6-5

Jean Edward Smith reminds us that the nine-member Supreme Court is not a creature of the Constitution, but of Congress. The number has varied from five to 10 (for two periods, it has been an even number, which seems passing strange for a court of last resort--as Justice Jackson put it, "We are not final because we are infallible; we are infallible because we are final," but dissents were rare in the first hundred years of the Court's existence).

So, should a Democrat be elected in 2008,and should the Democrats control the Senate sufficiently to beat back a filibuster (a tall order perhaps), there would be nothing to stop them from adding, say, a couple of justices to bring the court's membership to eleven. Assuming a couple of reliably "liberal" appointees, and the current conservative majority might disappear.

Is this likely? No. What is more probable is that the Court (calling Justice Kennedy...) will prove out Finley Peter Dunne's maxim, "whither th' Constitution follows the flag or not, th' Supreme Court follows the illiction returns."

Huh?

Mitt Romney is telling audiences that with her platform, Hillary couldn't get elected President of France.

Excuse me, but don't Repubs think that's a GOOD thing?

Feel good

Every so often we need a story that make us say, "Aw www." So here's the feel-good story of the week (or maybe the month): a cat lost for 10 years, reunited with her human. (Warning: the story does not say how the cat feels about the reunion; it is written from the human's perspective.

Bankrupt

The total moral and political bankruptcy of Congressional Repubs--a state to which they have been brought by their slavish devotion to the morally and politically bankrupt occupant of the Oval Office, has not been on better display than in the hearing today, on issuing contempt-of-Congress citations to Harriet Miers and Joshua Botlen. TPM has the lowlights--and a couple of highlights from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Adam Schiff (D-CA)--here. (In case you haven't heard already, not a single member of the minority party crossed the line to vote with the Democrats to uphold the power of Congress to investigate as part of its constitutional oversight responsibility.)

Stripped its essentials, the GOP position is that Congress dare not try to enforce the subpoenas that Miers and the White House have ignored, because if it loses, the presidency will be more empowered than it is now. According to which logic, the best way to avoid defeat is to put up the white flag without a battle.

As I've said from time to time, the unarticulated major premise of the GOP is that the American people are stupid.

Tienamen Square, USA

I was wondering

How come Joe Biden isn't doing better in the polls. Just about every time I hear him, he makes sense. He says things that I, and a lot of other Democrats, I think, want to hear. Unlike many of the other candidates, he doesn't mince words. So why is he mired so far back in the pack?

Department of no comment.

"More than two decades later, it is hard to imagine the Revolutionary War coming out any other way."
-- George W. Bush, July 4, 2007

Less is more?

That's what Rory Stewart argues in the case of Afghanistan. Specifically, he takes issue with people like my man Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, who say we should stop concentrating our military might in Iraq and use more of it in Afghanistan. Stewart's thesis is that there has been great progress in large parts of Afghanistan, that the areas that are now unstable are going to be that way for a number of years, but that putting concentrations of troops in will only make the situation worse.

He gives a couple of examples where greater NATO presence (British troops in one case, Dutch in the other) has been accompanied by a worsening security situation. Frankly, I am not convinced by these cases; it may be the constraints of the op-ed page, with a more-or-less strict word limit, but the mere fact that things got worse with more troops does not prove that putting in the additional forces was the cause or even a major cause for the change.

Still, Stewart has a provocative point. I think I can safely say that I was one of the few Americans who expressed concern over going into Afghanistan in the first place. I did so for historical reasons: for millenia, foreigners have invaded that land, and one after another they have suffered defeat and even disaster. I did not expect that the Afghans would welcome us any more than they did the Greeks, the Moguls, the British (who suffered some of their greatest colonial-era defeats at Afghan hands) or the Russians.

I have been agreeably surprised, in general, by the way we have been received in Afghanistan, but I believe that it is vital for us to make clear that we have no desire for a permanent military presence in that nation, and that we want the Afghans to govern themselves. Naturally, there are things we could do to help them, and forward our own policy. Paying opium growers for their crop--and assuring them that it will be destroyed if they sell to drug dealers--would be one step. Finding new crops, even if they need subsidies, to replace the opium poppy would be a later and better one.

There is one point on which I think Stewart is wrong. I heard a talk by Barney Frank a couple of months ago, and he argued that one of the things that is driving Afghans from us is the toll of civilians killed in air strikes. We are using air strikes, according to Barney (he's my congressman, and everyone in the district calls him Barney) because we have so much of our military tied up in Iraq that we must fight on the cheap in Afghanistan. Putting in more troops so that we do not have to use the imprecise weapon of air power, and so can reduce civilian casualties, would be a good thing. Provided that we can avoid alienating the local people with our troops on the ground.

The present crisis

In The Times, Adam Cohen writes on what he calls a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. He is valuable in summarizing the importance that the Founders gave to Congress in the declaration and prosecution of wars--in stark contrast to the extremism of Bush & Co. Cohen's article is well titled:

Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War

Cohen does a service to the general public in outlining the important role that Congress plays, both in declaring war (which somehow seems an antique notion today) and in paying for it--the ultimate power.

Obliquely, Cohen refers to the elephant (not the GOP symbol) in the room: this fall, the Democrats could force a reversal in Bush's war strategy by simply refusing to pay for the war without such a change. If Democrats have the spine (which is to say if they believe the polls), they could just say no to an unconstrained war without a schedule for American withdrawal. Will they have the courage, even in this non-election year? Don't count on it.

(Why anti-war forces, buoyed by a surge in public opinion polls, do not wage a 'Just say no to war' campaign is beyond me.)

(Let me hasten to add that I do not believe that we can execute a pull-out of American forces in six or eight months, or even a year, even with the best will in the world. And withdrawal will be perilous, both for Americans in Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have thrown in their lot with us on one level or another. But a withdrawal as rapidly as is consonant with good order and protection for our forces and the Iraqis--and one where the impetus is on extracting our forces, not on protection as an excuse for continued involvement--is the best of a bad group of choices.)

If I have a criticism of Cohen, it is only that he did not tie what Bush and his co-conspirators have done to the Constitution over the war to the violence they have done to our basic governing document on all fronts.

Innocence

Adam Liptak has an article on a study of the convictions (now 200) reversed by DNA evidence in The New York Times. Liptak is a treasure, and this piece is based on the work of Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

I won't go into the substance of the article, which details a lot of misbehavior and some apparent racial factors in these wrongful convictions. Let me note, however, that the study's results suggest that there are thousands of other innocent people in prison--inmates who will not have the chance for vindication through DNA, because there is no biological evidence in their cases. (It is no accident that a very high proportion of those exonerated were convicted of rape.)

One of the most disturbing parts of the article is the way in which prosecutors have too often been prepared to accept flawed or sometimes fraudulent evidence. I don't mean to suggest that many of them connive knowingly at the use of such proof--although there are a disturbing number of instances in which that seems to be the case. Prosecutors seem to forget that their role is not merely to convict, but to serve justice. Perhaps it would help if they had this truth drummed into them: When the wrong person is convicted, the guilty person is still out there on the street.

Enron revisited?

The New York Times reports that "record failures at oil refineries" have helped to drive up gasoline prices. These include damage from floods in Texas and Kansas and fires at several refineries, some caused by lightning strikes.

Now, no one is saying that these events were made to happen--not even the oil industry is powerful enough to direct a hurricane or a lighting strike. But do we know that repairs are actually being carried out as fast as possible? Remember what happened in California when Enron decided to drive up the price of electricity?

I have absolutely no evidence that oil companies are using refinery problems to raise prices artificially, but the Enron experience breeds cynicism, a view that is only enhanced by the nature of the energy market, which reacts to a relatively small shortage (The Times estimates that US refineries are running at approximately 95% of capacity) leads to skyrocketing prices. Will we see some revelation on front pages in 2009?

Be afraid, be very afraid

Well, it's about to happen. Deadeye Dick Cheney is about to become President of the United States!

Actually, he's going to be acting-President, and that--let us hope--only for about 2 hours, while W undergoes a colonoscopy.

