Indictments Are Not
The Best Revenge
I don't agree with a lot of the Bush administration's policies in the war on terror, and I plan to vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden in November. But during a recent campaign rally Mr. Biden gave a wrong-headed, if well-intentioned, answer when asked whether he would "pursue the violations that have been made against our Constitution by the present administration?" This is how he responded: "We will not be stopped from pursuing any criminal offense that's occurred."
![[Indictments Are Not the Best Revenge]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AI217_dersho_NS_20080911191016.jpg) |
| David Klein |
After praising Democratically controlled congressional committees for investigating these matters -- "collecting data, subpoenaing records . . . building a file" -- Mr. Biden continued: "If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued -- not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, [but] out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president -- no one is above the law."
Mr. Biden's comments echoed what Mr. Obama had said in April when he pledged that, if elected, he would have his attorney general investigate the actions of his predecessor to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies." Mr. Obama moderated his statement by stating that he would not want his first term "consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt," because his administration would have many other problems "we've got to solve."
No reasonable person can disagree with the important principle underlying these statements by the democratic nominees that "no one is above the law." But there is a countervailing principle at play here that is equally important -- namely that the results of an election should not determine who is to be prosecuted. These principles inevitably clash when the winners of a presidential election investigate and prosecute the losers, even if the winners honestly believe that the losers committed "genuine crimes" rather than having pursued merely "bad policies."
Under our particular system of government, it is nearly impossible for a winning administration to prosecute those it defeated without it being perceived, quite understandably, as "a partisan witch hunt." This is because the attorney general of the United States, the official who a President Obama would ask to review his predecessors' actions, plays two roles simultaneously -- that of political adviser to the president, and that of chief law enforcement officer of the United States.
In many other countries, these conflicting roles are performed by different officials. For example, in England, the minister of justice is a political adviser to the prime minister, but he plays no role in investigating and prosecuting crimes. That sensitive job is left to the director of public prosecution, who is nonpartisan. The same is true in Israel, where the minister of justice is a political adviser to the prime minister and the attorney general is the nonpartisan chief law enforcement official. (The attorney general of Israel will soon decide whether to prosecute Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on alleged corruption charges.)
It is because our system allocates these two incompatible roles to a single public official -- the attorney general -- that we have, in the past, seen the need to appoint "independent counsel" or "special prosecutors" to investigate political crimes. In England, Israel and other nations that divide these responsibilities, there is no need for these troublesome contrivances, because the normal prosecutors are already "independent" of partisan pressures.
We simply cannot trust a politically appointed and partisan attorney general of either party to investigate his political predecessors in a manner that is both fair in fact and in appearance. Nor would the appointment of "independent" or "special" counsel solve the structural problems inherent in our system. These ersatz functionaries bring problems of their own to the criminal justice process, as evidenced by the questionable investigations that targeted President Bill Clinton, vice presidential chief-of-staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby (full disclosure: I consulted with both of them, without fee, about their cases) and others over the past decades.
The real question is whether investigating one's political opponents poses too great a risk of criminalizing policy differences -- especially when these differences are highly emotional and contentious, as they are with regard to Iraq, terrorism and the like. The fear of being criminally prosecuted by one's political adversaries has a chilling effect on creative policy making and implementation.
Noam Chomsky -- the MIT professor of linguistics who has become a sort of guru to hard-left America bashers -- typically overstated his point when he asserted that "if the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every postwar American president would have been hanged." Among the crimes committed by American presidents, according to Mr. Chomsky, were the counterinsurgency campaign in Greece (Truman), the overthrow of the Guatemala's government (Eisenhower), the Bay of Pigs (Kennedy), the Vietnam War (Johnson), the invasion of Cambodia (Nixon), the attack against East Timor (Ford), the increase in Indonesian atrocities (Carter), support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (Reagan) and on and on to the current administration.
For those hard-left Democrats who have been pressing their candidates for a promise to prosecute, the list of crimes allegedly committed by the Bush-Cheney administration grows longer and thinner every day.
A politically appointed prosecutor, imbued with partisan zeal, could find technical violations of the criminal law in some of the envelope-pushing policies of virtually every administration. One does not have to be as ruthless as Laventri Beria -- who infamously assured his boss Joseph Stalin "show me the man and I'll find you the crime" -- to come up with "a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation" (as Mr. Biden put it).
Even the most well-intentioned and honorable partisans may see "genuine crimes" on the part of their political adversaries, where a more objective prosecutor would see nothing more than "really bad policies." Most "political" crimes are matters of degree, hinging on "mens rea," the mental state of the alleged perpetrator. The criminal law is a blunderbuss, not a scalpel, and in the hands of a partisan prosecutor it is too blunt an instrument to distinguish "genuine crimes" from "really bad policies" on the part of defeated political enemies.
Our constitutional system of checks and balances provides numerous mechanisms for dealing with "really bad policies," even those that may be seen by some as bordering on criminal. Congress may investigate, expose and legislate, but it has no authority to prosecute. In extreme cases, impeachment is available. Prosecution should be reserved for the extremely rare situation where the criminal act and mens rea are so apparent to everyone that no reasonable person would suspect partisanship. The best remedy in other cases is to campaign against and defeat those who supported the bad policies.
That is among the important reasons why I will vote for the Obama-Biden ticket, and that is also why I will try to persuade them, if they win, not to conduct criminal investigations of their defeated opponents.
