Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Progressives”

59 Comments

Lileks finds an interesting quote from prohibition days:

There may be no clearer demonstration of the drys’ pragmatic acceptance of every variety of ally than a comment made by Mabel Willebrandt – a federal official, a feminist, a progressive – when she was asked about the faithfully dry Ku Klux Klan: “I have no objection to people dressing up in sheets, if they enjoy that sort of thing.”

I’m always amazed at how many “progressive” ideas (gun control, minimum wage, unionization) have their roots in racism (the fascist dictator Woodrow Wilson being a canonical example). People who want to call themselves “progressive” today (like Hillary Clinton) might be amazed too, if they knew their own intellectual history. Speaking of which, I loved this:

True story. A few years ago, when Katie first came to CBS News, I worked as the editor of her blog “Couric & Co.” One afternoon, I had a meeting with her in her office overlooking the CBS newsroom. Her suite of offices is gorgeous: white-on-white, with a marble desk and gorgeous black-and-white prints on the walls.

(Think “The Devil Wears Prada,” and you’ll get the picture. Staffers used to refer to it as “The White Palace” or, more derisively, “White Castle.”) On the back wall is a lovely, dramatic picture of Jackie Kennedy and her children. Other iconic women on the walls included Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Audrey Hepburn. When Katie arrived for our meeting, I was admiring the pictures, but noticed one woman who was unfamiliar to me. “Who’s that?,” I asked.

“Margaret Sanger,” she replied.

So is Katie into eugenics, too? Is she a fascist, or an historically ignorant dolt?

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Cooked Books

7 Comments

…of ObamaCare.

The country is being run by blatant liars and charlatans.

[Update a few minutes later]

So, now the Donkeys and “liberals” think that “ObamaCare” is a pejorative? When did that happen? I thought that once they passed it, we were all going to love it. Now they don’t want to take creditblame for it?

I like the suggestion of one commenter that we call it National Socialist Healthcare.

Political Commentary, Space

It’s Not About The Excitement

76 Comments

It’s about the space economy, stupid.

I agree that developing lunar resources should be part of the mix, though we have a lot of work to do to prove out the techniques to do so in a way that makes economic sense. But as I’ve said before, I’m not that concerned about abandoning that goal for now — it was many years off in any event, and if it’s the momentary price we have to pay to kill off the misbegotten Ares program, it’s one well worth it. We can decide to go to the moon any time, and it will be a lot easier with a low-cost infrastructure than with a high-cost one.

Philosophy, Political Commentary

The Subjects Of The Constitution

4 Comments

Randy Barnett points to a revolutionary groundbreaking article on constitutional review:

[T]he important point is that any legislative violation of the Constitution is complete at the moment of enactment, and any subsequent facts must be irrelevant to the merits; whereas an executive violation of the Constitution happens later, and the facts of execution may be essential to the inquiry. So if the who is Congress, then the challenge is more likely to be ripe earlier—indeed, most strikingly, it might be ripe immediately after enactment, and before any enforcement whatsoever.

I haven’t read the whole thing, so it may be covered, but from the excerpt, it seems to me that it isn’t just Congress that is the “who.” Once the president signs an unconstitutional law, he becomes a violator as well (as Bush knowingly, even admittedly did when he signed McCain-Feingold, willfully violating not only the Constitution, but his oath of office — if you wanted an impeachable offense, that one seemed prima facie to me).

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The True Scientists

11 Comments

…win a debate at Oxford Union on climate change:

Lord Monckton, a former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the UK, concluded the case for the proposition. He drew immediate laughter and cheers when he described himself as “Christopher Walter, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, scholar, philanthropist, wit, man about town, and former chairman of the Wines and Spirits Committee of this honourable Society”. At that point his cummerbund came undone. He held it up to the audience and said, “If I asked this House how long this cummerbund is, you might telephone around all the manufacturers and ask them how many cummerbunds they made, and how long each type of cummerbund was, and put the data into a computer model run by a zitty teenager eating too many doughnuts, and the computer would make an expensive guess. Or you could take a tape-measure and” – glaring at the opposition across the despatch-box – “measure it!” [cheers].

Lord Monckton said that real-world measurements, as opposed to models, showed that the warming effect of CO2 was a tiny fraction of the estimates peddled by the UN’s climate panel. He said that he would take his lead from Lord Lawson, however, in concentrating on the economics rather than the science. He glared at the opposition again and demanded whether, since they had declared themselves to be so worried about “global warming”, they would care to tell him – to two places of decimals and one standard deviation – the UN’s central estimate of the “global warming” that might result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. The opposition were unable to reply. Lord Monckton told them the answer was 3.26 plus or minus 0.69 Kelvin or Celsius degrees. An Hon. Member interrupted: “And your reference is?” Lord Monckton replied: “IPCC, 2007, chapter 10, box 10.2.” [cheers]. He concluded that shutting down the entire global economy for a whole year, with all the death, destruction, disaster, disease and distress that that would cause, would forestall just 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.024 Kelvin or Celsius degrees of “global warming”, so that total economic shutdown for 41 years would prevent just 1 K of warming. Adaptation as and if necessary would be orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective.

