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Saturday, November 4, 2006
Are the Democrats Likely to Take One Chamber or Two?--
I’ve been looking at which party is going to control the Senate after the election, and I’m a bit surprised at some of the juxtapositions.
The Friday prices on the Iowa Electronic Markets show a 83.5% chance of Democrats gaining control of the House and a 33% chance of gaining control of the Senate (i.e., the Republicans having fewer than 50 Senate seats).
The Saturday evening TradeSports line is similar: the Democrats have an 87-88% chance of taking the House and a 31.6-31.9% chance of taking the Senate.
The House races are too numerous for me to make much sense of, but as I read RealClearPolitics, the Democrats need to pick up 6 seats to control the Senate, assuming that the probable 2 independents (Lieberman and Jeffords['s independent replacement Bernie Sanders]) caucus with them.
Likely pickups are PA (Casey +11.2%) and OH (Brown +11.2%).
Leaning Democratic is RI (Whitehouse +9.2%).
The other three possible pickups are listed as tossups (MO, MT, and VA), but the Democrat is ahead in the RCP poll averages in each race by 0.6% to 1.7%.
The Saturday night TradeSports bid/ask spreads also support Democratic victories in each individual race:
MO: DEM: 50.3% - 55%; REPUB: 46.1-48%.
MT: DEM: 65% - 68%; REPUB: 35-39.8%.
VA: DEM: 55.2% - 58%; REPUB: 43.3-48.2%.
So if each individual race breaks as currently polled, the Democrats win the Senate.
There is an outside chance that the Democrats could pick up one of the other two Republican seats that RCP lists as leaning Republican (AZ, 8%, and TN, 6.5%), even if it lost one of the seats listed above.
If each race individually goes according to the current polls and current betting line, the Democrats win both houses of Congress. But since so many races have to go toward the Democrats for them to win control of the Senate, both TradeSports and the Iowa Electronic Markets reflect about a 2 to 1 odds of the Republicans keeping the Senate.
I find this an interesting example illustrating joint probabilities: combining even highly correlated multiple probabilities more than 50% yields a joint probability significantly less than 50%.
Women and Role-Playing Games:
Sociologist E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman has an interesting article on women and role-playing games, trying to explain why so few women play RPGs.
OK, the article may well be interesting primarily to those of us who spent a lot of time in high school playing Dungeons and Dragons. But I suspect that RPG veterans are, ahem, disproportionately represented among the learned VC readership.
To me, another fascinating aspect of the article is the way in which the RPG culture is now primarily focused on online gaming, as opposed to the "real world" interaction that was the only game in town in the preinternet era when I played D&D.
Another November Surprise?--
The four military papers — the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times — will on Monday call for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld (tip to Instapundit). These papers are owned by a subsidiary of Gannett, so that represents little more than the opinion of their editorial staff or the publisher.
We will have to see whether any news coverage of the endorsements will make clear that the newspapers are privately published. Ordinarily, the endorsements of newspapers other than in local races get very little attention from other news outlets, and I can't remember ever hearing about whom the four military papers endorsed in the past. This is the sort of things that blogs, the cable news stations, and the biggest national newspapers might cover in passing, but if it makes the national or local nightly news programs (with their shortage of time to cover hard news), that would be unusual for private newspaper endorsements.
The Big November Surprise: Saddam?--
As I write this on Saturday, Nov. 4, I can’t help but think that we might be in for a big November surprise that may bode ill for the Republicans in the 2006. The focus of the news on Sunday and Monday might look very different than it does today.
According to news reports, the verdict in the first of many Saddam Hussein trials is due tomorrow, the Sunday just before the US elections:
U.S. and Iraqi forces drastically tightened security across Baghdad on Saturday in advance of the expected guilty verdict against Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi prime minister said he hoped the ousted dictator will "get what he deserves." . . .
The highly anticipated verdict, planned for Sunday, is expected to set off further bloodshed, underscoring the trial's failure to bring reconciliation to a country fractured ever deeper along sectarian lines.
Lawyers for Saddam have asked for a delay in the verdict, which if granted might push the verdict to a date after the November US election.
NOT GUILTY:
If a verdict of “Not Guilty” is rendered on Sunday, that would be an obvious public relations disaster for the Bush administration, even though Saddam would be tried on other grounds. The Republicans would be likely to lose a lot of support in the voting booth.
GUILTY:
If the verdict is “Guilty,” as expected for Sunday, there are a number of possibly bad consequences for the Republicans in any event.
First, it will look to many voters as if the Republicans orchestrated the verdict to come down immediately before the U.S. November election, especially if the Democrats and the Monday talk show hosts publicly accuse the Republicans of just such a move. While I don’t think the Administration is necessarily above playing politics in such a way, I don’t think that Karl Rove and company would be foolish enough to schedule a verdict so close to the US election, even if such an outcome were within their control.
Second, a reminder of just how slow progress has been in Iraq would not help the Republicans, just as Jimmy Carter’s attempt to influence the 1980 election with a last-minute claim that an Iranian hostage deal was imminent backfired on him, though such a strategy had worked beautifully before each major primary in the spring of 1980 to help him defeat Ted Kennedy.
Third — and most important — a verdict of guilty is expected by many to lead to considerable unrest in Iraq, and perhaps an orgy of violence. If that happens, the press will — and should — cover the violence extensively. I wouldn’t expect the press to downplay any significant increase in violence in the way that they did the Bin Laden message sent on the eve of the 2004 election (most major news organizations never disclosed that Bin Laden appeared to be threatening states that voted for Bush). If riots or mass murders in Iraq dominate the news on Sunday and Monday, it could spell real trouble for the Republicans.
Allen/Webb bleg:
I live in Virginia and am looking at various Allen/Webb materials. But suppose I don't care about Allen's business interests, use of racial slurs, or Jewish heritage, or about Webb's graphic novels. Does anyone have any input on whether -- based on his policy positions -- Allen is one of the best of the Republican lot in the Senate, one of the worst, or middling?
Friday, November 3, 2006
Neocons Turned Against Bush?:
An interesting piece in Vanity Fair, via Drudge.
Sex Classifications and Massages:
Roanoke, Virginia City Code Sec. 21-144(a) provides that "It shall be unlawful for any person to administer, for hire or reward, to any person of the opposite sex, any massage, any alcohol rub or similar treatment, any fomentation, any bath or any electric or magnetic treatment." Another section excepts medical massages (assuming that this exception is clear enough and narrow enough to avoid swallowing the rule), and "barbers or beauticians who give massage to the scalp, face, neck or shoulders only." Constitutional, or a violation of the Equal Protection Clause prohibition on sex classifications?
Note that a man and a woman were recently convicted for violating this ordinance; their massage seemed sexual, but the ordinance isn't limited to sexual massages. Same-sex marriage naturally played a role in the legal analysis. Thanks to Ben Winograd for the pointer.
