November 29, 2009
Miss World 2009
The finale of the Miss World pageant will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa on December 12, but the competition has actually been underway for a while. Miss World has a unique system of preliminary rounds, the winners of which automatically advance to the semifinals of the competition. First came the Miss Sport contest, which was won by Miss Japan. Initially, Miss England, Rachel Christie, who is also an Olympic athlete, was a heavy favorite for the Miss Sport title. However, she had to give up her crown after getting in a bar fight with another beauty queen. Seriously.
That was followed by the talent competition, in which Miss Canada and Miss Sierra Leone tied for first. Miss Canada reportedly "performed a classical song, showing incredible vocal range and control," while Miss Sierra Leone "showed a truly unique talent with an amazing Chinese dance and fire eating routine that she learnt during the six months she spent in China prior to this year's Miss World Festival." Honestly, the talent competition isn't a major element at Miss World. On the other hand, the Miss Universe pageant doesn't have a talent competition at all.
Next up was the Beach Beauty competition; as you might imagine, Miss Beach Beauty has sometimes gone on to win the Miss World title. This year's Beach Beauty is Miss Gibraltar, followed by Panama and (a bit surprisingly) Scotland, which is not known for its beaches. Miss Gibraltar has a nice, girl-next-door look:
The betting odds have been interesting to follow. Early on, Miss Brazil, Luciana Bertolini, was the odds-on favorite. You could see why in this rather famous photo shoot.
For some reason, however, Miss Brazil has fallen out of favor with bettors. The current favorites are Miss Puerto Rico, Jennifer Colon, Miss Mexico, Perla Bertran--who is on Facebook, by the way--and Miss South Africa, Tatum Keshwar:
You can learn about all of the contestants at the official Miss World site. I'm not crazy about the site, however. The photography is mediocre at best, and the pop-up style they use for photographs makes it hard to drag them. The best thing about the site is probably the videos of contestants, but only a minority of contestants have videos. It's hard to understand how anyone can run a beauty pageant and fail to understand the importance of photography. Beauty pageants are a bit like the Republican Party; the concept is great, but the execution is often mystifyingly poor.
Still, it's the contestants that make the pageant, and as always there are lots of strong ones. Like my countrywoman (so to speak), Miss Norway:
She also has a nice YouTube video here. Then there are Miss Costa Rica and Miss Ivory Coast:
We could go on, but what the heck: the final is still two weeks away. More to come.
Iran to World: Drop Dead!
All those harsh measures that the "international community" has been threatening have really taughtIran's mullahs a lesson:
Iran's Government today announced plans to build ten new uranium enrichment plants and said work would start within two months.
Each site will be the size of the existing Natanz plant with the aim of producing between 250-300 tonnes of uranium a year.
IRNA, Iran's state news agency, says the Government ordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin construction of five uranium enrichment sites that have already been studied and propose five other sites for future construction. ...
The move comes just two days after world powers united in condemnation of Iran's nuclear activities in a rare show of international consensus on the threat posed by Tehran's continued nuclear defiance.
Your move, world.
The University of Minnesota redesigns teachers
Everybody is familiar with the vulgar Marxism in which race is substituted for class. In one form or another, it is ubiquitous in the academy, though its racism pervades every form. It has given rise to stultifying orthodoxies in doctrine, governance and curriculum.
The University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development is the foremost institution through which primary and secondary school teachers are licensed to teach in the state. In her Star Tribune column last week our friend Katherine Kersten blew the whistle on it. Kersten exposed a particularly vicious brand of the academy's vulgar Marxism at the College of Education in its Teacher Education Redesign Initiative.
The initiative is a multiyear project to change the the way future teachers are trained at the College of Education. Addressing the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group's contribution to the initiative, Kersten argued that the initiative sought to require the ideological indoctrination of future teachers using patented techniques of reeducation made famous outside Minnesota. The Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group's contribution to the initiative is set forth in this report.
The title of the core section of the report is "What Successful Beginning Teachers Need to Know & How to Assess and How to Teach Them." The first point is: "Future teachers will understand themselves as beings who position themselves and are positioned by others in relation to dimensions of differences (racial, social class, gender), and other hierarchies in school and society." Other key points include include:
1. The College of Education and Human Development's proposed "teacher education redesign" plan would require students to adopt "race, culture, class and gender" identity politics in order to be recommended for a teaching license.
2. The rationale given is that teachers' lack of "cultural competence" is a major reason that many minority students perform poorly in Minnesota schools.
3. The plan includes 14 "outcomes" all prospective teachers would have to meet, as well as "assessment" methods to assure they had achieved the outcomes. The first outcome is typical: "Future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression."
Other highlights from the report deserve attention:
"Future teachers will understand that they are privileged & marginalized depending on context."
"Future teachers will recognize & demonstrate understanding of white privilege."
"Future teachers are able to explain how institutional racism works in schools"
"Our future teachers will be able to construct and articulate a sophisticated and nuanced critical analysis of [the American Dream].... In pursuing this analysis, students will make use of...the following:
o Myth of meritocracy in the United States
o Historical connections between scientific racism, intelligence testing, and assumptions of fixed mental capacity....
o History of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values
o History of white racism, with special focus on current colorblind ideology4. In assessments, students are evaluated and graded on whether they conform to the "race, class, gender" agenda. They must, for example, write a "self-discovery paper" in which they "describe their own ethno-cultural background." They must describe their own prejudices and stereotypes, question their "cultural" motives for wishing to become teachers, and take two "cultural intelligence"-type assessments. They are graded (for example) on "the extent to which they find intrinsic satisfaction" in "cross-cultural interactions."
