Terminus

2003-04-29T17:59:00.000-04:00

I'm Outta Here!

Ladies and Gents, I'm pleased to announce that TERMINUS is movin' out!! Please update your bookmarks to here. I hope you like the new layout, and make sure you check out the expanded link list. Best part: no annoying ads!!

You know, back when I was in elementary school, I used to ride my bike home on the last day of school joyously (but quietly) singing "I'm Free" by The Who. I feel like that again, all of a sudden. Goodbye Blogger!!

2003-04-29T08:17:00.000-04:00

What I Learned from Harry Kalas. I learned, just last night, that the Mets struck out 27 times in a double-header Sunday against the D-Backs, setting a Major League Baseball record. Think about it, that's a combined complete game of strikeouts. Go Mets.

In other baseball news, the Philadelphia Phillies took two of three from the San Francisco Giants, the team with the best record in the National League. Their series win included a no-hitter by pitcher Kevin Millwood, the first no-hitter scored by any pitcher in the League this year. You'll recall, naturally, that the Phillies's Jose Padilla recorded the League's first complete-game-shutout not too long ago. Go Phils.

2003-04-27T12:19:00.000-04:00

The Politics of Hate. With a title like that, you just know I'm talking about those hideous reptiles, the Republicans. Josh Marshall brings together several elements of the Santorum flap, and reading it all gives you an excellent perspective on the whole matter.

What's most striking to me about what Santorum said is that, if we take the man at his word (hate the sin, not the sinner), it is possible to conclude that he is blissfully unware of his bigotry. It is ipossible to conclude that he isn't a bigot, however. He claims that he has no problem with homosexuals, and President Bush lamely calls him an "inclusive" man. Let's assume that he has lots and lots of gay friends, and they go out drinking every Friday and have a great time. There is no discomfort on Sen. Santorum's part, even when he goes the the men's room along with two of his gay-buddies at the same time. Let's take to a really extreme level and say that Santorum doesn't even have a problem when his gay-buddies take him to one of their bars. Even assuming all of this is true, which it obviously isn't, this "inclusive" man is still a bigot. Why? Because he thinks 1) states should be allowed to criminalize homosexual sex, 2) states should criminalize homosexual sex, and 3) states should enforce their criminal laws against homosexual sex. Nothing wrong with being a homosexual, as long as you never have sex. That's what passes for "inclusiveness" in the hate party.

No surprise. These are the same people who push pre-marital abstinence with one hand, push away gay-marriage with the other hand, and pretend not to notice that they've just damned gays to a life of celibacy. The fact is, these guys will ot be happy until gay sex, if not homosexuality itself, is obliterated from the face of this great nation. It ain't never gonna happen (as if this even needs to be said), and the electorate is moving fairly quickly away from this mainstream Republican position. Even my Republican friends, for instance, are pissed about Santorum's remarks (because it makes it harder to pretend to themselves that their party isn't run by vile hateful thugs, and because they are not, by and large, bigots). What this means: the Republicans are soon going to realize that they are losing this battle, but they won't be able to do anything about it. Most of them have managed, just barely, to swallow the "hate the sin, not the sinner" line, and some of them can even speak to homosexuals in public, if they try really really hard. But Rick Santorum (or people like him) will become to gay issues what Strom Thurmond was to race issues.

For a while, I hoped Santorum would be forced to take a hit from this one, like Trent Lott did a few months ago. It appears this won't be the case. To understand why not, check out this fascinating article by Eleanor Clift, called Standing By Their Man. The article also makes one point that I must pass along. Santorum's comments were in response to a Supreme Court case called Lawrence v. Texas. That case involves a criminal prosecution under Texas's sodomy laws, which make sodomy a crime if it's committed by same-sex partners, but not a crime if it's committed by opposite-sex partners. Santorum was talking about using the law to protect the traditional family in lots and lots of ways. He said that homosexual sodomy, adultery, polygamy, bigamy, incest, and bestiality all undermine the traditional family, and therefore a state should ban all of them and should enforce that ban. As Clift puts it, "It’s worth noting, since Santorum brought up “man on dog,” that Texas doesn’t have a law against bestiality."

If it's any consolation (and it is to me), Texas is almost certainly going to lose that case. And Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas are almost certainly going to vote with the bigots. I'll have that story for you when it happens.

2003-04-25T16:14:00.000-04:00

This Doesn't Bode Well For National Missile Defense. Via Franklin's Findings. The Patriot missile was long considered the great hero of Gulf War I. How can anyone forget the jubilant reports of incoming Iraqi missiles effortlessly shot down by superior American technology, making our brave soldiers all but invincible on the desert battlefield. Unfortunately for those of us who like a little romance in our warfare, it was all a bunch of hooey. 4 SCUD missiles were shot down by Patriots, out of 47 attempts. That's a pretty bad batting average, even for an American League pitcher. Twelve years and $3 Billion later, the Patirot had a chance to redeem itself in the latest installment of "Bomb the Brown People". This time, Patriot missiles managed to shoot down two aircraft, raising its total career aircraft hits all the way up to two. Unfortunately, those aircraft were friendlies, and coalition troops were tragically killed.

Every war is going to have heart-rending stories of friendly-fire accidents. Every war is going to have technology-problems and equipment failures and all of that. My question, though, after reading this story, is why people don't know this stuff. If I polled all of my friends, in and out of school, I doubt ten percent would know that the Patriot missile sucks, and it's always sucked. I wouldn't have, and I'm a fairly well-read guy, I like to think. Propaganda in war is one thing, but the Gulf War was twelve years, and the majority of Americans probably still think that the Patriot missile won the war.

It occurs to me that this is one of the things that feeds into our nations seeming appetite for warfare. We believe that we are so technogically superior that no other country, particularly not a country full of dirty brown people, can so much as prick us. That belief is not totally unfounded, but the reality is not messier than most people realize. That's something we should remember the next time the government promises us a "cakewalk" war.

2003-04-24T16:54:00.000-04:00

"Can't Be Fixed". Today, Bob Herbert in the New York Times gives us the definitive anti-death penalty argument. There's really nothing I can add. Regardless of your views on the death penalty, I urge you to read this column. If you oppose the death penalty, you'll get a narrow, piercing critique, centered around the case of Delma Banks, Jr. in Texas (a case which I have mentioned before). If you support the death penalty, you'll get a clear, uncompromising look at its flaws, which need to be addressed to prevent the unconscionable and irreparable harm of executing the innocent. Herbert says that the death penalty can't be fixed, and should be abolished forever. I'm not so sure that it can't be fixed, and so I support a national moratorium to examine the problems in depth and propose solutions. However, I disagree with the death penalty on moral and policy grounds, so the question of whether or not it can be fixed is not relevant to me in the first place.

2003-04-24T15:49:00.000-04:00

The Party of Personal Liberty. I should have spent more time online yesterday. [Instead, I watched Manchester United win a great match against Real Madrid, and yet still fail to advance to the next round of the tournament. I was also, simultaneously, playing "Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link". Time well spent, I think.] If I had ventured online yesterday afternoon, I would have surely seen dKos arguing that the Democratic Party is the natural home of libertarians. I was actually thinking about that, quite on my own, just yesterday. In fact, I've been thinking about it a lot since 9/11 and the radical authoritarian shift in the law since then. The Libertarian Party is a bought and paid for piece of the Republican Party. But libertarians, unaffiliated with the national party in Washington, have interests which are very much in line with the Democratic Party.

Several of my friends, in and out of school, either are self-described libertarians or just generally fit the mold. One is, sadly, an Ayn Rand reader, and is therefore such a hardheaded absolutist that he is too far outside the political mainstream to even contemplate voting. Another considers himself a hard-right conservative, but several of his issues point more to the Democrats than the Republicans. Liberalization of drug laws, for instace, tends to get a fairer hearing from the left than the right (though the Democrats are far from having enough spine to get anything done on this issue).

Kos argues, as I was idly musing yesterday evening, that the Democrats should take positive action to position themselves in such a way as to go after the libertarian vote. Rick Santorum's recent bigotry erruption gives them a perfect opportunity to lay the groundwork for this push. The Republicans want a cop in every bedroom. The Democrats think you're old enough to make your own decisions. But, as Kos argues, this approach can work in economic realms as well, where libertarians have traditionally sided with Republicans. It's been more than 20 years since the Republicans, as a party, could honestly claim support for "fiscal responsibility". Thanks to Bill Clinton, and the (admittedly) tepid opposition to tax cuts coming from Democrats in Congress, the Dems are now in a great position to push the "fiscal responsibility" angle, which is huge with libertarians.

This isn't about moving to the right to do better in elections. It's about identifying a segment of voters who may respond effectively to what is already being done, and target them. Democrats shouldn't even pretend to be tracking rightward, because their own base is pretty pissed off at them already (e.g., the Nader/Greens problem). Democrats just need to make the case that the Republicans are selling the libertarians out (and have been since Reagan), and the Democrats (since Clinton) are actually pushing a more small government agenda.

2003-04-24T14:41:00.000-04:00

Newt's Back, Thank Goodness. CalPundit has a great post on the sudden and unexpected re-emergence of Newt Gingrich, the famous family-values Republican who served divorce papers on his cancer-sricken wife in the hospital (warms the heart, doesn't it?). In this post, Kevin Drum argues that Newt's return is a good thing.

The other day, in case you hadn't heard, Gingrich blasted the State Department (in a very thinly-veiled attack on Colin Powell) for botching the pre-war diplomacy. Strangely, when Tom "El Diablo" Daschle attacked the diplomacy failure, he was tarred as unpatriotic. When Newt Gingrich said the same thing, even more harshly, he was lauded by the same people who bashed Daschle, not the least of which Rush Limbaugh. The difference? Daschle blamed Bush, Gingrich blamed Powell. Bush is infallible, Powell is black.

The political buzz on this incident is that Newt was speaking unofficially on behalf of Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon backers. There has been a vicious war raging between the Defense and State Departments for months now. Imagine that, the government of George "Uniter not Divider" Bush is home to the most destructive and public intra-Administration war of our lifetime. Who could have predicted it? The point is that the argument within the Administration is between Rumsfeld and Powell, Defense and State. Rumsfeld won the Iraq argument, eventually, and now, the Rumsfeldians are blaming Powell for the failures while giving Rumsfeld credit for the successes. Military success, diplomatic failure. Rumsfeld wins, Powell loses. Seems simple, right?

The question is, though, why exactly did the diplomacy fail? It started off so well. Powell and State were able to get a unanimous UN Security Council vote on putting inspectors back in Iraq. That was, as I've said many, many times, a huge victory for Bush, and State won it for him. Then, rather than allowing the inspectrs the time they needed to do their UN appointed job, the Bush Administration began pushing for war "now". That's when the diplomacy broke down. Is that the fault of the diplomats, or the policy? I want to say "policy, 100%", but it's not that simple. It's actually a very good question, and this battle will be a lot of fun to watch.

Kevin's point was that it's a good sign that Newt is siding with Rumsfeld, because Newt is a political ignoramus (he gambled his whole elected career that people cared more about Clinton's penis than they did about their own jobs, families, and lives, and he didn't win). So, Newt's involvement with the Defense faction is likely to work itself out in State's favor sooner or later. I certainly hope so.

2003-04-22T11:03:00.000-04:00

Politicizing 9/11. The Republican nominating convention is going to be held very, very late next year. According to this article in the New York Times, next year will feature the latest Republican nominating convention in the party's 150 year history. Why? To blend the nominating convention in with the 3rd anniversary of 9/11. No shit.

Honestly, am I on my own, here? Keith, Jenna, you guys like Bush, right? Do you feel that this is at all, umm, inappropriate? Tacky? An insult to the memory of the people killed on that terrible day?

Ok, I'll come clean, everybody tries to wring some political advantage out of literally whatever they have at hand. There's no doubt that Bush, or any politician in any part in Bush's situation, would try to play up the 9/11 tragedy for political advantage (by making "terrorism" and "homeland security" major campaign issues, for instance). But normally, politicians are decent enough to be discreet about it. We've already had the shameful case of the Republican National Committee selling photographs of Bush taken on 9/11 to make money for campaigning. That was bad enough. Now we have this, which is the most egregious example of politicizing a national tragedy that I can imagine.

2003-04-22T00:22:00.000-04:00

Bigotry Watch. I've missed a few doozies, like the Republican member of the House who implied that everyone who lives in black neighborhoods (i.e., blacks) are presumptively addicted to drugs. But I wasn't going to pass up the latest, via Eschaton. Apparently, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) thinks that gays shouldn't have the right to fuck. This man is an embarrassment to his party. Or rather, he would be, if his party weren't so bigoted and hateful as to agree with him.

Every self-respecting Republican should stand up and repudiate those comments. There's no room for that kind of hatred in the United States Senate.

2003-04-21T18:15:00.000-04:00

Speaking of Which. My last post concerned talk radio, and in comments to last Friday's post, I was talking to Martin Wisse about anti-gay bigotry. Well, via Hesiod's Counterspin Central, we find this story from the The Des Moines Register about how a local talk radio host (carried on a Clear Channel station, surprise, surprise) carried out a hate and harassment campaign against gay high school students. Apparently, a local high school had a student group in support of gay and lesbian rights, which included both homosexual and heterosexual members. When this local radio host, Jan Mickelson, heard about this group, he went nuts. He referred to the club as "the sodomy club" so often that many listeners thought it was the name of the club (it was not). He claimed that the student group was spending taxpayer money to push a gay agenda at the school and push homosexual practices onto the students-at-large. Claims like these are so outrageous, and so familiar, that they hardly need refutation. But, of course, it was all a product of Mickelson's fevered imagination. No taxpayer money. No pushing anything on anyone. Of course, the school received a shit load of angry, sometimes abusive, sometimes threatening phone calls.

This is talk radio, people. This is not a rare case, this is the way it operates. This is a repeat of the Maine case from several months ago when, according to Philadelphia talk radio host Dom Giordano, the National Guard accused elementary school teachers of harassing and taunting the children of military parents. The National Guard denied the story, claiming that they had made no such accusation.

You want to be a conservative talk radio host? It's easy!! Find an "enemy group", whether it's Arabs, Muslims, gays, war protesters, liberals, Democrats, or whatever, and bash the living shit out of them. Nevermind the facts, or the truth, or the lives and reputations of the victims. You have two weapons: a voice, and a microphone. Use them mercilessly, brutally, and ruthlessly. Destroy their lives, if possible. Verbally beat them into submission, and garner up a few more votes for the Republican Party while you're at it.

Never make a retraction. Never admit an error. Most importantly, only criticize "them", never "us". Never shit where you eat.

2003-04-21T16:54:00.000-04:00

What I Learned From Talk Radio. I was listening to Drudge last night on my way home from Duke's. For some reason, he was all bent out of shape by the fact that Madonna says she doesn't read magazines. Don't ask me, I really have no idea. Anyway, he got a caller who was pretty pissed off about the government crackdown on file-sharing. The whole story, as the caller related, sounded dubious to me, but it isn't very important. The point is that Drudge, like me, is concerned about the government going after peple for filesharing copyrighted material. I'm not going to defend the practice, but I will say that there are a few other issues that law enforcement might want to concentrate on rather than me downloading DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince songs, you know?

What struck me about this is that over the whole time that Drudge was railing against the government, he never once uttered the words "Bush" or "Ashcroft". Not that he was required to, but I thought it interesting that he didn't. And it put me in mind of another occassion when I was listening to my local conservative talk radio station. The after-midnight host, Rollye James, was talking about PATRIOT II, which she despises (as all honest libertarians must). But she kept talking about Congress doing this. It was "Congress" this and "Congress" that. She never used the word "Republicans" or mentioned any Republican by name, despite the fact that the Republicans controlled both house of Congress at the time. She never used the words "Ashcroft", "Justice Department", "White House", or "Bush". The only time any particular name came up was when a caller opined that this bill had been drawn up by Daschle's office. Let me repeat: DASCHLE (ominous thunder noises)! Strangely, Rollye neglected to inform the caller (and the rest of the audience) that the bill had actually been prepared, like its predescessor, by the Justice Department, headed by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

It's something I've noticed about conservative talk radio. They will criticize their own side if they feel it necessary, but never personally. If he Democrats do something they don't like, everyone from Rush Limbaugh straight on down the line will start the "Daschle" routine up in no time flat, and they'll be sure to tell you, every four and a half seconds, that it's the Democrats who are doing this awful thing (probably trying to build low income housing, or something sick and evil like that). But when the Republicans do something they don't like (it doesn't happen much, which is another post in itself), it's never the Republicans. It's Congress. It's Government. It's those airheads in Washington. Conveniently, this ends up supporting, rather than attacking, the standard GOP anti-government ideology.

You see that: even when Republicans in Washington piss off talk radio, talk radio spins it around to help them. Brilliant! You have to admire the pure gall of it, don't you? I call it offensive damage control. It's one small part of the co-ordinated Right Wing message machine that is currently dominating our national marketplace of ideas. More on that later.

2003-04-21T14:48:00.000-04:00

Detroit Red Wings Swept by Anaheim. Or is it all just pro-American propaganda? Calpundit reports, you laugh. A lot.

2003-04-18T10:42:00.000-04:00

Quality Blow Jobs Available. I checked my e-mail this morning to see an e-mail from my Moot Court Instructor informing his classes that I was among the "Best Oralist" winners for our class. Needless to say, this has produced predictable ribbing among my friends. I walked into a conversation just twenty minutes ago when several of my male friends were analyzing my "oral" skills, all of them claiming to be drawing on personal experience. The award, then, is as much a downer as anything else. I mean, it isn't any sort of "real" award. It something which has dubious resume value, at best. I mean, there isn't even a certificate. But it is encouraging to know that I'm pretty good at oral arguments, and it justifies my decision to pursue Moot Court rather than Law Journal in my second year.

Of course, friends of mine teasing me for being "gay" (which, if you care to know, I'm not) is nothing new. I always try to take it in good humor, but then, it is indicative of a pervasive kind of homophobia that homosexuality is applied to known heterosexuals as a form of insult. That's something that has concerned me for many years. But what can you do?

I'll try to do some real blogging later today. If you couldn't tell, this was a "Haven't-posted-in-a-while-but-I-don't-have-anything-to-say" post. Sorry about that.

2003-04-16T15:43:00.000-04:00

Consensus by Fraud. We all remember, or at least, should remember, those chilling polls showing that a shitload of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11, despite the utter lack of evidence to support this belief (and despite the fact that even the Bush Administration, which has no particular loyalty to truth, nevermade this claim). Billmon wonders if the same thing might be happening again, this time with regard to WMDs in Iraq.

This isn't entirely of the Administration's doing, but they are certainly benefitting from it. When suspected WMDs are discovered, it's a huge, huge story. When those suspicions are proved false, that's a minor, minor story. That's a simple reality of the news business (which the Republicans also exploited under Clinton: allegations, big news; exonerations, not news). The result is that we've all heard the breathless and tense stories about possible WMD findings, but only the most observant of us may have caught all of the retractions.

I've seen this myself at law school. Several of my friends are utterly convinced that WMDs were found in Iraq, thus justifying the war retroactively. [There are two errors in that view, I feel, but at the moment, I'm only interested in the error of fact.] No WMDs have been found in Iraq. The UN didn't find any, and so far, the US hasn't found any. The question is, do Americans know that? Do they care? [It isn't necessarily wrong not to care, after all.] But the rest of the world knows, and the rest of the world cares.

If WMDs are not found, it may not hurt Bush, but it will definitely hurt America. According to a partial transcript posted by Eschaton, Ari Fleischer said "I think our credibility is rather strong." It isn't. It's actually extremely weak throughout most of the world, and whether or not Bush gets blamed at the polls next year, that is a serious problem for us all.

UPDATE: For more on this, see Jake Tapper's over at Salon.com.

2003-04-16T12:01:00.000-04:00

This was a Long Time Coming. A Venezualan general has accused the United States of taking part in the failed coup against President Hugo Chavez last year. According to this article, "Officials in Washington said they told opponents of Chavez they would not support any unconstitutional activity aimed at removing the leftist leader from power." Sorry, that doesn't pass the smell test. White House officials were talking to opponents of Chavez, but they didn't support unconstitutional means? Perhaps, but it looks pretty suspicious, especially in light of the fact that the United States certainly dragged its feet on condemning the coup, waiting until it was clear that their boys had lost before pointing out that military coups were just not a good thing, by the way.

There needs to be a Congressional investigation of this issue. There also needs to be a more aggressive attempt by the federal government to combat poverty. These two issues are utterly unrelated, but both have approximately the same probability of coming about.

2003-04-15T10:51:00.000-04:00

"How Could Anyone Possibly Be That Stupid?" Joe Conason asks this question after learning that U.S. troops were placed to guard the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and nothing else. No surprise, then, that the National Museum of Antiquities, housing quite literally the cultural heritage of all the world, was looted, causing the loss and destruction of 170,000 irreplaceable items, and the Iraqi Oil Ministry was not tampered with at all. Conason is even more concerned about the defensive, evasive, and downright belligerent attitude Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld took to Tim Russert's questioning on Sunday's Meet the Press. "Bad things do happen in life and people do loot," he said, but people didn't loot the Oil Ministy.

Is it any wonder that the American troops, just one week after the fall of Baghdad, are already wearing out their welcome? For the 1700th time so far, Bush's incompetence is standing in the way of achieving his own stated aims, but magically, doesn't seem to be getting in the way of him achieving any of the things that he denies being motivated by, like oil. How 'bout that!

2003-04-14T15:14:00.000-04:00

Fear Factor. Steve Gilliard, sitting in for the big guy at DailyKos, has today posted this tremendous essay on the impact of fear on American society post 9/11. It's pretty clear to me that fear is driving a lot of the things that are happening in America today. On one hand, the Bush Administration continuously employed fear in arguing for its war in Iraq. The spectre of chemical and biological weapons, linked with the spectre of terrorism, created a compelling (though ultimately fraudulent) argument. [The fear of nukes was even more compelling, before the U.N. inspectors let the cat out of the bag that Saddam had no nuke program to speak of.] Moreover, fear has allowed the governmet to get away with things that, I think, never would have flown pre-9/11. Like the USA PATRIOT Act. To be sure, 9/11 required several substantive shifts in policy, most of which have yet to occur, but also, 9/11 has justified policy changes which are not necessary or even desirable.

Gilliard's comments regarding "supporting the troops" are also well taken. It's all well and good to send the troops wetnaps and copies of Maxim (which are, I'm reliably informed, much sought after), but it would be much better if we gave them a better life, better job, better home, when they returned. The first thing we could do, for instance, is stop cutting veterans' benefits to save money for more tax cuts for the wealthy. Just a thought.

Anyway, it's a provacative essay, worthy of your consideration.

2003-04-14T10:15:00.000-04:00

Looting History. Joanne Mariner, human rights attorney and columnist for FindLaw.com, argues that the Pentagon (specifically Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld) has been altogether too dismissive about concerns of looting in Baghdad. Today's column makes the point that the United States was obligated by international law to protect the cultural treasures of Iraq, that the National Museum of Iraq pleaded with American troops to protect the Museum (saying it would have taken two troops and a tank, that's it), American forces flat-out refused to help, and as a result 170,000 priceless artefacts, some dating back to the earliest days of human civilization, have been stolen or destroyed.

This is a huge tragedy to anthropology, archeology, history, and art. It was totally preventable, but the United States didn't prevent it. Rumsfeld, who surely had bigger things to worry about, might at least have the decency to feign regret.

2003-04-14T09:58:00.000-04:00

If It Has to be Said, There's a Problem. Courtesy of Ruminate This, here's a great headline from The Mirror: We Will Find WMD, Powell Says. Ok, now I've been against the war since since late last year. I always assumed that Iraq had lots of nasty chemical and biological weapons. I also assumed that Iraq had a thriving nuclear development operation, and would, if unhindered, have nukes within couple of years. Even still, I opposed war, because I thought that UN inspectors could ably handle each of these problems without the necessity of killing thousands of Iraqis and more than 100 brave American soldiers. Of course, now we know, from Hans Blix, that Iraq had no nuclear development program. Also, after having been in Iraq for nearly a month, and after controlling very nearly the entire country, we've found nada on the chem/bio weapons front.

My question, aimed specifically at pro-war people, as well as those of my friends who have beens somewhat ambivalent about the whole time, is this: does the continued failure of the U.S. to find WMDs shake your faith in the wisdom of this war? Assuming we never find and WMDs, and it eventually becomes clear that, despite Saddam's public muscle-flexing, he actually never had any at all: then what?

Personally, I think it's likely that, at some point, we will find some WMDs, probably not very many, prossibly not weaponized, and probably in a condition of severe disrepair. At this point, is there any likelihood that they could turn public opinion retroactively against the war? I doubt it. Americans love wars, I'm sad to say, and they especially love relatively quick ones in which very few American troops are killed. But still, I'm curious how pro-war people would respond to the eventuality that, just as those dirty treasonous peaceniks have been saying all along, Iraq was absolutely no threat to us at all, ever, and this war was therefore sold to the American people on the back of a huge fraud.

2003-04-11T09:31:00.000-04:00

Holy Shit! I'm going to the Flyers game tonight!! My law school friend Dave (well, one of them), asked me this morning what I was doing tonight. I looked at him like he had three heads and said "I'm watching the Flyers", with a clear inflection which conveyed a sense of "What the fuck do you think I'm doing?" I thought he was going to suggest that we go out to some sports bar or something, which I would have had to reluctantly decline. You see... tonight is the big night. Lima Beanz, in a moment of semi-drunken bravado, bet me $10 that he could drink three beers per period during tonight's game. Easy money, it seems to me, because Lima Beanz is way out of shape when it comes to drinking. But no, Dave asked me if I wanted to see the game live. My mind froze. I fell over onto the cold hard cement. I could feel the rain falling gently on the back of my head as I stared blankly into the barren ground, drool falling slowly from my quivering lips. After being resuscitated, I agreed. I can't even express to you how excited I am to be going.

If you're reading this, Lima Beanz, you are NOT off the hook. You have two options: either do the nine per period tonight, and we'll settle up when I see you again after the game, or postpone to another game, with the understanding that if the Flyers are eliminated before you have a chance to do it, I win by default.

2003-04-10T18:39:00.000-04:00

Dangerous Dickheads. DailyKos has a post about the Baseball Hall of Fame cancelling their planned 15th anniversary celebration of Bull Durham because Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are against the war. I'm speechless. Check out the coments on dKos's post and you'll see a fierce debate about free speech. Unfortunately, both sides seem to have it wrong. This really isn't a free speech issue. It's a dickhead issue. It reminds of the proposed Dixie Chicks ban I told you about. [Recap: the 3L class president wanted to band Dixie Chicks music from the annual Barrister's Ball, but was eventually overruled.]

