tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88988809612869455692024-03-14T00:34:37.388-07:00A Different Washington: Archive 1998-2002Journal Entries from 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002Gerald G. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18272770512487580818noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8898880961286945569.post-39925056264863867642007-12-14T22:08:00.000-08:002007-12-26T13:35:04.793-08:001998<b><p align="justify">Dec 31, 1997</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The recent Republican outrage over Attorney General Reno's refusal to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate campaign funding should prompt us to reflect on certain fundamental issues raised by the alternative methods of examining alleged executive-branch sins: appointment of a special prosecutor, investigation by the Justice Department and hearings before Congress. A few preliminary thoughts:<br /></div><p align="justify">The least appropriate option for investigation of abuses by the administration, at least if the President or those near him are involved, is to leave it to the Justice Department. The current debate illustrates the problem: the A.G. may be on firm technical ground in refusing to appoint, especially to the extent that any charges would be dependent on the Pendleton Act, but the conflict of interest is obvious, material and insoluble. Nothing short of an indictment naming the President as a conspirator could satisfy skeptics -and not just Republicans- that all was done which should have been done. In the meantime, a Cabinet office has been forced into a position of hostility to the President it serves, the FBI is in opposition to the department of which it ostensibly is a part and its Director threatens to release a confidential internal memo to demonstrate that he sees the point. <p align="justify">However, the record to date of the other two procedures is not encouraging .<br /></p><p align="justify">Republicans have not always been fond of special prosecutors, which makes their current demand somewhat hypocritical. If the President were not a Democrat, they would be pointing out that the process has become perverted. After spending God knows how much, the Espey prosecutor gained an indictment charging him with receiving amounts roughly at the level of a cop taking a free donut, and even part of that bill has been dismissed. The Cisneros prosecution, although it involves a serious collateral issue, at its base even is even more trivial. Whitewater is a questionable subject for a special prosecutor because it involves pre-election events; in addition, to date it has been an expensive failure. The White House has kept it alive by evasion,<br />obfuscation and, to be kind, lack of candor in responding to requests for information, but that doesn't retroactively justify it. Other, post-inaugural, issues are more important, including the travel office firings and the delivery of FBI files to the White House, both of which suggest abuse of power. However, Mr. Starr seems to be no nearer to charging anyone than he or his predecessor were years ago. </p><p align="justify">The third approach, investigation by Congress, ought to present a viable option. Some of the issues are primarily political, such as the campaign funding mess. Even those which are more legal in nature may be appropriate subjects for Congressional inquiry; these scandals all involve some element of overreaching by the administration, and Congressional action is the best check on that. However, few recent hearings have been constructive. When Congress and the President are of the same party, there isn't much incentive. Even when they are opposed, investigations often have been useless or worse, as exemplified by the current crop and Iran-Contra. As with the special prosecutor, one has to go back to Watergate to find much success. <p align="justify">All of the alternatives raise a troublesome question: how much interference, by way of subpoena or Congressional demand, should an administration be required to suffer? There have been times during this endless process when it would have been appropriate, at least in response to Congress, for the White House to have said, "enough!" Instead, it has done the worst thing possible, give in by inches. <p align="justify"><b>Jan 5</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Another investigative and prosecutorial institution deserves mention. Although the media can't be considered as a formal alternative, they have some claim to equal status based on the Watergate experience. The media are close to Congress in approach: often unreasonably adversary, interested in headlines and short-term results rather than depth, and generally political in outlook. Republicans ought to love reporters, since they are, in effect, free-market, private sector prosecutors. Alas, they are not, on average, conservative enough. <p align="justify">An exception is William Safire, a one-man self-appointed justice department. Recently, in the course of explaining that he had not sold out by behaving in a civilized fashion upon encountering one of his targets at a cocktail party, he reassured us that he and his administration adversaries are not playing games. <blockquote><p align="justify">...We are participants in a protracted struggle to get at the truth about what some reporters see as a power-abusive conspiracy to violate the election laws or what some officials call protection of the presumption of innocence and the efficacy of the Presidency.<br /></p><p align="justify">It serves our serious, opposing interests to remain engaged and aware of what the other is doing.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">This is little self-important but, given the void left by the official forms, it can be forgiven.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify"><b>Jan 12</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The State Supreme Court has stuck down the portion of the term-limits initiative enacted in 1992 which applies to State offices. I haven't tuned in to talk radio, so I don't know what the reaction of the pseudo-populist right might be. In the papers, editorial response has been favorable and news reports have revealed only muted grumbling about the Court's reasoning and its indifference to the will of the voters. Assuming the Court's reasoning to be sound, the latter complaint is beside the point, as the holding is not that the people may not enact such limitations, but that they must do so by constitutional amendment. <p align="justify">The Times contributed the joke of the day in two sections. The first was in a column by the editorial page editor on an entirely unrelated topic, the assembling of a citizens' advisory board. Apparently this is fashionable, so Ms. Cameron felt it necessary to point out that the Times took this step for substantive reasons: "We're not a trendy editorial page...." <p align="justify">Alongside was the house editorial supporting the Court's decision, installment three in the Times' opinion by trend on this issue. In 1991, Ms. Cameron was "willing to risk the loss of some able legislators for the sake of joining a national movement...." The publisher, also part of the editorial board, said the term-limits initiative "is going to pass; let's have this newspaper join the mainstream in sending a message...." In 1992, the Times reversed course in part because "[t]he national term- limits movement...is losing steam." Its present conclusion at least is the same as the last, but its position still is one of testing the wind: <blockquote><p align="justify">...Term limits are yesterday's solution to yesterday's problem. Term limits fever peaked in 1992, when voters, angry at aloof pols who seemed to own their posts, approved the initiative....<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify">...The best course now for [House Speaker] Ballard and other term-limit enthusiasts is to get on with their lives and stop beating this tired old drum.<br /></p></blockquote><p align="justify"><b>Jan 13</b><br /></p><p align="justify"><i>[In this note, and in other local references, "Journal" refers to The Eastside Journal, a suburban daily paper.]</i> <p align="justify">Bill Clinton really is a big spender, an old fashioned big-government liberal. Mona Charen revealed that in a column in today's Journal. The particulars: Clinton's proposals to extend Medicare to those under 65, restore eligibility for food stamps to legal aliens and fund child care. <p align="justify">Ms. Charen argues that it isn't prudent to consider expanding Medicare at a time when its fiscal health is suspect; that would be a valid point if the extension would increase the system's deficit, which she seems to assume. Whether that's true isn't clear from the little I've seen about it. She also complains that Clinton is rushing to spend a surplus which hasn't yet materialized, which assumes a subsidy. If that's the case, point made, but she omits mentioning the equally premature and irresponsible plans being discussed by Republicans. <p align="justify">Her final argument is that expanding Medicare would "inevitably eliminate all incentive for employers to provide insurance for these people." What employers? As she notes, the 55-to-62 eligibles would be "dislocated workers." Even as to the employed, the trend is toward less adequate medical benefits. The expansion may be beyond our present financial ability or for other reasons imprudent, but pretending that business will satisfy the need is naïve at best. <p align="justify">Providing food stamps to legal aliens is summarily dismissed as "retrograde." Need? Equity? Compassion? You jest. Let them find employers. <p align="justify">Ms. Charen's best shots are saved for child care. This is not merely retrograde but "insidious," exceeding the health care bill in "dangerousness." Subsidizing parents who use day care "is not a matter of need - it is a matter of policy." (Are the two necessarily unrelated?) There is no need because only <blockquote><p align="justify">a small number of families (usually single-parent) are forced by economic necessity to place their kids in day care. The rest choose it for other reasons. As the Wall Street Journal reports, families in which both parents work earn an average of $56,000 annually, while male-breadwinner families earn only an average of $32,000 per year.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">And her point is what? That a family, say one with several children, can live comfortably on $32,000, can pay the mortgage, the car loan, the orthodontist and the pediatrician? (Drop the last two; I forgot that everyone has generous employer-financed health care). What of those below her supposed average? Where does she get the notion that only a "small number" of families, including those with a single (usually female) parent, need child care? I'd bet that she wants everyone off welfare; how is that accomplished without child care? Maybe we can't afford this either, or maybe the test for eligibility should be tough. However, pretending that most child care is a yuppie abuse doesn't contribute much to useful debate.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify">Her main objection is an example of the otherworldly quality of conservative social policy. <blockquote><p align="justify">Besides, "quality" child care is an illusion and <i>will always be.</i> Paid caretakers will never equal the lavish love of parents, especially mothers. The wholesale contracting out of child-rearing that the Clintons would encourage is exactly the reverse of what the country needs....</p></blockquote><div align="justify">All that may be so. It would be wonderful if every mother had the option of staying at home with the kids. However, Ms. Charen merely suggests that we ignore economic reality and tell working people of limited means to suck it up, along with the near-elderly and the aliens.<br /><br /><br /></div><p align="justify"><b>Jan 14</b><br /></p><p align="justify">What ever happened to the old Republicans? You remember, those dour types who thought that government borrowing was a sin. When they were in top form, they'd remind us that a family had to balance its budget and live within its means, and so should government. If the analogy still holds, modern Republicans must be up to their eyes in credit card balances. <p align="justify">The Governor has proposed that, as the state's highways are in need of work, we should raise the gas tax to pay for the necessary work. Yes, the gas tax is regressive, but that's the only kind of taxes we have so it's the gas tax or some other equally unattractive levy, or no repairs. Well, no; we can borrow. Reagan still rules. <p align="justify">The Republican chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee has proposed that the State sell $2.4 billion in bonds and retire them by diverting part of the automobile excise tax revenue to service the bonds. But wait! Modern Republicans not only don't make you take medicine, they give you a lollipop: the Chairman would also lower the excise. New HOV lanes and a tax cut; are these new Republicans great, or what? <p align="justify"><b>Jan 15</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The irony in the Republican highways proposal doesn't end with deficit financing. Initiative 601, passed in 1963, limits State spending. It was warmly welcomed by all manner of Republicans, including the paranoid small-government types and the more traditional fiscal conservatives. No longer could liberals simply spend as they wished. The aforementioned Chairman of Ways and Means was quoted as describing 601 as "the third rail of state politics." Apparently the juice has been turned off, as he now proposes to amend 601. <p align="justify">This is brought about by the diversion of excise taxes he advocates. As the excise now pays for criminal justice programs, they would have to be placed under the general fund, which is subject to 601. Hence his plan to ask for an exception to 601 to cover the diversion. At least this exercise in silliness has revealed which of two conservative fetishes, spending limits or opposition to taxes, is more powerful. <p align="justify"><b>Jan 22</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Washington is atwitter; ABC news is bragging that it was there first. Has something important happened? Certainly by the moralistic-degenerate standards of contemporary American politics. <p align="justify">President Clinton is accused of having a fling with a young White House intern and of persuading her to deny it in an affidavit. The only possible significance of this to the public is the accusation of tampering with a witness, but the appeal is the sexual sleaze. <p align="justify">It is amazing that a country which has the sexual standards of Caliguala's Rome can be sufficiently moralistic about an affair between consenting adults that it can be considered plausible that a president would suborn perjury to hide one. <p align="justify">It is no less startling that an independent counsel appointed, presumably, to investigate major breaches of the public trust would consider it appropriate to use illegally obtained evidence, employ the lawbreaker as a spy and entrap the supposed paramour in statements which could lead to a charge of perjury against her, all to find something, anything, on which to base a charge against the President. In addition to the stale smell of desperation, this has the aroma of the sewer. <p align="justify">Support for the President came from a surprising source. In his column today, William Safire said, with entire truth, "Nobody can accuse me of being soft on this President; only the other day a letter came suggesting: 'Get help on your Clinton problem.'" The same thought has occurred to me. Therefore, it was noteworthy to find this: <blockquote><p align="justify">...I think that he's lied about Whitewater, deceived us about Travelgate and Filegate, and deliberately violated campaign fund-raising laws to get re-elected - all abuses of power deserving scrutiny and prosecution.<br /></p><p align="justify">But to take the senseless risk of abusing the trust of a young girl down the hall? I just can't believe that.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">After noting that there are limits to the President's ability to remain effective and credible with this swirling around him, Safire said,<br /><br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">...It is not in the public interest for the Independent Counsel to procrastinate. If he cannot fairly file a criminal information with the House, he should clear the President with dispatch.<br /></p><p align="justify">...If Clinton is innocent of this, as I hope, we can press ahead with the long-term exposure of the stealing of an election. If he did seduce a kid and tamper with a witness, as I doubt, then he would resign as soon as public knowledge rendered him ineffective. <p align="justify">This democracy can take any jolt. Let's just not drag it out.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">Mr. Clinton can't ask for fairer treatment. However, dispatch has not been the hallmark of Mr. Starr's work.<br /><br /><br /></div><p align="justify"><b>Jan 28</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Some random thoughts re the Clinton-Lewinski mess:<br /></p><p align="justify">Clinton did himself a great deal of good by delivering a rousing State of the Union address. The tone, substance, the mere ability to do it under the circumstances combined to give him a boost in public approval.<sup><small>1 </small></sup>That won't save him if the alleged Lewinski testimony materializes and is believed. However it may well save him from some lesser variant, such as inconclusive evidence or the endless pendency of an unresolved investigation, Starr-style. <p align="justify">One group of supporters he should be worried about are feminists. They have been loyal backers and have given Paula Jones short shrift. He may not continue to be so lucky. Marrianne Means assumed his guilt in her column today, not a good sign. <p align="justify">Pundits have declared that, if the charges are true, Clinton should go because he has no judgment, no self-control, because he has thrown away his ability to do good things for the country and, of course, because he's suborned perjury. Our standards seem to have become more demanding than they were during Reagan's second term. <p align="justify">The character assassination is indiscriminate. Clinton, Lewinski and anyone else in any way involved all are targets of the prosecutor and the media, whose sense of propriety is identical.<br />___________________<br /><br /><small>1. 10/5/02: Richard Cohen described that ability today: "This quality of Clinton's - the sheer ability to get out of bed in the morning when you or I would have pulled the covers over our heads - is indeed one of Clinton's great attributes. Sometimes - in New Hampshire after Gennifer Flowers or in the White House after Monica Lewinsky - I could only marvel at his ability to keep going...."</small> <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Feb 1</b></p><p align="justify">The principals in the Clinton-Lewinski scandal are not providing enough material for the media, whose salacious interest in this matter far exceeds their concern for weightier subjects. One result is media self-examination: "are we making too much of this?" The question isn't meant seriously; it's merely the lead for a marking-time story, an excuse to review developments to date. As a column in the NY Times, itself an example of the phenomenon, put it, self-examination has appeared because "the story itself has lagged. Some appetite and a whole lot of<br />space on air and page remain, yet true developments, as opposed to embarrassingly false and soon-retracted statements, have been occurring more slowly. </p><p align="justify">The lack of reliable information has not impaired the ability of columnists to draw conclusions about Clinton's character or presidency; accusations and rumor will do nicely. Thus in Thursday's P-I, George Will declared that Clinton's presidency "is beyond resuscitating," that Republicans should not be shy about impeachment and that the people may have confirmation of their suspicion that the Democratic Party "is the incurable carrier of the 1960s virus of disdain for the civilized restraints and values of normal Americans." <p align="justify">On the same page, local writer Asta Bowen used the various stories about Clinton's sexual conduct as a vehicle for complaining about men's attitudes toward women. "I hate to say it, but whether or not there's been misbehavior here, in our culture it still is permissible - indeed profitable - to view women as sex objects." This leads her to a movie review. At least Will is aiming at Clinton; to Ms. Bowen, the stories about Gennifer, Paula and Monica are just pegs to hang an argument on. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Feb 9</b></p><p align="justify">I suggested that the periodic bursts of self-criticism by the media were insincere, a way of recounting the scandal on slow news - or rumor - days. The New York Times, however, takes the "mea culpa epidemic" seriously, and disapproves. This is "unwarranted self-flagellation," we were told by the house editorial on February 4. We must remember "the key fact that industrious, unintimidated reporting has brought to light the factual outlines of a situation that indisputably belongs before the public." Is that what one calls the publication of unsubstantiated rumors, the broadcasting of self-interested leaks? A slight variation on the theme was introduced on the 6th. "This is a time for withholding final judgment on the evidence and the<br />legal issues involved, but that does not mean that there has to be a freeze on concern and commentary." A more self-serving, hypocritical posture hardly could be imagined. </p><p align="justify">The second editorial blames Clinton for any fuzziness in the facts. "Cryptic denials" are not enough. The President's denial was a direct statement that he did not have an affair and did not ask anyone to lie about it. Brief, yes, but cryptic? <p align="justify">A more logical response to Mr. Clinton's dramatic statement was offered by Charles Krauthammer, not an admirer. He doesn't believe Clinton but recognizes that he's made the response editorialists like those of the Times and its Seattle namesake profess to have missed. Previous lies were <blockquote><p align="justify">all but stagesetters for the big one, the one he told the country Monday - eyes to the camera, jaw clenched and finger pointed: I didn't do it. With that, Clinton raised the stakes immensely.... As Bob Beckel, a fierce Democratic partisan says, "If he's lying, he's gone. This is not complicated anymore."<br /></p><p align="justify">Both Clinton's closest friends and deepest antagonists don't seem to understand that... <p align="justify">Clinton's fate does not rest on any obstruction of justice. It rests with the denial, issued not only on national TV, but also, apparently, under oath in his Paula Jones deposition. That lie alone will do it.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">Even Dr. Krauthammer can't resist tossing in a bit of gossip at the end. However, he has the main point: everything which needs to be said has been said and the survival of this presidency may well hinge on the truth of those statements.<br /><br /><br /></div><b><p align="justify">Mar 2</b></p><p align="justify">Kenneth Starr finally has gone too far. Hauling everyone in sight before a grand jury, often with only the flimsiest of connections to any legitimate inquiry, was ok with the media; how could they argue with nonstop muck-raking? But now he has committed <i>lèse magesté</i>: he subpoenaed Sidney Blumenthal and compelled him to identify reporters with whom he discussed matters uncomplementary to Mr. Starr and his office. This is only a step away from an invitation to the journalists to drop by for a chat. <p align="justify">The New York Times carried two expressions of indignation on February 25. Maureen Dowd thought that seeing "supercilious Sid sweating under a naked light bulb" was a pleasant thought, but the subpoena "raised the specter of Mr. Starr calling reporters to testify, and using the grand jury to intimidate his own critics.... [I]t is chilling to have government lawyers with subpoena power prying into communications between reporters and the officials they cover." The house editorial told us that the decision to call Blumenthal <blockquote><p align="justify">...undermines important legal and constitutional principles. On the tactical level, this move by the Independent Counsel is bone stupid. As a matter of principle, it is an attack on press freedom and the unrestricted flow of information....<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br />...Like any newspaper, we have an obvious interest in the confidentiality of the reporting process. But you do not have to be a journalist to see that Mr. Starr has committed an ignorant assault on one of the most distinctive and essential elements of American democracy.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">It's reassuring that the Times will stand up to Mr. Starr's police-state tactics in defense of press freedom; it would be more so if it were willing to challenge his assaults on rights of those not in the club.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify">In a column in today's P-I, Mark Shields pointed out the hypocrisy in this<br />attitude. He noted that other White House employees, including a steward, had been<br />subpoenaed without outcry<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">....But when Blumenthal was to be asked under oath about conversations with the media, the decibel level of media outrage turned earshattering. Suddenly, we had a grave constitutional crisis, abuse of power, a power-hungry prosecutor and a Starr chamber.<br /></p><p align="justify">...Why did we not protest with equal vigor when an unknown media assistant in the Office of National Drug Policy was summoned before a grand jury to explain a private phone call he made from his home to a Maryland public official?</p></blockquote><div align="justify">If I remember the story, that call questioned whether Linda Tripp had broken the law in her taping sessions. Starr considered that attempt to enforce the law as an obstruction of justice just as he now considers unfavorable publicity.<br /><br /><br /></div><b><p align="justify">Mar 3</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">Anthony Lewis, in his column yesterday, found three contributors to the assault on the presidency: first, Mr. Starr's astounding and, one hopes, unusual failings; as to the recent excesses, Lewis charitably observed that they indicate "far too thin a skin for a prosecutor." Second is the statute under which Starr operates. We who applauded the investigation of Richard Nixon may have to admit that the Republican critics of the ensuing statute had it right: this is too much power. As Lewis put it,<br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">...[t]he Watergate experience produced the idea of an established system for special prosecutors to look into charges of illegal conduct by the President and other high officials. But the Independent Counsel Act has had consequences few envisaged: a prosecutor with unlimited resources and time and no effective accountability sitting over a President year after year, stripping him of privacy, even wanting to question the Secret Service agents who protect him.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The final contributing factor, which has received surprisingly little attention, is the decision by the Supreme Court to allow the Paula Jones case to proceed. That ruling, together with the unlimited discovery allowed the plaintiff, has been bad enough. But it is the combination of Jones and Starr which has put the White House under siege. Quoting a former Reagan official, Lewis argued that the Independent Counsel Act and the Jones decision "...subject the Presidency to a constitutionally alien process," which "allows the Presidency - not just this President - to be perpetually submerged in a swamp of civil and criminal proceedings." Lewis added,<br /><br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">Someday soon, when the Clinton-Lewinsky crisis is history, this country is going to have to rescue the Presidency from that legal swamp. Congress should legislate to allow postponement of civil suits against a President, and let the Independent Counsel Act die. Then we can go back to the political system -the constitutional system- for holding Presidents accountable.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">His opinion of the statute can't be dismissed as a liberal's defense of a Democratic president. George Will, not to be confused with Mr. Lewis, expressed similar sentiments in 1994.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify">Lawrence Walsh also criticized Mr. Starr, in the current New York Review of Books. Mr. Walsh may not be the best judge of prosecutorial excess, but he offered a quotation from Justice Jackson which deserves attention. <blockquote><p align="justify">It is in this realm - in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious or in the way of the prosecutor himself.</p></blockquote><b><p align="justify">Mar 20</b></p><p align="justify">By any normal measure, Kathleen Willey’s testimony should have buried Bill Clinton. Other stories could be discounted as gossip, self-interested leaks, distortion or outright fabrication, but Kathleen Willey told her story on national television. <p align="justify">In addition, Mrs. Willey’s story introduced a new and more serious accusation. Instead of consensual sex or a rejected proposition, as in the other cases, here we have a claim of an unexpected and unwelcome advance, a pawing, an assault. <p align="justify">Mrs. Willey also is a different sort of accuser. Gennifer and Paula have been dismissed as bimbos, Monica as a fantasizing child. Paula Jones’ case is tainted by the source of her funding, Monica Lewinski’s story by the illegal means of its recording and the prosecutorial abuse employed to intimidate her. Kathleen Willey is a mainstream complainant, middle-class and middle-aged. As one political figure put it, she’s someone the women in my part of the country can identify with. <p align="justify">Finally, simply adding one more accusation should have a cumulative effect; believing his denials becomes more difficult with each variation on the theme. <p align="justify">There is some indication of erosion of support. Feminist groups and Democratic women have made some tentative but menacing steps away from the President. However, polls indicate that this does not reflect a general trend. <p align="justify">Several polls taken a day or so after the broadcast showed Mr. Clinton’s approval rating unchanged. Substantial numbers believed Mrs. Willey, but more women than men demurred. All of this may evaporate, but it is striking, even as a temporary reaction. <p align="justify">The recent polls echo earlier ones in revealing that, though people support Mr. Clinton now, they might well abandon him if it is established that he lied, especially if he asked others to lie. This seems to reflect both a statement that private sexual behavior is less important than public veracity and an ability to suspend judgment, both of which editorialists could do well to emulate. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Apr 3</b></p><p align="justify">The awful events in Jonesboro, Ark. have prompted the usual quest for answers. One columnist wondered rhetorically whether severe punishment, not the usual protection of juveniles, was an answer, only to stumble over the report that one of the prisoners had cried himself to sleep asking for his mother. Opponents and defenders of gun possession are equally baffled by the circum-stances of the killings: all of the controls which gun-rights advocates have claimed are the answer to irresponsibility were unavailing; but what more can gun-control advocates expect short of confiscation? <p align="justify">The root problem is, as should be no surprise, the culture. In this case it has two aspects. One is deadly combination of the worship of the gun, the pseudo-macho, don't-look-the-wrong-way-at-me attitude, the loss of respect for the sanctity of life and the utter immorality of so much of contemporary society. The other is the cancellation of childhood. Somehow we have forgotten not only that innocence is, at least in tender years, a virtue, but that children are not ready, whatever one's philosophy, to act with mature, safe, responsible judgment. Only an idiot, or only a society determined to experiment with all forms of idiocy under the guise of freedom, would consider it acceptable or safe to encourage children to have the means of carrying childish fantasies into deadly action. When I was a child, these fantasies were worked out with toy soldiers. Whatever one may think of the ideas, they didn't, in that form, pose a threat. We were, knew ourselves to be, and were treated as children, no menace to anyone. That, however, involves setting limits, making value judgments and paying attention, none of which fits the current model. <p align="justify"><i>Time</i> had two pictures of the younger of the boys. On the cover, he was shown in fatigues, cradling a rifle. That's frightening enough. Inside was the truly appalling picture: a posed photo of Andrew Golden, aged perhaps four, dressed in a cowboy hat and a long coat, holding a shotgun. It was eerily reminiscent of the pictures of JonBenet Ramsey: a beautiful child, dressed up as an adult, striking a pose bizarrely, disgustingly, frighteningly inappropriate to the age. For JonBenet, it led to manipulation, vulnerability and danger, for Andrew to mad aggression. <p align="justify">Role-playing is unacceptable today because it implies limits. Rejection of role-playing is an absurd conceit in any context; civilization is impossible without it. To liberate children from the role of children is the most destructive form of this delusion and the one which most clearly illustrates the weakness and fatigue of our society. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Apr 13</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The refuges one seeks to restore his soul probably are revealing. The need for restoration is revealing as well, although I'm not sure whether it is complimentary: does it proceed from depth of feeling or weakness of spirit? In any case, I need it periodically, one of those times being now.<br /></div><p align="justify">When I lived alone, the refuge sometimes was a physical one, a place to go to get away from, or have the illusion of getting away from, the most recent affront to one's integrity. That's more awkward now; somehow "I'll be in the San Juans for a few days - my soul needs restoring" would seem a little silly. Also, I have needed fewer and shorter restorations since I was rescued from my self-enforced solitude by one whose soul dwarfs mine on its best days. <p align="justify">Now, soothing my bruised feelings - I think that's all that it really comes down to - is accomplished mainly by a brief application of entertainment, by audio or video. This shows how shallow I've become. If I had any depth, I'd read the Bible or Shakespeare or Plato in Greek. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Apr 24</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">A few days ago the Seattle Times' house editorial denounced the President for his presumed sponsorship of the claim by the Justice and Treasury Departments that his Secret Service agents should be entitled to avoid testifying under a claim of privilege. One might be forgiven for treating with some skepticism an attack on testimonial privilege by a profession which is adamant in the defense of its version.<br /></div><p align="justify">The Times' comments expressed hostility not only toward the claim of privilege but also toward the President’s response to the Lewinski mess and toward his personal behavior. The tone may reflect the attitude of the editorial page editor, one of feminist-moralist disapproval of Mr. Clinton, or it may be part of a retreat from the liberal stance of the editorial page of recent years. <p align="justify">As to the former, the Times and editor Mindy Cameron have been consistent. In January, 1994, Ms. Cameron said, in response to the stories in the American Spectator about Clinton’s alleged amorous adventures, that the "doubts which linger with so many of us will seriously undermine any future moral pronouncements by Clinton." On May 9, 1994, commenting on the filing of the Paula Jones suit, the Times declared that consistency requires that people who believed the accusations against Clarence Thomas, Robert Packwood and others not ignore the Jones complaint. A few days before the recent house column, Ms. Cameron, staking out a feminist position, criticized Gloria Steinem’s more forgiving attitude toward Mr. Clinton's behavior. <p align="justify">However, the issue isn’t consistency in moral judgment, nor is it Mr. Clinton’s morals. There is reason to wonder whether he has demeaned the office, but the immediate question is whether it is to be weakened. Subjecting the Secret Service to questioning about the President’s activities will destroy confidence and impair the protection the Service must provide; for that reason, the privilege should be recognized in all but the most extreme cases. The allegations here are so trivial, so beneath notice that it is absurd even to contemplate forcing testimony. If anyone but<br />Kenneth Starr were in charge of the investigation, the risk of creating such a dangerous precedent would not be considered.<br />_______ </p><p align="justify">Whether or not the recent editorial was influenced by a general rightward move, such a move is evident. There have been numerous mild indications of a retreat from the rather doctrinaire, almost academic sort of liberalism which the Times adopted as its editorial stance a few years ago. A more emphatic example is found in a recent series of editorials on tax reform. In three columns, the Times advocated changes in the tax treatment of estates, capital gains and charitable contributions. Reexamination of these areas may be in order and the suggestions by the Times may be worth considering. However, they can't be evaluated in isolation, as the Times advocates. For example, an argument can be made for reduction of the estate tax, but only if combined with a meaningfully progressive income tax: a much better case can be made for allowing wealth to be passed without major dilution if its accumulation has been fairly taxed. </p><p align="justify">It is difficult not to suspect a yuppie aspect to the Times' recommendations; these editorials read like the product of people who have just noticed their advancement to another tier in the economic order. Having got theirs, they are determined not to let nasty government take any of it and give it away: "[T]he socialist doctrine of redistributing a set pie of wealth has been relegated to history's dust bin. Someday, the capital-gains tax may join it." Even Steve Forbes is subtler. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Apr 26</b></p><p align="justify">A column by Mark Shields in today's P-I laments the lack of leadership on liberal issues: "...President Clinton is incapable of summoning us to personal sacrifice or even inconvenience for any greater, common good." Among the potential subjects for such a call is <blockquote><p align="justify">the ever-swelling and indefensible income gap between the lucky few and everybody else in America. The fact that, since 1979, average executive salaries in constant dollars have gone up by 330 percent while workers' wages have fallen by 9 percent ought to be unacceptable to liberals.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Shields thinks that conditions are such that a liberal program could succeed with leadership. I wonder. The Seattle Times has been a political weathervane and it certainly isn't pointing toward personal sacrifice. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Apr 29</b></p><p align="justify">Kevin Phillips has written as much as anyone about the widening gap in income and wealth. <i>The Politics of Rich and Poor</i> and <i>The Boiling Point</i> described the development and the role of government in allowing or encouraging it. His most recent book, <i>Arrogant Capital</i>, builds in part on their economic themes, but more on their mildly populist attitude, in proposing solutions to what he thinks ails America. Unfortunately, his solutions not only are several steps beyond<br />anything Mr. Shields might dream of in terms of boldness, they are addressed in large part to subjects other than income distribution, as to which the virtue of his arguments isn’t as obvious. Some of the solutions are so strange that they appear to be offered mostly for shock value. </p><p align="justify"><i>Arrogant Capital</i> was published in 1994. Although I bought it not long after it came out, I finished it only this week, having abandoned it half-way through as a waste of time. Both in style and substance, it reads more like a Perot campaign tract than a serious work of political science, adopting Perot’s pseudo-populist stance and his tendency toward simplistic solutions. The title’s play on words aptly expresses the author’s disdain for Wall Street and for Washington. All of this is displayed in the framework of supposed <i>fin-de-siècle</i> parallels: late twentieth century America v. Britain in the late nineteenth, Holland in the late seventeenth and Spain in the late sixteenth. <p align="justify">Phillips’ best argument, lost in an unsorted mass of dubious prescriptions, is the obvious one that the very wealthy should pay more in taxes than they do. Phillips wants to raise the tax rate on the largest incomes, but (at least in one of his proposals) he wants to draw the line below the top bracket at a much higher level than we have done recently. He points out that, although physicians or business executives making $300,000 to $400,000 per year are in the upper one percent of incomes, there is a huge difference between them and people making multiple<br />millions. He thinks that the distinction must be made as a matter of equity and seems to imply that a high rate would be easier to enact if it applied only to the very few very rich. The former may be true, although his solicitude for the upper middle-class at times seems overdone. The latter also may be true, as it would eliminate the basis for the usual Republican argument that Democrats think anyone earning a decent wage is wealthy. However, the smaller the upper bracket becomes, the more obviously targeted it is and, logically or not, a fairness issue might emerge. On balance, though, I think that Phillips is on the right track here. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">May 13</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The Irish, North and South, Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and Republican, vote next week on an agreement which may end decades of terrorism and begin to end centuries of resentment, hatred and fear. The endorsement of Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party should help secure approval, but the most powerful impetus to a vote in favor should be the simple realization that it’s this or more bloodshed.<br /></div><p align="justify">However, proponents seem to be afraid to put that choice to the voters. Advertisements urging approval reportedly have been made bland and upbeat, rejecting pictures suggesting the alternative. I hope that the decision-makers have a better insight into the mind of the people than I do: it seems to me that their approach allows voters to think that this is only one choice among many, that they can reject this proposal and expect a better package from another round of talks. <p align="justify">Such a conclusion is more likely to be drawn in the North, where Protestants believe that they have the most to lose and that, in fact, they are losers under the agreement. Die-hard unionists have reason to feel that the plan favors the republicans: Sinn Fein, to them no more that the IRA in suits, will be recognized; terrorists will be treated as political prisoners and released; Eire will be given some influence in the affairs of Ulster. Maybe negotiations would resume after a negative vote, but it is more likely that the killing would. Protestant skeptics need to understand that the opponents have nothing to offer. The opponents' position was aptly described in a recent news report: they’ll refuse any proposal which Sinn Fein finds acceptable; in other words there will be no negotiated solution. However, if they’re counting on Britain for support and protection, they need to pay more attention; the Brits are leaving. <p align="justify">In addition to simply hating each other because of religion, ethnic origin or history, the combatants in Northern Ireland have been fighting over sovereignty: will the Republic or Britain rule? The Republic and Sinn Fein have had the sense to recognize, or at least to state, that there will be no reunification without the consent of the majority in Ulster. Unionists have yet to grasp that British rule no longer is a long-term possibility. If they refuse to accept that and to act accordingly, they may find that life after the British withdrawal may be much the same in Ulster as in Palestine. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">May 15</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">Belatedly, I decided to test my impressions of the situation in Ireland against reports from the scene, in the form of the latest papers I could find yesterday, the Irish Times of May 9 and the Belfast Telegraph of May 7.<br /></div><p align="justify">There was extensive coverage of the agreement in both papers, more so in the Telegraph, which is not surprising as the outcome will have far more impact in Ulster. In the Republic, there seems to be a good deal of apathy, and attention is divided between this referendum and one concerning the European Union. <p align="justify">The only serious issue in the Republic is whether the Constitution should be amended to eliminate the claim to sovereignty over the northern counties. To the irreconcilables in the IRA, this is surrender, ratification of British oppression, abandonment of part of the homeland, a part which is of special symbolic importance. To most, though, it appears to be a recognition of the facts: Ulster may have been the most Irish part of Ireland, but that was almost four centuries ago. <p align="justify">There was a forceful expression of this realism in a column by Garret FitzGerald in the Times. <blockquote><p align="justify">That the violence of the past 30 years has set back the prospect of Irish unity is self-evident. I could not with any seriousness today write the kind of book that I published 26 years ago - <i>Towards a New Ireland</i> - addressing in practical terms, as a serious, albeit not immediate, possibility, the emergence of a federal Ireland. And if I did, in contrast to 1972, no one now would take it seriously.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The violence also has led to the present acceptance of the renunciation. For, without the revulsion created by the IRA murdering people in our name, I do not think either parties or people in this State would have been willing to give up the claim on the territory of Northern Ireland contained in these Articles.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify">Coverage of the Agreement, in both content and tone, was generally positive in the Telegraph. The lead article on page one reported a meeting between representatives of the Orange Order and the Prime Minister. The P.M. is, of course, for approval, so his comments were upbeat. One Orange Order official was quoted as saying, "There are many Orangemen who are open to be persuaded to vote Yes." He went on to express concern about one of the major issues, the proposed release of prisoners, but then added: It's a great opportunity for peace. Let's see that people's fears are allayed so that they can vote Yes. <p align="justify">Also on page one, there was a report of a campaign by the Ulster Union for a vote of approval. David Trimble described the opposition arguments as "neither credible or achievable," and added, "With the union safe in our hands, we must look with confidence to the future." The latter comment illustrates another irony: those in favor of the agreement on both sides profess to see it as an aid to their aims: preservation of the union for one side, reunification for the other. Dissidents see the opposite: for the Protestants a threat to union, for the Catholics surrender in the battle for a united republic. <p align="justify">Inside, the Telegraph carried an article in which former Prime Minister Major expressed his strong support and two extended question-and-answer pieces in the first of which Mr. Blair did the same. The other was a series of questions from readers with objective and technical answers by a professor at Queen's University. The opposition point of view was reflected in a few comments in the various articles, but mostly in some of the letters to the editor and in one article about a father and son, both local government officials, who hold differnt views on the referendum. Surprisingly, it is the younger man who is in opposition. His comment is revealing,<br />although I would have expected it from the older generation: </p><blockquote><p align="justify">In my head, I do realize that this is probably the best deal we could get and, in five years time, there may well be even less crumbs on the table.<br /></p><p align="justify">But in my heart, I find that I cannot accept it, and I think that is the case for most unionists, and my father would see that too.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The house editorial summed up the debate over the agreement well:<br /><br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">To the Ulster Unionists, it represents a formal withdrawal, by Dublin, of the territorial claim in its constitution and an acceptance of the principle of consent. To republicans, it offers a chance of moving from a military campaign for Irish unity, now suspended, to a political campaign. To everyone, it provides an opportunity for Northern Ireland to regain some control over its own affairs, allowing for some trust to grow between the unionist and nationalist communities.<br /></p></blockquote><div align="justify">As to the sore points, prisoner release and "decommissioning," its advice is that the agreement must be accepted, "warts and all," because "the alternative is to re-run the past 30 years, again and again."<br /><br /><br /></div><b><p align="justify">May 21</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">An article in today's NY Times, datelined Belfast, claimed that, on the eve of the referendum, the campaign for approval is coming apart because of the appearance before the Sinn Fein convention of several IRA prisoners. If reaction is only now setting in, it's odd, as the meeting was on May 10. Timing aside, it is no surprise that there has been hostile reaction to this provocative gesture.<br /></div><p align="justify">The Times referred to "British and Irish officials" who thought the appearance of the prisoners would help win over reluctant delegates. At the time, it was justified as an indication that even these IRA warriors were for the agreement & for peace. Whatever the motivation, it was a stupid, insensitive move, a blunder as Gerry Adams is quoted as admitting. <p align="justify">The latest Belfast Telegraph available, of May 14, made some reference to the episode in its page-one article and it was denounced in two editorials. However, the house editorial again announced support for the agreement and there were articles in favor by representatives of labour and the Women's Coalition. All but one of the letters to the editor were critical responses to an article expressing opposition. <p align="justify">The other was signed "Victim's Brother" and began with a statement that the author's brother, a member of the RUC, was killed by an IRA terrorist. He went on to express disgust at the spectacle at the Sinn Fein convention. His conclusion seemed obvious. However, he went on to heap scorn on those, like Ian Paisley, who used his brother's death for propaganda. More or less as a plague on both houses, and in the hope of peace, he will vote yes: <blockquote><p align="justify">To Mr Paisley, Mr Smyth, Mr Robinson and all the other pro-union "grave dancers" who would prefer I voted No so that they could continue their, petty, blinkered, devisive politics for another 30 years, my answer to you is no. I will be voting Yes.<br /></p><p align="justify">To Mr Adams and Mr McGuinnis and all the other republican "grave dancers" who probably would prefer I voted No so that they could have an excuse to get off the sharp hook of democratic politics, my answer to you is no. I will be voting Yes. <p align="justify">I will bury my pain and my hatred. I will vote Yes on Friday May 22 and hopefully help to provide the young people of Northern Ireland with a chance to live in peace so that they don't have to bury their loved ones.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The mood of the Irish Times of May 16 was less optimistic. There was reference to a poll supposedly showing a majority of unionists opposed and reports of the decision by Jeffrey Donaldson that he could not support the agreement. <b><br /></div></b><b><p align="justify">May 26</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">Not long ago, I heard or saw several references to Jerry Springer. At first I had no idea who that might be, but eventually learned that he hosts one of the tacky daytime shows. On Memorial Day, I took a break from working in the yard and turned on the TV, forgetting that it was a week day. As I surfed along, trying to find something of interest, I landed on KTZZ just as the Springer show was starting. It was announced that today’s contribution to intelligent discourse would be Wives v. Mistresses." I decided to watch long enough to see if the show was as bad as<br />reported; it was. After the wife had a few minutes to demonstrate that she was abused and that she had neither pride nor dignity, the other woman was announced. At this point the adversarial relationship promised in the title was fulfilled, as the two launched into a punching, kicking, hairpulling fight from which they were separated, after a suitably exploitational interval, by the stage crew. They then were plumped down in chairs separated by half the width of the stage from which they abused each other in language requiring constant bleeping. (Interesting that the show maintains only that standard among all others). The man in question was to appear later, possibly leading to more fights, but at that point I had seen all that I could tomach.<br /></div><p align="justify">I find it somewhat puzzling that anyone would make a career of presenting this sort of garbage, but no doubt there’s money in it and everyone has a price. It is even more astounding that, assuming these confrontations not to be entirely phony, people can be found in sufficient numbers to debase themselves for our entertainment. The most disgusting element, though, is the audience. The more violent or humiliating the show became the more raucously enthusiastic they were. These are people who, given half the chance, would attend public hangings. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">July 13</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">While we were in Europe in June, I read in the Herald-Tribune that the tobacco bill in Congress had died because the Republicans had been energized - or intimidated - influenced, in any case, by ads run by the tobacco industry. The stories made the ads seem devastatingly effective. I've now seen them and can only conclude that the Republicans are exercising their usual shrewd skill in political analysis. The ads are amateurish in style, blatant in self-interest and, in their denunciation of more taxes and more regulation, seemingly a few years behind the curve. Appealing to a supposed revulsion toward government worked in 1994, but hasn't had much effect since.<br /></div><p align="justify">An article in the New York Times today reinforced my impression that the tobacco lobby is out of touch. The campaign theme for this year is experience. Incumbency is no longer disqualifying, knowledge of the workings of government no longer suspect, indicating that railing against government may not do the job. However, campaign-finance reform also is dead, so Tobacco can fall back on good old vote-buying. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">July 28</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The Seattle Times editorial page offered an interesting mélange of opinions yesterday.<br /></div><p align="justify">James Vesley, having demonstrated in his initial column several years ago that he was somewhat to the right of dominant thought in Seattle, has been relegated to writing about life on the Eastside. There are those who would consider the last phrase to be an oxymoron. Mr. Vesley apparently runs into this opinion; in today’s column he quoted someone referring derisively to the type of people who move there, an unnecessarily offensive reflection on our backward political, social and cultural condition. This attitude is unenlightened in varying degrees - as to politics a rejoinder takes some imagination - but pervasive. When we moved to Bellevue, one<br />of my colleagues lamented that we never would go to the theater, as if gates closed at the east end of the bridges at 6:30 p.m. </p><p align="justify">Charles Krauthammer devoted his column to asking for sympathy for the dire financial condition of physicians, another fairly hard sale. One of his proposals was to permit doctors to charge for telephone advice. That seems reasonable enough, and perhaps it would make one’s call to his doctor somewhat less like asking for an audience with the Pope. <p align="justify">Two of the letters to the editor rounded out the picture. One attacked a column which gushed over a Democrat running for Congress in the Eighth District, emphasizing that the candidate is a "gun foe." "As a citizen," the letter-writer said, he "cannot tolerate her diverting attention away from the crisis we all face - namely, deliberate murder, particularly teenage murder...." His solution to teenage murder is abandonment of "the shopworn tactic to deny citizens ownership of firearms...." This is hardly an original view, except for his comment that the shopworn tactic was repudiated by the voters in the defeat of Initiative 676; we'll hear more of that refrain. His letter must have been prompted by general disdain for any comments favorable to gun control; surely he can’t be worried that a Democrat might be elected from the 8th. <p align="justify">It has been said that the last remaining Marxists are found on American faculties. If so, the writer of the other letter has escaped (or has chosen not to so identify herself). In responding to a column about developments in China, she gave us a primer on communism: Marxism is not "rigid, insensitive economics," but "the theory of egalitarian sharing of socially created wealth...." Leninism is merely putting that ideology into practice, not a repressive one-party political system. Lenin was forced to adopt defensive measures, such as the one-party system, because of attacks by the capitalists. He looked forward to abandoning the one-party system as soon as possible. The repressive police state that developed was a creation not of Lenin but of capitalist antagonism and the Stalinist bureaucracy, which had to wipe out an entire generation of revolutionary leaders to come to power. The collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s movement toward capitalism are the result of the impossibility of competing on an uneven playing field dominated by hostile capitalist giants. Since Communism can’t survive such competition, we should have international socialism. Except for the last point, a rather pathetic retreat from the<br />old view of communism’s inevitable triumph, this is really quaint. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 13</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">In the New York Times of August 3, Arthur Schlesinger revisited the imperial presidency. He noted that, as forecast by Madison, expansion of presidential power was occasioned - or justified - by foreign threats. Conditions have changed: Because it was the creation of international crisis, the imperial Presidency collapsed once that crisis came to an end.<br /></div><p align="justify">However, his focus was not on inevitable indirect effects but on direct assault. Heaping scorn on Kenneth Starr and comparing his obsession with destroying the President to Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick, he said, Captain Ahab versus the American Presidency: if Mr. Starr’s quenchless feud continues, he may well do permanent damage to the American system of government. <p align="justify">I have to confess that, in 1973 when <i>The Imperial Presidency</i> was published, I was more interested in seeing President Nixon impeached than in preserving the institution, and regarded warnings on that score as merely another installment in the coverup, so my opinion of Mr. Starr’s actions may carry with it some measure of inconsistency. Dr. Schlesinger has better credentials: even as the sordid details of Watergate were emerging, he cautioned against going too far. In the foreword to <i>The Imperial Presidency</i> he said, <blockquote><p align="justify">This book is written out of a double concern. The first concern is that the pivotal institution of American government, the Presidency, has got out of control and badly needs new definition and restraint. The second concern is that revulsion against inordinate theories of presidential power may produce an inordinate swing against the presidency and thereby do essential damage to our national capacity to handle the problems of the future.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">In effect, his second concern has become reality. The statute creating the office of independent counsel, adopted in the aftermath of Watergate and as a reaction to Nixon’s firing of the special prosecutor he appointed, carries with it too much power and too little accountability. The fact that Mr. Starr’s view of his mandate has been approved at various points by the Justice Department and the courts may detract somewhat from the Ahab analogy, but it underscores Dr. Schlesinger’s earlier warning: we have institutionalized a process for weakening the presidency.