One assessment activity reads as follows:
"Autoethnography should reflect appreciation for how dominant pedagogical styles, school curricula, behavioral expectations, personal prejudices of school personnel...often convey overt and covert messages that devalue the culture, heritage, and identity of minority students."
5. Students must not only demonstrate changed thinking -- they must become activists. They must learn that schools are "critical sites for social and cultural transformation." One outcome reads: "Future teachers create & fight for social justice even if it's just in their classroom"
To say the least, the program contemplated by the initiative's Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group's report reveals an authoritarian mindset. Not only are future teachers required to subscribe to the prescribed ideology, so are the teachers who supervise their practice teaching in the public schools. (These teachers must endure "required training/worshop"[s] "around issues of race, class, culture, and gender.)
This is to be a comprehensive program, including the College of Education faculty -- mandatory "professional development" sessions are planned for them. According to the report: "Every faculty member at our university that [sic] trains our teachers must comprehend and commit to the centrality of race, class, culture, and gender issues in teaching and learning, and consequently, frame their teaching and course foci accordingly."
In addition, the College of Education plans to change criteria for admission in order to ensure that future teachers show the proper "attitudes" and "dispositions." A proposal seeking funding from the Bush Foundation states that, in January, the College of Education will be making "recommendations for assessing initial licensure candidates' professional commitments/dispositions as a criteria [sic] for admission."
Jean Quam is dean of the College of Education. On Friday the Star Tribune published Quam's vacuous if revealing nonresponse to Kersten's column. Quam avoids the points Kersten made. She neither attempts to refute them nor to address Kersten's evidence.
Among the straw men set up by Quam is her assertion that Kersten's "position is that discussion of [issues of race, class, culture and gender] equates to indoctrination." Those who read Kersten's column will easily see the falsity of this assertion, but we are grateful for Dean Quam's demonstration of the ethics she brings to the public discussion of the issues Kersten disputes, and for Quam's inadvertent corroboration of Kersten's indictment.
FOOTNOTE: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education sent University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks a letter addressing these issues on November 25. Minnesotans in particular may want to follow FIRE's example.
Paul Rahe: Is Obama a one-trick pony?
Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe writes:
I am not a great admirer of Peggy Noonan as a journalist. Most of the time, she aims at capturing a mood, and I generally find the lack of analysis and the sentimentalism so visible in her work offputting. There are, however, moments when she hits the ball out of the park, and she did so just a few days ago in The Wall Street Journal.
Noonan began by drawing attention to two articles published by establishment Democrats. In the first of these, which appeared on Politico, veteran commentator Elizabeth Drew reported,
While [Barack Obama] was abroad, there was a palpable sense at home of something gone wrong. A critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man. Most significant, these doubters now find themselves with a new reluctance to defend Obama at a phase of his presidency when he needs defenders more urgently than ever.
This is the price Obama has paid with his complicity and most likely his active participation, in the shabbiest episode of his presidency: The firing by leaks of White House counsel Gregory Craig, a well-respected Washington veteran and influential early supporter of Obama.
The people who are most aghast by the handling of the Craig departure can't be dismissed by the White House as Republican partisans, or still-embittered Hillary Clinton supporters. They are not naïve activists who don't understand that the exercise of power can be a rough business and that trade-offs and personal disappointments are inevitable. Instead, they are people, either in politics or close observers, who once held an unromantically high opinion of Obama. They were important to his rise, and are likely more important to the success or failure of his presidency than Obama or his distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team appreciate.
The Craig embarrassment gives these people a new reason - not the first or only reason - to conclude that he wasn't the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought, and, more fundamentally, that his ability to move people and actually lead a fractured and troubled country (the reason many preferred him over Hillary Clinton) is not what had been promised in the campaign.
This may seem like a lot to hang on a Washington personnel move. After all, intramural back-stabbing or making people fall guys when things go wrong (think Bill Clinton's Defense Secretary Les Aspin after the disaster in Somalia) are not new to Washingtonians.
But Craig's ouster did not occur in a vacuum. It served as a focal point to concerns that have been building for months that Obama wasn't pressing for all that might be possible within the existing political constraints (all that one could ask of a president); that his presidential voice hadn't fulfilled the hopes raised by his campaign voice (which had also taken him a while to find); that he hadn't created a movement, as he had raised expectations that he would; that would be there to back him up and help him fulfill his promises.
Drew's contention was not that Craig should have been kept. She acknowledged that, if Obama was unhappy with his performance, he should have been dropped. Her point was that it should not have been done in a shabby fashion by a series of leaks orchestrated by Obama's enforcer Rahm Emanuel. As an Obama loyalist, Craig deserved a dignified departure.
Symptomatic of her larger worries is the following:
The incident underscored worries that several had held about the Obama White House for some time: that it was too tightly controlled and narrowly focused by the Chicago crowd; that it seemed from the outset to need an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment.
The current crowd displays a certain impulsiveness and vindictiveness that do it no good - as in the silly war-let on Fox News that it is now trying to back out of. Even if Craig was making a hash of his job - and there's no independent evidence of this - it just wasn't smart to treat someone widely held in such high respect in this manner; once again, the impulsiveness backfired.
The replacing of Craig with Washington attorney Robert Bauer, Obama's own attorney for years as well as counsel for the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign, further narrowed the White House circle just when it needed broadening, lowered the stature of the office, and choosing the president's personal attorney for a position that calls for dispassionate judgment is hazardous. (Does anyone remember Alberto Gonzalez?)
