When Did We Suddenly Have To "Pay For" Things?

I feel like there is no greater illustration of the hollow GOP concern for the deficit than this exchange between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and David Gregory:

GREGORY: For a final time, I’ll go back to my question which is, the extension of the tax cuts would cost $3.2 trillion. That’s borrowed money, that adds to the deficit. Do you have a plan to pay for that extension?

MCCONNELL: You’re talking about current tax policy. Why did it all of a sudden become something that we, quote, ‘pay for’?

Senator McConnell may have once again darted across the McConnell Line.

....FORMER ROOMATE!

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's book What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America, was published in America by a press owned by none other than Fox News' Rupert Murdoch. Which, under the Spaceballs criterion of guilt that the Cordoba Initiative is being forced to play under, makes Fox News a terrorist affiliate (and the Cordoba Initiative a conservative hack outfit, I guess).

The Dark Side

This article, on how to keep the trapped Chilean miners sane as they await what might be a four-month long wait for rescue, is very interesting. But my favorite part was the inverse-Yoda advice given about the perils of darkness:

The men used tools they have underground to establish a light source and to power their head lamps – after food and water sources, establishing reliable access to light is critical to staving off psychological deterioration.

“The most important thing, aside from keeping physical needs satisfied, is to help them keep a positive frame of mind,” Dr. Suedfeld said. “Darkness is disorienting. It leads to uncertainty. That leads to anxiety and fear.”

And that leads to the dark side! Wait -- that's circular.

Anyway, hopefully the officials down in Chile have some good consultants available to advise them on how to keep tensions to a minimum amongst the trapped miners. Their situation is precarious enough without them fighting all the time.

I Hear That Book Covers Almost as Much Terrain as Richard Posner in a Year

An amusing legal research anecdote shared by Eugene Volokh.

Direct Talks Beginning

It took some severe arm-twisting and more than a few tense moments, but the US has announced that direct talks will commence between Israel and the PA this September. The word out of Washington (and this strikes me as quite optimistic) is that all issues can be resolved within a year.

Well, good luck!

Nobody Reads Literature Anymore

The New York Times had a fascinating account over a townhall meeting designed to assuage concerns over a new mosque being built on Staten Island (which, as we know, is only 11 miles from the WTC site). The meeting was quite fiery, and tensions were running high. But then,

as Bill Finnegan stood at the microphone, came the meeting’s single moment of hushed silence. Mr. Finnegan said he was a Marine lance corporal, home from Afghanistan, where he had worked as a mediator with warring tribes.

After the sustained standing ovation that followed his introduction, he turned to the Muslims on the panel: “My question to you is, will you work to form a cohesive bond with the people of this community?” The men said yes.

Then he turned to the crowd. “And will you work to form a cohesive bond with these people — your new neighbors?”

And we all know how this story ends, right? We all know what happens next?

The crowd erupted in boos. “No!” someone shouted.

Sigh.

In Southern Manhattan, I am a Muslim

Early this year, I declared myself "Seismic Shock" in solidarity with a blogger faced with threats of legal retaliation for daring to expose the links between a prominent pastor and anti-Semitic thugs.

The "controversy" over the proposed Southern Manhattan Muslim community center continues to grow, and folks stretch to ever deeper contortions to justify passive-aggressions "questions must be asked" formulations about whether the Imam is a closet Islamist. In that light, we read Jeffrey Goldberg's account of that Imam's sermon at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, and bow our heads in shame:

We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

As Mr. Goldberg correctly notes:

There are those who would argue that these represent mere words, chosen carefully to appease a potentially suspicious audience. I would argue something different: That any Muslim imam who stands before a Jewish congregation and says, "I am a Jew," is placing his life in danger. Remember, Islamists hate the people they consider apostates even more than they hate Christians and Jews. In other words, the man many commentators on the right assert is a terrorist-sympathizer placed himself in mortal peril in order to identify himself with Christians and Jews, and specifically with the most famous Jewish victim of Islamism.

I noted very early on that the demagogues who have created this controversy were taking the oppression of Jews in the Arab world not as a violation to be condemned, but as a model to emulate. The religious bigotry and hatred they are promoting is one that threatens me too. The experience of not being able to worship freely, of being seen as a permanent outsider, of constantly having to prove one's loyalty to country and community, these are all quite familiar to me. And in that sense, just as I am a Jew, I am a Muslim -- and always have been.

Barack Obama Went to Carleton?!?!

Goldberg:

Such a ridiculous question, is Obama a Muslim? Of course he's not. He's a Druid. But a Reform Druid. Meaning he only worships shrubbery.

(See here).

Flying Back to Chicago

Going back to Chicago today. Lot's of stuff is going down right now, and my patience is very thin. Looking forward to seeing Jill.

