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Saturday, July 15, 2006
Everybody Loves Justice!
Posted by on 7.15.06 @ 1:56PM
Via Reason’s Dave Weigel we learn of this Madison Record story which begins thusly: “To spiff up its image, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is considering changing its name to the American Association for Justice.”
One respnse to the potentially triumphant new name:
“If a shark called itself a kitten fish I would still not put my daughter in to play with it,” said Victor Schwartz, president of the American Tort Reform Association.
Sharks, apparently, need a new PR agency. When you’re being compared to trial lawyers, it’s fair to say the image has taken a bit of a hit. Conversely, I also believe kitten fish should stop whining and learn to snag their own multi-million dollar settlements.
Friday, July 14, 2006
More Voting Wrongs
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 4:07PM
As the story in today’s WSJ by the excellent David Rogers notes, the just-passed House bill extending certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act doesn’t MERELY extend provisions; it actually adds to the old law. (Passed, it must be noted, after Speaker Dennis Hastert came down like a ton of bricks against conservatives of his own party, as is becoming increasingly his habit.) And what it adds makes things even worse. For one thing, the bill tries to effectively make an end-run against the Georgia v Ashcroft decision that helped put limits on the enforced racial segregation of voting districts. What the House bill does is re-establish a form of electoral apartheid, and tries to guarantee election outcomes by assuming that all minority voters have readily identifiable “preffered candidates of choice.” The “right” to elect said candidates is then assumed to be sacrosanct. The great conservative lawyer Ted Olson has criticized this new provision, and Rep. Tom Price of Georgia rightly complained that the provision woul tried to guarantee “the outcome of elections” rather than “the right of individuals to vote.” In short, the bill in many, many ways is utterly pernicious, and itself makes utterly racist assumptions about how the color of somebody’s skin automatically determines their voting preferences. And remember, the Georgia v. Ashcroft decision that this bill tries to vitiate is a decision that was SUPPORTED by the black, Democratic attorney general of Georgia. As if Denny Hastert from his wrestling coach’s bench in Illinois knows more about the needs and rights and concerns of black voters than does the black, Democratic attorney general of Georgia, Thurbert Baker. The arrogance of Hastert and company is outrageous. And the cravenness of their pandering to the gods of “political correctness” is nauseating. This bill harms voters black and white alike, and it likely will be overturned in court because it is manifestly unconstitutional. Gee, thanks, Denny.
RE: Obnoxious
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 4:07PM
Quin, Jack Kemp has thought for some time that he is morally superior to the rest of us on the right. Recall this exchange between Kemp and Al Gore in the 1996 vice presidential debate:
GORE: I think Mr. Lehrer, that throughout most of his career, Jack Kemp has been a powerful and needed voice against the kind of coarseness and incivility that you refer to in the question. I think it’s an extremely valuable service to have a voice within the Republican party who says we ought to be one nation. We ought to cross all of the racial and ethnic and cultural barriers. I think that is a very important message to deliver. And we ought to speak out against these violations of civility when they do occur. You asked about the incident involving Roberto Alomar. I won’t hesitate to tell you what I think. I think he should have been severely disciplined, suspended perhaps, immediately. I don’t understand why that action was not taken, but the same could be said of so many incidents in all kinds of institutions in our society, but I compliment Mr. Kemp for the leadership he has shown in moving us away from that kind of attitude.KEMP: Well, I thank you, Al. I mean that very, very sincerely…
Gore implies the GOP on the whole is uncivil, and instead of taking issue with it, Kemp laps it up.
Kemp is the sort of conservative who lives for praise from the NY Times op-ed page.
Drug Bill Not As Costly
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 3:52PM
The CMS this week reported that the cost of the Medicare Drug benefit is
now projected to be $34 billion lower over 5 years (2006-2010) than in the President’s Budget, and $110 billion lower than in the Mid-Session Review one year ago. The average Part D premium is almost 40 percent lower than had been projected a year ago as a result of strong competition.Now, before everyone pummels me for supporting Part D, understand that I’m not. Rather, I’m pointing out that government programs that rely on the market to operate work better than those that do not, as the Medicare Drug benefit.
I suppose the success that Part D is having is why the Drug Bill Debacle is no longer one of the headlining blogs over at TPM Cafe.