Prof. Rick Garnett on Religion and Divisiveness:
A nice op-ed, focusing chiefly on the Ninth Circuit's Faith Center Church v. Glover case, and especially Judge Karlton's concurrence.
The Two Abortion Rights, and Therapeutic Abortions as Medical Self-Defense:
The Introduction to my Medical Self-Defense article attracted enough interest that I thought I'd serialize the article on the blog; and the Harvard people were kind enough to let me do that. So let me follow the Introduction with a brief discussion of the Court's existing recognition of a constitutional medical self-defense -- the (surprisingly uncontroversial) right to get even late-term abortions when needed to protect the mother's life. (I do not rely on the more controversial right to get such abortions to protect the mother's health, including possibly emotional or psychological health, or on the right to get particular abortion procedures such as those at issue in Stenberg v. Carhart.) Recall that I'm arguing here both that the Court should recognize a constitutional right to medical self-defense, by analogy to the Court's past precedents, and that even if no such constitutional right is recognized, legislators and voters ought to recognize a moral right to medical self-defense.
Roe and Casey hold that the Constitution protects the right to an abortion. But this right actually consists of two different rights -- different in scope, justification, and popular support.
The first is the highly controversial right to abortion as reproductive choice, which generally allows pre-viability abortions on demand. The second is the right to abortion after viability when necessary “to preserve the life or health of the mother.” This is not the right to abortion on demand, since a woman must show a particular reason for a post-viability abortion. Nor is the right justified by the woman’s right to choose whether to bear a child: If the medical danger hadn’t arisen, the woman would have been obligated to bear the child to term.
Rather, the right is a right to medical self-defense -- the right to protect your life using medical care, even when this requires destroying that which is threatening your life. This right exists despite the interest in protecting the viable fetus’s life, an interest Roe and Casey held compelling enough to trump the abortion-as-choice right. Yet this right is largely uncontroversial, endorsed even by Chief Justice Rehnquist’s Roe dissent, by all the restrictive abortion laws in effect when Roe was decided, and by public opinion. Only 9% to 15% of Americans endorse the view that abortions should be banned even when the woman’s life is in danger. Compare this to the 42% to 58% of Americans who endorse the view that abortion should be generally banned, and available at most to protect the woman’s life or in cases of rape or incest, and the 33% to 46% who endorse a similar view but without even a rape or incest exception.
The medical self-defense right has been expressly recognized just in abortion cases. Yet it can’t be logically limited to situations where the defensive procedure is abortion, and rejected in cases where the woman needs to defend herself using experimental drugs or an organ transplant. Nothing about therapeutic postviability abortion makes it more deserving of protection than any other medical self-defense procedure.
One can’t distinguish postviability abortions on the grounds that they involve the woman’s reproductive choice. After viability the time for that choice has passed, and the ability to get a therapeutic abortion is a side-effect of the woman’s medical self-defense right, not her abortion-as-choice right. Nor can one distinguish therapeutic abortions on the grounds that they involve control over the woman’s own body. A patient’s adding substances (such as medicines or an organ) to her body, as well as removing substances from her body (say, through drugs that kill cancer cells), involves her control over her body as much as does a doctor’s inserting a surgical instrument to remove a fetus.
The medical self-defense procedures may cause some harm. Ellen’s experimental drug may shorten Ellen’s already short expected lifespan. It may also cost her money for what the government thinks may well be a false hope (though note that the pharmaceuticals in the Abigail Alliance case were merely not proven effective, rather than proven ineffective). Likewise, as I discuss [below], allowing compensation for organs has been said to potentially cause various other harms.
Yet Roe and Casey demand far more than a showing of some conceivable risk to some government interests before Alice’s right to abortion-as-self-defense may be restricted. Even the compelling interest in protecting the life of a viable fetus -- a fetus that is in many ways indistinguishable from a born baby -- isn’t enough to overcome Alice’s rights.
The same should hold for other medical procedures used to protect one’s life. Modest burdens on the right to medical self-defense, such as an informed consent requirement or a short waiting period, would be constitutional. But to impose a substantial burden on the patient’s right to protect her life through medical procedures, the government should have to show an extremely powerful reason for burdening the right, and to show the burden is genuinely necessary because the government’s goals can’t be achieved in less burdensome ways. And even when the interest is powerful in the abstract, it might still sometimes be rejected in favor of a right to protect one’s life, as the interest in protecting fetal life is rejected under the abortion-as-self-defense right.
There is, of course, an important limit to the right to medical self-defense (or to lethal self-defense): The right is constrained by the rights of others who aren’t threatening the woman’s life. No woman has a constitutional right to force a doctor to perform an abortion, even to save her life. Likewise, Ellen’s constitutional right to medical self-defense wouldn’t entitle her to steal experimental drugs.
But this is no different from the way other indisputably recognized constitutional rights operate. My First Amendment rights don’t let me steal a printing press, speak on your lawn, or trespass on private property to worship at the site of an alleged miraculous apparition (even if Employment Division v. Smith were overturned).
This is not because property rights are more important than free speech rights, free exercise rights, or self-defense rights; rather, it’s because even important rights are bounded by the rights of others. Naturally the exact scope of those rights of others -- for instance, whether they include the right to freedom from defamation, emotional distress, offense, or interference with business relations -- has long been the subject of debate. But in our legal system an inherent, and I think necessary, aspect of constitutional rights is that they are bounded by at least some rights of others. The existence of such boundaries doesn’t contradict the existence of the right, or weaken the right’s force when exercise of the right does not conflict with the rights of others.
Next week, I'll talk more about lethal self-defense, and then get to the payoffs, which have to do with experimental drugs and compensation for organ transplants.
Hypothetical Hypocrisy:
I think people are often too quick to charge others with hypocrisy; a lot of the "He said A here, but did B there" is explicable by some quite sensible distinctions between A and B. But I'm especially bugged by overconfident claims of hypocrisy -- "He said A, but I'm positive he would have done B there had the situation only happened." This is especially so when the claims name some particular person. If you're going to accuse someone of being a hypocrite, it seems to me that you ought to have pretty solid foundations for your accusation. Your guess as to how the person would have reacted in a hypothetical situation will only rarely qualify.
A concrete example: My post about the Halloweengate press release drew this comment:
By the way, I wonder how many people (ahem--Instapundit) would have taken the exact opposite stance on this issue if this had come out first.
A request for some clarification yielded this from the same commenter:
As we discussed in the prior thread, there is no obvious political valance or statement involved in this costume. So, I think what likely would have happened is that people who were looking for an excuse to bash an Ivy League university president would have become outraged at her taking offense and issuing a statement about it.
In fact, here was Instapundit's last line of his last update:
"I remain skeptical that a Klansman costume would be received in the same fashion, or that an Ivy League university President would be comfortable being photographed with someone wearing a Klan costume."