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify">This is not to say that an independent counsel never should pursue the president; <i>The Imperial Presidency</i> included this comment: "If the Special Prosecutor established incriminating facts, these could serve as the basis for impeachment. <p align="justify">Dr. Schlesinger’s focus in his Times column was the Lewinski mess, which he considers to be unimportant: it involves Mr. Clinton’s private life, whereas Watergate included Presidential sanction of burglary, wiretapping, political dirty tricks, forgery, hush money, perjury and obstruction of justice. He wondered why there is such indignation over Clinton’s false statements, noting that President Reagan never was punished for untruths about Iran-Contra: Mr. Reagan’s falsehoods had to do with his official duties and were a gross dereliction of his executive responsibility. <p align="justify">Mr. Starr’s defenders tell us that the issue is not Mr. Clinton’s private life but his alleged false statements about it, one under oath, and his alleged involvement in Ms. Lewinski’s alleged false statement under oath. Dr. Schlesinger treated this with contempt: If Mr. Clinton is not being truthful, his deceptions have to do with his sex life, a type of lie which many Americans consider to be only a venial sin. <blockquote><p align="justify">You lie to protect yourself, your spouse, your lover, your children. Gentlemen always lie about their sex lives. Only a cad will tell the truth about his sexual affairs. Many people seem to feel that questions no one has a right to ask do not call for truthful answers.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">We may soon learn how many people subscribe to this charming amalgam of modern relativism and antique manners.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify">Assuming any of the case to be proved, arguably we would be faced with perjury and obstruction, presenting an apparent resemblance to Watergate. However, leaving aside the nature and seriousness of the underlying events as well as the dismissal of the Jones action, there remains a major distinction. In Watergate the Special Prosecutors started with known crimes, including the burglaries of the Democratic- Party and Fielding offices, and followed a trail that led to the White House. In the present case, Mr. Starr inherited an investigation of the Whitewater project which, so far as anyone can tell, has not led to the President, and other matters clearly involving the White House but which seem to have been equally unproductive. By the beginning of 1998, he had a target but no weapon. Enter Linda Tripp. Her story suggested that Mr. Clinton or someone on his behalf might have induced Ms. Lewinski to give a false affidavit, but that was not enough. Ms. Tripp, after being interviewed by Mr. Starr's forces, provided information to Paula Jones’ attorneys which enabled them to ask about Mr. Clinton’s relationship to Ms. Lewinski. This created the basis for the claim that he lied under oath, thus giving Mr. Starr something to prosecute. This may not qualify as entrapment, but it is the moral<br />equivalent, the manufacture of an offense. </p><p align="justify">In the New York Times a few days ago, Elizabeth Holzman suggested another aspect of crime-creation in the investigation of the president. Her theory is that the demand that he testify for the grand jury, a demand he cannot finesse as an ordinary citizen could, is setting him up to commit perjury. His only apparent way around that would be to confess to earlier perjury. This, of course, assumes that he has not told the entire truth about his relationship with Monica, something few people are any longer prepared to doubt. I think that her point is valid: an offense will be created by the investigation; it no longer seems relevant that the investigation was designed to determine if a crime had been committed before it began.<br /></p><p align="justify">In today's Times, a column by a Midwestern editor reported that people are weary of the mess; they long ago chose sides about Bill Clinton. <blockquote><p align="justify">That is why the Lewinski matter has seemed to change so few minds. People on both sides see the sex scandal as a ploy to drive our elected president from office. The only difference of opinion is over whether that is a good or bad thing.</p></blockquote><b><p align="justify">Aug 14</b></p><div align="justify"><br /></div><p align="justify">Mr. Starr finally has been asked to justify his incessant babbling to the media about supposedly confidential matters. Judge Johnson has required him to show cause why he should not be held in contempt, as to which one only can say better late than never. The demand for an explanation came from the President's counsel, perhaps one not fully qualified to cast the first stone, but probably no one else would have had the incentive or standing to raise the issue. <p align="justify">Mr. Starr has offered the - from anyone else - incredible explanation that his forces were not leaking, but using reporters as a source of information. Even he should be able to distinguish between talking and listening. <p align="justify">The case against Mr. Starr is based in no small part on an interview he gave to Steven Brill in which he candidly admitted that he and his chief deputy had briefed the press repeatedly, although never for direct attribution; hence the unending stream of references to knowledgeable legal sources. In the interview he offered this excuse, startling in its implications: leaks would be <blockquote><p align="justify">unethical except...where what we were doing is countering misinformation<br />that is being spread about our investigation in order to discredit our office and our dedicated career prosecutors.... I think it is our obligation to counter that kind of misinformation.... We have a duty to promote confidence in<br />the work of this office.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">This of course is really only a milder manifestation of the sense of mission which led Starr to summon White House aides to the grand jury to grill them about their conversations with reporters. If Starr talks to the media, it's promoting confidence in his office. If the suspect or his friends do, it's undermining that confidence. Because confidence in his office is the ultimate good, the legal and ethical violations inherent in his leaks and the abuse of power in punishing others’ are justified: a convenient world view. </p><b><p align="justify">Aug 15</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">Meanwhile, the White House and Mr. Clinton's private lawyers are leaking another chapter of this dismal tale. This time it's not an attack on Mr. Starr but a rehearsal of Mr. Clinton's testimony, due Monday. As Thomas Shapley put it in this morning's P-I, "Clinton and his minions are trying to figure out what he should say when he goes before the grand jury the day after tomorrow (the simple truth apparently not being an option)." </div><p align="justify">One version which has circulated for the past couple of days is that Mr. Clinton can admit to whatever he did with Ms. Lewinski without risking a perjury charge because the definition of sexual relations approved by Judge Wright for use at his deposition is narrow enough that he may not have engaged in any of the listed acts. This would be a perfectly Clinonesque answer, on the level of yes, I smoked pot but I didn't inhale or yes, I had sex with Gennifer Flowers but only once. Not only is the man not a saint, he's pathetic as a sinner. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 25</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">A monumental amount of nonsense has been written about President Clinton's by-now infamous four-minute speech last week. However, one bit of commentary deserves mention. In tonight's Seattle Times, John Leo offered a "first draft" of Mr. Clinton's speech: </div><blockquote><p align="justify">...As you know, at a deposition in January, I was asked about my relationship with that woman, Monica Lewinski. My answers were legally accurate when I said that I never had sexual relations with her. "Sexual relations," as you probably know, is a technical term that often causes undue confusion. Under the legal definition of sexual relations that I was using at the time, I was not having sexual relations with her, though it turned out that she was having sexual relations with me. So while there was an inappropriate relationship that one might describe as sexual, she was involved in it, but I wasn't....<sup><small>1<br /></p></small></sup></blockquote><div align="justify">That captures the Clinton confessional style perfectly. The other feature of the speech was the attack on Starr. As much as he deserves it, this, too, invites parody. Leo's "draft":<br /><br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">... I must admit that it constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible. It would be wrong to lay the blame on others. However, it is clearly all Ken Starr's fault....<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br />...Now that I have cleared everything up, it's important for all of you to rally behind me and turn your eyes from the spectacle Monica Lewinski and Ken Starr have made of themselves for seven months....</p></blockquote><div align="justify">This is the response Mr. Clinton - and the subject - deserve: he should be laughed at, ridiculed, for being such an oaf. Unfortunately, most of the comment has been leaden in its earnestness, pompous in its righteousness and cloying in its demand for the perfect expression of remorse.<br />____________________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>10/30/01:</strong> The evasion that drew the most derisive comment was Clinton's answer to a question by Starr, "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is." However, Mr. Clinton could cite precedent: Aristotle's <i>Physics</i> rejects a conundrum posed by Parmenides by observing that "His assumption that 'is' is used in a single way only is false, because it is used in several." <i>Complete Works of Aristotle</i>, Quoted in Gottlieb, <i>The Dream of Reason.</i> (The translation of that sentence in <i>The Great Books</i> is different, but give Bill a break).<br /><br /><br /></div></small><small><p align="justify"><strong>11/16/01</strong>: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy tells us that, according to Bertrand Russell, common speech "confuses, in the word 'is,' existential quanitfication ...identity... and predication...." So there, Ken.</small></p><p align="justify"><b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Sept 8</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify"><i>[Rick White represented Washington's First District at this time.]</i> </div><p align="justify">We have a primary election next Tuesday. No one has mentioned Clinton or that woman, although Rick White, in telling us that he wanted to discuss a scandal in Washington (misuse of Social Security funds), did manage to say no, not <u>that </u>one. It's surprising that no Republican filed in the 7th District. To be sure, it's a Democratic stronghold, but if the Clinton scandal really is such a millstone, a Republican might have has a chance, especially since Rep. McDermott still is battling his own scandal. <p align="justify">The only interesting partisan primary race is between Chris Bailey and Rep. Linda Smith for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat occupied by Patty Murray. Bailey was given little chance early on, but his ads attacking Ms. Smith's somewhat quirky record seem to have had effect and the Seattle Times has endorsed him. <p align="justify">The other spirited primaries, although they haven't yet descended to TV ads, are in several of the judicial races. Every two years we are treated to another and still more depressing illustration of why judges should be appointed. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Sept 22</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The outpouring of opinion regarding the Starr report has been astounding, not so much in its volume - the flood since January made it clear that no one with access to a keyboard or a microphone would refrain from comment - as in its tone and substance. We are, if politicians and editorialists are the measure, a commendably moral nation. </div><p align="justify">It is difficult to find anything in Mr. Clinton's behavior in this affair which does not engender feelings of dismay, disdain or disgust. Perhaps outrage is warranted; even those who have no use for his attackers or the process have expressed that emotion. The fact that neither the Jones deposition nor the Starr investigation of the Lewinski affair should have been allowed doesn’t excuse or eradicate Mr. Clinton’s misconduct. However, there is something false about the righteous editorials and speeches in Congress. <p align="justify">Most of the adverse comment and even much of that which is more tolerant is marked by great impatience with the tendency of Mr. Clinton and his lawyers to offer technical excuses. Up to a point, this is understandable: there is a natural desire to get to the heart of the matter, and quibbles over semantics don't do that. However the notion that Mr. Clinton shouldn't offer technical defenses is a little strange, given that he is faced with the equivalent of a criminal prosecution and that some of the offenses are claimed to be statutory crimes. This criticism is no more than a variation on the line that Mr. Starr has been peddling all along: any defense is a new crime. <p align="justify">One of the most prevalent -and to me one of the oddest- features is the relationship with Mr. Clinton which many of the hostile editorials imply. These commentators have such a personal, intimate connection to our President that his behavior elicits feelings of betrayal. My relationship to him or to any elected official is somewhat more distant, and I think that most people share that view. This may explain in part the gulf between the elite and popular reactions. There may be those who can claim betrayal in the sense of having been misled into providing a defense; this seems to be the motivation behind some of the announcements of moral superiority by Democratic members of Congress. However, the one person with a true claim to betrayal hasn’t made it, and has been rewarded with criticism for failing to do so. <p align="justify">Even many supporters see a need for punishment because of what he's put us through. What is that, exactly? The worst event for most of us during the past few months was the fall in the Dow and even that has rebounded a bit which, assuming any rationality in the behavior of traders, signals the financial world's preference to leave well enough alone. <p align="justify">Surprisingly little attention is being paid to the fact that all of the charges are created offenses, made to measure by the Independent Counsel. The initial reaction to the release of Ms. Lewinski's testimony, which shows how Starr distorted it in his report, has refocused attention on his abuses, and eventually someone may wonder whether the Founders had entrapment in mind as a basis for impeachment. <p align="justify">Anthony Lewis described all this as "the illegitimate process that has come to a hysterical climax in Washington this week: a prosecutor breaking the rules to destroy the President, a television corps acting as the prosecutor's chorus, partisan Republicans in Congress making a mockery of the notion that conservatives respect institutions." There does seem to be an element of hysteria in the overreaction, the anguish, the demands for public confession. Critics of the process see parallels in medieval witch hunts or in the Inquisition; one, detecting a religious element in the attacks, described them as sanctimonious. However, the driving force doesn't seem to me to be a demand for punishment for sin so much as the Drudge-Springer syndrome: there are no private matters; all is grist for the journalistic mill; public humiliation is the test of whether we have been sufficiently thorough. <p align="justify">The most appropriate penalty to assess against Mr. Clinton would be to refuse to vote for him next time. The demands for resignation are expressions of frustration that he can’t run again: if we can’t reject him in the next election, let’s undo the last. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Sept 28</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The explanations most frequently offered for the media excess have been competition, which has transformed journalism from a profession to a business, and the speed of communication, which has eliminated the time necessary for reflection. That might explain the excessive coverage, the emphasis on salacious detail, the rush to publish, the carelessness about sources, even the willingness to be a public relations outlet for Kenneth Starr. It doesn't explain the level of hostility toward Mr. Clinton nor the numerous calls for impeachment or resignation. </div><p align="justify">It is entirely possible that I simply am missing something, that Clinton's offenses are as serious as they say; perhaps my moral sense has atrophied or perhaps my dislike for Mr. Starr and his methods causes me to reject his case, to confuse the messenger with the message. That may be so, but I still think that this outpouring of indignation is peculiar, especially since many of the specific complaints - that Clinton has undermined the rule of law, that he's corrupted public morals, that he's exposed youngsters to concepts heretofore unfamiliar to them - range from the dubious to the ludicrous. What has led to the overwrought tone of he editorials? <p align="justify">It can't be that Mr. Clinton has done something completely unexpected, that we're disappointed in someone we thought was much better. His libido and his evasions have been on display all along. Perhaps it's the opposite, a feeling that he's been given enough chances, that we've overlooked his lack of character too long. He's made fools of us and we're embarrassed. <p align="justify">Part of it may be reaction at an invited level. He always was a smarmy operator, feeling our pain, wearing his heart on his sleeve. An exaggeratedly emotional response - outrage, anguish, feelings of betrayal - may be poetic justice. <p align="justify">Doonesbury summed up the Starr investigation perfectly. A reporter asks, "Judge Starr, if you had nothing on Clinton after three years, why was your office even open when the Lewinsky affair surfaced?" Starr: "Well, my staff and I knew from the very beginning that Clinton should be impeached... But for the first three years, we didn't know why. We couldn't fugure our what he had done." Reporter: "But that's because he hadn't done it yet!" Starr: "Who knew? Hindsight is 20-20." <p align="justify">The same thinking may lie behind the editorial conclusions that the Lewinski affair is an impeachable offense: it's not really that bad, but he's guilty of so much and here's one we can prove. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Sept 30</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">An article in the New York Times today provides an illustration of embarrassment as a cause of editorial overreaction. A reporter visited Canton, Ohio, located in a county which conforms to national trends in presidential elections. The principal theme of the article was that the people are sticking with Mr. Clinton in contrast not only to the Washington elite but to the home-town variety. The latter, in the form of the editorial staff of The Canton Repository, offered the illustration. </div><p align="justify">The Repository endorsed Mr. Clinton in 1992 and renewed its endorsement in 1996 despite misgivings about "the character issue." "I'm frightened," one of the editors is quoted as having said in October, 1996, "that we will be embarrassed as a newspaper if we endorse Clinton and have a huge scandal break out." One did. The editors were disgusted by the Lewinski affair and the fact that it had become "part of a national discourse." When the Starr report was released, the editor said, they were appalled. "Our patience broke. I read excerpts....It put us over the edge." The same day, September 11, the paper ran an editorial calling for resignation. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">October 5</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The chief counsel to the Judiciary Committee was quoted as recommending that Count XI of the Starr Report be dropped from consideration. Rep. Hyde said that the Committee might look at matters outside the Report. Both suggest some discomfort with Mr. Starr’s product, which is easy to understand. If I were anxious to impeach, I’d want a stronger basis than the Independent Counsel’s referral. In thirty-four years of law practice, I’ve read - and written - some unpersuasive briefs. The Starr Report ranks with the worst. </div><p align="justify">The Report has stylistic peculiarities which make one wonder whether it was proofread. For example, a list of players at the front is presented in an all-cap, comma-free format, leading to entries such as "Andrew Bleiler Former Boyfriend of Monica Lewinski." Does she have a boyfriend named Andy Former or a former boyfriend named Andy Bleiler? Some quotes are set off by quotation marks or indented, but other material which apparently is quoted is not. Facts are cited which seem to have nothing to do with the charge being discussed. <p align="justify">The main body of the Report, which argues that certain acts are the stuff of impeachment, appears to have been drafted by committee. It has eleven sections or counts; each is organized differently than the others. Some of the counts which involve multiple charges number them; others do not. One count uses one numbering scheme, the next uses another. Different parts of the same count use different schemes. The first count, perhaps the most crucial, describes two of its five charges differently in the preamble than in the summary and does not present them in the same order. <p align="justify">None of this determines whether the charges have merit, but it reflects a level of disorganization and haste which would make me cautious if I were a member of the Congressional prosecution. <p align="justify">As I read them, the eleven counts contain twenty-seven separate charges, but ten people probably would come up with six totals due to the ambiguity of the presentation. I've read Count XI three times and have decided that there are one, three and five charges. It is, in any event, an absurd claim and the hint that it may be jettisoned hardly is surprising. <p align="justify">I attempted to evaluate whether the charges are supported. At this point, I haven’t yet read any of the separately published evidence, so I had to make two basic assumptions: the Report fairly describes the evidence (<i>i.e.,</i> it doesn’t misstate it, doesn’t select only the useful data, doesn't overlook something critical) and Monica Lewinski is a credible witness. Within that framework, my tally is that out of twenty-seven charges, six are supported, one cannot be evaluated because not enough information is given, one is too close to call and nineteen should be discarded before reaching stage two. This doesn't mean that the six can be proved; it means only that, in the statutory language which the Report uses as a talisman, there is substantial and credible information to support them. Whether any of them deserves to be discussed as a ground for impeachment is still another matter. <p align="justify">There are several recurrent tendencies in the presentation of the charges. One is a willingness to invoke the letter of the law or other authority when it suits, and to ignore it otherwise. The first count is an example. This contains the bedrock allegation that Clinton lied in his Jones deposition and adds an allegation about answers to interrogatories. A definition of sexual relations was adopted by the court for use at the deposition. One of the five charges in Count I relies on that definition in finding that Clinton lied. The basis for that charge is that, although Clinton denied<br />that any of the acts included in the definition occurred, Ms. Lewinski testified otherwise; this is substantial evidence. However, another charge is based on arguing with the definition, in effect complaining that it gave Clinton wiggle room. It did, and it doesn't engender confidence in this Report to base an impeachment count on the fact that the prosecutors are unhappy about that. The other three charges are quarrels with Clinton's interpretation of terms which were not defined. The prosecutors may think that his interpretations are dubious, but the charge here is<br />perjury, an offense which cannot be based on quarrels over definitions. The rationale for these three charges is no more than an argument that Clinton should have confessed - told the entire truth, if you prefer. This is a legitimate ethical argument but not ground for impeachment. </p><p align="justify">This belief that Clinton is impeachable because he did not confess runs through the entire Report. It is found in the assertion that there is an impeachable offense in declining invitations to testify before the grand jury, in invoking privilege. The hubris which characterized Mr. Starr’s investigation was not set aside when he sat down to compose. <p align="justify">Many of the arguments are, in one way or another, unpersuasive; some are simply plucked out of the air. For example, in Count V, it is contended that <blockquote><p align="justify">President Clinton endeavored to obstruct justice by engaging in a pattern of activity to conceal evidence...from the judicial process in the Jones case. The pattern included:... concealment of a note sent by Ms. Lewinski....<br /></p></blockquote><div align="justify">This portentous language masks a lack of evidence. Discovery requests by Jones, vaguely described in the Report, may have required production of notes from Monica. She testified that she sent Clinton a note. No note was produced. That's it.<br /><br />Even as to charges which are supported, the prosecutors can't resist adding "grounds" which are simply arguments. An example is the second charge under Count II, that Clinton lied to the grand jury about the details of the relationship. This is a rerun in a different venue of the charge pertaining to the deposition. After listing four factual reasons for believing Ms. Lewinski on this issue, the prosecutors add three more, one of which is that Clinton had a motive to lie. In their view, that motive equates to proof of an act. I think that this charge is supported, but overkill<br />justifies skepticism as to any which are more marginal.<br /></div><b></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 17</b></p><p align="justify">A list of fifteen charges proposed by the chief counsel was published on October 6. It appears to include the first ten counts of the Starr report or, in some cases, parts of them, and to restate some of their facts as different offenses. It adds charges of conspiracy and misprision of felony, but the new charges appear to be nothing more than reinterpretations of the Starr material. However, if the committee doesn't engage in independent fact-gathering it will not be surprising. Congress' record in that regard is not impressive and there is a precedent as to impeachment: the proceedings concerning President Nixon were criticized at the time as being a compilation, not an investigation. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 29</b></p><p align="justify">When I read the Starr Report the first time I skipped the footnotes. There are 1,660 of them<sup><small>1</small></sup> and, for various reasons, many are obscure to the casual reader. Some refer to interviews of Ms. Lewinski not contained in "The Starr Evidence," which includes several interviews and claims to contain "Complete Testimony from...Monica Lewinski...." Nevertheless, reading the footnotes is enlightening. <p align="justify">Some are comments on or expansions of discussions in the text and have the same character: partisan, exaggerated, illogical. The most ludicrous example is, not surprisingly, part of Count XI. In support of a contention that the President failed to faithfully execute the laws by stating on TV that he didn't have a relationship with Ms. Lewinski, the prosecutors speculate that "several aspects of the relationship could have raised public concerns." One of them is this: <blockquote><p align="justify">Third, in late 1997, the President saw to it that Ms. Lewinski received extraordinary job assistance. Such assistance might have been tied to her involvement in the Jones case, as discussed earlier, as well as a benefit to an ex- paramour....</p></blockquote><div align="justify">Pause here for a moment. In Count VII we were told, There is substantial and credible information that President Clinton endeavored to obstruct justice by helping Ms. Lewinski obtain a job in New York at a time when she would have been a witness against him were she to tell the truth during the <u>Jones </u>case. Now the assistance only "might have been tied" to that consideration. It also might have been a benefit to an ex-paramour.<br /></div><p align="justify">This possibility prompts the prosecutors to outdo themselves: If the latter was a factor, then the President's actions discriminated against all of those interns and employees who did not receive the same benefit. The President failed to faithfully execute the laws by covering up the fact that he was discriminating in favor of an ex-paramour. The people, had they but known, would have been outraged that he wasn't offering job-hunting assistance to non-paramours. What category of discrimination does this fall into? Perhaps reverse sexual harassment? It's surprising that there's no charge that he violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by having Monica perform services on weekends without paying her overtime. <p align="justify">The footnotes also are blatantly salacious. Some commentators accused Starr of including unnecessary detail about sex in the Report. I was prepared to give him a pass on that issue after reading only the text; there was more about sex than was absolutely necessary, but it wasn't irrelevant as Clinton had denied having sexual relations with Ms. Lewinski. The footnotes are another matter; they go into details which are completely immaterial and which have been included solely for prejudicial effect. They reveal to us things that we did not need to know about Bill and Monica, but also reveal something about the Independent Counsel. If I were a member of Congress, I’d be more ashamed to consort with him than with the defendant.<br />___________________<br /><br /><small>1.<strong> 7/3/00</strong>: There are 1,692; I didn't count the 32 footnotes to the Introduction.</small> <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 30</b></p><p align="justify">Last night's Seattle Times informed us (via the Washington Post) that one Dolly Kyle Browning has filed suit against Mr. Clinton. <blockquote><p align="justify">Browning, a friend of Clinton's from high school, contends that Clinton defamed her by denying her public contention that they once had a sexual relationship. By casting doubt on her credibility, Browning and her lawyer, Larry Klayman of the conservative group Judicial Watch, contend that Clinton has hampered her efforts to publish a semi-fictional book about the affair she alleges.... </p></blockquote><div align="justify">Once a gentleman would have been constrained to deny an affair to preserve the woman's reputation. Now he's required to admit it to help sales.<br /></div><p align="justify">Mr. Clinton's lawyer responded that the action should be dismissed as frivolous or stayed until he leaves office. Adding a perfect coda to this tale from beyond the looking glass, Mr. Klayman asserted that this shows "a lack of respect for the courts." <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 2</b></p><p align="justify">Another revealing feature of the Starr footnotes is the relatively small number of citations to Monica Lewinski's grand jury testimony. In many cases, including some of the most crucial, the authority offered is her deposition, her interviews by the prosecutors or her proffer. <p align="justify">The "deposition" is actually testimony for the grand jury under grand jury rules (no counsel for the witness present) but taken in private. The ostensible reason for this was to minimize her embarrassment, but the effect was to insulate the testimony from intrusion by the jury. <p align="justify">At least the deposition is available as a verbatim transcript. The interviews (at least those I've seen) are presented in the form of notes taken by the prosecutors. They are, at best, paraphrases of Ms. Lewinski's statements and in many cases it is not even clear whether the statements are hers. The proffer was written by her, but in her grand jury testimony she seemed unsure whether some of the statements in it were accurate. <p align="justify">Apparently because the deposition was planned in advance, the questioning at Ms. Lewinski's grand jury appearances was bland and for the most part pointless, almost as if the prosecutors were going through the motions for the jury. The most interesting exchange came on the second day when a juror asked about the interrogation on the day Linda Tripp delivered Monica into the hands of the Independent Counsel and the FBI. If anyone harbors any doubts about the police-state mentality of the OIC, he has only to read this passage. <p align="justify">A further oddity about Ms. Lewinski's testimony revealed by the footnotes is the prosecutors' doubt about her veracity. We are told that they were unwilling to make a deal based on the proffer unless Ms. Lewinski submitted to an interview, "which the OIC deemed essential because of her perjurious <u>Jones</u> affidavit, her attempts to persuade Linda Tripp to commit perjury, her assertion in a recorded conversation that she had been brought up to regard lying as necessary, and her forgery of a letter while in college." After the interview the prosecutors either decided that Ms. Lewinski was, despite all of the above, truthful or decided that they didn't care. <p align="justify">Let's be generous and assume the former. This requires adherence to the theory that one can tell whether a witness is telling the truth by watching her testify. Although not without foundation in fact, this is one of the more seductive myths of the law. Good lawyers and judges have been fooled countless times and I don't see any reason to assume that the OIC is immune. In addition, it's difficult to see how the interviews enhanced Ms. Lewinski's reputation for veracity as she told the prosecutors during one of them that she lied to Linda Tripp in January, 1998 about various aspects of her job search. <p align="justify"><b>Nov 10</b> <p align="justify">Last Tuesday night the resident pollster on CNN informed us that the election results, while reflecting an almost unprecedented defeat for the Republicans, were not a referendum on impeachment. He and the majority members of the Judiciary Committee appear to be alone in that belief. Newt Gingrich was made to walk the plank for concentrating so narrowly on impeachment that Republicans could not get their message out. The speaker-presumptive has made noises sounding like the call for retreat, as have others, and pundits have declared that it’s over. However, Hyde and Co. are pushing forward, doing their duty to the rule of law, unconcerned about political implications, unintimidated by the voters’ displeasure. <p align="justify">If there had been any sentiment on the Committee for a lesser punishment it was diminished by the testimony yesterday of experts on impeachment (are there such beings?) condemning half-measures such as censure as being inconsistent with the Constitution. Unless this advice is ignored -and I certainly would do so if I were Mr. Livingston- the Republicans face the unpleasant choice of backing down ignominiously or pushing ahead and facing the not inconsiderable risk of being reminded in 2000 that they were told in 1998 to desist. They might, of course, do such a good job at the public’s business over the next two years that they could have it both ways; given their political skills of late, it wouldn’t be a good bet. <p align="justify">The local election was no less interesting. Washington contributed two-fifths of the net gain for the Democrats in the House and the state delegation has a majority of Democrats again. Several of the ballot measures are significant in various ways, but from the standpoint of political dynamics the stunner was Initiative 200. <p align="justify">This measure, which will eliminate gender and race preferences in public employment, contracts and education, was opposed by every respectable opinion-maker in the state as well as some from outside. It was opposed by the present and three former governors, both Seattle papers, business groups, church groups - you name it. It was sponsored, at and times it seemed to be supported solely, by John Carlson who, until he was fired for too blatantly promoting the initiative on his program, shared KVI’s conservative talk-show lineup with Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved and Michael Reagan. Carlson is more of a target than a recommendation, so<br />that wouldn't seem to bode well. The opposition ran slick TV ads; the proponents ran only one, which was clumsy and unconvincing. The only hint of weakness -unless, of course, one read the polls - was in the last ad by the opponents, which in effect told voters to disregard what the initiative said and to accept their version of what it meant. This epitomized their campaign: the best people were telling ordinary folks how to think. The folks said no, thanks, by a margin of 58 to 42. </p><p align="justify">Whatever the merits of the initiative, the campaign is another example of the gap between elite opinion, suffused with a sense of righteousness, and the popular variety. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 12</b></p><p align="justify">Today’s New York Times editorial page offers two interesting comments on the issue of censure as an alternative to impeachment, one by Senator Arlen Specter, the other in the house column. They are in accord that there must be some expression of disapproval of the President’s actions, but there they part company. <p align="justify">The Senator is of the opinion that impeachment hearings would be a distraction from important business and a waste of time given the unlikelihood of conviction. However he rejects the alternative of censure: it would be relatively meaningless even if accompanied by a negotiated fine, loss of pension and forfeiture of his license to practice law. Unless I’ve missed some proposal, he’s rejecting two penalties not under consideration. In any case, it’s fair to conclude that he would like to see Clinton impeached and won’t accept any outcome of lesser magnitude.<sup><small>1<br /></small></sup>He therefore proposes that impeachment be dropped, noting that Clinton could be prosecuted after leaving office. Of course, Congress can’t ensure that the latter will occur, so the point of his proposal seems to be that impeachment be dropped lest an acquittal in the Senate influence a criminal jury. </p><p align="justify">The Senator speculates that the prospect of prosecution might prompt Clinton to make a deal, resigning in exchange for a Congressionally approved plea bargain in which the President would promptly exit the White House with his liberty, his pension and our recommendation that he keep his law license. The proposal that someone allegedly guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice be allowed to practice law is a little odd, but apparently the only concern here is to restore purity to the government; the public can fend for itself. However, it’s only a recommendation, which any state could ignore, so it’s really window dressing. <p align="justify">Senator Specter claims to be drawing on his experience as a prosecutor in predicting that Mr. Clinton might well be sent to jail, but is this realistic? Public opinion, as measured by polls and the recent election lends little support to that assumption. He concedes that conviction in the Senate is unlikely, where the President is faced with a majority of political opponents and the standard of proof is whatever the senators choose to make it. Why then is a criminal conviction a probable outcome? As the Senator concedes, Mr. Clinton isn't likely to accept this offer. <p align="justify">The Times editorialists think that censure is an appropriate sanction, one that respects the political consensus against removing the President unless the evidence changes, and the high civic importance of rebuking him for his failure in his constitutional duty to uphold the law. They differ with the majority of the scholars who advised the Judiciary Committee that censure isn't sanctioned by the Constitution. Acknowledging that there is the danger of setting a precedent for Congressional meddling, the editors claim that there is a greater danger to the nation’s constitutional system if Congress gives the President a pass for his lying under oath and knowingly allowing others to testify falsely to protect him. <p align="justify">The Times has the right approach. There is a problem to be solved and the Constitution isn't that rigid - indeed not even explicit - on the point. In addition, as a censure is meaningless, where is the risk to the system? However, the practical need isn't that the President must be condemned, it’s that this farce must be brought to a close. If Congress can’t be redirected toward the business it was elected to conduct without first making a statement of principle - without, as the Times puts it, expressing its anger and disapproval - by all means let it do so.<br />_______________________<br /><br /><small>1. Apparently I misinterpreted Senator Specter’s comments on this point: he voted not proved, which caused confusion among the Senate clerks, but finally was recorded as not guilty. </small></p><p align="justify"><b>Dec 8</b> </p><p align="justify">News reports today tell us that sentiment in the House is swinging toward impeachment. One stated reason is that moderates who might have voted "no" are angered by the evasive nature of Mr. Clinton's answers to the Committee's 81 questions. The same fate may befall the defense being offered to the Committee today and tomorrow by the President's lawyers. </p><p align="justify">Some of Mr. Clinton's answers were almost provocatively evasive, but I still find it strange that otherwise reasonable people expect him to confess while charges loom. The strangest comment along this line was from a California Republican Representative who criticized Clinton's "'it's not my fault' adolescent attitude" and then added, "There are a lot of us who are more outraged at the tactics than the charges themselves." Impeach because of evasion; impeach because of refusal to admit perjury. If this is the moderate line, I might prefer the moralistic conservative<br />approach. Probably Clinton should have declined to answer the Committee's questions - the first one was sufficiently silly to have given some cover - and perhaps should have passed the opportunity to present a defense, especially as there apparently is no intention to challenge the basic facts. Maybe there is a plan, but I have to confess that I don't see it and the White House seems to have squandered the advantage given by the election and the disarray in the Republican ranks. </p><p align="justify">Another possible reason for the change in mood is that Mr. Starr got high marks for his performance. No one other than conservative Republicans takes the substance of his presentation seriously, but apparently some of the public and perhaps some of the House expected Mr. Starr to have horns, so his low-key, professorial delivery was reassuring. We have here another triumph of lowered expectations, but the White House may have brought this on itself by its constant attacks on Starr's bullying methods, unethical manipulation of the media and prurient preoccupations. That one can appear scholarly and still have all those failings is too subtle a point to be grasped. <p align="justify">The snatches I've seen or heard of Starr's testimony and today's defense demonstrate, if there were any lingering doubt, that minds are made up and the hearings are a farce. A Republican Committee member asserted today that no one has challenged Monica Lewinski's credibility, overlooking the fact that Starr did so both in the report and in his testimony. In the latter, he said that Ms. Lewinski "was encouraging others to join her in committing perjury. She was, as the information came to us, a felon in the midst of committing another felony." "...Ms. Lewinski<br />made it quite clear that she knew how to lie. She was encouraging others to lie...." The former was in reference to the January "interview"; the latter seemed to be a more general observation. </p><p align="justify">It's clear now that the impeachment drive is, after all, just about sex or, to give it the most important possible cast, about lies about sex. It isn't about Whitewater, FBI files, Travel Office firings, Vince Foster and his files or campaign financing. It isn't even about Kathleen Willey, just Monica. It can't be about Presidents not telling the entire truth: we'd have impeached most of them, many on grounds relating to the office. Is it because poor dumb Bill allowed himself to be put under oath? Maybe, but we keep hearing a lot about his deceiving the people in his famous televised denial. It comes down to this: should the House vote impeachment of a president<br />based on his not telling the truth as to the specific acts which took place in an admitted sexual dalliance? Is he fit to continue in office only if he says, "Yes, I fondled her breasts?" I look forward to having someone explain to me how that serves the public interest, how it enhances the power and authority of the United States to be revealed as a nation of fools. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Dec 17</b></p><p align="justify">It's always interesting to see what the media slant was on a controversial subject at an earlier time. If one does not have ready access to back issues of magazines, he only has to visit his physician: doctors' waiting rooms are a treasure trove of outdated opinion. Yesterday I could have tested my recollection of January's reactions to the Monica mess, but settled for reading <i>Time</i> from November 30. <p align="justify">What a difference two-plus weeks have made. <i>Time</i> then still offered the same conclusion as the post-election analysis had, that the only majority for impeachment was on the Judiciary Committee. The common wisdom now is that impeachment is certain, a conclusion buttressed by numerous reported conversions among moderate Republicans, and warnings are heard that conviction is not out of the question. <p align="justify"><i>Time's</i> report on the Starr visitation to the Judiciary committee evaluated his performance about as I did: prissy, pedantic, evasive and defensive. It regarded the standing ovation by the Republicans as evidence of their blind partisanship, which is accurate enough, but the swing of opinion to impeachment has demonstrated that the Committee is more representative of the House majority than many of us thought.</p>Gerald G. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18272770512487580818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8898880961286945569.post-67035520646090566972007-12-14T22:06:00.000-08:002008-01-20T10:52:06.915-08:001999<b><p align="justify">Jan 6</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">In a family discussion last month I offered the opinion, to less than unanimous assent, that the Republicans were to some degree acting from principle in their pursuit of President Clinton. I did not mean that I thought that these principles had been applied fairly, logically or consistently: one would have to be tone deaf not to detect hypocrisy, opportunism and political animus. Nor did I think that the offenses deserved the punishment contemplated. I simply meant that I thought that the impeachment process was being driven in part by a sincere belief that the President committed serious wrongs. However, having seen more of our Congress in action, I<br />am less sure that the proceedings have much to do with high principle. </div><p align="justify">Perhaps the best illustration is found in the behavior of Mr. DeLay, one of the chief architects of the impeachment vote. Apparently sharing the belief of many that the articles of impeachment were weak, he invited undecided Members to view secret evidence, including documents dealing with matters which neither the Judiciary Committee nor the Independent Counsel had seen fit to take up. He later suggested that if Senators only would inspect this mother lode of gossip, the necessary sixty-seven votes would materialize. <p align="justify">Those who spoke in the House debate in favor of impeachment and invoked Constitutional principle probably believed what they said. They were, however, lending their support to a political lynching. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Jan 7</b></p><div align="justify"><br /></div><p align="justify"><i>Commentary</i> presented a symposium in December's issue, inviting observations on the meaning of the November election, "the moral disposition of the American people" and the direction of conservative thought in the matter of morals. <p align="justify">Most of those who discussed the election sought to rationalize it in comforting terms: "Voters last November refused to send a Big Message, either that all was well or, by contrast, that the country would be definitively on its way to hell unless Clinton was kicked out of office...." "The '98 elections suggest that it has dawned on most Americans that we are in bad moral trouble, but we do not know what to do about it." "The results of the November elections reveal public indifference and Republican diffidence." Any explanation will do other than the inconvenient one that many voters see less in the Lewinski affair than do Clinton's critics and are more afraid of the latter. <p align="justify">Several of the essays undercut the frequent denial by Congressional Republicans and other friends of impeachment that the issue is sex. In fact, those opinions were notable primarily for their unabashed preoccupation with the subject. Another, and related, theme was that the problems with our moral disposition are all the fault of the Sixties. <p align="justify">In this view, the legacy of that time is primarily a liberalized, irresponsible attitude toward sex, finding expression in toleration (if not celebration) of casual sexual activity, in homosexuality, unwed motherhood and divorce. However, the worst manifestation, and the issue which seems central in the thinking of these writers, is abortion. To them, President Clinton's hesitant, passive, tawdry fooling around is part of the degenerate mindset which leads the heirs of the counterculture to murder their unborn. I think that one can, without much danger of overstatement, point out that this is ridiculous. <p align="justify">Leaving aside that Bill's chosen form of recreation wasn't procreation, it is absurd to argue that sexual promiscuity is inextricably linked to liberal ideas about abortion. Men cheated on their wives, took advantage of their subordinates and lied about it long before 1960. Conservatives did it, Republicans did it, Victorians did it and so did men of religious faith. Abortion may be wrong and the legacy of the counterculture may be regrettable, but conservatives aren't going to make that case by denouncing Mr. Clinton's behavior. Neither are they going to convince anyone that he should be forced out of office by denouncing the Sixties. <p align="justify">There were exceptions to this pattern. David Frum suggested that the "American public's disinclination to remove President Clinton from office is in many ways a conservative impulse..." The Democrats won in 1998 "by getting to the right of Kenneth Starr on the issue of public decency." They argued "that it was time to get smut off television - <i>and</i> that the way to get it off was by ending the investigation." Christopher Caldwell made much the same point: The "<i>Penthouse Forum</i> tone of the Starr report and much anti-Clinton commentary cast Republicans as the party that <i>really</i> likes to talk about sex." To get caught in certain activities is humiliating to Mr. Clinton, but "to spend a year turning blue in the face about it is perverse." Also, "Republicans appeared opportunistic in adducing a 'moral crisis' or a 'death of outrage' to explain the public's refusal to desert the President over the Lewinski matter." The confusion of targets - or melding of fixations - regarding Clinton and the Sixties isn't the only example of fuzzy thinking in the responses. The worst, at least to my admittedly legalistic mind, was offered by James Q. Wilson. Professor Wilson speculated that voters are tired of the impeachment proceedings because they require "incontrovertible evidence" of wrongdoing. They did not repudiate President Nixon until that appeared and "[l]ittle evidence of this kind has been presented against Clinton." So far, I'm with him. However, he thinks that such evidence exists and that the voters simply haven't taken the time to review it. The Starr report alleges - plausibly in my opinion - that Clinton did attempt to obstruct justice, but to accept that finding one must first study the report carefully or listen closely to Starr's congressional testimony...." The Starr Report may allege obstruction plausibly, but an allegation is just that, not proof.<br />However, before finishing a sentence, Professor Wilson converted an accusation into a "finding." Of course he has company, as the Judiciary majority was equally unable to understand the distinction. He continued, "I have read the report and listened to Starr's testimony and I think he is reasonable, and so I believe Clinton has acted wrongly. But not many Americans have done this." Professor Wilson's approach is somewhat less than rigorous. One need not subject the evidence to critical scrutiny, analyze the charges, consider the standards for impeachment or listen to contrary interpretations. It is enough that the advocate of a conclusion one supports appear to be reasonable. This is indistinguishable from the standing ovation granted Mr. Starr<br />by the Committee Republicans. </p><p align="justify">Even the claim that the public opposes impeachment because it has not read the Report is unconvincing. The versions of the charges reported in the media have been more damaging than the real thing and, unlike the Report, cannot be dissected. <p align="justify">In her essay, Midge Decter suggested that the public be instructed by neoconservative intellectuals."<sup><small>1</small></sup> If Professor Wilson is an example of their reasoning power, I'll take the maligned electorate.<br />_____________________<br /><br /><small>1.<strong> 10/10/01</strong>: Neoconservatives are insistent on this label, apparently intending it to suggest deep thinking. A more appropriate definition is suggested by Jaques Barzun in <i>From Dawn to Decadence</i>: "It was during 'the [Dreyfus] Affair' that the word <i>intellectual</i> became a noun with its present connotation of professional of the mind holding social or political views. It bears the same relation to thinker that aesthete does to artist: it denotes a large group of people articulate for a cause and often militant, without being themselves artists or thinkers."</small><br /><br /><b>Jan 11</b> </p><p align="justify">William F. Buckley was another contributor to the Commentary symposium. His comments there were somewhat rambling, touching on "the eschatological dynamic of the Judiciary Committee's inquiry" and "the progressive enfeeblement of ethical will." He was quoted in the New York Times on December 18 in a more succinct, although markedly less logical, vein. <blockquote><p align="justify">The arguments in favor of impeaching [the President] come down to this:<br />One, his behavior was disreputable. He deceived the courts and the American people.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">That's a fair statement of the facts, although one might disagree that it justifies impeachment.<br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">Two, the gravity of his offense is best measured by the disgusted attention that has been given to what he did.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">As much of that disgusted attention has been given by his sworn enemies, this would seem to be a self-fulfilling test.<br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">Three, the arguments in his defense have been semantic and legalistic.... [ellipsis in the original]</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The news article gives no clue as to the material omitted. If this is a fair excerpt, it is nonsense as a ground for impeachment unless the test is to ignore the merits of the charges and decide whether to condemn based on whether the defense is appealing.<br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">Four, the objection that the American people are opposed to impeachment ignores culture lags of historical frequency, including general opposition to the liberation of the slaves....</p></blockquote><div align="justify">If this is intended to say that public appraisal of Clinton may change, he may well be right, but how can that possibility be a basis for impeachment?<br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">Five, the true test of the stability of the Constitution is in its usefulness in liberating the country from miscast faith in a failed leader.<br /></p></blockquote><div align="justify">I can't think of anything more destabilizing than a vote by a self-appointed body of censors not only to overturn the last Presidential election, but to ignore the obvious message of the more recent Congressional election and the results of every poll over the last twelve months. Democracy allows the people to have "miscast faith." What would Mr. Buckley have said if his argument had been offered in 1987? </div><blockquote><p align="justify">And six, the profiles in courage, in the contemporary scene, will highlight the Republican and Democratic Congressmen who summon the courage to do the right thing.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">A rather muddled rhetorical flourish somehow has been transformed into an "argument in favor of impeaching."<br /></div><p align="justify">Mr. Buckley should stick to rambling; he doesn't make much sense when he tries to be systematic.<br /><br /><b>Jan 15</b> </p><p align="justify">McCarthyism has been used as a metaphor for the fixation on Mr. Clinton's sins. Alan Dershowitz has entitled his recent book <i>Sexual McCarthyism</i> and The Weekly informed us in the current issue that there is a web site called "Sexual McCarthyism.com." <p align="justify">I'm slowly wending my way through <i>The Crosswinds of Freedom,</i> the third volume of James MacGregor Burns' <i>The American Experiment.</i> Last night, reading about the McCarthy era, I came across this: "His 1950 crusade elevated McCarthy to the high priesthood of Republican right-wing extremism. McCarthyism, said the rising young conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., 'is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.'" I don't detect much good will in either of Mr. Buckley's crusades, but the rest is revealing. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Jan 17</b></p><div align="justify"><br /></div><p align="justify">One Republican has expressed impatience with the theory that the President should be driven from office because of annoyance at the defenses - or evasions, obfuscations or whatever - he has offered in response to the charges. Senator Jeffords of Vermont was quoted as follows: "If you say lying about a noncrime can be converted into a high crime by the way he handled it, (that) sets a pretty low standard to me." On the other hand, an accompanying story claimed that no one in the Senate now is saying that conviction is impossible, citing five senators, two of<br />them Democrats, to the effect that the House had presented an impressive case. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Jan 18</b></p><div align="justify"><br /></div><p align="justify">The Senate reportedly still is undecided whether to call witnesses, but the first one already has testified and has helped his case. I thought that President Clinton was taking a huge gamble in proceeding with the State of the Union address in the midst of his trial. His political instincts, not surprisingly, are better than mine. The speech was one of his better efforts even ignoring the obstacles; under the circumstances, it was incredible. He challenged his chief accuser to a showdown and Henry Hyde blinked.<br /><br /><b>Jan 24</b> </p><p align="justify">In today's P-I, a column by the director of the Baptist Center for Ethics criticized the religious right for condemning sexual misbehavior but not racist attitudes. The occasion was the revelation that Senator Lott and Representative Barr, the latter one of the House prosecutors, have attended meetings of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The writer's conclusion was that "the ethical double standard of the religious right advances moral relativism and discloses how ill-fitting the modifier religious is when applied to these right-wingers." The accusation of moral<br />relativism is a nice bit of irony. </p><p align="justify">The other aspect of this episode which I find intriguing is the lack of interest displayed by the media, especially given Barr's status as one of the House impeachment managers. There is, as to some subjects, an undeniable liberal bias in the media. However, contrary to my observation a year ago, it would be difficult to make that case based on reporting and commentary on the Lewinski affair. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Feb 9</b></p><div align="justify"><br /></div><p align="justify">I used to regard Henry Hyde as a principled, generally sensible conservative. In the early stage of the impeachment proceedings, he seemed, like the rest of us, to be caught up in an unpleasant process he would rather be rid of. However, at some point, he decided that he had a mission. Perhaps he saw himself as a defender of public integrity, but to me he appeared to be a latter-day Roundhead - part moral scold, part revolutionary - calling for the death of the tyrant. The reference in his closing argument to the divine right of kings did nothing to dispel the image. His<br />demand that the Senate cleanse the office epitomized the moralistic excess of the House managers and their detachment from reality. </p><p align="justify">Anthony Lewis, who has talked more sense about this mess than anyone else, summed up these tendencies in today's column. Referring to the speech by Rep. Graham, he asked, <blockquote><p align="justify">Why the trembling emotion? Frustration, I think. Mr. Graham and the other Republican managers believe that an evil President is about to be acquitted of the impeachment charges, and they cannot understand why.<br /></p><p align="justify">If they could only see it, one reason is their very certainty: their absolute conviction that they are right. Most Americans do not want to be governed by men who know they are always right....