Obama: Passive on DADT

This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to say that President Obama would call on the Senate to stay in session until it brought up the stand-alone measure to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In a series of passive replies to the Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson and the Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld, Gibbs didn’t directly urge the Senate to consider the measure, but said, “our hope is that the Senate will take this up again and we’ll see this done by the time the year ends.” “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and DREAM, along with government funding, are all in a basket of issues that are likely to come after” START, he argued earlier in the press briefing.

via wonkroom.thinkprogress.org

Now, maybe the administration is working furiously behind the scenes to get the DADT repeal done during the lame duck. But this certainly *looks* like, once again, the president doesn't have the heart to fight very hard or very visibly for a liberal priority.

Just sayin'.

Cliff Lee's return to Philadelphia brings me a step closer to complete betrayal of the Kansas City Royals

I want to stay a Royals fan. I don't know why I still want to be a Royals fan -- something about not turning your back on who you are and where you come from, I guess.

But Lordy, people, it's tough to stay strong when you live in a place where the major-league team just beat out the New York Yankees for the most-coveted free agent in baseball. A pitcher I really loved during his first go-round here. 

I know, I know: Big-market and small-market disparities. It's still way more fun to root for a team whose objective is "let's try to win the World Series next year" instead of "maybe we'll be ready for above-.500 baseball in 2012 if everything pans out juuuuuuust right."

I'm trying to stay loyal, Royals. But the Phils are making it real hard. I might even buy my son a Phillies baseball cap.

The rank, ugly hypocrisy of the Wall Street Journal

As the Virginia case shows, ObamaCare really does stretch the Commerce Clause to the breaking point. The core issue is whether the federal government can order individuals to do anything the political class decides it wants them to do. The stakes couldn't be higher for our constitutional order.

via online.wsj.com

You know, I'm not a huge fan of the individual mandate. And I should be against ad hominem attacks. But I'd take this rhetoric from the Wall Street Journal a lot more seriously if they didn't *regularly* publish John Yoo, who is of the opinion that the president has the right to violate treaties, order a child's testacles crushed and suspend the First Amendment in a time of war if he so chooses. This paper has regularly given its imprimatur to the idea that there are no limits when a president doesn't want there to be.

Oh, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. The paper has regularly given its imprimatur to the idea that there are no limits to the federal government's power when a Republican president doesn't want there to be.

The Wall Street Journal's fidelity to liberty and Constitutional order isn't just suspect -- it's laughable. The hypocrisy is too thick to bear.

Me @Macworld: Politico launches iPad app

Politico has launched its iPad application, joining a growing list of news publications to refashion their content for Apple’s tablet device.

The Washington D.C.-based political news publication quietly launched the app last Friday, and was advertising the program Monday afternoon on its Website. The app sports three pages of headlines from Politico, but—other than font-size choosing and social-media sharing—offers few additional features for users.

via macworld.com

Time to make an Al Gore joke

In the 21st century, the security of nations will depend increasingly on the security of natural resources, or “natural security.”  Countries around the world rely on the availability of potable water, arable land, fish stocks, biodiversity, energy, minerals and other renewable and nonrenewable resources to meet the rising needs and expectations of a growing world population. Yet the availability of these resources is by no means assured.  This report - authored by  Christine Parthemore and Will Rogers - points to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Mexico and Yemen as examples of how natural security challenges are directly linked to internal stability, regional dynamics and U.S. security and foreign policy interests.

via cnas.org

It's interesting to me that the American military -- as a group, about as conservative and GOP-oriented a collection of humans as you'll ever find -- is preparing for and thinking about what climate change will mean for America's national security. What do they know that their civilian friends don't?

Only Republicans can cry in public

Rep. John Boehner sat down with Lesley Stahl for a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, but the most talked-about part of the interview wasn't anything the future House speaker said (although the fact that he "rejects the word 'compromise'" got a few headlines), it was what he did - cry. For the second time since election night, the minority leader choked up with the cameras rolling.

via slatest.slate.com

I've got to say, if Barack Obama teared up in a televised interview, Republicans would never let us hear the end of it. There's nothing wrong, in my opinion, with showing strongly felt emotion. Remember when National Review/CNBC/Big Government's Larry Kudlow lamented Obama hugging Rahm Emmanuel at a press conference? "It did not send a message of American power and forcefulness." Kudlow fretted -- probably with a purpose.

Everybody's having a laugh today at Boehner's tears. But nobody is really trying to make the case that American prestige is threatened by them. It's a double-standard -- a fairly small one, as they go, but still.

