Obsidian Wings

A Bleg

Would someone please point me to the reasoning, if any, behind Hugh Hewitt's increasingly hysterical pronouncements of Constitutional doom in the wake of the fourteen-Senator deal on the filibuster?

Please keep in mind that the undersigned:

1.  Generally approves of Bush's nominees.

2.  Has questioned the Constitutionality of the filibuster in the past.

3.  But, nonetheless, is a member of the Coalition of the Chillin' (i.e., "the world did not end on May 23rd"). 

I admit to being fully perplexed by Hewitt's stance. I can see Constitutional arguments on both sides of this issue -- arguments that pass muster under even the strictest adherence to the original meaning of the Constitutional text.  Does Hewitt ever explain how he's so certain that his construction is correct?   Does he ever weigh the arguments?  Or does he (as I dishearteningly suspect) just like a certain result and plunge blindly forward, not caring how he gets there?

Incidentally, is the filibuster deal really comparable to the Supreme Court's decision in Korematsu, where the Court essentially held that American citizens could be imprisoned (almost) indefinitely for the crime of being Japanese?  (Says Hewitt regarding the filibuster:  "To borrow from Justice Jackson in his dissent in Korematsu --a loaded pistol has been left lying on the table which should have been put away.  Forever.")   What's your next rhetorical leap going to be, Professor?  Harlan's dissent in Plessey v. Ferguson?

CAFTA Blog: Addition to Von's Blogroll

Doverspa of RedState points to a comprehensive blog supporting the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).  To get it out on the table, free trade is one of the few policies that almost always has my unqualified support.  Since I haven't seen any legitimate reason to withold such support from CAFTA, support it I do. 

I hope to blog a bit more about CAFTA and free trade down the road; today I'm a bit tied up on other matters. 

So:  CAFTABlog goes on the blogroll.  And RedState gets added as well:  not only is it a daily read for me, but it nicely balances Daily Kos -- and frequently features the writings of our own Charles Bird, to boot.

And that, my friends, is what Brian Boitano would do.  (Erm, maybe not so much about adding CAFTABlog and RedState to the blogroll -- or supporting free trade deals almost sight unseen -- but definitely the rest.)

Infinity Past Orwell and Beyond

OK, so try and keep up. When we first heard a guard had flushed the Koran down a toilet in G-bay, the account was dismissed widely by the Pentagon, leaving us to imgaine the detainee who reported it was a willful liar or deluded or whatever. Now we're being told that same detainee has retracted the account:

The Guantanamo detainee who told an FBI agent in 2002 that U.S. personnel there had flushed a Koran in a toilet retracted his allegation when questioned this month by military investigators, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

"We've gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation and he has said it didn't happen. So the underlying allegation, the detainee himself, within the last two weeks, said that didn't happen," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.

So I'm confused...were we not to believe this detainee back then, but we are supposed to believe this account now? Or is it the other way around? More importantly, when can we just start laughing at anything the Pentagon tells us?

Two Quick Points on Moral Relativism

by Edward

The Amnesty International report is unsurprisingly being bashed by conservative bloggers, and nearly universal among their critiques is a strong distaste for "moral relativism." A comment in the AI thread on the Belmont Club summed up this position well (even though the link says "0 Comments" click it and you'll see them):

It's odd, isn't it, how moral relativism works. A country like say, North Korea or Iran takes dissenters and throws them into the gulag and that's government policy. In the US when someone mistreats a prisoner there is an investigation and the individual wrong-doers face criminal sanctions... that's our government policy. And yet, somehow the two are equal. As bad as moral relativism is, though, it's the fact that those who indulge themselves in this sort of thinking aren't even aware there's a problem.

I have two quick points I'd like to make about this: one specific and one general. Before that, however, I guess I should clarify that I feel this sort of critique of moral relativism requires a belief that there's a higher truth or higher standard (perhaps determined by the standard that's most consistent with a progressive approach toward human rights). That is, this POV argues there is a standard everyone else should look toward achieving, the yardstick by which all others should be measured, it can be determined, and eveyone else can be measured by it.

