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]

A Peculiar Institution: Thank God someone is finally telling the truth about that most unfairly maligned of all American institutions, slavery. Who knew it wasn't "genocidal?"

DOG BITES MAN !!!

A few weeks back I noted how the ugly and racist use of the term "illegals" to describe a class of human beings was becoming increasingly routine, even in mainstream organs such as USA Today. Lawrence Downes makes a similar observation in the Sunday NY Times:

I am a human pileup of illegality. I am an illegal driver and an illegal parker and even an illegal walker, having at various times stretched or broken various laws and regulations that govern those parts of life. The offenses were trivial, and I feel sure I could endure the punishments — penalties and fines — and get on with my life. Nobody would deny me the chance to rehabilitate myself. Look at Martha Stewart, illegal stock trader, and George Steinbrenner, illegal campaign donor, to name two illegals whose crimes exceeded mine.

Good thing I am not an illegal immigrant. There is no way out of that trap. It’s the crime you can’t make amends for. Nothing short of deportation will free you from it, such is the mood of the country today. And that is a problem.

America has a big problem with illegal immigration, but a big part of it stems from the word “illegal.” It pollutes the debate. It blocks solutions. Used dispassionately and technically, there is nothing wrong with it. Used as an irreducible modifier for a large and largely decent group of people, it is badly damaging. And as a code word for racial and ethnic hatred, it is detestable.

(snip)

So people who want to enact sensible immigration policies to help everybody — to make the roads safer, as Gov. Eliot Spitzer would with his driver’s license plan, or to allow immigrants’ children to go to college or serve in the military — face the inevitable incredulity and outrage. How dare you! They’re illegal.

Meanwhile, out on the edges of the debate — edges that are coming closer to the mainstream every day — bigots pour all their loathing of Spanish-speaking people into the word. Rant about “illegals” — call them congenital criminals, lepers, thieves, unclean — and people will nod and applaud. They will send money to your Web site and heed your calls to deluge lawmakers with phone calls and faxes. Your TV ratings will go way up.

This is not only ugly, it is counterproductive, paralyzing any effort toward immigration reform. Comprehensive legislation in Congress and sensible policies at the state and local level have all been stymied and will be forever, as long as anything positive can be branded as “amnesty for illegals.”

We are stuck with a bogus, deceptive strategy — a 700-mile fence on a 2,000-mile border to stop a fraction of border crossers who are only 60 percent of the problem anyway, and scattershot raids to capture a few thousand members of a group of 12 million.

My solution to the problem, of course, is to deport anyone who uses, as a noun, the word "illegal," preferably to a country that I'm sure they would fit in more comfortably, like Iran or Burma. In the meantime, we keep the immigrants, legal, illegal or indifferent., and witness a better America.

Kevin Drum, on the Bushies' latest excuse to go to war:

I had a friend many years ago who was a friendly but obsessive fundamentalist Christian who spent his time searching for signs of the antichrist. For a while during the early Reagan era he was convinced it was Konstantin Chernenko. Then it switched to Moammar Qadafi. Then it was Saddam Hussein. (He actually wrote a book on the subject at that point, which in a weak moment I agreed to read.) We lost touch after that, but my guess is that during the 90s he migrated to Slobodan Milosevic, then Osama bin Laden, then back to Saddam Hussein, and perhaps is now on the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bandwagon.

In a way, he reminds of me of America. It's not enough for us to have countries out there that we don't like. Even countries that we really don't like. There always has to be someone who's basically the antichrist, and whoever it is is responsible for everything. When people who believe stuff like that are dressed in rags and yelling at passersby from street corners, we call them crackpots. When they dress in suits and, say, edit the Weekly Standard, we call them foreign policy analysts. Weird, huh?

Not a duet I would ever have imagined performing together, but it works !!! From 1970:

Malkin's Nightmare: That would be USC's new quarterback, Matt Sanchez. Por El Trojan todo, Fuera de El Trojan, nada.

If this is serious, it's refreshing to know our colleges still produce men such as these. [link via Deadspin]

Avedon Carol has a provocative post this morning about the false labeling of the anti-abortion movement as "Pro Life," especially since so many of them lose interest in the post-natal "life" of the fetus. "Pro Life" seems to have been given greater credence by the media as the name of a movement than it's opposition, "Pro Choice," but it's clear that the Anti's (my preferred term) have a clear rhetorical edge. By framing the debate as one over "life," they create a battle between defending the life of an innocent proto-child versus the sexual freedom of a young woman, and the Pro's usually get suckered into making the laughable claim that the fetus isn't really "alive."

A better argument, and one that doesn't get into theological musings about the life continuum, is the notion of the forced pregnancy; an abortion ban, or even any limitation of the practice, is tantamount to forcing a woman to giving birth. If the state has the power to forbid when a woman can make such a decision, it also has the inherent power to force her to make the same decision, as the sad history of China and Nazi Germany attest.

I'm sort of torn on the issue of what to call the two sides, since neither term is truly accurate. I prefer the "Pro's" vs. "Anti's" formulation noted above, but I also believe that a person should have the power to label himself, and I no more have the right to force the label of "anti-choice" upon someone as I would referring to Muhammed Ali as "Cassius Clay."

DrudgeGate? Is there no American institution that the Bushies haven't corrupted?

Some days it just pays to be a Democrat, and this is one of them. Senate Republicans just denied cloture to a bill that would enable the children of illegal immigrants to become citizens if they complete two years of military service or attend college for two years. Seems like an easy call, what with the "War on Terror" and all that, to let people who are putting themselves on the line to fight and die for the U.S. of A. (or, for that matter, staying in school to get an education) to become citizens. At least, I haven't heard anyone claim recently that this country has too many smart and courageous men and women.

Well, apparently in the GOP, and among the more conservative blogs, courage and education are vices of the lowest order. It's hard to imagine what they gain from the obstruction. On the scale of public outrage towards illegal immigrants, non-citizens who are nevertheless volunteering to fight in Iraq would be rather down on the list. Since there is a five-year residency requirement, the class of people eligible under this law encompasses immigrants who were taken over the border by their parents (who do not receive citizenship under the measure), and for which more draconian measures would have little effect.