Making Cents of Wilson-Plame
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 3:51PM
Byron York today reports on the economic incentives possibly motivating the Wilson-Plame gang, particularly now that Valerie’s book deal has gone kaput.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s in the tank coverage of the Wilson-Plame press conference this morning makes much of the possibility that discovery in any court case could embarrass Administration figures — without citing a word about the possibility that discovery could be hugely embarrassing to the Wilsons themselves.
So far no one has scrutinized the business dealings Joe Wilson himself had in the Middle East after his departure from the State Department, when he became a murky lobbyist wheeler-dealer in the region. While his infamous New York Times op-ed continues to enjoy attention, everyone seems to overlook the piece he did for the ultra-left wing Nation magazine’s March 3, 2003 issue. Among other things, it included this following thought about how an Iraq war would be bad for business:
“American businessmen already complain about hostility when overseas, and Arabs speak openly of boycotting American products.”
More precisely, he was suggesting that an Iraq war would be bad for his business. Evidently, he’s been playing catch-up ever since.
Re: Happy Bastille Day
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 3:28PM
Wlady: Hauteur is ok in someone who can back it up. Like The Babe said, it ain’t bragging if you can do it. Other than make cheese and wines (and you need to rethink your defense of French wine which, for the second time in as many tries, was soundly thrashed by American wines judged by Brits and French in a blind tasting) just what do they do that makes them worth putting up with their unsupportable arrogance? Hmmm?
Our Point Exactly!
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 12:45PM
There has been much talk on AmSpecBlog about the communications efforts, or rather lack thereof by the Bush administration, in putting the “war on terror” in perspective for the American people. But Victor Davis Hanson in today’s Chicago Tribune wins the gold medal.
Re: Happy Bastille Day
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 12:37PM
Sorry, Jed, but however obnoxious or worse it seems, France remains the most wonderful spot in Western Europe. Whereas we are told ad nauseam that we should worry about what the rest of the world thinks about us, the French couldn’t care less what others think of them. Au contraire, for them it’s always been axiomatic that the world should worry about winning their approval. It’s no accident that hauteur is a French word. Of course, that comes with a huge price. Last Sunday not a single non-Frenchman backed France against adorable Italy.
Nonetheless, July 14 remains a special day.Thirty-nine years ago I stood along the Champs Elysees across from President Charles de Gaulle as he reviewed that day’s military parade. The highlight naturally was the flyover by the wonderfully named Mirage jets. (Sure sounds better than “stealth,” no?) Eternal France may not last till the end of time, but there’s a reason the term took root. If I didn’t live here, I’d want to live there. And it has nothing to do with the food or even wine, however superior it remains to those California pretenders.
Obnoxious
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 12:08PM
Speaker Dennis Hastert, Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, and the rest of the “House GOP leadership” (an oxymoron if there ever were one!) all deserve major demerits — or perhaps major bonus points for political hack-ery, whichever way you want to look at it — for their behavior yesterday on the extension of the supposedly temporary portions of the Voting Rights Act. Meanwhile, my longtime hero Jack Kemp, writing on the same subject, went as far as outright obnoxiousness, stooping to cheap political name-calling of his fellow Republicans, and wholly undeserved name-calling at that, obviously forgetting Ronald Reagan’s “11th Commandment” in the process.
First, the morally preening Kemp, in a column so despicably below the belt that it should earn him ostracism from all polite company for months on end: In the column, he compares all the House GOP opponents of blanket extension of the VRA (and presumably all their supporters — such as yours truly, whose record on race-relations will compare favorably even to Mr. Kemp’s own superlative record on that subject) to the mid-19th Century “Know Nothings” who, in Kemp’s words, “were nativists who disdained Catholics and immigrants while dismissing African-Americans as three-fifths of a human being. When asked about their party’s position, they would reply: ‘I know nothing.’” Great work, Mr. Kemp, calling your fellow Republicans racists. His column goes on to attack our motives: We “either truly don’t know, misunderstand or, worse, purposely misstate the purpose and effect of the Voting Rights Act.”