Deadeye Dick can't start a war in a couple of hours, can he?

Some reports say that Bush will be anesthetized for the procedure; I've had a couple of colonoscopies, and no one has ever offered anesthesia. They do offer sedation; I ask for the minimum dose, because I don't like being drugged and the procedure is just minimally uncomfortable. Be interesting to know how far under they put our Fearless Leader.

Are you like me--do you think it somehow appropriate for Bush to get a colonoscopy? Or do you, perhaps, wonder what they'll find. His head, maybe?

Lost time

I had some surgery a couple of days ago. Modern medicine really is amazing: I reported at 6:00, went into the operating room about 7:30 and would have been home by noon, except it took a little time to get a cab. (Amazingly good and caring care, too.)

But that's not what I want to talk about in this post.

I remember being wheeled into the operating room--not by an orderly (although one might have been pushing at the head of the gurney), but by the anesthesiologist and the anesthesiology resident. I remember moving from the gurney to the operating table and hearing the resident say that she was going to give me a sedative through the IV line in my arm. I knew, from the anesthesiologist, that they were going to give me a mask for oxygen, put the anesthetic through the IV line and, after I was out, put an oxygen tube in my throat. (Yeccchhhh to the last!) Then the surgeon was going to burrow into my innards. But after hearing the resident say that she was going to give me the sedative--preparatory to the mask, etc.--the next thing I remember is seeing black and, I think, hearing someone (probably the nurse in the recovery room) call my name.

What happened was that the anesthetic caused some retrograde amnesia. That is, I lost the memory of 1-5 minutes before I was actually knocked out. Retrograde amnesia is common; especially in cases of concussion and, I now suppose, anesthetic. When I did personal-injury law, I had a client who said he remembered falling from a loading dock, all the way down to the ground. I am sure that he believed that, but I never did. I always assumed that he had amnesia and filled in the blank in his mind.

The point of my maundering is this: Memory is almost all of our consciousness. Think about it: there is now and there is memory. The future is a guess, at best. The present is the most transitory of states--the cursor moving across the page of our lives. The rest is memory.

Those few lost moments in the operating room stand out, because the are so sharp-edged. I know that I am missing something--perhaps not the sequence exactly as described, surely it was not the way I imagined it when speaking with the doctor, but something close to what was told me. But I cannot fill in that void with a version of "what must have happened."

That is rare. We all forget things, but we surround our lost recollections with haze of the half-forgotten. I know that there are people I went to school with whose names and faces I no longer recall, but I am comforted by the knowledge that I once knew, and the feeling that the information I had has merely receded into the background. The few minutes I lost the other day are different: there is the before, the after and nothing in between. (If I had not remarked on this, I suppose that in time I might have constructed a "memory" of those lost minutes.)

To me, that blank in my life is eloquent. I suspect that I have not described my experience well enough for you to understand what I felt, but I now have a new appreciation for the preciousness of memory.

The cure

Bill Moyers Journal had an absolutely essential program on impeachment the other night. Go here and watch it; it's an hour long, which is a lot of video to watch on your computer, but it is well worth it.

Moyers' guests were Bruce Fein, one of the people who wrote the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton, and John Nichols, of The Nation, who has just written a book on impeachment. Fein, who was an official in Reagan's administration, is a traditional conservative. Like John Dean, who has written that the Bush administration is worse than Watergate, Fein is horrified at what has been happening in Washington. He argues that both Bush and Cheney must be impeached.

Two essential points: Nichols noted that "impeachment is not a constitutional crisis. It's the cure for a constitutional crisis." Most of us make the mistake of turning the two around in our minds. Fein argues--and he's right, I believe--that the elevation of the executive branch into an independent, virtually uncontrolled branch of government will not end with Bush if it is not ended before he leaves office. A Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, not to mention a Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson, will be mightily tempted to use the expanded powers of the presidency. That, as Fein points out, is the real threat that Bush, Cheney & Co. present to us.

There has been increasing attention paid of late to analogies between the United States and the Roman Empire. The Bush administration has given the country a mighty shove down the road toward despotism and away from democracy. Rome's leaders sealed the empire's fate when they headed down a similar path. The genius of democracy is its capacity for renewal and recovery; the fatal flaw of authoritarianism is the absence of the people's judgment.

Blind justice, revisited

Sailorcurt posted a new comment on this post from a few weeks ago. I suggest that you take a couple of minutes to read it; he has some good points.

I agree with a lot of what Curt has to say. In particular, it's pretty clear by now that there are elements of culture that hold African-Americans (or blacks, if you prefer) back. It's still hard for a white person to say that without being thought racist, but more and more people in the black (African-American, if you prefer) community have accepted this as fact.

(I first encountered the idea that black American culture was holding people back in the book called More Like Us, written by James Fallows in the late 1980's. He pointed out that African immigrants to the US progress at pretty much the same rate as immigrants from other nations. That still seems to be the case--as it is with Afro-Caribbeans. What, then, holds American-born blacks back? The answer seems to be--let me know if you believe there are other causes--cultural.)

On one level, the idea that culture is part of the problem is encouraging, because it means that black Americans have more control over their destinies than a theory blaming racial disparity on white society would suggest. On the other hand, changing culture is a very tall order.

Still, to the extent that Curt suggests that the need for cultural change means that integration is not needed, or no longer needed, I think he is wrong. To begin with, the elements in black culture still hold Americans back, those elements were created by three hundred and fifty years of slavery and one hundred-plus years of segregation. To walk away from integration is for white society (and I include myself in that, although none of my ancestors came to this country until after 1890) to ignore its role in what happened.

Of more immediate moment, while blacks need not, indeed should not, simply imitate white manners and mannerisms, the dominant culture of this country--the one that African-Americans must be able to succeed in--is one that is largely a "white" culture. (The idea that the dominant culture is predominantly white is a less and less accurate statement in literal terms., because that culture is shifted by its association with immigrants. The "white" culture of the 19th Century regarded the Irish and Italians, for instance, as being of a lower order, but today's "white" culture contains important elements picked up from Irish, Italian and many other immigrant groups. Today, the culture contains elements from Hispanic and Asian cultures, and the dominant "white" culture includes many contributions from African-Americans, of which jazz is only the most obvious. Still, for convenience we might call it white, if only for historical reasons.) If we believe that cultural change would be beneficial, it is important to give African-Americans, particularly children, the chance to understand and come to terms with that culture. Segregation--whether by choice or by law--inhibits that opportunity.

We cannot force a cultural change upon the black community, but we should recognize that it is in our interest--the interest of the people of the United States as a whole--to have the African-American community succeed. So far as I know, no responsible element in any part of our society wants to continue as we are today, when more young African-American men to to prison than to college. Integration is still a most important factor in allowing and encouraging such success; segregation, whatever the cause, will ensure failure.

Hard to argue

Those of us who have opposed the Iraq war often fail to give sufficient credit and consideration to some of the subtle and sophisticated arguments of those who support what the administration has done.

Consider this from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) yesterday:

"The best way to support the troops is just to support the troops."

Or, from Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), also yesterday:

"The way to defeat al Qaeda is to defeat al Qaeda."

I'm convinced.

GWOT update

So, how's that Global War on Terror working out for you?

Not at all well, apparently.

*First, there's a report that US counter-terrorism experts say that al Qaeda has rebuilt its capacity to where it was before 9/11. (Note that these professionals appear to be referring to the original al Qaeda, and not the offshoots and copy-cats who have adopted the name.) The title of the report is "Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West." Has a ring to it. Like "Bin Laden determined to strike US," the August 2001 report that Bush ignored.

*Then The New York Times says that the NRC gave a license to a bogus company that would have allowed it to purchase materials for a dirty bomb--without any investigation. Even worse, according to The Times, "That license, on a standard-size piece of paper, also had so few security measures incorporated into it that the investigators, using commercially available equipment, were able to modify it easily, removing a limit on the amount of radioactive material they could buy, the report says." So much for homeland security.

And we're stuck with Bush and Co. for another seventeen months.