The War Against the Normal
The first cut of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin reveals someone embarrassingly unprepared. His name is Charlie Gibson. Here's the transcript:
Gibson: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?
Palin: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.
Gibson: Exact words.
Palin: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said--first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.
But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.
Palin was right, as we noted Tuesday. Although she had spoken the words Gibson attributed to her, his rendition of the quote was a dowdification. He took the words out of context to make a prayer that "the task is from God" appear to be an assertion that it is.
This misleading quotation might have been an error rather than a deliberate deception, and it did not originate with Gibson. Our Tuesday item noted that CNN had misrepresented Palin's words on Monday, and on Sept. 4 "AllahPundit" pointed to an Associated Press dispatch from the previous day that might have been the origin of the falsehood.
Yesterday the Associated Press, in reporting on the interview, relied on its own inaccurate reporting of a week earlier in claiming that Palin had "contradicted an assertion she made at her former church that 'our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.' " This claim disappeared from later versions of the AP dispatch, although we haven't found any evidence that the wire service issued a correction.
ABC seems to have realized its mistake as well. The version of the interview that aired on ABC's "World News" last night (video here) edited out the lines in which Palin disputes the accuracy of Gibson's quote and Gibson replies, "Exact words." In their place is a YouTube clip of Palin speaking at the church. Again, as far as we know, ABC has not expressly acknowledged the error.
The journalists at AP, CNN and ABC who took liberties with Palin's quote might or might not have intended to deceive. But there can be little doubt that they intended to further a stereotype of Palin as some sort of religious nut. What's interesting is that in the course of doing so, they ended up disparaging her for praying.
As we noted yesterday, some of the less well-grounded members of the political media have been harshly attacking Palin for having a baby. Egads! Can we really have a heartbeat away a Christian who prays, or a woman who has borne children?
It really does seem as though the media and the Angry Left loathe Sarah Palin precisely because she is normal. Through the words of his supporters, Barack Obama has become the candidate of those who oppose religion and motherhood. With friends like these, who needs Karl Rove?
A Revealing Moment
On Tuesday Barack Obama gave a speech in which he used the phrase "lipstick on a pig" in reference to the opposing ticket. Some construed this as an unchivalrous reference to Sarah Palin. Obama claimed he meant nothing by it. We thought our Wednesday poem would be our final word on the matter, but we can't resist noting the Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh's comment from today:
The McCain camp quickly put up a Web ad portraying it as a sexist remark, and on Wednesday McCain spokespeople and surrogates served up similar accusations of disrespect on TV. Pressed about those claims on MSNBC, McCain senior policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer stumbled into a revealing moment. "It doesn't matter what the media thinks," she said. "What matters is what the American people think."
Translation: If we can dupe voters into believing Obama disparaged Palin, we can score political points.
But Scot, Barack Obama said the American people aren't stupid! What's really funny about this, though, is that Pfotenhauer's statement is a mere truism: What matters is what the American people think.
That Lehigh thought this a "revealing moment" is itself a revealing moment.
Keep Abortion Common
Our jaw dropped when we read this piece on the Los Angeles Times Web site:
A senior Canadian doctor is now expressing concerns that such a prominent public role model as the governor of Alaska and potential vice president of the United States completing a Down syndrome pregnancy may prompt other women to make the same decision against abortion because of that genetic abnormality. And thereby reduce the number of abortions. . . .
Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Ottawa, worries that Palin's now renowned decision may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere opt to follow suit.
OK, granted the guy's Canadian (though Canadians do "support" Barack Obama, according to a recent poll). But did he really say he is worried that fewer women will abort children with Down syndrome?
It's not clear, because the only direct quote from Lalonde, either at the Times or in the original source, Toronto Globe and Mail, is ambiguous: "The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada."
Yet whether or not Lalonde believes that declining to use abortion to eliminate handicapped children is a cause for worry, the two newspapers seem to see such a belief as a completely reasonable view. That in itself is astonishing enough.
A Pan, a Plan, a Canal . . .
Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez has expelled the U.S. ambassador and withdrawn Caracas's ambassador to Washington, the Associated Press reports. Chavez also weighed in on the American presidential election:
The socialist leader said Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, would return to the U.S. "when there's a new government in the United States." . . .
"Hopefully, sooner than later, (the U.S.) will have a government that respects the peoples and the governments of Latin America," Chavez said.
It's not clear if Chavez mentioned a specific candidate, but we assume he prefers the one who was born in Panama.
The Palin Plot Thickens
"Bristol Presses On With ImClone Bid"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12
Stay Away From Obama Ducks
"Obama Ducks Call to Push Reform in Illinois"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 12
Biden vs. the Drones
A New York Times story on Joe Biden's penchant for verbal miscues quotes David Wade, one of "two veteran minders" who have been assigned by the Obama campaign to travel with the Delaware senator:
Mr. Wade said that Mr. Biden's stumbles proved to voters that he was human and that they helped them relate to the candidate.
"For anybody who's gone to Joe Biden events and watched how voters connect with him," Mr. Wade said, "there's a pretty big gap between the expectations of the elite media who seem to crave scripted, blow-dried drones out of central casting instead of regular folks who want to see some honesty and candor. They appreciate it that he takes the voters seriously and doesn't take himself too seriously."
Mr. Wade added: "I've never heard a voter say they wanted someone who was more scripted, more slick and who talks to me in sound bites. If they wanted stuffed shirts, we'd be preparing for an October debate with Mitt Romney."
