Fables of the reconstruction

The Virginia Tech Report

The report by a commission set up by the state of Virginia on the Virginia Tech shootings is out, and the bottom line is: The university should have warned people about the first murders, and the university should have done a better job of identifying that Cho was a threat. The whole report is here, but I am basing my comments on the press reports.

I think the conclusions of the report are an attempt to placate the families of the victims by blaming university officials, but withholding any sort of real sting to the criticism by not calling for any of those officials to be punished. I am glad about that result, at least, since I don't think the criticisms are warranted.

First of all, what exactly is the causal chain of events that would have made a warning useful to the students and faculty in Norris Hall? "Hey, man, did you hear about that shooting?" "Yep, I brought my Ruger to class, just in case. Don't tell the T.A." I mean, seriously, the only thing that would have helped is if the university locked down the entire campus - if that's even technically feasible, since it's a small city. But there was no reason to think that the first shootings meant that whoever did it was about to go on a mass murder spree. And there won't be a reason to think that the next time there is a shooting on a campus, absent specific evidence to the contrary. If you really thought there were, you'd lock down what you could and send in the assault teams, not send out a warning.

The second criticism is that the university should have cut Cho out of the herd and "done something" to make him better or quarantine him, since in retrospect it's clear he was an imminent threat.  But again, prospectively, was he clearly a threat? The only thing that was clear to me was that the university people found his writing disturbing, but anyone who has worked in a large college setting knows that crops up on a daily basis. If he's not committing crimes or harming himself, what exactly are you going to do? He was clearly paranoid and delusional, in retrospect, but he also did a good job of not giving anyone evidence of how insane he was, mostly by keeping his mouth shut. So you interview some kid who writes luridly (and badly) about killing his father, and he refuses to talk to you. Then what? Expel him, give him an A, or ask him to teach the next class?

What I am really afraid of here, in both cases, is overreaction. If this report is seen as credible, the next time there is a shooting on a campus, it will mean the whole place will shut down. I live near the University of Pennsylvania, an urban campus. Shootings here are not an infrequent event. And disturbed, even disturbing, behavior by students is an unworkable grounds for kicking people out of programs. Some writer will get too creative one day and the next find herself kicked out of school with a restraining order not to enter campus again ever. In both cases, I don't think it's wise or effective.

I Got Your John Doe Right Here, Habibi

My question is, would this idiotic passenger have known Arabic from Urdu or Persian?

The incident late Tuesday night began when the unidentified woman complained before boarding about the men [speaking Arabic] to American Airlines staff, and continued her complaints after boarding. The plane left the gate and began taxiing at 11:14 p.m., and the woman persisted in her complaints. The captain returned to the gate 12 minutes later, the San Diego Tribune reported Thursday.

The airport has an 11:30 p.m. curfew, so the flight carrying 126 people was rescheduled for Wednesday morning.

Investigators interviewed the woman who complained as well as the six men, the report said.

It turns out the men were Iraqi-Americans who had been training Marines at Camp Pendelton, Calif., for deployment in Iraq.

Hearts and minds, people. Hearts and fucking minds.

"An Older White Male with Grey Hair Standing Outside My Stall"

Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig (and Mitt Romney's now-former Senate co-chairman) visits the restroom at the airport in Minneapolis and first lurks outside a stall where an undercover cop is sitting, then goes into the adjoining stall, and:

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could ... see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.

I feel sorry for the dude. Can you imagine being his age, and hanging out in public restrooms just to get some sex? And then getting busted? How undignified.

At least he went quietly and 'fessed up, right? Oops...

Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. ... Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”

In a recorded interview after his arrest, Craig “either disagreed with me or ‘didn’t recall’ the events as they happened,” the report states.

Craig stated “that he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine,” the report states. Craig also told the arresting officer that he reached down with his right hand to pick up a piece of paper that was on the floor.

“It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper,” the arresting officer said in the report. 

You know what, Senator? Just don't speak. It's insulting to tell someone such a transparent lie.

Oh well, at least he didn't try to "Do you know who I am?" his way out of it, right? Oops again...

At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states.

The sergeant should have tapped the card and said, "What do I think? I think this will make a very pathetic part of a news story." But it's Minnestoa, so he's probably politer than that.

Over at Hot Air, they're rationalizing as fast as they can:

What’s the big deal? Isn’t that the kind of behavior liberals fawn over? Shouldn’t Reid call him up and say welcome to the club?

darwin on August 27, 2007 at 5:47 PM

Harry Reid solicited sex in a public restroom? Huh? Swing and a miss!

AT least he wasn’t running an escort service out of his townhouse. But I guess that is only ok if you are a Democrat

400lb Gorilla on August 27, 2007 at 5:56 PM

Referring to the unfounded accusations against Barney Frank from 1990. Strike two!

    Special disastrous bonus factoid: He’s up for re-election next year! —- Allahpundit

Nothing “disastrous” about it… get him out of there ! He’s already a Democrat anyway.

Maxx on August 27, 2007 at 6:00 PM

He's a Democrat?

The American Conservative Union gave Craig's 2005 voting record 96 points out of 100. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave him 15. Considered a social conservative, Craig has long been an advocate of adoption. Senator Craig supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, voting for cloture on the amendment in both 2004 and 2006. He voted against cloture on a bill in 2002, which would have extended the federal definition hate crimes to cover sexual orientation.

Striiiiiiiiiike threeeeeeeeeeee. You're out fucked.

I feel a little less sorry for Craig now. Trolls a restroom, tells a cop stupid lies, and then tries to pull rank before being forced to plead guilty.  Meanwhile, he wants to amend the Constitution to make it illegal for gay people like himself to get married, so that they will have to be as undignified and lacking self-respect as he.

What White People Don't Even Know They Don't Have to Put Up With

From the Daily News letters:

Am I wrong for liking nice things?

I have a nice car with rims, and I get pulled over at least once a week. Why is this? Is it wrong for me to like nice things if I can afford them? It was amusing in the beginning because all of my papers are legal, and I have a valid license, so there was no reason for me to be nervous.

Now I can count on being pulled over all the time.

I was recently pulled over by officers from the 22nd District on my way to work as a security guard. Usually, the officers see my uniform and let me go, but this time was different.

One officer went to the passenger side of the car and proceeded to shine the light in my 7-year-old daughter's face. I looked in his direction, and he gestured for me to look the other way. When I looked the other way, another officer had his light shining in my face.

I asked him if there was a reason for pulling me over. He said I didn't put my turn signal on when I pulled over! (With all the homicides in Philly, they harass me for that?)

I asked if he wanted to see my license and registration. He asked if I had one! I gave him my paperwork, he looked at it and gave it right back.

I was dropping my daughter off at her grandmother's so I could go to work. Her grandmother came to the door and told my daughter not to be scared. The officer asked, "Why should she be scared?"

Then he asked if I had any weapons. I said no and asked if my daughter could go with her grandmother. He replied that I had to wait until they left, which I understood. But when they got into their car, they just sat there!

Why, in the midst of all this crime, chaos and murder, did Philly's finest decide to harass a mother dropping her daughter off on her way to work? I know they have a hard job, but this was unreasonable.

I respect officers because of the work I do. I'll continue to show respect and teach it to my daughter because I know not all officers are like this.

Nikki Carter, Philadelphia

Local Programming: Eagles

About that game last night:

The most discouraging play, not surprisingly, resulted in the half's only touchdown.

On a first-down play at the Eagles' 18, Steelers running back Willie Parker took a handoff and ran through the middle. Right tackle Max Starks - a 6-foot-8, 337-pound behemoth - fired out and locked up Gaither. Starks not only took the middle linebacker out of the play, he pushed Gaither into Brian Dawkins, who reeled as Parker ran by.

Parker scored on a play that looked distressingly familiar to anyone who watched the 2006 Eagles defense.

Parker ran into the end zone upright and untouched, I might add. They couldn't stop the run, and every pass over the middle seemed to be completed. Hey, I don't want to make Gaither the goat, but if all that's required for his job is to get pushed out of the way and trip Brian Dawkins, I'll take the position for half the salary.

No, Gaither's not the whole problem on defense. I know Dawkins himself is sacrosanct in Philly, but you know what? He wasn't exactly flying around out there. And the rest of the Eagles secondary made big plays ... for Pittsburgh. Yes, they did knock down a couple of passes ... that were very poorly thrown. Sheldon Brown, listen: When the ball is thrown directly into your hands, you catch it. I'm dreading what will happen when opposing offenses have their routes and timing down.  And the Eagles blitz is so easy to read, they might as well announce it over the P.A.: "Your attention, please. On the next play, Considine will stunt inside left tackle." The defensive line's pass rush looked good, though. It's just that they also got sucked in so the screen worked three times for 30 yards a pop.

