For No Reason: My Favorite Shows on TV Right Now

I don't actually have a TV. What we have are a couple of computers, and we cobble together our video entertainment out of an amalgam of Hulu, Netflix and a few other legal (I swear!) video-streaming sites. That means my access to current TV programming, while not bad, is somewhat limited. Still, these are the shows I most enjoy watching right now:

* JUSTIFIED: It lacks some of the complexity and depth of star Timothy Olyphant's previous series, "Deadwood," but it's got style to spare. Nice dialogue and a series of great guest-star appearances make this show as entertaining as any on TV.

* LOUIE: F/X makes ambitious series on small budgets, and this might be the best current example of the model. Louis CK is -- in his public persona, at least -- a humanistic misanthrope, not to everybody's tastes. This show goes some dark places, not all of them funny. But it's almost always compelling.

* COMMUNITY: It's joke-a-second meta-commentary on TV sitcoms could get tired if it didn't also have heart. It's a seriously funny show that deserves a much wider audience than it has.

* MODERN FAMILY: Shows that a family sitcom can have actual wit.

And, well, that's it. Those are the shows I have to see each week, when they're in-season. The end of compelling and complex sci-fi operas like "Lost" and "Battlestar Galactica" in the last year have left me without a meaty drama to sink my teeth into. ("Mad Men" doesn't do it for me; I hear "Breaking Bad" is pretty good though.) I'll take any recommendations. What am I missing?

Suicide Bombers May Not Always Hate Freedom

These findings shouldn't be all that surprising. It's human nature: People don't like outsiders coming into their country and running things. Careful diplomatic talk about sovereignty isn't all that useful if people in Kabul or Baghdad see that it's actually American troops keeping order; that's going to rub folks the wrong way.

That doesn't mean America never fights abroad. But if we want to be greeted as liberators, we should liberate and leave. And if we don't think ahead of time that's possible -- after an honest accounting of the facts instead of Rumsfeldian apathy to the concept -- then we need to calculate whether such an intervention is really likely to be worth it. In most cases, it probably won't.

Bag O' Books: Steven Hayward Critiques the Book Peter Beinart Didn't Write

So I've finished Peter Beinart's "The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris." It's part of a series of books that have been released in the last year or so -- many of which I've read (this, apparently, being the year George Kennan) -- examining American foreign policy in the 20th century. Some of those books have merely had the goal of appraising the Cold War now that it is firmly in history's mirror; others, like Beinart's, are looking back to see what lessons we might learn to apply in the aftermath of America's post-9/11 irrational exuberance for foreign adventurism.

If I could construct my takeaway from all these books -- including Beinart's -- I'd come up with something like this:

* It's insanity for America to think it can be the world's dominant power. A superpower, yes, and perhaps the most powerful one. But the only one? No. We can't afford it. And other nations -- particularly, at this moment, China -- have a vote.

* We tend to believe in our collective good intentions when we go abroad. The people abroad who feel the pressure of our projected power may be less convinced; we need to do a better job contemplating how they'll see our actions.

* America is best served when its military is just one tool in the foreign policy toolbox. We cannot eliminate every adversary upon the planet; we can contain them, use economic carrots and sticks to pressure them, even throw some money at democratic movements in those countries. Otherwise, we should only pull our sword from its scabbard in response to attack or actual imminent threat. A rival country (say, Iran) that obtains nuclear weapons is cause for alarm but is not, on its own, an imminent threat.

* Accordingly, America might be best served if it pulled back from the goal of being able to project power anywhere on the planet and refocused its resources -- in terms of money and national spirit -- on rebuilding our economy and strengthening our democratic institutions.

I am very interested, after all this, in Steven Hayward's critique of Beinart's book. I've chatted with Hayward and like him, but his review of Beinart strikes me as a not-very-elegant attempt to change the subject. Where Beinart makes the case that America has been badly served by ill-fated attempts to remake other countries and regions to suit our country's likes, Hayward's response is, essentially: But ObamaCare!

His criticisms of pure reason and of naïve faith in human nature's goodness and plasticity questions, implicitly, modern liberalism's central pillar. The eclipse of prudence by scientific, idealistic politics was a defining feature of Progressive statecraft, and it remains so for modern liberalism today—at least on the domestic scene. In making an elegant call for greater circumspection about government's mastery over all things, Beinart's skepticism stops at the water's edge. Why not apply the lessons of hubris—of overreaching and presuming a greater command of flawed human nature than is realistically possible—to, say, health care reform, or social policy generally?

