Month: March 2005

Governmental Meddling in Sports

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by Charles Yesterday, a group of millionaires–most of whom are or were articially enhanced through the miracles of medical technology–sat before a Republican Congress and wasted a whole day.  Secondary matters such as war, budget deficits, the economy, the environment and terrorism took a back seat.  While there is a history of governmental involvement in … Read more

San Diego Bishop Behaves Very Badly

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By Edward

Via Daily Kos

The family of a gay San Diego nightclub owner who died of heart congestion at age 31 is being denied a funeral in any of the the Roman Catholic diocese’s churches by its Bishop because he disapproves of the business the dead man owned.

The owner of a popular local nightclub with a gay clientele can’t have a funeral in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego because the church has deemed his business "inconsistent with Catholic moral teaching."

None of the 98 Catholic churches in San Diego or Imperial counties will be allowed to provide services for Club Montage owner John McCusker as a result of the decision by San Diego Bishop Robert Brom.

The Church is hiding behind a very flimsy argument on this, IMO:

The diocese issued a statement yesterday, saying: "The facts regarding the business activities of John McCusker were not known by church officials when arrangements were requested for his funeral. However, when these facts became known, the bishop concluded that to avoid public scandal Mr. McCusker cannot be granted a funeral in a Catholic church in the chapel of the Diocese of San Diego."

Chancellor Rodrigo Valdivia, a diocese spokesman, said the bishop’s order applies to all 98 parishes within the diocese’s jurisdiction.

Valdivia wouldn’t comment when asked to specify which of McCusker’s business activities violated church doctrine. He emphasized that the church’s decision had nothing to do with the sexual orientation of McCusker, who was gay. Instead, the decision was based on McCusker’s "public activity" as a businessman, Valdivia said.

"We received information that the business he was involved with was inconsistent with Catholic teachings," Valdivia said.

But when pressed on how frequently the Church refuses funerals based on this policy, the spokesman said he couldn’t recall any other examples. As one commenter on Kos noted, the Roman Catholic Church would not do this to a member of the mafia, but a gay nightclub owner, that violates church doctrine.

Sure to follow in the wake of growing fury this is causing in the gay community are further investigations into Bishop Brom’s alleged molestation history:

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US Oil Industry Running the Show in Iraq

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By Edward

A report by the BBC’s Greg Palast on Newsnight indicates that US "Big Oil" executives have had an alarming amount of input into how Iraq’s oil industry (and hence, elections and other things) has been run since the fall of Hussein. From secret planning meetings well before 9/11 to defeating a Neo-Con plan to privatize the Iraqi oil industry (and thereby destroy the OPEC cartel), Big Oil has been effectively putting its interest in not being barred from bidding on Iraqi reserves ahead of other concerns.

Two years ago today – when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad – protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq’s oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush’s first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d’etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

We’ve always known that Bush was full of it when he suggested the invasion would not take place if Hussein complied with the weapons inspectors (and I don’t mind saying, this nullifies the defense that noncompliance with standing UN resolutions justified the war IMO), but intentions to move forward with a forced coup d’etat months before 9/11 makes all the WMD in the hands of terrorists blather that much more insulting.

But back to the Oil Industry, though. Apparently, in one way, what was good for Big Oil was indeed good for the nation (Iraq, that is). Apparently, going into Iraq, the NeoCons were in control in as much as privatization was the plan, but that idea quickly revealed itself to have been a match meeting a stick of dynamite:

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This One’s For You, Rilkefan (Special Volokh Edition)

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by hilzoy

Last night, Eugene Volokh wrote the following about the slow and public throttling of an Iranian serial murderer:

“I particularly like the involvement of the victims’ relatives in the killing of the monster; I think that if he’d killed one of my relatives, I would have wanted to play a role in killing him. Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there’s a good explanation.

I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.”

I read this this morning and considered posting on it, but didn’t, since everything I had to say seemed so obvious. To wit:

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Erin go Bra-less: A Limerick Slam

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Just keep them this side of XXX, ‘kay? By jeepers, St. Pat’s Day’s is here And all along Fifth there’s great cheer But I’d trade all that charm Hell, I’d give my right arm For a nice pint of green-dye-free beer. Although, a free print of green-dye beer would do, as well, I suppose.

