Author Page for Robert Farley

Rehnquist Dead

I’m sure Scott will have something more substantial.

Friday Cat Blogging. . . Hermione

It begins. . .

The disaster is all the fault of big government. And the founders never intended that the Federal Government engage in public works projects. Presumably, Alexander Hamilton was a French Communist Islamofascist Moonbat spy, or, more likely, an invention of left-wing academia.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Forget insurance. My next guest says not one taxpayer dollar should go toward rebuilding the city of New Orleans (search).

Joining us now is Jack Chambless. He is the economics professor of Valencia Community College in Orlando.

Professor, why do you say that?

JACK CHAMBLESS, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, VALENCIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE: Well, if we look at Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution (search) — and I encourage all Americans to look at that before we start opening up our tax coffers to pay for all of this — we have every obligation to provide for New Orleans in terms of charity, private charity from one person to the other.

But the founding fathers never intended, Article One, section Eight of the Constitution, never intended to provide one dollar of taxpayer dollars to pay for any disaster or anything that we might call charity. What we now have is the law of unintended consequences taking place, where FEMA (search) has come into New Orleans, a place where, ecologically, it makes no sense to have levees keeping the Mississippi River (search) from flooding into New Orleans, like it naturally should.

Now with FEMA bailing out Louisiana, bailing out Florida and lowering the overall cost of living in these places, we have people with no incentive to leave. And the law of unintended consequences means that more people are dying with every one of these storms. They’re becoming more and more expensive, more and more property loss, just because the federal government has violated the Constitution to provide for these funds.

For more Neil, see this by Radley Balko.

Terror

Huh. And I thought that all terrorists were enemies. Silly me. . .

Families of Israeli Arabs shot dead on a bus in Galilee are not considered terrorism victims because their killer was Jewish, the defence ministry says.

Under Israeli law, only attacks by “enemies of Israel” are considered terrorism, the ministry said.

The ruling means families of the four victims will not be entitled to the lifelong monthly payments given to Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks.

Via Mischa.

New Orleans

What to say?

Via Majikthise.

LGM

As envisioned by Kat, by way of South Park Create-a-Character.

Oil Spots and Strategic Hamlets

There is some confusion in the blogosphere and in the general media about what precisely an oil spot strategy consists of. In particular, some people are arguing that the “oil spot” strategy argued for by Andrew Krepinevich is essentially the same as the “strategic hamlet” strategy tried by the United States and South Vietnam in the early 1960s. This is not the case.

The strategic hamlet program came well before the height of US involvement in South Vietnam. The idea was to protect South Vietnamese farmers from Viet Cong insurgents by collecting them in specific areas and fortifying those villages. The program was extremely disruptive to rural life in South Vietnam, as it uprooted families from their ancestral lands and forced them to live in new areas, often where land was scarce. Also, many of the “strategic” hamlets never received the funds and weapons that they were supposed to get. In any case, the South Vietnamese Army lacked the capacity to defend the hamlets from insurgents. The program was a disastrous failure.

The oil spot strategy is different, and was tried for a short while by the Marines in the mid-1960s. The motivation of an oil spot strategy is similar to that of a strategic hamlet; locals who believe they can be protected from insurgents will be less likely to support those insurgents. Instead of uprooting families and packing them into villages, however, the Marines took over the defense of an area and patrolled it regularly. The focus was not on hunting insurgents in the jungle, but rather on preventing insurgents from attacking villages and collecting taxes, weapons, and food. As people grew to fear insurgent attacks less, they would grow more cooperative with the Marines. Villagers would begin to plan for the future, the economy would improve, and the insurgents would suffer.

On a small scale these tactics worked in Vietnam, before Westmoreland shut the operation down. They probably couldn’t have won the war even if tried on a large scale, and I doubt very much that they can defeat the insurgency in Iraq. Nevertheless, it’s important to keep our terms clear.

Lexblogging: Mmm. . . Corruptilicious. . .

Okay, I don’t think even Dino Rossi would try this. I guess there are some differences between Washington and Kentucky. . .

Calling the investigation into personnel practices in his administration a wasteful game of political gotcha, Gov. Ernie Fletcher tonight pardoned nine current and former officials who have been indicted along with anyone who “might … be charged.”

Although he has the authority to do so, Fletcher said he will not pardon himself. Consequently, Attorney General Greg Stumbo’s office could prosecute Fletcher if the special grand jury investigating his administration’s actions were to indict him.

Scheduled to appear tomorrow before the grand jury, Fletcher said he would not answer questions.

And he seems like such a stand-up guy in all those anti-drunk driving commercials.

More at Kos.

Baseball Challenge Standings, Week 20

Dave Noon closes the gap with Erik Loomis by staging a 394 point rally. Let’s hope his marriage can survive. Farley clings desperately to 4th place.

1 New Mexico Alterdestiny, E. Loomis 2159
2 Axis of Evel Knievel, d. noon 2144
3 Shangri-La Coelacanths, J. Daw 1960
4 Oregon Bearded Duck, R. Farley 1783
5 SLC Maniloff, P. Maniloff 1739
6 Discpline And Punish, S. Lemieux 1725
6 Chan Ho Ballpark, P. McLeod 1725
8 Exciteable Roland, P. Kerwin 1657
9 Sweet&Tender Hooligans, J. Dudas 1596

Remember LGM’s College Football Pick’em league; league name is “Lawyers, Guns and Money”, password is “zevon”. Will post another reminder before Saturday, first day of games.

Where is he getting this?

I hate to pick on Matt Yglesias again, but. . .

Counterinsurgency tactics are also thought to have allowed the American military to essentially defeat the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam by the end of the 1960s but that country’s government fell soon enough to regular troops from North Vietnam.

Really? Cause I’ve never heard that. Certainly insurgent activity dropped off after the Tet Offensive, and certainly a greater percentage of the fighting in South Vietnam was shouldered by the North Vietnamese Army after 1968, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone argue that the US defeated the National Liberation Front. Given that it had a shadow government, controlled territory throughout South Vietnam and Cambodia, and was capable of attacking US and South Vietnamese forces through 1975, the claim would seem to lack plausibility. . .

The other problem with the claim is that the United States Army never adopted counter-insurgency tactics in Vietnam, or at least not the tactics that Yglesias, Krepinevich, Nagl, etc. are talking about.

Matt, you need to re-evaluate your sources.