Verbosities

O'Reilly: Traditional values people put others on a par with themselves. That's the Judeo-Christian tenet. Love your neighbor as yourself. Secular Progressives put themselves above all others. That philosophy says "Me first, then I'll worry about you."

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The global war on terrorism is not a game from which we can simply walk away when it seems it isn't going our way. At the same time critics of the Bush administration insist it should have done more to combat al Qaeda in Afghanistan before Sept. 11 (on the basis of intelligence far weaker than that pointing to Hussein's weapons of mass destruction), they miss the more profound lesson that national tragedy should have instilled: that the only deterrent to terrorism is strength and that weakness--real and perceived--is an incitement to further attacks.

(W)hen Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking "What would Gandhi do?"



And that's a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?



It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is never.

No matter how much evidence of Iran's determination to destroy or dominate us, no matter how many times Khamenei or Ahmadinejad leads the chant of "Death to America," no matter how many American fighters and Iraqi citizens are killed as a result of Iranian support for the terrorists, she and the Kissingers of this world continue to convince themselves that things are getting better, that Iran shares our goals for peace in the region, and that if we only make one more generous offer, the whole unpleasant situation will work out for the best.



It is not so. They are not like us, and they do not share our dreams. Diplomacy will not tame them. Only our victory will.

Doesn't Patrick Fitzgerald look like a man who has dodged a bullet and is ready to get out of town? That was my first impression after watching the special-prosecutor's press conference after news came down Wednesday about Scooter Libby. It would seem that prosecuting a Bush official before a Washington jury is not necessarily a slam dunk after all when the gruel is this thin.



Two crucial decisions were made in order for this sorry state of affairs to have played out this way. The first was when the Justice Department folded under political and media pressure because of the Plame leak and appointed a special counsel. When DOJ made the appointment they knew that the leak did not constitute a violation of the law. Yet, instead of standing on that solid legal ground they abdicated their official responsibility.



The Plame/Wilson defenders wanted administration blood because the administration had had the audacity to question the credibility of Joe Wilson and defend themselves against his charges. Therefore, the Department of Justice, in order to completely inoculate themselves, gave power and independence to Fitzgerald that was not available to Ken Starr, Lawrence Walsh, or any prior independent counsel under the old independent-counsel law. Fitzgerald became unique in our judicial history in that he was accountable to no one. And here even if justice had retained some authority they could hardly have asked Fitzgerald why he continued to pursue a non-crime because they knew from the beginning there was no crime.

Let us stipulate--appealing to the authority of such diverse legal authorities as David Boies and Victoria Toensing--that the Scooter Libby perjury case should not have been brought in the first place. It is also true that decisions by the trial judge made it difficult for Libby's team to put its best defense forward and that a D.C. jury was going to be tough for any Bush-Cheney official. Still, the verdict of guilty on the part of the jury was, as Hamilton might put it, "unfortunate."

The only problem is: There was nothing wrong with firing eight U.S. attorneys. Of course the Department of Justice was inept in the way they did it, trying to conceal things that didn't need to be concealed but the U.S. attorneys, like innumerable other public officials serve at the pleasure of the president. He fired eight of his own appointees apparently because they we not aggressive enough in pursuing voting fraud cases. In 1993 Attorney General Janet Reno rode into town and fired every U.S. attorney in the country but one--all Republican appointees.



Amidst all this foolishness there is a serious question here. Considering the times we live in, do we really want to continue to try to chip away at the traditional powers of the president?

(Quoting AEI Scholar John Yoo) We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.

People who want to blow Jews off the face of the earth. The regime that stormed our embassy in 1979 and kept Americans captive for 444 days. Iran’s Hezbollah puppets have killed more Americans, than any other terrorist group except al Qaeda. Explosive devices from Iran are being used right now against our soldiers in Iraq. They’re clearly more skittish about cultural warfare than the sort that actually kills people--like the one against Israel that Iran financed just a few months ago.