The Baseball Hall of Fame is under no Constitutional, legal, or even moral obligation to celebrate the 15th anniversay of Bull Durham. It sure would have been nice, though, as it is an excellent film deserving of special recognition. But the celebration was cancelled merely because Sarandon and Robbins are against the war in Iraq and aren't terribly fond of Bush. What possible motivation could there be for this decision, do you think? Hmm, well, maybe they could have sat down with Sarandon and Robbins and discussed the issue, agreeing to a no-politics rule. I can't say for sure, but I bet that would have been fine, especially considering Sarandon's performance at the Oscars: she briefly flashed the "peace" sign, and made no other comment. Obviously, Susan Sarandon is not Michael Moore, and she can keep her opinions to herself when she feels it appropriate to do so.

Alternatively, the Hall of Fame could have come up with some lame, obviously bogus explanation for cancelling the event. Even if Robbins and Sarandon were aware of what was really going on, it probably wouldn't have hit the news, and you and I wouldn't be talking about it.

Unfotunately, the Hall of Fame didn't do this. They decided, instead, to cancel the event because of Sarandon's and Robbins's political views, to tell them so explicitly, and now we've got a problem. Why? Because it further ingrains the idea, gaining more power everyday, that dissent will not be tolerated in this country. This is another development in the Republican PC campaign. Apparently, you are not allowed to publicly disagree with the President during war time. I should have to say this, but this is actually a pretty recent development in this country. Well, at least, this is a new iteration. Political dissenters were jailed in the early 19th century, and dissent during World War I was a very, very dangerous activity. But lately, we've all basically come to expect that, in this country, we're allowed to publicly disagree with our leaders.

Not for much longer, I'm afraid. Oh, there's not going to be any law passed any time soon to make it a crime to disagree with Bush. Even the feckless and timid Democrats would stand up to anything like that. But there will be a social cost to dissent, enforced by the P.C. Police (which is just about every Republican politician and pundit in the country). It's that social cost that's be wielded against Sarandon and Robbins. Bull Durham has nothing to do with war in Iraq, or with George W. Bush, or any of that. It's a great movie about baseball. But it won't get it's 15th Anniversary celebration because the Baseball Hall of Fame is run by a bunch of dickheads.

But they're dangerous dickheads, because everytime the P.C. Police enforce the Party line against foolish dissenters, the societal pressure to conform gets stronger. Welcome to the New America. Agree with Bush, or Shut Your God-Damned Face, You Treasonous Fuck!

2003-04-10T15:49:00.000-04:00

So What? Philippe de Croy at The Volokh Conspiracy has been listening to NPR a lot lately (and so have I). He claims that he's figured out the anti-Bush playbook. Well, I hate Bush, and I have my own little internet soapbox where I discuss that quite openly, so I'm something of an expert of the anti-Bush playbook. So let's take a look: First, he says, we must "Make clear that it was obvious all along what the military outcome would be, and that skepticism about it formed no part of your opposition to the war." Time out! It was obvious all along what the military outcome would be. Everybody said so. Liberals said "It might not be as easy as the White House is leading people to believe," and it wasn't. But everybody knew that the U.S. military would win militarily. That's what they're trained to do, and there's no better military in the world. Yes, the Super Bowl champs have beaten the local High School squad. So let's have a party and re-elect Bush while we're at it, because only a truly great President could have pulled off the military defeat of Saddam Hussein!!

Ok, let me wipe the vomit off of my chin, and then we'll continue. "State that of course you are happy for the Iraqi people -- those who weren't killed in the invasion -- but be careful never to end a sentence that way. Instead, always follow that sentiment with another that begins "but," or "; I only wish..." or "I only hope..." and then segue into other concerns -- the "diplomatic mess" we've created, or the "long term" picture, or "winning the peace," and so forth." Ok, I do this all the time. In fact, I did something like this just yesterday in an e-mail to Keith. But this is entirely in keeping with what I will call the liberal conception of the war. First, secure the military victory, which might be difficult but will definitely be achieved. Second, turn your attention to the deeper issues, the thornier problems, and the potential diplomatic pitfalls. Right now, we're on the cusp of that divide. Therefore, I'm very happy for the Iraqi people, but I hope we do better with Iraq than we did in Afghanistan. I was very happy for the Afghans, too, when women began throwing down their burqas and attending public schools. But, a year later, the situation in Afghanistan has not progressed, and is threatening to slide back into Taliban hands. I've said from the beginning that this entire enterprised must be judged, and can only be judged, by the situation in Iraq post-Saddam. So far, it's a kind of jubilant anarchy, as far as I can tell. For the rest, we'll have to wait see, and liberals would be well advised to mention the considerable difficulties that the Bush Administration will have to face, to try to make sure that those challenges are met.

"Talk a lot about things that "aren't clear" or that "remain to be seen." These sorts of assertions are good because they are hard to falsify. E.g.: "it's not clear how much of the excitement the Iraqis are showing is because Saddam is gone and how much of it is because of all the looting they are able to do." Or: "it remains to be seen whether the factions in the country can be governed in anything like the way the administration is imagining."" Is it clear what the Iraqis are celebrating? Is it clear that the factions can be governed? In other words, are these not perfectly good questions?

"Be forward-looking. Or past-looking. The point is to de-emphasize the present. Dwell on what hasn't been done, not what has been done. The sudden liberation of millions of people from tyranny is not, repeat not, the most important thing. Say that what counts is what comes next, that all this will only be meaningful if it ends up leading to true democracy and prosperity for Iraq." Excuse me? Let's try a thought experiment: imagine that the next leader of Iraq is a cruel and despotic dictator named Dassam Suhhein, who terrorizes his citizens, executes political dissidents, and starts trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction so he can sell them to international terrorists, then what's this war been for? Is it a good thing that Saddam Hussein is out of power? Certainly! But what comes next is more important, because we don't yet know what exactly the Iraqis have gained. We know that they will no longer be terrorized by Saddam Hussein. Do we know that they will no longer be terrorized? No we don't, and we must make it our mission to assure that they are not.

"Remember: you haven't been proven wrong about anything, and the neocons haven't been proven right about anything." Speaking for myself, I can't think of anything I've been proven wrong about yet. The neocons? They've been proven wrong about Iraq being a "cakewalk". It wasn't. It still isn't.

What really annoys me that de Croy doesn't refute, or even address, and of the claims or arguments he is attributing to the Bush-haters. He is merely objecting, I suppose, to the structure of those arguments, and their presentation. So what? Are these arguments wrong? Why?

It seems to me that conservatives everywhere do not merely want to declare the military mission to be a victory, but they seem to want to claim, or imply, that our objectives have been achieved and we should all pat ourselves on the back. Well, our military objections have been achieved, mostly, and that's wonderful. But liberals have been saying all along that the military phase would be the easy part, and many liberals, including myself, opposed this war in part because they didn't trust the Bush Administration to handle the hard part, which is starting now.

The point is, if you want to criticize the liberal critics, do it. But de Croy's snarky post is entirely without content, and fails to address any of the legitimate and very serious issues raised by the "Bush-haters".

2003-04-10T12:39:00.000-04:00

Battleground God. I was telling Lima Beanz and Jenna about this quiz about belief in God. Before Keith jumps down my throat, let me make clear that this quiz has no stake in pushing for a particular religious view. If you take the quiz, and I hope you do, you will be asked 17 true or false questions. Your answers will be evaluated on two levels. One, if any answer is logically inconsistent with a previous answer, you will take a "direct hit" (your character, innocently walking through the philosophical quagmire, will be shot). Two, if you have an opinion which most people would find ridiculous or what-have-you, you must "bite the bullet".

The idea behind the quiz is to prompt people to think more deeply about their beliefs concerning God. I took the quiz and got a perfect score, in that all of my answers were internally consistent. This doesn't mean, of course, that my views are correct, or that someone with very different views would necessarily score worse. The idea is to promote discussion of these ideas.

Take the quiz. Check it out. Let me know how it goes.

UPDATE: I don't mean to sound like I'm boasting about my perfect score. I'm not. I was a philosophy major, so I spent an unhealthy amount of time thinking about things like this and caring about the internal logical consistency of my beliefs. In other words, I'm a freak, deserving of pity, not praise. But then, you all knew that already, didn't you?

2003-04-09T23:17:00.000-04:00

Today Was a Good Day. I didn't even have to use my AK. But seriously, Josh Marshall, long-time Terminus favorite, has this post, the first in a series (scroll up) trying to put today's dramatic events in ther proper context. The key points are these: 1) on a basic level, it is very good news that so many Iraqis seem to be jubilant at the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; 2) in the long term, this could turn out to be really really good news if it translates to a fundamental change in perception throught the Middle East and the world, 3) the toughest battles will still take place after the war, and they'll be fought not by soldiers, but by politicians and beauracrats, and there's still a lot that could go wrong if we're not careful.

Despite the difficult road ahead, Josh wittles it down for us, and says simply and eloquently that today was a good day.

2003-04-09T18:04:00.000-04:00

NHL Playoffs Begin Tonight. Once again we are at that wonderfully exciting time of year: the NHL playoffs are about to begin, the NBA playoffs are around the corner, and Major League Baseball is underway!! The Flyers open a seven game series tonight against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Philadelphia. Shortly, I will head over to Duke's apartment to commence my annual tradition of drinking two beers per period of Flyers playoff hockey. It's fun and exciting, and makes sure that, no matter what the result, I will be in the proper frame of mind. Happy drunk or sad drunk: it's all up to the Flyers.

I have a good feeling about this series, and a good feeling about tonight's game. I think if the Flyers can out strong, they can put the Maple Leafs on the ropes early. Looking ahead, if the Flyers could manage to win the first two gams in Philly, it'll be all but over for Toronto. On the other hand, Toronto is going to play a very tough brand of physical hockey that would wear anybody down. That makes them a very difficult team to come back against. If the Flyers fall behind, it will be a very difficult series for them to win.

Fortunately, the Flyers finished the season fairly strong, unlike last year when they couldn't buy a goal in the final month of the season. They're playing well, and they look like a team. They've got scoring threats on every line, their defense has been solid, and their goaltender, Roman Cechmanek, has had a sterling year. Their powerplay is still something of a liability, but they've managed to pick it up a bit lately. It should be a really good series, because Toronto is a quality club that plays very hard (and very dirty). If this series goes into six or seven games, things will probably get pretty damn crazy.

Playoff hockey is damn near a totally different sport than regular season hockey, and every little thing takes on huge signifcance. A defensive zone face-off is an edge-of-your-seat moment, and a penalty kill can create nearly unbearable tension. It's extremely exciting, and I can't wait to get started.

2003-04-09T15:21:00.000-04:00

Land of 1000 Wars. I know we're all thinking about Iraq right now, but we should start thinking very seriously about Syria. It's beginning to look like the next war could get started pretty damn soon. Last week, the U.S. Secretary of Offense warned Syria to stop sending night-vision goggles into Iraq. There is significant debate on the question of whether or not Syria was actually doing anything of the kind, but now Rumsfeld isaying that they haven't stopped. See this, from BBC News (scroll down to the entry for 1852 GMT). Is Syria the next target? It's certainly beginning to look that way, especially now that Rummy is claiming that high level Iraqi officials are hiding out in Syria. This could be the beginning of the big media campaign aimed at the American public, to convince us to get behind an expansion of the current war into Syria.

I'm very much afraid that we're going to start leapfrogging from war to unnecessary war, one after the other. And if Afghanistan is anything to go by, we might not wait to finish one war before we start the next. The American people didn't sign on to this. They just barely signed on to Iraq, and they only did so after being barraged by false and distorted "evidence". On the other hand, the country is gripped by the patriotic furore of war, and they are much more likely to follow their leaders with little question.

In the meantime, as we go from war to war to war, Republicans in Congress, in newspapers, on television, and on the internet, will continue to hammer any and every Democrat as "unpatriotic" for any and every disagreement or objection they give voice to.

So let me get out in front of this one: Syria does not threaten us. There is no earthly reason we should put our soldiers in harm's way. Invading Syria will not make us safer in the short term, and the long term is anyone's guess. An invasion of Syria is unjustified, unwarranted, most probably illegal, and simply not a good idea. Iraq is going to be a big problem long after the war is nominally over, just like Afghanistan is a big problem right now.

Win the war. Stop the war. Concentrate on the peace.

2003-04-09T10:44:00.000-04:00

Another Step Toward Tyranny? Republicans in Congress are gearing up to try to make post-9/11 security measures found in the USA PATRIOT Act (which few legislators, if any, actually read before voting on it) permanent. As it stands now, many of the provisions on the Act are scheduled to expire at the end of 2005 unless they are re-authorized. The Republicans just want to skip the re-authorization process entirely and just cut to the chase: make them permanent now.

This is a terrible idea, and a threat to liberty in America. Even now, the government of this country is holding American citizens in prison with secret evidence, no access to counsel or family, and no access to judicial review. What this means is that the government, currently, has the power to arrest literally anyone for literally any reason (or no reason at all), and hold them literally forever, without trial, without a lawyer, without even charging them of a crime. Even if we assume that, to date, no one in the government has abused this authority at all, this is still a state of affairs that every freedom-loving American should oppose. We cannot allow the government to have that kind of power. Rather than make these these permanent, they should be repealed.

Everyone always talks about terrorism, and how we need these new laws to protect us against terrorists. Yet, no one has ever managed to show exactly how these things are supposed to help. More importantly, no one has been able to show that simple civil rights protection mechanisms, which would help protect against both intentional governmental misconduct as well as honest law enforcement mistakes, would in any way hinder our security. Since 9/11, the government has taken every opportunity to expand its powers, expand its ability to compile and maintain detailed data on all citizens, expand its ability to incarcerate people, restrict the ability of the public to act as a watchdog on federal power. Remember, the Republicans are supposed to be the "small government" people.

I know that when anyone hears this stuff they just sort of roll their eyes and ignore it. But imagine if it were you. Even worse, imagine if it was someone you loved. Imagine if some FBI guy, honestly or not, decided to arrest and incarcerate your father, on secret evidence, with no charges. Your father, an American citizen, couldn't see visitors, would have no attorney, and would never get a day in court. You would never know why he was taken, what crime he was suspected of committing, if any, or even where he was being held. Seriously, take a moment and imagine that. If you have white skin, then it's very unlikely that you will ever face this situation. But shouldn't the Constitution apply equally to all people, regardless of race? In fact, doesn't the Fourteenth Amendment specifically say that?

Ever since 9/11, the Constitution has been basically ignored, especially (but by no means exclusively) by the Republicans. The damage has been done, but it can be limited, and overtime, rolled back. The American Civil Liberties Union has been on top of this issue right from the start. I hope that, this time, the Libertarian Party, which claims to support individual liberty and Constitutional rights, stands up to their Republican paymasters and demands that the Constitution be upheld.

2003-04-08T10:35:00.000-04:00

Phone Booth. I saw this film on Saturday with Lima Beanz, The Duke, and Jenna. I enjoyed it tremendously, and I was very happy to notice that it won the box office this weekend with $15 million. According to IMDb, the film only cost $10 million. Anytime a film makes 150% of its budget in its opening weekend, that film is a huge hit, even if doesn't make all that much money.

The film is driven by a fantastic performance by Colin Ferrell, and also by Kiefer Sutherland as the menacing voice on the other end of the phone. The film is extremely short, clocking in at only about 80 minutes, and this is a huge benefit for it. It's compact, and it doesn't include a lot of superfluous material. It's very tight, which makes for a very effective thriller. I also love the of a disembodied voice on the other end of a telephone holding a man's life in the balance, and punishing the man for his sins. There's a sense in which any person exerting control or passing judgment on another person is "playing God", but this set-up makes the link that much clearer, and that much more effective.

But one of the most surprising aspects of the film is its humor. The main character, Stu, is an extremely quick-witted smart-ass, and he deals with the unimaginable stress of his situation by employing sarcastic humor at every turn. The Voice, on the other hand, also uses some lovely homorous flourishes, which makes him that much more interesting than your standard homicidal maniac / serial killer.

Lima Beanz, I think, was disappointed that the villainous character was never given very much motivation, but I think that's fine. A clear part of Stu's predicament is the arbitrariness of it. Stu is a pretty shitty guy, but he's not evil, or a child-molester, or anything like that. There must be millions of people in New York City alone who are at least as guilty as Stu, but Stu was targetted. This makes a crucial point about the arbitrariness of God's judgment (a point made in far more depth by one of my favorite Woody Allen films, Crimes and Misdemeanors). If you're one of those religious bigots who thinks that AIDS was God's judgment against homosexuals, you have to concede that AIDS spared a lot of homosexuals, and kills a lot of heterosexuals. Seems a pretty arbitrary punishment, right? If you believe that God actively punishes wrongdoers, you have to wonder if He's always paying attention.

Of course, talking about God-metaphors in movies tends to put off the general viewer, and I don't want to do that. It is a very tight film, highly entertaining, and wonderfully tense. I recommend it without reservation.

2003-04-07T12:52:00.000-04:00

Mosco Missed the Point. My friend Mosco has written this witless and moronic post on his witless but highly amusing blog. Who's heard this hip-hop song that goes "I know I can / Be what I want to be / If I work hard at it / I'll be where I want to be"? I don't remember the title or the name of the artist, but I've seen the video several times. Let me go on record saying that I think the song sucks hard, but it has an excellent and important message which Mosco managed to miss entirely.

The song is directed at urban minority youths, who unfortunately did not enjoy the priviledges of Mosco's middle-class suburban upbringing. Mosco's claim is that the message, as quoted above, is simply wrong. Technically, I suppose I have to agree with him. But the song is so much more than. The point isn't that any kid can do anything they want if they work hard enough. The point is that every kid has a multitude of options. The point is to keep your head up, don't get yourself dragged down by the pimps, pushers, and prostitutes, the gangs and the guns, the thugs and the dealers and the crooked cops. The point is that you don't have to conform to the "Thug-Life" culture, you can make your own way. The point is that blacks are the inheritors of a gloriously rich cultural and historical legacy, which is de-emphasized, if not ignored, in American public schools. The point is that urban minority children must actively resist te defeatist elements that surround them, and rise above the special obstacles that they were unfortunate enough to be born into.

The song makes an important statement that rap artists are in a particularly good position to make. Despite the fact that I don't care for the song on a musical level, I'm glad that it's a hit, and that it gets radio-play and air-time on MTV. As a longtime fan of Public Enemy, I'm always gratified to see other musicians pursuing music that has a message deeper than "It's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes."

2003-04-07T12:07:00.000-04:00

Depressing Developments. I'm tempted to rage against the incompetent short-sightedness of the Bush Administration, and there's no doubt that they deserve it, but I just don't have the strength. I just feel dejected and helpless. Is this really the best we could manage?

The New York Times reports this morning that the Taliban is still very much a force in Afghanistan. This is the quote that kills me: "...the Taliban is not only determined to remain a force in [Afghanistan], but is reorganizing and reviving its command structure." Read the article. Ask yourself, who the hell is in charge of all this shit?

Homeland Security is about a lot more than color-coded warning systems and draconian reductions in civil liberty protections. Our homeland security depends on the political stability of the Karzai regime. It is not politically stable. If the Taliban, or something like it, is allowed to regain control of major portions of Afghanistan, then we'll have to deal with them all over again. Unless, of course, we're too busy with Iraq, Syria, Iran, or whomever.

2003-04-07T10:10:00.000-04:00

The Bond Project: Tomorrow Never Dies. The first thing I think of when I think about this film is the title. It was supposed to be "Tomorrow Never Lies", which makes an awful lot more sense given the story, but it somehow got miscommunicated at some step along the way, and the producers, foolishly, decided to go along with the error. Still, "a rose by any other name" and all that. Had the title been the more appropriate "Tomorrow Never Lies", this film still wouldn't be all that good.

Beginning with the positive, we have an extremely slick and glossy modern action movie. The Bond franchise continues to maintain a very high standard of special effects, and this film is chock full of spectacular action set-pieces. The problem, as usual, comes down to the script. We have in this film a man who might just be the dumbest Bond villain in history. Consider how MI6 figured out that Eliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) was behind everything: they deduced that they printed their newspapers before the news possibly could have been known. What an obvious blunder! Proceeding from this is the usual cat and mouse sequence in which Bond socializes with the man he already knows to be guilty for the purpose of discovering is overall masterplan.

This film throws Teri Hatcher into the mix, in a role bursting with unfulfilled potential. Hatcher's character was underwritten, and Hatcher's performance totally failed to add any interest or depth to her character. The set-up of having Bond rely on a gilted former-girlfriend for vital information allows the development of an added dynamic to the film. Fortunately or unfortunately, Hatcher's character is killed off very abruptly with very little fanfare. The scene immediately following her death is awful also. Vincent Schiavelli's performance as the sinister Dr. Kaufman is awful. It works extremely well as a stand-alone scene, and it's far past time that someone took a few jabs at the hackneyed "torturer taunting the intended victim" scene, but the humor of it hits a very bad note in context with the death of the film. The movie asked us, the audience, to care about Hatcher's character, and then followed up her death with a humorous scene, making clear that this apparently big event is to have no impact whatsoever.

Michelle Yeoh's appearance is much applauded by Bond fans, but I don't really see why. She's basically a pale retread of Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me, without the emotional element. Ok, so she kicks ass, and as nice as it is to have a "Bond-girl" who really is a near-equal to Bond himself, it would be better still if the filmmakers bothered to make an interesting character out of her. They did not. As impressive as the fight-scenes and stunts are, Wai Lin is actually an even less interesting character than Paris Carver, which is admittedly something of an achievement in itself.

What works about this movie is the themes and ideas bubling beneath the surface. Elliot Carver is a wicked amalgam of Rupert Murdoch and Charles Foster Kane (and I never imagined to see a Bond film making reference to Citizen Kane, but then, The Spy Who Loved Me used a musical cue from Lawrence of Arabia, so why not? This film actually makes powerful points about several issues that are near and dear to my heart: the power of the media, and the dangers of media conglomeration. But, if anything has been made clear by this point, a Bond film does not live and die by its underlying themes.

Despite welcome appearances by Joe Don Baker (Mitchell!) and Geoffrey Palmer (whose interactions with Judi Dench are particularly delicious if, like me, you are a fan of "As Time Goes By"), this film is, all in all, rather slight and unsatisfying. It isn't bad, by any stretch, and it's actually a lot of fun. But it tilts a bit too far toward humor, which undercuts the power of the visuals, the action, and the themes.

The Bottom Line: Not a great film, but an enjoyable action film despite its flaws.

The Bond Project will continue with The World is Not Enough.

UPDATE: Permalinks are all screwed up, so I haven't been able to add this to the navi-bar yet. This may delay the final conclusion of the Project.

2003-04-04T09:55:00.000-05:00

Political Correctness Run Amok. For years and years I've been perplexed by the demonization of political correctness. I'll admit, I'm probably missing the boat on this one. But I've always been puzzled by people who spit the words contemptuously out of their mouths. The way always saw it, political correctness was about taking a few simple steps to prevent yourself from needlessly upsetting someone. I saw it as no more insidious that good manners, but I'm clearly in the minority on that one, because a lot of people seem to think that political correctness threatened free speech.

I'm beginning to see the point of their concern. But, as I think I've mentioned before, political correctness has been changing. It used to be associated with the left, with the insistence that we use non-offensive terms for describing people. And I'm down with that stuff. If I want to offend someone, I will, but I certainly don't want to offend someone by mistake. But the new political correctness is coming entirely from the right these days. Bill Maher lost his show, ironically titled "Politically Incorrect" for saying that flying a plane into a building is a lot less cowardly than launching a cruise missile at a target thousands of miles away. Now that some time has passed, maybe we can sit back and judge that comment. Does anyone want to defend the position that launching the cruise missile requires more guts? Do you think anyone could make an argument? Do you think there could be any serious disagreement at all? I doubt it. But he lost his job because "he shouldn't have said it".

No, if you're one of these anti-P.C. people, shouldn't you be all over that one. A man losing his job for saying something which was true, but which he shouldn't have said. Now, Bill Maher offended a lot of people with that remark. A lot of people seemed to think that he was impugning the bravery of the soldiers in the U.S. military. I don't know where they got that from. Nothing he said would indicate that conclusion. But people were offended, advertisers started panicking, and the show was shelved. Don't cry for Bill Maher, though, he's back on HBO, a channel with some balls.

We're getting a lot more cases of the P.C. police lately. Nothing like a war to bring that out, and once again, it's coming entirely from the right. Most recently, Sen. John Kerry, Democrat from Massachusetts and candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, has called for "regime change" in America. Apparently, this is an outrage. I can't figure out why. Think about it: Bush is the president, Kerry wants to be, and there's an election coming up in a year and a half. What result do you think Kerry is rooting for in the 2004 election? Even in time of war, presidents face electoral challenges from the opposition party. FDR won a very tight race in 1944. But, for some reason, Republicans and others are screaming bloody murdered, apparently outraged that this America-hating traitor wants Bush to be voted out of office in 2004. What gives? Does this make any sense? Can't we assume that all of the would-be presidential candidates want Bush to lose?

So why does Kerry get singled out? Two reasons: one, he could win. The White House has been worried about Kerry from the beginning. More imortantly, because he used the words "regime change". You see, you're not allowed to use the words "regime change" with respect to President Bush, because that creates a comparison between Bush and Hussein, and that's not fair.

Bullshit. Bush wants to regime change Saddam Hussein through warfare. Fine. Kerry wants to regime change Bush through politics. Fine. What is the problem here?

The lesson here is just this: political correctness is a bipartisan phenomenon, but it is still highly associated in most people's minds with the left. Many of the dangerous, pernicious, freedom-stifling effects that conservatives claim are just as prevalent (if not more, as I believe) on the right. Watch this war for the clearest example. They used to attack us for not supporting the troops. Then, we made clear how much we support the troops. So, they claim that we say we support the troops, but that you can't really support the troops if you don't support the president, because, as commander-in-chief, the president is the uber-troop. This would be funny if it weren't so dumb. The point is that dissent is being demonized, and has been demonized ever since 9/11. It's getting worse now, and we've all got to be vigilant and strong. Mark my words, this war is going to have descendants, and one of those descendants will be in progress during campaign 2004. It might be the long-term ccupation of Iraq, or it might be war with Iran or Syria. I don't know. But the Republicans are going to keep this going indefinately, and someone in Washington, or someone in the media, is going to tell us that voting against George W. Bush in 2004 is unpatriotic, if not treason. It's going to be said. Maybe by Ann Coulter, maybe by Tom Delay, I don't know. But that idea is going to planted in the public mind, and some of the public will believe it.

