Sunday, November 26, 2017

No, the New York Times isn't normalizing Nazis.

Yes, this story could be better — for it to have some meaning, we'd get some insight as to why Tony Hovater became a Holocaust-denying Nazi sympathizer. But the critics go further, saying that the story "normalizes" Nazis.

I dunno. Not sure how you can read this and think "gosh, that's normal":

Or this:


It's true, the story doesn't spend a lot of time screaming "this is bad!" But I suspect that's because the NYT editors know their audience probably doesn't include a lot of Nazi sympathizers, or even many folks who are Nazi agnostic.

Friday, November 24, 2017

When bad cops get fired and rehired

Great Washington Post piece about Gene Gibbons, a lawyer with remarkable success in getting bad cops rehired by the same police departments that deemed them unfit for duty. The un-shocking thing? He's from Philadelphia. His origin story is a little bit unexpected, though.
For Gibbons, an affable, barrel-chested man, the path to becoming an advocate for embattled police officers began when he was a teen growing up outside Philadelphia in the early 1980s. 
Then 16, Gibbons was driving home in the family station wagon when a Philadelphia police officer pulled him over. Gibbons sat quietly while the officer ran his license. When he returned, the boy asked the officer why he had been stopped. Gibbons said the officer abruptly punched him in the face and told him to go home.

“I was stewing mad,” he said. “The police had tremendous power.”
So, naturally, he made a career of ... enabling those abuses of power. Huh.

Anyway, there are lots of examples in the story of officers who had long documented patterns of bad behavior who got their jobs back anyway. Important thing to note: The examples are from Florida, which is renowned for its "sunshine" laws. In most states, police unions have persuaded legislatures to close such records to the public, making it very difficult for the public to know about problems in their local department. Police, who keep the rest of us accountable to the law, are practically immune to any such accountability themselves.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

The book I'm most thankful for in 2017

Buzzfeed checks in with writers to find out which books they're most thankful for.

First, I'm thankful to be back in the book-reading business in a serious way. I had a nasal reconstruction surgery this year that largely alleviated some sleep deprivation issued I'd had in recent years. I'm able to concentrate on an enjoy long-form reading again.

Second: The book I'm thankful for this year is Alan Jacobs' "How to Think."

Here's what I wrote on Facebook after completing it:

Finished reading Alan Jacobs' "How to Think" after two days. It's that good (and also that slim - about 160 pages). I want to sit with it a couple of days before writing about it more, but it gets at some thoughts I've had since the Trump Election and how I've tried - with varying degrees of success (and by "varying," I mean outright failure at times) - not to write off people with whom I have disagreements. 
Mostly it boils down to: They are human. With different journeys than I have. If I had made their journey, maybe I'd think the way they think. And having made my own journey, I might be blind sometimes - almost assuredly am - to errors in my own thinking. 
This doesn't mean I'm wrong or my Trump Voter friends are right, nor does it mean there is no truth to strive for - no right or wrong - but it does mean we are occasionally limited in our capacity to know it. And knowing those limits, it's good open our ears to people who think differently: We may never change our minds about anything, but to be somewhat open to the possibility is to be alive and self-aware and striving to be bigger and better than you are. 
That's my hope, anyway.
I'm currently reading Stephen L. Carter's "Civility." It shares some themes with Jacobs' book. I'll share more in the near future.

Why are Dems opposed to Trump's tax reform bill?

The Weekly Standard seems genuinely mystified.
Bringing U.S. corporate taxation in line with that of our global peers will spur the sort of broad-based growth that the Obama administration’s central planners could never achieve and that will benefit middle-income families quite as much as “the wealthy.” 
Ahem.
The first question was straightforward. Would they agree that if the US passed a tax bill “similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate,” GDP would be “substantially higher a decade from now”? Of the 42 economists polled, only one thought the Republican bill would boost the economy. The plurality said it wouldn’t, and the remainder were uncertain or didn’t answer.
Back to the Standard:
But the House bill, at least, contains some needed simplification: It cuts the number of brackets from seven to four, abolishes the estate tax, and gets rid of arbitrary breaks for such things as medical expenses, student-loan interest, and rehabilitating a historic home.
So. The promise of economic growth seems like a promise that might not materialize for the middle class or anybody else — but the loss of "arbitrary breaks" that help the middle class, for medical expenses and student loan interest — are pretty clear. The payoff may not come, but the sacrifice definitely will. This isn't that confusing.

No nondisclosure agreement for Congressional misconduct settlements

Probably the first time I've ever agreed with Andrew McCarthy:

Our public officials are supposed to be accountable and transparent, especially when they are expending public money. It is thus outrageous that Congress has made this cozy arrangement to sweep under the rug malfeasance by members of the club. There is no legal or policy reason to refrain from legislation that would out the lawmakers involved in misconduct settlements — regardless of the type of misconduct (I wouldn’t limit it to sexual episodes). 


Donald Trump's race problem

Donald Trump's supporters really want the public not to think he's racist, Vox reports, but Trump himself isn't really helping the cause.

Even before Wednesday morning, Trump’s blows to Lynch and Ball fit into an ongoing pattern of the president’s use of sports and the behavior of athletes of color as a battlefield for a culture war waged on behalf of his supporters. In Trump’s envisioning, black athletes are showing contempt for the country through displays of blatant disrespect and lack of explicit gratitude, a framing that his critics have called out for being little more than a thinly veiled racial dog whistle, one that is rooted in Trump’s troubled history on racial issues.

Understand, it's not just that Trump criticizes black athletes. Remember, he's refused to condemn folks like David Duke or the Charlottesville white supremacist marchers — or done so in a belated, churlish, "fine folks on both sides" way. The combination of who he criticizes and who he refuses to criticize seem pretty telling. All the excuse-making by his conservative media allies can't really cover that up. 