</p></blockquote><b><p align="justify">Feb 10</b></p><p align="justify">The Attorney General is looking into possible misconduct by Mr. Starr. At the moment, the focus is on his denial, at the time of the expansion of his powers to include the Lewinski affair, that his office was in contact with lawyers representing Paula Jones. This has been expressed as a challenge to his veracity but, as with his target, there isn't much to damage. The more important issue is whether the eventual charges against Mr. Clinton were the result of collusion, whether they were a species of entrapment. Unintentionally shedding light on the latter issue while denying the former, Charles Bakaly said, "There was no misleading of Justice. This was a very fluid evolving situation. Unlike most public corruption cases, this one was - ongoing felonies were still possibly being committed." <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Feb 11</b></p><div align="justify"><br /></div><p align="justify">The Senate voted today. As expected, neither article of impeachment came near to commanding the necessary 67 votes, but the result was worse for the House managers than would have been forecast until very recently: 45 for conviction on perjury, 50 on obstruction. <p align="justify">One of the many ironies, one which exposes the misuse of the impeachment power, is the extent to which the votes for impeachment and for conviction were influenced by Mr. Clinton's behavior after the events which ostensibly formed the basis for the proceedings, especially his refusal to admit wrongdoing in a manner acceptable to his critics. This was noted in an article by Lawrence Tribe today: <blockquote><p align="justify">Many who have urged the President's removal have been willing to see him remain in power if only he would confess that he committed a crime - strongly suggesting that no danger to individual rights or to the constitutional system itself was perceived in the President's admittedly shameful behavior. This impeachment has been less about danger to the nation than about disgust with the President's attitude....</p></blockquote><b><p align="justify">Mar 3</b></p><p align="justify">The revelations that America is depraved and that the causes are liberalism and the Sixties prompted the acquisition of Robert Bork's <i>Slouching towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and America's Decline.</i> (I also should consult<i> The Death of Outrage,</i> but it hasn't yet found its way to the bargain shelves at Barnes & Noble). <p align="justify">The hearings on his nomination to the Supreme Court convinced me that Judge Bork was outside the mainstream of American legal thought and an unsuitable candidate for the Court. Therefore, when I read his apologia, <i>The Tempting of America,</i> I expected to find myself in complete opposition. Instead, although I disagreed with him on important matters, it struck me as a well-reasoned exposition of his version of conservatism, much less radical than I expected. <i>Slouching towards Gomorrah,</i> his 1996 jeremiad, reflects more of the extremism that I thought I detected in 1987. <p align="justify">On Pages 2 and 3 of the Introduction, he tells us that society is deteriorating: <blockquote><p align="justify">...We hear one day of the latest rap song calling for killing policemen or the sexual mutilation of women; the next, of coercive left-wing political indoctrination at a prestigious university; then of the latest homicide figures for New York City, Los Angeles, or the District of Columbia; of the collapse of the criminal justice system, which displays an inability to punish adequately and, often enough, an inability even to convict the clearly guilty; of the rising rate of illegitimate births; the uninhibited display of sexuality and the popularization of violence in our entertainment; worsening racial tensions; the angry activists of feminism, homosexuality, animal rights - the list could be extended almost indefinitely.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">This is, shall we say, a peculiar statement: we are invited to believe that feminism is a development as indicative of cultural decay as the crime rate, that agitation for animal rights is on a plane with racial tensions.<br /></div><p align="justify">Following the ominous introduction, the book is divided into three parts. Part I tells us how we came to our present place; it begins, predictably, with a discussion of the Sixties. "It is important to understand what the Sixties turmoil was about, for the youth culture that became manifest then is the modern liberal culture of today." Quoting a description of the attitude of the time, he says, That was the authentic voice of adolescent Sixties radicalism -impatient, destructive, nihilistic. Modern liberalism is its mature stage. <p align="justify">It's not clear where some of Judge Bork's fixations originated, but the first two chapters demonstrate that his opinion of the Sixties is due in no small part to his having seen student demonstrations at first hand; the earlier book showed that his attitudes toward liberalism were influenced or at least confirmed by his treatment during the hearings. I can sympathize with both reactions: the irrationality and violence of some of the student actions would have offended almost any thoughtful person and the hysterical performance of some of his critics at the hearings might make anyone wonder what sort of people liberals are. However,<i> Slouching towards Gomorrah</i> claims that there is something fundamentally wrong with liberalism and that it is corrupting American culture. So sweeping an indictment requires something more than anecdotes about rude behavior. It requires factual support and persuasive argument, of which there is not nearly enough. <p align="justify">Judge Bork's theme is the "progression of liberty and equality to their present corrupt states of moral anarchy and despotic egalitarianism." In two chapters criticizing "the rage for liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and "the passion for equality," he changes his focus, arguing that this tendency did not arise in the Sixties but is revealed in the Declaration of Independence. <p align="justify">In denouncing radical individualism, Judge Bork informs us that the Declaration's "ringing phrases are hardly useful, indeed may be pernicious, if taken, as they commonly are, as a guide to action, governmental or private." However, his argument is nothing more than the obvious one that there are practical limits on the application of the principles of the Declaration, ones embodied,<i> e.g.,</i> in the Constitution. As it is the Constitution and not the Declaration which has great continuing impact on our decisions, his denunciation of the former is mostly rhetoric. <p align="justify">Judge Bork's main target as to individualism is<i> On Liberty.</i> His understanding of that work is about on a par with that of our local columnist, the only difference being her admiration and his disdain for the one simple principle." Neither seems to have read beyond that passage. His interpretation of<i> On Liberty,</i> of the influence of that essay and of the inevitable tendencies of the Enlightenment lead him to one of his simple principles: "Liberalism moves, therefore, toward radical individualism and the corruption of standards that movement entails."<sup><small>1</small></sup> <p align="justify">Judge Bork doesn't have any more regard for the Declaration of Independence when it comes to equality. <blockquote><p align="justify">The proposition that all men are created equal said what the colonists already believed, and so, as Gordon Wood put it, equality became "the single most powerful and radical ideological force in all of American history." That is true and, though it verges on heresy to say so, it is also profoundly unfortunate.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">He seems to regard the Declaration as he does the opinion in <i>Brown v. Board of Education:</i> a carelessly phrased statement leading to a result which he somewhat grudgingly approves, but leading also to dangerously egalitarian misinterpretations. By the twentieth century, equality had become "a serious threat to freedom." (The last word apparently has a different and more acceptable meaning than "liberty"). </div><p align="justify">Even assuming, as he apparently does, that once equality is posited, it inevitably must lead to some sort of excess, does he really think that whatever evils he perceives are too great a price to pay for the emancipation of the slaves, civil rights for minorities and votes for women? <p align="justify">In addition, his concept of radical egalitarianism is somewhat eccentric. Although he offers a few other examples, the chapter on the unfortunate effects of the passion for equality is devoted primarily to progressive income taxation. This, he informs us, is based on nothing more than envy of the more successful. Only someone influenced by the Chicago school of law and economics could reach such a conclusion and, stranger yet, believe that this demonstrates the march of liberalism toward Gomorrah. <p align="justify">In a chapter on the judicial system, Judge Bork denounces the Supreme Court's "constitutionalizing of radical individualism," using as examples decisions dealing with religion, freedom of expression and abortion, with passing mention of crime and education. Certainly there are debatable decisions in all of these areas, and some of them could be regarded as manifestations of excessive notions of personal liberty, but the conclusion that such a theme underlies all of the Court's work merely is asserted and is not to me self-evident. Judge Bork also discusses <i>Bowers v. Hardwick,</i> regarding prosecution for sodomy, but he has to criticize the dissent in order to make his point, as the Court handed down a notably conservative ruling, one which is an inconvenient exception to his supposed rule. <p align="justify">Under the heading of radical egalitarianism, Judge Bork indicts, among others, opinions on affirmative action. He notes a decision pulling back from approval of set-asides, but cautions that it is "too soon, however, to say that the Court has abandoned its extreme egalitarianism...." To do so would detract from the theme. He toys with the idea of legislative review of Court decisions, but neglects to mention that the closest approach to that recently was the legislative repudiation of <i>Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio,</i> a decision dealing with proof of disparate impact discrimination; Congress intervened in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 because it thought the Court too conservative. (<i>Wards Cove</i> was decided in 1988; does it reflect the pernicious effects of the Eighties?) <p align="justify">There are many aspects of contemporary American culture, politics and law which deserve close scrutiny, some which liberals would agree need major change, and some as to which many people would concur that there is evident an aspect of cultural decline or illness. However, addressing such issues is not advanced by overwrought, unpersuasive denunciations such as Judge Bork sets forth in Part I of his book, nor is analysis aided by simplistic arguments that all of the problems are the fault of one ideology, philosophy, tradition or decade. <p align="justify">Part II, as Judge Bork tells us in the foreword, "examines the particular institutions and areas of cultural warfare that result from the twin thrusts of modern liberalism: radical individualism and radical egalitarianism." This is not exactly a promise of moderation but there is, briefly, an entirely different tone. In the first four chapters of Part II, he discusses popular entertainment, the internet, pornography, crime, "illegitimacy," welfare, abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide. Even when taking an uncompromising position, he is more reasonable, more persuasive and more humane than anyone would have anticipated from reading Part I. <p align="justify">However, in addressing feminism, he returns to the earlier style. Many of the extreme views he criticizes have been reported in one form or another elsewhere and seem as dubious as he suggests. However, none of his discussion reveals any understanding of the significance of feminism to most women, or of the ways in which they integrate it, or parts of it, into their lives. His belief that gender discrimination no longer exists would surprise many. <p align="justify">Judge Bork’s apparent detachment from everyday life was one of the reasons I thought he was a poor choice for the Court. His concept of the law seemed academic; it was, in his telling, an intellectual exercise in which purity of reasoning was more important than just results. Much of this chapter reflects that same detachment. Apart from his discussion of the military, his view of feminism is academic in the literal sense: he is concerned primarily with battles on campus. The<br />same is true of his opinions on liberalism in general. While such debates are not unimportant, this focus leads him to take an unrealistic view and an unnecessarily hostile stance. </p><p align="justify">His attitude toward racial issues is similar: the problem has been solved but we are being poisoned by anti-white rhetoric. <p align="justify">Judge Bork concludes Part II with a chapter entitled "The Wistful Hope for Fraternity." True to his method, he informs us that the impediments to fraternity are "modern liberalism's radical versions of liberty and equality." His focus is multiculturalism, which, he tells us, is "barbarism". One of the oddities of his argument is that Western culture, which here he defends, elsewhere is accused of being the source of the excesses of liberalism, or at least of individualism. <p align="justify">Concern about the effects of multiculturalism is not unique to conservatives. Judge Bork refers to but is somewhat dismissive of Arthur Schlesinger's <i>The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.</i> Another study, which provides not only a far more insightful and objective appraisal than Judge Bork's but also an apt critique of his attitude, is Todd Gitlin's <i>The Twilight of Common Dreams.</i> On the latter point, Professor Gitlin has this to say: <blockquote><p align="justify">...The publicists and scholars who obsess about political correctness, and the politicians who seize on the opportunities they open up, are frozen into their own correctness. They are factions against factions. They feel victimized by those accused of cultivating victimization. Deploring hyper-sensitivity, they are hypersensitive to every slight directed against white men. Humorlessly, they decry the humorlessness of feminists and minorities.... [I]n the thick of the culture war, the movement that purports to wish to shore up the American center is itself a centrifugal force.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">In part III, Judge Bork adds little other than the observation that we have reached the suburbs of Gomorrah, the belief that government is the problem, not the solution (except as to crime and pornography), and the suggestion that we must resist radical individualism and radical egalitarianism one issue or organization at a time.<br /></div><p align="justify">Dismissing Judge Bork's concerns about the culture would be a mistake and even his attacks on liberalism are worth considering. Liberalism has significant problems and Judge Bork is an intelligent man: he’s bound to be right about some of them. It is, however, a challenge to do justice to a critique which takes such an extreme stance. I find myself thinking twice about accepting even sensible arguments from someone whose starting point is Irving Kristol's dictum that rot and decadence...[are] the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism.... Reasoning from<br />such an ideological premise is a poor substitute for analysis and clear thinking.<br />_____________________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>5/5/99:</strong> "<i>On Liberty</i> is widely praised; it is, however, less widely read. Otherwise so many misconceptions about its content could not have been so frequently disseminated." This accurately describes the Malkin-Bork inter- pretation (apart from praise, of course, as to Bork). "Far from being a plea for individual license, it is a sober and balanced presentation of its subject." Germino, <i>Modern Western Political Thought.</i> </small></p><p align="justify"><small></small><small><strong>8/24/02:</strong> Michelle Malkin, after leaving the <em>Seattle Times</em>, became a syndicated columnist. She is included in the conservative Townhall.com group and turned up last night as a substitute conservative commentator on The News Hour. She doesn't, however, share Judge Bork's views on personal liberty - or, at least, didn't when she was at the <em>Times</em> - which demonstrates, as Townhall.com states, that there is more than one conservative viewpoint.</small> <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Mar 8</b></p><p align="justify">There are more balanced and useful commentaries on the Sixties and on the dangers of excessive individualism. One is found in E.J. Dionne's <i>Why Americans Hate Politics.</i> In a discussion of "family politics," Dionne noted the common perception about individualism and the opportunism inherent in the kind of critique offered by Bork: "The conservatives took advantage of the public's uneasy sense that the sexual revolution, looser laws on drugs and pornography, even feminism itself, were the values of a self-centered individualism." However, conservatives "were committed to precisely such an individualism in the economic sphere...." <p align="justify">Dionne began from a rather different view of liberalism than that of Judge Bork: "Liberalism had always based its claim to power on representing the interests of the community as a whole against individualism." Like Gitlin, he advocated "restoring our sense of common citizenship." After listing some of the challenges that face us he said, <blockquote><p align="justify">Solving all these problems requires acceptance of the notions that individualism must be tempered by civic obligation and that the preservation of personal liberty is an ineluctably cooperative enterprise. These ideas lie at the heart of the popular revolt against both the Sixties Left and the Eighties Right. If there is an uneasiness about both the counterculture and the money culture, it is that both shunned the obligations of individuals toward the broader community....<sup> <small>1</small></sup></p></blockquote><div align="justify">_________________<br /><br />1. <small>Mario Cuomo stated the principle thusly in <i>Reason to Believe</i>: "...to the classic American tradition of individualism we must add the equally American notion of community...." Less centrist liberals than Cuomo and Dionne are more entranced by the notion of complete freedom, less committed to common goals.<br />A critique of their position is in order, but it requires a more objective and more subtle mind than Judge Bork's. Governor Cuomo's comment should be the guide: individualism and communitarianism are not liberal or conservative positions, but shared values.</small><br /><br /></div><b><p align="justify">Mar 10</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">Another commentator who has approached this subject with more objectivity is Judge Bork’s friend and advocate George Will. In a 1980 column, collected in <i>The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions,</i> he had this to say: </div><blockquote><p align="justify">...Republicans see no connection between the cultural phenomena they deplore and the capitalist culture they promise to intensify; no connection between the multiplying evidence of self-indulgence and national decadence (such as pornography, promiscuity, abortion, divorce and other forms of indiscipline) and the unsleeping pursuit of ever more immediate, intense and grand material gratifications.<br /></p><p align="justify">Republicans sense that manners, meaning conduct in its moral aspect, are as determinative in a nation's life as are materialistic preoccupations. Republicans seem not to sense the effect of such preoccupations on manners. </p></blockquote><div align="justify">Substitute "conservatives" for "Republicans." It is not only liberals who have contributed to "self-indulgence and national decadence."<br /><br /></div><b><p align="justify">Mar 11</b></p><p align="justify">Judge Bork's preoccupation with the pompous ramblings of college leftists is especially noteworthy as there seems to be a consensus that such people are increasingly disconnected from ordinary American life. As Todd Gitlin put it in a chapter entitled "Marching on the English Department," "The more their political life was confined to the library, the more their language bristled with aggression." <p align="justify">I may be naïve as to the influence of academic debates, but I see little in the way of direct effect. The newsletter of the Philosophy Department at the UW informed me recently that a new faculty member's interests include "feminist critiques of science and traditional epistemology." I'd bet that I wouldn't agree with her point of view, but so what? Unless something has changed since my undergraduate days, the Philosophy Department's position on epistemology has limited influence on world affairs, and science probably will continue on its fact-bound course despite her critique. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Apr 13</b></p><p align="justify">Up to this point, the principal contribution of editorial columns on the bombing of Yugoslavia has been to reveal that a policy is good if followed by one’s party, bad if by the other. Charles Krauthammer added two notes to the refrain yesterday. He is upset that the campaign in Yugoslavia reflects too much sensitivity: a Dutch pilot was barred from marking a kill on his plane; the Italians wanted to scale down the bombing on Easter; we have taken the Presidential palace off the list because it contains art treasures; we try to minimize the number of people killed. This is not sufficiently brutal: bombing empty buildings shows a "lack of seriousness," which can be demonstrated by "hitting targets...that may indeed kill the enemy, and civilians<br />nearby." To what end? According to him, the war never should have been started. </p><p align="justify">However, his confusion as to aims is not the most remarkable aspect of his column; that is the disclosure that the deficiencies in the conduct of military affairs, not only by the Clinton administration but by NATO, are (surprise!) the fault of the Sixties: "This is war? This is war as waged by humanitarians, idealists and the flotsam of the counterculture...." Whether we should have intervened in Kosovo could be questioned, as could the tactics, and the seemingly aimless, <i>ad hoc</i> responses of our government and its allies are a legitimate cause for concern, but intelligent debate is not fostered by dredging up the counterculture yet again. It is difficult not to conclude that those who are preoccupied with fighting thirty-year-old battles can’t pay enough attention to the current ones to have views on them worth noting. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">May 1</b></p><p align="justify">By a dismal coincidence the NRA convention was held today in Denver, only a few days and miles from the Littelton massacre. Even the NRA has some sensitivity, so the meeting was scaled back. However, someone apparently forgot to tell Charlton Heston that restraint might be in order. <p align="justify">I tuned into C-SPAN partway through what I assume was his keynote address. His comments on the events were the following:<br /><br />-- There always will be tragedies.<br />-- Somewhere another evil person is plotting a similar crime.<br />-- The media have, for their corrupt reasons, pointed the finger at us.<br />-- It's not our fault.<br />-- However, opportunist politicians are using the tragedy to take away our freedoms (<i>i.e.,</i> our guns). </p><p align="justify">Having thus disclaimed responsibility, he proceeded, in a delivery which sounded like a comedian imitating Heston playing Moses, to issue the following from on high, substituting a teleprompter for stone tablets:<br /><br />-- The Second Amendment is the protector of the Bill of Rights.<br />-- As long as we have the Second Amendment, we cannot be conquered, from within or without.<br />-- Because of the Second Amendment we never will have tyranny.<br />-- We need not worry about having to bear arms against our government: <i>as long as there is a Second Amendment - as long as we are in arms - it will not dare move against us.</i><br />-- No one can tell the NRA not to visit his city or state, because the entire country is our land. </p><p align="justify">We all have bad rhetorical habits; one of mine is to use detachment from reality too frequently as a metaphor. Here, however, is a genuine, honest-to-God example of it. Mr. Heston has transformed his personal fears and fantasies into a world view, one which invites the most deficiently socialized among us to imagine themselves to be defenders of society. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">5/6/99</b></p><p align="justify">Judge Bork thinks that liberals are uniquely subject to belief in radical individualism. How much more radically individualistic can one be than to claim that there is a virtually absolute right to own guns, that a limit of one gun purchase per month is unreasonable, that a proposal for background checks on purchasers smells of tyrrany? I don’t think that anyone would accuse Charlton Heston of being a liberal, but such are his views. </p><p align="justify"><b>June 15</b> </p><p align="justify"><i>["Fairview Fanny" is a nickname for The Seattle Times.]</i></p><p align="justify">Rep. George Nethercutt has, like several other members of the class of ’94, decided that a limit of three terms doesn't make as much sense as it seemed then. This has led to ironic reactions: the Democrats criticize Nethercutt for abandoning a policy they thought was wrong all along; U.S. Term Limits, which probably is happy with Nethercutt in Congress and isn't likely to prefer his opponent, will spend large sums to defeat him. The best reaction, though, came from Fairview Fanny. <p align="justify">The Seattle Times apparently has found its assignment as the conscience of Western Washington an insufficient challenge; it now will perform the same service to the citizens of the Inland Empire. Its views were presented in today's paper under the heading "Nethercutt's epiphany: Give hypocrisy a chance." Representative Nethercutt's decision is, we were advised, "the cynical, self-serving hypocrisy of someone who exploited others for personal gain." The issue, the Times advised us, is not the merit of the policy: "This editorial page opposes term limits;" it does so because the voters' choice "should not be overturned by gimmicks promoted as democratic virtue by the political party out of power." Instead, the editorial posed the question as follows: "What does George Nethercutt really believe? Voters will have to ask themselves that every time he opens his mouth." Fair enough, but applying the same standard to the Times would subject its editorials to more skepticism than our moral leaders would welcome. To be sure, Rep. Nethercutt's change of mind is more important than that of the Times: he promised his constituents that he would step down at the end of this term and presumably some voted for him for that reason. However, his reversal is there for all to see and the voters can decide whether to punish him for it. The Times hides its change of mind by failing to mention that it too formerly advocated those undemocratic gimmicks. Its pompous caption is more hypocritical than Rep. Nethercutt's epiphany. </p><b><p align="justify">July 13</b><a id="07/13/99"></a></p><p align="justify">For those of us who have fallen into a habit of nearly-automatic suspicion of any religious aspect of political discourse, <i>The Culture of Disbelief,</i> by Steven Carter, is a rebuke (or at least it seemed so at first reading). It challenges the negative attitudes toward religion prevalent in much of American life. <p align="justify">The thesis of Professor Carter’s book, as expressed in the subtitle, is that American law and politics trivialize religious devotion. This is an exaggeration, as American culture is not monolithic. However, his thesis is pertinent, and may be an understatement, as a description of the attitudes of American liberals, among whom there is often, as Irving Kristol put it, a powerful animus against the dominant traditional beliefs, especially religious beliefs.... <p align="justify">Professor Carter deals with three major issues, although one is mentioned only in passing. That one is, to me, the most important and the least controversial: religious belief can support virtue, both personal and civic. Carter gives this little attention as his focus is almost entirely on the political uses of religion. <p align="justify">The second issue is our treatment of religious practices or institutions. In Professor Carter’s view, the role of religion, and the reason it must be protected, is its mediating function, one which it best serves by being in opposition to the state: "religions are at their most useful when they serve as democratic intermediaries and preach resistance." Under this theory, it is the religious organization which is important. He rejects neutrality toward religion in favor of "accommodation": <blockquote><p align="justify">...Neutrality treats religious belief as a matter of individual choice, an aspect of conscience, with which the government must not interfere but which it has no obligation to respect....<br /></p><p align="justify">Accommodation, however, can be crafted into a tool that accepts religion as a group rather than an individual activity. When accommodation is so understood, corporate worship, not individual conscience, becomes the obstacle around which state policy must make the widest possible berth.... Thus the reason for accommodation becomes not the protection of individual conscience but the preservation of religions as independent power bases that exist in large part in order to resist the state....</p></blockquote><div align="justify">Some of his discussion does concern the rights of the group as such. For example, he argues that it was correct to allow the Catholic sponsors of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York to ban gays because the event is quasi-religious and the group should be free to enforce its beliefs at its event, even though conducted on public property and with a license. Elsewhere, his focus is, contrary to his formula, on individual rights. An example is his criticism of a Supreme Court decision upholding a refusal by the State of Oregon to award unemployment benefits to two men discharged by their employer for smoking peyote. The act took place in a ceremony of the Native American Church, which uses peyote as part of its ritual. State law prohibited use of drugs with no exception for religious practices, and the Employment Division somehow found the violation of the law to be work-related misconduct, which made the plaintiffs ineligible for benefits. Professor Carter refers to the judgment against the Native American Church, but in fact the dispute was between the individuals and the State. The role of the church was as the sponsor of the practice; in a sense its role was to create the problem. It is difficult to see how it can be described as performing a mediating function unless one assumes that there should be a right to smoke peyote and it’s handy to have an organization available which supports that.<br /></div><p align="justify">This part of the book is substantive and raises a number of difficult questions regarding the free exercise of religion. However, at its extreme, Professor Carter's view allows religious groups to undermine government, his attitude toward which at times resembles that of the paranoid right. <p align="justify">In addition, Professor Carter demonstrates some confusion as to the status to be accorded to religious beliefs. At one point, as part of his advocacy for religious institutions, he argues that the world view of fundamentalists is as valid as the scientific version, even though the former includes theories about the material world incapable of verification by secular means or even of rational defense. He carries this relativism to the point of asserting that truth is a function of power. On the other hand, he dismisses the most controversial aspect of the fundamentalist<br />world view, creationism, as "simply wrong and "bad science. If this is so, it is because he has applied the scientific view and rejected the religious one, so what is all the talk of equally valid world views about? </p><p align="justify">Professor Carter argues that a statute should not be invalidated merely because it was the result of religious motivation on the part of the legislature; he criticizes the Supreme Court for applying that test in <i>Edwards v. Aguillard,</i> which struck down the Louisiana equal-time law. However, he states that the decision was correct because creationism, "even if dressed up in scientific jargon . . . is, at heart, an explanation for the origin of life that is dictated solely by religion.... This sounds like a test based on legislative motivation. He adds to the confusion in the next paragraph: <blockquote><p align="justify">From the beginning, the constitutional case against the teaching of creationism in the public school classroom has been inextricably bound up with the scientific case against the claims that creationism makes. This strikes me as perhaps an inevitable course, but an awkward one as well. A statute cannot be said to further religion merely on the ground that a majority of scientists do not believe that it furthers science. Even if the "scientific" case for creationism is appallingly shoddy and naive, nothing follows for constitutional purposes.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The last sentence makes a valid point, but where does he end up? Was the Louisiana program simply shoddy science or was it explicitly religious doctrine? If the former, how does he defend <i>Edwards,</i> other than by reference to motivation?<br /></div><p align="justify">At one point, Professor Carter appeared to be moving toward the view advanced by Stephen Jay Gould in <i>Rocks of Ages</i>: any proposition about the material world which is verifiable belongs to the realm of reason and science; religious views have their proper sphere, but that isn't it. Professor Gould offers a more consistent approach to the problem of world views, and a much simpler one, although he makes it seem arcane by dubbing it "NOMA" (Non-Overlapping<br />Magesteria). </p><blockquote><p align="justify">To summarize,...the...magesterium of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magesterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. The two magesteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry....</p></blockquote><div align="justify">Whether Professor Carter subscribes to NOMA is unclear, given the inconsistencies of his discussion, but he points out that many do not: polls indicate that, for most Americans, the relationship between religious belief and scientific understanding is not capable of the neat separation that our legal rhetoric (or philosophical discussion) sometimes seems to suppose. Specifically, creationists are not likely to concede the realm of theory to science.<br /></div><p align="justify">Professor Carter’s final issue is our attitude toward the introduction of religious ideas and beliefs into public, <i>i.e.,</i> political debate. The application of his thesis here is based on a peculiar definition: for example, he disapproves of the rhetoric of the 1992 Republican convention and tries to make that disapproval fit the thesis by saying that the frequency with which religion was invoked trivialized it. This is entirely unconvincing: elsewhere trivialization means failing to take religion seriously, and the Republicans gave every indication doing just that. In addition, Professor Carter wants religion to be afforded a larger role in public debate; he offers the civil rights movement as an example of the proper use of religion in advancing a political agenda and makes a point of how often Dr. King and others based their argument on religious principles. For that reason he can’t, and doesn't, criticize Pat Buchanan and friends for appealing to religious belief; his complaint is that what they said was wrong. It comes down to this: he disagrees with the political uses to which religion was put; religion is, apparently, respected and celebrated if used in connection with ideas he approves and trivialized when offered in support of ones he disdains. Professor Carter devotes a chapter to the danger that political agendas will be advanced under the banner of religion, that religion will be subordinate to politics. However, despite his recognition of the problem, he does not avoid it: "what was wrong with the 1992 Republican convention was <i>not</i> the effort to link the name of God to secular political ends. What was wrong was the choice of secular ends to which the name of God was linked." <p align="justify">One measure of the seriousness of his argument is how much his religious convictions affect his positions on social or political issues. Professor Carter believes, on religious grounds, that prayer in school is good but holds, on secular grounds, that allowing it in public schools is prohibited. Here is an opportunity to show the primacy of his religious beliefs; instead, he resolves the conflict by sending his children to a private school where, he is relived to say, they pray. (He isn't persuaded that every parent should be given the same alternative through vouchers). As to abortion, his position is resolutely secular; his only reference to religion, apart from advising us to let the religious have their say, is a sarcastic reference to the zealotry of the humanity-from-conception argument. <p align="justify">Even on a religious issue, his religious convictions don't seem to be dominant. In approving the ordination of women, with specific reference to his denomination, the Episcopal Church, he distances himself from those "for whom politics drives spiritual commitment rather than the other way around." However, his discussion does not demonstrate that his approach is anything else. Like the conservatives he criticizes, he seems to have reached a position on political or logical or nonreligiously ethical grounds, but has described it as a religious conviction. <p align="justify">The closest Professor Carter comes to a political position clearly based on his religious beliefs is in a discussion of euthanasia and assisted suicide. However, his statement is personal and apologetic: "Still, I must confess a bias in the matter. I share the traditional Christian view that suicide is wrong.... It is not my desire to impose this tradition on anyone - only to relate it, for what moral guidance it might offer."<sup><small>1</small></sup> <p align="justify">In the end, one must wonder whether Professor Carter’s third issue has any substance. If his political positions are essentially the same as they would be absent his religious beliefs, if his reaction to the use of religion in debate depends on the political agenda, what is the point of the discussion? If religious belief is not going to change anyone’s political convictions, why need we worry whether expression of religious belief is being discouraged? Why not argue political issues<br />on political grounds and avoid all of the emotional pitfalls inherent in introducing religion into the debate? Only if a stated religious principle led to an unexpected political opinion would there be any real effect, and only then would we need to concern ourselves about the propriety of using religious arguments to support political positions. I haven’t seen enough such surprises.<sup><small>2</small></sup> </p><p align="justify">A recent issue of <i>First Things</i> reinforces my conclusion. It includes an extended essay on the Clinton-Lewinski affair by Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the journal and President of the publisher, the Institute on Religion and Public Life. The article is presented in a section entitled "The Public Square: A continuing Survey of Religion and Public Life." The author, as a preface to his discussion, says, "This 'journal of religion and public life' does not understand public life primarily in terms of politics as that term is ordinarily used." However, Fr. Neuhaus’ views, at least on the subject of Mr. Clinton, seem indistinguishable from those of other conservatives or, for that matter, from those of virtually any spokesman for the Republican Party. That being the case, what function does religion play? Is the Institute merely a front, a means of pretending that the political arguments offered are grounded in religious belief? Is it merely an illustration of the fact that there are liberal and conservative religious as well as political beliefs and that, not surprisingly, conservatives of one sort tend to be conservatives of the other? Under either theory, religion merely adds the potential for misunderstanding and resentment to the debate by allowing political opinions to be disguised in religious garb.<br />____________________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>12/19/99:</strong> In <i>The De-moralization of Society,</i> Gertrude Himmelfarb quotes Richard Hoggart: "In Hunslet, a working-class district of Leeds, within which I was brought up, old people will still enunciate, as guides to living, the moral rules they learned at Sunday School and Chapel. Then they almost always add, these days: 'But it’s only my opinion, of course.' A late-twentieth-century insurance clause, a recognition that times have changed toward the always shiftingly relativist.... </small></p><p align="justify"><small>2. <strong>9/1/99:</strong> I’ve just come across a review of <i>The Culture of Disbelief</i> by Glenn Loury in a 1994 issue of <i>The Public Interest</i>. In some ways Professor Loury is kinder to the book than I. He reaches a somewhat similar conclusion about the third issue, although from a different perspective, one which emphasizes pluralism: [N]o particular set of religious beliefs...can be the standard for the adjudication of conflicting public claims. He recognizes the importance and propriety of religious motives, but argues that public debate should include<br />compelling secular arguments. Therefore he is not contending that religious rationales be banned, only that they be accompanied by secular ones: expression of religious motives is, and should be, inadequate by itself to the task of public persuasion about the exercise of public power in a pluralistic democracy. This is a more liberal and may be a more realistic policy than the one I suggested and I agree with it to the extent that there should be no inhibition in revealing the religious basis for one’s opinion. However, once God’s will is invoked<br />in support of a proposal, we’re over the line, and I’m not convinced that the line will be respected with any regularity.</small><br /></p><p align="justify"><b></p></b><b><p align="justify">July 22</b></p><p align="justify">The House Ways and Means Committee approved a tax cut package which would cost the government $864 billion over ten years, an exercise in threefold irresponsibility: it gives away money which doesn't exist and may never exist; if the surplus were a sure thing, a substantial part should be applied to reduction of the debt which previous irresponsibility created; if there were enough left to reduce taxes, the reduction should be equitably apportioned. <p align="justify">On the last point, it could be argued that some of the proposals, taken in isolation, are not gifts to business and the wealthy. However, the plan as a whole is blatantly skewed: reduction of rates in each bracket (a larger reduction at the top), repeal of the minimum tax, elimination of the estate tax, reduction of personal and corporate capital gains rates, increased exemptions for interest and dividends. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 6</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">The irresponsibility doesn't stop there. Now we are told that the conservative party has intentionally appropriated all of the surplus for the current fiscal year, allocating it to such emergencies as the census. There’s no pretense of principle here. According to Mr. DeLay, this is designed to put Mr. Clinton on the spot, so it’s another in the series of astute maneuvers which includes shutting down the government. <b></b><b></div><p align="justify">Sept 8</b></p><p align="justify">Watching Janet Reno explain that she intends to get to the bottom of the Waco coverup left me with the same impression I had of her when she accepted the blame for the fiasco in 1993: here is an honest, responsible person whom I can trust to do the right thing. My earlier appraisal was shared by many and exceeded by some; I seem to be in distinct minority this year. <p align="justify">Ms. Reno escaped any serious criticism in 1993 in part because of her disarming candor and willingness to accept responsibility (which stood in sharp contrast to the evasions and wafflings of her boss) but also because she was overprotected. The example of the latter which sticks in my memory was an exchange on a TV news program between Senator Arlen Specter and then-<br />Representative Patricia Schroeder. Senator Specter made the obvious point that whenever a government operation results in the death of eighty citizens, an inquiry into what went wrong is appropriate. Rep. Schroeder, in high dudgeon, replied that he would’t make such a comment if the AG were male. Instead of laughing, the poor Senator mumbled and backtracked. Possibly because of this suggestion of sexism, Ms. Reno’s role was not criticized as seriously as it might have been at the time. </p><p align="justify">Nevertheless, Ms. Reno’s standing declined, no doubt partly because of Waco, but partly due to internal problems at the Justice Department and also because she was ignored by the President. Eventually, there developed a common opinion that she was incompetent, an opinion which has surfaced again in the wake of the recent revelations regarding use of pyrotechnic tear gas canisters at Waco and the suppression of that information. <p align="justify">The twin themes are that Ms. Reno was an affirmative action nominee and that (therefore?) her tenure has been a disaster. Maureen Dowd made the point in passing in a column today about Hillary Clinton: Bill repaid Hillary for her '60 minutes' appearance that saved his campaign after Gennifer Flowers by giving her health care (disaster) and going along with her wish to have a female Attorney General, who turned out to be Janet Reno (disaster). Richard Reeves, in his<br />column on August 31, was more emphatic. Ms. Reno, surely one of the most incompetent public officials in our history, was appointed because there was this fuss over Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, and the president had this awful time finding a woman attorney general.... He doesn't stop there. Well, he paid a price for that, not in Waco so much as in Washington where she almost cost him his job while saving her own 'credibility' and 'integrity' behind shields of special prosecutors. What is this supposed to mean? Was it the Attorney General’s duty to save Clinton’s hide by refusing to appoint independent counsel? I have some reservations about her agreement to extend Kenneth Starr’s jurisdiction to include the Monica affair, but otherwise the problems with the appointments have more to do with the deficiencies in the law and in the performance of the independent counsel than in Ms. Reno’s allegedly stunted sense of loyalty. She went so far out on a limb in refusing to appoint counsel regarding campaign financing that she was accused of bending the rules to save her job. Damned if you do..., apparently. </p><p align="justify">Janet Reno was a quota selection, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she was a bad selection. Quota appointments aren't a good idea, but that reflects on the chooser more than on the chosen. The worst aspect of the AG dance in 1993 was Clinton’s refusal to admit why he made his choices, not his only exercise in dissembling. <p align="justify">Senator Lott made his inimitable contribution today by suggesting that the AG resign. This is the reward for again being the only official willing to take any responsibility or corrective action.<sup><small>1</small></sup> __________________<br /><br /><small>1. Ms. Reno certainly is not immune to serious lapses in judgment, as shown by the Elián González ontroversy, especially the raid.</small> <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Sept. 23</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">I owe Charles Krauthammer an apology. In March, 1992, he offered a view of Pat Buchanan’s ideas which I thought was exaggerated. In February, 1993, he advised the Republican Party to define itself in part by a negative act: having disavowed David Duke, it should do the same to Buchanan. I thought that this was a bad idea, that the Republicans should include Buchanan in their deliberations and move toward the center, taking him and his followers with them. </div><p align="justify">The latter reaction was naïve in two respects: the GOP’s ability to define itself positively is too limited and Buchanan is irredeemable. His recent book and other statements have removed any doubt that he is around the political bend and tend to confirm Krauthammer’s view that he is antisemitic. I still regard the claim that Buchanan is fascistic a bit much, but labels aside, I agree that the Republicans should repudiate him even though, if the Reform Party takes him in, he may cost them some votes. However, thus far no leading Republican other than John McCain has seen fit to invite him to leave. </p><p align="justify"><b>Oct. 6</b></p><p align="justify">The Republican Party’s inability to define itself positively (in both senses: affirmatively and favorably) is exemplified by its leadership on Congress. Whether the subject is taxation, the budget, medical care, tobacco or guns, they demonstrate repeatedly that they are both irresponsible and politically inept. It has become so bad that George W. Bush, until now not noted for clearly defined positions, let alone liberal ones, has criticized Republicans, with specific reference to the Congressional variety, for their backwardness. </p><p align="justify">A Congressman was quoted in the Seattle Times on October 4 as saying, This is a Congress that has a rendezvous with obscurity....a truly awe-inspiring record of working so very, very hard to accomplish so very, very, little. An op-ed piece in the New York Times the same day took a longer and more theoretical view. The thesis was that national institutions are gradually losing influence to more local ones and, in Europe at least, to supra-national ones. Whatever the theory, the conclusion is the same. Even a casual observer can tell that Congress did very little in the last couple of years, but this obscures a much larger point: Congress has done relatively little of importance in the last 10 years. The author notes the failure to deal with such issues as health care and says that Congress’ major accomplishment was to abandon welfare to the states. (Actually abandon is my term; he sees it as part of the pattern of devolution). Gradually, without most of us stopping to notice it, Congress is ceasing to be a serious legislative institution. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 7</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">George W. seems to have learned one lesson from his father’s mistakes (perhaps too well), but has thus far emulated the former President’s mistaken caution on another point. The latter is the junior Bush’s olive branch to Pat Buchanan; like Bush senior in 1992, he is unwilling to risk losing conservative support by declaring Buchanan to be beyond the pale. </div><p align="justify">This is the more peculiar as George W. hasn't been reluctant to criticize more mainstream Republicans, especially those in Congress. On conservative moralists: Too often, on social issues, my party has painted an image of America slouching toward Gomorrah. On humane instincts: Too often, my party has focused on the national economy, to the exclusion of all else, speaking a sterile language of rates and numbers.... On political theory: Too often, my party has confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government itself. On fiscal policy: the plan to defer earned-income tax credit distributions was an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. <p align="justify">The lesson he learned was not to pander to Pat Robertson. While other candidates toed the line in appearances before the convention of the Christian Coalition, Bush gave his standard centrist speech, almost defying Robertson to find him in-sufficiently conservative. At first, that seemed to work, but his more recent remarks prompted Pat to warn him not to alienate the core conservatives. <p align="justify">Apart from his reticence regarding Buchanan, all of this seems to reflect confidence in nomination and preparation for November. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 8</b></p><p align="justify">Yesterday’s N.Y. Times carried dueling columns by William Bennett and Gary Bauer on George W’s comments. <p align="justify">To Mr. Bauer, Bush is telling conservatives, Go pound sand. I don’t need you. He is running as a wobbly moderate under the banner of 'compassion.'" He is moving to the squishy middle. This, Bauer thinks, is dangerous, as Bush hasn't yet won the nomination. Mr. Bauer apparently thinks that he still has a chance; dream on. <p align="justify">Bauer’s platform seems to approximate the doom-saying attitude which Bush satirized. Mr. Bauer was not amused: There is a deepening moral crisis in our culture, but Mr. Bush is absent in the struggle to redeem our country's values from three decades of leftist erosion. Does this sound like anyone we know? Yes; Bauer is offended by Bush’s gratuitous slap at Judge Robert Bork and his book 'Slouching Toward Gomorrah' as well as to other conservative critics of the popular culture. <p align="justify">The column by William Bennett contrasts not only with Mr. Bauer’s but, at least in its optimism, with Bennett’s recent book <i>The Death of Outrage.</i> There he had told us, <blockquote><p align="justify">...I cannot shake the thought that the widespread loss of outrage against [President Clinton’s] misconduct tells us something fundamentally important about our condition. Our commitment to longstanding American ideals has been enervated. We desperately need to recover them, and soon....<br /></p></blockquote><div align="justify">Apparently the recovery is now under way. He tells us in his column that in the early part of the decade, the task was to call attention to America’s stunning social regression;... However, now, the news is more encouraging. Murder, abortion and AIDS statistics are down and so are welfare rolls. He notes that Bush, after the Gomorrah line, said this:<br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify">But something unexpected happened on the way to cultural decline. Problems that seemed inevitable proved to be reversible. They gave way to an optimistic, governing conservatism.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">This obviously is Mr. Bennett’s view as well; he tells us that he contributed to the speech.<br /></div><p align="justify">Mr. Bennett’s positions are not necessarily inconsistent. In <i>The Death of Outrage,</i> he was focused on public reaction to Mr. Clinton's various alleged misdeeds, so perhaps he saw the lack of commitment to historic ideals only in the tepid response to presidential scandal, and no reflection on public attitudes toward other social ills was intended. In addition, he is too honest to argue that all of the signs are positive, so in the recent column he lists some statistics which are<br />pointing the wrong way. However, there certainly is a change of mood and it is difficult not to conclude that some of the change has to do with the party affiliation of the object. </p><p align="justify">Whether an upward trend exists perhaps is debatable, and even if a partial reversal of moral fortune has taken place, it may not be due primarily to the ministrations of conservatism. But as a campaign posture, the Bush-Bennett approach is pure gold. It avoids not only the inconvenient statistics which indicate that at least some indicators of cultural illness are falling, but more importantly the dark, moralistic, negative image of conservatism which Mr. Bauer projects, an<br />image which is more likely to frighten moderate voters away than to appeal to their desire for redemption. <b></p></b><p align="justify">Oct 21</p><p align="justify"></p><div align="justify"><i>[Initiatives have proliferated in the state of Washington in recent years, to the point that it seems that most legislation is accomplished by that method. This note deals with the first of several sponsored by one Tim Eyman, of whom more later.]</i> </div><p align="justify">Our annual rite of populism is upon us. On November 2, we will vote on an initiative which would replace the present motor vehicle license fee and tax, the latter based on the value of the vehicle, with a flat $30 fee. Steve Forbes, in town a few days ago to address the gathering of Republican women, endorsed the initiative, as he probably would any proposal in which the words flat and tax appeared in the same sentence. <p align="justify">The annual license charge is mostly a property tax; among its flaws is a methodology which exaggerates the value of most vehicles by not depreciating their value realistically. Property taxes are defective as a general rule because they are not directly related to the ability to pay. However, this one is less flawed in that regard than most, as the cost of one’s car probably bears some relation to one’s income. Certainly we could improve the state’s tax structure by replacing the auto- license impost, but I-695 is hardly the best approach. <p align="justify">As with many initiatives, this one is badly drafted. The existing law not only includes trucks, but assesses an additional tax on tractors used to pull heavy-load trailers. The entire existing statute would be repealed, but the initiative doesn't mention trucks, so they may escape without any license fee. (The section of the initiative referring to the new fee is so ineptly worded that it’s not clear that a fee will be imposed on any vehicle). Conversely, an exemption of some vehicles from the general personal property tax is expressly tied to the continued existence of the license-fee law, so if the latter is repealed, that tax will attach. <p align="justify">The effect on revenue and the public budget is not inconsiderable. The more drastic effect, however, is in Section 2 (the initiative is nothing if not concise, having only three sections, including the repealer), which provides, Any tax increase imposed by the state shall require voter approval. <p align="justify">The state includes cities, counties, special districts and every political subdivision or governmental instrumentality. Taxes include fees and any monetary charge by government. The only exemptions are college tuition and an ill-defined category of fines. Presumably this means that we will need to vote not only on new or increased taxes, but on water and sewer rates, dog and cat licenses, camping permit fees and charges for photocopying by public departments. Library fines may escape, depending on the interpretation of the exemption for civil and criminal fines and other charges collected in cases of restitution or violation of law or contract . Leaving aside the obvious silliness of such a system, consider the cost of the elections. <p align="justify">At least I-695 has the potential to demonstrate the folly in legislating by public vote. Initiative 601, passed in 1993, limited State spending. The spending limitations became inconvenient last year because the Republicans decided to fund transportation costs by borrowing, underwriting the loans with funds diverted from the vehicle-license revenue. That money had been used in part to fund criminal justice programs, so general-fund spending was increased to make up the deficit, which required modifying the rules established by 601. The plan was submitted as Referendum 49; the voters approved, thereby undoing part of what they had mandated in 1993. I-695 would undermine the R-49 plan by virtually eliminating the funds supporting it, thereby undoing what the voters mandated in 1998. <p align="justify">Polls indicate that I-695 will pass, that the weirdness of all this is lost on the people. The weirdness is supported (and suffered) by the Republicans: last year, they pushed R-49 as the solution to highway congestion, but last month they endorsed I-695. <p align="justify">Voters swallowed R-49 because it included a $30 reduction in the vehicle-license tax and a slight liberalization of the depreciation schedule; now they are mesmerized by reducing the charge <i>to</i> $30. Apparently they simply take leave of their senses when someone says tax reduction. Forbes should do well here. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 26</b></p><p align="justify">I should feel lucky: I only have to vote on four ballot measures. In addition to I-695, I get I-696, which would ban net fishing, and constitutional amendments dealing with lending the state’s credit to school districts and investing state funds. (Why, one might ask, are these constitutional issues?). If I lived in Seattle, I would be blessed with twenty ballot issues, a situation Brewster Denny described today as plebecitis. That, however, is only a warmup for the town-meting democracy to be instituted by I-695, in which we get to vote on every fiscal issue. Denny considers this to be the death of republicanism. However, the definition of a republic which he adopts, a government through representatives (as opposed to democracy, government by direct action), always has seemed to me to be artificial and historically inaccurate. Let’s not hide behind labels; the I-695 system simply is dumb and unworkable. <p align="justify">Numerous letters to the editors have extolled the virtues of voting on everything; I’d be interested to learn how often the writers vote. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 29</b></p><p align="justify"><u>Trivial Indicia of Cultural Decline Department</u>. <i>Jeopardy,</i> which once asked questions that probed some level of education, now has such categories as David Bowie; <i>Washington Week in Review,</i> which once had meaningful, informative discussion by the likes of Charles McDowell, Hedrick Smith, <i>et al.</i> now presents silly, superficial, self-conscious blathering by reporters who couldn't find an issue of public importance with a guidebook. The latter reminds me of football broadcasts: once we watched the game; now the camera either is on the sideline or closeup of a player. In both cases, it’s coverage <i>à la People</i> Magazine; in neither is the focus on the action. