Don Singleton

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Go Get 'em Tom

Tim Chapman wrote in Townhall When Oklahomans elected Dr. Tom Coburn to the United States Senate they knew that they were sending a man to Washington who would not dance the D.C. two-step. But Beltway types have underestimated the determination of this man not to go along to get along. Very soon, that will change. According to Senate aides, Dr. Coburn has notified his colleagues that he intends to challenge every earmark—or pork project—on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Coburn, who has been a champion in the fight against wasteful federal spending, believes that the congressional earmarking process is the genesis of the current Abramoff-related lobbying scandals.

Fantastic. I would be happy if any Senator was doing this, but I am particularly happy it is an Oklahoma senator, since I now live in Oklahoma.

Coburn’s threat will dramatically slow the appropriations process because he will demand many more votes and more debate than normal on all spending bills. The added debate will allow senators to learn the merits (or lack thereof) of each earmark and affirm or reject.

Wonderful.

According to one GOP Senate aide, many of the old-bull appropriators are not taking the threat seriously and are confident in their ability to apply pressure tactics and parliamentary maneuvers in order to ensure business as usual on spending bills. But that aide points out Coburn’s commitment, “It will take a lot of votes on one or two appropriations bills before the appropriators figure out that [Coburn] means business.”

Betsy blogged If his efforts gain traction, it could be a fun sight to watch the pretzels that Senators will twist themselves into when they have to explain why their appropriations for some special museum or project for their district needs to be funded by the federal government.

Roe v Wade Joke Page

Greg Gutfeld presented a Roe v Wade Joke Page in The Huffington Post. To be fair to the left wing wingnuts, many of the comments did not find the jokes funny, but I believe that many of the attempts at humor showed something important about the liberal mindset:

A fetus wakes up one morning only to realize he's in the process of being aborted. The fetus looks at the doctor and asks, "What the hell are you doing?" The doctor turns to the patient and says, "Don't worry, not all of them are this stupid."

We all know that the fetus can feel pain, but here we have a liberal suggesting that they can even speak, and yet they find it funny that it is being aborted.

A man finds a fetus on a park bench, crying, and asks "What's the matter?" The fetus responds, "I just got aborted!" "That's terrible," says the man, "but it could be worse. If you were born you'd probably end up fighting a war you don't support in Iraq."

The Left is so preocupied with their hatred for the war on Iraq they have to interject it even in their humor about abortion.

Girl:did i ever tell you about the worst abortion i ever had?
Man: no.
Girl: It was great!

The worst abortion she ever had was great??? This is absolutely evil.

How is planned parenthood like a cattle drive?
They head em up and move em out!

The Left admits that Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with Planning, but just running an abortion mill, and somehow that is funny?

After a couple has sex, the woman turns to the man and says, "If i get pregnant, what should we call the baby?" "A fetus!" he bellows before erratically speeding off to his home in Hyannisport, Mass.

As I understand it the Left thinks that the woman has the right to choose, but here we have a woman correctly referring to it as a baby, and it is a man from the liberal state of Massachusetts calling it a fetus. And they find this funny?

Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria

New York Sun reported The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

I wonder what the Democrats, who keep saying Bush lied about the WMDs, will think about this.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun. "There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."

Absolutely right.

Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."

White House Dismissed '02 Surveillance Proposal

WaPo reported

The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard.
That is reasonable. The NSA should get enough evidence by listening in to calls from Al Qaeda outside the US to their cell members here in the US that the FBI can then get a warrent under the current FISA law.
The proposed legislation by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) would have allowed the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for non-U.S. citizens if they had a "reasonable suspicion" they were connected to terrorism -- a lower standard than the "probable cause" requirement in the statute that governs the warrants.

We certainly want the NSA to have the ability to listen in on International phone calls, where a known or suspected Al Qaeda is on one end of the call, but before the FBI starts listening in on domestic calls we want them to get a FISA warrent.

Hamas Win Unsettles Peace Process

Yahoo! News reports Hamas won a huge majority in parliamentary elections as Palestinian voters rejected the longtime rule of the Fatah Party, throwing the future of Mideast peacemaking into question, officials from both major parties said Thursday.

The Palestenian's have replaced a corrupt government that wants to destroy Israel slowly with one that offers services, but which wants to destroy Israel right away. It will be interesting to see what sort of a government they form. Ideally it would be a government that offers services but is willing to negotiate with the Israelis. But I am not holding my breath.

Palestinian leaders huddled to determine what role the Islamic militant group will play in governing the territories. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will ask Hamas to form the next government, with his defeated Fatah Party weighing whether to form a partnership or serve in the opposition. A Hamas government, without Fatah as a moderating force, would greatly complicate Abbas' efforts to restart peace talks.

Peace talks require someone to talk to, and if Hamas is on one side of the table, I don't expect Israel to be on the other side.