You know what? We actually agree with Wade.
On the other hand, a tendency to misspeak is not necessarily indicative that a politician doesn't take himself too seriously. Case in point: Barack Obama. Also, it's hard to imagine David Wade (or the New York Times) offering a similar defense of George W. Bush.
Wannabe Pundits
"It's hard not to be reminded of the fanfare surrounding John McCain's introduction of Sarah Palin as his pick for VP," writes one Emily Rems. "Both are strategic attempts to court the coveted adult female demographic. Both claim to be exactly what the ladies of America have been waiting for. And both miss the mark entirely."
What is the other one in the "both" to which she refers? You guessed it, "the high profile unveiling of The Women," a new movie that Rems reviews in Premiere magazine:
Just as it was laughable to think that a woman with political views bearing no resemblance to those of Hillary Clinton could capture Clinton's voters by mere virtue of her anatomy, it's similarly ridiculous to assume that just because a film is about four N.Y.C. gal pals, it automatically has carte blanche to snap up Sex and the City's loyal female audience.
Roger Ebert doesn't like Palin either:
I want a vice president . . . who doesn't appoint Alaskan politicians to "study" global warming, because, hello! It has been studied. . . . I would also want someone who didn't make a teeny little sneer when referring to "people who go to the Ivy League." And how can a politician her age have never have gone to Europe?
This from someone who described "Fahrenheit 9/11" as "a compelling, persuasive film" and gave it 3½ thumbs up. At least then he was reviewing a movie, so he had an excuse.
'Nobody Does Evacuations Like Cuba'
The Associated Press's Anita Snow, reporting from Havana on the response to Hurricane Ike, finds the bright side of totalitarianism:
If there's one thing the communist island does right, it's evacuations. And in the end, that saves more lives than anything else. . . .
Of course, this is easier done in Cuba than in the United States because the communist government owns and controls most of the nation's resources. Unlike the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, it doesn't have to buy supplies or contract services from private companies, or pay overtime.
Most Cubans work for the government and don't have to worry about losing wages if they take off from work. And because police keep a close eye on evacuated areas--and because most Cubans have few possessions of value anyway--looting isn't a major concern.
That was the problem in Katrina--the people in New Orleans were too rich! Then there's this:
If anyone has doubts, authorities quickly put an end to them.
Do American journalists really yearn to live in a country in which "authorities" excel at quickly putting an end to doubt?
Heck of a Job, Brownie
"Fudge on the Ballot for Tubbs Jones' Seat in November"--headline, WKYC-TV Web site (Cleveland), Sept. 12
Life Imitates 'The Simpsons'
• "YE-SHE-VA: University Is Rattled by Transgender Prof"--headline, New York Post, Sept. 8, 2008
'It's a Wicked Salty Buzz, Dude'
"Saline High Getting Good Reviews"--headline, Ann Arbor (Mich.) News, Sept. 10
First Same-Sex Marriage, Now This
"Pumpkin and Apples Wed Well in Oven Pancake"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 12
Fighting terrorism
Overt difficulties for the police
A big trial convicts three terrorists, but dismays counter-terrorism officials
IT MIGHT have been the biggest act of mass murder since the attacks on America in 2001: at least seven airliners flying from London to cities in North America would have been blown up by liquid explosives smuggled on board as soft drinks. Thousands would have died had the plotters not been arrested in August 2006.
That is how American and British officials recount Operation Overt. But on September 8th, when a London jury returned its verdict on eight British Muslims charged with the plot, it could not agree that the targets were civilian aircraft. Instead it convicted three men on vaguer charges of conspiring “to murder persons unknown”, and was stuck on whether four others were guilty of the same offence. The eighth defendant, Mohammed Gulzar, al-Qaeda’s alleged emissary, was acquitted.
It was a bittersweet end to one of the West’s biggest anti-terrorist inquiries. Prosecutors had set out a mass of evidence gathered by the police: hydrogen peroxide for explosives, alleged bomb-making equipment, hollowed-out batteries to hide detonators, a memory stick containing details of transatlantic flights and “martyrdom” videos in the style of al-Qaeda.
MI5, Britain’s domestic-intelligence agency, had video and audio recordings from bugs in the gang’s safe house in Walthamstow, east London. The plotters were seen rehearsing how to turn plastic bottles into bombs; they were even heard recording their valedictory messages. “Now the time has come for you to be destroyed,” says Abdulla Ahmed Ali (pictured above), the group’s leader, jabbing his finger.
Mr Ali told the court that his group did not intend to destroy aircraft; it only wanted to stage a stunt by harmlessly setting off small bombs, perhaps at Heathrow airport. The jury did not believe him, but was in doubt as to his real target and how many were involved. With airlines demanding the end of restrictions on carrying liquids in hand luggage, British prosecutors said they would apply for a retrial of seven of the men, alleging that they all “conspired to detonate improvised explosive devices on transatlantic passenger aircraft”.
Operation Overt underscores the difference between intelligence and evidence that can stand up in court—particularly when cases deal with conspiracies rather than with acts of violence actually committed. Prosecuting terrorists in ordinary criminal courts—not American-style military commissions or the juryless Diplock courts from Northern Ireland’s Troubles—has many benefits: it underscores the fact that the terrorist threat is real, helps maintain public consent for anti-terrorist measures and may encourage Muslims to address the problem of violent Islamist radicalism in their midst. But many people, convinced that these defendants were guilty, are chagrined by the verdict.
