All Alone in the Night

I had no hard opinion on Tom Vilsack's proposal to index Social Security benefits to prices rather than wages, although off the top of my head I see no real problems with reducing the higher end of Social Security benefits to ensure that the program doesn't chew up the entire federal budget over time. I did note that hilzoy of Obsidian Wings did not like the idea, and she seemed to be joined in that dislike by many other prominent lefty bloggers. But now Coyote Blog points out a rather interesting conundrum regarding that dislike: a number of lefties have complained for some time that real wages are stagnant. Kevin Drum stands out in my memory as having been particularly outraged by that issue.

To summarize Coyote Blog's argument, if wages aren't growing, then indexing Social Security benefits to prices ought to increase benefits rather than decrease them. The only way indexing SS to prices would decrease benefits were if wages are growing faster than prices, which would mean that real wages are also growing since purchasing power is increasing.

I have little interest in claims of hypocracy, as Coyote Blog makes; hypocrisy, as they say, is the homage vice pays to virtue. But I am curious if the same people who say real wages are stagnant also think Vilsack's proposal is a bad idea because it would reduce SS benefits, because that does appear to be contradictory. Any economists out there want to enlighten me?

Update: typo fixed.

Where is the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution when we need it? For those who don't recall, and that clearly includes most of the judiciary, the ninth amendment states that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." It was placed into the Bill of Rights because of fears that the enumeration of rights contained in the first eight amendments to the Constitution would lead to all other rights no longer being protected by the government. Those fears, we've seen, have been prescient.

Today's case in point: New York City's law that bans people from dancing in bars, upheld by the state Supreme Court yesterday. Apparently written originally to take on speakeasies, the Supremes ruled that neither the state nor federal constitutions provided people with a right to dance.

Anyone who has ever seen me dance knows that I am not particularly aggrieved by not having the right to do so. But there is an important principle at stake when the state determines that it can arrest people for dancing. Government is supposed to exist to protect people's rights, not to curtail them. While it is true that any law curtails people's freedoms, good laws do so in order to protect other freedoms. Laws against murder or rape, for example, curtail freedoms that people in societies should not have. Human beings have an unfortunate tendency to want to force others to live the 'right' way, which is why Americans wrote the Constitution in the first place. By strictly limiting the reach of the federal government and making the rights of the people virtually unbounded, the Constitution was intended to protect the rights of all.

But the Constitution is only a piece of paper. It must be enforced by government, and government has a vested interest in going well beyond the reach of the Constitution. Which brings us to where we stand today, where a law barring people from dancing is not seen as restricting protected rights. Yet if government can make laws against people doing something as utterly harmless as dancing, what can the government not do? Very little, it would seem.

That's politics for you. Lying to a grand jury or stealing classified documents is no big deal as long as you have that all-important D after your name, but God help you if you have the temerity to do something like that as a Republican. So I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby discovered this past week when he was convicted of lying to a grand jury about his role in the infamous Plame Affair.

I have little sympathy for Mr. Libby. Republicans were once expected to be the party that placed national security above partisan politics, though that reputation was doubtless markedly overstated, to be charitable. It seems pretty clear that no laws were broken in revealing that Valerie Plame was the reason Joe Wilson made his tea-drinking trip to Niger, but despite that, Plame's decision to involve herself in partisan politics did not make it appropriate for the White House to expose her, because her work as a covert operative could well be damaged even if she hasn't been covert for years. Spies are often discovered by making connections, and anyone Plame recruited became an obvious target for their nation's counterintelligence agencies once her identity was broached. The White House was wrong to do what they did, and they deserved to get clobbered in the media and at the polls for it. But listening to people who cheer when classified information is leaked that damages the administration suddenly discover a concern for national security when that too could hurt the administration was a bit difficult to stomach, and I confess I was somewhat concerned that a lot of leftists may have hurt themselves performing such a sharp turnaround.

