Kim Murphy begins her reports at the LA Times with a horror story:

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada - When the pain in Christina Woodkey's legs became so severe that she could no long hike or cross-country ski, she went to her local health clinic. The Calgary resident was told she'd need to see a hip specialist. Because the problem was not life-threatening, however, she'd have to wait about a year.

So wait she did. In January, the hip doctor told her that a narrowing of the spine was compressing her nerves and causing the pain. She needed a back specialist. The appointment was scheduled for Sept. 30.

"When I was given that date, I asked when could I expect to have surgery," said Woodkey, 72. "They said it would be a year and a half after I had seen this doctor."

So earlier this month, she drove across the border into Montana and got the $50,000 surgery done in two days.

"I don't have insurance. We're not allowed to have private health insurance in Canada," Woodkey said. "It's not going to be easy to come up with the money. But I'm happy to say the pain is almost all gone."

One response to this is the appearance of a number of private healthcare clinics in Canada.

Hoping to capitalize on patients who might otherwise travel to the U.S. for speedier healthcare, a network of technically illegal private clinics and surgical centers has sprung up in British Columbia, echoing a trend in Quebec. In October, the courts will be asked to decide whether the budding system should be sanctioned.

Call me paranoid if makes you feel better, and if it's legal if you're in Canada, but I consider it a serious loss of liberty where private health insurance should be illegal and clinics that dispense timely treatment to suffering septuagenarians have the status of a medical marijuana center in the U.S. To be sure, at this stage of the game, no one in Congress is talking about prohibiting private insurance. But bringing private insurance under a very tight regulatory control, such that it may not survive or be able to freely operate, is part of the current legislative proposals.

A little Googling turned up this 2006 article by Clifford Kraus from none other than the New York Times:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 23 — The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada's most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise.

Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years before receiving treatment.

But no one is about to arrest Dr. Brian Day, who is president and medical director of the center, or any of the 120 doctors who work there. Public hospitals are sending him growing numbers of patients they are too busy to treat, and his center is advertising that patients do not have to wait to replace their aching knees.

The country's publicly financed health insurance system — frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity — is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.

Consider the force of the highlighted words: Canada's "publicly financed health insurance system is gradually breaking down."

Julie Hirschfeld Davis at Real Clear Politics notes that the fears of America's seniors are a major element in the current debate. They had better be, in a democracy where the elderly are disproportionately likely to vote. It is reasonable to worry how much and in what ways ObamaCare will move us toward something like the Canadian system. If the answer is a lot and in all the wrong ways, America's seniors will not have the option Ms. Woodkey had. But if Montana falls, well, there's always Mexico.

With his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, President Obama took another step toward repairing America's battered image.

This theme depends largely on a confidence in the power of rhetoric. The idea is that Obama can repair America's image by a certain kind of speech, less "bombastic and bullying," perhaps less arrogant, than that of our 43^rd President. I am an admirer of great rhetoric, and maybe it has that power, but one should think that actions count for something. Here is the Times again, slavishly imitating Obama's rhetoric:

Let's be clear: Mr. Obama has made enormous progress in the short eight months since he took office. He has overturned some of the most odious Bush-era policies: banning torture and pledging to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He has persuaded the world once again to hear, and to listen to, what America has to say, but he is still figuring out how to fully capitalize on that good will and credibility.

Let's be clear: what is mentioned here is scarcely evidence of "enormous progress." For the sake of argument, let's accept the "banning torture" item. The only other actual difference between Bush policy and Obama policy is "pledging to close the prison at Guantánamo." Does a pledge, in the absence of action or a coherent plan of action, amount to progress?

Isn't it more important that President Obama has decided to continue the Bush Administration policy on which the Guantánamo detentions were based? Here is the Washington Post:

The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a new system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials.

We have a lot of detainees at Gitmo who, for various reasons, can't be tried in an ordinary court, but are too dangerous to release. The Administration had announced its intention to seek new legislation from Congress cover such a situation, but quickly discovered that the activist core of his own party was vehemently opposed to that. So it has decided to fall back on the Bush Administration policy, one based on the 2001 authorization of military force. We are going to keep these people in the slammer (which slammer remains to be determined) indefinitely without charges or trial.

It is interesting that the Hard Left in America considers this a victory. See The American Prospect:

This development marks a pretty significant victory--if not the end of the war--for civil liberties advocates, who had been fighting furiously against any attempt to pass a new preventive detention law.

This is what civil liberties advocates consider a victory? Obama morphing into Dubya? Anyway, it seems to shine a new light on the President's nearly famous lines:

So for those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions that we have taken in just nine months.

Well, this was a concrete action, and it cemented the policy of his predecessor on something important. If we want to believe that the President has redeemed America in the eyes of the world, we will have to trust to his words rather than his deeds.

A federal appeals court overturned hard-fought campaign finance reform regulations in a ruling on Friday that will make it easier for independent political groups to raise and spend money to influence elections.

The three-judge panel struck down regulations intended to blunt the power of such organizations, including the controversial Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and MoveOn.org, which drew heavy criticism for spending tens of millions of dollars on aggressive advertisements during the 2004 presidential campaign.

The ruling, if it stands, could provide a boost to Republicans and their allies as they try to win back Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. Outside conservative groups could become particularly important in countering the fundraising juggernaut of President Obama, who shattered past records by raising more than $750 million during his 2008 campaign.

Well, it's nice to know that the appeals court is working to free conservatives to bag more scalps. But of course the party bringing the suit was brought by an organization that isn't exactly conservative, as we learn several paragraphs down the page.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit came in a lawsuit brought by Emily's List, a nonprofit political organization that backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights.

There's a little goose and gander for you in this story. I gather that two of the judges rested their decision both on the federal law that the FEC (Federal Election Commission) was interpreting, and on the Constitution. One of the judges would have restricted the decision to an interpretation of the statutes. That is a big difference for the obvious reason that the Constitution trumps all other regulation.

