The Virginia Tech Tragedy

What can one say?

Interesting how the bloggers are adding politics to the analysis:

Some argue that lack of gun control is the problem. Others, the exact opposite. My own take: while letting more people carry guns might be a good thing in exceptional circumstances such as this one --- who would not want one of the victims to be able to shoot back? --- it is likely that, in the long run, more people would die if more people were allowed to buy and carry guns.

(The fallacy is reminiscent of the justifications for torture: Sure, if we knew that torture was the only way to prevent a nuclear explosion in a city, we would approve of it. But how often would that actually be the case? And why would that mean that it is justified in general?)

Other bloggers have pointed out that while 32 dead in a single incident is horrifying in the US, and worthy of extensive media coverage, it has been an almost daily par for the course for Iraq (with less than 1/10 of the population). And yet Bush complains that the Iraq violence is covered too much.

Andrew Sullivan makes the point particularly well in this post.

p.s. An update: Surely enough, the next day we have 171 dead in Iraq, mostly civilians, including children.

It all depends on what the definition of "Improper" is

From AG Gonzales' second Washington Post op-ed piece about the "overblown personell matter":

I have nevertheless asked the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to further investigate this matter. Working with the department's Office of Inspector General, these nonpartisan professionals will complete their own independent investigation so that Congress and the American people can be 100 percent assured of what I believe and what the investigation thus far has shown: that nothing improper occurred.

So, the DOJ will investigate itself. But the boss has already reached a conclusion.

Connect the dots

A Time magazine article about the leaked announcement of earlier and longer tours in Iraq ends with this paragraph:

Of course, soldiers and their families weren't the only ones surprised by the Pentagon announcement. Just hours before the news leaked out, President Bush complained about Democratic congressional foot-dragging that has held up approval of a $120-billion-plus supplemental war bill. "The bottom line is this: Congress's failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines," Bush told an American Legion audience in suburban Virginia. The next day, his Pentagon did it all by itself, without any help from anyone of either party on Capitol Hill.

Notice that the Democrats have not refused to fund the troops---they just want a funding bill that starts bringing the troops back home soon. Bush's statement is extraordinary in how it fails to explain how (a) Congress is failing to fund the troops, and (b) How the longer wait would follow.

Now, as others have suggested, two remarks are in order:

(1) It seems reasonable to assume that the Pentagon has known, for a while now, that these extensions would be necessary.

(2) Bush's statements seem to be preparing the ground for this scenario: (1) The Democrats passs the funding bill; (2) Bush vetoes it; (3) The Pentagon announces the extended tours of duty; (4) Bush blames the Democrats, saying "I told you so".

Looks like the leak has ruined this gambit for them...

The Cost of Politics

A very disturbing NYT story about bogus voter fraud claims, and Josh Marshall's analysis of it.

If true, it means that the White House is not only willing to play politics with the Justice Department for electoral advantage, but also willing to upend the lives of a few powerless folks as a result.

On a related note, Jon Rauch at the National Journal notes that President Bush has underused his pardon powers, ignoring some very deserving cases for which Presidential pardon is the last resort. He writes:

Here is a fact that historians may note with puzzlement: Bush, who is obsessively protective of unilateral executive power in every other sphere, has all but abandoned the most unequivocally unilateral power that the Constitution gives him.

Meanwhile, RNC emails get conveniently lost...

Czar Emergency

You know things are bad in DC when they start looking for a "Czar" to try and solve an intractable problem. From the Washington Post:

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

As Marshall and a reader note in a classic post, this is reminiscent of an article from The Onion. Except it's for real. Slate summarizes here.

George W. Bush, summarized

Joe Klein's column in that rabid, left-wing media operation, Time Magazine:

When Bush came to office--installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore--I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

Quite the op-ed piece

A British op-ed piece, related to the discussion of whether 650,000 is an accurate number for the dead in Iraq since the invasion. Nobody is sure what the number is, though apparently this number was arrived at by established methods. (That nobody knows, and fewer care, is part of the problem.)

To quote from its last paragraphs:

At a time when we are celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200 years ago, we are continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights of the past half-century. It is inexplicable how we allowed this to happen. It is inexplicable why we are not demanding this government's mass resignation.

Two hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned as the moment when Britain violated its delicate democratic constitution and joined the ranks of nations that use extreme pre-emptive killing as a tactic of foreign policy. Some anniversary that will be.

· Richard Horton is a doctor and the editor of the Lancet

From Bush-Gore 2000 debate

This ranks up there with George W. Bush's claim of "I'm a uniter, not a divider" in the 2000 campaign.

MODERATOR: New question. How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force, generally?

BUSH: Well, if it's in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. So I would take my responsibility seriously. And it starts with making sure we rebuild our military power. Morale in today's military is too low. We're having trouble meeting recruiting goals. We met the goals this year, but in the previous years we have not met recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we're overextended in too many places. And therefore I want to rebuild the military power.

More Banana Republic evidence

Sullivan and Marshall have recently made the analogy as well. Sullivan, in regards to the application and normalization of torture. Marshall, in regards to the politization of justice:

It's yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we've been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown.

The revived Giuliani-Kerik controversy is also a good reminder of the cronyism and incompetence of this administration. This was the person that Bush wanted as Secretary of Homeland Security? A sign of how seriously President Bush took Homeland Security, indeed.

