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One of the things that has bothered me, since at least the first presidential debate of this campaign, is Obama’s outright Orwellian use of the term “tax cut”. The Wall Street Journal now debunks the illusion:

It’s a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he’s also proposing one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle, especially since more than a third of all Americans already pay no income taxes at all? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of “tax cut.”

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase “tax credit.” Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

• A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to “make work pay” that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.
• A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.
• A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).
• A “savings” tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.
• An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.
• A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.
• A “clean car” tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

The word “socialist” has, since the fall of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, lost its force as a political charge. People don’t feel threatened by “socialism” the way they did by “fascism”. That is simply too sanguine.

I don’t doubt that most voters will read through that list of what counts as “tax credits” and say to themselves, “I fit in there, I’m a good person, and by golly, in this economy, I can use all the help I can get.” But ask yourselves, “Where is this money coming from?”

I myself have been the recipient of unemployment benefits, and though I enjoyed not having to work for a while and getting money nonetheless, I always felt guilty about it. Not enough to get a job until the money flow ran dry; and that is the point. When there is “free” money, people become lazy. Further, the money Obama is promising to “95% of tax payers” is not “free”; it is gotten by increasing taxes on “the wealthy”.

Put in other words, this is nothing more than a blatant attempt to use government forcefully to redistribute wealth. It might not seem forceful right now because it does not happen at the tip of a gun, but rest assured that that is exactly what it is: coerced charity.

One reason why “socialism” has never gotten the same bad rap that “fascism” had is that people feel warm when they think about the purported intentions of socialists, which is to better the lives of the everyman. How callous must one seem who argues against providing for the everyman!

But that assumes that government is the only instrument by which we can take care of the less fortunate. To be sure, government often has incomparable scale, such that it can theoretically purchase for less due to greater bulk (but those who have supplied government contracts know that this is more the exception than the norm), and provide the logistical support to boot (although that didn’t seem to work real well during Katrina). Nevertheless, government, particularly a distant federal government of a nation that covers a third of a continent and a third of a billion people, has a tendency to lose touch. Further, to inure itself against lawsuits and charges of unfairness (in essence, to cover its own ass), it requires much more bureaucracy and red tape that eventually begins to undermine the gains from its scale. With such remove, is it any wonder that government often ends up helping opportunists and rejecting those in real need of help?

Contrast this with private charities. A private charity may not have the same scale as government (except perhaps for the Roman Catholic Church). However, private charities tend to be more involved in the lives of those getting their help; this is particularly true of religious charities, because of the motivation to win converts, whether through direct proselytization or through serving as values models. Further, private charities must always work to raise money, and a primary form of persuasive argument is demonstrating the good work that they have done.

Government, on the other hand, need never raise money, as it can levy taxes directly (with the implied support of “lawful use of force”), or indirectly by siphoning funds from a general account. In addition, all that is necessary in order for government to commit itself to such action is enough votes in the legislature, or the action of the executive, all of which requires, essentially, a simple majority of votes of the voting public–and yet, once 50%+1 of votes are cast in favor of action, government suddenly has access to the funds raised from 100% of the taxpaying public, not all of whom are eligible voters.

Charity is best which comes from the heart, and worthless which is imposed by government with the implied threat of violent force. In modern America, a compromise has been found by providing loopholes in the tax code that provide incentive to the rich to give. Although resultant giving may be less altruistic, nevertheless it gives “the rich” a choice, so that in some sense that charity still can be said to come from heart.

When Obama promises to pay for these “refundable tax credits”, he increases the number of those who end up paying no taxes, he rewards others who have no income, he stratifies income bands (thus reducing income and social mobility), and he does it all by punishing those who best have means to leave this country and its tax burdens. Look beyond the stated intentions, and you will see that such socialist economics will do nothing but impoverish this country. Can we really afford that in this economy? Is it any answer to claim that because Obama did not cause this state of the economy, he is therefore the antidote?

I think not.

