Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

2004-08-01T10:31:00.000-04:00

Rather hopefully, I looked at this morning's Washington Post and saw this article, which is headlined "Accord Reached On Global Trade," in reference to the Doha Round of the WTO talks.

I was hopeful, until I read down to the middle of the second paragraph, and found that "...representatives of the WTO's 147 member nations agreed on a framework setting the parameters for completing the Doha Round of negotiations."

It's too bad that they couldn't quite agree on a framework for setting the parameters of agreeing on a framework for setting the parameters of the Doha Round of negotiations. Then they might have been making some real progress, after all.

2004-07-26T22:44:00.000-04:00

Bill Clinton, on the other hand sounds great.

Damn term limits.

2004-07-26T22:38:00.000-04:00

I just caught the end of Hillary Clinton's speech at the convo (still, very, very busy with work stuff).

Uh, the last few minutes were not particularly impressive. Not that there was anything wrong with it, just that it sounded like a State of the Union speech, listing 'we need to do X better, we need to do Y better, and we need to do Z better,' rather than actually saying specifically why nor how the Democrats would do things better. Not bad, but not what it could've been.

2004-07-15T20:37:00.000-04:00

Serious internet problems, combined with being extremely busy at work.

2004-07-06T11:02:00.000-04:00

Yet another sign o' the apocalypse:

"We're going to make this election the hottest, most sexiest thing ever." - Sean "P. Diddy" Combs

2004-07-06T10:59:00.000-04:00

I can't seem to find it anywhere on the website, but I have a copy of today's New York Post.

The banner headline reads:

"KERRY'S CHOICE: Dem picks Gephardt as VP candidate"

Er, so much for that one.

2004-07-06T08:42:00.000-04:00

Oh, Thank God it's not Gephardt

John Kerry has chosen John Edwards to be his running mate.

The announcement e-mail:

Dear Friend,

In just a few minutes, I will announce that Senator John Edwards will join me as my running-mate on the Democratic ticket as a candidate for vice president of the United States. Teresa and I could not be more excited that John and Elizabeth Edwards will be our partners in our journey to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.

You are the heart and soul of our campaign. You've shattered records and expectations every step of the way. Every time someone said you couldn't do it, you proved them wrong. Because of your incredible grassroots energy and commitment, I wanted to make the first official announcement of my decision to you -- more than one million online supporters at johnkerry.com.

I want you to know why I'm excited about running for president with John Edwards by my side. John understands and defends the values of America. He has shown courage and conviction as a champion for middle class Americans and those struggling to reach the middle class. In the Senate, he worked to reform our intelligence, to combat bioterrorism, and keep our military strong. John reaches across party lines and speaks to the heart of America -- hope and optimism. Throughout his own campaign for President, John spoke about the great divide in this country -- the "Two Americas" -- that exist between those who are doing well today and those that are struggling to make it from day to day. And I am so proud that we're going to build one America together.

In the next 120 days and in the administration that follows, John Edwards and I will be fighting for the America we love. We'll be fighting to give the middle class a voice by providing good paying jobs and affordable health care. We'll be fighting to make America energy independent. We'll be fighting to build a strong military and lead strong alliances, so young Americans are never put in harm's way because we insisted on going it alone.

I can't tell you how proud I am to have John Edwards on my team, or how eager I am for the day this fall when he stands up for our vision and goes toe-to-toe with Dick Cheney.

This is the most important election of our lifetime, and a defining moment in our history. With you by our side every day of this campaign, John and I will lead the most spirited presidential campaign America has ever seen and fight to lead our nation in a new and better direction.

Thank you,

John Kerry

2004-07-05T21:12:00.000-04:00

Scouring the scuttlebutt about the VP nod, a couple of quick thoughts come to mind:

1. Dear God, not Gephardt.

I'm not strongly inclined to find myself fawning over any of the other potential candidates often named - Edwards may be too inexperienced, Vilsack has an Al Gore-like lack of charisma, Wes Clark doesn't seem to come across well on the stump, and Bob Graham ... well, there's the diary thing, for one. That said, I can't understand what the hell there is to like about Gephardt. Basically, the man has proven over and over again that he's capable of winning a politically moderate district in Missouri, and not capable of winning anything else.

Gephardt probably would swing Missouri over to the Dems. Elsewhere in the Rust Belt, his draw isn't as strong, however. Michigan is likely to swing Democratic, as is Illinois, while Indiana will go Republican barring a landslide, and Pennsylvania, while more competitive, leans Dem - which leaves Ohio and Wisconsin, neither of which seems like Gep's stomping grounds.

The man has zero charisma, and a mile-long voting record which seems certain to provide plenty of fodder for the Repubs.

Which basically leaves us back at Edwards. Who, OK, is a bit inexperienced and has the trial lawyer tag. He, however, is a proven strong fundraiser and campaigner who truly excites the base. Realistically, to provide a real bounce, it has to either be him or someone whose name isn't being tossed around among the majors. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Rep, would seem to be the perfect cross between Gephardt - strong with the unions and the anti-free trade factions - and Edwards - still fairly young (though not quite as young-looking), and charismatic enough. Plus, he's probably the one Dem in Ohio who still has enough statewide name recognition and popularity to swing the state Democratic if he's on the ticket. There are plenty of other strong possibilities as well who aren't being considered too strongly - Gary Locke, Bill Nelson and maybe even Jim Jeffords.

The vaunted ABC report last night that said that Kerry met with a possible running mate - probably Gephardt - last week at Madeleine Albright's house, of course, left out the possibility that Kerry might've just been meeting with Albright. Which would make for a rather interesting legal challenge, in all likelihood, since Albright is ineligible to run for the Presidency (she was born in Czechoslovakia) and might therefore be ineligible for the Vice-Presidency. She'd make one helluva candidate, certainly, and it would make the Republicans look anti-immigrant to challenge her. But it would seem rather unlikely, given that it might well not hold up.

The other thought I find myself having is that it's probably beneficial to get Kerry more positive airtime for a few more days by dragging this thing out. After all, it is still fairly early by historical standards - the vice presidential nominee usually isn't announced until the week before the convention, which is still three weeks away. Just as the Democratic jostling during the primaries focused attention on them and their opposition to Bush, bringing the President downward, the current focus would seem to once again put some positive light on Kerry. Of course, Bush has been doing a pretty good job of bringing his own poll numbers down for a few weeks now, but Kerry has to step forward sooner or later. Then again, if this thing drags on for too long, it risks making Kerry look indecisive. A few more days, maybe even a full week, though, might well help.

2004-07-01T21:58:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of driving lately, and a lot of parking in parking spots with relatively small spots. And, driving the cars of various relatives and friends to get things done, I haven't been driving an SUV (in other words, it's not a choice of my own). The largest car that I've been driving is a station wagon.

And I'm damned fed up with having to park next to SUVs and minivans, and having a hell of a time pulling out of the spots, being unable to see if anything's coming or not. (this is a problem that tends to be worsened by the fact that many larger cars have darkened windows).

So, I put forward the following idea:

Separate parking lots. One for sedans, hatchbacks, sports cars and station wagons. And a separate parking lot for SUVs and minivans, ideally with slightly larger spaces. One would think that this would make things a lot easier, with the larger cars being able to see around each other, and the smaller cars being able to maneuver around each other.

2004-07-01T21:57:00.000-04:00

Er, I was just flipping channels, and I swore I just saw an advertisement for an upcoming talk show on CNBC to be hosted by John McEnroe.

This has gotta be one of the signs of the apocalypse.

2004-06-29T23:33:00.000-04:00

Indulging in a little Canuck-o-philia

Looking at the results from yesterday's general election in Canada, a few things are obvious.

1. Paul Martin got punished for a variety of things. Part of this was his divisive struggle to take over the party, but a large part was the advertising scandal in Quebec inherited from Chretien.

2. The minority government probably isn't likely to last too long. With a bare majority in hand when combined with the NDP, the government might hang on for a little while, but anything longer than two years seems rather unlikely.

Less obvious, however, is the fact that the Conservatives didn't gain too much out of this. They clearly took on the Liberals at the latter's nadir, barring something spectacularly stupid (see McGuinty, Dalton, for ideas). They managed to pull in 99 seats, which looks like a rather impressive gain over the 72 they finished the last parliament with. What it ignores, however, is that the Parliament increased by seven seats due to (strictly non-partisan) redistricting. More importantly, the Tories didn't really finish with 72 - another 10 right-wing-leaning former members of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance refused to join the merged party. So the increase of 27 seats is something closer to half as large, in reality. Which looks a lot more impressive. Stephen Harper may be a fine politician, but the Tories will never get close to winning with the likes of Stockwell Day - who scares the bejeezus out of a large segment of the population - likely to take over a major Cabinet post after the voting.

Indeed, about two-thirds of the seats lost by the Liberals were lost in Quebec, where they took a beating to the Bloc Quebecois. In no small part this was due to the sponsorship scandal, a one-off move. Still, it hurts nonetheless. And it will make governing a lot harder. A 55-seat Bloc is going to be a lot harder to deal with than a 32-seat Bloc. About the best thing that can be said is that at leas they're not the official opposition again.

The results are likely to push the country towards using proportional representation voting over the first-past-the-post system that has been used since independence in 1867. The NDP is likely to push for the institution of the system as a condition of its support for major legislation. Proportional representation would have nearly doubled their number of seats in parliament (if a national list were used, which probably won't occur). The number of Liberal, Tory and Bloc seats would have been slightly cut in return. The Greens probably would've picked up a few seats, depending on the threshold. The Liberals aren't likely to be terribly opposed to the change, since they can no longer play off of a divided conservative opposition. The result of instituting PR voting would pretty much be to replace a long-term Liberal hold on 24 Sussex with long-term hold of a Liberal-NDP coalition (presumably, it would shift more towards a coalition system rather than the usual use of minority governments, though this is not certain).

On one hand, I can't say I have a strong feeling on favoring one system over the other. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. FPTP voting distorts the voting results far more - as is regularly cited, Margaret Thatcher never won a popular majority, but won three large majorities in Parliament. On the other hand, PR voting can cause real problems if the entry threshold is set too high - see Turkey, where the 10% threshold in the election meant that only two parties, together not garnering anywhere near half of the votes, entered parliament - or too low - see Israel, where there are normally dozens of parties in the Knesset, producing a spectacularly chaotic and unwieldy form of government.

On the other hand, I can say that I feel profoundly uneasy about the idea of getting rid of a voting system, a rather fundamental cog in the Rube Goldberg machine that is democracy - that has worked quite adequately over the past 137 years in favor of a new one just because it is politically favorable for the near future. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And even if it is broken but working, it might not be best to start swinging a monkey wrench at the thing.

(bad, bad metaphor ... ugh)

2004-06-21T23:40:00.000-04:00

John Rowland has resigned.

Look, some of the charges laid against him were clearly not reason to remove him - I mean, whether the man was taking the spare change from a poker game is not exactly a high crime.

Nor do I think it's a great idea to try and add up a bunch of small misdeeds into one big charge and lay it at the feet of the official, as is often done.

On the other hand, Rowland had clearly committed a number of serious infractions of the law, in accepting cut-rate and free contracting work from politically-connected individuals, and in selling a Washington apartment at well above-market prices from a another friend. And such apparent influence trading is clearly unacceptable, and more than reason enough for his removal.

