Blog 2002-05 Archives

Being attacked by a "pack of angry Chihuahuas" has to be as embarrassing as it is painful.

*Andrew McCarthy on the McCain torture bill. As I've said before (see here and here), I'm in favor of legislative action to make clearer what can and can't be done in the interrogation process going forward, at least as far as setting some outer limits and clear permissions. But I'm really concerned that this bill is a disaster. If there's one thing we don't need, it's getting the courts involved in this business or giving unlawful combatants anything like the rights of lawful combatants or common criminals.

*On a similar note, somehow, I doubt the people who loved Michael Scheuer's book are going to laud this op-ed.

*German cowardice frees a terrorist.

*Jack Abramoff could plead guilty and testify against people on Capitol Hill. That's the main development that's needed for the whole Abramoff business to get interesting.

*Megan McArdle on the choices we make and why they should affect the money we make.

*Jack Dunphy on "Tookie" Williams complete with the predictable involvement of Jesse Jackson and Jackson's equally predictable failure to even know the names of Williams' victims. And Patterico on executing the innocent.

*One of Nathan Newman's co-bloggers defends the TWU, but really ends up just demonstrating the pettiness of some of the issues involved. I still fail to see what makes bus drivers and token clerks' jobs so extraordinarily valuable to society that they can demand a right to retire at 55, something the rest of us can only dream about. Soldiers? Cops? Firemen? Yes. But token clerks?

Sorry if blogging's a bit slow at the moment, on top of everything else - work has been crazy the past month - I'm slowed by the transit strike (the LIRR, in its infinite wisdom, has closed my train station at rush hour as part of a "contingency plan"). I'm taking tomorrow off from work, so maybe I'll get more done then.

*Ann Althouse wants cameras in the Supreme Court, in part as a way of subtly pressuring aging Justices to retire when they can't do the job anymore. I'm not sure how many cases that would work in, but I strongly agree with Althouse and Dahlia Lithwick on this one: unlike at the trial court level, where TV cameras can affect the behavior of non-lawyer participants (witnesses, jurors) whose impartiality the system makes great effort to preserve, the dangers of cameras in the appellate courts are pretty minor, and at their lowest ebb at the Supreme Court, whose members have life tenure and nearly never have any further career ambitions.

*The Phillies dump Vincente Padilla, apparently on the theory that they have too much quality starting pitching.

*I like the White Sox' acquisition of Javier Vazquez - unlike the Phillies, the ChiSox apparently aren't complacent about their pitching staff - who seems like he should still have some good years left, but I do wonder if homer-friendly US Cellular Field is the best place for him.

*McQ has some thoughts on Iranian mischief in the south of Iraq.

*Dean Barnett has a great post noting Kos' criteria for front-page contributors:

Markos made it clear what criteria he was and wasn’t using in selecting the new guard:

"I made my decisions, like I have in the past, based on two factors -- the first is merit. I don't concern myself with sex, race, ethnicity, or any of that stuff. This is a site about politics, and I wanted the best commenters on politics…That's how I like it, no matter how controversial that might be."

For clarity's sake, I should point out that Markos never got around to identifying the second factor.

*Per Jonah Goldberg here and here, this sure looks like a deliberate policy of subsidizing suicide bombings.

*So, Joe Lieberman is loved by the GOP and hated by Democrats. Meanwhile, conservatives hate Lincoln Chaffee and Arlen Specter. But if Republicans traded Chaffee or Specter for Lieberman - even leaving aside questions about re-electability (Lieberman and Chaffee are up in 2006, Specter was elected to his final term in 2004), would we Republicans get a good deal? I'm not so sure. All three, like George Pataki and Christie Whitman, represent to a greater or lesser degree a New Republic-style brand of socially liberal, tax-cut-supporting, strong-on-defense, tough-on-crime, moderate-to-liberal on spending and regulatory issues Northeasterner who is poorly represented by both parties. But at least on domestic policy, Lieberman's been a more loyal soldier for his party: the American Conservative Union gives lifetime ratings of 41 for Chaffee and 44 for Specter, compared to 17 for Lieberman.

*Scott Adams on good and bad jobs in the War on Terror.

*Don Rumsfeld on the media's incomplete picture of Iraq.

*This Angry Bear chart of federal spending growth is a keeper, and provides great context. Via Instapundit.

This story from Blez reminds us that if you don't hire a good hosting company, your servers can end up living in a van down by the river.

I am nominated once again for Best Sports Blog in the Weblog Awards. Really, go and check out the other blogs that have been nominated.

John Hawkins announces the winners of his annual poll.