Seal the Chamber

In the wake of harsh criticism over her repeated use of the "n-word" on radio, Dr. Laura is ending her radio career:

Embattled radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger announced Tuesday she will not renew her contract that is up at the end of the year, telling CNN's "Larry King Live" she wants to "regain my First Amendment rights."
[...]
In announcing her decision "not to do radio anymore" after being in the business for more than 30 years, Schlessinger said, "I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry or some special-interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent."

While Dr. Laura still claims to "regret" the incident, I'm a little dubious, not the least because the "n-word" was among the least offensive elements of the tirade she went off on.

In any event, as is so often the case, "First Amendment rights" translates to the right not to be criticized by private parties. In fact, we can translate this entire whine as abject fury that Dr. Laura's professional position forced her to actually listen to Black people's "special-interest group's" opinions. Dr. Laura's real complaint here isn't about the First Amendment. It's that her echo chamber wasn't as secure as she thought it was.

Buchanan Says Gingrich Went Too Far

Pat Buchanan told off Newt Gingrich for comparing the planned Muslim community center in southern Manhattan to putting up a swastika near the Holocaust museum. Though, it being Buchanan, one can't be precisely sure if he was speaking up in defense of the Muslims, or the Nazis.

You Can Argue But You'd Be Wrong

In spite of grave misgivings, I started to read this post by Efraim Karsh, figuring that hey, it's important to educate myself on the views of others -- even if they do say ridiculous things like that Obama has "distinguished himself, in his short term in office, as the most anti-Israeli U.S. president in living memory."

And then we got here:

James Zogby himself, among others, felt compelled to attempt to rebut my article. "There are bad polls, and then there are bad interpretations of polls," he wrote in the Huffington Post. "Putting them together (i.e. a bad interpretation of a bad poll) can create a mess of misinformation."

The "bad poll" in question is a recent survey for the al-Arabiya television network, noted in my article, which found a staggering 71 percent of Arab respondents had no interest in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. And the "bad interpretation" is my presumed failure to recognize that this was not a fully scientific poll but rather an "online vote," which didn't refer to the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks but rather to the "Middle East peace process."

It is arguable of course that an "online-vote" by 8844 respondents (more than twice the size of the Brookings/Zogby poll), answering one straightforward question, might be more accurate and less susceptible to manipulation than "scientifically" crafted surveys purposively choosing their target audiences; or that ordinary Arabs, living as they do in one of the least democratic parts of the world, will be more candid in the relative obscurity of the web than in the presence of a pollster knocking on their front door or contacting them by phone.

And ... we're done here.

Because even I, B+ student in Statistics for Half-Witted Morons that I was, know that it is not, in fact, arguable that online polls (no matter how many people respond) are more accurate than a scientific poll. In fact, the entire polling industry got its start because George Gallup proved that scientific polling was far more accurate than even data drawn from a giant, non-random response pool (in his case, the Reader's Digest polls).

Anybody who is more statistically illiterate than I am really can't be trusted on any topic that involves gauging public opinion. Moving on.

Oh, I Think You'd Be Surprised

Proposing to create a new tax bracket for the ultra-rich (annual income of $1 million and above), James Surowiecki writes:

There would be political advantages, too: the reform could actually make tax hikes on top earners more popular. Critics like to describe tax hikes as hurting small business, because small-business owners make up a sizable percentage of people in the top two brackets and because small-business owners, unlike Wall Street traders, are popular on Main Street. It would be harder to mount a defense of millionaires, which may be why this year a Quinnipiac poll found overwhelming support, even among Republicans, for a millionaire tax.

I think you drastically underestimate the ability of the political classes to mount defenses of policies benefiting the hyper-rich.

It All Makes Sense Now

I've finally figured out why folks are so worked up about the Cordoba Center mosque near the WTC site.



To be fair, that "I [bomb] NY" in shrubbery is pretty impressive.

Obama Walks Back Religious Freedom Remarks

After issuing a strong statement in favor of the right of Muslims to build a mosque/community center several blocks from the WTC site, the President trimmed his sails slightly, saying that he meant to support only the "legal" right of Muslims to build there (or anywhere). He was not, he said, making any statement about whether he supported the particular decision of the local Muslim community to situate their mosque at that location.

How unfortunate. Nobody is going to give credit to the President for trying to slide on through the middle here. The folks who oppose the mosque still will view him as an enemy, and the folks who support the mosque now can effectively lump in the President with the ADL. And all of this comes after the President looked to actually be showing leadership on the matter.

