Politics: October 2005 Archives



The president has nominated Judge Samuel Alito for Supreme Court. Different take here. Obvious analysis here. More information here.



Captain's Quarters discounts the filibuster option, Michael Barone tells why the Donkeys won't want to filibuster him.



Among the legal set, Volokh Conspiracy seems to like him, as well as debunking the quota meme. Anne Althouse seems to like him.



Stop the ACLU covers the ACLU implosion.



Decision '08 has coverage of RNC Blogger conference call.



Vodkapundit notes that Alito has upheld partial birth abortion, not precisely the hallmark of an out of the mainstream right winger (out of the mainstream left-winger, maybe).



Daily Kos is screaming its usual logical fallacies and innuendo and invective. Decision '08 has their top ten comments.



On a slightly different topic, three cheers for the Instapundit for expressing an idea all too often overlooked: male choice, while Q and O debunks some of the hot air the Donkeys are spewing about one of Alito's rulings in that area.



Politechnical has the RINO watering hole on this one.



I see a lot more to recommend him than otherwise. He likes the Second Amendment, he thinks broadly and deeply when he's not hemmed in by precedent, his rulings that weren't controlled by precedent and the law were not anything that can be characterized as party line unless you allow for some major exceptions, everybody I've read has opined that he's intellectually up to the job, and there seems to be significant evidence pointing in that direction. Seems like an airtight case for supporting him. This is an A plus pick on the part of the president.



On the other hand, remember what I said on Thursday. It appears I've been borne out. Politically, this is risky, but it is a risk that must be taken if we want to have a President instead of a lame duck. Keep in mind, though, that thanks to those who wounded the President so deeply on Miers, this is a fight that he can lose.



I'm also disappointed to see how many "He voted my way on issue X so I favor him" posts there have been. This bothers me whether it's on the right or the left. It's indicative that you're considering the outcome, rather than the process of the decision, when you should, if you truly want "non-activist judges" focus on the process. If Judicial Activism is a Bad Thing, it's a Bad Thing whether they line up on your side of an issue or not. I prefer judges to line up on my side of an issue, of course, but what I'm looking for here is judges who will limit their power to what a judge's power should be. Samuel Alito seems to pass that test with flying colors.



Harriet Miers Withdraws

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Looks like Harriet Miers has thrown in the towel. Withdrawal letter here. I have mixed but mostly bad feelings about this. Oh, I agree she wasn't necessarily the most impressive candidate possible. Nonetheless, she was (is!) qualified, and what was done to her, and done by the President's alleged political allies, rises almost to the level of what happend to Bork. Those who raised such a storm of protest against her and damned be the consequences failed to consider what happens next.



Yes, now we have a chance at Luttig or Brown or some other well known basically conservative jurist. But like it or not, the president is now weakened politically by the Miers firestorm. Had he managed to ram her nomination through, the damage would have been minimal. Now it is significant.



The president now has fewer options and less leverage. Whoever he nominates is going to face a much increased level of Donkey scrutiny and activism.



He can nominate an "in your face" conservative such as Luttig, and with the Miers withdrawal emboldening them, the Donkeys will make it such a circus as Bork never saw. Somebody like that might still get confirmed on a party line vote, but it would take a lot of political capital and would energize the Donkeys for next year. It would also absolutely require a confirmation performance at least as good as Judge Roberts made to have any chance at keeping the moderate senators such as Snowe in the Elephant vote column. The Elephants would have to use the "cloture on a majority vote" option. Call it nuclear, call it constitutional, call it hamburger - it's not something he wants to have to do at this point. There's a lot more peril that it would fail at this point than there was last spring before the "Gang of 14," and if it fails it's all over.



President Bush could nominate a centrist and likely get them confirmed, and be thought even weaker than he is. Furthermore, it would eliminate any chance of getting a strong conservative on the court if here were to get a subsequent choice (say if Stevens retires) unless and until he has some other major victory.



He could nominate a moderate liberal and announce to the world that there's blood in the water. Presidency over. Lame duckhood starts here.