Hayward persists in this mode, wondering why Beinart doesn't spend more time in his book writing about the domestic overreach of liberal government programs. The easy answer to this is: Because it's a book about foreign policy. But Hayward seems to acknowledge that the United States has often overreached its foreign policy -- though Iraq is doing better than we once thought; he doesn't offer a counterargument to Beinart's thesis, and spends enough time reflecting on the Vietnam War to kind of confirm it. Pinning the problem of overreach mostly on liberals, then, requires bringing domestic politics into the picture.

Fine. But it thus becomes worth asking Hayward's fellow conservatives a similar question: If you doubt government's ability to make society better at home, why would you think it would work beyond our borders, in places with unfamiliar cultures and languages we don't really speak? Hayward writes of Beinart's "blind spot," but Beinart isn't the only person who has one.

UPDATE: A conservative friend of mine, a friend of Mr. Hayward's, writes with the following critique.

By and large, Steve Hayward's conservative friends (esp. of the Claremont variety) never suggested that we COULD spread happiness abroad. Our critique of Bush sort of boiled down to a kind of over-exuberant, childlike faith he has in human goodness.

Fair point! I was trying to be precise by not specifically attributing such beliefs to Hayward himself, but I ended up being a different kind of sloppy. My apologies to him.

To be more precise, though, I'll note that Mr. Hayward is part of a broader conservative movement that, for all its variety, did help put Mr. Bush in office and that, to outsiders at least, seems remarkably able to unite behind particular politicians and agendas. There are a few conservatives -- of the seemingly influential Bill Kristol variety -- who do urge restraint at home and adventurism abroad. Hayward critiques liberalism's lack of domestic restraint while countering Beinart; if that's the angle he wants to take, then a more overt critique of his more adventurous fellow conservatives (if, indeed, he believes that) would probably be in order.

One More Thought About Elitism

If Anne Applebaum wants to know why Americans hate elites, well, here's why:

About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms.

The data showed that revenue was expected to rise at 29 of the 35 firms surveyed, but at a slower pace than pay. Wall Street revenue is expected to rise 3%, to $448 billion from $433 billion, despite a slowdown in some high-profile activities like stock and bond trading.

Where revenue falls short, analysts and experts expect that Wall Street will lay off employees in order to keep bonus pools high. U.K.-based Barclays Capital and Credit Suisse have cut some staff, while Morgan Stanley has a hiring freeze in place.

Read the story and the pattern becomes clear: If a company's revenue goes down, pay for top executives goes up. If a company's revenue goes up, pay for top executives goes up even faster. And some companies are willing to lay off people to make sure the the "top" people get their money.

There is no "down" button on the meritocratic elevator, in other words. No matter how well or bad their businesses do, the elites do better -- sometimes at the expense of the not-so-elite. If Americans think that "success" is disconnected from actual success, well, who can blame them?

James Kirchick Changes the Mosque Subject

Kind of a bizarre op-ed from James Kirchick in the Wall Street Journal. Liberals who fear the rise religious and ethnic bigotry among opponents of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" are ignoring that the Europeans are even worse!

American liberals who ignore European bigotry while considering opposition to the Ground Zero mosque inexcusable bring to mind the mocking suggestion of German communist playwright Bertolt Brecht: "Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?"

Well, sure, fine: Some really closed-minded things happening Europe these days, as Kirchick details in his piece. But how to say this delicately: Who cares?

American liberals who have fought for the right of American Muslims to build mosques in New York and Tennessee haven't made the case that we should do so because, golly gee, look at those evolved Europeans and their traditions of religious tolerance! Maybe someone somewhere has said that, but they're the outlier. But the American debate isn't even remotely about Europe. Instead, what American liberals have done is appeal to American traditions of religious tolerance and expression.

Kirchick doesn't even really try to connect these unconnected dots. Everybody knows effete American liberals are closeted Communist Europhiles, so the dots connect themselves. Right?