Get ready. The election is coming, and it's going to be really, really ugly.

2003-04-02T13:08:00.000-05:00

New Wrinkle on the Weed Case. Big news from TalkLeft on the Ed Rosenthal case. If you recall, Ed Rosenthal was a grower and distributor of marijuana in California. He was operating under the California state law permitting the cultivation of pot for medicinal purposes. The jury was not informed of this fact, and they convicted him under federal anti-drug laws. Once they realized, after the trial, what was really going on, several jurors, joined by California prosectors, began campaigning to overturn the conviction. Well, the latest is that one of the jurors has come forward, admitting to the judge that she sought outside legal advice relating to the case and shared that advice with another juror. This may not sound like much, but it's huge. Mr. Rosenthal should immediately be granted a new trial.

If John Ashcroft weren't such a hypocritical asshole, the government would decline to re-prosecute following the tossing out of the verdict. But then, if Ashcroft weren't such a hypocritical asshole, Rosenthal never would have been prosecuted in the first place. Stay tuned for developments, and while you're there, add TalkLeft to your bookmarks. It's a great site for politics and news relating to criminal law.

UPDATE: Brutal Hugs puts this issue into the context of the war on drugs, and throws out some powerful stats showing just had badly we are losing. There are a lot of alternatives to the war on drugs, which is ridiculously expensive, totally ineffective, and has some pretty negative consequence, but those alternatives never seem to get discussed by politicians of either party. That means pivate citizens like us have to take it to the politicians, not simply wait for "leadership" that will never come. I'll be discussing this issue much more in the future.

2003-04-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

The New Civil Rights Movement. The rally yesterday was fantastic. I haven't had so much fun in ages (well, without alcohol). There were only seven of us on a 60-person bus. Rutgers - Camden Pride!! [Seriously, it was embarassing. But some of us got together on the bus and are discussing creating a new progressive activism group at the law school. If this goes anywhere, I'll let you know.] We were dropped off right outside the Supreme Court building just before 9:00am. There was already a large rally growing quickly. There were numerous speakers representing various interests, and the crowd was filled with contingents from law schools and colleges all over the country. It was fun to read all of the signs and T-shirts the people had brought. One guy had a T-shirt with Clarence Thomas's picture on it, which read "Every brother ain't a brother." That one got a lot of attention. One sign said "My SATs are higher than yours, Mr. President." There were several signs pointing out the hypocrisy of a white rich-kid legacy-admit ostensibly upholding the principles of meritocracy.

Let me branch off at this point and address something important. Meritocracy is a code-word for racism. There are no two ways about it. Oh, I know, it sounds like a nice idea, and there are plenty of honest Joes who honestly feel that meritocracy is the way to go. Like my friend Lima Beanz. But whenever you hear someone in Washington talk about meritocracy, listen close. They don't talk about legacy admissions. They don't talk about colleges which regularly admit the dim sons of major contributors. They don't talk about athletics. Think about it, Lima Beanz. A true meritocracy would destroy college sports, and hurt those professional sports which rely on collegiate players. Do you really think Allen Iverson should have gone to Georgetown? And if he hadn't, then what? He might have gotten himself into the NBA anyway, but maybe not. And even if he had, he wouldn't have had those couple of years in Georgetown to mature. But, more to the point, notice the fact that people only seem to praise meritocracy when they are attacking affirmative action. There has never been, and there never will be, a true meritocracy in this country. And the dirty little secret is that nobody wants one. Get used to it. And, given that, why should we allow the benefits to rich white kids to continue while we eliminate the benefits to minorities? Isn't that racist?

Consider also that the holy Bible of meritocracy, the standardized test, is itself racist. Or, more specifically, classist. This is inevitable, unfortunately. I don't think you can write a test, other than pure mathematics, that doesn't have some sort of bias, but it would be nice if someone decided to try. But that's only one problem with standardized testing. Think about this: what is a standardized test supposed to test? What does the SAT test? Intelligence? Studies suggest strongly that the SAT is a very poor predictor for intelligence, academic success, or professional success. So what does it test? It tests how well you take the SAT, and that's all it tests. There is a fee for taking the test. Re-taking the test costs more. There is a huge fee for the major SAT-prep courses, which promise to add points to your score. Once again, this translates directly into an unfair bias toward the wealthy. If you have the money, you can get pretty damn good at taking that test, and you can add serious points to your score. You can go to better schools than some poor fool who can't afford the prep materials or the re-takes. Meritocracy my ass.

What I learned yesterday at this rally is that affirmative action is crucial to the future of racial justice in this country. For all the barriers that we throw in front of minorities in this country, we throw them this little bone of affirmative action, which really isn't much. We don't give them a decent education. They don't have the same access to health care as affluent whites. They get higher sentences for the same crimes, they get lower wages for the same jobs, and they face social prejudices every day that most white people cannot even imagine. Against that, we allow some of them to get into college, despite the fact that they haven't been given the same tools to succeed as affluent whites have been given. If they fail, it because they haven't been given the tools to succeed. If they succeed, it is because they have worked harder to overcome the barriers they faced. It's true that the system will never be fair until there is bottom-up reform of the entire education system, but that isn't on the political agenda of any major party. Since Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court case which outlawed segregation, the government has refused to address the fundamental problems in the education system which fail to provide a decent minimum standard of education to all Americans. And, for a variety of reasons, the shortcomings in the education system are a far greater burden on minority children than on white children. The real solution to the problems of minority access to higher education must be found in public education reform. But until that happens, affirmative action must be maintained.

The thousands of people at yesterday's rally understand this. They understand that affirmative action creates as many problems as it solves, and is in no way the ideal solution to this problem. But they notice that the people who want to eliminate affirmative action have no plan to address the underlying issue. Their demands, our demands, are very simple. Fix the system first. If you are so offended by racial preferences in higher ed. admission standards, fine: tear down the racial barriers that make them necessary. Until the fundamental issues are addressed (whether successfully or not, let's at least acknowledge the problem and try to find a solution), any attempt to eliminate affirmative action is racist on its face, and must be fought on those terms.

The rally yesterday was overwhelmingly made up of students: law students, college students, and high school students. The young people are leading the way, picking up the fight that their parents abandoned. Martin Luther King's dream has not been accomplished, and much of the progress made in the 1960s has been lost. Its so encouraging to realize that so many young people are aware of these issues and fighting for change. The rally yesterday was referred to several times as the beginning steps of a new, youth-led civil rights movement in America. I don't know if that's just crowd-pleasing rhetoric, but it was an effective call-to-arms for everyone there. Is this the beginning of a new civil rights movement? I don't know. But it should be. It must be.

2003-03-31T22:54:00.000-05:00

Get On the Bus. Posting will be light tomorrow. Well, it was light today, but that's just because I didn't have much to say. But tomorrow it will be light because I'll be in Washington, D.C. Tomorrow, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the big affirmative action cases coming out of the University of Michigan. This is a huge case, as it will likely determine the future of affirmative action for at least the next few years. Whatever happens when the decision finally comes down, it won't be the last chapter. The most likely result is that affirmative action will be saved, in some form or another, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who holds the crucial swing vote in this case. Renhquist, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy will certainly produce an opinion openly hostile to all forms of affirmative action, as they have in the past. Breyer, Stevens, O'Connor, and Souter will most likely join with Ginsburg in upholding at least one of the affirmative action systems under review, and laying out the latest set of rules governing the use of racial preferences in higher education admissions. But, Ginsburg is widely expected to step down at the end of this session, and Bush will surely attempt to replace her with a Scalia clone, as he more or less promised to do during campaign 2000. If you hate blacks, you have a lot to be happy about. When Texas, California, and Florida (hmm... one of these things is not like the others) abolished affirmative action within the last several years, all of them saw an immediate and precipitous decline in minority attendance in colleges and graduate schools of over 75%. The importance of that statistic cannot be overstated. In today's world, it is all but impossible to get ahead with out a college degree (and difficult enough to get ahead with one). Factor in the shitty public education most minorities receive when compared with whites, plus the well-documented racial biases of the standardized tests used in college admissions, and you have the recipe for a permanent racial underclass in this country.

The good news, though, is that all three active Philadelphia sports teams won today. The Phillies beat the Marlins 8-5, the Sixers beat the Magic in OT, and the Flyers trounced the pathetic Pirates of Pittsburgh 6-1. The Mets, on the other hand, got their asses handed to them, 15-2, by the Chicago Cubs. So at least we have something to smile about.

I'll be back at some point, either tomorrow night or Wednesday, with a full report on my adventures in our nation's capital. Right now, I'm going to bed. I have to be at Rutgers at 5:15am to catch that bus. Fight the Power!

UPDATE: I should clarify: I won't actually be going to the Supreme Court. It's a huge case, and very unlikely that we'd have any chance of getting in. But there will be rallies and events and stuff, so I've been told. Should be fun.

2003-03-31T15:38:00.000-05:00

Opening Day. In this very difficult time, when American lives are at risk half-a-world away, it's important to keep something for yourself to simply find enjoyment in. It does no one any good to worry all the time, and we should get on with our regular lives as much as possible. Based on personal anecdoctal experience, no one actually needs to be told this. Most of my friends seem moderately to extremely disinterested in the war. But for those of us who do worry, we now have something to help take our minds off of it. Major League Baseball is here.

As a Phillies fan, it's been about ten years since the opening of baseball season presented any kind of excitement or optimism. This year, I am excited, and I'm hoping for a prety good year. Jeff Cooper over at Cooped Up has been cooped up a little too long, appartently, because he thinks the Mets will beat Philly to land the 2nd place spot on the NL East standings. I disagree. Philly pride!

I should mention that Prof. Cooper, who operates an excellent blog which I read frequently, could hardly have done more to get under my skin than to predict that the Mets would pass the Phillies this year. I despise the Mets, even more than I do the Yankees. [I should point out that I hate every New York sports team... every last one. The Mets are my least favorite New York sports team.] I now feel, despite our broad agreement on many political and legal issues, a deep and resounding contempt for Prof. Cooper. I mean, it's one thing for my friend Mosco to be a Mets fan, because (judging from his blog) he is clearly insane. But Prof. Cooper, on the other hand, has shown no signs of mental infirmity up to this point. It's very distressing.

Look, I don't know much about baseball. I like it, but I'm not one of those fans who knows lots of trivia about its history. I know very little about it's present, actually. But I am prepared to predict that the Phillies will finish this season ahead of the Mets in the NL East standings, and will win the majority of their games against the Mets. If Prof. Cooper thinks otherwise, it calls into question his judgment in every other regard as well.

The Phillies and the Mets won't face each other, if I read the schedule correctly, until mid-May. I will be watching.

At the time of writing, the Mets are losing to the Cubs 10-2 in the bottom of the sixth.

2003-03-30T10:26:00.000-05:00

Looks Like Somebody Fucked Up Here. Via Talking Points Memo, loads of articles about just how badly Donald Rumsfeld fucked up this whole war plan. I'm a little up in the air on this. Some of my fellow liberals are suggesting that Runsfeld is being scapegoated to cover Bush's ass, but I don't think so. From what I know of Rumsfeld, these stories seem prety plausible to me.

Rumsfeld Faulted for Troop Dilution. "Current and former U.S. military officers are blaming Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his aides for the inadequate troop strength on the ground in Iraq, saying the civilian leaders "micromanaged" the deployment plan out of mistrust of the generals and an attempt to prove their own theory that a light, maneuverable force could handily defeat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein." This could play very badly for the Administration. Rumsfeld probably has some good points to make about career military guys who can't get there heads out of the cold war model. The fact of the matter is, however, that if a civilian political decision made over the objection of the career military fails, and the military starts crying "I told you so," then the guys who made the decision are in a world of shit.

Rumsfeld based his war plan on the assumption that Iraq would not fight. The military guys said "We need more troops." Rumsfeld said "Not if they don't fight." "What if they do fight?" "They're not going to fight." They fought. We need more troops. It'll take tham a couple more weeks to get there. Now we have to decide whether to invade Baghdad with what we've got, or to give Saddam Hussein a huge political/public-relations win by waiting three weeks until we're ready. That's an ugly choice.

War's Military, Political Goals Begin to Diverge. "Ten days into the invasion of Iraq, the political imperative of waging a short and decisive campaign is increasingly at odds with the military necessity of preparing for a protracted, more violent and costly war, according to senior military officials." This is exactly what I'm talking about. This country was never solidly behind thi war, pretty much until it started. And when it started, we all pretty muc thought it was going to be pretty easy. That is to say, we were all told, by Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, and others, that it was most likely going to be pretty easy. So far, it hasn't been. Even the disloyal Iraqi in the south are fighting. Even Iraqi dissidents who fled the country to escape Saddam Hussein are returning to fight against the Greater Satan. Our supply line is stretched, our troops are underdeployed and undersupplied.

"Top Army officers in Iraq say they now believe that they effectively need to restart the war. Before launching a major ground attack on Iraq's Republican Guard, they want to secure their supply lines and build up their own combat power. Some timelines for the likely duration of the war now extend well into the summer, they say." The Administration does not want to hear this, and it really doesn't want to read it in the Washington Post. Most analyses that I've heard suggest that if the war isn't over within a month of when if began, the Administration may have a political problem. One month would be mid to late April. "Well into the summer" is three months longer than that.

What this means is this: from a political point of view, this war is going pretty badly so far. From a military poit of view, it's a different story. We need more troops before we can go after Baghdad, but our progress through the rest of the country has been outstanding. We have to dedicate far more resources to protecting out supply lines than we thought, but we can do that. Despite these setbacks, and I would call them "major" setbacks, I don't envision any possibility that we could lose this war (and by "lose" I mean leave without removing Saddam from power). It's just going to take longer. I know things can get hairy out in the desert when the summer hits, but our troops can handle it. This is a problem for the civilian leaders who fucked this up. Let the military run itself, and they'll take care of the rest of the war, on their timetable.

2003-03-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

The Bond Project: GoldenEye. Due to legal difficulties, several years passed between License to Kill and the next Bond film. For the first time in franchise history, fans would have to wait more than a year or two for the next exciting adventure. During that time, the world had changed tremendously. The Berlin Wall fell, and finally the Soviet Union collapsed. Despite the fact that the Bond franchise rarely looked to the Soviets as major villains, this nevertheless amounted to a massive change that the producers had to consider. The geopolitical realities of the world had transformed almost overnight, so the international political environment in which Bond operated had to be similarly overhauled.

The producers took this challenge seriously and met it head on. Some fans wondered if Bond could survive in the post-Cold War world. Mindful of this concern, the producers set out to prove that the same old Bond could function just as well in the New World Order. First things first, they needed to cast their new star. In the years since License to Kill, Timothy Dalton decided to relinquish the role (he had originally signed to a three-film contract). The producers didn’t have to look too hard to find there replacement. Pierce Brosnan, who had been literally hours away from taking the role after Roger Moore departed, was available. End of story.

In many ways, GoldenEye represents what might be called the first “modern” Bond film. It lots of small ways, the film was a huge departure from the past. One need look no further than the casting of Judi Dench as the new M to see evidence of this proposition. Moreover, M’s office was no longer a quiet, plain, tasteful room with desk and telephone. MI6 HQ now resembles a hi-tech operations center; vast, open spaces filled with computer work-stations, complete with a massive interactive monitor-board on one wall.

But the script, as well as sets, seems to have a more modern, or rather postmodern, flavor. For instance, Judi Dench’s M is given the role of expressing the same skepticism about Bond’s future as some fans already had. She refers to him as a “relic of the Cold War”. It’s not hard to see the parallel. Bond spends the film nonchalantly proving M wrong, just as the producers, without breaking a sweat, demonstrate that the franchise has plenty of life left in it. Also, by creating a villain who was formerly a double-0 agent himself, we get an enemy who is intimately aware of the standard Bond clichés, and can anticipate Bond’s actions, and also comment directly on the clichés of the franchise.

All of this, while very interesting, doesn’t necessarily make for a good film. Unfortunately for Bond’s long-awaited return to the big screen, this film is decidedly not good. Pierce Brosnan’s very first line as Bond is a stupid joke which is painfully unfunny, reminiscent of Roger Moore’s worst moments. All of the grit and realism established during Dalton’s all-too-brief tenure is swept away in minutes. It gets worse: the scene with Bond and a totally random pretty-young-woman in the Aston Martin is pointless and bizarre. Ok, sure, it sets up the meeting between Bond and Xenia Onatopp, but it feels isolated and intrusive.

Speaking of Xenia Onatopp, this character is simply dreadful, and Famke Janssen’s inept performance doesn’t help matters. It’s all part of the postmodernism of the film that we encounter a villain who kills via sex (a perfect villain for Bond, right?), but the character is both written and performed in so over-the-top a fashion that it feels forced and unnatural.

The major villain of the piece, however, is another story. Alec Trevelyan is a fascinating character superbly realized by Sean Bean. Alan Cumming, though pretty good as Boris, becomes more and more abrasive as the film goes on, to the point where you find yourself actively willing his death. The Russian villain, Colonel Ouromov, is utterly typical and entirely forgettable. One decent villain out of four is pretty horrendous, but thank goodness for that one.

There are a lot of compensating plusses, which make the film sufficiently enjoyable. Joe Don Baker (Mitchell!) returns to the franchise, this time as Bond’s new CIA ally Jack Wade. He too is given a little post-modern humor, mocking the cloak-and-dagger methods of his British counterpart. The inimitable Robbie Coltrane (who is only now getting the respect he deserves through the Harry Potter franchise) is a wonderful addition to the Bond family as Valentin Zukovsky. Again, he is used to add another level of self-awareness, undermining Bond’s seriousness and providing a welcome and effective jolt of humor. Michael Kitchen is excellent as Tanner, part of the MI6 team working under M. His role is small and not terribly important, but he plays every role with a sort of easy conviction which is utterly credible. Last but not least is Samantha Bond as the new Moneypenny. She’s fucking gorgeous. ‘Nuff said.

The story here is pretty intriguing, actually, but the plot has problems. All in all, it is very typical of the franchise, which I found disappointing in itself, especially when viewed directly following License to Kill. The Bond renaissance was short-lived, and it’s over now. This film ushered in the beginning of post-industrial Bond. Standing alone, I have to say that the film fails, but it definitely succeeds in its stated mission of proving the post-Cold War viability of the franchise.

Bottom-line: Effective cosmetic changes to the franchise re-invigorate it, but it’s ultimately let down by an all too typical de-emphasis on plot and story.

UPDATE: The Bond Project continues with Tomorrow Never Dies.

2003-03-28T00:43:00.000-05:00

The Indispensable Josh Marshall. Forgive me for the sycophantic kiss-up, but I'm really impressed by this post. It's long and has a scattered focus, but it hits so many great points, and employs humor with far more subtlety than I'm capable of. [When I started this blog, I always figured it would naturally be very funny, but it isn't. I'm a pretty funny guy in real life, if I do say so myself, so I'm a little surprised that I've never been able to get that across, but I'll keep working on it.]

He starts with a happy note about Richard Perle resigning from the Defense Policy Board, which is wonderful news. [But Atrios suggests that it isn't as good as it sounds.] He then moves on to an extremely thoughtful and insightful comment about the state of the war so far, which functions as a kind of defense of the Rumsfeldian approach which has been coming under so much fire lately. The basic point is that the Rumsfeld strategy of having a small, mobile, high-tech contingent of troops carrying out lightning-quick operations with assistance from indigenous troops (or, as I called them at the time, "outside contractors"), worked like magic in Afghanistan, which is an important point to remember. It doesn't look like it's working out so well so far, but at this point, I would be no more surprised if this war ended on April 1 or May 31. In other words, anything can happen, so the jury is still out on the war plan. The fact that we'll be bringing in one-third more troops in the next few weeks certainly lends credibility to the Rumsfeld-bashing, but it's still up in the air whether the political leadership seriously fucked this aspect up or not.

He goes on to draw some fascinating parallels between modern America and 19th/early 20th century Germany, which is a little disturbing. I'm not very good on history, so this stuff goes a bit over my head. But it's still interesting.

But then he really brings it home, and this is where the humor comes in. As I reported previously, rather sloppily, the Bush Administration is bending over backwards to pave the way for American corporations (especially big-ticket donor corporations) to profit handsomely from this war, which just looks really really bad if you happen to live in a country that pays attention to what America's president does (basically, most countries other than ours, so far as I can tell). We've got Qualcomm lobbying to go in and install some American-standard communications infrastructure stuff, which would just so happen to replace the European-standard equipment in place over there all ready, and would just so happen to open up a lucrative new market for Qualcomm while excluding those dastardly French. We've got Franklin Graham (not Christianity's best ambassador, in my view) salivating over the prospect of delivering humanitarian aid to post-war Iraq, and, while he's there, perhaps finding a way to discreetly steer the conversation toward Jesus. As Josh puts it: "That should go over well."

I just wish the Administration would pretend that it knew what it was doing. I'd sleep better.

2003-03-27T21:05:00.000-05:00

Dixie Chicks Scandal. Tomorrow, my law school is holding its annual Barrister's Ball. It's a sort of law school prom with loads of booze. Apparently, students attending had the opportunity to request music to be played during the event, and someone requested the Dixie Chicks. The third-year class president, who organizes the event, has decided to ban the Dixie Chicks' music from the event. I felt compelled to e-mail him regarding this issue, and I thought it might amuse you all to see what I had to say. Names have been deleted for privacy considerations.

"Although I have no intention of attending the Barristers' Ball (I don't go in for that sort of thing), I feel compelled to write you on the Dixie Chicks issue. I've known from the get-go, given your involvement with the Federalist Society, that your political views and mine were miles apart, but I have always found you to be a very personable and friendly guy, and I appreciate to this day how you went out of your way to welcome the 1-L class last fall. That's why I was very disappointed to hear that you have taken the petty and childish step of banning music by the Dixie Chicks at the Barristers' Ball.

"I could understand, and totally support, banning an anti-war song, even if I happened to agree with the content of the song. But to ban a song because of political disagreements you have with its singer is simply ridiculous. While I understand that millions of Americans, and a significant number of Rutgers Law students, found the comments made by the Dixie Chicks to be utterly inappropriate and totally off-base, you must also admit that millions of Americans, and a significant number of Rutgers Law students, agreed with the comments 100%. This isn't some deep fringe opinion. Recall that in the days immediately prior to the outbreak of war, when the comments were made, support for war in Iraq without even attempting to pursue a second UN resolution was polling at below 50% (while support for war even in the face of a UNSC rejection was polling above 50%). This shows that the comments made were not beyond the pale of reasonable discourse, or even outside the political mainstream. Beyond the sheer ridiculous of banning a band's music because of their political beliefs (the expression of which, thanks to thinned-skinned dissent-phobic war-supporters around the country, was solemnly apologized for), this band did not even say anything so awful that they should be censured for it.

"I believe the posters supporting your impeachment, which refer to you as another "dictator from Texas", are similarly ridiculous and over-the-top, but I think you over-reacted first. If students want to hear Dixie Chicks music at the Ball (and, for reasons of musical taste, I emphatically would not), they should not be denied that opportunity because the band failed to comport to your definition of acceptable political discourse in war time. Remember, more than a few Americans consider dissent to be the highest and bravest form of patriotism. What makes your opinions trump anyone else's?"

I'll update you if there are any developments, though I don't expect any.

2003-03-27T10:47:00.000-05:00

Diplomatic Quagmire. Michael Tomasky, writing for The American Prospect writes: "There is -- or was -- a diplomatic and political process on the one hand, and there's a fighting war on the other; and deploring the Bush administration's conduct of the former while supporting the speedy success of the latter now that it's under way is an entirely respectable and consistent position. Not only that, it's an important position to hold on to over the coming weeks." Couldn't have said it better myself, though not for lack of trying. The article is here, which is very interesting. [Thanks to Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?, for directing me to this article.]

The article includes the "gotcha!" moment of the chief architect of the "shock and awe" strategy coming out against the war (or, at least, against the manifest incompetence displayed by the Administration in the months leading up to war). His name is Harlan Ullman, and he says "...if it had been up to me, I would have waited months, perhaps, to get a second resolution, when it would have been clear that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I don't agree with the administration view that Iraq is a clear and present danger."

The article also discusses, as I did a few days ago, the utter ridiculousness of using the term "quagmire" in the current situation. But Tomasky makes the point that the failed diplomatic process of the pre-war period was a quagmire, and diplomacy in the post-war period will be just as bad. He ends on an optimistic note by predicting that the diplomatic fiasco, which has only just begun, will bite Bush hard on the ass in 2004. We shall see.

I'm a Philadelphia sports fan, therefore a pessimist, and therefore I believe with some certainty that Bush will be re-elected in 2004 by a far larger margin than that by which he lost in 2000.

2003-03-27T08:09:00.000-05:00

Investigation Stalls. The White House has no problem coming up with $10B for Israel, which is requested in that $75B budget request for the war that we heard so much about. Unfortunately, when Tom Kean, former governor of New Jersey and head of the 9/11 commission, asks for a measly $11M so they can investigate everything they've been commissioned to investigate, the White House is dragging its feet. This is serious. While it looks like the White House will, sooner or later, authorize the money, they are taking their sweet time about it. I know, you're thinking, there's a war on! Yes, I'm sure that they're very busy, and a lot of lesser issues are being put on the back-burner (like North Korea). But the 9/11 commission only has until May 2004 to complete it's task. The money they've already been given, $3M, will run out in August of this year. They need to get this money quick so they can get on with their job.

Of course, the White House didn't want a 9/11 commission in the first place. That's why the White House underfunded it, and gave it a very strict and very brief timeframe. That's why the White House is dragging its feet on this reasonable request. I mean, seriously, this is the U.S. government we're talking about... they could probably find $11M between the cushions in a sofa at the White House. Anyway, here's the story from TIME.

And if you're not angry enough, just remember that Whitewater was investigated for seven years at a cost to taxpayers of over $75M, while 9/11 can't hope to get that kind of investigation. It's obscene, and it makes you want to puke. George W. Bush is not only a bad president, he is a despicable man. I would consider it a great honor to personally spit in his face.

2003-03-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

Blood for Oil. Ok, I've never been one of these "No Blood for Oil" types. I think that phrase oversimplifies the motives of the Bush Administration so far as to be unhelpful. I think that the oil motive is one component of a very complex set of motives. I think oil is a necessary, but not a sufficient reason, within the nebulous and by no means unified mind of the Bush Administration.

Unfortunately, the White House is making it damn hard to continue minimizing the importance of oil. When U.S. companies with strong political ties to this Administration (first and foremost, Halliburton) start picking up highly lucrative no-bid government contracts for Iraqi oil, it shakes your faith. In other words, this may not be an oil war, but the Bush Administration is bending over backwards to make it look like one.