The Obamas themselves hang tight with a small Chicago crowd. Yes, he talks to others, and yes, a president's time is very limited, but the Obamas themselves seem as closed-off and unto themselves as does his inner White House circle. (Is this a coincidence? What is all this wariness about?) When the Obamas go to someone's house for dinner, almost invariably it's to that of Valerie Jarrett, the old friend from Chicago who serves as a counselor and whom they see all day. Old Chicago friends fly in for weekends frequently.
To this Noonan responded:
As I read Ms. Drew's piece, I was reminded of something I began noticing a few months ago in bipartisan crowds. I would ask Democrats how they thought the president was doing. In the past they would extol, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, his virtues. Increasingly, they would preface their answer with, "Well, I was for Hillary."
This in turn reminded me of a surprising thing I observe among loyal Democrats in informal settings and conversations: No one loves Barack Obama. Half the American people say they support him, and Democrats are still with him. But there were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him. George W. Bush had people who loved him. A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now; they're not dazzled and head over heels. That's gone away. He himself seems a fairly chilly customer; perhaps in turn he inspires chilly support. But presidents need that rock--bottom 20 percent who, no matter what's happening--war, unemployment--adore their guy, have complete faith him, and insist that you love him, too.
There is another sign -- which Noonan duly noted -- that the honeymoon is over. Leslie Gelb, a pillar of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, posted a piece entitled "Amateur Hour at the White House" on The Daily Beast, criticizing the Obama administration not only for its "inexcusably clumsy review of Afghan policy and the fumbling of Mideast negotiations" but also for the President's embarrassing Asian tour.
"Most presidents," he rightly observed, "wouldn't even commit to trips abroad without knowing that key deals would be finally agreed on and announced during the visit itself. The prospective visit is the power jackhammer to nail down the deals. Just take a gander at trips planned for Richard Nixon by Henry Kissinger or for George H. W. Bush by James Baker." Obama would have done better to take a vacation in Hawaii than to have undertaken a trip from which he would return empty-handed.
Matters were made worse on the scene. It was not good optics for Obama to bow to Japan's emperor. He seems to do this stuff spontaneously and inexplicably, as with his bow to the Saudi King some months ago. And it was truly unfortunate that Obama and his aides didn't flatly insist that he be allowed to address the Chinese people directly on television and meet with non-stacked Chinese groups--as has been the case during previous presidential visits. Beijing's leaders obviously didn't feel confident enough of their own standing at home to give the popular Mr. Obama such access. But he and his team should have made it a precondition of the visit. Its absence left an unhappy taste.
In his view, "the message for Mr. Obama should be clear: He should stare hard at the skills of his foreign-policy team and, more so, at his own dominant role in decision-making. Something is awry somewhere, and he's got to fix it."
After taking all of this in, Noonan observes,
Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can't afford to lose is exactly wrong--he can't afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on. Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama's rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demands baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.
Which gets us back to the bow.
In a presidency, a picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something people already think. When Gerald Ford was spoofed for being physically clumsy, it took off. The picture of Ford losing his footing and tumbling as he came down the steps of Air Force One became a symbol. There was a reason, and it wasn't that he was physically clumsy. He was not only coordinated but graceful. He'd been a football star at the University of Michigan and was offered contracts by the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.
But the picture took off because it expressed the growing public view that Ford's policies were bumbling and stumbling. The picture was iconic of a growing political perception.
The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren't playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying "Tough Talks Yield Big Progress" or "Obama Shows Muscle in China," the bowing pictures might be understood this way: "He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation's interests."
But that's not how the pictures were received or will be remembered.
To Noonan's remarks -- apt, I think, in every respect -- I will add but one observation. The Democrats are getting what they asked for.
In 2004, they tried a trick. If we nominate a man who won the Purple Heart in Vietnam, they thought, we will win. Never mind that John Kerry disgraced himself in the aftermath of his service in Vietnam, making unjust charges against his brothers-in-arms and resolutely thereafter refusing to apologize to those whom he had slandered. Never mind that he had no executive experience. Never mind that, as a US Senator, he was -- to say the least -- undistinguished. They wanted to win; and they gave not a thought to what sort of President he might be.
In 2008, the Democrats did the same thing. They had on their hands an inexperienced, recently minted US Senator from Illinois who was -- as Joe Biden put it in a candid remark that typifies his propensity for speaking his mind without first thinking about the consequences -- "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Never mind, they thought, Obama's long-standing connections with William Ayers, the unrepentant mastermind of a domestic terrorist bombing campaign in the 1970s. Never mind Obama's close association with the racist demagogue Jeremiah Wright. Never mind his lack of executive experience, his unfamiliarity with the private sector, and his ignorance of the ways of Washington. With the help of the pliable press, he could be sold -- and Americans would congratulate themselves on their lack of racial prejudice if they voted for him.
Now comes the reckoning. For Barack Obama seems to be a one-trick pony. He is very good at delivering a speech if he has a teleprompter at hand, and the first and even the second time that you hear him, you will be impressed. If you bother later to read and re-read the speech you will perceive its emptiness. But few will do that, and by the time that they do, it will be too late.
That is one problem. The other is that Obama's one trick cannot often be played. As we have seen over the last few months, as he has tried to play this trick over and over and over again, the more we see of him, the less we are impressed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never held his fireside chats more than three times a year. How many times has Obama demanded airtime from the networks in the last ten months? I shudder to think.
