Seeing that Al Sharpton is going out of his way to criticize John Edwards, it is fairly clear the motive. (no links- quick post before I hop out; but I'm thinking of 1) his first comment in the last debate was an attack of Edwards' two nations speech, and 2) in NY, Sharpton said recently that Edwards' citing that he wins over indies and repubs is misplaced- Sharpton says Dems shouldn't be concerned with winning over swing voters)
Clearly, Sharpton wants to win delegates so he has a place in the Boston convention. The person that chooses such places is the nominee. If you want a place, then, best kiss up to him that you think will be said nominee. Sharpton is doing the dirty, negative work for Kerry hoping to win some favor.
I think, right now anyway, that this is unsolicited from Kerry. Rather, I think Sharpton is just being an opportunistic meanie right now and ought to lose any respect that his punch lines have afforded him up til now. Shame.

Some good theological discussion from Duke Divinity's David C. Steinmetz regarding The Passion, in today's Raleigh News and Observer. After less important debates about history (see below) and fairly important debates about supposed anti-semitism (see evrywhere else), the meaningful discussion to be had after a Passionate night at the movies is theology. To wit, what theology did Mr. Gibson explore with his movie?
Steinmetz has some suggestions: "Christians have never agreed on a single meaning for the crucifixion of Jesus. Instead, they have offered over the centuries a number of theories, each of which has some support in the New Testament, but none of which was ever identified by church authorities as the sole official theory, displacing all others."
Three theories:

The oldest theory taught by Christians relies on a metaphor drawn from a battlefield. In this theory the accent falls on Easter rather than Good Friday. Christ is a liberator, who delivered humankind from the dark and oppressive powers of sin, death, and devil. Images of the cross show a savior who is hardly suffering at all. He is portrayed as a victorious general and his arms are outstretched, not in pain, but in triumph.

A second theory, associated with the name of St. Anselm of Canterbury (who died in 1109), works with a metaphor drawn from a courtroom and envisions fallen humanity as a guilty prisoner charged with a capital crime. God is a compassionate magistrate who does not want to condemn the guilty prisoner, but is compelled by his sense of justice to do so. In this theory Jesus Christ, who is innocent of all charges, takes the place and punishment of the guilty. By suffering death on the cross, he expiates human sin and upholds divine justice.

The third theory, proposed by the French theologian, Peter Abelard (died 1142), is more psychological in nature. God is not alienated from the human race, argued Abelard. Human beings are alienated from God. Indeed, God so loves wayward and erring humanity that he suffers humiliation and rejection at its hands. The cross is a stunning demonstration of a love that will not be turned aside, whatever the cost. The sight of the crucified Christ as the focal point of God's persistent love moves men and women to contrition and thus to the beginning of a new life.

Discuss...

My spin on the debate last night: (really, Edwards-centric spin) The panelists admited after the debate to trying to feed Edwards questions that would steer him into negative attacks on Kerry. Many that saw the debate are summarizing Edwards performance as such: he did fine, but didn't come out swinging at Kerry enough.
On the one hand, Edwards no doubt has to give voters a reason to vote for him and not the front runner, and this inevitably means drawing differences and saying "I'm better than he."
On the other hand, Edwards has done precisely this. There are no policy differences between the two as such to make one of them un-voteable; ie, if you'd vote for one you'll probably vote for the other without feeling all your policy hopes are vanished. The difference between them is 90% personal, and Edwards has laid out what he can in this regard.
The rest is up to us to see- and it is noble rather than wrong- for Edwards to stay quiet. What do I mean?
The panelists threw soft balls that Edwards could have batted into negativity home runs. Edwards could have distorted Kerry's record, or taken Kerry to task in more harsh terms. However, the fact that Edwards didn't, to so many's chagrine, take the easy hits, is just what makes him the unique politician that he is. Had he changed course...why would I still feel so special about him?
The personhood of Edwards is what wins over indies and Repubs. This is what makes him more likely than Kerry to beat W. It is up for the voters to recognize that- and, slowly, they do.

Nearly everyone says we live in a new era wherein a person with little experience in public life cannot become president. It is this notion that leads the New York Times to make the regretible decision to endorse John Kerry in the Tuesday primary.

It's true that Mr. Edwards has as much or more experience than George Bush did when he entered the White House in 2001. But that was a different era. Now Americans understand better that they live in perilous times, and they aren't likely to feel comfortable switching leaders this fall if the challenger seems to require a lot of on-the-job training. Mr. Bush himself was not well served by the thinness of his resume when Sept. 11 occurred.
...
The primary contest has now come down to two competing arguments. Mr. Kerry's supporters say Mr. Edwards suffers from a gravitas gap. Mr. Edwards's partisans say Mr. Kerry is on the wrong end of a charm chasm. The senator from Massachusetts seems to us to have warmed up a good deal since the campaign began. He can take the edge off his patrician aura, at least in part, by retelling the story of his Vietnam exploits and bringing back loyal blue-collar friends from the service to attest to his virtues as a leader.

Almost everyone who has been watching the Democratic campaign would love to merge Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards into one composite super-candidate, with Mr. Kerry's depth and Mr. Edwards's personal touch with the voters. In the television era, likability is extremely important. But this is a serious business, and Mr. Kerry, the more experienced and knowledgeable candidate, gets our endorsement.

When you deconstruct the experience theory, though, it becomes quite meaningless. Let's look at the NYT treatment of this factor: "Now Americans understand better that they live in perilous times, and they aren't likely to feel comfortable switching leaders this fall if the challenger seems to require a lot of on-the-job training. Mr. Bush himself was not well served by the thinness of his resume when Sept. 11 occurred."