(Cross-posted from Between Worlds)

Over a course of two weeks at the end of May and the beginning of June, I had the good fortune to take a class on international trade, focusing on China and the WTO, in Beijing. Naturally, I brought back many pictures, and I’ve written the trip, as reflected in the pictures, in nine parts at my blog. Not all of my reactions and reflections about China are expressed in the write ups, because there was just so much. Still, if you’re interested in what I do have up, please visit:

1. UIBE
2. Beijing in General
3. Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City
4. The Great Wall
5. Clubbing
6. Food
7. Farewell Banquet
8. Hanging Out
9. Post Script

Enjoy!

Aristophanes penned Lysistrata during the Peloponnesian War, about Greek women who manage to stop the war by withholding sex from their soldier-husbands. In a way, this is what Western women have been doing in the second half of the 20th Century. By leaving the home to work, they have made their sexual favors more dear. By earning their own wages, they have unchained themselves from supplicating reliance on the menfolk. We in the West have had a long time to get used to this transformation, and for the most part we are better off for it. I don’t have the data, but I suspect that societies where women make up more than one third of wage earners have seldom if ever gone to war against each other.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend past, a First Amendment Symposium was held at Loyola Law School in honor of esteemed alumnus Steven Shiffrin. It was attended by eminent constitutional law scholars, including Erwin Chemerinsky, Kurt Lash, and Eugene Volokh. The topic was commercial speech, particularly in the context of Kasky v. Nike, Inc., 27 Ca. 4th 939 (2002). I’ve broken down just a hint of the arguments that each of the distinguished speakers made.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rageh Omaar of the BBC takes a trip to Tehran to discover what the lives of ordinary Iranians is like.

It is a timely reminder that Iran is the home of an old and proud civilization, that just happens now, like the People’s Republic of China, to be caught up in a form of government that is behind the people’s capacity and taste for modernity and sophistication. Take the time to watch this, and to learn more about a remarkable people.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Senator Obama states that the more than 3000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq were “wasted”.

NBC Nightly News reports that the soldiers beg to differ.

Those who have seen Jarhead know that what’s reported from the front might not always be what the soldiers really think. The insinuation in that movie is that any time you see positive, upbeat videos of American soldiers in the front lines, it’s been carefully censored by the Pentagon, or if not, the front line commanders have exerted much pressure on the soldiers not to complain. (Along that line of thought seems to be the implied message that complaining, a trait commonly thought of as “unmanly”, is preferable to “manly” stoicism. Would that mean that having an “unmanly” armed forces is what those who think along those lines really want?)

Is Senator Obama right? After all, he’s a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Moreover, he was president of the Harvard Law Review. In other words, he’s about as educated as a man can be. Surely his education has enlightened him in a way that no mere grunt in the sands of Mesopotamia could possibly understand. After all, as Senator Kerry once sagely remarked: “You know, education–if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

I’m sure all those chicken hawk neocons are completely out of line to believe the self-congratulatory propaganda of the American military-industrial complex (run by none other than Vice President Cheney through his vise grip on all things Halliburton) could possibly be worth any more than the enlightened dismissal of the doyens of our brilliant, public-spirited intellectuals, whose Ivy League education places them leaps and bounds above the mean existence of mere mortals.

Yes, that was a bit arch and snide. I actually don’t necessarily believe that Senator Obama is a preening elitist. (For all I know he’s just a regular elitist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The point is, I’m afraid there are people out there who probably do buy into that world view. If you see one that effuses about how magnificent this or that current darling of the media is, smile and politely remind him (or her!) to take everything with a grain of salt, including the advice of those who would tell them to take only one side’s story (such as those of the soldiers) with a helping of a salt lick.

By the way, Matteo found some interesting commentary about the rhetorical parlor game against so-called “chicken hawks” (quoting Ace of Spades HQ):

Exit question: Since Arkin asserts that the troops should not be allowed to influence the public’s opinion on the war, and since the entire left demands that anyone supporting the war become a troop himself — has the left pretty much created a Catch-22 by which any and all support for the war is illegitimate?

