Month: July 2008

I missed this somehow. Money quote:

This bill provides important safeguards for civil liberties. It includes effective mechanisms for oversight of the new surveillance authorities by the FISA court, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and now the Judiciary Committees. It mandates reports by inspectors general of the Justice Department, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that will provide the committees with the information they need to conduct this oversight. (The reports by the inspectors general will also provide accountability for the potential unlawful misconduct that occurred during the Bush administration.) Finally, the bill for the first time requires FISA court warrants for surveillance of Americans overseas.

I’m hoping this is a joke: a Bush 2008 write-in campaign.

(Hat tip: Sean Salmon)

Japan recently installed face-recognition technology on cigarette machines, but the software has one minor flaw.

Abe Greenwald’s advice for McCain— be more of a neocon than Bush:

A frontal attack on Bush’s multilateral accommodation with Kim Jong Il would constitute a principled stand on national security, nuclear non-proliferation, and human rights. Moreover, by simply demonstrating that North Korea has given no indication of its readiness to declare, disable, and dismantle its nuclear programs in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, McCain would be taking a hard-nosed national security position requiring none of the military talk that tends to turn away Democrats and independents. Finally, it is a position that follows naturally from John McCain’s previous statements on the matter.

Wait, there’s more:

Challenging the administration’s North Korea capitulation would allow the senator to demonstrate that he is not George W. Bush 2.0, no flip-flop required. It might also attract the admiration of the vast Bush-hating portion of the electorate who (rightly or wrongly) feel that the President’s foreign policy high-mindedness is merely posturing to cover self-interest. McCain, the much-vaunted "maverick," needs to start living up to that description.

Oookaaay.

After the RNC’s energy ad, Obama hits back in the same media markets:

He is largely where he has always been, as he points out. He’s a very pragmatic liberal and committed Christian. Given all he’s written and said these past few years, nothing in the last month or so is out of place, it seems to me. But I’m not sure the criticism from the left and right – eerily similar to the criticism of Clinton from both sides in the 1990s – is bad for him. It’s probably great for him. He has many of Clinton’s virtues – immense intelligence, political ruthlessness – and none of Clinton’s vices – a lack of core values, indiscipline, a bad marriage of convenience.

I was reading Merton on the beach yesterday – "New Seeds Of Contemplation" – and came across this passage that summarizes what I hold to be the authentic Christian teaching on wealth, and government:

A man cannot be a perfect Christian – that is, a saint – unless he is also a communist. That means that he must either give up all right to possess anything at all, or else only use what he himself needs, of the goods that belong to him, and administer the rest for other men and for the poor: and in his determination of what he needs he must be governed to a great extent by the gravity of the needs of others. … If Christians had lived up to the Church’s teaching about property and poverty there would never have been any occasion for the spurious communism of the Marxists and all the rest – whose communism starts out by denying other men the right to own property.

The italics are in the original. And this is why the cooptation of Christianity for various forms of socialism and redistributionism – Obama’s tendency – is worrying to me. Because it isn’t about encouraging charity; it is about the enforcement of "charity" by the strong hand of the state. And in so far as it forcibly takes people’s property from them, it also diminishes their capacity for real charity.

Now, saints are very rare.

And the kind of voluntary communism of which Merton speaks likely only in monasteries and religious orders. In the world as it is, there should be some mandatory public provision for the poor, the sick and the indigent. But it should be a safety-net to avoid specific social evils, not a system of redistribution to construct some notion of "social justice" (see Chapter 6 in "The Conservative Soul"). In the end, the social Gospel can make Christianity less, rather than more, likely. The state cannot experience faith; and it cannot express charity. Only individuals can. One by one.

It’s not the acting they hate; it’s the theme song: "Who Are You?" by The Who. Multiple evidence here. Exhibit here:

I tried it on mine, and nada.

Charles McGrath reports on Matt Harding’s YouTube video:

In many ways “Dancing” is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it’s short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it’s open to a multitude of interpretations. It could be a little commercial for one-world feel-goodism. It could be an allegory of American foreign policy: a bumptious foreigner turning up all over the world and answering just to his own inner music. Or it could be about nothing at all — just a guy dancing.

Harding’s website is here. I saw this a while back and assumed it would eventually die the usual Internet death. But it keeps on spreading.
 

As Reihan and Ross focus on working class dysfunction, so does Tory leader David Cameron in Britain. He’s taking the Tory message to Glasgow for a by-election. Money quote:

"Changing our culture is not easy or quick. You cannot pull a lever. You cannot do it top-down. But you can give a lead. You can give a nudge. You can make a difference if you are clear where you stand.

Imagine if there was a Government that understood, really understood, that encouraging personal and social responsibility must be the cornerstone of everything that it did and that every move it took re-inforced that view.

Saying to parents, your responsibility and your commitment matters, so we will give a tax break for marriage and end the couple penalty. Saying to head teachers you are responsible and if you want enforceable home school contracts and the freedom to exclude you can have it and we will judge you on your results. Saying to police officers you are responsible and the targets and bureaucracy are going but you must account to an elected individual who will want answers if you fail. Saying to business, if you take responsibility you can help change culture and we will help you with deregulation and tax cuts … but in the long run they depend on the steps you take to help tackle the costs of social failure that have driven your costs up and up.

I’m struck, in contrast to R&R, how restrained Cameron is. His policy prescriptions – more autonomy at the bottom of public services, more accountability within the public sector, a gentle tax incentive for marriage – are more in line with traditional conservatism than wage subsidies, for example. And there’s an Obamaite tinge to Cameron as well: a young, eloquent, inexperienced and culturally modern individual emerging to replace a period of rule by the other party. One similarity: both are gay inclusive. One Cameron difference: he, like any Tory should, places more emphasis on environmentalism than Obama does.

My own thoughts on the parallels between Obama and Cameron – from February 2007 – are here. What Obama is to race in America Cameron is to class in Britain: cultural game-changers.

(Photo: Peter McDiarmid/Getty.)