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Friday, May 29, 2009
This Day In History - May 29
1453 – Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, making skillful use of cannon and other gunpowder weapons, captured Constantinople (today known as Istanbul), destroying the great Eastern Christian Empire of the Byzantines that had lasted over a millenium. With its fall, Mehmed claimed the title of Caeser and converted the second most historic church in Christendom, the Hagia Sophia built in 532 A.D., into a mosque. Islam, which since its founding had been spread by wars of conquest over Christian lands faster than any other imperialist force before or since, would continue to spread by the sword for another two centuries, reaching its high water mark just outside the gates of Vienna, Austria in 1683.
1660 – English Restoration - Charles II was restored to the throne of Great Britain, reestablishing the monarchy after the English Civil War and the Interregnum period overseen by the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell. As a condition of his return, Charles II promised in the Declaration of Breda to agree to "a free parliament, by which, upon the word of a king, we will be advised" and religious toleration.
1765 - Patrick Henry, only nine days after being seated in the Virginia legislature at Williamsburg, introduced the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions. It was possibly the most anti-British American political action to that point, and some credit the Resolutions with being one of the main catalysts of the Revolution. The proposals were based on principles that were well established British rights, such as the right to be taxed by one's own representatives. They went further, however, to assert that the colonial assemblies had the exclusive right to impose taxes on the colonies and could not assign that right. He finished his speech with the now famous line, "Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!"
1780 – At the Battle of Waxhaws, British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacred 113 American soldiers under the command of Colonel Abraham Buford after they had surrendered. Tarleton would later be the basis for the antagonist in the Mel Brooks film, The Patriot, a fictional story loosely based on the great Revolutionary War commander Francis Marion, the "swamp fox," one of the founding fathers of the world's most elite fighting force, the United States Army Rangers.
1790 – Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state.
1886 – Chemist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, the ad appearing in the Atlanta Journal.
1942 – Bing Crosby records Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", the best-selling Christmas single in history.
1943 - Meat & cheese rationed in US
1945 - US 1st Marine division conquerors Shuri-castle Okinawa
1948 – Creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation
1953 – Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay are the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's 39th birthday.
1964 – The Arab League meets in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian situation in Israel, leading to the formation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
1982 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff ever to visit Canterbury Cathedral.
1988 – President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union as he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
1990 – Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian SFSR by the Russian parliament.
Births
1736 – Patrick Henry, American patriot, statesman, and orator. One of his most famous acts is discussed above.
1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English novelist (d. 1936)
1903 – Bob Hope, British-born comedian and actor (d. 2003)
1917 – John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
1957 – Ted Levine, American actor. I watched this guy for six years play the police captain in Monk before realizing that he was the same actor who played the psychopathic transexual wanna-be Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.
Deaths
1453 – Constantine XI Palaeologus, last Byzantine Emperor, who died making a final charge against the Turks at the seige of Constantinople. He was beheaded by the Turks and his head sent to Asia Minor as proof of his death.
1790 – Israel Putnam, American Revolutionary War general (b. 1718)
1866 – Winfield Scott, American general (b. 1786)
1939 – Ursula Julia Ledochowska, Polish-Austrian Catholic saint (b. 1865)
Holidays
Today is International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers
And in the UK, its Oak Apple Day, a holiday established in 1660 to celebrate the English Restoration, though seldom celebrated in the modern era.
Feasts
Today is the feast of Saint Maximinus of Trier, a 4th century French bishop who is today invoked as protection against perjury, loss at sea and destructive rains.
And it is the feast of Saint Alexander of Alexandria, the 19th Pope of Alexandria who held that post from 313 A.D. until his death in 326 A.D. He took part in the First Council of Nicea, organized at the direction of Constantine to organize Christianity, standardize practices and agree on biblical texts.
Art: The Seige of Constantinople, painted 1499, painter unknown.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
A Bit Of Honesty From Speaker Pelosi (Updated)
[W]hat the political left, even in democratic countries, share [with Hitler, Stalin and Mao] is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.
Thomas Sowell, The Prejudices Of The Elite, 2007
"Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility" in order to control carbon dioxide emissions.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Pelosi Appeals For China's Help on Climate Change, AP, May 28, 2009
Carbon dioxide is central to life. We exhale it. Plants use it to create oxygen. Each time we burn a fossil fuel - those fuels that provide over 90% of our energy and feed our vehicles - we release carbon dioxide. It is hard to imagine quite literally anything that we consume or use, from buying an orange at a store to purchasing, say, a desk that was transported across the country on a truck, that is not involved directly or indirectly in the emission of carbon dioxide.
Yet for all of that, the vast majority of carbon emissions are either not man made or are otherwise natural emissions that we simply cannot control. As pointed out at Power and Control: "The burning of fossil fuels is responsible for just 3.27% of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere each year, while the biosphere and oceans account for 55.28% and 41.46%, respectively."