Campaign ’08 is well and truly under way!

(Hat-tip: Instapundit)

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Engram has compiled some data on the after-tax income levels of American taxpayers, comparing them from the last three years of the Clinton Administration and the first three years of the Bush Administration. The raw data seems to suggest that the top 20% of taxpayers kept more money after taxes under Clinton than they did under Bush. This would refute the common canard that the Bush tax cuts only benefitted that amorphous class referred to as “the rich”.

There is more to the facts than Engram presents; but there’s always more to it than meets the eye. One salient factor lost among all the talk of class struggle is the very real question of socioeconomic mobility. The membership of the top 20% isn’t always the same; neither is the membership of the bottom 20%. As we approach the margins, of course, the membership tends to solidify; but even so, such economic classes are far less unchanging, and far more fluid, in the United States than in most other places.

Although it’s pretty easy to pay lip service to class warfare, my gut instinct is that American voters intuitively understand this fluidity. Our general national aspiration toward “moving up and out” saves us from the worst parts of Marxist struggle.

Be sure to read the article for the charts, and the interesting notes in the comments. By the way, Engram is a registered Democrat.

(via Instapundit)

We’re covering freedom of speech now in Constitutional Law, and I found a couple of quotes that are particularly stirring, especially in light of the following column from Lenoard Pitt:

In 1989, photographer Andres Serrano exhibited a photo he called “Piss Christ,” depicting a crucifix submerged in urine. It raised a furor and was condemned on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Nobody was killed.

In 1999, artist Chris Ofili exhibited a painting he called “The Holy Virgin Mary,” in which the mother of Jesus has an exposed breast made of elephant dung. It drew a rebuke from the mayor of New York and crowds of protesters.

Nobody was injured.

Last year, a Danish newspaper printed political cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, one showing him with a bomb in his turban. There were weeks of rioting across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. At least one person died in Somalia, five in Afghanistan, a hundred in Nigeria. An untold number of people were injured. Property damage was in the millions.

You may think the point of the foregoing parallel is that Christians react more maturely to provocation than Muslims. You would be mistaken. After all, Muslims in America, surely as offended by the cartoons of the prophet as Muslims anywhere else, did not riot or kill. Their protests were confined to statements of anger and letters to editors.

No, the point has less to do with religion than with culture. As in, some cultures value freedom of expression more than others. Some realize the person who is not free to speak his or her mind is not truly free at all.

And some know courage is the price of that freedom.

And to salute that, I quote the following from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissent in Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925):

Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker�s enthusiasm for the result. Eloquence may set fire to reason.

And the following is from Justice Louis Brandeis’ concurrence in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927):

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Islam right now is going through major growing pains, exacerbated by the difficulties of coping with modernity. As such, it is experiencing the same doubt that Americans must have felt when confronted with the Russian Revolution of 1919, and the subsequent Bolshevik triumph over Tsarist loyalists in the 1920s. Islam and its adherents feel beset on all sides, and is in very real danger of falling for the human temptation to silence critics rather than rebut the critics’ claims. If Allah smiles on the umma, courage rather than cowardice will have the last say in this generational struggle for civilizational identity.

It is also a reminder, to those of us in the West that have come through, not only to continue to support the courageous members of the umma, but also not to give in to our own darker temptations. Gitlow and Whitney were decided less than a century ago (although to Americans that is a long time), and the freedom of speech is still a litigated field. Let us not betray the hopes of Justices Holmes and Brandeis.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Apparently, the long-time dictator of Cuba was struck from behind:

Zidane Vs. Fidel Castro – video powered by Metacafe

A great take on James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”:

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

When I applied to college in the fall of 1992, I did it not because I had any groundbreaking aspirations, but because, quite simply, it was the next thing to do. Having attended a school whose sole point was to prepare students for college, and growing up as the son of intellectuals (both my parents have Masters degrees), one of whom is from a family of teachers, education was seen as an end, not a means. So, it was off to college, and all that college stood for.