We have a statutory regime that heavily regulates the raising and spending of hard money (by campaign organizations) and soft money (by parties and independent political organizations). The purpose of such regulations is to limit the influence of money (unions, corporations, etc.) in American elections. But such regulation clearly works by limiting political speech.

If someone says "Obama is a Nazi" in a public forum, that is protected speech under the First Amendment. If he buys a can of paint, a brush, and a poster board and writes the same slogan, both the purchases and the calligraphy are protected speech. But what if a bunch of his buddies get together, pool their cash, and buy airtime on the local radio station to advertise the same message? Now they are potentially subject to FEC regulation. The FEC can limit their ability to raise money and run ads in order to influence an election.

Here is what United States District Court for the District of Columbia said:

The First Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, protects the right of individual citizens to spend unlimited amounts to express their views about policy issues and candidates for public office. Similarly, the First Amendment, as the Court has construed it, safeguards the right of citizens to band together and pool their resources as an unincorporated group or non-profit organization in order to express their views about policy issues and candidates for public office. We agree with EMILY's List that the new FEC regulations contravene those principles and violate the First Amendment.

Well…yes. All incorporated or unincorporated groups are groups: individuals who poll their resources but retain their rights under the Constitution. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that they are free to express their views in any public forum.

The USDCDC got it right. I just hope the Supreme Court confirms it.

But let us state categorically that such an accusation would be very dirty politics. Whatever one thinks about Bush 43's policies, including the war, to say that anyone who criticizes those policies is unpatriotic would be reprehensible and dense, given the meaning of American patriotism. The flag that Americans love is all about the right to hold contrary opinions and to say whatever we think about the people in office.

So what are we to think of the many Democrats who accuse a lot of Americans of racism, or more recently, homophobia, because they passionately criticize the President of the United States? The most prominent example is President Jimmy Carter. From CNN:

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News."

Now that is a very serious charge. It is clearly intended to discredit the "overwhelming portion" of the President's critics. A decent man would provide some evidence of it. Carter does point out that a lot of the signs carried by anti-Obama protesters have been ridiculously extreme. But so were the signs carried by anti-Bush protesters. Yes, President Obama has been compared with Hitler, and yes, that is absurd. But the Bush = Hitler meme was just as frequent among anti-war protesters. That is the kind of thing that happens when a lot of ordinary people gather to express their opinions. Carter provides no evidence at all that racism is a significant factor in the popular opposition to Obama's policies. I think that makes him a liar of the worst kind.

He wasn't the first to make that charge. Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times, has her own evidence that racism motivates Obama's critics:

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men's club — Joe Wilson yelled "You lie!" at a president who didn't.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

So Dowd's evidence of racism was the racial make-up of a section of seats around Joe Wilson (guilt by association with White persons) and the fact that she apparently hears voices that no one else does.

Paul Waldman at the liberal Washington Monthly makes the same charge in more detail but with no more evidence. Other liberal voices have chimed in behind Carter, as for example Kai Wright at The Root, and Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post.

To the credit of the Left, there are some reasonable voices. Joe Klein thinks there is racism in the protests, but he goes to some trouble to explain that it's complicated. Jim Sleeper, a reasonable voice on the left if ever there was one, argues that appeals to racism are a mistake. Sleeper is no doubt right about strategy: most polls suggest that Americans are offended by the race charge.

I have no doubt that some of those who march in protest against the President and his party, and create offensive posters, are motivated by racism. Some of those who organized protests against the war were Kim Jong il loving communists. But to call people who criticize the President racists just because they are genuinely mad at him is every bit as reprehensible as calling someone who criticizes the war a traitor.

But it is really hard to find examples of the latter. The former, on the other hand, is flamboyantly evident. The American Left is far more irresponsible on this score than the American Right.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ricci (pronounced Ree Chee, or sometimes Rich ee) and against the City of New Haven, Connecticut. The case has important implications for affirmative action, and less important though interesting implications for the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor.

The Case.

The city of New Haven instituted an exam for firefighters seeking promotion to lieutenants and captains. The exam was specifically designed to be race neutral and involved a lengthy process of fitting the test to the relevant manuals and the experiences of firefighters. The exam included an oral portion. The assessors were drawn from firefighters outside Connecticut, holding higher ranks than the positions open. Sixty percent of the assessors were minorities.

Frank Ricci suffers from dyslexia. He spent $1,000 on books, studied 13 hours a day, and hired a tutor to read him the material. He placed sixth on the lieutenant's exam, qualifying him for immediate promotion. Here is the Court's description of the results.

Candidates took the examinations in November and December 2003. Seventy-seven candidates completed the lieutenant examination—43 whites, 19 blacks, and 15 Hispanics. Of those, 34 candidates passed—25 whites, 6 blacks, and 3 Hispanics. Eight lieutenant positions were vacant at the time of the examination. [The] top 10 candidates were eligible for an immediate promotion to lieutenant. All 10 were white. Subsequent vacancies would have allowed at least 3 black candidates to be considered for promotion to lieutenant.

Forty-one candidates completed the captain examination—25 whites, 8 blacks, and 8 Hispanics. Of those, 22 candidates passed—16 whites, 3 blacks, and 3 Hispanics. Seven captain positions were vacant at the time of the examination. Under the rule of three, 9 candidates were eligible for an immediate promotion to captain—7 whites and 2 Hispanics.

So, although several black candidates qualified for eventual promotion, none qualified for immediate promotion to open positions.

The City of New Haven threw out the test results on the grounds that no immediate promotion for any Black applicants would open them to lawsuits under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Ricci and 19 others sued.

The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4

that race-based action like the City's in this case is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under the disparate-impact statute. The respondents, we further determine, cannot meet that threshold standard.

