can someone please tell politico...

...you can't "fact check" a prediction about the future.

can't just leave things alone

the constitutional council in kazakhstan held that the bid to cancel the next two presidential elections and extend president nazarbayev's term to 2020 is unconstitutional, and nazarbayev immediately announced that he won't appeal the decision. he did, however, float the idea of having an earlier presidential vote.

which makes me wonder what was the point of this entire circus. there is no way that any proposal to change the constitution would have gotten this far in kaz without the president's approval. (the referendum to extend the presidential term was passed unanimously in the parliament, those nur otan toadies won't do anything that major unless they're sure it's what prez naz wants). in the past, parliament has passed bills that would expand presidential powers only to have them vetoed; an elaborate sham to burnish nazarbayev's democratic credentials. this time, the parliament overrode the president's veto, only to have it shot down by the constitutional council (which is filled with presidential appointees). so why go that extra step this time? was nazarbayev seriously floating the idea to see whether he could get away with it this time? did last week's meeting in washington get him to step back from the brink?

and what is the point of nazarbayev's new proposal to hold earlier presidential elections? he is sure to win if elections are held in 2012 as scheduled, and he's sure to win if they are held this year instead.

my apologies to al

with basically all the non-arabic speakers i know who are closely following what is going on in egypt doing so through the al jazeera english site, i guess it's time for me to admit that i was totally wrong to predict it would flop back when it launched in 2006.

it just shows the limits of my imagination, but i never in a million years would have guessed that the american spectator would be recommending al jazeera to its readers. i'm even beginning to think that this crisis might finally get u.s. cable companies to start carrying the channel. but given my track record, maybe a surer bet is that it won't happen.

no longer surprised

i guess this is why completely shutting down the internet has never been tried before.

america's role in the egyptian crisis

the problem with this reasoning is that the u.s. is already effectively involved. the dirty little secret (which isn't really a secret) is that the u.s. effectively funds the egyptian military. egypt is the second largest recipient of foreign aid from the u.s. (the first is israel) and most of that money goes to the egyptian military. that package was basically a bribe to get egypt to sign on to the camp david accord. the egyptian gravy train continues to this day to assure that egypt honors its treaty with israel notwithstanding the very strong feelings to the contrary of the egyptian people.

while the average egyptian soldier may not know where his paycheck comes from, the top military commanders certainly do. so they will be very concerned with what the u.s. says about the crisis. the u.s. has a major say in how the military acts in this crisis and the military's actions will be pivotal in determining how this thing turns out. if the u.s. wanted to really interfere, it could call egyptian defense minister mohamed tantawi and tell him not to fire on protesters, or it could say that the u.s. wants to keep mubarak in power, or replace him with someone else. if tantawi wants to continue to get his paycheck, he would probably listen. but even absent such a call, tantawi and other commanders are going to be watching the obama administration very closely for signals.

the obama administration is in a tight spot. it has little to do with gas prices. egypt produces very little oil. the only potential effect on oil is a panic in the oil market from the perceived threat of revolutionary contagion (but that threat was already there with what happened in tunisia), or the potential that turmoil in egypt might shut down the suez canal (although history makes it pretty clear that the u.s. and europe won't let that happen).

no, the reason it is in a tight spot is because of israel. even though i don't agree with the policy, israeli security is a major interest of the united states. it has extremely strong bipartisan, almost unanimous, support among the washington establishment, the white house and congress. if egypt gets a government that really reflects the wishes of its people, the egypt-israeli peace treaty would be at risk, as would the blockade of hamas-led gaza. that's the problem for the u.s. real democracy in egypt will probably produce a government that may act against what is broadly believed to be a critical american interest.

no one knows what the next government will be in egypt. you can simplistically say that an alternative regime could be worse than mubarak, but it could also be better. but really the question is: better or whose for whom? what's better for the egyptian people might not be better for the consensus view of what constitutes u.s. interests. unless the u.s. government is ready to cut israel loose (and let's face it, it's not), it's left with a clear contradiction between it's interests in the region and its commitment to democracy. that's the conundrum.