Even then, though, I found myself nauseated by the attitudes of the poltical correctness activists. While the opinions voiced by students came in all types (albeit with an undeniably “liberal” slant), the loudest voices were those of the hypocrites. These were the people who stole, and sometimes burned, all the copies of the Daily Californian that they could find whenever the student-run (but not university financed) paper took a position contrary to what the leading lights of the Progressive movement deemed acceptable. One such excuse was the publication of a full-page ad denouncing Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The denunciation had to be in the form of an ad, paid for out of a private person’s pocket, because the paper was officially impartial. The paper defended the decision to allow publication of the ad as a purely business decision; that wasn’t good enough for the activists, who even torched one of the distribution stands.

Even worse was when the power got to the heads of the student activists. In the spring of 1995, during the campaign season leading up to the student senate elections, the Daily Californian was again targeted, with copies stolen and distribution stands defaced, when the paper endorsed a candidate for a major position in the student government. At the time, the two major student political coalitions were, loosely speaking, the Progressive activists, and the non-aligned coalition, which included among its constituent groups engineers and, worse, conservatives.

It was easy for me, as a science major, to get by without much of an attempt at indoctrination by the faculty. Perhaps, also, I was lucky to have gotten in at a time when the forced indoctrination hadn’t yet gotten to a fever pitch. To be sure, there were a lot of bullshit classes on offer, taught by what one suspects are almost-failed academics. But for the most part, there was little indoctrination.

As Penn and Teller describe, however, that’s no longer the case, at least in liberal arts curricula:

Mad Minerva says it better than I can:

If you’re a novice about the campus cult of diversity and political correctness, you will find this interesting indeed. As for me, this is the sort of thing I live with! Notice also one statement that shows up in the video: the idea that if Person A is offended by Person B’s words, then the campus should make Person B shut up. Here’s the core of the First Amendment battles on campus: if you have free speech, sooner or later somebody will get offended. But that’s part of free speech. You have a right to free speech, not a right to never be offended.

And, of course, as I like to point out to people, without free speech it’s much harder to tell who the idiots are.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. What they don’t tell us, and what an intelligent consumer of information should know, is that the existence of a picture is no guarantee of the veracity of the thousand words it may be worth. Sometimes, as in the works of Salvador Dali, the thousand words serve merely to describe the picture; certainly “The Persistence of Time Memory [Thanks, Lex; the watchfaces always throw me off]” is not meant to be a faithful representation of the world as it is.

But what happens when the news media, which proclaim themselves the final arbiters of impartial truth, buy into staged or exaggerated productions? A picture of a corpse on the ground, for example, tells you nothing about how the death occurred, or when, or wherefore. A still image can be useful in capturing a moment, but that moment must not be taken out of its context. Indeed, Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty dictates that we may know an object’s momentum or its exact location at any given moment in time, but not both.

Michael Costello applies this principle to the news media:

THE most powerful influences on global opinion are television pictures. An experienced TV journalist will tell you that the picture is the story. No picture, no story. Those same journalists will tell you that a powerful picture will overwhelm reality. The picture becomes reality.

After considering the current conflict in its proper context, that of Israel’s struggle for recognition and existence, Mr. Costello notes:

This is the true heart of the problem. The Palestinian issue cannot be resolved because a significant part of the Arab and Muslim world still do not accept Israel’s right to exist. They will not accept the two-state solution beloved of analysts because they do not accept the existence of one of those two states, Israel. This is just not a matter of politics to them; it is a matter of religion. It is non-negotiable.

Until this changes, Israel will remain as it has for 60 years: under siege. Those who seek Israel’s elimination will engage in conflict and terrorism against Israel and its friends.

So what are we to conclude? That Israel is just too much trouble? That it causes all of us too much grief? That in defending itself against these implacable enemies Israel offends our sensibilities by the manner in which it feels compelled to use force?

Already there are growing whispers from the so-called realist school of international relations that it would be a really smart thing if we just quietly walked away from Israel because it has become an embarrassment and inconvenience to our larger interests. Such is the consequence of privileging the power of the TV image over reason.

