perfidy

The OpinionJournal has a different take on the Rove matter than my esteemed colleague Johno.

I heard on the news last night that Rove was talking to Cooper on the agreement that what he said would be "deep background" and not to be used in reporting. If it is the case that Rove was telling a reporter that the story he was pushing (that VP Cheney was responsible for sending Wilson to Africa) was incorrect, then this is not such a big deal. You have to knowingly and with malice out an undercover agent for their to be a crime, and it seems that that particular line may not have been crossed. Are we even clear that Plame was actually, really, an undercover agent? I seem to remember that there was some confusion about that back when this story first came out, and before Wilson's credibility was shot.

Rove is a political operative. But that does not mean that he eats babies or that every single thing he says is part of some machiavellian scheme. This story frankly annoys me, if for no other reason than because it means I have to watch Kerry speak on the news again. Plame was not some daring agent on a secret mission behind the Iron curtain, whose unveiling could have resulted in death. Wilson is a self-aggrandizing hack who lied about what he did, when, and why in Africa. Rove is an oily political operative, but every president has one and it's rather pointless to scream, "He's an oily political operative! Fire him!" This is just an excuse for Democrats to scream at Bush, not that they really needed one.

... and black people drive like this!

Ha ha! He's so right! It's funny because it's true!!

You may also find funny this uncannily on-target George W. Bush conspiracy generator. Make your own, or set it on random! Did you know that George W. Bush has not captured Osama bin Laden so that Ann Coulter and oil companies could kill minorities? And that he allowed 9/11 to happen so SUV owners could oppress the Jews?

According to the internets, it's wall to wall fact!!

Maybe Buckethead doesn't like it when uncomfortable comparisons emerge.

Rather than pluck words, let's look at it.

The apology came a week after Durbin, the Senate minority whip, quoted from an FBI agent's report describing detainees at the Naval base in a U.S.-controlled portion of Cuba as being chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings," the senator said June 14.

If I read or heard about prisoners "chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures" I too would assume that it referred to prisoners of some repressive regime.

If I read your comments correctly, you all are telling me that you would not make this assumption, and that you acknowledge such activities occurring in US prisons. You then neatly "cover your asses" with finger-wagging about how you don't approve of such measures, but comparing us to really bad guys just isn't fair.

All the guy said is that these are practices that Joe Average, who believes that we're the good guys, would attribute to some of the repressive regimes that are commonly known. That sounds pretty damn fair to me.

But you want to generalize the statement, and to achieve that generalization you invoke logic that can be used to stifle, eliminate, and declare treasonous any criticism. This has distressing parallels to the politics of the moment.

We have some very solid knowledge in history present on this blog.

If those regimes were the wrong ones to compare these particular actions to, please tell us the right ones. Which governments or regimes chained up prisoners, denied them food or water, and subjected them to extreme temperatures?

Or would you prefer that we simply engaged in comparison-free dialog, arguing all of this from relativist positions, without reference points?

This court decision is a major blow to the citizens of this country. I am compelled to point out that in the last six years American citizens have had the character of their relationship with the government changed radically:

1. Takings: Any local government can now hand your private property to another private owner if any excuse for redevelopment is avialable. This is a clear invitation for corruption, and will inevitably result in a major upswing of same.

2. Trial by Jury: The current administration has reserved for itself the right to detain and permanently imprison any citizen, without trial or justification, under the guise of "fighting terror".

Let's recap. Any property you own is yours strictly subject to the whims of the government. Your freedom itself is also an illusion in the "conservative" world of George W Bush; it currently has no force under the law if some arbitrary member of the administration decides otherwise.

So what private right is Bush for, exactly? Well, he's strongly in favor of allowing property owners to pollute the hell out of that property, regardless of the effect on others. Apparently there's some sort of principal at work in that case. I struggle to understand how environmental concerns are less of a "public use" than protecting the profits of developers, but there it is.

These two things are pretty damn fundamental, and I'd say the average citizen of this country figures they're his birthright. They are, of course. But we are in exceptional times, times in which corruption and greed flow like electricity through the body politic, taking the path of least resistance. This administration is indistinguishable from its insider supporters, and its policies, while lacking any verifiable correlation between promised and actual effect, have inevitably benefited those same insiders.

‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing'

Kristol thinks that O'Connor will be the first to go.

Drudge is reporting DNC Chairman Howard Dean has decided to forego the evenhanded rhetoric, amity and collegiality, bend-over for the ruling party methods that he has heretofore exhibited. Now he's going to get mad, and you wouldn't like him when he's mad. This comes as a bit of a shock to those of us who thought that the good doctor was already a little bit around the bend, what with all the "Republicans are evil," "I hate Republicans and all they stand for," "They're the white Christian party," and other assorted bon mots.