Kemp then goes on to make a series of arguments that at least have the virtue of being arguments rather than gratuitious attacks. This is not the forum to pick those arguments apart, assertion by assertion by wrongheaded assertion, but here’s notice that I and many others could do so. But that’s what reasoned debate is about: respectful discussion, citing principle, marshalling facts, and using logic, to try to convince the other side and the undecided that one’s own position is right. (As I tried to do here, or as Ramesh Ponnuru did here, or as the Wall Street Journal has done several times recently, or as the courageous U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia did here in leading the fight for reason.) On his final assertion, however, here’s a challenge for him to document what I believe is not just undocumentable, but false: “the continuing well-documented efforts of elected officials to dilute minority voting strength and deter minority political participation strongly supports renewal of the Voting Rights Act.” Prove it, Mr. Kemp. Go ahead, prove it. Meanwhile, even if you can do so, and even if you can persuade people that your position is the more reasonable one, please spare us the accusations and insinuations that those who disagree with you are racists.
As for Hastert, Sensenbrenner, and company: Their strong-armed put-down of ALL amendments to the VRA legislation (again, do these guys know any way other than strong-arm tactics?) was accompanied not by reasoned argument but by boilerplate and sloganeering, all cravenly aimed at escaping just such charges of “racism” as those levelled by Jack Kemp. Never mind that a series of liberal, pro-VRA-extension, pro-civil rights academics have testified that proposals such as those in the defeated amendments are actually good ideas both on policy grounds and on constitutional grounds. Never mind that the amendments provide plenty of opportunity for creative politicians (creative in a good sense) to actually take the high ground in the debate, to become MORE associated with civil rights for black Americans, than they otherwise would be. Never mind that supporters of the unamended, leadership-sponsored legislation were so confused that they cited supposed irregularities in voting in Florida and Ohio to support their call for extending the provisions at issue — even though neither Florida nor Ohio would even be covered by those provisions, and even though it was the AMENDMENTS the leadership defeated, rather than the unamended legislation, that proposed to cover places like Florida and Ohio for the first time. In short, the leadership did not even bother, despite pleas from many of their members, to learn what the heck was in the legislation in the first place. Instead, they just demagogued and strong-armed, to the detriment of voters white and black alike. Shame on them all.
Happy Bastille Day
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 11:54AM
It seems like only yesterday when the French finally began a war, fought it heroically and defeated an enemy. Of course, the enemy was other Frenchmen, but you gotta give them credit for their one win. 217 years ago today, they stormed the Bastille. Yeah, whatever.
Today, of course, the French are still performing precisely as John Cleese and the Monty Python crew portrayed them in a couple of scenes in what we can only characterize as the unintentionally accurate “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” According to this report from al-Reuters, France condemned the Israeli action in Lebanon. The money quote:
French President Jacques Chirac said in a television interview: “One can ask oneself whether there isn’t a sort of desire to destroy Lebanon. “I find, honestly, like most Europeans, that the reactions are completely disproportionate.” Chirac also condemned Hizbollah for attacking Israel and firing rockets into the Jewish state. “These people are totally irresponsible,” he said.
Tut, tut, monsewer Chirac. Disproportionate? And the Hizballah is only “irresponsible” when they murder and kidnap? (“Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.”)
Let’s all raise a toast to Bastille Day. With some excellent California or Washington State champagne, of course. And let us hope that in the president’s diplomatic offensive this week, he made a secret agreement with Angela Merkel: the next time we fight the Germans, the loser has to keep France.
RE: ‘The 24 Addiction’
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 11:49AM
Paul: I, for one, can most definitely attest to the power of 24 DVD addiction, having just finished season 4. I literally ran around DC, from Blockbuster to Blockbuster, to find consecutive episodes. I was, however, able to finish the entire season in about 3 days, with little to no sleep of course. For how can you turn 24 off once you have started? Unless the DVD runs out and you have no choice, which of course is what happened.
Five months more until season 6…
Making the Streets Safe for the Exceptionally Cute
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 11:16AM
Beware ye seekers of “cutie pies” and hunky deputies: The state exacts a heavy price for your dastardly deeds these days.
‘The 24 Addiction’
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 10:17AM
Dorothy Rabinowitz admires 24 in today’s Wall Street Journal Weekend section, an admiration she acquired at least partly by doing what apparently many of the show’s fans have done at some point: view whole seasons via DVD over a few days. The show encourages such addictive watching, as its plot structure relies on cliff hanger endings to nearly every episode. I’d concur with her judgment that the show’s 4th season was its best, and that the just completed 5th season left more than a little to be desired:
“As it turned out, the show’s writers, who had had no problem, earlier, creating entirely believable American leaders, models of honor and decency - take that heroic specimen, President Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) - seem to have fallen on hard times in Season Five.”
