JunkYardBlog

MOCKING THE DEAD

Well, what can one say about someone who celebrates death?

When Sen. Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash, and people turned his funeral into a political rally, the nation was rightly disgusted. It was a revolting, petty act, atavistic and cruel and heartless. It said that life has no meaning apart from politics. How sad.

Now, an old warhorse of a politician is dead. Strom Thurmond lived a full life, longer than most of us will, and he packed more into that life than most of us can dream. Was he perfect? Far from it. He was a randy old man to the end. He once held views that civilized people consider anathema today, but those views were not much different than those held by most of the people of the time, people like my grandparents and yours. The nation outgrew them, and so did Strom Thurmond.

Sure, he didn't give up some of those old views. He always considered homosexuality deviant, and its practitioners bent on destroying society. Andrew Sullivan seems to be trying to prove him right.

For the past couple of days, Andrew Sullivan has been celebrating the death of a tired old man. It's a cruel, petty response to what is the one aspect of life we all will eventually experience--the end. Sullivan himself knows this all too well--he carries in his blood a virus that will probably kill him, as it claimed an awful lot of his friends. A decade of borrowed time has done nothing to make Andrew Sullivan any more mature or human. If anything, he has used his borrowed time to mock everything and everyone who doesn't see the world entirely his way, turning into a true demagogue. Strom did not agree with Sullivan's politics, so Andrew Sullivan is dancing on his grave.

Andrew Sullivan, you have no decency. You disgust me. Celebrate Strom Thurmond's death all you want. It won't make you happy. It just reveals the emptiness in you, where your heart should be.

WHY SHOULD THE DEVIL HAVE ALL THE GOOD MUSIC?

According to these guys, because today's contemporary Christian artists produce crap. Can't say I find much to argue with in that. I will say, though, that a few folks--DA, Kerry Livgren, anyone anywhere near Steve Taylor and Squint Records--are still producing quality stuff. Not many others, though.

LAP DANCING ON THE DEAD

Lap Dancing On The Constitution by George Will

"Sodomy legal in South Carolina: Strom Thurmond dead. On the same day. It's a funny old world, isn't it?" - Andrew Sullivan.

Yeah, ha-ha funny. Dance away Sulli.

"Nothing is certain but death, taxes and gays in your face -- even after death." - Benjamin Franklin updated for Andrew Sullivan

Flashback: Homosexual site advocates death of opponents

A radically pro-homosexual website has published a list of notable people its creators hope will "die soon" because the activists and lawmakers cited oppose the "gay" lifestyle.

..."If a person on this list dies (preferably a horrible death), a line will be drawn through their name," and then the deceased will be added to the site's "good riddance list."

Included on the "die soon" list are:

Former President Ronald Reagan, who "deserves to experience a horrible death soon and is getting what he deserves," the latter a reference to Reagan's worsening Alzheimer's disease;

Sens. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. and Jesse Helms, R-N.C.;

...Creators called Thurmond "doddering," "old" and "useless," and says is "rotting to death while the nation watches and laughs."

...As "journalists," creators said in the site's "About Us" section, "if it ever comes down to a court order to reveal anonymous sources, we will reluctantly go to jail to protect our right to practice our art without interference or restrictions, rather than break our word to keep such information confidential."

I always wondered what Sulli was doing online before he started blogging.

UPDATE: Sullivan has now dug up a six year-old joke story about Strom being sodomized. That's two posts in a row he's linked the act of sodomy with Strom Thurmond's dead body. Expect more from the blogosphere's resident Freudian.

STANDING UP FOR THE U.S. TAXPAYER (AND WHY I'M STILL NOT A DEMOCRAT: PATRICK KENNEDY)

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) doesn't like President Bush's tax cut:

As sometimes happens with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), he let his mouth race ahead of his brain Wednesday night at a gathering of Young Democrats at the Washington nightspot Acropolis. After presidential candidate Howard Dean spoke, Kennedy delivered an impassioned peroration against President Bush's tax cut. We hear that Kennedy told the crowd: "I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [bleeping] day in my life."

He went on to further demonstrations of his brilliance, forcing a party-line excuse and a defense. That defense is most notable for what it praises:

Kennedy's spokesman, Ernesto Anguilla, told us yesterday: "He was talking to the crowd; it was a rally-the-troops kind of speech about the tax cut. He was energizing the crowd and got caught up in it and used an unfortunate word, which he regrets using. . . . And no one pulled him off the stage."

Bragging about his lack of a resume rallied the troops? His public claim to a lifetime of sloth energized them? I guess that's what the Donks stand for these days--privilege and pomposity.

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Let me start this post with an assertion: I don't support sodomy laws. They're a bad, ineffective way for society to express its view of homosexual relationships. Unenforceable laws have no place on the books, and sodomy laws are largely unenforceable. There are ways they might be enforced that do not entail policing bedrooms--undercover operations targeting gay bars and pick-up joints, that sort of thing, and up until the late 60s and early 70s that is how such laws were enforced. If they were enforced--enforcement efforts varied around the country from fairly robust to no effort at all. But sending undercover cops into gay bars and hangouts is a very negative way to deal with homosexuality, even supposing society had the will to. It takes precious police manpower away from enforcing more urgent matters, to say nothing of the strange and dangerous situations undercover gay patrols might find themselves experiencing. So for a host of reasons, I'm with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in this week's decision--sodomy laws are in his words "uncommonly silly," but that doesn't give the Supreme Court the authority to strike them down. This week's decision in the Lawrence case is clearly judicial overreach, and will have sweeping consequences. It's not the end of the world, just the end of the world as we have known it for thousands of years.

I predict within five years, gay marriage will be a reality across the United States, overturning the definition of marriage Western society has embraced for millenia. The logic of the USSC's majority makes it inevitable. With gay marriage will come polyamorous marriage, within a few years, following the same logic. With these redefinitions of marriage will come, in a few years, gay and polyamorous divorces, and wrenching custody disputes over children and assets. Corporations will have to come to terms with these new arrangements for the purpose of determining health and retirement benefits, so expect many corporations to just cut or dramatically reduce their liability by gutting their benefit packages. Children caught up in all this will be raised in the most confusing circumstances imaginable--multiple fathers or mothers, biological parents they have never met (because gay adoption gets a boost now, as will surrogate births and various other means by which gay couples may have or obtain children), the works. The American family, for a small minority and in the eyes of the law, will become a house of mirrors.

