Sen Joe Biden said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire today that, if the president bombed Iran, "I will move to impeach him."

According to The Raw Story, former Florida congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough defended a bombing of Iran, saying that it is unfortunate "when you have Ahmadinejad talking about obliterating Israel, talking about obliterating the United States, talking about building nuclear weapons, how we can't stop him. Saying just absolutely horrendous crazy things, sending Iranian forces into Iraq to kill American troops." What Scarborough fails to understand, though, is that the president cannot engage in war without the express authorization of Congress. It's quite plain in Article I: Congress has the sole authority to declare war. For the president to engage in any action that could be construed as a declaration of war, he needs Congress' authority. If he engages in such actions without Congressional authorization, he has broken the law.

All right, Justice Scalia, let's play hardball. What was the "original intent" of the writers of the Constitution in giving Congress authority to declare war, and not the president? It was to prevent exactly this kind of situation: where a president unilaterally goes to war. Going to war takes money, and only Congress can decide how to spend the nation's money, thus only Congress can authorize going to war and spending that money. Furthermore, it acts as a check against the president. Sure, he might be in charge of the armed forces, but he can't use them unless Congress says so. Funny how this president is testing the limits of constitutional authority, isn't it? They were written for just this sort of occasion.

Unless Alberto Gonzales has advised the president that he does have the authority to go to war against Iran, using a legal doctrine he made up last night, the president will have no justification for going to war. The machinery of government is slow and deliberate, so as to prevent hasty decisions from being made.

What about "impeachment"? While the president's authorization of war is certainly unconstitutional, it does not follow that that authorization is criminal. But Biden is certainly welcome to try.

Posted by Mark at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now, on to wiretapping!

Glenn Greenwald from Salon and Ryan Singel from Wired's Threat Level blog take Time columnist (and pseudonymous author of Primary Colors) Joe Klein to the cleaners.

Klein, in a recent column published in the print edition of Time, makes ridiculous assertions about propsed updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including the assertion that the government is required by FISA to get warrants for wholly foreign communications. As Greenwald and Singel point out, FISA has never required this, and will never require this, because it doesn't even make sense. The government doesn't need permission from U.S. courts to spy abroad on nationals of other countries. Klein makes several other stupid statements, which only cause problems for those of us on the left who want to be credible. It's hard to be credible when people associated with you are making statements that aren't true, especially if those statements are out of ignorance. How, then, can we be trusted?

Greenwald correctly lambasts Klein for saying, regarding immunity for telecom companies that capitulated to the Bush administration and illegally gave away subscriber information without a warrant, that he favors "selective immunity to those telecoms who can provide written proof that they were acting in response to a direct order from the government."

Greenwald responds with an appropriate level of outrage:

Seriously, in what country does Joe Klein live? Can someone please explain to him that in the United States, the President doesn't have the power to give "direct orders" to violate the law? And what kind of person who isn't in the military runs around talking about "direct orders" from the American President at all? That isn't how our country works. Presidents obviously don't have the power to give "direct orders" to anyone to break the law, let alone civilians and private companies. Why does that even need to be explained?

That a supposed Democrat like Joe Klein would say that the president should be allowed to give "direct orders" is indeed frightening. But, if you read the rest of Greenwald's piece, you'll see that it comes to no surprise, as Klein is more than willing to compromise on individual liberty if it comes up against national security.

Incidentally, the government never ordered telecoms to give away information. You'll recall that Qwest Communications refused to comply with the government's request after its lawyers determined, correctly, that giving confidential subscriber information without a warrant was against the law. The rest of them capitulated for reasons that remain unknown (a desire to appear patriotic? Back-room promises of tax breaks or favorable legislation?). AT&T even famously created a secret room in its downtown San Francisco office for the sole purpose of allowing the NSA to monitor AT&T phone calls.

Happy thanksgiving!

Posted by Mark at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Far be it for President Bush's outgoing Homeland Security Advisor, Frances Fragos Townsend, to leave with dignity. This morning, Townsend told reporters that al Qaeda may target the United States around next year's elections, since "we know that al Qaeda views these periods as being a particularly vulnerable period." She cites the Madrid train bombings in 2003 as an example (ultimately, the PSOE's candidate, who was against the Iraq War, José Luis Zapatero, beat the conservative candidate, incumbent prime minister José Maria Aznar).

Sounds bad! Surely you must have some credible intelligence telling you that there might be attacks. I mean, after all, pretty much everyone knows that an organization like al Qaeda would try to influence voters by timing an attack with our election. That's sort of a given, and that's sort of what terrorists do: they instill fear in the civilian population in order to get what they want from the government. Al Qaeda would want to blow something up around election time so that we get frightened enough to elect a leader who will remain tough on terrorism -- tougher, even, than President Bush -- and thus validate al Qaeda's continued existence and mission.

So, Frances, back to that credible intelligence.

"We don’t have any specific information."

Oh. So, you're saying that al Qaeda might attack us next fall based on "our experience and what we know"? I see. And this has nothing to do with scare-mongering? You're sure this is about security? It's the same focus on security Dick Cheney had when he said, in 2004, that electing John Kerry might mean that we would be attacked again? You're only saying this out of a desire to keep us safe by giving us a warning ... a year in advance? I'll set iCal to "remind me again in 10 months."

Posted by Mark at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Students at a Florida high school who started a peace group were met with a level of appalling ignorance that simultaneously makes me fear for the future of this country and also doesn't surprise me, given that George W. Bush was re-elected:

The heckling began early in the school year, according to group members. They say they were putting small posters promoting peace on friends' lockers with their permission. They thought it was OK, because the cheerleaders and football players had signs on theirs. Eventually, though, group members say they were told by the school's administration they could no longer hang up the posters.

"People tore them down and drew swastikas and 'white power' stuff on them," Lauren said.

Skylar had similar things written on her posters.

"Someone taped an 'I Love Bush' sign over my 'Wage Peace' sign," she said. "So I tore it down, threw it away, and the whole commons starting booing. I walk by later and find that someone has completely tore my sign down and placed an 'I Love America, Because America Loves War' sign up.' "

I hate peace -- oh, and while we're at it, white power! Maybe Michael Moore was right when he blamed our militaristic culture for the levels of violence in America in Bowling for Columbine. Since when is peace automatically a bad thing?

Posted by Mark at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's one: at Sunday's summit of OPEC leaders, Chavez -- president of oil-rich Venezuela -- suggested that "OPEC should set itself up as an active political agent," according to The Houston Chronicle. He means, of course, that OPEC should use oil as a bargaining tool. He means, of course, that OPEC should greatly increase the price of oil specifically to harm the United States, which Chavez has set up as the enemy that only he can vanquish.

