Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Crafty, I agree with you on Rudy. Wrong to my taste on too many issues to support him in the primaries, but I will certainly join up if/when he secures the endorsement.  I also oppose gun control, but if I favored it and was President, I hope I would be principled enough to propose amending rather than stomping on the constitution.  Rudy has talked the talk on strict constructionist judicial appointments, but that contradicts his own position on gun control and on a mother's right to choose. 

Back to tax issues, in the 2000 campaign John McCain opposed candidate Bush's tax cut proposal.  Now McCain says make most of them permanent and Rudy sounds like he may go further into cutting and simplifying. And those are the moderates (RINOs). That is a step forward IMO. Still, McCain is feuding with Club for Growth (who I recently joined) over his previous anti tax cut votes.  It is not just the 'no' votes, but the rhetoric that helps gives credibility and cover to the left.  Specifically, McCain words and votes were cited often by the Dem here in our most recent senate race to demonstrate that she wasn't some extreme leftist.
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Club for Growth Calls on McCain to Apologize for Tax Votes

Washington - The Club for Growth called on Senator McCain to renounce his 2001 and 2003 votes against the Bush tax cuts and apologize for his vocal class-warfare-laced opposition to them.

In 2001, Senator McCain was 1 of only 2 Republicans to oppose the Bush tax cuts (Roll Call #170, 05/26/01) and 1 of only 3 Republicans in 2003 (Roll Call #196, 05/23/03).  He even went so far as to adopt the class-warfare rhetoric of the Senate’s most liberal Democrats, arguing in a 2003 Face the Nation interview that “the reason why I opposed the last round was because the—what I felt was a disproportionate favoring of the wealthiest 1 percent, 10 percent of Americans.  If that's continued, obviously, then I wouldn't support that.”    http://www.clubforgrowth.org/

Hillary in the news - today's talking point was 'universal healthcare'.  I'm sure we'll get to that in the campaign.  First I want to criticize her proposal from last week for a "Foreclosure-Timeout" in response to the trouble in the housing market.  I read it first in 'The Economist' but here is a short version from NPR Morning Edition:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8951674

Democratic Hopefuls Weigh In on Subprime Loans

Morning Edition, March 16, 2007 · "With foreclosure rates at their highest level in four decades, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is calling for a "foreclosure timeout." Another Democratic presidential hopeful — Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, the Senate Banking Committee chairman — says he will hold hearings on the subprime crisis. In recent weeks at least 20 companies who specialize in high-risk mortgages have gone bust."
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Let's walk through this.  A customer with a credit issue or low down payment, who would not qualify for the lowest risk - lowest interest rate mortgage, is able to buy a house they otherwise couldn't, by paying a premium on the interest rate to compensate the mortgage company for the higher risk.  It's a highly regulated business and the transaction is all legal.  The mortgage company pays out let's say $189,900 for the customer to buy the house in exchange for the right to receive scheduled payments and take the first position lien on the house for collateral.  Now let's say the customer with the higher risk defaults on his payments.  That happens; he did have a credit problem and/or insufficient savings. The mortgagecompany is powerless except to follow the contractual and highly regulated processs of mitigating its loss with a foreclosure and take back the property to re-sell.  During the long process they receive no further payments as the loan in in default.  The process takes some 6 months to a year(?) while the mortgage company has no right of possession, receives no money and keeps incurring costs.  Now enter new President Hillary who says they can't even do that.  She declares a 'foreclosure timeout'.  The customer stays in the house.  Payments in default don't need to be made.  The mortgage is prevented fom exercizing its right under the contract and under the law.

It reminds me of the Nixon Price Wage freeze of 1971.  So, the crisis includes lenders going broke and her answer is a foreclosure-timeout.  I don't know if these people hate capitalism or just don't understand it.  I can't say this stongly enough, but IMO, if you favor economic freedoms and the right to enter into binding, legal contracts - these policies are exactly the opposite.

It's only 2 years until the election and I have held out long enough.  I made up my mind and Fred Thompson is my choice.  More after this comment on the last post:
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GM: "I'd vote for Hillary before i'd vote for McCain."  - I don't know what to say to that except that I hope to vote for neither. 
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Thompson gave his thoughts today on immigration and relations with Mexico:

http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.25816/pub_detail.asp
Southern Exposure         
By Fred Thompson
Posted: Tuesday, March 20, 2007
ARTICLES
National Review Online 
Publication Date: March 20, 2007

Editor's note: Click here to listen to the original radio commentary this transcript is based on.

We are all very well aware of the fact that we have an illegal-immigration problem in this country. As usual, we avoided the problem for as long as we could and when we couldn’t avoid it any longer we were told that, indeed, somewhere between 12 and 20 million people had somehow come into this country unnoticed.

It's like we went overnight from "no problem" to a problem so big that it now defies a good solution. It’s become one of those "there are no good choices only less bad choices" that Americans are becoming all too familiar with.

Hey guys, you're our friends and neighbors and we love you but it’s time you had a little dose of reality.

We know that the overwhelming majority of illegals come across the Mexican border. Fortunately, we’ve got someone who is all too willing to tell us what we should do about it--the president of Mexico Felipe Calderon.  President Calderon doesn’t think much of our border policies. He criticizes our efforts to secure the border with things such as border fencing. He says that bottle necks at U.S. checkpoints hurt Mexican commerce and force his citizens to migrate illegally in order to make a living (and of course send money back to Mexico). He apparently thinks we should do nothing except make American citizens out of his constituents. Calderon also accused U.S. officials of failing to do enough to stop the flow of drugs in to the United States. Mexican politicians gave President Bush an earful of all of this during his recent trip to Mexico.

I think its time for a little plain talk to the leaders of Mexico. Something like:

    Hey guys, you're our friends and neighbors and we love you but it’s time you had a little dose of reality. A sovereign nation loses that status if it cannot secure its own borders and we are going to do whatever is necessary to do so, although our policies won't be as harsh as yours are along your southern border. And criticizing the U.S. for alternately doing too much and too little to stop your illegal activities is not going to set too well with Americans of good will who are trying to figure a way out of the mess that your and our open borders policy has already created.

My friends, it’s also time for a little introspection. Since we all agree that improving Mexico’s economy will help with the illegal-immigration problem, you might want to consider your own left-of-center policies. For example, nationalized industries are not known for enhancing economic growth. Just a thought. But here’s something even more to the point that you might want to think about: What does it say about the leadership of a country when that country’s economy and politics are dependent upon the exportation of its own citizens?

Fred Thompson is a visiting fellow at AEI.

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A couple other comments of mine on Thompson:

He was impressive handling the Chief Justice nomination of John Roberts through confirmation.  Right or wrong, he didn't hesitate or flinch when asked about pardoning Scooter Libby.

I heard him on the radio today where he called the leadership of the Justice Department "the B team" and described exacty how he would have unapologetically made the changes with the US Attorneys. 

Areas I've found so far where I disagree with him:  He favored campaign finance reform.  He opposes tort reform.  And he voted against removing Clinton from office.  I think he may have softened on campaign finance regulations.  I'm no expert on tort reform and politically he may have been right not to remove CLinton from office.  After all they were certainly known criminals before the ''92 and 96 election so maybe the voters deserved two full terms.

No one is another Reagan, but he may have exactly what it takes to stand next to Hillary in the debates and explain the merits of a conservative philosophy with 'plain talk', grace and humor.

I don't know how or why the Twin Cities became the center of American Islamic issues - home of Zacarius Moussoui, Kieth Mohamed Ellison, cab drivers that won't drive customers with liquor, the Imams who undermine airport security - now we have another one, the cashiers who won't scan bacon at Target. 

Like the Imam-airport controversy, the cashiers seem to know to go after a 'Target' worth suing, not some single location locally owned corner grocery.  And Target happens to be headquartered here. 

The setup is that some Target stores now sell food. Muslims don't eat pork.  Common sense might tell you that if you don't want to be around one of the most common American meat products, don't work at a grocery store.  Target offered the cashiers who refuse to scan bacon a transfer within the store with no cut in pay.  I wonder if that ends the controversy. lol

Here is one commentator's take.  Joe Soucheray is St. Paul newspaper comumnist and local talk show personality where he is mayor of his mythical town of Garage Logic where the theme is common sense (conservatism) as compared with the alternative views in the neighboring towns of Liberal Lakes and Euphoria.

Quoting Soucheray:

"As long as the newspaper is asking for feedback, I might as well weigh in.