2004-06-21T23:34:00.000-04:00

Er ... don't look now ...

But, divorce papers indicate that the Republican candidate for the Senate in Illinois apparently pressured his now ex-wife to perform a sex act on him in a public place on multiple occasions.

OK, so he was already trailing in the polls. And it's probably wildly inappropriate for me to be taking any pleasure in this. Then again, with the conservative punditry looking at Bill Clinton's My Life as an excuse to dredge up old sex scandals, I'll have to take what I can get as this trickles out into the mainstream media.

2004-06-18T16:49:00.000-04:00

I haven't been here much lately, having been rather pre-occupied with other things - most notably with moving my stuff across a few states and trying to get things in order before I start work in a few weeks. Something resembling more regular posting should return at the beginning of next week, more or less.

2004-06-18T16:42:00.000-04:00

Looking at Rumsfeld's admission that he signed off on a plan to keep an prisoner in Iraq unregistered and thus keep the Red Cross from accessing him - apparently in violation of international law - I find myself struck by the lack of an outcry calling for the resignation of the Secretary of Defense by the Democratic leadership, John Kerry, and just about anyone else with any real standing.

I suppose that, to a certain extent, this is just the result of fatigue with the willingness of members of the Bush administration to violate the legal codes that they are sworn to protect whenever it seems expedient.

I suppose, what I'd ideally like to see, is a Democratic member of the House or Senate descend onto the floor and quote from Cromwell's speech dismissing the Long Parliament:

"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

Then again, it probably ain't gonna happen. Dramatic moments in American politics are all too few, it seems.

2004-06-09T16:42:00.000-04:00

Also, this article, explaining that the Kurds are thinking of pulling out of the Iraqi constitution process out of a fear that the Shiites might limit their veto power is entirely frightening when you think about the possible consequences.

UPDATE: Er, crisis apparently averted.

2004-06-09T16:40:00.000-04:00

Ashcroft is refusing to release the 2002 White House memo justifying torture. Er, how is he able to justify refusing to release the memo to Congress, and is there some FOIA-esque way of forcing it out?

2004-06-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

Robert Samuelson notes that Ronald Reagan's (wait, didn't I say I wouldn't be writing about him ... er, oh well) popularity was in large part a result of the taming of high inflation during his time in office.

The problem, as Samuelson finally notes in the ninth paragraph, is that most, if not all, of the credit belongs to Paul Volcker, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987 (he was, incidentally, appointed by President Carter). Volcker's high interest rates were the primary culprit in bringing down high inflation rates (Volcker, incidentally, also deserves much of the credit for the early 1980's recession as well), beginning in the months before Reagan actually took office. Reagan's tax cuts did also play a role, but the deflationary impulse of the cuts was somewhat limited by the inflationary impulse of the resulting limited expansion (a good chunk of the tax cuts were rolled back in any eventuality later in Reagan's term when it became clear that such heavy borrowing was unsustainable - not that the remaining high borrowing was sustainable either, playing a large role in the first Bush recession.

2004-06-09T00:11:00.000-04:00

More pointless sports questions:

Doesn't it kinda undermine the point of the 15-day disabled list when a team (the Toronto Blue Jays) are allowed to put a player (Carlos Delgado) on the 15-day DL, retroactive by 10 days?

(the rule is that a player may be placed on the DL retroactive to the day after the last time he played ... but there doesn't seem to be any limit to the retroactivityness)

2004-06-08T15:19:00.000-04:00

The good news:

Only two weeks until Bill Clinton's My Life comes out.

The better news:

By then, the NBA playoffs will be over, and I won't have to listen to that damn Black Eyed Peas song during the ABC promos over and over and over again.

2004-06-08T15:12:00.000-04:00

The good news:

Colorado Republicans have lost in their effort to enact a mid-decade redistricting that would have remapped Congressional districts in favor of the Republicans. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the State Supreme Court's decision barring the intervention.

The bad news:

The ruling was based on the Colorado state constitution rather than the U.S. constitution.

This country really needs non-partisan redistricting. Really.

2004-06-08T14:58:00.000-04:00

There's going to be a backlash, I would suspect, against the plans announced today to pull a third of the American troops (12,500 out of the 37,000 total) out of South Korea. One would think that such anger might come both from hawkish types and from Democrats looking to score a few points against the failure of Bush's policies on North Korea.

And there are plenty of failings there. This isn't one of them, though.

The American force in South Korea is famously referred to as a 'tripwire.' Which it pretty much is at this point.

The American force is already pretty small, particularly in comparison with the South Korean force. The South Korean armed forces have about 2/3 as many soldiers as the North Koreans - but South Korea is much, much better armed than North Korea. Indeed, should fighting break out, the South Koreans would actually be doing the bulk of the fighting, particularly on the ground. The Americans would probably still be called upon to help in the air and sea, but each of these could just as easily be coordinated from Okinawa nowadays.*

The American forces have been pulled back from forward areas and the Seoul metropolitan area in recent years (this was, in part, due to Korean outrage at misbehavior by American soldiers and a road accident during joint military exercizes). Thus, most of the American soldiers still in the country are now farther south, and not in harm's way. Only a very small part of the DMZ, indeed, is still patrolled by American soldiers rather than their South Korean counterparts.

Basically, these soldiers aren't really needed in the Korean peninsula right now. Moreover, given the lack of popularity of the American soldiers in Korea right now, the pullback could probably actually help relations between the American and South Korean governments - though the conservative opposition won't like it - particularly at a time when the U.S. is trying to get the South Koreans to send troops to Iraq.

*Of course, there are questions as to how long the Okinawa base will be around, for that matter.

2004-06-08T14:46:00.000-04:00

I've been wondering about something lately -

Who might win the Stanley Cup next year.

Of course, this season just ended. And the NHL is pretty damn likely to either go on strike or get locked out next year, and the possibility of there being no season whatsoever next year is a distinct possibility.

The thing is, though, that Lord Stanley's Cup actually predates the NHL. For the first few decades, it was awarded in open competition between amateur and professional teams, more similar to the FA Cup in British football (soccer) than anything in American sport (Lord Stanley was, after all, British). For a little more than a decade in the 1910's and 1920's, it was awarded through a competition between the champions of a couple of professional leagues. All but the NHL went out of busines over time, and the cup ended up getting awarded to the NHL champion.

So, of course, I'm left to wonder if there's some provision in Lord Stanley's trust - or any other body that has control of the cup above that of the NHL - that would decide if the cup can be awarded to some other champion next year. I dunno if minor league hockey teams, university teams, amateur teams, or anyone else can compete. It sure is one hell of a question mark, though.

2004-06-07T14:12:00.000-04:00

This (with the usual, if true, caveat), is extremely disturbing, and just one more reason to vote for John Kerry in November.

2004-06-07T13:57:00.000-04:00

I'm seeming to have some problems viewing this site with a rather old version of Netscape, mostly in the sidebar (and particularly with anything that was italicized). Can someone please confirm if this is just my computer, or a broader problem that I need to figure out how to fix?

Thanks.

2004-06-06T15:51:00.000-04:00

Anyone willing to take a guess as to how long until she surpasses Elizabeth Taylor?

2004-06-06T15:44:00.000-04:00

For the record, I don't think I'm going to be writing about the death of Ronald Reagan because I really, really, don't care. I'm not interested debating about the legacy of his presidency, something which I was alive for part of and remember very, very little of (though it did get my picture in the New York Times, which ought to be worth something, I guess). And I'll leave it up to the pundits, historians and the people who were actually cognizant of something other than You Can't Do That On Television at the time to argue about it.

2004-06-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

Marion Barry says that the U.S. Park Police planted illegal drugs in his car in 2002.

Uh, I guess I have to thank the former DC Mayor. I haven't laughed like that in a long time.

2004-06-04T13:35:00.000-04:00

Heh.

It looks as if George W. Bush might get kept off the ballot in Illinois by an (apparently accidental) technicality. Yeah, well, it won't happen, I know, but it's still funny.

2004-06-04T13:32:00.000-04:00

Seek and ye shall receive?

Well, ask a question, and you might get it answered. I was wondering yesterday why Chalabi hasn't been arrested, and the Washington Post answers the following:

"FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said the investigation is still at its early stage. Noting that Chalabi is a British citizen, she said law enforcement officials are trying to determine "to what extent he is covered by U.S. law barring disclosure of U.S. classified information."

Basically, it's a jurisdictional thing.

2004-06-03T23:48:00.000-04:00

Speaking of Sid Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars, which I finally got through (it helps to have a long car ride or three in which you're not doing much of the driving), I was extremely surprised by the book. Not so much by what Blumenthal had to say - though it certainly clarified a lot of what was going on by the 'scandals' that was lost in the day-to-day business during the Clinton years - but by the fact that it really wasn't a true memoir in the sense of the word. Blumenthal spent the first two chapters detailing Clinton's first term, in which he was not involved in the administration at all, still working as a journalist, and only a few pages on his own personal history. Thus, the book produced a rather odd juxtaposition between a third-person history of the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1997, a few pages of first-person personal history, a first-person history of the Clinton administration from 1997 to 2001 that seemed oddly detached in places, and a third-person evaluation of the Clinton presidency after the fact. Really weird. Really good, but really weird.

2004-06-03T15:18:00.000-04:00

Damned if you do, damned if you don't?

Writing in the comments section of this Matt Yglesias post (luddite that I am, I can't figure out how to link to the comments section), one of the commenters, John Thullen, writes about the prospect of a Kerry victory in November:

"They'll be interrupted early on by the most savage attacks in history on a U.S. President by the losing scum of the Republican Party -- who wouldn't know a good winner if it were their own mother and will be the worst and most dangerous losers a polity has ever had to put out of commission."

(I should note that the "they" actually refers to liberal bloggers ... but that's neither here nor there)

This is one of the thing that frightens me about the possibility of Kerry winning.

It increasingly seems that when the Democrats lose an election, Democratic politicians and the leadership try to figure out where they went wrong and how they can fix things. When the Republicans lose an election, however, Republican politicians and the leadership try to figure out where the people went wrong and how to change them.

Before people get antsy, I should note that this is a critique of the politicians and leadership figures - but not of the members of the parties themselves (though it's been true of the wingut parts of both parties for a long time).

This type of behavior was one of the things that came across in Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars The prospect of such behavior after the election by the Republican leadership and media machine is an entirely frightening thought, not just because of the ability to choke up the airwaves and annoy people to no end, but also because of the possibility that it might well grind the legislative process to a halt and make it far more difficult to carry out basic policies at home and to prosecute the interests of the country abroad. Something to look forward to I guess.

2004-06-03T14:58:00.000-04:00

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

Ah, yes, it's Canadian election season again. The Globe and Mail has a good round-up here. Hopefully this time I'll actually be able to watch the results come in on the TV in English in a few weeks (three years ago, I found myself watching the only channel available on Georgetown's cable system that was broadcasting the results - which happened to be a Quebec CBC feed intended to teach French students).

Background: Paul Martin, having recently replaced Jean Chretien - who stepped down after a decade in office - called elections two years early in the hope of winning a large mandate of his own. Faced with a resurgent Conservative Party (which was itself recently formed out of the merger of the more centrist Progressive Conservatives and the right-of-sanity Canadian Alliance), and inheriting a scandal based on US$75 million of do-nothing contracts handed out in Quebec by the Chretien government, has sunk in the polls. It seems that the Grits (Liberals) might lose their majority and be forced into a minority government. It should be noted that the scandal occurred under Chretien's watch and that Martin immediately called for an independent investigation.