What I think we would have been reading instead is something like:
"I remain skeptical that a Fidel Castro costume would be received in the same fashion, or that an Ivy League university President would be uncomfortable being photographed with someone wearing a Castro costume."
OK, is there any real justification for assuming that Glenn Reynolds would have "taken the exact opposite stance on th[e] issue" if the press release had come out first, by "becom[ing] outraged at her taking offense and issuing a statement about it"? Is Reynolds noteworthy for thinking in other contexts that suicide bomber costumes are great, and that it's outrageous for university presidents to take offense at them? Is there any real support for the suggestion that Reynolds would have behaved this way?
And this isn't just this comment; I see it all the time, about what the ACLU or the Left or the Right or who knows who would surely have done in some hypothetical scenario. These people or groups are apparently so bad that we can accuse them of likely inconsistency even without their having actually done half of the internally inconsistent pair.
In rare circumstances, the targeted person is indeed so predictable that such a prediction is likely right. But my sense is that much of the time (including here) this just isn't so. The claims of hypothetical hypocrisy are based simply on the claimant's hostility to the target, rather than on any real evidence that the target would have indeed acted the way claimant alleges. It's basically argument by a presumption of bad faith -- not, in my view, the most enlightening form of discourse.
Supreme Court Grants Cert on Sentencing Issues:
The Court granted cert in two cases today to determine when the length of a federal criminal sentence is "reasonable" and thus allowed under Booker. Expect lots of blogging on this from Doug Berman over at Sentencing Law & Policy.
Apparently Coming from an Illustrious Irish Family Doesn't Take You as Far as You Might Like:
From a New York trial court decision, May 15, 2006 (paragraph break added):
This petition, to change the surname of a three-year-old minor and amend the child's birth and baptismal certificates, by the child's father, her non-custodial parent, is replete with accusations about the mother's alleged reprehensible and irresponsible conduct, as contrasted with the father's self-suffering [sic] assertions of religious devotion, piety, and upstanding behavior. Petitioner's histrionics are worthy of a Harlequin Romance novel or what was once known in Hollywood as a "four hankie" movie....
It is undisputed that Sean Wilson and Caroline Kilkenny had a relationship from late 2001 to August 2002, and that Ms. Kilkenny became pregnant with Mr. Wilson's child, Claudia Rose Kilkenny, who was born on April 29, 2003 at Lawrence Hospital, Bronxville, New York. The infant has resided continuously with her mother, at the mother's residence in Yonkers, New York....
Petitioner's grounds for changing the child's name include that the father: has an M.B.A. degree and is a C.P.A.; is a practicing Roman Catholic; and, is a member of the "Ancient Order of Hibernia" [sic]. Further, petitioner claims that "[m]y family heritage stems from Ireland and has a depth of history and vitality that procures immediate respect and good will in that region by the mere mention of my surname, Wilson."
He then claims that the name change would: save Claudia "the embarrassment associated with being a fatherless child"; "avoid any feelings of alienation arising in the child from having a different surname from that of Petitioner"; and, "prevent scorn and contempt from befalling Claudia as being associated as a societal bastard' child." ...
As you might gather, the court denies the petition. (The careful reader, incidentally, will have noticed that the request for an order to change the baptismal certificate, which is to say for an order that the Catholic Church change the baptismal certificate, seeks a remedy foreclosed by the First Amendment. The court noticed it, too.)
When "The Weight of Empirical Evidence" Is Only "Anecdotal or Theoretical":
In a post on proposals to raise the minimum wage, Kevin Drum comments:
"it's worth noting that virtually all the evidence on the anti-minimum wage side is either anecdotal or theoretical. The evidence on the pro-minimum wage side is concrete and statistical."
Yet the very story he cites as the basis for this proposition reports otherwise.
In a new report, economists David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board say a review of more than 90 studies in more than 15 countries since the early 1990s shows nearly two-thirds of the studies find a "consistent" though not always statistically significant negative impact on employment. Fewer than 10 found a consistently positive impact. While there's "no consensus," they say, "the weight of empirical evidence" supports the traditional view.
UPDATE: I am not sure, but this appears to be the Neumark-Wascher study referred to in the WSJ story. From the conclusion: In general, our results provide evidence that minimum wages tend to reduce employment rates among the youth population. A clear negative correlation between the level of the minimum wage and youth employment-to-population ratios appears both in the raw data, and in time-series cross-section regressions relating employment rates to minimum wages, with controls for overall economic conditions and cross-country variation in labor market policies and institutions. The disemployment effects also appear in models that control for country-specific factors (including country-specific time trends), indicating that the results are not solely driven by cross-country differences in minimum wage levels and youth employment rates.
Related Posts (on one page): - When "The Weight of Empirical Evidence" Is Only "Anecdotal or Theoretical":
- Worker Privacy and Ohio's Issue 2:
"The Acorn Indictments":
The WSJ editorializes on the recent indictments of four Acorn voter registration workers in Missouri for submitting fraudulent registrations.
We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The good news for anyone who cares about voter integrity is that the Justice Department finally seems poised to connect these dots instead of dismissing such revelations as the work of a few yahoos. After the federal indictments were handed up in Kansas City this week, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement that "This national investigation is very much ongoing."
Ah, Yes, the Press Release:
A Philadelphia Inquirer blog, Blinq, reports that Penn's president issued this statement:
Each year, the president hosts a Halloween party for Penn students. More than 700 students attend. They all crowd around to have their picture taken with me in costume. This year, one student who had a toy gun in hand had his picture taken with me before it was obvious to me that he was dressed as a suicide bomber. He posted the photo on a website and it was picked up on several other websites.
People have since complained to me that the costume was offensive. But for Pete's sake, this is a Halloween party, with a bunch of college kids trying to be creative, including trying to be creative with a theme of "dressing as scary evil things." Suicide bombers are scary evil things. Maybe they're too scary evil, or scary evil in the wrong way, or who knows what. But there's no rule book that he should have consulted on the subject; it's a matter of taste and judgment on which reasonable people can differ. Cut him some slack. I say again, it's a Halloween party; even if he went over the fuzzy line, how much public outrage does it merit?
Oh, whoops, sorry -- that was the statement that Penn's president issued in my dreams. Here's the statement she issued in reality:
Each year, the president hosts a Halloween party for Penn students. More than 700 students attend. They all crowd around to have their picture taken with me in costume. This year, one student who had a toy gun in hand had his picture taken with me before it was obvious to me that he was dressed as a suicide bomber. He posted the photo on a website and it was picked up on several other websites.
The costume is clearly offensive and I was offended by it. As soon as I realized what his costume was, I refused to take any more pictures with him, as he requested. The student had the right to wear the costume just as I, and others, have a right to criticize his wearing of it.