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 3</b></p><p align="justify">I-695 passed by a wide margin. Although it had some financial support from auto dealers, who will escape a tax, it seemed to be a genuinely grass-roots proposal. It was opposed by most of the opinion-makers and the proponents were far outspent by the opposition, so it’s yet another example of ordinary citizens being unimpressed by their betters. <p align="justify">Tim Eyman, the spokesman for the initiative and its prime mover, stated that it was a tax revolt. Certainly its requirement of elections on any monetary charge by government fits that description. However, the immediate change will have only a modest effect on each taxpayer and the measure does nothing to address the inefficiency and inequity in Washington’s tax structure. This is, unfortunately and perhaps inadvertently, populism and tax revolt in the conservative mold: cut taxes and shift the net burden downward. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 13</b></p><p align="justify">Another measure of the grass-roots nature of I-695 is found in the demographics of its reception. In King County, it was rejected in Seattle and in most of the east side, and approved in the south county. The Seattle vote perhaps simply reflects its liberalism, but the remaining split, wealthier precincts rejecting, poorer ones approving, indicates that the tendency to vote in favor was not proportional to the amount to be saved. However, this does not mean that money<br />was not the primary issue: even though people who voted for it would save less than those opposed, the saving may mean more to the family budgets of the former. This is why Steve Forbes’ plutocratic populism has appeal: even though the rest of us would save far less that he, any saving looks good. </p><p align="justify">Although four year ago, Forbes was alone among Republican contenders in pushing the flat tax, this year most of the candidates have indicated some affinity. Gary Bauer, the self-proclaimed champion of family values, has gone Forbes one percentage point better: his flat tax would be at 16%, not Forbes’ excessive 17%. Why not 15% or 12%? As the campaign wears on, there may be a fascinating bidding war. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 18</b></p><p align="justify">Contemplating the ability of Republicans to fashion a legislative agenda or even of saying something rational about government reminds me of Lionel Trilling’s description of conservatism in <i>The Liberal Imagination</i>: the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas. That was 1949 when, in Trilling’s view, liberalism was not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. That changed and we were told - and accepted - for some years that all of the new ideas were coming from conservatives. Not even conservatives believe that anymore; more to the point, their ideas even when supposedly dominant have not translated into governance, at least at the national level. One obvious reason is that conservative Republicans have no notion of what the federal government is good for. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 23</b></p><p align="justify">"'We’re baaaaack,' chortled Eyman," according to the Sunday Journal. The sponsor of I-695 thus announced the drafting of a new initiative. Although part of its purpose is to correct defects in the original, he presents it as a new blow for freedom. (For chutzpah, this resembles the announcement of a new version of software, correcting, at the consumer’s expense, the defects of the prior release). Although Eyman maintained during the campaign that the asserted flaws were imaginary, he has drafted a correction before I-695 has taken effect. <p align="justify">The new measure would exempt vehicles from the personal property tax, thereby eliminating one of the more obvious unintended consequences. It also would roll back the increases which many cities have threatened to impose before January, when 695 takes effect. Eyman is shocked, shocked that they would try such an underhanded tactic. (As he puts it, officials "still don’t get it," "it" apparently being his point of view). To show that he is not a man to be trifled<br />with, the roll-back would be retroactive to July 2 when, I assume, 695 was certified for the ballot. </p><p align="justify">Eyman apparently having noticed that a mind-boggling array of charges would be subject to vote, his new brain child would allow prices of some state-sold goods to be raised without an election. This is a step forward - or, rather, back - but examples of the new exemption included sales by the University Book Store which, as it is not a state agency, are not subject to I-695, so Eyman apparently still doesn't get it either. <p align="justify">Finally, the new initiative would limit property-assessment increases to 2% per year to prevent increases in property taxes through increased valuation. This apparently is based on Eyman’s fear that the assessors would hike valuations as a substitute for tax rate increases and his mistaken assumption that there is no existing mechanism to prevent that. As expensive homes increase in value faster than modest ones, the new proposal again would be a disproportionate benefit to the wealthy. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Dec 2</b></p><p align="justify">Another battle has been joined in the war between evolution and creationism. It began two or three months ago, when Kansas decided that evolution no longer will be part of the core curriculum, a move interpreted as motivated by a preference for creationism. <p align="justify">The form of creationism which has been offered to this point, centered around the assertion that the earth and mankind are vastly younger than scientists tell us, is nonsense. It could be accepted only by those who believe, for reasons unrelated to any desire to know the facts, that it ought to be so. <p align="justify">The usual and entirely misdirected argument against evolution is that it is "only a theory." The comment by some critics of evolution that no one was present at creation is an especially silly form of that argument. Evolution is indeed a theory, as is creationism; none of its adherents were there either. The only relevant question is which theory better explains observed phenomena. Evolution wins easily, forcing creationism to fall back on religious doctrine for justification, which lands it in the constitutional soup. <p align="justify">I did not expect to see this form of creationism advanced very seriously, both because of its obvious intellectual deficiencies and because of the Supreme Court’s rationale in such cases which, despite Professor Carter’s valid objection, uses motivation as a test. The change of direction in Kansas was subtle enough to suggest a more sophisticated approach. It seemed to me more likely that the next challenge would limit itself to demanding that two concepts be added to any discussion of evolution: some aspects of standard evolutionary theory are debatable and there is room for belief in design. If the critics of evolution limited themselves<br />to these arguments, they could avoid constitutional problems, might gain wider respect, and, through the former, might do evolutionary theory a service by requiring reexamination of some concepts. However, the battle lines seem to be forming in the usual way. </p><p align="justify">Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Kentucky has decided that "evolution" will be replaced in the curriculum by "change over time" and Oklahoma has ordered textbooks to contain a disclaimer about the certainty of evolution. This is more intrusive than the Kansas approach, although still hesitant. More ominously for intelligent debate, the article also informed us that one Ken Ham has formed a group called Answers in Genesis, Inc., which claims 110 creation clubs in schools. Its creed is a belief in the literal inerrancy of Genesis. To remove any<br />doubt that he means literal, he is putting together a museum in which a dinosaur is identified in the usual way with the addition of Created Day Six. </p><p align="justify">Mr. Ham's theory is that we must reject evolution to save morality:<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">I see a culture war hotting up in America between Christian morality and relative morality which is really the difference between a creation-based philosophy and an evolution-based one, said Mr. Ham, who argues that if the word day in Genesis’s account of creation is allowed to be taken metaphorically to encompass eons and to blur divinity’s role, then the Bible is made fallible and morality reduced to human whim.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">He probably does not recognize the perfect circularity of his argument: evolution is wrong because it contradicts the Bible; the Bible is literally true and accurate; the Bible is true and accurate because it must be in order to combat evolution.<br /></div><p align="justify">At its worst, the creationist position seeks to substitute ignorance for knowledge; creationism should be rejected on that ground alone. However, anti-intellectualism and even assertive ignorance are not rare in this supposedly enlightened age. It is tempting to see a Luddite factor in the advocacy of creationism. However, Mr. Ham has a web site, www.answersingensis.org; science is good for something, after all. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Dec 15</b></p><p align="justify">The subject of irrational responses brings us to the WTO meeting in Seattle. Where the major blame should be laid for the confrontations in the streets is not clear to me at this point, but certainly there is enough to go around. There have been legitimate criticisms of the WTO system from the beginning, criticisms which were brushed aside during the ratification process in a manner calculated not only to offend those critics but to encourage other and less relevant, less civilized opposition. At least the TV reports should discourage further migration here. <p align="justify">Reaction to the WTO - fearing world government, blaming it for all of life’s ills - prompted me to think that it is the liberal’s UN. Then I watched excerpts from the GOP Iowa debate; Allan Keyes denounced the WTO, so it’s apparently not popular on the far right either. <p align="justify">The best line from that debate was from Orrin Hatch. In response to John McCain’s plug for campaign finance reform, he asked why it is that every Democrat in Congress is for it, and almost no Republicans. He thought that was clever. <p align="justify">George W. Bush apparently has been advised that two of his more sensible positions won’t play well among the conservative faithful. Therefore he has decided that government is bad after all; he declared in the debate that it must be starved into submission through a tax cut - or at least parts of it: he also wants to improve the military and education. Maybe he’ll sort this out or maybe he’ll just follow the Reagan line and promise it all. <p align="justify">Mr. Bush’s other discovery is that religion talks in Republican primaries. This led him, during the debate, to identify Christ not only as his savior but as his favorite political philosopher. Whether or not this trivializes religious belief, it certainly misuses and debases it. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Dec 15</b></p><p align="justify">Tim Eyman is back - again. Now he proposes an initiative to require that 90% of all transportation funds be spent on highways, not on such luxuries as public transit. In part, this is another fix prompted by his belated realization of the impact of I-695. Highway construction will, to his surprise, be adversely affected by the repeal of one of its sources of funding. (An example is the announcement today that repair of the Hood Canal Bridge will be postponed indefinitely). Among other aims, the new initiative somehow would overturn the Puget Sound rapid transit plan and divert its funds to paving. One of the system’s officials had the<br />temerity to point out that, in line with Eyman’s supposed view of government, the plan had been approved by the voters. </p><p align="justify">Gradually, it is appearing that Mr. Eyman is not a naïve populist whose notions unintentionally serve conservative interests, but a conservative activist. We have learned that he was a sponsor of the initiative which overturned affirmative action and that funding and content for the new measure has been provided by a conservative think tank. His attitude toward transportation is pure Bellevue Chamber of Commerce: devote all transportation funds to the service of single-<br />occupant vehicles; none of that mass-transit socialism. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Dec 17</b></p><p align="justify">I’ve always wished that I could quote poetry or Shakespeare at appropriate points, both to show my erudition and to prove to all, to myself mostly I suppose, that I’m not entirely dull. In fact, I rarely recall anything conversationally useful, be it a story, a joke or anything more elevated. Recently, though, I’ve begun to think and occasionally talk in movie lines and song lyrics. <p align="justify">This still may not convince anyone that I would be an addition to a cocktail party. I have seen few movies in the past twenty years and probably haven’t heard or at least understood any lyric written in that period, apart from a few from musicals. Therefore, these fugitive lines are, shall we say, seasoned. As an example, watching ads for the new TV rage Who wants to be a Millionaire? naturally calls to mind the song of the same name from <i>High Society,</i> and Celeste Holm is there before me, telling Frank Sinatra Do I want a yacht? Oh, how I do not!<br /></p><small></small>Gerald G. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18272770512487580818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8898880961286945569.post-51038707873221316022007-12-14T22:05:00.001-08:002007-12-26T13:36:28.787-08:002000<b><p align="justify">January 16, 2000</b></p><p align="justify">Crowding most of the primaries and caucuses into the early months of this year would seem to create a very short campaign. For the Seattle Times, however, this is entirely too leisurely a pace: on December 10, it chose Bill Bradley not only as the Democratic candidate but as the next president and, being confident of its wisdom as few but editorialists can be, told us to vote the same way. <p align="justify">The house column on December 10 informed us that the endorsement had been made then because of a "campaign that began earlier than ever and a field that may be narrowed to two main contenders in caucuses and major primaries by March 7." As stated, this explains nothing. Judging from a column by the editorial page editor yesterday, it is intended to say that the Times wants to influence the vote and has to move fast because the nominees may be set, except for formalities, by March. Even this only explains picking Bradley as the Democratic nominee. <p align="justify">The choice was made primarily because of the former Senator's "steadfast commitment to racial equality." The December editorial acknowledged that the paper's concern is unusual: "race relations are not high on the public's radar...." The Times believes that they should be, and therefore Bradley is the choice because he "makes race the centerpiece of his campaign." A cynic might be tempted to believe that the Senator, whatever his deeply held personal views, has emphasized the issue because he is running behind Mr. Gore among black voters. The Times believes, however, that Mr. Bradley is pure, transparent and guileless, so this can't be so.<sup><small>1</small></sup> <p align="justify">The editorial lists several other issues on which Bradley is in its view, correct. An exception is his failure to get in line as to the repeal of the estate tax; the Times' liberalism has its limits. <p align="justify">Two general comments in the editorial are, I think, pertinent. The Times tells us that "Bradley calls up the best instincts of a Democratic party that lost its way." If that is true, he deserves attention. However, I'm not altogether convinced, as one of his legislative accomplishments, praised by the Times, was the 1986 tax bill (appropriated and modified by Reagan but retaining the central feature), which flattened tax rates. Those rates were properly, and more in line with Democratic principles, unflattened later. <p align="justify">The other observation is that he has "authenticity." I don't know what this means, but it is a point made in many of the comments about his appeal, so it's important, if only as a matter of image. <p align="justify">In her column yesterday, Mindy Cameron attempted to explain the decision to endorse. A reader had complained that it was premature, pointing out that "the race has barely begun." Her response combines a muddled extension of the metaphor with self-congratulation: <blockquote><p align="justify">Wrong. This presidential race is a marathon. Just because few people have lined the streets to watch the runners slog through the first 20 miles doesn't mean that there's no race.<br /></p><p align="justify">How could we possibly know? Well, by paying attention to those early miles. That's the job of newspaper people: pay attention when others are not and pass on information to readers. <p align="justify">On this page, we go beyond information and share our opinions about what we've learned.<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify">With few people paying attention, the field of candidates could be narrowed to two finalists by early March. In that scenario, presumed frontrunners - Gore and Bush<br />- win.<br /></p><p align="justify">An early endorsement by a serious newspaper editorial page is a call to pay attention....<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"></p><p align="justify">Bradley is the underdog in the battle for his party's nomination. But the more people pay attention in Iowa, in New Hampshire and in the early primary states, including this state on Feb. 29, the better they will understand why people from Sen. Patrick Moynihan to Mayor Paul Schell to columnist Molly Ivins agree that Bill Bradley ought to be our next president.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The Washington primary is noted in passing, but the rest of the argument presumes national influence.<br /></div><p align="justify">An editorial endorsement requires a certain hubris when directed toward the paper's readers on the eve of the election; addressed by a minor newspaper to the nation eleven months in advance, it is fatuous.<br />_________________________<br /><br /><small>1. Increasingly, abortion rights became Senator Bradley's signature issue, directed at Mr. Gore's change of views on the subject.</small> </p><p align="justify"><b>Feb 13</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The Times apparently has no influence in Iowa and not enough for its purposes in New Hampshire; Bradley lost badly in the former and decisively in the latter. It will be interesting to see whether the paper's endorsement has any more effect here at the end of the month. <p align="justify">Meanwhile, both parties have crucial contests in South Carolina. McCain has not quite had the courage to exploit his overwhelming victory in N.H: he's waffled on the Confederate flag issue and has descended to Bush's level in his ads, a tactic now abandoned. <p align="justify">Gary Bauer dropped out and Steve Forbes finally gave up; neither endorsed anyone, but the supporters of both probably will go mostly to Bush. <p align="justify">George W. and his compassionate-conservative, reformer-with-results platform need to be brought up short by a reference to the parade to death in Texas prisons and the lack of effective protection for the rights of the accused in that state. However, no Republican candidate is going to call him on that. <p align="justify"><b>Feb 14</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Senator McCain's brief lead in the polls in South Carolina has evaporated, so unless they are wrong or he routs Governor Bush in tomorrow's debate, the Bush bandwagon may shift back into high gear. <p align="justify">Charles Krauthammer proposed a McCain-Bush ticket in tonight's column, which may be moot if Bush does win. In addition, his thesis was that McCain has a better chance against Gore than Bush, something not borne out by the polls I've seen. Leaving polls aside, the proposal makes some sense. McCain would fare better in debate with Gore and his appeal to independents and even to some Democrats could be crucial. The reports that independents have been undecided between McCain and Bradley, not exactly ideological soulmates, suggests that character may be much more important this year than platform. <p align="justify"><b>Feb 15</b><br /></p><p align="justify">With Bauer, Forbes, Dole, Hatch, Kasich and Quayle out of the Republican race, and with Keyes marginalized, the burden of providing some interest in the primaries falls entirely on McCain. For that reason alone, one has to hope that he survives S. Carolina. Certainly there is little to keep the voters awake on the Democratic side. <p align="justify">The Reform Party has imploded, Jesse Ventura defecting and The Donald deciding not to favor us with his presence. However, any group in which Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani can be allies has the potential to fill the entertainment gap. Her endorsement of him, beginning with "In traditional political terms, Pat Buchanan stands for all the things that black progressives such as myself revile," and winding up with "We're going to integrate that peasant army of his," promises that this odd couple will provide as many laughs as Neil Simon's. <p align="justify"><b>Feb 16</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Actually, one of the Democrats has given us some (probably unintended) comic relief. A new ad for Senator Bradley features Michael Jordan. No doubt the idea is to remind us of Bradley's athletic career as well as to trade on Mr. Jordan's fame. However, Michael is noted of late for commercials featuring cartoon characters and every time I see his campaign ad I expect it to end with th-th-th-that's all, folks. <p align="justify"><b>Feb 17</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Gary Bauer endorsed Senator McCain yesterday which, if his supporters follow him, would be a significant gain for McCain, who said, with some understatement, that his lines of communication with religious conservatives "haven't been as firm" as he would have liked. There also have been several defections from Bush to McCain, including Dan Evans and Ralph Munro here and the California Secretary of State, whose name I forget. <p align="justify">The revelation that Bush spent $50 of his $70 million by Jan 31 has undercut the impression of inevitability based on unlimited funds. If McCain wins in South Carolina, there may be a stampede. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Feb 27</p><p align="justify"></b></p><div align="justify">Had Bush not won in South Carolina, it would have caused serious harm, as this was friendly turf. However, he did win and, although religious conservatives reportedly voted for him overwhelmingly, his margin was wide enough to suggest that there was more to the win than a conservative electorate, and success in Michigan might have been expected to follow. Not so: McCain won there and held Arizona. However, Bush still has the advantage, especially with closed primaries coming up. </div><p align="justify">Ours on February 29 is not one of them, so McCain may do well here. Bush has been running his "John McCain lies about me" ad here repeatedly, which is more than a little strange: Washington voters aren't likely to be impressed by it under any circumstances and McCain isn't running the offending ad, so George W. is presenting himself not only as a whiner, but as one who whines about imaginary slights. Bush's ad is interesting in two other respects: he has lost the pronounced southern accent he displayed in South Carolina, and the tax cut, formerly the centerpiece of his platform, has dropped to fourth on his list of things to do with the surplus. <p align="justify">Meanwhile Bradley is running attack ads against Gore here, also claiming that his opponent doesn't tell the truth. Seattle should be Bradley territory, although the endorsement of Mayor Schell carries less weight than it would have without the WTO fiasco, and the negative ads may hurt as much as they help. The Times repeated its endorsement of Bradley today; the P-I, not having chosen the next president, had recommendations for both races and nodded toward McCain and Gore. <p align="justify">I haven't seen any poll numbers and the only report of a poll (in the NY Times; what are the local papers good for?) indicated a win by Gore but the Republican contest too close too call. The former corresponds to my uninformed guess, but I would have bet on Bush. However, one never knows: Washington voters are not easily predictable, and the large number of independents here should help McCain. Another hopeful indication for McCain is that there are more yard signs for him than for Bush in Bellevue, which is establishment territory. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Feb 28</b></p><p align="justify">Governor Bush has sent a letter to Cardinal O'Connor apologizing for "missing the opportunity" to criticize the anti-Catholic and anti-miscegenational views of Bob Jones University. His appearance there has caused a great stir, surprisingly so as pilgrimages to religious-right shrines are <i>de rigueur</i> for Republican presidential candidates. McCain made an issue of it in Michigan and probably would have done so elsewhere, but the main impetus for the letter seems to be the amount of negative press attention. <p align="justify">Bush's Bob Jones speech and his more general appeal to the religious right in South Carolina were the culmination of a peculiar repositioning which had been underway since the Iowa campaign. Last fall, he was presenting a centrist, almost independent view, seemingly preparing for the general election. However, he was criticized for being too confident, for expecting a coronation, for undermining his support in Congress, and Pat Robertson made some menacing noises. Perhaps because of these reactions or because of the Forbes threat in Iowa and McCain's surprising<br />momentum in New Hampshire, Bush started moving rightward in Iowa and did so<br />emphatically in South Carolina. By all reports, Bush is closer to the center than his<br />recent behavior would indicate, although probably less so than the Congressional critic<br />of last year. Certainly he has raised doubts as to whether he has any views sufficiently<br />fixed to be affirmed whatever the audience. This ironically validates the McCain ad, so<br />offensive to Bush, which claimed that he's another Bill Clinton. </p><p align="justify">This afternoon, KING-TV posted on the internet the results of a poll it commissioned, conducted last weekend. It shows Gore leading 64-28 among Democrats and Bush ahead 55-33 among Republicans. Gore trails Bradley among "unaffiliated" voters, 13-11 and Bush has a greater problem, losing them 29 to 15. Toting all of this up produces a composite vote of Bush 24, McCain 23, Gore 22, Bradley 13, with 3% for Keyes and 16% undecided. This is based on calling 500 voters, so relying on it leaves much to faith, but it's consistent with the New York Times poll. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Feb 29</b></p><p align="justify">The Fox Network's "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" has generated criticism across the spectrum and Fox has announced that the show will not be perpetrated again. However, someone always can be found to voice an opposing view, and the NY Times presented a column by one today. <p align="justify">The writer, having grown up watching other examples of "reality" entertainment such as the Newlywed Game, sees nothing novel in "Multimillionaire," no reason for all the comment. Worse yet, she thinks that this sort of thing is in a noble tradition. "[T]he species that wouldn't...be curious to see Rick Rockwell pick his bride (or tune in a week later to watch Diane Sawyer interview her) would not have included such acute chroniclers of the human comedy as Jane Austen...." Perhaps this conflation of absurdly disparate depictions of "the human comedy" simply reflects the intelligence of someone whose favorite show was Candid Camera, who thinks that it is "compelling" to watch people unmasked on TV, who is not "too high-minded" to watch brides for sale. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with modern sensibility; the reviews of the recent film of <i>Mansfield Park</i> indicate that trash and Jane Austen now are considered compatible. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Mar 4</b></p><p align="justify">The McCain campaign has taken two serious, possibly fatal blows. He needed a win in Washington, not because this state is influential and certainly not because of the few delegates at stake. However, it was a semi-open primary, one which gave him the opportunity of winning the total vote. McCain's numbers have been suspect all along because of his weakness among Republicans. However, wins are wins and momentum is all; he needed such a symbolic win going into the much larger test on March 7. <p align="justify">Final totals are not available and, due to the number of mail ballots, probably won't be until the reporting deadline of March 10. Since election night, the tallies have shown McCain winning the unaffiliated vote easily, losing the Republican vote by a wide margin and losing in the total count. As of today, the totals are Bush 31.32%, McCain 30.7%. Gore has 23.23%, Bradley 12.11%, Keyes 1.65%; Bauer, Forbes, Hatch and LaRouche (will we never be rid of him?) divide the rest. Over the last two or three days, McCain has slightly narrowed the gap in the total vote, and there are about 180,000 ballots left to count, so it is possible that he may yet win that contest, but it would be too little and too late.<sup><small>1</small></sup> <p align="justify">The other setback is the reaction to McCain's attacks on Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. His speech in Virginia was a gamble, and probably not a good one; subtler reminders of Bush's alliance with the intolerant and nutty elements of the religious right would have been wiser. Any chance of a positive reaction was destroyed by his intemperate remarks a day or two later; calling Robertson and Falwell evil influences mimicked the style he condemned. The attack even allowed Bush to accuse McCain of setting one religion against another, gliding past the fact that this all started with Bush's playing up to an institution which does just that.<br />________________________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>3/13/00.</strong> Final tally, all voters: Bush 402,287 (30.72%), McCain 399,980 (30.55%), Gore 310,405 (23.71%), Bradley 162,725 (12.43%). The polls were on target. McCain did better than I had expected and worse than I had hoped.</small> <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Mar 8</b></p><p align="justify">John Carlson asserted in today's column that the Democrats are in trouble in Washington because the total Republican vote in the primary was larger than the Democratic. On its face, this is an accurate assessment: as of today the total vote for Democratic contenders is 449,340, for Republicans 796,525. However, his analysis certainly is incomplete; many who voted for McCain will, now that Bush is to be the nominee, vote for Gore in November. Although Carlson did not mention it, the statistic which best supports his prediction is the split of the unaffiliated vote; McCain had by far the largest share, but Bush drew more than Gore. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Mar 16</b></p><p align="justify">George W. Bush told the NY Times yesterday that he learned nothing from John McCain; the same is true of George Will. In the column published in today's P-I, Mr. Will reiterated his belief that campaign contribution limits would inappropriately inhibit political expression, that they would be "inimical to democratic values." The column was largely a report of a paper delivered by a Professor Priest. Much of it, as recounted by Will, is rather vague, but one statement is clear: "And, Priest notes, contributions or promises of future contributions 'can increase the likelihood that a candidate will honor his or her election promises, just as a bond enforces performance of a commercial contract.'" In other words, contributions buy politicians. At least we're agreed on what the money is for. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Mar 17</b></p><p align="justify">In old-style horror movies, the villain was large but slow-moving, menacing but slow-witted. The NRA would be perfectly cast in the role. Although it still is a huge, lumbering threat, it isn't going to outthink anyone. This is demonstrated by the foolishly offensive "Clinton is a liar" ads delivered by a smirking Charlton Heston, and more emphatically by the comments of the NRA vice president, Wayne LaPierre. Last Sunday, he delivered this: "I believe [Clinton] needs a certain level of violence in this country.... He's willing to accept a certain level of killing to further his political agenda - and the vice president too." The stunning idiocy of this statement has been pointed out, but Mr. LaPierre stands by it. He also was quoted as stating that the NRA would go "face to face" with Clinton and Gore throughout the campaign. Al can only hope. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Apr 18</b></p><p align="justify">The Governor of Illinois decided recently to suspend executions because of the incidence of wrongful convictions. There have been approving comments by other conservatives who have been supporters of the death penalty. It is heartening that they have acknowledged the problem, but one must wonder why it has taken so long. The investigations which led to the Governor's action disclosed that a significant number of innocent people had been convicted but, apart from the exact numbers, this should not be news. <p align="justify">Some have found it necessary to justify their concurrence by attributing it to a generalized distrust of government. As George Will put it, "Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order." Apparently I was mistaken in thinking that Mr. Will had emerged from his ideological cul-de-sac. <p align="justify">In one respect, pointing the finger at government has merit. Many of the cases of wrongful conviction have been brought to light without the help of those to whom the criminal justice system is entrusted. There may indeed be an institutionalized defect, and this branch of government may have forfeited our trust. However, I seriously doubt that this revelation will lead to calls for dismantling the system, for liberalizing criminal laws, for building fewer prisons. Conservatives throw rocks at only selected government windows; if their skepticism were genuine, if egregious errors resulted in withdrawal of support, the Pentagon would have been put up for sale long ago. <p align="justify">As long as I'm picking on George Will, let's examine the conclusion of the column in which his approval of the moratorium is stated.<sup><small>1</small></sup> Most it is devoted to a favorable review of <i>Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted,</i> a book by Barry Scheck and others. However, at the end he reminds us that he still believes. <blockquote><p align="justify">Two powerful arguments for capital punishment are that it saves lives, if its deterrence effect is not vitiated by sporadic implementation, and it heightens society's valuation of life by expressing proportionate anger at the taking of life. But that valuation is lowered by careless or corrupt administration of capital punishment, which "Actual Innocence" powerfully suggests is intolerably common.</p></blockquote><div align="justify">There is something fundamentally wrong with the last phrase. What level of error is tolerable; how many wrongful executions are justified? I would be interested to hear the rationale for maintaining a system which kills innocent people only now and then.<br /></div><p align="justify">Will's first argument in support of capital punishment is an unproven assumption modified by an excuse for the lack of proof. If there are persuasive studies showing that more executions lead to fewer murders, I have not seen them,<sup><small>2</small> </sup>but Mr. Will gives himself an out: the lack of a positive correlation is explained by the fact that we don't put enough people to death. <p align="justify">The first argument at least is potentially subject to validation. The second is inherently unprovable; it is an appeal to poetic justice. Some years ago, Will described this view as "the intuition that it is disrespectful of human dignity not to take a life as punishment for especially cruel, wanton or cold-blooded killing."<sup><small>3</small> </sup>This will not do: capital punishment requires a firmer foundation than a dubious notion of moral equivalency. <p align="justify">Still earlier, Will was an opponent of the death penalty; again, it was an intuitive matter: "Much opposition to capital punishment is, like mine, a strong emotion searching uneasily for satisfactory reasons to justify it." Most of that column was devoted to his lack of success in finding such a reason. However, his opposition remained strong: "Pending more powerful evidence that capital punishment is a powerful deterrent saving innocent lives, the burden of proof is still on those who say that today the valuation of life can be enhanced by violent deaths inflicted by the state, in private, in cold blood."<sup><small>4</small></sup> That more powerful evidence still is lacking.<br />What has changed is his view of human nature, society and the state. I think that his earlier instinct was sound, that brutalization is a greater risk than a failure of proportionality. At the least, he located the burden of proof correctly then, which means that he is wrong now.<br />_____________________<br /><br /><small>1. April 6, 2000.<br />2. <strong>10/18/00:</strong> A study by the New York Times, published September 22, shows that the trend lines in homicide rates in states with and without the death penalty are virtually parallel, but with homicide rates in the capital-punishment states substantially higher. The general disparity held up in comparisons between similar states, <i>e.g.,</i> North v. South Dakota, Massachusetts v. Connecticut.<br />3. Ca. April, 1987. (That suggested that only some murders deserved the death penalty, seemingly more moderate than his current position.)<br />4. November 29, 1976.</small> <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">May 4</b></p><p align="justify">The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows Bush with a 46-41 lead over Gore, reversing the March result, when Gore led by 3 points. This is not a surprise, as Bush has been more visible and more positive than Gore and has, once more, moved toward the center. Where Gore is remains unclear to me and it seems to baffle more astute observers as well. <p align="justify">Gore's attack-dog approach isn't working now and may not in the future, as Bush has a flair for injured innocence. In addition, the recent news hasn't been favorable: Gore's opportunistic reaction to the Elián González controversy did not play well and there are reports that he may have lied to investigators about the fund-raising excesses. <p align="justify">The detailed numbers should be even more worrysome to the Gore camp than the totals. He trails among men, white women, suburbanites and independents. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">June 12</b></p><p align="justify">Critical discussion of capital punishment has continued and, not surprisingly, Texas is at the forefront. Gov. Bush recently ordered a stay of execution to allow DNA testing. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death penalty of a Texas inmate because of ethnic stereotyping by a witness for the state in the penalty phase. That witness, a psychologist, in effect told the jury that they could take into account, in determining whether the defendant was too dangerous to live, that he is Hispanic. The Texas Attorney General now has agreed that six other death sentences involving that witness are tainted. <p align="justify">As pointed out in <i>Actual Innocence,</i> only a small number of cases are subject to reversal by the use of DNA testing. The limited survey by Scheck, Neufeld and Dwyer suggested that there must be many other suspect convictions not subject to such definitive reevaluation. This was confirmed by a study reported today in the New York Times; a review of death penalty cases from 1973 to 1995 determined that they have been riddled with error. <p align="justify">The Texas ethnic stereotyping decision offers a clear test for the other six cases involving the same witness; The Times yesterday carried an article on a Texas lawyer who has represented, perhaps incompetently, a dozen defendants condemned to death, half of whom have been executed; <i>Actual Innocence</i> identified a forensic expert whose reports were false and fraudulent. These all present patterns which should encourage and facilitate reexamination, but other sources of miscarriage often will not present such convenient models. <p align="justify">There is a built-in momentum toward conviction. This has several components; as to particular defendants, one is, contrary to the formula, a presumption of guilt by most jurors. Another, tending toward too readily finding someone to charge, is the need for convictions, especially in a time, such as the present or at least recent past, when the public has been anxious about the crime rate. As pointed out by Alan Dershowitz in another context,<sup><small>1</small></sup> the American system of politicizing the criminal justice system including, at the state level, electing judges and prosecutors, exacerbates this tendency by making these officials subject to, and encouraging them to play on, the desire by victims' relatives for retribution and the fearful public's demands<br />for toughness toward crime.<sup><small>2</small></sup><br />_____________________<br /><br /><small>1. November 29, 1976.<br />2. 7/18/00: These tendencies now are fed by Vice-President Gore's ill-considered support for a victims'-rights constitutional amendment.</small> <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">June 18</b></p><p align="justify">I read <i>Sexual McCarthyism</i> last week. Not surprisingly, I found myself more in agreement with Professor Dershowitz' views of the Clinton-Lewinski scandal than with those of William Bennett, whose <i>The Death of Outrage</i> is the only other book about the affair that I've read thus far. <p align="justify"><i>Sexual McCarthyism</i> included two provocative ideas: Clinton should have allowed the <i>Jones</i> case to be decided against him by default, and the prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department should be spun off to a permanent, independent office of public prosecutor. The former might well have spared both Mr. Clinton and the country the ensuing spectacle and the concomitant assaults on the law. The latter, if pursued, might redeem the experience. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">July 20</b></p><p align="justify">Vice President Gore is advocating adoption of a victims'-rights constitutional amendment. This seems so obviously a bad idea that I was very surprised to find how widely it is supported. It takes some hubris to disagree, especially for one with no expertise in criminal law, but I do. <p align="justify">The proposal is sponsored by Senators across the political spectrum, led by Kyl and Fienstien and including Biden, endorsed by Attorney General Reno and the Attorneys General of a majority of the states, including mine, and warmly supported by Lawrence Tribe. Professor Tribe and Senators Biden and Fienstien generally are considered to be liberals, so one might expect them to be careful about defendants' rights. On the other hand, the Attorneys General presumably would not support a measure which would interfere with prosecution. The support of both groups is a puzzle, as this measure is at once a threat to a defendant's right to a fair trial and a restraint on the discretion of prosecutors. <p align="justify">As a matter of constitutional theory, it is equally bad: it violates the basic principle that the Constitution should not be amended except to deal with a matter of fundamental importance; in addition, it is a detailed, procedural measure, suitable in form as a statute but with no place in the Constitution. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 1</b></p><p align="justify">The Republicans are embarked on their quadrennial exercise of duping the voters into believing that they have something in common. Thus far, George W's bland generalities seem to be doing the trick. <p align="justify">Having learned from the 1992 debacle, a variation on the theme was introduced four years ago: the convention presented a soft, moderate, inclusive, non-judgmental image, which required pushing Newt Gingrich aside. The opening ceremony of the current convention followed the same script, banishing the Congressional delegation to New Jersey. <p align="justify">It is amazing that anyone thinks that this will work, that everyone suddenly will forget what Republicans really believe, as clearly manifested by their votes in Congress. In 1996, few were fooled, but Bob Dole hardly was a warm and fuzzy candidate, and he undid the convention's work in his acceptance speech. Governor Bush is shrewder, so is unlikely to make the same mistake. The GOP's biggest advantage, however, is Vice President Gore's lack of appeal. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 2</b></p><p align="justify">Trent Lott was allowed a few minutes on stage tonight. Apparently he hadn't listened to Dick Cheney's interview by Jim Lehrer, in which Cheney repeatedly and rather pompously announced that this would be an entirely positive campaign, in contrast (and this isn't being negative, you realize) to Clinton's recent, terribly unpresidential comments. Senator Lott, given the assignment of introducing Lynn Cheney, who introduced her husband, couldn't resist attacking some of Gore's votes in Congress. He also plumped for a few Republican bills; providing drug coverage to seniors drew less applause than eliminating the estate tax. <p align="justify">Mr. Cheney apparently hadn't listened to his interview either. His acceptance speech was of the usual vice-presidential sort, attacking the other guys. </p><p align="justify">There were a few positive phrases, nearly all devoid of specific content. Bettering schools came down to "improving standards" and letting parents keep more money by cutting taxes; those richer parents would do something useful to their children's education, I guess. Clinton and Gore have only talked about saving Social Security, but we'll save it, he said, thereby only talking about it, and as briefly as possible. However, this was a rouse-'em speech, so we can't expect much. </p><p align="justify">The rest was all directed to the character issue: George W. Bush will restore decency, integrity and honor to the White House; we're weary of the Clinton and Gore routine; they offer legalisms and carefully worded denials, but we'll offer a stiff dose of truth; the military will have a commander-in-chief they can respect; the man from Hope will go home to (pause) New York; we'll never see Gore without thinking of Clinton; can anyone say that the man for the job is Al Gore? <p align="justify">This was delivered in Cheney's low-key manner, which made it seem moderate, enough so that, with a slight reservation by Mark Shields, the experts assembled on PBS gave it high marks. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 3</b></p><p align="justify">They also gave high marks to tonight's speech by George W. Bush; Mark Shields commented that if Gore was hoping that Bush would stumble, he had to be disappointed. Bush did not stumble, which isn't much of surprise given that the speech no doubt had been had been vetted and rehearsed and was read from a teleprompter. It was an adequate speech, but if I were Gore, I would be encouraged. <p align="justify">Much of the speech was a generalized, humane, optimistic, liberal call for a better world. This part was remarkably unlike anything associated with the GOP. Maybe Bush is a new kind of Republican; Paul Gigot described this theme as Bush's version of the third way, not attacking the welfare state, but proposing a tweak here and there. More likely it's just rhetoric. In any case, it seems a peculiar strategy, the message being we'll do a better job with Democratic programs. <p align="justify">Gigot identified one of its major weaknesses, although I'm not sure that he saw it as such. As he noted, the challenger usually says elect me because times are bad; Bush said elect me because they're good. In order to sell this odd product, he struck the theme that Clinton has wasted opportunities. He didn't identify any, and I'd be surprised if many people think that that is true. This argument seemed to me to be an admission of disadvantage: times are good, and all the Republicans can say is that they'd be even better under us. <p align="justify">The second major element in the speech was that Clinton - and Gore, mostly by association - are bad people. "Elect me and restore honor and dignity" is the message. Bush apparently hopes to conflate the two themes, to lead people who think that Clinton messed up morally to believe that he messed up as a leader; polls indicate that people thus far have resisted this notion. One interesting sidelight to this theme is that Bush is not approaching this as an open election, but is running against the incumbent, who has become, on both sides, Clinton-Gore. If voters are more unhappy with Clinton's behavior than happy with the economy, this may work; if not, it may be a blunder. Gore has yet to project an appealing persona and is turning voters off with attacks; it might be smarter to leave Clinton alone and run just against Gore. <p align="justify">The remaining part of the address was core conservatism: give the military better pay and equipment, build a missile-defense shield, eliminate the estate tax, lower the income tax, ban partial-birth abortions. Here Bush drew a distinction between the parties and stated real issues. However, he apparently doesn't expect them to attract many independent voters, as these topics were conspicuous by their absence until tonight. This was simply a message to the right not to worry: he remembers who he is. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 7</b></p><p align="justify">The second Republican theme obviously got the Vice President's attention. Today he announced that his running mate will be Joseph Lieberman. As Senator Lieberman's only claim to national fame is his denunciation of President Clinton's behavior re Monica, Gore has conceded the impact of the character issue and has decided to declare that he too disapproves of that behavior. Now he's playing the reverse game from the GOP: as to the economy and other policy matters, he's Clinton-Gore; as to character, he's virtuous Al. <p align="justify"><b>Aug 8</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The attacks by Cheney and Bush on Clinton's character were moderate in delivery, but in substance they are a rerun of the semi-hysterical denunciations of the President by the House managers during the impeachment trial: cleanse the office, said Henry Hyde; restore decency to the office, says Dick Cheney. It will be interesting to see whether the toned-down, retrospective version goes over any better. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Aug 21</b></p><p align="justify">The Gore and Lieberman acceptance speeches were effective. There was little in the way of dramatic rhetoric and both stopped short -in Gore's case, well short - of eloquence, but both told us - Gore in detail - what they would do if elected, which was crucial for two men who in different ways were still unknown quantities. Both speeches were informal, Lieberman's conversational, which was a pleasant relief from the usual stiff address, often delivered as if amplification had not been invented. (The champ, though, for informality, was Tommy Lee Jones, who was so laid back that it seemed that he hadn't given any thought to what he would say.) <p align="justify">Both speeches have been criticized for their lack of soaring inspirational phrases, which is fair both as literary criticism and politics; they didn't give the campaign any theme or slogan. However, content is more to the point, and they were far superior to the Republican efforts in that respect. <p align="justify">Mark Shields, in his column published in today's P-I, thought that there should have been more criticism of Governor Bush's record. I'm not sure that any more of this would have been helpful, given Gore's pledge to be positive and Bush's tendency to whine about negative campaigning. However, more should have been made of the differences between Democratic and Republican philosophy, with special reference to what the GOP did when in the White House, contrasting what the Clinton administration has accomplished. I thought that this was especially important given Bush's "squandered opportunity" argument. Belatedly, I discovered that this had been<br />the major theme of President Clinton's speech, which I missed. He hit the right notes,<br />including the irresistible echo of Reagan: "...let's remember the standard our Republican<br />friends used to have for whether a party should continue in office. My fellow Americans,<br />are we better off today than we were eight years ago?" </p><p align="justify">Gore pointed to the record, but dwelled more on what he wants to add to it. I assume that this route was chosen in part simply because he has ideas for improving the nation that he would like to carry into practice. However, it seemed to reflect three other preoccupations: he is trying to become his own man, something that he rather pathetically declared himself to be during his speech; he wants to disassociate himself from the Clinton embarrassment; and merely running on the record would play into the Republicans' hands, as voters are more likely to identify them with standing pat and preserving prosperity, despite their record on both topics. <p align="justify">It has seemed to me that Gore has tried too hard to distance himself from Clinton on the character issue. Part of this is hypocritical, as Gore also is under investigation for campaign finance abuses. As to Clinton's various Monica-related sins, I thought that the effort was misdirected. Repudiating Clinton on morals makes it more difficult to embrace him on policy, and it wasn't clear to me that the voters would punish Gore - or even Clinton if he could run again - for those sins. Reminding them of the Republicans' impeachment excesses might be more effective than trying to pretend that it all didn't happen. <p align="justify">That was my view until a judge let it slip that a new grand jury has been empaneled, perhaps to indict the President. (Why, one might ask, was the judge talking to a reporter about a pending matter?) Based on that report, I began to waffle. In a column in today's NY Times, Sean Wilentz showed that he is made of sterner stuff. He did not mention the leak about the grand jury, but must be aware of it. Nevertheless, he advocated "gently" reminding voters of the "fierceness and arrogance with which both Kenneth Starr...and the House Republicans pursued the president." This is especially important because Bush, as Wilentz notes, not only made coded attacks on Clinton's character, but made a point of disclaiming any responsibility for the partisanship in Washington, implying that it was Clinton-Gore's fault. The Governor may not be<br />responsible for the partisanship and the ugly atmosphere, but his party contributed to them mightily, and Gore needs to remind people of that. As Wilentz said, </p><blockquote><p align="justify">For partisan gain, [the House Republicans] refused to heed the people's desire to move beyond the scandal and they recklessly endangered the Constitution.<br /></p><p align="justify">The impeachment of Bill Clinton is arguably the most important and traumatic<br />political event of the last two decades. It is simply a disservice to voters for Democrats to let the Republicans get away with their not-so-veiled attacks.</p></blockquote><b><p align="justify">Sep. 8</b></p><p align="justify">Living in the 41st District gets better each year. In the primary for the State House of Representatives, we have a choice in Position 1 between a Republican and a Libertarian; in Position 2, between a Republican and two other Republicans; for the State Senate, between a Republican and, well, a write-in. I can't help wondering when it was that I became so wealthy and how I managed not to notice it. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 19</b></p><p align="justify">The awkward, programmed Al Gore more or less disappeared during his convention address, which gave his campaign life for the first time since the primaries. He had, and has, the advantage on the issues, not only because he has a better grasp of the relevant facts than Bush, but because Bush is running on a New Deal Lite platform, a "me too, but <i>I</i> trust the people" campaign. Democrats can only think wistfully of what Clinton would have done to that. <p align="justify">Gore hasn't done much, especially in the debates. In the first, he was the automaton again, rarely answering a question directly, ignoring opportunities to poke holes in Bush's arguments, unwilling to compare the last seven years to the preceding twelve for fear of being associated with what's-his-name. Instead, every response was a speech, usually the same one. <p align="justify">At least he was assertive. However, someone decided that such behavior was unseemly, that modesty is the indispensable attribute of a president. Accordingly, in the second debate, he was subdued to the point of lifelessness. In addition, after the first debate, he'd been caught in some of his frequent exaggerations, so at the second, he was chastened. The result was to bring him down to if not below Bush's modest level. The result was generally scored as shown in a Jeff Danziger cartoon: Bush & Gore play cards; Bush celebrates, having beaten a pair of twos with a pair of threes. <p align="justify">In the third debate, Gore reverted to form and, as in the first meeting, was the dominant player, both in substance and presence. The latter, however, has led to a rerun of the expressions of dismay over his bullying behavior. One would think that we were electing the prom king, not the commander-in-chief. <p align="justify">An excuse offered for these comments is that assertiveness offends women, which is one variation on a theory that female voters are especially superficial, that to them image is everything, and that the thought of an assertive president would be frightening. This is patronizing and I think it's nonsense. God knows, I don't have an especially high opinion of the American voter, who has superficiality in abundance, but it seems to me that women are, if anything, more interested in issues and less inclined to image voting than men. <p align="justify">Whatever the excuse, the Bush camp has seized on the bully theme. The New York Times reported today that Governor Thompson of Wisconsin said that "Mr. Bush had been well raised by his parents," but that Mr. Gore had not. "'Don't interrupt people when they speak,' Mr. Thompson said.... 'Don't be a bully.... Don't interrupt people. Come November, we should send Al Gore back to kindergarten.'" It gets worse. Barbara and Laura Bush were campaigning in Michigan on a theme of "W stands for women." They were upset that Gore had come too close to George W. while wandering about the town-meeting stage: <blockquote><p align="justify">In an interview on their bus, they made clear that they thought that Vice President Gore had gone several paces too far, especially when he moved within a few inches of Mr. Bush to stare him down.<br /></p><p align="justify">"I thought he literally was going to hit him," Barbara Bush said....</p></blockquote><div align="justify">The potential leader of the free world appears to need his mother's protection.<br /></div><p align="justify">We shall see how much that and his generally weak performance at the third debate hurt Mr. Bush. Certainly the first two debates, if that is the proper term for these vapid encounters, helped him enormously. This is partly another triumph of lowered expectations, at which the Bushes seem adept. The Governor was considered to be at a great disadvantage, an impression reinforced by his seeming fear of any formal encounter. Instead, he did rather well at the first two, and Gore was far less effective than expected. <p align="justify">The debate formats and the softball questions protected Bush. Combined with Gore's disappointing performance, they reinforced any tendency on the part of the voters to fall back on character or image or personality or some such test. This is not good news for Gore, but he is not the first Democrat with this problem. Republican presidents, Nixon aside, have not been elected during my lifetime because of their grasp of issues. They have been elected in part by projecting an image of the real America, as opposed to the elitist, immoral, socialist, etc., etc. Democrats.<sup><small>1</small></sup> They also have been elected because they were amiable.<sup><small>2</small> </sup>Amiability against command of the issues is not an equal contest: consider Eisenhower v. Stevenson or Reagan v. Mondale. I must confess that I have difficulty detecting Governor Bush's reputed charisma, but the consensus is that he has it; the Vice President certainly does not do well in that department, so unless the voters have a sudden attack of seriousness, George W. will have to adjust to living in awful Washington.<br />_________________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>7/20/01</strong>: This theory is more artfully expressed in Paul Krugman's new book, <i>Fuzzy Math</i>: "My opinion is that those who voted for Bush did so mainly for cultural reasons - that they saw him as a defender of traditional values against a godless modern world, that they percieved themselves as voting for a regular guy against the representative of a consescending elite."<br />2. "Amiability" may be more common in Jane Austen's novels than in political commentary. In my implied resort to the former source, I appeal for support to Gail Collins, who began her October 17 column, "An Ode to Pork," as follows: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a town in possession of a congressman running for re-election must be in want of a new parking lot."