Anne Applebaum on Elitism

I always like it when somebody smart says the same things I do. In this case, a couple of weeks ago I reflected on the dingy attitudes of today's American elites:

It seems to me that the prevailing ideology among the upper crust discourages gratitude more specific than generalized "proud to be an American" thinking. We're a nation of rugged individualists, the thinking goes, and people who end up with the successful Harvard applications and good jobs and well-appointed friends have come to believe that they have entirely earned their success. They don't consider how the institutions and foundations created by government -- and in the culture -- have made their success possible. What they're told, instead, is that they've been "free" to pursue that success. That's right, of course, but only partly.

Anne Applebaum takes a different tack, wondering why Americans hate today's elites so. But she ends up in roughly the same place:

The old Establishment types were resented, but only because their wealth and power were perceived as "undeserved." Those outside could at least feel they were cleverer and savvier, and they could blame their failures on "the system." Nowadays, successful Americans, however ridiculously lucky they have been, often smugly see themselves as "deserving." Meanwhile, the less successful are more likely to feel it's their own fault—or to feel that others feel it's their fault—even if they have simply been unlucky.

Then again, I'm not sure she's entirelyright on this; I agree there's an element of luck to all of this that falls outside the acknowledgement of today's Randian-flavored capitalist thinking. But maybe Americans also sense that what we today call "meritocracy" actually rewards a very, very narrow kind of merit: one in which 14-year-old freshmen -- and their parents -- decide the object of high school is to get great grades, participate and perform spectacularly in extracurricular activities and (generally) have their sites set on the person they want to be at 50 ... all at an age when most young people are still trying to decide who they are this week. Nail that down, be admitted to Harvard or Yale or Stanford, and your path in life can pretty much be set -- provided you don't go out of your way to fuck it up.

And if you do fuck it up -- if, say, you run the economy into the ground because you ran up billions of dollars in debt buying worthless mortgages, or if you oversaw and planned a disastrous war abroad that cost American lives and compromised American values -- well, you're rewarded ... so long as your fuck-up wasn't criminal in nature. Douglas Feith gets a stint at Georgetown; John Yoo at Berkeley. AIG executives get taxpayer-subsidized bonuses amounting to more in a year than most Americans earn over the course of a decade. There's no down button on the meritocracy elevator, in other words, which makes the whole thing seem less authentically meritocratic.

There are reasons for anti-elitism, in other words, even if the expression of it is sometimes misplaced. (Insert everybody's current favorite example, Ginni Thomas, who rails against the establishment from her sinecure at billionaire-funded rabble-rousing "think tank.") And Applebaum is right about one thing: Americans will probably always have an anti-elitist streak, no matter how the elites obtained their ranks. They're the elites, after all. They have the power and the money. We don't. That's enough reason to hate the bastards.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: Hugs

There's a long list of challenges to being a stay-at-home dad and trying to earn money at the same time.

Like when the kid screams when you're interviewing a source for a story.

Or when he interrupts a great writing flow with a sippy cup shoved, literally, into your face with demands for "juice-juice, juice-juice."

Or when you have to change a poopy diaper, ever.

But once or twice a day, you'll be sitting on the couch, typing away, when two unexpectedly long arms will appear from behind you and grab hold of your neck. It's not an attack! He's hugging you. He loves you! He enjoys hanging out with you! And you're one of those rare fathers with the privilege to spend so much time with your son during his formative years!

It's a blessing. Not an unfettered blessing, but it is a blessing.

Dinesh D'Souza in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Accuses President of Loving Terrorists

If you thought that new ownership might mean that Brian Tierney was no longer able to hand out op-ed contracts to right-wing cronies, well, don't celebrate yet. Today's Inky editorial page features Dinesh D'Souza -- the guy behind the "Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist" idea that Newt Gingrich spouts. D'Souza is pretty well discredited even on the right; no reason for the Inky not to publish him!

And hey, why not speculate that the president of the United States is happy to see terrorists at work!

If Obama shares his father's anticolonial ideology, this would explain a lot about his eagerness to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. It would also explain his sympathies for the Lockerbie bomber, not because Obama favors the killing of Americans, but because he views Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi as a resister in a noble cause. Since America is the rogue elephant with a mammoth nuclear arsenal, we can understand why Obama seems more eager to reduce America's nuclear stockpile than to prevent Iran from obtaining its first nuclear bomb.

