The Evil of Conservatives

Conservatives are evil. Of course, they don't actually exist any more according to Sam Tannenhaus's book The Death of Conservatism, but they are still evil. That must be the only possible explanation for the blatantly disparate treatment of conservatives and liberals in the media. Jay Nordlinger has an interesting piece on the topic.

Keep Dictators out of Office in Honduras!

Why the West keeps insisting that Honduras is currently being ruled by a ultra-rightwing dictatorship is beyond me. And yet the entire supposedly civilized world (the Obama administration, the UN, the EU) is united behind impeached former president Manuel Zelaya and is now crying hurrah as Zelaya has sneaked back into the country. Germany's liberal newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung coos about Zelaya's feat ("Heimkehr nach Honduras") and is tantalized by the expectation of a response by the "Putsch-Regime" (rebel regime). The French newspaper Le Monde ("Le président Zelaya de retour au Honduras") similarly describes Zelaya as the rightful president of the country who had been "ousted since late June by a coup d'état". Roberto Micheletti is described decidedly depracatingly as the man "who rules the country" since the coup.

The situation is certainly not neat and clean. Experts on the Honduran Constitution differ about the question whether the impeachment of Zelaya was legal. The Constitution is frustratingly vague on some key matters. The country continues in an uncertain state of semi-unrest. That Zelaya is a thug seems clear to me, however. Taking his cue from his crony Hugo Chavez, Zelaya was in the process of maneuvring himself into the role of president for life. His duplicitous proposal to organize a referendum on holding a referendum (sic) to change the Constitution was a blatant attempt to have his cake and eat it too. Since the Constitution explicitly forbids proposals to meddle with a number of core articles and rules any such attempt an automatically impeachable offense, Zelaya organized the referendum on a referendum approach so as to insulate himself from prosecution.

The so-called coup was the culmination of several legal steps during which Zelaya was repeatedly informed that his referendum was illegal. Zelaya went on, got arrested and kicked out of his country. The latter step was probably not wise but certainly does not invalidate his legitimate impeachment.

That the Obama administration keeps calling for Zelaya's return is disheartening. As Mary O'Grady describes in the Wall Street Journal ("Hillary's Honduras Obsession"), the President and his Secretary of State are ignoring the facts. Dictators like Zelaya should be kept out of office. The world should stop calling for his return to power and wait, like everyone else, for the results of the elections to be held in November.

UPDATE
The German magazine Der Spiegel ("Gestürzter Präsident Zelaya kehrt zurück") is refreshingly objective, referring to Zelaya as "former president" and to Michelletti as "interim president".

New Justice A-Coming

Okay, so maybe I overreacted in my previous post.

Don't get me wrong. I still think she is deplorably affected by this postmodern, wishy-washy, multiculti nonsense about race relations and minority rights. I am not at all convinced she understands how evil affirmative action is.

But she is clearly not a nutcase. She gave impressive and intelligent answers to all questions asked of her, even the ones from the committee's new joker (Al Franken) who asked her about Perry mason. I hope Mr Franken has since been informed that the legendary lawyer is a fictional character.

Sotomayor will be confirmed some time before the August recess, with a comfortable margin. Democrats are united behind her and many Republicans are likely to support her too. The Republican defection is not surprising. For political reasons, the GOP cannot afford to waste ammunition on Sotomayor. She is a low-value target because she is simply replacing the ultraliberal and eccentric David Souter. Her appointment to the court will not change the political ideology of the court too much. If anything, she is likely to bring about a more balanced chemistry in the whole court. More importantly, Republicans just do not want to shoot down a Hispanic female judge in an era when they are working hard to make inroads in the Hispanic community.

Here's a balanced assessment of the situation by Marcia Coyle (National Law Journal) and Tom Goldstein (Scotusblog.com) on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.

Filibuster Her!

I thoroughly disapprove of the filibuster. It is an undemocratic sabotage tactic that circumvents the will of the people as expressed in the orderly elections of this country. So I am somewhat disgusted that I see no other solution than the filibuster to stop the elevation of the despicable Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Judge Sotomayor embodies all that is wrong with the hard-left elite that currently has the shrillest voice in the postrational West. She believes in abusing her office to advance social policy but, as is now the norm among liberal intellectuals, shrouds it in lofty and polysyllabic pseudo-legal logorrhea and thus escapes being caught out on it. Except that sometimes the cameras are rolling when she has forgotten to put on the mask:



This woman does not believe in logic or rationality. Her approach to life and the law is all feelings--her feelings, to be sure. She is a slave of the false religion of Diversity Politics and worships at the shrine of Postmodernist Waffle. There is no reason to believe she will interpret the law as it is written--despite what Pres. Obama said in the piece of bromide he served up to the press as an introduction of Sotomayor. She will rule in favor of the Hard Left's favorite causes at every turn: unlimited, tax-funded abortion, federal recognition of gay marriage, more rights for labor unions, greater equality for minorities and lesser equality for white males. On that last point (who remembers George Orwell?), note this statement by Sotomayor:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life. (New York TimesMay 14, 2009

This woman is a disgrace to the bench and her nomination is intellectually dishonest. Considering that she has been reversed numerous times by the Supreme Court, Republicans must do all they can to prevent her confirmation. She is so dangerous to the foundation of this country that even a filibuster is justified.

Coleman or Franken?

In the Minnesota recount battle, Al Franken has repeatedly gotten the upper hand. According to a Star Tribune poll published today, Minnesotans are fed up with Norm Coleman's quest to overturn Franken's lead. The Minneapolis paper headlines that "Most Want Coleman to Quit" and cite results from their recent telephone poll which shows 64% of all respondents want Coleman to throw in the towel. Only 28% believe Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court is justified.

So, should Coleman give up?

No. And there are better reasons apart from the fact that Al Franken is a disgrace to Minnesota (consider the fact that he once threw a chair at talkshow host Michael Medved in a fit of rage). The Star Tribune has painted itself into a corner as well, having endorsed Coleman over Franken. Now the newspaper finds itself with an apparent majority of Minnesotans rooting for Al Franken.