The Court reached that decision on fairly narrow grounds, and did not ask whether the City's actions violated The Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment.

Comment

Ricci was denied a promotion he had worked very hard to obtain and which he was entitled to under the rules the city had set up. He was denied his promotion solely on the grounds that the results of the exam had a disparate impact on Blacks, i.e., that the racial mix of those who qualified for immediate promotion was not to the City's liking.

This looks to me like a de facto quota system. A quota system, as defined in previous cases such as Bakke, is one which sets aside a number of seats or positions for which only persons of a certain racial identity are allowed to compete. Here we have to assume a de facto requirement that at least one immediate-hire position was reserved for a Black applicant (or one each for lieutenant and captain). That would mean that at least two such positions were not open to persons who were White or Hispanic, or anything other than Black. The fact that the failure to fill the quota resulted in throwing out the whole test, rather than in the preferential promotion of a targeted minority, clouds the issue but doesn't make it any cleaner. Unfortunately, the Court did not address this question.

All the results mean is that the City cannot discriminate against White and Hispanic applicants solely on the basis of their racial identification merely because it imagines it might be sued under Title VII. It has to prove that the results were a violation of Title VII. But the Court also indicated that it thinks that the city cannot make such a case. That's not chopped liver. It provides significant protection for city governments trying to find legitimately race neutral modes of promotion. But it leaves four votes in favor of discriminating against Mr. Ricci just because he's the wrong color.

The case has only small consequences for Judge Sotomayor. Four votes side with her on the substantive issue, which supports the claim that she was in the mainstream on this one. On the procedural issue (she heard this case on the lower court, and voted to dismiss it without examination) the result was more embarrassing. None of the Justices agreed that the case did not deserve to be heard. None of this is likely to affect her confirmation.

Frank Ricci and Sonia Sotomayor both rose from humble positions through very hard work. But under the racialist law of affirmative action, they are not equally disadvantaged.

I believe that all human beings are created equal: male and female, rich and poor, Black and White, born and not yet born.  While I think that the wrongness of abortion is a matter of simple logic, I recognize that logic can be obscured by political passions and I acknowledge the possibility (at least in the abstract!) that this might sometime happen to me.  For this reason, I can respect people who disagree with me on this matter and hope for the same courtesy from those who think I am obviously wrong. 

There are limits to respect.  Some people consider waterboarding to be a grave crime against humanity, and I can understand if such a person refused to sit with an interrogator who was known to have done such a thing.  I would not sit down with someone who admitted to practicing late term abortions.

I write these things now only for the sake of showing that my opinions about domestic terrorism are not colored by any pro-choice sympathies.  The United States is a Republic, for Heaven's sake!  As citizens we have enormousand perhaps unprecedented liberties, to think for ourselves, to express our thoughts in speech and writing and in lawful political action.  But liberty is not mere freedom, it is freedom with responsibility.  However much it may hurt, citizens in a Republic are responsible for abiding by the law and accepting the decisions of electorates, legislatures, and courts until such time as minds can be changed. 

There is no possible excuse for terrorism, none, and that is what the murder of an abortion provider amounts to.  Someone might think that the late George Tiller, one of the few medical professionals who "provided women with abortions even late into their pregnancies", in fact murdered children for a living.  I would like to say I disagree, but I cannot.  In this case, it doesn't matter.  Murderous violence against one's fellow citizens points toward a darkness much greater than any it might remedy.  If unchecked, it invites violence and fear without end, and ultimately tyranny. 

Socrates argued, in the Crito, that it is never right to do evil in return for evil, and that those who believe it is can never have common ground with those who do not.  This is hard reasoning, but as usual with Socrates, it is right reasoning.  I think that slavery was a great evil.  I also think that John Brown deserved to be hanged, if anyone ever did.  I think abortion is wrong to the same degree and for the same reasons as slavery.  I also think that George Tiller's murderer should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  If this was a political murder, as seems obvious, then the perpetrator is an enemy of liberty and decent government.  If anyone deserves a good hanging, he does.  

Friend of and valuable contributor to this blog, A.I., posted a comment on the Prop. 8 case before the California Supreme Court. It seemed to me that with all the attention I reproduce it in whole here:

Ken. It appears one of us will eventually have gloating rights over our arguments regarding laws against same sex marriage being discriminatory. I refer to the Ted Olsen/Davide Boies (unlikely duo extraordinaire) case being brought in federal court in California to strike down Prop. 8.

In part, they will argue what has been more-or-less my point all along, that: "Prop. 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it singles out gays and lesbians for a disfavored legal status, thereby creating a category of second-class citizens." Of course, that is only part of the case.

So will you or will you not gloat if your opinion prevails in this case. I should be a big enough person to say I will not gloat should my side prevail--I should be, but...

A.I.: I am not sure I earn any gloating rights here, and I am in no mood to gloat. The CA Court by a 6 to 1 vote did indeed uphold Proposition 8, which restricted marriage in California to a union of a man and a woman. As I understand the decision, it turned entirely on a procedural question concerning what kind of amendment is valid under the state constitution. . The Court ruled that Prop. 8 "was a limited constitutional amendment, not a wholesale revision that would have required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to be placed before voters." That hardly validates my position, nor does it contradict yours.

I continue to say that your argument is wrong for the simple reason that it is logically incoherent. The other sex marriage restriction applies in exactly the same way to all citizens of California. For that reason it cannot be said to "single out gays and lesbians." Singling out is logically exclusive of equal applicability.

Consider an example: Marriage is sometimes used for other purposes than a loving union. Sometimes immigrants marry only in order to gain legal residence in the United States. What if two women wished to marry not because they were a homosexual couples, but only so one partner could extend her public insurance benefits to the other? They would be barred from marriage under the law even though they are neither gay nor lesbian. Therefore: no singling out.

