You Know You've Irrevocably Joined the 21st Century When...

you use your laptop while on the toilet.

" ConflictOfInterest !! ",I barked through a muffled cough.

How obvious is this move? Our shameless pres nominates the senior Abramoff prosecutor to a federal judgeship.

(Hat tip: comments of fool_me_1ns on AmericaBlog)

Alito and Little White Lies

Increasingly, the Right is publicly minimizing the stigma of lying. This is so rich, coming after their 90's orgy of condemning perjury and obstruction of justice. Now the framing is reversed, with identical indictments of Cheney's man Scooter Libby only adding up to a "little perjury trap" (as worded by the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday).

I have noticed similar spin around Judge Alito's Supreme Court nomination. An example regards one of Alito's rulings that a woman could be legally forced to attest in writing that she has notified her husband before an abortion. To soften his stance, Alito and his defenders eagerly point out two exceptions. One is that women can avoid the notification if they attest in writing that:

(1) the husband wasn't the father;
(2) the father couldn't be found;
(3) notification would result in abuse; or
(4) the husband was the father through rape.

But here's the jaw-dropper. The second exception they raise is that all of these legal requirements can be easily circumvented through lying [hat-tip to Brilliant at Breakfast for link to NYT story]:

Further, [Alito] said, the law would be "difficult to enforce and easy to evade," because it required no proof beyond a woman's word that she had notified her husband.

Charles Krauthammer phrases this more succinctly, in the way that the Right actually means it:

The married woman just has to inform her husband. Even less than that. She just has to sign a form saying that she informed him. No one checks.

That is the most weasely tack that could have been taken. Put aside the garbage legal reasoning of defending a law's acceptability in part because it cannot be enforced [hello, sodomy laws?]. What's most heinous about this is waving a broad right to choice in front of women, with just the legal technicality of lying as a price.

My second issue is with what Alito claimed in his job application to the Reagan Justice Department [emphasis added]:

"Most recently, it has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan's administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly. I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

In response to this revelation, some Alito defenders pull out the dumbest argument yet. Some are actually claiming this application says nothing about his personal or legal views. Why? Because Alito was applying for an advocacy position, and thus chose to 'display' the views he would eventually have to argue.

Isn't that another way of saying he lied on his job application? Isn't it bad to casually imply the judge you support casually lies in his documents to government agencies? Because if he lied for that job, wouldn't he lie for this one?

Thanks for the slavery

A recent post on Media Matters for America reminded me of the old race debate on the supposed positive effects of slavery. MMFA reported that a conservative black leader expressed that Africans were better off becoming African Americans in the way we all know they did.

MYCHAL MASSIE [on Janet Parshall's America radio program]: The black people today who curse America are cursing God because if God had not permitted the Ashanti and Dahomey tribes of ancient Africa to trap other Africans and sell them to the Muslims, who sold them to the Europeans, we would not have what we have today.

He is not alone in his thinking. This sub-strain of conservative thought had me harking back to conservative provocateur David Horowitz who, among his many other anti-liberal crusades, campaigned against slavery reparations. One of his reasons was that African Americans are on balance wealthier than they would have been as modern African natives.

In establishing that American blacks have indeed received economic benefits from living in America, I compared the incomes of Africans living today in the former African slave states to blacks in America descended from slaves. The income disparity is twenty to fifty times greater for black people lucky enough to be living in America today.

(Notice this doesn't live up to even basic legal standards. If, at Bill Gates' dinner party, I steal a fork and then give him a stock tip which makes him a million dollars, I'm still liable for the fork. This is the essence of what happened: we stole Africans' tangible goods in exchange for an unintended miniscule opportunity which is still expanding at a glacier's pace.)

There's nothing wrong, I think, to a reasonable amount of romanticizing of our ancestor's struggles. But I think, as a matter of ethical choices, one has to rationally weigh what was sacrificed to what was gained. The ethical test here is, simply, "Would you go back and do it to your ancestors all over again?" I don't know many Irish-Americans that thank their Maker for the Potato Famine, even though it eventually drove their ancestors to the New World. Insert your own atrocity (Jews, Armenians, Cambodians, etc.); there is no distinction that Massie could logically argue prevents his standard from applying to any of these nightmares.

The fatalism underlying Mr. Massie's argument is patently against Christian justice. There is a certain embrace by Christians of "whatever happens", because it fits into God's ultimate plan. Well-meaning Christians have struggled for millennia to reconcile this humility with their revulsion at certain parts of God's design. But Mr. Massie seems to give in in the opposite direction in the worst possible way. If you believe that God engineers every detail of creation, it is still beyond standard theological thought to say every cause is good which leads to a good outcome. I think that before leaving grade school, even publicly-schooled proles are exposed to "the ends don't justify the means".

