Ciceronian Review

Vietnamistan

Karzai has mastered the trick of locking up American support.  Like the fellows we held up in Central America and General Thieu, it is not the corruption or incompetence that matters, it is whether the fellow appears opposite the enemy.  We had that corrupt general in VietNam.  The Afghan election was determined by fraud, as is pretty obvious.  But our government seems on a road to allow it all to slide because they are not sure what would follow if something approaching a fair run were to be held. 

CIA Needs Better Defense

With AG Holder's announcement of an investigation into CIA interrogation conduct, we get an array of protest.  Most of it falls into either (1) such an investigation is an improper political review of a prior administration's policies, or (2) such an investigation will cause the CIA not to do its job properly in the future because employees will be afraid of after the fact prosecutions.  (Not so much protest along the lines of 'no point to investigating what was legally permissible' which is a bit of surprise to me.  Maybe I missed it.)  The two general lines of argument are remarkably silly for all  the play they get. 

I don't see why CIA agent, who are supposed to tough people risking the health and lives for the good of the country, patriots of the old school who will defend the nation with their lives, are afraid of testifying in front of Congress or the remote possibility of prosecution for crimes.  How hard are these guys, if that is what scares them?  Most high school football players take bigger risks for a much smaller purpose.  And what is the fear?  That like the rest of us, they may get prosecuted for committing crimes?  This is a peculiar piece of argument.  Soldiers get prosecuted for committing crimes.  Even those brave boys of high finance sometimes get prosecuted for committing crimes.  I don't see why CIA folk can't do their jobs perfectly well while living with the risk that if they commit crimes on the job they will be prosecuted.  The prosecution of Mr. Foggo should not cause the collapse of the CIA.  (How he got to the top of that organization remains a mystery to me -- but then I knew him long ago.)  The conduct alleged has been illegal for a pretty long time.  I assume they all or mostly managed high school and college, and so are generally familiar with the idea that one of the things that made Nazis and Communists evil was the use of torture. 

The complaint that an investigation may criminalize policy differences is at least as odd.  Change sin enforcement policies happen all the time.  The economy has not come to a halt because of changes in tax enforcement or securities enforcement policies.  This is not enactment of an ex post facto criminal law, and reading existing statutes differently is not new.  Sometimes the change make more things legal than in the past and sometimes the other way around. 

The argument should be that the alleged conduct at issue is not illegal.  I suppose one could argue that the law does not apply to the CIA.  It is a poor line of argument.  It is stupendously shortsighted.  And it has no legal foundation, at least as far as I can tell.

Honduras and Constancy

Over the weekend, the Honduran President was displaced by a coup d'etat effected by the military.  Unlike most coups, this one seems to have had the support of the Supreme Court and the Legislature.  Very unusual.  All the same, a coup.  By its nature, a coup displaces the will of the electorate because it terminates the office of the President elected by the citizens of Honduras.  As expected, the OAS and its member states (all, as far I know) have condemned the coup.  Interestingly absent was a call by the Republican spokesmen for more forceful action in Honduras.  One would think the Republicans would want forceful intervention, which, in Honduras, would likely be pretty effective.  Or at least an economic boycott, to support the democratic process.  But that has not been forthcoming.  Maybe it has to do with the President overthrown -- a Chavez ally, so perhaps not worthy of support. 

I don't think it is helpful for that party to be so brazen in the posturing with principle.  It would not cost the Republicans much of anything to just stand against military coups.  It is not like Lenin would be raised from the dead as a result, or even Bill Ayres. 

Throw Him on the Barbie

This has been an interesting week for the Republican Party and for the defense of marriage crowd.  Sen. Ensign has an affair with a staffer.  Gov. Sanford has an affair, wanders off to Buenos Aires with his darling and has his staff lying about hiking the Appalachian Trail.  The defense of marriage from gays and lesbians seems to be losing its luster --the defenders aren't all that taken with their own marriages it seems.  Another way to see it is to think of it all as competition between the parties -- the Demoncrats had John Edwards finding sex in the middle of a presidential campaign (shades of Gary Hart).  The Republican candidates couldn't match it so the next rank of up and comers had to match Edwards.  So Ensign goes public when -- well, not so very clear why.  Extortion is not usually attempted by the party lawyer sending a letter.  Not to be outdone, Mr. Sanford decided that unexplained disappearance would be okay -- Gary Hart again!  That was a self-destructive move.  Which all suggests that the old slogan is still good -- Republicans make good barbie - throw one on today.

