Question timeGeorge Willhas some questions for Senator Kerry… Au revoir, HowardA sad post-mortem on the Dean Campaign.
I see, in Dean's seemingly doomed bid for the nomination, more and more of my own doomed attempts to convince students that the reason their Union kept sliding further and further into a hole in the ground (literally, as of 2002) was because they kept electing callow idiots, and that if they'd only stop electing callow idiots, then the decline could be halted and reversed. They never did; unable to bear it any longer, I resigned from the Union Council, and watched with quiet satisfaction while the Union collapsed into corruption, ineffectiveness, bankrupcy, and, ultimately, the demolition of its offices. I'm not even sure if it still exists now in any meaningfull sense; in spite of the continual efforts of a minority of dedicated Council members, the voters felt that they knew better, and they got exactly the Union they deserved: corrupt, ineffective, bankrupt, and, ultimately, homeless. The Weekly standard on Bush v. KerryStory. The discomfort of strangersInteresting essay in the Guardian from David Goodhart. ...In the rhetoric of the modern liberal state, the glue of ethnicity ("people who look and talk like us") has been replaced with the glue of values ("people who think and behave like us"). But British values grow, in part, out of a specific history and even geography. Too rapid a change in the make-up of a community not only changes the present, it also, potentially, changes our link with the past. As Bob Rowthorn wrotein Prospect in February 2003, we may lose a sense of responsibility for our own history - the good things as well as the shameful things in it - if too many citizens no longer identify with it... Looks like Nader's in for 2004As posited by a Daily Standard article that could hardly contain their sense of joy, Nader 2004 may be a presidential campaign run entirely out of spite.
Nader, on the other hand, either has learned a very imortant lesson, or else he's learned nothing. Neither possiblity speaks well of him. Either he learned that, by threatening to run in 2004, he can seek to control the democratic agenda, invoking the spectre of four more years in the wilderness; or, he doesn't understand how necessary it is that this is a two-horse race. One possiblity paints him as duplicitous and opportunistic, the other paints him as selfish and foolish. Neither option speaks highly of him. Kerry returns fire on gay marriage. Sort of.Story.
Kerry, campaigning in Maine in advance of Sunday's Democratic caucuses there, stepped gingerly around the potentially explosive issue of gay marriage. He said he is opposed to the Wednesday ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which said that nothing short of marriage would guarantee gay couples their full constitutional rights. He did not rule out backing a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, a step the Massachusetts legislature is considering.
"I personally believe the court is wrong," Kerry told reporters in Portland, adding that he is "opposed to [gay] marriage, period."
Unlike Republicans, the Massachusetts senator does not support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing gay marriages, such as the measure under consideration in his home state. The Democratic front-runner said he is ready to "fight" the Republicans if they decide to make it a "wedge" issue in the campaign. So...Um, that's clear then. He believes it's wrong, but he also believes that the court is wrong, and while he seems ambivalent to a State constitutional ban on gay marriage, he's also opposing a Federal ban on gay marriage.
And this is the guy who you want to run against George "tell it straight" Bush?Courting troubleToday, the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared civil unions to be insufficient to satisfy constitutional requirements, creating a de facto right to gay marrigage in MA. Are they intending to speed up the progress of a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, or are they just too ignorant to understand how this will play in that half which supports such an amendment? Crying rapeA couple of years back, a foolish young woman named Nadine Millroy Sloane made up - from thin air - a charge of rape against a member of the British Parliament. She was swiftly and robustly repudiated, and sent to jail.
Her conviction was on the same day that TV presenter John Lesley was cleared of any involvement in a series of rapes or sexual assaults, opening the way to a string of lawsuit for slander and libel from Lesley in the direction of Ulrika Johnson and the tabloid media (most particularly, Channel 5) that perpetuated the story. Actor Craig Charles was falsely accused of rape nearly a decade before that, and nearly paid the price with his career. Even though he was cleared, the allegation still hangs over him now.
All of which prompted me to repeat my frequent question: When will the accused be given the same legal right to anomynity as the accuser??
Anyway, The Guardian today carries got a (quite long, so I won't post it) poste facte explanation of what really happened, from beginning to the end. It's both fascinating and quite depressingly predictable: in short, here was a foolish young woman, in dire financial circumstances, and dubious mental health, who had money dangled in front of her by a manipulative press, and who got so tangled up in the web of lies she spun to obtain that money that she started believing her own lies. And, perfectly predictably, the Judge made a complete example of her, as a warning to anyone else who would throw around allegations of rape without foundation.
I don't know if I like this silly woman any more now than I did before I read it, but I have a degree more sympathy for her - a dangerous combination of psychological instability, poverty and duplicity. Abortion, reduxIn response to various recent reports about violence against abortion doctors, and criticism of the obvious logical failure here -
I think there's a qualitative difference between those who are "pro life" and those who are just "anti-abortion". Vicki and I - and a few others - fall into the former category. These other people fall into the latter, and I agree that there's something very wrong with the kind of people who physically attack (sometimes even kill) abortionists, and who act as if rights began at conception and ended at birth. I don't recognise those people as being pro-life - they're simply anti-abortion. Heart in gear, brain in neutral is always a dangerous thing.
I wrote last year on some general thoughts about what drives abortion and how to solve the abortion problem in a progressive and bipartisan way; q.v. ante at 12/11/2003.
A handful of additional thoughts:
Point 1: If I go down to an ICU ward today, and strangle a premature baby, I'll be charged with infanticide. Right now, a 16 year old girl can go and get an abortion at the same point in the baby's development, and not only not have to worry about being charged with infanticide, but the clinic doesn't even have to inform her parents. That, in my view, is absurd. Do you believe in the right to choose to take a defenceless life?