If anything, these should be exactly the sort of immigrants America wants: hard-working people with families, willing to defy convention and authority (like any real American) to come to the promised land, with children committed to defending and improving our great nation. To put it another way, what sort of person is more likely to benefit our nation: someone who sits on their ass and waits years for a favor to be granted, or someone who seizes their opportunity? I think the answer is obvious. America has always valued the ambitious, whether it's a Greek or Italian worker docking at Ellis Island in 1900, the Filipino couple using a "work visa" so that their daughter could be born on these shores in 1970, or the Mexican day laborer crossing the Colorado River today.

And that's why this issue has proven to be such a bomb as a wedge issue for the GOP. The people who are most angered by the "illegals" are bigots and nativists who are already in their camp. The rest of the country just sees human beings working to improve their lot. And when it comes right down to it, the Republican caucus in the Senate simply revealed the hard, mean face of modern conservatism this afternoon.

Frankly, I've always enjoyed the Santa Anas: they're warm and they're breezy, so it's the best of both worlds. But then again, I live in the flats, like 85% of the rest of Los Angeles, not the hillside, like Joan Didion and the affluent crowd she writes about, so I don't connect the winds to that foreboding cleanser which is a brush fire. Still, even in Bel Air or Beverly Hills, I've never heard of school being cancelled because the wind picked up.

Rule of Thumb for the rest of you: never pay attention to any sociological observations about SoCal from anyone who lives in the Santa Monica Mountains.

And now, for your musical enjoyment:

Heather Havrilesky, on TV's best hour:

The sad message of the show is that, in a world built on lies, ethics are a barrier to both success and happiness. Draper is trapped in a marriage that he doesn't feel connected to, partially because it grew from false pretenses (his wife doesn't know who he really is), but escape from it would be reckless and destructive for him and his family -- just see the single mom down the street from the Drapers, considered hopeless and sad by her neighbors.

The characters of "Mad Men" are thus resigned to live double lives, and the more comfortable they are with their deceit, the happier they'll be. But it makes sense that ad executives would be best served by experiencing the world as pure, delightful artifice: You are whoever and whatever you say you are, nothing more and nothing less. It's a testament to the intelligence of the writing that we, as the audience, find ourselves torn over these characters and their choices. In an oppressive, corrupt culture, their lies sometimes feel like acts of cowardice, and at other times feel like acts of liberation.

This is what a good dramatic work should do: ask important questions that have no easy answers. But that's not all we get from "Mad Men." We get weighty, nuanced scenes that we've never seen before, and that we can't predict as they're unfolding. We get fantastic acting, incredible art direction, and dynamic, fun storytelling with a wicked sense of humor. "Mad Men" is easily the best new show of the year, a true work of art grounded by sharp social commentary and poetic insights into the American experience.

For creating a show that has become one of the most talked-about, heatedly debated series in TV history, and for creating a look and ambience normally associated with Wong Kar-Wai films, Matthew Weiner deserves all the kudos he's received.

I'm not sure Colbert translates as well to the printed page as he does on late-night TV.

A Republican speaks, on illegal immigration:

Why shouldn't city employees turn undocumented immigrants over to the INS? Because if immigrants fear being caught and deported, they will avoid the police, hospitals and schools--to the detriment of the entire city. If the federal government fails to fulfill its responsibility to keep undocumented immigrants out of the U.S., then we must afford them certain protections to preserve the health and safety of all Americans.

A criminal who victimizes an undocumented immigrant might attack a legal resident next. Discouraging the reporting of crimes would make it more difficult for the police to track criminal activity. New York now leads the nation in crime reduction, but we cannot catch criminals, prevent crime and protect the public if we don't have accurate information about where and when crimes are occurring.

Immigrants who fail to seek medical care for fear of deportation also pose a substantial danger to the general public. The misguided new federal law could result in the spread of serious communicable diseases that might easily have been contained if diagnosed and treated early.

And parents who fear deportation might not send their children to public schools. If not in school, some 80,000 children of undocumented immigrants would be on the streets of New York or left alone in apartments. Not only would they suffer irreversible damage, but so many unsupervised children would endanger public safety in the entire city.

What's more, there is no indication that vastly increasing the number of names reported to the INS would even lead to substantially more deportations. The federal government seldom deports undocumented immigrants, even when the INS has established their identities. In New York City, which has an estimated 400,000 undocumented immigrants, only about 1,500 are deported each year. While the recently enacted illegal-immigration law provides new funding for deportation, still less than 1% of the undocumented immigrants already in New York would be deported each year. If the federal government wants to stop illegal immigration, it should work diplomatically with other governments and better secure our national borders, not endanger public safety by recklessly denying critical services to people already here.

--Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 1/9/97 [link via Rude Pundit]

"Even the conservative Wall Street Journal..." Another triumph for conservative bloggers.

In Defense of Americanism: Regardless of who (or what) he's sleeping with, there is evidence that John Edwards would be a terrific President, as this Glenn Greenwald piece shows. There are worse things than the occasional terrorist attack.

I would be more inclined to dis Kaus' take on the Edwards-Gluck affair allegations if one of the parties would, you know, actually deny that they had an affair, or better yet, deny that they had ever slept together, not just use Clintonian weasel words like "the story is false," or "I love my wife, therefore there's no truth to the allegations." Lefty bloggers would be doing our side more of a favor if we stopped being unpaid shills for Democratic politicians and subjected all sides to rigorous scrutiny. At the very least, our hearts won't be broken quite so often when they act like politicians.

The Democratic Party can't stop the damned war in Iraq, but at least they're trying to do something about the real public health menace our country faces from Talladega and Daytona.

SmythesWorld Revisited: On why Kaus is wrong about any long-term damage this might have to the Edwards campaign (and yes, the denials are vague enough even for Clinton to drive a semi through them). Just a reminder: Edwards is the same candidate that Ann "Jew Complete Me" Coulter was calling a "faggot" not too long ago. As long as there are no videos or love letters lying around, no one can prove nothing, and no liberal politician ever lost a vote because he was "rumored" to be a ladies' man.