I must say that I’m impressed that Hollywood took on a politically incorrect villain. Must have run out of neo-Nazis. So now these sensitive souls in Iran think that Hollywood is part of a U.S. government conspiracy to humiliate them into submission. I can only wish we were that effective.

But Ahmadinejad's ambitions are not confined to the destruction of Israel. He also wishes to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby to control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil out of it through the Persian Gulf. If he acquired a nuclear capability, he would not even have to use it in order to put all this within his reach. Intimidation and blackmail by themselves would do the trick.



Nor are Ahmadinejad's ambitions merely regional in scope. He has a larger dream of extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe, and this too he hopes to accomplish by playing on the fear that resistance to Iran would lead to a nuclear war. And then, finally, comes the largest dream of all: what Ahmadinejad does not shrink from describing as "a world without America." Demented though he may be, I doubt that Ahmadinejad is so crazy as to imagine that he could wipe America off the map even if he had nuclear weapons. But what he probably does envisage is a diminution of the American will to oppose him: that is, if not a world without America, he will settle, at least in the short run, for a world without much American influence.



Not surprisingly, the old American foreign-policy establishment and many others say that these dreams are nothing more than the fantasies of a madman. They also dismiss those who think otherwise as neoconservative alarmists trying to drag this country into another senseless war that is in the interest not of the United States but only of Israel. But the irony is that Ahmadinejad's dreams are more realistic than the dismissal of those dreams as merely insane delusions.

There's a lot in the bill I don't understand, but this sort of makes sense. There's $50 million for repairs to the plant that supplies electrical power to the Capitol--where Congress works. To fund and win the war, Congress does need electricity at least to do its job.



Ah, I get it. This bill isn't just about funding the war for democracy and freedom in Iraq. It's a political statement. And it's about buying enough votes with pork in order to make that statement. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing, if Congress did have its power cut off every once in a while.

Over the years, America has earned opprobrium in the Arab world for its realpolitik backing of repressive dictators like Hosni Mubarak and the Saudi royal family. This could be the chance to right the scales, to establish the first Arab democracy, and to show the Arab people that America is as committed to freedom for them as we were for the people of Eastern Europe. To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim.

Now, as before, politicians are itching to fund their pet projects with the short-term revenue increases that come from tax hikes, ignoring the long-term pain they always cause. Unfortunately, the tax cuts that have produced our record-breaking government revenues and personal incomes will expire soon. Because Congress has failed to make them permanent, we are facing the worst tax hike in our history. Already, worried investors are trying to figure out what the financial landscape will look like in 2011 and beyond.



This issue is particularly important now because massive, unfunded entitlements are coming due as the baby-boom generation retires. We simply cannot afford higher taxes if we want an economy able to bear up under the strain of those obligations. And beyond the issue of our annual federal budget is the nearly $9 trillion national debt that we have not even begun to pay off.



To face these challenges, and any others that we might encounter in a hazardous world, we need to maintain economic growth and healthy tax revenues. That is why we need to reject taxes that punish rather than reward success.

One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the "have-nots" and the "haves" engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability.

We're also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there's a world war going on out there and they need to pick a side--the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.

Taken together, American principles, interests, and systemic responsibilities argue strongly in favor of an active and expansive stance of strategic primacy and a continued willingness to employ military force. Within that context, and given the ways in which nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction can distort normal calculations of international power relationships, there is a compelling need to hold open the option of--and indeed, to build forces more capable of--preemptive strike operations. The United States must take a wider view of the traditional doctrine of "imminent danger," considering how such dangers might threaten not only its direct interests, but its allies, the liberal international order, and the opportunities for greater freedom in the world.

Tenet acknowledged that before the Gulf War, the CIA had underestimated how far along Saddam was on his nuclear program.



