The Iraqi deadline is fast approaching and it’s worth trying to figure out what could happen in the next few days. Saddam’s current ploy is to welcome inspectors as a way to prove he has no weapons of mass destruction. Without taking experts out of the country and interrogating them, the inspectors almost certainly won’t find any. That’s surely why the December 8 deadline is so important. It’s the first clear trip-wire for war. What if Saddam produces a list of mainly civilian-use technology and the Bush administration declares that it knows it’s incomplete. What then? The administration has long argued that the point of the U.N. inspections is not to find well-hidden weapons but to provide Saddam a mechanism by which to disarm completely. If his December 8 declaration is a lie, then Saddam is clearly violating the terms of the 1991 truce and the U.N.’s last chance option. So we declare war. We could be on a direct war-path by next week. In fact, I think it’s highly likely we will be. And then the counter-strikes in Northern Lebanon and throughout the West may well be ramped up. This is the calm before the storm. As snow blankets much of us, we should savor it while we can.
THE FRUITS OF AIDS ACTIVISM: Congrats to all the activists pummeling the drug companies for high-priced HIV drugs. The latest data show a 33 percent decline in new HIV drugs in the research and development pipeline since 1997. “We have lost the battle with the activists, and now the market is less profitable. The result is that we are spending less R&D time on anti-retrovirals. Why bother to innovate these products when any advance will not be profitable?” one drug company honcho tells TechCentralStation. There may be other reasons for the decline – a saturated market, a better winnowing out process for failing drugs – but the impact of the assault on the drug industry is almost certainly part of the picture. Now watch the mainstream media ignore this. Far better to run a fatuous piece by Bill Clinton on World AIDS Day than confront the real threat to drug innovation so critical to halt a fast-mutating virus.
GETTING IT:“I appreciate your attention to the tax haven absurdity in the Homeland Security Bill. One gripe: I wish you would stop using the phrase, so and so “gets it,” when they agree with you. The phrase implies some higher plane of knowledge that a select few attain when they tap into your opinions, or at least a point of view that you agree with. Those who disagree with you don’t just then disagree; they don’t get it; don’t understand; they’re stuck in the cave. It sounds a tad arrogant. Can’t one get it – and disagree?” – from the Letters Page today.
WHAT THE BRITS BAN: Here’s what happens when you don’t have a First Amendment. You not only get hauled into jail for insulting someone’s religion, you can’t even run TV commercials making fun of George Bush! An ad which portrayed the allegedly dumb president trying to put a video-cassette into a toaster was ruled too cruel. You could broadcast it on a regular, approved show – but not in an ad. Go figure.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Tolerant, but not stupid! Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn’t mean you have to approve of it! …”Tolerate” means you’re just putting up with it! You tolerate a crying child sitting next to you on the airplane or, or you tolerate a bad cold. It can still piss you off! ” – Mr. Garrison, South Park. More words of non-lefty wisdom from South Park can be found here. Warning: lots of naughty words but no “horrific, deplorable violence.”
KURTZ’S BAIT AND SWITCH: Stanley Kurtz is still insisting that the minute one state legalizes equal marriage rights for gays and straights, gay marriage will be nationalized. He therefore argues that we need to take the drastic step of barring gays from marriage in the U.S. Constitution itself. That’s how urgent he thinks this matter is; that’s how big a threat to the entire fabric of our society this is; that’s how likely such a nationalization is. I disagree – as do the vast majority of Constitutional scholars. In his first piece, Kurtz propagated the idea that the Full Faith and Credit Clause will mandate such a nationalization. Presented with legal evidence that shows that that clause has never succeeded in nationalizing one state’s marriages and that it is extremely unlikely to be successful in doing so in the future, he has now wisely reverted to another argument. This time, he argues that same-sex marriage may one day be nationalized the way inter-racial marriage eventually was – not by full faith and credit but by an equal protection argument. In fact, he now believes that equal protection arguments are far more likely to nationalize same-sex marriage than Full Faith and Credit. Well, I’m glad he’s acknowledged that the scare tactics by the far right on Full Faith and Credit are just that. That was the point of my post earlier this week; and he has essentially conceded the point.
EQUAL PROTECTION: As to equal protection, you could indeed argue that granting a very basic civil right to a majority and denying it to a minority is an obvious case of inequality. Perhaps one day in the distant future, SCOTUS will see this. I certainly hope so. But is it likely now? Or immediately? Or even soon? One should recall that it’s still constitutional in some states to single out gays in the privacy of their own homes and arrest them for sexual acts that, when performed by hetersoexuals, are entirely legal. (With any luck, SCOTUS is going to end that blatant injustice soon. And Kurtz, to his great credit, supports such a move.) But it’s a huge leap from there to the Court’s mandating gay marriage across the country on the grounds of equal protection. I don’t know many scholars or legal observers who expect SCOTUS to take such a drastic meaure any time in the distant future. Of course, it’s possible (whereas using Full Faith and Credit is almost certainly impossible). But it’s extremely unlikely. Remember it took well over a century for the Court to rule on inter-racial marriages in this way. The relevant question is whether it is so likely in the short term that we have to take the drastic step of amending the Constitution of the United States itself to prevent such a thing from happening. That’s where Kurtz and I disagree. I believe individual states should be able to decide for themselves. I believe that state courts – where marriage questions rightly belong – should also rule on a state-by-state basis. I think that when that happens, other states should have the chance to recognize or not recognize such out-of-state marriages acording to their own laws, constitutions and public policy. I hope that when that process unfolds, and marriage is seen to be profoundly strengthened (rather than weakened) by including everyone in its reach, fears will give way to evidence and we’ll eventually have marriage rights for all. It will take time and persuasion and argument and experience, but that’s the genius of a federal system, a system Kurtz wants to upend. I want that slow federal process to take place. Kurtz wants to pre-empt it now by writing an anti-gay plank into the Constitution of the United States. He wants to prevent the process even starting. I think that’s unconservative, anti-federal, extremist and deeply divisive. W
hich is as good a description of some elements of the far right (and the far left) in this country as you can find.
The Dish 