And offense. Hey, I am glad Donovan is upright. I like the guy, he cleans up well. But he looked stiff, and he looked tentative at times. He got sacked twice and I didn't notice even a flicker of an attempt to run. Why? And maybe I'm just being hypercritical, but a couple of his passes wobbled in a very un-McNabb like way. It wasn't as bad as the dying quail bomb last week, but ... if your knee if bothering you, then maybe you can't plant and push off the way you need to when you throw. That could be a concern. And everybody in the bar held their breath every time he got hit, something which will make exciting lunch room conversation for as long as his season lasts. "He's done by game four." "No way! He'll last six or seven, easy."

On the other hand, Buckhalter ran well and we all know what Westbrook can do when he gets more than one touch. Rookie Tony Hunt looks very promising, both running and catching. And rookie Brent Celek continues to show he knows how to get open, although I haven't been paying close enough attention to his blocking to make an overall judgment. And while it will take years for him to grow into the job, Kevin Kolb looks like a smart bet.

First round of cuts probably come today.

Gonzales Roundup

Fred Clark:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he resigns, can we believe him?

Related paradox: the likely forthcoming, "I Don't Recall": A Memoir.

One more: Can (soon-to-be-former) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales make a rock so big that even he can't pretend it isn't there?

The only person who is a bigger liar is his boss. I know, I listened to his remarks about the resignation: "Alberto Gonzales is a principled man."

Hilzoy:

Alberto Gonzales helped to destroy the good name of our country. He wrote the legal opinions that allowed the administration to disregard laws it did not wish to follow, and in so doing did real damage to the structure of our government and to the separation of powers. He took a department that was, by all accounts, superb, and trashed it. And by being so transparently interested only in advancing the interests of George Bush at the expense of the laws he swore to uphold, the Constitution, and the national interest, he deepened cynicism about government at a time when we badly needed leaders worthy of our trust and our confidence.

Goodbye and good riddance.

Shrill. Like it.

Atrios:

I'm sure we can still kick him around after he's gone.

Jack Balkin:

Mr. Gonzales ... was a disgrace to the office. There are many roles he could have competently filled-- and did fill-- in his career. The Nation's chief law enforcement officer was not one of them. He abused his office for political gain, repeatedly misled Congress under oath --and probably out and out lied on more than one occasion-- and turned a once proud institution of government into an object of deep suspicion.

No one person can cure what ails the Justice Department these days. It will take determined leadership and reform by a large number of individuals. I have no confidence that the current Administration will put the right people in place. We may have to wait for a new Administration, and even then to fix what Alberto Gonzales did to the United States Department of Justice may take many years.

Someone in Balkin's comments notices that the effective date of the resignation is September 17th - appropriately enough, Constitution Day.

Lizardbreath at Unfogged:

Not that whoever replaces him is likely to be any better.

"I have selected her as my nominee for Attorney General because Ann Coulter has shown that she will uphold the high standards of integrity and professionalism that Alberto Gonzales set for the office."

upyernoz:

delayed resignations send a very different message than a quick one. rather than saying "this guy's at fault and takes responsibility for it", a resignation after the scandal has died down sends no message of accountability. indeed, it seems to send exactly the opposite message. by leaving a good seven months after his first name became "embattled", gonzales seems to be saying "fuck you" to all the people who called for him to go months ago. "yes, i'm ready to go," he seems to say, "i just didn't want to give you the satisfaction."

arguably the rumsfeld resignation, made years after abu ghraib, and the rove resignation, made years after he was tarred by the plame investigation and months after his failure in the 2006 election, were also fuck you resignations. last year i noted that resignation didn't seem to be in the administration's scandal-management playbook because they didn't want to admit responsibility for things. in a sense the long delayed resignation is another attempt to deny the existence of the scandal.

I think "Fuck you" will be the way history summarizes this Administration.

Needlenose wonders why, why, why:

The race is on to find the most cynical (and hence, most probably accurate) interpretation for the sudden resignation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.  Laura Rozen serves up Jack Balkin's collected conventional-wisdom challenges that everyone is trying to scheme around, focused on the problems of getting a new AG confirmed by a Democratic Senate.

My take is simple. From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products (in this case, a new A.G.) in August. So the stonewall.  But the GOP, already facing disaster in 2008, needed Gonzales gone to deprive the Democrats of a  campaign issue. So I bet Congressional Republicans told Bush to fire him or they would agree with the Democrats to impeach.

Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings:

Somehow tar and feathers just don’t feel sufficient.  I want to call for something more…substantial…um, I mean “enhanced.”  (Gotta stay on top of today’s DOJ terminology.)  But calling for an “enhanced” approach would make me just as much of a bloody thug as him, so I can’t go there.  I have no desire to burn in hell alongside Gonzales.  But I do want to inflict some sort of punishment.  So we have to stick to stuff that’s creative but not “enhanced.”

All I’ve got right now is that we’ll tie him to a chair and force him to watch Paris Hilton opining on theoretical physics.  Or maybe we’ll make him eat all his meals at McDonald’s.  That would piss me off half-way through the first meal.

Wait, I’ve got it:  We’ll make him change the diapers of each and every LGF poster.  And to make sure that those diapers are perpetually full, we’ll put them on a flight with a Sikh.  Yes, I realize that Sikhs are neither Muslim nor Arab, but LGF posters don’t know that.

I am sure there is a lot more worthwhile stuff out there, but enough for now.

Update:

Mike Dorf:

Alberto Gonzales Resigns to Spend More Time With Karl Rove's Family
That's what I would write if I wrote for The Onion.  But I don't.

The Center for American Progress:

Who could have imagined that things could get worse [than under Ashcroft]?

Yet Ashcroft’s successor often seemed more a White House functionary than the attorney general of the United States. Alberto Gonzales was ever-willing to subordinate the needs of justice to the demands of his political masters—crossing lines that even his predecessor had refused to cross. His cavalier disregard for the rule of law and his tenuous grasp of the responsibilities of his office were an embarrassment to the Department of Justice and an insult to the American people.

Now Gonzales is gone, but the department he headed lies in ruins—its morale shattered and its credibility at an all-time low. If the damage is to be repaired, there must be not only a change in leadership but a change of heart. If Americans are to regain their confidence in the administration of justice, we must have an attorney general of unimpeachable integrity who understands his (or her) duty to uphold the Constitution and is prepared to carry it out.

Suck on This/Shoved Down My Throat

Sometimes it gets very, very vulgar.  First, here's Atrios recalling the sage counsel of Tom Friedman back in 2003:

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?"

You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow?

Well, Suck. On. This.

Okay.

That Charlie was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

Then this past week we have Ted Nugent:

He was walking up and down the stage holding two machine guns, and he said:

"I was in Chicago last week, I said, "Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk!" Obama, he’s a piece of sh*t and I told him to suck on my machine gun! Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, "Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch. And since I'm in California, how about Barbara Boxer? She might want to suck on my machine gun! Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these, you worthless whore!""

And just last week I was remarking to someone how male homophobia is often accompanied by a statement like, "I don't care if you are gay, just don't shove it down my throat!" (Whenever I hear it, I always imagine it's followed by either a little whimper of fear or the batting of eyelashes and a flirtatious, "You brute.")

Sexual fear and anger is the wellspring of conservative politics. The right-wing male mindset is all about either wanting to rape someone's mouth or fearing having their mouths raped. It's very simple. The GOP is truly The Party of Dicks.

Remember to Duck When the Moistened Bint Lobs a Scimitar at You

Overheard in NYC:

Queer #1: I kind of like Barack Obama. He's cute.
Queer #2: If I didn't have a husband, I would be so far up Barack Obama's ass that if anyone pulled me out they would become King of England.

Philadelphia Sports Hero Brett Myers

Phillyburbs:

Brett Myers blew the game, then blew his stack Saturday night on Inquirer reporter Sam Carchidi (Audio: KYW 1060. WARNING - strong language, adult situations). Carchidi had the (mis)fortune to be covering the game (Todd Zolecki is the regular beat reporter) and the gall to ask Myers about the two homers he surrendered to San Diego in the top of the ninth.

Watching the game on TV, the first homer (Kevin Kouzmanoff’s), seemed like a legitimate shot; the other, to light-hitting Termel Sledge, a typical Citizens Bank Park cheapie. Carchidi held the same view. Myers contended they were both cheapies, then called Carchidi a “retard” who didn’t know “s**t about f***in’ baseball” for daring to disagree.

Rather than sulk back to his laptop to file the story before deadline, Carchidi shot right back at Myers by asking him to spell retard. Things escalated from there, and before long, reporter and closer were jawing at each other like two guys from Croydon fighting over some skank after last call at McFadden’s.

Thankfully, Shane Victorino, Pat Burrell and Six Fingers Alfonseca intervened, or Brett Myers might’ve been back in anger management class.

Two dudes from Bristol, not Croydon, but alright. What a very Philly moment.

(Via Phawker.)

 

Swimming to Cairo

Al-Reuters:

A young Egyptian man swam along the Mediterranean coast from the Gaza Strip to Egypt overnight after almost two years of living without papers in the Palestinian enclave, police sources said on Sunday.

Jesus. How long a swim is that?

