Month: December 2008

By Patrick Appel
A dispatch from inside Iraq:

We have got a gap inside the Iraqi community. A gap between people of the same generation, I mean between those who fled the violence and traveled out of Iraq after 2003, and these who stayed in the country.

The people who left Iraq cannot imagine what happened, they only have the barest idea, and they have not seen and lived the Islamist style of life.

by Chris Bodenner
Seyward Darby worries that Obama’s selection of Linda Darling-Hammond to head his education transition team is a troubling sign for school reform:

During the campaign, Obama deftly appeased all sides of the policy debate. While appealing to the unions, which have long been bastions of Democratic support, he also gave great hope to reformers inside and outside the party by supporting merit pay and pledging to increase funding for charter schools. In asking Darling-Hammond to helm the transition–a precursor, some worry, to her appointment as secretary of education–Obama has suggested that he wasn’t entirely serious about change, at least when it comes to education.

By Patrick Appel
Marc on the left being upset:

What the left really objects to  — if the left really objects to anything, and, really, there’s no evidence that the "left" is upset — … actually, I’m going to interrupt this sentence and redefine "left" as that old Washington liberal interest group crowd; what they object to is Obama’s decision to create an administration that does not give Washington-based liberal interest groups a privileged seat at the table, that does not use traditional political liberal means to achieve progressive ends, that does not, at least a priori, buy into the symbological, circularly stimulating priorities of liberal interest groups. (Case in point: Joe Lieberman.)

Ta-Nehisi weighs in.

by Chris Bodenner
RedState’s Streiff, yesterday:

What the AP, and the press in general, fails to note is that Shinseki was essentially fired … for being a disloyal **** and actively lobbying to preserve a weapons system the OSD did not want. … Having said that, I am cheered by the selection of General Shinseki as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs rather than a politcal [sic] hack like Max Cleland who has made a career of riding his admittedly serious injuries.

Streiff, Sept. 1:

As we discovered during the 2004 election, John Kerry is a man virtually devoid of honor. … Now, four years later, Kerry returns the favor not by defending John McCain against calumny but by joining the voices spreading it. There is a whispering campaign underway working on two levels. The first level, the more respectable of the two if such a distinction is possible, is that John McCain hides behind his POW experience to deflect criticism and uses it to his advantage relentlessly. For instance in USA Today:

Former president Jimmy Carter called Republican presidential candidate John McCain a “distinguished naval officer,” but he said the Arizona senator has been “milking every possible drop of advantage” from his time served as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

By Patrick Appel
Drezner predicts the future:

I look forward to the 2010 debate about whether:

1. The successful economy can be explained by President Obama’s adherence to liberal principles
2. The flailing economy can be explained by President Obama abandoning real liberalism and engaging in politically expedient policies.

By Patrick Appel
Jane Hamsher doesn’t want Caroline Kennedy to take Hillary Clinton’s senate seat:

The woman has never run for office in her life. We have no idea how she’d fare on the campaign trail, or how well she could stand up to the electoral process.  She simply picks up the phone and lets it be known that she just might be up for having one of the highest offices in the land handed to her because — well, because why?  Because her uncle once held the seat?  Because she’s a Kennedy?  Because she took part as a child in the public’s romantic dreams of Camelot?  I’m not quite sure.

Greenwald said it best a few weeks ago.

By Patrick Appel
Andrew picked a good week to write about the end of newspapers. Ryan Chittum explains what the possible Tribune Company bankruptcy means:

The last hope for the newspaper industry to avoid a massacre was the brand value, the cachet, of newspapers. They are (yes, still) power centers in their communities and are trophy assets for the rich players in those places. Those rich folks aren’t so rich anymore and nobody will lend them money to buy a fifty-cent copy of a paper now, much less $500 million for the whole operation.

Think the news has been bad for the industry in the last couple of years? The real blood-letting is about to begin.

By Patrick Appel
Ross’s article in the NYT over the weekend is worth a read:

In theory, there are many middle grounds imaginable in America’s abortion wars, from bans that make exceptions for rape and fetal deformities to legal systems modeled on the French system, in which abortion is available but discouraged in the first 10 weeks and sharply restricted thereafter.

The public is amenable to compromise: majorities support keeping abortion legal in some cases, but polling by CBS News and The Times during the presidential campaign showed that more Americans supported new restrictions on abortion than said it should be available on demand. And while some pro-lifers would reject any bargain, many more would be delighted to strike a deal that extends legal protection to more of the unborn, even if it stopped short of achieving the movement’s ultimate goals.

Benen counters:

…evidence of conservative willingness to "compromise" on abortion is surprisingly thin. In 2005, for example, pro-life and pro-choice Democrats crafted the Prevention First Act, which aimed to reduce the number of abortions by taking prevention seriously, through a combination of family-planning programs, access to contraception, and teen-pregnancy prevention programs. Dems sought Republican co-sponsors. Zero — literally, not one — from either chamber endorsed the measure.

What’s more, this year, pro-life activists in South Dakota and Colorado forced strikingly inflexible anti-abortion measures onto their statewide ballots. Both lost, but it was a reminder of the movement’s "absolutism" on the issue.

Douthat’s correct that activists have fought battles over related-but-peripheral issues such as parental notification laws, waiting periods, and access to emergency contraception, but that doesn’t necessarily point to compromise. Rather, activists have pursued these alternate routes a) while continuing the fight for a ban on all abortions; and b) because they were picking the fights they thought they could win.