Fables of the reconstruction

See You Monday

I'm getting on a plane to Vermont to visit friends. Go visit one of the sites listed to the left, loyal readers - both of you.

Mark Corallo, Ashcroft's Spokesman on PATRIOT

Mark Corallo is a fucking liar.

If you don't know who he is yet, he is the Justice Department's leading spokesman on the USA PATRIOT Act. The ACLU has compiled a report on the Justice Department's misinformation campaign about PATRIOT, which contains some damning details about Corallo's veracity. For example, Corallo told Florida Today: "U.S. citizens cannot be investigated under [the PATRIOT Act]." Lie. He told the Bangor [ME} Daily News: "The fact is the FBI can’t get your records." Another lie. To get your records, the FBI "must get a search warrant. And to get a warrant, it must convince a judge 'there is probable cause that the person you are seeking the information for is a terrorist or a foreign spy.'" A total lie. He told the Associated Press that the law only applies to agents of a foreign power or a member of a terrorist organization. All lies.

Before coming to Ashcroft's employ, Corallo worked for House Speaker Livingston as the spokesman for the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. He had a major hand in the Clinton impeachment and the ongoing Hunt for the Clenis.

When Speaker Livingston started to have second thoughts about the impeachment, according to CBS News, this is what happened:

"Livingston, who would soon be forced to resign over his own marital infidelities, told an aide, Mark Corallo, 'We've got to stop this. This is crazy. We're about to impeach the president of the United States.'

Corallo convinced Livingston to reconsider. 'Boss, we have a rapist in the White House,' he said, a reference to allegations against Mr. Clinton by a woman named Juanita Broaddrick about a 1978 incident. Broaddrick's calims were not included in the House impeachment findings.

Livingston said he can't recall the conversation, but didn't deny it took place."

Mark Corallo, liar and right-wing hatchet man.

Corallo has told so many outright lies, half-truths and distortions, at this point he probably wouldn't know the truth if it got up and bit him on the ass. Which it did, in a way, yesterday. On Monday, the Philadelphia Daily News printed an editorial reporting that Herr Ashcroft was going on the PATRIOT and More! Tour around the country, including a stop in Philly. Corallo called them and (1) denied there was going to be any tour, (2) demanded they print a retraction and apology. Then the story appeared the next day in the Washington Post. The News is not too pleased with Mr. Corallo. So, what happened? I think Ashcroft floated the idea of the tour, because he knows he is a major political liability for Bush in the upcoming election. If you don't believe that, then you didn't hear the cheer that went up at the Dean rally the other day when Dean said he was going to stand up to Ashcroft. It was the second biggest applause line after promising to give Bush a one-way ticket back to Crawford. But when the story was leaked, the reaction surprised Ashcroft - people like me were rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of a public forum to rip him a new asshole. They had to backpedal and now aren't sure if they want to go ahead, or if they want to try to somehow prevent a hostile audience. The problem is that they need to make it something newsworthy, and talking to a room full of Federalist Society members is not going to do it.

I sure hope Ashcroft does come to town, and he brings Corallo with him. I would like to see him try to spin his way out of a room of real civil libertarians.

Ignorance is Strength

Nicholas Kristof in today's NYTimes: "Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent). ... America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians. " What's the trend? "[M]ainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.

The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America."

The America I grew up in was always an anti-intellectual society. Why is that? If you were to ask people, both domestically and internationally, to choose the kind of person from all of American history who best represents what the country is about, you will likely get the same answer every time: The cowboy. The cowboy is our central heroic myth. Although the western is no longer a popular theme on television or movies, the cowboy is still present every day in the media. Instead of wearing a ten-gallon hat and six-shooters, he wears a cop's badge and a 9-millimeter. Or he wears the antihero's suit and sneer.

What are the qualities of the cowboy? He's male, obviously. He's very tough, and independent. He faces a hostile world that is nonetheless rich with opportunity. He uses violence and rough justice to sort out problems. An insult directed at him must be replied to with his fist. He works hard and, crucially, he while he might enjoy music, he doesn't read much. He doesn't discuss ideas. The real world is harsh and cruel and simple. Ideas are weak and effeminate. You need enough education to learn to read and count, but not much more.

This myth of a male-dominated world in which too much education or a focus on ideas is suspect has brought American society to where it is today. When we're faced with many subtle and complicated problems, a culture infantilized to believe that reason is for pussies does the only thing it can: It turns to magical thinking.