[Mohamed Salman Omeira] Awda told [police] that he entered Gaza in September 2005, when Israeli troops left the area. For a few days border controls between Gaza and Egypt broke down and people crossed in both directions without going through immigration procedures.

But once in Gaza he could not return because he did not have any identity documents, the sources added.

Update: Ah, Google maps shows me the real reason he had to swim. Apparently, past Egypt there are no roads!

Tomorrow's Onion Headline Today

Bush Modified Oath of Office With Signing Statement
Document Claims Oath's Provisions Not Binding in Wartime

QOTD

Roy Edroso:

My take is, getting laid is more fun than talking about how other people are to blame that you're not getting laid.

Concern Trollery of the Low IQ Kind

Clayton Jones at Daily Pundit thinks that the Florida legislature should respond to the Democratic Party's stripping the Florida Dems of their representatives to the Convention for moving up their primary without permission by forbidding Florida's electoral votes to be cast for Democrats. 

I think even the Roberts court would see problems with that. Someone should tell these fuckwits that Bush v. Gore was confined to its facts.

Losing Two Sons

Oh. My. God.

Early in the Iraq war, Jeff and Peggy Hubbard faced the news that every parent with a child at war dreads, the death of their son Jared, a Marine killed alongside his best friend.

Two years, nine months and 18 days later, they faced another grim-faced officer. This time, it was their youngest, Army Cpl. Nathan Hubbard, 21, dead in a helicopter crash in Iraq.

A third brother, Jason, was on another helicopter in the same unit and was at the crash site. He accompanied his brother's body on a flight out of Iraq and was on his way home for the funeral.

The family has been told that, if he requests it, Jason Hubbard will be discharged or given a noncombat assignment under an Army policy governing sole surviving siblings and children of soldiers killed in combat....

I cannot comprehend what that family is going through.  How many families like them now, here and in Iraq?

Local Programming: Fuck, It's Hot

Nothing ever gets done in Philly in August. Everyone has left town or is unable to move. You want to know why?  Here's why:

That's at 7 p.m.

Today's Moment of Zen

Shamelessly stealing this idea from The Daily Show.  I now give you, Our Man in Iraq:

Even Maliki's detractors agree. The failure, said Ali Hatem al Suleiman, the prince of the Dulaim, Iraq's largest Sunni tribe, lies in a system designed to remain in political paralysis as each sect and ethnic group defend their own interests.

"Maliki is like a pen with two closed fists around it. Every finger is a party, how can the pen write?" he asked.

Still, many Iraqis predict that Maliki's premiership is nearing its end. One official said his advisors are looking for other government positions, predicting their impending unemployment.

Analysts and some Iraqi officials say that Maliki is a convenient scapegoat for a failed American political project in Iraq.

"Somebody has to take the fall for a failed surge," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst now with the Brookings Institution, a center-left policy think tank in Washington. "Mr. Maliki is a convenient scapegoat to blame...Of course, it begs the question what are we going to do to replace Maliki. There are no obvious replacements."

Hey, I know! If Maliki is the pen clenched in two fists, then the fists should shatter the pen into ten pieces and divide them up ... although then you end up with a lot of blood ink on your hands.

Damn. This shit's complex. It's a shame no one thought about it before we deposed Saddam.

QOTD

Yglesias, on O'Hanlon:

[T]hough he says this "would be a sad time to conclude we have been defeated," he also concedes that "our strategy for Iraq probably cannot work absent major national political cooperation across sectarian lines." But if our strategy probably can't succeed, then this seems like an ideal time to conclude that we should abandon our strategy. There's no such thing as a non-sad time to admit you've failed, after all.

State Secrets

Here's what happens when you refuse to admit that your foreign policy is based on an absurd lie:

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”

See? Once you begin to use torture for "special cases", to prevent "ticking time bombs", then it spreads. Inevitably.

And when you have leadership that is conscientious and honest, and really believes in the rule of law, this does not happen:

Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.

“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

“Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said.

They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.

“The only way we can find out what is going on is for someone to come forward and let us know,” said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates corruption. “But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on them. The message is, ’Don’t blow the whistle or we’ll make your life hell.’

“It’s heartbreaking,” Daley said. “There is an even greater need for whistleblowers now. But they are made into public martyrs. It’s a disgrace. Their lives get ruined.”

So you cowboy/cowgirl up, gather the evidence, and take your lumps, then what?

Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company — with which he was briefly associated — bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.

He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.

It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.

But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.

Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.

“It’s a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system,” said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. “I tried to help the government, and the government didn’t seem to care.”

Emphasis supplied. What the fuck? Oh, a Reagan judge who also dismissed, on the grounds that state secrets would be exposed, a case by an innocent German citizen for torture at the hands of private contractors after extraordinary rendition.

In April 2004, CIA Director George Tenet learned that [Khalid] El-Masri was being wrongfully detained. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice learned of his detention shortly thereafter in early May and ordered his release. [Having been kidnapped on December 31, 2003 and tortured in an Afghanistan prison for 5 months,] El-Masri was released on May 28 following a second order from Rice. American authorities met with him and agreed to release him if he agreed never to tell the story of his ordeal to anyone. They flew him out of Afghanistan and released him at night on a desolate road in Albania, without apology, or funds to return home. At the time he believed his release was a ruse, and he would be executed. He was eventually intercepted by Albanian guards, who believed him to be a terrorist due to his haggard and unkempt appearance. He was subsequently reunited with his wife who had returned to her family in Lebanon, with their children, because she thought her husband had abandoned them.

Incompetence and violation of basic human rights. That's the biggest state secret of them all.

(Via Avedon Carol.)

I Am Pro-Winning

James Joyner harshes on Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers:

[T]he Republicans need to hold all their current seats plus gain 16 of the Democratic seats to retake the majority next year. That’s an uphill fight, given the party’s current popularity, but not inconceivable.

It would sure help, though, if the 38 most moderate Members were replaced by True Blue, Netroots Approved Progressives. What better way to stem to tide than have Al Franken-style liberals running in places like Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, Utah, North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana?

So, sure, Republicans love this idea.   But getting distracted by that sort of thing is short-sighted thinking. 

Look, what’s the point of winning a majority if your party’s most ideological members aren’t one hundred percent happy, one hundred percent of the time? It’s far better to lose the majority by insisting on ideological purity and then building from there with Pure Progressives. It’s worked nicely for the Libertarians, why not the Democrats?

Which is an unfair attack, because no one is talking about "Al Franken-style liberals", they're talking specifically about:

As Chris Bowers noted, the two biggest defeats for House Democrats so far in 2007 have been the capitulation vote on Iraq, and the vote to allow Alberto Gonzales warrant-less wiretapping powers. We're calling the Democrats who capitulated on both bills 'Bush Dogs', as these are the most likely to capitulate on important fights in the future.

So this effort is directed at 38 people who voted with Bush on two issues. Joyner just assumes that getting people to change their votes on one or both issues, or replacing them with people who vote with leadership on one or both of those issues, instantly puts them outside the mainstream for their districts. 

As one of my better professors who has been a lobbyist said, "I've never had lunch with Congress. I've had lunch with members of Congress." There is no national election for the House. There are 435 local elections for the House. If you want a majority in the House, you do the calculations about what positions people should take based on how well it plays in the district. As Joyner implies, you don't ask people to commit electoral suicides. On the other hand, you don't assume without evidence, as he does, that changing your vote on any given issue will lose you the district.

Now, Bowers and Stoller don't make the opposite assumption without evidence. Here's what they say will be the salutory effect of profiling "Bush Dogs":

The first step in stopping this behavior is to identify the people engaging in it and offer up criticism.  There are a few reasons for this.  One, many of these members feel no pressure to vote correctly or uphold progressive values.  Criticism is the signal they are relying on to let them know when they err.  Two, some of these members may need to face a primary challenge, and it's useful for potential primary challengers to know that there is criticism of these members.  Three, other members considering joining the Bush Dog caucus may be dissuaded if they know there will be criticism.  Four, candidates running for office will finally have a signal on how they should talk about being good Democrats that are willing to take tough votes.

I see nothing in that paragraph that says, "My way or the highway." In fact, it leaves considerable room for conservative Democrats to make the case that they can't vote with leadership and still win their districts. But at least they will have to make the case. This is called politics, not a purge. Joyner's just wrong.

The 1,500,000

I know it's still the silly season, and I should let it go since this incident will be forgotten by October, but .... I'm not letting it go, because it's going to come up again:

Let's talk about the raw political calculation behind Hillary's statement in New Hampshire that if there were another 9/11-type event, the Republicans would successfully use it to attack Democrats and improve their chances of winning the White House unless those attacks were met, and that Hillary would be the best candidate to counter those attacks.

