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Category: Politics

In the end

It’s pretty great that Iraq is getting to have an election. I don’t have a lot of hope for it; I think that we’ve failed to prevent the Sunni/Shia conflict from heating up, and I am not yet convinced we’re going to see any kind of stability in the country over the course of the next five years or more. But I’m glad that Iraq is having a multi-party election. It’s been over fifty years since they’ve had one.

Without prejudice

Speaking of Oscar nominations, here’s the stupidest thing I’ve read today:

But here’s an interesting dog that isn’t barking… Michael Moore gets passed over for the big award he coveted… and the lefty bloggers aren’t up in arms. In fact, nobody on the left is talking about Moore today.

I still strongly believe that no blogger is obligated to write about any topic, but I just find it interesting that web personalities who one would think would be big Michael Moore fans are collectively shrugging their shoulders over this. You know a lot of Christian conservatives are grumbling about the three nominations in technical categories for “The Passion of the Christ,” and Kathryn’s already noted this on the Corner.

Other possibilities, which Jim Geraghty seems to be incapable of considering:

  • Much of the left isn’t upset because they don’t think Farenheit 9/11 deserved a nomination, because they don’t automatically assume that movies which advance ideological agendas similar to their own are de facto great movies.
  • As countless people pointed out all year, Michael Moore is not the spokesman for the Left.
  • The Oscars are not controlled by a left-wing conspiracy. (Hard to believe, I know.)
  • Geraghty’s assumptions about who is a big Michael Moore fan are hopelessly flawed.

Less snidely, more seriously… I think it’s really sad that a guy who writes for a fairly important conservative national magazine doesn’t understand the difference between appreciating someone’s ideology and appreciating their artistic talent.

Who says no?

Interesting factoid: Alberto Gonzales, nominee for the post of Attorney-General, apparently believes Gavin Newsom, as an elected executive of the government, has the right to take a stand against laws he considers unconstitutional:

MR. GONZALES: Senator, I do believe there may come an occasion when the Congress might pass a statute that the president may view as unconstitutional. And that is a position and a view not just of this president, but many, many presidents from both sides of the aisle.

Obviously, a decision as to whether or not to ignore a statute passed by Congress is a very, very serious one, and it would be one that I would spend a great deal of time and attention before arriving at a conclusion that in fact a president had the authority under the Constitution to —

OK, so I’m overstating it a little; one might feel that the President has certain rights that the Mayor of San Francisco does not. However, those rights aren’t enumerated in the Constitution, so I think I’m on pretty solid ground. And the general principle is clear. The mayor’s office is in the executive branch. Gonzales is stating that he feels the executive branch has the right to ignore statues passed if it feels they are unconstitutional.

My previous thoughts on the matter, in which I presciently presume that “Ashcroft and Bush no doubt feel that it is unconstitutional to force them to provide counsel to Jose Padillo,” are here.

They want you dead

The biggest reason I value David Neiwert’s reporting is the simple, matter-of-fact way he reminds us that yes — the rhetoric of the right is extreme and unacceptable. His latest post on the subject is a great example. It’s so obvious: “I say start executing the leftists in our country, soon.” That’s flat out ugly and it’s not an exceptional case.

Manacles

Via Patrick: the Pentagon has asked the White House to figure out a way to keep detainees in custody indefinitely without a trial. Note the chain of requests carefully — if the article’s accurate, the Pentagon instigated this. I see three possibilities, only one of which has any silver lining.

It could be exactly what it looks like: the Pentagon chipping away at civil liberties. It could be the White House asking the Pentagon to ask them for ideas, so that the White House can claim it was the Pentagon’s idea and they’re horrified — plausible deniability. Or, and I’m not saying this is what’s going on but I think it’s possible, the Pentagon could be sick and tired of holding these guys without trial and they could have done this as a way of forcing the White House’s hand.

“Hey! Hey, Mr. President! What do you want us to do with these prisoners you’re holding illegally? HEY, OVER HERE!”