Ultimately, I think this type of thinking flows from our current over-patrioticity. That is, America is so good that every primary cause of becoming somehow more American has to be good. The insecurity of so-called 'patriots' is turning inside-out the reasonable conclusions of otherwise resolved ethical questions. Their motto? "America always, at whatever cost."

What's in a name...

It would be a joke if it wasn't so outrageous. Now when you hear the words "libby" and "false Iraq intelligence" in the same conversation, you need to ask them, "Which 'libby'?

"...[New York Times reporter] Douglas Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It shows that an al-Qaeda official [Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi] held by the Americans was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the basis for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner... ,"was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports."

[Hat tip to Atrios.]

Maybe recently indicted vice-presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby knew al-Libi. Given Libby's past behavior, it wouldn't be completely paranoid speculation to suspect they were the same person. Libby and the Vice President are known to have publicly quoted news reports sourced primarily from their own leaks in order to give their flimsy Iraq intelligence added credibility. As our distance grows from that pre-war period, this gang's integrity continues to flake off like lead paint chips. And guess who's kids end up being poisoned?

The Money in My Pocket Goes "Jingo-Jangle-Jingo"

(Part 2 in a series of thought-provoking posts on the style and design of the Fox News Channel.)

Each of the four back-to-back business shows on FNC each Saturday have their own show names. But as a whole, Fox has labeled these a 'business block' entitled

"The Cost of Freedom"

Kinda overwrought, don't you think? This phrasing should not be new to anyone who has dipped even slightly into the political discourse over the past five years. Gratuitous usage of 'freedom' has mostly been used to sell political arguments. So does this practice need to bleed over into promoting so-called business shows?

Besides it being a cute combination of 'cost' and 'freedom', I sense an added level of preachiness here. Maybe this is another incarnation of the conservative refrain which says 'capitalism is vital to our democratic way of life'. Which is nice if you want to beat people over the head with it, but since when is jingoistic sloganeering the goal of a news channel?

On Miers: Can We Pull Our Heads Out of Our Meta Now?

Bush, as a gut player, has reached for Harriet Miers as the next Supreme Court nominee. I don’t believe that he picked her because she is a mild unknown unlikely to cause a political showdown. Bush knows her mind and believes she will serve the conservative Republican cause. The image of the hapless crony has so dazzled us that we can’t see the capable crony right in front of us.

Why do some Democrats think that she will be a good pick? Why are many in the Left so muddled about what to think of her? The Left is being too clever by half, snarking at the Right’s apparent discomfiture when we have a living breathing conservative already on the marble escalator. The Right’s complaint about not having iron-clad proof does not erase her lineage with the Bushes.

My action point is that our rank and file doesn’t need to take on the same posture as those in the journalistic and political worlds. Of course, it’s important to ponder about what ammunition we can give politicians and publishers that will be more than just a hunch. But that doesn’t mean we also need to take their studied, neutral stance. When did we give up on our common sense about Bush’s track record?

There is a lot of ambivalence and confusion about this cipher of a lady. First, for ourselves we need to form a reasonable first opinion about where Miers stands, even in light of the lack of evidence. Second, and more important, we need to broadcast to undecideds what a reasonable first impression should be. We need to stop the meta-game of acting like the political establishment in order to influence them, to be 'relevant'. Especially in the blogosphere, and certainly on this lifetime appointment, we should retain the right to go with our gut and talk about it.

A Witness Entombed in Marble

President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, White House counsel Harriet Miers, is generating actual grumbling from the right and genuine ambivalence on the left. The question is why President Bush would nominate someone with no judicial experience or other substantive public advocacy skills. Bush has been the main beneficiary and witness to Ms. Miers' on-the-job skills, from her services to him as governor all the way to the White House. But I think the bigger issue may be what Ms. Miers has witnessed during her devoted service.

Not that I want to immediately accuse Bush or Miers of any wrong-doing. But this is one of the few people involved in almost every potential 'W' legal question in the past 10 years. Ms. Miers was also involved in vetting the legal aspects of Bush's dealings with the Republican apparatus. A tempting side effect to her confirmation would be to insulate her behind the highest bench in the land. How thorny would it be to probe a Justice Miers in the various investigations that inevitably grind out from the Beltway mill, regardless of their merit? On the flip, the President would easily have the right to contact and coordinate with her whenever the legal issue overlapped with her work for him. And if this resulted in a regular info-pipeline between a Supreme Court justice and the extended Bush clan for years to come, so much the better. Even without any untoward collusion involved, this is classic Bush network-building. Someone at the Supreme Court that would at least pick up the phone on a regular basis is a big deal and a jewel in the prince's crown.

