President Obama passes a critical test: recognition of judicial authority

If I am going to bash his administration for what I think it does wrong, then I have to acknowledge when it rises to the challenge.

Recently, when a Federal judge ordered a Gitmo detainee freed, I said that now was the time to find out if we were a nation of laws, and if the Obama administration would react like Andrew Jackson or follow the law.

LATimes:

Reporting from Washington — Avoiding a showdown with a federal judge, the Obama administration agreed Wednesday to release from Guantanamo Bay an Afghan prisoner who was captured as a teenager and held nearly seven years for allegedly throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers.

The government said it would "promptly release" Mohammed Jawad, now 23, and send him to Afghanistan -- but only after it sent a required notification to Congress explaining whether his release would pose a risk to national security. That will take 22 days, the administration said.

They followed the law. This is a good sign, but only a start.

This is simply the definition of DUMB....

.... on so many levels that I don't even want to think about it.

Comment rescue: Delaware's only progressive think-tank

In the rather bizarre brew-haha over the nature of the Caesar Rodney Institute, this comment got made by one of the many anonymous commenters at Delawareliberal demanding that Charlie Copeland out all the pseudonymous bloggers at Resolute Determination:

There is only one progressive think tank in Delaware that I am aware of and it is truly non partisan, based on good government practices, that is: deinformedvoters.org.

The link is actually to the organization that calls itself Delaware Unified Civic/Political Association. It is important to note that this site does not appear to have undergone any changes in many months; I could be wrong about this, but there are no listed updates, no new topics, no new research, and everything looks exactly as it did when I consulted the site more than a year ago when writing a post on the proposed DE Single-payer health plan.

The site says that the organization intends to file for IRS designation, 501 (4) (C), and intends to be a non-partisan effort.

I want to be very careful here with what I say next. The only two individuals listed as associated with the site are Dr. Floyd McDowell and Elizabeth Allen. I disagree completely with both of them on single-payer health care, but I also have a lot of respect for many other positions that both of them have taken on different issues. Liz is a semi-regular commenter here: sometimes she berates me on health care, while other times she agrees with me on finance and foreign policy. At other times, however, she is pretty far off into conspiracy land (sorry, Liz, got to call them as I see them).

I have no idea if Dr. McDowell ever reads this blog, but I know Dana Garrett is a friend of his, and that Dana stops by frequently. So I want to be clear on all that, and to treat both of these individuals with respect.

Here are my two points:


1) DUC/PA is not a think-tank by any accepted definition of the word. At best it seems to be--from the website, which is the only thing I can judge--a semi-moribund issues repository of a citizen lobbying group. There's nothing wrong with this--Dr. McDowell and Liz continue to lobby on behalf of their programs and more power to them--but a think-tank is an organization that conducts ongoing research, writes regular policy reports, and attempts to stay current on the issues that matter. DUC/PA does none of these things.

2) DUC/PA is not non-partisan in any meaningful sense of the word. While the authors say they want to convince legislators of any party to accept their views, they are advocating a pretty straight-down-the-line progressive social agenda that would appeal primarily to liberal Democrats, and they present no information whatsoever that might contradict any of their positions. I want to be clear: I have absolutely no problem with that. But it is not non-partisan except in such a narrow technical sense that anybody who presents any legislative proposal--no matter how liberal or conservative--and says she wants support from both parties (but sees no room for negotiation on the details)--could be considered non-partisan.

The nature of our current political system, folks, is that think-tanks and advocacy groups today are partisan: The Center for American Progress is liberal, Heritage is conservative, Cato is libertarian, etc. etc. etc. There are very few sources left that could in any way be considered disinterested any more, which is one of the problems with our national dialogue.

Which brings me back to the comment at DL:

There is only one progressive think tank in Delaware that I am aware of and it is truly non partisan, based on good government practices, that is: deinformedvoters.org.

It's just wrong.

Personally, I would argue that the Caesar Rodney Institute is not (at least not yet) a think-tank, either, even if it is trying to acquire some of the attributes. For all that you may disdain Heritage, or CAP, or Cato, at least those think-tanks generally tried to employ credentialed if usually quite partisan scholars and academics along with the ideologues.

Which is why they have been so successful, first for the GOP and more lately for the Dems.

CRI does show me any serious academics or policy experts from anywhere, so there is no reason to think it is anything more than a partisan lobbying effort attempting to influence political discourse in favor of conservative economic/political causes--or, with a bit more glitz on its website and some more money behind it, a mirror image of what DUC/PA originally set out to be.

And I suspect that after the novelty wears off, it will be quoted in the WNJ about as frequently as DUC/PA is.

Both are fair game practices, and unless somebody can prove that something illegal is being done with campaign funds, I don't give a rat's butt whether Charile Copeland is using it to subsidize his campaign team between elections or not--though I should note he has unequivocally denied either giving CRI money or influencing its board, hires, or subject matter.

Even if he's stretching the truth, in the same State with the incredible revolving Thurman Adams campaign fund, the Nancy Wagner husband employment agency, the Orlando George legacy seat on the Big Head committee, and the "I'll support John Atkins no matter which party he pledges or how many times he's caught driving drunk" fan club, I'm actually supposed to get worked up about this?

Some folks who take their anonymous, sanctimonious selves way too seriously need to get a life.

Waiting for the unauthorized biography of El Somnabulo

The Earth is not flat and there are no non-partisan think tanks.

From the Center for Defense Information to the Center for American Progress, from Heritage to the Urban Institute, think-tanks exist to influence public policy, and--by defintion--you should always take into account the ideological bias and potential funding sources of any organization that purports to be publishing research reports or policy studies intended to shape public opinion or legislative priorities.

A lot of our liberal/progressive friends have severe underwear bunching problems over the fact that the Caesar Rodney Institute doesn't use the word conservative on its home page [even though terms like free-market, rule of law, individual liberty and other key code words appear right up front. The CRI even discloses its association with the State Policy Network openly; anybody who knows anything about the funding and political leanings of American think tanks should know that this means we are dealing with a conservative enterprise--no need for an expose.

But the issue of who is funding CRI and its association with Charlie Copeland has come up, with this amazing offer from Delawareliberal's El Somnabulo:

El Somnambulo finds himself in such a circumstance today. His insistence on openness and transparency is so profound, and Charlie Copeland’s failure to provide such openness and transparency is so…transparent, that ‘bulo is prepared to part with his most prized possession.

The Beast Who Slumbers is prepared to go much further than that. Not only will he publicly unmask, but he will reveal his civilian identity. He’ll even go further. He’ll permit Copeland to write an unauthorized bio of ‘bulo or, if Copeland prefers, Copeland will be free to select whomever he wants to write it–El Burrito Junior, Monsignor Lavelle, a ‘moonlighting flak’ from the Caesar Rodney Institute, or any other Mindless Mignonette (Greenville spelling) he might prefer. And DL will print it, word-for-word.

In exchange, all Copeland has to do is fully and completely answer the following questions HERE at Delaware Liberal (most of you have seen these questions before, but none of you have yet seen them answered by Copeland):

What's interesting about this is that Copeland has already unequivocally answered all of 'bulo's initial questions, presented here as pairs so that you can judge for yourself [questions from here; answers from here]"

'bulo:

Are you supporting CRI in any financial capacity and, if so, to what extent?

Copeland:

I have not given anything to CRI and am unaware of any significant gift by any family member to CRI (although their charitable donations are their own — I don’t ask and they don’t tell). I have never asked any family member to give any money to CRI, either.

'bulo:

What role did you play, and do you continue to play, in the choice of staff and/or board positions for the CRI?

Copeland:

I have had no involvement in the set up of the Board, the selection of employees, or the selection of areas into which they are doing research, I think that it is great and am very supportive.

'bulo:

If you are involved in CRI, why have you chosen not to provide the same transparency to your role as you demand of state government, for example?

Copeland:

[Answered by denial of involvement in previous two questions.]

'bulo added one additional question:

What involvement, if any, do staff and/or members and/or others affiliated with the Caesar Rodney Institute have in the creation of content and/or research for your Resolute Determination blog?

Copeland has not, to date, answered this lone question. I don't think, however, that this question is one for which an answer can legitimately be asked in a blogging community that has declared (and in the case of el Somnabulo whined about it) that the worst possible sin is the outing of a blogger. El Somnabulo regularly blogs based on supposed inside information, the source of which he/she does not disclose, along with his/her own identity.

It is, of course, possible that Charlie Copeland is lying, and if El Somnabulo or anyone else has proof of that they should now step forward and nail him, as his responses were all unambiguous.

Absent that evidence, however, it seems time for El Somnabulo to come forward with a few biographical details.

Just don't hold your breath.

Disclaimer: I don't work with or for CRI; don't have a high opinion of the work they have thus far produced; don't agree with their faux free-market approach; and think Charlie's blog is pretty much filled with drivel and GOP talking points rather than anything useful or informative.

But if you are going to make charges and demand answers, then when you get them you need to provide the evidence that the answers you got are wrong, or else you need to STFU and do what you promised.

Comment rescue: Government by blackmail

Tyler recently posted on the Federal government's intent to withhold highway funds from States unless they pass legislation making driving while texting illegal. This is, of course, the same mechanism that the Feds used to force States to lower speed limits in the 1970s and to make failure to wear a seat belt a primary offense over the past decade.

Progressives, with Dana Garrett standing in as our exemplar today, think this is exactly what government should be doing:

I read that texting while driving is just as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. If the Feds said to states who had no laws against drunk driving "No bucks until you pass such laws," then I'd say Amen because those states are acting against the public interest. Therefore, if texting is just as dangerous as drving drunk, then I think the Feds making this condition is a great idea.

This is my response:

Let's unpack the consequences of your position, Dana.

Federal highway funds pay for multiple safety-related issues on State roadways, from improved crash barriers to sobriety check points.

It is therefore your position that if a State disagrees with the Federal government over the propriety of safety measure X that an enlightened response is to refuse to fund all other safety measures?

Yep. That's enlightened paternalism from the progressive state, all right: government by blackmail.

Dana offered this rejoinder:

"It is therefore your position that if a State disagrees with the Federal government over the propriety of safety measure X that an enlightened response is to refuse to fund all other safety measures"

States disagree w/ an established fact? Your use of "disagree" is a monument to liberal hermeneutics. They might as well disagree that jumping off tall buildings is bad for your health. [Followed by two citations on studies showing driving while texting is dangerous.]

This difference of opinion needs to be unpacked, because it highlights a major distinction between progressives and libertarians [who actually agree on lots of issues].

When it comes to issues of safety, progressives generally take an ends justify the means approach, and consider it acceptable for the Federal government to demand compliance with specific regulations even if the Feds do so by threatening to make conditions even more unsafe.

Don't agree with the Feds on speed limits, seat belts, or driving while texting? Then the Feds will remove all money for better guard rails, repaving dangerous roads, installing new stoplights, conducting DUI checkpoint....

According to progressives, this is perfectly acceptable as long as their cause represents an established fact, usually pontificated with the bland assurance that science has spoken and only the irrational would dispute these demands, therefore justifying placing other citizens at increased risk.

But the first question should be: is the science by which the Feds make these decisions so immaculate and disinterested?

And the answer is: not really. Decisions about what to study, who funds the studies, and how the recommendations are made are the dirty little secrets of the whole process. Let's take the example of seat belt use on school buses, which only two States (New York and New Jersey) mandate.

Here's the kind of arguments that a major industry lobbying group has used to keep States [much less the Federal government] from passing laws to require seat belts on school buses:

Seat belts are of no value in the majority of fatal accidents.

More children are killed around school buses -- walking to and from the school bus stop -- than inside school buses.

No data proves conclusively that seat belts reduce fatalities or injuries on school buses.

School buses are specifically designed with safety in mind. They are heavier and experience less crash force than smaller cars and trucks.

School buses also have high padded seats specifically design to absorb impact.

There is no guarantee that once installed students will use seatbelts. Studies have shown that mixed and improper use of seat belts can increase the risk of injuries.

There is concern that seat belts could be used as weapons to strike or choke other passengers.

Money proposed for seat belt installation could be better spent on other safety measures.

[Obviously the folks who worry that school children will beat each other do death with the buckles have met my children, but I digress.]

Look at the quality of these arguments. Because more children get injured walking to the bus stop we shouldn't make them safer on the bus? No data proves that seat bealts reduce fatalities or injuries? Improper use of seat belts could increase injuries? Some lobbying group, huh?

Except that, uh, these are not the talking points of an industry lobbying group, they are the talking points of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Or consider that insurance company studies have repeatedly found that eating while driving is just as distracting and dangerous as drunk driving or [by implication] cell phone usage? Why hasn't the NHTSA demanded that eating while driving be made a primary offense?

The real answer is that the decision of which actions will be considered for Federal implementation is rarely an immaculate scientifie process, but a political process.

Besides, there is already on the books in virtually every State a law that covers cell phone usage at the wheel: inattentive driving.

But that's not sufficient for many of our progressive friends, who want to go even farther: banning the possession of a switched-on cell phone in the passenger compartment of any vehicle--not just those being operated by the driver.

This sort of behavior has two consequences: (1) it increases risks for other people; and (2) it encourages the government to use blackmail in situations that are hardly life and death.

1) Let's try a thought experiment. Delaware misses the deadline for passing a Driving While Texting law. The Feds withhold money for fixing guardrails on Route 1. Because the guardrails are not replaced, a mother driving loses control on the ice, and--swerving off the road--smashes through a barrier that was never replaced, rolls her car, and kills both children in the back seat. Is the Federal government justified in increasing her risks while driving in order to force Delaware to pass specific pieces of legislation? Progressive say Yes. Of course they don't fund any studies to examine the increased risks created via government by blackmail.

2) Recently the Federal Department of Education has followed suit with the NHTSA by threatening to withhold millions in Federal education funds from States that don't keep testing statistics in a manner that satisfies the educrats. For example, in California, where students are already suffering from massive budget cuts, the Feds are now demanding that the State change its laws on teacher assessments or the Department of Education will take even more money away from inner-city children, children who do not speak English fluently, students with special needs.

This is ethical progressive behavior on the part of the State, right progressives? You don't do exactly what we want, and we will penalize your students by starving your schools of money....

Notice how the argument slips from the Feds preventing harm [texting while driving] to the Feds merely enforcing what it considers to be a comparative advantage [certain forms of teacher evaluation], and doing both through blackmail.

There are, to my mind, legitimate reasons for Federal intervention in certain activities by the State: States trying to circumvent the US Constitution to deny voting rights based on exra-constitutional and non-constitutional laws comes to mind as one example. States subverting due process laws would be another.

But the idea that the Federal government should be empowered to increase the risks for other drivers or for school children in order to enforce compliance with its mandates is where Libertarians draw a line that Progressives apparently do not even see.

This is the quotation placed in the mouth of H. G. Wells in the movie Time After Time:

The first man to raise a fist is the man who has run out of ideas.

Pretty much describes government tactics in insuring compliance with its wishes.

A time to find out if we are a government of laws: Federal judge orders Gitmo prisoner freed

From the ACLU:

WASHINGTON – A federal judge today ordered the government to release Guantánamo detainee and American Civil Liberties Union client Mohammed Jawad, who has been illegally detained by the U.S. for almost seven years. The Afghan government has indicated that it is prepared to receive Jawad immediately and unconditionally. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle gave the Justice Department until August 21 to release Jawad from Guantánamo and transfer him to the custody of the Afghan government.

Judge Huvelle also ordered the Justice Department to inform Congress of its plans for returning Jawad to Afghanistan by August 6, and to produce a report on the status of his repatriation by August 24.

The following can be attributed to Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project and one of Jawad's lawyers in his habeas corpus case:

"Judge Huvelle made clear that Mr. Jawad has been illegally detained and the government has no credible evidence to continue holding him. We are pleased that the Justice Department has expressed a commitment to getting him home so that this nightmare of abuse and injustice can finally come to an end."

Now the question becomes, "Will the Feds comply," or like President Andrew Jackson was supposed to have said, will the Obama administration respond, "Judge Huvelle has made her ruling; now let's see her enforce it."

I am really, really, REALLY hoping that we're going to find out that the US Constitution means something to our government here.

RC Gnostic kicks ass--and so does the ACLU

H/t Big Bend Bikers for Freedom:



Whoever thought that ordering a pizza would turn into a session of end-of-life counseling?

Redwaterlilly, Mike Protack, and the Ganges River...

... all revolve around a particular issue in my somewhat fevered mind.

I have a colleague who has done considerable world traveling. He is a teacher, who considers himself a naturalist (in the Darwinian sense) and an anthropologist, and who fervently believes that religious and ethnic strife will destoy the human race.

About a decade back he spent six weeks in India. He happened one day to come upon a 90+ year old Hindu "holy man" who begins each day by wading naked into the Ganges River and swimming and drinking without worrying about the feces and other detritus floating along on the current.

My friend passionately explained germ theory and all the health hazards to the mystic who had been performing this ritual for the past seven decades. He expalined that continuous exposure to pathogens and microbes and parasites would inevitably lead to disease, infection, and death.

My friend was genuinely unable to figure out why the Indian holy man did not immediately change his ways and stop bathing daily in the Ganges River, now that modern scientific truth had been explained to him.

I bet you all know somebody like my friend.

Redwaterlilly recently posted about the Delawareliberal post on Republican/conservative bloggers visiting an avowedly liberal/progressive website; in her posts she specifically mentions perennial GOP candidate Mike Protack:

One of my favorite reads, Delaware Liberal, is receiving a large amount of comments from right wingers and Republicans. At times those commenter’s have the audacity to complain about the liberal view of the authors — well, it’s Delaware LIBERAL after all, isn’t it? Those idiots, like Mike Protack, really are annoying. Do they think that their replies on liberal blogs will change anybody from being a liberal to becoming conservative? Since Protack’s posts are mostly just full of talking points or incoherent, I don’t think he will succeed in it. It’s sort of like having straight people coming to my blog and trying to convince me to become straight — not going to happen — ever.

Even if you happen to be a conservative or a Republican, you have to admit that few if any of Mike Protack's posts at DL could ever be characterized as an attempt to engage. Mostly they are lectures, one-hit expositions on the failure of liberal thought that appear to be lifted direct from one of his websites [can't say that for certain because I have moral scruples that prevent me from clicking through to find out]. By contrast, regular conservative commenters at DL (RWR. Anoni, Mike W., etc.) at least attempt to take part in the dialogue.

But I guess I have to wonder why.

I see the same thing here, and I suspect most every political blogger does. After all, whether you are Delawaredem or David Anderson or Hube, you would not be blogging at all if you did not possess strong political convictions. Yet people persistently pop into a liberal, or a conservative, or a libertarian blog and drop a one-liner that they are just as convinced as my friend wading hip-deep in Ganges sewage will immediately change my whole perspective on life and politics, bringing me to my knees in a blinding epiphany.

As Redwaterlilly says--for me, for David Anderson, for Delawaredem, for Dana Garrett: not going to happen.

This is not so say that real, even harsh disagreement is not legitimate and fun and an inherent part of the spectacle of blogging. When folks like Dana, Hube, DD, David Anderson or others take the time to excoriate one of my positions in the comments, or to fire back from their own blogs, that's the great fun. When regular critics/commenters like A1 or tom (from entirely different perspectives) castigate me for a weaker than usual argument, it is mutually enjoyable intellectual fencing.

What's a great strength of the Delaware blogosphere (as opposed to the South Carolina blogopshere where my friend Waldo writes) is that we all do engage each other directly rather than talk completely past each other. As such, I think I read a great deal more detailed progressive arguments than the average libertarian, and my progressive/liberal friends spend more time grappling with [or at least ridiculing] libertarian ideas that most liberals would ever contemplate.

But the one-line commenters who think they are all going to change some of us are like my friends in the Ganges River: blissfully unaware that piously quoting their own orthodoxy while standing hip-deep in water turned brown from the turds floating in it is not going to change anybody's mind.

A Delaware Libertarian exclusive: Interview with Libertarian State Senate candidate Wendy Jones

Although I have explained my disagreement with Libertarian 19th District State Senate candidate Wendy Jones regarding childhood immunizations, I also believe strongly [contra Barbie] that people should know exactly what a candidate stands for--particularly Libertarian candidates. So I sent Wendy five questions and requested responses. Here they are:

1. At least one blogger has suggested that in the 19th District Senate race there are really four conservatives running. She says this from the perspective of being an LGBT citizen who does not see anyone in the field addressing the issues that concern her. What do Libertarians (in general) and you (in particular) offer such an individual that is distinct from the Democrat-Republican status quo?

Firstly, while I am a hard-line Libertarian, I am also a member of the alternative community & have an alternative relationship. Before I can address the concerns of anyone in that community, I first have to hear from them. Anybody questioning my stance on the topics which I have addressed already have to first realize just where these questions are coming from and to whom I was addressing. The venues so far have been in the SCCOR meeting in the Oak Orchard VFW & the Crossroads Community church. Both venues have been strongly right-leaning as well as christian-fundamentalist. While risking sounding simplistic and over-generalizing, also noting that there were certainly others from different groups there, my responses have been to questions from those two main groups of voters.

One must also keep in mind as to what office I'm running -- I'm running to represent the citizens (hopefully most of whom will be voting, for me!) in District 19 in Sussex Co. The questions I've answered so far, and will probably be answering this afternoon (Wednesday) at 5:PM on http://www.WGMD.com/ 92.7FM and again on this Saturday 7:AM, same station/site, as well as www.WZBHrocks.com/ 93.5FM tomorrow after 7:AM (Thursday) will most probably be from the same area. If anyone has additional concerns which might allow me to elucidate on additional topics, now's your chance. I'll also be participating in the Candidate's Debate, hosted by the League of Women Voters, Thursday evening @ 7:PM at the Sussex Co. Council Chambers on The Circle, in Georgetown, Sussex Co. DE. There is a link on our website http://www.DelawareLiberty.com/ where anyone may click into both the audio & video of the proceedings. It is my understanding that all four candidates will be present; it will be the first and only time to my knowledge that Polly "Adams" Mervine has decided to make herself available in a public debate.

I'm also planning on being available to meet-n-greet at the Smith's family Restaurant & the Greenwood Volunteer Fire Dept. Chicken BBQ, both in Greenville, both Friday & Saturday. If there is a specific time & place where anyone would like me to meet, either personally or publically, please contact either myself or my campaign manager, Brian Shields, either through this address, my home ph# 302-684-5373, or my cell# 302-682-2061. I'll let Brian decide whether he wants his cell# publicized. I see it as my duty. One of us will get back to anyone who contacts us ASAP.

Regarding the last point, what do I & the Libertarians have to offer that is distinct from the Dem-Rep status-quo, both I & the Libertarian philosophy stand for less government & more individual responsibility. The Reps would have "Big Brother" abuse the government's function by restricting/dictating such civil & religious issues, specifically SB121, for instance. It is both my & the general Libertarian stance that it is not the government's place to interfere & intrude upon the rights of consenting adults to contract (which is what marriage basically is) within the sanctity of their home (& church, whichever that may be, or not, if that is their choice). Of course, it is neither the government's function to interfere with the citizen's rights of freedom of association & to do business.

On the other hand, the Dems would have "Big Brother & the Nanny State" play "Robbin' Hood" & interfere with those who are trying to make use of their entrepreneurial skills & willingness to take chances in order to make & run a business for themselves & their families. The Constitution guarantees equal opportunity, not equal results. Those who, for one reason or another, cannot do as well can be helped much more positively & efficiently by private charities rather than by the present system of equalizing poverty.

The sticking point comes in when one or another specific group calls upon "Big Brother & the Nanny State" to intercede on their behalf when they perceive they are being injured in some way. Instead of accepting the responsibility of taking action themselves & making their own lives better, they would have the government force their own views & attitudes upon others. This is as much a crime as what originated the problem, & makes matters only worse. And, once one or more particular groups are singled out for special consideration, then what do we do with all the others we've left out? The only solution is to give everyone the same special consideration & ban all discrimination, which is really a "thought crime". Now, do you see just how complicated this gets, & where this is going? While we're at it, why don't we just ban all crime, & all evil while we're at it? Thoughts & attitudes are changed by deeds, not my force or law.

The solution is to vote with your dollar & the ballot box & your feet. Associate with people who like you, who want to do business with you, who value you as a person & who are willing to join together to boycott and/or vote together, or, even run for office themselves? How's that for a positive solution? Calling in "Big Brother & the Nanny State" to do what is really your own responsibility is actually the worst thing that you can do... because then you have handed your power (& responsibility) over to a faceless, self-serving entity that is just as likely to be turned against you tomorrow. Thoughts & attitudes cannot be legislated. The best solution is to earn one's place in society & gain that respect. Never forget, a government big enough to give you everything you want is also strong enough to take everything you have. And it will, just as the "other side" bends its ear too!

