President Aristotle

September 11th and the Spirit of Iwo Jima

2006-09-12T00:26:00.000-04:00

Five years ago, we remembered American heroism in a photograph that paid tribute to the soldiers of World War II.

At Iwo Jima, we lost over 6,000 men in a mere six weeks, fighting for a piece of rock that was necessary to victory.

Today we fighting terrorism in a theater that has cost over 2500 American lives.

The spirit of victory is the spirit of Iwo Jima.

Ann Coulter: out of line

2006-06-08T04:40:00.000-04:00

It's sad and embarrassing. And no conservative should even think about defending her. Kudos to Captain's Quarters for plain-spoken words. And to Hugh Hewitt for his integrity.

Zarqawi is dead!

2006-06-08T04:22:00.000-04:00

Zarqawi is dead. A major victory for the US effort in the war on terrorism and a major step forward in Iraq: Iraqi democracy is alive and Zarqawi is dead.

The official release from US Centcom runs:

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., Multi-National Force-Iraq Commanding General, announced the death of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in the following statement during a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad June 8:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Coalition Forces killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and one of his key lieutenants, spiritual advisor Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, yesterday, June 7, at 6:15 p.m. in an air strike against an identified, isolated safe house.

“Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi and some of his associates who were conducting a meeting approximately eight kilometers north of Baqubah when the air strike was launched.

“Iraqi police were first on the scene after the air strike, and elements of Multi-National Division North, arrived shortly thereafter. Coalition Forces were able to identify al-Zarqawi by fingerprint verification, facial recognition and known scars.

Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida in Iraq have conducted terrorist activities against the Iraqi people for years in attempts to undermine the Iraqi national government and Coalition efforts to rebuild and stabilize Iraq. He is known to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis. Al-Zarqawi’s death is a significant blow to al-Qaida and another step toward defeating terrorism in Iraq.

“Although the designated leader of al-Qaida in Iraq is now dead, the terrorist organization still poses a threat as its members will continue to try to terrorize the Iraqi people and destabilize their government as it moves toward stability and prosperity. Iraqi forces, supported by the Coalition, will continue to hunt terrorists that threaten the Iraqi people until terrorism is eradicated in Iraq.”

Zarqawi was near the center of the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection that led to the American decision to liberate Iraq.

Since 2000, Saddam Hussein had been subsidizing Zarqawi's Al Qaeda group as part of his war against the Kurds. And in October of 2002, Zarqawi had extended his reach by assassinating US Ambassador to Jordan Lawrence Foley.

With the collapse of his patron Saddam Hussein in April of 2003, Zarqawi was central to the Al Qaeda effort to expel the Americans from Iraq.

In an intercepted letter dating from February of 2004, Zarqawi worried that Al Qaeda would fail if democracy were established in Iraq: "IF WE FIGHT THEM, THAT WILL BE DIFFICULT BECAUSE THERE WILL BE A SCHISM BETWEEN US AND THE PEOPLE OF THE REGION. HOW CAN WE KILL THEIR COUSINS AND SONS AND UNDER WHAT PRETEXT, AFTER THE AMERICANS START WITHDRAWING? THE AMERICANS WILL CONTINUE TO CONTROL FROM THEIR BASES, BUT THE SONS OF THIS LAND WILL BE THE AUTHORITY. THIS IS THE DEMOCRACY, WE WILL HAVE NO PRETEXT."

He was right: Three elections later, Iraqi democracy is alive and Zarqawi is dead.

***************************************************************************

Links: The coverage over at the Counterterrorism Blog is more in-depth than all the world's mainline sources put together: see in particular Bill Roggio on the work of Major Task Force 145. Walid Phares looks at Arab reaction. And Andrew Cochran has an excellent round-up.

The Washington Post reduces Al Qaeda to an "insurgent" group, and notes that Iraqi reporters applauded his death. The Post does not mention if American reporters joined in the applause.

ABC News reports on the death of the "insurgency" leader, adding the suggestive detail that: "Zarqawi did not die right away, ABC News has learned. He was badly injured when he was recovered by U.S. troops. He then died from his injuries and was handed over to Iraqi officials."

CBS News, clearly worried by yet another victory in the war on terror, writes: "CBS News correspondent Susan Roberts reports that while there is no question that Zarqawi's death is a major victory for U.S. and Iraqi forces, it may have little impact on the sectarian violence now plaguing the country."

MSNBC carries the AP report of the demise of Iraq's "most wanted militant", conceding in the very first paragraph: "It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror."

CNN has a solid report on the death of the terrorist. CNN readers show their seriousness in the war on terror, ranking the video clips of the death of Zarqawi as #3 behind the clips of Paul McCartney's wife (#1) and Hadith (#2) as the most watched on-line newsclips (as of 5.30am Eastern time).

Professional is Britain's The Guardian. And Britain's Daily Telegraph. The BBC with characteristic cowardice reports the demise of a "militant" but not a "terrorist". By contrast the Times of London hails the death of the "terror leader", and connects the story to national concerns, noting that he was believed to have personally beheaded Ken Bigley of Liverpool, UK.

In France Le Monde notes the death of "le terroriste". Le Figaro also notes the death of "le terroriste", adding that he was responsible for a campaign of "bloody murders".

In Germany, Der Spiegel goes where the BBC won't: "The most-wanted terrorist in Iraq is dead". Der Spiegel even goes on to note that Zarqawi's goal was to re-establish the Caliphate in Iraq. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in its coverage highlights Tony Blair's declaration that this is a defeat for Al Qaeda worldwide. Munich's Suddeutsche Zeitung minces no words in describing the demise of one of the world's "most-wanted terrorists", and his responsibility for some of the "bloodiest attacks" of the last few years.

Iraqi blogger Iraq the Model offers congratulations for a major victory against terrorism. Al Jazeera reports the death of Zarqawi, while refraining with American journalism from calling Zarqawi a terrorist.

Atlas Shrugs has smiles. The Mudville Gazette is on top of things.

Michelle Malkin, as ever, is amazing. And Glenn Reynolds with impeccable timing was writing just yesterday on Zarqawi's troubles.

An unqualified nominee? We report, you decide

2006-05-09T11:17:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes has recently blasted Brett Kavanaugh as an unqualified nominee

An Unqualified Judicial Nominee

Published: May 3, 2006
Senate Republicans have announced plans to push for a quick vote on Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination for a powerful appeals court judgeship has languished since 2003. There are good reasons the nomination has been kept on hold. Mr. Kavanaugh was unqualified then, and he is unqualified now. Moreover, since his Senate hearing in 2004, new issues have been raised that he should be questioned about, including what role, if any, he played in Bush administration policies like the National Security Agency's domestic spying program.

Mr. Kavanaugh has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the nation's second most important court. A young lawyer with paltry courtroom experience, Mr. Kavanaugh does not have the legal background appropriate for such a lofty appointment. What he does have is a résumé that screams political partisanship.

He worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor, and helped draft possible grounds of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. He became a partisan in the impeachment battles that followed, co-writing an op-ed article in 1999 that presented Mr. Starr as an "American hero," while railing against a "presidentially approved smear campaign against him." Mr. Kavanaugh has spent much of his legal career since then in the Bush White House, where he helped select many of the administration's far-right judicial nominees.

Since Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination was first considered, information has come to light about a number of troubling policies that he could have had a hand in, including domestic spying, torture and rendition of detainees to other countries. Senate Democrats would like to question Mr. Kavanaugh about these programs, and about what connection he had, if any, to the Jack Abramoff scandal.

It is not clear, however, that they will get the chance. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has so far resisted calls for another hearing before Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination is brought to a vote. The Republicans have long used judicial nominations as a way of placating the far right of their party, and it appears that with President Bush sinking in the polls, they now want to offer up some new appeals court judges to their conservative base. But a lifetime appointment to the D.C. Circuit is too important to be treated as a political reward.

Absent from all this is any discussion of Mr Kavanaugh's actual accomplishments. Here's his resume:

Brett M. Kavanaugh Resumé
Birth: February 12, 1965; Washington, D.C.

Legal Residence: Washington, DC

Education:1983 - 1987, Yale College; B.A. degree, cum laude. 1987 - 1990, Yale Law School, J.D; Notes editor of the law review.

Bar Admittance:1990, Maryland; 1992, District of Columbia.

Experience:1990 - 1991, Law Clerk to the Honorable Walter K. Stapleton, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 1991 - 1992, Law Clerk to the Honorable Alex Kozinski, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 1992 - 1993, United States Department of Justice, Office of the Solicitor General. 1993 - 1994, Law Clerk to the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy, Supreme Court of the United States. 1994 - 1997, Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr. 1998, Associate Counsel. 1997 - 1998, Kirkland & Ellis. 1999 - 2001, Partner. 2001 - present, President George W. Bush: Associate Counsel to the President, 2001 -2003. Senior Associate Counsel to the President, 2003. Staff Secretary, 2003-present.

You will notice that the NYTimes stayed carefully silent about this "unqualified" nominee's two degrees from Yale, his position on the law review, or his clerkship for the Supreme Court. Of all this "news that's fit to print", the Times couldn't spare a word. He worked for Ken Starr and the President, so that was enough to dismiss him as a political hack.

Of course, the problem isn't that Kavanaugh isn't qualifed. It's that he's well-qualified and conservative--but the Times can't be upfront about the real issue here.

A Star Is Born...

2006-05-07T15:01:00.000-04:00

As readers here know, I am a big fan of the Dawn Patrol's Dawn Eden.

Latest news is the release of the cover of her forthcoming book on chastity and sexuality, The Thrill of the Chaste.

Looks like a knockout.

Dawn is a fascinating woman and a wonderful writer: from a Jewish family, she is a walking encyclopedia of the history of rock'n'roll, and a recent convert to the Catholic Church.

Her blog regularly covers issues of contemporary sexuality, and her insight and raw emotional honesty make her irreplaceable. Please set aside your volumes by Freud, Foucault, and Camille Paglia; and make some room for Miss Eden.

I include here a snippet from her blog of last year that for me was particularly memorable...

A single bases her actions on how they will or won't affect her single, lacking state. She goes to parties based on whether or not there will be new men to meet. She chooses friends who are also single and lacking—again, think Carrie's gang in "Sex and the City"—who will reinforce her own cynicism.

A singular bases her actions on how they will enable her to be the person whom she believes God wants her to be. She trusts that God has a plan for her and that—assuming she longs to be married—a husband is only part of that plan. Moreover, she trusts that God will provide a husband for her if she follows His will for her life, making the best use of the gifts that He has given her.

I spent many years of my life being single. I have nothing to show for it except the ability to toss my hair fetchingly, and a mental catalog of a thousand banal things to say to fill the awkward and unbearably lonely moments between having sex and putting my clothes back on. Those are moments they never showed on "Sex and the City," because they strike to the heart of the black hole that casual sex, even—no, especially—when done in the hope of marriage, can never fill.I may spend many more years being singular. But not a single day of them will be wasted. And that, of course, will be a singular achievement. [boldfaced added].

If you didn't get in to Harvard...

2006-04-11T00:20:00.000-04:00

So you didn't get admitted to Harvard. Or that other high-prestige college that you set your heart on.

Here's some sound advice for what to do next.

1. Do remember that some of the most prestigious schools in the US are awful places to get an undergraduate education. Harvard's doctoral programs mostly deserve their reputation. Their undergraduate programs are something else again. As an academic, if my kid wanted to go to Harvard, they'd need a VERY good reason. In most cases, my kid would find it easier to convince Harvard to accept them than to convince me to help pay for four years of over-rated ivy. Since Harvard's admission rate is historically about 10%, well, you get the picture.

2. If your heart is really set on that school that turned you down, then don't take no for answer. Take your next best school, work hard as a freshman, and look to transfer in later as a sophomore. You are not sentenced to spend the next four years of your life at a school that you really don't like.

3. Do realize that graduate schools are not impressed by the US News rankings. Your ability to go to a top-class graduate school depends on your GREs, your GPA, and a number of other things. There are numerous excellent colleges that will not be found in the first couple lines of the US News rankings.

4. This is nicely summed up by Gregg Easterbrook:
"The elites still lead in producing undergraduates who go on for doctorates (Caltech had the highest percentage during the 1990s), but Earlham, Grinnell, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Knox, Lawrence, Macalester, Oberlin, and Wooster do better on this scale than many higher-status schools. In the 1990s little Earlham, with just 1,200 students, produced a higher percentage of graduates who have since received doctorates than did Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern, Penn, or Vassar."

5. So here's a short list of great liberal colleges that I hope my kid will look at seriously:

St John's College: the classic great books program and probably the best liberal arts college in the country.
Thomas Aquinas College: similar to St John's, but with a strong Catholic slant.
University of Chicago: Indiana Jones's school is vastly underrated by high school students, but not by grad school admissions offices.
Wheaton College: "In a survey of baccalaureate origins of doctorate
recipients, Wheaton ranked 11th in the nation in the total number of graduates (all fields) who went on to earn doctorates."
Hillsdale College: first-rate liberal arts program with a strong emphasis on values and culture.

Rush as the clown prince of conservativism

2006-04-10T20:16:00.000-04:00

Sometimes conservatives are so easy to caricature...Rush Limbaugh cites a great article from the Asia Times by Spengler, the nom de plume of one of their columnists. At the end of the article, Rush remarks:

Now, this is Asia Times Online. The date of this story is April 11, 2006, and the author is simply named "Spengler." I don't know first names. It's all I know.

Rush, buddy, the name is taken from Oswald Spengler, a German intellectual 1880-1936, best known for his study, The Decline of the West.

Of course, this still makes Rush better educated than Howard Dean, who once claimed that the Book of Job was his favourite book in the New Testament.

The Gospel of Judas: skepticism strikes out

2006-04-10T00:12:00.000-04:00

I just finished watching National Geographic's two-hour special on the Gospel of Judas. At one point I told some friends who were watching it with me: they've got two hours and some of the world's greatest biblical scholars, and I bet at the end they can't find a single one who thinks there's any historical credibility to the Gospel of Judas.

Sure enough, not a single one of their international panel of scholars was willing to endorse the historicity of the Gospel of Judas.

1. This is a great manuscript find--but so far it tells us absolutely nothing about the true history of Jesus. Few of the scholars on the program would be identified with any traditional form of Christianity. But none was willing to claim the Gospel of Judas as evidence that would undermine the traditional Gospels. There are good reasons why even skeptics won't endorse the Gospel of Judas. In part, any gospel written in the second century is going to be a dubious source of truth about Jesus. But mostly, there's no serious evidence that the Gospel of Judas has any contact with any credible historical tradition.

2. The discussion of the carbon-14 dating in the television special renews my skepticism about the accuracy of the carbon-14 date. The carbon-14 team thinks the manuscript dates from AD 220-340. But they never calibrated their carbon-14 readings against papyri from this period with known dates. Which means their estimate of AD 220-340 is much less credible estimate than they may realize. The handwriting of the papyrus looks about a century later than that given by the carbon-14 team. I would like to believe that the carbon-14 estimate is right: it would mean that a substantial batch of late Roman manuscripts are about a century older than scholars have so far estimated. But it is more likely that carbon-14 date is wrong.

3. Bart Ehrman repeats in the special the standard claim of many biblical scholars that the gospel were originally anonymous. Lots of biblical scholars agree with that, but the Gospel of Judas itself suggests that this is wrong. The camera focusses on the title at the end of the gospel, which reads Gospel of Judas in letters so clear many non-scholars could probably read it. The new manuscript is yet another piece of evidence that it was very rare to see gospels without titles. There is little reason to believe that the gospels now in the New Testament ever circulated without titles. So as I pointed out on Friday, the Gospel of Judas actually lends some support to the traditional view of the gospels.

Do you believe in magic?

2006-04-08T22:47:00.000-04:00

Dawn Eden links to an amazing post over the The Raving Atheist. Classic quotation:

Magical thinking occurs when one asserts that the human status of the fetus is mind-dependent, varying from woman to woman, dependent on the notion of "wantedness." That's the thinking prevalent in the pro-choice movement today. "Nobody can say when life begins," the argument goes, "so it's whatever anybody says it is." Or "between a woman and her god," even if that god throws infants into volcanos. Planned Parenthood and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice have hired clergy to promote precisely that sort of view.

The Power of Prayer

2006-04-08T19:12:00.000-04:00

Scrappleface hits this one out of the park.

Prayer Study: Humans Fail to Manipulate God
by Scott Ott

(2006-03-31) — A team of scientists today ended a 10-year study on the so-called “power of prayer” by concluding that God cannot be manipulated by humans, not even by scientists with a $2.4 million research grant.

The scientists also noted that their work was “sabotaged by religious zealots” secretly praying for study subjects who were supposed to receive no prayer.

“As it turns out, God was not impressed by our academic credentials, our substantial funding base, and our rigorous study protocols,” said lead researcher Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston. “I get the feeling we just spent 10 years looking through the wrong end of the telescope.”

While patients who knew they were the targets of the study’s intercessory prayer team actually had more post-operative complications, Dr. Benson admitted he failed to prevent friends and relatives from praying for the “no prayer” control group.

“It really burns me up that we worked so hard, only to be undermined by an anonymous army of intellectual weaklings on their knees,” he said.

Dr. Benson said he would now seek $10 million in grants to explore whether fire can be called down from heaven to kindle a pile of wood. The control group’s wood will be drenched in water to prevent combustion.

Dutch seek to punish educated moms

2006-04-08T11:50:00.000-04:00

The article is as awful as you'd fear:

Sharon Dijksma, a leading parliamentarian of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) wants to penalise educated stay-at-home women. “A highly-educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work – that is destruction of capital,” she said in an interview last week. “If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at society’s expense, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.”

Hence her proposal to recover part of the cost of their education from highly-educated women who decide not to seek paid work. Between 2001 and 2005 the number of Dutch women aged between 15 and 65 who were out on the labour market rose from 55.9 to 58.7 per cent. Dijksma says she wants to stimulate more women to join the work force. In the municipal elections earlier this month the PvdA became the biggest party in the Netherlands thanks to the Muslim vote. The PvdA is generally expected to win the general elections next year, when the 35 year old Dijksma, who has been an MP since she was 23 and is a leading figure in the party, might become a government minister.

The Gospel of Judas

2006-04-07T16:41:00.000-04:00

The publication of the Gospel of Judas has provided some excitement for the web in biblical studies. And the New York Times is in on the action.

1) This is a very high-powered team that was asked to do the work on this new codex. I know some of them personally. Stephen Emmel of Muenster is someone I met in Germany, and Emmel is brilliant. Robinson is well-known internationally, and one of the leading biblical scholars of the last generation. Ehrman is currently the best-known specialist in New Testament textual criticism in North America. Putting all of these guys (and others) together on one project is the Dream Team of biblical scholarship.

2) The codex itself is certainly authentic. It is written in Coptic. The carbon-14 experts date it to AD 280 +/- 60 years. Emmel thinks the handwriting dates from around 400. Most of my work is with Greek palaeography rather than with Coptic, but since the alphabets are mostly the same, the Greek is frequently used as a cross-check on the Coptic. I haven't had time to do a systematic study of the fragments, but at an initial glance I would tend to concur with Emmel: mid-to-late fourth century AD at least in terms of the Greek characters, possibly early fifth century AD.

3) This means there is some discrepancy between the palaeographical date and the carbon-14 date. Unfortunately, carbon-14 dating has often proved unreliable in dealing with ancient manuscripts: when documents with known dates are tested with carbon-14, the carbon-14 dates frequently prove to be badly off. I haven't been able to locate the publications of the carbon-14 team, but the carbon-14 date of AD 280 +/- 60 may well be too old: mid-to-late 300s may well prove closer to the mark when the codex is studied in detail.

4) There is a difference between the codex and the text. The codex was copied after the text--just as your printed Bible in your house is a recent copy of a much older text. Although the codex of the Gospel of Judas looks fourth century AD, the Gospel text itself is much older: it must have been written prior to the time of Irenaeus of Lyons, who mentions it in his book Adversus Haereses (Against the Heresies) in c.AD 180.

5) Irenaeus writes: "They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas." (AH I.31). So the Gospel of Judas itself must have been written before the time of Irenaeus of Lyons c.AD 180, even though the codex which we have now was copied perhaps two hundred years later.

6) There isn't a chance in the world that Judas actually wrote the Gospel. And there's very little chance that any biblical scholar will try to claim otherwise.

7) Nor is there any meaningful chance that the Gospel of Judas contains any new historical facts about Jesus himself. As always, one wants to be cautious until a thorough study has been made, but the chances that it contains anything true about Jesus that isn't already in the Gospels is near zero.

8) The most interesting thing about the codex--at least from the standpoint of palaeography--is the fact it contains the title at the very end: The Gospel of Judas. If you look carefully at the last two lines of the picture, you may be able to pick out the letters: EUANGELION IOUDAS.
(The last line looks like an O Y Delta A C=Ioudas).

9) Many modern biblical scholars think the biblical gospels were originally anonymous, and that the titles were added later by the scribes. But the German scholar Martin Hengel has written that the titles are authentic. The Gospel of Judas provides some additional supporting evidence that Hengel is right: the normal way for ancient books to be written is with titles, either at the end or the beginning of the manuscript. This in turn supports the traditional belief that the Gospels were not written anonymously, but by known individuals whose names were part of the titles.

10) In and of itself, the presence of titles does not prove that the Gospels were originally written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John: the Gospel of Judas contains a title and was certainly not written by Judas. But it does add to the evidence that the titles were very old, and the probability is that the titles were accepted by the early Catholic Church precisely because they were thought to be correct.

11) I doubt that the Gospel of Judas will strengthen the case for skepticism about the Gospels among biblical scholars. I do think it should add evidence to Martin Hengel's case for the traditional titles of the Gospels. The most important long-term effect of the discovery of the Gospel of Judas may well be to enhance rather than to question the historicity of the Gospels.

[My apologies to biblical scholars for oversimplifying a complex debate on the authorship of the Gospels and the significance of the titles!]

Romney's health care reform

2006-04-07T08:21:00.000-04:00

Mitt Romney is currently attracting much favorable attention for his health care reform in Massachussetts.

Reason Magazine provides the best concise analysis of American health care policy that I've seen in years: a terriffic defense of why something like the Romney plan should be the basic plan for free market-based health care reform.

Bush on the mound

2006-04-04T01:17:00.000-04:00

Cincinnati gives President Bush a standing ovation.

President Bush had lots of oomph in his arm to throw out a strong first pitch for the Cincinnati Reds' home opener.

Bush became the first sitting president to throw a ceremonial pitch in Cincinnati as the Reds took on the Chicago Cubs.

Bush received a loud standing ovation when he took the mound in this Republican-leaning city. He was accompanied by two injured soldiers and a father who lost his son in Afghanistan.

Little American flags were distributed to the crowd of 42,000 before the game. Fans waved them excitedly as Bush was introduced and drowned out the few scattered protesters...

"I've got the dish at home at the White House, and so, when I'm doing my work, I keep a game on. And there's nothing better than opening day," the president said.

Johannes Paulus Magnus

2006-04-03T00:20:00.000-04:00

Spent the evening playing EWTN's DVD of John Paul II's funeral. Toward the end, one of the commentators remarks, noting his failing health: "Nobody wanted him to live five years more than he did."

I did.

I had a grandmother who lived to six months shy of her one hundredth birthday; and I thought and hoped that John Paul II would continue to lead the Catholic Church into his nineties.

Rumors of poor health had swirled around the pope for years, and his Parkinson's was obvious to all. But so too was the will, the stamina, the determination, the perserverance.

He had early in his pontificate set his heart on leading the Church in the millenium celebrations. Often when an older man has a goal like that, after he achieves it, the will to live goes too. As the year 2000 drew to a close, I worried that we would lose John Paul II in 2001. But when he survived that awful year, as indomitable as ever, I was certain he would be with us for many years to come. Only in the last few weeks before his death did I slowly realize that we would not have him with us much longer.

Sometimes the most beautiful and most deeply understood insights into this man came from unexpected places.

From The Tablet came a remarkable obituary, punctuated by a stunning poem:

A prophecy of the style of his papacy could be heard in the words of the Polish romantic poet Juliusz Slowacki, who in the nineteenth century had criticised the conduct of Pius IX and prophesied the coming of a Slav pope:

This one will not - Italian-like - take flight
At cannon's roar or sabre thrust
But brave as God himself stand and give fight
Counting the world as dust.

That Polish poem was familiar to Karol Wojtyla from boyhood.

Yes. That's the man who stared down the Nazis and the Communists with equal faith and fearlesness.

And PBS Frontline produced an amazing article that cut to the heart of John Paul II with greater power than almost anything in the religious press:

There is a fiery, mystical core to the young Wojtyla's faith. It is the deepest, darkest layer of the soil which has nourished him throughout his life. All his early heroes are passionate visionaries: the strange, otherworldly Jan Tyranowski; the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross; the stigmatic faith healer, Padre Pio. Their emotional, poetic view of the world has sustained him throughout his life. This is a man for whom the great religious truths are viscerally experienced. Christ is alive and walks the earth; the Virgin is a real woman; the Devil is a person not an abstraction. Good and evil are powerful autonomous forces battling each other--the powers of darkness and light. As Pope, he has attended exorcisms, and even officiated at one.

Read, pray, believe.

Into Great Silence

2006-04-02T13:39:00.000-04:00

The irreplaceable Sandro Magister on Europe's new hit movie:

The original title in German is “Die Grosse Stille,” the great silence. It is a title that is more than appropriate for 162 uninterrupted minutes of pure contemplation. The soundtrack is made only of the chiming of bells, nighttime psalmody, footsteps, wind, rain, and very little else...

But no one would have bet on the astonishing public success that the film had last winter in Germany, topping even the latest Harry Potter film. And yet this is precisely what happened...

Yet the Carthusians are the most hidden of all monks, the least inclined to release news about themselves, the farthest from seeking proselytes. The novices – in the film, there is one who came from Africa – join the Carthusians in mysterious, unplanned ways. That so many viewers are seeking out the contemplative silence of “Die Grosse Stille” is a sign of the need in these times.

War on Terror? What War?

2006-04-02T10:38:00.000-04:00

The New Republic carries this gem:

"To anyone who cares about the fate of our republic, these are troubling times. Yet seldom has our public discourse seemed so inadequate to the seriousness of the situation. George W. Bush's administration has pushed us into moral and constitutional crisis, but the media remain committed to business as usual--trivializing criticism of the president as partisan bickering, finding expert apologists for power to sanction appalling departures from American tradition. Think-tank intellectuals with impeccable credentials calmly discuss torture as an instrument of national policy. Bush himself, having deceived Americans into supporting his disastrous Iraq adventure, now asserts his authority to ignore legislative constraints of any kind. "Presidential historians" on public television solemnly compare him to Lincoln and other "wartime presidents," overlooking the egregious flaw in this analogy: we are not in a state of war. Instead we are in a state of permanent emergency, a murky atmosphere of genuine danger and popular anxiety that can be deployed to justify just about any expansion of executive power. " [Boldface added].

So: "we are not in a state of war." Thousands of Americans are fighting in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands are fighting in Iraq, but: "we are not in a state of war."

If liberals want to know why they lost in 2002 and 2004 elections that were very winnable, they might start with statements like this.

It's worth noting as well that this was published in The New Republic, the one liberal journal that has consistently argued the necessity of fighting the war on terror. In December 2004, TNR published Peter Beinart's "A Fighting Faith", a ringing call for liberals to defend America as they had during the Cold War.

The overwhelming response from his fellow liberals was: nothing doing. Or as Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly put it: "If he thinks too many liberals are squishy on terrorism, he needs to persuade us not just that Islamic totalitarianism is bad — of course it's bad — but that it's also an overwhelming danger to the security of the United States." If after September 11th, even relatively moderate liberals like Kevin Drum still need to persuaded that Islamic terrorism is an "overwhelming danger" to the US, it explains very clearly why Democrats can't win elections.

No wonder Kerry lost. CNN's exit polls showed that the American people trusted President Bush to handle terrorism 58 to 40%. By contrast only 40% trusted Kerry to handle terrorism, while 58% did not trust him. But the breakdowns are even more interesting. All of the red states trusted Bush to handle terrorism, none of the red states trusted Kerry to handle terrorism. But what is interesting is that the blue states didn't trust Kerry either: of the states that went blue, only in Massachussetts and Maryland did a plurality of voters trust Kerry to handle terrorism.