Finally, he can nominate another cipher like Harriet Miers. Whoever it is will face a level of scrutiny neither Miers nor Roberts nor any justice since Bork has seen. The Donkeys now know that the president's nominees can be beaten. If they are the type of justice I would like to see, the overwhelming odds are that the evidence of it will come out, and now the Donkeys are in full hue and cry while the Elephants are almost certainly caught flatfooted again. Advantage: Donkeys.



Best guess and best hope: One thing a lot of people don't understand about President Bush is that he's got cojones. The president will find a severely qualified conservative jurist smart enough to understand the politically generated hell they are going to go through in confirmation, and loyal enough to stick it out to the end even if the nomination appears doomed. The point is that's the only way to get some control of the confirmation process back, by naming someone who possesses the obvious qualifications to be on the court who is nonetheless subjected to something that makes what happened to Robert Bork downright friendly. Even if the Donkeys win that vote, they lose politically. If they lose it, they break even - both sides are energized, the Donkeys by the loss, the Elephants by what the Donkeys did to this poor person who is obviously qualified for the post. Nonetheless, this strategy is politically risky and could well fail, and take the possibility of President Bush accomplishing anything else significant with the rest of his term down with it. In which case I will tell those who whipped up the storm against Miers, (sarcasm)"Thank You Ever So Much."(/sarcasm).



Looks like Hugh Hewitt agrees with me and has a suggestion arrived at by process of elimination. To which I ask: How much staying power has McConnell got? Because he's going to need it.



Scrappleface manages to say the correct things with a smile that takes away the pain.



**********


Decision '08 has the RINO watering hole on this.



I liked World According to Nick's take, even though I disagree with some of it.



Don Surber has a point that is very possible, and I would like to see averted: Donkeys take Congress back next year.



Countertop Chronicles has a suggestion for a replacement. I ask: Exactly how solid the qualifications? If he's not a experienced appeals court judge somewhere, there's no way he'll survive the vetting the senate will do on the next nominee.



Powerline has more thoughts.



It turns out most of us have been chasing a false trail.



Here is actual new information about the Miers nomination in the Houston Chronicle. Business leaders are backing her because they think she'll be good for tort reform. Obvious implications: 1) This makes her a much stronger nominee from a capitalist point of view 2) Look out for the ABA to attempt an assassination, either in the bar evaluation or in the Senate.



Professor Reynolds of Instapundit fame, on the other hand, has an Op-Ed article which makes an excellent point about the aftereffects of promoting a White House Counsel to the Supreme Court.



Kudlow's Money Politic$ has more, as does Conglomerate, Investors.com, FindLaw (and another, here's a link to an ATRA annual meeting, a personal injury lawyer who for some reason doesn't like tort reform, Business Week likes her because they figure she'll grant cert to more business cases, even the Washington Post gets into the act, here's a SF Chronicle article on Miers and Marvin Belli, which tells us she knows the other side as well, Washington Times writes about the political and business perils of tort and tort reform, ATRA has endorsed her, NRO doesn't care, here's an op-ed in the Los Angeles rag about her, Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground has some good perspective.



This morning's reads were something of an Epiphany for me on the subject of the Miers nomination. It's not about Roe vs. Wade, or any other constitutional issues. It's about the legal climate for business. And on that front, I believe Professor Reynolds is right in that promoting a White House Counsel is a bad thing to do, but she becomes a much stronger pick on all other fronts. From this point of view, I don't have to trust the President - I can see her paper trail on the issues, and I have become a much stronger Miers supporter.



As I said also, look for some serious efforts to derail her nomination from the Trial Lawyers, whether by forte main or by stealth.

Lots of stuff flying around today about the Miers nomination. Except for Beldar's excellent factual examination of Miers experience as opposed to Roberts', it apprears to be all tail-chasing.