Winners and losers

Exciting news from Wall Street! Thanks to low-interest rates and an influx of capital from the Fed's emergency lending program and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Bloomberg reports that 2010 is on track to be the second most-profitable year in Wall Street history. "Even if this quarter only matches the third, [Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley's] revenue will top that of any year except 2009," reporter Michael Moore writes.

via slatest.slate.com

Victor Davis Hanson: Still very, very wrong about Iraq

So there were plenty of reasons, not counting fear of WMD, for Congress to have wanted to remove Saddam — and indeed a majority of Democratic senators, including Harry Reid, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton, and sizable numbers of House Democrats voted for the resolutions. The administration erred in hyping one or two writs concerning WMD, and today the result is that we have completely forgotten the congressional authorizations in late 2002 and their rather long litany of Saddam’s transgressions — which had earlier led Bill Clinton to push through a regime-change authorization of his own (the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998).

via nationalreview.com

For those interested in re-fighting the debate leading to the invasion of Iraq, it must be remembered that the Bush Administration hyped WMD as a reason for going to war because, really, it was *the* necessary and sufficent condition to get the American people's backing for the invasion. Even after 9/11, were Americans ready to start a land war in the Middle East over the no-fly zone? Over violations of UN sanctions? I'll wager not. The Bush Administration was able to go to war because it persuaded the American people *that their safety was endangered* by not acting before Saddam surely would. The Bush Administration was wrong. The war was, and continues to be, an unjustifiable disaster.

Is Atrios right about health reform?

I'm no constitutional scholar like Ann Coulter, but given my good enough for a blogpost understanding of this I actually don't think it's insane to rule that the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

via eschatonblog.com

He might be. It's obviously pretty easy for us liberals to gripe about legislation that falls short of perfection, but the individual mandate looks uglier and uglier as time goes on. I know, from a policy standpoint, why health reform advocates thought it was needed -- to prevent healthy people from gaming the new system and staying out until they needed it to spend money. But it seems like the act, as passed, was designed to alienate as many voters as it made happy. If it goes down in judicial flames, it will be yet another generation (at least) before Democrats have a bite at this particular apple.

Me @Macworld: VoodooPad comes to iOS

A desktop program that lets users create personal wikis has made its debut as an application for the iPhone and iPad.

VoodooPad for iOS, an offering from developer Flying Meat, made its debut last Friday in Apple's App Store.

via macworld.com

Mr. Mom Chronicles: An update

I've finally figured out one key tool to working/parenting at the same time: the baby gate. I confine kid to his room and let him play in there while I'm writing. It's a small apartment -- his doorway looks out into the living room, where I work. So if he needs anything, he just has to peek out and ask. We're still together, but he's not trying to climb around in my lap while I try to make turn developer-speak into English for Macworld's readers. Very helpful.

Moose the Mooche

Pandora is giving me The Dirty Dozen Brass Band version of this song this morning:

On Social Security, Bernie Sanders gets support from the right

Here’s another problem: Does anyone think that Congress will be able to hold this “one-year” holiday on a portion of Social Security taxes to just one year if unemployment, come Christmas 2011, is still closer to 10 percent than to 5 percent? Politically, it’s going to be hard for members of either party, ahead of an election, to start taking more cash out of people’s paychecks.

via nationalreview.com

That's Nicole Gelinas writing at National Review -- and it's pretty much the same point that Bernie Sanders made during his Friday Filibuster: the payroll tax holiday is going to feel pretty nice this coming year, I'm certain, but if it remains a permanent feature of the tax landscape -- and it's going to be difficult to reinstate -- well, that will do more to undermine Social Security than all the failed privatization plans put together. If Nicole Gelinas and Bernie Sanders can agree on this point, who is left to disagree?

The religious cleansing of Iraq

The Christians and other smaller minority groups here, however, have been explicitly made targets and have emigrated in disproportionate numbers. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, these groups account for 20 percent of the Iraqis who have gone abroad, while they were only 3 percent of the country’s prewar population.

More than half of Iraq’s Christian community, estimated to number 800,000 to 1.4 million before the American-led invasion in 2003, have already left the country.

via nytimes.com

It's a tragedy. And it should act as a cautionary note. We don't know what native forces we're going to unleash when we decide to make war on a country that we don't actually need to make war upon. Because we don't know that we can make things better by using our armed forces to create regime change, perhaps we should only do so when a given situation is going to become intolerably worse. That wasn't the case in Iraq in 2003.