Actually, who might best weigh in is a spokesman for Muslims, which is part of the problem. There are many. As I understand it, there are many imams, just as there are many priests or rabbis. And while it is true that pork is forbidden in the diet, it is my understanding as well that there is no prohibition against touching pork.

That's problem No. 1. If there is no directive against touching pork, then why in the world is a Muslim cashier refusing to scan a package of bacon? And if he or she is practicing a tributary branch of the faith that prevents touching pork, then most of us have the same question we have about the cabdrivers. Why did you take a job where you might have to touch pork or be in the same car with a bottle of vacation rum?

Besides which, when you get a package of bacon home, you practically need a garden shears to open it. We spend billions of dollars a year in this country marketing and packaging products. Handle the package of bacon by the shrink-wrapped, double-sealed, triple-glazed hermetically encapsulated cardboard corner and slide it across the scanner. There. The price gets registered, and you haven't touched any pork.

Or, as ridiculous as we might wish to get, keep a pencil handy and poke or guide the bacon across the scanner.

This is America. We get inventive. And we get inventive in order to keep things moving along. That's the way we do business. Please join us.

That might touch at the heart of our shared frustration. We are basically a large blob of 300 million or so people who conduct our commerce in a secular fashion while practicing, pretty much in private, an astounding variety of religious obligations. Great. Worship grasshoppers for all I care, but when I am standing at the counter with a dollar in my hand, reach behind you and get me that O-ring I need for my lawnmower.

As wave after wave of immigrants arrived in, say, the Twin Cities, I can find no historical evidence that they demanded that America accommodate them. On the contrary, they assimilated, worked hard and benefited from America. I can find no historical evidence that other immigrant groups wished to have such a religious presence in the material marketplace, or, to put it another way, we have not previously been this expected to accommodate such a public component of one particular faith.

That's what stuck in the craws of most of us, and most of us are weary of being thought intolerant by the likes of newspapers."
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http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/16926961.htm  - AP coverage of original story
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/columnists/16920908.htm  - Soucheray column, St. Paul Pioneer Press
http://www.powerlineblog.com/  - the link and excerpt was from powerline

An eerie development in the imams case here in Minneapolis.  The pretend terrorists trying to cripple airport security are suing the unidentified passengers for reporting the intentionally bizarre behavior.  Even if a jury gets this right, and we don't know that they will, some poor travelors are going to spend a lifetime of income into legal defense costs.

Source: Katheryn Kersten Mpls Strib column - http://www.startribune.com/blogs/kersten/
Excerpts and analysis from Powerline  (http://www.powerlineblog.com/):

March 15, 2007
Meet John Doe

Gary Cooper played John Doe in the Frank Capra's movie "Meet John Doe." It's a timely film about media manipulation driven by a sinister newspaper mogul with cynical political purposes. The media manipulation nevertheless takes on a life of its own in the flowering of the "John Doe Movement."

Many of us think that the case of the flyling imams begins with another case of media manipulation. In her Star Tribune column today, Katherine Kersten takes a look at the complaint they have filed against US Airways in Minnesota federal district court. Kathy discovers some John Doe defendants -- defendants whose identity plaintiffs do not know at present, but may later include in the lawsuit:

    the most alarming aspect of the imams' suit is buried in paragraph 21 of their complaint. It describes "John Doe" defendants whose identity the imams' attorneys are still investigating. It reads: "Defendants 'John Does' were passengers ... who contacted U.S. Airways to report the alleged 'suspicious' behavior of Plaintiffs' performing their prayer at the airport terminal."

    Paragraph 22 adds: "Plaintiffs will seek leave to amend this Complaint to allege true names, capacities, and circumstances supporting [these defendants'] liability ... at such time as Plaintiffs ascertain the same."

    In plain English, the imams plan to sue the "John Does," too.

    Who are these unnamed culprits? The complaint describes them as "an older couple who was sitting [near the imams] and purposely turn[ed] around to watch" as they prayed. "The gentleman ('John Doe') in the couple ... picked up his cellular phone and made a phone call while watching the Plaintiffs pray," then "moved to a corner" and "kept talking into his cellular phone."

    In retribution for this action, the unnamed couple probably will be dragged into court soon and face the prospect of hiring a lawyer, enduring hostile questioning and paying huge legal bills. The same fate could await other as-yet-unnamed passengers on the US Airways flight who came forward as witnesses.

    The imams' attempt to bully ordinary passengers marks an alarming new front in the war on airline security. Average folks, "John Does" like you and me, initially observed and reported the imams' suspicious behavior on Nov. 20. Such people are our "first responders" against terrorism. But the imams' suit may frighten such individuals into silence, as they seek to avoid the nightmare of being labeled bigots and named as defendants.

Unlike Frank Capra's John Doe, these John Does are the real deal. Like Capra's John Doe, however, they represent a genuine citizens' movement. If identified and added to the lawsuit, they may have a claim or two of their own to assert against the flying imams, or a movement to start.

Thanks Crafty for finding that story.  I have no idea why earth science is political, but it is. It's quite a breakthrough for that paper to publish a contrary view, though it took them almost a year.  I saw a headsup yesterday that a major hit piece on Al Gore's script was coming in the NY Times, then I didn't see the story. Silly me, I expected a story that changes the liklihood of survival on our planet and life as we know it to be center front page.  Turns out it was the 141st story listed on their website for 'today's paper'.  http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html   I am curious if any of my liberal friends who read the Times will notice this story and curious if you came across it while reading the paper or were referred to it by link from another source.

Nice photos from Powerline at the link if you have never come home to find your house or car buried in a 15-20 foot snow drift.  Of course isolated weather isn't ever eveidence of anything global, though I keep seeing a replay on television of a glacier dropping ice chunks as presumably depicting something.

I came home (Lake Minnetonka, MN)  last night from an extended ski trip with constant Montana snow to find our house, cars and property covered, not quite as thoroughly as the photos at the link.  It took hours to clear out a place to put a car and to clear a door to access the house.  Then this morning began the process of clearing the roof to avoid collapse, ice dams or water damage.

I whine about winter, but of course we love it.  Most of my friends who believe the globe has warmed noticeably have coincidentally moved south or west to avoid winter.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016931.php

Karl Rove picked out these four segments for Republicans to work on:

Suburbanites: "The heart of our party is married couples with children, but they are also those that are most prone to be mobile in our society and hence less linked into politics."

Younger voters: "That's where you set in motion things that come to pass not in a matter of an election or two, but a matter of a decade or two."

African-Americans: "You can't claim to be a great political party if you're getting 9 or 10 or 11 percent. One of the interesting things about the 2006 election is that we appeared to make gains in the African-American community even while we were losing a national election."

Latinos: "This group is rapidly growing. We do well among them in some elections and not well in others."

Rove has a special interest in the group that demographers call "some college" -- people who, like him, attended college but did not graduate. The concerns of this group dovetail with one of his current policy passions: income distribution and education.

"Income is increasingly correlated to more education," he said. "The challenge for our society is how do we prepare every child to be ready for college if he or she decided to go to college? Our problem today is not that we don't have enough higher education opportunities. It's that we don't have enough people who are prepared to take advantage of it."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2732.html
The rest of the interview is interesting as well.

Below is Peggy Noonan on Hillary v. Rudy. First my take on the players so far.  My bias is right-wing, free market, low tax, limited government, strong defense conservative with certain, limited, 'neocon' type tendencies.

I agree with the points above on Edwards indecisiveness and Hillary on war.  Obama, I think, is a good man, too far left for me, and too far left for America if people choose to consider that.  Unqualified in the sense of executive experience, but not necessarily unelectable.

The top Republicans have greater stature.  Quoting powerline: 

"John McCain is a war hero. In addition, as a U.S. Senator he's been at the forefront of nearly every major legislative battle for well over a decade. For better or worse, his footprints are all over our election laws, the judicial confirmation wars, and the war against terrorism, to cite three leading examples."

I don't support McCain and I think they don't either.  But he is qualified to be President.

Mitt Romney I just don't know.  Some conservatives are turning toward him.  To me, it seems his conservative views are too recent for me to trust.  He does comes across as presidential. 

Rudy is the front-runner.  His liberal social views, different than mine, perhaps make him more electable, yet he says he would appoint non-activist judges in the spirit of Roberts and Alito.  He has executive experience, national clout, a solid conservative record on tax and spend issues, and a strong persuasive view of taking the fight to the enemy.  He is consistent, diplomatic and unapologetic with his views.  That's better than shifting in most cases.  That said, and that Rudy personally detests abortion,  as a man and a father I have no idea what the phrase "a woman's right to choose" means, except that a legislating court made a ruling in violation of the judicial principles that Giuliani supports.