You got some new information, or a truly unconsidered viewpoint, I'm interested. I'm not interested in going around and around arguing over the same information. My position remains what it was: Disappointed, but willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and I will support her nomination unless she shows herself to be unsuitable. The president is the one with the power to choose said nominees, and the president chose her. She appears to be qualified by her record. Yes, there were better choices available in my opinion. I'm pretty certain I wasn't elected president last election. The man we did elect chose Harriet Miers. Live with it, and either support or oppose her nomination on its own merits, not that of some hypothetical alternative candidate. Yes, if you're one of those people that worked for his election, you have a right to be angry at President Bush for this. My advice to you is to let it go. He's never running for anything, ever again, and deserting the Elephants who are running in the future over this is stupid on every level. If you think you'll get a better nominee out of the Donkeys, particularly by supporting them because they're Donkeys and not Elephants, I have a wake up for you. Now get your mind off of wishful thinking and evaluate the nominee we have as to whether she's qualified or not.



She seems to be qualified. She seems to be a strict constructionist, which is certainly my number one overall priority. I'm not wedded to having any one particular decision upheld or overturned. I really don't have a litmus test, and a strict constructionist is more likely to see it the way I want it seen on every issue. There is no single issue where I want a sure vote in exchange for giving up a large portion of the rest of my wish list. There is no single decision I'm willing to forsake several others for. Harriet Miers seems likely to fit the sort of justice whose votes on the court I would most likely match.



Conservatives keep telling the rest of the country they don't like activist judges. Their actions in the outcry against Harriet Miers belie this. If you are a conservative and want something mollifying, look at this Supreme Court Deathwatch at Countertop Chronicles that I linked two days ago. After this, the Donkey activists are playing defense for four of the next five likely vacancies. You vote Donkey (or fail to vote Elephant) in 2006 and beyond, and you're cutting the nose off to spite your face at the moment you would most likely win. There are several words for those who do that sort of thing. Stupid is one, moron another, imbecile a third. Pinhead, idiot, dumb, and dolt also apply, as do childish, immature, and spiteful. These Things Take Time, and they're just taking a little longer than you assumed. To stalk off and forfeit the game in a snit when you're ahead on points because your first play after one touchdown only gained six yards instead of a touchdown is not the act of a rational adult.



UPDATE: I'd forgotten about this Scrappleface piece of satire. Wonderful satire yes, but it makes an excellent and real point.



President Bush has nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat. It certainly seems in character to pick someone he already trusts. I don't know enough about her to judge her qualifications or politics, but given that his first pick was Roberts, I'm inclined give him and the new nominee every benefit of the doubt, despite being underwhelmed on the face of the nomination. Yes, I can think of people I actually wanted to see on the Court, that's not the issue here.



Washington Post has a profile up; there's something positive to be said about any lawyer whose undergraduate degree was in mathematics. Lots of trial experience seems to be her denominator with Roberts; She seems well respected in the legal community and she has held public office before if not as a judge. Nonetheless, I'm not seeing reports on any respected legal writings of hers, leading me to believe she's nominated because the president trusts her to vote correctly rather than because she's going to be an influence on the other members of the court. I know I said that some of our best leaders come from out of nowhere, but when you examined their records there was something there beforehand. Maybe not something great, but something indicative. Needless to say, I regard this as settling for a C plus when you could have just as easily had an A. But I doubt the president will withdraw the nominations, and so the question on the table is confirm or refuse her nomination, to which there really is only one answer, as she does appear qualified.



More information at American Justice Partnership



Looking at other reactions around the 'sphere:



Todd Zywicki at Volokh Conspiracy thinks President Bush is simply trying to pick justices who "vote right" rather than changing the legal culture. I regard this as agreement in principle with what I said above. Since I was just going on the political angle, it's good to see someone with law credentials confirming my guess. Eugene Volokh sees more parallels with former Justices White and Powell than O'Connor.



Powerline is disappointed as well, and suspects that it was a political move. Could be, but I doubt it. The president and other Elephants are sitting in too good a position of strength unless they're going to get something that I don't think the Donkeys are willing to give. When you deal with a weaker opponent, you expect to get the better of any bargain and this just gives away too much.



