American Hero: This story is almost too painful to read. Think of the sacrifice and love of country a man must have to forsake a high-paying career (and one in which the window to participate is inherently short-lived) to fight what he was led to believe would be a war against terrorists, only to be sent to fight a chimera. Every time I read some warblogger deny they have a responsibility to take up arms in the war they've cheerleading for, I think of Pat Tillman.

Perhaps the clearest indication that stopping the Roberts nomination is now a lost cause:

According to a report from The Canadian Press, Martha Burk, the chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, said she intends to write letters of protest to the NHL and NBC over the NHL's new ad campaign, which is set to begin next week.

The first spot, titled "It's Time," shows a player (an actor, not an NHL player) in a locker room, surrounded by candles and accompanied by a woman who ceremoniously helps him don his hockey garb. The ads feature quotes from Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" along with dramatic camera work and music reminiscent of the film "Braveheart."

Burk told The Canadian Press that the ad is "offensive on many levels."

"The woman is dressed provocatively and when she asks the player if he's ready, it's a double-entendre in my view," Burk told The CP. "She's in the ad as a groomer, a sex object.

"The commercial is clearly selling sex and violence and the last image in that commercial is a young boy watching this, so he's clearly the customer they're after, or it's a misguided attempt to draw in families."

This is stupid on so many levels I really don't want to get into it. At least with Augusta, NOW was taking on a racist country club which hosted a tournament people cared about.

YBK [Part 19]: Three weeks to go. From the Associated Press:

File bankruptcy now -- before the law changes!

That's the message -- or exhortation -- that attorneys are making across the country, in TV commercials, print ads and mailings, urging Americans to seek bankruptcy court protection before a new law makes it harder for them to walk away from their debts.

Debtors are responding. Counting down toward the Oct. 17 effective date for the biggest reform in U.S. bankruptcy law in a generation, personal bankruptcy filings have jumped this month to the highest on record. Filings averaged more than 9,000 per day, up roughly 50 percent from last year's average daily volume, during the first two weeks of September. (emphasis mine)

It will get worse. One wonders whether the devastation to be wrought by Hurricane Rita will finally spur Congress to act on suspending the law, lest we witness a financial panic not seen since 1929.

The greatest Onion article, ever.

An interesting bookend to the Giambi-Palmeiro-Bonds controversy, where another industry suddenly wakes up one morning and decides that the drug use it was previously willing to condone, even encourage, has suddenly become bad for the bottom line. As with steroids and the like, heroin and cocaine provided career advantages to its users on the catwalk, regardless of the resulting medical damage; one set of drugs puts muscle on, the other allows it to wither away.

I doubt we'll see a panel of defiant supermodels perjuring themselves before Congress in the near-future, though....

Three generations of imbeciles are enough! Wouldn't it be a better question to ask which Bush appointees/nominees are actually qualified to hold their positions, rather than listing the endless supply of his mind-numbingly incompetent picks? Perhaps a more fruitful task would be to compare the current crop of hacks with the people his father had in the same position; I don't think it's necessarily a Republican, or even a conservative trait, to staff the government with morons. It bears repeating that the Presidential Medal of Freedom didn't used to be a symbol of failure.

My guess is that it's a lethal combination of ideology and faith that leads a political leader to surround himself with those who've failed in all other aspects of life before they enter public service, but who nevertheless have the right political connections. Someone who believes that "intelligent design" should be taught to our young'uns is not going to be obsessed with having qualified appointees doing the people's business. If the United States is going to remain a superpower and a beacon of freedom and all that, we need to have a good strong dose of elitism. We need to put grown-ups in charge of things again.

Miscellany:

1. The editors of the Dallas Morning News have a rather entertaining blog, in the tradition of the National Review Online. My post two weeks ago on "Norquist's Bathtub" was referred to one of their editors (thankfully, the prediction that the death toll from the hurricane would "dwarf" that of 9/11 has not been borne out to date), so I'm getting a big hunk o' Lone Star link-love today.

2. My take on Bush's speech Thursday night: not bad. In fact, it was perhaps the best he's sounded since right after 9/11; acknowledging that the buck ultimately stops with him will surely help him politically, as it is a refreshing change from his typical avoidance of responsibility. Focusing in on the racial aspect of the disaster was especially important. The problem, of course, is that his initial proposals indicate that nothing will change. Karl Rove is in charge of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction, the housecleaning he needs to do at FEMA and DHS has not started, and his vow not to raise taxes while cutting spending elsewhere to pay for reconstruction has the tinny sound of a man trying to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic; if rebuilding New Orleans is to be the trade-off for cutting funds that might prevent a disaster elsewhere, that is not acceptable. Liberals must increase the pressure on this government.

3. Matt Welch has converted his blog into a daily diary of the Angels for the final weeks of the season. Those who wish to follow the missteps of L.A.'s pursuit of the AL West title should check it out.

4. A friend of mine from Georgia calls the annual Florida-Tennessee battle, the "Meteor Bowl"; he hates both the Gators and Vols, and for him the optimal result would be for a meteor to crash into the stadium during the game. That's kind of what I thought of the Hitchens-Galloway tussle in New York City this past week.

5. Speaking of college football, I'm off to Over/Under for some Santa Monica fun. See ya Monday.

Read this, and I dare you to tell met that you can drive a nail up this guy's ass with a sledgehammer.

The worst team nickname in the world. [link via Ragged Thots]

After three days of testimony, the one thing I can safely conclude about John Roberts is that he's one hell of a lawyer. Slick, evasive, brilliant, mendacious, smooth as silk; he's Thomas Dewey without the moustache. Trying to get him to answer a question truthfully is like attempting to crack someone's skull open with a pillow, yet I doubt anyone could point to a single false statement he made this week.

I'm skeptical there'll be any public groundswell demanding that Roberts' confirmation sail through the Senate. If he doesn't want to give a straight answer to questions, or if he continues to assert whatever lame-ass privilege he's using to hide his records from his time at the Solicitor General's office, then filibuster him.

That would accomplish several things: it would be a symbolic sign of defiance aimed at our lame duck President, at a time when public contempt for Bush is at a level not seen since the final days of Nixon; it would signal that every nominee will have to face a battle, and a more conservative appointee will be on notice for next time(and Roberts' deceptiveness aside, his public record indicates he's a bit closer to the center than the person he's succeeding; at a time in his career when Rehnquist was trying to intimidate black voters into forgoing their franchise, Roberts was working behind the scenes to overturn anti-gay legislation); and it will allow swing-state and Red State Democrats in the Senate the chance to publicly distance themselves from the progressive wing by voting against the filibuster. It's a no-lose situation.

YBK [Part 18]: Not one, but two of the largest airlines went double-toothpicks within minutes of each other. The new bankruptcy laws are going to be brutal on business reorganizations, so expect to see this story replayed quite a bit in the next four weeks. In the meantime, what does this say about airlines when three of the four biggest airlines in the country (plus U.S. Air) are currently in Chapter 11? Can someone say "Amtrak"?

Because 10,000 would be unforgivable: There's something positively odious about complaining that not enough people died along the Gulf Coast the past two weeks.

Clueless:

You never gave five seconds of thought to the risk of flooding in New Orleans until it became impossible to think about anything else? Me neither. Nor have I given much thought to the risk of a big earthquake along the West Coast — the only one of the top three catastrophes that hasn't happened yet — even though I live and work in the earthquake zone.

Question for Mr. Kinsley: What planet do you live on? I dare you to name anyone who has lived on the West Coast (particularly California), and experienced at least a 6.0+ quake, who does not think about The Big One constantly (ie., 8.0+ on the Richter Scale). I think about it every time I drive under a freeway overpass, or walk next to a brick building, or wake up at 4:00 in the morning. I think about it whenever I see glass or china sitting precariously on a shelf, or turn on a flashlight. Earthquakes are part of the reality of living in LA, and the certainty that a major quake will rattle us again in the near future is something everyone thinks about. And I think its fair for any Angeleno to make the assumption that our government will be accountable in the event some major building or piece of infrastructure isn't seismically capable of withstanding such a shock.