Where was this concern when Sandy Berger decided to sneak classified documents out of the National Archives and then destroy them? He got off with a fine, a slap on the wrist, having ensured that any history of the Clinton administration now will be missing who-knows-what data about their anti-terrorism efforts. I do not subscribe to the theory that Berger was destroying information that would have been harmful to the Clinton administration, but his actions have ensured that we will never know for sure. Was his crime worse than Libby's? What harm accrued because Libby lied to a grand jury about a matter in which no crime was committed? I seem to recall a lot of people complaining about President Clinton's impeachment over perjury; after all, he only lied about sex, right? Of course, his lies were arguably more self-serving than Libby's, as Clinton would eventually settled Paula Jones' lawsuit to the tune of $850,000 (and it is not hard to visualize how differently that entire episode would have played out had Clinton borne the scarlet 'R').

We have come to a time in our history where there are two separate systems of justice, one for Democrats and one for Republicans. (OK, really there's four: Democrats, Republicans, rich people and the rest of us. Guess where most convictions come from.) It seems not too much of a stretch to suggest that this might be a bad thing. President Bush and his administration have already demonstrated the lengths they are willing to go in order to try and cement their hold on power. How much further might Democrats be willing to go when they can rest easy with the knowledge they won't even have to fear serious prosecution?

Jumping off from Zathras' article regarding the dearth of civility in contemporary America, I'd like to add a few thoughts of my own regarding the direction America is moving in.

As I noted in our first entry here, we may be standing at the door of a sea change in world history. The 20th century was indisputably the American century, ushered in by Teddy Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, punctuated by the United States' balance-tipping entry into the First World War and America's central role in the century's second war to end all wars, and cemented with the decline of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the sole superpower. But the world is a dynamic place. Where America stood at the dawn of the 21st century, while differing in scope, was not all that different from where Greece and Rome and Britain stood at earlier times in human history. And each of those nations, in their turn, saw their influence ebb or disappear completely. While that does not mean that it is certain that America will follow a similar course, such an end does not seem implausible, either.

Sole powers are rarely popular, and with good reason. No matter how benign a hyperpower may wish to be, it will fail and its failures will generate resentment. Europe dislikes the U.S., among other reasons, because it is a painful reminder that Europe's time of world dominance has passed. Much of the Islamic world despises the U.S. because its culture undermines the foundations of their belief system. The Arab world hates the U.S. for its support of Israel and its perceived role in keeping the Palestinians subjugated. South America dislikes the U.S.'s historical penchant for interfering in their affairs. In many of these cases the U.S. can defend itself. The U.S. can hardly be blamed if other nations like American culture, for example, and the U.S. did not cause Europe to lose its relative influence over the rest of the globe. And when the U.S. has interfered overseas, it claims to do so for the best of reasons: good intentions. Such intentions are cold consolation for people whose families have been uprooted or killed in wars financed by American dollars, however, and many good intentions have ended in situations akin to what we now see in Iraq, where 26 million Iraqis live lives flavored with omnipresent fears of where and when the next bomb will explode.

Nor would isolationism solve America's problems, although it might well do less harm than America's current course. When nations are not cursing the United States for its interference, they are complaining that the U.S. is failing by not getting involved in some project or other; witness the common complaint held by many that the U.S. is at once wrong to be in Iraq and not to be in Darfur. The fact the United States possesses such great power relative to the rest of the globe means that people will generally want to see that power put to use for their pet causes. Recall Madeleine Albright's famous complaint of Colin Powell: what good is a great military if you can't use it? America's possession of a good military has led it into no small number of cases where it has chosen to rely on military force because it could. As a wise man once observed, when you're good with a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail to you. So it is with American power: because it exists, people are going to want to see it used to further their own ends.

Add to this the changes that have reshaped American society over the past century. America was founded on the ideal of a place where people could come and be and do as they pleased. If you didn't like where you were, you could light out for the territories and live as you chose. The frontier closed down in the late nineteenth century, and American society had to change to deal with that. There was some degree of consensus for the first half of the century, albeit a consensus maintained primarily by the exclusion of nonwhites and females from power in almost every field. As other Americans were finally permitted to pursue that original American dream and more and more people shifted from relatively independent farms to cities where specialization and cooperation were required to survive, the consensus view of what America was or should be began to dissolve, and nothing has yet emerged to replace that.

