"Chicago Burned Down...Again"

Give the GOP partisans some credit. They've taken a lickin', but they've kept on tickin' these last couple of days. Consider Republican strategist Bill Paxon:

"These guys just keep getting up every day and moving forward," said Bill Paxon, another former House Republican. "Some days aren't easy. They've had a tough run here lately. But the secret of their success through all of these twists and turns in the road is to just keep moving forward." [emphasis added]

Leading TNR's Michael Crowley to remark:

Success?? Good grief, so what would failure look like? FEMA blows the Hoover Dam? Zsa Zsa Gabor on the Supreme Court? America occupied by Iraq?

I can see it now: "The fall of Charleston to Iraqi National Guard elements is, far from a setback, proof that Iraq has adapted American foreign policy models and sees the pre-emptive attack strategy as legitimate and effective." And the Hoover Dam, of course, was finished in the socialist Roosevelt administration. So we're all happy to see that go.

UN Troubles

A UN resolution, threatening sanctions on Syria if it fails to cooperate in the Lebanese assassination investigation, is coming under veto threat by China and Russia, as well as strong opposition from Algeria. The reasons were the usual: blah, blah, National Sovereignty, blah blah blah too harsh (when on earth has a UN sanction been too harsh?). Algeria's objections were a slight variation on theme, however:

Algeria's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah Baali, said that "we have serious problems with several parts" of the resolution, noting that it goes well beyond supporting Mehlis's investigation. He cited one provision that he said could be interpreted as requiring Syria to commit to halting support for Palestinian and Iraqi militants. "We understand the need to ensure full cooperation of Syria," he said. "We don't believe that the time has come to even threaten sanctions."

Horrors upon horrors! Syria will have to stop directly aiding terrorists? Say it ain't so! I cry for the awful burdens the international community is placing on this poor pariah state.

While we're on the subject of attacking Israel being a debatable subject in the UN (and moreover, a debate Israel tends to lose), what does everyone think about this call by Israel to expel Iran from the UN? If you recall, a short while ago Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel "must be wiped out from the map of the world." While such rhetoric (depressingly) is not a shift from hardline Iranian elements, it is the first time that a high-level elected official as issued such a direct call for Israel's destruction. Israeli response was swift:

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said "that a country which called for the destruction of another cannot be a member of the U.N.," according to a statement released by his office.

The statement quoted Sharon as saying, "Such a country, in possession of nuclear weapons, is a danger not only to Israel and the Middle East but to Europe as well."

Earlier, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate, said, "Since 1945, the establishment of the United Nations, no head of state which is a member of the United Nations ever called for the destruction of another member of the United Nations, publicly and clearly, as the president of Iran did.

I think we have to treat Iran's statements as a serious threat. Iran is hotly pursuing nuclear weapons (which would give it the capability to quite literally "wipe Israel from the map"). We know it has no qualms about funding lower-level attacks on Israel (Iran is linked to as perhaps the most aggressive supporter of Palestinian Terrorist Groups). The $100,000,000 question is what would happen if they stepped it up and launched a first strike nuclear assault. How would the world respond? Obviously, if Israel had time it would launch its nukes right back--but I'm not sure how long it takes for a missile to travel from Tehran to Tel Aviv, and I don't know at what level of alert Israeli nukes are kept at. If Israel can't respond, would the world sanction a nuclear retaliation? I'm just not convinced they would. And if they wouldn't, the religious fanatics in charge view whatever response they'd inevitably incur as a reasonable price to pay?

Given this, I am inclined to support Israel's call for Iran's expulsion. The UN will never do it, of course, because this act comes at the cross-section of the two redlines the UN will never cross: a) supporting Israel and b) doing anything of substance. But if the US or (better still) the EU threw its support behind the call to expel Iran, maybe things would change. Maybe. Doubtfully.

Don't Let Up

In the midst of the Miers recall and Plamegate developments, this Eric Reeves article on Darfur could get lost in the shuffle. Don't let it. I'll excerpt the important parts. Bottom line: the US is starting to give up on stopping the genocide in Darfur and is slowly opening relations with Khartoum.

[I]n the last six months the administration's stance towards the genocidal Sudanese government seems to have shifted towards one of appeasement--at a time when the situation in Darfur grows more dire by the day.

This change in attitude towards Khartoum first became apparent in April, when the CIA flew Major General Saleh Gosh to Washington, D.C., in order to provide intelligence on international terrorism. Gosh was Osama bin Laden's chief minder during his five years in Khartoum, from 1991 to 1996; he now heads the Sudanese government's ruthlessly efficient intelligence and security service, and has been referred by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry to the International Criminal Court to be investigated for crimes against humanity. The security service he directs is responsible for tens of thousands of extra-judicial executions, killings, and disappearances, as well as numerous instances of torture, illegal imprisonment, and other violations of international law. Most importantly, all evidence suggests that Gosh himself is one of the prime architects of Darfur's genocide.

Another sign of appeasement came in July, when the Washington firm C/R International, whose managing director is former State Department official Robert Cabelly, agreed on a contract with the Sudanese government. Because trade and economic sanctions put in place in 1997 by President Clinton remain in effect, the contract required an explicit waiver from the State Department, which it granted.
[...]
In short, the same vicious cabal in Khartoum that was explicitly declared by former Secretary of State Colin Powell to be responsible for genocide in Darfur has now been allowed to secure the services of a former State Department employee to provide it with p.r. counsel. For a fee of $530,000 per year, the firm's role will essentially be to put a happy face on a genocidal regime.

In its public face, the Bush administration is also slowly starting to pull back from its condemnations. Consider this statement by Michael Ranneberger, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs:

Even now what you're seeing is not these systematic Janjaweed attacks against villages. You know, somebody said, "It's because all the villages were burned." Well, it's not. You fly over Darfur, almost all the--you see thousands of villages, fully populated, farming going on, and everything else. So it's because of the presence of these African Union forces.

This assessment is belied by virtually everybody on the ground--Reeves says the prevailing consensus is that between 80-90% of the tribal villages in Darfur have been destroyed. Even if I was inclined to trust the Bush administration on this matter (which I'm not), I simply cannot believe that 5,300 troops patrolling an area the size of France, without a mandate to respond to acts of violence, could have triggered the massive turnabout in Darfur's situation that Ranneberger says they are.

We are approaching a turning point. This is the time where America will show whether its outrage at genocide can be sustained, or whether it will again dissipate as other matters draw our attention. The Bush administration has shown time and again that it will work with the most brutal of dictatorships if given free reign to do so. Clearly, they are enticed by the prospect of enlisting Sudan in the war on terror--and Khartoum is obviously dangling intelligence aid as incentive for the US to drop pressure. The only thing stopping the Bushies from treating Sudan the same as Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, or any of the other states in which we've been acquiescent in support of massive human rights violations is that the American people had, at one point, united in the belief that Sudan was beyond the pale. If that sentiment proves to be unsustainable, then I predict America will slowly, quietly, but inevitably begin opening relations with Sudan and downplaying the mass murder in Darfur.