Note to Self: Learn Mandarin, Fast

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Yesterday’s vote in the Senate has taught me that appealing to America’s sense of pride in our land or responsibility to future generations as a means toward discouraging drilling in ANWR is a losing battle. Americans want cheap gas today, even it it means we’ll find ourselves right back where we are 5 years from now. Therefore, it’s time to appeal to the only emotion apparently still capable of motivating Americans to act politically: fear. (Hey, if Bush can constantly use it, who among his supporters can complain?)

Drilling for oil in ANWR will benefit China. China, the emerging economic superpower that’s still run by Communists, will be the real winner if a large amount of oil is extracted from beneath the Arctic soil.

Why? In a word: geography.

Tom Friedman quotes noted energy economist Philip Verleger, who explains:

"Oil in Alaska cannot easily or efficiently be shipped to our Gulf Coast refineries. The logical markets are on the West Coast of the United States and in Asia. Consumers in China and Japan, not the U.S., will be the real beneficiaries of any big Alaska find.

"With a big find, China and Japan will be able to increase imports from a dependable supplier – the U.S. – while consumers in the U.S. will still be at the mercy of unreliable suppliers, such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. It is simple geography. [Also], a big find will lead to lower prices in the short term, promoting more emissions and more warming."

Moreover, focusing exclusively on squeezing out a little more supply will only discourage conservation, Mr. Verleger added, setting the stage for higher prices again in three or four years – "when exhausting oil reserves and burgeoning demand from China and India will drive the price of oil to well above $100 a barrel." That will put even more money in the pockets of some of the world’s worst governments.

That’s right. Drilling in ANWR, which is being touted by the administration as necessary to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, will actually do nowhere near as much toward that end as Norton is suggesting. Rather, it will help the nation that’s set to challenge our #1 Superpower position .

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Wolfowitz And The World Bank

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George Bush has nominated Paul Wolfowitz to run the World Bank. I don’t know much about Wolfowitz’s views on development, and a small part of me is thrilled that he’ll be safely away from the Pentagon, unable to influence our defense policy. But a bigger part of me thinks that this is a bad idea, … Read more

PAYGO

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by hilzoy Anyone up for emailing Senators? Today, according to Mark Schmitt, “Senators Chafee and Feingold are expected to offer an amendment to the budget resolution restoring the “Pay-as-you-go” rules, known as PAYGO”. From their press release: “”The Senate once again has the chance to do its part to pass common-sense fiscal policies to rein … Read more

The Superiority of Live Dogs to a Dead Lion

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By Edward Jean-Paul Sarte, who would have been 100 this June, is being remembered in a major exhibiton at the French National Library. Although he’s not the only one, The New York Times’ Alan Riding is marking the occassion by asking, "But is Sartre remotely relevant today?" As political visionaries, two of his contemporary critics, … Read more

Blogs to Read

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Captain’s Quarters Blog has two excellent stories on its front page.  First there is this story about the Irish terrorist group, the IRA, and how it may have finally exhausted its support.    I won’t be the first to say it, but it is about time.  Long before 9/11 Irish-Americans should have been able to … Read more

Promotion Priorities and Pretense

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By Edward

Ever have something you read bother you but not recognize immediately why?

While writing this post on Gale Norton’s scandalously misleading op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, something about her rationale lodged itself in the confusion corner of my brain (yes, that’s an opening, let your inner stand-up comedian have at it).

The troubling idea was contained in the central thesis of her essay on why we "must" drill for oil in ANWR (I broke it down for myself to see if I could figure out what was amiss with it):

[1]As part of a comprehensive energy strategy of [2] promoting conservation and [3]reducing dependence on foreign oil, [4]we must increase our energy production here at home.

It took my brain a few hours to do some shuffling of those four ideas, but eventually it all congealed to illuminate for me that the notion that BushCo has a strategy of promoting conservation that (as Norton implies it should) morally balances the necessary evil of breaking our national oath with regard to protecting ANWR is pure grade-A horseshit. Seriously. It’s total manure.