A beautiful summer weekend, a little physical trauma, the need to learn a new cel phone (the old one having drowned), and it's a week between postings. Sheesh. I really need to be more disciplined.

The inquisitors

Josh Marshall has a terrific post on the cast of characters who put Scooter Libby in the dock, giving the lie to those who argue that the man is nothing but a victim caught up in political tides.

A clarification

Seems that the Scooter Defense Fund did not contribute to the funds that I. Lewis used to pay his fine yesterday. So the dollars came from other sources; I'm sure that Scooter has a lot of friends with plenty of long green.

By the way, the SDF has raised $5 million. A lot of money, right? But at $500 an hour--which is probably less than his lead counsel charges--that's 1,000 hours, and I'd bet the case has taken that much time already, with the appeal process hardly begun. So Scooter's friends had better go back to beating the bushes (no pun intended).

While you're at it, take a look at this portrait of Mel Sembler, the guy who heads the defense fund. Not just another child abuser; he made money at it.

No surprise

Given what we've seen, this was to be expected. From today's White House press briefing:

"Q Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

"MR. STANZEL: Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by 'equal justice under the law.'"

It's really like shooting fish in a barrel.

A glorious fourth

I hope yours was, at any rate. Your editor spent his working under an 18-foot Concordia Sloop Boat named Defiant, putting seam compound (what a landsman would call caulking) into her seams. This is what I call a day well spent, if not exactly enjoyable; the seam compound is just as messy as you might imagine.

Defiant has been out of the water undergoing partial restoration for the past couple of years. Now it's time to fix her up and sell her, the editor having acquired the lovely Rozinante in the interim. Here's a photo of Defiant in her element, before restoration:

Chaff

Chaff was the name given to shreds of aluminum foil tossed out of aircraft to fool radar during WWII. Chaff is what we are seeing from the administration and its corps of apologists as they attempt to distract us from the truth.

Unfortunately, the misconceptions are not confined to White House flacks and their allies (such as David Brooks in the NYT). Sailorcurt posted a comment to my post on the commutation echoing much of the rhetoric of Libby's defenders. A friend of mine who is not a Republican and no fan of George W. Bush expressed many of the same sentiments.

Clearly, the right-wing propaganda machine has managed to get the message out beyond its acolytes. If we're not careful, the deniers will succeed in undermining the truth about what really happened in l'affaire Libby. In an effort to do our small part to make clear what really happened, let's look at some of the most common red herrings out there:

1. Libby should never have been prosecuted because no one was prosecuted for revealing Valerie Plame's identity, the leak that initiated the special prosecutor's investigation. It's pretty common for perjury cases to be brought where there is no underlying crime charged. Effective perjury, after all, may make such a prosecution impossible. In this case, it's now clear that the first person to reveal Plame's identity was Richard Armitage, and he was not charged. That's not relevant to what Libby did, however. For one thing, Cheney, Libby et als engaged in a cover-up, whether it was criminal or not. (Apparently, prosecution of the second leaker, even if he or she didn't know of the first is not possible.) Nor is it necessary for there to be an underlying crime: One can perjure himself to cover up something that is not criminal. Libby might have done just that--covering for a political offense, not a crime. It seems likely that the Cheney-orchestrated smear campaign against Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, was independent of Armitage's revelation. It is possible that Libby and his bosses were not even aware of what Armitage had done.

2. That Libby should not have been prosecuted, because Bill Clinton was not charged with a crime for his perjury. First, the fact that one person gets away with a crime does not provide an defense for someone else to avoid the consequences of his acts. More important, the quality of the acts was different. While Clinton was the President and Libby only a special assistant to a President (oh, and chief-of-staff to the VP), Clinton lied about an affair, and he did so in a civil deposition. You could count the number of perjury cases brought for lying in civil cases without taking off your shoes. Scooter's perjury, in contrast, came in front of a grand jury that was investigating possible wrongdoing by some of the highest officials in our government. Libby's lies obstructed justice. Clinton's perjury had nothing--beyond casting his credibility into deep shadow--to do with the office he held. Libby's falsehoods were made in the course of his official duties.

(Clinton may not have been prosecuted, but he was impeached--only the second President to have been so treated; some might consider that condign punishment.)

3. Libby's sentence was disproportionately severe. To begin with, that is simply untrue; the sentence was within the federal guidelines. Indeed, on June 21st the Supreme Court, in a case entitled Rita v. US, upheld a more severe sentence for perjury. Also, if Bush really thought that the sentence was too stiff, he could have reduced it--he did not have to cancel it entirely.

For six-and-a-half years, W and his administration have consistently lied to the American people. They depend on the good will of their opponents--the assumption that we will presume a certain good faith on the part of high government officials--to lend themselves credibility that they do not deserve. Let's not permit ourselves to be sold yet another bill of goods.

July 4th

Freedom a word, more than the base coinage
Of statesmen, the tyrants dishonoured cheque, or the dreamer's
mad
Inflated currency. She is mortal, we know, and made
In the image of simple men who have no taste for carnage
But sooner kill and are killed than see that image betrayed.

C. Day Lewis, The Nabara

Never thought I'd see the day

when the leading Democratic candidates' fund-raising "dwarfed" that of their Repub opponents.

One good turn...

deserves another. Kilroy_60 was kind enough to include The Old New Englander in the latest edition of his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Blogosphere. Take a look. And look at some of the other blogs he highlights. I've looked at a few and some of them are very interesting. I was particularly struck by A Thousand Words...One Frame at a Time, a photographic blog with some very striking images. Marooned in England also caught my eye. And, of course, you ought to scan Kilroy's Fear and Loathing--the Gonzo Papers.

Different worlds

Are these men--former Senate colleagues--living on the same planet?

Fred Thompson, soon-to-be-presidential candidate, on Bush's gift to Scooter Libby: "I am very happy for Scooter Libby. I know that this is a great relief to him, his wife and children. While for a long time I have urged a pardon for Scooter, I respect the President's decision. This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life."

Chuck Schumer: “As Independence Day nears, we are reminded that one of the principles our forefathers fought for was equal justice under the law. This commutation completely tramples on that principle.”

...

Barack Obama points out that Libby's lies, "compromised our national security." The full statement.

John Edwards: "Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today." His statement.

And Joe Biden suggests that we flood the White House with phone calls. Good idea. The daytime number is 202-456-1111. That's right, it's not toll-free. They only give the 800 number to big donors. You could also send an email.

Even I didn't think he would do it

As governor of Texas, George W. Bush sent hundreds of men and women to their deaths without batting an eye. And as President, he's sent thousands of Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis to their doom. But 2 1/2 years in Club Fed is too much for one of his cronies is too much for the President to stomach.

Incredible--to me at least--that George W. Bush would be so arrogant, cynical and, yes, stupid as to commute Scooter Libby's sentence before the man's toes had crossed the threshold of a federal prison.

Read the White House statement excusing Bush's act. As might be expected, it is a farrago of deceptions, half-truths and outright lies.

Commutation sounds less dramatic than a pardon, (the $250,000 fine is still in place), but it isn't. Scooter isn't going to pay the fine: one way or another, his friends are. While he will lose his law license for having been convicted of a felony (if he hasn't lost it already), some of his buddies will make sure that he lands on his feet.

What amazes me is the stupidity of Bush's move, and especially its timing. According to the White House, Mr. Bush "concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive." But he did not wait until Scooter had served a year, or six months or even thirty days; he spared him even a moment in jail. He did this before the Court of Appeals has heard Libby's appeal, or even received the briefs. Indeed, in all probability, a notice of appeal has barely been filed, and it may not even have landed in the appellate court as yet.

Many people suggested that Bush would pardon Scooter to avoid a prison sentence and the risk that Libby would spill his guts to prosecutors. I never bought that. From all the evidence that I've seen, Scooter's middle name is loyalty; he would never turn on his bosses, especially with only two-and-a-half years in some Club Fed to serve.

So, why did Bush act, and act now? Maybe I was wrong about Scooter and he really was threatening to roll over. But I think it's more likely that the President is simply displaying once again his contempt for the law, the public and the truth.

