perfidy

Well, Harriet Miers just leapt another of the imaginary hurdles to her confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Ann Coulter is neither amused nor impressed. As I said during the Roberts confirmation process, if Ann doesn't like the candidate, then the candidate's probably got at least something going for them.

Why? Not because Ann's unintelligent, quite the opposite - she's very bright. She's also, however, highly caustic, so much so that she's far better fun (not informative - fun) to read than to listen to. I've long thought that if she could lose the whiny high-school know-it-all "can you believe it?" tone to her voice, she'd be far more effective at communicating. In this case, however, her causticity (causticism?) is directed at the alleged difference between the Ivy League law schools and the less-adored ones like SMU.

With a nod to the opinions of those who, like me, aren't impressed by Ivy League degrees when someone's actual work history is also available (i.e. Ivy League degree is an excellent credential for a new graduate, but isn't a balm for any occurrences of observed stupidity or incompetence later in life), Ann admits that it's reasonable to not be swayed by the dueling J.D. degree argument. And then she rides it to the hilt, asserting that a conservative from an Ivy League law school is a better and more solid conservative precisely because they remain one after an Ivy League indoctrination.

30 years later. Right. That would be believable if, in fact, the only forum in which rowdy right/left discourse were available was in Ivy League schools, or in college generally. But it's not, and anyone whose cognitive abilities were fully formed on exit from university, remaining unamended by experience since then, ought to be checked for dain bramage. John Roberts, as a ferinstance, is one bright gentleman, to all appearances a gen-ewe-wine legal scholar. But if he came out of Harvard Law as "that guy", I'd be shocked. He's done a bit since then.

And speaking of having done a bit since then, Ann seems to think that the only thing noteworthy that Miers has done is run the TX Lottery Commission. Others who've opined on the matter, such as Bill Dyer, at great length, aren't nearly as exercised about Miers' qualifications, and neither does Bill think running the Lotto is the most impressive resume item Miers possesses.

To the extent my previous mumblings on this matter aren't viewable as a coherent position, I'd state for the record that I will be emotionally and politically unaffected by the result of Ms. Miers' hearings. The process? Oh, that I'll probably react to, one way or another, because it has nothing much to do with her, and all to do with her inquisitors, but if she's ultimately confirmed by the Senate, that's fine by me, and if she's rejected, likewise.

The Republican Party doesn't have a constitutional prerogative to choose SCOTUS appointees, nor does the "administration", the Senate majority leader, or the President's masseuse. That prerogative falls to the president himself, and, in the words of Richard Jeni (which {ahem} I note after a Google source search for the phrase, I've used in this forum once before, but gimme a break - they apply) “Shut up, fat boy - the gentleman has MADE his selection”.

Perhaps I don't take the internal politics of the Supreme Court seriously enough, or think that there's some sort of cock-fight where they compare sheepskins before each deliberation, and perhaps I don't give enough credit to those who think they can accurately forecast the end result of any single Justice's nomination (see "Souter", "Kennedy", or "Earl Warren"), but a choice is a choice, and if she's confirmed, then so be it. And let the chips fall where they might.

All due respect to Ken Mehlman and the rest of the agitators requesting grass roots support for the candidate, I'd ask "why does it matter"?

The saying goes, you can indict a ham sandwich. Apparently, it has been revealed that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle failed at least once to get an indictment against DeLay. Witness:

A Travis County grand jury last week refused to indict former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as prosecutors raced to salvage their felony case against the Sugar Land Republican.

In a written statement Tuesday, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle acknowledged that prosecutors presented their case to three grand juries — not just the two they had discussed — and one grand jury refused to indict DeLay.

Not that DeLay is supercool, and I want him to be godfather to my next child - but I think that this is all a bit of a witch hunt on the part of an overzealous and a tad bit politically motivated Mr. Earle.

While I don't feel as Johno does that the recent appointment of Harriet Miers is some sort of presumptive ass covering, I am beginning to feel more strongly that this nomination should be stiff armed by the Senate. While Miers is no doubt a bright, pleasant and even (let us grant) deeply conservative person; I am not prepared to take on trust Bush's assertion that she is the best qualified candidate for one of the more important jobs in our republic.

A common refrain among Bush supporters, and one that I have on occasion used myself, is that Bush is right about the big things even if he occasionally commits some egregious pooch-screwing on the little things. This, however, is a big thing. One of the bigger things. Possibly the biggest, short of the war on terror itself. My stepmom voted for Bush second time around despite her deep opposition to the war for this reason alone. She wanted conservatives appointed to the big bench, and as we have seen Bush is having many opportunities to do so, and might have yet more.

Roberts was a suitable candidate. He is widely respected in the legal profession, adn is clearly as conservative as Rehnquist, who he is now replacing. But this nomination is the real big one, because we are replacing O'Connor - a swing vote.

George Will hits several very good points in his most recent essay. First is this:

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's "argument'' for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers' nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

This gets back to the argument against cronyism from Federalist 76. Were I president and nominating a candidate for the Supreme Court, I could select my cousin Chris for the job. I can be certain that Chris would be reliably conservative for the next several decades and ensure that the court goes in a way that I want. That doesn't make Chris a bad person, but neither would it convince anyone that he was the best candidate for the position.

There are so many talented, respected conservative candidates that it is almost insulting that Bush should pick Meirs.

Will moves on and brings out the big, spikey bat:

In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked -- to insure a considered response from him, he had been told in advance he would be asked -- whether McCain-Feingold's core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, "I agree.'' Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, "I do.''

This gets to the heart of the matter. Bush clearly either lacks comprehension or conviction on the issue of constitutional responsibility. The Congress has been lacking this for most of a century, and large parts of the Supreme Court for decades. If we had a President who got it, we might redress some of the damage that has been done. The Constitution is the contract we all live by, and you can't go violating the terms of it without storing up some bad karma. The Constitution includes means for amendment, and that should be exercised rather than bending the Constitution out of all recognition.

Will continues:

The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers' confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

Under the rubric of "diversity'' -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can only be understood, empathized with and represented by a member of that group.