My specific point relates to the AI report. All the shouting about "how dare they" criticize us strikes me as willfully blind to the way that, by proclaiming our moral superiority, we are asking to be held to a higher standard. It seems to me that Amnesty's point was that as the world's remaining superpower, the US bears a bigger responsibility than North Korea or Iran to set an example. So any critique that doesn't account for how the President declared himself qualified to preach to the rest of the world about such matters in his last Inaugural address, leaves a bit of a gap in how one is meant to interpret responsibility and credibility. I mean, it's human nature for problems to arise, but when so many problems are arising (G-bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, extradition, false arrests in the US, etc.) AND the president is still declaring we'll lead the way toward the end of tyranny, then I think AI and others have a right to suggest, because we're holding ourselves up as an example of a higher standard, that we're failing in equal measure to those holding themselves to a lower standard.

My general point is this: it seems to me that moral relativism is a good definition for the way many conservatives justify their opposition to advances in the gay rights movement in America. By insisting that their social customs and personal preferences should dictate the law, they're ignoring the more progressive standards of many other countries on such issues. Opening up marriage and military service to gay people is definitely more progressive, and countries that have done so arguably hold the yardstick we should be measuring ourselves against.

Resolving when moral relativism is good and when it's bad would seem a good use of some of these critics' time.

Proselytizing from the Bench

Via a diarist on Kos
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In what seems an obviously unconstitutional order, Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion County Superior Court in Indiana has prohibited a man and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.

Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.

Bradford refused to remove the provision after the 9-year-old boy's outraged parents, Thomas E. Jones Jr. and his ex-wife, Tammie U. Bristol, protested last fall.

The Judge's argument boiled down to insisting that because they send their son to a Catholic school, teaching him Wicca beliefs at home would cause confusion in him as he ages. (The judge didn't comment on the confusion he'll experience when he's taught the First Amendment, but....)

The parents, although divorced, have joint custody of the child and both agree he should be exposed to Wicca beliefs. Fortunately, this order seems destined to be overturned on the appeal:

Even the U.S. military accommodates Wiccans and educates chaplains about their beliefs, said Lawrence W. Snyder, an associate professor of religious studies at Western Kentucky University.

"The federal government has given Wiccans protection under the First Amendment," Snyder said. "Unless this judge has some very specific information about activities involving the child that are harmful, the law is not on his side."

Bradford gets high marks from the Indianapolis Bar Association, and a fairly short google search didn't turn up any other indications of wingnuttery in his rulings, so I want to know what the hell was he drinking that day. Through a court spokeswoman, he noted that he couldn't discuss the pending dispute.

Did Newsweek Make a Mistake?

It's hard to keep up with this one. And count me among those shocked that the Associated Press would run with this story, but they did.

Even as the MSM, including Fareed Zakaria, have universally conceded that Newsweek made a mistake in printing the allegation that US military personnel had flushed a Koran down the toilet in Guantanamo, newly declassified FBI documents show a consistency to the allegations and show that the Justice Deparment and DoD were aware in early 2002 that such accusations were being made against guards and were perhaps more credible than they admitted:

Terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just four months after the first detainees arrived, that military guards abused them and desecrated the Quran, declassified FBI records say.

"Their behavior is bad," one detainee is quoted as saying of his guards during an interrogation by an FBI special agent in July 2002. "About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Quran in the toilet."

The statements about guards disrespecting the Quran echo public allegations made many months later by some detainees and their lawyers after prisoners' release from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The once-secret FBI documents show a consistency to the allegations and are the first indication that Justice and Defense department officials were aware in early 2002 that detainees were accusing their guards of mistreating the holy book. [...]