Experience, then, is a new requirement post 9/11--because we live in "perilous times." And just how are these times more perilous than during the cold war? Than on 9/10? Or, moreover, than 1860- when Abraham Lincoln was elected president, with all of two years of Senate experience with a few more years in the House?
Moreover, how would experience have prevented 9/11? What is the NYT purporting, when it says Mr. Bush was "not well served by the thinness of his resume" when 9/11 occurred? If the implication is that lives could have been saved had Gore been president, why doesn't the paper come out with a clearer accusation. Further, would a thicker resume have garnered Bush greater support after the war? 100% approval rather than 90%?
The fact is, Bush's level of experience had nothing to do with our being attacked in September of his first term. If anything, his freshness in public life furthered his ability to take in the tragedy in a fairly sympathetic response as the broad citizenship.
What I would call the blunders of post-9/11 America came not because of inexperience, but because of partisan ideology that exploited the terror on voters' minds.
The Iraq war was rushed because, before 9/11, the administration was set to remove Hussein (as was Clinton's policy goal) and create a Democratic foothold in the middle east as soon as possible. The threat of terrorism, then, was used to promote this plan- but it is important to note that it was not visa-versa. It was not Bush's lack of preparation that hastened the war- it was his administration's over-preparation.
Under the NYT's reasoning, though, the threat of terror has changed something; but the notion that 'thing's have changed' actually promotes the so-called Bush Doctrine of offensive pre-emtion. Or am I wrong?
I reckon what I don't understand is this: If these perilous times are the result of the new-ish threat (it was always hiding behind the curtain, folks) of terrorism in the U.S., then how does experience in the old ways and policies help us at all? What does someone who cut his foreign policy teeth during the cold war (Kerry) offer in the way of superior resume?
Apart from the ability to respond to terror, what does the NYT purport that experience adds for the candidate? The article offers nothing, so we're left to venture guesses. The economy? Perhaps experience in D.C. will give us a condidate that knows how to create jobs. Perhaps experience will lead to lower crime rates.
But why use experience as a measure and not the policy positions laid out on both candidates websites? Fact is, plans, and not experience, lead to prosperity.
"Perilous times" and "serious business" propel Kerry into the NYT's favor. That sentiment is certainly in line with several commentators- but it is an empty thought. The times are always perilous, and the business of president is always serious. But the most fundamental point is this: the moment power becomes the exlusive provence of those with excessive public experience, we have lost the soul of our country. Term limits exist for a reason:
The United States is a country of citizen rulers. Unless the Times and proponents of the "experience" requirement are prepared to require a masters degree for public service, I urge them to think of what they are saying.

Not anti-semitic, and not accurate
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ begins today in theaters. I havn't seen it, and I'll probably wait for DVD. Until then, my reaction is only second hand- and is not so much a reaction to the film as a reaction to the reaction. My two general hunches are this: 1) Gibson did not set out to cast scorn on the Jews (although I don't dismiss the real possibility of indirect anti-semitism, and in that vein, some careless work from Gibson); 2) the movie is, despite the producers' assertions, historically inaccurate. It is this second issue that seems most problematic. Purported historic truth is dangerous.

First, the script is not drawn strictly from the Gospels. (btw, I heard a preacher on CNN today saying the movie was accurate because it comes from eyewitness accounts...the Gospels. ??? Wonder if the preacher knows just how many decades after Jesus' death Mark was written?) Rather, the script also drew on visions of Christ's Passion received and written up by two seventeenth-century nuns. The work can be found in the diaries of Ven. Ane Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) in the book "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ." A list of problematic elements of that account of the passion can be found in Creighton University's Journal of Religion and Society.

As Professor Fredriksen (Prof of Scripture at Boston University) writes in The New Republic, "To depict a first-century event by drawing on visionary writings composed almost two millennia later makes no sense at all: one might as well try to reconstruct ancient armor by peering at Bruegel."
The movie furthers its semblance of authenticity by using Aramaic and Latin. The first is correctly used, the second is a blunder. The Jewish high priest and the Roman prefect spoke to each other in Greek. Pilate's troops, while employees of Rome, were not "Romans." They were Greek-speaking local gentiles.
Fredriksen writes:

Then The New York Times Magazine published a profile of Hutton Gibson, the actor's father. He is what modern Catholics politely term a "traditionalist." Hutton Gibson considers the current papacy to be illegitimate. Vatican II--the Roman Church council in 1965 that, inter alia, changed liturgical language from Latin to spoken vernaculars, and expressed as a theological point of principle that all Jews everywhere could not be held culpable for the death of Jesus--he dismisses as a coup pulled off by Freemasons and Jews. He is also given to idiosyncrasy about the Holocaust (he believes that it never happened) and about September 11 (he believes that Al Qaeda was not involved).

The father's views, the article properly noted, cannot simply be imputed to the son. But the Times also noted that the son has aired his own contempt for the Vatican, and has generously financed and very visibly endorsed assorted "traditionalist" endeavors. And now he is committed to making this graphically violent film called The Passion. In light of the historical connection between the charge of Christ-killing and Christian anti-Jewish violence, might the film upset Jews? "It may," Gibson conceded. "It's not meant to. It's meant just to tell the truth."

Fredriksen knows quite a bit about the forming of this screebplay, becasue she was on a committee of professors that reviewed it for accuracy. Some excerpts from here TNR article:

We already knew that Gibson's efforts to be "as truthful as possible" (his own words in the Times) would be frustrated by the best sources that he had to draw on, namely, the Gospels themselves. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, whose texts were composed in Greek between 70 C.E. and 100 C.E., differ significantly on matters of fact. In Mark, Jesus's last meal is a Passover seder; in John, Jesus is dead before the seder begins. Mark and Matthew feature two night "trials" before a full Jewish court, and a dramatic charge of "blasphemy" from the high priest. Luke has only a single trial, early in the morning, and no high priest. John lacks this Jewish trial scene entirely. The release of Barabbas is a "Roman custom" in Mark, a "Jewish custom" in John. Between the four evangelists, Jesus speaks three different last lines from the cross. And the resurrection stories vary even more.
The evangelists wrote some forty to seventy years after Jesus's execution. Their literary problems are compounded by historical ones: it is difficult to reconstruct, from their stories, why Jesus was crucified at all. If the priests in Jerusalem had wanted him dead, Jesus could have been privately murdered or killed offstage. If the priests had wanted him killed but were constrained from arranging this themselves, they could have asked Pilate to do the job. If the Roman prefect had simply been doing a favor for the priests, he could easily have arranged Jesus's death by any of the considerable means at his disposal (assassination, murder in prison, and so on).