This is just so much crap. Lots of people got mad last week when the Washington Post published a Dinesh D'Souza op-ed, but even the Post didn't let D'Souza expound on Obama's supposed (and entirely made-up) sympathies with anti-American terrorists. (He merely hinted that the president was a communist in that piece.) Do the Inquirer op-ed pages have any standards at all for what they'll publish? This isn't an auspicious start for the new regime.

Intolerance

New York Times:

For weeks now, this bucolic northern Colorado city of just over 60,000, which has a vibrant arts community, has been bitterly divided over the controversial artwork that once sat in the empty display of the Loveland Museum Gallery where the sign now rests.

Some here interpreted the small image, which was part of a lithographic print exhibition by the San Francisco artist Enrique Chagoya, as showing Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act with another man, and demanded its removal.

Last Wednesday, amid heated public debate over the exhibit and daily protests in front of the museum, a 56-year-old Montana truck driver named Kathleen Folden walked into the gallery.

Wearing a T-shirt that read “My Savior Is Tougher Than Nails,” Ms. Folden strode up to the exhibit, took out a crowbar and proceeded to smash the plexiglass casing. To the horror of visitors, she then ripped up the print, just as police officers arrived.

“People were asking her, ‘Why’d you do this?’ ” recalled Mark Michaels, a Colorado art dealer, who witnessed the event and grabbed Ms. Folden. “She said, ‘Because it desecrates my Lord.’ ”

In a slightly different context, these actions would have given rise to a nationwide "Everybody Draw Jesus Having Sex With a Dude Day" and endless lectures about the inability of the Christians to co-exist peacefully in a liberal culture without threats of violence to make the rest of us conform to their practices.

John McNesby Is Why Philadelphia Police Are Broken

It's been a week full of stories about the corruption of Philadelphia police, but none of that disturbed me half as much as this story about an escape attempt by accused cop killer Rasheed Scrugs.

Here's John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police:

John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, said Scrugs "started to ramp up his antics" earlier this week when he indicated that he didn't want to appear in court.

"He's a savage," McNesby said. "They should have finished him off on the street. Now we have to deal with antics."

I'm just astonished. Not that McNesby would feel that way, but that he -- as one of the highest-profile cops in the city of Philadelphia -- would feel comfortable publicly advocating that police commit street executions in lieu of letting the justice system work. It's horrifying: I have to live in a city full of cops he's encouraging to behave that way.

Thanks to McNesby, of course, Philadelphia cops don't have to live in this city. And though there are frequent stories in this city's media, you generally don't ever hear McNesby decrying corruption in the ranks -- he's usually attacking, even threatening to sue, the Daily News for exposing that corruption.

This surely can't be an easy city to police. There have been more cop killings in the two years I've lived here than I would've thought possible. But the relationship between Philadelphia police and its citizens appears to be broken -- and a good chunk of that is the fault of police. I can't help but think John McNesby, who openly calls for police to circumvent the law and execute suspects, is a very big part of the problem.

* UPDATE: A friend -- uncharitably, I think -- interprets my last paragraph to mean I believe that police have brought cop-killings upon themselves. I do not believe that, I repudiate that idea, and I did not intend to convey it. I included that sentence to convey that I understand that policing Philly is difficult; that doesn't justify the attitude, exemplified by McNesby, that the police are better than the community they deserve, nor that they're entitled to administer justice outside the bounds of the law.

Netflix Queue: 'Irma Vep'

When "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" came out on DVD nearly a decade ago, it had a great, compelling and dramatic movie to offer "Star Wars" fans. Unfortunately, it wasn't "The Phantom Menace." Instead, included among the extras, was an hour-long unnarrated "making of" documentary that proved far more dramatic and engaging in its depiction of George Lucas than anything Lucas managed to put up on the screen himself.

For whatever reason, though, I've never managed to get into movies or shows that purport to depict show business from behind the camera. "30 Rock" is an exception because it's not really about the creation of an SNL-type live comedy show; that just happens to be the workplace of your typical NBC workplace comedy. I can add another entry to my short list of exceptions: "Irma Vep," a 1996 movie from France.