But there are two arguments that lead me to opine that Coleman ought to continue his appeal. First, the so-called opinion poll seems a little heavily tilted toward Democrats. If you read the fine print in the article, you'll see that of the 1,042 respondents 20 percent were Republicans and 36 percent Democrats. Or almost double the number of registered Democrats over Republicans in a poll on an election issue in which the Democrat and the Republican candidate received virtually even results. Once you control for this curious flaw in the poll, the 28-64% division shrinks closer to a 40-50% distribution. Such a result would have represented more fairly the mood in Minnesota: We're sick and tired of this recount, but we'll live with it a little longer, even if we have to grind our teeth. After this long of a process some discontent with the situation is normal, but I do not believe that 64% of Minnesotans want Coleman to quit. The Star Tribune can argue that one cannot control exactly for party affiliation, but on such a topic that argument sounds very weak. A perfect parallel to Minnesota's party affiliation is probably not possible but a 20-36% spread is a little extreme.

Secondly, the legal arguments that Coleman has raised are not trivial. Just to be clear, Mr Coleman is not alleging that Al Franken or the Democratic Party cheated during this election. Rather, his objections are to the vote counting process which he claims was not fair and equal. Different standards for approving absentee ballots were applied in different counties and it so happens that heavily Democratic-leaning counties were a lot less strict in applying these standards than Republican-leaning counties. As a result, the Republican counties rejected a lot more absentee ballots (and thus, by implication, a lot more Republican votes) than the Democratic counties, which were generally lenient in allowing absentee ballots (and thus, again by the logic of statistics, increased the overall Democratic count in proportion to their representation in that county).

The upshot is that Republican votes were more usually rejected than Democratic votes. Coleman wants the courts to consider his argument that this is a violation of federal equal protection principles. So far, no court has done so; all previous rulings were very limited in scope and specifically excluded any consideration based on this argument. The courts have yet to rule on this basic question. Coleman has every right to appeal. Not only that, if he can provide overwhelming evidence of this situation, then the state of Minnesota needs to rethink its election laws because it implies a systemic unintentional bias in favor of Democratic candidates. Coleman's appeal might well be the catalyst to make elections in Minnesota fairer.

Does that mean the appeals should go on forever? Surely, at some point Coleman ought to give up? True. And the same goes for Al Franken, if at some point the odds get reversed. But let us not be hasty. Appeals are unlikely to drag on for years. The state Supreme Court will hear arguments early June and by mid-summer there will likely be a verdict. This court will not be able to skirt Coleman's constitutional objections as the district court did and so it is highly likely that there will be a different outcome. There are good chances that by the summer there will be an end to this situation. Such a timeline seems a reasonable situation to accept in face of the importance to American democracy.

But even if there is no substantial change at the state level, I would like to judge any hypothetical further appeals to the federal courts on their own merits. I am not of the opinion that Al Franken should be kept out of the Senat at all costs. He can only do so much harm among so many other hard-left senators. Still, I don't mind admitting that I am not against a little more patience before we certify Mr. Franken.

Krauthammer on hESC

Charles Krauthammer, not a religious man by his own admission, but at least a thoughtful conservative wrote an article in the Washington Post today explaining why he declined Pres. Obama’s invitation to attend the signing ceremony overturning Pres. Bush’s limitations on federal funding for hESC. The article is not just thoughtful, it drives a truck through the phony rhetorics of Mr. Obama’s lecturing on science and ethics. Not only is it disingenuous to claim that until the Divine Revelation of Obama to the world, American scientific policy was shaped by politics and religious dogma. It is also logically inconsistent to claim that in forbidding human cloning one is not putting ethics—i.e. moral dogma, one might say, religion—over pure science.

But Mr Krauthammer’s column makes another thing clear when he says:

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix.

This thing is: without religion you have no moral anchor. While I agree with most of Mr Krauthammer’s practical decisions, he becomes completely inconsistent when he concludes, on the basis of the principles in the quote above, that it is morally justified to use “left-over embryos” from IVF treatments. Exactly equivalent to what a human embryo is, Mr Krauthammer is unable to explain and he adds nothing more enlightening to these comments. I suggest that he is wrong in his basic principle and that personhood is conferred upon conception. This is a conclusion not so much based on religious revelation even; rather, it is the safe logical conclusion drawn from the reliable observation that the vast majority of embryos, once implanted in a woman’s uterus, actually develop into persons. So even if one avoids the dilemma at the crossroads of science and faith—the question when personhood is conferred—it seems safer, and in line with actual reality, to simply declare as a matter of categorization that embryos are persons.

It is not up to the pro-life person to prove this statement true beyond reasonable doubt, but rather it is the responsibility of those demanding certain rights that these claims have a basis in reality and do not conflict with the rights of others. It is the scientists who would have to prove that their experiments are safe, not the public at large to prove the scientists’ experiments dangerous.

Slick Willy Doesn’t Know What an Embryo Is

POTUS 42 as always had problems with basic school subjects. While in office, he had trouble with the English language such as when he could not define the word “is.” But biology also has not been his strong suit, as evidenced again this week by his moronic statement in an interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta as they talked about stem cells. Clearly, Clinton has not a clue what an “embryo” is, when he says that Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research (hESC) is fine as long as we’re not talking about “a process that would allow them to be fertilized and become …ehm, little babies.”

The statement is emblematic of the public debate about hESC and illustrates why Pres. Obama’s decision to throw federal money at this research is so evil. On July 18, 2006, CNN’s correspondent Carol Costello made this blooper on live TV when she was talking to CNN’s medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen about this same topic:

Cohen: “These are four-day old embryos. We’re talking about very tiny, tiny embryos.”
Costello: “And they’re not fertilized either, right?”
Cohen: “Well no, an embryo is fertilized.”
Costello: “Just to make it clear–”
Cohen: “Its sperm and egg have met each other–”
Costello: “So, it is?”
Cohen: “–and they, they’ve grown for about four days. So, they’ve formed a very, very small embryo.”
Costello: “Ok, so I feel silly now.”

The American media, all having been educated in the Liberal School of Journalism, and Democratic politicians, who are too busy grabbing power, clearly all flunked biology. But these same morons are driving the debate about hESC.

Human Embryonic Stem Cell research is murder, plain and simple. You have to terminate the life of a fertilized human egg which thereby has become an embryo, which is a synonym for “baby.” So, yes, hESC is the killing of a human baby. That is why we pro-lifers oppose hESC. That has nothing to do with being unable to separate faith and science. I have no religious ‘beliefs’ about the fact that hESC kills babies. This is not preached in my church nor do I read it anywhere. I know this because I paid attention in biology class and know what an embryo is. Anyone who supports hESC does not know what an embryo is. That Bill Clinton does not know this either is shocking. Newsbusters’ Matthew Balan sighs, understandably, that Sanjay Gupta has ties to Clinton so we should not be surprised that he did not feel it necessary to correct Number 42 on his biology.

