G'day, mate: It probably hurts to lead your party when it's voted out of office, but to be the Prime Minister, and lose your seat to boot...John Howard, btw, is the same guy who opined last winter that a Barack Obama victory next year would be a victory for Al Qaeda, only to have the junior Senator from Illinois completely ream him the next day.

Reminscent of early Python, both literally and figuratively, I suppose....

(more)

Michael Kinsley returns to form here, with a post about what sort of "experience" is relevant toward the Presidency. On Hillary Clinton:

But in fact, being the president's spouse has got to be very helpful for a future president. It's like an eight-year "Take Your Daughter to Work" Day. Laura Bush, as far as we know, has made no important policy decisions during her husband's presidency, but she has witnessed many, and must have a better understanding of how the presidency works than all but half a dozen people in the world. One of those half dozen is Hillary Clinton, who saw it all—well, she apparently missed one key moment—and shared in all the big decisions. Every first lady is promoted as her husband's key adviser, closest confidant, blah blah blah, but in the case of the Clintons, it seems to be true. Pillow talk is good experience.

On the junior Senator from Illinois:

Obama also has valuable experience apart from elected office, and he also has to be careful about how he uses it. That is his experience as a black man in America, and also his experience as what you might call a "world man"—Kenyan father, American mother, four formative years living in Indonesia, more years in the ethnic stew of Hawaii, middle name of Hussein, and so on—in an increasingly globalized world. Our current president had barely been outside the country when elected. His efforts to make up for this through repeated proclamations of palship with every foreign leader who parades through Washington have been an embarrassment. Obama's interesting upbringing would serve us well if he were president, both in terms of the understanding he would bring to issues of America's role in the world (the term "foreign policy" sounds increasingly anachronistic), and in terms of how the world views America. Hillary Clinton mocks Obama's claims that four years growing up in Indonesia constitute useful world-affairs experience. But they do.

On what it all means:

Warren Buffett likes to say, when people tell him they've learned from experience, that the trick is to learn from other people's experience. George W. Bush will leave behind a rich compost heap of experience for his successor to sort through and learn from.

A replay you'll probably see a hundred times before you die:



Be honest: until yesterday, did any of you know the rule about what would happen if the ball carommed off the goal post extension and back over the crossbar?

Waterboarding, or the "water cure," has been with us since the Inquisition, and has always been regarded as a particularly heinous and cruel form of torture. If you don't believe me, perhaps this state supreme court decision from the 1920's which overturned a murder conviction might give you pause:

The state offered the testimony above set forth, also testimony of confessions made by the appellant, Fisher. When the testimony was offered the witnesses tendered testified that the confessions were free and voluntary. No objections were offered to this testimony at that time, but subsequently the defendant, after the state had rested, introduced the sheriff, who testified that, he was sent for one night to come and receive a confession of the appellant in the jail; that he went there for that purpose; that when he reached the jail he found a number of parties in the jail; that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country. The sheriff testified that he told these people not to hurt the appellant, and that the process was new to him as he witnessed it being administered to the appellant.

Several persons were introduced by the appellant who testified as to the presence of the parties in the jail and the administering of the water cure to Fisher and others jointly charged with the offense with him. The defendant also introduced a witness by the name of Hicks Ellis, who testified that he was in the party which administered the water cure to the appellant, and secured the confession thereby.

(snip)

We are satisfied that the court erred in receiving the confessions under the circumstances disclosed in this record. The Constitution of the state provides in section 26, among other things, that “the accused shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself.” This guaranty is violated whenever a confession is illegally extorted from a person accused of crime. In White v. State, 129 Miss. 182, 91 So. 903, 24 A. L. R. 699, the court, in the first syllabus of that case, held:

“Confessions induced by fear, though not aroused by spoken threats, are nevertheless involuntary, because the fear which takes away the freedom may arise solely from the conditions and circumstances surrounding the confessor.”