The issues here are very clear. People have the right to build religious buildings to serve their local community. There should not be a mosque-exclusion-zone of indeterminate radius in south Manhattan. Asking the community to relocate is not just patronizing, it's idiotic -- the community center is designed to serve the Muslim community that already exists in southern Manhattan -- it doesn't do them any good to build out in Queens.

Calvin & Hobbes Search Engine

No joke, I've been wanting something like this to exist for years.

Leveraging Experience

Ta-Nehisi Coates has an excellent post up on Pankaj Mishra's essay about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tariq Ramadan and Paul Berman. Mishra recalled the following anecdote from Arendt:

During the Vietnam War, Hannah Arendt noted that members of the Democratic Administration had frequent recourse to phrases like "monolithic communism," and "second Munich," and deduced from this an inability "to confront reality on its own terms because they had always some parallels in mind that 'helped' them to understand those terms."

Coates adds:

When I was college, it was common for student activists to call slavery "the Black Holocaust" or "The Real Holocaust." There's an argument to be made about America, and the stories we tell ourselves when we see ourselves as heroic, and when we don't. But most of these activists--some of them anti-Semites--knew very little about Jews, Europe, Nazism nor, frankly, slavery. And they didn't much care. They were not interested in specifics. They were interested in leveraging the moral power of other people's experience, in order to bolster the moral power of their own. It was narcissism, laziness, and basic lack of respect--not simply for the Jewish experience--but for the specifics of the African-American experience.

I've stated my distaste for the appropriation of "Holocaust" to other contexts in general. And I think that Coates is right both that such a move is both demonstrative of a lack of imagination, and represents an astoundingly disrespectful attempt to leverage one group's experience on behalf of another (often without that group's consent, and often -- as Jews well know -- against the group itself).

Hey, Data Point!

A major part of my comment thesis is that courts don't protect the politically powerless, but rather only intervene once a marginalized group has demonstrated some clout in the political arena. And wouldn't you know it if, fresh on the heels of Judge Walker's historic opinion striking down California's anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment, we see a poll indicating that half of all Americans agree with him.

Of course, my suspicion is that these things aren't independent of each other. High profile gay marriage victories make it more likely that more people will label themselves in support of gay marriage, because the position has moved from fringe to mainstream (and people generally don't like to consider themselves fringe). At the same time, of course, growing popular support for gay marriage is what makes pro-gay marriage rulings feasible -- it's what moves them from "kooky, frivolous argument" to "position I have to take seriously".

I should say that I don't think whether gay marriage is constitutionally protected is dependent on whether a majority wills it so. I just think descriptively, judicial recognition of gay rights (or really any rights claim) seems to move in tandem with popular recognition of the same.

Fun With Civil Procedure

Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows depositions to be used by an adverse party "for any purpose". A clever lawyer read that language literally, giving us this colloquy (quoted in Wright and Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure Sec. 2141 n. 1).

The Court: Next witness.
Ms. Olschner: Your Honor, at this time, I would like to swat Mr. Buck in the head with his client's deposition.
The Court: You mean read it?
Ms. Olschner: No sir, I mean swat him in the head with it. Pursuant to Rule 32, I may use this deposition for any purpose, and that is the purpose for which I want to use it.
The Court: Well, it does say that. (pause) There being no objection, you may proceed.
Ms. Olschner: Thank you, Judge Hanes. (Whereupon, Ms. Olschner swatted Mr. Buck in the head with the deposition).
Mr. Buck: But, Judge....
The Court: Next witness.

You never know what new trial tactics will emerge if you read the rules closely enough. That's a tip, kids, write it down.

It's That Most Magical Time of Year

There's nothing like the thought of sticking it to Muslims that makes conservatives suddenly care about gay rights:

I’m announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space.

This is not a joke. I’ve already spoken to a number of investors, who have pledged their support in this bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance.

As you know, the Muslim faith doesn’t look kindly upon homosexuality, which is why I’m building this bar. It is an effort to break down barriers and reduce deadly homophobia in the Islamic world.

The goal, however, is not simply to open a typical gay bar, but one friendly to men of Islamic faith. An entire floor, for example, will feature non-alcoholic drinks, since booze is forbidden by the faith. The bar will be open all day and night, to accommodate men who would rather keep their sexuality under wraps – but still want to dance.

To be sure, a deliberate attempt to provoke is not akin to an accidental one. Nonetheless, it does not seem to occur to them that, while certainly the right to build a bar is not a bedrock tenet of America's civic traditions like building a house of worship is, there certainly is no reason why Muslims or anyone else should be able to prevent an otherwise legal and properly zoned* gay bar just because they find it offensive.

* Of course, as the post seems to recognize, zoning laws do sometimes take issue with bars being opened right next to houses of worship. In any event, assuming that there are no zoning issues -- sure, build the bar. I have no quarrel with it.