2. If you win the 19th District Senate race, you will become a party of one in the General Assembly. As such, how will you effectively represent the interests of your constituents?

I regard the challenge of performing this duty most seriously -- and it will be my honor I hold in exchange. It will be my duty to represent those citizens of the 19th district, but I will also not work to try to maneuver "pork-barrel" projects described in an unequal or unfair share in relation to the other districts around mine. I will do as much as I possibly can while still being honest & transparent to them as well as myself. No backdoor games or deals, & promoting & supporting the use & expansion of petition & referendum so that specific issues can be addressed directly by those directly affected. I will not play games with tricks like "desk-drawer vetos" & will do everything possible to have legislation written & understandable so that each citizen can have the opportunity to read & understand it, & not in such volumes that they simply cannot be read in time & are too often rushed through in late-night sessions without even being read. It is also my goal of being accessible to each & every citizen to be able to have a direct connection as to what may be of most concern to them.

3. Everyone in Delaware has watched the trainwreck that is the 2009 State budget. Everyone knows it will get worse next year. What perspectives and specific proposals do you bring to the table to deal with the State's fiscal situation?

As it has been said, Delaware doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. There are many jobs that can be done more efficiently & effectively by using Delaware-based private businesses competing by a sealed-bid process. The prevailing-wage law needs to be ditched. The huge burden placed upon our healthcare system by undocumented immigrants can be addressed by utilizing & expanding the existing enforcement framework & expanding enforcement officersas required, & funded by increasing the fines for any businesses caught violating current employment & immigration laws. We also need to minimize the tax burden on both current & prospective businesses in order to allow for them to move into DE & expand. Minimizing the size & involvement of government on all levels while encouraging private Delaware-based businesses to complete to replace the services that the State already does. We have state-owned golf courses, marinas & a helicopter which it has no business owning. They should be sold to benefit the budget & their use be replaced by the same private-competition process mentioned above. Getting more ideas & input from the citizens will bring an untold pertinent & effective solutions to the table as well.

4. Explain Del Pointe to readers in the rest of the universe, and explain your position on it.

Del Pointe is basically a DE state-sponsored, huge multi-gaming racino complex proposed in the Millsboro general area. Citizens in that area are outraged because not only does it conflict with their religious sentiments, it will prey upon those who can least afford it. Also, it will present a huge new competitive element to the already existing infrastructure & private businesses, & be subject to the strong effects of cronyism & special interests. It is also basically an unhealthy practice to draw almost 50% of its income from the most vulnerable families in the area. For those who still want to gamble, there are already gaming facilities available a relatively short drive to the north. Plus, diversifying the types of games to include those of skill & thought (vs. simple slot machines) will give the gamers a fighting chance & promote active thought.

5. Delaware is among one of the highest spenders, per capita, on public school education, and yet our test=2 0scores are consistently mediocre (despite some recent small advances). As Senator from the 19th District, what will be your position on the best way to improve public education in the First State.

I am a strong supporter of a school voucher program. Parents have the right to choose what type & quality of school their children attend, whether it be public, parochial, charter, private or homeschool. Parents should have more influence as to what their children are taught & will be strongly encouraged to get more personally & actively involved. Parents should only pay for the type of school, & the number of children, which they are using. Those with no children in the school system should not be taxed.

And Wendy's closing comments

My apologies for the delayed response, Steve, but I have been swamped. You did, indeed, have some hardball questions. Thank you for allowing me the latitude to answering them!

I look fwd to hearing from any who might still have questions & encourage anyone interested to listen to the Candidate's Debate this evening 7:PM either at the Sussex Co. Council Chambers in Georgetown or through the link-click (once for video & once for audio) through our campaign website www.DelawareLiberty.com Also, don't forget your one last chance to call into www.WGMD.com 92.7 this Saturday 7:AM & also meet me as I've mentioned above if there are any concerns which I might have inadvertantly left unaddressed.

The one last thought I want to leave you with:

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten! If you like what has been happening, & want more of the same, just keep doing the same thing. If you want a real, new, innovative opportunity for an honest, personal, Constitutionally-based representative, I'm really the only choice there is. Unless, of course, you choose not to vote at all, & then you won't have any right to complain.

So, Empower Yourselves! Activate Yourselves! Legalize Yourselves! Get out & VOTE FOR ME on Monday, August 3rd!

Yours, In Liberty,

Gwendolyn "Wendy" Jones,
Libertarian Candidate for Sussex Co. Senate District 19

I'd like to thank Wendy--especially after I just wrote a post very critical of her--for responding to these questions. You may not like her positions, but at least you now know them. That's a hell of a lot more than can be said for some of the competition.

Wendy Jones and school-age immunizations: a post I wish I did not have to write

Caught in the tender clutches of United Airlines returning from Colorado I did not see the following comment at Delawareliberal by Libertarian 19th District State Senate candidate Wendy Jones until late last night--too late to make any reasoned response before falling asleep.

Here is the part that Wendy wrote which is most problematic for me:

“polio” – can you be sure it’s just polio if it’s the State that mandates it? Should it perhaps be a better idea that educating on the pros & cons rather than sticking a needle willy-nilly into your child filled with whatever they decide to tell you is in it? What if, through viral gene replacement technology, for instance, thought patterns & personalities could (& even might be) changed to eliminate “undesirables”, for instance, & ensure a dull, compliant populace? Mandated by the State?

These statements are troubling for a variety of reasons. For the sake of intellectual consistency I need to parse them out, despite the fact [perhaps especially because of the fact] that Wendy is running as the Libertarian candidate in this election.

1) The level of paranoia approaches birther/9-11 truther saturation. You can have abstract arguments over the government's role in mandating public health measures like vaccinations or the wisdom of particular vaccines ala anthrax [as I will discuss in point two], but the idea that can you be sure it's just polio if it's the State that mandates it? Not sure about Wendy, but while the State mandates these immunizations, the vaccines themselves are produced by private companies and in general administered by your own pediatrician's office. Having worked for a military unit that was responsible for administering vaccinations to soldiers, I have been personally responsible for quality control and batch testing for vaccines. When dealing with conspiracies, you always need to ask yourself, What would I have to believe in order for this to be true?

In this case I would have to believe that to inject my children with chemicals through viral gene replacement technology, for instance, thought patterns & personalities could (& even might be) changed to eliminate “undesirables”, for instance, & ensure a dull, compliant populace? that virtually every pediatrician and public health care worker in America had been either duped or co-opted into the conspiracy, and that the government has so penetrated virtually all pharmaceutical companies to the point where it can not only require them to produce something other than polio vaccine labeled as polio vaccine, but also has managed to completely suppress any whistle-blowers from talking about it for decades.

Is the State capable doing dire medical things to people? Of course it is. The Tuskegee Syphillis experiment and the US Army LSD experiments in the early 1960s are prime examples. But those examples are also instructive: small groups of people working in secrecy against the larger policies of the government, and whose misdeeds were found out pretty quickly because of their ineptitude. The Army officers conducting the LSD experiments, for example, actually took movies of the troops they had unwittingly dosed with hallucinogens and showed them openly at a variety of training occasions. The perpetrators of the Tuskegee experiment actually submitted their results to refereed journals.

The common threads in these conspiracies are small scale and incompetence. For a Libertarian, who generally holds government actions to be awkward and incompetent unless otherwise proven, suspecting the government of such a massive intricate conspiracy to inject public school students with gene therapies as yet unknown to mainstream science is--I am sorry to say--simply loonie tunes.

2) Should the government have the authority to mandate vaccinations as a public health matter? Here I follow Libertarian philosopher Tal Scriven, who proposes a four-point checklist for whether or not the State should have the power to prohibit or mandate any particular actions, such as universal vaccination of school children. [Note: what you will read below is my plain-English paraphrase of Scriven's rather more difficult academic writing; you can read the original here]:

1. The law must be clearly and unambiguously written.

2. The law must be universally publicized.

3. The law must prohibit an action (or an inaction) that can be demonstrated to pose serious harm to individuals.

4. The law may not be enacted if either (a) the pleasure (or good) associated with the action/inaction outweighs the harm; or (b) if prohibiting such actions/inactions creates a greater harm than leaving it alone.

Scriven describe harm in a pretty narrow fashion, as Harm should include not only physical pain but also death and severe psychological suffering.

Let's think about vaccinations then:

1. You can't go to public schools without being vaccinated against common, massively infectious diseases.

2. Yeah, it's universally publicized.

3. The failure to vaccinate has a well-documented consequence of public health risks not just to individuals but to whole populations.

4. Does the good associated with this law outweight the harm it could potentially cause?

Ah, number four--there's the potential rub, leading to number three:

3) What are the public health implications [positive and negative] of universal vaccinations? Positive: prevention or limitation of widespread infectious diseases like the polio epidemics of the 1940s and 1950s. Negative: some tiny percentage of those vaccinated will have moderate to serious to life-threatening reactions even to modern vaccines, and large numbers of people believe [erroneously, the experts tell us] that large-scale vaccination is causally linked to autism. Urban legends aside, the science on the autism/vaccination non-linkage is pretty clear and unambiguous (and shared by medical authorities in other countries who have no association with our government).

But what about the .0001% of people who will have a severe enough reaction to be life-threatening? Can a Libertarian justify a government mandate that places a person at any level of risk they would not, as individuals, choose to accept for themselves? The answer, for me, lies in Scriven's fourth requirement, about the relationship between harm and inaction.

Here's the rub: in a society in which there are no universal immunizations my children have a much MUCH higher risk of death or life-threatening harm from mass infectious diseases than they do from the tiny percentage chance that they will react badly to a vaccine. Moreover, the government in taking the universal action of requiring immunizations of all children is not transferring wealth or selectively benefitting any population; instead, in an originalist Constitutional sense, the government is promoting the general welfare.

As a Libertarian and Constitutionalist, I think therefore that immunizations for major infectious diseases as a prerequisite for entering the school system represents a legitimate State power. That does not mean the State should get to vaccinate you against anything, or that people shouldn't be skeptical until a scientific consensus emerges, but that limited public health measures are consistent with Libertarian thought.

Which is going to subject me to shitloads of criticism from a number of my anarcho-capitalist and severely minarchist friends.... But it will not be the first time for that.

So all of this comes back to Wendy Jones and Delaware's 19th State Senate race. Her position on vaccinations is--as I have said above--unfortunately, loonie tunes from my perspective. I cannot credit it as a serious policy position, and it raises disquieting questions about her understanding of science and the Libertarian perspective of public policy.

On the other hand, all of us (including Polly ADAMSADAMSADAMS Mervine's husband) have our own individual weird beliefs, such as the idea that the 19th District's Senator should vote based on Mennonite theological concerns about sexuality. [It sort of tells me that the talent pool in the district is shallow enough to be safe for non-swimmers.] Like Redwaterlilly I am beginning to feel like the district has a race between four social conservatives [even though I do think RWL does a disservice to Wendy's positions on LGBT questions.]

Fortunately, no Delaware State Senator is going to have the ability to vote upon or eliminate immunization programs for school children. [And, no, Dana, before you ask, I do not equate cold-blooded public health decisions with paternalism.]

And I really do believe that yet another nepotist Democrat or socially conservative GOPer [even if running as an IPoD] is not healthy for Delaware's economic future, so that Wendy sitting in Dover voting No, no, no is probably preferrable [Ron Paul has made a fortune as "Dr. No"] to the alternatives, I have to pull back from any unequivocal endorsement of my own party's candidate, not that my endorsement or lack of it matters one whit in a district in which I do not live and cannot vote...

But if I expect Dems and GOPers to confront strange behavior in their own parties, I have to be honest enough to do so within my own movement.

Nanny Goes Federal to Ban Text Messaging While Driving

The Democrat nannies are on the loose, run amok, busting out the time-worn federal funds withholding extortion to hammer the states into compliance with their latest federal fetish to control our daily habits and activities.

Is there no end to the mass control freak mentality of this ilk? What's next? Mandating cars have ignition shutoff sensors triggered by use of a mobile device inside the vehicle?

Hell, why not...it all makes sense in service to sating nanny's whims, so nanny can make use all feel safe and happy (and nanny's helpers nicely bloated with traffic fine revenues, btw).

Lawmakers want ban on texting while driving

The Associated Press - Wed., July 29, 2009

WASHINGTON - Democratic lawmakers called for states to ban texting while driving or face cuts in highway funds, citing the need to reduce driver distraction and potential highway deaths and injuries.

"When drivers have their eyes on their cell phones instead of the road, the results can be dangerous and even deadly," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who unveiled the legislation Wednesday with Democrats Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making texting while driving illegal.

Some critics have questioned whether the laws could be enforced, whether there is enough data to warrant such bans, or if reckless driving statutes already cover texting behind the wheel.

Steve Largent, a former Oklahoma congressman who leads CTIA — The Wireless Association, said his organization supports "state legislative remedies to solve this issue. But simply passing a law will not change behavior. We also need to educate new and experienced drivers on the dangers of taking their eyes off the road and hands off the wheel."

The Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety agencies, said it does not doubt the dangers of texting and driving but does not support a ban because it would be difficult to enforce.

"Highway safety laws are only effective if they can be enforced and if the public believes they will be ticketed for not complying. To date, that has not been the case with many cell phone restrictions," said Vernon Betkey, the highway safety association's chairman.

The sheer irresponsibility of these people is breathtaking...threatening to endanger potentially 1,000,000's of motorists by denying traffic infrastructure funds (taken from the states in the first place to be doled back out by federal overseers) to maintain roads (interstate highways for starters), in order to punish the "states" (i.e. endanger every motorist using roads in those states) that dare refuse to have their traffic safety laws dictated from on-high by the likes of Chuckie Schumer (AH-NY)...

I guess the integrity of the nation's transportation infrastructure (that they argue is so neglected) isn't as important to nanny Schumer et al as asserting ham-fisted nit-picky control over the actions of every last motorist in the United States, based on little more than the extremely-rare exceptions, with little or no conclusive proof that the "problem" prompting such control is even an actual problem.

But alas, THINK OF THE CHILDREN! (All 300 million of us).

Dana Garett on Libertarians and Paternalism: A Disappointing Start

I had much higher hopes for the quality of analysis that Dana Garrett would bring to his series on Libertarians than the current installment merits. In it, Dana indulges himself in creating (without sources or direct attribution) straw-man libertarians who think parents have the right to deny their children life-saving medical treatment.

My detailed comments and Tyler's have already been registered at the site.

Here's a suggestion that Dana probably won't take (I already offered it once): why not start with a genuine attempt to understand the libertarian philosophy from the perspective of the zero-aggression/no force or fraud principle that is one of the few principles held by virtually all libertarians? If you can't take the time to prove you understand that well enough to critique it rationally, then you can't really make a case that you have any understanding of modern libertarian philosophy.

But then, understanding Libertarianism isn't actually the point of this series, is it, Dana?

What you've really decided to do is to unmask libertarians as irrational fetishists....

Let me ask you, Dana, in all candor, if you are being as diligently honest in your attempt to portray my belief system as you credited me when I wrote I like Dana, but here's why I won't be a Social Democrat in February 2008, and to which you responded:

Bravo! You got it. That's what I believe mostly. I have just a few quibbles here & there, but you are so much on target that to mention them would be to cavil.

Brilliance in a Nutshell : Tyler Cowen Edition

'Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch interviews Tyler Cowen, the prolific George Mason University economics professor, popular blogger, New York Times columnist, and author of the brand new Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World.'

Seriously, Cowen has wonderful perspective and great insight. Really interesting thoughts on autism and "ADD", among other things.

Nuts in a Nutshell : Krugman Edition

Money quote : "Maybe stuff will turn up. Maybe there'll be anotherrrrrrrr.....stimulus package...uh, ya know...there'll be more stuff...."

(Is that the technical term for whatever you're talking about, Perfesser? "$tuff"?)

My A** This Country Is Left-Liberal...

And neither the 2008 nor Obama's election changed a damn thing in this regard.

From some hardcore 'wingnut' polling data (Source : CBS/NY Times)...

Question : How would you describe your views on most political matters? Generally do you think of yourself as liberal, moderate, or conservative?

(Click on image for clearer view)

It's Like Watching A Graph of the World Slowly Waking Up to Horrible Reality...

With a whole bunch of dupes now battling messiah hangover....

Libertarians and the Delaware blogosphere: You know you're making headway when they develop talking points to use against you

I was going to do this as a top ten list, but could not decide on which one was absolutely either (a) the dumbest or (b) the most hypocritical.

Recently both Dana Garrett of Delaware Watch and jason of Delawareliberal have decided to turn their attention to Libertarians. This is a good thing, despite the biased nature of the coverage, because it indicates that they are now having to deal with Libertarian ideas as the primary opposition philosophy rather than the strange rantings of the Lawn Jockey Caucus of the Old Confederacy and Buffalo Commons Party (the political entity formerly known as the GOP). This has brought a whole host of other local commenters out to try their hand at stupid put-down lines for Libertarians.

It's worth a trip through the tripe to take a look at just what passes for political discourse in Delaware these days.

We'll start with the one-liners and work up to jason and Dana.

Pandora:

The problem with the Libertarian Party is they can’t agree on what they stand for. Ask 100 Libertarians to define Libertarianism and you’ll receive 100 different answers. I’m still confused.

This is pretty good coming from a Democrat whose party includes both Dennis Kucinich and Max Baucus, Henry Waxman and Tom Carper. There is the germ of a real issue here, as I have written before. There is no Democrat nor any Republican philosophy, only parties. And what holds them together is the urge to elect more Democrats and more Republicans, pretty much regardless of the ideological bent of the individual candidate. Thus the Delaware Democrats trumpet their progressivism, but depended for years on the likes of Thurman Adams to hold their majority in the State Senate, as he killed on liberal bill after another. Now they've nominated Polly [my husband speaks for me because I'm a Barbie doll with no opinions] ADAMSADAMSADAMS Mervine to replace Daddy. Pretty much the only issue-oriented question Polly has answered is that she opposes discrimination protection for Delaware's LGBT community because all those nasty Mennonites in her district won't let her have another opinion.

So what ideology drives Democrats? Pretty much seems to be power for Democrats. The Libertarian mistake has been to name a party after a philosophy rather than choose some high-sounding meaningless pseudo-patriotic title which actually commits them to nothing.

Von Cracker:

Libertarianism = Utopian fantasy.

All ideologies, VC, if seeking 100% adoption of their ideals, represent utopian fantasies. The concept of a representative democracy with essentiall universal suffrage was considered, for centuries, to be a utopian fantasy in Europe until the Americans did it. Want a utopian fantasy? How about the current liberal fantasy that we can simply spend multiples of our entire GDP by printing money, provide stimulus and health care for everyone, and never actually have to pay for it? Or the GOP fantasy that we can keep women in back alleys looking for abortions on coat-hangers, gays inside closets, and funnel all our tax dollars to faith-based charities.

See? It's only a utopian fantasy when you are criticizing somebody else's agenda. When you're supporting a President who employs dozens of high-powered lobbyists in key positions [but says he isn't], compares same-sex marriage to child abuse [but says he is pro-LGBT], and finds endless excuses to increase the military and fight additional foreign wars, your idea of utopian is bound to be a bit biased.

Then there's jason (1):

Where the eff were you Libertarians when George Bush was blowing up shit will nilly, establishing the department of homeland security, saying illegal wire taps were great, getting rid of habeas corpus, adding billions to the national debt, and trying to legislate morality?

Gee, jason, as you admitted on 24 April 2009, the national Libertarian Party opposed every single one of these issues, at a time when large numbers of your beloved Democrats were (a) voting for the Patriot Act; (b) voting to authorize the invasion of Iraq; (c) voting for telecom immunity in the wiretapping issues; (d) spending bazillions of dollars we didn't have; and (e) legislating morality. Unfortunately, jason, you have the infantile fantasy that what you don't notice didn't happen. Works great when you are four years old, but most people have to grow out of it.

Then there's jason (2):

I was paying attention the entire Bush maladministration and I never heard a peep from local or national libertarians. Somebody find me a libertarian site that was prominently anti-Bush. Just one. I beg of you.

OK jason, we won't count this site, because I have only been posting since November 2007. You want one--just one?--try Knappster. Try the national Libertarian Party website. Try Outright Libertarians. Try Next Free Voice.

Oh, sorry, that's four. I shouldn't use big numbers with the numerically challenged.

There's jason (3):

Either the is no real Libertarian Party or you guys seriously suck. Or, you know what? You are really Republicans, but are sick of being looked at funny so now you call yourselves Libertarians. Same wingnut bullshit, new package. That’s probably it.

Let's not ask jason to discuss structural barriers to ballot access for third parties, in which his Democrats collude with their arch-enemies the GOPers to insure that nobody else can even get candidates on the ballot while taking millions of dollars in Federal tax money to support their own campaigns.

There is an accidental kernel of truth in jason's statement (stopped clocks and all that): Libertarians used to be one of the three legs of the GOP back between Buckley (late 50's), Goldwater (60's), and Reagan (80's), but the social conservatives essentially gave us the boot in the 1990s. Oh, and jason, like there are both pro- and anti-abortion rights Democrats (a few) there are also pro- and anti-abortion rights Libertarians. Like there are leftist and centrist Democrats, there are left-Libertarians and right-Libertarians. But in your simplistic world, there is no such thing as a political spectrum within a party, which is why Delaware is represented by that amazingly liberal Tom Carper, huh?

All of the foregoing commenter quotations are from here.

Then there is Dana Garrett's critique of Libertarians, which is too extensive to handle in one go, so I will just start with his concerns about seat belts and helmets:

Debates about budget hikes are very important and honest differences can surround them. But seat-belt laws and, let me add, motorcycle helmet laws?

This is something I don't get about Libertarians. They seem to think that almost any government intrusion is ipso facto bad. That virtually none are beneficial. But surely that seat belts and motorcycle helmets save lives and people from serious injury is uncontroversial to any rational person. I have even heard Libertarians argue to the point of shouting that laws requiring the use of car seats for children were a serious assault on their liberty as parents. Imagine that. Because they hold personal liberty in extremis (as a fetish, in my view), they would willingly let many children risk death and serious injury, children which could be saved by a law only intended to protect them. I think that is bizarre.

Notice, please, that Dana starts by assuming his own political viewpoint [Government should have a primary role in keeping us safe from our own bad decisions] is a universal, and therefore unquestionable, value. To oppose this value makes one, by definition, irrational. And to grind in that point, Dana uses the anecdotal detail, I have even heard Libertarians argue to the point of shouting to imply that because some people with a particular viewpoint argue in a certain way, anybody who shares their philosophy must be irrational.

But let's take his central point: But surely that seat belts and motorcycle helmets save lives and people from serious injury is uncontroversial to any rational person.

In other words, Dana is arguing that it is the State and not the individual which should decide for all individuals what is and what is not appropriate risk-taking. I'll address seat-belt laws, but since I don't ride a motorcycle I will convert that one into mandatory bicycle helmet laws just to be able to use personal examples.

Seat belts: I use my seat belt. I make my children use seat belts. I did so long before the State got around to mandating it. Of course, the State doesn't mandate seat belts for school children riding in government-owned school buses because that would be too expensive. Nor does the State look at the fact that government-mandated airbags in cars increase the fatality rates for smaller adults in the front seats of most vehicles. Nor does the State actually mandate a three-point restraint system in seat belts (based on that used in aircraft) which is known to be far safer than the current shoulder-and-lap belt system now used in American cars. Why? Because the State, in this case, is not a paternalistic, disinterested guardian of the public safety, it is a political process for making deals with special interest groups. And because an individual state like Delaware might decide not to make seat belt usage a primary offense, the Federal government gets its way by threatening to remove highway funds necessary to regrade roads, build guard-rails, or install traffic lights at dangerous intersections.

So point one is that none of these laws are immaculate conceptions of a protective government: they are exercises in State power over individual decision-making.

Point two is that Libertarians do reject the State's power to define risk-taking for individuals. Just last week I allowed my thirteen-year-old son to go rock-climbing in Colorado, hanging by his fingers from mountain ledges over 200 feet above the ground. He was wearing protective gear--the best protective gear I could afford--and working with an expert instructor. But, you know what? Hundreds of rock climbers fall and get injured or die every year even with all the precautions. Certainly the State should step and tell me that my son is not allowed to rock climb. Or ski. Or motocross. Or that my daughter should not be allowed to step into a soccer goal as the keeper wearing only shin guards when she spends a large part of every game diving under the cleats of the opposing players and crashing into metal goal posts.

I make my children wear seat belts because I think it is the right thing to do. The fact that the State wants to coerce me into doing it does not stop me or make me do it.