Those advocating new legal powers against terrorism—lengthening pre-charge detention, increasing the scope for post-charge questioning or making telephone intercepts admissible in court—will find little to support their case in Operation Overt. Rather than seek such authority, senior policemen involved in the investigation have singled out the importance of electronic surveillance and the need for a country-wide counter-terrorism squad.
For now, most scrutiny has fallen on the delicate business of international intelligence co-operation. For America’s security services, the biggest threat comes from Europe’s Muslim extremists, especially Britain’s, who can enter America relatively freely. It counts on Britain to share what it knows. In turn Britain, which is hated by al-Qaeda almost as much as America, relies heavily on the latter’s vast intelligence resources—not least its monitoring of e-mails and money transfers.
Both countries are vitally dependent on the assistance of Pakistan, in whose lawless tribal belt al-Qaeda’s leaders are thought to have found sanctuary. Britain’s large population of Pakistani origin—particularly the angry sons of migrants—gives al-Qaeda an obvious avenue of attack.
Intelligence collaboration, say Western security officials, is the “unsung success” of the fight against al-Qaeda. But the Overt case offers a glimpse of its pitfalls. Senior British police sources say they were rushed into arresting the plotters because a related suspect, Rashid Rauf—allegedly al-Qaeda’s linkman—had been unexpectedly arrested in Pakistan at America’s behest. News of the arrest, they say, might have prompted the plotters to destroy evidence, disperse or, worse, attempt a “desperate attack”.
Some say that allowing the investigation to run longer would have increased the chances of gathering evidence—complete bombs, or purchased airline tickets—for a more convincing prosecution. In truth, though, British police planned to make the arrests just three days later because the plotters seemed close to striking.
“I think the Americans lost their nerve. They could not stand the risk of another attack,” says one British source, who claims the decision to arrest Mr Rauf came from the White House. Not true, retort the Americans. Philip Mudd, an official at the FBI, says Mr Rauf was arrested because he was about to travel to the tribal areas; America might have lost a big al-Qaeda figure and potentially important intelligence.
Debates about tactics are to be expected. More alarming is the ineptitude of the Pakistani police, who allowed Mr Rauf to escape last December. As he was brought from court to prison, he asked to stop and pray in a mosque and slipped out, never to be seen again. If he is busy planning the next attack, American and British spooks had better be on good terms.
Economics as Metaphor
By DAVID RANSON
Many newspaper readers, recalling what they read at the beginning of this year, must be rubbing their eyes. How can the economy still be functioning despite the perfect storm of recession and housing collapse that was supposed to engulf it?
Although markets are volatile and segments of the country are having a hard time, the national output is up, not down, this year. How has the economy pulled this off? Is there something the pessimists were missing?
The answer is yes, and here's why. People tend to anthropomorphize the world around them, and not just in economics. We look at the outside world and assume that it is governed in the same way as our own lives. For example, we're mystified by Mother Nature's apparent heartlessness and large-scale disregard for what we cherish: order, justice and the sanctity of life. We still resist the notion that we can't dictate the course of the Mississippi, control the way the planet evolves, or equalize the distribution of income.
The same parochial streak in human nature is rife in economic commentary. In the context of a household or a business, debt is a burden and can become a threat. But for society as a whole, debt finance is a prime means of capitalizing production and growth.
It's extraordinary, then, that in national debate the narrow view drowns out the broad. Aggregate private debt and trade deficits are widely regarded with equal suspicion and fear -- even by "experts." Instead of celebrating the role that private debt has played in creating prosperity, many blame "excessive" debt when things go wrong, and cite it as a basis for pessimism.
At the micro level, the failure of an institution is often a disaster to those with a personal stake. But from an overall perspective, when one institution becomes insolvent, another can be relied on to pick up its functions.
Again, it's the localized human costs that exercise the political imagination. The benefits of systemic adaptability are taken for granted. Government responds to constituencies and takes great pains to preserve the existing institutional structure, sometimes guaranteeing or bailing out failing firms. It's widely assumed that a large enough wave of bankruptcies will bring the economy down. Little or no credit is given to the ability of the economic system to heal itself and find its way back to vitality.
What's excessive now is fear, not debt: Fears of insolvency and private-sector indebtedness are misplaced and harmful. They place obstacles in the way of ill-used capital that seeks to move toward safer and more profitable employment. They plunge the stock market into turbulence. They push government into hasty actions that intrude more aggressively into private choices and decisions. They undercut the market-price system, without which the economy cannot allocate resources productively. Last but not least, these fears trigger the proverbial false alarm in a crowded theater, sending everyone stampeding for the exits.
Economists have a professional duty to transmit the more broad-minded vision of the world that their discipline reveals. But economists are parochial too.
There's an old saying that if your neighbors are losing their jobs it's a recession; if you are losing yours it's a depression. It's therefore unfortunate that such a large fraction of prominent forecasters hails from the financial community. Their views are colored by the turmoil suffered in their industry. In an earlier generation, many of the best-known forecasters ran economics departments in nonfinancial companies. Today these are a dying breed, thanks to the past decades of corporate cost-cutting.
We are not a nation of whiners, but we do have a lot of alarmists. It is becoming politically incorrect to suggest that the economy is basically sound.