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All About Oil

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–Sebastian Matthew Yglesias has a post which reminded me of a topic I wanted to write about.  When talking about politics/diplomacy/foreign policy in the Middle East, the comment "It’s about the oil" will typically come up if the conversation goes on long enough.  The problem with that line is that it has just enough of … Read more

The Fourteenth Amendment Strikes Again!

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by hilzoy I’m not trying to set a record for most posts in a short period, but the New York Times has a story I have to write on: “A California judge ruled today that the state’s ban on gay marriage violated the state constitution, despite social traditions and historical definitions that “marriage” is a … Read more

Support A Ban On Extraordinary Rendition

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by hilzoy Via email, Katherine the Sorely Missed tells me that Edward Markey has introduced a bill, H. R. 952, that would outlaw extraordinary rendition. Most readers of this blog are probably familiar with extraordinary rendition, but just in case: Katherine summarized the issues in an earlier post, in which she wrote: “”Extraordinary rendition” is … Read more

Advice For Liberal Bloggers …

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Jeanne D’Arc posts on a story in today’s New York Times that contains the following priceless passage: “Asked what lessons liberal and progressive bloggers could learn from the experience of FreeRepublic, Mr. Taylor replied that while “I’m loath to give them advice,” they might have to outgrow the conspiracy-theory stage of blogging to produce reports … Read more

The Gopher

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And so I pop up, like some sort of unkennable furry rodent, from my piles of briefs and filehistories and pleadings to comment on the least consequential story of the day:

Ramesh Ponnuru is an ass.

I’m not an anti-Ponnuru.  Indeed, I don’t know him from Adam.  I’ve barely read the guy.  I do find it a little weird that everyone at NROnline takes pains to point out how intelligent he is whenever they criticize him — but, then, I find a lot of stuff at NROnline a little weird.  Calling a conservative commentator "K-Lo."  John Derbyshire’s strange affection for the word "buggery."  Donald Luskan. 

Look, man, don’t judge me.  I just read it for the articles.  The Jonah Goldberg articles ….

I digress.  Back to Ramesh Ponnuru, and his recent ass-hood.

For those who have had better things to do with their time, a quick review:

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You Call That a Crowd?

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By Edward In what is an anything-but-dull duel of street rallies, the anti-Syrian citizens of Lebanon responded to last week’s pro-Syrian (Hezbollah-sponsored) march with what is, by all accounts, a much, much bigger pro-Democracy rally: Hundreds of thousands of opposition demonstrators chanted "Freedom, sovereignty, independence" and unfurled a huge Lebanese flag in Beirut on Monday, … Read more

The Importance of Being Obstinate

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By Edward

If there’s one important lesson Rove teaches his boss and his staff it’s how to stay on message no matter what. Assimilate your critics’ rhetoric within your statements as best you can, so that to the casual observers it looks as if you’re moderate, but don’t budge from the "solution" you want to see enacted, regardless of the facts. If you don’t get what you want, just wait a while, and then start the whole process up again with the same "solution" and arguments slightly warmed over.

Gale Norton has apparently learned this lesson well. After having been told "No!" to drilling in ANWR, the Interior Secretary is once again hawking the same tired arguments with a new coat of fresh "moderation" but the same old expected outcome. She begins her op-ed in the Times today with a prose so relatively romantic even Byron would have been embarrassed to offer it (I’ll highlight the more ludicrously poetic bits):

Even though it is noon, the landscape is pitch black. The wind chill stands at 70 below zero. A lone man drives across a vast frozen plain on a road made of ice. He sits atop a large, bug-like machine with enormous wheels. He is heading for a spot on the tundra pinpointed by satellite imagery to explore for oil. When the spring thaw comes and the road melts, any evidence that a man or a machine ever crossed there will be gone.