What happens when politicians praying and mounting two-ton monuments of the 10 Commandments in courthouses doesn't work? Maybe they'll try burning a few heretics.

Missiles

Lots of people are writing about the arrest of the arms dealer who thought he was selling antiaircraft missiles to terrorists for use in the U.S. against airliners. Many of the comments, rightly, have focused on the fact that the arrest resulted from a sting operation run by the U.S. No actual terrorists were involved. The implication is that the whole thing was prompted by the government, and thus is a sham.

I think that's a really wrong-headed approach in this case. From the story in the Washington Post:

Lakhani, 68, a British national ... was ordered jailed without bond on charges that he sold a Russian SA-18 shoulder-fired missile to federal agents posing as terrorists. He also allegedly promised to supply 50 more at a price of $5 million, and was interested in purchasing tons of C-4 plastic explosives, officials said.

The SA-18 is a scary weapon. The high-end version has a big warhead, it can hit much faster targets flying as high as 10,000 feet and from angles older missiles could not, and electronic countermeasures don't work against it very well. The fact that the guy arrested thought he could get 50 of them at only $100,000 each should make anyone sit up and take notice.

Also, this is exactly the kind of police work liberals should support. Someone who had the ability to supply terrorists with major weapons has been incarcerated. That's exactly the kind of action that we should prefer to preemptive wars and PATRIOT Act games. As Josh Marshall wrote: "[T]his is an unquestionably good thing for at least two reasons. First, it's a good thing to have behind bars any miscreant willing to make money by selling terrorists the equipment to bring down a commercial airliner. ... Second, and more to the point, you probably can't deter terrorists who are willing to kill themselves anyway. But you probably can deter some people with financial motives from supplying the terrorists with the weapons. And this probably goes some way toward that end."

An Arctic Wasteland, Covered With Ice

If you get the reference contained in the title of this post, you'll agree that inside lame-ass comedic movie actor Steve Martin is a political satirist yearning to break free: It All Depends on What You Mean by 'Have'

Jackboot John Is Coming to Philly

John Ashcroft will visit Philadelphia as part of his tour defending the PATRIOT Act. I intend to help give him a very rousing reception. (Link via The Liquid List.)

Filling the Swamp

Okay, so Sullivan and a number of other idiots say that the U.S. presence in Iraq is like "flypaper" that will draw Islamic militants forward to be destroyed. This, they say, is a strategy that will work.

Of course, another possibility is that the U.S. occupation will create more militants and give their leaders something to organize around. The NYTimes has a scary article on the issue today. "In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say."

The U.S. is lucky that Saddam wasn't liked at all in the Middle East, or we'd be facing a much bigger problem. But it's still a fucking mess. If the U.S. could hope to mount a real counter-guerilla operation, then the "flypaper" theory might have some merit. But the problem is one of numbers and territory. Since we decided to go this alone, our troops are tied up in important things like guarding oil wells and keeping themselves alive. This reduces the number of troops who can actually go out and hunt for the bad guys. Second, the organizing of the guerilla forces is being done largely outside the country. Since the purpose of the invasion was to gain leverage over the Middle East, why would they help us? In fact, it's in the best interest of the Syrians and Saudis and Iranians, tacitly and carefully, to help terrorists now.

Maureen Dowd is Hip

Maureen Dowd's op-ed today in the Washington Post, Blah Blah Blog, says that the Internet might be "over" because "[b]logs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment."

Wrong. It's a pull medium, Maureen, not a push medium. That's what makes it unique - no one can shout you down, no matter how loud a voice they have. The only way the establishment could take over is if they bought up all existing blogs.

Bidding on Fables of the reconstruction starts at $10,000. Do I hear 11?

Update 4/10/04: Made NYTimes link a true permalink.

Wesley Clark Clarifies

Here's a piece of real news. Wesley Clark's letter to the editor in the NYTimes today makes it clear that the people who asked him to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein were from a Middle East think tank, not the Bush Administration. This is interesting on two levels. One, obviously, it exonerates the Bushies of that particular charge. Secondly, it begs the question: why would the Middle East think tank be interested in that theory?

Aspiring Geek

I love little gadgets. My Kyocera SmartPhone 6035 is over 2 years old now, and it's starting to give out. Truthfully, I never used it the way I thought I would. It's a combo PDA/phone, and I thought it would save me from juggling two devices. The problem was using both simultaneously was not that practical. How do you type on a PDA while also talking through the same device? A headset would help, but who wants to walk around all day with that on your face? Looks stupid. And you can't whip one out and connect it up just to take a call - it takes too long. The Kyocera also comes with a speakerphone, but it turns out that you have to hold it about 4 inches from your mouth so people can hear you. At that distance, you can't even focus on the screen, much less write on it.

