LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC - Index 7/3/09

4 posts: (1) Independence Day: Here & Abroad--The Home Front; (2) Lawfare Raises Its Ugly Head Here, There, Everywhere--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (3) Goodbye Gale & Karl--Class & Crass; (4) Is Barack Obama Legally Eligible to Hold Office?--The Home Front.

LFTC - Independence Day: Here & Abroad

Ben Stein's posted a lovely mini-tribute to the wonderful men & women of the world's finest military, who keep America the Land of the Free.  Peggy Noonan recounts the last days of producing the Declaration, and salutes America's leading historian today.  William Bennett & John Cribb salute Abraham Lincoln's defense of what the Founders released on July 4, 1776.

The Washington Post's Robert McCartney presents heartwarming news about African-American student attitudes with President Obama in the Oval Office: they see 1776 at last coming true.  Karl Rove salutes an elderly volunteer for medical service in Iraq.

John Thomson explains the extent of Venezuelan thug-tyrant Hugo Chavez's meddling in Honduran affairs, which led to what Hudson Institute scholar Jaime Darenblum calls a coup for democracy in the Honduras coup. Pat Buchanan asks why 44 is siding with the international left, to restore to power an anti-US leader.

Diplomat & Latin American expert Otto Reich sees digital dissent sprouting in Cuba, and wonders if Team Obama will ignore the stirrings.  Reich reports:

After 50 years of living under the most repressive dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, the Cuban people are losing their fear and beginning to push off the Communist boot from their collective neck. Paradoxically, this is happening as a dark cloud of authoritarian populism spreads throughout Latin America, financed by Hugo Chávez’s petrodollars, undergirded by Castro’s intelligence and security infrastructure, and propelled by years of incompetence and selfishness on the part of political elites. Democratic change in Cuba, long deemed an impossibility, could turn the tide and usher forth a rebirth of freedom in the region.

An uncommon sound was heard throughout three Cuban cities in early May of this year: pots and pans being banged in protest over political and economic conditions on the island. The protest was as unusual as the way in which it was organized: An incipient movement of young bloggers used their limited access to the Internet — the Cuban government severely restricts access to computers and the Web — to call on the population to carry out the protest.

He adds:

....The Castro regime itself has recognized that it cannot extinguish what it calls “indisciplina laboral,” or rampant worker non-cooperation with the regime’s command-and-control apparatus. What’s more, after a grassroots campaign by activists throughout the island, more than 1.5 million Cubans of voting age refused to cooperate with the sham one-party, one-candidate “elections” organized by the government in January 2008 in order to “legitimize” the passing of presidential power from Fidel Castro to his younger (by almost five years) brother, Raúl. Never before had Cubans in such large numbers dared to defy the rigidly enforced order to vote. For the first time in half a century — because of this innovative campaign, carried out with fasts, public protests, workshops, Internet postings, leafleting, and programs on short-wave radio — citizens were galvanized into rejecting sham elections.

Ex-Reagan National Security Council staffer Raymond Tanter compares Iran 2009 with two recent Iran historical precedents: the successful 1978-79 revolution and the failed 1999 student uprising.  Ralph Peters urges Team Obama to abandon nation-building in Afghanistan.  The Washington Times reports that in Pakistan, the Taliban are buying children--as young as age 7--to use as suicide bombers.  The WSJ editors flag Congress slow-rolling aid for Pakistan despite the government stepping up its fight against the Taliban & al-Qaeda, a posture long-sought by the US.

Anne Applebaum visits Morocco and sees peaceful protest and democratic governance, in stark contrast to the Hell inside Iran.  Her money paragraph sums up nicely, but read the entire column:

[W]atching the extraordinary range of clothing and skin colors on the Moroccan streets, one takes away at least one thought: Transformation from authoritarianism to democracy is possible, even in an avowedly Islamic state, even with an ethnically mixed population, even with the presence of a jihadist fringe. More importantly: It is possible to acknowledge and discuss human rights violations in this culture, just as they can be discussed elsewhere. Just because much of the Arab world lacks the political will to change doesn't mean that change is always and forever impossible.

Bottom Line.  Expect President Obama to stick to his "engagement conquers all" foreign policy for dealing with anti-US dictatorships.  Morocco has evolved from what Natan Sharansky calls a "fear society" to what Sharansky calls a "free society"--the latter defined as one in which free protest of government policy in public is safe and permissible.  Let us then celebrate Morocco's new-found independence as well as our own long-lived freedom.  And as well, let us pray that soon Iranians too will celebrate a genuine Independence Day.

LFTC - Lawfare Raises Its Ugly Head Here, There, Everywhere

As the nation's celebrates its 233rd birthday, its legal system continues its assault on Americans who while serving in government acted in good faith to defend America after the worst attack ever launched on US soil.  CIA agents and Bush-era legal advisers are defending themselves against a spate of lawsuits filed over decisions made and advice given that led to actions taken in good faith to protect the American homeland. 

A federal judge is allowing convicted terrorist conspirator Jose Padilla to sue a top Bush 43 lawyer whose legal opinions provided the legal rational for holding Padilla as an unlawful combatant, a ruling condemned by a Los Angeles Times editorial.  Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White's 42-page opinion in Padilla v. Yoo (Northern District, CA 6/12/09) is enlightening on the perils of lawfare.  Facing a motion to dismiss Padilla's complaint, the judge goes through a conventional analysis of Rule 12 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, wherein for purposes of deciding whether to dismiss a defendant's motion, the judge assumes that all facts alleged by the plaintiff are true.  The trial lawyer who cannot draft a complaint able to get by such a low barrier is in the wrong profession.  So John Yoo, having advised in good faith his commander-in-chief on wartime detention procedures for unlawful combatants, now must defend--at personal cost and legal liability risk--a lawsuit filed by former gang-banger Jose Padilla, picked up in Afghanistan, where he had filled out an application form to enter al-Qaeda.  Judge White's mechanistic legal analysis ignores this in favor of boilerplate legalese.  Anyone care to bet what Yoo's successors will do, when asked for advice on how to treat detainees?

Lawyers for a terror defendant in a New York case wish to visit CIA "black sites" involved in rendition.  The New York Times reports that the government says it will preserve the sites during litigation.  Meanwhile, also reported in the NY Times, present & former CIA officials have testified before a Virginia grand jury investigating the CIA's destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes.

Bottom Line.  A chilling effect on future decisions and advice is inevitable--even if the suits fail, because the expense and time involved will alone deter anyone from taking any chances to winding up in court.  Such risk-averse behavior is not the best way to defend America against its enemies.  It is not the way America won its wars in the past.  Trying to do so now is an experiment we should not have embarked upon.  But we have done so.

LFTC - Goodbye Gale & Karl

Ladies first: This LA Times obituary captures how delightful actress/singer Gale Storm was.  She was pretty & talented--and, apparently, exceedingly personally gracious too.  For those of you who did not grow up in the 1950s and don't remember GS's two big TV sitcom hits, My Little Margie (once second only in ratings to I Love Lucy) & Oh, Susanna, read this lovely tribute to an oldie but goodie.

Now to Karl Malden's LA Times obituary.  The great character actor--whose performances not infrequently matched--even exceeded--those of the marquee stars in his films--passed away this week at age 97.  He played strong & weak characters with equal facility, provided a young Michael Douglas with an acting anchor to help lift the young man to super-stardom, and made American Express iconic.  The best measure of his excellence, by my lights, is that I am at a loss to figure out what I regard as his best performance, because so many were so superb.

LFTC - Is Barack Obama Legally Eligible to Hold Office?

I have avoided posting on the lawsuits seeking to prove that our current President does not meet the Constitutional requirement of natural-born citizenship to hold his office.  Just because we are entering a holiday weekend, I thought I would look at things.  I did not go through the interminable legal proceedings, but lay out below the main considerations.  I conclude, not to keep readers in suspense, that Barack Obama is fully qualified to serve as president.  But let us walk things through just once, if only to draw lessons for future campaigns on how to nip controversy in the bud.

Citizenship.  On the cusp of America's 233rd birthday, there is now on eBay a seller offering what he says is a certified Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Hussein Obama II, dated 7:24 PM on August 4, 1961.  The U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section I, contains in Clause 4 the Presidential Eligibility Clause, which reads:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The leading Supreme Court citizenship case is United States v. Kim Wong Ark (1898); the Wiki entry on Kim Wong Ark lays out complex questions.  (I lack the time or patience to wade through what reportedly is a cumbersome majority opinion, especially as its holding sheds no light on the Obama case.)

The citizenship discussion at U.S. Constitution Online spells out Congress has by statute defined who is a natural-born citizen of the United States, in Title 8 U.S.C, sec. 1401.  (That entry notes that questions were also raised as to John McCain, born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone; but there is no dispute as to where McCain was born.)  Either subsection (c) or (d) or (g) covers Barack Obama's parents--I have lost track of the peregrinations of his mom in the years prior to his birth.  Title 8 U.S.C. 1405 makes those born in Hawaii after April 30, 1900 United States citizens at birth.  Hawaii was admitted the the Union on August 21, 1959 as the 50th state.  As PolitiFact.com explains, the State of Hawaii allows only family members to request a certified original copy of a birth certificate.  The State's rationale is to protect familial privacy.

Which brings us to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) candidate filing requirements.  FEC Form 2 Statement of Candidacy requesting bare-bones data.  Playing the Candidate Registration Information PowerPoint presentation yields no additional information.  Thus, there appears to be no requirement that the federal agency charged with supervising elections verify the citizenship of Presidential aspirants.  American Independent Party Presidential candidate Alan Keyes filed suit in California on Nov. 14, 2008, 10 days after the election, demanding proof of citizenship before then-Senator Obama took office.

Law Meets Politics.  Two legal problems face any challenger: (1) standing to bring suit; (2) mootness--it may be too late to bring suit.  Re first, clearly the average voter does not qualify, as to bring a lawsuit the plaintiff must have suffered unique injury.  Re second, time for challenge was before Jan. 20.  Practical politics are that no Democrat would dare challenge for fear of alienating core black voters.  GOP had less fear of that, but greater fear of facing Hillary, so why challenge?  So the only way this could come to pass is if iron-clad proof is dug up, and the certificate makes it into as establishment press organ like the Washington Post or LA Times (NY Times will not touch it).  Then the moot issue resurfaces, with the legal question being whether an eligibility defect is curable by acceptance of service in office.

The problem could have been fixed long ago, had Congress required every candidate declaring for President to file with the Federal Election Commission either an original certificate of birth or a certified copy of the original.  Failure to present legal proof would then disqualify a candidate.  Still, if the press published stuff showing Obama somehow ineligible, who would stand up and push our first African-American President over the side?  Joe Biden?  Not if he is hoping for a second term?  John McCain?  There is no machinery for calling a special Presidential election.  And if there was, would new nominations be made?  Perhaps McCain would have a right to run again, but could Hillary-re-emerge and take the spot from Biden?  Likely, Biden steps in.  But only if he does not push Barack over the side.  In all, a fine mess indeed.

