Obsidian Wings

More Puzzlement

by hilzoy

Daniel Larison says a(nother) wise thing (h/t):

"Americanists believe that any statement from the President that fails to build up and anoint Mousavi as the preferred candidate is discouraging to Mousavi and his supporters, because they apparently cannot grasp that being our preferred candidate is to be tainted with suspicion of disloyalty to the nation. It is strange how nationalists often have the least awareness of the importance of the nationalism of another people. Many of the same silly people who couldn’t say enough about Hamas' so-called "endorsement" of Obama as somehow indicative of his Israel policy views, as well as those who could not shut up about his warm reception in Europe, do not see how an American endorsement of a candidate in another country's election might be viewed with similiar and perhaps even greater distaste by the people in that country."

Indeed. And a lot of those same people thought that Iraqis would adore us because we had overthrown Saddam Hussein, apparently without thinking: however much they hated him, it's deeply humiliating to have someone else overthrow your dictator and occupy our country. And so, in all likelihood, however happy Iraqis might be at first, we should expect that not to last: inevitably, soldiers in an alien country make mistakes and kill or detain the wrong people, call in airstrikes on people who are doing nothing wrong, etc.; and when that happens, our welcome, however warm initially, will very quickly turn to resentment.

National pride is a powerful thing, and a completely comprehensible one. Why the very people who will brook no criticism of their own country, even when it's fully justified, should fail to understand this is a mystery.

Puzzled By Honduras

by hilzoy

From the New York Times:

"The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the army on Sunday after pressing ahead with plans for a referendum that opponents said could lay the groundwork for his eventual re-election, in the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war.

Soldiers entered the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, and disarmed the presidential guard early Sunday, military officials said. Mr. Zelaya’s private secretary, Eduardo Enrique Reina, confirmed the arrest. (...)

Political tensions have increased as Mr. Zelaya pressed ahead with plans for a nonbinding referendum that opponents said would open the way for him to rewrite the constitution to run for re-election despite a one-term limit. In the weeks leading up to the referendum, supporters and opponents of the president held competing demonstrations.

Last week, the Supreme Court and Congress both declared the referendum unconstitutional. But on Thursday, the president led a group of protesters to an air force installation and seized the ballots, which the prosecutor’s office and the electoral tribunal had ordered confiscated.

After the armed forces commander, Romeo Vazquez, said that the military would not participate in the referendum, Mr. Zelaya fired him. But the Supreme Court declared the firing illegal."

I am puzzled by this. I found the Times' description of the referendum unilluminating ("a referendum that opponents said could lay the groundwork for his eventual re-election" -- what does that mean?) So I went off in search of the actual question, which seems to be this:

"¿Está usted de acuerdo que en las elecciones generales de noviembre de 2009 se instale una cuarta urna para decidir sobre la convocatoria a una Asamblea Nacional Constituyente que apruebe una nueva Constitución política?"

Unless my rusty Spanish misleads me, this means: "Do you agree that there should be a fourth urn (I'm guessing this means: ballot box) in the Nov. 2009 general elections to decide whether to convene the National Constituent Assembly to approve a new Constitution?" 

Apparently, the Supreme Court ruled that this referendum is unconstitutional, either because the President does not have the right to call referenda, or because "the constitution says some of its clauses cannot be changed." (Though why the latter would mean that the referendum is illegal, and not just that the proposed Assembly could not legally change those parts of the Constitution, is a mystery.)

As a result, the Army, which normally distributes ballots, declined to do so, the President sacked the head of the Army, his Attorney General argued to the Supreme Court that the firing was illegal (on the rather puzzling grounds that "it regarded the president's decision to hold the referendum as "illegal," and therefore his order to the military commanders as well"), and the Supreme Court agreed. 

Meanwhile, the Congress banned referenda within 180 days of a general election, thereby making this referendum illegal. The President took the ballots so that the referendum could be held, and today the military removed him from power and flew him to Costa Rica.

The President's supporters seem to think that he plans to use a National Constituent Assembly to create some sort of Chavez-like system in Honduras. His supporters seem to think that the coup just reflects an entrenched oligarchy's unwillingness to contemplate anything that might reduce their power.  (Some Honduran takes are here.)

For my part, I am puzzled. (Seriously: I know nothing about Honduras.) If holding an Assembly to revise the Constitution is such a bad idea, why not just vote no on the referendum? If the people would, in fact, like to have such an Assembly, why not have one? What, in short, is so scary about a referendum that simply asks whether people would like to have an Assembly that might revise the Constitution in as yet unspecified ways? And even if there's some reason for thinking that it is scary, is this (seemingly) mild, non-binding referendum anywhere near threatening enough to hold a coup over?