Now in 2006 the Democrats have a very winnable election in front of them. Instead of vowing to win the war on terror, they are running to impeach Bush, surrender Iraq to the terrorists, end the Patriot Act, and stop wire-tapping Al Qaeda. If that isn't exactly the way the moderate Democrats see their platform, that is the way it will be seen in Middle America, and that platform seriously undermines their chances of carrying the fall.

If Democrats really want to win in 2006, they might go back and re-read Peter Beinart.

American deaths in Iraq hit two-year low: The Washington Post can't handle the truth

2006-04-01T08:59:00.000-05:00

Rice Admits to 'Tactical Errors' U.S. Troop Fatalities Hit a Low; Iraqi Deaths Soar. So reads today's Washington Post. Two articles: one where Rice admits that mistakes were made in BIG type; the other where the US shows dramatic progress in tiny type.

Is there any way to rationalize this except as anti-Bush bias at the Post?

This blog regularly slams major media, but it doesn't usually slam the Post. The Washington Post is certainly a liberal slanted newspaper--but that's not really a big deal: there is no unbiased news, and a slant is to be expected. What I appreciate about the Post--unlike many other American news outlets--is that there's nearly always a good faith effort to be fair, its liberal slant notwithstanding. Well and good: the Post wears its liberalism with honesty and honour.

Most of the time.

Today's story correctly notes that American casualties have dropped to due to our success in training the Iraqi army, and it correctly notes that Iraqi casualties are up.

But quite apart from its determination to hype the fluff of Condi's confession, quite apart from its determination to play down the dramatic progress in US casualties in Iraq, the Washington Post can't even get the Iraqi casualty story straight.

1) The Post exaggerates the situation with respect to Iraqi military and civilian casualties: "But recent weeks have also been among the most lethal of the war for Iraqi civilians, police officers and soldiers, who were killed and wounded at a rate of about 75 a day, a rate three times as high as at the start of 2004." This combines Iraqi police/military fatalities with civilian fatalities, and thus produces a misleading result. The graph above shows Iraqi police/military fatalities which have been dropping steadily since the summer of 2005, despite the fact that numbers of Iraqis in the field is steadily increasing. Appeal to the military death rates for Iraqis from 2004 is misleading since there were so few Iraqi police/military in the field at that point. The Iraqi civilian figures fluctuate from month to month: March was certainly a bad month for Iraqi civilians with 899 deaths and Iraqi civilian deaths have been rising since December of 2005--but even the March 2006 figure was down from 1524 deaths in August of 2005.

2) The Post misses the point that American fatalities have now been declining sharply for six months. From 99 in Oct 2005 to 86 in Nov 2005 t o 68 in December 2005 to 64 in Jan 2006 to 58 in Feb 2006 to 31 in Jan 2006. So American fatalities have dropped about 70% in six months.

Ever seen that fact on the nightly news? Didn't think so.

3) The Post misses the point that the March reduction in American deaths is part of a broader trend over the last sixteen months. I suspect that the public perception is that things in Iraq have gotten worse over the last year or so in terms of American casualties. But that is simply not true. The peak point in American casualties was the period between the hand off of American sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004 and the first elections in January 2005.

The Bush strategy was to elect a democratic government, train a new Iraqi army, and then American casualties would drop. Is the strategy working?

American fatalities per day
June 2004-Jan 2005: 2.92
Jan 2005-Dec 2005: 2.35
Dec 2005-Mar 2006: 1.69

American fatalities have dropped 20% since the elections of January 2005, and 42% since the elections of December 2005 (as against the June 2004-Jan 2005 base). The Post headlines for the second Bush term could have read regularly: American casualties in Iraq drop again. But that's not a story that the press seems to want to cover.

4) The Post misses the point that some of the March reduction is seasonal. Weather is a part of the Iraqi battlefield, and the insurgents and terrorists have traditionally been relatively quiet in March. In March 2004 fatalities were relatively low at 52; but in April 2004 the insurgency exploded with Americans suffering 140 deaths. In March 2005 deaths were relatively low at 39, but then deaths headed upward, peaking at 99 in October of 2005.

5) The Post misses the point that we are in an election year and there is every reason to expect a redoubling of attacks by the terrorists to browbeat the Americans into voting for surrender. As Clausewitz pointed out: war is politics by other means. The terrorists in Iraq time their attacks for maximum political effect; they consciously work to manipulate the news media and most of the time they succeed. The next six months are certain to see renewed attacks by the terrorists. If American casualties are still this low six months from now, then the terrorists will have failed, and we will be in a position to declare victory and go home.

Much however as of today is in doubt. The Democrats are running for Congress on a scarcely concealed platform of surrender in Iraq. The terrorist summer/fall offensive will be designed for maximum casualties to help the Democrats win the Congress and force the administration to hand over Iraq to the terrorists.

The Republicans are running on a platform of stay the course; a strategy which has been working so far, at least as measured by the 20% reduction of US casualties since the first elections in Jan 2005, and the 40% reduction in casualties since the elections in December (with June 2004-Jan 2005 as the baseline).

Why surrender Iraq to the terrorists when the evidence shows we're winning?

Conclusion: The Post here misses the real story. The story should have gone something like this: The American strategy of handing the war over to the Iraqi military showed yet another month of success as American fatalities dropped for the sixth consecutive month and are now at the lowest levels since the insurgency exploded in April 2004. Iraqi military deaths are up slightly in March but still down sharply from summer 2005 despite the increase in Iraqi military in the field, evidence of the increasing professionalism of the Iraqi army. But Iraqi civilian deaths are up, reflecting the delay in forming a new Iraqi government and renewed fears of civil war. Meanwhile, American commanders brace for a new round of terrorist attacks this summer as Al Qaeda hopes to influence the American fall elections and terrorize American voters into retreat.

The Crack-up in Academia

2006-03-31T08:21:00.000-05:00

Three facts characterize modern academia: the sun rises in the east, it sets in the west, and it is almost impossible for conservative Christians get hired within mainstream academia.

Alas, it can even be difficult for conservative Christians to keep their jobs at allegedly religious universities.

The latest case is Francis Beckwith of Baylor University. A remarkably prolific scholar who has outpublished and outperformed nearly all his peers at Baylor (and pretty much everywhere else), Beckwith has an Achilles' heel: he's pro-life and he argues for it in print.

This might not have been a problem at Baylor until recently. Under President Robert Sloan, Baylor had hired world-class scholars with known Christian commitments in an effort to make Baylor a center for Christian academic excellence.

But Sloan was forced out, and the new administration has launched a purge of Christian conservatives. The sorry tale is told by a Baylor grad student, writing incognito at American Spectator.

Andrew Sullivan joins the Flat Earth Society

2006-03-28T20:46:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan's recent post will get him a life-time membership in the Flat Earth Society (yes, there really is one). Sullivan writes:

People have this strange idea that Americans are much more secular today than they once were. In fact, the kind of religious fundamentalism we see today, while always part of the American fabric, has rarely been as dominant. The faith of the founders' was a drier, more Enlightened type; and it's fair to wonder whether some of them were believers at all in the modern sense of the term. That's why a defense of secularism is by no means un-American. It is the essence of what made the United States such a radical experiment in its time: the separation of government from God. Just don't tell that to the theocons.

Did the Founding Fathers affirm separation of church and state? Of course.

Separation of the government from God? Not a chance. But maybe Sullivan has never read the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Or this: "We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that 'except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel." Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention, 28 June 1787.

Or this: "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." Thomas Jefferson, 1781.

The key point is that for the Founding Fathers the existence of God was a fact, amply supported by 2000 years of Western philosophy and proved to a moral certainty by Newtonian science. This God was the necessary basis for both human morality and human rights, hence their concern in the Declaration of Independence for "the laws of Nature and Nature's God".

Religion was something else, a matter of faith; something the government could encourage, but not require. Hence this early repudiation of the notion of "Christian America":

"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." President John Adams, Treaty of Tripoli, 1797.

But this same John Adams could also say:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, Address to the Military, October 11, 1798.

The Founders distinguished between the pair of Reason/God which were the foundation of government; and that of Faith/Religion which were left to private belief. It's not a difficult distinction to grasp.

Maybe some day Sully will catch on.

Dean's Democrats and the Evangelicals

2006-03-28T08:06:00.001-05:00

Howard Dean has declared his determination to reach out to evangelical Protestants. An article about his outreach ends as follows (from Christianity Today):

In the gathering of Hispanic Democratic leaders, Gloria Nieto, vice chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, broke down in sobs as she lamented her feeling of rejection as a woman who had illegally married a woman in Boston. Responding to her wondering if the Democratic Party would still be a welcoming home for lesbians, Dean leaped off the stage into the audience to hug her. With a sob of his own catching his voice, he brought the audience to a standing ovation with his declaration, "That's why I am a Democrat." Many evangelicals may well respond, "That's why we are not Democrats."

The scientific evidence for why the Evangelicals are right about this is summarized in an excellent short pamphlet. Highlights include:
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Fact #2: Studies show homosexual marriage is hazardous to one's health.
Across the world, numerous researchers have reported that 'committed' or 'coupled' homosexuals are more apt to engage in highly risky and biologically unsanitary sexual practices than are 'single' gays. As a consequence of this activity, they increase their chances of getting AIDS and other sexually transmitted or blood-borne diseases.

In 1983, near the beginning of the.AIDS epidemic, gays in San Francisco(13) who claimed to be in "monogamous relationships" were compared to those who were not. Without exception, those in monogamous relationships more frequently reported that they had engaged in biologically unhealthful activity during the past year. As examples, 4.5% of the monogamous v. 2.2% of the unpartnered had engaged in drinking urine, and 33.3% v. 19.6% claimed to practice oral-anal sex.
In a sample of London gays(6) in 1987, those infected with HIV were more apt to have regular partners than those not so infected.In 1989, Italian researchers(14) investigated 127 gays attending an AIDS clinic. Twelve percent of those without steady partners v. 28% of those with steady partners were HIV+. The investigators remarked that "to our surprise, male prostitutes did not seem to be at increased risk, whereas homosexuals who reported a steady partner (i.e., the same man for the previous six months) carried the highest relative risk."
During 1991-92, 677 gays in England(15) were asked about "unprotected anal sex." Those who had 'regular' partners reported sex lives which were "about three times as likely to involve unprotected anal sex than partnerships described as 'casual/one-night stands."' Sex with a regular partner "was far more important than awarelless of HIV status in facilitating high-risk behaviour."
A 1993 British sexual diary study(16) of 385 gays reported that men in "monogamous" relationships practiced more anal intercourse and more anal-oral sex than those without a steady partner. It concluded that "gay men in a Closed relationship... exhibit... the highest risk of HIV transmission."
In 1992, a sample(17) of 2,593 gays from Tucson, AZ and Portland, OR reinforced the consistent finding that "gay men in primary relationships are significantly more likely than single men to have engaged in unprotected anal intercourse."
Similarly, a 1993 sample(18) of gays from Barcelona, Spain practiced riskier sex with their regular partners than with casual pick ups.
Even a 1994 study(19) of over 600 lesbians demonstrated that "the connection between monogamy and unprotected sex,... was very consistent across interviews. Protected sex was generally equated with casual encounters; unprotected sex was generally equated with trusting relationships. Not using latex baariers was seen as a step in the process of relational commitment. Choosing to have unprotected sex indicated deepening trust and intimacy as the relationship grew."

Why is homosexual marriage a health hazard?
While married people pledge and generally live up to their vows of sexual faithfulness, participants in both gay and lesbian "marriages" offer each other something quite different. They see shared biological intimacy and sexual risk-taking as the hallmark of trust and commitment. Being exposed in this way to the bodily discharges of their partner increases the risk of disease, especially so if that partner was 'married' to someone else before or engaged in sex with others outside the relationship.

The evidence is strong that both gays and lesbians are more apt to take biological risks when having sex with a partner than when having casual sex. The evidence is also strong that gays disproportionately contract more disease, especially AIDS and the various fonms of hepatitis, from sex with "partners" than they do from sex with strangers. There is also some evidence(20) that gays with partners are more apt to die of both AIDS and non-AIDS conditions than those without partners.

Like gays, 'married' lesbians are more apt to engage in biological intimacy and risk-taking. However, there is insufficient evidence to conclude whether disease or death rates are higher for partnered or unpartnered lesbians.

Fact #3: Homosexual marriage has the highest rate of domestic violence.
Domestic violence is a public health concern. Among heterosexuals, not only is it an obvious marker of a troubled marriage, but media attention and tax dollars to aid 'battered women' have both grown tremendously in recent years. What is not reported is the empirical evidence suggesting that homosexual couples have higher rates of domestic violence than do heterosexual couples, especially among lesbians.
In 1996,(21) Susan Holt, coordinator of the domestic violence unit of the Los Angeles Gay Lesbian Center, said that "domestic violence is the third largest health problem facing the gay and lesbian community today and trails only behind AIDS and substance abuse... in terms of sheer numbers and lethality."
The average rate of domestic violence in traditional maariage, established by a nationwide federal government survey(22) of 6,779 married couples in 1988, is apparently less than 5% per year. During their most recent year of marriage, 2.0% of husbands and 3.2% of wives said that they were hit, shoved or had things thrown at them. Unmarried, cohabiting heterosexuals report(23) higher rates of violencea rate of about 20% to 25% per year.
When the same standard is applied to gay and lesbian relationships, the following evidence emerges:

In 1987,(24) 48% of 43 lesbian, and 39% of 39 gay Georgia couples reported domestic violence.
In 1988,(25) 70 lesbian and gay students participated in a study of conflict resolution in gay and lesbian relationships. Adjusted upward for reporting by only one partner in the couple (i.e., "only one side of the story"), an estimated 29% of gay and 56% of lesbian couples experienced violence in the past year.
In 1989,(26) 284 lesbians were interviewed who were involved "in a committed, cohabitating lesbian relationship" during the last 6 months. Adjusted for reporting by just one partner, an estimated 43% of the relationships were violent in the past year.
In 1990,(27) nearly half of 90 lesbian couples in Los Angeles reported domestic violence yearly. 21% of these wonien said that they were mothers. Interestingly, of those mothers who had children living with them, 11 lived in "violent" and 11 in "nonviolent" relationships. Thus, unlike traditional marriage where parents will often forego fighting to shield the children from hostility, there was no evidence from this investigation that the presence of youngsters reduced the rate of domestic violence.

Overall, the evidence is fairly compelling that homosexual domestic violence exceeds heterosexual domestic violence. The limited scientific literature suggests that physical domestic violence occurs every year among less than 5% of traditionally married couples, 20% to 25% of cohabiting heterosexuals, and approximately half of lesbian couples. The evidence is less certain for gays, but their rate appears to fall somewhere between that for unmarried, cohabiting heterosexuals and lesbians.

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Aristotle and the Welfare State

2006-03-27T07:12:00.000-05:00

From Charles Murray over the weekend:

But Aristotle was right. Virtue is a habit. Virtue does not flourish in the next generation because we tell our children to be honest, compassionate and generous in the abstract. It flourishes because our children practice honesty, compassion and generosity in the same way that they practice a musical instrument or a sport. That happens best when children grow up in a society in which human needs are not consigned to bureaucracies downtown but are part of life around us, met by people around us.

Read his article, "A Plan to Replace the Welfare State."
******************************************************
Update: K-Lo at National Review interviews Murray. And Andrew Ferguson takes a look too.

Mississippi Churning?--what Newsweek doesn't understand about abortion

2006-03-26T13:56:00.000-05:00

Newsweek offers its most recent defense of legalized abortion.

March 20, 2006 issue - When "Jane" discovered a few weeks ago that she was pregnant, she nearly collapsed. She already has four kids, ages 6 to 18, to raise on her own, while working full-time as a housekeeper. "I'm struggling trying to take care of them," said the 33-year-old Vicksburg, Miss., native, who gave a fictitious name to protect her privacy. "I'm not financially able" to handle a fifth child.

By leading with this item, Newsweek's reporter is clearly trying to legitimize both abortion and Roe v. Wade. Jane "discovered" that that she was pregnant. Her story is tragic: she is a thirty-three year-old woman who already has four children, and there is no husband (or father!) in sight. Yet she has gotten herself pregnant by some unknown man who can't or won't help look after the child he has fathered; she has allowed herself to conceive a child she can't afford to raise, and is demanding an abortion in an attempt to avoid the consequences of her own self-destructive behaviour. And she demands our sympathy.

Well: yes. God knows she deserves sympathy. Jane is a woman with serious psychological problems. She needs some serious counseling to address what are clearly long-standing problems with her mental health and her moral character. And she's symptomatic of abortion in Mississippi and American abortion in general, and the effect that abortion has on women's lives. Legalized abortion undermines the lives of women, for it functions as an enabler; it enables women to pursue deeply self-destructive lifestyles that require comprehensive counseling.

83% of Mississippi's abortions are for unmarried women. 56% of Mississippi's abortions are done for women who have already given birth at least once. 37% of Mississippi's abortions are for women seeking their second abortion or worse.

The solution to this is not for Mississippi to follow South Dakota by trying to ban all abortions.

That will simply lead to defeat in the US Supreme Court.

What is needed instead is a German-style mandatory counseling law coupled with a ban on abortion after the 12th week.

As I've noted in these posts: such a law has a very good chance of cutting US abortion rates in half or better--that is, reducing them to European levels. And it has a good chance of being upheld by the US Supreme Court as consistent with abortion law since the Casey decision in the early 1990s.

And it would begin to address the problem that Newsweek doesn't see: that legalized abortion does not empower women, it enables them: enables women like Jane to persist in self-destructive lifestyles.

Women deserve better.

The clock strikes midnight: Iran goes nuclear

2006-03-26T01:20:00.000-05:00

Iran announced last night it would go nuclear this year.

It is now only weeks away from finishing the centrifuges necessary to process the uranium needed to produce atomic bombs.

We are now in the most dangerous period of American history since the Cuban missile crisis.

Michael Ledeen warned us it would probably happen this spring. The CIA and an army of experts got it wrong (see the CSIS report pages 114-120).

From RegimeChangeIran (H/T: RedState)

Iran would fully go nuclear with the current Persian year, which started simultaneously with spring on March 20 [of 2006], Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.

"Our enemies try to prevent our scientific progress through wide-spread propaganda but inshallah (God willing) this (new) year will be the year when the Islamic Republic of Iran will fully avail itself of peaceful nuclear technology," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the news agency ISNA.

In a meeting with visiting Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Shara, Ahmadinejad said Iran's use of peaceful nuclear energy will be to the benefit of the Islamic world and the "friends of Iran."

Earlier on Saturday Iran thanked Russia and China for their stance in the ongoing dispute over Iran's controversial nuclear programme, state news agency IRNA reported.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki thanked his Russian and Chinese counterparts by telephone for their "logical stance" and persistence to evaluate the issue within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Russia and China have so far refused plans for ultimatums or deadlines put by the United Nations Security Council on Iran for suspending all its uranium enrichment programmes.

Mottaki reiterated Iran's wish to find a broad-based agreement through negotiations and criticized any political approach in the UN Security Council towards the issue.

The sand has run out on the clock, and it is time to act.

1) The Army has a collection of papers looking for options.

2) Winds of Change calls for a full scale invasion.

3) The Officers' Club looked at this last year. In Feb 2006 they looked at the Israeli option. They also assessed Iran's strategy against the West.

4) Military historian Victor Davis Hanson cautions about the dangers of air strikes.

5) Clifford May looks at Iran's vow to destroy "Anglo-Saxon civilization". No, they're not bluffing.

6) But Alexander Coburn thinks Bush probably won't attack.

7) The German press thinks that the US has been laying the groundwork for an attack since at least December of 2005.

8) And Al-Jazeera believes the German press.

9) RCP looks at Iran's defensive strategy.

10) James Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly offers a first-rate article on a US military war game of an attack on Iran.

11)Military expert Austin Bay comments here and here. With this on bombing details.

12)Military expert Ralph Peters looks at "Nukes for Allah".

13) The Cato Institute is concerned that the mullahs are tricking us into a trap. Carpenter critiques the conventional wisdom.

14) Senator Brownback and Rademaker of the State Department address AEI on the crisis.

15) The Heritage Foundation looks at the Iranian crisis. Heritage notes that Iran may already have material for ten nuclear weapons. Peter Brookes of Heritage notes that Iran is hiding circa 25 senior Al Qaeda leaders and that the military option has serious drawbacks.

16) At the Brookings Institution Martin Indyk thinks we can't go to war in Iran with troops in Iraq. Flynt Leverett calls for diplomacy. Dalder and Gordon call for sanctions.

17) Global Security offers an important set of studies here. This includes a look at a blockade, air strikes, and "The Khuzestan Gambit" or seizing Iran's oil fields.

18) There is finally the option for a quarantine/no-fly zone strategy to promote internal revolution in Iran.

19) Neo-con Robert Kagan thinks air strikes would backfire.

20) John Tabin at American Spectator is more sympathetic. His colleague at AmSpec Jed Babbin sounds the alarm: must we wait until Iran has nukes to act?

With apologies to Allen Ginsberg...

2006-03-25T18:14:00.000-05:00

A brilliant post from American Digest:

Growl
by Gerard Allen Van der Ginsberg
For Karl Rove Solomon

I SAW the second-best minds of my not-so-Great Generation destroyed by Bush Derangement Syndrome, pasty, paunchy, tenured, unelectable, and not looking too sharp naked,
...aging hair-plugged hipsters burning for their ancient political connection to the White House through the machinations of moonbats,
who warred on poverty and Halliburton's Wal-Mart and bulbous-eyed and still high from some bad acid in 1968 set up no-smoking zones on tobacco farms in the unnatural darkness of Darwinistic delusions floating a few more half-baked secular notions like "Let's all worship zero!",
who bared their withered breasts and, he or she, bleated their vaginas' mawkish monologues to John Kennedy's ghost under the capitol dome and french-kissed Mohammedan agents in the gore-drenched redrum rooms of Guantanamo,
who passed gas and on into universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating President Al Gore and Vice-President Noam Chomsky envisioning world peace among the masters of war and stayed on and stayed on and stayed on sucking off the great teat of academe in upaid student loans and over-paid professorial positions the better to molest the minds of children for decades with every third year off for bad behavior,
who were embraced by the academies and hired by the New York Times for crazy & publishing obscene odes or anything else that trashed George W. Bush without regard for truth since there were no consequences for these posturing poseurs of puke,
who cowered in their marble-countered plasma screened media rooms in underwear which was no longer Victoria's Secret, burning their money by donating it in carloads to every half-assed Democratic PAC that promised impeachment in a nano-second without the losing proposition of actually holding an election and listening to Rush Limbaugh through the wall,
who got bombed at public wine-tastings by chugging the slops bin and referencing Sideways, returning to their summer house in the Hamptons where they ate smoked salmon, smoked $200 marijuana, wore $250 denims, and bitched about how the economy was a mess but did not really, as they claimed, send their $36,000 tax cut back to the government, and continued to suffer the secret shame of Affluenza,
who breathed fire and bile about "that crooked administration" among their friends and shut up around people with real jobs and drank turpentine to get through "A Night with Gloria Steinem", claimed bogus ego-death, and Ab-busted their torsos night after night,
....
who blathered continuously about the Florida "theft" for the entire ninety-six months of the two Bush terms while the Evil One put one, two, maybe three or even four justices on the Supreme Court,
....a lost battalion of a multi-million man and mom marching platonic conversationalists jumping to conclusions about WMD off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering "BUSH LIEEEEEEEEED!" and moronic memories and false anecdotes and eyeball kicks and yearning for the electroshocks of hospitals and the briefness of jails and the endless Bush wars .... oh my sorry little schmos.... ....who had double-standard vision while their baby seals died, turned into a pair of mucklucks by Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton,
who thought they were only mad when Bush appeared in the clouds above their Iowa Caucuses proclaiming "Neener, neener, neener,"
who in humorless protest turned Cindy Sheehan into their personal hand-puppet, which she enjoyed, and complained that she looked far too much like the devil spawn of Howdy Doody and Alfred E. Newman...

Iraq and its Discontents

2006-03-20T07:52:00.000-05:00

A superb post from Gateway pundit:

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Three Years of Dragging Democrats Through Their Iraqi Quagmire
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction... Saddam may well hide his most lethal weapons in mosques, schools and hospitals. If our forces attempt to strike such targets, untold numbers of Iraqi civilians could be killed."
Senator Teddy KennedySeptember 27, 2002And, so... After the "paralysed" UN body failed to hold Iraq accountable, America and it's 30 nation Allied Coalition took action on March 19, 2003.But, the war has not been without its critics from the Left... * German politicians predicted: "Millions of people in Baghdad will be victims of bombs and rockets."What happened: The antiwar Iraqi Body Count site lists an estimated 4,000-6,000 civilians and fighters were lost in the startup months of the War in Iraq. * Ted Kennedy predicted:"A war on Saddam might also cause an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with an estimated 900,000 refugees, a pandemic and an environmental disaster as Saddam lit the oilfields on fire." Actual Result: The oil fields were not set ablaze, no pandemic.* The UN predicted... It is also likely that in the early stages there will be a large segment of the population requiring treatment for traumatic injuries, either directly conflict-induced or from the resulting devastation. Given the population outlined earlier, as many as 500,000 could require treatment to a greater or lesser degree as a result of direct or indirect injuries.What happened: Again, the antiwar Iraqi Body Count site lists an estimated 4,000-6,000 civilians and fighters lost in the startup months of the War in Iraq.* Ted Kennedy also predicted: "The U.S. could run through "battalions a day at a time" and that the fighting would look like "the last fifteen minutes of 'Private Ryan.'"Actual Results: Although each fatality is a tragic loss for America, this is still one of most successful military campaigns the US has ever fought.* Medact Global Health: "A more contained conflict could cause half a million deaths and have a devastating impact on the lives, health and environment of the combatants, Iraqi civilians, and people in neighbouring countries and beyond."Actual Results: Antiwar Iraqi Body Count says that 35-37 thousand deaths including bank robbers.* Hans Blix argued: The Iraqis were better off before the war The harsh truth: Before the War in Iraq, Saddam was filling his mass graves and keeping state hired rapists on his payroll. In those 20 years about 5% of the people of Iraq were killed or mysteriously disappeared. The red area in the graph above shows the estimated average deaths in Iraq under Saddam Hussein from 36 average deaths per day from mass grave discoveries, to 137 deaths per day from a different source. The yellow area shows estimated total fatalities since the beginning of the War in Iraq from Iraq Body Count, an antiwar website. * John Kerry insisted... "There are no-go zones in Iraq today (September 2004). You can't hold an election in a no-go zone."Results: Iraq held a very successful democratic election in January 2005.* Jimmy Carter predicted... "The Carter Center did, our 52nd election. All of our elections have been in troubled countries where the outcome was doubtful. But in every case there has to be a central government that can set up the constitution and bylaws and rules so that an election can be held peacefully. I don't see that happening as long as the terrible violence continues in Iraq."About those election results: Former President Jimmy Carter, who predicted that elections in Iraq would fail and in the past year described the Bush administration's policy there as a quagmire, this week ended 10 days of silence to declare the historic Iraqi vote "a very successful effort." (February 11, 2005)* Madeleine Albright observed... "It has long been obvious that the Bush administration lacks a viable plan for success in Iraq. The hardest political job — drafting a constitution acceptable to all factions — has not even begun..."Results: Iraqi Constitution drafted and accepted by 78% of the voters.* Madeleine Albright accused... The "coalition," never robust, is shrinking.Reality: There Iraqi Allied Coalition consists of 30 nations. The Afghanistan Coalition consists of 35 nations.Bulgaria announced that it will be sending troops back to Iraq. (February 24, 2006)* John Murtha exaggerated... "Many say that the Army is broken. (Murtha did later, actually!) Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards."Reality: The Army Guard is surpassing its goals and growing in strength despite Rep. Murtha's campaign against military recruitment.And now they say this is a Civil War... We will see.Pajamas Media is covering these missed predictions.Donald Rumsfeld today in the Washington Post had this to say on what we've gained from our three years in Iraq:
Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly -- from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election -- in defiance of terrorists' threats and attacks.Ken McCracken at WILLisms asks, "Is the U.S. on the right trajectory for success in Iraq, or not?" and has a few interesting responses (including mine!)Democracy Project explains that democrats may finally have a Defense plan.Volokh Conspiracy notes a grim milestone.
posted by Gateway Pundit at 3/19/2006 05:56:00 AM

Al Qaeda + Iraq: the new evidence

2006-03-18T18:52:00.000-05:00

The key arguments for going to war in Iraq always seemed to me to be two: 1) the need to end Iraq's support for terrorism, of which support for Al Qaeda was only a part; 2) the need to establish a democracy in the Middle East as the only long-run answer to terrorism, and Iraq's strategic position as the keystone in the arch.

