judgement by your peers

Dwight Meredith points out that George W. Bush's stated beliefs about juries are hypocrisy incarnate:

While Governor of Texas, Mr. Bush showed an abiding faith in the unerring accuracy of jury decisions in death penalty cases. While Governor more than 130 death penalty cases came before the Governor. He granted a reprieve in exactly one case. Mr. Bush has said that he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime."

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Mr. Bush has said that poor jury decisions are �devastating the practice of medicine� and ruining many an �honest business.�

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My experience is with civil juries. That experience convinces me that juries almost always make good decisions. I have yet to try an important civil case in which the defense lawyer slept through the trial, failed to interview witnesses or failed to present crucial evidence.



A person whose experience is only on the criminal side could feel differently. Overworked and underpaid lawyers without the resources to investigate, prepare and present a case may not give juries the information needed to make an accurate decision. That increases the likelihood of jury error.





George Bush�s blind faith in the inerrancy of death penalty juries combined with his distrust of civil juries is perverse.

Dwight has a lot more detail about the specifics of why the distinction between civil juries and death penalty juries is not only innappropriate, but actually even backwards.

the GOP Golden Age

Andrew Sullivan is on the political equivalent of the Road to Damascus. First he receives and analyses an email that boasts of the true reason why Deficits are Good

GW's real job, like Reagan before him, is to ensure that all the money is spent, that when a Dem takes office, 33 percent or more is paying off debt. This is called preemptive handcuffs. It isn't my idea. It is David Stockman's. No money to spend when Dems are in office. You are being childish. The only rationale for fiscal responsibility NOW is if you want there to be $ for Dems to spend later.

Give the guy points for candor. But the result of this repetitive, partisan strategy is surely an increasing level of government debt, which doesn't only restrict future spending, but restricts future tax cuts. I hate to bring up the national interest here, as opposed to cheap partisan advantage.

I find the notion that the GOP ever had the national interest at heart to be astonishingly innocent. I'd sooner believe that Sullivan is feigning amazement and is positioning himself for a party switch than I would that he is shocked, SHOCKED to find that teh GOP cares about power and nothing else.



He goes on to write:

I'm all in favor of tax cuts. I think Americans are over-taxed; I believe that individuals can make far smarter decisions about where the country's wealth should be spent than government usually does; I'm particularly persuaded that tax rates in particular should encourage work not redistribution. Where I differ from others is in their belief that deficits don't matter; that government debt is no problem; and that drastically increasing that debt just before the entitlement crunch hits is good politics or economics. I think we need to decrease spending while we decrease taxes. At the very least, I think we should hold a line on spending while we decrease taxes. What I cannot support is vastly increasing spending while you cut taxes. Call me crazy, but I regard this as a question of responsibility. We have a responsibility not to leave the next generation in a huge hole of our making. At this point, it's clear that the Republican party, at all levels, is simply fiscally irresponsible. This is true at the federal level, where Republicans have out-spent Democrats; and at a state level, as this USA Today synopsis spells out.

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The Democrats aren't worse. They're actually better at controlling spending than today's Republicans. True fiscal conservatives might want to rethink their long-standing preference for Republicans.

Maybe Andrew has been secretly reading Dwight Meredith? I'd like to note that Sullivan has stated earlier that he's a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. This isn't irony, it's either obtuseness or disingenious positioning. Regardless, Sullivan hasn't let his own words stop his hypocrisy before. But these comments are certainly worth bookmarking as the GOP brings this nation to ruin.



UPDATE: Sullivan, with his newfound respect for the good of the Nation, might also want to consider Tapped's superb capsule summary of the GOP agenda:

First off, independent analyses put the true cost of the cut at $800 billion dollars or more. (The New York Times' David E. Rosenbaum rightly describes the $320 billion price tag as "artificial.") That blows a huge whole in the budget, as intended, and gets us further down the road toward bankrupting Medicare and Social Security, creating pressure to privatize both programs.