*David Pinto notes some ridiculous puffery by Scott Boras about Johnny Damon, including an assertion that Damon is somehow better than Rickey Henderson. Of course, he's just advocating for his client, but there's a difference between honest and dishonest advocacy; any lawyer can tell you that, and dishonest advocacy doesn't help your credibility in the long run (not that Boras needs credibility, with the clients he has). Comparing Damon to Rickey is just stupid; between 1995 and 2002, Damon had a better OBP than Rickey only once. And that's for age 36-43 for Rickey compared to 21-28 for Damon. Also, over that same period Rickey stole 308 bases to Damon's 214.

*Jack Shafer predicts the predictable.

*Corruption in US efforts in Iraq is a Bad Thing, if predictable given the nature of government contracting and the general principle that in chaos there is opportunity. At least DOJ has caught some people.

*Patterico on executing the innocent.

*Ralph Peters is more than a little over the top in this column on Democrats' calls for withdrawal from Iraq, but it's not entirely unwarranted. For a more measured take, here's a fine post from Jon Henke on what separates the two sides in the Iraq debate as it exists today.

*Could Novak's source have been Armitage? That would be quite the letdown for the Josh Marshalls of the world who see the Plame story as all about neocon perfidy, if it's true.

*This doesn't seem to helpful for Samuel Alito. (via Bashman)

*Byron York on "Boogie to Baghdad" and why some people just don't want to remember it.

*Yup.

*This American Prospect article on Alito and machine guns is notable for its near-complete absence of analysis of the constitutional issues.

*The Rockefeller democrat. More here.

*The Win Shares system had Juan Uribe and Jhonny Peralta as by far the best defensive shortstops in the AL this year.

*The vanishing World War I vets.

*From a friend of the site: "Hopefully, more stories like this will eventually lead to less stories opening with five words like
this." This is also a good point.

*When athletes in the US get in trouble, machetes and gasoline are not usually the weapons of choice.

*Not Larry Lucchino's biggest fans.

*More goodies from QandO here and here.

*Brad Wilkerson on the block?

*This doesn't sound like a meritorious lawsuit, given the plaintiff's concession - why did his lawyer let him speak to the press? - that Home Depot wasn't responsible for gluing him to the toilet.

*Jeff Goldstein on Michael Steele.

*LOoking back, a friend wondered about Harriet Miers' financial disclosures why a single woman who spent so many years in private parctice as a law firm partner didn't have more money.

Unfortunately, as happens from time to time, I'm just too swamped at work to blog this week. I should be back by Monday the 28th, or possibly by Friday. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

UPDATE: Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. If I can get a few work things wrapped up, I'll have to weigh in later today on the Delgado deal.

I've got the MT Closecomments plugin installed on the blog (MT 3.121), so comments to old entries show up as needing approval. But I would like to block them entirely, as well as trackbacks to old entries; I'm getting inundated with hundreds of spam comments & spam trackbacks at a clip, which seriously eats into my blogging time. Anyone have suggestions?

*Ricky West has a nice tribute to his 23-year-old nephew. Go see why.

*Proof of a housing bubble - or a good omen for the future? Baghdad's real estate market is booming.

*Some social conservatives balk at a new vaccine for cervical cancer because it might encourage underage sex:

Because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted virus, many conservatives oppose making it mandatory, citing fears that it could send a subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage. Several leading groups that promote abstinence are meeting this week to formulate official policies on the vaccine.

Via MBOnline. Sorry fellas, I'm as opposed to teenagers having unmarried sex as you are, but this is where I get off the bus. This is cancer we're talking about here (and who thinks STDs serve a useful purpose anyway?). Look, if you don't want kids to be encouraged to have sex, don't tell them what it's for, or warn them it won't stop them from getting pregnant, etc. But don't stop the vaccine.

*Gerry Daly on vote fraud and abuse of the old and the feeble by Detroit Democrats.

*How British are you? A (British) citizenship quiz from the BBC. Via Oxblog. I got six of 14 right, which sounds about right for a semi-informed foreigner who's never been there and hasn't read the pamphlet.

*Also from Oxblog, David Adesnik's one-step plan for Bush to survive Plamegate: "Win the war in Iraq. History will only rememeber Scootergate if America fails in Baghdad."

*Judd Gregg wins $850,000 in the Powerball drawing

*Tom DeLay's mug shot is a picture of defiance.

*Mac Thomason on the grim economics that will force the Braves to use even fewer good players to win the division next year.

*Ed Moltzen on Kathleen Willey and Valerie Plame.

*Minas Tirith and the fall of Constantinople. (Via the rejuvenated American Scene).

*Blez is ready to do without umps calling pitches and have machines call balls and strikes. Is the technology really workable to give reliable ball-strike calls for each hitter's zone? If so, I could live with this.

