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Since people with no official business before the court -- and therefore nothing to gain -- are the only ones from whom he can accept gifts, here's proof that Clarence Thomas is our most loved robed master.
David Frum, in today's issue of National Review:
No issue, not one, threatens to do more damage to the Republican coalition than immigration. There's no issue where the beliefs and interests of the party rank-and-file diverge more radically from the beliefs and interests of the party's leaders. Immigration for Republicans in 2005 is what crime was for Democrats in 1965 or abortion in 1975: a vulnerable point at which a strong-minded opponent could drive a wedge that would shatter the GOP.
The president's insistence on de facto amnesty for illegals isn't helping, either. Inexplicably, Mr. Bush does not appear to understand that his proposal will push the GOP into civil war, with business interests pitted against everyone else.
The GOP is a party dedicated to national security, conservative social values, and free-market economics. The president's policy on immigration risks making it look instead like an employers' lobby group. That's the weak point at which the edge of the wedge could enter--and some smart Democratic politician is sharpening it right now.
Yep.
From the last 7 days, a few casualty reports in the war on drugs:
Meanwhile, from Drug Policy News:
New numbers from Oklahoma show that most of those sentenced to prison for the first time on felony charges were convicted of drug offenses. In addition, 80 percent of the state's inmates had a measurable amount of drugs in their system at the time of arrest.
Oklahoma's prison costs have soared 193 percent, or $253 million, in the past 16 years, according to figures from the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center. During this period the state's prison population has more than doubled.
As in many other states where the number of prisoners is skyrocketing while dollars are scarce, lawmakers are beginning to question the wisdom of locking up people for simple possession and other nonviolent drug offenses.
"We need to incarcerate the people we're afraid of, not that we're mad at," State Rep. Lucky Lamons (D-Tulsa) told the Associated Press. Lamons is a former police officer.
Oklahoma ranks fourth in the nation in overall incarcerations per 100,000 residents. Only Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas send more of their populations to prison.
Associated Press:
A divided Montana Supreme Court declared Thursday that the state constitution's guarantee of equal protection extends to gays, and ruled that the state university system must offer same-sex couples the same health benefits available to heterosexual ones.
In a 4-3 decision, the justices struck down the university's policy of denying benefits to employees' gay partners.
The high court said the policy violates the Montana Constitution's guarantee of equal protection because unmarried heterosexual partners could get the benefit by signing a common-law marriage affidavit, while unmarried gay partners could not.
The opinion and the dissents are here. (Link opens PDF document.)
Mark your calendar!
Howard Bashman of the indispensable How Appealing relays word that U.S. Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer will debate one another on January 13, 2005. The topic? Relevance of foreign law for American constitutional ajudication.
American University's Washington College of Law, host of the debate, will live stream the program on the Internet. Starting January 10, you'll find more details here.
Whatever you might think of his views, you have to admit that Justice Scalia has a brillant mind. And although Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the smartest liberal on the court and would give Justice Scalia a better run for his money, Justice Breyer is no intellectual slouch. Listening to Scalia and Breyer go at it, as they did during oral argument in Lawrence v. Texas, is fascinating.
If you're anything at all of a constitutional law buff, don't miss this. It ought to be riveting.
In the past, it happened only rarely and I just ignored it. But now it happens a little more often. I refer here to "vacant trackbacks," the practicing of pinging a blog without making any reference to it in the entry from which the ping is sent.
This morning I followed a trackback to my post on Mississippi abortion clinics. But the entry to which the trackback took me makes no mention whatsoever of either my post or my blog. So why did the author ping? Beats me.
If you write something in response to what another blogger has written and you want to draw the other blogger's attention to your work, just send him an e-mail; don't send him a vacant trackback. Trackbacks are used to give credit where it's due or to expand discussion of a post. Accordingly, any time you send a trackback, your own entry should include a hyperlink to the post to which you're tracking back. Otherwise, there is no point in it.
I've already deleted this morning's vacant trackback, and henceforth that's what I'll do with any others I get. If you just want me to read your post, send an e-mail and ask. I'll be glad to do it.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit yesterday granted rehearing en banc in a case with potentially important implications for the war on drugs. The plaintiff, a state prisoner, asserts that a New York law disenfranchising currently incarcerated felons and parolees violates Section II of the Voting Rights Act. (See 42 U.S.C. § 1973.) A three-judge panel of the court disagreed and upheld New York's law.
According to the panel, "Because the Supreme Court has instructed us that statutes should not be construed to alter the constitutional balance between the states and the federal government unless Congress makes its intent to do so unmistakably clear, we will not construe the Voting Rights Act to extend to New York’s felon disenfranchisement statute."
It seems unlikely that the full appeals court will reach a different conclusion. But in any event, the case is part of a wide assault, both legal and political, on disenfrachisement statutes, which, according to The Sentencing Project, exist in one form or another in almost all states and "significantly [affect] the political voice of many American communities."
New York is one of 48 states to prohibit inmates from voting while incarcerated for a felony offense. Thirty-five states prohibit parolees from voting, thirty-one prohibit probationers from voting and seven states deny the franchise even to ex-offenders who have served their sentences.
"The United States is the only democracy," according to the Drug Policy Alliance, "in which people who have served their sentences can still lose their right to vote." Whether temporarily or permanently, roughly "4.7 million people in the U.S. cannot vote because of a felony conviction." Many of these people have lost their right to vote on account of the drug war. Of the 1.4 million people now in U.S. prisons, half a million -- 36% -- are there on drug-related offenses. (Among only federal prisoners, it's 56%.)