Blind Justice

In 1861, soon after the Civil War began, President Lincoln declared a blockade of the rebellious South. It proved to be one of the North's most effective weapons. Owners of several ships seized by the US Navy sued, claiming that the blockade was illegal, because it was an act of war and Congress had not declared a state of war to exist. In The Prize Cases, the Supreme Court upheld the blockade. Writing for the Court, Justice Grier observed that the the war was "a fact which the Court is bound to notice and to know."

Yesterday, a majority of today's Court turned a blind eye to reality (although Justice Kennedy gave a least a nod in its direction), ruling that school assignment plans in Seattle and Louisville are unconstitutional. The four reactionary members of the court would hold that any consideration of race in school assignment violates the Constitution. They had the gall to cite Brown v. Board of Education in their opinion.

Brown was decided because of a problem--racial discrimination. Its declaration that separate but equal is inherently unequal recognized that the law may appear to say one thing while doing another. Segregated schools were said to be equal; that was the rationale that had been adopted to keep the races apart. But--as the Court recognized in 1954--that equality was false. Yesterday, the majority turned that rationale on its head, saying, in Chief Justice Roberts' words, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," as a justification for striking down measures to secure integration. The Chief Justice is no fool; he must have known that the court's decision would aid, not cure, racial discrimination.

Conservatives have been very clever in using legalisms--that is, legal principles divorced from the context of the real world--to reverse more than half a century of racial progress in this country. In this effort, they have used the separation between private and public actions to their advantage.

When Brown was decided, segregation was enforced by law. Under the 14th Amendment, government action to cause or enforce distinction on the basis of race is unlawful. Traditional Anglo-American law takes a very different view of private action, however. The classic attitude was, as one wag put it,

Thou shalt not kill, yet needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.

The much-beloved Prof. Clark Byse, of Harvard Law School, described the common law view this way: "Suppose I'm sitting by the river, smoking my cigar, and a baby comes floating by. As long as I don't flick my ashes in baby's face, I have no obligation to do anything." (In some cases, laws have been passed to impose a duty to act in such situations, but they are rare.)

A person's choice of where to live is private, and the perhaps-natural desire to live with people who look the same as we do, or worship in the same church or synagogue or otherwise seem like us (which some might call prejudice) has been left largely unfettered. (When one person won't sell or rent to a person because of race, national origin, religion or the like, government does get involved, even though those may be private choices.) So, we have come to the point where private choices have led to segregated neighborhoods--often more segregated than they were half a century ago, and the courts take refuge behind the concept of color-blindness to preserve the re-segregation of our schools.

It's not quite as simple as that, actually. Back in the '70's, the Supreme Court was faced with the question of whether a federal court could order city and suburban school districts combined in order to achieve integration. The court decided that that was beyond the purview of federal law. How different things would be today had that case gone the other way.

Is segregation "a fact which the Court is bound to notice and to know?" Today, apparently not. But someday, with different judges, the question may be answered differently. Let's hope so.

The cost

Each day, The New York Times publishes Names of the Dead, a box inside of which are the names of soldiers whose deaths have been announced by the Defense Department since the last edition. Most days, I read it; spending a few moments looking at the names, ranks, hometowns and units of the dead seems like the least I can do to pay honor to their memories.

Yesterday, I was particularly struck by the number of NCOs who were listed. Among 11 men there were six sergeants; there was also one lieutenant. The Talmud says that to save one life is to save the world; I suppose the reverse of that is that to lose a life is to lose the world. Even if we do not take the humanist position that each life--Iraqi, American, soldier, civilian--is of equal value, the cost that the US is paying in Iraq in terms of damage to our military is horrendous. Non-Com's and junior officers make the services go. Taken together, they are much more important than the much-less-numerous senior officers. (Kipling said, "The backbone of the Army/Is the non-commissioned man.")

We don't need another reason to end our misbegotten adventure in Iraq, but here is one anyway. We are losing the best of us in pursuit of, what?

How to be popular

A couple of days ago, I posted a comment on a blog I ran across. The blog in question, What Would John Wayne Do?, is hosted by a firearms enthusiast. WELL, suddenly TONE got comment after comment--all from gun fanciers (I trust that they will not be offended by that term). I haven't counted, but there may be as many comments on that one post as on all the other posts this year.

(While it's nice to be popular, I moderate comments to keep out spam--the policy is to publish anything that isn't defamatory or commercial--so keeping up takes time. And I got drawn into the debate, which took more.)

I wonder, though, why this subject generates so much heat. Given the power of the NRA and other organizations of those who favor a relaxed approach to firearms regulation, the millions of Americans who own guns and the millions of firearms that are in American homes (and on American streets, but that's another subject), why is there such a need to contend so vigorously with even such a mild expression of dissent as mine? (And let's face it, TONE's readership doesn't approach that of The New York Times or the Daily Kos.) I don't question the legitimacy of the positions taken by those who have taken the time to post comments--many of them make good points. But I do question whether the subject is really more important than the other issues that TONE comments on, like the damage done to our constitutional system in the name of a "War on Terror," the Iraq war, corruption in government, the challenge of climate change and the like. To me, the debate over gun regulation is an important issue, but its not the only issue, or even the most important right now.

Ah well, that's what makes horse racing.

Money talks

"They say money talks. I thought that was the problem."
Prof. Paul Freund, commenting on Buckley v. Valeo,1976.

Buckley v. Valeo was the case in which the Supreme Court first decided that the wealthy can spend their own money to further their political campaigns without let or hindrance. The central idea underlying that case--that money equals speech--has led to the political situation today, where wealth dominates our politics.

But does the First Amendment really empower the wealthy or organized pressure groups by protecting their right to spend money? The Amendment says that speech shall be free; it does not say that some people have the right to drown out others, nor does it hold that some speech is more valuable than others.

Would it violate the First Amendment if reasonable limits applied to all individuals, whether they are contributing to someone else's campaign or supporting their own? As long as the limits were the same for all, how would freedom of speech be impeded?

"Conservative" jurists like to concentrate on the text of the constitutional or statutory provision at issue. It's time to look at the First Amendment that way--at what it says, and at what it doesn't.

The children shall lead us

From Andrew Sullivan: High school honor students invited to meet the President handed him a letter saying,

"We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants."

Watch the video from Anderson Cooper's show last night.

Rehnquist's triumph

In 1937, the Supreme Court decided West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, the case in which the majority blinked and accepted the New Deal measures designed to lift the nation out of the Depression. Before that, the court and its membership had been a galvanizing issue for liberals and others on the Left. The current court's recent decisions will return its membership and its philosophy to first-rank status among issues that liberals, progressives and even moderates care about. Yes, I know that pro-choice forces have long warned of what would happen if Republicans were permitted to continue packing the courts with anti-abortion ideologues, but the hard-right decisions of today's court will mobilize many more people.

In a series of cases over the past few months, the court has decided that corporations, PACS and others with money have free speech rights, that high-school students don't, and that taxpayers can't sue the President to enforce the First Amendment's command to separate church and state. Earlier, the court further limited shareholders' ability to sue brokers and investment bankers for fraud, upheld a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, ruled that a woman could not sue for equal pay because she had waited too long since her last (unequal) raise, and told a prisoner that he could not appeal because he had made the mistake of believing a federal judge's calculation of the date by which the appeal had to be filed.

Taken together, these decisions--most by a 5-4 majority--reveal the triumph of the late Chief Justice Rehnquist's philosophy, although the use of that word implies the presence of an over-arching set of principles that is absent from the court's reasoning. The rule of decision that the late Chief Justice followed, and which is a pretty good guide to the present court's decisions on important issues, is this: When an individual goes up against the government, the individual loses; when an individual goes up against a corporation, the individual loses; when the government goes against a corporation, the government loses.

For decades, the membership of the federal courts has galvanized the Right. Now it's time for the Left to take up the cause of principled decision-making that the Supreme Court has largely abandoned on important issues.