getting nastier

it looks like the military is moving against protesters in egypt and they are using live ammunition.

this is a critical difference from what happened in tunisia. in that case, the military refused the government's orders to shoot protesters. that seems to be what really caused ben ali to flee the country. because the egyptian military still supports mubarak and is willing to slaughter egyptians to keep him in power means that revolution in egypt will be much much harder.

selective prosecution

two months ago, wikileaks main site, wikileaks.org, was taken down by hackers. someone even claimed responsibility for the cyberattack and bragged about it on twitter.

wikileaks wasn't stopped. it just moved to a bunch of mirror sites. then companies like amazon bowed down to pressure and announced that they would not host the wikileaks site. and paypal canceled wikileaks' account.

that triggered pro-wikileaks hackers to do a bunch of revenge hack attacks, they hit paypal and (after a few tries) took down amazon, at least briefly. they also attacked several other sites that had buckled under pressure to stop doing business with wikileaks.

so if we step back for a moment, we have two parties engaging in cyberattacks. there are the anti-wikileaks hackers who took down the original site and the pro-wikileaks hackers to took revenge on the companies that ceased doing business with wikileaks. both hacks are equally illegal. but the FBI only seems to be pursuing the anti-wikileaks people. has anything even happened to "the jester", the hacker who took down wikileaks and claimed responsibility? i can't find any indication that the authorities have made any effort to go after him.

as if a million of tweets suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

i'm a bit surprised to learn that completely shutting off the intertubes has never been tried before. but i really doubt it will make the situation any better for hosni and the gang. this is just adding another legitimate grievance to the protesters' long list.

also as i was shoveling yesterday morning, i was listening to the BBC global news podcast and heard an interview with the egyptian foreign minister. his main point was that the protests are not bad for his government. on the contrary, he insisted, they show just how democratic egypt is: people can freely state their opinion on the streets, newspapers aren't censored, etc. i think censoring the entire internet will make that case a little harder to make.

anti-choice

senator vitter is co-sponsoring a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship, with some exceptions:

Rand Paul (Ky.) and David Vitter (La.) are introducing a resolution this week that would amend the Constitution so that a person born in the United States could only become an American citizen if one or more of his or her parents is a legal citizen, legal immigrant or member of the armed forces, according to a joint press release Thursday.

(emphasis added)

the armed forces exception is interesting because it would mean that children of illegal immigrants would get citizenship if at least one of his/her illegal immigrant parent was a member of the armed forces. the parent, presumably, would continue to be an illegal immigrant, even as that person risks his/her life for american security.

meanwhile, senator vitter was a major opponent of the DREAM act. the act would have permitted people who came into the u.s. illegally as children to become legal permanent residents of the u.s. if they join the military or go to college. senator vitter spoke out against the DREAM act and then applauded its rejection by the senate at the end of 2010.

i just find that odd. in senator vitter's ideal world, illegal aliens who are illegal not by their own choice (but rather through the choice of their parents when they were brought illegal to this country as a minor) cannot become legal aliens no matter what they do, even if they serve in the u.s. military. but the child of an illegal immigrant whose illegal parent chooses to join the military gets to be a full citizen (not just a legal alien), when he or she otherwise would not be. the child, even a grown child, has no say in the thing that determines his/her legal status. vitter doesn't seem to have a problem with awarding legality under the immigration laws in exchange for military service. he just doesn't want the person being legalized to have any choice in the matter.

catty calhoun post

i hadn't thought of john calhoun since, well, probably high school. that is, until i saw the photo in this post this evening. i remembered that guy from some american history class that i must have taken at some point. not really because of his vice presidency, his tenure in congress or his role in the nullification debate, what really rang a bell with me was the picture:

what a scary looking dude! and he happened to be a bad guy too, or at least in the sense that he was on the wrong side of that nullification thing.