Pentagon officials have said repeatedly that they have turned up no credible, substantiated claims that U.S. military guards had deliberately treated the Muslim holy book with disrespect

Pentagon officials had no immediate comment on the new FBI documents, which were made public Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU said it received them in response to a federal court order that directed the FBI and other agencies to comply with the organization's request under the Freedom of Information Act.

In many of the interrogations described in the FBI documents, military officers were present. Some were with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations; others were Navy and Army investigations personnel.

This takes some extra careful parsing. It could be that the Pentagon investigated the 2002 charges and found no credible evidence of such incidents, but the Associated Press disagrees that the evidence, based on these new documents, was not credible. It could be that the Associated Press is "circling the wagons" (see Hilzoy's deconstruction of that bit of paranoia). It could be the AP wants more riots in the Muslim world so it can help sell more newspapers. It could be that no one actually reads Newsweek (or anything else) at the AP, and this struck some editor there as news. Or it could be the Internet news service servers have achieved self-awarness and decided to publish what "They" think is newsworthy.

Or it could be the truth is finding its way to the public.

The ACLU has what they describe as "documents the government did not want the general public to read" on their website, including an FBI memo (pdf file), "stating that Defense Department interrogators impersonated FBI agents and used "torture techniques" against a detainee at Guantanamo."

And this detailed list of interview excerpts suggest there's more to the allegations with regard to the Koran story than one errant single anonymous source:

DETAINEES 3878-3881

Summary of FBI interview of detainee at Guantanamo Bay

08/01/02

Notes that "[p]rior to his capture, REDACTED had no information against the United States. Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet. The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things."

OK, so let's imagine the worst. Say the White House saw the potential for the riots in Pakistan and elsewhere to really spread and put enormous pressure on Newsweek to retract the statement, even though both organizations knew the statement was true. The short-sightedness of that would be staggering. The number of people who would need to remain complicit should have told all but the most incompetent of people that such a cover-up would be worse than the original alleged action. And it would eventually have to come out, so it was a foolish race against time.

Personally, I want this to be a mistake. I want the AP story to be mere follow-up, not potentially another gallon of gasoline on what was almost an extinguished fire.

More than that, though, I want the Adminstration to handle this latest story more competently than they did the Newsweek one. In the back of my mind, I'm sure they knew this was coming and that's why they came down so hard on the magazine.

BFF

Via Sullivan

Accepting their explanation at face value, it's still difficult to conclude the accidental labeling of a student in her high school yearbook as simply "Black Girl" doesn't reveal a latent racism on the part of the yearbook staff:

A Texas school district has apologized to a student identified only as "Black Girl" in a high school yearbook photo.

All the White students are identified by name in a photograph of the Waxahachie High School National Honor Society. The teen identified as "Black Girl" is the only Black student in the photo.

Geek confession: I was the editor of my high school yearbook. A good deal of the page layout was done after, well, let's just call it, extracurricular beverage research. Sometimes when laying out the pages, there would be a student who no one on the staff could name. We "cool" kids working on the yearbook didn't always mix with all the other cliques in school. So, I'll accept the school's spokeperson's assertion that the act wasn't "malicious."

Still, it would be bad enough if this teen were merely in an otherwise unorganized crowd of students...then I would be more likely to feel that the poorly chosen placeholder was merely thoughtless, but considering she's a member of the National Honor Society, you'd think she would be in some of the same classes as the yearbook staff, or that the yearbook staff (assuming they were also Honor Society members) might have remembered her name from the award ceremony. Again, every white student was named.

Perhaps it's not racism this reveals as much as basic teenage cliquishness. Perhaps the teen is a shy loner who keeps to herself. Either way, it's good the issue is getting some attention. I can't imagine how humiliating and infuriating it must have been for her to find the mistake. The school should go out of its way to make this up to her.

*BFF = Best Friends Forever (common high school yearbook acronyn)...for a few other (more funny ones, see this [scroll down]).