There is a third problem. Once in office, presidents are judged more by what they do than by what they say and how well they say it, and Barack Obama is in the process of doing a great deal of harm. His "stimulus" bill was a transparent act of grand larceny, stealing from the future in order to enrich Democratic Party constituencies now. His unlawful handling of GM and Chrysler defrauded the bondholders, rewarded the intransigents in the UAW who were largely responsible for the auto-makers' decline, and made it harder for American corporations to borrow money.
And every version of the health care reform that he backs threatens to bankrupt the country and force us to raise taxes on a grand scale. If investors remain on the sidelines, if employers are reluctant to hire, and if, in consequence, the economic recover is anemic and virtually jobless, it is to a considerable extent Obama's fault.
The simple fact that he has done nothing to rein in a patronage-mad Democratic congress is a sign of his fecklessness as President. As David Ignatius points out in today's Washington Post, in 2010, there is going to be hell to pay -- especially in Democratic strongholds with especially high unemployment, such as Michigan, Nevada, Rhode Island, and California.
There is in this a lesson. In 2012, the Republicans should nominate for the presidency an individual with executive experience -- who has negotiated with legislators, and who has had to make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences. Among those available, they should choose a principled defender of constitutional government and a skilled manager who recognizes the ultimate dependence of the public sector on growth in the private sector of the economy and who thinks of himself in the international arena as the guardian of American interests.
Paul A. Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College. He is the author, most recently, of the companion studies Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect.
November 28, 2009
The Holder Justice Department twists the law ACORN's way
The Holder Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group. Here is the Office of Legal Counsel memo reaching this conclusion.
OLC analysis is tortured. Congress stated: "None of the funds made available by this Joint Resolution or any prior Act may be provided to ACORN. . ." On its face, this looks like a blanket prohibition against paying ACORN under any circumstances. However, OLC purports to find ambiguity in the term "provided to" and then opts for a meaning that does not bar "payments made pursuant to a binding contractual duty."
OLC opts for this interpretation because it avoids a construction which might require the government to breach its contractual obligations to ACORN. In my opinion, this stated DOJ objective is a worthy one, whatever we think of ACORN, and I don't assume that it's just a pretext by OLC for favoring ACORN. However, it seems to me that OLC avoids the result it disfavors only by ignoring the plain meaning of the statute Congress enacted, which is unworthy of DOJ.
East Anglia to Make Climate Data Public
Shaken by Climategate, the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit has reversed its long-standing policy and agreed to make its climate database public so that other researchers can check the conclusions that have been reached by global warming alarmists who, until now, have been the only ones with access to the data. What is not clear from this report is whether the formulas and calculations that were applied to the data to obtain published results will also be made public. In any event, shining sunlight on the heretofore secret world surrounding the manipulation of climate data can only be a good thing.
Now that the CRU is in retreat, maybe the liberal media will be shamed into covering the story.
Ohio taxpayers footing bill for defense of "Joe the Plumber" attackers
Last fall, during the peak of the presidential campaign, three Ohio state employees used their positions to target, Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber" by searching state records in the hope of finding material with which to smear him. Ohio's independent Office of the Inspector General investigated the actions of the three employees. It concluded that there was "no legitimate agency function or purpose" and "no reasonable basis" to authorize the searches for confidential information about him. Simply put, these three partisan hacks violated state law.
After Wurzelbacher sued the three, Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, a Democrat, decided to use taxpayer money to pay for the defense. This seems improper on its face, and former Senator Mike DeWine, who is running against Condray for Attorney General, makes a strong case that it violates the applicable Ohio rules.
Here is DeWine's analysis, which appeared in the Dayton Daily News:
In October 2008, Toledo resident Samuel Wurzelbacher gained notoriety as "Joe the Plumber" for challenging then-presidential candidate Barack Obama on his tax plan. Shortly thereafter, three high-level State of Ohio political appointees conspired to cause state databases to be used to dig up confidential information about Wurzelbacher.Last year, Ohio's independent Office of the Inspector General initiated an investigation into the search of state records regarding Wurzelbacher. Their report concluded that there was "no legitimate agency function or purpose" and "no reasonable basis" to authorize the searches for confidential information about him.
Three state employees used state time and equipment to target a private citizen and invade his privacy. Their actions were in violation of state law and for the purpose of advancing a partisan political campaign.
Joe the Plumber is now suing the employees. In our legal system, when private employees are sued, they are responsible for hiring and paying for their own attorneys. The only exception is when the lawsuit is against a public employee who was properly acting within the scope of his public duties. In that case, the attorney general represents the employee.
When state employees are sued, Ohio Statute, Revised Code 109.362, requires the attorney general to review the facts before providing taxpayer-funded representation. The attorney general may not represent an employee who acts recklessly, maliciously or in bad faith outside the scope of his employment.
Despite this, Cordray still chose to use our tax money to defend these wrong-doers, two of whom resigned in disgrace, while the third had his job "revoked." Cordray's decision to provide legal representation in the face of Ohio law may provide political cover to the Strickland administration, which appointed the wrong-doers, but it is no way to run the attorney general's office.
Not only does such a decision show a blatant disregard for taxpayer dollars, but it is also an affront to every Ohio citizen who expects state government to protect their privacy rights.
This is not the only case that calls into question Cordray's judgment when it comes to matters that may embarrass his political allies. After disgraced ex-Attorney General Marc Dann left the office in shambles, two of the young women who socialized with Dann and his buddies threatened legal action against the state. Any blame for how they were treated rightfully belonged with Dann and other people who were involved with the women.
But, here too, Cordray decided that taxpayers were responsible. Without first going through the financial approval channels required by law, and after meeting in secret, Cordray agreed to pay nearly $500,000 in taxpayer dollars to the women.