In the 2004 general election, 121,068,721 votes for President were recorded, with a margin of victory of 3,012,499, or 2.5%. In the 2000 election, 101,464,036 votes cast, with the winning* margin of 543,816, or .5%. So just as a rough average, let's say 1,500,000 people decide the outcome.  Now, even knowing what you know now about 9/11 and Katrina (and Iraq), do you really think if there were another 9/11-type attack, that the Republican noise machine could not sway 1,500,000 people? I think it's a flaw among smart people to assume sometimes that other people think the way they do. But a lot of people are pretty dumb. Bush is doing badly in the polls now, but remember: The supporters he's lost since 2004 voted for him in 2004, which was itself pretty fucking stupid. So, if you believe that those people are not going to be swayed by Republican slander on Democrats after a terrorist attack, you're counting on the intelligence of the 1,500,000. Is that wise?

Note, please, that this is not bashing all of "the American people's reasoning powers", as Josh Marshall puts it.  This is just an attempt to be clearheaded about how some people, who may make up the margin of victory, think. 

So, it's reasonable to think that people would believe the first part of Hillary's argument, that the Republicans would succeed in attacking the Democrats after another terrorist strike. And as I said yesterday, Hillary has a plausible case to make that her resume shows she is the most able candidate in countering GOP attacks. And even if it such attacks wouldn't work on you, I think it's smart to think they would work on others in the general election. Taking a step back even further, I don't even think another 9/11-style attack is likely, but I do know that Democrats still worry about what would happen if there were one. Haven't you? What you're worrying about is how other people would react. Even if you don't think a major terrorist attack is probable, Hillary's statement  shows she's thought about it, implying she has thought of all the possible ways she could be attacked.  It's good primary politics to position yourself as someone who is walking into the fight with your eyes open. Nu? 

What this ultimately gets back to is the slippery, infuriating arguments about electability. Sometimes those arguments are bullshit, true. But it's not like this one is unfounded. We just saw in 2004 what happens when a Democratic candidate fails to prepare to respond to bullshit arguments. Tell me, is it bashing "the American people's reasoning powers" to acknowledge that the swiftboat attacks worked? Consider the scenario if John Kerry had said in 2003, "If they come after me by slandering my war record, it may help them, but if they do I know how to blow the sonsofbitches out of the water." (No pun intended.) Would you have said then that Kerry was "thinking like a loser"? Hillary's in the same position. I'd rather have someone thinking clearly and being prepared for likely scenarios rather than someone who overestimated the intelligence of a fraction of the American people.

Get a Fucking Grip, People

This appears in the New York Post:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday raised the prospect of a terror attack before next year's election, warning that it could boost the GOP's efforts to hold on to the White House.

Discussing the possibility of a new nightmare assault while campaigning in New Hampshire, Clinton also insisted she is the Democratic candidate best equipped to deal with it. ...

The former first lady made the surprising comments as she explained to supporters that she has beaten back the GOP's negative attacks for years, and is ready to do so again.

And Matt Yglesias wets his pants, calling it "a disaster":

I think the Democrat best positioned to deal with GOP political mobilization in a post-attack environment is going to be the one who isn't reflexively inclined to see failed Republican policies resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans as a political advantage for the Republicans.

And then he goes for the gratuitous swipe:

The other is that I think there's a pretty clear sense in which the further one is from Bush's Iraq policy, the easier it is politically to say that the failures of Bush's national security policy should be blamed on Bush's failed policies.

And Hillary's too hawkish, geddit??  Look, this is nonsense. Your position on Iraq has little or nothing to do with guarding against terrorism at home. Sure, it's been argued that Iraq is a distraction from doing commonsense things like protecting the ports, strengthening infrastructure, and safeguarding the food supply, but the fact is that as a policy matter you could have gone to war in Iraq and devoted considerable energy to doing those things, too.  You just couldn't have used the political arguments ("you're with us or you're against us") that Bush rolled out when you did it. And you couldn't have told people there would be no sacrifice, to go shopping and not worry. All of which are things the Dems, including Hillary, reject. So Hillary could be all for keeping every single last American soldier in Iraq forever - which she isn't - and it wouldn't make a fucking bit of difference to how well she could respond on the day after another major terrorist attack.

Duncan agrees with Yglesias and says:

[W]hile it never made any sense there perhaps was a time when it would have been true.  Not anymore.

Well, we'd have to see, wouldn't we? It's not a straight shot to that conclusion.  I lost any faith I had in Bush's competence and good faith before he was inaugurated the first time, but am I the average voter? No. Would people really turn on the GOP if there were another major terrorist strike? Depends on the attack. Depends on how the Dems handled it.  I'm far from being in love with Hillary Clinton, but she is absolutely right that the GOP would try to attack the Dems if there were another 9/11. And she has been through all this before. Which was the point she was trying to make, by the way. "I've been there, I know how to punch back."  Josh Marshall says:

[A]ssuming that any failure of the president's anti-terrorism policies will automatically be a political boon for the Republican party means thinking like a loser. It also signals a lack of confidence either in your own policies or the American people's reasoning powers. 

Which just tells me that he didn't click the link and read the fucking article, in the New York Post, for christ's sake. She could have said, "I like cupcakes" and the Post would have spinned it as negative. But here we have Democratic activists picking up on Republican spin and adopting it. Oy.

Whether you like her or not, the fact that she spent 8 years under siege in the White House and is perceived as being a bitch is her selling point. People believe she is tough. Other people talk about how high her negatives are. As she has pointed out, do you think the GOP is not going to try to drive up Obama's negatives if he gets the nomination? Edwards? John Kerry didn't have high negatives going into the '04 campaign, and look what happened. Looking at Obama and Edwards, I don't get the feeling that they're going to tougher than Hillary.

QOTD

Never thought I'd see the day, but here's Andrew fucking Sullivan:

To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to "pull the rug out from under them," is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It's beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to coopt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither.

No Silly Sully now, is he? Er, at least on this.

I don't like to link to it because I don't like to feed The Atlantic anymore after seeing their internal blog's obsession with hits. They fucking wet themselves with joy when they get a Drudge link. But what am I going to add, like 20 hits?

(Via Laura Rozen.)

More on that Pro-War Astroturf Group

I had the fleeting thought yesterday to mention the coincidence that that one of the board members of Freedom's Watch, Mel Sembler, was Bush's ambassador to Italy. Freedom's Watch initial and sole purpose seems to be to gin up a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq as a justification for continuing the occupation. As you may remember, it was the Italian secret service that was instrumental in passing along the forged Niger uranium document that formed the pretext for the war in the first place.

Just a coincidence, I thought, then I ran across this post:

[I]f that name, Mel Sembler, sounds familiar, it’s cause he’s the guy who used to run Straight, Inc., the place teens and addicts were sent for behavior modification, by torture.

Okay, another coincidence. A war supporter used private contractors to torture prisoners in Florida, and the U.S. government uses private contractors to torture war prisoners (or whomever the government feels like snatching off the street).

But it turns out Sembler was more closely involved in the document forgery incident than just being in the country at the time. The linked article by Josh Marshall and Laura Rozen from September 2004 says:

The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included [Larry] Franklin, [Harold] Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting. (According to UPI, Ledeen was then working for Feith as a consultant.) Also in attendance was [Manucher] Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians. One of the Iranians, according to two sources familiar with the meeting, was a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who claimed to have information about dissident ranks within the Iranian security services. The Washington Monthly has also learned from U.S. government sources that Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington.

Alarm bells about the December 2001 meeting began going off in U.S. government channels only days after it occurred. On Dec. 12, 2001, at the U.S. embassy in Rome, America's newly-installed ambassador, Mel Sembler, sat down for a private dinner with Ledeen, an old friend of his from Republican Party politics, and Martino, the Italian defense minister. The conversation quickly turned to the meeting. The problem was that this was the first that Amb. Sembler had heard about it.

According to U.S. government sources, Sembler immediately set about trying to determine what he could about the meeting and how it had happened. Since U.S. government contact with foreign government intelligence agencies is supposed to be overseen by the CIA, Sembler first spoke to the CIA station chief in Rome to find out what if anything he knew about the meeting with the Iranians. But that only raised more questions because the station chief had been left in the dark as well. Soon both Sembler and the Rome station chief were sending anxious queries back to the State Department and CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., respectively, raising alarms on both sides of the Potomac.

(Links and emphasis supplied.) So Sembler and the Rome station chief are characterized as having "stumbled upon" the information about the December 2001 meeting. Who was at the meeting? Franklin, who plead guilty to passing classified material about Iran to AIPAC. Ledeen, no citations needed. Ghorbanifar, the reputed Mossad double agent. Pollari, who carried the yellowcake document to the meeting and later was involved in the kidnapping of an imam off the street in Milan in an "extraordinary rendition" by the CIA. And Martino, "well-known in neoconservative circles" and the past president of Friedrich Hayek's Mont Perelin Society - a libertarian just like the major donor to Freedom's Watch, John Templeton.

All of these ideological soulmates got together for the purpose of bypassing the CIA, which had dismissed the yellowcake  allegations. But supposedly Sembler didn't know about the meeting. I never questioned that story until now. Sembler's an old friend of Ledeen's, and apparently - from his involvement in Freedom's Watch - a neo-con true believer, but he was "alarmed" by news of the meeting. Why? Ambassadors don't always get briefed on intelligence operations.