Did I ever think about New Orleans being wiped off the face of the earth because of a flood before August 29, 2005? In all honesty, no; I had never studied the topology of that region. But I assume that many, if not most, Louisianians did, largely because major floods occurred every so often. They had a right to assume their government was looking after them, and that predictable threats, such as the corruption of the levees, were going to be dealt with.

And to simply shrug at a calamity like Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks and say that it's human nature not to focus in on the problem until its too late is rather lame. The state and local governments knew enough to wargame contingency plans, however ineffectual they turned out to be. The Army Corps of Engineers knew that the levees probably wouldn't be able to survive a Category-4 hurricane as far back as 2000, and the local newspaper predicted the devastation that would occur two weeks ago all the way back in 2002, facts which Kinsley acknowledges. Money was budgeted towards doing something to shore up the levees, but not nearly enough. The people who needed to know knew, but they just couldn't get the people who had the power to do something about it to act accordingly. And that's unforgiveable.

We don't expect government to guarantee that all disasters be averted. But it's not unfair to demand that avoidable, predictable mistakes not be made. And treating FEMA like a patronage cow, the federal version of state boxing or parole boards on which to stack cronies and hacks, is inexcusable.

UPDATE: Reader MK informs me that Michael Kinsley actually was in town for the '94 Northridge quake. I guess the collapse of the 10 Freeway didn't leave much an impression....

Gone fishin'....

A blackout has wiped out electrical service to most of Los Angeles (that is, the city; the greater metropolitan area, including Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and Santa Monica, gets its power from another source, and all systems are normal in those cities). Sherman Oaks, where I live, is dark, but Woodland Hills, where I work, has been unaffected. If that changes, I won't let you know, because, well, I won't have power to blog anything.

Quote of the Day:

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. I'd seen it in the theater, but I'd brought Apple, and she was tiny, so I left like 70 times because I was trying to calm her down and I missed the end and stuff. And now, since the film has finished, what's going on in Iraq and what's going on every day? And you see that footage of Bush landing and saying 'Mission accomplished' and he just looks like the biggest moron of all time.

--Gwyneth Paltrow

Earlier this week, as most of you already know, Bob Denver passed away. Most famous today for playing the title character in the TV crapfest "Gilligan's Island", his obits also contained fleeting references to an earlier TV role, as Maynard G. Krebs in the series, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis". This LA Times column recounts the uniqueness of that character, a goateed, jazz-loving, bongo-playing hipster.

What is truly odd about this is the fact that Denver would have become so well-known for one character, but almost forgotten for the other. "Gilligan's Island" has been a staple on TV for generations, even though it was astonishingly bad and unfunny, and lasted for only four seasons. Very few people younger than 50, on the other hand, have any memory of "Dobie Gillis". In fact, that show lasted longer than "Gilligan", is said to have been a much better comedy (I have to rely on the opinions of others for this, since I have never seen a single episode of the show in the nearly forty-two years I've been on the planet), and had a much more famous cast. Besides Denver, the show also included a young Warren Beatty, who is only one of the most famous actors in the world, Tuesday Weld (as Dobie's infatuation), who came pretty close to becoming a star, and who was nominated for an Oscar for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Michael J. Pollard, who was also Oscar-nominated, for Bonnie and Clyde, and Sheila Kuhle, who might not be a name many of you have heard of, but in California she is a pretty well-known political figure. And yet, other than a few odd episodes that might have been shown on Nickelodeon once upon a time, I don't know if its ever been syndicated. Strange.

The Buck Stops Nowhere: Now that the hapless FEMA Director has been "reassigned" to other duties in the capital, when is the incompetent moron who nominated him in the first place going to take the hint?

TalkLeft reports that displaced lawyers from the Gulf Coast will be permitted to practice law in Arkansas for the next two months. Don't be surprised if other state bars provide the same exemption, as the judicial system in that area has collapsed.

Seems like I might have to retract my earlier post about how Michael Brown had "disaster management" experience with the city of Edmund, OK in the late-70's. TIME is reporting that it was more like a college internship; Brown also padded his resume in other areas as well. The obvious question, after reading the transcript of his Senate confirmation hearing, below, is didn't the FBI do a background check on this guy? Did anyone perform due diligence?

Something for liberals to ponder: Mike Brown, the clearly-unqualified show horse official and unaccredited law school graduate, who went from being a non-practicing lawyer in Colorado to running FEMA, had to undergo one confirmation hearing before the Senate. In 2002, as the President's nominee to be Deputy Director of FEMA, he went before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman (yes, the Democrats controlled the Senate at the time), and the hearing lasted forty-two minutes.

From there, his nomination went to the floor of the Senate, where he was confirmed without opposition by voice vote. Rather than blaming the local elected officials, such as Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin, who may have made mistakes but were clearly overwhelmed by the scope of the catastrophe, I think any conservative with a smidgen of intellectual integrity should hang his hat on this example, of how "vigorously" Senate Democrats exercised their Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent when the Brown nomination came before them. [link via TPM Cafe]

Thought of the Day:

Because they don't see blacks as a current or potential constituency, Bush and his fellow Republicans do not respond out of the instinct of self-interest when dealing with their concerns. Helping low-income blacks is a matter of charity to them, not necessity. The condescension in their attitude intensifies when it comes to New Orleans, which is 67 percent black and largely irrelevant to GOP political ambitions. Cities with large African-American population that happen to be in important swing states may command some of Karl Rove's respect as election time approaches. But Louisiana is small (9 electoral votes) and not much of a swinger these days. In 2004, Bush carried it by a 57-42 margin. If Bush and Rove didn't experience the spontaneous political reflex to help New Orleans, it may be because they don't think of New Orleans as a place that helps them.

Considered in this light, the actions and inactions now being picked apart are readily explicable. The president drastically reduced budget requests from the Army Corps of Engineers to strengthen the levees around New Orleans because there was no effective pressure on him to agree. When the levees broke on Tuesday, Aug. 30, no urge from the political gut overrode his natural instinct to spend another day vacationing at his ranch. When Bush finally got himself to the Gulf Coast three days later, he did his hugging in Biloxi, Miss., which is 71 percent white, with a mayor, governor, and two senators who are all Republicans. Bush's memorable comments were about rebuilding Sen. Trent Lott's porch and about how he used to enjoy getting hammered in New Orleans. Only when a firestorm of criticism and political damage broke out over the federal government's callousness did Bush open his eyes to black suffering.

Had the residents of New Orleans been white Republicans in a state that mattered politically, instead of poor blacks in city that didn't, Bush's response surely would have been different. Compare what happened when hurricanes Charley and Frances hit Florida in 2004. Though the damage from those storms was negligible in relation to Katrina's, the reaction from the White House was instinctive, rapid, and generous to the point of profligacy. Bush visited hurricane victims four times in six weeks and delivered relief checks personally. Michael Brown of FEMA, now widely regarded as an incompetent political hack, was so responsive that local officials praised the agency's performance.

The kind of constituency politics that results in a big life-preserver for whites in Florida and a tiny one for blacks in Louisiana may not be racist by design or intent. But the inevitable result is clear racial discrimination. It won't change when Republicans care more about blacks. It will change when they have more reason to care.

--Jacob Weisburg, Slate.

YBK [Part 17]: Not surprisingly, Hurricane Katrina will have a major impact on the bankruptcy numbers in the three states (Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama) that have been devastated. The L.A. Times reports that after every major hurricane in the last 25 years, bankruptcy filing rates have gone up at a rate of over fifty percent over unaffected states in the three years following the disaster.

Ironically, with the new law set to go into effect less than six months from now, the people who are most likely to be screwed by its provisions aren't the now-homeless African-Americans of New Orleans, whose annual income was too low to qualify for the new means test, but instead are the middle-class whites who lived on the outskirts:

But unless changes are made to an overhaul of the nation's bankruptcy law due to kick in next month, many of those affected by Hurricane Katrina and the resulting floods will have a substantially harder time winning court relief from loans they incurred for homes and businesses that are now gone, according to a variety of judges, lawyers and policy experts.