Rehnquist

There's still time

As you've undoubtedly heard, Deadeye Dick Cheney has now proclaimed that he is NOT, despite what you have heard and the text of the Constitution, a member of the Executive Branch. (Maureen Dowd had a wonderful analysis of this yesterday.)

There's an old adage in law that you can't have it both ways. That's lawyer talk for what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Put still another way, if Deadeye Dick is not a member of the Executive Branch, then he doesn't get to claim executive privilege, and Congress can call him in to spill the beans about everything from his energy task force to deliberations about Iraq and the shenanigans at the Justice Department.

Cheney has really gone off the deep end here. If this is an example of the way his mind is working now, he should be removed from office on the ground of mental incompetence.

TONE has advocated impeaching the President, but in his lame-duckiness it's clear that that isn't going to happen. The Vice-President is different however. The administration has 19 months left in office. That's plenty of time to put Deadeye Dick in the dock.

Scary stuff

If you go to the very tippy-top of the page, you'll see a tab that says "next blog." Click it and you'd find a more-or-less random pick from the thousands of Blogspot publications. Here's the one I got when I hit the button just now. Sheesh.

Heroes all

"I didn't have any choice. They sank my boat."
--John F. Kennedy when asked how he became a war hero.


You may have heard the heartfelt praise that Charleston, S.C., Fire Chief Russell "Rusty" Thomas heaped upon the nine firefighters who died a week ago today. The tributes were certainly merited, but let's remember that every man and woman who fights fires is heroic.

Most of what we call heroism is reactive--like JFK's exploits after his PT boat was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer. I do not mean to belittle such exploits; many people faced with a sudden challenge fail the test. But there is a special kind of courage in the person who knows there is danger and goes forward to meet it.

Breaking News!

Always trying to bring you the news that really matters....

Prince William has reported resumed his relationship with Kate Middleton, according to British newspapers. The story is especially significant, because, having just turned 25, the Prince can now marry without the Queen's approval.

(I don't follow this stuff, but it does strike me that the royal family could use some new blood; a commoner like Ms. Middleton might help the line.)

Good question

A regular reader (who wishes to remain nameless) asks this question: If Hamas can smuggle guns and ammunition into Gaza, why can't it smuggle in medicine and baby formula, if not solid food?

Bad news for Mitt

The co-chair of Mitt ("Flipper") Romney's Utah finance committee has been sued for child abuse by no fewer than 133 plaintiffs, according to The Hill. The plaintiffs allege that Robert Lichfield operated schools where children were subject to "physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse."

This is bad news for Mitt, potentially worse than the indictment of Rudi's S.C. now-former-chairman on drug-distribution charges. The mention of child abuse in a major Romney supporter--especially one from Utah--will play into widespread prejudice against the former governor's Mormon faith; there's no connection, of course (for all I know, Lichfield might not be a Mormon), but the suit will remind people who want to be reminded of such things about stories of abuse from polygamous break-away Mormon sects. Bigots don't need evidence, of course, but a story that seems to justify their prejudice is always welcome. Unfortunately for Mitt, prejudice against Mormons seems more deeply rooted in his party than in the nation at large.

(I don't know much about Mormon theology, and I haven't known many people who identified themselves as Mormons, but the ones I have met have seemed to me to be extraordinarily decent people. As TONE has suggested in the past, the question isn't whether a Mormon should be President, but which Mormon we might vote for. Mitt isn't the one, but that has nothing to do with this latest story.)

Bloomberg boomlet

The press is awash in speculation about whether New York mayor Michael Bloomberg intends to run for President as an independent, or perhaps on a third-party ticket; the National Edition of today's New York Times has two stories on the front page. (The website gives it somewhat less prominence.)

Let's remember something basic: Bloomberg is not going to be the next President. Even if he went back to the Democratic Party--which he bolted to get the Repubs' nomination for mayor in 2001--he would not stand a chance of obtaining the nomination, and he isn't going to win the White House as a third-party candidate, either; think Ross Perot, who got less than 20 percent of the vote in 1992.

So, the Mayor's only role would be as a spoiler and, given his positions on issues like abortion, gay marriage and gun control, his candidacy would aid the Repubs. Given those positions, there's no logical reason why Bloomberg should run. So, if he does enter the race, it's a matter of ego winning out over good sense.

(I haven't seen much of him--not living in New York any more, thanks be to G_d--but the Mayor seems like a sensible man. Still, no self-made billionaire can be short in the ego department.)

Oops, again

Rudy got more bad publicity yesterday. Newsday reported that he resigned from the Iraq Study Group after being told that he had to come to meetings or leave. At the same time, he was out giving speeches that brought him more than $10 million a year.

What kind of behavior is that for a candidate whose strong suit (maybe his only suit, as far as Republican voters are concerned) is national security?

Talkingpointsmemo points out that Giuliani ducks the Iraq issue whenever possible. How long before one of his Repub competitors makes a serious point about this?

Ooops

Seems that Rudy Giuliani's South Carolina state chairman (the state treasurer, too) has been indicted for buying "less than 500 grams" of cocaine. According to the NYT, Thomas Ravenel, a 44 year-old millionaire and member of one of the state's leading families, intended to "share" the drug with "other people."

At least one early report said that Ravenel had been charged with distributing crack, which would carry a much higher sentence. This bears attention--was the report wrong, or did the US Attorney decide to charge cocaine when crack was involved? Remember that a few years ago, the Supreme Court decided that the disparate penalties between crack and powder cocaine are not discriminatory, even though an overwhelming proportion of defendants charged with crimes involving crack are black.

Oh, by the way, 500 grams is 1.1 pounds, a considerable quantity might be involved

(Mr. Ravenel quickly resigned from Rudy's campaign, and was suspended as state treasurer.)

Cutting the heart out

Seymour Hersh (Sy to his friends) has another piece in The New Yorker exposing the essential corruption of the administration, particularly in its handling of the war and related issues. This time, Hersh focuses on Gen. Antonio Taguba's investigation of the horrors at abu Ghraib.

The thing is, Taguba played it straight and told the truth. We might say that he upheld the honor of the US Army in the way he conducted himself--something to retrieve the shame visited upon the institution and the nation by what went on at abu Ghraib.

So, what happened to Gen. Taguba? Rumsfeld and company made sure that his military career ended abruptly, of course, and stuffed his report in a drawer.

We can talk about the cover-up, the scapegoating of a few enlisted personnel, the way that the events at the prison outside Kabul caused incalculable damage to America's position in the world. But at least as important is the example of Gen. Taguba, sacrificed for doing his duty. What does that say to everyone else in the United States Army, and the other military forces as well? What does it say about honor and professionalism?

When this administration is but a sad memory, when the prosecutions are finally over, the nation will still depend on our military to protect us from the very real threats that will continue for decades. The damage done to the military establishment by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et als, will be felt--very likely in the form of dead Americans--long after the malefactors are gone.

Why do they do that?

While I'm in a curmudgeonly mood (when is he not? you ask), why do merchants keep re-arranging stores? Today I was in my local CVS, a store that I kind of knew after they re-arranged it a few months ago, only to find that they've done it again. The powers-that-be are constantly re-doing parts of the Trader Joe's I go to, guaranteeing that I'll be lost for something, or maybe everything, on my list.

Memo to people in the retail business: It helps if your customers can find what they're looking for.

Baby on board

In the last few weeks, I've noticed a resurgence in those yellow-and-black "baby on board" signs in car windows. I gnash my teeth every time I see one.

I think it's of the egocentrism that these notices display: We're important, because we had a baby! Lots of people have babies. The question is not how other people react to that, but how well you do as a parent. Sticking a plastic sign in the rear window of your car doesn't mean much compared to how you treat your child--and if you think it does, then maybe you don't deserve to have one.

Then, too, it might be that what bothers me is the suspicion that those people are already living their lives through the children.

(It's especially annoying, of course, when one of the baby-on-board folks drives like an idiot.)