A quick rundown: Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung -- playing herself, and doing so delightfully -- is brought to Paris to play the lead in the remake of a classic silent film about female vampires. The production proves a mess, undone by the failing powers of its once-great director and the petty jealousies that infect any small group of highly talented, highly competitive people.

Given such a description, "Irma Vep" sounds, perhaps, like one of your run-of-the-mill Christopher Guest mockumentaries. Being French, however, it so much more sensuous -- filled with scenes of driving through Paris streets at night, intensely evoking the bittersweetness of an unrequited crush. At one point, Cheung -- trying to connect to her character in the movie-within-a-movie -- dons a latex catsuit and climbs to the rain-drench rooftop of her hotel. Immediately, the viewer can see how much craft has been brought to the scene -- if only because we earlier saw how badly botched a similar effort was in the movie-within-a-movie. But such cleverness isn't the only thing going on here, because that would be merely cynical.

There's also celebration. Because, honestly: Watching Maggie Chung creep around in a catsuit in the dark rain is the reason movies were invented. The scene -- and the movie -- are unexpectedly beautiful.

John Featherman Responds!

The Republican candidate for Philly mayor responds to my complaints about his lack of specificity. I'll let him have the floor:

Joel,

Thanks for your write-up. I welcome the opportunity to address all of your questions.

First, I appreciate that the Daily News gave me the opportunity to express my views on Nutter as well as generally introduce my campaign to the voters of Philadelphia.

Second, you are correct. With 800 words, I can't offer the level of specificity that you and others need to make an educated judgment about my qualifications for becoming the next mayor. I am more than delighted to get as specific as you like. If you send me questions, I will answer them thoroughly. As an example, when I ran for public office before, I answered quite candidly many bloggers' intriguing questions. One such interview was with "Above Average Jane," and can be seen here: http://aboveavgjane.blogspot.com/2006/02/interview-with-john-featherman.html.

Third, what government does best is govern! That may seem tautological, but it makes sense if you think about it. Government is best at creating tax policies, job initiatives, creating regulations, enforcing zoning issues, etc. Government is best at administering public policy. A concrete example is government deciding to tax people for trash pickup. That is fine, and that is governing. Actually picking up the trash is something that Philadelphia's government is not good at, as evidenced by the need for neighborhood associations to raise money to hire people to clean their streets. So, with respect to trash, Philadelphia "governs" by taxing for the pickup, but would be best suited to "bid out" trash collection to private agencies that do it better and cheaper than the city can ... in such a way that the City can shift the burden of trash worker's pensions to the private sector.

That's an example. There are many more. I'm not suggesting we run a city like a business. I'm suggesting we run a city professionally, farming out items that will allow us to cut out pensions and benefits from our budget. We do not have a choice, as this city is on the cusp of bankrupcy. Don't believe me? Just Google "Harrisburg bankruptcy" and see how they are about to declare Act 47.

As for the online presence, www.featherman.com will be up by this Friday, October 8th. It won't be a fancy site. I just purchased a license to se "Website Tonight" from Godaddy.com, and I'll be managing it myself.

It's not easy, Joel, as I don't have the luxury of being able to campaign on taxpayer dollars. I'm a full time Realtor, and I have to pay the bills at the same time that I'm launching the campaign. I'm going to have to continue showing properties during the day to make a living, but I'm going to devote the rest of my free time to campaigning in a meaningful way.

I don't have the bank accounts that Tom Knox, Sam Katz or Michael Nutter have. If people want to handicap me as a long shot because I'm not a fat cat, so be it. At least they won't be able to claim that I'm such rich egomaniac who is buying a seat.

But please give me consideration. That's all I ask. I'm trying to reform the Philadelphia City Committee -- of which I've been a critic of their ineffectiveness (you can Google that) -- at the same time that I'm attempting to generate constructive ideas to positively turn our city around.

So please be open minded. Be as critical as you like, but keep in consideration that I'm just like you and many others -- an average person who's fed up, who has the courage (to some, perhaps foolishness) to put his name on the line, and who will be a punching bag for a lot of folks.

-John Featherman

john@featherman.com

Karl Rove Calls Kettle Black

As always, Karl Rove's career in punditry requires amnesia to take seriously. He writes about Democrats' poor prospects during the forthcoming midterm election:

Given this dismal picture, Democrats believe they have only one option: a thermonuclear assault on their GOP opponents, which means raising questions about their character, distorting their views, and making outlandish claims.