Tilting at windmills much? As if Chavez didn't already have dictatorial tendencies (which have before been chronicled in this space), now we have him creating an enemy for his people to hate, with the promise that he will save them from that enemy. This is chapter four of the Dictator's Playbook, one used to good advantage by Mssrs. Hitler, Stalin, and honorable mention for the Party in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nothing unites people like a common foe.

Both Chavez and his new best friend, Iranian president and winner of the Definitely Not Crazy Wet T-Shirt Contest at the Hooter's in Persepolis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the rising price of oil on the weakening U.S. dollar. Oil is traded in U.S. dollars, and as the value of the dollar decreases, countries would have to increase the price of oil to compensate. This makes sense only if you discount the fact that the price of oil started increasing before the U.S. dollar went into decline, which was before this summer when the credit crunch caused the world's faith in the U.S. markets to decline. May I also add that, as both Chavez and Ahmadinejad are Princeton-trained economists, their statements are totally earnest and in no way an attempt to lash out at the United States.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia may approve of lashing a woman 200 times for the crime of being raped (although, in Saudi Arabia's defense, the crime wasn't that she got raped, but that she talked about it publicly and tried to get her attackers prosecuted), but that doesn't mean he's a fool. "Those who want OPEC to take advantage of its position are forgetting that OPEC has always acted moderately and wisely," he said.

It's true that OPEC meets the technical definition of a cartel: a small group of firms in an oligopolistic market that meet to set prices so as to take advantage of the relative inelasticity of demand. But in the past, OPEC has used its cartel-power to make money, not political statements. And whenever OPEC has set its prices, Saudi Arabia -- whose number one customer is the United States -- has always caved in. If they give us cheap oil, we won't press for "regime change" in a country run by a theocratic dictator whose government supports terrorism. But trust us: Saddam Hussein was the most heinous threat facing our nation, much like the guy who ran that stop sign should be arrested before the guy who's driving over a hundred and weaving in and out of traffic.

Disappointingly, not many nations have joined Chavez and Ahmadinejad's new after-school club for countries that hate the United States. President Bush is only shooting himself in the face with a hunting rifle by making macho condemnations of Iran, fueling their sense of outrage and making the United States even less of a diplomatic power. (Note to GWB: You forgot the "speak softly" part.) For now, our enemies will remain our enemies in private, deciding -- unlike the Gruesome Twosome -- to publicly remain our friends. It would be bad for business for most other countries in the world (of course, it doesn't cost Chavez or Ahmadinejad anything; they don't trade with us, anyway!).

Posted by Mark at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I went back to Ohio last week to see the family and was unsurprised to find out that airport security is still terrible.

If you're flying on Continental Airlines and you see "SSSS" in the lower right-hand corner of your ticket, then congratulations, you're subject to a "secondary search." The only way I know that this is what "SSSS" means is because the TSA screener at the very beginning of the security checkpoint -- the one who gives you the okay on your boarding pass -- missed the secondary search and waved me through to a normal line. The second screener -- who is about ten feet away -- saw it and escorted me to the secondary line, circling "SSSS" at the bottom and letting the first screener know that she had missed it.

A secondary search is actually a search for explosives residue. You must walk into a machine that blows air over you and then analyzes the results, to determine whether or not you had explosives residue on you. The machine looks very expensive and was made by GE. I'll be sure to buy more of their stock.

Then, you are escorted to a table where a TSA screener goes through your carry-on items and swabs them for explosives residue with a little piece of paper that he puts into a machine that does an instant explosives residue check. The screener swabbed the inside of my carry-on bags (taking care to use a different little paper every time) and took special care with my electronics. Note that "care" doesn't mean that he didn't handle them so as not to break them. No, "care" here means that he was extra-interested in electronics. I had two cell phones, an iPod, and a laptop among my carry-on and pocket items. He swabbed each of these separately, especially in the connector openings. It occurred to me that, based on this security check, the TSA labors under the impression that explosives can be hidden only in electronic devices. I had an Altoids container and a toiletry bag in my carry-on luggage. He pulled out neither to examine it more closely. The Altoids container could have been just as likely as my cellular phone to contain explosives. Moreover, he didn't examine the toiletry bag to make doubly sure it didn't contain any lethal liquids or gels.

Why give electronics special attention? If they feel as though a detonator or other device can be hidden only in electronics, why swab them? A detonator contains no explosive parts. Unless they think that it could contain regular old explosives. But why not swab everything that could potentially contain an explosive? Also, it is patently absurd to think that only an electronic device could contain a detonator. It would be more easily hidden, but it could have been in the Altoids container. Also, he never asked me to turn any of the devices on to prove that they were really the electronics they appeared to be.

What was accomplished during this secondary search? We learned that I didn't have any explosives residue on my person or on my stuff. We paid special attention to electronic devices, while ignoring the non-electronic devices that could have just as easily contained explosives. (For the record, I didn't bring any explosives.) We didn't check the electronics to make sure that they weren't detonators, and we didn't check my toiletries to make sure I didn't have any liquids or gels.

I was prompted to write this after reading this story at The Consumerist about a new TSA pilot program in which you will have to remove all the electronics from your carry-ons and place them in a separate bin. When I go to Ohio for my annual Christmas trip, I take a lot of electronics. I can't imagine how pulling all of the electronics out of my bag will "speed up the screening of carry on-baggage," especially if I have to rifle through everything to find the various electronics.

Even with the TSA cheating on their exams, airports aren't necessarily safer.

Posted by Mark at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Laws make sense and are enforceable only if they don't prohibit activities we do every day. A law prohibiting taking showers wouldn't make much sense because people need to shower. In that case, people would take showers and risk being arrested, as the necessity for a shower is greater than the fear of arrest. In this article via Boing Boing, John Tehranian writes for the Utah Law Review on the disconnect between what we do everyday with intellectual property and what is being outlawed by rights-holders. Tehranian says that the demands of rights-holders are ridiculous, and if the law were enforced 100% of the time, we would all be liable for millions of dollars' worth of copyright infringement:

There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John’s activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing. Such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense of justice. Indeed, one must either irrationally conclude that John is a criminal infringer—a veritable grand larcenist—or blithely surmise that copyright law must not mean what it appears to say.

Have you ever whistled a song in public? Copied an email or article without attribution? You've committed a crime. Bad laws turn otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals for no good reason. Strengthening copyright laws isn't better for society and it certainly doesn't increase a content provider's likelihood of continuing to provide you with content in the future. It just nets them money from lawsuits. If the RIAA were really concerned about infringement, they wouldn't have a settlement hotline. Instead, they function like the Mexican police ("How much you got?"), settling for whatever people have instead of what they are "legally" entitled to.