Team Obama's Proof.  On June 13, 2008 President Obama's campaign released this photocopy of the candidate's Hawaii birth certificate.  The embossed seal & registrar's signature go on the back of Hawaii birth certificates.  FightSmears.com is a website devoted to responding to accusations about Obama & his family.  PolitiFact dispatches conspiracy theories:

If this document is forged, a U.S. senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois Secretary of State's office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois and many other government agencies....

And there's the rub. It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world's biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything's possible.

But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what's reasonable has to take over.

There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact's conclusion that the candidate's name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn't authentic.

And that's true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust.

Bottom Line.  There are lessons to be drawn here.  First, the Federal Election Commission should require a certified copy--both sides--of any candidate's birth certificate to be filed with Candidate Form 2.  Second, it is easy to dismiss conspiracy theorists, and no doubt there will be such types no matter what is filed at the FEC.  But demanding a formal filing proving candidate birth by original or certified copy of same is a simple formality that as a matter of principle should be required.  It is the way the country's candidate selection business should be conducted--at least, for high office.

As for conspiracies, it is easy to laugh.  But consider this June 18, 2004 Fox News posting reporting that 40 years after JFK's murder a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy & cover-up, according to an OpinionDynamics poll conducted in October 2003.  By 66-25 Americans believed then that there was a conspiracy, and by 74-14 they believe that there was a cover-up.  There is no reason to think results today would be any different.  However one feels, there is little doubt that better handling of matters then would have produced a more widely accepted report.

It was a simpler time then, before events from JFK through Watergate produced the corrosive skepticism of today.  Thus I give folks a generation ago a pass for errors committed.  But today, there is no excuse for careless procedures.  A simple candidate filing procedure requiring submission of formal proof for candidates seeking high office would keep to a minimum questions that might arise as to eligibility of candidates who have filed.

LFTC - Index 7/2/09

5 posts: (1) Secrets: Gray Lady Sins Again--MSM Murders; (2) IRAN: Messages for Mullahs--Us v. Them; (3) Purdum's Petulant Palin Purgatory--The Home Front; (4) Progressive Governance: Tale of 3 States, 3 Polls--The Home Front; (5) Telecom: State of Broadband America--Telecom.

LFTC - Secrets: Gray Lady Sins Again

Tuesday's New York Times featured a front-pager about our military resuming drone reconnaissance flights over Pakistan to help Pakistani troops.  Mind you, we are not talking here about armed drones that may fire & kill people, simply secret recon flights to help locate the bad guys.  Americans generally know that this kind of stuff goes on.  Putting this on the front page merely provides ammunition to Islamists who seek to discredit Pakistani troop operations by linking them to our military.  Such gratuitous disclosure adds nothing of consequence to public debate here.  Some secrets should stay secret.

LFTC - IRAN: Messages for Mullahs

This RealClear Politics Iran Protest Video (2:15) shows Iranians shouting "Death to the dictator!" as they chase fraud-vote winner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad away.  Too bad they did not catch him....Enjoy it anyway.  Roger Cohen, a convert to hardline, interviews a pro-regime cleric who sees the regime paying a steep price for repression this time.  Aussie pundit Greg Sheridan sees human rights groups AWOL on Iran's crackdown.  AP reports more unrest, plus a significant quote from Mohammed Khatami, a former Iran president, who called the regime's actions "velvet coup against the people and democracy."  Velvet, hardly, but a coup, indeed.  Khatami's public voice deepens the split within the regime.

Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports that Hillary urged President 44 to talk tougher to Iran.  Amir Taheri sees Mahmoud Ahmaddi-nutjob becoming a suddenly unwelcome guest outside Iran.  John Bolton wonders if the time is ripening for Israel to send a military message to Iran's nuclear facilities.  Alan Dershowitz sees Team Obama linking Israel, settlements & Iran.

Bottom Line.  Despite repression ascendant in the short-run, cracks are widening inside Iran, and opinion outside is turning--not fast enough, but at least it is turning inexorably.

LFTC - Purdum's Petulant Palin Purgatory

Todd Purdum's 15-page Vanity Fair impaling of Sarah Palin fails.  Even if one believes Purdum (I do NOT), how does his account separate her from other prominent seekers for high office--at lest some of whom Purdum probably likes or admires?  Let me juxtapose Purdum's statements with my responses, serially.

Purdum.  His opening sentence damns with faint praise: "Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics."  On the second page, Purdum writes: "Palin is at one the sexiest and the riskiest brand in the Republican Party.  Her appeal to people in the party (and in the country) who share her convictions and resentments is profound.  The fascination is viral, and global."

LFTC.  Does this sound a lot like the appeal of Barack Obama?

Purdum.  Palin "seems proud of what she does not know" and "was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice=presidency."

LFTC.  Nothing in the article documents that Palin is proud of being ignorant about anything.  Nor does the article--even if accurate, which again, I reject--establish more about Palin and the truth than can be said about pretty much any politician.  No politician tells "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" all the time.  Is Barack Obama telling the truth when he says he will not raise anyone's taxes who makes less than $250,000?  NOPE.

Purdum.  Referring to the Palin clan: "By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection."

LFTC.  In chronological order: Donald Nixon arranged a $205K loan ($1.5M today), free of repayment obligation, from Howard Hughes to Richard Nixon's 1960 Presidential campaign.  Billy Carter toadied to the Libyan government while its dictator (Muammar Qaddafi) sponsored terror against Americans & America's allies.  Roger Clinton was a cokehead, who famously said that his brother Bill "had "a nose like a vacuum cleaner" during his gubernatorial terms in Arkansas; Bill pardoned Roger in his last day in the Oval Office. Nothing in the VF article substantiates such comparisons.

Purdum.  Palin has "deep ignorance about most aspects of foreign and domestic policy."  She is "a cipher by choice."  Partly this is due to her refusal to have "in-depth conversations with the national media."

LFTC.  No specific examples given.  How much did Barack Obama know before November 4 (after which he has been learning from daily Presidential briefings)?  Could her reluctance to open up to national press have anything to do with the vicious assault on her (and the entire Palin family) mounted within hours of her selection combined with "gotcha" interviews from Charlie Gibson & Katie Couric, of a kind not thrown at, say, Barack Obama?

Consider what Barack Obama said of Palin's travails--to Purdum's credit, recounted in his Vanity Fair piece:  Obama "believed Palin would never have time to get up to speed.  He told his aides that it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national candidate, and added: 'I don't care how talented she is, this is really a leap.'"  Obama got so many softball questions vis-a-vis hardballs tossed at Hillary, that Saturday Night Live satirized it.  Think of it: Four months for Candidate Obama to hit his stride with magic carpet media adulation masquerading as press coverage.

Purdum.  Palin was "unable or unwilling to prepare" for media interviews but then "worked hard" for her debate with Joe Biden, which "was nothing like a disaster."

LFTC.  Why did McCain staffers set Palin up with two wolves (Charlie & Katie) in edited interviews, while turning down invitations from fair questioners Chris Wallace & Bill O'Reilly for live interviews?  I watched the Gibson interview live, and then, for blogging, went straight to ABC's website to check my notes.  I then went the next day to ABC's website to confirm my entry from the night before--and found some Palin answers no longer at ABC's site.  Most notably, an answer on Iraq referring to  quote from Abe Lincoln--which went better than Gibson expected--was no longer posted.  BTW, Palin buried Biden.

Purdum.  "In dozens of conversations during a recent visit to Alaska, it was easy to learn that there has always been a counter-narrative about Palin, and indeed it has become the dominant one.  It is the story of a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of the times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them."  Her nickname was "Barracuda."  "The second thing McCain could have discovered about Palin is that no political principle or personal relationship is  more sacred than her own ambition."

LFTC.  Having "an intuitive feel for the temper of the times" is a bad thing that calls for a counter-narrative?  Is having a poor feel a positive narrative?  Seizing opportunities--ambition!  Imagine THAT in a politician!  Was Barack Obama's announcing for the Presidency in February 2007, after 143 days of actual service in the United States Senate, an act of ambition?  Is Hillary ambitious?  Al Gore?  Elliott Spitzer?  What does Purdum think of Obama & Hillary?  Is Hillary a "barracuda?"  What is more sacred to Hillary than her own ambition?

Purdum.  "Yet Palin herself cut corners."  She used personal computing and communications devices to evade state ethics laws.

LFTC.  And Hillary didn't?  Has Palin ever made $100k trading commodities using the Wall Street Journal?  Has Palin treated any state employees worse than the way Hillary treated the White House travel office?  Will she walk out of the Governor's Mansion with anything like the haul Hillary took from the White House?  Did Hillary make any personal trips to New York to campaign for the Senate in 2000, while First Lady, without covering the cost with her own campaign funds?

Purdum.  Palin has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

LFTC.  Bill & Hillary do not have NPD?

Purdum. Palin "lacked the knowledge, the preparation, the preparation, the aptitude and the temperament for the job" of President.

LFTC.  Bill Clinnton said in Denver that no one is fully qualified on Day One to be President.  In 1992, George H. W. Bush's best campaign line was the Governor Clinton's foreign policy experience was eating at the International House of Pancakes.  Did Barack Obama have the preparation and knowledge to be President?  Did Bill Clinton have the temperament--he of the legendary, volcanic temper tantrums?  Does a successful state governor truly lack the aptitude to be President, while a community organizer has it?

Purdum.  Palin's husband Todd spent lots of time in the Governor's office.

LFTC.  Think Hillary was in the Oval Office from time to time?

Bottom Line.  I doubt much--if any--of the article is true, if only because there are hardly any sources will to stand out in the open--even, former McCain staffers in no way beholden to Palin.  But even assuming Purdum is right, so what does he prove?  Unless Purdum is willing to apply these equally to those I name above, his claim that Palin is unfit for higher office would apply to pols Purdum likely admires--Obama, Bill and Hillary.  His title says volumes, too: "It came from Wasilla"-- Godzilla rose from dark depths of the Pacific and wrecked Tokyo.  Actually, Godzilla wrote this character assassination turkey.

LFTC - Progressive Governance: Tale of 3 States, 3 Polls

A WSJ editorial looks closely at results in three key states--NY, NJ & California--and finds dismal results that correlate high spending, high taxation, leveraging union power and high levels of public health care with poor economic performance.  Well worth a careful read.  President Obama would do well to take note of real-world limits, and try not to load his agenda with too many big  items, warns Peggy Noonan; PN suggests that economic recovery and winning wars be 44's one-sentence message describing his Presidency.