OK, Dr. Gutmann, he had a right to wear the costume, you have a right to criticize the wearing of it, and I have the right to criticize your and everyone else's taking this so seriously. (Of course, they also have the right to criticize my taking their taking it so seriously so seriously.) Only mildly, mind you, especially in your case, since University President is not a job that generally allows "Oh, calm down already" press releases. I suppose you did what you had to do.
But, boy, I wish you'd put out my version of the press release instead.
The Alarm Went Off:
A friend of mine asked me about this -- why do we say "the alarm went off" when the alarm, or at least the sound, goes on?
I infer that this is related to a gun or a bomb going off, that when something is ready to go it is somehow seen as "on," and then when the trigger turns that readiness into actual firing or detonation the device is seen as "going off." But can anyone tell me more precisely how the phrases came to be this way?
HBO's "Hacking Democracy":
HBO's "Hacking Democracy," a documentary that purports to show that "the top-secret computerized systems counting the votes in America's public elections are not only fallible, but also vulnerable to undetectable hacking, from local school board contests to the presidential race" premiered last night. I haven't had the chance to watch it yet, but I hope to in the next few days. Votelaw's Ed Still says "It's a thrill a minute -- well, maybe every few minutes."
According to this report (also via Votelaw), Diebold claims that the documentary is inaccurate and asked HBO to pull it from the air. See, for instance, here and here. HBO stands by the accuracy of the program. Given that Diebold's pre-broadcast complaints appear were based upon their "understanding" of the program's content -- rather than viewing the program itself -- I will be curious to see what, if any, post-airing response Diebold produces. (Diebold's releases on this and related issues are available here.)
Like Glenn Reynolds, I don't see what's so wrong about paper ballots, and if "Hacking Democracy" lives up to the hype, I expect I will hold ever more strongly to this view.
More Sixth Circuit Habeas Happenings:
Following the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit continues to provide a crash course in the current controversies concerning the availability of habeas relief in federal courts. This week, the Sixth Circuit is once again divided -- this time 7-7 on a petition for rehearing en banc -- over whether a habeas petition should have been granted to a capital defendant.
Last June, in Slaughter v. Parker, a three judge panel reversed a district court decision granting James Slaughter's habeas petition claiming ineffective assistance of counsel. Judge Batchelder wrote the majority opinion for herself and Chief Judge Boggs. Judge Cole dissented.
On Wednesday, an evenly divided Sixth Circuit denied Slaughter's petition for rehearing en banc. Judge Cole wrote a dissent, which begins: We are uneasy about executing anyone sentenced to die by a jury who knows nearly nothing about that person. But we have allowed it. We are also uneasy about executing those who commit their crime at a young age. But we have allowed that as well. We are particularly troubled about executing someone who likely suffers brain damage. We rarely, if ever, allow that—especially when the jury is not afforded the opportunity to even consider that evidence. Jeffrey Leonard, known to the jury only as “James Slaughter,” approaches the execution chamber with all of these characteristics. Reaching this new chapter in our death-penalty history, the majority decision cannot be reconciled with established precedent. It certainly fails the Constitution. This Court’s seven to seven stalemate regarding the en banc petition, however, leaves this precarious decision intact. As Robert Loblaw at Decision of the Day notes, Cole's dissent was joined by Judges Martin, Daughtery, Moore, and Clay, leaving the identities of the other two judges who voted in favor of en banc review a mystery.
Fighting Wildcats and Rodents:
The 5th and final excerpt from War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today, by Max Boot:
Technological advance will not change the essential nature of war. Fighting will never be an antiseptic engineering exercise. It will always be a bloody business subject to chance and uncertainty in which the will of one nation (or sub-national group) will be pitted against another, and the winner will be the one that can inflict more punishment and absorb more punishment than the other side. But the way punishment gets inflicted has been changing for 500 years and it will continue to change in strange and unpredictable ways.
In assessing the future conduct of conflict, most analysts tend to fall into one of two camps. One group stresses the dangers of terrorists and guerrillas who use cheap, simple weapons like AK-47s, machetes, or explosives. Another group stresses the danger of high-tech weapons such as cruise missiles and killer satellites proliferating around the world and into the hands of states such as China and North Korea. The former school (associated with ground-combat arms) stresses the need for better warriors; the latter school (associated with air and naval forces), the need for better machines. The reality is that both high-intensity and low-intensity threats are real and that both more superlative people and first-rate equipment are needed to counter them. Michael Evans of the Royal Military College of Australia offers sage advice when he writes: “In a dangerous and unpredictable world, military professionals and their political masters must … be ready to tame the big wildcats and not simply the vicious rodents, to be able to fight troops like Iraq’s former Republican Guard as well as Taliban, al-Qa’ida militia, and terrorists.”
Today, the U.S. is much further along in figuring out how to tame the Republican Guard than Al Qaeda, and it needs to place more emphasis on making up for its deficiencies in irregular warfare rather than simply enhancing its already substantial lead in conventional warfare. While the Information Revolution has decreased the number of weapons and soldiers needed to defeat a conventional adversary, occupation duty and nation-building—the prerequisites for turning a battlefield triumph into a long-term political victory--continue to demand lots of old-fashioned infantry. Therefore, the U.S. and its allies would be making a mistake if they were to seriously stint on force size in order to procure more high-tech systems.
But that doesn’t mean that the U.S. can simply ignore the dangers of major warfighting or the dictates of technological change. That was the mistake Britain made before 1914 and again before 1939. The British had the world’s best “small war” force—an army well-trained and equipped for fighting bandits and guerrillas—but it was ludicrously insufficient to deter German aggression or to defeat Germany once a world war broke out. That mistake, symbolized by deficiencies in tanks and aircraft carriers, hastened the end of the Pax Britannica.
Today, the possibility of conventional inter-state war is lower than at any time in 500 years, but it has not disappeared altogether. Because Americans and other citizens of Western democracies no longer seem willing to suffer the same level of casualties experienced by their ancestors, their armed forces must be able to defeat adversaries at scant cost in lives. That argues for keeping the qualitative edge that the U.S. gained in the Information Age--an edge that cannot be preserved by standing still. It will be necessary to keep innovating since, as previously indicated, some of the technologies and techniques employed by the U.S. are starting to be negated by their dissemination around the world. Innovation must be organizational as much as technological, and it needs to focus on potential threats across the entire spectrum, from low-intensity guerrilla wars to high-intensity conventional conflicts.
In any case, the boundaries between “conventional” and “unconventional,” “regular” and “irregular” warfare are blurring. Even non-state groups are increasingly gaining access to the kinds of weapons—from missiles and landmines to chemicals and perhaps even atomic bombs—that were once the exclusive preserve of states. And even states will increasingly turn to unconventional strategies to blunt the impact of American power.