Posted by Mark at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bloggers, geeks, and other online types tend to be more libertarian than anything else. As a result, much of the Internet is fawning over Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) as much as Oprah is fawning over Barack Obama. I wonder, though, how much of the Internet knows how much crazy there still is in Rep. Paul. Sure, he p0wned Rudy Giuliani earlier this year at a Republican debate, but that doesn't mean that he will make a good president. Here's a sampling of the legislation authored by Ron Paul:

• H.J. Res. 23: A proposed constitutional amendment that would abolish income, estate, and gift taxes. The resolution also specifies that it also "[prohibits] the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens," but it's not clear from the amendment that it does that; the amendment would be open to wide interpretation.

  Crazytown Level: High. This is explicitly a repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which amended the Constitution to permit Congress to levy income taxes. But how will the government get money?

• H.J. Res. 46: A proposed constitutional amendment that would limit U.S. citizenship to children born with at least one parent who is a citizen. Currently, a child born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of the citizenship of his or her parents.

  Crazytown level: Low. I heartily disagree with this amendment, but anti-immigration proponents have been after this for years, citing some EU countries as examples. (Again, contemporary legislation from other countries is acceptable as a prototype only when you agree with it; otherwise, you must limit yourself to vague, uncodified doctrines of "Western tradition." Justice Scalia, I'm looking at you!) As crazy legislation, this isn't so crazy, as natural citizenship is one way Those Mexcians get their feet in the door here.

• H.R. 300: A bill that would prohibit federal courts from ruling on issues of free exercise or establishment of religion; the right to privacy; or gay marriage.

  Crazytown level: High. While Congress is explicitly granted the power to regulate the federal courts' appellate jurisdiction, it hasn't exercised it. I suppose Rep. Paul's idea here is that the federal government should stay completely out of our lives, even in adjudication. The problem is that, to preserve the government's non-intrusion into our lives, we need the court to tell the government to stop it. Oh, and by the way, if a judge violates this law, it's an impeachable offense. Oh, and by the way, any past cases that deal with any of the above issues are no longer admissable as a precedent. That section goes way, way too far. Judges grab precedents from cases that don't, on first appearance, have anything to do with their current cases. Don't tell judges how to do their jobs (as the Republicans tried to do with Terri Schiavo).

• H.R. 1094: A bill that would state that life begins at conception, and thus, all laws permitting any abortion of any kind, for any reason, are void. Oh, and by the way, the federal courts may no longer rule on the legality of abortion, at all, for any reason.

  Crazytown level: High. For a guy who purports to be a libertarian, how can he write this stuff? I give this a "high" Crazytown level because it's so hypocritical.

• H.R. 1146: A bill that ends United States involvement in the United Nations.

  Crazytown level: High. We started the freaking United Nations. We're not going anywhere anytime soon, despite what John Bolton wants.

• H.R. 2756: A bill that repeals 31 USC 5103. Sounds pretty innocuous, right?

  Crazytown level: Very high. Here's the text of 31 USC 5103: "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts." Yes, folks, in this bill, Rep. Paul wants to eliminate Federal Reserve notes (e.g., dollar bills) from being used as legal tender. I wonder why the bill contains hardly any references to the fact that paper money and coinage would no longer be used in transactions. And what else does he want us to use? Gold? I'm starting to get the feeling that Rep. Paul would be happier living in Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia. As a corollary, Rep. Paul also wants to repeal the Federal Reserve Act and eliminate federal banks. I thought we settled this in 1913?

• H.R. 3216: A bill that would allow the president to grant letters of marque and reprisal so that private persons may go out and find members of al-Qaeda, and specifically, Osama bin Laden.

  Crazytown level: High. Also, this legislation is unconstitutional. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to "grant letters of marque and reprisal" (Art. I, § 8). Ignoring that for a second, this would give bounty hunters the authority to track down members of al-Qaeda or seize their property. A letter of marque is a warrant "authorizing the designated agent to search, seize, or destroy specified assets or personnel belonging to a party which has committed some offense under the laws of nations against the assets or citizens of the issuing nation." They were once granted to state-sponsored pirates, like Sir Francis Drake, to provide them with a legal basis for raiding enemy ships. Ignoring that, do we want Dog the Bounty Hunter going out into the wide world to alienate even more Frenchmen?

So, before you decide that Ron Paul is the greatest guy in the world because he understands the concept of "blowback" and isn't afraid to speak truth to Giuliani, keep in mind that he lives in Crazytown. He's the author of good legislation, as well (like this and this), but he would make a pretty awful president.

Posted by Mark at 4:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Long before I moved to California, Dianne Feinstein earned my ire for her pro-gun control stance. (Note that "pro-gun control," as used by the gun control lobby, doesn't mean "enforcing stricter gun laws," but rather "outlawing guns or making them really, really hard to obtain.")

Then I moved to California and was forced to write letters to her, as I did earlier this week. She disappointed me by being one of only two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of Judge Michael Mukasey for Attorney General. This made me upset: how, in the face of all that we have seen over the last several years, could she vote for a candidate who would not take a firm stance on torture? But even more troublesome was his stance on executive power; Mukasey does believe that some heretofore unknown "inherent" power to break the law exists in Article II of the Constitution. Where does this power exist? Ostensibly, if you play Article II backwards, you can hear the words saying, "By virtue of the fact that the president is granted the power to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the president is permitted to ignore statues that infringe upon his duties to lead the armed forces, especially in times of war, though there is no guarantee that this is necessarily the case. These duties consist of, but are not limited to: foreign and domestic spying; suspension of the writ of habeas corpus; torture, even when in violation of domestic and international law; legislative authority; and judicial authority. Oh, and by the way, Paul is dead."

I find it strange that Article II, written in 1787, would predict Paul McCartney's death, but hey, when you play things backward, strange things happen.

But Friday, Dianne Feinstein earned my eternal ire, and just as I was about to write her another letter. Feinstein is in favor of legal immunity for telecommunications companies that aided the Bush administration's illegal, poorly-justified, warrantless wiretapping program:

In a statement at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering legislation to extend the Bush administration's electronic surveillance program, Feinstein said the companies should not be "held hostage to costly litigation in what is essentially a complaint about administration activities."

She endorsed a recent statement by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that companies assured by top administration officials that the surveillance program was legal "should not be dragged through the courts for their help with national security."

This is not a case of innocent telephone companies being bullied by the big, bad Bush administration. These companies voluntarily helped the administration engage in domestic surveillance. The telecom companies' lawyers claim that they were assured by the administration that the activities were legal, and furthermore, their own legal departments said that the activities were legal. "We thought it was legal!" was their claim.