We shouldn't expect forecasters to shrug off the depressing effects of what's happening in their own back yards. This is human nature. We just need to keep things in perspective when we listen to them. A more objective diagnosis is especially needed during an election year, in which many unfounded fears are broadcast and amplified by the media.
A natural system has built-in redundancy. It manages and heals itself. The economic system is no exception. On this page about 10 years ago, Penny Russell and I argued against the idea that the economy is a "house of cards," susceptible to collapse as soon as a few cards are dislodged. We suggested that it's more like a beehive. The future of the hive does not depend on full employment for all the worker bees. In fact, an accident can put many bees out of action without compromising the hive as a whole.
Metaphors are important. If they are off the mark, they can deceive. But good metaphors can help maintain perspective amid chaos. The community of banks, for example, can be likened to players in a game of musical chairs. As the music stops, some comfortable backsides are thrown out to be replaced with fresh ones. When the music resumes, wealth has been redistributed, and livelihoods have been turned upside down, but the game goes on.
Most businesses and workers hurt by this financial chaos are as innocent as those whose farms were flooded by torrential rains in Iowa. In nature's rough justice, short-sighted decisions by some can cause much hardship for others. Yet despite the human tragedies at the local level, the system as a whole muddles through.
Failure to recognize this endangers the mental health of our society. We create a far bigger tragedy when we lose heart, change the rules of the game, or act recklessly with quick fixes.
The Never-Ending War on American Freedom
by Thomas J. DiLorenzoFrom the beginning of the American Republic there has been a group of influential people who have devoted their lives and careers to putting more Power In Government (PIGs). As soon as the American Revolution ended Alexander Hamilton schemed to overthrow the first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and replace it with a document that would legitimize a permanent president who would appoint all the governors and have veto power over all state legislation. He wanted a king, in other words, who could force British-style mercantilism and an imperialistic foreign policy on America without any significant resistance by the citizens of the states. He failed during his lifetime, but that is essentially the system Americans live under today. We now live in "Hamilton’s republic," as his idolaters gleefully remind us.
As soon as Hamilton’s party, the Federalists, gained power, one of the first things they did was to rescind the First Amendment to the new Constitution with the Sedition Act during the presidency of John Adams. Hamilton authored several long-winded reports as Treasury Secretary in which he invented the insidious notions of "implied" powers in the Constitution along with such an expansive interpretation of the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses that the Constitution would become useless as a restraint on governmental tyranny.
Hamilton’s political compatriot, Chief Justice John Marshall, turned Hamilton’s legalistic mysticism into legal precedent during his long tenure on the Court, with many other PIG lawyers following suit over the succeeding generations. And of course Abraham Lincoln established a French Revolutionary/Stalinist-style regime that imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political dissenters, employed an army of spies and informers (on Northern citizens), shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, illegally suspended habeas corpus, deported an outspoken member of the opposition party, confiscated firearms, illegally created the state of West Virginia, censored all telegraph communication, and myriad other assaults on the Constitution, including waging war on his own country after promising to defend the lives and liberties of the very people he was waging war on.
The brilliant John C. Calhoun explained the inevitability of all of this – and more – in his Disquisition on Government, written in the late 1840s and published shortly after his death in 1850. Calhoun wrote that it is an error to think that "a written constitution, containing suitable restrictions on the powers of government, is sufficient, of itself, without the aid of any organism . . . to counteract the tendency of the numerical majority to oppression and the abuse of power."
All democracies are broken down into two basic groups – net taxpayers and net tax consumers, said Calhoun. And the latter group (PIGs) will inevitably prevail, as history teaches us. The party in favor of constitutional restrictions on governmental power at first "might command some respect" but "would be overpowered." It is mere folly, he argued, to suppose that "the party in possession of the ballot box and the physical force of the country [i.e., the military], could be successfully resisted by an appeal to reason, truth, justice, or the obligations imposed by the constitution." Moreover, "the end of the contest [between net taxpayers and tax consumers] would be the subversion of the constitution" whereby "the restrictions [on state power] would ultimately be annulled, and the government be converted into one of unlimited powers."
This is why Calhoun embraced the Jeffersonian idea of nullification during the sectional dispute over the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations." As explained by Ross Lence in the Foreword to Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, the former vice president was "seeking a means by which [disunion] could be avoided," and so he "turned to the doctrine of interposition, which defended the right of a state to interpose its authority to overrule federal legislation. The seeds of this doctrine were introduced by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799." Of course, such ideas as nullification, interposition, secession, and federalism were snuffed out by the Lincoln administration as a result of the War to Prevent Southern Independence.
Calhoun’s prediction of a government of unlimited powers eventually came true. The Jeffersonian strict constructionists did more or less prevail for a while, but were nearly wiped out by 1865, and were nowhere to be found by the turn of the twentieth century. At that point numerous notorious PIGs gleefully thumbed their noses at the Constitution and the freedoms it was supposed to protect. This story is told in great detail in the new book by Tom Woods and Kevin Gutzman entitled Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush.
Woodrow Wilson resumed the totalitarian attacks on free speech that Adams and Lincoln had pioneered with the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. These laws literally criminalized opposition to going to war in Europe, as Woods and Gutzman explain. In addition, the creepy-sounding "Committee on Public Information" portrayed Germans "as subhuman savages"; and sauerkraut even became known as "liberty cabbage," an early precedent for the moronic "freedom fries" language adopted by the Bush administration after its invasion of Iraq in 2003 when the French government refused to participate.