Two colonels of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army envision “unrestricted warfare” encompassing not only traditional force-on-force encounters but also financial warfare (subverting banking systems and stock markets), drug warfare (attacking the fabric of society by flooding it with illicit drugs), international law warfare (blocking enemy actions using multinational organizations), resource warfare (seizing control of vital natural resources), even ecological warfare (creating man-made earthquakes, tsunamis, or other disasters). In a clever bit of ju-jitsu, many of these strategies turn the strengths of Information Age countries against them. Al Qaeda is pursuing similar strategies.
Countering such threats will require much more than simply buying more advanced aircraft, tanks, or submarines. Such traditional weapons systems may be almost entirely useless against adversaries clever enough to avoid presenting obvious targets for precision-guided munitions. To fight and win the wars of the future—wars that may more closely resemble a series of terrorist attacks or hit-and-run raids than traditional force-on-force armored, aerial, or naval engagements--will require reorganizing conventional militaries to emphasize such skills as cultural awareness, foreign language knowledge, information operations, civil affairs, and human intelligence. It will also require cutting away the bureaucratic fat to turn bloated Industrial Age hierarchies into lean Information Age networks capable of utilizing the full potential of high-tech weapons and highly-trained soldiers.
Whether the U.S. is ready for such challenges will determine whether it can keep its position as the lone superpower or whether the world will see another power shift of the kind that accompanied the Gunpowder Revolution, the First Industrial Revolution, the Second Industrial Revolution, and the early stages of the Information Revolution. The course of future history will turn on the outcome.
How Majority of People Vote May Determine Election:
Breaking news from the New York Times: In Virginia Race, Women May Be the Decider
By Robin Toner
FAIRFAX, Va., Nov. 1 — There is, unquestionably, a striking amount of testosterone in the Virginia Senate race between Senator George Allen, football-tossing Republican conservative, and Jim Webb, Democrat, Vietnam veteran and chronicler of the warrior tradition.
But the real struggle in this exceedingly tight contest, one of a handful that will determine control of the Senate, may be decided by how women vote. Given that Virginia has about 1.9 million registered female voters, compared with 1.6 million registered male voters, that prediction seems pretty safe. Of course, the Washington Post was all over this story last week.
Thursday, November 2, 2006
Dressing as a Suicide Bomber to a Halloween Party:
Democracy Project is upset by this incident. InstaPundit seems to think the suicide bomber might be anti-Semitic. But this is a Halloween party, no? In recent years, people dress up as positive things for Halloween, too (my boys were Pooh and Tigger) but I had thought the tradition was to dress up as scary, often nasty people. One of the kids in the neighborhood this year was dressed as a '20s gangster, complete with a plastic machinegun. Pirates are pretty common.
You're told to dress as someone scary. A suicide bomber is scary. It should probably be scarier than a skeleton or a ghost. Sounds like you did your Halloween duty. And I don't think that wearing a costume for Halloween endorses the likely sentiments of the person being depicted, be he pirate, bomber, gangster, or zombie.
Now there is a more complex argument, I suppose, that could be made: wearing a costume suggests that the depicted person's activity is a laughing matter. I take it that this would be a possible objection to people's dressing as Nazis for Halloween. I should say that I wouldn't object myself to people's dressing as Nazis for Halloween; still, I assume the sensible argument wouldn't be "by dressing as a Nazi you're endorsing Nazism" but "by dressing as a Nazi you're suggesting that it's OK to use Nazis as a subject of light-hearted fun." Yet even this isn't that persuasive an argument in my book. There are contexts in which light joking about suicide bombers or Nazis might be strikingly inapt; a Halloween party, on the other hand, doesn't seem to me to be one.
UPDATE: Instapundit asks: "Would a university President really pose for photos with someone in a Klan outfit, or wearing blackface? I find that hard to imagine. And if not, why is the suicide bomber outfit OK?"
Two thoughts: First, I would likewise defend someone who came to a party as a Klansman. Same theory — Klansmen are scary; Halloween is about scary costumes; Halloween is not about endorsing the characters you're dressing as. (I'm not keen on the blackface taboo, at least when used to forbid all attempts by whites to try to play black characters at parties; but for this post I'd like to focus on costumes that fit with the Halloween theme precisely because they represent scary evil characters.)
Second, I don't know the details of the pose with the university president, but let's not assume that she deliberated much about the matter. A Halloween party at the university president's house to which students are invited is likely to be a huge affair. I suspect that Saadi wasn't the first person who posed with her.
The president's main job at the party is not to police costume choices but to be nice to the attendees. If she's asked to pose with someone, the default reaction is "OK, let me get this over with quickly, and move on to mingle," not "Let me think about the person's costume to see whether it's suitable for a Picture With Moi." Even if you think that on careful reflection she should have said "No, I won't pose with you because I find your costume in bad taste," I doubt that careful reflection should be expected here.
And, no, I don't think that now that she has had time for careful reflection she should put out a formal apology / clarification / statement praising peace and distancing herself from terrorists or those who would wear inappropriate terrorist costumes. It's a student dressing up for a Halloween party, for heaven's sake.
FURTHER UPDATE: In the paragraph marked "First," I meant to include one more item, but with the lateness of the hour forgot. It may well be that dressing as a Klansman to a Halloween party would have caused a fuss, from a refusal to pose to protest marches to disciplinary measures. But because people have lost a sense of perspective as to some set of costumes doesn't mean that we should encourage them to do the same as to others. One can certainly condemn those who use a double standard (though it's a little harder if you're just conjecturing that they'd have a double standard, since you have only a hypothetical case to compare against). For the reasons I gave above, however, we shouldn't avoid double standards by having a single standard of outraged condemnation.
A Picture from a UCLA Restroom,
from a Daily Bruin article:
An isolated incident like this one of course doesn't tell us much about the incidence of such attitudes. But it's still good for those of us who -- like me -- have almost never encountered anti-Semitism in their Los Angeles lives to remember that this stuff is out there.
Thanks to Omri Ceren for the pointer, and for the pointer to a story about a seemingly similar incident at UC Irvine.
More on the "Stern Review":
The Stern Review is not getting favorable reviews from environmental economists. A sample:
John Whitehead of the Environmental Economics blog analyzes the report here, here, and here; Prometheus has posted commentary by Richard Tol here; and Roger Pielke Jr. notes the report cherry-picks data on hurricanes here.
Brennan Center Guide to Voter Fraud:
The Brennan Center has released an Investigator's Guide to "Voter Fraud". It details a series of questions that should be answered when assessing claims of voter fraud, and notes that many claims of "voter fraud" are overstated. (I suspect much the same can be said of many claims of "disenfranchisement.")
Medical Self-Defense, Prohibited Experimental Therapies, and Payment for Organs:
This is a new essay of mine, which should be coming out in April 2007 in the Harvard Law Review. The article, lean and trim (by my standards) at 30 pages, is available from this page. In the meantime, here's the Abstract:
Three women lie in adjoining hospital rooms. A fourth lives a block away. All are in deadly peril.