Second, tax cuts are good politics for the GOP. Cutting taxes has replaced fighting communists as the glue of the party. Everyone in the GOP can agree about tax cuts, which is why the White House plans to keep cutting taxes every year Bush is in office -- it keeps everyone rowing in the same direction instead of fighting about things over which they disagree. We could have spent the last few months discussing the hundreds of thousands of jobs this country is losing. We could have spent the last few months talking about health care. We could even have been talking about abortion. None of those issues are really good for the GOP. But instead, we've spent most of that time talking about tax cuts.

To what end? staying in power. This is the GOP Golden Age - the pre-eminence of political success. But at what cost? Krugman points to Japan as a cautionary tale:

The Bush administration is, of course, notably unconcerned about deficits. Aren't the tax cuts in the pipeline exactly what the economy needs? Alas, no. Despite their huge size � if you ignore the gimmicks, the latest round will cost at least $800 billion over the next decade � they pump relatively little money into the economy now, when it needs it. Moreover, the tax cuts flow mainly to the very, very affluent � the people least likely to spend their windfall.



Meanwhile, state and local governments, which are not allowed to run deficits � we have our own version of the stability pact � are slashing spending and raising taxes. And both the spending cuts and the tax increases will fall mainly on the most vulnerable, people who cannot make up the difference by drawing on existing savings. The result is that the economic downdraft from state cutbacks (only slightly alleviated by the paltry aid contained in the new tax bill) will almost certainly be stronger than any boost from federal tax cuts.



In short, those of us who worry about a Japanese-style quagmire find the global picture pretty scary. Policymakers are preoccupied with their usual agendas; outside the Fed, none of them seem to understand what may be at stake.

It's even larger than merely the economy's health at stake, however. American supremacy - military, social, economic - is built upon that foundation, which Bush is determined to undermine for political gain. If we do indeed get caught in a liquidity trap like Japan, this will affect our position as the sole superpower. It puts America's security at risk as well as its prosperity. The Krugman article is probably the single most important one to read today.

neo-wilsonianism personified

from Howard Dean's interview with truthout.org:

What Bush is doing in Afghanistan is a huge problem, and bodes very ill for what is going to happen in Iraq. The President has taken his eye off the ball in Afghanistan. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan and the elimination of the Taliban. I thought that group was a clear and present danger to the United States, and I supported what the President did. However, there's no follow-up. The best defense policy we could have in this country is not just to have a strong military, but it is to build middle-class nations with strong democratic ideals, where women fully participate in the government. Those countries don't go to war with each other, and they don't harbor groups like al Qaeda.



We're not doing that in Afghanistan. We're making deals with corrupt and crooked and undemocratic warlords in order to pacify Afghanistan. That is exactly the mistake the United States always makes. The notion of 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' is a huge mistake, and this administration is doing that. If they do that in Iraq, we're going to end up with an enormous problem, as we may well have in Afghanistan if the President doesn't add more peacekeeping people. The irony of this is that all the nations the President insulted before going to war in Iraq are the people we need now. We need more troops, which means we need NATO and the United Nations to get involved in rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq in a meaningful way. It has nothing to do with being nice to the French and the Germans. It has to do with protecting our soldiers who are going to be seen more and more every day as an occupiers and less as liberators.

I could have written these words myself. This is the neo-wilsonian "domino" theory and I think it makes a lot more sense than the neo-conservative one. The point is that the neocon domino theory relies too much on dominator methodology. Though both domino theories desire teh same end goal, the conciliator approach is an essential ingredient. This is why neo-wilsonian foreign policy is more pragmatic and will result in positive outcomes. The failure of the neocon approach on Afghanistan is obvious and that's certainly where we seem to be headed in Iraq as well.

the Spam King is right

Ronald Scelson , the Cajun Spammer king who sends 180 million spam emails every 12 hours, is ironically the only one making sense on dealing with the spam problem.

Scelson said he supports anti-spam legislation. But while committee members were clearly intrigued by his story, they gave little weight to his proposed solution: Pass a tough spam law, but then prevent any Internet provider from blocking e-mail from bulk marketers that abide by the law.



The Burns-Wyden bill would make it illegal for bulk mailers to forge their sending location, have deceptive subject lines or prevent users from removing their names from e-mail lists. Owners of networks would retain the ability to block mail, and the legislation gives Internet providers legal standing to hunt down and sue spammers.