</small><br /><br /><b>Oct 20</b></p><p align="justify">Our choices for president and vice-president are not limited to Republicans and Democrats. The voters' pamphlet informs us that we may vote for candidates from the Constitution, Freedom, Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, Socialist, Socialist Workers and Workers World Parties. (Buchanan is on the Freedom ticket, although his statement refers to the Reform Party.) </p><p align="justify">Minor parties are said to be the source of new ideas. These parties do advocate ideas whose time has not come, such as abandonment of the war on drugs (Green, Libertarian and Socialist), programs from which the Democrats have pulled back, such as universal health care (Green and Workers World) and ideas not currently in favor, such as abolition of the death penalty (Green and Socialist). But many of the positions advanced either have had their day, for example socialism (Socialist, Socialist Workers and Workers World), from the mere suggestion of which the Democrats recoil in terror, or are extreme forms of positions toyed with by the Republicans, such as shrinking the government to eighteenth-century size (Libertarian and Constitution); the Green platform has its own form of this back-to-Eden mentality. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 23</b></p><p align="justify">The Seattle Times is challenging the Wall Street Journal for the prize in journalistic schizophrenia. Unlike the Journal, where the disconnect is between the editorial page and the rest of the paper, in the Times it is inside the house editorial. The Times' first choice for president was Bradley; its second is...Bush? Weird as it is, yes. After deciding last December that the only man for the job was a maverick Democrat, because of his views on race relations, the paper yesterday advocated the election of a mainstream Republican because of "the overpowering need for integrity and civility in office" and "for a realistic balance between government and commerce...." For the first, read no more nasty intern-chasing and for the latter, tax relief for the wealthy. <p align="justify">As is its recent practice, the Times pulled back the curtain on its oracular performance, revealing not Frank Morgan but Frank Blethen, publisher and anti-tax crusader; in her separate column, the editorial page editor explained the mechanics of the endorsement: the editorial board consists of eight editorial writers and four members of management, including the publisher and two others from the Blethen family; "In close calls, the publisher's side wins." <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 29</b></p><p align="justify">Today the Seattle Times offered its endorsements for the Senate seat now held by Slade Gorton and for four of the nine House positions, in each case selecting the Democrat. There is nothing wrong with those choices, but what sense does it make to endorse a Republican for president and Democrats for Congress who will vote against much of his program, including, I would expect, the tax breaks for which the Blethens pine? Apparently it was the staff's turn. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Oct 30</b></p><p align="justify">Completing the picture, the Times today published its endorsements for the remaining five House seats, selecting four Democrats. <p align="justify">A letter to the editor published yesterday concluded, as I had, that the Bush endorsement had been motivated by a desire for tax relief, even though that was conveyed only in code. The writer noted the earlier advocacy by the Blethens, through an editorial and advertisements, for repeal of the estate tax and asserted that "The Bush endorsement is an act of pure cowardice because it is based on a single issue that was never even mentioned." Perhaps in response, the only endorsement today of a Republican for Congress included this bit of candor among the reasons for supporting her: "[Rep. Jennifer] Dunn was the House sponsor of the Death Tax Elimination Act - important to this newspaper's opinion pages and owners...." <p align="justify">Also in today's Times is a column by Molly Ivins stating her admiration for Ralph Nader and her determination to vote for him, but suggesting hesitantly that voters in states where the result is in doubt should vote for Gore. After pointing out that Bush and Gore are not indistinguishable, she said, "In Texas, we'll vote for Nader and a perfect world. You swing-state progressives need to make the hard choice - but you're not making it just for yourselves ...." Not a ringing statement of support for Gore, but better than nothing. (The same hint was dropped in an advertisement in yesterday's New York Times: "In this state, a vote for Nader is not a vote for Bush.... If you live in a state where the race is close, vote your conscience." The ad was placed by "Citizens for Strategic Voting," claiming not to be affiliated with any candidate. The National<br />Abortion Rights League now is running a television ad attacking Bush's views on abortion and warning that a vote for Nader will turn the Court over to the likes of Scalia and Thomas.) </p><p align="justify">Ms. Ivins believes that her third-party vote in Texas is a safe declaration of principle, but she confesses that she regrets having abandoned the Democratic candidate once in the past. In 1968, outraged by the Vietnam war, she could not vote for Humphrey (presumably because, as Johnson's loyal Vice President, he had had to profess support for the war) so she cast a write-in vote for Eugene McCarthy.<sup> <small>1</small></sup> The difference between Nixon and Humphrey seemed clear enough to me although I was too, by then, an opponent of the war. However, I understand the dilemma. In 1972, I still could not vote for Nixon, especially after four more years of war, but could not bring myself to support Senator McGovern. Therefore, like Ms. Ivins four years earlier, I virtuously tossed away my vote on a write-in. <p align="justify">Because of my 1972 vote, I can sympathize with the Nader supporters; however, I don't agree with them because I have another parallel experience. In 1980, I was, like so many Democrats, disappointed in Jimmy Carter. He had been conservative, indecisive, ineffectual, etc., so how could one support him? A declaration of principle was called for, so I voted for John Anderson. Never mind that the only real-world alternative was Ronald Reagan, longer on charm than smarts and dedicated to an agenda which would make Carter look like Ted Kennedy. A vote for Ralph Nader this year is much more like my later apostasy than my earlier and the choice is easier. Gore is more of a liberal than Carter, and Bush is, well, longer on charm than smarts. <p align="justify">Two reasons exist for voting for Nader and the Green Party, one traditional, one contemporary. The traditional reason is that the mainstream parties will, for various reasons, fail to embrace some good ideas, and the function of third parties is to give those ideas expression and build support for them. For this purpose, the more votes for the third party the greater its influence. The contemporary reason is related to federal campaign funds: if Nader draws 5% of the popular vote, the Party will be eligible for funding in 2004. Therefore, if one believes in the platform a vote is not wasted because it will increase the chance for eventual success. The odds that a third party will elect a president are long. However, the funding argument doesn't necessarily depend on any such assumption; more funds may lead to a better showing, which may lead to wider<br />acceptance of the platform or parts of it. Nothing is wrong with either argument other than the fact that one must make choices, and these considerations may have to give way to others. Voting for Nader in an undecided state is justified only if it is true that there is no important difference between the major candidates. If Nader really believes this, he is too uninformed to be taken seriously as a political leader.<br />____________________<br /><br /><small>1. It isn't clear why Ms. Ivins disavows her 1968 vote. Was Texas not a safe state for Nixon? Does she now have a higher opinion of Humphrey? <b></p></b></small><b><p align="justify">Oct 31</b></p><p align="justify">The Green platform is stridently, and consistently, opposed to big business. It also claims to be opposed to big government, but it is full of proposals which presuppose an active federal government. Another seeming inconsistency on this point is that, although the platform repeatedly states its preference for local over more remote government, virtually all of its effort in Washington is directed toward the presidential election. According to the Party website, there is only one Green candidate for state office (the State Legislature from a Seattle district), and none for any more local position. Its only other candidate in this state is running for Congress. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 2</b></p><p align="justify">The Libertarians, on the other hand, are fielding candidates here for all sorts of state offices: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor, Attorney General, Commisioner of Public Lands, Insurance Commisioner and the Legislature. It always strikes me as inconsistent that people who disdain government should want to manage it. The Libertarians have this in common with the Constitution Party and, to no small degree, the Republicans. Yes, they can argue that they are running so that, once elected, they can cut government down to proper size, but it still seems odd that they are so anxious to be a part of the evil thing. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 9</b></p><p align="justify">We still do not know who the next president will be, although the odds are that it will be George Bush. Although he trails in the incomplete national popular vote and in the electoral vote, he has, at this moment, a lead of 225 votes in Florida, and its 25 electoral votes would put him over the top. No doubt the exact margin in Florida will change, but clearly it will be tiny compared to the 6 million votes cast in Florida and miniscule compared to the 100 million nationally. Any number of things could change: the recount isn't complete in Florida, let alone official; there are absentee ballots to count there; recounts are underway in other states; the winner in Oregon (and in some reports, New Mexico) hasn't been determined yet; Bush may pull out the popular vote; and some electors may not follow the usual script. However, there is a strong possibility that Governor Bush will lose the popular vote and win in the electoral college with one vote above a majority, based on a few votes in a state governed by his brother, those few votes under a cloud because of various alleged irregularities: not an auspicious start to a presidency. <p align="justify">If this occurs, any number of factors will be pointed to in dissecting Gore's loss, prominent among them his failure to win Tennessee, Clinton's failure to win Arkansas for him, and Nader's vote in Florida, far more than Bush's margin. As Democrats feared, Nader may have given the election to Bush. If Nader had drawn a significant percentage nationally, perhaps he could escape the spoiler charge; winning about 3% hardly justifies the damage done. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Nov 17</b></p><p align="justify">The continuing uncertainty in Florida has prompted numerous calls to bring the process to an end. Some have come from the Bush camp; those are readily translated into "Go away and let George play Predident-elect." More disinterested observers have offered the same advice, but the message, on a practical level, still is the same: Gore should concede. Some of this is based on fears of a consitutional crisis, embarrassment that the world's leading democracy can't get it right, or simple impatience, none of which deserves much atttention. <p align="justify">However, if I were one of Gore's advisers, I might concur for reasons of self-interest; a concession would be statesmanlike and would help to preserve his chances for 2004, especially against an incumbent who seems to have lost the popular vote. It may be too late for this gesture; certinly the safest time for it has passed. The Republican efforts to block vote counts may have further weakened Bush's claim to legitimacy, so a concession still may be timely, but Gore needs to do it while he has something to concede. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Dec 5</b></p><p align="justify">The Seattle Times apparently wishes to make clear that its editorial page is, in an older tradition, a mouthpiece for the owners; none of that modern public-service - objectivity nonsense. The Times' current concern is a strike against it and the P-I by the union representing reporters and clerical workers. Both papers are publishing small editions, written by management employees and, at the Times, some replacements. In Sunday's Times, the abbreviated editorial page contained two signed columns, one written by the editorial page editor, both of which were critical of the union's position; no opposing view was offered. <p align="justify">An article on the strike in the New York Times commented that Seattle is a strong union town; that was true once, but no longer. The best evidence is the fact that the strike is not supported by other unions at the papers, whose members remain on the job. The only solidarity being shown is by senior reporters, many of whom would gain little if the union's demands were met. <b></p></b><b><p align="justify">Dec 11</b></p><p align="justify">On Friday, the Florida Supreme Court decided that a lower court ruling against Gore was erroneous and ordered, by a vote of 4 to 3, hand recounting of all ballots shown, by machine processing, to lack a presidential selection. Rather than limit this to the counties for which Gore had made application, the Court included all Florida counties, which rescued Bush from a tactical error but was a sensible result. The count began. <p align="justify">A start, however, is all that it was allowed. Bush applied to the U.S. Court of Appeals for a stay and was refused. However, the U.S. Supreme Court, less fearful of the political thicket or more willing to substitute its judgment for that of Florida voters, election officials and courts, granted the stay. Justice Scalia rubbed salt in the wounds of Gore's lawyers by reciting that the stay was based on the substantial chance that Bush would prevail on the merits. <p align="justify">If Gore had been elected via the recount, there always would have been the accusation that he "stole" the election. The idea that one can steal an election by counting the votes seems ludicrous, but the element of subjectivity in the analysis of the uncounted ballots would give the claim just enough plausibility to be accepted by many, especially as it would be combined with the notion that an election should be final the day after, even if suspect. <p align="justify">There have been numerous hand-wringing letters, editorial columns and comments in straight news reports, all critical of Gore's determination to carry on the fight. Some are traceable to partisanship and some to a journalistic tendency to find crises for marketing purposes. However, there has been a surprising tendency to find something improper in Gore's refusal to concede, some of it apparently based on the supposed ill - effects of prolonging the uncertainty. It's true that the stock market has been nervous, but it reflects the reactions of the least rational and most easily frightened segment of the population. Elsewhere, life goes on as usual despite the supposed constitutional crisis. <p align="justify">If the Supreme Court decides the outcome, it will establish Gore's credentials as a martyr and effectively cancel the criticism leveled at him for resorting to the courts. It will underscore the doubts as to Bush's legitimacy, relegating him to the Hayes category, a President who lost the popular vote and won the electoral vote under a cloud. <p align="justify">Throughout the post-election period, the odds have been against Gore's being elected. Even if all of the votes were counted and even if that had shown him to be the winner, action by the Florida legislature or Congress could supervene. I can't help wondering whether Gore's strategy has been based less on the prospect of winning than on forcing Bush into this position. Gore could hope for a repeat of history: Hayes served only one term.</p>Gerald G. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18272770512487580818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8898880961286945569.post-40068310128541254192007-12-14T22:03:00.000-08:002008-12-05T17:14:59.389-08:002001<p align="justify"><b>Mar 21</b><br /></p><p align="justify"><i>[In November, 2000, The Seattle Newspaper Guild went on strike against the two Seattle dailies, The Seattle Times and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I). The strike was settled in January, 2001. The majority interest in the Times is owned by the Blethen family, which has published the Times since 1896.]</i><br /></p><p align="justify">In recent months, The Seattle Times has made itself ridiculous with some consistency. Its response to the strike, in addition to using its editorial page to plead its case, included the hysterical overreaction of throwing up chain link fencing around its property (apparently equating its employees to anarchists), hiring replacements, threatening not to allow the strikers to return, and generally behaving as if this were the nineteenth century. All of this is in contrast to the P-I, which took the strike more or less in stride and neither exhibited nor provoked the sort of hostility evident at the Times. <p align="justify">After the strike, the Times took another step toward making its editorial page an outlet for the Blethen family's economic views. The editorial page staff was cut in half and all but one of the survivors were removed from the editorial board, now consisting of three members of the family, one of their corporate employees, and the new editorial page editor. Today's house editorial argued that ergonomic regulations should be scrapped in favor of voluntary changes, which sounds like more self-interest at work. Possibly that is not so, but taking editorial policy out of the hands of the staff certainly destroys any appearance of objectivity. <p align="justify">However, the Times may have taken a step back toward journalistic respectability through a series of articles published last week on experimental procedures at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The articles accuse the Center, in two of its "protocols," of proceeding to human testing too soon; continuing experimental procedures after they were known to be dangerous, useless or both; diverting into the experimental procedures patients who would have had better chances with standard treatment; ignoring warnings, including those from its review<br />committee; and conflicts of interest. The picture is of treating patients more or less as laboratory animals. </p><p align="justify">Of course, the Times may be wrong, in which case it has been irresponsible and has done damage to an institution which it acknowledges to be a leader in cancer research. However, the articles were detailed and persuasive and the rebuttal from the Center and its supporters has been the opposite. <b><p align="justify">Mar 22</b><br /></p><p align="justify">An article in the New York Times on the February 28 earthquake was headlined "Slightly Shaken, Briefly Shocked, Then Back to Mellow as Usual." The text referred to Seattle as "this waterfront capital of coffee and mellow." I'm not sure that "mellow," as an adjective or pseudo-noun, entirely fits my hometown. <p align="justify">The reporter acknowledged two seeming contradictions to the image, the WTO disturbances in 1999 and the rioting on Fat Tuesday this year that left one young man dead, in the light of which it is difficult to think of Seattle as peaceful, law-abiding or entirely civilized, let alone mellow. <p align="justify">The Seattle Police Department has been criticized bitterly for its handling of those two events and the WTO anniversary demonstration last fall. Some of the criticism is little more than an attempt to shift blame from where at least part of it belongs. However, it is difficult to find anything which the police have done right; they seem to have an almost perfect record of acting aggressively when they should show restraint and holding off when they should intervene. Fat Tuesday saw them in the latter mode: standing at the edge of a riot, doing nothing, refusing to act. They appear to have only one available action mode, full battle drill. The idea of a calming, controlling, restrained but intimidating presence seems to have been lost entirely, leaving them with no intermediate, measured response. The impression given is one of indecisiveness and timidity. <p align="justify">Perhaps Seattle simply hasn't had enough experience with large-scale disorder and violence. Although they haven't been entirely absent here, we have been relatively fortunate in that regard, and WTO was a shock to everyone. The familiar outside agitators were blamed and there was the ritual recital that only a small fraction of the demonstrators caused all of the trouble. The latter argument overlooks the role of some of the supposedly peaceful demonstrators in facilitating the more violent ones through irresponsible, obstructive behavior. Fortunately, at WTO this resulted primarily in property damage. Fat Tuesday escalated to beatings, one fatal, and made clear that we have enough home-grown thugs to produce a riot. <b><p align="justify">Mar 26</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Bill Clinton, reportedly concerned about his place in history, nevertheless behaved on the way out as if he were determined to confirm the most exaggerated views of his character. As a result, he has been denounced in terms that, leaving aside the demented right, I don't recall seeing before; now Andrew Sullivan, in the March 12 issue of <i>The New Republic,</i> calls Clinton a sociopath. </p><p align="justify">Sullivan's focus is on the pardons, especially of Marc Rich, for which he can find no adequate xplanation. Sullivan's conclusion is that "we had for eight years a truly irrational person in the White House, someone who, I think, lived on the edge of serious mental illness." "Clinton's actions as president can be fully understood only if one understands him to be a deeply disturbed person - not fully in control of himself or his actions." "...Clinton was not psychologically healthy enough to have been president of the United States." "And truly gifted sociopaths have ways of inveigling those around them to participate actively in the sickness...." Maybe Mr. Sullivan will be shown to have seen the truth, but this seems a bit much, even to one<br />who diagnosed Richard Nixon at a distance of three thousand miles. </p><p align="justify">Sullivan's point that Clinton risked everything in the Rich pardon is true enough and the parallel to his self-destructive behavior in the Lewinski affair is tempting. However, the motivation for his behavior with Monica isn't any mystery and the only puzzle is how he could be so foolish. In the Rich pardon there is, contrary to Sullivan's diagnosis, a question as to motivation, and rushing to the conclusion that there cannot possibly be a rational explanation suggests that<br />personal dislike plays a large part. Sullivan admits as much, describing himself as one of those "who have long loathed" Clinton. </p><p align="justify">In opting for the psychological answer, Sullivan brushes aside the more important question, whether the Rich pardon was corrupt. He argues that Clinton could have made lots of money speaking, so he didn't need any from Denise Rich. If Clinton's supporters had tried that explanation, they'd have been laughed at; apparently the U.S. Attorney in New York doesn't find it compelling. The opposite possibility, that the pardon was granted on the merits, gets only a derisive "Please." Although Sullivan finds it to be too absurd to consider, it would explain why Clinton did something so dangerous to his reputation. <p align="justify">The answer may be the simple one that both principle and self-interest were at work. That wouldn't allow as much range to a commentator, but, since such conflicts are so common to politics, it might be a more likely explanation. <b><p align="justify">Mar 28</b><br /></p><p align="justify">At some early point George W. Bush decided to act, or it was decided for him that he would act, as if he not only had been elected legitimately but had a mandate. For the first few weeks this seemed to work, aided by the usual deference and respect for the office on the part of the press and public. A friendly House passed the tax cut without bothering to read anything, let alone consider the consequences, which gave a sense of momentum if not inevitability. Alan Greenspan made qualified, obscure, but somewhat favorable comments regarding the tax cut, thus giving it the imprimatur of enlightened, nonpartisan fiscal policy. The Democrats stood around in a daze, unable to do more than suggest that the cut should be a little smaller. The Clintons cooperated by making daily headlines in ways not helpful to their reputations, validating Bush as the office-cleanser. <p align="justify">However, the past couple of weeks have not gone so well. Bush has abandoned ergonomic standards, curbs on carbon dioxide in the air and arsenic in the water and is challenging restrictions on logging roads. This could be seen as imaginary-mandate hubris, but looks more like capitulation to the business lobby. The impression of weakness is reinforced by the President's wandering among the people begging them to want a tax cut while back at the capital State and Defense are fighting over control of foreign policy. <b><p align="justify">Mar 29</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The Supreme Court will consider a case involving application of the death penalty to a mentally retarded man. We may learn how disadvantaged one must be not to be put to death, an appropriate parody of morality for an amoral but legalistic age.<sup><small>1</small></sup><br />__________<br /><br />1. <small><strong>2/25/03:</strong> Parody has given way to surrealism. The Supreme Court did rule that a mentally retarded defendant could not be executed. Now, however, the 8th Circuit has decided that an insane defendant may be given drugs to render him sane enough, long enough, to be executed.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">Apr 1</b><br /></p><p align="justify">An interesting contrast to Andrew Sullivan's bitter condemnation of Bill Clinton was offered a year ago by Ben Stein. In a column in USA Today, he predicted accurately that, after January 20, there would be "a flood of commentary about what Bill Clinton did and who he was." <p align="justify">Stein listed his Republican credentials and set out in harsh detail his reasons for not admiring Clinton as a president; Clinton was "one of the most dangerous enemies of the Constitution in this century." But Stein recognized that Clinton was human and, at times at least, admirably so. <p align="justify">Stein gave three examples of Clinton's decency.<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">Soon after he was inaugurated, I noticed that Clinton wore what looked to me like ugly neckties. I bought him a tie and sent it with a note that I would never vote for him but that I wanted him to look better. He did not have to reply, but he sent a funny handwritten note thanking me and hoping I would change my opinion about voting for him. His human gesture showed a real person behind the iron fences.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">This was a trivial incident, as Stein notes, but revealing in the same way as the two more significant ones.<br /></p><p align="justify">On the occasion of Richard Nixon's funeral, the President could have made the minimal gesture; "Instead, Clinton sent out three planeloads of Nixon officials and friends from Washington to Yorba Linda, Calif., came himself and spoke warmly and with obvious admiration of the deceased peacemaker." <p align="justify">The final example concerned the funeral of Stein's father, Herbert Stein. <blockquote><p align="justify">...My father, a well-known Republican economist who often had written negatively about Clinton, died on Sept. 8.... The funeral was the next day, in accordance with Jewish law, and even many of his longtime friends could not organize themselves to be there. Not one high-ranking Republican, past or present, showed up....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Clinton sent Treasury Secretary Summers and his White House economics advisor with "a lovely letter to my sister and me about how much he respected my father and how much Washington would miss him.... Clinton did this despite my often severe criticism of him." Without pulling any punches on matters of policy or on character flaws, Stein was able to appreciate the generous side of Clinton's nature.<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">...Pundits will ponder why the man, with all of his moral baggage, was able to engage so much of the American public so positively for so long. I suggest that it might be simply because even though he has many flaws -- and I still would not vote for him -- he has a certain warmth, generosity of spirit, even a kindly quality of friendliness that shows through the mistakes and the lies.<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br />Voters recognized it, and they liked it, just as I did -- even though for the third time, I wouldn't pull the lever. But I would invite him in for dinner, and he could stay as long as he liked.</p></blockquote><b><p align="justify">Apr. 9</b><br /></p><p align="justify">That President Bush's early success was not due to his personal skills is clear even to those relatively sympathetic to him. An article in <i>Commentary</i> by Daniel Casse, which goes rather far to find something significant in compassionate conservatism, offers the following assessment: <blockquote><p align="justify">...As even his supporters would have to concede, Bush may have been the least-prepared candidate to assume the office of the presidency in the past century....<br /></p><p align="justify">...[His shortcomings] included the fact that he was persistently and embarrassingly inarticulate, that he had rarely travelled outside the U.S., that he seemed to have no deeply held views about government or burning mission to become President, and that his adult life appeared unburdened by any concern for the great policy questions of our age.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Despite these limitations, Mr. Casse thinks that "there was...much more to Bush's strategy that the desire to project an image of amiable, bipartisan bonhomie. Out of the campaign flowed a whole series of thoughtful speeches and detailed policy proposals on the very topics on which the GOP was floundering." Unless I missed something, details were notably lacking, but Bush certainly did take a more centrist position than is typical for Republicans. However, if that explains the vote, large sections of the public must have been gullible, as it would have been necessary to accept that Bush believed in and would carry into action policies his party had firmly opposed. We have seen enough of the real George W. Bush (or, perhaps more accurately, real Republicanism) recently to show how naïve that would have been. I'm still more inclined to the view that, in addition to the deficiencies of Al Gore as a candidate, the votes Mr. Bush drew from outside the Republican core came from a response to that somewhat redundant amiable bonhomie. <b><p align="justify">Apr. 10</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Boeing's decision to move its headquarters from Seattle was as baffling as it was surprising. The announcement has led to various types of civic soul-searching, including consideration of how much Seattle has changed in recent decades, one form of which has it that the Seattle into which Boeing comfortably fit no longer exists. I doubt that this explains Boeing's departure, any more than the claim by Phil Condit that Seattle is too remote from financial centers and Boeing's customers,<sup><small>1</small></sup> or the somewhat facetious suggestion by Walt Crowley that Boeing was dismayed that its home town opposed free trade, as supposedly demonstrated by the WTO follies. Seattle certainly is less provincial and isolated than it was earlier, when Boeing apparently was content to be here. <p align="justify">However, leaving Boeing aside, the contention that the city has changed significantly and not necessarily for the better has merit. The older Seattle was the somewhat paradoxical one of strong unions and conservative politics, less surprisingly of strong unions and family values. In a sense that was the mellow Seattle; the current one might be described more accurately as self-absorbed. <p align="justify">Whether Seattle today lacks family values, it certainly lacks families. Census data show that Seattle's population in 2000 was virtually identical to that in 1960, but the percentage of children (those under 18) dropped from 30 to less than 15. Among major American cities, only San Francisco has a lower proportion.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. Some time later, he was quoted as stating that he needed to be more centrally located relative to Boeing's various operations. Take your pick.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">Apr. 11</b><br /></p><p align="justify">After the Puget Sound mass transit plan was defeated in 1995, it was scaled back, and the modified version passed in 1996. The scaling back was fiscally somewhat devious; the plan was advertised as having been cut from $6.7 billion to $3.9 billion. However, scaling back only reduced the total cost, not the annual levy; we would pay as much per year for less, but pay it for a shorter time. Apparently that was enough to gain passage, but the lesser version was of even more dubious merit than the original; among other changes, the entire east side branch of the rail system was eliminated. <p align="justify">Marketing labels are one of the major accomplishments of the project to date: the Regional Transit Authority now is styled Sound Transit; the overall plan now is Sound Move; the commuter train is The Sounder (which allows one to break the Sound barrier); express buses are ST Express; the projected light-rail component is Link. <p align="justify">On a more substantive level, Sound Transit has been less active: the accomplishments in four and a half years are several express bus routes beginning in 1999 and train service from Tacoma to Seattle beginning last year. The train service uses new equipment on existing tracks. The bus routes are superimposed on the existing service and are operated by existing carriers; the contribution by Sound Transit again is new equipment. These could have been accomplished in other ways; the only excuse for the 1996 proposal was the light-rail component. <p align="justify">However, the planning of that element has been a farce and the project is a fiasco; the schedule has slipped by years and cost estimates have increased by hundreds of millions. Nothing has been built and it not at all clear that anything ever will be. The project now has entered the vicious-circle stage: it needs federal funds to proceed, but it is in such disarray that federal contributions have been suspended. <p align="justify">Administrative ineptness probably accounts for part of the problem, but certainly it is due in part to the vagueness of the original proposal. A multi-billion dollar project based on a plan of the back-of-an-envelope variety doesn't have a significant chance of success. <p align="justify">The Seattle area is among the worst in the nation for traffic congestion; apart from the new train, the value of which is unclear at this early stage, buses are our only form of public transportation. It may be that it is too late to build a light rail system or that it is, for some reason, unsuited to this area. I still think that it has a place in a proper transportation plan, but there is no sense in building a rail line simply to have one. The regional plan should have given light rail intelligent, realistic consideration and should have proposed it, if at all, in a form which would do some good. Instead the RTA proposed a rail system which would have little impact on<br />auto traffic and now it has made a complete mess of that plan. Many, including former backers, are calling for "Link" to be abandoned. However, buses aren't solving the problem and we seem to be doomed to building still more freeway lanes, which won't solve it either. <b></p><p align="justify">Apr. 12</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The New York Times reported yesterday that the evolution debate in Kansas, and more generally, has taken a new form. In place of creationism, critics now are advancing theories of design as an alternative to the orthodox, neo-Darwinian version of evolutionary theory. The new approach is being dismissed as creationism in another guise, but I don't think that it will be that easy to ignore. Design may or may not withstand examination, but it should focus attention on aspects of evolutionary theory which seem to be as much a matter of faith as any of the alternatives. <b><p align="justify">Apr. 24</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Andrew Sullivan may be on to something. The April issue of <i>Liberty</i> features a series of articles mockingly labelled "Bill Clinton: a Celebration." The first, by R.W. Bradford, editor and publisher, carries the subtitle "Bill Clinton was a liar, thief and sociopath...."<sup><small>3</small></sup> To make sure that we don't conclude that he was merely of the garden variety, Mr. Bradford tells us that Clinton<br />was "an absolutely amoral sociopath." </p><p align="justify">It is, however, less surprising to find such an appraisal here than in a serious magazine like <i>The New Republic.</i> Although <i>Liberty</i> sometimes contains sensible, realistic commentary, a large portion of its content is doctrinaire, smirkingly dismissive of government and, in tone, on the level of <i>The American Spectator.</i> A short piece in the "Reflections" section of this issue of<br /><i>Liberty</i> tells us that the author makes a hobby of "creating ugly scenes with public figures like William Bennett, Dick Cheney, James Carville, and Robert 'Bud' McFarlane." (Aren't we clever and important?) He says that trying to humiliate and embarrass is his "default mode when dealing with a suspected sociopath," so I assume that he places the above-mentioned individuals in that category.<sup><small>1 </small></sup>The Bradford article is graced by a cartoon implying that Clinton shot Vincent Foster, which might be too much even for the <i>Spectator</i>.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>9/02/02</strong>: I opened a 1992 issue of Liberty today and discovered that, according to one of the contributors, described as "Senior Editor with the Cato Institute," the first President Bush also was a sociopath, because he agreed to a tax increase.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">May 21</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The Seattle Weekly has a new look. Jean Godden's column in The Seattle Times quoted the new editor of The Weekly on the subject: "It's playful. It looks a little arty and raw, which reflects what we like about Seattle and what we don't want to see changed." Ms. Godden was appropriately unimpressed: "Ah, that explains a lot: playful, arty and raw. Definitely the inner Seattle, probably best defined by newcomers to the city. Either that or they've confused Seattle with sushi." <p align="justify">The editor's blather is illustrative of an increasingly common phenomenon: the city and the region are defined for us by recent transplants, especially those in the media. Another contribution by outlanders has been the transformation of terminology. In the news, Washington now always is "Washington State," even when no one would suppose that the local reporter had the capital city in mind (salmon runs in Washington State are down in recent years; the snow pack in Washington State is low; Governor Locke of Washington State..., etc.). Clinkers like "the Puget Sound" are common. Events occur "in Puget Sound," which apparently is meant to<br />mean "in the Puget Sound region," not under water. Anyone standing on a runway now is on the tarmac, a term never used here until recently; pop now is soda. </p><p align="justify">I haven't read the new-look Weekly and hadn't paid much attention to it for some time prior to 1999, when I consulted it for reactions to the WTO riots. I don't know what the new editor has in mind as "raw," but in one respect it already qualified: I was startled at how grossly sexual it had become. The Weekly, even in its early days, was notorious for its personals: "men seeking women," "men seeking men," etc., complete with handy abbreviations. Those now appear in the once-staid Seattle Times (does it call itself a family paper these days?), so the Weekly moved<br />on, running pages of sex-related ads and a sex-advice column. The column in the WTO issue was so bizarre that I wondered if it was parody. Reference to a few subsequent issues indicated that it was not; some of the columns were weird, all were crude and, to my old-fashioned eye, degenerate. </p><p align="justify">The NY Times reported at about the same time that someone was planning a sex museum in Manhattan. Off the streets and into the galleries, apparently. <p align="justify">My point of view clearly is something less than contemporary,<sup><small>1 </small></sup>but its distance from the cultural front lines was emphasized recently. Fred Moody wrote an article for The Seattle Times on his career with The Weekly; he thinks that it has become too mainstream.<br />_____________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>8/25/01</strong>: As Mr. Woodhouse put it, "...I live out of the world, and am often astonished at what I hear." <strong>11/2/02:</strong> Or, "I have lived a good deal out of the world and am, therefore, perhaps, more astonished than I ought to be." Mr. Dale, in <i>The Small House at Allington.</i> Is this coincidence or did Trollope do Jane Austen the honor of plagiarizing <i>Emma</i>?</small><br /><br /><b>May 24</b> </p><p align="justify">Over the past few weeks several editorial columns have asked why President Bush has been treated with such deference by the media. It is an interesting phenomenon: a president who lost the popular vote and won the electoral under less than pristine circumstances, who has advanced a bold and controversial agenda, who has given every indication of being as intellectually challenged as his detractors claimed during the campaign, who has abandoned any pretense of being the political healer and uniter he claimed to be, and whose fund-raising techniques are closer to the Clintons he reviled than to the principles he professed, has received a good press. The reason, however, is not difficult to discern: the media view politics as procedure, not as substance - as a contest to be scored, not as issues to be evaluated.<sup><small>1 </small></sup>President Bush has, until now, won most of his battles, so he's due a good press. Never mind that his major victory consists of pushing his tax plan through a compliant Republican Congress; wins are wins. If the plan is better for his friends and contributors than for the country, who cares? </p><p align="justify">Things may have changed: Senator Jeffords has defected. The response of the media has been predictable: there has been more coverage of this than of any of the Bush programs; PBS' News Hour devoted its entire program to it tonight. True, it's important; it has implications for the Bush agenda and is an historic event, but the appeal is that it's a goal scored against the Bush team.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>4/5/03</strong>: Another suggested explanation is that the famous liberal media are, in fact, conservative. See Alterman, <i>What Liberal Media?</i></small> <b></p><p align="justify">June 24</b><br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">I have, from time to time in these memoirs, had some harsh things to say about judges, utterances of mine which may, I'm afraid, have caused a degree of resentment among their assembled Lordships, who like nothing less than being judged.<sup><small>1</small></sup></p></blockquote><p align="justify">Rumpole has nothing on Allan Dershowitz, whose latest book, <i>Supreme Injustice,</i> contains the harshest criticism of an American court by a responsible, knowledgeable person that I have ever seen. His subject is <i>Bush v. Gore,</i> which he describes as a corrupt decision, proceeding from personal or political motives, unsupported by law or logic and contrary to decisions by the majority on related issues. The crux of his argument is that the decision fails the shoe-on-the-<br />other-foot test, that it would not have been rendered if Gore had been asking for an order terminating vote-counting. Therefore, the result was dictated by the identity of the parties, a violation of the oath to "administer justice without respect to persons...."<br />_________<br /><br /><small>1. John Mortimer, <i>Rumpole and the Angel of Death.</i></small><br /><br /></p><b><p align="justify">July 3</b><br /></p><p align="justify">I have just read <i>The Betrayal of America</i>, by Vincent Bugliosi, in comparison to which <i>Supreme Injustice</i> is restrained. Bugliosi refers to the <i>Bush v. Gore</i> majority as criminals and describes the decision as treasonous. <b><p align="justify">July 9</b><br /></p><p align="justify">In his NY Times column a few days ago Paul Krugman noted the ongoing downward revisions to the government's economic forecasts and speculated that, had this information been available earlier, moderates would not have lined up behind the Bush tax cut. More recently, the Times house editorial, under the head "Mr. Bush's Fiscal Gaffe," reflected on the same news by stating that the President, in pushing for his tax cut, "forgot - or perhaps he did not know - that a slowing economy, with lower corporate profits and personal earnings, would automatically result in lower tax collections and would throw his knife-edged fiscal plan into imbalance." <p align="justify">Unless we assume an almost incredible level of ignorance on the part of Congressmen, the late arrival of worsening forecasts is not a likely explanation for their action. Anyone who has lived through the past twenty years who is not a supply-side cultist or is not blinded by loyalty to Ronald Reagan had to realize that the tax cut would reduce revenues, that spending cuts would not miraculously appear, that forecasts of endless surpluses were suspect from the outset, that the economy was heading down, and that the tax cut therefore was trouble. It would be interesting to know why those moderates voted so irresponsibly. Perhaps it was just tax-cut fever, although the tepid support by the public makes this a little difficult to understand. (One theory is that, although nationally the support for a tax cut was limited, it was popular in some states or districts, which would explain support by the Members representing those populations.) <p align="justify">As to the President and his economic advisors, ignorance also is not a persuasive theory. It may be that there still are a few who believe that cutting taxes really will not reduce revenues, but there probably are many more who think that the government can and should be starved into decline. Most importantly, they simply hate taxes as righteous people once hated sin, and are willing to take any risk in order to extirpate them. <b><p align="justify">Aug 14</b><br /></p><p align="justify">However, I may be giving Congressmen credit for too much perception; perhaps they did need to see the house of cards fall in order to conclude that it was unstable. It is unfortunate that they did not have, in addition to a less rosy scenario (to borrow from David Stockman), Paul Krugman's <i>Fuzzy Math</i> to guide them. It would have reminded them that there are huge Social Security commitments to fund in the not-distant future. <p align="justify">The only positive aspect of all this is that the cut is back-loaded, which offers the opportunity to prevent part the damage by repealing some of the cuts before they take effect. <b><p align="justify">Aug 30</b><br /></p><p align="justify">In a recent New York Times story about Seattle, the reporter described us as a city so polite that a driver would rather die than honk his horn. Even allowing for the hyperbole, that could describe only a past Seattle. Drivers in the Seattle area not only are not obsessively polite and self-controlled, they are wild, rude, arrogant and dangerous: speeding, jumping lanes, tailgating and running lights are the rule. <p align="justify">In this case, the change was recent and abrupt. A few years ago -1996? 1997?- drivers began running the light next to my office building. The change was so sudden and the violations so gross that I was about to call the city engineering department to report a mistimed light when I noticed the same thing happening at the next intersection. Before long it was all over downtown Bellevue, then everywhere; then drivers moved on to other forms of irresponsibility. <p align="justify">The latest indication of our decline came yesterday. During the morning rush hour, a woman, apparently after driving onto the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge, was perched at the edge, threatening to jump. As police attempted to talk her away, commuters, annoyed at being delayed, called "Jump, bitch, jump!" She did jump. Amazingly, she survived and now is listed in serious condition. <p align="justify">Apart from the obvious human defects in the individuals involved, what causes this? In simple, superficial terms, the immediate cause of these driving-related barbarisms is impatience: nothing, certainly not a stranger intent on killing herself, can be allowed to slow one down. <b><p align="justify">Sept. 5</b><br /></p><p align="justify">On August 30, Hubert Locke wrote a column about Seattle's recent turmoil, including the riots. His point was that the widespread criticism of Mayor Schell overlooks the difficult transition Seattle is going through. <blockquote><p align="justify">Seattle, which got a late start as an American city, was also late losing its innocence. While other metropolitan centers were trying to cope with strikes, riots, the flight of the middle class to the "burbs," crime and looming fiscal collapse, Seattle was cheerfully cleaning up its lake, hosting a world's fair, expanding its port and dutifully passing one set of bond measures after another to improve its parks, build affordable housing and a new art museum and accomplishing a good many other laudable urban projects.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">However, now "urban reality" finally has caught up with the Emerald City. Professor Locke did not refer to the freeway bridge incident, but his urban-reality stage appears to include the uncivilized behavior of the motorists inconvenienced by a tragedy playing out before them. </p><p align="justify">There were numerous comments about the incident. A P-I article reported that <blockquote><p align="justify">[Walt] Crowley pointed to popular culture as a possible culprit: "I don't know if it's peculiar to Seattle, but certainly our music, our TV, our films, our literature are saturated with selfishness and gratuitous violence and exploitation.... [W]e're not living in times that value empathy, or a sense of community." </p></blockquote><p align="justify">People have been cruel to each other from the beginning, without the aid of television, so we shouldn't be too ready to lay all of the blame there; however, despite the reporter's interpretation, Mr. Crowley may have been using pop cultureas a measure rather than as a cause. Although Professor Locke's picture of premodern Seattle is idealized, there has been a major change which needs explanation, and the degeneration of the popular culture is one place to look for clues.<br /><br /></p><b><p align="justify">Sept 6</b><br /></p><p align="justify">There are those who think that the Reagan deficits were run intentionally, to force reductions in spending and in the size of government. It seems to me that the financial chaos created by Reagonomics was born more of ignorance than cunning, but that President Reagan and his team were willing to make use of the unintended consequences. <p align="justify">This view is based in part on David Stockman's account of one of the many unhappy discoveries which characterized his service to Ronald Reagan, this one occurring during the 1980 campaign. He described the upside to the realization that his forecasts were billions of dollars off: <blockquote><p align="justify">At the time, the prospect of needing well over $100 billion in domestic spending cuts to keep the Republican budget in equilibrium appeared more as an opportunity than as a roadblock. Once Governor Reagan got an electoral mandate for Kemp-Roth and 10-5-3, then we would have the Second Republic's craven politicians pinned to the wall. They would have to dismantle its bloated, wasteful, and unjust spending enterprises or risk national ruin.<sup> <small>1</small> </sup></p></blockquote><p align="justify">Budgetary problems are political opportunities for President Bush as well, although in this case the epiphany is only rhetorical, as he and his advisors presumably haven't been misled by Laffer curves drawn on napkins. At a news conference on August 24, he called the vanishing surplus "incredibly positive news" because it will create a "fiscal straightjacket for Congress." Of course, he doesn't think that his spending plans, including the missile shield, need be forced into that straightjacket, nor will he reconsider the tax cut, an exercise in deluding one's self and the nation which also is borrowed from Reagan.<br />__________<br /><br /><small>1. Stockman, <i>The Triumph of Politics,</i> p. 68.</small><br /></p><b><p align="justify">Oct 12</b><br /></p><p align="justify">There were memorial services yesterday marking one month since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It still is difficult to understand that these atrocities took place: there is no frame of reference in which to place them. It is not only the fact that it happened here, shattering our illusion of security, and not only the craziness of suicide bombings. The devastation in New York was so awful as to seem unreal, the pictures like something from a science-fiction movie. <b><p align="justify">Oct 26</b><br /></p><p align="justify">America was not ready for September 11. Individually we were isolated, self-centered and inward-looking, led by an administration whose attitude toward the world was isolated, self-centered and inward-looking. As Maureen Dowd put it, "We were optimists, a big, bold, S.U.V., Sex-and-the-City society, confident in the security that our geography afforded, flush from the 90s, happily absorbed in the secondary questions of existence." <p align="justify">It might not be likely that such a people would respond well, but the signs are encouraging. There has been heroism, especially by the New York firefighters, police and medical aid personnel and by the passengers on the Pennsylvania plane. There has been eloquence, again notably from the New York forces and from Mayor Giuliani. Even the interviews of victims' families, usually so pointless and exploitative, produced responses that were genuine and touching. <p align="justify">The first wave of unity has passed and criticism and debate have begun, as is both expected and necessary. Even most of this has struck me as responsible and reasonable. <p align="justify">There are exceptions. Perhaps the most bizarre was the Falwell-Robertson revelation that we brought it on ourselves through our sins, ironically echoing the militant Islamic line. Some pronouncements from our other wing have contained a similar opinion, here revealing the reflexive anti-Americanism so typical of the left.<sup><small>1</small></sup> However, most of the comments I have seen, in news reports, editorials and letters to the papers, have been thoughtful, whether supportive of the attacks on Afghanistan, opposed or concerned about fallout. <p align="justify">Most early editorial opinion on the administration's response was favorable, more so than the facts would require. Some of this was the usual rallying around, in which support is translated into approval and admiration. Support is in order, but I have to confess that I cringed whenever the President went on camera. He invariably smirked; he usually does and it no doubt is a nervous habit, but it was unfortunate here, making it appear that he treated these problems lightly. His tendency to use casual, inane expressions made it difficult to take him seriously. The impression was of someone who is basically silly, not the image required under the circumstances. <p align="justify">Several reporters and columnists told us that the administration has abandoned its pre-9/11 agenda to concentrate on the threats. (One local writer announced that the "so-called Republican Revolution is ancient history"). That certainly was naïve; this is an administration which serves business and the wealthy backed by a doctrinaire and inflexible House majority. Drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, which made no sense before and makes none now, has been revisited. The House has passed a tax cut, primarily aimed at business, including retroactive repeal of the alternate minimum tax. This will do little to avert or shorten the recession; its primary effect will be a corporate windfall, estimated at $1.4 billion in the case of IBM. <p align="justify">The worst example is the refusal of the House to agree to the federalizing of airport security, a measure included in a bill which passed the Senate 100-0. This reminds me of a description of opposition to a municipal police force for London in the nineteenth century. In 1811, two families living along the Ratcliff Highway were murdered. After the suspect hanged himself, <blockquote><p align="justify">the turmoil subsided, and many would have agreed with John William Ward (a future Foreign Secretary) that a few killings in the poorest parts of London were a fair price to pay to avoid the costly and authoritarian system of state policing the French had to endure: "I had rather half a dozen people's throats should be cut in Ratcliff Highway every three or four years than be subject to domiciliary visits, spies, and all the rest of Fouché's contrivances." <sup><small>2</small></sup> </p></blockquote><p align="justify">Similarly, the House would rather that a few planes were flown into buildings than create a federal security force at airports. If the military did not exist, Republicans would not vote to create it.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>7/6/02</strong>: Todd Gitlin described this as "soft anti-Americanism" in an excellent, pointed but balanced article in the January-February issue of <i>Mother Jones.</i><br />2. Stephen Inwood, <i>A History of London.</i></small><br /><br /></p><b><p align="justify">Nov. 1</b><br /></p><p align="justify">In a column carried in today's P-I, Jack Kemp alleged that the federal tax code is "so anti-growth that, in Treasury Secretary O'Neill's words, it is 'unworthy of an advanced civilization.'"<sup><small>1</small></sup> That's an apt phrase, but as a description of what the Internal Revenue Code will be if the present trend continues. <p align="justify">The tax code already was tilted toward the wealthy and powerful; the revisions made earlier this year have pushed it considerably further in that direction; the bill just passed by the House is incredible in its servitude to the moneyed interests; continual reductions in revenue will make it impossible to carry out proper functions of government. I would call that unworthy of an advanced civilization. <p align="justify">It is considered gauche to speak ill of tax breaks or other benefits for the wealthy. Such talk is, we are told, "class warfare." The very mention of class is, except apparently in some isolated academic circles, bad manners. However, E. J. Dionne was bold enough in today's column in the Washington Post to raise the question. <p align="justify">His comments were prompted by the inconsistent responses to anthrax infection exposure, notably more rapid in Congress and the Supreme Court than in post offices. Dionne thinks that "postal workers have good reason to wonder why they weren't at the top of anyone's priority list." This isn't the best example of class-based policy and, as he acknowledges, the principal causes of the tardy concern for postal workers were disorganization, uncertainty and general ineptness. However, it's a legitimate occasion to raise the issue, and Dionne notes its broader application, including the growing income gap in recent decades. <p align="justify">I have little sympathy for the anti-capitalist simpletons and their anarchic fellow travelers who seem to think that subsistence farming is the appropriate model. Our business economy is the engine which drives the welfare bus. However, if ordinary Americans are told often enough that they have to move to the back or, more to the point, that there isn't room, they will rebel. The Republicans seem determined to bring this about.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>1/15/02</strong>: O'Neill's statement, made to Congress in January, 2001, was, apparently, "Our tax system is not worthy of an advanced society and I really think we need to do something about it."</small> <b></p><p align="justify">Nov. 5</b><br /></p><p align="justify">There was an article in the P-I today about the interruption of mail service to Washington D.C. because of the need to screen for contamination. However, when I saw the headline, "A Congress Disconnected," I thought that the House Republicans must have introduced a new bill. <b><p align="justify">Nov. 6</b><br /></p><p align="justify"><i>[The last part of this note refers to one of a series of initiatives to the voters sponsored by a local activist, Tim Eyman. His proposals have had two general themes, tax cuts and public votes on any tax increases.]