Alice is seven months pregnant, and the pregnancy threatens her life. Her fetus has long been viable, so she no longer has the Roe/Casey right to abortion on demand. But because her life is in danger, she has a constitutional right to save her life by hiring a doctor to abort the viable fetus. She would even have such a right if the pregnancy were only posing a serious threat to her health, rather than threatening her life.
Katherine lives nearby. A person breaks into her home and seems about to try to kill her (or perhaps seriously injure, rape, or kidnap her). Just as Alice may protect her life by killing the fetus, Katherine may protect hers by killing the attacker, even if the attacker isn’t morally culpable, for instance if he is insane. And Katherine has a right to self-defense even though recognizing the right may let some people use false claims of self-defense to get away with killing the innocent.
Ellen, back in the hospital, is terminally ill. No proven therapies offer help. An experimental therapy seems safe, because it has passed Phase I FDA testing, yet federal law bars its use outside clinical trials because it hasn’t been demonstrated to be effective (and further checked for safety) through Phase II testing. Nonetheless, under Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. Eschenbach, decided in 2006 by the D.C. Circuit, Ellen has a constitutional right to try to save her life by hiring a doctor to administer the therapy.
Olivia is dying of kidney failure in the room next to Alice’s and Ellen’s. A kidney transplant would likely save her life, just as an abortion would save Alice’s, lethal self-defense may save Katherine’s, and an experimental treatment may save Ellen’s.
But the federal ban on payment for organs sharply limits the availability of kidneys, so Olivia will likely die if she must wait for a donated kidney. Barring compensation for goods or services makes them scarce. Alice and Ellen would be in jeopardy if doctors were only allowed to perform abortions or experimental treatments for free. Katherine likely wouldn’t be able to defend herself with a gun or knife if weapons could only be donated. If organ providers or their heirs could be compensated, many more organs would be available, and Olivia would be much likelier to get the life-saving kidney. But federal law bans organ sales, and thus frustrates Olivia’s ability to protect her life.
My claim is that all four cases involve the exercise of a person’s presumptive right to self-defense — lethal self-defense in Katherine’s case, and what I call medical self-defense in the others.
This is a constitutional right: I will argue in Part II that Roe and Casey secure not just a pre-viability right to abortion as reproductive choice, but also a separate post-viability right to abortion as medical self-defense when pregnancy threatens a woman’s life. And given that Alice has such a right to defend herself by getting an abortion, Ellen and Olivia should have the same right to defend themselves through other medical procedures. Alice is free to have surgery in which a doctor inserts devices into her body to excise a fetus that, tragically, threatens her life. Ellen should likewise be free to have a procedure in which a doctor inserts chemicals into her body to destroy a tumor that threatens her life. And the government should not place substantial obstacles in the way of Olivia’s having a procedure in which a doctor inserts an organ into her body to replace a failing organ that threatens her life. It can’t be that a woman has a constitutional right to protect her life using medical procedures, but only when doing so kills a viable fetus.
I will also argue, in Part III, that the right to medical self-defense is supported by the long-recognized right to lethal self-defense: the right to protect your life against attack even if it means killing the attacker. The right has constitutional foundations, in substantive due process, state constitutional rights to defend life and to bear arms, and maybe the Second Amendment. But even if it’s treated as just a common-law and statutory right, our accepting it should lead us to accept a similar common-law or statutory right to defend one’s life against medical threats as well as against human or animal threats. Even if the Court stops recognizing unenumerated constitutional rights, legislatures should presumptively protect people’s medical self-defense rights just as they protect people’s lethal self-defense rights, and as the public overwhelmingly supports women’s abortion-as-self-defense rights. While a legislature need not fund people’s self-defense, it generally ought not substantially burden people’s right to defend themselves.
In Parts IV and V, I’ll apply the abortion-as-self-defense and lethal self-defense analogies in more detail to experimental drugs and to compensation for organs. I’ll argue that the right of medical self-defense offers an extra foundation for the Abigail Alliance holding that there is a constitutional right to use experimental therapies to protect one’s life. And I’ll argue that the right makes the organ sales ban presumptively improper and unconstitutional when the organs are needed to protect people’s lives; some concerns about organ markets may justify regulations of such markets, but not prohibition.
I will also argue that, while this presumption is potentially rebuttable, it should take much to rebut it. Recognizing the right to medical self-defense as a constitutional right or a moral right means that the government should have a very good reason to substantially burden the right, and that the restriction should be as narrow as possible.
In particular, while the right may be regulated in some ways — for instance, to prevent the killing of people by organ robbers — such regulations can and should be far less burdensome than a total ban on organ sales would be. We respect and value self-defense rights enough that we allow lethal self-defense, even given the risk that false claims of self-defense can be used as a cloak for murder: Rather than prophylactically banning all use of lethal force, we make certain uses illegal and rely on case-by-case decisionmaking to discover these improper uses and to deter them. The same should apply to payments for organ transplants.
Finally, in Part VI, I’ll argue that a right to medical self-defense is not only logically supportable, but also potentially successful both in political debate and in the judicial process. Both liberal and conservative judges and voters should be potentially open to it; and I hope that the analogies I offer in this Essay can be used to help persuade them.
New Jersey Federalist Society Panel on Lewis v. Harris:
The New Jersey Lawyers Chapter and Seton Hall Law School Chapter of the Federalist Society are hosting a panel discussion on the recent New Jersey marriage decision. It will take place this coming Monday, Nov. 6, 5:30-7:00 p.m. at Seton Hall Law School, Rm. 373, One Newark Center, Newark, NJ.
The panelists will be the Hon. Richard A. Merkt, assemblyman and parliamentarian of the NJ state assembly; Lawrence Lustberg, counsel for the gay couples in the case; and me. The moderator will be Professor John Wefing of Seton Hall law school. Food and refreshments will be available. If you're a reader of the VC come up and say hello.
RSVP no later than Nov. 3 to Tom Weisert at thomas.weisert@ogletreeadkins.com or by phone at 973-656-1600.
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.--
There is a new report on global warming done by the reputable economist Nicholas Stern. The Stern Review's conclusion (tip to Instapundit and TCS):
Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don't act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action — reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change — can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year."
Bjorn Lomborg dissects the Stern Review at Opinion Journal (tip to Tim Blair):
The report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world. Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.
Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off. . . .
Mr. Stern sees increasing hurricane damage in the U.S. as a powerful argument for carbon controls. However, hurricane damage is increasing predominantly because there are more people with more goods to be damaged, settling in ever more risky habitats. Even if global warming does significantly increase the power of hurricanes, it is estimated that 95% to 98% of the increased damage will be due to demographics. The review acknowledges that simple initiatives like bracing and securing roof trusses and walls can cheaply reduce damage by more than 80%; yet its policy recommendations on expensive carbon reductions promise to cut the damages by 1% to 2% at best. That is a bad deal. . . .