How progress is made

From Pam Belluck's story on the vote by the Massachusetts legislature, refusing to send a measure that would ban same-sex marriage to the voters. Speaking of Gale Candaras, a state senator who changed her vote on the issue:

"Most moving, she said, were older constituents who had changed their views after meeting gay men and lesbians. One woman had 'asked me to put it on the ballot for a vote, but since then a lovely couple moved in,' Ms. Candaras said. 'She said, "They help me with my lawn, and if there can’t be marriage in Massachusetts, they’ll leave and they can’t help me with my lawn.”'"

Good Americans

Bradley Scholzman, a high official in the Gonzalez Justice Department who was raked over the coals by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, was the subject of a complaint by several women attorneys in the appellate section of the Civil Rights Division, who charged that he replaced a number of women of various ethnicities with white, Christian males.

Allegedly, Schlozman told one new attorney that he was intent on replacing the women with "good Americans."

Why is it that people who use phrases like that wouldn't know a good American if he (or she) walked up and smacked him in the nose? Which is what he deserves.

Two state solution

That's what Palestinians with an ironic bent are calling the division of the West Bank and Gaza between Fatah and Hamas.

Will there come a time when moderate Palestinians and moderate Israelis realize that they have more in common with each other than with the extremists on their respective sides? And might that prove durable enough to obtain for the Palestinians a state--one that is dedicated to living in peace with its neighbor? (Because if the Palestinians do not prove that they are able to live peacefully with Israel, there will be no state.)

Whose ox is Borked

Robert Bork, eternally angry apostle and legal guru of the Right, seems to have forgotten "conservatives'" disdain for punitive damages. He seeks no less than $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, from the Yale Club of New York (of all places) for injuries he allegedly suffered in a fall while mounting the podium to give a speech there.

This is reminiscent of the case of now-ex-Senator Rick Sanctimonious, whose wife had no problem in accepting a $350,000 malpractice award from a Virginia jury, after the then-senator had called for caps on malpractice damages. (Ironically, the trial judge reduced the verdict to $175,000.)

Just a thought

Repubs want to inject politics into morality, rather than morality into politics.

In a phrase

Rep. Barney Frank (D. MA--and my congressman) on anti-government Repubs handling the public's business:

"It's like putting vegetarians in charge of the meat department."

Rule of Law

Last week, I had the privilege to attend a dinner at which Prof. Neil Katyal and Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the lead attorneys for Salim Hamdan in his case before the Supreme Court last year, were honored for their work. (Hamdan's was the case in which the Supreme Court declared that detainees at Guantanamo do have the protections of law and legal process.) They were both awe-inspiring in their intelligence, dedication to the law and courage.

Lt. Cmdr. Swift told two stories that bear repeating. (I'll apologize to him in advance, because I am doing this from memory.) He recalled going to his 20th reunion at the Naval Academy and being "cornered," as he put it, by a classmate who had gone into the Marines. Cmdr. Swift described the man as a complete Marine and said, "If someone shot at an American, anywhere in the world, in the last 20 years, it was probably at him." The Marine officer came up to Cmdr. Swift who expected to get blasted for representing an al-Qaeda terrorist. (Hamdan is accused of having been Osama bin-Laden's chauffeur.) What the man said was, "The rule of law is what I fight for. Men die for that!"

The second story was about a trip to Hamdan's home in Yemen, to gather information for the case. Cmdr. Swift took along a female JAG officer, who could speak to the women and go into their portion of the house. As the Americans were getting ready to leave, the grandmother--the matriarch of the family--gathered her granddaughters together. Cmdr. Swift describes this woman as having grown up in a society that had not changed since the 7th Century; she did not know there was such a thing as radio until she was 30. The older women quieted her granddaughters and pointed at the American woman. "Look at Susan," she said. "She went to school. She worked very hard, and she became a lawyer. If you go to school and work hard, you can do anything!" That, as the Commander said, is what the US should be about--spreading the ideas that gave this country its unique place in the world. Instead, we quaver in fear of the terrorists, and display our fear in every action at Guantanamo.

Prof. Katyal and Lt. Cmdr. Swift have shown the courage that our national leaders lack. They are the best of my profession, and the best of this nation.

Observations

on the Republicans' debate last night (the TV was on but the sound was down):

--The only candidate with Republican Hair (best exemplified by Trent Lott) is Mitt Romney.

--Conversely, Tommy Thompson (how is he still a candidate?) has the worst rug in the world: perched precariously atop his dome, and an obviously fake shade of redwood brown

--More than half of the Repubs running for President are unrecognizable to anyone outside their immediate families. And maybe not to them.

Hail and farwell

Shay-Shay, our odd but beloved kitty, lost a long battle with kidney disease early this morning. He followed his sister, Natasha, who went to her rest just over two months ago.

Shay was a strange fellow, born with four mis-matched feet, only three usable legs and several other congenital deformities. With a feisty--to say the least--personality, he took some getting used to, but he was sociable and, as he mellowed in a loving home, very affectionate. Until recently, one of his favorite pastimes was to lick my arm like a dog might.

Shay was chosen by my friend Rosemarie, who took him from a shelter despite his physical unconventionalities; without Rose, his life would almost certainly have been quite short. When she could not care for him, she asked me if I'd take him temporarily. That turned out to be thirteen years, in which he grew to be an integral part of our household. It sure seems quiet and empty without him.

Despite his small stature, Shay was a tough guy. He was hospitalized twice with serious kidney infections and had been battling one (with apparent success) as an outpatient when he began to fail about two weeks ago. The vet said that she didn't know another cat who would have survived even one of these challenges. He might not have looked like it, but he had the soul of his distant cousin, the lion.

Good-bye Mr. Shay. You'll always be our special guy.

A political milestone remembered

A new plaque was unveiled in Boston yesterday, commemorating the spot where Gov. Elbridge Gerry and State Sen. Israel Thorndike agreed on state senate districts that would keep their party in power. One of those districts is remembered, because it's odd shape reminded people of a salamander--only this one was named by Gerry's opponents a gerrymander, and so a legendary term was born.

At yesterday's unveiling, descendants of the original participants were there to commemorate the event. One of them, incredibly, bears the moniker Elbridge Gerry--a little like naming a kid Boss Tweed.

(By the way, the "G" in gerrymander is soft, but the eponymous governor pronounced his name with a hard "G." That's our trivia lesson for today.)

Partisanship at the Justice Department???

Who would have thought it????

The Boston Globe reports that two offices in the Justice Department, the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, have notified Congress that they are investigating whether civil service hiring rules were violated by, among other things, favoring conservative Repubs for jobs in the Civil Rights Division. The probe will also examine whether hiring decisions elsewhere in the department were made according to a political litmus test--something that Monica Goodling pretty much admitted in her testimony last week.

OK, there's not much new in the story. Should we care that the Justice Department is investigating itself? Isn't that a case of the fox looking over the chicken coop? Perhaps, but I think, and hope, that there is enough professionalism left in the Department, especially in the two offices handling the investigation, that the results will be pretty much free of political influence.

One of the geniuses of the American system of government since the New Deal was that we managed to keep professional government activities pretty much separate from political considerations, even in departments that were led by political appointees. One of the great, though largely-unrecognized crimes of Bush and his cronies has been their assault on that separation. We can only hope that the next (Democratic) president will give some attention and spend some energy on re-establishing a credible and effective civil service.

Truer than he knew

"As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for."

Vice-President Cheney to the graduating class at West Point, May 26, 2007.

What he didn't say was that one of those people was standing right in front of them, delivering a speech!

The conscience of the nation

Bill Moyers is the conscience of America. Consider the commencement address he delivered at Southern Methodist last week.

Some highlights:

"America’s a great promise but it’s a broken promise.

"It’s not right that we are entering the fifth year of a war started on a suspicion. Whatever your party or politics, my young friends, America can’t sustain a war begun under false pretenses because it is simply immoral to ask people to go on dying for the wrong reasons.

…

"America needs fixing. Our system of government is badly broken.