The fact that Jesus was publicly executed by the method of crucifixion can only mean that Rome wanted him dead: Rome alone had the sovereign authority to crucify. Moreover, the point of a public execution, as opposed to a private murder, was to communicate a message. Crucifixion itself implies that Pilate was concerned about sedition. Jesus's death on the cross was Pilate's way of telling Jerusalem's Jews, who had gathered in the holy city for the paschal holiday, to desist from any thought of rebellion. The Gospel writers, each in his own way, introduce priestly initiative to apologize for Roman fiat, and the evidence suggests that the priests must have been somehow involved. But the historical fact behind the Passion narratives--Jesus's death on a cross--points to a primarily Roman agenda.
...
The script, when we got it, shocked us. Nothing of Gibson's published remarks, or of Fulco's and Gibson's private assurances, had prepared us for what we saw. Each scholar, independent of the others, wrote his or her own comments on the document. We then boiled them down, bulleted our points, and made the whole discussion easy to digest. The first section of our report explained the historical connection between passion plays and the slaughter of European Jews, the dress rehearsals for the Shoah. Then we summarized our responses to the script. We pinpointed its historical errors and--again, since Gibson has so trumpeted his own Catholicism--its deviations from magisterial principles of biblical interpretation. We concluded with general recommendations for certain changes in the script. Four short appendices--two historical, two directly script-related--traversed this same terrain from different directions. A final appendix provided excerpts from official Catholic teaching.Receiving criticism is never easy. As teachers and as scholars, who regularly give and get criticism, we knew this. We also knew that we were asking Gibson to revise his script substantially. We knew that we were working against his enthusiasm, his utter lack of knowledge, and his investment of time and money. We pinned our hopes on his avowed interest in historicity, on his evident willingness to hear what we had to say, and on his decency. In retrospect, we also functioned with a naivete that is peculiar to educators: the belief that, once an error is made plain, a person will prefer the truth.

You guessed it. The historians' report wasn't used.

That script--and, on the evidence, the film--presents neither a true rendition of the Gospel stories nor a historically accurate account of what could have happened in Jerusalem, on Passover, when Pilate was prefect and Caiaphas was high priest. Instead Gibson will apparently release what Christopher Noxon, in his article for the Times, had correctly described already in March: "a big-budget dramatization of key points of traditionalist theology." The true historical framing of Gibson's script is neither early first-century Judea (where Jesus of Nazareth died) nor the late first-century Mediterranean diaspora (where the evangelists composed their Gospels). It is post-medieval Roman Catholic Europe.

A quick summary of the first century setting is available from the Journal of Religion and Society, here.
The problem with purporting historical accuracy is that such an assertion promotes a sense of right/wrong and us/them. Further, it diminishes a sense of vulnerability going into a discussion of both the historical and spiritual aspects of the event.
For believers (and agnostics), the Truth and meaning of Jesus' passion is beyond a notion of visual accuracy anyway. Historical truth mixes with the broader sense of Truth that is absolute--and the batter is a personal concoction. Thus, my complaint with Gibson's vision is not the vision- it is the assertion of it being someting other than a vision. While Gibson seems to acknowledge this (he did so on Diane Sawyer), he contradicts himself (as seen above- asserting the attempt to get at the true happenings). The film should be advertised as a vision. Rather, it is being advertised as History.

More:
Some more info is here, and here.
Here is the Communitarian response. (one has a right to say damaging things, but why?)

Lemmings for Kerry
Duncan Watts (sociology professor at Columbia), over at Slate, touches on why primary voters will vote for Kerry despite not liking him.

One answer may be found in a series of psychology experiments conducted at Princeton University in the 1950s. Princeton social psychologist Solomon Asch showed a room of participants a series of slides displaying sets of vertical lines. Two of these lines were clearly the same length, while the others were obviously very different. The subjects were then given the seemingly trivial task of identifying which pair of lines were the same. But there was a trick: Everyone in the room except for one person had been instructed beforehand to give the same incorrect answer. The real subject of the experiment was the lone unwitting participant, and the real test was of an individual's ability to disagree with his or her peers.

Asch demonstrated a stunning effect: Faced with a decision that, in isolation, no one would ever get wrong, the unwitting subjects went against the evidence of their own eyes about one-third of the time. In psychology, Asch's result is famous, yet its implications for what we might call "social decision-making" (decisions that are influenced by the previous decisions of others) are largely unappreciated by the general public, or even researchers who study decision-making. And social decisions are everywhere. From the everyday (choosing a movie or a restaurant) to the profound (choosing a religion or a career), each one of us is influenced consciously and unconsciously by our friends, families, colleagues, and role models in ways that make the boundary between what we decide for ourselves and what others decide for us almost impossible to distinguish.