Now, a couple of things - while the Chretien government did a good job of pulling the country back together after the separatist efforts in Quebec and in dealing with the economic problems that the Mulroney government left it with, after 10 years of unquestioned dominance, having one national party was clearly becoming problematic. And it's good to see the Grits forced to campaign with fresh ideas rather than simply as the only alternative to four other discredited groups.

Second, I can't see why Martin looks likely to go it alone in a minority government rather than a formal coalition after the election (the difference is that a minority government only hands out Cabinet seats to the plurality party, where a coalition government will divy up the seats). Admittedly, Canada doesn't have much of a history of coalition governments, pretty much only doing so during wartime. On the other hand, there's nothing prohibiting them from doing it now. Coalition governments would seem more stable, since any upheaval by the junior parter would not just be tied to their seats in parliament, but also their ability to hold the coalition together.

If the Liberals were looking for a coalition, they would seem likely to turn to the left-wing NDP. A Liberal-NDP coalition would probably pull the centrist Liberals a little to the left, but not overwhelmingly so. Depending on the Conservatives - either by coalition or minority government - might be tougher to swallow, since it would certify the Tories in the mainstream, where the Liberals would rather point to the continuance of the Alliance in the new Conservative party, making them look like a wolf in sheep's clothing. And a Liberal-Bloc Quebecois coalition would be even tougher to swallow given the historical animosity between the two.

Then again, if the polls cited by Collin May at are to be belived, it might well be that the Conservatives could actually enter government as the senior party, possibly in coalition with the Bloc, which is an entirely frightening prospect. Of course, the Tories could also turn to the Grits as a possible junior partner in their own right. The Tories might even turn to the NDP - assuming the Alliance faction isn't too dominant in the Conservative Party - though the polls seem to indicate this to be an unlikely prospect.

2004-06-03T14:24:00.000-04:00

Speaking of the Tenet resignation, let the speculation begin:

Constant criticism from the talking heads?
9/11 Comission report?
Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq intel failures?
Gore's speech?
Age/family/children?
Cicadas?

The official line is that Tenet is retiring to spend time with his family. Almost certainly, with the upcoming reports due out both on the 9/11 commission and the Iraq intel failures, this was probably a good time to leave.

The question is also whether Tenet decided to go on his own, or got pushed (or for that matter, just nudged) by the White House. Which, really, there's no way of telling with any certainty right now.

(Also, watching CNN right now, Ahmed Chalabi is criticizing Tenet as responsible for pretty much every American failure in Iraq in the past decade - some of which Chalabi himself might well have had a hand in fomenting, particularly the attempted coups. Jesus, why haven't we arrested this guy already?)

(On a wholly tangential note, I have to hope that my alma mater will strongly try to get Tenet to join the faculty in the near future. Georgetown has done an absolutely horrible job of attracting the famous alumni back to the hilltop in recent years. I realize that Bill Clinton would've been a lightning rod - though far more so in 2001 than now - but the university has done a spectacularly poor job of getting the likes of Tenet back. From what I understand, the university had a very hard time getting Madeleine Albright back, and got back few other Clinton Administration officials)

2004-06-03T14:22:00.000-04:00

I've been watching CNN's coverage of the George Tenet resignation-fest, and I have to say the following:

Suzanne Malveaux really needs to lay off the tanning beds and creams for a while. She's starting to look like a slightly more effeminate version of George Hamilton.

Yep, really tackling the tough issues here.

2004-06-02T12:20:00.000-04:00

Glenn Reynolds engages in a bit of semantic hackery over on his MSNBC site.

Speaketh Reynolds:

"We've heard a lot about the Geneva Conventions over the past couple of years. And some people -- noting, among other things, that the United States hasn't fought against an enemy who applied the Geneva Conventions to our troops in nearly 60 years -- are wondering if we should scrap the Conventions.

"Now Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is joining those voices, with a column in the Baltimore Sun."

There's only one problem ... no one whom the good Prof. cites is arguing to scrap the conventions. Actually, he only notes Dershowitz (who argues for a number of fairly reasonable alterations to the Geneva Conventions, but has never appeared to have supported scrapping them).

Scrapping the conventions, of course, would be incredibly foolhardy. Not so much because it would change the rules of the current wars (it wouldn't, either way), but because it would might change the rules of future wars for the worse, and would certainly worsen the standing of the United States in the eyes of the rest of the world, already seemingly at an all-time low.

Moreover, simply put, two wrongs don't make a right - just because those whom we fight do not follow the Geneva Conventions and our moral idea of a war does not mean that we should therefore debase them.

There is, as Dershowitz argues, a solid case for altering the Geneva Conventions (the oldest of which is 140 years old, the youngest of which is 55 years old) to reflect the current nature of war and to close the large gaps left in fighting terrorist groups and terrorism. No reasonable person, however - including Dershowitz - seems to be advocating scrapping them entirely, as Reynolds wants.

(Reynolds also criticizes Amnesty International for criticizing U.S. policies. Now, again, I'm not going to claim that Amnesty is a wholly perfect organization - the move last year by the leadership of Amnesty to criticize the U.S. government for using its reports on human rights abuses in Iraq was a spectacular blunder - but if you're going to criticize it, you had might as well do it on valid grounds. Reynolds suggests that Amnesty focus its energy on the Darfur conflict in Sudan. Well, er, they're already doing that, and it's linked to on the Amnesty homepage, admittedly one step below a call for an independent investigation into Abu Ghraib.)

2004-06-02T12:10:00.000-04:00

The primary election in Virginia's 8th district is coming up next Tuesday (a Washington Post summary is here). This might seem like just another unimportant primary, but it may be one of the most important this year for the Democratic Party.

Because it gives them a chance to rid themselves of one of their most embarrasing politicians.

Jim Moran is, in the words of an acquaintance "almost certainly bought by the Republican party for the express purpose of embarrassing the Democrats."

Well, OK, maybe not, but you get the point. Last year Moran was caught making rather inappropriate remarks about the fact that many prominent neo-conservatives were Jewish (this wouldn't have been so problematic but not for the fact that Moran had been accused of anti-Semitism in the past). Moran was stripped of his minor position within the House Democratic leadership as a result. Moran also took a rather huge and unusual loan from MBNA a few years ago to refinance his rather sizable debts, apparently in return for his vocal support of a bill that would have made personal bankruptcy proceedings more favorable to the banks.

Moran, however, has never faced a truly serious challenge, despite his endless string of gaffes. The 8th district is one of the country's most Democratic districts (it's not really a gerrymandered district, given the geographic compactness), and a Republican stands no chance of getting elected.

His challenger, Andrew M. Rosenberg, unfortunately, is the first serious Democratic challenger that Moran has faced off against. The costs of running in the district, based in the Arlington and Alexandria suburbs of DC, are rather high, and Rosenberg has mostly had to run based on mailings and door-to-door campaigning.

Truthfully, Rosenberg is a little too connected to the DC lobbying community, and not quite as progressive, as I'd like to see. Then again, in going up against such a despicable character, I'd probably support a ham sandwich for the Democractic nomination over Jim Moran.

2004-06-02T11:40:00.000-04:00

William Safire is suggesting that the U.S. government eliminate the penny.

Er, no.

The government will never eliminate the penny (nor does it make sense to) as long as the seignorage revenues are significant. Assuming that it costs a half-cent to make a penny (something I seem to recall as being about right), at 1 billion cents per month, the government earns about $50 million per month, or about $600 million per year on the penny, nothing to sneeze at. In any case, if the costs of making a penny rise too high, the Mint can just debase the coin by using cheaper metals - a number of countries have ended up using coins made of aluminum in part by the end - as it has done in the past (pennies are mostly zinc, not copper, nowadays).

Eliminating smaller denomination coins, in any case, makes a lot more sense in countries that have VAT-style sales taxes - as most European countries do - that get built into the price beforehand, rather than U.S.-style sales taxes that get added on afterwards, increasing the need for rounding up and down. In other words, rounding makes a lot more sense when after-tax prices are going to end in a 0 or 5 regardless of whether a 1-cent coin exists. Thus, eliminating the 1-cent Euro coin makes a lot more sense in terms of efficiency than eliminating the 1-cent USD coin.

As for Safire's actual points, if the penny were eliminated, $9.98 would actually get rounded up to $10 ($9.97 would get rounded down to $9.95). Also, I don't know why he cites Britain, which still uses their own penny (Britain didn't actually get rid of the haypenny - half-cent coin - until the early 80's, by which time it was almost never circulated.

2004-06-02T11:38:00.000-04:00

Heh.

The mayor of Crawford, Texas is publicly supporting John Kerry for President.

2004-06-01T17:22:00.000-04:00

A federal judge in San Francisco today issued a ruling striking down the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. This should come as a surprise to, oh, about three people.

The bill was clearly unconstitutional from the start, which is why it remains so mindboggling why the Congress and White House acceded to it (political brownie points with the extremist crowd, well, obviously). Carhart v. Stenberg (or was it Stenberg v. Carhart was decided by a 5-4 vote at the Supreme Court. The marginal vote came from Sandra Day O'Connor, who issued a ruling clearly stating under what circumstances she would find a late-term abortion ban constitutional - it would necessitate allowing for exceptions in cases where the doctor felt that such an abortion would be necessary to preserve the health or life of the mother.

Such an exception, of course, would leave a rather large hole in the ban - pregnancy presents dangers to a woman's health regardless of whether an abortion ever occurs or not. So the Congressional Republicans, wanting to close off any possibility of late-term abortions, whether a necessary medical procedure or not, tried to summarily issue a finding in the bill that such circumstances never occur (which is flat-out false - by all measures, late-term abortions are fairly rare, but are occasionally necessary).

Anyhow, the San Francisco case, along with other cases that were recently argued but have not yet had decisions issued in New York and Nebraska, will go on through the appeals process, and head on to the Supreme Court either next year or the year after. Where it seems almost certain to be found unconstitutional (unless one of the Carhart majority retires beforehand and gets replaced by someone opposed to Roe v. Wade.

2004-05-31T20:42:00.000-04:00

A little bad news

The Plain Dealer (yes, that is the actual name of an actual newspaper) published a statewide poll yesterday, indicating that the Democrats are lagging in both the presidential race and the race for the Senatorial seat.

Bush was given a 47-41 lead over Kerry, with Ralph Nader polling at 3%. Bush's lead is just outside of the margin of error, which was +/- 2.6%.

This cuts both ways, I guess. The bad news is that Bush leads Kerry by a few points, just outside of the margin of error, a slight move ahead of earlier polling that gave Kerry and Bush statistically insigificant leads, or even gave Kerry a statistically significant lead. The good news is that Bush has spent millions of dollars in Ohio in recent weeks (in the past few days, I've seen far too much of it), far more than Kerry and yet not enough to open a dominant lead. So you can take this poll and be an optimist or a pessimist with it.

Now for the unquestionably bad news. The same statewide poll (though in a different article) found George Voinovich to have a rather dominant 55-24 lead over Eric Fingerhut. This contrasts with a poll commissioned by Fingerhut's campaign a couple weeks ago that seemed to show Eric down by only 47-32, putting Voinovich in a rather vulnerable position given his incumbency.