This is a matter of simple logic. If no A is B, then all A are not B. If A stands for any person, and B stands for persons legally allowed to marry someone of the same sex, then under Prop. 8., all A are not B. There is no way that "all A" singles out "some A".

The people of California, including 70% of Blacks and 53% of Hispanics, admire traditional, i.e., opposite sex marriage and want to keep it at that. You admire same sex marriage just as much, and wants it to be legal, but I do not see you arguing for other possible forms of marriage, such as polygynous or polyandrous marriage. Those who believe in such forms, for religious or other reasons, probably see you as singling them out for disfavored status. What you want is for the Courts to bless your sentiments and not those of California's Black and Hispanic (excuse me, Latino) populations. There are no constitutional grounds on which to do so.

But if the passing and sustaining of Proposition 8 was good in terms of constitutional law, it was not good, I think, for the institution of marriage. The Court made it rather clear that all the tangible benefits of marriage have to be available to same sex couples (in effect singling out radical Mormons and polygynous Islamists). That means the creation of an institution parallel to marriage with all of the same legal consequences. I think that dilutes marriage and renders it less meaningful. That is one of the reasons I am in favor of same sex marriage. I think it would support rather than diminish the importance of this very important institution.

So as I said, A.I., I am not in any mood to gloat.

I am not now nor have I ever been a part of the Roman Church. I was raised a Methodist. I am not qualified to say whether inviting President Barack Obama to give ND's commencement speech and receive an honorary degree was a violation of Catholic protocol. But I gather that the Catholic Church has more rules than the Methodist Church, which is an easy call since the former has at least some rules and the latter, so far as I can tell, has none. I like having a lot of different kinds of religious communities in the neighborhood. That's diversity. But that means that each community has to insist on being what it is. If Obama's invitation was a violation of the rules, as some allege, that represents a threat to diversity. How's that for a politically correct defense of staunch Catholics?

I listened to President Obama's speech this morning, and commented on it on South Dakota Public Radio. I thought it was a fine commencement speech, as such things go. The issue of abortion was obviously the center of gravity around which the whole affair revolved. I thought President Obama's handling of that issue was very interesting.

He said one thing that needs saying, and said it well.

One of the vexing things for those of us interested in promoting greater understanding and cooperation among people is the discovery that even bringing together persons of good will, bringing together men and women of principle and purpose -- even accomplishing that can be difficult.

The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in an admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved. (Applause.)

Yes. There are people of intelligence and good will on both sides of these issues. I wish he had made that the central theme of his speech. I liked this part as well:

Now, understand -- understand, Class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it -- indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory -- the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

So how do we deal with such irreconcilable differences on abortion? The President had some suggestions:

Let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions, let's reduce unintended pregnancies. (Applause.) Let's make adoption more available. (Applause.) Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. (Applause.) Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women." Those are things we can do. (Applause.)

Now I liked one thing there: the "sensible conscience clause" part. I don't think that doctors or pharmacists who are opposed to abortion for religious reasons or reasons of moral conscience should be forced to choose between conscience and livelihood.

But it is also important to recognize that position regarding people who disagree with him on abortion is one of tolerance. Tolerance was the mechanism by which the great politico-theological controversies of the Protestant Reformation were ultimately, if very gradually, resolved. The mechanism works like this: we, the people in power, will stop burning you guys and the stake; heck, we might even let you into the colleges. But in turn, you guys will accept that we are in power. It worked for Queen Elizabeth. Maybe it works for Obama.

The United States has a much more liberal abortion policy than most developed countries. A woman five days from natural birth can get an abortion if she has a doctor and a lawyer behind her. A healthy baby who survives an attempted abortion, well we know that Obama does not think that such a biological entity deserves protection. President Obama's bottom line is that this regime is no more negotiable than the Protestant Succession was for the Elizabethan regime. Accept that, and he will negotiate on other details. This is appalling. But for a political scientist, it is very interesting.

The American Left has always had a soft spot for Castro.  While President Obama was off schmoozing the French and the Turks (a necessary if largely fruitless business), the Congressional Black Caucus was visiting the Saruman of the Caribbean Fidel, and his brother Raul.  They put up no resistance to the sweet voice of tyranny.  This from the LA Times:

How's this for hope and change: U.S. officials flying to Cuba, not to interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay but to meet with the Castro brothers in order to ease the 50-year tensions between the two nations.

The aging, ailing, cigar-smoking icon Fidel Castro had three members of Congress visit with him today in Havana, which resulted in the bearded one asking, "How can we help President Obama?"  In an effort to improve the relationship between Cuba and the U.S., Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) and Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) were the first U.S. officials to meet with the 82-year-old former dictator since his intestinal surgery in July 2006.

"I'm convinced Raul Castro wants a normal relationship with the United States," Lee said after the meeting with the 77-year-old, the Associated Press reported. "He's serious."

"I think that what really surprised me, but also endeared me to him, was his keen sense of humor, his sense of history and his basic human qualities," Rush said. "I intend to do everything that I can when we get back to the States to make sure that normalization with our relationship with Cuba is given proper consideration both within the House of Representatives and the neighborhoods of America."

Mona Charen has some interesting comments:

"This is the dawning of a new day,'' exclaimed Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. "In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor."

Funny how easy it is to survive when you don't hold elections. And when all of your opponents wind up in prison or dead. And when even those who dare to whisper a word of dissent to your absolute rule find themselves harassed, beaten, humiliated, and imprisoned. According to the Black Book of Communism, more than 100,000 Cubans have served time for political offenses in Cuba's equivalent of the Gulag Archipelago since Castro came to power in 1959. Among those particularly singled out for persecution were human rights activists, homosexuals, and religious believers.

Castro is a tyrant.  What is it that makes him so attractive to people who never have to worry about being arrested in the middle of the night?  Why this fondness for a man and a regime that view independent librarians as a disease to be cured? 

Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper writing at the New York Times point out that Chas Freeman was a controversial choice for National Intelligence Council Chairman.

When Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, announced that he would install Charles W. Freeman Jr. in a top intelligence post, the decision surprised some in the White House who worried that the selection could be controversial and an unnecessary distraction, according to administration officials.

Mazzetti and Cooper put all the blame on Freeman’s critical stance toward Israel.  That was almost certainly the real deal breaker.  It generated a brief but intense lobbying campaign by supporters of Israel, and it brought pro-Israel members on Congress to push their weight on the issue.  It didn’t help that Freeman was not only anti-Israel, but vehemently pro-Saudi in his positions. 

But that’s hardly the only thing.  The real smoking gun is what Freeman said about the atrocity in Tiananmen Square in 1989, when the Chinese Government smashed a peaceful protest movement by sending tanks against teenagers.  Here is the now infamous e-mail that Freeman sent on the topic, from the Weekly Standard:

I will leave it to others to address the main thrust of your reflection on Eric's remarks. But I want to take issue with what I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be yoiur citation of the conventional wisdom about the 6/4 [or Tiananmen] incident. I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at "Tian'anmen" stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

For myself, I side on this -- if not on numerous other issues -- with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' "Bonus Army" or a "student uprising" on behalf of "the goddess of democracy" should expect to be displaced with despatch from the ground they occupy. I cannot conceive of any American government behaving with the ill-conceived restraint that the Zhao Ziyang administration did in China, allowing students to occupy zones that are the equivalent of the Washington National Mall and Times Square, combined. while shutting down much of the Chinese government's normal operations. I thus share the hope of the majority in China that no Chinese government will repeat the mistakes of Zhao Ziyang's dilatory tactics of appeasement in dealing with domestic protesters in China.

I await the brickbats of those who insist on a politically correct -- i.e. non Burkean conservative -- view.

Chas

I don’t know about you guys, but I find this thing appalling.  A pro-democracy campaign waged by courageous students is murdered by the Chinese government.  China being what it is, we will never know how many died.  But we do know what Chas Freeman thought about the Chinese Government’s actions.  He is disgusted that they waited so long to send in the storm troopers. 

We know already, from Secretary of State Clinton, that the Obama Administration isn’t going to let a silly little thing like human rights get in the way of good relations with China.  Maybe that’s a regrettable necessity.  But at least we should regret it.  Chas Freeman is innocent of such regrets.  He obviously admires the firm hand of Beijing, except that he finds it a little wimpy.  He would respond in the same way, quicker, against protestors on the Capitol Mall, if he had his way. 

Chas Freeman is a cretin.  He was Obama’s pick for a major intelligence post.  It is some small comfort that his date with power has been postponed.  But as Paul Mirengoff points out at Powerline, the comfort is small indeed. 

It's natural to feel relief over the demise of Chas Freeman's appointment as National Intelligence Chairman. But this sentiment must be tempered by the knowledge that the man who selected Freeman, Dennis Blair, is our Director of National Intelligence. Indeed, that knowledge, coupled with Blair's defense of Freeman, fully offsets the relief I otherwise would feel.

What sort of people have we installed at the White House? 

I had the pleasure, this week, of carefully reading the Supreme Court's opinions in District of Columbia v. Heller for my course in Constitutional Law. In that decision, the High Court declared for the first time that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects the right of citizens to possess firearms, including handguns, and to have them ready at least for the defense of their own homes.

Antonin Scalia's opinion is characteristically thorough, brilliant, and devastating. He examines the historical record and the logical meaning of each part of the Amendment. Here is the text of the Second Amendment, from ePublius!:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Scalia properly distinguishes the Prefatory Clause (A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State) from the Operative Clause (the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed). The first explains the reasons for the amendment, but does not change the operation of the second clause. If I say in my will: "Jon is a handsome man, so I leave him my fortune," Jon gets the fortune. If you object that Jon is butt ugly, you might have a point. But he still gets the money.

Scalia lays out the question:

The two sides in this case have set out very different interpretations of the Amendment.

Petitioners and today's dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service.

Respondent argues that it protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

One side wants to interpret the 2^nd Amendment in such a way as to completely negate any effect. They want it to go away. The five judge majority interprets it to mean something enforceable in court. Here is some of the meat of Scalia's opinion:

The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a "right of the people." The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase "right of the people" two other times, in the First Amendment 's Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment 's Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people"). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not "collective" rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body. Nowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right.

The Constitution does not recognize any "corporate rights," except those belonging to the American people as a whole and some belonging to the people of the various states. But when it says "the right of the people," it always means the right of individual persons, as in

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…

Scalia goes on to show that "the right to bear and keep arms" was understood by the framers as a pre-existing right belonging to individual persons. It was one of those rights that the founders preserved from the English political tradition. English kings who wished to become tyrants had tried to disarm Englishmen who were not loyal to them. Protecting the rights of every citizen to keep and bear arms was thus a bulwark against tyranny. Hence the prefatory clause. Scalia shows that this interpretation was well-grounded in the various state constitutions.

To see that Scalia was right, and the minority wrong, one has only to notice how weak and disturbingly stupid Steven's dissent is. Consider this:

The Court overlooks the significance of the way the Framers used the phrase "the people" in these constitutional provisions. In the First Amendment , no words define the class of individuals entitled to speak, to publish, or to worship; in that Amendment it is only the right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, that is described as a right of "the people." These rights contemplate collective action. While the right peaceably to assemble protects the individual rights of those persons participating in the assembly, its concern is with action engaged in by members of a group, rather than any single individual. Likewise, although the act of petitioning the Government is a right that can be exercised by individuals, it is primarily collective in nature. For if they are to be effective, petitions must involve groups of individuals acting in concert.