So I wandered into the Verizon Wireless store a couple of weeks ago, looking for an LG flip phone. (Consumer Reports ranks LG very highly, and I wanted something small after lugging the humungous SmartPhone for so long. Turns out, the new LG VX6000 came out this week, too. It's the same as the basic VX4400, except it comes with a camera! and is $50 more. I asked a few questions, dithered a couple of days, and then bought it. It's great. I love the camera. I am still thinking about whether I want to buy the picture e-mailing service; it's $4 per month. I got the insurance - also $4 per month - because I didn't on the SmartPhone and had to pay $175 when I smashed the screen. Not good. The thing is so light it has almost flown out of my hand, comically. It seems tough, though; even if I dropped it on concrete, I would not be surprised if it was okay (especially with the leather case). Still, insurance is good.

To replace the PDA, I got the Sony Clie SJ-20. Very nice, basic. So much faster than the SmartPhone or my Handspring Visor before that. Lighted screen that I love. It also feels tough, but I have no illusions about it not smashing if I drop it. At $70, though (on eBay), I figure it won't be a tragesty.

More Proof that Bill O'Reilly is a Fucking Asshole

It looks like the whole lawsuit against Franken is the result of the altercation between him and O'Reilly. Check this out: USATODAY.com - Insults thrown, left and right: "Schroeder said that, backstage, O'Reilly said his photo was used without permission. Franken said it was in the public domain. Later, O'Reilly said, 'Fox lawyers will handle this.' "

What a dick!

More Book News

Here's a book suggestion from Adam Felber at Fanatical Apathy:

"Motherfuckers – The Liberal Plot to Sodomize Your Mom” by Ann Coulter"

Go pre-order it.

FOX News Sues Al Franken Over Book Title, Proving His Point

As everyone now knows, FOX News has lost its tiny little mind and is suing Al Franken and Penguin Books for the subtitle of Franken's upcoming book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced View of the Right." FOX owns the copyright to "Fair & Balanced" and, apparently, has never heard of the concept of satire.

In the suit, according to reports (I can't find a copy), FOX calls Franken "a parasite" and "unfunny." Well, he is too, and I have no less than that unimpeachable source, the Washington Times: "for Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations: 'This book establishes Al Franken as a master of political humor... a delight to read and certain to appeal to readers of any political persuasion whose spirit hasn't been ompletely broken by the state of current U.S. politics.' Via The Official Al Franken Web site.

Just Sit Down

John Baer in The Philadelphia Daily News says:

"I think it's already down to Dean and Kerry. ... I wrote last winter former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean presents the same sort of threat to W. that Clinton brought to Poppy - deja vu all over again. He's fresh, smart and nobody gives him a chance. Just like Clinton. And he delivers a line. ... And Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, while somber and pedantic and seemingly bored to be sharing insights with common voters, is also rich and experienced and tall, and at least sounds as if he knows what he's talking about."

The rest of the field? Not a chance. I couldn't agree more.

I just love the Daily News. I don't know if there is another urban paper like it in the country - a liberal blue-collar tabloid. And they have the best covers:

It's Not Hypocrisy When We Do It

In today's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne runs through a list of insults and venom that Republicans hurled at Clinton and then concludes: "It is thus hilarious that Republicans have been so self-righteous against Democrats who have had the nerve to behave as an opposition and challenge President Bush's credibility. Republicans are telling Democrats: 'Don't you dare do what we did.' It's equally amusing, but also depressing, that hypocrisy isn't being called by its real name."

Get Your Tickets Now to Catch This Show.

Oh, please please please come to Philadelphia. You'll never forget the experience. I promise.

Ashcroft Planning Multi-City Tour:

"Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) will embark on a multi-city tour later this month to talk about the war on terrorism and the benefits of the USA Patriot Act, officials said Monday.

Ashcroft plans to kick off the tour Aug. 19 in Washington and visit more than a dozen cities. The exact itinerary was still being completed and will be released later."

Funny and Incisive is Good

alicublog is the funniest thing I've seen in a blog. A couple examples:

ELECTION IN PROGRESS:

"The folks at NRO's Corner have been ... complaisant on the pro-choice candidacy of the Terminator in California. (Even the reliable scold Lopez, having dropped a sour note on Ahnold at one point, later nollied it with some on-message boosterism.)