With the new release of documents from the Iraqi treasure chest, the case for Iraq's support for terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular has been dramatically strengthened.

1) We now know from the internal documents of the regime itself that Iraq was funding Al Qaeda groups in the Philippines, and in Saudi Arabia:

These documents add to the growing body of evidence confirming the Iraqi regime's longtime support for terrorism abroad. The first of them, a series of memos from the spring of 2001, shows that the Iraqi Intelligence Service funded Abu Sayyaf, despite the reservations of some IIS officials. The second, an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on the relationships between the IIS and Saudi opposition groups, records that Osama bin Laden requested Iraqi cooperation on terrorism and propaganda and that in January 1997 the Iraqi regime was eager to continue its relationship with bin Laden. The third, a September 15, 2001, report from an Iraqi Intelligence source in Afghanistan, contains speculation about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and the likely U.S. response to it.

2) We now know also from these same internal documents that Uday Hussein had been tasked with creating the Saddam Fedayeen and using terrorism to strike the West abroad:

The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.

[bold added].

The decision to invade Iraq was an essential part of the war on terror. The challenge now is to make that decision work.

Steve Warshawsky with a must-read post

2006-03-16T02:09:00.000-05:00

The Bush Doctrine, RIP? No, but essential reading nonetheless.

A soldier smacks down the DKos Left

2006-03-16T01:09:00.000-05:00

After the DKos team was ranting about how General Franks didn't care about his troops, a soldier set them straight:

Ok. Having just spent almost two years in Iraq, I can unequivocally say that most of the posters here are a) full of [Army word], b) hopelessly brainwashed by their professors or the other idiots posting on this site, c) on a serious psychodelic trip that I can only envy, d) all of the above.

The region I was based out of was mainly shi'ite. Working in civil affairs, I spoke to this is a rough guess about 400-500 people. To a MAN, they described a hell on earth that existed before the US intervened. Most of them had relatives that had been tortured or killed or were just plain missing. They had zero rights, zero support, and zero respect from their Sunnit leaders. i think it absolutely sucks that I come home and find ignorance on a grand scale that i never imagined.

AS for our chain of command and the "apparent" lack of concern for casualties, let me tell you that from day one, it was drilled into our brains that we were to take utmost care to make sure that we kept civilian casualties to a minimum. i wasn't there when Franks was in command, but I read the ROEs and memos put out by Franks before I got there, and the common demoninator throughout was - surprise! - safeguard civilians. Thats why we were there. I cannot count the number of times we put ourselves in danger in order to avoid endangering civilians.

A friend of mine over there told me that this was a good site for intelligent debate and discussion. I can see that either he or I was mislead, because after about two weeks of reading this crap, it is apparent that either the server deletes all alternative viewpoints, or those who have alternative viewpoints have given up. Is there anyone here who has any viewpoint other than "Bush lied", or "Franks is a F[******]" (very intelligent, by the way.") just curious, because from what I've read, it appears that you have no idea what has been going on in the world during the last 20 years.

Blair and neoconservativism

2006-03-13T07:23:00.000-05:00

From the UK:

Freedom fighter
Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq has its roots in a long tradition of left anti-totalitarianism, argues Oliver Kamm

The late Robin Cook wrote that ‘the judgement of history may be that the invasion of Iraq has been the biggest blunder in British foreign and security policy in the half century since Suez.’ Many – perhaps most – Labour supporters would share Cook’s scepticism about the merits of the war. But his implication that Iraq was an aberration in Tony Blair’s foreign policy was clearly mistaken. The overthrow of theocratic despotism in Afghanistan and Ba’athist tyranny in Iraq is central to Blair’s record. It is part of a distinctive approach that has marked his premiership. That stance represents continuity with the principles of an earlier anti-totalitarian left, and a shrewd strategic judgement of where Britain’s security interests lie in the early 21st century. It is, moreover, sharply at odds with the philosophy and practice of John Major’s government.

It was understandable that, during the general election campaign, Blair tried to shift debate from an unpopular war towards domestic issues, but it makes no sense in the long run to allow the cause of regime change to go by default. The foreign policy of Blair is more than Iraq, but Iraq is how history will judge him, and supporters of the prime minister need to make the case for regime change.

“Making the spread of democracy the cornerstone of foreign policy extends progressive values and at the same time protects our security”
Let us start with what was genuinely the biggest blunder in British foreign policy since Suez. This was Britain’s failure, under a Tory government, to prevent Serb aggression against Bosnia in the early 1990s. Policy at that time consisted of what the historian Brendan Simms has termed a conservative pessimism about the limits to the effective exercise of power in the international order. A mix of quietism and condescension resulted in humanitarian disaster. It also sparked a crisis in transatlantic relations, exemplified in defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind’s contemptuous dismissal of one American politician’s concerns with the words: ‘You Americans don’t know the horrors of war.’ (The politician was Senator Bob Dole, who was nearly killed and permanently disabled in the second world war.)

You cannot understand Blair’s policies in Iraq without that background. Long before 9/11, he took a fundamentally different approach from Major, Rifkind and Douglas Hurd, and not only in declaratory policy. In Kosovo, he confronted Serb aggression rather than acquiesced in it. He also sent British troops to preserve Sierra Leone from hand-lopping rebels, aware both of the demands of liberal internationalism and of the potential for a failed state to become far more than a regional problem. He argued his case long before President Bush came to see the urgency of promoting democracy overseas.

Indeed, as a presidential candidate in 2000, Bush had denounced interventionist ‘nation-building’ and proposed the withdrawal of American commitments in the Balkans. The coincidence of view between a Labour prime minister and a conservative president makes many on the left uncomfortable, but there is no reason that it should. In pursuing regime change, Bush has adopted Blairism, not the other way round.

Of course, there were grievous failures of intelligence over WMD, and the maladministration of post-Ba’athist Iraq has been a scandalous dereliction of duty. But there should be no questioning of the immense benefits to Iraq and to ourselves of overthrowing a gangster regime. Saddam was not responsible for 9/11, but he welcomed it and sought a WMD capability in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. Ba’athist Iraq did not have stockpiles of WMD, but it did possess dual-use facilities that, according to Charles Duelfer of the Iraq Survey Group, could have produced chemical and biological weapons on a rapid turnaround.

Saddam was a sponsor of terrorism, and the most likely conduit for Islamist groups to obtain WMD. There were clear grounds for expecting Saddam to be a regional menace, and few for expecting him to be containable in the way that the Soviet Union was during the cold war. Soviet leaders were brutal and expansionist, but they were rational and calculating political agents. Saddam launched three wars in 17 years (against Iran in 1974, Iran again in 1980, and Kuwait in 1990) that almost destroyed his regime.

But there is a wider issue in the case for regime change. What marked British policy under Major, and was the principal weakness of US foreign policy in the cold war, was a ‘realism’ that took an impossibly narrow view of western strategic interests. In the Balkans in the 1990s, British policymakers allowed a nation to be dismembered by aggressive and genocidal nationalism. In the cold war, American administrations were prone to ally with authoritarian regimes as a bulwark against communism. Both approaches were far from serving the purposes that realism set itself. What overcame communist totalitarianism in eastern Europe was partly collective security involving alliances and military preparedness. But, at root, it was the power of an idea: the appeal of an open and liberal society, as opposed to a closed and sclerotic one. The task of western governments against a new totalitarian threat – though a very old, atavistic totalitarian idea, in Islamist fanaticism – is similarly to implant the notion of freedom.

The Blair-Bush policy (the names should be in that order, as Blair is the policy’s initiator) understands the limits of realism. In the realist model of the international order, states are often compared to billiard balls. A billiard ball’s internal composition is opaque and unimportant; what matters is how the ball interacts with others on the table. It is a model entirely inappropriate to current foreign policy debates, where, if we are to safeguard our security, we need to engage in the battle of ideas. What serves our security is the spread of liberty, not the balancing of power among competing states. No western statesman has better articulated this case than Blair, and he is right.

After 9/11, commentators immediately sought a ‘root cause’ for the destruction, and alighted upon whatever they had been intellectually exercised with beforehand: poverty, global warming, a Palestinian state, and many others. These issues are urgent challenges in their own right, but they are tangential at best to the task of defeating theocratic barbarism. It was not poverty that drove a group of well-educated and affluent Saudis to slam aeroplanes into office blocks and government buildings that September morning in 2001, but ideology. What animates al-Qaida is not the failings of our societies, but what we exemplify: pluralism, religious liberty, sexual equality and liberalism. We cannot mollify our enemies without abandoning our values, and we would not succeed even then.

In the cold war, the nuclear stand off that had dominated world affairs for two generations was finally robbed of its terror by a transformation in the underlying political relations between states. Totalitarianism gave way to the promise of constitutionalism. Our most urgent task today is to transform a region that has acted as an incubator for religious fanaticism by failing to provide an outlet for any other kind of dissidence. Making the spread of democracy the cornerstone of foreign policy extends progressive values and at the same time protects our security. It is a principle that the overthrow of Saddam has served. Regime change in states that have committed atrocities against captive peoples ought to be the thing of which Labour supporters are proudest.

Oliver Kamm
is author of Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-wing Case for a Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy

Gay parenting and child abuse?

2006-03-12T23:50:00.000-05:00

From a Catholic blog from Alaska!

With links to a debate between the Family Research Institute and Dr James Dobson.

Is modern war more destructive than ancient war?

2006-03-12T23:27:00.000-05:00

The milblogger Neptunus Lex:

From an interesting (unclas) brief I recently received:

(A) World War II Strategic Bomber had a CEP (ed. - circular error probable, a measure of bombing accuracy) of 1,744 ft., which meant it took 2,794 World War II 500 lb. Bombs to kill a point target.
This equates to the full bomb load of 175 B-17 Bombers.
If one equates this to a modern fighter bomber (like the FA-18E/F, not so much the Tomcat) and the 4 precision weapons it carries: The modern fighter bomber works out to be worth 700 World War II B-17s in a strategic bombardment roll.

Better bombs, much better accuracy. The slideshow goes on to state that 1 FA-18E with four precision weapons is the equivalent of 163 F6F Hellcat dive bombers, and carries a striking force equivalent (by itself) of two World War II aircraft carriers.

Which I thought was kind of cool.

Lessons for Iran: What the US should have done in Iraq

2006-03-12T09:36:00.000-05:00

One of the great themes of von Clausewitz is the fog of war: the fact that nobody on either side really knows what's going in the mayhem and confusion. The New York Times carries an excellent article today, based on an official US military study of what really happened in the Iraqi War of 2003.

The article is a must-read, but I will offer here three basic lessons that come out of the article:

1. Saddam never feared the US military. Saddam was not impressed by the fact that the US rolled over his army in a matter of hours in the first Gulf War. On the contrary, the fact that the US had failed to pursue him to Baghdad in 1991, the fact that the US pulled back from wiping out the Iraq army when it had the chance, the fact the US allowed him to put down the domestic revolts that followed the war--all this convinced Saddam that the US lacked the will either to inflict or endure high numbers of casualties. These impressions were reinforced by the systematially weak response of the Clinton administration to the Iraqi provocations of the 1990s. As a result, Saddam never thought that the US was serious about war with him, and never seriously considered that he might be overthrown until the US tanks began rolling through Baghdad.

Now the fact that Saddam never feared US might is a failure of US military strategy. The purpose of war is to break the enemy's will to resist, and that means influencing his mind. The point comes up regularly in discussions of Reagan's Star Wars proposal and the end of the Cold War: nobody knows if Star Wars would have worked in practice, but the Russians feared that it would, and hence it played a key role in why the Russians caved in to the West.

The same principle applies to the Middle East--Middle Eastern dictators do not think like cool-headed graduates of Western war colleges: if you want to prove to Middle Eastern dictators that you're serious about war, you don't bomb empty buildings in Baghdad, and call it "Shock and Awe". You have to slaughter large numbers of his troops in a manner that shows that you will stop at nothing to remove him from power. Anything less than this simply convinces him that you lack the will to fight and win a serious war. Which is what happened to the US in dealing with
Saddam Hussein.

2. Unafraid of the Americans, Saddam Hussein's greatest fear was his own people. Up until the very end, Saddam Hussein was terrified most of a Shiite uprising in the south of Iraq. Saddam Hussein had little fear that the Americans would do any serious killing. The Shiites were another story. Hussein refused to blow up bridges that would have slowed down the US advance because he feared he would need those bridges later to put down a Shiite uprising. His Fedayeen were needed as much to launch a counterattack against the Shiites as against the Americans. The New York Times article goes into this in stunning detail.

3. The US should have tried the Shahristani approach before we went to war. Hussein al-Shahristani is an Iraqi physicist who was in exile after being tortured by Saddam Hussein (picture above). Strongly supportive of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, he did not think an invasion by American troops was the right tool to achieve that. In an interview with Newsweek he said:

Why did you oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq? I was supporting the removal of Saddam from power but I did not think an all-out war on Iraq was the best way of doing that. I would have liked to see the Iraqi people helped to free themselves from Saddam by declaring southern Iraq as a safe haven the way the northern part of the country was. That would have sent the right signal to the Iraqi people and it would not have taken a week before the whole southern part of the country would be free. Then we would not have to face an occupying army in the country and create friction between the local population and the occupation forces.

I first ran into the Shahristani view in 2004, a year after the war. As a strong supporter of the War in Iraq, I've been convinced ever since I read the interview that we should have at least tried the Shahristani approach before we sent in the troops. Today's New York Times article, documenting in detail Saddam Hussein's fear of his domestic enemies, strongly suggests that Shahristani was correct.

The point of this is not to engage in post-war breast-beating. The point is that we are facing a rather similar decision in Iran. The ayatollahs fear us even less than Saddam Hussein did: after all, the ayatollahs humiliated us in the hostage crisis of 1979, and they have seen little in our invasion of Iraq to suggest that anything has changed. The ayatollahs think they can survive any air strikes; they think the option of invasion is a joke given the insurgency in Iraq. But the ayatollahs do however fear their own people, again similar to Saddam Hussein.

If we link these points to the counsel of Sharistani, it suggests this: Rather than having only two military options for Iran, invasion or airstrikes, the Shahristani model indicates a third: create one or more safe-havens in Iran, enforced by a no-fly zone, for the domestic enemies of the Ayatollahs.

The Iranian government is highly unpopular at home, and StrategyPage reports that regional governments think they will soon be out of power. These regional governments might be wrong, but the internal revolution strategy is clearly the strategy that needs to be tried first.

Edward N. Luttwak notes that the ayatollahs fear their people with good reason:

Iran's minorities each resist the Persian-dominated central government. Just in the last month, guerrillas of Baluch nationality kidnapped soldiers in southeast Iran. Arabs of Khuzistan province next to Iraq detonated bombs in Ahwaz, and Kurds clashed with the rural police...

The Kurds, who account for about 9% of the population, have been encouraged by the example of virtual Kurdish independence in Iraq next door. Their demands for autonomy are becoming more forceful, and something of an insurgency seems to have started...

Smaller nationalities that are known to be disaffected because of recent examples of violent resistance include the Arabs at 3% of Iran's population and the Baluch at 2%. Little is known of the intensity of the national sentiments of the Turkmen and Lurs (2% each), and still less of the Gilaki and Mazandarani (8% in all), who may be politically more assimilated simply because they speak Persian dialects.

Along with the Kurds, all the smaller nationalities amount to only a quarter of Iran's population; but Turkic-speaking Azeris add another 24% all by themselves. Many Azeri families in Tehran especially are believed to be thoroughly assimilated, but the more numerous Azeris farther north are not, and national revival and separatist groups have become increasingly active among them. Since Azerbaijan just across the border gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the Azeris have a national home of their own, and it is not Iran.

Given the fact that, as Luttwak points out, Iran is an empire like the former Soviet Union, not a nation-state, there is a long list of ethnic groups, comprising nearly half the population, who would might rally if the US created a safe haven for them.

The Shahristani model could come in principle in a range of variants from creating one or multiple safe-havens on the one hand, to extending a no-fly zone over the entire country and declaring that the US will give military support to any group that overthrows the regime (parallel in effect to our success in Afghanistan).

The key points here are that diplomacy is not going to stop the Iranians from building a nuclear weapon, and the US responses are not limited to invasion or air strikes. In the face of a country already one step away from revolution, the intelligent use of US airpower has the potential to push the country over the brink.

Moreover: it is quite likely that internal revolution is what the ayatollahs fear most. If American public debate focusses on the use of a no-fly zone to create an internal revolution, the ayatollahs are more likely to fear that than air strikes (which they can ride out) or an invasion (which they don't think is a threat given the situation in Iraq).

A no-fly zone then might well be the right answer to an Iranian terrorist regime seeking nuclear weapons. And if it failed, all the other options would still remain on the table.

Aristotle and Duty

2006-03-12T02:57:00.000-05:00

A great post over at Grim's Hall:

The Overpraising of Dissent:
I'm going to write a bit more about happiness and ethics. This post picks up where yesterday's left off.

Yesterday's post considered the possibility that ethics includes a "duty to unhappiness" -- that our inherited biological reasons for feeling happy must often be set aside in order to be a good citizen. I cited the example of Socrates, whose devotion to the pursuit of truth led to his execution. This tradition of dissent and its protection, informed by the examples of both Socrates and Jesus, is at the core of Western culture.

Yet I think it is very much possible to overpriase dissent -- and on reflection, I think it's necessary to explore that idea as well. The duty is to set aside happiness in favor of good citizenship, not to pursue your own happiness in favor of what society needs. It is the case, furthermore, that personal happiness must be set aside for the survival and prosperity of the nation.

The best way to explore this is by beginning with the problem posed by Aristotle: that he said, and I have always believed, that happiness is the goal of ethics. How, then, can there be a duty to be unhappy in ethics?

Read it all!

After South Dakota: a workable plan to reverse Roe

2006-03-11T02:16:00.000-05:00

[Picture: a beautiful colour ultrasound of a fetus yawning--this behaviour has been identified as early as 11 weeks through colour ultrasound.]

South Dakota's recent move to ban all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother has many pro-lifers concerned.

And with good reason.

Barring some change in the US Supreme Court, the South Dakota law is DOA when it gets to DC. There simply aren't five votes right now to reverse Roe outright.

There might, however, be a way to accomplish the functional equivalent of reversing Roe without going the South Dakota route. But it requires paying some attention to the Supreme Court and the key swing vote: Anthony M Kennedy.

There are three key things to realize about Kennedy: 1) He's not willing to reverse Roe outright, and he made that clear in the 1990s with Casey v. Planned Parenthood. 2) He is willing to uphold laws that do not constitute an "undue burden" on a woman's right to choose. He thought the ban on partial birth abortion (PBA) was fully consistent with Casey, and was furious with his colleagues for not agreeing with him. 3) Kennedy places a very high emphasis on international law as a guide to Supreme Court decisions.

Combined, these points suggest a strategy for a law that stands a good chance of picking up Kennedy's vote.

For starters, let's take a look at some basic international abortion statistics. The following are all from 1996 (the latest international data). The abortion rate is the number of women per 1000 women between the ages of 15-44 who have an abortion in any given year. The abortion percentage is the estimated percentage of pregnancies that end in abortion.

United States: rate: 22.9. Percent: 25.9. Law: legal through viability.
Belgium------rate: 6.8. Percent: 11.2 --illegal after 12 weeks. Mandatory counseling.
Finland-------rate: 10.0. Percent: 14.7 --illegal after 12 weeks. Informed consent.
Germany----rate: 7.6. Percent: 14.1 --illegal after 12 weeks. Mandatory counseling.
Ireland------rate: 5.9. Percent: 8.9 --illegal except for life of mother.
Netherlands--rate: 6.5. Percent: 10.6 --illegal after 13 weeks. Mandatory counseling
Spain---------rate: 5.7. Percent: 12.6 --illegal w/o 2 MDs certifying it necessary for life/health.
Switzerland---rate: 8.4. Percent: 13.3 --illegal w/o 2 MDs: easy or hard in some cantons.

What should be clear here is that the US abortion percentage is quite high relative to key European countries. It's also clear that many European countries have much more restrictive abortion laws. In particular, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands all ban abortion after 12-13 weeks (or put sharp limitations on it), and all have programs of mandatory counseling for any woman who seeks an abortion. These nations have abortion percentages of 11-14%, sharply lower than the 26% American abortion percentag.

What we need then is a European model law that would ban abortion after the first 12 weeks (unless necessary for the life of the mother) combined with a mandatory counseling program for any woman seeking an abortion.

Why would this stand a good chance of picking up Kennedy's support? For four reasons: first, one could make a strong a priori argument that 12 weeks is ample time for a woman to make a decision about abortion; hence banning abortion after that time would not constitute an "undue burden" on the woman's right to choose. Second, the fact that several European countries have laws quite similar to this would make a powerful case to Kennedy that this rule of law has widespread international support. Third, the fact only about 11% of US abortions take place after 12 weeks suggests that banning these abortions would not be an undue burden for the overwhelming majority of US women. Fourth, the rise of colour ultrasound has dramatically changed public perceptions of abortion, so one can reasonably argue that banning abortion after 12 weeks is in keeping with the evolving ethical standards of the American people.

Banning 11% of abortions is not as much as pro-lifers would like to do for the pro-life cause. But since reducing abortion by 11% would mean saving over 100,000 lives, this would still mean dramatic progress.

But more: coupled with a strong mandatory counseling program, the reduction in US abortions might be even more dramatic. There's no reason in principle why the US abortion rate couldn't be cut in half: reducing the current 26% rate to a more European 11-14% rate would be a major step in the right direction.

The strength of this as a legal strategy is that one could achieve this without ever needing to argue for a formal reversal of Roe. If, for example, Ohio adopted such a law, the state attorney general would not need to argue for the reversal of Roe or even Casey: one would merely ask the Court to find that a 12 week limit on abortions does not constitute an "undue burden" on the woman's right to choose. In effect, we would ask the Court do here something similar to what the Court did in Casey. In Casey, the Court dropped Roe's trimester framework, but upheld Roe, claiming that the viability criterion was the real heart of Roe, and that the trimester framework could be readily jettisoned. Here we would argue that the heart of Casey is the "undue burden" test, and that Casey's attachment to the viability criterion can be jettisoned with reversing Casey.

If the Court agreed, then Roe would be reversed in all but name. With the trimester framework dead and the viability criterion discarded, Roe would then be but the painting of a law, a face without a heart.

Such a move would of course send the pro-choice movement into spasms of hysteria. But it is very unlikely that the American people would share that hysteria. Roe would still be legally on the books. And most Americans would find little threatening in a ruling that left the right to choose intact as long as it was not unduly burdened. The very hysteria coming from the anti-Roe forces would serve to further alienate them from the American mainstream.

Note that this is a very different reaction than could be expected currently if the Supreme Court upholds South Dakota. Few Americans are currently prepared to support a pro-life law as broad as South Dakota's. If the Supreme Court upholds South Dakota, it can count on a very strong backlash, one whose political impact might threaten to undo or severely limit the gains of reversing Roe.

Certainly, there can be no guarantee that Kennedy would uphold a European model abortion law. But since a European model abortion law would not threaten Roe directly, it stands a much better chance of being upheld than South Dakota. What we need is for some state legislature to pass a law this summer along these lines, and put the strategy to a test.

Prohibition worked!

2006-03-09T22:09:00.000-05:00

Here's a message from the DEA to make Eliot Ness smile:

A word about prohibition: lots of you hear the argument that alcohol prohibition failed—so why are drugs still illegal? Prohibition did work. Alcohol consumption was reduced by almost 60% and incidents of liver cirrhosis and deaths from this disease dropped dramatically (Scientific American, 1996, by David Musto). Today, alcohol consumption is over three times greater than during the Prohibition years. Alcohol use is legal, except for kids under 21, and it causes major problems, especially in drunk driving accidents.

Hmm. This is surely overstated, but it does drive home a point: a law can be politically unsuccessful, yet still have quite impressive positive effects. While these might not be enough to justify the law, it reinforces the point that making something illegal does reduce its incidence--even if it doesn't eliminate it entirely.

The principle is applicable to whole range of issues from drug legalization to abortion rights. It's a good idea to post this point as a square yellow post-it note somewhere in the corner of your mind.

Democratic revolution: Iran

2006-03-09T08:57:00.000-05:00

Michael Ledeen, perhaps our most impressive Western expert on Iran (H/T: RegimeChangeIran):

Why regime change is the only choice:On Monday, ABC News broadcast a story about the discovery of very powerful bombs--the so-called IEDs--sent from Iran into Iraq.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," said Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."

Inevitably, there are still those who believe that somehow our differences can be reconciled, and we can yet reach a modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic. I wish they were right, but the Iranians' behavior proves otherwise. Religious fanatics of the sort that rule Iran do not want a deal with the devil. They want us dominated or dead. There is no escape from their hatred, or from the war they have waged against us. We can either win or lose, but no combination of diplomatic demarches, economic sanctions, and earnest negotiations, can change that fatal equation. They will either defeat us, or perish. And that is their decision, not ours. We have yet to engage.

Why it can work: The demographics certainly seem to favor radical change: roughly 70% of Iranians are twenty-nine years old or less. We know from the regime's own public opinion surveys that upwards of 73% of the people would like a freer society and a more democratic government, and they constantly demonstrate their hatred of the regime in public protests, in the blogosphere in both Farsi (the internet's fourth most popular language) and English, in strikes (the most recent of which is the ongoing action by the Tehran bus drivers' union), and from time to time in violent acts against officials on the ground. The regime's reaction is violent and ruthless, but the protests continue, and there is good reason to believe that the mullahs are extremely worried.

Read the whole thing!

100% Right

2006-03-08T21:41:00.000-05:00

National Review on-line thinks that South Dakota's abortion ban will set back the pro-life movement. They're right.

Police assault Iranian women

2006-03-08T21:28:00.000-05:00

From Kosoof:

A group of about 130 women’s rights activists who gathered in Deneshjoo Park in central Tehran to celebrate International Women’s Day were brutally beaten by the police. As soon as the program started with distributing some brochures and chanting Iran’s women’s movement song, the police informed the attendants that their gathering is illegal and they should leave the premises. Then the police started beating men and women present in Daneshjoo Park and the program was ended. Simin Behbahani, the Iranian elderly famous poet was among the people who have been beaten.

According to Atricle 27 of Islamic Republic of Iran’s Constitution, public gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam

The Networks' war on democracy in Iraq

2006-03-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

Pierce Wetter has a superb post on the effect of the media on the war in Iraq (H/T: Instapundit):

Prior to the Iraq War coverage, the local television coverage was the most despicable thing I had ever seen the media do. Does the LAPD bear some blame for the riots? Yes. Does Rodney King? Yes.
But for me, the lion's share of the blame falls on the local television stations in LA. The behavior of both Rodney King and the LAPD was terrible, and the verdict, well, it was the verdict. But I truly don't think there would have been riots if the media hadn't intentionally fanned the flames. 50-60 people died in those riots. I lay those deaths to a large extent at the door of the LA media, yes.
Last week, I saw the media chant:
Is there going to be a civil war?
Is there going to be a civil war?
Is there going to be a civil war?
Is there going to be a civil war?
Is there going to be a civil war?
They could have just as easily asked:
So, when are you guys going to work it out?

