Month: March 2010

(Hat tip: Barking Up The Wrong Tree)

This week Peter Wehner read Newsweek's Iraq cover story and declared victory.  Kevin Sullivan counters:

The emergence of a democratic government in Iraq is a good thing and indeed, we should be grateful that the Iraqis are out from under Saddam's yoke. But it's important to distinguish between things that are good, and things that are worth spending 3 trillion dollars and thousands of American lives on. The invasion and occupation of Iraq cannot be justified solely on the basis of our love for democracy. The costs must be justified by gains to the security of Americans.

How many times has Pete Wehner declared victory? I'll be covering the elections this weekend with purple fingers crossed. But I remain a pessimist on Iraq, which is always a safe thing to be.

Everything you never wanted to know about counting noses in Congress.

Well, it wasn't much of a vacation – more of a staycation with a redesign stress-out/meltdown – but I do want to thank my eternal comrades in Dishness, Chris and Patrick, for keeping the Dish so al dente, and Alex Massie for providing some great crack about the increasingly interesting British election, Graeme Wood for his uniquely quirky coverage of things foreign and Jonathan Bernstein whose analysis of the evolving politics and policy of healthcare was, well, you know how good it was. Keep reading Alex here; and Jonathan here.

I particularly want to thank Alex for helping me avoid any of my own expertise in judging how hung a parliament can be, and the Lord Almighty for saving me from live-blogging Palin on Leno.

Today on the Dish we rounded up reaction to the Pentagon shooting, Obama's potential caving on civilian trials, and the latest jobs report. Alex Massie continued his debate over debates with Bernstein, criticized MPs for waving reforms in the wake of the expenses scandal, sided with Iceland in its struggle against her Majesty's Government, countered the arguments of Tea Party-ism in Britain, remarked on Gordon Brown's aversion to foreign policy, and remembered the Armenians.

Jonathan Bernstein fired back at Massie over debates, dissected the latest GOP plan to derail HCR, picked apart McCain's opposition to reconciliation for Medicare, differed with Yglesias and Ezra over the proper role of journalists covering controversies, laid into Obama over his lack of appointees, and swiped at Judd Gregg. Graeme Wood scrutinized The Hurt Locker (reader take here) and sent a short dispatch from Bombay. Patrick tussled with Kevin Sullivan over Iran and Joyner scored the Leverett-Ledeen debate.

In other Dish coverage, Matthew Alexander reviewed Thiessen's book, TNC praised public schools, Dan Savage explained why marriage equality is so important for the poor, Kim Elsesser called for a neutered Oscar, and I rounded up a bunch of commentary on how the Internet is shaping intelligence and learning. More on the Cheneys' McCarthyism here, here, and here. Christianist watch here. Fantastic viral videos here and here.

Andrew will be back in the morning.

— C.B.

by Alex Massie

One of the things no-one has yet been able to quantify is the exact extent of the anti-politics mood that dominates the majority of private conversations about British politics. This is more than just the standard cynicism and weariness of the age, rather it's a direct response to the parliamentary expenses scandal in which it was revealed that hundreds of MPs were, by any reasonable measure, on the take.

Among the items our parliamentarians thought it appropriate to charge to the public purse: a duck house and, in one infamous instance, the cost of cleaning a moat. That's right, a moat. These were merely some of the more flagrant abuses of a system that seemed to have been designed to enrich MPs without anyone noticing.

Now, typically, MPs are trying to water down reforms to the system:

Members of the cross-party committee currently responsible for overseeing Commons’ allowances also warned that people with families, and women in particular, would be put off running for Parliament if expenses were made less generous.

[…] Other proposals include forcing MPs to rent a second home rather than buying property with mortgages subsidised by the taxpayer, and requiring Members to produce receipts before being paid expenses.

Second homes would be restricted to MPs representing seats outside London, meaning those with constituencies in the capital’s suburbs would be forced to commute.

The [parliamentary] committee said that abolishing the resettlement grant would "add considerable financial insecurity" to being an MP, claiming that being forced to pay for their own expenses before claiming money back: "would add major cash-flow problems".

The poor lambs. It is hard to think that this bleating will much impress the public; rather it will confirm the electorate's view that MPs are a bunch of grasping chancers uninterested in real reform and determined to maintain privileges unthinkable in most parts of the private sector. All this makes it more uncomfortable to be an incumbent than is customarily the case.

The irony is that the system of lavish expenses was designed as a kind of compensation for restricting MPs pay (currently £65,000 a year) so as not to upset or infuriate the public. Better, in retrospect, to have simply bitten that bullet and increased their pay to around £100,000 while simplifying and streamlining the expenses system.