Ward, You're Back!

Remarkably, Ward Churchill won his wrongful termination suit, at least at the trial level.  Churchill was fired by the University of Colorado following his remarks about the September 11 attack.  After the fact, the University uncovered evidence showing Churchill was a pretty poor scholar -- plagiarism and the like -- and tried to dress up the firing with that set of clothes.  But it was political.  After all, if plagiarism won't get someone fired from Harvard, why should it be enough for Colorado?  An unfortunate aspect is that Churchill is an unattractive plaintiff, he is sanctimonious and a poor political thinker.  The jury gave him only $1 in damages, which tells you a good deal.  The judge has yet to decide whether Churchill will be re-instated. 

He is a good test for commitment to academic freedom and integrity, or one of a couple.  Yoo is another good test, and there is the Harvard plagiarists.  Rubbermaid standards.

Let Them Collect

I do not think that compensation caps for executives of companies accepting federal largesse are worth the trouble.  Set aside that they would either come too late (and so not apply to plenty of high payers) or would be retroactive (raising litigation risks).  It seems to me that they will be hard to monitor or enforce, and those costs are not worth incurring.  It also seems to me we would be better off putting into place -- rather, returning to law -- a more seriously progressive taxation system.  Make $14 or $50 million, but tax income at genuinely progressive rates, e.g., marginal rate of 70% of income about $5 million (or some such).  Short memories at work -- that ws the state of the world during the long growth of the fifties and sixties and seventies.  It was in the eighties that progessive tax lost its place.  So be conservative, revive the pre-Carter tax structure.

No Good Letter

The continuing fights over California Proposition 8 have moved to the California Supreme Court.  Along with the briefing, we now get letter campaigns.  There are campaigns to get people to write to the California Supreme Court, urging it to strike or uphold the Proposition.  As a tool to motivate and involve, I think the campaigns have a point.  Rally and rile the troops, keep money flowing, and so on.  As a practical strategy, i.e., a strategy to affect the outcome of the Court's decision, it seems a very poor idea.  Poor in several senses.  First of all, it will not affect the decision-making.  The Court knows enough to ensure that all the various letters go elsewhere, are read by no one, at least not while the case is pending.  I find it hard to think of a reason why the letters would ever be read by anyone.  I would send them all right to the shredder.  Second, it is a bad idea because it is entirely inconsistent with what judging and law is about.  California had one election, run properly.  Why hold a second election, done in a completely unreliable way?  Third, it is still a bad idea.  Here in Zion, people do write to judges.  In fact, recently had the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee write to a judge about a matter pending before the judge; on behalf of the Senator's friend.  Not much difference here.  Fourth, these kinds of campaigns do nothing for politics or for judicial integrity.  So, there you have it.  Sanctimony for the day.  Well, something has to keep us warm in Zion.