"Just because your house or car is somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't mean that your auto loan or mortgage went with it," said Brady C. Williamson, who was appointed by President Clinton to head a national bankruptcy commission in the mid-1990s.

UCLA professor Kenneth N. Klee said, "The new law is going to make it much more difficult for people to put their lives back together." Klee is a former Republican congressional staffer who was a chief author of the previous major bankruptcy-law change in the late 1970s.

House and Senate Democrats are expected to propose, perhaps as early as today, delaying the effective date for the new measure and easing some of its most stringent requirements. When it passed the bankruptcy overhaul last spring, the Republican-controlled House rejected an exemption for victims of natural disasters.

There is an exception within the new law for waiving the means testing and credit counseling upon a showing of "special circumstances", language that was deliberately kept vague by Congress, but how that will be interpreted is going to be left to the individual judges; some will apply a very broad standard, no doubt, allowing anyone who can show that the means test is unrealistic in their situation to remain in Chapter 7, while other judges will approve exemptions only in rare instances. Congress explicitly refused to grant an exception for victims of natural disasters, so there are no assurances that the victims of Hurricane Katrina will be able to use the "special circumstances" exemption.

I suspect that unless federal action on this front isn't enacted shortly, there will be a veritable stampede to the courts before the new law goes into effect on October 17.

A mortician associated with the DHS has been told to prepare for up to 40,000 dead. My God. [link via Josh Marshall]

Tony Pierce, the poet laureate of blogtopia, explains who is ultimately to blame for Norquist's Bathtub.

Tens of thousands of people may be dead, a great city and cultural center destroyed, and Stephen Fry is inspired to write a tasteless article about the stench of the suffering. We could use compassion, and instead we get derivative Wildean mockery. What an asshole.

Norquist's Bathtub: In many respects, August 29, 2005 is already turning out to be a more important date than 9/11, and not just because the number of fatalities caused by Hurricane Katrina will dwarf the best efforts at savagery by Osama's thugs. The collapse of the levees of Lake Ponchartrain seems to have awakened us to the rotten underpinnings of our institutions, our government, our leaders.

We are undergoing an ideological, not a partisan, reawakening. Historian Timothy Naftali compared the events of the past week to the core meltdown at Chernobyl, where the inability of the Soviet Union to protect its own people was laid bare, leading to the fall of Communism, but we need not look overseas for historical precedent. The combination of the Watts Riots and the first heavy casualty figures from Southeast Asia in 1965 brought about the beginning of the end of Cold War liberalism, coincidentally in the first year following the reelection of a President, just as the ineffectual responses to crises led to the obliteration of the Republicans in 1932 and the Democrats in 1980.

Although the blame has deservedly focused on the Bush Administration, and their typically inept response to Hurricane Katrina, the Democrats bear a great deal of responsibility for what happened. Obviously, there were failures at the state and local level to quickly respond to the impending disaster; the call to evacuate came less than 48 hours from impact, not enough time to get safely away from the storm, and certainly not enough time to prepare the mass evacuations of the destitute. If anything symbolizes the local failure, it was the row after row of empty buses that were parked in a flooded lot in New Orleans, instead of being used to transport people out of the area. That neither the state of Louisiana nor New Orleans and its surrounding parishes can be considered well-governed sovereignties even in the best of times (a problem shared throughout the South, as the slothlike measures taken by the buffoonish Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, while his state's coastline disappeared, attest) exacerbated the problem, particularly afterwards.

More important than the failure of its local politicians, though, the Democrats have failed to provide any effective opposition. Just as with 9/11, we were victimized by our own lack of imagination. You can go through all the preparedness drills and make all the contingency plans that you like, but if you don't have political leaders who will make a stand and insist that we be prepared for any contingency, if your party lacks the will to stake out unpopular stands, even in the best of times, then democracy fails. The most telling fact so far is that even if the funding to repair the levees had come through, in full, they still probably wouldn't have been ready in time to stop what happened.

So, Republicans didn't think that budgeting money to protect a city from a semi-centennial disaster was important, and the Democrats didn't put up enough of a fight. Bush nominates a political crony to head FEMA, then a small-town lawyer straight from the world of show horse competitions, and the Democrats silently assent; both Joe Allbaugh and Michael Brown breezed to confirmation, with no Democratic filibuster. This disaster was predictable, inevitable, and overdue, something we knew for decades, and still the Democrats failed to do enough, either in opposition, or even in those brief times we controlled the government. No wonder Clinton was so reticent about attacking his successor over what happened last week.

But in the end, the events of the past week, when combined with the ongoing debacle in Iraq, has thoroughly discredited the governing ideology this country has had since 1980. It is a philosophy that holds that tax cuts are the panacea to prosperity, that no one need sacrifice for the common good, and is best encapsulated by Grover Norquist's infamous phrase that his aim was "...to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub". Although the federal budget has increased during the Reagan-Bush Era, its effectiveness, its ability to accomplish things, has diminished. "Conservatives" have, with malice aforethought, strangled the initiative of society to publicly confront issues of poverty, racism, and inequality, and to adequately protect the safety of the public. This week, the Gulf Coast is that bathtub.

It is the Republican philosophy of governance. Our infrastructure rots, our military is undermanned, our environmental protections are being sabotaged. Starve the beast, and let the private sphere, the realm of Enron and Halliburton, take care of things. As Naftali points out,

Not all of the questioning about the rapid growth in government since the 1960s was wrongheaded and Reagan at least admired Franklin Roosevelt and having experienced the depression first hand understood that government had a positive role to play. But Reagan's imitators ever since, mainly Republicans but also some Democrats, have lacked that historical perspective and have mechanically espoused the view that government had to be lean and mean and, when in doubt, could be underfunded lest money be taken from the pockets of "ordinary Americans," who knew best how to spend it. Underlying this was another, more amoral, message that those who fall behind in this society get what they deserve.

For a quarter of a century, we have also been told we could have our cake and eat it, too. Local property taxes could be kept low, state budgets could be balanced and federal taxes could be reduced progressively with nothing but a positive effect on our national quality of living. For fifteen years, we have been told that the US military is large enough to handle every conceivable threat to the country because high technology would allow us to project force more efficiently. For three years we have been assured that our government is reorganizing to ensure that an urban disaster such as we witnessed on 9/11 would not happen again. Many Americans, unfortunately, came to believe these assertions and forgot not only the value of good government but that it costs money.

This week we saw the cumulative effect of these illusions. For six days thousands of babies were starved of formula, countless old people died of exposure and families lived with almost no water and had to defecate in public by a city Convention Center because the federal government lacked the resources, skill and troops to rescue them.

David Brooks, who is no liberal, noted over the weekend that "the first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield." It is pathetic that the Bush Administration, whose greatest innovation to conservatism has been to honor political loyalty at the expense of talent or competence, would attempt to (dishonestly, as it turns out) shift the blame to local officials. Ineffectual local government is to be expected when dealing with a Category-4 hurricane; in Mississippi and Louisiana, corrupt politicians are a feature, not a bug. In the post-9/11 world, we expected the Federal Government to handle the big stuff, and, as in the War against Terrorism, the Bush Administration was not up to the task.

If any good is to come out of the horrors of this past week, it will require us to abandon the notion that the public sphere can accomplish nothing worthwhile, that people must settle for inefficient, cheap government, or that individual desires must always trump the needs of the rest. I have a feeling we might have already begun to turn down that path.

A correction, and a silver lining:

1. Friday's post, about the previous job held by FEMA Director Michael Brown, may have implied that he was completely without experience in the field of emergency management. In fact, before he was the "czar" of Arabian Horse breeding, he was a city manager for the town of Edmund, Oklahoma, from 1975 to 1978, where he supervised the emergency services division. At that time, the population for Edmund, a suburb of Oklahoma City, was a little under 30,000.

