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Hard to Believe, but We’re Doing Pretty Well

[ 11 ] December 8, 2007 |


There’s a lot of sturm und drang about the state of abortion laws in this country — and rightly so. Several states are trying an end run around Roe by constitutionally enshrining fetal life from the moment of conception; the Supreme Court doesn’t think women are full citizens and issues decisions that sound more like 1947 than 2007; and in 87% of American counties, there is no abortion provider.

But still. Looking at the map that Good Magazine has put together (via Jezebel) of the world’s abortion laws, we’re in comparatively good shape. Most equitorial and sub-equitorial women, it seems, are screwed. One nit to pick, though: Good’s map puts the US in a category of countries (58 of them) in which abortion is permitted with no restrictions. That’s not actually true of abortion in the U.S.; it wasn’t true under the Roe framework and it’s sure as hell not true under the Casey framework that Gonzales v. Carhart virtually gutted. In the U.S., there are countless restrictions on access to abortion: waiting periods, notification laws, a federal ban on one type of abortion procedure, “informed” consent laws. The list goes on. So as much as I’m thankful for the U.S.’s relative liberalism with regard to abortion, I also think it does us no good to paint a picture far rosier than the one we deal with here on the ground.

I Guess They Were Right….

[ 12 ] December 8, 2007 |

So Alfonso Cuaron’s Great Expectations was on HBO not long ago, and since I’d never seen it I decided I’d give it a try. It looked terrible and got awful reviews, but all of Cuaron’s other films are great, causing me to wonder whether it was misunderstood.

It, uh… wasn’t misunderstood. God, that was a terrible movie. I mean damn, it just wasn’t any good. I have to wonder whether Cuaron was actually on some kind of bender during the making of the film, necessitating the handing over of directorial duties to Ethan Hawke. Bleh. Ick.

Duck and Cover!

[ 0 ] December 7, 2007 |

If you’re Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery Yankee, the fact that Franklin Foer still has a job pretty much has you breathing into a paper bag several times an hour.

But when he’s not calling for Foer’s head to be mounted on end of a pikestaff, TIDOS — the Dwight Schrute of the blogosphere — has taken to dispensing survival tips to his readers. If, for instance, you’ve never thought about how to survive a hail of bullets in a shopping mall — a circumstance that Sudden Jihadists are determined that all of us face someday — Gomer’s your man. Among the priceless tips:

Once you make it outside, keep moving. Put as much physical space and as many physical objects between you and the scene as possible.

So if I understand him correctly, when the shooting starts, I should . . . um . . . run? Well I’ll be damned.

Just so we’re clear on this, the contributors to Lawyers, Guns and Money have no meaningful counsel to offer on mall rampages, carjackings, street muggings, boar attacks, cat scratch fever, hot dog fingers, or getting shot in the face by Dick Cheney. Rob has, however, done his part to warn us about the Zombie Menace and the Day of the Monkeys that looms before us like a dark, hairy cloud — but as this site has always been primarily devoted to news and information that are genuinely useful, you would only expect as much.

Friday Cat Blogging

[ 30 ] December 7, 2007 |

Henry applies the “you hump it, you own it” principle to yet another of my daughter’s toys.

Baseball’s Own Hugh Hewitt

[ 0 ] December 7, 2007 |

Mr. Kenny Williams:

Reacting Wednesday to the blockbuster deal that sent power-hitting third baseman Miguel Cabrera and former All-Star left-hander Dontrelle Willis from the Florida Marlins to the Detroit Tigers — wrecking the Sox’ latest offseason plans — Williams said: ‘‘All this has done is put the Tigers in a better position to contend with us.”

Yes, contend with you. I’m sure you believe that!

Apparently, Williams is also the prime candidate to be the idiot who takes Juan Pierre off the Dodgers’ hands; that seems about right. Which reminds me, it really should be noted that the much-maligned-by-anti-Beane-nitwits Paul Depodesta was about a hundred times better as a GM than Ned Coletti, although in fairness the Mets never would have had their incredible stretch run this year without Paul LoDuca’s incredible clutchiosity and leadertude. And you could never wina World Series with a character like J.D. Drew on your team. Advantage: Bill Plaschke!