I am hoping to learn more from others here especially those who favor the other candidates.  Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee and Tom Tancredo have not been able to break through with measuralbe support.  I like Hunter but have concern about a tendency toward protectionism.  Brownback I believe is anti-war.  For some that is a positive quality.  Tancredo is too single issue oriented for my taste and on that issue I think he mixes an anti-immigration feeling with the important border security message. (I'm happy to be corrected on that or anything else.)

Later in the campaigns people complain about not having the best candidates to choose from. I am voicing my frustration right now.  The only other name mentioned around that matches my views better is Newt Gingrich.  I don't find him to be presidential and in his case I am not confidant he can win a general election which is more important to me than matching my views perfectly.

Maybe I am just to picky.  Anyway, the score right now is Hillary versus Rudy.  Rudy reaches better to the middle and so he wins if the election is held today and if conservatives show up.  Of course the election isn't held today.  They have nearly a couple of years to bring him down.

Here is Peggy Noonan on that particular matchup:

New York, New York
Rudy vs. Hillary in 2008?

Friday, February 9, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

According to polls, Hillary Clinton holds an early and significant lead among Democratic voters (43%, compared with 22% for Barack Obama, according to a Fox News poll 10 days ago). She is of course the killer fund-raiser of the race, with one of her contributors crowing this week that she'll raise more money than all the other candidates combined. So let's call her the likely Democratic nominee, even though Mr. Obama hasn't even announced yet. On the Republican side it's Giuliani time, with Fox News putting him at 34% among GOP voters and John McCain coming in second with 22%. He hasn't announced yet either, but this week he filed all the papers.

So at the moment, and with keen awareness that not a vote has been cast, it is possible to say the state of New York is poised to become the home of both major-party presidential candidates. This is not unprecedented, but it is unusual. It happened in 1904, when New York, was the home of the hero of Oyster Bay, President Theodore Roosevelt, and reluctant Democratic nominee Alton Parker, a judge on New York's Court of Appeals, who carried only the solid South. It happened again in New York in 1944, when Teddy's cousin Franklin sought a fourth term against the bland and mustachioed Thomas Dewey, the New York district attorney unforgettably labeled by Teddy's daughter, the chilly and amusing Alice Roosevelt Longworth, "the little man on the wedding cake." In 1920 both the Democratic and Republican nominees were from Ohio; Sen. Warren Harding, who seemed boring but proved sprightly, landslided Democrat James Cox, a dreamy Wilsonian who thought America wished to hear more about the League of Nations. (Illinois was the first state to enjoy dual nominees when Republican Abraham Lincoln beat Stephen Douglas, the official but not the only Democratic candidate that year.)

Right now New York, our beloved, overtaxed, postindustrial state, is the red-hot center of the political map.

These are exciting times, with rival gangs roaming uptown and down looking for money and support. The styles of the two tongs are different. Hillary's people are cool and give away nothing; they're all business. They're like a captain from an army about to crush you. Why should he bother to charm you?

Rudy's people are more like old-style New Yorkers: They are pugnacious, and if you express reservations about their guy, they give you the chin. They don't make the case or try to persuade; they tilt their chins up and try to argue you into conceding he can win. As if they think it's all on them, and if they can win the conversation, he will win the nomination.

The city, as we say in the state, is full of people who've met both candidates, know them, had dealings with them. The other night I bumped into a veteran journalist who talked about Iran. The journalist said, "I wrote Hillary and gave her good advice but she didn't write back!" I went to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee speech Mrs. Clinton gave last week, and the higher geopolitical meanings of the event aside, the crowd ate dinner as she spoke and didn't seem unduly impressed. They'd seen her before and would see her again.

What a boon the race is for the tabloid press and the mainstream media: If New York's at the center, they're at the center. The tabloids had fun with the formal debut, via a Harper's Bazaar interview, of Judi Giuliani. The Post famously front-paged The Kiss, a posed and mildly creepy smooch--it was bigger story in New York than the mad astronaut--and her recent reflections that the presidential race is "a journey" they can make "together." It left one observer--that would be me--saying, "Oh no, please no." In politics, in the world of political life, the proper attitude of a third wife is modesty.

Mrs. Clinton also has an interesting spouse.

Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton seem in a way to represent two different New Yorks, two different templates of what it is to be a New Yorker. Rudy as mayor: An embattled pol bickering with reporters trying to bait him. A Western European ethnic from the outer boroughs with a slight hunch to his shoulders. He does the chin too, or did. His people probably got it from him. He was the government-prosecutor son of a Brooklyn guy, a Republican in a Democratic town, a man who had ideas--convictions!--about how to cut crime and stop the long slide, and who had to move entire establishments (and if there's one thing New York knows how to make, it's establishments) to get his way. And he pretty much did, winning progress and enmity along the way. On 9/10/01 he was a bum, on 9/11 he was a man, and on 9/12 he was a hero. Life can change, shift, upend in an instant.

Mrs. Clinton is not ethnic or outer-borough. She's suburban, middle class; she was raised in a handsome town in Illinois and lived an adulthood in Arkansas and Washington. She founded the original war room, is called "The Warrior" by some of her staff, has been fierce and combative in private, but obscures it all now under clouds of pink scarves. She literally hides the chin.

Both candidates seem now almost...jarringly happy. As if they've arrived and it's good, which they have and it is. But good fortune distances. They are both rich now, and both have spent the past six years being lauded and praised. In both it seems to have softened their edges--the easy, ready smile. We'll see if it's softened their heads.

But it is significant that in Mrs. Clinton's case, for the past 30 years, from 1978 through 2007--which is to say throughout most, almost all, of her adulthood--her view of America, and of American life, came through the tinted window of a limousine. (Now the view is, mostly, through the tinted window of an SUV.)

From first lady of Arkansas through first lady of the United States to U.S. senator, her life has been eased and cosseted by staff--by aides, drivers, cooks, Secret Service, etc. Her life has been lived within a motorcade. And so she didn't have to worry about crime, the cost of things, the culture. Status incubates. Rudy Giuliani was fighting a deterioration she didn't have to face. That's a big difference. It's the difference between the New Yorker in the subway and the Wall Street titan in the town car.

Picking a couple passages from Reagan speeches in honor of his birthday in the context of looking for a governing philosophy for our next leader.  (If your time is limited, read the two Reagan speeches linked rather than my ramblings.) Here is Reagan quoting Lincoln:

"What they truly don't understand is the principle so eloquently stated by Abraham Lincoln: "You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."" - Reagan speech 1992 RNC http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/rnc.cfm

Amazingly, what was an issue for Lincoln, was the issue of Reagan and certainly the economic issue of 2008.   Distracted by war, Republicans largely didn't show up for the debate on economic policy differences in 2006 and for the most part couldn't demonstrate that their view was noticably different from their opponents.

Here's another Reagan quote from his farewell Oval office speech expanding on what he meant by his usage of the famous Shining City on a Hill vision:

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still." http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/farewell.cfm

There is so much in there.  For today's controversies I'll pick out the parts about free ports and open doors. 

Free trade versus protectionism has been debated for centuries.  Both parties have members on both sides.  Put me with Reagan and the free traders.  I see at least one conservative running with tendencies toward protectionism. 

Lastly, I don't interpret the Reagan vision of open doors to be in conflict with the paramount need today to secure our borders; there aren't any suicide bombers in his shining city vision.  In my view we can should favor and encourage increased legal immigration and guest workers, highly screened, while enacting a lock-down, zero tolerance border enforcement for our national security (echoing what Crafty wrote in the previous post).  My reasons are economic and moral, but I also think a general anti-immigration message will not win in 2008.

The unintended consequence of raising the minimum wage
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I am posting this because I think the question is interesting - how does a raising minimum wage affect the border issue - not because I agree with the answer.  I'm still thinking about that.    - Doug
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4523270.html

 Feb. 3, 2007, 6:36PM
Working toward reform
Effect of $7.25 on immigration
The unintended consequence of raising the minimum wage

By DALE O. CLONINGER

I have yet to see anyone address the effect of a significant increase in the federal minimum wage on illegal immigration. In that void, I offer the following observations: First, if most of the 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants came to the United States because of the enticement of jobs and the prospect of earning $5.15 an hour, what do you think increasing that wage to $7.25 an hour would do? If you do not know the answer, I suggest you eschew our southern border lest you be trampled by the surge in illegal immigrants.