Don't let that happen.

Death to Homework

I have to say, I found this attack on homework by Brad Plumer to be quite persuasive. Not that it isn't self-serving, of course. But it is difficult to argue against this:

But let's do Waldman one better and say it flat out: homework is most likely evil. Yes, evil. Any educational system that relies on parents at home to help with the "learning process" will only end up perpetuating inequality, as long as some parents can help their kids and some cannot; as long as some parents can speak English and some cannot. And homework, for all its uselessness, is far more likely to put undue stress on family life than anything else. Of course, let's also be honest, the whole point of public school isn't to turn students into well-educated citizens but rather to produce good consumers and dutiful worker bees--people with short attention spans who follow authority, care deeply about status, and will attend with all due diligence to humiliatingly pointless tasks. Get used to working overtime, kid, you'll need it. In that regard, homework is indispensable.

So homework a) perpetuates inequalities between "haves" and "have-nots," b) strains family life and c) is designed to train students into mindless worker-bots who won't think critically or challenge authority. Talk about a stinging rebuke! The critical theorist in me just glows while reading it.

But to be honest, what really caught my eye in the piece was Plumer's story about how he dealt with homework specifically.

: Everyone go out and play. Seriously. Also, let me call bullshit on Dr. Cooper and doubt very much that homework "help[s children] develop study habits and time management skills." Generalizing from a single experience here, when I was in elementary school, I remember very distinctly cutting corners on virtually all of my homework. Math problems would get scribbled frantically in pencil on paper during homeroom. (In fact, what little creativity I have owes entirely to those ingenious, sweaty-fingered minutes spent trying to make it appear as if I had thought very hard about, say, problem #23(a) but just couldn't get the answer.) The spelling workbook, I quickly discovered, didn't need to be filled out at all--—if you worried about grades you could always recoup your losses by getting the "bonus" spelling words on quizzes right. "Homework" always denoted something to do as little of as physically possible. Ever since, I've always had terrible study skills, and while I blame my own laziness, all that useless homework gets part of the blame.

I too have atrocious study skills, which I also attribute to laziness. But now, I also can blame my elementary school teachers for assigning me homework too! Indeed, I've played the very same games Plumer has--like Plumer at some level I see myself as an expert at wiggling out of the holes I've dug by avoiding work. And like Plumer, who considers this the root of what creativity he has, I too am tempted to say that this has had a net positive in my academic career--I became the writer I am, at least in part, because I could write my way out of tests that I barely study for, and I could spin my way out of questions I didn't know the answers to (this also explains the classes I tend to be good in versus bad in--the more subjective the class, the better I do. So top grades in Social Studies and English, serious problems in Math. Foreign Languages, where I can't even speak/write at all, have been predictably catastrophic).

So does this salvage homework? Perhaps--but saying homework is good because I've learned valuable skills in avoiding probably isn't something they recommend in Teacher's College.

Intolerable

A caveat, not that it should be relevant. I'm a Maryland native who will be supporting the Democratic candidate (preferably O'Malley, but I like Duncan too) in the 2006 Senate race. I'm not a Steele fan, an Ehrlich fan, or a fan of the modern Republican party.

That being said, anyone who cares about racism and wants to register opposition to it should condemn this post by Steve Gilliard (H/Ts: Robert George and Andrew Sullivan). WARNING: Do not click on this link at work. For those of you who do not feel comfortable viewing it, it is a photo of Michael Steele, the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and 2006, Senate nominee, photoshopped so that he is in "blackface," with exaggerated lips and bushy white eyebrows. The caption is: "I's Simple Sambo and I's running for the Big House."

It is simply horrifying that such images could even be considered marginally acceptable by anybody in the 21st century, and I don't care how bad the target is (and Michael Steele, severe flaws as a politician aside, is not an embodiment of pure evil). And while "they do it too" should not be an excuse for our own racist acts, I have never seen a major Republican blogger do anything as nakedly racist as this post. At least they pretend to hide behind making a policy argument. This was raw prejudice on full display.

I confess that prior to college, I knew nothing of the image of a "sambo." I had never heard of it. I won't claim that Bethesda was a utopia of racial inclusiveness and integration, but this was one form of racism that mercifully had been beyond my consciousness. However, as far as I can gather, the "sambo" is one of the most reviled stereotypes in the African-American community. Charles Lawrence III specifically uses it as an example of a prevailing social stereotype which help ostracize him as a child in his seminal work, The Id, The Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism, 39 Stan. L. Rev. 317 (1987). Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explicate further on the harms of such images (again, specifically mentioning the "Sambo" as an example):

the history of racial depiction shows that our society has blithely consumed a shocking parade of Sambos, coons, sneaky Japanese, and indolent, napping Mexicans--images that were perceived at the time as amusing, cute or, worse yet, true. How can one talk back to messages, scripts, and stereotypes that are embedded in the minds of one's fellow citizens, and, indeed, the national psyche?

In other words, this type of imagery is not neutral, comical, parody, satire, or otherwise "harmless." It plays on deep-seated racism in American society (by both the left and the right), it marginalizes African-Americans of all political persuasions, and it affirms that even the most shocking forms of racial stereotyping are still fair game even for supposed "allies" of African-Americans.

When a certain liberal blogger subjected Michelle Malkin to sexual slurs, I wrote/asked "We Are (Are We?) Better Than This. I now ask again, this time in some desperation: Can liberals draw a line in the sand and say, once and for all, "racism is intolerable, we will not engage in it at any point, at any time, targeting any one."? This shouldn't be a question, but a moral obligation. It's time we met ours.

UPDATE: What does it mean that Steve is black? Frankly, I don't think it matters--this is a vicious racial smear and ought be treated as such. I've heard the argument that alleged cases of black-on-black racism should be considered an intramural dispute and that white liberals like myself should stay out of it, and frankly I don't buy it. As I wrote in a previous post:

To me, this obscures the divisions in power relations that exist within the black community. Since the black left is far more powerful than the black right, [they can] leverage the influence they have over anti-racism discourse to suppress views they don't like....The terminology used by black leftists is not neutral debate, it is a deliberate attempt to link black conservatives to an ideology inherently opposed to black people. It's like a Jew calling another Jew a Nazi--irrespective of the validity of the criticism itself, the term is offensive because of the particular tropes and tenors it carries in the Jewish experience. Acting as if this was just folks debating ("free speech"?) blinds us to the realities of power and forces us to pretend that Blacks do all agree on the terms and conditions regarding opposition to racism--and moreover, we have to play that role by accepting the very controversy that is under dispute--that black leftists are "right" in how they frame the racism debate and the conservatives are "wrong."