*Chris Lynch thinks it's time to start thinking about Larry Walker as a serious Hall of Fame candidate. I'm not sure about that one, but Walker shouldn't be penalized for his home park, as he really has been a fine hitter everywhere he's been.

*Powerline has the text of a motion to dismiss the second indictment of Tom DeLay. It certainly sounds like DeLay has valid grounds to dismiss the indictment, on the basis of the statutes at issue not covering his conduct and, possibly, improper venue. (There's no shame in being acquitted on technicalities when you are charged with a technical offense in the first place). But then, criminal defense attorneys often make arguments that sound persuasive until you see what the facts or law really are; I don't know enough about the Texas statutes in question to know if this holds water.

*Comedian/actor Charles Rocket has committed suicide. Maybe it's just me, but I could never keep Rocket straight from John Heard. I think it's just that they shared a similar stable of facial ticks.

*Jeff Goldstein notes the massive allocation of resources to arrests for marijuana possession. I'm generally - if somewhat weakly - in favor of criminalization of marijuana (in part on a broken-windows theory), but the problem with enforcing the law against pot is that you end up with a choice between (1) using vast resources better spent elsewhere or (2) enforcing the law in an arbitrary manner (and as we all know, a law arbitrarily enforced is far more susceptible to being a law discriminatorily enforced). This is one reason why I think the federal government, at least, should get out of the pot-busting business and leave to local governments the decision of what resources to allocate to this area.

*Leon H has a disturbing story about an affiliate of the American Girl doll company.

*Here's a bizarre headline about North Korea: "Report: Kim has chosen 2nd son, an NBA fan, to succeed him."

David Stern's long arm grows ever longer.

*Mike Brown should be thankful that in the US, scapegoats only get fired.

*A word in favor of today's soldiers. And a word about recruiting from someone who knows.

*I haven't looked at the legislation in detail, but I agree with Instapundit that a Congressional effort to promulgate rules for the handling of detainees is a good thing, for reasons I've explained before.

*This, also via Instapundit, just amazed me. Next up, UK Committee on Un-Islamic Activities? We're at war, and our allies are rotting from within.

*A stolen vote of the type you won't hear much about.

As always, good to have visitors from Bill Simmons' place stopping by. Unfortunately, I've been too busy with work to post anything substantive the last few days . . . For those of you who are dropping by for the first time, look around; there's a lot of stuff here going back five years. This site covers politics, war, the law, pop culture and various other stuff; while I usually do more baseball during the playoffs, I've been writing a lot the last two weeks about the Supreme Court. You can hit the link at the top to just view the baseball posts.

I've been nominated for the "Best Political Blog" in the Small Dead Blog Awards over at The Roadkill Diaries.

*Duff McKagan of Guns n' Roses goes back to school to get an education in finance (via Kevin Cott). This does't sound like fun:

McKagan's drug abuse was so severe that his pancreas exploded, causing third-degree burns inside his intestines and stomach.

*Lileks: "Calling the contractors to find out why no one showed up is never as cathartic as you think it will be."

*Harriet Miers, Number 67.

*This would be a tough test to have to take for a clerkship.

*Kevin Drum makes sense on why the Democrats need the middle more than Republicans do. He quotes EJ Dionne:

According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.

Drum, writing before the confirmation of Roberts and the Miers nomination:

These numbers have been rock steady for decades, and their meaning is simple: energizing the base just isn't enough for Democrats. Even if every hardcore liberal in the country votes Democratic, we have to win about three-quarters of the moderates to gain a majority. That means we have to win support pretty far into the conservative end of that moderate center, and people like that simply aren't going to respond to anti-war rallies and screaming campaigns against John Roberts.

This is one reason I haven't blogged much about Roberts. The liberal blogosphere has made opposition to Roberts practically a litmus test of "getting it," of understanding that liberals can play every bit as hard as conservatives. But you know what? It's the netroots that doesn't get it. They think unyielding opposition to Roberts shows how tough we are, but what most Americans see - including all those moderates whose votes we need - is a guy who seems conservative, but also mild mannered, intelligent, and well qualified. It's true that he took nonresponsiveness to whole new levels during his confirmation hearings, but let's face it: that particular Kabuki dance started after Robert Bork flamed out spectactularly for being a little too forthcoming to Senate questioners. Roberts just refined it a bit.

The fact is, by every previous standard of Supreme Court nominees, Roberts is well qualified for his position. Is he conservative? Of course he is. But that's because the American public elected a conservative president and a conservative Senate. If we want better nominees, that's what needs to change.

And the way to change that is to change the minds of centrist voters who are tiring of George Bush and the Republican party but still wary of Democrats. They may say they're fed up with Bush, but when it comes time to pull the lever on election day they also need to feel like it's safe to vote for a Democrat. Right now they still don't.

