Category: Politics

I’m picturing Dom DeLuise as president

Count me among those not surprised by this news:

The Army Reserve, taxed by recruiting shortfalls and war-zone duty, has adopted a policy barring officers from leaving the service if their field is undermanned or they have not been deployed to Iraq, to Afghanistan or for homeland defense missions.
…

At the heart of the controversy is whether a law stating that commissioned reserve officers are appointed “for an indefinite term and are held during the pleasure of the President” gives the government the power to force them to serve permanently — as Army lawyers say — or only to discharge them against their will.

It’s an interesting debate, and if we are to continue with an all-volunteer army in which people actually wish to volunteer, the proper interpretation of that phrase seems clear. A reserve officer who has met his obligation should be allowed to resign.

That said, a court will decide, as it must whenever ridiculous, unclear language is used to craft legislation. Is “during the pleasure of the President” the worst phrase ever rendered by a legislative body? Legislative language surrounding obscenity probably trumps that, so let me be more specific. Could there be another law more tailored to fit the grandiose power ambitions of the current administration? I imagine Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzalez commenting that “during the pleasure of the President” is a particularly wonderful phrase. I’m sure it’s being added to all future signing statements. All that’s left to wonder is whether or not they feed grapes to President Bush upon command.

Perhaps a Madison descendant, instead?

Dynastic arrogance is one reason, among many, that I will not vote for Hilary Clinton in 2008 if she wins the nomination. So what does President Bush have to gain with the same thinking, especially at a time when America seems to be disinclined to buy the Bush brand name.

“I would like to see Jeb run at some point in time, but I have no idea if that’s his intention or not,” [President] Bush said in an interview with Florida reporters, according to a story on the St. Petersburg Times Web site.

If that sounds familiar, the Bush brothers’ father, former president George H.W. Bush, made a similar statement last year, telling CNN’s Larry King that Jeb Bush would be “awfully good” as president.

“This guy’s smart, big and strong. Makes the decisions,” the first President Bush said then.

Can we please have a viable third party candidate in 2008? Some sense of a respect for America would be helpful.

Should death certificates cite “Insufficient Socialism”?

I don’t know if this is the alleged cause as determined by the study or if it’s a bias slipped in by the journalist reporting on the study, but this bit from a story on infant mortality rates, and how America is second only to Latvia among the industrialized world in infant deaths. Consider:

The researchers also said lack of national health insurance and short maternity leaves likely contribute to the poor U.S. rankings.

Saying that lack of national health insurance is a cause is the same as saying that I still have student loans because I didn’t have a rich benefactor when I graduated from college. It’s one possible argument, but it’s preposterous to think of it as causative, or even related, really. I have student loans because I racked up credit card debt during college. Where many people my age paid down student loans, I paid Visa.

In the case of this study, health insurance affordability and access may (and probably do) have a significant contributory impact to high infant mortality rates. Preventive care works wonders, as we surely know by now. But there is no way to realistically gauge that national health insurance is the solution to reducing infant deaths. Any reasonable study of economics suggests it could reduce the rate, but at the likely expense of some other group. What trade-offs shall we start making to get the preferred ideological solution to health care in America? Or would it make sense to say that inadequate health care access and affordability are contributing factors, and work to find a solution to that conundrum that leaves open a much broader range of options? Remember, keeping kids alive and healthy is supposed to be the goal.

Congress shall make no law …

As a Sirius stockholder I’m a huge fan of Senator Frist’s latest craptacular foray into public policy. As an American, though, I’m disgusted:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is trying to push through a bill that would increase indecency fines on broadcasters and threaten to take away their licenses after three violations.

Frist is championing the bill after conservative groups, a key voting bloc if he runs for president, expressed frustration at the lack of congressional action to curb broadcast indecency.

His stand also puts opponents of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 in the position of appearing to cast a vote in an election year against decency.

I can’t begin to express the shame I feel that the First Amendment has been reduced to a bygone principle, where attacking it is an accepted political ploy designed to shore up the conservative base for 2008. I don’t give a fuck about decency when the real issue is that Sen. Frist and his fellow small government defenders meddling, prudish comrades in Congress will trade my liberty for a few votes.