The crowning absurdity of the president's wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who "legislate from the bench.''

I can't really add to that.

This nomination is not an abomination that should be resisted to the last breath. But it is a bitchslap to the face of the body politic. I disagree with ideologues using the Senate to enforce litmus tests on candidates for the courts, or indeed for other positions of responsibility. But the Senate does have a responsibility - detailed in Federalist 76 and elsewhere - to weed out the sick, the weak and the incompetant. A sort of Darwinian control on Presidential appointments. John Tower was a drunk, and was rightly bounced for secdef. Abe Fortas was righteously bounced for being a crony of LBJ. Bork was wrongly bounced for ideological reasons when everyone knew that he was more qualified in terms of constitutional acumen than anyone then on the bench.

There are plenty of good candidates. Alito, McConnell and Luttig right off the top of my head. Maybe we should wait and see if we can do better.

At the risk of sounding a little paranoid, here's a scenario. Say Miers makes it to the Supremes. What happens if, in a few years, a gigantic case or two relating to the activities of Bush I or II while in office come down the pike? The Bush clan are major players in the international development scene, and have been involved in a bushel of morally and ethically dubious and legally questionable enterprises, along with their not-as-erstwhile-as-might-be-hoped friends the Sauds and the like. What if --- what if -- and I'm just saying, something real ugly comes to light and the case makes it all the way to the big leagues.

Would close personal friend and leader of the fanclub Miers recuse herself? Would she not? Is it possible that W doesn't care what constitutional crises he might be flirting with? Does this help explain some of the reasoning behind this pick?

Reading it back, that sounds uncomfortably like Kossite Kool-Ade, but bless my timid fencesitting soul, that's where my head is going when I think about the implications of this nomination. All the more reason that a crony, no matter how qualified, august and Solomonic they may be, are not suitable candidates for the SCOTUS.

[wik] Speaking of... can anybody please recollect for me why exactly Bush I chose to take out Manuel Noriega? What act of belligerence against the United States or its treaty-bound allies triggered that invasion?

Forgive me, but I get the inescapable impression that in trying to do his best, George W. Bush is coming in his second term to resemble more and more none other than... Jimmy Carter. Think about it. He has stocked his talent pool with Texan cronies and other assorted yes-men and seems determined to rely only on their supposedly ex-Beltway judgment for counsel (disregarding Cheney and Rumsfeld, for whom family connections apply) for better or worse. His domestic initiatives are foundering, his international initiatives are suffering from terminal lack of focus, and on a personal level he is a religous man prone to make snap judgments about people's qualities.

I know it's a stretch and probably unfair to both George and Jimmy, but that's the way I sees it.

[wik] With the obvious caveat, of course, that nobody ever doubted Jimmy Carter's integrity.

When I first heard rumors that Miers was on the list of potential Supreme Court nominees, I thought to myself, "Myself, given Bush's propensity to promote loyalists - a propensity that verges on, nay tapdances on the line of cronyism - she's going to be the one. You just watch."

Myself had no real arguments against this kind of solid reasoning. And lo and behold, there it is. A person with no notable qualifications for the position save a near fanatical devotion to the President is nominated. A person who, it seems, used to be a Democrat and once donated money to Al Gore's presidential campaign. To be sure, that was the earlier, saner Gore. Not the more recent android replicant Gore of 2000. As a conservative I have nothing but Bush's assurance that this is the real deal, a full octane strict constructionist. Someone who, once on the court, will not do a Souter and list dangerously to port. The list of conservative commentators irritated by this nomination is longer than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick. People are righteously pissed that qualified, solid conservatives were passed over for Miers.

Maybe it will all work out. Maybe there is some dastardly Roveian scheme at work. But Sen. Reid is already saying she's cool even before the oppo-research lads have gotten a crack at her. That, to me, is a very bad sign, seeing as he voted against Roberts.

This is the Bad Bush at work. We've been seeing a lot more of him lately. And I'm frustrated.

Clinton pursued what was in effect a scorched-earth strategy so far as the rest of his party was concerned. Whatever success he achieved was not transferrable to the party at large, and yet they were saddled with all of his negatives whether they deserved them or not. This was largely a function of his narcisism and ego.

The flap over DeLay, and lingering questions about Rove and Plamegate will not bother the electorate a year from now. But if Bush continues on this track, he will be doing to his party through stupidity and blind reward of loyalty what Clinton did to his through priapism and perjury. The Republicans are not doing anything right now to make their base happy. And unhappy bases do not go out and vote in mid term elections.

This morning, President Bush tapped a bootlicking toady for the Supreme Court slot recently vacated by O'Connor. Harriet Miers is White House counsel and has known Bush since forever, having served with him while he was governer of Texas. She is reputed to be one of the Bush camp's most fervent believers (that's really sayin' som'n), and David Frum has quoted her as telling him that Bush is the most brilliant man she's ever met.

Now, really. That's just over the damn top.

What game could Bush possibly be playing by nominating not only a crony, and not only an unknown, but an unknown crony who thinks he hangs the moon and whose qualifications for the Supreme Court are, well, tissue-thin? Well, I'll tell you.

A hundred dollars says that Bush has floated Miers' name as an "eff you" to all and sundry who think he's headed in the wrong direction. He takes loyalty very seriously and obviously tends to reward faithfulness over competence, and also famously hates to hear bad news or be contradicted. So there's that dynamic at play, this time nationwide rather than in the confines of staff meetings.

But there's something deeper here. Her nomination is likely to piss off his opponents and supporters alike. If she goes down in flames, well, so what? Bush wins whether Miers gets the confirmation or not. If she does, it's a lovely gift for a close personal friend whose heart he has looked into deeply and seen the good inside (viz. Putin), and as he sees it probably a lock on someone dependable to cement his legacy for the next two decades or so.

And if Miers goes down the loser, Bush is banking that in the aftermath of a failed confirmation fight, nobody but nobody will have the stomach to fight a brutal, extended, and potentially politically suicidal second round over the inevitable super-conservative follow-up candidate like, say, Janice Rogers Brown.