But from the time they turned twelve I have knowingly flouted the law that requires them to wear bicycle helmets. At age twelve we made the determination that for riding around the neighborhood (as opposed to racing, riding on the highway, or mountain biking) that our children were old enough to make the appropriate decisions about their biking safety. Don't agree with me? Then make your own kids wear their helmets, and I won't try to stop you--unlike Senator Margaret Rose Henry who thinks that even people old enough to have drivers' licenses should have to wear bike helmets under penalty of law.

I have no objection to the State attempting to convince anybody to do the right thing other than I resent my tax dollars being spent on government propaganda. Give people the stats on trans-fats, on smoking, on mountain-climbing, on neck injuries in football games, on sunscreen....

And then STFU and let people make their own decisions.

What is amazing is that civilization has not come to an end with people making their own decisions about safety and risk-taking in the past 5,000 years. Yes: a lot of good people have made choices that left them incapacitated or dead. And a lot of others have gone on to conquer risks and achieved great things that they otherwise might never have attempted had your nanny state been successful in regimenting them into cocoons.

While we're at it, we should probably cancel the Olympic Games and most sports programs except yoga, since there really isn't any way to make downhill skiing into a safe exercise. Hit a damn tree and I don't care what kind of protective gear you are wearing, your time is up.

Is that making a fetish out of indiidual liberty, as Dana likes to say? At first I didn't like the term, but now I'm OK with it.

I would rather make a fetish out of personal liberty than a fetish out of nanny state regulations intended to keep everyone safe from anything more dangerous than a paper cut.

I would rather make a fetish out of personal liberty than a fetish out the idea that only my particular views on what constitutes legitimate political differences of opinions is the only rational viewpoint.

The irony of all this attention to Libertarians is this: all of you criticizing the Libertarian philosophy have libertarian urges that you so zealously protect in your own life. You demand the freedom to make your own decisions, because your own particular case is special.

You're just unwilling to extend the same level of freedom to your fellow citizens.

Wendy Jones: Attracting even more attention....

... probably because she's got the courage to point out the obvious.

The WNJ runs a story on the failure of Democratic candidate Barbie [Polly Adams Mervine, as channeled by her husband and other stand-ins] failing to show up for debates, and it's not Republican Joe Booth but Wendy Jones, Libertarian State Senate candidate in Delaware's 19th District, who steps to the plate:

"At the risk of being a little critical, I'd say it was bordering on arrogant and irresponsible for her not to appear," said Libertarian candidate Wendy Jones, who attended last week's forum despite having undergone back surgery a few days prior. "I can only guess that maybe she's hoping to ride in on her daddy's coattails to office."

Meanwhile, Independent Political Report runs its third story on the Wendy Jones candidacy, and--locally--Delawareliberal blogger jason is apparently so embarrassed by his Go Wendy Jones! endorsement that he has to pen a ridiculous post condemning Libertarians that contradicts his own words from three months ago.

Maybe jason would care to explain how having his own party nominating a woman afraid to answer questions on the issues except through her husband is an indicator that his own party does not suck.

Foot in Mouth Disease regarding Libertarians at Delawareliberal

Another indication that libertarian thought--real libertarian though as opposed to the faux libertarianism of birther Republicans--is starting to worry our liberal and progressive friends: they are paying attention to us.

I've already highlighted the series on Libertarians that Dana Garrett has promised at Delaware Watch, but this next one is too funny to miss.

jason at Delawareliberal now has a post up: Everybody is a Libertarian All of a Sudden:

What a bunch of Johnny Come Latelys losers.

Where the eff were you Libertarians when George Bush was blowing up shit will nilly, establishing the department of homeland security, saying illegal wire taps were great, getting rid of habeas corpus, adding billions to the national debt, and trying to legislate morality? You have your panties in a knot over every little thing Obama does because, “holy shit the slippery slope is gonna git-cha!” (paraphrase)

But Bush, bought the country a ticket to Libertarian Hell and set up a tea party there for eight long years, and you guys were like little church mice, because OH GOD THE TERRORISTS!!

What a joke your pathetic movement is.

I was paying attention the entire Bush maladministration and I never heard a peep from local or national libertarians. Somebody find me a libertarian site that was prominently anti-Bush. Just one. I beg of you.

Either the is no real Libertarian Party or you guys seriously suck. Or, you know what? You are really Republicans, but are sick of being looked at funny so now you call yourselves Libertarians. Same wingnut bullshit, new package. That’s probably it.

The only problem is that jason has already previously admitted, just three months ago, that Libertarians have been opposed to constitutional violations.

Here's the interchange between jason and me on 24 April 2009 that I just quoted back to him:

jason,
You have an incredibly short memory for your own embarrassments.

On 24 April you wrote:

You know Steve your indignation is hilarious. I don’t know how many times I thought, “Well this Bush outrage, at long last will get the libertarians stirred up,”

Only to hear crickets.

I responded:

Your standard and your response are ridiculous.

Hube is not a libertarian, as far as I know.

And it’s pretty difficult for you to hold me responsible for “not speaking out” prior to November 2007 when I started a blog precisely to speak out about that and other issues. Before that, you’d have had to come to my classes, or read articles in homeland security circles, to find me speaking out on a regular basis.

The fact that I didn’t choose to join your little blogfest until November 2007 doesn’t equate with moral or intellectual silence. It only equates with the poverty of your intellectual world view: only what you happen to hear has any relevance.

FYI: as I have proven to you on multiple occasions, if you go back and check the archives of the national LP website, you will find that libertarians have been consistently against the trashing of the constitution since they first opposed the original Patriot Act. Did you? And if so, where can we read about it from 2001-2002?

And you then replied

Sorry Steve. Just checked out that page you mentioned. I guess I took your party’s utter impotence for acquiescence.

To anticipate your next point, I know that the Democrats were pretty impotent throughout as well.

The whole interchange can be found here:

http://www.delawareliberal.net/2009/04/24/around-the-horn-friday-6/#comments

So you can either allow your original apology of three months ago to ride, or you can create a new one. Either way, you really should check your own notes from time to time before you start to spew.

The reason that jason is so--ah--forgetful is that actual Libertarian thought is probably the greatest single obstacle to the entire statist agenda of the Obama administration, and to the hypocritical judicial and foreign policy positions that administration has taken that are either indistinguishable from or extend beyond old Bush abuses.

jason doesn't ever talk about the Obama administration position that it can indefinitely detain people who have been found not guilty by the courts.

jason doesn't ever talk about the Obama administration position that it could execute some Gitmo detainees without trial.

jason doesn't ever talk about the army of lobbyists employed by the Obama administration, the preferred position of Goldman Sachs, the continued move to use the 3rd Infantry Division for domestic police work, or the DOJ equating same-sex marriage with child abuse.

jason prefers to trot out his little Libertarian envy rap, because he stopped complaining about constitutional and civil liberties abuses just as soon as a Democrat got elected

Those Crazy Conspiracist libertarians.....errr, excuse me, Democrat & Republican House Members...Expose Goldman Sachs and Demand Answers....

[I hope they don't hold their breaths waiting for a rational (or any) explanation for Goldman Sachs' special little singular arrangement.]

Dear Chairman Bernanke:

In the fall, Goldman Sachs secured access to government funding by converting from an investment bank into an ordinary bank. Despite this shift, the CFO of the company, David Viniar, said last week that the company is continuing to operate as if it were still a high-risk investment bank: "Our model really never changed," he noted in a quote to Bloomberg. "We've said very consistently that our business model remained the same."

This statement seems accurate. Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve granted a temporary exemption to Goldman Sachs from standard bank holding company Market Risk Rules, allowing the company to continue operating as if it were an investment bank. The company and its employees have taken full advantage of its new government subsidies, and the retained ability to bet big. In its most recent quarter, Goldman Sachs earned high profits of $2.7 billion on revenues of $13.76 billion, with 78 percent of this revenue derived from high-risk trading and principal investments. It paid out much of this revenue in compensation, setting aside a record $772,858 for each employee at an annualized rate. The company's own measurement of risk, its Value-at-Risk model, recently showed potential trading losses at $245 million a day, up from $184 million last May.

Despite its exemption from bank holding company regulations, Goldman Sachs has access to taxpayer subsidies, including FDIC-backed bonds, TARP money (since repaid), counterparty payments funneled through AIG, and an implicit backstop from the taxpayer that allowed a public equity offering in a queasy market. The only difference between Goldman Sachs today and Goldman Sachs last year is that today, the company is officially gambling with government money. This is the very definition of "heads we win, tails the taxpayers lose."

It is worth noting that there sometimes might be good reasons to grant temporary regulatory exemptions, considering that companies cannot instantly change their business model. Still, given Goldman Sachs's last quarter results and public statements that it is not changing its business model, we are worried that the company is using its regulatory freedom to evade capital requirements and take outsized risks with taxpayers on the hook for losses.

With this in mind, our questions are as follows:

1) In the letter granting a regulatory exemption to Goldman Sachs, you stated that the SEC-approved VaR models it is now using are sufficiently conservative for the transition period to bank holding company. Please justify this statement.

2) If Goldman Sachs were required to adhere to standard Market Risk Rules imposed by the Federal Reserve on ordinary bank holding companies, how would its capital requirements differ from the current regulatory regime?

3) What is the difference in exposure to the taxpayer between these two regulatory regimes?

4) What is the difference in total risk to the portfolio between these two regulatory regimes?

5) Goldman Sachs stated that "As of June 26, 2009, total capital was $254.05 billion, consisting of $62.81 billion in total shareholders' equity (common shareholders' equity of $55.86 billion and preferred stock of $6.96 billion) and $191.24 billion in unsecured long-term borrowings." As a percentage of capital, that's a lot of long-term unsecured debt. Is any of this coming from the Government? In this last quarter, how much capital has Goldman Sachs received from the Federal Reserve and other government facilities such as FDIC-guaranteed debt, either directly or indirectly?

6) Many risk-management experts, most notably best-selling author Nassim Taleb, note that VaR models can dramatically understate risk. What is your overall view of Taleb's argument, and of the utility of Value-at-Risk models as regulatory tools?

As we work through legislative conversations regarding systemic risk, these questions are taking on increased significance. We appreciate your time and the efforts you are making to explain the actions of the Federal Reserve to Congress, and to taxpayers.

Sincerely,

Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)

Brad Miller (D-N.C.)

Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.)

Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)

Ron Paul (R-Texas)

Tom Perriello (D-Va.)

Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)

Jackie Speier (D-Calif.)

Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.)

Walter Jones (R-N.C.)

______________________

Less than 4 years ago....

Bernanke: There's No Housing Bubble to Go Bust
Fed Nominee Has Said 'Cooling' Won't Hurt

By Nell Henderson - Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, October 27, 2005

"Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst, he indicated to Congress last week, just a few days before President Bush nominated him to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress's Joint Economic Committee. But these increases, he said, "largely reflect strong economic fundamentals," such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households....

Many economists argue that house prices have risen too far too fast in many markets, forming a bubble that could rapidly collapse and trigger an economic downturn, as overinflated stock prices did at the turn of the century. Some analysts have warned that even a flattening of house prices might cause a slump -- posing the first serious challenge to whoever succeeds Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan after he steps down Jan. 31.

Bernanke's testimony suggests that he does not share such concerns, and that he believes the economy could weather a housing slowdown....

Bernanke believes "the Fed's job is to protect the economy, not to protect individual asset prices," said William Dudley, chief economist for Goldman Sachs U.S. Economics Research.

That view mirrors Greenspan's. He and Bernanke have both said it is unrealistic to expect the Fed to identify a bubble in stock or real estate prices as it is inflating, or to be able to pop it without hurting the economy. Instead, the Fed should stand ready to mop up the economic aftermath of a bubble..."

...and wipe the derriere of Goldman Sachs with Federal Reserve Notes charged to the American taxpayer.

Is Health Care America's New Political Third Rail?

It used to be that any attempt to so much as breath a whiff about reforming, changing, or even discussing reform or change of "Social Security", the massive Ponzi-scheme social welfare entitlement system set up by the Democrat Party a half century ago, meant something near political suicide, at least amongst the American government, political, and media establishments.

Social Security has never been reformed, because it can never really be fixed. It is a fundamental failure that is openly-acknowledged as utterly unsustainable no matter how much money the welfare statists print and throw down the tube to sustain it. It's demise is inevitable, but hopefully not as just another casualty of the total collapse of our economic system under the weight of Leviathan's bottomless bloat.

The hysterical, fear-mongering decades-running sandbag defense of this scam of a ruse of 'security' in elder years, brought to you by our efficient, benevolent federal overseers, was a potent force for many years.

But has the wider public now gained an intuitive understanding from this runaway trainwreck of a system that letting the camel's nose under the tent on issues of such broad and deep impact on the country will soon follow with the whole hungry camel lodged in your living room?

I think so. I think we are seeing the latest exercise in the reality that attempting to impose "health care reform" on America by federal government fiat is the new third rail American politics.

It is fitting that instead of this third rail shocking those who would reduce or end government's control over a broad social good (such as by halting an unsustainable federal dole of across-the-board old-age financial entitlement, deceptively dubbed "Social Security"), instead it is administering rapid political jolts those who seek political control over the even broader and more endemic social good of health care.

Bill Clinton got instant karma, in political terms, for manipulation, monomaniacal arrogance, and partisan warfare as tools to make the federal government the omnipotent force in our country's health care "system". Clinton's hubris and unwelcome paternalistic excess cost his party their 40-year run controlling 1/2 or all of the United States Congress, before he had even reached 2 years in office.

I was lucky enough in January 1995 to be sitting on the floor of the House amidst the new Republican majority when Clinton announced the end to big government's "era", in his State of the Union address. Ashame that new Republican majority didn't hold him to it, before devolving into their own federal power binge under the autocrat Bush....leading to their recent political demise.

But the worm can turn fast in political terms....if opponents repeat or, better, magnify their mistakes. Barack Obama looks to be headed on that same 1st-term Clinton trajectory, but with even more gusto.....grasping that third rail, locked arm-in-arm with his and his party's entire identity and credibility at stake.

We'll see if the GOP and the broad range of other (non-political) forces marshaling against the ObamaCare Nightmare will repeat the same mistakes as the last beneficiaries of the public's punishment of the last unitary Democrat majority and their mania to assert federal control over something as profound as the health of each and every citizen in the land.

I hope the forces of limited, accountable government finally have the day and win out over the welfare statists, trite central planners and their legion of enablers cocooned inside the D.C. beltway.

Dana Garrett of Delaware Watch plans a series of posts on Libertarians...

... and I welcome it [read my comment at the end of his inaugural post].

I don't expect Dana to like a lot of what he finds about Libertarians, but I do expect he will subject the philosophy and its political incarnation to some serious scrutiny. That's good.

I intend to link to each of the posts as he publishes them, because I suspect very few Libertarians will make his progressive-liberal blog regular reading (which is a shame, because as much as we disagree we are good friends and learn a lot from each other).

A point of personal privilege, however: I suspect Dana will ruffle a lot of your feathers with his opinions. If you want to take issue with him on the issues, or the accuracy of his interpretations, feel free... he's a big guy and can stand up for himself.

If, however, you feel the need merely to rant about being mischaracterized by someone you consider a Statist progressive, please do it here rather than there. I'm posting his links on this issue so that we can learn about and from him hopefully learning about and from us, not so he can be inundated with people abusing him. Capeesh?

Goldman Sachs, Obama, Fascism and such and such

I'm no Harry Markopolous, but I somehow sense there is something amiss with the financial engorgement of Government Sachs...err....Goldman Sachs, in the midst of being incessantly told how "we" are in the worst financial "crisis" since the 'Great Depression'.

I see working Americans scrimp, sacrifice, and save each day by the sweat of their brows. But then I also see rapacious government (at all levels, mind you) along with a handful of well-connected robber-barons, hand-in-hand...partying like it's...well...1999.

So how do us working shlubs get that gig? Oh, right, we have to sell our souls to fascist Democrat government lifers.

Yeah, that's right Democrat neo-liberals (and all you Bushies too, while I'm at it)...YOU. ARE. FASCISTS.

If you have any soul, repent now. Actively renounce head fascist Barack Obama. He is nothing but a song-and-dance showman for the greediest, most vile elements of our society. You are suckers if you honestly can still support this reprehensible charlatan.

Anyhoo....back to Goldman Sachs...Steve (with some help from Nancy) has connected many dots in the travesty that is our nation's treasury in the clutches of this despicably self-dealing entity.

Steve overlooked one dot, which says it all :

Geithner names ex-lobbyist as Treasury chief of staff

Updated 1/27/2009 11:25 PM

By Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner picked a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist as a top aide Tuesday, the same day he announced rules aimed at reducing the role of lobbyists in agency decisions.

Mark Patterson will serve as Geithner's chief of staff at Treasury, which oversees the government's $700 billion financial bailout program. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion of that money.

Treasury spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said Patterson "brings significant expertise to the job." Patterson, who left the investment bank in April, signed the administration's ethics pledge, which requires him to recuse himself from issues "directly and substantially related to my former employer."

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said President Obama was retreating from his own ethics rules barring lobbyists from working on the issues they lobbied about during the previous two years. "It makes it appear that they are saying one thing and doing another," she said.

The White House waived the rules Friday for William Lynn, who lobbied for a defense contractor last year, to serve as deputy Defense secretary.

Geithner issued rules Tuesday to restrict lobbyists from contacting Treasury about bailout issues.

A USA TODAY review of Obama hires shows that 21 have registered as federal lobbyists, although most have not done so within the past two years. They include White House aide Cecilia Muñoz, who lobbied last year for the National Council of La Raza, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who lobbied in 2007 for a national teachers union.

White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said Obama is following through on his commitment to operate under strict ethical standards.

Dave Wenhold, of the American League of Lobbyists, said lobbyists bring expertise to the job. "Just because you are registered to lobby doesn't mean that you are evil, " he said.

Smile, Everyone! Smiles!!....

Welcome to Fantasy Island!!!

Another note from the lobbyist-free Obama Administration: lobbyists helping write health care reform

From AP:

WASHINGTON — Stormy weather in Congress is threatening President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, but some see a silver lining: the lobbyists are still mostly on board....

The industry groups have invested heavily to make sure their views get taken into account. The health care sector gave $167 million in campaign contributions to congressional candidates in the 2008 election cycle, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets.org. Health care companies poured $484 million into lobbying efforts in 2008, and are on pace to exceed that this year.

Separately, the drug companies have offered up $80 billion over 10 years to reduce prescription costs of seniors if a deal goes through, while major hospital groups agreed to a $155-billion reduction in Medicare and Medicaid payments to free up funds that would help subsidize coverage for the uninsured.

The political infighting on Capitol Hill has strengthened the hand of the health care groups, since liberals have been thwarted so far in their attempts to win speedy passage of the legislation through the House and Senate.

Lest there be a temptation to say, Well, that's just campaign contributions to Congress, not the President, we should recall that candidate Barack Obama received $1,262,224 in contributions from the health care industry in 2008, along with $11,532,962 from health care professionals, $43,440,058 from attorneys and lobbyists, and $3,167,003 from commercial banks.

That's, uh, over $59 million to the Obama campaign from parties with a special interest in heatlh care reform.

[Note: if you don't understand why commercial banks like Goldman Sachs have an interest in health care reform, you haven't been watching closely.]

So if all you single-payer advocates are wondering why you aren't at the table, the answer is simple: you didn't pay for the chair.

Health care "reform" will probably pass sometime this fall, but those of you who think it will (a) cover everybody or (b) seriously reduce the profits of insurance companies or big pharmaceutical companies should think again.

Maybe President Obama will at least kiss his supporters at the end of the process.

How to fund Health Care reform: send more money to the banks

Dana Garrett is currently trumpeting the supposed 23% return the US government received on its bail-out investment in Goldmann Sachs:

Boo hoo for you conservative Republicans and Libertarians. Instead of the dire consequences you predicted, the bailout is already starting to work for both the companies it helped and the taxpayers. Goldman Sachs is ALREADY giving us a 23% return on our tax dollars. We are ALREADY making a good return on the bailout--just like what happened in Sweden.

This is GREAT NEWS! Because, you see, it means we now have a funding mechanism for Health Care reform: we just keep sending bail-out money to America's mega-banks.

It will work like this.

First (h/t ABC) we spend $23.7 Trillion on the Troubled Asset Relief Program:

"The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the government's efforts to fix the financial system.

If the Goldmann Sachs model works, the banks will then return that with 23% interest, meaning that we'll get back over $29 Trillion, which gives us, say, $3 Trillion to spend on health care and another $2 Trillion in case we need to fight any more really pressing wars.

Now I know there are nay-sayers who would point out that Goldmann Sachs only achieved this amazing return through the concatenation of infiltrating the government:

Indeed, Goldman’s presence in the [Treasury] department and around the federal response to the financial crisis is so ubiquitous that other bankers and competitors have given the star-studded firm a new nickname: Government Sachs.

The Times points out that Goldman alums include:

* Former treasury secretary Hank Paulson

* Paulson's bailout chief Neel Kashkari

* Interim Treasury investment officer Reuben Jeffrey

* Key Treasury players Dan Jester, Steve Shafran, Edward C. Forst, and Robert K. Steel

* Key New York Federal Reserve players Stephen Friedman (head of the New York Fed board of governors, who sat on Goldman's board and owned a substantial stake in Goldman while he was making official decisions - and see this), William C. Dudley (head of the New York Fed's unit that buys and sells government securities), and E. Gerald Corrigan (charged with convening a group to analyze risk on Wall Street)

And from some truly creative accounting:

While the propaganda-machine is trumpeting the huge “profits” reported by Goldman Sachs for the second quarter, we should not forget Goldman's shady maneuver to create an “orphan month” - which was not included in any quarterly report – where the company hid billions in losses. None of these factors are supportive of the official posturing of company officials that Goldman Sachs has put the collapse of Wall Street's multi-trillion Ponzi-scheme behind it.

Or the fact that GS received additional billions in bail-outs funneled indirectly through AIG thanks to former Treasury Secretary Paulson, who also used his influence to shit on GS rival Lehman Brothers at the same time [from HuffPo]:

Goldman this week defended itself by reiterating the fact that it received US$10 billion in TARP bailout money last year to avert bankruptcy but has repaid that amount in full....

That is true but that's only a fraction of the bailout.

Goldman received an estimated three times' more, or US$30 billion, in an indirect bailout which was funneled through bankrupt insurer AIG.

Washington bailed out AIG's counterparties, to whom it owed hundreds of billions, because AIG had sold to them unbacked credit default swaps (a form of insurance on bond values). Goldman was not only ahead of the queue in collecting its IOU, but is reported to have gotten 100 cents on the dollar to boot.

Goldman was made whole even though it is arguable that it was imprudent to buy these swaps which were not actuarially approved and had no capital behind them as insurance products are supposed to. Even so, Goldman and AIG's other foolish customers got backstopped for lousy business practices.

The point of all this is that Goldman Sachs cannot argue that the proceeds it received from the AIG rescue did not constitute an indirect bailout any more than can auto parts makers who are saved by Detroit's bailout....

Paulson should have never been appointed in the first place because he had conflicts of interest after pocketing hundreds of millions a handful of years before as CEO of Goldman Sachs.

But he was. So having been put there, he should have recused himself from any fiduciary dealings involving public funds aimed at replenishing the coffers of his old firm and buddies that still worked there.

Likewise, he should have recused himself from dealing with his and Goldman's arch rival, Lehman Brothers. But he didn't and handed over the keys to the investment banking kingdom to Goldman and refused to help Lehman. By so doing, he turned the crisis into a full-blown catastrophe.

None of that matters, however, Dana Garrett assures me [and Tyler]:

One issue is the need for reform. Granted. But how does that negate the FACT (the 2nd issue) that the US taxpayer is getting a 23% return on its investment? That's the fact that you don't want to acknowledge because it runs contrary to your doctrinaire belief that the government can only fail when it involves itself with the marketplace.

Sorry, but you were wrong....

You are implying the US didn't get a 23% return. Oh, is this yet another example of more secret knowledge you have, Tyler, (you and some other conspiracy theorists) that the MSM doesn't have? Let me guess. This is all a lie. The US really isn't getting this return, right?...

So what are these illegal and--this is funny coming from a Libertarian--unethical business practices that GS is engaging in post bailout, Steve. You make these bald assertions w/o offering one scintilla of proof.

Dana's obviously right: all the government needs to keep doing is ploughing money into the banks [under the direction of Government Sachs] in order to reap those 23% interest rewards and pay for everybody to have health insurance.

Yeah. And the Obama administration doesn't appoint lobbyists to key positions or extend Bushco arguments about gay marriage, wire-tapping, or the right to detain people indefinitely who have been found innocent by the courts.

It's just my Libertarian myopia that keeps me from understanding how this all works out.