While I have not been one to believe that Karl Rove is the all-powerful puppetmaster/machiavel/satanic schemer that some in the dirtier, smellier parts of the left imagine him to be. But I doubt myself... Did Karl Rove somehow replace the real former Governor Dean with an android? Because Dean is a gift beyond price to the Republicans. Fundraising is down, the fringe is pushed to ever greater heights of offputting frenzy, and Republican speechwriters and admakers have a database of money quotes they will be decades in exhausting.

And Dean seems to be dragging the party leadership with him. Every day, some Democrat gets sucked past the event horizon of Deanite mania, to a place where the laws of physics and history are strangely warped and unintelligible. Senator Dick Durbin confusing past totalitarianism with current American Military practice is only the most recent victim. I have heard people of the left say that Dean's behavior is no different than that of Rush Limbaugh. While this is certainly true, there is a significant difference in their positions. Limbaugh is not the RNC Chair.

M. Simon had a post the other day (found via Murdoc) which lays out the problem for the Democrats:

So far the Democratic Party hates white Christian Republicans according to Dean. The Military according to Durbin and Jews according to a forum organized by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan.

So let us do a Venn diagram to see what is left of the Democrat party.

Here is the list:

Whites
Christians
Republicans
The military
Jews

Now of course there is overlap but that list must include 70% to 80% of all Americans. I must say, short of Nixon's resignation, this is one of the most amazing weeks I have ever witnessed in American politics. The Democrat Party is shrinking faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Democrats are building a permanent Republican majority by the simple and expedient method of self-destruction.

How they imagine that they can reclaim the levers of power in 2008 is utterly beyond my comprehension. After alienating everyone who isn't already ideologically committed to the party, they will no doubt nominate the most polarizing figure in American politics in the last quarter century. Hillary is smart, and canny; but she's going to have a smaller base to work from. And there is no guarantee that the Republicans will nominate as weak a candidate as GWB next time around, or that the war on terror will have blown up in our faces. (I mean, really, the last two elections were "Clash of the Midgets.") If a Republican with broad appeal to the middle - someone like McCain, if not actually McCain - goes up for the big game, the Democrats are going to be toast.

After the first couple days of media self-congratulatory fluffing, I began to think fondly about Rathergate. Everyone on TV seemed to be preening in the reflected glory of a time when the media brought down a president. After Watergate, it was all about the kill, rather than the scoop. But after that faded a bit, almost everything else was even smellier crap. Some right-wing assholes attacked Felt. He was a bad guy because he broke the law, or betrayed secrets, or did something that had adversely affected a Republican in power. Some left wing assholes wrote hagiographies of the former FBI #2 man. This was the hero who allowed the media to kill a presidency. Without Felt/Deep Throat, Bob Woodward would still be a whining nobody. And that would be horrible.

But that’s all bullshit. It seems to me that most people conflate good actions with good intentions, and vice versa. And also the opposite. A sadist might be an excellent surgeon, paid very well for the opportunity to cut people up. (And incidentally cure them of what ails them.) And there have been far, far too many well intentioned people doing horrible things for the best reasons. (e.g., the entire last century.) Felt's case is perhaps a rarity, where he did a good thing for bad reasons. But not so rare as most people think.

Well, that's not quite true - in one forum or another, I state the obvious multiple times per day, and for that I apologize.

But here's a case where the WSJ's Brendan Miniter has done it, and it seems to me to be a public service:

Hero or not, Mark Felt did America a great service

Just when I thought that nobody in a position to widely disseminate such a rational thought was going to do so, Mr. Miniter comes and says:

This is an open memo to those on the right who've spent the past week chastising their counterparts on the left for calling Mark Felt, a k a "Deep Throat," a hero. It's true that the recently outed Watergate supersource might have acted for his own interests, and that real heroes pay the price for their heroism instead of hiding in the shadows of a parking garage. It is therefore difficult to laud his personal character or portray him as someone young people should emulate.

But if Mr. Felt isn't personally a hero, his actions look a lot more heroic than the actions of those who've had the most biting words for the now 91-year-old man who at the time was the No. 2 official at the FBI. Pat Buchanan, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, called Mr. Felt a "snake." Charles Colson, another Nixon aide, who served seven months in prison for obstruction of justice, said Mr. Felt was "violating his oath to keep this nation's secrets." Watergate conspirator turned radio personality G. Gordon Liddy, who also served time, is quoted as saying bluntly that Mr. Felt "violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession."

Sounds about right to me, since I was tired of the whining revisionists' history-polishing after the first of the participants opened his gaping pie-hole on the matter.

Miniter's take is a good one, and I commend it to your attention.

[wik] George Friedman, in the Geopolitical Intelligence Report which hit my mailbox a couple hours ago, covers the underpinnings of Felt's methods, along with some of his motivations, and comes to some very obvious conclusions that, ahem, hadn't even crossed my mind. I can't find a link for the briefing at his site, but if anyone's interested, I'd happily forward the Stratfor email.