To what degree, if any, do carbon emissions effect the climate. Scientists in fact disagree on that one. But even assuming that carbon does effect climate, can we can have any sort of impact on our climate by attempting to control the small percentage of carbon dioxide emissions over which theoretical control is possible? That is an even more contentious question. Then, assuming we can actually effect climate, what limits should there be on such efforts to force change by government fiat - i.e., where is the cost/benefit analysis?
For example, Obama has proposed a cap and trade bill that will impose a massive regressive tax on our economy. Yet, as the Governor of Indiana pointed out not long ago, "[n]o honest estimate pretends to suggest that a U.S. cap-and-trade regime will move the world's thermometer by so much as a tenth of a degree a half century from now." The scheme proposed by Obama is like that of the EU. Not long ago, the EU banned outdoor heaters in the UK to limit carbon emissions. Those heaters were responsible for .002 of one percent of Britain's total carbon emissions. Banning them was an exercise in futility. Yet the economic impact was considerable. The cost to pubs, cafes and caterers of this regulation is estimated at a staggering £250 million (half a billion dollars) annually in lost business. Are either justified?
[Update: Jim Manzi at NRO on the Waxmen Cap & Trade Bill:
. . . The costs would be more than ten times the benefits, even under extremely unrealistic assumptions of low costs and high benefits. More realistic assumptions would make for a comparison far less favorable to the bill.
I’ve had to rely on informal studies and back-of-envelope calculations to do this cost/benefit analysis. Why haven’t advocates and sponsors of the proposal done their own? Why are they urging Congress to make an incredible commitment of resources without even cursory analysis of the economic consequences? The answer should be obvious: This is a terrible deal for American taxpayers.
What Mr. Manzi neglects to mention is that this cap and trade system seems far more about finding a massive new revenue source and a vehicle to punish traditional energy than it is about actually reducing carbon. Indeed, an identical program in the EU has seen carbon emissions rise since cap and trade was put in place.
Update: See also this cost benefit analysis from economist Martin Feldstein.]
At any rate, if you don't know the answers to the questions I posed above yet, I would suggest you start digging deep and figure it out. And then take a vocal stand - because there are at least four groups of people who are not motivated by objective science but who are completely invested in pushing a particular answer to these questions. And they are about to change your life drastically:
Group I - As Michael Crichton pointed out several years ago in a brilliant essay on the issue of 'environmentalism,' the far left have made of the global warming issue a religion, complete with an Eden, a dogma, a utopia, and severe penalties for heresy. Al Gore is on record demanding that any dissenting opinion be silenced and and that skeptics be denied access to the public. Numerous of the top "scientists" in the global warming industry are on record calling for the actual prosecution of people who contest "global warming" and the need to control our carbon emissions.
They have traded objective science for religious dogma and when that happens, one takes their word as scientific fact at one's own peril. I am reminded of the fatwah issued by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia in 1993 that instructed "the earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment." Dogma and science clearly do not go together. We could do with true debates on this issue - but debate is shunned by the global warming crowd. There is a reason climate sceptic Lord Monkton was prevented by the left from appearing before the House Energy Committee at the same time as Al Gore. [Update: See also here, discussing Stanford U. Prof. and global warming alarmist Stephen Schneider's refusal to engage in a debate] If they are not prepared to defend their positions, how can they be believed?
As an aside, someone the other day referred to selling carbon credits under a cap and trade scheme as "granting indulgences." After I stopped laughing, I realized just how apt a description it was, for this is a religion and indulgences were used by the medieval Church to grant forgiveness for sins in return for money.
Group II - A second group are those who want to use environmentalism and control of carbon as a vehicle to attack capitalism and redistribute the world's wealth. Indeed, that was a major theme at last years Bali Conference held by the IPCC, which saw a UN panel urge the imposition of a 'global' carbon dioxide tax on the richest nations. The proceeds of the proposed tax were to fill the UN coffers, which they would then distribute to developing nations, ostensibly to help them combat the effects of climate change.
[Update: To clarify, I consider this group to be made up of the larger international community who are agitating for a redistribution of America's wealth. And the day after I published this, they are in the news again. The Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) issued a report in which they claim 315,000 deaths in the Third World last year due to global warming. They are using that as justification to put a carbon tax in America, payable to the UN, at the top of the list for the Copenhagen UN/IPCC Summit. It should be noted that, in consideration of the facts that we are in a seventh straight year of global cooling, that we are in an extended period of solar inactivity as reported by NASA, and that temperatures world wide have risen less than a degree over the past century, the numbers of deaths "due to global warming" posited by the GHF would seem to be more than a little cooked. And indeed they are - see Bishop Hill for the explanation.]
[Update 2: If this report is accurate, then Obama has in fact signed us up for both a unilateral carbon emissions reduction a large scale transfer of wealth to the UN, just as GHF and the IPCC are requesting. This is insanity on steroids.]
Group III - Yet a third group, and some of the most vociferous supporters of climate change regulation, are businesses and individuals such as GE and Al Gore who stand to make a windfall from climate change regulation. These are rent seekers who see a chance to reap billions out of the collective pockets of us all. As one author wrote in the WSJ several days ago, we need to beware the Climate Change Industrial Complex. Truly, we do.