Change I Cannot Believe In

This past TUESDAY President Obama gave an outrageously good non-State of the Union speech (it’s not called that when a new president has just taken office, but it’s essentially the same). I actually watched all of it again on Wednesday online and had to admit that the presentation was practically flawless. Others have since pointed out that it was very hard to watch because Nancy Pelosi kept jumping up like a jack-in-the-box at every applause line. As for content, well. Obama presented a program that is truly astounding—and he has no money to pay for it. On top of the recession, Obama plans to reform education, institute universal health care, create world peace… It was really sickening to listen to the smug nonsense of the speech and much of it was specifically designed to lay blame at George W. Bush’s feet. “We have inherited a deficit,” etc. Well, never mind that it was the Congressional Democrats who created those deficits, even if Mr. Bush can be blamed for not vetoing more spending bills.

What was quite painful to watch was the Republican response to the speech, given by Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. It was a terrible speech, regardless of what Michael Medved says. I was and am in complete agreement with David Brooks’ assessment which he gave immediately afterward on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS (that it was “not a good speech”). And I am not just talking about the delivery which was astonishingly bad. He seemed like an eight-year old reading a book report his mother had proofread and corrected. But the contents were stupefyingly bad too. Not that I did not agree with most of the things he said, but he was hammering on the wrong topics as if he were tone deaf to the public conversation that has been going on about the current crisis. It is fine to believe in a pro-business, lower corporate taxes and incentives approach to the economy but it simply is not sufficient, in an address like this to the entire nation, to lambast the Current Occupant—to borrow a phrase from Anoka’s favorite left-wing loony—for being a closet socialist. Jindal’s speech was in essence nothing but a childish McCarthy-esque Red Scare speech. It really made me doubt whether Jindal has any future in politics, much in the same way as I believe Sarah Palin ought to be firmly tethered to the Alaska governor’s mansion for fear she tries to step on the national stage again. Palin presents a scary anti-intellectual approach to conservatism that I believe will do more harm than good. Folksy? Fine. Straightforward? Fine. Anti-intellectual? No way, Jose.

On THURSDAY came Obama’s budget. In addition to the $700 billion Spending Bill (wrongly named the Stimulus Package) Obama is now proposing another $500 billion in “regular” spending. My friend David Brooks again explains what’s wrong with this budget in his New York Times column today:

On Thursday, he [Pres. Obama] offered a budget of his own, and the question arises: Will he really change all that?
The answer is somewhat, but not enough. Obama’s budget is far more honest than the ones that preceded it. It imposes real pay-as-you-go rules on future outlays. Intellectually serious efforts are made to pay for at least half of the cost of health care reform.
But the ingrained habits are still there, and the rot is not expunged.

There is a certain virtue in honesty. George W. Bush’s insistence that the expenditures of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be hidden by accounting tricks and kept off the regular budget has not convinced me, so the fact that the true cost, at least in dollars, is now visible in the budget is not bad. But this honesty does not go very far, nor is it even complete. As Mr. Brooks explains, Nancy Pelosi is running the show and that is truly a scary thought. It’s bad enough to think she is third in line under the Constitution.

However, the best analysis of the budget I have heard has come from former McCain campaign advisor and former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin. He went head to head with Robert Greenstein, Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, on (yes, again) PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer on Thursday. Holtz-Eakin exposes the Obama budget (and the economic policy in general) as old-fashiond socialist tax-and-spend dogma. Interviewer Jeffrey Brown asked him whether he thought Peter Orszag (White House budget direcor) was wrong in rejecting the label “wealth distribution.” Holtz-Eakin responded, in probably the best-presented media critique of Obama fiscal politics,

Oh, it is. I mean, there’s no question. This is a trillion dollars in tax increases. They are going to be on business through deferral and other sorts of arcane things and on high-income individuals explicitly. Raise their rates, tax their dividends and capital gains, diminish their charitable and mortgage interest deductions, and use it to fund Make or Pay, Earned Income Tax Credits, on American Opportunity Credit, low-income tax credits, refundable credits for some people who don’t even pay income taxes. So, there’s no question what that is.

Liberal counterpart Robert Greenstein had no answer for this. He took the so-called high ground by reminding the PBS audience that all Obama’s policy does is go back to the tax rates that existed before George W. Bush’s irresponsible tax give-aways to the wealthy. That sounds very good on TV and I’m afraid that many people bought that excuse, but it has one major logical flaw: it assumes that the tax rates in 1999 were good then. (One may ask, in addition, whether the 1999 rates—or the 1988 rates, for that matter—will work in 2009, but we will leave that matter for now.) In other words, what Greenstein was saying is, in effect, our policy is okay because it we used to do it this way before. To take this argument ad absurdum, imagine how high eyebrows would have to be raised if, say, President Grant had decided to reinstate slavery in 1871 with the justification that “all we are doing is returning to the situation before 1860.” Just because a situation existed in the past does not make it right or applicable to the present.

Review of Jeffrey Toobin's "The Nine"

Jeffrey Toobin. The Nine. Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. New York: Anchor Books, 2007 (2008 edition with a new afterword). Paperback, 451pp., index, ill. $15.95 (ISBN 978-1-4000-9679-4)

This book is, as the endorsement by Michiko Kakutani from the New York Times (printed on the cover) says, “compelling.” Indeed, Mr. Toobin, well-known legal analyst for CNN is more than just a clear head. He is also a good writer. Toobin knows what he is talking about and he delivers his message in a very readable style.

In twenty-five chapters, the book describes the important developments of the later Rehnquist court and into the new Roberts court. Toobin has one important lesson for any layman with an interest in the Supreme Court: judges are politicians. Especially gripping is his description of the very controversial Bush v. Gore case of 2000. His judgment of that case, which he already described in his previous book Too Close to Call, is devastating but Toobin is also very evenhanded. He condemns all justices equally for conduct unbecoming of a judge. Every last of the justices played politics with that case when any law student could have told you that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction under the Constitution to even hear the case. Nevertheless, the justices also did not affect politics in any way, because even if they had not illegally handed the Bush team his electoral victory on a silver platter, Bush would have won anyway, had Gore’s recount challenge been allowed to work its way through the Florida court system.