2. At least one emergency professional sees an advantage of having someone of Mr. Brown's background in charge of things right now. According to Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief, "He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm."

[links via Billmon]

But wait, there's more: What bloggers (and others) were saying two years ago, at around this time:

I'm a little late to this subject, but isn't it interesting that the fabled solidarity of French socialism leaves old people alone to die from the heat as the whole country goes on vacation at the same time? Yet that seems to be a consensus view of what happened...At least they have solidarity about when to take vacations--none of that evil American individualism and workaholism. (citation omitted)

--Virginia Postrel

13,500 people dead, in a modern nation, due to a heatwave the would scarcely get notice in Texas? True, France isn't prepared for the heat like Dallas is -- but neither was my old home (ed-St. Louis). Even 5,000 seems much, much too high.

Were there no emergency A/C shelters? Did the hydrants stay closed? Did the Seine dry up? Lord knows, the French know to keep their wine cool in cellars -- so what about people?

What the hell went wrong?

--Vodkapundit

French President Jacques Chirac has promised to remedy defects in his country’s health service in the wake of the heat wave that has killed thousands of mainly elderly people.

We’ve proudly decided to become even more socialist!

The French funeral directors association said 10,416 had died during the first three weeks of August because of the heat wave and projected the death toll for the month from the heat wave would be 13,632.

10,000 people! Jeez! 100 degrees isn’t that hot, people... its that hot everyday in Texaaaas... what gives?

France, which normally has temperatures in upper 20s Celsius (80s Fahrenheit) was hit with temperatures in the upper 30s (90s to over 100 Fahrenheit). After the first week of the heat wave, French officials, many of whom had been on vacation,

that’s what we call in here in the good ol’ U.S. of A "being asleep at the wheel"

rushed back to work. The death toll soared by 3,000 in that week. In a bid to divert criticism, Chirac added: "Today, the time is for contemplation, solidarity and action. I think about each of these victims and hold out my hand and express the solidarity of the nation."

what a schmuck...

--Rantburg

And with that, I send heartwaves to the Land of the Free and the Brave on this second anniversary of 9/11. I'm glad to have found Carine, Dissident Frogman and Damian...proof that Hope lives on both sides of the Atlantic. Now, if I could just find the magic formula to spread that Hope all over the world...

Of course, the French would refuse the formula AND the Hope, claiming them a menace to their oh so sacred culture. They would threaten to veto it or ask to renegotiate their share. They would leave it to die of thirst and bury it in an unmarked grave (which would later be defiled) without ceremony. And then, when held to account, blame everyone but themselves for the death of Hope.

God Bless America.

--Valerie, at "Pave France"

France received a shock this summer, when more than 10,000 of its elderly citizens died in distress during a heat wave--some while supposedly under medical care in hospitals. Thanks to the 35-hour workweek and the long August holiday, these institutions were short-staffed. The families of those who died were on holiday, too.

Yet another shock--and at the same time--the French government discovered that its unemployment-benefit plan for part-time workers in the entertainment industry, though generous, was underfunded and in danger of imminent collapse. The government suddenly decided to cut the benefits radically. As a result, the workers went on strike, and virtually all the great cultural festivals that are the pride of France's tourist industry had to be canceled.

These are all symptoms of a painful disease, a continental depression born of the realization that EU prosperity is a house built upon sand. While the American economy is picking up, the EU's remains in stagnation, bordering on recession. The 35-hour workweek is splendid, provided you have a job. But what of the growing millions who are out of work and whose social security payments are now threatened with reduction or cut-off dates? Unemployment, already high, is rising in France and Germany.

(snip)

The omens for continental Europe, however, are sinister. The entire plan for perpetual improvement upon which the EU depends is based on continuous economic expansion. There is no provision for stagnation. As we see in Japan, once stagnation sets in, it can last many years. Americans should count their blessings, above all the supreme blessing of having an economy that is run by businessmen not bureaucrats, or that--under wise governance--runs itself.

--Paul Johnson

I don't know what M. Chirac heard in the dépanneurs and resto-bars of Quebec this week, but what I heard south of the border was complete amazement at how a nominally First World country could be so insouciant about an entirely avoidable Third World death toll. President Bush and the entire Washington press corps are spending a month in heat equal to the brutal Parisian summer, and he's playing golf in it all day while they stand around watching; in Phoenix tomorrow and Monday, it will be an unremarkable 105. This isn't about the weather.

In Paris this spring, a government official explained to me how Europeans had created a more civilised society than America - socialised healthcare, shorter work weeks, more holidays. We've just seen where that leads: gran'ma turned away from the hospital to die in an airless apartment because junior's sur la plage. M Chirac's somewhat tetchy suggestion that his people should rethink their attitude to the elderly was well taken. But Big Government inevitably diminishes its citizens' capacity to take responsibility, to the point where even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the state should do something about.

Meanwhile, Maggie Pernot wrote the other day to chide me for my continued defence of the Rumsfeld Death Camps at Guantanamo. The prisoners, she complains, are "kept in tiny, chainlink outdoor cages where they were likely to be rained upon". In fact, they have sloping roofs and cool concrete floors, perfect for the climate. If they had solid walls rather than airy wire mesh, they'd be Parisian sweatboxes and everyone would be dead. By contrast, if those thousands of French pensioners had been captured by the Marines and detained by Rummy in Cuba, they'd be alive today.

Mme. Pernot writes from St Julien, France. That's right: she's surrounded by an actual humanitarian scandal on all sides but she'd rather obsess about an entirely fictional one. Heat getting to you, Madame? Or just the unusual odour from the flat next door?

--Mark Steyn (again!)

I'm surprised they had people who could buy it. After all, over 10,000 French people supposedly died from the heat wave.

Perhaps we could collaborate on a book where Frenchmen are doing the nasty while dehydrating.

We can call it, "Sweating Up The Sheets."

--Jay Caruso (in reference to a book that was on the Best Seller list in France)

Incredible. The man in charge of FEMA, the government agency that was supposed to coordinate disaster relief in New Orleans, Mike Brown, had to resign from his previous job, as the "Judges and Stewards Commissioner" for the International Arabian Horses Association, due to incompentence and mismanagement. After 9/11, the notion that the President would cull from the ranks of failed executives at horse breeding associations for a position like FEMA Director is mind-boggling.

What they were saying last year at around this time:

There was a heatwave in Europe this summer. It made life uncomfortable everywhere, from London to Rome. But only in France did the death toll climb up and up. The "brutal Iraqi summer" so eagerly anticipated by the Continent's anti-Americans is believed to have killed two US soldiers. The brutal Gallic summer wound up killing well over 10,000.

Why? It seems to have been a combination of factors.

Snobbery: The French regard air-conditioners as vulgar and American. Big government: The French healthcare system is designed for the convenience of its employees, so in summer it's on vacation. Heartlessness: The entire country goes to the beach in August, and having grand-mere along would be too much of a drag, so it's easier to leave her in her airless city apartment.

Bernard Mazeyrie, managing director of France's largest undertakers', noted that many of the bereaved were in no hurry to bury their aged loved ones, preferring to leave them on ice while they stayed sur la plage to finish their holidays.

By the standards of the world, Iran, China and France are all wealthy societies. They're vulnerable to "events" because of their organizational principles – a primitive theocracy which disdains modernity; a modified totalitarianism which thinks you can reap the benefits of capitalism without the institutions of liberty; and a cradle-to-grave welfare state that has so enfeebled its citizens' ability to act as responsible adults that even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the government should do something about.

--Mark Steyn

In a period of two weeks during August, more than 11,000 elderly French men and women died of heat stroke. It is important to note this is not nearly the scandal in France that it would be in America. In fact, upon hearing the news, French president Jacques Chirac decided to stay on vacation in Quebec, Canada.

Why not? Because, in the words of British historian Paul Johnson, the French – like most Europeans, and like most left-thinking people anywhere – love ideas more than people.