That's only one part of the problem I see from this week's ruling. The other problem is what it will mean for the church.

Most churches today frown on the homosexual lifestyle. Where the Bible addresses homosexuality, it condemns it, and most churches rightly take their moral cues from the Bible. It is Christianity's foundational text. This week's ruling, because it is so sweeping, will open the door to lawsuits aimed at ending churches' "discrimination" against practicing homosexuals. Here's the form I expect it to take. A young man will graduate from a mainstream, well-respected seminary, probably in a conservative, evangelical denomination. He will be gay, but in the closet throughout his time in seminary. Upon graduation, he will apply for a job in a church, probably not as pastor (young seminarians tend to hit the lower ranks first) but as minister of music or youth pastor, or maybe associate pastor in a mid-sized or larger church. He will be qualified in every way--except that he will have also come out of the closet during the interview process. The church will not hire him, and he will sue it for discriminating against him. He'll lose, but that won't matter. He will have sent the church's denomination a message, and cost the local church a fortune (the ACLU or Human Rights Campaign will pick up his tab). The local church, if it is small enough, may close down as the case drags on and saps its funds. The denomination's hierarchy will look at its bylaws at the behest of its lawyers to see if there are ways to prevent future liability. More liberal denominations will change their bylaws and allow practicing homosexuals to enter its ministry force. In so doing they'll remove their legal liability, but at the expense of doctrine. More evangelical churches--those most hated by the gay rights lobbies--will not change, and will be sued repeatedly. It will take just one victory and the gay rights movement will have conquered the Christian church in America.

It might also take the form of a request for marriage. A gay couple will approach a pastor to request his services in a marriage ceremony, or they may just request the church's facilities. Perhaps it's a historic church, or the church where one of the couple's parents married years ago. The pastor will decline the request on doctrinal grounds, and get sued. Again, the gay couple will lose the case but win the war: The church will spend a fortune to defend itself, and it may end up changing its stance to deflect future liability. The church will lose in the press, which will demonize it and its pastor for their "intolerance."

Think it can't happen? There is already a lawsuit working its way through the courts demanding that the Catholic Church accept female priests. Gays already went after the Boy Scouts, taking them all the way to the Supreme Court to demand that the Scouts allow gay troop leaders. The Scouts won that case, but are losing the war that has followed as city after city pulls financial and other support and the press continues to browbeat them. Churches don't have the public-private model that the Scouts until recently enjoyed, but they do have members who are public figures. Those public figures will be called out to go on the record about such cases, and many will cave. Others will pander and join up with the plaintiffs. Churches will split over the issue.

In short, I think this week's ruling has opened the door to a wave of courtroom persecution, redefining marriage and ending the world as we know it.

THE SOUND OF THIEVERY

Glenn Reynolds links to this column as an argument that recording industry execs are hypocrites when it comes to file sharing. The upshot is that such execs never pay for music or books themselves yet they own scads of it because it is given to them by their friends who work for the companies that produce it. The column, and Glenn by extension, argue that they're doing the same thing as their nemesis file sharers--owning a product for which they haven't paid. Which is true, but irrelevant.

I certainly harbor no love for fat cat recording execs. They're leeches for the most part, people who exploit the talents of others for their own gain. And I certainly have no love for the RIAA--it's just the umbrella organization that the leeches are using to suck the artists' and the consumers' blood. But...

Surely there's a difference here between the actions of the execs and those of file sharers. It's the difference between a gift and a theft.

If I own a DVD, I can choose to give it away as a gift to someone. If someone else owns another DVD, even of the same movie I've given away, they can choose to give it to me. In both cases, the owner of the product has freely chosen to give away his own property--the DVD. No harm done, and no copyrights violated.

That's the position that recording companies are in--they own the intellectual property in their inventory. If they choose to give some samples of it away, either to someone that they believe will promote it or to execs at another company--to anyone at all, actually--they're perfectly within their rights to do so. It's a gift freely given. But the recording companies aren't saying to the recipients that they now have the right to make as many copies of that product as possible and distribute it to as many people as they possibly can. The recording companies are saying here's a sample of our product--whether you like the product or not, use it to do your job in reporting on our industry. Or just enjoy it. But we're freely giving it to you.

What makes this tricky is that most file sharing begins with someone who owns a legit copy of the music, and then decides to share it. If they give it away in the same form in which they bought it (and don't make a copy to keep for themselves), that's fine. But if they choose to file share, it's a different story. They rip the cd into mp3s and put them up on Kazaa or another P2P network, and anyone can then access that music if they get on the network and take the time to download. If you own a cd you have the right to make a legit backup for yourself, but you don't have the right to make lots and lots of "backups" and then give them away to people who otherwise might have shelled out some cash to buy the cd themselves, and that's what file sharing does. It violates the copyright owned by the recording company.

I'm not saying that the recording companies should then go about smashing into every file sharer's computer or sue them. In fact, I'm ambivalent on this whole thing. The technology has clearly outstripped our ability to define it legally or agree on the do's and don'ts of how to deal with it (which should give us at least a little pause when we think about things on the horizon like nanotech or cloning). I'm also not claiming saintly purity on this or any other issue. Just merely poking a hole in Glenn's argument.

The case of recording execs getting freebies and file sharers downloading hundreds or thousands of tunes is a proverbial comparison between apples and oranges. They have nothing to do with each other--one's a gift freely given, and the other is theft or something related to theft, at least as the law holds for now.

BUSH ISSUES EXECUTIVE ORDERS ON SODOMY, SEX CRIMES

After the Supreme Court ruling today, Bush calmly signed an Executive Order just one hour later banning sodomy nationwide for all federal taxpayers, employees and contractors. He said, "I would like to thank Congressman Gephardt and President Clinton for the inspiration to be all I can be with the power of the presidency. I pledge to overcome any wrong things the Supreme Court does today, tomorrow or any other day. AIDS is a health crisis impacting our national security, and the Supreme Court has ruled beyond the bounds of the Constitution, so I must now act."