If that fight happens and his second choice is blocked (or even if things start looking shaky for that second choice) Bush & co. are betting that this will give him a chance to go to the nation with hands raised in despair over the flotilla of cranks, radicals, and secular-humanist faggot-lovers (present!) that make up the other side these days. Advantage: Bush!

Or, he could just be a cronyist idiot.

[wik] Obsidian Wings has a rundown of reactions from across the web. Guess what: they're mostly negative. Either W is playing a very long and subtle hand, or his failings of imagination are bigger than I'd ever thought.

This story, from the 9/21 issue of The Onion, entitled "Bill Introduced As Joke Signed Into Law" brings to mind several real-life actions on the part of our elected congress-morons, like McCain-Feingold and the recently passed Porkfest 2005.

And while the Onion story itself is well-conceived, well-crafted, and funny, I somehow couldn't bring myself to give it the belly laugh it probably deserved.

I find myself, to no avail, wishing our public discourse contained just a bit more critical thought, such as that expressed by Dr. Walter Williams in his latest op-ed on money, and the egregious wasting thereof.

Ist. Statist. That's different.

Via Hit N Run, the money quote from last night's presidentiary address:

It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice.

Riiiiiiight. So, the only two differences between the Republicans and Democrats are now that the Republicans love the military and some Democrats love gays and rain forests? That's it?

Screw it. B, you're old enough... run for President. Your country needs you.

Murdoc links to an article by the infamous Instapundit regarding the repeal of the even more infamous seventeenth amendment. Which one is that, you ask? Is that the one that gives the vote to chicks? Or is it the one that says Vice Presidents don’t have to be elected, except when a plurality of the congress is not in session or whatever that one was?

No, the seventeenth is the amendment that dictated that from that moment on, moronic senators would be chosen directly by the people, rather than by state legislatures. Many would argue that this makes no difference whatsoever. If anything, we’ll at least have more photogenic senators. And since most people think that America is a democracy, well this direct election thing makes that delusion more palatable.

Neither Glenn nor Murdoc know what to make of this. Glenn links to an article on the National Review by Bruce Bartlett. Old Brucie has some interesting thoughts on the matter:

The Constitution originally provided that senators would be chosen by state legislatures. The purpose was to provide the states — as states — an institutional role in the federal government. In effect, senators were to function as ambassadors from the states, which were expected to retain a large degree of sovereignty even after ratification of the Constitution, thereby ensuring that their rights would be protected in a federal system.

The role of senators as representatives of the states was assured by a procedure, now forgotten, whereby states would “instruct” their senators how to vote on particular issues. Such instructions were not conveyed to members of the House of Representatives because they have always been popularly elected and are not expected to speak for their states, but only for their constituents.

You can see the logic there. The people have their own direct representatives in the House. And of course, they have some influence on the choice of senators through who they elect to their state legislature.

Bartlett argues that the seventeenth amendment (and the never to be sufficiently damned sixteenth) inaugurated the explosive growth of big government.

The 17th amendment was ratified in 1913. It is no coincidence that the sharp rise in the size and power of the federal government starts in this year (the 16th amendment, establishing a federal income tax, ratified the same year, was also important). As George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki has noted, prior to the 17th amendment, senators resisted delegating power to Washington in order to keep it at the state and local level. "As a result, the long term size of the federal government remained fairly stable during the pre-Seventeenth Amendment era," he wrote.

Prof. Zywicki also finds little evidence of corruption in the Senate that can be traced to the pre-1913 electoral system. By contrast, there is much evidence that the post-1913 system has been deeply corruptive. As Sen. Miller put it, "Direct elections of Senators … allowed Washington’s special interests to call the shots, whether it is filling judicial vacancies, passing laws, or issuing regulations."

So the new style Senators elected by the people wouldn’t stand up to federal power like the old senators did. But I think that Bartlett has the cart before the horse. The passage of these amendments was evidence that the growth of federal power was already happening. They are effects, rather than causes. To be sure, the new wimpy direct elected senators probably did grease the wheels of big gubmint. That trend would have won out in any event.

The logic of large scale industrialism had a huge influence on politics, and of course business. But not just in the obvious ways. The idea that things can be managed, and that a sufficiently bright or well informed group could manage things like, say, the government was very appealing to the predecessors of idiot statists like Mitt Romney, discussed in the previous post. This logic dominated American politics for a century, and still does. Its major success was winning the Second World War through industrial means, and its downfall was arguably Vietnam, where a bunch of systems analysis mooks like McNamara allowed the most powerful country in the world to be defeated by small people in pajamas.

Since then, the small has made a comeback, in a number of surprisingly dissonant ways. You have the small government conservatives and the libertarians telling people to get small. You have technologists in the open source movement talking about small networks of people accomplishing amazing things, and you have artsy liberal types wanting to live small, with hand crafted cheeses made by authentic third world cheesiers. I think that in some important ways, this is all related. It’s post industrialism without the postmodernism. We, inoculated with irony and sarcasm, are unable to buy into the industrial age slogans. They seem at best silly, and typically rather pathetic to us. We are a small minded people.

We’ll never see the repeal of the seventeenth. Even though it might be a good idea. For one thing, given the explosion in gerrymandering, it’s the only national elective body that is democratically elected. Rotten boroughs and safe seats are the norm in the People’s house. For another, there’s no compelling evidence (comparable to senate seats empty for years thanks to state house logjams) that the current system is in any way broken. Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, and Rick Santorum don’t count as evidence.

Maybe we need to create another house of congress. The senate would go back to the old style, where senators get appointed by the states. The House would continue to represent the political parties and special interests. But a new house would have members selected by a new method. Anyone who can get a million verified signatures from registered voters is in. Voters can remove their names from a list at any time. Anytime a candidate falls below a million names, he’s out. Voters can support more than one candidate. In an internet age, this is possible.