The Islamic militants, who carried out dozens of suicide bombings and seek Israel's destruction, have said they oppose peace talks and will not disarm. Israel and the United States refuse to deal with Hamas.

There goes the Road Map

CQ blogged It's not like the Palestinians gave themselves much in the way of choice for their first Parliamentary elections in ten years, but in a surprise, the hardline Hamas terrorists took a bigger slice of the vote from the more moderate terrorists of Fatah in today's vote. Exit polling shows that Hamas will likely trail Fatah by a handful of seats in the new assembly, forcing the new government into the uncomfortable position of adding Hamas to its cabinet when most peacebrokers consider them part of the problem:.... Perhaps this election will finally convince the United States, if not Europe and Russia, of the folly of continued efforts on "road maps" and the like. Gaza showed that Fatah cannot govern a state, and the West Bank just elected bloodthirsty terrorists almost to a Parliamentary majority. These people want war. They will not settle for half the land when they believe a war will bring them all of it. In the end, it may be better for the world to let the two sides fight their war in order to make them both sick enough of the consequences to start selecting leaders that want peace and plan for it. If all the Palestinians understand is death and martyrdom, then let them have their fill of both.

GOP Vixen blogged Oh joy. Brings new meaning to the phrase terrorist state: It's not just that the state sponsors terrorism, but the parliament has terrorists!

Stop the ACLU blogged Kofi Annan congratulated the Palestinian people for electing a terrorist organization to represent the will of its people? I wonder if the Palestinian State he speaks of resembles the map at the U.N. that pre-dates the formation of Israel as a state. This is definitely a giant step backwards in the peace process in the Middle East, not that there was any real progress in that area anyway…but still.

Sister Toldjah blogged The only people this election is good news for are the pro-terrorism-against-Israel Palestinians who voted Hamas into the government in the first place, and folks like Jimmy Carter - who seems to be mystified as to why Hamas would even be labelled a terrorist organization.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Diane Feinstein is out of touch with reality

Betsy's Page blogged

Diane Feinstein really needs to review her history. This is what she said about why Alito's nomination differed from Breyer and Ginsburg. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said things are different from when the Senate considered Breyer and Ginsburg, who were confirmed 87-9 and 96-3 respectively. "There was not the polarization within America that is there today, and not the defined move to take this court in a singular direction," she said.

Gimme a break! As if Clinton wasn't trying to move the court in "a singular direction." Of course he was, but Feinstein just liked that direction so she didn't mind.

A Democrat does not notice something that supports the direction she thinks it should go, or news reports that support that direction, because they think they are always right. But they get very upset when things go in a Conservative direction, or when news reports give the Conservative side.

And tell me that America wasn't polarized during the Clinton presidency. Does she have a total blank about the those years? And is her argument that, if the country is polarized politicially, the president can't nominate someone of his or her own ideology? Would she make those same arguments if Hillary were president? She better watch out. It's quite possible that a Democrat could be elected president and face a Senate that still has a majority of Republicans. Does she expect the GOP to suddenly become saints and roll over for the Democrats after their display on the Alito nomination?

There is not a snowball's chance in hell of that. Even if the Rebublicans lose their majority position, they have now learned how the Democrats want to play, and the Dems are going to be very upset when they see what they did, done to them.

More disappointing things have happened with the GOP, but she shouldn't count on it. If the Democrats were smart, they'd acknowledge that Alito's confirmation is inevitable and have fifteen to twenty Democrats vote for him, just so they can have that talking point if a Democrat wins in 2008. But casting strict party-line votes (with a handfull of exceptions) will create a precedent that could very well come back to bite them.

Not could, but WILL

Sowell usually makes sense

Betsy's Page blogged:

Thomas Sowell is back arguing that we should pay legislators in Congress millions of dollars so that they wouldn't be tempted to take bribes.
If we paid every member of Congress $10 million a year, that would not increase the federal budget by one percent. Chances are that it would reduce the federal budget considerably, when members of the Senate or the House of Representatives no longer needed campaign contributions or the personal favors of special interest groups and their lobbyists.
What makes you think that $10 million is enough. People always want more money, in fact the more they have, the more they will want.
One term in the Senate would bring in $60 million, which most people could live on for life, without being beholden to anybody and without having to seek a job afterwards for special interests, much less having to sell their soul to continue a political career.
The could live on it, but will they? You would have to couple this with an absolute requirement that they not get a job having anything to do with politics, lobbying, or anything else. And you would have to impose absolute term limits. And even then, the demand for such a highly paid job is going to be so great that people will get beholden to special interests just to get the job.
Money is not the only thing that corrupts. Power also corrupts and some people go into politics for power. Nothing can be done about such people -- except force them to compete with other people, drawn from a far larger pool, including top people in highly paid professions who today can seldom afford to serve in Congress at the expense of their family's standard of living and financial security.
Gosh, unless such an idea was paired with a term limits amendment, think of how cutthroat the fights would be to maintain a seat would be. If our legislators were getting paid that kind of money they'd do anything to get the job and stay in. It wouldn't be pretty.