Maybe the story that Sembler was surprised by the meeting is true, or maybe it was a cover to conceal his role in arranging it.

"Democratic Institutions Are Not Necessarily the Way Ahead"

Here's more from the Department of No Shit, Sherlock (which may have to become its own category):

Nightmarish political realities in Baghdad are prompting American officials to curb their vision for democracy in Iraq. Instead, the officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security.

A workable democratic and sovereign government in Iraq was one of the Bush administration's stated goals of the war.

But for the first time, exasperated front-line U.S. generals talk openly of non-democratic governmental alternatives, and while the two top U.S. officials in Iraq still talk about preserving the country's nascent democratic institutions, they say their ambitions aren't as "lofty" as they once had been.

"Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future," said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war's major battlegrounds.

Translation: Give me some brutal Iraqi fucker who I can turn this shit sandwich over to, and go home. Please.

Crocker and Petraeus conceded they are "now engaged in pursuing less lofty and ambitious goals than was the case at the outset."

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lightning, also reflected a less lofty American goal for Iraq's future.

"I would describe it as leaving an effective government behind that can provide services to its people, and security. It needs to be an effective and functioning government that is really a partner with the United States and the rest of the world in this fight against the terrorists," said Mixon, who will not be perturbed if such goals are reached without democracy.

"Well, see that all over the Middle East," he said, stating that democracy is merely an option, that Iraqis are free to choose or reject.

Huh. I remember when arguing that bringing democracy to a place like Iraq would be virtually impossible was met with howls of "racism!". 

The U.S. government has long cautioned that a fully functioning democracy would be slow to emerge in Iraq. But with key U.S. senators calling for al-Maliki's removal, some senior U.S. military commanders even suggest privately the entire Iraqi government must be removed by "constitutional or non-constitutional" means and replaced with a stable, secure, but not necessarily democratic entity.

A "not necessarily democratic entity"?  Hmm, sounds like someone's been talking to a few Baathist generals.

You know, I am sure there were elements of the Bush Administration who actually bought the happy horseshit about democracy promotion in the run-up to the invasion. But I am convinced Cheney and friends never intended any result other than to replace an unruly Saddam with a new, tractable Saddam. The fact that that was easier said than done, and that the plan may yet fail, probably never crossed their crooked little minds.

(Via Tim F. at Balloon Juice.)

Update: Also, via Bradrocket, here's Juan Cole quoting from an email he received:

"There is serious talk of a military commission (majlis `askari) to take over the government. The parties would be banned from holding positions, and all the ministers would be technocrats, so to speak. . . [The writer indicates that attempts have been made to recruit cabinet members from the ranks of expatriate technocrats.]

The six-member board or commission would be composed on non-political former military personnel who are presently not part of the government OR the military establishment, such as it is in Iraq at the moment. It is said that the Americans are supporting this behind the scenes.

The plan includes a two-year period during which political parties would not be permitted to be part of the government, but instead would prepare and strengthen the parties for an election which would not have lists, but real people running for real seats. The two year period would be designed to take control of security and restore infrastructure. . . .

[I]t is another [desperate plan], but one which many many Iraqis will support, since they are sick of their country being pulled apart by the "imports" - Maliki, Allawi, Jaafari et al. The military group is composed of internals, people who have the goal of securing the country even at the risk of no democracy, so they say. "

So, a junta. Goooooood morning, banana republic!

Philly Connection to New Astroturf Pro-War Group

Via Laura Rozen, Mike Allen at Politico:

A new group, Freedom’s Watch, is launching Wednesday with a $15 million, five-week campaign of TV, radio and Web ads featuring military veterans that is aimed at retaining support in Congress for President Bush’s “surge” policy on Iraq.

I saw one of the ads on the local Fox station tonight - I gotta say, try harder, guys. They put on some poor woman who lost her husband in the WTC and a son in Iraq. She's obviously out of her mind with grief; I even listened to the whole spiel. It isn't enough to lie and link al-Qaeda to Iraq. What is this, 2004? You gotta drop the pretense and start calling people who oppose the war traitors. That'll light your phones up.

Freedom's Watch aims to do for the GOP what the MoveOn political action organizations have done for Democrats. [President and CEO Bradley A.] Blakeman, who was a member the White House senior staff in Bush’s first term, said Freedom’s Watch is designed as “a never-ending campaign – a stable, credible voice of reason on generational issues that won’t rise and fall with election cycles.”

Right. Sure. Credible voice of reason. When's that gonna start? And, the never-ending campaign? My prediction is that this outfit will be defunct as of the end of the Bush presidency.  So, who is Freedom's Watch when it's at home?

The board consists of Blakeman; [Ari] Fleischer; Mel Sembler, a Florida Republican who was Bush’s ambassador to Italy; William P. Weidner, president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.; and Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The donors include Sembler; Anthony Gioia, a Buffalo businessman who was Bush’s ambassador to Malta; Kevin Moley, who was Bush’s ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva; Howard Leach, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman who was Bush’s ambassador to France; Dr. John Templeton of Pennsylvania, chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation; Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast Spectacor, the huge Philadelphia sports and entertainment firm; Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and ranked by Forbes magazine as the third-wealthiest American; and Richard Fox, who is chairman of the Jewish Policy Center and was Pennsylvania State Chairman of the Reagan/Bush campaign in 1980.

(Link and emphasis supplied.)

Richard Fox is local. Comcast, as the article says, is right here in Center City Philly. So Philly is subsidizing pro-war propaganda. Wonderful. The Templeton Foundation is located in a Philadelphia suburb, and has a right-wing track record:

A 1997 article in Slate Magazine noted that the Templeton Foundation had given significant financial support to groups, causes and individuals considered conservative, including gifts to Gertrude Himmelfarb, Milton Friedman, Walter E. Williams, Julian Lincoln Simon and Mary Lefkowitz, and referred to John Templeton, Sr., as a "conservative sugar daddy". The Foundation also has a history of supporting the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, as well as projects at major research centers and universities that explore themes related to free-market ideology, such as Hernando de Soto's Instituto Libertad Y Democracia and the X Prize Foundation.

If it were George Soros spending $15 million on anti-war ads, the right would be savaging him. And it's strange, isn't it, how these libertarians seem to come out in force for such big-government operations like massive military occupations of countries with major oil reserves?

QOTD

Tim F. at Balloon Juice:

[T]he few stability metrics not trending in reverse call for ten years of occupation or more, yet readiness issues will push us out on a time scale closer to a year or less. Surprisingly, it turns out that people who create their own reality can’t create their own troops. Assuming that things don’t get measurably worse the situation when we leave will look almost exactly like the security situation today.

Yes, but the important thing is it won't be George W. Bush's concern any more.

If I Need Another Reason Not to Subscribe to The Atlantic

Megan McArdle blogs there now. And previously was blogging for The Economist (WTF?).

Rightwingers Claim Their Anti-Muslim Hate Video Requested By California Highway Patrol

This video (warning - operatic score and bad graphics) would just be funny and sad in its racist Muslim-baiting, but then I am told:

One strong measurement of the effect we’re having (and the need for what we do) came in the form of request from the head the FBI-California Highway Patrol Joint Counter-terrorism Task Force who called this week to ask if their group could use our flash video “What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad” as a training film.    

We’ve put this video in over one million e-mail boxes, with a heavy emphasis on those of college students. It has been reproduced on innumerable websites across the web and is now a YouTube video. To view the video and remind yourself of what the FBI-CHP will be teaching to its agents when it tries to get them to know the enemy, go here.

So now I am wondering what the head of the FBI-California Highway Patrol Joint Terrorism Task Force really wants with it. Is he seeking examples of domestic hate material designed to stir up terrorist attacks against Muslims? Then he's on the right track. Is he in agreement with the cartoonish hyperbole the video espouses? Then we'd have a problem.

So, I just sent the following email:

I am seeking comment for publication from CHP regarding a story which appeared at this website: http://dailypundit.com/?p=27253

The story claims that the head of CHP's Joint Terrorism Task Force has requested the use of a video called "What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad" for the purpose of training CHP officers in the JTTF. (The video is linked at the story.)

Questions:
Is it true that CHP personnel have requested the use of the video "What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad"? If so, for what purpose?

Does CHP endorse the message of the video, namely, that all Muslims are compelled by their religion to kill and rob all non-Muslims?

-Mithras Invicti

Doubt I'll get a reply, but we'll see.

Iraq Needs a Secular Dictator

From the department of no shit, Sherlock:

Imposing a strongman to end the chaos resulting from Iraq's civil war is an option rarely raised in America's anguished debate over Iraq.

But Michael Oppenheimer, director of New York University's Centre for Global Affairs, claims a dictatorship is now the most likely route to salvage Iraq.

"If you can find a more authoritarian, non-constitutional figure in Iraq, you should probably go for it," he said.

"Everyone else is clinging to threads that are things are improving when they are not." ...

"An authoritarian government is scenario No. 1 in Iraq," he said. "It's the only one that allows the US and the UK retrieve a modicum of our interests. We should start thinking about how to make it happen."