Common sense gun control

I have a friend who says there's no such thing as "common sense gun control." Maybe if we just did the little things:
Tens of thousands of people wanted by law enforcement officials have been removed this year from the FBI criminal background check database that prohibits fugitives from justice from buying guns. 
The names were taken out after the FBI in February changed its legal interpretation of “fugitive from justice” to say it pertains only to wanted people who have crossed state lines. 
What that means is that those fugitives who were previously prohibited under federal law from purchasing firearms can now buy them, unless barred for other reasons.
So if you're accused of murder but haven't crossed state lines: Congratulations?

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

How to survive your relatives' politics at Thanksgiving

Maybe stay home this year?

We returned to Kansas last year after eight years in Philadelphia, in part to be closer to our retirement-age parents. But one thing we discovered during our years in exile is that we don't mind the occasional holiday with just the three of us — me, my wife, and my son — to hang out.

So we're skipping broader festivities this year. We'll go see everybody at Christmas, but this year's Thanksgiving is about putting on a low-maintenance stew in the Crock Pot, watching a bunch of movies, and simply hanging out. We love our families, let there be no doubt. But sometimes the best way to holiday is to hibernate.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Me @TheWeek: We need to do a better job welcoming Republicans to the anti-Trump resistance

Why can't liberals take yes for an answer?
"We cannot loudly and publicly say, 'Where in the hell are the Republicans who are willing to call out Trump?' then boo them when they do so," writer/activist Shaun King said Tuesday on Twitter. "When people you don't like do the right thing, the important thing, even if they've been enemies before, that's progress." 
We don't have to forget that John McCain is overly hawkish, or that Bob Corker wanted to be Trump's secretary of state, or that George W. Bush was a historically awful president. But right now, the priority for lefties should be to contain and eventually end Donald Trump's presidency. They shouldn't be so eager to turn away allies. Liberals must learn to take "yes" for an answer.
Read it all! 

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

My passion for "A Prayer for Owen Meany."

Sometimes, things come into your life through serendipity.

How I ended up reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" was this: After I graduated from college in 1995, I moved to Southeast Kansas to take a job at a small-town daily newspaper. One of my best friends from college, Brent Graber, was taking a gap year before grad school, so he moved in with me.

That probably saved my life. I was so alone, otherwise.

In any case, Brent enjoyed going to estate sales an picking up stuff cheap. And one time he picked up the "Owen" at such a sale.

When we were at home in the evenings, he read passages to me, laughing with delight. So when he finished, I picked it up and read it. And was smitten.

The first time I read "Owen Meany," I loved it because it was hilarious.

The second time I read "Owen Meany," I loved it because it let me know in a keen way that faith and doubt, that sacredness and profanity, often coexist.

The third time I read "Owen Meany," I closed the book, then handed it to the barista in the coffee shop where I was sitting and urged her to read it.

The fourth time I read "Owen Meany," the rage over 1980s politics seemed a bit dated — but I saw more of myself in the middle-aged narrator's disillusionment.

Will there be a fifth time? I don't know. Some books accompany you all the way through life, though. "Owen," for me, is one of them.


Monday, October 23, 2017

How I got cut from jury duty



I spent parts of two days in a Douglas County District Court last week, undergoing the tedious process of jury selection for a criminal trial. I'm pretty sure I know why I got cut, and I'm still a little bothered by it.

If you've never been through the jury selection process, it can be a pretty intense thing — the prosecuting and defense attorneys each have a crack at the jury pool, asking hours of questions designed to elicit your biases, and to send you home if your biases are too overt. Lots of personal information gets shared, sometimes tears are shed, and it's all a very intense way to spend time with a few dozen strangers.

It's also, less obviously, a preparation for trial and the types of arguments that both sides will make. The lawyers, in picking a jury, are walking a tricky line: They want to get rid of overtly biased jurors so that they can conform to fair trial rules — but they also want to pick jurors who might be amenable to the arguments. So, not too biased but biased enough.

Which, I guess, is where I come in.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

My passion for U2's "Rattle and Hum"



The first album I was ever intimate with was U2's "Rattle and Hum."

By intimate, I don't mean "liked" or "loved." What I mean is this: The cassette tape was a constant presence in my stereo for the better part of a year in the late 1980s. I played it in the car, I played it in my room, I played it over and over and over again, singing along with — emulating — Bono's wails and snarls over and over again so much that even now, 30 years later, I can still perform much of the album if it suddenly appears on a sound system within earshot. Like Bono, I no longer hit the high notes quite so effortlessly, and the Gospel version of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" resonates now, in my forties, in ways it didn't when I was a teenager. But still.

It may seem odd that "Rattle and Hum" inspired this passion in me; it was U2's prior album, "The Joshua Tree," that launched the band into the pantheon of rock gods, and the follow-up live album — if I remember correctly — was judged a lesser effort. But you don't fully decide what music you find or finds you, especially in rural Kansas in the late 1980s, and the album's release in 1988 coincided with my sophomore year of high school. I was ready to be smitten with so much about life, and musically, "Rattle and Hum" immediately became what I loved most.

It's possible the competition wasn't really there. Again, I lived in rural Kansas during the pre-Internet age. It's possible I might've heard of bands like, say, the Pixies, and I remember a skater friend had a copy of an early Red Hot Chili Peppers, but my high school years were dominated by hair metal, Young MC, and this new guy named Garth Brooks. Later, I would envy friends who spent those same years listening to the Smiths. I'd never heard of them.

Next to "Cherry Pie," U2 seemed deep and authentic and they sang in overt ways about Christian concepts that, at the time, I'd only heard from Christian bands. At the time, too, Bono's perpetual smug righteousness - a trait he's carried forth into late middle-age - wore much better when he was in his 20s and I, a teen, was finding what I cared about. Yeah! Killing Martin Luther King Jr. was wrong! Apartheid is bad! Albert Goldman is an unethical book writer!

