Unqualified Offerings

1. Pretty good analysis of yesterday’s Laffer Curve Brouhaha from Jon Henke.

2. Gary Farber reviews the President’s to-do list.

3. Crispin Sartwell makes the anarchist case for drug prohibition. (Via The Agitator.)

4. Belgravia Dispatch is more or less on the UO Train regarding what to do about Iran. I hope to tease out some of the differences later, but it’s a decent starting point.

It’s gotten very hard, in the back and forth between surveillance apologist Roger Pilon and Clueful-American Bob Levy, for me to remember what point Pilon was trying to make. It seems like he’s just engaged in a garden-variety broad construction of the Constitution’s “commander-in-chief” clause, which somehow becomes broad authority over “foreign affairs” which somehow becomes untrammelled power to engage in domestic surveillance if the President thinks it’s a good idea. Complementarily, he’s also construing the Congress’ power to legislate extremely narrowly. Somehow, if Congress can pass laws the President is required to obey if a President signs them, like in the Constitution-as-written, somehow the President will not be “co-equal”. Implicitly, if the President can set aside laws that he’d rather not obey, that makes Congress “co-equal” with the Presidency. Maybe because each branch is said to have an underground train system.

This two-step is precisely the dance to take up if you want to flatter pretensions to an imperial presidency, though it means making a dance floor of a constitution that says that the President is “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces, not me or Bob Levy or even Roger Pilon; that the President can make treaties that don’t become law unless the Senate approves; that was written by men who feared more than anything a return of monarchism to the republic; and that has all this extra stuff at the end about due process and narrowing the conditions under which the government may search and seize. If only Eugene Debs would return, Roger Pilon could justify clapping him in jail again.

I know there’s a faction at Cato that wants to turn the place into just another Republican “pro-business” think tank, and this kind of nonsense would certainly seem to help that effort, but where’s their sense of timing? The Bush Presidency is on its way to penny-stock status. And little birds tell me that the business community is going to gag on the new immigration enforcement stuff, which will alienate the big money guys from both the GOP and its courtiers. The Cato that’s worth supporting is the Cato that was willing to work with left-wing think tanks on proposals to curb corporate welfare; that supports market-friendly policies over rent-seeking by big business; that gives Radley Balko the time to try to save an unjustly convicted man from the chair and decries rather than advocates the ramification of the surveillance state. And that recognizes war is any government’s favorite excuse for seizing more power.

As noted by pretty much everyone, sources told ABC News that one of the things the Feds are doing with all that lovely domestic surveillance data is snooping in on the phone usage of major media outlets. As noted by Gene Healy:

The ’90s weren’t that long ago. And I remember a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over misused FBI Files and suspicious IRS audits. Over the last four and a half years, many of the same wailers and gnashers have cheer-led the concentration of unreviewable power in the executive branch, as if George W. Bush would be the last president ever to wield that power. And now, lo and behold, there’s the mistress of Travelgate warming up in the on-deck circle.

Unless they know something we don’t . . .

Also on Cato’s blog, Timothy Lynch suggests, “The phone records program may have already morphed into just a criminal investigative tool for the government.” Which is what has happened to most of the legislated PATRIOT Act provisions already: they’ve been pressed into service in drug and pornography and other cases.

Libertarians who still support the Bush Administration are utter tools.

Over on Crooked Timber they’re debating “The Smiths: Funny Strange or Funny Ha-Ha?” and coming down in favor of the latter. I’d add that Nirvana is, similarly, a hilarious band, and this is what makes them so much better than Pearl Jam, who wouldn’t know funny if Richard Cohen’s teacher read to them from the Schooldays’ Humor Primer. Nirvana know perfectly well that a line like “I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black” is a laugh line - that’s what makes it and them great. Shakespeare was a scream; Pearl Jam, not so much.

Pearl Jam, phooey. But the thread is wandering here. Hate hate hate hate Pearl Jam! Sorry. I’ll close n - Pearl Jam bites! Bites!!! MUST - CLICK - POST!!

Two articles on negotiations with Iran or not: Newsweek (h/t Farber); Reuters (via Antiwar.com).

Similarity functions in dissent and nutjobbery, illustrated.

Via The Poorman.

Notwithstanding the fact that it would be a deeply stupid idea to go to war with Iran, Iran sucks in a lot of ways. They’ve just thrown scholar Ramin Jahanbegloo in jail for being an American agent engaged in “cultural activities against Iran.” Which is a wienie charge: it’s not like they’re claiming he’s been blowing up trains or something. I suspect that what they call “cultural activities against Iran” is what I’d call dissent. Which every country needs a measure of, especially dreary theocratic ones.