That case, in the methods resorted to to procure the confession, is a good deal like the one before us. There an ignorant negro boy was arrested, brought to the scene of a horrible murder, and after he was released by the authorities fell into the hands of infuriated citizens, who took him into a store building where the bloody corpse lay and a crowd of armed men were assembled, to obtain a confession. The boy confessed to one of the men, and then his hands were tied behind him, he was placed upon the floor, and a white man stood upon his body and administered to him the water cure, which consisted of pouring water into his nose. The court held that this confession was unlawfully obtained, and was therefore involuntary. It also held, in the third syllabus of the case, that:

“Where confessions were obtained at the scene of the murder by threats, duress, and physical violence, it was error to refuse to allow defendant's counsel to introduce testimony showing a connection between such involuntary confessions, and another confession to some of the same parties subsequently made at the jail to show that the same influence obtained in the latter confession rendering it involuntary.”

The bleeding heart judges who made that ruling, incidentally, were the members of the Mississippi Supreme Court. Eighty years later, a practice that was deemed too barbaric to justify even in the deepest part of Dixie, at a time when lynching was still a daily part of life in that state and much of the membership of the judiciary had ties to the Ku Klux Klan, is now a confirmed practice of the United States of America, something the President and the Attorney General will not say is torture. [link via Hit&Run]

Fighting Islamofascism: The Home Front

As Congress debates setting conditions on continuing to fund a seemingly open-ended commitment to propping up the Iraqi government, it's important to realize that our brave men and women must sometimes fight the same battle at home, as we have come to learn the last two Saturdays:

"It's important to realize that our young men have been fighting pitched battles against religious fanatics who have been brainwashed into a culture that seeks to destroy all other ways of life," Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun said Monday. "That's just the way Notre Dame football is, the way it's always been. You can't reason with people like that. You destroy them as completely, remorselessly, and quickly as you can."

"Naturally, the young men of our service academy will find the situation infinitely more complex when they're deployed to Iraq," Navy head coach Paul Johnson added. "Compare football to war all you want, but unlike when you go into South Bend, winning in Baghdad means winning the hearts and minds of the people, not pursuing some sort of scorched-earth policy."

From The Onion, natch.

In 1988, perhaps even more important than the "Willie Horton" controversy* in electing the first George Bush to the Presidency was a flap over his opponent, Michael Dukakis, vetoing a law that would have forced school children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Then-Governor Dukakis rightly pointed out that such a law was flagrantly unconstitutional, scoring points with the converted but failing to understand that such a rationale had no spin potential whatsoever, and in fact made him seem weak for putting Warren Court procedural tenets above compelling grade schoolers to recite patriotic and religious doggerel like automatons.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the same thing is coming out of Hillary Clinton's camp today regarding John Edwards' promise that he will seek to strip members of Congress of their health care privileges unless they pass a comparable bill for all Americans. Even if the "27th Amendment" to the Constitution can be considered a "real" amendment, what difference does it make in terms of framing the agenda for the next President? It's a political winner, for the same reasons that the Pledge issue was the turning point for Vice President Bush in '88.

If Congress fails to act, the membership will have a toxic issue on their hands, and Edwards, as President, will have the bully pulpit to ream them for their inaction. And considering that if Edwards wins the Presidency, it will be highly likely that the next session of Congress will have an even larger Democratic majority, doing nothing on the issue will send a public signal that our legislators, Democrat and Republican alike, are under the thumbs of the special interests. [link via Kausfiles]

*Scare quotes used to remind the reader that there was no such person as "Willie Horton," other than the retired outfielder for the Detroit Tigers; the furlowed rapist's name was William Horton, and received the dimunitive nickname only after Ailes, Atwater and crew went to work not-so-subtly reminding Americans that the convict in question was, like the more famous baseball player, black.

U.S.A. !!! U.S.A. !!! First the Dixie Chicks; now this.