Second, given the Law of Diminishing Returns, what do you think the employer response to the sudden and significant increase will be? This question is not answered easily.

Theory suggests employers would reduce the number of employees to help offset the increase in the hourly wage. However, if demand for their products remains high, employers will most likely maintain production levels and look to cut costs (or raise prices) in other ways.

There are at least two ways employers can reduce their labor costs in the short run.

First, employers could outsource more jobs overseas, where labor costs are a mere fraction of those in the United States. Second, faced with paying an American the $7.25 above the table, employers could choose to hire (more) illegal immigrants at a subminimum wage under the table. This practice is not new; it will simply be magnified. The black-market wage will, in all likelihood, also rise — meaning that employers may be unwilling to employ all those scrambling across the borders looking for work. In any event, American workers (as well as legal immigrants) get the short end of the stick.

The heightened exodus across the Mexican border will undoubtedly create greater political pressure for immigration reform — read legal guest worker program. An effective guest worker program will lead to higher labor costs, as the now legal immigrant workers can petition for enforcement of the federal minimum wage law without fear of deportation.

The single most important reason why illegal immigrants are able to find jobs in the United States is that employers can employ them at wage rates significantly lower than their American counterparts. If employers lose this incentive, they will have less reason to offer jobs to immigrants. Fewer jobs for immigrants will mean fewer immigrants. In this manner, an unintended consequence of a higher federal minimum wage may be sound immigration reform that could result, eventually, in fewer immigrant workers in the United States.

There is an important caveat, however.

This conclusion assumes that a guest worker program will stem the flow of illegal immigrants and minimize the black market in their labor — heroic assumptions to say the least. As long as there is a mass of labor willing to work for wages below the minimum, there will be employers who will do so.

Cloninger is professor emeritus at the School of Business of the University Houston-Clear Lake.

Winter in Minnesota brings out the global warming skeptic in me.  We woke today to nice sunshine, a below zero temp and -30 F 'windchill'.  The forecast shows below zero temps every hour for the whole weekend coming up with -33 F windchill during the 'heat' of the day on Saturday.  Not global measures, just giving context to my skepticism. 

Earlier in this thread I saw both sides of the climate change debate well represented. I disclose I am no scientist, just trying to calculate the human caused component of global warming based on the imperfect science I have read so far.  I never see the proponents or alarmists quantify the human element of warming, so here I give it my first shot. I recognize that all components of my math are inexact (wrong) and controversial, but they are based on the best estimates I have found, and I already disclosed my bias above.  Please re-do the math with the data you trust better and post your answer to the question - at what rate is mankind warming the planet?

Estimate of total warming over the last 50 years:  0.5 degrees Celsius

Proportion of atmosphere CO2 attributable to humans:  3% (0.03)

Proportion of greenhouse effect attributable to CO2: less than 2% (0.02)

Negative feedback factor estimate: 50% (0.5)

Conversion factor of 50 year warming to per decade warming: 1/5 (0.2)

Total warming attributable to humans: 0.5 x 0.03 x 0.02 x 0.5 x 0.2 =0.00003 degree C per decade.

This is not in contradiction to the wording of scientists that it is very likely, with 90% certainty, that human activity is contributing to global warming.

Up go the oceans - 20 feet.

--
Adding to the many skeptic questions about consensus theories, I am curious about Oxygen levels in the atmosphere:

If fossil fuel combustion destroys 2 O₂ molecules for each CO₂ created, and if fossil fuel combustion is the central reason we see elevated levels of CO₂ (I think it isn't), why don't why see matching double depletion levels of O₂ in the atmosphere?  Oxygen levels have stayed amazingly steady.  Any measurable oxygen depletion would certainly steal the headlines away from all other issues.

Taking my rambling shot at the question - we're spreading 'democracy', but what is it we are spreading when you see Hamas 'elected' as a ruling political party, etc. Hugo Chavez was 'elected'. Saddam won sham 'elections'.  Some countries have elections but don't allow unapproved parties or candidates. Some countries call elections suddenly when it's convenient and some cancel elections and hold power. Even Hitler and Nazi rise to power had some origin in the electoral process. 

Pure democracy has some pure meaning such as every citizen voting on every issue and you risk tyranny of the majority(as Crafty just wrote).  I take 'democracy' in the spreading sense as meaning loosely some form of self rule. From our point of view I guess we are looking for a lot of good qualities in new republics based on what we value, but want it to be their idea in their own form.

So my answer is that democracy, such as the 3 national elections in Iraq, is step one in freedom, not the end-all solution.  Giving people a taste of freedom and self-rule where none has existed in their lifetime is the beginning.  That doesn't mean the security issue is solved or that capital markets are free or that basic freedoms will be protected or that tyranny won't return.

I just believe that the first step toward freedom is amazingly important. It was impressive to see the recently freed republics of Europe such as Poland, Romania and Bulgaria identify with the cause of Iraqi freedom.  My daughter and I saw Pres. Bush up close at a campaign appearance in Oct. 2004 they day that Afghans first headed to the polls, with a 75% turnout and women included, not just rule by men, much less the taliban and al Qaeda.  For me it was a quite an emotional feeling to connect the freeing of these many millions of people we've never seen or met with the choices and political efforts that we make here.  In iraq, I am very proud that Saddam got a fair trial and is now dead.  We didn't achieve US independence without war and outside help, and it wouldn't have happened in these new countries either without help.

Now back to bad, elected governments, such as Hamas.  Democracy is ugly, but better than the alternatives. Capitalism and free markets are ugly but better than the alternatives.  I grew up in a Goldwater-Reagan type Republican family in a state (Minnesota) completely dominated by the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party of Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, etc. and a country run by Lyndon Johnson and huge Democratic congressional majorities.  Of course it didn't seem like self rule when you keep losing elections and live under someone else's tax code and spending programs and court system.  The difference was that you always knew you could change minds; you didn't have shoot the oppressors.  Through 1984, Minnesota was America's most liberal state as Reagan won all the other 49. The liberal issues were the same as today IMO: reverse the tax cuts and pacify the enemy.  Eighteen years later Walter Mondale was defeated in his home state and a tax cut supporting Republican took the Senate's most liberal seat of Paul Wellstone. (This year we sent a Wellstone-clone to take the other senate seat, oh well.)

My point is that the process of getting it right, from anyone's point of view, is a long, long, long process and we never quite get it right. (I see that same point made with "How could it not take decades?")  In America, we didn't free slaves until seventy-some years after the bill of rights went into effect.

I was asked the same spreading democracy question previously by another friend in the same context - I think the implication was the a benevolent dictatorship might have been preferable to the actual choice of the people. In the case of Iraq, we installed the interim government of english-speaking American Paul Bremer while the first elections were scheduled.  Considering the criticisms we face now, can you imagine what world and Iraqi opinion would be now if the American installed government was the permanent solution?

Now back to good government and real freedoms.  Heritage makes a freedom index ranking of 161 countries.  I'm sure their criteria aren't perfect, but I like the thought process. http://www.heritage.org/index/topten.cfm

Some politician suggested an 'Association of Democracies' as an international rival for the UN's tolerance for illegitimate regimes.  It makes sense to me.

I appreciate the Lindzen WSJ post above.  Going further back in time, he wrote a great piece still posted at Cato on the origin of the global warming debate, the underlying science and the politics driving it.  It's very long so I will just link it. I recommend a slow, careful read.  The first half is science and the second half covers the debate in the early years.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html

One point is his characterization of CO2 and methane as minor greenhouse gases with water vapor and clouds having 50 times more greenhouse effect.

At the heart of the science debate is the issue of net positive or negative feedback issues with warming.  In other words, a cloud may trap in heat but blocks light out. Net negative feedback would mean that warming in itself would cause offsetting phenomenon rather triggering even more warmth as others argue.

He criticizes existings models for inaccurately explaining existing data.  For example:

"If one considers the tropics... There is ample evidence that the average equatorial sea surface has remained within plus or minus one degree centigrade of its present temperature for billions of years, yet current models predict average warming of from two to four degrees centigrade even at the equator. It should be noted that for much of the Earth's history, the atmosphere had much more carbon dioxide than is currently anticipated for centuries to come."

Comments and criticisms of his science encouraged, but not on his integrity or his funding please.