(snip)

[T]he future of the world is either European secular socialism, Islamic totalitarianism or the unique American combination of Judeo-Christian religiosity and political and economic liberty.

Few Americans are attracted to the second possibility, but vast numbers look to Europe as a model. One hopes that the next time they do, they will note the 11,000 elderly dead in France. But don't bet on it.

--Dennis Prager

As of writing, there are in excess of 300 corpses yet unclaimed. It is the normal policy in France that if a body is not claimed within six days, it is buried in a pauper’s grave. But, given that it’s the month of the grande vacance, the French are cutting the relatives a little slack. As an official indicated understandingly, it’s August and many of the relatives may not wish to cut into their month long vacation to come home early to claim a body.

As the numbers of heat deaths climb, a final figure of close to 20,000 is being seen as not unrealistic – in other words, a humanitarian disaster.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Guantanamo Bay, which the French are in the habit of condemning with dainty disgust as barbaric, sweltering, fetid and inhuman, remains remarkably stable: None.

--Dennis McQueen, World Net Daily

Does anyone else find this claim suspicious? "France's worst heat wave on record has killed an estimated 3,000 people across the nation, the Health Ministry said Thursday, as the government faced accusations that it failed to respond to a major health crisis," the Associated Press reports from Paris.

Three thousand deaths? In a Western European country? Because of the weather? This is the kind of death toll usually reserved for Third World natural disasters--Chinese earthquakes, Bangladeshi floods and the like. Has the heat really killed 3,000 Frenchmen?

--James Taranto, WSJ

I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.

--James Wolcott

[all links via Crooked Timber, exc. for the Wolcott post, which the author had the good sense to apologize for before Katrina struck landfall]

UPDATE: My bad. The French heat wave occurred two years ago, and most of the above quotes originated then.

The combination of cataclysmic property damage and the near-doubling of gasoline prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina will certainly exacerbate the YBK problem. The personal devastation that millions in the Gulf Coast area have suffered has led a number of Congressman to propose an amendment to the recently-passed bankruptcy law, which will waive the hardships imposed by the new law on victims of this disaster. Let's hope Congress speedily passes this legislation before the draconian provisions go into effect.

One area where it is fair to take the current regime to task is their complete lack of preparation for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was not simply a matter of levee repairs that were never funded, or grasslands that were allowed to atrophy; those were problems that existed before the 2000 Election, and the fact that Democrats never used their position in the opposition to draw a line in the sand on those issues is a pretty good indicator that blame for those problems crossed party lines.

Instead, FEMA has been made to look utterly incompetent over the last few days, dealing with problems that one would have thought would have been in the forefront of this Administration's priorities, since those were problems dealing with refugees, emergency rescue and damage control: in other words, the same problems that would exist after a major terrorist attack. Bush chose to handpick political cronies to run the agency, and the utter lack of preparation in evacuating masses of people without access to cars, getting food and water to survivors, and having immediate access to medical care is unforgivable. [link via Smirking Chimp]

Ironically, the professional ran FEMA during the Clinton Administration, James Lee Witt, is a major reason why Bush made it to the White House in the first place. Prior to their first debate in 2000, major fires broke out in Texas, and FEMA assistance was required. In that debate, Mr. Witt's decisive actions drew praise from then-Governor Bush, and Vice President Gore seconded that praise, stating that he had accompanied Mr. Witt down to Texas. It turned out that he had accompanied Mr. Witt's assistant, and hadn't spoken to the FEMA director until later, but the Bush camp was able to spin that discrepancy into yet another Gore "prevarication" (in an age of fictitious WMD's, Nigerian Yellow Cake, and the billions of dollars that have disappeared in the reconstruction of Iraq, it is poignant what we used to be consider "dishonest"). What had been a debate that most of the public thought had been decisively won by Al Gore suddenly shifted, and Bush moved out to a lead in the polls that he didn't relinquish until Election Day.

Hell:

The sick and the disabled were the first to be led out. But late Wednesday afternoon, as the slow evacuation of the Superdome began, it was not always easy to distinguish them from the rest of the 20,000 or more storm refugees who had steeped for days in the arena's sickening heat and stench, unbathed, exhausted and hungry.

They had been crammed into the Superdome's shadowy ramps and corridors, spread across its vast artificial turf field and plopped into small family encampments in the plush orange, teal and purple seats that rise toward the top of the dome.

They had flocked to the arena seeking sanctuary from the winds and waters of Hurricane Katrina. But understaffed, undersupplied and without air-conditioning or even much lighting, the domed stadium quickly became a sweltering and surreal vault, a place of overflowing toilets and no showers. Food and water, blankets and sheets, were in short supply. And the dome's reluctant residents exchanged horror stories, including reports, which could not be confirmed by the authorities, of a suicide and of rapes.

By Wednesday the stink was staggering. Heaps of rotting garbage in bulging white plastic bags baked under a blazing Louisiana sun on the main entry plaza, choking new arrivals as they made their way into the stadium after being plucked off rooftops and balconies.

The odor billowing from toilets was even fouler. Trash spilled across corridors and aisles, slippery with smelly mud and scraps of food.

"They're housing us like animals," said Iiesha Rousell, 31, unemployed after four years in the Army in Germany, dripping with perspiration in the heat, unable to contain her fury and disappointment at being left with only National Guardsmen as overseers and no information about what might lie ahead.

--New York Times, 9-1-2005

UPDATE: Billmon has a more detailed list of relief providers. Check it out.

Eric Alterman has a list of relief agencies and philanthropies that are providing assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, here.

There has been an unhealthy desire of many bloggers to use Katrina to justify their political position, whether pro- or anti-Bush. Hurricanes of the size and devastation we've seen this week, although rare, do happen, and will continue to happen, regardless of whether we deal with global warming, maintain the wetlands, or keep a sufficient National Guard presence in the homeland. Of all people, the son of Robert F. Kennedy should be the last person who uses human misfortune as orginating from the temper of a vengeful god. And rightists who are attempting to shift the blame to the state and local government of Louisiana as a way of scoring racist points (not to mention the coverage of "looting", which is suspiciously focused on African-Americans) may try to explain the similar destruction in Republican Mississippi and Alabama.

Anyone would be hard-pressed to point to a single policy that this President pursued that would have alleviated the damage, or stengthened our ability to protect the Gulf Coast from such a disaster, although it's not Bush's (or Congress') fault New Orleans is 20 feet under water; it just happened. Being unprepared for the Worst Case Scenario is an all-too-human fault. That was true last week, before the hurricane, and it will be true next week as well. Partisan blame has nothing to do with the immediate problem, which is saving lives.

But if the Democratic Party doesn't heed the lessons of this tragedy, than it truly is unworthy to be an opposition party. As with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean last year, we, as a species, should be well past the point where thousands of people get killed in a disaster of this magnitude. Tsunami warning systems, reinforcing dikes, retrofitting building to withstand most earthquakes: we can do all of that, right now. We know Bush and the Republican Congress have a misplaced set of priorities, and that money has been drained from FEMA to pursue less important objectives. But what have liberals done to sound the trumpets? What did Clinton do? Why was the possibility that a disaster like this could strike perceived by all sides as less important in the last election than abortion or gay marriage?

As a society, our first priority should be to protect each other from predictable disasters, even before we focus on luxuries like fighting wars and such. This wasn't the first hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans is not the first American city to be nearly destroyed by such a disaster. Even if it is in poor taste to immediately point accusatory fingers at your ideological adversaries right now, it is not inappropriate to ask what we do now to make sure that something like this, or something like the Christmas Day Tsunami, does not have the same impact on humanity in the future.

UPDATE: A challenge to progressive bloggers. Clearly, this project is going to entail more than just donating money and blogging up a storm.