Mr Oppenheimer does not subscribe to calls for an immediate American troop withdrawal. Indeed he suggests that it will take up to three years of American military involvement to engineer a viable dictatorship in Iraq.

While New York University is ordinarily viewed as a bastion of America's liberal elite, Mr Oppenheimer says he has no misgivings about installing a more "benign Saddam Hussein".

He suggests that none of Iraq's current swathe of leaders fits the bill.

A strongman will most likely be found in the middle to higher ranks of the Iraqi Army.

Who the fuck could have foreseen that?

Update: Oh, and by the way, this is both smart military policy and good politics:

Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, would keep troops in the region to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north. And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois would leave a military presence of as-yet unspecified size in Iraq to provide security for American personnel, fight terrorism and train Iraqis.

These positions and those of some rivals suggest that the Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict — however much it appeals to primary voters — oversimplifies the problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief.

I know a lot of people who I agree with 99% of the time, people I respect a great deal, see this kind of stuff and it makes their blood boil. I understand, I really do. But as I have said before, Bush has well and truly fucked us. He drove us into a ditch in Iraq and it's not a simple matter to extricate ourselves; at least, not without guaranteeing much further damage. And there are no good options. We could stay for years more and try to rig some sort of stable situation and then see it fail.

I think the problem is that Bush and his people have lied so much about the reasons we need to stay that when someone tells the truth about why we need to stay, the good reasons get lumped together with the lies in peoples' minds.

I can't believe I am saying this, but: The next President will need to maintain a significant military presence in Iraq for at least another 2-3 years.  The numbers of U.S. troops will probably fall next year - if I understand what people who know are saying about the numbers and lengths of troop rotations - but there will be nothing like a full withdrawal under the next President.

I guess it doesn't matter whether we all agree or not. Every major Democratic candidate agrees we need to stay. So Nader was right? No. If you elect a Democrat, we keep troops there for one term. You elect a Republican, it's 10 years.

Force Her to Carry Lumber While Being Whipped Instead

Their crime? Biblical error:

A Texas pastor and a colleague have been charged with tying a 15-year-old girl to a van and dragging her along the ground after she refused to continue an exercise run at a Christian "boot camp," [San Antonio] police said on Sunday.

And if you can't verbally abuse her in Latin, don't do it at all. 

I wonder if Michelle Malkin will be all over this threat to our children from religious fundamentalist wackos?

Chinese Toy Factory Boss "Hangs" "Himself"

Reuters:

The boss of a Chinese toy manufacturing company involved in a Mattel recall after its products were found to contain excessive lead levels has hanged himself, Chinese media reported on Monday.

It being China, they don't tell you the remarkable fact that he seems to have hanged himself in prison after shooting himself in the back of the head.

No wonder people want to emigrate to the U.S. If he were a U.S. factory manager who was caught using unsafe materials, he'd be a shoo-in for the Republican nomination for the local Congressional seat,  running on tort reform.

How to Make a Hyperlink

I notice a lot of people in blog comments still paste whole URLs rather than trying to create a text hyperlink. Is it laziness? Against their religion? Lack of knowledge?

In case it's the last, here's the format for a hyperlink:

[a href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com"]Your text here.[/a]

Except use angle brackets <> instead of the square brackets [] .  It's very simple.

TomTom One GPS $200 at Toysrus

Until August 18, Toyrus has a printable 20% off coupon (in-store only), which gets you the TomTom One GPS for $200.  I bought the same unit last year and I love it. It paid for itself in the first month, when on two different occasions I was on the highway and heard about accidents ahead. I hit the "Avoid part of route" button on the TomTom and it detoured me around the traffic jam on the highway on surface streets I was otherwise totally unfamiliar with, saving me hours of being stuck. The other really cool feature is the unit is slim enough to fit in your pocket, so it works just as well when you're hiking in the country or navigating a city on foot as it does in a car.

(Via SlickDeals.)

If You Need More Evidence Things Are Not In Our Control

Yahoo News:

In a hidden corner of Rome's busy Fiumicino Airport, police dug quietly through a traveler's checked baggage, looking for smuggled drugs. What they found instead was a catalog of weapons, a clue to something bigger.

Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.

As the secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in, making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered.

For one thing, The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command — a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases.

Why these officials resorted to "black" channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear.

Hmm. Why would Iraqi government officials be complicit in smuggling 100,000 AK-47s into the country? It's an enigma. Maybe they're just gun collectors.

There's more good news:

Meanwhile, the planned replacement of the army's AK-47s with U.S.-made M-16s may throw more assault rifles onto the black market. And the weapons free-for-all apparently is spilling over borders: Turkey and Iran complain U.S.-supplied guns are flowing from Iraq to anti-government militants on their soil.

We need Joe Lieberman to make another visit to tell us how much better things are getting.

My Life in the Law

I've been out of law school for over ten years, and to date the single best piece of advice I have given a client is the following:

Use 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol to remove built-up soap scum.

I can just coast on my awesome reputation now.

On Or About This Date

One year ago today: "Who's Harding?"

Two years ago, I was forced to apologize: "Unfortunately, medical science has not yet progressed to the point that liberals can donate a sense of humor to you directly. "

And a real, actual scientist said, "I've seen DNA. It's very liberal."

Three years ago, Yale and Harvard grad President Bush decried "legacy" admissions to colleges.

And if Al Gore had been occupying the White House on 9/11, the Republicans would have lynched impeached him. (And Democrats would have let them do it.)

Four years ago, I had a thought:

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.

And in the news:

"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."

Blogiversary

This blog is now four years old. And getting older every second.

Killadelphia

The field negro:

So there I am sitting in "gun court", watching and listening to some cases before mine is called; as young black male after young black male are being brought up from the Criminal Justice Center cell room into court. The circumstances are a little different, but the charges are all pretty much the same. (Hey, it's gun court.) Every one of these young men were found with guns on their person in a very dangerous part of town. Some of them were slinging, and some were just popped in a car stop. But on it goes; charge after charge, plea deals after plea deals, and the beat never stops. Another day on the other side of that Killadelphia murder count. Some will get probation and house arrest, some will get sent to do county or state time, and some will end up back on the streets or in someones funeral home within weeks. Nowhere in the court room is a fucking father, nowhere! There are a few mothers, grandmothers, and girlfriends, but no fucking fathers! Invariably as one of the few men of color in the court room (besides the cops) these defendants always end up giving me the stare down, as if I can now play the role of someone who should have been playing it for the duration of their young lives. I look, but I can't help. Sadly, it's too late now, another young black male lost, a mind already poisoned by the streets, a future already snatched away.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen: "What Strange Irony of Fate"

Previously:
"I Seek No Rewards".
"Today Too There is a Law!"

Today, from "The Death of Schillinger", pages 143-146 of "This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" (1959), by Tadeusz Borowski:

    Until 1943, First Sergeant Schillinger performed the duties of Lagerfuehrer, or chief commanding officer of labour section "D" at Birkenau, which was part of the enormous complex of large and small concentration camps, centrally administered from Auschwitz, but scattered throughout Upper Silesia.

    Schillinger was a short, stocky man. He had a full, round face and very light blond hair, brushed flat against his head. His eyes were blue, always slightly narrowed, his lips tight, and his face was usually set in an impatient grimace. He cared little about personal appearance, and I have never heard of an incident involving his being bribed by any of the camp "bigwigs".

    Schillinger reigned over sector "D" with an iron hand. Never resting for a moment, he bicycled up and down the camp roads, always popping up unexpectedly where he was least wanted.

    His arm could strike a blow as hard as a metal bar; he could crack a jaw or crush the life out of a man with no apparent effort.

    His vigilance was untiring. Each of his frequent visits to other sectors of Birkenau spread panic among the women, the gypsies, or the "aristocracy" of the Effektenkammer, Birkenau's wealthiest section, where the riches taken from the gas victims were stored. He also supervised the Kommandos working within the great circle of the watch-towers, and without warning he would inspect the prisoners' suits, the Kapos' shoes, or the S.S. guards' sacks. Furthermore, he visited the crematoria regularly and liked to watch people being shoved into the gas chambers. His name was usually linked with the names of Palitsch, Krankenmann, and many other Auschwitz murderers who boasted that they had personally succeeded in killing with the fist, the club, or the revolver, at least ten thousand people each.

    In August 1943, we heard the news that Schillinger had died suddenly in some very unusual circumstances. ....

    [T]he Sonderkommando foreman ... told me the following story ... :

    "On Sunday, after the midday roll-call, Schillinger came to the cremo courtyard to visit our chief. The chief was busy, as the first truckloads of the Bedzin transport had just been brought over from the loading ramp.

    "Surely you realize, my friend, that to unload a transport, to see that everyone gets undressed and then to drive them inside the gas chamber, is hard work that requires, if I may say so, a great deal of tact. ... [Y]ou work with systematic haste, emphasizing the pressure of duties which supposedly must be performed inside the false bathhouses. And, in fact, you really do have to make it snappy if you're to gas one transport and clean away the corpses before the next one arrives. ...