Americans today are increasingly Americans only as an accident of geography. Even on September 11, 2001, when most Americans pulled together, if only briefly, in the wake of those attacks against them, filmmaker Michael Moore was asking why the terrorists had struck New York when New York was opposed to President Bush. In his logic, the ties that bound New Yorkers to the rest of the country were less important than their differences, and the terrorists should have realized that. Moore exists towards the extreme end of the spectrum, but his thinking is not irrational. Politically, the United States in many ways has split into two disparate nations (a tremendous oversimplification, of course, but bear with me) as we can see here.

There remain points where we are all generally in agreement, but do they truly bind us together as Americans? In 2000 and 2004, leftists threatened to flee the country if the Republicans won, although few actually were willing to go that far. Right wingers seem less predisposed to that type of threat, but the rhetoric leading up to the 2006 elections was redolent with claims that voting Democratic was tantamount to handing the U.S. over to Osama bin Laden, a vicious claim that certainly implied that the Democrats were not fit to defend the country from its enemies, whether willfully or not. For a republic to survive in the long term, its citizens need to be confident that the system works; that whoever the electorate chooses to represent it, that person will be (on average) reasonably competent and will do a decent if not inspiring job. If enough people believe that is unlikely to happen, they will consider other methods to accomplish that goal. If enough Republicans and Democrats believe that the other party will produce leaders that will damage the country (and President Bush has done a great deal to justify that belief for Democrats), they will seek ways to ensure that those candidates cannot reach office. This is the justification for much of the electoral fraud seen around the world: the other guy would be a disaster, so it's ok to break the rules to make sure he doesn't get elected. It is a significant leap to decide that it is also ok to resort to violence to prevent such occurences, but that is merely a difference in scale once the decision it's ok to break the rules has been made.

America is not at that point yet. Despite President Bush's victory in 2004, the Democrats did not flee the country en masse. I am aware of no attempts to kill Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid to derail the Democrats from pursuing their political agenda now that they are in the majority. Nor can I say with any certainty that this is necessarily going to change.

Despite that, I wonder just how long habit will out. Different parts of the country are growing less alike as time goes by. Having lived in many parts of America, I can attest that life is very different in different regions. American culture still exists, but it is a backdrop to the dominant culture in those areas, and it does not seem implausible that the people of America will grow further apart with time as those cultures continue to develop. As the federal government continues to grow in power, will there come a day when some subordinate elements of America decide that they no longer wish to have their lives controlled by distant populations with little chance for the locals to control their own destiny.

We have seen this before, of course. The American South broke away from the union in 1861 because they feared (probably rightly) that the federal government would force emancipation on them. That schism led to the greatest conflict yet fought in the western hemisphere, and the bloodiest conflict the United States has yet suffered. A future attempt to break away from the federal government might lead to the same thing, a far deadlier concept in an era when weapons far outstrip the destructive capabilities available from 1861-1865. Any such breakup, therefore, would need to be amicable if it were not to risk horrific devastation. Unfortunately, habit and fear of change would be likely to defeat any amicable moves towards separation; it would likely only occur if one side felt that it was the only option, and would then almost certainly lead to the federal government attempting to put it down violently once again.

Yet there is something perversely tempting about the idea of breaking the United States into a number of smaller states. Unlike 1861, there is no great moral issue that would be exacerbated by separation. Geography would ensure a great degree of cooperation among the new nations, which would probably retain some European Union-style agreements that would still allow people to travel without passports or undue paperwork. Smaller nations would allow people a greater degree of say in how their government ran. And an American military divided into four to six separate forces would no longer present such a tempting stick for leaders seeking to impose their preferences on faraway places, but would still be easily integrated if necessary for a truly defensive requirement.

I have no illusions about the likelihood of this occurring. American history has been one of greater centralized authority almost since the day the Constitution was adopted. I see little reason to expect that to change without a major upheaval. Which leaves unanswered the question of what may happen when that central authority does something people decide goes too far, an occurrence that is a matter of when, not if.