Stevens is arguing that the "right of the people peaceably to assemble," in the First Amendment, is a "collective right." He needs to, to establish the existence of collective rights under the Constitution. But this is so stupid an argument as to embarrass a moron. The right to peaceably assemble doesn't belong to the Sierra Club or the National Rifle Association. It belongs to any individual who wants to join one or the other. When you make this stupid an argument, you are either dumb as a post (Stevens is not), or you are trying to save a bad proposition.

But it gets worse. Stevens says:

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States.

Stevens is saying that the purpose of the 2^nd Amendment was to protect the right of each state to arm itself against the Federal Government. Now I have relatives in Arkansas who would welcome that interpretation. They have confederate flag decals in the back windows of their pickup trucks. In order to save gun control, Stevens has joined Alexander Stevens and become a confederate!

Steven's dissent is self-refuting. The Second Amendment clearly protects the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms. It does so because the founders thought that this right was necessary to the security of a free people. It is careful to preserve the power of the states and Congress to regulate the militias. But if the Constitution means what it says, it means that individual citizens have a right to "cling" to their guns.

It's too early, to be sure, to judge the Obama Administration's policies. We know that he is "reversing" Bush Administration policies on Gitmo, but we have no clue as to what direction that car is now heading. The announcement that Gitmo will close is part of the made for TV package. Change we cannot be at all clear about.

Obama is playing to the New York Times and the LA Times here. These organs of enlightened if financially insolvent opinion are quite clear that Bush's military tribunals are kangaroo courts. Presumably they want all the Guantanamo detainees turned over to civilian courts. Okay. But doesn't that mean that a lot of these detainees, captured by the military, will be released? And what does that mean? Well, we have an idea. The New York Times delivers it:

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

So in this case, those terrible, constitutionally corrosive Bushies were too nice. They released al-Shihri to the Yemenis, who apparently put him in a terrorist twelve-step program. He relapsed. Now you can chalk this up to Bush incompetence, but doesn't his release indicate that we didn't have enough on him to be certain that he was the real bad guy that he obviously was?

So what about those recovering terrorists whom we are pretty sure aren't recovering? Aren't some of these folks going to be released by American courts, if the Courts get a hold of them? Courts aren't really designed to safeguard national security. And what if the next great terrorist attack on the mainland is accomplished by someone who got out with a writ of habeas corpus? What is that going to do to our concern for civil liberties?

You might suppose that the NY and LA Times would be thinking about this. If so, they are keeping their thoughts to themselves. I am guessing that Obama is thinking about it. The last thing he wants is to be responsible for the release of the next bin Laden. I am guessing that he will figure out a way to keep the really bad eggs from shipping out. But he is going to have to do it on his own. The Left has nothing.

From the Washington Post:

President Obama took dramatic steps yesterday to reverse Bush administration policies on the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists, ordering the closure of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and banning the use of controversial CIA interrogation techniques. But he left open the question of how his administration will deal with any detainees it concludes are too dangerous to be released.

The Press is doing a pretty good job of presenting just the story that the Obama Administration wants presented. Even Fox is in on it. Right now, Obama wants to be seen as radically transforming the way we do business in Washington, while being very careful about what he actually does. The well-established pattern of big pronouncements unaccompanied by revealing details continues. This is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that we eventually do get details.

The New York Times, busy selling itself to Mexican telecommunications billionaire and apparent loan shark Carlos Slim, vents in the way that suggests a declining digestive system on the Guantanamo story.

Long before President Obama took office, pretty much everyone, even President George Bush, said the prison at Guantánamo Bay needed to be closed. In June 2007, the White House claimed it was working on a "number of steps" that had to happen first — but getting started was really hard.

Well, maybe not so hard. It took President Obama less than 12 hours. Before midnight of his first day in office, he took the obvious and vital step of halting the military tribunals at the prison camp. And he reportedly is considering a draft executive order that would direct that the prison be closed entirely within a year.

That first paragraph acknowledges, without any risk of honesty, that Obama's executive order was no reversal of policy. It was in fact a change of policy toward the same end. Maybe it will be a more effective policy. But if Bush announced a year and a half ago that Gitmo needed to be closed, and didn't manage it, Obama intends to take another year.

So the bit about doing it all in 12 hours is a transparent lie. What Obama did do is to shut down the military tribunals, which brings to a halt the only real mechanism in place for clearing out the facility. What he didn't do is say how he intends to solve the problems with which the Bush Administration wrestled. From the Wall Street Journal:

In the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Bush Administration and Congress painstakingly set thresholds for who can be detained and under what rules. Mr. Obama argues that work was flawed and that the trials should not continue in their present form. But he also said in his ABC sitdown that he wants to create "a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system, but doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up."

Sounds great. But this "balance" is difficult to strike because many of the Guantanamo prisoners haven't committed crimes per se but are dedicated American enemies and too dangerous to let go. Other cases involve evidence that is insufficient for trial but still sufficient to determine that release is an unacceptable security risk.

The problem is simple: the prisoners in Gitmo were captured as a result of military actions. The U.S. military does not ordinarily read Miranda rules to people who are trying to kill them. Our soldiers are trained in war and trained in the rules that are supposed to make war a little less brutal. But they are not trained to collect evidence for criminal trials. So we have a lot of folks in Guantanamo who were are pretty sure are too dangerous to release, but whom we cannot convict in an ordinary court of law.

So what do we do with them? Turning them over to civilian courts will likely result in their release. But where? A lot of civilized nations have criticized the Guantanamo regime, but none has been willing to accept any of the detainees. Sending them back to their country of origin might or might not be possible, but it will surely result in some cases in a worse fate than any incarceration by Americans. It's possible that they might be transferred to other American facilities, but folks living around these facilities are going to be any more eager to get these new neighbors than are the British. But surely if President Obama wants to avoid "releasing people who are intent on blowing us up," he is going to have to come up with some as yet unmentioned strategy.