This much is fairly obvious. What is a bit more intriguing, as Watts writes, is that the whole storyline of this primary season could be different. Sort of like the parallel universe ideas mentioed at the beginning of the classic film "slacker." For instance, had Edwards grabbed a few more points in Iowa, and especially if S.C. were next- he'd be the front runner now. And the story line about the inevitability of this would be presented. Writes Watts:

In fact, the combination of cascades and hindsight bias renders much of what passes for "obvious" in this election campaign deeply misleading. Because the cascade is effectively driven by a small minority of voters, the result is more or less arbitrary--Dean really could be winning just as easily as Kerry. But once we know the answer, hindsight bias kicks in and makes the arbitrariness of the cascade (seem to) go away. Everything pundits are saying about Dean now could just as easily be used (and would have been used) to 'explain' a Dean victory. Had that happened instead, we would all be walking around saying, "Well, of course Kerry lost--he's got all the charisma of a dead horse--and that Dean is a real firebrand." In each of these "parallel worlds," Dean and Kerry are exactly the same (more or less), and voters are (more or less) exactly the same as well. In terms of the inputs, the difference between the two worlds could be a coin toss. And yet the results, along with our collective memory of what happened and why, are absolutely, completely different, and we can't even imagine now what that other world would have looked like, let alone how vigorously we'd be rationalizing it.

Edwards announcement
Turn on the TV's around 2:40pm this afternoon. There's buzz that Edwards plans to make an announcement today, and the local CBS station just played a blip that they'll be going to live coverage of an Edwards NY event.
More later...

Andrew Sullivan
Can't say I usually dig what Andy has to say, but this is one instance where we're in full agreement.

WAR IS DECLARED: The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land. Rather than allow the contentious and difficult issue of equal marriage rights to be fought over in the states, rather than let politics and the law take their course, rather than keep the Constitution out of the culture wars, this president wants to drag the very founding document into his re-election campaign. He is proposing to remove civil rights from one group of American citizens - and do so in the Constitution itself. The message could not be plainer: these citizens do not fully belong in America. Their relationships must be stigmatized in the very Constitution itself. The document that should be uniting the country will now be used to divide it, to single out a group of people for discrimination itself, and to do so for narrow electoral purposes. Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued. Those of us who supported this president in 2000, who have backed him whole-heartedly during the war, who have endured scorn from our peers as a result, who trusted that this president was indeed a uniter rather than a divider, now know the truth.

It is important to note that the specific bill to which Bush had shown favor denies both marriage and civil unions to gays. See Professor Balkin on this. However, Bush's statement made today says this:

The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.

Profesor Balkin assumes this is a concession and a backing off of the Federal Marriage Amendment that has been debated in the Senate for a few weeks. Balkin writes:

My friend Mark Tushnet who teaches at Georgetown University, remarked to me the other day that what is most remarkable about the debate over same sex marriage is that within a few year's time the moderate conservative position has now shifted from opposing all recognition of same sex partnerships to conceding that states may pass civil unions, as long as these are not called marriages.

Still, we know that Bush words don't always equal Bush deeds. We have to wait and see which specific amendment Bush backs. If it's the FMA, he does not, indeed, suport the State's ability to define other arrangements, ie- civil unions.
I wonder if, in the above except, Bush isn't refering to the civil contractual arrangements that gay couples might make to secure certain similarities to a marriage situation. If so, this is not civil unions...it is a loosely held together duct-tape like immitation thereof. It would be like a two-year-old's drawing of the Mona Lisa.

UPDATE
Old news...but everytime I read this line I have to wonder:

Quick action is essential, he said, to bring clarity to the law and protect husband-and-wife marriages from a few "activist judges."

How in the hell are judges doing a thing to harm my mom and dad's marriage? Is the judge urging infidelity? Whispering promises of a new life to one parent?

BS, when so pure and stinky, is truly spectacular.

Raise the Orange flag...teachers plotting

WOW. Our Education Secretary, Rod Paige, called the NEA (the largest teachers union) a "terrorist organization" during a private White House meeting with governors on Monday.
Democratic and Repub governors have confirmed the comment, and you can read all about it here.

Missouri Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, said Paige's remarks startled the governors, who met for nearly two hours with Bush and several Cabinet officials. Bush was not present when Paige made his statement.

"He is, I guess, very concerned about anybody that questions what the president is doing," Holden said.

"He was implying that the NEA has not been one of the organizations that has been working with the administration to try to solve 'No Child Left Behind,' " he said.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, said of Paige's comments: "Somebody asked him about the NEA's role and he offered his perspective on it."

Any thoughts that the White House might want to hold a 'constructive criticism' seminar?
Really, though..this sort of thing is stupid, even if made as a joke. Last year, Richard Perle did much the same thing. Talking with Wolf Blitzer, said Hersh: "Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly."
This was Perle's response to Hersh's article alleging that Perle used his position on the Defense Policy Board and his influence on the Bush administration's war plans to seek millions of dollars in investments from Saudi businessmen for a venture capital firm where Perle is a managing partner. Perle did not defend the merits; he simply said it was all nonsense.
Note to Perle and Paige, calling folks that disagree with you "terrorists" is only going to make you look stupid. Assures the voters that team-Bush is planning on exploiting the living shit out of the t-word.