Pretty much spot on. War, as von Clausewitz put it, is about breaking the enemy's will to resist. Television coverage inevitably influences how people perceive events. And that in turn affects the will. If television networks repeat every day, America can't win, there's going to be a civil war; sooner or later the prophecy stands an excellent chance of coming true. You can persuade the Iraqis to revolt, and you can persuade Americans to quit.

The result is pictured graphically in the American evacuation of Saigon in 1975. The key turning point had been the Tet offensive of 1968. Despite the fact that it resulted in a devastating defeat for the Viet Cong, the American televison networks played it as a defeat for America; and from then on the American objective was never to win the war in Vietnam, but to quit as rapidly as possible.

This was summed up perfectly by a great milblog:
Years after the war in Vietnam ended, American Colonel Harry Summers once told a North Vietnamese Colonel that the U.S. never lost a battle in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Colonel responded saying, "That is true. It is also irrelevant."

Winning the war in Iraq means being tougher at home than the Vietnam generation was. It means not allowing the press to create a defeat. It means insisting on the truth despite the fog of war--and the fog of propaganda created by the press.

American soldiers are winning. It's the American press we need to worry about.

Pro-choice in the City: why NYC needs a strong counseling law

2006-03-07T00:16:00.000-05:00

It's no surprise that in NYC, as in the rest of America, women seeking abortion are mostly unmarried: 80% single with about 20% married (the only exception of note here is Mormon Utah, where nearly 40% of abortions are sought by married women.)

In 1995, only 37.1 % of New York City abortions were for women having an abortion for the first time. Over 60% of abortions were for women having their second abortion (or more). 28.6% of NYC abortions were for women having their second abortion. 17.3% were for women having their third abortion. 15.8% were for women having their fourth abortion (or more). These second abortions are less "choices" than acts of desperation by women who fear their lives are slipping out of countrol; they are excellent candidates for a strong counseling program.

If the rest of the country was more moderate than NYC, the evidence was nonetheless troubling: nationally, only 54% of abortions are done on women having their first abortion. 26.4% are for women having their second abortion. 10.7 % are for women having their third abortion. 6.7 % are for women having their fourth abortion or more. If all second abortions in the US could be eliminated, the rate of abortion would drop by about half.

Women seeking abortion typically already have have given birth at least once before. In NYC, only 32.6% had no previous live births. 28.1% had one; 20.9% had two; 9.2% had three; 5.9 had four or more. Nationally, only 44.6% had no previous live births. 26.2% had one; 17.8% had two; 6.7% had three; 3.4% had four or more. We don't have breakdowns by married and single women, but since 80% of women seeking abortion are single, the overall picture is troubling.

I suspect that when most Americans think of abortion, they think of a college age white woman without children seeking a means of dealing with an unfortunate failure of contraception. The actual picture is quite different. Women seeking abortion are usually unmarried, and have often had both previous abortions and previous children out of wedlock. Their seeking abortion is part of a pattern of lives in deep pain and emotional disarray.

This suggests again the wisdom of a strong mandatory counseling law along German lines. These are women in serious need of help, and with proper intervention the rate of abortions in the United States could be dramatically reduced; judging by the German experience, perhaps as much as 60-80%.

The German model and the new pro-life push

2006-03-06T02:41:00.000-05:00

The new colour ultrasound technology has been a key reason for the new round of pro-life progress.

In Britain, the hard left Guardian reports:

Stuart Campbell, former head of obstetrics at King's College Hospital, says striking new images from ultrasound scans that allow doctors to view babies inside the womb have convinced him the normal 24-week legal limit for terminations should be reassessed.
"The more I study foetuses the more I find it quite distressing to terminate babies who are so advanced in terms of human behaviour," he said.
"For normal babies being terminated for social reasons it's probably unacceptable nowadays to be terminating them much after 14 weeks. They can suck their thumbs, they can open their eyes, they can perform complex movements. I think it's time we got our act together."

In the US, President Bush's appointment of two new conservative justices have further emboldened pro-life legislators. South Dakota seeks to ban all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother.

Yesterday I tried to explain why the next round of pro-life legislation should rather follow the German model. Glenn Reynolds has also suggested a more European approach.

Two years after Roe v Wade, the German Supreme Court addressed abortion in a very different manner than the US (decision and translation here).

The key points are:

The legislature implemented a system of mandatory counseling which has as one of its goals to present the case that the developing unborn child is an independent human life. However, no legal sanction is applied in the first 3 months of pregnancy if the counseling is completed and the abortion is performed.... Some abortions are therefore de facto legal. A significant number still occur, but the incidence per capita is about one-fifth that of the United States.

The legislature is allowed to institute a counseling system designed to discourage women from the abortion, and the result is an abortion rate only about 20% of the US.

So why does this make sense here?

1. 45% of US abortions are on women who've already had at least one previous previous abortion. So there is a very high chance (70-80%?) that a woman who has one abortion will be back for a second. In other words, women having abortions have very serious issues that strongly commend the wisdom of comprehensive counseling by the state.

2. Counseling can dramatically reduce abortion. As noted above, the German rate is about 20% of the American rate. Counseling is essential for those 45% of American abortions that are second abortions. But mandatory counseling can also help prevent abortions in the first place because it sends a clear message that abortion is not a just another form of birth control.

3. A German-style counseling law has a good chance of being upheld by the Supreme Court. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and (to a lesser degree) Justice Breyer have both indicated that they take seriously international jurisprudence as a means of informing US Supreme Court decisions. That principle is very controversial among American scholars. But the reality for pro-lifers is that both men sit on the Supreme Court and that one or both of their votes is needed for a bill to pass constitutional muster. A German-style counseling law has an excellent chance of winning their approval; a South Dakota-style ban on all abortions except those necessary to save the mother's life doesn't.

A strong counseling bill on the German model would not directly reverse Roe v Wade since it does not challenge Roe's trimester framework. Since it does not explicitly ban abortion, it would be dramatically less controversial with the American public. But it might well pass muster with the US Supreme Court, and help save a lot of lives.

For suggestions as to what kinds of issues should be included in the bill, see this.
************************************************************************
UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for the link!
UPDATE 2: I checked the Alan Guttmacher Institute figures on abortion in Germany and the US. These figures give the rate of abortion per thousand women age 15-44 and the ratio of abortion as a percentage of known pregnancies. AGI gives for Germany a rate of 7.6 vs 22.9 in the US for the year 1996; meaning that Germany's abortion rate is about 1/3 of the American rate. The ratio is 14.1 for Germany and 25.9 for the US for 1996; meaning that the German abortion ratio is about 40% lower. Both of these figures are less impressive than those cited in the source above, but the basic point remains unchanged: abortion in Germany is much less frequent than in the US. Exactly how much of this can be attributed to abortion policies would take some serious regression analysis. But it's not unreasonable to think that the differing legal framework is an important factor.
UDATE 3: For some strong reasons why mandatory counseling is an urgent need, see the evidence here.

Winning in Iraq: the metrics

2006-03-06T02:01:00.000-05:00

Something not covered in today's Washington Post story: We're winning.

The chart on the right contains the stats on US military fatalities in Iraq of the last few months.

The chart was put together by Pierce Wetter. (HT: Instapundit).

We're working with pretty much the same data and coming to pretty much the same conclusions. I gave additional statistics to support the same conclusion over the weekend.

This is the chart for Iraqi police deaths--down substantially.

And this is the chart for Iraqi civilian deaths.

I would add one important caveat on this: some of this is cyclical. The Iraqi insurgents have usually reduced their attacks in the winter, and picked up in the spring/summer starting in April. In my post on this I emphasized year over year figures to help mitigate the influence of climate on these statistics.

Life after Roe?

2006-03-05T05:24:00.000-05:00

Roe v Wade is doomed to be reversed for the simple reason that the decision was scientifically wrong, and the rise of color ultrasound is slowly unraveling the political and legal basis for its support. When mothers can now see their child's heartbeat while still in the womb, it becomes more and more difficult to justify slicing the child to pieces through partial birth abortion.

The US Supreme Court now probably has five votes to reverse partial birth abortion: Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas--and Anthony Kennedy as the decisive fifth.

But Kennedy is unlikely to join a reversal of Roe v Wade altogether. Kennedy's nickname while a Court of Appeals judge was "Flipper", and it's not impossible that he would support a reversal. But the likelihood is that he will not, and that means that South Dakota's push to ban abortion (except when the life of the mother is at stake) most likely will not succeed.

A better strategy would be to take seriously a problem with American abortion that more moderate pro-choice people might sympathize with.

We might begin with this chart:
1.3 million--US abortion deaths in 2004 (est)
700,000--US heart disease deaths
560,000--US cancer deaths
107,000--US deaths in accidents
30,000--US suicides
20,000-US homicides
15-17,500--civilian deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war
14,000--US AIDS/HIV deaths
2200--US military deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war
59--death penalty executions in the US 2004

The chart indicates the enormous loss of life through abortions relative to most of the other issues that currently engage the Republic's political attention. But then add these two sets of facts:

Previous abortion: 1975: 18% yes. 2000: 45% yes.
Illegitimacy rate: 1975: 24.5%. 2000: 44%

Roe v. Wade is strongly correlated with an increase in illegitimacy in the US (24-->44%!). Roe has also become a routine form of birth control for the irresponsible and the careless. 55% of abortions in the US are performed on women seeking an abortion for the first time. 45% of abortions are for women having their second or third abortion (or worse!). This suggests that perhaps 70-80% of women who have one abortion will be back for a second or third.

And on any view of abortion, that should be a scandal.

What should be done?

Most nations in the world have much more restrictive abortion laws than the US. In Germany in particular, there are very strict counseling requirements for any woman who seeks an abortion. If American law is to learn from the wisdom of our European counterparts, then there is every reason to seek in the US counseling laws that would identify why the woman was having the abortion, address the problem, and take steps to make sure there was no second abortion. Such a law would not end all abortions, but it might well end about half of them, and that would be an enormous step forward under the current regime.

A strong counseling law would address the issues of:

1) Does the woman understand and have access to birth control?
2) Does she have an alcohol problem? (A very good question for college students becoming pregnant after getting drunk at a party.)
3) Does she suffer from depression?
4) Does she suffer from self-esteem issues or other psychological problems that led to the pregnancy?
5) Is the woman in an abusive relationship?
6) Was the pregnancy due to incest?
7) Does she fear that she lacks financial resources to carry the child to term?
8) Is she fully aware of the option of adoption and the large number of couples seeking to adopt?
9) Is she aware of the scientific evidence of fetal development?
10) Has she seen an ultrasound of her child? (About 70% of women who see an ultrasound of their child choose to carry the child to term.)

A strong counseling law, modeled on the German experience, would likely lead to large reductions in American abortion rates. Strong counseling should be able to prevent a very high percentage of second abortions. And the very knowledge that counseling was a necessary requirement for abortion would encourage a higher level of seriousness and responsibility within American culture as a whole.

It would also have a very good chance of being upheld by the Supreme Court. This is in part because relatively mild counseling laws have been upheld under the Casey decision of 1992. But this is also because Anthony Kennedy, the key 5th vote, has made international law central to his understanding of the US Constitution.

Now there are very severe problems with what Kennedy has done with the Constitution using foreign law. But whatever one thinks of his work, pro-life leaders would be well-advised to write challenges to Roe that can be rationalized under his framework. For Kennedy is now the decisive swing vote on abortion, and without his support no move toward a more pro-life Constitution can succeed.

A final advantage is that a strong counseling law would be much less controversial with the American people than a ban on abortion as broad as South Dakota seeks. As tragic as abortion is, a wise pro-life movement will follow the path cut out by the NAACP in the legal strategy that led to the end of segregation: to move carefully, cautiously, step by step.

Good news from Iraq: hard facts for pessimists

2006-03-05T02:35:00.000-05:00

The historic elections of January 2005 can be seen to have produced a fundamental shift in the war in Iraq.

The following statistics are taken mostly from the invaluable monthly Brookings Institute reports.

The Bad News:
1. Daily attacks are up: from 19 in December 2003 to 52 in December 2004 to 75 in December 2005.
2. US military deaths overall have not declined: 486 in 2003; 848 in 2004; 846 in 2005.
3. Multiple fatality bombings are up: from 29 in winter 2004 to 56 in winter 2005 to 92 in winter 2006 (winter calculated as Nov/Dec/Jan).

The Good News:
1. Successful daily attacks are down sharply: from about 25-30% in December of 2004 to about 10% in December of 2005.
2. US wounded are down sharply: The Iraqi insurgency was relatively limited from March 2003 through March 2004. In April 2004 the insurgency gained dramatically in strength with casualties running 323 for that month and peaking at 1397 in November 2004 during the battle of Fallujah. They gone down steadily since then, and in the last four months casualties have dropped from 618 in October 2004 to 259 in January 2006. The casualty figures of 259 for January 2006 are the lowest for any month since the insurgency exploded in April 2004.
3. Iraqi police and military fatalities are down sharply: they ran 109 in January 2005, and the Iraqi armed forces saw their fatalities peak in July of that summer at 304. They have dropped steadily since then to 190 in January 2006.
4. Car bombings have been cut sharply: from 136 in May 2005 to 30 in December 2005.
5. Attacks on Iraqi oil and gas infrastructure are down sharply: from 60 in winter 2005 to 11 in winter 2006 (Nov/Dec/Jan).
6. Hostile fire deaths are down sharply: in the ten months from April 2004 through the elections of 2005, Americans suffered 458 deaths; or 45.8 deaths per month to mortar, rocket propelled grenades, snipers, and other hostile fire (apart from helicopters). In the twelve months since the elections (Feb 2005 to Jan 2006), Americans have suffered 196 deaths from hostile fire; or 16.3 deaths per month.

[Helicopter deaths are excluded in the above figures, although these are encouraging as well: Helicopter losses due to enemy fire were 5 per month during the liberation of Iraq; 4.5 per month under the CPA; 0.2 per month during the revolt; and 0.8 per month since the January 2005 elections. It's possible that the insurgency has gotten better at targeting our helicopters since the elections, but it hasn't produced a serious impact on fatality statistics.]

We can break the war into four phases based on hostile fire deaths:
Phase I: Liberation of Iraq--March/April 2003: 49 deaths per month.
Phase II: CPA occupation--May 2003/March 2004: 12.4 deaths per month.
Phase III: Revolt--April 2004/January 2005: 45.7 deaths per month.
Phase IV: Democracy--February 2005/Jan 2006: 16.3 deaths per month.

In sum, these figures imply a very different account of the field of battle than the nightly television reports. They suggest that since the elections of January 2005 things have not gone well for the insurgency. The insurgents appear increasingly to be getting swept out of their areas of operations, and seem to be having a very difficult time getting American soldiers in their gunsights. The basic thing that has kept them on the nightly news are the IEDs (the improvised explosive devices). Although fewer of these are going off, the ones that do go off have greater power, hence the rise in multiple fatality bombings coupled with the decline in car bombings overall.

The trendlines on this don't look good for the enemy at all. More Iraqi soldiers are in the field, and the enemy has had a decreasing ability to inflict its will on the new Iraqi army; hence the declining fatality figures for the Iraqis. The insurgency since the January 2005 elections has shown a declining capability to fight Iraqi soldiers or American soldiers or even to attack fixed installations.

In other words: they're losing.

The analysis above basically agrees with what regular readers of Strategy Page have been getting there.

Does this mean that the war will soon be over? No. The Democrats are running for Congress on a policy of immediate withdrawal; and enemies of democracies design their attacks for maximum political impact in election years (see the Madrid bombings of 2004 in Spain). The Democratic campaign platform guarantees a major summer/fall offensive in Iraq designed to convince Americans to quit in Iraq and give the terrorists the victory. They will be helped in this by the 85% Democratic networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC who will slant the coverage of the attacks in a way designed to convince the American people that the war in Iraq is hopeless.

Clausewitz pointed on in On War that winning a war is not ultimately about killing soldiers, but breaking the enemy's will to resist. Americans can lose if they choose to believe the reports from ABC, CBS & NBC rather than our soldiers in the field.

Rather they can follow Tom Paine: These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Postscript: A few other points should be added. The total number of American deaths as of January 2006 is 2241. 18% of these are not combat related. 40% of the deaths are hostile fire-related (apart from helicopter deaths at 6%). The remaining 36% of US deaths are due to IEDs (31%) and car bombs (5%).

Postscript 2: I'd be grateful for comments on this post by some of the milbloggers. And I'm embarrassed to say that I wanted to include a graph here, but I could not figure out how to import Excel graphs into Blogger. Any help?

0-5: Why we can't trust the CIA on Iran's nukes

2006-03-04T17:27:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times: Estimates of just when Iran might acquire a nuclear weapon range from alarmist views of only a few months to roughly 15 years. American intelligence agencies say it will take 5 to 10 years for Iran to manufacture the fuel for its first atomic bomb.

And then at the end of the article: As much as anything, officials worry about the unknown. They note that the United States missed signs that a country was about to go nuclear with [1]the Soviets in the 1940's, [2] the Chinese in the 1960's, [3] India in the 1970's and [4] Pakistan in the 1990's.
"People always surprise us," said a senior nuclear intelligence official who was not authorized to speak publicly. "They're always a little more cunning and capable than we give them credit for."

0-4. And if I remember correctly that the CIA got fooled on North Korea as well, that makes 0-5.

And if the CIA is wrong about Iran, we might not know until we see the mushroom cloud over Washington, DC.

The Bloody Borders Project

2006-03-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

The tag-line of the Gates of Vienna puts it all into perspective: At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war.

The latest phase is set forth in full color in the Bloody Borders Project: Gates of Vienna draws on Samuel Huntington’s well-known quote about Islam’s “bloody borders”.

The site needs to be checked out in full, but the map is an excellent snapshot of the scope and range of global jihad...and the news that the mainstream press does not see fit to print.

Die Grosse Stille--Into Great Silence

2006-03-04T13:40:00.000-05:00

A film with no script, no dialogue, and a soundtrack entirely in Gregorian chant, has been playing to packed houses in Germany, and now across Europe. A feature-length documentary, it has no interviews, no narrator, no background material. Entitled Die Grosse Stille -- Into Great Silence -- it is about the life of the monks in Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the Carthusian monastic order.

So writes David Warren in a wonderful post brought to my attention by Kerry Hogan of Smoothing Plane. Kerry writes:

Without a Great Silence beneath us, among us, within us, there is nothing. A great and terrible nothingness is advancing upon us... If we do not come to our knees on our own, and reconnnect our small selves with God, the conflagrations coming which will force us there, may be unendurable.

The Caligula Factor: why quitting in Iraq would create more terror

2006-03-03T16:44:00.000-05:00

The Roman emperor Caligula late in his reign (AD 37-41) decided to put a statue of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem.

This decision set off nation-wide protests by the Jews throughout Palestine, and the Roman official official on the scene asked Caligula to reverse his decision for fear of insurrection.

The crisis was resolved when Caligula was assassinated in January of 41, and Claudius was seated on the imperial throne.

The crisis, however, was never forgotten by the Jews. The sudden assassination of Caligula in the middle of the crisis seemed to many Jews to be proof that the God of the Jews had vindicated his people. Particularly the younger generation of Jews was convinced that the God of Israel was on their side, and that if the Jews would fight for God, then God would fight for them.

The result in AD 66 was the revolt of the Jews against the Roman Empire. Josephus, one of the younger generation of Jewish priests, noted that it had been led principally by younger priests like himself, and these priests had no fear of Roman power. They were convinced that however powerful Rome was, the power of the Jewish god was greater. They had seen the Roman Empire capitulate to the power of God in the Caligula crisis, and they were contemptuous of priests older and wiser than themselves who counseled peace and caution.

The revolt of the Caligula generation of young Jews brought about one of the greatest disasters of Jewish history. The Jewish war of AD 66-74 brought about the destruction of the temple, the ruin of the people, and atrocities on an unimaginable scale. Josephus estimated over one million deaths in the ensuing slaughter. Josephus has blood-curdling tales of the horrors of the war and young women eating their own children to stay alive in the ensuing famine.

If we want to understand our enemies, we need to understand that they think not like Communists or Nazis, atheists cooling calculating the correlation of forces. They think like ancient Jews, ready to revolt if only they see evidence that God is on their side.

Missed by the secularized experts who dominate our newsmedia is this: one of the key reasons for September 11th was the Soviet defeat of Afghanistan, and the belief of the mujahideen that Allah alone had given them the victory. The Islamic mujahideen who won the war did not attribute their victory to the power of democracy or American Stinger missiles. They attributed their victory to the power of Allah. They believed that by turning to him with all their hearts, Allah had returned to his people and given them victory over the mighty Russian bear.

And they figured that if Allah defeated the Russians, then he would also defeat the Americans--if only his people stayed true to Allah and the Koran.

The crushing victory of the Americans in Afghanistan was a devastating blow to that theology. Al Qaeda and the Taliban were swept out of Afghanistan within weeks, and Allah seemed to be fighting on behalf of the Northern Alliance--not the heroes of jihad.

The war in Iraq has now set the theology of jihad its second major test. If the Americans are driven out of Iraq, then the youth of the Islamic world will see that Osama bin Laden is right, that the Americans are paper tigers, and that Allah will fight for them if they will fight for him.

If that happens the democracies of the West will face a generation of jihad that will make September 11th look tame.

But for that very reason Iraq is also an unprecedented opportunity for the victory of democracy in the Islamic world. The failure of Al Qaeda in Iraq will further discredit a group already bloodied after its defeat in Afghanistan. The truth of Al Qaeda's view of the Koran is scarcely self-evident to the young men of the Islamic world. The pious ones are willing to be content in principle with a more pacific reading of the Koran. And many young men who are not pious would much prefer the decadence of the hedonistic West. The truth of Al Qaeda's theology will not be proven in abstract discussions in mosques: rather it will be proven on the battlefield, it will be vindicated or defeated in the field of combat, and the principal field of combat is Iraq.

What is at stake in Iraq is the education of a generation of young Islamic men. If they see the emergence of Iraq as a strong Islamic democracy, then Al Qaeda has no future. If they see the victory of jihad in Iraq, then we will face a generation of jihad that will cut a crescent of blood across Europe and the United States.

We face then a direct challenge to our generation, a nation whose leaders came of age in Vietnam and whose first inclination when faced with hardship is to cut and run and quit. To the senators and congressmen who grew up in the Vietnam era, and who compare this war ad nauseam to that one, there is only one message: if you quit now, if you cut and run here in Iraq, you will create a generation of Muslims as committed to terrorism as you are to peace. The war in Iraq is the education of an entire generation of young Muslims, and if you quit and surrender, then you are training them for terrorism, whether you will it or no.

This is the crisis: you are going to have to face a war you did not want, led by a president whom you hate, and unite to fight for the country you love.

There is no alternative to victory.

The Prejudices of Andrew Sullivan

2006-03-03T05:33:00.000-05:00

are not normally of great concern, except insofar as others share them. Here, for example, is insensitivity in the blogosphere:

Andrew Sullivan:
If you had any doubts about the reach and power of Christianism in today's Republican party, read this letter from Supreme Court Justice, Samuel Alito, to James Dobson, the leading fundamentalist in the U.S. today, and the central power-broker in this White House on social policy...

So what did Andrew do wrong here? Well, for starters, let's take a look at that "fundamentalist" phrase that Andrew is throwing around. Andrew doesn't seem to know this (most Catholics, unfortunately, don't), but fundamentalist has been a term of offense for most conservative Protestants in this country since at least 1942: the National Association of Evangelicals, formed in that year, was founded under that name precisely because evangelicals were weary of "fundamentalist" as an insult. When some sixty years later, the term fundamentalist is thrown around loosely, it has about the same force as "boy" had applied to black people in the South, or Ross Perot's famous "you people". Andrew Sullivan would not refer to Barak Obama as "the leading Negro leader in America today." And Andrew Sullivan would not take it kindly if Dr Dobson referred to Mr Sullivan as "the leading fag blogger in America today." Civility and tolerance are important virtues--but in these matters one needs to give if one hopes to receive.

There are still a few Christians left who still do prefer the term fundamentalist. Most of them are clustered around Bob Jones University; but if you don't understand that Bob Jones has been anathema in the broader evangelical community for decades, then you probably get too much of your news from ABC, CBS, & NBC.

In and of itself, Sullivan's use of "fundamentalist" may well stem from simple ignorance. But bigotry and ignorance march together, and his follow-up is every bit as bad:

A few emailers have asked what I see troubling in the Alito thank you note to Dr James Dobson. First, Supreme Court Justices should be very careful associating with overtly political entities, and you don't get much more political than Dobson. Secondly, Dobson himself read it out loud on the air to brag of his influence on national affairs. Thirdly, there is more than just a hint of a constitutional quo for a political quid in the letter.

Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the US Supreme Court in 1967. If he had received a letter of congratulations from Martin Luther King, and Marshall had written back thanking King for his prayers and support, who would have deemed that inappropriate?

Memo to Andrew: every new public official gets flooded with letters of congratulations after taking office. And every new public official in turn writes back some kind of a gracious response.

The ripples of shock flowing in some political circles over a simple thank-you letter are troubling. Opposition to the political agenda of evangelical leaders is all part of the game. But when a thank-you letter can rile the waters, there is something more than political disagreement here: there is rather the passion of prejudice, passions that have been directed toward evangelicals for most of their history, and which make them the single most stigmatized community in American public life today.

Who's forcing democracy on the Iraqis?

2006-03-03T02:12:00.000-05:00

Robert Kaplan is worried that Americans are "forcing" democracy on an Iraq that doesn't want it.
Francis Fukuyama fears the same.

For the January 2005 election, Iraqi voter turnout was 58%.
For the October 2005 on a democratic Constitution, Iraqi voter turnout ran over 60%.
For the December 2005 ballot CBS reported Iraqi turnout at about 70%.

We might contrast the Iraqis, who allegedly are having democracy forced upon them, with the Americans: for the American presidential election of 2004, voter turnout was 60%, and that was the highest American turnout since 1968. And Americans didn't have to run the risk of being blown-up by Al Qaeda terrorists when they went to the polls. If you had to judge, you'd be hard pressed to prove that Americans are more committed to democracy than the Iraqis.

Here's what the Iraqis told the Brookings Poll:

"Q: Do you think Iraq today is heading in the right direction?
Iraqis who answered "yes": Overall = 64%; Kurds = 76%; Shiia = 84%; Sunni = 6%

Q: Thinking about any hardships you might have suffered since the U.S.-Britain invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it?
Iraqis who answered "yes": Overall = 77%; Kurds = 91%; Shiia = 98%; Sunni = 13%" (HT: Andrew Sullivan).

If Americans were as optimistic about Iraq as the people who actually live there, the entire debate on the war would be different. We hear much about the loss of American soldiers in Iraq, and that remains an on-going sadness. But the Iraqis have paid a far higher price than Americans have, both in absolute numbers and in percentage terms, and their conviction that freedom has been worth it runs far deeper than many American opinion leaders. Maybe the people of Iraq know more about what's going on in their country than ABC, CBS, NBC, and the New York Times.

If Americans were as convinced that the war has been worth it as the Iraqis are, the entire political landscape would be different. Those who argue that we are "forcing" democracy on the Iraqis might have to face the point that the Iraqis are very eager for exactly what the liberation of Iraq has brought them.

And this is the real choice facing the American people in 2006: On the one side, we have the Iraqi people, who after decades of suffering under Saddam Hussein, are risking their lives for freedom. On the other side, we have Al Qaeda terrorists and ex-Hussein Sunni loyalists, who see a return to dictatorship.

Do we hand Iraq back to the terrorists or do we stand and fight for democracy?

************************************************************************

UPDATE: thanks for the link to Hugh Hewitt!

NRO's Puddleglum: John Derbyshire

2006-03-02T21:41:00.000-05:00

You may recall Puddleglum.

One of the classic characters from CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair (vol 5).

Puddleglum is, well, always glum--gloomy, sure that the world is going to cave in on him and on everybody else.

National Review, true to its love of dear Mr Lewis, thought that the conservative world needed at least one Puddleglum-esque character on its roster of writers.

Enter John Derbyshire. Born in 1945, educated in England where he studied mathematics at University College London, he came to this country terribly worried that upbeat conservatives like Ronald Wilson Reagan were making way too many people too happy.