During the Lincoln administration roving gangs of Republican Party thugs destroyed printing presses, intimidated Democratic voters in the Northern states, and generally behaved like twentieth-century brownshirts. Woods and Gutzman write of how the exact same thuggish behavior was an integral part of the Wilson administration. A Christian minister was sentenced to 15 years for distributing a pamphlet to five people explaining that Jesus Christ was a pacifist (reminiscent of how Congressman Ron Paul was loudly booed by an audience of "evangelicals" when he reminded them in 2008 that Jesus was known as The Prince of Peace). Men were tarred and feathered for not spending enough of their income on "Liberty bonds" that helped fund the war; German language Bibles were burned; and the producers of a movie about the American Revolution that portrayed America’s "ally" Great Britain in an unflattering light were sentenced to ten years in prison.
By the 1950s American presidents clearly thought of themselves as dictators who were not constrained one iota by the Constitution. Consequently, Harry Truman felt justified in having the government seize and operate the steel mills so that he could better prosecute the undeclared war in Korea. Truman insisted that he had absolute, dictatorial power to "do whatever is for the best of the country." Constitution schmonstitution. The Supreme Court eventually ruled against this particular act of theft, but it had little effect in deterring future dictatorial behavior. Today, American presidents think of themselves not just as unrestrained dictators but as emperors of the world.
Woods and Gutzman provide a scholarly analysis of why Brown vs. Board of Education was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court "set itself above the Constitution" for what the majority believed was a good cause. Constitution schmonstitution.
There is no constitutional authority for the myriad pork-barrel spending projects that Congress funds year in and year out with tax dollars, but so what? Woods and Gutzman describe the evolution of this particular power grab, from the time when the "father of the Constitution," James Madison, vetoed an "internal improvements" bill as unconstitutional to today’s anything-goes mentality in Washington, D.C.
Then there is the theft of privately-held gold by FDR. The Supreme Court never even bothered to comment on this grossly unconstitutional act of thievery. Nor is there any constitutional basis for the government’s ban on prayer in public schools or military conscription. Not to mention the dictatorial implications of presidential "executive orders." Teddy Roosevelt receives special mention with regard to this latter authoritarian tool. He issued 1,006 executive orders compared to 51 and 71 for his two predecessors, write Woods and Gutzman. The "Bush Revolution," discussed in chapter 12, proves that modern American presidents and their advisors have nothing but absolute contempt for the Constitution.
Upon reading Who Killed the Constitution? the Jeffersonian wing of the founding fathers, were they alive today, would be reaching for their swords, preparing for another revolution. The Hamiltonians, on the other hand, would be popping champagne corks, high five-ing each other, and smiling very broadly. Calhoun would be deeply saddened that his dire predictions about the fate of an American democracy that is stripped of its Jeffersonian, states’ rights moorings have all come true in spades.
The Great Unmasking
Everywhere you turn these days, you find the press in an agitated-to-furious state about the McCain-Palin campaign. Many reporters are downright angry, according to the Washington Post's media critic Howard Kurtz, in part because of the "lipstick on a pig" controversy. That's obvious to anyone who has watched the news this last week. Many in the press are lacerating themselves for covering this story, and they blame the McCain campaign for having done it to them.
A broader anti-McCain critique is embodied by one of the Washington Post's resident Obamaphiles, E.J. Dionne, Jr., "The campaign is a blur of flying pieces of junk, lipstick and gutter-style attacks . . . McCain has shown he wants the presidency so badly that he's willing to say anything, true or false, to win power."
It's touching that the MSM has recently developed such delicate sensibilities. It's also a shame that their fury at false attacks was missing during the last eight years, when Democrats hurled one false, hateful, and misleading charge after another against President Bush. But perhaps because Bush was the object of the attacks, the press didn't feel the urgent need to police them. It's also worth noting, I suppose, that having become enraptured by a man whose candidacy was based almost entirely on his persona, the mood and feelings he created, and his ethereal promise of change, many in the press now pretend they want the election to focus on a substantive debate about, oh, say, Medicare Part B.
My own view is that the debate about "lipstick on a pig" was silly and will soon be forgotten. Yet it's not as if it broke any barriers in that regard. To take just one arguably more serious example: Recall that in February, Barack Obama said, "We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years."
It's a charge Obama repeated, even though he knew it was untrue. (The Annenberg Political Fact Check said, "It's a rank falsehood for the DNC to accuse McCain of wanting to wage 'endless war' based on his support for a presence in Iraq something like the U.S. role in South Korea.") The fact that the accusation was false didn't seem to matter; one Obama aide told the Politico, "It's seldom you get such a clear shot." But for some reason, the press didn't go into a tizzy on this matter. Puzzling.
Presidential campaigns have long been a mix of lots of things: substantive speeches and political ones, policy papers and personal countenance, issues and character, biography and narrative, charges and counter-charges, and appeals to evocative images and American symbols. Elections are often intense affairs that involve high moments and low ones, moments of drama and trivia. This campaign is no different. And compared to past presidential campaigns - the 1800 election between Jefferson and Adams, two of our more important and impressive Founders, comes to mind - this campaign is a walk in the park.
The important political point is that McCain is controlling the conversation of the election. He has stripped Obama of his mythological standing and has begun making a strong case that he and Palin, rather than Obama and Biden, are the authentic agents of change in this election. Obama is also in a dangerous place for a politician: constantly explaining himself and declaring, in an obvious state of frustration and confusion, "enough is enough." If this continues for the next seven weeks, McCain will probably win.