Stu Bykofsky's frustrating column about Spring Garden school

Byko's column in today's Daily News tries to seem profound but doesn't tell us anything. Spring Garden school a K-8 outfit at 12th and Melon, outperforms other schools serving poor and disadvantaged populations in the city, and Stu wants to know why.

We still don't know. Bykofsky wants us to believe that the teachers are extra-dedicated or that Spring Garden somehow has higher expectations for its students. Perhaps he's right. But he never tells us how Spring Garden got to that point, how the school fashioned a culture that earns the loyalty and hard work of its teachers and that in turn produced above-average student achievement. Was it pure luck? Was there a design of some sort? If what Spring Garden is doing can be reproduced in other schools around Philadelphia, maybe it should be. That's presumably Byko's intent. But we need a little more information beyond the platitudes we get here.

Netflix Queue: 'The Assassin Next Door'

Have you seen 'La Femme Nikita'? If you pretend like it's set in Israel and stars a very forgettable Bond Girl and is much less entertaining, you can skip this movie. The lesson? Jean Reno should be in every movie about female assassins ever.

Bag O' Books: 'The Finkler Question'

Three thoughts about Howard Jacobson's "The Finkler Question":

* This novel has very much the feel of a 1960s' Philip Roth comic novel -- in its obsessions with questions of sex and Jewishness -- only told from the point of view of a British Goy, Julian Treslove. I myself have made jokes about wanting to "convert to secular Judaism," for many of the same reasons that Treslove embarks on a (doomed) quest to adopt a Jewish identity for himself. His quest is usually hilarious, but his ardor for the Jews at times feels like it actually contains traces of anti-Semitism. 

* Roth's novels seem meant for a wider, non-Jewish audience. But one gets the sense in Jacobson's novel (if one is Gentile) of peeking into a private conversation about the nature of Jewish identity, how much of it is bound up in the nation of Israel, and how much non-Israeli Jews should burden themselves -- and be burdened by others -- with Israel's role in the Middle East. Julian is meant, I suppose, to be the character the rest of us identify with in viewing those conversations, but he's so oblivious to his own ridiculousness that we're kept at arm's length. On reflection, that's probably intentional. 

* That said, it all really comes down to penises. And a passage in the novel in which Julian waxes rhapsodic about the erotic power of his (very Gentile, very uncircumsized) penis is a masterpiece in the long and storied annals of literary dick jokes. It's probably no accident that the most true-seeming character in the novel is Hephzibah, Julian's girlfriend and accidental guide into Judaism -- and the only woman character whose thoughts we're permitted to hear directly. Unlike Julian or his friends, Finkler and Libor, she doesn't seem to embody a point-of-view on the questions mentioned above; instead she lives her Jewishness, and encompasses (literally, it seems) all of the contradictions that the three men have with each other. She's messy. So is life. And so, often, is identity.

The Atlantic Wire quotes me writing in anger

This Will Have to Be Settled in Court, claims Joel at Cup O' Joel.

via theatlanticwire.com

No credit cards at Christmas

Christmas will no longer be on credit for many shoppers, despite tempting offers from retailers and credit card companies trying to coax the plastic out of consumers’ wallets.

The lowest percentage of shoppers in the 27-year-history of a national survey said they used credit cards over the Thanksgiving weekend, while the use of general credit cards like Visa and MasterCard fell 11 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to the credit bureau TransUnion.

via nytimes.com

This strikes me as a good trend. Too many people spend months paying off their Christmas spending spree -- and too many people never get it entirely paid off. Living within your means isn't sexy or even fun, but it's relatively sustainable.

Did Obama just surrender on the environment?

The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition.

The move to delay the rules, announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency, will leave in place policies set by President George W. Bush. President Obama ran for office promising tougher standards, and the new rules were set to take effect over the next several weeks.

Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation. Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs.

via nytimes.com

I don't get the logic here. The EPA rulemaking process was intended, partially at least, to circumvent a do-nothing Congress. Now that a Congress has been elected that has even *less* inclination to address environmental issues, the president has decided he shouldn't use the executive branch's rulemaking power after all? Because critics might say boo? The critics who were going to say boo in any case?

I'm not saying that it's not legitimate to balance regulation against the economy. But the only real change to the calculations of that balance seems to be that the president now believes action would hurt his re-election. And that seems simply craven. What am I missing here?