Maybe the President can find a way to cut this Gordian knot, but as yet we have no clue as to what it might be. So it's silly to say that Obama has "reversed" Bush policy until we have some idea what his policy will be.

The long scrolls of Bush Administration crimes, the ends of which are currently dangling about the feet of dedicated Bush-loathers, all include the charge that Bush trashed the Constitution in his warrantless surveillance after 9/11. Well, did he? Maybe not, according to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. This from the New York Times (yes, it is still in business):

In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists…

But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and made public Thursday, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Here is what is at question: no reasonable person doubts that the U.S. Government can monitor foreign communications that begin and originate abroad. Someone in Iran calls someone in Iraq, who calls someone in Oxford, and all of them are talking about "the next strike," well, we can listen in without bothering with warrants and all. Now, what if Oxford calls Chicago? Does Maxwell Smart have to determine whether the recipient is an American citizen, and if so, get a warrant, before he listens in? Well, that depends on how badly you want to monitor that intelligence.

The three-judge court, which hears rare appeals from the full Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, addressed provisions of the Protect America Act, passed by Congress in 2007 amid the controversy over Mr. Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants. It found that the administration had put in place sufficient privacy safeguards to meet the constitutional standards of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Because of that, the company had to cooperate, the court said.

That finding bolstered the Bush administration's broader arguments on wiretapping without warrants, both critics and supporters said.

William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University who has criticized the administration's legal position on eavesdropping, said that while the ruling did not address Mr. Bush's surveillance without warrants directly, "it does bolster his case" by recognizing that eavesdropping for national security purposes did not always require warrants.

After the World Trade Center fell, Bush decided that stopping the next attack was not a matter of law enforcement, but a matter of war. It was imperative to find out what the terrorists were planning, and make them stop. I think he was right to do so. His most vociferous critics accused him of trampling of civil liberties, but I wonder how much those liberties would have been worth to most Americans if 9/11 had been followed by a series of terrible attacks. Americans have not yet been scared. The World Trade Center was in New York. We don't want to see what happens when we get really scared. If you want to protect civil liberties, and I certainly do, you have to stop the really big scare from happening.

Bush leaves office with peace of mind. I know BB will cringe at this, but he does. He kept the next thing from happening. I expect that the next President will do much the same as he did.

My Keloland fellow, Cory Heidelberger, has a brief reply to my recent post on Same Sex Marriage and the Constitution. It was so good he apparently managed to post it twice. We are more in agreement, I think, than he may realize; or at a least about some things.

Here is his last paragraph:

To disagree with the good professor, I will appeal not to lust, but to love, to the intentional choice that a free person can make to commit to a relationship with one significant other. That is a valuable, character-building, society-leavening choice. That commitment is about much more than what we do with our naughty bits. It's about sharing a household, raising children, tending each other when sick or dying. Incest and polygamy may still fall under the purview of responsible government, as those behaviors entail problems with power and submission. But if two rational citizens want to make a lasting commitment to each other, we should not contort our law or Constitution into denying that choice.

Cory is making a hardy effort here to distinguish between a homosexual relationship and other "non-traditional" relationships. He seems to think that two consenting adults involved in the former have a constitutional right to marry, whereas persons involved in the latter do not. Now I happen to share Cory's sentiments. I think when a man shows up in a emergency room because his male partner of many years has collapsed on the racquetball court, it is only decency to give him the same rights a wife would have. Moreover if (as some gay activists have argued) marriage can curb the tendency of male homosexuals to be promiscuous, as it surely does curb the promiscuous inclinations of heterosexual males, then both kinds of marriage would be worthy of respect for exactly the same reason. So my sentiments here are compatible with Cory's.

The chief difference is that I don't confuse my sentiments for constitutional principles. Cory is inclined to admire the homosexual couple (two rational and presumably adult citizens) as much as the heterosexual couple. But surely it's possible that some incestuous or polygynous relationships involve rational citizens. Who is Cory to deny them their choice? I agree with Cory that the alternatives he dislikes may "entail problems with power and submission," but so does heterosexual monogamy and, I dare to say, some spicier homosexual partnerships. I suspect that Cory is merely categorizing these relationships into the ones he feels fondly toward, and the ones he doesn't. That is the same as Black voters apparently did in California when they voted for Prop. 8.

I think Cory's intuition is right, and that there are rational principles that indicate which of these relationships should be blessed by the state, which should be ignored, and which should be prohibited. I just don't think these principles are contained in any constitution I have yet seen. Some things are left up to legislatures to decide. So I see "no contortion of the law or Constitution" involved here.

Finally, I partially dissent on the nookie question. Homosexual relationships like heterosexual ones are surely about more than just physical sex. But it is physical sex that ties together all the relationships that Cory mentions. We wouldn't be considering extending the relationship of marriage to couples of men who are just chums. Without the nookie, no one would be talking about marriage. I note that my spell check doesn't recognize "nookie."

I am not opposed to same-sex marriage as policy, but I do not believe that same-sex marriage is required by the Constitution of the United States. I doubt very much whether it is required under any reasonable interpretation of any state constitution. In reply to an anonymous interlocutor on my Keloland site, I wrote this:

Banning gay marriage does not "discriminate against a group of people by denying them rights enjoyed by other groups." Under such laws, a gay man can marry a woman but not another man. A non-gay man has exactly the same rights. Whatever may be wrong with traditional marriage restrictions, it isn't equality.

Happily, I received a response, presumably from the same A.I.:

So a predominately homosexual society banning heterosexual marriage would comport with your definition of equality?

To which I reply: yes. A law that allowed a person to marry another of his or her own sex but not to marry someone of the opposite sex, so long it was applied the same way to all persons, would satisfy the standard of equality before the law. Treating everyone the same regardless of who they are is what equality means. I don't think that is merely "my definition;" rather, it is the very heart of that concept.