Such a strategy, he writes, "will further besmirch the reputations of the Democratic Party and its leader, Mr. Obama."

I'm no fan of negative campaigning. But Rove has zero credibility on such matters. You'll remember what he did, prior to his entry in national politics, to an Alabama judge seeking re-election:

Some of (Mark)Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the (Rove)camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."

And yet Karl Rove has a cushy gig writing for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. To be fair, though, that's not proof his reputation wasn't besmirched.

Today - And Today Only - I Root For Fred Phelps

The gay-bashing folks of Westboro Baptist Church had their day in the Supreme Court today, contesting a lawsuit that would force them to pay millions of dollars in damages for demonstrating near a military funeral.

The church's actions are distasteful in the extreme. But it's important to note that a number of news organizations -- including the New York Times -- have weighed in on the side of the church. Limiting Fred Phelps' ugly free speech, you see, might have real consequences for the speech the rest of us express and hear.

Respondents were found liable for millions of dollars in damages for intrusion and intentional infliction of emotional distress based solely on their publication of offensive religious and political opinions -- opinions which the Petitioner encountered not at his son's funeral, but only several hours later by watching news reports, and then weeks later after conducting an online search. Imposing tort liability for such speech will chill the activities of all who speak or publish on controversial issues.

In other words, the family didn't actually encounter the Phelpses at the funeral. But they knew the Phelpses were out there, somewhere near -- 1,000 feet away, in compliance with funeral picketing laws -- being offensive. In fact, the family is claiming to have been intruded upon because they found offensive material by searching for it on Westboro's web site. With all due respect to the family, that's a really lousy foundation to start restricting free speech rights: It doesn't really punish the Phelpses for intruding on their privacy, but for expressing repugnant opinions. That's not how it is supposed to work in America.

Either you believe in the First Amendment, in other words, or you don't. Read the whole brief, and you'll get a sense of how silencing Fred Phelps might be a step down the slippery slope to silencing all of us.

John Featherman's Case for a Republican Mayor

John Featherman makes it today in the Daily News. I've previously expressed skepticism that the GOP -- which culturally seems to favor rural areas, and philosophically seems ill-suited to providing the kinds of services that a big city needs just to hang together -- is really equipped to provide municipal leadership here. But it would probably prove useful if Democrats actually had competition for city leadership.

The problem is that John Featherman -- who actually has filed papers to run as a Republican candidate for mayor -- doesn't seem to offer much in the way of competition. Most of his solutions sound familiar: Cut business taxes! Really crack down on corruption! The only problem is, we hear those kinds of promises fairly often from our politicians -- Mayor Nutter said those things when he was a candidate. Why would Featherman or any other Republican be better-positioned to make those things happen?

Featherman gets intriguing, though, with this proposal:

MAKE REAL BUDGET CUTS! Government should stick to what it does best and consider outsourcing everything else. This means bidding out trash, call centers, prisons and administrative services, among others. This means cutting wasteful government jobs, with the mayor focusing exclusively on the needs of our 1.5 million residents. And having the political courage to negotiate the three unresolved municipal contracts and fight for fair concessions - in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie-like style.

This raises a couple of questions:

* What does municipal government "do best" according to Featherman? After all, his "everything else" seems to cover a pretty wide range of necessary services.

* What does Featherman actually propose to cut? He doesn't actually name a single program or job that needs to go.

Maybe these are questions for which Featherman actually has answers. It's not easy to lay out a detailed governing platform in an 800-word op-ed, after all. Here's the problem, though: John Featherman is running for mayor, and today's piece certainly signals that the campaign has opened. But he has no online presence for his campaign that I can find -- not even a Blogger blog. It's to believe that Republicans are ready to govern Philadelphia if they're not even ready to made the case.

The ACLU and Jonah Goldberg's Assassination Straw Man

Jonah Goldberg's debating partner.

Toward the end of an otherwise-modest column on the government's plan to assassinate an American citizen affiliated with Al Qaeda, Jonah Goldberg stacks the deck:

Some civil libertarians seem to think we can never, ever kill an American citizen without a trial by jury (and perhaps not even then). That would have been silly during the days of conventional warfare. Now it's plain crazy.