Whiners and complainers want more public participation in politics. This would get it. The new House would share many of the powers of the other two. Any bill has to pass all three houses before becoming law. But lets give the new house something special. The Senate has the whole advice and consent thing, and the House has control of the budget. This new house would have the power to cancel existing laws by a simple majority vote. It could remove from office anyone not confirmed by the Senate by a two-thirds vote.

That would make politics fun again. But we need a cool name.

Just to throw more fuel on Buckethead's fire, here's what Mitt Romney, Republican presidentiary hopeful '08, has to say today about civil liberties:

Governor Mitt Romney raised the prospect of wiretapping mosques and conducting surveillance of foreign students in Massachusetts, as he issued a broad call yesterday for the federal government to devote far more money and attention to domestic intelligence gathering.

Unless that is some backhanded and subtle Swiftian barb about distrust being poison to a civil society even in the face of an implacable enemy, that's just stupid. Not galactically stupid, not "no fat to cut" stupid, but as a platform plank it's red meat to the base and not much more. Domestic surveillance is a double-edged sword. We have already seen the PATRIOT Act used to bust headshops... that's a bad precedent to set. Also, it would cost even more money.

Leaving aside the scary-to-me mission creep that always seems to accompany new efforts at domestic surveillance, there is the very real problem of competitive edge. Already American universities have seen a dropoff in enrollment of bright foreign students. You know, the ones the stereotype comes from with a brain the size of Venus who will eventually do things like build AI computers the size of a housefly and cure colon cancer? Well, if they're not here they're in China, Korea, or Europe. Advantage: foreigners!

The only thing that would be worse than the smarmy pantsload we have in office now is a smarmy pantsload who thinks he knows what he's doing and thinks he knows what you ought to be doing too.

Well, worse than that would be a nuculur device detonated within the US, arranged for by extremists hiding among the larger population of upright & faithful Muslims. What a conundrum.

My mind is reeling and my body is weak. Tom DeLay is a man of such breathaking chutzpah and such enormous testicles that I cannot believe he can walk down the street without the aid of a wheelbarrow and a custom-made canvas sling.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

. . . .

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."

h/t Reason's hit and run.

So far I haven't had the most respect for Arnold Schwarzenegger as governer of California. Maybe it's having seen him in "Kindergarten Cop," or maybe it is his inability to singlehandedly lift the slcerotic legislature of our nation's most populous state out of its doldrums as he promised.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's crapola like this.

California lawmakers became the first in the country to approve a bill allowing same-sex marriages.....

The legislation could be vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has expressed an acceptance of gay marriages but said it's an issue that should be decided by voters or the courts.

So, wait wait. Let me get this straight. The question of gay marriage, according to leading Republicans and sundry conservatives, is a matter that must be left to the people and their representatives and not imposed by fiat by activist courts, unless it is a matter that must be left to the people and the courts and not imposed by fiat by activist... people's representatives.

Right. So, activist courts are a threat to the republic except when they are defenders of our liberties and legislatures are the duly designated voice of the people except when they are loose-cannon petty tyrants who must be stopped by the courts (threats to the republic and defenders of our liberties, Amen) and the people (who, as we know, also buy Franklin Mint commemorative plates and Beanie Babies), which people are in turn morally suspect sheeple who (per Rick Santorum) must be protected from themselves by legislation (passed by loose-cannon petty tyrants or sacrosanct conduits to the Will of the Populace) and upheld by judges (threats to our republic or defenders of our liberty, yr pick).

Three thoughts spring to mind like Spaniel pups who've been into the Maxwell House tin again. Big thought the first: NO WONDER the Governator never gets a damn thing done! He doesn't even understand how his state's government works! And for a guy who could lift like ten thousand pounds in his prime, he sure has experienced some scary bone loss in the spinal region. Better get that checked out before he hurts himself.

Outsize mental bolus the second: ...or maybe he understands too well how his state government works in all its resplendent contraditions and is playing a deeper game, one that he and his friends at the Heritage Foundation call "freeze the beast" in which the size of state government is reduced by grinding the parts against one other, much like throwing a '65 Charger in reverse at highway speeds, causing the drivetrain to leap out of the car and onto the road, stopping the car's forward progress in a spectacular fashion. Rhetorical tricks like the one above amount to a dazzling shell-game of trickery and misdirection designed to confuse everyone - the citizens of the Golden State, its judges and legislatures, and even the big-government conservatives in the Republican leadership - long enough for Schwarzenegger to grind the gears, strip the transmission, and spirit California's government away to two cabins on a small ranch outside Fresno connected to the outside world by a single dialup modem. Brilliant!!

Johno's Brain Poop the third: While it is a little unfair to take Schwarzenegger to task as a spokesman for his party as a whole, I'm not above being a little unfair, and he is one of the most prominent Republicans in the country. The way I see it, either gay marriage is an issue better left to the people (and, dammit, their duly elected representatives who speak for them) than to a judiciary whose powers do not include drafting new law, or the people need to be saved from themselves by all-knowing judges and/or legislators. For the record, the second option there wouldn't pass the guffaw test if Moses (or Confucius, yr pick) were the judge and Solomon were Speaker of the Heezy, so let's focus on the first option, the one that Schwarzenegger has discarded.

Even though I am in favor of gay marriage, I'm not dumb enough to miss the fact that the Massachusetts decision last year set the cause across the country back about fifty years. So while some of the Republican party are all like "step off yo, courts!," Arnold seems to have strayed off the reservation far enough to send exactly the opposite message which, although possibly politically expedient in the very short term, is in the long term a maneuver of monumental stupidity. The Republicans can stay in power only so long as their main messages remain widely appealing, inoffensive, and not confusing. Two legged stools aren't so good for sitting.

In other news, it looks more and more likely that the Massachusetts State Legislature and voters will eventually end up endorsing the Commonwealth's Supreme Judicial Court decision from last year, thereby putting the cart back behind the horse where it belongs. Currently, there is a proposed Constitutional amendment before the State Senate which would ban gay marriage but uphold civil unions. That amendment is losing support from both sides as the dedicated opponents of gay marriage show their true colors and back a total ban on legal gay unions of any stripe, and as supporters of gay marriage abandon civil unions as a half-measure. Given the climate of the state now, I strongly doubt the opponents of gay marriage have a shot at getting a total ban into the Constitution. The so-called Travaglini amendment (after the Senator sponsoring) is, politically speaking, their last good shot. They will radicalize themselves right out of the argument.