That doesn't mean, of course, that the law proposed above would be a good law or a just law, it just means, as I said, that whatever is wrong with it, it isn't inequality.

AI goes on:

Telling a heterosexual person they can marry a person they are physically compatible with while denying that right to a homosexual person hardly meets a reasonable definition of equality under law.

I am not at all certain what "physical compatibility" means here. I cannot imagine any obvious way that two men are more physically compatible than a man and a woman. Well, actually I can, but I won't elaborate. I suspect that what AI means is that homosexuals are attracted to persons of the same sex, just as heterosexuals are attracted to persons of the opposite sex; so, allowing the one group to marry those they are attracted to, but not the other group is not equality.

But that argument also fails. No one, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transgendered, etc, gets to marry whomever he/she is attracted to. No one is allowed to marry his daughter, sister, or mother, regardless of how "physically compatible" they may be. No two people can marry a third. A State might forbid marriage between first cousins or even second cousins. So long as these restrictions are applied equally to all, regardless of race, creed, color, or sexual preference, they involve no inequalities.

A final argument against different-sex restrictions on marriage makes an analogy with laws against miscegenation. This fails as well, on logical grounds. The purpose and presumed effect of banning inter-racial marriage was to make sure that discrete and insular minorities remain discrete and insular. Or, to use the language of Plessy, the purpose was to prevent "commingling" between the races. Whatever different sex restrictions on marriage may do, they do not inhibit commingling of homosexuals with heterosexuals.

So I see no valid argument that constitutional principles require the legalization of same sex marriage. I also made this argument about motive behind the thirty states that have passed different-sex restrictions on marriage:

I would like to think that the opposition is rooted in irritation at the Courts. California was one of the states where the State Supreme Court tried to enact gay marriage by legislative fiat. The same thing happened in Massachusetts, and would have been overturned their if the state constitution had not allowed the legislature to block the popular will.

AI responds:

As for 30 states banning gay marriage in response to court actions, I doubt it. There was no court action in SD prompting voters to ban same-sex marriage. I doubt Mormon support for 8 in California was anything more than religious bias (bigotry) against homosexuality. I am not accusing you of bigotry. However, I do believe defending the notion that trying to define otherwise arbitrary lines between judicial activism and legitimate legal interpretations justifies a Proposition 8 serves to offer cover for bigots.

Persons of traditional faith have the right hold what opinions they do about the sanctity of marriage. Perhaps it is not the best political strategy to call them bigots. I notice that you mention the Mormons, but not African-Americans who, as I pointed out, may have put Prop. 8 over the top. Selecting your targets in such a way might on its own be at least a soft form of bigotry.

I did not vote for the recent constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in SD. But I have close friends who did, some of them deeply involved in that initiative. I can tell you that they were thinking of little else but the actions of various courts around the nation. There has been a movement nationwide to establish same-sex marriage by judicial fiat. I can also tell you that when discussing this with people who are deeply opposed to same sex marriage (and that includes a lot of discussions with a lot of people), I never heard anyone express a contempt for homosexuals. I did hear frequent contempt for liberals who want to trump the legislative process have judges write their own opinions into the text of the various constitutions. So I think you are wrong with regard to the motives behind the movement.

I thought my post on the New Yorker cover might draw a response.  It did.  Just after I posted it I noticed that my esteemed Keloland colleague Bob Schwartz also posted on the cover, presenting a case against the cover.  Bob has this:

Of course The “New Yorker” is standing by their cover despite the condemnation that is coming pretty much from all sides including both the Obama and McCain campaign’s. They state that the satire was obvious and that their readership was smart enough to figure out the real meaning.

The problem with that logic of course is that while the “New Yorker’s” readers might be smart enough, as the WND poll shows, not everyone is a “New Yorker” kind of reader and all that cover has really done is put an image to the ridiculous beliefs of those who refuse to do even the most basic research and who probably shouldn’t be voting in the first place.

Intrepid reader BB has this comment, in much the same spirit:

I should send BB a stipend for acting as a proof reader.  Thanks, Bob.  I corrected the typo.  As to the substance, what my colleague and reader seem to be saying is that political humor should be limited to the lowest common denominator.  Unless the bozos can get it, don't print it.  I could not disagree more. 

Did George Carlin worry about the goof balls who wouldn't get his satire?   I dare say not.  Political humor is supposed to be edgy, and ought to be clever.  It is frequently harsh and biting.  Sometimes it makes great demands of its audience, which is as it should be. But if you want it to be good, you can't put shackles on it or expect it to abide by Marquis of Queensbury rules.  Here might be my favorite example of political humor, or assassination, depending on your view.

The English actor and playwright Samuel Foote (1720-1777) was engaged in argument with Lord Sandwich in, where else, a pub.  "Foote," said Lord Sandwich, "I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end, but I think you must die either by the pox, or on the gallows."  Foote replied without missing a beat: "That would depend on whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles."  Not that was a good English foote to the arse.    There wasn't enough left of Sandwich to bury in a condom. 

Most political humor does not rise to that level of cleverness.  The New Yorker cover certainly did not.  But if you want to strangle cleverness in its crib, you need only insist that all comedy be in good taste, and that it respect the sensitivity of the issues.  The reaction to the New Yorker cover in the general press demonstrates that our political culture has become altogether too stuffy.  It's high time some good wits let a little air out of our shirts. 

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.  Mr. Sampson (no word on Delila yet) managed to get help from the ACLU and FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and the Purdue administration quickly back-peddled, denying that it had ever said or did what it said and did in print. 

But one has to wonder just what kind of people these are who regard "openly reading a book" as a crime?  Bozos, to be certain.  But malevolent Bozos, whose every instinct is antithetical to freedom of thought.  Every honest person on the left, with a genuine concern for liberty, should demand that this sort of thing be shut down.