Polling maven William Schneider analyzes three new polls and finds voters liking Obama, skeptical re his policies and still blaming Bush.  Voters are pessimistic re the economy, unsure of what the competing health care proposals contain, angry at bailouts and scared of mega-size federal deficits.  Yet on deficits, by 46-6 voters blame Bush, having apparently accepted President Obama's structural deficit inherited argument.

Yet in FY 2007, the last pre-financial meltdown year, the Bush administration deficit was $150B, a mere 1.2 percent of GDP, which is one-tenth of the projected $1.8TR deficit for Team Obama's first year.  The last Bush deficit was well under $1TR.   But the harsh political truth is that what voters perceive, rightly or wrongly, will drive political calculation in Washington, DC.

Bottom Line.  As one Democratic political consultant of a generation ago, Joe Napolitan, once said: "Never underestimate the intelligence of voters, or overestimate the amount of information they have."  Or as JFK famously put it, "Life is unfair."

LFTC - Telecom: State of Broadband America

Telecom maven Bret Swanson details at BretSwason.com the status of broadband access in America, and finds much to like, with good reason.  His firm, Entropy Economics, examined key indicators of broadband connectivity: residential, wireless and total bandwidth (transmission capacity), focusing on the period 2000 through 2008.  Put simply in lay terms, residential connections are nearly all wireline--coming into the home via wires--copper, coaxial cable or optical fiber.  Wireless bandwidth uses radio spectrum, and nearly all wireless connectivity is used outside the home.  Add residential + wireless and you get total consumer bandwidth.  These numbers, however, exclude much business bandwidth, which runs over private, and thus uncounted networks; thus total bandwidth in use in America is understated.

First the raw numbers, and then an explanation for lay LFTC readers as to what they signify.

The 2000 - 2008 span saw per capita average available overall bandwidth jump 84-fold, with residential bandwidth up 54-fold and a 499-fold jump in wireless bandwidth.  A typical consumer connection in 2000 was a miserly 28 kilobit (28,000 bits) per second; in 2008 that number became 2.4 megabits (2.4 million bits) per second.  In 2000 a typical residential connection was 26 kilobits per second, which in 2008 became 1.2 megabits.  In 2000 a typical wireless connection was a minuscule 2 kilobits per second; in 2008 it was about 1 megabit.

What does this mean, in terms of services--keeping in mind that voice service was available to both residential and wireless consumers in 2000?  The big differences are in data and video services.

In 2000 a residential customer could slowly access small data files, such as web pages with lots of writing and a few still images; motion picture images--motion video in telecom parlance--were impossible.  In 2008 things were vastly improved for the user.  Web pages (data) could be rapidly accessed; still image files fairly easily sent in a reasonably short, though rarely instantaneous, time.  But motion video still lies beyond easy access.  Wireless customers, effectively limited to voice and the briefest of e-mail messages in 2000, now easily exchange e-mails (data) and can swap photos given a high-capacity link (which most wireless customers still lack).

All this stuff cost scads of money.  In 2008 alone, computing and communications investment of all types totaled $453B; between 2000 & 2008, such investment totaled $3.5TR.  The growing economy, plus modest deregulation, aided this immense beneficial investment.  Whether gains will continue is up in the air, given the economic mess we face, and possible excessive added regulation under Team Obama.  Stay tuned.

LFTC - Index 7/1/09

5 posts: (1) Iraq: America Steps Aside; Obama Steps In--Wobble Watch; (2) Minnesota Dumps Norm--The Home Front; 3) Senator Durbin's Investment Strategy, or Bet Against Senators?--The Home Front; (4) Regulating Financial Risk--The Home Front; (5) Health Care: What Voters Do Not Know of the Big Picture (Lots)--The Home Front.

LFTC - Iraq: America Steps Aside; Obama Steps In

Yesterday American troops vacated Iraq's cities, in accordance with the status of forces agreement that also calls for full American withdrawal by end-2011, leaving in place a small force only.  With this transition, President Obama now owns the Iraq War, even as he carries out policies designed by his predecessor.  There is no reason at this juncture to believe that 44 will revert to his Campaign 2008 "cut & run" theme; the prospect of a debacle in Iraq placed at his doorstep will keep 44 attuned closely to the advice he is receiving from his excellent generals (mostly picked by Bush too).

LFTC - Minnesota Dumps Norm

Senator Norm Coleman yesterday made the following statement at his home in St. Paul:

“Ours is a government of laws, not men and women.  The Supreme Court of Minnesota has spoken and I respect its decision and will abide by the result.  It’s time for Minnesota to come together under the leaders it has chosen and move forward. I join all Minnesotans in congratulating our newest United States Senator – Al Franken.

“Just a few last words about my legal challenge.  Sure, I wanted to win.  Not just for myself but for my wonderful supporters and the important values I have always fought for.  I also thought it was important to stand up for enfranchising thousands of Minnesotans whose votes weren’t counted like the others were.  After all, issues and politicians come and go, but voting is fundamental.

“It is the essence of democracy so I knew we needed to do everything we could to get it right.

“I am forever grateful and humbled by the people of Minnesota who have given me the honor to represent them – and even more grateful for their wisdom, courage, patience and understanding over these past several months.

“The path that I take in the future is not nearly as important today as the path that we must now — all travel on together — to strengthen our state and our nation.

“I have never believed that my service is irreplaceable.  We have reached the point where further litigation damages the unity of our state, which is also fundamental.  In these tough times, we all need to focus on the future.  And the future today is we have a new United States Senator.

“I congratulate Al Franken and his victory in this election.  He now enjoys the advantage that our Congressional Delegation has over the other 525 people on Capitol Hill: he represents Minnesota.

“I know the great ideas, the amazing work ethic and the historic ability to come together to get things done in this state will help him greatly, as it has me.

“Speaking of which, I think we all should take a moment to thank Amy Klobuchar and her staff.  They have done a great job of carrying the burden of two Senators these last six months.  She is an extraordinary public servant.

“I don’t reach this point with any big regrets.  I ran the campaign I wanted.  I conducted the legal challenge I wanted.  And I have always believed you do the best you can and leave the results up to a higher authority.  I’m at peace with that.  As to my future plans, that’s a subject for another day.                

“We live in a great country and a great state.  We can all have confidence that by some path we don’t yet know – one which we can all come together to lay out – we will arrive at the better future we all seek.

“Thank you and may God bless Minnesota and America.”

Bottom Line.  Norm Coleman showed his class last September, when he faced the bailout vote.  He voted for the bailout, reluctantly, despite knowing his supporters in Minnesota hated the vote--and despite knowing that the bailout would pass 3-1 in the Senate.  His vote was superfluous, and his colleagues would have understood, had Coleman used the 300+ pages of goodies the Senate added, as an excuse to vote against it.  He'd surely have won easily.  Rarely has there been a more graphic example of no good political deed going unpunished.

Setting aside how Democrats literally stole the election, leave us award 2.4 million voter raspberries to the idiots in Minnesota who voted for a buffoon to serve as their Senator.  May they repent at leisure.

LFTC - Senator Durbin's Investment Strategy, or Bet Against Senators?

The Weekly Standard's Scrapbook detailed how Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) made key personal investment decisions last fall: by insider trading.  Yep, seems that during the Sept. 16 - 19 period last fall, when Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was telling lawmakers the financial world was about to "melt, thaw, resolve itself into a dew" the Senator decided to cash out $83 grand of mutual fund shares and buy $98 grand of Berkshire Hathaway, the Warren Buffett vehicle.  By year-end, all the funds Durbin had sold were up, while Berkshire Hathaway was down 40 percent (Durbin bought it near its 52-week high).  By the end of 2008, Durbin & spouse had sold 1/3 of their Berkshire stake at a $10 grand loss.

Meanwhile, a new investment vehicle called Congressional Effect Fund, started in May 2008, invests money according to cycles of sessions on Capitol Hill.  When Congress is in session, the fund puts its assets in Treasury bills.  When Congress goes on vacation, the fund shifts its assets into an S&P 500 index fund.  In its first 14 months of operation the CEF is down 2 percent, versus down 27 percent for the S&P 500.

LFTC - Regulating Financial Risk

Begin with the White House document (88 pages), Financial Regulatory Reform, A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation, released June 17.  A shorter version plus the President's remarks is at the White House Economy sub-page.  Here is another compact government summary (just over 3 pages) of the massive proposal.

Sifting through the full proposal, a few elements emerge: (1) the role of the federal government in creating broader, gap-filling regulatory schemes will be much greater; (2) the Federal Reserve will become deeply embedded in risk regulation, working closely with the Executive Branch; (3) firms deemed "to big to fail" will face stricter, systemic risk regulation governing capital, leverage, liquidity; (4) new sectors will be brought under comprehensive federal regulation--over-the-counter (OTC) financial derivatives (trillions in "notional" face value but highly interlinked) and the $5.7TR insurance industry (36 percent the size of the $15/8TR banking industry--foreign countries regulate insurance at the national level); and (5) executive compensation will face significant regulatory supervision.  (N.B., Contrary to popular perception that Republicans were responsible for deregulating OTC financial derivatives, deregulation was accomplished by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, signed into law Dec. 21, 2000 by President Clinton.)

Notable are the standards proposed to govern executive pay: (a) pay for performance; (2) pay aligned to risk time horizons; (3) pay in accord with sound risk management; (4) parachutes and special retirement packages must not conflict with the interests of shareholders; (5) promote transparency & accountability.

Robert Samuelson sees financial crises as inevitable, despite regulatory efforts throughout American history; he worries that the next crisis will be that of Treasury bonds and a collapse in investor faith in American creditworthiness.  Check out economist John Rutledge's RutledgeCapital.com website.  Look at his Fed Tsunami of Exploding Bank Reserves and his Fed Tsunami of Exploding Monetary Base postings.  The latter charts Fed monetary base figures going back a century; then in 1970 a significant upward monetary expansions begins, and in 2008 it rockets upward as if headed for the Moon.

JP MorganChase Chairman Jamie Dimon calls for a unified bank regulator.  Financial regulation maven Peter Wallison questions "too big to fail" regulation.  PW sees regulators setting capital, leverage & liquidity standards for financial firms deemed to pose systemic risk as a license to create financial Fannie Maes & Freddie Macs--behemoth zombie firms propped up by taxpayers and protected by powerful political friends, as were Fannie & Freddie.  A WSJ editorial looks back to Ben Bernanke's views on monetary policy in 2003; here is the Dec. 9, 2003 Bernanke speech text the WSJ was discussing.  Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas sees a simpler regulatory scheme as better.  A WSJ editorial notes that (who else?) Barney (Dinosaur) Frank wants looser lending standards for Fannie & Freddie borrowers.  Um, didn't we just see this movie?  Economist Martin Feldstein thus writes that the Fed must reassure markets on inflation; he notes that investor expectations have sent the 10-year Treasury bond yield up from 2.26 percent to 3.98 percent in six months.