Hugh Hewitt writes a very good defense of Ms. Miers, from a policial point of view. He makes some good points, but I can't help thinking that he's damning with faint praise, as I was hoping for a first class legal mind who happened to not be a liberal. As far as I can tell, Janice Rogers Brown might be a harder confirmation fight, but the fight would be more worth winning. Call me myopic; I do agree that the pundulum of power needs to swing away from the judicial branch but I don't think this will do anything worthwhile to accomplish that.



Strata-Sphere has some worthwhile thoughts, while calling out the Coalition of the Chillin'. Since they were right about the gang of 14, this lends a certain weight to the argument.



Beldar gives us better reasons to like her. I conceded that she was qualified before looking to the 'sphere, but she's still not exactly credentialed as a great legal mind. She apparently was picked for loyalty and because President Bush trusts her. Not the worst of reasons, but hardly the best.



Llama Butchers was ready for a knock-down drag out fight, and is disappointed by the pick. Maybe she is a stalking horse, but that scenario doesn't ring right to me.



Captain's Quarters, whose judgement I respect, is disappointed, and I understand why.



Professor Bainbridge is appalled, and gives seven good reasons. I'm not impressed by "true conservative" credentials, but given the judicial branch's left wing activism in the last forty years or so, I want something differentiated a little bit more from Ginsberg.



Red State goes so far as to say Miers is unqualified, thereby forfeiting any respect I might give the other parts of his opinion.



Michelle Malkin is completely underwhelmed (a thought with which I agree) and has a good round up.



Decision '08 has another good roundup of posts.



Random Fate says it looks like a crony appointment to him.



Countertop Chronicles has a Supreme Court Deathwatch, on the hope the president gets another chance soon.



One of the Washington Post Bloggers is reporting her past donations to Democrats.



Ezra Klein thinks she's an apparatchik.



Talk Left likes her, which I admit makes me nervous.



Eschaton is doing the happy dance.



DU is as rational as ever.



Harriet Miers has a blog? Okay, somebody has put up a somewhat amusing variation a la Huffington's Toast.























Ten Big Things

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A little over four years ago, we were a nation united in the face of our greatest challenge in sixty years. Today we are divided and fragmented and talking at cross purposes like no other time in our history.



What happened?



People got distracted by the little stuff.



There is an old anecdote about a teacher and a class. He has a large jar and some fist sized rocks. He proceeds to fill the jar with large sized rocks, then asked if the jar was full, to which the class answered yes. The teacher then hauls out some thumb sized rocks, and puts dozens of them in the gaps between the big rocks. When it was full of that, he gets out some fingernail sized rocks, then sand, and finally water.



The moral of the story, for those who may not have heard the anecdote, is to fit the big things in first.



Going beyond that, we need to keep the Big Things foremost in your mind. Sometimes we get so distracted by the alligators we forget it isn't a requirement to exterminate them in order to drain the swamp.



We've been allowing ourselves as a society to lose sight of the big stuff in amongst all the little day-to-day stuff that goes on every day, rather than keeping focused on the end result of the big projects.



Not everybody has the same list of Big Things, and most of them tend to be personal, not public or political in nature. It can be hard to keep them in sight, especially when you're thinking tactically from day to day and you need to be thinking strategically. People whose list of big things are different from one another, whether different in priority on the same items or having completely different items in the list of Big Things, are predictably going to have intractable arguments between themselves, which do not often admit of a mutually satisfactory conclusion. Nonetheless, if both sides to an argument are aware of their differences on Big Things, they are far more likely to come to an agreement to disagree more or less amicably, even if one wins the voting and the other loses.



Big Things tend to be broad based, not specific issues themselves. It is rare that one vote on one item directly resolves a Big Thing. Big Things take dedication and years of work to resolve; on a day to day basis there are victories and defeats, some more important than others but few, if any, critical to the point of being a sure overall victory or defeat.



Here are my political Biggest Things, in order from top to bottom.



1. The War on Terror. This is it. The Big One, more important than any other thing, more important than all other things combined. The reason? If we lose this one, all of the others become irrelevant. All other bets are cancelled. There won't be a United States, period. Not to mention huge numbers of dead, wrecked economy, displaced refugees, etcetera.