Impeach Kent !! Appears the Manny Real of Texas is an a bit of hot water. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Sweet Smell of Success: That would be my bro Jim, who's profiled this week in the New Yorker, in a story about the All-Ages club he runs in downtown L.A., The Smell. This month's Vanity Fair also has a blurb about the club, as part of its run-down on the local music scene.

One of my links in the previous post was to a Matt Stoller commentary entitled "Bush Dogs Move to Block Mortgage Reform." "Bush Dog," for those of you not hip to "netroots" lingo, is a term used by bloggers to describe the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats whose opposition to the policies of the Bush Administration has been rather tepid, to say the least. However problematic I find the position of these conservative Democrats to be on its merits, Stoller's headline is misleading, at least based on the contents of the letter.

As I noted before, there are three provisions to the bill currently before the Judiciary Committee. The bill will permit the bankruptcy court to readjust home loans based on the actual value of the home, not on the total payoff balance of the outstanding mortgages, so that all loans which are above the current appraised value of the home are treated as "unsecured" debts, which can be forgiven in a Chapter 13 plan. It will also allow the payoff of the secured debt on homes to exceed five years, and it will waive the requirement that Chapter 13 filers who are seeking to save their home receive pre-petition credit counseling.

The first two provisions clearly involve a reform of the mortgage system as it has existed for hundreds of years, to reflect the modern reality of ARM's as well as to treat home mortgages the same way the bankruptcy courts treat second homes, investment and rental properties, commercial developments and family farms. The third provision, concerning credit counseling, is the only one that would overturn a portion of the controversial 2005 law (known as BACPA, or by the less elegant name my fellow practitioners have given it, BARF). I happen to believe that the requirement should be dumped altogether; I have yet to see a single instance, either in my practice or in the practice of a fellow attorney, where a credit counseling session led a prospective debtor away from filing bankruptcy. Obviously, a credit counseling service depends on the referrals from consumer attorneys to survive, and a service that actually proposed something that kept a debtor from using our services would cease to receive business from our end.

But opposition to ending that requirement is clearly not the same thing as "blocking" mortgage reform, since it isn't not a mortgage issue; it's a convenience issue for filers. Many people who file Chapter 13's do so at the last minute, so having to speak with a credit counselor before filing can be very difficult. But the courts are divided as to whether the failure to take a class before filing necessitates a dismissal, and even if the case is dismissed, a debtor can turn around and file a second time without too much trouble.

If the "Bush Dogs" are sincere that their only reason for opposition is to not tinker with the BARF Act so soon after passage, then I don't see this letter as problematic in the slightest. Certainly, there's no need to hold up the provisions that constitute real mortgage reform just to get rid of the silly debt counseling requirement.

Reason will not lead to Solution: When last we left the thorny subject of the current real estate implosion and its relation to bankruptcy law, the House of Representatives was considering legislation that would relax the current draconian restrictions on homeowners in filing Chapter 13 bankruptcies to stave off the Repo Man. The bill passed through sub-committee last month, and two weeks ago the Chief Economist for Moody's Corp. testified before the Judiciary Committee that one provision of the bill, which would permit the courts to modify the terms of a home mortgage, would save up to a half-million homes from being lost in foreclosure over the next year and a half.

This is such a sensible reform that I can hardly believe it has any chance of passing through Congress, let alone getting signed by the President. It would reamortize the secured amount of a home loan at the appraised value of the home, permitting homeowners to treat oversecured mortgages as unsecured, the same way owners of vacation homes and rental properties, of commercial real property, and family farmers can under the current law. It would also permit repayment plans that exceed the current five-year limit, and end the worthless requirement that debtors seek credit counseling as a precondition to filing a bankruptcy.