Would allowing these folks to vote change the politics of the drug war? Specifically, might their votes create an actual constituency in opposition to it? We have several constituencies in favor of the drug war: city leaders whose local budgets are swollen on account of it; police officers who get to dress like storm troopers because of it; prison guard unions whose membership depends on it; and prison construction companies who make millions keeping up with it. But other than liberty-minded citizens who oppose the drug war on principle but don't organize around it, there is no large constituency in America saying, "The hell with this."
Of course, even if given the right to do so, not all prisoners (or parolees and probationers) would vote. (In fact, I suspect most of them wouldn't.) And even among those who did, not all would make drug policy their top concern anymore than all gay voters make same-sex marriage theirs. Still, as the casualties of the drug war grow in number, it seems likely that if they were allowed to vote, our collective enthusiasm for this insipid endeavor might dampen, at least a little.
With the help of the legislature, pro-life activists in Mississippi have whittled down the number of abortion clinics in that state to one -- and they're closing in on it:
For both sides in the national debate over abortion, Mississippi has become Exhibit A: It is widely considered the state with the most thorough arsenal of laws, policies and public pressure aimed at curtailing the procedure. There used to be seven abortion clinics in the state; now it is the most populous of a handful of states with only one.
[...]
Abortions reached a peak in Mississippi in 1991, when 8,814 were reported. The number dropped to 3,605 in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, producing one of the lowest abortion rates in the country — less than one-third the national rate.
Many hard-to-measure factors may have contributed to the drop, such as more effective use of birth control or an upsurge of Mississippi women getting abortions in other states. But activists on both sides believe the strict laws and community pressure have had a significant impact, along with the efforts by anti-abortion groups to publicize the checkered legal backgrounds of some abortion providers.
Even if we assume, arguendo, that abortion is a constitutional right, it's hardly a celebratory one, and there's nothing wrong with people discouraging others from exercising it. After all, even former President Clinton used to say that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
Chicago Tribune:
TEMPE, Ariz. -- A legal confrontation is playing out here as a student organization seeks official recognition and money from a state-run university even though the students plan to exclude non-Christians and gays.
A group of Christian students at Arizona State University's law school formed a chapter of the Christian Legal Society, a national organization that unites Christian lawyers and law students for fellowship, mutual legal support, meetings and Bible readings.
After the university refused to recognize the group, the society's national headquarters in Washington, D.C., drafted a lawsuit challenging the university over its anti-discrimination policies, a move that echoes similar and sometimes successful efforts across the country.
In the lawsuit, the society argues that the members at Arizona State have a constitutionally protected right to organize and receive university recognition under the 1st and 14th Amendments.
Well, the Christian Legal Society is half right. Its Arizona chapter is entitled to exemption from a university policy prohibiting discrimination on account of sexual orientation. But the chapter is not constitutionally entitled to university funding if it won't follow the school's policy.
The Christian students are guilty here of a sin usually associated with liberals: confusing rights with benefits. Are the students entitled to free speech and free association? Yes, they are; those are their rights. But are they entitled to public funding, even though their membership practices violate university policy? No, they aren't. The funding is a benefit, not a right, and the Government often sets conditions for receiving benefits.
For the same reason that the Government must respect the rights of the New York Times but isn't required to buy the Times a printing press, Arizona State must respect the rights of its students but isn't required to subsidize the application thereof. The Constitution promises that the Government won't interfere with the exercise of our rights; it doesn't promise public funding.
Lou Dobbs on the link between border policy and homeland security:
Every homeland security, intelligence, and defense department official acknowledges publicly that the United States will again be hit with another terrorist attack--that it's not a question of if, but when. It's inexcusable for our elected officials and our government to procrastinate further in their responsibilities to protect nearly 300 million Americans. Our border security today is nonexistent: An estimated 3 million illegal aliens will cross our borders this year. No leap of imagination is required to fear that a handful of terrorists could be among such a large group of people.
And yet the Nation's leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, including the president, dawdle. Why? If you guessed "money and power," you're right:
Economic interests are dominating the discussion of immigration reform. Big business, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and organized labor both seek open borders--business to exploit the cheap labor that is provided by illegal aliens and labor organizations to add to their membership rolls.
How many times will we have to get hit, and how many Americans will have to die, before we finally get serious about securing our borders?
The largest party of Iraq's Sunni Muslims, the minority who ruled the roost under Saddam, has withdrawn from next month's elections. But the UN reports that Iraqi voters will still have 6,250 candidates to pick from in races for the 275-member national assembly.
That's an average of almost 23 candidates per seat, which is a lot more variety than Americans get when we vote in gerrymandered contests for the U.S. House of Lords Representatives.
Jonathan Rauch, one of America's most sensible gay writers, is looking for the pony in the dung pile:
Republicans' continued control of Supreme Court nominations makes it nearly unimaginable--and it was always unlikely--that the court will overrule the states on gay marriage. The Supreme Court recently sidestepped an opportunity to intervene in Massachusetts' gay marriages, and the election returns will give lower federal courts second thoughts about butting in. The enactment of those 13 state amendments demonstrates that popular sovereignty is alive and well in the states. I am dismayed by the amendments' passage, but I can't complain about the process.
Jonathan thinks the gay community would make a lot more progress if it would give on the semantics and ask for civil unions, not marriage. I think he's exactly right.
Meanwhile, the drive for a Federal Marriage Amendment remains stalled, despite Republican gains in Congress. And it's unlikely to pick up steam unless the courts insist on defying the will of the people. Major gay groups seem to have heard the message:
People think that neither the country nor the courts are ready for it [same-sex marriage] and probably we'll lose. Nobody likes to take cases and lose.
There's a new push for diversity and academic freedom in the classroom, but this time it's coming from conservatives:
In many ways, the trend echoes past campus conflicts — but turns them around. Once, it was liberal campus activists who cited the importance of "diversity" in pressing their agendas for curriculum change. Now, conservatives have adopted much of the same language in calling for a greater openness to their viewpoints.