Group IV - The most insidious group of all is the fourth - socialist left wing politicians who are on the cusp of using the supposed need to control carbon emissions to justify a massive expansion of government and curtailment of our freedoms. Some of these politicians are fervent believers in the global warming religion while others are far more cynical. Both see in the issue, an unparalleled vehicle for expanding the reach of government, filling the coffers of government with new taxes, and justifying government control of seemingly every aspect of life and the economy. Under the guise of regulating carbon, there is literally nothing that the government cannot reach and then effect through a combination of regulation and taxation. For example -
No more lamb - sheep burps cause global warming.
No more steaks - cattle farts, why they're worse than vehicle emissions.
Indeed, I hope you like a vegetarian diet.
Fat people cause global warming - lose weight or get taxed.
Your thermostat - no more central heating, get ready for centrally controlled heating. As Obama said, "We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,”
Gas - get ready for it to skyrocket in price - which in fact is nothing more than the left has long sought.
Cars - get ready for them to shrink to deathtrap size while the sticker price goes rocketing "skyward."
Your roof - buy white paint.
Your pocketbook - it will shrink massively under cap and trade plus all of the other green initiatives, with the proceeds going to fund the climate change industry and government coffers. Estimates now are that the cap and trade policies of Obama alone will to cost each family in America nearly $4,000 annually. That is quite a regressive tax from the man who promised us tax cuts but for the wealthy few.
Private jets - well, you can't afford one, but our overlords will be quick to point out that just a few of those (i.e., theirs) will not add appreciably to our carbon footprint. Green for thee, not for me, as Instapundit would put it. It is much easier to be green when you do not have to worry about paying your bills at the end of the month, but it gets even easier when you are not just incredibly rich, but also have a high tolerance for your own personal hypocrisy.
This isn't the road to a green Utopia. Its the road to an Orwellian green hell.
No one on the left has done more to clarify how the socialist left sees this issue than Nancy Pelosi today. As she said, the left intends to reevaluate "every aspect" of your life. What she implied was that after such reevaluation comes regulation and control of aspects she finds below her standards. Thomas Sowell was right - shades of Hitler, Mao and Stalin indeed.
[Update 3: The Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change has just issued a nearly 900 page report challenging the science of global warming. You can find the document here. Below are two videos that show the unveiling of the report and give a brief overview.
Watcher's Council Business - Results & Nominations
I have been derelict in my duties this week, failing to post the results of the last round of voting as well as the current nominations. The winner of last week's contest for best post was Joshua Pundit with just a must-read essay, Land For Peace, American Style. It puts into perspective the situation of Israel by comparing it to a hypothetical with our own southwestern states that La Raza seeks to break off into a seperate country. Among the non-Council submissions, the winner was one of my favorite blogs, Seraphic Secret. His post The New-Old War Against the Jews discusses how the canard of anti-zionism is nothing more than a transparent attempt to dress up anti-semitism that has been around for millenia. You can find the full result of the voting at the Watcher's site. Now for this week's nominations.
Each week, the members of the Watcher's Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for best post. The Watcher publishes the results each Friday morning.
Terry Trippany plays the role of Watcher of Weasels. Do visit the Watcher's Site for his theme of the week. This week, its about a brewing scandal of huge proportions - Dealergate.
This week's nominations are:
Right Truth - Home grown terrorism and the media
The Razor - Death To Inclusiveness!
Joshuapundit - Jerusalem Day
The Glittering Eye - Living Within Your Means: California Edition
The Colossus of Rhodey - More Obama administration waffling on “torture”
Wolf Howling - Obama Has The Left Going Nauseous
Bookworm Room - Does Brown v. Board of Education constitute the Supreme Court’s one free pass?
Soccer Dad - Mr. obama and mr. netanyahu - the alternative version
The Provacateur- Deconstructing The Criminal Enterprise ACORN
Non-Council Submissions
Submitted By: Right Truth - Planck’s Constant - The Pursuit of Happiness and Making Blacks Happier
Submitted By: The Razor - The Other McCain - The Road to Weimar America
Submitted By: Joshuapundit - Melanie Phillips - A Wary Encounter
Submitted By: The Glittering Eye - SCOTUSBlog - The Dynamic of the Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor
Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey - Spiegel Online - Hitler’s European Holocaust Helpers
Submitted By: Wolf Howling - Nial Ferguson @ NYT - Diminished Returns
Submitted By: Bookworm Room - PoliGazette - The Future Electoral Fortunes of the Democratic Party
Submitted By: Soccer Dad - Treppenwitz - 10 Lessons Israel Should Take From The Sri Lankan Victory Over Terror
Submitted By: The Provacateur- New Ledger- Let’s Make Cars More Expensive
This Day In History - May 28
585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Greek scientist Thales, while the Lydian King Alyattes was fighting against the Median army under King Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse. The eclipse was taken as a sign from the gods that the fighting should stop and the two sides agreed to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.