Cheers erupted at the joint press conference with a smiling Dick Gephardt and a disheveled Dennis Kucinich. They embraced the President in a group hug as visions of a Democrat "Clinton-plus" imperial presidency danced in their heads. Dick Gephardt was later seen high-fiving Bush exclaiming, "Now that's what I'm talkin' bout, Commander!"

Bush then signed another E.O. blocking the second Supreme Court decision upholding statutes of limitations on sex crimes. He said, "This is a human rights issue. With my signature, I declare any statutes of limitations on sex crimes unconstitutional. Rape victims can rest assured that old priests and old cads like Bill Clinton will now be held accountable for raping the innocent. These perps cannot run, and they cannot hide. The long arm of justice will eventually reach them." He then added, "That means you too Uday, if you're listening."

Bush later made clear to a maniacal Helen Thomas that, despite his new orders, the strange American tradition of allowing rampant prison rape will not change. "I'm not going to worry about it until after Bill Clinton serves his time," Bush said.

OK, seriously...

Although Andrew Sullivan is gleefully calling the sodomy decision a rebuke to Santorum, it doesn't mean he was legally wrong. Santorum was saying that there will be much more to follow from any expansion of the newly created "right to privacy." He was right. In fact, Sulli and other gays have already forgotten today's decision and are now demanding that society no longer oppose gay marriage. Here we go. We won't really know how right Santorum was for a decade or two when we see the unintended results of this political decision. I'm sure he'll be vindicated -- sort of like we all know Roe v. Wade is really a legal disaster now. So no, it wasn't a legal rebuke in that sense.

Sulli is probably thinking a religious "rebuke" -- like the secular Supreme Court ruling was the Pope declaring homosexuality blessed by God. It wasn't that either. Or maybe he's just happy Santorum didn't get immediate vindication after being unfairly attacked and misrepresented. There's so much schadenfreude going around these days it's almost become a new philosophy of life. Time to invent a new English word for it.

With the earlier affirmative action decision, and now this sodomy case, it looks like the Supreme Court is still a law unto themselves. Gephardt was right about that danger. So if we want a right to privacy and a right to discriminate, why don't we just put those rights up for a Constitutional Amendment through the legislature? Ah, then it would be too difficult for liberals to get their way. They prefer to use either the judicial or executive branches to amend the Constitution. That's unconstitutional, isn't it? Tough luck. Consider your love for the Constitution rebuked.

"DOCUMENT BURIAL AND U.N. ACTIVITIES IN IRAQ"

That's the title of an Iraqi document--one of many, many pieces of evidence that Saddam still had a WMD program--unearthed in Iraq in the past week or so. The picture that's emerging, slowly, is that Saddam did everything he could to hide his WMD programs from prying eyes. Those prying eyes--the UN inspectors, in Iraq at our insistence--were misled for more than a decade, as Saddam played shell games with his programs. That had the effect, it seems, of keeping him from getting his programs going full tilt, meaning that the UN inspections kept Saddam from acquiring WMDs which he could turn on Israel, us or whomever he pleased. But for nearly four years--from Dec. 1998 to late 2002--there were no inspectors in Iraq. The world had no idea what kind of progress Saddam had made toward producing WMDs in that time. That was an untenable situation.

By playing such games, Saddam was not in compliance with the raft of UNSC sanctions imposed on him after the Gulf War. His hope, it seems, was to keep playing games until the world grew tired of dealing with him. That strategy was working, had worked--France pulled out of the no-fly zone enforcement regime in the mid-90s, and the Clinton administration allowed the inspections regime to end entirely in 1998. Saddam then apparently planned to reconstitute his WMD programs once our backs were turned for good. He never got that change.

Thank God that we and the UK at least maintained the no-fly zones and satellite surveillance. If we hadn't, it's clear to me that Saddam would have acquired some kind of WMD--a bioweapon, or a chemweapon, perhaps a nuke in a deal with North Korea. Our surveillance at least kept enough eyes trained on him to keep up a rudimentary monitoring of his movements, and kept a thin, temporary lid on his WMD programs. Thank God that President Bush came along and decided that enough was enough, and Saddam had a choice to either get back into compliance with the UN inspections or face the end of his regime. Thank God that when the UN balked, we didn't. Thank God.

THE BOY WHO LIVED

I finally finished the dreadful Dean Koontz novel I'd been working on, so tonight I started in on the first Harry Potter book. I won't be blogging impressions as I go, because that would be extremely dull and not worth my time to write, much less your time to read. But I will say that after the first chapter, I'm unimpressed. J.K. Rowling is no C.S Lewis. The quality of prose just doesn't match up to anything Lewis produced. And the first chapter is an odd, slow way to start such an epic. Oh well.

Which isn't to say the story is bad. It isn't. It reads fairly well, especially after the last two novels I've slogged through. But I can't see how it could possibly deserve all the hype.

OVERCOME VS OVERTURN: TAKE YOUR PICK, BUT EITHER'S AS BAD AS THE OTHER

According to good ol' Webster, the words overcome and overturn express different degrees of the same idea. Overcome:

Main Entry: over·come
Pronunciation: "O-v&r-'k&m
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): over·came /-'kAm/; -come; -com·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English ofercuman, from ofer over + cuman to come
Date: before 12th century
transitive senses
1 : to get the better of : SURMOUNT
2 : OVERWHELM
intransitive senses : to gain the superiority : WIN
synonym see CONQUER
- over·com·er noun

That's what Dick Gephardt said he'd do to Supreme Court rulings that he, as president, didn't like. That's supposed to be better than declaring he'd "overturn" them, which again according to Webster:

Main Entry: 1over·turn
Pronunciation: "O-v&r-'t&rn
Function: verb
Date: 13th century
transitive senses
1 : to cause to turn over : UPSET
2 : INVALIDATE, DESTROY
intransitive senses : UPSET, TURN OVER

Overcome is arguably better than overturn I suppose, but only by shades of meaning. Both words mean essentially the same thing. One could make a legalese argument here, but I don't know of any legal definition of overcome that differs substantially from overturn. If that becomes Gephardt's next tactic, arguing that he's speaking as a lawyer and that overcoming isn't the same as overturning, then that just makes it worse. He understands some legal distinction between overcome and overturn, but not the Constitutional separation of powers that he would have to abide by and caretake as president. Presidents, according to the Oath of Office, must defend the Constition against all enemies--how does one who doesn't understand the Constitution know who its enemies are?