Cass R. Sunstein, professor of law at the University of Chicago, writing in the New Republic Online:
Originalism enjoys a lot of appeal among many people, but it is also vulnerable to serious objections. As an approach to constitutional interpretation, it must be defended, not simply asserted.
With President Bush likely to make soon his first appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, we're sure to hear a lot more about the doctrine of originalism and its implications for the Nation. I can't speak, of course, for all who consider themselves originalists, and I don't think anyone else can either. Even the two most prominent and consequential originalists, namely Justices Scalia and Thomas, don't always agree with one another. But most originalists are animated by the idea that in our democracy, the power to make law belongs to the people. The law is the codification of the people's will, and to honor the original meaning of the law is to honor their will. For the originalist, the Constitution, which is the Nation's basic law, differs from other, lesser law in its importance, but not in its function, which is to give expression to the public purposes and aspirations of the people.
The coming debate over the president's judicial nominees and their approach to constitutional law will tell us a lot about how Americans view themselves, and whether they still believe in their own political sovereignty. Any approach to statutory or constitutional interpretation is ultimately tied inextricably to the question of how -- and by whom -- we shall be governed. Originalism is an endorsement of popular self-government, or the right of the people -- sometimes acting directly, more often acting through their elected representatives -- to make law. For the originalist, the people say what the law should be; judges then take what the people have decided, whether at the constitutional or statutory level, and say only what the law is. And once the law is written, it doesn't change unless and until the people change it. This is the essence of democracy, and the fight over Mr. Bush's judicial appointments will tell us whether we still take it seriously.
Although they express their view only obliquely, many of our fellow citizens are averse to the right of the people to make law, and they would invest an elite minority with the power to substitute its will for the will of the polity. They believe, in other words, that the Nation should be governed in a non-democratic way. And they advocate a malleable, "living Constitution" whereby unpopular policy views can be transformed into constitutional mandates.
Prudential considerations usually prevent the advocates of a "living Constitution" from arguing forthrightly for non-democratic government; instead, they say that by reading the Constitution with a view to society's "evolving standards" and "changing values" we actually honor the will of the people rather than undermine it. Why these evolutions and changes are not reflected in the policy decisions of elected legislative bodies, which are acutely sensitive to shifts in culture and public opinion, the advocates never say.
There's a reason for this silence. Advocates of a "living Constitution" are almost invariably cultural and political liberals whose policy views the elected branches of Government will not translate into law. In search of a way to bypass the inconvenient mechanisms of popular self-government, the legal left devised the "living Constitution," which sounds better to the American ear than "autocratic rule."
Professor Sunstein is right that originalism "must be defended, not simply asserted." But this is true because democracy itself must still be defended and not simply asserted. The right of a people to govern themselves is, still and yet, a fragile idea in the world, one easily lost, one to which many are violently opposed and one for which the United States is simply the largest, most ambitious experiment. Supporters of a "living Constitution," which is say supporters of rule by an insular minority, remind us that the outcome of that experiment is as yet unknown.
So that I can fully enjoy the holiday with my partner, Michael, and his family, this will be my last post until Sunday evening.
When I started this blog back in March, I had an average daily readership in the single digits. Now, 9 months later, I get an average of 300 readers a day, according to Statcounter. Thank you for making me a small part of your day. In the New Year, I'll continue to look for ways to make this blog gratifying to write and interesting to read.
Merry Christmas to you! I hope your holiday is happy and safe, and I'll see you again Sunday evening. For now, blogging off.
Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court is one of 20 candidates for the federal bench that the president will resubmit when the new Senate meets on Jan. 4. Last term, Democrats prevented the nominees from receiving an up or down vote -- an obstructionist tactic Republicans are no longer willing to tolerate.
Incoming minority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, called it " ... a disservice to the American people to detract from the important work of the Senate to reconsider these failed nominees." But of course the nominees have not failed; they were never voted upon, and almost all of them will win confirmation once the GOP puts the kibosh to the Democrats' dilatory antics.
(EDITED to correct Judge Brown's first name, which is Janice, not Janet.)
Although Government classifications based on race are always suspect and rarely sustained against constitutional challenge, this one should be.
Within our Nation's prisons, the victims of violence, including sexual violence, are not randomly distributed among the races. Liberals are usually the ones to say it and they're right: we don't send people to prison for punishment; we send them to prison as punishment. To deny prison officials the ability to segregate inmates, even temporarily and before their gang affiliations are known, is to sentence young, small-framed, non-violent (and usually white) inmates to a punishment that no legislature has authorized and that no judge has imposed.
The tragedy of prison rape is discussed in polite society only rarely, and even then usually as the brunt of jokes. But it's no joking matter.
(The case referred to in the first link, Johnson v. California, was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on November 2, and is on appeal from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. That court's opinion, which upholds a prisoner classification system in which race is factor, is here.)
Reuters:
President Bush will spearhead an election-style public relations campaign early next year to try to convince Americans that Social Security is in urgent need of change but will keep dollar and cent details deliberately vague, analysts and officials say.
With Bush's political capital riding on a successful overhaul of the popular retirement program, the White House and its allies plan to bombard the public with presidential speeches, television and radio ads, newspaper op-ed articles and grass-roots rallies between now and early 2005.
"It's going to be a battle royal, very much like an election campaign but over an issue rather than a candidate," said Stephen Moore, executive director of Club for Growth, a Republican group that hopes to spend $15 million on a media campaign backing the White House.
[...]
Meanwhile, opponents accuse the White House of exaggerating the issue's urgency, saying it used a similar ploy to justify the war in Iraq by citing an urgent threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that have never been found.