Gandhi might even say we're gaining on them....

Back to Gandhi:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Libertarian thought is emerging--one might even say oozing out around the edges--into the political discourse these days.

One reason, I suspect [and hope], is that Libertarians are becoming more and more willing to stand up and confront social conservatives, who were never really small-government advocates, and who have proven [at least the political leaders] to be quite willing to use both force and fraud not only to maintain their hold on power, but to remove essential civil liberties from the American people.

Or maybe--as Robert Heinlein would have put it--we're just in the silly season.

But when you see Libertarianism used in such throwaway fashion as the NYT does here:

No one really knows what to call the 150-pound pig roaming free in Panama City, Fla., but by eluding the authorities for five months, shaking off a Taser and four tranquilizer darts on Tuesday, the porker has become more than just swine.

The pig is now a local libertarian hero. Supporters describe the animal as a freedom-loving outlaw with a taste for corn. His Facebook page lists more than 200 fans, like Mary K. Sittman, who asked this week, “Is the pig a symbol of our desire to live free of government controls?”

... then you realize several implicit assumptions that the author of the piece has made:

1) The majority of his readers will understand the term libertarian and equate it with a significant minority political view in America

2) The majority of his readers will understand that libertarianism has something to do with championing personal freedom against the government

Five years ago I don't think that would have been the case.

Another example of Libertarianism oozing in through the cracks:

In North Carolina, after Libertarian Gubernatioral candidate Michael Munger and Senatorial candidate Chris Cole both did far better than expected in 2008, the North Carolina Department of Taxation has started to honor requests to send voluntary contributions to the Libertarian Party, something previously reserved only for GOPers and Dems. [If you are wondering how Libertarians can see their way to cash the checks, remember: it's a voluntary donation, not a diversion of tax funds.]

And closer to home in Sussex County:

Delawareliberal's own jason has joined his co-blogger Delawaredem in endorsing the candidacy of Libertarian Wendy Jones for the 19th District Senate seat over Barbie [oops, Polly]. No, I don't think either jason or DD has suddenly developed a taste for Libertarian politics, but faced with a truly horrendous Democratic candidate they can't hold back the vomit in their throats to support, a Libertarian actually offers them a more palatable alternative than either the Republican Booth or the faux independent Opaleski.

This is success. It is incremental success thanks to the people who [unlike me] are doing the heavy shoveling for Libertarianism as a viable political philosophy: Michael Munger, Chris Cole, Tom Knapp, and our own Brian Shields.

Ah, the sound of another lobbyist entering the Obama administration (listen, that's HuffPo groaning)

The President who campaigned on getting the government out of the hands of corporate lobbyists has now appointed the ultimate corporate lobbyist to be food czar at the FDA:

From HuffPo:

[Michael Taylor] had been Monsanto's attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA. Soon after, he became Monsanto's vice president and chief lobbyist.

Michael Taylor is the man placed by the biotech industry into the FDA during President Clinton's first term with the mission of ignoring the warnings of the scientific community regarding Genetically Modified Organisms [GMOs or genetically modified foods]:

When the FDA was constructing their GMO policy in 1991-2, their scientists were clear that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to "different risks" than conventional foods. But official policy declared the opposite, claiming that the FDA knew nothing of significant differences, and declared GMOs substantially equivalent.

This fiction became the rationale for allowing GM foods on the market without any required safety studies whatsoever! The determination of whether GM foods were safe to eat was placed entirely in the hands of the companies that made them -- companies like Monsanto, which told us that the PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange were safe.

GMOs were rushed onto our plates in 1996. Over the next nine years, multiple chronic illnesses in the US nearly doubled -- from 7% to 13%. Allergy-related emergency room visits doubled between 1997 and 2002 while food allergies, especially among children, skyrocketed. We also witnessed a dramatic rise in asthma, autism, obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, and certain cancers.

In January of this year, Dr. P. M. Bhargava, one of the world's top biologists, told me that after reviewing 600 scientific journals, he concluded that the GM foods in the US are largely responsible for the increase in many serious diseases.

In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine concluded that animal studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between GM foods and infertility, accelerated aging, dysfunctional insulin regulation, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, and immune problems such as asthma, allergies, and inflammation

In July, a report by eight international experts determined that the flimsy and superficial evaluations of GMOs by both regulators and GM companies "systematically overlook the side effects" and significantly underestimate "the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others."

The inauguration of President Obama was viewed by many [and I have to admit that I shared some of that optimism] as the opportunity for real science to return to a prominent place in policy-making.

Instead, we get business-as-usual in the appointment of another lobbyist--this time one with a proven track record of ignoring scientific data with a fervor that would warm the heart of the most ardent climate-change denier.

Change? Or continuity of the worst kind?

And again I wonder: where are my liberal and progressive blogger friends on this umpteenth betrayal of candidate Obama's promise to take the people's business out of the hands of lobbyists?

Ooh, Snap.

Peggy Noonan Speaks the Unspoken About the Coming Health Nazis....if Obama Gets His Way

She writes a good piece noting why ObamaCare is sinking fast, and it isn't because of Washington game-playing.

It is bad enough having political elitists with the cocky Obamesque self-assurance that they know what's best for all of us.

Worse that they are shoving their gargantuan economy-killing cure-all agenda down the country's collective throat.

But even worse is what this portends for all of us should Americans' health and health care become inalterably subject to the whims of the ilk that would use the force of state to dictate our day-to-day lives in the name of collective "health".

"We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of . . . let’s call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next. Mr. Obama’s own choice for surgeon general has come under criticism as too heavy.

Only a generation ago such criticisms would have been considered rude and unacceptable. But they are part of the ugly, chafing price of having the government in something: Suddenly it can make big and very personal demands on you.

Those who live in a way that isn’t sufficiently healthy “cost us money” and “drive up premiums.” Mr. Obama himself said something like it in his press conference, when he spoke of a person who might not buy health insurance. If he gets hit by a bus, “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

Under a national health-care plan we might be hearing that a lot. You don’t exercise, you smoke, you drink, you eat too much, and “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

It is a new opportunity for new class professionals (an old phrase that should make a comeback) to shame others, which appears to be one of their hobbies. (It may even be one of their addictions. Let’s stage an intervention.) Every time I hear Kathleen Sebelius talk about “transitioning” from “treating disease” to “preventing disease,” I start thinking of how they’ll use this as an excuse to judge, shame and intrude.

So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not.

Americans in the most personal, daily ways feel they are less free than they used to be. And they are right, they are less free.

Who wants more of that?"

Ah, the old wetback license-plate ploy, again, eh?

I can recall when Elsmere wanted to pass an ordinance allowing the police to troll apartment house parking lots on the look-out for Pennsylvania license plates...

Now Homegrown Boy at Resolute Determination sees further evidence of society's deterioration in those self-same license plates:

This morning was the 4th car I’ve seen with PA tags on it yet sporting a bumper sticker announcing that their child is a superstar at the area public school.

Hmmmmm……………………if you’ve been in Delaware long enough to get your kid in school shouldn’t you have had time to get to motor v?

Or maybe school choice has really expanded it’s definition or …

the cynic in me said they’re here illegally using our tax dollars to teach their kid. (for the record American’s in Mexico get NO state funded services)

OK, HGB, let's see if we can't find a few plausible reasons (aside from wetback invasion) why a car sporting PA plates might have a Delaware honor student bumper sticker:

1. The kid used to go to DE schools before the family moved into PA, and they never took the damn sticker off.

2. The car in question is being driven by grandma or grandpa who happen to live in PA and wanted to recognize their oh-so-talent child.

3. The car in question is being driven by a divorced parent who doesn't have custody of the child and doesn't live in-State.

4. The car in question is being driven by a member of the US Armed Forces who is not required (according to Federal law) to retag the vehicle away from the home state of record.

5. The parent in question is actually paying tuition to send the child over the State border in search of a specific school or type of school.

6. The parent in question was busier helping the kid with the homework that won the award than worrying about getting the car retagged.

The cynic in you is free to believe whatever the hell you want to believe, but before you move onto the next step of suggesting that for purposes of law and order [read: fewer brown people in our State] that the police should begin examining such discrepancies, please remember: probable cause this ain't.

A genuine confusion regarding President Obama and health care reform

On 13 June, President Obama said this of his objectives in health care reform:

"if doctors have incentives to provide the best care, instead of more care, we can help Americans avoid unnecessary hospital stays, treatments and tests that drive up costs."

Now here's my confusion: There are several reasons advanced for the need for health care reform, the primary of which are generally:

1) Millions of uninsured or under-insured Americans

2) Soaring premiums

3) The refusal of health insurance companies to authorize necessary tests, treatments, or hospital stays.

Number three accounts for [by my rough estimate] nearly 75% of the anecdotal horror stories about health care in America: refusing meds, nixing treatments, demanding that you leave the hospital early.

But it was Tom Baker in his highly regarded The Medical Malpractice Myth who argued that neither HMOs nor malpractice threats are causing physicians to order too many tests or engage in too many procedures. Instead, Baker argues, there actually aren't enough tests or procedures being done:

There is lots of talk about the heavy burden that “defensive medicine” imposes on health costs, but the research shows this is not true.

Yet what Mr. Obama appears to be advocating is fewer tests, fewer procedures, and fewer hospital stays.

I realize that he is making the best practices argument, but it seems to me that there is an inherent contradiction in his position.

Maybe it's just me.

A small Libertarian moment...

... because life really is about a lot more than politics and policies.

There is a creek about thirty feet wide that runs through the center of town in Breckenridge, Colorado. The water, which rushes swiftly, varies between six inches and maybe two and a half feet deep [there are a couple of small holes that are deeper]. There are rocks and boulders strewn around--some jagged, some slippery, some flattened and nicely rounded.

What you do in Breckenridge on a sunny July day is go down and sit by the creek and watch your kids and grandkids from about age four on up wading in the creek and jumping haphazardly from rock to rock.

Sometimes a kid slips and busts his or her ass on a rock. On very rare occasions a smaller child will lose footing and be swept along pell-mell for five or ten feet before some other kid or a nearby parent snags the sputtering tyke.

Everybody laughs.

There is not a single sign from the town of Breckenridge to remind you that there is no lifeguard, that you enter the water at your own risk, or that parents should remain within arm's reach of a non-swimming child.

There's no trash in the creek.

Everybody just sort of watches out for their kid and any other kids in view.

Amazing: social self-organization without the State.

Obviously this has to be stopped.

Long overdue....a picture worth a 1000 words (or trillions and trillions of dollars).

[Borrowing a phrase from commenter "rc" I 'liberated' this photo courtesy of Jonathan Turley.]

Racism, Dr Henry Louis Gates and the Delaware Blogosphere

What's really remarkable about the whole Gates event is the immediate willingness of many people to employ one of two methods to trash Dr Gates:

(1) To claim, based on personal experience or just personal philosophy that Dr Gates should not have responded loudly and aggressively to the police officer's inquiries. The cops have a tough job. Cooperation gets you out of the situation much better than confrontation. Gates showed little grace or tact.

Give me a break. Not a single one of these commenters that I can find has been subject to the subtle police-state-style harassment that my black academic and consulting colleagues deal with on a regular basis. I have one colleague I think of as the magnet for the predictability with which the TSA will pull him out of line for a supposedly random secondary screening. I have been through airport security dozens of times with this individual, who is a senior scholar and--ironically--a security consultant to DHS--and three out of every four times he goes through, he is pulled.

I have a colleague in Information Sciences who works in Delaware but lives in New Jersey. He drives a Mercedes. He is in great shape, and looks 25 instead of his real age of 48. Remember the old NJ State Police driving while black profiling? Not only was this man pulled over seven times in three weeks on the New Jersey Turnpike, it is a fantasy to suggest that things have gotten much better. Last summer he drove his Mercedes down through Delmarva toward Virginia Beach and was stopped twice--never ticketed--because the locals had been promised big rewards by the DEA if they helped them shut down the drug highway down Route 13. One deputy even told him, "You don't want to get stopped any more, sell the car."

How it really stacks up is like a black NCO told me about ten years ago. Ever heard this joke? Question: When does a black man become a nigger? Answer: When he leaves the room..

And point number two is that if Dr Gates' critics can't find something substantive about his conduct to rail against, they will just suggest--and none too subtly--that this major American scholar is really a black man who has left the room.

Here's a scattering from my own comments section and a few other places:

Hube:

Third, he's only "pre-eminent" because he's a professor of "black studies." Funny how someone like Thomas Sowell who operates in a REAL discipline doesn't garner such a title.

Sorry, my friend, but here you are full of it. Since the 1987 publication (by Oxford University Press) of Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "Racial" Self through his most recent 2009 (by Princeton University Press) of Lincoln on Race and Slavery, Dr Gates has earned the respect of liberal and conservative scholars across numerous disciplinary lines.

Then there is the ever-gutsy Anonymous:

Black Studies is a real discipline. So is Turf Management.

Or his equally cowardly and grammatically impaired brother Anonymous:

Gatres a loud mouth black panther wannabe scholar trumping up racial tension be screaming racism.

Notice what passes for legitimate attack here: lampoon the discipline and then lampoon the individual.

Anybody commenting here bright enough to have read any of Dr. Gates' work? Hube? Want to 'fess up that it was your preconceptions and not actual knowledge talking?

I've read Dr Gates' work for years, and while I don't agree with all of it, the man is arguably brilliant, an intellectual heavy hitter, and frankly--in terms of longstanding contribution to our understanding of American culture--so far out of Thomas Sowell's league that to make the comparison suggests that you know little about either man's work and are commenting based on political ideology rather than real knowledge.

But here's my favorite, as Anoni attempts over at Colossus to make Dr Gates into a gay black man trying to hide the fact that he's getting some on the down-low:

The next door neighbor calls police after seeing two black men wearing backpacks trying to force the front door.

According to Gates's lawyer those two men were Gates and a friend.

No News Report mentions the friend

The police report makes no mention of the friend

any further speculation on who the friend is and why he hid and how that explains Gates bizzare behavior would unkind and not politically correct.

the guilty flee (or in this cased rant and rave) when none presue.

So instead of dealing with what happened, we'll just trash Dr Gates as a wanna-be scholar in a fake discipline who is probably a closet homo.

Maybe the cop should have demanded to check his freezer for the body parts of the dismembered children that Dr Gates was luring into his house to molest and then kill, so he could gather inspiration to hit the keyboard and spew racist black panther filth.

Post-racial America my ass.

Over at Reason.com Radley Balko issues....

"A Challenge to Lefty Bloggers:
State Your Limits"

by Radley Balko | July 21, 2009, 2:51pm

Several years ago, Matt Welch put up a "pro-war libertarian quiz" in an effort to get pro-war bloggers to go on record stating their limits when it comes to what powers they'd give the government in fighting terrorism.

In that spirit, I'd like to pose a similar query to the lefty blogosphere/opinionsphere on the growth and size of government. Every initiative announced by the Obama administration pushes us further into uncharted territory on both fronts, so it would be interesting to see what if any actual limits lefty opinion makers would put on the size, cost, and influence of the federal government. At what point would you be willing to finally say, "Okay, we've gone far enough"?

Note that the intent here is to find your limits, not what you consider to be ideal.

Next week, I'll post links to any responses to the survey.

• Progressive Taxation

Currently, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans make 19 percent of the country's income and pay 37 percent of the taxes. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent. The bottom 50 percent of earners pay 3 percent of taxes. (Note: These figures don't include payroll taxes.) Most on the left believe the current tax system isn't progressive enough, so they'd presumably favor shifting the tax burden up the income scale. But what is your limit? Should the top 1 percent pay 60 or more percent of the government's costs? More than 80? What's the maximum percentage of earners who should pay no income tax at all?

• Inflation

What's the maximum acceptable rate of inflation? How high would the inflation rate need to be for you to say, "This new government program is great, but we can't print anymore money to pay for it"?

• National Debt as a Percentage of GDP

Currently, the federal debt stands at about 80 percent of GDP. That's the highest percentage since the early 1950s. What is the maximum percentage of debt related to GDP that you'd be willing to accept?

• Federal Spending as a Percentage of GDP

For most of the last 50 years, annual federal spending has held at about 20 percent of GDP, the annual deficit at 2 percent. The CBO projects that by 2020, spending will soar to 26 percent of GDP, and the annual deficit to 7 percent. This is before factoring in the cost of Obama's health care plan. What percentage of spending with respect to GDP would you consider too high? The annual federal deficit?

• Unfunded Liability of Entitlement Programs

Right now, Social Security and Medicare face a $106.4 trillion future liability above and beyond what current payroll taxes would be able to fund. Before we start talking about new entitlements, where should we put the celing on unfunded future entitlement liability? That is, how much higher can that $106.4 trillion figure rise before you'd be willing to say, "Hold on, great as this new entitlement idea sounds, I'm not sure we can afford it"?

• Income Equality

As noted above, currently the richest 1 percent of Americans earn about 19 percent of the country's income. The bottom 50 percent of earners make 13 percent. Most on the left believe these figures are too lopsided. So where should they be? Presumably, the answer is somewhere between where they are now and the point at which every earner in the country makes the same amount of money. To phrase the question another way, at what point would you be willing to say the government has gone far enough when it comes to redistributing income? What is an acceptable level of income inequality?

• Individual Tax Rates

The top federal income tax bracket currently stands at 35 percent. What's the maximum top tax rate you'd be willing to endorse? Where should the cutoff be for the top bracket (it's currently $372,950)? Factoring in state and local taxes, the average tax burden on the wealthiest Americans in some states will approach 60 percent if the Democrats' health plan passes. What's an appropriate upper limit on that figure?

• Average Tax Rate

According to a new World Bank report (PDF), the average U.S. tax rate is 46.2 percent, putting us 102 out of 178 countries (meaning 101 countries have a lower total tax burden than the U.S.). Again, how high would you be willing to let that figure climb?

Advice to Delaware Libertarian readers....don't hold your breath waiting for answers.

So far as I can detect, the leftist-sphere operates totally ad hoc, far more practiced and comfortable with incessant, juvenile hyperbolic attacks on their straw man caricatures of anyone who dares challenge their collective (and collectivist) megalomania, than with actually answering questions or stating any clear limits on how far over the cliff their statist fantasies will drag us all...

Environmental eliminationist bumper sticker in Colorado?

Traveling in Colorado today I fell in line behind an SUV with two bumper stickers.

One was a left-over Obama/Biden campaign sticker, and the other was this:


Obviously, this is a hate-filled person who needs to be sent to a FEMA Camp for political re-education. Maybe Colorado should include this particular bumper sticker in a Homeland Security Advisory. Because, after all, eliminationist speech IS hate speech, and we all know that hate speech is not protected speech.

Or maybe the folks in danger of blowing out an aneurism over some twit in Virginia's 99th State House District talking about the bullet box ought to ... you know: get a life or lighten up.

By the way, you can order your environmentalist eliminationist bumper sticker threatening the lives of land developers here.

Buy six and you get a ten percent discount.

What's wrong with the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard is not just the racism...

... although that is a significant issue.

Cambridge MA Police responded to a woman's report of "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry," by arresting Dr. Gates inside his own home.

[Turns out Dr. Gates and friend had locked themselves out.]

Yes, Dr. Gates was irritable, and yes Dr. Gates probably initially refused to produce identification--again, within his own home.

What's outrageously, police-state wrong about this is the only charge the Cambridge Police could come up with:

He was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he "exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior."

What the f**k? He got arrested for disorderly conduct inside his own home after he had provided the police with identification?

At which nanosecond after Dr. Gates proved he was the rightful owner of the home did the police officers have any legal standing whatever even to be inside the home, much less to characterize Dr. Gates' behavior?

Ah, but offending a police officer has now become a significant illegality, because our public servants are rapidly forgetting they were never intended to be our public masters.

Or would the Cambridge Police prefer public massas?

Comment Rescue: What do progressives want?

I suspect this comment by DelawareDem was off the cuff and not intended to be all-inclusive, but it is instructive:

A progressive Democrat believes that government should and can provide a social safety net for its population, like social security, unemployment insurance and healthcare. It should set standards and provide funding for education. And of course the government should provide for the national defense. In other areas, the government should regulate the free market to prevent fraud and monopolies, but should otherwise allow the market to work.

What interests me is the disparity between this comment and the realities of what progressive Democrats actually work toward. Take this part: In other areas, the government should regulate the free market to prevent fraud and monopolies, but should otherwise allow the market to work. You have to wonder exactly what that means, since on its face it would not include having the government intervene to bail out particular manufacturing sectors or to interfere in the internal rules of companies to set the compensation rates for executives. But these are both things that have happened over the past year, and the current occupant of the White House has been roundly criticized by many on the progressive left for not going far enough.

Also missing in DD's definition of what a progressive Democrat believes is any indication of how the government should pay for all this. I know that's not missing from the progressive philosophy, because the progressive income tax, surcharges on excessive wealth, and an overall taxation level above 40% of GDP and 50% of individual income are heart and soul of the progressive Democrat agenda.

But so is mandatory safety regulation that restricts personal choice (helmet laws, seatbelt laws)...

Then there are the details--always the details!--with things like health care, which includes (as it is on the table currently) a potential bonanza for trial lawyers, mandatory end-of-life counseling, and potential built-in provisions that would covertly end private insurance while taxing businesses for not providing it!?

Or the details of national defense, our progressive kin have been awfully quiet about the currents administration's continuation and extension of Bushco Constitutional abuses, the ever-expanding war in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, or the amazing continually ballooning defense budget and military....

The point here is explicitly not to bash DD for making a good-faith effort to define the interests of progressive Dems in a short paragraph, but to emphasize that the devil is always in the details of how far you extend the power of the State to achieve your aims. From my perspective the progressives tend to come down on the side of as far as possible in the pursuit of noble goals, which is sometimes scarier than the consequences of the problems they are trying to solve....

Philosophy or pragmatism: the dangers of stark dichotomies

It is a fairly common charge against Libertarians [or Greens, or even some Progressives for that matter] that we are too interested in political philosophy and thinking about the perfect society to actually work on solving real social, political, and economic problems.

It is also a really fond talking point of some of my progressive and liberal friends to suggest that fiscal conservatives and libertarians are being hypocritical if they ever avail themselves of a government service or benefit.

There is some truth to both criticisms, but far less that those who blog so smugly would like to believe. Perhaps need to believe.

Take case one: I will admit that many libertarians have a penchant for internal witch hunts and arguments about how many Ayn Rand or Murry Rothbard clones could dance on the head of a pin. That's why a Libertarian Party is almost a contradiction in terms. As my friends point out, sixty Republicans would be a cloture-proof Congress, sixty Democrats would be a nail-biter on every single bill requiring cloture, and sixty Libertarians wouldn't be able to agree to meet in the same venue and vote in the first place.

The power of Libertarianism is therefore primarily as a philosophy and a partial set of views held by almost everybody. How often have you heard a convinced Dem or GOPer say, "I tend to be Libertarian on issue X"? As much as I would like the term Libertarian--as in Libertarian Party--to equate with rational small government, non-intrusion into people's private lives [even when they are being stupid], and a non-interventionist foreign policy, it ain't gonna happen. Not Libertarian enough for too many libertarians; too radical for the others you might attract to any one of those three tenets.

Being a Libertarian is not, therefore, about successful politicking, as much as I would like it to be otherwise [and as much as, during election years, I indulge my fantasies that this or that candidate might actually break through].

So why call myself a Libertarian? Primarily, I think, because the philosophy is just as important as pragmatic problem-solving. Somebody needs to keep asking the questions about why we're doing things and raising objections regarding ethics or freedom, even at the cost of being labeled a contrarian who doesn't want to do anything.

Which is odd, because many, many Libertarians contribute every day to resolving major problems in society. Contra popular belief, the political arena is not the only or even necessarily the best place to have an impact on the society within which you live. I've negotiated labor contracts, chaired state-wide education commissions, conducted detailed, descriptive studies on gaps in Delaware health care provider expertise, and rewritten Standard Operating Procedures for emergency first-response doctrines in urban settings. None of those things were either at odds with being a Libertarian or even seriously affected by my Libertarian political beliefs--though I have consistently run into smalled minded bigots [hello, Geezer] who were obviously beaten by a copy of Atlas Shrugged as a child and never got over it.

As for that issue of Libertarians using government services, it neglects the coercive side of things. If the government takes my money for things I don't approve of (foreign wars would be my first example), and then the government exercises its power to create monopolies on all kinds of services (from postage stamps on up), then as a taxpayer (willing or not) I have already paid for those services. The fact that in many cases I cannot get them anywhere else--or that the government has exercised its ability to subsidize its products at below any value the free market could be expected to provide--is not an argument against making rational choices about how to spend the half of my money the IRS and DE Department of Revenue choose to leave me.