Perhaps "some" civil libertarians believe that, but it's not the position of the ACLU, which has brought the lawsuit challenging the government's plan. In its complaint (PDF) asking for an injunction, the organization acknowledges there are times when due process will be skipped:

Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law
prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and
imminent threats of death or serious physical injury. The summary use of force is lawful
in these narrow circumstances only because the imminence of the threat makes judicial
process infeasible.

In other words, you can kill your enemy on the battlefield, when he's also trying to kill you. Not even the ACLU is against that.

That's not what the government is doing. It is reserving to itself the right to kill an American citizen who -- for all we know -- might be sitting peacefully in a kitchen somewhere in Yemen, presumably able to be captured if he's spotted. And that's where, at the very least, the government wanders into gray area. The ACLU, noting that the "right to life" is fundamental for U.S. citizens under the Constitution, wants that area to be a little less gray.

The government’s refusal to disclose the standard by which it determines
to target U.S. citizens for death independently violates the Constitution: U.S. citizens
have a right to know what conduct may subject them to execution at the hands of their
own government. Due process requires, at a minimum, that citizens be put on notice of
what may cause them to be put to death by the state.

The weird thing is, that's not so different from Goldberg's own conclusion. "So, let's have Congress and the president come up with some clear, public rules," he writes. "Better to start the debate over an easy case than a hard one." Sure. So why knock people who share your position? Can there never be a cease-fire in the war against liberals?

Are the Inky and Daily News Really So Similar?

Philly's two major dailies come under new ownership on Friday, and I couldn't help but notice this quote today from the new guy in charge:

Longer term, (new CEO Gregory J. Osberg) said, he wanted to talk with the editors of the newspapers about making them "more distinct from one another."

"I think today we are asking our consumers to choose one newspaper or the other, the way we're approaching the news," Osberg said.

"If we start to separate the brands, to become more distinct in their editorial missions, there is an opportunity for us to get consumers interested in buying both of the papers on any given day.

I'd love to know what Osberg means by that, because the Inquirer and Daily News couldn't seem more different to me. The Inquirer is the suburban newspaper, with lots of coverage of New Jersey and outlying counties that I -- as a Philly resident -- don't generally find all that useful or interesting. (It also tries too hard, I think, to be a "paper of record" with national and international news, sometimes trumpeting headlines on wire service stories you could find anywhere.) The Daily News is pretty much a Philly-Philly-Philly paper, a bit sassier and more fun, but relentlessly focused on what's going on here.

Now: My residency and biases make me a bit more of a Daily News man, myself. But I also see the value, mostly, of the Inky model. By offering such distinct publications, Philadelphia Media Network is probably already reaching more of the market than it would otherwise. The challenge isn't -- and shouldn't be -- getting Philadelphians to buy two newspapers per day. It's getting them to buy one.

We Must Call Attention To Christine O'Donnell's Idiocy Because Voters Are Idiots

I'm not really comfortable with Mark Schmitt's case for mocking Christine O'Donnell's brand of goofiness:

One problem is that Tea Party extremism is so far out and obscure that it doesn't immediately register as extremism. They want to repeal the 17th Amendment! That sounds odd, but most of us don't know off-hand what the 17th Amendment is. And even after being reminded that it's the one that has to do with direct election of senators, it's still not clear why they want to repeal it, other than the fact that it was passed during the Progressive Era. It takes a lot of explaining, and I still don't quite get it, plus it seems so unlikely to happen that I can't get too worked up about it. (There's also the fact that living in Washington, D.C., without senators, I don't have a vote to lose.)

More importantly, the Tea Party movement's embrace of eccentric constitutionalism and rhetorical libertarianism has had the effect of moving social issues to the background. Most of the Tea Party activists, and all of their candidates, hold the same cluster of not-very-libertarian views on social and cultural issues as their far-right predecessors, usually several degrees more extreme. (Angle, for example, has said that a young teenager who becomes pregnant as a result of rape by her father should "make a lemon situation into lemonade.") But those views are obscured behind a confusing screen of constitutional and economic nonsense.