The good news - to the extent that there is good news - is that Fingerhut is down because of very low name recognition, something already known. Voinovich, who's been involved in Ohio politics for nearly two decades, name recognition is around 80-90% in most polls. The PD poll put Fingerhut's name recognition at around 50% - which, actually, sounds a little high. I still don't doubt that Eric - if he can ever get enough money to do some advertising (donate here, by the way) - could make Voinovich rather nervous and force him to spend the rather large bank accounts that he's sitting on at home rather than spreading it out to other Republicans. On the other hand, though - despite this being still really early, I have to admit - I'm starting to wonder about Fingerhut's chances of upsetting Voinovich, rather than just polling him in one of the 55-45 contests that statewide Ohio Democrats always seem to manage.

There was some speculation among the pundits and chattering classes that Eric was running with an eye towards putting himself in a position to win in 2006 for the governorship or DeWine's senate seat (it's often thought that, barring a famous name a la Taft, it's essentially impossible to win statewide office in Ohio without losing once beforehand), when there'll be more attention and Jerry Springer might run for the other of the two offices, drawing further attention and money to the state. Anyhow, it looks like those plans might just work out.

Usual disclosure: Eric is, broadly speaking, a family friend.

2004-05-31T19:02:00.000-04:00

I think that more than enough has already been said about this WaPo article in today's paper about the need of the Bush administration to go and make stuff up in their negative ads against Kerry, which I've been seeing en masse lately. But if you haven't read it yet, I'd suggest you should.

(And how many ways can you point towards "lying" without actually saying "lying", anyway)

2004-05-29T14:06:00.000-04:00

Idiocy masquerading as wishful thinking:

"Mr. Perle said the action against Mr. Chalabi would burnish his anti-American credentials in Iraq and possibly help him to be elected to political office. "In that regard, this clumsy and outrageous assault on him will only improve his prospects," Mr. Perle said."

(To be fair, it is statistically impossible for Chalabi's popularity to do anything but improve, as no one has yet discovered a way for popularity to drop below zero)

2004-05-28T16:22:00.000-04:00

Matt Yglesias writes:

"On the left, the College Democrats are treated like shit, the think tanks do approximately nothing to help their young research assistants move on to bigger things, the junior staffers on the Hill get no support and encouragement to stay involved in politics, and in general no one seems to give a damn whether or not there will be a next generation of professional progressives."

Well, as with everything, yes and no.

From what I've seen, I'd disagree with the comment that the College Dems are treated like shit. Generally, the College Dems seem to be treated pretty well by the DNC, et al, in comparison with the RNC, et al, relates to the College Repubs. The problem is that the DNC, et al, views the College Dems as a student group (which it is) rather than a pre-professional group (which it also is).

Now, the job market for young politically minded right wingers is clearly more favorable right now in DC than the job market for young politically minded left wingers. This is a regular phenomenon, and not just a part of the Republicans holding the White House and Capitol. It's particularly extreme at the undergraduate level - once one reaches the more rarefied air of graduate graduates, it's somewhat more even. The result is that a lot of politically minded progressives with undergraduate degrees get weeded out, while politically minded rightists get fed into the incubators, researching articles at AEI, Cato, the National Review, the Weekly Standard and so on.

This is partially, as Matt notes, the result of crappy treatment by the national organizations who aren't interested in facing off against any young whippersnappers. It's also broadly a reflection of two other things though. First, young leftwingers are a lot more likely to get siphoned off to work at international organizations and groups. Second, the dearth of job opportunities for young progressives is in large part reflective of the dearth of job opportunities for progressives at any age. The right wing did a very good job of building up thinktanks and other organizations to back its causes during the 1970's and 1980's, while the left wing rested on its laurels.* As a result, there is a far greater supply of politically oriented young left wingers than the job market for that type of interest can handle.

*Some might point to Brookings as an exception, but it's worth noting that Brookings is now officially non-partisan, notoriously tough for young individuals to break into, and has aspersions towards academia.

2004-05-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

Blogspot has been acting up a bit lately - when I try to load up Blogspot sites, I just get a generic Blogspot error message saying that no such website exists (this happens about a quarter of the time - the rest of the time, it goes through normally). Is anyone else having this problem?

2004-05-17T19:55:00.000-04:00

The good news is, it's looking more and more like that a problematic Supreme Court nomination isn't likely to occur this summer. Generally, Supreme Court retirements happen during the summer break (excepting cases of illness), which starts fairly soon. If any of justices were to retire right now, it seems unlikely it's probably too late for the White House to put forward another uber-conservative on the court without creating a rather big issue for the presidential election, something the polls seem to show that can't be afforded right now.

2004-05-12T11:16:00.000-04:00

Given the recent questions about Rumsfeld, I've started to wonder about whether there's a method for impeaching Cabinet secretaries.

I should note that I don't actually think that this should be done, at least not yet, as it would be overplaying the hand by a lot. I'm just wondering about it. If there's anything the Clinton impeachment should've proven, it's that impeachment proceedings should not be so much a means of dealing with an inability to be have in a trustworthy manner, but only to deal with cases where there has been a clear and conscious decision to violate the law (see Nixon, Richard).

2004-05-10T23:15:00.000-04:00

One of the Daily Kos posters is waxing enthusastic (uh, I think I've just committed a rather serious sin against the English language, but you get the point of what I'm trying to say ... I hope) about the chances of Capri Cafaro of unseating Steve LaTourette in OH-14.

If there's a year to unseat LaTourette, this is certainly it - while no one wants to expressly bring his marital difficulties to the fore (well, OK, I'll do it - he cheated on his wife with a lobbyist and then called his spouse over the phone to inform her of this and tell her that he was filing for a divorce) - the district is never going to be too favorable to electing a Democrat. Moreover, the job losses are hurting the district as well (though the 14th isn't as manufacturing-oriented as neighboring districts).

A lot is made of the fact that the district elected a series of Democrats up until LaTourette. It certainly hasn't helped that the Democrats couldn't find a top-tier candidate against him for so long - nor would Cafaro count as one, but for the fact that her family is enormously wealthy - but Lake County has been trending Republican for a while, and the district as a whole has been doing so as well. The district elected Democrats for a couple of decades until 1994, when LaTourette upset Eric Fingerhut,* who had taken over for Dennis Eckart in 1992. It became clear over the next couple of elections, though, that 1992 had been more of an abberation than 1994 - the district turned out more Republican than had been intended by the redistrictors during the post-1990 Census revisions. This trend was exaggerated further when most of the Cleveland/Cuyahoga County precincts were cut off in the last round of redistricting.

(Before any of my Democratic-leaning readers start lamenting this, despite the fact that the redistricting was clearly Republican-oriented, the changes to the 14th district were mostly motivated by a need to adjust for the fact that Stephanie Tubbs Jones' neighboring district had lost a significant amount of its population and had to be maintained for reasons pertaining to the Voting Rights Act).

Anyhow, with most of the Cuyahoga County portions of the district gone, the 14th leans even more to the right than it did previously. Her family's links with disgraced Rep. Jim Traficant, currently sitting in jail, probably won't help. Cafaro was actually granted immunity for her testimony in the trial. Caparo's campaign, previously quite impressive, doesn't seem to be doing the same job of outreach to the general population - the campaign website doesn't seem to have been updated since the primary. She might be doing a great job of linking up with the movers and shakers, but it'll be the decisions of the voters that actually count in November.

The moral of the story is this: If anti-Bush momentum picks up further, Cafaro could be one of the likeliest upsets of an incumbent Republican Congressman. Without it, though, she's going to face an uphill battle, money and all.

*Usual disclaimer: Eric is, broadly speaking, something of a family friend.

2004-05-10T22:55:00.000-04:00

I found myself watching the Indians beat the Red Sox on ESPN2 tonight, and the announcers kept marvelling about the addition of new seats to Fenway Park brought in by the (relatively) new ownership, and how it affected the stadium for the first time in its history (this isn't true ... I'll get to it later). Well, in reality, the field of play hasn't been affected significantly by the new seats on the roof in right field nor the Green Monster seats, no matter how much they alter the view from the press box. The only change to the field of play has been the slight alteration resulting from the addition of a few dozen seats in foul territory in front of where the fences used to be (incidentally, the people who owned the seats that were just behind the old boundary must have been mighty pissed about that change). This only barely reduced the already small foul territory, though.

Anyway, this brought me back to a Tim Keown column from a couple of weeks ago criticizing the addition of quirks to the new stadium in San Diego, Petco Park.

Keown said: "Petco Park in San Diego is the latest retro ballpark to incorporate funky angles and cheeky quirks in an attempt to appeal to the bohemian sensibilities of the well-heeled baseball fan. The result of all this visible strain, sorry to say, is a wonderful trend that threatens to turn into self-parody.

Some of the new ballparks -- not including the design brilliance in Baltimore, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Cleveland -- are too damn cute. The old parks, the ones they're trying so strenuously to imitate, came by their eccentricities naturally."

Anyway, it seems to me that this is a bit false. There's a real difference between those baseball stadiums that were designed with quirks that actually reflected the layout of the surrounding neighborhood. Camden Yards and Jacobs Field were limited by the layout of the neighboring streets (and Camden Yards by the desire to leave the B&O Warehouse intact). The stadiums in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Cincinnati were strongly limited by large bodies of water adjacent to the stadiums.

On the other hand, the Ballpark in Arlington, Safeco Field in Seattle, Miller Park in Milwaukee, Citizens Bank Park in Philly and Tropicana Field in Tampa were all set down in parking lots, and given cutesy little quirks because they could. And they all look a lot worse for it. The Seattle, Houston and Milwaukee stadiums were all heavily affected by the desire to include a retractible roof, anyhow.

The other point is that the latter type was designed with significant quirks in them for no reason. On the other hand, most of the legendary stadiums that the new stadiums want to mimic - pre-renovation Yankee Stadium, Ebbets Field, and the Polo Grounds in New York, Shibe Park in Philly, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Fenway, Wrigley, and a few others - almost entirely developed their quirks over time, mostly as the result of a desire to shoehorn new seats into existing stadiums in sites that were already bound by existing streets and seating areas. In almost all of these stadiums, the stadium had far more quirks in its later years than its earlier years. Indeed, if one looks at the photos of these famous stadiums in their early years, the stadium layout looks downright boring. Basically, it's often the renovations that produce the quirks that make great stadiums great, not the initial construction of quirks.

2004-05-10T12:23:00.000-04:00

I don't think it's visible here, but Blogger has updated its template for posting once again. I'll probably test out the new comments system in a few days, which will once again get rid of the old comments. The new system is rather annoyingly user-friendly (I'm rather stuck in my ways about old software), though it does have a few new bells and whistles.

2004-05-09T12:47:00.000-04:00

George Will: "Michael Barone, America's foremost political analyst, wonders why America produces so many incompetent 18-year-olds but remarkably competent 30-year-olds."

Uh, maybe it's because I'm 22, but I've often seen it the other way around, with the 18-year-olds far more competent than the 30-year-olds.

Will seems to blame increased schooling for coddling our youngsters, but to the extent that Americans become more competent from ages 18 to 30 is not so much a reflection of the failings of the secondary schooling system at younger ages but the success of the higher education systems, warts and all.