Look at it this way: African-Americans in the Jim Crow South continued to ride segregated trains after Plessy, even though they disagreed with American apartheid. Were they hypocrites for doing so? No. Because that's the transportation that was available to them to use to better their condition--economic, social and political. And you'll notice that when the time came to exercise enough power to get those restrictions struck down, the boycotts and civil disobedience started almost immediately.

So while I object to the idea of Sussex County owning tax ditches, I damn well expect the county authorities who can use the power of the State to place a right-of-way into my property to spray the damn ditches for mosquitoes.

Ultimately, the reason I am a Libertarian--and a public Libertarian at that--is because somebody has to think it is just as important to raise issues of personal freedom and limited government that to pretend that blogging about health care and stimulus packages and their favorite candidate for local office actually equates with helping solve problems.

Delaware Dem endorses Libertarian Wendy Jones in the 19th State Senate Race

No secret that DelDem and I have our issues, but it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge his classy cross-party endorsement of 19th District Libertarian State Senate candidate Wendy Jones over at Delawareliberal:

You know, I am now rooting for Wendy Jones to win this race. It would be something. A shot in the arm for Libertarians, a death blow to conservative Democrats and Republicans a like. This country and state need an honest and strong opposition party, and the Republicans are neither. It is time for the Libertarians to rise.

DD also joined me (I can't find the link right this second) in noting that Polly ADAMS Mervine's campaign website was--charitably--a bit short in the issues department.

Thank you, DelawareDem, for this statement of support for a new multi-party system.

Who says we cannot find agreement in the Delaware blogosphere?

Although I don't really think kavips' call for a blogosphere political party is going to take off anytime soon.

The No-fly, No-buy list: first guns and now cars

Remember what Rahm Emmanuel said about being one of the 1,000,000 Americans on the No-fly list:

“if you’re on that no-fly list, your access to the right to bear arms is cancelled, because you’re not part of the American family; you don’t deserve that right. There is no right for you if you’re on that terrorist list.”

Now, it seems that your right to purchase a car has also been cancelled--from Alphecca [a car salesman in real life]:

A guy of middle-eastern decent (born in Afghanistan) wants to buy a car. We agree on the price, he fills out a credit-ap and we run it. Rock Star, as we say in the biz, 815 FICO score with 92% of his current credit available. Well employed at a famous medical school. Should be “No Problem” getting him financed, right?

Wrong. His name brings up a flag on AMPAC, the American Patriot Act terrorist watch list. Well, his name is similar to other names on the list, so, banks are not allowed to loan money to him. It means he can’t get the car and I can’t get the sale.

But, of course, we don't live in a police state....

And if you think otherwise we can have a warrant draw up for your arrest.

Peter Singer on Health Care rationing: and infanticide is also OK

Preference Utllitarian philosopher Dr. Peter Singer has an op-ed in NYT (h/t Hube) regarding the fact that the United States must ration medical care via government decree.

I will deal with that issue at length a bit later today or sometime tomorrow.

Now, however, I'd like to point out to you Dr. Singer's longheld views on the morality of killing newborn babies [this particular quotation comes from 1980; Dr Singer has reiterated it many times since]:

This deals with the central point to which Hart objects. Two of his comments on the application of my views can be replied to more briefly. First, he is broadly correct when he says that in my view the secret killing of a normal happy infant by parents unwilling to be burdened with its upbringing would be no greater a moral wrong than that done by parents who abstain from conceiving a child for the same reasons. I say "broadly" because one should also take into account the fact that a normal infant can be given up for adoption. Hence there is a better option available to the parents of the infant, one which is not available to the parents who refrain from conceiving, unless the woman is willing to go through pregnancy and labor in order to give the child up for adoption. That requires a moral sacrifice which it is difficult to blame a woman for refusing to make. No such sacrifice is required of the parents who are imagined to be contemplating killing their infant.

Even with this caveat, my view will appear shocking to most readers, as it apparently does to Hart. But is it wrong? I still have not seen a good reason for differentiating morally between the two cases (other than "side-effects" like the factor just mentioned) and in the absence of a good reason for taking a different view, I persist in my belief that the morality of the two acts is not intrinsically different.

One might be forgiven for suggesting that a philosopher who does not find a moral difference between contraception and infanticide is not the best person to be drawing up the principles by which government should ration life-saving medical care.

A 60-vote majority does not mean the end of politics....

... as card check bites the dust in deference to moderate Democrats.

What I said last October:

The Democratic Party in Congress will fragment rather than unify. The Class of 2006 is far more conservative than the folks who will come into office in 2008. Absent a strong GOP, the Democrats will provide their own internal opposition. Look for that to be overcome only at the cost of massive, budget-busting pork like we've never seen.

Afghanistan: surprise, surprise! 68,000 American troops are not going to be sufficient

From Anti-war.com:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says that the United States could wind up sending even more troops to Afghanistan this year than was initially planned. During a visit to Fort Drum in New York, Secretary Gates said the number of troops by the end of the year could exceed the 68,000 planned in the Obama Administration’s escalation, though he said it probably would not be much higher.

National Security Adviser James Jones had earlier this month insisted that the US would not be increasing the number of troops to be sent to Afghanistan this year, though he did say the Obama Administration might send another 10,000 troops sometime in 2010.

New Afghan Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, however, has been told there is no limit to what he can ask for in additional troops, and he is expected to issue his report on the current troop levels sometime soon. It has been widely speculated McChrystal would ask for more troops.

Want an escalation done right?

Give the job to obvious graduates of the McNamara School of Successful Military Interventions.

Obama DOJ: Bush Administration stance on wire-tapping is our stance on wire-tapping

From the SF Chronicle:

SAN FRANCISCO -- President Obama is adamant about maintaining the secrecy of a wiretapping program authorized by George W. Bush, an administration lawyer told a federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Obama "does not intend to use the state-secrets privilege to cover up illegal activities," said Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino. But in exceptional circumstances, he said, the president will invoke secrecy to protect "the sources and methods of detecting terrorist attacks ... the crown jewel of the United States national security administration."

Coppolino said the administration will cite national security in seeking dismissal of a lawsuit by telephone customers accusing the government of illegally intercepting phone calls and obtaining phone company records.

This is the part I really love:

The judge said in a 2006 ruling that AT&T had helped the government in surveillance, citing statements by federal officials and a former AT&T employee. On Wednesday, he asked Coppolino whether anything had changed that would justify dismissing the latest lawsuit.

The Justice Department lawyer replied that the plaintiffs will have to air classified information in court about "the nature and scope of the government's surveillance program" to prove their case, and the government will have to do the same to defend itself. That "would risk exceptional harm to the national security," Coppolino said.

Notice that they stopped just short of saying they would refuse to abide by the judge's ruling, but left themselves plenty of room to do so.

While I'm sure that was a completely uintentional (ahem! cough?) oversight, we probably should clear it up, huh?

... at least before we rush to pass health care reform.

From Investor's Business Daily:

Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:
"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law."

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

Stepping off into the great unknown....

Hillary Clinton always said she didn't regret her Iraq vote; now she's willing to do it again in Iran

From Anti-war.com:

In a high-profile policy address before the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the US wouldn’t not hesitate to use its military to “defend our friends, our interests, and above all, our people” during the segment discussing Iran.

She elaborated on the declaration with “this is not an option we seek nor is it a threat; it is a promise.” Clinton also warned Iran that the US offer to hold talks, which she had previously said she didn’t expect to work to begin with, would not be open-ended and that “our willingness to talk is not a sign of weakness.”

Today’s comments are the latest in a long line of bellicose rhetoric coming from the Secretary of State. Last month during a television interview she said that Iran was risking the possibility of a US invasion, citing the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq as a model.

And in the we-never-seem-to-learn category, she's advocating this position despite the lack of evidence that any WMD program actually exists in Iran:

The US has been demanding that the Iranian government abandon its civilian nuclear energy generation program, and several officials have claimed, despite a stark lack of evidence, that Iran is working on nuclear weapons. The IAEA has pointed out no evidence for the accusation exists, and America’s own National Intelligence Estimate says they don’t believe Iran has an active weapons program either.

So much for Smart Power, I guess.

Congress says "No!" to President Obama's IMF signing statement by 429-2

From New American:

The U.S. House of Representatives on July 9 voted almost unanimously to rebuke President Barack Obama over his June 24 signing statement openly declaring that he could ignore provisions of the law he was signing.

The bipartisan 429-2 vote was a direct result of Obama's assertion that he could ignore restricitons on how the $106 billion loan guarantee to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) could be used. In his signing statement, Obama claimed that “provisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403 and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations.”

MSM strangely silent. Go figure.

Once again from the Bush--er--Obama administration ... will we see a signing statement on this, or a veto?

From WaPo:

The Obama administration has objected to a provision in the 2010 defense funding bill currently before the Senate that would bar the military's use of contractors to interrogate detainees.

The provision, strongly backed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), describes interrogations as an "inherently governmental function" that "cannot be transferred to contractor personnel." It would give the Defense Department one year from the bill's enactment to ensure that the military had the resources to comply with it....

Last year, the Senate dropped a provision prohibiting the military from using contractors for interrogations after President George W. Bush threatened a veto unless it was removed.

Trolling for--er--wandering around and looking for talking points

We all use them: those shorthand aphorisms that substitute for real thought.

It is, of course, damn near criminal when our political opponents do the same: bespeaks a lack of intellectual depth or the willingness to follow your leaders without question.

Here are some of my favorite talking points found in the Delaware blogosphere over the past few days:

We use our tax dollars to invest in our future. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.

You know, conservatives would sound a lot more coherent if they did accept the concept of the living Constitution.

I think the FFs left the documents purposely vague because they wanted it to be a living document. I think this is also why we have the oldest working constitution.

If times compel us to change the definition of “press” and “arms,” maybe we can also bring our own modern interpretation to “promote the general welfare.”

A well-fed, well-educated populace is the single greatest driver of economic prosperity, whereas a malnourished populace inevitably leads to crime and political upheaval, under which commerce suffers greatly. The wiser emperors of Rome understood this...

It was an established, millenia-old practice at the time of our nation’s founding for governments to build and maintain roads and other public works paid for by tax revenue.

The Constitution grants the government the power to tax, and the power to spend. No limits – as long as we follow the process.

The Constitution explicitly grants the Federal government the power to tax, and the power to spend. No limits on who you can tax, how much you can tax, and what or who you can spend it on.

The Supreme Court is not the arbiter of the tenth amendment.

All law is a legal imposition of morality, and we happen to have a system for determining whose morality gets imposed by being codified into law.

The government cannot be neutral – it either forcibly enforces laws allowing discrimination or it enforces laws prohibiting discrimination.

Cap and trade is a risk worth taking. It’s the first step in freeing us from the dangers of being dependent on foreigners for energy. For me, it’s all about National Security.

Oil prices, including oil from Alaska and Texas, are controlled by OPEC. The price is set by the OPEC cartel.

Republicans are leading the Democrats on the generic ballot and on 8 of 10 top issues. Abortion, Economy, Government Ethics, Iraq, Immigration, National Security, Social Security, and Taxes.

People want Big Brother watching out for us. Which part of the marketplace do you trust? The financial banking part or the part that resells grave sites and throws the bodies away?

It has been long recognized that forcing people to pay for abortions in a pluralistic society is a different issue from allowing people to commit abortion.

He [President Obama] should understand that no Christian can be a willful party to committing abortion directly or as a third party.

Opposition to abortion is intrinsically demanded by the fundamental identifying Christian doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. To force Christians to pay for abortion is a kin to trying to force them to deny Christianity. That is a violation of any notion of pluralism and a potential violation of the first amendment. It is certainly contrary to our founding philosophy.

Did you know that America consistantly ranks among the top two nations for the highest corporate tax rates?

Free markets are great for hamburgers and cell phones. Not so good when a medical emergency forces you to go to the hospital. Would we let market forces control any other mission critical services like policing or fire fighting? Is getting your family rescued from a burning house a right or a privilege? Same for health care.

Regarding the competence of our Government. The do real well with the FCC FAA FDA. They have created miracles with the GPS mapping satellites not to mention the incredible communications satellite network for cell phones and all.

It has only been in recent years with the rise of Rush Limbaugh goofball conservatism that our GOP has got into this thing about the government being the enemy of the private sector. That tax is government taking our money and giving it to others. That we can spend our money better than government. (What does that even mean?)

The hostile eye is merited because the government has a greedy eye that is always looking at the private sector

The Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI) is a new Center-Right, non-partisan, 501c(3) think tank in Delaware.

These same people that guessed wrong and need 18 months to put a shovel in the ground now want to run our health care system?

I remember about 4 years into the Iraq war, before the surge, many defeatists were stating that we had won WWII in less time than we had already been in Iraq. I believe that then-Senator Biden was one of those voices.

Single payer, transportable, permanent, health insurance would be the biggest boost to freedom since interstate highways. Let’s roll.

Republicans would never be for something that will cost jobs, increase taxes and destroy our way of life, rationing health care and telling people that they are going to die because the government finds their treatment to be “unneccessary.”

Asking socialist democracies to vote out universal health care, total control by government of manufacturing and energy is like asking the Russian people under Stalin to vote to repeal his 5 year plans.

What is at stake is whether or not we can afford health care in the near future. This is not a personal versus business conflict. All businesses in this nation today, desperately need a break from health care costs to remain viable.

Admittedly, there are more liberal than conservative talking points in today's little round-up. That was the uintentional result of the fact that most of the conservative talking points were more firmly embedded in paragraphs and sentences where to excerpt them would have been both too awkward and time-consuming. But they were certainly there.

Somebody I know said during the 1990s that people "like to call up talk radio, bloviate, and pretend they've actually done something about the issues." The same is pretty much true today, but the practice extends to blogging, twitter, facebook, etc. etc. ad nauseum....

A topic that I rarely touch upon...

... for rather obvious reasons is Delaware State University.

But this one question has been niggling at me ever since the General Assembly completed its budget negotiations.

Of the three state-supported institutions of higher education, DSU by far receives the smallest amount of support from the State: Del-Tech receives $30 million more and UD receives about $80 million more.

So here's my question: Why did DSU--which receives the smallest allocation--take the largest budget hit?

Check the numbers: Del-Tech got hit for 6%, UD took a 7% reduction, and DSU got clipped for more than 8%.

Unfortunately, I think I know the answer.

When you're Lonnie George, or there are literally UD alums falling all over each other in the Executive and Legislative branches, you get good protection.

When you are the smaller, historically Black university that's had management problems and difficulty finding a new president, the State really doesn't have to pay attention.

In fact, the State may be sending a message. In his remarks to the Joint Finance Committee, Interim DSU President Clay Smith told the legislators that a 10% cut--which they first envisioned--would put DSU on the road to going out of business.

Handing DSU an 8.4% cut, then, appears almost tantamount to saying, "Good luck with that."

Speaking of thin resumes: meet Polly "A New Generation of Leadership" Adams Mervine

When I ran my original post about 19th District Libertarian State Senate candidate Wendy Jones, at least one of my regular commenters carped that she had a rather mediocre to non-existent record of public service or public policy experience [discounting her work with 2nd Amendment groups, LGBT groups, and the Sussex Mobility Consortium]. But now that I see Democrat ["Don't I look a lot like Sarah Palin"] Polly ADAMS Mervine's resume from her campaign website, I get it completely:

Family: Husband S. Jay Mervine,

Pilot, American Airlines

Marine Capt. Desert Storm

Son Stephen J. Mervine, Jr.,

9th grade Sussex Tech

Graduate Eagles Nest Christian Academy

Greenwood Mennonite School

Occupation: Co-owner Fauxbulous FX, Inc.

Previous 2nd grade teacher North Laurel Elementary School

Previous English teacher All Nippon Airways in Okinawa, Japan

Education: Elementary Education Teaching Certification—East Carolina Univ. ‘91

Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth Univ. ‘86

Woodbridge High School ‘82

Activities/Community Involvement:

Member Union United Methodist Church

Former Children’s Church Coordinator

Board Member Clear Space Productions

Founder Fund For Women

Former Board Member Delaware Pain Initiative

Founding Sister-Epsilon Gamma Chapter of Alpha Sigma Alpha ‘84

Let's see: she's been a 2nd Grade Teacher, attends church, and served as a board member for a couple of charities. Yep. Got it. Oh, yeah: she helped found an ASS--oops, I mean ASA--chapter. Unfortunately, she hasn't actually taken time to put down anything about her stance on the issues.

Now I can see why some people might be just so bowled over that they'd say, Who needs an election? The obvious intellectual and philosophical strength of the Delaware Democratic Party is on display right here. Let's just give her that crown she should have had in the Miss Delaware pageant. Strange, 3rd place in Miss Delaware [what year was that?] ain't on the list of achievements.

Wendy Jones has actually had a life of hard work, and has actually posted a platform on the issues:

Petition/Referendum: As your state senator, Wendy pledges to support the introduction of the use of petition and referendum on the ballot; in the meantime, Wendy pledges to sponsor and introduce any legislation supported by a certain percentage of the registered voters within the area involved.

Prevailing Wage: Replace the current process with a competitive, sealed-bid procedure by private industries, promoting fair market value for your hard earned tax dollars.

Gun Control: “In my opinion, gun control should be defined as a steady aim. What part of ’shall not be infringed’ do they not understand? The Second Amendment guarantees the rest, being necessary to the security of a free state, and as a last resort against tyranny in government.” - Wendy Jones

School Vouchers: Citizens have the right to choose how and where their children are educated, whether it be public, private, charter, parochial, or home. Furthermore, their school tax dollars should be applied to whichever is their choice. Those citizens having no eligible children should pay no school taxes.

Tenth Amendment: Fight to restore and defend the state’s and people’s rights as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution in the face of a virtual irrelevance by our centralized national government.

Term Limits:Wendy proposes that no elected office be held for over two consecutive terms without vacating that position for a third term, after would they will be free to run for that office again. She includes herself in that proposal.

Illegal Immigration: Enhance and expand enforcing existing laws, by maximizing fines and other sanctions against offending employers.

Property Rights: The right to private ownership of property is the basic foundation on which this country was built. There can be no better stewards than those private owners; land is not inherited from our ancestors but borrowed from our children.

Gay Marriage: I oppose all government interference between the freedom of choice for consenting adults to freely contract within the sanctity of their home and their church.

You may or may not agree with all (or any) of her positions, but at least she's actually telling people about what she'd do as State Senator--not just why Daddy's little darling deserves, Biden-like, to continue the legacy....

Why I'm not a conservative; OR--why it is so lonely being a Libertarian advocate of smaller government

... because the GOP never--not just George W Bush never, but never even under Ronald Reagan--meant it.

And I have not found a piece of a rant that I more wish I'd written in a long time than this one from Matt Barganier:

If you think most self-described conservatives really hate Big Government, then you stopped paying attention sometime around, oh, the Nixon administration. Good God, man, if they hated Big Government, wouldn’t they at least dislike the most wasteful and intrusive government programs of them all, from the War on Terror to the War on Drugs? No, they love Big Government, from its big, fat boots to its big, fat head. Oh, they’re angry that some of the loot falls on the, um… undeserving, but that won’t stop them from sucking the teats of Social Security and Medicare to the shape and texture of a deflated football. They won’t abide tax increases, but they see no connection between those and deficit spending. And why should they? Just keep those F-22s coming, barkeep! The grandkids are buying!

What both Republicans and Democrats agree upon is that it is all right for government to keep sucking money out of the economy as long as it is their particular, obviously moral purpose for which it is used.

Then they trick us into arguing about the moral purposes rather than the original question of the morality of the whole process.

Goldman Sachs: The Obama Administration's Haliburton?

I shouldn't have to explain the Haliburton reference, right?

You need to listen to Steve Cordasco lay out the Goldman Sachs mafia that has been set in place to determine which banks get TARP funds, who eats who, and who among the surviving banks gets the best deal. [The audio is from an entire show; fastforward to about 35 minutes in for the GS information.]

Once you realizer that Secretary Geitner and Fed Chair Bernancke have set things up so that GS alums [all with stock and stock options] are completely running the bank bailouts, then check this out:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reported Tuesday a second-quarter profit that jumped more than 60% as the investment powerhouse earned nearly $750 million from equity underwriting, helping battered financial-services firms sell stock to meet new government capital requirements.

The quarterly performance from equity underwriting was a company record.

Goldman (GS 149.81, +0.37, +0.25%) also profited handsomely from its role as an intermediary, and sometimes a purchaser itself, for assets that troubled firms needed to sell quickly during the ongoing economic and market crises.

"Our role as an intermediary focused on making markets for buyers and sellers helped drive our performance. We were also active as an underwriter of many significant debt and equity offerings for clients," Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in a press release.

See, the neat thing about this is that all those GS folks now working directly or even indirectly for the Treasury Department don't have to do the AIG hand-wringing about bonuses, because they all already have either the stock or the stock options to take their profits. Thus nobody in the Obama administration will be pillorying Goldman Sachs chief executives for outrageous salaries and bonuses.

But nothing like Haliburton, right...?

If only it had been declared "Top Secret" before it made its way into Borders

From AP:

Court papers filed Thursday show that prison officials twice rejected requests by inmate Ahmed Omar Abu Ali to read "Dreams from my Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

The books contained material "potentially detrimental to national security," prison officials said in two separate rejections from August and September.

On Friday, bureau spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said the bureau reversed course in November and let him read the books.

Damn. All you people rooting around for the birth certificate and the secret Muslim decoder ring were missing it: Virginia's Bureau of Prisons already knew the real top-secret Obama shit was in the books.

Which may only go to prove that nobody actually ever read them.

Gandhi, the Daily Kos, and Libertarians

At Delawareliberal (the really old version of the site) they used to have up the following quotation from Gandhi:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Which is intriguing in light of the fact that some diarists at The Daily Kos are now spending almost as much time discussing [debunking, from their perspective] Libertarianism and the idea of a serious Libertarian third party as they spend trashing social conservatism and Sarah Palin: here, here, and here.

As a rough measure it is becoming more and more clear that libertarian ideas--unfettered by the overtly moralistic and often theocratic overtones of the extreme social conservatives--are seen by progressives and liberals to be their major intellectual and political opposition.

Which would be a lot of fun if Libertarians could ever find a way to organize themselves.

Ah, well....

Today's quote from John Holdren, Obama administration Science Advisor

"Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction."

Putting the science of eugenics back in its proper place at the top of the Federal government....

For a more complete look at Dr. Holdren's long-held views on forced abortions, population control, and the elimination of national sovereignty, go here.

If you 'd like to do anecdotal arguments for or against nationalized health care...

... then you should talk to my Dad.

Dad's 81, Mom's 78. When we talked last night he--shall we say--waxed eloquent about the idea that Medicare is the standard by which we should judge the government's performance as a health insurance provider.

First off, Dad points out, after a lifetime of paying Medicare taxes, the coverage is hardly free.

"They take $86 a month for each of us out of our Social Security payments," he notes. "Then the Medicare only covers about 60% of my out-of-pocket costs, so I had to get the supplemental insurance. We got the cheapest one we could find--bare bones coverage that leaves out a number of things we still have to pay for. That costs another $176 a month. And we didn't take the prescription drug coverage because that would have been at least another $120 a month. We just couldn't afford it."

Let's crunch those numbers: $86 + $86 + $176 + $120 = $468/month, or $5,616/year.

Above that, he estimates that--not counting prescriptions--he ends up with roughly another $3 - $4,000 of out-of-pocket medical expenses per year. Some of that occurs because the doctor he has seen for his joint problems for nearly two decades finally made the tough decision to stop accepting Medicare, so if Dad wants to keep seeing the physician he trusts (a major promise of the new reforms, right?) he has to pay the freight himself.

My Dad is a retired public school teacher: retired with a disability after twenty-eight years (he's legally blind); Mom stayed at home through most of those years. They're contemplating the move into assisted-care now, and as a bridge to that end they investigated having a home health aide come in a couple times a week to assist with the heavier housework.

Medicare pays for that, right?

Well, yes, sort of. Except, as the nice but oh-so-sorrowful woman at the benefits office explained, to qualify for the home health aide Mom would have to give up her driver's license. "We can't provide in-home services for people who can drive."

Of course, if Mom gave up her driver's license they'd have no way to shop ... or make doctor's appointments.

Would Medicare do that? "No, but there are some volunteer programs that might be able to help you out once a week or so."

The common meme/narrative/talking point most often extended by the advocates of single-payer or the public option is that the best case would resemble "Medicare for everybody."

But to have "Medicare for everybody," as President Obama now points out, the government will have to cut Medicare costs yet again.

To Dad what that means is pretty clear: "There will be more doctors who won't take my Medicare, and they'll raise my premiums and co-pays."