The most well-recognized climate economist in the world is probably Yale University's William Nordhaus, whose "approach is perhaps closest in spirit to ours," according to the Stern review. Mr. Nordhaus finds that the social cost of CO2 is $2.50 per ton. Mr. Stern, however, uses a figure of $85 per ton. Picking a rate even higher than the official U.K. estimates--that have themselves been criticized for being over the top--speaks volumes. . . .
But nowhere is the imbalance clearer than in Mr. Stern's central argument about the costs and benefits of action on climate change. The review tells us that we should make significant cuts in carbon emissions to stabilize the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at 550 ppm (parts per million). Yet such a stark recommendation is not matched by an explicit explanation of what this would mean in terms of temperature.
The U.N. Climate Panel estimates that stabilizing at 550 ppm would mean an increase in temperature of about 2.3 degrees Celsius in the year 2100. This might be several degrees below what would otherwise happen, but it might also be higher. Mr. Nordhaus estimates that the stabilization policy would reduce the rise in temperature from 2.53 degrees Celsius to just 2.42 degrees Celsius. One can understand the reluctance of the Stern review to advertise such a puny effect.
Most economists were surprised by Mr. Stern's large economic estimates of damage from global warming. Mr. Nordhaus's model, for example, anticipates 3% will be wiped off global GDP if nothing is done over the coming century, taking into account the risk for catastrophes. The Stern review purports to show that the cost is "larger than many earlier studies suggested." . . .
Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just 1% of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure--$75 billion--the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?
We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of 1% extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just 2% extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10% to 13% estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
You should read both the executive summary of the Stern Report and Lomborg's review.
I did find one part of Lomborg's critique unrealistically sanguine. Lomborg accepts the UN's estimated cost of providing even the most "basic" health care to the world, $75 billion, which strikes me as awfully low: How could $12 a year per person per year pay for basic health care, education, and clean drinking water where it is not now provided?
Overall, I will never understand why the very real problem of global warming turns otherwise sensible people into fear-mongers.
Vote Fraud Indictments in K.C.:
Federal indictments have issued against four individuals who had been working on ACORN voter registration drives in Missouri. These indictments are supposedly part of a national investigation into fraudulent voter applications. Unlike prior reports of dead-people voting, here there are allegations of actual fraud. Gateway Pundit has more.
Perhaps because I grew up in Philadelphia at a time when vote fraud was all too common, I see potential vote fraud as a serious concern (and one that supporters of either party may commit). This does not mean that I dismiss concerns about disenfranchisement, quite to the contrary. Those who are eligible to vote should be able to do so without interference, but I have seen elections stolen through fraud, and believe it can still happen today.
Related Posts (on one page): - "The Acorn Indictments":
- Vote Fraud Indictments in K.C.:
Ohio Voter ID Case Settled:
Ohio papers, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Cincinnati Enquirer are reporting that the lawsuit over Ohio's new Voter ID rules has been settled, at least in regard to next Tuesday's election. According to these reports, it seems the rules will be somewhat loosened so as to allow voters without photo ID's to provide other means of identification (such as the last four digits of their social security number). Here is the consent order, and here is some initial commentary from Ohio State's Dan Tokaji.
Ann Coulter in Voting Fraud Inquiry?
The Associated Press is reporting:
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation into whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will probably be turned over to prosecutors, Palm Beach County's elections chief said Wednesday.
D.C. Circuit Stays Anti-"Light" Cigarette Order:
The Associated Press is reporting: A federal appeals court has blocked a landmark judgment against the tobacco industry, allowing the companies to continue selling "light" and "low tar" cigarettes until their appeals can be reviewed.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also allows the companies to continue for now the advertising campaigns that a federal judge in August ruled were misleading.
Without comment, the appeals court granted the tobacco companies' request to put Judge Gladys Kessler's order on hold. The story reports that the panel was split 2-1. Judges Sentelle and Randolph were in the majority. Judge Tatel dissented. Written and oral arguments in the appeal have yet to be scheduled.
This development should not be particularly surprising. Judge Kessler's rulings on claims against tobacco companies have repeatedly met with resistance from the D.C. Circuit, in this and other cases. This is just the latest example.
Military Power Still Matters:
Part 4 of excerpts from War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today, by Max Boot:
The major theme that runs throughout War Made New is the importance of not missing out on the next big change in warfare. History is driven by many factors, but in academia’s rush to focus on economics, race, class, sexuality, geography, germs, culture, or other influences, it would be foolish and short-sighted to overlook the impact of military prowess and especially aptitude in taking advantage of major shifts in war-fighting. Of course a country’s success, or lack thereof, in harnessing change cannot be divorced from such underlying factors as its economic health, scientific sophistication, educational system, political stability, and so forth. But, contrary to Napoleon, God is not necessarily “on the side of the big battalions.” Even big and wealthy countries often lose wars and head into longterm decline through a lack of military skill.
The considerable gains of the Axis during the early years of World War II came, after all, against a coalition of Allied states that in aggregate had 40% greater GNP and 170% larger population. That the Axis ultimately lost goes to show that military skill can sometimes be trumped by greater resources if a war drags on long enough and if the side with greater resources shows sufficient wisdom in their employment. But even in a long coalition war the side with the greater resources does not always prevail. The alliance of Britain, Hanover, and Prussia was dwarfed in economic and demographic resources by its adversaries in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763)--France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and (near the end) Spain—but still managed to win largely because of the superlative skill of the Prussian army and the British navy.
War Made New chronicles many other examples of the poorer side emerging victorious—Britain beat the Spanish Armada (1588), Sweden beat the Holy Roman Empire at Breitenfeld and Lutzen (1631-32), Prussia beat the Habsburg Empire at Königgrätz (1866), and Japan beat the Russian Empire in 1904-1905. More recent instances might be cited of the poorer power winning, such as North Vietnam’s defeat of the United States or the Afghans’ defeat of the Soviet Union.
These were not anomalies. In a statistical analysis of 20th century wars, the side with the larger GNP, population, armed forces, and defense expenditures won only a little more than half the time, making these factors about as useful in predicting military outcomes as flipping a coin. Political scientist Stephen Biddle, who analyzed these statistics, writes that “Superior numbers can be decisive or almost irrelevant depending on the two sides’ force employment. This in turn means that states’ relative economic, demographic, or industrial strength are poor indicators of real military power: gross resource advantages matter only if they can be exploited via modern-system force employment, and many states cannot do so…. How forces are used is critical.”