Paying parliamentarians well is never going to be popular but, in the long-run, it makes matters easier and helps avoid the kind of scandal that, however entertaining, lowers the reputation of parliament still further.

by Chris Bodenner

The Pew Research Center recently released an opinion survey of nearly 900 "prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers" regarding the impact of the Internet on intelligence and learning. The lead question was the Nick Carr-inspired, "Will Google make us stupid?", based on his ever-popular Atlantic cover story. Carr's essay was especially formative for me. I have re-read it several times since working for the Dish, in an effort to cope with the never-ending fire hose of information that the job entails. His words are mine:

I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. […]

The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas.

In other words, your brain is forced to distinguish between fluffy prose and nuggets of wisdom within the same broad argument (as opposed to the scattered arguments of the web). Even the seemingly nonessential details you absorb from a book may fuse into new insights after bouncing around your head for a while. I, for one, come to the most interesting insights during what Julian Jaynes calls the three Bs (bed, bath, and bus), or any moment of passive contemplation after reading a long piece of writing. The condensed chunks of information on blogs, however, often remove those spaces of ambiguity – and thus opportunity for unique thought.

Anyway, below are some of the more thought-provoking quotes from the long list of Pew contributors. The first two are actually generalized statements culled from multiple people:

A fourth “R” will be added to the basic learned skills of “reading, ‘ritin, ;’rithmatic”: Retrieval. Maybe the ability to write computer code will be a necessary literacy. Maybe it will be the ability to write smart search queries.

The nature of writing has changed now, especially since so much of it takes place in public. The quality of the new material will get better over time, in part because these new social media creators will get feedback and learn.

“The Internet will drive a clear and probably irreversible shift from written media to visual media. Expressing ideas in the future will just as likely involve creating a simulation as writing an expository essay. Whether that will make our renderings of knowledge less intelligent is unclear, but I think its likely that there are tremendous opportunities to enhance it. For instance, would it be more intelligent to render our knowledge of politics in Ancient Egypt as a book-length essay or a realistic, interactive role-playing simulation?” – Anthony Townsend, research director, Institute for the Future

“Spelling and grammar have gotten worse. People don't think things through or edit as much before publishing or sending as they once did. But on the other hand, the Internet has improved my Chinese reading and writing ability. The hyperlink enables me to communicate in non-linear ways that adds layers of meaning to my writing that could not exist on paper. The fact that I can mix visuals, sound, and text when making an argument or telling a story often enhances the effectiveness of my work.” – Rebecca MacKinnon, Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy

“The question is all about people's choices. If we value introspection as a road to insight, if we believe that long experience with issues contributes to good judgment on those issues, if we (in short) want knowledge that search engines don't give us, we'll maintain our depth of thinking and Google will only enhance it. There is a trend, of course, toward instant analysis and knee-jerk responses to events that degrades a lot of writing and discussion,” – Andy Oram, editor and blogger, O’Reilly Media

“My conclusion is that when the only information on a topic is a handful of essays or books, the best strategy is to read these works with total concentration.  But when you have access to thousands of articles, blogs, videos, and people with expertise on the topic, a good strategy is to skim first to get an overview. Skimming and concentrating can and should coexist,” – Peter Norvig, Google Research Director

I think Norvig nails it; books and blogs can coexist because they are complementary channels of learning. It just takes vigilance to keep the Internet from consuming us. (And perhaps a Dishtern or two.)

(Image: “Google Monster" by Asaf Hanuka, via The Daily What)

by Patrick Appel

USA Today compares. Earlier debate here and here.

by Jonathan Bernstein

I disagree with Matt Yglesias about whether majoritarian democracy is a good thing, but he's absolutely correct that it's silly to say (as Judd Gregg does at the moment) that the Framers wanted supermajority requirements in the Senate.  It is true that the structure of the Senate (relatively small number of Senators, relatively large and therefore heterogeneous constituencies makes it likely that Senators will be inclined to prefer rules that give each Senator quite a bit of negotiating leverage, while the House (many more Members, relatively homogeneous districts) is likely to favor rules that involve individual Members trading their negotiating leverage on most issues for extra influence over a small number of issues.  But to extrapolate from that to the idea that the Senate was intended to have a 60 vote filibuster rule is…well, Yglesias calls it abject nonsense, and that seems fair to me. 

I think that case that the filibuster is unconstitutional is very weak, but the case that supermajorities are somehow required by the Constitution is even weaker.  They are a consequence of Constitutional design, but not one that the Framers as far as I know, wanted or predicted. And they obviously did not want or predict partisan filibusters!

(Yglesias is correct about the Framers and modern parliamentary systems, too.  But the United States doesn't have a "presidential" system; it has a system of separated institutions sharing powers, with a strong president and a transformative (bicameral) Congress and independent courts.  Generally, lumping the US with presidential systems tends to be misleading.  He's right that in the 20th century the US tended to encourage other nations to adopt parliamentary systems; whether that speaks to actual failures of the American government or a Brit-o-phile affectation common to the sorts of people who influence those decisions is, at best, an open question).