    "It was a restless transport -- these weren't the traders from Holland or France who only thought of how they'd start doing business with the Auschwitz rich. Our Polish Jews knew what was up. And so the whole place swarmed with S.S., and Schillinger, seeing what was going on, drew his revolver. But everything would have gone smoothly except that Schillinger had taken a fancy to a certain body -- and, indeed, she had a classic figure. That's what he had come to see the chief about, I suppose. So he walked up to the woman and took her by the hand. But the naked woman bent down suddenly, scooped up a handful of gravel and threw it in his face, and when Schillinger cried out in pain and dropped his revolver, the woman snatched it up and fired several shots through his abdomen. The whole place went wild. The naked crowd turned on us, screaming. The woman fired once more, this time at the chief, wounding his face. Then the chief as well as the S.S. men made off, leaving us quite alone. But we managed, thank God. We drove them all right into the chamber with clubs, bolted the doors and called the S.S. to administer Cyclone B. After all, we've had time to acquire some experience."

    "Well, ja, naturally."

    "Schillinger was lying face down, clawing the dirt in pain with his fingers. We lifted him off the ground and carried him -- not too gently -- to a car. On the way he kept groaning through clenched teeth: 'O Gott, mein Gott, was hab' ich getan, dass ich so leiden muss?', which means -- O God, my God, what have I done to deserve such suffering?"

    "That man didn't understand even to the very end," I said, shaking my head. "What strange irony of fate."

    "What strange irony of fate," repeated the foreman thoughtfully.

    True, what strange irony of fate. When, shortly before the camp was evacuated, the same Sonderkommando, anticipating liquidation, staged a revolt in the crematoria, set fire to the buildings and, snipping the barbed-wire, ran for the open fields, several S.S. guards turned the machine guns on them and killed every one -- without exception.

From the coverleaf:

Tadeusz Borowski was born in the Ukraine in 1922. Having survived Auschwitz and Dachau, he died by his own hand in Warsaw in 1951.

Tomorrow, "The Supper".

The Silly Season

This is the kind of story they write when the Presidential race has been  going since February, Labor Day's still a month away and it's over five months until the first primary.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen: "Today Too There is a Law!"

The first excerpt yesterday, "I Seek No Rewards."

From the story "Auschwitz, Our Home (A Letter)" on pages 130-132 of "This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" (1959), by Tadeusz Borowski:

    If the barrack walls were suddenly to fall away, many thousands of people, packed together, squeezed tightly in their bunks, would remain suspended in mid-air. Such a sight would be more gruesome than the medieval paintings of the Last Judgment. For one of the ugliest sights to man is that of another man sleeping on his tiny portion of the bunk, of the space he must occupy, because he has a body -- a body that has been exploited to the utmost: with a number tattooed on it to save on dog tags, with just enough sleep at night to work during the day, and just enough time to eat. And just enough food so it will not die wastefully. As for actual living, there is only one place for it  -- a piece of the bunk. The rest belongs to the camp, the Fatherland. But not even this small space, nor the shirt you wear, nor the spade you work with are your own. If you get sick, everything is taken away from you: your clothes, your cap, your "organized" scarf, your handkerchief. If you die -- your gold teeth, already recorded in the camp inventory, are extracted. Your body is burned and your ashes are used to fertilize the fields or fill in the ponds. Although in fact so much fat and bone is wasted in the burning, so much flesh, so much heat! But elsewhere they make soap out of people, and lampshades out of human skin, and jewelry out of the bones.

    We work beneath the earth and above it, under a roof and in the rain, with the spade, the pickaxe and the crowbar. We carry huge sacks of cement, lay bricks, put down rails, spread gravel, trample the earth ... We are laying the foundation for some new, monstrous civilization. Only now do I realize what price was paid for building the ancient civilizations. The Egyptian pyramids, the temples, and Greek statues -- what a hideous crime they were! How much blood must have poured on to the Roman roads, the bulwarks, and the city walls. Antiquity -- the tremendous concentration camp where the slave was branded on the forehead by his master, and crucified for trying to escape! Antiquity -- the conspiracy of free men against slaves!

    You know how much I used to like Plato. Today I realize he lied. For the things of this world are not a reflection of the ideal, but a product of human sweat, blood and hard labour. It is we who built the pyramids, hewed the marble for the temples and the rocks for the imperial roads, we who pulled the oars in the galleys and dragged wooden ploughs, while they wrote dialogues and dramas, rationalized their intrigues by appeals in the name of the Fatherland, made wars over boundaries and democracies. We were filthy and died real deaths. They were "aesthetic" and carried on subtle debates.

    There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.

    What does ancient history say about us? It knows the crafty slave from Terence and Plautus, it knows the people's tribunes, the brothers Gracchi, and the name of one slave -- Spartacus.

    They are the ones who have made history, yet the murderer -- Scipio -- the lawmakers -- Cicero or Demosthenes -- are the men remembered today. We rave over the extermination of the Etruscans, the destruction of Carthage, over treason, deceit, plunder. Roman law! Yes, today too there is a law!

    If the Germans win the war, what will the world know about us? They will erect huge buildings, highways, factories, soaring monuments. Our hands will be placed under every brick, and our backs will carry the steel rails and the slabs of concrete. They will kill off our families, our sick, our aged. They will murder our children.

    And we shall be forgotten, drowned out by the voices of the poets, the philosophers, the priests. They will produce their own beauty, virtue and truth. They will produce religion.

    Where Auschwitz stands today, three years ago there were villages and farms. There were rich meadows, shaded country lanes, apple orchards. There were people, no better nor worse than any other people.

    And then we arrived. We drove the people out, demolished their houses, levelled the earth, kneaded it into mud. We built barracks, fences, crematoria. We brought scurvy, phlegmon and lice.

    Now we work in mines and factories, and the fruit of our labour brings enormous profits to somebody.

    The story of the building of Auschwitz is an interesting one. A German Company built our camp -- the barracks, halls, shacks, bunks, chimneys.  .... [T]he Company ... like all German companies, ... is increasing its capital. It has done fantastic business at Auschwitz and is now calmly waiting for the war to end. The same goes for the companies in plumbing, in well-drilling, in electrical appliances; for the producers of brick, cement, metal and lumber, the makers of barracks parts and striped prison suits. The same thing is true of the huge automobile company, and of the scrap demolition outfit. And of the owners of the coalmines in Myslawice, Gliwice, Janin and Jaworzna. Those of us who survive will one day demand compensation for our work. Not in money, or goods, but in hard, relentless labour.

Tomorrow, "The Death of Schillinger."

The One Hundred and Twenty Eighty Day Law

NYTimes:

Under pressure from President Bush, the House gave final approval Saturday to changes in a terrorism surveillance program, despite serious objections from many Democrats about the scope of the executive branch’s new eavesdropping power. ...

The House Democratic leadership had severe reservations about the proposal and an overwhelming majority of Democrats opposed it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the measure “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.”

Yeah, so, why did the Dems cave on this?

But with the Senate already in recess, Democrats confronted the choice of allowing the administration’s bill to reach the floor and be approved mainly by Republicans or letting it die.

If it had stalled, that would have left Democratic lawmakers, long anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August spent fending off charges from Republicans that they had left Americans exposed to threats.

The amendment sunsets in one hundred and twenty days:

Senior House Democratic leaders said they were resigned to the measure, which will be in force for six months. But they said they would not wait that long before trying to come up with a more acceptable, permanent change in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“There is no way we are ever going to wait six months,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Okay, so it's not a good development. But the Dems seem like they have good political reasons not to go into recess after voting this down, especially given the craven news media. (Imagine: "Up next on the Situation Room: Are the Democrats cowards or simply traitors?" Every day until after Labor Day.) And it expires in six months even if they do nothing and clearly, they're going to address it.

Nevertheless, this is another opportunity for people to TOTALLY FREAK OUT:

Avedon Carol calls it "Inexplicable" and says: "Outside of the Beltway, nearly everyone ranges from outraged to flabbergasted to outraged and flabbergasted." Meteor Blades: "The Senate has surrendered to Mister Bush on domestic spying, yielding ignominiously to the White House’s demands...." (MB at least acknowledges that the law sunsets in six months, but characterizes it as time Congress will use to make the change permanent.) John Cole: "Grow a spine, you cowards." Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings: "The East Germany Restoration Act passed 227-183, with 41 Democrats jumping ship to fellate Dick Cheney."

Even Duncan and Digby - no freakouters - are just puzzled. Scott Lemiuex: "The six-month sunset period is, of course, a joke; if they're willing to sell out now -- after Bush having stuck his thumb in their eye and reneging on a deal, yet! -- they're sure not going to develop any more backbone-like properties in an election year." Glenn Greenwald asks, "The cycle is just going to repeat itself 180 days from now. Why would it be different?"  Which is a fair question.  The answer, of course, is that when this comes back up (a) we will be that much further into the campaign season, which focuses the politicians' minds somewhat, (b) it seems a goodly number of Dems in the House feel like they were railroaded, including the Speaker, and (c) liberal bloggers are going to be kicking the Congressional Dems like a rented mule. On who should we be focused? 