I say this to point out that Gephardt is sticking to his comment that he'd "overcome"--and to him it's important to use that word as opposed to "overturn"--Supreme Court rulings with Executive Orders if we the people give him the White House (which we'd now obviously be fools to do). Gephardt can stick to his story and his word, but I can't see how it helps him much. He'd either surmount the Supreme Court or upset it, conquer it or destroy it. Take your pick, Dick.

MORE: Eugene Volokh provides a helpful table comparing the original statement with the defense.

THE TIMES STILL AREN'T A-CHANGING

I'm probably the 3,467th person to use some variation on that headline since the Jayson Blair scandal, but it's true--the New York Times is still the Old Gray Liar. Check out this headline:

Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence

What sort of direction do you expect such a story to take? It seems to me that the reader has been led, by the wording and tone of the headline, to expect some sort of damning indictment of high-up Bush administration officials, perhaps even Bush himself, over the handling of sensitive intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. That's certainly the way I took it. You'd probably expect a story about how the Bush team bent the raw data to fit its preconceived notions of Iraq's WMD guilt in order to sell the case for war to the press and public. Well, if that's what you expected then the headline probably served its purpose--in misleading you to draw conclusions which the story doesn't support.

Based on second-hand accounts of closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee (which should be re-named just to avoid irony), CIA analyst Christian Westermann alleged that he'd felt pressure to change data all right--on Cuba's WMD programs, though, not Iraq's. The pressure wasn't in the form of any direct order to change anything--just in the form of peppered, pointed questions. Ooooh. Scary. And he says he stood tall against that pressure:

Mr. Westermann told lawmakers last week that while he felt pressure, he never actually changed the wording of any of his intelligence reports.

He did not immediately provide lawmakers with details about his complaints, and it remains uncertain the degree to which his concerns related to Iraq or other regional issues.

Administration officials said his most specific complaints concerned issues related to intelligence on Cuba, and he has not yet provided similar specific complaints about the handling of intelligence on Iraq.

Well if that ain't a smoking gun that the President lied, I just don't know what is. But seriously, the story's headline runs counter to the story's own conclusion, which is that by the star witness' own testimony he didn't change any data or report in the face of pressure that was subtle, to say the least. More sublte than the pressure a certain boy President once leveraged to buy a mistress' and her gabby friend's silence--no one went around calling Mr. Westermann a "stalker." And, by the way, we didn't go to war with Cuba. Castro doesn't even rate membership in the Axis of Evil.

The story's headline could just as easily have read:

Expert Said to Tell Legislators Political "Pressure" Had No Effect on Intelligence Reports

But that's not as sexy, is it?

(thanks to Hanks)

LIEBERMAN ON GEPHARDT

NewsMax has taken up the task of querying presidential candidates about Rep. Dick Gephardt's oft-blogged but otherwise underreported vow to "overcome" the Supreme Court should he become president. First up, Sen. Joe Lieberman, who disagreed with Gephardt but referred any further questions on the issue to Gephardt's campaign.

NewsMax says it's calling up the other contenders for comment. They can take it as a) a chance to disagree or agree with Gephardt on principle; b) a chance to take a free swing at a rival; c) a chance to hide and hope it goes away. It should be interesting.

PEJMAN TO GEPHARDT: STOP DIGGING

I can't improve on this vivsection of the Congressman Who Would Be King's mangling of the Constitution and the sniveling spokesperson's defense.

"CHEMICAL ALI" CAPTURED?

I thought we'd already taken him out with a missile, but the Mirror says we recently picked him at a roadblock.

Stupid post...must...get...more....sleeeep....

NEWSFLASH: CASTRO IS A WINDBAG, A BRUTE AND A NUT

Just in case anyone was uncertain.

VERRRRRY COOL

And verrry fast. And they finally put the $#%$# USB and FireWire ports on the front! That's been one of my pet peeves about the Mac for quite a while now.

But at $1999, too expensive. They'll hold on for a while, and their new love-fest with IBM (who'd-a thunk IBM would end up saving Apple from Intel?) will keep their processor development going. But I still think the Mac's days as a big hardware player are numbered.

KERRY: DUPED BY A DOPE

Christopher Hitchens guts John Kerry's "I was misled" defense.

Given that Kerry once went all the way to Vietnam under some kind of misapprehension about a war for democracy and launched a political career on the basis of what he finally learned when it was much too late, one might be tempted to discern a pattern here. But that temptation should probably be discarded. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was fabricated out of whole cloth (by a Democratic president, building on the legacy of another JFK from Massachusetts), and not even the most Stalinized of the Vietnamese leadership ever ran a regime, or proposed an ideology, as vile as that of Saddam Hussein.

"Vote for me. I'm easily fooled." Heh. Could've been Jimmy Carter's slogan, though.

HOWARD DEAN: I'M NOT A CROOK!

This is funny, but I suspect that we soon won't have Howard Dean to kick around anymore:

Presidential candidate Howard Dean is berating himself for saying he wanted to break into the country club of Democratic Party insiders.

The remark to Vermont reporters Monday came several days after Dean's 17-year-old son, Paul, was charged with aiding in a burglary at the Burlington Country Club.

Vermont's former governor cut short a campaign swing on Friday to return home after his son was picked up by police along with a group of his friends.

Dean made the country club comment Monday just before formally kicking off his campaign for the presidency....

"It is a bit of a club down there," he said. "The Democratic Party, all the candidates from Washington, they all know each other, they all move in the same circles, and what I'm doing is breaking into the country club."

Paul Dean is accused of driving the car while three friends broke into an outbuilding at the country club to steal beer.

On Monday, Dean winced when he heard his own words.

"That was an incredibly unfortunate phrase," he said.

"Why do I say these things?" Dean asked a press aide.

STILL SILENT ON GEPHARDT

The lefty bloggers haven't uttered a peep on the Dick-tator's mad plan to wipe out the Supreme Court. Andrew Sullivan has weighed in.

Lefties, where are you? Josh, we're waiting...