"The administration's blitz on Social Security is eerily reminiscent of the way they made their case for war," said David Wade, spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the former Democratic presidential nominee who sits on the Senate Finance Committee.
Well, at least the Democrats are consistent. Whatever the danger, whether foreign or domestic, Democrats seem constitutionally unable to distinguish the imminent from the immanent. And in both cases, they're on the losing side of history. From Business Week:
"They call it a crisis. They have no plan. It sounds like Iraq," says Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL).
But the GOP is girding for battle, and the stakes go beyond pension reform: Conservatives see Social Security privatization as a realigning issue that will help build a vast investor class and nurture a new generation of Republicans.
This year alone, the United States will spend billions and deny an estimated 1.5 million Americans their liberty as the Nation prosecutes the so-called "war on drugs." Despite these financial and human costs, prices for cocaine and heroin have dropped to 20-year lows while the sale of illegal drugs has risen to account for at least 8% of world trade. Meanwhile, according to the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress:
Under U.S. leadership, and backed by the United Nations, the drug war is global, with the participation of every country in the world. Recently, however, that united front has begun to fracture. Many European countries that have been our long-term allies in the drug war are today beginning to frame the issue of drug abuse less as one of law enforcement and more as one of public health. Portugal, in 2001, decriminalized all drug use and adopted a policy of “harm reduction.” Spain no longer prosecutes illegal drug use done privately. Belgium permits the use of medical marijuana. Closer to home, Canada has legalized marijuana for medical uses and is in the process of decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. The chief of the Mexican federal police has announced his support of worldwide drug legalization as the only way to destroy the global drug economy, and high-level officials in the government of Mexican President Vicente Fox reportedly favor drug legalization as the solution to the violence and corruption caused by narco-traffickers. Even within the United States, voters in some states have approved ballot initiatives to lessen the penalties for using certain drugs.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit today rejected the claim that a male has a constitutional "right to decide not to become a parent even after conception:"
State requirements, and federal encouragement, of child support from unwed fathers has a long historical tradition. It emanates necessarily from the biological relationship, a relationship that may have only marginal importance for the male in some cases like the one before us in which the father seeks to remove himself completely from the child.
[...]
As the plaintiff concedes, there are no judicial decisions recognizing a constitutional right of a man to terminate his duties of support under state law for a child that he has fathered, no matter how removed he may be emotionally from the child. Child support has long been a tax fathers have had to pay in Western civilization. For reasons of child welfare and social utility, if not for moral reasons, the biological relationship between a father and his offspring -- even if unwanted and unacknowledged -- remains constitutionally sufficient to support paternity tests and child support requirements.
[...]
Neither the laws of biological reproduction nor the Due Process Clause recognize the "fairness" arguments plaintiff raises. Reproduction and child support requirements occur without regard to the male's wishes or his emotional attachment to his offspring.
If you make a few gender-appropriate modifications in language, didn't the court just describe the law for women prior to Roe v. Wade? Why isn't what's good for the goose also good for the gander?
My point here isn't that fathers should get away with not supporting their biological children, even when unwanted. My point is that for many for reasons -- including the courts' unwillingness to extend "choice" to men -- Roe was atrocious constitutional law.
(Thanks to How Appealing.)
Associated Press:
President Bush on Monday renewed his call for a guest worker program for immigrants seeking employment in the United States, saying the Border Patrol shouldn't be chasing "goodhearted people who are coming here to work."
That they're goodhearted people who want to work is true but irrelevant, Mr. President.
On my way into the Texas Medical Center in the mornings, I occasionally see the Metro Police conducting traffic enforcement. Do you know whom the officers are stopping? They're stopping doctors and nurses and other goodhearted people who are just trying to get to work. But that's not an excuse for running a red light or speeding or tailgating -- or even crossing the border illegally.
Even if we have a good heart and an industrious objective, we still have to obey the law. A guest worker program is fine -- our economy clearly needs it -- if it gives people a chance to enter the country lawfully. But if "guest worker program" is just a euphemism for amnesty for the goodhearted but lawless, it will never pass a Republican Congress. Sooner or later, the president is going to have to accept that. They don't call the GOP the law-and-order party for nothing.
I often marvel at the wildly irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric uttered by some of my gay and lesbian brethren. Here's yet another example of it, from Mark Bonney, a gay activist in Oklahoma, on his state's lopsided approval of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage:
"We couldn't get married before, so it didn't create any larger legal hurdle," Bonney said. "But it's got to hurt, when you know that three out of four of your neighbors don't want you around. It was a statement of hate."
A statement of hate? Where's the evidence for that? Or does opposition itself to gay marriage prove, ipso facto, that the opponent is hate-filled? If so, why?
I have no doubt that some voters, whether in Oklahoma or elsewhere, supported a ban on same-sex marriage out of visceral disgust with homosexuals. But I also have no doubt that others supported it out of disgust with an imperial judiciary hell-bent on undermining the capacity of a free people to govern themselves, and that still others worry over the unintended consequences of redefining an important social institution. To say blanketly that opposition to same-sex marriage is a "statement of hate" is to say that no decent person can object to it in good faith, or for intellectually defensible reasons.
But that's just not true. Good people who oppose same-sex marriage know themselves not to be bigots. And when gays and lesbians insist nevertheless on calling them ones, they know we're wrong. And if we're wrong about that, what else are we wrong about?
The Mark Bonneys of the world hope to short-circuit the debate by summarily dismissing the opposition. After all, why reason with bigots, who are, by definition, possessed of an unreasonable prejudice? But the opposition here is not dismissable, as Mr. Bonney learned on Election Day, nor is it unreasonable.
"You can't have marriage until you've gained enough self-acceptance to demand respect from your neighbors," he said.
Or until you show them the same respect you demand.