...[M]y Jewish background places me deeply opposed to the "it's not our problem" school of thought. The history of genocide is replete with examples of tyrants who knew that if they just kept their actions an internal affair, they could escape international notice and condemnation of even the most brutal of crimes. Within this paradigm, Hitler's crime was not that he slaughtered millions of Jews, it's that he invaded Poland (which of course made it "everybody's problem"). Had he just concentrated on the Jews in his own border (like Turkey with Armenians, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sudan, etc.), he'd have been home free. I reject this logic.

Obviously there is value to letting groups solve their own problems, just as there is value in respecting national sovereignty. But this is predicated on the notion that all members of the group in question stand on roughly equal footing, and that the object under consideration is not whether or not to expel a disempowered sub-sect. Because I believe the position of black conservatives does not meet either condition, and because I believe that outsiders have obligations, when possible, to rectify even injustices that aren't within their own community, I register my disagreement...

This isn't to say that Gilliard's racial slur is the equivalent of Nazi genocide--it's obviously nowhere close to that. But on the flip side, protesting racial slurs isn't as extreme a remedy as a military intervention, so that washes out. The point is that as a member of a group which watched six million of its members be slaughtered as the world looked away, I'm not willing to adopt that same logic and let justice stop at my own ethnic borders. There are some lines we should not cross, but there are some lines we absolutely must cross in order to protect disempowered persons.

UPDATE 2X: Greetings, Kossacks! I reprint my email response (slightly edited) to Pyesetz for your edification:

Thanks for you response over at Kos. I believe this is the first time I've been linked to by any Kos blogger, and while I'd have preferred it to be more along the lines of an extollment of my awesome wit and breathtaking intelligence, I'm still appreciative that you took the time to address my post and offer your thoughts :-).

That being said, I disagree with your post, and I think you're misinterpreting what I'm advocating. Basically, you take issue with a supposed call on my part for "censorship" of Mr. Gilliard. Nowhere in my post did I do such a thing. I certainly condemn Mr. Gilliard's characterization of Mr. Steele, in the harshest of terms--and I don't back down from that. As a society, I do think racial slurs should be considered beyond the pale as a political tactic. This doesn't mean that I think we should ban them--rather, I think their should be a mutual consensus amongst all persons (progressives especially) that we will not use them and not tolerate them when the occur. The best response to an action like Gilliard's is harsh condemnation, and then, if he persists, ignoring him. The message should be zero-tolerance for racial slurs--not on the level of law, but on the level of our own associations. This is no more censorship then me condemning, say, Michelle Malkin for calling for mass internments. She has the RIGHT to say it, and we have a right (I'd say obligation) to bash her senseless (rhetorically, of course) for saying it. To characterize a condemnation of Malkin regarding her racism as "censorship" is to confuse a social protest with legal sanction. Only the latter can be labeled "censorship" if we are to preserve the principles of poltical debate. With regards to Mr. Gilliard, we choose to see him as a voice we consider and take seriously, or choose not to. In making that choice, one cannot ignore the particular tools he uses to make his advocacy. And I believe that the use of racial slurs should be prima facia proof that a given speaker should be expelled from our collective community of political allies--again, not as a matter of law, but of free association. Gilliard is free to say what he wants--but if THIS is what he says then we should be quick to disassociate ourselves from the message.

I also would like clarify my Jewish analogy, because it's being misinterpreted (this is my fault, it was poorly written). I'd agree that if a Jew ACTUALLY is a Nazi--in that he has joined the party and says "heil Hitler" etc etc, then yes, we can say he's a Nazi as a matter of fact. Similarly, if Steele actually had dressed up as a Sambo to make Republican donors laugh in their beer, then Mr. Gilliard would be perfectly justified in putting a picture of that act on his site and saying "see! He's playing a Sambo!" What I'm objecting to is criticizing a person who legitimately deserves criticism in a manner designed to play on particular base emotive reactions, without a direct and explicit link. So, if a Jew is a neoconservative, we may criticize him for being a neo-con, but not as a Nazi because the two are distinct and the conflation is a deliberate effort not just to demark political opposition but also to exile the person from the community writ large. I don't think that's permissible in normal political disputes. Similarly, I think that Steele can be critiqued from plenty of perfectly reasonable positions, but seeing as he isn't "actually" a Sambo, portraying him as such is an effort to illegitimately dehumanize him and tag him with one of the most appalling anti-black stereotypes in existence today. There's a difference between a factual label, and a damaging stereotype. Steele is not factually a Sambo, and as long as that is true it is immoral to label him as one.

I agree that we should be very cautious in "taboo-ing" certain issues from political discourse. But I think that racial slurs, like Nazi comparisons, meet this high standard except in the most clear-cut circumstances. For all of Lt. Gov. Steele's faults, this is not a "clear-cut" circumstance where an attack such as this is justified. We may (and do) disagree, vociferously, about his policies or judgment. But it is a basic hallmark of human decency that we refrain from this sort of brutal ad hominem attack.

Corruptathon

I've said for awhile now that Democrats should run in 2006 on corruption. Not just "against DeLay" but as a party of clean government. And yes, I think that once they win, they should actually institute reforms--none of this GOP 1994 crap where they run on cleaning up congress and make it worse.

People keep telling me that they'll never win, that the American people don't care about corruption. Well, to them I say, scope this data (link: Daily DeLay):

How important will each of the following issues be to your vote for Congress this November? (sorted by extremely important)

Extremely important -- Extremely/Very important

Corruption in government 45 -- 81
Terrorism 45 -- 77
The situation in Iraq 44 -- 81
The economy 43 -- 84
Health care 42 -- 79
Gas prices 41 -- 70
Social Security 38 -- 75
Taxes 35 -- 73

Wow, look what's in first place! If it isn't corruption in government? Beating out Iraq AND Terrorism.

Uh-oh, spaghettios (does anyone else remember that?).

And as DeLay's troubles continue to grow, I don't see these numbers falling any time soon.

Poll Data

Some interesting information from the pollsters office today. Kos, as usually, does a great job putting all together.

Survey USA has the list of most and least popular senators. Daily Kos pulls out the highlights--bottom line, it doesn't look good for the GOP.