China watcher Gordon Chang calls Beijing "the dollar's new best friend" due to its huge reserve holding.  China stands to lose the most if America inflates away trillions of indebtedness.  Alan Greenspan calls inflation the big threat in our economic future.  The big threat to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's future may be Members of Congress, who assailed his stewardship in a Hill hearing last week.  Hudson Institute scholar Irwin Stelzer sees four forces blocking economic prosperity: health care, energy, unions and "fiscal madness." Economist David Malpass says we need a game changer, not a new norm.  Malpass notes that Industrial production, down 13.5 percent, had its sharpest one-year decline since 1940; federal tax receipts for January - May 2009 are down 23 percent since the first four months of 2008, while spending is up 18 percent--without factoring in health care.  Team Obama, he writes, is doing all the wrong things.

Bottom Line.  Given the massive perfect storm of catastrophic failure in both private and public sectors, it is hard to argue in principle against remedial, broader, stricter regulation.  In practice, however, there is substantial reason to be afraid of what will follow.  Specifically: (1) the ability of federal regulators to divine systemic risk in advance requires an omniscience & omnicompetence that government lacks; (2) the independence of the Federal Reserve is likely to be further compromised in significant ways, as its actions become deeply intertwined with those of the Executive Branch, and inevitably as well, with those of the Legislative Branch; (3) practices historically left purely to the private sector--such as executive compensation--will now push the government far deeper into the economy, and thus push political favoritism to the fore while market imperatives take a back seat.

And all the above does not take into account when the likes of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and colleagues on the Hill get hold of the administration's proposals and push them through the Congressional sausage-grinder.  Bismarck's famous quip that there are two things, laws and sausage, that one should never see being made, will ring true again.

LFTC - Health Care: What Voters Do Not Know of the Big Picture (Lots)

George Will sees Americans regretting the health care "fix" proposed by Obama, if it passes, but sees deficits as an obstacle to passage.  GW notes Betsy McCuaghey's point (noted earlier on LFTC) that people spend today about the same for the Big Four Expenses (housing, food, energy & health care) as they did in 1960; the mix has changed, with food & energy down and health care up.  People get far better care today than back then.  They tell pollsters they are willing to pay $100 a month for HC, but actually already pay $400 and do not realize it, because much HC cost is hidden by third-party payers and government payments (taxpayer-funded).  Government pays 46 percent of all HC expenses; add in 38 percent paid by private insurers and in all, $84 of every HC dollar is third-party paid.  Only 9 cents per HC dollar is paid by consumers directly.

WSJ pundit Dan Henninger recalls what happened with Medicaid and sees a replay in 44's "public option" health care competitor.  Medicaid--health care for elderly poor--started as a modest supplementary program run primarily by the states, with limited federal supervision.  But over the past generation Congress has heaped upon the states unfunded regulatory mandates--states must pay for part or all of new federal rules that impose HC costs.  Now, 1/3 of CA's $100B budget goes to Medicaid, while in NY the state's $2,283 cost per capita tops the 50 states.  In all, states now pick up 43 percent of the total Medicaid tab.  CA faces billions of costs imposed by a federal judge in 2006, to cover prison HC costs.  DH identifies a sad truth, shown by the legislative collapses in CA & NY: "The bigger the government, the smaller the politicians."  Spending swallows up everything and deprives legislators of meaningful control, so they posture and try to protect their political skins by shifting blame and passing quixotic bills designed to curry favor with uninformed voters.

Voters may not realize, John Stossel reports, how long patients wait for care in Canada & Europe.  Patients in those countries must be, it seems, patient indeed.  Voters would do well to read this list of HC shibboleths provided in a WSJ op-ed.

Michael Barone exposes several cracks in Team Obama's HC proposal.

Legal scholar Richard Epstein notes that the European & Canadian HC systems President 44 admires do not, as does America's system, allow for huge malpractice awards; yet 44's HC proposals do nothing to curb the rapacious tort bar:

Litigation in the U.S. has at least four distinctive procedural features that drive up malpractice costs. The first is jury trials, which can veer out of control and in any case introduce significant uncertainty. The second is the contingency-fee system, which allows well-heeled lawyers to self-finance litigation. The third is the rule that makes each side bear its own costs. This induces riskier lawsuits than are undertaken in most other countries, such as Canada, England and most of Europe, where the loser pays the legal costs of the winner. The fourth is extensive pretrial discovery outside the direct supervision of judges, which occurs far more readily here than elsewhere.

Even these features aren't the whole story. American judges frequently let juries decide whether honest mistakes are negligent. Judges in other nations are less likely to do so. American courts commonly think it proper for juries to infer medical negligence from the mere occurrence of a serious injury. European judges usually will not.

American plaintiffs are sometimes spared the heavy burden of identifying particular acts of negligence, or of showing the precise causal connection between a negligent act and an actual injury. Lastly, damage awards for lost income and medical expenses in the U.S. tend to dwarf awards made elsewhere -- in part because governments elsewhere provide this medical care from their nationalized systems. In sum, the medical malpractice system provides incentives for plaintiffs that really do matter. Americans, for example, file claims about 3.5 times more often than Canadians.

David Brooks sees a "Vince Lombardi strategy" adopted by Team Obama, after the famed NFL coach's quip, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."  Team Obama has ceded control to Congress, which drafts bills far less coherent than White House proposals would be, but manages to pass them (by narrow margins).

Bottom Line.  Voters understand their own health care picture fairly well, but know little of its true costs and who pays what, let alone of the larger HC picture, for which while statistics abound, they are often misleading and are hard to separate as between wheat & chaff.  Alas, the White House and Congress both know this.

LFTC - Index 6/30/09

7 posts: (1) Supremes' Final Bang and Whimper--The Home Front; (2) Honduras Hates Hugo (Chavez)--Wobble Watch; (3) IRAN Update: Nasty for Quite a While--Us v. Them; (4) Israel Offers Settlements Compromise--Wobble Watch; (5) North Korea, Missiles & Hawaii, & Arms Control--Us v. Them; (6) Guarding Against EMP Catastrophe--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (7) Obamalympics 2016?--The Home Front.

LFTC - Supremes' Final Bang and Whimper: Sonia Safe; Hillary Deferred

Yesterday the Supreme Court handed down the final three decisions of its 2008-2009 term, one major ruling on reverse discrimination, one decided on narrow technical issues of bank regulation, and one delayed to the fall.  Included is the ruling that will prove at most mild embarrassment for Supremo nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Reverse Discrimination: Sonia Settled.  By 5-4, Justice Kennedy (who authored the majority opinion) siding with the four conservative Justices, the Court reversed the Second Circuit's ruling in  Ricci v. Di Stefano (93 pages), the New Haven firefighters case in which as an appeals Judge Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor voted not to even hear an appeal, despite reverse discrimination claims.  (Ricci is the white firefighter applicant Frank Ricci, who filed suit to obtain the promotion the city denied him; DiStefano is New Haven Mayor Johhn DiStefano, whose rulings against Ricci and other applicants triggered the lawsuit.)

Kennedy's opinion turned on interpretation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, with little in the way of lower appeals court legal precedent to guide the Court.  First, note two points: (1) That the ruling was made on statutory grounds obviated the need for the Court to consider Constitutional claims.  (2) Such a ruling per statute also enables Congress to pass a law overruling the result.

Begin with a summary of the law (accessible to lay readers) as it stands on these kinds of cases, established by Congress in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII of which covers employment discrimination), as interpreted and re-cast thereafter by numerous Supreme Court cases (helpfully provided in the Court's own 4-page syllabus).  (1) Title VII prohibits not only intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex & national origin; the statute also prohibits employer practices that have a statistically "disparate impact" on members of such classes.  (2) An employment practice that has such a disparate impact can be sustained if the practice is ""job-related" and ""consistent with business necessity."  (3) A plaintiff can still win if he can show that (a) there is an alternative procedure that has less disparate impact on his class and (b) that such alternative satisfies an employer's "legitimate needs."  (4) An employer who takes a race-conscious action that has a disparate impact must have "a strong basis in evidence" to show that otherwise it will be held liable to plaintiff.

In effect, the majority and dissenting opinions agree on the general principles in points (1) & (2).  Justice Kennedy answered point (3) in the negative and point four in the affirmative; Justice Ginsburg answered point (3) in the affirmative and point (4) in the negative.  Hence the 5-4 split on the Court.

Reversing and requiring a verdict of summary judgment to be reinstated means that the 5 in the majority saw no genuine issue of material fact worthy of putting the case before a jury; the dissenters thought the case should go to trial.  Ed Whelan, author of NRO's Bench Memos and himself a former Supreme Court law clerk for Justice Scalia, points out that none of the 9 Justices supported Justice Sotomayor's appellate ruling that summary judgment be entered in favor of plaintiffs.  (Ed's point is correct as a technical matter, but the arcana of what is legally sufficient for summary judgment will escape not only the vast majority of voters, but also nearly all reporting on the case.)

Justice Kennedy's money paragraphs are near the end of his 34-page opinion:

"On the record before us, there is no genuine dispute that
the City lacked a strong basis in evidence to believe it
would face disparate-impact liability if it certified the
examination results. In other words, there is no evidence
—let alone the required strong basis in evidence—that the
tests were flawed because they were not job-related or
because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests
were available to the City. Fear of litigation alone cannot
justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of
individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for
promotions.  The City’s discarding the test results was
impermissible under Title VII, and summary judgment is
appropriate for petitioners on their disparate-treatment
claim.

* * *

"The record in this litigation documents a process that, at
the outset, had the potential to produce a testing proce-
dure that was true to the promise of Title VII:  No individ-
ual should face workplace discrimination based on race.
Respondents thought about promotion qualifications and
relevant experience in neutral ways.  They were careful to
ensure broad racial participation in the design of the test
itself and its administration. As we have discussed at
length, the process was open and fair.

"The problem, of course, is that after the tests were
completed, the raw racial results became the predominant rationale for the City’s refusal to certify the results.  The injury arises in part from the high, and justified, expecta-
tions of the candidates who had participated in the testing
process on the terms the City had established for the
promotional process. Many of the candidates had studied
for months, at considerable personal and financial ex-
pense, and thus the injury caused by the City’s reliance on
raw racial statistics at the end of the process was all the
more severe. Confronted with arguments both for and
against certifying the test results—and threats of a law-
suit either way—the City was required to make a difficult
inquiry. But its hearings produced no strong evidence of a
disparate-impact violation, and the City was not entitled
to disregard the tests based solely on the racial disparity
in the results.

"Our holding today clarifies how Title VII applies to
resolve competing expectations under the disparate-
treatment and disparate-impact provisions. If, after it
certifies the test results, the City faces a disparate-impact
suit, then in light of our holding today it should be clear
that the City would avoid disparate-impact liability based
on the strong basis in evidence that, had it not certified
the results, it would have been subject to disparate-
treatment liability."