Of course, the corollary is that the GOP needs its base more than the Democrats do - which is something Bush seems to have forgotten with the Miers nomination. I'm not sure which is the more depressing possibility: that Bush, Cheney and Rove didn't know that this nomination would provoke a furious reaction from the base (which was entirely predictable), or that they didn't care. It was one thing to blow off the base on an issue like steel tarriffs, which are pretty small potatos to most people and could be explained in terms of obvious political benefits. But the Supreme Court is, for a large segment of the GOP, the #1 or #2 issue in presidential elections, often trailing only national security and/or taxes.

Or, in this case, death averted. Saw this when I caught a few minutes of this twitchy, undernourished actress on the Craig Ferguson show last night (yes, I got home from work pretty late).

Interesting profile of CNN's Anderson Cooper. I did not know he was a Vanderbilt; he's one of those people who just suddenly appeared on TV and it seemed like everybody knew who he was. Cooper's had a rough life . . . the funny thing is, the anchors are such creatures of the Manhattan establishment, yet the Big Three were mostly self-made men haling from far from the East Coast, without much in terms of social or educational pedigree - Rather's a Texan, Brokaw's from South Dakota, Jennings was from Canada. Cooper is more from the background you'd expect in a big media guy, the background that most New York Times reporters come from.

*Instapundit thinks spending federal funds and law enforcement resources battling adult (i.e., not child) pornography is a waste of resources. I agree. Porn is a classic example of the sort of thing that, even if you are going to crack down on it, ought to be left to the local level; as the Supreme Court recognized decades ago, what counts as obscene in one community may be acceptable in another. And it's awfully difficult to argue that pornography has any truly national impact, except by making arguments under which any bad thing has a national impact.

*Unless I remember incorrectly, this represents the first indictment of a Bush Administration official. That's a marked difference from the record of prosecutions in the Clinton Administration (or the Reagan or Carter Administrations, for that matter). If the history of two-term presidencies is any indicator, this will not be the last.

*Youppi! is back, after a year spent living under an overpass in Montreal carrying a "Will Mascot For Food" sign (in French, of course). (via Kevin Cott).

*Now, Tom DeLay says, "There are programs all over the federal budget that are bloated or wasteful or inefficiently using the funds we provide them, and I'm very interested in identifying them." How long has DeLay been in Congress?

Some are arguing that it's time for divided government - that Democrats in Congress would at least produce some pork-killing gridlock. I mean to get to this point in more detail when it's time to discuss the McCain 2008 campaign, but while fighting pork is a good thing, the real battle is to change the structure of the budget process and rein in entitlements - neither of which would ever be helped even one little bit by electing more Democrats. But I'm not that optimistic that we're getting anywhere on that front under the GOP, either.

*This looks like a bad idea. So does this, if it means that partisan sniping has led the Bush White House to divert one of its best homeland security people to handle an investigation.

*Rafael Palmeiro is being investigated by Congress for perjury. Which serves him right, but if we're on the subject of waste of taxpayer money, this is a rather conspicuous example.

*The Washington Post:

Slightly more than half of American teenagers, ages 15 to 19, have engaged in oral sex, with females and males reporting similar levels of experience, according to the most comprehensive national survey of sexual behaviors ever released by the federal government.

The report today by the National Center for Health Statistics shows that the figure increases to about 70 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds.

The survey, according to those who work with young people, offers one more sign that young women are more sexually confident than they used to be.

As a friend writes, "One could, accurately, replace the word 'confident' with 'promiscuous.'"

*Is Anderson Hernandez on the way?

*Michael Newdow may have won another round in California, but the US District Court in DC rejected his attempt to get a permanent injunction against prayers at the inauguration of the President. (Link opens PDF file).

*Maybe you saw, or heard, the tearful story told on national TV by Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard:

The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in a St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

If so, you were lied to. Via Jeff Goldstein, who has been en fuego on the Hurricane Katrina story, to the point that he can barely keep his server running.

*Wonder if the people who got all bent out of shape over the Tom Delay-Homeland Security-Texas Legislature flap will go nuts over a Louisiana Democratic Congressman, who is perhaps not coincidentally under federal investigation, diverting the National Guard to clear possessions out of his house rather than save people.

*Speaking of DeLay, if he really believes Congress is doing a good job holding the line on spending and there is no fat left to cut in the budget, it is clearly past time for the House GOP to go get itself a new leader. Via NRO (and yes, I've seen subsequent reports putting the quote in context - they make it a little more understandable but no more defensible.

*Then there's the story of a 57-year-old New Orleans man who drew on his long-ago training as a Vietnam veteran and walked out of town. Via Brian Preston, who has likewise been all over Katrina and its aftermath.

*Classic George Will (via NRO). Favorite line: "You can no mor