There’s a letter campaign calling for his release which you can contribute to.

(Via Crooked Timber.)

1. Country A regularly stations warships off the coast of Country B.

2. Country B never stations warships off the coast of Country A.

3. Country B does not, in fact, have warships that could get to Country A if they tried.

4. Country B tests a torpedo in its own coastal waters, the ones where Country A regularly stations warships.

5. Country A declares that the torpedo test is evidence of Country B’s aggressiveness.

Someone’s diplomats say the IAEA has found traces of what may be really way super-enriched Uranium on some equipment in Iran. Previous findings were determined to be stuff clinging to used centrifuges dating to the previous owner: Pakistan. This may be true or false or prove out or not. It may be someone trying to gin up the threat level on the US side in hopes of justifying a war or ginning up the threat level on the Iranian side in hopes of convincing the US that, like North Korea, it already has nuclear weapons and it’s too late to bomb. (Your outside-the-box theory of the day: Russia or China have provided Iran with trace elements of highly enriched Uranium for just that purpose - to fool the US into thinking it’s too late. Odds of this theory being true: pretty darn small.)

(Link via The Wisdom Tooth.)

Will these traces be the “mobile biological weapons labs” of 2006, or the smoking gun that comes in the form of a mushroom cloud? Or just someone on mushrooms? Beats me. The only reason I’m blogging it is to remind everybody that it doesn’t pay to get too involved in the twists and turns of the moment. Above all, don’t think these stories will determine a decision to go to war or not go to war. The decisions will, at least in the short run, determine the stories.

So, the rawstory report on carriers moving to the Gulf:

Two air-craft carriers are already en route to the region, RAW STORY has found. The USS Abraham Lincoln, which recently made a port call in Singapore, and the USS Enterprise which left Norfolk, Virginia earlier this month, are headed for the Western Pacific and Middle East. The USS Ronald Reagan is already operating in the Gulf.

The Enterprise does indeed appear to be heading to the Gulf. The Lincoln was off the coast of Singapore at the beginning of the month doing antipiracy and freedom of the seas duty. It did some rescue work at the end of April. (Both links via Wizbang.) Last Tuesday, Prince Mohamed of Brunei visited the Lincoln “in an undisclosed location off the coast of Borneo.”

The Reagan may be rotating out soon, per the Wizbang report, then again it may not.

Now, I was hoping to learn that the carriers could support an attack on Iran from outside the Gulf, since then the only reason to move the carriers into the Gulf would be intimidation value. However, it appears that the combat radius of the F/A-18s that form the bulk of our carrier strike forces have a range of only 290 nautical miles. Iran’s a pretty big country, so you’d want to get relatively close to bomb interior targets from a carrier.

So, watch the Reagan. If it rotates away from the Gulf in the next couple or few weeks, it’s all business as usual. Otherwise, there’s a buildup, and maybe war.

Interpretive Dance Theocrats by holyoffice. Excerpts:

In their best-selling series of books about the song, “Left Behind (Parallel Lines),” Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye defend the rap verse’s hip references to Grandmaster Flash and Fab Five Freddy, and maintain that when Jesus returns, all believers will be united in accepting that Blondie’s cover of “The Tide Is High” is better than the original.

…

When professional athletes thank Jesus for helping them win a game, this [Touchdown Jesus] is the Jesus they’re referring to.

…

Not all Christians accept this [the Trinity]: Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some Pentecostals reject trinitarianism, as do Muslims. Interestingly, while this does not mean Pentecostals are Muslim, it does mean that Muslims are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Via Eve.

In this time of crisis, can you imagine how wrong the country might have gone without the steadying hand of President Hagel?

Bruce Baugh e-mails intriguing thoughts about “The 101st Fighting Keyboarders:”

Talking with Mom and Dad about their personal histories led me to this association: what the war party bloggers have done is recreate the experience of being a child in World War II. They write patriotic essays and make patriotic collages, and get pats on the head and congratulations from the authorities. They watch diligently for the mutant, I mean, for the subversive among us, and help maintain the proper atmosphere of combined courage and vigilance. They are not expected to manage the family books, nor invited into discussion of the nitty-gritty, and it seldom occurs to them that there’s even a possibility there - that’s for the grown-ups, and rightly so.

But what’s fitting for a child isn’t fitting for an adult.

Yes. If there’s one thing libertarians worthy of the name should oppose, it’s the government infantilizing the citizenry. I turned against the Bush Administration when it became clear this was what it was doing with their version of the “War on Terror,” frightening the American people into dependence and support. The curious feature of teh internets in the last four years has been a group of people actively infantilizing themselves on behalf of power.