I wonder if he had this piece by Charles Krauthammer in mind:

The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel’s ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert’s own complaint that “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep at all last night” (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.

His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America’s confidence in Israel as well. That confidence — and the relationship it reinforces — is as important to Israel’s survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.

Faith, Charles, and courage!

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

For generations, fantasy literature had been thought of as a not-very-worthy genre. Lumped together with that, perhaps, are science fiction and superhero comics. However, all three have hit the big screens with astounding success in recent years. Fjordman has some ideas as to why that is:

Maybe I�m reading too much into it, but is the sudden reappearance of superheroes exemplified by Superman, Spider-Man and swarms of other similar characters a sign of a renewed sense of vulnerability and insecurity in the West following the Jihad attacks of 9/11? Another closely related meta-trend is the renewed popularity of fantasy literature. In online magazine The American Thinker, blogger Bookworm has some interesting comments to the surge in fantasy literature and some of the values we are presented there. J.K. Rowling�s enormously successful books about teenage wizard Harry Potter have been belittled as merely �silly books for children.� But as Bookworm notes, some of the later books such as Order of the Phoenix are much darker than its predecessors. It �centers on Harry�s desperate efforts to convince the Powers That Be that evil once again walks among them. Only with tremendous effort is he able to rally some believers to his side and prepare them for war.� Sounds familiar, doesn�t it?

Indeed it does! Fjordman also takes a shot at academics for their relativistic attitudes, by postulating how they might have psychoanalyzed the fantasy world:

In this age of Multiculturalism and cultural relativism, the only places we can identify evil and fight it are in fictional worlds, be that the Middle Earth of Tolkien or the Hogwarts of J.K. Rowling. Maybe that is why it is such a relief to visit them, if only for a few hours. In the real West, our Universities would advise us to negotiate with Sauron and identify his legitimate grievances. Our media would say that the real reason why the Orcs kill people is because they suffer from institutionalized racism and Orcophobia. We would all get sensitivity training, invite Orcs to settle in our major cities by the millions and teach our children about the richness of Orc culture.

Isn’t it our educated betters that first pooh-poohed the genre? Fortunately, all is not lost. After all, both J.R.R. Tolkien, and his colleague and compatriot C.S. Lewis, were academics themselves. Proof, perhaps, that in a world with many fake knock-offs and mediocre wannabes, there can still be found brilliant diamonds in the rough.

(Hat-tip: Mad Minerva)

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

I’ve stated before that I’m not adverse to use of massive force:

I think reasonable people can disagree as to whether the Israeli response is “disproportionate”. I myself have no qualms about destroying an enemy’s infrastructure if civilian deaths can be kept to a minimum and the payoff in psychological damage to the enemy is great enough (think about General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea).

I went a little deeper into this in response recently to a comment from someone:

I don’t want to sound like a “make love not war” type of guy, but come on, dropping bombs with that might … is a bit of an “over kill” literally �. It�s like a little kid goes to a football player (Defense) and kicks him in the knee, which makes the football player rip him apart

My response:

Without supporting or protesting any specific Israeli tactics, I would pose the following question: What does it take to win? In your analogy, the stakes aren’t very high; probably a bruised ego at best. But in the actual war between Israel and Hezbollah, the stakes are the very survival of Israel. Sure, Hezbollah does not currently have the wherewithal to wipe Israel off the map, as long as there’s a little more than token resistance on the part of Israel. But asking Israel to do no more than that is essentially to say to Israel to grab her ankles.

Personally I’m in favor of General Sherman’s idea of total war: Destroy the infrastructure. I grant that General Sherman’s methods may not entirely apply here, because unlike the Union occupation of the South after the American Civil War, Israel’s not likely to occupy even just southern Lebanon after the conflict, with an eye toward annexation.

So, back to the question: What does it take to win? Israel has nuclear weapons. If all it wanted was to be rid of Hezbollah, why not just nuke the frontier areas? Goodbye south Lebanon, goodbye Gaza. But the international relations repercussions of such an activity, to say nothing of the moral repercussions, argue against such a tactic.