Joe Manchin's weird, kind of offensive apology on DADAT

"While I believe the 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' policy will be repealed someday, and probably should be repealed in the near future, I do not support its repeal at this time," Manchin said in the statement. "I truly understand that my position will anger those who believe repeal should happen now and for that I sincerely apologize. While I am very sympathetic to those who passionately support the repeal, as a Senator of just three weeks, I have not had the opportunity to visit and hear the full range of viewpoints from the citizens of West Virginia."

via thehill.com

It's a weird apology: I'm sorry for voting according my belief that repeal shouldn't happen right now. It's clear Manchin is somehow trying to have his cake and eat it too, but why?

As for his "as a Senator of just three weeks" comment, I call bullshit. He's just been through a campaign in which he took plenty of strong stands. There is no "probationary Senator" time: You've got to go to the Capitol with your big-boy pants on. And are we really to believe that a man who won election to federal political office had never really given thought to the prospect of DADT repeal? Unlikely. You made the vote, Joe Manchin, you should own it. Your avoidance just compounds the offensiveness of your original vote.

Philadelphia Police Heroism Watch

There are also good and brave and honest cops in the city, and it should be acknowledged that they do have a dangerous job:

A Philadelphia Police Officer was shot overnight during a chase in North Philadelphia, according to police.

Officer Kevin Gorman was treated for a gunshot to the shoulder at Temple University Hospital and released about 5 a.m. today, according to Police Officer Christine O'Brien.

Gorman was wounded on the 3300 block of N. Howard Street in North Philadelphia.  He is a 3 and 1/2 year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department.

Philly Police Corruption Watch

An officer is suspended after repeated accusations that he steals from North Philadelphians:

It wasn't the first time that (Officer Joseph) Sulpizio, a narcotics officer with Strike Force North, had been accused of theft. He'd been taken off the street twice since 2008 for allegedly stealing money from people he detained but never arrested.

At least two high-ranking narcotics supervisors have repeatedly contacted the Internal Affairs Bureau - in memos and phone calls - to voice concern that Sulpizio might be a thief.

Next month, Sulpizio is scheduled to go before the Police Board of Inquiry to explain why he took Castro to Front and Tusculum and failed to radio in his whereabouts.

Yesterday, Commissioner Charles Ramsey removed Sulpizio from street duty for a third time after the Daily News asked Sulpizio's superiors for comment.

"I benched him," said Ramsey, who added that the department had taken Sulpizio's gun from him.

Thank God for Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman.

DADT repeal fails; time for some judicial activism

The theory by propounded by haters of "judicial activism" is that America's political arguments are best settled in a political -- not legal -- arena. Judges should defer to Congress, the thinking goes, because Congress is elected by the citizenry, and thanks to elections every couple of years, is accountable to that citizenry.

But: It's clear that overwhelming majority of Americans favor a repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell." And a nearly overwhelming majority of the Senate does so, as well: 57 Senators voted today for cloture on a bill that would repeal DADT. These aren't close numbers in either case. Yet there will be no repeal of DADT. Procedures.

Meanwhile, a case against the law sits in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals -- slowed down, apparently, to allow the political process to take the lead. I hope the case now goes forward with all due speed. And I hope the courts affirm the decision that DADT is unconstitutional.

This will surely bring more cries of "judicial activism" from the right, if it happens. But who cares? If the political arena can't be responsive not only to the wishes of a large majority of the citizens, but a large majority of its own members, what good is it? There's a plausible argument to be made that DADT is unconstitutional; the courts should feel free to act on that argument. They'll be hewing closer to the wishes of the citizenry than the political branches.

The Tea Party, the states and the Constitution

That's what Ben and I talk abut in this week's Scripps column. Stop me if you've heard this before:

The proposed amendment spits in the eye of the same Founders whom conservatives make such a show of revering.

Before the Constitution, the United States was governed -- if you can call it that -- by the Articles of Confederation. Under that system, Congress functioned more like today's United Nations Security Council, a fractious and paralyzed body that let each state act as a sort of sovereign nation with veto power over every act of the national government.

It didn't work. Letting the states have that much power made it impossible to get anything done. The adoption of the Constitution didn't just fix those shortcomings: Read The Federalist Papers and it's clear the Founders believed the new system represented a decisive point when the multiple states decided they truly were a nation rather than a collection of small, weak, independent kingdoms.

There was opposition to that vision. A group of men who called themselves the "Anti-Federalists" wanted to continue the old ways of state primacy and campaigned hard against the Constitution. They lost the argument, or so it seemed. The emergence of the proposed new amendment suggests that -- for all their tri-corner hats and Gadsden flags -- today's Tea Party set has more in common with the Anti-Federalists who tried to stop the Constitution from becoming law than they do with the actual Founders. It's funny, if you think about it.