Jon Stewart agrees, as reported by Nathan Newman.

2003-03-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

Senate Dems' Strategy. After the midterm elections, when the Democrats lost control of the Senate, many lefty bloggers began chiming in with strategy arguments for how the Democrats should position themselves for the 2004 elections. Liberal Oasis posted a 9-Point Plan for the Democrats to recapture the majority. It advises adopting a "government-in-exile" approach, whereby the Democrats sort of pretend that they control the Senate and put forward their own legislation on every issue. While the Republicans would vote it all down, they would thereby develop a "virtual" record to run on in 2004. Also, the Republicans would become solely responsible for the ensuing mess, entirely of their own creation. This would give Democrats tons and tons of material to run against.

This strategy hasn't really happened, mainly because of a few conservative Democrats who love crafting compromises with the White House. The President proposes some horrible, ridiculous thing. The Democrats start screaming about it, and the compromisers split the difference. This looks good on paper, and plays well politically for the compromisers, but totally falls apart when you reaize that the White House never really wanted the ridiculous, horrible thing at all, and was gunning for something like the compromise all along. It gives the White House the image of being willing to work across aisles to obtain bi-partisan support, but it still gets every thing it wants.

Something like this has just happened in the Senate, where Bush's $750B tax cut written into the latest budget was slashed to $350B (these numbers are approximate). There is currently a bit of a debate among liberal, progressive, and lefty bloggers. $350B in unspecified tax cuts is too much. Something closer to zero would be better, especially since we are paying 100% of the war costs, and we're paying it 100% on credit. In other words, we simply cannot afford a tax cut. It's like a guy working nights at UPS who can't afford to pay rent on his apartment quitting his job without a back-up plan. If you don't have enough money to function to begin with, you don't intentionally slash your revenue stream.

There's no question that $350B in tax cuts is better than $750B. But since the Democrats, and a few moderate Republicans, have gone on record in favor of this tax cut, it undermines their positioning for 2004. It makes it harder to credibly run on a fiscal responsibility platform. So the argument goes. On the other hand, it shows how vulnerable Bush has become on domestic issues, particularly on the economy. If a ragtag bunch of spineless Democrats can stand up to the White House during a war, than the White House must be pretty weak. And the press has picked up on this dynamic big time, and it's filtering through to the public consciousness as we speak. Sure, so long as the war is on, and going fairly well (which it is), the President is going to be broadly popular. But as soon as the war stops, doestic issues become more prominent, and Bush starts looking shaky again.

For more on this strategy debate, check out Eschaton, which argues that this is a big victory for the Dems, and also Seeing the Forest and Ruminate This, who think this is a strategic disaster for the Dems.

I'm kinda on the fence, but I tend to lean toward Eschaton's analysis. The deficit is, after all, already established as a huge issue in the next election. In 2000, Bush promised that we could have massive tax cuts, pay down the debt, protect social security, and meet needed contingencies all at the same time. He lied. If the deficit isn't at record levels already, it will be soon. Despite voting for this tax cut, which is huge, Dems can still position themselves as fiscally responsible as compared with Republicans, whose lustful thirst for tax cuts is utterly boundless. Besides, it sends a loud message to the White House: the tax cut strategy has failed miserably, and we're not going to take much more of this.

Oh, it's typically weaselly spineless Democrat compromising, and we've had far too much of that, but I still think it works out to a net gain for the Dems politically.

2003-03-24T10:10:00.000-05:00

War Commentary by Blog. If you're like me, you resent intensely how unreliable the news media is during war, particularly this war. We all understand that the Pentagon uses the US media to disperse propaganda aimed at our enemies, and that's ok. But I don't have to listen to it, and why should I if I can't believe anything I'm being told? Some cynics would say that this is no different from everyday media unreliability. Not so. Normally, the media are incompetent cowards. Now, they are knowing dupes. And I don't like to be duped.

But I found a great resource for gettig reliable news and news analysis, and it's a blog. DailyKos became one of my favorite blogs back before the midterm elections. It generally focuses on electoral politics, and it is an indispensable resource within that area. I've been surprised and delighted by the sterling work it's been doing on the war. Its author has a strict policy against reporting rumors, which makes it a far more reliable news source than anything on television. The site also displays a healthy skepticism of the Pentagon, and a very reasonable pro-troops, anti-war ideology which I wholeheartedly share. Check out this post, which is particularly note-worthy. dKos reports that a reporter has uttered the most dangerous, inflammatory work imaginable at a time like this: "quagmire". Quite rightly, dKos dismisses this as irresponsible exaggeration. The war may not be going as well as many Americans expected, but it is certainly well within the expectations of the military brass who are paid to come up with realistic expectations. [The story is in how the Bush Adminstration fast-talked the country to war without honestly discussing what they knew would be the result. Imagine if you could go back in time and tell people roughly what the first week of war would be like... would that have increased or decreased public support?] The use of the word "quagmire" is inaccurate, unhelpful, and just silly. It's important for all of us to remember that word, and remember the war that its usage evokes, because the weeks and months ahead, both during and after the war, will be very hard. But we're simply not there yet. Nowhere near.

The post goes on to deconstruct the propaganda failures of the war to date. The number one example of this is Umm Qasr. I thought that was taken ages ago, but every time those nifty maps show up on the news, the graphics indicate that fighting is still on-going. But there have been plenty of claims made by the Pentagon (whether they be assertions, speculations, or sheer wishful thinking) that have been reported as fact by the media, which have turned out to be just wrong. Some of this is inevitable. It's not called "fog of war" for nothing. But it looks bad, doesn't it? There are a lot of levels to modern warfare, one of which is propaganda. The U.S. isn't doing very well so far in this area.

2003-03-22T11:05:00.000-05:00

Disturbing. I know I'm anti-American and un-patriotic and objectively pro-Hussein and all that, but has anyone else felt really uncomfortable watching the news, as if they were watching a high school kid beat the shit out of a third-grader. There is such a mismatch on display for the world that it simply looks cruel. What possible threat could this country have been to us? Look at the news! Just look at it. We decimate Baghdad, and they fire a couple of missiles which don't reach their targets. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Iraq is so feeble because it means the troops are in less danger. But it really looks cruel that we're annihilating this poor, broken country that can't even defend itself. And for what?

The only thing that's more disturbing is how some people really seem to get off on this stuff. Atrios called it a "wargasm", and that's exactly what it is. It sickens me. This whole war sickens me.

2003-03-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

Maintenance. I'm having some trouble with my comments, so please forgive me if things aren't working too well.

2003-03-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

Drew on a Mobile. Last night, Jenna, Lima Beanz, Mosco and I watched Talk Radio, a little-known film by Oliver Stone. Mosco and I were the only ones who managed to stay awake, though. Those two are just... I don't know. It's sad.

Anyway, on the way home, I was listening to 610 WIP, the sports station. There was a guy on, I think his name was Steve Fredericks. He was talking about the war. He said that the time for debate is passed, but he wanted to talk about how people were feeling about this war. He was telling everyone about his wife, who's apparently petty scared about the can of worms that's about to be opened. He talked about not knowing what's going to happen, and about how the aftershocks of this war will be with us for years to come. I think it's a pretty picotal moment in history, and in a lot of way, it's going to define everything that comes after it for a long time. I think that's reason enough to be scared.

So I did what I never do, and I called in. I held on the line as several callers tried to engage Steve in a debate on the merits. One guy started alking about social inequalities in America, arguing that the Administration should focus its attention on this country for a change. Another guy argued that the threat posed by Saddam made this war necessary. Steve didn't want to talk about any of this stuff. He's right, it's a done deal, so what's the point? But then he took my call. "Drew on a mobile." I told him that I was scared about this war, and I told him about Mike.

I think I've mentioned Mike on this site before. Mike used to be in Big Fantastic, one of the bands that I'm in now. Mike was the singer. A couple of years ago, Rich, Chris, and I got together and decided that Mike just wasn't cutting it. He didn't have any musical background, and it made it very difficult for him to keep up with some of Chris's more complex songs. It was a difficult decision, because Mike was more dedicated to that band than any of us, and he worked harder at it than any of us. It was especially difficult for Chris, who was very close friends with Mike. But we fired him. So he joined the Marines.

Mike has always liked to tease me about this, saying that if anything ever happened to him, it would be my fault. Mike was primarily responsible for getting me into the band in the first place, so I guess he felt pretty betrayed by the whole thing. I never really let it bother me too much. I mean, I didn't know he was ging to join the Marines, and it was his choice anyway. But lately, since he left for Kuwait, I've been thinking about him a lot. I've been thinking about him damn near every day. I had trouble sleeping last night.

Since he lefted the band, my relationship with Mike has been a bit rocky. Sometimes I can be a real asshole, and I've said some pretty shitty things about Mike, and I've said some pretty shitty things to him. I can't stop thinking about that these days. I know it isn't really my fault that he joined the Marines, but I feel responsible anyway. Sometimes, it can be pretty hard to be an atheist. Sometimes, when a family member dies, or when someone you care about is facing a tough situation that you can't help them through, you yearn for the peace and comfort that prayer can bring. I call that a "crisis of faithlessness", and it's been something I've been going through a lot lately.

I didn't pray last night, as I tossed and turned, trying to sleep, thinking about Mike. But I hoped and wished that he would come home safely. Even if it's not prayer, maybe that's enough. And even though I don't agree with the war that our president has asked him to fight, I hoped and wished for him to kick ass while he's there.

When people talk about anti-war protesters who don't support the troops, like Steve on the radio did last night, I just think about Mike. I'm going to write Mike a letter today, and I'm going to tell him a lot of this stuff. I'm going to wish him well. I'm going to tell him that his friends and his country are proud of and grateful for the job he's doing over there. I'm not going to mention what I think of our president, or what I think of this war, or the protests I've gone to and the one I might go to tomorrow. At this point, it just doesn't matter any more. I think that's what people mean by "support the troops", and that's what I'm going to do.

2003-03-18T10:56:00.000-05:00

Alterman on The Daily Show. Did anyone catch Eric Alterman on The Daily Show last night? I didn't either. I was watching The Salton Sea with Lima Beanz, Jenna, and Mosco. Pretty good flick, I think. I would have been able to follow it a bit better if I hadn't had so much beer during the Flyers' terrific 4-2 win over the New Jersey Devils. That was a hell of a game. I did my old "two beers per period" routine, that I usually save for the playoffs, but that was easily the single biggest game of the season for the Flyers, and it was St. Patrick's Day, so I figured I'd bring it back. Plus, I'm on Spring Break.

Anyway, I caught The Daily Show at 10am this morning, and it will be on again sometime this afternoon too, I think. Eric Alterman was terrific. I was a little worried that the interview wouldn't go very well. The Daily Show, I think, is a pretty tough gig if you're a news person and not an entertainment person. I've seen some top news guys have a lot of trouble finding the line between news and comedy, and end up embarrassing themselves on that show. Not everyone can do what Jon Stewart does, and that is to present the news through humor. In the long tradition of comedy-news, the usual approach is to take the news and make it funny. But Sewart does something a little different: he uses comedy as a tool to present the news. Enter a bona fide news person who thinks "Joke news show on Comedy Central" and the results can sometimes be disastrous. But Alterman navigated it masterfully. He was both funny and effective.

Speaking of Alterman, I finished What Liberal Media? some time ago, but haven't gotten around to saying anything about it. No time like present. I thought it was an excellent book. I thought some sections might have been a little tighter, but overall, the effect was staggering. While there wasn't too much in it that I didn't already know, the effect of putting all of that material together in one place was like a punch in the gut. It was, in a lot of ways, a very depressing read. It exposed the true depths to which the national media have fallen. Yet, it also offers hope that this enduring myth of liberal media bias can be fought with hard facts and meticulous research. Many of the reviews I have seen of the book since it's publication have been highly encouraging. It seems clear that there is at least a small group of reporters, columnists, and commentators who understand what has happened. For those people, this book is a call to arms.

But the enduring myth (or Big Lie) of liberal media bias is only one battlefield in a larger war. One need only recall that so-called press conference the president staged recently to realize how timid and ineffectual the media have become. Traditionally, the press was supposed to be a check on government people. Journalists were supposed to take the side of the people against the government as a means of keeping the government honest. There are very few journalists willing to take that role any longer. It's no surprise that Bush evaded those few tough questions he got during the press conference. There is a long tradition in this country for politicians of all stripes to attempt to sidestep uncomfortable questions. But the press should at least try to pin him down, if for no other reason than to make clear that this man is refusing to answer this question. The press corps did not do this at all, and they have refused since day one to hold Bush to the same standard to which Clinton was held.

I'm not saying that all of these reporters are Republican hacks deliberately aiding the administration in its attempts to lead (or rather, mislead) America into an unnecessary and illegal war. But they have abandoned their traditional role as advocates for truth, openness, and accountability in government. This is a dangerous development for all Americans. All power corrupts, as they say, and journalism should act as a real check against that power. When it doesn't, it acts as a real tempation for presidents, hidden from the eye of public scrutiny, to abuse that power. The same goes for both parties. Put a Democrat in the White House, cloak him in secrecy, shield him from the public, and he will also abuse his power. It's a bipartisan problem that I simply don't know how to fix.

What Liberal Media? is, at least, a start.

I've loaned the book to my friend Lima Beanz, and I urge everyone to read it. We can't fix these problems unless we really understand how the media operate. This book is a crucial piece of the puzzle.

2003-03-17T17:23:00.000-05:00

The Bond Project: License to Kill. The second and, sadly, final Bond film to star Timothy Dalton has the distinction of being possibly the most widely and vociferously loathed film of the entire series. Which is odd, because in my humble opinion, it is undoubtedly the single best.

Sure, it’s not a “typical” Bond film. Sure, Bond has entirely lost the cool detachment that we’ve come to know. Bond has gone rogue and is being pursued by his own government. Bond is driven entirely by personal motivations, not by duty. Are those bad things? It’s for those reasons, among others, that I love this movie so much.

It probably has the best story of any in the franchise, just because there are so many competing interests and goals at work. Bond is simply trying to get revenge for his friend Felix (who is making his last appearance in the series). But that quickly gets a lot more complicated when Bond’s obsession begins stepping on some other toes. Bond also infiltrates his target’s organization to create mistrust between Sanchez and his top lieutenants. This is a perfect set-up to provide all of the action that is required of a Bond film (and this one delivers), with a lot more meat to keep the audience interested between explosions.

That’s my theory, if you’re interested, about why this film is so vehemently despised. The last thing most people want in a Bond film is a plot that requires even a modicum of thought or effort to follow. Don’t get me wrong, this movie is far from complicated, but it’s not mindless popcorn action-movie stuff. Most Bond movies are, even some of the good ones. So, this Bond movie, which actually is a pretty good movie in its own right, does not deliver the kind of entertainment most people look for in a Bond film. But that doesn’t make it bad, does it?

Whatever. The point is that this is one of the very few movies in the Bond franchise that is legitimately good in its own right. Dalton delivers the best ever lead performance in a Bond film, the script is layered and well-constructed, and the direction is top-notch. This represents the high water mark of the entire francise. In addition to being the last Timothy Dalton film, it was also the last film directed by John Glen, who had directed every Bond film since For Your Eyes Only. The future would bring ups and downs, as always, but I doubt it will ever produce a film as strong as this one.

Bottom Line: Best Bond film ever, its many detractors notwithstanding.

The Bond Project continues with GoldenEye.

2003-03-17T17:22:00.000-05:00

Spring Break. Sorry posting has been light the last few days, but I'm on Spring Break right now. No, I haven't run off to some exotic locale surrounded by hundreds of college girls in various stages of having gone wild, but I do have some time off from school, and that's good enough for me. I'm catching up on some important movie viewing that I've been neglecting lately. My friend Tucker loaned me The Untouchables and Diner, the latter of which is on at this very moment. The most important thing, though, is that on Saturday night Lima Beanz, the Duke and I finally beat Final Fantasy X. Afterwards we went to Finnegan's Wake in Philly and met up with a bunch of other people, including some friends of mine from school. I love bringing my law school friends and my other friends together, but they don't really mingle much. Nevermind.

It's a great week for Spring Break, because Mosco from Wisconsin is back in town for the week. Once again, he's promising to restart his blog. He has a new digital camera, so you might be able to see an extremely unflattering picture of yours truly on that site in the near future. That's something to... uh, look forward to..., I guess. Whatever.

Anyway, blogging might be light for the remainder of the week, because I won't be sitting in class all day with a wireless internet connection at my disposal. But I'm still here, so please pop in from time to time.

2003-03-17T13:30:00.000-05:00

What is a Diplomatic Solution in Iraq? I was just reading this article in Newsweek which included this quote: "The majority of those polled seemed to believe that time is running out for a diplomatic solution..." The article was about the latest poll numbers regarding the the imminent war in Iraq. As usual, the poll results were conflicting and not entirely clear, but the article represented it as confirming that Americans overwhelmingly support this war. But that's not what I wanted to talk about.

For months now Bush has been pounding his chest about the need to pursue "diplomacy". I don't know what the fuck he think he means when he says that, because there hasn't been a single moment of genuine diplomacy regarding Iraq since Bush came to power. Yesterday was a big diplomatic summer in the Azores with the UK and Spain. Well, that's diplomacy there, right? Sort of. I mean, this White House has employed loads of diplomacy in its pathetic failure of an attempt to get UN support for an invasion of Iraq. That's the diplomacy we've seen, and that's what diplomacy is: trying to urge other countries to act in accordance with your interests. But does constitute a "diplomatic solution"?

It depends on how you define the problem, and this is where the genius of the Bush administration steps in. The problem is not that Saddam Hussein has WMDs, or whatever. The problem is merely that the UN won't authorize war with Iraq. The US has employed diplomacy, badly, to try to find a "diplomatic solution" to the problem of procuring UN authorization. The alternative to this diplomatic approach, presumably, is to attack the UN in order to get their authorization to attack Iraq. So, yes, Bush is pursuing a diplomatic solution to our problem with the UN, and that's a good thing. He's failing miserably, embarrassing himself every day, and alienating every ally this country ever had. In other words, he's inept to the point of impeachability, and has done more damage to this country than any president since Herbert Hoover. But at least he isn't invading the UN.

But what about Iraq? Let's pretend we had a president who wasn't a blood-thirsty warmonger, who didn't constantly lie to the American people about his own goals and policies, and who didn't have unhealthy obsession with Saddam Hussein. Let's say, oh, Clinton! What would Clinton have done if faced wit this same crisis over Iraq? Well, like any man who understands the horrors of warfare, and who values innocent human life irrespective of color, religion, or national origin, Clinton would pursue a "diplomatic solution" before consigning hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians to oblivion. In other words, Clinton would attempt to settle our dispute with Saddam Hussein through non-military means first. Then, if that failed, he would reluctantly invade. Looking at the state of things in the world today, he would probably say that the inspections have gone fairly well so far, and we've achieved soome encouraging results. So, there's no reason to give up on them just yet. Clinton would no doubt support tough benchmarks and explicit deadlines for compliance. If Clinton's diplomatic solution in Iraq failed, he would be forced to adopt a military solution, and he would attempt to get authorization from the UN. I don't think, under those circumstances, Clinton would have had any difficulty at all in obtaining the "diplomatic solution" with the UN that Bush has failed, and ultimately given up on.

Just a little reminder to all of you what a good president looks like.

2003-03-13T10:41:00.000-05:00

Delma Banks, Jr. Update. The US Supreme Court has granted an indefinate stay of execution for Delma Banks, Jr., who was scheduled to become the 300th person executed in Texas since 1982 last night. Read the story here from the New York Times. Mr. Banks is hardly out of trouble, though. It appears that the Court is split on whether or not the hear the case themselves. If they decide not to, it would immediately end the stay, and the execution could be rescheduled for any time after thirty days.

We'll have to wait and see what happens next.

2003-03-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

Britain's Latest Proposal. The latest move in the drive for UN approval of war with Iraq has been made by Britain. The New York Times has the story. The idea is that Saddam Hussein has a specific amount of time to perform several specific actions in order to avert war. The concept behind this plan is sound, I think, but we've got to look at the details. One of the hurdles Saddam has to overcome is mentioned explicitly in the Times story: "The six conditions, for instance, included a demand that the Iraqi leader appear on television to make a public declaration in Arabic that he has been concealing weapons of mass destruction but has now made a "strategic decision" to disarm."

This struck me as rather odd. Think about it: if the goal is disarmament, what possible difference would it make whether or not Saddam goes on television to tell everyone in Arabic that he has disarmed? Personally, as someone who supports disarmament, I don't care what Saddam says in Arabic on television, I only care that he disarms.

Let me speculate about this one: the goal here was to create a condition that Saddam would never meet. Saddam is a dictator who rules by force and propaganda. Admitting that he is disarming would be a huge political liability for Saddam. I'm trying to think of an American example that might cover this, but I can't. The closest I can come to is forcing Bush to admit that he lost the 2000 election. Even that, however, would be unlikely to incite Bush's assassination. Saddam admitting to his own people, presumably the target audience of this broadcast, that he has caved to international pressure would most likely lead to his assassination. Which is fine as far as it goes, but that's exactly why Saddam will never do it. And that is why it's in the proposal.

Think about this: giving Saddam a condition that he will never meet is exactly the same as directly authorizing war, in practice. That's why France will not support any resolution that involves an ultimatum. This proposal will go nowhere, and it highlights the massive division on the Security Council. The US and UK are looking for nothing other than a way to get a war started as soon as possible. Just about everyone else is looking for a way to avert war. The problem is that the US has not been able to convince very many countries either that 1) disarmament without war is impossible, or that 2) disarmament without regime change is impossible. All of these "compromises" coming out of the UK fail to address this fundamental disagreement, but they serve their purpose by making it appear that the US is bending over backwards to prevent war, when they're actually bending over backwards to start a war.

2003-03-12T09:48:00.000-05:00

A Stunning Development. Balkinization reports that Jose Padilla will be allowed to have a lawyer. This is a huge rebuke to the Ashcroft Justice Department, and I'm a little surprised. First of all, the judge who made this ruling seems pretty adamant about it: '"Lest any confusion remain, this is not a suggestion or a request that Padilla be permitted to consult with counsel, and it is certainly not an invitation to conduct a further `dialogue' about whether he will be permitted to do so. It is a ruling -- a determination -- that he will be permitted to do so," the judge said,' according to the New York Times. Second of all, federal judges are often highly deferential to the "political" branches during times of national crisis. Consider the fact that the US Supreme Court upheld the decision during WWII to gather up all Asians living on the west coast (whether US citizens or not) and confine them to internment camps.

What this says to me is that, at least in the eyes of this particular judge, the Justice Department is way out of line on this one. Thank goodness. I have no sympathy for Jose Padilla, who, even if he is cleared of these terrorism charges, is a pretty unsavory guy. But a country that allows its government to lock up its citizens on criminal suspicion, while denying that citizen his Constitutional right to representation by counsel, is not a country that I would call "free".

2003-03-12T00:08:00.000-05:00

Bigotry Watch. Yes, it's another round of Bigotry Watch, where stupid, insensitive, and outright racist comments are publicly scorned. Guess what... it's even a Democrat this time. Rep. James Moran Jr. of Virginia, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, suggested in recent statements that American Jews are responsible for the U.S. policy toward war in Iraq, and that they could turn this policy around if they chose, and that they should.

Listen, you can criticize Ariel Sharon; that's not anti-Semitism. You can criticize Israel; that's not anti-Semitism. You can say that Israel should get out of the West Bank and Gaza and give the Palestinians an independent state of their own; that's not anti-Semitism. You can even criticize the U.S. government for being too cozy with Israel; that's not anti-Semitism. But you cannot suggest or imply, much less flat out state, that American foreign policy is being dictated by the desires of American Jews, who have the power to single-handly end the push for war in this country. That sounds an awful lot like anti-Semitism to me. Not to mention a little nuts.

I don't live in Virginia, so obviously, Jim Moran is not my Congressman. Therefore, you won't hear me calling on him to resign his seat in the House of Representatives, just like you didn't hear me call on Trent Lott to resign his Senate seat. But shit, comments like that are simply not acceptable.

Anyway, read the story for yourself, from yesterday's Washington Post.

2003-03-11T14:49:00.000-05:00

Don't Believe the Hype. Get ready, folks, there a shitstorm of disinformation coming your way once again from the Republican Party and their media cronies. The topic this time: so-called "partial-birth abortions". I say "so-called" because the term was made up by a pro-life Republican politician and doesn't really mean anything. But that's another story.

Today's story can be found at an excellent blog amusingly titled "Alas, a Blog", under a post published earlier today called "What does the partial-birth abortion ban actually ban?." If you said "partial-birth abortions", then you're a sucker. Follow the link.

Let me make my position very clear on this issue: I think that late-term abortions, performed in the third trimester of pregnancy, particularly after the fetus has reached a point of viability, should be banned except in cases that involve threats to the life or health of the mother. In other words, they should only occur when they are medically necessary to the mother. Honestly, I don't see how anyone could possibly have a problem with this position. Except that the ban isn't really necessary, because but for cases of medical necessitate, I'm not sure how much abortions like these happen anyway. But, if people want a ban, that's fine with me.

What's up before the Senate now, and likely to pass according to the Washington Post, is a bill that doesn't ban many late-term, post-viability abortions, but does ban many abortions which can in no way be described as "partial-birth", including abortions that take place before the third-trimester and before the fetus becomes viable. Futhermore, the bill contains an exception for cases where the life of the mother is threatened, but not the health of the mother. Think of it this way: you want to write a bill that applies to all even one-digit numbers. You write a bill that ends up apply to all numbers from 3 to 7. Is this a good bill?

Of course, it's worse than that. In fact, this bill seems to be unconstitutional, and I expect many of its supporters in Congress know it. In Stenberg v. Carhart, decided in June 2000, the US Supreme Court overturned a Nebraska law which banned partial-birth abortions, but did not provide an exception for the health of the mother. The Court ruled, 5-4, that any such law must create a "health of the mother" exception in order to be Constitutional. This bill carries no such exception.

A fraud is being perpetrated on the American people by the Republicans in Congress. They are trying to capitalize on the reasonable revulsion most of us feel for so-called "partial-birth abortions", which are extremely gruesome. But don't let them fool you. This bill will ban many more abortions than merely these, and many of these it will not ban at all. This is not a "partial-birth abortion" ban, and anyone who tells you otherwise must be either a liar or a sucker.

Thanks to Ampersand at Alas, a Blog, for bringing this issue to my attention.