The Objectively Great Mitt Romney’s Objectively Great War On Constitutional Values

[ 0 ] December 7, 2007 |

I’m not sure — objectively! — that Yglesias or Cole fully understand the extent to which — objectively! — Mitt Romney’s speech was without question the greatest in the history of American political discourse. When even a dispassionate analyst like Hugh Hewitt can — objectively! — see the greatness of Romney’s attack on the non-religious and staunch opposition to the secular polity established by the Constitution, backed up by such brilliant analysts as Sean Hannity and Michael Medved, I can only conclude that only the most embarrassing hack could fail to see Mitt Romney as the greatest orator in the history of mankind. Objectively!

Destroying Torture Tapes

[ 17 ] December 7, 2007 |

The CIA deliberately destroyed tapes of two of its “severe interrogations.” The First Rule of the Bush administration: it can always get worse. Marty Lederman correctly calls out Jay Rockefeller, who at the very least has been sitting on this information since 2006, for yet again shedding crocodile tears after failing to do anything when it mattered. Marcy Wheeler, among other good points, notes that this will be the first major test for Mukasey, “a clear case of obstruction of justice involving Goss and a bunch of other people.” We’ll see if there’s been any progress from the Gonzales regime soon enough…

"A National Joke"

[ 7 ] December 7, 2007 |

I haven’t always agreed with Murray Chass’s analysis of labor issues, but he’s been doing great stuff about the exclusion of Marvin Miller from the Hall of Fame, this time by a committee stacked with Lords of the Realm after he was becoming to close to being elected under the old system. And, adding insult to injury Bowie Kuhn, the dimwitted reactionary who (thankfully) lost one battle after another in his attempt to make sure that players continued to receive grossly below-market salaries, was elected:

The National Baseball Hall of Fame has become a national joke. Its latest electoral contrivance elected three former executives to the Hall yesterday, none named Marvin Miller. Making the committee’s decision even worse, one of the three is named Bowie Kuhn.

For any committee of 12 supposedly knowledgeable baseball people to elect Kuhn, Barney Dreyfuss and Walter O’Malley and not Miller defies reasonable and logical explanation.

Of the three men elected by this newfangled panel, O’Malley deserves the honor because by moving his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles 50 years ago, a move for which he is still reviled in Brooklyn, he opened the entire country to baseball. The new geography made a significant impact on Major League Baseball.

Few men, if any, however, made as significant an impact as Miller on Major League Baseball. You don’t have to like what he did to recognize that impact. The game today is what it is in great part because of what Miller did as executive director of the players union from 1966 through 1983.

That only 3 of the 12 voters on the new executives committee acknowledged his contribution, and voted for him, is a sad commentary on the committee members and the Hall’s board of directors, which concocted the committee.

The committee was weighted heavily in favor of management candidates. Seven of the 12 members were or are management figures, owners and executives. If ever a system was created for the failure of one man, this was it.

“They are not a jury of my peers,” Miller observed last week, “but a jury of my antagonists.”

This would seem to be payback by people who should know better. Miller wrecked the owners’ cushy setup as lords and masters of the players and they would show him. I didn’t think Miller would get the nine votes necessary for election, but I thought he could come close. I could never have imagined that only three members would vote for him. As a member of the writers’ wing of the Hall of Fame but a nonvoter because The New York Times doesn’t allow its employees to vote, I am embarrassed for the Hall and everyone connected to it. Jane Forbes Clark, the chairman, and Dale Petroskey, the president, should especially feel embarrassed for what has occurred.

It is good that Dick Williams was selected; more on that later. Stephen Brunt has more on Miller.

You Can’t Spell "Jesus" Without "US"

[ 20 ] December 7, 2007 |

Mitt:

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.

OK, Mitt. Whatever you say.

Here’s the Father of Our Country (and George Washington):


And here’s Jesus with some of his Confederate friends:


. . . and mopping up after the massacre at Wounded Knee:


And so on:

The Boumediene Oral Argument

[ 6 ] December 6, 2007 |

Unfortunately, other professional responsibilities have prevented me from reading the full transcripts yet, so I’ve only heard the highlights so far (I’ll have more when I read them in full.) Marty Lederman found both advocates brilliant (as did TAP’s Phoebe Connelly, who was in attendance) and seems optimistic about the result. Linda Greenhouse also says that the case will turn on how far Kennedy is willing to go (implying that he will join the judgment of the Court’s four more liberal members but may — in his typical fashion — try to narrow the reasoning.) I don’t differ from the conventional wisdom here; the most likely outcome seems to be a Kennedy opinion (or an opinion designed to attract Kennedy’s vote) holding that Congress doesn’t need to provide full access to ordinary federal courts to satisfy the habeas requirement but does need to supply better procedures than it did in its most recent bill. Orin Kerr, however, argues that because Kennedy was uncharacteristically silent it’s hard to make a prediction, and argues that the Court may just send the case back to the lower courts after making it clear that “that there is a Constitutional right to habeas jurisdiction for the Guantanamo detainees.” Dodging the key questions in that why wouldn’t surprise me either, although in light of the Court’s previous decision such a clarification seems unnecessary.

…As Roger points out in comments, audio of the oral argument is also available online.

Missile Defense and Iran

[ 0 ] December 6, 2007 |

Michael Goldfarb dissents from my conclusions on the implications of the NIE on missile defense, and further asserts that liberals should love missile defense:

And finally, liberals fundamentally misunderstand the effect of deploying a missile defense system–it would decrease the likelihood of conflict, not increase it. Missile defense would provide decision makers with one more option in a world where options are the scarcest commodity.

Imagine the U.S. intelligence community, or more likely their Israeli counterpart, is able to determine with some degree of certainty that the Iranians are mere months away from an operational nuclear capability. Right now, they’d have two options: bomb or do nothing, aka diplomacy. But if those leaders could have some confidence in their ability to shoot down an Iranian missile, wouldn’t this strengthen the argument for doing nothing–the argument Farley would most certainly be making. As it is, the American people would likely demand military action, but missile defense would give liberals a fall-back position–’it doesn’t matter if they build a nuclear missile, we can shoot it down.’

Uh… no.

Let me explain the concept of “deterrence”. Deterrence means the creation in the mind of on adversary the belief that the costs of an action will outweigh the benefits. In this specific sense, it means creating in the mind of the Iranians the belief that they’ll suffer drastic consequences for doing things like firing nuclear missiles at other countries. Now, I tend to think that the dramatic military supremacy of the United States over Iran in any conceivable military confrontation is enough to deter Iran from firing nuclear missiles at random European targets. As such, I reject Michael’s premise; because of deterrence, we don’t need to overly worry about the threat of Iran committing national suicide by firing a nuke at Paris or Berlin. Indeed, this has pretty much always been the liberal position on missile defense; even the job it purports to do can be done better by deterrence. Of course, it’s been a wingnutty article of faith that the leaders of Iran are not sensitive to costs, but whatever else it has to say, I think that the NIE has put that argument decisively to bed. Backing me up on that I have no less august authority than Victor Davis Hanson, who noted recently that Iran is not a suicidal state and is sensitive to costs. Now, a sensible reader might reply “but isn’t Victor Davis Hanson an unredeemed hack who can’t be trusted to supply reliable information about his academic specialty, much less the decision-making process of the Iranian state?” The answer is yes, but the point still holds.

So, since in my world liberals are against throwing money away on weapon systems that have dramatic and unsolved technical problems, that agitate foreign countries (while it might be objected that Russia is already irritable, that’s no reason to poke it with a sharp stick for no good reason), that are extremely expensive, and whose flimsy strategic rationale has vanished like an April frost, I’d have to say that liberals like myself are quite rational in our belief that missile defense is a pointless waste.

Depressing Hockey News (With Bonus Feminism!)

[ 14 ] December 6, 2007 |

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

“I was only following orders!”

According to court documents, the contract on Steve Moore, leading to Todd Bertuzzi’s near homicide, was put out by fellow scumbag Marc Crawford, backing up what many had long assumed. I don’t think this provides the slightest exoneration for Bertuzzi — he wasn’t told to sucker-punch Moore in the head, and a player could even have chosen to interpret Crawford as ordering a hard but clean and legal hit (such as, say, Moore’s hit on Naslund.) But it’s clear that the disgraceful circus was also created in large measure by Crawford.

Elsewhere, the charity created by the wives of the Ottawa Senators is donating a third of its proceeds to “crisis pregnancy” centers. As Stacey May points out, fans who purchase charity raffle tickets (I’ve certainly contributed to similar things) reasonably expect their money to go to innocuous charities, not to organizations distributing forced pregnancy propaganda. No wonder the Senators have lost seven straight!

“See You On The Links, Marc!”

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