1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declares the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn valid. Cranmer, along with Thomas Cromwell, supported the principle of Royal Supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm. After the break with Rome, Cranmer organized the Anglican Church. He would later be executed for heresy when "Bloody Mary" ascended to the throne.
1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. The Armada was harried by the great Sea Lord, Francis Drake who then defeated the superior Spanish force in the Battle of Gravelines. As the Spanish attempted to return to port in Spain, the majority of ships were lost to storm off the Irish Coast.
1644 – In one of the most brutal acts of the English Civil War, Royalist troops under the command of the Earl of Derby slaughtered some 1,600 soldiers and civilians at the Bolton Massacre.
1754 – In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington led a force of Virginia militia to defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen.
1774 – The first Continental Congress convenes.
1905 – At the Battle of Tsushima, Japan shocked the Western world when they destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet.
1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1982 – British forces defeat the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green in the Falklands War.
Births
1738 – Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, French physician and creator of the guillotin, meant as a humane method of execution.
1888 – Jim Thorpe, American Olympian and football player.
1908 – Ian Fleming, English WWII spy and later author of the James Bond novels.
Deaths
1971 – Audie Murphy, American actor and war hero. He lied about his age and enlisted in the Army in 1942 at the age of 16. In 27 months of combat action, Murphy became one of the most highly decorated United States soldiers of World War II. He received the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest award for valor, along with 32 additional U.S. and foreign medals and citations
Holidays and Feasts
Today is Republic Day in both Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Today is the Feast day of the following St. Lanfranc. He was a very influential monk who befriended William the Bastard and accompanied him to England where he was later named Archbishop of Canterbury.
Art: A frame from the Bayeux Tapestry that documents the Norman invasion of Britain.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Dealergate . . . Its Better Than Watergate
It is an ancient custom for kings to confiscate the property of disfavored subjects and distribute it among their supporters to cement the king's power. Indeed, it is a tradition as old as non-democratic government itself. In the modern era, it has been a particular hallmark of communist governments. It is clealry unconstitutional for our government to do this under the 5th Amendment which reads, in pertinent part,:
. . . nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
In fact, until a few days ago, it was impossible to envision something like this even being attempted in the U.S. That was until people started shining a light on what has been happening with dealerships as part of the reorganization by Chryseler and GM pursuant to plans of Obama's "auto czar." A clear pattern is developing, though it is still awaiting more data. It appears that, among the many dealerships being cancelled by those organizations - all seem to be Republicans or dealers who did not affirmatively support Obama. If you supported Obama, you not only keep your dealership, but you get the huge benefit of your nearby competition getting axed.
It is clear that many of the dealerships getting axed were quite profitable - thus negating any claim that the decision to kill them was based on economic considerations. If the decision of which dealships to axe is being directed by the Car Czar, with GM and Chrysler merely acting as intermediaries, then this act would be as unconstitutional as if done directly by the White House itself. If all of this in fact holds up to further scrutiny, then it is an unconstitutional act whose illegality dwarfs Watergate, where the only illegal acts were spying and coverup.
Doug Ross broke this story several days ago. He has since updated his post. Here are some of the things we know now, based on review of partial data:
- The initial pass at the list of shuttered dealers showed they had donated, in the aggregate, millions to Republican candidates and PACs and a total of $200 to Barack Obama.
- Dealer Jim Anderer told Fox News' Neil Cavuto he can't comprehend how his dealership can be among those killed: he stated that his sales volume ranking is in the top 2 percent of all dealers.
Then there is this from Rick Moran, writing at the American Thinker:
Now comes more evidence that these dealer closings were politically motivated.
Through Reliapundit at Astute Bloggers, we learn that the lawyer for the dealers being torpedoed believes that the closings were ordered not by Chrysler, but by the White House: (via Reuters )A lawyer for Chrysler dealers facing closure as part of the automaker's bankruptcy reorganization said on Tuesday he believes Chrysler executives do not support a plan to eliminate a quarter of its retail outlets.
Lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Bellavia Gentile & Associates, who represents some of the terminated dealers, said he deposed Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday and came away with the impression that Press did not support the plan.
"It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers," Bellavia said. "It really wasn't Chrysler's decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President's automotive task force."The dealer closings were not ordered by the bankruptcy judge but by the White House. This puts a whole new light on how the dealers to be closed were chosen and, more importantly, who did it.
And do see the post from Gateway Pundit:
Now there's this...
RLJ-McLarty-Landers is owned by three men. One was the former Chief of Staff for President Clinton.One is the founder of Black Entertainment Television and a huge Obama supporter.
All 6 of their Chrysler dealerships will remain open. And, get this... Their local competitors have been eliminated!
Doug Ross calculates the odds of all six of these dealerships remaining open while all of their competition has been axed as being to be about "one ten-millionth of one percent." Do see his calculations.
Bottom line. This is starting to stink more and more. This has the potentail to be a huge scandal. Any bets on whether the MSM will take notice?