Mr. Mike Mason, founder and managing director of “Climate Care”, concluded for the opposition. He said that the proposition were peculiar people, and that Lord Monckton was more peculiar than most, in that he was not a real Lord. Lord Monckton, on a point of order, told Mr. Mason that the proposition had avoided personalities and that if Mr. Mason were unable to argue other than ad hominem he should “get out”. [cheers] Mr. Mason then said that we had to prepare for climate risks [yes, in both directions, towards cooler as well as warmer]; and that there was a “scientific consensus” [but he offered no evidence for the existence of any such consensus, still less for the notion that science is done by consensus].

As usual, the opponents employed the logically flawed precautionary principle.

I think that the tide has really turned on this nonsense, at least over the Pond, if not quite hear yet. That may have to wait until November.

Speaking of which, there was an awful story on ABC Sunday night, where the focus was on death threats to climate scientists. Note that they make no mention of the threats against climate skeptics in the emails. And they set up a straw man, when they say there’s a “conspiracy” to foist a “hoax” on the world on the part of the scientists. Yes, some people have made such allegations, but that’s not the point. I’m willing to believe that most climate scientists are sincere in their beliefs. The problem is that they drink too much of their own bathwater, and suffer too much from confirmation bias. Not to mention that it’s difficult to get funded if you don’t hew to the party line. But that kind of story wouldn’t accomplish ABC’s purpose — to present the noble scientists trying to save us from ourselves as victims of conspiracy mongers.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Arizona

2 Comments

…and our national self abasement:

Arizonans, are you feeling less frustrated yet? At bottom, the dispute over the state’s law is a conflict of visions. The law’s supporters believe we should take the border seriously and assert the country’s sovereign right to control who comes here and who doesn’t; its detractors believe any serious effort to make good on that sovereign right is exclusionary and tinged with racism because it’s primarily directed at Latinos.

In this struggle, the latter camp sees Felipe Calderón as an ally and thrills to his disparagement of their countrymen.

It’s all part of the culture war. It’s not just between Rousseauians and Lockeans, but also between those who believe in American exceptionalism, and those who seek a transnational “progressive” “multicultural” future. And Arizonans, and others, can’t wait until November to start to take their country back from those who seem to despise it.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Lest there be a misunderstanding, that last sentence was just an expression of their eagerness to vote next fall, not a prediction or recommendation that they do anything else sooner. Other than continue to pass their own laws, of course, and defend their state(s) from a foreign invasion, as the federal government seems determined not to do.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is sort of related, but like Jonah, I can’t figure out what David Brooks’ point is. I also think that he mischaracterizes the divide. It’s not the French enlightenment versus the Scottish one. I think that any essay like this that ignores both Locke and Rousseau misses the mark. It’s about whether not not one accepts human nature as it is, or if one believes that we are blank slates, and worthy putty to build a new Soviet man.

[Update mid morning]

More thoughts on Arizona from Heather McDonald:

…let’s be honest: National origin is an inevitable part of immigration enforcement. Foreign alienage is a prerequisite to being an illegal alien; to say that national origin may not be a factor in assessing whether someone may be in the country illegally is to render immigration law nonsensical. If foreign alienage were not a valid consideration regarding border control, incoming passengers on international flights could not be separated into U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens for customs clearance. Yet the illegal-alien lobby, in its nuclear assault on the Arizona law, has managed to discredit notice of foreign birth as a factor in immigration enforcement and to fold foreign alienage into the utterly lethal category of “racial profiling.” The original version of SB 1070 said that a “law enforcement official#…#may not solely consider#…#national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.” In the uproar that followed passage of the law, Arizona legislators took out “solely.” It is not clear how this change affects legislative intent or the impact of the law. The Supreme Court has allowed border-patrol agents to use apparent foreign birth as one factor in the initial decision to make a car stop near the border. Lower courts have applied that ruling in cases challenging car stops far from the border as well, allowing apparent foreign alienage to count as one part of reasonable suspicion in initiating a stop, so long as the stop was based on other specific, articulable facts as well. SB 1070 is narrower than those rulings, since it applies only to the development of reasonable suspicion after a stop has already been made. To argue, as the illegal-alien lobby is currently doing, that a local law-enforcement officer may not consider apparent foreign origin in deciding whether to ask someone about his immigration status is tantamount to shutting down immigration enforcement entirely.

Obviously, that’s the goal.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sometimes, though there’s poetic justice:

The lawmaker injured in the crash…is an open-borders advocate.

Well, OK, maybe not so poetic, but justice nonetheless.