Craig, all,

I thought of Condi when Hillary started changing her emphasis from 'woman' to 'mom'.  Of course Condi is out for now because a) she isn't running and b) Bush foreign policy is currently in low regard.
--
Speaking of foreign policy, this speech Mitt Romney gave in Israel last week offers a very clear plan regarding Iran and a worthwhile read IMO.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016622.php

Mitt Romney Herzliya Conference Speech
January 23, 2007

    Thank you Ron Lauder for that introduction. And thank you for what you do – and to you Uzi Arad as well – to make this important conference happen. It’s good to be at the Herzliya Conference this afternoon. It’s been a busy day. I saw the sunrise in Jerusalem. And along with friends, I traveled to the Gaza border, from there wechoppered up to the Lebanese border. And now here.I am glad to be in Israel again. It has been about 10 years since my last visit and I am struck by how much has changed. The economy is booming. As someone who spent most of my career in business, I have great respect for the ingenuity and resilience of Israel’s workers and entrepreneurs.

    But the changes are not only economic and they are not only positive.

   And it is not just Israel that has changed in the past decade, but the world around us. Unfortunately, many have not fully caught up with the new strategic paradigm we face.In that old world, the Arab-Israeli conflict was thought of as just another intractable regionalconflict. One that drags on…that should be resolved…but is not part of a global threat to theworld order.9/11 changed that perspective. Or it should have. Contrary to the Baker-Hamilton Commission, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict will not magically mollify the jihadists. No, what we should have realized since 9/11 is that what the world regarded as an Israeli-Arab conflict over borders represented something much larger. It was the oldest, most active front of the radical Islamist jihad against the entire West. It therefore was not really aboutborders. It was about the refusal of many parts of the Muslim world to accept Israel's right toexist – within any borders.

    This distinction came into vivid focus this summer. The war in Lebanon had little to do with thePalestinians. And it had nothing to do with a two-state solution. It demonstrated that Israel isnow facing a jihadist front that from Tehran through Damascus to Southern Lebanon andGaza.As Tony Blair astutely put it, Hizbullah was not fighting “for the coming into being of a Palestinian state...but for the going out of being of an Israeli state."

    Yet we have still not fully absorbed the magnitude of the change. As far as our enemies areconcerned, there is just one conflict. And in this single conflict, the goal of destroying Israel issimply a way station toward the real goal of subjugating the entire West.Jihadism -- violent radical Islamic fundamentalism -- has emerged as this century’s nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century’s horrors: fascism and Soviet-styled communism.In my country, the attack by Al Queda has led some to believe that we are threatened by aband of fanatics in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They imagine that if we couldonly get Bin Laden and his cohorts, all this unpleasantness could be over.But Jihadism is much, much more.

    Jihadists are among Shia and Sunni, promoted by Hamasand Hizbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, financed by knowing and unknowing Muslimgovernments, and preached to hundreds of millions in many nations. Their goal is theoverthrow of moderate Muslim states and their replacement by a caliphate. Their strategy isthe collapse of the economy, the government, and the military of America and our friends.To their eyes, our destruction is not delusional, but possible.In my country, the focus has been on Iraq, which is understandable. We have some 140,000 men and women there, with more on the way. And we are suffering casualties. Indeed, the past few days have been especially painful for the United States. Thousands of American families continue to make the greatest sacrifice for security in Iraq. And for whatever the mistakes made and the challenges before us, we must remain committed to making everyeffort for success there.And on Iraq, I would just like to make another point. Some Congressional leaders in theUnited States today are arguing that the President is not authorized to allow our forces topursue Iranian elements inside Iraq – which are attacking our own troops. That would be folly.

    But today, I wish to focus on the regime that has become the heart of the Jihadist threat - Iran. I believe that Iran’s leaders and ambitions represent the greatest threat to the world sincethe fall of the Soviet Union, and before that, Nazi Germany.

    Ahmadinejad has gone well beyond the boundary of outrage…beginning with his calculateddesecration of history. Indeed, when he denies the Holocaust, he could care less about history– his point is about the present and the future. His purpose is not to deny the Holocaust, but todeny Israel. He is testing the waters. He wants to know who will object. And how they willregister their objection.The Iranian regime threatens not only Israel, but also every other nation in the region, andultimately the world. And that threat would take on an entirely new dimension if Iran were allowed to become a nuclear power. And just think of the signal a nuclear Iran would send toother rogue regimes with nuclear ambitions – this could be a tipping point in the developmentand proliferation of nuclear regimes. How should the civilized world approach this challenge?

    Our first goal should be to dispense with three major schools of wishful thinking:The first school concedes that Iran must not be allowed to go nuclear. But that's where thecertitude ends. Beyond that recognition, there is only the hope that Iran’s weakeningeconomy and political rivalries will yield a change in the government’s leadership. We are all hopeful, but this is not a strategy. The second assumes that it is possible to live with a nuclear Iran. This thinking is based onthe theory that Iran, once granted the privilege of joining the nuclear club, will be aresponsible actor.

    Neither their words nor their record justify this conclusion. The third school believes that the logic of deterrence, which served us through the Cold War,will apply to Iran. But for all of the Soviets’ deep flaws, they were never suicidal. A Sovietcommitment to national survival was never in question. This assumption simply cannot bemade about an irrational regime that celebrates martyrdom.Each of these three represents a rationale for inaction, rather than a strategy for success.Each would in all likelihood yield the same result – an Iran that is nuclear armed, threateningthe world, or worse. They should be rejected. And they should be replaced with anunderstanding of two fundamental realities:

    1) Iran must stopped;

    2) Iran can be stopped.

    It is inconceivable to me that some think otherwise. Their view must be based ondisbelief…disbelief that Iran’s regime means what it says.Few believed that Hitler meant when he called for the destruction of the Jewish people in Mein Kampf. Few believed what Osama bin Laden said.

    The 9/11 Commission found numerous failures – failures of intelligence, of coordination, andof analysis. But they found that the most critical failure was what they called a “failure ofimagination.” Americans simply could not believe that people would crash airplanes full ofinnocent people into buildings full of innocent people.

    Since that happened, can we really dismiss horrific threats as mere rhetoric? A nuclear Iran is unacceptable because, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointed out inhis confirmation hearings, we have no way of guaranteeing that Iran will not use a nuclearweapon. Many people do understand that Iran must be stopped, but they do not believe it is possible. They see the modest sanctions that the UN took three years to produce. They see Russia refusing to end its cooperation with Iran's nuclear program. They conclude that the UNSecurity Council will never produce sanctions tough enough – and soon enough - to stop Iran.

    What is less appreciated is what the US and Europe can do. Yes, we should continue toencourage China and Russia to work with us on the UN Security Council. And from my meetings in Israel over the past few days, and in China two months ago, I have reason to bemore optimistic about the role China could play.But we must not sit idle while we wait for cooperation: The US and Europe can do much toexploit the Iranian regime’s vulnerabilities.

    In considering our strategy, we must remember that the government and the clerics arenot the sole center of power. The people of Iran also represent a major source of power. Byand large, they have not been radicalized by their government and clerics. They feareconomic stagnation and political repression. Most are not seeking a military confrontationwith the West. Indeed, most want greater engagement with the West - there’s a reason, for example, that there are more than 75,000 bloggers active in Iran today. A successfulstrategy should consider and encompass the people of Iran, as well as their leaders. In my view, our strategy to stop Iran should include the following five dimensions:

    First, we must continue tighten economic sanctions. Our model should be at least as severeto the sanctions imposed on Apartheid South Africa. We should demand no less from theinternational community today.The Bush Administration deserves credit for the efforts it has made on the economic trackthus far. The Administration’s campaign to deny Iran access to the international bankingsystem is crucial. The United States and Europe must ensure that Iran is unable to obtaincredit. And we must ensure that Iranian purchases in foreign currencies become difficult or impossible.

    We must also be imaginative in the way we pressure Iran economically – an issue I havebeen looking into. In my meetings this week in Israel, I have become aware of the potential ofUS pension funds to further isolate the Iranian economy. We should explore a selective disinvestment policy. After a series of briefings here, I have contacted the Treasurer of my own state of Massachusetts and Governors of other states to begin this process by meetingtoday with senior Israeli leaders in Boston.

    Second, we must impose diplomatic isolation of Iran’s Government. Ahmadinejad should notbe provided the trappings, respect, and recognition of a responsible head of state as hetravels. In fact, when former Iranian President Khatami traveled to Boston last year to lectureat Harvard University, I denied him state police security for his visit. The real question is: why was he invited in the first place? Ahmadinejad is even more strident than Khatami. He should neither be invited to foreign capitals nor feted by foreign leaders. This would haveimportant symbolic significance, not just to Ahmadinejad, but to the people of Iran.Diplomatic isolation should also include an indictment of Ahmadinejad for incitement togenocide under the Genocide Convention. The United States should lead this effort.