All of this hardly fits with the notion that Saddam posed no threat. As Tenet made the media rounds, he may have helped the administration as much as hurt it

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

Imagine what it would be like to live, knowing that a rocket could fall on you or your children at any minute. Half of those who live nearest to Gaza have fled their homes. Those remaining are traumatized by daily warning sirens and explosions.



The irony is that Israel has the military might to easily win the war that is being waged against them today. They haven’t used that might, in the past, out of compassion for Palestinian civilians and because it could trigger a wider regional conflict.



That balance of power is about to change, though. If Iran develops nuclear weapons, the very existence of this tiny nation of Israel will be threatened. The Iranian regime has left little doubt that it intends to see Israel "wiped off the map." Hamas is using the same language, not coincidentally, and has announced it will begin launching missiles into Israel from the West Bank too.



If the world doesn’t act to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, it must be prepared for the consequences of Israel defending itself.

Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) first guest blog posting (that is, on a blog other than her own) is raising a few eyebrows in Democratic political circles.

Not because of what Clinton wrote, but because of where she chose to post it.

GOP Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter’s campaign contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in posting a message from him, on the subject of Israel. Just to be clear, this isn’t an LGF endorsement of Congressman Hunter (and no, he isn’t paying me to post it)—but I think the lizard army will really appreciate his straightforward assessment of the situation.

I’d like to thank Charles Johnson for giving me an opportunity to talk to his readers at Little Green Footballs about Israel...

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales vowed Friday to remain in his post through the end of President Bush’s second term, in a “sprint to the finish line.”

In his most definitive statement on the issue to date, Gonzales made clear to his critics during a speech on crime that he would continue to reject their calls for his resignation.

“I know that I only have 18 months left in my term as attorney general, and that really does not feel like a lot of time to accomplish all of the goals that are important to me. So often Washington seems to run at a marathon pace, but I intend to spend the next year and a half in a sprint to the finish line,” Gonzales said.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The unfree governments now understand that they have to provide a good economy to keep citizens happy, and they understand that free-market econ­omies work best. Also, nearly all of the unfree nations are developing countries. History shows they grow faster, at least for a while, than mature nations. But being unfree may be an economic advantage. Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state.



So the future may look something like the 20th century in reverse. The unfree nations will grow so quickly that they will overwhelm free nations with their economic might. The unfree will see no reason to transition to democracy.



Meanwhile, democracies may copy many of the market-friendly policies of the dictatorships, but it seems unlikely that free citizens will choose to reduce their own political freedoms.



Democracies will stay in the game, but, as Arrow showed long ago, their victory is not assured.

A government is really just a mechanism that makes collective decisions for a large number of cit­izens who have different preferences. I might want to spend our tax dollars on dog parks; you might prefer more police. The government’s job is to work it out. This job is called “aggregating preferences.” In the U.S., we send signals with voting to help the government aggregate preferences.



Arrow was able to show that no voting scheme can be devised that will create a government that has rational preferences, where rationality is defined precisely by Arrow as meeting a number of condi­tions. Democracy might be a form of government that many prefer to live under, but there is nothing theoretically compelling that suggests that it is the form of government that best reflects the underly­ing preferences of citizens. As a result, democracies will not necessarily outperform other types of mech­anisms for preference aggregation as a route to economic prosperity. Democracies will not always win.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 in Kelo v New London, that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment permits state governments to redistribute private property with the aim of maximizing tax revenue. In this case, a handful of homeowners will be evicted against their will to make room for a pharmaceutical plant. Liberals take note: If you really support the common man against big corporations, then you too should be outraged by this case.



While the decision reaffirms a position that has been the status quo for quite some time, still I am puzzled. The Takings Clause reads,

Private property shall not be taken for a public use, without just compensation.

That’s a full stop at the end, with not a word about tax revenue.



As Randy Barnett has argued in Restoring the Lost Constitution, we are certainly not to interpret the adjective “public” here to imply that government takings for private use are ever permitted–with or without just compensation. Such a power was never contemplated at the adoption of the Constitution, except to regard it with horror: The power itself implies strongly that private landowners hold their land only by virtue of a “public” utility, and, ultimately, that the property does not truly belong to them. In the final analysis, all property would then belong to the government.