Obama's First Real Challenge is North Korea (Updated)
North Korea seems determined to push Obama and South Korea as far as they can go. The threat from North Korea has gone from warm to hot - with a potential to get much hotter indeed. North Korea is acting bellicose, talking of a declaration of war. This after North Korea detonated a nuclear device, fired several missiles and reopened its nuclear plant in Yongbyon, all in violation of its treaty obligations. War is not outside the realm of possibility. Is Obama up to the task and what are his options to stop the North Korean nuclear program?
We last fought a declared war in Korea between 1950 and 1953. During one two week period in 1950, as the U.S. fought in the Chosin Resevoir area, we suffered 3,000 killed and 6,000 injured while killing 25,000 of the enemy. If we do go to war again in Korea, major engagements against the 1 million man standing army of North Korea would likely be about as bloody for soldiers but with the addition of countless civilian casualties. Indeed, war in Korea would make Iraq look like little more than a training exercise.
Update: The "Danger Room" at Wired.com posits similar bloodshed in any action defending against or attacking North Korea.
The terrain in Korea is mountainous. Korea is a web of small to medium valleys surrounded by steep and heavily wooded mountains whose apex is invariably a thin ridge. Larger valleys support dense population centers. War in this terrain is the opposite of war in the wide open Middle East. The latter is happy hunting ground for tanks and helicopters - blitzkreig warfare, if you will. South Korea, outside of the Chorwon Valley, is light infantry country where the warfare is slower and far more costly. Seoul, the capital of South Korea with over ten million inhabitants, sits within artillery range of North Korea. The conventional thinking was that it would likely come under heavy bombardment and chemical attack within the opening minutes of war in order to cause chaos and choke the roads to prevent reinforcement from the south. The heavily fortified DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) cuts across the 38th parallel, but the North Koreans have been tunnelling under that for half a century with an eye towards moving entire divisions in behind South Korea's front line defenses when war starts. Add to all of this that any such war has a real chance of going nuclear. It is a war we and the South Koreans would win, but not without tremendous loss. And there is the wild card of China. If war starts in Korea, would they again be sucked in on the side of their client, North Korea, as they were in 1950?
War in Korea has come close to reigniting on several occasions over the past half century, and cross border exchanges of gun fire, if not routine, still today occur with some regularity. Further, there have been deadly naval skirmishes between the two Koreas as late as 2002. Kim Il Sung often spoke of resuming war against South Korea, but his last memory of U.S. and R.O.K. forces up close and personal was getting his tail handed to him up around the Yalu River. His son, Kim Jong Il, the current leader, is a true megalomaniac and without his father's memory of the near calamity of 1950. I long thought Kim Jong Il so unbalanced and mecurial that he would force a war as soon as he took the reins of power. He didn't then, but he might now. China we know has been a large factor in staying North Korea's deadly hand over the years, but Kim Jong Il could always decide to roll the dice, particularly now as he is near the end of his life. The likelihood of this is influenced by how weak Kim Jong Il perceives the Obama administration to be.
Clearly, Kim Jong Il does not seem to impressed at the moment. North Korea, in violation of its treaty obligations, conducted a test fire of an ICBM in April. The response of the Obama administration and the UN was toothless. Thus, it is no surprise that only days ago, North Korea felt secure enough to reopen its nuclear plant in Yongbyon, engage in a test of a nuclear weapon, and launch still more missile tests. South Korea "responded to the nuclear test by joining the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led network of nations seeking to stop ships from transporting the materials used in nuclear bombs." North Korea has in turn responded by characterizing South Korea's act as an "act of war," announcing its withdrawal from the 1953 Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War, and promising a military response if any of its shipping is interdicted for the purpose of searching for nuclear contraband.
As Bloomberg notes, "North Korea routinely issues threats directed at the U.S., South Korea and Japan, warning of military retaliation if they continue to take actions that the country’s leadership characterizes as threats to its security." That said, this is a bit different. Never has, to my knowledge, North Korea repudiated the 1953 Armistice. Never has the U.S. and South Korea threatened to interdict North Korean shipping. And we are now at a point where it is obvious that endless talks and offers of assistance - going on since 1994 - will not sway North Korea from its nuclear ambitions. That said, it has not stopped Sec. of State Clinton from again making calls for North Korea to return to the obviously useless "six party talks."
North Korea holds the potential to do grave damage to us in two ways. One is to sell its nuclear and rocket technology, if not the weaponry itself, on the blackmarket to the highest bidders. We know that this has gone on already, such as in the recently destroyed Syrian nuclear facility. North Korea's second threat is actual war to conquer the South. One, if not both, are virtually assured if Obama does not take action. If his only response is through the UN and a call to resume six party talks, he will have utterly failed his first test and we will all, sooner or later, pay a price for it.
The idea of interdicting North Korean shipping is certainly one option, but I could see that one being not particularly effective and with a real chance of igniting war. China, which supplies North Korea with virtually all of its fuel as well as many other supplies, holds the key to getting North Korea to back down militarily and give up its nuclear ambitions. Under the current circumstance, China has had no motivation to really lean on North Korea other than to stop actual war. All of this leads to Charles Krauthammer's brilliant suggestion yesterday that, in response to the latest provocations, we convince Japan to join the nuclear club.:
That is a bold suggestion, but it is one that makes complete sense. And indeed, I can't see any other real options. This hot potato is now in the hands of Obama and Clinton. Does anyone feel confident that they will rise to the occasion?