which made me wonder: i assume that picture rang a bell because it was used in some history text book i read 25 years ago. did they just use that awful picture because he was a bad guy? aren't there any good pictures of him?

wikipedia provides a tepid yes. his entry has one not-so-bad portrait from when he was a youngish man:

but the rest of the images in the wiki entry are all pretty creepy, especially this sketch showing his dracula look:

even this one that looks like one of those official portraits that try to be flattering, but in his case they couldn't quite pull it off:

did calhoun actually look like that? or did he just piss off  the portrait and the sketch artists guild? yes, he actually looked like that. wiki has a photo, which is just as scary as the artists' conceptions.

wtf?

i had no idea that sarah palin reads brendan's blog.

مع سلامة جمال

i don't know what will happen in egypt but the mubarak family seems to think it's serious.

UPDATE (1/27/11): per my discussion with gw in the comments, the report of gamal's flight appears to be premature. right now, it looks like it hasn't happened. i guess it was just a rumor that got picked up by an indian newspaper and then echoed a bunch of other places from there.

you want the truth? you can't handle the truth

the most revealing thing about the NRA's efforts to shut down research looking into the links between gun laws and violence is that it suggests the leaders of the gun rights organization themselves believe (or at least suspect) that legal firearms might make us less safe. if they really believed their own rhetoric, then they'd be pushing for more funding to study the connection between guns and public health. just look at how often they bring up john lott.

the state of the union is whiny

last night was the state of the union address. every year i feel obligated to complain about why i don't like them and why i don't think they're worth watching. and yet, notwithstanding my complaints, every year they continue to hold the speech and televise it! the nerve of them.

anyway, as whiny as these things usually make me, this year i really don't have anything to say that i haven't said before. so let me just adopt by reference everything i've ever written about the SOTU address. i still think it's just a bunch of meaningless pageantry and political posturing masquerading as a newsworthy event. anything of relevance that does happen in the speech you can just as easily get from the snippets in the news the next day, or just read the full text yourself. the reality is that most of the time (absent an iconic line like "axis of evil") these things are pretty quickly forgotten.

the whine cellar: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010

too crazy to be jindaled?

as i said before, chris christie's decision to decline giving the response to the SOTU address was smart. i won't say what that makes bachmann.

the comics code authority is dead

it's been effectively ineffective for quite while, ever since the big two started publishing comics without the CCA seal in the 1980s under their vertigo and epic imprints. but still, good riddance.

five pillars

re: obama's speech tomorrow:

To create more jobs and thereby strengthen the economy, White House advisers say President Obama will propose five "pillars". They are:

•  Innovation;
•  Education;
•  Infrastructure;
•  Deficit Reduction; and
•  Reforming Government

how long will it take for the "obama is a secret muslim" crowd to flip out about that word choice?

it always comes back to the ignorant or lying debate

as matthew yglesias notes ross douthat proposes that rather than pushing for an outright repeal of the affordable care act, republicans in congress should push for incremental constructive improvements to the law, like deregulating the health care exchanges. but lets face it, there's no chance that the GOP will do that. not because they don't want to, but because republican members of congress don't seem to know enough about the health care law to come up with such constructive changes.

one year ago, when i was stuck in kazakhstan and struggling to follow the health care debate from afar, my spotty access did allow me to read occasional wonky articles about the various mechanics of reform. i would also sometimes read the critiques from the other side. one thing really stood out, the other side wasn't addressing much that was actually in the health care bill. they were talking about government takeover of the health care system (as if the ACA would institute something like the NHS), or about how the government would tell you what doctor to see, et cetera. some of these things were in op-eds by members of congress. people debating the actual bill in congress seemed to not have an even passing familiarity with what that bill said. even with limited communication from halfway around the world i had a better idea of what was in the bill than they did. i guess they could have been trying to mislead people by misrepresenting the proposal. but after a while, i really got the impression that is what they thought the reform effort was all about. how else can you explain the GOP's pledge to american proposing to repeal "obamacare" and replace it with a bunch of health care reforms that are in obamacare?

the major flaw with douthat's proposal is that congressional GOP is not capable of proposing constructive amendments to the ACA. i bet quite a lot of them don't know what "the exchange" is, never mind coming up with a practical way to deregulate it.

will people just call it "ross"?

of the options mentioned in this article, i think the "kush republic" is the best name. but no one ever asked me and it looks like they're going with the boring "republic of south sudan".

wow

i think that no one comes out looking good from this.