But the claim falls flat when you consider that Qwest, after reviewing the administration's request, refused to comply because, in its opinion, the request was illegal! Since at least one phone company realized that what the administration was asking was illegal, the assertion that phone companies were only trying to help is invalid. If at least one company realized the plan was illegal, then it would have been possible for other companies to realize it was illegal. Perhaps they just thought they would never be caught. Perhaps they hoped that their compliance would lead to favorable legislation -- this could be a sort of in-kind campaign donation.

Feinstein, though, says that she is open to suggestions, including the suggestion that lawsuits can go ahead, with caps on damages.

That's a fine idea! (And I'm serious about this.) We don't need to litigate the phone companies out of business; rather, we just need to rule against them to (1) get a precedent set to say, definitively, phone companies may not voluntarily comply with requests for information. The US Code is clear about this, anyway, but apparently we need to say it a few times before it sinks in. Also, (2) punitive damages that are great -- but not too great -- will get the message through that violations of the law will not go unpunished. This plan is fine, but a blanket immunity only lets the administration know that it can break the law without consequences.

Posted by Mark at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared martial law last week in Pakistan, he said it was partly due to a rise in extremism in Pakistan. This is reflected in the official declaration of martial law, which notes:

there is visible ascendancy in the activities of extremists and incidents of terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings, IED explosions, rocket firing and bomb explosions and the banding together of some militant groups have taken such activities to an unprecedented level of violent intensity posing a grave threat to the life and property of the citizens of Pakistan.

After setting out extremism as ostensibly the primary purpose of the declaration, he adds that "some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive and legislature in the fight against terrorism and extremism thereby weakening the government and the nation's resolve diluting the efficacy of its actions to control this menace." Therefore, the judiciary is partly to blame for the extremism, since it is ineffective due to its working "at cross purposes" with the rest of the government. This explains why Musharraf fired the Chief Justice at the same time he declared martial law. (Actually, it doesn't; he fired the Chief Justice because the Chief Justice has been a vocal critic of his; this declaration just gives a fun pretext for the firing.)

Even if Musharraf can appear to justify martial law by way of cracking down on extremism, that doesn't explain the most recent events coming out of Pakistan. We've learned that, in the aftermath of the declaration of martial law, the police "detained about 500 opposition party figures, lawyers and human rights advocates on Sunday." That's right: "extremists" turn out to be Musharraf's critics and opponents. Surprise! When a president declares martial law, it turns out that he uses the opportunity of the suspension of the constitution to imprison his opponents, critics, and anyone else he doesn't like. Who could have known?

In the meantime, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has called for protests against Musharraf's declaration. "After the news conference, police officers fired tear gas and beat about 100 of her party workers when they tried to push through police barriers blocking access to the Parliament building." Because that's how you quell terrorist extremism: by beating protesters.

Fortunately, Musharraf doesn't have to suffer the anguish of beating protesters alone. Last Thursday, Venezuelan soldiers "used tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons to scatter tens of thousands of demonstrators protesting constitutional reforms that would permit Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely."

Chavez wants the Venezuelan constitution re-written to, as stated above, allow him to run for re-election indefinitely, but also, the new constitution would degrade the autonomy of the Venezuelan armed forces, placing them under Chavez's sole authority, and degrade the autonomy of the Central Bank of Venezuela. Chavez claims that he needs to remain in power longer in order to complete his project of "21st-century socialism."

At the same time, over in the United States, we're having a surreal discussion about whether or not torture is okay. Scott sent me an article from counter-terrorism consultant Malcolm Nance, who says, definitively, "Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period." Nance, "a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego," has personally experienced and conducted waterboarding as part of SERE's interrogation training. Note, of course, that students are not subjected to waterboarding so that they can use it on suspects, but subjected to it so that they know what it's like.

Nance says that there are a lot of misconceptions about waterboarding. One misconception is that waterboarding is "simulated drowning." Says Nance, "It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. "

Ultimately, he says, this will come back around to bite us. "Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations," says Nance. "Waterboarding will be one our future enemy’s go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it."

And, all the while, the world is a safer place.

Posted by Mark at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Senator Feinstein:

I strongly urge you to vote against the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey for the position of Attorney General. Judge Mukasey has shown that he will be no better than former attorney general Alberto Gonzales in standing up to the president and enforcing the Constitution instead of the talking points of the Bush administration.

Judge Mukasey's refusal to say, during Judiciary Committee hearings, that waterboarding is definitively torture is troubling. After World War II, the United States prosecuted German and Japanese soldiers who performed simulated drowning for war crimes. Why is waterboarding any less illegal now than it was fifty years ago? Furthermore, international authorities on interrogation, as well as several former Judge Advocates General of the United States (who sent Sen. Charles Schumer a letter saying as much), all agree that waterboarding is torture. This is not, say these authorities, an issue that needs to be open to debate. Without question, waterboarding is torture. Yet, Judge Mukasey, who would be responsible for enforcing the law, is either unable or unwilling to come to that same conclusion.

Reportedly, Judge Mukasey and Sen.Schumer came to a private agreement that the former would support a bill banning certain interrogation techniques, waterboarding being one of them. This agreement strikes me as disingenuous, for even if such a bill gained the support of enough Republicans to pass, who is to say that President Bush wouldn't veto it outright? Experience has shown that President Bush insists that he does not condone the use of torture, but nevertheless wants to retain the ability to use it, ostensibly in a completely fictional "24"-style scenario in which torture is the only way to save the country from an imminent threat. This scenario, according to professional interrogators, never happens.

Beyond the issue of torture, Judge Mukasey has shown that he has the same belief as Attorney General Gonzales when it comes to presidential power. Like Gonzales, Judge Mukasey believes that the president has special wartime authority to suspend habeas corpus and engage in warrant-less wiretapping, even though these "powers" are nowhere to be found in the Constitution or federal statutes. The U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts have repeatedly struck down these over-reaching assertions of executive power, and yet, the administration continues to make them. Judge Mukasey has offered no evidence to suggest that he will respect the limitations of the executive's authority any more than Gonzales did.

President Bush has insisted, like a petulant child, that he will not nominate anyone else if Judge Mukasey is rejected by the Senate. I urge you to call the president's bluff, for if the Senate rejects Judge Mukasey, the onus is on the president to nominate someone else, and if he fails to do so, then the vacancy in the Attorney General's office is his fault and his alone for refusing to compromise. Even though he has attempted in recent weeks to suggest that Congress is ignoring the nation's business, it will be up to him to explain why he didn't want to nominate someone who would reject torture outright. If "we do not torture," as he often says, then he should be prepared to back his assertion by nominating someone who will not condone any form of torture.

I wish to thank you for your time by allowing me the opportunity to communicate with you on this issue. I hope that you will take this information to heart and reject Judge Mukasey's nomination.