Firefox has built in blogging tool

TechBlog reports that Firefox now has a built in blogging tool:

Performancing is a blogging editor built as an extension to Firefox. It works in a split screen, with the page you're blogging at the top and the editor at the bottom. It also makes it easy to insert Technorati tags (which I've done below, for the first time in TechBlog) and work with del.icio.us bookmarks. It works with the most popular blogging programs, including Movable Type, WordPad, WordPress and Drupal.

This was posted using that new tool

Men in Mexican Army Uniforms in Border Standoff

FOXNews reports Men in Mexican military-style uniforms

Why be so "politically correct" and not say Mexican Military

crossed the Rio Grande into the United States on a marijuana-smuggling foray, leading to an armed confrontation with Texas law officers, authorities said Tuesday.

This is another reason why we need to station our military on the borders.

No shots were fired. The men retreated and escaped back across the border with much of the pot, though they abandoned more than a half-ton of marijuana as they fled and set fire to one of their vehicles, authorities said. The Mexican government denied its military was involved.

Of course they deny it; they don't want war with the US. But their police and their military are both corrupt, and are being paid by the narco-trafficers.

The confrontation took place Monday and involved three Texas sheriff's deputies, at least two Texas state troopers and at least 10 heavily armed men from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, said Rick Glancey of the Texas Border Sheriffs' Coalition.

Google Agrees to Censor Results in China

Breitbart reports Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market.

Interesting. They refuse to provide information to help fight child pornography, but they agree to help the Chinese government suppress their citizens, in return for greater access to China.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," on Wednesday. A Chinese-language version of Google's search engine has previously been available through the company's dot-com address in the United States. By creating a unique address for China, Google hopes to make its search engine more widely available and easier to use in the world's most populous country. Because of government barriers set up to suppress information, Google's China users previously have been blocked from using the search engine or encountered lengthy delays in response time. The service troubles have frustrated many Chinese users, hobbling Google's efforts to expand its market share in a country that expected to emerge as an Internet gold mine over the next decade.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Amending FISA

The Washington Monthly reported Here's another point related to General Hayden's admission today that the NSA's domestic spying program isn't some kind of dazzling high tech black op, but merely garden variety wiretapping that was done outside normal FISA channels because NSA couldn't meet the "probable cause" standard normally needed to get a warrant issued.

Clinton had several opportunities to get Osama but he passed them up because he did not have the necessary "probably cause" to take him to court. Probable Cause is reasonable when we are talking about what people are doing in this country to other people in this country, but when it comes to terrorists overseas talking to their cells in this country, probable cause should not be required. Even "reasonable cause" is too strict. I think they should go with "possible suspicion" or something like that.

Administration apologists have argued that the White House couldn't seek congressional approval for this program because it utilized super advanced technology that we couldn't risk exposing to al-Qaeda. Even in secret session, they've suggested, Congress is a sieve and the bad guys would have found out what we were up to.

There are some secret aspects to identifying what numbers to track that we don't want out.

But now we know that's not true. This was just ordinary call monitoring, according to General Hayden, and the only problem was that both FISA and the attorney general required a standard of evidence they couldn't meet before issuing a warrant. In other words, the only change necessary to make this program legal was an amendment to FISA modifying the circumstances necessary to issue certain kinds of warrants. This would have tipped off terrorists to nothing. So why didn't they ask Congress for that change?

They asked about that, and were told it probably would not go through, so they found another way.

It certainly would have passed easily. The Patriot Act passed 99-1, after all. Hell, based on what I know about the program, I probably would have voted to approve it as long as it had some reasonable boundaries.

Then encourage the Dems to show how strong they are on security and let them propose an ammendment legalizing what is being done.

Rove's Early Warning

E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote in WaPo Perhaps it's an aspect of compassionate conservatism. Or maybe it's just a taunt and a dare. Well in advance of Election Day, Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, has a habit of laying out his party's main themes, talking points and strategies. True Rove junkies (admirers and adversaries alike) always figure he's holding back on something and wonder what formula the mad scientist is cooking up in his political lab. But there is a beguiling openness about Rove's divisive and ideological approach to elections. You wonder why Democrats have never been able to take full advantage of their early look at the Rove game plan.

Because they are so filled with hate that it clouds their judgement.

That's especially puzzling because, since Sept. 11, 2001, the plan has focused on one variation or another of the same theme: Republicans are tough on our enemies, Democrats are not. If you don't want to get blown up, vote Republican.

That's about it.

Thus Rove's speech to the Republican National Committee last Friday, which conveniently said nothing about that pesky leak investigation. Rove noted that we face "a ruthless enemy" and "need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in."

And we certainly don't need someone who is proud of voting for something before voting against it, and thinking that will show how strong he is.