Can anyone shed light on this?

Update: I checked Randy Paul's blog as I was writing this, but he waited until I had just hit post to put up a lovely, link-filled post about this. Check it out. 

I should also have mentioned this, from the WSJ: "The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials." Apparently, the Honduran military just stopped taking their calls.

Here's Obama's statement:

"I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."

The EU:

"The EU strongly condemns the arrest of the constitutional president of the Republic of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, by the armed forces. This is [an] unacceptable violation of constitutional order in Honduras. The EU calls for the urgent release of President Zelaya and a swift return to constitutional normality."

Other reactions here, here, and here.

Indefinite Detention

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said. (...)

Under one White House draft that was being discussed this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system.

Such detainees -- those at Guantanamo and those who may be captured in the future -- would also have the right to legal representation during confinement and access to some of the information that is being used to keep them behind bars. Anyone detained under this order would have a right to challenge his detention before a judge."

This is a very puzzling article. It has some good news: for instance, that Obama has rejected the idea of national security courts. This is good: the idea of trying to construct an entire new set of courts, all of whose procedures could be litigated until eternity, is crazy, and why we need a new court system has never been adequately explained. If the administration has rejected that, that's good news. 

Then there's this: 

"One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare. Al-Qaeda operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities. Suspects captured elsewhere in the world could be transferred to the United States for federal prosecution, turned over to local authorities or returned to their home countries.

"Going forward, unless it's an extraordinary case, you will not see new transfers to the U.S. for indefinite detention," the official said."

Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress comments:

"Congress has already approved traditional law of war detention in the Authorization to Use Military Force of 2001. The Supreme Court sustained military detention authority of those detainees captured in zones of active combat in 2004 in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, so President Obama is on firm legal ground should he choose to limit military detention to those circumstances. (...)

This would be a significant shift from the Bush administration’s policy that swept into U.S. military detention virtually anyone suspected of terrorist activity captured anywhere in the world. It would restore the bright line between criminal and military detention, a crucial distinction to preserve not just in the United States, but also in other countries that look to or use the U.S. as an example."

That's not entirely right, I think. First, I'd like to see a very clear definition of "the battlefield", to prevent future reversions to Bush's doctrine that it was the entire world. This should not be left up to the discretion of the President. Second, this allows for exceptions to the rule that future detainees will be either held as prisoners of war, transferred to the US for trial, turned over to local authorities, or sent home. Those exceptions should not be "rare", or reserved for "extraordinary cases"; they should be nonexistent.

Finally, of course, there's that little bit about "going forward". Those detainees that the administration believes that it can neither try nor release could be held indefinitely, according to this policy. That is, of course, the elephant in the room. And it's just wrong.

In this country, we have what we call "laws". When you break a law, you can be tried, and, if the government can prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, you can be sent to jail. If the detainees in question have not actually violated any laws, then it's hard to see why we propose to detain them. If they have, and we cannot prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, then we should ask: why not? 

If we don't have convincing evidence against someone, we should not detain him. If we do have such evidence, but it was obtained under torture and the person we tortured will not repeat it in court, then it is unreliable. If we have evidence, but revealing it would compromise "sources and methods", then we're in a pickle, but not an insoluble one. We might allow a judge to review that evidence in camera. We might decide that convicting this person is worth compromising some of our secrets. We could try to find more evidence that we could disclose. But we do not get to just detain someone indefinitely. 

No President should have that power. Period.

I sympathize with Obama's not wanting the Congress to pass legislation on this topic. They have been horrible on these issues so far, and I see no reason to think that they would change. (And, yes, Obama has been awful too, but the Congress has been even worse.) If he somehow has to obtain the power to detain people indefinitely, and it's legal to do it via executive order, fine.

I also don't envy him the politics of it. Obviously, if some released detainee commits an act of terror against the US, all hell will break loose. And the costs of that will not be purely political: people might not get health insurance, or we might be unable to act on global warming, if some released detainee decides to blow himself up in an American city. I wish that my fellow citizens were also moved by the wrongness of keeping people who might be innocent locked up without recourse, but apparently not enough of them are.

But that doesn't make it right. Obama does not have to do this. The rule of law is one of our most basic values. It underwrites the freedoms that we go on and on about, but are apparently unwilling to risk much of anything to preserve. 

Shame on him if he does this. And shame on us.