With the case thus settled, there would be no public testimony from them that might reveal other aspects of the growing scandal. They were effectively silenced.
Ohioans deserve an attorney general who will make decisions based on the law, not politics. Sadly, Cordray has failed to live up to that obligation. At a time when every precious state tax dollar must be preserved for the vital services of government, hundreds of thousands have already been squandered by Cordray's missteps. Taxpayers must speak out and demand change.
Condray's weak defense of his decision can be found here.
That'll Show 'Em!
You almost have to laugh at the way the media cover the "international community's" kicking of the Iran can down the road. The board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which a few days ago acknowledged that its policy toward Iran had "reached a dead end," has passed a resolution criticizing Iran for flouting U.N. resolutions and demanding that it stop work on nuclear weapons. The Associated Press risibly declares this a "blow" to the mullahs:
In a blow to Iran, the board of the U.N. nuclear agency on Friday overwhelmingly backed a demand from the U.S., Russia, China and three other powers that Tehran immediately stop building its newly revealed nuclear facility and freeze uranium enrichment. ...
The West said some time remained for Tehran to come around and accept a specific offer that would delay its ability to make a nuclear weapon as well as engage in broader talks with the ultimate goal of persuading it to mothball its enrichment program.
But that window of opportunity would not stay open indefinitely, officials said.
"The next stage will have to be sanctions if Iran doesn't respond to what is a very clear vote from the world community," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said the resolution's passage shows that "the international community still wants dialogue with Iran, but time is pressing."
"Our hand is still held out," he added. "I hope Iran will take it. Iran must know: our patience is not infinite."
That's true. But the mullahs' patience, if not infinite, is certainly greater than that of the "world community." They seemed to bear up reasonably well under the "blow" of another strongly-worded resolution. In fact, at least one Iranian legislator suggested today that his country could respond by simply withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, thus ending any involvement by the IAEA in Iran's affairs. The Associated Press considers this, too, to be a "blow":
If Iran withdraws from the treaty, its nuclear program would no longer be subject to oversight by the U.N. nuclear agency. That in turn would be a significant blow to efforts to ensure that no enriched uranium is diverted from use as fuel to warhead development.
The bottom line of these blows and counter-blows is that Iran's will to possess nuclear weapons vastly exceeds the will of the "world community" to stop it.
Russian Derailment Was Terrorist Attack
The derailment last night of a high-speed Moscow-to-St. Petersburg train that killed more than 25 people apparently was a terrorist attack, Russian authorities say:
Russian officials opened a terrorism investigation Saturday, saying that a homemade bomb planted on the tracks of the high-speed Moscow-to-St. Petersburg route caused a derailment that killed at least 26 people and injured dozens more.
The head of Russia's Federal Security Service, Alexander Borotnikov, was quoted by the Interfax and RIA Novosti news as saying that an improvised explosive device equivalent to 15 pounds (7 kilograms) of TNT had detonated when the train passed over it Friday night. Remains of the device were found at the site of the crash, Borotnikov said.
Anything said by the Russian government should be taken with a grain of salt, but in this case the claim appears plausible, based on witness statements and what is known of the evidence at the scene:
The most obvious suspects are Chechan Muslims, but so far no claim of responsibility has been reported.
Trying KSM: Why? part 4
We have criticized the Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 conspirators in federal court in several posts. Attorney General Holder's press conference announcing the decision is available here in its entirety.
In "A reasonable decision," Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith step forward to defend the Obama administration's decision. Among other qualifications, Comey and Goldsmith are former high-ranking officers of the Justice Department during the Bush administration, and their opinion warrants consideration.
The Comey/Goldsmith column is nevertheless relatively brief and conclusory. It omits consideration of the decision on the terms that Attorney General Holder himself adduced in its favor. It also omits any mention of the "protocol" on which it was based. One can only wonder why.
The Comey/Goldsmith column has elicited a lengthy response by Andrew McCarthy. By contrast with Comey and Goldsmith, McCarthy characterizes the Obama administration's treatment of KSM et al. as "An unreasonable decision." Despite the professional distinction that Comey and Goldsmith bring to the table, McCarthy's response is devastating. I urge you to read it all.
McCarthy was of course the prosecutor in the case of the Blind Sheikh and others in connection with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. His memoir recounting his experience together with lessons learned is the invaluable Willful Blindness. When it comes to the subject of federal trials for unlawful combatants, McCarthy is like Walt Whitman: He is the man, he suffer'd, he was there.
In "No need to fear a Manhattan terrorist trial," Stuart Taylor has also stepped forward to defend the administration's decision. McCarthy has not separately addressed Taylor's column, but many of the points that McCarthy makes in response to Comey and Goldsmith's column also apply to Taylor's. I would add that while Taylor defends "Holder's logic," Taylor also omits any mention of the "protocol" that Holder himself has repeatedly cited supporting his decision.
The document setting forth the "protocol" is titled "Determination of Guantanamo Cases Referred for Prosecution." The first paragraph describes a process for determining which cases are to be referred for criminal prosecution. The second paragraph sets forth the "Factors for Determination of Prosecution." It reads:
There is a presumption that, where feasible. referred cases will be prosecuted in an Article III [federal] court, in keeping with traditional principles of federal prosecution. Nonetheless, where other compelling factors make it more appropriate to prosecute a case in a reformed military commission, it may be prosecuted there. That inquiry-turns on the following three broad sets of factors, which are based on forum-selection factors traditionally used by federal prosecutors:
A. Strength of Interest. The factors to be considered here are the nature of the offenses to be charged or any pending charges; the nature and gravity of the conduct underlying the offenses; the identity of victims of the offense; the location in which the offenses occurred; the location and context in which the individual was apprehended; and the manner in which the case was investigated and evidence gathered, including the investigating entities.