Hope, confidence, optimism, morning in America--Bah! A true conservative craves not these things, said Master Derbyshire.

Did W win the White House by the skin of his teeth in 2000? Derb wrote: from beneath the dark sign of Saturn, and with the taste of black bile on my tongue, I offer George W. Bush a wan, pale, shadowed-eyed, melancholic welcome to the office of the Chief Magistracy, and a limp, cold, feeble handshake. Puddleglum himself could scarcely have been more morose. Next to Derbyshire, Hamlet looks like a man on Prozac.

Was W re-elected in 2004 with the GOP winning both houses? Derb wrote: DOOMED, DOOMED, Conservatism is a dead letter, socialism is unstoppable...Which might be true, IF you don't bother to read the 2005 report of the Economic Freedom Network, which noted that economic freedom has risen in 96 out of 105 nations since 1985; a pretty good working definition of conservativism, and sure to send socialists searching for someone to prescribe anti-depressants.

Did W vow to place conservative justices on the Supreme Court? Derb wrote: I doubt there will ever be another conservative on the Court--right before W put two card-carrying conservatives, John Roberts and Sam Alito, on the highest court in the land.

Have Iraqis responded to the latest bombing with admirable restraint? Derb is certain that all is lost. Of course, a part of him knows that's not the view of soldiers on the scence like Ralph Peters: "I flew over the streets of this city on Sunday. The calm made a striking contrast to the media hysteria. No mosques burned. No demonstrations seethed. The closest thing I saw to violence was a children's soccer game played in a suburb." [bold added]

Cheer up, Puddleglum. Put down that copy of Hamlet you've been reading. Try the The Chronicles of Narnia for a bit.

Aslan wins in the end. :)

Lent, penance, and resurrection

2006-03-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

Returning to one's blog after long absence is like a resurrection from the dead.

There is much, much to write both on my dissertation and for my college, but I will try to get out 2-3 posts per week.

Peace and grace,

GrenfellHunt

Blessed are the peacemakers...

2005-12-16T06:56:00.000-05:00

for they shall be called the sons of God. --Jesus of Nazareth, c. AD 27/28.

A beautiful morning, full of good news from Iraq and around the world.

1. Grayhawk has a brilliant post on victory and democracy in Iraq. Perfect on a day that highlights the principle that you bring peace to the Middle East by bringing democracy.

2. Grayhawk again with a careful post on the current strategy to reduce American troops to 92,000 next year; conditions permitting.

3. The UK Guardian posts Salaam Pax's blog from Iraq on the elections. It's progress when leading Western journalists will step aside let the Iraqis speak for themselves.

4. McCain and W clinch an agreement on banning torture. McCain has done good work on this issue, and the passing of the agreement will help consolidate support for the mission in Iraq, both domestically and internationally.

5. Rasmussen has the president's job approval up in the mid-40s, and this is consistent throughout December.

6. Sadly, the move toward to democracy in Iraq has come against the bitter opposition of many key Democratic leaders: John Kerry, House leader Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Murtha. Right now, they have created for themselves the image of a party that has two key goals if they win the Congress in 2006: surrender Iraq to the terrorists, and impeach W. I have been assuming that the GOP would lose seats in the House but retain control in 2006--but with the Democrats running on a surrender platform, the GOP has a shot at increasing its control.

Thanks to Milblogger Citizen Smash for a great post and photo.

Give the Devil her Due

2005-12-16T06:39:00.000-05:00

A prominent radical complains:

Why Can't I Get Arrested?

I'm getting a little insulted that no Democratic prosecutor has indicted me. Liberals bring trumped-up criminal charges against all the most dangerous conservatives. Why not me?

Democrat prosecutor Barry Krischer has spent two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to find some criminal charge to bring against Rush Limbaugh. Political hack Ronnie Earle spent three years and went through six grand juries to indict Tom DeLay. Liberals spent the last two years fantasizing in public about Karl Rove being indicted. Newt Gingrich was under criminal investigation for 3 1/2 years back in the '90s when liberals were afraid of him. Final result: No crime.

And of course, everybody cool in the Reagan administration was indicted. Or at least investigated and persecuted. Reagan's sainted attorney general Ed Meese was criminally investigated for 14 months before the prosecutor announced that he didn't have anything (but denounced Meese as a crook anyway).

I've done a lot for my country. I think I deserve to be indicted, too. What's a girl have to do to become a "person of interest" around here?

These liberals are fanatics about privacy when it comes to man-boy sex and stabbing forks into partially-born children. But a maid alleges that she bought Rush Limbaugh a few Percodans, and suddenly the government has declared a war on prescription painkillers.

Liberals are more optimistic about the charges against Tom DeLay than they are about the charges against Saddam Hussein -- and the only living things Tom DeLay ever exterminated were rats and bugs.

Charges like these are not brought at random. They are brought against people who pose the greatest threat to liberals.

What am I? Miss Congeniality?

Soldiers vs. the Press: Round II

2005-12-11T15:49:00.000-05:00

From StrategyPage

Journalism Versus Reality in Iraq
by James Dunnigan
December 3, 2005

American troops are developing a hate-hate relation with journalists. The basic problem is that soldiers and marines in Iraq have access, usually via the Internet, to what the mass media is saying about what they think is happening in Iraq. These news reports, all too often, do not reflect what the troops experience. It gets uglier when the troops realize that reporters are spending most of their time in the Green Zone or some well guarded hotel, leaving it to local Iraqi stringers to collect information and photos for the reporters stories. Relations are a bit better with the few embedded journalists who still travel with the troops out in field. But even the embeds are often mistrusted and disliked, because some of them are blatantly out for dirt, not an accurate story.

Few of the troops understand that the news business is driven by dramatic events, not the tedious kind of process the troops go through every day to defeat the terrorists. To the troops, the war is being won. They see bad guys killed in large numbers, and few Americans getting hurt (it’s fairly common for their to be about twenty enemy dead for each American loss). The troops see tangible evidence, every day, of Iraqis having a better life. The troops cannot understand why that is not news, and why journalists always seem to be looking for a negative angle. To the average G.I., the attitude is, “what are these reporters looking for?” They are looking for a story, and bad news is a story. Good news is not. As a result of this clash of cultures, reporters are increasingly seen as a potentially dangerous enemy. For the troops, this is already accepted as true for many Arab journalists. Some of those have been arrested for hostile activity, or later revealed as al Qaeda agents. European journalists are seen as particularly clueless, so wrapped up in their anti-American fantasies, that communication is nearly impossible. But after watching a CNN clip on the net, or viewing an online story from the New York Times or Washington Post, it’s hard to view U.S. journalists as fellow Americans.

1. US journalists are fellow Americans...who just happen to be bad reporters.
2. Dunnigan writes: "They are looking for a story, and bad news is a story. Good news is not." But there's nothing inherent in journalism that mandates this attitude to America's wars. This is a post-Vietnam phenomenon: the reporters of World War II had higher standards than our current generation of celebrity-journalists.
3. The bottom line here is that current journalists are simply poor critical thinkers: skeptical of anything good that comes out of Washington, but ready to believe the crudest propaganda from Middle Eastern terrorists.
4. September 11th was a shock because the leading voices of the American press (ABC/CBS/NBC/NYTimes) failed in their responsibilities to the American public. 4 years later, far too little has changed.

The Truth about the War: The Soliders versus the Press

2005-12-10T12:17:00.000-05:00

Atlas Shrugs has a great post with a letter from a Marine.
[Family values notice: our Marine occasionally talks like one.]

Hot Quote: "morale among our guys is very high. They not only believe they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. They are inflicting casualties at a rate of 20-1 and then see [stuff] like "Are we losing in Iraq" on TV and the print media. For the most part, they are satisfied with their equipment, food and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren't enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Iran and Syria. The Iranians and the Syrians just can't stand the thought of Iraq being an American ally (with, of course, permanent US bases there). "

No politics here, just a Marine with a bird's eye view's opinions:
1) The M-16 rifle: Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it's lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They like the ability to mount the various optical gun sights and weapons lights on the picanttiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits can't be reliably counted on to put the enemy down. Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents show a high level of opiate use.
2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): .223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun. Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly. (that's fun in the middle of a firefight).
3) The M9 Beretta 9mm: Mixed bag. Good gun, performs well in desert environment; but they all hate the 9mm cartridge. The use of handguns forself-defense is actually fairly common. Same old story on the 9mm: Bad guys hit multiple times and still in the fight.
4) Mossberg 12ga. Military shotgun: Works well, used frequently for clearing houses to good effect.
5) The M240 Machine Gun: 7.62 Nato (.308) cal. belt fed machine gun, developed to replace the old M-60 (what a beautiful weapon that was!!). Thumbs up. Accurate, reliable, and the 7.62 round puts them down. Originally developed as a vehicle mounted weapon, more and more are being dismounted and taken into the field by infantry. The 7.62 round chews up the structure over there.
6) The M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun: Thumbs way, way up. "Ma deuce" is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper, puts their dicks in the dirt every time. The most coveted weapon in-theater.
7) The .45 pistol: Thumbs up. Still the best pistol round out there. Everybody authorized to carry a sidearm is trying to get their hands on one. With few exceptions, can reliably be expected to put 'em down with a torso hit. The special ops guys (who are doing most of the pistol work) use the HK military model and supposedly love it. The old government model .45's are being re-issued en masse.
8) The M-14: Thumbs up. They are being re-issued in bulk, mostly in a modified version to special ops guys. Modifications include lightweight Kevlar stocks and low power red dot or ACOG sights. Very reliable in the sandy environment and they love the 7.62 round.
9) The Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle: Thumbs way up. Spectacular range and accuracy and hits like a freight train. Used frequently to take out vehicle suicide bombers (we actually stop a lot of them) and barricaded enemy. Definitely here to stay.
10) The M24 sniper rifle: Thumbs up. Mostly in .308 but some in 300 win mag. Heavily modified Remington 700's. Great performance. Snipers have been used heavily to great effect. Rumor has it that a marine sniper on his third tour in Anbar province has actually exceeded Carlos Hathcock's record for confirmed kills with OVER 100.
11) The new body armor: Thumbs up. Relatively light at approx. 6 lbs. and can reliably be expected to soak up small shrapnel and even will stop an AK-47 round. The bad news: Hot as shit to wear, almost unbearable in the summer heat (which averages over 120 degrees). Also, the enemy now goes for head shots whenever possible. All the bullshit about the "old" body armor making our guys vulnerable to the IED's was a non-starter. The IED explosions are enormous and body armor doesn't make any difference at all in most cases.
12) Night Vision and Infrared Equipment: Thumbs way up. Spectacular performance. Our guys see in the dark and own the night, period. Very little enemy action after evening prayers. More and more enemy being whacked at night during movement by our hunter-killer teams. We've all seen the videos.
13) Lights: Thumbs up. Most of the weapon mounted and personal lights are Surefire's, and the troops love 'em. Invaluable for night urban operations. Jordan carried a $34 Surefire G2 on a neck lanyard and loved it. I can't help but notice that most of the good fighting weapons and ordnance are 50 or more years old!!!!!!!!! With all our technology, it's the WWII and Vietnam era weapons that everybody wants!!!! The infantry fighting is frequent, up close and brutal. No quarter is given or shown.
Bad guy weapons:
1) Mostly AK47's The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably. PKM belt fed light machine guns are also common and effective. Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like shit. Undisciplined "spray and pray" type fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. (Iran, again)
Fun fact: Captured enemy have apparently marveled at the marksmanship of our guys and how hard they fight. They are apparently told in Jihad school that the Americans rely solely on technology, and can be easily beaten in close quarters combat for their lack of toughness. Let's just say they know better now.
2) The RPG: Probably the infantry weapon most feared by our guys. Simple, reliable and as common as dog shit. The enemy responded to our up-armored humvees by aiming at the windshields, often at point blank range. Still killing a lot of our guys.
3) The IED: The biggest killer of all. Can be anything from old Soviet anti-armor mines to jury rigged artillery shells. A lot found in Jordan's area were in abandoned cars. The enemy would take 2 or 3 155mm artillery shells and wire them together. Most were detonated by cell phone, and the explosions are enormous. You're not safe in any vehicle, even an M1 tank. Driving is by far the most dangerous thing our guys do over there. Lately, they are much more sophisticated "shape charges" (Iranian) specifically designed to penetrate armor. Fact: Most of the ready made IED's are supplied by Iran, who is also providing terrorists (Hezbollah types) to train the insurgents in their use and tactics. That's why the attacks have been so deadly lately. Their concealment methods are ingenious, the latest being shape charges in Styrofoam containers spray painted to look like the cinderblocks that litter all Iraqi roads. We find about 40% before they detonate, and the bomb disposal guys are unsung heroes of this war.
4) Mortars and rockets: Very prevalent. The soviet era 122mm rockets (with an 18km range) are becoming more prevalent. One of Jordan's NCO's lost a leg to one. These weapons cause a lot of damage "inside the wire". Jordan's base was hit almost daily his entire time there by mortar and rocket fire, often at night to disrupt sleep patterns and cause fatigue (It did). More of a psychological weapon than anything else. The enemy mortar teams would jump out of vehicles, fire a few rounds, and then haul ass in a matter of seconds.
5) Bad guy technology: Simple yet effective. Most communication is by cell and satellite phones, and also by email on laptops. They use handheld GPS units for navigation and "Google earth" for overhead views of our positions. Their weapons are good, if not fancy, and prevalent. Their explosives and bomb technology is TOP OF THE LINE. Night vision is rare. They are very careless with their equipment and the captured GPS units and laptops are treasure troves of Intel when captured.
Who are the bad guys?: Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi Al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province (Fallujah and Ramadi). These are mostly "foreigners", non-Iraqi Sunni Arab Jihadists from all over the Muslim world (and Europe). Most enter Iraq through Syria (with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian govt.) , and then travel down the "rat line" which is the trail of towns along the Euphrates River that we've been hitting hard for the last few months. Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in "sacrifice squads".Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian), are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters. (they have been fighting the Russians for years). In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired (and led) Iraqi Shiites. The Iranian Shiia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local govt.'s, the police forces and the Army. The have had a massive spy and agitator network there since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 80's. Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago. Bad Guy Tactics: When they are engaged on an infantry level they get their asses kicked every time. Brave, but stupid. Suicidal Banzai-type charges were very common earlier in the war and still occur. They will literally sacrifice 8-10 man teams in suicide squads by sending them screaming and firing Ak's andRPG's directly at our bases just to probe the defenses. They get mowed down like grass every time. (see the M2 and M240 above). Jordan's base was hit like this often. When engaged, they have a tendency to flee to the same building, probably for what they think will be a glorious last stand. Instead, we call in air and that's the end of that more often than not. These hole-ups are referred to as Alpha Whiskey Romeo's (Allah's Waiting Room). We have the laser guided ground-air thing down to a science. The fast mover's, mostly Marine F-18's, are taking an ever increasing toll on the enemy. When caught out in the open, the helicopter gunships and AC-130 Spectre gunships cut them to ribbons with cannon and rocket fire, especially at night. Interestingly, artillery is hardly used at all. Fun fact: The enemy death toll is supposedly between 45-50 thousand. That is why we're seeing less and less infantry attacks and more IED, suicide bomber shit.The new strategy is simple: attrition. The insurgent tactic most frustrating is their use of civilian non-combatants as cover. They know we do all we can to avoid civilian casualties and therefore schools, hospitals and (especially) Mosques are locations where they meet, stage for attacks, cache weapons and ammo and flee to when engaged. They have absolutely no regard whatsoever for civilian casualties. They will terrorize locals and murder without hesitation anyone believed to be sympathetic to the Americans or the new Iraqi govt. Kidnapping of family members (especially children) is common to influence people they are trying to influence but cant reach, such as local govt. officials, clerics, tribal leaders, etc.). The first thing our guys are told is "don't get captured". They know that if captured they will be tortured and beheaded on the internet. Zarqawi openly offers bounties for anyone who brings him a live American serviceman. This motivates the criminal element who otherwise don't give a shit about the war. A lot of the beheading victims were actually kidnapped by common criminals and sold to Zarqawi. As such, for our guys, every fight is to the death. Surrender is not an option. The Iraqi's are a mixed bag. Some fight well, others aren't worth a shit. Most do okay with American support. Finding leaders is hard, but they are getting better. It is widely viewed that Zarqawi's use of suicide bombers, en masse, against the civilian population was a serious tactical mistake. Many Iraqi's were galvanized and the caliber of recruits in the Army and the police forces went up, along with their motivation. It also led to an exponential increase in good intel because the Iraqi's are sick of the insurgent attacks against civilians. The Kurds are solidly pro-Americanand fearless fighters. According to Jordan, morale among our guys is very high. They not only believe they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. They are inflicting casualties at a rate of 20-1 and then see shit like "Are we losing in Iraq" on TV and the print media. For the most part, they are satisfied with their equipment, food and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren't enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Iran and Syria. The Iranians and the Syrians just can't stand the thought of Iraq being an American ally (with, of course, permanent US bases there).

The Press is too liberal? Reality and the New York Review of Books

2005-12-08T09:27:00.000-05:00

The New York Review of Books has recently published an article with the disturbing title, "The Press: the enemy within". There's more than a whiff of McCarthyism in a title like that, but as one might guess, this is not a McCarthyism of the Right. The burden of the article is to paint the key institutions of the news media as pawns of the Establishment in general and the Pentagon in particular.

These kinds of articles need to be taken with some seriousness, in part because they reflect what many American liberals think about the press, and in part because they reflect what many reporters think about themselves.

The central proof of the press's conservative bias is the failure of the press to realize that Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs. But the article goes on to run through several criticisms that pretty much anybody would agree with: the search for ratings, the cult of celebrity, and the willingness of the press to invest much energy in puffing things like Time's 100 most influential people at the expense of real news.

But the article seems most exercised about the failure of the press to give sufficient print to civilian casualties in Iraq, and allegations of American atrocities: "When NBC cameraman Kevin Sites filmed a US soldier fatally shooting a wounded Iraqi man in Fallujah, he was harassed, denounced as an antiwar activist, and sent death threats. Such incidents feed the deep-seated fear that many US journalists have of being accused of being anti-American, of not supporting the troops in the field. "

Of course, Sites was harrassed in this way for very good reasons. The "Iraqi man" was an armed terrorist whom the soldier believed was pretending to be dead--a tactic that terrorists had been using to kill numerous American soldiers. After the Sites video was used to whip up much anti-American hysteria all across the world, a careful review vindicated the soldier. But not before much damage had been done to the reputation of the country.

More to the point, the press coverage of Fallujah highlighted the exact opposite problem: the basically complete indifference of the press to American victories and successes, and a single-minded focus on casualties and atrocity allegations. The end of 1984 battle of Fallujah was a brilliant piece of soldiering: the Americans cleared a major city of terrorists in a short period of time with exceptionally few American casualties. Yet the press basically ignored the tremendous success of the battle, the skill and bravery of the American soldiers--and invested a vast amount of coverage instead in the Sites video. In football terms, this was like winning a major playoff game, and finding that the headline the next day focussed on a sportwriter's claim that the hometeam should have been called offsides.

The real problems of the press are much different, and they transcend any standard liberal/conservative divide:

1. The press sends reporters who with few exceptions are simply unqualified to cover the war. In order to cover the war, a reporter should be expert in three areas: a) they should be fluent in Arabic; b) they should experts in Iraq and Islamic culture; c) they should know something about war. But few American reporters have any expertise in any of these three areas. The NY Review rightly notes part of the problem with the war reporters: "The simple lack of language skills is one reason. Captain Zachary Miller, who commanded a company of US troops in eastern Baghdad in 2004 and who is now studying at the Kennedy School of Government, told me that of the fifty or so Western journalists who went out on patrol with his troops, hardly any spoke Arabic, and few bothered to bring interpreters."

2. The press doesn't understand strategy: this again is related to the fact that the reporters basically lack a military background, and don't know an M-1 from an M-16. It's not an exaggeration to say that Americans get better covervage of the Super Bowl than they get of the war in Iraq. The team that does the Super Bowl coverage will mostly be composed of ex-NFL pros, often hall-of-famers. The contrast with the military ignorance of American war reporters is striking. By contrast, the NY Review is easily impressed: "The nation's principal news organizations deserve praise for remaining committed to covering the war in the face of lethal risks, huge costs, and public apathy. Normally The Washington Post has four correspondents in the country, backed by more than two dozen Iraqis, as well as three armored cars costing $100,000." Pathetic. That's substantially less than any network will invest in covering a Washington Redskins football game. But I suppose the Redskins have higher television ratings.

3. The press doesn't know how to prioritize coverage. Related again to #1 and #2. Decisions about what to emphasize depend on understanding the flow and progress of the war. But in the absence of any real understanding of war, the press finds it easier to simply hype the casualties to the exclusion of anything else. So in a study of the coverage by ABC/CBS/NBC from January through September of 2005:

Few stories focused on the heroism or generous actions of American soldiers. Just eight stories were devoted to recounting episodes of heroism or valor by U.S. troops, and another nine stories featured instances when soldiers reached out to help the Iraqi people. In contrast, 79 stories focused on allegations of combat mistakes or outright misconduct on the part of U.S. military personnel.

8 vs. 79. But the NYReview of Books thinks that the press isn't focussing enough on atrocities and civilian casualties.

Conclusion: in the most important war of our generation, the major news media simply cannot be relied on to cover the war in an accurate and informed way. The real coverage is now on-line: StrategyPage, AustinBay, Juan Cole, and the milblogs are the only place where anything like serious coverage is going on. And that is at a certain level good news: the soldiers actually fighting in Iraq report that morale is high and that we're winning. One can hope that at some point the press will cover the story.

Thomas Jefferson's forgotten legacy

2005-12-04T16:31:00.000-05:00

Andrew at ConfirmThem gives us this classic quotation:

Thomas Jefferson to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823:
On every question of construction, carry yourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

This is original intent jurisprudence in terms as clear and plain as the Jefferson Memorial or the dome of Monticello.

Of course, stuff like that would today get you drummed out of the party Jefferson founded: namely, the Democrats.

In the place of the real Thomas Jefferson of history, we get the politically correct Thomas Jefferson, remembered only for his "wall of separation" between church and state: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. (Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT. (Jan. 1, 1802))

But despite what some moderns imagine based on the Danbury letter, Jefferson's political philosophy always rooted human liberty in the existence of God:
Jefferson's reputation began to reach beyond Virginia in 1774, when he wrote a political pamphlet, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Arguing on the basis of natural rights theory, Jefferson claimed that colonial allegiance to the king was voluntary. "The God who gave us life," he wrote, "gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."

Indeed, as the above citation from the Danbury letter makes clear, in Jefferson's eyes, it was precisely the existence of God that created the network of liberties that separation of church and state was designed to protect. Jefferson's God was the classic Enlightenment God, proven to exist by the clear force of reason itself, acknowledged by the great philosophers from Aristotle to Newton, and not necessarily to be identified with any tradition of established religion.

Jefferson would be given the privilege of enshrining this view of the God of natural reason in American history two years later when he wrote the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights...

This did not conflict in the slightest with Jefferson's view on the wall of separation: for Jefferson, the existence of God was a matter of philosophy; while church was a matter of religion. Hence for Jefferson there was no contradiction whatever in rooting human freedom in God, for that was a matter of sound philosophy rather than a matter of religion.

In fact his own attitudes to many of the religious denominations of the new country were largely contemptuous: he scorned Calvin, thought little of Athanasius, denied the historicity of the New Testament, and seems to have held the Catholic Church in particularly low repute: "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." (Letter to Alexander von Humboldt (Dec. 6, 1813))

But for all this disdain for religious tradition, he thought God himself the cornerstone of liberty:

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." (Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785) Query 18)

No leading Democrat would be caught dead saying that today: what Jefferson held to be the basis for democracy is now thought to be "intolerant", "narrow-minded", and "theocratic". But Jefferson's belief that God is the basis of human liberty is quite in keeping with the views of most Americans today:

Fully 92 percent of Americans say they believe in God, 85 percent in heaven and 82 percent in miracles.

Democrats will do better in the polls when they take more seriously the views of Jefferson.

W's grand slam: Sam Alito

2005-12-01T07:45:00.000-05:00

W has had the presidential career of a home run hitter. The baseball players will note immediately that this is clearly a double-edged epithet: home run hitters nearly always are at the top of the league in strike outs. And there's no doubt that W has had his share of strike outs, Harriet Miers being a well-intentioned but undoubted whiff.

But Alito is something else again. Yesterday saw the release of a 1985 memo on abortion coupled with the release of his Senate questionnaire containing his essay on judicial review. The contents are simply solid gold.

Let me begin by pointing to the missing key to the Alito nomination: his commitment to Alexander Bickel's vision of judicial review. Alexander Bickel was one of Yale Law School's most famous and influential judicial theorists. There are two key points about Bickel:

1. Bickel thought that in a democracy it was fundamentally dubious to have unelected judges striking down democratically passed laws: judges lacked the authority and the wisdom to write good laws in place of legislatures. Consequently the power of judicial review should be exercised rarely and only in cases where the evidence was quite clear-cut.

2. Bickel believed that judges should proceed slowly, cautiously, and with all due restraint in whatever interventions into the political process they chose to initiate.

This is crisply summed up in an interview with one of Bickel's students, James Freedman of UCBerkeley:

Freedman: He was a constitutional law person, but he had views on constitutional law which were quite out of the received conventional wisdom at the time, and today, I think, sadly, are hardly regarded at all. I regard them highly, but history has, in a sense, passed by his views. Maybe they'll come back someday.

Q: What were those views?

Freedman: Well, he is very much a person of judicial restraint...Very much a person of keeping the Supreme Court out of federal courts, generally, out of decisions that ought to be made by legislative and elected officials... Part of what Bickel understood was that society had to develop organically. One of his heroes was Edmund Burke. He admired Burke's sense of society as a kind of a coral reef of beliefs and views that have been accumulated over many, many centuries. And he wanted the Supreme Court to play a role that generated widespread consent, rather than just, by edict, announce this is what the law will be, because he thought that didn't have a chance of catching on, that one needed to generate in society a general consent.

Indeed, I'm not sure whether he thought Brown against the Board [of Education], which declared segregation unconstitutional, was a wise decision in a scholarly sense, but he was very pleased with the Court saying, "We will do this, not immediately, but with all deliberate speed" -- to be done slowly, carefully, building up kind of a basis in society for acceptance of it.

In his now famous ReaganDOJ job application, Alito said that he applied to Yale Law School in part because he wanted to study with Bickel. Although Bickel was a political liberal rather than a conservative, his views on judicial restraint were attractive to young conservatives like Alito. And Bickel was not a defender of a Scalia-style commitment to originalism.

The influence of Bickel is readily apparent in Alito's newly published 1985 memo on ReaganDOJ abortion strategy. On page 17/footnote 10, Alito cites Bickel as one of four authorities rejecting the legitimacy of Roe v. Wade. It is noteworthy that three of these authorities are prominent liberal judicial theorists: Alexander Bickel himself; Archibald Cox, one of the heroes of Watergate; and John Hart Ely, a pro-choice member of Yale Law School. (I am not familiar with Epstein, the fourth individual cited). It is worth noting that none of these three is a conservative judicial radical. Alito here is functioning well within the mainstream of contemporary legal theory in rejecting Roe as simply contrary to the Constitution.

But the influence of Bickel is equally clear in Alito's recommendation for executing the ReaganDOJ policy of trying to reverse Roe. Alito, true to Bickel's belief in judicial gradualism, does not advocate seeking to reverse Roe outright. He advocates instead defending a series of common sense abortion restrictions, arguably consistent with Roe itself, that would ultimately lead to the slow dissolution of the legal force of Roe itself. Bickel's philosophy leads Alito to a policy of judicial restraint both in strategy and in tactics.

Reading Alito's memo, carefully crafted and incisively written, is a reminder of what a remarkable legal talent W has found. As an academic, I am dislike the word "brilliant", the most overused word in academia and one rarely merited by the evidence. But I am strongly inclined to describe Alito as brilliant: it is not the flashy brilliance of a Mozart, the genius as enfant terrible with all the brassy noise which that title implies; rather it is a quiet, understated brilliance, whose calm logic and soft-spoken whispers of cutting reason remind one of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the cool syllogisms of the Summa Theologica.