Sincerely,
Mark Wilson

Posted by Mark at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't know about New York state's drivers licenses, but on the back of my California drivers license, there's a warning: "This License is issued as a license to drive a motor vehicle. It does not establish eligibility for employment, voter registration, or public benefits." And yet, the drivers license has become the identification of choice for most organizations. It immediately proves your identity, whether you're using your credit card, taking an airplane, or buying five cases of MD 20/20.

But perhaps the drivers license shouldn't be used this way. After all, the only thing it's supposed to do is prove that, in the opinion of the state of issue, you're competent to drive a car. It just so happens that it contains a whole bunch of other interesting information, like your name, your birthdate, your picture, and your signature. Until recently, in most states, it also carried your social security number. In 2000 (the year I got my first drivers license), Ohio allowed you to elect whether or not you wanted your social security number on your drivers license (I chose "no"). Currently, California doesn't put your social security number on there at all.

The ubiquity of a drivers license (practically every adult has one) and the convenience (you have to carry it whenever you drive, so most people put it in their wallets and forget about it) make it a natural choice for a de facto identification card. But the problem is that illegal immigrants can't get them, since they don't have social security numbers. In most states, you need a social security card and another document to prove that you are who you claim to be. The social security card is, for all intents and purposes, a federal ID number. You use it everywhere, even on that most official of places, your taxes. Because the social security number's veracity is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the federal government, most states and organizations take it for granted that your social security number is a good way to identify you. Because if you can't trust a social security number, not being able to get into a Star Trek convention is the least of this nation's problems.

In steps New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. Two months ago, Spitzer announced that he would be changing New York's policy for issuing drivers licenses. Social security numbers would no longer be a requirement for establishing identity, meaning illegal immigrants -- who can't get social security numbers -- could get drivers licenses. In a press release, the New York DMV spun the policy change as an issue of public safety:

The DMV estimates that tens of thousands of undocumented, unlicensed and uninsured drivers are currently on New York’s roads, contributing to increased accidents and hit-and-runs as well as higher auto insurance rates. In addition, bringing more New Yorkers into the system will ensure a greater number of people have a license record that, if necessary, can be used to enhance law enforcement efforts.

The press release goes further into the history of identificationr requirements in the state of New York. It says that social security number requirements were first enacted in 1995 "as part of an effort to punish parents who were not paying child support." This is a long way away from establishing identity, if true. In 2002, the DMV allowed people who were ineligible for social security numbers to obtain a drivers license. provided they obtained a letter from the Social Security Administration stating they were ineligible for a social security number. The only change happening to DMV policy is that the DMV no longer requires an applicant to provide a letter of ineligibility; the applicant just checks a box on the form stating that he is ineligible.

Security, says the press release, will be assured by expanding the number of documents you can use to prove your identity. Furthermore, photo recognition technology -- in use in 18 other states -- will be used to prevent people from obtaining multiple licenses.

But what are these documents you can use?! New York uses a very interesting system for determining your identity. The state assigns point values to particular forms of identification -- a U.S. passport is worth 4 points, a military photo ID is worth 3 points -- and then tells you how many points you need to get a particular kind of license. To get a new drivers license, for example, you need 6 points of identification. If you cobble together enough documents to prove you are who you claim to be, then congratulations! You have a drivers license!

There is nothing wrong with this idea, but anti-immigration groups want you to think there is. The New York Post, for example, is concerned about illegal immigrants voting:

While it is up to the local boards of election to determine who is eligible to vote, it is rare that election officials check into a person's legal status, particularly if they have identifying information on their voter-registration form like a driver's license or the last four digits of a Social Security number, [Board of Elections spokesman Lee] Daghlian said.

In order to register, a person must sign an affidavit stating that they are an American citizen.

"You assume that people don't lie, and that's what the form says," Daghlian said. "It's an affidavit you sign under penalty of perjury."

But Daghlian concedes, "Nobody checks it" to determine its validity.

At the polls, voters are asked to show some form of photo ID, like a driver's license, to prove their identity, Daghlian said.

"I suppose it would be [tough to catch] if someone wanted to take advantage of the system and try to get a number of people registered who aren't citizens and went ahead and got them driver's licenses," he said.

Well, here's problem number one: don't use drivers licenses to determine eligibiity for voting, because that's not what it's for. In California, I haven't been asked for my drivers license as proof of my identity. Maybe that's because of the disclaimer on the back of my drivers license. Maybe New York should invest in such a disclaimer?

Also, the part about trying to get a number of people registered illegally doesn't really happen. There's not a lot of individual voter fraud in this country. What there is in this country is a lot of systematic election fraud. That's large-scale fraud perpetrated by an official entity, like former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. There just isn't pervasive individual voter fraud going on.

This is what all states should do. Even illegal immigrants need to drive, and they will drive whether or not they have licenses. It's a great fallacy that a lot of people -- largely on the right -- believe: making something illegal will stop people from doing it. Humans don't work that way. They will only stop doing that activity if their own interest in that activity is less than their interest in not being prosecuted. (Also, you need to multiply their interest in not being prosecuted by the probability that they'll get caught.) Illegal immigrants are terrified of taking advantage of government services, though, because they're afraid that any interaction with an authority may result in them getting deported. Allowing them to get drivers licenses is a step in the right direction toward telling them that they should be accessing government services. They're paying taxes for those services; why shouldn't they be allowed to take advantage of them? Whatever happened to the belief that anything can be procured for the right price? If an illegal immigrant can pay the $25 to get a drivers license, why not let them have it? It doesn't confer any rights or benefits; it just lets them drive a car.

Posted by Mark at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

Two weeks ago, J.K. Rowling outed Albus Dumbledore, former Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as gay. Her audience applauded when they heard the news, but Time contributor John Cloud isn't so easily convinced:

Why couldn't he tell us himself? The Potter books add up to more than 800,000 words before Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, yet Rowling couldn't spare two of those words to help define a central character's emotional identity: "I'm gay." We can only conclude that Dumbledore saw his homosexuality as shameful. His silence suggests a lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character.

Even though I'm more of a New Historicist when it comes to literary interpretation, one must still acknowledge the supremacy of the text. Even though historical context can aid in understanding a literary work, there is no information in a work of fiction that is not in the text. While it may be arguable that Orwell was writing about the BBC canteen when he described the Ministry of Truth cafeteria in 1984, the fact remains that the words on the page describe the Ministry of Truth cafeteria, not the BBC canteen.

Now that the disclaimer is aside, I can safely say that Cloud makes a pertinent point: from the structuralist point of view, Dumbledore is not gay. Homosexualty was never explicitly in the text; in fact, it wasn't even implicitly in the text, which is why Rowling's statement was so surprising. In structuralism, this is called the "intentional fallacy": the idea that the author's own intentions or interpretations mean anything to the text as written. But this isn't a typical case of the intentional fallacy; not only is Rowling's interpretation of her own work not relevant to the text, it isn't even supported by the text! If Rowling herself were to write a paper on Dumbledore's latent homosexuality, she'd probably get a failing grade, as she would be unable to find textual support for her claim.