Why Bush sucks, or at least why that suckiness has brought us to defeat in the War on Terror. To put it another way, if Clinton had been President, is there any doubt that at the very least, bin Laden would have been killed or captured by now? Or that Iraq would have been pacified? Of course not. I'm not saying he could have prevented 9/11, or that there wouldn't have been other problems with terrorism, but Clinton would have done a better job managing them. Elvis was knowledgeable, listened to other people, and knew how to charm his political adversaries. Bush, on the other hand, is an asshole, perhaps the biggest asshole in the White House since Nixon, but without Tricky Dick's shrewdness and understanding of the big picture.

To answer Prof. Kleiman's question, the last (and heretofore only) child of a President who was eligible to serve in the Armed Forces at a time of war, but failed to do so was...John Payne Todd, step-son of James Madison. Very interesting character, that Mr. Todd. He was the only surviving son of Dolley Madison from her first marriage, and was still a toddler when his mother met the future President in 1794 (at the time, Todd's guardian was a friend and political ally of Madison's named Aaron Burr). When the War of 1812 started, he had just turned 20.

He seems to have been spoiled by his mother, and spent much of his early years at school, far away from the political world his parents occupied. He quickly gathered some worrisome vices, including a proclivity for drinking and gambling that would, over the fullness of time, bankrupt his widowed mother. Rather than putting the boy in harm's way, at a time when the British were sacking the White House, his step-father sent him on a diplomatic mission to Europe in 1813. By all accounts, he embarrassed himself on the junket with his public drunkenness, and the nation remained at war for two more years.

In short, nothing at all like the current situation....

Headline of the Year.

Another newspaper dumps Ann Coulter, in light of her recent mocking of the brave firemen and police officers of New York City.

Matt Welch brings up an interesting point: that the people who enable this bigot always justify their tolerance by saying what a "funny" or "nice" person Ilsa is in real life. I think there ought to be a circle in hell reserved for people who are willing to excuse those who are hateful simply because they have a genial manner. C'mon, Josef Stalin had a very biting sense of humor; Hermann Goering also could be quite charming and witty, when the occasion demanded it. The fact that Ms. Coulter can be generous to her friends or occasionally crack a joke about herself is insignificant, when compared to the debasement she has brought to political rhetoric in this country.

I used to have a friend in law school who was a social acquiantance of Alexander Cockburn, the Stalinist apologist for The Nation. Supposedly, he was quite the raconteur, with a flirtatious charm and a passion for the vintage Ford Thunderbird. He sounded like a pretty interesting character, and I can appreciate the temptation to associate with such notoriety. But not everyone is entitled to my good will, and especially not those who gloss over Soviet genocide. With the Coulters and Cockburns of the world, it's important for the rest of us to set some standards, lest we succumb to the temptation of political relativism.

Free Judy Miller ?!? To even make that demand shows an enormous amount of entitlement and privilege. She's a percipient witness in an on-going criminal investigation, a court having determined that her testimony is critical, and her silence leads to the suspicion that she may have been a source for a criminal act. The most generous interpretation of her actions is that she's protecting an anonymous source who gave her disinformation in order to justify the outing of an undercover agent; the least generous is that she was, in fact, the disseminator.

Reporters have no more of a First Amendment right to be a part of a criminal conspiracy than any other citizen. Let her rot.

It took only two years for Ahnolt to reach the same low level of support that it took Grey Davis five years to attain. Believe it or not, he's even more unpopular in California than George Bush is in the rest of the country.

YBK [Part 16]: Summertime is traditionally the coolest period of the year for bankruptcy filings, while spring and fall usually see most of the action. This is not surprising, since consumers always have big-ticket expenditures around the holidays at the end of the year, and family vacations and weddings in the middle; not until they get their first credit card bill afterwards do they finally begin the overdue process of reevaluating their debt situation.

Whether this summer will be any different may be critical to whether there is another Black Friday in October ten weeks from tomorrow. According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, bankruptcy filings soared to a record level in the quarter ending June 30, 2005. A total of 467,333 bankruptcies were filed, surpassing the previous quarterly record by over 7%, and as I mentioned last month, it beat the same period last year by 12%. Again, this has happened without any significant gains occurring in California, which has disproportionately benefitted from the Housing Bubble.

Apparently, the American Legion leader who's been so vociferous in denouncing those peaceniks opposing the President got as close to the frontlines during 'Nam as the President did....

In what is becoming a hardy perennial, yet another article on the death of motion pictures. It runs through the whole litany of reasons, from formulaic pictures, to excessive in-theatre advertising, to the advent of technology that brings a comparable visual experience into the privacy of your own home, as well as a new claim (that the publicizing of celebritydom has made the "real life" antics of stars more entertaining than the films they appear in) that can barely withstand the giggle test. It concludes with the announcement of what may be a sea change in philosophy at some of the studios:

With the task so large, and so very complex, Hollywood is still grappling with how to broach solutions.

[Michael] Lynton (Sony) said he would focus on making "only movies we hope will be really good." At Fox, executives said they are looking to limit marketing costs. At Universal, [Marc] Shmuger said he intends to reassert "time and care and passion" in movie production. Some of his own summer movies, he conceded, should never have been made.

He declined to name them.

Mr. Shmuger, it should be pointed out, has been the Veep at Universal since December, 2000, so it's not like he's blasting what others greenlit.

IMHO, you can boil all these explanations down, and what you will come up with is that the long-term trends have pointed to declining movie attendance since the late-1940's. If given a choice, most people would prefer to do something at home with their families rather than go out, and technological advances now mean that the one big advantage that motion pictures still had over television, the visual experience, is almost gone.

It's not a question of scripts, or cellphone noise, or expensive popcorn; once the potential movie consumer starts asking himself why he has to go see something on a movie screen rather than waiting until it comes out on DVD, the bar gets set much higher, and it's not something that will go away simply because the studios decide to release better movies. In other words, no matter how good the movie, if it doesn't promise the viewer a sumptuous visual treat, as with the Lord of the Rings movies or Revenge of the Sith, or an excuse to communally experience an uncommonly hilarious or traumatic film, he would just as soon stay home.

Fund-Raising !! Fund-Raising !!

I haven't done this before, but I thought I'd avail myself of the opportunity to do some fundraising for a truly worthy charity this week: me.

I've been doing this for three and a half years now, and I have always maintained my amateur status. But I love writing, much more than I what I actually do for a living, and if I'm going to devote the time necessary to be a writer, I need some help.

So if you have a few dollars to swing my way, the PAYPAL button will point you in the right direction, and you will have my undying gratitude...thank you.

Say It Ain't So, Lance: Well, it probably ain't so. The paper that broke the story, L'Equipe, has been out to get Armstrong for years, and the problems with the chain of custody concerning the urine sample probably won't get this case out the arraignment stage. Nice try....

Bring me Wallace, alive if possible; dead...just as good. Seven hundred years ago today, Sir William Wallace was drawn and quartered by the forces of King Edward I.

In a column from last week that has been approvingly cited elsewhere, New Republic writer Jonathon Chait questions the validity of the notion that a veteran has a special moral claim to comment on foreign policy, asking:

One of the important ideas of a democratic culture is that we all have equal standing in the public square. That doesn't mean stupid ideas should be taken as seriously as smart ones. It means that the content of an argument should be judged on its own merits.

The left seems to be embracing the notion of moral authority in part as a tactical response to the right. For years, conservatives have said or implied that if you criticize a war, you hate the soldiers. During the Clinton years, conservatives insisted that the president lacked "moral authority" to send troops into battle because he had avoided the draft as a youth or, later, because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

So adopting veterans or their mourning parents as spokesmen is an understandable counter-tactic. It was a major part of the rationale behind John Kerry's candidacy. The trouble is, plenty of liberals have come to believe their own bleatings about moral authority. Liberal blogs are filled with attacks on "chicken hawk" conservatives who support the war but never served in the military.

(snip)

The silliness of this argument is obvious. There are parents of dead soldiers on both sides. Conservatives have begun trotting out their own this week. What does this tell us about the virtues or flaws of the war? Nothing.