Some of the causes have aged better than others.

Two other good memories of the album: My senior year in college, taking a long road trip with my college band, and singing the album at the top of my lungs with Mike Yutzy. And a group of friends "borrowing" the college's digital projector to show the concert movie of the same name on the side of a dormitory.

I put the album on over the weekend for a short roadtrip — "Rattle ahd Hum's" running time being equivalent to about the length of a quick turnpike run between Emporia and Lawrence, Kansas. When "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" ended, my son offered a slow, sarcastic golf clap.

Punk.

I guess my passions won't be his, which is fine. I won't be 15 again, which is mostly good. But it was good to rediscover the album, to rediscover my Bono impression. I still haven't found what I'm looking for, either, but "Rattle and Hum" puts me a little closer to locating it.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Are college kids the biggest threat to free speech?

No. But I think Atrios is missing something with this:
The obsession of our pundit class with elite college generally, and specifically the idea that lefty college kids are the greatest threat to free speech ever known to man, is completely bizarre. I know that sometimes well-meaning college kids can be dumb. They are 19! They also don't have any power. Sure everybody can have a bit of power over someone or something for a moment, but structurally...college kids have no power. Even Harvard kids. The $30 billion endowment has power.

Our pundits punched hippies when they were in college (show me where the hippie hurt you, Jon) and they can't stop punching them now. It's so weird.
I suppose I'm one of the hippie punchers in this scenario. But here's the thing: College is a place one goes to learn habits of mind and habits of how to act on the ideas of what your mind generates. The students in college will, in not too long, be the folks running our offices and our states and our nation, and if they're developing censorious habits of mind that they'll take forward with them into that future, that is of concern.

That's to say nothing of that fact that colleges are supposed to be the areas of our society where inquiry and expression is most free. "Academic freedom" has covered a multitude of sins over the years - and rightfully so. When those zones of freedom become clogged by the censorious instinct, it leaves the rest of us with a reduced chance to fight for expression.

Is it important compared to President Trump threatening to investigate the press? Probably not. But it still matters, and remains worthy of comment.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Is late night supposed to be fair and balanced?

I understand that late night talk shows are more overtly political — liberal, really — than they were two or three years ago. Still, I find it kind of odd that there seems to be a real push for both "balance" and comprehensiveness of coverage, mostly from the right.

This is becoming a regular thing:


Discussions of balance and story choice make sense where the news media — especially media that presents itself as attempting objectivity —are concerned. But these are comedy shows, and most comedy has a point of view. Do they owe the audience (or a portion of the audience) to address certain topics?

This isn't a defense of Harvey Weinstein. I just think this "make jokes about Harvey" push from the right is based on expectations that folks on the right don't get to have. Fair and balanced is for news — maybe — but it's a silly, unrealistic expectation for a comedy routine.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Maybe the New York Times really does have it in for Hillary Clinton

Great piece by the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein's decades-long pattern of sexual harassment, but the Times makes one editorial choice I find weird and even a little upsetting.

It uses this picture with the story:

It's worth noting, of course, that Weinstein is connected to and moves among powerful figures. Yet this photo feels ... unnecessary. It's not the picture of Clinton with him that bothers me. It's the picture of Clinton laying her hands on Weinstein, who we are learning in this story is a serial sexual harasser. The combination of the two factors makes the picture look like something that it's not.

I'm not one to obsess about the Times and its treatment of Clinton. I think her emails and Clinton Foundation practices were fair game for inquiry - and hell, I supported her during the primary season. This feels unnecessary, though. A little bit like piling on. Ick.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

21 things I think about guns.



I believe that guns are tools made for the explicit purpose of killing.

I think that sometimes, unfortunately, killing is necessary.

I think that even when necessary, killing is morally fraught and not to be entered into lightly.

I think the act of owning a gun is a signal to the world you have determined you can trustworthily decide when killing is correct. I think that’s … kind of extraordinary. I think I do not possess that sensibility myself.

I think that even if I wanted to make gun ownership illegal, it would be impossible to do, politically, in America.

I think I grew up in Kansas, around good people who possessed guns safely and with respect for life.

I think I lived eight years in Philadelphia, around good people who feared for their lives because of guns.

So.

I think that firearms education - like the hunter safety classes of my Kansas youth - should be available wherever access to guns is available.

Which is to say, just about everywhere.

I think that the right to bear arms is not completely unfettered, because no right is.

I think part of the anguish about the gun debate, on one side, is a fear that government is going to come and take everybody’s guns away.

I think part of the anguish about the gun debate, on the other side, is that that fear seems to block even modest and incremental regulations that might create more safety for Americans at large.

I think, for example, that there are many obstacles to passing laws that require owners to report missing and stolen guns. Even though this seems to be the very essence of responsible gun ownership, and even though one study indicates eight in 10 gun crimes are committed using guns that were illegally possessed by somebody other than the other.

I think one could pass a law like that, make America a little safer, and nobody’s legitimately obtained gun would’ve been seized by the government. So I think I don’t understand why the opposition to something like that is reasonable.

I think that mass killings like the one in Las Vegas weirdly work for the NRA types, because they can challenge any reasonable regulation offered afterward with: “How does this stop (insert mass killing here)?”

And I think a sufficient answer should be: “We don’t know that it would. But here’s the reasoning this regulation might reduce killings overall.”

I think people who offer such regulations should be prepared to discuss that reasoning in detail.

Finally, I think the NRA is not magic. They spend a lot, yes, but not infinitely on lobbying and political contributions. They’re effective because they have a committed constituency - one, by the way, that isn’t necessarily reflective of the broader gun-owning population. The NRA wins because the NRA’s membership cares more than you do. They’re working even when gun regulations aren’t a top-line issue in our societal debate. They stay committed even during the fallow times. So if you want to do something, you are going to have to care more and organize your friends to care more.