ADDING: the guardian's editorial sums it up:

It is hard to tell who appears worst: the Palestinian leaders, who are weak, craven and eager to shower their counterparts with compliments; the Israelis, who are polite in word but contemptuous in deed; or the Americans, whose neutrality consists of bullying the weak and holding the hand of the strong. Together they conspire to build a puppet state in Palestine, at best authoritarian, at worst a surrogate for an occupying force. To obtain even this form of bondage, the Palestinians have to flog the family silver. Saeb Erekat, the PLO chief negotiator, is reduced at one point to pleading for a fig leaf: "What good am I if I'm the joke of my wife, if I'm so weak," he told Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell.

not gonna be jindaled

the first sensible thing that guy has done. nothing slows down the rise of a rising star in the opposition party like having them give the official response to the SOTU.

(via memeorandum)

obliterating any doubt

president nazarbayev is now hinting that he may support the move to cancel the next two presidential elections, which would mean that he would automatically have his term extended until 2020. sure, he vetoed the measure before, but with parliament unanimously voting to override his veto and five million kazakhs signing a petition to have the term extended (that's over half of all registered voters in the country), who is he to disappoint the kazakh people?

as for that petition, election officials in the government somehow managed to validate almost all of the five million signatures in record time. nevertheless, opposition figures have called for closer scrutiny of the signatures. so the central election commission ordered that the five million signatures be destroyed. nothing to see here. i'm sure they were just trying to get rid of the clutter in their offices.

so it looks like kazakhstan is inevitably heading towards the elimination of any pretense that it is a democracy. the EU is concerned, but i doubt if it will make any difference. kazakhstan is no longer the head of the OSCE, so they seem to think no one is going to pay attention to that stuff in their country anymore.

delusions of reality

recently the american right has embraced the gold standard and figures on the right have begun arguing that the u.s. should go back to it. which is a little bizarre if you think about it. under the gold standard, the government guarantees that each dollar is worth a certain amount of gold. so the dollar is "backed by gold" in the sense that everyone who holds a dollar bill has the right to demand the government present a certain amount of gold. the gold standard act of 1900 set the value of the dollar at 1.5046 grams of gold. but isn't that also a form of price control? legislating that $1 equaling 1.5046 grams of gold is another way of fixing the price of gold at $20.67 per ounce, rather than letting the market decide. it's odd that certain rightwingers, of all people, would be in favor of what is effectively the imposition of government price controls.

but it gets even more strange: the current gold standard fetish, i think, is driven by the ascendancy of the libertarian faction in the GOP. libertarians have long clamored for a return to the gold standard. but libertarians really don't like price controls.

gold standard proponents tend not to see it in terms of the government fixing the price for gold. they view it more about backing the u.s. dollar with something of "real value" rather than just the imagined value of the greenback. but that doesn't make much sense either. it's true that the dollar is only valuable because of the mass delusion that it is valuable. but that's equally true about gold. there's nothing intrinsically valuable about either. gold has a longer history of being viewed as valuable, but otherwise i don't see much of a difference. the value of gold is as real and unreal as the value of a dollar. a gold standard doesn't back the dollar with anything more real than what it already has.

missing

via the arabist, these photos from tunisia are really great. but as i looked at them, one thing really stood out: the lack of women in the crowd scenes.

a lot of the news article i have read about the tunisian revolution have noted how progressive and western tunisia is on women's rights. i'm not sure how representative those photos are, but i would be hard pressed to find a street scene of a mob in the u.s. or europe with such a lopsided male-female ratio.