Stump Thinking

I wonder what Hamas' plan is.  The fight with Israel is not one Hamas can win, not even by stalemate.  Its rockets are too inaccurate and small and infrequent to constitute a military danger.  They harass civilians, but cause very little injury or death (12 deaths in a year is not all that serious).  The rocket attacks are not going to drive Israelis out of the area near the border, and do nothing at all of military value.  So the point must lie elsewhere.  One might think that it is symbolic resistance.  As symbol, the attacks also seem ineffective.  Compare to IRA or ETA or ANC attacks.  In part, Hamas lacks the symbolic impact because it is not in Israel, and, I think, maybe because it is using rockets.  (I am not cure about the last -- there is something else that is ineffective as symbolic about what Hamas has been up to.)  The attacks seem designed, or at least better designed, to push Israel into attacking Gaza.  And that seems a foolish aim ultimately.  There is gain to Hamas when Israel attacks.  I don't see reason to think Gazans would be much different than others when it comes to being under attack.  During the attack, people rally round the flag.  (We don't expect Israelis to give up and run from the borders because of Hamas rocket attacks -- isn't the psychology pretty much the same?)  And with high levels of destruction of the infrastructure attributable to the invaders, it seems unlikely that post-war there will be a serious shift away from Hamas.  Anyway, it is unlikely that anyone in opposition would be in a position to do very much.  Weapons would be even more concentrated with Hamas, those who could exit likely would have (and they are the ones most likely I think to be the opposition).  At least, over the foreseeable short future, then, Hamas gets to consolidate rule, but over an increasingly impoverished place.  Maybe there are ideological rewards.  It is a religious movement and they frequently are driven by completely idiotic ideas.  What is clear is that the rocket attacks don't move Gaza closer to a state, and do not move anyone closer to either two state or one state solutions.  They don't make Palestine any more likely.  Seems like a diversion.  And completely without justification.  So immoral, even setting aside the culpability from using indiscriminate weapons aimed at nothing in particular.  Fails as guerrilla war or liberation.  

Glow in the Dark

One of the entertaining aspects of life in Zion is the funnily open corruption of government.  Legislators do their friends favors in ways which are more direct and open than other states I have lived in, including Illinois.  For example, a state Senator McCoy (sometimes referred to by the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "the gay") introduced a bill to regulate nuclear power plants.  The newspaper coverage focused a bit on the opposition, to be expected.  What was odd is not just that there was opposition from a company, but the language of opposition:

But Aaron Tilton, promoter of the state's first nuclear power plant, called the measure "a backhanded slap" at nuclear power and "a grandstanding bill" that will be dead on arrival in the upcoming 2009 Legislature.

"The bill is basically going to go nowhere," said Tilton, a Republican who lost his own House seat last year, in part, over his involvement with the power plant, a 1,500-megawatt nuclear station.

        ...

Tilton questioned the seriousness of McCoy's effort in light of the fact that his company Transition Power Development LLC wasn't included in discussions about the bill.

The issue is not that some industry folks dislike some of the language.  No, the bill will go nowhere because McCoy did not first talk with the guy who is trying to build such a plant, and lost his seat over the issue, or more accurately, lost his seat over self-dealing on the issue.  So the Republican Rules Committee will see to it that it is Tilton's way or now way.  Skip the merits. 

No Good Believer

The ware in Gaza elicits an array of odd arguments and passionate posturing.  In a recent post, David Kopel advanced in very brief form an argument that shows up elsewhere -- the people in Gaza have no grounds for complaint in this war because they voted for Hamas:

"No nation should have to endure years of terrorist rocket attacks aimed at civilians. Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. The civilians who elected Hamas are the ones who are to blame for the suffering of the people in Gaza, just as the voters who elected the Nazis bore the responsibility for the necessary Allied military invasion of Germany."

This is a claim that deserves at least a little examination.  First, one wonders if "blame" means here something like ultimate responsibility, or means something like solely responsible, or directly responsible, or something else.  Is it that the Gazans who voted for Hamas are thereby permissible targets in war?  So it is okay to kill those who vote wrongly?  And what an odd story to tell about responsibility.  If one is in a group that votes wrong, one is fair game (on the theory that one should have done more to exit?).  How would one carry out this approach to politics and violence.  Does the fact that one has not voted matter?  It is pretty hard to see how the many children living in Gaza come to be responsible because they were born to parents who could have voted.  What about voting in a country with other sorts of objectionable policies or laws -- do we get to shoot them too?  I suppose one might think that only those done wrong get to use violence, but even so, why would one think that merely being in the polity justifies such treatment.  One could go on and on about what a remarkably bad idea Kopel has advanced.  It is an example of collective punishment, and all the stranger from someone who claims libertarian inclinations.