Indeed, the show suddenly fell back on that all-too-familiar staple of Hollywood films, the concept of corruption and evil at the very core of the institutions supposedly worth defending. Add to that this season’s absurd plot and seeming determination to avoid terrorist villains of any Islamic affiliation, plus the normal wear and tear on plausibility and novelty of shows of this kind, and the decline is well under way. But don’t tell Fox, which has renewed it for three more seasons, or the Emmys, which has given the recent ridiculous season a slew of nominations.
Tim of Carney as Daniel of Babylon
Posted by on 7.14.06 @ 9:55AM
Tim Carney enters The Huffington Post lion’s den to ask, “Why is Al Gore pushing Enron’s agenda?” My interview with the Big Ripoff author appeared earlier this week.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Go Nancy!
Posted by on 7.13.06 @ 2:59PM
Some conservatives are mocking Rep. Pelosi’s sudden attempt to become fiscally responsible, but I think we should encourage it. According to the WSJ article:
If she becomes speaker in the next Congress, she says, she would press to severely reduce earmarks. “Personally, myself, I’d get rid of all of them,” she says. “None of them is worth the skepticism, the cynicism the public has… and the fiscal irresponsibility of it.”
And:
“Not every single dollar” would go to the Treasury, she said, “but I hope that…we would use the rollback of the tax cuts” to address the deficit since “it is the biggest drain…on the next generation.”
Furthermore:
Ms. Pelosi says she is committed to a “pay-as-you-go” budget approach that would require any expansion of federal benefits to be offset by spending reductions elsewhere or new taxes.
With the exception of rolling back the tax cuts, those are all good ideas. Let Pelosi and the Democrats run with this. If they get some traction among the electorate with this issue, the GOP will have to respond in kind. The GOP may be able to dis’ a good portion of their base on the spending issue, but they can’t afford to dis’ both their base and the middle.
Most elections are about which party can outspend the other. I’d be all too happy to have an election that is about which party can “out-cut-spending” the other.
RE: How Badly Does Allen Want to Be President?
Posted by on 7.13.06 @ 2:27PM
What a sell out!
Maybe I’ll have to reconsider my vote this Fall. Does Jim Webb use Redman?
Christmas Ornaments
Posted by on 7.13.06 @ 1:51PM
Manon McKinnon’s column today shows the embarrassingly if not entirely dimwitted mean side of reporter Helen Thomas.
So it may surprise some that Ms. Thomas doesn’t always play the ogre. In fact, she can be the life of the party. That’s what she was last December 15 at a late afternoon White House Christmas reception for Washington media types and their families. While the President and Mrs. Bush spent the entire time in the ground floor’s China Room, patiently having their photos taken with individual guests, Helen Thomas held court upstairs alongside the buffets in the East Room and State Dining Room, with stops in the Blue, Green, and Red Rooms, shucking and yucking with other revelers, and, most alarming off all, having her picture taken with a number of wide-eyed guests as if she were some kind of star or world leader.
Well, at least she didn’t boycott the White House while it remains the official home of the hated Bush.
More VA News
Posted by on 7.13.06 @ 12:39PM
Sorry if anyone’s tired of the Virginia political news, but it looks like Jim Gilmore is getting serious about running for governor in 2009, opening a state PAC (via NLS). It would be his second term — Virginia allows multiple terms, but not consecutively.
Speaking of Allen
Posted by on 7.13.06 @ 12:33PM
Jim Webb has agreed to debate him July 22 at the Virginia Bar Association’s annual meeting at the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia.
How Badly Does George Allen Want to Be President?
Posted by on 7.13.06 @ 8:09AM
So badly that Roll Call reports that he’s trying ($) to quit the chewing tobacco. His spokesman confirmed that he is using Snus, which doesn’t generate the typical chew spit.
If he switches, it’s a good thing. There is nothing quite like seeing a U.S. senator behind a grand desk spitting into a plastic cup — or a president, for that matter.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
ABC’s Ode to Gorby
Posted by on 7.12.06 @ 5:18PM
Really, there is some historical revisionism that is just beyond the pale, but, coming from the mainstream media, just as predictable. So it is any time one of the big networks digs the sainted Gorbachev out from under whatever dacha he is enjoying while “advising” the “moral person” of Vladimir Putin. See this ABC piece today from Claire Shipman. Let us count the ways that it distorts history. First, the lede sentence alone is absurd: Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the “iron curtain” that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yeah, RIGHT. Gorby just stepped up to that curtain and tore it from its moorings. Deliberately. On his own. There never was a guy named Ronald Reagan, much less a Pope John Paul II, a Thatcher, a Walesa, a Havel….