Anecdotal? Sure. Opinionated? Well, he is my Dad--what did you expect?

The Obama administration reticence on naming a special prosecutor...

... has nothing to do with being thus far unaware of Bush administration policies on domestic surveillance or any failure of the MSM to cover this issue.

Yes, there are new details emerging, but we knew--we pretty much ALL knew--this was going on.

As much as I cavil about the national Libertarian Party, it was the only political party that really made this a significant issue during the 2008 elections. Again and again.

The ACLU has been pointing this out--in detail and along with other homeland security outrages--for years.

We knew. As a friend of mine said about two months ago, "There has been no greater stain on the reputation of American in modern memory than the fact that we torture."

Torture, surveillance, constitutional abuse.

And yet there continues to be surprise [now growing louder, I will admit], among our liberal and progressive friends that the Obama administration would rather leave this all in the past, and is reluctant to name a special prosecutor.

How could this be? It's not the political cost, as some have suggested. It's the fact--that the MSM and New Media have both documented thoroughly since Inauguration Day--that little has changed under the new administration.

The Obama administration has gone to court repeatedly relying on Bush-era legal theories to defend its conduct, has mooted its ability to detain people found innocent by the courts, and has even discussed executions without trials while pushing for a new cyber-security law that amounts to authorizing a complete government take-over of the internet. The Obama administration piously talks about shutting down Gitmo while maintaining abusive interrogation techniques at Bagram.

Want links? I've done this so many times that you can just start here.

The Obama administration therefore has this tiny little conundrum to solve before it can authorize a special prosecutor: how do you take the Bush administration to court for doing many things that you're still doing?

OK this is domination (and Congressional) power-mad Christianists at their worst

Not an elegant title, but I am still blown away by the Rachel Maddow interview regarding The Family, which you can either see or read here.

Only to make it imperative that you visit, I will give you this snippet about a powerful, secretive Washington DC Christianist group that includes Senators and Congresscritters among its converts:

Maddow: Wow. When I read your book, The Family, when it first came out in hardback, my notes on um, I write notes in the flyleaf about what I was thinking about. And my notes about it, I went back and looked, were that it was essentially to promote, it saw its role as promoting American power, world wide, unfettered capitalism with no unions, no programs to help poor people, all with this idea that godly powerful rich men should get as many resources as possible personally, and they should just privately help everyone else. That is the impression that I was left with. Was I close?

[Author Jeff] Sharlet: That's dead on the money. The family began, it's the oldest Christian conservative organization in Washington and it goes back seventy years. And the founder believed that god gave him a new revelation saying that Christianity had gotten it wrong for two thousand years and that what most people think of as Christianity, as being about, you know, helping the weak and the poor and the meek and the down and out, he believes god came to him one night in April in 1935 and said what Christianity should really be about is building more power for the already powerful. And that these powerful men who were chosen by god can then if they want to dispense blessings to the rest of us, through a kind of trickle-down fundamentalism.

Words fail. Tomorrow maybe they won't, but tonight...

wow.

Comment rescues, bad math, and ridiculous factoids of the health care debate

Because people who have an agenda rarely bother to check their facts, and people who agree with their agenda rarely bother to challenge them, things like this comment on the American Medical Association versus Physicians for National Healthcare pass into history as fact-free talking points:

The majority of doctors who used to be members of the AMA, have left that group and joined Physicans for National Health Care. PNHP.org. These doctors are all for single payer health care!

Not that this commenter will every reaLIZe it, but the statistics say otherwise.

The AMA has not quite 245,000 members, of whom about 135,000 are actually practicing physicians (the rest are retired, medical students, or other medical personnel). This means the AMA represents something like 15% of the 900,000 practicing physicians in the United States today.

Physicians for a National Health Program [the actual name of the group] claims 14,000 members. Again, not all are doctors; many are retired, medical students or allied health professionals.

Assuming that 55% of the members of PNHP [the same percentage as the AMA] are practicing physicians, this would mean that PNHP represents the views of not quite 1% of the 900,000 practicing physicians in the United States today.

For either organization to claim to speak for the entire medical profession is, therefore, dishonest, but for anyone to suggest that PHNP represents the voice of American physicians borders on delusional.

Still, it won't matter, because the relationship of talking points to truth is no longer really very important, is it?

Libertarian may be the wrong name for a political party

This is not exactly news, but a comment in response to a Peter Orvetti post on moderate libertarians at Independent Political Report got me thinking about it again.

Erik Geib says

I still feel like most of this in-fighting wouldn’t be so severe if the party simply weren’t named after a philosophy.

There are reasons that the Democratic Party is not named the Liberal Party or the Progressive Party, which is the same reason that the Republicans don't call themselves the Conservative Party.

When I break it down I get two main reasons:

(1) Because not all Democrats are progressive/liberal, and not all Republicans are that conservative. Instead, the parties are (or at least were in the case of the severely wounded GOP) vehicles for groups of political fellow travelers to use to win elections at all levels of government. Because of the way they are named (see the item below), they can accommodate Democratic Senators that are as conservative as Bayh or Carper in the same party with Dodd or Kennedy. The Libertarian Party, however, gets tied up in endless what kind of Libertarian are you and who are the real Libertarians, you're not distractions to the point wherein it implodes and convinces the American voter that they are definitely not ready for prime time.

(2) The names themselves--Democrat and Republican-- are perfect for political parties, wherein Libertarian is fatally flawed. We are a Democracy and a Republic [at least in some non-purist sense], so both parties can lay legitimate claim in that sense to being about all Americans. Libertarian is the name of an ideology, not a party--by definition a sub-set [and a fairly damned exclusive one at that] of the total populace. For a third party to be effectively organized around generally Libertarian principles, as the Dems are oganized around generally liberal principles, it needs a different name.

The problem is that the remaining good names are problematic. Somebody in the thread I quoted suggested Liberty Party, and I have always thought that Constitution Party, Federalist Party, and even Reform Party had good points. Problem: you've got to be able to turn the party name into an adjective--Democrat or Republican--and the only way to do that with Liberty Party is ... Libertarian!? Not gonna work.

Constitution, Federalist, and Reform names have already been taken by people whose ideas--in many ways--are not quite what we'd be looking for.

Freedom Party? Oops--too much like the Freepers.

Free Market Party? Too much economics and not enough individual liberty.

Civil Liberties Party? Possible, because civil libertarian, strangely enough, does not have quite the baggage attached to it that plain Libertarian does.

Jeffersonian Party? I'd kind of like it because I am an unreconstructed fan of TJ, but in the current time the image of Sally Hemmings pretty much cuts away at everything.

Bull Moose Party? Don't tempt me.

Thomas Paine Alliance? You'd get called Pains

Common Sense Party? Too much Glenn Beck association for me.

Objectivist Party? Hello Ayn Rand. Goodby votes.

Civil Resistance Party? Stolen from Venezuela. Better give it back.

Constitutional Union Party? Too Statist for a lot of Libertarians--too Civil War-era for a lot of other folks.

Limited Government Party?

Indepedent Citizens Party?

Obviously I need some help here.

But you knew that already.

Newt drops acid on Al Jazeera

... or something like that, since it is difficult to explain why else he would be there advocating that the United States attack not Iran's nuclear capabilities, but that nation's refineries in order to de-stablize the existing regime:

The former speaker of the US House of Representatives has said that the US should "sabotage" Iran's oil and gas infrastructure as part of its efforts to bring down the government.

In an interview with Al Jazeera's Avi Lewis for the Fault Lines programme, Republican Newt Gingrich said targeting Iran's refinery would spark an economic crisis that would destabilise the government in Tehran.

He said the US should "use covert operations … to create a gasoline-led crisis to try and replace the regime".

"I think we have a vested interest, the world has a vested interest, in a responsible Iranian government, just as we have a vested interest in a responsible North Korean government," he said.

I love the logic, Newt old buddy.

We want a responsible government in Iran that does not meddle with the internal affairs of its neighbors, which we will achieve by meddling in its internal affairs.

Hopefully, on Tom Knapp's GOP Presidential Candidate Handicapping Post the odds on the Newtster are going down.

When self-regulation leads to tax harvesting--OR--protecting the public from bad yoga while raising revenue

Even the New York Times cannot shake off the idea that this is ... not just ridiculous but positively Orwellian:

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ten years ago, with yoga transforming into a ubiquitous pop culture phenomenon from a niche pursuit, yoga teachers banded together to create a voluntary online registry of schools meeting new standards for training instructors.

But that list — which now includes nearly 1,000 yoga schools nationwide, many of them tiny — is being put to a use for which it was never intended. It is the key document in a crackdown that pits free-spirited yogis against lumbering state governments, which, unlike those they are trying to regulate, are not always known for their flexibility.

Citing laws that govern vocational schools, like those for hairdressers and truck drivers, regulators have begun to require licenses for yoga schools that train instructors, with all the fees, inspections and paperwork that entails. While confrontations have played out differently in different states, threats of shutdowns and fines have, in some cases, been met with accusations of power grabs and religious infringement — disputes that seem far removed from the meditative world yoga calls to mind.

That this is pretty much a naked money grab rather than needed to protect the public is pretty clear:

The conflict started in January when a Virginia official directed regulators from more than a dozen states to an online national registry of schools that teach yoga and, in the words of a Kansas official, earn a “handsome income.” Until then, only a few states had been aware of the registry and had acted to regulate yoga instruction, though courses in other disciplines like massage therapy have long been subject to oversight....

Regulators said licensing the schools would allow states to enforce basic standards and protect customers who usually spend $2,000 to $5,000 on training courses, not to mention provide revenue for cash-starved governments. “If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules,” said Patrick Sweeney, a Wisconsin licensing official, who believes that in 2004 he was the first to discover the online registry and use it to begin regulating yoga teaching.

Many smaller studios are being shut down by the licensing fees, but in some states Yoga masters are fighting back:

In April, New York State sent letters to about 80 schools warning them to suspend teacher training programs immediately or risk fines of up to $50,000. But yogis around the state joined in opposition, and the state has, for now, backed down.

Let's go back for a moment to that idiotic comment by Patrick Sweeney of Wisconsin: “If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules."

First off, moron: they did set up rules. That's how you found them in the first place, because they set up industry standards.

Second, pea-brain: there hasn't been the slightest piece of evidence put forth that unlicensed Yoga schools do any harm to anybody.

So forget the idea that you're somehow acting in the public interest. The truth is that Yoga has become a $6 Billion business over the past few years, and cash-strapped State governments are trying to cash in.

This is immoral, opportunistic tax harvesting at its worst.

But they'll get away with it.

Obama administration: no reason to investigate reports of mass murders by US-backed force in Afghanistan

Unbelievable:

WASHINGTON -Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces.

The mass deaths were brought up anew Friday in a report by The New York Times on its Web site. It quoted government and human rights officials accusing the Bush administration of failing to investigate the executions of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of prisoners.

U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country.

The Times cited U.S. military and CIA ties to Afghan Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom human rights groups accuse of ordering the killings. The newspaper said the Defense Department and FBI never fully investigated the incident.

Asked about the report, Marine Corps Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that since U.S. military forces were not involved in the killings, there is nothing the Defense Department could investigate.

"There is no indication that U.S. military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this," Lapan said. "So there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD (Department of Defense) perspective to investigate."

Of course, Dostum has been connected with the CIA and US Special Forces since 2001:

In November 2001, with the beginning of the US invasion of Afghanistan, and against the wishes of the CIA who distrusted Dostum, a team including Johnny Micheal Spann landed to set up communications in the Dariya Suf. A few hours later 23 men of Operational Detatchment Alpha (ODA) 595 landed to begin the war....

There were allegations in 2001 that Dostum and his forces, who were fighting jointly with US Special Forces, suffocated as many as 2,000 prisoners in container trucks following the Taliban surrender of Kunduz in an incident that has become known as the Dasht-i-Leili massacre.

And--while basically resuming his career as an Afghan warlord--Dostum is technically a senior official in the government we are supporting:

[President] Karzai appointed him as a special adviser on security and military affairs, with effective control over security affairs in the northern Afghan provinces of Balkh, Jowzjan, Sar-e Pol, Samangan, and Faryab. Today he runs parts of the country's north as his own fiefdom, nominally serving as a deputy defense minister to the national government in Kabul but operating almost totally independent of the government. Dostum's force of some 20,000 militia fighters is composed mostly of ethnic Uzbeks who are members of his political group, Junbish-e Melli.

This time even the partisans at the Daily Kos are wondering WTF?:

My understanding of offical White House policy is justice must take a back seat to political expediency if we are to more forward. Would Obama or his lackey Eric Holder dare to initiate meaningful investigation of war crimes in Afghanistan while totally ignoring them in Gitmo or Bagram? Or would any investigation whatsoever indicate a lack of a certain, shall we say, bi-partisan spirititude?

But nothing will come of it.

As the Defense Department says, only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country, which, translated into British Imperial Speak from the 19th Century attempt to occupy Afghanistan, read like this: Just wogs killing wogs, eh? No business of ours, except that they're saving us havin' to spend on the bullets.

How to secure Afghanistan: one soldier for every 122 people in the country

Actually it's worse than that.

According to WaPo:

The Afghan army is already scheduled to grow from 85,000 to 134,000, an expansion originally expected to take five years but now fast-tracked for completion by 2011. Several senior Pentagon officials indicated that an adequate size for the Afghan force may be twice the expanded number.

So that would be 268,000 soldiers (not counting police) for a country with a population of 32.7 million.

That's one soldier for every 122 people in the country.

But wait: by fall the US will have 68,000 troops on the ground, plus 8,000 Brits, 2,700 Canadians, and roughly another 4,000-odd NATO soldiers. So that's nearly 83,000 foreign troops, and WaPo also reports that General McChrystal may be gearing up to ask for more American forces early next year--trainers, you see.

Let's just deal with the number we know will be there in the fall, which--when added to the potential expansion of the Afghani Army--means that there could be 351,000 troops in Afghanistan by some point in 2011.

That's one soldier for every 93 Afghanis.

To give you an idea of just how massive an occupation force that would be, consider that to approach the same density of troops, you'd have to send 3.2 million troops to occupy the United States.

Ask yourself for a moment exactly what kind of a war we are fighting when the Pentagon and the commander on the ground are seriously proposing that it will take years, billions of dollars, and a troop concentration equal to 1.1% of the country's total population to achieve security.

Making stuff up: what you do when you've got nothing

I tried. I was going to let this abyssmal, ignorant post by donviti at Delawareliberal go by without comment. Really.

But there are just so many things wrong about An Awful Christian Ritual That Needs to Be Stopped from the man whose infantile rants are somehow treated as either real commentary or legitimate attempts at literary posturing by his co-bloggers, that I couldn't pass it by.

In this post donviti--who claims once to have been Catholic and should therefore know better--terms circumcision a Christian ritual, which it is not.

But watch him bristle should anyone point out his ignorance or suggest that some of his writings tend to be ... anti-Catholic.

In this post donviti--whose source of record is a blatantly anti-Semitic urban-rumor type post at the Daily Kos--passes off as true the myth that Jewish children are circumcised by an adult sucking on their penises.

Circumcision is a serious issue for a lot of folks, and there is a reasoned Libertarian case to be made against it as well as one that can be made for it. That case isn't made in a post where faux outrage and pretend moral superiority are substituted for ... pretty much anything.

Somebody seems to have had his forebrain trimmed back instead of his foreskin.

Worth reading: a brilliant piece on how President Obama is successfully courting the Catholic vote...

... despite the obvious differences on abortion.

The two important take-aways from David Gibson's brilliant article on the President's meeting with the Pope are:

(1) Love him or hate him, support or oppose his policies, think he's a disaster or a triumph, Barack Obama is an immensely skilled politician and you will always underestimate him at your peril..

(2) Catholics--even American Catholics--are not the pro-life voting monolith that social conservatives would like to believe they are.

Here's the tiniest snippet of an article you really should read in full:

For his part, Obama has been diligent in courting the Catholic vote, and there appears to be more than political maneuvering at work. Obama knows how to "talk Catholic," in the words of more than one participant at last week's White House meeting between Obama and a select group of Catholic journos from across the spectrum. At that meeting he cited the late Chicago cardinal, Joseph Bernardin, as an inspiration and he spoke easily about Bernadin's "seamless garment" approach to pro-life and social justice issues. He can talk theology and original sin (as he did at Notre Dame) and he knows that you address the pope as "Your Holiness" -- something it took George W. Bush a while to learn. (At a 2007 meeting with Benedict, President Bush made aides wince by repeatedly referring to the pope as "sir.")

As a Catholic who believes that a secular society should defend women's right to control their own bodies--including abortion--I found this article extremely interesting.

Guest Post: Townie76 and a critique of my Libertarian positions

Townie76, like Waldo, is an old friend of mine of more than 25 years, who has begun reading this blog and commenting during the past couple of months. He is a career military officer, a trained historian, a legal scholar, and a profound thinker regarding the American experiment. He's not by any means a Libertarian, as you will surely notice by the following, but I think that he represents such a voice of rationality within our currently intellectually bankrupt public discourse that I could not resist sharing his recent, lengthy response to this blog with you.

What you get is what he wrote, with minimal editorial omissions as noted in the text and two corrections of obviously mis-typed words (I was "condemning" and not "commending" DHS for the Rightwing Extremism Report, and I really think he meant to refer to the States as multiple "laboratories" rather than "lavatories" of Democracy, but considering Larry Craig, maybe not.):

While I agree in part with what you say, I also find myself in disagreement in part, but that is nothing new, as our graduate school debates were always more about agreeing to disagree.

If I was to offer a major critique of what is the underlying philosophy of your blog it would be this; you postulate a Lockeian vision for a Hobbesian world. While we should always strive for obtaining the vision which Locke set forth in Second Treatise on Government the reality the world we live in is more like the world described by Hobbs in Leviathan.

But having said that, let me at least touch on the points which we agree.

Regarding speech, I am totally in agreement with you that the right and the left use inflammatory speech, and will try to use “eliminationist” in order to paint those who disagree with them as being something akin to take your choice of words.

So why do groups or individuals, be it Glen Beck or Paul Krugman use language and rhetoric which is over the top? I wish I had an answer for this, but what I do know is it adds to the course nature of our debate. Calling for the killing of abortion doctors or homosexuals, may make someone feel good but in the end enables some to act out the words of provocateur. But restricting such speech, whether uttered by conservative, communists, liberal, socialists, or god forbid moderates is a cure worse than the illness. Likewise, our college and universities must begin to show some willingness to permit speech, which is contrary to the majority view, despite the fact it might offend someone or some group on the university campus. We must also ensure that students and faculty respect the right of those whom they disagree to speak. I would argue that good manners are something which we should insist upon.

Regulating speech and belief is impossible; for there is always someone who thinks and sees the world differently from society in general. (Having been this person for over thirty years in the military—not to the extent of some—I have been more often at odds than in agreement with most of my peers.) The question is: are the beliefs and speech of a group so threatening to the internal security of a nation that they must be banned or at least monitored? This is where we get into an area that is fraught with civil liberty implications. The badly mishandled DHS report. (By the way I have it on good authority that report was began, written, and approved by the Bush administration but not released, whereas it counterpart of left wing groups was!)

Should we be fearful to the point of banning groups that advocate the violent overthrow of America—I think not, as most are harmless ranting of a few. However should we know who they are and monitor them—I think so, but maybe it should not be the federal government who does so. The Southern Poverty Law Center is doing a good job, and if they should find troubling developments I am sure they are capable of alerting appropriate authority. It seems to me that unless a federal crime has been committed we should not waste the time or energy to monitor these groups.

Where you have been right to raise the increasing rise of the federal police state, I think the greatest threat comes not from the federal government but rather from overzealous state and local law enforcement agencies. I am troubled by the perceived need of state and local law enforcement agencies to gather intelligence on their citizens, to write reports on otherwise law abiding citizens because they are associated with a particular group, who words not actions, cause concern. I am also disturbed by the “thin blue line” mentality, which increasingly has the police looking more like the military than the good Patrolman Flannigan! Is there a need for the police to wear military style utility uniforms, is there a need for the police to swarm building in delivering routine warrants, is it necessary for the police to use no knock warrants, to bust into a house in the middle of night and shoot and kill a ninety year old women (Atlanta GA) or shoot the owners two Labrador Retrievers (Prince George County Maryland), or to use a Taser against a man simply because he is loud and vocal (University of Florida). The greatest threat to our civil liberties comes not from the federal government, but the increasing Para-militarization of the state and local police departments and the willingness of local and state government leaders to condone the use of extraordinary means at all times in the conduct of police activities. Too many of our police have forgotten they are to serve and protect, and that they have an obligation to their fellow citizens to live by the laws they are to enforce.

Regarding the Bill of Rights, I have always maintained, that no one of the amendments is more or less important than another, that they should all be regarded as inalienable and essential to the exercise of the liberties which all men receive at birth. It always amazes me that some believe that the Bill of Rights includes all the rights except the 2nd Amendment, or that somehow that Freedom of the Press is more important than “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The question, which has not been fully resolved, is whether the Bill of Rights applies only to the Federal Government (see Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion in Barron v Baltimore, however given the language of 14th Amendment, I am hard pressed to believe, despite the Supreme Courts reluctance to do so, why they should not be incorporated.) In fact, I would go as far to argue that the Bill of Rights provides a minimum which each state must provide, but which the individual states may expand upon. At one time, a law student and I postulated a theory of Constitutional Common Law, but it never got beyond the academic discussion stages!

Now I will turn my attention to your stated positions on foreign misadventure. I too share your concerns, that the military has become the first instrument of foreign discourse rather than the means of last resort. I think that part of the problem lies with the passing of the “Wise Men” who understood that to be part of family of nations required the judicious use of force, that you could get more with sugar than vinegar. Unfortunately with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, rather than turning our back of foreign involvement, we allowed our position as the Alpha among the family of nations to rule our heart and not our head. I would also submit, that at the end of the cold war, we did not go far enough in dismantling our Cold War military. We should have retreated to inside the borders of our nation, leaving German, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom and return our armed forces to the terra firma of the United States. These are we should have, but we didn’t and we are left with legacy of foreign involvements in the expense of our most precocious resources.

Having said this, we are in Iraq—which was clearly a mistake. I am less sure of Afghanistan, although we must and should be wary of long involvement in this region. We should not view it as a nation, but rather a series of tribes connected by a common religion, but who have no concept of what nationhood means nor any desire to become a nation. Should we have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11—I think not, we should have hunted terrorist throughout the world and forced them back into Afghanistan. We didn’t: we decided that revenge was better warm than cold—clearly we forgot the lesson of Don Corelone in the Godfather.

Having said all of this, I do not believe we can return to our isolationist past, nor do I believe we can radically alter the size of the United State Military. In many respect, the Department of Defense has become the quintessential New Deal agency. It size and breath fuel much of our nation’s economy, there is a presence in every community in our nation be it a recruiting station, and national guard or reserve armory, or a industry which in large or small parts contributes to the armed forces of our nation. The Department of Defense is much more adapt at delivering stimulus money than the government as a whole. [Here follows an extremely detailed proposal for reducing the size and scope of the US military, which I will eventually publish as a separate item.]

While I think my thoughts have a certain common sense appeal, the reality is they shan’t have a chance in hell of even being considered. How to limit foreign adventure is best achieved by fiscal restraint in funding the military. If the military is kept small and poor (a lesson of history) then the civilian masters will be less likely to commit our forces to poorly considered foreign adventures.

Now some thoughts on the role of the central Government, its scope, and relationship with state governments. There has always been a tension between the greater and lesser republic. Madison warned us about the tyranny of faction (Federalist 10) and Calhoun argued for a minority veto (Exposition and Protest) (I should note than Lani Guinier essentially for the same and was pilloried in the Clinton Administration by the right!), we fought a Civil War over the right of state to succeed from the Union. As Gary Wills has shown part of the Sui Genius of Abraham Lincoln was the incorporation of the Declaration of Independence into governing philosophy of our Constitution. The Federal Government is now the Greater Republic; with the State being important was clearly beholden to the Central Government. The question is how involved should the Federal Government be in the lives of its citizens.

There are those, who believe that government knows best. The best exemplars of this attitude are the Labour Government under first Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown and Henry Waxman (D California) and (Rosco Barlette) R Maryland.

First I shall disparage Blair et al of Labour. Despite their protest to the contrary their third way was an imposition of the ultimate nanny state. Because they were better educated, because they were rich and successful, because they were urban and not rural, they knew what was best for the citizens of the United Kingdom. Traditional education standards were cast aside in order to promote a diverse nation, being English was seen as somehow not in keeping with the 21st Century. Yet, for all their reforms their education is routinely considered to be failing its students and declining as measured against other European countries. Fox Hunting was an affront to their urban educated sensibilities, so rather than letting the minority who enjoyed the sport continue to do so, they banned it because they could do so. They did it in a heavy handed way that showed their true colours, which was to stamp out any traces of Toffiness. Of course this has proven to be a legal and public relations disaster for Labour.