Liberty is the ability to give offense without governmental repercussions, not the freedom to do only what’s acceptable in polite society. They’re all devoid of principles. Otherwise, they’d accept that the Constitution is our foundation, not a religious text. May they rot in defeat in November.

Is an innocent billionaire in prison successful?

Yesterday, President Bush hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao. During the course of their joint press conference, President Bush made an interesting statement:

As the relationship between our two nations grows and matures, we can be candid about our disagreements. I’ll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of respecting human rights and freedoms of the Chinese people.

China’s become successful because the Chinese people are experience (sic) the freedom to buy and to sell and to produce. And China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely and to worship.

China is not successful. No amount of money can justify not having the freedom to assemble, to speak freely and to worship (or to not worship… that’s important, too). Money is good, but I’ll take freedom every time if the deal is one or the other. I suspect that more than a few Chinese agree.

A Star Trek fan would make a Borg reference here

In my various recent writings on America’s looming immigration “crisis”, I’ve tried to work my way in the general direction of an intellectual solution. Although I don’t have a full idea of the solution yet, one of the most important aspects is assimilation. Danielle and I have discussed it a bit, which helps me organize my thoughts beyond the simple concept, but I’m not at the end yet. I’m not sure when that will happen, which is why today’s editorial by Robert Samuelson is useful. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but I like this passage for its compact summation of the need for assimilation by new immigrants.

We have a conspiracy against assimilation. One side would offend and ostracize much of the Hispanic community. The other would encourage mounting social and economic costs. Either way we get a more polarized society.

On immigration, I am an optimist. We are basically a decent, open and tolerant nation. Americans respect hard work and achievement. That’s why assimilation has ultimately triumphed. But I am not a foolish optimist. Assimilation requires time and the right conditions. It cannot succeed if we constantly flood the country with new, poor immigrants or embark on a vendetta against those already here.

I like that as a starting point. Assimilation is important to maintain a shared American culture built on our common ideals. Those should not be so easily discarded simply because we’re afraid to hold an expectation. American culture is vibrant, resilient, and essential, but it will not hold if we embrace irrational immigration policies.

One aspect of assimilation should be an English requirement, which, contrary to this Reason piece, does not mean that I think a language such as Spanish should have no influence. An English requirement, among other expectations, would work to reduce the chances of further dividing us into a multi-cultural society. That is dangerous, as evidenced by the difficulties facing the U.K. and other nations more willing to impose low standards. This commonly involves bending laws away from the national legal foundation in favor of avoiding offending new groups. That would be a suicidal path. American history shows that immigrants to America understand that. I think they still do. The question is, do we?

Fear can sell even the inconsequential

I got a fun e-mail from the good folks at the American Family Association. They want me to take a survey:

Should Congress pass a law making BC/AD the official method of dating time?

The Kentucky Board of Education has voted to take the first step in redefining how America dates time. The board voted to include a new secular system of dating the calendar, BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era), and added it to the BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of our Lord”) method.

The new secular system of time dating will appear in the curriculum and other materials used by Kentucky educators. This new system is already being included in textbooks across the nation.

The new method will replace the birth of Christ as the dividing point in history. For example, the new system would change 2006 AD (Anno Domini) to 2006 CE (Common Era).

It also opens the door for the ACLU to find a liberal activist judge who will forcefully remove the use of BC and AD. The ACLU types will claim that the use of BC and AD are a violation of the First Amendment because it dates history based on the birth of Christ.

Since the emphasis in that excerpt is from the original, the absurdity of the AFA hysteria is that much more amazing (and amusing). We can worry about the big, bad ACLU and the liberal activist judges because they’re going to remove Christ from America if they can, but it’s okay to encourage an activist legislature to take action to prevent something that isn’t a threat. Before this article, I’d never heard of any movement to replace BC and AD. And I live on the east coast, away from the real Americans in Red America who the elites are trying to rule in their ivory-tower conspiracy!