I think that will be hard.

I think, ultimately, there’s room in this country for both gun ownership and a smarter regime of gun regulation.

But I think I don’t know if we’ll ever see it.

The difference between guns and climate change

It seems to me that when liberals draw on particularized knowledge (say, of science) to make the case for certain policies (say, regarding climate change), they're accused of pointy-headedness, tyranny by bureaucracy, and general elitism.

When conservatives draw on particularized knowledge - such as with guns - they're more "in touch with the people" and keepin' it real. This, coincidentally, lets them try to shut down conversations about gun regulations because folks on the left lack a certain expertise regarding the details of the issue. 

A bit of an epistemic closure problem I'm not sure how to resolve, except to note the hypocrisy.

 Anyway, one doesn't have to have particularized knowledge of guns or how they work, specifically, to note that just one man killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 more in just a matter of minutes the other night, nor to sense that perhaps something's amiss in our governance that apparently gathering the tools to commit massacre was done so easily.

Arguing, purposefully but respectfully

Two pieces in the aftermath of the Las Vegas aftermath that I want to highlight, because they're so gentle and humane without being wishy-washy.

The first is from David French at National Review. His conservatism - his social conservatism, especially - is not mine. But I very much appreciate how he decided to respond to Jimmy Kimmel's response to Las Vegas: Not with demonizing or mockery, like so many conservatives did, but with a dose of understanding. The title of the post is "Jimmy Kimmel is sincerely wrong about guns," and that may tell you as much as anything about the tone.

French:
Humanity has struggled to neutralize evil men for millennia. For millennia, we have failed. It doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to try. It doesn’t mean that we close ourselves off to innovative solutions and new ideas. It does mean, however, that even the best of intentions and the most genuine of monologues have to be exposed to the cold light of law, reason, and facts. Sincerity only makes misinformation more dangerous. Kimmel is misleading Americans, and when he misleads, he’s not acting as a “moral authority,” he’s clouding the debate. 
I don't agree with all of French's conclusions in the post, but he treats Kimmel like a person who was sincerely sad about the massacre, sincerely looking for solutions, but lays out his disagreement.

Similarly, some thoughts from Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic.
But I try to avoid expressing anger at any honest reaction in such moments, keeping in mind that we all bear tragedy differently; and that among the dead in Las Vegas and the heroes who shielded the living were people who would have reacted in all those ways had the atrocity happened someplace else. I try to be forgiving even of ghastly jokes or callous comments, because many are much better than what they say when suddenly subject to horrors that can scarcely be conceived; insofar as they behave badly, it is rooted in the trauma of helplessly watching the terrible specter of worldly evil. 
We’re stuck together in this era of connectedness; we’ll react to many future tragedies together: mass shootings, natural disasters, mass casualty accidents, terrorist attacks, even wars. Human difference ensures that many will have different notions of how one ought to react, and that some will behave badly by most of those standards. To be forgiving of others while trying to be constructive is our charge.
We will always have disagreements. Some of them may well nigh be impossible to resolve. And tone-policing can be a way of blocking justice, admittedly. But maybe one solution to all our woes is to treat our neighbors in a neighborly fashion - to treat them, no matter how much we disagree, as people with sets of hopes and fears and ways of seeing the world that feel legitimate to them. This is harder to do in some cases than others, and God knows I fall short. But anger gave us Trumpism, which begat anger. French and Friedersdorf offer an example of breaking the cycle.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Me @PennLive: Dreamers should vote Republican

Mighta had my tongue in cheek on this one, but the underlying point is real: One reason Republicans don't like immigration is that it makes new Democrats. So....

If you want this GOP-held Congress to pass a "Dream Act" that saves you from deportation and maybe even provides a pathway to citizenship for you, try this: Promise to vote Republican. 
No, really. 
Republicans believe that immigrants are destined to become Democrats. And when there's a choice between being fair to minorities or winning elections, Republicans go with winning elections every time.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Me @TheWeek: Why Trump's aides are so openly trashing him

Rhymes with "shmistery":
Yes, history is always watching the White House. But given the disruption Trump caused by being elected, and his inability to let a week go by without distraction and controversy, it seems likely that this administration will get the treatment more than most — that, like the Nixon administration, which practically created its own cottage industry in publishing, it will be dissected by historians, journalists, and writers for decades to come. 
There will be heroes and villains in those stories. And surely, lots of people working for President Trump have already decided that they don't want to be seen as the villains. So how can they prevent it?

Monday, August 14, 2017

Trump's Tweets, Part II

Twitter is never going to suspend the Twitter account of POTUS, ever, ever, ever.

Trump's tweets

I'm off Twitter, but President Trump's tweets remain ubiquitous.


Doesn't that mean Trump willingly had, as an advisor, a man he considers a ripoff artist?

Friday, August 4, 2017

Goodbye, Channel 6: (Journalism will never love you back)





Channel 6 in Lawrence, Kansas airs its last newscast tonight. Once upon a time, I had the privilege of trying to become a TV reporter while still writing for print; I spent my 30th birthday ad-libbing crazy stuff on live TV because the city commission election results were very, very, very late coming in. And some of you may remember the time I went to Columbia MO dressed in KU gear to get on-camera reaction in advance of a "Border War" basketball game.

You hear me say journalism will never love you. It won't. I thought at the time we were building something new, something that might survive the then-nascent turmoil of the business. Wrong. So many things I've tried to build during my career have disappeared. Poof. And I cannot lie: That hurts. A lot. My ego wants a legacy, and it's hard to leave a legacy in institutions that no longer exist.

But what would I have done differently?