B. Efficiency. The factors to be considered here are protection of intelligence sources and methods; the venue in which the case would be tried; issues related to multiple-defendant trials; foreign policy concerns; legal or evidentiary problems that might attend prosecution in the other jurisdiction: and efficiency and resource concerns.
C. Other Prosecution Considerations. The factors to be considered here are the extent to which the forum, and the offenses that could be charged in that forum, permit a full presentation of the wrongful conduct allegedly committed by the accused, and the available sentence upon conviction of those offenses.
Despite the bare bones nature of the enumerated factors and the lack of detail regarding how they are to applied, this is a shocking document. The operative presumption is a rule in favor of criminal prosecution. Nothing could more clearly indicate the Obama administration's treatment of the war on terrorism as a venture in law enforcement. (McCarthy commented on the "protocol" here.)
Given application of the "protocol" to KSM et al. to support a trial in federal court, we can deduce how the enumerated factors are applied by the Obama administration. If the attack occurred in the United States, it weighs in favor of criminal prosecution. If the attack focused on American civilians, it weighs in favor of criminal prosecution. It is less clear to me how the other factors are weighed and applied in practice.
The Obama administration is engaged in a venture that will simultaneously undermine the prosecution of the war in which we are engaged while it blurs the distinction between war and crime. To what end?
Whatever it is, notice of the express rationale supporting the administration's decision should be taken, especially by prominent defenders of it such as Jim Comey, Jack Goldsmith and Stuart Taylor.
November 27, 2009
The 35-year war on the CIA
Not long after 9/11, I told a friend that at least now the CIA would be rebuilt and given the means and the backing needed to prevent attacks like this. My faith in this prediction seemed justified when I attended a party in mid-2002. A lefty was lamenting that all the reforms brought about since the days of Frank Church mgiht now be undone. Michael Isikoff, who happened to be at the party, listened to a minute or two of this rant and then pointed out that we had, after all, been attacked and might have benefited from better information.
If the lefties were running scared and smart, mainstream guys like Isikoff understood that attacks on the CIA had gone too far, then there was room for optimism.
Unfortunately my optimism proved to be misguided. For, as Arthur Herman shows in the December issue of Commentary, the seriousness with which the Bush CIA acted to protect Americans following 9/11 caused the left to intensify its 35-year war against that Agency. And the fervor of that wave of attacks may well have produced the left's final victory in that war.
Herman contends:
The party now in power in the White House and on Capitol Hill is more determined to malign those Americans who tried to protect this country from a repetition of the horrors of 9/11 than to punish those who masterminded those horrors, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or to thwart their would-be imitators.
The part about punishing KSM may be an overstatement, but the part about thwarting KSM's imitators seems pretty close to the mark.
So does Herman's concluding judgment:
The 35-year war on the CIA still rages. The particular shame of it is that it's beginning to look a lot like a suicide mission.
Herman's article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase here. We'll try to remember to post the link if it becomes generally available on Commentary's website.
"Snuck"?
Regular readers know that I have little regard for the New York Times. But I assumed that, no matter how misguided the paper's politics might be, it did have some standards relating to grammar and punctuation. So I was astonished to see this, on the front page of the Times' web site:
My fifth-grade teacher, Miss Klock, would be spinning in her grave, except that she was a Republican and probably never had much faith in the Times in the first place. The reporters evidently knew better; here is how their piece begins:
The celebrity-seeking couple who sneaked into a state dinner this week came face-to-face with President Obama and his wife, Michelle, the White House said Friday in a disclosure that underscored the seriousness of the security breach and prompted an abject apology from the Secret Service.
What's next? "Me and her went to the mall" in the Washington Post?
UPDATE: As usual, we get results. The Times was shamed into making the correction:
Is insuring the uninsured a moral imperative?
Charles Krauthammer explains why the Senate and House health care reform bills should be "killed" and why Congress should opt instead for "targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system one by one -- tort reform, interstate purchasing and taxing employee benefits."
Krauthammer's analysis is fully persuasive. However, near the end of his column he states that "insuring the uninsured is a moral imperative."
This may be one of those issues best left for high school debate rounds or all-night college BS sessions. But for what it's worth, my view is that "insuring the uninsured" does not rise to the level of a moral imperative.
It would, I think, be highly desirable if every American had health insurance. But I'm hard-pressed to understand why it's morally imperative that some Americans pay for the health insurance of other Americans who can afford (even if not comfortably) to pay it themselves. This is tantamount to attaching a moral imperative to the transfer of income from the well-off to those who are less well-off but not poor.
Krauthammer may not be asserting such a moral imperative. He may instead have in mind a regime that requires those who can afford health insurance to purchase it and that assists them by lowering the cost through such measures as interstate purchasing.
It seems to me that reasonable people can disagree on the merits of requiring everyone to purchase health insurance. One argument against this requirement is that healthy, young Americans should not be forced to make what they reasonably consider to be a bad economic decision. To the extent that plausible arguments exist on both sides of this question, I can't find a moral imperative in favor of either.
Finally, if Krauthammer is right that insuring the uninsured is morally imperative, one can argue that he is wrong to reject legislation that would largely accomplish this right away, in favor of targeted measures that, at best, will only move us gradually towards meeting our moral imperative.
As I see it, there are only a very small number of moral imperatives, and those few things that rise to that level must, by definition, be satisfied immediately, to the extent possible.