[wik] In the comments, Patton points out that in the bizarro-world of California politics, the courts *really do* have to decide this issue. Because the in/famous Prop. 22 was a ballot initiative and not a piece of legislation, it is up to the courts to deal with it. Which, when you think about it is even more delicious... I now fully appreciate the rich irony inherent in the fact that in California, in order to satisfy the beautiful symmetries and patchwork of federalism, the courts really do have to decide the issue of gay marriage.

Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies at His Home

This, of course, was utterly predictable as a short-run event right after Rehnquist said, several weeks ago, that he was not planning to retire, and would serve as long as he was able.

The shit, as they say, is fixing to hit the fan, and the partisan flames will be doused in Sterno starting Tuesday. Soon, everyone's going to be wondering why they made such a big deal about John Roberts. I await with great anticipation and not just a little trepidation the name of the nominee for this new vacancy.

No anticipation, only trepidation, regarding the soon-to-be-unleashed heart-rending flood of messages from special interest groups wanting money from me to fund their campaigns in support of/opposition to whichever poor bastard is nominated.

Marvelous.

[wik] It's started. Alan Dershowitz & Chuck Schumer have lit what appear to be the first two bags of dog poo. After perhaps one more such prank from the Left, I'd expect that Pat Robertson or some such other wingnut drops the first stinkbomb from the Right prior to end of day, Sunday.

[alsø wik] Well, damn - that was clearly one of the strategic possibilities, but not guaranteed in any way, and not one that I thought would be chosen - Bush Nominates Roberts for Chief Justice. Notwithstanding that there's still a lot of chaff emanating from the right about Roberts being "another David Souter", Bush claims that the people have had a chance to see him and they like him. This, therefore, will make filling the Chief Justice's slot all that much more efficient. Mind you, Harry Reid says this changes everything in the confirmation process, but also mind you, Harry Reid is an asshat.

As for people getting to know about Roberts these last several months and becoming comfortable with him: That may be true, but in my case, the thing I think is most attractive about him is that last I checked. Ann Coulter doesn't like him at all. Not to pick on Ann, whom I find bright, articulate, endlessly amusing to read, and generally wrong in intensity if not direction, but I try to only allow myself one standard deviation from the center, and if Roberts is on her shitlist for not being radical enough, that might make him good enough for me.

Also, perhaps unlike those better informed on matters than I, I don't consider there to be much practical difference between an Associate Justice and the Chief Justice, beyond ceremonial matters. Having had Rehnquist, whom Alan Dershowitz called "a right-wing thug", in the Chief Justice's seat hasn't had any absolute impact in the direction of the Court's rulings.

Nevertheless - I think it appropriate to row back. Roberts' confirmation will clearly get even more interesting, and the choice for the other open slot, the better to let Ms. O'Connor retire, will be comparatively boring. Just to retain symmetry, however, maybe they can choose a woman who used to date John Roberts. What are the odds of that, I wonder?

Most Americans are unaware of how, exactly, their government works. At best, most of our citizenry has a hazy conception of the actual operation of Congress based in large part on vague recollections of schoolhouse rock’s “I’m just a bill.” This is a good and bad thing.

On the one hand, it is bad because liberty in a republic depends on the wise and considered participation of an informed citizenry. Warmed over and fuzzy memories from high school civics layered with factoids from USA Today and CNN do not an informed electorate make.

On the other hand, it is good, because if the good citizens of this nation actually understood, really knew, what goes on in, say, the stygian depths of the House Rules Committee room, they’d invite the British back to finish what they started in 1814. Leaving our fair capital a smoking wasteland would be infinitely preferable to facing the horrifying reality of dysfunction and corruption at the heart of our system.

On a related but tangential track, there’s Sam Cohen. You’ve likely never heard of him, but he’s the dude who invented the atom bomb. The peacemongers and hippies all painted the neutron as an even eviler version of an irredeemably evil weapon. It was the ultimate capitalist bomb – a nefarious device that killed people while leaving their property intact. This is in stark contrast to the actual mindset that led to Cohen to invent the bomb and to declare for decades that it was the most moral weapon ever devised.

Cohen’s logic was that in war, people will use weapons. Weapons are designed to kill. So, it makes sense to design weapons that kill efficiently while doing as little else as possible. If a neutron bomb doesn’t kill you outright, you will live on with out appreciable aftereffects. The infrastructure that you need to survive after the war will be intact – not blasted apart or poisoned with radioactivity. The bomb doesn’t maim, it only kills. Cohen, from his position at RAND, lobbied for years for his concept, only to be rejected by five successive administrations and a military that wanted only bigger bombs, not more efficient ones.

Cohen’s story has some – interesting – accounts of the wrong-headedness of those in charge of our nuclear strategy. But they aren’t as far fetched as they might seem at first. Remember that the depiction of cold war strategic reasoning in Dr. Strangelove is barely exaggerated from the realities of game theory informed strategy used by RAND and the military up until the fall of the Soviet Union. (The takeover of grand strategy by the mathematicians starting with RAND in the late forties is responsible for much of the incredible weirdness of the Cold War, the counterintuitive reasoning, inflexible response postures and bloodthirsty retaliation schemes. Also, the fascination with throw-weight, CEP, megadeaths, and finely-wrought calculations of the effects of nuclear war.) And also that those responsible for setting policy had (with the possible exception of Eisenhower) none of the special aptitude or training one might think necessary for figuring out what to do with city-destroying weaponry.

Knowledge is good, as the Faber college motto tells us. But it doesn’t always make it easier to sleep at night.

[wik] A couple other interesting Cohen bits here and here.

A headline in today's Washington Post informs that Roberts Resisted Women's Rights. On reading the story, these horrific facts were made evident:

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."

