What he doesn't do is explain exactly why it's a bad thing if Senators vote against judges who have a different constitutional philosophy. For those of us who don't see "partisan" as a pejorative term, what exactly is the argument?Both these senators decry the growing role of interest groups that lobby on judicial confirmations. Both have defied those pressures, Leahy in voting for Roberts and Graham in being the lone Republican to support Sotomayor in this week's vote.
"I pointed out that Roberts was not someone I would have recommended to Bill Clinton or Barack Obama," Leahy said, "but I did not want to see the chief justice of the United States confirmed on a party-line vote."
Graham took the same stance on Sotomayor, saying he expected to disagree with many of her rulings, but gave great deference to Obama's choice because "elections make a difference" and she is "clearly qualified." He said he hoped it would serve as an example to Democrats the next time a Republican president makes a nomination.
If their examples spread, we might avert the ugly partisanship of recent confirmation fights.
But it's also worth offering a more general reality check here: The public option is not now, and has not ever, been the core of the argument for heath-care reform. It is the core of the fight in Washington, D.C. It is an important policy experiment. But it was not in Howard Dean or John Kerry or Dick Gephardt's plans, and reformers supported those. It was not in Bill Clinton's proposal, and most lament the death of that. It is not what politicians were using in their speeches five years ago. It is a recent addition to the debate, and a good one. But it is not the reason were are having this debate.
Rather, what has kept health-care reform at the forefront of liberal politics for decades is moral outrage that 47 million of our friends and neighbors are uninsured.
If reformers cannot pass a strong health-care reform bill now, there is no reason to believe they will be able to do it later. The question is whether the knowledge that the system will not let you solve this problem should prevent you from doing what you can to improve it. Put more sharply, the question should be whether this bill is better or worse than another 19.5 years of the deteriorating status quo.
These twists and turns make Iraq look less like either Vietnam or World War II — the analogies that politicians and pundits keep closest at hand — and more like an amalgamation of the Korean War and America’s McKinley-era counterinsurgency in the Philippines. Like Iraq, those were murky, bloody conflicts that generated long-term benefits but enormous short-term costs.
There is a certain vague similarity in that while I would say counterinsurgency in the Philippines “worked” it’s hard for me to see that it actually achieved anything. I mean, suppose the Philippines had obtained independence from the United States in the 1890s rather than the 1940s. How would my life be worse? How would any American’s life be worse? What “long-term benefits” actually accrued to us as a result of the counterinsurgency effort?
But the hinge point in U.S.-Philippine history -- what yielded the friendship and closeness that the two nations presently enjoy -- was the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. What the Japanese inflicted upon the Philippines and its people was by orders of magnitude far worse than anything the U.S. ever dared. You probably know the rest: MacArthur declares he Shall Return; he does; the battle of Leyte Gulf is one of the largest in the history of naval warfare; we drive the Japanese from the Philippines; the amount of gratitude is overwhelming; a partnership has been our inheritance ever since.It's really unclear what value Ross believes that the Philippines held for the United States. He could believe that they were a strategic asset for the US, or that the post-1946 relationship was an asset, or that the conquest and occupation was justified by the current Philippine democratic regime. All of these arguments are pretty unconvincing. On the strategic question, independence of the Philippines was threatened by actors other than the United States. Both Japan and Germany (yes, German Pacific imperialism [no pun intended] was to be taken seriously at the turn of the century) had an interest in the Philippines while it was held by Spain, and it's not at all unlikely that either or both would have attempted to subjugate and independent Filipino state, or taken the Philippines away from Spain. This threat was understood to be serious by US policymakers. However, the conquest and occupation didn't particularly help the US in World War II, as the archipelago was conquered in short order and at great cost to the US. David Silbey makes this point at greater length at Edge of the West; the islands ended up have virtually no strategic value to the United States. In this sense, Yglesias is quite correct; the brutal conquest of the Philippines earned the United States almost nothing in the long run.
Eminent economists have told Queen Elizabeth II that the global financial downturn was brought about by a "psychology of denial" among the financial and political elite, a report said Sunday. In a three-page letter, the experts said "financial wizards" completely failed to "foresee the timing, extent and severity" of the credit crunch, according to The Observer newspaper, which said it had obtained a copy of the letter.