[snip]



Provided that “just compensation” is given, it seems there is nothing at all preventing any sort of taking, so long as some legislature votes to do it. Let’s also not forget that just compensation is largely in the eye of the beholder. Its very existence in the Constitution is something of a necessary evil: If the compensation truly were just, then governmental “takings” would not exist at all. Instead, the government would simply raise its offer enough to induce the property owners to sell of their own accord.

(S)omeone just explain to me how our government remains one of limited powers in light of Raich, Kelo, and the indefinite detentions of those who are neither accused of crimes nor are POWs. From where I sit, the circle has finally closed: The enemies of liberty on the left and the right have all come to an agreement in which big government wins no matter what the rationale or the venue. I only hope we will realize what is happening before even more damage is done.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Remember that anonymous hold placed on the Open Government Act? Looks like it was placed by Jon Kyl of Arizona.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., says the Justice Department is concerned that it could force them to reveal sensitive information.

In a statement Thursday, Kyl said the agency's "uncharacteristically strong" opposition is reason enough to think twice about the legislation, and he will block a vote until both sides can work out the differences.

Powered by ScribeFire.

It was in June of 2005 that I officially joined Team Pokerstars. It was the beginning of an incredible two year journey that ended last month, when I found out that I won't be on the team after June 15th of this year.

I had been expecting to be cut from the team ever since Bill Frist snuck the UIGEA into an entirely unrelated port security bill in the middle of the night on the last day of Congress' session in 2006. Because he wanted to suck up to his daddy-needing ultra-conservative moralizing base. For his presidential bid. Which he dropped shortly after. Hey, diagnose this, asshole.

Uh. Sorry. Anyway, with the future of online poker in the USA in serious doubt as a result of this Fristfucking, PokerStars and the other online rooms need to focus on Europe and Asia to expand and fortify their business. It totally makes sense, and it didn't surprise me at all when I got the call last month.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I give you my favorite quotation from the Bush administration, put forward by the proverbial "unnamed Administration official" and published in the New York Times Magazine by the fine journalist Ron Suskind in October 2004. Here, in Suskind's recounting, is what that "unnamed Administration official" told him:

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Meanwhile, in a separate opposition to the prosecution's sentencing memorandum, Libby's lawyers address an issue that has caused no small amount of controversy recently, the prosecution's assertion that Valerie Plame (also known by her married name, Valerie Wilson) -- the former CIA agent whose outing sparked the investigation that ultimately ensnared Libby -- was indeed a covert agent. Libby's lawyers argue that the assertion Plame was covert, based on an unclassified summary of her classified file, "is tantamount to asking the Court and Mr. Libby to take the government's word on Ms. Wilson's status, based on secret evidence, without affording Mr. Libby an opportunity to rebut it. Such a request offends traditional notions of fairness and due process."

Libby's lawyers don't specifically refute the prosecution's assertion that Plame qualified as covert under the relevant statute, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, but they do call it into question. They observe that the IIPA definition only includes those CIA agents "serving outside the United States" or who have "within the last five years served outside the United States," and that the unclassified summary says that within the relevant time-frame Plame "engaged in temporary duty travel" while otherwise remaining the U.S., and say that "it is not clear" that travel meets the IIPA definition. "In fact," they write, "it seems more likely that the CIA employee would have to have been stationed outside the United States... the meaning of the phrase 'served outside the United States' in the IIPA has never been litigated. Thus, whether Ms. Wilson was covered by the IIPA remains very much in doubt."

(1) The term “classified information” means information or material designated and clearly marked or clearly represented, pursuant to the provisions of a statute or Executive order (or a regulation or order issued pursuant to a statute or Executive order), as requiring a specific degree of protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.



[snip]



(4) The term “covert agent” means—

(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency—

(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and

(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.