At some point in the past, the British civil legal system appears to have jumped the track on certain issues. It's laws concerning defamation and libel are a disgrace to anyone who cares about free speech, and this decision, where a judge takes on the power to censor the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is really disturbing. It might be a tad understandable if the corrections concerned misstatements of fact, although not tolerable in any country that values civil liberties. But to excise portions of the film because the judge believes them to be "alarmist" is, how shall I say it, BULLOCKS.

Shorter Mark Steyn:

"Arbeit Macht Frei "

[link via TBogg, who has a litany of other examples of poor-bashing by the fringe right]

The Kaus Curse: President Obama? It looks that way, after Mickey Kaus' prediction of the imminent doom of his candidacy.

Speaking of Mickey, his preceding post commenced thus:

Crops Rotting in the Fields! ... Oh wait. That's last year's crops-rot-in-fields story. Sorry. Here's this year's. They haven't rotted yet... [Thanks to reader C.B.] .. Update: Is the Bush administration rushing to declare a crisis and use it as an excuse to open the door to more illegals? I don't know the answer.

I'm not sure if it's sloppy editing or what, but I can swear that he's using the word "illegal" as a noun in that passage. In polite society, that's considered to be a faux pas comparable to referring to Clarence Thomas or Barry Bonds as "colored," or using the word "Jew" as a verb. It's a clear reference to a specific ethnic group (no one calls Irish or English immigrants who overstay their visas "illegals") and it's meant to be derogatory. "Illegal alien" is scarcely better, what with its origin in early-20th Century anti-Semitism and its allusion to non-humans from other planets, but at least it has some connection to immigration status. The word seems awfully harsh for what is, after all, a violation of a malum prohibitum law. Using "retard" in a sentence is no less offensive.

I'm biased, of course. As an Angeleno my whole life (so far), I live in a community that is, at its very core, Latino. Its architecture, its style, its music, its dialect, its cuisine: all have been shaped by the great and steady migration from south of the border, and that influence has been uniformly positive. L.A. has its faults, and there are times when I wished everyone spoke the same language, but I wouldn't trade a minute of living here for any other city in the world.

As far as immigration is concerned, I say, the more the merrier. The U.S. does not have a high population density, as nations go, and our past experience has shown that more immigration boosts the economy for everyone. Immigration has been the fuel that has led to the constant reinvention of American society. America as a nation can no more succeed without immigration than it could without an army.

And if there's one thing the Democratic Party has stood for over the years, it's that the party has always been pro-immigration. It was a pro-immigration party when Jefferson was President, when the party was dominated by planters and farmers, and during the Age of Jackson, when it was a coalition controlled by the slavocracy. It was pro-immigrant when it also supported Jim Crow, as well as when it was pro-silver and anti-imperialist. In fact, it was precisely the fact that immigrants constituted such a large portion of its coalition that it eventually became the engine that drove the New Deal, and later repudiated its states rights, Southern base to become the tribune of civil rights for blacks, women and gays. Believing that Americanness is something that anyone can earn through hard work and ambition is the party's birthright.

Given the choice between living in a country that provides an opportunity for someone who crosses the border without permission to work hard and earn enough money to buy a house and have his children go to college, and a country where third-rate bigots of the Malkin, O'Reilly and Limbaugh variety can whine about how the border fence isn't high enough, I know what I'd prefer. It's too bad we can't trade.

UPDATE: As to the first point, noted actor and all-around nice guy Val Kilmer writes in to suggest that, in fact, Kaus wasn't suggesting that Obama was going down, only that certain "experts" were trying to return to the Clinton fold based on a presumption that he's going to lose. Insofar as he does note a possibility that Obama can still win (just as there are some college football writers who say that USC can still "win" the BCS Title), I guess it's not exactly like his infamous prediction of Kerry's doom before the Iowa caucuses in '04. So thanks Val, and thanks Iowa.

The Republican War on the Middle Class: Apparently, living in a house you own and supporting government aid to the uninsured is enough to earn the scorn of right wing tools. Digby is in fine form here:

This is so loathesome I am literally sick to my stomach. These kids were hurt in a car accident. Their parents could not afford health insurance --- and sure as hell couldn't get it now with a severely handicapped daughter. And these shrieking wingnut jackasses are harassing their family for publicly supporting the program that allowed the kids to get health care. A program, by the way, which a large number of these Republicans support as well.

They went after Michael J. Fox. They went after a wounded Iraq war veteran. Now they are going after handicapped kids. There is obviously no limit to how low these people will go.

They'd better pray that they stay rich and healthy and live forever because if there is a hell these people are going to be on the express train to the 9th circle the minute they shuffle off their useless mortal coils.

Scum.

Ditto. More here on what may be a nadir in the culture of attack politics.

Let it be said that perhaps the most significant thing Joe Torre did as Yankees' manager for a dozen seasons is the manner in which he altered the public perception of the team, from arrogant, rich symbols of corporate sports into a scrappy, classy collection of athletes. It wasn't easy to root against the Yankees while Torre was their manager. Without doubt, a class act.

Also, he skippered the team to four championships. I guess that's significant, too.

Yeah, I know, tomorrow is the day I reach the number of Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, et al., that is to say, 44. With that comes the bleak notion that in eight years, my life will be half-over. So unhappy....

"Hey Faggot Stupid": A day like any other in Neoconland. I'm sorry, but I read something like this, and the first thing I think about is whether it's author is going to be found to have a "wide stance."

Right from the Start: Kevin Drum points out the obvious flaw to Sen. Obama's campaign strategy of highlighting his opposition to the 2002 Iraq Resolution:

Maybe it's unfair, but being "right" five years ago just doesn't seem to be a winning pitch. In a way, that doesn't surprise me. Most people react negatively to blowhards who are always reminding their friends about how smart they were on some previous occasion, and maybe that's how this sounds to a lot of people. Especially people who themselves might have supported the war back in 2002 and don't really appreciate being reminded about it.

I don't know. I'm just guessing here. But bragging about your good judgment might be a very different thing than bragging about a concrete achievement. On this score, Hillary Clinton's decision to cosponsor legislation preventing military operations against Iran without congressional approval seems pretty smart.

This really goes without saying. It's a frustrating thing for lefty bloggers to have been proven right about going to war in Iraq, only to have the same people whose counsel got us into the mess in the first place remain the "acceptable" voices about what to do now.