"You are leaving here as our basic constitutional principles are under assault – the rule of law, an independent press, independent courts, the separation of church and state, and the social contract itself. I am sure you learned about the social contract here at SMU. It’s right there in the Constitution – in the Preamble: “We, the People” – that radical, magnificent, democratic, inspired and exhilarating idea that we are in this together, one for all and all for one.

…

"For all the chest-thumping about rugged individuals and self-made men, it was the imperative and ethic of cooperation that forged America. Laissez faire – 'Leave me alone' – didn’t work. We had to move from the philosophy of 'Live and let live' to 'Live and help live.' You see, civilization is not a natural act. Civilization is a veneer of civility stretched across primal human appetites. Like democracy, civilization has to be willed, practiced, and constantly repaired, or society becomes a war of all against all.

…

In l960 the gap in wealth between the top 20% of our country and the bottom 20% was thirty fold. Now it is 75 fold. Stock prices and productivity are up, and CEO salaries are soaring, but ordinary workers aren’t sharing in the profits they helped generate. Their incomes aren’t keeping up with costs. More Americans live in poverty – 37 million, including l2 million children. Twelve million children! Despite extraordinary wealth at the top, America’s last among the highly developed countries in each of seven measures of inequality. Our GDP outperforms every country in the world except Luxembourg. But among industrialized nations we are at the bottom in functional literacy and dead last in combating poverty. Meanwhile, regular Americans are working longer and harder than workers in any other industrial nation, but it’s harder and harder for them to figure out how to make ends meet…how to send the kids to college…and how to hold on securely in their old age. If we’re all in this together, what’s a civilized response to these disparities?

America’s a broken promise. America needs fixing.

I often see something in print and Publish Postask myself, "Why didn't I say that?" In Bill Moyers' case, I read his words and ask myself, "Why didn't I think that?"

Memorial Day

"If any ask you why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied."

Rudyard Kipling

On this Memorial Day, as we recall the sacrifices of men and women who risked all and sometimes gave all for this nation, let us also remember that when politicians lie, good people die as a result.

Blowing my own horn

Today's NYT carries a letter over your editor's name today on the subject of Monica Goodling's testimony, along the lines of this TONE post.

Mmm, mmm, good!

Back in the '70's, The Wall Street Journal published an article called something like "We don't want your paprika to walk off the plate," about how spices and similar ingredients contain "permissible levels of filth"--rodent hair and feces, pieces of dead moths, that sort of thing. Given that spices are milled from flowers, leaves and seeds into tiny pieces or powders, and as they can be contaminated everywhere from field to factory, it is inevitable that some nasty stuff gets into the final product. Not a pleasant prospect, but then we don't see many people collapsing from the pepper they put on their eggs. Our bodies can fight off a certain amount of toxins and beasties. Still, we all know that contamination can make us sick and even kill us.

I was reminded of that WSJ story by a piece on NPR today, about the dangers we face from food imports, especially from China. Some of it is pretty chilling stuff.

You may wonder why the brouhaha about food imported from China. Isn't this the country that was buying our wheat to stave of starvation a couple of decades ago? Yes. Today--as Americans learned this spring--we are importing wheat gluten from China. We are also importing lots of other food and food ingredients from the People's Republic. Did you know that 80 percent of our ascorbic acid--otherwise known as vitamin C, comes from China? Me, neither. The NPR website (link above) has an interesting table showing the amount of some food imports from China, including almost $160 million worth of concentrated apple juice (they have apples there?) used as sweeteners, $60 million in fresh garlic and another $18 million in powdered garlic. So it isn't enough to avoid food products from China; ingredients in made-in-America products is being imported with increasing frequency.

Last month--not last year, last month--FDA inspectors rejected more than 250 shipments of food from China, more than from the rest of the world combined. Reasons include such defects as obvious decomposition of meat and fish to the presence of drug residues. Yecchh.

What's really scary is that the FDA inspects only a tiny portion of the food products that are imported. Given that China is not going to increase food safety or wholesomeness to American standards any time soon, a complete overhaul of the agency's inspection system, and a drastic increase in resources, are necessary to avoid serious threats to our health. To do that, however, will mean yet another battle with the small-government, no-new-taxers, at least until they get scared for their own health.

It's more than 100 years since Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, but the fight for food fit to eat goes on.

Crossing the line

So Monica Goodling admits that she "crossed the line" in filling Justice Department posts on the basis of partisan credentials. She did a lot more than that.

Goodling and her co-conspirators (for that is what they were) dealt a body-blow to our system of justice.

The credibility of our prosecutions depends on the public's belief that political appointees (and, in the case of most local district attorneys, elected officials) can keep politics out of prosecutorial decisions. Now it is clear that, at least in areas such as civil rights and government corruption cases, we cannot have that faith when the federal government is involved.

That is a terrible, terrible development. For decades, under men like John Doar and Nicholas Katzenbach, the Justice Department was the shining ornament not just of the United States, but of the civilized world. As much as anything, the federal system of justice showed the world what the United States was all about.

What I fear is that that may still be the case.

Immigration--some further thoughts

Yesterday, I noted the irony--or is it hypocrisy--that the GOP, for so long the self-proclaimed party of family values, should back an immigration proposal that tilts the field toward those with desirable skills, rather than family members of prior immigrants.

Tom Friedman makes an argument, if not for the proposal now before Congress at least for taking skills into account. Recounting his experience at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduation (where he apparently received an honorary degree), Friedman says that it seemed that virtually all of the PhD recipients were foreign-born, and argues that if we do not make it easy for such graduates to stay in the country, we are doing tremendous damage to our economy and our world position.

Friedman has a point. Immigration has always been like the Nile floods in ancient Egypt, which kept that narrow valley fertile and formed the basis for Egyptian power. Immigrants have watered the fields of American enterprise and achievement. And in a global age, when we bring students here and then tell them to go back home, we are improving the lot of our competitors.

Now there may be good reasons for doing just that, most clearly where we have a sufficient supply of skilled graduates. And the best argument for restricting immigration may well be that it imposes a drain on nations that can ill afford to lose human capital--not on France or Britain or Japan so much as on Haiti, Mexico and other places that need the kind of energetic, intelligent, active people who are most likely to emigrate.

While I tend to agree with Friedman on narrow national-interest grounds (subject to the caveat just above, which bothers me somewhat), that does not mean that the proposed new visa scheme is a good idea. It would impose the elitist concept that we can pick winners--that those who already possess certain skills are the immigrants we want. Sounds good, but watch out.

The truth is, we don't know which immigrants we want. The proposal before Congress now would have kept out Andrew Carnegie and others who came here with nothing and built the nation. (It would have kept my grandparents out, too.) We may think that a computer programmer or someone with an engineering degree from a well-regarded foreign university is preferable to a Mexican farm worker or a Haitian who's first job will be bussing in a restaurant. Maybe. Maybe not. Last week, CBS did a profile on the doctor who heads Johns Hopkins' department of neurosurgery. He came here from Mexico as a teenager, to pick crops. Only after he was here did he get on a track to education and professional brilliance. Do we want to keep such people out of our country?

Still hanging on?

Or still twisting in the wind?

Alberto Gonzalez, of course. Earlier this week there was a lot of talk that he would resign before the Senate votes on a no-confidence resolution. I thought he might cut and run before his former hireling, Monica Goodling, testifies before Congress today. But no, Gonzalez is still there, tarnishing the reputation--or what's left of it--of the Justice Department.

We old people can remember when the Justice Department really did seem to be in the business of seeking justice, when people like John Doar and Nicholas Katzenbach led a government effort to make the promise of equality before the law a reality. Those were the days--almost forgotten now--when the government was actively trying to eliminate, or at least reduce, poverty.

Now, what do we have? Government sold to the highest bidder in a shabby, half-hidden auction.

There's no guaranty that things will change after January 20, 2009, but at least there's room for hope. That's what makes this the most exciting time since the Kennedy campaign of 1960.

Family Values

As you've undoubtedly heard, the proposed compromise immigration bill would swing the system toward granting visas for skilled workers and away from the families of immigrants. This proposal came from the Repubs, of course.

So much for the party of family values.