The bit where the Pentagon was going to ask Congress for $25 million to build a prison kind of tips me in that direction, since I have trouble believing that the career guys in the Pentagon would ever think that would go through. Then again, it might have been a Rumsfeld special.

The leak is effectively spotlighting the situation, whether or not that was the intention. Senator Lugar has called it a “bad idea,” and you can expect more of that this week.

Acts of criminal intent

If you pay attention to the right wing of the political blog world, you’ll perhaps have noticed the argument that the AP “act[s] as mouthpieces of terrorist organizations.” Why? Because a stringer for the AP took pictures of an election worker being killed in Baghdad. Indeed, the AP is “participating in murder.” Yowza. That sounds really bad.

As it happens, Ryan of the Dead Parrot Society is a blogger and a journalist. He has the advantage of a) being level-headed and b) knowing a little bit about news photography. So his takedown is worth reading. My favorite excerpt:

So where was the photographer most likely standing when he got these shots? Hey, you know that Glenn Reynolds, he’s a camera buff, so why not ask him: If you were a professional photographer carrying professional equipment optimized for shooting pictures in a war zone (where you might not want to be right up close to the action), how far away could you have been and still gotten these shots? Actually, you don’t have to ask Glenn, because I just spoke with a news photographers on our staff. Judging by the perspective and clarity on the image above, he estimates that the photographer in Baghdad was using a 300-millimeter lens from about a block away. “From a very safe distance,” he said.

The disadvantage of being all pure and innocent of the mechanics of news reporting is that sometimes you say something really stupid because you don’t know anything about the mechanics of news reporting. You might say that a war photographer has to be really close to the action to photograph it, for example.

But follow the link, and don’t rely on my recap of stuff Ryan already said. The entire media category over there is worth reading, in fact; Ryan has a great perspective on this stuff. He’s a serious blogger and he’s one of the guys who brought the concept of blogging to newspapers.

Well done

Credit where credit is due on tsunami relief: Bush is sending an aircraft carrier and working closely with several nations in the region on relief efforts. Also, as expected, there will be future monetary support as the U.S. Agency for International Development requests additional funds.

I still think it’d be a good gesture to cancel the inauguration and redirect those funds, but that’s me.

Are you now

Hugh Hewitt has a fairly revealing piece this morning calling for reporters to answer a short questionnaire.

What questions would I like answered? Very simple ones: For whom did the reporter vote for president in the past five elections?  Do they attend church regularly and if so, in which denomination?  Do they believe that the late-term abortion procedure known as partial birth abortion should be legal? Do they believe same sex marriage ought to be legal?  Did they support the invasion of Iraq?  Do they support drilling in ANWR?

If I know the answers to those ten questions, I can quickly decide what degree of trust with which to approach a reporter’s reporting.  Even “low trust” reporters can earn trust, of course, but degrees of suspicion are a fact of life.  Only MSM pretends otherwise, and bloggers have exposed that pretension as the fiction it really is, even if most of MSM want to continue the charade.

Got that? His degree of trust in any given reporter depends on whether or not they believe same sex marriage should be legal. It depends on whether or not they support drilling for oil in ANWR. It depends on not only their church-going habits, but what denomination they belong to. Unitarian Universalists need not apply?

He sets up for the list of questions by noting that everyone brings baggage to the reporting of the news, and thus argues that if you’re not willing to reveal that baggage, you’re untrustworthy. But then he makes the jump to asserting that it’s not just the revelation of the baggage that matters, it’s what the baggage is. It’s not “if those ten questions are answered,” it’s “the answers to those ten questions.” This is no more and no less than an ideological-based test for reporters, and it’s disgusting.

Putting it together

Bush’s inauguration will cost between 30 and 40 million dollars, before the cost of security is added. We have, so far, sent around 15 million dollars in tsunami relief aid. Quite the contrast.

I’m fairly sure we’ll send more money over the course of the next month or so. I also think we’d earn a lot of good will if we cancelled the inauguration and put the unspent money towards relief. It would hurt some American companies, yes, but chances are nobody would die of it.

This entry is pretty much just the result of this post and this post in close proximity.