Capturing Osama, good for Edwards
Call me crazy- but here's my theory. According to some sources pointed out in Counterspin, special ops are waiting for the word from Bush to pull in Osama. Popular belief would have this being very good for Bush's re-election prospects. I agree that Bush's numbers will assuredly go up. But there's a chance it may hurt the re-election.
Once Osama's captured, we will be all the more close to a pre-9/11 status quo. To be sure, the newly perceived fear of quietly scheming terrorists will remain to be exploited; but, Osama's capture might close, for many voters, a chapter in our history.
With that conclusion, the notion that any leader now elected for Presidency must have some requisite war-experience may diminish. The most potent attack on Edwards right now is that concerning his inexperience on the foreign affairs front (nevermind his serving on the intel committee for some years.) In this regard, Kerry's attacking Edwards in the same way Bush would- we can't put someone in the hot seat that isn't tested in a war-time environment.
(Defense against this attack is this: Edwards has the requisite experience- he's served on the intel committee, and has worked hard during five years in the Senate to gain foreign affairs experience. Apart from this, he can be trusted to make appropriate decisions regarding the war on terror-especially in that this is a new kind of war; it is against state-less entities, and it requires some aspects of traditional war, but requires much more in the way of state dept. work and diplomacy. Finally, Edwards is arguably strongest on the domestic protection issues.)
Osama's capture does two things, both good for Edwards, and both stemming from the aforementioned closed chapter..
1) it diminishes the edge Kerry has regarding nat/security. The need for a warrior king falls away; and Kerry's Vietnam service will do about as good as did McCain's.
2) after the intial to-do and glowing around Bush, having fulfilled his promise from a few years ago to bring in Osama, many Americans will more than happily wish to think of the terror-war as less than a war. We will return to a status quo wherein we worry about domestic economic issues...much as we did in spite of the USS Cole and the first Trade Center bombing. The use of fear, and the notion that we need to re-elect Bush in order to finish out the response to 9/11 will have little potency.
Edwards wins, because the election will once again be focused on like-ability (and policy, for the few that care).

The story behind the story
Neat looking read- Constitutional Law Stories; edited by Michael Dorf.
Little narratives about the behind the scenes of some big Supreme Court decisions.

I'm finding that I'm a sucker for some accents.
Surely she's pop-lite...but Chantal Kreviazuk has done stole my ear for awhile. Like Bjork's voice, with late 70's drama pop. Fun.

Go have fun at www.rathergood.com

As featured on Quiznos commercials...

Judicial Dyslexion
Things are getting interesting in the field of Federal Judicial Selection; and I'm not talking about recess appointments. Get the digs from Talking Points Memo.
Long story short: you may remember hearing about GOP staffers stealing memos from Senate Democrats regarding strategy with Judicial appointments. (I wrote about it here) Looks like the Senate Sergant at Arms is about to lay down a damaging report; closing out the various excuses offered thus far from the GOP.
And as I wrote in the Jan. 18 post- let's give credit where due to Senator Hatch, who's sniffed trouble in this from the get go, and avoided joining his party in offering lame excuses.

Shorter TNR: 'If you're smart, you best hop off the bandwagon;' or...the stock market theory: TNR's blog analyzes why exit polls showed Kerry winning over poor liberals with no more than high school degrees, while John Edwards struggles among that demographic (who are supposed to be most naturally inclined toward him), but does amazingly well among white-collar voters. Don't huff elitism...its a theory, not a social statement:

My own hunch is that what we're seeing is an important divide between less sophisticated voters and more sophisticated voters. Just about the only thing less sophisticated voters--who, I'm guessing, tend to be poorer and less well-educated--know about John Kerry is that he's been winning, and possibly that he's a longtime Senator and a Vietnam veteran. On the other hand, more sophisticated voters--who, I'm guessing, tend to be more affluent and better educated--have probably paid attention to the campaign long enough to know that, in addition to these things, Kerry's from Massachusetts (not exactly a presidential breeding ground of late), tilts to the liberal end of the ideological spectrum, and tends to be kind of boring and long-winded. Which is to say, less affluent, less educated voters are looking at John Kerry's string of primary victories and concluding from them that he's electable. More affluent, better educated voters are actually watching debates and reading newspapers. And they're concluding from these things that Edwards--who is neither from Massachusetts nor a liberal nor boring--is actually more electable. (Particularly after many of these newspapers endorse Edwards, as the two biggest papers in Wisconsin recently did.)

It's a phenomenon that's actually very similar to what goes on in the stock market. Less sophisticated investors just pick the stocks whose prices they've heard are going up. More sophisticated investors actually do some research about the companies they plan to invest in. Up until yesterday, Kerry was that tech stock that the girlfriend of the cousin of the guy down the street said was a can't-miss opportunity, while Edwards was the unheralded stock of a company with a little-known but solid product.

Likeability = Electability
How can you not like this guy?


"Today the voters of Wisconsin sent a clear message," Mr. Edwards said, "and the message was this: Objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear."

Folks, despite the media being joined to Kerry at the hip (Time/Warner donated a bunch of money to his campaign; Kerry drafted the media conglomeration bill- while Edwards was opposed to big media), the sea change might be a-comin.
Kerry's votes supposedly come largely from those thinking he's the most likely to beat Bush. This has been, of course, nonsensical reasoning; it is bandwagon driven and reality blind. And the latest from Rasmussen secures my belief: Kerry's now LOSING to Bush: Bush 48%, Kerry 43%.
1) Kerry's boring. Did you see his speech last night?
2) Edwards does much better amongst Indies and Repubs than Kerry. I saw a Dem strategist last night say that didn't matter- that this was the Dem's candidate to choose. What utter dumbness that is! It's the country's candidate. If the dems choose someone ONLY their party likes, disaster. Wake up folks.

Update:
Eric Alterman in Altercation WI:

On Edwards: Is perhaps part of the reason tht he media keep missing his late surges because they treat with contempt his message about jobs, NAFTA, and free trade? Damn right it is. Edwards is an almost magical candidate once you get to see him up close. In Wisconsin he showed his ability to bring in Republicans and independents which I believe is another way of spelling "electability." The big question becomes, will voters ever get to see him up close?

But Terry McC and the other machers in the Democratic party designed this process in large measure to prevent something like a late surge for Edwards from happening. This was self-defeating lunacy.

Having a Democrat wrap up the nomination in the beginning of process prevents people form taking a good hard look at his flaws before deciding who to choose, and increases the likelihood of buyer's remorse--a la Dukakis. It also takes the Democrats and their framing of the issues out of the news. This primary season has done nothing but good for the party and for the nation’s debate. The longer it goes on, the longer the Bush team will be incapable of defining things the way they want them defined. (By the September convention, it will be Kerry who deserted his National Guard post.)

