Month: August 2010

Kain observes:

I think some conservatives view Gingrich as a guy who knows what he’s doing – a policy expert, someone who can navigate Washington, beat the Democrats at their own games, etc. I think he’s a pretty standard, boiler-plate Big Government Conservative more interested in playing war than making government work effectively. The mosque business simply confirms this. But I think at one point a lot of conservatives viewed him as the moderate, rational, wonkish leader they’d like to have instead of say, Sarah Palin. That the two are becoming more and more indistinguishable is hardly surprising, but it certainly speaks to his character.

If you believe that the blockade on Gaza was unsustainable, then you'd be Binyamin Netanyahu. Or one of the few congresspeople prepared to argue for what she believed was in Israel's vital interests – and the interests of the US. Well, she got what she asked for, didn't she? If you do not toe the AIPAC line, this happens:

Andrew Exum is disgusted by the National Review's editorial against the mosque:

Writing as a Christian, I am firmly within the majority in the United States. As a Protestant Christian, I am also within the majority. And as an Evangelical Protestant Christian, I belong to the largest subset of all Christians in the United States. I treasure the way the 1st Amendment protects my rights to worship. But I also understand that the 1st Amendment — the "first draft" of which was written by one of my ancestors — exists more to protect religious minorities than those of us in the majority. It's an amendment written with Huguenots and Quakers and Catholics in mind. Where the Bill of Rights really has its value is as a check against the tyranny of the majority. It's for times like these when the passions of Americans — stoked by the memory of September 11th — cause us to do and say things that spit in the face of the freedoms we claim to cherish.

Andrew gives me hope. There must be many sincere evangelicals who feel the same way.

In Maryland, a federal police officer shoots a dog at a public park and gets away with it. Radley Balko reacts:

I’ m certain that if I (or anyone else who isn’t a cop) pulled out a gun and shot a dog at a dog park in a residential area, I’d be facing criminal charges. And rightly so. Even if the dogs were fighting, there’s no justification for shooting one of them, particularly around other dogs and people. It’s reckless, trigger-happy, and dangerous. It’s also safe to say that if this had been anyone other than a cop, the local police department would have no qualms about releasing his name to the press.

This sort of thing happens with startling frequency in Maryland. And elsewhere too. Mercifully, a backlash is underway.

And right in my face? Clive Thompson notes how retro it is:

Consider: If I suddenly decide I want to dial you up, I have no way of knowing whether you’re busy, and you have no idea why I’m calling. We have to open Schrödinger’s box every time, having a conversation to figure out whether it’s OK to have a conversation. Plus, voice calls are emotionally high-bandwidth, which is why it’s so weirdly exhausting to be interrupted by one. (We apparently find voicemail even more excruciating: Studies show that more than a fifth of all voice messages are never listened to.)

The telephone, in other words, doesn’t provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another. The other tools at our disposal are more polite. Instant messaging lets us detect whether our friends are busy without our bugging them, and texting lets us ping one another asynchronously. (Plus, we can spend more time thinking about what we want to say.) For all the hue and cry about becoming an “always on” society, we’re actually moving away from the demand that everyone be available immediately.

The iPhone and AT&T are doing their best to help.

(Photo: Stan Honda/Getty.)

Drum doesn't think the Supreme Court will uphold Judge Walker's decision:

[Walker] essentially ruled that bans on same-sex marriage are nothing more than an "artifact" of history, and I have severe doubts that this is going to withstand scrutiny. At the Supreme Court level, the briefing attorneys won't be limited in their presentation of the law, and all they have to do is show some rational reason for existing bans. It doesn't have to be a great reason, and it doesn't have to be a reason that anyone mentioned at the district level, just one that's not plainly looney. I'm not sure that Vaughn was persuasive in ruling that no such reason exists.

Here's where Walker may have over-reached:

If you think genders still have any distinct role in society at all, then there's a rational basis for prohibiting same-sex marriage.

The question here is: what does a distinct role mean? I'm a strong believer that men and women are deeply different and yet I do not and cannot see that as a reason to oppose marriage equality. Why? Precisely because such differences are too profound to be somehow weakened by a tiny proportion of the population being included in an institution no longer designed to perpetuate men's control over women. It's when you really break down this argument that you find there is none – except an expression of heterosexual superiority. Maybe that feeling is what this is all about. Maybe that feeling will prevail. But it is not a reason to keep 2 percent of the population in a second class position, when including them would cause no harm to the majority at all.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mike Riggs are in agreement: Real Housewives of Washington DC is unspeakably bad.

It's an interesting question, I suppose. Did it matter that Thurgood Marshall was black? Should he have recused himself from civil rights decisions that affected African-Americans? I can't see that many would agree with that, although the line of questioning from Republican senators in the Kagan hearings might give one pause. Gerard Bradley tries a more focused attempt to delegitimize the enormous victory yesterday for marriage equality:

When a judge is obliged to withdraw from a case due to a conflicting interest we call it “recusal.” Federal law requires that, whenever a judge knows that he has “any other interest [ that is, besides a financial interest] that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding” at hand, or when “his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”, he must recuse himself. I am not saying that Judge Walker should have refused himself in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. I am not saying so because nowhere (as far as I know) has Judge Walker volunteered or been made to answer questions about how the outcome of that case would affect his interest (whatever it is) in marrying, and thus his interest in the manifold tangible and intangible benefits of doing so. That is a conversation worth having.

So Bradley wants to raise the issue of Walker's alleged bias – without substantiating any claims to it – while not raising it. Leave this particular piece of passive aggression aside – and you find that the logical conclusion of preventing gay judges from adjudicating on questions to do with gay rights would be removing all gay people from the discussion. Every gay person might one day fall in love and want to get married. Some may choose not to (should they recuse themselves too?); some may believe it violates their faith (ditto); others may already be in such marriages in one of five states (ditto plus plus). Similarly, since we are debating the alleged superiority of heterosexual sexual orientation here, is not heterosexuality by the same reasoning also a conflict of interest? Or are gay rights only legitimate when they are supported by straight people?

And here's something that really does pose a dilemma for a free and fair society. On this issue, there is scarcely any opposition in the gay community. Yes, there are some debates about the role of courts, and strategy. But I know of almost no gay people who would disagree with the core arguments that Judge Walker elaborated upon. And so we really do get an almost exquisite example of a majority deciding the fate of an issue where the minority is united and clear. When Newt Gingrich speaks of the views of "the American people", he means heterosexuals.

That is also a conversation worth having.

There is no excusing the senseless murder of an IDF soldier – shot while removing a tree on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border. It was obscuring a security camera (although why the camera could not be moved rather than the tree is the kind of question only Jon Stewart seems to ask).  Stephen Walt echoes Juan Cole:

This incident underscores the fragility of the current peace between Israel and Lebanon.  When security is precarious, military personnel will be more inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, and may also engage in provocative actions to show that they can't be intimidated. The problem is that this is all very risky, especially in this context. 

Goldberg's take:

The Lebanese sniper who killed an IDF colonel was firing from 80 meters away; this was no mistake. The colonel, whose epaulets would be seen clear as day in the sniper scope, was targeted intentionally. And why were there so many journalists in the area, an otherwise quiet and distant stretch of border, far from Beirut? What I can't figure out yet is the why of this.