To those reforms I would add three others: raising the debt limit on Chapter 13 filings; eliminating the barrier that prevents homeowners from receiving discharges in Chapter 13 when they have filed a Chapter 7 within the last four years; and ending the presumption of abuse element. The current limits (just over a million dollars in secured debt, and just under $337,000 for unsecured debt) are particularly arbitrary for middle class homeowners, many of whom made the mistake of borrowing against the artificial rise in the value of their homes just before they needed hospitalization, or had a high judgment imposed against them or their business. The elimination of the 4-year barrier on Chapter 13 filings should be self-evident in this economy; many of the people who filed bankruptcies on the eve of YBK in October, 2005 also own homes, and not allowing them to save their homes would be unfair. And the presumption of abuse element, always the most controversial aspect of the 2005 law, forces many homeowners who simply wish to walk away from their property, into Chapter 13 (or its very expensive cousin, Chapter 11), benefiting no one, least of all the banks that are prevented from foreclosing by the automatic stay.*

But as I said, its chances for passage are dim, at least until after the 2008 election. Few Republicans in either house of Congress back the measure, and even if it gets out of the House, the likelihood that the Democrats could invoke cloture in the Senate, or even get a majority to support such reforms, is bleak. And by the time another session of Congress decides to act, the devastation to the economy that will no doubt be caused by the upcoming landslide of foreclosure sales will have already occurred.

*Its stated purpose, to discourage filings by middle and upper class debtors, has failed miserably; in the Central District of California, less than one percent of all affected cases get dismissed, in spite of all the time and paperwork the statute imposes.

UPDATE: Thanx to the good folks at Winds of Change for cross-posting this.

YBK [Fin]: Wow, who saw this coming? Oh, wait....

Virginia Republicans, who had flogged the immigration issue as their wedge to maintain control of the state legislature, went down to a decisive defeat this evening, following the same trend as states like Colorado and Arizona in 2006. Mr. Kaus hasn't commented yet, but I'm certain that eventually we're going to see this anti-immigrant backlash he's been predicting manifest itself at the polls somewhere. Utah, anyone?

Assrocket Wins !!!!

Mickey Kaus interrupts his daily potshots at the Democratic contenders for the White House (apparently, he's now offended that an Edwards campaign commercial mentions his wife's struggle with cancer) to celebrate what he sees as a turning point in the debate about immigration:

It seems like only months ago we were told the immigration issue was splitting Republicans. Now it's E.J. Dionne wringing his hands about the

worry among Democrats that Republicans are ready to use impatience with illegal immigration to win back voters dissatisfied with the status quo.

What's changed? Well, President Bush--the main politician doing the GOP-splitting--is leaving the scene. The Republican electorate seems to have decisively turned against his illegal-immigrant semi-amnesty. Result: No more split! But the powerful GOP anti-legalization sentiment was obviously latent even in 2006. The MSM just chose not to notice.

Anti-legalization sentiment has also been manifestly latent among Democratic voters--including, but not limited to, unskilled workers whose wages have been suppressed by immigrant competition. What's odd, then, is that the Dems now aren't split. They're only terrified! The Dem presidential candidates who might appeal to anti-legalization opinion--and thereby split the party--all seem paralyzed by their desire not to offend Latinos.

Hmm. The last successful Democratic presidential candidate defied his party's dogma on a central issue (welfare) at the risk, it was thought, of offending key interest groups (blacks, liberals). Is there no current candidate willing to do the same on immigration? You'd think someone in the 2008 field would make the move, just for strategic reasons. ... John Edwards may be edging there: On ABC's This Week he came out against N.Y. Gov. Spitzer's illegal-immigrant driver's-license plan. But he only did it sotto voce, after prompting, and after emphasizing his support for "comprehensive" reform (i.e. legalization). ...

(snip)

P.S.: Dionne eventually dismisses anti-illegal-immigration sentiment with a classic paleolib device:

Yet at a moment when the electorate is very angry, it's not surprising that some voters are channeling their discontent through the immigration issue. It's happened before in our history.

Of course, pre-Clinton Democrats also dismissed voter anger on the welfare issue as displaced discontent about economic stagnation (when they weren't dismissing it as plain old racism). Welfare recipients were "scapegoats," we were told. Then it turned out that the voters who were angry at welfare were angry at welfare. It's just possible, as Michael Barone suggests, that the voters who are angry at illegal immigration are angry at illegal immigration.