5. Conrad (D-ND) 73/23
19. Nelson (D-NE) 63-29
21. Byrd (D-WV) 65/32
32. Clinton (D-NY) 63-24
58. Chafee (R-RI) 56-37
69. Cantwell (D-WA) 52-37
72. Stabenow (D-MI) 50-39
72. Talent (R-MO) 51-40
75. Kyl (R-AZ) 48-38
82. Burns (R-MT) 52-43
84. Nelson (D-FL) 46-38
95. DeWine (R-OH) 45-43
100. Santorum (R-PA) 45-48

Vulnerable Democrats are doing good in this poll (Byrd's numbers are especially heartening)--and nothing makes me happier than seeing Santorum at rock bottom. DeWine also is in serious trouble--both the Democrats running against him (Paul Hackett and Sherrod Brown) would be strong candidates even in a year that wasn't shaping up to be a Democratic tidal wave.

Meanwhile, in my native Maryland, the numbers also are looking good for the Democrats in both the Senate and Governor's races:

Governor's Race

Ehrlich (R) 42
O'Malley (D) 48

Ehrlich (R) 44
Duncan (D) 45

Senate Race

Cardin (D) 47
Steele (R) 38

Mfume (D) 40
Steele (R) 42

I'm undecided between Cardin and Mfume for Senate, leaning toward Cardin. And while I do respect Doug Duncan highly and am sad that I think his political career is about to end, I have to endorse O'Malley--a rising star in the Democratic party if I've ever seen one. The fact that the GOP is looking at Maryland as one of its top pick-up opportunities is proof in of itself of how dire things are for them right now.

Finally, the DeLay scandal has taken its toll. DeLay's disapproval's have topped 50%, and 42% of his constituents (including 27% of Republicans and 50% of Independents) say that he shouldn't even wait for an election, but should resign from congress himself. These are simply atrocious numbers--DeLay has to be seen as one of the more vulnerable GOP incumbents in congress.

Oh The Places You'll Go!

According to Sitemeter, my last 100 visitors have included persons from the following locations:

-Alaska

-Mauritius

-Australia

-New Zealand

-Turkey

-Canada

-England

-Trinidad & Tobago

I feel so cosmopolitan...

Gay Rights for Gay (Western) Whites?

...With all due apologies to Darren Lenard Hutchinson.

Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings points us to (and excerpts extensively from) a stellar article in the Washington Post on the status of gay rights in Africa. If you think the climate is bad here, you should hear what's going on over there. This is not to say that gay rights is an issue we've "won" in America, only that what is a major problem that occasionally spills into violence in America appears to be a violent problem that occasionally lapses into merely a "major" one in Africa. I've already once before blogged on how race intersects with homosexuality in shifting the nexus of oppression--and since I read an excerpt from Chandra Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes" for class today, an analysis of how "third world" modifies homosexual also seems appropriate (note to the uninitiated: Mohanty's article is considered a classic critique of how western feminism constructs third world women to fit within certain prefigured norms, and why this is harmful).

What's most depressing is that you get the feeling that this is rooted in the tradition of Western colonialism--that homophobia at the level described in this article is not "native" to the continent. This isn't a "blame the West" game--just an acknowledgement of history. The article notes that at worst, the status of homosexuals was ambiguous in pre-colonial Africa--sometimes scapegoats for droughts and crop failures, but sometimes seen as mystical healers and shamans. The primary organs of modern homophobia in Africa today are the Church and politicians trying to distract the masses from pressing problems at home (hmmm...sound familiar?). Scapegoating may be universal, but surely the fact that homosexuals seem to be one of the few classes in the west exempt from protection from explicitly expressed animosity by public officials, surely African leaders have gotten the message that this is a human rights violation for which they'll pay no price. If they choose a different characteristic that Western nations value (like Mugabe's racism toward White people), then the West will protest ferociously--for most countries, this isn't worth the cost. In other words, the status of gay rights discourse in America incentivizes African leaders to scapegoat homosexuals because insofar as they have to scapegoat somebody, this is an "freebie" that won't bring trade sanctions or any other such bad things.

Another thought I had after reading Mohanty was whether or not Western leftist ideologies also have aided African leaders in the suppression of homosexuals. Essentially, what struck me was how often the justification for the suppression of gays and lesbians was premised off it not being "African." The charge for local norms and customs taking precedence over universal human rights standards has been led, by and large, by the left. The rhetoric being used here (though not the effect) doesn't strike me as conservative--rather, what I'm hearing (and this has been heard from terrorist groups in the middle east too) is a co-opting of the leftist attack on culture imperialism and using it to proclaim that homosexuality is a Western value imposing itself on African(/Arabic) culture.

Leftists will argue that this isn't true because, as noted above, homophobia isn't actually rooted in African history at all but is primarily an import from the West. Okay, maybe. But this was still a foreseeable harm that needs to be addressed. By splitting off "African" norms from "our" norms, the left has shoved a wedge between what might be a necessary alliance between first world and third world gay activists. This doesn't mean that the first world should simply absorb the third world into its own framework--acknowledgement of difference is obligatory (for example, "tradition" is a strike against first world gays but perhaps an argument in favor for third world homosexuals). However, at some level I believe that severing human rights in the third world from human rights in the first world by extolling cultural differences and moral relativity is a convenient cover for activists who simply do not wish to address third world oppression. The division serves to allow us to turn the other way, and that shouldn't be acceptable (even if the goal is to focus on "our own" problems, doesn't that betray the sort of provincialism that liberals should try to avoid?).

Blogger Influence

As the Miers nomination continues to get negative reviews, this is the topic on the minds of both policymakers and (of course) bloggers themselves. How much influence do we have on the actual going-ons of the world?

Daniel Glover started the discussion by comparing bloggers to freshman representatives--they have "occasional seats at the policymaking table -- but they are definitely back seats." He warrants this by noting that, even in the wake of a furious reaction by the blogosphere right, President Bush has stood loyally by Harriet Miers.

First of all, I wonder what Glover would say if Bush ends up withdrawing Miers after all, or alternatively, if she loses a Senate vote. But Daniel Solove thinks that even the status quo showcases plenty of blogger influence on the Miers nomination:

The fact that Bush still stands behind Miers is not an indication of the blogosphere's failure. The blogospheric reaction certainly has the Administration reeling. The blogosphere has registered the dislike for the nomination in a much more potent and articulate way than a mere poll.

I also believe that bloggers have helped shape the debate on the issue. The blogosphere has led to many experts, who might just get a soundbite in the print and TV news, having a much larger influence in shaping the debate. The mainstream media has picked up on this and turned it into a lead story for the Miers nomination. The eyes of the media and those inside the Beltway are looking at the blogosphere to gauge the way the debate is progressing.

I think this is very true. Framing an issue is critically important in politics, and blogs have had a lot of success in this respect. Even if Bush ends up winning on Miers, he'll have to expend a lot more effort and capital than he would otherwise, and that's a very tangible impact in modern politics. I'd argue that its the relative newness of the genre which is responsible for our lack of influence--we still aren't quite sure which buttons to press to harness our power. The fact that bloggers have played acknowledged keystone roles in certain controversies (e.g., Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond, Rathergate) means that the potential is there--and any politician caught in the wake of a bona fide blogger storm can probably vouch for our strength.