Point 2: To me, it's all about the science. It either is taking a life, or it is not. If science ultimately shows that it becomes a living human being at birth, then the abortion argument is moot. If it's not alive, it's not an abortion (which was what was wrong with the recent partial birth abortion bill, BTW - I'm told that it ruled out abortions carried out on foetuses that had already died. That's not an abortion - that's an assisted stillbirth! No life, no abortion!). But science doesn't show that at all. Science shows distinct brain activity early in the second trimester. If it's alive, and you decide to kill it, it's muder. The "can't survive outside the womb" argument cuts no ice with me - if I stick a breadknife in your guts, you won't survive without the help of a nurse. I thought we'd moved past the point where we allowed citizens to die in the name of natural selection.
Point 3: If the life of the mother is endangered, then we reach the point where I have to admit we leave my comfort zone. What I can't understand, however, is why no effort is made to save the baby in such circumstances. Every effort should be made to keep the mother and baby alive, and to get them both out of it. If that involves pulling c-section, go ahead. Even if that gives the baby 1 chance in 100 of survival, that's better odds than sticking a blender in its head and dismembering the remains.
Point 4: It isn't just about choice. The abortion debate is like the MP3 trading debate: the people who support it make long and impassioned arguments that hinge upon them, upon their needs, upon their situations. But they are no longer the whole point! Their thinking is clouded because they're only thinking of how something affects them, about what they want to do. But this is fallacious, because once a child has been conceived, it ceases to be a question of one person's "choice", because now two lives are being affected by the decision.
Point 5: Even if it were primarily about choice, abortion isn't a choice, it's a lack of options, peceived or real. The problem will be dealt with in part by improving education, which will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Abstinence is part of that education. So is birth control. The Bush regime is talking out of its arse on that one, and they're making the abortion problem worse by doing so (yes, you read it hear first: the Bush regime is, and will continue, to increase the abortion rate by blocking proper sex ed classes). And it will be dealt with in part by improving the options available to women - and their awareness of those options - once they have gotten pregnant. Improved support systems for those who choose to and improved adoption support will, in my view, cause demand for abortion to wither and die.
There should be no-one with heart or a brain, whether self-described as pro-choice or pro-life, who does not feel that we should engineer policies to reduce the number of instances in which women feel they have to have an abortion. Not one person in here should feel that abortion is a good option, whether they feel passionately that women should have the choice to get an abortion or not. If you do....Well, that blows my mind. I can't have a rational debate with someone who thinks abortion is a great thing for mother or child.
However, it having been said that we should reduce the number of instances in which abortion "needs" to happen, and while I'm confident that a mix of improved education, better support and reduced poverty will decimate the number of abortions carried out in the United States, there will always be some who still choose to take their child's life. In my opinion, the program that I have been advocating here having been carried out, Congress can go ahead and make it illegal (or else the science will have rendered the issue moot). Other people here will disagree and say that women must retain the choice. And I look forward to having that debate with you at that point. What I'm saying is, let's not have this argument here and now. That's not helping anyone. Let's deal with the main causes of abortion - poverty, be in financial, educational or just a plain lack of other options - and slash the abortion rate to the point where we're dealing with single figures per state per year, in a progressive and intelligent bi-partisan way which we should all be able to agree on. Then - and only then - we can argue about where that policy should run. I look forward to that argument. But there are more pressing things to argue about right now than whether it should be legal or not. Just making it illegal won't stop abortion, in my view. Dealing with the causes of abortion will cut it off at the root, and it will wither and slip into the past - just another barbaric practise we used to do before we figured out a better way.
If any of you think that makes me a misogynist, then I'm sorry you feel that that's the only way to rationalize your opinion against mine. I don't doubt that there are such people in the anti abortion crowd. I don't feel that anyone who can be described as pro life rather than anti abortion fits that label.
The pro-choice movement is determined to paint pro-lifers as being determined to take away the rights of the mother, to create some Handmaiden's Tale-esque future. There may well be a few such people (just as, by the way, there are a few people in the pro-choice movement who are genuinely pro-abortion; I've debated with them, and unlike the bulk of pro-choicers, they're deeply, deeply nuts), but for the most part, the goal is simply to observe that there are two people's rights involved, which must be balanced. Democrats and the SouthStory.
I missed this a couple of months back - an interesting paper urging the democrats not to give up the South as no longer winnable territory. Outsourcing: the tide may be turningStory.
The partial backlash against offshore IT outsourcing has gained another convert: Lehman Brothers has stopped outsourcing its IT helpdesk to Indian services giant Wipro, due to poor quality of service. The trend towards offshore outsourcing is still in full flow, but companies may start to be more skeptical of the assurances made by offshore vendors. Whatever happened to abolishing the Department of Education?Story
Great stuff from the Cato Institute: As recently as 1996, the Republican party sought to abolish the Department of Education as an inappropriate intrusion into state, local and family affairs. The GOP platform that year was clear: "The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education."
...The Department of Education itself has grown by 69.6 percent between 2002 and 2004: from $46,282 million in FY2002 to $60,600 million in FY2004. This is a remarkable increase from a party so recently committed to devolving control over education — and the silence of loyalists on this issue is still more remarkable.
...Just as British Prime Minister Tony Blair achieved Labor hegemony through policies virtually indistinguishable from those of his opponents, the Bush administration now seeks to solidify Republican control by promoting policies — unconstitutional, to boot — that should make their loyalists blush.
Small government conservatives should carefully separate the political victories of this administration from its actual victories. In federal education policy, they have suffered a defeat.
|
|
