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Murphy grandstanding on “home invasions”

Friday, April 4, 2008

Congressman Murphy wants to make home invasions a federal crime. The wave of home invasions, by my count, has now reached two in the State of Connecticut, clearly calling for a federal response. This is a stupid idea. It makes no sense, so of course it has a good chance of passing. How does making home invasion a federal crime do anything to reduce the likelihood that such crimes will occur, or increase the likelihood that these already easily caught criminals will be apprehended?

There was a time that making a federal crime out of a “home invasion” would have been seen as so obviously unconstitutional that no one would have seriously suggested it. Now, we have arrived at the point where we assume that the federal writ runs to any act, no matter that it has no obvious impact on interstate commerce or any other federal interest. The original intent was that the states would take care of ordinary criminal behavior, and that is what these “home invasions” are. Not only are they within the proper sphere of the state courts, they are more competently handled by the state courts, which are better set up to deal with them.

Murphy is making a mistake here. The federal government has better things to do than enforce state criminal law. Not only that, we are safer as a people if the federal government is forced to maintain its distance. Connecticut has had no difficulty apprehending or punishing there “home invaders”. It doesn’t need help from a U.S. Attorney who has better things to do.

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Big Brother coming to Ledyard

Friday, April 4, 2008

Sometimes I’m a bit naive, I must confess. When I read this article in this morning’s Day, I was frankly puzzled:

Steve Masalin said after almost every snowstorm, residents call him to complain their roads haven’t been plowed.

“It happens frequently, almost all the time,” said Masalin, the town’s director of Public Works, on Thursday. “Plows could have been down their road one or two times but still they have an inch or two of snow in the morning.”

Mayor Fred Allyn’s proposal for funding of global positioning systems in town-owned vehicles could answer those questions.

Partly it was the bad writing (what questions had been posed that needed answers?) but mostly I was a bit mystified. Why, I wondered in my innocence, would Ledyard snow plow operators need GPS devices to find their way around Ledyard. Shouldn’t they know the roads like the back of their hands?

Gradually, it dawned on me that the point of the devices was not to aid the drivers, but to spy on them. Fittingly, Ledyard’s mayor wants to get the money to buy them from Homeland Security. It’s somewhat ironic that the police chief, who would probably not balk at spying on everyone else, isn’t quite so happy when the shoe’s on the other foot.

This is how it creeps up on us. George Orwell would recognize the world we’re creating. He had no idea how we would do it, but he knew we would do it if we could.

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Another incentive for past conduct

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Just got back from Drinking Liberally, where one of my fellow drinkers pointed out that the Senate is following in the footsteps of the Groton Town Council by incentivizing past behavior. You may recall that the town of Groton gave a hotel developer a tax break as an incentive to build a hotel it had already built. Today the Senate gave homebuilders a tax break that rewards them for past behavior, but gives precious little incentive for future economic activity:

In addition, [the bill] would … provide a new tax break for struggling home builders, allowing them to claim current losses against taxes paid in earlier, more profitable years. Officials said the proposals would cost taxpayers $15 billion to $20 billion, with details still being worked out.

Now, it’s certainly possible that some of these homebuilders will use that money to build more houses, generate more jobs, etc. It’s also possible that a lot of them will simply pocket the money and run. If the bill allowed them to take a credit in future years it would cost the same or less, but the taxpayers would be shelling out the money only to homebuilders that were contributing toward pulling us out of the mess we’re in. This tax break merely rewards the folks who made piles of money (you need to have made a profit in order to take advantage of this tax break) as part of the system that got us into the mess.

I’m not advocating for this alternative, I’m only saying allowing a carryover makes more sense. Neither tax break is a particularly good idea.

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One more alternative global warming theory bite the dust

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

British scientists have debunked yet another alternative explanation for climate change:

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun’s activity.

The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate “sceptics”, that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.

The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.

But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.

Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.

This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.

A quick Google search shows that, as you might expect, the folks who are unwilling to credit thousands of scientists are always willing to credit one, so long as he or she reinforces their preconceptions. Svensmark is, as the quote above states, well thought of in the denial community.

The global warming debate is one of the most mystifying of modern times. There is no religion element to it, so it can’t be compared to the evolution/creation debate. Why has the right chosen to make it an article of faith that global warming is not happening, or that if it is, it is caused by something other than the activities of man. Why this willful denial of something going on right in front of our eyes? I refuse to believe it’s merely an allegiance to Big Oil. There is something in the right wing genetic code that makes them truth resistant.