My campaign is a disaster, Moe. I hate the public so much! If only they'd elect me. I'd make 'em pay! Aw, Moe, how do I make 'em like me?

Homer Simpson, "Trash of the Titans"

Among the myriad offenses committed by Karl Rove, of whom I expect someone on the left will claim causes tooth decay and cancer before the end of 2008, is that he has polarized the electorate. Before Rove, goes the narrative, the citizens of the U.S. existed in peaceful harmony, presumably singing on a hill somewhere while sipping Coca-Cola. When President Bush came to power, Rove advised him that the middle was barren of voters and the base was where votes could be found, and Bush governed on that assumption, throwing bipartisanship to the wolves. And so the Democrats were reluctantly forced into opposition because the evil Rove would not permit them any role in government.

That narrative is powerful in no small part because there's some truth in it. As a cynic once observed, the best way to get people to swallow a big lie is to wrap it in a kernel of truth, and the ratio of lie to truth is much better in this case. While the Bush administration did make some bipartisan moves early in the first term (No Child Left Behind is likely the best example), that tendency disappeared fast and was nowhere in evidence in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when the President appears to have made little effort to bring the Democrats into the planning process in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and little appears to have changed up until the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections which have required Bush to shift gears.

But is it possible that Rove was right? Over at Obsidian Wings, a site that is at least theoretically devoted to conversation across party lines, the conversation regarding presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has produced the following gems:

if she gets the nomination we will all vote for her because, well, have you seen any those repub candidates? Arg!

Not only vote for her, but work tirelessly to get her elected.

I should add: of course I will support her over any GOP candidate now running, because I think she'd make a better President than any of them. (Good Lord, what a weak field.)

So, to sum up, HRC is a bad candidate and we don't want her, but we'd vote for Genghis Khan before marking a ballot next to a Republican candidate's name. Exaggeration? Only because Khan won't be running for president on any slate. Those people aren't going to vote Republican for president, period. Which is their business. But it rings a trifle hollow when they then complain that the Republicans don't seem interested in listening to their opinions. Why on Earth would they?

President Bush has expanded federal involvement in education like no other President in history and is responsible for the biggest new entitlement program since the Great Society, and Democrats still hate him. Oh, those programs aren't any good, they complain, demonstrating a shocking lack of foresight. Whether the programs are good or not, Bush has established the federal role for both of them, and if there's one thing we've learned about the federal government it is that it never lets go of anything once it has sunk its teeth into it. So the merits of the programs Bush has instituted, while important, pale in comparison to his having brought the federal government into those areas. Had a Democratic president tried either of those moves, Republicans would have fought him tooth and nail. Now those programs are locked in, and the Democrats can 'fix' them at their leisure. Regardless of Bush's actions overseas, Democrats ought to be on their knees worshipping him for giving them two openings they might never have gotten on their own.

Instead we have nominally thinking people pretty much demonstrating Rove's thesis: their votes are decided long before the first primary ballot is cast. Which means there is absolutely no electoral reason for Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter; if it seems like I'm picking on the Democrats, that's only because I'd rather wade through Obsidian Wings' comments section than RedState's; certainly President Bush's attacks on Democrats who supported the Iraq war in 2002 demonstrates the principle as well) to compromise with Democrats, because there aren't any votes to be had there. And in the modern era of American politics, where getting elected is far more important than doing anything once you are, that carries a lot of weight.

This does not actually mean Karl Rove was correct in his thesis. Whatever its stated purpose, Obsidian Wings is dominated by Democrats, not centrists, and even in an ideal world it would be ridiculous to expect registered Democrats to vote Republican save in unusual situations. There may, in fact, be a reservoir of centrist voters who are looking for candidates who are more interested in doing what's right than ensuring their reelection. American voting results, however, don't provide much support for that thesis. And so we careen merrily along, two separate peoples forced to live together via an accident of geography.

My earlier post about changing how the military treats women included a link to a Salon article about women and war. While much of the article is good, it does include a claim by Janis Karpinski, a former general who was in command at Abu Ghraib when many of the worst abuses there were committed, that female soldiers were dying of dehydration in Iraq because they were afraid to use the latrines. Like every other word that passes Karpinski's lips, that's a lie, and Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority has the goods on this one.