JOHN adds: I also find it odd that Krauthammer, a conservative, appears to think that there is a moral imperative for the government to supply everyone with health insurance. In general, moral imperatives apply to people, not governments. An individual might well conclude that he is under a moral imperative to help other people get vitally needed medical care (as opposed to, say, cosmetic surgery or Viagra prescriptions). In fact, a great many Americans do feel such a moral imperative, which is why they donate to countless charitable organizations that provide or finance health care. What governments should do is not respond to bogus "moral imperatives," which generally involve transferring money from one citizen to another, but rather pursue sound public policy. Krauthammer demonstrates that the Democrats' proposals represent awful public policy. He should leave it at that.
The Merseyside derby, then and now
One of Everton's most prominent supporters, who is in failing health, recounts this story:
The doctor tells him "I have good news and bad news." The Evertonian says, "tell me the bad news first." The doctor responds, "your cancer is spreading rapidly." "So what's the good news?" the Evertonian asks. "You won't have to see Everton play at Kirkby."
This story captures the view of most die-hard Everton fans about the club's quest to build a new stadium outside of Liverpool. But it turns out that no Evertonian will have to see the Toffees play at Kirkby. The government has rejected the club's proposal to build there.
This, however, is the only good news from Everton's season thus far. A third of the way through, we are 14th in the Table, just 4 points above the "drop zone."
To make matters more interesting, we play Liverpool on Sunday. The Shite isn't particularly enjoying life either, sitting in the unaccustomed position of 7th place and having already been eliminated from Europe's Champions League.
The cliche is that you can throw all of this out where the Merseyside Derby is concerned. I'm not 100 percent sold on this bit of wisdom but it was certainly true 14 years ago this month. Then, an Everton side that had won only once in 14 matches (as opposed to once in 7, which is the current situation), defeated Liverpool 2-0. Duncan Ferguson scored the first goal -- and his first in an Everton shirt -- after having been "breathalyzed" by the police the night before.
This was the team's first match under Joe Royle, a former star player for Everton. Joe recalls the great victory here. Scroll down towards the bottom if you want to hear Joe tell the story in his own lilting scouser tones.
UPDATE: With Everton unable to move to Kirkby, there is now talk about buliding and sharing a stadium with Liverpool, who has a permit to construct one near the current site of both Anfield and Goodison Park. Sharing a park with the Shite is perhaps an even less appealing prospect to the Everton faithful than moving outside of the city. However, the aforementioned Joe Royle favors the idea.
Anfield and Goodison both hold special memories but both clubs, to have a chance of challenging Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United, would need greater income. Certainly Everton would gain as it halves the costs and it could make a fantastic stadium for both sets of fans.It's tried and tested in Milan [where Inter and AC Milan share the San Siro] and a number of other big cities and it works.
Legendary Everton player and manager Howard Kendall opposes a "groundshare," as he opposed moving to Kirkby, but admits it may be the only solution for both clubs.
It's B-a-a-a-ack!
I'm the wrong guy to draw this analogy, since I never go to horror movies--they scare me. But I believe there is one long-running series featuring a serial killer who wears a hockey mask and carries a chain saw or some such thing, and keeps coming back, seemingly from the dead. That's how I'm starting to see the Democrats' government medicine plan. Try as hard as they might, the American people can't seem to kill it.
Byron York says that Harry Reid is determined to pass the Senate's version of the bill by New Year's. On paper, this seems impossible, given the short time available, the number of amendments that will be proposed by Democrats as well as Republicans, and the other issues the Senate needs to take up. Nevertheless, it may well happen. Why? Because the bill is so unpopular:
[T]he biggest problem for Democrats, by far, is that public support for the bill is slowly and steadily falling. According to Pollster.com, the average of all the polls done on health care shows 48.7 percent of Americans opposed to the bill, and 39.5 percent in favor. The gap between disapproval and approval has never been bigger.
The reason the Democratic leadership and the White House are rushing to pass the bill is that they know it is killing them and believe doing it quickly will kill fewer of them than doing it slowly. If they pass it by year's end, perhaps voters will move on to other concerns by the November 2010 midterm elections.
Ever since the Obama administration took office, a common refrain has been, "How dumb do they think we are?" It seems the Democrats believe that voters are not just stupid, but forgetful as well.
MichaelBarone, meanwhile, notes that the federal deficit is now running at 10 percent of GDP, a figure never before approached in peacetime. The Democrats' health care measures, once they kick in, are projected to add another $1.8 trillion in federal spending, and that figure, appalling as it is, is undoubtedly far too low. Nevertheless, the Democrats are "unfazed":
That suggests that, at least for some Democrats, huge looming budget deficits are not a bug but a feature. Just as Ronald Reagan hoped that cutting taxes would force politicians to cut spending, these Democrats hope that increasing spending will force politicians to increase taxes to levels common in Western Europe. ...
[Poll data on the economy] mirrors voters' current opposition to Democratic health care bills. Democratic leaders nonetheless want to jam one through before their current majorities are eroded, as they seem likely to be, in the 2010 elections. This is politically risky, but makes sense if your goal is to expand government.
So the battle over health care is not just about health care. It's about whether government will permanently gobble up more of the private-sector economy -- and slow it down in the process.
I think that's right. I don't believe that Democrats in Congress actually disagree with the majority of voters who expect a government takeover of medicine to result in worse health care at a higher cost. Rather, the Democrats believe that degraded health care is an acceptable price to pay for what they are really after--government domination over the life of every citizen. Whether the American people understand how profound is the Democrats' assault on their liberties, and will be willing to do what it takes to throw the greedy rascals out of power, remains to be seen.