It isn't that I'm a fan of the War on Terror. Quite the contrary. I'm abhorred by all of the lives and treasure we are pouring down this rathole to no long term economic benefit. If this is less, both in terms of lives and in terms of share of GDP than WWII, it's still not something I want us to be doing. But the alternative to spending them is worse. But the penalty for failure makes not trying hard enough pale by comparison. Yes, I would be happier if we didn't have to fight. That option simply is not on the table unless we're willing to cede our way of life. It's not as if the American people suddenly turned into fascist warmongers on September 11, 2001. The fact that we had been in a war for decades just became undeniable. Demonstrating in favor of "peace" and demonizing our "fascist" leaders is all very well and good. However if you think you're accomplishing anything positive, consider that in my forty-odd years, I have yet to find anybody who likes war, and that includes large numbers of military personnel and military contractors. But one determined, intractable antagonist makes a war. Peace requires everybody involved be willing to come to a mutually acceptable agreement. That is not the case now. In fact, our current enemies are far more refreshingly upfront about their goals than any others in living memory, and that includes our antagonists in World War Two.



The current administration gets an A on this one. Not that there's not room for improvement, but grading by every other leader we've had in the past century or more, George W. Bush has a clearer understanding of what we face today, and has shown more willingness to take the necessary steps, than any other leader since Lincoln. The opposition gets an F. Whether it's from wanting to score political points or a deeply held belief does not matter, because they are so incredibly screwed up on this most important of all considerations that it's actually a reason to pity them.



2. The Budget, or rather our lack of one. What good is it to have a legally passed budget if you do not allow it to constrain you? The deficit is the largest subproblem with this. The deficit slurps up investment cash, making investment cash more costly, so fewer real investments get made. But as a larger problem, our budget process is broken. Sane would be be decide what we have to spend, put some aside off the top for emergencies, and then divide up the rest by the relative priority, and stick to it. That's not what we do now. This has nothing in common with what we do now.



George Bush gets an F here, but so does the opposition. He's got a lot of help from Congress, but that's passing the buck. He's got a veto; he should use it until Congress restrains itself.



3. Government spending. The government spends way too much money, trying to do everything on everybody's wish list. It is a tragedy of the commons. Just like your average family, there are trade-offs to be made and some goodies we're going to have to pass up. Rather more things than we're used to in this case. I've heard a certain stripe on the political spectrum accuse others of wanting to starve the government. They say this like it's a bad thing. It's not. Until those in government are spending their own money to get the job done, government will be the least efficient of all possible ways to get a job done.



This extends to implicit and explicit market subsidies. Comparing things in context, our government is one of the best around at not explicitly subsidizing industry, but we have a lot of implicit subsidies, selling public assets for less than their real worth. Mineral, timber and oil, we allow it to be extracted from public lands sometimes for pennies on the dollar. This does not lower market prices in any significant fashion, so we the public don't get anything out of it, while it allows the entire economic process to be distorted. If the people of the United States got fully audited financial statements prepared to the same standards as is required of public corporations, I believe that we'd have an armed rebellion the next day.



George Bush gets a D here. There are some ongoing extenuating circumstances, and nobody has infinite political capital to spend. This is a systemic problem, but with that all said, our current president is hurting the situation more than he's helping. The opposition gets the same grade.