That doesn't take away from my piece, nor the rest of the Salon article's accounts of some of the many problems female soldiers face, but I would rather chew my own foot off than even suggest Karpinski might be in any way, shape, or form credible, as I noted in an earlier comment.

One of the primary complaints I've seen raised against Hillary Rodham Clinton as she pursues the Democratic nomination for president is that she appears to have no center of beliefs. Similar to complaints made against her husband, she is said to be strictly poll-driven, and therefore is not a good choice for president. Yet her interview in the New York Times this morning seems to thoroughly dispel that notion.

In the interview Clinton says that as president she would maintain a smaller garrison of U.S. troops in Iraq to deter Iran, protect the Kurds, and go after al Qaeda. That hardly seems like a response calculated to pull in votes. The Democrats are looking for a candidate who will get the troops out of Iraq the day after they're inaugurated, if not sooner. If Clinton were simply looking to maximize her chances for getting the nomination, she'd steer far clear of any hint she'd keep troops in Iraq any longer than absolutely necessary. Nor does saying she'd keep troops in Iraq necessarily help her in the general election, as most Americans either want the U.S. to do what's necessary to win in Iraq or get out, not steer some middle course that leaves U.S. troops still coming home in boxes without fixing the problem.

In point of fact, Clinton's response is one of the most realistic I've read from a presidential candidate in some time. Most candidates offer weasel words and lies; consider how many candidates have promised to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, for example. Then when they get into office, reality intrudes and U.S. foreign policy goes on generally unchanged. (This, btw, is why I chuckle when people claim we wouldn't be Iraq right now if Al Gore had won in 2000. History shows us that predicting what a person will do as President by their actions as a private citizen is a fool's game. How many Confederates assumed that Abe Lincoln wouldn't go to war over secession based on his virulently antiwar credentials until 1860?) The standard answer I'd expect from most candidates would have been either some variation of 'we'll have to weigh the situation as it stands when I take office' or some red meat to the base. Clinton deserves a great deal of credit for offering an answer that, while it certainly wouldn't be precisely what she'd do if she won, would probably at least be a beginning point for a realistic policy.

On a related note, one of the quotes in the Obsidian Wings thread I noted yesterday argued:

Your thoughts on Clinton echo mine. The attacks on her in the left blogosphere for being Republican, a warmongerer, evil triangulator, etc. are patently silly. At the same time she obviously lacks political guts. There's a time to compromise and evade in politics, and there's a time to take a bold stand. She's taken no bold stances whatsover since getting burnt in 1994. She'd be a good caretaker president and do the political equivalent of making the trains run on time. But she wouldn't do anything important or historical, and after the Bush years we have both need and opportunity to get some big stuff done. Obama and Edwards both have strategies to make a difference - Obama attacks the divisiveness the Bushites need to prevent real reform and Edwards is working for a mandate for a lot of specific policies.

From where I sit, if true, that's a feature, not a bug. Presidents who want to do things that are 'important or historical' tend to make shoddy leaders, because they're too busy trying to make history to worry about the effects their policies may actually have. Need I point any further than the current occupant of the Oval Office to note what can happen with Presidents worried about making their mark? Personally, I could go for a nice run of caretaker presidents who didn't do anything big and who preside over several decades of peace and prosperity. I don't know if HRC is really in that mold, but if so, she'd make a better President than either Obama or Edwards.

In a move that should shock precisely no one, members of the Bush administration are suddenly very reluctant to testify under oath to anyone. This is taken as further proof (as if they needed any) of the guilt of pretty much anyone who has the temerity to be Republican to those on the left, and in some cases they may well be right, as this administration has hardly been a model of propriety and openness. Nonetheless, in their rush to their preferred judgement, it seems to me that the left is perhaps overlooking a rather obvious reason for Republicans to avoid saying anything under oath: I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.