Election in progress! Turn off principles before merging with the one available lane."

and

CRAZY LIKE A FOX NEWSMAN:

"I used to make fun of Jim Lileks a lot, till my focus inevitably and happily drifted. My thought back then was that the guy was nuts, and his dire visions of nuclear death for New York and so forth still read like Bremeresque ravings found in motel drawers after killing sprees.

But Lileks has calmed. From the evidence of his most recent column, he would seem to have shifted his job description from the Jeremiah of Jasperwood to good-natured Republican hack.

He has developed, for example, a sunny side attitude toward the risible candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger.... He sounds like an excitable Jaycee pimping his high school football teammate for County Executive. He adds, 'We saw this in Minnesota with Jesse.' I never noticed Lileks calling the surly Minnesota governor 'Jesse' before -- either he and Ventura recently bonded over a secret stash of Battlestar Gallactica figurines, or the prairie pundit has begun adopting icons as journalistic pets. ....

Then Lileks gets to that gay bishop, and suddenly he's channeling Maggie Gallagher. 'It has nothing to do with Rev. Robinson’s sexual orientation,' he assures. 'The guy left his wife and kids to go do the hokey-pokey with someone else... 'I want to have sex with other people' is not a valid reason for depriving two little girls of a daddy who lives with them, gets up at night when they're sick, kisses them in the morning when they wake.'

In just a few tear-stained cliches he's got the soccer moms on board with the Derbyshire wing, all the while maintaining plausible toleration! ... [T]his is the work of a crafty wordsmith angling for the A. M. Rosenthal Chair, which is always well-padded, at some bigger daily than that he currently serves. All he has to do now is minimize the trips to Target and desperate declarations of fealty to his widdle girl, and tone down the keening pitch to which his longer pieces usually escalate, and he's a cinch the next time great Rupert has an opening."

There is more hilarity there.

Molly's Uneasy, Too

Molly Ivins is worried:

"The 'Watch on the Rhine' quality of our public life these days deserves serious attention. As one who studies the small, buried stories on the back pages of major newspapers, I am becoming increasingly uneasy. This is more than just, 'Boy, do their policies suck.' There's a creepy advance of something more menacing than bad policies.

I keep thinking of Mussolini's definition of fascism: 'Fascism should more properly be called corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power.' When was the last time we saw this administration do something that involved standing up to some corporate special interest in favor of the great majority of the people?"

(Link via Suburban Guerrilla.)

I see her point, but Godwin's Law applies here. I'm re-reading Hitler: The Path to Power by Charles Bracelen Flood. It always shocks me how quickly Lance Corporal Hitler went from being a nameless, wounded war vet to being poised to take over a country in less than 5 years. It's also good to keep in mind that Hitler and the other voelkish elements in Germany weren't just talking around the ideas of political violence and racist hysterics. They openly advocated it, and whipped up enthusiastic crowds with incitements to murder. While the modern conservative movement owes much to the Nazis - both their ideas and their manipulation of propaganda - the Right in America are rightly smacked in the head whenever they openly call for fascism. Look at Ann Coulter - she's a buffoon, nothing else.

Shrub Going the Way of George I?

Ezra at Not Geniuses has a perceptive post about the parallels between 2004 and 1992.

Although I see Dubya sliding down the popularity rollercoaster, too, I think it is a fundamentally different situation than with his father. People didn't like Bush the Elder because he seemed like an awkward patrician who couldn't relate to ordinary people if he tried. At the same time, he was rational and educated and responsible - a patrician - which meant the fire-breathing fundamentalists didn't take to him, either. Neither point is true of Shrub. However, he's perceived as incompetent, something of a liar, and opportunistic rather than doctrinaire. The knuckle-draggers like him, therefore, but they don't see results, which means they are not enthusiastic about him. And ordinary people are turned off by the fact that you can't trust anything he says and he seems to work more on his image than on actual issues. Meanwhile, the economy is still not getting better and it is not clear at all that we're any safer than we were 23 months ago.

Doubleplusgood

Via Billmon at Whiskey Bar, it's Attorney General Orwell.

The Costs of Going it Alone

The Brookings Institution says:

"With Iraqi oil revenues unlikely to reach full potential soon, outside estimates of the US bill for reconstruction range from Dollars 5bn to Dollars 120bn a year over several years. That puts the total cost to the US at between Dollars 150bn and Dollars 300bn. Had President George W. Bush gained the support of important US allies—if not for waging war, at least for securing the peace—the burden could have been far smaller."