Concurring Opinions. Justice Scalia's 3-page joined fully in the majority opinion, but noted that the ruling postpones the day of judicial reckoning in which the disparate impact laws are weighed against the Constitution's Equal Protection guarantee against use of race.  He sees the two lines of jurisprudence at war.  Justice Alito's 12-pager also fully concurred with the majority, and focused on Justice Ginsburg's dissenting opinion.  Alito stated that the dissent omitted crucial facts which show this case to be an especially egregious case of discriminatory misconduct.  Thus, Alito said, accepting the dissent's own interpretation of the legal standard would lead to the same result reached by the majority.  Alito bluntly stated that no reasonable jury could find other than the the City's decision, far from being a good-faith effort to avoid possible legal liability, was motivated by "the desire to placate a politically important racial constituency."  Alito's opinion notes that Mayor DiStefano had long ties to an incendiary race-baiting black preacher, whom he even appointed in 2002 to be Chairman of the Haven Board of Fire Commissioners, only to have to fire him in 2004 after the activist made racist anti-white remarks.

Dissenting Opinion.  Justice Ginsburg, joined by the four Court liberal Justices, filed a 39-page dissent.  She stated that the city had good cause to believe it would face legal liability and that tests used by other cities could have accomplished the city's purpose better in avoiding disparate impact liability.  Ginsburg stated: "It is the Court that has chosen to short-circuit this litigation based on its pretension that the City has shown, and can show, nothing other than a statistical disparity."  Ginsburg accused Alito of omitting key facts and relying upon plaintiff's evidence.

Outside Comments.  George Will, without peer among non-lawyer pundits on Supreme Court matters, castigated liberal orthodoxy in a case of blatantly obvious reverse discrimination, thus preserving racial spoils:

Although New Haven's firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly -- 5 to 4. The egregious behavior by that city's government, in a context of racial rabble-rousing, did not seem legally suspect to even one of the court's four liberals, whose harmony seemed to reflect result-oriented rather than law-driven reasoning.

Will sees a long, hard jurisprudential slog ahead:

The nation shall slog on, litigating through a fog of euphemisms and blurry categories (e.g., "race-conscious" actions that somehow are not racial discrimination because they "remedy" discrimination that no one has intended). This is the predictable price of failing to simply insist that government cannot take cognizance of race.

National Journal's superb Stuart Taylor, one of the best among lawyer pundits, is dismayed by the ruling, because Sotomayor is more radical on race than even the four liberal dissenters in the firefighters case:

But as a matter of law, the difference between the Sotomayor position and the Supreme Court dissenters' position is nonetheless important and revealing.

Both, in my view, would risk converting disparate-impact law into an engine of overt discrimination against high-scoring groups across the country and allow racial politics and racial quotas to masquerade as voluntary compliance with the law.

But while Ginsburg at least required the city to produce some evidence that the test was invalid, the Sotomayor panel required no such evidence at all. Its logic would thus provide irresistible incentives for employers to abandon any and all tests on which disproportionate numbers of protected minorities have low scores.

And racially disparate scores on virtually all objective tests are unfortunately the norm, not the exception. It's not hard to understand why: Studies have long showed that because of unequal educational opportunities and cultural differences, the average black high-school senior has learned no more than the average white eighth-grader -- and considerably less than the average white senior.

Of course, this would be no justification for basing promotions on test scores that have little relationship to the requirements of the job. But the New Haven exam was clearly job-related and carefully developed to insure race-neutrality, as the majority opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy detailed.

To be sure, as Ginsburg argued, alleged imperfections in the New Haven test were attacked by black firefighters, city officials, and others after the fact. But every written and oral objective test ever devised can be similarly attacked as imperfect. If the law were as Judge Sotomayor ruled, no employer could ever safely proceed with promotions based on any test on which minorities fared badly.

The NRO editors praise the ruling, while noting that prior Court decisions, ratified by Congress, created a different discrimination law than envisioned in the original civil rights legislation:

The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 targeted intentional discrimination — that is, disparate treatment in employment opportunity based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It did not encompass disparate-impact-discrimination theory, the notion that illegal discrimination should be inferred, even in those cases in which illicit intent cannot be discovered, if employer actions cause outcomes that are uneven by race or the other suspect categories. Disparate-impact discrimination was concocted by the Supreme Court in 1971 and, unfortunately, codified two decades later when President George H. W. Bush signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (over this magazine’s objections).

The act’s internal contradictions put employers in a pincer. The law mandates race-conscious remedies if disparate impact suggests discrimination, yet it also prohibits intentional discrimination in employment decisions. An employer must fear being sued both if he unintentionally discriminates and if he takes curative steps that are race-conscious.

Adding my own two cents, in one sense I identify with Justice  Ginsburg's dissent: Her statement that New Haven had a well-founded fear of litigation liability if it hired the firefighters, rejected by the majority because there of the absence of "strong evidence" that the city would be held liable, is correct, in this sense: Given the hash of discrimination law created by the Supreme Court over a generation, anyone hiring whites has a well-founded fear of being sued and possibly thus held liable.

Bottom Line: Sonia Safe.  The Court's ruling is at most a mild embarrassment for nominee Sonia Sotomayor.  Because it was 5-4, she cannot be said to have gone so far over the line in the appeals decision in which she cast the deciding vote (7-6); the technical point that summary judgment was rejected by all 9 Justices is too arcane a legal point to be politically significant to the vast number of voters and reporters--and thus, as well, to wavering Senators.  Thus its main impact will be to provide a basis for questioning her views.  GOP Senators will not be able to stop her nomination based upon this, but merely highlight differences in the two parties as to judicial philosophy, thus providing an potential election issue for 2010 and beyond. Alas, per Scalia's lament, the Court is not ready to resolve the Constitutional question, best resolved by returning to the lone dissenting opinion of Justice John Marshall Harlan Sr. in the 1896 "separate but equal" ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson: "Our Constitution is color-blind."  Justice-to-be Sotomayor is ultra-color conscious, so her ascension will not help.

First Amendment: Hillary Deferred.  The case, Citizens United v. FEC,  involved an activist Group, Citizens United, making a sharply critical film about Hillary during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, and fighting an FEC (Federal Election Commission) ruling that the film amounted to a campaign contribution.  The Court set September 9 for a pre-term special oral argument in the case.  A New York Times article notes signs that the Justices are prepared to issue a broad ruling overturning prior restrictive precedents; Sotomayor's ascension replacing Souter will not change the odds. as Souter's was a free speech restrictionist vote in campaign finance cases.  The March 2009 oral argument in the case (69 pages, double spaced, of which 56 are the actual argument, the other 14 case lists) offers clues that a major reversal of prior precedent might be in store.  (Reading the Q&A with its numerous twists & turns leads me to conclude: "Oh what a tangled web Congress weaves, when campaign laws it ill-conceives.")

This unusual decision increases pressure to confirm Justice Sotomayor in time for her to sit as the ninth Justice in the case, David Souter having retired yesterday.  Oral argument will be held in advance of the Court's 2009-2010 term, which begins the first Monday in October, falling on Oct. 5.

LFTC - Honduras Hates Hugo (Chavez)

Over the weekend came a military coup in Honduras that, WSJ pundit Mary Anasatsia O'Grady writes, reflects Honduran rejection of Venezuelan thug-tyrant Hugo Chavez.  Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, following Hugo Chavez, called an referendum illegally and extra-constitutionally, in defiance of the legislative and judicial branches.  Thus the military stepped in to prevent the travesty of another Hugo Chavez.  The military immediately turned over control to Congress, whose leader assumed an interim Presidency pending a November election.

Roger Noriega sees the ousted President as a Chavez clone.  Noting that most Latin American governments limit their Presidents to single terms, mindful of past abuses, RN details why the military stepped in, recalling what Chavez did and Zelaya wished to emulate:

Once he was elected in 1998, Chavez rammed through constitutional amendments that concentrated most of the powers of the state in his hands. In the coup de grace against Venezuelan democracy, last year he engineered a "reform" that permits him to seek the presidency indefinitely.

Chavez has urged his acolytes in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua--upon whom he has lavished vast sums of foreign aid--to shove aside constitutional norms to impose their will. That is precisely what Zelaya was attempting to do when he came up against the country's other democratic institutions, which declared unconstitutional a popular referendum that he hoped would bless his second term.

Specifically, Honduras Electoral Tribunal, Congress, Supreme Court, attorney general and human rights ombudsman each declared Zelaya's plan unlawful. Undaunted, Zelaya stepped up his populist rhetoric in a bid to whip up the mob against the legal obstacles in his way. It speaks volumes that Zelaya was never able to mobilize large demonstrations. The idea that "Mel" Zelaya thought he deserved a second term left most Hondurans merely mystified.

NRO''s Mona Charen adds more context to the picture.  On CNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough made a neat point about President 44, noting that he regards the Iranian struggle between a vicious regime and democratic dissenters as a largely internal matter that calls for an Iranian solution, while he instantly condemned the Honduras coup and called for reinstatement of the deposed President.  Given that the coup was intended to protect democracy from a Chavez-style displacement, 44's reaction is premature and unsettling.

The OAS, predictably, backed the would-be Hugo.  President Obama sided with Hugo & Castro, calling the coup illegal and "a terrible precedent"; Hugo (naturally) threatens to invade.

LFTC - IRAN Update: Nasty for Quite a While

Yesterday Iran formally certified Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the June 12 election winner and President.  Former Director of National Intelligence, CIA and National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden told MSNBC yesterday that dealing with Iran has always been very difficult.  General Hayden said that Iran will now put acceptance of the election results in front of any negotiation over matters nuclear.  "Everyone now agrees that "something fundamentally has changed in Iran."  Hayden added: "It remains to be seen how this will affect the security of the Iranian state."  Family Security Matters posted open letters from Iranian exiles to President Obama about dealing with the Iranian regime.  Manhattan Institute scholar Judy Miller & her Iranian academic co-author see a "ray of light" for reform in Iran.

WSJ pundit Bret Stephens sees a misguided realism guiding Team Obama: conciliate and negotiate Iran away from the nuclear precipice:

In other words, Mr. Obama seems to have thought that a considerable part of America's Iran problem was simply an America problem, to be addressed by various forms of conciliation: Mr. Obama's New Year's greetings to "the Islamic Republic of Iran"; the disavowal of regime change as a U.S. objective; the offer of direct talks without preconditions; withdrawal from Iraq; the insistence, following the election, that the U.S. would neither presume to judge the outcome nor otherwise "meddle" in an internal Iranian affair.

What did all this achieve? Iran's nuclear programs are accelerating. It is testing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. Its support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is unabated. Ahmadinejad stole an election in broad daylight. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blessed the result. British Embassy staff are under siege. A campaign of mass arrests and intimidation is underway and a young woman named Neda Soltan was shot in the heart simply for choosing none of the above.

Oh, and Iran still accuses the U.S. of "meddling."