</i><br /></p><p align="justify">There have been a number of comments to the effect that the September 11 attacks and the administration's response have fundamentally changed attitudes toward government. In the Washington Post today, Michael Kelly quoted from an article by David Brooks in which Mr. Brooks "argues...that Sept. 11 reshaped our politics. The most important, and most salutary, of the ways in which this is true involves what Brooks calls the relegitimization of central institutions." <p align="justify">Kelly (and apparently Brooks) think that there is a significant change of attitude toward government, a retreat from anti-statism. I'm not convinced of that. Certainly no such renaissance has touched the House of Representatives or the administration. The government's need for revenue over at least several years will be significantly increased, at a time when the business downturn and more realistic forecasts have eliminated any thought of a surplus. The response is to cut taxes: more will be expected of the government, so it will be partially dismantled. The refusal to federalize airport security is another clear indication that attitudes have not changed among those people. <p align="justify">Another development, certainly on a small scale but perhaps revealing of public attitudes, is the vote today in Washington on Initiative 747. This, the latest brainchild of Tim Eyman, will cap increases in property taxes at 1% per annum unless a greater increase is approved by public vote. The present law allows increases of up to 6%. In early returns (it's now 11:30 p.m.), the measure is receiving a 60% "yes" vote.<sup><small>1</small></sup> Maybe the voters don't think that services cost money or maybe they still believe that we only need to eliminate fraud and waste. Maybe they really want to vote oftener. I doubt that those are the reasons; there still is lots of antigovernment sentiment out there, which is revealed in the series of anti-tax votes over the past few years.<sup><small>2</small></sup><br />__________<br /><br /><small>1. The final tally was 57.56% yes to 42.44% no.<br />2. <strong>11/8/01</strong>: The letters to the P-I this morning included this (full text), reflecting hostility toward those who run government: "Tim Eyman is a hero to many people of this state. He will be to me as well if and when he gets an initiative on the ballot that would limit [increases in?] state legislators' (and other public officials') salaries to 1 percent without a vote of the people."</small> </p><p align="justify"><b>Nov 8</b> </p><p align="justify"><i>[Two earlier Eyman initiatives were invalidated by the courts because they violated a constitutional provision that legislation, whether a bill in the legislature or an initiative, may have only one subject.]</i> </p><p align="justify">Eyman's initiatives have an impressive record at the polls, but not in the courts, in part because of inept draftsmanship. The present one may turn out to have a similar flaw. Certainly it is peculiar: the first and last sections are not substantive, but inanely argumentative, revealing Mr. Eyman's megalomania. For example, in the last section, we have this: <blockquote><p align="justify">The people have clearly expressed their desire to limit taxes through the overwhelming passage of numerous initiatives and referendums. However, politicians throughout the state of Washington continue to ignore these measures.<br /><br />Politicians are reminded:...<br />(3) Politicians are an employee [sic] of the people, not their boss.<br />(4) Any property tax increase which violates the clear intent of this measure undermines the trust of the people in their government and will increase the likelihood of future tax limitation measures.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Don't mess with Tim or he'll repeal another tax.<br /></p><p align="justify">The prior two initiatives, I-695 and I-722, have been struck down by superior courts and the rejection of 695 has been upheld on appeal. The fate of I-722 is pending before the Supreme Court, which leads to an interesting ambiguity in the present initiative. The law prior to Initiative 722 allowed a 6% annual increase in property taxes without a vote. I-722 would have reduced that to 2%. I-722 has not gone into effect due to its rejection at the superior court level. If the Supreme Court overrules, 722 may take effect, but for now it is a nullity. I-747 recites that it amends the existing statute and I-722, which may be an accurate statement. However, the amendment set out in 747 shows only the change from the 722 level: "'Limit factor' means...one hundred ((two)) <u>one</u>percent...." That suggests to anyone reading the initiative that the change is a reduction of only one per cent, and that the present limit is 102%, which it is not; that is merely Eyman's probably vain hope. The Supreme Court voided I-695 in part because it violated the rule that an initiative must deal with only one subject. I-722 also violates the rule, although Eyman has attempted to avoid it by heading each section "Limiting taxes by...."<sup><small>1</small></sup> <p align="justify">Also, in the first section of I-747 we find this: "The Washington state Constitution limits property taxes to 1% per year; this measure matches this principle by limiting property tax increases to 1% per year." The two provisions "match" only in the use of the figure 1%; otherwise they deal with entirely different concepts. The former limits the total tax burden on a parcel of property, in any year, by all taxing districts, to 1% of the value of the property; the latter would (subject to exceptions not set forth in or affected by the initiative) limit the total tax levy of a district to 101% of the highest levy in the three preceding years. However, a reader might be misled into thinking that the initiative somehow enforces the constitutional limit. This specious argument would have looked good on a campaign poster; putting it into the text of the initiative may come back to bite the author. <p align="justify">Not many voters read the text of initiatives, even the admirably short ones sponsored by Mr. Eyman, so the actual effect of these ambiguities may be small. However, I would not be surprised to see them turn up in a challenge to 747. <p align="justify">In addition to imposing the 2% per year limit on increases in the total tax levy of a district, I-722 would have exempted a property owner from paying "the portion of property taxes attributable to any increase in value of property...over its 1999 valuation level, plus the lesser of 2% per year or inflation." The former is a limit on total taxes; the latter is an individual right. As the value of expensive property increases faster than average, this is a gift to the affluent. Perhaps because<br />that was inconsistent with the supposedly populist character of these initiatives, it was dropped from 747.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>11/29/01</strong>: I'm not keeping up; the Supreme Court voided I-722 on September 20 under the one-subject rule.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">Nov 10</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Public officials already are predicting reductions in services due to the passage of I-747. This irritated one reader of the P-I: "It seems every time there is a lack of money, it is due to one or the other initiative, never attributed to the inability of the bureaucracy to run a lean, mean operation." The writer's complaint that initiatives are handed more than their share of the blame has merit; in the present case, the economic downturn plays a part in the reductions in revenue. However, her point is the usual one that all we need to do is spend less, and her choice of cliché, "lean and mean," may reveal more that she intended. Wealth transfer, welfare, aid to the undeserving poor are not popular. <b><p align="justify">Nov 12</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The WTO convened, so there was a protest Friday in Seattle, although little of it seemed to have anything to do with the WTO. About 200 gathered at Seattle Central Community College for speeches. According to the Seattle Times, one "black-clad man wearing a bandanna as a mask" told the crowd, "You know that some of us were here in 1999. We're part of your community. We're the anarchist community." <p align="justify">The main event was a protest at the U.S. Immigration Station of a raid November 7 on a wire transfer operation in Rainier Valley suspected of providing money to terrorists. About 100 Somalis joined the WTO group for this part of the demonstration; only about 50 of the total went on to Westlake Square to continue to protest the WTO. <p align="justify">The wire transfer is used by Somalis to send money home, but the government apparently suspects al Qaida of skimming or diverting the funds. The wire transfer was housed with a mini-mart. The protesters were upset not only at the suspension of an operation they believe to be honest and essential, but at agents' hauling off and later dumping the inventory of the mini-mart. We can't know who's right about the former, but the latter seemed to be gratuitous<br />destruction of property. </p><p align="justify">The government's actions in this raid are questionable, but at least they had something to do with the terrorist threat. It's difficult to see what, other than ideology, would prompt the Justice Department spend time threatening physicians who use drugs to assist suicide in Oregon, where it is legal, and the DEA to use scarce resources to raid a medical-marijuana facility in California, where medical use is legal. Whatever one may believe about these issues, they should not be the<br />current focus. The government's domestic response to September 11 has been disorganized at best; diverting attention to matters such as these can only make that worse. <b></p><p align="justify">Nov. 13</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The administration has been careful not to declare war on Islam or to blame the faith for the terrorist attacks. There are good reasons for this, including preventing retaliation against Muslim Americans and preservation of a coalition which includes Muslim nations. However, as some including Salman Rushdie have pointed out, there is a religious element in the hatred of the United States. <p align="justify">Certainly we should not be blind to religious causes, among others. However, if we needed any reminder that terrorism, hatred of government and rejection of mainstream Americanism exist independent of Islam, and exist at home, it has been provided. <p align="justify">Sara Jane Olson appeared in court last week to answer for her part, as a member or dupe of the Symbionese Liberation Army, in an attempt to bomb two police cars. She tried to finesse by pleading guilty to two felony counts, then announcing to reporters that she had no regrets and that she was innocent and had been forced to accept a plea because the September 11 attacks created an atmosphere in which someone accused of engaging in violence against the government could not receive a fair trial.<sup><small>1</small></sup> The judge was not amused; at the next hearing, he told her, "A guilty plea is not a way-station on the way to a press conference." She affirmed her plea and then kept quiet, but remorse is not likely to have taken hold. She did indeed have the bad fortune to be caught at an unpropitious time, and her hallway comments no doubt reflect her real and unrepentant feelings.<sup><small>2</small> </sup><p align="justify">Bill Ayers, another former bomber, burst into print just before September 11. Ayers helped to place a bomb at the Pentagon, among other places - or maybe he just fantasized that; in any case, if he did it, he's proud. His post-publication interviews seek to excuse terrorism by reference to the Vietnam war. His wife, Bernadette Dohrn, was part of the same Weather Underground mob. Although they were convicted of crimes, no stigma attached: he now teaches English at Illinois, she law at Northwestern. Such are the elevated standards of the academy. <p align="justify">At least these people are too old and sedentary (and, ironically, too respectable) to plant bombs; now they can do harm only indirectly. Their disciples are out there performing acts of violence in protest of world trade, the rape of the environment or whatever they are outraged about on any given day. One of the recent incidents was the firebombing of a corral at a facility housing wild horses. The "Earth Liberation Front" accepted blame, stating that the attack was in reaction to<br />the government's "continued war against the earth." It added: "In the name of all that is wild we will continue to target industries and organizations that seek to profit by destroying the earth." </p><p align="justify">This psychotic behavior exists on both sides of the political spectrum: Olson, Ayers, Dohrn and the eco-terrorists on the left, Timothy McVeigh and the abortion-clinic bombers on the right.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. The New York Times article on her appearance was aptly entitled "A Last Gasp of Radical Cheek." </small></p><p align="justify"><small>2. <strong>11/16/01</strong>: Yesterday she filed an application to withdraw her guilty plea. Stay tuned.</small> </p><b><p align="justify">Nov 23</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Addendum: we have a new inmate in the right wing of this asylum. Last week at a gun show, one Timothy W. Tobiason was peddling a how-to-do-it book on germ warfare. Enraged at the government for some slight, real or imagined, he is offering instruction on how to kill people. His book includes directions for making "mail delivered" anthrax. Mr. Ashcroft may be rounding up the wrong group. <p align="justify"><b>Nov 24</b><br /></p><p align="justify">George Will allowed his penchant for sweeping pronouncements to lead him into excess in his column Thursday. "A foolishness of recent decades - a fetishism of rights without parameters - has been partially purged by the heat of burning jet fuel."<sup><small>1</small></sup> Following that repellant lead, he revealed the evidence of fetish-purging: "Sobriety is evident in the mostly temperate response to President Bush's revival of the traditional wartime option of trying unlawful foreign belligerents in military tribunals." His subject is the order issued by President Bush on November 13 providing that accused terrorists, if non-citizens, will be tried before "military commissions," military tribunals bound by fewer restrictions than courts martial and possibly operating in secret. In contrast to the mostly temperate response, "some professional hysterics, such as New York Times editorialists, have reacted with the theatricality of antebellum southern belles suffering the vapors over a breach of etiquette." More intemperate response is needed; herewith some theatricality. <p align="justify">Mr. Will asserted that "It was only in order to preserve the option that Bush insisted that the tribunals be able to try alien terrorists held in the United States. The real purpose of the tribunals is to cope with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unlawful belligerents or war criminals captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere." Perhaps, but his celebration was prompted by a supposed change in attitude toward domestic jurisprudence, and it is the domestic use of military commissions that should cause concern. Mr. Will's confidence in a government body operating in secret under rules designed to provide limited protection from abuse of power is<br />remarkable considering that he doesn't trust government. Of course, he's a citizen and why worry about aliens? They're the only ones at risk - for now. </p><p align="justify">The commissions have been characterized by Will's fellow conservative William Safire as kangaroo courts, which is fair comment as to their domestic use. The decision to employ them is born of concern about our security, which is appropriate, but also of the common tendency in such cases to fall back on drastic measures. The practices during and after both world wars offer parallels and, unfortunately, precedents and excuses. This order and the Attorney General's decision to listen in on attorney-client conversations reflect a degree of panic on the part of an administration which, at least in some of its parts, is not up to the present<br />challenge. One could argue with as much force that the hysteria lies in these policies. </p><p align="justify">This is the rationale set out in the body of the order:<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">[Section 1](d) The ability of the United States to protect the United States and its citizens, and to help its allies and other cooperating nations protect their nations and their citizens, from such further terrorist attacks depends in significant part upon using the United States Armed Forces to identify terrorists and those who support them, to disrupt their activities, and to eliminate their ability to conduct or support such attacks.<br /></p><p align="justify">(e) To protect the United States and its citizens, and for the effective conduct of military operations and prevention of terrorist attacks, it is necessary for individuals subject to this order pursuant to section 2 hereof to be detained, and, when tried, to be tried for violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws by military tribunals. </p></blockquote><p align="justify">Detention at the government's whim obviously raises serious questions in terms of civil liberties, but at least there is some relationship to preventing further attacks. The rest of this doesn't make much sense. Using the armed forces certainly will be necessary abroad. I hope that the President is not suggesting their use at home; if so, we have a more serious problem than the one posed by this order. Under either assumption, why is "the effective conduct of military operations" dependant upon subjecting residents accused of terrorism to a special tribunal? How will military trials "protect the United States and its citizens?"<br /></p><p align="justify">The order doesn't offer an answer to either question, but "White House officials" said that the tribunals were "necessary to protect potential American jurors from the danger of passing judgment on terrorists."<sup><small>2</small></sup> Presumably the concern is retribution against or intimidation of jurors by the terrorists the government leaves at large. I'd be interested to know how many potential jurors have expressed that fear; I suspect that when the occasion arose, there would be few asking to be excused. In any case, this is too obvious a makeweight to take seriously. <p align="justify">The sources "also said the tribunals would prevent the disclosure of government intelligence methods, which normally would be public in civilian courts." This one I can believe, but easy suppression of whatever the government wants to suppress is an argument against this scheme. <p align="justify">One possible reason for secret trials or the limitation of defendants' rights is the belief that a proper trial would give terrorists a platform. The administration has revealed this fear in the pressure put on networks not to broadcast statements by bin Laden. That decision was foolish and applying the same principle here would be equally so. Osama and his followers have convicted themselves every time they have opened their mouths; what have we to be afraid of? <p align="justify">There has been no clear statement of the legal basis for the order. It cites two provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. §§ 821 and 836. The latter empowers the President to prescribe the procedures to be followed by military tribunals, including military commissions; the order contains such provisions, so this is authority for the order to that extent. Section 836 also states that the procedures "shall, so far as [the president] considers practicable, apply the<br />principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States District Courts...." The order deals with that as follows: </p><blockquote><p align="justify">[Section 1](f) Given the danger to the safety of the United States and the nature of international terrorism, and to the extent provided by and under this order, I find consistent with section 836 of title 10, United States Code, that it is not practicable to apply in military commissions under this order the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Why is it not practicable? No reason is offered, but of course we can speculate that the idea is to speed things along and guarantee convictions. The image is of defendants hustled through trial and on to execution<sup><small>3</small> </sup>as the shells whistle by; there's no time for niceties in the midst of battle.<br />This is dramatic, but not persuasive.<br /></p><p align="justify">Section 821 states that provisions in the Uniform Code of Military Justice referring to courts martial do not "deprive military commissions...of concurrent jurisdiction with respect to offenders or offenses that by statute or by the law of war may be tried by military commissions...." On its face this is irrelevant as no one is contending that the trials should be before courts martial. The intent presumably is to establish that military commissions are legitimate and Section 821 implies their continued viability. However it offers no guidance as to what military commissions are and what their jurisdiction is. <p align="justify">The order applies to any non-citizen whom the President determines that there is reason to believe <blockquote><p align="justify">(i) is or was a member of the organization known as al Qaida;<br />(ii) has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit, acts of international terrorism, or acts in preparation therefor, that have caused, threaten to cause, or have as their aim to cause, injury to or adverse effects on the United States, its citizens, national security, foreign policy, or economy; or<br />(iii) has knowingly harbored one or more individuals described in subparagraphs (i) or (ii)....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The order assumes that the President has the power to subject such persons to this order, but the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn't provide it. Military commissions are a creature of "the law of war," a sort of military common law, and it is necessary to look to Supreme Court decisions to make sense of this. </p><p align="justify">Military commissions were employed during and after World War II, and administration spokesmen have been eager to cite President Roosevelt's decision to use them as support for the present order. (By a parity of reasoning, we should round up all Muslims and confine them in detention camps for the duration of the conflict). The case generally referred to is <i>Ex parte Quirin,</i> in which the Supreme Court upheld the convictions before a military commission of Germans who had been landed here by submarine to engage in sabotage. Whether that decision<br />could apply here might depend in part on a comparison of statutory law then and now. Within the then-existing statutory framework, the Court decided the issue by determining whether the defendants were charged with a violation of the laws of war. It found that they were, and in so doing drew a distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants, the latter including soldiers out of uniform, behind enemy lines, engaging in espionage or sabotage. None of the context of that determination is present here. The defendants took off their uniforms upon landing and thereafter wore civilian clothes; terrorists don't have uniforms. The defendants' activities were<br />unlawful because they were behind the lines; there aren't any here. The rationale assumes a declared war, conventional forces and a national enemy. </p><p align="justify">However, to the administration, the only issue is that a military commission was approved for the trial of people determined to do great, warlike damage. President Bush simply has said this is the way it's going to be, and has dared Congress and the country to say no. <p align="justify">We offer the American way as a model and the protection of it as a basis for our actions. That way includes adherence to reasonably modern concepts regarding the administration of justice. Important among them is the rejection of the notion that the magnitude of the crime and the identity of the accused dictate the rights to be recognized.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. All quotes from Mr. Will: Washington Post, 11/22/01.<br />2. New York Times 11/15/01; same source for all quotes except those by Mr. Will.<br />3. Vice President Cheney indicated that this is what he has in mind: A military tribunal, he said, 'guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve.' He spoke favorably of World War II saboteurs being 'executed in relatively rapid order' under military tribunals set up by President<br />Franklin D. Roosevelt. </small><b></p><p align="justify">Nov. 27</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The Bush administration, in its early days, announced that we would go alone, heedless of world opinion, disdainful of treaties existing or proposed. When we were attacked, the President suddenly realized that we needed help and support, which have been provided with far less mention of our former position than we deserve. This administration learns slowly; the military-commission order now threatens an aspect of that support. <p align="justify">Spain has charged eight men with crimes related to terrorism, possibly including membership in al Qaida and participation in the September 11 attacks. Spain will not extradite them if they would face trial by military commission. Europe already considers us to be less than fully enlightened because of our use of the death penalty, so there might have been problems anyway. However, the prospect of military trials removes all doubt and serves not only to interfere with our interests but to align us with the sort of regimes we accuse of sponsoring terrorism. <b><p align="justify">Dec 3</b><br /></p><p align="justify">A seductive argument, that we are at war with an enemy which is not only evil but somehow of a different order of being than any faced to date, is the basis for much of the support for the administration's policies. The force of this argument was illustrated in a column by Thomas Friedman in Sunday's New York Times. Mr. Friedman, an excellent political columnist, ought not to have been seduced, but he has. Although he offers some pro forma criticism of the policies, including military tribunals, he is ready to accept their basic premise. <blockquote><p align="justify">...I am glad critics are in Mr. Ashcroft's face, challenging his every move. His draconian measures go against our fundamental notion that people have a right to be let alone by government when there is no evidence that they have committed a crime and, if there is evidence, to be charged and tried in public, with judicial oversight, not in some secret proceeding. When our officials deviate from those norms they should be grilled and grilled again. </p><p align="justify">But having said that, I find myself with some sympathy for Mr. Ashcroft's moves. Listening to the debate, it is almost as if people think we're safe now: the Taliban have fallen, we've won and we can act as if it were Sept. 10 - with no regard to the unique enemy we're up against.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">He reaches this conclusion from the observation that bin Laden would not be convicted by a jury of his peers. What this has to do with the issue is a mystery to me.<br /></p><p align="justify">Mr. Friedman's reference to the unique enemy is the key to his view. In contrast to the Soviets, who, for all their faults, shared "certain basic human norms" with us, bin Laden and al Qaeda are "radical evil - people who not only want to destroy us but are perfectly ready to destroy themselves as well. They are not just enemies of America; they are enemies of civilization." What has this to do with judicial procedure? "At some level our legal system depends on certain shared values and assumptions between accusers and accused. But those simply do not apply in this case." In his view, our judicial procedures are to be tailored to the degree of evil perceived in the accused. <p align="justify">It gets worse. All of his argument is based on the supposition that those subjected to the new procedures are guilty, that they are brothers to those who piloted the planes, that every defendant will be a surrogate for the dead terrorists: "...let's not debate all this in a vacuum. Let's not forget what was surely the smile on those hijackers' faces as they gunned the engines on our passenger planes to kill as many Americans as possible in the World Trade Center." <p align="justify">If someone as intelligent and perceptive as Thomas Friedman can forget that anyone accused is in principle, and most of those presently detained almost certainly are in fact, innocent of any such relationship, then the rule of law is in deep trouble. <b><p align="justify"><a id="12/04/01">Dec 4</b></a><br /></p><p align="justify">One source of the administration's rationale for the military commissions is the White House Counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, who has given us his interpretation on television and in print. The latter, appearing in the New York Times a few days ago, demonstrates that loyalty is a more important attribute for the position than knowledge of or fidelity to the law. <p align="justify">Mr. Gonzales begins by informing us that "President Bush has invoked his power to establish military commissions to try enemy belligerents who commit war crimes." This sentence contains three assumptions, two of which are dubious interpretations of the law, and the third a blatant repudiation of it. Whether the President has the authority to establish military commissions to try resident civilians is, as far as I know, an open question; nothing in Mr. Gonzales' column and nothing I have seen elsewhere provides that foundation. Mr. Gonzales describes the potential defendants as enemy belligerants, which is doubly unfounded. This categorization, and more generally all of this rationale, is part of the obsolete tradition of declared wars; it cannot be carried over without modification into the present situation. The second problem with the use of that language, and with the third part of his statement, is that he assumes the guilt of those charged or even merely detained. This appears even more clearly in a later statement: "Enemy war criminals are not entitled to the same procedural protections as people who violate<br />our domestic laws." </p><p align="justify">Part of Mr. Gonzales' column consists of nonsense, such as reminding us that commission trials will be "full and fair" or arguing that we are saving our liberties by renouncing them. Part is more candid but no more convincing: we need military commissions in order to use secret information, to take advantage of looser rules of evidence and to "dispense justice swiftly, close to where our forces may be fighting, without years of pretrial proceedings or post-trial appeals." (How the parenthetical applies to domestic use of these tribunals is not explained). The truly appalling part of his lecture is the degree to which he misrepresents what the order says or what commissions are. <p align="justify">"The order covers only foreign enemy war criminals; it does not cover United States citizens or even enemy soldiers abiding by the laws of war." (Again, the accused are criminals before trial). The exception for enemy soldiers is contrary to the stated goal of dispensing justice swiftly close to the fighting, unless there is some way to distinguish between "enemy soldiers" and "war criminals." What is it? Which category do Taliban soldiers fall into? Taliban leaders? Al Qaeda members, however defined? The exception for those abiding by the laws of war is entirely illusory; there is no standard by which this could be measured and it is clear that the administration intends to define violations <i>ad hoc.</i> All of this is, however, largely beside the point. The controversy is over the domestic use of commissions; as to that, this front-line rhetoric is merely a smokescreen. <p align="justify">"Under the order, the president will refer to military commissions only noncitizens who are members or active supporters of Al Qaeda or other international terrorist organizations targeting the United States." This is not so. The order applies to anyone who has "knowingly harbored" someone suspected of terrorism. It does not require that the accused have "actively supported" terrorism. It isn't even clear that the accused must have known that the person in question was a terrorist. Moreover, this category and those more directly related to terrorism are defined by presidential discretion: they include anyone that the President "determine[s] from time to time... that there is reason to believe" is such a person, not exactly a rigorous<br />standard. </p><p align="justify">Mr. Gonzales says that, to be subject to the commissions, one "must be chargeable with offenses against the international laws of war, like targeting civilians or hiding in civilian populations and refusing to bear arms openly." There is no such requirement in the order. The only reference to the laws of war is in the statement of principles, which recites that it is necessary for those subject to the order to be tried for violations of "the laws of war and other applicable laws." A noncitizen is subject to the order if the president determines that there is reason to believe that he "(i) is or was a member of...al Qaida; (ii) has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to<br />commit, acts of international terrorism, or acts in preparation therefor...or (iii) has knowingly harbored one or more individuals described in subparagraphs (i) or (ii)." Terrorism is not defined, which further extends the potential scope. </p><p align="justify">"Military commission trials are not secret. The president's order authorizes the secretary of defense to close proceedings to protect classified information. It does not require that any trial, or even portions of a trial, be conducted in secret." I assume that he grasps the point that they may be secret and may be so at the government's whim, so this is evasion, and not even skillful evasion. <p align="justify">"Everyone tried before a military commission will know the charges against him, be represented by qualified counsel and be allowed to present a defense." There is nothing in the order to support this. "The American military justice system is the finest in the world, with longstanding traditions of forbidding command influence on proceedings, of providing zealous advocacy by competent defense counsel, and of procedural fairness.... The suggestion that these commissions will afford only sham justice like that dispensed in dictatorial nations is an insult to our military justice system." No, it isn't. The traditions he refers to apply to courts martial; military commissions are different bodies not subject to the same rules. <p align="justify">"The order preserves judicial review in civilian courts. Under the order, anyone arrested, detained or tried in the United States by a military commission will be able to challenge the lawfulness of the commission's jurisdiction through a habeas corpus proceeding in a federal court." This is false. As to the first sentence, there is no provision for appeal or any other "judicial review;" to the contrary, "review and final decision" are reserved to the President or, if so delegated, to the Secretary of Defense. As to the second sentence, individuals subject to the order "shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or ndirectly, or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on the individual's behalf, in (i) any<br />court of the United States, or any State thereof, (ii) any court of any foreign nation, or (iii) any international tribunal." Perhaps Mr. Gonzales is relying on the courts to reject this sham and save civil liberties from him and the rest of the administration. <b></p><p align="justify">Dec 6</b><br /></p><p align="justify">After writing the foregoing note, I saw an article about the Senate hearings which seemed to say that persons better qualified that I had expressed some level of consent to the military commissions. I didn't read carefully, didn't save and can't find that article, so I'm not sure what their reasoning was. I'm prepared to be shown that I'm wrong, having had sufficient experience of being so, but until then I remain an unrepentant opponent of this policy. <p align="justify"><b>Dec 7</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Apart from promulgating or supporting bad policies and showing himself to be unsuited to his post, Mr. Ashcroft's statements and decisions have been revealing as to two elements of conservative doctrine. One has been shown to be flexible, the other rigid. <p align="justify">The former is the aversion to intrusive government. The fear of the knock on the door, the specter of rights trampled by the authorities apparently apply only to OSHA. <p align="justify">The latter is gun rights. Mr. Ashcroft has been a staunch supporter and the emergency which requires the suspension of various other rights is not going to change that. The Justice Department has prevented the FBI from checking gun-purchase records of suspected terrorists. Mr. Ashcroft stated that he is prevented by law from allowing access to the records, apparently referring to a policy adopted by the Clinton administration. I haven't seen any film of the hearings; I wonder whether the Senators laughed at the claim that fastidious adherence to the law (a Clinton policy!) is going to stand in Mr. Ashcroft's way. <b><p align="justify">Dec 8</b><br /></p><p align="justify">I misjudged Mr. Ashcroft; he's worse that I thought. In his Senate testimony he descended to the level of that especially base form of pseudo-patriotism, the argument that any criticism of the administration gives aid to the enemy: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists." <p align="justify"><b>Dec 10</b><br /></p><p align="justify">I located the article about military commissions [see 12/6], in the NY Times of 12/5. The principal reference was to Lawrence Tribe. However, in a letter to the Times on 12/7, he said his comments had been misinterpreted: <blockquote><p align="justify">You correctly report that I do not believe that military tribunals per se violate the Constitution, but I certainly don't support the president's sweeping order of Nov. 13.... The power that it asserts is too quintessentially legislative to stand without authorization from Congress, which the laws cited by the attorney general fail to provide. More fundamentally, not even Congress could empower a president to subject any resident alien to trial by tribunal whenever the president claims reason to believe that the accused ever aided or abetted what the president deems international terrorism....</p></blockquote><b><p align="justify">Dec 19</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Since the end of October, Jack Kemp has written three columns (to be more accurate, three which have found their way into the Seattle P-I) advancing his economic views. I know next to nothing about economics, so it's a good idea to hide my ignorance by avoiding the subject; Mr. Kemp has no such inhibitions. His columns set forth a theory part of which I find baffling. It's possible, of course, that I'm simply too ignorant to understand it, but I think that it's more likely that he doesn't know what he's talking about. <p align="justify">Kemp disagrees with the administration (and, it seems, nearly everyone else) that we need an economic stimulus package. To the extent that he is simply skeptical that any of the bills discussed will be of any help, he may be right; however, his disapproval is due more to his adherence to an opposing doctrine. According to him, <blockquote><p align="justify">Our current economic problems are neither the result of the "normal operation of the business cycle" nor the aftermath of a "burst bubble." My best reading of the economic data is that we are in a deflationary recession inadvertently created by the Federal Reserve Board and exacerbated by a tax code so anti-growth that, in Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's words, it is "unworthy of an advanced civilization." (P-I 11/1/01)</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Other more knowledgeable people have talked about the possibility or threat of deflation, but Mr. Kemp appeared to be referring to something already in being. On November 14, after reiterating that we are in a deflationary recession, he offered some context: "In late 2000, the Fed asphyxiated the economy, which was growing at more than 4 percent, by shrinking the monetary base by 3 percent and sucking the oxygen out of the marketplace." Assuming that he means M-1, that's about its decline for the entire year; I don't know of any contraction of that dimension in "late" 2000. One also could criticize the Fed for raising interest rates last year when better forecasting would have shown the beginnings of a downturn, but what does<br />any of this have to do with deflation? </p><p align="justify">Obviously I'm not the only one who's slow; Kemp continued:<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">Even now, however, most economists and government officials deny that deflationary monetary policy is the culprit. How, they ask, can we be experiencing deflation when prices continue to rise, when the Federal Reserve Board has cut short-term interest rates 10 times this year to their lowest level since 1961 and when the money supply continues to grow faster than the economy? Let me explain.<br /></p><p align="justify">First of all, prices are falling and have been falling for some time. In a deflation, price decreases begin with commodities that are traded on spot markets, such as gold, industrial metals and agricultural goods, all of which have fallen substantially in price over the past several years. </p></blockquote><p align="justify">That suggests that we're really talking about gold prices, which turns out to be the case. I discovered that Kemp and his guru Jude Wanniski have argued that we have been in a deflationary period since 1996. However, this doesn't mean deflation in any ordinary sense; it means, apparently, that the price of gold has fallen. According to Wanniski, the "current deflationary process began in late 1996 when the dollar price of gold and all other commodities began to fall."<sup><small>1</small></sup><br /></p><p align="justify">Both tend to dance around the subject of gold, perhaps recognizing how eccentric they sound in advocating a policy of tying money to gold. As in the preceding quotes, they sometimes talk about "commodity prices," rather than gold alone. In that elliptical mood, Kemp demanded that "the Fed replace discretionary monetary policy...with monetary policy based upon targeting market price signals."<sup><small> 2</small></sup> When gold is mentioned, the references often are indirect, even mystical, as if, having admitted that gold must be the measure, they are reluctant to come right out and say what they mean: the money supply should be managed to maintain the price of gold at a set level. Thus Wanniski referred to "the deflation we see evidenced by the declining gold price,"<br />and criticized Allan Greenspan for deciding that the decline in the price of gold "was not a useful sign of monetary deflation." He offered this definition: "Deflation is not a statistic but a decline in the monetary standard." According to him (and <i>his</i> guru, Robert Mundell), inflation also is a decline in that standard. "The decline in a standard reflects not its rise or fall in value but its deteriorating stability, credibility and constancy. To all the titans of classical theory that standard was golden...." </p><p align="justify">However, eventually the discussion becomes specific. Wanniski rejected pegging money to composite commodity prices because they are too volatile and Kemp offered this formula: <blockquote><p align="justify">There is nothing mysterious about how gold could be used as a reference point....With the dollar defined in terms of gold..., the Fed would stop guessing how much liquidity is good for the economy and allow the market to make that decision for it. With the dollar defined in terms of gold..., the Fed would forget about raising or lowering interest rates and simply add liquidity (buy bonds) when the price of gold tries to fall and subtract liquidity (sell bonds) when it tries to rise...."<sup><small>3</small></sup></p></blockquote><p align="justify">This suggests a desire for stability, and on November 14, Kemp seemed to confirm that: "We want the value of our money to remain constant rather than increase or decrease, and that is what we look to the Fed to do." However, in the same column, he argued that the Fed "should be buying bonds, which will inject liquidity into the economy...." In other words, he wanted the Fed to manipulate the money supply, to decrease the value of money. Wanniski had made the same argument: "the deflationary process...cannot be reversed unless someone the president respects picks up the phone and tells him there is no remedy except an inflation to readjust the<br />gold price." </p><p align="justify">Buried in all of this is a magic value for gold, at least for now. The inflation called for by Kemp on November 14 should continue "...until commodity prices and the price of gold rise off their lows and other prices stabilize." How far should gold rise? On June 28, he said, <blockquote><p align="justify">The only way to end this deflation is to have the Fed stop targeting interest rates and begin targeting gold directly...by calibrating the level of liquidity in the economy...to keep the market price of gold stable within a narrow band closer to $325 than $275 [roughly its price in June and now].</p></blockquote><p align="justify">What is the real-world advantage of increasing the price of gold? If we are entering a period of deflation, conventionally defined, increasing the money supply might be called for (a question far beyond my grasp), but if so, what has the price of gold to do with it? What is significant about $325? None of this makes much sense, so maybe this proposed burst of inflation is merely a goofy detail in a goofy theory. However, cynic that I am, I suspect a hidden agenda, one at which Wanniski may have hinted in references to a value for gold which would put "the interests of<br />debtors and creditors in balance," and to the burden on debtors of paying off debt "with more valuable dollars" created by deflation. </p><p align="justify">Whatever the Kemp-Wanniski definition of deflation might be, is there any evidence that it restricted business expansion and caused a recession? If it did, the effect was long delayed: GDP grew by 3.57% in 1996 and by 4% or more through 2000; the first negative month was March, 2001. <p align="justify">The other part of the Kemp theory is simplicity itself: tax cuts will cause economic expansion. This has been supply-side doctrine from the outset, validated in terms of motivation: we need tax cuts "to remove the huge disincentives to work, save and invest produced by taxing income four and five times at high rate [sic] as we do currently."<sup><small>4</small></sup> I think that we might reasonably ask<br />how much has to be given to the affluent before they will consent to doing anything useful. </p><p align="justify">In his latest column, carried today in the P-I, Mr. Kemp urges the Senate Democrats to compromise on the stimulus bill, i.e., stop opposing tax cuts. He derides the "class warriors in Sen. Tom Daschle's wing of the Democratic Party" who "argue that higher tax rates on upper-income people are required to pay for increased government benefits to those suffering from the economic downturn." If Senator Daschle represents the radical wing of the party, it has become tame indeed. The class warfare here is resistance to such measures as a retroactive windfall for corporations. As to "higher tax rates," Kemp means that Democrats propose that Congress "actually raise taxes" by delaying the tax-rate reductions passed a few months ago. Kemp says that such a policy would not hurt the rich (good, that's out of the way; onward). But wait: it hurts the poor; it prevents them from "climbing the economic ladder." He doesn't say how, but I assume that it has to do with job-formation by the favored ones. <p align="justify">Jack Kemp is a man of good will blessed with a sense of responsibility, but he remains a true believer in the Laffer-Wanniski faith, which has made him a gold-standard crank and has given him a distorted view of the importance of tax rates in economic growth. Most Republicans have had the sense to ignore calls to return to gold, but they have been all too willing to subscribe to the tax-cutting half of the Kemp message. Even here, I doubt that they accept the ideology which accompanies it, the notion that tax cuts favoring the producer class automatically will result in growth. They just like lower taxes, but are quite willing to hide behind supply-side<br />rhetoric. Kemp deserves better than to be used by people who simply want to keep more, and whose social views are less enlightened than his.<br />__________<br /><br /><small>1. This and other quotes from Mr. Wanniski are from an article this year in <i>The American Spectator,</i>. exact date unknown. One of the minor mysteries is what Wanniski is looking at; gold prices did not begin to fall in late 1996 and composite commodity prices rose in 1996.<br />20. P-I 11/1/01.<br />21. Wall Street Journal 6/28/01.<br />22. P-I 11/1. Apparently the dreaded double taxation has mutated.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">Dec 28</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The administration appears to be backing away from the extreme position taken in the military-commission order. The only person charged thus far with complicity in the terrorist attacks will be tried in District Court. Today The Washington Post reported that guidelines for the commissions will civilize them to some degree. These are encouraging developments and I assume that they reflect second thoughts and more mature consideration of the issues. Certainly they cannot have resulted from any criticism from Democrats in Congress, most of whose reactions ranged from silence to enthusiastic acceptance of the original commission structure; Senator Lieberman was a surprising member of the latter group. Even Senator Leahy managed only to be upset that Congress wasn't consulted; apparently it is important to capitulate in advance.</p>Gerald G. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18272770512487580818noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8898880961286945569.post-41086304964571063352007-12-14T21:59:00.000-08:002008-01-07T22:17:13.487-08:002002<p align="justify"><a id="01/07/02"><b>January 7</b></a><br /></p><p align="justify">William Safire mused this week on the reaction of his readers to his "recent diatribes against Bush's grasp for greater executive power;" conservatives wonder why he went wrong and liberals praise him (faintly). His criticism of the President began when he "denounced as a seizure of dictatorial power" the military tribunal order which would "deny the rule of law and public trial to those accused of terrorism."<sup> </sup><blockquote><p align="justify">In a climate of fear, only hard-line right-wing nuts not running for office and professional civil libertarians could get away with such a stand....<br /></p><p align="justify">Most liberal politicians dove under their desks for fear of seeming soft on terror. Not a peep out of Senator Hillary Clinton; nothing but a wimpish waffle from the majority leader, Tom Daschle; and from Joe Lieberman, of all people, came an initial exhortation to try-'em-and-fry-'em that out-Ashcrofted Ashcroft....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Given the Democratic response, it's good to have a "libertarian conservative Republican<br />contrarian iconoclast," as he describes himself. He also draws on his status as "a decentralist ideologue with Clinton-deriding credentials" to "inveigh against Bush's recent assertion of 'executive privilege' to hide past presidential blunders and prosecutorial corruptions." Safire thinks that Bush, by "expanding presidential power during wartime, F.D.R.-style," is "centralizing political authority and it is up to conservatives to rein him in."<br /></p><p align="justify">There isn't much doubt that the President would like to establish the dominance of the executive branch. At this point and in some measure, at least asserting its independence isn't a bad idea. The specific claim of executive privilege which Safire disapproves is questionable, but the extreme of intrusion reached in the Clinton years was not healthy and the Bush position may lead to some more sensible accommodation. Ari Fleischer, while not an unbiased source, summed up this problem aptly enough: "The nation grew weary of endless investigations and fishing expeditions."<sup><small>2</small></sup> <p align="justify">The order for military tribunals, while every bit as bad an idea as Mr. Safire states, doesn't, I think, proceed from a desire to seize power as much as from two other forces, one specific to the situation at hand and the other a common aspect of conservative politics. <p align="justify">The former is a combination of panic, bad judgment and a deficient understanding of the principles involved, including the nature and history of military commissions, all revealed in the text of the order and the statements in its support, including the argument by the White House counsel. The latter influence is an attitude toward criminal prosecutions which emphasizes harsh punishment and takes little notice of the rights of the accused, including the presumption of innocence. In this regard, the order and its defense are but extreme examples of the mindset of the average conservative legislator who votes for long mandatory sentences and who would, if not for the bleeding-heart liberals on the bench, do away with all those picky procedural<br />rules. The decision to eavesdrop on attorney-client conversations falls into the same category. </p><p align="justify">However, it certainly is true that this administration is not shy about acting unilaterally nor is it burdened by an overdeveloped sense of its limitations. An article in the Washington Post by Dana Milbank offered an analysis similar to Safire's: "On a wide variety of fronts, the administration has moved to seize power that it has shared with other branches of government." Some of the actions he described are susceptible to the alternative explanation just suggested. Others, assuming his analysis to be accurate, would be expansions of executive power or of freedom from accountability. Milbank refers to the administration's resistance to putting cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal in a treaty, "thereby averting a Senate ratification vote", proposing a<br />reorganization of the INS "without the congressional action lawmakers sought", attempts to limit intelligence briefings for members of Congress, and refusal to cooperate with a General Accounting Office probe into Vice President Cheney's energy task force; also, when "an open-meeting law prevented Bush's Social Security commission from meeting privately, the group split into two so the law would not apply."<sup><small>3 </small></sup></p><p align="justify">Milbank noted in passing that Congress approved the USA Patriot Act, which handed to the administration the same sort of powers that it has, in other instances, arrogated. This doesn't validate the Bush approach, but it indicates, as does the lack of Democratic criticism, that anything related to terrorism might be approved anyway. <p align="justify">The administration's tendency to act unilaterally is not confined to relations with Congress. It has given notice of withdrawal from the ABM treaty, has rejected proposals to combat global warming and apparently is considering an attack on Iraq in which we would have fewer allies and a weaker case than in Afghanistan. <p align="justify">The administration's go-it-alone attitude toward foreign affairs is dangerous and should raise far more concern than has been expressed. The domestic issue is, in a sense, the reverse of that posed by Safire and Milbank. President Bush and his advisors may be reaching for more power relative to Congress than is beneficial to the country, but that is easily reversed and will be corrected at some point after the war on terrorism ceases to be an excuse and a means of intimidation of the opposition. The greater danger is that the Bush administration will, through tax cuts, deregulation and concessions to business, cripple the government's ability to deal with domestic problems.<br />______________<br /><br /><small>1. Quotes from column in New York Times, 1/7/02.<br />2. He managed to dispel any illusion of high-mindedness by applying the same standard to coziness with Enron: "Fleischer warned Democrats this morning against investigations into the Bush administration's dealings with Enron. 'The American people are tired of partisan witch hunts and endless investigations,' he said." (W. Post 1/10)<br />3. Washington Post, 11/20/01. </small></p><p align="justify"><b>January 15</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Treasury Secretary O'Neill already had demonstrated to the satisfaction of any objective observer that he knows little about government and less about responsible public policy. Now he has revealed that he is unqualified to hold public office; not only does he have no glimmer of a world outside the boardroom, he's simply too inept to be allowed to be a spokesman even for this business-serving administration. O'Neill on the demise of Enron: <blockquote><p align="justify">Companies come and go. It's part of the genius of capitalism. People get to make good decisions or bad decisions, and they get to pay the consequence or to enjoy the fruits of their decisions. That's the way the system works.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">In his column today, Bob Herbert translated as follows:<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">I guess it was Mr. Lay...and other top Enron executives who made the good decisions, because they sure reaped the benefits.... And it must have been the rank-and-file employees and the ordinary investors who made the bad decisions, because they're the ones paying the consequences.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">In addition to offering a description of capitalism which one would expect, given the circumstances, only from a critic intending parody, Secretary O'Neill put his foot in it regarding contacts from Enron. He acknowledged that he received calls October 28 and November 8 or 9 from chairman Kenneth Lay about Enron's worsening condition. He kept them to himself, he said. "I didn't think this was worthy of me running across the street and telling the president.... I frankly think what Ken told me over the phone was not new news." Apparently he's so afraid of involving the President that he feels compelled to invent excuses for not informing him that one of the nation's largest corporations was in serious trouble, but surely he could have thought of a more plausible excuse than that an impending disaster isn't "new news." <p align="justify">The reason that everyone is terrified of having any contact with Enron, now that it's dying, is that, when it was healthy, the contacts were suspect: Enron and other energy sellers were helping to make policy and to influence appointments. If the administration didn't have a guilty conscience over that and the amount contributed by Enron and its executives to the Bush campaign, it could be more open about the calls for help, none of which appears to have resulted in any improper action. <p align="justify">Mr. O'Neill is of the opinion that a system which taxes corporations is not worthy of an advanced society. No doubt regulation of insider trading, requirements of fair disclosure to shareholders and protection of employees' retirement plans would strike him as something from the stone age. <p align="justify"><b>January 17</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Perhaps Secretary O'Neill need only be patient: if we continue on the present path, income taxes on corporations soon will be a thing of the past without formal repeal. <p align="justify">It was revealed today that Enron paid no federal income tax in four of the past five years; in fact, it was entitled to $382 million in refunds over that period. Creative accounting and lawyering helped: Enron has 881 offshore subsidiaries, including 692 in the Cayman Islands, sheltering income from the nasty tax man. No doubt this would be, in Mr. O'Neill's view, part of the genius of capitalism. <p align="justify"><b>January 19</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Senator Kennedy once again proved his credentials as the last living liberal by advocating repeal of part of the recently-passed tax cuts. The response was derision by Republicans, horror-stricken aversion by Democrats. "Senator Kennedy has set the stage for an honest debate between those of us who oppose tax hikes and those who support Daschle-nomics," said Dick Armey, not quite honestly. His a-tax-cut-repealed-is- a-tax-increase line was echoed by the White House: "the Democratic leadership in all times, good and bad, looks to raise taxes on the American people." That reference to the leadership and Rep. Armey's to Sen. Daschle were a bit off target: the Senator "issued a statement...recalling that his own recent speech on the economy 'did not call for either the suspension or the delay of the tax cut passed last spring.'" Even Kennedy could not bring himself to urge complete repeal of the future cuts. <p align="justify"><b>January 22</b><br /></p><p align="justify">When the past catches up, it does so with a vengeance, or so Sara Jane Olson must think. Even before she was sentenced on her guilty plea in the police-car bombing case (her attempt to withdraw her plea having been denied), she and others of the SLA were charged with murder in the course of a 1975 bank robbery. Bill Ayers, safe behind an expired statute of limitations, can boast of and probably embellish his role in bombings. The SLA, facing a crime not so conveniently wiped away, resort to whining about how unfair it is to remind them of their former lives. In reporting the new charges, The NY Times noted that William Harris was asked in an interview last year how he had changed since his SLA days. "I'm older, no longer self-destructive and unwilling to go to jail." "We were a bunch of amateurs. I wish everyone would forget us." It is typical that the focus is inward. Never mind that the SLA and its clones destroyed other lives; whether Harris now would wear the SLA motto, "death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people," depends solely on how he views himself and how much risk he's willing to take. <p align="justify"><b>February 1</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The administration is making it difficult to support its reassertion of executive privilege. In addition to its decision to use the issue of contacts with Enron as a place to take a stand, which casts some doubt on the assertion that this is all about high principle, it has offered arguments which are, to say the least, short on candor. <p align="justify">The privilege which seems to me to be most in need of restoration concerns conversations between the president and his advisors. Vice President Cheney seemed to refer to this in interviews last weekend: "I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job." It was wrong for past administrations to have acquiesced to congressional demands: "We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years." "What's really at stake here is the ability of the president and the vice president to solicit advice from anybody they want in confidence - get good, solid, unvarnished advice without having to make it available to a member of Congress." However, he wasn't talking about internal advice, but justifying his refusal to turn over documents concerning Enron's involvement in his energy task force. Perhaps there is a case to be made for confidentiality of contacts between citizens and the<br />administration, as he more candidly argued elsewhere, but it's a different case than that for internal advice, and he does the debate no service by attempting to conflate them. </p><p align="justify">The President recently engaged in the same ploy. After denouncing the demand for the energy committee documents as "an encroachment on the executive branch's ability to conduct business," he said, "We're not going to let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves to become eroded." <p align="justify">The Vice President also attempted to pretend that interest in Enron arose only after its bankruptcy filing and that the only question is whether the Administration did anything late last year to bail it out. That isn't the issue, as Mr. Cheney knows full well, and the demand for his records was made long before Enron's financial troubles were made public. <p align="justify">The proper balance between transparency of official action and the need for candid advice isn't easily struck. The general assertion by this administration that the line has drifted too far toward intrusion is valid, but the broader the claim and the more obvious its use to cover impropriety the less attention it will and should receive. <p align="justify"><b>February 5</b><br /></p><p align="justify">It's easy to see why no one pays much attention to the Democrats: they have no effective spokesmen and they are so fair and cooperative that every debate is lost before it begins.