2003-03-10T10:22:00.000-05:00

Sullivan v. New York Times. Andrew Sullivan argues that international pressure against Saddam Hussein is being undermined by disunity in the UN Security and here at home. Honestly, I think he's right about that. But for some reason, he only blames one side. He says "To be sure, we don't have absolute maximum pressure. We have a divided security council, massive peace demos and papers like the New York Times already bailing on a united front."

So what is the Times supposed to do... pretend they think Bush is right for the sake of national unity, even though they honestly believe Bush is wrong? What kind of journalism is that? Of course, this is just a trickle-down argument from the Republicans in government. When the much lauded post-9/11 "spirit of bipartisanship" broke down, whose fault was it? Democrats, obviously, because the Democrats stopped agreeing with Bush.

Why do these concepts always cut the same way? Under a Republican president, bipartisanship never means mutual compromise; it means the Democrats have to agree with the what the Republicans have wanted all along. Sullivan's argument is the same. Bush doesn't have to temper his policy, or even his approach, to secure international backing; rather, everyone else has to support Bush on Bush's terms. What utter bullshit! The world, and the country, are divided because Bush is divisive. The problem isn't that Bush is wrong (though, obviously, I think he is). The problem is that Bush is bullying rather than persuading, he's threatening rather than arguing. If there is a divided front in the country, or in the world, and if that divided front is playing into Saddam's hands, then it is a failure of diplomacy to be laid squarely at Bush's feet.

[The title of this post is an inside joke to Law-geeks that I've been hoping to use for months now.]

2003-03-10T10:02:00.000-05:00

Judicial Killing in Texas. It's a classic example of why the death penalty in this country is hopelessly broken. A black man is accused of killing a white boy in Texas in 1980. Case closed. Kill the bastard.

Trouble is, the evidence against the defendant was based on two highly uncredible witnesses: a hardcore drug addict, and a felon hoping to swing a deal with the prosecutors. Prosecutors broker deals with snitches all the time, but the jury is usually supposed to be told about this arrangement, if I'm not mistaken. But not this time. The prosecution deliberately concealed the deal, because they needed the testimony and knew that it wouldn't be credible if the deal were known. On top of that, the defendant has an alibi putting him in Dallas, a three-hours drive from the crime scene, at the time of death.

He's going to die on Wednesday. Bob Herbert has the story.

Tell me again that death row inmates should have less opportunity for appeal, I dare you.

2003-03-09T11:14:00.000-05:00

Sad Day. My grandmother passed away last night. It's a bit of a shock. She was extremely healthy, and not just for someone of her age. My family often joked that she would outlive all of us, and it seemed likely. But, I think, sometimes, when someone is just ready to go, well... I'm holding up ok, and my parents really seem to have it together. I'm still pretty shaken up, though.

I've decided, out of pure foolishness I expect, to come in to Rutgers this morning to finish working on my appellate brief, which is due tomorrow. I don't know if I can do it. I may have to request a postponement. Believe me, if you thought analyzing section 309(c)(2)(A) of the Clean Water Act was dry and technical before, try dealing with it in a state like this.

I'm sure all of my readers have been through family losses of their own; I'm not trying to elicit sympathy. But I wanted to get all of this down. I feel a little better having done so.

2003-03-08T14:42:00.000-05:00

Howler History. One of the most valuable cites on my daily must-read list has to be The Daily Howler. Five days a week, Bob Somerby provides ample evidence of the way in which our mainstream media distorts stories and skews the facts, and worse. Most of the time, the Howler directs its attention at debunking spurious hit-pieces aimed at Democrats, but it's goal is to combat journalistic malpractice wherever it occurs. The Howler was one of the few places you could go to get a tough, fair defense of President Bush during the brief Harken scandal period. I was never quite satisfied with the Howler's arguments on that topic, and perhaps you may not be convinced on some other issue, but I urge you to take a close look at what Somerby has to say, and consider it carefully.

This past week, the Howler has embarked upon a project called "Howler History". The topic is the press's blatant smearing of Gore's relationship with one of his political advisors during the 2000 campaign, Naomi Wolf. I didn't know much about the Wolf business back then, and I don't really remember any of it today. But reading through the Howler's pieces, which are all thoroughly backed up with ample quoting from primary sources, it shows the same pattern of baseless Gore-bashing that dogged the Democratic nominee for over a year-and-a-half leading up to the election.

Monday's entry details the "discovery" of Naomi Wolf, who was "secretly" advising the Gore campaign. Of course, she was doing this by sitting only a few rows back from the stage at a Gore-Bradley debate; hardly where the Gore campaign would have put her if they were trying to keep her secret. Nevermind, the press corps leaped into action, and the rest is Howler History. Follow the link.

Next up is Tuesday's entry gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the development of the "earth tones" brouhaha. Apparently, the Washington press corps had nothing better to do than to comment on Gore's choice of clothes, and the discovery that he often wore cowboy boots put them into hysterics. Of course, this was an early attempt by Gore to "reinvent himself" because "he didn't know who he was". On the other hand, it's just possible that Gore had consistently donned cowboy boots throughout his public career, and in his private life as well. Gore's explanation: "I'm from Tennessee!" Not good enough for the press, who had decided that everything Gore did was carefully calculated for political effect. Right? Follow the link.

Wednesday's entry gets even worse, showing how the press corps bends over backwards to spin a perfectly unremarkable non-story into a big issue. The story goes that Naomi Wolf advised Gore that he had to become an "Alpha male". What Wolf actually said is that he should be more forthright with his criticisms of President Clinton to establish that he is his own man, as every Vice-President must do when running for President. But the boring and true story wasn't nearly as much fun as the fun and false story, so the press closed their eyes and pretended that Wolf had said something really weird. Follow the link.

The Howler took Thursday off to redirect its attention to current journalistic misconduct, and provides instead some info on the continuing Kerry-bashing going on at the Boston Glode. Apparently, the Globe is having a really hard time dealing with the fact that John Kerry is not Irish, and, even more astounding, is Jewish. Holy shit!! Follow the link. But Howler history returned yesterday when Friday's entry detailed the continued press obsession with Gore's wardrobe. Apparently, no one wanted to talk about the substantive differences between the two presidential candidates, but everyone wanted to have a good laugh about the colors that Gore was wearing. And everyone was fixated on the fact that Naomi Wolf had advised the earth-tones ensemble. Wolf and Gore both denied that she had anything to do with his clothes, but the press corps kept going. What was the source for this "story"? Follow the link.

The Howler promises that the final installment of the Wolf series will appear today. Stay tuned.

I realize that this is all ancient history, but I think it's really important for everyone to know how irresponsibly the press behaved during the 2000 election cycle. Howler History is a remarkable account of a press corps that avoids at all costs having to discuss substantive political issues, and is all to eager to descend into adolescent gossip-mongering. And, as Thursday's entry shows, this process is beginning all over again, and the first target is Senator John Kerry. Regardless of your political beliefs, the Daily Howler is an invaluable resource for those of us who have learned not to blindly trust the press, and Bob Somerby is performing a public service by wading through the muck on our behalf.

Conservative readers of Terminus may worry that the political leanings of the Howler will not match their own, and they are probably right. However, the Howler has shown an admirable level of independence, and is willing to go after journalistic malfeasance wherever it happens. Even if you end up in "disagreeance" with the conclusions reached on a particular issue, it is important to see the kind of sloppy hack-work that creates this country's political debates.

2003-03-07T11:10:00.000-05:00

Let's Not Do That Again. Going back to the well, folks, for another great post from Daily Kos. This time, the subject is the Bush press conference last night, which I watched with interest. Personally, I thought he was pretty poor. I mean, look, if yo are going on television in front of the whole world to argue that we must go to war now, and you duck the tough questions (and get pissy with the reporters who ask them), how do you think that looks? When a reporter asks you about one of the potential downsides of your plan, and you say that you are "concerned" and that you "think about it", but you don't give any clue as to the content of those thoughts, how do you think that looks? When you overturn a long-standing tradition of giving the first question to the most well-known and well-regarded White House reporter of all time, Helen Thomas, and don't let her ask any question at all, how do you think that looks?

To me, it looks like a man who's stubbornly backing an argument he knows he can't win.

What really pissed me off is how he said, more than once, that he has not decided to go to war. That's a bald-faced lie. [But it's a minor, political lie that doesn't really matter, to be fair.] By his own words, the United States has three goals: disarmament, regime change, and promoting democracy. Disarmament can be achieved through inspections, but regime change and promoting democracy absolutely cannot. There is no way to remove Saddam Hussein and remake the country's government into a democracy without going to war. I mean, Hussein isn't going to install democracy voluntarily, and even if he were to step down and flee into exile, the guys left at the top aren't going to install democracy; they're going to take over. So, something ain't right. Either he already has decided to go to war (he did, months ago at the very least), or he's lying about his true motives. Perhaps both, but I'm willing to concede that his public motives are his true motives.

As an international strategy, his press conference is not going to bring people around to our side. Most other countries in the world don't believe that "regime change" is, in and of itself, a legitimate goal. I think this view carries a lot of weight. I mean, it's pretty dangerous to allow one country to invade another because they don't like the other's leaders. Now, Bush tried to argue that Iraq presents a real threat to the United States. Except that he didn't really argue for it, he asserted it, and it's a tough assertion to prove, because Saddam Hussein has no missiles which are even able to cover one-tenth of the distance between Iraq and the United States. Sure, Saddam could sell nukes to terrorists, if he had nukes. He doesn't. Of course, he might build nukes in the future. But not if there's a tough inspections regime in place he couldn't.

So, you see, Bush needs the regime change goal in order to get support for war, because inspections can't meet it. But regime change is an illegitimate goal, and inspections may be able to deal with the goal of disarmament, thus making war at best premature, and possibly unnecessary. This is why France, Germany, Russia, Canada, China, Turkey, Jordan, etc., etc., oppose the United States on this issue. The only way to answer this objection is to prove that inspections can't work, and Bush didn't even attempt to make that case.

UPDATE: If you haven't already, be sure to check out the response from Liberal Oasis. It's the best treatment I've seen so far.

2003-03-07T09:48:00.000-05:00

Saudi Arabia: Bastion of Religious Tolerance. From Daily Kos, we have the story of two Middle Eastern countries. One of them is a brutal and repressive Muslim regime which does not allow any expression of Christian faith. It enforces this policy with brutal police actions aimed directly at Christians. The other country has a history of religious intolerance, but the current government has clamped down on it severely. While the majority of the second country's citizens are Muslims, the Christian minority is permitted to freely and openly practice their religion. There are even Christians in very high positions within the government. One of these countries is on America's Top Six list of countries practicing severe religious intolerance, and one of them isn't.

The first country is Saudi Arabia. They are not on the list. The second country is Iraq. They are.

If this makes any sense to you, please email me. I want to start taking the same drugs as you do.

2003-03-06T12:14:00.000-05:00

The Bond Project: The Living Daylights. The role of James Bond, 007, was portrayed by Roger Moore in seven consecutive Bond films spanning more than ten years. In that time, the Bond franchise developed a highly recognizable tone and style defined in large part by Moore’s approach to the character. When it came time to find a replacement, producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli was ready to take the franchise in an entirely new direction.

Before settling on Timothy Dalton, several other actors were considered, including Sam Neill and Pierce Brosnan. In fact, but for contractual obligations he had with “Remington Steele”, Brosnan was to have taken the mantle from Moore eight years before his eventual debut in GoldenEye. Fortunately or unfortunately, Brosnan’s loss was Dalton’s gain, and Bond fans were treated to a very different James Bond.

Before taking the role, Dalton made clear his interest in grounding his portrayal firmly in the character as he appeared in Ian Fleming’s books. In the films, the character of Bond had originally been established by Sean Connery in Dr. No, with significant input from that film’s director, Terence Young. Since then, the character had evolved a great deal, but gradually. Even as the actors came and went, the Bond character was always more or less consistent from film to film. Watching the movies in chronological order, while changes in approach are evident between films and between actors, there never had been a major re-imagining of James Bond. Timothy Dalton set out to change that, and he had the full support of the production team.

Dalton’s Bond was a much darker, grittier secret agent than Moore’s. He’s also more human, and more vulnerable, than any portrayal in the franchise to that point. Timothy Dalton was interested in Bond as a character, and as a human being, in addition to Bond as action-hero. This gives Dalton’s films an added layer of depth that most Bond films never even aspired to. I was amazed while watching this film to notice how closely I was following Dalton’s face during close-ups. Dalton, in this film, showcased an ability to use his face and his eyes to clue the audience in to what Bond was thinking during each scene. Though a subtle example, this was indicative of the massive change in approach that Dalton’s Bond represented.

Unfairly, this film is more often remembered for another change in approach. Bond’s legendary promiscuity is sharply downplayed. Upon meeting Kara, the film’s female protagonist, Bond does not immediately appear to be trying to sleep with her. Rather, this film allows a relationship to develop between the characters which is, though quite conventional by action-movie standards, a rather striking departure for Bond.

The story is also a change of pace, being only the second film in the franchise (after For Your Eyes Only) which tries to fool the audience as to the identity of the film’s true villain. Again, this is a highly effective tactic which encourages the audience to pay closer attention to the story than is normally warranted. For the most part, this tactic pays off, as the story is very interesting and engaging. It is a terrible shame that Walter Gotell was not healthy enough to take a major role in this film. Because of audience’s familiarity with General Gogol, the first act would have been far more tense and far more exciting than it was. As it turned out, even with a brand new character written-in to replace General Gogol, the intrigues of the first act are very enjoyable.

The film’s primary weakness comes from Whitaker, an American arms trader portrayed by Joe Don Baker (Mitchell!). The performance was perfectly adequate, but Whitaker as written was a little too eccentric (almost to the point of silliness), and this eccentricity greatly undermined the otherwise straightforward approach to the story. Before the disappointing fire fight with Whitaker, audiences are treated to one of the best done action sequences in the franchise’s long history.

The Bottom Line: This film represents a stunning re-working of the Bond franchise, maintaining the same elements that the series has always relied on, but re-calibrating them around a new star with a wildly new approach to the character.

The Bond Project continues with License to Kill.

2003-03-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

Credibility Gap. Matt Bivens at The Nation has a short blurb each day called "The Daily Outrage". Yesterday's entry details the advice given to Republicans by pollster Frank Luntz to confuse and mislead voters on environmental issues. Here's the quote from Bivens's post: "Luntz says George Bush and the Republicans are vulnerable on environmental issues -- i.e., they're out-of-step with Americans -- and so have to start muddying the waters, lest the voters notice." Emphasis mine. What a lovely choice of words. Isn't muddying the waters, among other things, exactly what we're talking about here?

The other point I want to bring out of this is that most Americans are well to the left of the White House on environmental issues, and yet the Republican Media Establishment (and sometimes even the Mainstream Media Establishment) continue to portray environmental issues as fringe-leftist issues. It's just not true. That's preciely why the Republicans have to play these silly games with terms.

2003-03-04T21:36:00.000-05:00

The Escalating Crisis with North Korea. Honestly, it's a scary time to be alive. As if we didn't have enough to worry about with (a) terrorism, and (b) the inevitable (but unnecessary) war with Iraq, North Korea is simply refusing to go away. I'm telling you, that Kim Jong-Il guy is really impatient. If he would just cool it for six to twelve months, Bush would still have plenty of time to fight that war *after* Iraq has been dealt with. But no, like the little child he is, Kim Jong-Il wants his war now, now, now!! And it's starting to worry a lot of people. Fortunately or unfortunately, none of those people seem to live or work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. To say that the White House response to this crisis has been lacking is an understatement akin to saying that the Tampa Bay Bucs did "pretty well" in the playoffs.

Josh Marshall has the kind of post that keeps him popular with many in the political-blog community. He's got a good breakdown of the breakdown up on his site right now. It has been clear to everybody for the last couple of months now that North Korea is trying to get the United States to sit down, diplomatically, one-on-one. It has been unclear to me why that is such a big thing to ask. Until we engage with North Korea diplomatically, they will continue to up the ante, unless they finally go too far and force us to engage militarily. Either way, engagement will have to occur before this crisis can be resolved. Which sort of engagement would you prefer at this point?

Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, told Congress that he would prefer to engage diplomatically. The White House was furious.

The trouble with all of this is that the United States has no North Korea policy. Some of the more hard-line of the war hawks want to hold off on North Korea until after Iraq is over, and then go to war. The moderates want to deal with North Korea diplomatically now and defuse the situation as soon as possible. The last thing they want is for North Korea to think they can take advantage of US focus on Iraq to get away with ever more flagrant provocations. President Bush is in the middle on this one, and if he has a policy in mind, he isn't telling anyone.

Seriously, this one goes way beyond my personal and political animosity toward Bush. These successive escalations can only lead to one place, sooner or later, and that's war. This is homeland security right here. This is a threat to American lives. This is exactly the kind of crisis that requires strong leadership, and it could hardly be more important. Bush's failure is far more than simply a political embarrassment to him. It's a gaping weakness in the national security of this country, and it must be addressed.

2003-03-04T10:56:00.000-05:00

Back to the Future. Tucker (aka Keith) and I disagree about a hell of a lot, especially when it comes to politics. But we both love movies, and sometimes (only sometimes) we love the same movies. Check out Tucker's World to find his discussion of the Back to the Future Trilogy. Tucker loves these films, and so do I. That having been said, I think he goes a little over the top. I mean, they are really good movies that are really fun to watch, but they're far from perfect.

Keith likes Part 2 a lot more than I do. You see, the film-makers didn't initially plan for a trilogy. They made one really good movie, and it hit, so they decided to follow it up. But they had this line at the end of the first movie, establising that the follow-up was concerned with addressing some problem with Marty's kids. As a little teaser at the end of a stand-alone film, it works. But when the filmmakers tried to expand it into a real sequel, they failed miserably. The whole storyline about Marty's kids is utterly uninteresting. It rambles and meanders around just long enough to establish the real story of the sequel, which is similarly truncated due to the time spent running around in the future. What results is a movie which totally fails to stand up on its own merits. There isn't a single unified story here, it's just two pieces which work to link the end of Part 1 with the beginning of Part 3. [Interestingly, if you go from Part 1 to Part 3 (switching as soon as the Delorean departs 1955), skipping part 2 entirely, it still mostly makes sense and you really don't miss much of any importance.]

Part 3 is greatly maligned in most circles, but to me, it's a vast improvement over Part 2. Sure, there's a lot of cheesiness in it, but the story is a lot better than Part 2, mainly because it has a single story which is developed from beginning to end. You know, like in a movie. Actually, the low point of the final installment is the whole business about overcoming Marty's hang-up about being called a chicken, which was inserted into the series out of nowhere in the second installment. I credit the filmmakers with trying to give Marty a charcter arc, but they didn't do it very well.

Still, the movies are all highly entertaining, and it's a lot of fun to try to follow the crazy twists of the time-travel story. Next time you watch, try to count how many time-travelling Deloreans are in Hill Valley at any one time. There are frequently several. Unlike most time-travel stories, the film-makers this time thought very hard about how time travel works, and what its "rules" are, and they applied them very well. Nevertheless, there are some weird issues hidden in the corners that are fun to play with.

Take a look at the fantastic DVD set for loads of behind-the-scenes, documentary, and trivia materials.

2003-03-04T10:36:00.000-05:00

Hooray! Lots of good news on the personal front today. First, I've managed to fix my archives, sort of. Now, if you click on archives, you get a complete list of every week that Terminus has been in existence. I found some pretty interesting stuff back there, too. I'm still trying to improve the archives page, but don't hold your breath. Second, I'm planning to travel to Borders Books and Music after class today to buy some extremely dorky DVDs, because I feel that I haven't been sufficiently indulging my dorkiness lately. I thought that being in law school and writing a blog would take care of it all by itself, but dorkiness is like most narcotics... you start needing more and more just to maintain. So, I'm going to buy Doctor Who: The Aztecs and Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos. Get dorkier than that, I dare you. On a whim, I thought I'd check out King Crimson's official website to find out when their next album would be release. I found out, much to my surprise, that it's already out, and that King Crimson will be at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia on Friday. Yeah, this Friday. Holy shit, right? That was lucky. Not sure, yet, if I'll be able to go. Fingers are crossed.

Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't go. I've got this appellate brief due in next Monday, and it needs a lot of work. God damn it. Law school eats your life.

2003-03-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

Complaints Department. I'm going to get some things off my chest here, so sit back, and I'll try not to spit.

I'm getting really angry at a lot of the tactics employed by the war hawks. Here at Terminus, I have gone to great pains to establish a strong argument in support of my position. I wish those on the other side would do the same. Some people have done, and I have tried to point out their work here for the benefit of the many people who are still conflicted about the war. But by far what we get from the media is cheap, sarcastic, mindless bashing of the doves. I'll give you a couple of examples.

The conservative talk radio station out of Philadelphia, "The Big Talker" 1210 AM, is sponsoring a "Rally for America" at Valley Forge. The idea is to get lots of people together to show support for the troops. When I first heard about these rallies, which are being held all over the country and drawing a miniscule sliver of the numbers that the anti-war rallies are getting, I immediately wondered if these were not "pro-war" rallies, despite the frequent denials. Dom Giordano addressed the issue on Saturday on his radio program. He said that if someone were "ambivalent" about the war (as many people are) wanted to show support for the troops, they would be welcome. He used the word "ambivalent" several times, but he never appealed to people who do not support the war, and yet still want to support the troops. Also, he repeatedly drew a distinction between these "Rallies for America" and the other, vastly larger protest rallies. Those rallies, the ones that set records all over the world a couple of weeks ago, are filled with people who hate the President and hate America. Giordano mentioned those things several times, and always together, as if it's a single unit.

What's wrong with this? Well, it implies (intentially, of course) that people who oppose war do not support the troops, hate Bush, and hate America. This is complete bullshit. I support the troops wholeheartedly. This shouldn't even need to be said. The troops are putting their lives on the line in defense of freedom and democracy. If the particular mission coming down the chain-of-command isn't likely to promote the goals of defending freedom and democracy, that's hardly the fault of the troops. Troops may sign up with the intent of defending freedom and democracy, but they don't have a "freedom and democracy" clause in their contracts which allow them to decline service in missions which don't meet that standard. They fight because they are ordered to fight, and because they honor their commitment to the country, to the military, and to the President. If I were in the armed forces, despite opposing this war, I would fight it. That's why I didn't join the military, because I didn't want to put myself in a position where I would have to kill people in service of a cause I might not agree with. And because I'm fat, weak, and have a high aversion to physical exertion.

Let me make this very clear. I support the troops, I do not support the war. I hate President Bush, I do not hate America.

On the 'Imus in the Morning' program today, Imus was having some fun at the expense of Fred Durst. I hate Limp Bizkit, and have no special affection for Durst either. I don't even know (and perhaps this is obvious) how to spell his last name. But Imus was busting on him for using the non-word "agree-ance", and for making hideously awful music. For one of his "bumpers" today, Imus ran the "agree-ance" quote, played the first verse of George Michael's "Faith", and then segued it into the chorus of Limp Bizkit's cover of the same song. The point of all of this is that Durst's oppostition of the war is not to be taken seriously. But then, do we need hawks to tell us that a singer from a shitty band is not a serious critic of foreign policy? No. Who pays attention to Durst? Republicans. Why? To discredit people who appen to agree with him.

And it's a little rich for someone who supports President Bush to make fun of someone for speaking poorly. Not to mention someone like Don Imus who gives a microphone to Bo Dietl. Which is more embarrassing... the most powerful man in the world not knowing how to pronounce "nuclear", or some singer in a shitty band saying "agree-ance"? And I don't see how the utter hideousness of Limp Bizkit's "music" is relevant to the debate in any way.

Stunts like this piss me off, and it shows the intellectual bankruptcy of most of the Republican media establishment on the issue of war. Indeed, on most issues.

I have no doubt that Bush genuinely believes in the course he is charting, and there is an argument to be made to support his cause, his aims, and his methods. There is a real argument to be had about this, and having it would benefit us all. But ducking a real debate by smearing opponents of war, who also genuinely believe in their cause, and have a strong argument to make in support of that cause, is petty, small, and cowardly.

And, more importantly, it pisses me off.

Anyway, I want to make it very clear to everyone that I wholeheartedly support the troops, without reservation. Their courage and dedication is a tribute to this country. I only wish they had better leaders in Washington.

2003-03-02T12:10:00.000-05:00

Diplomatic Fiasco #19,434. Oh my God, I can't believe how bad it's getting. I woke up this morning to start blogging, but my friggin' dad knocked me off the friggin' computer. I really wish I didn't still live with my parents, but the money I save is just too good to pass up. Anyway, by the time I got back on again to scan the headlines and forcibly inject my opinion into the internet, there were also sorts of crazy stories going around. And most of them are very, very bad for the White House.

Let's see... looks like Turkey voted no (barely) on allowing U.S. troops to deploy from there. This is a serious diplomatic fuck-up for sure, but it's not immediately obvious why. It's clear that it creates a logistical nightmare, since troops and equipment were literally parked off the cost of Turkey waiting to deploy. It's clear (and this is the most serious ramification) that it makes the war more dangerous for our troops who eventually go in. Don't get me wrong, we still have a mind-boggling degree of military supremacy, but a double-fronted war would have spread Iraq's troops that much more thinly. It also undercuts the argument, again, about how much of a threat Saddam is. Think about it: the deal that Turkey rejected was a pretty damn good deal. Some $30 billion, plus massive concessions allowing you to have an influential role in post-war Iraq. All you have to do in exchange is let the Yankees use some of your land from which to launch their invasion. Seems pretty sweet to me, but the Turks turned it down. It's the part about post-war influence that reveals just how serious this fuck-up is. As Josh Marshall explains, the U.S. government has already publicly admitted that they were willing to sell out the Iraqi Kurds in order to get Turkish support. Now, the Kurds are publicly betrayed, and the U.S. still doesn't get it's two-fronted war. That's a fiasco, and the White House has egg all over its face.

Next we've got this devastating revelation about the NSA wire-tapping the U.N. delegations of countries with key votes in the security council in order to, I don't know, get a lead on how they're going to vote. This is not playing nice, and it looks like it was authorized pretty high up the chain of command. Rice seems to be directly implicated by this article in The Observer. The article discusses a memo originating high up in the NSA directing the agency to spy on the U.N. delegates. You can see the memo here. The fact that this is happening is not surprising. Like the spy plane that crashed in China in 2001, the problem isn't the spying, it's the getting caught. The U.S. just got caught, and that will probably enrage precisely those "swing vote" nations that the White House is counting on.

Now, I've told you before that the United States will go to war no matter what the UN does. But, there could still be problems. If this new UN resolution doesn't pass, Tony Blair will be under tremendous pressure. It's even possible that Britain would back out of our "coalition", which would be a devastating blow the United States.