Now Mr. Obama is promising more of the same, plus the equivalent of a group hug for the demonstrators. Is this supposed to be "realism"?

Stephens sees a four-step alternative approach as more promising:

A more common sense form of realism would reach different conclusions. One is that the "bloviations" of Ahmadinejad are not just politically motivated, but are also expressions of contempt for Mr. Obama. That contempt springs from a keen nose for weakness, honed by the habits of dictatorship and based on an estimate -- so far unrefuted -- of Mr. Obama's mettle.

Second, as long as Tehran can murder its own people, scoff at a U.S. president and flout U.N. resolutions without consequence, it will continue to do so.

Third is that the Achilles Heel of the Iranian regime isn't its "isolation." (What kind of isolation is it when Ahmadinejad's "election" was instantly ratified by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev?) Nor is it its vulnerability to a gasoline embargo, vulnerable though it is. Its real weakness is its own domestic unpopularity, which has at last found expression in a massive opposition movement.

The fourth is that Iran's nuclear programs have now reached the stage where they can only be stopped through military strikes -- probably Israeli -- or an internal political decision to abandon them. The prospect of another Mideast war can't exactly please the administration. So how about trying to achieve the same result by leveraging point No. 3?

Below is a sobering essay on Iran & America by Stratfor's founder, republished with Stratfor's permission.

The Real Struggle in Iran and Implications for U.S. Dialogue

by George Friedman

Speaking of the situation in Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama said June 26, “We don’t yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran.” On the surface that is a strange statement, since we know that with minor exceptions, the demonstrations in Tehran lost steam after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for them to end and security forces asserted themselves. By the conventional wisdom, events in Iran represent an oppressive regime crushing a popular rising. If so, it is odd that the U.S. president would raise the question of what has happened in Iran.

In reality, Obama’s point is well taken. This is because the real struggle in Iran has not yet been settled, nor was it ever about the liberalization of the regime. Rather, it has been about the role of the clergy — particularly the old-guard clergy — in Iranian life, and the future of particular personalities among this clergy.

Ahmadinejad Against the Clerical Elite

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran his re-election campaign against the old clerical elite, charging them with corruption, luxurious living and running the state for their own benefit rather than that of the people. He particularly targeted Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an extremely senior leader, and his family. Indeed, during the demonstrations, Rafsanjani’s daughter and four other relatives were arrested, held and then released a day later.

Rafsanjani represents the class of clergy that came to power in 1979. He served as president from 1989-1997, but Ahmadinejad defeated him in 2005. Rafsanjani carries enormous clout within the system as head of the regime’s two most powerful institutions — the Expediency Council, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council and parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, whose powers include oversight of the supreme leader. Forbes has called him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Rafsanjani, in other words, remains at the heart of the post-1979 Iranian establishment.

Ahmadinejad expressly ran his recent presidential campaign against Rafsanjani, using the latter’s family’s vast wealth to discredit Rafsanjani along with many of the senior clerics who dominate the Iranian political scene. It was not the regime as such that he opposed, but the individuals who currently dominate it. Ahmadinejad wants to retain the regime, but he wants to repopulate the leadership councils with clerics who share his populist values and want to revive the ascetic foundations of the regime. The Iranian president constantly contrasts his own modest lifestyle with the opulence of the current religious leadership.

Recognizing the threat Ahmadinejad represented to him personally and to the clerical class he belongs to, Rafsanjani fired back at Ahmadinejad, accusing him of having wrecked the economy. At his side were other powerful members of the regime, including Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who has made no secret of his antipathy toward Ahmadinejad and whose family links to the Shiite holy city of Qom give him substantial leverage. The underlying issue was about the kind of people who ought to be leading the clerical establishment. The battlefield was economic: Ahmadinejad’s charges of financial corruption versus charges of economic mismanagement leveled by Rafsanjani and others.

When Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi on the night of the election, the clerical elite saw themselves in serious danger. The margin of victory Ahmadinejad claimed might have given him the political clout to challenge their position. Mousavi immediately claimed fraud, and Rafsanjani backed him up. Whatever the motives of those in the streets, the real action was a knife fight between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. By the end of the week, Khamenei decided to end the situation. In essence, he tried to hold things together by ordering the demonstrations to halt while throwing a bone to Rafsanjani and Mousavi by extending a probe into the election irregularities and postponing a partial recount by five days.

The Struggle Within the Regime

The key to understanding the situation in Iran is realizing that the past weeks have seen not an uprising against the regime, but a struggle within the regime. Ahmadinejad is not part of the establishment, but rather has been struggling against it, accusing it of having betrayed the principles of the Islamic Revolution. The post-election unrest in Iran therefore was not a matter of a repressive regime suppressing liberals (as in Prague in 1989), but a struggle between two Islamist factions that are each committed to the regime, but opposed to each other.

The demonstrators certainly included Western-style liberalizing elements, but they also included adherents of senior clerics who wanted to block Ahmadinejad’s re-election. And while Ahmadinejad undoubtedly committed electoral fraud to bulk up his numbers, his ability to commit unlimited fraud was blocked, because very powerful people looking for a chance to bring him down were arrayed against him.

The situation is even more complex because it is not simply a fight between Ahmadinejad and the clerics, but also a fight among the clerical elite regarding perks and privileges — and Ahmadinejad is himself being used within this infighting. The Iranian president’s populism suits the interests of clerics who oppose Rafsanjani; Ahmadinejad is their battering ram. But as Ahmadinejad increases his power, he could turn on his patrons very quickly. In short, the political situation in Iran is extremely volatile, just not for the reason that the media portrayed.

Rafsanjani is an extraordinarily powerful figure in the establishment who clearly sees Ahmadinejad and his faction as a mortal threat. Ahmadinejad’s ability to survive the unified opposition of the clergy, election or not, is not at all certain. But the problem is that there is no unified clergy. The supreme leader is clearly trying to find a new political balance while making it clear that public unrest will not be tolerated. Removing “public unrest” (i.e., demonstrations) from the tool kits of both sides may take away one of Rafsanjani’s more effective tools. But ultimately, it actually could benefit him. Should the internal politics move against the Iranian president, it would be Ahmadinejad — who has a substantial public following — who would not be able to have his supporters take to the streets.

The View From the West

The question for the rest of the world is simple: Does it matter who wins this fight? We would argue that the policy differences between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani are minimal and probably would not affect Iran’s foreign relations. This fight simply isn’t about foreign policy.

Rafsanjani has frequently been held up in the West as a pragmatist who opposes Ahmadinejad’s radicalism. Rafsanjani certainly opposes Ahmadinejad and is happy to portray the Iranian president as harmful to Iran, but it is hard to imagine significant shifts in foreign policy if Rafsanjani’s faction came out on top. Khamenei has approved Iran’s foreign policy under Ahmadinejad, and Khamenei works to maintain broad consensus on policies. Ahmadinejad’s policies were vetted by Khamenei and the system that Rafsanjani is part of. It is possible that Rafsanjani secretly harbors different views, but if he does, anyone predicting what these might be is guessing.

Rafsanjani is a pragmatist in the sense that he systematically has accumulated power and wealth. He seems concerned about the Iranian economy, which is reasonable because he owns a lot of it. Ahmadinejad’s entire charge against him is that Rafsanjani is only interested in his own economic well-being. These political charges notwithstanding, Rafsanjani was part of the 1979 revolution, as were Ahmadinejad and the rest of the political and clerical elite. It would be a massive mistake to think that any leadership elements have abandoned those principles.

When the West looks at Iran, two concerns are expressed. The first relates to the Iranian nuclear program, and the second relates to Iran’s support for terrorists, particularly Hezbollah. Neither Iranian faction is liable to abandon either, because both make geopolitical sense for Iran and give it regional leverage.

Tehran’s primary concern is regime survival, and this has two elements. The first is deterring an attack on Iran, while the second is extending Iran’s reach so that such an attack could be countered. There are U.S. troops on both sides of the Islamic Republic, and the United States has expressed hostility to the regime. The Iranians are envisioning a worst-case scenario, assuming the worst possible U.S. intentions, and this will remain true no matter who runs the government.

We do not believe that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, a point we have made frequently. Iran understands that the actual acquisition of a nuclear weapon would lead to immediate U.S. or Israeli attacks. Accordingly, Iran’s ideal position is to be seen as developing nuclear weapons, but not close to having them. This gives Tehran a platform for bargaining without triggering Iran’s destruction, a task at which it has proved sure-footed.

In addition, Iran has maintained capabilities in Iraq and Lebanon. Should the United States or Israel attack, Iran would thus be able to counter by doing everything possible destabilize Iraq — bogging down U.S. forces there — while simultaneously using Hezbollah’s global reach to carry out terror attacks. After all, Hezbollah is today’s al Qaeda on steroids. The radical Shiite group’s ability, coupled with that of Iranian intelligence, is substantial.

We see no likelihood that any Iranian government would abandon this two-pronged strategy without substantial guarantees and concessions from the West. Those would have to include guarantees of noninterference in Iranian affairs. Obama, of course, has been aware of this bedrock condition, which is why he went out of his way before the election to assure Khamenei in a letter that the United States had no intention of interfering.

Though Iran did not hesitate to lash out at CNN’s coverage of the protests, the Iranians know that the U.S. government doesn’t control CNN’s coverage. But Tehran takes a slightly different view of the BBC. The Iranians saw the depiction of the demonstrations as a democratic uprising against a repressive regime as a deliberate attempt by British state-run media to inflame the situation. This allowed the Iranians to vigorously blame some foreigner for the unrest without making the United States the primary villain.

But these minor atmospherics aside, we would make three points. First, there was no democratic uprising of any significance in Iran. Second, there is a major political crisis within the Iranian political elite, the outcome of which probably tilts toward Ahmadinejad but remains uncertain. Third, there will be no change in the substance of Iran’s foreign policy, regardless of the outcome of this fight. The fantasy of a democratic revolution overthrowing the Islamic Republic — and thus solving everyone’s foreign policy problems a la the 1991 Soviet collapse — has passed.

That means that Obama, as the primary player in Iranian foreign affairs, must now define an Iran policy — particularly given Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s meeting in Washington with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell this Monday. Obama has said that nothing that has happened in Iran makes dialogue impossible, but opening dialogue is easier said than done. The Republicans consistently have opposed an opening to Iran; now they are joined by Democrats, who oppose dialogue with nations they regard as human rights violators. Obama still has room for maneuver, but it is not clear where he thinks he is maneuvering. The Iranians have consistently rejected dialogue if it involves any preconditions. But given the events of the past weeks, and the perceptions about them that have now been locked into the public mind, Obama isn’t going to be able to make many concessions.

It would appear to us that in this, as in many other things, Obama will be following the Bush strategy — namely, criticizing Iran without actually doing anything about it. And so he goes to Moscow more aware than ever that Russia could cause the United States a great deal of pain if it proceeded with weapons transfers to Iran, a country locked in a political crisis and unlikely to emerge from it in a pleasant state of mind.