Boston Cream Pie in the Face

Boston, the land of the Big Dig billion dollar black hole, has another quagmire.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority had its retirement fund bilked of several million dollars through a bad investment. The name of the stinker commodity?

The Bayou Hedge Fund (based in Stamford, CT, strangely enough).

Here's an investment tip. When the company is named for a SWAMP, do you really want to sink your money into it?

Supporting the Troops is Patriotism is Supporting the War is Patriotism is Supporting the Troops is...

Better writers than I have beaten this dead semantic horse, but I'm moved to chime in today.

Pro Iraq war persons held rallies in Washington, D.C. today in response to large anti-war rallies on Saturday. FoxNewsChannel.com ran an Associated Press article today by Elisabeth Goodridge with the headline 'Counter demonstration to support troops'. Other news outlets ran that wire article with different titles:

• 'Defenders of Iraq war counter-rally'; CNN.com
• 'Iraq Supporters to Rebut Anti-War Rallies'; ABCNews.com
• 'War Supporters Follow Anti-War Rallies'; Yahoo! News
• 'War Supporters Follow Anti-War Rallies'; Guardian (UK online newspaper)
• 'Supporters of Iraq war counter anti-war rally with their own'; San Diego Daily Transcript

Notice the contrast between Fox News' "support troops" and other outlets' "support war" themes. FNC staffers can't help but to have heard the argument that supporting the troops doesn't necessarily mean supporting the troops' mission. Nonetheless, this is a constant refrain by FNC, especially during the build-up to the 2003 invasion, when articles with subtitles such as "Protest vs. Patriotism" surfaced.

To avoid further ado, I'll just list the obvious conservative talking points and let you throw what flowers or vegetables you'd like.

• Supporting the troops means supporting their overall mission.
• Supporting the troops means supporting their commander-in-chief in all his war policy decisions.
• Patriotism means supporting the particular administration in power.
• Patriotism means endorsing whatever overarching military objectives and methods the current administration endorses.
• The policies/actions of the American Left significantly motivate the enemy; although terrorists never really talk about it, they are encouraged when liberals disagree with current security policy.
• The policies/actions of the American Right do not significantly motivate the enemy; terrorists need no outside prompting to do what they do, even though most of their rhetoric decries conservative policies on Israel, military/political meddling in other countries, etc.

When in the minority....

When is a low poll number significant? Note the commentary from Fox News Sunday's pundit panel about the latest AP-Iposos poll (margin+-3%).

It showed a 46% approval rating for Pres. Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina relief. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said that was "no big deal", that the number is not bad and matches Bush's general approval rating in the low-to-mid 40s.

The responses for how to pay for Katrina relief were as follows:

42%: Cut spending on Iraq war
29%: Delay or cancel tax cuts
14%: Add to federal debt (borrow it)
11%: Cut domestic spending

Fox News Washington editor Brit Hume responded that none of these options got a majority, and the Iraq poll response was phrased way too abstractly to be meaningful(?!).

So, both being a minority, what makes 46% a satisfactory value, but 42% not worthy of consideration? Both questions were clear and gave a range of balanced answers. I assume the same people were asked both questions, so it's not a size/sampling issue. Significantly, the full 3% margins of error for these figures overlap.

Maybe it's that Kristol has a different standard for polls than Hume.

As a side note, the top two responses were solutions from the left. If you add "Reduce Iraq war spending" to "Delay/cancel tax cuts", 71% of people agreed with a solution contrary to Pres. Bush's stated priorities.

But, of course, that question was just badly phrased. Brit Hume raised an argument to this effect that was both a straw man and implied the responders were clueless. He was confused about the 42% for reducing Iraq spending, because they obviously didn't want to cut money for ongoing military missions, nor for the troops, nor for pulling out immediately. But of course there are more options than those Hume raised, such as a compressed draw down, increased accounting vigilance to avoid billions lost to embezzling, and so on.

Roberts Mops Up, or "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"

One of the things to learn from Disney's Fantasia is not to fool oneself that the master will not return. With Judge Rhenquist's passing, the conventional wisdom is that his former apprentice/clerk John Roberts will be conservative enough to maintain the current balance. But will Roberts be conservative in his own way, or does this apprentice fantasize about being like the master who left behind his pointed cap?