"President Bush and the Republican Party do," Rove informed us. "Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats." Rove went on: "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview, and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong." Oh, no, those Dems aren't unpatriotic, just security idiots.

I think some of them are unpatriotic, but they certainly are idiots who want to pull out of Iraq and let it turn into a failed state just like Afganistan, but this time one much easier to get in and out of.

Here's why the same approach keeps working. First, note that phrase, "the same cannot be said for many Democrats." This is Rove's wedge through the Democratic Party. Rove has always counted on Bush's capacity to intimidate some Democrats into breaking with their party and saying something like: "Oh, no, I'm not like those weak Democrats over there. I'm a tough Democrat." The Republicans use such Democrats to bash the rest of the party.

So you admit that the rest are weak.

Moreover, these early Rove speeches turn Democratic strategists into defeatists. The typical Democratic consultant says: "Hey, national security is a Republican issue. We shouldn't engage on that. We should change the subject." In the 2002 elections, the surefire Democratic winners were a prescription drug benefit under Medicare (an issue Bush tried to steal),

He did steal it. The result is a mess, but he did steal it.

a patients' bill of rights, the economy and education. Those issues sure worked wonders, didn't they?

By not engaging the national security debate, Democrats cede to Rove the power to frame it. Consider that clever line about Democrats having a pre-Sept. 11 view of the world. The typical Democratic response would be defensive: "No, no, of course 9/11 changed the world." More specifically, there's a lot of private talk among Democrats that the party should let go of the issue of warrantless spying on Americans because the polls show that a majority values security and safety.

They certainly should. On 9/11 people were saying why didn't we connect the dots. Will now they are connecting the dots, and the public wants that to continue.

What Democrats should have learned is that they cannot evade the security debate. They must challenge the terms under which Rove and Bush would conduct it. Imagine, for example, directly taking on that line about Sept. 11. Does having a "post-9/11 worldview" mean allowing Bush to do absolutely anything he wants, any time he wants, without having to answer to the courts, Congress or the public? Most Americans -- including a lot of libertarian-leaning Republicans -- reject such an anti-constitutional view of presidential power. If Democrats aren't willing to take on this issue, what's the point of being an opposition party?

They can't pretend to be strong on defense when they are really so weak on defense.

Democrats want to fight this election on the issue of Republican corruption. But corruption is about the abuse of power. If smart political consultants can't figure out how to link the petty misuses of power with its larger abuses, they are not earning their big paychecks.

And, yes, the core questions must be asked: Are we really safer now than we were five years ago?

Yes

Has the Iraq war, as organized and prosecuted by the administration, made us stronger or weaker?

Stronger.

Do we feel more secure knowing the heck of a job our government did during Hurricane Katrina?

We did just fine except in a state with a Democratic Governor and a Democratic Mayor who both screwed up. And we did even better with Rita.

Do we have any confidence that the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies will clean up their act if Washington remains under the sway of one-party government?

A lot better than if the weak on defense Dems get control.

Imagine one Super Bowl team tipping the other to a large part of its offensive strategy. Smart coaches would plot and plan and scheme. You wonder what Democrats will do with the 10-month lead time Rove has kindly offered them.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Why?

Cat at EIMC blogged Cindy Sheehan asked President Bush, “Why did my son have to die in Iraq?”

Another mother asked Harry Truman, “Why did my son have to die in Korea?”

Another mother asked Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Why did my son have to die at Iwo Jima?”

Another mother asked Woodrow Wilson, “Why did my son have to die on the battlefield of France?”

Yet another mother asked Abraham Lincoln, “Why did my son have to die at Gettysburg?”

And yet another mother asked George Washington, “Why did my son have to die near Valley Forge?”

Then long, long ago, a mother asked, “Heavenly Father, why did my son have to die on a cross outside Jerusalem?”

The answers to all these questions are similar:

“That others may have life and dwell in peace, happiness and freedom.”

I could not have said it any better.

The President's End Run

WaPo editorialized The most detailed legal justification to date for the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance has emerged from the Bush administration, but the 42-page version isn't any more convincing than its shorter predecessors. In some ways -- particularly in its broad conception of presidential power in wartime -- it is more disturbing.

It may not be convincing to Left Wing Newspapers like WaPo and NYT, but the American People seem to understand that we must "connect the dots" and that Al Qaeda cells do not have the right to communicate privately to their bosses overseas, even if they are in this country.

As it had implied previously but never flatly stated, the administration asserted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would be unconstitutional if it were read to prevent the president from engaging in the kind of warrantless surveillance that the administration has been conducting.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and when a country is at war, it has the right to try to find out what the enemy is planning, before they attack.

This interpretation, with its expansive view of the commander in chief's powers, would call into question Congress's ability to prevent the administration from engaging in torture or cruel and inhuman treatment or to establish rules for detainees and military tribunals -- exactly the areas in which we have been encouraging Congress to step up to the plate.