Pundit Review isn't quite as "up" on the blogosphere as Solove (or myself) is, but still thinks they play some role. He focuses on grassroots organizing and fundraising as the blogosphere's main strengths today--but sees room for improvement:

I do think blogs have had a substantial impact on other areas such as grass roots activism, fundraising and on the media. We discussed this very issue with Danny on his recent visit on Pundit Review Radio.

Dealing with politicians who are hostage to spe$ial intere$t$ is another question. It will take time. How many reformer politicians have gone into DC and then just been enveloped by the inside beltway infrastructure? Hundreds? Thousands?

The way for blogs to break through on Capitol Hill is to pick off a congressional candidate or two, then they will be able to move up a few rows in the bus. I think the Thune Senate candidacy in 2004 was the first where bloggers had a significant impact. We need to see more of that, whether it is coming from the left or the right. A couple of high profile defeats, brought about in large part by activist bloggers, will go a long way in getting the attention of the entrenched elites on Capitol Hill.

We are in the first inning of this blog/citizen journalist/new media phenomenon, so as Danny mentioned, there is room for improvement and hope for the future.

Surely, the organizational capacity of the blogosphere should not be underestimated (look at DKos if you needed proof). However, I think that the interactivity between politicians and activists that blogging engenders is a rising phenomena that needs to be examined. John Conyers is currently guest-blogging on BlackProf, and is writing some superb posts. Barack Obama's post on DKos regarding the Roberts nomination caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. Of course, some politicos start blogs to look trendy and then do nothing with them (Harry Reid, I'm looking at you). But even Reid's blog has comments open, and by more closely integrating politicians into the discursive stream, blogging has the potential to crack the bubble that separates politicos and their constituents. The golden opportunity, from my perspective, would be if politicians were expected to engage the blogosphere--this would be a major threat to the status quo where politicians can play the spin game and avoid any substantive debate.

And finally, I want to point to some comments by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (from a post by Todd Zywicki) that I think are quite relevant:

The confirmation process has been fundamentally changed by technological changes that allow the instantaneous and costless spread of information. In this age of the 24-hour news cycle of blogs, talk radio, and cable news, there is a seemingly constant vacuum to be filled with new information on the nominee. Much of this revolution is for the good, as it allows the public to develop a more informed view. But there are harmful effects as well. Unsubstantiated rumors, false allegations, and distorted facts can be spread with impunity by those who don't take the time to check the facts-as well as by those who affirmatively seek to mislead. And once such baseless claims and innuendo are made, the Internet ensures that they take on a life of their own and can never be fully rooted out.

In light of these changes, those who traffic in information owe all Americans a duty to act in good faith, to avoid circulating falsehoods, and to verify information before broadcasting it. The careers and reputations of good people depend on that....It is important that amidst all of the static surrounding a nominee, the Senate focus on the characteristics that are essential to good judging, seek out reliable information, and maintain the dignity of a process that is essential to our democracy.

Obviously, a Bush administration official talking about "distorted facts" and "unsubstantiated rumors" sets off my irony alert. But the point is still well-taken--we have an obligation to be impeccably honest, forthcoming, fair, and of course to admit mistakes when wrong. In the early days of the blog I posted a "code of ethics," and I think it is all the more relevant now:

1) I will not be a partisan hack, nor will I engage in hatchet jobs on my political opponents that are grounded weakly or not at all in facts.
2) I will focus predominantly on issues, not personal lives or other tangents. While instances such as Rathergate deserve some attention, they don't deserve ALL of our attention and certainly don't outweigh the pressing issues that face our country.
3) I will do my best to present issues with as much factual grounding as possible.
4) If evidence turns up that proves I'm wrong, or casts my point in substantial doubt, I will either address the criticism or admit error.
5) If a political opponent says something that I think is smart, wise, well-advised, or I otherwise agree with, I will point it out.
6) I will at all times conduct myself in a manner that seeks to further, not hinder, intellectual debate on the issues.
7) Recognizing that full compliance with the above is often a case of judgment, I will make a good faith effort to comply with this code.

I honestly think that the influence of bloggers will only continue to grow. It is now, in the early days of this institution, that the norms which will govern how blogging behave for decades to come will be established. Do we want to merely replicated the smearing and hackery of mainstream politics? Or, just as bad, mimic the bland "he said/she said" "journalism" of the Mainstream Media? Or do we want to be something different: an honest, serious, and intellectual discussion and advocacy of the issues that matter? Now's the time when we have to decide.

Jews and Admissions Decisions

Really interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker on how the Ivy League admissions decisions got how they are. Specifically, it notes how much of the current emphasis on "character" was designed specifically to reduce the amount of Jews on campus. A stellar example of how prevailing standards of "merit" are actually constructions to aid certain persons at the expense of others.

Link via Phoebe Maltz.

Romeo & Juliet

The Kansas Supreme Court just unanimously struck down as discriminatory a set of statutes which punished certain criminals convicted of homosexual statutory rape far more harshly than those whose crime was heterosexual. Basically, Kansas has what is known as a "Romeo & Juliet law," which reduces statutory rape sentences significantly if the perpetrator is under 19, the victim is either 14 or 15 (KS age of consent is 16), and there is less than a 5 year age difference between the older actor and the younger one. The Kansas law only applied to heterosexual cases. At bar, the perpetrator was sentenced to over 17 years in prison, when if the crime was heterosexual the maximum sentence would have been 15 months. The opinion can be found here.

The court struck down the law as having no "rational basis" for its existence. I dislike the rational basis test, both in of itself (I think that, under its terms, its far too easy to beat--when it is met normally the Court has to stretch a bit), and as applied to homosexuals (I think that the record clearly establishes that their cases deserve either "heightened" or "strict" scrutiny). I discuss this issue in far more detail in this post. But even still, I agree with Kip Esquire--this law is "indisputably unconstitutional." And the opinion text does a good job of dismantling many of the rationales the state might have for discriminatory conduct. Also, the fact that the opinion was unanimous, and came out of Kansas, should theoretically forestall accusations of judicial activism. We all know it won't, but I can dream, right?