Will also says: "Barone says racial preferences, which were born in the 1960s and '70s, fence some blacks off from Hard America, insulating them in 'a Soft America where lack of achievement will nonetheless be rewarded.'"

Uh, I have to think that neither Will nor Barone has been to Northeast DC, or any other ghetto in a damn long time if they can actually believe this. Pardon my language, but it's utter bullshit.

2004-05-05T23:31:00.000-04:00

Three things strike me about the current CNN top story - that George Bush is angry with Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of accountability in the situation at Abu Ghraib.

1. Uh, how nice of the Secretary of Defense to fall on his sword for Bush.

2. Except that he's not actually falling on his sword. There utter lack of any culture of responsibility in the current administration continues to astound me. There's not one peep of accepting any sort of punishment for this. If this were the British cabinet, the Defense (well, Defence) Secretary would have resigned, or been fired by now. Here, though, the buck seems to stop ... well, it mostly seems to peter out on its own eventually.

3. It was leaked anonymously. Now, one can start getting into the conspiracy theory mindset that the White House purposely leaked this so as to deflect any harm from Bush to Rumsfeld. On the other hand, though, this White House seems to have steadfastly avoided the leaking game that most White Houses tend to play. Most senior officials have been extremely tight-lipped, unwilling to bad-mouth each other. Maybe that's coming to an end. Or maybe it was on purpose. I don't pretend to know (that's Bob Woodward's job, I guess ...).

2004-05-05T19:09:00.000-04:00

I realize I've got three hundred years of history of semantics and literature going against me, but if D'Artagnan - whose actual remains may have been found recently - was a swordsman, why was he called a musketeer? I mean, a musket was a gun, not a sword. Shouldn't Dumas have written about the 'Three Swordsmen'?

2004-05-04T17:48:00.000-04:00

I have Pardon the Interruption on the TV right now, and Kornheiser, Wilbon and Jon Miller are discussing the possibility of changing the intentional walk rule - requiring that one strike be thrown first, sending the runner to 2nd base, etc., because of Barry Bonds.

First of all, it's a dumb idea. The intentional walk is good strategy, whether it's exciting or not. Secondly, it'd tip the balance towards the batter in a wholly unnecessary. How about starting to testore the balance and banning those damn elbow guards that Bonds wears. I'm willing to accept that they have a valid role when someone is coming off the DL, but there's no way that they should be allowed year-long - batters should be worried about the possibility that pitchers are going to throw inside. Maybe then we can think about changing the intentional walk rule.

2004-05-02T19:00:00.000-04:00

I'm watching the evening news (actually, 'watching' is a fairly generous term but ...), and they're discussing possible running mates, listing Dick Gephardt, Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and John Edwards.

Now, I don't have much reason to admire Gephardt. He's unabashedly protectionist, and while he does appeal to the 'old Democrat' wing of the party, I don't think that's as large of a block that needs to be appealed to as in the past. As far as Edwards, I don't think he'd do badly, but I don't know that he'd set the house on fire, either. And as far as Vilsack, well, I guess Kerry wants to carry Iowa, but I really don't think Vilsack will help at all elsewhere. I saw Vilsack speak here a few months ago, and he's a deadly boring speaker. Admittedly, he was mostly speaking off the cuff, and didn't seem to have much in the way of prepared remarks. It's possible that he's better when working off of a stump speech (Kerry does seem to do better with prepared remarks than when winging it). But he wouldn't seem to bring much excitement to a ticket that seems to need it.

Looking around, it's disappointing how little 'outside-the-box' thinking seems to be going on ... unless you listen to the inane chatter about McCain. There's little talk of, say Gov. Locke, Sen. Lincoln or Sen. Breaux (who, though planning to retire, and one of the more conservative members of the Democratic party, would seem to be a pretty attractive choice when you think about it). Then again, most of the recent VP choices have been individuals who were generally a surprise to the public. I can't really recall whether Gore's name was tossed around that much in 1992, but Kemp clearly came out of the blue in 1996, Cheney sort of chose himself when put in charge of the Bush campaign's search for a VP candidate in 2000, and Gore's choice of Lieberman, though mooted a little bit in the media, was still fairly surprising. So it wouldn't be surprising to see Kerry go out there and choose someone surprising, I guess.

2004-05-02T18:48:00.000-04:00

The feds have seized all of the steroid test samples for Major League Baseball from last year. If there ever was a case that called for a leak to the media, this is it.

2004-04-28T10:10:00.000-04:00

In defense of grade inflation - since it isn't all it's cracked up to be

There's an article in the WaPo today looking at efforts at Princeton to roll back the tide of rising grades. The article states that:

"More than 45 percent of the grades awarded at Princeton from 1997 to 2002 were A's, compared with just 30 percent a quarter-century earlier. The number of C grades declined over the same period from 15 percent to 7 percent."

...

"Experts on grade inflation trace the phenomenon to the Vietnam era, when professors were reluctant to give grades that would lead to their students flunking out and becoming eligible for the draft. Grade averages tapered off during the '70s and '80s and then shot up again during the '90s, according to Stuart Rojstaczer, a Duke University professor who has collected nationwide data on grade inflation."

Er, yes and no.

There's anecdotal evidence that grades were inflated to prevent flunking out in the Vietnam years. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that a large element of rising grades at most universities reflects the fact that students today are smarter and better prepared for their university studies, and seem to be working harder as well. Looking at average SAT scores, it's pretty clear that aptitude levels have risen pretty dramatically over the last thirty years or so, even once you account for the recentering of the SATs in the mid-90's.*

This change is particularly true at elite universities. Rising aptitude levels are the result of a couple of factors - the reduction of widespread legacy admissions, demographic issues (the children of baby boomers have entered the educational system more quickly than many top universities have expanded their slots), and improvements in secondary education. Students also appear to be working harder - there is a decent amount of evidence that the greater pressures to seek post-graduate studies and to build directly for a professional career have led to higher workloads. This appears to be particularly true when one looks at trends in extra-curricular participation - there has been a fairly noticeable shift (again, particularly at elite universities) - away from fraternities and sororities and towards pre-professional groups on a relative basis.

In other words, the university students of today are smarter and harder working than those of thirty years ago. And those of thirty years from now will likely smarter and harder working than those today (frightening, no?). There may be some inflation of grades that has gone on. But it's worth noting that a sizable part of the trend has been a real increase in academic achievements.

*SATs aren't perfect of course, but they're the best measure I can think of that is used on a widespread basis. ACTs aren't as common, and grade point averages are measured in a multitude of different ways.

2004-04-28T09:26:00.000-04:00

Popping a few bubbles

There's a good deal of speculation going around that Google is about to offer an IPO. The reasoning is that Google gave out stock options to most of its 1,000+ employees recently. SEC regulations require that any company with more than 500 shareholders and $10 million in assets must file an annual report with the SEC. Since filing an annual report is a fairly onerous process - and also necessary before going public - it's possible that Google may just go public soon.

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but there are a couple of problems with this. First, the options may not have been exercized yet - that is, it's possible that while most of the employees have a rightt to buy stock at a certain time, there may not be 500 actual shareholders yet. The other thing is that there is, as I understand it, a clause in SEC regulations allowing for exemptions under certain circumstances. So it's quite possible that Google may not go public quite yet.

UPDATE (4/30/04): OK, so there's no two ways about it, I was wrong.

2004-04-26T02:03:00.000-04:00

So I went down to the abortion protest today.

I have to say that the organizers had seriously weird tastes in music while they were waiting for the marchers to arrive back at the Mall. I mean, I'm not expecting them to play "Brick" by Ben Folds Five, but "Ice Ice Baby"?

Yep, definitely tackling the tough issues here.

2004-04-23T11:49:00.000-04:00

Matt Yglesias has an interesting post discussing the applicability of the Law of One Price to gasoline and blog ads.

My response (which I already posted in the comments there, but then, I'm lazy) is this:

The Law of One Price fails to hold in its strong form pretty much everywhere (as do many economic rules when applied to reality, which is so much messier than the theoretical world), even with fairly mobile commodities

There's an intersection in the East Side of Cleveland (Cedar & S. Green) where there are three gas stations. The price is usually pretty close for most grades of gasoline - I can't remember it ever varying more than a nickel a gallon from high to low, but it often varies by a cent or two. The stations differentiate themselves by convenience in terms of location - it's easier to just turn right than go left across traffic - in terms of facilities - one has a small convenice store, another has a garage - and in terms of the exact grade of the gasoline.

Interestingly, though, the price divergence seems to be smaller for the price of standard unleaded gas than for the premium higher octane gasolines. Standard unleaded rarely deviates by more than a penny, but the higher octane gasolines sometimes vary by three or four cents per gallon. One possibility is that the suppliers for the different stations offer different prices. Another, more interesting, possibility is that the station owners think that customers just look at the price of standard gasoline rather than the grade that they're actually buying.

2004-04-21T02:51:00.000-04:00

Rep. John Hostettler was briefly detained yesterday after he tried to board a plane with a loaded gun in a carry-on.

Hostettler claimed that he "completely forgot" that the gun was in his bag. And considering how dumb he is, that's a wholly plausible explanation. Hostettler may be one of the dumbest members of Congress, definitely among those I've seen in action - he's one of the few who can make Jim Moran look smart by comparison.

2004-04-21T01:47:00.000-04:00

Georgetown (finally) hired John Thompson III today (actually, yesterday, as I write).

Back to work. (writing/editing the neverending thesis)

2004-04-19T18:31:00.000-04:00

Say what you want about Bob Woodward's new Plan of Attack, but the man clearly knows how to do PR for a book right. (hell, he's only had about three decades to get it right)

By the way, why the hell was anyone in the White House willing to speak to Woodward?One would think that Bush at War would have been education enough for them. There are a couple of possibilities - one is that one major White House figure spoke to Woodward, and the rest were essentially obliged to follow in order to prevent a view that made that person look like a hero and the others badly (i.e., Powell talks and denigrates Rumsfeld, or vice versa). Another possibility is that they were just that idealistic and sure of being correct. Or that they're complete and total idiots (which even I don't believe).

UPDATE: CNN is reporting that Colin Powell is saying that the White House told him and others to speak to Woodward. Honestly, what the hell were they thinking?

2004-04-17T11:58:00.000-04:00

There's an op-ed in the Washington Post today by Steve Hayes, who served alongside John Kerry in Vietnam, suggesting that the Democratic presidential nominee earned three Purple Hearts for relatively minor wounds and then used them as a means to apply for an early return to the States (the article does not question the Silver Star earned for gallantry) - as well as criticizing the current administration for blindly sending men and women into combat with little experience or idea of the dangers.

From what I know, it seems that this is realistically more an indictment of the military culture in Vietnam than of Kerry, who may have used the system to his advantage. Purple Hearts were generally allotted in a rather generous manner during the war (I have no way of knowing whether this is still true today). One of my high-school teachers, who worked various support jobs at the base and never actually went into combat, nearly earned a Purple Heart - during a hot night, he had gone up to sleep up on the roof of one of the buildings at the base, and, briefly forgetting where he was when the base came under light arms fire from the Viet Cong, fell off and suffered a cut to his leg. This made him eligible for a Purple Heart, but, more embarassed than proud, he refused to put in the necessary paperwork.

Long story, short: getting a Purple Heart during the Vietnam War wasn't always a difficult thing.