A Republican Strategy For An Activist Supreme Court Pick
. . . among the most aggressively pro-plaintiff, anti-business appellate judges in the country. Her rulings in class actions, preemption cases, and other commercial matters are of a piece with her contempt for property rights (noted by Richard Epstein) and her anti-employer bias in discrimination cases (a matter of notoriety). Other criticisms of her, consolidated at TNR, are that she is "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench." Those comments seem borne out by the research done at Powerline. This is not necessarilly a bad thing from the right's perspective. Better to appoint a weak liberal whose ability to sway other members of the Court will be limited than an intellectual powerhouse and leader. Sotomayor stated in a 2002 speech at Berkeley that she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their 'experiences as women and people of color,' which she believes should 'affect our decisions.'" . . . She went on to say in that same speech at Berkeley, "'I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.' Such a quote should disqualify her. It won't. The truth is that reverse racism is wholly accepted by the far left and the MSM. Indeed, it is why we have Obama today - a man whose own occasional forays into reverse racism coupled with his long association with the despicable Rev. Wright should have disqualified him from standing for dog catcher, let alone POTUS. Regardless, Sotomayer's statement here should be one of the things highlighted by the right in the upcoming hearings. November 7, 2001/To: Senator Durbin The practioners of identity politics are on the left. And they have made an industry of projecting their sins onto the right. A few minutes ago, I did a radio-show piece with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who voiced her hope that this confirmation process would be dignified and merits-based, and not involve the “dumpster-diving” and smear-tactics to which, she asserted, extremists on the left and the right have resorted in the past, etc. Bottom line, Republicans need to be very respectful, but they do need to repeatedly highlight Sotomayor's activism and her disdain for property rights, gun rights, and equal protection. They need to hammer those issues home. They will not stop Sotomayor from being approved by the Democratically controlled Senate. But they can educate the public on just what it is the public is getting. Who knows, perhaps the public may feel a bit less empathetic when they are done.
President Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonya Sotomayer of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals presents the Republicans with a real opportunity to get out its message, though they likely have no chance of stopping her nomination. Sotomayer is a doctrinaire left-wing judcial activist of passable, though hardly superior, legal reasoning skills. She has displayed blatant reverse racism for which she needs to be called to account. But by far the most important, she has authored or been a part of several very questionable opinions on 2nd Amendment rights, property rights and reverse discrimination. And therein lies the Republican opportunity.
Sotomayer's personal history is compelling. Much like the personal history of Clarence Thomas, her's is a success story to be celebrated. A child from a poor family who lost her father at nine, she has worked her way far up the ladder to reach where she is today.
In choosing Sotomayer, Obama articulated an undefined "empathy" standard for Supreme Court Justices that seems like an invitation for Justices to ignore law and precedent in order to arrive at a decision that supports, as Richard Epstein points out, favored litigants. Indeed, Obama doubled down on that theme in his introduction of Sotomayer yesterday when he, with all the accuracy that he earlier brought to a quote of Churchill, misquoted the late Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes for the proposition that Holmes supported this type of judicial activism. Roger Clegg points out the falsity of Obama's quote.
Regardless, Obama may well have found such an activist in Sonya Sotomayer. She is, according to NRO's Michael Greve:
Other than her written decisions, at least two quotes from Sotomayer have surfaced that seemingly raise questions about her qualification for the Supreme Court. The first was a video of her stating in 2005 that "court of appeals is where policy is made." Many on the right are seizing on this as proof of her judicial activism. It is not. Indeed, what she said is nothing more or less than the truth. Cases that get to the appelate division are there on questions of law that are often simply unclear. Thus it falls to the appelate courts to flush out the law. Even if they do this in the best traditions of Scalia by looking solely to original intent and plain meaning, their decisions are still "making policy."
Sotomayor's second quote is much more problematic - and indeed, if uttered by a conservative or a white male, would end the nomination process today. It is both a clear affirmation of judicial activism and the casual reverse racism of the far left - racism that should have no place in our government:
All of this said, the goal in the hearings should be to establish that Sotomayor is in fact a highly activist judge and explain precisely what that means for our country. In particular, Republicans would highlight four cases on which Sotomayor has written.
The first case would be the reverse discrimination lawsuit, Ricci v. DeStefano, currently at the Supreme Court. Sotomayor was derelict in her duty to decide the case and, indeed, came down without any substantive comment on the side of the defendant charged with reverse racism. You can read a good description of the case and the controversy over Sotomayor's opinion here.
The second case would be her role in the Didden v. Village of Port Chester, discussed in detail at the Volokh Conspiracy. It is a horrendous decision that finishes off the job of scrubbing from the Constitution the 5th Amendment's "public use" clause prohibiting government from taking private property and giving it to another private party for a non-public use.
