Month: May 2011

Freddie deBoer explains:

The shamelessness and opportunism of conservatives in government and media would astound, if movement conservatism hadn't extinguished any sparks of credibility years ago. They say that they are defending Israel while trying to perpetuate a status quo that isolates Israel internationally, dooms it through demographics to a small handful of equally noxious choices, and undermines the moral legitimacy of both the state and the righteous purpose of providing a safe home for Jews in the world. (How many movement conservatives, if they were honest and actually consistent in the application of their religious beliefs, would be forced to say that all Israeli Jews are condemned to hell?)

Spurred by an NYT article, Adam Serwer worries about the private prison business model:

Private prisons don't save money, but they create an obvious and counterproductive profit motive that leads to policies that increase the prison population. Private prisons need more prisoners. While the most effective way to reduce prison costs is to "reduce the headcount," that is, the number of incarcerated. Private prison companies have a financial interest in doing the opposite. So whatever cost-saving private prisons might offer in the short run is swamped by their interest in making sure America imprisons more people, because otherwise they'd go out of business.

Megan McArdle expands on the idea:

I'd be much more sanguine about the prospects for an agency in either the prison or welfare system that got paid only if their "clients" stayed employed, out of jail, and drug free for a year after leaving the system.  But I doubt you could find many companies willing to take on such a contract, because who wants to bet on your ability to change the behavior of legal adults who have, as a group, a higher-than-normal propensity to be out of work and take drugs?

The genius of the real private economy is that firms that are really poorly run go out of business. It’s not that some magic private sector fairy dust makes the firms all be runs soundly. Lots of bad businesses are out there. But they tend to lose money and close. Meanwhile, well-run firms tend to earn profits and expand. The public sector doesn’t have this feature. Just because a public agency is inept is no guarantee that it will go out of business. Resources are allocating according to political clout rather than any criteria of merit. It’s a problem. But it’s not a problem that “privatizing” public services actually solves. There’s no magic private sector fairy dust.

A guide to Anglo-European misunderstanding:

Late last week Ron Paul said that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act "because of the property rights element, not because they got rid of the Jim Crow laws." But Jim Crow was actually a government-imposed attack on property rights, as Doug Mataconis explains:

It's … worth noting that Plessy v. Ferguson involved a Louisiana law that was designed to prevent the Pullman Company from offering equal seating options to blacks. That, in fact, was the entire purpose of Jim Crow laws. Even if, for example, the Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina had wanted to serve the four black college students who sat down at their lunch counter on February 1, 1960, the laws in place at the time told them that they couldn't. Racial segregation in the South wasn't a product of the free market, it was the product of a state imposing racial prejudices under the threat of criminal prosecution. For that reason alone, it was a violation of the 14th Amendment and the Federal Government was entirely justified in trying to bring it down.

McArdle tries to imagine counterfactuals.

A blog devoted to the arctic ice caps provides the above chart. Kevin Drum sighs:

On current trends, the Arctic will be entirely ice-free in September by about 2016, and will be ice-free year-round by the early 2030s.

The full hour and a half video his here. Stephen Miller recommends Ted Olson's final thoughts (about three minutes long) if you don't have the time to watch the whole conversation.

Jen Rubin makes it clear who she believes should be the senior partner in the US-Israel relationship – Israel:

By now the White House, if it didn’t already, must realize that it poisoned the waters before a meeting with the Israeli prime minister and an appearance before AIPAC. What’s he going to do about it? Frankly, the problem is his. Netanyahu doesn’t have a negotiating partner, but he does have the opportunity before AIPAC and Congress to make his case and educate the public about the nature of the unity government to which Obama is handing off territory . But Obama has a firestorm he has to extinguish, and quickly. Good luck with that, Mr. President.

Obama has handed off no territory to anyone, and specifically said in his speech the following:

For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.

This is now "throwing Israel under the bus". The lies these people tell …

Chris Beam recounts its history:

There are legitimate reasons for a perp walk, aside from humiliation. If a defendant may have committed other crimes, police might want to broadcast his name and face to get other victims to come forward. A prosecutor may also opt for a perp walk if a suspect is considered a flight risk.

Instead of simply issuing a court summons, law enforcement conducts a surprise arrest and invites the press. "It helps them with the bail argument," says Ryan Blanch, a criminal defense attorney in New York. "If [the prosecution] wants to argue for no bail, they can say, we had to rip him from his house." It also makes running away harder, if they do get out on bail.

Whatever the rationale, perp walks have become as much a staple of the U.S. criminal justice system as the Miranda warning. They've been ruled constitutional, so long as they serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Sam Roberts also digs up some facts:

In 1962, Capt. Albert A. Seedman, who later became the city’s chief of detectives, was reprimanded for staging a perp walk after photographers missed the original one and,  worse still, propping up the accused murderer’s chin to capture him full-face. In 2000, a federal appeals court in New York ruled in the case of a doorman accused of robbing an apartment that perp walks staged solely to accommodate the news media violated a the defendant’s constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure. The same court ruled later in another case involving a correction officer, though, that while a defendant might claim a privacy interest in not having himself publicly humiliated, “that privacy interest was outweighed by the county’s legitimate government purposes.”

The case against the perp walk here.

Matt Duss responds to the big lie about the 1967 borders:

Treating the 1967 lines as a basis for negotiations in this way represents the overwhelming consensus of the international community, enshrined in multiple UN resolutions. That anyone should be confused or surprised about this probably goes to the success that Israeli leaders have had over the years in obscuring it, and the indulgence that American leaders have often shown toward those efforts.

Massie's two cents:

I dare say Romney and Tim "Nice but Dim" Pawlenty think they must behave stupidly so they may meet domestic, conservative expectations and their views might change were they to find themselves living on Pennsylvania Avenue. Nevertheless, there are times when politics is canny and times when playing to the gallery leaves you looking like a dolt. This is one such time.

Chait believes Obama's speech did break new ground but that the ensuing freakout was unwarranted:

During the first quarter-century of Israel's existence, the prospect of a massed conventional military invasion constituted the greatest threat to its existence. That's no longer true. The greatest dangers today are the combination of demographic and political threats posed by the growing relative size of the Arab population west of the Jordan river, terrorism, and the loss of legitimacy posed by a continuing occupation and counter-terrorism policy in the West Bank and Gaza. Those dangers all dwarf the potential that armored columns of Arab armies will cut Israel in half. The tragedy is that huge swaths of the Israeli right and its sympathizers (both Jewish and Gentile) have failed to grasp this, and have placed it in danger of succumbing to the mortal new threat while guarding against the antiquated one.

(Image of the front page of Michele Bachmann's website)

An intriguing hypothesis from Ron Brownstein.