Thus I think I have established that merely putting up token resistance, or nuking Hezbollah, are extreme solutions that are non-starters. What does it take to win?

The kind of power politics we’re used to seeing, which has developed over the Cold War era, is that the international system does not want any party to a conflict to win outright. While it’s easy for remote adversaries to come to a ceasefire agreement (North Korea/United States), or even to declare a winner (United States > North Vietnam, United Kingdom > Argentina, etc.), it is far more difficult for neighbors to live with the sense that one side or another has “won” (Iraq v. Iran, Iraq v. Kuwait, Somalia v. Somalia, Ethiopia v. Eritrea), much less a convincing victory (Israel > Egypt + Jordan + Iraq + Syria + Saudi Arabia). More times than often, one neighbor complete absorbs the other (North Vietnam > South Vietnam). In fact, outside of the Americas and most of Europe, neighbors often exist alongside each other with some unease (North Korea v. South Korea, Japan v. North Korea + South Korea + China, Vietnam v. China, China v. India, Cambodia v. Vietnam, Indonesia v. East Timor, India v. Pakistan, Iran v. Iraq, Serbia v. Croatia, to list just a few outside the Middle East).

In fact, the international system as it currently exists tends to support the underdog blindly. In some case, this may be good, if the underdog was attacked (Bosnia, Kuwait, and Egypt in 1956); in others, it’s probably not good, if the underdog is the aggressor (the occasional incursions by Pakistan). The only exception to this rule is that when Israel is the underdog but not the aggressor, it is not supported (1967, 1973).

A system which applies pressure for war to cease before a workable peace is possible merely buys time for the side that was about to lose. This is not to say whether that’s good or bad, but at least in the case of post-1967 Israel, we’re not talking any longer about states rubbing up against each other, jostling for land and/or resources. No, we’re talking now about an enemy that intends for the complete and irrevocable eradication, not only of the Jewish state, but of any Jewish blood in the Middle East. Against that backdrop, a system that does not allow one side or the other to win is actually a way to lengthen the conflict, not to ameliorate it.

We go to great lengths to say that we want the war to stop because innocents are getting killed. But what we end up doing is forcing the parties to refight the same war every few years. When you add it up, the civilian casualties turn out greater than if we were to let the parties have a free-for-all, last man standing.

If you don’t mind keeping the conflict simmering, then Israel is “overreacting”. But keep in mind that essentially what you’re supporting in this conflict by limiting Israeli options is the continued existence of Hezbollah.

If you want a real end, let Israel do what it must, and punish it later for its excesses.

I’m sure some of the dates can be cleaned up, but overall I think this is a pretty good representation of the current international system, which is in fact a rather “reactionary” one, a truly “conservative” system.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Los Angeles is not famous for its skyline, even though it is recognizable, at least to locals. The nightlife downtown also leaves a little to be desired. Still, there are a couple of cool places, including the BonaVista Lounge, a rotating lounge on the 34th floor of the Westin Bonaventure, hemmed in by 4th Street on the north, Flower Street on the east, 5th Street on the south, and Figueroa Street on the west. The Lounge has a meager offering of cocktails, unfortunately, but you really can’t beat the view:

Both pictures were taken with a time exposure of 10 seconds to take in the night light. The first was taken with the camera resting along a part of the floor that was not revolving. The second was taken with the camera resting on our table, which moved along with us and the floor.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

In a performance on Broadway a few years ago, Robin Williams riffed on French impotence by doing an impression of a suffocatingly snobbish Frenchman deriding all things American. In the middle of this imaginary Frenchman’s tirade, his head snaps around, and he declares, “The Germans are here!” Whereupon this realization, he faces the audience again, stretches out his arms, and says, “We love Americans! Welcome Americans!” Now, Robin Williams is not a fan of George W. Bush by any stretch of the imagination; but that bit always tickled me for the excellent way in which it shows the double standards of a power so seemingly impotent.