Then there is this:
Gorbachev found a partner in former President Bush in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During their time in power, communism fell in East Germany, when Germans tore down the legendary wall separating the democratic West from the communist East. The collapse of communism quickly spread across eastern Europe, and the leaders worked together to create a partnership in the changing world .
Again, Shipman cannot even bear to mention Ronald Reagan. As if the “partnership” began with Bush, rather than being bequeathed to him by Reagan. And then there’s the notion of Gorby and Bush working together to build the new, post-Communist world: Balderdash. Until the very end, Gorbachev tried to keep Communism regnant in the Soviet Union; it fell AGAINST his wishes, in a military coup where he looked weak and was taken prisoner from his vacation house, only to have the coup-meisters themselves forced out by the throngs in the streets led by a very, very brave (if ultimately a bit buffoonish) Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was the democrat; Gorby the recalcitrant hold-out.
Then again, maybe there IS some truth to how Shipman reported it. Gorby and the elder Bush DID have a partnership; the Bush administration actually resisted Yeltsin (I guess he wasn’t “prudent” enough) in favor of trying to prop up the obviously flailing Gorbachev. But the clear insinuation of the Shipman story is that Bush and Gorbachev controlled events in the move of eastern Europe to freedom, whereas the truth is that events controlled them. Sure, Gorbachev deserves credit for being humane enough to recognize the evils of the gulag, and credit for being perceptive enough to see that SOMETHING needed to be done to reform the system, and brave enough to work with Reagan, Thatcher and Bush for peace. This is not to utterly denigrate Gorbachev. Thanks God he came into power when he did. And thank Gorby for his humaneness. But to the end, he held out the hope for a new form of Communism, not for democracy and not for real freedom. And he sure as heck would NOT have been an agent of, or conduit for, change if it weren’t for the man who Shipman just couldn’t bring herself to mention at all, one Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Good Will Writing
Posted by on 7.12.06 @ 2:18PM
A few weeks ago CJ linked to Ingrid Newkirk’s perverted will.
Here’s an antidote: a gent who penned his obituary before he passed on. Classic.
War Warning
Posted by on 7.12.06 @ 1:59PM
The surest sign that things are going well in Iraq is the growing violence in Palestine and across the Lebanese border into Israel. The latest attack — this time by Iran-financed Hizballah terrorists — added two Israeli soldiers to the number of hostages now held. This is the result not of Israel’s Gaza incursion but the fact that the Israelis — like us — aren’t taking the battle to the source of the enemy.
In Israel’s case, the center of gravity lies in Syria and in Egypt. For us, it’s in Syria and Iran. The longer we and the Israelis wait, the greater the cost to both nations in blood and treasure.
It’s 1973 all over again. If Israel sends a force into Lebanon it will probably face Syrian troops. We’re awaiting reports of Syrian tank dispositions, and the movement of Egyptian and Saudi air forces. Watch. Watch closely. This is about to be a very big war.
Re: Bilingual Ballots: No, Non, Nyet!
Posted by on 7.12.06 @ 12:53PM
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is pushing an amendment that would strip that provision from the bill. He too cites the argument that a language unifies a country, and Mr. Hogberg’s right/privilege distinction is well-taken. There are other considerations too. Competency in English is a requirement of citizenship, which is a requisite for voting. Thus, as George Will pointed out, bilingual ballots not only render this provision pointless but are in direct conflict with existing law. Finally, there is the insulting practice of “surname analysis” (see Jan Tyler’s testimony) which allows a district to predict how many bilingual ballots and translators it may need by measuring, for example, how many Martinez’s live in a particular voting district. If liberals despise so-called racial profiling when it comes to combating terrorism, why would they give this practice a free pass?
That’s One Way to Raise Money…
Posted by on 7.12.06 @ 12:17PM
Congressional Democrats are using the images of flag-draped coffins to raise money.
The rest of the ad is also quite awful: you would think the apocalypse is upon us, with the flashes of high gas prices, hurricanes on the radar, and car bombings (presumably in Iraq). Overall, times are pretty good. The Democrats’ success depends on the times staying bad.