Toobin describes that case in several chapters showing enormous depth of knowledge—the most profound knowledge of all the cases he describes—and an ability to empathize with the ‘other side.’ It must come as no surprise that Mr. Toobin, working as he does for CNN, does tip his hand every now and then as a liberal, dismissing some conservative victories as unreasonable and many of their arguments as mendacious.

This becomes all the more clear in the unnecessary new afterword in the 2008 reprint. In it, Mr. Toobin shows himself to be more of a political journalist than a legal analyst. The afterword was clearly written in the thick of the 2008 presidential campaign and Toobin finds it necessary to take some cheap jabs at Republican candidate John McCain. Without the afterword, the book would have had a perfectly elegant ending. With it, the essentially fair treatment of a contested topic is defaced by an author’s ugly unmasking of himself, revealing a bitter hatred for perceived Republican hypocrisy in matters judicial.

Mr. Toobin proves himself to be an especially keen observer of mankind. We learn a lot of things about the personalities of the justices. The book is anything but flattering of the Rehnquist court and the judges who served on it. One wonders whether perhaps the author does not occasionally pass too harsh judgment on some of them. (At least in this indelicacy he pays neither the court’s liberals nor its conservatives any favors.) Justice Thomas is treated perhaps the least kindly when Toobin rakes up the Anita Hill affair again, repeating once more the long-whispered but not substantiated rumor that Ms Hill was right in her charge of sexual misconduct (and that Thomas was addicted to pornography on a profound scale). Mr. Toobin’s description of Clarence Thomas as the kind substitute father to his grandnephew, though endearing in itself, hardly makes up for the unnecessary jabs at Thomas the pervert.

Still, on the whole these are relatively minor flaws in a book that is truly interesting. Mr. Toobin’s look at the politics behind the nomination of justices, the maneuvering of the justices behind the screens, even some of the Congressional debates over the court is enlightening and well written. For those who are prepared for a left-leaning view of the Supreme Court, this book must be considered a very mildly biased book, and with the bias largely restricted to a small number of the author’s pet topics. Because it is so wonderfully crafted, so well researched no reasonable person could dismiss this book as unworthy propaganda—because it is not.

Four and half out of five stars.

NO! It's not as bad as the Great Depression

As the new liberal Congress gets ready to throw another one trillion dollars down the sewer with the mistaken or, in some cases (read: Treasury Secretary Geithner), mendacious notion that it is going to stimulate the economy and jolt us out of the economic crisis, very few influential voices in this country are willing to call this for what it is: dangerous nonsense.

For one thing, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AR), one of the few brave voices in this rush to pull out the federal check book, reminded the audience of Hugh Hewitt’s radio talk show yesterday (Jan 21, 2009) that the proposed bill to stimulate the economy will do little or nothing in that respect. Not that all of the proposed spending is necessarily pork, but it does not belong in this bill, he explained. Some of the money for infrastructure and energy projects will not even be spent in the next four years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In other words, under the guise of emergency spending Obama and his liberal allies in Congress are adding enormous amounts to the national deficit. And it will do nothing to the economy in the short term.

But more importantly, this bill is only being pushed because the country is “in the worst recession since the Great Depression”—according to those pushing it. Problem is, that is not true, at least not yet. Baltimore Sun columnist Jay Hancock looked at the actual statistics recently and concluded that while it’s important not to underestimate the economic downturn, right now the recession is not even as bad as the 1982 economic crisis. While unemployment is rising rapidly, it’s still nowhere near the 10.4 % unemployment rate of 1983. It’s not even up to the 7.8% of 1992.

There are other statistics, such as gross domestic products and services produced in the US that suggest things are not as bad as the 1930s--nor even as bad as 1982. Other factors may look disastrous, including the almost total collapse of the housing market in some regions of the US or the dissolution of great bastions in the financial markets, but while these are impressive events, they are not of widespread catastrophic magnitude.

So before Pelosi, Reid & Co. drive us all like lemmings over the cliff, could we perhaps have a little perspective?

One Little Sentence

Should one be glad that the New York Times is keeping Roger Cohen out of the unemployment lists? I cannot say I am overly familiar with the man's columns, but today's puke-worthy adoration of St. Barack XLIV by Cohen leads me to answer that question in the negative. The column is not just drivel, it's religious claptrap in the official Media Cult of the Obamassiah. Of course, the Times, as any other person or corporation can express itself in whatever way it likes, but I don't have to like it.

In his column, Cohen passes grave judgment on the preceding 8 years and on the president who led the country:

America is returning to its Constitution: “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” With that little sentence, Obama bade farewell to renditions, torture, the trampling of habeas corpus, Guantánamo and other stains on the nation’s conscience. This work will not be complete until Guantánamo is closed and those wrongly imprisoned, some for more than five years, are compensated.

The arrogance is inconceivable. For years, the public debate as well as the professional debate between Constitutional scholars, lawyers, Congressmen etc. has raged over the legal status of many of Pres. Bush's policies in the War on Terror. But Cohen knows best: it was all unconstitutional and Guantánamo is full of innocent people. With one little sentence, the verdict is passed. Surely fodder for those who want to also impose sentence on Mr. Bush.

Give me a break.

And.... He's In! -- On Roland Burris Being Seated

After well over a week of legal tug-of-war, Roland Burris, Rod Blagojevich's pawn in his embarrassing game of cat and mouse with the FBI, was finally admitted to the Senate today. Of course, Harry Reid must have been fuming that Blagojevich had won this round in a game in which he, Reid, was also a mere pawn. But Burris has all the legal arguments on his side and so Reid got embarrassed, as the Washington Post put it.

Burris is another product of the Chicago political machine and though he may not be implicated in the Blagojevich scandal, America and Illinois should not expect anything even as competent as Obama's performance in the seat he is now going to be filling. Once Mr Burris takes his seat, he will be firmly shackled by Reid & Co. to make sure he does nothing that is not first approved by the Democratic Party. After all, Burris is hardly electable on his own terms and should be made to understand that he is expected to step aside for a hand-picked candidate in 2010, when Mr Obama's original term expires.

What a circus. Now only one joke remains: the Al Franken show in Minnesota.

Review of David McCullough’s John Adams

David McCullough. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. (ISBN 0-684-81363-7, 751pp., index, ill.)