NOTE: Obviously, this isn't meant to denigrate the contribution and risks borne by thousands of men and women who did put themselves in great danger during the war.

2004-04-15T11:18:00.000-04:00

Kriston Capps has moved off Blogger and into the wonderful world of Moveable Type. The new address is www.grammarpolice.net.

(by the way, who the hell would have thought to have squatted already at http://www.grammarpolice.com?!?)

2004-04-15T11:16:00.000-04:00

Rumors are swirling around campus that Princeton John Thompson III is about to be hired as the new head coach of the men's basketball team, replacing the recently fired Craig Esherick. Thompson, for the uninitiated, is the son of legendary G-Town coach John Thompson, whom Esherick rather unsuccesfully replaced.

I can't help but think that this isn't the best possible outcome. It isn't that Thompson won't improve the team and restore it to adequacy - pretty much anyone would be an improvement over Esherick - but that he'll face a very hard time restoring it to glory. Working under his father's shadow - and his father still works on both local radio and national TV covering basketball - will be incredibly difficult. Thompson has succeeded at Princeton, but hasn't done anything spectacular there, and hasn't exactly taken the Tigers to new heights.

Thompson has previously stated that he wouldn't be tied to Princeton's legendary old-school style of basketball if he moved elsewhere - he would be willing to consider something more up-tempo. The back-to-fundamentals style of basketball actually might be a significant improvement at Georgetown over Esherick's schizoid style of play, but one has to wonder whether we have the right perimeter personnel to make such a strategy work right now. The alums probably wouldn't be happy at first, given Georgetown's traditional style of relying on the biggest guys possible in the low post - Ewing, Mourning, Mutombo, Sweetney, etc. - but that wouldn't be too much of the problem if the team were to start winning again.

That said, financial considerations undoubtedly played a role in the choice, given the current dire financial situation of the university. Getting a big name mid-major coach like Bobby Gonzalez would probably be too expensive, as would getting a widely known assistant (the name of Duke Assistant Coach Johnny Dawkins has been repeatedly floated, but one can't help thinking that Dawkins would be little different than Esherick). So the university pretty much has to go in-house to some extent, in order to get someone who's willing to work for less than they might demand on the open market.

2004-04-08T18:45:00.000-04:00

Uh, anyone know of a source where I can find historical data on Finnish police strength levels?

Actually, at this point, I'd take pretty much any data on the subject I can get.

2004-04-08T18:44:00.000-04:00

About the Kerry speech yesterday in Gaston:

It was pretty good. As a speaker, Kerry comes across far better (i.e., less aloof and more emotive) in person than he comes across on TV. He's still not Clinton-esque, though. He's also far better than Bush, whose public speaking style is - in the words of a staunch Republican I know - 'somehow both incredibly boring and cringe-inducing,' due to his habits of mumbling and lapsing into malaprops. That said, Kerry has developed a habit of ad-libbing during his speeches. Some of this is quite entertaining and beneficial to his speaking style - particularly when responding to hecklers - but it looked like he's going to end up putting his foot in his mouth pretty soon in a manner that's going to require the jaws of life to get it out. It seems almost certain that Kerry is going to say something that - possibly by getting taken out of context by the Republican spin-and-smear machine or possibly just by misspeaking - is going to cost him a few points in the polls.

As far as the actual text of the speech, it was good to start to hear specifics about Kerry's economic plan. Much of it was stuff I'd endorse, particularly on his deficit reduction plans (The New York Times likes it, while the Washington Post doesn't like it, because they feel that it doesn't go far enough away from Bush's economic governance). He also tended to make a couple of vaguer remarks about supporting American manufacturing - slowing the decline of American manufacturing, particularly where it has occurred due to the pegging of the Chinese Yuan, is admirable, but the idea that the decline can be halted or reversed is pretty stupid - and moving away from free trade, seemed to be more politically-driven and far beneficial - or even harmful - to the national economy.

Pointless addendum: I can be seen on the C-SPAN tape of the event at a couple of points, sitting in the balcony. As far as anyone who can actually recognize me - I really need to shave and get a haircut (the broken finger has impeded the former, my laziness has impeded the latter) - and I don't usually look quite that morose.

2004-04-06T16:29:00.000-04:00

Kerry is speaking at Georgetown tomorrow, apparently to give the vaunted speech laying out the economic policy that he expects to campaign on, and I expect to be able to see the speech. Usually (though not always), Georgetown sets up microphones so that speakers can take Q-And-A's after the speech. Any suggestions for a question, should I get the chance?

2004-04-06T16:28:00.000-04:00

Summarizing Charlie Cook's round-up of the upcoming elections, Wonkette roughly quotes Cook as saying the following:

"Cook (ignoring his own advice about making VP predictions) suggested that Kerry should pick Gephardt. Ohio is most important state in race. Northern Ohio is where job losses are hurting Bush; Southern OH is more conservative; but the votes are in the North."

Well, he could have been more wrong, but it'd have been pretty difficult. It's true that job losses are hurting Northern Ohio, and that Ohio may well be the most important state in the presidential race (though, seven months out, it's something that could well change in the coming weeks). The problem is that, as the past decade has shown, Democrats do very well in Northern Ohio, but can't win without enough support in the south.

Unfortunately, this isn't something the incredibly incompetent state Democratic party has realized. As a result, it's run a series of Democrats from the northern part of the state (mostly, though not all, from the Cleveland area) with almost no success. Tim Hagan, Mary Boyle, Ted Celeste. Lee Fisher, yet again. As a result, no Democrat has been elected to a state-wide office other than the State Supreme Court in a decade. Rather than give a Democrat from down-state a chance for once, Eric Fingerhut is running for the Senate this year.*

Bill Clinton did win the state twice, by understanding that winning Ohio means showing up in the north once in a while to get sufficient turnout, but mostly by running strongly enough in the southern half of the state to keep ahead overall. It isn't necessary to win the southern half of the state - it's pretty damn near impossible - but just to do well enough in the Canton and Columbus areas and to get enough voters out in inner-city Dayton and Cincinnati to let Cleveland, Toledo and Youngstown the Republican votes in the deep south. Running toward the northern half of the state might be easier, but it'll also be running away from victory.

Hell, I think the Democrats could still carry the Cleveland area if they nominated a houseplant (though this isn't as true as it used to be).

*Disclosure: Eric is, broadly speaking, a family friend. He served the East side of the Cleveland suburbs in the House for one term in the early '90's. He's a nice guy, and a good politician. Barring an unforseen anti-Bush tidal wave, he doesn't stand a chance of winning.

2004-04-02T12:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posting here of late, but I've got a pretty good excuse this time - a broken finger, injured late last week playing football. I can still type adequately, but somewhat slower than normal, and it's slowing up all my coursework and leaving me with less time for other things.

2004-03-26T10:32:00.000-05:00

More minor adjustments to the template.

2004-03-26T00:18:00.000-05:00

I've been watching far too much of the NCAA tournament lately, and it seems that far too many of the close games degenerate into foul-fests at the end of the game. (witness Wake Forest vs. St. Joseph's as I write this). So, can I make a suggestion?

Make any foul beyond the three-point arc during the double bonus worth three foul shots, rather than the current two foul shots. This would offer a pretty significant discouragement to fouling every single player anywhere near the ball whenever a game gets close in the final minute.

Another alternative, I guess, would be to create a triple bonus, so that any fouls after the tenth or so, would automatically result in three shots.

Something has to be done, though. The final minute of a game should not take fifteen actual minutes to be carried out.

2004-03-25T16:30:00.000-05:00

In the middle of a surprisingly intelligent Newt Gingrich op-ed arguing for free trade and ensuring that America 'insources' jobs by "by making America the best place in the world to create the next high-value-added, wealth-creating jobs," the former Speaker speaketh:

"The debate, then, is between those who embrace the future and those who try to prop up and defend the past and who, in the process, crush the country's growth potential. One example: The result of failed protectionist policies in West Germany has been massive unemployment, with many young people never having held a job. It is a situation that instills a sense of malaise and decay."

Er, no.

There are plenty of cases where protectionism led to economic decay (including pretty much everywhere during the Great Depression, though this was worsened strictures on foreign exchange and capital movements at the time). West Germany wasn't one of them.

West Germany actually maintained fairly low trading barriers with its neighbors in Western Europe in industrial goods from 1951 (the founding of the ECSC) and agricultural goods from 1958 (the founding of the EEC/EC/EU). Now, the EU certainly maintains plenty of idiotic barriers against trade from outside its borders (the CAP is largely a subsidy program, but it creates numerous trade losses). That said, barriers to trade within the EU are almost nonexistant, and much of German trade has historically been unaffected by tariffs. (of course, there's an argument to be had that their major trading partners were major trading partners because of trade diversion rather than trade creation).

The recession in Germany after reunification was largely the result of an ill-conceived currency policy at reunification that drastically overvalued the East German Mark relative to the West German Mark, spending policies that caused the junking of the EMU in 1992 and led to much uncertainty in neighboring economies as well as Germany, and plenty of market inefficiencies due to problems with the structure of the welfare state and strict regulations on the labor market. Basically, it was everything but protectionism.

2004-03-22T23:53:00.000-05:00

Gregg Easterbrook is complaining about "the NCAA's disgraceful new policy of not disclosing the graduation rates of men's basketball teams"

First of all, I'm not entirely sure it's new - plenty of colleges have been doing their damnest to suppress the true graduation statistics for a while (this is true insofar they estimate that students can take six years to graduate when scholarship athletes only get four years of tuition covered).

More than that, there are, as I understand it (this with the caveat that I'm not a lawyer and don't play one on TV), pretty sound reasons for not disclosing certain academic information such as graduation rates where it is possible to discern information about specific individuals from the broader data. FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and the Buckley Amendment basically make life a lot more interesting for university administrators by making the disclosure of much of the information that a university must keep illegal to disclose publicly. I've been involved with numerous activities at Georgetown that have required me to either sign Buckley waivers or to be reminded of the need to avoid any disclosure of sensitive information to avoid making myself or anyone else eligible for lawsuits. Of course, then again, this also gives universities an incentive to hide behind FERPA and the Buckley Amendment whenever they don't want to give out certain information (as Georgetown notoriously did following the death of a student in an altercation in early 2000).

2004-03-22T14:48:00.000-05:00

For those wishing to denigrate the recent statements of Richard Clarke on the Bush administration's attitude on terrorism before 9/11 and focus on Iraq afterwards as the result of partisan sniping from a former Clinton administration employee (see Pundit, Insta for one example), it's worth noting that Clarke originally came to work for the Reagan White House and stayed on in various posts working for George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He's not exactly the partisan stereotype.

2004-03-17T23:53:00.000-05:00

More thesis crap

Does anyone know of a good historical data set that involves annual numbers on poverty in developed countries over the last half-century or so? Theoretically the World Bank should have something along these lines somewhere, but I haven't been able to find anything in the format I need there as of yet. Thanks.

2004-03-16T22:57:00.000-05:00

There's a rumor going around campus tonight that Craig Esherick will be out tomorrow as head coach of the Georgetown men's baskeball team. It's not clear as to whether he is thought to have been fired, re-assigned or resigned.

None too soon, really.