Truth is, I enjoyed the hell out of being a jackass on Channel 6. I loved being a blogger at Lawrence.com. I am grateful for the stories that I've done and things I've seen that helped make somebody's life a little safer, or helped misunderstood people tell their story. I've loved the simple act of telling a community about itself.

So. I'm grieving a bit the loss of Channel 6. There will be fresh losses to grieve, no doubt, in the not-too-distant future. This is what love is, I guess: Opening yourself up to the possibility that it won't end well, all for the sake of how good it feels when it's good.

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Me @TheWeek: The culture wars are all Trump has left

The culture wars are all Trump has left:
Trump can't pass a health-care bill (at least so far). Getting a tax cut looks like it might be tricky. The wall he promised looks no closer to reality than it did six months ago. There are real questions these days about whether Republicans are capable of governance. 
In that climate, all Trump and the Republicans will have left are identity politics and the culture wars. It's why Trump — after promising to be a president who would protect LGBTQ rights — came out against them. It's why he spent a Tuesday night speech describing the crimes of illegal immigrants in torture-porn detail
And it's the reason conservatives are cheering the prospect of Kid Rock making a Senate run against Stabenow; policy, these days, matters to them much less than all the "real America" virtue signalling that the entertainer provides. For Trump Republicans, that posturing is all that seems to really matter.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Jerry Moran: Bad cop

For 20 years or more, I've been used to thinking of Jerry Moran as the "good cop" in a state full of bad cops. Some of that's personal: He's got a background among Kansas Mennonites, like I do, and I was predisposed to the tribe, I guess. When I'd encountered him in a professional setting, he was far more congenial than, say, Pat Roberts, whose good humor leaves a sour aftertaste.

But after his vote today to proceed on a Senate healthcare bill that doesn't exist, I must finally concede: He is a congenial coward. The Hamlet act he pulls is a way of luring moderates and the occasional liberal (guilty!) to his side even as he votes conservative when push comes to shove.

This is possibly purely a fault of my own interpretation: Moran has never claimed to be anything but conservative. But his unwillingness to commit until very late on controversial issues — the characteristic that defines his political career — fooled me into thinking maybe it was possible to peel him away on the occasional issue of importance. The "good cop" is only the good cop until the interrogation is over and the episode is concluding ... and, suddenly, you realize he was on the bad cop's side all along.

Whatever. It's late now. But he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt from this constituent ever again.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

The untold story of how Harry Reid helped give us Donald Trump

I've got a story to tell, one that's out there on the public record, but one that hasn't been much remarked upon.

131009_harry_reid_605_ap
He lied. Did American democracy die?
It takes place during the Obama-Romney campaign of 2012. During the campaign, Mitt Romney was proving reluctant — as Donald Trump was, after him — to release some pertinent personal financial information. So Sen. Harry Reid, then the leader of Democrats in the Senate, decided to make a big deal about it.
Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office. “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying. “He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?
I wrote at the time that "Reid’s allegations look and smell a lot like bullcrap."
Why? Because there’s absolutely no reason to believe that Reid is telling the truth. He’s offered no witnesses and no proof of his claims, only a “somebody told me” statement that wouldn’t get within a million miles of passing muster in a court of law. And when challenged to present his evidence, his response is that Romney can prove Reid’s allegations wrong—by releasing his tax forms. Politically clever? Yes. Distasteful? It absolutely should be.
It turned out I was right. Reid later admitted lying, but said he had no regrets: "Romney didn't win, did he?"

Fast forward to the fall of 2016. Trump versus Clinton. Her emails have been hacked; Trump has asked the Russians to release them to the media. It's all very suspicious. And Harry Reid, serving out his final days in the Senate, makes his move. He writes an angry letter to James Comey.
In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.
Here's the thing: Reid was right! He was telling the truth! We found out later that Republicans had warned President Obama they'd accuse him of politicizing intelligence if he went public with this — and Obama, probably figuring Clinton would win anyway, decided to keep his mouth shut. Reid's letter to Comey, when made public, represented one of the best possible chances to get this issue fixed firmly in the minds of the American voters. Only ... Reid's accusation was treated like so much bullshit. Here's the Washington Post:
Reid is saying that he has been told the FBI has evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And he's not just saying this information came from mysterious and unnamed national security officials; he's saying Comey himself has left him with this impression. But there is no public evidence to support Reid's claim of actual "coordination" between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And were that to be the case, it would be a scandal of epic proportions. Asked what evidence exists of such a connection, Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson cited classified briefings. "There have been classified briefings on this topic," Jentleson said. "That is all I can say." Asked whether the letter means Comey has shared such information directly with Reid, Jentleson said, "Refer you to the language in the letter." This is the political equivalent of Reid lighting a match, dropping it on a dry ground and walking away.
The Post then mentioned Reid's false allegation against Romney. And it included this old quote from Reid:
Is there a line he wouldn’t cross when it comes to political warfare? “I don’t know what that line would be,” [Reid] said.
It was, in retrospect, a missed opportunity. In 2012, when Reid made his first, pretty clearly bogus charges, there were no end of defenders. Why? Because, I was told, Romney hadn't released his tax returns so who was to say Reid was wrong? And in any case, the other guys fight dirty so why shouldn't we? We're tired of always being the weak ones, right?

 The problem being: When Reid's credibility mattered most, when he could've used some "trust me" to help steer the nation on a different course, he'd spent it all on a crappy lie he probably didn't even need to make in order for Obama to win. Going low, politically, has its short-term rewards. It can be justified on that basis. But who wishes Americans had paid more attention to Harry Reid last fall? A lot of the same people who lauded his earlier lie.