<sup><small>1</small></sup> The latest instance was a confrontation on PBS between Budget Director Mitchell Daniels and Senator Kent Conrad, Chairman of the Budget Committee. The Senator had an important point, that the Social Security fund is being jeopardized in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. However, he made the point so many times that he merely came across as obsessed and made it so incompletely that Daniels could brush it off, which he did, arrogantly and somewhat less than candidly. In addition, Senator Conrad fell over himself pledging to approve every dollar requested for defense, never mind whether it has anything to do with the all-embracing war on terrorism, which prompted a momentary suspension of rudeness by Daniels, but papered over the fact that this budget is a radical document. <p align="justify">A day or so ago, Walter Williams appeared on PBS' Nightly Business Report to advise us that taking money from him to give to someone else is theft; I assume that his parable referred to taxation. Here's the conclusion of his syndicated column today: <blockquote><p align="justify">A clear constitutional duty of the federal government is national defense, and not taking the earnings of one American and giving them to another. We'd have more than enough resources to put into our anti-terrorism battle, while keeping our liberties, if we'd increase the former and decrease the latter.<br /></p></blockquote><p align="justify">Or, as a Times editorial put it, "The Bush budget is a road map toward a different kind of American society, in which the government no longer taxes the rich to aid the poor, and in fact does very little but protect the nation from foreign enemies...." The Bush administration hasn't quite reached that point, but with good libertarians like Dr. Williams to guide them, it may not be long.<sup><small>2</small></sup><br />_______________<br /><br /><small>1.<strong> 3/30/02</strong>: Paul Krugman put it more bluntly in yesterday's column: "...the liberals I know generally seem unwilling to face up to the nastiness of contemporary politics." </small></p><p align="justify"><small>2. <strong>10/12/02</strong>: Robert Nozick, in <i>Anarchy, State and Utopia,</i> informed us that "Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor." Although the comment doesn't explicitly mirror Professor Williams' aversion to redistribution, it appears in a chapter entitled "Distributive Justice," the Rawlsian form of which Professor Nozick didn't approve. Pick your metaphor; perhaps the anti-tax folk should borrow from their fellow libertarians at the NRA and pledge that taxes will be taken only from their cold, dead hands.</small> </p><p align="justify"><b>February 12</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Judging from the State of the Union address, success - partial success at that - has gone to the President's head. The war in Afghanistan has brought down the Taliban, provided that country with an opportunity to establish a stable and just government and put bin Laden on the run, all more quickly and at less cost than most predicted. However, the stated goal of finding bin Laden has not been achieved, and even the Taliban leader Mohammed Omar remains at large, facts which could have inspired a measure of humility in, or at least received a mention by, a more mature leader. <p align="justify">On balance the campaign has been a success, but it has been so in no small part because the President was able to convince allies to support and potential critics to tolerate the action in Afghanistan. This would not seem to be the time, with bin Laden possibly alive, with al Qaeda cells scattered around the world, and with almost daily killings in Israel and the occupied territories, to decide that we can proceed alone. However, that's apparently what the President has in mind. In sweeping language, he denounced Iraq and Iran, throwing in North Korea for good measure, suggesting that we would attack if they did not mend their ways. <p align="justify">The bluster, combined with the President's willingness, even eagerness, to do all this alone, has put him on the end of a long and shaky limb. Maybe the "axis of evil" is so easily cowed that this threat will bring it to heel, but the odds aren't good. If Mr. Bush's bluff were called, he would have two options, neither attractive: if we attacked another country without broad support, it could be a disaster; if we didn't, the world would conclude that we speak loudly and carry a wet noodle. We can only hope that someone will persuade the President to climb back from his perch while he still has the poll ratings to disguise the retreat. <p align="justify">The threat will get cheers for now, and it diverts attention from the fiscal disaster that is his budget, but at some point the grown-ups must take charge again. The administration is turning a tendency to take unilateral action into a policy of thumbing its nose at the world. The latest move, added to the military-tribunal order, the continued detention of many foreigners with no discernable reason, the accusations of maltreatment of prisoners, the reluctance to abide by Geneva conventions, and Bush's habit of making ill-considered statements in his faux-cowboy style, supplies those who hate America with reams of recruiting material and has to make our allies wonder whether a little distance wouldn't be a good idea. <p align="justify"><b>February 11</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Articles and opinion columns about Enron have reported that its sins may be replicated in other companies. They even have noted that executives of failed companies tend to leave with lots of money. I haven't yet seen any mention of the fact that all of this is merely the most visible and most reprehensible form of a phenomenon common to most large businesses, that they are run for the benefit of top management. Executive compensation is out of control; if the managers of Enron and Global Crossing made out like bandits, they merely did what everyone else does, only with their masks askew. <p align="justify"><b>March 27</b><br /></p><p align="justify"><i>A Partisan Century</i> collected political articles from <i>The Partisan Review</i> during its first sixty years, 1934-94. I'm up to the mid-1970s, at which point the contributors still are wistfully thinking of radicalism and socialism and reflecting on what an unjust (and philistine) bourgeois society in which they lived. One, writing in 1975, noted "the absence of a left". I can't wait to see what they thought of the eighties. <p align="justify">Perhaps there really wasn't a left in the turbulent late sixties and seventies, just a lot of hedonists, rebellious against authority only to the extent necessary to have their own way. The same author, Christopher Lasch, referred to "the growing demand for immediate impulse gratification" and "the tendency to equate fulfillment of those demands with political and cultural emancipation." Such people could slide easily into the equally self-centered material culture of the next decade. <p align="justify">Whatever the truth of that theory, there certainly isn't much serious criticism, leftist or otherwise, of the current business culture. The News Hour on PBS tonight had a segment on post-Enron proposals to hold corporate executives liable for fraudulent accounting. It offered three commentators, all present or past corporate directors, all of whom assured us that directors take their responsibilities very seriously. This is consistent with the general reaction: the system is sound, but a few bad guys abused it. One panelist, former American Airlines Chairman Robert Crandall, made a point of the terrible complexity of the tax laws, more or less suggesting that the cause of tax fraud is tax law. At a more enlightened time, that would be received as the joke that it is; conditions being what they are, I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the preamble of bill to abolish the IRS. <b><p align="justify">March 30</b><br /></p><p align="justify">We may be conflicted as to the duty to obey tax laws, but we don't fool around when it come to drugs. Drug use must be punished; if that results in penalizing innocent people, so be it. <p align="justify">In <i>HUD v. Rucker,</i> decided this month, the Supreme Court upheld eviction of public housing tenants on the ground that other residents of their apartments had used drugs. The Court's rationale is that the housing authorities merely enforced a statutory mandate that every public housing agency use leases which "provide that any criminal activity that threatens the health, safety, or right to peaceful enjoyment of the premises by other tenants or any drug-related criminal activity on or off such premises, engaged in by a public housing tenant, any member of the tenant's household, or any guest or other person under the tenant's control, shall be cause for termination of tenancy." The authority in Oakland employed such leases, and enforced them against several tenants not personally involved in drug use; Mrs. Rucker's daughter was caught using drugs several blocks from the apartment. <p align="justify">A literal reading of the statute, which the Court obviously favors, would allow Mrs. Rucker to be evicted if her daughter used drugs in New York. I have some doubt that this is what Congress intended, but whether Congress or the Court is to blame for this decision, it is consistent with the official policy toward drugs, which has nothing to offer but draconian punishment. It is surprising that we don't burn down the buildings and pour salt on the earth. <b><p align="justify">April 8</b><br /></p><p align="justify">In a column on March 30, Frank Rich referred, with justice, to the "incoherence and indolence of the Bush 'policy' in the Middle East...." Even when the President finally decided that denouncing Arafat wasn't getting the job done, he still concentrated on intervening rhetorically. Secretary Powell will not reach the scene for several days, making stops apparently designed to persuade Muslim nations to solve the problem for us, clearly a vain hope. In the meantime Mr. Bush ordered the parties to desist, and now he seems surprised - certainly he's testy - that they haven't complied. This level of arrogance in a person of such limited ability and insight is worrisome. <p align="justify">Sharon will end his operation eventually, and may do so earlier due to the President's demands; without American support, Israel hasn't much chance of survival. However, he may decide that Bush will reverse course again before long. This situation needed much more than lectures; it needed the attention of a good-faith broker, someone willing to expend some moral capital in bringing about a cease-fire. Bush not only has failed to play that role, he scoffs at it. His implication that Clinton's effort at Camp David, sabotaged by Arafat, made things worse is illustrative of his level of understanding. He backed himself into a corner by his declaration of a crusade on terrorism, as Sharon insists he is doing nothing else. To make matters worse, this and the President's posturing relative to Iraq and Iran have alienated Europeans other than<br />Britain and, in the Muslim world, have reinforced the impression that the US is not only anti-Palestinian but anti-Muslim. All of this has made the belated mission by Powell even more difficult. <b></p><p align="justify">April 9</b><br /></p><p align="justify"><i>[The P-I mentioned in this note is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. ]</i><br /></p><p align="justify">The column by Frank Rich excoriated Democrats for their "fecklessness". He denounced the Republican ploy of impugning the patriotism of the administration's' critics: "If anything, it's the Democrats' patriotic responsibility not just to hold up their end of the national dialogue over the war's means and ends, but to say where they want to take the country in peace." However, he didn't have much to say for their efforts to date: "now that they've capitulated on issues ranging from fuel-economy standards to gun control, the sum of a Democratic social vision these days often seems to have dwindled down to a prescription drug program for Medicare patients." <p align="justify">March Shields, in yesterday's P-I, expressed the same opinion of the President's approach to the Palestinian crisis, describing it as "his Pontius Pilate disengagement from the simmering conditions in the Middle East" and the same view of Democratic will: "Whether it is out of fear of being branded "soft" on terrorism or simple political paralysis at the sight of the president's sky-high favorable poll numbers, too many Washington Democrats are too scared to question - let alone to criticize - the Bush administration's very questionable policies." <p align="justify">The war and the polls obviously are problems for the Democrats, but they have been feckless since inauguration day, even though faced by a new and dubiously elected, inarticulate president and some of those same very questionable policies. Only on the confirmation of Judge Pickering have they shown much resolve, and that seemed to be driven by group politics. </p><p align="justify"><b>April 17</b> </p><p align="justify">The inability of the Democrats to expose the shortcomings of the administration is the more remarkable considering that it is, in striking degree, confused and inept as well as doctrinaire. <p align="justify">President Bush clearly has a limited set of ideas, or perhaps one should say obsessions. The tax cut is mandatory whether the economy is booming or in recession, whether there is a surplus or a deficit, whether we are at peace or at war. Drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is urgent (this week) because Iraq will interrupt oil sales for a month. The declaration of war on terrorism is hindering efforts to stop the fighting in Palestine; response: more rhetoric on the axis of evil. The Muslim world is virtually unanimous in deciding that <i>we</i> are the evil ones, that we are anti-Muslim; response, as the risk of a Middle East explosion rises: another threat to invade Iraq. <p align="justify">An article earlier this year referred to the President's view of the world as divided into good and evil, and noted that this had been developed "under the tutelage of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice". She apparently also counseled avoidance of the Palestinian issue, stating, "We shouldn't think of American involvement for the sake of American involvement". Her tutelage, no doubt influential with a president so inexperienced in foreign affairs, is one of our problems. <p align="justify">This administration is well on its way to setting a new record for, to put it moderately, unbelievable statements, no mean feat given the standard set by predecessors. Most recently, we have the explanations of why it was cheering on the coup in Venezuela. We had no contacts with the plotters; well, yes, we did but we didn't back an ouster of the president; well, yes, we did but we told them to use a referendum. "Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr. Chávez as Venezuela's legitimate president, one administration official replied, 'He was<br />democratically elected,' then added, 'Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just<br />by a majority of the voters, however.'"<sup><small>1</small></sup> Without question, that is a comforting thought to this administration.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. New York Times 4/16/02.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">April 18</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Secretary Powell has returned from a mission to the Middle East which would be difficult to describe other than as a failure: lectured to by the King of Morocco, ignored by Sharon and Arafat, and snubbed by Mubarak. President Bush, desperate to salvage something and running from right-wing criticism of his brief flirtation with neutrality, grasped at a straw and seized a nettle: as a report in the Washington Post put it, he "endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a 'man of peace' yesterday, crediting him with taking satisfactory steps to end Israel's three-week-old military assault despite Sharon's rejection of the president's demand for an immediate withdrawal from Palestinian cities." That should get Mr. Bush's meeting with Prince Abdullah off to a good start. <p align="justify">The President suffered another defeat today when the Senate rejected drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. He brought both defeats on himself, the former by ignoring an explosive situation for more than a year and then bungling his intervention, the latter by pushing a bad policy which was going nowhere. <p align="justify">Drilling in ANWR to reduce our dependency on foreign oil makes as much sense as finding that everyone leaves the lights on 24 hours a day and deciding that the solution is to build more power plants. However, one of the obvious remedies, improving gas mileage, requires a little intelligence and a small dollop of political courage, not to be found in the White House or in Congress. <b><p align="justify"><a id="04/19/02">April 19</b></a><br /></p><p align="justify">Following the decision in <i>California Democratic Party v. Jones,</i> holding California's blanket primary to be unconstitutional, everyone assumed that Washington's primary, on which California's had been modeled, would be next to fall. The Democrats, with the Republicans and Libertarians tagging along, challenged Washington's primary law in U.S. District Court (<i>Washington State Democratic Party v. Reed</i>), only to be told that a) the circumstances in Washington are different than those in California, and b) they failed to prove their case. Whether the Supreme Court will agree remains to be seen. Reversal would not be a surprise, given its willingness to interfere in the conduct of elections by states and its inventiveness in finding constitutional problems, shown not only in <i>Jones</i> but more dramatically in <i>Bush v. Gore.</i> <p align="justify">California adopted the blanket primary by initiative (Proposition 198) in 1996. Its proponents, to their regret, stated that the purpose of the initiative was to force political parties toward the center: opening up the primary to all voters would result in more centrist candidates being nominated than if the selection were limited to party members. The Supreme Court, Scalia, J., made short work of that effort: <blockquote><p align="justify">...Proposition 198 forces political parties to associate with - to have their nominees, and hence their positions, determined by - those who, at best, have refused to affiliate with the party, and, at worst, have expressly affiliated with a rival. In this respect, it is qualitatively different from a closed primary. Under that system, even when it is made quite easy for a voter to change his party affiliation the day of the primary, and thus, in some sense, to "cross over," at least he must formally become a member of the party; and once he does so, he is limited to voting for candidates of that party...</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The Court held that being forced to open up their primary contests to nonmembers violated the parties' right of association, which includes a right not to associate; the state's interests were not strong enough to justify this interference; the California statute therefore was unconstitutional. This strikes me as a dubious conclusion.<br /></p><p align="justify">The Court made a quick pass at establishing a special status for political parties: <blockquote><p align="justify">Representative democracy in any populous unit of governance is unimaginable without the ability of citizens to band together in promoting among the electorate candidates who espouse their political views. The formation of national political parties was almost concurrent with the formation of the Republic itself.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">This is a little disingenuous. The ability of citizens to band together doesn't mandate permanent political parties, and parties not only are not mentioned in the Constitution, but were considered undesirable; so much for original intent. </p><p align="justify">Leaving aside explicit constitutional status, do political parties have a character or role that requires deference to their interests in the conduct of elections? Apparently not; at least, none is suggested. The issue is simply that, unless an election is nonpartisan, parties are involved, and they have associational rights which a state may not impair unless there is a compelling state interest. This resolves into a two-level analysis; what injury is there to the parties and, if there is significant injury, is the state's interest strong enough to prevail? <p align="justify">One question regarding the first level is the nature of a political party: is it a sufficiently well-defined entity that it can have the rights described? The Court had some trouble with the concept. At various points, it referred to "party members", the "party faithful", the party "rank-and-file" and the "party base", but never defined the terms. It had difficulty with the concept of "party leaders," applying this term at one point to nominees and at another to those endorsing a nominee. The Court's lack of focus is easy to understand; as it noted, party membership may be demonstrated by nothing more than asking for its ballot upon arriving at the polling place. This fuzziness as to the identity of the party makes it difficult to take seriously the notion that it is an<br />entity which has associational rights that will be violated by the votes of non-members. </p><p align="justify">The evidence of damage seems thin. Expert testimony was interpreted as indicating that crossover voting, <i>i.e.,</i> voting by non-members, would be substantial, but that "malicious crossover voting" or "raiding" would be slight and that few elections would be determined by crossovers. However, any risk of interference was enough to raise the specter of irreparable harm: "a single election in which the party nominee is selected by nonparty members could be enough to destroy the party"; Lincoln might not have been nominated in a blanket primary. Even apart from disasters of such historic proportions, crossover voting isn't fair: "Ordinarily, however, being saddled with an unwanted, and possibly antithetical, nominee would not destroy<br />the party but severely transform it." If crossover voting fails to change the identity of the nominee, it will change his position: "Even when the person favored by a majority of the party members prevails, he will have prevailed by taking somewhat different positions - and, should he be elected, will continue to take somewhat different positions in order to be renominated." </p><p align="justify">In evaluating the evidence, the Court was content to discover possible harm and seemed unconcerned whether it would be likely. It was not unduly interested in the adequacy of the proof because the proponents of Prop. 198 had convicted themselves: "It is unnecessary to cumulate evidence of this phenomenon, since, after all, the whole purpose of Proposition 198 was to favor nominees with 'moderate' positions." <p align="justify">The conclusion, then, is that the parties must be free to choose their candidates without interference by nonmembers, so that the parties' messages may remain clear:<br />"There is simply no substitute for a party's selecting its own candidates." In a legislative debate over a law such as Prop. 198, this would be a legitimate argument from political theory. But this isn't such a debate; it's a judicial decision purportedly applying constitutional principles. Assuming that the Court is on solid ground in finding a right of non-association, why should that be more important than the state's right to regulate its elections, even if that changes a party's message?<sup><small>1</sup></small> </p><p align="justify">The Court made fast work of the first two claims by the state:<br /><br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">Respondents proffer seven state interests they claim are compelling. Two of them - producing elected officials who better represent the electorate and expanding candidate debate beyond the scope of partisan concerns - are simply circumlocution for producing nominees and nominee positions other than those the parties would choose if left to their own devices.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">This is a peculiar response. The state's arguments were not circumlocution; they were assertions of interests in the election process, interests which in another context hardly would be controversial. The avoidance of straight talk lies in the Court's dismissal of these arguments: it did not deal with them on their merits, but simply found that they conflict, in theory, with the parties' associational rights and therefore must fall. As the Court put it later with unintentional candor, these arguments were "automatically out of the running" because of that conflict. There was no balancing of interests and no serious attempt to evaluate or even properly describe the state's claims.<br /></p><p align="justify">The third issue had to do with "disenfranchisement". It isn't entirely clear that the Court framed this issue correctly; it summarized the question as follows: <blockquote><p align="justify">Respondents' third asserted compelling interest is that the blanket primary is the only way to ensure that disenfranchised persons enjoy the right to an effective vote. By "disenfranchised," respondents do not mean those who cannot vote; they mean simply independents and members of the minority party in "safe"districts....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The Supreme Court interpreted "independents and members of the minority party in safe districts" to refer to a single category, <i>i.e.,</i> non-majority-party voters in safe districts:<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">...These persons are disenfranchised, according to respondents, because under a closed primary they are unable to participate in what amounts to the determinative election - the majority party's primary; the only way to ensure they have an "effective" vote is to force the party to open its primary to them....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The District Court, whose opinion was adopted by the Ninth Circuit, appeared to refer to two categories, minority party voters in safe districts, and independents anywhere; the Supreme Court did not address the latter. Whatever the scope, the issue again was disposed of by restating it: </p><blockquote><p align="justify">...This also appears to be nothing more than reformulation of an asserted state interest we have already rejected - recharacterizing nonparty members' keen desire to participate in selection of the party's nominee as "disenfranchisement" if that desire is not fulfilled. We have said, however, that a "nonmember's desire to participate in the party's affairs is overborne by the countervailing and legitimate right of the party to determine its own membership qualifications."</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The state's argument about disenfranchisement isn't a reformulation regarding keen desire; it's an issue concerning the rights of independent voters and those in one-party districts. It may not be compelling, but it should be met on its own terms, not by a specious redefinition.<br /></p><p align="justify">The state's remaining four interests - promoting fairness, affording voters greater choice, increasing voter participation, and protecting privacy, "[were] not, like the others, automatically out of the running" but they were disposed of with equal efficiency, in a single paragraph. <p align="justify">The fairness argument, as described by the Court, was a repetition of the disenfranchisement claim: "The aspect of fairness addressed by Proposition 198 is presumably the supposed inequity of not permitting nonparty members in 'safe' districts to determine the party nominee." That was trumped by the party's interest: it would be unfair to permit "nonparty members to hijack the party". However, the District Court had interpreted the fairness argument in broader terms: "it is apparent that the voters of California believe that the system is fairer when all voters, including independents and regardless of party affiliation, may participate in framing the choice of candidates at the general election." <p align="justify">The argument that opening the primary gave voters more choices was rejected in two muddled sentences, in which the Court first declared that the blanket primary actually narrowed choice, then suggested that broadening choice was an illegitimate aim: <blockquote><p align="justify">...As for affording voters greater choice, it is obvious that the net effect of this scheme...is to reduce the scope of choice, by assuring a range of candidates who are all more "centrist." This may well be described as broadening the range of choices favored by the majority - but that is hardly a compelling state interest, if indeed it is even a legitimate one....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Broadening voters' choices - giving them a chance to select someone sensible, no mean task in any election - may not even be a legitimate state interest. Where does this amazingly anti-democratic conclusion come from? We are not told. This is not legal reasoning; it is merely the imposition of personal preferences.<br /></p><p align="justify">The next issue did not even rate a separate discussion: "...The interest in increasing voter participation is just a variation on the same theme (more choices favored by the majority will produce more voters), and suffers from the same defect." Given the ambiguity in the discussion of the preceding issue, it isn't entirely clear what "the same defect" is. If the Court again was questioning the legitimacy of the state's aim, it is seriously off track. Whatever one may think of the California scheme, it cannot be denied that a state has a proper interest in encouraging greater understanding of and involvement in government. In a time when suspicion of and hostility toward government are widespread and constantly encouraged, establishing a positive<br />connection is of critical importance, and the vote is an obvious way to accomplish that. If the associational rights of political parties are even more important, the Court surely must be able to articulate the basis for that conclusion. Its failure to do strongly suggests that it had no persuasive argument and so resorted to this dismissive evasion. </p><p align="justify">The final issue is privacy: the state argued that voters should not be required to disclose party preferences in order to vote. To the Court, this cannot be a compelling interest because certain Federal laws require the appointment of persons by party; therefore party affiliation cannot be "sacrosanct". The Court does not explain why Congress' decision that some offices be filled on a partisan basis prohibits a state from adopting a policy of allowing voters to keep their party affiliation private at the polling place. <p align="justify">The Court added one more ground for its decision: even if these state interests were compelling, the statute still would be defective because those interests could have been served by a narrower measure, a "nonpartisan blanket primary." <blockquote><p align="justify">Generally speaking, under such a system, the State determines what qualifications it requires for a candidate to have a place on the primary ballot - which may include nomination by established parties and voter-petition requirements for independent candidates. Each voter, regardless of party affiliation, may then vote for any candidate, and the top two vote getters (or however many the State prescribes) then move on to the general election. This system has all the characteristics of the partisan blanket primary, save the constitutionally crucial one: Primary voters are not choosing a party's nominee. </p></blockquote><p align="justify">Under such a system, the state could achieve its goals "without severely burdening a political party's First Amendment right of association".<br /></p><p align="justify">It is difficult to know how serious the Court was about this. What it described is not a true nonpartisan primary, but a hybrid, but it still would dilute the power of parties more seriously than 198. Inserting an earlier step gives the parties a protected preliminary choice. However, at the level under discussion, the primary election, nonmembers still would be allowed to vote for party candidates, and they could deny the party's nominee, and the party, a place in the final election. That is a greater dilution of party power than the California plan, and hardly seems to be a more "narrowly tailored" solution. It makes sense only if one assumes that party integrity and doctrinal purity are more important than having a seat at the table.<br />__________<br /><br /><small>1. As Justice Stevens put it in dissent, "It is not this Court's constitutional function to choose between the competing visions of what makes democracy work - party autonomy and discipline versus progressive inclusion of the entire electorate in the process of selecting their public officials..."</small> <b></p><p align="justify">April 21</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Two of the oddities in <i>Jones</i> - two of its features which seemed odd to me, to be more candid - turn out to be related, sort of. First, the Court's insistence on the right of the parties to define their messages, to decide who may carry their banners, sounds less like freedom of association than trademark law, the Court ruling that nonmembers can't be allowed to infringe on the party name. The other peculiarity is the position of the Libertarian Party. Its spirited opposition to the California and Washington blanket primaries is inconsistent with its core principle, that ndividuals should be able to make their own decisions. This statement of principles appears in the LP platform: <blockquote><p align="justify">As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives,.... We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world,.... Consequently, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The convergence is found in an article I came across yesterday which reported the <i>Jones</i> decision. The Libertarian Party's National Director was quoted as follows: "This ruling means that we can protect our intellectual property - the core beliefs, philosophy, and ideology that make the Libertarian Party a unique and valuable part of the American political process." This formulation of the issue as intellectual property is closer to the result than the negative right of association, although it still leaves us, at least as to the major parties, with the problem of defining the owner. <p align="justify">As to the second issue, Gail Lightfoot, identified as the Libertarian Party's plaintiff in the case and its U.S. Senate candidate in California, had this to say: <blockquote><p align="justify">How can a party seeking to limit government intrusion into the lives of its citizens possibly support a wide-open primary, where any voter from any party - or no party at all - is able to select its candidates? Libertarian principles demand that...candidate selection be limited to party members who presumably agree with those same principles.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The state wasn't intruding into the lives of its citizens; it was trying to give them more freedom. On this issue, the LP isn't libertarian at all, at least not as to individuals; it's libertarian only in the limited and anomalous sense of opposing interference with its freedom to be exclusive.<br /><br /></p><p align="justify"><b>April 27</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Conservatives, including political columnists, have been on President Bush's case for suggesting that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must change their ways. The criticism has found its way into Democratic ranks; Senator Lieberman declared that the President's hesitant attempt to stop the killing by both sides "muddles our moral clarity." Rep. DeLay wants to introduce a resolution declaring our unwavering support for Israel.<sup><small>1</small></sup> <p align="justify">I think that these reactions are profoundly misguided. It isn't that I differ with the supporters of Israel on the issue of relative virtue. Israel has gone around the bend in its current military operations and has, in other ways, contributed to the crisis it faces. However, if I had to choose moral sides, I would pick Israel. Although I have great sympathy for the Palestinian people, Yasser Arafat is beneath contempt, the Arab nations are setting new standards for hypocrisy and no movement which encourages the use of suicide bombers against civilian populations deserves support. The enthusiasm of the left for the Palestinians is reminiscent of its enthusiasm for North Vietnam, and some of the hostility toward Israel reeks of anti-Semitism. All of this is beside the point. <p align="justify">There are general reasons to be wary of resorting to morality as a guide to foreign policy. One of the problems with moral clarity is that it is far too flexible and manipulable a concept; the importance of morality varies, as does its content, with the political views of the observer. In addition, our focus often is too narrow; it doesn't require much imagination to realize that reasonable people could have differing opinions on the legitimacy of Israel's military operations and even on our war on terrorism, which seems to include the option of attacking anyone we define as a menace. However, the more important problem is that moral principles, even if genuine and unambiguous, may be an impediment to achieving peace and stability. This is not a<br />situation in which we have the luxury of choosing sides. </p><p align="justify">The U.S. probably has lost its chance to act as a neutral mediator. Prince Abdullah proposed a program to the President; it clearly is one-sided but could be a starting point and offers the potential for Arab involvement, which is critical. Jimmy Carter made a suggestion a few days ago which contemplates direct pressure on Israel. The President needs to accept someone's plan in a hurry; his press-conference and photo-op ramblings won't do the job. However, under any of these programs, he must have the courage to ignore the moralists, especially those on the Israeli side.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. Resolutions were passed by the House and Senate May 3 which were uncompromisingly pro-Israel.</small> </p><p align="justify"><b>May 20</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The discovery of certain pre-September 11 intelligence documents containing various indications of potential terrorism raise three questions: why did the government not do more; why was this information not shared with the public at the time or at least released voluntarily afterward; and what did the government have before 9/11 in addition to the material leaked? The responses from the administration all have been attempts to deflect the demand for full disclosure. <p align="justify">The most direct response to the first question has been to explain that the communications received were not specific enough to have warranted action. That may well be so, although it sounds somewhat false coming from an administration which has shown little aversion to unilateral action and extreme measures. Parsing the known material also implies that it is the complete inventory, in effect giving a very possibly false answer to the third question. <p align="justify">The answer given to the second question is that it was not in the public interest to release it; in part this is based on the assertion that the information was too general to be helpful, but partly on the notion of not causing panic. Neither is convincing, and the willingness now to release current reports of undefined threats certainly undercuts that argument. <p align="justify">It is difficult in this country to react to such threats, in part because we simply do not think along the appropriate lines. The government's failure may reflect nothing deeper than that, and it may be excusable. The failure also may reach back into the Clinton administration. Therefore the calls for disclosure needn't be seen as a partisan or even hostile inquiry. It is necessary for future planning to know, among other things, what we have missed in the past. However, thus far the administration's attitude has been defensive - it's all politics, any criticism undermines the war effort, questions play on the emotions of the victims, etc. - and consistent with its pattern of secrecy and arrogance. <p align="justify"><b>May 29</b><br /></p><p align="justify">While the President was in Europe, suicide attacks resumed in Israel along with threats of further operations by the Israeli military. India and Pakistan are stumbling toward war; even if that is averted, the tension is a serious problem as it diverts Pakistani forces from the area near the Afghan border where bin Laden is reported to be alive and active. An administration which understood the problems would be fully engaged, but we seem still to be locked into a policy of stern lectures and promises to send an envoy some time to do something. <p align="justify">Never mind the problems foreigners create for themselves; the President's first act on returning home was to propose a federal purchase of mineral rights to prevent oil drilling in the Everglades. Jeb, always more candid than George, acknowledged that this might help his re-election chances. If the President had enough brothers, we might develop an enlightened environmental policy. <p align="justify">Director Mueller acknowledged today that the FBI failed to respond to information available last summer. He is reorganizing the Bureau to concentrate on counter-terrorism, a move which seems months overdue. <p align="justify"><b>July 22</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Rhetorical intervention having worked so well in the Middle East, the President followed that plan as to the wave of business scandals and failures and the resulting crisis of confidence. The backdrop for his July 10 speech on Wall Street was a blue panel repeatedly emblazoned with "Corporate Responsibility." It isn't clear whether he intended that as a challenge or as a description of the way the system now works. His few-bad-apples approach certainly suggested the latter: "...the American system of enterprise has not failed us. Some dishonest individuals have failed our system." "Leaders in this room help give the free enterprise system an ethical compass, and the nation respects you for that.." The stock market fell as he spoke and hardly has stopped falling; clearly investors do not share his appraisal. <p align="justify">To be sure, there were a few suggestions for change, but not only did he fail to get out in front of the movement for reform, his proposals are well short of those already being discussed. In all, the program is modest to the point of insincerity. <p align="justify">One notion, already put into effect, is a "financial crimes SWAT team," which appears to be about as useless as its name is silly. It is intended somehow to increase the likelihood of criminal prosecutions, but "administration officials" were quoted as saying that "creation of the task force did not necessarily mean that more F.B.I. agents or prosecutors would be assigned to such cases, and did not assure a bigger budget for such cases." Appointment of a former corporate insider as head of the team did nothing to enhance its image. <p align="justify">In the course of his speech, The President made several comments which indicate just how far ethical reform is from his focus. We can be confident in a sustained recovery, he said, because of "pro-growth reforms," i.e., the tax cut. "For the sake of long-term growth," he wants Congress to make the reductions permanent. He also will ask Congress to join him "to promote free trade, which will open new markets and create better jobs and spur innovation." In addition to being beside the supposed point of his speech, the last struck me as an unusually flagrant instance of hypocrisy, until I read this, two lines later: "And I will insist on, and if need be enforce, discipline<br />in federal spending so we can meet our national priorities without undermining our economy." Can anyone say "steel tariffs" or "farm subsidies?" <b></p><p align="justify">July 26</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The President's bully-pulpit style has obvious advantages for him. It allows him not only to strike moral poses while avoiding the risk of defeat or embarrassment by actually doing anything, but also to claim credit if, through the efforts of others, his goals are met. He reminds me of a character in an old sitcom, a mayor whose only contribution to governance was to pass the buck by flapping his hands and squeaking "Handle it! Handle it!"<sup><small>1</small></sup><br />____________<br /><br /><small>1. The internet is wonderful; by searching for that phrase, I discovered that the program was <i>Carter Country,</i> 1977-79.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">August 7</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Questioning of the administration's plans (ambitions? fantasies? propaganda?) regarding Iraq has begun, and it has led to discussion of some relevant and difficult issues, but all at a secondary level. A cartoon by Tom Toles in yesterday's Washington Post is typical: the President hands an unidentified figure a document entitled "Iraq" and says, "It's no longer a matter of if but when." The other replies, "...and what; and who; and how; and what are the costs; and what are the consequences; and what is our follow-up." Good questions all, but where is "Why?" <p align="justify">When the first President Bush was asked why we should drive Iraq from Kuwait, the answers degenerated into a comedy routine, with a new answer every week. The funniest was James Baker's "jobs, jobs, jobs;" the one which seemed to resonate best was the threat of Saddam's development of nuclear weapons; the only plausible one was defending our oil supplies, not so much in Kuwait as in Saudi Arabia. <p align="justify">This President Bush has, for the most part, avoided wandering from one rationale to another, and has concentrated on Saddam's potential or actual possession of weapons of mass destruction, with only occasional and unsupported suggestions that Iraq is linked to 9-11. Iraq has used and presumably still possesses some forms of chemical weapons; whether it has nuclear or biological weapons apparently is less certain, but both are possible. Obviously, one way to find out is to resume inspections on a meaningful basis; it may be that the administration's saber-rattling is intended to bring that about. However, it seems more likely that Bush really would like to bring<br />about a "regime change." If so, in answering "why," he needs to tell us what Iraq might do with those weapons, specifically whether they are a threat to us. If they are not, unilateral action is next to impossible to justify. </p><p align="justify">The other question under the heading of "why?" is "why now and not earlier?" or "why Iraq and not other threats of mass destruction?" We tolerated nuclear weapons in the U.S.S.R. and still do in Russia, China, Pakistan and India; North Korea may have such weapons and resists inspections, yet we seem content simply to insult it, while helping it build a nuclear power plant. Why then must we invade Iraq, causing God knows how many deaths, disrupting an entire region and possibly doing irreparable damage to our position and prestige, to say nothing of those pesky secondary problems, among them who succeeds Saddam, how much does it cost us to prop him up and how many civil or other spin-off wars do we get dragged into. I assume that questions of this sort entered into the decision not to go to Baghdad in 1991; what has changed? <p align="justify">The most worrisome aspect to this is the increasing smugness of the President. "I'm a patient man," he tells us, "but I have lots of tools at my disposal." Am I the only one who sees a little boy playing soldier? <p align="justify">Perhaps President Bush is, as predicted, merely the front man for more experienced hands. That isn't the picture, so if it is the fact, it's being disguised skillfully. It appears that he is at least setting the tone and direction for his administration, which is not comforting. Delegation or regard for advice would not offer much reassurance in the case of many of his aides, but more reliance on Powell certainly would help. Instead, "neoconservative foreign policy thinkers," reportedly are influential with the Bush administration. This group recently added to its advocacy of the Iraqi adventure the helpful suggestion that we seize Saudi assets and "target" its oil fields. Well, the Saudis have been reluctant to help invade Iraq, so why not invade their country too? We could mount the invasion from - let's see - who's left? <p align="justify">Senators Biden and Lugar were invited to discuss with Jim Lehrer their two days of hearings on Iraq. Lehrer, who is not ordinarily a sharp or persistent questioner, repeatedly asked, in effect, what business it was of Congress' to be meddling in war plans. It is true that by inaction, acquiescence and legislation, Congress has ceded most of the war-making power to the president, but the constitutional delegation to Congress of the power to declare war remains and it seem bizarre, especially in the present circumstance, that such a question could be raised and that the responses would be so timid. <b><p align="justify">August 8</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Al Gore claimed recently that, if not misled by advisors, he would have been less cautious in the 2000 campaign. Senator Lieberman commented that the Vice President wasn't cautious enough, that he erred in straying from the new-Democrat line. The Senator was quoted as saying that some of the campaign rhetoric about "the people vs. the powerful" may have sent the wrong message. "It was not the pro-growth approach." "It ultimately made it more difficult for us to gain the support of some of the middle class, independent voters who don't see America as 'us vs. them,' but more in Kennedy's terms of a rising tide lifts all boats." Senator Lieberman may be right as to the dangers of appearing to advocate class warfare, but as to the Kennedy line, he<br />apparently hasn't looked at any middle-class harbors. </p><p align="justify">Mr. Gore responded, not naming the Senator as his critic, in an op-ed piece in the NY Times on August 4. The heart of his response was an affirmation of a mild populism: <blockquote><p align="justify">I believe Bill Clinton and I were right to maintain, during our 1992 campaign, that we should fight for "the forgotten middle class" against the "forces of greed." Standing up for "the people, not the powerful" was the right choice in 2000. And, in fact, it is the Democratic Party's meaning and mission. The suggestion from some in our party that we should no longer speak that truth, especially at a time like this, strikes me as bad politics and, worse, wrong in principle.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Maureen Dowd found that offensive, at least coming from Gore, and contributed a bitterly sarcastic column yesterday, referring to Gore's "faux-populist fury...." Mr. Gore made lots of mistakes, has a tendency to be pompous, and has been strangely silent since inaugural day, but I don't know what the poor man has done to deserve a level of scorn epitomized by this: <blockquote><p align="justify">The problem with Knowing It All, dear boy, is that some of the little people may find you insufferable when you explain to them that they are suffering now because they didn't listen to you in the first place - sigh - when you were right - sigh - as you always are - big sigh and roll of the eyes. They may hold their hands over their little, average American ears. They may even feel compelled to vote for the president who spoke with such sensitivity on the first tee in Kennebunkport Sunday about the suicide bombing that killed nine bus passengers in Israel: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive."</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Ms. Dowd had one undeniably valid line: "Feel free to attach yourself to Clinton ('Bill Clinton and I were right to maintain...") once you are sure it can't do you any good. Ignore all the party-poopers, including Bill, who grumble that you would be president today if you had mentioned his name even once after Labor Day in 2000." <p align="justify">Meanwhile, Mr. Bush, en route from Kennebunkport to Crawford, stopped to raise funds in Mississippi and delivered a speech before yet another repeated-slogan backdrop, this one advocating "Strengthening our Economy." The President's plan: tort reform; that should put everyone back to work. Vice-President Cheney also is on the lecture circuit, trying to buck us up. Secretary O'Neill is too busy mending fences in South America to join the pep squad, probably to everyone's relief. <p align="justify">The IMF announced today that it will lend Brazil $30 Billion. Its economy no doubt is in trouble for many reasons, but it hasn't been helped by the steel tariffs which, the Washington Post reported, have reduced Brazil's exports of cold-rolled steel to the U.S. by 80%. Since part of the IMF funds will come from us, we're helping to injure another economy, then bailing it out, all to buy contributions to the GOP from steel companies and votes in steel-producing states. <b><p align="justify">August 9</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Conservatives have begun to express doubts about war with Iraq, which is a good thing, especially as liberals seem to be tongue-tied. George Will argued in today's column that an invasion of Iraq could be undertaken legitimately only if sanctioned by Congress. He made the basic point clearly: "War of the sort being contemplated is not the sort of plunge into uncertainty that a prudent president wants to embark upon alone, even if the Constitution permitted that, which it does not." However, his defense of Congress' constitutional powers was undercut somewhat by his belief that a vote is important as a political weapon: "Today most Democratic presidential aspirants serve in the legislative branch. It is in the interest of all voters, and especially of one who votes in Crawford, Texas, for those aspirants to be required to publicly debate and vote on this issue." This is reminiscent of the threats of Phil Gramm, among others, to tar anyone who voted against the Gulf War with lack of patriotism. The jingoism aroused by that war, which was short, more or less successful and sparing of American lives, faded very quickly, and Mr. Will might be similarly disappointed on this occasion. <p align="justify">A more emphatic statement was offered by Dick Armey:<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">If we try to act against Saddam Hussein, as obnoxious as he is, without proper provocation, we will not have the support of other nation states who might do so. I don't believe that America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Much of what has gone on since September 11 has been equally inconsistent with what we have been or should be. To Representative Armey's credit, he opposed another instance, TIPS, the egregious if oafish spy plan promoted by the egregious, oafish John Ashcroft, and he advocated privacy protections as part of the Homeland Security Department legislation.<br /><br /></p><b><p align="justify">August 11</b><br /></p><p align="justify">I may have to retract that comment about President Bush's setting the tone and direction because, at least in one instance, there isn't any - or, more accurately, there is more than one. <p align="justify">Sixty Minutes had a segment tonight on the refusal of the Transportation Department to allow anything resembling ethnic profiling in searching airline passengers. This scrupulousness not only is unusual for a law-and-order administration (that will teach Bush to hire a Clinton man), but it is in bizarre contrast to the policy of the Justice and Defense Departments, which is to incarcerate Muslims and to invade their countries. The reticence of the Transportation Department may stem from Secretary Mineta's internment during W.W. II, in which case it illustrates that learning the wrong lessons from history is worse than learning none. The Secretary is so wedded to the notion that one must not take appearance into account that we must suppose that, if he received a report that a six-foot-tall Arab had entered an airport carrying a bomb in a black briefcase, he would stop everyone with a black briefcase (women too:<br />mustn't discriminate based on gender), while passing all six-foot Arabs carrying charcoal grey ones. </p><p align="justify">I don't think that I can ascribe to any of Mr. Bush's policies the weird disparity in the conduct of his secretaries, so he must not be in charge, at least here. <b><p align="justify">August 21</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The most recent failure of the Democrats to capture the White House can be blamed on the combination of the electoral college and the Supreme Court, but they have a persistent weakness: their inability to project themselves as a party of all the people. I came across two references to this failing a few days ago which demonstrate that this is not a new problem and suggest that, unless the Democrats reassess their heritage, it may be intractable. <p align="justify">One is by Pierre Rosanvallon, in <i>The New Social Question,</i> published in 1994 in France, in English in 2000. He adopts a theory that the strength of the Democratic Party has been creation of a " 'progressive coalition' between the black population and a large part of the white middle class, a coalition cemented by a Keynesian philosophy of the state, inherited from the Roosevelt era." According to this theory, the coalition fell apart in the 1980's because "the Democrats had become increasingly identified only with 'minorities' and seemed primarily to express the specific demands of those groups." By concentrating on minorities, "the party had tended to make general social programs secondary to campaigns targeted to specific populations, and hence had reached that 'boiling point' of the middle class, which was fatal to the Democrats." <p align="justify">The last comment was made with reference to Kevin Phillips' <i>The Boiling Point,</i> cited in the footnotes, but the use of that title as a description of rebellion against the Democrats is misleading. Phillips' book was published in 1993 and its political context is the rejection by voters of the re-election bid of the first President Bush; the boiling point was reached in part because of the subservience of government to the wealthy, primarily under Presidents Reagan and Bush, a theme addressed in his earlier book, <i>The Politics of Rich and Poor.</i> However, the general argument that the Democrats have become identified with group rights is sound enough. <p align="justify">The other reference is by Henry Fairlie, writing in <i>The New Republic</i> in 1983. He too criticized the tendency to focus on interest groups, but to him the point was not that the coalition had failed, but that its significance had been misinterpreted: <blockquote><p align="justify">Too much is made of the New Deal "coalition" that F.D.R. put together after 1932.... [H]is initial opportunity was given to him less by his own political skill and intuition, less by the Democratic Party and its machines, than by a profound social and political movement of voters who felt themselves disenfranchised.<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br />...Democratic candidates..., with various degrees of emphasis, are trying to attract the support of various interest groups, which they hope to bind together into a fanciful "coalition." It is wholly to the point that these interest groups are usually<br />identified and identify themselves as <i>minorities,</i> and it is precisely there that the analogy with the New Deal "coalition can be seen today to be misleading and unprofitable.... The genius of the New Deal was not the "coalition," but the appeal to the <i>majority</i> sense of the nation.