Ahh…if you close your eyes, you can almost hear the approving whispers of the caribou in the wind. Look at the lone man. It’s absolutely amazing that the technology has advanced so far that oil can be extracted by one man and his one machine (and even more amazing is that we’re left assuming this one man built the ice road himself as well). Norton continues her fairy tale:

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Iran, Diplomacy, and Nuclear Weapons

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–Sebastian Despite early reports to the contrary European negotiators have been reminded again that their carrot-only approach to diplomacy doesn’t work so well.  In an attempt to bolster the European effort and coupled with a European commitment to refer the stop blocking attempts to refer the matter to the UNSC if Iran continues along this … Read more

A Three-Point Plan for John Bolton

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by Charles

The appointment of State Department veteran John Bolton to the UN ambassadorship was a bold one.  You don’t select a guy like Bolton and expect milquetoast.  Quite the opposite.  While there is no shortage of tut-tutting and worries from unnamed sources, Bolton is just the guy to challenge the waning moral authority and ineffectual leadership of this bloated bureaucratic body, as Anne Applebaum aptly noted.  So, in keeping with the spirit of this choice, I propose a bold three-point initiative for Mr. Bolton after his confirmation.  These are the sort of right-off-the-starting-block actions that will set the right tenor between the US and UN for the remainder of Bush’s term.  Two of the three are deliberately confrontational.  As they should be, since the UN has more often than not worked against American and global interests than with them.

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More Collective Action: Bankruptcy Bill

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Politology has started a coalition of bloggers opposed to the hateful bankruptcy bill. The coalition crosses party lines, as it should — this isn’t a liberal or conservative bill, it’s a disgrace. I am signing on (as myself, obviously, not as Obsidian Wings as a whole.) It’s obviously likely to pass the House and then … Read more

Sign the Petition.

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For who have been spending quality time under a rock for the last few weeks (or getting all their news from ObWi, since we haven’t much covered it), the FEC has suggested that it may begin regulating campaign speech on the internet.  That is, blogs.  That is, you and me.  This is a gross and, … Read more

Music Blather Friday

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Todays topic is the best modern rock band that I’m currently listening to through my headphones.  Actually I want to say that they are the best modern rock band still producing new material, but I’m not really up enough on rock to be sure.  In any case 3 Doors Down is a darn good band … Read more

Freakin’ Finally!!!

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It’s about bloody time! Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world’s first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al-Qaida leader. The ruling was issued by the Islamic … Read more

Art World Scandals

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By Edward

Warning: if the art world bores you, like, oh, say…NASCAR does me, you’ll want to skip this one.
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The art market is beyond white hot again and so, with success, of course, comes scandal. In fact, it feels like the press is paying a bit more than the usual amount of attention to the wheelings and dealings of the last great unregulated industry in the Western world lately (and of course, that makes everyone associated with the art world feel all warm and fuzzy for finally being noticed, on one hand, and rather anxious about strangers peering in too closely, on the other).

Two scandals of particular note are the Lehmann/Mehertu scandal and the NPR/MoMA scandal. The Lehmann/Mehertu scandal involves money, access, and ego. The NPR/MoMA scandal involves money, Nazis, and Egon Schiele.

Scandal 1:

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Race Based Hiring and Firing Decisions

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I am not one of the subset of conservatives who denies that there are still race problems in the US.  I disagree with affirmative action in most cases because the small plus factors which are argued for often become much larger in practice, and because I think such programs can actually cause or deepen racial … Read more

A Few Bad Apples

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By Edward

So the bad apples have been isolated, there is no connection to the top brass, and stricter guidelines have been put in place to keep incidents like those that happened at Abu Ghraib from happening again. All is relatively well in the world with regard to America’s relationship to torture. At least according to the recently released report by Navy Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, who "conducted more than 800 interviews and reviewed the conclusions of several other investigations."

Church concluded that no civilian or uniformed leaders directed or encouraged abuse, and his report holds Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top defense leaders largely blameless on the narrow question of pressuring interrogators as well as the larger matter of interrogation policies.

"We found no evidence to support the notion that the office of the secretary of defense (or other military or White House staff) applied explicit pressure for intelligence or gave ‘back channel’ permission to forces in the field in Iraq or in Afghanistan" to exceed the bounds of authorized interrogation practices, the report said.

But if that’s the case (i.e., those we elected are not responsible), why do even I still feel the need to shower every time this subject comes up? Can all of the abuses now coming to light really be dismissed as merely a lack of expertise and oversight? Who are these bad apples cropping up in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, and even the CIA? What’s it say about our culture or our military in general that bad apples are so plentiful? Are our troops really just that stressed out or undertrained? Why isn’t that seen as a crisis?