Likewise, the imposition of draconian rules and regulations on the owners of Public Houses has merely turned a once thriving commercial industry into a slowly dying one. But of course while imposing draconian rules and regulations they allowed their urban well educated friends in the financial industry to create new means of making money, but through means that not only put their individual fortunes at risk but also the financial underpinnings of the United Kingdom most importantly the common working stiff, who led on by unscrupulous lenders has lost not only his home, his job, and his life savings. Rules and regulations are fine for the Toff and the working stiffs, but not us who smart and know what we are doing. Of course, these are the same ones who have now been caught with their hands in the cookie jar so to speak, by padding their expense accounts.

Now I shall turn my attention to Messers Waxman and Barlette. Mr. Waxman, is the exemplar of the bully nanny state. Nothing is too small for his inquisitions. He regularly belittles Executives of legal industries (Tobacco) for selling a legal product, he proposes draconian solutions to problems by increasing the scope and reach of government. Mr. Barlette, on the other hand, believes that somehow the United States must protect young impressionable and honorable young men of the Armed Forces of the United States from the purveyors of pornography such as Playboy and Penthouse with their pictures of scantily clad or naked females. He also believes that gay men and women are not honorable to serve in the United States military as somehow he believes they will turn good heterosexual military men and women into deviant perverted screaming and flaming homosexuals.

Now, having said all this let me turn the other cheek and speak out the other side of my mouth. Whereas in my previous discourse I spoke to the desire of man for liberty and freedom, free from the unnecessary and unwarranted intrusion of government into their lives let me address the other need of mankind—the need for order.

In the world of Locke mankind is perfectly capable of regulating (intentional choice of a word) his/her conduct; whereas in the world of Hobbs (an I should not many Calvinists) man requires a strong central government to control the rabble of the polity. The essential question is how to balance the need for Liberty with the need for Order. [A graphic which did not make the transition with this email has been omitted.] I would submit you could go to any period of American history, in 1798 the Patriot Act could be replaced by the Alien and Sedition Act.)

Several weeks ago, you posted a condemnation of the Department of Homeland Security for their release that implied that right wing extremist posed the greatest threat to our nation. Given the history of right wing extremist groups, was this not a prudent move, to alert state and local police to the potential of violence by these groups? Where DHS made a mistake was to determine the threat based on ideology rather than the propensity for violence, if that standard had been used then it would have group gangs, environmental extremists, PETA etc in one report.

While we should respect the Bill of Rights, I believe that our history has highlighted, even the founders believed that the Bill of Rights were not absolute. It seems where one of the failing of those who argue that the 2nd Amendment is absolute fail, is the fact that the other rights contained in the Bill of Rights are not absolute. Assembly and speech have some limits; assembly can be regulated by time, manner, and place; speech can be regulated where it cause violence, or as Justice Holmes said, it does not give one license to yell fire in a crowded theater; religion has some restrictions in particular the use of Christian prayers at public assemblies; some searches are permitted without a warrant when the police can show there is high probability of flight and a linkage of the search to a crime. As the Supreme Court decision in Heller v. the District of Columbia, the restrictions imposed by the DC Government were too extreme, but the Court acknowledged that governments have a right to impose some reasonable limitations in order to maintain order in society as whole, of course they left it to the Courts to determine what was reasonable. This reminds me of the guidance contain in Lemmon v Kurtzman (403 US 602) which provide broad pronouncements regarding the entanglement of religion in the matters of state.

Can rights be absolute? I think not, as it would be anarchy, which would be appealing to neither the Locke nor Hobbs which resides in each of us.

In this day and age can we as a nation afford to allow the state unrestrained determination of what the role of government? I doubt for a moment you want California to determine how the government of Delaware should function, rather you would want the good citizens of Delaware to determine their own fate, nor do I believe you want each state in our great nation to be the same in how it views governance. In fact I would argue that one of the strengths of our nation is the fact that as David Broader says, there are multiple laboratories of democracy in operation in our nation at any given time.

Despite my general good feelings for Locke, and despite my admiration for the concept of democracy as a system of government as a whole, I must confess that I wonder whether too much democracy is necessarily good for the body politic. In this, I believe, I share many who wonder if the progressive impulses of Hiram Johnson have served the state of California and its citizens in obtaining good governance.

Libertarian Party of Delaware: Wendy Jones for State Senate

From Jim Rash, Chair of the Libertarian Party of Delaware:

The Libertarian Party of Delaware is proud to announce that Gwendolyn (Wendy) Jones will run for the 19th Senate District in the special election to be held August 3rd on the Libertarian Party ticket. Wendy is looking forward to representing the people of the 19th District and bringing a new spirit of liberty to Legislative Hall.

An active member of the Libertarian Party for almost 20 years, Wendy is a member of the LPD Executive Committee and currently serves as the LPD Sussex County Secretary. She is a strong supporter of individual rights and, as a long time small business owner, will work to restore free-market entrepreneurship, creating jobs for Delawareans. Her support of the Second Amendment is evidenced by being an NRA member for about 25 years, currently holding a Life-Endowment level membership. She is also a Gun Owners of America member and she is the Delaware representative for Pink Pistols. She carries a well worn copy of the U.S. Constitution which will be her guide in Dover.

A Milton resident since 2001, Wendy has spent her spare time giving back to her community, mentoring at H.O. Brittingham Elementary School in Milton, and she is currently donating her professional driving services for Sussex County Mobility Consortium.

Wendy's official campaign site [still somewhat skeletal] is here. Note to Wendy and Brian: first priority, frankly, is to get that donation page up. Knowing it will pale by comparison to the Demopublicans and pseudo-Demopublicans of IPOD, we can still raise a small kitty for Wendy if every registered Libertarian in the State [or even independents] would send her $25.00.

This is a short campaign (to 3 August), but it is an important one, not just for Libertarians but for the State. Are we going to play business as usual with the Delaware Way? Probably. But we could also send a message here.

Two strains of the Orwellian world view that all wealth actually belongs to the government...

First, from Jefferson County, Alabama, where the Courts have ruled that the local government's occupational tax and business license fee are invalid, the Center for Libertarian Press Information notes that the county faces the prospect of running out of money on 31 July. In a statement of rare, direct honesty, one County Commissioner indicates what she thinks is the essential service of government:

One Commissioner placed the priorities of the County government exactly when she said: “If we can’t make payroll, only the revenue department employees will be working, to collect taxes.”

Locally, one of our favorite liberal/progressive bloggers declares all tax cuts or credits to be government subsidies:

We are taking about the cost of business equipment — not retail items that get sold to a consumer. And that grocery store gets depreciation on its shelving — which reduces the tax bill owed. A subsidy. Not unlike the mortgage tax deduction. Or any other tax credit or deduction.

This is actually part of a fairly entertaining thread that started out about health care and ended up being a tutorial in things that some of our local blogging community do not understand about economics or accounting.

The basic underlying philosophy here is that the government--or the people--has first call on any wealth amassed by individuals or businesses, and that any of the money you are graciously allowed to keep for your own use is a government subsidy. This viewpoint does, inadvertently, have the honesty to admit that the current US tax code is a purely partisan political thing, wherein the government exercises its fiat power to reward certain political groups or encourage trendy pieces of social/economic behavior under the rubric of public policy.

It bears little resemblance to economics or accounting as actually practiced by professionals, but hey....

That's an understandable position, perhaps, when you select as a blogging handle a name that evokes "the archetypal character of someone whose prophetic insight is obscured by insanity" or "someone who believes that he or she can see the future but cannot do anything about it."

The Obama administration's war against the Constitution

I really don't like the title of this post, because it is far too close to what a lot of nutjobs were writing back even during the Presidential campaign. Besides, I really don't think that President Obama is systematically continuing the Bushco policies of dismantling the civil liberties protections of the US Constitution because he is a socialist, or anti-American, or a secret Kenyan-born infiltrator.

I think he is busily hacking away at the US Constitution because he is a traditional Demopublican, Statist politician who actually views the Bill of Rights as an impediment to effective government action, and who actually believes that Americans will be more free [whatever that could possibly mean in the current context] with the government having more power to regulate virtually every aspect of our lives.

I resisted this kind of title through the repeated cases of the Obama administration supporting Bushco policies on detainees, even when the administration has mooted ideas like execution without trial, indefinite detention, refusing to acknowledge the authority of the Courts, refusing to release prisoners acquitted via trials at their own military tribunals, eliminating Miranda rights, and issuing signing statements in which he refuses to comply with laws as written by Congress.

Now White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel insists that the government has the power to nullify the Constitutional rights of American citizens without following any due process. He was speaking in regard to the controversial DHS "No-fly" list:

“if you’re on that no-fly list, your access to the right to bear arms is cancelled, because you’re not part of the American family; you don’t deserve that right. There is no right for you if you’re on that terrorist list.”

Don't believe it? You can view the video here.

We should take a moment to recall that the "No-fly" list now includes at least one million American citizens, the overwhelming majority (probably in the 98-99% category) have neither been charged nor convicted of any crime. The Department of Homeland Security admits that thousands of people have been placed on the list by mistake, although you cannot find out if you are on the list, have no ability to challenge the evidence that got you placed on the list, and have no legal recourse of any kind once the government decides to place you on the list.

I have chronicled these excesses--and others--during the first six months of the Obama administration, and have watched his supporters consistently ignore them [one of the few exceptions to this in the local blogosphere being Dana Garrett, who always retains the courage of his convictions no matter who is in power].

I have also watched Republicans [who generally lacked the courage to stand up to the Bush administration on the same issues] give President Obama a pass on continuing to whittle away at our Constitutional protections. They've painted themselves into their own particular corner, since it would be politically quite difficult at this point to come out against continued movement in a direction that they have previously approved [unless, like Nancy Pelosi] they didn't actually hear the briefings they were attending.

The matter is actually quite simple: in six months President Obama has moved from extending unconstitutional powers assumed by Bushco into the realm of having his Chief of Staff declare the unilateral Executive power to nullify entire amendments in the Bill of Rights.

Some sensible liberals and progressives who visit here (Perry and A1 among them) have expressed disappointment regarding these developments [A1 has even announced an unwillingness to support Obama in 2012], but for the most part the mantra from our most strident friends has been variations of Bush broke it; Obama needs more time; give him a chance; wait and see; he can't afford to be seen as a surrender monkey on terrorism.

Meanwhile they are busy explaining that the greatest threat to America is not the Obama administration's unconstitutional actions, but rightwing rhetoric about them, while turning a blind eye toward the overtly eliminationist rhetoric of administration shils like Paul Krugman, who declares Congresscritters who vote against the Obama administration to be traitors.

Enough is enough.

Too many Americans sat back in the shadow of 9/11 and allowed the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and a wide variety of unconstitutional pieces of legislation to be passed in order to assauge our fears of another terrorist attack. In other words, as Al Gore so famously said, He played on our fears.

Well, government by campaign and catastrophe continues unabated in the new administration, even though the fears they now play on revolve around health care, bank bail-outs, global warming, and unemployment.

It is actually time to do something in defense of the US Constitution.

You could do worse, at this point, than donating to the American Civil Liberties Union or Anti-war.com, two organizations doing yeoman work on virtual shoestrings either to halt the Obama administration war on civil liberties or expose the truth behind our foreign policy and the so-called War on Terror.

You could start pressuring your elected officials to do something about the "No-fly" list, or to take a public stand on the many administration violations of constitutional law.

You could actually ask tough questions of candidates running for office.

You could consider voting for Libertarian or even Green candidates in order to remind the two wings of the Demopublican Party that failure to support the US Constitution has consequences (at least I hope it does).

You could even (perish the thought) use your blog and your slowly evaporating First Amendment rights to act like you actually give a damn about the Constitution, or just admit that you were posturing prior to the last election, that you really don't care, and it was all about politics and getting your party into power.

It is time. It may be past time.

Childe Roland to take his sword and leave town amid (surprise) no ethics investigation since the administration needs his vote through 2010

A few days ago our friends in the Democratic wing of the Demopublican Party were all rejoicing at the seating of Al Franken in the US Senate to give them a fairly meaningless 60-vote majority (since the idea of any 60 Democrats agreeing on anything is pretty far out there)....

Strangely enough, while they are doing the Franken victory dance and enjoying the bizarre roadshow that is Sarah Palin, they seem quite mum on the fact that their 60-vote majority is also dependent (at least for the next year and and a half) on the vote of Illinois Senator Roland Burris.

Remember Burris? The guy even Dick Durbin said ought to resign? Except that he didn't, and the Illinois prosecutors abruptly forgot about pursuing his corruption case, and the Senate ethics investigation has ... evaporated.

Today poor Roland announced that he's doing a Ted Kauffmann--not running again--only in his case it seems to be because nobody will give him any money.

Strangely enough, it all escapes the notice of our friends that passage of the Obama agenda in health care, cap and trade, yada yada yada is heavily dependent on a handful of Senators who were appointed [one might even say selected] not elected, at least one of whom would be getting prosecuted if the idea of an Illinois ethics investigation wasn't something better suited for Comedy Central than the court system.

Miko--a frequent commenter here--is right: politics in America has now descended into being a professional team sport. As long as your team is winning it doesn't matter if you cheat.

Let's Be Like Europe: Giving a whole new meaning to "An Eye for an Eye"

The problem with policy via anecdote is that the inevitable horror stories among any health care system that attempts to serve a population of 300 million people will exercise disproportionate weight over statistical analysis. This is because the math literate speak quantitative and the non-math literate speak qualitative.

So take into account not individual horror stories but systematic restrictions of care when the government becomes involved in dictating what is best practice, it is interesting to look at Great Britain where, as noted in WSJ, if you are going blind due to treatable macular degeneration, the government will only approve treatment for one eye:

In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: "When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients."

I guess it is true what they say: in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is treated via the public option.

Or how about rejecting the use of Aricept to slow the onset of Alzheimer's as not cost effective or refusing to authorize pap smears for women under twenty-five?

This is all thanks to NICE:

Take the United Kingdom, which is often praised for spending as little as half as much per capita on health care as the U.S. Credit for this cost containment goes in large part to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE. Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you.

The British officials who established NICE in the late 1990s pitched it as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used "best practices" in medicine. As the Guardian reported in 1998: "Health ministers are setting up [NICE], designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere."

What does government determination of best practices mean in real terms (aside from blanket restrictions on cutting edge medications)?

The NICE board even has a mathematical formula for doing so, based on a "quality adjusted life year." While the guidelines are complex, NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months. Why $22,000? It seems to be arbitrary, calculated mainly based on how much the government wants to spend on health care. That figure has remained fairly constant since NICE was established and doesn't adjust for either overall or medical inflation.

Proponents argue that such cost-benefit analysis has to figure into health-care decisions, and that any medical system rations care in some way. And it is true that U.S. private insurers also deny reimbursement for some kinds of care. The core issue is whether those decisions are going to be dictated by the brute force of politics (NICE) or by prices (a private insurance system).

The last six months of life are a particularly difficult moral issue because that is when most health-care spending occurs. But who would you rather have making decisions about whether a treatment is worth the price -- the combination of you, your doctor and a private insurer, or a government board that cuts everyone off at $22,000?

Certainly US insurance companies deny care, or make you fight for drugs, or even cancel your coverage in particular instances. But you can bargain with them, threaten them with bad publicity and lawsuits, and you can find people authorized to make exceptions. I've managed to get approval for five more days of in-hospital post-operative stay than BCBS-DE initially wanted to pay, and I've managed to challenge successfully denials of more than 45 physical therapy visits based on reading their own guideline and policies back to them. It can't always be done, but it can often be done with persistence and taking the time to do your homework--which is something you are not going to be able to do with a government body.

Two important notes:

(1) Neither President Obama nor the Washington elites currently debating health care intend to be restricted by the same regulations they are going to put into place. From ABCNews:

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother I always want them to get the very best care."

So I will accept the idea of a public option when it is good enough for the President and the members of Congress to agree to abide by its treatment limitations.

(2) NICE-style limitations of medications and treatments from that British best-practices model are exactly what the President is talking about. Again, ABCNews:

"There's a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, that every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier," he [Obama] said....

End-of-life issues were raised as well; right now it is estimated that nearly 30 percent of Medicare's annual $327 billion budget is spent on patients in their final year of life.

Jane Sturm told the story of her nearly 100-year-old mother, who was originally denied a pacemaker because of her age. She eventually got one, but only after seeking out another doctor.

"Outside the medical criteria," Sturm asked, "is there a consideration that can be given for a certain spirit & and quality of life?"

"I don't think that we can make judgments based on peoples' spirit," Obama said. "That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people."

Like only treating macular degeneration in one eye, right, Mr. President? When you're old, who needs depth perception, anyway?

SCCORing Libertarian Wendy Jones at the 19th District Candidate Forum

Longtime Sussex County Libertarian activist Wendy Jones has declared for what I guess has to be called the Thurman Adams memorial family-owned State Senate seat, and attended the candidate forum hosted by SCCOR along with GOPer Joe Booth.

Here are the reviews from the SCCOR discussion site regarding how well the audience thought she did:

The libertarian (candidate?) had more open and honest responses instead of a lot of sound bite monitoring and party-line bullcrap that Mr. Booth's answers resembled.

...

"Wendy" Jones, the Libertarian candidate, for I believe she is running, I thought she did a GREAT job. I wish I lived in that district so I could vote. It's not fair. Wendy would have my vote in a heartbeat. Regardless of her political experience, I felt she represented MY opinions very well.

...

I liked most of Wendy's answers too...the delivery wasn't great...doesn't bother me but it could hurt her chances.

...

Wendy had better "lines" but they were lost in her...weird?...delivery. Who's quick on their feet and can put together something memorable? We need that person to run.

...

I think that Wendy resonated well with the crowd.... Knah is correct when he indicates that Wendy is not a polished speaker, and sadly this may effect her run. This is a shame, because she truly seems to have the people as the soul of her campaign. I hate to admit that it may take someone practiced and polished to run a successful campaign against the liberal thinkers. The Democratic party is very good at choosing such people.

Important ideas for Delaware Libertarians here, even considering the heavy social conservative bias of SCCOR:

1) Libertarian ideas do matter: Wendy apparently reached a number of people by simply answering their questions, which is behavior different enough from polished campaigners to attract notice, but....

2) We're going to have to work at packaging ourselves, our message and our candidates better no matter what. Ask yourself: how many of the millions who voted for either McCain or Obama actually really knew anything beyond sound bites about their stances on policy? Like it or not, if we're going to compete in the elective arena, we're going to have to play that game as well.

3) The 19th District, with four candidates in the game now, is a nice open race and a big chance for Wendy, Brian Shields, and our Sussex County Libertarians to get out there with a message that (a) the Delaware Way should no longer allow hereditary Senate seats and that (b) there are a lot more options available than voting yourself new masters from different wings of the Demopublican Party.

Comment rescue: We will decide what you need (und you vill like it)

I love this interchange at Delawareliberal, interestingly enough in a thread on health care reform.

First, Tim Pancoast:

Glenn Beck, just like myself would be happy to drive in an innovative, efficient, fuel cell vehicle as long as it meets our needs. If it can’t go over 65, if it doesn’t have the seating, storage, or towing capacity that we need than we don’t want it.

Then the response from a commenter self-titled as DC:

First of all, most places don’t have speed limits over 65, so that shouldn’t be a consideration (nevermind the fact that hybrid cars can go faster than that).

Second, how often do you really ‘need’ the capacity for 7-9 person seating? Or, for that matter, towing? Much like the needs of suburbanites for SUV’s: none at all. I don’t think that driving from home to the grocery store includes a need for four wheel drive or 16 inches of ground clearance. That’s not need. That is however the typical American attitude: bigger is always better (bigger, more expensive, less efficient…. seems that we continue on the same theme).

So let's unpack this counter:

1) Most places don't have speed limits over 65, so that shouldn't be a consideration. Aside from the fact that DC doesn't seem to get out much (like riding on I-95 in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia where the speed limits hit 70 or 75), I love the self-sanctification that says the speed and power of the vehicle you purchase should be controlled by the government's regulations on how fast you can drive. Which ignores (among lots of other things) times when you need that speed to get out of the passing lane or to avoid an accident....

2) How often do you really 'need' the capacity for 7-9 person seating? I don't know, jerk, you tell me: there are six people in my immediate family, so I'd guess I need it any damn time we go somewhere with one of my kids' friends in the car or to be ecologically freaking sound and car pool. But what damn business is it of yours to determine what my family needs? Like the next one...

3) Or, for that matter, towing? See, DC doesn't think I 'need' to own my Coleman pop-up camper or to be able hook up a rental trailer to move my kids to college. In DC's world either the government pays for that, or we just don't do it.

4) Four wheel drive and ground clearance? Has it occurred to DC that when we get ice storms and essential employees have to go to work anyway [including my daughter] that four-wheel drive and a decent ground clearance is the only way to do so safely?

That's not need. Here's an idea for DC: STFU.

One of the essentials of individual liberty is the ability to determine for myself and my family what our needs are, as opposed to our 'wants.' And instead of the mindless conformity imposed by government bureaucrats that everybody has to use the same restricted flow showerhead and that my mom (who is 5' 1") needs government permission to have the airbag that would probably kill her disconnected, the genius of America has generally been predicated on leaving as many choices to the individual as possible.

Now, however, we are entering the nebulous world in which I cannot be allowed to choose not to enforce bike helmet wear on my children, because if they do get hurt all of society will have to pay for it (really?). And the government is making my choice for me that the pleasure I get from certain foods cooked in trans-fats has to be balanced against the extra years I could live on a diet of steamed broccoli (I don't know how long it would be, but it would seem like forever).

Here's what the czarist, behavioralist dweebs like DC and his/her ilk fail to consider: Americans will let you spend their money and their grandchildren's money, because we really don't have a concept of what a million dollars, let alone a billion or a trillion is. But eventually, if you start cracking down on my individual choice (suddenly labeled as 'wants' or even 'vices'), there is going to be political and social pushback in a big way. And I don't just mean libertarians here....

I have lots of liberal and progressive friends whose beef with social conservatives is that they want to tell everybody else how to live their lives in the bedroom while having affairs in Argentina or the bathrooms of airports.

I haven't quite figured out the difference between those social conservatives and the liberal elites who think gun control is a great idea (while being tailed by armed bodyguards), or who want to tell me what I can smoke, eat, drive or pour on my goddamn popcorn at the movie theater.

All of a sudden the Tenth Amendment is now our friend...

... when the State of Massachusetts uses it to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act:

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (pictured) filed a 32-page lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. government, seeking federal marriage benefits for 16,000 legally-wed gay and lesbian couples. At issue is the constitutionality of Section 3 the Defense of Marriage Act, recently notoriously defended by the Department of Justice.

The suit states that DOMA, termed "overreaching and discriminatory," interferes with the state's "sovereign authority to define and regulate marriage."

"We view all married persons equally," Coakley said at a press conference today.

The basis for the suit is the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Section 8 of the Constitution. Along with the United States itself, defendants include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs.

But when the issue is Montana challenging Federal firearms regulations or Dave Burris posting on States using the 10th to combat Federal power grabs, the Tenth Amendment is a vehicle for promoting political violence--at least according to some of our local commentators.

So for the sake of intellectual consistency, I suppose that jason should now denounce the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for appealing to the Bill of Rights to limit Federal instrusions on the ability of the States to define and regulate marriage.

Oh. Oops. I just used the words jason and intellectual in the same sentence.

Sorry.

At any rate: good luck to Massachusetts. Given the fact that President Obama's Justice Department felt compelled to compare same-sex marriage to incest and to go to court to claim that DOMA doesn't infringe on anybody's civil rights, there's not likely to be much sympathy for you in the White House.

From the Department of Unnecessary (and not useful) and Redundant Research Department

Proving once again that men descended from porcine mammals rather than primates, this finding from the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills:

To test the effect of a woman's bust size on the rate of help offered, 1200 male and female French motorists were tested in a hitchhiking situation. A 20-yr.-old female confederate wore a bra which permitted variation in the size of cup to vary her breast size. She stood by the side of a road frequented by hitchhikers and held out her thumb to catch a ride. Increasing the bra-size of the female-hitchhiker was significantly associated with an increase in number of male drivers, but not female drivers, who stopped to offer a ride.

[h/t Kids Prefer Cheese]

No need to worry about double jeopardy: the Obama administration doesn't want to let you out even if you are acquitted!!??