(emphasis mine) I think it's a brilliant suggestion. If the Burns-Wyden bill is passed, then I can easily filyer my mail to stop spam I don't want to see. I don't think that my ISPs should be blocking email that may be spam but follows these rules. The filters in Eudora and Outlook Express are powerful enough to stop all spam I am not interested in receiving if I know for a fact that the forged header problem vanishes. I think it's a great compromise.

postwar screwup watch: Tuwaitha redux

Phil Carter has even more bad news about the looting of nuclear materials from Tuwaitha - according to CNN civilians near the site are beginning to show signs of radiation sickness. Phil identifies a lack of troops on the ground (a recurring theme) as the root cause:

It goes without saying that this story is bad. I wrote a couple of days ago that the decision to leave this facility unguarded -- while putting troops on oil facilities and other critical infrastructure -- was probably a big mistake. Now we have some hint of the cost of that decision. This story also shows the price of not having enough troops to do the job at the precise moment necessary. The critical window for establishing order was right after Saddam's statute fell -- that's when the looting happened; that's when the proverbial radioactive cat got out of the bag.



These cases of radiation sickness may, unfortunately, be irreversible and incontrovertible evidence of that. But at this point, hand-wringing won't do much good. We have to get enough soldiers on the ground to secure Iraq -- whether they come from NATO, the National Guard, or elsewhere. Once the streets are secure, we need to get all the NGOs and aid organizations necessary into Iraq to fix this kind of stuff. There may not be much that we can do for children like Amar. But if they get there fast enough, groups like Doctors Without Borders and the Red Crescent can try to save thousands of others.

Phil also has an excerpt from military prophet Ralph Peters and his own analysis about the issue of sufficient boots on the ground. He also takes a hard look at Rumsfeld's plans to remake the Army with less emphasis on human beings and more on technology:

Secretary Rumsfeld is right that transformation needs to happen. But the Office of the Secretary of Defense does not necessarily have all the answers about transformation. In my old unit, the 4th Infantry Division, the smartest minds on transformation were usually the junior officers and sergeants who actually used the stuff in the field. Similarly, Secretary Rumsfeld should realize that some of the best ideas on transformation may be out in the field right now -- perhaps even in the Army. Furthermore, acrimony between the OSD staff and the Army staff is not in the best interests of America's defense. If there are legitimate areas of disagreement, so be it -- let the best ideas prevail. If there are personality conflicts, those need to be dealt with. But the price for pursuing the wrong vision of transformation will be paid in American blood. Eventually, the OSD and Army staffs are going to have to find the right answer together, and put the Rumsfeld v. Army feud behind them.

Rumsfeld's conflict with eth Army is at the root of our problems in winning the peace in Iraq - we have ideology interfering with practical needs. I'm adding Phil to my daily readme list for now - his insights are just too valuable to risk having missed.

water flows uphill

A British inventor has created a garden that features a series of cascading waterfalls - where water flows uphill^[1]. On display at the Chelsea flower show, it is inspiring all sorts of speculation:

It is a trick which has greatly intrigued the crowds at the Chelsea Flower Show, where Dyson's work is part of the Daily Telegraph's Silver Gilt award-winning garden. People have been queuing up 10-deep to see the fountain, says Mr Phillips, many of them discussing their various ideas as to how it works.



"I stand a discreet distance away and listen to some of their theories - there are some fantastic ideas there, some of them I actually wish I could make.



"One person was saying that they thought the water was actually travelling the other way - they were wondering how I was managing to get a water jet to shoot up to the top of the glass."

I'd love to see this thing in person. I just need to figure out an excuse to visit Murtz!





^[1]Inspired by M.C. Escher's "Ascending and Descending" lithograph (1960).

who shot Mohammed al-Dura?

James Fallows turns his considerable investigative skills to the question. This article expands upon the theme of the original article I used as a hyperlink to Mohammed al-Dura's name in the footnote to my lanat upon the hirabists post.



The article is also posted to the UNMEDIA mailing list (archives are open to non-subscribers, so feel free to browse)