Unfortunately, I will also note that this case is red meat for the right. Even under the best of circumstances, reducing a sentence on a statutory rape case lights up a bright, shining "critique me" sign for Christian conservatives. But worse, the criminal himself isn't a sympathetic character. Generally, R&J laws are there so that consensual sex acts between two actors of near-same age won't be prosecuted. While this case was consensual, the perpetrator has a criminal history of aggravated homosexual sodomy (no word whether those convictions were on consensual acts too). In fact, the opinion hints that the acts weren't quite consensual after all:

The State makes the same argument in a narrower fashion as applied to the facts of this case, stating the activity between Limon and M.A.R. was "less than consensual and more likely coercive." Where the State stipulated below that the sexual activity between Limon and M.A.R. was consensual, it cannot be heard to argue on appeal that Limon's actions were "coercive and predatory." We agree the wording in the stipulation that the oral sex between Limon and M.A.R. was "consensual" was a legal misnomer and a better term would have been "voluntary," but that distinction does not permit the State to back away from its stipulation at this stage of the case.

In any case, this at the very least isn't two innocent kids engaging in puppy love. The right will go wild over this.

Orin Kerr offers some interesting thoughts. He notes that the analysis in the case makes it ripe for a Supreme Court review. However, according to the news articles I've read, the Kansas attorney general does not plan to appeal, so the Supreme Court will have to wait for another day.

Little Brother

Sorry for the lack of posts. My younger brother is visiting me at college, so I've been spending time with him instead of you. Quality time is so important in today's environment, after all. Anyway, he leaves on Sunday. Expect light posting until then.

Things to look at until then:

Voter suppression amongst Katrina victims? Spencer Overton examines some odd machinations by FEMA.

Maggie Gallagher sums up her time on The VC. I'm a strong advocate for same-sex marriage, but she's a worthy foe. Eric Muller takes issue with at least one of the claims though.

Dan Solove takes on sploggers. They are, indeed, a menace to society (or at least, the blogosphere).

Kevin Drum plays at least partial defense on behalf of liberal hawks (like myself). The original attackers were Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias in the American Prospect.

And if you're desparate for more: The First Carnival of the Femnists and Restless Mania both have plenty on the reading list.

Running About

I'm out of town for most of today picking my brother up at the airport. Posts, if any, won't be up until late tonight.

Perp Walk

An Arrest Warrant has just been issued for Tom DeLay, the Associated Press reports. This actually doesn't mean all that much--it's standard pre-trial procedure--but it does mean that DeLay will have to be fingerprinted and have a mug shot taken. I can't wait for that picture to show up on front pages everywhere.

Meanwhile, John Cole points to a separate Houston Chronicle story on a particular aspect of DeLay's defense strategy.

U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's chief lawyer says he has no evidence that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle participated in grand jury deliberations, despite having made that allegation in motions to dismiss DeLay's indictments.


But Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin said there have been enough public comments by grand jurors in news media reports to raise suspicions that Earle may have violated laws in his efforts to indict one of the most powerful Republican politicians in the nation.

DeGuerin is seeking access to grand jury records to develop possible evidence of misconduct on Earle's part. He has subpoenaed records from two of his assistant district attorneys related to their dealings with three grand juries that investigated DeLay.

The article claims that DeGuerin has an uphill battle ahead of him if he wishes to press this point--leading me to think this is a PR move.

In other scandal news, Kevin Drum finds a story that says Bush is pissed at Karl Rove...for not doing a good enough job on the cover-up.

An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

....[T]he President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

As Drum notes, if true this proves a connection between this whole scandal and President Bush. It also, as Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings argues, gives lie to Bush's claims that he is serious about finding the roots of the leak. If the story is true (and according to Josh Marshall, the reporter who wrote it has very deep links with the administration), Bush knew about the source of the leak and collaborated in the cover-up.

But while Rove may be getting heat, many folks say it's Cheney that's truly in trouble. Eric Muller, Andrew Sullivan, and Michael Froomkin all are positing that Cheney will either be indicted or, in Froomkin's case, be at least an "unindicted co-conspirator" (which is what Nixon was in the Watergate scandal).

And finally, what does it say about the current administration that I can write a full-length post dealing with separate scandal stories about the Vice President, the President's top aid, the House Majority Leader (emeritus), without ever quoting a site like The Daily Kos and while letting about a dozens "minor" scandal-ers off without mention (Scooter Libby, Bill Frist, and Roy Blunt all jump immediately to mind).

The culture of corruption makes blogging too easy.

Merry Fitzmas?

For the most part, I've been pretty scrupulous in avoiding the Plame scandal (My co-bloggers at TMV are doing an excellent job covering the developments, here for the latest post). Not because I don't think it's important, but because the legal issues fly way over my head and I don't like talking about indictments and crimes and punishments when I have no idea what the relevant laws are or whether they've been breached. And I'm especially reluctant to do it when the subjects of the investigation are people like Karl Rove, whom I despise. I don't trust my own objectivity.

I'm also inclined to agree with John Cole: if Fitzgerald doesn't hand down any indictments (of major figures?), a significant portion of the left will implode in a spontaneous fit of outrage. We need to be careful not to put the cart before the horse.

But there is one thing that is absolutely true, and Publius of Legal Fiction nails it. If (keep that "if" in mind) a senior Republican official committed perjury in the process of outing an undercover CIA agent, a lot of Democrats will be gleefully waving Republican quotes from the Clinton era about how incredibly awful a crime perjury is, impeachable offense, etc etc.. Republicans will undoubtedly dredge up Democratic quotes from the same era dismissing perjury as a minor offense. Publius warns us to avoid getting caught up in this moral equivalency game:

I don't want the dialogue to get mired in the Swamp of Moral Equivalence (where both sides are always equally right and wrong) that seems to be a permanent template that people like David Broder project on to the world. Though I realize what I'm about to say has a "heads I win, tails you lose" ring to it, I think it's true. Under the hypothetical above, I think the Republicans get it wrong both times. And the reason is context. Perjury - like all things - must be viewed in context. I'm not saying that perjury is good - it's never good. But the question is not whether it's good (it's not), it's whether it is sufficiently bad to warrant impeachment or indictments of senior administration officials. And that depends entirely on context.

Clinton's perjury involved a private sexual affair. That's not to excuse it - it's only to say that it doesn't rise to the level of impeachment given the circumstances. If Clinton had committed perjury in the context of Travelgate or Somalia, that's an entirely different matter. And I would have said impeach his ass. That's because it would be perjury in the context of his public duties and responsibilities. Again, not good - just not sufficiently bad for impeachment.

Libby's perjury (if it exists) was in the context of an official DOJ investigation into an outing of a CIA agent. There was nothing private about it. If Libby lied about an affair or private past drug use under oath, I don't think that would warrant an indictment. It would be bad, but it wouldn't justify prosecution. Lying to the FBI about this particular investigation, however, is completely different. This is an investigation into Libby's public action as a public official with knowledge gained as a result of his public authority. There's nothing private about it. Perjury in this context is indictable. The public action undermined national security no matter how sketchy or partisan Joe Wilson is.