The report’s conclusion hinges on this one statement:

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p-art-y time: open thread

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OK, so I know I was mocking the neo-con supporters for partying over the most silly of things, and, in lots of ways, there’s nothing more silly than art, but I’m in day three of the most brutal week, party-schedule-wise, the New York art world has (it’s the Armory Show week), and I want to … Read more

The IRA Doesn’t Get It

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By Edward

In response to growing public and political pressure to hand over the IRA members who brutally murdered 33-year-old father of two, Robert McCartney, the terrorist organization offered to "shoot" the men responsible. Uh, hello!!! You’re not quite understanding what’s happening here. As the BBC’s Mark Simpson points out though, this alarming disconnect on the IRA’s part is not surprising:

Few people in Belfast were surprised to hear that the IRA’s answer to recent problems was to reach for its guns.

After all, that is what the IRA knows best.

In spite of the peace process, it remains a terrorist organisation with thousands of weapons and, when pushed, it is not afraid to use them.

So it was no great shock to find out how the leadership responded when faced with the embarrassment of IRA "volunteers" being involved in the murder of a Sinn Fein supporter, Robert McCartney.

Instead of politics, the IRA preferred pistols.

Rather than calling on the killers to go to the police, it preferred "justice" from a firing squad.

The big surprise was that the IRA made this position public.

The greater shock is that the IRA can’t seem to appreciate how public opinion is turning against them. According to the NYTimes report:

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Bad Sh*t Happens…and Happens…and Happens

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by Edward

via a diary by Harley on Tacitus
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What kind of monsters are they churning out over at the CIA? I mean, I know they must have taken lots of heat for missing the signs that the 9/11 attacks were coming, but at what point did Tenet or whomever start approving secret rendition programs and training our agents to behave just like the tyrants we’re supposed to be clearing off the earth:

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards — paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit — dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.

As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic — "hypothermia" was listed as the cause of death — the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive’s family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial. He is on no one’s registry of captives, not even as a "ghost detainee," the term for CIA captives held in military prisons but not registered on the books, they said.

"He just disappeared from the face of the earth," said one U.S. government official with knowledge of the case.

The CIA case officer, meanwhile, has been promoted…

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Bankruptcy Cloture Vote Roll Call

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The cloture vote on the hateful bankruptcy bill has passed, which means that the bankruptcy bill won’t be filibustered, and will probably pass. Every Republican voted for cloture, but it couldn’t have passed without Democratic defections. There were fourteen: Biden (D-DE) Byrd (D-WV) Carper (D-DE) Conrad (D-ND) Johnson (D-SD) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lieberman (D-CT) … Read more

Maximum Pain

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From the New Scientist, via Effect Measure: “Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that … Read more

Premature Jubilation

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By Edward

Update: cross-posted on Liberal Street Fighter

What is it about NeoCon supporters that causes them to party like it’s 1999 over the most precarious of victories? Revenge of the high-school wallflowers syndrome? Seriously, from the "Mission Accomplished" embarrassment; to the decorating of Tenet, Franks, and Bremer; to the currently spreading canonization of Paul Wolfowitz, it’s as if they have a warehouse bursting at the seams with streamers and helium balloons they can’t hold back. "Puh-le-e-e-e-aze, let’s us dance now…we’ve learned the Macarena!"

Let me back up here, though, before anyone concludes that this is about sour grapes. Back when it was first becoming apparent to me that the invasion of Iraq was less about WMD and more about Wolfowitz et al.’s desire to test their social re-engineering theories, I acknowledged openly and frequently that perhaps one day he would be heralded as a genius in our history books. In fact, I truthfully said I hope so. But the cart is being shoved out ahead of the horse all over the place where Wolfie’s concerned.

In a column stuffed with the sort of sentiments normally reserved for love-struck teenagers’ diaries, David (I really am the NYTimes’ most transparent hack) Brooks is nearly panting with adulation for the man he says has "always been an ardent champion of freedom." But, as usual, Brooks gets it exactly backwards:

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