It's possible that Libby was involved in truly criminal acts. Whether or not Valerie Plame met the legal definition of a covert operative, the Bush administration's decision to unmask her in order to undermine her husband's testimony was wrong, and I've got no heartburn with them paying a harsh political price for it. (If only the left were so concerned about national security when their own people undermine it, but I digress.) Nonetheless, whether because of a cover up or because Plame didn't meet the rather stringent requirements for the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, there's no evidence of which I am aware that points to Libby breaking any laws other than lying under oath.

Perjury, do not mistake me, is a serious offense. I was among those who believed that while Ken Starr went well beyond the proper limits of his investigation in his zeal to get a conviction, once President Clinton perjured himself, he should have been tossed our of the White House on his ear. And if Libby did, in fact, perjure himself, I have no particular heartburn with him spending a few years in jail, although it does seem incongruous that Libby may do more time than your average rapist. Still, the evidence I've seen against Libby isn't all that strong. It basically hinges on a he said-she said between Libby and Tim Russert, who has been known to misremember things before.

But then, we all misremember things. I remember being quite the stud in my youth, but friends who knew me in high school and college insist that isn't really the case. I suspect that few of us don't have some memories that aren't quite in sync with reality; that's part of the trouble with eyewitness testimony. Ask any cop and she'll tell you that if you have four witnesses to an accident, you'll get four different stories about what happened, and nobody will be lying. (By lying I mean telling an intentional mistruth, for clarity.) No two people see anything quite the same way. We all bring our own prior experience and prejudices to each situation, and those shape our perceptions.

Back to the question of testifying under oath. Maybe Libby perjured himself intentionally, lying to protect his boss. Or maybe Libby told the truth as he remembered it, but was mistaken. Maybe Russert told the truth as he remembered it, but was mistaken. I am not trying to get Libby off; the courts have spoken, and I have no interest in trying to overrule them. But I suspect a large number of Republicans saw what happened to Libby and came to a similar conclusion: even if you tell what you think is the truth under oath, you may end up going to jail. The average Republican, after all, probably believes Libby when he says he told the truth in his testimony, so how will they feel knowing that they could end up in the same place Libby is now? Given that, if you were called upon to testify, wouldn't you think twice before putting your neck on the chopping block?

The Democrats have gotten their pound of flesh, although it remains to be seen whether Libby will in fact serve any time. But regardless of the merits of this prosecution, they have also given word to every member of the Republican party to be extremely cautious about what they say under oath. To which they will respond 'Good, you should tell the truth when you're on the stand,' but when the truth comes down to a question of who the jury believes, Republicans know that they in danger of incriminating themselves even if they tell the truth as they remember it. I cannot blame any Republican for choosing to exercise his fifth amendment rights rather than risking jail time because his memory conflicts with someone else's.

I have no doubt that Patrick Fitzgerald believes in his heart that Libby is guilty. But the second-order effects of Fitzgerald's decision are likely to do a lot more harm than good.

There are some articles one reads that force you to ask if the author is not making it clear enough that he's joking, or if he's just seriously deranged. At the top of that list is Dan Simpson's piece examining how to rid America of guns in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings last week. In this piece Simpson explains his plan for ridding America of all its guns and making the world a better place. Let's take a look.

First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

A logical first step, although Simpson must be intelligent enough to realize that many people would not, in fact, be willing to turn in their weapons. Simpson explains how hunters would be permitted to keep their weapons in a centrally located armory and could withdraw them with a hunting license and that weapons with historic significance would be placed in museums. Then he gets down to the nitty gritty: how he would root out those guns not turned in willingly.

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for "carrying."

This is where the reader has to wonder: is Simpson serious, in which case he is a dangerous man whose right to vote should be arguably taken away from him, or is he attempting to illustrate just how ridiculous the idea of eliminating guns from society is? I hope it is the latter, but I fear for the former.

What Simpson is proposing is nothing less than a police state. He wants to empower the government to search you and your property at any time for no particular reason. That is precisely the type of tyranny the United States was founded to protect citizens against, yet Simpson apparently would welcome being subjected to that kind of treatment. If he is serious, and I continue to hope the article was intended as some kind of poorly-executed parody, I hope Simpson will do us all a favor and move to some place like North Korea or Cuba, where gun crime is low and the citizens are subject to just the kinds of treatment Simpson advocates.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have fought and died over the years to preserve certain fundamental liberties from tyranny. People like Simpson illustrate why it is so important to continue that fight even today, because there is no one more dangerous than a man who wants to do things for your own good.