Or maybe liberals think that having served in war, or losing a loved one in war, gives you standing to oppose wars but not to support them. The trouble is, any war, no matter how justified, has a war hero or relative who opposes it.

Sheehan also criticizes the Afghanistan war. One of the most common (and strongest) liberal indictments of the Iraq war is that it diverted troops that could have been deployed against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Are liberals who make that case, yet failed to enlist themselves, chicken hawks too?

To answer Mr. Chait's question, yes, absolutely. I don't happen to care for the word "chickenhawk", as it conjures up an association with pederasty, preferring instead the word "coward", but liberals like myself who support sending our troops to fight the remnants of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without being willing to volunteer myself are as cowardly and gutless as Cheney, Bush, Hitchens, and the rest of the neocons, all of whom became more vociferous in support of an aggressive foreign policy once they were safely out of harm's way.

In fact, I have less of an excuse. When the President commenced hostilities with the Taliban in October, 2001, I was 38 years old. I probably wouldn't have been the optimal material for a recruit (think "Private Pyle" from Full Metal Jacket in terms of body type), but older men than I volunteered. I'm single, with no children, and the type of legal practice where I could afford to suspend operations for a time without hurting my clients. And I supported our fight in Afghanistan, as did most of the rest of the human race.

When Pat Tillman volunteered for duty, almost a full year after 9/11, and months after the Taliban had fled into the mountains, he wasn't much younger than I, and he was in an occupation that had a very narrow timeframe for him to excel. He went anyways, and never came back. Tillman was a hero; I'm not.

And that is why the story of Casey Sheehan resonates, and why his mom's vigil has so captured the public's imagination. Casey Sheehan did not have to die in the service of his country, but he chose to do so. I have no idea what mixture of idealism and calculation went into his decision, but he made a choice to put himself in danger, because our democratically-elected leaders told him that his country needed him. And as a result, he's dead.

Now that his life is over, his mother, like so many other parents who've gone through the hell of having to bury a child, asks why he had to die. Was it to punish Iraq for the deaths of September 11? There's no evidence Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. To protect the "homeland" from WMD's? Iraq, as it turns out, didn't have any. To fight "Islamofascism"? Saddam was one of the most repugnant dictators who ever lived, but he was kind of weak on the "islamo-" part of the equation, and anyways, the constitution that's being drafted doesn't seem that much different than the laws governing Iran or Saudi Arabia. And, of course, Al Qaeda is more powerful than ever.

I'd say Ms. Sheehan has a right to some answers, as do the rest of us. And yes, Mr. Chait, giving greater moral weight to the opinions of those, like Ms. Sheehan, who've paid the ultimate price, while disregarding the views of those who claim that in spite of this being the most important cause of their generation, they don't have to sacrifice, is only fair. Realizing that such a cost must be borne by people like the Sheehan family is the only way one the "content of an argument" should be judged on its merits.

Museum of Retreads: Where the Spice Girls, Jar-Jar Binks, David Hasselhoff and Anna Kournikova still matter...at your local Ninety-nine Cent Store. [link via Defamer]

YBK [Part 15]: The nation's paper of record finally reports on the bankruptcy boom that began with the passage of the new law. What's interesting about the NY Times article is that it indicates that the states where filings have gone up most dramatically are those that have been untouched by the Housing Bubble, like Idaho, Indiana, Ohio, Texas and Utah. Residents in those states can't stave off the debt collector when times are tough by borrowing on the equity of their home, so they often have no choice but to file.

The YBK trouble will occur when the bubble begins to burst elsewhere, in states like California, Massachusetts and New York. As one of the Volokh Conspirators notes, 61% of all new mortgages in California are interest-only, no-money-down deeds of trust, where the borrower agrees to incur a sizeable debt on their home in the expectation that they will be able to refinance or sell at a higher price down the line, before monthly payments at a prohibitively higher level kick in. If they are unable to do that, the borrower has two options: either file a Chapter 13, and try to repay the arrearage over a period of time, or simply default, and allow the lender to foreclose.

The result is scary to think about. Lenders, who are limited to what they can recover in a foreclosure to the actual value of the property plus costs, will lose their figurative shirts. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which exist to alleviate the burden for low and middle income borrowers to buy a house, could collapse, requiring a massive government bailout that will dwarf the S&L bailout in the '90's. Unsecured creditors, like the credit card companies that so aggressively lobbied Congress to pass its wish-list, will see a lot of their loans vanish in bankruptcy, especially non-delinquent accounts. And for homeowners, the expectations that were generated by the steady, dramatic rise in home values may make the fall especially galling. We might be staring into the abyss if the bubble begins bursting before October 17.

Wow. A law prof with a blog doesn't perform the one ethical requirement all attorneys must obey, that of performing due diligence, then complains that others are being "uncivil" to point that out? Unfreakingbelievable. [link via ODub]

Duke Cunningham is not the most sympathetic of victims, but there is something very disturbing about the lis pendens placed on his Rancho Santa Fe mansion (or, as they would call it in Texas, his "ranch"). It is based on a "secret" civil suit, filed but not served on the defendant, which alleges he is the beneficiary of a bribe, and the lis pendens is the first step toward the oft-odious use of a civil forfeiture claim. The lawsuit is being kept a secret so as to not give away evidence against the Congressman, which makes it next to impossible for him to defend himself. His only option is to move the court to release the lis pendens; the government will undoubtedly argue that to present evidence justifying their case would imperil ongoing criminal investigations, as if a politician receiving a bribe was tantamount to a plot by Al Qaeda. He may be a sleazy politician, but in the eyes of justice he must be seen as innocent.

Please tell me the puzzle in this morning's LAT was not rated "diabolical"...I've become a bit of a sudoku fiend the past few weeks, so I know that any "diabolical" puzzle has to be one that gives you few leads and much guessing. Any sentient being should be able to solve the "easy" puzzles without resorting to notes; giving the highest rating to a puzzle that I was similarly able to solve in ten minutes does violence to the English language, and frankly insults all past and present Sudoku Masters. I'm just not that good yet.

Religion of Peace: Heh. Indeed.

Law of Unintended Consequences, Part 145: Dwight Meredith, another blogger who passes the time away by practicing law, points out the biggest reason why frivolous lawsuits happen; the "tort reformers" themselves. In reference to the investigative series in the LA Times this week, he notes:

Part of the tort reformers' narrative is that greedy lawyers push clients into bringing marginal law suits. That may be true in some class action suits in which the lawyer is committed to a certain amount of work regardless of whether the class is large or small but in everyday individual suits, it is almost always the prospective client who is pushing the hardest for a suit to be brought.

The client has been told over and over by the tort reformers and the media that a jury may award him the riches of Croesus regardless of whether he has suffered significant damage and regardless of whether he has been wronged. It is not surprising that prospective clients are eager to collect.

If the tort reformers and the media provided a more accurate picture of the nature of the litigation system, fewer people would be so eager to sue. The tort reformers do not really care if people bring frivolous suits or potentially meritorious suits with small damages. The frivolous suits lose early and often. The trivial suits do not cost much. The tort reform lobby is quite willing to accept an increase in trivial suits if they can create a political climate that allows them to limit the exposure of businesses and insurance companies on the really bad cases. Perhaps the media should expose that game. It would not even have to make stuff up.

[link via Charles Kuffner]

...to err, DeWine: As if his heartbreakingly-close loss last month didn't caused enough pain, now comes word that any possible U.S. Senate run by Paul Hackett in Ohio next year has now been doomed by the Curse of Zuniga: Kos has predicted his victory.

File this under the "Who Knew He Was Still Alive" category: Tonight, Bobby Bragan became the oldest manager in professional baseball history when he helmed the Fort Worth Cats of the independent Central League to an 11-10 victory. Bragan, who is just three months shy of his 88th birthday, previously managed several major league teams, as well as the legendary Hollywood Stars of the PCL in the mid-50's.