UPDATE: From the other day, “You WANT me on that blog!” by Kieran Healy. H/t: Bruce in e-mail again.

William Niskanen of Cato talks some more about the impracticality of the “Starve the Beast” approach to downsizing government. (See his recent paper on the subject.)

I hadn’t considered the practical objections until Niskanen pointed them out. I lost my enthusiasm for “starve the beast” over the last couple of years as I had to admit that, as a political/policy package it was dishonest, and the same sort of dishonesty as the Bush Administration used to sell its Iraq policy. That is, in each case there’s an exoteric justification and an esoteric intention. For Iraq the exoteric was heavy on the WMD talk and removing a uniquely evil ruler. The esoteric was “World War IV.” In the case of “Starve the Beast” the exoteric justification was always “We can afford this” while the esoteric was, of course, “The bulk of voters want more government than we do, but if we make it unaffordable they’ll HAVE to reduce spending. At some point.”

I couldn’t oppose the dishonesty in the one case and support it in the other. The only honorable way to reduce the scope of government is to convince people, openly, to reduce the scope of government. That’s hard work. Gosh, too bad.

Iraqi units operating independently. Very independently.

(Via Antiwar.com. And yes, there’s an allusion contest regarding the title of this blog entry.)

UPDATE: The Iraqi government says it was “only” a predominantly Kurdish army unit fighting with Arab civilians.

And it’s offseason BSGlogging too.

Via Hit. Also: Run. (In comments.)

We’ve talked about the Jewish-American contribution to the development of comics and superheroes here before. Now there’s a book, Up Up and Oy Vey. I haven’t read it yet, but I gots ta, and soon.

How can God permit this to happen?

Via Mrs. O.

Truth be told, if Deadwood Season III is great and the show goes out on a high note instead of dragging on for three seasons past its prime, that would be an achievement we should grudgingly appreciate. If I were producing the best thing ever to hit TV and getting snubbed by the Emmys year after year after year I might decide to pack it in myself.

Haven’t had time to get the details yet, but the latest news from the jails of Israel also looks promising.

I went to bed last night and woke up this morning feeling remarkably optimistic about a peaceful resolution of the US-Iranian nuke standoff for the first time in weeks. Being smarter than Saddam Hussein, they’ve made sure their overtures are too public to ignore. And the Bush White House may realize that it stands to reap substantial political gains this fall from a deal with Iran. This may seem counterintuitive, but there’s no escaping the fact that

* Most of the American public are war-weary. Only so many people read Pajamas Media every day - or write for it.

* A US-Iranian thaw almost certainly means at least temporary, measurable progress in Iraq, which helps with the war-weariness above.

* Gas prices will come down some.

* George Bush can sell the agreement as a fruit of Republican “toughness,” in the tradition of Reagan’s late rapprochement with Gorbachev.

It will gall a lot of administration opponents. When we suggest that we probably could have had a comprehensive deal with the Iranians three or four years ago, it will fall on deaf ears. When we argue that we wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of US and Iraqi lives to get to a place we stood a good chance of coming to more cheaply, we’ll fade into a barely intelligible background buzz in the national conversation. We’ll make the same arguments about the need for the genuine oversight that one-party government prevents, but hey, times are good today!

That will be a price worth paying.

Look, I have become a “Bush hater.” There’s nothing wrong with that. The man’s record on civil liberties, spending, executive aggrandizement and international hubriscompel animus. But better George Bush should look unwontedly effective than the US should launch a ruinous, avoidable war.

Leon Hadar suspects, likewise, that it’s all over but the shoutingwhispering:

Germany as mediator? In the Washington Post there was also a report today that Indonesia Offers to Mediate Talks With Iran. And I thought that it was quite remarkable that Rice and the Bushies while dismissing the Iranian President’s letter didn’t use it as an opportunity for name calling and for making more promises for “regime change” in Tehran. The Bottom Line: The chances for the UN Security Council adopting a resolution to “punish” Iran are close to zero. The costs of a U.S. military attack on Iran are going to be enormous. So the choices facing Washington now are either to maintain the dangerous status quo or to open a dialogue with Iran. Period. Talks with Iran could be happen. If they do, we won’t be hearing about them until they conclude. Memo to intelligence agencies and news organization: Find out if a leading U.S. diplomat had “disappeared” and be suspicious if Condi Rice extends a visit to Turkey or one of the “stans.” Just some ideas…

Dig the picture too. Maybe I’m just prey to a mood here. But I’m going to enjoy it for a bit.

Heed the word.