The estimates of what this little adventure is going to cost us have been all over the lot, but the bottom line is, financially, preemptive war is a loser.

The Best Place to Meet Smart, Kinky People

I didn't discover the web until 1994, but since then, I have been on at least one (and usually more) personals sites. I think the first BDSM-specific site I ever used was adultfriendfinder. I subsequently tried Matchmaker (formerly alt.email.net), alt.com and bondage.com, with varying success. Aside from meeting A on alt.com, which was purely luck, most of the time I have spent on these sites involved wading through a lot of dreck.

I have found the best site for meeting submissive women who are intelligent and well-educated is not a BDSM site, it's Nerve. It's a free site (so long as you don't e-mail anyone first, which most women don't need to do) but for some reason it attracts smart people. It's probably self-selecting, since it asks about things like favorite books and has a snarky quality that would intimidate the dull. (I know, I sound condescending.) Try it.

The Value of a Proofreader

What a gimme. Operation Ivy Lightning: "The 4th Infantry Division said it had launched a new mission, Operation Ivy Lightning, to hunt Saddam loyalists it believed had fled to isolated villages east of Saddam's hometown of Tikrit to escape repeated U.S. raids. 'Ivy Lightning is a surgical strike in remote towns...to isolate and capture non-compliant forces and former regime loyalists who are planning attacks against Coalition forces,' Lt. Col. William MacDonald told reporters in Tikrit. " (Emphasis added.)

Sweet. Light and sweet, in fact. (Link, as usual, via Atrios).

Fairly Unbalanced

I cannot believe this shit. Fox Sues Humorist Al Franken Over 'fair and Balanced' Slogan (Link via Atrios) I don't do intellectual property law, but it seems preposterous to me that a phrase can be copyrighted such that it can't be used in a sentence anymore. If I were writing about Nike, and I wanted to use the title "How to Just Do It to Your Sweatshop Workers", I think I should have the right.

Dean Appearance in Philadelphia

I attended the Howard Dean rally and speech this afternoon on Independence Mall with A and her husband. It was pretty interesting. The organizers claimed 3,500 people attended, but it looked a lot smaller than that - say, 1,500. I saw Mike Marsico of the Liberty City Democrats and a number of other local activists. Gov. Dean was over an hour late, or rather, there were a number of speakers who went before him. Most of them, I didn't catch their names. There was a college kid and another young guy, both of which were pretty bad speakers. There was a minister named Janice something who was very good. There was a male minister who was not so good. There was Angel Ortiz and Mayor Street, both of whom I can't abide as speakers, but they whipped up the crowd.

Gov. Dean finally arrived and spoke for about 15 minutes. I was a little disappointed at the brevity, but he was saving his voice for the event inside the National Constitution Center, a panel of all the candidates put on by the Sheet Metal Workers and carried on C-Span. I caught most of the program. The focus seemed to be on Dean, who held up pretty well, I thought. Gephardt and Kerry both got a lot of attention, too, but interestingly, they seemed to me to be trying to distinguish themselves from Dean. One impression I had confirmed: John Kerry is a pretty lousy public speaker. I think he has many great positions, and it feels a little shallow to judge someone's worth as President on this, but he reminds me too much of Al Gore's wooden delivery. At one point, he started talking about the details of a proposed plan to have government cover a certain percentage of catastrophic medical bills, and I thought to myself: No way will this man defeat George W. Bush in a debate. Dean will destroy him; Gephardt will do well, although he's no tiger.

Here's proof camera phones will not supplant regular cameras anytime soon:

Can you Destroy New York with Meth?

Eugene Volokh is a hard-right Republican "law and order" (his phrase) conservative who poses as a moderate, by using moderation of language to disguise radical thought. But credit where credit is due, in this post he points out a story about a North Carolina prosecutor who is using a state anti-terrorism law against manufacturing "chemical weapons" to prosecute a methamphetamine maker. Volokh is against using the law this way.

So he's a principled libertarian, right? Sadly, no. His concern isn't the rule of law, it's that such cases will expose the real agenda - um, excuse me, give the misleading impression that such laws' "lowered protections" will be misused. In other words, he likes the PATRIOT Act and doesn't want anything to jeopardize it. This is a selective concern. If the situation were reversed, and a terrorist were being charged with making illegal drugs - because making a chemical weapon technically fit the definition - you wouldn't hear a peep from Volokh.

