The Irony of Geert Wilders

In America, you fairly regularly see liberals defend the rights of others to express fundamentally illiberal positions. That's why you end up with spectacles like the ACLU defending the right of the KKK to have a march, or anybody at all defending the rights of Westboro Baptist Church to picket with its homophobic signs. There's usually a lot of throat-clearing about how the liberal groups don't really share the ideas or goals of the extremists, and nobody really thinks otherwise.

That's why I'm interested in the case of Geert Wilders, the anti-Muslim Dutch politician on trial for saying nasty things about Islam. It's not the kind of trial that would take place in the United States, but other countries have rather stricter limits on free speech. Lots of American conservatives have weighed in on the issue, including this typical entry from National Review:

Wilders compares Islam to Nazism, a provocative stance, to be sure. But how should such provocative criticism be received? With open debate, or with the criminalization of opinion? It is extremely pertinent in the Wilders case to ask whether his trial means that Europe’s commitment to freedom is already dead.

On the face of it, I'm in agreement. Society is best served by letting Wilders criticize Islam; Islam should be more than capable of rhetorically defending itself. But here's the thing I don't see Wilders' defenders acknowledge: the freedom they advocate for him is the freedom he would take away from Muslims.

This is a man, after all, who has called for banning the Koran:

Madam Speaker, the Koran is a book that incites to violence. I remind the House that the distribution of such texts is unlawful according to Article 132 of our Penal Code. In addition, the Koran incites to hatred and calls for murder and mayhem. The distribution of such texts is made punishable by Article 137(e). The Koran is therefore a highly dangerous book; a book which is completely against our legal order and our democratic institutions. In this light, it is an absolute necessity that the Koran be banned for the defence and reinforcement of our civilisation and our constitutional state. I shall propose a second-reading motion to that effect.

That's not it, of course: Wilders has also called for a tax on Muslim women wearing headscarves and a ban on Mosque construction. Fundamentally, though, Wilders' defenders are invoking a freedom of expression for him that he would deny others.

That's not so shocking: Again, see the ACLU's defense of the KKK. What is shocking is that Wilders' defenders barely, if ever, acknowledge this tension. To read editorials like National Review's is to believe that Wilders has merely made some outrageous comments. In fact, he's advocated a course of action that would damage the freedom of Muslims living in his country.

Some American conservatives would, no doubt, suggest that Western societies are dooming themselves by letting radical Muslims take advantage of our traditions of openness. They're fine with some bit of double-standard, in other words, because the double-standard is supposedly needed to preserve the standard at all. It is stirring to see National Review unequivocally defend Wilders' right to speak his peace; when it comes to the rights of Muslims, however, there will always been room for debate.

Netflix Queue: "Space Cowboys"

Three thoughts about Clint Eastwood's "Space Cowboys":

* I'm shocked that Eastood and Tommy Lee Jones could appear in the same movie without Hollywood imploding under the weight of all that laconic.

* The movie was pitched to the public as an action-comedy, but it's a Clint Eastwood action-comedy. This means, among other things, that the movie is somewhat gently paced: It doesn't hit you with the gag-every-five-seconds pace of today's films. It also means, of course, that somebody sympathetic dies at the end. But it's a fun film, so it's a good death. Oh, Clint Eastwood.

* I think I prefer out-and-out science fiction and fantasy to movies set in the real space program. My mind keeps picking out discrepancies between Hollywood-NASA and real-NASA. Too distracting for an old space nerd like me.

Still, an enjoyable flick. Three out of four stars.

Federalist 39: James Madison's Confusing Sales Job

Read all entries in my series on The Federalist Papers here.

Well. No wonder we're so confused.

My writing partner Ben Boychuk and I had the pleasure of interviewing author Ron Chernow this week. He wrote the acclaimed new biography of George Washington, along with an earlier bio of Alexander Hamilton -- he knows something, in other words, about the founding of this country. In our discussion, Chernow repeated his assertion (first made in a New York Times op-ed) that today's Tea Partiers are wrong to claim an exclusive ideological heritage descended from the Founders. In truth, Chernow said, the Constitution was a compromise between competing visions of government -- powerful or limited? Instead of actually settling the question, the Founders fudged it a bit, so that the arguments of the 21st century aren't so different from the 18th.

Nowhere is that tension more evident, perhaps, than in James Madison's authorship of Federalist 39. Madison's intent here is to fend off criticism of the proposed new government as insufficiently federal -- that is, he's arguing against the proposition that the Constitution takes away too much power away from the states and deposits it in the national government.