For all intents and purposes, then, Dumbledore -- despite what her creator claims -- is not gay. Dumbledore, you see, doesn't live in Rowling's mind. As a character in published fiction, Dumbledore lives in the pages of the text, and if the words on the page don't support an assertion of homosexuality, then it doesn't exist.

Which brings us back to Cloud's conclusion: "We can only conclude that Dumbledore saw his homosexuality as shameful. His silence suggests a lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character." Assuming for the moment that Rowling's assertion is true and Dumbledore is gay (which, as I've said above, isn't true, because it isn't in the text), one possible explanation for a lack of any mention of homosexuality by Dumbledore is, in fact, that he's ashamed of it.

Two-and-a-half years and over 400 (!) entries ago, I wrote that whether or not Spongebob Squarepants was gay was irrelevant to the show, since the characters' sexualities were irrelevant to the show. (Thankfully, my posting lives on in posterity; "spongebob sex" is one of the most-searched-for terms that leads people to my website. Hooray!) We cannot assume that a similar irrelevancy is at work in Harry Potter, as the characters' sexualities clearly are relevant to the story. The romantic tension between Ron and Hermione is a mainstay of the plot of all seven books; Harry's relationship with Cho Chang after the murder of Cedric Diggory adds an important dimension to Order of the Phoenix. In any case, the characters' sexuality is not unimportant.

Given Dumbledore's past, it is not unreasonable to assume that he kept silent about his homosexuality because he was ashamed of it. Remember that he kept silent about his sister's death because he was ashamed of it. With all this information, what kind of homosexual role model is a man who has kept quite for over one hundred years about his homosexuality? In adding this abrupt, and theoretically false, footnote to Dumbledore's life, Rowling has, perhaps unknowingly, turned her character into a model for what homosexuality should not be. She's opened up a can of worms that she won't be able to close again. "But it would have been better if she had just let the old girl rest in peace," Cloud concludes.

Posted by Mark at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rich Erlich sent me an article by Andrew Sullivan about the Bush administration's torture policies.

Sullivan argues that the Mukasey nomination goes beyond merely defining "waterboarding" as torture. The Republicans, he says, are at the end of an elaborate chess game with Democrats about what torture is and is not. On the one hand, if Democrats don't pass legislation specifically prohibiting waterboarding as torture, pro-torture Republicans like President Bush and National Review shill Rich Lowry will take that as an implicit endorsement of torture (even though, as Sullivan points out, waterboarding was used by the Nazis in World War II, and the United States prosecuted Nazis for using waterboarding). On the other hand, if Democrats do pass legislation that specifically prohibits waterboarding, then the use of torture will be normalized in U.S. law. "And so a new precedent will be set; and the torture program, already well-established, will further entrench itself into US law and practices. The current law is not in any way mysterious," says Sullivan. Current U.S. law already outlaws "severe mental or physical pain or suffering," a description that, says Sullivan, has always included waterboarding -- until the Bush administration came along. Outlawing it by name will only normalize the use of torture.

And what happens at that point? Democracy falls apart, says Sullivan. For one thing, Bush would veto any law that specifically prohibits a particular act of "enhanced interrogation." (In a Wall Street Journal op-ed of a few weeks ago, a former Reagan Justice Department official said, in the same piece, that over-broad definitions of torture that don't outlaw specific acts open our soldiers up to prosecution and we shouldn't outlaw specific acts because that hampers our ability to effectively conduct interrogations. Does this make any sense?) Or, he would attach a signing statement that gives him the right to ignore such legislation if, based on his own made-up interpretations of his powers, he decides he wants to.

Once torture becomes normalized, it can be used anytime, anywhere:

What this complacent view doesn't grapple with is that these torture techniques can be used against any terror suspect; that such suspects are not subject to due process under president Bush's understanding of his powers; that such suspects can be captured within the United States; that they can be citizens; and that the war that justifies this extraordinary power is defined as permanent. That is why combining the power to detain without charge with the power to torture is an effective suspension of the rule of law and the Constitution. And such a suspension is astonishingly broad and open-ended.

Witness the Jose Padilla fiasco. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was held incommunicado and denied his right of habeas corpus for two years for allegedly plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb" (a non-nuclear explosive that would, if detonated, release radioactive material). There was no complex legal issue to grapple with in that case, no issues of jurisdiction or standing as with Guántanamo Bay. Padilla was a U.S. citizen, captured on U.S. territory. End of story. By any measure of legality, he should have been held in a civilian prison and given his day in court like any other civilian. The Bush administration, however, wanted to prosecute him as an "enemy combatant" and strip him of his Constitutional rights. Because, you know, in this War on Terr', we can't afford to give even U.S. citizens access to courts, as that could compromise national security. (The Bush administration has also argued that the War on Terr' is so drastically different from other wars that U.S. judges shouldn't even be able to adjudicate legal issues relating to this war, because they just don't have the experience and understanding to deal with the unfathomable threats to national security that might occur.)

Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court put the kaibosh on the Bush administration and ordered Padilla to be charged with a crime or released. The Bush administration did charge him with a crime, but it wasn't even the "dirty bomb" plot for which he was originally arrested.

For Sen. Chuck Schumer to compromise on the issue of waterboarding is potentially very troubling. What are the Democrats afraid of? That Bush is going to continue to make stupid statements about their do-nothingness to the media? Why should the Democrats care what Bush thinks? The part of the country that dislikes them already dislikes them, and Bush doesn't need to convince that part of the country. The part of the country that likes them won't be swayed by Bush, since that part of the country knows that Bush is a moron. Are they afraid that Bush will shove them into a locker and take their collective lunch money? What's going on, here? It sounds as though Democrats are internalizing the statements Bush makes about them. If that's the case, we need to elect a less neurotic Congress in 2008.

Thanks, Rich!

UPDATE

Just in case you weren't sure whether or not waterboarding counted as torture, four retired JAGs (Judge Advocates General; JAGs are military lawyers) sent a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asserting that waterboarding is, according to active duty JAGs, "unanimously and unambiguously [...] inhumane and illegal and would constitute a violation of international law, to include Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions."

Furthermore, perhaps in an effort to dispel the myth of the 24 torture scenario (a scenario in which we need to torture a suspect so as to get information about an imminent threat; Rudy Giuliani has often used this falsehood as a justification for torture; professional military interrogators say that such a situation never occurs), the JAGs state that "[c]ruelty and torture -- no less than wanton killing -- is neither justified nor legal in any circumstance."

They conclude by reaffirming, unambiguously, that "[w]aterboarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances. To suggest otherwise -- or even to give credence to such a suggestion -- represents both an affront to the law and the cores values of our nation."