That is because you are more concerned with restoring the Democrats to power than to worry about protecting the United States.

The administration, appropriately, would prefer to avoid the constitutional argument. Instead, it contends first that FISA's warrant requirements were superseded by the post-Sept. 11 congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which allows the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent "any future acts of international terrorism against the United States."

And you don't want to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States?????

The administration cites this sweeping language and the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld , in which a plurality found that the AUMF allowed the president to detain U.S. citizens captured on the battlefield as enemy combatants. The administration says that reasoning applies equally to "all traditional and accepted incidents of force . . . including warrantless electronic surveillance to intercept enemy communications both at home and abroad."

And you don't want the communications intercepted???

A critical difference between detention and surveillance, however, is that Congress has already passed a law outlining detailed requirements for domestic surveillance -- even during wartime; FISA specifically provides a 15-day grace period for warrantless surveillance in time of war. The vague wording of the AUMF can't reasonably be read to implicitly trump FISA.

FISA is one way to do it. Getting an ordinary warrent is another. And using wartime powers is yet another.

The administration goes on to say that if the AUMF doesn't provide such approval, and if FISA is interpreted to prohibit such wiretapping outside its procedures (the law says it is to be the "exclusive means" for authorizing foreign intelligence surveillance), the statute would be unconstitutional.

It certainly would not be in the country's best interest.

President Bush, the paper says, "determined that the speed and agility required to carry out the NSA activities successfully could not have been achieved under FISA." Because those activities "are necessary to the defense of the United States from a subsequent terrorist attack, FISA would impermissibly interfere with the President's most solemn constitutional obligation -- to defend the United States against foreign attack."

Before and since the 1978 passage of FISA, presidents have asserted that they also possess the inherent constitutional authority to authorize warrantless searches. Yet there is a major difference between claiming such inherent presidential power and stretching it -- too far in our view -- to conclude that, when Congress has spoken on an issue, the president is free to ignore that legislative action.

So you are saying it is ok for them to claim a power, they just should not use that power?

Especially without knowing the parameters of the surveillance, we hesitate to second-guess the president's argument that FISA's limits are unduly constraining. The surveillance may be critical for national security, and a law written in a different technological age may well need to be refurbished. But the proper way to handle that -- which the administration rejected -- would have been to seek changes in the law, not to do a stealthy end run around the legislative process. In such an amorphous, long-running conflict as the war against terrorism, it's critical to ensure that limits are in place to prevent the executive branch from overreaching.

And to be sure to give the terrorists a fair chance to strike again.

Tagged by Danny Carlton

Danny Carlton blogged I've ignored the last two times I was taged, but since I've been too busy to blog today I'll respond.

I think at least one of those tags that he ignored came from me, but I will not ignore his.

Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life:

Computer Consultant, Systems Programmer, Computer Operator, delivering supplies to Tug Boats

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have:
Down Periscope, The Passion of The Christ, Harry Potter, and Star Wars
Four Places I Have Lived:
Tulsa, OK; Dallas, TX; Pasadena, TX; Amarillo, TX
Four TV Shows I Love To Watch:
CIS, CIS Miami, Mythbusters, Touched by an Angel (no longer on)
Four Places I Have Been On Vacation:
I am not sure what a vacation is, but four places I have been to overseas would be London, Amsterdam, Rome, and Israel.
Four Websites I Visit Daily:
Michelle Malkin, Anchoress, Hooah Wife, and EIMC
Four Favorite Foods:
Roast Beef, Ham, Barbecue, Fried Chicken
Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
Since I am homebound, just about anyplace other than my home.
Four People I Am Tagging With This Meme:
Anchoress, Hooah Wife, Deb @ EIMC, Cat @ EIMC

Most & Least Desired 2008 Republican Nominee

Right Wing News reports a survey of 58 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to send us a ranked list 1-5 of the candidates that they would most like to take the Republican nomination for President in 2008 and the 1-5 candidates they'd least like to see as the Republican nominee in 2008.

Most Desired

Condoleeza Rice I would love to see her, but has said she is definitely not running
Rudy Giuliani I agree, but can a pro life candidate get nominated
George Allen He is a governor, and a governor is more likely to know how to run the country than a Congress Critter
Newt Gingrich I like his ideas, but doubt his ethical problems would let him get the nomination
Dick Cheney who has made it clear he is not running

Least Desired

John McCain
Chuck Hagel
Bill Frist
George Pataki
Jeb Bush

Judge Alito's Radical Views

NYT reported If Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings lacked drama, apart from his wife's bizarrely over-covered crying jag,

The NYT objects to its coverage because it was one of the things that pointed out how much the Dems abused Alito.

it is because they confirmed the obvious. Judge Alito is exactly the kind of legal thinker President Bush wants on the Supreme Court.