In a similar vein, Ray D. of Davids Medienkritik has this to say about the German magazine Spiegel Online:

According to SPIEGEL, Americans are warmongers, mercenaries, cowboys, Rambos, religious nuts and conceited bungling occupiers who have created a catastrophe-disaster-debacle-quagmire-civil war in the Middle East. And now the same online magazine wants us to believe that the current crisis in the region “calls for US leadership”!? Does that make sense to anyone else? Could it be that the United States really is a positive force in the world and not the summation of vile stereotypes and chronic biases displayed on German newsstands?

And never mind that Europe can do little about the crisis other than look on in bumbling impotence. This is all America’s fault, because Bush is not being decisive enough and has allegedly tied his nation down in Iraq. Mascolo quotes Time magazine’s assertion that America is too weak to act because it has “bled itself white in Iraq.” Bled itself white with fewer US deaths in Iraq than on 9/11 alone? Bled itself white with dozens or even hundreds of times fewer casualties than in previous wars? As an historic reminder to Mr. Mascolo, the United States suffered 81,000 casualties and 19,000 combat deaths in the Battle of the Bulge alone, and the nation was certainly not too weak to finish the task of occupying Germany.

I’m not so naive as to think that all Germans necessarily feel this way. Specifically, though, I find Spiegel Online to be like the child who declares his parents unfair and unjust for disapproving of his rebelliousness, but then turns around and demands a raise in the allowance so he can carry on with that very rebellion.

Hopefully Spiegel Online doesn’t speak for all Germans. I suspect they represent Germans about as well as, say, Newsweek or Time represent all Americans. But certainly, by the very inconsistency of their protestations, they cannot be taken seriously. It would be like saying that the editors at Vanity Fair ought to be given run of the United States.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Jacques Chirac is not usually in an enviable position, and, at least to many Americans, his comments often come off the wrong way. Still, I find his remarks on the Israeli raid on Lebanon to be absolutely tone deaf:

President Jacques Chirac said Friday that Israel’s military offensive against Lebanon is “totally disproportionate” and asked whether destroying Lebanon was not the ultimate goal.

However, he also said that rockets fired on Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas are “inadmissible, unacceptable and irresponsible.” Chirac implicitly suggested that Syria and Iran might be playing a role in the expanding crisis in the Middle East which, along with the Iranian nuclear issue, creates “a truly dangerous situation in which we must be very, very careful.” (AP)

First of all, news that’s hot off the wire can sometimes be wrong or provocative and inflammatory. Certainly there was no shortage of anti-Bush bias during the 2004 elections. Still, the subtext of what President Chirac is saying is quite disturbing.

I think reasonable people can disagree as to whether the Israeli response is “disproportionate”. I myself have no qualms about destroying an enemy’s infrastructure if civilian deaths can be kept to a minimum and the payoff in psychological damage to the enemy is great enough (think about General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea).

President Chirac’s snide suggestion is that Israel is trying to destroy Lebanon, when it is in fact Hezbollah that wants not only to destroy Israel, but to wipe it completely off the map. Such an insinuation is insulting at best. Fortunately, unlike Third World professional victims, Israel doesn’t whine about its hurt feelings. Israel, for all its flaws, is strong and confident. Perhaps that’s what infuriates President Chirac so.

Moreover, Lebanon has been of Gallic interest for the better part of a millennium. The Levantine kingdoms of the Crusades were, after all, French, and the French have resented any non-French outside influence in Lebanon, including that of Syria. Would that the French would also be more forthright about the Iranian influence; but I suppose asking France to stand up to a real power that might just strike back is asking too much.

(Hat-tip: Israellycool)

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Congressman William Jefferson’s contention, that all materials in his office are immune from searches and seizures, has been struck down by Federal District Judge Thomas F. Hogan as an improper interpretation of the Speeches and Debates Clause (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 6). (Judge Hogan’s opinion is here in PDF format.) The Conclusion follows:

The facts and questions of law presented here are indeed unprecedented. It is well-established, however, that a Member of Congress is generally bound to the operation of the criminal laws as are ordinary persons. The Speech or Debate Clause does not �make Members of Congress super-citizens, immune from criminal responsibility.� Brewster, 408 U.S. at 516. Members of Congress are not �exempt[] . . . from liability or process in criminal cases.� Gravel, 408 U.S. at 626.