    The full title of the Genocide Convention is the Convention on the Prevention andPunishment of the Crime of Genocide. Remember that word: Prevention.Article III of that treaty establishes that “public incitement to commit genocide” is apunishable crime. Every signatory to this treaty, including the U.S. and most Europeancountries, shares an obligation to enforce it. So do human rights groups that care aboutinternational humanitarian law.Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel, and human rights advocate and former Canadian JusticeMinister Irwin Cotler have spoken out on this issue.In addition, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has been a forceful advocate for this effort, and is joined by Alan Dershowitz. If these two can agree, they must be on to something.

    Third, Arab states must join this effort to prevent a nuclear Iran. These states can do muchmore than wring their hands and urge America to act. They should support Iraq’s nascentgovernment, They can help America focus on Iran by quickly turning down the temperatureof the Arab-Israeli conflict -- stopping the financial and weapons flows to Hamas andHizbullah…thawing relations with Israel…and telling the Palestinians they must dropterrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

    Fourth, we must make it clear that while nuclearization may be a source of pride, it can alsobe a source of peril. The military option remains on the table. And further, nuclear materialthat falls into the hands of terrorists would surely provoke a devastating response from thecivilized world.

    Fifth, our strategy should be integrated into a broader approach to the broader Muslim world.I agree with our friend, former Prime Minister Aznar of Spain, that a central purpose of NATO should be to defeat radical Islam. I believe this has two critical dimensions. The first is anunquestionably capable military. This will mean a greater investment by the United States aswell as other nations. The second is a global partnership which includes NATO and otherallies. Its mission would be to support progressive Muslim communities and leaders in every nation where radical Islam is battling modernity and moderation. This Partnership for Prosperity should help provide the tools and funding necessary for moderates to win the debate in their own societies. They need secular public schools, micro credit and banking,the rule of law, adequate healthcare, human rights, and competitive economic policies. In thefinal analysis, only Muslims will be able to permanently defeat radical Islam. And we canhelp.

    We should remember that in the two other global confrontations with totalitarianism in thepast century, it was not always obvious that the West would prevail. Indeed, in these conflicts, the balance of power was not always in the West’s favor. Those were wars we could have lost, but did not.

    In the current conflict, the balance of forces is not nearly as dangerously close as it wasduring moments of World War II and the Cold War. There is no comparison between the economic, diplomatic, and military resources of the West and the handful of weak terrorist states that threaten us. In the previous global wars, there were many ways to lose, and victory was far fromguaranteed. In the current conflict, there is only one way to lose, and that is if we as acivilization decide not to lift a finger to defend ourselves, our values, and our way of life.

    It is time for the world to plainly speak three truths:

    One, Iran must be stopped.

    Two, Iran can be stopped.

    And three, Iran will be stopped.

    Thank you.

This author was Supreme Court analyst for the Jim Lehrer News Hour and for the Chicago Tribune, now of ABC news.  Today she writes at opinionjournal.com about my favorite justice on the court:
--

The Truth About Clarence Thomas
He's an independent voice, not a Scalia lackey.

BY JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG
Sunday, January 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Clarence Thomas has borne some of the most vitriolic personal attacks in Supreme Court history. But the persistent stereotypes about his views on the law and subordinate role on the court are equally offensive--and demonstrably false. An extensive documentary record shows that Justice Thomas has been a significant force in shaping the direction and decisions of the court for the past 15 years.

That's not the standard storyline. Immediately upon his arrival at the court, Justice Thomas was savaged by court-watchers as Antonin Scalia's dutiful apprentice, blindly following his mentor's lead. It's a grossly inaccurate portrayal, imbued with politically incorrect innuendo, as documents and notes from Justice Thomas's very first days on the court conclusively show. Far from being a Scalia lackey, the rookie jurist made clear to the other justices that he was willing to be the solo dissenter, sending a strong signal that he would not moderate his opinions for the sake of comity. By his second week on the bench, he was staking out bold positions in the private conferences where justices vote on cases. If either justice changed his mind to side with the other that year, it was Justice Scalia joining Justice Thomas, not the other way around.

Much of the documentary evidence for this comes from the papers of Justice Harry Blackmun, who recorded the justices' votes and took detailed notes explaining their views. I came across vivid proof while reading the papers as part of my research for a book about how the Rehnquist Court--a court with seven justices appointed by Republican presidents--evolved into an ideological and legal disappointment for conservatives.

Justice Thomas's first term was especially interesting. He replaced legendary liberal icon Thurgood Marshall, and joined the court just a year after David Souter took William Brennan's seat. There appeared to be a solid conservative majority, with the court poised to finally dismember the liberal legacy of the Warren Court. But that year it instead lurched inexplicably to the left--even putting Roe v. Wade on more solid ground.

Justice Thomas's first year on the job brought to life the adage that a new justice makes a new court. His entry didn't merely change the vote of the liberal justice he replaced. It turned the chessboard around entirely, rearranging ideological alliances. Justice Thomas acted as a catalyst in different ways, shoring up conservative positions in some cases and spurring others--the moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in particular--to realign themselves into new voting blocs.

Consider a criminal case argued during Justice Thomas's first week. It concerned a thief's effort to get out of a Louisiana mental institution and the state's desire to keep him there. Eight justices voted to side with the thief. Justice Thomas dissented, arguing that although it "may make eminent sense as a policy matter" to let the criminal out of the mental institution, nothing in the Constitution required "the states to conform to the policy preferences of federal judges."

After he sent his dissenting opinion to the other justices, as is custom, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Kennedy changed their votes. The case ended up 5-4.

Justice Thomas's dissents persuaded Justice Scalia to change his mind several times that year. Even in Hudson v. McMillan, the case that prompted the New York Times to infamously label Justice Thomas the "youngest, cruelest justice," he was again, initially, the lone dissenter. Justice Scalia changed his vote after he read Justice Thomas's dissent, which said a prison inmate beaten by guards had several options for redress--but not under the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment."

From the beginning, Justice Thomas was an independent voice. His brutal confirmation hearings only enforced his autonomy, making him impervious to criticism from the media and liberal law professors. He'd told his story, and no one listened. From then on, he did not care what they said about him.

Clarence Thomas, for example, is the only justice who rarely asks questions at oral arguments. One reason is that he thinks his colleagues talk too much from the bench, and he prefers to let the lawyers explain their case with fewer interruptions. But his silence is sometimes interpreted as a lack of interest, and friends have begged him to ask a few questions to dispel those suggestions. He refuses to do it. "They have no credibility," he says of critics. "I am free to live up to my oath."

But the forcefulness and clarity of Justice Thomas's views, coupled with wrongheaded depictions of him doing Justice Scalia's bidding, created an internal dynamic that caused the court to make an unexpected turn in his first year. Justice O'Connor--who sought ideological balance--moved to the left. With the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, the court now is poised to finally fulfill the hopes of the conservative movement. As George W. Bush told his legal advisers early in his presidency, he wanted justices in "the mold of Thomas and Scalia." Interestingly, on President Bush's marquee, Justice Thomas got top billing.

Ms. Crawford Greenburg, legal correspondent for ABC News, is the author of "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story for Control of the United States Supreme Court" (Penguin Press, 2007).

We lost a few people in the move. (

I tried to recognize the initials.  Is that you Doc?

I agree to some extent. The format is a little hard for me to adjust to.  Clicking on the '10 most recent posts' seems to give a glimpse of the current discussion.  I have been reading, but slow to dive in.  I started that way on OP as well. 

Many posts here are worthwhile readings.  The best to me are the personal exchanges on the issues of the day. 

Hang in there.  Maybe we find a few other familiar faces and get to know the rest better as well.

    - Doug

Keeping you informed of the effort to preserve the archive.

I wrote to Eric: "I asked a few others how to convert from Lotus Notes format to something more universally readable and searchable.  The only suggestion I received was the possibility that Adobe 8 might do it.  I don't know if that's true but I'm willing to try it.  I agree that it is worthwhile to capture the database as is and we can work on conversion after that.


Eric wrote:

"...Adobe 8 won't be able to read the Lotus
Notes Database directly.

You'll have to have Lotus Domino and Lotus Notes installed. Acrobat is only
the capture tool.

You could also get away with only the Lotus Notes Client installed and then
Install Acrobat 8 Professional with that.

I have Lotus Notes installed here.

Let me know.

In any case, I've not picked up the server. It's on my list.

