HERE’S A BLOG REVIEW of Gene Healy’s new book, mentioned below.
Archive for 2005
March 4, 2005
ELECTIONS IN MOLDOVA THIS WEEKEND: Here’s a story from the Financial Times.
By the way, I’ve seen nothing in the major papers, and only a few mentions on cable, of Robert Byrd appearing to liken GOP tactics to Hitler, which he now denies, even though Jewish groups have demanded an apology (“Hideous” and “outrageous,” says the ADL.) Why is the press giving Byrd a pass?
Good question.
UPDATE: The Rocky Mountain News noticed.
LOTS OF INTERESTING STUFF over at Arthur Chrenkoff’s. If you’re only visiting for his roundups of Iraqi and Afghan developments, you should check it out.
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES has responded to Hugh Hewitt’s complaints about its North Korea coverage, but Hugh is still unhappy.
I’M OPPOSED TO A NATIONAL I.D. CARD: But at least if we have such a system, we probably won’t outsource it to the Cuban secret police, as Hugo Chavez is reportedly doing.
AZERBAIJAN UPDATE: Hundreds protest at the funeral of a murdered journalist.
A WHILE BACK, I had a project with the working title of Due Process When Everything is a Crime. It never quite jelled (there’s a chapter in the ethics book along these lines, and I wrote a review essay that drew on some of it) but the full-length project kind of ground to a halt after 9/11 and I never got the momentum back.
Now Gene Healy has produced a new book called Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything, that addresses the same problem: The growth of trivial-yet-potent criminal laws to the point that everyone is a felon, and prosecutorial discretion is the most important part of the justice system. It looks interesting enough that it’s got me thinking of restarting that project.
MIKE ROSEN: “Thank you, Ward Churchill.”
THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES IS UP: Read it, and then go grocery shopping!
RALPH PETERS: “Don’t Get Cocky!”
FOR three years, this column has shot down the pessi mists who warned we were bound to fail in the Middle East. Now those of us who see our confidence vindicated must beware a premature euphoria. There’s plenty of work ahead.
Our successes have been remarkable. In the past six weeks, we’ve seen more positive movement in the region than we saw in the preceding six decades. The political landscape of the old Islamic heartlands has changed breathtakingly since our first special-operations team went to work in the wake of 9/11. . . .
From Iran through Saudi Arabia to Egypt, the first breezes of change are beginning to blow.
But they’re not gale-force winds just yet. We would be almost as foolish as the eternal naysayers were we to imagine that our mission is nearing completion.
Excessive euphoria would only play into the hands of those who wanted freedom’s campaign to fail all along. If our rhetoric becomes too exuberant, even positive events on the ground could be dismissed as falling short of our promises.
That’s absolutely right.
UPDATE: And Charles Krauthammer is also right when he says that we need to keep the momentum going:
Revolution is in the air. What to do? We are already hearing voices for restraint about liberating Lebanon. Flynt Leverett, your usual Middle East expert, took to the New York Times to oppose the immediate end of Syria’s occupation of Lebanon. Instead, we should be trying to “engage and empower” the tyranny in Damascus.
These people never learn. Here we are on the threshold of what Arabs in the region are calling the fall of their own Berlin Wall and our “realists” want us to go back to making deals with dictators. It would be not just a blunder but a tragedy. It would betray our principles. And it would betray the people in Lebanon who have been encouraged by those principles.
Plenty of time for euphoria when we’re done. Though it’s hard not to gloat at least a little bit in the face of pieces like this one, however grudging, from Fred Kaplan.
BLOGGERS, MCCAIN-FEINGOLD, AND MEDIA CREDENTIALS: A Houston talk-radio station wants to make sure that all bloggers get the media exemption that allows free speech under campaign-finance “reform” law:
As such, we believe that we enjoy the “broadcast exemption” that prohibits the federal government from regulating our speech in the manner they are proposing for “mere” citizen bloggers.
While we still need to talk to some sharp lawyers and nail down the details, if these restrictions come to pass, KSEV and LST are committed to working out a legally sound way in which individual bloggers– of every ideological persuasion and partisan affiliation– can somehow register with us and be credentialed as a press representative of KSEV and LST.
Like Raoul Wallenberg handing out passports, we will start issuing press credentials to any blogger that asks for one.
I trust that things will turn out better for them than they did for Wallenberg . . . .
UPDATE: In response to Josh, I took the Wallenberg reference to be ironic, as was my treatment of it (here at InstaPundit, gratuitous ellipsis is generally a sign of irony). I detected no such irony in Robert Byrd’s comments.