It's not that Esherick's a bad guy. He's certainly dedicated almost all of his adult life to the Hoyas basketball program. And I have no doubt that he's a damn fine assistant coach, gets along well with the alums and Georgetown community more generally, and would probably make a fine Athletic Director. It's also clear - and I've seen this far too much over the last couple of years - that he's a horrible head coach. He can't manage during the game worth a damn, and can't recruit worth a whit (the only top-notch player we've had over the past few years was Mike Sweetney, who actually committed to John Thompson shortly before he resigned). We've done horribly in the Big East in recent years - though we're still perfectly capable of beating the crap out of MEAC teams. It's pretty clear that he can't motivate at all either (and he's about admitted as much in a couple of interviews recently). Which has basically left us with a coach who does very well at running practices and very poorly at everything else.

More than that, Esherick has steadfastly tried to take credit for the success of 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's while denying any responsibility for the recent troubles. At the press conference after the first-round loss in the Big East tournament last week, Esherick blamed our crappy record this year without once acknowledging that he was ultimately responsible for that recruiting.

It's possible that the decision was made in response to a rally that was put together by a bunch of alums that was scheduled for tomorrow. The alums had also put together a petition here that had about 3600 signatures at last check.

Then again, it's just a rumor.

(If true, this will bring about the rumors about who they're going to hire. There will be some pressure, no doubt, to bring in a big name. Which ain't gonna happen, since the school is pretty much broke. My guess would be that they'll lean towards one of John Thompson's sons - Ronny, a former GU assistant coach who's currently an assistant coach at Arkansas, and John Jr., currently the head coach at Princeton - or Horace Broadnax, another alum who used to be the head coach - though not a particularly good one - at Bethune-Cookman. Possible extremely dark horses might include dragging either John Thompson or Lefty Driesell - whose son is currently a Georgetown assistant coach - out of retirement. )

UPDATE: And it's official. He's been fired. (honestly, could the President's office please get someone to write press releases who can actually make it sound like DeGioia is actually talking rather than writing press releases that sound like a committee wrote his quotes)

2004-03-09T21:19:00.000-05:00

Moral Dilemma

I'm currently in the process of writing my thesis. Which is one of the reasons I'm not writing much here right now. I'm working in a fairly esoteric field in which there are very few existing academic papers (because it's a highly politically charged topic, I've decided not to discuss it here until I have at least have all the data before me). One of the papers was co-authored by John Lott. I'm seriously queasy about citing Lott, given his spectacularly unprofessional behavior in the past surrounding "More Guns, Less Crime" and the Mary Rosh fiasco. So, the question is: do I cite Lott, cite Lott with a footnote indicating that the man is all but entirely discredited, or just ignore the paper?

UPDATE (March 25): For those who are truly curious, I cited the paper in my literature review and included a footnote detailing Lott's behavior, as Tim Lambert suggested.

2004-03-07T14:46:00.000-05:00

Happy (slightly belated) blogiversary to Wizblog. Anyone who can refer to me as a trendsetter and still keep a straight face about it is fine by me.

2004-03-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

The shadow cabinet. As I've said before, it's a good idea.

2004-03-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

Kieran Healy makes the argument that divorce is far more of a threat to the social order than gay marriage.

I agree. To a point, anyway. I'm all for restricting the use of no-fault divorce laws where children are involved. I've seen far too many times amongst my friends (and arguably, between my parents), where parents have just given up on a marriage rather than fight through tough times, and in doing so, causing serious emotional damage to their family members. This isn't to say that I'm against divorce in case of a fault (adultery, violence, etc.) or no-fault divorce where no children are involved. But social costs aside, allowing people to just give up on their families so easily is a bad way to run a society.

2004-03-04T21:36:00.000-05:00

I haven't written much here in the last week or two because of midterms - I'm increasingly convinced that midterms are worse to deal with than finals, as the rest of university life doesn't come to a grinding halt during midterms as it does during finals - and regular posting (or what passes for it here) should resume shortly.

2004-03-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

I'm not usually in the outrage-manufacturing business, but ...

I just came across this notice at the Political Graveyard. It seems that a bill has been reported out of the House Judiciary Committee in and is now before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to overturn the Supreme Court's Feist decision, which decided in 1991 that facts could not be copyrighted.

If passed, this bill would wreak untold havoc on the internet, forcing the removal of the Political Graveyard, Wikipedia, Froogle, Google News (both Google sites gather information from other sites), and numerous other sources of information, both on the internet and across all media.

Basically, if you want a dumber and more ignorant America, support the bill. Otherwise, you can send a fax to the committee members here (note: you have to register). You can also write your Representative here.

2004-02-29T12:57:00.000-05:00

More minor changes to the template. Nothing terribly noticeable, really.

2004-02-27T14:38:00.000-05:00

Y'know, it's one thing when Charles Krauthammer writes something really stupid. It's another thing when he just writes something entirely wrong, as he does in today's column.

So says Krauthammer: "Not again. We are the only Western country to have legalized abortion by judicial fiat rather than by democratic approval of the people or the legislature. Are we going to do it again with gay marriage?"

Well, actually, no. I dunno about the link between abortion and gay marriage in Krauthammer's argument, but the United States is not the only Western country to have legalized abortion through a court decision (five states actually legalized abortion in 1970, three years ahead of Roe v. Wade - some due to state court decisions and some via state legislatures). Canada fully legalized abortion in 1988 through a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Morgentaler case (it had previously legalized abortion under certain restrictions in 1967). Australia legalized abortion on a state-by-state basis from 1969-86 through a variety of court decisions (except for South Australia, which legalized via legislation in 1969, and Tasmania, which has yet to repeal its laws criminalizing abortion as best I know). The United Kingdom first liberalized its abortion laws via the Bourne case of 1938, which allowed abortions to protect the life of the mother or to prevent her from becoming a "mental or physical wreck." Abortion laws in the United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland) were subsequently substantially liberalized by an Act of Parliament in 1967 (in effect in 1968).

So much for fact-checking.

2004-02-25T11:01:00.000-05:00

Josh Marshall is musing on the apparent reticence of Congressional Republicans to wholeheartedly support the Federal Marriage Amendment. As Marshall points out, the FMA is clearly about getting Bush re-elected, regardless of the health of Republicans in the House of the Senate. They're upset - and with good cause.

The more I think about it, the more I have to believe that the cultural war isn't a winning issue for Republicans. Yes, it will motivate a large part of the base, but it simultaneously angers a smaller part of it - more libertarian types - while pissing off moderates. Similarly, if Bush were to propose that Congress move on a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade, it would essentially be electoral suicide. The American public doesn't support gay marriage and/or civil unions quite as strongly as it supports abortion, but it's just a weaker version of the same argument.

I find myself repeating Al Franken's story about the 1992 Republican convention. Pat Buchanan gave a particularly vitriolic speech in which he openly stated that the Republican party was in the middle of a cultural war. The major networks all simultaneously proclaimed the speech to be the 'red meat' needed to rally the base and put Bush back on top. Meanwhile, Franken, offering live commentary on Comedy Central, alone mused aloud that the speech would be scaring away moderate Americans from the Republican party. Only Franken was right.

This isn't to say that the cultural war, in some weaker form, isn't a means for the Republican party to draw support. But at the end of the day, people want to tell each other how to act, not to be told how to act themselves.

2004-02-24T17:57:00.000-05:00

With the Federal Marriage Amendment now closer and closer to reaching the floors of the House and Senate, I think we have to start wondering about it's actual chance of passing, regardless of the actual quality of the amendment (for the record, I think it's bigoted and idiotic, randomly snatching a state issue and making it a federal one). Josh Chafetz thinks that it's not likely to pass the Senate, but I have to wonder about that, given the large majority that the Defense of Marriage Act got - as it did in the House. I have to wonder, though, about the chances of ratification by the states. An enormous anti-amendment campaign will likely be taking flight soon. And while 38 states have passed laws refusing to recognize gay marriages, I have a hard time believing that a similar number would approve an amendment now. The small territorial size of northeastern states relative to western ones could be a distinct advantage there.

2004-02-24T17:53:00.000-05:00

Random Tech Support

For reasons I can't understand, my ancient, Windows-95-running, laptop, has decided to start printing out one blank sheet when I turn the computer off at times. Basically, when I shut it down, it makes a lot of noise, the printer lights start blinking, and after about five minutes, a blank sheet gets fed out and the computer shuts off. Any ideas as to what's going on?

2004-02-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

Arnold Schwarzenegger has come out in favor of an amendment to the Constitution proposed by Orrin Hatch that would strike the language requiring that the President be a natural-born citizen and replace it with a requirement that the President be a U.S. citizen for 20 years.

I oppose it.

I oppose it not because I think that the language in the constitution is any good - it's plainly a relic that is no longer needed. I'd quibble with the 20 year requirement (I think it ought to be a little longer, but I'm not so opposed to this as to oppose the amendment entirely. I oppose it because the Hatch Amendment seems plainly intended to promote the possibility of a Schwarzenegger campaign for the White House. And I do not believe that the Constitution should ever be altered because of one individual. The constitution is intended to represent the entire nation, not one individual. Come back to me in a few years, and I'll happily support the amendment, but not now, not for Schwarzenegger.

(I should point out, for consistency's sake, that I would argue that the 22nd amendment, which limited the President to two terms and was a reaction to the long presidency of FDR, was a bad idea, and that any attempt to repeal the 22nd amendment on behalf of a sitting or former president - as was talked about for Reagan and Clinton - would also be a bad idea)

2004-02-19T09:01:00.000-05:00

I haven't seen anything written about this, and have no indication of how certain or accurate the report is, but the local NBC affiliate in DC is reporting that investigators are now considering the possibility that the tests on the letter thought to have ricin that was found in the Dirksen Senate Office Building were oversensitive and produced a false positive by detecting castor bean pulp used to make the paper rather than ricin. Good news, I suppose, if true.

UPDATE: WRC has put up this synopsis of the situation.

2004-02-18T23:21:00.000-05:00

Maybe the folk singers actually can save the world

There's an interesting article in the Guardian on the role of - of all people - Billy Bragg, in the reform of the House of Lords. Bragg, an English folk singer, has put forth a proposal that's actually being considered quite seriously alongside other proposals put forth by individuals more involved in the political process (Bragg has been quite politically active in the last couple decades, strongly promoting Labourite left politics, but isn't actually a politician).

Lords reform, of course, has been ongoing for nearly a century, as the upper house has been slowly neutered. Most of the hereditary lords were ejected a few years ago, but the house remains unelected. It has little power in dealing with most legislation passed by the Commons - it can only delay and amend - though it has occasionally stifled the passage of certain bills, most recently in blocking anti-fox hunting legislation. As the article notes, the Lords remains quite conservative and Conservative, despite the ejection of the hereditary lords, and tends to oppose Labour-held governments far more than Tory-held governments.

Bragg's proposal would allocate seats in the Lords through Proportional Representation party lists on a regional basis. The proportional representation rather than being decided by separate elections, would be set out at each general election by how many votes Commons candidates for each party receive. Thus, if the Lab-Tory-Lib Dem breakdown in Commons votes were 45-35-20 across an entire region, the seats in the Lords allocated to that region would be allocated accordingly. There would be a 4% cutoff for any party - that is, any party receiving less than 4% of the total votes in a region would receive no seats in the Lords from that region. Thus, there would still be no separate elections for the Lords, limiting election fatigue, but the Lords would become essentially representatives. This would probably allow some small parties - the Greens, Socialists and UK Independence Party - to take a few seats, but would still keep out the truly minor parties - i.e., the Monster Raving Loony Party, etc. The actual power of the Lords vis a vis the Commons would stay the same, though it would gain additional legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

The end result of this plan, though, would be to make the Lords as reflexively left-wing as it currently is right-wing. The result of the current single-member district system has been to distinctly penalize the left as votes have been split between Labour and the Lib Dems - even at the height of her premiership, with a hundred seat majority, Margaret Thatcher's Tories never won a majority of the popular vote.