[alsø wik] For the truly intrepid, the Onion's take on the matter

...why the hell not. Baseball Crank gets jiggy with the statistics, and starts talking about the 2006 Senate races. Based on his analysis, it looks like the Democrats might have a tough row to hoe in trying to undo some of the Republican majority. By adding the percentage of the vote that Senator got in the last election to the vote that his state gave to the Presidential candidate of his party, the Crank comes up with a rough measure of both the political climate in a state and its feelings toward its Senator.

Of the ten lowest ranked races, seven are Democratic seats and three Republican. Of the 33 total races, less than half (fifteen) are Republican seats. Of the races that the Crank ranks as relatively solid, I think two deserve some further consideration: Vermont and New York.

Jeffords was elected as a moderate Republican by a broad margin. I wonder how pissed those voters are with his defection, and whether another Republican candidate could take advantage of that. Also, Hilary will likely be running for President, and would any other Democrat stand against Guliani if he wanted that seat? Or even Lazio, who did pretty well considering he had nothing like the name recognition of Hilary and entered the race late?

Let’s say that aside from those two special cases, each party wins all of the races ranked over 105%, and loses all those below. That would create a net change of +4 for the Republicans. They could pick up the two special cases as well. That’s the upper bound – a safely filibuster proof majority. I would imagine that as long as the economy keeps up, and there is no major balls-up in Iraq, the Republicans will likely pick up another seat or two. That’s my prediction.

Last Friday, as I was desperately trying to get out of the office, I posted a link that I found on Kausfiles. I hadn't had time to do more than skim it, but it seemed interesting. Johno felt differently:

The linked article has GOT to be the single stupidest post I have ever seen on the internet. Interesting? Sure. Like a dog licking his own sack is interesting.

Now, I generally trust Johno's judgment, intuition, even his wild-ass-guesses. So when I went back to read the article more thoroughly today (now that I have recovered from a long weekend of debauchery) I was expecting to find a big, steaming pile of poo. And smelly poo, at that.

That turned out not to be the case. First, arguing that Steve Sailer's post is the stupidest post on the internet - even limiting the comparison to stupid posts that Johno's seen... well, that's a bit of a stretch. I would say that the case is a bit deterministic, and that Sailer is to some extent using his assumptions to justify his arguments. But...

There is something there. I'll get to that in a minute. But first, thanks to the Maximum Leader we have this article by a credentialed political science professor. [Maximum Leader gets 1.5 kudos for linking my I hate our freedom post, and an additional 3 kudos for agreeing with me instead of Geeklethal.] Professor Abramowitz writes about the effect of redistricting on the competiveness in congressional races. Or rather, the lack thereof.

The 2000-2002 redistricting cycle is often cited by critics of partisan redistricting as the best illustration of the dangers of gerrymandering because of the extensive use of sophisticated mapmaking technology in drawing district lines. However, between the 2000 and 2002 elections, the number of safe U.S. House districts only increased from 201 to 203 and the number of competitive districts only decreased from 123 to 116. Over the last three redistricting cycles--those that occurred between 1980 and 1982, 1990 and 1992, and 2000 and 2002--the number of safe districts increased by an average of only 8 while the number of competitive districts decreased by an average of only 2.

The Prof also points out that it makes little difference if courts or non-partisan commissions due the gerrymandering – most congressional seats remain stolidly non-competitive.

The assumption that shifting control of redistricting from partisan state legislatures to nonpartisan commissions will dramatically increase the number of competitive districts is not supported by the record of such commissions. In the 2000-2002 round of redistricting, eight states with a total of 75 House districts used nonpartisan commissions to redraw their districts or had their districts redrawn by the courts. In the 2002 elections, 9 percent of House contests in those states were decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage points compared with 8 percent in all other states. Of 65 incumbents who ran for reelection in states whose districts were redrawn by the courts or nonpartisan commissions, not one was defeated.

Why is this the case?

If redistricting isn't responsible for the low level of competition in House elections, what is? Two major trends have contributed to a decline in competition in recent years. First, House districts have become less competitive, but not because of redistricting. Most of the change has occurred between redistricting cycles. Between 1992 and 2000, for example, the number of safe districts increased from 156 to 201 while the number of competitive districts decreased from 157 to 123.

The other trend is the cost of running a serious congressional campaign, now significantly north of seven digits. But what is the cause of increasingly homogenous house (and other) districts? Let’s take a look:

For the same reasons that states and counties have become less competitive--Americans are increasingly living in communities and neighborhoods whose residents share their values and they are increasingly voting for candidates who reflect those values. Growing ideological polarization at the elite level has also made it easier for voters to choose a party identification on the basis of their ideological preferences. Southern and border states that once regularly elected conservative Democrats have been trending Republican while urban and suburban areas in the North that once regularly elected moderate and liberal Republicans have been trending Democratic. The result is that red states, counties, and districts are getting redder while blue states, counties, and districts are getting bluer.

The American population (noted for its extreme mobility even in the mid-1800s) is super- or hyper-mobile today. People think nothing of moving thousands of miles to be in a place more congenial, remunerative, or whatever value is important to them. I’m not sure about GL or Patton; but I know that Johno, Ross, and I have all made moves of at least half a thousand miles to get to a place that we thought would do us right. That people would self-sort themselves by politics is not an odd thought. Especially since political ideas often go hand in hand with any number of other attitudes.