Wait: That's kind of what the Constitution was created to do. The Articles of Confederation, which gave pride of power to the states, had already proved unworkable as a means of national government. But yesterday's antifederalists, like today's Tea Partiers, wanted to see more power left to the states -- and they were ruthless in suggesting that advocates of the Constitution were lying in their efforts to convince Americans that states still retained considerable power. Here's "A Farmer" writing in Antifederalist No. 3:

There are but two modes by which men are connected in society, the one which operates on individuals, this always has been, and ought still to be called, national government; the other which binds States and governments together (not corporations, for there is no considerable nation on earth, despotic, monarchical, or republican, that does not contain many subordinate corporations with various constitutions) this last has heretofore been denominated a league or confederacy. The term federalists is therefore improperly applied to themselves, by the friends and supporters of the proposed constitution. This abuse of language does not help the cause; every degree of imposition serves only to irritate, but can never convince. They are national men, and their opponents, or at least a great majority of them, are federal, in the only true and strict sense of the word.

Madison has tricky political ground to cover here, then, and he treads cautiously and confusingly. Let's jump to the final paragraph of 39 for a picture of the ambiguity.

The proposed Constitution, therefore is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national.

Got that?

Now it's true that something can be partly one thing and partly another. But this paragraph -- and the whole paper -- makes me wonder if the effort to sell the Constitution as a document of "limited" government is more a political sales job than a substantive description.

The new government, after all, will have unlimited power of taxation. It will be the arbiter of disputes between the states. It alone has the power to raise a standing army. The one power the states seem to retain over the national government at this stage is whether or not to opt-in to the system. After that, they can shape it somewhat -- through electoral votes and appointments to the Senate -- but there are no real veto points once the national government has made up its mind about a course of action. The states can give legitimacy to the national government; there's no real mechanism for them to withdraw it.

That's not to say the national government has unlimited power overall. It has its spheres of influence, and the states have theirs.

In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.

But the national government's spheres of action are biggies. That's why the antifederalists fought the Constitution.

I'm not arguing for all this as a brief for unlimited central government, incidentally. I'm rather haphazardly trying to make sense of this as a pitch at the time, and looking at it in light of what actually happened in America's history. And what I'm seeing here is this: James Madison, whether he wanted to or not, left the door open to a bigger government than what today's Tea Partiers want -- or perhaps he himself envisioned.

How wide? I suspect we'll find that out in the coming papers.

Netflix Queue: "Ichi the Killer"

No.

To elaborate: There's two movies in "Ichi the Killer." One is a sly subversion of superhero myths -- particularly "Batman." We're always told that Batman/Bruce Wayne is kind of a freak, but really: If you were a billionaire industrialist, wouldn't you be tempted to become a city's crime-fighting savior with really cool cars and utility belts? But our "hero" in this movie, Ichi, really is twisted and broken. The villain, Kakihara is reminiscent of the Joker with his facial scars, but takes his penchant for chaos-born-of-ennui to depth that Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger wouldn't have been able to contemplate for a mainstream American movie. And there's a third, very important character: the henchman. For him, the story isn't an exciting villain-versus-hero duel -- it's a tragedy. The subversion extends all the way to the movie's confrontation between Ichi and Kakihara.

Unfortunately, that movie is buried beneath another one so filled with torture-porn style violence and misogyny that I can't possibly recommend it.

I want to like "Ichi the Killer." But despite its merits, it feels harmful.

Michelle Rhee and School Reform

Ben and I talk about whether the ongoing, never-ending process of school reform is endangered by the resignation of Michelle Rhee as Washington D.C.'s chancellor of schools. My take:

Certain "reformers" are rushing to make Michelle Rhee's resignation a morality tale for the nation's education system -- an example of the corrupt power of teachers' unions and the rot of public schools. But there's less to the development than meets the eye. If "reform" is the message, then Rhee was an imperfect messenger: It is time for her to move on.

Reform, after all, remains the agenda for D.C. Mayor-in-Waiting Vincent Gray and Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson -- a Rhee protege -- have promised that efforts begun under Rhee will continue. As Melinda Hennenberger noted at Politics Daily, "The plan under Henderson is Rhee's exact reform agenda, so how does giving someone else a chance to implement it amount to disaster?"

It doesn't. But some conservatives interested in education reform have a second, extra-educational agenda: Politics. They want to undermine teachers' unions that -- not incidentally -- have proven a powerful ally of Democrats in past election seasons. It's in the critics' interest to portray those teachers as obstacles to reform; unfortunately, unions all too often protect the jobs of bad teachers and give those reformers ample material to work with.

There's a better way. In September, the New York Times profiled Brockton High School in Massachusetts, a large and previously underperforming school that has seen dramatic rises in student test scores. How did the school do that? With a renewed emphasis on reading and writing skills, even in classes not devoted to those subjects.

Teachers weren't the adversaries at Brockton; they drove the process.

And, as the Times notes, the school "scrupulously honored the union contract." Teamwork, it turns out, is better for students than constant political bickering.

If education reform is to succeed, teachers cannot be the enemy -- both for political and pedagogical reasons. Michelle Rhee apparently didn't understand that. But her resignation doesn't have to mean the death of reform.

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.