The letter was signed by political historian Peter Hennessy, and Tim Besley, a London School of Economics (LSE) professor and an external member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee. It spoke of the "psychology of denial" that gripped the political and financial world in the build-up to the crisis.
The economists said financial experts convinced themselves and the world's politicians that they had found clever ways to spread risks across the markets.
During a visit to the LSE in November, Queen Elizabeth asked Professor Luis Garicano about the credit crunch, saying: "Why did nobody notice it?"
In her opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Sonia Sotomayor said that she wanted to clear up some questions about her views. “In the past month, many senators have asked me about my judicial philosophy,” she said. “Simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make law—it is to apply the law.” Coming from a jurist of such distinction, this was a disappointing answer. Like much of her testimony, it suggested that the job of a Supreme Court Justice is merely to identify the correct precedents, apply them rigorously, and thus render appropriate decisions.
In fact, Justices have a great deal of discretion—in which cases they take, in the results they reach, in the opinions they write. When it comes to interpreting the Constitution—in deciding, say, whether a university admissions office may consider an applicant’s race—there is, frankly, no such thing as “law.” In such instances, Justices make choices, based largely, though not exclusively, on their political views of the issues involved. In reaching decisions this way, the Justices are not doing anything wrong; there is no other way to interpret the majestic vagueness of the Constitution. But the fact that Judge Sotomayor managed to avoid discussing any of this throughout four days of testimony is indicative of the way the confirmation process, as it is now designed, misleads the public about what it is that Justices do.
The discrimination against PED users in Hall of Fame voting rests upon the perception that this was cheating. But is it cheating if one violates a rule that nobody is enforcing, and which one may legitimately see as being widely ignored by those within the competition?
It seems to me that, at some point, this becomes an impossible argument to sustain—that all of these players were “cheating”, in a climate in which most everybody was doing the same things, and in which there was either no rule against doing these things or zero enforcement of those rules. If one player is using a corked bat, like Babe Ruth, clearly, he’s cheating. But if 80% of the players are using corked bats and no one is enforcing any rules against it, are they all cheating? One better: if 80% of the players are using corked bats and it is unclear whether there is or is not there is any rules against it, is that cheating?
And. ..was there really a rule against the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs? At best, it is a debatable point. The Commissioner issued edicts banning the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. People who were raised on the image of an all-powerful commissioner whose every word was law are thus inclined to believe that there was a rule against it.
But “rules”, in civilized society, have certain characteristics. They are agreed to by a process in which all of the interested parties participate. They are included in the rule book. There is a process for enforcing them. Someone is assigned to enforce the rule, and that authority is given the powers necessary to enforce the rule. There are specified and reasonable punishments for violation of the rules.
The “rule” against Performance Enhancing Drugs, if there was such a rule before 2002, by-passed all of these gates. It was never agreed to by the players, who clearly and absolutely have a right to participate in the process of changing any and all rules to which they are subject. It was not included in any of the various rule books that define the conduct of the game from various perspectives. There was no process for enforcing such a rule. The punishments were draconian in theory and non-existent in fact.
It seems to me that, with the passage of time, more people will come to understand that the commissioner’s periodic spasms of self-righteousness do not constitute baseball law. It seems to me that the argument that it is cheating must ultimately collapse under the weight of carrying this great contradiction—that 80% of the players are cheating against the other 20% by violating some “rule” to which they never consented, which was never included in the rule books, and which for which there was no enforcement procedure. History is simply NOT going to see it that way.
A Singapore law professor who was to teach a human rights course at New York University Law School this fall has withdrawn after students protested what they called her anti-gay views.
"Heterosexual potential"?
Homosexuality is a gender identity disorder; there are numerous examples of former homosexuals successfully dealing with this. Just this year, two high profile US activists left the homosexual lifestyle, the publisher of Venus, a lesbian magazine, and an editor of Young Gay America. Their stories are available on the net. An article by an ex-gay in the New Statesmen this July identified the roots of his emotional hurts, like a distant father, overbearing mother and sexual abuse by a family friend; after working through his pain, his unwanted same-sex attractions left. While difficult, change is possible and a compassionate society would help those wanting to fulfill their heterosexual potential. There is hope.
Just to be clear; we swaddle Miriam because we want her to invade and conquer small countries. Elisha can be a pacifist if she wants.
