Human-animal hybrids? HUMAN ANIMAL HYBRIDS?

I cannot believe that this is a major issue worthy of mention in the State of the Union.

(Added 2/2/06 at 7:41 PM: Check out http://www.humananimalhybrid.net/…)

Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) has promised to vote “no” on the Alito nomination, according to the Washington Times today. He’ll vote today to end the Democratic filibuster and eventually won’t support Alito’s nomination in the up-or-down vote. This is probably a safe bet for Chafee given the outrage in (blue) Rhode Island that could erupt if he voted yes… but it will only prove safe if he can make it through the GOP primaries this fall.

His GOP challenger, former mayer of Cranston, RI, Steve Laffey, and Dem challenger Matt Brown, have each levied attacks on Linc for being a “flip-flopper”: Laffey said that Linc has an “inability to make a firm decision, which once again made him irrelevant to the process in the Senate.” As a very conservative Republican, Laffey’s future prospects in the Senate seem especially irrelevant. On the other hand, if Laffey can wrest the GOP nomination away from Chafee because of local Republican disillusionment with Chafee’s moderate voting record (National Journal says his social policy votes are more liberal than 60% of Senators).

If the “no” vote against Alito does hand Laffey the GOP nod this fall, it “could kill the GOP’s chance of holding a seat in liberal Rhode Island,” because a Laffey candidacy would almost certainly be too conservative to win in Rhode Island.

The election in Palastine last week will have ramfications not only across the middle-east, but also around the world. This is a very large statement to make, especially less then a week after the election, but I feel that once I lay out the logics, it will be clear as to why I feel this way.

As I see it, only three things can occur in the territories. Their can be a civil war, the two parties can form a coalition government, or hamas can take power (which they legitamitely won). In each of these situations, the Isaeli election most be considered. If their is a civil war, Israel will have an urban civil war on its’ border. If their is a coalition, Hamas will have power (legitamacy), and Israel will have a government that espouses its’ destruction on its border. If Hamas controls the entire governments, then it will be the same as the previous arguement, and perhaps even stronger.

In all three of these situations, I feel Israel will move to the right in the general elections. I do not pretend to be an expert in israeli electoral politics, but when a nation has a newly created enemy on its border, it seems to me that the country will move to the right, and elect a party such as likud.

Likud, and other conservative Israeli parties are great friends of the american military-industrial complex. In doing so, they will buy american arms, and because of how entrenched congress is with AIPAC, it is likely that the israeli’s will get an export licence for their arms. So, what is the gist of this? Buy defense stocks.

ABC News’ The Note has two leaked strategy memos, one from each party. In my optimism, I read through them expecting something big. Lo! and behold, here it is! From the Democratic leak:

Third, pound the ball on the ground by showing that it is Democrats who will stand up for the truth and move us forward: Let’s stand for something that actually matters to people in a way that will brand the party as truly being the party of reform for the middle class. We need to appreciate that we are not in power and have no obligation to put out proposals that can be immediately implemented. Let’s keep it simple and identify three truly BIG ideas that will communicate to voters that we actually want to do something to make their lives better. Here is a halftime snack of a pu-pu platter of ideas to choose from: let’s have tax reform that eliminates taxes for those making $50,000 or less and reduce forms to one page (front and back); let’s clean up Congress by putting in place actual term limits; let’s immediately impose sanctions on Iran and keep all options on the table; let’s have an energy plan that makes the U.S. independent from the Middle East in ten years; let’s have a sin tax on the porn industry that pays for college for every kid in America that gets a B average; let’s create a string of high tech universities and colleges to meet the challenges of the flat world; let’s establish a national 401(k) (thanks, Gene).

Those are brilliant! Brilliant, I say! And when was the last time you heard anything of similar value and innovation from either party? If the Democrats ever put forth ideas like these seriously and on a national scale, I’ll walk through fire to keep the party in power.

“Sin tax”? It’s a little judgmental, and I’m not sure I’m thrilled about the First Amendment implications of such subjective law, but it’ll play like football in the Red States, and I’ll confess that on balance I actually like the idea.

Term limits? High quality education commensurate with a Thomas L. Friedman reference?

Sign me up.

This chart from the Economic Policy Institute is pretty damning:

The long and the short of it is, as MaxSpeak points out, “the triumph of Republican-conservatarian economic policy consists of an expansion of government jobs”. If tax cuts had done anything significant to create jobs, it would have been in the private sector–these are government sector jobs. Intriguing!

This is just too funny.

A prosecutor put on a zippered leather mask and re-enacted a bondage session Friday at a dominatrix’s manslaughter trial, telling the jury the woman did nothing to help her client when he suffered a heart attack.

[...]

In a re-enactment for the jury, the prosecutor donned the mask, and with both hands, reached back and clutched the top of a blackboard to simulate how Lord was strapped.

“After a gasp, his head went forward and she did nothing, nothing for five minutes,” Nelson said, his voice muffled as he spoke through the zippered mouth opening.

Lord’s attorney objected, and Judge Charles Grabau agreed.

“That’s enough, Mr. Nelson,” the judge said. “Thank you for your demonstration.”

I wonder if he learned that in law school?

It may seem like I’m beating a dead horse here, but unfortunately I’m one of those closet libertarian types. I wonder why won’t Bush allow a secret panel of the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee to review the findings?