Hmm, perhaps this War on Terr' isn't so different, after all? But that answer is too simplistic. The better answer, and no doubt the one that Rush Limbaugh would use, is that these former JAGs hate America and want to see the terrorists win.

Posted by Mark at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why pay for insurance if the insurance company isn't going to pay for the services that you signed up for them to pay for?

Kos, proprietor of Daily Kos, lives just up the road in Berkeley and has had a heck of a time trying to get his insurance provider, Blue Shield, to pay for an anesthesiology procedure. "Of course, we never asked them to process this at the 'preferred rate'," he says. "We ask [sic] them to pay for the service. That's why we're paying over $800/month in insurance premiums. To be insured." He concludes, "How could a government-run service be any worse than these unaccountable, unethical, disgusting creeps?"

Opponents of government-run healthcare claim that such a system would be inefficient, but in the United States, people with private insurance often have to deal with each physician individually if they're taken care of by a team of physicians (e.g., if a person had surgery, that person may have to deal with each doctor's billing individually). Furthermore, even though you're paying hundreds of dollars per month for that insurance, there's no guarantee that the insurance company will pay for your treatment. This goes back to what I said the other day: insurance companies are more than happy to pay for a prescription here or there, but when it comes to expensive procedures, they don't want to pay, and they insert language into your contract that gives them the right to waive payment for expensive procedures whenever they want. You may think that you're covered, but for any given procedure, there may be a loophole that exempts the healthcare provider from paying for it.

The price of healthcare (guess what? It's steep)

A study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2004 found that the price of healthcare is rising faster than employee wages:

“Since 2000, the cost of health insurance has risen 59 percent, while workers wages have increased only 12 percent. Since 2001, employee contributions increased 57 percent for single coverage and 49 percent for family coverage, while workers wages have increased only 12 percent. This is why fewer small employers are offering coverage, and why fewer workers are taking-up coverage,” said Jon Gabel, vice president for Health Systems Studies at the Health Research and Educational Trust.

Let's be completely clear: "employer-provided" does not always mean that the employer pays for your healthcare. What is more likely than not is that you pay a certain amount per month for your healthcare. At my job, $30 is deducted from each paycheck to pay for my healthcare plan, if I elect to enroll in a healthcare plan (which, of course, I emphatically do).

And for the people out there who insist that, if you don't have employer-provided healthcare, you should just purchase your own: let's crunch the numbers. Purchasing your own healthcare is very expensive; in fact, it could be considered a regressive tax (the tax rate increasing as income decreases), since people at the lowest incomes are less likely to have jobs that provide them with healthcare, forcing them to obtain private healthcare at a cost many times that of what employees with employer-provided healthcare pay. The Kaiser Foundation found that people who purchase their own insurance pay an average of $308 for single coverage; as I mentioned above, I pay $30 a month. Does it make much sense that the people who are least in a position to pay a lot for healthcare are the ones who are most often going to pay a lot for healthcare?

Or you could just go without healthcare. President Bush feels that we have a very robust healthcare system for those who don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, or don't have their own insurance. "The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans," he said in Cleveland on July 10. "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." Bush is technically correct in that federal law requires emergency rooms to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay; however, this near-sighted philosophy ignores the fact that (1) emergency room care is very expensive; and (2) the cost of treating the emergency patient could have been significantly reduced had the patient had access to preventative care, eliminating his need to use expensive emergency care.

But, to paraphrase Kanye West, George Bush doesn't care about poor people. He has demonstrated time and time again that it is more important to allow private industry to make money than it is to permit people to survive -- and by "survive," I mean "not die." This is also the situation in Iraq, where incompetent private contractors get no-bid contracts and then proceed to not do things they said they would.

Posted by Mark at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Part of the reason that we have a separation of powers in the Constitution is that the authors of the Constitution wanted to force compromise to happen. With no one branch of government, or even one person, singly in charge of every state process, making unilateral decisions would be difficult. Compromises that everyone could agree to had to happen for business to get done.

For six years, President Bush has been executive and legislator. As head of his party, which was also in control of Congress, he was able to dictate whatever he wanted. If a particular Republican voted in a way that he didn't like, Karl Rove's political machinery would work to make sure that person wasn't re-elected. Like the political bosses of turn-of-the-century New York, Bush kept a tight ship; everyone who didn't fall into lockstep with the Bush/Cheney philosophy was smeared, or ousted, or both.

Once the Democrats were in charge, Bush suddenly had to do something he had never done before: compromise. Except he never compromised. He always refused to budge, insisting that whenever Democrats held hearings, or demanded accountability for the war in Iraq, or oversight over warrantless wiretapping, they "lost sight of the fact that we're at war."

Hey, guess what! He said that yesterday! Apparently, during a time of war, Congress should acquiesce and do whatever the president wants. Failure to do so may result in another terrorist attack.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee hinted that it may not recommend that Judge Michael Mukasey, Bush's nominee for Attorney General, be sent to the full Senate. Some senators have expressed reservations that he refused to say whether or not "waterboarding" -- an interrogation technique banned by the Army but maybe (or maybe not) currently being used by the CIA -- counts as "torture." Mukasey said that he couldn't say whether or not it was torture. This article from The New York Times indicates that, if Mukasey did say waterboarding constituted torture, the administration (which, let's be honest because we're all adults here, is doing, otherwise their knickers wouldn't be in such a twist about it) could be liable domestically and internationally for war crimes.

But what I'm more concerned about is Judge Mukasey's apparent belief that the president may not necessarily be bound by the law, as long as the violation of that law is because he is defending the country. Read as Judge Mukasey takes a page from the Alberto Gonzales Doublespeak Playbook:

LEAHY: Can a president authorize illegal conduct? Can the president -- can a president put somebody above the law by authorizing illegal conduct?

MUKASEY: The only way for me to respond to that in the abstract is to say that if by illegal you mean contrary to a statute, but within the authority of the president to defend the country, the president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law.

Can the president put somebody above the law? No. The president doesn't stand above the law.

But the law emphatically includes the Constitution. It starts with the Constitution.

"Putting somebody within the law" doesn't make any sense. If you thought Mukasey's views on executive power were any less erroneous or made-up than Alberto Gonzales', then you thought wrong.

President Bush also said yesterday, "People who say we are not at war are either disingenuous or naïve." I'm surprised he's using words like "disingenuous," which is a big word for him. But does he know what it means? Perhaps he doesn't realize that it is also "disingenuous" to state that the United States does not torture, and then turn around and refuse to outlaw specific acts that could constitute torture, or to sign into law, without equivocation, a bill that bans the use of torture in the War on Terr'. Now that you have a fun new word to use, Mr. President, would you call the latter acts "disingenuous"?