That is why Bush nominated him

He has a radically broad view of the president's power, and a radically narrow view of Congress's power.

Apparently the NYT considers any idea contrary to its own is radical. However I believe that they NYT is the one with radical views.

He has long argued that the Constitution does not protect abortion rights.

It doesn't. It was a handful of activist judges that created that right, and then proected that right.

He wants to reduce the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans, and has a history of tilting the scales of justice against the little guy.

As senators prepare to vote on the nomination, they should ask themselves only one question: will replacing Sandra Day O'Connor with Judge Alito be a step forward for the nation, or a step backward?

If Ruth Bader Ginsburg could replace Byron White (Roe's leading dissenter), why can't Alito replace O'Conner.

Instead of Justice O'Connor's pragmatic centrism, which has kept American law on a steady and well-respected path, Judge Alito is likely to bring a movement conservative's approach to his role and to the Constitution.

Precisely the reason that George Bush was elected.

Judge Alito may be a fine man, but he is not the kind of justice the country needs right now.

He is exactly what we need.

Senators from both parties should oppose his nomination.

It is likely that Judge Alito was chosen for his extreme views on presidential power. The Supreme Court, with Justice O'Connor's support, has played a key role in standing up to the Bush administration's radical view of its power, notably that it can hold, indefinitely and without trial, anyone the president declares an "unlawful enemy combatant."

Judge Alito would no doubt try to change the court's approach. He has supported the fringe "unitary executive" theory,

I don't recall him ever refering to such a theory during his confirmation hearings, but it is true that we do have just a single president, i.e. the Presidency is not a committee

which would give the president greater power to detain Americans and would throw off the checks and balances built into the Constitution. He has also put forth the outlandish idea that if the president makes a statement when he signs a bill into law, a court interpreting the law should give his intent the same weight it gives to Congress's intent in writing and approving the law.

It seems reasonable to me. The primary thing is what the law actually says, and Alito said that is what he would follow, but if a judge is going to also look at congressional intent it seems reasonable to also look at executive intent, since both branches are involved in making a law.

Judge Alito would also work to reduce Congress's power in other ways. In a troubling dissent, he argued that Congress exceeded its authority when it passed a law banning machine guns, and as a government lawyer he insisted Congress did not have the power to protect car buyers from falsified odometers.

Congress frequently exceeds its power.

CQ blogged Like the rest of those who have come out in opposition to his confirmation, the only basis for their rejection is ideological, transforming the process into an election rather than an appointment. Either one has to believe that Supreme Court justices have to be vetted for ideology or that the process should be non-political. In both cases, the New York Times gets it wrong. If ideology is to remain outside of the process, then the only question for Judge Alito's confirmation is whether he has the competence to work on the Supreme Court. The ABA found him to have the highest degree of competence -- not the most conservative of groups either, one should remember -- as well as the highest degree of ethical practice. He has spent 15 years of fine public service on the federal appeals bench and almost a decade of work before that as a federal prosecutor, serving the people of the United States and enforcing the law. Outside of ideology, Judge Alito has the most experience in appellate law for a nominee in 70 years.

If ideology is to be considered, then the New York Times has it even more wrong. It asks whether a conservative should replace a centrist on the court. If ideology has suddenly become a qualifier, then one has to look at who nominates the candidate. The President won election twice, and at least during the last election, Supreme Court nominations clearly were a major issue. He has the mandate of the election to pick the ideological bent of the replacements for any opening on the Court; there is no quota system for leftists, centrists, and conservatives, nor have Presidents been particularly apt at guessing which categories their nominees would fill in the long run anyway. Bush's two elections show that the people want a more conservative court -- so as long as the Times considers ideology a basis for selection, then a conservative judge should be the most acceptable as a manifestation of the demand of the people.

OTB blogged The "unitary executive" theory merely holds that the President is the ultimate decision-maker in the executive branch, which is not only not "radical" it is the view of the Framers of the Constitution.

Hugh Hewitt blogged The trouble is that the paper's certainty about Alito's vote on abortion rights and its characterization of the judge's alleged consistent bias are both howlers and easily recognized as such. Hysterical claims of certainty and assertions of absurd lies don't persuade. They repel. Does the editorial board ever wonder why it has no influence? Zero?

Patterico blogged Note to the editors of the New York Times: If you are trying to persuade Sen. Lincoln Chafee to vote your way on this nominee, your argument would be more convincing if you at least try to spell the Senator’s name right. Hint: it’s “Chafee” — with only one “f.”