As the state of California has become less competitive, so have its counties. Many of the state's urban areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County, have become much more Democratic. At the same time, the state's rural areas and small towns, like their counterparts in the rest of the nation, have been trending Republican. In the 1976 presidential election, 46 of California's 58 counties were decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage points and those counties included 72 percent of the state's voters. But in 2004, only 13 counties were decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage points and those counties included only 21 percent of the state's voters. On the other hand, there were far more landslide counties in 2004 than in 1976 and a much larger percentage of California voters lived in landslide counties in 2004 than in 1976. In the 1976 presidential election only 2 counties in California were decided by a margin of more than 20 percentage points and those counties included only 8 percent of the state's voters. But in 2004, 36 counties were decided by a margin of more than 20 percentage points and those counties included 64 percent of the state's voters.

Given the one-sided partisan make-up of so much of the state, it would be difficult for even a panel of retired judges to draw a large number of competitive state legislative and congressional districts in California. And if you think some of the current districts are misshapen monstrosities, try to imagine what a competitive district in the San Francisco Bay Area would look like. [emphasis mine –ed.]

So it seems that some sort of sorting process is going on. Professor Abramowitz doesn’t get into the reasons for that much. Which brings us back to Steve Sailer.

In parts of the country where it is economical to buy a house with a yard in a neighborhood with a decent public school, you’ll generally find more Republicans. You’ll find less in regions where it’s expensive.

It’s a stereotype that a mortgage, marriage, and babies tend to make people more conservative. But it’s a true stereotype.

The arrow of causality points in both directions. Some family-oriented people move to family-friendly states, but the cost of forming a family also affects how many families are formed overall.

He’s making the case that (one of) the reasons that (potentially) conservative people move to red states is that it is easier to do what they want – get a house and spawn a family. And also that more such conservatives will be formed because is it easier to get a house, a yard, a wife (or husband) and kids. We all know the statistics about the difference in voting habits between single and married people, homeowners and renters, and so on. I think that Sailer’s got a point that places encourage one side or the other, and that both affects the attitudes of those who live there, and filters who moves in an out.

One of the reasons that I would not likely be happy in a major urban center is that I would be surrounded by hard-core liberals. I don’t want to live in a place without liberals, but I don’t want to live in a place without conservatives, either. I wouldn’t have a house, a yard, or a safe environment for my boy. Right now, one of the few things keeping me from moving to an even more “red” rural locale is the income that I can earn here, and few other places. (And those places are even less family friendly than suburban DC.) Mrs. Buckethead mentions at least once a week how nice it would be to move to New Hampshire, up near the White Mountains and away from the Massholes.

So I can feel the logic in what Sailer is talking about. It’s not the only thing, but it’s not a steaming pile of poo.

The man who they call Deep Throat has reportedly come forward.

W. Mark Felt, 91, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward's source, the magazine said.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told lawyer John D. O'Connor, the author of the Vanity Fair article, the magazine said in a news release.

Wow. Even so, I still prefer to think of Deep Throat as two cute blondes with weed cookies.

Via Kausfiles, we find this really, really interesting bit of political analysis that I don't have time to discuss right now.

Perhaps oddly for a guy with a temporary disdain for political commentary, my first short note at the new home so graciously provided by my friends here at the Ministry has a political tinge. It's occasioned by Buckethead's posting about the proposed changes to Senate rules, now made moot by the agreement reported this evening.

As that matter's already well covered at the link and comments above, my take's a bit macro. Harry Reid, in the tradition of folks from both sides of the political aisle, has engaged in a long-running game of pissing on peoples' shoes while claiming it's raining. Similarly to the theatrics of Trent Lott, who originated the phrase "nuclear option", and Bill Frist, among others repeatedly use it, the game involves sleight of hand, repeated ad nauseam until the hoped-for moment when everyone forgets their legs are being pulled, with vigor.

As evidence for Sen. Reid's success, the Washington Post makes reference to the proposed rule changes as "an arcane constitutional question", when it's neither arcane nor even a constitutional question at all. Mr. Reid regularly refers to it as a (capital C) "Constitutional matter", intentionally confusing the actual requirement for "advice and consent" with his desire to let the minority outvote the majority. Frist, Lott, and the rest haven't helped by talking about the "nuclear option" as though a change to the Senate rules was utterly unprecedented and disgusting, sort of like wiping out a couple cities in Japan.

Yeesh. You can't get a straight story out of either, and it's become a battle of drooling retard sound bites, none of which accurately reflects the position of its dispenser. In my admittedly non-existent perfect world, Reid would make a case to the public at large that those "extreme" judges such as Owen and Brown are actually extreme, rather than, say, not holding the political views that he thinks they should hold as females, African Americans, or in one case, both. Claiming to disagree with their views isn't the same as convincing the rest of the Senate or the American public you're right. Just ask Tom Daschle, if you can find him. But it's easier to cast it as a constitutional infringement, or the trampling of the rights of a group who, ahem, didn't carry the majority in either house of Congress.