Hey: Politics ain't beanbag. It's never going to be as clean as I like it. But there are costs to wallowing in the dirt, and they're not just moral prissyness. They matter. We're all living with how they matter now.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

The unexpected, lovely humanity of "Spider-Man: Homecoming"

Three thoughts about “Spider-Man: Homecoming” just as soon as I learn that with great power comes great blah-blah. (Also: Spoilers.)



• There’s really not much interesting to say about most Marvel movies anymore. They’re big, they’re expensive, they’re usually reasonably entertaining for a couple of hours and that’s it. I’ve been partial to the “Captain America” movies — the first because it took place in a different era and thus felt substantially different from the rest of the MCU — and the second because it so effectively echoed 1970s paranoid thrillers, right down to the Robert Redford.

I’m not sure that the new “Spider-Man” movie is all that different, but it has two scenes going for it that I want to linger on. Again: Spoilers!

• The first scene: When Peter Parker shows up at his date’s house to take her to homecoming. The door opens and what do we realize: The dad of Peter’s crush is also the movie’s villain — Michael Keaton, playing the Vulture. The next few minutes are both some of the quietest in the MCU and the most taut: As Peter wordlessly absorbs the shock that his nemesis is also the loved one of someone close to him. And as Keaton slowly realizes that Peter is Spider-Man, the tension builds to the scene’s climax: A threat by Keaton to kill everybody Peter loves. It’s the closest the MCU has ever come to Pure Hitchcock.

What’s remarkable about the scene is it’s pure domesticity. We see our villain as a dad -- realize, in fact, that he’s a normal dad, and that the villainous things he’s done aren’t just a rationalized in the story by being a dad -- they are, in fact, seemingly absolutely the things a normal dad would do to ensure that he could keep feeding his family in the face of economic pressures. Michael Keaton sells the heck out of this, and in that moment he becomes a sort of Jean Valjean -- if we were witnessing his story through the eyes of plucky teen detective Javert.

The other scene: Peter is trapped under rubble — can barely move. He starts screaming for help. Screaming and crying, in fact. He sounds not like a superhero, but like a little boy, like somebody’s child. And of course, that’s what he is.

• Which brings us back to the MCU and today’s blockbuster movie economy. A few weeks ago, I saw Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” for the first time. What struck me, as much as anything, were the movie’s simple opening scenes — Martin Sheen working on a garbage truck, Sissy Spacek twirling a baton on the empty neighborhood streets of her small town. We don’t see many of these real-life moments anymore in the movies. There are too many explosions to set off, too many CGI effects to paint into the scene. I miss the old reality.

Marvel movies, as I’ve noted, are as guilty of the loud-louder-loudest blockbuster trend as much as anything. So it’s notable that the most memorable moments in “Spider-Man” are its quietest and most human. They’re what I remember, more than any spectacle, after leaving the theater.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Me @TheWeek: Block Christopher Wray's nomination to the FBI

In a stunning failure of self-promotion, I neglected to mention here my debut at TheWeek.com. I'm really thrilled to have been published there — the ranks of commentary writers are about as good as any publication in the country, so I feel lucky.

The subject of my debut? Christopher Wray, Donald Trump's nominee to lead the FBI. My take? Don't confirm him:
There's an old legal concept known as "the fruit of a poisonous tree." The idea is that if evidence is tainted — say, if police got a confession without reading a suspect his rights — then all information learned as a result of that evidence is inadmissible in court. The message to lawyers is clear: You don't get to take advantage of doing things the wrong way. 
American government is not a court of law. But with President Trump, there's plenty of reason to think that the tree — the whole damned orchard, in fact— is filled with toxins.
It's obviously not a good idea to halt all governance while Donald Trump is under investigation. But the FBI position is different, for reasons I explain in the piece. Please! Read the whole thing!

The straight line connecting tribalization, demonization, and Trump's Russia scandal

I’ve been thinking about this awful tweet from the awful Dennis Prager. Screen Shot 2017-07-17 at 7.43.20 AM

  Which led me to this tweet this morning quoting a Fox News personality: Screen Shot 2017-07-17 at 7.46.56 AM
 And I’m a bit discouraged. 

Let me preface: I’m not quite a “pox on both your houses guy.” All things being equal, I find liberalism superior to conservatism, and I don’t make apologies for it. But I do think political tribalism blinds us to the ways that we’re very similar to our rivals, and that awareness of those similarities is a hedge against hubris.

Among Democrats and liberals, I often hear a refrain that goes something like this: “Republicans don’t play by the rules. They’ll do anything to win, and when it comes down to it, they’ll stick with each other. Not like our side, which is weak and too willing to play by the rules. We have to be as tough as they are.”

Having spent time in the out Internet provinces of both conservatism and Trumpism, I can tell you this: Rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives say precisely the same thing about the other side. A lot. (I know what some of my liberal friends are going to say: “They’re wrong!” But they’re not, entirely.)
 
Best I can tell, both sides believe it. Best I can tell, neither side really examines why the other side thinks that. Everybody has their reasons, I assure you, and it’ll probably be worth examining that in another post. 

But one result of our ongoing demonization is this: It removes any moral or ethical barriers we might otherwise observe. The only object is to win — or avoid losing — by any means necessary. The other guys are going to do it. We should too! All of which makes the race to the bottom a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meeting with the Russians? In a way, that’s not a transgression of the norms, but a fulfillment of what the norms have become.

How to disrupt that race? No idea. Ugh.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

If Donald Trump was a good human being, we wouldn't be in this mess

I've been wondering lately: What would the world be like if Donald Trump was a good guy and not a man of such transparently ill character whose corruption and classlessness infects all around him?

A pause: I don't like attributing character flaws to people with whom I disagree. Usually, they're good — or good enough — people with different opinions! But with Trump, the crappiness of his character is key to the critique of him. It's unavoidable.