Eric"

I received the following update 11/20 regarding the archive from Our Piazza.  My hope is that we can receive the DVD backup as is and that someone in this small group showing interest can translate from lotus notes to a more widely accessible format. I personally don't use any Lotus  products or have any expertise there.  Please respond here or to me directly if you can offer any suggestions.  Thank you.    - Doug

--

Doug, the web site is in a Lotus Notes database. It's full text searchable
only when using a Notes client or a Domino Server. It's in the NSF format
and is not readable by other software.

The other option is to load the database <2 Gigs onto a notes client or
Domino server and export it, using a 3rd party tool that would need to be
purchased.

When I get the server back I'll copy the NSF files to a DVD for
safe-keeping.

Eric Mack

"I hadn't realized that the "axis of evil" speech came after Iran helped us in Afg."

Hopefully history will sort this out someday.  Looks to me like Iran played some kind of dual role of helping and sabotaging our interests in Afghanistan and with AQ. Trita Parsi takes a cynical view that Iran was there for us and we backstabbed them; that may not be the final word. (Also, I don't see middle ground for Iran becoming a nuclear power.) Here is a Time magazine piece Feb 2002 exploring the question of including Iran in the 'axis of evil'.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,198857,00.html
"...But one complaint not mentioned by the administration may be evidence suggesting that Tehran may have helped senior Taliban and al Qaeda members escape from Afghanistan. An adviser to Heart warlord Ismail Khan told TIME that shortly before the U.S. bombing campaign began in October, a high-ranking Iranian official connected to the hard-line supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini had been dispatched to Kabul to offer secret sanctuary to Taliban and al Qaeda fugitives. The Iranian official was apparently trapped in Kabul during the bombing, and remained there until the Northern Alliance took control of the city. Although the Iranians despised the Taliban for their persecution of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan, their hatred for the U.S. may have run deeper.

And, according to sources in Herat, the Taliban and al Qaeda took the Iranians up on their offer.

Shortly before Herat's Taliban garrison fled in November, a convoy of 50 off-road vehicles carrying some 250 senior Taliban and al Qaeda members allegedly crossed over into Iran, using a smugglers' route through the hills about 20 miles north of the city. A Western diplomat in Afghanistan claims that groups of Taliban and al Qaeda are still threading their way through the mountains of central Afghanistan and heading for the Iranian border. "The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has an eye on everything that happens along the border," says the diplomat. "Of course they know that Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are getting across." Once inside Afghanistan, the al Qaeda and Taliban could slip over to the Gulf States through Bandar Abbas and other Iranian ports. Conventional wisdom in Herat, according to Ismail Khan's aides and also elders of the city's large Shiite community, is that Tehran hard-liners, especially within the Revolutionary Guards, have a different political agenda from President Khatami for the war in Afghanistan ? one they've been actively implementing to the benefit of the Taliban and al Qaeda."  (end TIME quote)


Similar story, same time frame in BBC here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1817141.stm

--

Victor Davis Hanson (interesting) comments on Rumsfeld

Don't Blame Rumsfeld! [Victor Davis Hanson]  Thurs am, 11/9/06

I don't see how removing the Secretary of Defense helps either the country or the Republicans, especially given the pre-election vote of confidence in his full tenure. He was on the right track reforming the military; the removal of the Taliban and the three-week victory over Saddam were inspired.

So we are down to his supposed responsibility for the later effort to stop the 3-year plus insurgency, whose denouement is not yet known. Rumsfeld's supposed error that drew such ire was troop levels, i.e., that he did not wish to repeat a huge presence in the manner of Vietnam, but sought to skip the 1964-1971 era morass, and go directly to the 1972-5 Vietnamization strategy of training troops, providing aid, and using air power.

I think he was right, and that most troops in Iraq today would agree. I was just talking to a Marine Lt. back from Haditha and Hit; his chief worry was not too few Americans, but rather Iraqi Security Forces insidiously expecting Americans to do their own security patrolling. Since sending in tens of thousands to do a Grozny-like smash-up is both politically impossible and antithetical to American policy, I don't see the advantage of more troops at all, especially when we will soon near 400,000 Iraqis in arms, which, together with coalition forces of ca. 150,000, would in theory provide 555,000?or more than the "peacetime" army of Saddam's. As a rule in history, it is not just the size, but the nature, rules of engagement, and mission, of armies that matter.

For the future, neither precipitous withdrawal nor a big build-up are the right solutions, the former will leave chaos, the latter will only ensure perpetual Iraqi dependency. As it is, there are too many support troops over in Iraq in compounds, who are not out with Iraqis themselves; more troops will only ensure an even bigger footprint and more USA-like enclaves. Abezaid, Casey, Petraeus, McMaster, etc. understand counter-insurgency and the need for a long-term commitment that marries political autonomy for the Iraqis with American aid, commandos, and air support. Rumsfeld supported them all.

A final note.Whatever Rumsfeld's past in the 1970s and 1980s, he wholeheartedly supported the present effort to offer the MIddle East something other than realpolitik. I don't see how the Reagan-Bush era 1980s and early 1990s policies in the Middle East?selling arms to Iran, putting troops in Lebanon and running when they were hit, cynically playing off Iran against Iraq, selling weapons to any thug in the Middle East, giving a blank check to the House of Saud, letting the Shiites and Kurds be massacred in February-March 1991?were anything other than precursors to the events of 9/11?when, of course, enhanced by the shameless Clintonian appeasement of the middle and late 1990s.

The return of the realists-Baker, Gates, and the former advisors to GB I-should prove an interesting mix with the Dean-Pelosi Democrats. The latter used to call for idealism in foreign policy, then got it with GWB's democratization, then turned on him, and now will get the realism that they currently profess to favor. Don't hold your breath.

I think the Saddam Hussein (Hanging) verdict will come down soon. IMO people should become familiar with the alleged facts before it gets tossed around as an American or Republican political stunt.  Like the OJ trial, people think the Saddam trial story was about antics. The trial was about a gruesome massacre.  The question is whether what is alleged is true and whether this massacre was ordered by Saddam.  My understanding is that this crime was chosen for trial because easily proven facts. The actual, original order and documents were discovered because of the American-led liberation of Iraq.  Supporting that guilty view is the behavior of the defense, arguing everything except the facts of the case.  I posted an alleged first hand account with gruesome detail on OP (RIP) awhile back, now lost.  Here is a version from the NY Times from last year:


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/international/middleeast/03dujail.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=788a1ef6c2e064fb&ex=1278043200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

A Town That Bled Under Hussein Hails His Trial

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 3, 2005

DUJAIL, Iraq - The scars of what happened after an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein, on July 8, 1982, are painfully evident in this mainly Shiite town 35 miles north of Baghdad.

People lower their voices when they speak of fathers, brothers and sons who went to the gallows, their fates unknown until Mr. Hussein's overthrow 21 years later set off the ransacking of a secret police headquarters in Baghdad that uncovered records of the executions. The landscape around Dujail is mostly barren scrubland, stark testament to the bulldozing of thousands of acres of date palms and fruit orchards after plotters fired on Mr. Hussein's convoy from thickets on the edge of town.

Now, the events at Dujail have come full cycle for Mr. Hussein.

Officials at the Iraqi Special Tribunal set up to try the former dictator and his top aides have said they expect to put him on trial by the end of the year in the deaths of nearly 160 men and boys from Dujail, all Shiites, some in their early teens. Some were shot dead in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt, but 143 - 9 of them ages 13 through 15 - were executed three years later by Mr. Hussein's revolutionary court. Townspeople say that many others remain missing - at least 200, by some counts - and that they hope the trial will reveal at least something of their fate.

For now, their families have only fading photographs of their lost menfolk at weddings, school graduations and summer outings, and tales of the moments they disappeared, seized on the streets or pulled from their homes by secret police squads that descended on Dujail in the days that followed the attack on Mr. Hussein.

Along the sun-blasted streets and alleyways of the town, a nondescript, impoverished sprawl of single- and double-storied concrete structures and makeshift, domeless mosques beside the main highway to Iraq's oil-rich north, the prospect of seeing Mr. Hussein, 68, facing a possible death sentence has brought relief - at least to the three-quarters of the population who are Shiites, though not to many in the Sunni Arab minority in the town, where there are still fierce loyalties to Mr. Hussein.

"Having Saddam on trial for what he did here will be good for Dujail, and for all of Iraq, because many people in this country, and in Dujail, still think of him as some kind of a god," said Ali Haj Hussein, a 37-year-old Shiite who lost seven brothers in the executions that followed the assassination attempt, including one, Hussein, 19, who confessed to his father before he died that he was one of those who had shot at the Iraqi ruler.