The CRA... Still Not Causing the Meltdown

by publius

Megan McArdle cheers on John Carney in a misguided attempt to once again blame the housing meltdown on the CRA -- i.e., a 1970s law intended to limit loan discrimination.  She writes:

[T]he role of the CRA in the financial meltdown [has been] understated by liberals who are unwilling to admit that regulation, too, can produce hideous unintended consequences.  . . . Regardless of how much causal blame you assign it, the financial crisis has certainly proven that the CRA seems to have been a very, very bad idea.

Essentially nothing in that excerpt is true.  Felix Salmon and Ryan Chittum hopefully put the stake through this argument, but it keeps appearing (the Chittum post is more comprehensive).  To sum them up -- the bad loans at the heart of the meltdown came overwhelmingly from unregulated, non-bank lenders who weren't even covered by the CRA.  In addition, the CRA loans did very well.  And there's basically not a shred of evidence that the CRA led to the meltdown.  And you can't evade that 100% lack of evidence by citing vague "mentalities" and drawing imaginary causal lines constructed entirely of ideology.

Why I'm Happy about Waxman-Markey

by publius

Well, it’s certainly not perfect.  But at the end of the day, I think Waxman-Markey is a very good thing – and one that deserved a “Yea” vote.

The most significant achievement is simply that the bill would impose real limits on emissions.  And that’s what matters most – the reduction is more important than the distinct question of revenue allocation.  And while the emissions limits are not strong enough, they're a good start – and would give the country more credibility to work for meaningful international limits.

Like any legislation, there were a lot of smelly compromises required to get the bill out.  Some of them are really bad – particularly the ones involving the Department of Agriculture Keeping Americans Fat, Unhealthy and Cancerous (KAFUC).  But all that said, there are various reasons why I think the bill was nonetheless worth supporting.

First, there’s the inertia principle.  The real obstacle to major reform like this is setting up the initial institutional framework.  It takes a lot more cost and effort to set up the initial regime than to tweak it down the road.  (This concept is borrowed from Volokh’s “slippery slopes” paper). 

Second, it’s hard to imagine getting anything much better at this point given the political and institutional contexts.  Frankly, it’s something of a miracle that we’re even seeing it happen.  It seems to defy public choice theory* because the people who would benefit most are the diffuse public at large who don’t have an organized lobby with similar power as say the oil companies, KAFUC lobbyists, and other energy companies. 

And while the political norms have shifted a great deal on this issue in recent years, we’re not there yet.  Americans still don’t feel a sense of urgency about global warming (note the relative non-coverage of this bill).  And as Yglesias notes, the rotten and undemocratic institutional structure of Congress is practically designed to kill a bill like this.

Third, I think the bill will get better in time, not worse.  One strong objection I’ve heard from the left is that Waxman-Markey would be counterproductive because it would suck the wind of out of “real” reform efforts.  In other words, the bill would be a false comfort. 

Perhaps.  But my hope is that the politics on this issue is getting better, not worse.  In the years to come, one hopes that more and more Americans come around on issues like food policy and climate change.  And I’m also hopeful that we’ll see “greener” politicians on all levels of government.  Having this initial regulatory framework in place will make future grassroots efforts more efficient and effective – one hopes.

Last point – a big kudos to the House liberals.  I know that all the media attention gets lavished on the median Senate votes.  But they really came through here on an important bill that has real political risks and no immediate short-term benefits.  It was an act of principle.

Just think – if we got rid of the Senate entirely (which we should), Americans would currently be seeing some truly landmark progressive legislation on health care coverage and climate change.  Fortunately though, we have a system that ensures that Wyoming gets as much representation as California.

*Mark Thompson has a thoughtful post responding to my earlier public choice post that’s worth a read.

Cap And Trade Passes The House

by hilzoy

From the NYT: 

"The House passed legislation on Friday intended to address global warming and transform the way the nation produces and uses energy.

The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change. The legislation, which passed despite deep divisions among Democrats, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction.

The bill's passage, by 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against it, also established a marker for the United States when international negotiations on a new climate change treaty begin later this year.

At the heart of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that sets a limit on overall emissions of heat-trapping gases while allowing utilities, manufacturers and other emitters to trade pollution permits, or allowances, among themselves. The cap would grow tighter over the years, pushing up the price of emissions and presumably driving industry to find cleaner ways of making energy.

President Obama hailed the House passage of the bill as "a bold and necessary step." He said in a statement that he looked forward to Senate action that would send a bill to his desk "so that we can say, at long last, that this was the moment when we decided to confront America's energy challenge and reclaim America's future."