The reform could also significantly affect the formation of cabinets. Current rules allow members of the Lords to sit in cabinets, but leaves parties choosing possible ministers from a group that does not sit on its political merits. The reform would allow parties to place favored ministerial candidates on the party lists for the Lords, thus ending any uncertainty about winning a position in the Commons.

The biggest downside about the reform would be that it would make the Lords distinctly more partisan, eliminating the role of non-partisan cross-benchers, and would convert the Lords to being a chamber for debating from a chamber for carrying out oversight.

I don't know about how it stands up to the alternatives, but Bragg's plan does seem likely to be able to please far more of those on both political extremes more than any other plan I've seen yet.

2004-02-18T22:57:00.000-05:00

Monroe Doctrine redux

Josh Marshall, writing yesterday, asked whether the possibility of French intervention in Haiti to deal with the ongoing rebellion would raise any Monroe Doctrine issues?

Well, no, not really.

First, the Monroe Doctrine - glibly simplified, the idea that the Europeans should leave international conflicts in the Western Hemisphere to the U.S. to deal with and the U.S. would do likewise to international conflicts in Europe - was never as strong in reality as it was on paper. At the time the doctrine was first promulgated, British, French and Spanish troops were garrisoned in Canada and throughout Central and South America. Anyhow, Haiti is internally divided, not currently at odds with anyone else (though this could conceivably change if relations with neighbors or humanitarian issues deteriorate). Anyhow, it would seem that any pretense to the Monroe Doctrine was abandoned by the American government during World War I, irretrievably so after World War II.

Second, the French aren't proposing to send troops from France to Haiti. They're considering sending some troops currently stationed in the Caribbean to Haiti (the French still have a few troops in territories in the Caribbean - I believe the British also do station a few troops there, as well as in Belize). Technically speaking, this would a reorganization, and not any new intervention in the Western Hemisphere.

This, of course, ignores the question of whether foreign powers should currently interfere in the internal conflict. I'm inclined to feel that nothing more than humanitarian aid (and what ever security needed to safeguard it) should be sent right now. To intervene now would essentially be to protect Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who has, a la Robert Mugabe, abandoned any pretense of running the country in a transparent and democratic manner. Of course, the rebels might well not be any better ...

2004-02-18T00:06:00.000-05:00

From the 'I have some truly weird professors' dept.

Earlier today ...

Prof. X: Um, sorry, I keep having trouble remembering your name ... it's that you look exactly like my roommate when I was in the Peace Corps ... uh, do you mind if I just call you Jim?
Me: Umm ... ok.

I think he might of been joking. I hope he was joking.

2004-02-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

I occasionally photograph basketball games for the school paper. This means sitting right along the endline of the court (well, actually, set back a few feet for the safety of myself, the players and the referees). It also often means that I'm sitting right in front of the band. And let me say unequivocally that, no matter how catchy the original performance may sound, Outkast's "Hey Ya!" was not meant to be played by a marching band. Particularly not one located ten feet behind you.

2004-02-09T09:15:00.000-05:00

Well, this story just keeps getting more and more interesting ...

Kevin Drum has uncovered the full (i.e., not torn) document listing George W. Bush's military service in 1972-73. The document shows that Bush, in fact, did not actually show up for his Air National Guard training. As a result, he was transferred to the Army Reserve Force, where he could have theoretically been called up to actually serve in Vietnam. He continued to accumulate service points while in the Army Reserve Force, though it's not yet clear for what.

2004-02-05T21:48:00.000-05:00

Helluva day for Georgetown alums doing time for the Bush administration ...

Manuel Miranda (SFS '82, 6 or so years after Tenet, I believe) is being forced to resign (very much against his will, the article seems to think) from his position on the Majority Leader's staff. Oddly enough, Miranda is being forced to resign by Orrin Hatch, his former boss while he worked for the Judiciary Committee, not his current boss. While there, Miranda was apparently involved in a break-in to the servers of Democratic staff members in order to get an understanding of their plans to filibuster the nominations of the more extreme individuals that George W. Bush had nominated for the federal bench. It hardly seems that Miranda was the only person involved in the break-in - judging by the spread of the memos, he clearly passed them along to other people, at the very least, who must have then known of the plot.

Note #1: One of Miranda's defenses was that "there is no such thing as a property right to a federal document." Uh, in that case, I'm sure he'd be happy to provide us with the papers that Miguel Estrada had written ... and his own strategies for dealing with the filibuster, for that matter. Makes sense, no?

Note #2: Miranda has been a continual thorn in the side of the university since he graduated (some people don't understand that - unless you're entering academia - you leave when you're done). Besides formerly serving as the President of the Cardinal Newman Society, which argues that Catholic universities should become more Catholicized, at all costs (not being Catholic, this is one of those things that I think should be entirely left up university administrators and students, not to outsiders). Miranda has also been involved with The Georgetown Academy a hyper-conservative newspaper usually filled with insults and screeds against various students and faculty deemed too left-wing (or in other words, anywhere to the left of Pat Buchanan). Fun guy, eh?

2004-02-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

OK, so I just got back from the Tenet speech, which was apparently his first public defense of the pre-war intelligence and first speech in months. He ranged over a number of topics, which can be summarized in the following:

1. No imminent threat The CIA estimate of Iraq's WMD capabilities in late 2002 found that Iraq was trying to build a number of different WMD programs and had various capabilities, but was not an imminent threat to the United States. (Spinsanity has some background on the 'imminent threat' rhetoric)

2. Analysis of intelligence Tenet said "Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days. But these times demand it, because the alternative -- politicized, haphazard evaluation without the benefit of time and facts -- may well result in an intelligence community that is damaged and a country that is more at risk."

3. The Iraq Survey Group Despite the assertions of David Kay and others, the ISG is nowhere near '85%' complete, Tenet said, and is far from complete. It still has much work to do in all parts of Iraq. Moreover, it has run into systematic attempts to inhibit its work, both through intimidation and the organized destruction of files and other information during the immediate aftermath of the war and thereafter. As a result, Tenet was insistent that any information he gave today was provisional and subject to future revision as more information becomes available - and insisted that this would be made available to the American people.

4. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Iraq has been found in recent months to have had various unmanned aerial vehicles - probably, though not certainly, for the dispersal of biological and chemical weapons - that could have been used regionally, or, if launched close enough, used to attack the United States. Iraq did admit to parts of this program - in violation of UN sanctions - in the run up to the war.

5. Nuclear Weapons No one thought that Iraq had any nuclear capability during the war, but would have been able to build a bomb within 12-24 months if it could acquire fissile material, it was thought during the run up to the war. This now appears to have vastly overestimated the capability - it probably would've been a few years.

6. Biological Weapons We thought that they were building dual use facilities - which could be used for civilian production or converted to illicit use - but did not have much success in actual production yet. We haven't yet really found much.

7. Chemical Weapons We thought that they were building dual use facilities and may have had relatively small stocks. We haven't yet really found much yet, but we believe that they probably didn't have the stocks we thought they did.

8. The Chem/Bio mobile production trailers We thought they were to be used for mobile production of various weapons in violation of UN sanctions. We're not sure whether they were intended for that or for hydrogen production - they don't appear to have been ideally suited for either one.

9. CIA productivity Tenet argued that the CIA knew what was going on in Libya, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere. This may or may not be true - I really have no idea how accurate it is - but it seems pretty clear from elsewhere in the speech that the CIA gets a lot of information and has to often balance contradicting info. Thus, it may be technically correct to say that it had accurate information about various threats - though it probably also had other information that has been subsequently been proven wrong. If we do have things right more often, it raises the question of why we're apparenlty not doing more - we've dealt with Libya, but seem to have no footing in dealing with Iran or North Korea right now.

10. The CIA and the rest of the intelligence community Tenet, when asked about the effect of the Office of Special Programs (Doug Feith's domain) in the Pentagon in its effect on the politicization of intelligence on Iraq. Tenet replied that he did his job at the CIA, and that the President worked off of the objective view and information of the CIA alone. The former is a valid point - Tenet had little control over OSP. As far as the latter, well, fat chance.

11. The independent WMD commission Tenet said that he welcomed the establishment of a commission to investigate WMD claims and the chance to explain the actions of the CIA in drawing up its estimates.

12. Human intelligence Tenet suggested that we did not have the human intelligence in Iraq that we would have liked to have had, but our human intelligence elsewhere is much better, and we were able to rely on the intelligence sources of our allies in Iraq.

Analysis ...

I think Tenet seems to have overestimated the importance of the CIA in the intelligence process and underestimated the role of Defense and other groups in setting the President's mindset on Iraq. That said, I think he wants to fiercely defend the CIA's independence and commitment to objectivity - when he uttered the words "politicized, haphazard evaluation," he practically spat them out. Tenet seemst to be confident in his ability to prevent the politicization of the CIA but simultaneously seems unconcerned about the politicization of the rest of the intelligence community. He was quite insistent that the CIA would make further information that it finds out about Iraq available as found out "no matter what," rather than this information being politically controlled.

It seems that both the left and right on the political spectrum will find something to be pleased about with this speech. Opponents of the war will clearly be pleased by the disclosure that the CIA did not see Iraq as an imminent threat. On the other hand, supporters of the war will look at the list of intelligence as far as Iraq's repeated violations of UN sanctions on missiles and UAVs and the possible future threats from eventual WMD production as justification for the war.

The news outlets ...

CNN's current story is mostly just a few quotes from the speech and some stuff excerpted from the preview earlier.

MSNBC currently has an AP story up that emphasizes Tenet's point-by-point estimates, and the fact that Tenet said that the CIA never saw Iraq as an imminent threat.

The WaPo has a partial transcript here.

The New York Times has an early article up here.

2004-02-04T22:15:00.000-05:00

CIA Chief George Tenet is set to speak at Georgetown University tomorrow to 'correct misperceptions' about the CIA and its intel on Iraq. Now, I think I should have a ticket (long story). Anyhow, Georgetown usually makes sure that its speakers have to answer questions from the audience (they have made exceptions once in a while in the past, though the only one that I can remember was Bill Clinton during the speech in which he announced he was postponing certain work on the Missile Shield). Any suggestions as to any questions that I should ask if I were to get a chance? Thanks.

UPDATE: I got stuck in the balcony and didn't get a chance to line up for the only microphone in the room. In any case, someone asked the question, more or less, about the Pentagon reinterpretation of the case for war in Iraq, that I wanted to get at, and Tenet essentially brushed it off, saying he did his job and others did theirs.

2004-02-03T15:21:00.000-05:00

I'm getting really sick of people releasing the exit poll data early. Besides the fact that this can distort the democratic process by causing some voters - though probably not a huge amount now - to just follow the herd rather than voting their preferences, the early release takes the fun out of waiting for the results to roll in at night.