People are scratching their heads about him. A 'confirmation conversion' is not unheard of, where the nominee minimizes the political difference between he and the congresspersons reviewing him. But when was the last time that a Supreme Court nominee so successfully projected his 'conversion' like a spell over everyone meeting his hypnotic blue stare? Clarence Thomas lost plausible deniability when he incredibly stated that he had never discussed his opinion of abortion with anybody. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not being able to run away from being a former ACLU lawyer, discussed her leftist legal writings at her hearing. Conservatives dread confirming another cryptic Souter-like judge to the court, but I believe that is the closest analog, in one sense, to the current hearings. In both cases, the scales did not fall from people's eyes before the whole process was over. Roberts has conjured the mops and is now cleaning up.

The befuddlement over what Roberts 'is' grips the reporters and senators who are, at one time or another, professionally obligated to withhold judgment. Then again, that depends on what the definition of 'IS' is (or 'WAS' was).

Reasonable question: IS Roberts a lawyer whose conservatism led him to be repeatedly hired by the Reagan political dynasty?
Conservative Fantasia: No, he IS just a [hand muffles mouth] lawyer trusted enough by conservatives to faithfully defend their policies.

Reasonable Question: WAS Roberts a spunky Justice Dept. staffer ideologically motivated to be a fount of Reagan-era conservative thought?
Conservative Fantasia: No, he WAS just politically astute and loyal enough to parrot this group's ideologies back to them in private memos.

I want to say, without implying he was lying, that Roberts used some 'spin' during his recent hearings. Spin can consist of technically accurate phrasing from which the speaker expects listeners to conclude the partial truth. Edward Whelan of the National Review Online raises exactly this point when he talks about the 1992 Casey abortion case [hat tip to Andrew Sullivan]:

Roberts's statement that Casey is "settled as a precedent of the Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis" is definitional boilerplate in Roberts's usage. As Roberts employs the terms, anything that qualifies as "precedent" is "settled," and all precedents of the Court are "entitled to respect." In Roberts's words, Casey is "entitled to respect like any other precedent of the Court." [emphasis is author's]

Roberts' equivocation about the strength of Roe v Wade's precedent is just one example. Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter was keen to discuss Roberts' views on privacy. Roberts' affirmed that privacy exists in several sections of the Constitution, and agreed the 14th amendment privacy aspects apply equally to women. All that said, he never explicitly affirmed a privacy right to an abortion. As you can see, another way to spin while not lying is to flatter your audience by endorsing everything that leads to what they want without actually endorsing what they want.

Let's not deny or forget that Roberts is a conservative. Roberts knew ahead of time the general political drift he would have to advocate if he joined the Reagan Justice Department and Bush 1 Solicitor General's office. Did he do it just for the practice? Roberts knew that the Federalist Society was the to-the-right-of-right group in America. Did he participate in their public panels because he wanted the exposure? Roberts knew of the conservative connections his future law firm held. Did he work there just for access to their country-club membership?

Final rhetorical questions. Would Bush II break faith with the religious right like his father by appointing another 'Souter'? Would Bush have appointed Roberts if he thought he would rule against the 'culture of life' and for 'taking innocent life'? Has Bush ever been known to start something at the halfway point between he and his critics?

PA 9/11 Memorial controversy

Michelle Malkin and other conservatives with blog bullhorns to blow are upset over the proposed 9/11 Memorial in Shanksville, PA (hat-tip to Liberal Avenger). It happens that the rim around the bowl-shaped site looks too much like an Islamic-style red crescent for their comfort.

Forget that the most recognized red crescent is associated with, uh, the Red Crescent, the Muslim analog of the Red Cross. Forget that almost all other representations of the Islamic crescent are not red and often include a star. Forget that this follows the natural geography of the area. Forget that this looks as much like a crescent as any other Western amphitheatre-style layout.

Unfortunately, I suspect this furor feeds off the shaky assumption that our war on terrorism is also a war against Islam. Isn't this the topographical equivalent of playing albums backwards to catch Satanic voices? What range of arc angles have now been proscribed by the Right Art Police? Under this logic, we should expect the following news release from Jewish groups:

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE CONDEMNS FOUR-WAY INTERSECTIONS

ADL Director Abraham Foxman today raised serious concerns about grid-based street systems. "The risk that cars passing through an intersection may then, even coincidentally, make coordinated right turns to trace out a swastika is just too serious to ignore."