...

Covering a period from 1982 to 1986 -- during his tenure as associate counsel to Reagan -- the memos, letters and other writings show that Roberts endorsed a speech attacking "four decades of misguided" Supreme Court decisions on the role of religion in public life, urged the president to hold off saying AIDS could not be transmitted through casual contact until more research was done, and argued that promotions and firings in the workplace should be based entirely on merit, not affirmative action programs.

In October 1983, Roberts said that he favored the creation of a national identity card to prove American citizenship, even though the White House counsel's office was officially opposed to the idea. He wrote that such measures were needed in response to the "real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration."

Now, as a side note, much of this wasn't news to me, as I'd already heard it during the breathless expose on NPR's All Things Considered, the night that 5,000 pages of records had been made available, and all the progressives ganged up looking for instances where Roberts had called someone a homo or some other such disqualifying action.

However, when put in context, like the WaPo did for me, uh, wait a minute. Even in context, the only thing I see there that's even worth a raised eyebrow is the silliness about AIDS transmission. I was around in the early 80s, but can't recall how institutionalized that sort of scientific ignorance was at the time, so I don't really take it all that seriously.

(If you don't already think me an intemperate red-neck, see the rest below the fold)

As for the rest, I read it a bit differently. Roberts didn't want to create women's rights out of whole cloth, and as one who remembers the idiocy that went under the name "comparable worth", he was utterly correct - it was staggeringly pernicious and anti-capitalist. Pernicious because it involved a whole bunch of folks, outside the free market, enforcing decisions about who got paid what, and anti-capitalist for the same reason.

And before anyone says "Hey, anti-capitalist is a good thing", I'd first say "Kiss my ass, Fidel, you ignorant socialist bastard, and keep doing so until you can find a single case where socialism actually worked", but after I'd calmed down, I'd further point out that "capitalist" isn't shorthand for some fat-ass sitting in the corner office smoking a cigar and repressing the working class, it's a concise description of simply allowing the free market to determine worth of various positions. Insisting that women not be paid less due to their lack of Y chromosome was and is an absolutely good thing. Insisting that there be a command economy, in which the Collective makes all wage decisions, would be an absolutely bad thing.

Roberts has suggested that promotions in the workplace should be based on merit rather than affirmative action programs, and this is somehow controversial? Only to ostriches and retards. As an example of why that is and what's wrong with continued over-emphasis on the race wars, particularly in the present day, consider the always-articulate thoughts of Dr. Walter E. Williams, and this excerpt:

When I think of the behavior of today's civil rights organizations, I often think of the March of Dimes. In 1938, President Roosevelt helped found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to fight polio, an epidemic that crippled thousands of Americans. The name March of Dimes was coined by Eddie Cantor in his fundraising effort asking every American to contribute a dime.

Since 1970, polio has been eradicated in the U.S., but the March of Dimes lives on, and they're asking for more than dimes. When they accomplish their mission, most organizations don't fold the tent; they simply change their agenda. The March of Dimes now raises money to fight against birth defects, premature birth and other infant health problems. We'd probably deem them stupid if they continued their battle against polio in America. Why? Because polio has been eradicated.

...

Like the March of Dimes' victory against polio in the U.S., civil rights organizations can claim victory as well. At one time, black Americans did not enjoy the same constitutional guarantees as other Americans. Now we do. Because the civil rights struggle is over and won doesn't mean that all problems have vanished within the black community. A 70 percent illegitimacy rate, 65 percent of black children raised in female-headed households, high crime rates and fraudulent education are devastating problems, but they're not civil rights problems. Furthermore, their solutions do not lie in civil rights strategies.

Civil rights organizations' expenditure of resources and continued focus on racial discrimination is just as intelligent as it would be for the March of Dimes to continue to expend resources fighting polio in the U.S. Like the March of Dimes, civil rights organizations should revise their agenda and take on the big, non-civil rights problems that make socioeconomic progress impossible for a large segment of the black community.

So there's that.

And the latter item, identity cards? Aside from the fact such cards already exist, even if only in the ineffective form of the Social Security number attached to every friggin' trail of American life, the Post talks about his aversion to illegal (otherwise known as "uncontrolled") immigration as though that's a bad thing. I'm all for immigration, done properly. But the apologists who'd pretend that illegal immigrants should just be allowed to stream over the borders are either intentionally deceptive or criminally naive. I'm now officially a minority in my home state of Texas (being a person of pallor), and there's a decent chance that I'll be in another minority soon, as a person actually legally authorized to be here.

That first part doesn't concern me, but the second concerns me greatly - in addition to the drain on resources, paid for by legal citizens but consumed by others, there's the bit about this becoming Mexico, which, well, if I wanted to live in an opportunity-bereft shithole, I could just move there myself. They don't have to bring it to me. And when they do bring it, I'd prefer that they at least bring it in the language of the land, a/k/a English. The fact that they don't is but one of the reasons for lack of assimilation, and the core reason which causes an otherwise mild-mannered and open-minded guy like me to wonder how long before I am a de-facto Mexican.

Don't get me wrong - Mexican-Americans are cool, but Mexicans who seek a better life, and do so by simply transplanting themselves here to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves are missing the point. What's right about America is the vast melting pot that it's been for the last couple hundred years. And what's wrong about Mexico is the ineptly governed, economically unbalanced, insular, congealed, undifferentiated mess that it's become over those same couple hundred years. No wonder they want out. But don't congeal our melting pot, is all I'm saying. Well, that and if you're coming, come legally, please?

So, back from my rant to my actual point - I'm supposed to be inclined against Roberts because he seems to have, at least 20 years ago, held a bunch of intelligent positions? Not bloody likely.

But then I've never been overtly progressive like that.

Oh, and regarding whether turning homemakers into lawyers is a good thing?

Roberts's comment about homemakers startled women across the ideological spectrum. Phyllis Schlafly, the president of the conservative Eagle Forum who entered law school when she was 51, said, "It kind of sounds like a smart alecky comment." She noted that Roberts was "a young bachelor and hadn't seen a whole lot of life at that point."