4. Government regulation. We've got way too much of it that serves no particularly good purpose. Actually, I want the government prevented from getting involved at all without a clear constitutional authority. Unless you have compelling reason to the contrary, allow the citizenry to make their own decisions, not the government. Once it has a toehold, the government takes more and more; it never leaves on its own. If this means we can't regulate a farmer raising wheat to feed to his own pigs as interstate commerce, so be it. We can accept exempting such small amounts from federal oversight as sufficiently insignificant. If party A wants to pay party B for sex, why is it the government's business? What harm has been done to any third party, especially as opposed to doing exactly the same thing for free as a result of meeting in a bar? If someone wants to consume something mind-altering, why does the government need to get involved, unless they do something while their judgment was impaired? How, precisely, is illegal marijuana different from legal ethanol? Why is the government involved in this? Nor are personal laws the only problem. Ecological regulations. Workplace safety regulations. Employment regulations. Accessibility regulations. What conceivable good does it to to require a startup business to spend tens of thousands of dollars on modifications to an old, existing building and delay opening so that handicapped people can patronize the business, when it means that the business doesn't open at all so that nobody can patronize the business? I don't know a single business that doesn't want every dollar it can get, and intentionally shutting people and their dollars out is stupid. "Maybe they are unaware of the problem," I've heard. So make the business aware of it. Which would you rather have: A set of government rules that costs ten to hundreds of thousands to implement or a couple people that come around and say, "You know, for a couple hundred dollars for a ramp and a couple hundred more to widen this door, you'd get 15 percent more business as people with mobility problems and those who have friends or family with mobility problems could come spend their money here." Sometimes they'll get the people who won't spend the money. Those people are already suffering the appropriate penalty. I see the necessity for Environmental regulations, but these should be of the nature that you're not polluting the everybody's environment. Nor do I see any kind of dichotomy between corporate uses of the environment and personal uses of the environment. If it is illegal for corporations to discharge pollutants that make people sick, it should be illegal for individuals to discharge pollutants that make those around them sick (got that, smokers?). At least the corporate use has a broad economic benefit. Condemning people's property rights because they have an endangered species of ragweed is ridiculous. You want to save the ragweed, you plant the ragweed on your own land, or you convince the owner it's worth saving.



I see the benefits of all kinds of regulations, actually. But we need to look at the overall cost of a regulation to see if those overbalance the benefits before it is implemented.



Because Government is never spending its own money, Government is slow and inefficient and cumbersome. It's easy to say "Let's have the government force people!". It requires approximately zero in the way of thought or creativity. It may be a lot easier for the people with that thought than going around and actually offering people compelling reasons for doing what you want them to. But government should be the solution of last resort, not first. But everybody needs to understand the concept that using the government for a job is akin to asking a poorly programmed giant robot with no provision for canceling instructions to swat this fly that's wandered into your house. It's going to take a while to get him to understand the problem, and when you do, he's going to use a Sequoia-sized crowbar that will knock your house flat - three years after the fly left. If it doesn't miss altogether and hit your car, which never had a fly problem, and once started, it continues to swat houses and cars forever. Government should never be the tool of choice, only of necessity.



George Bush gets a B minus here. As someone who's actually read the PATRIOT Act, it is very restrained and targeted. The things that everybody's objecting to are actually found mostly in other, older legislation. And while there is room to roll back previous regulation in all kinds of ways, nobody has infinite political capital to spend, and his is understandably tied up in the war on terror. The opposition gets a D.



5. Thinking things through. Actually, it's a measure of how messed up things have gotten that this is not number one. It's been said that people are lazy. This is never more true than when you're talking about mentally lazy. Many people who think nothing of working in the hot sun all day to put up a patio deck will never stop to think that they're building over the gas company easement. As soon as the average person has something that looks like it might in some way address something they perceive as a problem, they start screaming their heads off that This Is What They Want Done, and they usually get it because giving them what they want is politically easier than convincing them there's a better solution. We as a nation have a long history of going off half-cocked, with half-vast solutions of the moment which in fact make the problem worse, not better. This goes at least back to Carrie Nation in the 1870s, if not further. Making something illegal without dealing with the demand issue is guaranteed to create organizations outside the law which do not care about other legal niceties such as murder. Making guns illegal because criminals use them is circular logic at best.



Stop and think a minute, or a year. Outside of combat and natural disasters, there aren't a whole lot of problems that have to be solved now. Is there a cheaper solution? Something more narrowly targeted? Something less intrusive? What are the consequences likely to be? Is there something that doesn't involve the government that you can do? Is there an incremental solution so you stand a chance of figuring out that there is an unintended consequence before it bites you? Is it possible that all proposed solutions are worse than just living with the problem as it sits?



