South Dakota Politics Schaff

This is my last post for KELO/South Dakota Politics.  I have decided to essentially stop blogging.  As I explained to some of my blogging colleagues earlier this week, my attitude toward blogging these days is like my attitude toward calypso music.  I have nothing against it.  I am sure it has its virtues and fine people enjoy it.  I am just not interested.

Many thanks to KELO, especially Jeremey Moser, for this opportunity. 

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.
THE UNANIMOUS
DECLARATION
OF THE
THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's GOD entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.

HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.

HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

HE has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyranny only.

HE has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.

HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.

HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the mean Time, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.

HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.

HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.

HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our Legislatures.

HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:

FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:

FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:

FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:

FOR abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:

FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

FOR suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.

HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection, and waging War against us.

HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.

HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.

HE has constrained our Fellow-Citizens, taken Captive on the high Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

HE has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.

IN every Stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every Act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them, from Time to Time, of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our Connexions and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the Rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connexion between them and the State of Great-Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of Right do. And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.

John Hancock.
GEORGIA, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Geo. Walton.
NORTH-CAROLINA, Wm. Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.
SOUTH-CAROLINA, Edward Rutledge, Thos Heyward, junr. Thomas Lynch, junr. Arthur Middleton.
MARYLAND, Samuel Chase, Wm. Paca, Thos. Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.
VIRGINIA, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Ths. Jefferson, Benja. Harrison, Thos. Nelson, jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.
PENNSYLVANIA, Robt. Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benja. Franklin, John Morton, Geo. Clymer, Jas. Smith, Geo. Taylor, James Wilson, Geo. Ross.
DELAWARE, Caesar Rodney, Geo. Read.
NEW-YORK, Wm. Floyd, Phil. Livingston, Frank Lewis, Lewis Morris.
NEW-JERSEY, Richd. Stockton, Jno. Witherspoon, Fras. Hopkinson, John Hart, Abra. Clark.
NEW-HAMPSHIRE, Josiah Bartlett, Wm. Whipple, Matthew Thornton.
MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, Saml. Adams, John Adams, Robt. Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry.
RHODE-ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE, &c. Step. Hopkins, William Ellery.
CONNECTICUT, Roger Sherman, Saml. Huntington, Wm. Williams, Oliver Wolcott.

IN CONGRESS, JANUARY 18, 1777.

ORDERED,
THAT an authenticated Copy of the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCY, with the Names of the MEMBERS of CONGRESS, subscribing the same, be sent to each of the UNITED STATES, and that they be desired to have the same put on RECORD.
By Order of CONGRESS,
JOHN HANCOCK, President.

BALTIMORE, in MARYLAND: Printed by MARY KATHARINE GODDARD.

While Scott McClellan's book sits on the bestseller list, Douglas Feith's War and Decision has received half the attention of McClellan although it appears to be twice the book.  The link above is to the book's homepage which contains a bevy of information, including Misconception and The Facts about the Iraq War.  Feith's book is informative, well-written, and in general a convincing account of the planning and early stages of the Iraq war. 

Feith, who was Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2001-2005, begins his book with a discussion of 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan.  While this is important subject matter, I suspect most people are more concerned with the Iraq war so I will concentrate on that. 

Why Iraq?  This is the title of Feith's sixth chapter.  First, Congress and the Clinton administration had already passed the Iraqi Liberation Act into law in 1998, making regime change in Iraq part of national policy (btw, in this section Feith incorrectly identifies Tom Daschle as being from North Dakota. People often confuse the two states and I like to clear things up by telling people that South Dakota is the Dakota just south of North Dakota).  Second, the Hussein regime was brutalizing its people with mass murder, torture and general reign of terror.  Third, the regime had attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush, surely an act of war.  Feith also delves into the connections between the Iraqi regime and international terrorism.  Next, the sanction regime was porous and was hurting the wrong people, namely the Iraqi citizenry. Also, Iraq was in serial breech of the agreements that had ended Gulf War I (including firing at US planes enforcing no fly zones). 

What about the WMDs?  Feith reports that the CIA told both the Clinton and Bush administrations that Iraq had large stockpiles of WMDs.  Iraq most certainly had the programs in place to reconstitute WMDs at a moment's notice.  Even after hostilities ended, the Iraq Survey Group "confirmed Saddam's intention and capability to produce biological and chemical weapons.  But the large stockpiles were not found" (emphasis in the original).  