Let's apply the question to this week's big scandal — the newly reported meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer he thought might provide Russian government dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

If the people around Donald Trump had been both smart and patriotic, we wouldn’t be waking up this week to news that his son met with a Russian lawyer to dig up “dirt” in Hillary Clinton. We would’ve found out last summer — and it might’ve provided the boost he needed to win the presidency.

News of Trump Jr.’s meeting broke this week, adding to the appearance of a White House under siege and a legal noose tightening around the president’s inner circle. All of this — this part of the scandal, anyway — could’ve been avoided if the Trump campaign had just done two things:

• Called the FBI.
• Held a big press conference announcing why they’d called the FBI.

This approach would’ve had two advantages. It would’ve been the right thing to do. And it would’ve helped Trump look like a real American leader — someone selfless enough to sacrifice a possible advantage if taking that advantage meant doing dirty business with the country’s rivals.

There was precedent for this: Back in 2000, Al Gore’s campaign received a tape showing George W. Bush’s debate preparations — and promptly sent it along to federal investigators.

''I looked at it, and I said, 'I shouldn't have this and shouldn't be looking at this,''' said former Rep. Tom Downey, the Gore adviser who received the tape. ''I knew that it was serious stuff.”

Gore, of course, ended up narrowly losing the presidency. Trump narrowly won.

But imagine what our politics might look like right now if the Trump campaign called the FBI then held the press conference. Imagine the campaign bounce he might’ve received if he’d made a statement like, say, this:

"The Russians tried to give us damaging info on our opponent but even though that might have given us an advantage, it wouldn't be the right thing to do for our country. We are all Americans."

Trump still could’ve railed against “Crooked Hillary.” He still could’ve charged that her email setup as Secretary of State had made America less secure. But he could’ve put questions of collusion with Russia largely to rest, and — for once — maybe even made himself look a little more like a statesman instead of a two-bit schemer. “More in sadness than in anger” would’ve been a good look for a politician attempting to appeal to moderates.

That would’ve taken some imagination, though. That would've taken some moral fitness — or the smarts to try to appear fit once in awhile.

Instead, the Trump campaign played to character, choosing to pursue the dumb, obvious, “let’s screw our enemies” power move. And when that didn’t work, he went public asking the Russians to release any info they had on his opponent.

The trouble with Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency, from the beginning, has been his inability to get out of his own way. His determination to avenge slights and be in control — but only in the most rudimentary fashion — led him to fire James Comey, to attack the “Morning Joe” crew, to slam veterans like John McCain and to pick fights with Rosie O’Donnell, to get his pound of flesh but to almost always get it in a fashion that leaves his presidency as collateral damage.

Given the choice between blunt-force trauma and the smart, silent shiv — or merely doing the right thing and being nice people — Trump and his minions choose blunt force every time. I'm not sure they're aware that different possibilities exist.

If Trump had tried to be a bigger, better man, he might right now have a bigger, better presidency. All he and his campaign had to do was the right thing. They didn’t. Of course they didn’t.

Cross-posted at SixOh6.

Monday, July 10, 2017

Why smart conservatives should love the Bechdel test

I'm shocked, shocked that a National Review writer has decided to take issue with the "Bechdel test." The test, as I'm sure you know, is a very simple way to check if your movies have even a moment in them that isn't dude oriented. Here's Wikipedia:
The Bechdel test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.
And here's NRO's Kyle Smith:
In the past few years, the Bechdel Test has begun popping up casually in reviews like a feminist Good Housekeeping Seal of approval. Take this appreciation last month of the 1992 film A League of Their Own, published by Katie Baker on the site The Ringer: “It is, in my possibly blinded by love but also correct opinion, one of the best sports movies there is. And it is an honest ode to women and sisters and friendships, with a story that breezes through the Bechdel test by the end of the opening scene.” Hey, and you know what? Tom Selleck’s Matthew Quigley appears almost immediately in Quigley Down Under. Hurrah, this film breezes through the Cowboy Test by the end of the opening scene! Neither of these two tests gives you any hint as to the worth of a film, and furthermore neither of them tells you anything about a film’s general feminist wokeness. It doesn’t even tell you whether the film is entirely about a woman.


A couple of observations:

•You know why the "Cowboy Test" is ridiculous? Because there have been a million fricking movies about cowboys. We actually have no need of further cowboy movies — though, admittedly, I'd watch one if a good one came along — because just about every permutation of the genre has been exhausted. The Bechdel test was invented, meanwhile, because such female-centric moments were relatively rare.

•Smith is right that the Bechdel test doesn't tell you about the worth of a film or its feminist bona fides. Nobody makes those claims for it! (Check the video above for confirmation of this.) Instead, the underlying question is this: Does this movie contain a single moment that's not all about the guys in it? It is the very minimum a movie can do, in other words, to put a female perspective onscreen.

• Which means that the Bechdel test doesn't do much to constrain movie art: The art itself is pretty constrained — the movie business has increasingly been designed to appeal to and arouse the passions of teenage boys. To the degree female characters are designed to appeal to this demographic, it's not often with their agency apart from men in mind.

The Bechdel test was created because movies are so dude-oriented that getting such a moment was unexpected, to be noted.

Smith says the Bechdel test is irrelevant because women don't make the kinds of movies that reap big box office. "Have a wander through the sci-fi and fantasy section of your local bookstore: How many of these books’ authors are female? Yet these are where the big movie ideas come from. If a woman wants the next Lord of the Rings–style franchise to pass the Bechdel Test, then a woman should come up with a story with as much earning potential as J. R. R. Tolkien’s."

Which is ... stupid. Tell the makers and viewers of Wonder Woman that they don't like sci-fi adventure. For the love of god, tell my nerdy-ass wife — but give me a head start out of the room.

Hollywood discovers that there's an audience for women-centric movies every couple of years, then promptly forgets it. Using that amnesia to justify the ongoing omission of women and women's perspectives from our films isn't just dumb — it's clearly leaving a lot of money on the table.