Another set-back for the United States is that fact that Saddam Hussein is destroying the controversial Al Samoud II missiles. As absurd as it was to think of going to war over some missiles that could only fly 130 miles, we will now be going to war over some destroyed missiles which could have only flown 130 miles. But think about that for a minute. Saddam Hussein is destroying weapons which the UN has objected to, and this is a set-back to the White House plan. Isn't that exactly what we want him to do?

This story has so many twists and turns to it, I will be really disappointed when the war actually starts. First of all, a lot of people are going to die in the first couple of days. We are about to witness what could be the most devastating sustained bombing campaign the world has ever seen. Second of all, once that starts, the press will jump immediately into war mode, during which time nothing will be reported which might even possibly be construed to criticize the White House, even a little bit. So, enjoy the diplomatic process stories while you still can. I will be.

In fairness, I should point out the one piece of good news I heard this morning. And it's really, really good news. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, suspected of planning the September 11 attacks, has been arrested in Pakistan. For those of you who like that sort of thing, it looks like he'll be taken to some secret location outside the United States and tortured. I'm not a fan of torture, but in spite of this, it's still really excellent news.

2003-02-28T09:35:00.000-05:00

War Against Teachers. Why do Republicans hate teachers? It boggles my mind. For the last two days or so I've been hearing all sorts of vague allegations about teachers in Maine apparently demeaning young kids who had fathers in the military. The keyword is vague. Yesterday alone I must have heard at least four different people mention this story: three on talk radio, and Lou Dobbs. I never heard from any one of them (which is not to say that they didn't mention) what had actually happened. I heard that the Maine National Guard had gotten complaints about teachers. But I didn't even hear a one-sided uncorroborated allegation, which is usually the starting point for these things.

I was very pleased to find Hesiod on the ball again this morning. Surprise, surprise, looks like this has all been blown way out of proportion. With their charactistic blend of exaggerations, insinuations, and outright lies, the Republicans are once again going after our nations teachers. Yeah, I know teachers don't fight fires or kill people or anything exciting like that, but I happen to think that they are heroes in their way as well. [Except, obviously, for Lima Beanz, who is a public menace.] I'm sick to death of Republicans lying about them to make them look bad.

2003-02-27T12:51:00.000-05:00

Bush Spanks Congressional Republicans, and They Take It. This is interesting. For a while now, Congressional Democrats have been bashing the White House for not putting enough money into homeland defense. Considering how much money the government was able to find to buy Turkey's support for the coming war with Iraq, it was a terrible omission not to put sufficient (and previously promised) funds for law-enforcement and other first-responders.

Thankfully, the White House has relented and agreed to provide the promised money. How nice of them, yeah? But the spin is interesting. The White House, including Bush himself, has expressed "disappointment" with Congress for neglecting this crucial priority. But the Congressional Republicans claim that they wrote the spending bill in close consultation with the White House. So far, no one has come right out and put this at Bush's feet, but it certainly looks like they should to me. Meanwhile, the White House continues to slap the Congressional Republicans on the issue.

Here's the article. I should point out that I'm speculating here, and perhaps the White House really was blindsided by the startlingly omission in the Republicans' spending bill. Not betting on it, though.

2003-02-27T11:01:00.000-05:00

Fred Rogers has Passed Away. Wow, I'm surprised how much this one has hit me. I just discovered this over at Counterspin Central. That site was kind enough to provide some links, which I will reproduce here. First is a 1999 article from Salon about his brilliant career. Second is a lovely and very personal tribute from Jeanne D'Arc.

I feel like I've been punched in the gut.

2003-02-27T09:58:00.000-05:00

Donahue Not Lying Down. Phil Donahue is pissed that his show got cancelled after only six months, and he has good reason to be. Unlike fellow commentators Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, et. al., Donahue routinely tried to raise the level of debate, and give a fair airing to all sides of an issue. It's no secret that Donahue himself had a clear position on the issues at hand, but everyone on his show had a chance to put forth their views in the best light possible, and as a result, Donahue's show performed a wonderful service to all of its viewers.

But that's not good enough. Apparently, Donahue's ratings were so bad, that he had to get cancelled after only six months. At the same time, MSNBC is bringing in more conservative commentators, like Michael Savage, Dick Armey, and Joe Scarbrough. According to this article, regardin a Donahue post-firing press release, MSNBC is trying to "out-Fox Fox". This, my friends, is the state of your liberal media.

Did Donahue have bad ratings? Arguably, he did. He was getting smacked by O'Reilly every night. I mean, smacked hard. But he was pulling the strongest ratings of all of MSNBC's prime time line up. Imagine that you own a hockey team that isn't scoring very well. Do you fire your best scorer? That's exactly what MSNBC has done, because their best scorer is a liberal. This is an outrage.

2003-02-27T00:41:00.000-05:00

Too Liberal for Television. It's past my bed time, so I'll be brief. Counterspin Central has the real deal on why Donahue was dumped by MSNBC. It wasn't the ratings. Apparently, the man was just too liberal, and MSNBC worried that Donahue's program might become the unofficial home of the anti-war movement at a time when the other big cable networks were wrapped in the flag.

This is an outrage. Honestly, I wasn't the biggest fan of the show. First of all, I didn't really think Donahue was as sharp as he could have been. His questions were really long. I mean, he asked really good questions (and never the sort of mindless non-sequiturs Chris Matthews likes to pepper his guests with), but he would suck up so much oxygen before getting to the point that the guest would have damn near no time to respond. And, compounding this problem, there were way too many commercials.

Despite Donahue's shortcomings as a host, it was the only show on television which was making other views available. And what's more, he always included a wide-range of views on his program, and gave every guest ample opportunity to make their own argument in their own words. Certainly, Donahue had his own political biases which he wasn't afraid to show, but his was by fair the fairest program on the cable news networks.

But what really makes me angry is not that the show was cancelled, but rather that the American public has been robbed of a crucial balancing voice in our political discourse, all for the sake of MSNBC's bottom line. News has been dead for years, and this proves it. It's all business now. And principled opposition to a highly controversial war is simply not a formula for maximizing profits.

2003-02-26T13:54:00.000-05:00

250 People, Some of Them Economists, Support Bush Tax Cut Scheme. Thanks to Tapped for nailing this one. It seems that the White House has been touting a letter from 250 "economists" supporting the president's latest (but not last) tax cut proposal. The letter reads: "We enthusiastically endorse your economic growth and jobs proposal. It is fiscally responsible and it will create more employment, economic growth, and opportunities for all Americans. Moreover, it will improve corporate accountability and strengthen the nation's international competitiveness." That isn't a sample: that's the entire letter. Kind of underwhelming, isn't it? I mean, it reads like a political consultant wrote it. You don't suppose...?

Anyway, it gets worse. Sure, if I wanted to be petty and juvenile, I could point out that the previous letter from economists bashing the president's tax scheme was signed by 450 economists, and this one was only signed by 250 economists. I could do that, but I won't. Because it isn't true. As it happens, quite a few of the people who signed the latest letter are not economists. People like Ben Stein.

Now, you could argue that these people are economists, depending on what the definition of the word "economist" is. But according to the traditional definition (someone with a PhD in economics who works in the field), Ben Stein certainly is not one. And he's not the only one on the list. Check out Tapped's analysis, linked above.

But if we're going to relax the criteria, does anyone know where I can go to add my name to the anti-Bush tax plan letter? I have a BA in economics from Rutgers University, so I figure I'm qualified. That will make it 451 to 250. I'd count my friend Rob, too, but he'd probably write his own letter talking about how Milton Friedman could have beaten the crap out of John Maynard Keynes or some nonsense like that. Rob's crazy.

2003-02-26T10:52:00.000-05:00

Welcome Newcomers!. Well, thanks to a generous plug from Liberal Oasis, my numbers are way up so far this morning. Of course, they are still pathetic, but way less pathetic than usual. Hooray!

For those of you who are new to Terminus, I hope you find material of interest, and please post comments!! Scroll down to predict when the US will see another surplus, and please give me feedback on my approach to the war question.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the anti-war sentiment in this country. A couple of weeks ago, we had massive protests in New York and California against a war in Iraq, and these protests were reflected all over the world. It was an amazing display of world protest against the aims of the Bush administration, and it was pretty exciting. All told, millions of people from around the world came out for protests in a myriad of cities on the same day, to voice their opinions. If I had known about the (comparatively) small protest in Philadelphia, I would have been proud to take part.

But war-hawks in this country were, at best, utterly dismissive of the protests. At worst, they argued (and continue to argue) that the protests are counter-productive, anti-American, objectively pro-Saddam, or even treasonous. This is inevitable. Conservatives will descend to these tactics every time, because they seem to work for them. Turn on conservative talk radio and you won't find anyone who supports the protesters. [Interestingly, you will find people who oppose war, but usually for isolationist reasons.] But, you know, some of those conservatives actually have a point. I wouldn't blame an honest war-hawk for thinking that the protests were covers for abject pacifism. We can have the pacifism debate, but it's a debate that the hawks would win outright. Pacifism is an absolutist doctrine which is difficult to defend from principled objections. This prompted me to consider the circumstances under which I could support this war, in principle.

I think this is something that liberals in particular, and doves in general, should undertake. Doves have been making principled arguments against this war for a long time now, but their arguments center on why war is not appropriate in this case. That's absolutely right, but it's not enough. It is also necessary to establish under what circumstances a war is appropriate. This is less a question of political strategy for me (although, it might help), but rather a question of defining the role of war in the world today. When is it permissible, and when is it required? What goals can justify a war, and what circumstances necessitate it?

Last night, during the second intermission of the Flyers-Blackhawks game (the Flyers won 2-0 in Cechmanek's second consecutive shutout), I was flipping around on the box, and found Frontline on PBS. They were doing a story about the behind-the-scenes White House debates over Iraq. You know the sort of thing: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Donald Rumsfeld vs. Colin Powell. The program, including interviews with lots of interesting people (even conservatives), made the point extremely clear that war with Iraq was, at least according to the hawks in the Administration, about establishing a new paradigm for America's role in the post-Cold War world.

It became axiomatic among liberals, progressives, and Democrats after the 2002 midterm elections that you can't fight something with nothing. The hawks have a whole world-view, based on American exceptionalism, preemption, etc. It is a view that is profoundly frightening to me, and to many lefties, an some righties as well. The previous President Bush was severely embarrassed when the first draft of Wolfowitz's new paradigm was leaked to the New York Times, and he disavowed it. The current President Bush has accepted it whole-heartedly.

Right now, we are in danger of this paradigm being installed by default. The United States is going to war in Iraq, in the middle of March, exactly as has been planned from the get-go. All of this business about going through the United Nations and getting a second-resolution is merely political window-dressing designed to cover the political ass of Tony Blair. The war is going ahead, exactly as planned by the hawks in the White House, regardless of what happens at the UN. This war represents the first deployment of this radical new foreign policy doctrine. It becomes, in some sense, precedent. When the next war comes along, it will be easier, politically, for the hawks to get their way.

For this reasons, liberals must begin to formulate an alternative foreign policy paradigm. Because you can't fight something with nothing, the left must have something with which to fight. The hawks are pursuing a plan under which the United States, as the world's only superpower, has more-or-less unlimited discretion to reshape the world as and how it likes. The United States, unlike every other nation of the world, may launch preemptive wars against its potential enemies. The United States, unlike every other nation of the world, may launch wars to remove foreign leaders we don't like. The United States, unlike every other country in the world, can do whatever it damn well pleases. This view is a minority position, even among the Republicans. But convincing the country to go along with Iraq is a big part of convincing them to go along with the whole damn thing.

Liberals need to fight back.

2003-02-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Bond Project: A View to a Kill. Here we have another in the series of films that qualifies as harmless, mindless fun. The story is highly similar to Goldfinger, with microchips replacing gold, Max Zorin replacing Auric Goldfinger, and May Day replacing Odd Job. Old school Bond fans will attack every one of these counterparts from the point of view that Goldfinger was far superior, and it's hard to argue with that. However, the present film is more than sufficiently entertaining in its own right.

By the time this film was released, Roger Moore had played 007 for somthing like twelve years. Roger Moore was 58 years old at the time of release, and yet looked far better than the much younger Sean Connery did in his final official outing in Diamonds are Forever. Nevertheless, change was in the air, and this film marks the end of the Roger Moore era. It is unlikely that any other actor will ever make as many Bond films as Moore, or remain in the role for so long. Over the course of Moore's tenure, the series had changed dramatically. This film represents a sort of final statement of what Moore's Bond was all about. It is as far removed from the high camp of The Man With the Golden Gun as it is from the (relatively) realistic grittiness of For Your Eyes Only. The basic template, then, which had been established previously and ultimately cemented by this film, is for an exciting, action-packed storyline of limited weight, centered around a Bond effused with easy charm and pointed wit. It may sound like a description vague enough to accomodate Dr. No, but the Connery Bond has been definitely dispensed with. The ruthlessness is gone, for example, and the tone of the films is far more jovial and less dangerous.

As for the particular film, it is an suitably entertaining entry, and contains several memorable sequences and characters. Christopher Walken makes a terrific villain. While most Bond villains make the fatal mistake of underestimating Bond, Walken's Zorin takes this trait to an extreme. Recall the lovely scene where Zorin uses his computer to ascertain Bond's true identity. As he tells Bond later, he is amused. Zorin not only underestimates Bond, he is thoroughly dismissive of him. It's a particular kind of psychosis which makes for a highly entertaining (though not very plausible) villain.

Bond's cover as a facile aristocrat hoping to try his hand at horse-breeding sets up a wonderfully entertaining sequence. This film gets a great deal of mileage out of mocking the effete British aristocrat (including his ridiculous name, St. John-Smythe), and provides the priceless pay-off by putting Patrick MacNee's aristocrat in the position of serving as Bond's valet. I think the social politics of this situation may be missed, in part, by American audiences. But I'm an American, so what do I know? The entie horse-racing motif, however, is another in a long line of examples of villains who have a totally irrelevant pasttime which Bond uses to get close to him. Goldfinger played golf, Kristatos sponsored an Olympic figure-skater, and now Zorin breeds and races horses. Like Goldfinger, Zorin's lack of ethics in the area of his hobby establishes, for the benefit of the viewer, his status as villain, despite the fact that cheating at horse races is not in any way connected to trying to corner the market in microchips by creating earthquakes in Silicon Valley.

The final sequence taking place in the mine is one of the most spectacular sequences in the history of the franchise. The sudden side-switching by May Day is a bit played out by now (although, she certainly had more motivation to betray Zorin than Pussy Galore did to betray Goldfinger), and her "noble self-sacrifice" is a little too convenient and sentimental. Especially considering that May Day is just not a very likeable character. Memorable, yes, but not likeable. If I was suposed to feel sympathetic for poor May Day, I didn't.

I can't leave my discussion of this film without mentioning its theme song, which is one of my all-time favorites. I can't explain why, but I have always adored Duran Duran. My oldest sister was a big fan at the time when it was fashionable for girls of her age to like Duran Duran, and in my impressionable youth, I developed a lasting affection for the group. As a result, I early love the theme to this film. It was rattling around in my head for days after viewing the film.

The Bottom Line: another slight yet entertaining entry, which essentially sums up and represents the whole of the Moore era.

The Bond Project continues with The Living Daylights.

2003-02-24T14:46:00.000-05:00

The War Debate. Most of the people debating the war in our public discourse today are simply not serious. They make facile, sound-bite-sized points in one direction or the other, and fume when they do not receive instant agreement. In the United Nations, various representatives make long speeches and conduct even longer hearings, but the two sides are basically talking right past one another. Colin Powell says "Stop pussyfooting and get on board," while the French, Germans, and Chinese say "Why don't you try to make your case again, but without lying this time?" And while conservatives are enraged when anyone suggests that the White House is motivated by Iraq's oil, those same conservatives are quick to ascribe such goals to the French, and argue that their objections are therefore dishonest and not to be taken seriouly.

What do we make of all of this? In my view, everybody has a piece of the puzzle. First of all, it's about oil. It's about oil for the White House, it's about oil for the French, it's about oil for Hussein himself. But it isn't only about oil, not for any of them. The White House has a legitimate concern about Hussein's weapons. The French are honestly unconvinved that war is the best option. For Hussein, oil without power is as useless as power without oil. So the U.S. wants to disarm and remove Hussein, while increasing its access to Iraqi oil. The French want to avoid a bloody and de-stabilizing war, while keeping their access to Iraqi oil, and Saddam wants to remain in power, maintaining his own access to Iraqi oil.

We lowly private citizens are fortunate that we can form an opinion on this matter without some of the geopolitical pressures that drive the debate. It's not that we don't have a personal stake in the outcome, it's just that our personal stake in it is different from Bush's. We have the luxury, then, to examine the situation strictly on its merits. The interests we must address are these: humanitarian ramifications of war vs. inspections, geopolitical ramifications of war vs. inspections, and security ramifications of war vs. inspections. On the humanitarian front, inspections are clearly the better answer. It's not perfect, because it means that Saddam Hussein, a brutal and inhume dictator, remains in power. But the alternative (killing thousands of civilians in order to rescue those same civilians from their awful dictator) is not morally coherent. On the geopolitical front, hawks often claim that there are huge potential gains to be had through war. I think that's true. Doves often claim that the risks just as huge, and that everything would have to break perfectly for this to work out well. I think that's also true. Potential gains are only as good as the probability of their realization. With the ever-shrinking, nearly-negligible chance of installing a true "beacon of democracy" in place of Hussein's regime, I feel that the geopolitical rationale is a complete non-starter. Which leaves the security argument.

This is the tough one. My post from last Friday lays out where I stand on this issue as of now, so I don't need to elaborate on that. But I would like to reccomend a couple of resources that you can look at to help you clarify your thinking on this point. I have, first, a column by Kenneth Pollack in Friday's New York Times. A Last Chance to Stop Iraq. This is the article that prompted me, on Friday, to examine what circumstances would compel me to support war. After you've read that, read a response released by the "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace". Why Pollack is Wrong: We Have Contained Saddam". Both of these articles are serious in that they are striving to discover what, given the situation, represents the best policy for dealing with this particular problem in its own terms. The issue is the effectiveness of inspections in pursuit of disarmament. Even if you've already made up your mind (and, by this point, who hasn't?), read these articles. They represent that best rationale I've seen for invading Iraq, and a principled criticism of that rationale. In a perfect world, these papers would represent the level of national discourse behind democratic decision-making. In the real world, both papers are utterly irrelevant, as the United States will not be dissuaded from invasion under any circumstances.

2003-02-21T12:25:00.000-05:00

The Case for War. There are some people in the world who are called pacifists, who believe that violence is always the wrong answer in every circumstance. Not many people think that this is a very logical position to hold. It certainly has problems. As such, I am not a pacifist. This is a misconception that even some of my friends have, merely because I am far more reluctant to embrace violence than most. But, I am not entirely reluctant to embrace it. Now, I don't believe in anything like a "just" war. There are too many things that routinely happen in war which are totally incompatible with justice, but which are nevertheless necessary. I do believe in "necessary" wars, and a war can be necessary under a number of different theories.

Concerning the present situation with Iraq, I can think of one circumstance which would convince me that the war is necessary. That would be if it can be definitively shown that inspections cannot make any more progress. I think plenty of people on both sides of the issue would agree with the statement that, if inspections cannot make any further progress, then war is necessary for the purpose of disarming Iraq. The question then moves to whether or not that showing has been made. To me, it has not, but I'm beginning to wonder about it.

I do not accept regime change as a valid basis for war, nor can I accept pre-emption. Both, I feel, are buzzwords designed to cover up the fact that we're talking about an unprovoked, offensive war. In my view, an offensive war is never justified. Only a defensive war. Nazi Germany launched an invasion; the allies (belatedly) repelled the invasion. Fom the allied perspective, that was clearly a defensive war (and a necessary one, but they are two separate issues). The Gulf War was a defensive war (not directly defensive, since Iraq did not invade or attack the United States, but defensive of ally Kuwait). These are both easy cases.

The present case is a lot stickier. The only justification that can even hope to fall on the right side of the offensive-defensive dichotomy is the disarmament justification. Even this, though, gets ugly. You don't have any clear provocations like the invasion of Poland in 1939 or the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But you do have a real interest in preventing a tyrannical thug like Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons (which, in the hands of North Korea, have reduced Bush's vaunted moral clarity to full-fledged Clintonian foreign-policy nuance, and we can't have that!). Preventing Iraq from acquiring nukes is a totally legitimate, not to mention crucial, interest.

However, if that goal can be achieved without putting American soldiers at risk, and without killing any innocent Iraqis, or destabilizing the region, or fomenting fundamentalist Muslim hatred, or furthering Osama bin Laden's apocalyptic holy war wet dreams, then that's the way to go. The clear alternative to war is U.N. inspections. If the inspections can work to disarm Iraq and to frustrate his plans to acquire nukes, even if it cannot succeed in removing Saddam from power or pre-empting whatever it is we're trying to pre-empt, then it is the only legitimate option. If the inspections cannot achieve this goal, then war is the only available option.

In light of the huge costs and uncertainties, not to mention loss of human life, which accompanies any war, it makes sense to put the burden of persuasion on the side of going to war. In other words, it must be conclusively demonstrated that the inspections cannot succeed before the war alternative becomes legitimate.

So, while I am beginning to harbor doubts as to the potential effectiveness of inspections, I am not yet convinced that they are hopeless. I will be paying very close attention in the coming days and weeks to this point.

All of this relates only to the moral justification for war. I am still convinced that the Bush Administration cannot be trusted to carry out a war in the right way, and I think the weight ofthe evidence is overwhelmingly on my side. But then, that all depends on what you think the goal of the war is, and opinions, even within the White House, differ wildy on that question.

2003-02-20T13:36:00.000-05:00

Hey you! Yeah, you. I'm talking to you! Here at Terminus, we're going to embark on a bold experiment, which is almost certain to fail. I've been lamenting lately that I don't get a lot of feedback to my posts, which leads me to believe that I'm an insufferable old boor. Not exactly news, I know. Anyhow, I thought I'd ask a question of my readers in an attempt to solicit responses. As I said, this will probably fail. Here's the question:

Given the best-case-scenario, when do you think the U.S. government will see its next surplus, and what would have to happen to bring it about? I've been thinking about this question a lot lately, but I won't post my answer until I have a couple of responses. So, if you want to know what I think, you'll have to tell me what you think. And, you should probably get out more. Alternately, you could just ask Lima Beanz. He and I were just talking about this last night.

Oh, it was beautiful. We had just finished watching a movie, and out of nowhere, he belted out an impassioned defense of Bill Clinton's presidency. I love that kid.

2003-02-20T12:40:00.000-05:00

"Budgetary Smoke and Mirrors". I found this article thanks to Pandagon . Over there, Jesse argues that Bush's plan to raise revenue by increasing "user fees" would be called a tax hike if proposed by a Democrat. He's right, of course, but what he doesn't point out is that it is a tax hike.

Consider one case from the article. The Bush Administration has budgetted $675M for meat inspections, which is a public service designed to ensure that all of the meat sold for public consumption in the United States is safe. Unfortunately, we actually need $768M to do this job, leaving a shortfall of $93M. The Bush Administration plans to make up this shortfall by increasing fees paid by meatpackers to federal inspectors. Meatpackers will, of course, pass on as much of this fee increase to consumers as possible, which means that the price of meat is going to increase. Which means that everyone who buys meat will pay more for it. This is a tax hike. Or, to put it more precisely, this has the same effect on consumers as a tax hike. It's also a very regressive tax hike, since it will have a disproportionately high impact on low-income Americans, who spend a higher proportion of their income on food. [A man making $250,000/year does not spend ten times more on food than a man making $25,000/year.]

Jesse argues that this is reminiscent of the way a badly managed business tries to raise revenue, not by cutting costs or increasing sales, but by tacking on arbitrary fees to raise the price of their items. That's exactly right. It's a bad business practice (it's indicative of an unwillingness to confront the core problems, and represents a desperate attempt to look strong when the fundamentals are crumbling), and it's an irresponsible government practice. At least he's trying to minimize the deficit, but we can't give him too much credit for that. This measure represents a drop in the bucket (in fact, a tiny drop in a huge bucket), and anyone who was really concerned about the deficit would stop wildly cutting the taxes of the exorbitantly wealthy. [Bill Clinton's taxes were cut by $150,000 last year. They were CUT by $150,000 last year!!]

As if this isn't bad enough, the Bush Administration also wants to charge veterans more for health care. Beautiful!

The bottom-line is that, because these proposals are so politically stupid, many of them will be shot down in Congress, which means that Bush can blame the Democrats for blocking his brave effort to reduce deficits. Looking at it that way, they may not be politically stupid after all. On the other hand, on top of other resent measures by the Bush Administration to save money by screwing veterans, there is a growing chorus of people sick to death of Bush's particular brand of "compassionate conservatism".

2003-02-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

Political Corruption. Even when it began in the wake of the White House's oil-heavy "energy policy", the suit brought against Vice-President Cheney over the meetings held to wrte the policy were a "below the radar" political issue. Now, in this post-9/11 world, it's only moreso. That's a shame, because it's actually a pretty important issue, and it's symbolic of the attempts of this White House to circumvent the Constitutional limits on executive power.

Here's the background, off the top of my head (so, some details may be a little fuzzy). After the White House released its energy policy (which, surprise, surprise, was specially gift-wrapped for the fossil fuel industries and contained little more than lip service to conservationist and environmentalist concerns), a couple of Congressman wanted to know who the White House met with in constructing the policy. This is quite similar to what happened in Clinton's first term, when Hillary Clinton refused to release the names of the people she met with to help her to decide who to meet with to help her to decide Health Care policy. No, wait. That's not really similar at all. Cheney refused to release the names of his direct outside advisors. The former First Lady, on the other hand, refused to release the names of the people who advised her of which advisors to meet with. Regardless, Republicans at the time villified Hillary Clinton for stonewalling, while Democrats argued that it doesn't matter who chooses the advisors, it only matters who advises on the policy. So, when Cheney refused to release the names of those who advised on the energy policy, Democrats cried foul (and rightly so) and a couple of Congressmen urged the General Accounting Office to pursue the matter.

The GAO is a government oversight agency designed to promote transparency in government. They subpoena documents from, for instance, the executive branch, in order to make public the processes of decision making, or what have you. It is a public service, and transparency in government is a necessary component of good government under a democratic system. How can the people make informed voting decisions if their government is doing things in secret which they might not approve of? So, the GAO subpoenaed the White House to get the information about the composition of the energy policy advisory panel. The White House fought them, and refused to release the documents. So, in an unprecedented move, the GAO sued the Vice-President. This suit failed, and the GAO has just decided not to appeal the decision.