Democrats facing reelection next year in conservative districts helped propel the bill to a quick approval.

There you go. Stop freaking out and get to work.

Update: In a mistake that should in no way undermine the awesome persuasiveness of my analytical ability, I apparently thought six months was 120 days. My defense is that I picked up the 120 number from Nancy Pelosi's blog.  Why I didn't realize immediately that 6 months (which is what the bill says and is reported everywhere else) and 120 days are not the same thing is ... uh ... one of those top secret thingies under FISA. Yeah, that's it.

High Broderism, Part II: The Columnist Strikes Back

Anne-Marie Slaughter tries it again.

A Philadelphia Weekend in August

The good part: Everyone leaves. Lots of parking. You can get a table at any restaurant. No lines at the grocery store.

The bad: The stink of rotting garbage reaches its annual peak. (Winter is the best because all the trash, excrement and rotting organic matter are trapped beneath a layer of ice. Of course, you can't go anywhere in all that ice, so it's a trade-off.)

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen: "I Seek No Rewards"

From the coverleaf of "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen", copyright 1959, translated by Barbara Vedder:

Tadeusz Borowski was born in the Ukraine in 1922. Having survived Auschwitz and Dachau, he died by his own hand in Warsaw in 1951.

From pages 90-92, set in Harmenz, a subsidiary camp of Auschwitz:

    I remember another Block Elder, a big redhead with broad feet and chapped hands. She did not have a separate shack, only a few blankets spread over the bed and, instead of walls, a few other blankets thrown across a piece of rope.

    "I musn't make them feel," she would say, pointing to the women packed tightly in the bunks, "that I want to cut myself off from them. Maybe I can't give them anything, but I won't take anything away from them either."

    "Do you believe in life after death?" she asked me once in the middle of some lighthearted conversation.

    "Sometimes," I answered cautiously. "Once I believed in it when I was in jail, and again once when I came close to dying here in the camp."

    "But if a man does evil, he'll be punished, won't he?"

    "I suppose so, unless there are criteria of justice other than the man-made criteria. You know ... the kind that explain causes and motivations, and erase guilt by making it appear insignificant in the light of the overall harmony of the universe. Can a crime committed on one level be punishable on a different one?"

    "But I mean in a normal, human sense!" she exclaimed.

    "It ought to be punished. No question about it."

    "And you, would you do good if you were able to?"

    "I seek no rewards. I build roofs and want to survive the concentration camp."

    "But do you think that they", she pointed with her chin in an indefinite direction, "can go unpunished?"

    "I think that for those who have suffered unjustly, justice alone is not enough. They want the guilty to suffer unjustly too. Only this will they understand as justice."

    "You're a pretty smart fellow! But you wouldn't have the slightest idea how to divide bread justly, without giving more to your own mistress!" she said bitterly and walked into the block. The women were lying in the rows of bunks, head to head. Their faces were still, only the eyes seemed alive, large and shining. Hunger had already started in this part of the camp. The redheaded Elder moved from bunk to bunk, talking to the women to distract them from their thoughts. She pulled out the singers and told them to sing, the dancers --- and told them to dance, the poets --- and made them recite poetry.

    "All the time, endlessly, they ask me about their mothers, their fathers. They beg me to write to them."

    "They've asked me too. It's just too bad."

    "Ah, you! You come and then you go, but me? I plead with them. I beg them --- if anyone is pregnant don't report to the doctor, if anyone is sick, stay in the barracks! But do you think they believe me? It's no good, no matter how hard you try to protect them. What can you do if they fall all over themselves to get to the gas?"

    One of the girls was standing on a table singing a popular tune. When she finished, the women in the bunks began to applaud. The girl bowed, smiling. The redheaded Elder covered her face with her rough hands.

    "I can't stand it any longer! It's too disgusting!" she whispered. And suddenly she jumped up and rushed over to the table. "Get down!" she screamed at the singer.

    The women fell silent. She raised her arm.

    "Quiet!" she shouted, though nobody spoke a word. "You've been asking me about your parents and your children. I haven't told you, I felt sorry for you. But now I'll tell you, so that you know, because they'll do the same with you if you get sick! Your children, your husbands and your parents are not in another camp at all. They've been stuffed into a room and gassed! Gassed, do you understand? Like millions of others, like my own mother and father. They're burning in deep pits and ovens ... The smoke which you see above the rooftops doesn't come from the brick plant at all, as you've been told. It's smoke from your children! Now go on and sing." She finished calmly, pointing her finger at the terrified singer. Then she turned around and walked out of the barracks.

The truth will set you free, I guess, in the same way Arbeit macht frei. Tomorrow: "You know how much I used to like Plato. Today I realized he lied."

QOTD

Sgt. Adam Kokesh:

The Roosevelt Doctrine: Speak softly and carry a big stick.
The Bush Doctrine: Speak incoherently and hit someone with a stick.

Also funny from the same post:

The group of civilians that turned out to support us at the cook out was great, but we had to tell the woman with the rainbow pinwheel who was trying to start a drum circle to secure that shit or keep her distance. She chose to put her stuff away and pretended to not be a hippy for the duration of the afternoon.

Festival

Italian Market, May 20, 2007:

Whew

I had just begun to worry when I got a call from the last of my friends from Minneapolis who I hadn't heard from since Wednesday night.

He said that the effect on the average city resident's life is incredible. Not only do you have to navigate around the loss of a major expressway, but fear of bridges has set in for a lot of people. It's like people being afraid to fly after 9/11, except you have no choice. If you live in Minneapolis, you have to cross rivers.

On Being Colorblind or Just Blind

Mike Dorf:

Liberals value integration as a good in itself because liberals, like conservatives, value color-blindness, albeit in a different sense. Conservatives believe that GOVERNMENT decision-makers should always or almost always be color-blind in the sense that government should not make decisions that turn on race. Liberals believe that INDIVIDUALS should be color-blind but see ubiquitous evidence that they are not. In deciding where to live, with whom to socialize and all sorts of other matters, individuals make decisions based on race. The conservatives don't deny this, but they call the phenomenon "societal discrimination" or "voluntary segregation," and conclude that the government cannot take any race-conscious measures to remedy it. Liberals, by contrast, see the harms that result from numerous individual private race-based decisions as worse than the harms that result from race-based decisions by the government to remedy these private decisions. Meanwhile, the conservatives deny that such race-based government action is a "remedy" at all, because they deny that private race-based decision making is (at least constitutionally speaking) a harm.

I'd go a step farther and say that most conservatives see "voluntary segregation" as a social good, because of the label "voluntary". It's sort of an economic argument coupled with a constitutional rights argument: There is an "optimal" level of racial segregation which is mediated by the private choices people make as part of the freedom of association. In this view, anything the government does to reverse societal discrimination (that doesn't violate other laws, like against discrimination in housing or employment) is not just useless, but actively harmful. I would call this the "weak libertarian" view. There is also a "strong libertarian" view held by a few conservatives that all laws against private discrimination are constitutionally harmful - including laws against discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations or lending - because they burden the freedom of association or the freedom of speech.

Dorf goes on to say:

[W]hat strikes me as interesting about this example is how the underlying value is the same: color-blindness.

I just don't see conservatives valuing color-blindness at all. How could they possibly value it, when they deny even the possibility that correcting private discrimination could rise to the level of a compelling state interest? They are stuck with the 14th Amendment, that's all, and they are trying to interpret it as narrowly as possible.  If they do claim to value societal color-blindness, it's just a rhetorical device to help win the argument against beneficial race-conscious laws, like affirmative action.

I do agree with Dorf's conclusion:

The attachment to societal color-blindness explains what liberals value in integration but it doesn't explain why they (we) pursue it in the face of evidence that the pursuit has been a failure. And on this point, I think the best answer is simply that many of us believe that [Derrick] Bell---who writes about the "permanence of racism"---is unduly pessimistic. American attitudes about race today are hardly a model of egalitarianism. Revealed preferences are even worse. But both represent a marked improvement over the not-all-that-distant past. So while Bell and others are right to pursue whatever methods of education that work within de facto segregated schools, we conventional liberals are also entitled to think that it's too early to give up on the goals of integration.

Right. When I was a kid, racist rednecks with baseball bats on my street would chase out any black man who had the misfortune to wander into the neighborhood. Nowadays, their kids or grandkids are not only unlikely to hold similar views, but probably truly reject them.

How did we achieve this "marked improvement over the not-all-that-distant past"? By society adopting a clear message that racial discrimination - whether private or public - is simply morally wrong and unamerican. Our laws are part of that message. I can see why some people might grow cynical with race-conscious integration efforts, but abandoning them means tacitly accepting the conservative premise that discrimination is acceptable, at least.

Seattle

I went on a trip in June and neglected to ever post the pics. Mt. Rainier:

More after the jump.