After seeing the HBO miniseries John Adams on DVD (we don’t waste our hard-earned money on an HBO subscription) I was intrigued enough to find out more about America’s second president, so I bought McCullough’s book on which the tv-series was based.

Adams is a relatively little-known figure among the Founding Fathers. The extravagant and heroic Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin make for much more interesting reading in history textbooks than Adams, who was never caught out on any sexual sin, never owned any slaves, never invented anything, and never led any battles.

Seen in that light, Adams must seem a terminally boring person, a president who swam against the tide of popular opinion when the country clamored for war with France and who made himself extremely little beloved by signing into law for which any 21st century president would be run out of town for even if he just wondered out loud about the desirability of such a provision: the Alien and Sedition Act. Fair enough, this monstrous law, which elevated personal insults of the president to the level of a criminal offense, ought never even have come to his desk and he should never have signed it.

Yet the second president was no more a monster than the forty-third for all the bile that was directed at both. Though Adams’ transgression of Constitutional safeguards was much more acute than George Bush’s creation of separate judicial procedures for enemy combatants at Guantánamo, since it criminalized speech—and speech against Adams—, there was a context in which Adams agreed to sign this legislation. This context also produced probably his greatest legacy to his country and almost certainly ensured that the infant United States did not die an ignominious crib death. It was Adams’s resolve to avoid war with France, almost at all costs and certainly at great personal political cost, that prevented a disastrous military conflict at a time when the young country could not have prevailed. The Revolutionary War had crippled any military strength the United States could muster from among the untrained farm hands that formed the core of the militia.

At the same time, though, that Adams resisted the evil machinations by Alexander Hamilton—surely the vilest character ever in American politics, period.—to militarize America and prevented the costly and unnecessary build-up of a standing army in peace time, President Adams was enough of a forward-looking realist to see that America’s future safety depended on what he referred to as the “wooden wall:” a strong navy. All of America’s enemies lay across the ocean. Though military success against the Barbary pirates is credited to Adams’s successor Thomas Jefferson, it was thanks to the second president’s insistence not to be distracted with ground troops and funding of a navy that Jefferson had the disposal of a fleet strong enough to defeat a band of Islamic thugs that had so far held all of Europe hostage over right of sea passage in the Mediterranean.

David McCullough’s book is much more than a chronicle of Adams’s presidency or his underestimated involvement in the Revolution. This biography paints a great picture of the man Adams as he was from cradle to grave. A lot of contemporary records have come down to us about John Adams, not in the least because the man was more than merely a prolific correspondent and a firm believer in keeping diaries. There are few people in world history who wrote more than Adams. But in addition to this boon to historians, Adams happened to marry a woman who, if perhaps not a more prolific writer, ranks but little lower on that scale. Most of his children and grand-children also kept diaries. This biography clearly benefits from the enormous library of letters and diaries from the Adams family, his correspondents, and his contemporaries.

One cannot help but gain enormous respect for John and Abigail Adams—and even come to love them in a sense. Their marriage was certainly not idyllic. Abigail suffered from many illnesses and infirmities that sometimes confined her to her bed for weeks or months. The pressures of public life, the burdens of which Abigail often did not feel herself able to endure, led to numerous years of separation while Adams was in Europe, in Philadelphia, or in Washington DC, while his wife remained at home in Massachusetts. And yet these two people were very well matched in every way. Abigail was able to provide her husband not merely the emotional support that would have been expected of a wife in the 18th century. In possession of a keen intellect herself, she was able to provide him with a sounding board and advice on practically any issue he encountered both in his legal and his political career. Abigail is also known to have argued with her husband in favor of incorporating full equal rights for women in the nascent republic. John Adams never committed to supporting such a notion, though he hinted that his reluctance stemmed from a correct appreciation of the mood of the times, which would never have supported it.

Adams stands apart from many of the Founding Fathers by being so normal and mainstream, but also in a sense ahead of his time. Especially on the subject of slavery and racism, the Adamses (both John and Abigail) were very outspoken. While Jefferson too claimed, limply and completely incredibly, to abhor slavery while never doing anything against it, John Adams spoke openly of his belief that all men were truly created equal and that any distinctions on the basis of skin color were morally repugnant. Adams described slavery as a “foul contagion in the human character,” and “an evil of colossal magnitude” (p. 134). Abigail was perhaps even more outraged by slavery, possibly because her father had owned a slave. Yet Adams refused to bring up the topic in the Continental Congress, aware of the fact that it would have killed among the southern states the taste for resistance against the British suppression that Massachusetts was suffering under more than any of the other states. Nevertheless, in his later years, Adams correctly predicted that the issue of slavery would be the cause of civil war between the north and south.

McCullough describes all the important (and many not-so-important) events of his life in admirable detail. Yet I have a few quibbles with the book. The biggest one is that Adams’s faith is hardly ever described. To the modern reader it may seem at times as if Adams believed only in some nebulous spirit-God who smiles benevolently on everything man does as if they are His pets. Adams’s faith seems to play almost no role in his thoughts or his actions. Nowhere are we even told what theology he subscribed to or what sort of church he went to, though one may assume (I do not know this) that he was a Congregationalist like most of rural Massachusetts in the 18th century, and therefore similar to what today would be called a Reformed Baptist. But Adams’s faith, and that of his wife, played a huge role in their lives and, as even the momentary glimpses in McCullough’s book show, provided him with the moral framework that guided him in his political beliefs and his policies. Also, Abigail believed that the calamities that befell Americans may well be the result of God’s wrath on the country for the evil of slavery. Both Adamses lived out of the Bible and enjoyed all of Creation as a gift of God.

I also think that McCullough’s style is, as others have said, too much on “autopilot.” The material seems a little disorganized and often one wonders why some items are even included. At 650 pages it is also simply too long for a popular biography. Many things could have been condensed and left out. What is more, McCullough offers very little argument. The book at times seems like an arrangement of personal writings, but the author provides no framework in which to place the material. Though it is possible to gain an understanding of the historical context of the Alien and Sedition Act through this book, Adams’s biographer includes little or no discussion of this highly controversial scene in American politics. If this were sold simply as a digest of the Adams Papers that would be fine, but McCullough claims it as a biography.