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">This undoubtedly is correct; Democrats more recently have failed to convince voters that<br />they are in and can represent the mainstream. </p><p align="justify">Moderate Democrats like Senator Lieberman understand this and realize that they must reconnect with the middle. Unfortunately, when they get the message that average voters are being ignored, the New Democrats' response is to become faux Republicans, as if being pro-business were the key to majority acceptance. This approach, imitating Republican economic policy, seems to me to be exactly backward; one key to Republican electoral success has been disguising the fact that they are Republicans, at least as to economics. </p><b><p align="justify">September 6</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The President has embarked, reluctantly and unwillingly, on a course of persuasion as to his desire to invade Iraq. Congress will be "consulted" and the U.N. will be lectured. The conduct of the Iraq initiative has been so inept that it's tempting to think that second thoughts may have appeared, but inept, hesitant, unconvincing arguments for extreme proposals are not new to this administration, so I wouldn't bet much on that. <b><p align="justify">September 20</b><br /></p><p align="justify">President Bush, perhaps concerned that patience with his obsession with toppling Saddam was wearing thin, dressed it up in a hedged and insincere multilateralism before the United Nations. The President probably regrets that turn, as it prompted more calls for deferring to the UN and produced an offer by Iraq of "unconditional" inspections followed by a plea for understanding. The speech also muddled an already implausible case by introducing new justifications for invasion: the UN will become "irrelevant" if it allows its resolutions to be ignored; "Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause...." <p align="justify">The speech was, internally, a complete muddle as well, wandering back and forth from one theme to another. At one point, the President set out a long list of actions by which Iraq could regain legitimacy: "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace," he declared, it will "disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction," "end all support for terrorism." "cease persecution of its civilian population," "release or account for all gulf war personnel whose fate is still unknown," "accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions," "end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program," and "accept U.N. administration of funds from that program to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people." All of this obviously would take time and would imply some ongoing dialogue; the President seemed to recognize this: <blockquote><p align="justify">If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq. And it could open the prospect of the United Nations' helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis, a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty and internationally supervised elections.<br /></p></blockquote><p align="justify">However, the rest of the speech ignored this detailed proposal and, by implication, abandoned it. It was surrounded by denunciations of Iraq's violation of UN resolutions and calls for action to punish such violations. Even those parts of the speech were ambiguous. The President advised the delegates that <blockquote><p align="justify">My nation will work with the U.N. Security Council to meet our common challenge. If Iraq's regime defies us again, the world must move deliberately, decisively, to hold Iraq to account. We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Does he really mean to move deliberately? That statement was followed by a thinly-veiled threat to act unilaterally if need be, in which he announced that "The Security Council resolutions will be enforced." Does this refer to the new resolutions "my nation" will seek or existing resolutions flouted by Saddam? Statements made after the speech, the resolution to be sent to Congress, and the new policy of preemptive war leave little doubt that deliberation and multilateral action are, at best, options to be employed or rejected at the administration's discretion and that the program for Iraq's redemption was not seriously meant. It would be ironic if pressure from the public, Congress or our few remaining allies required the President to adopt his own suggestions.<br /></p><div align="justify">___________</div><p align="justify"><br /> </p><p align="justify">I thought, for the first several paragraphs, that the column by Thomas Friedman in Wednesday's New York Times was intended to capture the absurdity of the administration's position. He reported that, in talking to people around the country, the question most often put to him was some variation of this: <blockquote><p align="justify">"How come all of a sudden we have to launch a war against Saddam? I realize that he's thumbed his nose at the U.N., and he has dangerous weapons, but he's never threatened us, and, if he does, couldn't we just vaporize him? What worries me are Osama and the terrorists still out there."</p></blockquote><p align="justify">He thinks that the prevailing view is that Saddam is "deterrable."<br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">That is, he does not threaten the U.S. and he never has, because he has been deterred the way Russia, China and North Korea have been. He knows that if he even hints at threatening us, we will destroy him....<br /></p><p align="justify">No, what worries Americans are not the deterrables like Saddam. What worries<br />them are the "undeterrables" - the kind of young Arab-Muslim men who hit us on<br />9/11, and are still lurking....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">This makes sense, and ought to lead to the conclusion that the obsession with Iraq is a distraction from the far more important task of making the country safe from terrorist attacks. It also ought to lead to the realization that, among other motivations, the administration is proposing to attack Saddam because Iraq is an easier target than al Queda.<br /></p><p align="justify">I thought that Mr. Friedman was heading this way. Unfortunately not; he is concerned that we are planning to take out Saddam for the wrong reasons. Rather than worrying about weapons of mass destruction, we should be aiming at regime change so that we can create a democratic society in Iraq which will be a model for Muslim youth and will draw them away from the politics of despair and suicide. <p align="justify">If Congress paid attention to the opinions reported by Mr. Friedman, it might reach sensible conclusions in the upcoming debate. Instead, judging from comments by the leadership and the presidential hopefuls, it is likely to join him in deciding that we have to invade, for some reason, never mind which one. The Democrats, fearful of being regarded as wimps if they fail to support the proposed war, are on the brink of proving that they are indeed wimps by caving in. <b><p align="justify">September 24</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The administration complains that the Senate sits on judicial nominations; the Senate responds that it has processed more than the Republican Senate did for President Clinton. Which is right? Who cares? It's merely the latest installment in a tedious and irresponsible game. The administration complains that the Senate is applying political or ideological tests to nominees; the Senate responds that the administration is making appointments on ideological grounds. Again, a plague on both houses. <p align="justify">There is, however, no doubt as to the criteria used in picking judicial nominees, a fact underscored by the Justice Department today. A US District Court Judge in Vermont held the Federal Death Penalty Act unconstitutional, finding that its authorization to use hearsay evidence in the sentencing phase is contrary to Supreme Court decisions including <i>Ring v. Arizona.</i> Was the official response "We respectfully disagree and will seek clarification through an appeal"? Not by Mr. Ashcroft's doctrinaire, arrogant department: noting that the judge was a Clinton appointee, a spokeswoman offered this analysis: <blockquote><p align="justify">Today's decision underscores the importance of confirming President Bush's nominees to the federal bench - well-qualified men and women who will apply the laws that Congress has passed in accordance with Supreme Court precedent.... In our system of government, it is the legislature elected by the American people which determines the proper punishment for federal crimes, not lone members of the judiciary. Congress passed the Federal Death Penalty Act to save lives, and the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly said the death penalty does not violate the Constitution.<sup><small></small>1</sup><br /></p></blockquote><p align="justify">The aggressive ignorance of this response suggests that no one at Justice had read the opinion. The decision made no attempt to determine the proper punishment for federal crimes and clearly stated that it is Congress' role to do so. It held that the statute violated standards recently set out by the Supreme Court, but noted that Congress could not have anticipated the recent holdings. Whether the death penalty violates the constitution was not an issue.<br /></p><p align="justify">The prosecution may appeal and may well prevail. The opinion seems to me to be an ambitious reading of the recent decisions, although the principles it derives from them are sound. The political response is unfortunate, but it is entirely in keeping with the attitude of this intellectually and ethically challenged Justice Department: it and it alone will decide the law; certainly no Clinton man in Burlington, Vermont has any business interfering.<br />___________<br /><br /><small>1. New York Times 9/25/02.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">October 5</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Pollsters are telling us that the Republicans probably will retain control of the House and may recapture the Senate. Apparently the voters are reacting to the administration's tactics about like a recent cartoon: a man is sitting on the sidewalk holding a sign which says "lost my job/401(k) went south/lost my health insurance/lost my house/please help." A pollster asks him "what is your no. 1 concern this election cycle, sir?" His response: "Iraq."<sup><small>1 </small></sup><p align="justify">The poor fellow can be forgiven his lack of focus; he shares it with those who ought to know better, who ought to be challenging the administrations' priorities and perceptions. <p align="justify">An example of uncritical acceptance of a White House line is a column on September 30 in the Washington Post. In it, Jackson Diehl gushes over the new strategic policy in terms that suggest that he is acting as a press agent for Condoleezza Rice: he credits her with its "execution," apparently meaning its expression; he describes it as "a bold - and mostly brilliant - synthesis," at once "Jacksonian," Wilsonian" and "Kissengerian." Mr. Diehl complains that the policy, despite its publication, has not been fully accepted by others in the administration. One can only hope so, as this is a policy which is not only dangerous and unprecedented, but stunningly simplistic; it<br />reads like the product of an undergraduate conservative club, albeit an unusually smug one. </p><p align="justify">In Mr. Diehl's view, the policy "packs into just 34 pages everything the foreign policy of the 1990s lacked." <blockquote><p align="justify">It begins by embracing two facts that have been obvious since 1991, but hard for a democratic and sometimes insular society to accept: that America has unmatched and unprecedented power in the world and therefore no choice but to shape the international order; and that it faces threats that are utterly different but in some ways more dangerous than the threats from the old Soviet Union.<br /></p></blockquote><p align="justify">I count four alleged facts.<br /></p><p align="justify">As to the first, our power is unmatched at present, but our dominance will not last forever (an issue explored in a far more analytic column by Robert Wright the previous day in the NY Times). Therefore it is foolish for us to adopt a policy which will make the entire world resentful - and encourage it to play power politics in response - when some day we may be on the short end of the equation. In addition, Mr. Diehl's third fact, that the current threats are different from those faced in the past, goes a long way to mitigate the importance of the first: the policy he praises uses our dominance in conventional warfare as a basis for hegemony in a world where that may not count for much. <p align="justify">Mr. Diehl's second point, that we have "no choice but to shape the international order," is neither a necessary nor a desirable inference from the first. We should be involved in world affairs, should be internationally responsible and frequently will be required to take the lead. However, that does not obligate or authorize us to dictate to the world. Anyone who thinks that the lesson of September 11 is more unilateralism hasn't thought the problem through.<br />_____________<br /><br /><small>1. Matt Davies, The Journal News (Tribune Media Services) 9/30/02. </small><b></p><p align="justify">October 9</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The portion of the President's address to the UN suggesting that, by meeting certain conditions, Iraq could avoid war and regain legitimacy seemed to go by the board the next day, assuming it to have been seriously meant in the first place. For that reason, his speech in Cincinnati Monday was surprising, as it included a similar proposal. <p align="justify">The speech began with a litany of Iraq's violations of UN resolutions and international law. There followed a review of the failures of previous policies. This led, however, not to a statement of the need for drastic and immediate action, but to a revised version of those policies: <blockquote><p align="justify">Clearly, to actually work, any new inspections, sanctions or enforcement mechanisms will have to be very different. America wants the U.N. to be an effective organization that helps keep the peace. And that is why we are urging the Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough, immediate requirements.<br /></p><p align="justify">Among those requirements the Iraqi regime must reveal and destroy, under U.N. supervision, all existing weapons of mass destruction. To ensure that we learn the truth, the regime must allow witnesses to its illegal activities to be interviewed outside the country.... <p align="justify">And inspectors must have access to any site, at any time without pre-clearance,<br />without delay, without exceptions.<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br /> </p><p align="justify">...In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It must release or account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot whose fate is still unknown. <p align="justify">By taking these steps and by only taking these steps, the Iraqi regime has an opportunity to avoid conflict.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">All of this sounds, as did the corresponding part of the UN speech, like a step back from unilateralism. The comment which followed sounds like a step back form another extreme position: "These steps would also change the nature of the Iraqi regime itself. America hopes the regime will make that choice." "Regime change" now could be internal, more or less voluntary, and consist of a change of behavior.<br /></p><p align="justify">Whether these apparent signals of moderation can be taken seriously is anyone's guess. These passages may have been inserted solely to placate the State Department, our allies or the UN; the clumsy way in which they have been stitched into the text suggests that the speeches were the work of collaborators who have different agendas. Perhaps the President simply is keeping a line of retreat open. <b><p align="justify">October 12</b><br /></p><p align="justify">One theory is that the President emphasized the UN in his Cincinnati speech because he wanted to convince Congressional skeptics - you know, those Democrats who might, under extreme provocation, vote "no" - that he isn't a loose cannon. This theory might explain references to collaboration with the UN, but not the President's version of a twelve-step program. <p align="justify">William Kristol speculated today that the program was designed to confuse Saddam; we're preparing for war, but we'll catch him off guard by pretending to wait for his compliance. Mr. Kristol also thinks that the appeal to the UN is merely a "prelude to war," a cynical manipulation of that body on the way to our doing what we damned well please. Both are plausible (the first barely so), but Kristol also thinks that Bush has been clear and straightforward in his description of the threat and the need for immediate action (a performance aptly described by Michael Kinsley as "arguments that stumble into each other like drunks"), so I'm not sure that his evaluation is reliable. <p align="justify"><b>October 16</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Possibly the strangest aspect of the Democratic capitulation on the war resolution is that its political motivation never was a secret. In January, Karl Rove told the RNC, "Americans trust the Republicans to do a better job of keeping our communities and our families safe. We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." Perhaps that was too vague. Helpfully, Andrew Card revealed why the White House waited until the start of the election season to promote action in Iraq: "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." <p align="justify">To make clear that the bipartisanship he sometimes touts, if it ever was a reality, is now a thing of the past, the President charged that the Senate was "not interested in the security of the American people." and babbled "if I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people, say, 'Vote for me and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.'" <p align="justify">Was the Democratic leadership unaware of the fact that the alleged threat to our security was a partisan program being marketed at the politically most propitious time? At least one of them had no illusions on this score; I discovered today that Rep. Gephardt wrote an op-ed piece for the NY Times on September 27 which referred to all of these statements and added one I'd missed: "last June...a computer disk containing a presentation by Mr. Rove revealed a White House political strategy to focus on the war as a way to 'maintain a positive issue environment'...." Mr. Gephardt didn't want to believe the ugly truth, but finally concluded, "there's no denying it. President Bush himself has decided to play politics with the safety and security of the American people." And to him, it became worse than mere politics: <blockquote><p align="justify">One Republican member of Congress even went on national television to question a Democratic colleague's patriotism and accuse him of hating America, simply for saying we needed a debate on Iraq.... To question people's patriotism for simply raising questions about how a war is to be fought and won, to say that anybody who doesn't support the president's particular policy on national security is against national security, is not only insulting, it's immoral.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Then why go along? Is the argument for immediate, unilateral action so compelling? Apparently it is, to Rep. Gephardt:<br /><br /></p><blockquote><p align="justify">It's clear that in a world plagued by terrorism, protecting our national security means worrying about where terrorists could get their hands on weapons of mass destruction.<br /></p><p align="justify">Around the world, Iraq is the No. 1 candidate for spreading those weapons. We must deal with this diplomatically if we can, but militarily if we must.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Let's grant the premise of the possible spread of Iraqi weapons, even absent much evidence; how does that lead to approval of the resolution? To be repetitious, why now? The answer, given by Mr. Gephardt, by Secretary Rumsfeld and others, is 9-11, but what is the connection? Those terrorists needed only plane tickets and box cutters; others do well with plastic explosive or rifles. In addition, it is possible that invading Iraq will increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks. If homeland security is the question, this plan is the wrong answer.<br /></p><p align="justify">Rep. Gephardt's concluding qualification can't be taken seriously. If he or the President really meant unilateral invasion to be a last resort, a very different resolution should have been adopted. <p align="justify">The UN determined long ago that Iraq was dangerous and that its weapons program needed to be brought under control. However, the UN has been ambivalent and irresolute; it needs a better policy than economic sanctions and occasional bombings. If all of our bluster brings that about, good; if we must take the lead in enforcement, so be it. However, granting the President imperial power and hoping for restraint is foolish and irresponsible. Doing so knowing that the program is being pushed at least in part for political reasons is pathetic. <b><p align="justify">October 18</b><br /></p><p align="justify">As if to lift the veil from any Democrats who did not fully understand that they have been had, the administration has confirmed that it knew of serious violations by North Korea - an evil country, remember - which it somehow did not mention while the anti-Iraq resolution was pending. The only reference to Iraq in the new strategic policy is in this paragraph: <blockquote><p align="justify">At the time of the Gulf War, we acquired irrefutable proof that Iraq's designs were not limited to the chemical weapons it had used against Iran and its own people, but also extended to the acquisition of nuclear weapons and biological agents. In the past decade North Korea has become the world's principal purveyor of ballistic missiles, and has tested increasingly capable missiles while developing its own WMD arsenal....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Despite the twinning of threats by Iraq and North Korea in the policy, they were, in the administration's judgment, unrelated for purposes of deciding whether one of them justified a declaration of war. By the merest coincidence, disclosure of the Korea problem came hours after the President signed the resolution. He then put the final nail in the coffin of Democratic self-respect by hitting the campaign trail.<br /><br /></p><b><p align="justify">October 31</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The two recent statements of American military policy are remarkable documents. The war resolution recently approved by Congress is dangerously sweeping in its delegation of war powers to the President; it also is notable for its manipulation of the facts to create a threat to the United States. The National Security Strategy provides a general framework for the imperial tendencies of the resolution. Perhaps because of its wider scope, the Strategy is an even more seriously flawed statement. <p align="justify">The ostensible focus of the Security Strategy is terrorism: "The United States of America is fighting a war against terrorists of global reach. The enemy is not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism...." However, the first application of the policy is a plan to overthrow a single political regime and person. Although an attempt is made to tie this to terrorism, the administration has not made that case, and one reasonably can doubt that it is the principal motivation. <p align="justify">One of the Strategy's more obvious flaws is that it sets forth a program which its drafters certainly do not want anyone else to adopt. Imagine, for example, India handed this formula: <blockquote><p align="justify">We make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them.<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br /> </p><p align="justify">While [we] will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country;<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br /> </p><p align="justify">...The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, [we] will, if necessary, act preemptively. </p></blockquote><p align="justify">The Strategy has a rather different suggestion for India: "Our involvement...looks first to concrete steps by India and Pakistan that can help defuse military confrontation." We do not seem to be prepared to accept similar suggestions regarding our confrontations.<br /></p><p align="justify">There are other examples of this sort, but in a sense the inconsistencies of the policy are beside the point: this is intended to be a policy in which the rules are different for us than for anyone else. As there is no principle, other than superior force, on which that distinction could be based, this is a policy which can be accepted by any other nation only by coercion, which the drafters apparently think is a viable theory. <p align="justify">The Strategy, as expressed both in the President's foreword and the text, has as its fundamental premise the unmatched military power of the United States. The President tells us, "Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence." The text echoes this: "The United States possesses unprecedented - and unequaled - strength and influence in the world." The inference from strength to influence is dubious; indeed, the events of recent weeks demonstrate that the brandishing of our power has diminished our influence in some ways. The statement would be more accurate if it were to refer to our strength and ability to intimidate. <p align="justify">The Strategy's attitude toward our military power is amazingly simple-minded; essentially it consists of noting that we have the most powerful military in the world and concluding that we can, therefore, do whatever we want. There are at least two major problems with that view. <p align="justify">The first is that at least some of the security threats we face, possibly the most important ones, are of a sort not amenable to unilateral military force. The document repeatedly refers to the dangers posed by terrorism; by my quick count, the words "terrorist," "terrorists" or "terrorism" are used seventy-five times. Superiority in military force will go only so far in combating terrorism. International cooperation will be far more important. That receives occasional mention, but the focus clearly is on unilateral action: "... we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists...." If our only response to terrorism is to invade other countries, we won't make much progress in preventing it.<sup><small>12</small></sup> <p align="justify">The second problem with basing a policy on the assumption of military dominance is that it will not always exist, and in practice may not exist now. If there is any clear lesson from the Vietnam war, it is that theoretical military superiority will not always bring military victory. Our measured response to the disclosure of North Korea's nuclear program undoubtedly is based at least in part on the fact that it would be difficult to defeat and that invading it would put other countries at risk. However, ignoring reality, the policy reaches this level of bluster: <blockquote><p align="justify">It is time to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength. We must build and maintain our defenses beyond challenge. Our military's highest priority is to defend the United States. To do so effectively, our military must: ...dissuade future military competition;...</p></blockquote><p align="justify">Is the last meant seriously? I doubt it. I have difficulty in imagining a recommendation to the President that we invade China in order to prevent it from becoming too strong; even Richard Perle might think twice about that. The policy proceeds from conclusions about the behavior of states; preemption (like the need for an antimissile shield) is premised on the supposed ineffectiveness of deterrence: <blockquote><p align="justify">But deterrence based only upon the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people, and the wealth of their nations. We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries. Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction - weapons that can be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning.</p></blockquote><p align="justify">This is a thoroughly confused statement. Why are "leaders of rogue states" more willing to take risks and less afraid of massive retaliation? What is the significance of rogues' not using "conventional means"? We can concede that Iraq isn't likely to invade the U.S. (or to bomb it, despite the President's fantasies about a "growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles"), but how does the unlikelihood of such "conventional" operations advance an argument for preemption? Is there a known threat of terrorist attacks on us from "rogue states" as opposed to stateless terrorist organizations? Assuming that terrorists desire weapons of mass destruction, are they more likely to obtain them from rogue states than from non-rogues? Do we preemptively attack only the former and hope for the best as to the latter? Does the rather silly definition of "rogue states" in the policy really help us to identify them?<br /></p><p align="justify">That paragraph exemplifies the argument - muddled or disingenuous, according to your appraisal of Bush & Co. - which runs together the concepts of rogue states, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction as though there were a demonstrable and exclusive connection between them. <p align="justify">The document in places wanders rather far from national security issues. Not content with declaring that progress and social justice depend on a free-market economy (there is "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise"), it specifies that it must be a supply-side economy: <blockquote><p align="justify">We will use our economic engagement with other countries to underscore the benefits of policies that generate higher productivity and sustained economic growth, including: pro-growth legal and regulatory policies to encourage business investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial activity; tax policies - particularly lower marginal tax rates - that improve incentives for work and investment;....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">In the section on trade policy, we get doublespeak: "To promote free trade, the United States has developed a comprehensive strategy," which includes this: "Help domestic industries and workers adjust. There is a sound statutory framework for these transitional safeguards which we have used in the agricultural sector and which we are using this year to help the American steel industry." Farm subsidies and steel tariffs as keys to free trade are at least consistent with this administration's obsession with going its own way.<br /></p><div align="justify">__________</div><p align="justify"><br /> </p><p align="justify">The war resolution is introduced by twenty-three recitals. The heart of the matter is a series of clauses about the danger posed by Iraq; all of them in one way or another assert that it is a threat to the U.S. <blockquote><p align="justify">Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br /> </p><p align="justify">Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;<br /></p><div align="justify">***</div><p align="justify"><br /> </p><p align="justify">Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself....</p></blockquote><p align="justify">The first recital is typical of the document as a whole: a claim that the U.S. is in danger, mixed with more general references to Iraq's threat to others and its violations of UN resolutions; the latter somehow are supposed to prove the former. The second recital is factually accurate, although the second example is not much of an indictment given that the U.S. and Britain have been attacking from the air. Both parts of this recital are old news, hardly a basis for our sudden shift of policy. The claim in the third recital that Iraq might directly attack the U.S. is simply nonsense. The danger that it might attack our armed forces obviously is enhanced by putting them in harm's way. The claim that Iraq may give WMD to terrorists leads to the central argument; because of the paucity of evidence of direct threat, the resolution seeks to connect Iraq to terrorism: </p><blockquote><p align="justify">Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq; </p><p align="justify">Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens; </p><p align="justify">Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations...;</p></blockquote><p align="justify">There is little to support the first two; the few contacts revealed come nowhere near showing a connection between Iraq and 9-11 or a meaningful connection to al-Queda. The last recital is at most boilerplate, but it isn't even a sensible observation; what 9-11 underscored, as to weapons, is that terrorism can be a simple, low-tech undertaking. </p><p align="justify">The administration's inability to articulate persuasive reasons for its proposed actions has two implications. The first, obviously, is that we may be embarking on a course which is unjustifiable or disastrous. It is possible to take an action for the wrong reason or no clear reason and still turn out to be right, but the odds are not good and government by luck or retrospective rationale leaves something to be desired. It also is possible that the administration is about to take action for good and sufficient reasons which have been withheld, but it would be naïve to believe that and, in any case, it poses too serious threat to democracy to be tolerated. <p align="justify">The second problem, especially in the case of the National Security Strategy, is that the effect of its impulses are not limited to the immediate case, but may determine our actions in the future and our relations with the world, as well as suggesting to others that unilateralism is the order of the day. <p align="justify">Finally, there is the issue of hypocrisy. Apart from the sections of the Strategy which reveal this, there are, with respect to Iraq, our former actions to contemplate. We tolerated all of Iraq's present sins without declaring that they demanded immediate regime change. In addition, we did business with Iraq up to the eve of the Gulf War and did so again in the recent past; Hallibuton was involved in this. Perhaps this administration simply is wiser than its predecessors and perhaps Vice President Cheney now sees something which escaped him earlier but there is little evidence of either; the "why now" question remains, and casts a cloud of illegitimacy over the present plan.<br />______________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>5/31/03:</strong> The March-April, 2003 issue of <i>Foreign Affairs</i> quoted the <i>Suddeutsche Zeitung</i> on the National Security Strategy: The greatest deficit in the new U.S. doctrine lies in its national self-overestimation, the overemphasis on the military and the ignoring of a system of values and allies. That is why this doctrine will<br />not last. </small><b></p><p align="justify">November 1</b><br /></p><p align="justify">An article in the Washington Post a few days ago presents an example of the possibility that the administration is about to take action for good and sufficient reasons which have been withheld. The article challenges the prevailing theory that the anthrax letters were sent by a lone American. <p align="justify">The reporters claim that "a consensus has emerged in recent months among experts familiar with the technology needed to turn anthrax spores into the deadly aerosol that was sent to Sens. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) that some of the fundamental assumptions driving the FBI's investigation may be flawed." It goes on to discuss difficulties with the FBI theory and to outline possible Iraqi connections. <p align="justify">It isn't clear what to make of the story, beginning with the claim of consensus. Although the article concentrates on Iraq as a possible source, there isn't much to support that. Referring to "Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998," the article states, "Spertzel and more than a dozen experts" interviewed by the Post suggested "investigators might want to reexamine the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism, or try to determine whether weaponized spores may have been stolen by the attacker from an existing, but secret, biodefense program...." However, Dr. Spertzel is the only one of the scientists named who refers to Iraq or explicitly to another state as a possible source. <p align="justify">The reference to "recent months" is ambiguous. To some degree the article restates concerns expressed late last year. An article in the New York Times in December reported that, although the administration had adopted the theory of a lone domestic source, "the sophistication of the anthrax found in the letter mailed to Senator Tom Daschle...has kept Dr. Spertzel and others convinced that Iraq or another foreign power could be behind the attacks." <p align="justify">The Post article is equally ambiguous as to the administration's supposed reaction to the attacks, which it summed up as follows: "Bush administration officials have acknowledged that the anthrax attacks were an important motivator in the U.S. decision to confront Iraq, and several senior administration officials say today that they still strongly suspect a foreign source - perhaps Iraq - even though no one has publicly said so." The statement permits at least two interpretations. It may mean that the administration officials were initially convinced that Iraq was involved, but that the case was not made and now there is only suspicion that there might be a connection. It may mean that the desire to invade Iraq already existed and the anthrax attacks reinforced that urge, perhaps without regard to any conviction as to a connection. <p align="justify">In any case, it is difficult to believe that the administration presently thinks that there is a connection; if it did, it would have ample incentive to say so: it would be far easier to justify its determination to topple Saddam - and its preference to do so without restrictions imposed by the UN - if it could tie Iraq to the anthrax attacks. That connection would do almost as well as a link to 9-11 in justifying a retaliatory war. The danger of further biological attacks would make a better case for preemptive action than anything offered to date. Unless the administration is playing so deep a game that it prefers to appear inept, the connection must not have been made. <p align="justify">Director Mueller said today that the FBI continues to favor the domestic theory.<sup><small>1</small></sup><br />_______________<br /><br /><small>1. <strong>4/11/03:</strong> The Seattle Times today carried a report from the Baltimore Sun that Army research has concluded that the anthrax could have been produced "using simple methods, inexpensive equipment and limited expertise, according to [anonymous] government sources familiar with the work." Dr. Spertzel still wouldn't rule out Iraq.</small> <b></p><p align="justify">November 2</b><br /></p><p align="justify"><i>[This refers to Tim Eyman's tax-cutting initiatives (see November 6, 2001). Most of his proposals have been directed, unsuccessfully, to reducing annual auto license tab fees to $30.]</i><br /></p><p align="justify">Seattle decides tomorrow, via "Seattle Citizen Petition No. 1," whether to build a monorail line from West Seattle to Ballard. This is, if one believes the proponents, the Elevated Transportation Company, the first leg of a more extensive system. <p align="justify">The monorail proposal is, in terms of planning, on a par with the disastrous Sound Transit light-rail program. At least the latter was a serious, if inept, attempt to deal with the area's transportation mess. The monorail is a sort of cult object, supported less on the basis of any promise of utility than because it somehow seems so "Seattle." <p align="justify">The Times ran op-ed columns pro and con on Sunday. The argument in favor, signed by the chairman and vice chairwoman of the ETC, said that people should vote for the monorail because it has "pizzazz." <blockquote><p align="justify">Yes, pizzazz! Because monorails are cool and a lot of people think Seattle has been losing its edge. We are buried in process and by those who are opposed to everything. Some say the last cool thing Seattle did here [sic] was when the people rose up against the political leadership and saved the Pike Place Market.<br />With a public vote! Sound familiar?</p></blockquote><p align="justify">People should vote for the monorail, authorizing expenditure of $1.5 billion in 2002 dollars for (what is hoped to be) the first phase of a controversial transportation system because it's cool, or has pizzazz, as you prefer. The reference to the Market suggests that doing things by public vote is cool, so the message apparently is: vote yes on the monorail because you've been given the chance to vote on the monorail. </p><p align="justify">Building a transportation system by initiative should be popular with Tim Eyman's fans, who want to vote on anything concerned with spending money. However, the method of financing the monorail won't be. Funding will be provided by a tax imposed on vehicle license tabs. Eyman's latest initiative, I-776, also on tomorrow's ballot, seeks (again) to bestow upon us the blessings of pure, no-additives-allowed, $30 annual auto license tabs. According to monorail proponents, the average car in Seattle is worth $6,700, which would produce an annual additional tab tax of $94. So much for purity. The proponents threw in an additional snub to Eyman by describing the tab<br />tax as "both economically and environmentally progressive. It costs more for people who own more expensive cars and provides an incentive for people to own fewer cars." The latter may be wishful thinking. </p><p align="justify"><b>November 6</b> </p><p align="justify">The weather until today has been unusually good - glorious for this damp corner of the world - leading to the best show of fall color here that I can remember. It's gray and drizzly this morning, a fitting comment on the election, a decision to hand complete power to an accidental president who aims for an imperial plutocracy. Oh, well; we get through Seattle winters and this too will pass. <p align="justify">Whether it passes sooner or later and the amount of damage done in the meantime will depend in part on whether the Democrats find a voice, and a program. <b><p align="justify">November 16</b><br /></p><p align="justify">I attended a seminar Monday on the subject "Will September 11 Change the Constitution?" There were perceptive comments over the course of its two hours, but on the whole it was notable for its superficiality. The discussion was, of course, in terms of the war on terrorism. At one point, a member of the audience asked for a definition of that sort of war; none was forthcoming and there was no serious discussion of whether "war" is an appropriate name for the present effort. <p align="justify">Two panelists edged up to the subject, one by offering the opinion that "war" is a rhetorical device, the other by asking whether there is any analogy between 9-11 and Oklahoma City. The moderator did not follow up on these points and thereby missed an opportunity to put a test to those who would justify administration policies as part of the restrictions necessary in wartime. <p align="justify">Why were the 9-11 attacks an act of war but the Oklahoma City bombing a law enforcement issue? There is a considerable difference in the number killed, 3,030 v. 168, but that isn't enough to make the distinction. Is it simply that foreigners were involved in 9-11? If, instead of those attacks, Richard Reid had succeeded in blowing up his plane, would we be at war, and with whom? The combination of the number of casualties and the foreign source is significant, but is it definitive? <p align="justify">To some degree, the attack on Afghanistan, which clearly was an act of war, has created language and a mindset which has been carried over to every other effort. The determination to invade Iraq reinforces the sense of a war footing. <p align="justify">"War" certainly is being used as a rhetorical device, to great and opportunistic effect. The use of the term is not unprecedented: as was pointed out, we have had a war on drugs, a war on poverty, etc. However, no one took those labels literally; here we are doing so and are basing conclusions about constitutional principles on the assumption that a literal interpretation is proper. <p align="justify">Leaving aside how we came to adopt the term, what are its implications? The discussion of this topic was limited to whether specific, otherwise objectionable policies, <i>e.g.,</i> detention without charge, are justified by the circumstances. As the moderator put it provocatively, must a few bones be broken to win the battle? One of the defects of the discussion as a whole and of this approach to invasion of rights is that no one addressed the issue of duration. The assumption seemed to be that all of this is temporary, that the emergency somehow will end. One panelist referred to President Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, arguing that it was the price paid for holding the nation together. However, the comparison may not work: the Civil War eventually was over, so even if suspension was wrong, it was temporary; there is no basis for an<br />assumption that terrorism will conveniently go away after four or five years. If a risk of terrorist attacks places us on a war footing, we will be there permanently. It is time to reject the metaphor; otherwise, the government will have an excuse to do whatever it wants, forever. </p><p align="justify">There was disagreement as to whether we face a constitutional crisis. If we accept the notion of permanent war, the answer is yes. <b><p align="justify">November 29</b><br /></p><p align="justify"><i>[The counties referred to in this note are in generally liberal Western Washington, except for Whitman, which is in the generally conservative east but is the site of Washington State University. The comment on Mr. Eyman's credibility refers to his admission that he diverted to his personal use funds contributed to his initiative committee. He eventually paid a fine of $50,000.]</i><br /></p><p align="justify">Initiative 776 passed by a significant but hardly overwhelming margin, 51.47 to 48.53. Six counties voted no, Jefferson, King, Kitsap, San Juan, Thurston and Whitman: the west side plus WSU. The favorable vote varied widely, from 69.6 in Grant County to 32.1 in San Juan. Both the cumulative and highest county margins were down from Eyman's best; the public may be wearying of his $30-tab obsession, or it may reflect the damage to his personal credibility. <p align="justify">Eyman already has drafted another initiative, I-800, this one to require a 75% favorable vote on any new tax, especially the dreaded income tax, or any tax increase. No text is available yet, and it appears to be a work in progress. According to the Permanent Offense website, I-800 originally applied only to the legislature and carried an effective date of January 1, 2003. Now it applies to cities and counties as well and would be effective November 5, 2002. The change was prompted by announcements by local governments that, pending the outcome of a constitutional challenge to I-776, they will continue to collect tab taxes. This is prudent given Eyman's record in court. Tim, however, is not a man to be trifled with; hence the revision. <p align="justify">His web site shows Eyman wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with "the return of I-601/spending and taxation limits." This is a little odd, as the law created by 601 hasn't gone anywhere, although it was modified a few years ago when Republicans in the legislature suddenly found it to be inconvenient. In addition, 601 limited spending, not taxes. I-800 more closely parallels the invalid I-695 (but substituting legislative supermajorities for public votes) and I-602 (defeated the year 601 was passed), which would have limited taxation. <p align="justify">The "politicians" Eyman derides play into his hands by assuming that he has a personal following and great influence, even though he has been revealed to be dishonest and sticky-fingered. It is true that there are many people in the state who will buy his line, but that's because they have convinced themselves that they are overtaxed and will vote for anything which limits taxes. Elmer Fudd could sponsor an anti-tax initiative and command a following. The "politicians" need to forget Eyman and start persuading people that government services are valuable and that, like everything else, they have to be paid for. <b><p align="justify">December 2</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Senator Kerry announced, more or less, that he's running for president. Whether this is a wise decision is impossible to tell. President Bush would be unbeatable at this point and the prospect of permanent war certainly creates the possibility that he will still be so two years from now. However, he is fundamentally very vulnerable and, if the war mantle ever were stripped from him, he could sink as abruptly and disastrously as his father did. <b><p align="justify">December 8</b><br /></p><p align="justify">King and Pierce Counties have filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of Initiative 776 and have obtained a temporary injunction blocking implementation until a hearing on January 31. According to news reports, the plaintiffs have raised several issues, including impairment of revenue pledged to pay bonds, the old reliable one - subject rule, and the fact that voters across the state were allowed, in effect, to repeal local taxes. The last is the most interesting. <p align="justify">All 39 counties voted on 776. Four counties, King, Pierce, Snohomish and Douglas, impose a local-option tax which 776 repeals. Douglas, Pierce and Snohomish produced majorities for 776, so presumably those voters decided that they no longer wanted that tax and, subject only to other constitutional issues, they ought to be able to make that decision. However, King County voted against 776; why should the rest of the state - or, to be more accurate, the 33 counties which voted for 776 - be able to tell us that we can't tax ourselves? I don't know how this will shake out as a constitutional issue, but as political theory it isn't sound. <b><p align="justify">December 9</b><br /></p><p align="justify">A column in the NY Times yesterday decried the tendency of newscasts to substitute participles (gerunds? - some sort of verb-derived part of speech) for verbs. "In North Dakota, high winds making life difficult...." "A Big Apple accident, two taxicabs plowing into crowds of shoppers The author directed his comments primarily toward cable news, <i>i.e.,</i> Fox News and CNN, but noted that the usage turns up on network news programs as well. I've noticed it mostly on the Nightly Business Report on PBS: "On the Dow today, IBM rising, Boeing falling...." As the author points<br />out, none of the rationales for this - immediacy, economy, conversational tone - make any sense. </p><p align="justify">Another example of decline is punctuation. Advertising readerboards are perhaps the most consistent offenders and the most common sin is inserting an apostrophe in front of every s. Advertising seems to be especially prone to misplacing apostrophes, but this error is widespread. I had a secretary some years ago who could get the apostrophe wrong whatever the situation: if one was called for, it was omitted; if none was appropriate, it went in; as a variation, it came after the s when it should have been before, and vice versa. <p align="justify">I assume that those errors are due to not knowing or not caring about proper usage, but punctuation also is subject to fads. The P-I reported a year or so ago that the hyphen is passé and "increasingly is being replaced with periods, underscores or, especially, asterisks." We were told that replacing the hyphen conveys "a more European feel" (so would reversing commas and periods in numbers; surely a little confusion is a small price to pay for being more European) and that using underscores "creates a hip, high-tech feeling." It concluded this excursion into communications wonderland by inquiring, "So does anyone know what's going on with the uestion mark?" <p align="justify">As implied, I think, by the last sentence, the question mark also is passé. Consider William Greider’s book <i>Who Will Tell The People.</i> Exactly what the editor or publisher thought would be conveyed by omitting the question mark from a question is a mystery. Someone failed to the author that the book would be in the new mode; his Introduction states that Chapter Two is entitled Who Will Tell The People? (They also forgot to mention that Chapter Two, as published, is entitled Well-Kept Secrets. ) <p align="justify">The title of one of Stephen Carter's books is <i>(integrity).</i> Presumably this also is intended to convey some sort of originality by way of creative typesetting, but the combination of lower case and parentheses suggests that the publisher believes that the subject is something to be discussed only in whispers. <b><p align="justify">December 10</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, on the eve of his departure from office last month, lamented the inability of the Service to collect taxes due. Although all indications are that he is right that taxes are being avoided regularly and blatantly, legally and not, a few delinquent accounts are being worked. I know this because one of them is mine. <p align="justify">To be more precise, one of them pertains to a partnership of which I was a member up to 1993. Last November, I received a notice stating that the firm owed $35.10, of which $17.20 was the principal amount, the rest interest. It indicated that the debt arose from the unemployment tax return for 1992, but offered no explanation of the basis for the claim. The form was unsigned and did not identify any office, department or section. It came from Ogden, which is roughly equivalent to saying that something came from Washington, D.C. It recited that there had been prior notices, which was not true (a fact later acknowledged by the IRS). It did give a phone number, which was in a different city and apparently a different office, department, section, etc.<br />(Even other IRS offices seem to despair of getting through to anyone in Ogden). After the obligatory excursion through the telephone tree, I spoke to someone who agreed that a claim for pennies nearly nine years old wasn't worth anyone's time. The file would be closed. </p><p align="justify">Of course, you know the sequel. This November, I received a virtually identical notice. It was dated November 25 (last year it was November 26), and the deadline for payment was December 5 rather than last year's December 6. Diligence, consistency and even a sense of tradition are alive at the IRS. With additional interest, the claim had increased to $37.31. <p align="justify">Being a good and paranoid citizen, I called again. This time I got through after a shorter wait but as a penance was given the full bureaucratic treatment. At one point the conversation came to a halt because my interlocutor insisted on having the address of the partnership office at the time of the events in question. I have no idea whether this was necessary information which she did not have or whether it was a test to see whether I was really who I claimed to be, there no doubt being a significant risk that a stranger to the account would find calling the IRS amusing. In any case, accelerating senility has made it impossible for me to remember such details as the address of my office in 1992. I pointed out that the claim was nearly ten years old, and that one reason for statutes of limitation is that even more alert folk tend to forget things and to toss records in less time. The agent, or whatever she is, went off the line for several minutes and came back prepared to proceed despite my obstructive behavior. Eventually, she agreed to close the file. Watch for next year's bulletin. <p align="justify">The article on the departure of Mr. Rossotti, the former Commissioner, noted that some of the IRS' computers date to the Kennedy administration. Perhaps old computers can store only old information. If the Service ever gets new ones, it may be able to go after the taxpayers (I use the term descriptively) who are, right now, under the IRS' nose, avoiding payment of millions. <b><p align="justify">December 13</b><br /></p><p align="justify">We think of the attitude of Scrooge in<i> A Christmas Carol</i> as an anachronism, or an exaggeration for effect, or both. Early in the story, he is asked to contribute to a fund for the poor. He inquires whether the prisons and poorhouses still are in operation. Upon being told that many would rather die than go there, he responds that if they would rather die, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Perhaps we can trust that no one could think that now. <p align="justify">After Scrooge has been partly enlightened, The Ghost of Christmas Present reveals two children, Want and Ignorance, hiding beneath his robe. Scrooge asks, "'Have they no refuge or resource?" To his chagrin, his words are thrown back to him: "Are there no prisons?" "Are there no workhouses?" In the George C. Scott film version, a line is added to the scene which perfectly describes the modern cure for such chagrin: "Cover them," Scrooge says; "I do not wish to see them." Unlike Scrooge, we have not progressed beyond that point. Perhaps we need a visitation from the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. <p align="justify">The welfare reform act of 1996 was an exercise in putting poverty out of sight. Tired of having to contemplate the poor, Congressional Republicans, with Clinton's consent, covered them with the robe of federalism. They satisfied their consciences by sending some money to the states along with the poor, but tied the money to rules designed to ensure that idleness would be punished. The unreconstructed Scrooge would have approved: "I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned - they cost enough." <p align="justify">Hard times have made the poor visible again. The necessity of reauthorizing the welfare devolution should force a closer look, one which will reveal that, even before the economy turned down, many were worse off working than on welfare. Of course, if our only aim is to cover them again, we can continue the program and hope that the economy will improve enough to produce the required inventory of minimum-wage jobs. <b><p align="justify">December 18</b><br /></p><p align="justify">A Scrooge analogy, although not presented explicitly as such, appeared in Tom Toles' cartoon in the Washington Post yesterday. A plutocrat, complete with top hat, looks out his window and sees a woman waiting, in the snow, at a bus stop. He says to himself, "Look at that poor woman out there. I have everything. She has nothing. This special time of year makes me want to give her something I have too much of." So he leans out the window and yells, "You should take some of my tax burden, you lazy freeloader." <p align="justify">On December 3, Paul Krugman found another modern Scrooge, the Wall Street Journal. He noted, in his New York Times column, that its editorial-page editors "are upset that some low-income people pay little or nothing in income taxes." They referred to those earning $12,000 as "lucky duckies" because they pay less than 4% in taxes. Professor Krugman pointed out that even the math was biased: the 4% refers only to income tax; payroll taxes would push the bite to something like 20%. <p align="justify">Robert Reich, in this month's American Prospect, noted the regressive nature of payroll taxes and the government's increasing dependance on them. According to his numbers, payroll taxes accounted for 2% of federal revenue at the end of World War II and 37% now. (The tables I could find on the IRS website show the 2001 share to be 32%; Professor Reich may have better data). We're absurdly dependant on this unfair tax. On our present course, so succinctly portrayed by Mr. Toles, we will become more so. <b><p align="justify">December 20</b><br /></p><p align="justify">The welfare policy of the Great Society, we have been told repeatedly, was a costly failure; therefore it had to be abandoned. That analysis is sufficient for a program whose purpose merely is providing for needy people. A more forgiving standard is required for really important projects, such as a missile shield. Therefore, we are proceeding with that program despite its being a costly failure; in fact, deployment was ordered days after its most recent unsuccessful test. Unlike welfare, which eventually was repudiated by liberals as well as conservatives, this irrationality has produced virtually no comment. <b><p align="justify">December 24</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Welfare reform has given us a new term, "the working homeless," people employed at "low-wage jobs the government shepherded them to, jobs that perversely afford them too little money to pay for shelter." So we are informed by a column by Francis X. Clines on the editorial page of the New York Times today. To be specific, he tells us, using St. Louis statistics, it requires a wage of $12 an hour to pay for a two-bedroom apartment, but the wage of many female single parents is likely to be at or near the $5.15 minimum wage. So they live on the street, or on the charity of friends and relatives. They have done what we demanded, and still suffer privation. <p align="justify">Welfare reform was long on a blinkered form of moral principle and short on compassion, long on theory and short on realism. <p align="justify">Mr. Clines has attempted to introduce us to the working homeless, "if we care to know them." But we do not; we still are Scrooge confronting the Ghost of Christmas Present and his destitute children; we do not wish to see them. <b><p align="justify">December 26</b><br /></p><p align="justify">Happily, there are exceptions. Today's P-I reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated eight million dollars to a local program designed to provide decent housing and other assistance to homeless families. <b><p align="justify">December 28</b><br /></p><p align="justify">I don't know whether I could sustain an argument that beer commercials are an indicator of the state of the culture, but a pair of them seem like a fair reflection to me. <p align="justify">In the mid-80s, Miller ran an ad at Christmas showing a horse-drawn sleigh accompanied by "I'll be home for Christmas." It was a beautiful little piece, in addition to being very sentimental. <p align="justify">This year, Coors has been running ads which are crude, stupid and ugly. I haven't thought of the 80s as a golden age, but everything is relative.</p>Gerald G. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18272770512487580818noreply@blogger.com0