But in politics, it's entirely understandable why that should be so. The public backed the President's position the first time around. They have now come to realize they were sold a bill of goods, and they want someone to reverse the policy, but the fact that someone vociferously opposed said policy at the outset doesn't make them any more credible now. If you're a voter, a candidate who tells you that he, like you, supported going to war five years ago, but has now come to see the error of his ways, and that the policy needs to be changed, is simply going to have more influence than the smarty-pants who just wants to say "I told you so."

Your very special musical moment of the day:

Having fooled around for a bit on both MySpace and Facebook, I can say that Toby Young's analysis on the "U v. Non-U" traits of both social networks is dead on:

I’ve been a member of both MySpace and Facebook for at least two years and while MySpace is populated by a vast array of hip, alternative types (disc jockeys, musicians, skateboarders), Facebook users are almost exclusively upper-middle-class professionals and/or their children. It’s the internet equivalent of U and Non-U.

If anything, this divide is even more pronounced in the UK because, as a nation, we’re so class-conscious. The great thing about Facebook is that it offers people an almost limitless number of ways to advertise their superior social standing — something that U-types are particularly keen on in my experience. I don’t simply mean you can post a picture of yourself standing next to a celebrity — though, God knows, we’ve all done that — or even that you can advertise your membership of U-sounding groups, such as ‘I’d rather be hunting’. (There’s even one called ‘I say loo not toilet’.) No, I’m talking about the ‘update your status’ button that enables you to tell all your friends exactly what you’re doing at any given moment. It is this feature, more than anything else, that allows Facebook users to flaunt just how successful they are.

(snip)

For a Facebook user, the ultimate confirmation that you’ve arrived is if someone else tries to impersonate you on the site. I had no idea how widespread this practice was until I applied to become Facebook friends with ‘Harold Pinter’, ‘Daniel Craig’ and ‘Angelina Jolie’ — and they all said yes.*

Personally, I've always found MySpace to be more interesting, and not just for the creative and genuinely hip manner in which spam finds itself to my humble site on a routine basis. Maybe it's just the blogger in me, but I enjoy having a forum to unapolegetically display my inner geek to the universe, and MySpace is perfect for that. Perhaps that's why bands and artists of all types love it so much; being "private" is the opposite of being creative, and exposing yourself (so to speak) to a world outside your circle of friends is liberating.

*Ed.-Also a problem on MySpace; it never ceases to amaze how low a level of celebrity it takes to generate a bogus site.

If there's anything sadder than Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS (which, from the technical aspect of contract law, may not be entirely meritless, particularly if representations were made to Rather about future employment), it's the pathetic defense of the report about George Bush's "service" in the Air National Guard that inexorably led to his ouster at the network. For some lefty bloggers, the bogus documents are what global warming and/or WMD's are to the right, a claim that must never be conceded to the other side, in the face of overwhelming facts to the contrary. Truth is always the first casualty of war.

It is true that the documents highlighted on the 2004 60 Minutes II report have never been "proven" to be forgeries. No eyewitness has come forward to claim that they witnessed a third party drafting the letters on a Dell Computer, nor has anyone admitted to having been the forger. The only evidence that exists that the documents were forged is circumstantial. In that respect, saying that the forgery was unproven is like saying O.J.'s guilt in the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman is "unproven." After all, nobody saw him do it, a jury hearing the case in a criminal court acquitted him, and he claims he's still looking for the real killer. The blood of the victims in his car, on his clothing, and at his house is nothing more than the kerning and the raised font of the TANG letters.

Of course, there are still wingnuts on the right who insist that the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" weren't similarly discredited, who insist that the multiple contemporaneous accounts of John Kerry's bravery in Vietnam were less credible than the memories of middle-aged men, warped by partisanship and anger, three decades after the fact. The desire to believe the absolute worst in your enemies is a very human one, and is unaffected by one's opinion on providing universal health coverage or supporting preemptive wars. It is so much easier to stick to one's guns to the bitter end.

But in the end, I prefer the truth. In this case, the truth is that the documents in question were almost certainly forgeries. That doesn't mean that George Bush fully performed the terms of his service to the Air National Guard, or that Robert Bullock, the Kerry for President campaign, or Karl Rove were behind the forgeries, or that everything Dan Rather or Mary Mapes ever reported on is discredited. And it shouldn't have any bearing on whether Rather's lawsuit against his former employer has any merit, since it is based on representations made after the validity of the documents had come into question.

It simply means that the juiciest portion of the infamous broadcast back in the late summer of 2004 was based on fraudulent evidence, evidence that would never have been broadcast had CBS News performed adequate due diligence. These were not counterfeit documents, reproduced copies of genuine letters, "fake but accurate" evidence, like a medieval monk's careful reproduction of an ancient text that he couldn't read. If it is the duty of a progressive to speak truth to power, to be a critic and opponent of injustice, then the tactics of a partisan hack cannot be followed.

Tip for the Track: Always bet on Bodacious Tatas....

Perhaps the most famous boxing TV broadcast in history:



It probably got pushed back in the morning paper, though, since it occurred on the same day the Supreme Court announced the Roe v. Wade decision, the North and South Vietnamese publicly released the terms of a peace treaty temporarily ending the war, and LBJ died.

Figures: Move-On's lame-o ad attacking Gen. Petraueus was plagiarized...from Rush Limbaugh. And as Marc Cooper points out, the entire purpose of the ad was apparently not to raise public awareness, but filthy lucre instead.

UPDATE: And of course one fund-raising scam deserves another [courtesy of TPM]

One Morning at Berchtesgaden:

President Bush and Karl Rove sat listening to Norman Podhoretz for roughly 45 minutes at the White House as the patriarch of neoconservatism argued that the United States should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The meeting was not on the president’s public schedule.

Rove was silent throughout, though he took notes. The president listened diligently, Podhoretz said as he recounted the conversation months later, but he “didn’t tip his hand.”

“I did say to [the president], that people ask: Why are you spending all this time negotiating sanctions? Time is passing. I said, my friend [Robert] Kagan wrote a column which he said you were giving ‘futility its chance.’