It's the whole "which is worse, lying about sex or selling weapons to terrorists in Nicaragua" point. Again, I hesitate to prejudge prior to the indictments coming down. But on a moral level (which exists apart from the legal case), there is a significant qualitative difference between what Clinton did and what Libby (or Rove or Cheney) is accused of doing. We should not tolerate attempts to equate the two.

Amazing Grace

The VC and De Novo (among others) note this story about that Charlie Daniels classic, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Basically, the song was in a High School Band's marching arsenal until a certain Robert McLean complained about a presumed asymmetry. Mr. McLean claimed that if the song was about God (the specific example given was "Amazing Grace") the band director would be fired for breaching the Church/State wall. Chastised, the school pulled the piece.

Now, I consider myself a church/state fire-breather. I believe that both Lee v. Weisman and Santa Fe Ind. Sch. Dist. v. Doe were properly decided, believe that "under God" is unconstitutional in the pledge, and if I had my druthers we'd replace "In God We Trust" with our original motto, "E Pluribus Unum." When I was in 5th grade, a bunch of my friends and I expressed concern to our choir director that our winter performance was almost exclusively made up of Christmas songs (they added one Chanukah song for variety). So yeah, I take this stuff seriously.

I went to Walt Whitman High School, a very liberal school smack in the most liberal city (Bethesda) in a very liberal county (Montgomery County, Maryland). Support for the separation of Church and State is, I guarantee you, far, far higher than it is in Prince Williams County, Virginia.

My junior year, our band played what could only be described as a gorgeous rendition of "Amazing Grace" (Frank Tichelli, arr.). It was the warm-up piece for our competitions (HS band competitions feature one warm-up and two adjudicated pieces, plus one attempt at sight-reading). I had no protest whatsoever. In fact, I was thrilled to play such a wonderful song that just seemed to soar and fall with a rare intrinsic passion. That song was and remains one of my very favorites, and I still listen to it regularly on my iPod.

So basically, I think that Mr. McLean has a skewed perception of what us evil separationists actually advocate for. I have no quarrel with playing a song with religious roots, if it was chosen for its artistic merit (as this one clearly was), just as I had no problem studying the Bible as a piece of literature in my AP Literature class. I know of no person of any political persuasion who would argue differently. The moral of the story is that folks like McLean need to get their facts straight. They protest policies that nobody actually supports. If they could just look past the Pat Robertson style demonizations of the liberal atheists and secularists (or in my case, the Jews--we kind of get grouped in with secularists for the purposes of this debate) to what kind of educational policy we actually want, both sides might be able to find some common ground. I'm not saying there wouldn't be disagreements--there would be. But whether or not "Amazing Grace" should be performed would not be one of them.

Intimidation or Association?

Maggie Gallagher (guest-blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy) brings back up an old issue in the Massachusetts gay marriage debate. Some pro-gay marriage advocates are posting the names and addresses of people who have signed a petition against gay marriage online. This information is part of the public domain, but obviously this action makes it a lot more public. I first blogged on the topic here and much of the argument applies here (obviously, the problems I had with Ms. Barber's particular post should not be cross-applied to Ms. Gallagher's).

A few facts need to be gotten straight. Ms. Gallagher says that this is "a bid to discourage anyone from signing the petition." This isn't actually true--the stated goal of the organization is so that gay and gay-friendly voters know who their political opponents are in their neighbors so that they can foster a dialogue with them. Put this way, it seems far more benign--indeed, perhaps something positively beneficial to a democratic polity. Do we not want more political engagement and discussion between voters? Absent intimidation, I have difficulty seeing how this is a bad thing.

In any event, the particular problem Ms. Gallagher has is not with the list itself (she passes that without comment), but rather with a particular person who says that he would not hire anybody who's name is on the list. In other words, economic retaliation. She asks if this gives anybody "the creeps."

I'll admit that it does give me pause. But I also do not consider it to be an open-and-shut question. The idea that people can refuse to patronize those who support causes one finds to be abhorrent or immoral is pretty well-accepted in American politics. Focus on the Family and other such groups have called for boycotts of Ford, Disney, and Procter & Gamble, among other companies, because of perceived pro-gay policies. Many liberal groups have eschewed Nike products because of Sweatshop labor. And undoubtedly, the reverse is probably true as well: it seems clear that at least some people choose affirmatively to buy from a given company because s/he believe the company is aligned with his/her values. Is this any different? To some extent, economic revolt is one of society's greatest tools to rectify corporate and/or social injustices.

At the same time, like most tools it is one that can be used for good or evil. One can easily think of a southern shop owner in the 1960s, sympathetic to civil rights, but one who knew that if he served black customers, his white clientele would evaporate and go bankrupt. I won't pretend that this dilemma does not exist. It seems intractable to notate where ones rights as a free economic actor end and intimidation begins.

At the same time, one thing it clearly isn't is "terrorism," to quote the title from this wrong-headed and hyperbolic post. Worse, it seems to badly mischaracterize the pro-gay marriage position:

The battle for marriage is a battle for the future of our country. Those seeking homosexual marriage seek to hijack the family by reducing marriage to a sexual institution. Thus sex will have been exalted above the needs of children. When we refuse to honor marriage by making it a matter of sex, not love, we put children in harm's way. The exaltation of sex puts children in harm's way in one other manner as well: we destroy millions of them for the sake of unconstrained sexual activity through abortion.

For all the talk on how liberals are all about sex, sex, and more sex, it always seems to be the conservatives who bring it up. The liberal argument for gay marriage has two broad strokes to it. The first is that marriage is the uniting of two people who love each other and that it is unjust to exclude homosexuals from the institution. True, this unity probably will include sexuality, but like in any healthy marraige it will by no means be limited to it. The conservative obsession with gay sex seems more a product of a reflexive revulsion rather than any actual advocacy by marriage-equality advocates. The second, though, is expressly predicated on the best interests of children. This argument plays within the reality of children who are being raised by gay couples, and asks what is in their (the children's) best interests. The answer is clear: a stable environment where their parent's are in a socially sanctioned relationship and are backed by the state's full and unequivical support. It is clearly not that the state try to pretend these children exist, or worse yet, that these children should be stripped from their families in placed in a "better" heterosexual home. Such a belief is not "for the children," rather, it privileges a particular social ideology over the needs of individual children. To caricature the pro-equality movement as omitting the needs of children is a parody at best, and at worst it attacks the speck in gay couples' eyes while ignoring the log in its own.

New Debate Resource

Via the PrawfsBlawgs discussion of the debater/professor link, I came across a new site by Lindsay Harrison, former debater at Greenhill HS and currently a Law Lecturer at the University of Miami. Her site is designed to give HS policy debaters some guidance on the legal implications of the cases they're running, but I'm sure it can be used by debaters of all stripes (or indeed, anybody else).

