Month: January 2007

I hyped it here. But Mr Garrison invented it first, as John Travolta demonstrates below:

"Hi, I’m Anthony. I live in Banning, California. I am a gay athlete and still in high school … With no other gay jocks, I feel like I am the only one and it sucks cause I don’t know any other guys that are gay and like me. I play football, basketball, track, cheerleading and swim. I have been playing football since I was five. I am the tight end for my high school, free safety and kickoff and punt returner. I don’t know why I told you this but there you go. LOL. You guys are the closest to me and I figured if I was going to be moving down there, I should find out about things that are going on what are the age limits that you guys need to join," – Anthony Castro, in an email to the L.A. motion (gay) flag football team.

Castro is part of the next generation of gay men – out in high school, unafraid to be fully themselves, even if it means violating stereotypes. Castro was killed in a car crash January 21, aged 19. You can read a tribute here.

"Transcendentalism, especially when reinforced by religious faiith, is psychically full and rich, it feels somehow right …  (But) Science has always defeated religious dogma point by point whenever the two have conflicted. But to no avail. While empiricism wins the mind, transcendentalism wins the heart …

Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods.  It did not evolve to believe in biology … The eventual result of the competition between the two world views, I believe, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself," – E. O. Wilson, Consilience.

I knew nothing about this till this morning, but a blogger got into a spat with the Ace of Spades website about my position on the "surge." Ace had accused me of changing my position constantly to oppose anything Bush argued for, because I was still upset about the Federal Marriage Amendment of four years ago. This meme is so widespread on the homophobic right that I’ve long since stopped trying to counter it. But NeoCenturions blog found itself committed to exposing a demonstrable untruth. Hence this fisking. Money quote:

Ordinarily it’s the person making the allegation who’s supposed to demonstrate the accuracy of the charge, but so be it. I would warn you, Ace and Toby, before I start, to prepare yourself for just how thoroughly you’re about to be Fisked. I’m not being facetious. This might actually break some bones.

Read the whole thing. Ace needs to retract his charge and apologize, but, as NeoCenturians notes, that retraction "is, I believe, scheduled for five minutes after Hell freezes over."

It’s Friday.

A reader writes:

I want to explain to you why I signed the pledge proposed by Hewitt. I hope our previous correspondence has established that I am not a ‘fanatic’ and have been critical of Bush’s handling of the war (although I still agree with the initial decision to go to war).  Moreover, I also have doubts about the surge but am willing to give it a chance. 

My problem with the non-binding resolution is that its sole purpose is political cover for the senators, many of whom supported the initial decision to go to war. If these senators really have significant doubts about ‘plus up’ they should exercise their constitutional authority and refuse funding for the extra troops.  However, all senators (Democrat and Republican) are smart enough to realize that the public reaction to cutting off funds for extra troops would be extremely negative. So, they are trying to have it both ways: if ‘plus up’ does reduce violence in some measurable manner, the senators can say "it was our oversight that led to success and our resolution was merely non-binding" yet if the surge is not successful, they can say "I told you so."

Combined with the purely political motivations for the resolution is the fact that it may have very real and significant negative consequences for our troops.  Not only will it discourage the troops already there and the new ones heading over, it also sends a message of weakness to our enemies — as General Petraeus said in his confirmation hearing. Anyone who thinks Islamic terrorists do not pay attention to acts of Congress are underestimating our enemies.

In short, the purely political nature of the resolution combined with the likelihood of the negative consequences it may cause is why I signed the pledge.

An alternative reading is that the senators strongly disagree with the president but feel a need to defer to the judgment of the commander-in-chief when troops are in combat. My own view is that the non-binding resolution is, in fact, a sign of respect for the presidential office, as well as a statement of no confidence in its current holder. Which strikes me as a fair position to take.

It’s the true conservative position on energy:

With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don’t even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 — with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and assorted sheiks, rather than the U.S. treasury — and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles per gallon ratings.

No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It’s the essence of capitalism.

Amen. But it requires telling Americans they need to sacrifice for national security. And no one wants to do that, do they?

Here’s a disturbing video showing U.S soldiers watching as their Iraqi Army colleagues – Shia – brutally beat Sunni civilians to near-death, as U.S. soldiers hoop and holler in support. It shows what this president is now risking: that the U.S. will become a party to one side in a sectarian civil war. It is happening already. It must be stopped. However grim things are in Iraq, this president’s policy could make things far, far worse.

Here’s a YouTube purporting to expose what president Kennedy might say to president Bush if he were still alive, on the question of government secrecy and executive power. It’s worth acknowledging that, whatever his rhetoric, Kennedy wasn’t so good at transparency either. And, if anything, he was more reckless in foreign policy than his rich-kid, daddy’s boy successor, George W. Bush.

A reader writes:

The Attorney General was correct, technically, when he said that the Supreme Court’s holding in Rasul v. Bush was based on a statute (28 U.S.C. § 2241, the Congressional habeas corpus statute) and not the Constitution. However, this is standard Court practice, as they do their very best to try and reach an answer to a question without reaching a Constitutional question, whenever possible (“Constitutional Avoidance Doctrine”). And to be fair to Senator Specter, his gut instinct is probably correct that the Court would hold that there is a guarantee to habeas corpus (and if the question only applied to American citizens, as opposed to anyone under U.S. jurisdiction, Justice Scalia would be on board without question — see his dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, joined by Justice Stevens — and given that it’s explicit in the Constitution, any ruling on this matter would probably be unanimous, despite the serious deference this Court has given the Executive).

I find it appalling that the Attorney General would advance such a position. While I can appreciate Mr. Gonzales’ verbal gymnastics, as I am a law student, there is no doubt in my mind that the authors of the Constitution would be appalled at any assertion that the writ of habeas corpus was not guaranteed to everyone, absent explicit Congressional action suspending it in a time of invasion or rebellion.

As I would call myself a conservative, this was the mortal sin of the Bush administration for me. I cannot fathom a President not immediately firing, rebuking, or reprimanding such an un-American, and this is un-American, opinion by the man he hired to be the leading attorney for upholding the Constitution of the United States. There is nothing conservative about an Executive branch committed to grabbing as much power as it can at the expense of anyone else, be it the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch, or in this case, the civil liberties of the American people.

Perfectly put, I’d say. No conservative can support this administration. Except those conservatives gripped by power, partisanship and pride.