And both he and Karl Rove burst out laughing.

“It struck me,” Podhoretz added, “that if they really believed that there was a chance for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, ‘No, no, it’s not futile, there’s a very good chance.’ ”

From The Politico, 9-24-2007.

Losing the War:

It's not often mentioned, but the rest of the world does not evaluate all international interactions from a starting premise that America is right and its motivations pure. We actually have to convince them of that, particularly in the post-Iraq era. And we're failing. We're abetting Ahmadinejad's attempts to project a hugely disingenuous version of himself through our megaphone. Without us, he's in trouble: He's domestically unpopular, and fundamentally without a platform. With our opposition and apparent hatred for Tehran, he's Iran's champion against America, and he's outwitting us in the court of world opinion.

--Ezra Klein

Needless to say, any Presidency that can transform Hugo Chavez from an egocentric nickel-and-dime hustler into an internationally beloved populist shouldn't have any problems making a Holocaust-denying whack job like Ahmadinejad into a world-historic figure. Well played, fellas.

In the middle of another banal attack on "Bush-enabling" Democrat Dianne Feinstein, comes this rather sleazy attack by Glenn Greenwald:

Additionally, Feinstein is a 74-year-old divorced Jewish woman currently on her third husband, and it is thus extremely unlikely that she harbors any hopes of running in the future on a national ticket.

One would think by the thrust of that jab that the senior Senator from California was a political version of Zsa Zsa Gabor, or the Democratic version of Rudy Giuliani. In fact, Feinstein has been married to the same man now for 27 years. Her previous husband was married to her for sixteen years, until he died of colon cancer. The one divorce she had was nearly fifty years ago, hardly the marital record to make Liz Taylor blush.

In any event, it's hard to see why Greenwald is so hysterical about Senator Feinstein, since it's not as if she's ever pretended to be a tribune for the underclass or a champion of progressive values. When she was Mayor of Frisco many years ago, a leftist group tried to recall her at the polls (oddly enough, it was over her support of gun control laws), and it was hard to see much of a difference between the candidates when she challenged Pete Wilson for governor in 1990 (she lost, barely) or Michael Huffington for the Senate (she won that one). She's never campaigned as a liberal, so it should hardly be shocking that she doesn't always vote that way.

Back when rock and roll wasn't a niche music, and was still spoken of in the present tense, this is how performers entertained us:

To no one's surprise, the arbitration panel hearing Floyd Landis' appeal of the drug "testing" that stripped him of the official designation as 2006 Tour de France champion upheld the ruling today, by a 2-1 margin.

Reading between the lines of the ruling, it's clear the panelists were deeply uncomfortable with the standards of evidence in use by the French lab, even agreeing with the cycling champ that the initial positive test that Landis "failed" was not credible. The whole ruling reads like one of those Rehnquist Court decisions upholding the death penalty, even though the defendant can be shown to be innocent, the police had planted evidence, etc., on the grounds that said evidence was never argued before the trial court. And the controversy concerning Greg LaMond and the crank phone call, which was the highlight of the prosecution's case-in-chief, received the minimal consideration that it deserved.

Anyways, kudos to Landis for fighting the good fight, and to Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times for exposing the whole sordid business of the drug testing racket to the light of day. This may well turn out to be the opening salvo in a much larger war, like the Curt Flood case, that the athletes shall win in the long run.

More on the Belichick Tapes, here. There's no doubt the $500,000 fine was deserved after this story.

With the filibuster being the GOP weapon of choice in the Senate, this is probably a good time to put its abolition on the agenda for the next Congress. On paper, it shouldn't be difficult, since a bare majority of the Senate votes on its rules before it ever convenes, and the filibuster has traditionally been a conservatising influence on legislation. I know there are some with sugar-plum fantasies that the Democrats will pick up 6+ seats in 2008, even nine seats if Republicans continue to remain satisfied with the bang-up job their doing in Iraq, but more likely there still won't be enough votes to overcome Republican obstructionism when the issue is, say, healthcare or getting a progressive judiciary confirmed. We have to start thinking about what our agenda is going to be in post-Bush era on the morrow, and not just pretend that getting more Democrats elected is the End Game.

Now here's a worthy netroots target for 2008: Max Baucus. As the New Republic blogs over his decision to deny Congressional representation to the voters of D.C.:

(Baucus') explanation for his vote against DC receiving a vote in the House of Representatives (with Utah receiving one as well to maintain presumed partisan balance), is really one for the ages:

Baucus said in a written statement that he opposed the bill because Montana has only one House vote. "If we were to expand the House, Montana's voice would become less influential," he said.

Now, my back-of-the-envelope calculation--and I hope readers will feel free to correct it if it's wrong--finds that Montana's single House vote currently makes up 0.2299 percent of the total House vote. If the House were expanded from 435 members to 437, Montana's share would drop to 0.2288 percent. Yes, Baucus felt obligated to vote against any federal representation for residents of the District of Columbia, because it would reduce the relative clout of his states' residents (in the House only, the Senate would be unaffected) by one-thousandth of one percent.

Contrary to popular netroots mythology, Montana is not that red a state, and has not even historically been a particularly red state. All but two of the Senators it has elected in its history have been Democrats, it voted for Clinton in 1992 (and almost went for Dukakis in 1988), and routinely has been the most liberal of the Rocky Mountain states, although Colorado has probably passed it for that distinction in recent years. Tester and Schweitzer have shown that a progressive Democrat can win there today, so there's no need for the rest of us to assume that Baucus is the best we can get out of Big Sky.* [link via Matt Yglesias)

*Baucus has always been a Luxury Box Democrat, dating back to his first election to the Senate, when he defeated an incumbent, Paul Hatfield, over his support for the Panama Canal Treaty the previous year.

Angry Young Man: The guy who got tasered at the John Kerry Q&A the other day was, how should I gently put this, a blogger-in-training.

Shorter Roger L. Simon:

O.J. Made Me Want to Nuke Iran.

And of course, props to Mr. Beard for perfecting the format. When I have more time, I'll post about how the assasination and funeral of Princess Diana ("How Dodi Changed My Life") shaped my political ideology.