And the Republicans? Sure, it's easy to change the rules, far easier than making your case and doing what Senators do - trading horses. There's not much room for give and take on a yes/no vote for a judicial appointment, particularly in a case when so much testosterone's already been spilt. Gilding the proposed rule change under the previously chosen name, "nuclear option" (until Karl Rove dictated other nomenclature) was a great way to further inflame prostates all 'round, but not good for much else, like an actual resolution to the matter.

And so now we've got a compromise. Since I believe 80% of Americans are clustered within a standard deviation of dead center, I'm drawn to the conclusion that roughly 80% of the populace is, like me, happy that some form of resolution's been reached. (Yes, I just made that 80% up. Twice. Out of whole cloth)

Complete happiness, however, remains elusive. I'd enjoy the ability, for once, to deactivate the bullshit filter when listening to my elected representatives as they troll for dupes.

From an ABC news piece on an audit of Medicaid in New York State:

[New York State Comptroller Alan] Hevesi asked Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a letter Sunday to "take immediate action to ensure that sex offenders do not receive erectile dysfunction medication paid for by taxpayers."

What? Yes, that's right...

Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state's comptroller said Sunday. Audits by Comptroller Alan Hevesi's office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Those included crimes against children as young as 2 years old, he said.

Gaaaaaaah. One thing you can count on... whenever a story like this breaks, the politicians will descend like ants to lap up the publicity. Senator Chuck Schumer: come on down!

"While I believe that HHS did not do this intentionally, when the government pays for Viagra for sex offenders, it could well hurt many innocent people..."

Thanks, Chuck. That really clarifies the issue for me. I though it was about cutting government waste: I'm relieved that you've twigged to the notion that giving boners to babytouchers is not in anyone's best interest. Although I do have to wonder: why is the government subsidizing Viagra for anyone? What sense does that make. (Well... as much sense as requiring soldiers to surrender their nail clippers to TSS, but letting them hold on to their M-16s and bayonets, but I digress.)

Hat tip to Reason's Julian Sanchez, who goes where I dare not in his choice of headline.

An interesting historical note to the debate over the judicial filibuster comes from Anne Althouse, who notes that the Constitutional Convention considered requiring a supermajority to reject nominees:

Mr. Madison, suggested that the Judges might be appointed by the Executives with the concurrence of 1/3 at least of the 2d. branch. This would unite the advantage of responsibility in the Executive with the security afforded in the 2d. branch agst. any incautious or corrupt nomination by the Executive.

[wik] On the other side of things, here's some interesting information on other means by which nominations could be blocked from hilzoy of Obsidian Wings.

[alsø wik] My earlier discussion of this is here.

A few moderate senators from both sides of the isle are scurrying to and fro in an attempt to head off the looming confrontation over President Bush’s judicial nominees and the Senate filibuster rules. It seems at this point rather unlikely that they will succeed. Just so we have some solid ground to walk on, let us summarize the debate:

• The Republicans are pondering changing the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees. The Filibuster would remain in place everywhere else that it hasn’t already been removed.
• The Republicans are thinking about doing this because the Democrats are holding up many appellate court nominees.
• The Democrats say that it is within their rights to do this, and that it is a long standing senate tradition and part of their constitutional duty as Senators to oppose right wing fanatical nominees.
• The Republicans say that the Democrats are obstructionist wackos who are opposing every thing Bush does out of knee jerk political rancor, and that the rule change just puts things back where they were.
• As far as appellate court nominations go, Bush’s success rate so far is about half what the last two presidents whose party also controlled the Senate achieved.
• The Senate rules are not part of the Constitution, and the word filibuster does not appear in that august document. The Constitution says that the Senate must give its advice and consent to nominees, and little more.
• The senate rules for filibusters have been changed in the past – most recently by Democrats lowering the cloture threshold from 67 to 60. Even more recently, some Democrats called for the abolition of the filibuster altogether, back when they were the majority. And of course, minority Republicans screamed bloody murder then.
• All of the judges currently in limbo are ranked “qualified” or higher by the American Bar Association.
• The Republican spin is that all nominees deserve an up or down vote, not endless obstruction through empty parliamentary tactics. In other words, “If you don’t like ‘em, don’t vote fur ‘em.”
• The Democratic Spin is that the Republicans are trying to rewrite the constitution and change the Senate into a rubberstamp body, allowing extremist right wingers onto the bench. In other words, “Don’t let the Right wingers execute a naked grab for power.”

Now, on general principles, changing the Senate rules is not something that should be done lightly. However, It seems fair that a President, having gone to the trouble of winning an election and all, at least ought to be able to get his nominees a vote. On the whole, I think that the Democrats are, in fact, being obstructionists. I would have greater confidence in their claims that they are attempting to keep “extremists” off the bench if not for the fact that they have called all of Bush’s nominees “extremists.” That kind of dilutes the oomph of that word.