In the end, this is neither the hyped super-biography that it was sold as, nor the horrible failure some reviewers believe it to be. The book avoids the label “mediocrity” fairly easily because it is too well researched and too comprehensive in its inclusion of the various aspects of Adams’s life. But it is true that many topics are treated too superficially. Because of its length, these flaws are quite grave. 3 out of 5 stars.

No Sympathy for Hamas

For all the wailing and hand-wringing among the instinctively anti-Israel left elite in the world, I fully support Israel’s attack on the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. While all the big names in America’s mainstream media keep shouting, as John Noonan at The Weekly Standard’s “The Blog” reminds us, all castigate Israel for “disproportionate force,” this term is a red herring. Ezra Klein of The American Prospect complains that Israel’s is responding with deadly force to Hamas’s “potshots.” Hamas is not killing anyone, though there are some injuries. Thus, the close to 400 dead Palestinians in Gaza cannot be justified by anyone. Besides, Klein adds, almost as an afterthought, Israel is a terrorist and anti-Palestinian racist state anyway, so why have sympathy for them?

Well, I have no sympathy for Hamas. The nonsensical argument that there is no justification for responding to what Klein calls “potshots” is despicable. You try living within range of those potshots and have them rain down on your backyard day after day for years on end. Even if we grant the—untrue—argument there have been no casualties as a results of Hamas’s continual bombardments, is Israel just supposed to shrug its collective shoulders and ignore Hamas as if it were merely an annoying bug?

For years, Israel has bent over backwards to turn the other cheek. Yes, sometimes it has responded inappropriately, but that is hardly surprising given the fact that Hamas has vowed to wipe Israel off the map. You run out of cheeks at some point. Nor does Israel believe that all Palestinians are evil. But these reprisals are not disproportionate. Hamas is a huge terrorist network sitting on a strip of land about twice as large as the District of Columbia and spends almost all its energy on lobbing missiles into Israel. The relatively low casualty rate is no reason for Israel not to avoid future mishaps.

The Morning After

WHAT MANY HAD FEARED HAS NOW HAPPENED: A SCARILY inexperienced senator with a wafer-thin resume has been elected president of the United States. That says something. It says something about the mood of the country. It certainly says something about the still simmering racial tensions in this country. It probably says something about the ignorance of the American voter. And it says something about the way the 21st-century media work in our society.

This is a historic moment. America has elected her first black president. That alone is something to be relieved about. The previous failed attempts of black candidates to gain any traction among average voters, though due almost entirely to their extremist positions and their paramount unfitness for office, nevertheless left a foul taste in the mouths of many Americans. This is a huge moment: about as big as the civil rights laws of the 1960s. For that aspect I am grateful. And I am not just saying this because at 1:45am the city of Washington DC, where I was privileged to experience the evening as a guest of Dutch public radio and TV, has exploded in a massive outdoor party.

Yes, Washington DC, which is overwhelmingly Democrat (nearly 100%) and which has slightly more than half African-Americans, is celebrating the election of Barack Obama. As a conservative I did think it wiser to travel by taxi from the studio back to my hotel rather than saunter back past the White House (directly on the route).

Republicans Lost?
Are Republicans now lost forever? Certainly not. The world did not end because the wrong black candidate got to be the first black president. First of all, Sen. Obama has shown himself to be intelligent and who knows how to play the political game. That means there is, to use the man’s own words, hope. Confronted with the realities of office he may yet reign in the most radical parts of his agenda.

But I am also not convinced by arguments that Republicans brought this on themselves by “overreaching,” whatever that is supposed to mean. Surrounded by liberal talking heads at the studio, I kept hearing this theory that Karl Rove’s evil strategy to cement a permanent Republican majority was the main culprit of this kick up the party’s backside. In the words of another famous American: It’s the economy stupid. Well, and that other albatross around every Republican’s neck, the Current Occupant, as liberal looney author and commentator Garrison Keilor likes to call him.

McCain ran an abominable campaign in the homestretch, though this was partly due to the vastly smaller war chest available to him. Sen. Obama’s campaign alone raised over 600 million dollars, while McCain’s net income was under 300 million, a decided disadvantage. But McCain did not have the clear message and he did not have the presentation. McCain killed his own campaign by using his gut instead of his brain. He selected an outside candidate for running mate and he went berserk when Wall Street crashed. One may forgive him for the former mistake because he had no viable alternatives. And do not forget that Palin did rally the base in a way Republicans have not seen in a long time. That was and will remain a valuable asset to this campaign.

But McCain’s second mistake—raving and ranting against this and that person he deemed responsible for the financial crisis—revealed something eerie about his judgment. It is, in my view, what clinched this race. I have spoken to a few of the liberals who attended the election broadcast and more than one said something along the lines of, “Let’s keep our fingers crossed.” They are not sure about Obama. All they know is that McCain was not an option. He was ruled out.

Leadership
So, whither now the conservative movement? I do not think much will need to change in politics, but a lot will need to change in tactics. Democrats benefited from a much better grassroots organization. Republicans will need to develop a parallel structure.

As for Sarah Palin? I doubt we will hear much from her again on the national stage. Applying the Peter Principle, she seems to have risen above the level where she can perform adequately. She seems to be functioning fairly well as governor of Alaska and has a serious argument on her side now that a counter-report has cleared her of wrongdoing in Troopergate.

But that leaves the conservative movement in the Republican party without a real leader. Leadership is not going to come from the Palins and Huckabees who have been weighed and found wanting. But the likes of McCain and Thompson, while honorable men (said the former Fredhead in me), clearly belong to a previous generation. In four years, we will not see them. Romney will not win anything national until he gets a real human soul transplanted into his android body. Who will lead the way?

Sarah Palin for Vice-President

I think Governor Palin (Alaska) is an exciting choice as John McCain’s running mate. Her record in Alaska shows her to be a sound conservative, an effective governor and politician, and a moral family woman. She is known as a reformer. As governor she cleaned house in her state’s corruption-ridden Republican Party, not afraid to throw fellow party members involved in scandal to the dogs, thus showing her moral integrity. She also single-handedly killed the symbol of pork barrel spending: the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, which (Republican) Alaska Sen. Stevens wanted built at tax-payer expense. Also, her personal background shows she learns quickly and can do many things at the same time, balancing work and family in an admirable way.

Yet this was no easy choice. There was no easy choice. All contenders (Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Tom Ridge, Joseph Lieberman) had major problems attached to them that would have hampered John McCain’s effectiveness in the campaign. To suggest that any of these other candidates would have been better is naïve.