The third case would be the recent opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo where Sotomayor joins in arguing that the Second Amendment does not grant a "fundamental right" to keep and bear arms. More on this at the Volokh Conspiracy. In other words, she believes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms does not apply to the states. This would neuter the Second Amendment decision in Heller. And indeed, I forecast months ago that Obama could well appoint a Supreme Court nominee who would take this position.
And the last case would be Merrill Lynch v. Dabit, where Sotomayor simply ignored federal law of preemption to allow a state secuities lawsuit to go forward. It was very plaintiff friendly decision and also ridiculously wrong - to the point that the Supreme Court reversed it 8-0.
I would suggest that those four cases and the propositions Sotomayor's decisions stand for should form almost the sole focus for questioning her. Those are wholly legitimate areas to bring up - but I doubt if the left will have any of it. As Jonah Goldberg notes, the left is primed to play the race and gender cards to any Republican challenges to Sotomayer, irrespective of the nature of the challenges. What a surprise eh. As I've written before here, redefining legitimate debate into a racial or gender has been the left's game plan since they hijacked the civil rights movement in the 1960's and turned it into a marxian vehicle that sought not equality, but entrenchment of victims groups and identity politics.
The hypocrisy of the left is unbounded. For example, the WSJ has pointed to a memo to Dick Durbin from left wing groups asking him to put off Bush federal court nominee Miguel Estrada in 2001 - because he was Latino. As the WSJ quotes:
"The groups singled out three--Jeffrey Sutton (6th Circuit); Priscilla Owen (5th Circuit); and Caroline [sic] Kuhl (9th Circuit)--as a potential nominee for a contentious hearing early next year, with a [sic] eye to voting him or her down in Committee. They also identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible."
As to calls by the left to pass on Sotomayer with no real challenge, this again is a ridiculous call by the left. As Richard Garnett writes at the NRO:
Look for expressions of regret, and calls for seriousness, civility, and the like, in the days to come from President Obama’s surrogates in the press and in the activist groups. You will have to look harder, though, for journalists to observe, and these surrogates to admit, that (a) the “let’s use Supreme Court nominations as occasions to smear good people” tactic is one that the Democrats — but not, in fact, the Republicans — have practiced enthusiastically; (b) that Justices Breyer and Ginsburg were easily confirmed, with substantial Republican support, not because they were “moderate,” but because the Republicans voted in accord with the “President gets his (qualified) nominees” standard; and (c) that dozens of Democratic senators, including the president, abandoned this standard (to the extent they ever respected it) and disgraced themselves by voting against Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts, easily among the most impressive nominees in history.
May 27 - This Day In History
1328 – Philip VI is crowned King of France. He started the 100 Years War with England, only to see the French army all but annihilated by a much smaller English army incorporating the longbow at the Battle of Crécy.
1703 – Czar Peter the Great founded the city of Saint Petersburg, built by slave labor and prisoners of war. The city was later renamed Leningrad, reverting back to its original name after the fall of the Soviet Union.
1895 – Irish author and wit Oscar Wilde is imprisoned for sodomy.
1941 – British warships caught up with the German battleship Bismarck, sinking it after a three hour battle. .
Births
1837 – Wild Bill Hickok, American gunfighter (d. 1876)
1911 – Vincent Price, American actor (d. 1993)
1912 - Slammin' Sammie Snead, American golfer (d. 2002)
Deaths
735 – The Venerable Bede, monk and the "Father of English History." Much of our knowledge of his era dates from his many writings, the most famous of which is Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People).
1564 – John Calvin, the French theologian who founded Calvinism. "The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world. Calvin's thought exerted considerable influence over major religious figures and entire religious movements, such as Puritanism, and his ideas have been cited as contributing to the rise of capitalism, individualism, and representative democracy in the West.
1949 – Robert Ripley, showman and student of the bizarre. He has gifted/cursed us with Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Holidays and Feasts:
In Nigeria, its Children's Day. Bolivia is celebrating Mother's Day. And today is the feast day for the Roman soldier and Christian martyr, Saint Julius the Veteran.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
California Upholds Prop 8 - Marriage Is Between A Man & A Woman
You can cancel the cake. The California Supreme Court has bowed to the will of California's electorate on the issue of gay marriage - it is no longer a Constitutional right in California.
The California Supreme Court, which last year found a state constitutional right to gay marriage under the state's equal protection clause, has now found that Prop 8 - a Constitutional Amendment passed by the California electorate - worked a valid change to the state Constitution. Gay marriage is no longer legal in California. The Washington Post has the story.
Gay rights activists have pursued a two pronged approach to furthering their goal of legalizing gay marriage throughout America. One is through the ballot box - and though I disagree with gay marriage, that's fine. The ballot box is where new social policy should be made. The second prong pursued by activists - and with which I vociferously disagree - is the tried and true left wing blueprint of using our Court system to force on America a cause they cannot pursue through the ballot box. This invariably becomes an argument for gay marriage under state equal protection clauses.