Feith documents the fact that the Bush administration made a holistic case for war rather than basing its decision on stockpiles of WMD.  He also documents the various official investigation that failed to find any evidence that the intelligence was rigged or that administration officials pressured intelligence analysts to change their reports.  Feith goes into more detail than I can reproduce in this review.  Let's just say it's convincing. Read the book for details.

Feith has little good to say about the State Department and the CIA.  He depicts Colin Powell and George Tenet as political operators who did not do the kind of strategic thinking that was promoted by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.  If the Pentagon was more influential, Feith argues, it was from the fact that Rumsfeld had his team think out problems, argue out various alternatives, and then write tightly argued memos.  Powell and Tenet preferred to operate on the level of tactics and rarely made complex arguments.  Indeed, Feith argues that Powell especially seemed to want it both ways on Iraq.  He didn't want to commit himself to a full-throated defense of the war, but he never objected to the war decision.  This way if things went well he could say he never opposed, but if things went badly he could say that he wasn't a big supporter.  Powell and Tenet also undermined the administration by remaining silent in official meetings but then airing objections to administration policy to media sources.

Feith also has criticism for Condoleezza Rice.  Rice's assumption was that "interagency disagreements are a symptom of a dysfunction rather than useful debate."  Her reports to the president were often aimed at presenting the appearance of consensus rather than giving the president the stark alternatives and letting him decide. 

If anyone was shading intelligence, Feith argues, it was the CIA, which made a practice of giving more credence to intelligence that confirmed analysts' preconceived notions and dismissing contradictory evidence as "unconfirmed."  They also failed to tell administration officials exactly how poor their sourcing was coming out of Iraq.

Obviously Feith objects to the "Bush lied, people died" notion.  First, Bush made comprehensive argument for the Iraq war, not focusing on stockpiles of WMDs.  Second, Bush, Congress and various other governments, based on what they were told, believed Iraq to be in possession of stockpiles.  Here Bush, Congress and other governments were wrong, but they really did believe what they were saying. Finally, as noted above, after the war inspection groups did find vast WMD capabilities and strong evidence of WMD programs.  Saddam could have reconstituted significant amounts of WMDs in a matter of weeks.  But, Feith laments, after reports that large stockpiles were not found, the administration inexplicably refused to defend its case for war and started to play up the "promotion of democracy" angle. This, Feith argues, made it look like Bush was changing his argument to fit the news.  And that is not totally inaccurate, but it appears to have been unnecessary. 

Let me discuss the post-war planning,  as this post is already getting long.  In Feith's account,  Bush was wary about starting post-war planning too soon as such planning would undermine the administration's diplomatic ventures. It would make it look like Bush thought war was inevitable, which Bush did not believe until late 2002.  But again interagency squabbling hurt the effort.  The State Department was notoriously hostile to the "externals," Iraqis living outside of Iraq who might help form a government.  Although eventually the interim Iraq government was based on externals, State fought them tooth and nail, making planning difficult.  Second, Gen. Tommy Franks appeared uninterested in post-war planning, especially the training of a new Iraqi police force.  Next, although Bush wanted a quick transition of power, Paul Bremer differed and thought the Iraqis were not competent or hard working enough to take control.  He insisted that a constitution be finalized, rather just negotiated, before the US gave up power. Bremer ended up guiding a 14 month occupation that was intended to be only weeks. Bremer somewhat undermined his argument as the very people he claimed were incompetent were the very people he eventually selected to head an interim government.  It just took him months to do what could have been done in weeks, helping spur resentment by the Iraqi people. 

I have not done justice to the amount of detail and documentation Feith produces to augment his argument.  This documentation is why I find the argument largely convincing.  A note of caution, though.  I am wary of a memoir (of sorts) like this where almost everything bad was someone else's fault and the author could seem to do no wrong.  To be fair, Feith on various occasions admits that there is no way of knowing if his or Rumsfeld's ideas would have worked better. And Feith does say that despite his obvious admiration for Rumsfeld, the Secretary's brusque manner often undermined his efforts.  But Feith engages in precious little self-criticism, and readers should be skeptical of that. 