Chuck Todd, NBC's political director, made an interesting analogy this morning. He spoke about how for years people claimed the Miami Hurricanes were a dirty team--and they won championship after championship. I actually don't think either the McCain campaign or the Obama campaign are particularly dirty. And the effort to portray Republicans as the Party of the Mean (in contrast to Democrats, the Party of Issues) is a tired liberal talking point.
One other observation: The ferocious response Sarah Palin's nomination has provoked among the political class is turning this election into one based on a cultural narrative rather than an economic debate. The dripping condescension that some of Palin's critics are demonstrating toward her is boomeranging. She is becoming a heroine to many Republicans, who are as energized as I can remember in defense of Palin. And in attacking Palin, many Democrats and liberal commentators are mocking her faith, worldview, and life experiences. In that sense, a great unmasking is taking place. A wide swath of liberals are revealing their arrogance, their cultural elitism, and even their ugliness. It may be therapeutic. And it may also cost them the election.
Chavez in pre-election cash spree
| By Robert Plummer Business reporter, BBC News |
When it comes to running the economy, no-one could ever accuse Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez of being a hostage to conventional wisdom.
 May Day pay rises went down well with Chavez supporters |
With the country's most recent statistics showing consumer price rises of 29.1% in the 12 months to the end of March - the highest rate of increase in Latin America - now might not be the best time for inflation-busting pay deals.
But on 1 May, Mr Chavez gave public sector workers an across-the-board salary increase of 30%.
He said maintaining people's purchasing power was a more pressing priority than getting inflation down.
At the same time, he put up Venezuela's minimum wage by the same percentage, to the local equivalent of $372 a month. This, too, is now the highest in Latin America, according to the president.
Why the sudden largesse? Well, Mr Chavez's United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is in the process of selecting its candidates for state and municipal elections due to be held in November.
The last time regional polls were held, in 2004, was a high-water mark for the president and his followers, who ended up with 20 of the country's 23 state governorships - although a couple have since defected to the opposition.
 |  These regional elections are the most important in the history of Venezuela  President Hugo Chavez |
But since then, Mr Chavez has suffered his first electoral setback. In December 2007, his plans for constitutional changes, including the removal of term limits on his presidency, were narrowly rejected by voters.
If the next elections follow that same voting pattern, pro-Chavez candidates will be left with just 15 governorships, analysts say.
The president is well aware of the danger, and has even gone so far as to describe the forthcoming round of voting as the most important regional elections in Venezuela's history.
As a results, many observers expect Mr Chavez to ramp up public spending in the run-up to November, in order to secure his support among poorer members of Venezuelan society.
Outlook uncertain
No problem, you may say. Venezuela can surely afford it. After all, the country is awash with oil, which continues to fetch ever-higher prices on world markets.
But a closer look at Venezuela's macro-economic performance suggests that the government has less room for manoeuvre than it would like to think.
| The oil sector contracted sizeably as a result of inefficiencies and chronic under-investment Consensus Economics |
About 50% of government revenues come from oil, mostly from the state petroleum company PDVSA. But as world oil prices have been climbing, Venezuelan economic growth has been slackening.
GDP grew at a rate of 10.3% in both 2005 and 2006, but this slowed to 8.4% in 2007, while the respected survey organisation Consensus Economics forecasts that it will grow by just 5.6% in 2008.
Even more seriously, Consensus Economics predicts that this year, the government will go from running a budget surplus of 3% to a deficit of 1.3%.
"The strong outturn in the 2007 fiscal accounts belies the fact that the oil sector contracted sizeably as a result of inefficiencies and chronic under-investment," says the organisation's latest survey.
 The oil industry has suffered from under-investment |
Instead of investing in PDVSA to increase production, the government has used the firm as a cash cow, milking its funds to finance social programmes.
Thanks to the president's nationalisation drive, PDVSA now controls all Venezuela's oilfields, but a new windfall tax will see it handing over even more money to the government.
The tax, which will take 50% of oil revenues above $70 a barrel and 60% of revenues over $110 a barrel, also applies to PDVSA's foreign partners, who are now restricted to minority stakes in Venezuelan ventures.
Shunned by investors
There is strong evidence that Mr Chavez's nationalisation programme, which has also extended to electricity, telecoms and the cement industry, is frightening off foreign investors.
 Exxon Mobil's compensation battle attracted some hostility |
One firm, Exxon Mobil, is seeking $12bn in compensation from Venezuela after its oilfields were nationalised last year.
But many companies are now staying away altogether. Figures from the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) show that Venezuela attracted $646m of foreign investment in 2007, while Colombia and Peru pulled in $9bn and $5.3bn respectively.
Venezuela was even eclipsed by relative economic minnows such as El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, which attracted about $1.5bn each.
None of this appears to be doing ordinary Venezuelans any good. The lack of investment has left industry unable to keep up with growing consumer demand, while price controls imposed by Mr Chavez on about 400 basic goods have led to food shortages.
The president has put up wages for his country's poorer citizens. Now all he has to do is make sure there is enough in the shops for them to buy.
Expulsions stoke US-Venezuela row
 US-Venezuelan relations are said to have hit a new low |
A series of tit-for-tat expulsions has left the US without ambassadors in three Latin American countries.