Mitt Romney has two problems. As a Mormon he would scare away a good deal of the so-called Christian Right who will baulk at giving the Mormon cult political legitimacy. The lack of personal affection between Romney and McCain also doesn’t help. Similarly, the liberal pro-choice senator Joseph Lieberman, though sound on foreign policy, especially Iraq, would undo all the healing between McCain and the conservative base in the Republican Party who—unfairly in my view—consider McCain a dangerous left-leaning moderate. Tim Pawlenty’s drawback, even though he is a fine conservative and effective two-term governor, is summed up in Jay Leno’s joke: “Tim Who?” Outside of his state of Minnesota, nobody knows him. Why Tom Ridge’s name has even come up still confuses me. There can be no room for pro-choice politicians on a Republican presidential ticket. Assuming you’re campaigning to win, that is.

It has to be admitted that Palin is not the dream candidate. Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience as well as limited executive experience is a problem. By choosing Palin, McCain has dulled one of his mightiest weapons against Obama: the charge of his inexperience. What is more, within days, the media have dug up two blemishes on her image, if not actually blemishes on her career (note the difference, if you are able).

Her involvement in what some detractors call “Troopergate” (her alleged unethical interference in having her ex-brother-in-law fired from the State Police) is certainly the more serious problem. Palin has sought legal representation to defend herself against the charges. While it may be true to state that Palin remains innocent until proven guilty, even of relatively minor charges, the story does not look well in the media. In our media culture which revolves around subjective images and feelings, the allegations pack a much bigger punch than ought objectively to be the case.

At the same time, her squeaky clean family image has been dented by the revelation of her 17-year old daughter’s pregnancy. Barack Obama may say that “families are off-limits,” the media are drooling over the story. It blunts Gov. Palin’s effectiveness somewhat. Even the reiterations that, naturally, the girl is keeping the baby detract ultimately from Palin’s staunch pro-life image, because the repeated statement actually reinforces the pro-choice norm of America’s left-wing politicians and media that such young girls ought not to continue unwanted pregnancies. Pro-life sensibilities are subtly ridiculed.

Gov. Palin will have to work hard to become a household name across the country. The vice-presidential debate in Missouri will be a real challenge. Joe Biden is a seasoned politician who knows how to work the camera and whose foreign policy expertise could easily dazzle in comparison to Palin’s neophyte stature in that area. Yet it is not entirely fair to suggest, as the New York Times seems to insinuate, that national security and foreign policy experience are of overriding importance in deciding whether a candidate is fit to be vice-president. John McCain, although 72, is not about to drop down dead. The Constitution gives the VP only two duties: inquiring after the health of the president and preside over the Senate. I’m sure Gov. Palin can handle that. And more. To suggest that she is clueless about politics just because she hasn’t served 38 years on the foreign relations committee is nonsense.

Last but not least, it cannot be ignored that McCain has picked a credible woman candidate. Palin was not picked just because she is a woman. But hey, it does help to make McCain’s image more hip. So we have a ticket with a black man running against a ticket including a woman. Sounds exciting.

Thoughts about the Democratic Convention 2008

The Democratic National Convention was a tantalizing political festival. It was well-directed and the number one impression that will probably linger longest in people’s minds is the atmosphere of unity among the delegates and attendees. The party made a real attempt to present a united front. There was no sudden coup d’etat by the Clintonistas, as some deluded Hillary backers had feared (read: hoped). Both Bill and Hillary nicely towed the party line.

And yet, for those who are willing to look below the surface, what was most important about the convention was how partisan its organization was. While Democrats united, the message of unity among all Americans, stressed by Obama in his acceptance speech among others, was nothing but a façade. Party politics prevailed even in decisions to reshuffle speeches. Gov. Ted Strickland (Ohio) suddenly spoke at prime time, pushing out Mark Warner (former governor of Virginia). Guess what? Strickland’s fervent anti-Republican speech played much better with the party brass than Warner’s concilliatory speech calling for bipartisanship.

Obama’s speech was good, as always. Tone and delivery never failed. It was not a brilliant speech, however. While some glimpses of content were revealed, the speech remained chockful of meaningless clichés. And again, Obama tried to coast on his abstract message of hope and the glowing image of his own bipartisan resumé—which does not exist. All the fancy words about reasonable common ground on abortion, for instance, are nothing but fancy words, coming from the most fervently pro-abortion senator currently serving in Congress. He is ready to debate John McCain on any of these issues, the senator claims. So why has he turned down 10 invitations to debate him so far?

Adding Joe Biden to the ticket was an interesting move. For one it really bolstered the left-wing message of his campaign, considering that Senator Biden is the third-most liberal serving senator (Mr. Obama is number 1 on that list). Senator Biden is primarily a foreign-policy expert, suggesting that Obama wants to make foreign policy his number one campaign theme. No worries for McCain there, as he is much Mr. Obama’s superior on that front. Obama still denies the surge made any difference.

After the convention, Obama received his expected bounce in the polls. But the 15-point lead that was circulated by among others the McCain campaign has so far not materialized. RealClearPolitics reports an average of only 4.5 percentage points advantage for Obama. That seems to suggest that people are really getting tired of Obama and weren't swayed by the propaganda campaign in Denver.

Obama Overexposed

Could it be true? Is America really getting sick and tired of Barack Obama? According to a study published by the Pew Research Center (available here), 48% of Americans say they have heard too much of Obama. That includes 34% of Democrats and 51% of independents. At the same time, many people (38%) are complaining that not enough has been seen in the media of John McCain. In fact, fewer people say they have seen the Republican candidate in the the right amount (35%) than they have Mr Obama (41%). Even in their own parties, Obama is considered to have the right amount of exposure by 57% by fellow Democrats, against a score of only 37% for John McCain among fellow Republicans.


One reason? Could it be the ridiculous overexposure of Obama in the mass media, at least up until very recently? The same report includes results of candidate exposure research, showing that in the first half of 2008, the media had an outright love affair with Obama (see graph).

The data show that currently, coverage of Obama is about 81%, of McCain about 78%, but between February and this past week, the average difference was roughly 22% in Obama's favor. In early May, Obama-favor in the media was even over 50%!