Clearly, Dionne is overreacting to another bogus Penn-Carville poll; as political analysts, they failed to predict the sweep that captured both houses of Congress last year (Carville famously tried to get Howard Dean fired after Election Night), and they are among the last denizens of the camp that believes the Democrats' achilles heel is their weak showing in the South (the majority position now being that the party's poor standing in the South is a manifestation of the party doing very well everywhere else). The fact is, polls on this issue are all over the place.

And no matter how far the future GOP nominee attempts to distance himself from the President, any voter anger at border control will rest on the fact that the Republican Party controls the Executive branch. Insofar as the Republican candidate who has the most momentum right now (ie., McCain) is the one most identified with immigration reform, and the candidate whose campaign is cratering (Thompson) is the only major contender who has most explicitly adopted the "deport the illegals" position, it is hardly a sure thing the party will be able to effectively use immigrant-bashing as a wedge issue next fall anyway. But even if the party nominates someone who speaks the Minutemen's language, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that George Bush is still President. They're stuck with him as the face of the party, and his is the record they have to run on. In spite of (or, perhaps, because of) the immigration issue, Congressional Democrats have one of their all-time biggest partisan edges over the GOP, according to yet another James Carville poll.

So if Republicans want to make immigrant-bashing work for them as a political issue, they will probably have to wait until 2010 (lord knows, it didn't help them much in 2006). And who knows, with a Democrat in the White House and large majorities in Congress, they might actually be able to make it work in their favor, assuming President Clinton signs into a law a real reform package in her first two years.

Concerning the second half of Kaus' post, I can only say that I know he's a shrewder observer of history than that passage would make it seem. To compare today's immigration issue with yesterday's welfare reform, one needs to first understand that the there were two different phases to the anti-welfare campaign. In the first phase, from 1966-1982, it was clearly appropriate for liberals to identify "voter anger on the welfare issue as displaced discontent about economic stagnation (when they weren't dismissing it as plain old racism)," because that's how the welfare issue was framed at the non-elite level: as lazy Negro Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs and buying malt liquor with food stamps. It was a way to appeal to anti-minority sentiment without sounding like James Eastland or Richard Russell.

But underneath the code, there was a sound policy rationale for reforming the welfare system, something that neolibs like Bill Clinton and Mickey Kaus understood. In order for that side to get a fair hearing, the bigots needed to be discredited first. It is for that reason that Ronald Reagan, whose political career rose on his ability to exploit white backlash, never made any serious attempt to end welfare once he reached the Presidency, while Bill Clinton, who barely raised the issue in 1992, not only could sign into law such a measure, but could increase the party's share of the African-American vote in the process.

And the same thing is true with immigration. Of course, there are people out there who hold sincere beliefs about how illegal immigration may or may not cause a 3% decline in wages among unskilled workers, or about how a lax system of border enforcement is leading to a corrosive decline in respect for our laws, or the impact it has on deterring terrorists from entering the country.

But that's not where the noise comes from on this issue. It comes from people like VDare and the Minutemen, from people who see Latino immigrants, legal and illegal, as a brown wave that threatens to initiate a reconquista of the West. Allowing people who use the word "illegal" as a noun to drive this debate is like letting American policy in the Middle East be shaped by men who use "Jew" as a verb. On an issue like this, the motivation for enacting a law has to be considered as important as the substance of the policy itself.

What he says:

Since Judge Mukasey’s situation is not unlike that facing Elliot Richardson when he was appointed Attorney General during Watergate, why should not the Senate Judiciary Committee similarly make it a quid pro quo for his confirmation that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes? Richardson was only confirmed when he agreed to appoint a special prosecutor, which, of course, he did. And when Nixon fired that prosecutor, Archibald Cox, it lead to his impeachment.

Before the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee completely cave-in to Bush, at minimum they should demand that Judge Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate if war crimes have been committed. If Mukasey refuses he should be rejected. This, indeed, should be a pre-condition to anyone filling the post of Attorney General under Bush.