Think about it. Cap and trade is completely in line with standard market economics: you identify an externality that the market does not capture, design a market system to capture and price that externality, and rectify a market failure. The Democrats, who favor the bill, have a huge margin in Congress. They water it down in various ways to make it more palatable to various wavering people. And after all that, it still only passes by seven votes.

That's sad. I hate to think what will happen to it in the Senate.

It's also a testament to the power of special interests. Consider the bill's emissions credits. President Obama proposed to auction them all, which would have allowed them to be distributed to those businesses to whom they were most valuable; the proceeds from the auction would have gone both to rebates to consumers and to funding a continuation of the middle class tax cuts. Oh no! shrieked various utilities and other corporations that would have had to pay for those auctioned credits. And lo! our representatives caved, which means that the money that would have paid for our tax cuts is no longer there.

I'm really glad it passed: it's a lot better than nothing. But it could have been better still.

"Hot Air", Indeed.

by hilzoy

Here's an exchange from ABC News' special on Obama's health care proposal:

"Q: If your wife or your daughter became seriously ill, and things were not going well, and the plan physicians told you they were doing everything that could be done, and you sought out opinions from some medical leaders in major centers and they said there's another option you should pursue, but it was not covered in the plan, would you potentially sacrifice the health of your family for the greater good of insuring millions or would you do everything you possibly could as a father and husband to get the best health care and outcome for your family?

OBAMA (after talking about his grandmother): I think families all across America are going through decisions like that all the time, and you're absolutely right that if it's my family member, my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

Ed Morrissey calls this Obama's Michael Dukakis moment", and writes:

"Oopsie!  So ObamaCare for thee, but not for me?  Hope and change, baby! (...)

If ObamaCare isn't good enough for Sasha, Malia, or Michelle, then it's not good enough for America. Instead of fighting that impulse, Obama should be working to boost the private sector to encourage more care providers, less red tape and expense, and better care for everyone."

It's worth taking this apart a bit. It is true now, and would be true under any remotely plausible insurance scheme, that sometimes insurers will not pay for treatments, on the grounds that they are too experimental and unproven, or that they just plain don't work. That is true under our current system, and it would remain true under Obama's plan. 

It is also true, both under our present system and under Obama's proposal (and, for that matter, any other proposal out there) that people who want medical care that is not covered by insurance can get it, so long as they are willing to pay for it themselves (or find someone else to pay for it.) Thus, if Bill Gates wants to try some very expensive unproven treatment, he can. If I wanted that same treatment under the same conditions, I would not be able to have it. 

If this counts as "ObamaCare for Bill Gates but not for me", then it exists now, and will continue to exist under Obama's plan, and any other plan under even remotely serious consideration. Curiously, we have the same system for all sorts of things. Cars, for instance: much as I love my Prius, I would really, really love to have a vintage Jag. Unfortunately, I can't afford one. I imagine that Barack Obama can. Oh no: he's a hypocrite again: it's ObamaCar for him but not for the rest of us, who can't afford vintage Jags! I could go on -- ObamaFood, ObamaLivingRoomSets, and so forth, but you get the point.

The main difference between ObamaMicrowaves and ObamaCare is that the government does not so much as try to ensure that everyone will have a toaster oven. So Obama and I get what the government provides in the way of toaster ovens, namely nothing, and then we have the option to buy more. This is what we call "the market", and it means that some people end up better off, toaster-oven-wise, than others. 

With health care, by contrast, we guarantee that certain kinds of people -- the elderly, children, veterans, federal workers, etc. -- will get health insurance, which in turn provides them with health care -- at least, it's supposed to. As I said above, it will not pay for experimental treatments, or treatments that don't work. Nonetheless, unlike toaster ovens, the government provides some people with a decent level of health care; as with toaster ovens, they are free to get more.

Obama's health care plan would extend insurance to more people; ideally, to everyone. The point is to put a floor under everyone -- and a decent one. It's also to give them more choices about the health insurance they or their employers purchase. The point was never to put a ceiling on how much people can spend, or to make absolutely sure that Bill Gates has no advantage over anyone else, as far as health care is concerned. 

Nothing -- nothing -- about this idea is in any way inconsistent with the idea that someone who can pay for health care that his or her insurance company declines to cover should be able to do so. The alternative would be to forbid people to get any care that is not covered by their insurance. Again, that is something that no one has seriously proposed. Surely Ed Morrissey isn't faulting Obama for not proposing to forbid people from buying health care on his own -- is he?