JAY ROSEN WAS ON THE DAILY SHOW, explaining how to make it big in blogging.
RUMBLES IN AZERBAIJAN? Keep an eye on this.
March 3, 2005
“WHAT HAVE THE AMERICANS ever done for us?” Heh.
GODWIN’S LAW VIOLATOR, BUSTED: Though some would call it an instantiation, rather than a violation, of Godwin’s Law.
MORE HOMELAND SECURITY SCREWUPS:
The U.S. government’s smallpox vaccination program eroded the credibility of federal health officials while leaving no clear indication of how well prepared the nation might be against a bioterrorist attack.
So said Dr. Brian Strom, chairman of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee which released a report Thursday on lessons learned from the 2002 vaccination effort. The panel presented its findings in Washington, D.C.
While stopping short of calling the program a failure, the report did find what appear to be serious shortfalls in how the initiative was implemented. The report, titled The Smallpox Vaccination Program: Public Health in an Age of Terrorism, is the last of seven reports providing recommendations and guidance to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Unlike earlier reports, however, this one was undertaken at the IOM’s own initiative.
These lessons learned are important because “bioterrorism, unfortunately, continues to be a threat and it is likely that future programs like this will need to be initiated,” said Strom, who is also chairman and professor of the department of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
We’re going to have to do better than this. (Full report here).
McCain and Feingold have managed to foster real bipartisanship — they’ve gotten liberal and conservative bloggers alike to detest them. Jerome Armstrong at MyDD, Atrios, and DailyKos all agree — this legislation has become a serious threat to political speech, and John McCain and Russ Feingold have become two of the most dangerous politicians to American liberty since Huey Long. Jerome makes the point that the problem at the moment are the three Democratic FEC commissioners who appear intent on enforcing the law as McCain and Feingold insist, but both parties had a hand in creating this fiasco.
Indeed.
REID STOTT: “I don’t normally watch network TV news, but tonight I just happened to catch about two minutes of Peter Jennings on ABC. And it fully reinforced why I don’t bother with network TV news anymore.”
ALTHOUGH I UNDERSTAND THE TEMPTATION, it’s still a bit early for this much gloating. Isn’t it?
CONDI, RUMMY, AND THE Japanese Navy.
UPDATE: Much more, here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more from Michael Ubaldi, here.
LAURIE MORROW: “Ave Atque Vale, Phi Beta Kappa.”
MATT YGLESIAS LOOKS AT THE POLLS:
Bush has net negative approval ratings on the economy, on foreign policy, and on Iraq. You would think that would be fatal, but it was the same in late October. Generally speaking, the picture is the same throughout. The numbers make the president look very, very, very weak. But he looked just as weak right before the election, and obviously it didn’t work out. The upshot, I think, is that the Democratic Party’s political problems are really about the Democratic Party and not their opponents. Interestingly, the poll doesn’t find much support for the notion that a dash to the right on cultural issues is the way out. They asked “which party comes closer to sharing your view on abortion” and 45 percent said the Democrats to just 35 percent for the Republicans. They asked “which party comes closer to sharing your view on the legal recognition of gay couples,” and the Democrats got 42 percent to the GOP’s 37 percent.
Which is all by way of returning to my long-time hobbyhorse — to wit: The Democratic Party’s political trouble is explained almost entirely by the fact that the country does not trust it with national security. It may be possible to weasel into office through some other contrivance, but Democratic positioning on both culture and economics is already reasonably successful. Bush is not wildly popular. The obvious growth area is trying to convince people that Democrats can do national security properly.
This is exactly right. It seems to me that the best hope for the Democrats is for Bush to be so successful at foreign affairs and national security that by 2008 nobody cares anymore.
UPDATE: Reader Larry Weintraub emails:
You forget the more obvious option: For the Democrats to coalesce around a viable National Security policy that the public believes in.
It’d be enough for voters like me (well, specifically, for me), exactly the ones Matt is talking about who voted for Bush but are, domestically and socially, Democrats.
It would probably be enough for me — I’ve been hoping for it for over three years — but it seems increasingly unlikely. Unless they’re smart enough to nominate “the most uncompromising wartime President in the history of the United States,” anyway. . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: Of course, there’s always the possibility that the NYT poll is just wrong. Or, put another way: “Anyone who relies on the Times and CBS to explain what American voters are thinking deserves the inevitable losses which result.”