Don Henley on the Music Industry
In an op-ed in today's WaPo, "Killing the Music," Eagles frontman gives the artists' rant on the shape of music business today. It ain't good, and the industry is to blame. Two major problems: 1) nature of big sales, 2) response to piracy.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the root problem is not the artists, the fans or even new Internet technology. The problem is the music industry itself. It's systemic. The industry, which was once composed of hundreds of big and small record labels, is now controlled by just a handful of unregulated, multinational corporations determined to continue their mad rush toward further consolidation and merger. Sony and BMG announced their agreement to merge in November, and EMI and Time Warner may not be far behind. The industry may soon be dominated by only three multinational corporations.

The executives who run these corporations believe that music is solely a commodity. Unlike their predecessors, they fail to recognize that music is as much a vital art form and social barometer as it is a way to make a profit. At one time artists actually developed meaningful, even if strained, relationships with their record labels. This was possible because labels were relatively small and accessible, and they had an incentive to join with the artists in marketing their music. Today such a relationship is practically impossible for most artists.

radio stations suck too:

Radio stations used to be local and diverse. Deejays programmed their own shows and developed close relationships with artists. Today radio stations are centrally programmed by their corporate owners, and airplay is essentially bought rather than earned. The floodgates have opened for corporations to buy an almost unlimited number of radio stations, as well as concert venues and agencies. The delicate balance between artists and radio networks has been dramatically altered; networks can now, and often do, exert unprecedented pressure on artists. Whatever connection the artists had with their music on the airwaves is almost totally gone.

and a nod to "High Fidelity"

Music stores used to be magical places offering wide variety. Today the three largest music retailers are Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target. In those stores shelf space is limited, making it harder for new artists to emerge. Even established artists are troubled by stores using music as a loss leader. Smaller, more personalized record stores are closing all over the country -- some because of rampant P2P piracy but many others because of competition from department stores that traditionally have no connection whatsoever with artists.

I was wrong about Sanctions
Upon reading a Feb. 8 Editorial from the Times, "A Success Worth Noting in Iraq", I remembered that sometime about two years ago, I argued against the Iraq sanctions.
Now, I believe this was before serious talk about whether or not Iraq posed a military threat to the U.S.- but I remember having a discussion where I argued that sanctions where in fact hurting the people of Iraq. The context was a Cuba discussion- and the pretty well-known argument that our embargo is hurting the people there. Same with Iraq. And as with some's argument on Cuba, I argued that sanctions may in fact be prohibiting a revolution twoards liberal democracy.
Well, as far as the Iraq side of that argument goies, I need to revisit it. The Times editorial makes a good point: it looks like sanctions were exceedingly effective in preventing a known-enemy, Mr. Hussein, from making good on his known desire to promulgate a weapons program.

In response to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and its defeat the next year by an American-led military coalition, the United Nations Security Council imposed oil export restrictions, a ban on the import of weapons and potential weapons ingredients, and a series of disarmament requirements to be monitored by aggressive international inspections.

None of the measures worked exactly as intended. All were met with Iraqi deceptions and resistance. Oil export sanctions were evaded with increasing success. United Nations inspectors were repeatedly obstructed and often felt threatened. They were withdrawn in advance of American bombing strikes in 1998, and not permitted to return until 2002. Yet the totality of these measures, particularly the prohibitions on importing weapons and their ingredients, now appears to have worked surprisingly well, apparently persuading Mr. Hussein that he would never be able to rebuild his weapons programs so long as sanctions remained in effect. That was exactly the message Washington wanted to send.
...
The case of Libya also illustrates the effectiveness of sanctions. Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's renunciation of his weapons programs was not simply — perhaps not even principally — a reaction to the American invasion of Iraq. It came in response to years of painful economic pressure through sanctions, along with diplomatic assurances that changed Libyan behavior could bring relief. President Bush emphasized this point after Libya announced its decision, telling other pariah countries that they too could rejoin the world economy and international community if they gave up their unconventional weapons programs. Clearly spelling out the steps needed to win relief from sanctions can motivate at least some countries to change their offending behavior.

Sanctions are hardly a perfect tool. They hurt innocent civilians, require broad international enforcement and work best when backed up by effective inspection arrangements. But under the right conditions, they offer American administrations an effective alternative to military force, which, it is now clearer than ever, should be employed only as a last resort.

The Bush-approved, US Constitutional amendment proposition reads as such:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

As such, and as Professor Balkin explains, this seems to preclude marriage and civil unions for gays. That's quite a jump from the faily bipartisan support for allowing civil unions.

Fareed Zakaria takes a look at the new work out from David Frum and Richard Perle in this past Sunday's Times Book Review. The book, "An End to Evil," discusses the 'right's' foreign policy plans to end terrorism.
Zakaria spends about the first third of the review approvingly- noting that the writers argue for three fronts (home, abroad, and in ideas): 1) tougher monitoring and border control; 2) tougher treatment toward terrorist supporting/associating regimes; and 3) a battle against radicalism, in favor of democratic reforms.
Zakaria writes:

Most of their arguments and proposals on these three fronts are intelligent and worthwhile. Many have been put forward by other writers and political figures at different points on the political spectrum (among them, Thomas Friedman, the editorialists of The Washington Post and this writer). But to say this would not please Perle and Frum, for the central stylistic pose of their book is angry radicalism. The war on terror has reached a ''crisis point,'' they declare. ''We can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington. . . . The ranks of the faint hearts are growing and their voices are echoing ever more loudly in our media and our politics.''
Frum and Perle make many of their proposals sound provocative and contested by sprinkling in sentences like, ''For some Democrats, winning the war has become a less urgent priority than winning the next election,'' and ''Many Democrats in Congress seem to be interested less in defending the homeland than in preparing to recover after the next terrorist attack'' and ''We have wanted to fight and they have not.''
Reading this book one might forget that in the last two years, with broad support from Democrats and the public, the United States has fought two wars, made antiterrorism the central focus of international politics, created a Department of Homeland Security, shifted its Middle East policies and instituted hundreds of changes to its law enforcement and immigration regulations. Support for such actions remains very strong across the board -- indeed the Department of Homeland Security was a Democratic proposal -- with the one exception of the original decision to go to war in Iraq, on which the Democrats, like the country at large, were and are divided. The authors talk tough on Saudi Arabia, for example, but might be dismayed to find that the candidate who most strongly echoes their views is Howard Dean.