As a practical matter, giving states more federal power would also blur the lines between the two forms of government, making a real hash of things. Voting for state senators and governors and attorneys general might be determined by their stands on national -- rather than local -- issues. The proposed amendment doesn't just repudiate the work of the Founders; it's probably just a bad idea on its own merits.

Republicans block health aid for 9/11 workers

Republican senators blocked Democratic legislation on Thursday that sought to provide medical care to rescue workers and residents of New York City who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke from ground zero.

Republicans have been raising concerns about how to pay for the $7.4 billion measure, while Democrats, led by Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York, have argued that the nation had a moral obligation to assist those who put their lives at risk during rescue operations at ground zero.

via nytimes.com

As Jonathan Chait pointed out at his blog, the Republicans just pressed very hard -- and successfully! -- for a tax cut for the rich that expands the deficit massively. It's clear that if 9/11 workers didn't want to get sick, they should've been rich and unpatriotic enough not to have worked at Ground Zero.

Jack Shafter agrees with me about Fox News and the public option

The call to refer to the program as the government option instead of the public option came from Republican pollster Frank Luntz, Media Matters and Kurtz report. But this shouldn't disqualify the new term from the Fox News stylebook. Government option is superior to public option in that it emphasizes that the government—and thus the taxpayers—will be footing the bill. As a modifier, public has many nongovernmental uses, as in public appearance, public figure, public display, public-key cryptography, public editor, public enemy, public storage, and public opinion.

But when government is used as an adjective, there is no such confusion.

via slate.com

I agree with Fox News about the 'public option'

Everybody knows that Fox News is a messaging machine for the GOP, so I tend not to get worked up about new examples of the phenomenon. What's the point? But even by my relaxed standards, I really can't get worked up about this:

On Oct. 27, the day after Senate Democrats introduced a bill with a public insurance option from which states could opt out, Bill Sammon, a Fox News vice president and Washington managing editor, sent the staff a memo. Sammon is a former Washington Times reporter.  

“Please use the term ‘government-run health insurance,’ or, when brevity is a concern, ‘government option,’ whenever possible,” the memo said. 

I have no doubt the phrasing served Republican ends. But I don't care, actually, because the term is also accurate.

There's nothing wrong with "public option." But compared to "government option," the former phrase actually is less descriptive of the issue at play. Liberals -- including me -- were arguing that a government-run health insurance plan be added to the list of private insurance options Americans would have once health reform was passed. In that case, the word "public" possibly obscures more than it reveals to the average American citizen.

That's not to uphold Fox News as a journalistic paragon. It isn't. But if liberals are angry that the channel described a government-run plan as a government-run plan, we've got bigger problems than Luntzian messaging on our hands. 

 

From the comments: Not terrorism, but 'cyber-vigilantism'

I totally agree that the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" should not be uttered when describing non-violent acts. To paraphrase brother Joel, it puts "too much noise in the signal." The EFF, in denouncing the digital attacks on MasterCard and others, used the term "cyber-vigilantism" - which I think is a much better term. It reflects that the attacks have real consequences and are motivated by revenge, but are quite distinct from the physical violence that is part and parcel of genuine terrorism.

Robb, via joelmathis.blogspot.com

This sounds right. I was struggling with the language to describe what I saw as a disruptive -- and wrong -- response to the Anonymous hacking spree. 'Cyber-vigilantism' sounds right, and more accurate.

House Dems revolt on tax bill

Defying President Obama, House Democrats voted Thursday not to bring up the tax package that he negotiated with Republicans in its current form.

"This message today is very simple: That in the form that it was negotiated, it is not acceptable to the House Democratic caucus. It's as simple as that," said Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen.

"We will continue to try and work with the White House and our Republican colleagues to try and make sure we do something right for the economy and right for jobs, and a balanced package as we go forward," he said.

via politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com

I wonder if we're not seeing the beginning of the end of the Obama presidency on this. The Republicans are already rooting for the president's failure and working earnestly for it. It now seems that Dems are doing the same. There's nothing wrong with this, per se -- I tend to like it when Congress acts like a co-equal branch of government, and when members assert their prerogatives instead of rolling over for the president.

But in his eagerness to get a deal with the GOP, it now appears the president simply assumed he'd have the votes of his own party. That he doesn't -- or that he failed to persuade his own caucus -- is going to be a sign of weakness to voters, Republicans, just about everybody. That's not good for Obama. He's looking more like Jimmy Carter at this hour than he ever has.