I'm sorry, but this just blows me away. My father, who died seven years ago at the age of 61, used to tell me anecdotes about his beloved Stars, and their manager during his boyhood years, Bobby Bragan. Bragan used to pal around with a young actor and baseball fanatic named Jack Webb, who according to an apocryphal tale, later decided to playfully wink at his buddy by giving a character he created, Joe Friday, a badge number that referenced a certain legendary baseball statistic. For a few seasons, the Stars decided to play a few games each summer in shorts, drawing the derision of much of the sports media in the country; Bragan was their manager.

In terms of having celebrity backing, the Stars made the Lakers seem like the Clippers. Besides the aforementioned Webb, Jack Benny, Gary Cooper, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart and Laurel & Hardy were regular fans; Elizabeth Taylor was even a batgirl one season. And of course, Raft wouldn't have been caught dead at Gilmore Field (next door to Farmer's Market and CBS-Television City) without his "associates", Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen.

Jeez, the guy managed Carlos Bernier. He managed against the late Gene Mauch, when Mauch was still a minor league player (with the L.A. Angels).

It's like finding out Al Lopez is still alive....

Two points, concerning what is becoming an increasingly dull debate in the blogosphere:

1. The use of racist and sexist vulgarities against non-white bloggers is always uncalled for, no matter what they write. And that even includes someone as racist and vile as Michelle Malkin. Just don't go there.

2. Those who are unwilling to repudiate the bigotry that streams out of websites like Malkin's and LGF have no credibility when it comes to speaking out on this issue. Go fart somewhere else.

UPDATE [8/17]: What he said.

She's been snubbed by the President. She's been shot at, seen a local thug desecrate a memorial to fallen servicemen near her camp, and insulted by complete strangers. She's been falsely accused of anti-Semitism based on a probably fake e-mail, had her motives questioned for having the audacity to question the war, and had her private life targetted by the revanchists of the Right. And of course, she has had to grieve the loss of a son, which a national pundit, the adult children of whom are not in uniform, had the temerity to call a "piffle".

She is Cindy Sheehan, the woman who symbolizes the crystalizing opposition to the war in Iraq. And, according to this blogger, she's doing it all to divert attention from...the Air America "scandal".

The Los Angeles Times has a good investigative series this week about the "tort reform" movement, and in particular its use of bogus or exaggerated anecdotes, and the reference to inflated jury awards, to argue its case to the public. The corporate lobby, for example, often mentions the lady-who-spilled-coffee-and-sued as an example of how the system has run amok, without mentioning some other telling details (such as the third degree burns the lady suffered when she spilled the caffeinated magma over her lap). Even worse, it will refer to high jury awards without mentioning that the verdict was later overturned, or the award reduced, on appeal. Due to the prevailing bias against lawyers, the public (and more importantly in this case, the media) buy stories that are as factual as letters to the Penthouse Forum.

As long as we're on this point, why exactly should even the most frivolous, bad faith awards be detrimental to the economy? It's not as if the money leaves the country or disappears; it simply goes from one sector, corporations, to another, consisting of consumers. The ambulance-chasees, as it were, then spend their ill-gotten gains on items such as housing, food, and various consumer items, boosting the economy. The price of goods may theoretically increase to accomodate the higher legal costs, but if more consumers have more money to spend, what's the problem? Why is it more important to protect Exxon or Phillip Morris from boneheaded juries than it is to protect consumers from the same?

Swift'd: It appears that Samgrass, Drudge, and others have been conned by a bogus e-mail about Cindy Sheehan.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy: It has been said that LBJ knew that South Vietnam was lost when Walter Cronkite came out in favor of withdrawal, but Armstrong Williams ?!? [link via John Cole, who uses a much better headline on his link]

Quickie Trivia Answer: Tampa Bay. I didn't give credit to those who guessed too many teams.

The Nationals have hosted every team in the National League this year, save Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Frisco, as well as two of the three AL expansion teams (Seattle and Toronto) since 1971. And of course, before moving to Arlington, the Senators played the remaining eleven American League teams. The catch: Washington played in the National League for a few years in the 19th Century; the Reds, Cards and Giants all previously visited D.C. the last time the city had a team in the Senior Circuit, in 1899.

Volokh Conspiracy is generally considered by lefty bloggers to be the best conservative blog out there. It's intelligent, provocative and fun, and for a lawyer like myself, it is indispensible in finding out what the other side is thinking without the demeaning, partisan tone that exists elsewhere. When the competition consists of nothing more than posts of "Heh. Indeed", "Religion of Peace?" and "Wankers", and when argument is limited to the banal overuse of the word, "liar" (which, among bloggers, means "a person who stated something that I consider to be factually incorrect"), the VC is an invaluable resource.

So it's a bit of a disappointment to read Prof. Volokh's list of "supporters" of the insurgency in Iraq. Inspired by the death of an American journalist a few weeks back (originally attributed to the insurgency, but more likely the result of his having run afoul of Shi'ite bigots upset with his plans to marry a local), the professor recently asked his readers for examples of Westerners who support the Iraqi insurgents. By any fair meaning of the term, that should be limited to those who've provided rhetorical support not only for the insurgents' goals, but also those who have cheered their tactics, including the killing of American G.I.'s and murder of civilians.

Of the people mentioned on the site, they are either are marginal political wack-jobs, such as George Galloway, or some professor emeritus back east, or they are people whose past statements have been so blatantly taken out of context so as to earn the most scornful term that can be used by a blogger, "dowdification". That would include the most famous American on the list, Michael Moore, who is there because he compared the insurgents to the Minutemen and the Viet Cong, and predicted that like those forces, they would ultimately win. Anyone who has seen Fahrenheit 911 knows that although Moore opposes the war, he is not anti-G.I., nor has he glossed over the horrors of terrorism.

Another example concerns former British Cabinet minister Clare Short, because she supposedly told a Dubai "newspaper" in an interview that the cause Osama bin Laden was fighting for was "just", and that the insurgents were analogous to the French Resistance during WWII. Criticism of the latter is simply political correctness; the analogy she drew between the Resistance and the insurgents was that they were fighting an occupying army, not that their goals were equally praiseworthy. And the former statement was in reference to a book about bin Laden that Ms. Short was citing to the interviewer, and had nothing to do with whether or not she supported Al Qaeda. Had Prof. Volokh decided to do some actual research on the subject, he might have come across this article, written by the same Clare Short only a few weeks ago:

"Let it be proclaimed without qualification: the messianic millenarianism of Osama bin Laden is a form of fascism that has no place in any society that believes in or aspires to freedom.

But we need to think more ambitiously still. The objective should be to get an international consensus, including the leadership of the Muslim and Arab world, which places all attacks on civilians and non-combatants in a war situation beyond the pale. We have, fortuitously, a series of opportunities to advance this seemingly simple, but until now impossible agenda." (emphasis mine)

Well, if you believe the professor, it seems the Right Hon. Clare Short was a supporter of terrorism before she was against it. More logically, though, you could conclude that maybe her earlier remarks were jumbled, taken out of context, or even misquoted.

If guess if you try hard enough, and cherrypick your source material on Google, you can prove that anybody supports the terrorists. I just thought that wasn't the sort of rhetorical game a law professor ought to play.

Today's class assignment is to read Bray v. Alexandra Clinic (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court decision which has recently played such a prominent role in the John Roberts' nomination. Roberts is getting a bum rap for his role in writing an amicus brief in favor of the defendants' position whilst at the Solicitor General's office. Notwithstanding the fact that the defendants included some pretty unsavory characters, an attorney should be allowed to question the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, or the treatment of prisoners at Git-mo or Abu Ghraib, without being called "pro-terrorist"; the same standard should be applied when deciding whether it is appropriate to use a particular federal law to prosecute people who blockade abortion clinics. Since the high court ultimately agreed with his position, it begs credulity to argue that Roberts' position was extreme.

NARAL's ad is the leftish equivalent of Roger Simon's blanket condemnations of "objective pro-fascists" behind every tree. It was a stupid, counterproductive ad, and did nothing to weaken Roberts.

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