As the fight to reform Social Security begins, liberals are launching a counterassault. They argue that there is no impending crisis in Social Security, that the president is serving the interests of Wall Street investment firms and that the system needs only modest, technical fixes to remain solvent.
But in an essay for American Prospect Online, Robert Kuttner makes it clear that the left is motivated at least as much by politics as it is by policy. The debate over Social Security reform, according to Mr. Kuttner, could provide liberals with the chance to "hand George W. Bush a rare, humiliating defeat:"
... the two largest liberal “527s,” the Media Fund and America Coming Together, and their donors are casting about for a post-election role. “They put over $200 million into trying to defeat Bush,” says one activist. “Blowing away his top legislative priority would be a pretty good second best.”
Liberals, Mr. Kuttner admonishes, should offer no alternative plan of their own, and instead train all their fire on the president's proposal. For partial privatization of the largest social welfare program in the world is a major threat to not only left-wing ideology, but also to the Democrats' source of political power:
Ideologically, Bush-style conservatives want everyone thinking individualistically, more like investors than citizens. Politically, if they can fragment the Democrats’ most beloved social program, they can splinter the Democrats’ voting coalition, undercutting both Social Security’s present alliance between the poor and the middle class and its intergenerational compact between the young and the old -- and thus the Democrats’ role as faithful stewards.
Translation: if Mr. Bush succeeds in promoting choice and wealth creation among the Nation's middle and working classes -- at the expense of collectivist dependence, which is the Democrats' stock-in-trade -- he will eviscerate the left.
The liberals' raison d'être is to aggregate power to themselves while superintending the affairs of others. Mr. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, albeit partially, threatens not only the liberals' understanding of the individual as drone; it also threatens an important source of the liberals' power.
In the days and weeks to come, you'll hear heavy political weapons fire. It will emanate from those who draw their power from The Hive and who don't want you disconnected from it, even partially, lest you think and behave "individualistically."
Does the intelligence reform bill signed into law today by President Bush provide a back door to a national ID card? Some say it does:
Privacy advocates worry that provisions buried in the intelligence bill President Bush is to sign Friday will lead to a national identification card.
Little-noted measures included in the legislation that reshuffles intelligence agencies order states to begin issuing new fraud-proof birth certificates, and new driver's licenses with standardized data encoded on them are set for 2006.
What data will be included on licenses and how it will be used in federal databanks is not yet clear. The legislation only requires the data to be "machine readable," leaving the issue of what data to collect to the Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security. Regulations concerning fraud-proofing birth certificates are to be drafted by the Department of Heath and Human Services.
"There's a problem," said Marc Rotenberg, a Georgetown University law professor who serves as executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington think tank.
"There are two directions they can go here. One is to reduce the likelihood of fraud and counterfeiting of driver's licenses, which we all would applaud. Or they could link this all together in a new national database, which is what they should not do."
The legislation states that within two years, U.S. government employees won't accept any driver's licenses or birth certificates issued by the states that don't comply with the new fraud-proof requirements. That means drivers from states that don't comply with the new requirements will be unable to use their state licenses as identification to get past federal airport screeners and board an aircraft.
Organizations ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Conservative Union to the Gun Owners of America oppose the measure, saying it would give too much power to federal bureaucrats to decide who could get a valid license.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has concerns about where this could all lead.
"History shows governments inevitably use such power in harmful ways," Paul said.
If you're using Firefox -- and according to my Statcounter, a third of you are -- meet the Florida teenager who brought it to you. If you're not using Firefox, click the image and get it free. You'll be glad you did.
The chair of the Washington, D.C. city council has told corporate welfare queens to get off the tit:
... Linda W. Cropp yesterday said she will not reopen legislation next week requiring the District to include private funds to build a ballpark in Southeast, effectively killing the deal negotiated between Mayor Anthony A. Williams and Major League Baseball.
The showdown with baseball began when Mrs. Cropp tacked an amendment onto the stadium bill late Tuesday night that requires private investors to pay at least half of the hard stadium costs, about $140 million.
The city would pick up the tab for the remainder of the stadium work, such as roadwork, parking facilities and land acquisition. However, if private financing cannot be secured, the city would not be required to build the ballpark.
The entire cost of the project is estimated at $435.2 million.
Under the deal to which Mr. Williams and MLB agreed in September, the District guaranteed to publicly finance the ballpark's construction.
Major League Baseball is not happy:
"It's like a heart attack around here," said one baseball executive at MLB's New York headquarters. "This is definitely serious. If the District thinks we don't have other options or we're engaged in a game of chicken, they're sorely mistaken."
Oh, dear. Does anyone play the violin? I know it just breaks my heart when bitchy multimillionaires are told to take their snouts out of the public trough. How about you?
I'm all for free enterprise. But public financing of sport stadiums isn't free enterprise. It's corporate welfare and a rip-off of the taxpayer.
Oh, for crying out loud!
The estate of a Rosewood Heights man who died from overdosing on OxyContin stolen from a pharmacy is suing the pharmacy.
The estate of Justin Stalcup filed suit against pharmacist Michael J. Cleary and his pharmacy, The Medicine Shoppe in Wood River. The suit claims the pharmacist did not properly safeguard narcotic medicines.
Stalcup died in February after overdosing on OxyContin provided to him by his girlfriend, Jode L. Sandbach, 20, of Wood River.
Sandbach stole OxyContin and Xanax from the pharmacy Feb. 3. She gave the drugs to Stalcup, 21, who was found unresponsive at his residence in Rosewood Heights by his parents Feb. 4.
Only yesterday, the American Tort Reform Association named Madison County, Illinois, where the suit was filed, the top judicial hellhole in the Nation.
(Thanks to Overlawyered.)