One area where Atrios has been consistently prescient is the emerging housing bubble, and what should be done about it. Here, he links to a dialogue about a potential legislative fix to the 1978 bankruptcy law, which was drafted long before adjustable rate mortgages became de rigueur among homeowners, that's well worth reading. My understanding is that it concerns the power of the bankruptcy court to modify loans in the Chapter 13 context, but I suppose Congress could also extend the practice to Chapter 7 cases as well, provided the debtor is current on the mortgage at the time of filing. The 2005 BARF act made the practice more difficult as well, so that law will need to be revisited as well if Congress really hopes to make a dent in the problem.

Lacks the fuzz guitar that made the original recording so priceless, but still a gem from the mid-60's:

Hearing this song over and over, in a continuous hellish loop, has given me about four hours sleep the past two nights, so why not share the burden with my readers:



Sweet dreams !!!

Turns out the "Presidential Election Reform Act" (ie., the Calif. Political Consultant Full-Employment Act of 2008) that may be on the June ballot in California has another flaw, besides the fact that it would eviscerate the state's national influence in Presidential elections: it's blatantly unconstitutional. Turns out that Article I of the Constitution gives exclusive power to determine the appointment of electors to the state legislature, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly viewed as absolute (most recently, in an obscure 2000 case called Bush v. Gore).

Two things to like about Hugh Hewitt: He's a Browns fan, and he wrote this post. Prof. Chemerinsky was easily my favorite professor at USC, and his warm, student-friendly teaching style is a principal reason I didn't quit law school. He made every student in his first-year Con Law class believe what he was teaching was the most important class they were taking, and his popularity cut across ideological lines. Here's hoping the UC Board of Regents reconsiders its dunderhead decision to unhire the King of Really Bad Puns.

9/11 Changed Nothin': Roger Ailes is right. We're going to keep living this nightmare over and over, like Groundhog Day, until the Lord (or Shaq) returns.

Complete with Go-Go Dancers !!!

The Greatest Guitar Solo Ever, according to the Times of London:

Z

From "The Jonathan Winters Show," 1967. As I get older, I'm starting to find the contributions of his bandmates, esp. Mr. Krieger, to be of more interest than those of the Lizard King.

Rats. They announced the Creative Arts section of the Emmy Awards tonight, and my sister (and her colleagues) got robbed. As if it were that hard to recreate ancient Rome on a soundstage....

It's fair to ask whether the BBC will next be censoring programs about the Holocaust under the guist of its "Impartiality" doctrine.

Signifying nothing: From a blogger named Matt Stoller:

Also, while I'm doing a bit of ranting, stupid articles on what the 'netroots' does or does not do, such as this one or this one, to take but two examples, that ignore the fact that no top-tier Democrat differs from Clinton on Iraq, are really really stupid. They are much stupider than articles (like this one by Art Levine or this one by the usually-very-good Kevin Drum) that just whine inaccurately* about what 'the blogosphere' should have done as if the blogosphere is some top-down organization with centralized management that controls the Democratic party leadership rather than a network of people with somewhat highly trafficked websites held in mild disdain by most Democrats on the Hill with any decision-making authority or useful information. Although to be fair to the previous two really stupid articles, the latter two stupid articles were pretty stupid.

Huh? Well, feel free to rant away, Mr. Stoller, but it wouldn't hurt to get a f**king clue. Lefty bloggers are great at raising money for causes, for garnering attention to worthy causes, and for publicizing dark horse challengers, but on a tactical level, they have all the sense of a cage of spastic ferrets being harassed by a deranged hive of wasps. Bloggers can get a Ned Lamont nominated, but actually electing him, or avoiding doing really airheadish things that rile up the opposition, is another thing entirely.

Stoller's notion that blogs doesn't have "top-down" organizational control is technically correct (for one thing, traffic-wise, political writing is a relatively insignificant part of the blogosphere), but it still obscures the very negative role the Queen Beez play in determining what the agenda is for the rest of the non-MSM. If anything, it's "pretty stupid" for Stoller to pretend that within the lefty blogosphere, there aren't about a dozen bloggers who link almost exclusively to each other, who generate 99% of the press coverage, and thereby set the agenda for the rest of us.

Like it or not, that exclusivity can be a strength, since it keeps us on message and magnifies our influence, but it also backfires on occasion, as Mr. Drum points out in the post referenced above. Depending on the season, we are told by the Queen Beez that we have to elect more Democrats to Congress, no matter what position they take, or we are told that we have to purge the "Bush Dog" Demos at the first chance, or we just sit back and make snarky quips about "Friedman Units" and post photoshopped pics of Joe Lieberman. With that sort of de facto leadership, it's no wonder we feel like we get snookered at every turn.

*BTW, how does anyone "whine inaccurately" about anything? "Whining" connotes an undignified, childish complaint; it's not a verb that can be properly modified by an adverb relating to the accuracy of the complaint, since whether the whine is true or not is irrelevant. In any event, if you are going to complain about the whining of others, it would be best not to adopt such a prissy, petulant tone.

Later turned into a very boring cover by Jimi Hendrix, this has all the spirit that the drug-ladled Hendrix version lacked:



It was their only hit, though....

Turns out all the U.S. needed to reclaim the top spot in world hoops was a dose of Kobe...of course, it also helps that LaBron and Carmelo aren't rookies anymore, either. Surround Bryant with some talent, and you've got a team with mucho swagger. Let's face it, A.I. and Duncan are both talented players, but by themselves, they don't put the fear of god into anyone, especially not at the international level. Kobe Bryant, on the other hand, sends a signal to the rest of the world that the real battle is for silver.

Rape, or whatever...: A talmudic discussion of whether there can be rape without a victim "harmed" by the attack, here. Ezra Klein raises a strange analogy, likening the woman who doesn't feel "terribly traumatized" after a "non-consensual sexual act" to a "bookish type" who doesn't miss the TV set that was burgled from his studio apartment; in Klein's view, the perpetrator of the first act is as much a "rapist" as the second is a "thief." By the same token, if I get slapped in the face, but I'm not hurt, the slapper has committed "battery" just the same as if I had been punched in the jaw.