The president's solution to Congress' refusal to allow Mukasey to get a full hearing is ... nothing. In a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, Bush said, "If the Senate Judiciary Committee were to block Judge Mukasey on these grounds, they would send a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for attorney general. And that would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war." Apparently, it's asking way too much for an Attorney General nominee to take a stand on executive authority that doesn't feature the president as the head of all three branches of government. Equally burdensome is asking Mukasey to state his opinion on waterboarding. Since we don't officially know that waterboarding even goes on, what's the harm in asking him his opinion?

The end result will be not a compromise, but a whole lot of nothing. Bush will pout, fold his arms and hold his breath while Congress does the same. The onus, however, is on Bush to find a nominee that Congress likes. This is one of Congress' checks on the president: the latter's nominees require "the advice and consent of the Senate." No consent, no nominee. In much the same way that the president is allowed to fire any U.S. attorney at any time, for any reason, it is within the Senate's purview to refuse to consent to a president's choice for Attorney General for any reason.

The president is not beyond compromise, though. In 2006, he withdrew the nomination of Harriet Miers because the political cost-benefit analysis showed that she wasn't worth the humiliation of her being voted down by the Senate, which she would have been, by both Democrats and Republicans. Justice Alito's approval by the Senate was due in part to a pact entered into by Bush and then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Arlen Specter (R-PA). Specter didn't like Alito, anyway, but in exchange for Alito making it out of committee, Bush would agree that the Judiciary Committee -- and not the secretive Intelligence Committee -- would be the venue for hearings about the warrantless wiretapping program.

The political meme of "all these Democrats do is waste people's time with their hearings and their frivolous spending" that began two weeks ago has reached a head, as Bush triumphantly smiles his asinine, shit-eating grin while the Democrats stall his nominee and appear to prove him right. This is a power play for Bush, and to back down now would signal that the Democrats do have real authority, an impression the president would like to avoid. The Miers withdrawal was bi-partisan and mitigated by a news release indicating that she withdrew herself. Okay, maybe she couldn't stand the heat; she can at least reasonably be given the benefit of the doubt. But a Mukasey withdrawal will emphatically be interpreted as having occurred because the Democrats successfully blocked him. And if it appears that the Democrats actually have some authority, they may (yikes) actually start to act like they do.

Posted by Mark at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A report released to today by the Economic Policy Institute, "a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank," shows that the percentage of uninsured Americans rose 2.1% from 2000 to 2006. According to the report, employer-provided health coverage, which is the predominant form of health coverage in the United States, fell 4.5% in the same period.

Lest you think that you're safe in your white-collar job, be warned! The report emphasizes that loss of coverage occurred "across the socio-economic spectrum. [...] Even the most highly educated and highest wage workers had lower rates of insurance coverage in 2006 than in 2000." In 2006, only 61.4% of "white-collar" workers were covered by an employer's health insurance.

At the same time, the number of uninsured workers rose 2.8%. "Uninsured workers" are workers who in jobs where employer-provided heath coverage was never an option. The ethnic composition of uninsured workers is, of course, skewed. People identified as "hispanic" make up 40% of the uninsured workers category.

The point of this report is to show that private healthcare is not a viable option. Even as people are remain employed, they lose healthcare coverage. While Republicans and other proponents of private healthcare view healthcare as a commodity, the report suggests that that model is flawed. Moreover, non-employer-provided private healthcare is very expensive for just basic care, even discounting co-pays and deductibles.

Also, observe an interesting footnote that contradicts what President Bush and others have said about SCHIP expansion:

Opponents of SCHIP expansion argue that the availability of a public insurance option leads parents to voluntarily drop private coverage and shift their children's coverage to the public sector. As shown in an EPI Economic Snapshot, research shows very little of such "crowding out" actually occurs. The large majority of SCHIP recipients—86%—were either not covered six months before entering SCHIP or had lost private coverage within six months prior to enrolling.

Republicans, who profess to believe in a free market (except where it hinders the ability of a firm to make a lot of money, in which case, Republicans believe that the government should assist those firms, while at the same time insisting that government should not assist individuals), argue that the government's sheer size and scope is an unfair advantage, and government's entry into a given industry will cause firms to leave that industry because they cannot effectively compete with the government. This is called "crowding out." It's the number one reason why President Bush and others oppose a government-run healthcare system. This justification is based on the assumption that healthcare is and ought to be a commodity available for sale in the open market, like a car, refrigerator, or toothpaste.

The above blockquote shows that the "crowding out" effect is negligible, since 86% of the people who would be covered by SCHIP weren't even buying private insurance, anyway! It's not that the government pushed consumers toward private healthcare; quite the opposite, since, in losing coverage, the consumers were pushed out by private healthcare providers.

The "invisible hand" metaphor articulated by Adam Smith (in doing something good for yourself, you will necessary do good for society) works only when the motives of both the individual and society are the same. When it comes to healthcare, the motives of the health insurance company and the customer are actually in opposition. The interest of the insurance company is in making profit, and to do that, it must pay out as little as possible to customers. The interest of the customer is in getting well, and to do that, the customer must receive an unknown amount of care, which equates to an unknown amount of money. In order to get well, a customer may need only to see a doctor and receive some pills; insurance companies like doing this because it minimizes the amount of money it has to spend. On the other hand, the stories from Michael Moore's Sicko were about customers who needed a tremendous amount of expensive care: diagnosis with expensive equipment, multiple expensive surgeries, treatment with expensive drugs, and possibly expensive aftercare. Insurance companies, if they're rational, hate these customers, since it is these customers that decrease their profits. And, it turns out, they often refuse to pay for treatment, or they direct their doctors not to provide expensive treatments, even while the doctors themselves may know that it is exactly that expensive treatment that could cure them. (There might be a possibility that the treatment may not cure them, but ethically, a doctor is obligated to try to cure a patient even if that cure might be expensive; in the trade-off between cost and human life, human life should always win.)

Ironically, the customers who need healthcare most are those customers for whom insurance companies want to provide healthcare the least. This is why private health insurance doesn't make practical sense. The needs of both parties are diametrically opposed, as compared to, say, a consumer who is in need of a toothbrush.

The government, on the other hand, is not in the business of making profit. It is in the business of ensuring that its citizens live. (If you disagree with this statement as one of government's objectives, then you also necessarily disagree with the existence of public police departments, fire departments, and emergency rooms, since these are all services that could be provided by private companies based on fees or subscriptions.) The government's incentive in a business is not profit, so it can afford to engage in functions that private industry may not, such as providing healthcare at cost or even taking a loss, all in the name of, again, not profit, but the continued survival of its citizens. It is for this reason that healthcare should not be controlled by the government, not by private firms.

Posted by Mark at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)