This is where the article switches to the mode of the second thirds: basically a slam on the neocons.

The angry style is a hallmark of neoconservatives and their more traditional conservative colleagues. Though they run the most powerful country in the history of the world, controlling the federal government, the courts and a majority of state legislatures and executives, they still speak like a bitter minority, constantly outraged by the powers that be. It's an effective pose commercially, providing much grist for the best-seller mill. And one suspects that consciously or unconsciously this book has been influenced by the frothy best sellers that tell tales of Clinton's treason and left-wing media bias. But this is a pity (and quite unlike Frum's earlier work) because there is much here that could form the basis of a strong bipartisan antiterror foreign policy.

One can sense Zakaria's dismay. As he writes in the review, he has known Frum for a number of years.
Give a read- it's both a useful glimpse into some ideas and a reminder of the troubles of partisanship.

On Wiscon...I mean, Edwards
Columnist for the Capital Times, in Madison, WI, says in much better fashion all that I would about Edwards' electability.

Right now voters seem to think Bush will be defeated by the standard presidential resume - a long political career, military service (combat experience preferable), proven foreign policy acumen, and perhaps campaign savvy.
If that's so, why didn't the electable Al Gore defeat Bush in 2000? Gore had the resume to trounce Bush. Even John Kerry says he didn't run against Gore in 2000 because he presumed Gore would win.
Alas, Americans don't vote for resumes and platforms alone. Ask people why Gore lost and they are most likely to offer personality traits. He was too "stiff," too "elitist," a "Washington insider," "not one of us." A sparkling resume counts for naught if the job interviewers are uncomfortable with you.
...
Character and personality, whether genuine, contrived or press-anointed, have always proved key to voter appeal. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were all seen as personable "one-of-us" candidates. Compare them to Gerald Ford, Fritz Mondale, Michael Dukakis and Bob Dole. Would you say any one of them was "like us"?
...
Edwards can defrock Bush because he is everything Bush falsely claims to be and more. Edwards is the trusted neighbor, the high school football player of working-class roots who put himself through college to become an immensely successful lawyer and U.S. senator whose integrity and intelligence are highly regarded by liberals and conservatives alike.
...
The clincher for me was imagining each of the Democratic candidates toe-to-toe with Bush on the debate stage. When the astute, optimistic, hard-working, unifying Edwards takes the stage, Bush will clearly be seen as the arrogant, lazy, cynical, divisive, never-had-to-earn-it, class clown phony that he is. Edwards is the perfect foil for the Bush facade.

And that's the real deal.

On that topic, something from off my chest.
I've read a plethora of column lately that take a derisive tone to the notion of voting for the candidate that seems most likely to beat Bush. Watch the commentary on CNN everytime they compare the poll numbers on those that voted for the candidate with which the voter most agrees, and the candidate the voter thinks can win against Bush. The conclusion seems to be that the latter voter gives up principle for pragmatic purposes.
Such a conclusion, though, is either 1) incredibly simple minded or 2) an opportune chance for right-wing commentators to poke at Dems. The first question in the poll should be: "do you believe any of the democraic candidates will offer more favorable policies than the Bush administration?"
Obviously, any Dem candidate gets my support policy wise. Thus, I want the candidate that will in fact get the opportunity to impliment the policy. It is, in fact, all about that factor. Otherwise, I would be content to deliver a speech in my jammies. The Dems need the right suit for the election...it's that simple. Those that disagree are free to send their recommendations to Nader that he should run.

Of Plato, Playdough, and Bush

In Slate, Wiliam Saletan reflects on the Meet the Press interview, and Bush's worldview in general.

As Bush put it: "...And I see dangers that exist, and it's important for us to deal with them. ...The policy of this administration is ... to be realistic about the different threats that we face."Realistic. Dangers that exist. The world the way it is. These are strange words to hear from a president whose prewar descriptions of Iraqi weapons programs are so starkly at odds with the postwar findings of his own inspectors. A week ago, David Kay, the man picked by Bush to supervise the inspections, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his team had found almost none of the threats Bush had advertised. No chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. No evidence of a renewed nuclear weapons program. No evidence of illicit weapons delivered to terrorists. "We were all wrong," said Kay.

Again and again on the Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked Bush to explain the discrepancies. Again and again, Bush replied that such questions had to be viewed in the "context" of a larger reality: I see the world as it is. Threats exist. We must be realistic.

This big-picture notion of reality, existence, and the world as it is dates back 2,400 years to the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato believed that what's real isn't the things you can touch and see: your computer, your desk, those empty barrels in Iraq that Bush thought were full of chemical weapons. What's real is the general idea of these things. The idea of a computer. The idea of a desk. The idea of an Iraqi threat to the United States. Whether you actually have a computer or a desk, or whether Saddam Hussein actually had chemical weapons, is less important than the larger truth. The abstraction is the reality.

The article compares such a worldview with that of Aristotle, relying more on what can be seen and felt. Loose analogy, but fun chitter chatter anyway.

In Bush's Platonic reality, the world is dangerous, threats exist, and the evidence of our senses must be interpreted to fit that larger truth. On the night he launched the war, for example, Bush told the nation, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Russert asked Bush whether, in retrospect, that statement was false. Bush replied, "I made a decision based upon that intelligence in the context of the war against terror. In other words, we were attacked, and therefore every threat had to be reanalyzed. Every threat had to be looked at. Every potential harm to America had to be judged in the context of this war on terror."