As an aside, Feith believes the Abu Ghraib scandal was the turning point in the war, as in Iraq and around the world it cost the United States all its good will.  Rumsfeld recognized the embarrassment and twice offered to resign over it. 

Finally (whew), what were the overall deficiencies of the administration and Bush in particular.  Bush can be blamed for not running a tight ship, not insisting on getting all points of view (on this matter he gave too much authority to Rice), tolerating disloyalty (especially from Powell), and not carrying through on decisions about post-war planning. Bush also failed to defend the administration when it came under political attack, ceding too much ground to his opponents and allowing misrepresentations to take on the status of conventional wisdom.  In a particularly harsh section, Feith excoriates the president for switching his argument on Iraq from defending the nation to building democracy. In short, while Bush was once touted as the "MBA president," the guy who understood and could manage personalities, Bush was actually a weak manager who did not assert control over his administration.

This post is now almost as long as the book it reviews.  So let me conclude by highly recommending Douglas Feith's War and Decision.

Rod Dreher lists several stories (see here and here) indicating just how serious the energy crisis is to our economic well being.  It becomes clearer by the day that our policy of loose money and high government debt is damaging our currency and, ultimately, our way of life.  I have been railing on the Federal Reserve for lowering interest rates instead of raising them.  Here is the Asian Times:

The oil price has doubled in the past year because the US Federal Reserve panicked over risks to the over-leveraged financial system and flooded markets with excess liquidity. The world is willing to pay arbitrarily high prices to hedge against inflation, but the cost of inflation hedges drags down the world economy. Last week's spike in commodity prices and swoon in global stock markets points the way to a deep and prolonged fall in economic activity.

And here is Forbes:

What is happening now is not demand destruction, it is a financial disaster. The U.S. consumes 21 million barrels of per day. At $135 per barrel, the U.S. spends $1.0 trillion per year on oil, which is equal to 15% of the $6.8 trillion in take-home pay of everyone who pays taxes. If oil prices rose to $200 per barrel, the U.S. would spend $1.5 trillion per year on oil, which would be equal to 22% of take-home pay. Moreover, those percentages of 15% and 22% do not even include the cost of coal or natural gas. In other words, the U.S. will be broke long before oil prices hit $200 per barrel, and the rest of the world would be sure to follow.

Still think it is the speculators driving up the price of oil?  The ever prescient Robert Samuelson explodes that myth in today's must read:

Speculator-bashing is another exercise in scapegoating and grandstanding. Leading politicians either don't understand what's happening or don't want to acknowledge their own complicity. (snip)

Politicians promise to tighten regulation of futures markets, but futures markets aren't the main problem. Scarcities are. Government subsidies for corn-based ethanol have increased food prices by diverting more grain into biofuels. A third of this year's U.S. corn crop could go to ethanol. Restrictions on oil drilling in the United States have reduced global production and put upward pressure on prices. If politicians wish to point fingers of blame, they should start with themselves.

At least McCain is for drilling off-shore and expanding our nuclear energy capacity. Obama and the Democrats seem to be putting all there eggs into the renewable fuel basket.  Only a fool would think that somehow solar and wind energy will even come close to meeting our energy needs in the short, medium and even distant future.  Fossil fuels must remain part (I said part) of the energy solution.  But not if you are the majority leader of the United States Senate, who took a short break from looking for unicorns to unload this whopper:

Jim Geraghty catalogs the seven (now eight) Democrats who have belittled John McCain's military service.  The most recent is "informal Obama adviser" Rand Beers who says McCain had the "wrong kind" of military service. 

While Barack Obama was urging supporters not to devalue the military service of rival John McCain, an informal Obama adviser argued Monday that the former POW's isolation during the Vietnam War has hobbled the Arizona senator's capacity as a war-time leader.

“Sadly, Sen. McCain was not available during those times, and I say that with all due respect to him," said informal Obama adviser Rand Beers. "I think that the notion that the members of the Senate who were in the ground forces or who were ashore in Vietnam have a very different view of Vietnam  and the cost that you described than John McCain does because he was in isolation essentially for many of those years and did not experience the turmoil here or the challenges that were involved for those of us who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam war."

One would hope that the rank stupidity of these remarks should be obvious (e.g., McCain had limbs broken, teeth broken, and was subject to brutal physical and mental torture, but he didn't experience the "turmoil" of Vietnam?). 