Smart conservatives, you'd think, might embrace the Bechdel test for this reason if for nothing else: It just might help them make a ton of cash from an underserved audience.

Cross-posted from SixOh6.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Guns are not *just* inanimate objects

My latest at PennLive:
No, guns are not just "inanimate objects." 
Yes, guns are tools. And yes, those tools don't operate without humans making the decisions. 
But guns are a different type of tool. They are designed for one purpose only:
To kill. 
The simple fact is that guns are qualitatively different, are designed and made to be dangerous -- are prized, in fact, for the amount of injury and death they can inflict -- and that makes them worth considering differently than we do, say, a wrench.
I also show why the "cars kill people too" argument is (ahem) fatally flawed. Please give it a read!

Friday, July 7, 2017

War in North Korea is not inevitable - no matter what the hawks say

Speaking of the way Americans are sold wars of choice as no choice at all:
While the Kim regime is technically a Communist government, the ideology that governs North Korea is known as “Juche” (or, more technically, “neojuche revivalism”). The official state ideology is a mixture of Marxism and ultra-nationalism. Juche is dangerous because it is infused with the historical Korean concept of “songun,” or “military-first,” and it channels all state resources into the North Korean military—specifically its nuclear program. Juche is not a self-defensive ideology. Rather, it is a militaristic and offensive belief system. If the North gets a fully functional nuclear arsenal, they will use those weapons to strike at their American, South Korean, and Japanese enemies.
Get that: If North Korea gets the right combination of nukes and missiles, it will definitely attack the United States. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion: "Given these facts, why should we waste precious time on negotiations that will only empower the North and weaken the rest of us? We should be preparing for conflict on the peninsula, not begging the North to take more handouts from us as they build better nuclear weapons."

But there's plenty of reason not to believe that North Korea will automatically strike the United States if it's capable.

Here's why. If North Korea launched nukes at America, America would launch its nukes at North Korea. Everybody knows this. The North Koreans know this. This is not in doubt. It is difficult to establish one's dominance over a continental peninsula if you, along with the peninsula, are smoking, radioactive ash.

As NBC News reports: "The country says it wants a nuclear bomb because it saw what happened when Iraq and Libya surrendered their weapons of mass destruction: their regimes were toppled by Western-backed interventions. It wants to stop others, namely the administration of President Donald Trump, from toppling its totalitarian regime."

The North Korean regime is awful. But that penchant for self-preservation means it's unlikely to start a war that will end with its destruction. Understand, there's a long history of this. America's hawks warned that Iran's mullahs had a messianic ideology that would cause them to lash out with nuclear weapons once they were capable; we invaded Iraq because we didn't want Saddam Hussein to prove he had weapons "in the form of a mushroom cloud."

The essential idea is always that nations unfriendly to the United States are so irrational, care so little for their own survival, that they're willing to commit civilizational suicide via a nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies. But it hasn't happened yet.

So when hawks make that case for war, make them prove it. Point out that history hasn't worked out that way so far. Point out that we've invaded a country to no good end because of similar thought processes. But never merely accept that we have to choose war. It's not inevitable, no matter how much hawks sell it as such.

Cross-posted at SixOh6.

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Self-restraint in North Korea

This has been stuck in my craw for the last day or so.
The unusually blunt warning, from Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the commander of American troops based in Seoul, came as South Korea’s defense minister indicated that the North’s missile, Hwasong-14, had the potential to reach Hawaii. 
“Self-restraint, which is a choice, is all that separates armistice and war,” General Brooks said, referring to the 1953 cease-fire that halted but never officially ended the Korean War. “As this alliance missile live-fire shows, we are able to change our choice when so ordered by our alliance national leaders. 
“It would be a grave mistake for anyone to believe anything to the contrary.”
You know what else is a choice? Making war.

There's something awful and dangerous about the idea that war is a default position, that it takes an act of will not to send thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen into combat to inflict death on a widespread scale.

 This is particularly true in North Korea, where it seems likely the regime is developing nuclear weapons as a means of protecting itself from interference from superpowers like the United States. The likelihood they'll actually start a war? Pretty low.

Which means we'd be starting a war for the purpose of ... making sure they can't retaliate if we decide to go to war with them. That seems like a terrible squandering of life in order to prevent an unlikely outcome.

 Listen, the North Korean regime is — as George W. Bush once said — loathsome. But if our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved this century, going to war against loathsome regimes doesn't necessarily result in a net improvement.

 But their provocations do not require an armed response. Anybody who tells you differently might have an itchy trigger finger.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Donald Trump, Decius, and the AHCA

Michael Anton, a Donald Trump adviser who went by the pen name "Decius" in making the intellectual case for Trump during the campaign, said this during an interview about Modern Conservatism's failures:
Economic freedom is a human right. But with finance having seized the economy by the … whatevers … and income inequality skyrocketing, should lower taxes really be top priority? Carried interest, 2 and 20? Or is fostering economic solidarity more important? Conservatives have conniptions at the very question. But Aristotle says that the greatest wealth gap in a good regime should be 5 to 1. I’m not saying we want that, but in what way does making hedge fund managers the ultimate winners in our society make any sense? It made sense to challenge the Soviet Union, as it still makes sense to maintain a strong defense. But “strong defense” has morphed into endless, pointless, winless war. 
In 1980, we had to unshackle the economy, rebuild the military and alliance structure, and recover from the ’60s-’70s orgy. Today our priorities are different—or should be. But conservatives only know the formula they learned from the crib sheet.
Today, the House of Representatives voted on a health care bill that will boot 24 million people from coverage. They did so to clear the way for giving millionaires a tax cut. And they celebrated this in the Rose Garden.

So much for "fostering economic solidarity."