Schlafly said, "I knew Lyn Arey. She is a fine woman." But she added, "I don't think that disqualifies him. I think he got married to a feminist; he's learned a lot."

Lighten up Phyllis. A smart lady like you should be able to tell he was ranking on attorneys, not homemakers or women. See? Even right-wingers can get a periodic case of humor constipation.

Over the last couple months, I’ve run across several clever and even snarky ideas for redirecting the firehose of public expenditure from the bottomless pit of government bureaucracy into the arid and brown uplands of sensible ideas in dire need of irrigation. I posted about one of these a while back, aimed at the stinking miasma of public school funding. Yesterday, I ran across two more, from Dr. Jerry Pournelle.

The first is an idea I’ve had for a while, but which the good doctor was rude enough to write up first. Gazing at the billions spent annually on the nearly moribund Shuttle Program, Jerry thinks some thoughts:

NASA spends a billion and can't fix the problem of foam dropoff. Give me a billion and 3 years (and exemption from the Disabilities Act and some other imbecilic restrictions) and I'll have a 700,000 pound GLOW reusable that will put at least 5,000 pounds in orbit per trip, and be able to make 10 trips a year for marginal costs linearly related to the cost of fuel.

…Now, as a backup in case single stage is the wrong way to go -- and I can be convinced that it is -- hand another $1 billion to Burt Rutan and let him try his air lift first stage approach. Then have a flyoff. Hell, go mad: give me a billion, give Burt a billion, hand a billion to each of the remaining big aerospace companies, and give a billion to NASA. That's $5 billion, less than the annual cost of the Shuttle program -- have you noticed that the program cost is independent of the number of Shuttle launches? NASA will waste its billion, the two aerospace companies will futz around with studies that end up requesting $20 billion each and produce nothing but paper, but you may be sure that Rutan and I will both have some flying hardware.

Is it arrogant to put myself in the same league with Burt? Sure, but then we all know I won't actually try to manage the program; that's for younger people. My job will be to take the heat while they get the work done. And if you don't fancy me as the competition to Rutan, pick someone else. I can think of at least three small outfits I'd give long odds can spend a billion with far more return to the American people than the two big aerospace outfits and NASA, so if you want to do the program right, you may need $8 billion because you aren't going to do anything without bribing NASA and the big boys; and an $8 billion program looks like money so the big aerospace outfits will want larger bribes. (They'll take bribes to stay out of the way, because that's a sure return and they don't take chances any more; but they're good at the political game and for $8 billion they will smell money in the water and go into a frenzy; but be sure that whatever they get they won't produce anything useful for it. Not any more. And we all know that including the engineers who work for the big outfits.)

Now, Dr. Pournelle once worked in the space bidness, and I’m sure that I couldn’t do quite as much with a billion as he. But I’m sure that I could do more than NASA.

If you scroll up a bit from the NASA bit (which you should read in full) you’ll find another interesting spending proposal. Jerry links to an article in the Washington Post which reports on the findings of the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. This group of fuzzy-headed liberals determined that the cost of giving the boot to our estimated ten million illegal aliens is in the neighborhood of $41 billion a year, and running to nearly a quarter trillion dollars over five years. In coming up with this large number, the CAP assumes government standard procedures for dealing with wetbacks. That is, that it would cost about $28 billion per year to apprehend illegal immigrants, $6 billion a year to detain them, $500 million for extra beds, $4 billion to secure borders, $2 million to legally process them and $1.6 billion to bus or fly them home. In short, government numbers, and a permanent lifetime employment plan for those who would manage, but not solve the problem of illegal immigrants.

The good doctor has a different idea:

As many have pointed out, that's less than the cost of the Iraqi War; which would you rather see the money spent on? Of course I doubt the $41 Billion/year to begin with. In Los Angeles a great deal of the cost would be borne by local police once they were freed of the restrictions on checking citizenship and residency status -- and in Southern California at least $2 billion a year would be saved instantly by relief of public institutions such as hospital emergency rooms from the burden of providing services for illegal immigrants. Other such savings come to mind.

And of course some of the job could be farmed out to bounty hunters. At ten million illegal immigrants, what could we afford to pay bounty hunters per individual delivered at a Border Patrol station or INS Detention Center? At $1000 a head it would cost $10 billion to round up all of them, leaving another $20 billion for actual cost of detention and deportation, and still saving $11 billion for the first year. Spend that $11 billion on border control, and the next year there would be, say, only 5 million, so the cost is now $15 billion for the second year plus the $11 billion for border control. Surely we would be down to a million in five years, so our cost would be $3 billion for bounty hunters and deportation, plus the $11 billion for border control. We could then look at streamlining the border control operations, having spent $55 billion on it; one supposes that cost could be got down to half? We are now at $10 billion a year, possibly forever.

But if they are right, and it will cost $40 billion/year forever, it will still be affordable. We can afford the Iraq war, can't we?

As I’ve said many times before, I have no problem with immigrants, provided they come here legally. I am open to almost any plan for numbers of legal immigrants allowed into the country. I think we should reform the immigration process so that it is in most respects easier to get into and stay in this country – at least in terms of paperwork, red tape and bureaucracy. I think that we should adopt a new status for citizens of nations like Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other friendly places, whereby they could come to this country with an absolute minimum of fuss, to work, study, or travel for any period of time.

It’s one thing to invite someone into your home. Show them hospitality, even let them stay for extended periods of time. If you invite them. But if someone breaks in and takes up residence in your basement, they get the door or a bullet regardless of how inexpensively they could clean up the kitty litter.

We are in the third millennium now. We should be able to begin thinking about new ways of doing things that have been traditionally been managed poorly if at all by government bureaucracies. These are just a few, and I’m sure there are plenty of others.

“The first step in reforming government is also the first step of making chitlins: first you gotta squeeze out the dookie.”