American idol worship

With the school recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance found unconstitutional again, the frothy storm surge of indignation has begun. Unfortunately, the legion of misconceptions spread by the outraged parties makes reasoned discussion very difficult. The Becket Fund, a 'religious liberties'-focused legal group, has already pledged to challenge this finding. [All emphasis added in quotes is mine.]

"Today, the U.S. District Court ruled that reciting 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, even voluntarily, in public school is unconstitutional."

Actually, by reading the court's decision, it's easy to find this is off the mark.

"The [9th circuit] court, however, continued to hold, [snip] that the Elk Grove School District practice of teacher-led recitation of the Pledge 'aims to inculcate in students a respect for the ideals set forth in the Pledge, including the religious values it incorporates.'

[snip]

...the court concludes that it is bound by the Ninth Circuit's previous determination that the school district's policy with regard to the pledge is an unconstitutional violation of the children's right to be free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."

Supposedly, then, a student could recite the pledge in school if it wasn't in a school-led context. If true, this would follow the path of school-prayer cases that eventually led to student-led prayers around the flag-pole every morning (while they're there, maybe they could squeeze in a Pledge before the bell rings). Neither was Pledge of Allegiance found unconstitutional; the claims against the federal law articulating the Pledge were dismissed.

I'm particularly interested in this area of the law because I was one of those kids expected to 'opt-out' of the Pledge because of my religious upbringing. Coming from a formerly Jehovah's Witness family (until I was 13), my mother had to have 'the talk' with my grade school teachers to remind me not to stand up during the ceremony. Our view was that the pledge would raise the flag up as an idol that would take allegiance and focus away from God. Interestingly, the right to refuse the Pledge, and not be punished for it, was actually decided in the Supreme Court case West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, regarding the school expulsions of Jehovah's Witnesses during WWII.

I do not now hold those religious views in full, but I still see how the flag has turned into an idol, with the pledge as quasi-worship. Some define their patriotism by these practices. I've heard of soldiers saying they fought "for the flag". People who hold the cross holy nevertheless raise the flag higher by supporting a flag-burning amendment. I don't understand how people can funnel their love of country through one object or practice around that object. I'd rather dedicate my energy to the Constitution.

The Pledge, in contrast, has little of the breeding and stability of our founding document. As E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic notes it was composed by a socialist in the late 1800s. After that, Congress continually tinkered with it: they added 'of the United States of America' in the 20s and 'under God' in 1954(!). In fact, even when the Founding Fathers wrote allegiance oaths for officials into Article VI of the Constitution, the pledge was to uphold the Constitution and religious tests were explicitly forbidden.

Finally, I'm not sure what to make of the numerous contradictory statements made by vigorously pro-Pledge supporters. The pro-crowd claim it is not coercive, it doesn't hurt atheist children to mouth the words affirming a particular God. But they don't say that when their own children encounter curricula discussing other religions.

They say the Pledge is meant to inculcate patriotism. Through what? Simply saying it like a rote formula? Or actually listening to its content? It's useless if taught by rote. Alternately, if the purpose is actually to get kids to consider (in order to eventually agree with) its content, are they supposed to lapse into unconsciousness when they get to 'under God'? These so-called 'patriotic' people want children to learn from the pledge, but also selectively not learn from it.

They say it is simply a traditional practice. Then, when countered with the emptiness of such an exercise, they say it's essentially a patriotic practice. Then, when the religious part is slightly threatened, they complain that God is being taken out of the schools!

Lights, Camera, Captions.

This is one of what I hope to be many posts on the audio/visual style and framing of Fox News Channel's coverage. In other words, the cover of the book unfortunately does make a difference (especially if it WHOOSHes when you turn each page).

I've noticed a weird graphic choice that Fox News Channel has seemingly stuck with for years. The title text is rendered in two different text styles in the standard screen-bottom graphics (sometimes called chevrons) . Example is below:

FOX NEWS ALERT

AMERICA'S CHALLENGE

FAIR & BALANCED

IRAQ: A NEW ERA

Displayed here are both non-serif and serif font styles (serifs being the little flourishes at the end of the line strokes in text). I'm under the impression that mixing these two styles in the same graphic scheme can be harder to scan or absorb at a glance. If used in the same tableau, I imagine they would be better placed in different sections; certainly not mixed in the same phrase or sentence.

FNC has leaned heavily, and often successfully, on graphics, animations and sound effects to grab attention and set the atmosphere for the viewer. The title of the captions is obviously very important, in the prominent place directly below the show itself. Why present it, then, in such a peculiar way?