Slate-iest headline ever

Julian Assange's Great Luck

Why his arrest and jailing in the United Kingdom is good news for him.

via slate.com

Get Obama re-elected?

The liberal angst about Obama seems profoundly misplaced to me. Liberals should care about one thing and one thing only: Re-electing Obama. If he gets re-elected, it means Obamacare is probably never repealed. Since health care is an enormous driver of the federal budget and huge portion of the economy, keeping Obamacare in place will give the left an important foothold on the commanding heights of the debate over the size and influence of the government. With Obama as president, it’s likely that the current fight over whether government is 24 percent of GDP or 18 percent of GDP settles toward the former. What liberals don’t seem to realize is that 2009 was a historic year for them–to be able to spend and regulate so much in a basically center-right country was extraordinary. Now, all their energy should be devoted to protecting the legacy of ‘09.

via nationalreview.com

That comes from National Review's Rich Lowry, so you might want to consider the source. As for me, I'm in the midst of evaluating how much a liberal supporter of Obama could reasonably have expected to accomplish -- and to fight -- given the circumstances facing him. I suspect a lot of people on the left are doing the same thing right now.

Chait: 'The Uncertainty Canard'

So, Republicans had a choice. They could accede to certainty with Clinton-era rates on the rich, or uncertainty with Bush-era rates on the rich. They chose uncertainty. The Bush-era rates will live on for two years, after which nobody knows if they'll be extended or not.

For those still clinging to any naive notion that Republicans meant this as anything more than a slogan, the answer is now clear. They want low tax rates for the rich. They don't care about certainty.

via tnr.com

When making video of the cops is a crime

I'm not a libertarian -- yet! -- but I'm glad we have the libertarian weirdos at Reason to chase down stories like this:

As citizens increase their scrutiny of law enforcement officials through technologies such as cell phones, miniature cameras, and devices that wirelessly connect to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and LiveLeak, the cops are increasingly fighting back with force and even jail time—and not just in Illinois. Police across the country are using decades-old wiretapping statutes that did not anticipate iPhones or Droids, combined with broadly written laws against obstructing or interfering with law enforcement, to arrest people who point microphones or video cameras at them.

When the police have the power to be beyond public scrutiny in a public setting, we're all in trouble. Liberals might have good reason to be suspicious of The Koch Brothers, who fund a lot of political efforts we don't like. But their money also goes to fund work like this. I don't like most of what they stand for, but I don't think they're that easily demonized.

On terrorism, Mohamed Osman Mohamud and entrapment

National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy makes the case that Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the man accused of wanting to set off a bomb in Portland, wasn't "entrapped" by overzealous investigators:

No rational human being can be enticed, against his beliefs, into murdering another person, much less murdering thousands of people, as Mohamud hoped and tried very hard to do at Pioneer Courthouse Square on November 26. No amount of money, cajoling, or appeals to anti-Americanism and cultural solidarity can get a person to take such an unspeakable action.

Well, sure. Clearly Mohamud had some darkness in his heart. On the other hand, it's also worth considering this:

The FBI wormed their way into Mohamud. They read his e-mail. They gave him money. They bought the bomb components. They paid for the safe house. They built the test explosive. They pretended to detonate it. Then they built the bomb. They provided not only the cell phone that was supposed to trigger the bomb but also the number code that had to be punched in. 

That's McCarthy's sarcastic -- but accurate -- description of how the case developed. And it's worth considering the old cliché that investigators use when trying to narrow down suspects in big cases: Did the suspect have the means, the motive and the opportunity?

In Mohamud's case, at least, you can argue that he only possessed one leg of that three-legged stool. Without the FBI, he wouldn't have had the means or the opportunity to fake-commit his attack on the Portland Christmas tree lighting. Truth is, lots of people in America have murderous thoughts everyday. Sometimes it's fleeting and momentary; sometimes it's a sustained emotion born of rage or ideology or some mix of the two. The vast majority of people never act on those sparks. But what if they had a buddy egging them on and (say) providing them with a gun — well, what would happen then?

No, it's unlikely that the FBI created a murderous rage in Mohamed Osman Mohamud's heart. But the argument can be made that the FBI catalyzed that rage from impotence and inaction into something more dangerous. In America, at least, the law isn't supposed to judge us purely on the darkest conjurings of our soul; it is acting murderously, not thinking murderously, that is illegal. We know Mohamud had those thoughts. Would he have acted — or tried to do so — without the FBI's help? 

More on liberal tax anger

In the comments below, Andrew clarifies and expands my take on liberal anger about taxes:

This liberal's anger is, in part, also about the deeply unjust society that emerges when deep and abiding inequalities are enshrined by massive asymmetries in wealth. Yeah, I'm saying it: We should spread the wealth around.

Fair point. In my mind, a lot of the government programs I was mentioning -- the ones that seem more likely to take the hit when our years of national debt spending come to an end if, as I suspect, never summon the will to pay for the services we're getting -- do the job of addressing the pernicious effects of growing inequality in America. For me, at least, it's not about taking from the rich so much as it is about lifting up the poor. (Your mileage may vary on that point.) But you probably can't have one without the other. The rich can afford it. And the rich wouldn't be rich, most likely, without the infrastructure, stability and security provided by the government. They've benefitted disproportionately from that; I'm fine if they pay a few extra tax dollars in return.

Liquor Control Board employees fired

All 20-plus employees of the Liquor Control Board's warehouse store in South Philadelphia - the state's largest - were dismissed Friday over what the LCB's chief executive called "widespread financial irregularities."

Joe Conti declined Monday to specify the nature of the allegations that followed an internal audit several months ago, pending further investigation.

Sources said workers at the low-slung warehouse at 23d Street and Washington Avenue in Point Breeze - at which many of the region's bars and restaurants buy wine and spirits - were suspected of selling products to some regular customers in a fashion that was off the books.

via philly.com

I only take note of this development to mention what I periodically must mention: It's crazy that the state is in the liquor business.