We’re Back to That
Posted by on 7.12.06 @ 11:43AM
In today’s Washington Post, the major op-ed reaction to yesterday’s terrorist bombings in Bombay is offered by Xenia Dormandy of Harvard’s Kennedy School who until last August was director for South Asia on the National Security Council — presumably the Bush Administration’s NSC. What’s odd about the piece is already evident in the subtitle, “Pakistan Needs to Respond to Militants.” The term “militants” or “militant groups” appears four additional times in Dormandy’s column. What’s missing? Any use at all of the word “terror” or its cognates. Thus the Bombay bombings had nothing to do with terrorism, terrorists, or the global war on terror. For future reference, don’t confuse 7/11 with 3/11, 7/7, or 9/11.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Politically Incorrect Headline of the Day…
Posted by on 7.11.06 @ 9:40PM
…on the Mexican election mess via my pal Todd A. Check it out.
Don’t Put Your Stock in Bonds
Posted by on 7.11.06 @ 6:05PM
“Sources” within major league baseball believe that Barry Bonds will be indicted for perjury and tax evasion by a San Francisco grand jury when it disbands in the next few weeks, according to a report in the New York Daily News. I hope they’re correct. Where they’re not correct is when they write:
“A Bonds indictment, coming just two months after he passed Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list, would be a public relations calamity for the game.”
On the contrary. A Bonds indictment is like a disinfectant, albeit tardy and incomplete, for the game. And on the more cynical side, it may spare Bud Selig and his minions from their true public relations calamity: having to congratulate this loathsome figure on breaking the game’s all-time homerun record, when most everyone watching would know the achievement was a fraud.
The New York Times Is Wrong Again!
Posted by on 7.11.06 @ 4:06PM
I know, that’s just a shocker, isn’t it? Back in 2004, the Times declared that “desperate poverty” had been eliminated in Europe. Over at TCSDaily, John Rosenthal documents why it ain’t so, and provides a link to this blog that documents Paris’ homeless crisis.
Bilingual Ballots: No, Non, Nyet!
Posted by on 7.11.06 @ 12:13PM
Didn’t get to this yesterday, but the Washington Post had an editorial endorsing bilingual ballots. At the end, the Post’s editorialists state that they “don’t doubt that many more people will vote, and in an informed way, if they know what they’re voting on.” Yes, and everyone in this country has a way to make an informed vote. It’s called learning English.
What’s missing from the Post’s editorial is the fact that few things divide a nation more than the lack of a common language. There’s nothing wrong with citizen’s knowing more than one tongue—I’m all for it. But all citizens should know one common language. Look at Canada (Quebec, specifically) for what can happen when a country has a large swath of citizens who cannot speak the same language as the majority.
While it is likely true that, as the Post states, “there are [not] many people who will decide to learn, or not to learn, English based on the availability of bilingual ballots,” it is beside the point. With bilingual ballots the state empowers a constituency that is resistant to learning English. The more they vote without having to know English, the more they will support policies that divide us along language, such as bilingual education. The Post unwittingly concedes this:
When bilingual assistance is provided, voting participation increases and members of the affected groups have a better shot at winning elections. Hispanic voter registration in Yakima County, Wash., went up 24 percent after the Justice Department sued the county for failing to comply with the law. After Justice reached an agreement with Harris County, Texas, turnout of Vietnamese American voters doubled, and the first Vietnamese American was elected to the state legislature.
The right to vote is like any other right in that it is not absolute. It is subject to reasonable restrictions, like being free of a criminal record or requiring ID. Knowing English should be another.
No Iron Curtain Speeches Here
Posted by on 7.11.06 @ 10:52AM
And don’t expect anything close to “tear down this wall.” While Vladimir Putin resurrects a Russian dictatorship, what does President Bush have to say about it in advance of his St. Petersburg G-8 trip?
He still speaks about his “good friendship” with Putin. Is Russia blackmailing the region using energy? “That’s not an issue we worry about here at home. That’s an issue that the European leaders are going to have to work through.” The Marshall Plan, it ain’t.
Christopher Hitchens’s recent quip on Russia hosting a gathering of “industrial democracies” comes to mind: the country “is neither advanced nor a democracy.”