tunisia-lebanon

it looks like arab governments concern over what has happened in tunisia has crowded out some of the attention they would otherwise devote to the political crisis in lebanon. which i guess makes sense. the leaders can imagine a tunisian scenario happening to them whereas lebanon's current crisis is more of the product of its parliamentary-based system, its internal factionalization, and the involvement of an international tribunal that are more particular to that one country.

still, it is a little odd. the lebanon story is chock full of their usual favorite to obsess about: sectarianism, interference by the west in the form of the international tribunal investigating the hariri killing, iranian influence, and, of course, israel implicitly lurking in the background (or at least viewed to be lurking). tunisia raises none of those things. all it raises is the security of their own grip on power, the biggest obsession of all.

giving them up for expedience's sake

two years ago today on the mall:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.

Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

today:

The Obama administration is preparing to increase the use of military commissions to prosecute Guantánamo detainees, an acknowledgment that the prison in Cuba remains open for business after Congress imposed steep new impediments to closing the facility.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to soon lift an order blocking the initiation of new cases against detainees, which he imposed on the day of President Obama’s inauguration. That would clear the way for tribunal officials, for the first time under the Obama administration, to initiate new charges against detainees.

revolution is not a disease

i was reading this article and wondered whether there has ever been a case of revolutionary contagion. whether the "domino theory" in vietnam or the "democratic wave" that the u.s. invasion of iraq would allegedly cause, it seems like this is a phenomenon that is often anticipated but never actually happens.

then i started tapping out this post on my phone and realized that i already read a post by stephen walt about this very topic.

so there you go.

!شكرا جوجيرا

i thought i was just getting kubria wa hawa. i didn't expect all the other books for noz jr. he already has a few books in russian and kazakh. this is just what we need to make his language development even more complicated!

are they the same half?

CNN poll: Half favor repealing health care law

With House debate set, up to half of people under 65 have preexisting conditions

kaz in da hood

one thing that became clear to me in my time living in taraz, the city had a really bad reputation. whenever i spoke to kazakhs from other parts of the country, they had the impression that southern kazakh cities, and taraz in particular, was a crime-infested violence-ridden hell hole. at least one tarazi insisted that shymkent (another southern city), not taraz, was the crime capital of kazakhstan. nevertheless, i always felt pretty safe there and when mrs. noz was living there alone, crime wasn't what i was worrying about.

but we spent almost all our time in the town center. they say the "microregions" are where the crime is. i can't say i ever spent much time in any of them.

in any case, it was entertaining to read this post about my recent home away from home.

not a wikileaks revolution

the arabist has a good point. at best, wikileaks played a minor roll in overthrow of the tunisian government, and it possibly played no significant role at all. i'm sure the tunisian people were well aware that their leaders were living extravagantly. they didn't need a leaked cable to tell them that.

when i visited tunisia in 2000, it was impossible to miss the huge seaside palace sitting just next to the ruins of carthage (even more so because of all the security guards warning you not to photograph the palace, which essentially means that an entire side of the ruins are not photographable). i'm not trying to play the "i went to the country for vacation and so now i am an expert" card (because i am definitely not an expert). but even during the brief two weeks that i was there, it was readily apparent that ben ali and his cohort were living very differently than everyone else in the country.

tunisians aren't morons, they knew about this stuff all along. the solipsistic western media might think that wikileaks triggered the uprising against the extravagance and corruption of the tunisian regime because that's how they found out about those things.

fed

i haven't read ron paul's book, but i don't completely get the movement to abolish the federal reserve. the fed was established in 1913 and the period between then and now corresponds with an unprecedented explosion of economic growth. in 1912, the u.s. was not a dominant economic power in the world (although it was a significant player). now it is an economic superpower. i haven't tried to puzzle through all of the arguments against the fed's existence, but it seems like any case would have to get past that rather compelling historic counter-example.