Hard to believe but apparently true:

Top Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson informed the Senate Armed Services Committee today that the Obama Administration might decide to continue imprisoning detainees indefinitely, even if they were charged with a crime, tried and acquitted.

The new assertion of presidential authority is staggering. Previously the Bush Administration had held the detainees for years without trial, and claimed the right to hold them basically forever, which the Obama Administration endorsed. But trials were avoided for lack of evidence. President Obama had previously defended the release of detainees ordered to be let go by the courts by insisting there was nothing he could do after the court ruled.

Not so now, it seems, and the lack of evidence is no obstacle because even if the trial fails, the president can simply overrule the court and keep the innocent detainee anyhow. Johnson said the detainees held despite being found not guilty in court would be permitted “some form of periodic review,” though it was unclear how this would even theoretically work.

While the Bush Administration often struggled with their system of extralegal detention, the Obama Administration seems perfectly willing to make bizarre assertions as to their hopes for a future legal system. Last month they were openly talking about executing detainees to avoid messy trials. Now the trials themselves will be next to meaningless.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D – NY) expressed concern about the plan, saying “What bothers me is that they seem to be saying, ‘Some people we have good enough evidence against, so we’ll give them a fair trial. Some people the evidence is not so good, so we’ll give them a less fair trial. We’ll give them just enough due process to ensure a conviction because we know they’re guilty. That’s not a fair trial, that’s a show trial.”

Explain to me again why (A) there is a significant difference between Bushco and the Obama administration on civil liberties; and (B) why most of my liberal/progressive friends seem to be far more interested in GOP infighting than the ripping sounds around the US Constitution now that their man is in power....

What I love about the health care "reform" process...

... is that you can be a major player without ever having to worry about the consistency of your arguments.

For several years the advocates of health care reform via the public option or single-payer have been telling us about the obscene amounts of money Americans spend on health care, the poor results we get, and--this one is really important--the amount of money we will save under a nebulous new system.

To the 45-50 million people without health care, to the middle class struggling with rising premiums, and to the businesses trying their best to maintain health plans, that idea that health care reform will lower costs has been a mantra that has slowly built their expectations until ....

... it's actually time to pay for the damn thing.

Now, all of a sudden, nobody is talking any more about the savings we're going to reap, but where to get the money to pay for it.

Given their druthers, your representatives would like a direct tax on the health care benefits of those who already have insurance to pay for those who don't. That'll really help the struggling middle class, eh?

Here's CNN:

The idea of taxing health care benefits has been controversial since it was proposed. Obama has never fully supported it, and many key Senate Democrats have opposed it outright. Even so, Conrad didn't rule it out, saying the tax remains "viable" while senators seek other options.

Meanwhile, a new surtax on Americans who make more than $250,000, the sugary drinks tax and increasing the Medicare payroll tax were among the proposals for funding health care reform discussed by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Rep. Charles Rangel, the committee's chairman, said "all of the above" and more were covered during an all-day meeting at his Capitol Hill office, but declined to give details.

This boils down to:

(A) Going back to that $250K well again....

(B) Sneaking the middle-class health care tax in by increasing their Medicare taxes (yeah, they'll be too dumb to notice that)

(C) Taxing my Mountain Dew fix...

Folks have also been telling us for years about how Medicare is so much more cost-effective than private insurance--until it becomes time to pay for the public option:

Larson said the committee members hoped to reach an agreement Tuesday night. Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen said members were also discussing how Medicare savings could offset the cost of reform.

Medicare savings? If Medicare is being run so much more efficiently (which is the reason we're supposed to love the model), then how come there are apparent huge Medicare savings available to subsidize health care?

What's happening here is the classic bait and switch that both the traditional right and left have played for so many years.

Promise people they can have better, cheaper, universal health care and they'll support the idea overwhelmingly in polls and even vote for you.

But once you have to explain exactly how you're going to take the money out of their hides, that support abruptly evaporates:

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed only 20 percent of respondents support the tax and a Washington Post/ABC News poll found 70 percent opposed it. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 54 percent of respondents oppose the new tax.

The poll was a setback for many lawmakers who considered the tax the best way to raise hundreds of billions of dollars needed to pay for health care reform.

"When you get numbers like that, it certainly causes you to look for alternatives," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota.

The same thing happened under Reagan: he promised that huge tax cuts and reductions in government spending could be accomplished without ever cutting into essential services. When he couldn't pay for it, he kept the tax cuts and huge chunks of the services, content to run up the deficit....

Here are three important points to remember when the government promises to solve really big problems [you could think of them as the political laws of thermodynamics]:

1. Government programs never cost as little a projected--usually the estimate is off by powers of magnitude.

2. Government revenue plans never bring in as much money as promised--because if the tax bite is that significant people will exert massive energies to avoid it.

3. Despite repeated proof that numbers (1) and (2) are true, American voters will faithfully continue to vote for a convincing politician who promises them something for nothing.

Pushing back against Audra Shay

The inner workings of a major political party are not--under any circumstances--pretty, particularly when that party is trying to recover from electoral disaster and sort out whether it intends in future to be conservative Libertarian or the Lawn Jockey Caucus of the Old Confederacy and Buffalo Commons Party.

And, naturally [at least in the convoluted mental universe of blogging], the most qualified people to give them advice are the people who want them defeated at all costs. The semi-pious, semi-gleeful pseudo-advice pieces penned under the rubric of What the GOP needs to do are about as entertaining as they are non-partisan.

So, of course the helpful liberal and progressive bloggers were more than willing to latch onto the racist commentary of Young Republican leader Audra Shay, with caustic observations that she proved that such thought among GOPers could not be dismissed as an individual case because--essentially--Michael Steele, Tucker Carlson, and Mike Castle--had not all jumped forward breathlessly to condemn her.

Perhaps--just perhaps--they were leaving the job to Ms. Shay's peers among the Young Republicans, like YR National Committeewoman Cassie Wallender, who wrote a lengthy piece regarding Shay and instigated a dialogue that has included other YR officials.

Quoth Wallender, in part:

I continue to hold that stating “You go get ‘em” and “LOL” to racist remarks are not acceptable for YRs. Her continued inappropriate responses to the situation and utter lack of an apology are quite disconcerting. I do not want to see infighting as we are all on the same team ultimately, but this is unacceptable especially from any of our elected officers. Even despite the red flags of spin pointed out above, and giving Audra the benefit of the doubt regarding racism, at the very best this was extremely poorly handled by turning it into a political attack on people completely uninvolved and by showing allegiance to those making racist statements while choosing to squarely turn her back on those speaking against racism.

Then there's Andrew Dorsey, VP of the Tampa Bay YR:

In the age of Facebook, Twitter, etc… everything we say will be judged for our entire lives, no matter what the age. I’m sure I’ve said things that disqualify me from public service, even when I was 16 years old on old BB and AIM conversations in the 90s. I advise everyone with interest in serving their country, live the standards to which you hold your leaders.

About this situation. It’s one thing for people to post racial comments on your Facebook page, it’s another thing entirely for Audra to brush over them as if they didn’t matter.

Truth in advertising forces me to admit that there is also this anonymous comment in the thread:

Cassie -
Congrats on perpetuating the myth that polititians cannot be trusted. You are a blowhard, opportunist attention whore. You have proven that even without a shred of proof, you will drop an association in a moments notice if it might make your day easier, or benefits you somehow. If I were to use your meter, you are quilty by association and must be racist for having followed your ex-friend’s page in the first place. Oh, and your claim that you ’saw something that was morally wrong, and as a conservative I took it upon myself as an individual to stand up, and I do not regret it at all’ ??? You didn’t ’stand up’, idiot. You typed something on a keyboard. Leave it to a budding polititian to think that saying or writing something is actually productive. You are counter-productive, to say the least. I on the other hand, am well aware that posting this message will benefit nobody. I just had some free time, and you were the first idiot that popped up on the news wire……

Curiously, however, very few of the viral blog responses from the usual suspects seem to have covered the actual internal pushback against Shay from her contemporaries.

Perhaps that's because they are not really interested in the success of rebuilding efforts in the GOP so much as they are in making such efforts virtually impossible.

Speaking not as a Republican but as a third-party advocated who knows he's not going to see a politically successful Libertarian Party come along any time soon, it's an interesting process to watch, which exposes pretty much everybody's modern-day fascination with dirt over policy and political expediency over actual investigation.

Thanks to its social conservative wing the GOP is flirting with a break-up that will make the Whig dissolution of the 1850s look minor. What's hold the OCBC Party together at this point is actually the electoral system that the Repubs and Dems rigged to share power between them to the exclusion of pretty much all other points of view. The Dems would be well advised (in the same spirit they offer gratuitous help to the GOP) not to be too successful in destroying their enemies, because the American people may well decide that the time for monolithic parties has come and gone.

[h/t Waldo, who is hardly responsible for the uses to which I put his links]

Governor Markell makes a good move: eliminating the Department of Finance

As first reported (at least the first time I saw it while traveling this week) at Delawareliberal, Governor Jack Markell has made the decision to eliminate the Department of Finance and consolidate necessary functions among other government offices.

This is a good move, a good sign, and a follow-through on a campaign promise that was badly needed to restore confidence following the ham-handed attempt at non-surgical salary cuts for all State employees.

I'm hoping that he will eventually get around to looking at the elimination of Homeland Security, folding its major functions into the State Police headquarters, but today I'm just happy to note that--unlike a lot of other politicians of both parties--Jack Markell seems to be trying to keep his commitments.

Ahem. A message from the office of the Viceroy for the American colonies

Lots and lots of my blogging friends from all parts of the political spectrum have chosen to mark the 4th of July by posting the Declaration of Independence. On one level I have no problem with that; retaining any awareness of the political thought of the Framers and Founders is generally a good thing.

But I keep watching American history textbooks and the lessons used to teach our public-school students the turbulent era of the American Revolution, and I begin to realize that this piece of history presents some remarkable difficulties of narrative reinterpretation for our liberal and progressive friends.

In the 1760s, at the end of the French and Indian War, the British government discovered that the price of securing the liberties of its American colonists from those dastardly, garlic-eating French was way more expected. Moreover, by that point, the English people in the home islands were among the most highly taxed people in the world. They paid taxes on stamps, lead, paper, glass, wine, cloth, horses, carriages, sugar, wheat ....

So the progressive government of England decided that it was only fair to spread the tax burden to British citizens living in the American colonies, so that everyone would pay his fair share for armies defending the frontiers and the navy patrolling the sea lanes.

But capitalist American merchants and traders (many of whom were already engaged in seriously illegal tax evasion by smuggling French molasses) thought they should be able to use the infrastructure built by the Empire without paying their fair share, and joined forces with the racist settlers despoiling the Native Americans of their lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to begin using rightwing eliminationist rhetoric against Parliament, the King, and duly elected or appointed Imperial agents in America.

Some went so far as to call for armed violence against the legitimate government, and to claim the right within individual colonies to nullify or ignore laws that they felt violated their rights.

Many of the lower, baser sort--clinging to their guns and their Bibles--began to organize domestic terrorist groups: urban street gangs in Boston styled themselves as Sons of Liberty to get away with attacks on the property and persons of their betters, and illiterate farmers began hoarding powder and shot, while constituting themselves as quasi-legal militias for the purpose of [so they said] defending themselves against the depredations of the oppressed Indian class, but really to await the chance to kill military and law enforcement officers....

Throughout this period the progressive British government attempted to employ conciliatory measures--even reducing certain taxes and studiously ignoring the outrages committed against Imperial and colonial officials.

Instead, they concentrated on reaching the better-informed, more socially conscious and progressive elements of the American elites, convincing them once placed in power the actions of the government de facto must represent not only the will of the people but also the interests of the people, and that paying a fair share of the tax burden in exchange for government services constituted the great advancement of the Enlightenment.

Fortunately, with the appintment of former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson to the head of the Crown Secretariat for Frontier and Colonial Security, along with the issues of the CSFCS report on Rightwing Domestic Terrorism in the North American Colonies, the corner was turned.

[A footnote from history: two copies of the long-suspected CSFCS report on Leftwing Domestic Terrorism in the North American Colonies have recently been unearthed in the offices of the colonial governor of Virginia, establishing the fact that PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Anglicans] merely talked mean and did not do anything violent.]

A vareity of colonial malcontents were duped into a government sting [known to the authorities as Operation Tea Party] and arrested in early 1774, effectively decapitating the so-called Independence Movement in New England. The arrest of the seditious malcontents Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson in Virginia on 4th of July 1776 broke the back of the eliminationist Indies in the South, and has since been memorialized as Government Affirmation Day in all seventeen British colonies.

Speaking today at the Affirmation Day ceremonies at Boston Commons, Lord Gordon Brown, Viceroy for the Americas said, "We must all shudder at thought of what might have happened had not our forefathers exercised vigilance in the protection of the Empire from internal sedition. Untrammeled individualism and an unbecoming thirst for profits stand in the way of our development of a great English civilization. I will now read from the congratulatory letter of King Louis XXIII of France in Versailles, applauding the objective of NASA (the North American Settlement Administration) to place the first family of English colonists on the western bank of the Mississippi River by 2020...."

No, our little militia groups of today are not the Founders. But while we are busily approaching 1984 from the other direction in terms of our ruling class's interest and ability to rewrite American history into a politically useful narrative, let's not allow them to convince us to accept a rewritten history of who we are and how we came to be--warts and all.

Individualism, natural law, limited government, capitalism, racism, slavery, free enterprise--it was all in there throughout our history. We have committed both great and terrible acts.

The most terrible would be to turn our backs on the legitimate dialogue between our limited government roots and the Statist aspirations of those who currently rule us.

India, homosexuality, Islam, and Christianity

There is, at least from my jaundiced point of view, some hope in the world today, as Delhi's High Court overturns the Indian law declaring same-sex relationships an unnatural act worth ten years imprisonment:

Delhi's High Court ruled that the law outlawing homosexual acts was discriminatory and a "violation of fundamental rights".

The court said that a statute in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which defines homosexual acts as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" and made them illegal, was an "antithesis of the right to equality".

The ruling will inevitably be challenged in such a predominantly homophobic society, as evidenced by the statement of a major Indian mullah:

The head cleric of Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, criticised the ruling.

"This is absolutely wrong. We will not accept any such law," Ahmed Bukhari told the AFP news agency.

What comforts me--and should provide an example for American Christians--is the response of India's Catholic community:

Father Dominic Emanuel of India's Catholic Bishop Council said the church did not "approve" of homosexual behaviour.

"Our stand has always been very clear. The church has no serious objection to decriminalising homosexuality between consenting adults, the church has never considered homosexuals as criminals," said Father Emanuel.

"But the church does not approve of this behaviour. It doesn't consider it natural, ethical, or moral," he said.

Think about the profound difference there would be in American political discourse if Christian leaders--who are free to disagree and even preach against any behavior with which they disagree--accepted the idea that it is not the church's responsibility to criminalize behavior between consenting adults.

It might also affect US foreign policy in some fundamental ways. Consider the treatment of the indigenous LGBT population in our Iraqi colony [excuse me: in our sovereign ally Iraq; it's the 4th of July and I must try to be more patriotic]:

Well, here's one step forward, and about 9,000 steps backwards when it comes to LGBT rights in Iraq. Fundamentalist Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr addressed Iraq's ongoing violence toward LGBT people in Iraq, by urging Iraqi people to reject killing LGBT people, which has become a nationwide epidemic, with several dozen men being murdered in the past few months because of their sexual orientation (or their perceived sexual orientation).

The downside to all of this? Sadr took the occasion to call homosexuality fundamentally evil, and preach conversion therapy through Islamic preaching and teaching. Kind of an odd thing to say, since most of the people murdering LGBT people in Iraq are doing so in the name of radical Islamic teaching and preaching (or, well, at least in the name of how they see Islamic teaching and preaching). *Sigh*

A few of Sadr's zealot colleagues also took the opportunity to call homosexuality a "corrupt phenomena from the West," which is a line of thinking that has proliferated throughout the Middle East and Africa, as grassroots LGBT groups struggle to push for equal rights. Another Sadr ally called homosexuality a disaster, and said it was plaguing the Iraqi population, according to AFP.

All of this highlights the growing need for folks, particularly our own State Department, to spotlight the issue of global violence toward LGBT people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised to make violence on the basis of sexual orientation a priority for her office. With the U.S. so heavily invested in Iraq, this has to remain on the radar screen of the Obama administration.

Exactly how Secretary Clinton is going to address this issue with the Iraqis remains kind of vague in my mind, since the Sadr rejoinder to any entreaties would be:

1) The Obama administration recently filed a brief supporting laws against same-sex marriage that employed comparisons to child abuse and pedophilia.

2) The US Military stills tosses even highly qualifieid LGBT troops out of the service.

3) The US criminal justice system, even when it prosecutes people who kill gays, pretty much lets them off with a wink and a nod, despite all the hate crimes laws in the universe.

4) The President of the United States invited a cleric with a known anti-gay agenda to deliver the prayer at his Inauguration.

So Sadr would be at least logically justified in asking Secretary Clinton: Should we pay attention to what you say, or to what you do?

Ah, for a few Indian Catholic Bishops willing to immigrate....

Happy Fourth of July, suckers....

Not to duplicate what Shirley has already covered at the Curmudgeon, but RG at Big Bend Bikers for Freedom has a kick-ass column on the futility of celebrating our independence as a people when we routinely acquiesce to our own chains.

Here's the merest snippet:

So this Independence day, those that will bother, will sing songs and give speeches glorifying our Freedom, our Independence. We will wave flags and pay hollow honors to those who have died to protect what others have died to give us. We will puff our chests with pride and glory.

Then come Monday we will meekly return to subservience declaring our distaste for politics, i.e. excuse for not taking action, allowing all that Jesus and other liberators stood for, all that this country stood for, all that generation after generation of American Soldiers have died for, to go straight to fucking hell!

And then get indignant should someone suggest, that maybe we ain't so patriotic after all.......

The only problem, RG, is that far too many people who read your post will actually think that government bail-outs, stimulus packages, public option health care plans, trampling civil liberties in the name of freedom, and a military interventionist foreign policy are expressions of our freedom as a people and not the death of them.

Sometimes you can feel really lonely outside the two-party duopoly...

... because the arguments between different wings of the Demopublican Party are so ... incestuous.

Like when Democratic bloggers OK with the idea of mass arrests, trials and executions for political dissenting opinions pat themselves on the back for calling Republican bloggers crazy who believe God told them that abortion and homosexuality are mortal sins and therefore should be legislated out of existence.

Yeah, serious policy stuff like that, designed to instill public confidence.

But, just occasionally, you find something like Glenn Greenwald discussing media culpability in keeping this whole charade running [the specific case is the current, bizarre NPR refusal to use the word torture anymore, but the context could be health care, climate change, bail-outs, or terrorism]:

There are two sides and only two sides to every "debate" -- the Beltway Democratic establishment and the Beltway Republican establishment. If those two sides agree on X, then X is deemed true, no matter how false it actually is. If one side disputes X, then X cannot be asserted as fact, no matter how indisputably true it is. The mere fact that another country's behavior is described as X doesn't mean that this is how identical behavior by the U.S. should be described. They do everything except investigate and state what is true. In their view, that -- stating what is and is not true -- is not their role.

Yeah: the two parties have nothing in common--except the shell game that keeps them in power while the military industrial complex, giant corporations, and blood-sucking bureaucrats all prosper.

Comment rescues and doubling down on eliminationist rhetoric

According to self-annointed guru David Neiwart, there six possible characteristics of eliminationist rhetoric:

A: Expressing a desire or a demand for extermination, removal, or infliction of harm

B: Identification of opponents with national enemies

C: Identification of opponents as a target for retaliation or incarceration

D: Expressing a desire for or approval of genocide or murder

E: Identification with vermin or disease

F: All of the above

Now let's be clear: lots of people, especially those on the far right, are throwing around eliminationist rhetoric by this definition, and when it happens it deserves condemnation. I have condemned it, on occasion, but there is enough of it these days on both sides of the Demopublican divide that were I to spend my days condemning every piece as I heard it, there would be little time for blogging on anything else. Or eating. Or sleeping.

But let's think locally, and examine the two recent statements by Delawaredem, both the one he originally made and the one he then redacted it into. In responding to Mark Scheuer's outrageous statement on the Glenn Beck Show:

“The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”

First DD says this, and while I don't completely agree with this statement (you can be unhinged or have loonie ideas without hating America), it is an appropriate piece of condemnatory political speech:

First, if you agree with this statement, nodding your head thinking another attack that kills untold millions this time instead of only 3,000 eight years ago will surely make Americans scared enough to embrace the neocon way again, then you hate America. Rooting for millions of Americans to die to prove a political point is precisely the definition of hating America.

But then DD follow, first with this:

Second, if you agree with that statement, you are a traitor to the United States of America, and you deserve to be arrested, tried, and put to death in as quick a manner as possible.

That, however, following the near-unanimous disagreement of the commenters (including at least one DL co-blogger), DD modifed his original statement to this:

No, you just hate America. And you are so evil that you are personally acquianted with Lucifer himself. You have tea with him every Tuesday. The rest of this post stands.

Having taken fire for this position, DD then conducted a tactical retreat by mis-characterizing his original statement in a second post:

It is more dangerous to say that hoping millions of Americans die in a torrent of fire at the hands of Osama bin Laden is treason than it is to say that you hope millions of Americans die in a torrent of fire at the hands of Osama bin Laden so that your party gains politically.

Cute, but no cigar. Notice what he's done here: he claims he was criticized for calling out Mark Scheuer for making what he considers a treasonous statement. That's self-serving BS and not what DD did in the original post. In the original post he maintained that not Scheuer but anyone who agreed with him was a traitor to be arrested, tried, and put to death.

Yep, it was hyperbole. I do not believe that on his worst day Delawaredem would actually want to kill his political opponents.

But he wants to employ the same style of rhetoric that he roundly condemns in others.

How many ways does this meet Mr. Neiwart's definition of eliminationist speech?

It expresses a desire for both the removal and elimination of a large group of people.

It identifies his political opponents with national enemies.

It suggest the appropriateness of government retaliation and incarceration.

It does not suggest genocide--not actually--but it does want everybody with a specific political opinion to be killed.

It doesn't equate his enemies with vermin or disease--just Satan.

All of the above?

Delawaredem, who is a passionate partisan politician who hopes only the best for America as he sees it, has fallen into the trap of fighting eliminationist speech with eliminationist speech.

While it is not surprising that jason--who routinely crosses the line into eliminationism for his own political opponents--concurring in the opinion that fire must be fought only with fire, it was dismaying to read this comment this morning by Progressive Mom:

DD — I think the rule is: Repubs are allowed hyperbole and are allowed to HIDE their actual literal interpretation by crying “hyperbole!” and “free speech.”

Democrats are only allowed to be literal. Hyperbole is not allowed, since it serves to bring out the sniffing, crying Republicans with their chorus of “shame on you” and “aren’t you terrible.”

Literally, I think that words can be treasonous. And people who commit treason can be tried and punished. And calling people treasonous isn’t treason.

PM: nobody is suggesting that Mr. Scheuer's original comments were acceptable. I (even Steve Newton) surely have not done so. Nobody has allowed him to hide behind the hyperbole defense.

And Dems/Progressives can use all the hyperbole and even eliminationist speech they damn well please.

They just can't do it while criticizing others for doing the same thing, without being called on it as hypocrites and equally dangerous to the body politic.

Word can be treasonous. And people who commit treason can be tried and punished.

[Aside: note that for both DD and PM the trial and the guilty verdict are synonymous; so why bother with the trials?]

The problem is that PM doesn't mean words like, "I have been providing Osama bin Laden with directions on where to best place a dirty bomb in Los Angeles," she means words that she personally finds excessively politically offensive.

She wants those people punished.

By the way, PM: show me where anybody has accused DD of treason for suggesting Scheuer's words were treasonous. Hasn't happened.

From the libertarian perspective the generalization here is unfortunate: partisans of both major political parties (from the national to the local) now feel it is appropriate to engage in and defend eliminationist rhetoric against American citizens with different opinions.

Which is leaving less and less of a place for people who don't want to eradicate their opposition to stand.

NYT: Obama administration nearly indistinguishable from Bushco on civil liberties in war on terror

What a surprise:

“President Obama may mouth very different rhetoric,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He may have a more complicated process with members of Congress. But in the end, there is no substantive break from the policies of the Bush administration.”

I'd say it was worth reading in its entirety, but by this point you either get it or you don't: President Obama is shaping up to be essentially just as authoritarian, just as cavalier about civil liberties, and just as dangerous to the Constitutional rule of law as somebody else with whom we recently parted company.

But his supporters, much like the Stepford Republican faithful who followed Dubya over the cliff, mostly don't give a damn as long as he keeps them happy with domestic Bread and Circuses.