MORE: Rachel Lucas asks, in essence, "Will the real aspiring Hitler please stand up?" C'mon lefties--there's a real menace to the Constitution in our midst. Do ya have anything to say about him? Atrios is denouncing conservative UNSC justices for yesterday's Michigan decision--but offers no defense of the court's Constitutional role as a co-equal branch of the government. Nothing about Gephardt.

MORE: NewsMax weighs in.

MORE: John Hawkins observes:

I find it highly amusing that Democrats who shout "brown shirt" & "1984" at the slightest provocation aren't even batting an eye at Dick Gephardt threatening to ride roughshod over the Supreme Court unless the toe they Democratic Party line.

MORE: The Gephardt office responds with an ad hominem attack on its critics, spinning the quote away by essentially saying that Gephardt didn't say what he is quoted (and recorded) as saying. Attacking InstaPundit and Eugene Volokh--that's a bad move for the Congressman who would be king. Gephardt's office also insists that he was talking about the Mighigan case, which is true, but he made his remarks on Sunday--before the UNSC handed down its ruling. So his comments don't seem, to me at any rate, to be a benign case of a candidate promising something he can't deliver (which is Gephardt's defense). He is pre-emptively saying that no matter what those 9 hair-brained justices do tomorrow (with respect to affirmative action in Michigan), if you elect me president I'll undo it by fiat. He's not only playing up affirmative action, but also playing into the hard left's antipathy for the UNSC that lingers from Florida, circa 2000. At the very least, Gephardt played a very nasty demagogue angle, speaking in the left's code language of Bush's illegitimacy. At most he threatened to rip out the checks-and-balances system enshrined in the Constitution and legal precedent. That's why I think Gephardt's comment is an order of magnitude worse than Trent Lott's comment back in December. Lott pined for the bad old days, knowing full well they'll never come about again. Gephardt promised to start a whole set of bad new days if elected president, an office he happens to be currently seeking.

MORE: Lefty blogger Jack Balkin delivers a couple of good whacks Gephardt's way, and even saves a mild one for me. Fair enough--reasonable minds can disagree whether Gephardt or Lott was worse.

MORE: Jonah Goldberg's take.

MORE: Josh Claybourn says Gephardt's remark is the dumbest utterance of a Democrat presidential candidate this year. That's a very competitive field, but I think he's right.

MORE: Read this, paying attention to the Daniel Drezner part. Then go read this confirmatory post. And this one, paying particular attention to the third paragraph.

Policies aside, the difference between the GOP and the Democrats is that the GOP is capable of sacrificing power in order to clean up its own house, while the Democrats will sacrifice everything if it means maintain or increasing power. Which just makes Gephardt's comments a little bit worse.

HOW ANONYMOUS LEFTY HOUSE BLOGS ARE LIKE THE CHINESE AIR FORCE

In an old post (a couple of weeks old--several generations in the blogosphere), InstaPundit wonders why TAPPED and TomPaine.com's blogs are both anonymous. I've wondered the same thing--the anonymity lends both blogs a very distant, depersonalized feel and makes them practically unreadable. I don't read them regularly because, for me, their very tone makes them sound like some kind of party line schtick as opposed to the personal, thoughtful convictions of interesting people. Anyway, IP posits an interesting reason for the lefties' WE ARE THE BLOG, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE feel:

However, I suspect that the real motivation for anonymous house blogs is that the people who run these publications don't want their staff making a name for themselves via blogging. They might *shudder* ask for more money, or something.

Which reminded me of this fascinating article about China's weakness as an air power. Suffice it to say that China's reliance on ground-launched missiles in an age where air superiority is clearly the way to win modern wars is a bit puzzling. The article's author, Jacqueline Newmeyer, says China has intentionally kept its air forces weak because aircraft have an empowering effect on individual soldiers (or in this case, pilots):

The potential of technology to empower soldiers is perhaps nowhere more stark than in the field of air power. The pilot is a virtuoso, commanding a machine that grants him surpassing mobility. From his position in the cockpit, he can not only defy nature but also, if sufficiently motivated, threaten his own regime. (9-11 provided a horrific demonstration of what can happen when control of an airplane falls into the wrong hands.) For this reason, modern air power poses a highly potent threat to authoritarian governments. An insubordinate air force pilot or two might wreak destruction on a grand scale.

While Western liberal democracies have elicited a high degree of loyalty, so that the threat of coup d’etat has been relatively insignificant, the situation of an empire, held together by force and not loyalty, is different. The emperor constantly faces the menace of mutiny. Service in the air force both encourages the independence of spirit that could lead to mutiny and equips would-be mutineers with the most dangerous weapons in the arsenal. Because rebellion has never been a serious fear in the U.S. military, air force (and submarine) officers not only wield these weapons but also possess great discretion over their use. In contrast, Chinese leaders have been reluctant to entrust quality planes to their air force, much less top-of-the-line precision-guided munitions. The alternative to the manned aircraft is a weapon that can be centrally controlled, such as a missile.

So there you have it--TAPPED and China's air force may both be weak in comparison with, respectively, The Corner and the US Air Force because their masters don't trust their individual subordinates.

COULTERGEIST

Ann Coulter's going to have a blog. What do you want to bet she won't be hiding behind some kind of institutional "we think" this and "we think" that?

I have to say I'm an occasional Coulter fan--every time I warm to her writing she says something just over the top. But her wit and zip are perfect for blogging. It should be fun.

(thanks to Hanks)

SADDAM OFFERING TO SURRENDER?

According to this story, he sent off his former #4--the Baathist we just captured last week--with a note offering terms for surrender.

Saddam passed the handwritten document to Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti shortly before the former aide was captured by US forces last week, it has been claimed.

In the letter Saddam called for "fair treatment" by the allied forces for himself and that his family be allowed safe passage from Iraq to another Arab country.

In return he promised order an end to the rebel attacks on the occupying American soldiers, which have claimed 40 lives since the official end of hostilities.

I'm treating this story with a great deal of skepticism, but it's certainly intriquiging if true.

HISTORY REPEATING: GEPHARDT ECHOING CLINTON'S THREATS AND ACTIONS

I'm adding some historical perspective here to Bryan's last two posts. Gephardt is really just saying he will pick up where the Clinton Presidency left off. Remember that the Clinton Administration actually repeatedly did to the Legislative Branch and Constitution what Gephardt seems to be threatening to do to the Judicial Branch.