The test for me as to whether this rule change is a good idea or not is to flip it. Say, god forbid, the Democrats were to stage an amazing comeback and in 2008 win the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Newly elected President Moonbat sends a group of judicial nominees ranging from fairly liberal to communist to the Senate. Now, do I still think it’s a good idea that the Senate vote on them? Yes, I do. If the Republicans can dig up enough dirt, convince enough moderate Democrats, or make enough deals to keep the more left wing ones from getting 51 votes, hey! That’s great. But that’s how the system should work. The Constitution does not require a supermajority to approve presidential nominees, which is what the Democrat's current filibuster usage amounts to. The Constitution is very clear when it does require one.

So as far as I’m concerned, changing the Senate rules is okay by me, end of story.

But what really confuses the crap out of me is why the Democrats are doing this now.

The Dems are really irritating the Republicans, pushing them hard on the whole issue, pissing them off to the point where they are ready to risk whatever political backlash might come to change the rules. Reid is only offering empty compromises. All for what? To keep a bunch of appellate court nominees off the bench, nominees that the ABA ranks qualified or well qualified, and who aren’t any more right wing than the average Republican? When they know that there are going to be at least two Supreme Court vacancies in the next year or so, including the Chief Justice slot?

The Democrats are going to lose the filibuster, the appellate court nominees will go through anyway and be confirmed, and they’ll have exactly bupkis in their quiver when they get to the real battle. And as a bonus, the Republicans will be in the clear politically because the rule change would have happened well before the Supreme Court fight. That really, really blows my mind. Unless I’m really missing something, that is the most boneheaded political strategy I’ve ever heard of. (Excepting of course the Iraqi insurgents, who are so impatient that they can’t take the time to provoke the US into killing Iraqi citizens, and are skipping the middle man to go right ahead and kill the Iraqis themselves.)

I have to wonder what their thinking on this is. Or do they really think that all of these nominees are rabid, slavering, dues paying members of the KKK? Even the black ones?

The Ministry's inboxes have been flooded recently with missives bearing anguished cries from our many readers. "Why," they ask, "has the Ministry scaled back on its unusually penetrating and insightful coverage of the current political scene? Where else can we go?"

It is time for a reply. For my part, the decline in politically themed posting stems mainly from the fact that, though I am to a certain degree wonkishly interested in policy and politics, I am more interested in sharing embarrassing stories from my past, interesting food or beverage experiences, and random musings on topics that actually have very little bearing on whether we all live or die. It's not just that Politics:Blogs::Keith Richards:Heroin, though that's a part of it. There are plenty of top-shelf bloggers out there reading bills, parsing doubletalk, and watching out for our collective asses. Obsidian Wings, John Cole of Balloon Juice, and the staff of Reason's Hit and Run are three such shining exemplars.

But - and let's be frank - politics is done to death. As anyone can see from reading the archives at Little Green Footballs, it is difficult to stare day after day into the abyss and retain a sense of scope. Every new dawn brings a fresh raft of stunning outrages-- which ones are for real? Which ones are not worth fretting over? It quickly becomes hard to tell.

For instance. Should I be concerned that Congress tacked legislation creating a national ID program onto an appropriations bill regarding money for the war in Iraq? Orin Kerr of the Voloks says "yes, but not too much." So why do I get the creeping horrors at the mention of Senator Sensenbrenner's name?

Should I be worried about Social Security? Alex Taborrok says "Yes!!!". Indeed, private companies can bail out on their pension schemes if they can't pay them, trusting that the Feds will pick up much of the tab. If the Feds can't pick up their tab, who do they bail to?

Should I be outraged that the NIH used foster children as guinea pigs for experimental AIDS drugs in the 1980s and 1990s? There are apparently glaring irregularities in how subjects were selected, monitored, informed, and tracked. Ah, but maybe it saved lives! Why does this remind me of Kazuo Isiguro's latest novel?

Should I care that Congress recently upped mandatory minimums for drug offenses, tacking on special extras if a crime was committed within a city block of a gun? Or if one of the perpetrators was thinking about guns? (Check this out, and see if you can spot the giant pit of stupid:)

"Mr. Forbes argued that critics who say jail time only turns juvenile offenders into hardened criminals overlooked the potential for keeping them behind bars when they are most likely to commit crimes. "The crime-probability ages are 15- to 24-year-olds," he said, "and if you take the person off the streets for that period then the statistics go enormously away in terms of perpetrating additional crimes."

I just don't know what to think any more, so I'm resorting to blogging about food, music, and the occasional footwear. Perhaps Minister Buckethead can take up the political side of things, and at least give me a wall to bounce my objections off of. That doesn't hurt when I do that, does it dude?

In a comment to my economics post below, GeekLethal coins the term "onanomics" to describe that branch of economics that manages, through narrowly modeled, tightly construed conditions, to describe absolutely nothing of use. Good coinage.