I rarely link to big-time liberal bloggers -- in part because I rarely read them -- and Kevin Drum is wrong when he writes that the impending crisis in Social Security is a "fake problem." He is, however, right about the trouble facing Medicare:
Medicare ... will start dipping into its trust fund in a mere six years. And no one thinks this estimate is going to improve: thanks to skyrocketing healthcare costs, Medicare might very well be in worse shape than we think it is. As a result, the cost of Medicare is likely to increase by a staggering 7 points of GDP over the next 50 years.
... Medicare reform is really, really hard. You've got the same funding issues as Social Security, except much bigger and much closer; and in addition you also have to face up to spiralling healthcare costs. And figuring out a way to contain healthcare costs is a subject that nobody wants to tackle. Not Democrats and definitely not Republicans.
I don't know that Republicans are any less willing than Democrats to talk about containing health care costs. But it is true that few partisans of any stripe are willing to discuss the subject forthrightly. There's a simple reason for that. If you talk even briefly about restraining the explosive growth in health care expenditures, especially in the context of Medicare reform, you will come face-to-face with very painful choices -- even more painful, perhaps, than the choices involved in reforming Social Security. Painful choices are not what politicians specialize in.
Medicare is the program through which the Government pays for health care for the aged and disabled, and as the population ages, the costs of the program will rise steadily. This fact occasions difficult questions. Many Americans already view health care services not as commodities on the free market, but as a right, and one to which the Government should guarantee access. But is the right to health care inexhaustible? Medicare spends most of its money during the last 6 months of people's lives. Are the elderly entitled to expect that? Or are there limits to the amount of health care for which the Government should pay? And if there are no limits, who will apprise the taxpayer to brace himself?
If you understand the nature of the questions, then you understand why no politician wants to talk about the answers.
Reuters:
No one has done the right studies to prove whether gun ownership laws increase or decrease crime, or whether the tens of thousands of gun deaths in the United States each year could be prevented by gun control, a committee of experts said on Thursday.
[...]
"For example, despite a large body of research, the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime, and there is almost no empirical evidence that the more than 80 prevention programs focused on gun-related violence have had any effect on children's behavior, knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs about firearms," the report reads.
I don't know whether right-to-carry laws contribute to a general reduction in crime. But that's not the point. After all, the police carry guns, too, and crime often rises anyway. But few would take that as reason to disarm law enforcement.
The better question is not whether right-to-carry laws reduce overall crime, but whether the subset of citizens who legally carry a concealed gun are successfully victimized less often than the population as a whole.
In Texas alone, more than 240,000 private citizens are licensed to carry a firearm. For them, I don't think the point is to prevent harm in every case. I think the point is to prevent harm in specific cases, namely their own. And aren't people ultimately responsible for their own safety?
San Francisco Chronicle:
San Franciscan voters will be asked to decide next year on a measure that would prohibit the sale, manufacture and distribution of firearms in the city and limit the possession of handguns to those who require them for their jobs.
Gee, I wonder how the vote on that will come out.
Whence comes the view that the way to deal with the lawless is by passing more laws? Reportedly, the proposed ban was drafted "in response to handgun violence in San Francisco." But isn't unjustifiable violence already unlawful in San Francisco? I know the city is a large, outdoor lunatic asylum, but still: aren't the statutes of California, which prohibit murder and armed robbery and that sort of thing, operational even there?
If those laws don't modify the behavior of the criminal element, why will this one?
In a succinct piece on the partial privatization of Social Security, William Beach of the Heritage Foundation says that borrowing to finance transition costs is the way to go:
The U.S. has nearly always borrowed to finance crucial changes to its economic infrastructure, and making Social Security more secure is one of the most important changes we could make. Indeed, it is fairer to secure working America's retirement by borrowing funds from wealthy Americans and foreign investors than by raising taxes on labor.
Evidently, the president agrees. He said again today that "nothing will change" for those at or near retirement and that there will be no increase in payroll taxes. If so, doesn't that leave borrowing as the only other option?
Of course, even a switch to partially privatized accounts will not correct for Social Security's coming shortfall. We can expect proposals to raise the retirement age, lift the ceiling on payroll taxes and index benefits to inflation, not wages.
The White House acknowledges that allowing younger workers to invest funds in private accounts would do little to help plug the shortfall.
"It will take more to solve the problem than just personal accounts," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday. The transformation would be part of a "comprehensive solution to strengthen Social Security."
Washington Times:
Why won't the elites in this country face up to the illegal immigration crisis we are facing? Is it all politics, or like the reaction from blue state pundits to President Bush's reelection, do they just know better than the rest of us?
We all know the staggering numbers of illegals pouring into our country. We're well aware of the costs to taxpayers and the impact on our overall quality of life. Yet, for some reason, our elected officials refuse to come to grips with the problem.
The answer may lie, at least in part, with the pervasive -- and corrosive -- influence of political correctness, which often precludes acknowledgment of the obvious:
In the age of terrorism, it is obvious that the enemy will seek to do damage operating within U.S. territory. That, of course, was the story of the 9/11 hijackers, 19 Muslim terrorists who took advantage of loose laws to practice flying accurately into U.S. skyscrapers.
But the movements of such folk are not of primary concern to the U.S. government, to judge from the record. Mr. O'Sullivan reports that the Transportation Department has launched several lawsuits against airlines because pilots had banned passengers they thought were security risks.
Asa Hutchinson, an official in the Department of Homeland Security, recently cut down a Border Patrol initiative to catch illegal aliens. The reason? It was catching too many illegal aliens.