That adorable little bit of folksy homespun wisdom was handed down to me by my Great-Grand-nuncle Hiram Boggs, a veteran of the Great War, and it was handed down to him by his Great-Grand-nuncle Zachariah Homer Muttonchop Boggs, who fought in the Civil War (on the side of the Blue) and spent his teenaged years fighting Copperheads and slave-hunters in the briar flats of Northeastern Ohio.

That makes seven generations of Boggses, Muttonchops, Mackies, Mackils, Morgans, Melvilles, Patricks, Picklebarrels, and Bagginses who have fought on the side of liberty against the encroaching depredations of the revenuer, the bully pulpit, and the bureaucrat.

And I’m starting to think it’s time for me to do the same. Of course, nobody in my family actually at any point picked up arms against the US Government (well, that’s not entirely true. I had a great-great-aunt killed by a stray bullet by Pinkerton men at Homestead and her husband was killed in a Pullman strike – also by the goddamn Pinkertons), and I don’t intend to either. That way lies madness and death.

But what can an honest man do when the fat cats down in Washington seem intent on Hoovering my wallet with one hand (that’s a pun, get it? Hoover the President and Hoover the vacuum cleaner? Haw!) and beating me about the head and neck with a Jack Chick tract (or a copy of The Noam Chomsky Reader) with the other? And what of an age where, even as our greatest enemies lie as they ever do outside our borders, even raising questions about the direction the country is taking elicits the inevitable “Don’t you know there’s a war on?!? Sinner!?!”

You know what an honest man can do?

Not a goddamn thing.

This morning on NPR, Buzzmachine heard Rick Santorum sum up why my short flirtation with the Republican party a few years back is over for good, unless they do something to get rid of "conservatives" like him.

This whole idea of personal autonomy — I don’t think that most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. And they have this idea that people should be left alone to do what they want to do, that government should keep taxes down, keep regulation down, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, that we shouldn’t be involved in cultural issues, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world. And I think that most conservatives understand that we can’t go it alone, that there is no such society that I’m aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and it has succeeded as a culture.

If I read this correctly, real conservatives want to manage my bedroom behavior, raise taxes, regulate everything, prohibit unsavory cultural activities, and make sure people can't just do whatever they want. Personal autonomy: bad. Government control of behavior: good.

Now I know that some folks might claim that Rick Santorum is an outlier, that he does not speak for conservatism and its place in the Republican party. That would be a fine argument, Margaret, if only he weren't the third-ranking Republican in the Senate and therefore one of the national spokesmen and leaders of the conservative movement. No, Rick Santorum's conservatism is part of the Republican party just like Bill Clinton's wang is part of his body. It may be ugly, it may jump out of his pants at inopportune times and get him into a peck of trouble, it may be shameful and creepy when it rules his mind, but it's an inextricable part of his identity, part of who he is.

The howler is, of course, that Short Bus Santorum is construing "radical individualism" as a threat to the American way of life. Right. "individualism" like "liberty" and "radical" like "for all."

As Buzzmachine observes,

That’s not radical. That is the center of America. That is where most of us live — in let-us-be land. Santorum lives on the fringe, right neighborly with the PC folks who would tell us what to think and say. Yes, the far right and far left do, indeed, meet at the fringes....

God, I hope this guy makes a run in ought-eight. I have a hankering to watch him get torn to pieces in the public arena. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Hilary Clinton recently addressed the DLC in Columbus, Ohio (the heart of the heart of it all) calling for party unity in the face of backward time-tunneling Republican trucksuckers. Predictably, a call for party unity resulted in fratricidal infighting. Much like the Scots, the Democratic party is locked in mortal combat with its eternal enemy, the Democratic party.

The infamous McQ, over at Q and O, has a thoughful and, uh, infamous post up on that very topic. After ably and efficiently reviewing the background (go read) he gets to this point:

She walked into an ideological buzzsaw and now is trying to stitch the effort back together. Look, if the Dems are going to have any chance in '08, they are going to have to settle their internal dissonance. They are going to have to come up with a unified strategy and a candidate who is capable of carrying it through. The sort of in-fighting being witnessed now is how it will be done. But based on the reaction to Clinton's speech, she may not be as strong a candidate for that position as many on the left would like to believe.

To be sure, infighting will not help the party gain electoral victory. We saw infighting on the left last time around, and there is no reason to suppose that it will be better next time. But look at what the result of that infighting was: the party nominated a Massachusetts liberal. Sure, they didn't pick Dean, but Dean removed himself from the running with some ill-considered vocal performances. It's as if the Democrats, seeing Bush, thought the Republicans were triple-dog-daring them to prove that, yes, they could pick a worse candidate. The only sensible Democratic candidate was Lieberman. But he was as welcome as a red-headed stepchild. The influence of the DLC and other centrist organizations within the party had never been lower.

Overall, I think McQ's analysis is spot on. But he concludes:

I'll watch with interest how this all lays itself out, but suffice it to say, the more radical left is making its play for the soul of the Democrat party.

And that's where I'd have to disagree.

The left won the soul of the democratic party back in 1972. The DLC and similar efforts have been fighting a rear guard action ever since. They managed to sneak Clinton in, but the left of the left has generally prevailed at all national levels - and the result has been the alienation of the leftish center - the Reagan democrats, the DLC, Blue Dog Democrats or whatever you want to call them.

Both democratic presidents since that date have been anomalies. Carter nearly didn't get elected despite the fact that the incumbent administration was heavily tarred with the watergate scandal. Clinton would never have won without Perot splitting the center/right vote. In neither of his victories did he get a majority of the vote.

An incumbent vice president couldn't quite manage to win, despite the fact that Bush Jr. is arguably one of the weakest candidates the Republicans ever nominated. And they couldn't defeat him the second time, despite the quagmire in Iraq and the Bush's flat-out abysmal job approval ratings.

And, they've progressively (sorry) lost ground in both houses of congress, even in off year elections where the opposition usually gains seats. Even if Hilary wins the nomination singing DLC chops, she won't have a chance unless the world blows up or the Republicans nominate another W. She won't have a sufficiently large base, and she'll have to do too much to appease the left that is the strongest part of her party.