Still, I'd rather the wing-nuts were right for the wrong reason than wrong for the wrong reason.

So Nice of Them to Think About Giving Other People Their Rights

I don't understand why so many people read Rachel Lucas. I suspect that conservatives find the combination of sex and violence - a woman blogging about guns - so exciting they wack off while reading her site. (She has a picture of herself here as a child in a cheerleader's outfit, which is ideal wingnut porn - go get the lube, Rush.) Lucas is another conservative posing as a reasonable, rational person, like Volokh. In this post, she reiterates that she supports same-sex marriage but finds merit in this post by Chuck Simmons. In the post, Simmons claims:

The government's interest in the legal recognition of these relationships revolves around property issues. Inheritance, support, all that money stuff that married people never think about under [sic] the worst happens. ... Legalizing gay marriage at the state level is not as simple as removing all reference to the sex of partners in marriage laws. Many states explicitly recognize mothers are first in line for child custody after a separation or divorce. In a same-sex marriage, this is an issue to be addressed, either there are no mothers, or two. Child support, when neither party is the sperm donor, is another. ... I see no legal reason to ban same-sex marriage, but strongly support a detailed revamp of marriage laws in any state that is going to legalize this. Don't go off er... half-cocked on this issue, because if the courts are left to settle issues that were not covered in statute, we will regret it later. ... Despite the passionate rhetoric, this is not a basic human rights issue. It is a money issue.

"Half-cocked." How clever. How cute. So cute it makes me want to vomit on his head. Unfortunately, his cowardly ass doesn't believe in providing comments to his posts, so I will have to take him to task here.

First, what the hell is he talking about? This is not my area of law, but I would be very surprised if many states' statutes contain (as he says elsewhere) "the presumption that the mother is the first choice for child custody, or that the male partner should be the person paying alimony or support." Most states have abandoned the "tender years" doctrine and give both parents an equal shot at primary custody. Of course, there may be a bias among judges to give mothers custody, but that's a different problem.

Second, what the hell is he talking about? Vermont passed a civil union law that effectively just "remov[ed] all reference to the sex of partners" and didn't change anything else. That state does not seem to have any problem adjusting to the issue. Moreover, deciding cases in novel circumstances is what judges do all the time. Confronted with two mothers, does he think the courts will judge whip out Solomon's sword and chop the kid in two? No, they will apply the standard of what is in the best interest of the child, as usual.

Third, what the hell is he talking about? Since when is being prevented from marrying the person you love not a "basic human rights issue"? Only someone whose rights were not being denied could be so sanguine about others being deprived of those rights. Tell the frantic person who is trying to get into the hospital to see his or her partner when the couple is traveling and they don't have their durable medical powers of attorney with them. Or the jurisdiction is severly homophobic. Or the "real" family intervenes. Or whatever. Not fundamental?

Libertarians should be offended to be lumped into the same category as these people.

How the Right owns the military

Remember when Clinton was in office, the military hated him? ("[M]iddle-level officers and NCOs [are] a hotbed of anti-Clinton sentiment. Only two months ago a series of public attacks on Clinton from mid-level officers appeared in Navy Times and other military publications, contrasting his treatment in the Lewinsky affair and the disciplinary measures against military officers charged with adultery or sexual harassment.") Officers tacitly gave their surbordinates permission to publicly criticize the President, and no action was taken.

Now, of course, things are different. A few enlisted men in Iraq criticize the Secretary of Defense, and they get slapped down. This is the kind of thing that makes civilians cynical about the political influence of the military. We already know that the officer corps is deeply more conservative and Evangelical Christian than the population at large. No wonder they produce a Timothy McVeigh. And they spend $1 billion a day, and then ask for more. While supporting a party that seeks to spend the country so far into debt that everything will be cut - except military spending.

I appreciate the job that the military does on behalf of the country. I wish they wouldn't make it so hard to support them.

Gay v. Interracial Marriage

I never get tired of drawing the parallel, maybe the connection, between opposition to same-sex marriage and opposition to interracial marriage. Less than 50 years ago, it was still illegal for people of different races to marry in some parts of the country. In the landmark case, Loving v. Virginia, the trial court judge summed up the argument nicely when he wrote that God had put the races on separate continents, and had not intended for them to mingle. He was reversed by the Supreme Court.

There is something primitive and proto-human about such arguments. Arguments against changing marriage carry this whiff of the cave about them. Humans are not so evolved that they don't still behave like they are just ignorant savages. Religion, of course, is an effort to channel and control such impulses. Sometimes, though, it seems the impulses are what is channeling and controlling religion.