You can hear the gears turning in Bush's mind. We were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. That attack exposed a new reality. That new reality changed the context for interpreting intelligence. Or, as Howard Dean less charitably puts it, if Bush and his administration "have a theory and a fact, and [the two] don't coincide, they get rid of the fact instead of the theory."

Orcinus compiles responses to Bush's Meet the Press interview...well, at least comprehensive on the Guard stuff. In sum, wondering why Russert didn't push on this. My guess- it was taped. Maybe he did and it was cut.

Require Reading...
(at Crooked Timber)

The Next 3/5 Compromise

In answer to yesterday's questions: yes, federalism concerns in traditional conservative thought will likely take a back door when gay marriage is concerned. Looks like Bush will support an amendment to the US Constitution that defines marriage as exlusively between men and women.
The constitutional amendment likely to win the backing of Mr. Bush is one that has already been introduced in Congress. The House version, sponsored by Representative Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colorado, states: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the Constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
On this subject, I'll go full rhetoric without regard to what are some terrible flaws in the analogy: this amendment is in the spirit of the three-fifths compromise. It takes a central aspect of our human experience and deems a segment of society unfit. I'm disgraced and disheartened with a country that would deny, in its fundamental law, this opportunity to so many.
Supporters of the amendment realaize that the federal government hasn't the power to define this traditional state issue. Thus, changing the federal Constitution in order to do so.

Entries to the 'not good' catagory:
1.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, admitted today that he had shared Pakistani nuclear technology with other countries. From the Times:

On Sunday a senior Pakistani official said a government investigation had found that the scientist had shared Pakistan's nuclear technology with Iran, Libya and North Korea for more than a decade. In what appears to be one of the most successful efforts to evade antiproliferation controls in history, Dr. Khan sent nuclear-weapons related parts, plans and designs to the three countries with the aid of middlemen from Sri Lanka, Germany and the Netherlands.

Precisely the kind of activity we should be focused on preventing.
2.
slightly less importantly...
UNC Basketball recruit, JameSon Curry, was arrested Wednesday on charges that he sold marijuana. damn stupid kids.

Will they respect State Sovereignty?

The Massachusetts Supreme Court clarified a question put forth by state legislatures concerning the gay marriage ruling from last summer: is a civil union enough? The court's answer: no- only marriage will do it. (The court agrees with Jonathan Rauch in this online TNR debate on gay marriage)
The court decision cannot be appealed to the US Supreme Court because it is based on state law. Massachusetts lawmakers will be soon considering an amendment to their Constitution.
So, if no amendment passes there, will folks in DC attempt to step in? If Bush proposes federal legislation to affect the Massachusetts marriage laws, what happens to the State sovereignty so supposedly valued by Mr. Bush? Would Rehnquist allow such a federal control to pass?
Consider Bruce Fein in the Washington Times (representing the traditional, federalist position)(context: defending nomination of Bill Pryor):

State sovereignty over traditional local matters was embraced for multiple reasons. The science of government is the science of experiment. Political wisdom is more likely to be discovered through experiments in 50 different state laboratories than by lead-footed trial and error in one national laboratory. State experimentation, moreover, is less risky than a national gamble. A progressive icon, Justice Louis D. Brandeis lectured in New State Ice Co. vs. Liebman (1932): "To stay experimentation in things social and economic is a grave responsibility. Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."
...State experimentation is frustrated when Congress enacts a nationwide rule, whether within or without its constitutional authority. Statesmanship thus militates in favor of congressional deference unless states have been proven unfit to address or correct an evil. The latter circumstance is exemplified by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, both necessary to overcome a century of odious racial discrimination. Similarly, last month in Nevada Department of Human Resources vs. Hibbs (May 27, 2003), the Supreme Court, speaking through Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, sustained the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 as a reasonable congressional measure to correct and to forestall unconstitutional gender stereotyping.

Massachusetts has chosen, unless their Constitution undergoes amendment, to undergo one of those grand expirements. Now, earlier I mentioned Bush. Of course, both parties have voices urging federal legislation; and Clinton signed the first attempt: the Protection of Marriage Act. Point here is point out one more instance where, I'm predicting, the great philosophies (federalism/potent state power) of some conservatives are about to take a back seat.

Colon Powell thinks...
Washington Post reports today that Mr. Powell might not have supported the war if he knew then what he knows now.
Powell "conceded that the administration's conviction that Hussein already had such weapons had made the case for war more urgent."
To be fair, Powell contrasts these concerns with much of the same justifications for the war that we've been hearing; namely, Hussein had the intent- and with a little more time, might have reporduced weapons.
Still, it seems amazing to me that an administration official has said the war might not have been necessary. Wonder if this will get big play?

The Senate is evacuated again
Lesson (perhaps un-)learned: pounding vague-threat countries and then justifying the same with broad statements that the world is better off with some dictators doesn't stop terrorism.
Especially American terrorism.

As the news is reporting today, some white powder turned up via the mail in Senator Frist's office- and was confirmed to be ricin. As is not reported in alot of news outlets yet (but as Josh Marshall reports), CBS reported on Jan. 9th that a pckage containing ricin was left at a post office in Greenville, SC.

A letter inside the package said the author could make much more ricin and will "start dumping" large quantities of the poison if new federal trucking rules went in effect, according to information released by the FBI and other federal agencies Thursday.

The rules, which require more rest hours for truck drivers, took effect Sunday.

The letter, signed "Fallen Angel," said the author was "a fleet owner of a tanker company."

Sadly, for those in the entertainment biz, if things match up, Ms. Coultur might have to change her terrorists-are-only-surly-arab-men routine. Or who knows, maybe the trucker fits her description.