These social views are the positions that voters, especially the younger voters and suburbanites who turned decisively against Republicans in 2006 and 2008 and who are now wavering, understand. They don't need to find a copy of the Constitution to decipher the extremism. Remember that there were two issues during the Bush years that dramatically illustrated to voters the extremism of the Republican far right at that time. The first was the case of Terry Schiavo, in which congressional leaders sought to intervene in a family's private medical tragedy. The Schiavo intervention, opposed by 70 percent of the public, derailed Congress and the Bush presidency in the early months of 2005, contributing to the subsequent defeat of Social Security privatization.

He concludes: "In an ideal world, it would be as easy to show just that the economic views of the new Republican stars are as extreme and unhinged as their social views. But it's probably too late to start that now."

In other words: Governance is hard and complicated! Rather than make our case to the voters based on the substance of our views and actions, let's do the culture war thing instead so we can signal to them that the other guys are out-of-touch with our "values" in ways that don't have very much to do with governance!

Which, basically, is the left-wing version of this:



I'm not naive: Value-signaling always will be part of democratic politics. But the Schiavo Affair turned off voters because it signaled to them that Republicans had embraced culture-war issues to the exclusion of effective governance. Obsessing about Christine O'Donnell's views of masturbation might do the same thing to Democrats.

Kristol, Fuelner and Brooks' Somewhat Misleading Op-Ed On Defense Spending

Arthur Brooks, Edwin Fuelner and Bill Kristol have an op-ed in today's WSJ, warning fiscal conservatives not to rein in Pentagon spending because, well, defense spending isn't really the reason America is in its current debt-laden state. They make some of the usual arguments -- that defense spending as a share of GDP is actually lower now than it was during the Cold War -- that are fine as far as they go.

The problem is that in making the case that domestic entitlements are the real cause of the deficit, the trio pulls a bit of apples-and-oranges sleight of hand. Here's the offending bit:

Defense spending has increased at a much lower rate than domestic spending in recent years and is not the cause of soaring deficits. Even as the United States has fought two wars, the core defense budget has increased by approximately $220 billion since 2001, about a tenth as much as the government devotes each year to "mandatory" spending: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, lesser entitlements such as food stamps and cash assistance, and interest payments on the debt. These expenditures continue automatically, year after year, without congressional debate.

The comparison here is confusing to the point of misleading. The Trio (as I'll refer to the collective) has to make it seem as though the defense budget is somehow relatively anemic so they compare just the increases in defense spending to the total yearly budgets of the entitlement programs. That's a comparison that makes no sense.*

*And without footnotes, it's hard to be sure what comparison they're making, but it's worth noting that the "core defense budget" has generally not included Afghanistan and Iraq war expenses, which have largely been appropriated through supplemental bills.

It's not easy to track down easy-for-a-layman-such-as-myself-to-understand budget information over time; the best I can find is this Congressional Budget Office table (PDF). What it shows:

* Defense spending more than doubled between 2001 and 2009 -- from $306 billion to $655 billion. (Best I can interpret the CBO data, this includes war-fighting expenses.)The defense budget as a share of GDP rose from 3 percent to 4.6 percent.

* "Mandatory" spending -- including entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. -- also doubled during this time, from $1.007 trillion to $2.093 trillion. As a collective group, the percentage of the GDP rose from 9.9 percent of GDP to 14.7 percent. That sounds much bigger, but when you break it down by program, you see the increases are generally in line with the Pentagon's: Social Security's share of GDP rose by just 0.6 percent; Medicare rose by 1.2 percent of the GDP; Medicaid rose by 0.5 percent of GDP.

Now you can argue that the costs of those entitlements is still going to prove a drag, and I won't try to counter-argue in this post. But it's clear that -- despite the picture painted by The Trio -- Pentagon spending has been growing, along with the rest of government over the last decade, in robust fashion. It might not be the source of America's deficit issues, but it is certainly a source.

Plus, there's always this chart:

The United States spends 46.5 percent of the world's total military spending. The next closest competitor, China, spends 6.6 percent.

Now, depending on your vision of America's role in the world, maybe that's entirely appropriate. (I'm ... dubious.) Our military bestrides the world; China, at this point, seems to want to dominate the Pacific. What that chart suggests, however, is that the American defense establishment is hardly underresourced. Let's figure out the proper balance of America's defense needs and America's resources and go from there.

Why Am I A Liberal?

I talk about that in the latest Ben and Joel Podcast.