LFTC - Israel Offers Settlements Compromise

A New York Times front-pager yesterday reported that Israel is willing to freeze new settlement construction on the West Bank, if in return Palestinians commit to negotiating an end to hostilities & Arab states agree to implement confidence-building measures.  But Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reveals this as yet another illusion re the Mideast: that Arab governments would respond meaningfully to an Israeli settlements freeze. In fact, DI writes, cosmetic gestures at most would be offered in return.

Bottom Line.  Good luck Bibi--and do not expect more than 5 nanoseconds worth of appreciation from Team Obama, which, like the Palestinians, will swallow this latest Israeli concession and then press for more up-front goodies.  Israeli officials meet ours today in Washington.

LFTC - North Korea, Missiles & Hawaii, & Arms Control

National security maven George Wittman offers observations on North Korea that bear careful reading.  Gordon Chang sees North Korea's renunciation--three times--of the 1953 armistice as just cause to board the ship with suspect cargo that our Navy is shadowing.  A WSJ editorial sees a contradiction in Team Obama's opposition to and proposed funding cuts for missile defense, and its deployment of ballistic missile defense to Oahu, in anticipation of a possible North Korean  missile test headed towards the Islands.  Ex-Reagan official Richard Perle & Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) decry Team Obama's arms control fetishism, potentially casting missile defense aside, and also failing to keep up America's nuclear arsenal.

LFTC - Guarding Against EMP Catastrophe

Writing in Human Events, Kathryn Gaines warns of our vulnerability to an EMP attack.  Fortunately, the federal government is beginning to listen.  The Defense Department has ordered construction of hardened electrical infrastructure for key facilities in Washington, DC.  This spring a bill to provide protection for electrical infrastructure nationwide, H.R. 2195, was introduced in the House of Representatives with bipartisan sponsorship across a broad political spectrum.

LFTC - Obamalympics 2016?

President 44 has appointed another czar, the Washington Times informs us in a Monday editorial.  The czar will head the newly-created White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport.  In 1984, though mostly coporate-financed, the government paid out $75M for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics; in 1996 the Atlanta Summer Games cost the government $609M; and in 2002 the Salt Lake City Winter Games cost taxpayers over $1.3B--much of it surely due to extra security precautions for an event merely months after September 11, 2001.  Could Chicago 2016, if Team Obama gets the Windy City the Games, give us the world's first trillion-dollar sporting event?

LFTC - Index 6/29/09

5 posts: (1) IRAN: Voices--Us v. Them; (2) How Green is Obama's Eco-Valley?--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (3) Mourning Michael 24/7: Class & Crass; (4) DC Metro Train Crash: Taxed to Death--The Ap & the Cap; (5) Magic Flute 35 Millennia Before Mozart--Cyber Serendip.

LFTC: IRAN: Voices

President Obama.  At Friday's joint White House press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama answered questions on Iran.  44 was asked if he still thought, as per several weeks ago with his initial statement after the Iran election, that opposition leader Hossein Mousavi and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are basically similar in outlook.  44 answered that Mousavi has evolved: He has "captured the spirit of forces within Iran that are interested in opening up."  Iran's regime has violated international norms.  44 does not take Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about seeking an apology from 44.  He need not apologize to 44 but might look to the families of "those beaten or shot or detained" and might "answer their questions."

Asked about negotiating with Iran's leaders on the nuclear issue, 44 said he was still waiting on the outcome of events inside Iran, 44 responded: "There is no doubt that any direct dialogue with the rulers of Iran will be affected by events of the past weeks."  A nuclear Iran, 44 added, could trigger an arms race in the Mideast.  "Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a big problem." There will continue to be multilateral P5+1 talks.  As to "direct dialogue between America and Iran, we will have to see how that plays out in the weeks ahead."  (One way matters are playing out, as Gen. Ray Odierno told CNN's John King on Sunday's "State of the Union," is that Iran is still exercising "undue influence" in Iraqi affairs.)

Former British PM Tony Blair told CNN's Fareed Zakharia on "GPS" yesterday that President 44 has struck the right tone re Iran.  Blair endorsed continuing to seek a nuclear deal with the existing regime.

Iran.  An Iranian exile writes a poignant open letter to Ali Khamenei, not likely to resonate with Iran's Supremo.  Saturday the government declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner in the June 12 election.  With Tehran's streets still in some ferment, opposition leader Hossein Mousavi reportedly said that he will apply for permits to hold future demonstrations.  The British government protested the arrest of nine British Embassy staffers by the regime (which claimed that the staffers were aiding anti-regime demonstrations).  A powerful--brutal--voice is that of the regime's Basij militia, reports a Sunday Washington Times front-pager; the group's full name is Basij-e-Mostzafan--"Mobilization of the Oppressed."  A Sunday New York Times front-pager profiles Repression 101 inside Iran.  Time Magazine asks which paramilitary unit rules Iran's streets.  Al-Jazeera reports force used against protests in northern Tehran.  Reports have the security forces dragging protesters out of hospital beds to arrest them.  The Washington Post reports that the regime is pressuring Mousavi to give in:

The emerging power dynamics leave Mousavi with tough choices. Confronted with increasing political pressure over what supporters of the government say is his leading role in orchestrating riots, he can either acknowledge his defeat and be embraced by his enemies or continue to fight over the election result and face imprisonment.

"Everything now depends on Mousavi," said Amir Mohebbian, a political analyst. "If he decreases the tension, politicians can manage this. If he increases pressure, the influence of the military and security forces will grow."

Should he continue to fight, other analysts say, Mousavi and many of his advisers could be jailed, which would mean the end of their political influence within Iran's ruling system. The exclusion of such a large group would end Iran's traditional power-sharing system. Authority would rest in the hands of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and his supporters, leaving the parliament as the lone outpost of opposition voices.

Robert Maginnis sees Iran's leadership divided, but reform stalled; President Obama's engagement on nuclear & terrorism is, he writes, "dead in the water."  In the same vein, Amir Taheri asks with whom America should negotiate re Iran issues.  Fareed Zakharia says Iran 2009 is not Berlin 1989.  Velvet revolutions then toppled Soviet Communism due to three forces: democracy, nationalism and religion; only the first is on the side of the protesters in Iran today.  The latter is shared (albeit, I would note, that revolutionary ideology is the regime's and not the opposition), and religious passion is split between moderate clerics and the radical theocratic regime.  A RAND analyst sees the Revolutionary Guard triumphant.  Ex-NATO Commander Gen. Wesley Clark agrees.

Other Voices.  The Washington Times reports that encryption technology originally developed for the US Navy has aided the protesters, bypassing regime Internet filters to reach the outside world.  Yet the Financial Times reports that on the whole, Iran, and China as well, has been mostly successful in cutting off prohibited communications.  Helle Dale of the Heritage Foundation calls for more public diplomacy based upon new technology distribution.

Legendary Soviet-era dissident Natan Sharansky urges more support for Iranian dissidents seeking more freedom:

Every totalitarian society consists of three groups: true believers, double-thinkers and dissidents. In every totalitarian regime, no matter its cultural or geographical circumstances, the majority undergo a conversion over time from true belief in the revolutionary message into double-thinking. They no longer believe in the regime but are too scared to say so. Then there are the dissidents -- pioneers who dare to cross the line between double-thinking and everything that lies on the other side. In doing so, they first internalize, then articulate and finally act on the innermost feelings of the nation.

People in free societies watching massive military parades or vociferous displays of love for the leaders of totalitarian regimes often conclude, "Well, that's their mentality; there's nothing we can do about it." Thus they and their leaders miss what is readily grasped by local dissidents attuned to what is happening on the ground: the spectacle of a nation of double-thinkers slowly or rapidly approaching a condition of open dissent.

To see the telltale signs, sometimes it helps to have experienced totalitarianism firsthand. More than once in recent years, former Soviet citizens returning from a visit to Iran have told me how much Iranian society reminded them of the final stages of Soviet communism. Their testimony was what persuaded me to write almost five years ago that Iran was extraordinary for the speed with which, in the span of a single generation, a citizenry had made the transition from true belief in the revolutionary promise into disaffection and double-thinking. Could dissent be far behind?

Former Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar calls for the West to speak out forcefully against the regime's brutal crackdown.  Human rights maven Joshua Muravchik profiles a former regime supporter who has seen the light.  In a Sunday WP op-ed, Muravchik argues that recent events spell the beginning of the end for radical Islam.  On the Sunday talk shows, Fox News Sunday's All-Star panel all agreed (Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson, Juan Williams) that Iran's crackdown precludes Team Obama doing business as usual, albeit 44 has been dragged reluctantly to this realization, always lagging behind events.

Ex-CIA agent Robert Baer told Zakharia yesterday on "GPS" that eventually the Iranian regime will crumble.  Baer added that he is certain that we lack intelligence assets inside Iran to give us a good picture of what is happening, let alone be able to influence how events unfold.  Intelligence maven Gabriel Schoenfeld writes that the CIA is long out of the business of helping democracy dissidents.  GS notes how CIA covert operations--now long out of favor--saved Italy from Communism:

In the late 1940s through the late 1950s, the U.S. faced similar problems in various locales around the world. One of them was Italy, where there was a very real danger that the highly organized Italian Communist Party -- benefiting from huge covert subsidies from the Kremlin -- would come to power via the ballot box. Soviet funds had enabled that party to build a dense network of paid organizers that operated in every region and created front groups in every sector of society, from farmers to veterans to students.

The prospect of Italy becoming the first country in Europe to fall to Communism via subversion rather than direct force of Soviet arms was not, at the height of the Cold War, something the U.S. could abide. So the CIA was instructed, first by Harry Truman and then by Dwight Eisenhower, to stop it. It was the challenge presented by Italy's vulnerability in its 1948 election that prompted the fledgling spy agency to create its Office of Policy Coordination. The banal-sounding name was a cover for what was an aggressive tool of covert political propaganda and paramilitary operations.

Over the course of the 1950s, the CIA secretly funneled money to forces in Italy's political center. This enabled democratically oriented parties to match the Italian Communist Party activist for activist. When revealed years later, the policy was subjected to scathing criticism. But it had worked. Fragile Italy remained democratic in the 1950s and is a stable democracy today.

A Washington Post editorial calls regime change true realism:

It's still too early to say whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mr. Ahmadinejad will succeed in their hard-line coup; de facto opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi remains publicly defiant. Yet it is becoming quite clear -- for all who care to see it -- what the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime will offer if it survives: harsh repression at home and unrelenting hostility toward the West. If the regime chooses to "engage" at all with the United States, it will be to bolster its shaky legitimacy, not to surrender its nuclear program or its support for terrorism. The only plausible path toward ending the threat it poses is that demanded by the demonstrators: regime change.