Last Friday, John Dean, former Counsel to President Nixon and a man with intimate, first-hand knowledge of the mischief Presidents can pull off when the public can't see them, wrote this article for FindLaw.com, despairing at the GAO's failure to pursue the matter further. Dean is concerned, as am I, at the precedent this sets which will allow all future Presidents to keep much of their business (or, rather, the people's business) secret from the voting public. Dean also wonders why the GAO dropped the matter.

This article from The Hill gives us the answer. It seems that some Republicans in Congress are more concerned about protecting the power of the President than they are with asserting their own Constitutionally mandated oversight role, and they are willing to go so far as to threaten to cut GAO's funding if hey didn't play ball.

I imagine that most people, not being as wonky as I am, won't get very fired up about this matter, but it truly is important. The executive branch of government was already pretty powerful even before Bush came in and started knocking down venerable Constitutional walls. By failing to challenge the lower court ruling against the GAO, we lose the chance for a higher court to step in and re-establish one the vital checks-and-balances that works to restrain the worst excesses of the executive branch. Whether this actually would have happened or not is anyone's guess, but either way, it would have been useful to get a more definitive ruling on the issue. Of greater concern is the willingness of Republicans in Congress to use their budgetary powers to intimidate a non-political Congressional organization into dropping a suit against a Republican White House. This is the most cynical manipulation of the system I've seen in years, and I'm very upset that it was allowed to succeed.

Ironically, it confirms some of the objections true conservatives have against government power. Any organization, whether inside or outside the government, which depends on government money to operate, is susceptible to political manipulation by the people who right the checks (or, rather, the appropriations bills). Sometimes, this political manipulation is wielded for the public good. In this case, however, the manipulation is being used to save the White House the political embarrassment of having to admit, publicly, what everyone knows: that the energy companies didn't just adivse, they practically wrote the energy policy, and they were allowed to do so as a reward for their financial support of Bush's presidential campaign. If this isn't crass political corruption, what is?

2003-02-17T21:50:00.000-05:00

The Bond Project: Octopussy. What exactly makes a Bond film successful? Of course, it depends on what one means by “success”. But it’s still difficult for me to answer the question merely in terms of my own opinion. For instance, as you may have noticed, there are several Bond films which I despise. Considering them as a group, these share certain qualities: a lack of seriousness that goes far over the line into ridiculousness, weak plots which can be demolished by the slightest scrutiny, and special effects elevated beyond all reason to the point where they consume the films themselves. The current film in my series contains many of these aspects, and yet I enjoy it a great deal. Why that it should, I can’t quite explain.

Octopussy is an entirely non-serious film, and the plot is extremely flimsy. Some of the action sequences stretch credulity beyond the breaking point, even for someone familiar with Mr. Bond’s implausible exploits. And yet, I simply enjoy this film.

Certainly, it marks a major shift from its immediate predecessor. For Your Eyes Only is a film which, even if taken out of the Bond context, would stand up quite well as an espionage thriller. Octopussy on the other hand, would be derided and then ignored if not for Bond. Somehow, Bond can get away with things that other films can’t.

But how can you hate a film which opens with a tense chase scene involving two circus knife throwers pursuing a clown. And it only gets better from there. From the lovely scene at the auction where Bond steals the Faberge egg, all the way to the all-girl raid on the villain’s headquarters in the final act, this film is nothing but fun. If anything can be said to drag it down, it is the over-serious performance from Louis Jordan as henchman-turned-mastermind Kamal Khan. He starts of promisingly, his easy charm and smooth malevolence fitting in nicely with the canon of Bond villains to date. But toward the end of the film, he seems to (quite inexplicably) start taking the whole thing rather seriously. His henchman, a wonderfully imposing figure, seems to realize that it’s all rubbish really, and the scene where Khan orders the poor man out of the plane to tackle Bond is a perfect example.

The title character, unfortunately, turns out to be a lot less interesting than she should be. And while, judging from the high esteem in which she is held, Maud Adams is much acclaimed for her performance in this film and in The Man With the Golden Gun, I find both appearances to be distinctly unmemorable. There is much which springs rapidly to mind when I consider this movie: Vijay, the yo-yo razor thingy, the all-female assault at the end. But the supposedly central character, Octopussy herself, I must struggle to recall. General Orlov, indeed, is very memorable. He is totally over-the-top, and in realistic terms, utterly insane. I can’t quite comprehend what, exactly, he was trying to achieve, or how he thought it would possibly benefit him. Indeed, the logic of his scheme was sorely lacking. But his insane determination fit quite well into the barely restrained silliness of the rest of the production.

Watch, for instance, the scene where Bond storms into the U.S. military base in West Germany. Hear the panic in the guards voice as he reports to his superiors that the intruder it wearing “a red shirt”. A wry commentary on American fear of Communism, and perfectly in keeping with the general tone of the film.

Others have professed to take similar enjoyment in many of my most hate Bond films, and I wonder if others detest Octopussy the way I detest Moonraker. There really is, I suppose, no accounting for taste.

The Bond Project continues with A View to a Kill.

2003-02-13T12:33:00.000-05:00

Still Waiting for the Compassion. George W. Bush campaigned throughout 2000 as a "compassionate conservative". This is probably the most memorable of Rove's skillful double-speak slogans. The first word of that phrase was aimed directly at political independents, moderates, centrists, and so on. And you can't fault him on it. I mean, who opposes compassion. Well, as a matter of fact, George W. Bush opposes compassion, at least where the federal government is involved. You see, the second word of that phrase, which was aimed at every aspect of the Republican base (from the Reagan Republicans to the Christian Right to the Racist Right), has turned out to be far more important to Bush's political agenda.

See, for instance, this column by Bob Herbert in the New York Times today, shows how Bush's words and his policies are still miles apart. Indeed, I remember thinking to myself after the Obscenely Huge Tax Cut for the Fantastically Wealthy of 2001 was passed, "Will the 'compassionate' part start now?" It hasn't yet, and I'm still waiting.

But this hasn't put the brakes on Bush's language of compassion. Oh, especially recently, while his underlings are busy preparing to reign death and destruction on the heads of thousands of Iraqi citizens, Bush has been touring the country talking about compassion this and compassion that. Nevermind his budget, which cuts a heck of a lot out of the compassion department. Nevermind the fact that he still hasn't found the money to pay for his own education bill (which is great in two ways: a) it shows him breaking a promise and abandoning education entirely, and b) it was a bad bill). Nevermind that he's pulling back on afterschool programs for kids, cutting back on welfare-to-work programs, all while the economy is iffy and the job market is in the shitter.

That's bold leadership if ever I saw it. Again and again I am reminded of Helen Thomas. Worst President Ever.

2003-02-12T11:32:00.000-05:00

Osama and Saddam. Liberal Oasis today tells us that they've finally had it with Colin Powell. I think, after yesterday's disgusting performance, a lot of people will feel the same. Yesterday, of course, we heard a tape made by Osama bin Laden in which he expresses support for the Iraqi people in the coming war with the United States of America. Colin Powell, even before the tape was released, told us that this proves the previously unprovable, that Iraq is linked with al Qaeda, and that this should put to rest the question of justification for war. I'm not surprised the White House made this argument, but I am surprised that it came from Powell. It's an obvious lie, and I always thought Powell was smarter than that.

But Terminus, how can you say it's a lie? It's Osama bin Laden himself expressing spport for Iraq, isn't it? Well, no, not exactly. He's expressing support for the people of Iraq. His tape contains no shortage of bile directed at Saddam Hussein, whom everyone agrees to be a vile and odious man. What's actually going on here, as Colin Powell himself understands very well, is that Osama bin Laden wants a US/Iraq war as much as Bush does. Bin Laden wants regime change as much as Bush does. Why? Because both Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush want exactly the same thing... an opportunity to install a new government in Iraq in their own image. Bush wants a pro-Western democratic government in Iraq. Osama wants an anti-Western theocratic government in Iraq. What actually happens as the dust setles is anyone's guess. There are legions of militant, extremist Muslims both inside and outside Iraq waiting to take advantage of the carnage and the anti-American sentiment to push their agenda of a fundamentalist Muslim Iraq. The irony is that the post war Iraq could be far more closely tied to al Qaeda than the current Iraq. Osama knows this, and he knows that his best chance for getting control of Iraq lies with using the United States to depose Saddam.

How can we fight against this outcome? Well, we've got to make sure that our puppets rather than bin Laden's puppets come to power in postwar Iraq. But wait! If we're going to be installing a democracy in Iraq, won't the people choose their leaders themselves? No, of course they won't. The United States won't let Iraq choose it's own leaders if we think that there's so much as a chance that they'll choose anti-US leaders. We can't afford to let Iraq become democratic, because right now it's filled with oppressed militant Muslims who want to extract revenge on Saddam and his Baath party for brutalizing them for so long.

This war is definitely going to go badly for Saddam. It's very probably going to go well for the United States. But if the post-war goes well for al Qaeda, then we will be in a far worse situation than we are right now. It's the post-war we have to worry about. And it's the post-war that no one in the White House is talking about.

2003-02-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

John Ashcroft: Menace to Society. Listen, I'm a liberal, and like all liberals I hate John Ashcroft and continue to curse the feeble Democrats who allowed his confirmation to the position of Attorney General. But it's not all bile and irrational rage, there's a reson for it. In fact, there's buckets of reasons. Here today is simply two, both posted today on FindLaw.com (an indispensible resource for knowledgeable legal commentary). First, we have Sherry Colb's take on the Ed Rosenthal prosecution. Remember, Ed Rosenthal has recently been convicted of growing and distributing marijuana. The jury, believing him to be a typical drug dealer, convicted him. In fact, he was not a typical drug dealer. He grew his marijuana exclusively for medicinal purposes. He didn't buy it from illicit sources, he didn't sell it to anyone for recreational use, and it is impossible to argue that his actions harmed anyone at all, ever. Why was he even prosecuted? Thank John Ashcroft. Sherry Colb is a law professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark.

Next we have Jake Kreilkamp's fascinating article on Ashcroft's crusade to force northeastern states to execute more people. This is an outrage, and this alone would result in Ashcroft's immediate dismissal if we were currently governed by a president who gives a flying fuck about law or justice. How it works is that prosecutors cut a deal wth a criminal defendant that says "If you rat out your bosses, we won't try to execute you." This is a good deal for everybody, except the defendant's crime bosses. The prosecution gets a) a conviction, and b) dynamite testimony against the bigger fish to help convict them too. Society benefits because all of these guys are off the streets. The defendant benefits because he is not executed. But John Ashcroft is not happy. He says, "We got the info, let's execute the bastard anyway!" Nevermind that the prosecutors signed a deal in good faith, and that it is common practice for the Attorney General to respect these signed agreements, John Ashcroft is hungry for blood (or, perhaps, for the sweet fragrance of electrified flesh). Especially if the defendant comes from an inferior race. 90% of the victims of Ashcroft's interventions so far have been minorities. This article was written by a student at NYU Law School, and it's making me angry just thinking about it.

This should be a front-page story in every major newspaper across the country. Ashcroft's crusade to execute as many blacks and hispanics as possible is not only morally obscene, it's also counter-productive. If you care about putting criminals away so that they can't hurt people, cutting deals like this is a crucial tool you want to have on your side. Ashcroft's practice of invalidating these deals after the fact is going to cause defense attorney's to resist cutting these deals for their clients, which means the police will have to settle for convicting low-level operatives and will miss the chance to break-up the big crime rings. Who benefits from that? Crime lords. Isn't that special?

John Ashcroft: Bigoted Racist, Insatiably Power-Hungry, and Irredeemably Stupid. Menace to society.

2003-02-10T14:05:00.000-05:00

Media Bias: The Truth Behind the Co-ordinated Republican Whine Campaign. Eric Alterman is a columnist from The Nation and MSNBC.com (his weblog, Altercation, is linked on the navi-bar to the right). He's just come out with a new book called What Liberal Media? (click the title for the book's website, which includes its opening chapter and appendices). Of course, he's now doing the political chat-show circuit. Well, sort of. He did Crossfire last week, against L. Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center, but he got dropped by Bill O'Reilly at the last minute, presumably to give Bill more time to tell the son of a man killed on 9/11 to shut up and to use an indefensible racial slur on the air. Now, TAPPED is bringing to our attention the fact that MSNBC put Eric up against a trio of conservative opponents. That's right, three Republicans just to take on one guy and his book. Of course, this doesn't seem quite so unfair when you realize that Eric's book is a slam dunk debunking of the haggard old lie that keeps Bozell in business. Seriously, the only people who think that the media is liberal (including several dear friends of mine) are people who simply don't pay attention.

TAPPED points out that Bernard Goldberg, author of a sloppily researched and thoroughly discredited year-old book about media bias gets a full hour, one-on-one, with Chris Matthews Wednesday night, and Alterman gets a few minutes up against a team of scornful opponents. Oh yeah, feel the bias, baby! [Oh yeah, TAPPED has the details on the discrediting of Goldberg's book, so don't take it from me... follow the link. Also, take some time to check out both the MRC website and the WLM? website. Don't just take it as gospel from people like Bozell, Goldberg, and Ann Coulter (author of another thoroughly discredited book on the same topic). And don't take it as gospel from Alterman, TAPPED, or me either. That's the beauty of poli-blogging. The sources are here. All you have to do is point, click, and read. Take advantage.]

UPDATE: Eric Alterman will be on Bill O'Reilly's program tomorrow night. I encourage everyone to watch.

2003-02-10T12:04:00.000-05:00

The Fiasco Waiting to Happen. Ok, a lot of bloggers in the neighborhood (that is, the ideological neighborhood) have been talking about problems with eectronic voting machines. Some suspicious things have been happening in some elections, and both sides are making allegations (or at least, voicing suspicions). The short version of the story is that some electronic voting machines make it difficult, if not impossible, to check the results. So far I haven't seen anything that I would call direct evidence of vote tampering, but that's not the point. At least, not yet. Assume for a moment that there was serious vote tampering in some election last November. With many of these electronic voting machines, it would be impossible for anyone to check. This is a serious problem, and as the title of this post points out, it's a problem that I think everyone in the country is going to learn a lot more about before it gets fixed. I hope you enjoyed the Bush v. Gore debacle as much as I did, because I predict that there will be many more three-ring circuses involving disputed election results unless the federal government steps in to deal with this.

To get yourself up to speed on this issue (and get ahead of the curve, so that you already know the ins and outs of the issue even before the major media really start taking an interest), start with this post on a blog I've recently discovered called Balkinization. The author, Jack M. Balkin, is a distinguished professor of Constitutional and First Amendment Law at Yale University. He also, as it happens, is a co-author of Processes of Constitutional Decision Making, which is the case book I'm currently using in my Constituional Law course. Anyway, this post gives you a nice overview of the issue, and also supplies links to several news sources and bloggers who have discussed it previously. Read this stuff, it's frightening. It's obviously frightening to democrats. The 2002 midterm elections provide lots of circumstantial evidence that vote tampering has already taken place. In Georgia, Senator Max Cleland enjoyed a wide lead that deteroriated steadily until election day. Last minute polls show that his challenger, Republican Saxby Chambliss, led by a single point. In the end, Chambliss won by a significant margin. Looking at the vote distribution county by county in Georgia, the results are peculiar. [Follow the first link on the Balkinization post for more information.]

Let me reiterate: I'm not claiming that the Georgia Senate election was stolen. I just saying that the results were peculiar, and that they are unverifiable. But it isn't just sour-grapes Democrats who should be afraid of this. I've also heard some stories about irregularities in New Jersey which favored Democrats. It doesn't matter which party benefits from illegal vote tampering, voters of all political affiliations should be outraged.

You'll never have a fair election. In every election, ethics are overlooked, laws are evaded, and people fight tooth and nail to win. This is inevitable. The concern with many of these new electronic voting systems is that they open up a whole new avenue of election-rigging unlike anything we've ever seen before. And if it's done well, it's undetectable. Something has to be done to protect against this, and soon. The first step is finding out what's going on. Follow the links, read the articles.

2003-02-06T11:01:00.000-05:00

The Solicitor General's Role. We all know from our elementary school social studies classes that the government is divided into three branches. We are all familiar with the major offices of the federal government. Those of us who have a strong passion for politics have a somewhat greater familiarity with the workings of the federal government. But one area which doesn't get discussed very much is the particular relationship between the Solicitor General (currently Ted Olson) and the Supreme Court. For a fascinating look at this relationship, as told by examining the SG's recent brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs in the upcoming University of Michigan affirmative action cases, please refer to this article.

The article, written by Edward Lazarus, also takes a critical look at many of the issues contained in the SG's brief in this matter. Interestingly, the brief ignores the best available arguments against affirmative action. This was a political calculation. Especially in light of the Trent Lott fiasco, the White House is already pushing the envelope of how hard it can fight against affirmative action. On the other hand, in light of the 2002 election, hard-core conservatives are expecting Bush to take advantage of his position as the most powerful President in recent history. Bush is stuck in the middle of competing political interests, as all politicians are. His compromise was to argue against the University of Michigan, but refuse to either support or attack affirmative action in general. Lazarus argues that this gutless approach violates the close relationship between the Court and the SG, which requires that the SG always be candid, forthright, and meticulously well-reasoned in its briefs. he brief actually submitted in this matter is, according to all reports I've seen, illogical and craven.

Regardless of what you think about the University of Michigan cases, or about affirmative action in general, this is a fascinating article that I reccommend to anyone who wants to know more about government than 95% of the journalists we get our news from.
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Coincidentally, Edward Lazarus made a cameo appearance in Josh Marshall's blog yesterday. It looks like Miguel Estrada, who has been nominated to the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, may have lied to Dianne Feinstein during his confirmation hearing. I'm surprised that Mr. Marshall is so concerned about this. I mean, Clarence Thomas lied in his, and William Rehnquist lied in when he was appointed to the Court, and again when he was appointed Chief Justice. I would have been more surprised if Estrada hadn't lied. Anyway, in making the case against Estrada, Marshall refers to Estrada's days as a clerk for Justice Kennedy. Also clerking for the Court at the same time was Edward Lazarus, whose name pops up in Marshall's account. Weird coincidence.

2003-02-05T14:44:00.000-05:00

Can the Jury Take Back a Verdict? Here's an interesting case. According to this article in the New York Times, the jury that convicted a man for growing and distributing marijuana has changed its mind. Ed Rosenthal had a California state permit to grow and distribute marijuana for medicinal purposes. Residents of California state, along with several others, have voted in the last few years to allow the cultivation, distribution, and use of marijuana on the advice of a physician. The federal government, however, permits no such exception to the federal drug laws. Taking a break from protecting the country from terrorism, Attorney General John Ashcroft has decided to redouble the government's effort against the nation-wide scourge of marijuana abuse. So, they prosecuted Ed Rosenthal under federal law.

The defense in the case was barred from mentioning the California state law. The reason for this is that this was a prosecution under federal law, and according to the "supremacy" clause of the federal Constitution, federal law trumps state law. Therefore, the existence of a California statute, and the defendant's full compliance with that statute, were not considere relevant issues by the court. But the jury has a different view. Several jurors have stepped forward to publicly apologize to Mr. Rosenthal for convicting him. They have stated outright that, had they known of the California statute, they would not have convicted him. Moreover, they also atended Rosenthal's bail hearing to tacitly pressure the judge to set bail. The federal prosecutors argued that he should be held without bail. The judge sided with the defendant. Mr. Rosenthal's sentence is pending, but the jurors are already calling for a new trial. Ironically, they are being joined by the California District Attorney's office.

This issue is all about federal vs. state law. Legally speaking, the trial court was correct that the existence of the state law is not relevant. Whether or not Mr. Rosenthal was in compliance with state law, he was violating federal law. On that analysis, his conviction is no doubt correct. On the other hand, the jurors did not know why he was cultivating marijuana, and clearly, the answer to that question was relevant to their decision. Under our system, the jury has the power to completely disregard the law if they feel that an injustice would result from the correct application of the law. This is clearly how they felt about this case. But the federal government refuses to allow the individual states to decide for themselves whether or not they want marijuana to be prescribed by doctors to the terminally ill. In fact, the federal government is so adamant that marijuana is EVIL, the states must not be allowed to lessen the restrictions on it.

I don't know what's going to happen to Ed Rosenthal. I don't know what should happen to Ed Rosenthal. But I hope his case brings more awareness to the heavy-handed, over-bearing activities of the Ashcroft Justice Department. Anyone remember when Ashcroft took another time out from the War on Terror to prosecute doctors in Oregon for prescribing medicine to facilitate patient's suicides? Someone needs to sit Ashcroft down and get his priorities in order. Stop the terrorists, Mr. Attorney General. Concentrate on them. Let the states deal with this small stuff on their own.

2003-02-03T10:28:00.000-05:00

Get Your Facts Right. My friend Tucker has a long a post up about the McDonald's lawsuit, which I thought was dismissed a week or two ago. Whatever. Like most people who don't know anything about the law, Tucker has an opinion about this case, and wants to share it with you. I do know something about the law, but not much. I have no opinion of the McDonald's suit. Why? Because I don't know what the plaintiff's were claiming. How could I have an opinion? Of course, I haven't heard anyone offer an opinion on this case who had even smallest clue what the issue was. It's this kind of self-supporting ignorance, goaded and stoked by the national media (which can't be bothered to research, or even to book knowledgeable experts as guests on their shows), which drives mindless calls for tort reform. "We must have tort reform to protect McDonald's from these moronic lawsuits!" The case was dismissed!!

Read lower, and see how Tucker thinks the shoe-bomber should be executed because it cost too much money to keep him alive in prison. Check your facts, Tucker. It's more expensive to execute prisoers than to keep them for life. I know, it's a shocking statistic, and I don't really understand how it's true, but it is true. And executing someone won't make anyone any safer than keeping him in prison forever would. In both cases, the public is protected from a dangerous criminal, which is the whole point.

So, let's get this straight. You think that the shoe-bomber should be killed, or at least, beat up a lot in prison. As my Bible-burning father would say, that's mighty Christian of you.

[Tucker doesn't have permalinks, so just click the link on the navi-bar to the right, and scroll down to the January 30, 2002 entry "Chewing Fat".]

2003-02-03T10:10:00.000-05:00

Blame This on Clinton, I Dare You! According to the latest budget submitted by the White House, we will have a record deficit this year, and a new record deficit next year. How did we go from record surpluses to record deficits in just two years? It took Clinton something like six years to go from record deficits to record surpluses, but only one-third of that time for Bush to more than undo Clinton's historic achievement. Seriously, that's impressive, in a "shockingly-irresponsible" kind of way.

Helen Thomas says Bush is the worst President ever, and she's met them all since Kennedy. When you read articles like this, it's hard not to agree.

2003-01-31T11:54:00.000-05:00

State of the Union - Reaction (Iraq). Surprise, surprise, but you're humble blogger was not persuaded by the President's fearmongering this past Tuesday night. I'll try to explain why.

Nukes are the only WMDs. This is a contentious notion, but I think the definition of weapons of mass destruction to include chemical and biological weapons is highly misleading. The whole concept is pretty fuzzy, as a matter of fact. Consider that the allied powers killed more people in Dresden than in Hiroshima (it just took longer). So clearly, the whole weapons of mass destruction thing isn't directly about how many people might be killed. Be that as it may, Bush relied on high-ball estimates of death-tolls to make his case that we have to go to war over the possibility that Saddam might have components which could be used to make chemical and biological weapons. We don't have a whole lot of direct historical evidence of the practical potential of these weapons. We had the subway terrorists in Japan, and the Anthrax letters here, neither of which killed as many people as the D.C. Snipers. The kinds of high-ball estimates war-hawks come up with are pretty clearly ridiculous. Sure, if 100,000 people were locked in an unventilated domed football stadium, they'd have a problem. [Does it matter that some of them would probably be trampled to death rather than killed by chemical weapons? No, probably not.]

Clearly, nuclear weapons are serious business. North Korea has some, which is precisely the reason why the Bush administration is not threatening to attack him. Certainly, preventing a madman like Saddam from getting nukes is an important goal. [Preventing a madman like Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan from getting them is also an important goal, but we blew that one. Preventing a madman like Kim Jong Il from getting them was also an important goal, and Bush really screwed the pooch on that one.] So, why not war? Well, is war really necessary to prevent Saddam from developing nukes? Maybe, but I doubt it. The inspectors have as yet found no evidence that Saddam has restarted his nuclear development program. They will continue looking, unless US bombs start getting in the way. Even if we assume that there is a nuclear program idden somewhere in Iraq, the fact that it must be hidden not only from satellites but also from a team of dedicated inspectors specifically looking for it, means that it won't be making a lot of progress. Similarly, so long as international pressure and attention are focused on Iraq, it won't be easy for him to acquire materials and transport them to their intended destination. [As opposed to North Korea, which can move reactor rods and things like that literally in broad daylight, cheerily waving to the US spy satellites as they go.]

As far as all of the stuff in the speech showing that Saddam is a really bad guy... well, no shit. Fact is, all of those horrible things Saddam has done he was doing back when he was our ally. In fact, all of those things have been done by people who are now our allies. As Micahel Kinsley recently argued in Slate, this argument is complete bullshit. Bush doesn't even believe in it, or he'd be arguing for going to war against other bad men all over the world. He just threw it in to strengthen the rhetorical argument, but it completely misses the point of the real debate.

The biggest shortfall of Bush's presentation is that he completely ignored the policy argument, which is crucial (at least to me). Even if you agree that the United States has a moral and legal right to invade Iraq on whatever pretext they eventually come up with (if any), based on whichever justification you choose to accept, you still have to show that it's a good idea. In order to do that, you have to balance the benefits and the costs. The benefits are potentially very large, but vague. I mean, you're not going to make America any safer from Iraq. The United States couldn't be safer if it were on a different planet. Iraq can't get his weapons, if he has them, to the United States, end of story. [I know, he could sell them to terrorists, but he never has before, and our own CIA reports that he's never shown any inclination to do so. Of course, terrorists could buy from Pakistan, couldn't they? Or North Korea?] So what are the benefits? Well, you've got the neo-conservative faction in the White House having wet dreams every night about a pro-US democratic stronghold smack in the middle of the Middle East, sitting on a huge oil reserve to boot. Hey, if that happened, it would be wonderful. I mean, seriously, that would be a fantastic result. This can't justify war in a legal or moral sense, but it would in a policy sense, if we thought we could pull it off.