From the comments: On cyberwar and terrorism

Is the Wikileaks 'cyberwar' actually terrorism? Of course not! It doesn't even begin to approach anything resembling a reasonable definition of the word, and it's very irresponsible to label it as such. (I'm looking at you, certain Republican politicians.) And I'm concerned when intelligent, informed liberals like Joel see the actions of Anonymous as "muddying the waters."

What is happening now is mostly (all?) simple DDOS attacks by a bunch of 4chan /b/tards. I've heard it argued that such a tactic is the 21st century equivalent of a sit-in, and I think the analogy does have some merit. All they are doing is temporarily denying access to a (virtual) location by occupying its access points (i.e. its bandwidth and/or SYN/ACK queue). The difference is one of scale and of repercussions for the activists/attackers.

I personally don't think it's a great strategy, as it is going to cause more harm to Assange and Wikileaks than it is to Visa, MC or Paypal. I can see a lot of people blaming this activity on Assange and Wikileaks, but it's clear that they do not have any role in it.

But it's NOT terrorism. Even entertaining that idea is dangerous and points us toward a world in which anyone who upsets the status quo can be tarred with the same brush as mass murderers.

via joelmathis.blogspot.com

When an oil company owns a country

The oil giant Shell claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to politicians' every move in the oil-rich Niger Delta, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable.

The company's top executive in Nigeria told US diplomats that Shell had seconded employees to every relevant department and so knew "everything that was being done in those ministries". She boasted that the Nigerian government had "forgotten" about the extent of Shell's infiltration and was unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations.

via guardian.co.uk

Is the Wikileaks 'cyberwar' actually terrorism?

I've been deeply skeptical of Republican politicians who label Julian Assange and Wikileaks as "terrorists" deserving of a good Hellfire missile or two. What happened on Wednesday, though, muddies the waters for me a bit:

Within 12 hours of a British judge’s decision on Tuesday to deny Mr. Assange bail in a Swedish extradition case, attacks on the Web sites of WikiLeaks’s “enemies,” as defined by the organization’s impassioned supporters around the world, caused several corporate Web sites to become inaccessible or slow down markedly.

Targets of the attacks, in which activists overwhelmed the sites with traffic, included the Web site of MasterCard, which had stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks; Amazon.com, which revoked the use of its computer servers; and PayPal, which stopped accepting donations for Mr. Assange’s group. Visa.com was also affected by the attacks, as were the Web sites of the Swedish prosecutor’s office and the lawyer representing the two women whose allegations of sexual misconduct are the basis of Sweden’s extradition bid.

The New York Times doesn't mention this, but Sarah Palin was also a target of the hackers. (Though she was typically witless in her response.)

Now, as a matter of course, I'm pretty sympathetic to Gizmodo's take on the whole Wikileaks affair. "Wikileaks is a flawed endeavor represented publicly by a smug egotist. But it deserves the respect and support of anyone who prioritizes the privacy of individuals over that of governments." And I think people like Palin and Mitch McConnell who throw around the word "terrorist" too freely are a menace to free society.

The hackers acting in support of Wikileaks, though, aren't freeing information and exposing the inner workings of government. They're disrupting lives. Lots of regular people use Amazon and Visa and PayPal to conduct their daily business. And they are, to some extent, "collateral damage" in Wednesday's attacks.

Now, that damage right now is that some people are pretty inconvenienced. Nobody has died or even had to declare bankruptcy based on the hackers' actions. I don't want to make too big a deal about it. But the willingness of Wikileaks supporters to disrupt the lives and businesses of bystanders is troubling to me. And, possibly, a portent of bad days to come.

Some good news

Republicans may hate Barack Obama but there look to be a pretty meaningful percentage of them who don't hate him enough to vote to put Sarah Palin in the White House. When you combine that with her complete lack of appeal to Democrats and independents she looks virtually unelectable for 2012.

via publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com

What, exactly, does Jonah Goldberg want us to do in North Korea?

Eventually this dynasty of misery will end and North Koreans, starved, stunted, and beaten, will crawl back into the light of civilization. My hunch is that it will not be easy to meet their gaze, nor history’s. No one will be able to claim they didn’t know what was happening, and very few of us will be able to say we did anything at all to help.

Jonah Goldberg, via nationalreview.com

Jonah Goldberg has a really annoying -- one might even say cowardly -- way of suggesting policy choices without explicitly advocating for them. He's well-remembered for wondering out loud why nobody had killed Julian Assange, but then (implausibly, in my mind) denied that he was making the case for killing Julian Assange. He's defended torture in similarly convoluted fashion, saying that waterboarding is bad, but is it such a big deal if it only happened to three people?