However, times change. In today's NYTimes.com, Frank Rich writes:

The national polls [show] ... opposition to same-sex marriage ranging from 49 percent to the upper 50's. (The opposition melts away considerably among those under 29.) By contrast, as late as 1991, almost a quarter century after the Supreme Court's 1967 decision striking down anti-miscegenation laws, 66 percent of American whites said they would oppose a close relative marrying a black.

"What strikes me," Professor Chauncey says, "is how closely the resistance to same-sex marriage resembles white people's fears about interracial marriage, which were at the emotional core of their fears about integration in general." Now, as in the 1950's and 60's, much of the objection to legally extending marital rights takes the form of religious warnings about a declining "moral order," even though the rights being debated are those granted by the government, not those bestowed (or withheld) by religious denominations.

There are several interesting nuggets in there. Long-term, opposition to same-sex marriage is doomed by demographics. But the reasons for the opposition, I think, will go down the memory hole. In 20 years, you'll find, the same kind of people making biblical arguments against the moral "question" of the day will have no idea what you're talking about when you bring up Lawrence v. Texas.

A cave is a dark and lonely place.

Update 8/28/03: Updated for clarity.
Update 4/10/04: Made NYTimes link a true permalink.

Bush Lied, Soldiers Died

Josh Marshall and Tom Tomorrow and Atrios (link bloggered, scroll down to "Lies") are all talking about this article in the Washington Post today. While the real bloggers are focused on boring-but-important stuff like the "grafs" (you know, I am coming to hate that word), I like headlines and subheadings:

Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
Facts and Doubts
'Nuclear Blackmail'
'Educating the Public'
'A Mushroom Cloud'
'Literary License'
'Footnotes and Disclaimers'
'He Made a Name'
'Stretches the Imagination'
Unravelings

I like that last one, especially. Unravelings. Which means the same as Ravelings, you know. I like all of the ones in quotes. "A Mushroom Cloud." Ah, but it's only three little words. You know, if we plastered magnets on all of the Bush Administration officials, the spin could produce enough electricity to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Then, we could get out of Iraq sooner. Just a suggestion.

Dubya the Environmentalist

This is just too funny-sad.

Bush proposed his 'Healthy Forests' initiative last year, and has implemented portions of it through new government rules.

...

They no longer require environmental studies before trees are logged or burned to prevent forest fires. The rules also limit appeals of such projects.

"The preventive forest thinning Bush is trying to accelerate helped ensure the survival of $2 billion in telecommunications equipment, camps owned by churches and Boy Scout and Girl Scout groups and two mountain observatories, said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality."

"When you don't do (thinning), you get moonscapes with matchsticks," Connaughton said in a telephone interview Sunday. "When you do the work right, you get thriving, natural forest that's got a nice, wide canopy."

Right, I believe someone who has worked with industry his entire career like James Connaughton.

And buried down near the end: "Some critics also said Summerhaven was a curious place for Bush to pitch his initiative. It was lack of money, not bureaucratic hurdles, that prevented critical thinning in the area, they say. Moreover, the legal obstacles to thinning that Bush wants to remove have been almost nonexistent on Forest Service lands in the area, experts say."

Winnebagos of Mass Destruction

It's so hard to know the truth. You rely on the experts to deliver their best judgment on a topic, and to give you that judgment honestly, in order to be an informed citizen. And that's what the Bush Administration is counting on. They are trading on the defiled credibility of professionals to delude the public into thinking that the Iraqis presented a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.

Take the Iraqi trailers that Bush said were used to make biological weapons. Bush & Co. said they were weapons factories. Then the Brits said no, actually, they produce hydrogen for weather balloons, and we know because we sold them to the Iraqis. Now the Bushies say, yes, they were for bioligcal weapons. "'We stand by the white paper,' the Defense Department official said. 'But based on the assessment of the engineering team, it has caused us to pursue additional information about possible alternative uses for the trailers.' "

Get that? Alternative uses. Yeah, they were used to make hydrogen, too! When they weren't making weaponized anthrax to drop on your cereal in the morning.

Oh, who to believe? (Hint: whoever is saying the Bushites are lying.)

More on the Army

For a liberal urbanite attorney pervert who has never been closer to the service than preserving my Dad's old Air Force uniform, I have an unusual interest in things military. Not the weapons - if I owned a gun, I'd probably end up killing myself or someone else by accident. Not the uniforms - please. But, like dilettantes everywhere, I care about Strategy.