Europe’s New Soft Underbelly
Posted by on 7.11.06 @ 7:34AM
The allied plan for overthrowing Fascism in Europe involved striking at what Churchill called the Continent’s “soft underbelly,” which then was to be found, courtesy of Mussolini, in the central Mediterranean. Now that vulnerable flank is more squarely situated in the Black Sea. Since summer of last year I have suggested here at AmSpec that (a) the EU ought to expand to include Turkey, but at a finely regimented snail’s pace, and (b) Georgia, land of the Rose Revolution, is critical to the success of the last united Western grand strategy — the advance of the frontier of the rule of law and ordered liberty from its southeasterly flank in Europe.
These issues are now back in the news as we struggle to fashion a proper Georgia policy. Last Thursday, feted Georgian prez and no stranger to America Mikhail Saakashvili spoke at AEI, and you can find and watch his speech (scroll down) at C-SPAN. My takes on Russia, Georgia, and the necessities of the West, plus links to a fuller discussion, are found here.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Vote Is Safer in Mexico
Posted by on 7.10.06 @ 4:02PM
Our own senior editor John Fund has a crucially important column today about how the Mexican voting system is probably safer than our own, and about the importance of improving our ballot security in this country. Well worth a read. Particularly important in the U.S. is that all states ought to require photo IDs for voting. Meanwhile, as for the Mexican elections, this paragraph from Fund’s column, relating word from our friend (and acknowledged expert on just about all things political) Michael Barone, is particularly telling:
Michael Barone, the co-author of the authoritative Almanac of American Politics, spent a week in Mexico reporting on its election and the safeguards it has taken to ensure an accurate vote. “I have more confidence in Mexico’s election procedures than I do in those in much of the United States,” he concluded.
Distorto
Posted by on 7.10.06 @ 12:23PM
Well, Michael Moore says his new agit-propumentary about the health care industry, “Sicko”, is about 3/4s finished. Money quote from the Variety article:
“We’ve spent the better part of the year shooting our next movie, ‘Sicko.’ As we’ve done with our other films, we don’t discuss them while we are making them,” Moore wrote. “If people ask, we tell them ‘Sicko’ is ‘a comedy about the 45 million people with no health care in the richest country on Earth.”
They have health care; they don’t have health insurance. There’s a big difference.
Looks like Moore is his usual “don’t-let-the-facts-stand-in-the-way” self.
P.S. Take a look at the picture accompanying the article. Guess his dumpy, everyman look that he tried so hard to effect fell victim to his desire to fit in with the Hollywood crowd.
So You’re Looking For a Summer Book
Posted by on 7.10.06 @ 12:05PM
For those of you who don’t have a reading list ten books deep (speaking from personal experience here… my current load includes Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full and Gerard V. Bradley’s A Student’s Guide to the Study of Law), check out AFF’s compiled suggestions from conservative and libertarian writers. You’ll find several once and current TAS contributors and editors, including our own Amy Mitchell as well as Tim Carney, Jeremy Lott, and Brendan Conway.
Building Collapse in Manhattan
Posted by on 7.10.06 @ 10:36AM
A four-story building on Madison Avenue in Manhattan has collapsed after a very loud explosion was heard that reverberated around the neighborhood. CNN’s Larry King, who was staying in a hotel nearby, is quoted as saying he has never heard such a sound. With amazing rapidity, the White House has ruled out terrorism. Maybe they’re right, and maybe they already have irrefutable information that rules terrorism out as a cause, but the announcement seems more than a little over-eager to me. It seems to indicate that our top priority is not offending the enemy.
Sunday, July 9, 2006
Viva Italia!
Posted by on 7.9.06 @ 8:39PM
That headline, being so appropriate to so many occasions, isn’t 100% accurate today. The French lost the World Cup Soccer match to Italy with a lot of help from the amazing Italian team. But however valiantly the Italians played, it was the French being themselves that was determinative.
Zidane - whose name we’d never heard before today and will likely never hear again - is (was?) the best of the French players. And he performed perfectly, head-butting an Italian player and earning ejection from the game. It’s all too sweet. Viva Italia!
Liberal Christianity
Posted by on 7.9.06 @ 9:49AM
Check out the superb op-ed by Charlotte Allen in today’s LA Times, “Liberal Christianity is Paying for Its Sins,” here. Concluding graf:
“So this is the liberal Christianity that was supposed to be the Christianity of the future: disarray, schism, rapidly falling numbers of adherents, a collapse of Christology and national meetings that rival those of the Modern Language Assn. for their potential for cheap laughs. And they keep telling the Catholic Church that it had better get with the liberal program - ordain women, bless gay unions and so forth - or die. Sure.”
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