In reality though, isn't Gephardt actually saying that he will assume the legislative power of making laws that might otherwise have to pass Congress? If we want to keep the courts in check (they do need checking too) then new laws should be made in an attempt to pass Constitutional muster the next time. He's saying he will take that power and decision away from Congress and the people -- exactly like Clinton did. Clinton's actions were a massive abuse of power, but he was allowed to get away with it for the most part. Clinton's advisors also bragged about the Executive Order power-grabbing after the Supreme Court denied Clinton his line item veto:

Clinton's proposals are intended to make gradual progress on largely popular social reforms until Republicans in Congress start to cooperate--or lose power after the November elections.

"He's ready to work with Congress if they will work with him. But if they choose partisanship, he will choose progress," said Rahm Emanuel, senior policy advisor to the president.

The power to issue executive orders originally was intended to give presidents rule-making authority over the executive branch. But many have used it instead for sweeping public policy decisions.

Fresh from what aides view as a triumphant trip to China, Clinton is reportedly eager to exercise his executive powers to the hilt.

"He always comes back from these trips with a big head of steam, and this trip has been especially remarkable," said Paul Begala, another senior advisor. "This president has a very strong sense of the powers of the presidency, and is willing to use all of them."

Mindful of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down the line-item veto authority Clinton won last term, the president also hopes his executive-order offensive will pressure Congress to enact his legislative priorities, Emanuel said.

Clinton began his serious power consolidation attempt earlier by quietly signing Executive Order 13083 in May of 1998 while he was in England. It effectively revoked the 10th Amendment to the Constitution:

"Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool."
--Clinton presidential aide Paul Begala, July 1998

President Clinton's glib announcement that he will issue a barrage of executive orders to further his legislative agenda while bypassing Congress is the ultimate fulfillment of those fears. More chilling yet is the timing of the ominous announcement. It comes less than two months after Clinton issued, while on foreign soil, Executive Order 13083, which annihilates the principles of federalism that have guided the nation for the last 200 years.

The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Under EO 13083, Clinton has effectively tacked on to that clear, forthright, inspired, unambiguous statement a list of exceptions. He has done it single-handedly, with the stroke of a pen. And, no Mr. Begala, there is nothing cool about totalitarianism.

Clinton was only forced to abandon E.O. 13083 after a public uproar. I saw it posted online, deconstructed the hideously offensive thing and, as a WorldNetDaily contributing editor, sent it to Joseph Farah. He then wrote the WND column that exposed it for all of us through the growing power of the Internet. Eventually Joe's column kicked off an Internet and talk-radio storm (what Hillary would call the VRWC in action):

[State and local] officials agreed to work out new language with the White House as long as 13083 does not serve as the basis for the discussion.

Mickey Ibarra, assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations, said the demands would be met.

"We hope to begin talks as early as next week," he said. "We will listen to our partners and begin wherever they want to."

Left unsaid at the congressional hearing was how all these public officials even heard about Executive Order 13083. The White House issued no press release when the order was signed quietly by the president in Birmingham, England. There were no press conferences by administration officials or spokesmen. There was no press coverage by the Washington Post, New York Times or Associated Press when the sweeping order was issued.

The answer to the question of how they found it says much about the potential impact of the "new media." WorldNetDaily carried the first significant story about the order June 17. That story and subsequent follow-ups were linked to and broadcast e-mailed all over the Internet. Talk radio hosts from coast to coast, including Rush Limbaugh and Michael Reagan, picked up the story and warned of the order's unconstitutional implications.

That's how state and local officials found out about it. And that's how congressional representatives who introduced legislation to override the order learned of its existence, too. It wasn't until local officials went to Washington to protest that the Washington Post took notice of Executive Order 13083.

This is just the most recent triumph for the Internet as a news medium. It was just about six weeks ago that WorldNetDaily first raised major questions of accuracy with regard to CNN-Time's "Tailwind" report -- questions that ultimately forced perhaps the most high-profile retraction in the history of American journalism and the firing of some of those responsible.

Predictably, David Broder's WaPo article failed to credit WorldNetDaily for the reporting that beat them by four weeks. Broder knows better than to try to pull anything like that now I bet.

The Post badly blew the chance to expose one of the most dangerous Executive Branch abuses of the last few decades. Consider that the President was quietly attempting to nullify part of the Constitution by executive fiat and grab power away from both Congress and all 50 state legislatures. Then consider that both the mainstream media and the clueless Republicans in Congress were actually going to cave and allow him to do it. The Internet and talk radio saved a brewing Constitutional crisis by stepping in as the 4th branch of government and sounding the alarm state by state. Let's see what the WaPo editors say tomorrow about Gephardt's plan to legislate and rule the nation by Executive Order. I doubt they've learned to care, but we'll see.

As far as the Internet's power, that's how things were done "way back in the old days" before blogs. It was usually WND or Drudge taking on the Clinton's abuse machine while they and the mainstream media tried to stop the new media tide. In fact, Joe Farah was the only journalist named in the White House's taxpayer-funded study of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy." Before that he was served with a now-documented political IRS audit -- another gigantic abuse of power that the elitist WaPo and NYT ignored. I think Farah wears both taxpayer-funded political attacks on his Internet speech as badges of honor. He should.

The Clintons hated the growing power of the Internet to drive news coverage and hold them accountable. So did their friends in the media. The Democrats, to counter online conservatives, then funded and fed stories to the Salon.com failure (see VRWC article above) -- just as Al Gore is now foolishly trying to do with GoreTV and the Clintons are trying to do with Al FrankenRadio. History is repeating as Richard Mellon Scaife is simply replaced in their never-ending circular conspiracy by Rupert Murdoch. They still don't get it. The thought of a FrankenGore media "monster" is hilarious though.

The question now is whether or not the vast blogging conspirators decide to take on Gephardt for essentially saying he'll be as abusive to the Constitution as Bill Clinton was. I would call him "Clinton Lite" but he may actually have plans to be "Clinton Plus." He's chomping way too hard at the constitutional bit to stay in this horse race. Even worse, he just sold out the entire Legislative Branch to the Executive by his comments on overturning Judicial decisions. He just gave Bush the green light if he wants it to usurp congressional power and to bypass laws the Supreme Court strikes down. His fellow Democrats should do him in for that stupidity alone. Hearing a sitting congressman sell out his colleagues' Constitutional power on a whim -- in a gamble to gain and abuse the Presidency for himself -- is stunning.