Here, Goldberg seems very much to be advocating for a U.S. invasion of North Korea. He's dismissive of opposition: "After all, America, we are told again and again, is overextended. And we all know that the concept of regime change — the only conceivable remedy for North Korea’s plight — is out of favor."

But he never tells us precisely how that regime change should come about. And good thing for him! Because if it *was* an invasion, he'd have to start wrestling with questions about the likely impact on South Koreans, or about China's likely reaction if the United States acted on its own initiative to bring down one of its client states. He'd have to grapple honestly with whether the United States actually can afford the blood and treasure that would be expended in pursuit of bringing down the Communist regime.

Instead, his vagueness allows him to act as though the choices are made in a vacuum. North Koreans have it bad -- and, lordy, he's right about that one, their plight is a very real tragedy -- so somebody should do something. Fine, Jonah. What should we do? What should we do?

Christine O'Donnell, unemployment and John McCain's tarnished legacy

Christine O'Donnell on Tuesday compared the "tragedy" of extending unemployment benefits to Pearl Harbor and the death of Elizabeth Edwards. 

"Today marks a lot of tragedy," O'Donnell, the Tea Party-backed GOP Senate candidate from Delaware, said Tuesday night during an appearance in Virginia. 

"Tragedy comes in threes," O'Donnell said. "Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards's passing and Barack Obama's announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits." 

via thehill.com

You know what really bugs me about this story?

It's that The Hill is covering the opinions of Christine O'Donnell, failed Senate candidate from a small state that otherwise almost never gets press coverage. I don't know why her opinions merit continued coverage, exactly, except the press long ago decided that her O'Donnell merited coverage far in excess of her actual importance.

And if Christine O'Donnell becomes a part of our collective public and political life, saying dumb things every couple of weeks, I'm going to blame John McCain. He plucked Sarah Palin from relative obscurity to be his running mate, despite her lack of qualifications. Palin boosted O'Donnell -- whose only accomplishments seem to be running for office and losing every couple of years -- in the GOP's Senate primary, giving her the spotlight.

Which means, ultimately, that because John McCain made an awful mistake, the rest of it will pay for it in perpetuity by reading Christine O'Donnell quips in our morning paper. This makes me unhappy.

More about Obama and his willingness to fight

Asking Obama to fight for his own key campaign pledge and the desire of a majority of Americans is not mindless ideologically purity

Ari Berman, via twitter.com

I generally think Ari Berman is unrealistic in his vision of how liberals can govern in America. But I think he's right in this case.

President Obama: Visible mostly in surrender

Fascinating press conference today from Barack Obama.  His comments at the end about purists were, from my perspective, absolutely correct, substantively. 

The truth is that there are a lot of people who just don't accept that the President of the United States can want something, fight for it, fight effectively and correctly, and still not get it.  If it doesn't happen, it must have been -- in Obama's words -- a "betrayal."  Those people are wrong.

via plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com

Jonathan Bernstein's comments above made me realize that part of my problem with President Obama is, indeed, optics: the president has been very visible in compromise and surrender on liberal priorities. He's been a behind-the-scenes player when it comes to actually fighting for those priorities.

President Obama spoke with frustration about last year's fight over the "public option" and how he doesn't get credit for health reform on the left because of the lack of that option. The problem is that *I don't remember seeing him fight for the option.* For much of the yearlong healthcare debate, the president let Congress take the public lead and wrestle with the issues. When he emerged to make the case for a health reform law, he quite explicitly signaled his surrender on the option. Liberals never got the sense he fought and then compromised. All we really saw was the compromise.

Again on taxes: Obama ran for president promising to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and end them for the rich. And he made, in my view, a persuasive case for that approach. But in recent months, as the clock ticked toward midnight, the president wasn't very visible in making the case again and now. He became most prominent, at the end, when he was showing frustration and disgust with the deal he himself had signed off on.

Behind the scenes during the fight. Visible during surrender and compromise.

Combine that public face of leadership with Obama's seemingly pre-emptive concessions on offshore drilling and freezing the pay of federal workers, and the overall impression President Obama gives is that he's most comfortable in accommodation mode. If the president wants the respect of the "professional left," he's going to have to show early, persistent and visible leadership on some issue that's dear to liberals. We might even forgive him if he compromises a bit in the end. But we want to see him fight.

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.

Don't blame cities for rural violence

A New York Times story about the dangers of being a park ranger:

Two recent shootings of wildlife officers — one killed in Pennsylvania while confronting an illegal hunter, the other seriously wounded after a traffic stop in southern Utah — have highlighted what rangers and wildlife managers say is an increasingly unavoidable fact. As more and more people live in proximity to forests, parks and other wild-land playgrounds, the human animal, not the wild variety, is the one to watch out for.