Among the many parts of the memo that deserve careful consideration is Alito's line on page 9: "we should make clear that we disagree with Roe v Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled." [Boldface addedd]. In contrast to the sloppy rhetoric of clashing interest groups, reducing Roe to thumbs-up-or-thumbs-down, Alito carefully indicates that reversing Roe is not necessarily a matter of all or nothing, but may well be viewed by the court as a matter of degree. A valuable point, and not one likely to be picked up in warring television ads and network sound bites.

On balance, the new memo probably helps Alito in the Senate. Some senators will be disturbed by the fact that memo really places beyond doubt the point that Alito thinks that Roe v Wade was wrongly decided; the memo can scarcely be dismissed as a mere expression of Alito-the-advocate. But it also show Alito's temperamental and philosophical caution: even within a ReaganDOJ committed to reversing Roe, Alito declined to counsel seeking that directly; he preferred a gradual approach running the implicit but concomitant risk that gradualism might lead in the long run to nothing but minimal modifications in the basic framework of Roe.

It is worth noting too that this places his decision in Casey in a new light as well: in Casey, Alito followed exactly the strategy of his ReaganDOJ memo--he upheld the spousal notification requirement, but declined to challenge Roe directly. Although Alito as an appeals court judge was not really in a good position to call for the reversal of Roe, it is quite probable that he found the opportunity to uphold a specific abortion restriction completely consonant with his ReaganDOJ advocacy strategy.

Alito then is likely to lead to the further erosion of Roe, and he may well vote to reverse Roe altogether if given the chance. But as a Bickel-schooled gradualist, he is unlikely do this immediately or rapidly or soon. Alito is likely to give state legislatures the benefit of the doubt as to the constitutionality of abortion restrictions. Over at ConfirmThem, there has been much speculation that Alito will prefer a "rational basis" test for interpreting Roe. This would leave Roe officially on the books while gutting Roe of most its force. In the end, Roe would remain "good law", and yet the teeth would be taken out of it, and most state abortion restrictions would be allowed to stand.

The new memos from the ReaganDOJ make this a highly probable scenario for the future Mr Justice Alito.

The Ownership Society 2001-2005

2005-12-01T07:18:00.000-05:00

I've defended here the basic point that W's Ownership Society goes back to Aristotle: private property is an essential foundation for a successful society, and the erosion of this principle by government action is counter-production to what Aristotle called human flourishing.

An excellent blog, Willisms, provides a very cool graph on exactly this point:

The Brussels Journal has a great piece titled "The Myth of the Scandinavian Model," in which the correlation between government spending and economic growth is noted.

Indeed, in OECD countries over the latter half of the 20th century, the correlation was very significant:

This data is not terribly shocking, but it's worth saying, because the stakes are so high:

The higher the level of taxation, the lower the growth rate. The explanation for this phenomenon is as logical as it is simple. The higher the tax level, the lower the incentive for people to make a productive contribution to society. The higher the fiscal burden, the more resources flow from the productive sector to the ever more inefficient government apparatus.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration, while lowering tax rates, has been reluctant to confront the need to keep down government. The following chart, from the Brussels Journal, helps to clarify:

This chart neatly reverses the conventional wisdom of much of American politics over the last fifteen years. President Clinton, boxed in by Newt Gingrich's Congress, saw government spending as a percentage of GNP fall sharply. W, seeking to cut into traditional Democratic constituencies, sharply raised government spending as a percentage of GNP. It can't be said that W has had much success with spending money like LBJ.

The hero in the chart above is...Ireland.

Once the #22 ranked economy in the OECD, Ireland surged to #4 after a deliberate policy of slashing taxes and spending. Ireland now has the most dynamic economy in Western Europe.

The lessons of this are pretty clear: the Ownership Society works--if we act on it.

The Realignment of 2004...and the road to 2006/08

2005-11-25T11:22:00.000-05:00

I´m currently on vacation outside of Cancun, Mexico. I was here two years ago in Thanksgiving 2003 when W was headed into the final turn of his forthcoming 2004 campaign. My father asked me how I thought W would do. Democrat that he is, he was certain the GOP was headed for defeat.

My call: W by 52-48%.

In the end it was W 51, Kerry 48. Not too bad for one year out.

This year there is much hope among Democrats that they can retake the Hill.

Don´t bet the ranch on it. One year is a long time, and it´s always possible that the GOP could blow it. But 2004 looks like a realignment election that will set the Democrats in the minority for the next generation: with a moderately competent campaign the GOP suffers no more than customary off-year losses. They shoul hold both the House and the Senate (minus perhaps a dozen seats in House and two in the Senate), and set the stage for another major win in 2008.

The recent uproar in the House over Congressman Murtha simply digs the Democrats deeper into the same pit: they are once again perceived as the party that would rather quit than fight, and after September 11th that is a route to electoral defeat. Right now, the betting is that the GOP will suffer customary off-year setbacks in the Congress, but if 2006 is made a referendum on handing Iraq over to Al Qaeda, the Democrats might go down rather than up in numbers.

And 2008 looks increasingly bleak for the Democrats: Real Clear Politics publishes a poll showing that Hillary looks increasingly unbeatable among the Democrats...while opposition to her outside the Democratic party appears to be hardening: net anti-Hillary sentiment in the South and the Midwest runs 16-18 points, which is to say, she can´t reconstruct her husband´s coalition, and she can´t compete where it counts. The GOP will take the Midwest, the solid (GOP) South, and the White House.

On the GOP side, McCain has serious problems with his own party, but looks unbeatable in a national election. Among independents, pro-McCain sentiments ran 55-29.

Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt has a Thanksgiving day poll for the GOP:
I went for McCain on the first ballot, and Condi on the second.

Happy Thanksgiving...from William Bradford and the Pilgrims

2005-11-24T15:12:00.000-05:00

In the little Baptist church in Cleveland where I once attended, we had a very special Thanksgiving service every year. The congregation would get up, and for an hour or two one by one everyone would give thanks for something special in the year.

One of our members would read from William Bradford´s classic history of the Plymouth Plantation:
Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the fast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. And no marvel if they were thus joyful, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on the coast of his own Italy, as he affirmed, that he had rather remain twenty years on his way by land than pass by sea to any place in a short time, so tedious and dreadful was the same unto him.

But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people's present condition; and so I think will the reader, too, when he well considers the same. Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. It is recorded in Scripture as a mercy to the Apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they met with them (as after will appear) were readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise. And for the season it was winter, and they know that the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men--and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. If it be said they had a ship to succor them, it is true; but what heard they daily from the master and company? But that with speed they should look out a place (with their shallop) where they would be, at some near distance; for the season was such that he would not stir from thence till a safe harbor was discovered by them, where they would be, and he might go without danger; and that victuals consumed space but he must and would keep sufficient for themselves and their return. Yea, it was muttered by some that if they got not a place in time, they would turn them and their goods ashore and leave them. Let it also be considered what weak hopes of supply and succor they left behind them, that might bear up their minds in this sad condition and trials they were under; and they could not but be very small. It is true, indeed, the affections and love of their brethren at Leyden was cordial and entire towards them, but they had little power to help them or themselves; and how the case stood between them and the merchants at their coming away hath already been declared.

What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity," etc. "Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good: and his mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, show how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them." "Let them confess before the Lord His lovingkindness and His wonderful works before the sons of men."

Atta in Prague: the Al Qaeda/Iraq connection

2005-11-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

One of the unresolved puzzles is the claim of Czech intelligence that Mohammed Atta met with Iraq intelligence in early 2001. Although the CIA has never been able to confirm it, the Czechs as I understand it have never backed down from their claim.

NRO has an excellent post on this here:

ATTA IN PRAGUE [Andy McCarthy]
Ed Epstein has stayed on the case and has done the 9/11 Commission one better: he has actually conducted something resembling an investigation into whether the top hijacker met with in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent five months before 9/11. Ed’s report on what he found out, after traveling to the Czech Republic and meeting with the BIS (i.e., Czech Intelligence) officials who were personally involved in the matter is featured in the Wall Street Journal this morning (registration required).

His article will not be good news for the Richard Clarkes of Clinton revision-world, who maintain that the previous administration so intimidated Saddam after the attempted murder of the first President Bush in 1993 that the Iraqi dictator foreswore collaboration with terrorists against the U.S. – a claim that has never made any sense given that top Clinton officials (including the former president himself) continue to defend their Augugst 1998 bombing of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on the ground that it was a joint Iraq/Qaeda/Sudan effort to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The bottom line, as Ed puts it, is that the Atta/Prague connection remains “consigned to a murky limbo” – largely thanks to American officials leaking the possibility while the Czechs were still trying to investigate it.

But this much is known – notwithstanding the energetic effort to suppress it by some former Clinton officials, Democrat partisans, and members of the intelligence community invested in the delusion that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorism. In 1998, Saddam began trying to blow up an American target, Radio Free Europe in Prague, by having Jabir Salim, his consul to the Czech Republic (but in reality, his top intelligence agent there), attempt to recruit terrorists to carry out the mission. This intelligence became known when Salim defected, and Clinton administration was so concerned about it that it took several steps to protect the facility.

Salim was replaced by Ahmad al-Ani, whom the BIS was obviously interested in – interest that only intensified when the BIS learned he was trying to access explosives and make contacts with “foreign Arabs.” It came to a head on or about April 9, 2001, when al-Ani was observed getting into a car with an unknown Arab male who was later identified as Atta – an identification that has never been disproved, despite Herculean efforts to knock it down. The Atta identification did not happen until after 9/11 (when Atta’s photo was splashed across the international press), but the Czechs were so worried about whomever al-Ani had met with back in April that they decided to take no chances: al-Ani was expelled due to suspicion of terrorism – four months before 9/11.

In the end, the FBI cannot account for where Atta was between April 4 and April 11, 2001, or how he spent the $8000 cash he abruptly withdrew on April 4 before he disappeared for a week. (They’ve pointed to use of his cellphone in the U.S. during that timeframe, but that, of course, does not mean Atta was the one using the cellphone.) Nor can the FBI explain why Atta stopped in Prague in June 2000 right before flying to the U.S. to begin the 9/11 preparations. The Czechs, meanwhile, regard as “pure nonsense” al-Ani’s protestations that he was nowhere near Prague the day he was seen meeting the man a witness has identified as Atta.

This is Able Danger all over again. The "Atta in Prague" possibility never fit the 9/11 Commission’s narrative, so it was buried with a shoddy, slap-dash investigation -- the same treatment Able Danger got; the same treatment the Clinton Justice Department's dramatic heightening of "the wall" between criminal investigators and intelligence agents got; the same treatment the internal assessment of the Clinton administration's performance in the run-up to the Millennium bombing plot got, and so on.

Meanwhile, in 1998 alone, we have $300K going from Iraq to Zawahiri (al Qaeda’s number 2); bin Laden’s famous February fatwa calling for the murder of all Americans and prominently featuring, as part of the justification, U.S. actions against Iraq; meetings in Iraq between Qaeda members and Iraqi officials in March; meetings in Afghanistan between Iraqi officials and al Qaeda leaders in July; the embassy bombings in August, after which, of all potential targets, the Clinton administration chose to retaliate against al Shifa, believed to be an Iraq/Qaeda joint weapons venture; an Iraqi member of al Qaeda (now held in Guantanamo Bay) traveling with Iraqi Intelligence to Pakistan to plot chemical mortar attacks on the American and British embassies there; and Iraq seeking to recruit Arab terrorists to blow up Radio Free Europe. Oh, and in February 1999, Richard Clarke objected to a suggestion that U-2 flights be used to try to find bin Laden because, if bin Laden learned the walls were closing in, Clarke wrote to Sandy Berger that “old wiley Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad.”

Back in action...

2005-11-24T14:59:00.000-05:00

This blog has been temporarily out of commission...due to a major scholarly conference I had to attend. But things will be humming soon...

What TPM doesn't understand about the Democrats

2005-11-16T19:11:00.000-05:00

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo runs about the smartest defense of the Democratic Party you'll find. But sometimes you get the idea that the guys over there just don't get it. Take this recent post:

(November 15, 2005 -- 01:41 AM EDT)
E.J.Dionne: "There is a great missing element in the argument over whether the administration manipulated the facts. Neither side wants to talk about the context in which Bush won a blank check from Congress to invade Iraq. He doesn't want us to remember that he injected the war debate into the 2002 midterm election campaign for partisan purposes, and he doesn't want to acknowledge that he used the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised."

[Josh Marshall writes:] This is an extremely good point. As is often the case in fierce debates some of the most relevant angles of discussion are left untouched because they serve neither side's purpose. This is most certainly one of them.

On the contrary: far from "injecting the war debate into the 2002 midterm election campaign for partisan purposes", it would be more accurate to say that W took advantage of the fall campaign to force Democrats to do something they have been reluctant to do for a generation: approve military force in order to defend their country in time of danger.

In placing it in that way, I realize that many Democrats have a different slant. But that is precisely the point I wish to make: In the late 1940s, it was the Republican party that was the party of isolationism, and the Democratic party that was the party of national defense. And it might have stayed that way except for Eisenhower's defeat of Taft and the isolationist wing of the GOP in 1952. Meanwhile, the Democrats came progressively under control the 1948 Henry Wallace/1972 George McGovern wing of Democratic isolationism.

September 11th gave the Democratic party a historic opportunity to reverse course, and reclaim national defense as a core value, to do an about face in a manner similar to what happened with the Republicans in 1952. The Democrats failed miserably. For a few months post 11 September 2001, the Democratic party was ready, willing and eager to defend the country...and then the Democrats rapidly slid back into the blame-America-first isolationism that has ruled the party for the last generation.

The tragedy is that W's decision to have the Congress vote on war in Iraq in the middle of the 2002 election season was based on the very realistic assessment that Democrats would be unlikely to vote for war under any other circumstances. Indeed, Democratic leaders such as Josh Marshall continue to underrate how little Middle America thinks the Democrats can be trusted to defend America.

Here are two pieces of evidence that Josh and the TPM gang should save on their laptops as they think about 2008:

1. There is no speech at the GOP national convention that Democrats hated more than Zell Miller's double-barrelled denunciation of his own party for failing to defend America in time of war. But focus groups showed that this was the MOST popular speech of the convention among UNDECIDED voters. No doubt Josh thinks that Miller's speech constituted outrageous questioning of the Democrats' patriotism--but Middle America thought it was a great speech. Democrats need to face honestly the question of why non-aligned voters don't think their party can be trusted in time of war and why they think Zell Miller-like denuciations are fully justified by the facts.

2. Democrats thought they could earn trust with the voters on national defense by nominating war-hero Kerry. But exit polls showed that when asked whether Kerry could be trusted on terrorism, he won a plurality of voters in only two states: Massachussetts and Maryland. In other words, not only did every red state think Kerry couldn't be trusted on terrorism, the blue states didn't trust Kerry on terrorism either (with the exceptions of MA and MD). What is worse, it is not clear that the Democrats had any candidate in 2004 with better credentials on terrorism that Kerry. The Democrats nominated for president a man that they themselves had little confidence in on national security--they can scarcely be surprised that he led their party to defeat.

Unfortunately, there is at present no evidence that the Democratic party leadership has any intentions of dealing meaningfully with national defense. After the 2004 debacle, they then put Howard Dean at the head of their party. And they seem convinced that going even farther to the left on national security issues is the way to win in 2006 and 2008.

Politics is a strange business, and the political future is never fully predictable. But the betting here is that continued efforts to attack W from the left will lead to the same result in 2006 that it produced in 2004: defeat at the polls.

Rush's RINOs

2005-11-15T21:07:00.000-05:00

Rush is charging RINOs

High on Rush's list are John McCain and George Voinovich. The former needs no introduction, the latter is my senator from Ohio.

McCain as a RINO? Well, for 2004, the National Journal rates his conservativism as 48 on economic issues, 49 defense/foreign policy, and 55 social issues. That might make him a moderate, but not a RINO: his American Conservative Union rating for 2004 was 72; not up to Barry Goldwater, but not bad. His ACLU rating from 2000-2002 was 0. McCain's NARAL rating in 2003/4 was 0; his National Right to Life rating was 82. His John Birch Society rating for fall 2004 was 90; his Christian Coalition rating for 2004 was 83; his Concerned Women of America rating for 2004 was 100. The pro-defense American Security Council rated him for 2003-2004 at 100.

This isn't an accident: McCain has taken the lead defending W on the War on Terror; he's led the efforts to cut spending post-Katrina; and notwithstanding the Gang of 14, he's been outspoken on the issue of pro-life judges. With 99 senators like him, the Senate would be united on the War on Terror, the budget would be balanced, and the federal judiciary would be stocked with judges loyal to the Constitution.

Voinovich as a RINO? For 2004, his National Journal conservativism ratings are 61 economic, 57 defense/foreign policy, 53 social issues. His American Conservative Union rating was 76--which sure isn't Ronald Reagan, but he's no RINO either. More: Voinovich has a 100% National Right to Life rating; an 80% rating from the John Birch Society; and a 100% rating from the Christian Coalition.

Exactly how did a guy with a 100% Christian Coalition rating get confused with a RINO?

Okay: John Bolton. An issue I think he was mistaken on. But that doesn't make him a RINO. If you doubt it, check out yesterday's vote on withdrawing from Iraq, where Voinovich came down squarely on W's side. That shouldn't surprise anybody since his American Security Council rating for 2003-2004 was 100.

Hunting RINOs is legitimate big-game sport...But McCain and Voinovich shouldn't be in the cross-hairs.

W's home run: Alito rejected Roe in 1985

2005-11-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

It is a long-standing baseball legend that Babe Ruth in one game once pointed to centerfield, and then knocked the ball over the wall.

Two weeks ago I wrote that Alito authored a law review article in 1986/87 that indicated that he probably did not believe that the right to privacy included a right to an abortion.

I looked carefully at the judicial philosophy contained in this article, and Alito's approach to jurisprudence; on 2 November 2005 I concluded on the basis of this article:

it is clear that Alito: 1) sees Constitutional jurisprudence as ruled by original intent; 2) is willing advocate the overruling of precedents going back a century; 3)thinks decisions that lead to unworkable results need to be overruled; 4) thinks that when the Court begins writing law, rather than interpreting it, the results are quite likely to be unworkable: for the Court does not have the skills to write laws well.

All this suggests that Mr Justice Samuel Alito is not likely to look on Roe with sympathy. But we won't know for sure until he is seated on the Court.

Well, that's the careful, measured language of an academic, not the bravado of a baseball player--but you get the idea. The logic of Alito's analysis of 5th Amendment privacy cases, expressed in 1986/87, made it unlikely that he supported any right to privacy that included abortion.

Now in a key breakthrough the Washington Times has located Alito's 1985 job application to the Reagan Administration--and has effectively vindicated my 2 November 2005 post. Alito's job application was written around the same time that Alito was writing the law review article. And Alito clearly repudiates Roe v. Wade--exactly in keeping with what one should have inferred from his 1986/87 article:

"It has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan's administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly," he wrote.
"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

It is, of course, possible that Alito has changed his views in the succeeding twenty years. But there is at present no special reason to think that. Millions of pro-life voters supported President Bush in 2004 hoping for a Supreme Court nominee opposed to Roe v. Wade.

W has hit a home run.

But I like to think I called it....:)
*************************************************************************
The link to the document is here.
See page 15. (Hat tip: ConfirmThem).
****************************************************************************
Special note: Alito at Reagan DOJ did not merely oppose Roe; he argued that it should be REVERSED. He played a key role in writing the legal briefs arguing for reversing Roe, and it appears to be THIS work that he is proud of. (HT: DHS at ConfirmThem)

here’s more on Alito’s days at the SG office:

The clues come from Charlies Fried. In 2002, Ted Olson hosted a symposium in memory of Rex E. Lee, a Solicitor General under Reagan. During the symposium, Fried, Alito’s boss, offered up the following:

Walter Dellinger: And Charles, you did not know President Reagan?

Charles Fried: I did not know the president. My situation was special and rather like Seth [Waxman]’s in a way. I had been the principal deputy in the office and the office was vacant from, I think it was March or so, until I was named. So, I was acting in the office and doing all these things and they had a chance to get a really good look at me. There was the abortion brief and also the brief in the Wygant case. I had a big hand in writing it, and so did Sam Alito, who had this marvelous phrase saying that a particular African American baseball player would not have served as a great role model if the fences had been pulled in every time he was up at bat, a point which some people were greatly offended by because they thought it to be pamphleteering. I thought it was entirely appropriate. If it had been made in the other direction, it would have been applauded rather than deplored by the New York Times. But I was able to bring those briefs to the senators upon my courtesy calls and say, “Now, this is what you will get. Take it or leave it.” So, I had been in the job. That is unusual.

2003. “Transcript: In Memory of Rex E. Lee (1937-1996) Rex E. Lee Conference on the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States.” Brigham Young University Law Review. [2003 B.Y.U.L. Rev. 1]

Fried’s statement is unclear on Alito’s involvement with “the abortion brief,” filed in Thornburgh v. Am. Coll. of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986) according the the BYU footnotes. Senators will need access to documents from the era to clarify the ambiguity.

The brief strongly urged the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade:

"Indeed, the textual, doctrinal and historical basis for Roe v. Wade is so far flawed, and, as these cases illustrate, is a source of such instability in the law that this Court should reconsider that decision and on reconsideration abandon it". [Quotation marks in last paragraph supplied by GrenfellHunt].

Although the evidence is not absolutely definitive, it looks as though Alito helped write the brief arguing for the reversal of Roe, and it is THIS work that Alito is proud of...and not merely as a technical piece of legal excellence; Alito appears to be stating that it reflects strongly his own personal beliefs.
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AND FURTHER: Left out of the Washington Times article is this key sentence:
"It is obviously very difficult to summarize a set of political views in a sentence but, in capsule form, I believe very strongly in limited government, federalism, free enterprise, the supremacy of the elected branches of government, the need for a strong defense and effective law enforcement, AND THE LEGITIMACY OF A GOVERNMENT ROLE PROTECTING TRADITIONAL VALUES." (Capitalization mine). Goodbye, Lawrence v Texas, and the right to gay marriage.
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UPDATE:Many thanks to Fred Barbash for the kind words and the link!

Veteran's Day: two poems by Carl Sandburg

2005-11-11T15:32:00.001-05:00

In memory of Dan H Davies, World War I veteran; and Mary Wagner Griffin, American Army nurse at Verdun.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Grass

PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.

Threes

I was a boy when I heard three red words
a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets
for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--I asked
why men die for words.

I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,
lilacs, told me the high golden words are:
Mother, Home, and Heaven--other older men with
face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality
--they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.

Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks
of doom and damnation, soup, and nuts: meteors flashed
their say-so: and out of great Russia came three
dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
for: Bread, Peace, Land.

And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck with a girl on his knee
for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say
three things and I always get by--gimme a plate of ham and eggs--how
much--and--do you love me, kid?

POLL & FORUM: The Truth about the War

2005-11-09T13:29:00.000-05:00

Norman Podhoretz has just published a classic on the recent debate on the war in Iraq.

It is clear, calm, and unequivocal: President Bush told the truth about WMDs in Iraq.

If you are a supporter of the War, it is must reading. If you are opposed to the War, then Podhoretz's defense of the Administration calls for a careful answer.

I'm hoping to discuss the Podhoretz article with both supporters and critics in the comments section.
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UPDATE: This poll has caused serious problems with Blogger and has been deleted.

A third century church in Israel?

2005-11-07T15:42:00.000-05:00

One of the adventures of biblical studies is the periodic announcement of ASTONISHING NEW EVIDENCE OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY!! which regularly hits the headlines. Some of these announcements turn out to be real. Others turn out to be...overstated.

I was in Toronto in November of 2002 at a major convention of biblical scholars when the news focussed on an ossuary said to be linked to Jesus' brother (well, strictly speaking, relative) James. Three years later, the authenticity of the inscription on the ossuary is seriously in doubt. And periodically over the last few years, claims have been made for re-dating New Testament papyri to the first century. So far, none of these claims has proved true.

Now we hear that a church from the third century AD has been discovered in Palestine. Is it true? Catholicism was not a legal religion in the Roman Empire until the edict of Milan in AD 313. The possibility of a real church building from before that time is quite small. We know of a house-church from Dura Europus in modern-day Iraq dated to c.AD 232. A papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt attests a church in the south of the city in AD 304 (POxy 2673). But both of these seem exceptional in light of the legal status of Christianity.

Serious questions are already being asked:

But Mr. Zias said it struck him as strange that a Roman military officer would take credit at a time when the Roman authorities prohibited practicing Christianity. "If I were a Roman soldier in the third century, I certainly wouldn't want my name on it," he said. "This would not have been a good career move. In fact, it sounds like the kiss of death."

If the Megiddo site does date to the third century, "then I would ask why it was not reported or discussed by early church historians," said Yiska Harani, a historian with expertise on Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. "How did they overlook a successful place of early worship?"

This evidence is not definitive either way, and there is not much an outsider can do at this point except wait for the publication of the evidence. But caution is advisable in this case...as in many others.

The end of the anti-Catholic bias? Alito and the five-Catholic Supreme Court

2005-11-04T16:47:00.000-05:00

It has not gone unnoticed, but it has gone largely unremarked, that Judge Alito will make five justices out of nine on the Supreme Court who identify themselves as Roman Catholics: Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. In a country about 25% Catholic, we now see a majority of Catholics on America's highest court.

Even more remarkable is this: All of them were appointed by Protestant presidents. All of them were confirmed by an overwhelmingly Protestant Senate. None seems to have been an affirmative action choice; in none does a deliberate strategy of appealing to the Catholic vote appear to have been a central reason for the appointment. In each case it simply appears that the president in question thought the candidate was the best man for the job.

The sea change has been quiet but dramatic: in nineteenth century America, Rome as the whore of Babylon was thought to be a threat to democracy itself. Rome's hierarchical church was imagined to be incompatible with egalitarian democracy. In 1928, the nomination of Catholic Al Smith as the Democratic party's presidential candidate resulted in a massive anti-Catholic backlash that Herbert Hoover rode to the White House. As late as 1960, the campaign of John Kennedy raised widespread fears that the pope was trying to take over America. Harry Truman, with a shrewd insight into the power of the pursestrings pulled by Kennedy's dad, quipped: "It's not the pope I'm concerned about, it's the pop!"

The hysteria that five Catholics on the Supreme Court would have evoked only a generation ago, and the contrast with the present day, is something to behold. The Senate is about to put a fifth Catholic on the Court, and nobody much seems to care. Is this the end of the anti-Catholic bias? Can we now write finished to one of the longest and most deeply held prejudices in American history?

For the most part, yes. Oh, anti-Catholicism can still be found here or there. If you dig deeply enough into the American trash can, you can still find the few cockroaches of anti-Catholicism crawling around on the bottom. But for the most part, this is a bias that is dead and buried--more so, I think, than some in the older generation of American Catholics may realize.

It's worth noting too that this is not merely a transformation in the attitudes of non-Catholics. It reflects as well the enthusiasm for the American experiment in democracy that was a long part of the American Catholic experience, but received a special boost at Vatican II. John Paul II made it a part of his special mission to put the Catholic Church squarely behind democratic reformers: the result was a wave of Catholic energy for democratization that brought to power democracies in Poland, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Latin America, and throughout the Catholic world.

Today many people think that Islam and democracy are fundamentally incompatible. The dramatic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq are evidence that there is nothing in Islam that stands in the way of an authentic commitment to democracy. The day may well come when the Islamic commitment to democracy is taken for granted, as much as the Catholic commitment to democracy is now.

And perhaps the day will come when there are five Muslims on the US Supreme Court, appointed by non-Muslim presidents and confirmed by a non-Muslim Senate...and the fact that there are five Muslims on the Supreme Court will raise hardly an eyebrow, since nobody will much care.

Roe, the Constitution and the American people

2005-11-03T13:07:00.000-05:00

"Yet overturning Roe v. Wade should be the sine qua non of a respectable jurisprudence." So writes Robert Bork in a superb article.