This is a pattern.  When Bill Clinton ran against legitimate war heroes in George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, military service meant nothing.  When it was Al Gore and John Kerry running against George W. Bush, their Vietnam experience was crucial, indeed for Kerry is was elemental to his campaign.  To even question Kerry's rendition of facts of his service was to "swift boat," now a verb of opprobrium indicating a false and unfair attack (even though even Kerry had to admit that parts of his story were false, namely that the "Christmas in Cambodia" that had been "seared" in his memory never actually happened).  But apparently that truth is no longer operative and today's truth is the John McCain didn't serve in the right way, making him ill equipped to be commander-in-chief. 

From the Jerusalem Post:

Anyone can talk about "supporting our troops"; the McCains serve. McCain's father and grandfather were respected American admirals. Of McCain's four sons, three have gone the military route. One was a Navy pilot like his father, one enlisted in the Marines at age 17 and recently completed a tour in Iraq, and one is completing his education at the Naval Academy (raising the strong possibility that, for the first time in half a century, the United States will have a president with a son at war).

Yet, likely because of those same values, McCain maintains a strict code of silence about his sons' military service, no matter how legitimate his pride or politically useful their military status. Through 2007, McCain was the strongest Senate advocate of vastly increasing troop levels in Iraq, strongly influencing the administration's wildly successful "surge" strategy.

Yet McCain never brought up his own son's service in some of the roughest areas of Iraq. His principled refusal of political advantage from his son's Iraq service extends to refusal even to be interviewed on the subject, or to introduce his son to campaign audiences.

This article assails a "do nothing" Congress when it comes to the energy issue.  As expressed in the article, the Democrats insist on "windfall taxes" on oil companies, a deal killer for Republicans, while the GOP insists on more drilling, a deal killer for Democrats.  This passages in humorous:

Some experts have told Congress that speculation in oil futures could be adding a $40-a-barrel premium to the price of oil, which translates to about $1 a gallon at the pump.

But critics say that policing the financial markets, much like a windfall profits tax, would do little to increase worldwide oil supplies, which some energy analysts see as the root of the problem.

Would do little?  How about nothing!  How would regulating speculators and taxing oil companies magically make more oil come out of the ground? 

I have often commented that by attacking the oil companies we really injure the average Joe who makes his living in the oil fields.  Attacking oil industry profits won't affect the lifestyle of the Exxon corporate board members, but it might cost a North Dakotan or South Dakotan a job. The high price of oil is causing oil wells in Harding County to open up and money to flow into that sparsely populated part of the state:

For the past few years, rooms at the Tipperary Lodge motel in Buffalo that sat empty in winter have been full.

Truck drivers, road builders and laborers have been busy, and a revenue source for Harding County that brought in about $1.6 million in 2007 already has added $1.4 million to the public coffers this year.

While everyone with a car or truck in South Dakota feels the pain of record fuel prices and President Bush calls for drilling in environmentally sensitive areas that have been off limits to oil exploration for decades, for the little oil patch in the northwest corner of this state the astronomical run up in oil prices has ignited something of a boom.

Read it all here.  You see, when you attack the oil companies you don't hurt the fat cats in Houston, you hurt Diane Haivala, owner of the Tipperary Lodge in Buffalo, SD.

Meanwhile, the oil boom is creating millionaires in North Dakota.

State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells.

I wonder how many people those evil oil companies are employing in North Dakota?  I happen to know that there are people from Lemmon, SD who now work in oil fields in North Dakota.  That's oil company profits and speculation putting people to work. 

Here is Joel Dykstra on this issue:

We need to take action to reverse years of neglect by Washington incumbents. We need to open up areas of American territory in Alaska and off-shore to exploration to get more oil and gas flowing to American consumers from American reserves. We are the only country in the world that imports more oil from overseas without utilizing its own God-given resources.
 
Senator Tim Johnson voted at least five times to keep parts of Alaska off-limits to oil exploration. If these areas had been opened instead of blocked we could be using American oil now instead of importing more from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela - two countries who use our dollars to work against American interests around the world.