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More outrage fatigue

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The country is now in possession of the full text of the previously classified torture memo authored by one John Yoo, who believes that presidents named George Bush were endowed with unlimited powers by James Madison and the other fans of an untrammeled executive that authored the Constitution. Glenn Greenwald has two excellent posts
(here and here) on the “opinion” and its author, essentially arguing that it was, and was intended to be, a green light for criminal behavior. He also argues persuasively that, while they will never be called to account, Yoo and his ilk are as guilty of war crimes as any of the folks who actually conducted the torture. Ironically, he cites Injustices Scalia and Thomas in support of that contention, neither of which probably had Americans in mind when they opined that conspiracy to commit war crimes is, itself, a war crime.

If anyone needed proof that the person who is the president of the United States has a profound impact on what the country is, and how its people think, they need look no further than the presidency of George Bush. In the past seven years we have grown so inured to outrage and criminal behavior by our government that officially sanctioned torture hardly raises an eyebrow. Remember that the next time you hear Ralph Nader say that there was no difference between Gore and Bush.

Not only do we live easily with torture, we reward its proponents. Yoo’s outrageously sloppy and irresponsible legal “scholarship” got him a teaching job at Berkeley and of course other plum rewards:

The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page wanted someone to defend George Bush’s serial assertions of “Executive Privilege” to block investigations into his wrongdoing, and it turned, of course, to ex-Bush-DOJ-lawyer John Yoo, who is not only the most authoritarian but also the most partisan and intellectually dishonest lawyer in the country. Yoo is not only willing — but intensely eager — to defend literally anything George W. Bush does or would want to do, including — literally — torturing people and crushing the testicles of children if the Leader decreed that doing so was necessary to fight Terrorists. Yoo, of course, is a principal author of most of the radical executive power theories which have eroded our constitutional framework over the last six years.

Lest you think the testicle statement is hyperbole, here’s Yoo for himself:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz01hN9l-BM[/youtube]

You might wonder, is there any limit to Presidential power in Yoo’s universe. Well, it all depends on which president you are talking about, I guess:

But this isn’t the first Op-Ed Yoo has written on the topic of Executive Privilege for theWall St. Journal. Back in 1998, when Bill Clinton was asserting the same privilege to resist Congressional demands that his closest aides testify about the President’s deliberations in responding to the various Lewinsky investigations, Yoo became one of the leading spokespeople denouncing the assertion of this privilege.

As a matter of fact, Yoo suggested that Clinton should be impeached if he defied a Congressional subpoena, something Clinton never actually did. Partisan hack that he is, Yoo is now silent about Bush’s assertions that he is free to ignore Congressional subpoenas.

People like Yoo have been embedded throughout our government. We essentially have two bodies of law, enforced by a politicized judiciary. If the Democrats manage to wrest the presidency from these people, a new set of rules will apply, articulated by the same people who have given Bush a blank check for eight years. It will be the work of a generation, if it can every be done, to restore some semblance of the rule of law.

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Drink Liberally tomorrow

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Yet another reminder. Every first Thursday the Southeastern Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets at the Bulkeley House in New London at 6:30 PM. We are now officially members of the national Drinking Liberally organization.

We’ve had a lot of fun at the previous meetings. It’s a chance to meet like minded folks and talk politics. So far, no Obama-Clinton wars or anything like that. Just good, clean patriotic Republican bashing.

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Republican hackery, youtube style?

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

I was going to include a video of Bush getting booed yesterday, which I plucked from Truthdig here. It was basically a clip from the tv coverage of the game. When I tried to preview the video, I got a message that it was no longer available. I went back to Truthdig. The video played there, though I could tell it was a different video, but I assumed Truthdig had just found a new version of the same video. I copied the embed code, which, to my surprise, appeared to be precisely the same code as that which didn’t work before.
I was busily re-pasting the code in my post, only half listening to the video, when I realized it was an entirely different video. It started with video of yesterday’s game, then cut to out-takes from first pitches past, and interviews with people making laudatory comments about Bush.
Obviously, not the kind of thing Truthdig would post. Is there some way that someone can hack into youtube and replace one video with another?
In any event, I spent quite some time trying to build a post around the video, but that’s a no go now. Suffice it to say that George still doesn’t measure up to Dad, who managed to get booed at the Super Bowl. Not to say that George, Jr. couldn’t do it. He’s just had the good sense not to try.