“We’re seeing a little bit more of the urban spill into the wild spaces — city violence in the country,” said John Evans, an assistant branch chief of law enforcement operations at the National Park Service.

Cities surely have their problems with violence. But it's not Philadelphians (say) who are traipsing through the woods in the off-season, killing wildlife officers because they got caught poaching. Rural areas can -- and do -- generate their own violence. It's misleading for them to blame it on the cities.

Alan Cumming is pretty awesome

And he gives a pretty awesome interview to the AV Club

I think even though it is Shakespeare, it should be light. I always try to remember, if Shakespeare were around today, he would be writing The Good Wife, you know what I mean? He would be writing for television, he’d be writing for HBO or something. He was a populist writer, and I think people forget that.

 

Welcome back to the Cold War!

Washington and its western allies have for the first time since the end of the cold war drawn up classified military plans to defend the most vulnerable parts of eastern Europe against Russian threats, according to confidential US diplomatic cables.

The US state department ordered an information blackout when the decision was taken earlier this year. Since January the blueprint has been refined.

Nine Nato divisions – US, British, German, and Polish – have been identified for combat operations in the event of armed aggression against Poland or the three Baltic states. North Polish and German ports have been listed for the receipt of naval assault forces and British and US warships. The first Nato exercises under the plan are to take place in the Baltic next year, according to informed sources.

via guardian.co.uk

Julian Assange arrested in London

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Tuesday in London on a Swedish warrant, London's Metropolitan Police said.

Assange was arrested at a London police station at 9:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m. ET) and will appear at the City of Westminster Magistrate's Court later in the day, police said.

Swedish authorities had issued the warrant for Assange so they can talk to him about sex-crime allegations unrelated to WikiLeaks' recent disclosure of secret U.S. documents.

via cnn.com

I don't know what to say. The conspiracy-minded part of me wants to think this is a snow job. The feminist part of me never wants to downplay sex crime allegations. So all I'll do is note this development, and reserve judgment pending a greater knowledge of the facts.

What liberal anger on the tax cuts is all about

I remember when the first Bush tax cuts were passed back in 2001. It was a political masterstroke for Republicans because -- unlike President Obama's stimulus tax cuts -- they made damn sure everybody knew their taxes were lower. How? They had the federal government send big checks to nearly every taxpayer in the country. Lots of people tucked the money into their bank accounts or went out and bought TVs, but at the largely lefty Mennonite church I was attending at the time, there was a fair amount of hand-wringing.

It wasn't that my fellow congregants were fans of high taxes. And it's not as though they were fans of every part of government -- it was a lefty Mennonite church, after all, with a pretty strong pro-peace stance. But the churchgoers recognized that there were things that government does that they not only like, but think are necessary to the just and proper functioning of society: social services, retirement income, medical care for the poor, that kind of thing. And they believed the tax cuts were likely to diminish financial support for those very worthy efforts. As a result, some church members talked openly -- and advocated -- sending the Bush tax cut checks to various charities. The money, they suspected, was going to be needed.

And that's what the liberal anger about Obama's tax cut deal is all about. For the last 30 years, Democrats have been derided by the GOP as "tax and spend liberals." It's supposed to be slur, but in a sense it's a badge of honor: Liberals were trying to actually pay for what they were buying, instead of putting it on a credit card. They even tried to make the health reform law into a deficit reduction measure; you can argue (as conservatives do) that there' some hocus-pocus going on with that effort -- but it's notable that Dems even make the effort. Republicans certainly don't: In the last decade they've given us two wars and the Medicare drug benefit financed pretty much entirely with borrowing from China. They have been for bigger government, in other words, but they haven't been willing to pay for it. Only one of the parties has been adult about the balance between spending and resources, but somehow it's the GOP parades around as the party of fiscal conservatism. It's ... galling.

And that's what it boils down to. Liberals think there are some services that government is uniquely well-positioned to provide. Extending the Bush tax cuts more than likely hastens the day those services are cut or eliminated, because the money we use to pay for them now will probably be redirected towards debt payments instead. (It's not like the Pentagon budget ever goes down.) Extending the tax cuts -- and, like the continuing fixes to the Alternative Minimum Tax, I'm willing to bet we've entered an era of permanent temporary extensions of the Bush cuts -- plunges us more fully into becoming a debt-laden country with a shredded safety net. It's difficult to discern an upside to this.