Rich Tafel, former executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, writing in National Review Online:
The one statistic confounding pundits in this election is the number of gays who voted for George W. Bush. Polls show that the president received anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million gay votes, up from 1 million votes in 2000 and double the number of gay votes for Bob Dole in 1996. This dramatic increase comes despite the fact that no gay organization endorsed him, no gay journalist editorialized on his behalf, and no gay leader supported him.
[...]
Gays who voted for President Bush had a simple logic. They recognized that both candidates opposed gay marriage for political purposes. Their primary concern was the war on terror. They believed that we are engaged in a war for the future of our country and our way of life. They believed that the rise of militant Islam is a real and deadly threat. They believed that our country, with all its faults, is a force for good in the world. They believed that our enemy cannot be reasoned with. They believed that we needed a leader who understood the world in terms of moral values, and they didn't scoff when the president used the words "good" and "evil" to describe the battle against terror. They realized we've made mistakes, but also realized that the only thing worse than making mistakes is not even trying.
Mr. Tafel is exactly right.
As both a gay man and a conservative, there are issues on which I disagree with this president. But above all else, I love my country; I believe America is a unique nation in history, that she is, as Ronald Reagan observed, the "last, best hope of mankind," and that her survival is essential to the cause of human freedom. I believe Mr. Bush believes that too, which is why I voted for him. I trust Mr. Bush to keep America safe. I did not trust Mr. Kerry to do likewise.
The debate about gay rights will go on. But it will go on, thanks in part to more than a million gays and lesbians, in an America protected from the barbarians who would deny a free people the ability to even express their ideas. The left-leaning gay intelligentsia told homosexual citizens to ignore everything else and vote their own interests. To this admonition, 1 in 4 gays and lesbians responded: "But a safe and free America is my interest."
(For more, see Steve Miller.)
Los Angeles Times:
The generation-long political retreat of Democrats across the South is disintegrating into a rout.
President Bush dominated the South so completely in last month's presidential election that he carried nearly 85% of all the counties across the region — and more than 90% of counties where whites are a majority of the population, according to a Times analysis of election results and census data.
The Times' analysis, which provides the most detailed picture yet of the vote in Southern communities, shows that Bush's victory was even more comprehensive than his sweep of the region's 13 states would suggest.
His overwhelming performance left Sen. John F. Kerry clinging to a few scattered islands of support in a region that until the 1960s provided the foundation of the Democratic coalition in presidential politics. Kerry won fewer Southern counties than any Democratic nominee since the Depression except Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and George S. McGovern in 1972 ...
In Southern counties without a substantial number of African American or Latino voters, Bush virtually obliterated Kerry. Across the 11 states of the old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, whites constitute a majority of the population in 1,154 counties. Kerry won 90 of them.
The South holds 168 electoral votes, which is slightly more than three-fifths of the 270 needed to win; of 26 U.S. senators from the region, 22 are Republican.
Says GOP political maven Karl Rove:
If you accept my underlying assumption that this is the result of a trend that has gained momentum over the years and has been reinforced under President Bush, what is the act that is going to stop it and reverse it?
Once these things get set in motion, they require something on the landscape done by one or both parties, or events to intrude, to stop it and reverse it.
As a white southern male, I'm wondering what would have to happen to get me voting Democratic. As things stand now, I would sooner slide naked down a 10-foot razor into a pool of iodine than vote for a party influenced by Michael Moore and his ilk.
We won't stop the flow of illegal immigration until we lean on the Mexican government to clean up its corrupt act, which has the U.S. taxpayer subsidizing the Mexican upperclass.
U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., who did not seek re-election and whose term ends in January, has signed on as a contributor to Fox News. (Link requires registration.)
Other than his fiery speech at the Republican National Convention in support of President Bush, Sen. Miller is probably best known for challenging Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" to a duel.
No matter how many times I watch that video -- if by chance you haven't seen it, click the image -- it still makes me laugh.
I wonder: what keeps him from resigning already?
Further evidence that the politicalization of the federal judiciary is now complete. But with our courts having become alternative legislative forums, it could hardly be otherwise.
Next stop: subjecting federal judges to popular vote.
The three biggest domestic policy issues of our time are illegal immigration, the war on drugs and Social Security. Tomorrow, finally, a serious national debate on reform of the latter may begin. One of many key facts to keep in mind:
The system uses payroll tax dollars from current workers to fund benefits for current retirees. In 1937, there were 40 workers for every retiree; by 2030, that ratio will drop to 2.1 workers per beneficiary.
We still know only the outline and none of the specifics of what the president will ultimately propose. But if he's serious about his vision of an "ownership society," meaningful reform of Social Security is the place to start.
CTV Canada is reporting a deadly outbreak of meningococcal C infections among gay men:
A deadly bacterial infection outbreak has medical officials in B.C. urging gay men there to get vaccinated against it.
"We think we're seeing the beginning of an outbreak in gay men in B.C. and if we nip it in the bud, we can save a lot of people some grief," said Dr. David Patrick of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Since October, three men have died as a result of meningococcal C disease. Four others have become ill but recovered.
There have been 19 cases detected all year. Sixteen of those occurred in men.
The infection, caused by the meningococcus bacterium, can strike very suddenly. It can cause brain damage and death. Symptoms include high fever, headache and a stiff neck.
The culprit, meningococcus bacterium, is spread by saliva.
I'm reminded now of the old, fictitious colloquy between a police officer and a homeowner who's just shot an intruder.
Officer: Why did you shoot him in the back?
Homeowner: Because his back was facing me.
From the Associated Press:
The Supreme Court refused Monday to clarify when police can use deadly force to stop fleeing criminal suspects but said a lower court got it wrong in allowing a lawsuit against an officer in Washington state who shot a burglary suspect.
Law enforcement groups and 16 states had encouraged the court to use the officer's appeal to clarify protection for officers from lawsuits when they injure or kill fleeing felons.