The equal protection clause of most states' Constitutions date back well over a century and were not composed in contemplation of modern, avant garde social issues. Indeed, I think it safe to say that, given the much stronger role of religion in life of the time, that the drafters would have explicitly excluded gay marriage from equal protection clause if they could have foreseen it ever arising as an issue.
The duty of a Court is to interpret the laws passed by legislators and constitutional conventions. It is not the duty of a court to create law - particularly Constitutional law - according to its own whim. Doing otherwise inevitably creates massive distortions in our democracy. Think the abortion of Roe v. Wade.
In California, the people have spoken - and the Court has acted appropriately. The recourse of gay rights activists is now to the ballot box - precisely where it should be.
Update: Gay Patriot has a similar take - that the California Supreme Court made the right call.
Update: That bane of our nation, the ACLU, is all set to use this decision to stoke their piggy bank. According to the ACLU, the decision of the California Supreme Court puts all minority rights up for grabs in California - a proposition ludicrous on its face, but one that will no doubt help the cash flow.
Niall Ferguson: "Calls For More Regulation Are Symptoms Of The Very Disease They Purport To Cure"
. . . Financial crises will happen. In the 1340s, a sovereign-debt crisis wiped out the leading Florentine banks of Bardi, Peruzzi and Acciaiuoli. Between December 1719 and December 1720, the price of shares in John Law’s Mississippi Company fell 90 percent. Such crashes can also happen to real estate: in Japan, property prices fell by more than 60 percent during the ’90s. Read the entire article. And someone distribute this to Barney and Barack, please.
Harvard Professor of Business Niall Ferguson is a brilliant historian and economist. He states that deregulation did not cause the financial crisis and opines that calls for more regulation of the financial markets as very ill advised. Rather, he sees the problem as being poorly designed regulations currently on the books.
This from Niall Ferguson writing at the NYT:
For reasons to do with human psychology and the failure of most educational institutions to teach financial history, we are always more amazed when such things happen than we should be. As a result, 9 times out of 10 we overreact. The usual response is to introduce a raft of new laws and regulations designed to prevent the crisis from repeating itself. In the months ahead, the world will reverberate to the sound of stable doors being shut long after the horses have bolted, and history suggests that many of the new measures will do more harm than good. The classic example is the legislation passed during the British South-Sea Bubble to restrict the formation of joint-stock companies. The so-called Bubble Act of 1720 remained a needless handicap on the British economy for more than a century.
Human beings are as good at devising ex post facto explanations for big disasters as they are bad at anticipating those disasters. It is indeed impressive how rapidly the economists who failed to predict this crisis — or predicted the wrong crisis (a dollar crash) — have been able to produce such a satisfying story about its origins. Yes, it was all the fault of deregulation.
There are just three problems with this story. First, deregulation began quite a while ago (the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act was passed in 1980). If deregulation is to blame for the recession that began in December 2007, presumably it should also get some of the credit for the intervening growth. Second, the much greater financial regulation of the 1970s failed to prevent the United States from suffering not only double-digit inflation in that decade but also a recession (between 1973 and 1975) every bit as severe and protracted as the one we’re in now. Third, the continental Europeans — who supposedly have much better-regulated financial sectors than the United States — have even worse problems in their banking sector than we do. . . .
We need to remember that much financial innovation over the past 30 years was economically beneficial, and not just to the fat cats of Wall Street. New vehicles like hedge funds gave investors like pension funds and endowments vastly more to choose from than the time-honored choice among cash, bonds and stocks. Likewise, innovations like securitization lowered borrowing costs for most consumers. And the globalization of finance played a crucial role in raising growth rates in emerging markets, particularly in Asia, propelling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
The reality is that crises are more often caused by bad regulation than by deregulation. For one thing, both the international rules governing bank-capital adequacy so elaborately codified in the Basel I and Basel II accords and the national rules administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission failed miserably. It was the Basel system of weighting assets by their supposed riskiness that essentially allowed the Enronization of banks’ balance sheets, so that (for example) the ratio of Citigroup’s tangible on- and off-balance-sheet assets to its common equity reached a staggering 56 to 1 last year. The good health of Canada’s banks is due to better regulation. Simply by capping leverage at 20 to 1, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions spared Canada the need for bank bailouts.
The biggest blunder of all had nothing to do with deregulation. For some reason, the Federal Reserve convinced itself that it could focus exclusively on the prices of consumer goods instead of taking asset prices into account when setting monetary policy. In July 2004, the federal funds rate was just 1.25 percent, at a time when urban property prices were rising at an annual rate of 17 percent. Negative real interest rates at this time were arguably the single most important cause of the property bubble.
All of these were sins of commission, not omission, by Washington, and some at least were not unrelated to the very considerable political contributions and lobbying expenditures of the financial sector. Taxpayers, therefore, should beware. It is more than a little convenient for America’s political class to blame deregulation for this financial crisis and the resulting excesses of the free market. Not only does that neatly pass the buck, but it also creates a justification for . . . more regulation. The old Latin question is highly apposite here: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? — Who regulates the regulators? Until that question is answered, calls for more regulation are symptoms of the very disease they purport to cure.
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