The visit to Dujail amounted to a venture into enemy territory for Saddam Hussein. In 1982, he was in his third year as president, still consolidating his power, and many in this town, with a population of about 75,000, despised him for starting a war with Iran, Iraq's Shiite neighbor, two years earlier. Shiites here say that Mr. Hussein had long distrusted the presence of a large Shiite enclave, including Dujail and the nearby town of Balad, deep inside Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland - and beside the main highway from Baghdad to Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown.

A conservative Shiite religious party, Dawa, with an armed wing that had mounted terrorist attacks against Mr. Hussein's government, had strong support in Dujail, and saw in his visit a chance to avenge the government's killings of hundreds of Dawa leaders and sympathizers. The plotters named the mission Operation Bint Huda, after the sister of Dawa's founder, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric. The two were executed in 1980.

Other crimes for which Mr. Hussein is likely to face eventual prosecution, in separate trials, include the Anfal campaign - the Arabic word means spoils - of the late 1980's, in which as many as 150,000 Kurds were killed, many shot and dumped into mass graves, others killed in poison-gas attacks; the chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988 that killed about 5,000, which is likely to be treated as a separate case, like Dujail; and the repression of a Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq in 1991, in which 150,000 people are believed to have been killed. Also under investigation by the tribunal are the executions of more than 200 Baath Party leaders after Mr. Hussein seized power in 1979.

But the Dujail trial will set the pattern for the others, and lawyers for Mr. Hussein have made it clear they plan to use every legal recourse to expose the proceedings as a show trial, manipulated by the American lawyers who run the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, an American Embassy agency that has been the legal and financial mainstay of the tribunal.

On the summer afternoon 23 years ago when Mr. Hussein came to Dujail, he was greeted with gunfire from the palm groves on the north side of town, survivors say. The first to rush to the streets were the youths; they had heard rumors for days that something important was about to happen. Army helicopters had been circling near the town, and official vehicles from Baghdad had been coming and going from the Baath Party headquarters in a grim, guarded compound along the road leading into Dujail from the main north-south highway.

"It was about 2:30 p.m. when we heard people saying that Saddam had arrived, so we ran into the streets to see him, and right away his bodyguards started shooting at us, and they killed three of my friends," said Ghalib Hussein Abbas, a 42-year-old tractor driver now, then an unemployed youth of 19.

Fleeing to their homes, the townspeople saw the helicopters return, firing at villages amid the palm groves from which the plotters had attacked.

Two days later, survivors said, a 24-hour curfew was eased when loudspeakers announced that those missing relatives should go to the Baath headquarters and search among rows of bodies laid out in the building's forecourt. For some, it was a trap. According to witnesses' statements to the tribunal, four of the men set to go on trial with Mr. Hussein had gathered at the building to direct vengeance on the town: his half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, deputy head of the Mukhabarat secret police in 1982; Taha Yasin Ramadan, a deputy prime minister and later Baath Party vice chairman; and the two local Baathist officials, Abdullah al-Musheikhi and his son, Mizher al-Musheikhi. Another defendant will be Awad Hamad al-Bandr al-Sadoon, former chief judge of the revolutionary court.

In small groups at first, then in larger roundups, about 1,500 townspeople were arrested, as many as 30 from single families, and started on a journey into Mr. Hussein's gulags - first at a detention center in Tikrit, later at a secret police detention center in Baghdad, and finally, to the Nugra as-Salman prison, an old British-built fort in the desert along the Saudi Arabian border. Some survivors, who were released in 1986, say that the appalling conditions at the prison caused several dozen deaths, including women, children and nursing infants. The 143 who were hanged never got beyond detention in Baghdad, where Mr. Sadoon, the chief of the revolutionary court, sent them to the execution chambers at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

Accounts from local Shiites say Mr. Hussein outwitted the Dujail plotters from the start. On his entry to the town, those accounts say, tribal leaders made him a gift of a car, and marked it, in tribal tradition, with hands dipped in the blood of slaughtered sheep. Mr. Hussein, though, Shiites in Dujail say, saw the gift as a possible harbinger of assassination and returned the car, insisting that the tribal leaders and some of his aides travel in it - to their deaths, as the accounts have it, when the plotters fired on the car.

A few hours after the shooting, Mr. Hussein took to the flat roof of the town's main clinic and told a crowd that he was "not a coward who can be chased from your town," but assured his listeners there would be no reprisals. "He told us that the people who had attempted to kill him were a small band of traitors, and that we don't want to confuse them with the good people of Dujail," said Kassem Aalbuhaider, a shopkeeper now, then only 12.

But even as Mr. Hussein spoke, Mr. Aalbuhaider said, the secret police were at work. "They took whole families, even old people, women and small children," he said.

Within weeks, the razing of the palm groves and the orchards began, continuing until more than 250,000 acres had been bulldozed. In 1992, after the first Persian Gulf war, Mr. Hussein returned to Dujail for the first time, and told tribal leaders that the wastelands could be replanted, with grain crops, but not with palms and orchards. But it took 12 more years, and the overthrow of Mr. Hussein, before the town could begin in other ways to recover from what townspeople now refer to simply as "al karitha," the disaster.

Now, the plinths where Mr. Hussein's statues and portraits once stood at the town's major intersections are bare, and the streets are hung with portraits of the white-bearded clerics who are the icons of religious Shiites. The Baath Party headquarters serves now as a Shiite mosque. But the totems that seem to matter most are the date palms that some townspeople began planting discreetly in the mid-1990's as memorials to those who died.

On a recent evening, Mr. Hussein, the townsman who lost seven brothers to the gallows, led a visitor to the family's fields outside the town and through a grove of half-grown palms dedicated to them: Faleh, Hussein, Mahmud, Mohsen, Muhammad, Saad and Salim. "Here, I feel like a king," he said, smiling broadly as he reached out to touch the palm trees' drooping fronds. "Like these trees, Iraq is reborn. We are just at the beginning, but once Saddam has been tried and executed, we believe Dujail will begin to rise again."

Thanks Crafty for the Strat report.  I don't agree completely, but it makes a nice takeoff point for discussion.

Strat makes several assertions or conclusions that are arguably valid, but could also be looked at differently.  At the core they seem to see this as a U.S. public relations challenge with the U.S. looking impotent.  IMO, that assumes that people buy the anti-American rhetoric of the regime (they are doing this because they are threatened by the U.S., they demand 2-party talks with the U.S., etc.).

Blame goes to the NK regime IMO, not Clinton, Carter, Bush or China. If they fed their people or allowed any human effort at having an economy maybe one could then argue that defense and exerting sovereignty are healthy or righteous interests. That is not the case.

If there is a PR problem it should go to China who has influence and leverage, who laid down the line that was then crossed.

Strat quote: "The United States has maneuvered itself into a position of taking primary responsibility for dealing with North Korea's threat."

Yes, the current and previous President said this was unacceptable.  But I assume the same goes for statements of all others in the 6-party talks except for the DPRK and the UN and all the non-proliferation nations.  This is NOT acceptable.  Unfortunately, all this is in the context of the Iraq experience: the 12 years of resolutions without enforcement or consequences, the lack of support for action from so much of the world, and the enormous difficulty, tragedy and yet unknown outcome of finally taking bold action.

Strat continued: "the United States is out of options and allies."

Obviously there is an elephant in the room, a militatary strike in the spirit of Ozirak, the Israeli strike on an Iraqi nuclear facility in June 1981, is very carefully not being mentioned or discussed in any way. Ozirak reference: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/mcnair41/41osi.htm

I see that China is working on a new fence: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/17/asia/AS_GEN_China_NKorea_Fence.php  Perhaps that is in preparation for the fall of the NK regime and perhaps they are considering stronger actions after they feel they can control the flow of refugees - pure speculation on my part.  As Strat wrote, they also have an interest in seeing the status quo continue.  They certainly do not fear the NK regime.

The U.S. allies with the most to fear from a nuclear NK are obviously South Korea first (if they are still our ally), then Japan and ...Taiwan, oops another elephant in the room. 

I don't know the timeframe for North Korea becoming a real threat.  If this is a U.S. problem, then the political timeframe for this administration taking any action is 2 years.  In the Ozirak link above, the time frame was also driven by a leader with a deadline to leave office.

Under my theory that this really is a China problem first and with China not wanting Japan and Taiwan to accelerate their militarization or increase their defense cooperation with the U.S., I presume China could shut this down one way or another in a short order if or when that decision is made.