But since rape, like burglary, is a crime, not merely a verb describing a particular bad act, how the victim feels afterwards makes all the difference in the world. In prosecuting crimes, the DA's office will only proceed if there is a sense that harm has been imposed on a victim, for obvious reasons: it's next to impossible to convince a jury to deprive someone of his liberty unless they feel he's wronged someone in an egregious manner. With rape prosecutions, having a traumatized victim is even more important, since the element of consent is not all that easy to prove, especially since eyewitnesses are not likely going to be available to decide the issue. And having a victim who feels like she's been wronged is always handy when you're proceeding to trial; the last thing a DA wants is to have the supposed victim appear before the jury as a reluctant, unsympathetic, or even hostile, witness.

If all you want, though, is to decriminalize "rape," to turn what has been viewed for millenia as one of the worst crimes people can inflict on each other, into a mere insult, like calling someone a "thief," then by all means, parse away.

Another entry from the gutsy journalistic tradition that is the N.Y. Post:

'It's hard. He's such a wonderful person,' one source said. 'He's such a great guy and so smart and just . . . nice. We're just hoping he gets better.'

"He", of course, being Owen Wilson, the "tow-haired, Tinsel Town hunk" who is recuperating from a recent suicide attempt. Why Murdoch's flagship paper is granting anonymity to a source for expressing the courageous thought that The Wedding Crashers star not succumb to his demons should be obvious; the last thing any entertainment reporter wants is to be cut out of the loop by the P.R. flacks who write most of the stories about the "Industry." [link via Kausfiles, which inexplicably thinks the LA Times should be as similarly hard-hitting]

The Little Boys Room: Another GOP Senator busted.

Becoming a Man: Like many of you, I saw the live press conference by the former Atlanta Falcon quarterback this morning, and I was particularly moved by this quote:

I want to apologize to all the young kids out there for my immature acts and, you know, what I did was, what I did was very immature so that means I need to grow up.

I totally ask for forgiveness and understanding as I move forward to bettering Michael Vick the person, not the football player.

Although some people may live their entire lives on the straight and narrow, the callow rebellious youth who emerges from a life of selfishness and vice into later greatness is a common one. It is a story that is as old as Alexander the Great and St. Augustine, and on through to Prince Hal, Winston Churchill, and the great man who currently holds supreme power in this country. Many of us can attest to what the Leader of the Free World admitted during his first Presidential campaign, that when we were young and irresponsible, we were young and irresponsible.

In the fullness of time, with the wisdom that accrues from age and experience, we can look back at the folly of our youth, whether it be the all-night carousing with our friends, the snort or puff of an illegal narcotic, or the rape stand we tie a defenseless animal to for breeding purposes. Just as I cringe at some of the things I used to pull in my adolescence, from crank yanking girls who didn't want to go out with me to T.P.'ing a neighbor's house, Vick will no doubt roll his eyes at the silliness of some his exploits with the Fallstaffs of his life, such as electrocuting and shooting the also-rans at "the Kennel," or injecting dogs with performance-enhancing drugs to accentuate their killing abilities.

This whole thing is just a learning experience, one that a more mature Michael Vick can use when he returns to action next season.

This place was not constructed to keep something out... To answer Pam Spaulding's question, this film, which besides some hilariously pretentious dialogue, also contains the most comical sex scene in screen history. I even remember the date I saw it: January 2, 1984. Together with my pals Jim Christianson and Greg Sapinsley, the three of us ventured to Westwood to see the early evening showing, thereby missing the second half of the Orange Bowl, and afterwards engaged in the sort of giggling more common among people who've imbibed a substantial amount of weed. I still cannot believe the director was able to survive that fiasco.

The Unfiltered Views of a Neo-Conman:

When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.

This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.

The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.

The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation's powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.

As there appears to be no sensible result of the invasion of Iraq that will be popular with his countrymen other than retreat, President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.

By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.

(snip)

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

--Phillip Atkinson, a contributing editor for the Center for Security Policy, a conservative "think-tank" that includes, among others, former CIA chief James Woolsey, Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley, and Frank Gaffney. The piece was subsequently scrubbed from the think-tank's website, although, as Digby points out, they can't say they weren't warned about this guy's extreme opinions concerning other subjects.

Ecce Angeleno: A terrific slice o' life story out of East L.A., in this morning's local paper, about the last Japanese restaurant in Boyle Heights.

Butch van Breda Kolff, R.I.P.: The coach and mastermind behind perhaps the darkest moment in Los Angeles Laker history has died at the age of 84. Coaching the Lakers to two NBA Finals appearances in the late-60's, van Breda Kolff was always remembered for allowing his dislike of Wilt Chamberlain interfere with the Lakers' bid to win the 1969 championship.

In brief, the Lakers had lost to the Boston Celtics in five of the previous seven NBA Finals, and had not yet won a title in Los Angeles. With the teams splitting the first six games by winning on their home courts, the aging Celtics came out fired up in the 7th and deciding game of the 1969 Finals, which for the first time was being played in Los Angeles, and took a commanding lead late in the game. At one point losing in the fourth quarter by 17 points, the Lakers had cut the lead in half with less than six minutes to play, when Chamberlain dislocated his knee while rebounding a ball at the defensive end. Trying gamely to play, the Laker center finally limped off the court with 5:15 to play, and van Breda Kolff moved back-up forward Mel Counts into the center position in place of Chamberlain.

Over the next few minutes, Counts played well; it also helped that his Celtics' counterpart, Bill Russell, had five fouls. The Lakers cut the lead to a point, with Counts hitting two free throws and an outside jumber, with just under three minutes to play. Insofar as Chamberlain couldn't hit free throws to save his life, had no outside shot to speak of, and also had five fouls, Counts gave the Lakers a dimension during that rally that they normally didn't have. The Celtics, aging and in foul trouble, seemed spent.