Some have theorized that Mr. Ahmadinejad's repression of the massive popular uprising could at least make it easier for the United States to build a coalition able to impose tough sanctions. But this week brought a depressingly familiar indication of how that diplomacy will unfold. Russia, which along with China has recognized Mr. Ahmadinejad as the election winner, blocked a Group of Eight meeting from even condemning the government's violence. "Isolating Iran is the wrong approach," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, repeating his standard line. With U.S. support, the G-8 ended up renewing its invitation to Iran to open negotiations on its nuclear program -- even though the blood on Tehran's streets is not yet dry.

A WSJ editorial sees lessons from Reagan and Poland for the Iran case today.  After reviewing Carter & Reagan stances toward Poland, the WSJ compares Poland then with Iran today:

Today's Iran is different in many respects from 1980s Poland. The Iranian economy is a shambles, but the regime can sustain itself through oil and gas exports. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can claim his own religious authority. And opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi appears to be a man more in the mold of an Alexander Dubcek than Lech Walesa.

Then again, the Iranian regime is now openly detested by a huge segment of the population, which has produced its own roster of martyrs. The repression has united the opposition and inspired global support, including some prominent former apologists for the mullahs. A large and restive trade union movement could become a locus of opposition, as could a growing number of prominent Shiite theologians who reject the idea of theocratic rule. The country is profoundly vulnerable to a gasoline embargo, for which there is pending legislation in Congress. Digital links to the outside world make it nearly impossible for the regime to arrest or murder dissidents without the world noticing.

All of which means that there are opportunities for the Obama Administration to exploit, provided it envisions a democratic and peaceful Iran as a strategic American aim. That doesn't mean military confrontation with the mullahs. But it does require taking every opportunity to apply consistent pressure on Iran while exploiting its internal tensions and contradictions.

"I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity," Mr. Walesa wrote in these pages after Reagan died in 2004. "Let's remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for."

But the WSJ notes that Hossain Mosavi is more like failed 1968 Prague Spring leader Alexander Dubcek than Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.

Bottom Line.  Iran has silenced many voices inside, but more voices outside are being raised.  The clerical fascist theocracy has been irremediably discredited.  America stands aloof, and Iran's dissidents must fend for themselves in what likely will prove to be a long, twilight struggle.  As for a nuclear deal, bearing in mind the late Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov's famous dictum that a regime that oppresses its own people cannot be trusted to keep international bargains it makes, a deal's sole value, if somehow consummated, would be to provide a political basis for sterner action once Iran violates the deal's terms, as surely it would do.

LFTC - How Green is Obama's Eco-Valley!

Last Friday the House passed, 219-212, the cap & trade House bill--the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454)--with 44 Democrats voting against, but 8 GOP Members voting in favor.  A swing of 4 GOP votes would have killed the bill.  The Senate is supposed to be a tougher sled for the administration.  Politics maven Jay Cost sees long odds against Senate passage of cap & trade.  Here is a TAS piece on the legislative sleight of hand employed to ram this bill through, by Pelosi and her California partner in Congressional crime, militant Green Henry Waxman:

When fighting between the Energy & Commerce and Agriculture committees over the bill grew too intense, the farm lobby was bought off as were a lot of other Democrats. In exchange for votes, Pelosi and Waxman wrote countless paybacks, favors, and concessions into the legislation -- all without serious debate.

Indeed, House leadership crafted much of the ACES Act in secret behind closed doors. In the week before the final vote, it grew by a whopping 600 pages. Even that figure doesn't stress the urgent, secretive nature of the process. At 3:09 Friday morning, Waxman et al. introduced a 309-page "manager's amendment" to the legislation that was set for a vote later in the day.

Representatives would have had all of nine hours to study the text, assuming they went without sleep. The manager's amendment made even that impossible, because you had roughly 1,200 pages of text -- containing, at last count, 397 new government regulations and 1,090 new economic mandates -- followed by over 300 pages of text with no index that amended the previous legislation on paragraph by paragraph basis.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) called the House bill "a pile of ----" (you fill in after reading article).  The bill, 1,200 pages (more than 100 pages longer than the February stimulus bill), was last amended 20 hours before final passage.  On CNN "State of the Union" yesterday Minnesota GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty told anchor John King that the bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for passage because she thinks it means "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs!" actually means "capping job growth and trading jobs" (i.e., from here to places overseas).  

Still pending in the House is the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2009 (H.R. 1835), heartily endorsed by legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens in a conversation with CNN's King.

Business historian John Steele Gordon calls cap & trade a declaration of war against the American economy.  It will, JSG writes, empower federal bureaucrats to intrude into local decisions, start a trade war with India & China, and act as an auto-engine speed governor on economic growth by slowing growth as the economy accelerates.  JSG sees President Obama emulating Thomas Jefferson's disastrous second-term Embargo Act, which hurt American economic interests in a misguided effort to punish England for the Royal Navy's seizure of American ships & impressment of our sailors on the high seas.

George Will sees Team Obama mesmerized by Green theology, such that economic facts to the contrary simply are ignored.  GW links to this Guardian article on the Spanish windmill debacle.  GW references also a Spanish March 2009 study showing deleterious impact of renewables policy (53 pages) on Spain's economy, and a March 2009 report by the Senate Committee on Green Jobs & the New Economy (44 pages) sponsored by Ranking Minority Member Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO).  AEI scholar Ken Green explains that the "cap"in the House bill is a non-binding ceiling, and thus is not a true cap.  In another piece Green explains why cap & trade is too complex to work properly; and it heavily favors politically favored interests.

A WSJ editorial assails the Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill being pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Uranus), Rep. Ed Markey (D-Neptune) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Pluto).  Even the vaunted Congressional Budget Office laid an egg, using, the WSJ notes, unrealistically narrow cost estimates that ignore collateral economic impact.  A better proxy than the absurdly low $175 per household that CBO sees as the bills cost (close to $200B annually) is the UK experience, where recent Green legislation now costs each UK household $1,300 annually--which in US terms, would top $1.4TR annually.

Michelle Malkin nails EPA for suppressing a contrary view on carbon emission gains versus economic costs.  A Washington Times story notes that the cap & trade bill targets light bulbs and...hot tubs.  Washington Times pundit Wesley Pruden turns is sharp wit on the "hot-air bill" Democrats are pushing.

Here is a  summary of an AEI paper on 30 years of eco-progress in Canada.  The report link is in the summary.  As the report runs 53 pages, I will pass, but LFTC readers with an appetite for detail might try it.  It looks good from a quick scan.  WSJ pundit Kim Strassel notes that Down Under the Australian Senate changed climate change policy due to new scientific evidence.  Two key paragraphs in her must-read column:

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

Gregg Easterbrook writes in a New York Times op-ed that promising coal-gasification technology that would cut carbon emissions sits on the sidelines while a second administration pours billions into a new technology project aimed at zero emissions, that has to date utterly failed.  The best is, he writes, the enemy of the good, a classic Beltway boondoggle exercise:

Current coal-fired power plants burn pulverized coal using a combustion process that hasn’t changed in a half a century. The new approach turns coal into a gas similar to natural gas, which runs through a device similar to a jet engine. Such plants can achieve near-zero emissions of toxic material and chemicals that form smog, and they require about a third less coal than regular coal-fired power plants to produce an equal amount of energy, which means about a third lower greenhouse gases.

Beyond that, the promising technology of “sequestering” carbon dioxide — pumping it back into the ground to keep it out of atmosphere — appears for technical reasons to be impractical for conventional pulverized-coal power plants. But gasification plants have technical characteristics that should make “sequestration” of carbon feasible. A gasification power plant with sequestration would have around two-thirds lower greenhouse gases than a conventional coal-fired generating station.

The first commercial gasification power plant, designed by General Electric for Duke Energy, is being built in Indiana. Yet, absurdly, most state public-utility commissions have denied requests to construct these environmentally friendly systems. Last year, Virginia denied a major utility’s request to build a coal-fired power plant that would have sequestered nearly all its carbon output.

Bottom Line.  Green science is coming undone as Green economics run up against the global financial and economic woes already tacking trillions onto projections of a few years ago.  Cap & trade is an economic disaster waiting to happen, should the Senate yield, and pass the bill.

LFTC: Mourning Michael 24/7

NRO's Jonah Goldberg wrote about Michael Jackson Friday, and said much of what I thought of saying but lacked the energy to write.  Courtesy of JG's piece, my work is done for me.  In a first-rate piece that I wish I had written, one that LFTC readers should read in full, regardless of their feelings about the King of Pop, JG captures the essence of what is wrong about the media madness of mourning Micheal 24/7:

"And while we’re at it, his relatively early death wasn’t “tragic.” He was one of the richest people in the world. He spent his money on perpetual childhood and he was perpetually with children not his own.

"Meanwhile, in the last ten days, we’ve seen or heard of remarkable people who’ve given their lives for freedom in Iran. We’ve heard of innocents killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the last decade, America has lost thousands of heroes in noble causes and thousands of innocent bystanders who were denied the simple joys of life through no fault of their own. Those deaths are tragic, and we're hard pressed to think of more than a handful of names to put with the long line of the dead.

"If anything, Michael Jackson’s life, not his death, was tragic."

Bottom Line. In the past twenty years, America has beccome Clinton-ized, Oprah-ized and Diana-ized: Clinton-ized in its growing fascination with scandal, at the expense of substance, in public life; Oprah-ized in its addiction to therapeutic approaches to life's problems, at the expense of practical coping; and Diana-ized in its infatuation with mega-celebrity, at the expense of extraordinary achievement.  Jackson was clearly a mega-celebrity entertainer, whose passing merited front-page attention.  But if the world has not lost its collective mind, as time passes the self-immolation of a monumentally self-absorbed entertainment superstar will be displaced in historical pride of place by the heroic, and truly tragic, martyrdom of young Iranian street protester Neda Agha Soltan, whose murder by a regime rooftop sniper energized the revolution of millions of Iranians against a cruel, atavistic theocratic tyranny.

LFTC - DC Metro Train Wreck: Taxed to Death

The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday on an astonishing tale of bureaucratic insanity: District of Columbia officials delayed replacing old cars of the type that were involved in last week's catastrophic train wreck because--the DC government had financed purchase of the cars via a tax shelter for which early winding down carried financial penalties, meaning that replacement could not take place before 2014.

A friend and LFTC reader has published for more than 25 years a superb private newsletter covering a broad range of issues.  He labels all District items "Lost Colony."  This latest episode illustrates why.

LFTC - Magic Flute 35 Millennia Before Mozart

Yahoo News reported last week that scholars have excavated part of what is now the world's oldest known musical instrument: an ivory flute.  Actually, three of them, found in Germany, which represent the first confirmation that Stone Age humans played music.  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1791 opera, Die Zauberflote, premiered months before the genius composer passed away, at age 35.  We now know that Mozart's magic instrument was not mankind's first.