The existing broad protections of the Speech or Debate Clause � absolute immunity from prosecution or suit for legislative acts and freedom from being �questioned� about those acts (including privilege from the testimonial act of producing documents in response to a subpoena) � satisfy the fundamental purpose of the Clause to protect the independence of the legislature. The Court declines to extend those protections further, holding that the Speech or Debate Clause does not shield Members of Congress from the execution of valid search warrants. Congressman Jefferson�s interpretation of the Speech or Debate privilege would have the effect of converting every congressional office into a taxpayer-subsidized sanctuary for crime. Such a result is not supported by the Constitution or judicial precedent and will not be adopted here. See Williamson v. United States, 28 S. Ct. at 167 (�[T]he laws of this country allow no place or employment as a sanctuary for crime.�) (quotation omitted).

For the foregoing reasons, the Court has found that the search executed on Congressman Jefferson�s congressional office was constitutional, as it did not trigger the Speech or Debate Clause privilege, did not offend the principle of the separation of powers, and was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, the Court will deny the motion for return of property. An appropriate order will accompany this Memorandum Opinion.

This seems to bear out what I had written:

It seems to me that Jefferson’s Complaint claims not so much that he is protected by the privilege from Arrest than that his office is immune to searches and seizures because searches and seizures should be interpreted as questioning him about his legislative operations.

…

My guess is that no judge will grant absolute immunity of the sort Jefferson seems to be looking for. I also don’t think any judge will lay down an exact rule as to how a search may be conducted. If anything, the court would probably issue a guideline or a balancing test to help future judges decide whether or not appropriate precautions have been and will be taken before signing off on a warrant.

Judge Hogan’s conclusion seems reasonable, and consistent with what I know of Constitutional Law. If appealed, I highly doubt his ruling will be overturned. At most, it may be remanded for further consideration, if a higher court does formulate a newer guideline.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Thanks to a discussion from another post, I thought I’d share a picture from my friend’s wedding to demonstrate what a Canon Powershot S70 can do in low-light:

Amid news about the recovery of the corpses of two American soldiers, and that the soldiers may have been tortured before decapitation, I’ve seen a troubling pattern here on the home front. People seem to be going beyond blaming President Bush personally for the deaths of the two soldiers; now, with none other than Andrew Sullivan leading the charge, critics of the President are claiming that the torture of hostages by terrorists is somehow morally equivalent to the torture of enemy combatants by U.S. personnel:

Some people wonder why I remain so concerned about torture, and the surrender of our moral standing with respect to this unmitigated evil. Maybe the news of captured, tortured and murdered Americans will jog their conscience. Or maybe it will simply reinforce the logic of torture-reciprocity endorsed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales.

While I share Andrew’s concern about the use of torture, I must disagree with his faulty logic that Islamoterrorists torture because we torture, in some hocus pocus, smoke-and-mirrors “cycle of violence” that is so much en vogue among many members of the Left. Even a passing glance at the video messages from terrorists, such as the late and unlamented Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, will show that fighting Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, basing troops in Saudi Arabia, enacting sanctions against Saddam Hussein, invading Afghanistan, are all nothing more than raisons du jour for the terrorists. Their aim is nothing more than the complete takeover of the world by their extremist version of the already-intolerant Wahabbi sect of Islam. Pay attention, and you’ll see calls by Osama bin Laden for the reconquest of al-Andalus, and calls by Zarqawi for the extermination of Shiites whom he sees as apostates, and therefore far more deserving of hell than even “infidels and crusaders”. No, Andrew, the torture of non-Muslim hostages predates even the Iraq War. But I guess that would throw off the “everything is Bush’s fault” tint to your world view.

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