Hat tip: QandO.

Some people really, really need a day job. Case in point, the Carpetbagger Report's hypersensitivty regarding House Republican Ted Poe, who (horror of horrors) quoted Confederate General and KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest's infamous dictum to 'get there firstest with the mostest'.

Are we now so frail that we cannot even quote bad people who said reasonable things because they were bad? Yes, Forrest wasn't much of a human being, but he was one hell of a cavalryman and his observations on military strategy are probably pretty good. The fact so many people can get worked up over such a minor thing makes me weep for this country.

Is anyone really surprised that the Democrats, now safely ensconsed in power, are turning their back on the promises they made about ethical reform back in the fall? It amazes me that anyone could be, yet I assume that some people must be, as I recall various left-wing bloggers talking about how important it was to get Democrats in office in order to stop Republican corruption. And maybe some of them are expressing their surprise or disappointment in print, but I've yet to see any of them.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Corruption was a great issue to run on, but like term limits there was no way Congress was going to pass any meaningful ethics reform no matter who is in charge. I do not generally subscribe to a view of America that sees the country as stratified into classes, but it is reasonable to argue that there are at least two classes in America: the governing class and the rest of us. Whether it is traveling the roads at speeds that would get the average citizen tossed in jail or receiving a slap on the wrist for crimes that would rate far worse were the perpetrator not connected to the right people, there is little question that the governing class considers itself too important to be tied down by the rules they're too happy to impose on the rest of us.

Nor is it a surprise this news isn't being mentioned much by those who claimed the Democrats would do a better job with ethics reform than Republicans. It is the rare person who is willing to admit when they have erred; take a look at how many pro-war blogs are talking about General Petraeus' letter to the troops about torture to see the same phenomon from the other side of the fence.

Update: Kudos to Kevin Drum, who tells the Democratic leadership to "show some spine. If Democrats want people to believe that there's really a difference between the two parties, then show them there's a difference." Amen.

Just as with lobbying reform, the Democrats want people to see them as the party better able to deal with national security issues, but the plain truth is that while they're not likely to be any worse than Republicans, they're not going to be any better, either.

With the U.S. in a war that is only going to get worse as we withdraw from Iraq (which doesn't necessarily mean that isn't the right decision; my own position on Iraq remains informed uncertainty), the Democrats have decided that our intelligence assets need to spend some of their limited time and assets evaluating the national security implications of global warming.

Does global warming pose a threat to national security? Quite possibly yes, but there's no way to know right now given the state of the science: we just don't know how soon changes may occur, what changes they may be, or to what extent. Those variables make all the difference in a global warming scenario, and without more information, any assessment offered about its effects on global warming will tell us more about the assumptions underlying the assessment than the real problems.

At another time, this might just be another government boondoggle, spending other people's money to benefit the cause or group of the week. But intelligence is a bit more important than studies on cow flatulence or another building named for Robert Byrd. Al Qaeda has shown a definite pattern in its attacks: it goes after targets more than once, and it seeks to up the ante with each new attack. Further, it is a patient organization. It took them eight years to launch a second attack on the WTC. Defeating those kinds of attacks requires good intelligence, and that is something the United States sorely lacks. Tossing off some of those limited assets to create a largely speculative report is little more than a concession that national security isn't really an issue for the Democratic Party.

Fortunately, both parties are blessed with the knowledge the American system doesn't hold anyone responsible for failures any longer. George Tenet walked away from his tenure as CIA director, having overseen the failure to stop the September 11 attacks and having guaranteed the presence of WMDs in Iraq, with a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his troubles. When the next attack comes, nobody is going to blame the Democrats for sending intelligence assets on a wild goose chase, nor the Republicans for launching a war than inspired who knows how many new jihadis to strike at the United States.

Isn't democracy wonderful?