What happened next is the stuff of nightmares to Laker fans, and still enables Celtic boosters to wake up each morning with some serious wood. With under three minutes to play, the Lakers had three straight chances to take the lead, all of which came to naught; Elgin Baylor put up a wild shot, then Jerry West and Keith Erickson had turnovers on consecutive possessions. On each possession, the Lakers' offense was curtailed by the lack of a dominating inside presence. Finally, with just over a minute to play, Don Nelson put up a desperation shot over an outstretched West, which bounced high off the back iron and into the basket, giving Boston a three-point lead. At the other end, Counts got the ball underneath the basket on the next Laker possession, only to have the ball stripped by Russell. After two more free throws, the Celtics lead grew to five points with less than a minute to play, and would eventually reach eight points. In all, the Lakers went six consecutive possessions between points in the final three minutes.

At some murky point during this sequence of events, Chamberlain had either miraculously recovered from his injury, or had decided to suck it up and play, but in any event had informed his coach that he was ready to go back in. van Breda Kolff, who hadn't gotten along with Chamberlain during the season, exercised the same coach's discretion that would get him fired soon afterwards, and told the greatest player in basketball history to sit down, as Counts was playing well in his absence. The Lakers got no closer than two points the rest of the way, and lost for the sixth time in eight years to their hated rival, 108-106.

In none of the accounts that I have seen does it identify when Chamberlain announced he was ready to go back in. Certainly, the Lakers played well for several minutes after Wilt went to the bench, but on their three possessions where they failed to take the lead, the Celtics had clearly adjusted to Counts' presence on the outside. Even with a crippled Chamberlain, the Lakers could have used him to bottle up the Celtics front court, setting up West, Tommy Hawkins or even Counts to have open shots from the outside.

What's even harder to excuse if you're a Lakers fan is that van Breda Kolff didn't see fit to reinsert Chamberlain in the final minute, when his play under the basket might have sparked a last-ditch comeback. The three-point shot was still a decade in the future, so having a good perimeter player stroking from twenty-three feet out wasn't going to make the game any closer than having Wilt put in a finger roll. Even if the Celtics had held on to win, you still want to have the players out on the court that give you the best chance, and even if putting in Wilt would have been tantamount to a Hail Mary pass, at least the fans and players would feel like the team gave it their best shot. Not bringing Wilt back into the game when he asked to go back in, even during desperation time, was clueless.

After Nelson's shot, the Lakers needed their own miracle, and Counts was clearly not going to do it. van Breda Kolff's stubbornness may not have cost the team a title in '69, any more than Bill Buckner's error necessarily cost the Red Sox the '86 World Series, but it had the same impact on the long-suffering fans of the team. He was a very good coach, and he certainly deserved to be remembered for the overachieving teams he coached at the college level (including a Princeton team that made the Final Four in 1965), so it's sad he'll be remembered for a couple of minutes when he wasn't a good coach.

I never knew a man who had better motives...: I suppose next he'll be quoting Richard III....

Atrios somewhat reticently links to this post, which posits that the changes incurred by the 2005 BARF legislation are somehow related to the high rate of foreclosures we're currently seeing. Under the old law, the hypothesis goes, the generous terms by which someone could file Chapter 7 allowed many a homeowner to save his home, receiving a breathing space in which he could stop the forced sale of his property and come current on his mortgage. As someone who loathes the BARF, and who has repeatedly spelled out some of its egregious after-effects, as well as many of its unintended consequences, such as the devastation to the credit card industry caused by the mere passage of the law, it is a tempting position, but one that I just don't buy.

You see, in American bankruptcy law, there are two avenues available for most consumers, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Choosing either avenue imposes a court order, called a stay, that stops all debt collection activity, including foreclosures and civil lawsuits. In Chapter 7 cases, the consumer files his paperwork listing his assets and debts, as well as his monthly income and expenses, and more than 9 out of 10 times, the court-appointed Trustee will determine, after a public meeting to which creditors are invited, that the debtor has no assets to liquidate. Thereafter, the consumer receives a discharge, forgiving his unsecured debts; the whole process usually takes four months, tops, although the courts in L.A. are still dealing from the huge backlog of cases resulting from YBK in October, 2005.

However, a Chapter 7 does little to protect the consumer from the Big Bad Wolf trying to foreclose, either now or in the golden, pre-BARF era that was so friendly to consumers. The automatic stay provides a temporary reprieve, but secured creditors like mortgage lenders have always been able to take advantage of a remedy under the law, the Motion for Relief. That motion gives the lender the ability to go before the court and ask that the automatic stay be lifted so that foreclosure proceedings (or evictions) may continue.

Filing such motions is what I used to do for a living, and unless the property involved had a huge equity cushion (exceedingly rare in Chapter 7 cases, since the debtor would presumably borrow off the equity first to pay his debts), I always won. In fact, I was expected to have an order signed by the judge and in my client's hands within six weeks of the case being filed; if it was a repeat filer, I would seek an order for the matter to be heard ex parte, so it wasn't unusual for the client to be able to resume the foreclosure process within three weeks of the filing. And that was under the old law.

Both before and after 2005, homeowners who wanted to stop foreclosures and save their homes filed Chapter 13 bankruptcies. The Chapter 13 case is the preferred option of the authors of the new law, in that it imposes a repayment plan, usually over five years, on the debtor. Since the mortgage lender receives payment on its arrearages over the lifetime of the plan, it is protected, and the court won't grant relief from stay allowing it to pursue the foreclosure.

The problem with the new law is that it imposes additional costs on many debtors, particularly non-homeowners, who make above the median average income in their state. It doesn't impede homeowners from saving their investment through the bankruptcy courts, any more than the old law did. And the old law certainly didn't give a serious breathing spell to those homeowners who filed a Chapter 7 to stop a foreclosure. Joe Biden can be blamed for a lot of things, but not the high foreclosure rate.

Is there a genocidal regime or dictator that the ADL won't appease? [link via The Plank]

UPDATE [8/22]: I figured the ADL wasn't going to get away with playing David Irving on the Armenian genocide. Good that they switched course, even though "tantamount to genocide" sounds almost euphemistic, like "almost murder." The ADL long ago forfeited any right to be a gatekeeper for the term.

Can a statement by a press flack that it is a policy never to comment on a particular issue the same thing as "declining to comment" on same? Kevin Roderick explores the philological ramifications.

Tilting at Strawmen: Has anyone argued that bloggers will inevitably replace investigative journalists? Or that bloggers can typically do the same sort of reporting as newspaper reporters? Of course not, so what was the point of this op-ed?