Bolivia and Venezuela have expelled their US envoys, accusing Washington of trying to oust Bolivia's government.
Washington has responded by throwing out envoys from Bolivia and Venezuela and freezing the assets of three aides to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Meanwhile, Honduras has refused the credentials of a new US ambassador, postponing his appointment.
US officials said the actions of Venezuela and Bolivia showed their leaders' "weakness and desperation".
The BBC's Emilio San Pedro said relations between the US and Latin American opponents such as Mr Chavez had seemed to be on a holding pattern.
But the situation has changed in a matter of days, he says.
This week's arrival in Venezuela of two Russian bomber planes taking part in a military exercise is not thought to have helped the situation.
And with more joint military exercises in the pipeline, our correspondent says it could take a while for tensions to subside.
Bolivia accusations
Freezing the assets of the three Venezuelan aides, the US Treasury accused them of "materially assisting the narcotics trafficking" of rebels in Colombia.
All three had "armed, abetted and funded the Farc, even as it terrorised and kidnapped innocents", according to a statement from the US Treasury referring to the left-wing rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
Analysts say the trio - Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva and Ramon Rodriguez Chacin - are members of Mr Chavez's inner circle.
 Evo Morales accused the US envoy of meddling in Bolivia's internal affairs |
Mr Carvajal Barrios is a military intelligence director who has protected Farc drug shipments from seizure, claimed the US statement.
Mr Rangel Silva is another intelligence chief who had pushed for greater co-operation between Venezuela and the Farc, the US Treasury alleged.
And Mr Rodriguez Chacin, who until Monday was Venezuela's justice minister, is Caracas' main "weapons contact" for the Farc, the statement charged.
The flurry of diplomatic expulsions began on Thursday, when Bolivia threw out the American ambassador to La Paz, Philip Goldberg.
President Evo Morales said the US envoy had been siding with a violent opposition movement in the east of Bolivia, where groups are demanding greater autonomy and a bigger share of gas export revenues.
'Go to hell'
US officials said the allegations were baseless, but nonetheless expelled the Bolivian ambassador to Washington in retaliation.
This prompted the Venezuelan leader to step into the fray alongside his Bolivian ally.
President Chavez gave US ambassador Patrick Duddy 72 hours to leave Caracas, telling him: "Go to hell 100 times."
On Friday Washington responded by giving the Venezuelan ambassador his marching orders.
Now Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Rosales has refused to accept the credentials of a new US ambassador.
BBC South America correspondent Daniel Schweimler says a growing number of left-wing Latin American governments have backed Mr Chavez's anti-US rhetoric.
The region has also benefited from the Venezuelan leader's generosity with oil.
But the US is a leading trade partner and a major aid donor to Latin America, so few in the region will be happy relations have plummeted to this new low, according to our correspondent.
He says this diplomatic row is serious but will probably soon blow over, while Bolivia's problems are only likely to get worse.
Who is to blame? Russell Roberts
Somebody asked me the other day—whose fault is it that Freddie and Fannie are on the ropes? Is it the fault of the greedy execs? Inadequate monitoring and oversight? Did Congress mess up?
I actually think this is an emergent mess that evolved out of no one's design. An alliance of bootleggers and baptists that created something that was no one's intention but that served many people well until it fell apart. It's a study in flawed incentives and institutional design. The lesson is that government agencies work best when we know what they're doing and there is some measure of accountability, even if it's only political. Here's a little fable on the subject:
Once upon a time, Fannie and Freddie were partners in a business. Well, it wasn’t exactly a business. It was almost a charity. Not quite. It was sort of a government agency. Or maybe it was all three together. When Fannie and Freddie talked to investors, they acted like a business. When they talked to the government regulators, they acted like a government agency.
And when they talked to the American people, they acted like a charity. A charity whose goal was to help more people own a home.
Who could be against that?
But it’s hard to be three things all at the same time. So maybe it’s not surprising that Fannie and Freddie ultimately ended up suffering from multiple personality disorder. Which were they? A business? A charity? A part of the government? No wonder people were confused.
One day, Henry, who worked for Uncle Sam, woke up and discovered that Fannie and Freddie didn’t have enough money to keep the promises they had made. Henry was one of the last ones to find out. A lot of people had been saying for years that Fannie and Freddie were living beyond their means. Now the bills had finally come due. Who was going to get stuck with the bill?
Everybody wanted to blame someone else. Some blamed Fannie and Freddie. But it wasn’t really their fault, they explained. Uncle Sam told us to act like a charity. So we helped a lot of people get houses who wouldn’t have had them otherwise. And our investors told us to make money. We tried to do both. And we’ve succeeded. Unfortunately, our books don’t balance.
When Uncle Sam got mad at Freddie and Fannie for making promises they couldn’t keep, Freddie and Fannie just shrugged. Hey, they said. You said you’d always take care of us. I know you winked when you said it. But can you really blame us for living large? When you have a rich uncle, nephews and nieces with credit cards are known to have a spending problem.
The lesson is clear for Uncle Sam. Fannie and Freddie need new rules, rules so different that we may as well change their names and call them Florence and Floyd.
We also should remember, there really isn’t a rich uncle. There’s just you and me. If we’re going to pay for the misdeeds of Florence and Floyd, let’s make them government agencies with accountability. Or disband Freddie and Fannie and let the people who take the risks risk their own money instead of yours and mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment