Obsidian Wings

Flagging Support

The outgoing flag of Iraq looks like this:

A contest-winning newly designed flag looks like this:

The idea, according to US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (as reported in the Washington Post), was "an Islamic crescent on a field of pure white, with two blue stripes representing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and a third yellow stripe to symbolize the country's Kurdish minority."

Among other feedback from Iraqi's polled, however, is the widespread feeling that it looks too much like the Israeli flag:

Cheney v. U.S. District Court, 03-475

After two years of delays and having lost two rounds in lower courts, Cheney is about to face the final test in his quest to keep private his records of work on a national energy strategy.

Cheney Secrecy Case Goes to High Court

The executive branch's argument in this battle is that forced disclosure of confidential records intrudes on a president's power to get truthful advice. The questions (pdf file) they're asking the Supreme Court to answer are

Whether the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), 5 U.S.C. App. 1, §§ 1 et seq., can be construed, consistent with the Constitution, principles of separation of powers, and this Court's decisions governing judicial review of Executive Branch actions, to authorize broad discovery of the process by which the Vice President and other senior advisors gathered information to advise the President on important national policy matters, based solely on an unsupported allegation in a complaint that the advisory group was not constituted as the President expressly directed and the advisory group itself reported.

and

Whether the court of appeals had mandamus or appellate jurisdiction to review the district court's unprecedented discovery orders in this litigation.

The argument of the groups pressing the matter, Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, is that the public should be able to see what influence energy industries had in outlining our national energy policy.

Lack of Discussion

Imagine I suspected that someone broke into a house by stealing a key from its owner. If you later showed that someone else broke into another house by smashing a window, would you think that this showed I was wrong about the first person stealing a key?

No?

Then why is this considered a passable argument?

When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw up. When a black person screws up, it ignites a debate on race.

The subject, of course, is Jack Kelley vs. Jayson Blair, and Pitts' point is precisely on target. Don't the folks who loudly insisted that affirmative action was to blame for Jayson Blair's transgressions owe us an explantion for their relative silence about the far worse journalistic fabrications of Jack Kelley? Has it given them any second thoughts at all?

I like Kevin Drum, but this shows a serious lack of attention to the dicussion about Jayson Blair. First of all, I'm not aware of anyone who suggests that affirmative action is to blame for Blair's trangressions. Affirmative action didn't cause Blair to lie. The suggestion is that affirmative action allowed Blair to more effectively escape the consequences of his lies for a longer period of time than would be expected at a newspaper with supposedly high standards for accuracy. The suggestion is that Blair was underqualified for the position he was given. The suggestion is that affirmative action sensibilities allowed Raines to turn a blind eye to Blair's problems and made it more difficult for Blair's peers to voice their opinions about him.

Let's hear from his boss, Howell Raines:

“Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter. I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities….Does that mean I personally favored Jayson? Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”

San Jose Mercury News

This suggests that it is at the very least non-ridiculous to think that race played a factor in Blair's quick success.

This post does nothing to deny that racism exists in the US. This post does not suggest that black people are inferior. This post does not suggest Blair's journalistic crimes were worse than Kelly's. You could lie far more egregiously than Blair, and get away from it for longer, and so long as your method of evading notice did not involve affirmative action that would say precisely nothing about whether or not affirmative action played a large part in Blair getting away with lying as long as he did while getting promoted as quickly to as high a position as he did.

There are many different methods for evading detection of lies. Just because Kelly didn't use affirmative action to further his says precisely nothing about the high probability that affirmative action helped Blair with his.

In case anyone was wondering...

...I just didn't have anything all that urgent to say today. An odd experience, after five straight months of spouting off on every topic that caught my eye.

Moe

Hope in Bishkek

Even a LGF'er who had been battling me for days eventually admitted (after his own research) that Kyrgyzstan---as an example of a moderate Muslim democracy---does indeed represent hope in the WoT. Sure, emerging from the Soviet Union has shielded it somewhat and made it more secular than most Muslim countries, but Kyrgyzstan both bravely repelled an infiltration attempt by al Qaida in 2000(although they are creeping back in) and now stands poised to accomplish something no other Central Asian state has managed: it will hopefully soon be the first Central Asian state to "experience a ballot-box-driven transfer of power." (via the incomprable blog Argus)

My partner is from Kyrgyzstan so I've been trying to follow developments there. Essentially President Askar Akayev's second (and legally final) term is almost up. Elections are scheduled for February 2005. There continues to be widespread speculation that he's growing more and more corrupt and will do something to make this potential historic transfer less than ideal (Akayev may pull a few strings and legalize a third term; he may install a member of his familly---his wife's name has been floated---or some other shenanigans), but ...

If Akayev indeed sticks to his pledge not to run in 2005, most analysts believe that whoever wins the election would enjoy the incumbent’s political blessing. Even so, the voluntary departure from power of a sitting president would establish an important precedent in Central Asia’s political development. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, no Central Asian state has witnessed a turnover of authority in the executive branch.

Kyrgystan is a small, poor nation (many people we meet have never heard of it), but its has been a good friend to the US and its potential as an example warrants more US support (especially as it may start to lose the battle against Islamic extremists without some help). We have a military presence there already, but do little PR wise to support the country. A high-profile* diplomatic visit, soon (hint, hint...Cheney/Powell) congratulating Akayev on his nation's acheivement could both encourage him to retire into the elder statesmen role gracefully, and help bring the sort of investments (if only touristic...it's an awesomely beautiful country with a very rich, ancient culture) that could enable it to continue to strengthen economically (which could help them further repel the terrorists) politically (ditto), and symbolically (double ditto).

*There have been low-profile ones, but the election angle could make one now a bit more "mainstream newsworthy."

New Generation of Pro-Choice Voices

I wish I had a first-hand account of yesterday's march to share with you (feel free to use this as an open thread to share your experiences if you were there). I've attended previous marches in Washington focussed on preserving a woman's right to choose, but didn't attend this one. It sounds like I missed quite an event:

Massive March in Support of Abortion Rights

The turnout was among the largest seen in a city with a fabled history for such gatherings. Authorities no longer offer official crowd estimates, but various police sources informally estimated the throng at between 500,000 and 800,000 in the mile-long stretch of green space between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

Perhaps most significant about the gathering (which included the usual mix of politicians, celebrities, and true believers) was the focus on "mobilizing a new generation of women to the fight."

Earth Day and Conservatives

I don't think it is actually Earth Day, but San Diego had its hugemongous EarthFair in Balboa Park. It is billed as the "largest free annual environmental fair in the world". So I figure it offers a good excuse to comment on environmentalism.

Personally I think of environmentalism, by which I mean an idea that the preservation of a 'natural' environment ought to be one of the highest priorities, as a little bit like the Atkins diet. Both have useful insights which can make daily life much better, but both have quite a few followers who take things way too far.

I don't believe that there is any reason why conservatives ought to be anti-environment or even indifferent to the environment. We ought to respect the fact that human beings alter environments and like many complex systems the effects may not be obvious or direct. Conservatives are aware of this possibility in complex human interactions, and should be willing to extend the train of thought to complex environmental systems. That said, I don't believe that environmental purity (which I take to mean as the state of the environment if human beings didn't exist or did not effect an environment) is a particularly worthy goal for government involvement.

A better goal would be to reduce human impact while allowing human beings to do most of the things that they do. Take notions of clean air for instance. I think everyone can agree that air quality ought to be better than is found in Mexico City. And lots of improvements can be made. The catalytic converter offers a dramatic reduction in emissions for a moderate (thought not inexpensive) cost. As a result, LA has dramatically reduced smog levels (dramatically reduced not eliminated), while Sydney is still smog-infested. The problem comes when you fail to factor in diminishing returns. Trying to reduce smog levels by an additional 60% or 70% isn't going to come at the same moderate price. Like losing weight, making it most of the way to your target weight may be difficult, but it is no where near as difficult as the last couple of pounds. There are carcinogens which are already occur at such small levels that attempting to restrict them further is an exercise in throwing money away. For instance why all the fuss about arsenic when we aren't even dealing with lead paint effectively? We could spend hundreds of millions of dollars on reducing the arsenic levels and not impact as many lives as a couple of thousand dollars spent dealing with lead paint in one house.

The key insight of the environmental movement is that individual actions which are not a big deal of themselves can combine in large human groups to create a large problem. One person dumping a chamber pot into the ocean makes a negligible difference, but having all of Tijuana dump sewage into the ocean can cause problems as far away as Los Angeles.

The old environmental movement had a very conservative-like slogan: "Think Globally, Act Locally". It is a slogan which I entirely agree with. It turns the above insight into a method of correcting problems. There are probably 10-20 small choices that you make each day which if made by a large segment of society on a regular basis could make quite a difference. As an example, when purchasing one or two items at a store, decline to take a bag. You are just going to throw it away 1 second after you get home. Why use it at all? When purchasing your car, you could ask yourself "Am I going to use this for off-roading? Do I live in an area with heavy snow?". If the answers are 'no', you probably could avoid 4-wheel drive. You could turn off lights when you aren't in the room (why is my roommate glaring at me?). When going to dinner with nearby friends you could pick them up in your car instead of having everyone meet at the restaurant. You could use e-mail more frequently than mailed letters. You could make archived records on disc instead of printing out everything.

I think that if we put our minds to it, conservatives could come up with an excellent environmental ideology which is non-absolutist. It would contain elements of social pressure, an awareness of diminishing returns (especially in government action) and a willingness to really balance costs and benefits (as opposed to pretending to balance them while trying to allow a company to do whatever it wants). I'm not going to try to claim that I have actually done so in the above post, but I think it provides the kernel of thought for such a plan.

Fourth Estate?

Such a simple statement...

And the president at his barbecue with the press this August and a reporter said to him: Mr. President, is it really true you don't read the press or watch us on television? And he said no. And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that.

...to produce so much discussion: Jay Rosen, Centerfield and Instapundit, to start. For my own part: no, I don't consider the media to represent the public. Big surprise there: nobody does, actually. I mean, does anybody here think that, say, Eric Alterman wrote What Liberal Media? because he thought that pushing the media to the Left would make it less mainstream? I take the position that it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is: you're likely to see the press as a funhouse mirror distortion of your own beliefs*.

As for their positioning themselves as the Fourth Estate of government, I can only echo the question of one of Jay's commenters:

If the press is the Fourth Estate, where is the check on the press?

Read the articles and links, as you like: they don't all agree with each other, but the debate is interesting.

Moe

*Frex, my default take is that the press is generally a vaguely left-of-center entity more interested in sensationalism than in real news, and ferociously uninterested in the flavor of the raw meat it attempts to devour. Figuring out when this take is biased (as opposed to actually being just the simple truth) can be a fun experience.

Self-referencing...

I really should con...vince the folks over at Socialism in an Age of Waiting to take a look at this debitage post (which draws off of my post about the Commissar's post), so that I can find out if this really is a proper Marxist analysis of blogging. And if it is, I'm also curious about how to resolve third-party links and such...

Um, is this going to be a problem?

This is highly unlikely to impinge on regular blogospheric radar sets across the spectrum, but that doesn't mean that it's not of interest: Cyprus vote leaves island split.

More than three-quarters of Greek Cypriots have voted against a UN plan to reunite the island in a referendum.
Turkish Cypriots, in contrast, endorsed the plan with a 65% majority, according to official results.

But both sides had to approve the proposals for Cyprus to be reunified in time for EU membership on 1 May

A Fistful of Euros (who I cheerfully admit is more up to speed on this sort of thing than I am) doesn't know what's going to happen next; as it stands, the Greek half of the island is slated to enter the European Union while the Turkish half will not. That will... complicate matters, since as far as I know the Turkish half of the island doesn't have an internationally recognized government. Hey, I told you that I'm not up to speed on this sort of thing: I merely pass along the story and an encouragement to click the link.