Broken

by hilzoy

Finally, four months after his nomination, Harold Koh has been confirmed by the Senate as the State Department's legal advisor. Various Republican Senators have put holds on Koh. They threatened to filibuster, and 31 of them voted against cloture. 

The Republicans who voted in favor of his nomination were Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Richard Lugar, Mel Martinez, and George Voinovich. Those who had the decency to vote for cloture even though they opposed his appointment were Lamar Alexander, Judd Gregg, and Orrin Hatch. 

Meanwhile, Dawn Johnsen's nomination remains on hold, although TPMDC reports that she has -- gasp -- been seen in DC, so maybe things are looking up on that front as well.

This should not be happening. Normally, nominees for administration positions are confirmed unless there's some reason to think that the nominee is just beyond the pale. But this time, the Republicans seem to have decided that they will filibuster things at will. The government cannot function this way. The Senate is broken, and it needs to be fixed.

I'm in favor of having a filibuster so long as it is used only in extreme situations. But the understanding that it will be so used has broken down. Reporters who should know better routinely write that some bill or nominee cannot get "the sixty votes needed to pass", as though it were standard operating procedure for the Senate to require qa supermajority.

It is not. And if the Senate Republicans want to make it into one, it's time to end the filibuster (though I'd be open to keeping it for judicial appointments, which are for life.)

R. I. P.

by hilzoy

First, Farrah Fawcett:

She was enough of a star that she didn't need to make The Burning Bed, and the kind of star (all-American sex symbol) who might justifiably have wondered what effect it might have on her career. But she made it anyways, and it had an enormous effect of bringing the discussion of domestic violence into the mainstream. A lot of people owe her thanks for that, and other things.

Just to add some music to Seb's post: Michael Jackson was about my age, which means that I remember when he first came to national attention. If you know him more from Thriller, let alone from his later life, it might be hard to imagine just how talented he was; and how beautiful his face was before he started trying to improve on it. This is from when he was around eleven (if you want to skip the dumb intro, start at around 40 seconds):

Wikipedia:

"From a young age Jackson was physically and mentally abused by his father, enduring incessant rehearsals, whippings and name-calling. Jackson's abuse as a child affected him throughout his grown life. In one altercation -- later recalled by Marlon Jackson -- Joseph held Michael upside down by one leg and "pummeled him over and over again with his hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks". Joseph would often trip up, or push the male children into walls. One night while Jackson was asleep, Joseph climbed into his room through the bedroom window. Wearing a fright mask, he entered the room screaming and shouting. Joseph said he wanted to teach his children not to leave the window open when they went to sleep. For years afterward, Jackson suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom.

Jackson first spoke openly about his childhood abuse in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said that during his childhood he often cried from loneliness and would sometimes get sick or start to regurgitate upon seeing his father. In Jackson's other high profile interview, Living with Michael Jackson (2003), the singer covered his face with his hand and began crying when talking about his childhood abuse. Jackson recalled that Joseph sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as he and his siblings rehearsed and that "if you didn't do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you.""

For me, the song that encapsulates Michael Jackson's stranger side is Ben. If you don't know it, give it a listen, bearing in mind that the Ben in question is a homicidal rat.

May they rest in peace.

Michael Jackson

--by Sebastian

I've been strangely sad since hearing that Michael Jackson died.  Strangely because I haven't really liked him much in the past 10 years. 

I loved him growing up.  His voice was so arresting.  His songs were usually encouraging.  He projected an elemental joy in singing that I found captivating.  When I was little I was completely drawn into that.  And as I got older I appreciated his singing even more when comparing it to others. 

But his turn toward extreme strangeness and apparent self-loathing in his non-singing life wore me down somewhat.  And then the allegations of child molestation made me angry at him.  (Though I do remember saying that Michael Jackson was the only person I could imagine who was so weird that it was even remotely plausible that he could be sleeping in the same bed with those kids and not be molesting them).  So for the last 10 years or so whenever I would hear about him, my heart would harden a little and I would turn away.

Yet despite all that in the wake of his death, I'm still sad.  Lots of radio stations on the way home were playing his songs, especially some of his older songs.  Wow, I had forgotten what a good voice he had.  I think there are two parts of me that are sad.  The first is the part that recognizes the death of Michael Jackson as happening many years ago.  The child and then man who so entranced me was gone a long time ago.  I sorrow a bit for all those lost years between that and his actual death.  The second is the part, deep down, that really was rooting for him to snap out of it.  The part of me that believes in redemption stories and getting your life back together.  That will never happen now (and of course it was never very likely).

Hmm.

You can use this as an open thread.