What to do with the Uzbeki Goonacracy

The problem with Uzbekistan is the problem with Pakistan is the problem with Saudi Arabia.  The former Soviet republic is a repressed unfree country without a preferred opposition.  According to Freedom House, it is solidly not free.  Its economy is in similar straits, its press freedom rivals that of Russia and Belarus and it is as corrupt as Zimbabwe.

Those who want regime change, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, basically want freedom.  The freedom to oppress, that is.  Trading one form of dictatorship (Karimov) for another (sharia and Caliphate) is no solution.  Freedom House has more on the the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP):

The goal of the IRP, for instance, is to establish an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. The form of the state that this movement envisages more closely resembles the modern state of Pakistan than that of Iran or Saudi Arabia. Under the Pakistani model, the government has an obligation to uphold and preserve the Muslim style of life, and practices such as drinking, drug use, and prostitution are illegal.

Ugh.  The sad fact is that Karimov is a dictatorial thug who slaughtered over 700 protesters in Andijon, and we're stuck with him.  Credit Karimov for being with us and not with the terrorists, but it does not mean an ally gets to skate.  Stephen Schwartz and Bill Kristol:

From the Saudi royals, to Vladimir Putin, to Putin's Uzbek friend Karimov, strongmen hope to gain acceptance by Washington of their violent habits of governance. Of course, it is true that the United States does (mostly) have to deal with the governments it finds in place in the world. But we don't need to wink at their bad acts. To the contrary, a more or less coherent strategy for the spread of freedom will often require pressuring and criticizing these governments. And, incidentally, it is political, civil, and economic freedom to which most Central Asian Muslims aspire. Just like Ukrainians, Georgians, and Iraqis.

If we really want to spread democracy globally and abide by the spirit of the 2005 Inaugural, then that means more pressure and more influence-wielding on our allies to reform.  There is no justice without freedom.  Iran is one thing.  Since there is a strong movement to democratize there, regime change should be our policy (no, I don't think we should do so militarily).  Uzbekistan is another story.  Our tools are pressure, exhortation, sanction and condemnation.  We should use all of them, early and often.

Gateway Pundit reports on Karimov's overtures with China.  Takes one to know one, I guess.  Registan.net has been following things pretty closely, and so has Publius Pundit.  Time to get in Karimov's face.

Democracy Iranian Style

A guffaw or a loud snort should follow any statement that puts Iran and democracy in the same vicinity.  Why?  Because Iran is not free and it is not a real democracy.  It's a joke:

Iran's hard-line Guardian Council on Sunday rejected all reformists who registered to run in presidential elections, approving only six out of the 1,010 hopefuls. Leaders of the reform movement threatened to boycott the vote.

The final list effectively barred reformers seeking democratic changes within the ruling Islamic establishment from the presidential race. The move came as ruling clerics seek to consolidate their power in the June 17 vote following the departure of reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

Iran has the 9th most unfree press on the planet to report it all (Reporters Without Borders has more here on this repressed and oppressed nation).  So why are the mullahs so afraid of its own people?  Publius Pundit:

Perhaps one of the biggest phobias of a tyrannical regime is that they won’t get the legitimacy they need from both the domestic and international community. This is exactly why they go through the huge trouble of organizing sham elections every few years. What will happen if nearly nobody votes? Regardless of who wins, he will know that he is not the true choice of the Iranian people. The Iranian rulers have even acknowledged that they do not expect many people to turn out, and you know they’re worried about it.

What if the mullahs hold an election and no one shows up?  Regime Change Iran has more.

Conservatism In Theory And Practice

by hilzoy

According to Merriam-Webster, 'conservatism' means:

1 capitalized a : the principles and policies of a Conservative party b : the Conservative party
2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change
3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

This is a view I can respect, even when I disagree with it. Changing institutions can often have large unintended consequences, and a generally cautious attitude towards changing them often makes sense to me. To quote a passage from Chesterton that Sebastian cited recently:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

So why aren't more Republicans taking a conservative position on the nuclear option?