This weekend, I was watching the Sunday news cycles when I saw footage of Laura Bush speaking at the yearly dinner they throw to persuade the White House Press Corps that they are something better than slime you scrape off a shoe. The networks all replayed that sorta-funny but really upsetting set of jokes where W is so dumb he once tried to milk a male horse, so easygoing he is in bed by 9, and so unsubtle that he likes to fix every problem on his ranch no matter how big or small with a chainsaw... which is why he gets along so well with Cheney and Rumsfeld. What? Did Laura Bush just call her husband cack-handed and dim, with a penchant for unintrospective bumbling and jerking off horses, and then play that for laughs?

Almost as good as last year when they did that whole "nope... no WMDs under here montage" with George looking under couches and in closets. Laff freakin riot.

Anyway, the word that popped into my head to describe Laura Bush's performance at the Press Corps dinner was "macrotesticularity." As in, "my, that was awfully macrotesticular of her to play our nightmares for laughs like that."

Bet you didn't know that a post about neologisms was going to degenerate into a takedown of the President's speechwriters, foreign policy, and taste for chainsaws, didja?

[wik] I should probably be clear here. I don't think the President is stupid. To begin with, that would mean that his opponents are even stupider than he is, and although there is ample evidence to support that thesis, all that can be proven is that his opponents are less smart, not that the President is stupid. Moreover, stupid men don't make President. Period. Now, that does not mean that George W. Bush is far to incurious and prone to what I would call lack of insight, but that's a matter of taste. Au chaque ses propres, you know?

But to make a funny out of the President's supposed lack of intelligence is neither funny, reassuring, or particularly worthwhile for anybody. If he's that stupid that he jacks off horses and can't be bothered to figure out why, say, Turkmenistan's Islamic crisis is different from Sudan's, that's horrible. If he's not that stupid than joking about how he is is just sort of tasteless.

[alsø wik] I should also be clear on another point. I thought Laura Bush was pretty funny; they were funny lines. Or as it occurred to me later, they would be funny lines in another context. Unlike certain moral majoritarians, I have no problem with the First Lady making horsejacking jokes, and unlike some uptight liberals, I think it's funny to laugh at the President while retaining some respect for the office. But my mind's subprocesses have been working it over the last couple of days, and at some point I began to realize that jokes about the President's smarts are weak, tired and lame. Where's Bruce Vilanch when you need him?

[alsø alsø wik] I should also also be clear that I really haven't spent very much time thinking about this. Reading this post over, I come off pretty uptight. In reality, I'm not all that bothered by any of this and in fact have spent far more time writing about it than I have fretting about it. So I'm going to move on now, and post something about robots or music or boobies, or robots with musical boobies.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] Ohhh, but this is too good to pass up! Big Time Patriot of blogcritics recommends that we test the mettle of the FCC and lodge formal complaints about the hot man-on-beast penile manipulation talk aired on CSPAN. If a blurry accidental nipple is worth half a mil, what's the going fine for horse dong?

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, I realize that I'm a world-baby.

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which basically makes it illegal to transport a minor across state lines for the purpose of having an abortion if the minor's home state requires parental notification prior to the procedure. That, I only have *some* trouble with on the usual Federalist grounds and because although I don't much care for Roe v. Wade, I also would like states that (at some point in a theoretical future) legalize abortion to not have the legality of the practice stepped upon by other states' laws that prohibit same. Slippery slopes, all that.

But that's not what cheeses me off. What does cheese me off are the infantile hijinks of the Republicans in Congress. (Honestly, these days I could start every single post that way and not once would it be less true.) Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings (who I do not want to marry despite here many charms and virtues, being already happily wed (never mind, folks! (that's an inside-baseball(well, blogball (how many nested clauses can I achieve? (Five!)))) comment) read the bill closely and observed a fascinating phenomenon. The Democrats offered a number of amendements to the bill which would have, for example, exempted Greyhound drivers from prosecution if one of their passengers was a fifteen year old crossing state lines for an abortion. The original text and vote count read:

DEMS: a Scott amendment to exempt cab drivers, bus drivers and others in the business transportation profession from the criminal provisions in the bill (no 13-17):

The revised text in the Congressional Record now reads:

GOP REWRITE. Mr. Scott offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution if they are taxicab drivers, bus drivers, or others in the business of professional transport. By a roll call vote of 13 yeas to 17 nays, the amendment was defeated.

Wha? That's gotta be a mistake, right? In my best John McLaughlin voice, "WRONG!" See this amendment,

DEMS: a Nadler amendment to exempt a grandparent or adult sibling from the criminal and civil provisions in the bill (no 12-19)

... which somehow ended up as this amendment:

GOP REWRITE: . Mr. Nadler offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were grandparents or adult siblings of a minor. By a roll call vote of 12 yeas to 19 nays, the amendment was defeated.

So not only are Greyhound drivers not exempted from this law, but in the GOP revisions, it somehow it all suddenly became about child molesters. In the words of Phil Dennison in the comments, "This is almost literally the equivalent of a high school student grabbing someone's textbooks or homework, crossing out that person's name in them, and writing "Fag" over and over."