Ed Whelan blogged ’ll limit myself to the NYT’s core claim – that Judge Alito “has a radically broad view of the president’s power.” One problem with this claim is that the editorial offers not a shred of credible evidence to support it. The editorial charges that Alito “has supported the fringe ‘unitary executive’ theory, which would give the president greater power to detain Americans and would throw off the checks and balances built into the Constitution.” But the “unitary executive” theory merely takes seriously what Article II of the Constitution states: that the “executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” As Judge Alito testified repeatedly, it does not reach the separate question of the scope of that executive power. Indeed, the editorial’s charge that the theory “would give the president greater power to detain Americans” is contradicted by the fact (seemingly never acknowledged by those trying to use the “unitary executive” as a stick to beat Alito with) that Justice Scalia, a proponent of the unitary executive, took a much more restrictive view of executive power than Justice O’Connor did in the Hamdi case.

Rick Moran blogged Quick! Someone tell the editors at the New York Times that we had an election more than a year ago and that a liberal didn’t win nor did a “centrist.” A conservative won the Presidential election of 2004, one who promised to appoint conservative judges if he were re-elected. He didn’t promise to appoint centrists or women or minorities or anyone the New York Times could remotely approve. President Bush ran on a platform and repeated constantly that if given the opportunity, he would appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court.

This is what sticks in the craw of the Times’ editors. The people of the United States elected George Bush because he is a conservative. And the Times thinks that overarching fact should not matter. It bespeaks a contempt for the very concept of democracy that more and more, the editors of the New York Times are having a hard time in hiding.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

College literacy

MSNBC reported Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.

But I bet they can quote all of the talking points of the Democratic Party.

Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

With the price of higher education today, why send kids that don't seem to be learning anything.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees, or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school. The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents, and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.... Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills, meaning they could perform moderately challenging tasks. Examples include identifying a location on a map, calculating the cost of ordering office supplies or consulting a reference guide to figure out which foods contain a particular vitamin.

Months to form Iraqi Government

Iraq the Model blogged Reactions to the results announced yesterday varied from one party to another but in general it seems that the results were welcomed outside Iraq more than inside as politicians here re still have the task of looking for a way to form a government that convinces all concerned parties.

The hard work.

The positive thing about those reactions is that objections weren’t as harsh as they were when the preliminary results surfaced. Now, those with objections confirmed that they want to push the political process forward; on al-Hurra, a spokesman of Maram said today that "although we have reservations on the results, we intend to go on with the political process" and this will most likely be enough to cast away the ghost of a bloody conflict we were afraid of.

All are convinced now that solutions lie within politics and negotiations but what concerns us now is that some parties will perhaps keep a high ceiling for their demands. It is true that no single bloc can form a government without forming a coalition with other bloc(s) but the number of seats each bloc got will remain the factor that decides the form of and terms of cooperation despite the calls for forming a government of national unity that overlooks election results and focuses more on dealing with the current challenges and dangers.

What he is talking about is that while the Shi'ites did not get enough to form a government, they are close enough that they can partner with any of the other major groups, so while if they are smart they will try to make all of the other groups happy, they are not going to be forced to do anything against their interests.

Today the supreme judicial board decided to extend the term of the interim national Assembly and interim government for another 3 months after a request submitted by the presidency council, apparently to avoid facing constitutional vacuum.
This decision suggests that forming the government is expected to take quite a lot of time.

The UIA looks excited and seems to be rushing things more than other blocs; yesterday they said they’ve formed to committees to direct talks with the two other major blocs; the Kurdish and the Sunni. The UIA hope they can form the government before the end of February when the reconciliation conference will be due, maybe to avoid external influence from Arab countries-that back the Sunni parties and Allawi-on the process. However, I think the UIA will not make it and will have to come to the conference before the government is in place.

If they are smart they will form a government, probably with the Kurds.

The UIA is discussing many internal issues now, among which is the issue of nominating the PM as well as the need to reorganize their lines after facing objection on the policy of the UIA from the Fadheela and the Sadrists who said that it’s not the right time now to talk about federalism.

I expect the UIA to focus on renewing their coalition with the Kurdish parties but I doubt it will be as easy as it was last year for the changes that erupted on the Kurdish end, mainly the recent union of the two Kurdish administrations.

The other thing that may hurt with the Kurds is that this time they got fewer seats because votes from outside their region were not included, but they still have enough to team with the Shi'ites.

The UIA has put a condition-though they refuse to call it so- on the participation of the Sunni, that is “we want to form the government with the good elements in their bloc”. I believe this was a wrong choice of words because the Sunni too do not think that all UIA members are “good” and I think both parties should look at each other as a whole since all members in each individual bloc have come together to enter the election as one body after agreeing on a unified policy. This selectivity on the UIA’s part is in my opinion illogical and impractical.

States of Confusion

William Baude editorialized in NYT It's no longer just anti-abortion advocates who oppose Roe v. Wade. These days, Roe's traditional critics are joined by a surprising and increasing number of people who are pro-choice but willing - in fact, eager - to have the ruling overturned. In an October column titled "Support Choice, Not Roe," The Washington Post's Richard Cohen expressed his fatigue with "having to defend a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up."