Of course for those of us who care about the rule of law the results really are secondary to the means if they were illegal especially when reasonable and efficient means (FISA) existed for the same purpose. But, if as the President contends these wiretaps provided us with needed information, and did not spy on Americans needlessly then why not allow the Senate to view the documents?

The idea that our government can’t operate with classified information is pretty ridiculous when Congress has been required to do so it has obliged. We still haven’t seen all the Abu Gharib photographs yet. If this program is so vital, so important, and so successful then Bush should prove to the Select Secret Committee just that, and do so through revealing the details to them confidentially. If, however, the Senate were to find evidence of abuse and illegality then they would and must come forward to their colleagues in the House revealing only the data that is illegal. The information that is useful for our protection would not need to be released anyway since it would prove nothing.

The ball is in your court Mr. President, why not prove just how useful your illegality is?

Today’s Washington Post article and poll results show that 76% of Americans think “Bush should disclose all contacts between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and White House staffers.” The Abramoff scandal was a tough enough when it just implicated the GOP House leadership and threatened the 2006 midterms. Throw in the White House and some calls for accountability and you have a real stew going. Refusing to answer to the Press Corps not only makes them look guilty, but also is bad for transparent democracy. (Not that this White House has ever been called “transparent” with a straight face…)

What’s the red line beyond which the White House realizes it is politically untenable (for both the midterms, and for their policy initiatives) to continue to obfuscate about the Abramoff-Bush meetings? 76%? 85%?

Do 100% of Americans need to call for disclosure before they’ll comply?

From the Washington Post:

Just a heads-up.

Today in the Palestinian elections, Hamas won with an overwhelming majority. I think we today witnessed the end the to any likelihood of real peace in Israel. The possibility for moderation is now zero. This will lead an era where Israel will continue to build the wall and continue the process of withdrawal from the West Bank.

The acting Prime Minister of Israel had this to say:

If a [Palestinian] government should arise of which Hamas is a participant, the world and Israel will ignore it and render it irrelevant.

and in a statement

Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government, even if only part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for Israel’s destruction, and in any case will continue to strenuously fight terrorism everywhere.

I think it would be well for the governments to realize that such words and rhetoric, can be inherently dangerous. Wars have begun that way.

I’m usually a fan of the Becker-Posner Blog, and occasionally of the opinions of the titled author, 7th Circuit court judge Richard Posner. He’s a prolific author who writes volumes of popular jurisprudence, including today’s piece for The New Republic defending the NSA wiretap program. What if it works, he asks? Two problems.

When Posner says that “Law in the United States is not a Platonic abstraction but a flexible tool of social policy,” I wonder why a prominent jurist like himself would not see how some (many?) value upholding the law for it’s own sake. As Jon Margolick mentioned to me earlier today, it is the reason why drug dealers get off on procedural technicalities–isn’t the important part that the law maintain its integrity, not that we advance the social policy of ridding our society of drug abuse? Years from now we want procedural justice to still mean something, and that includes making sure that the executive branch is not de facto excused from their misdeeds. Because the President is not above the law, it is indefensible to set a precedent that he may flout laws he dislikes–just because he wants to.

A second problem, as Posner alludes to, is that we can’t know the success of the program due to secrecy limitations. The results of the NSA program, including whether it has or has not thwarted attacks, cannot therefore be used in evaluating the domestic wiretapping policy. But that’s not the point: the question of successful (or even of good) policy is distinct from the question of legality. It looks like the administration (and Posner?) is trying to make the policy logically antecedent to the question of law. But if it can be shown that eavesdropping on international-domestic telephone conversations has successfully thwarted terrorist attacks, then perhaps a case can be made for expanding the legal boundaries of wiretapping: amend FISA, or have Congress authorize Bush’s program. The repugnance of the program mostly centers on how the (largely) unchecked executive branch has thwarted the limits imposed by FISA, and in the process, has probably broken the law. The architects of the program, if they knew they were breaking the law, need to be held accountable, now. I await Specter’s judiciary hearings with bated breath.

(I’m comforted by Posner’s sensible suggestion for a new rule on FISA that evidence gleaned through the wiretapping programs only be available in national security-related cases, and not, as he says, cases involving people who are defrauding the IRS. Safeguards like this, which would prevent the Bush administration from overreaching and gobbling up more law enforcement powers, make the legal use of wiretapping programs seem, at least on their face, less onerous.)

Jack Balkin points out, via a friend, that the Iraqi Constitution guarantees liberties we do not enjoy. And, in spite of the obtuse commenter on that post, the Iraqi Constitutional provision in question does not change in the face of war.

In what other areas is our democracy deficient? We’re clearly exporting an inexpertly crafted good–though we tout democracy as the be-all and end-all of freedom, it’s far from perfected here. Some questions, then: What does ‘democracy’ mean? Ought religiously-based democracies and secular democracies to share the same word? How specific are we (or, perhaps, how specific was President Bush in his second state of the Union) in referring to the “spread of democracy”? Are we comfortable not having liberties guaranteed to citizens of other nations? Can we still be a city on a hill if we compromise our own liberties for security?

And, because I would hardly be a political blogger if I let this opportunity pass, what do we make of Ben Franklin’s assertion that “Those who would sacrifice permanent liberties for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security?” Does that question fit here?

I obviously think so. How about you?