The ongoing proliferation of destructive technology means that the link between economic and military power is more tenuous than ever. Al Qaeda, whose entire budget would be insufficient to buy a single F-22, can inflict devastating damage on the world’s richest country. Advances in biological and cyberwar promise to put even more destructive potential into the hands of ever smaller groups—as does the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Imagine the devastating consequences of a mega-terrorist attack. Not only could millions die but international travel and commerce—the lifeblood of the global economy--could be severely disrupted. Such a scenario reveals the falsity of economic determinist arguments which counsel that military strength is unimportant and that it is feasible to stint on military preparedness in order to strengthen the economy. On the contrary, there can be no long-term prosperity without security. The entire world today depends, no matter how begrudgingly or unwittingly, on the protection provided by the United States, whose armed forces keep open air and sea lanes, safeguard energy supplies, and deter most cross-border aggression.
Dreamers can convince themselves that military power no longer matters, that economic interdependence has consigned war to the dustbin of history, and that a country need only wield “soft power,” but history is likely to deliver a stark rebuke to such wishful thinking. As a matter of fact, it already has. The attacks of September 11, 2001 put an end to a decade of talk about the “end of history,” a “strategic pause,” the inexorable flow of “globalization,” and the “peace dividend.” The incidence of war may have declined for the moment, but great dangers still loom ahead. Santayana had it right: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
Next (and final) installment: Fighting Wildcats and Rodents
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Barack Obama's real estate ties.
The big story on some of the local TV news shows tonight is about Barack Obama's ties to Rita Rezko, the wife of Tony Rezko, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's former chief fundraiser. Tony Rezko has been indicted in a massive scandal involving giving government jobs and contracts to Blagojevich's contributors. Apparently, the Rezkos live in a mansion in the suburbs north of Chicago, but on the same day that Obama bought a $1.6 million house on the south side of Chicago, Rezko's wife bought the vacant lot next door. Then Obama bought 10 feet of the Rezko lot, and Obama has now been paying for the mowing of all of the Rezko lot, though he says that he has been meaning to divide the costs.
Here is part of the Chicago Tribune article (registration required) that launched the story:
The same day last year that Obama and his wife, Michelle, closed on a $1.65 million home, Antoin "Tony" Rezko's wife, Rita, closed on a $625,000 vacant lot next door, the Chicago Tribune reported in Wednesday's editions. Both lots had once been part of the same estate, but were listed for sale separately by the owner. . . .
Obama said he had discussed the home with Rezko, but didn't know when Rezko became interested in the vacant lot.
In January, Obama paid Rezko $104,500 for part of the lot to balance the space between his house and the fence.
"I told them if you can spare another 5 or 10 feet, I'd be happy to purchase it from you," Obama said. "They came back and said they could sell us up to 10 feet."
A city ordinance required Rezko to fence the line between the properties, but the Obamas paid for an attorney and architects to inquire about the fence with the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, partly because Obama's wife once worked there and because they wanted to ensure it was done properly, Obama said. Rezko was to pay $14,000 for the fence, although that bill has not been paid, the fence company told the Tribune.
Obama said he took special care to ensure any financial arrangements with Rezko were ethical, because Rezko was widely reported to be under investigation by a federal grand jury. . . .
Rezko and his companies donated at least $19,500 to Obama's state Senate campaigns and federal fund; Obama has said he would divest the federal donation.
Obama said he didn't know how much he spent on the work that led to the fence permit for Rezko.
"My suspicion is that it would probably be a couple of thousand dollars. On the architectural side it might be more," Obama said.
Obama has the landscaper who mows his lawn also mows Rezko's 7,500-square-foot yard, Obama said.
"My intention was to have the landscaper figure out some pro-rata cost for that mowing and send that bill to Rezko. I just haven't had time to do it," Obama said.
To say that this is small potatoes by the standards of Illinois political scandals is an understatement. It is not clear to me that Obama has done anything that is clearly improper, though I confess that I have been voting for Obama since he was representing my district in the state legislature.
Editorial Board of Topology -- a Leading Mathematics Journal -- Resigns
over publisher's decision to raise the institutional subscription price to $1,665 for one year (six issues). The New York Sun reports on this.
Thanks to Paul Caron (TaxProf) for the pointer.
Red Wine Is Good for You (If You're a Mouse):
The New York Times reports:
Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging report that a natural substance found in red wine, known as resveratrol, offsets the bad effects of a high-calorie diet in mice and significantly extends their lifespan. . . .
Resveratrol is found in the skin of grapes and in red wine and is conjectured to be a partial explanation for the French paradox, the puzzling fact that people in France tend to enjoy a high-fat diet yet suffer less heart disease than Americans.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania and Schools:
A reader passed along to me this item from a USA Today article last week:
Witold Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, defended Flaherty and other students who were expelled and punished by schools for statements they made online from their home computers.
He agrees that districts should punish students who post admissions of illegal activity — such as high-schoolers who post pictures of themselves drinking, doing drugs or committing other criminal acts. He also agrees that racist remarks or postings that promote or predict violence should be punished.
The reader, Brian Teague, wrote: "I would be very interested to read your comments in the VC regarding this article from today's USA Today, especially the excerpt below detailing the ACLU's distorted (in my mind) view of the apparent limits of the first amendment [referring to the 'racist remarks ... should be punished' item]."
I too was puzzled by Mr. Walczak's paraphrased position, but thought I'd e-mail Mr. Walczak first to clarify his views. Mr. Walczak was kind enough to promptly get back to me, and reported that the paraphrase actually misdescribed his position, which is this:
Schools might be able to punish students who post admissions of illegal activity, not for the speech but for admitting the illegal activity [I take it referring to the use of speech as evidence of the activity -EV]. The law is unsettled in this area which is why I say might.
If a student threatens violence or uses racial epithets against another student or teacher while in school, he might be punished under the Bethel v. Fraser standard. Again, the line between harassing and protected speech is unclear.
In any case, since the issue came up, I thought I'd pass along Mr. Walczak's correction. It's hard to tell for sure whether the reporter misheard, misunderstood, or mistranscribed what was said (something that reporters, like others, sometimes do), or whether Mr. Walczak misspoke. But I thought it might be helpful to know that, one way or the other, the legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania doesn't endorse the view that was ascribed to him in the article.
Zakaria on the Future of Iraq:
A very interesting essay in Newsweek.
How Embarrassing:
Check out claim 9 of this patent application:
9. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus which is really a bogus claim included amongst real claims, and which should be removed before filing; wherein the claim is included to determine if the inventor actually read the claims and the inventor should instruct the attorneys to remove the claim.
Thanks to Michael Barclay for the pointer.
Political Ads, Inaccuracy, and Copyright Infringement:
The Seattle Times runs this editorial:
[T]here is one TV ad benefiting Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner that is beyond the pale, not because of what it says but because it violates a copyright of TVW, Washington's public-affairs network.
Burner, who is challenging incumbent GOP Rep. Dave Reichert in the 8th District, is not responsible for the ad. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is running the ad attacking her opponent. The TV ad depicts Reichert at a meeting saying GOP leadership comes to him and tells him how to vote, and he'll take the vote.
It omits his next line: "There are some times when I say, 'No, I won't.'"
Sounds pretty ba |