UPDATE: Simon, over at Kikuchiyo News addresses Bryan's post and, in the process, unknowingly confirms my argument that Gephardt really means he will subvert the Legislative Branch that he's now a member of. So either way you look at it, Gephardt is out of bounds and we have him pinned down.

MORE: Lowell Ponte agrees that Gephardt just opened the door for Bush to issue completely constitutional Executive Orders that would humorously expose the recent Supreme Court decision as the convoluted racial mess it is.

President Bush, in an order straight out of William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” could declare that racial factors may be used by colleges and employers – but only if they could prove that members of no other racial group suffered discrimination as a result. The University of Michigan preferences for African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans, as this column argued in February 2003, had the inevitable effect of discriminating against other groups – including Asian-Americans, Caucasians, and Jews. It was and remains a racist, anti-Semitic policy endorsed by roughly 40 of America’s most prestigious companies. “Affirmative Action” may be used, this Executive Order would say, but the Federal Government will sue and shut it down the instant it becomes “Negative Action” against anyone of an unfavored race.

...President Bush could order the creation of a Department of Racial Classification, with Cabinet rank, to investigate, determine and define each citizen’s official “race” for purposes of issuing government race I.D. cards. This department will establish criteria for defining race and will require citizens to submit evidence of their “race,” including documentation of family history and DNA samples. Every political advocate of racial preferences ought to be asked to co-sponsor the legislation setting up this Apartheid-like department.

...We cannot authorize racial preferences and then let each person’s “race” be defined by whim or arbitrary guesswork.

THE DICKTATOR IN WAITING

We learn via InstaPundit that Gephardt said exactly what CNN and others quoted--that he would overturn Supreme Court rulings if given the reins of the presidency.

Where is the outrage?

Last year Sen. Trent Lott said something that, once you knew the historical backstory, had racist overtones. He was justifiably ousted from his post as Senate Majority Leader, and many in the blogosphere led posts with titles like "Why I'm not a Republican: Trent Lott."

Sen. Orrin Hatch said that as a last resort he is interested in destroying file-sharers' computers. He received just condemnation, and many in the blogosphere led their posts on the subject with titles like "Why I'm not a Republican: Orrin Hatch."

But their comments pale beside those of Rep. Dick Gephardt. He isn't just in full pander mode as Glenn suggests; he's in revolution mode. For what he says he'll do is overturn the checks and balances in our government that exist for the express purpose of keeping too much power from concentrating in too few hands.

Where are the posts titled "Why I'm not a Democrat: Dick Gephardt?" And where are the liberals that will on principle oppose a declared dictator in waiting who is running for president? When Republicans Lott and Hatch said offensive and stupid things, we conservative bloggers stood up on principle to denounce them.

Josh Marshall, where are you?

Atrios, where are you?

CalPundit, where are?

Do any of you care about the Constitution or the rule of law that is the basis of our nation? If you do, you will join in calling for more than an apology from Gephardt--you will call for his resignation from the US House of Representatives.

His comments are far beyond anything any freedom-loving American should tolerate in an elected official. He has served in the House representing Missouri's Third District since 1976. Surely in those 27 years he has learned how our Constitution functions. Surely he has learned that presidents can't simply overrule the Supreme Court if it suits them.

If he hasn't yet learned that basic civics lesson, then he isn't qualified to serve in the House. If he has and said it anyway, then he knowingly declared that he would shred the Constitution, and isn't qualified to serve in the House.

He should resign. It's that simple.

MORE: Eugene Volokh, who was the first to report Gephardt's remarks, also reports that Rep. Dennis Kucinich said nearly the same thing at the same event, which took place Sunday. So now we have not one but two Democrat presidential contenders stating flatly that they would ignore the Constitution if they won the White House. This cannot be credibly spun away as misspeaking--Gephardt and Kucinich knew what they were saying. Both have disqualified themselves from the presidency; both should resign from the House.

GEPHARDT SHOULD RESIGN

Sen. Orrin Hatch, who isn't running for president, outraged the blogosphere last week when he said he was interested, as a last resort, in destroying computers belonging to people who engage in illegal file-swapping. It was an outrageous thing to say, but amounting to little more than "grampa blather" as James Lileks put it. The Judiciary Comittee which Hatch chairs would never go for codifying such an extreme measure, and the American people would never stand for it.

Now, Rep. Dick Gephardt, who is running for president, has this to say about the Supreme Court (assuming CNN got the quote right):

"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day," said Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.

We'll leave aside the candidate blather--"When I'm president"--which will only occur when swine sprout wings and take flight from my posterior, and focus on the substance of what the man said. Taken at face value, Gephardt said he will not respect the decisions of the Supreme Court, which last time I checked is one of the three co-equal branches of the US government. He said he will use the stroke of the pen and overturn Supremem Court decisions he doesn't like, to institute his own intepretation of the law or the Constitution. It's then no stretch to imagine him doing the same thing to any law passed by a Republican-controlled Congress.

There's a word for that, Dick--dictatorship. Gephardt has just declared that he would rule by fiat if elected president. Don't think it can't happen--it can. One rather infamous experiment in democratically-elected dictatorship took place in Germany from about 1933 to about 1945. It didn't go well.

I would say that Gephardt probably mispoke, as that would be the charitable explanation for saying something so obviously un-American. But the uncharitable explanations fall into a couple of lines--that Gephardt isn't smart enough to understand the implications of what he said, or that he understands it perfectly and intended it to comfort his allies who worry that President Bush might have time this summer to nominate a justice who would make the SCOTUS more conservative. Under that inpretation, Gephardt is signalling that the abortion industry, the race-mongering industry and various other Democrat cottage industries/lobbies have nothing to fear: Even if the SCOTUS gets packed by GOP judges to the hilt and Justice Thomas or Scalia becomes the Chief Justice, Gephardt would negate its actions and rule as their liberal, albeit tyrannical, friend. Which would spell the end of the Republic, or at least the rule of law as we have known it since the founding.

Under either of those uncharitable explanations, Dick Gephardt isn't qualified to be president. In fact, he shouldn't hold public office and should resign his seat in the House.