One of her early posts focused on the limits of congressional power. There was one section that was confusing to me however:

There is an important limitation on legislation passed pursuant to Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. If the Supreme Court has held that a right does not exist, Section 5 cannot be the basis for a statute passed ostensibly to enforce such a right. The Supreme Court has stated, "Section 5 legislation reaching beyond the scope of § 1's actual guarantees must be an appropriate remedy for identified constitutional violations, not an attempt to substantively redefine the States' legal obligations." [Nevada Department of Human Resources v.] Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721, 728 (2003) (quotation omitted). By way of example, since the Supreme Court has stated that there is no right to be free from traffic stops made without probable cause, Congress could not pass legislation banning traffic stops made without probable cause since it lacks the authority to enforce a right that does not exist.

In comments, I asked the following (edited slightly for clarity):

At least as you're describing it, this seems to conflict with the precedent set by Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U.S. 484 (1974) and how it was essentially overruled by statute via the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. If freedom from discrimination against status of pregnancy is not a right under the 14th amendment, then it seems that congress could not have passed the PDA making it a protected status. I can think of a few distinguishing characteristics between that case, and the example you give, but it seems that these events put a significant wrinkle in the claim you make.

This isn't an area of law I claim to know very well, but I was always under the impression that there is at least a limited amount of wiggle room between the "floor" of what the constitution absolutely requires, and the "ceiling" by which congress can expand those protections beyond the baseline. So Pregnancy is not an inherently protected class, but congress, pursuaint to its power under the 14th amendment, can make it one. Of course, there is almost definitely some outward limit to what congress can do under the 14th amendment. But turning back to Harrison's example, could congress respond to cases proclaiming that there is no right to be free of an unreasonable search and seizure in a traffic stop by (for example) passing a law claiming that automobiles are private spaces and thus are contained within the limitations of the 4th amendment? Or, that any search and seizure must be reasonably be expected to yield additional information/evidence about the act that provoked suspicion in the first place? Would these laws be unconstitutional exercises of congressional power (putting aside from whether they're wise policy)?

Explanation about why I'm foolish and ignorant would be much appreciated.

Should Virginia Execute Hitler?

The Virginia Gubernatorial race gets a little bit uglier. Godwin's law aside (does that only apply to internet posts, by the way?), I really dislike this ad. In my opinion, the Holocaust should be used to influence one political issue and one political issue only: genocide. Since the chances of mass murder breaking out in old Virginny are relatively slim, and since neither Kaine nor Kilgore will have any influence on American policy regarding the current genocide in Darfur, the Hitler reference is exploitative and entirely inappropriate.

A few thoughts. First, according to The Washington Post, Jewish leaders share my outrage by the usage here:

Adolf Hitler became a central character in the Virginia governor's race this week as Republican Jerry W. Kilgore's campaign used the Nazi leader's name in an emotional ad on the death penalty, prompting an outcry Friday from some Jewish leaders.
[...]
Such references are inappropriate and insensitive, and, as part of a discussion of the death penalty in the Commonwealth of Virginia, trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust," wrote David Friedman, a regional director for the group.

While most Jewish groups lean Democrat (making some conservatives suspicious), it appears that this is not a partisan issue:

Holocaust references have become almost off-limits in American politics as Jewish leaders have begun to pounce on what they say are cynical attempts to capitalize on the emotional power of the genocide.

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) was chastised for accusing Senate Republicans of acting like Nazis. Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan was taken to task for comparing the Terri Schiavo case to the killings at Auschwitz. And in Virginia, state Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) was reprimanded for comparing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to the Holocaust.

It's very frustrating to me to see non-Jewish politicians (especially non-Jewish politicians who take positions at odds with the majority of the Jewish community) co-opt one of the most horrifying events in our history without our consent. The fact that this ad ran without any apparent consultation with the Jewish community is appalling. It doesn't matter whether the ad matches some hypothetical situation where Kaine would have to pass judgment on Hitler (and even the accuracy in this respect is disputed). The Kilgore campaign should have consulted with the Jewish community before invoking a man who's very name has a powerful psychological effect on Jews around the world. It just lends more credence to my hypothesis that the Jewish identity is rapidly devolving into nothing more than a political football for non-Jewish activists. There is no examination of Jewish perspectives on the death penalty (which admittedly is a very complex issue). The impact is a very powerful silencing effect on the Jewish community, as its views on its own identity become irrelevant and pass out of the public debate. This is marginalization personified.

Second, Kaine's opposition to the Death Penalty comes out of his sincere religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic. Recall that Kaine has said that he will enforce Virginia's death penalty law because it's the law--his anti-death penalty position is a personal belief, nothing more. Imagine the outrage if a liberal candidate attacked a conservative candidate for just holding conservative religious beliefs. Hell, you don't even have to imagine it--we know what would happen, because we've been hearing for several years now Republicans blasting Democratic Senators for asking conservative judicial nominees if their sincere religious beliefs will prevent them from upholding the law. "Religious discrimination!" they cry. "Stop persecuting people of faith." But what the Democrats are doing is asking the perfectly legitimate question about whether these potential judge's personal faith will conflict with the rule of law. The Kilgore ad attacks the belief even after being assured the rule of law won't be implicated. There is a difference here, to be sure, but the GOP comes out far worse.

I haven't been following the VA race that closely, but from what I've picked up it seems that Kilgore is running a paradigmatic nasty campaign. Ads like this are maybe the most visible instances. However, I also heard that as he got pummelled in the debates, he resorted to old conservative stand-bys of "TAXES WILL RISE TO THE HEAVENS!!! AAAAAAHHHH!!!!" In other words, what we've seen out of the Kilgore campaign is what we see out of far too many campaigns in America today: lots of inflammatory rhetoric, precious little substantive debate. I won't say I think this is worse than gratuitous Holocaust references. But it is something we should oppose.

One final (brief) note on Jewish views on the Death Penalty. In Judaism, the commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Murder" (as opposed to "Kill"), and the Death Penalty is not considered murder if judicially imposed as punishment for certain crimes. However, Talmudic interpretation has severely limited when it can imposed--placing extremely high procedural hurdles before the state can justly take a life (to the practical effect that it could never be imposed at all). So while Jews don't subscribe to the Roman Catholic model which is inherently opposed to the Death Penalty, a Jewish perspective would be appalled by the broken, unjust, and frankly racist freight train to the Electric Chair that personifies Virginia's Death Penalty system. Which is roughly my position as well: The Death Penalty may be alright in theory, but in practice it is broken beyond repair. That these nuances were again, entirely ignored by the Kilgore campaign as it sought to exploit Jewish tragedy for electoral gain, is icing on a bitter cake of Jewish political expendablity.