If the Democrats in the Senate refuse to demand any such requirement, it will be act that should send chills down the spine of every thinking American.

--John Dean

Sometimes it just pays to know when to quit. Towards the end of an otherwise unremarkable critique of last week's media-mauling of the former First Lady, Digby emits this shriek:

Grab the Maalox kids because I can feel it in my gut. The bad breath and the sleepy eyes and the bedhead are all around us. Come 2009, if a Democrat wins the presidency, the Village press will finally wake up from its 8 year somnambulent drool and rediscover its "conscience" and its "professionalism." The Republicans will only have to breathe their character assassination lightly into the ether --- the Village gossips will do the rest. And if this new president resists in any way, a primal scream will build until he or she is forced to appoint a special counsel to investigate the "cover up" and grovel repeatedly in forced acts of contrition in response to manufactured GOP hissy fits and media hysteria. We're going forward into the past (and judging from the haircut nonsense we've already seen, it isn't confined to Clinton.)

Reforming politics isn't enough. Reforming the media is just as important. The current administration is so power mad, morally bankrupt and inept that their natural heir is a barking madman. (And some excellent reporting has been done to expose them.) But the Village kewl kidz and the queen bees who set the political agenda and dominate the coverage have never found any of that interesting or worthwhile. They care about their silly little shorthand parlor games that they think reveal politicians' "character." And their judgment of character is about as useful to the average voter as Brittney and K-Fed's.

They are a huge problem and I can't see how this country can pull out of this spiral until this is dealt with.

"Dealt with?" What did you have in mind, madam, waterboarding Maureen Dowd? Sending David Broder to Gitmo? Having a free press means taking the superficial with the substantive, the accurate with the inaccurate, and sometimes, even political figures we like are subject to scrutiny. Even unfair (and dishonest) scrutiny. It's called the First Amendment.

A veiled threat about "dealing with" heretical journalists has more than the whiff of fascism about it. If the Digby's of the world see elections as the first step towards the Great Day of Reckoning with the Evil Forces who have been in our way, perhaps they deserve to be marginalized. The hard work and heavy lifting involved in actually getting progressive policies enacted for the first time in forty years will require courting and compromising with said Evil Forces, due to the rather cumbersome structure of our government, and rhetoric about "reforming the media" is simply not high on our agenda.

An inspiring story in the New York Times, about a Daniel Ellsburg for our age.

Much of this week's controversy (now aborted, thanks to Senators Schumer and Feinstein) about the Attorney General-nominee's rather flaccid answers on the issue of whether waterboarding constitutes "torture" dwell on the legal predicament Mukasey would be placed in if he, as the chief law enforcement officer in the country, were to label the CIA's favorite tactic of the Spanish Inquisition as being beyond the pale. Now that he's not being forced, under penalty of Senate rejection, to take a position, the Bush Administration can go back to whatever it was doing before, and the "highly trained professionals," as the President calls them, need not worry about having to answer in a U.S. court for practicing their arts.

But another alternative exists, notwithstanding any evasions that may play out in the American judicial system. The Hague Convention has criminal courts precisely designed to investigate and punish activities, such as war crimes, torture, genocide and other breaches of the Geneva Conventions, acts that may have been perfectly legal in the countries they were committed in, and although the Bush Administration refused initially to recognize the court, any future President will not be so bound.

Sending Bush or Cheney to the docket at the Hague may be tough for the American public to swallow, no matter how unpopular they may be, but I'm not certain they same will hold true for the torturers and mercs whose activities are currently held to be beyond the reach of American justice. It would have the added advantage of any mooting any last-second pardon that may come out of the White House in 2009. A presidential candidate (Hillary? Edwards? Obama?) who expresses a willingness to sign on to the International Criminal Court, and waive any injunction on Americans being charged as defendants, will be taking a more relevant position on ensuring that a war such as this one never be sought again. [link via Matt Yglesias]