As we have covered this ground before, I have only a brief response to Prof. Blanchard's musings on science and magic.  Prof. Blanchard defines science thusly: "Science is the pursuit of the underlying truths about the world, all of them, out of a simple desire to know."  True enough.  In this sense theology and philosophy are sciences or are parts of science.  But for at least 250 years this is not what most people mean by science, as most people are not Aristotelian in their outlook.  When most people say "science" what they mean is the attempt by man to use his mind to master the natural world, including himself, and manipulate it to his own ends.  It is not just about "understanding," it is about use. 

The divide between philosophy and the natural sciences is deep.  In general, the modern scientist, qua scientist, does not believe that we can say anything authoritative about that which is not measurable and quantifiable.   Thus the complaint, for example, that political science is not a "real science," try as it might to ape the natural sciences.  There is the derision of the humanities as "soft." 

Prof. Blanchard and others are admirably attempting to bridge this gap.  But it does not change the fact that when a modern scientist says America has a "scientific soul," he does not mean we are a nation of Aristotles.  In short, he does not mean by "science" what Prof. Blanchard means. 

The Supreme Court yesterday, in reaching a decision that to put to death someone who viciously rapes an eight-year-old violates the Eighth Amendment, makes a decision so heinous even Barack Obama cannot support it.  Read the details of the rape here, but only if you have a strong stomach. 

I have many times on this site voiced my opposition to the death penalty.  But my view is prudential, not categorical.  In a world confused about the value of human life, I'd prefer that we err for the time being on the side of life even with the worst criminals.  Even if I was categorically opposed to capital punishment I would not be so arrogant or ignorant to suppose that the Constitution prohibits that which it clearly allows.  In short, I would not read my own values into the Constitution.

For a legal analysis of the case, see Scott Johnson, Ed Whelan, Matt Franck, and the editors of National Review. 

Obama's rejection of this decision would be more edifying if this is not exactly the type of decision one can expect from Obama's "living Constitution" judges.  Says Jonah Goldberg:

To his credit — or to the credit of his realpolitik advisers — Obama came out against yesterday's decision. But, that doesn't change the fact that he would appoint judges who would vote the same away and has voted  against judges who voted the right way. 

The 'living Constitution" is one of the hallmarks of the Progressive philosophy.  Let me quote from Sidney Pearson's introduction to Herbert Croly's Progressive Democracy. 

For Croly, the Constitution was a "living Constitution," which is to say that it was not bound by the principles of the Founders.  It could evolve into some other than what the Founders would have intended.  Croly described this as a "strength," but the implications were clear; a "living Constitution" could be interpreted and reinterpreted to the point where the original principles were lost altogether....The virtual elimination of the Constitution as a source of permanent principles was necessary because Croly well understood that as a practical matter there was not likely to be a new Constitutional Convention to draft a new document. (emphasis mine)

Croly, Woodrow Wilson, and other Progressives wished to replace the Constitution with the more enlightened view of their age (the Progressives were not the first nor last to believe that intellectual evolution had peaked with themselves).  This turns the judicial branch from an institution which uses its judgment to an institution that asserts its will.  Thus Obama and others like him don't really have a legal argument against the Court; they merely have a policy disagreement.  And that is what the "living Constitution" does. It turns the Supreme Court into just another policy making body.  So the opinion of five judges overrules the people of Louisiana (to say nothing of the jury), an overruling based on a whim. 

We are now in a legal position where our imperial masters on the Supreme Court believe that a man who perverts his role as a caretaker by raping his young step-daughter has so much dignity that the Constitution forbids the public from executing him.  But, the unborn have so little dignity that the Constitution demands that the public allow women to kill their unborn child for any reason at any point in pregnancy. 

Here is Alexis de Tocqueville, From Democracy in America:

The legislators of the United States, who have mitigated almost all the penalties of criminal law, still make rape a capital offense, and no crime is visited with more inexorable severity by public opinion. This may be accounted for; as the Americans can conceive nothing more precious than a woman's honor and nothing which ought so much to be respected as her independence, they hold that no punishment is too severe for the man who deprives her of them against her will. In France, where the same offense is visited with far milder penalties, it is frequently difficult to get a verdict from a jury against the prisoner. Is this a consequence of contempt of decency or contempt of women? I cannot but believe that it is a contempt of both.

Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in 1962.  The somewhat cryptic title refers to a certain view of man.  The word "orange" refers to the Malay word "orang," which means man.  Thus the main character of the novel, Alex, is a clockwork man.  If you have seen the film or read the novel (and I confess to only seeing the film) you know that criminal Alex is made "good" by the scientific application of certain visual stimuli that condition his mind to revolt at the idea of committing violence.  The clear implication of the end of the film is that this technique can be used to make men good, but can also be used to make men bad. 

This is one of the implications of the Atlantic Monthly article "Is Google Making Us Stupid," to which I referred yesterday.  The author, Guy Billout, discusses the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, who in the late 19th Century timed the activities of various workmen in an attempt to find inefficiencies in their behavior.  Obviously the more efficient they could become in the use of their time the more money was to be made by industry.  Taylor wrote a book, The Principles of Scientific Management, aiming to turn the management of men into a science.  In this way, the worker became almost literally a clockwork man.  When man becomes a mere machine, it is easy to see him as something to be manipulated and conditioned, just as we might manipulate our car engine or computer.

This past weekend in Minnesota I was paging through a book at Barnes and Noble that was worried about the potential loss of America's "scientific soul."  This was another in a long series of "evolution good, intelligent design bad" books, perhaps matched only by the "intelligent design good, evolution bad" books (for the record, I am an "evolution controversy" agnostic).  I seriously doubt American ever had a "scientific soul," and if it did it is a good thing to remove.  When we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine, a thing to be manipulated for good and for ill.  Man, of course, is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine. 

In a Sherlock Holmes story I listened to during my recent road trip, Holmes laments while in a posh London neighborhood that while his friend Watson can appreciate the beautiful architecture of the homes, Holmes himself can only see places where crimes might take place.  His dedication to his science has made him immune to beauty.  What a pity if that is how we start to see humanity and nature, unable to appreciate their beauty, only able to see a machine.  

Two stories today on the continued support for the "Classroom Connections" program, i.e., Gov. Rounds' effort to put a laptop in the hands of every high school student in our state.  Here is Terry Woster's story and here is Chet Brokaw's.  The Rounds administration defended their program and its funding in front of the Joint Appropriations Committee yesterday.  According to the Woster story, outgoing Education Secretary Rick Melmer foresees 100% participation by our public high schools.  Brokaw reports this from budget director Jason Dilges:

He said state officials will return to the Legislature next year to seek money for a fourth year of the laptop program, and they will try to do a better job explaining how important it is.

"Technology, we all agree, is the wave of the future," Dilges said. "We can't afford not to go forward with this."

The idea that "technology is the wave of the future so we have to have laptops" is, frankly, lame.  The least problem our students have is that they are insufficiently adept at computer technology.  All the wizbang technology in the world serves no purpose if our students cannot read, cannot carry on a sustained thought, and cannot do math.  Laptops are of no use for any of these skills. 

It just so happens that my column today in the American News is on this subject, focusing on Mark Bauerlein's Dumbest Generation book.  If I may quote myself (and I may):

Graphic-heavy software and Web sites do little to raise the vocabulary of young people. The complexity of the written word and the plot intricacy of novels, even pulp novels, build vocabulary while encouraging contemplation and complexity of thinking.

But computers, video games and television, Bauerlein writes, condition the mind “against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unaided by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else.”

It is no accident that the National Association of Manufacturers lists low reading and writing skills as the No. 2 deficiency of employees.

Read the whole thing.  Also, read the Atlantic Monthly piece "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" to which Prof. Blanchard referred recently.  The piece is a little longer, so if you are the typical internet user you might struggle to get through it.  Leonard Pitts has some thought on that article here.  The author of the piece, Guy Bilout, writes:

[University College London researchers] found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

(snip)
“We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Believe me, students will figure out technology.  And those that need technology for their profession will be trained in it. But the ubiquitous use of technology in the classroom will make our students less literate, less thoughtful, and less human.  I urge the Rounds administration to rethink this initiative, and if they refuse to do so, I urge the legislature to cut all funding.

This short video provides some excellent details on how you can survive the coming zombie hordes.  One note of caution: contra this video, some think that it is not safe to go into the water.  There is growing consensus that zombies have some swimming skills.  Even if they can't swim, they can walk on the floor of the body of water, possibly reaching islands.