Nor can you think things through without numbers. If you can't express it mathematically, it's opinion, not fact. It may be art but it is not science. And polls are just facts about opinions, politically informative but having no reliable connection to real problem solving.



George Bush gets a B plus here. No, he didn't revive Kyoto, a fundamentally flawed treaty that his predecessor negotiated but couldn't submit to the senate, having agreed to concessions the Senate had unanimously informed Mr. Clinton in advance that it would not approve. President Bush went out and negotiated something better, and if you didn't read about it in US papers, it was reported by many other sources, including a note and a link here. If he's let opportunities pass in the War On Terror, that is because not even our military or other resources are infinite. By comparison with other US leaders in the last century, he's doing a better job at cleaning up messes in a real, lasting way that doesn't leave his successors (in other words, us) with more problems when his term is over. The opposition gets an F. Anytime I want to read something monumentally stupid, with no consderation of consequences, I have only to check the opposition mouthpieces.



6. Accountability for everyone. No excuses, no hiding. Nobody is perfect, but that's not a reason not to try. If we can't keep an eye on you, we have no way to tell if you're doing a good job or not. If you're employed in private industry, we still have the corrective instrument of the market, and some avoiding of the harsh light of scrutiny is understandable, although those in private industry have fewer protections than those in government. If you're employed by the government (directly or indirectly), then you being able to avoid scrutiny is intolerable. Whether you are President of the United States or an elementary school teacher, you are being paid and funded with taxpayer dollars - dollars that are taken at the point of a gun if necessary from people who have no other choice except leaving the country (and even that may not be enough in some cases). The least we as taxpayers are entitled to is to see that we're getting what we pay you for, and if not, we have the right and the duty to elsewhere. I fail to see how extorting taxes to pay for public schooling where the public schools are not doing their jobs and there are no other alternatives available for that money is morally different from the sort of dealings that Tammany Hall was famous for. It is political patronage at the point of a gun, plain and simple.



This also means federal judges should be subject to periodic confirmation (as they are here in California), or a lot more subject to impeachment. Why we can put up with our justices finding things unconstitutional due to rights nowhere enumerated in the constitution or legislation?



George Bush gets at least a solid B here. Remember, we're grading on a curve. When was the last time you heard any other federal level politician accept the responsibility for anything? (crickets chirping). The opposition wants to hold George Bush accountable whether he did anything wrong or not, but they want their own examples of incompetence and malfeasance in office ignored. F plus for them.



7. Authority for civil servants to do their jobs. It doesn't make sense to expect someone to do a job without giving them the authority to make the decisions necessary to accomplish it. If any NIMBY or busybody who doesn't like the either basic decision or any part of it can hold the whole process hostage for a decade or more while the courts unwind, we're not going to get a lot done. If you want anything to get done in a timely fashion, you've got to trust someone to do it. Whomever got there, whether by dint of hard work or political appointment, can be held responsible under the previous section. If people get hurt by the decisions unnecessarily, that's what Accountability is all about. But sometimes people get hurt by the correct decisions. We don't live in a perfect world. That someone may be disadvantaged in some way is not sufficient evidence that the decision is wrong. You have to show that there is a better alternative in order to show the decision wrong. This means that the pendulum of power has to swing back more towards the executive and legislative and away from the judicial branch. Presidents and Congresscritters and governors and legislators face regular elections, the citizens best shot at accountability, judges do not. Either that, or we have to impeach more judges for exceeding their authority or abuse of it, and I'm not certain that's constitutional.



George Bush gets an A minus here. By and large, he delegates well, and backs up his people completely, even when it would be immediately easier not to. How many times have the leftists called for Rumsfield to quit or be fired? He's still there. The opposition doesn't want to cede any authority that may gore any of their oxen, and they're not all that hot about administration appointees that actually do their jobs (Bolton, Rumsfield, The things they have said about Robert's previous work, Gonzales, etcetera). D minus.