In today's NYTimes, this story: Army Is Designing Ways to Reorganize Its Forces. The gist of the story is that the Army is planning on making units more “modular”, so that formations of different sizes and with varying capabilities can be used in a given situation. Also, the Army is considering (a) using active-duty troops to do some tasks in the foreign areas of operation, so as to keep the National Guard and reserves at bases at home, (b) “cutting back on less urgent foreign missions”, (c) “transferring people in uniform out of administrative tasks and back to combat units”, and (d) “using more Iraqis and foreign troops for the mission in Iraq.” The bottom line, though, is that after the reorganization they think they need more troops.

First, see American forces to pull back in Iraq. Second, this sounds to me like a somewhat forced way of Rumsfeld getting what he wants. After the purge of top officers who stood in his way the other day, he now puts in a guy who dances to his tune. Okay, fine, I am all for civilian control. But do military officers think this is a good plan? What happens to unit identity when you break things up into chunks and glom them together into whatever freeform structure you think you need at the moment? At the extreme, this means people who have never seen each other before being “assembled” into a unit and then thrown into an operation. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

The other ideas for reorganizing all strike me as just weird or lame. Using active-duty troops in place of reserves and National Guard? Um, isn’t that why you have them, to augment forces in the field during conflicts? Cutting back on less-urgent missions and increasing the tooth-to-tail ratio all sound great, but everyone wants to do that, and if you seriously try it, it will have major policy implications (in the former case) and jeopardize the overall health of the Army (in the latter case).

All in all, it strikes me as lame and half-hearted, and just a prelude for asking for more money so they can invade some other third-world country.

American forces to pull back in Iraq

Now comes this story:

The steady loss of American troops and a terror bombing at the Jordanian Embassy may prompt the Bush administration to revise the U.S. security role in Iraq, shifting some responsibility to emerging local forces.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, at a news conference, said the United States intends to use "whatever techniques are appropriate" against followers of Saddam Hussein and other anti-American fighters, some of whom have crossed into the country.

But, he said Thursday, "it may be what you want to do is to stand back a little bit more and let Iraqis who have started to create forces, protect installations."

That way, Powell said, "you don't need a coalition military organization protecting that installation."

"We have to be nimble, flexible, (make changes) as the situation changes," he said.

I read this to mean, "The situation is chaotic, and we are sick of taking casualties. We can't take the loss of morale and political heartburn they cause. Also, we need to draw our forces down under 100,000 both for budgetary reasons and unless we have those divisions freed up, we're not a credible threat to invade the other places we want to threaten, like Iran and Syria. So long as we're spending $4 billion a month to occupy Iraq, Bush is vulnerable. He promised security on the cheap, with no sacrifices necessary.

"So, we're going to train a few Iraqis to go out there and take the brunt. They'll be able to violate human rights at will, and no one will be able to complain. They can say, hey, at least we're not Saddam. All the better if the 'insurgency' continues so the new government - backed by a strong American military presence - can impose dictatorial rule and prevent our nightmare of a popularly elected Sharia-based government. That's all we need!

"We can pull our troops back to bases where they can't be touched, and they'll only sortie out in force to engage in search-and-destroy. We own the sky, and that will continue. But we're going to give the cities and the infrastructure to the Iraqis; let them blame the lack of electricity on themselves. In the meantime, on to 2004 - and another term!"

I feel sorry for the Iraqis.

U.S. Changing Tactics in Iraq

This is a good move: "The top allied commander also said the U.S. military, in a change in strategy, has decided to limit the scope of its raids in Iraq (news - web sites) after receiving warnings from Iraqi leaders that the large military sweeps were alienating the public." And it might be good news, too.

The ACLU confronts Ashcroft

From the press release:

"The ACLU filed the first legal challenge to the USA PATRIOT Act, taking aim at a section of the controversial law that vastly expands the power of FBI agents to secretly obtain records and personal belongings of innocent people in the United States, including citizens and permanent residents."

More GIs Die

Mission accomplished:

"Later Thursday, a fierce gun battle broke out in central Baghdad, with at least one American casualty. The battle followed a firefight the night before in which two American soldiers were killed, the military announced.

The deaths Wednesday night ended a four-day period in which no U.S. forces had been killed and brought to 55 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat since May 1, when President Bush declared major fighting over."

Switching to typepad

I've decided to try Typepad, the basic edition of Movable Type. I just want to see if it is easier than Blogger.