But don't the American people affirm Roe v. Wade overwhelmingly?

DailyKos, citing a Gallup poll, says the American people would reject a nominee to the Supreme Court who wants to reverse Roe by 53%-37%.

Which is half-right. The problem is that the American people don't know what's in Roe, and think reversing Roe means banning abortion at all times and under all circumstances. A huge catalog of polls on abortion is now available over at AEI.

In an April 2005 CBS News/NYTimes poll, Americans were asked if abortion should be generally available as it is now, available under stricter limits than it is now, or not available at all:

As now: 36
Stricter: 38
Not permitted: 24

Roe's status quo only gets about 36% approval. Stricter limits would require, whether the American people know this or not, either modifying or reversing Roe. That position has the support of about 2/3 of the American people.

Here's another poll, much more specific, that helps clarify this point:

In January 1998 a CBS News/NYTimes poll asked Americans if abortion should be legal as it is now; under stricter limits; illegal except for rape or incest or when the mother's life is in danger; or illegal under all circumstances:

As now: 25
Stricter: 25
Rape/incest/life: 41
Not permitted: 9

Here, the pro-Roe position gets only 25%; a hard ban on abortion gets about 50%.

These figures are somewhat higher on the pro-life side than other polls that have asked the same question. In August 1996 the answers were:

As now: 36
Stricter: 20
Rape/incest/life: 34
Not permitted: 9

Here, the pro-Roe position only gets 36%; 43% want some kind of strong ban on abortion with another 20% wanting stricter regulation than currently--about in keeping with the April 2005 survey.

A March 2001 LATimes poll asked which was closest to the respondent's position: legal under all circumstances; legal except in cases of rape or incest or where the mother's life is in danger; illegal in all circumstances. The answers were:

Legal all: 42
Legal except rape/incest/life: 41
Illegal all: 12

Again, that puts a majority of the American people (53%) in favor of restrictions that would require reversing Roe.

We can put this in very specific terms: Judge Alito is now taking furious criticism for allowing a Pennsylvania law to stand that requires a woman to certify that she has notified her husband of her decision to have an abortion. That law was later struck down by the Supreme Court as contrary to Roe. What do the American people think?

Spousal notification--approve/disapprove:
1992 Gallup/CNN/USA Today: 73 yes/25 no
1996 Gallup/CNN/USA Today: 70 yes/26 no
2003 Gallup/CNN/USA Today: 72 yes/26 no

Since the 1992 Casey decision which struck down spousal notification, the position held by about 70% of the American people would either require reversing Roe or substantially modifying it.

So, yes: most Americans say they support Roe. Until they realize what it really stands for...

Where Antonin Scalia gets his wisdom...

2005-11-03T03:00:00.000-05:00

The Dawn Patrol sets Mr Justice Scalia straight...

Scalito and the Founding Fathers: why he supports original intent and why this threatens Roe

2005-11-02T18:15:00.000-05:00

[New poll at bottom!]
There's no question but the party of the elephants is feeling very good right now about the future Mr Justice Alito.

After the searing weeks of the Miers affair, the party is all but fully re-united and proud once again of their president. Whatever one might think of their judicial philosophies, there's no question but that John Roberts and Samuel Alito are two consummately well-qualified jurists. After a bit of controversy, W has done good work, and there is no doubt that Roberts and Alito will represent the highest judicial standards on the Supreme Court.

This doesn't mean that we have as clear a picture as we might like of what Samuel Alito's judicial philosophy is. As the model of the type of judicial philosophy he was looking for, W set forth Thomas and Scalia--two jurists of the original intent school, both of whom have called for the reversal of Roe v Wade as contrary to the original intent of the Constitution.

Whether Alito actually falls into this school is now a matter of some debate. No one doubts that he is conservative. But whether he is an originalist, and whether he is likely to see Roe as requiring reversal is a question that has no consensus. Senator Specter seems confident that Alito will perpetuate Roe. Rumors from the White House suggest that key people in the administration have the same view.

There is a key clue in an article written by Alito in the 1980s: "Documents and the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination"; University of Pittsburgh Law Review 48 (1986-87): pages 27-81. Now that is about as BORING a title as one could ask, and the literary style of the piece might well suggest a threat to the sleeping pill market. The CONTENT, however, is quite interesting.

The article looks at the 1886 Boyd case where the Supreme Court ruled that if you subpoena a man's written documents, you violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. We are used to witnesses before Senate committees "pleading the Fifth" to avoid self-incrimination. But the Boyd case went one step farther: Boyd said the Fifth Amendment also applied to a man's written documents. Among other things, this could make prosecutions of corporate crime very difficult if it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment to subpoena a corporation's internal records. Now before you reach for the No-Doze, let me suggest that what Alito has to say about this case tells us a lot about how he thinks about the Constitution and what he'd do with Roe.

Alito makes it reasonably clear what his Constitutional philosophy is: he says that "the Constitution provides no clear standard for regulating document subpoenas and that this problem could have been satisfactorily solved through the democratic process had the Supreme Court not insisted on finding a constitutional answer." [page 31] Read in context, Alito makes it clear that 1) the standard of interpretation is the original intent of the Constitution; 2) where the Constitution is unclear or silent, the Court should leave issues to the legislative branch; 3) failure to leave these questions to the democratic process makes matters worse, not better.

Alito goes on: "By sweeping so broadly [in the Boyd case], the Court made its work much more difficult than was necessary. It could have struck down the 1874 provision on the narrower ground that the fifth amendment was intended to preserve the common law privilege against self-incrimination and that the privilege, as interpreted at the time of the Bill of Rights, encompassed the compulsory production of papers." [page 35]. Here Alito applies two rules of interpretation as a basis for criticizing the Court's work: 1. he appeals to the original intent of the 5th amendment as refuting the Court's conclusions; 2. he identifies the Court's sins as rooted in a "broad sweeping" interpretation where a "narrow" interpretation would be more appropriate.

Alito goes on to reject the Court's decision to extract from the 5th amendment a right to privacy broad enough to encompass written documents. Alito's conclusion here is very interesting because the right to privacy, and hence a right to an abortion was exactly what was discovered much later in Roe: Roe was a broad sweeping interpretation of the 5th amendment (among other areas). And it is exactly Roe's kind of broad sweeping privacy right that Alito denies in his article. Although Alito never expressly addresses Roe, the basic constitutional logic of his critique of the Boyd case strongly suggests that Alito thinks Roe is wrong.

Alito develops his critique of Boyd in a thorough, meticulous analysis of the Constitution with original intent as the linch-pin: the Court's work in Boyd is condemned because under Boyd the meaning of the 4th amendment and 5th amendment overlap, whereas the original meaning of the Constitution separates the two amendments sharply.

So Alito hews strictly to original intent as the touchstone of Constitutional interpretation. But he does not run immediately to the conclusion that Boyd should have been directly reversed: "Right or wrong, Boyd was not easy or convenient to overrule because it was woven into the fabric of so much subsequent case law." [p.39] We see here a commitment to original intent, coupled with a concern for the principal of stare decisis. Boyd was not to be reversed merely because it was mistaken.

Boyd was, however, unworkable. Alito launches into a long discussion as to how a decision that dispatched with the original meaning of the Constitution led the court into series of Constitutional quagmires. We need not here review these problems. The key point is that Alito shows that in this case going beyond the original intent of the Constitution did not succeed in solving the problems: it merely lead to an incoherent and unworkable body of law. He then concludes: "The problems... inevitably raise the question whether the application of the fifth amendment privilege to subpoenas for documents is necessarily as difficult as the Supreme Court's decisions have made it seem. The answer is that it is not, provided that one is willing to entertain the possibility that the fifth amendment privilege simply does not address the problem of subpoenas for existing documents, and that this problem is one that must be resolved on nonconstitutional grounds." [page 78]

Alito here insists that where the Fifth Amendment is silent, the Court ought not to have tried to extend its principles to solve broader problems. Rather, the Court ought to have left the question of the right to privacy of written documents to be solved by the legislatures and the democratic process. Alito writes: "The individuals who framed, adopted, and ratified the fifth amendment left no clear evidence that they ever considered the application of the privilege to subpoenas for documents." [page 78]. Hence the Court ought not to have violated the original intent of the Constitution; it ought to have left the problem alone.

But would this not have left the right to privacy unprotected? Is it not the role of the Court to read the right to privacy as broadly as possible? Alito rejects the notion that the Supreme Court serves as the principal guardian of the right to privacy: "The law of evidence recognizes many sensitive and important nonconstitutional privileges--such as the attorney-client privilege, the physician patient privilege, spousal privileges, and the privileges, and the privilege for communications to a clergyman. Although lacking constitutional status, these privileges have nevertheless developed, endured, and flourished. Federal and state lawmakers have not generally evinced hostility toward these other nonconstitutional privileges but in fact in recent years have recognized a host of new privileges." [page 80]. In other words, it is not necessary for the Supreme Court to intervene to protect rights not written into the Constitution--Federal and state lawmakers are both competent and capable of acting to protect these rights.

More to the point, legislatures are better at these issues than the Court is: "This is a problem of weighing important, but nevertheless extra-constitutional, values. It is a problem of balancing, of picking and choosing, of drawing fine lines. Legislative and rulemaking bodies are well-equipped for this task; courts are not." [page 81]. One cannot read this passage without thinking about how this principle would apply to the right to privacy as considered with respect to abortion. In Roe, the Supreme Court tried precisely to "balance" the woman's right to privacy in abortion against the potential life of the fetus. Yet neither the right to an abortion nor the right to life of the fetus is expressly written in the Constitution. In Boyd, Alito concluded that the balancing of unwritten rights is best left to legislatures who are much more capable. It is difficult to avoid the question of the logic of his analysis of the Boyd case: it seems to suggest that the right to privacy of abortion, like the right to privacy of written documents under the Fifth Amendment, raises questions of balancing best left to legislatures who are more competent at it. When Alito refers to the "drawing of fine lines", it is hard not to think of Roe's fine lines: the lines drawn in Roe's trimester scheme, or the lines drawn in Roe's viability test.

Here is Alito's last paragraph: "For ninety-nine years, the Supreme Court has struggled with the problem of applying the fifth amendment privilege to subpoenas for documents, and the most difficult cases may still lie ahead. Yet the problem of regulating subpoenas for documents is not inherently intractable. It is not, however, amenable to easy solution using the Self-Incrimination of Clause of the fifth amendment. The Supreme Court's past and future difficulties are the wages of insisting that the Constitution answer a question that should be entrusted to the mundane processes of democratic government." [page 81].

If Alito votes to reverse Roe, we can expect he will write a paragraph much like this. In the case of Boyd, we have a century of intractable privacy law with respect to written documents; in the case of Roe, we have some thirty years of intractable privacy law with respect to abortion. In both cases, Alito may well recommend the same result: get the Supreme Court out of the business of writing laws, and return this function to the processes of democratic government.

The above conclusions, of course, can only be tentative. Alito never expressly draws the parallel between the privacy laws of Boyd and the privacy rules of Roe. Perhaps Alito sees other issues in the privacy questions of abortion that would lead to the abandonment of the parallels drawn above.

It's possible. But it is clear that Alito: 1) sees Constitutional jurisprudence as ruled by original intent; 2) is willing advocate the overruling of precedents going back a century; 3)thinks decisions that lead to unworkable results need to be overruled; 4) thinks that when the Court begins writing law, rather than interpreting it, the results are quite likely to be unworkable: for the Court does not have the skills to write laws well.

All this suggests that Mr Justice Samuel Alito is not likely to look on Roe with sympathy. But we won't know for sure until he is seated on the Court.
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UPDATE: Welcome to ConfirmThem and Polipundit readers!
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UPDATE 2 from 14 Nov 2005: This post can now claim to be vindicated. See the discussion of the new evidence above.
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Poll:

"It's Scalito...get me another drink"

2005-10-31T15:41:00.000-05:00

Drudge's photographers snap liberal NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd as she hears the news about Scalito.

They're looking for a caption.

My favorite: if you want to keep the beer cold, put it next to my heart.

We trust Miss Dowd has a sense of humor about these things, and if she moved next to us on a barstool, we'd be happy to buy her a drink.

We just won't buy her columns at the NY Times--at least not as long as they're selling for 50 bucks a year.

Poor Miss Dowd: she's sitting at a barstool, looking for a successful Catholic man in his fifties with an interest in politics....but Samuel Alito's already taken. :)

But Miss Dowd? We're sure you can solve your problems at www.catholicmatch.com. :)

W's Trick or Treat: Libby goes down, W's polls go up

2005-10-31T15:22:00.000-05:00

For somebody, this is going to be a really bad Halloween.

W was supposed to be on the ropes. The NY Times was declaring last week to be the worst week of his presidency. The press expected W to be battered by the indictment of Karl Rove. Scooter Libby got hit instead, and the natural conclusion would be that W's popularity would take a hit as well.

But, but....

Rasmussen has the stats:
Fri 28 October: 40%
Sat 29 October: 42
Sun 30 October: 43
Mon 31 October: 45

W's approval rating goes up 5 points instead. Perhaps the public took the indictment of Libby as indication that Rove and the others were probably in the clear. In any case, having made what looks like a politically very successful appointment in Judge Alito, W starts off the new week on the comeback trail...

Alito to the Supreme Court

2005-10-31T06:35:00.000-05:00

News reports confirm what White House sources had indicated since Friday: Samuel Alito will be President Bush's next nominee to the Supreme Court.

Determined to avoid being ambushed again by negative reactions, the White House carefully orchestrated a series of trial balloons to make sure that Alito was acceptable to the GOP base.

On Friday, White House sources let bloggers at ConfirmThem know that Alito along with Michael Luttig was the leading choice for the next nominee for the Supreme Court. The ConfirmThem website had been ground zero for the uprising against previous court pick Harriet Miers, but over the weekend the reaction to Samuel Alito was strongly positive among the GOP's activist base.

Although some were concerned about Alito's lack of express commitment to a Scalia-style philosophy of original intent, most were won over by his excellent credentials and strong conservative track record.

An intense debate took place over whether Alito would be likely to overturn Roe v Wade. Although Alito has never openly criticized Roe, he wrote a key dissent in the 1992 Casey decision on abortion. In his dissent, he indicated support for a rational basis test for abortion rulings as opposed to the undue burden test ultimately adopted by the Supreme Court; the rational basis test would make it much easier for the states to regulate abortion, and would seriously undermine Roe v Wade without actually reversing it.

Samuel Alito is 55. Senator Arlen Specter is said to support him and be a key ally. Alito has a BA from Princeton, a JD from Yale, worked for the Reagan Justice Department, and is on the short list of Robert Bork.

Late last night, Senator Harry Reid raised the possibility of a filibuster if Alito were chosen.

Aristotle and the plague of promiscuity

2005-10-31T03:01:00.000-05:00

IrishLaw--a great new blog discovery--has an excellent post on a recent medical journal article.

The key figures are that sexually transmitted diseases caused about 30,000 deaths in 1998. Cases of infertility caused by STDs ran 600,000 per year. And the current estimate is that half of young people will contract an STD by the age of 25.

Number of deaths in 2004--and the cause
1.3 million--US abortion deaths in 2004 (est)
700,000--US heart disease deaths
560,000--US cancer deaths
107,000--US deaths in accidents
30,000--US suicides
30,000--US deaths from STDs (including AIDS/1998)
27-30,000--Iraqi civilian deaths (estimated since 2003)
20,000-US homicides
14,000--US AIDS/HIV deaths
2,016--US military deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war
59--death penalty executions in the US 2004

So sexually transmitted diseases killed 10 times more Americans in a single year than have died in Iraq.

It's not unreasonable to think that Roe v Wade has played a key role in changing American sexual habits. If abortion is always available as a fallback, couples need be less careful about their behaviour. The statistics indicate the history:

Previous abortion: 1975: 18% yes. 2000: 45% yes.
Illegitimacy rate: 1975: 24.5%. 2000: 44%

Abortion is fundamentally a means of birth control for the irresponsible: 45% of those who had abortions in the year 200 had previously had one or more abortions. Abortion has encouraged the irresponsibility that leads to out of wedlock births: since abortion was legalized in 1973, illegitimacy instead of dropping has sky rocketed.

Altogether, these statistics give us the basic bad news. Abortion is the leading cause of death in America--the key target in building a pro-life civilization, the deaths from this cause dwarfing suicide, homicide, AIDS, the war in Iraq or the death penalty.

Something to think about as we contemplate the next justice for the Supreme Court...

W to announce new Supreme Court justice Monday morning

2005-10-31T03:00:00.000-05:00

CNN (11.16pm EST) confirms that the president will announce his pick tomorrow.

Presumably, this is Alito or Luttig.

CNN adds an interesting poll figure:

“Sixteen percent said it is essential that the nominee would vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, and another 16 percent said it is a good idea.

But 42 percent said a nominee who opposes Roe v. Wade would be a bad idea.”

16+16=32% want W to name someone who will reverse Roe. Since W carried 51%, this means about 60% of those who voted for W want a nominee to reverse Roe.

16% think it’s “essential”. What percentage of GOP primary voters think this is essential? Must be a lot…

Last Two Standing: Sunday White House Trial Balloon: Alito or Luttig

2005-10-30T02:01:00.000-05:00

The White House is clearly concerned about yet another Harriet Miers-style knifing. The information coming out of the classic unnamed "White House sources" has been reasonably consistent, although the variants have shifted somewhat from day to day. The key thing is that the White House wants to make sure that the next nominee does not get ambushed on the same day is announced. So the leaks are deliberate, calculated, orchestrated.

And it means the White House is watching the public reactions.

As we head into Sunday, the White House has narrowed its search to either Samuel Alito or J. Michael Luttig. This is according to Jan Greenburg of the Chicago Tribune, one of the very few reporters who identified Harriet Miers as part of the shortlist that led to her selection. The question now is what the public reaction will be.

ConfirmThem--whose bloggers led the attack on Miers--has been debating both judges extensively since White House staffers began spreading the word Friday morning that it would probably be either Luttig or Alito.

Key summaries from the current debates:

A few bloggers are hostile and suspicious of both. Neither has ever formally endorsed originalism. Neither is on-record for advocating roll-backs of existing precedents. Neither has given any clear or obvious critique of landmark outrages against an originalist understanding of the Constitution, such as Roe v Wade or Lawrence v Texas. The majority of bloggers would seem to prefer the president's short list to be headed by either Janice Roberts Brown or Edith Jones.

Nonetheless, the majority seem quite favorably disposed toward both. It is not completely clear which of the two is the favorite. Bloggers like the fact that Luttig is better known in conservative circles; is prominent in the Federalist Society; and is said to have the support of John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia--all of whom are close to him personally. Some worry that Luttig is too wedded to the principle of stare decisis.

But Alito has some vigorous advocates: "[Alito] will be more likely to overturn existing precedent or change the *basis* of the central holding of the case so as to nullify its effects...His intellect exceeds that of Luttig, most observers will conclude on close inspection. He makes less noise, but the superiority is undoubted."

So our Sunday White House Trial Balloon Poll:

Saturday White House Trial Balloon: Alito, Jones or Luttig?

2005-10-29T15:13:00.000-04:00

Here is the latest from the source code-named Populist:

As of today my sources are saying that there are four names that have received serious attention since the Miers departure on Thursday. Alito, Luttig, Priscilla Owen, and Edith Jones. For whatever reason, my sources feel that Karen Williams is no longer under serious consideration.

I’m also hearing that the conventional wisdom that the nominee will most likely be a man is not accurate. I’ve been told that the White House is still concerned about replacing O’Connor with a woman if a confirmable woman is available that can withstand the tremendous pressure the hearings will cause. Of the many available women, as of today my sources feel Jones and Owen were the finalists among that pool to go along with Alito and Luttig. But my sources also feel that if Bush goes with a woman Edith Jones is much more likely to get the nomination than Owen.

So based on what my sources are suggesting, the list looks like Alito, Edith Jones, or Mike Luttig as serious contenders as of today. Apparently Luttig is getting many endorsements from establishment conservatives, as if Edith Jones. My sources feel that the final pick will come down to how Bush interacts with each candidate, but they feel Alito probably has a small advantage because of his more “personable” demeanor.

So with this, we now post our Saturday trial balloon poll:

The White House trial balloon: Alito, Luttig or Cox?

2005-10-29T00:00:00.000-04:00

White House sources have been sending the names of Judges Samuel Alito and Michael Luttig to ConfirmThem as the president's shortlist for the Supreme Court. Intense discussion continues over Chris Cox, now head of SEC.

What's going on is very clear. The White House is sending up a clear trial balloon, endeavoring to avoid the mishap of the previous nomination. The White House does not want to get blind-sided twice in a row (Roe?).

So I've posted a poll to see whom bloggers would tell the White House to pick. Although the trial balloon from the White House seems to focus on Alito/Luttig, it seemed good to see how many bloggers preferred Cox to either of them. I've given brief descriptions; much fuller data can be found at ConfirmThem.

1. Samuel Alito is 55. He is best known for his dissent in Casey--nonetheless, White House sources deem him unlikely to reverse Roe. Some bloggers think Casey proves otherwise. Senator Arlen Specter is said to support him and be a key ally. Alito has a BA from Princeton, a JD from Yale, worked for the Reagan Justice Department, and is on the short list of Robert Bork.

2. J. Michael Luttig is 51. He has a BA from Washington and Lee, a JD from University of Virginia. He clerked for Scalia duing Scalia's time on the Court of Appeals, then clerked for Warren Burger, and finally worked for the Bush 41 Justice Department. He is said to be personally close to both Scalia and Thomas; he is also on Robert Bork's short list.

3. Chris Cox is 53. He holds a BA from USC, and a JD and an MBA from Harvard. He served for two years as associate counsel to President Reagan involved with selecting federal court judges. Then he served 17 years as a US Congreessman and compiled a 100% pro-life voting record. He has been vigorously promoted for the Supreme Court at the National Review. He is currently head of the SEC.

The Next Nominee...

2005-10-28T08:49:00.000-04:00

May have already been chosen. Various rumors suggest we get an announcement today. But it's important to be clear about the principles involved in this choice.

1. The nominee should have impeccable conservative/originalist credentials. There should be no doubt about the nominee’s conservativism. This means NO as in NO stealth candidates: eg, Maureen Mahoney or Callahan. (The Corner notes reports that are currently circulating that Mahoney is pro-Roe.)

2. The nominee should be on record as a critic of several of the cases listed below—with opposition to Roe as the sine qua non of an acceptable nominee:
2.1. Roe v Wade (abortion).
2. 2. Lawrence v Texas (gay marriage).
2.3. ACLU v Reno (internet pornography).
2.4. Santa Fe v. Doe (school prayer).
2.5. McCreary County v ACLU (ten commandments).

3. Good nominees would include: Emilio Garza, Michael McConnell, Edith Jones, Chris Cox, and William Pryor.

MEANWHILE: the rumor mill...
"Sources say that Judge Priscilla Owen of the 5th circuit, Judge Michael McConnell of the , J. Harvie Wilkinson of the 4th circuit, Judge Edith Jones of the 5th circuit and Judge Edith Clement of the 5th circuit and Judge Karen Williams of the 4th circuit had interviews with Bush.”

Bush won’t pick anybody he hasn’t interviewed. And if he interviewed them, it means they’ve also been vetted.

What should the president do with these candidates?

Edith Jones: Yes—see the links at ConfirmThem.
McConnell: Cautious yes—He’s academia’s leading critic of Roe v. Wade, and strong on Religion in the First Amendment. He’s no liberal: any conservative who can resist the pressure of academia will likely resist the pressure of SCOTUS; cf. Scalia.
Williams: NO—with her Democratic husband she’s an excellent bet to come to DC and lose both her principles and her accent.
Owen: NO—reported here at ConfirmThem to be pro-Roe; her sympathy for parental notification does not change this. And she’s vulnerable to the Bush crony charge.
Edith Clement Brown: NO—see her answer to Senator Kennedy below.
Wilkinson: NO: he was Powell’s clerk on SCOTUS when Powell voted for Roe, and he regards Powell as his hero. NO WAY.

Edith Brown Clement: answer to Senator Kennedy’s question of 2001:
Question 2C: Do you believe the constitutional right to privacyencompasses a woman’s right to have an abortion?
Answer: The Supreme Court has clearly held that the right toprivacy guaranteed by the Constitution includes the right to have anabortion. The cases handed down by the Supreme Court on the right toabortion have reaffirmed and redefined this right, and the law issettled in that regard. If confirmed, I will faithfully apply SupremeCourt precedent.

GRENFELLHUNT: That’s not good enough.

"It was a good fight, ma, but he won!": the GOP after Miers

2005-10-27T10:27:00.001-04:00

Many of us have vivid recollections of 1976...

Ronald Reagan fought sitting president Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination, and came within an ace of beating him. At the convention, Reagan was forced to face a narrow defeat. He came out for a major press conference, flash bulbs bursting all around, cocked his head and threw out a trademark Reagan grin and said: "Well, it was a good fight, ma, but he won!" The press and the room broke in laughs and applause. Reagan not only had principles, he had class.

First off, congratulations to the anti-Miers team. They fought with energy and gusto, and they fought for conservative principles. They fought to convince the president to change course, and succeeded--the number of times in which that has happened can be counted on one hand.

Second, kudos to Hugh Hewitt. Hugh was badly outnumbered on this, but he fought with courage, tenacity, intelligence and determination--if you're in a fight, this is the man you want in your corner.

Finally, kudos to Harriet Miers who has conducted herself with grace and class throughout the whole process. She is an intelligent and capable woman who has served both the White House and the country well.

So where do we go from here?

I fought for Miers ever since she was nominated, but I don't think this fight has necessarily harmed either the party or the president or the country. On the contrary, conservatives have now shown that presidents MUST nominate for the Supreme Court ONLY candidates with UNDOUBTED conservative credentials. If they don't, they risk a major fight. This battle has the potential to reinvigorate conservatives and to put new steel into the determination to re-make the Supreme Court. This fight can prove to be the anti-Bork, an opportunity for the GOP to show a renewed dedication to Constitutional principle.

It is noteworthy too that the Miers nomination collapsed shortly after publication of a speech of hers that SEEMED to indicate that she supported Roe. There can be no mistakes like this again: GOP presidents need to nominate judges whose anti-Roe credentials are beyond question. They cannot afford to shy away from this principle in the face of opposition from pro-choice Republicans. Republicans have operated on a big tent theory and rightly so, but here there must be limits: even those Republicans who support choice have a moral responsibility to recognize that Roe is contrary to the Constitution. Pro-choice Republicans are duty-bound to the Constitution, and even if they think the states should legalize abortion, they have an obligation to recognize that Roe was a constitutional travesty. Pro-choice Republicans have a responsibility to support anti-Roe nominees for the Supreme Court, and not confuse their own personal views about abortion with their duty to the Constitution.

Fortunately, the GOP has quality talent that has recognized the wounds that Roe and other decisions have inflicted on the Constitution.

High on the short list should be: Emilio Garza, Michael McConnell, and Edith Jones.

Any one of these would unite the party and unite America behind an outstanding nominee for the Supreme Court.

**************************************************************************
POSTSCRIPT: Dahlia Lithwick has an excellent post on why GOP presidents can no longer speak in code on Roe: they must nominate candidates who are on-record against Roe v Wade.

The top questions on Miss Miers: answers for Hugh Hewitt

2005-10-27T03:00:00.000-04:00

Hugh Hewitt asks the critical questions about Miss Miers.

Does George W. Bush deserve any loyalty from his party? From pundits identified with his party? If so, how much and why not more? Yes, W deserves loyalty from his party. Conservatives, of all people, should appreciate that loyalty is a virtue. And this includes pundits who think of themselves as Republican. How much loyalty? Well, here would be the limit: if a president breaks a clear promise, he can't be surprised if people rebel. I don't believe that the president has tried to do anything except keep his promises with Harriet Miers; but it is possible that HM will prove not to be a judge in the mold of Scalia/Thomas, and if that proves to be the case, his party is free to point out the error in a civil fashion.

Do Harriett Miers' many accomplishments count for nothing? They count for a good deal, and the probability is that she will be deemed qualified by the ABA as a result.