I have serious doubts that we can, and the point hasn't been adequately addressed by the White House. I mean, there are difficulties. This administration has been very explicit on its disdain for "nation-building". Well, you're never going to establish a viable pro-Western democracy in Iraq without nation-building on steroids, and it'll probably take a pretty long time even with that. Just take a look at how the half-assed approach has worked in Afghanistan. Warlords, terrorists, and the Taliban are still around causing mischief, and the new government is not exactly stable, or even established throughout the entire country. And if the administration doesn't get it right in Iraq, it could be a disaster. A literally bloody disaster.

Of course, then you have the distinct possibility that an occupation of Iraq, even more than simply an invasion, would stoke anti-American fervor such that we've never known. This brings with it an increased risk of further terrorist attacks directed against this country, which could actually make us less safe. Surely, that has to count against the policy support we're talking about.

On balance, if the goal is to protect Americans from threats posed by Saddam Hussein, I think a continuing system of inspections, backed by international support and the credible threat of force, is perfectly adequate. Indeed, sometimes the threat of force is more effective even than force. Consider that our own intelligence agencies have stated publicly that a "get Saddam" invasion might compel the bastard to use whatever nasty weapons he might have (which he declined to do in the first Gulf War), because, face it, what's he got to lose? It's nothing that fits neatly on a protester's sign, but this is my reasoning for opposing war in Iraq.

It's moot, naturally, because we're absolutely no doubt about it going to be at war in Iraq before the end of March. [I say that hoping that my terrible recod of prognistication, i.e. the 2002 elections, will work in my favor for a change.] I just hope that, for once, Bush doesn't fuck it up.

2003-01-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

State of the Union - Reaction (Domestic). Sorry for the delay, folks. I'm really busy lately with school. Anyway, I want to say a few things about the domestic agenda portion of Bush's Tuesday speech. I must say I was a litte surprised. I mean, this was a Clintonian laundry-list of domestic programs. I really ddidn't expect to see that. Of course, it was all crap.

Let's start with the economy. He claimed that accelerating and making permanent the tax cuts will stimulate the economy. That is a lie. Not an error, a lie. This President doesn't care about stimulating the economy, apparently. We've had the tax cut of 2001, the post-9/11 economic stimulus package, that sham summit in Texas last summer, constant calls to accelerate and make permanent the 2001 tax cut, and now a call for the repeal of dividends taxes. We've already seen how brilliantly this plan has worked so far. The fact is, not one of these measures can really be called stimulative. The President simply isn't trying to stimulate the economy (or, he's just utterly and persistently wrong about which policies would do it). My mind boggles. This guy knows that if the economy is in the tank in October 2004, he's probably a goner. You'd think he might actually try to fix the economy.

He also mentioned the deficit, sort of. Last year, he told us that we would have a small, short-term deficit. I didn't believe it at the time. I was right. We now have a large deficit (and it will probably swell to huge before the end of this year), and it's going to be with us for a while. Certainly, Bush's deficit will outlive Bush's presidency, regardless of what happens in two years. Is that what he meant about not leaving messes for future presidents to clean up? Anyway, deficit-hawk Bush admonished Congress that the United States has to spend within its means. I seriously don't know how all those people managed not to laugh at this line. First, how much new spending did Bush propose in the very same speech? Hundreds of billions of dollars. Second, we're going to war with Iraq, which isn't going to be cheap. Oh, but don't worry about ballooning deficits. Bush will save money by blocking essential money for homeland security, refusing to fund his own education initiative, and changing the way the government accountants do their math, so all goverment budget projections reflect this President's essential economic optimism.

Notice what gets slashed when te money gets tight? We can't afford Homeland Security, we can't afford to do a proper invsitgation of 9/11, we can't afford a real prescription drug benefit, we can't afford education. We can afford tax cuts with for the very wealthiest Americans, not to mention the corporations, and we can afford to go to war with Iraq.

We can also afford to give loads of money to religious organizations to help us treat drug addicts. Forget doctors, all you junkies need is a little Jesus. I knew it was too good to be true when I heard this president talking about treatment programs, rather than prison, for drug addicts. I knew there was a catch. The catch is that the money isn't going to reputable, medical, drug treament programs. The money is going to religious organizations. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure these religious groups are good groups that do good work and help people, but this is just a crass bribe to the right-wing Christian extremist faction of the party, cleverly disguised as crass pandering to the liberals. Here's the clue: this president NEVER panders to the left. So, add Christian groups to the list of welfare beneficiaries getting rich off the hard labor of other people, and getting fat sucking at the teet of the American taxpayer. C'mon libertarians, speak up about this shit, you spineless intellectual frauds!

OF couse, we'll have lots of money going to help fight AIDS in Africa. This is insane. First of all, a lot of this money is also going to religious groups. In fact, the vast majority of it is going to religious groups. The established, reputable organization which is really trying to save lives in Africa is getting a pittance. Come on, did you really think this administration would care about stopping AIDS in Africa? Of course not. They want to talk about it, because they want people to forget about Trent Lott, the disgraced bigot who was punished by being given a committee chair. But they don't want to help. Why? Because helping requires two things: condoms, and cheap drugs. This Administration hates condoms. Bush forced abstinence-only sex education in Texas, and wants to do the same for the whole country. It failed in Texas, and it will fail everywhere. [And please explain how a no-sex-before-marriage policy will stop the spread of AIDS among gays, who are legally barred in this country from marrying.] The Adminstration hates cheap generic drugs, because they get massive campaign donations from companies that make the expensive brand-name drugs. Thousands of people in Africa have died over the last two years because this Administration has refused to allow them access to cheap generic drugs. We have an export ban, if you can believe that. Human lives are worth nothing compared to the corporate profits of political donors.

Of course, the best moment is when Bush promised money to develop a hydrogen-powered car. That's right, Tucker, Bush wants to abolish the internal combustion engine. Oh, when I heard that I was delighted. Not that I believe him for an instant, of course. But after the howling, derisive laughter which greeted Al Gore when he came up with this plan twenty-five years ago, I feel that Gore has been proved right once again. Of course, there are some serious doubts about the particular policy Bush is talking about. Clean cars are a wonderful goal, but apparently the generation of hydrogen itself requires a great deal of energy, which would probably come from dirty-burning fossil fuels. Besides, if Bush really gave a shit about pollution or fuel-efficiancy, he would offer funding to Detroit to start bringing out hybrid cars like the Japanese are already doing, which are becoming more and more popular in the states. It's great that we can try to achieve technological breakthroughs for twenty years from now, but why not take advantage of the technology that's already available now to reduce American dependence on foreign oil now? The future can do whatever it wants, but as long as GWB is in office, American dependence on foreign oil will not be interfered with.

He talked about other things too, but those are the big ones. One of these days, I am going to write about his tort reform plan, but I'd rather devote an entire post to that topic, because it's very important to me. I'll be back later to discuss the foreign policy portion of the speech. See you soon!

2003-01-28T15:33:00.000-05:00

State of Dis-Union. The buzz surrounding tonight's State of the Union address is picking up steadily. My friend Sarah, with whom I will be watching, describes the annual speech as "the Emmy's of politics". She is, of course, being facetious, but I think she's genuinely excited to see what Barbara Boxer is going to wear. Like countless other political junkies around the county, I will be on the edge of my seat waiting for the merest suggestion... the slightest hint... that Hillary Clinton might roll her eyes. I have a lot of money riding on this. And of course, there's the pool to guess how many times the President will say "nukular". I'm going with four. I don't know why, I just have a really good feeling about four.

But, putting all of that good fun aside for a moment, there is actually a pretty heavy undertone to this year's exercise in political theater. After all, we're going to be going to war soon. Not to mention the fact that the economy sucks. And with Bush's poll numbers dropping steadily since New Year's Day, this is a pretty damn big speech for him. Last year's State of the Union was a guaranteed love-fest. This year's... well, we'll see. He could blow it and jeopardize his whole foreign-policy agenda. A Washington backlash is a powerful thing. On the other hand, he might kick some serious rhetorical ass and Washington will resume fellatio-mode faster than you can say "Where's Osama?". I think it's likely that he'll do pretty well, his poll numbers will jump up a bit, and support for war will increase in the United States, and around the world, just enough to get it started by early to mid March.

After that happens... who knows? In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof reminds us that there's still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding this war. Surely, few people seriously doubt that the United States will win the military end of it without too much problem, but the question remains: what happens then? Kristof echoes Gary Hart's recent worries that invading Iraq could trigger renewed and re-invigorated anti-Americanism, which might spark retaliation by fundamentalist terrorists.

Of course, everyone has Iraq on the mind (and nobody is talking about North Korea, al Qaeda, or any of the other lurking dangers out there), and tonight's speech will probably live or die by how well the pundit-class thinks it addresses that issue. The speech is coming at a time of rising disagreement with the "Get Saddam" policy which had been fairly popular over most of the last year. Especially now that inspections have started, which even wimpy pinko commie leftist libruls like me strongly support, a lot of people are wondering if war is really necessary anymore. Aren't inspection a superior alternative to war? Joe Conason certainly thinks so: "Maintaining military pressure on Iraq while the inspectors carry out their tasks, even if it takes several months, is a far saner and less expensive proposition than an invasion whose consequences cannot be foreseen." Christ, even Norman Schwarzkopf thinks Bush (and especially Rumsfeld) should shut the fuck up and let the inspectors do their job.

And Josh Marshall, who has made the only intelligent argument in support of war that I've seen from anyone, thinks the inspectors should at least have the opportunity to complete their work. "We signed on to inspections. Like it or not, we did. It's very hard for us to say the process has run its course. Hard to say primarily since it's not true."

We'll see what happens. If I have a chance, I'll post reactions tonight after I get home. But I might wait until morning.

2003-01-27T10:38:00.000-05:00

Bullshit, &c. I just noticed this post from Friday morning up at &c., the blog run by The New Republic. If you read the magazine, you know that they are very hawksih on the Iraq issue. If you read Terminus, you know that I'm not. (Guess where this post is going.) Anyway, here's the quote: "[I]t seems to us that the only morally acceptable reason to support the use of force is that it gets you to an outcome--regime change and assured disarmament--that you couldn't possibly achieve diplomatically. You may not think that's worth the price. But in that case you don't support diplomacy, you support doing nothing."

Actually, you support containment. It's like this: I want the United States, and the United Nations, to keep a very close watch on Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons. All of them. We should be engaged actively in trying to prevent him from obtaining nuclear weapons, and we should try to find and dismantle any biological or chemical weapons he has. We should also keep careful track of his missile fleet. We should know how many he has, where they are, and what kind of range they have. I don't think regime change or disarmament (even assured disarmament) are compelling goals. Iraq, whether Saddam is in charge or not, is not capable of threatening the United States. Iraq is capable of threatening some of its neighbors, including key strategic allies of the United States like Israel and Saudi Arabia. And I take that seriously. But does it justify a war? I don't see how.

Ten years ago, Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Sure, we had a debate about whether or not to go to war, and why shouldn't we? I mean, if we're going to be sending soldiers into battle, I want debate, I want discussion, and (ideally) I want broad public support. But ten years ago, Iraq was clearly in the wrong. I'm not saying he's in the right now, but what has he done since then? Ok, he's violated the terms of the cease-fire, which arguably gives the United States a legal and moral right to invade, but don't give me that shit. We're talking about human beings fighting and dying. Don't give me legal trivialities.

I agree that regime change and assured disarmament probably won't come without war. I agree that those goals are "good". Supporters of war agree, or at least claim to agree, that war is "bad". All we're arguing about is the relative value of these "goods" and "bads". What strikes me is that this is exactly the sort of international adventurism that Republicans decried during the Clinton years. Saddam isn't going to kill Americans unless there's a war. Isn't that what we're supposed to be concerned about above all else? Isn't that what September 11th was supposed to teach us, that we have to do much better to protect ourselves from overseas threats? Saddam Hussein is not a threat... not to us. And, insofar as he is a threat to our strategic allies, he can be contained without war, as he has been for the last twelve years. That being the case, the "goods" of regime change and assured disarmament are only marginally "better" than the status quo, and they entail a far higher cost.

We shouldn't do nothing. We should keep inspectors in Iraq. We should engage diplomatically to make progress in the area of disarmament. Just like Clinton did with North Korea, we offer Saddam Hussein economic aid in return for access. Right now, we're offering Saddam the opportunity to avoid war in return for access. Saddam, like most intelligent observers of world politics, doesn't believe for a second that war can be averted as lon as Dubya is in charge, so he's not really inclined to give much access. Give him a carrot, and maybe he'll play ball. Even if he doesn't, international diplomatic pressure (backed up by the credible possibility of force, i.e., the status quo) can achieve much at a very low human cost.

The post from "&c." (click here) oversimplifies the issues and demeans the reasonable alternate view. This is indicative of a certain intellectual desperation. It's hardly surprising. It must be frutrating to be stuck supporting a policy that even the White House can't decently justify. We'll all be watching the State of the Union tomorrow to see what Bush has come up with big time. Those folks at The New Republic are feverish hoping to be given a more concrete leg to stand on.

2003-01-26T10:34:00.000-05:00

Why No War? Here's a great quote from that great blogger Max Sawicky: "It may be legal by U.S. and/or UN strictures for war to be waged. There may be some justifications for war. But there is nowhere near enough justification for war in light of the potential costs to U.S. national security." This is an elegant statement of a position that has been slowly crystallizing in my head for the last couple of weeks. Note that Max, in the brief quote above, makes no reference to Weapons of Mass Distruction, he makes no reference to weapons inspectors. He makes no reference to some potential coalition. He simply says that the benefits of war don't away the potential costs. In other words: bad policy.

The Bad Policy argument has gotten extremely short shrift in the national debate. I think the reason for this is largely political. Bush backed the dems into a corner by forcing them to vote on the Iraq resolution before Election Day. The dems voted yes, and they went back to their home states and beat their chests about voting yes. "No, we're not anti-war Weenies, no sir. Rush Limbaugh is talking about other democrats, who are Weenies, but not me. I'm with President Bush!" Many of those cowardly dimwits got spanked by the electorate, who reasoned "Why vote for a pretend Republican when I could vote for a real one?" But, thanks to the powerful advantage of incumbancy, many of them were returned to Washington.

So, they're kind of locked in, aren't they? I mean, if war was justified in late October of 2002, why not in late January of 2003? That's why the debate has shifted to a whole bunch of bogus issues. Bogus Issue Number One: Do you think the United States should invade Iraq without a resolution from the United Nations? What the crap is this one all about? Think about it. What possible differece does it make to the question of war as policy whether or not the UN votes for it? It makes no difference. Going to war with Iraq is Bad Policy regardless of whether France vetoes or merely abstains. Even if you think the war is good policy, the UN vote of confidence makes no real difference.

So why have dems insisted so loudly that the White House go through UN channels? Because they are hoping that the UN will do what they couldn't do and stand up to Bush's lunatic scheme to put American soldiers in danger for no good reason. The more interesting question: why have Americans bought it? You see in polls all over the place that, given the UN's blessing, Americans are far more comfortable with the idea of war with Iraq than they are otherwise. What gives? The only explanation I can think of is that the people don't trust the White House. Bush is trying to convince the American people that war in Iraq is a good idea. The American people aren't exactly sure. We have doubts. So we say "What does Kofi Annan think?" That's remarkable to me. Thanks to Bush's naked political lust for war, the people of this country are actually taking the UN seriously. That might be the single greatest achievement of the Bush II presidency.

Bogus Issue Number Two: Do you think the United States should invade Iraq alone, without first building an international coalition of support like we did in 1991? Please, the US military can handle Iraq all by itself. True, the lack of support within the Middle East will make things more complicated, but we can take these guys. Insisting on the formation of the coalition reflects two major misgivings, I think. First, it's just like the UN case above. We want to know that other "adults in charge" think this is a good idea. We don't trust Dubya, but if a bunch of other world leaders are behind it, especially democratically elected world leaders, well then, maybe Dubya's got the right idea after all. If not, then he must simply have a naked political lust for war. He should just watch Full Metal Jacket, masturbate, and leave us out of it. Second, a coalition reduces both the human and economic costs of war. The US won't have to pay for everything. The Brits can pay for some, the French, the Germans, etc. And some of those people will suely get killed too, and it won't just be all American kids. Somehow it makes it all a little better to know that British poor black kids will be killed in addition to American poor black kids.

There's much more to say on this subject, but I'm getting bored, frankly. I'll have more to say on the Bad Policy argument before the State of the Union address. In the meantime, check out Max's post, which hits most of the points I'm thinking of, here.

2003-01-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

The Bond Project: For Your Eyes Only. This is the perfect example of a film which takes itself seriously, yet hasn't lost its sense of humor. It takes itself seriously in the sense that it has strong characters, a compelling story, and a solid script. Clearly, plenty of effort went into to making this film into a quality product, which can't be said for too many entries in the franchise. That having been said, this movie still finds time to have a quick lagh at its own expense, such as the priceless chase sequence in Melina's car.

This is a very rare Bond movie in the sense that the audience doesn't know who the villain is until fairly late in the game. Even better, the audience meets the villain before it knows he's the villain. Of course, given the number of villainous roles Julian Glover has played, it wouldn't have been much of a surprise to anyone familiar with his work. Nevertheless, this simple plot-twist is devastatingly effective in a franchise which isn't known for misdirections of this sort. Think about it... even excepting the movie's that are named after the villain, think about how often the story telegraphs the identity of the heavy early in the first act. The previous film in the series is a perfect example. It's very rare that there's even more than one suspect.

Despie being such a simple plot-twist, the script milks it for all its worth, and it turns out to have a pretty good pay-off. The guy who is set up as the villain, Columbo, becomes a crucial ally for Bond, and gets a terrific scene where he gains Bond's confidence. Columbo's dialogue, not to mention a strong portrayal by Topol, makes him easily one of the most effective supporting characters in the history of the series. Sadly, the same can't be said for Melina Havelock, Bond's leading lady. She's stunningly beautiful, and the script gives her a marvellous motivation and a memorable modus operandi, but the performance is flat, which undermines the character tremendously. Far more memorable is Bibi, the young and not-so-innocent figure skater who throws herself at Bond, only to be rejected. That's a nice touch, actually. It's nice to see that Bond will draw the line somewhere. But Bibi is a thoroughly annoying character who doesn't really serve any necessary plot function. Her presence also undermines the story a bit, as it seems unlikely that a character like Kristatos would be so concerned about sponsoring an Olympic figure-skater. In that sense, it's reminiscent of Blofeld's bizarre interest in heraldry from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

This film also uses the character of Gogol very nicely. The brief but memorable exchange between Gogol and Bond at the end, outside Kristatos's hide-out, is a marvellous moment, and a good reminder that the Soviets still are the bad guys, even if the Bond series rarely uses them as such. The fact that we've already seen Gogol as a sympathetic character in previous films makes his minor involvement in this entry that much more interesting. You know, I actually miss the Commie bastard.

Of course, what is a Bond movie without spectacular stunts and action sequences? There's plenty of those. The "dragging over coral in shark-infested waters" sequence is pretty cool, I must admit, although it doesn't seem to fit the style and tenor of this particular movie. I know it was taken from the novel Live and Let Die, but that's not what I mean. This movie presents a much more realistic Bond. Sure, he's damn near superhuman in his talents, but everything happening here is basically grounded in reality. The shark sequence, on the other hand, seems a little overcomplicated. To be fair, this is a quibble, and it's still a fun scene. [Though, one wonders why the sharks are immediately drawn to the nameless henchmen rather than the bleeding heroes.]

The bottom line: Easily the best Moore-film yet, and the perfect palate-cleanser after the sci-fi camp of Moonraker. The Bond Project will continue with Octopussy.

2003-01-22T13:12:00.000-05:00

The Abortion Debate: Thirty Years After Roe v. Wade. Before I hit on some of the deeper issues involved in the abortion debate, I want to vent about a couple of pet-peeves. Number one: abortion is not murder. Anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken. It is not a matter of opinion. "Murder" is a legal term, with a legal definition. Under the laws of this country, abortion is no more murder than speeding. Of course, what people mean when they say "Abortion is murder" is that abortion is, morally speaking, functionally equivalent to murder. As rhetoric, it has a bit less punch, doesn't it? That interpretation of the "Abortion is murder" assertion is amenable to debate and discussion. There are arguments for and against the position which can be legitimately and honestly argued. But that doesn't change the simple fact that, as a matter of law, abortion is not murder.

Another pet peeve of mine is pro-life supporters who insist on calling pro-choicers by any name other than "pro-choice". "Pro-death" is my personal favorite, which was used by a fellow student in my Torts class last semester. I'd be willing to bet big money that this particular student supports both the death penalty and war in Iraq, while your humble blogger, who fits this student's definition of "pro-death", supports neither. Another common one is "pro-abortion". These little word games are petty and small. Grow the fuck up. If I wanted, I could refer to pro-lifers as anti-choice, or anti-privacy, or anti-woman, or pro-female-slavery. All of those labels are at least as applicable as pro-death or pro-abortion. Let's just all agree that these stupid word games serve no honest purpose, and mutually agree that my position will be called "pro-choice" and the opposing position will be called "pro-life". Everybody happy? Good.

To me, the abortion issue is so simple that it boggles my mind that we're still stuck in this hideously tedious debate. Oh, I know that the issue is complcated on a personal level, on a moral level, and on a religious level. But on a legal/political level, it's so simple. Who chooses, government or pregnant woman? That's the only issue. Most pro-choicers agree with pro-lifers that abortion is an awful, awful thing which should be limited, ideally, to cases of rape, incest, and medical emergency. Pro-choicers, however, understand that it is a complicated moral issue with no easy answers, and that a woman should be allowed to choose for herself, on the advice of her physician, how to handle her own body.

Let me diverge fr a moment. When I was in high school, I was swayed, for a time, by the facile philosophizing of Ayn Rand. Not my proudest moment, I don't mind telling you. I later studied hilosophy in college, and realized how primitive and naive her philosphy was. But, one of her observations has stuck with me ever since. She once wrote that rights, by definition, cannot be in conflict with one another. She used this point to support her view that no one has a right to medical care. You see, if someone has a right to medical care, that means that someone else (i.e., a doctor) has an obligation to provide it for her. Obligations, in the legal sense, are the exact opposite of rights. Ayn Rand argued that the doctor, as a human being, obviously has a right to life and liberty and yadda yadda yadda. A legal obligation to provide all and sundry with health-care, irrespective of whether they can pay for it, is a flagrant limitation of his rights. Therefore, there is no right to medical care, as it would entail the curtailment of another previously recognized right.

The same argument works for abortion. Pro-lifers talk about how fetuses have the same right to life as everyone else. But, by the above argument, they can't have. Granting a fetus the right to its own life necessarily deprives the mother of her right to hers. This is the inherent conflict at the heart of the legal debate. It is impossible to grant fetuses rights without stripping those rights from women. It is unconstitutional to strip women of these rights. Therefore, fetuses do not, and cannot, have the kinds of rights pro-lifers want to grant them.

So, we now have two perfectly simple planks from which to argue that the government should stay out of abortions entirely. One, it's too personal a decision to leave to the government. Two, it's impossible to grant rights to fetuses without taking them from women. But pro-lifers are not swayed by these arguments. Well, that's not really surprising. The biggest problem pro-choicers have to face up to is that the opposition is buoyed by religious fervor, and when in the history of mankind has calm, intelligent, logical reasoning done a damn bit of good in the face of religious fervor? [Hint: never.] I'd love to read an argument for the pro-life position from a non-religious person (and such an argument is possible), but I'm not betting on any takers, especially with my low traffic.

The thing that pro-choicers always have to keep in mind is that, regardless of all of these legal/political/religious debates, an abortion comes down to something very simple and very powerful: killing a defenseless creature which otherwise would one day be a beautiful child. This is precisely why I have no debate with those people who believe that abortion is, morally speaking, functionally equivalent to murder, as long as they agree to keep their personal value judgements out of the public sphere. This is the argument I've often had with my good friend Rob, whose intellectual brilliance is only matched by his utter inability to formulate or refute a logical argument. [It goes to show that studying English literature for long enough will turn even the sharpest mind into pudding.] Rob grew up Catholic, although his attitudes and lifestyle don't suggest to me that he is particularly religious (like most American Catholics I've known). Rob is stringently and vociferously pro-life. I find it hard to disagree with most of what he says, except when he tries to apply his moral code to everyone else in the country.

Just to prove that I have the courage of my convictions, I want to say this. When my mother was pregnant with me, there were complications. I had a twin, who died in the womb. The doctors were very concerned that carrying me to term might have endangered my mother, and that I would probably have been born developmentally disabled, if I survived at all. The doctors urged her to have an abortion, to protect her own health. She refused. I was in pretty bad shape when I was born. I had to stay at the hosptial for a while, I was jaundiced, and I needed surgery when I was still an infant. But otherwise, I turned out fine. My mother turned out fine. Se has never regretted for one moment the decision she made, and of course, I owe my life to her bravery and determination. That having been said, if I had been there when she was pregnant, out of concern for her safety, I would have strenuously advised an abortion. I don't what that adds to the discussion, exactly, but I wanted to share that story.

And one other story... a while ago now a dear friend of mine became pregnant. When I heard about this, I was thrown for a loop. I thought long and hard about what I would say to her if she asked my advice, and how I might feel about it if I had been the father. [There was... um... no chance of that.... trust me.] She decided on her own to carry the baby to term, but sadly miscarried. But, before she told me of her decision, I resolved that if she asked, I would advise abortion. Her boyfriend was a lunatic. They had very little money. Neither of them were in an emotional or financial position to care for a baby. In a situation like that, I don't see how bringing the fetus to term can be considered a good thing for the child. I know a lot of people argue that to believe alive, whatever the circumstances, is in all cases preferable to not being a live. I don't agree. I am in the strict minority of people who believe that, in particular cases, a decision to have an abortion can be made on the basis of the interests of the fetus.

So, that's where I'm coming from. I certainly hope that Roe v. Wade will never be overturned, but I expect that it will. The decision has survived thirty years of a concentrated Republican onslaught. Democrats have been in the White House for only twelve of those thirty years. The Republicans have stacked the Supreme Court with anti-abortion zealots, and Bush will probably have the opportunity to appoint at least one Justice before he has to face a re-election challenge. Can Roe v. Wade survive another Scalia or Thomas? I doubt it very much. Will Bush appoint anyone who isn't another Scalia or Thomas? No chance in hell.

UPDATE: Be sure to take a look at this article, by Columbia Law Professor Michael Dorf, on the current legal standing of Roe v. Wade. Dorf examines several crappy Constitutional arguments pro-lifers employ against the ruling, and also a couple of pretty good ones. It's interesting reading, and a good example of a fair and balanced approach to a tendentious issue put forth by someone with an avowed opinion.