I agree with him. It was a foolish decision, with logic twisted to achieve an end, which requires that all future judges must be chosen to try to protect or reverse that end.

Similarly, Benjamin Wittes in The Atlantic Monthly and Eleanor Clift in Newsweek have argued that abortion-rights supporters should welcome (if not necessarily hasten) the end of Roe. The emergence of this pro-choice anti-Roe movement seems fueled by a hope that if it were left to the states, and not the Supreme Court, to set abortion policy, the result would be a more secure and less acrimonious compromise.

I favor the matter be returned to the states. Some Blue States will probably permit it, but many Red States will forbid or strongly limit it. Population will increase in the Red States, increasing their representation in Congress, and we could see whether God would shower more blessings on the Red States that did not kill His newest creations.

But what would actually happen if Roe were overturned? It's unlikely that Congress would pass a comprehensive federal ban on or right to abortion.

That is why it was so bad for a handful of activist judges to "create" a law that Congress never would have passed (either for or against).

So in the absence of Roe, states would largely be free to regulate the issue as they saw fit. Some states would permit abortion on demand, while some would ban it; many would fall somewhere in between. A patchwork of state abortion regulations, however, will lead not to compromise, but chaos.

I am surprised that a second year law student at Yale would be so ignorant of the law that he would think that.

The common refrain in the anti-Roe pro-choice camp is that women in anti-abortion states will simply travel elsewhere to end their pregnancies. But it's unlikely that states with strict regulations on abortion would stand idle, and they will have many legal tools at their disposal. States could make it illegal to cross state lines in order to abort a fetus - a tactic Ireland tried in the early 1990's, until a court decision and subsequent constitutional amendment recognized a right to travel.

Ireland did not have a Commerce Clause to contend with.

While the Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to travel across state lines, it has also recognized exceptions.

The only ones I can think of apply to criminals, and they do not forbid travel, they merely say that traveling across state lines allows federal law to apply, but we just agreed that federal laws would not be made either for or against abortion.

If states can decree that life begins at conception, they might also be able to use child custody laws to curtail the movements of pregnant women. For example, many states are legally allowed to hold children in protective custody if there is reason to believe the parents will misbehave. Once Roe has been overturned, a state may be able to place unborn children into protective custody, forbidding their mothers to take them across state lines.

Extremely unlikely, and certain to be reversed by the court.

Furthermore, in recent decades, the Supreme Court has ruled that a state can regulate its citizens' activities while they are elsewhere and prosecute them for violations of state law upon their return. This so-called long-arm jurisdiction has been invoked to allow states to regulate Internet sites based beyond their borders, or to prosecute murders that followed interstate kidnappings. Anti-abortion states could forbid their residents to obtain or perform abortions, even while out of state. Would such measures be legal? The current law is unclear.

Only to a second year law student.

Abortion-rights states would undoubtedly respond in kind. For example, Rhode Island, where 63 percent of residents favor abortion rights, has rebuffed efforts at regulation in the past. Just as Utah could make it a crime for a resident to go to Rhode Island for an abortion, Rhode Island could forbid Utah's law-enforcement officials from interfering with her decision to get one. Similarly, if an anti-abortion state places a fetus in protective custody, an abortion-rights state might do the same for the woman. And so on.

Sheer paranoid foolishness.

Without Roe, the federal courts would be flooded with such disputes. Abortion cases, now further encumbered by issues of family rights and the powers of states to regulate trade across state lines, would once again end up before the Supreme Court. And though a doctrine called "conflict of laws" exists to settle legal disagreements between jurisdictions, this kind of interstate regulatory warfare has been mercifully rare in our nation's history. The precedents are muddy, the standards unclear, and so it is almost impossible to know how a future Supreme Court would resolve the matter.

Indeed, American democracy has rarely resolved moral battles of this scope at the state level. The most significant moral conflict ever devolved to the states, after all, was slavery. The problem of escaped slaves made it necessary to include a Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution, but it was impossible to contain the moral controversy within state borders. Disagreements over how to determine who was a fugitive slave, how to regulate slavery in the territories, and how to maintain the balance of power between South and North meant that slavery would inevitably become a federal issue. "A house divided" could not stand.

Overturning Roe and leaving the states to regulate abortion will not be the compromise that ends the debate. Rather, it will worsen it.

Did ANY of the things you worry about exist before Roe (when it was a state decision)? Or is the fact that Roe permitted the birth of a large Abortion Industry, where organizations like Planned Parenthood ceased to be what their names imply, and just became organizations to provide and promote abortions.

Pro-choice and pro-life states will not enjoy an easy and untroubled coexistence, as some would like to believe. Nor will overturning Roe get the federal government, or the federal courts, out of the business of abortion jurisprudence. Instead, state regulation will make a complex legal matter even more complicated, and the divisions over abortion that much wider. If Roe is reversed, the ensuing chaos will demand a federal resolution to the abortion battle - again.

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