Does Harriett Miers strike the commentator as a dedicated public servant? Yes.

Why not wait for the hearings to at least begin? Some pre-hearing questioning is appropriate. If she turns out to be a mistake, the hearings may be too late to effect her withdrawal or defeat.

How important is it that Roe v. Wade/Casey be reversed? Opposition to Roe/Casey and a willingness to reverse are the sine qua non of a good nomination. 1) Roe itself is one of the most tragic miscarriages of justice in the history of the Supreme Court. 2) A willingness to reverse Roe is a touchstone of true originalism. 3) A nominee who lacks the willingness to reverse Roe is not going to be likely to reverse the lesser outrages of the last generation.

Which five precedents does the commentator think are in most pressing need of reversal? 1. Roe v Wade (abortion). 2. Lawrence v Texas (gay marriage). 3. ACLU v Reno (internet pornography). 4. Santa Fe v. Doe (school prayer). 5. McCreary County v ACLU (ten commandments).

Does the commentator agree with George Will's assertion of Justice Lewis Powell as the "embodiment of mainstream conservative jurisprudence?" No. It's difficult to rank Powell as a conservative at all. The honour should probably have gone to Rehnquist.

Is a neo-Borking underway which will discredit the conservative cause's defense of its future nominees against similar, future attacks from the left? No: some of the criticisms, both of the president and Miss Miers, have been excessive and unrestrained. But in general, the GOP has been too deferential to presidential selections to the Supreme Court, and too willing to trust the president when bad selections have been sent to the Senate (O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter). A more critical view of White House nominees would in general be constructive.

What are the political consequences of a defeat of Miers at the hands of a GOP controlled Senate? Right now, very small, and probably less dangerous than confirmation. Even if Miss Miers is a good pick (which has been my view), she is not perceived as such by the party: indeed, she is seen as betrayal on the magnitude of Bush 41's broken promise, "Read my lips: no new taxes." From a strictly political view, W would do well to withdraw her, and replace her with a pick who both in substance and in appearance is a more reliable conservative; the next nominee must be clearly on-record as opposed to Roe and Lawrence.

Miss Miers on religion and law: the 1993 speech

2005-10-26T16:00:00.000-04:00

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.
--Ignatius of Loyola (CCC 2478)

Late last night the news broke of a story in the Washington Post: in 1993, Harriet Miers had given a speech in which she apparently repudiated the pro-life views that she had endorsed in 1989. Whereas then she had told Texans for Life that she favored a Constitutional amendment banning abortion except where the life of the mother was at stake, now she apparently thought that abortion was a matter of "self-determination."

The Washington Post article as of late last night did not give the full speech, only snippets with no sense of context. I thought it the better part of wisdom to wait to make sense of the brief quotations until the full speech was available. Today the full speech is available, and I seek here to give it some reasonably full assessment.

Harriet Miers: her history on abortion
There is every reason to think that through much of her adult life Harriet Miers would have been classified as pro-choice. As late as 1987, Miers was a member of Girls Inc., a group that explicitly affirms Roe v. Wade. Although it is possible that Miers was either unaware or unsupportive of the position of Girls Inc, it is more likely that this reflected Miers' position as well. In 1988 she contributed to the campaign of Al Gore, who had then shifted from pro-life to pro-choice as part of his presidential campaign. (She seems, however, to have been dissatisfied with Michael Dukakis; she did not contribute to his fall presidential campaign, but gave money instead to the DNC.)

According to Texas Justice Nathan Hecht, toward the end of the 1980s Miers changed her position on abortion. After seeing a film on abortion at church, Miers for the first time believed that life began at conception. Although Hecht does not specify the content of the film, it appears to have included the scientific evidence for why life begins at conception.

In 1989, she ran for Dallas City Council. Long time feminist friend Louise Raggio reported that Miers now opposed Roe v. Wade, although Raggio was unclear as to whether Miers thought Roe should be reversed. Miers also sought the endorsement of Texans for Life, and endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, but only for the life of the mother. She agreed further to oppose the appointment of pro-choice officials in Dallas government, to support pro-life meetings and events, and to decline the endorsement of any pro-choice organization. Indeed, she refused even to meet with pro-choice Dallas groups. Once on Dallas City Council, she dismissed critics of Operation Rescue protests with the words: "Well, I'm sorry, it's murder and that's that."

Her pro-life conversion appears sharply in the public record. From 1992-93, she served as head of the Texas bar, and in that capacity she fought the new ABA rules supporting abortion--an apparent reflection of her new pro-life stance. Her political contributions also underwent a sharp shift from pro-choice to pro-life. Her 13 recorded political contributions after 1990 went only candidates with 100% pro-life ratings from either Texas or National Right to Life groups. The most striking was her contribution in 2000 to the Nebraska attorney general who defended the ban on partial birth abortion before the Supreme Court. When she moved Washington to work in the White House, she was identified by co-worker (and Harriet Miers' critic) David Frum as "pro-life".

The 1993 speech
In 1993 Miers gave a speech to the Executive Women of Dallas. The first ten pages or so of the 14 page speech focus to some degree on the issue of judicial activism. Without defending judicial activism, Miss Miers points out that in some cases the legislatures have deliberately provoked judicial action; that is, legislators, fearful of making controversial decisions, have sometimes deliberately not acted so that the responsiblity for controversial decisions could be borne instead by the courts. In such cases, Miss Miers indicates, the real responsibility for judicial activism lies more with the legislatures than with the courts.

The controversial aspects of the speech come in two paragraphs:

Where else do we hear a lot today about the Courts. The law and religion. A preacher in Dallas is challenged by suits charging that he is ripping off the helpless and defrauding them with prayer cloths, etc. Abortion clinic protestors have become synonymous with terrorists and the courts have been the refuge for the besieged. The Branch Davidian compound became a sight for speculation about legal responsibilities and legal rights. The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual women's right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion. Questions about what can be taught or done in public places or public schools are presented frequently to the courts.

The law and religion make for interesting mixture but the mixture tends to evoke the strongest of emotions. The underlying theme in most of these cases is the insistence of more self-determination. And the more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes the most sense. Legislating religion or morality we gave up on a long time ago. Remembering that fact appears to offer the most effective solutions to these problems once the easier cases are disposed of. For example, if a preacher is committing a fraud and it can be shown, even if he is a preacher, he should be stopped. But if we just think people are ignorant or stupid for giving their money for a blessing, that is different matter. No one should not be able to oppressively require a student to participate in religious activities against their will, but if a student on his or her own chooses to express himself or herself in religious terms, that should not be prohibited. Where science determines the facts, the law can effectively govern. However, when science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act. I do not mean to make very complex, emotional issues too simplistic. But some of these issues do not need to be as complicated as they have become if people deal with each other with respect and even reverence. [Typos are reproduced from the original].

What does Miss Miers mean here about "self-determination"? And what light does it shed on her views about Roe?

A few observations.

1. The first paragraph and the second paragraph are asymmetrical: she deals with issues in the first paragraph that she does not address in the second, and vice versa.

2. She does not here address something that she personally took a strong stand on: namely, the defense of Operation Rescue. Abortion clinic protestors have become synonymous with terrorists and the courts have been the refuge for the besieged. If we only had this sentence from Miss Miers, we would never be able to guess that she strongly defended Operation Rescue while on Dallas City Council. Indeed, the terminology might reasonably suggest that she supports here the pro-choice side. Yet she does not do so. Rather, she limits herself to describing the conflict in terms that pro-choicers would identify with; and she moves on to other issues.

3. Although the possible reference to abortion has drawn much attention, Miss Miers is also apparently concerned with the teaching of scientific creationism in the public schools--a major in issue in Texas: Questions about what can be taught or done in public places or public schools are presented frequently to the courts.

4. Miss Miers writes: Where science determines the facts, the law can effectively govern. However, when science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act. This has been assumed to be a discussion of the abortion issue. But it may well be a reference to the scientific creationism debate, and she may be encouraging the government not to mandate one scientific approach to the issue. This would be consistent with her focus on what can be done or taught in the schools in the immediately preceding sentences.

5. If Miss Miers does have the abortion controversy in mind, does this indicate that she thinks that the principle of "self-determination" coupled with the scientific evidence legitimizes legal abortion? a) This is certainly possible since this was exactly the logic of Roe v. Wade. "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." Miss Miers' answer can reasonably be taken as an explicit avowal of the logic of Roe v. Wade. b) But it is also possible that Miss Miers thinks that the scientific evidence supports the proposition that life begins at conception. This was Ronald Reagan's basis for opposing abortion, and it may well be Miss Miers' position. If Miss Miers thinks that the scientific evidence supports the pro-life position, then she may well be arguing that state governments can legally act to ban abortion. This would agree with her 1989 response to Texans for Life, as well as what might be inferred about how she came to hold pro-life views. This would also be in keeping with the view of Edith Jones in her famous opinion in McCorvey v Hill: "Hard and social science will of course progress even though the Supreme Court averts its eyes.... One may fervently hope that the Court will someday acknowledge such developments [in science] and reevaluate Roe...accordingly. That the Court's constitutional decisionmaking leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer not only about the abortion decisions, but about a number of other areas in which the Court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of constitutional adjudication."
c) There are some other possible interpretations of this paragraph, but the view expressed in a) would be the best interpretation of the passage as written, for this is the one most obviously in keeping with the emphasis on self-determination earlier in the paragraph. But a) is not a certain interpretation, since from the standpoint of a pro-lifer, abortion ends the unborn baby's right to self-determination.

7. We return then to the quotation from the beginning of this post: the need to listen patiently to the text and try to understand exactly what the writer meant. The most reasonable interpretation of the text is that it is an affirmation of the logic of Roe v. Wade--but it is possible that it has no bearing on abortion at all, or that it reflects the view that the scientific evidence requires the reversal of Roe v. Wade. This question cannot be decided with certainty from the text alone--it can only be decided by questioning the nominee.

Questions for Miss Miers
The president was elected on a promise to millions of Americans about our courts: to choose justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas--both sharp critics of Roe v. Wade. For this reason, it is absolutely unacceptable for the president to nominate or the Senate to confirm a nominee whose speeches can reasonably be held to uphold Roe v. Wade. In the light of the 1993 speech, Miss Miers needs to explain her views on Roe and the history of those views. There has been a tendency of recent nominees to keep silent on Roe. But those who have written or spoken on these questions cannot claim a right to reticence appropriate for those who have not spoken on abortion. It is appropriate to ask Miss Miers questions, and these questions should include:

1. Did you support Roe v. Wade in 1987 when you were a member of Girls Inc? If not, why were you a member of group explicitly committed to Roe?
2. Is Louis Raggio correct when she says that in 1989 you rejected Roe v. Wade as part of your Dallas city council campaign? If she is wrong, then why did you seek the endorsement of Texans for Life, an anti-Roe organization?
3. At the time of your 1993 speech did you agree or disagree with Roe v. Wade? What was your 1993 reference to "self-determination" intended to indicate if not agreement with Roe v. Wade?
4. As of 2005, do you agree or disagree with Roe v. Wade? Have you had any other shifts in views on Roe v. Wade that are not currently a part of public record?

The virtue and the weakness of the internet is speed: a few bloggers have immediately assumed on the basis of the 1993 speech that Miss Miers is a stealth supporter of Roe, now on a glide path toward the Supreme Court. It would be better, and more in keeping with the views of charity expressed by St Ignatius of Loyola, to question Miss Miers specifically as to what her 1993 speech meant. And it would be constructive for future nominees to give us upfront their views on that case.

Postscript: many of us will remember the 1976 flap over Jimmy Carter's "ethnic purity" remark. Carter ran as a Southern progressive who said that the Civil Rights Act had been the best thing to happen to the South in his lifetime. His "ethnic purity" comments were seized upon by the press as proof that he was a closet racist, and only the staunch support of Daddy King bailed Carter out of his difficulties. As Carter's subsequent career showed, he was no racist of any kind, and his real problem was an excessive liberalism. The flap over Miss Miers' speech may well prove to be dispute of the "ethnic purity" type; a quick misreading both of a speech and of a woman's character.

********************************************************************************
Catechism of the Catholic Church: Offenses against the Truth
2477 Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:
- of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;
- of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them;
- of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.

2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:
Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.
--Ignatius of Loyola (CCC 2478)

For key links, see:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012062.php
http://bench.nationalreview.com/archives/080767.asp

http://www.nationalreview.com/whelan/whelan200510261633.asp
http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_23_corner-archive.asp#080785

Why politics matters with judges...

2005-10-25T11:25:00.000-04:00

In discussing judges one is frequently told that political views are different from judicial views, that political philosophy is often different from judicial philosophy.

As an abstract point, this might be correct. But in practice, there is very good reason to believe that most judicial reasoning is little more than a legal rationalization of political prejudice.

There is now a fascinating support for this proposition posted over at the Volokh Conspiracy. A new article by Ward Farnsworth. Farnsworth looks at Supreme Court cases over the last 50 years and finds that the correlation between political ideology and decision-making runs about 95%.

Finally, there is a book-length study on this very point from Cambridge University Press: The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited, rightly arguing the depressing propostion that most judicial decision making is simply political policy-making under another name.

How to be wrong twice: the dangers of trading Miss Miers

2005-10-25T11:09:00.000-04:00

The great baseball writer Bill James once remarked that after he'd evaluated a trade in baseball in print, he never changed his mind about it--even if the trade didn't work out the way he thought. Why? Because changing your mind in print only gave you the opportunity to be wrong twice.

President Bush yesterday side-stepped a question over whether the White House was considering withdrawing Miss Miers. The result was a new surge of speculation over replacement candidates for Miss Miers.

Now even if you think that Miss Miers deserves to be confirmed for SCOTUS--as I do--it's still clear that she has been a political mistake for the President. But trading her for another candidate gives the White House an excellent chance to double the damage politically, and dig themselves into a deeper hole than they are right now. It also gives them a chance to move from a candidate that W knows perfectly to a real unknown who might do serious damage on SCOTUS.

Let's take a look at some candidates to see how they could damage both the White House and the country. And let's compare them for a moment to Miss Miers.

We can start with three things we know, or at least have good reason to believe, about Harriet Miers:

1. Miss Miers almost certainly opposes Roe v. Wade: Louise Raggio has stated explicitly that Miss Miers opposed Roe v. Wade in 1989, and Miers' endorsement of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion agrees with that. Neither Rehnquist nor Scalia nor Thomas nor Kennedy nor Souter nor O'Connor has ever shown such opposition to abortion.
2. Miss Miers almost certainly opposes Lawrence v. Texas: Miss Miers publicly supported the Texas sodomy law that O'Connor, et al struck down. As a lawyer, she could scarcely have done that if she thought it was unconstitutional.
3. Miss Miers is an originalist: she is attested as such by Ken Star, Leonard Leo, and others; and her Senate questionnaire is strongly originalist in content.

So why trade her? And for whom? The standard short-lists are crammed with candidates all more risky than Miers, either because they have no anti-Roe credentials, no anti-Lawrence credentials, or no evidence of an originalist philosophy of law. Others are risky because as out-of-town candidates they have all the hallmarks of a Souter or Kennedy or O'Connor: conservatives who came to DC and then went liberal.

1. Attorny General Gonzales. This apparently pro-Roe nominee is high on the Bush shortlist and would probably end the Bush presidency, or at least leave him without any friends besides Karl Rove and Laura.
2. Maureen Mahoney. A highly qualified lawyer and a stealth candidate. She's been suggested by the Washington Post and for good reason: the word on the web is that she is both pro-Roe and anti-originalism.
3. Karen Williams. A South Carolina appellate court justice with a Democratic husband--as an out-of-towner, she is an excellent candidate to be converted to liberalism on the Georgetown cocktail circuit. Her conservativism likely won't last two years in DC.
4. Janice Roberts Brown. An outspoken conservative, often thought to have libertarian leanings--yet she has apparently never criticized Roe or Lawrence. She will be filibustered; her California conservativism could easily come across as too extreme and backfire in the hearings with calamitious results in 2006 for the GOP.
5. Michael McConnell. A brilliant conservative, and I've suggested him on my blog: he is on-record opposing Roe. But politically, he'll be denounced for his support for Bob Jones. And he has odd views on polygamy. In all, he is a more brilliant conservative than Miers, but a less reliable one; if the Dems decide to bork him, he risks reversing the 2004 GOP gains with blacks and Hispanics.
6. Michael Luttig. He's never criticized Roe or Lawrence, and shows little interest in reversing mistaken precedents. The most likely guess is that he would be an originalist on new cases, but uphold bad precedents stare decisis.
7. Emilio Garza. He's definitely anti-Roe, and the one candidate on the list who is a definite improvement over Miers, both politically and substantively. Unfortunately, the White House has never shown any interest in him, and the chances of him getting the pick are apparently virtually zero.
8. Edith Jones. Most famous for her opinion in McCorvey v Hill, where she criticizes Roe--but less sharply than Sandra O'Connor did in the 1980s, and O'Connor later upheld Roe in the Casey decision.
9. Miguel Estrada. The ultimate stealth candidate. A reputation for being very conservative, and not a line on-record to prove it. In contrast to Miers' extensive anti-abortion and anti-sodomy track record, Estrada offers zilch.
10. Connie Callahan. A Hispanic nominee, said to be Bush's second choice after Miers; weak on religious liberty issues and almost certainly pro-Roe.

The above list is not exhaustive but it is instructive--there are very view nominees out there with a stronger, more solid, or more reliable conservative record than Miers. Of the ten listed above, I would rate 1 better (Garza), one about equal (McConnell), and eight worse. Trading Miers offers a VERY high risk that we will get a nominee less conservative, and less reliable than Miers.

As Bill James would have put it: you wanna trade Miers? it's an opportunity to be wrong twice.

Arlen Specter on Harriet Miers

2005-10-23T23:04:00.000-04:00

Senator Specter remarks:

"I don't think she's going to be withdrawn."

"During the recess, I took home a large compendium of cases that she'd been involved in and I studied them, and I found out they were very complex," he says. "She had an underground easement case which was very complicated, she represented Disney in a jurisdiction issue in Texas, she represented Microsoft in a patent case. She represented a woman, pro bono, on Social Security [and] a criminal defendant in a habeas corpus case. And I could see as I went through her legal record that she's a good lawyer. She deals with complex, conceptual issues and, I think, demonstrates the capacity to handle a wide variety of issues, including constitutional issues."

(HT: Forest Nymph)

"100% innocent!": Syria and OJ Simpson

2005-10-23T10:24:00.000-04:00

100% not guilty! said OJ Simpson after being arrested for the savage murder of his wife.

"We are 100% innocent!" said Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after being accused of assassination by the UN.

The New York Times lays out the plot by which the Syrian dictator Assad masterminded the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The assassination of Hariri in February of 2005 sent shock waves through the region. Emboldened by democratic elections in Iraq, the people of Lebanon identified Syria as the culprit, and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Syrians from their country.

The Syrian government began to tremble. For the strategy in going to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003 was not merely bring down Saddam Hussein. The strategy was to lay the foundation for democratic revolutions throughout the Middle East. No one feared that strategy more than dictator Assad of Syria, whose Baathist party was Saddam Hussein's closest ally.

Since the invasion of Iraq, Syria has played a double game, outwardly professing cooperation with the West while secretly allowing Syria to be a basing ground for the terrorists in Iraq. The administration has been slow to confront the Syrians with anything except diplomatic protests and polite requests for more help.

Now the UN's official report, accusing the Syrians of assassination has dealt a further blow the Syrian dictator. Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid reports: "the Syrian regime has been on the verge of implosion for quite a while now, and it appears that many people are now taking notice of that."

The Syrians have been threatening Abdulhamid and other dissidents for months:

So, “do you want to be a hero, Ammar?” He asked. Why, “do you want to make me into one, General?”

Blogroll this brave man now.

Professor Josh Landis over at Syria Comment argues that the US is committed to a policy of regime change. If so, action on that policy is long overdue.

President Bush in his heroic inaugural address of January 2005 pledged this country to a forward strategy of democratization and freedom. In Syria, the time to act is now.

Miss Miers the originalist and Mr Will

2005-10-22T11:33:00.000-04:00

For the last few days, those of us who have supported the confirmation of Harriet Miers have been told that George Will had another column coming out on the Miers' nomination. It was supposed to be "brilliant", which knowing Mr Will is perfectly plausible. One hoped for a thoughtful, cordial piece, executed with Mr Will's customary urbanity and erudition.

Mr Will in his very first sentence writes:

Such is the perfect perversity of the nomination of Harriet Miers that it discredits, and even degrades, all who toil at justifying it.

All--not some, but all--who support the Miers nomination are by virtue of their support "discredited" and "degraded". They are supporting a nomination "perfectly perverse". Here at President Aristotle, I try not to speak that way even of...Democrats. Mr Will declines to offer a patient, sympathetic exposition of his own point of view. His purpose, unfortunately, is rather to sneer at those Republicans who support the nomination; as well as those many Democrats with first-hand knowledge of Miss Miers who think that she would make an excellent justice.

Many of their justifications cannot be dignified as arguments. This is true, of course; but not uniquely so: the same can be said of both sides in pretty much any debate.

Of those that can be, some reveal a deficit of constitutional understanding commensurate with that which it is, unfortunately, reasonable to impute to Miers. This might be correct, but it is not immediately clear how George Will would know: Mr Will can claim many educational credentials, but not apparently a law degree. And he chooses not to discuss those of Miss Miers' defenders who do have law degrees, who have worked with her personally, and who state that she is both a first-rate lawyer and an originalist--exactly the sort of person that thoughtful conservatives might think about supporting.

Next, Miers's advocates managed, remarkably, to organize injurious testimonials. Mr Will is certainly on to something: the deficiencies of the White House's campaign for Miss Miers are all too glaring. Mr Will cites a few testimonials that he finds particularly vacuous, graciously neglecting the ones to her skills at cooking and bowling. But it is rather too bad that Mr Will chose not to discuss the testimonials of the Texas attorneys consulted by Beldar: "Percentage expressing any doubts about her fitness for the Court based on personal knowledge and dealings with her: Zero." Or the testimonial of Ken Rainey, Texas bar: "she is brilliant...She appears, as I have observed, to be a strict constructionist ”. Or Colleen McHugh, Texas Bar: "That she is hard-working explains why she is able to do so much...She is also brilliant." Or Ken Starr:
"Starr: I think she's terrific...I've known Harriet Miers for over 15 years....She is enormously talented.
Hannity: Do you have any doubts whatsoever that she's an originalist in the mold of a Scalia or Thomas?...
Starr: ...I don't."

Nor does he discuss Federalist Society official Leonard Leo's affirmation of her Robert Bork-like originalism: He spoke as one who has known and worked with her for well over a decade, who has played host to her when she has been a Federalist Society speaker, and -- perhaps most significant -- who joined her in a battle to get the American Bar Association to rescind its resolution endorsing Roe v. Wade , the decision establishing a right to abortion.

The first thing Leo said was that Miers's statement accepting the nomination from Bush was significant to him. "It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the Founders' vision of the proper role of courts in our society . . . and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution," she said. "When she talked about 'the Founders' vision' and used the word 'strictly,' " Leo said, "I thought, 'Robert Bork,' " Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court pick, who was rejected by the Senate after a bitter fight. "She didn't have to go there. She could simply have said, 'Judges should not legislate from the bench.' But she chose those words."

I asked if he was surprised that she did -- or whether it was consistent with what he knew of her judicial philosophy. He replied: "I'm not surprised that's what she believes. I'm surprised her handlers let her say it."

Critics of the Miers nomination have not been satisfied with the above testimonials, and perhaps they are correct. But Mr Will does not explain why these are not convincing reasons to support Miss Miers--he simply sets them aside, preferring instead to sneer at easier targets of ridicule.

Miers's advocates tried the incense defense: Miers is pious.
But of course, the argument was not that she was pious; the argument was that she was an evangelical, which is not the same thing. At least two points were being made: The first point was an appeal to an important national constituency. Despite the fact that evangelicals constitute 15% or more of the population, there has apparently been no self-identified evangelical on the court since Hugo Black. Perhaps, President Bush is to be criticized for trying to reward a major GOP voting bloc; but that is not the same as an appeal to piety.

The second point is that evangelicals tend to be strict constructionists in both Constitutional law and biblical practice. This link was made explicitly by one of her Texas defenders who pointed out that Miss Miers applied strict construction to both the Bible and the Constitution. While no one thinks her religion is a qualification for public office, an understanding of her religion clarifies the roots of her constitutional philosophy--whose alleged absence troubles Mr Will. These roots will only confirm the criticisms of those academics who dismiss originalism as a fundamentalist approach to the Constitution. But they sharpen the social sources of her commitment to originalism, as well as highlighting the depth and strength of that commitment.

The crude people who crudely invoked [her piety] probably were sending a crude signal to conservatives who, the invokers evidently believe, are so crudely obsessed with abortion that they have an anti-constitutional willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade with an unreasoned act of judicial willfulness as raw as the 1973 decision itself. This is a sentence that Mr Will should probably not have written: on the one hand, he wants (reasonably) to dismiss the charge that Miss Miers' critics are elitists; on the other hand, he suggests (unreasonably) that Miss Miers' defenders are "probably" a bunch of "crude" yahoos. Mr Will could scarcely have written a more self-defeating and self-contradictory sentence.

Worse: he simply misses the message--Miss Miers' defenders have been very far from suggesting that conservatives "have an anti-constitutional willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade with an unreasoned act of judicial willfulness as raw as the 1973 decision itself." On the contrary, HM's defenders have consistently portrayed her as a legal trailblazer for women, one of the top 100 women lawers in America; a woman who would put her considerable legal talents to the service of an originalist constitutional philosophy similar to that of Scalia and Thomas; and a woman who has openly proclaimed that "it is the responsibility of every generation to true to the founders' vision" and that judges have authority to make decisions based "only on the founders' vision--the rule of law"; thereby implying that one cannot depart from originalism without subverting the rule of law itself. Far from promoting a raw display of conservative judicial power, her defenders have signaled that she would reverse Roe v Wade on the basis of an originalist constitutional philosophy that her stellar legal career gives her ample skills to articulate.

Of course, Mr Will scoffs at this as quite absurd. Mr Will, who knows neither law nor Miss Miers, deems her a legal nitwit with no constitutional philosophy of law at all. Her defenders, who know both law and Miss Miers, think her a first-rate lawyer and an originalist. Perhaps Mr Will is right, and her defenders are wrong. But he should not confuse his arguments with theirs.

Mr Will goes on to write: Thoughtful conservatives' highest aim is not to achieve this or that particular outcome concerning this or that controversy. Rather, their aim for the Supreme Court is to replace semi-legislative reasoning with genuine constitutional reasoning about the Constitution's meaning as derived from close consideration of its text and structure. Of course it is precisely for this reason that thoughtful conservatives have praised Miss Miers' statement on judicial activism: "For the legal system to be predictable, the words are vital -- whether they are agreed upon by parties to a contract or are the product of legislative compromise. Many times in practice I found myself stressing to clients the importance of getting the words exactly right if their interests were to be protected in the future...Courts should give proper consideration to the text as agreed upon, the law as written, and applicable precedent." Mr Will, in his critique of Miss Miers' legal philosophy, declines to cite a single word from her statement on exactly this issue. Those who have studied have found much to praise, some even thinking it a better statement of originalism than that of John Roberts. Mr Will is free to disagree; but his reasons would be more convincing if he engaged with her statements, rather than omitting them altogether.

The rest of the column collects a few more sneers and insults, but there is little more of intellectual content that needs discussion.

In 2004, President Bush was re-elected, vowing to appoint to the Supreme Court justices of the same mold of Scalia and Thomas. On the basis of a decade's close work with Miss Miers, the President believes her to be an outstanding lawyer who shares the Scalia/Thomas originalist approach to jurisprudence. Nor is this just his view: those who have worked with her over the years also agree that she is a first-rate lawyer with an originalist philosophy of Constitutional law.

We go forward now to the hearings where we hope to see this substantiated in further detail.

************************************************************************************
UPDATE: Welcome to Hugh Hewitt readers!
UPDATE 2.0: The American Spectator discusses the Will column.

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