On the other hand, as some have pointed out, perhaps the Mob is the go-to organization as far as securing your Homeland is concerned.

I'd say that the biggest difference between first-world and third-world countries is good governance. Not that it is perfect anywhere, mind you, but the rule of law and competent administration count for a lot. And the US seems to have taken a large step backwards in the last 7 years.

The "Clinton Did It" defense

Don't let dishonest commentators (including Bill O'Reilly last night, and a Republican senator on NPR this morning) fool you when they point out that all 93 Federal Prosecutors were replaced by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno in 1993.

Every administration replaces all, or most of, the Federal Prosecutors when they come in. What is highly unusual is to pick and choose some to replace in the middle of an administration; even more so, when it seems based mostly on partisan considerations.

To pretend otherwise is part of the Big Lie. Here's a good blog post on the matter.

p.s. It appears that two prosecutors were fired under Clinton. Why? From this blog:

As it happens, the Congressional Research Service has just released a report on this. It appears two resigned under pressure – one because he grabbed a TV reporter by the throat on camera, and the second having been accused of biting a topless dancer.

What happened in Texas...

A depressingly revealing blog entry from the Washington Post, describing Gonzales' previous work for Bush while in Texas...

The AG's defense

Gonzales' press conference today: Mistakes were made, I did not take part in them, and the guy who made them has quit already anyway.

Right. Once can smell Karl Rove's imprint on this from a mile away, a carefully planned and coordinated political move, to politicize the justice system. Rove... what a pernicious, damaging influence on the way politics works in the USA.

It is also interesting to revisit Gonzales' op-ed in USA today defending this "overblown personnell matter". "Related to performance, not to politics"?

Salon don't like it either

From Salon (Joe Conason):

Loyal dissemblers like Gonzales can be found in every royal court and indeed are essential to the smooth functioning of any autocracy or banana republic. They are not, however, well-suited to overseeing the pursuit of justice and the enforcement of law in a democracy.

The Other Side of the Banana

We've heard about the fired prosecutors, who "lost the confidence" of Attorney General Gonzalez, some after disappointing Republican Senators by not bringing up Democratic indictments in time for the elections. Now folks are asking what the ones who were *not* fired were up to.

Looks like Democrats have become 7 times more likely than Republicans to become targets of local investigations - an old Rove trick, now institutionalized and enforced from the top?

How the Banana Republic works

Congressional hearings have produced interesting results.

See also this editorial in the New York Times.

No one is quite sure how the provision for letting the White House replace Attorney Generals without Congressional approval made it into the "Patriot Act" bill, but it looks like White House operatives were involved. Nice separation of powers, as Slate points out.

Dow Jones Industrial average waste of time

I generally like to listen to NPR, and can be described as a news junkie.

But why, oh why, do they (and most other outlets) insist on wasting precious seconds of their broadcasts telling me how many points the Dow Jones Average has gone up or down----especially if it is just two points out of 12,000? And why would I want to know about this every hour?

Today's 3-or-4% loss is a good ocassion to make the obvious points: First, if you reallly think that I need to know how this number changes from day to day, please tell me the *percentage* that the thing won or lost; at least that saves me from having to do the math in my head, assuming that I actually knew the last day's closing price.

Second, only is news when the loss or gain is bigger than a certain percentage. What should the threshold be --- 0.5%, 1%? I don't know... but the implicit agreement should be that if the Dow is not mentioned in the hourly news, then it did not change that much. And then, maybe on Friday you can tell me how much it changed for the week.

Banana Republic Watch, February edition

And here's something that you only used to see in third-world "democracies" of dubious character:

The executive branch arbitrarily firing attorney generals who happen to be conducting sensitive corruption investigations, and replacing them by political operatives and hacks. All of this, made "legal" by an obscure provision slipped at the last minute into a "patriotic" bill.

Banana Republic Watch: Shameless Sophistry

It might be time for any US citizen of any political persuasion to get worried:

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

Book titles

I've been collecting the titles for some books by relatively well-respected, and certainly well-publicized, "pundits" from the right. The titles alone are quite revealing, and say volumes about their authors' intellectual honesty and nuance levels, not to say anything about their estimation of their target audience. Here it is:

"Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton," by Jonah Goldberg.

“The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life,” by Ramesh Ponnuru.

"Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism," by Sean Hannity.

"Godless: The Church of Liberalism," by Ann Coulter.

"Women Who Make the World Worse : and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports," by Kate O'Beirne.

"State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America," by Patrick J. Buchanan.

"Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party," by David Limbaugh.

The latest entry into the list, which makes this post complete, is:

"The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," by Dinesh D'Souza.

This last one is particularly unbelievable: The terrorists have indeed won.

Unclear on the Concept

From the NYT article:

The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

As the corresponding NYT editorial points out:

It does not seem to matter to Mr. Stimson, who is a lawyer, that a great many of those detainees did not deserve imprisonment, let alone the indefinite detention to which they are subjected as “illegal enemy combatants.” And forget about the fundamental American right that everyone should have legal counsel, even the most heinous villain.

See also the Washington Post editorial.

Besides the apparent fact that the guy in charge does not seem to understand basic concepts of the rule of law in a civilized society, I also find it interesting, and apalling, that he resorts to the extortive threats that have been proven to stifle free speech in nominally free societies: If you do/say something we don't like, you won't get business from the big companies that keep your law firm/newspaper running.