UPDATE 2: A reader sent a substitute video link, which I posted, but I have now taken it down, because it seems to be playing havoc with the blog on Firefox. Everything looked fine in Safari, so I wasn’t aware of the problem until recently. I think the problem may also have stemmed from the fact that I was experimenting with Ecto blogging software, which I have pretty much decided to abandon.

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Counting Delegates

Monday, March 31, 2008

Via Talking Points, here’s a fun site at Slate, where you can tinker with the delegate math and play out different scenarios depending on how things go in the upcoming primaries. The conclusion is inescapable: Hillary can win only if she steals it, or a miracle happens.

I assumed, for example, that she gets 65% of the vote in each of the remaining primaries. Assuming that Michigan and Florida remain out of play, she ends up with 12 more delegates than Obama. The problem is, she is unlikely to get 65% of the vote in any of the remaining primaries, and there are some where Obama is likely to get a vote of that magnitude.

If you are a Clinton fan, you should visit this site. The hard numbers will quickly disabuse you of any notion that Hillary can win this thing without playing dirty. (There is, by the way, little sign that there are a lot of top Democrats out there that would be interested in helping her play). Just more proof that it’s time for her to withdraw while she can still do so with grace, and before she succeeds in making McCain the odds on favorite in November.

Filed in Presidential Politics | | Comments (1)

Good regulations can’t trump bad regulators

Monday, March 31, 2008

Paul Krugman makes the valid point today that Treasury Secretary Paulson’s proposed “reforms” amount to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic:

Anyone who has worked in a large organization — or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” — is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.

You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive.

…

So the Treasury has, with great fanfare, announced — you know what’s coming — its support for a rearrangement of the boxes on the org chart. OCC, OTS, and CFTC are out; PFRA and CBRA are in. Whatever.

Krugman makes the case that new regulations are in order, but the fact is that even those won’t help unless we also get new regulators. Regulatory policy issues rarely if ever intrude on a presidential campaign, but an administration’s approach to regulation has far reaching consequences. Perhaps only its Supreme Court choices are more important It’s too late to prevent the unfolding disaster, but not too late to prevent the next one. But that requires two things, good regulations and good people to enforce them. We will never get the former as long as there is a Republican (of the 21st century variety, in any event) in the White House, and even if Congress legislated in detail, we would never get the enforcement such regulations will require. Krugman probably recognizes this, for as he notes, the mindset of our current regulators is hardly encouraging:

For example, there was a 2003 photo-op in which officials from multiple agencies used pruning shears and chainsaws to chop up stacks of banking regulations. The occasion symbolized the shared determination of Bush appointees to suspend adult supervision just as the financial industry was starting to run wild.

McCain has surrounded himself with people who promise more of the same. These folks are true believers, who will stick to their ideological preconceptions in the teeth of all historical evidence. They are the people who will tell you that the market will take care of people who peddle tainted drugs or the people who peddle fraudulent financial instruments. And it does take care of them. They walk away from the wreckage with big bucks, while the rest of us pick up the pieces.

[From Good regulations can’t trump bad regulators]

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Last Democrat Standing

Monday, March 31, 2008

Poor Joe Lieberman. According to him, he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, every other Democrat in the country did:

“It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government,” he said. “It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me.”

People who are never called to account, and sedulously avoid situations where they ever will be, can say things like this and get away with it. Lieberman insulates himself from any challenge to this weird world view. What this is really all about, of course, is the fact that the party has left Joe behind on Iraq. Howard Dean and Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and John Larson and Wesley Clark and–yes–, Al Gore (who is apparently no longer a member of the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party) along with all those dirty filthy hippy Lamont lovers that account for more than half the Connecticut Democratic party (and now, probably all of it), have been proven right about an issue about which Lieberman has been wrong from the start. No doubt Joe is feeling a bit put out these days. The “surge” is currently being exposed for the failure that it is, and Maliki, the U.S. puppet and Iranian stooge, has been revealed for the weakling that he is. Benedict Arnold probably went to his grave convinced he’d been true to the principles of the American Revolution, and Joe will go to his believing he’s the last real Democrat, as he votes for one Republican after another.

I hope Joe keeps saying stuff like this about the Democrats. Despite their best efforts, I still think the Democrats will have a hard time losing the presidential election this year. If they win, there will be nowhere for Joe to go. No cabinet position, no Supreme Court position, no nothing. He’ll be stuck in the Senate, and if he keeps saying stuff like this the Democrats might just grow enough of a spine to move Joe back to the extreme backbench, where he can live out the remainder of his political life in the ignominy that he deserves.

[From Last Democrat Standing]

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