Instead, the court issued an unsigned opinion that found only that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco erred in ruling that the officer, Rochelle Brosseau, clearly violated the suspect's constitutional rights.
Brosseau shot Kenneth Haugen in 1999 as he fled in his Jeep to avoid being arrested for drug charges and for questioning in a burglary in Puyallup, Wash., a city of about 35,000 people in the Puget Sound region 10 miles east of Tacoma. Haugen pleaded guilty to fleeing police but then filed suit claiming a civil rights violation. He suffered a punctured lung in the shooting but recovered.
The vote in Brousseau v. Haugen was 8 to 1, with only Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting.
According to the Court:
Brosseau arrived at the Jeep, pointed her gun at Haugen, and ordered him to get out of the vehicle. Haugen ignored her command and continued to look for the keys so he could get the Jeep started. Brosseau repeated her commands and hit the driver’s side window several times with her handgun, which failed to deter Haugen. On the third or fourth try, the window shattered. Brosseau unsuccessfully attempted to grab the keys and struck Haugen on the head with the barrel and butt of her gun. Haugen, still undeterred, succeeded in starting the Jeep. As the Jeep started or shortly after it began to move, Brosseau jumped back and to the left. She fired one shot through the rear driver’s side window at a forward angle, hitting Haugen in the back. She later explained that she shot Haugen because she was "'fearful for the other officers on foot who [she] believed were in the immediate area, [and] for the occupied vehicles in [Haugen's] path and for any other citizens who might be in the area.'"
Despite his injury, Mr. Haugen managed to escape. Half an hour would pass before he realizes his injury and seeks medical care. After convalescing in the hospital -- and pleading guilty to felony "eluding" in violation of Washington state law -- Mr. Haugen filed suit against Officer Brosseau under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming violation of his constitutional rights.
In reversing the judgment of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals1, which had ruled for Mr. Haugen, the Court writes:
Qualified immunity shields an officer from suit when she makes a decision that, even if constitutionally deficient, reasonably misapprehends the law governing the circumstances she confronted. ... Because the focus is on whether the officer had fair notice that her conduct was unlawful, reasonableness is judged against the backdrop of the law at the time of the conduct. If the law at that time did not clearly establish that the officer's conduct would violate the Constitution, the officer should not be subject to liability or, indeed, even the burdens of litigation.
Its prior cases on excessive force, the Court says, "by no means 'clearly establish' that Brosseau's conduct violated the Fourth Amendment."
In my view, the Court here shows appropriate reticence in second-guessing the often difficult, instantaneous decisions that police officers must make. As the Court notes, this area of law is "one in which the result depends very much on the facts of each case." Mr. Haugen "had proven he would do almost anything to avoid capture" and Officer Brousseau was fearful for the safety of others. Our courts have never endorsed the view that a "Fourth Amendment violation [occurred] when an officer shot a fleeing suspect who presented a risk to others."
Moreover, Mr. Haugen knew he was pushing his luck. Well before he was shot, it had to have been abundantly clear to him that Officer Brousseau wanted him to get out of the Jeep. Not only had she repeatedly ordered him to get out, she had also drawn her gun, pointed it at him and even used it to break out the driver's side window. Mr. Haugen chose to ignore her.
And so the moral of the story is, as always: the police are human, and they are armed. Make them fearful at your own peril.
————————
1The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has jurisdiction in California, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montona, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii. In all but the handful of cases that the Supreme Court agrees each year to review, the regional courts of appeal have the last word on questions of federal law.
From Christopher at Legal XXX:
Proponents of a living Constitution don't want the document to change WITH the times--they want the Constitution to change the times.
Pioneer Press:
If you really want to know how a war is going, don't ask the politicians or the agency spin-doctors. Ask the front-line grunts and field commanders.
And nearly to a man, those in charge of deploying the troops at the ground level believe our efforts largely have been a bust — pun intended — and that it's time for major policy reform or overhaul.
No, it's not the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's another issue for another time. It's the so-called war on drugs, a much longer and perhaps thornier and more perplexing conflict ...
Nearly 300 police chiefs, from the nation's largest metropolitan areas to the smallest towns, agree they lack the right resources ...
Well, imagine that: servants of the Leviathan agreeing among themselves that they don't have enough money. (Will they ever?)
Meanwhile, despite the U.S. having already spent billions on the drug "war," prices for cocaine and heroin are at 20-year lows.
In addition to the other, better known costs of illegal immigration, here's a less publicized one: it's wrecking the environment.
Tons of trash and high concentration of human waste are left behind by undocumented aliens. This impacts wildlife, vegetation and water quality in the uplands, in washes and along rivers and streams.
Paging the eco-left, paging the eco-left.
In a piece touting the Democratic view that Social Security isn't really in financial trouble, the Los Angeles Times reports:
For now, Social Security is taking in more through the payroll tax than it is paying out in benefits. Lots more.
In 2003, income to the Social Security trust fund, including interest earned on the accumulated surplus, totaled $632 billion. Outlays, including administrative expenses, were $479 billion.
That left an annual surplus of $153 billion, or about four months worth of benefits.
At the end of the year, the trust fund had more than $1.5 trillion — more than three years' worth of benefits.
That's true. There is a surplus on the trust fund's ledger. But the surplus is in the form of IOUs from the Government, not cash on hand. And the Government has already spent the money elsewhere.
These are important details, don't you think? Alas, the LA Times makes no mention of them.
"They're not code words; they're our culture."
Chief speechwriter Michael Gerson defends the president's use of a religious vocabulary.
The always sharp Tyler Cowen asks an intriguing question:
How much could our government raise by auctioning off the right to leave the [Social Security] system?
By use of the word "auctioning," I assume that Tyler means an option open only to the highest bidders. If