But it gets worse, at least from McCain's perspective. The report also includes data on how visible the candidate is to voters. McCain's visibility has not improved, hovering constantly between 8 and 11%. And Obama? His visibility has steadily climbed over the spring and summer, currently reaching 76%.

What does this mean? I don't rightly know, but it may mean that voters are realizing that Obama is overexposed. This may lead to a backlash among voters who are getting tired of seeing his face on tv (and repeatedly on the cover of Newsweek) all the time. What's more, Pew mentions that 22% of respondents in their survey reported they have an unfavorable view of Obama, up from only 16%. That may indeed mean the post-Berlin bounce for Obama. Let's hope.

Bush Never Lied about Iraq

Please all read this important article in the Los Angeles Times, written by James Kirchick, assistant editor of The New Republic. This is hardly a conservative publication and cannot be accused of having succumbed to White House propaganda. It's an enlightening review of public reports by US Congress about the intelligence on Iraq.

On Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195; 553 US 2008) Guantanamo Detainees Case

This was a close case, decided 5-4 by a liberal v. conservative split. The liberal majority (opinion by Justice Kennedy) decided that the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) did not adequately protect the right to habeas corpus of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The majority concluded that the limitation of habeas rights in that law was unconstitutional because, in the views of the Court, habeas protections can only be suspended by invoking the Constitution’s suspension provision, i.e. when the Commander in Chief declares a rebellion or invasion. The conservative dissenters, Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas, rejected this argument in two separate dissenting opinions, one by the Chief Justice and one by Justice Scalia, in both of which the other conservative justices joined.

The Roberts dissent argued primarily that the DTA adequately protected whatever rights aliens detained as enemy combatants have. The right of habeas corpus is not an independent civil right in US law, according to the Chief Justice, but is first and foremost a “procedural right, a mechanism for contesting the legality of executive detention.” In other words, Roberts implies that it is not the exact formula of the writ of habeas corpus that is the protected civil right, but the intent or content of this writ, i.e. the test whether executive detention is legal. Thus, Roberts concludes that the DTA more than adequately provides for a protection of that essential right and that the discussion of habeas corpus should never even have been considered in this case.

Justice Scalia’s scathing and sarcastic dissent went into the specific question whether the Guantanamo detainees had the right of habeas corpus. He emphatically concludes that they do not because the detainees are held in Guantanamo Bay which is part of Cuba and not the United States. As alien detainees being held outside the sovereign territory of the United States they have no constitutional right to sue in civilian US court. Scalia also argued that the very reason President Bush decided to detain enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay facility was that he was advised by legal counsel that US civilian law does not extend to that facility.

As with any legal case, the question is an intricate one. Seen from a political point of view, I am not unsympathetic to the Court’s decision. The reason for this is that I do not agree with the ethical argument that enemy combatants “ought not to be be allowed to sue in civil court.” This seems to be at the bottom of Bush administration arguments, and Justice Scalia’s opinion strongly supports this notion. Hiding behind certain blank spots in the law because it is convenient to do so does not address the ethical question whether even enemy combatants ought not to have a certain minimum guarantee of due process. Scalia’s intricate argument regarding the sovereignty status of Guantanamo Bay is not only unconvincing, it is short-sighted and goal-oriented. He argues in effect that Guantanamo Bay is in no way part of US sovereign territory and that, ergo, the right to a writ of habeas corpus does not extend there, at least not to alien detainees. But his reasoning is somewhat tortured (pun intended) because he has to engage the majority’s argument that US sovereignty extends there at least de jure if not de facto. While this distinction, invented by the majority for this case, certainly is not extremely elegant, it does essentially describe the status of Guantanamo: US duties are imposed there by US agents (the US military and other federal agents) on the detainees and these US agents have to abide by executive directives. The majority’s conclusion that this implies US legal control of the area is not less than reasonable. Scalia’s dissent that there is no such term as de jure sovereignty and that its distinction from de facto sovereignty is contrived is unfair and wrong. His particular example that, in common law history, the English writ of habeas corpus was not issued in Scotland when the power of the English crown extended de facto to Scotland, is a legal non sequitur. After all, Scotland had and has its own law in a way not dissimilar to the way different US states have different and separate legal codes.

But this is mostly politics and not necessarily constitutionally sound reasoning. The Chief Justice’s dissent makes clear that even the alien detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their detention, but he deferred to the decision reached by both the executive and legislative branches in passing the DTA in 2005. This law, he argued not unpersuasively, protects the effective content of the detainees’ rights. Just because these rights are not exactly equal with civil habeas corpus rights that obtain for US citizens anywhere, and for legal resident aliens within the sovereign territory of the United States, this is no reason to declare the relevant provision in the DTA unconstitutional.

We must not fall into the trap of fixing this the quick way because the question is politically controversial. I have always disagreed with the Bush administration’s handling of the legal rights of Guantanamo detainees. I believe the limitations imposed on them are unethical because they contradict the very principles undergirding American law and democracy. Even enemy combatants should have some rights. The administration has claimed to agree with this position but the limitations they have imposed on these rights, as gleaned from the legal arguments employed in the various challenges in federal court to the detainees’ treatment, appear to exceed the standards of reasonableness.

On the other hand, the public at large has no right whatsoever to know anything about the way these enemy combatants are processed as this would clearly violate the national security interests of the United States. And unfortunately, the public, in the guise of journalists, pressure groups, and politicians, have muddied the debate by offering conclusions on the matter when they have no understanding of the facts. This decision by the Court’s liberal majority is clearly driven to appease these ill-informed public opinions. Chief Justice Roberts’ warning that the majority’s decision will create a legal confusion that is in no-one’s interest, neither that of the government nor that of the detainees, is quite correct. As members of the judicial branch of government, the justices have no calling except to look at what the pertinent laws say and then declare that. If this analysis of the law finds that the Bush administration has not violated any law then, no matter the political or ethical quibbles one may have with administration policy, too bad. It is simply not up to the judiciary to correct this situation. Judges are nothing but glorified legal consultants, trained in giving expert opinions on the cumulative effect of legislative and executive action.

Thus, even though I am not unsympathetic to the position or even the arguments taken by the Kennedy majority, the conclusion of that majority cannot be construed as anything but liberal judicial activism. I do not agree with all the arguments propounded by the two dissents, but their overriding redeeming quality is that both the Chief Justice and Justice Scalia understand much better than the liberal majority the position Supreme Court justices as well as other federal judges have in a constitutional democracy.