On a side note, isn’t it amusing how wonderfully the conservatives have embraced “red” as their color, when fifty years ago, red was the antithesis of their goal? I know I’m not the first to think of that, but it just struck me. I’m slow, but it entertains me sometimes.

Really, though, who cares? I don’t sign my checks with 2006 AD now, and I’m not about to start signing them 2006 CE. CE is a Microsoft operating system, nothing more. And no amount of hysteria or liberal activist judges and their ACLU buddies will change that.

I did chuckle, though, so it was worth something.

Progressive Tax Day propaganda

The editors at The Washington Post certainly know how to frame skew a discussion in their favor. Today, they’re trying to make a case against the Senate essentially ignoring one of its rules to get tax cuts extended. That would be a fine argument, and worth pointing out if only to further build the case of Congressional hypocrisy. But that’s not the setup the editors use. Consider:

MUCH TO THE chagrin of the White House and the GOP leadership, lawmakers didn’t get a new round of tax cuts done in time for tax day today. But when Congress comes back from its recess, it’s expected to take up a deal to extend President Bush’s capital gains and dividend tax cuts. To make their budget-busting tax policy appear less costly than it is, the lawmakers are resorting to a gimmick that is even more egregious than their usual tactics.

If they want to use the size of the deficit as the justification for their position, they should anticipate, and understand how poorly it reflects on them, the simple counter-argument that reducing spending is just as effective at deficit reduction. It’s certainly more appropriate. Instead we get terms like “budget-busting”. What’s more budget-busting, bringing in too few dollars or sending out too many dollars? One thing is easier to control than the other. I know which one it is. It’s a shame the Post’s editors don’t, or at least won’t acknowledge it since it doesn’t fit a liberal vision of American government.

Via: To The People

Networks finally understand the Constitution

Even though lawsuits like this shouldn’t be necessary, it’s about time the broadcast networks grew a set:

Four TV broadcast networks and their affiliates have filed court challenges to a March 15 Federal Communications Commission ruling that found several programs “indecent” because of language.

ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox, along with their network affiliate associations and the Hearst-Argyle Television group of stations, filed notices of appeal in various federal courts, including in Washington D.C. and New York. Some were filed late Thursday and the rest Friday morning.

The move represents a protest against the aggressive enforcement of federal indecency rules that broadcasters have complained are vague and inconsistently applied. Millions of dollars in fines have been levied based on those rules.

The networks need to fight the censorship coming from the FCC more often every time. That won’t happen, but this gives hope that maybe they’re growing a spine. It’s an infant spine, sure, but it’s a start.

Personally, I like this:

The networks and affiliate groups, representing more than 800 individual stations, issued a rare joint statement Friday calling the FCC ruling “unconstitutional and inconsistent with two decades of previous FCC decisions.

“In filing these court appeals we are seeking to overturn the FCC decisions that the broadcast of fleeting, isolated _ and in some cases unintentional _ words rendered these programs indecent.”

“Unconstitutional and inconsistent with two decades…” Blah, blah, blah. They should’ve just stopped with unconstitutional. Using the less severe, but equally offensive, censorship practiced by the FCC for the last two decades as a defense only invites the court to rely on tradition rather than the Constitution. Given how frequently that seems to be happening lately, I want the courts to use clearly absurd logic to insert tradition into “Congress shall make no law…” Instead, we’ll maybe get the status quo from last year. Big deal.

FCC spokeswoman Tamara Lipper said Friday that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled more than 20 years ago that comedian George Carlin’s monologue on the “7 dirty words you can’t say on television and radio” was indecent.

“Today, Disney, Fox and CBS challenged that precedent and argued that they should be able to air two of those same words,” Lipper said. “We are reviewing their filings.”

What’s to review? That ruling was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. The Constitution should still prevail over the scared, puritan hacks reading, “interpreting”, and “enforcing” it. At some point, the national mommies and daddies in the Federal government need to stop being nanny-statists.