He's right. The Republican party, who I used to from time to time make common cause on issues like government spending, taxes, minimally intrusive regulation, and the like, have never gotten over the smarmy prep-school smugness that marred the Gingrich years. You'd think that being in power would finally assuage their victim complex, but nooooo! It's "the liberals" this and "godless" that and "we're under attack on every front!" when the Presidency, both houses of Congress and at least 5/9ths of the Supreme Court are their folks. I mean, shit. At least we Red Sox fans had the good graces to shed the whole Our Lady Of Perpetual Angst schtick once we won the Series. But the Republican Party can't seem to stop. Bill Frist fulminates against the Godless. Tom DeLay plays funny with ethics rules. Rick Santorum... well, the less said about Dim Bulb Ricky, the better.

What's more is while changing the wording in every amendment on a bill is wildly funny in some locker-room contexts in high school, and might even arguably be construed as the feisty jabs of an underdog minority (see 1994), when you're the party in power, that kind of move means you're a prick and a bully. Power doesn't make you a prick; pricks prove themselves through power. Newt Gingrich: Prick. When he was in charge of the House, that was dazzingly obvious he was a giant prick. He even shut down the government by way of proving his prick credentials. Now that he's faded into the background, he might still be a prick but he's at least 50% less of a prick about it.

That such adolescent, disrespectful behavior ends up in the Congressional Record, entered there by the Committee Chairman (Sensenbrenner, in this case, not some no-name looking for street cred (or prick cred)) rather than being left among the table scraps of a hi-larious three martini lunch at the Hotel George means you're bordering on insane. So I don't give away the whole game, I urge you to go read Hilzoy's post to find out why Sensenbrenner felt it so important that the amendements be revised to read they way they do. It's a larf riot.

The Washington Post reports on a study that finds that the vast majority of college professors are liberal. While this should come as no surprise to anyone who ever went to college, the degree to which the professoriat is liberal is worrying.

Among the findings:

Among all universities, professors are:
72% liberal and 15% conservative
50% identify themselves as Democrats, and 11% as Republicans

At elite universities (the top 1/3), the gap is wider still:
87% of faculty are liberal and only 13% conservative

"In contrast with the finding that nearly three-quarters of college faculty are liberal, a Harris Poll of the general public last year found that 33 percent describe themselves as conservative and 18 percent as liberal.

The liberal label that a majority of the faculty members attached to themselves is reflected on a variety of issues. The professors and instructors surveyed are, strongly or somewhat, in favor of abortion rights (84 percent); believe homosexuality is acceptable (67 percent); and want more environmental protection "even if it raises prices or costs jobs" (88 percent). What's more, the study found, 65 percent want the government to ensure full employment, a stance to the left of the Democratic Party."

"The most liberal faculties are those devoted to the humanities (81 percent) and social sciences (75 percent), according to the study. But liberals outnumbered conservatives even among engineering faculty (51 percent to 19 percent) and business faculty (49 percent to 39 percent).

The most left-leaning departments are English literature, philosophy, political science and religious studies, where at least 80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than 5 percent call themselves conservative, the study says."

Liberal professors tend to hire more liberal professors. Anecdotal evidence of discrimination against conservatives in academia abounds, although this study says that evidence of discrimination is "preliminary." For all their talk of diversity, universities seem to be almost entirely lacking in the one sort of diversity that actually matters - diversity of ideas.

[wik]Johno comments that

Yeah, okay. But what happens when a bunch of adults start hectoring students about right-thinking this and socialist that?

That’s right- the smart and attentive ones do what endless generations of kids have done: grow up, drift the opposite way, and end up as professors with center-right to conservative opinions.

Seriously… if the problem were as bad as for example David Horowitz would have us believe, the Yoots of Today would be hoisting the star and sickle and marching to the “Internationale” on their way to cut their penises off in recompense for man’s injustice to (wo)ma(or y!)n. And yet, heavens! that ain’t happening.

But that ain’t happening, and this will fix “itself” in a few years.

(Trust me on this. The one entrenched big-school liberal arts faculty I know well is changing its face with each new hire, abandoning the orthodox insurgent marxism of the 60s and 70s for a softer kind of wimpy leftism (as described above) with no backbone to it whatsoever. The Marxists staged a “revolution” in the 70s in the academy, and they are now moribund at best and laughingstocks at worst. In twenty years, all the Assistants and Associates will be trending right, I promise.)

Johno gets the Calvin Coolidge award for recommending effective non-action. My original intent when I read the article was not to write a “sky is falling” post. Things generally swing back and forth, but this swing has been bigger than others, and - this is the important thing - accompanied by constant claims that the swing never happened, and that all those Chairman Mao quoting postmodernists were really just middle of the road moderates. That someone had to commission a no-doubt costly study to demonstrate what any booze-drenched college freshman could blearily see in seconds is the real story. Which is what I was thinking when I saw the article, but lost track of as I wrote the post.