8. We are all Americans first and foremost before anything else. Nobody gets any special privileges unless they have earned them as individuals. Nobody must bear any special burden under the law unless they have been duly sentenced as an individual. Race, sex, and religion based policies are an affront to our very nature as Americans. It is fine to be an American whose ancestors were from somewhere special; I'm rather proud of my Scottish ancestors. But I'm American first. It is not okay to be Scottish (or anything else) who happens to live in America unless you're really from there and haven't become a naturalized citizen.



This includes no class warfare. Just because somebody is rich is not an acceptable reason to deprive them of benefits that accrue to everyone else. Just because they are poor does not accrue them any special virtue.



George Bush gets at least a B plus here. He's proven time and again that race, creed, or sex is neither a barrier to advancement in his administration nor a criterion for special consideration. The opposition would accuse a stop sign of being racist or sexist, whether it was or not, as long as George Bush or a Republican had anything to do with it. Grade F.



9. Decisions should be made on the basis of the best interests of the whole country, first and foremost. This district or that special interest group or the other group of agitators is not as important as the long term benefit of the country as a whole.



The president gets a D on this one. Medicare drug benefit. $200 billion to rebuild Louisiana. More pork in the highway bill than you can believe and he didn't veto the thing. Except for fetal stem cells, I can't point to one special interest he's said anything resembling "no" to, and "no federal funding for fetuses you kill after today" isn't exactly the strongest condemnation going. The only reason it's not an F is the special interests he's said yes to include political opponents. The opposition is no better, they get the same D.



10. No intentional steps backwards. Baby steps forward are fine, and marking time may be necessary occasionally. But we can never afford to move backwards on individual freedoms, or anything else on this list.



The president gets a solid A here, for holding the line and enforcing it when it would be so easy to let it slip. The only time we've done anything vaguely shameful was Abu Ghraib, and he did the right thing in response to that. Abu Ghraib was not an atrocity or anything vaguely resembling one, but it was wrong and he has prosecuted those who may have done wrong as well as their superiors. Enemy combatants? It's legal, traditional, and intelligent to hold them until they are no longer a threat. USA PATRIOT? If you're griping about it, you haven't read it. Nor is it the primary purpose of the first, fourth, and fifth amendments, among others, to shackle the government and prevent law enforcement from doing their job. It is to force the government to allow political opponents to talk, to prevent the government from persecuting opponents or fishing for opposition wrongdoing. Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Markos Zuniga, Cindy Sheehan, MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, ANSWER, even CAIR. They're all still running around free to spread their fertilizer to anyone who will listen. The Bill of Rights are not supposed to stop the FBI or other law enforcement from investigating if they have a reasonable belief that a law has been violated. If you do something wrong, you still deserve to get busted for it, even if you are an opponent of the president. You want to talk about serious wrongdoing here, talk about Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, FDR trying to pack the Supreme Court, Johnson and Nixon using the FBI as a weapon against dissidents. The opposition gets a B plus that would be the same A except that they're trying to subvert the system to keep the Evil Republicans from doing their jobs so that the opposition can win the next election, despite the fact that it would mean more recycled terrorists.



So now my big things are on the table. I'm not hiding my agenda. Put yours on the table too, and even if we cannot come to an agreement, it may be obvious why, and we may get along better because of it.



Notice, please, that even though I generally support the Republicans more then the Democrats, there is no reason why this cannot change; indeed I promise you it will if the Democrats start doing better at what's really important.



Now, to turn this into a meme. I'm looking for as much diversity of opinion as I can reasonably get, so I hereby tag Eric's Grumbles, Politburo Diktat, aTypical Joe, Louisiana Libertarian, and State of Flux. Approximately Ten Big Things, in order, and how you think the administration, congress, or the US as a whole are doing on them. Tag five more people each when you're done. Put a link to this post and a trackback when you're done, so everybody can find out what everybody else is saying. (You don't need to wait to be tagged if you want to speak up. If you don't have a website, put it in comments or email me if it's too big)





P.S. After I already started this article, I also read Michael Barone in US News & World Report.

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This page is a archive of entries in the Politics category from October 2005.

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