Maybe secession wasn't such a bad idea after all

Proving that the Old South really hasn't died, the Virginia Citizens Defense League held a "Bloomberg Gun Giveaway," to thumb its nose at New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaign to stop the deadly traffick in guns from states like Virginia to NYC.

Two $900 firearms were given away--a pistol and a "Varmint Stalker" rifle. The winner of one, a former Brooklyn resident, is quoted as saying "If he [Bloomberg] doesn't like people in New York having guns, he should deal with New York. Just keep out of Virginia." The problem, as this empty-headed twit doesn't seem to recognize, is that Virginia won't keep its guns out of New York.

Now if Virginia were in a foreign country, things would be a lot simpler.

One to go

Democrats seek a vote of (no) confidence on Gonzalez. Given the number of Republicans who have called on the AG to resign (the latest being Chuck Hagel, over the Ashcroft hospital-room intrigue), its hard to see how the result could be much in doubt. The question, then, becomes what the Repubs will do to try to avoid the vote.

One Down

Wolfowitz is out at the World Bank.

In a sop, the banks' board of directors accepted Wolfie's claim that his actions had an honorable purpose. Right.

Whoops

In this post, TONE may have given the impression that then-AG Ashcroft approved the warrantless wiretapping program from his hospital bed. It's now clear that that was not the case, that--hard as it may seem to believe--he expressed his reservations about the legality of the program. Not only that, but he pointedly told then-White House Counsel Gonzalez and chief of staff Andy Card (a man who until now has looked like Mr. Clean among all the scandals) that they should not be talking to him, but to the (Acting) Attorney-General, James Comey.

For some fascinating video of Comey's testimony on the subject, take a look at this, from Talkingpointsmemo. (This is the most riveting footage of the kind that I've seen since Alexander Butterfield spilled the beans about Nixon's Oval Office tapes during Watergate.)

Mitt Romney, civil libertarian

Last night at the Republicans' debate, Mitt Romney said he'd like to see the size of the Guantanamo concentration camp (he didn't use THAT term, of course) doubled, that he doesn't want prisoners in the US where they would be entitled to actual legal representation.

The question isn't whether a Mormon should be President, it's which Mormon.

The successor

Last week I saw a number of postings on political blogs theorizing that Alberto "Not-so-Speedy" Gonzalez's staying power is due to the Administration's fear of the confirmation fight that will ensue if he leaves. Yet yesterday we saw a man who is a good Republican and who's nomination would sail through Congress: James B. Comey, former Deputy Attorney General in the Bush administration, testified before Congress.

There would be a price for the administration pay in appointing Comey, of course. He happens to be one of that apparently disappearing breed: an Republican who really is dedicated to the Constitution as it is written and the rule of law, not politics. He is the one, you may recall, who refused to sign off on the administration's warrentless wiretaps when he was Acting Attorney-General while then AG John (Too Dumb to Beat a Dead Guy) Ashcroft was in the hospital. Which led Gonzalez to rush to that hospital to get a hazy Ashcroft (he was going under anesthesia) to approve the program. Comey has also been frank in saying that those US attorneys allegedly fired for performance reasons were among the finest in the land.

(Has it occurred to you that perhaps when the administration says they were dismissed for performance reasons, what they mean is that the US Attorneys in question were performing their jobs all too well?)

And there is something else: the probability that, if he were AG, Comey would actually investigate the shenanigans that have shredded the fabric of government under Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, et als.

The thin thread of mortality

Early Friday morning, I'm lying in bed trying to sleep when I notice that my legs ache. Aha! I think, I'm coming down with something. Probably a 24-hour bug.

And so it proved.

Nothing terribly serious. A mild headache that might have meant a slight fever (not worth bothering to check), aches in the legs, no appetite.

So, how can such a minor ailment make one lose so much energy that it requires thought to decide whether it's worth expending the effort to reach out and turn off the light? That getting up to go into the next room becomes a major project?

Although it was, fortunately, one of those 24-hour things (I felt--fancied, perhaps, that I could actually sense the fever break as slight chill late on Friday night), even the day after I was tired enough to take a solid one-hour nap after getting myself a bowl of cold cereal for breakfast. And I did nothing that might remotely be called productive for the rest of the day. Indeed, I could not even face the idea of booting up the computer until today.

We go on, most of us, on most days, feeling vital enough to carry out our normal tasks without exhaustion and, if we are lucky, with sufficient energy for other pursuits as well. Yet a simple cold or mild virus will lay us out as if we are on our deathbeds.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Take one day off

and you lose a week. I was out of the office last Friday to work on getting the lovely Rozinante
ready for the water, and I'm just catching up now. (Rozinante's color scheme is different now.)

What did I miss? The Queen's visit, for one thing. (Even after more than 200 years, if you say "the Queen," Americans know that you are referring to the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, more familiarly known as Great Britain, the UK or sometimes--wrongly--England.) I may be a liberal, but I have a soft spot for the Queen. Especially given what we have in the White House today.

Other than that, it seems like more of the same: Bush is threatening to veto the Democrats' latest Iraq spending bill, Not-So-Speedy Gonzalez is back in front of a congressional committee today, Wolfowitz is still hanging on at the World Bank and people are still dying in Iraq.

Perhaps the best development of the week was that Hillary Clinton has joined with Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) in a measure to repeal the authorization to use force in Iraq. Talkingpointsmemo reports that liberals in the House are talking about making their support for a new funding bill (the old one passed by just 10 votes, remember) dependent on an agreement to bring a de-authorization bill to the floor.

Some commentators have said that such a measure would be meaningless, because Bush would just veto it. Leaving aside that every such veto peels some more people away from W, I do not see why the President would have a chance to veto it. Did he have to sign the original authorization--which was an authorization for him to take action? What would that add? And why would he have the right to veto a bill that, in effect if not in form, expresses the will of an equal body of government? That makes no sense.

I don't mean to suggest that repealing authorization will end American participation in the war, any more than repealing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution did. To do that, Congress would have to cut off funds--or the chief executive would have to suffer an attack of good sense. But reversing its stance would be a powerful statement and would further isolate Mr. Bush.

(UPDATE: Greg Sargent reports that House Democrats will allow a straight up-or-down vote on whether to withdraw from Iraq.

Support the troops--bring them home

I went to an anti-war rally, organized by MoveOn.org, in downtown Boston this afternoon. Maybe 100 people stood around, some with signs, some with pots and pans to make noise, a few handing out leaflets. There was a screechy portable sound system.

Were the demonstrators supporting Congress against the President? No, not really. Their attitude was more "a plague on both your houses." The calls were for bringing the troops home, "now." One speaker suggested that the American and Iraqi peoples both wish an end to the war.

Would that it were so. True, a large majority of Iraqis devoutly wish to see the backs of the Americans, but let's be honest: a large number of them want us gone so that they can have a freer hand in killing their fellow countrymen. And we should remember that--despite what you hear--there ARE Iraqis who believed that the Americans could make their country a better place, that at least some of those who joined the Iraqi army and police force did so for patriotic reasons, and others did so, not to advance the cause of a sectarian militia, but to feed their families. There are also millions of Iraqis who simply want to live lives free of politics, war and sectarianism. Those people are unlikely to coalesce into a force strong enough to suppress the killers but, having encouraged them, we owe them at least a semblance of transition before we leave them to their fates.

The people that I saw at today's demonstration help to explain why the anti-war movement has not generated mass protests, even with the war's unpopularity. Instead of building bridges to mainstream politicians and voters, speakers castigated congressional Democrats for providing money for the war and failing to establish hard-and-fast deadlines to bring the troops home.

True enough, but even the largely-symbolic bill that Bush vetoed yesterday had only a 10-vote margin in the House. If the anti-War movement want stronger legislation, it has to appeal to those who now hesitate; criticizing them as near-allies of Bush and his cronies is a poor way to do that.

You can't veto the truth

Americans United for Truth is running a powerful ad about Bush's veto of the Iraq/Afghanistan funding bill. It's title: "You Can't Veto the Truth."