SPACEJUNK SCIENCE AND GLOWING CLOUDS

That's real science about junk in space:

Called collisional cascading, or the Kessler effect (named after the former chief of the U.S. orbital debris programme, Donald Kessler), the process involves chunks of debris colliding and shattering into many smaller pieces that will hit others and so on.

``If his estimates prove to be true it could become impossible to fly in space.

The probability that you'd get holed would increase drastically,'' says Mr. Kulik.

Kessler predicted the process will begin around 2030, although some scientists in the field believe it has already begun.

Another critical factor today is orbital explosions, often caused by chemical reactions in dregs of fuel in old spacecraft. More than 100 rockets and satellites have reportedly blown up in space.

The most debris created by one of these was when the upper stage of a U.S. Pegasus rocket exploded in 1996, two years after it was launched.

The burst generated a cloud of some 300,000 fragments larger than four millimetres, 700 of which were over 10 cm and large enough to be catalogued and tracked. Other incidents in recent years show that the debris question isn't just the imaginary bogeyman of space exploration. In the same year as the Pegasus blast, the French Cerise satellite was knocked out by a fragment of an exploded Ariane rocket stage in the first recorded debris collision.

It would would be interesting to watch a supercomputer simulation of this effect.

Meanwhile, check out the skies off the Mid-Atlantic coast tonight for a multiple rocket launch that will create glowing clouds in the Earth's ionosphere using a chemical called TMA. Spaceweather.com has the details.

DEMS IN MORE RACIAL TROUBLE

It's amazing that black voters still put up with this:

Terry McAuliffe, who praised "colored people" three years ago after elbowing aside a qualified African-American rival for the post of Democratic National Committee chairman, is facing new charges that he discriminates against blacks.

Responding to questions from the Congressional Black Caucus last week, McAuliffe revealed that he has only one black political consultant on the payroll for 2004 and employed no black consultants for the 2002 campaign, reports The Hill newspaper.

"I told him that was insulting,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. "That did not go over well with our caucus."

Thompson told The Hill about a black political consultant he knew who had tried repeatedly without success to get a contract with McAuliffe's DNC.

He took his business proposal to the Republicans and they promptly signed him, the Mississippi Democrat said, adding, "The party can start acknowledging through contracts with minorities the good minorities do for the party.”

The slow death of the Democratic Party continues...

U.S. GOES AFTER SADDAM AND THE SYRIANS

Get ready for our long-delayed attack on Syrian targets. Also reported as in the works here.

Bryan and I both argued two months ago that the right of hot pursuit should have been used in Syria when our nation instead turned prematurely to "peace." The silence in the blogosphere and media was deafening, though it later turned out that's exactly what the Pentagon was arguing internally. It also turns out they were correct that it was a legitimate right and vital national security interest. It now appears clear that George Bush called off the shooting war far too soon for sensitivity reasons -- just like his father did in '91. The fear of attacking inside Syria was like the fear of supporting the overthrow of Saddam in Iraq after kicking him out of Kuwait.

Short-term thinking kills. Presidents need to learn how to finish wars properly before switching modes to mollify the UN, pacifists, allies, Palestinian terrorists, and the population of the target nation. Had we obtained real cooperation from Syria in exchange for calling off justified hot pursuit attacks it might have been worth it. We didn't though. Syria played us for fools and we're now in "lukewarm pursuit" of the enemy.

I just wish this attack had taken place inside the Syrian border to send a stronger message to Assad:

It was unclear who shot first, but American forces engaged in a firefight with Syrian border guards and several guards were hit, one senior Pentagon official said on condition of anonymity. The guards were given medical treatment by U.S. forces on the Iraqi side of the border, and it was unclear how many were wounded and whether any had died, he said.

Two officials said they had no reason to believe that Saddam or his sons were among the fugitives. Intelligence that prompted the attack indicated a number of higher-level Iraqis were in the convoy -- not necessarily Saddam, an official said.

The special Task Force 20 commando team was aided in the attack last Wednesday by fire laid down by an AC-130 gunship and other air support, one official said.

The convoy was traveling a known smuggling route near the city of Qaim. It was unclear whether smugglers were among casualties and how many Iraqis might have been captured or killed.

But a third Defense Department official said forensics experts went to the site to collect evidence, possibly for DNA testing.

I've posted before that I thought that our preference is to kill Saddam and not capture him, even though we might get info from him in a plea deal. I may be wrong, but I'm thinking that capturing him might almost be as inconvenient as capturing Osama bin Laden.

Thinking about that possibility illustrates that the Israelis are right to kill their terrorist targets. With live prisoners and trials they're likely to see more terror anyhow. And many Palestinian terrorists eventually get released back on the streets after "peace" negotiations give them over to Arafat.

BOXING IS THE GREATEST SPORT

If you didn't catch the Lennox Lewis vs. Vitali Klitschko heavyweight championship on HBO Saturday, it was a great example of why there's no other sport with the emotional drama and athletic challenge of boxing. You can still see a repeat on Tues night, or check out the printed result here. It's pretty amazing that it wasn't a PPV fight.

It seems most casual fans see the sport through the wacky antics of Mike Tyson and Don King, and generally only pay attention to the heavyweights. This is unfortunate. The real excitement lately has been watching smaller fighters with less of the circus atmosphere. In fact, one of the greatest dramatic trilogies in history is not a series of books, but a spine-chilling series of Jr Welterweight fights betwwen Gatti and Ward -- and these two weren't even fighting at the top of the division. The welterweight ranks are full of competition these days.

That trilogy of fights is where the cliche of giving 110% can finally be understood as reality. There's nothing like watching two bloodied and spent fighters embracing and smiling at the end of an amazing fight -- like two brothers wounded but still alive after fighting each other in the Civil War. Contrary to the view of elitist liberals who would have the sport banned, boxing at it's best actually elevates and illuminates the human spirit.

If you used to be a boxing fan, got bored with heavyweights and haven't jumped back on board yet, now's the time. John McCain has been trying for a while to help properly regulate the sport, but I've recently heard discussions of a boxer's union. Influential commentators have been demanding changes and calling corruption out. All are needed to protect mostly minority fighters from corrupt judges and the abusive control of charlatans like Don King.