November 26, 2009
Lebanon for the Lebanese, what the U.S. can do to help
This article by Peter Berkowitz in the Weekly Standard brings us up to date on the situation in Lebanon, where an election was held in June, but a new government is only now being formed. In the election, a moderate, pro-Western, pro-democracy coalition -- led by Saad Hariri, son of the linfluential anti-Syria eader whose death by car bombing in 2005 sparked the "Cedar Revolution" -- exceeded expectations and obtained a small parliamentary majority. The overriding issue, according to Peter, was "whether Lebanon would submit to Hezbollah and the political authority of Syria and Iran, or build a free and democratic state."
Although the voters opted for the latter alternative, the winning coalition was unable to form a government for five months because Hezbollah blocked it -- formally, by means of the powers it obtained through the Doha Agreement (a deal reached after Hezbollah forces took over Beirut in 2008), and informally, through threats and intimidation. But the stalemate has finally been broken, at least for now, by the formation of a "national unity government" in which 2 of the 30 ministerial portfolios will go to Hezbollah politicians.
Conventional wisdom holds that Israel is the key to undermining Hezbollah's influence. The idea is that if the Israelis would only abandon the small strip of land they control in Southern Lebanon (Shebaa Farms) and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state, Hezbollah would lose its status as the heroic resistance.
It's a convenient analysis inasmuch as it relieves the Lebanese of responsibility for their own fate, but Peter rejects it. In his view, "resistance does not refer merely to armed struggle against Israel's occupation of this or that piece of land, or even the battle against Israel's very existence, but a fight to the death against the claims of liberty and democracy in Lebanon and throughout the region in the name of Islamic law as dictated by the Iranian mullahs."
What should the United States do?
First, the Obama administration can stop encouraging the widespread view, rooted in decades of pan-Arab rhetoric, that the key to Middle East peace is solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians should be assiduously pursued, but to suppose that the absence of a final agreement between them is what stands in the way of security and stability in the Middle East is to play into the hands of Arab governments that cynically use the conflict to shift their people's attention from their own countries' internal failings and destabilizing ambitions.Second, the United States can expand programs to support civil society in Lebanon, particularly K-12 education, and also economic development, particularly in the south, since one way to loosen Hezbollah's grip is to enable the Lebanese government to better provide the social services and financial support that, thanks to Iranian financing, Hezbollah now delivers.
Third, the administration can redouble efforts to degrade Iran's ability to deliver cash and transfer funds electronically to Hezbollah.
Fourth, it can place at the heart of engagement with Syria an insistence on cutting off the enormous flow of ammunition, machine guns, bombs, rockets, and missiles that Iran pumps through Damascus to southern Lebanon.
But ultimately, the future of Lebanon depends "most of all on crafting strategies to thwart Tehran's export of Islamic revolution" which, in the near term "depends most of all on thwarting Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons."
Annals of Government Medicine
Hospital conditions in the United Kingdom are frequently appalling, but the Basildon and Thurrock University National Health Service Hospitals are especially bad, with hundreds of preventable deaths occurring yearly. The Telegraph headlines, "Hundreds of patients died needlessly at NHS hospital due to appalling care":
Poor nursing care, filthy wards and lack of leadership at Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals FoundationTrust led to the deaths of up to 400 patients a year.
Figures compiled by a health watchdog showed death rates at the Essex trust were a third higher than they should have been.
Among the worst failings discovered by the Care Quality Commission were a lack of basic nursing skills, curtains spattered with blood on wards, mould in vital equipment and patients being left in A&E for up to ten hours.
Concerns about death rates at the foundation hospital trust were first raised a year ago, but an internal investigation failed to find anything wrong and managers dismissed the concerns. ...
The key findings of the report were:
- appalling hygiene and cleanliness in A&E
- patients left in A&E for ten hours and treated in full view of others
- four deaths among patients with learning disabilties
- a lack of children's nurses and doctors in A&E
- blood splattered on curtains and mould in vital equipment
- lack of basic nursing skills with failure to feed patients or give medication correctly
- elderly patients frequently developing bed sores, prompting concerns from nearby care homes.
As is typical in government medicine, there has been no accountability even though Basildon has been criticized publicly since 2001, when the Royal College of Nursing described conditions there as "third world."
UPDATE: The Sun's account, not surprisingly, is more disgusting.
Those "crazy" Israelis -- their uses and their limits
The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration secured China's cooperation in dealing with Iran by holding out the specter of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the Post, two senior officials on the National Security Council - Jeffrey Bader and the ubiquitous Dennis Ross - told China that if it did not help the U.S. on the issue of Iranian nukes, Israel might well bomb Iran. This, in turn, would lead to a crisis in the Persian Gulf that would diminish China's access to oil, Bader and Ross warned.
Following this warning, China said it would support what the Post describes as "a toughly worded U.S.-backed statement criticizing the Islamic republic for flouting U.N. resolutions by constructing a secret uranium-enrichment plant."
What should we make of this? First, the perception that Israel is willing to strike Iran constitutes the best weapon the Obama administration has when it comes to rallying key elements of the international community to take steps aimed at dealing with the Iranian threat. So this option needs to be on the table. Second, even so, the best the Obama administration seems able to produce is a "toughly worded statement" criticizing something Iran has already done. What's the next step, an angry letter to the New York Times?
Third, China's overriding interest in the Middle East is access to oil, and the same is true for all, or nearly all, key players. While this fact may, thanks to Israel, be useful when it comes to generating "tough" statements, it suggests that ultimately Iran may hold the trump card when it comes to more meaningful action.