mini

with an in-law visit on the horizon, i bought some stuff that i don't ordinarily get at the grocery store over the weekend. how exciting it is to experience the unfamiliar sights of those rarely visited aisles!

in one such aisle, i discovered coke's 90 calorie mini-can. it apparently came out in late 2009, but i didn't notice until now. in my defense, i was in kazakhstan for a big chunk of that time. since my return one thing that has really stood out about this country is how ridiculously massive the portion sizes are in restaurants, with fast food places the worst offenders. a small coke in the food court by my office is what they would have called a "large coke" when i was growing up.

i remember ordering a small iced tea in july, just after my return, and then being completely dumbfounded by being forced to pay for so much drink that i didn't want. all i needed was about 12 ounces, but my only option was to buy at least twice as much and then pour half of it out. at the same time what also struck me was all of the diet options. diet cola didn't exist in taraz, or at least was extremely rare. it had been a while since i had seen so many diet logos.

my two realizations are probably related. maybe the reason they weren't selling diet in taraz is because there wasn't a demand for it because they're not drinking a half gallon with every meal. i started to wonder when american marketers would realize that they could sell smaller portions and call that "diet". i guess that has finally happened.

but that's just in the grocery store. the serving counter is still rushing in the opposite direction.

first arab democracy

from the NYT's report about tunisia:

As virtually the only pillar of government left intact, the military now could play a pivotal role in determining whether a new autocrat or the first Arab democracy emerges from the tumult that brought down Mr. Ben Ali — a question that has captivated the region.

hey, i thought that iraq was the first arab democracy? at least that's what they kept telling me during the bush years. it's funny how that talk in the u.s. media has faded away.

both iraq and lebanon have legitimate claims at being "arab democracies" today. both are flawed democracies, of course (is there any democracy that isn't?) if you're going to name a first, i would think it would be lebanon. even if their democracy is too flawed to count now, they had an elected parliament and prime minister in 1946, when france finally recognized its independence. and, unlike most other arab countries, since independence lebanon doesn't have a recent history of being ruled by a single king or dictator.

reaching for the tin

last month a "grass roots" movement spontaneously sprung up in ust-kamenogorsk (oskemen) proposing a referendum to extend president nazarbayev's current term until 2020 (which would cancel the 2012 and 2017 presidential elections). why bother with pesky and expensive elections that everyone knows he will win? they asked.

the answer is probably because it looks bad to the rest of the world. did i mention that by total coincidence, the referendum movement appeared just after the OSCE summit ended in astana and what little international attention kazakhstan had gone away?

in any case, parliament took up the issue and pass a bill calling for the national referendum. (never let it be said that the kazakh parliament isn't responsive to the needs of the people!) president nazarbayev, however, vetoed the bill.

this follows a bit of a pattern, as prez naz also vetoed bills that would have expanded his presidential powers in the past, most recently in 2010--thus making a bold statement to the world that he is, in his heart, a democrat, notwithstanding the desperate (and completely independent) cries of his people to let him continue to control the levers of power in their country.

but this year's referendum proposal would not die! no, this time, parliament voted unanimously to override president nazarbayev's veto! holy shit, are they in trouble!!! i mean, no one has ever publicly rebuked the president like that before, right? the country does have a few free expression-related issues. some folks who publicly protest the referendum proposal were arrested last month and they're on the same side as the president on this issue!

there may be some pesky procedural problems with the way it went down, but the only real question is whether the president of kazakhstan will respect the democratic wishes of his people and allow the effective end to any pretense of democracy in kazakhstan. actually, an even more pressing question is whether the president realizes just how ridiculous this whole tap-dance will look to the outside world if they take notice.

i've never understood why people like nazarbayev don't get that the best way to go down in history as a great statesman is to peacefully turn over power to someone else when his normal term is up. if nursultan did that, he really would stand out among leaders the other leaders in post-soviet central asia. the guy has not been an awful president, especially when you measure him against the extremely low bar set by some of his neighbors. but if it happens the "president for life" thing will ultimately make him remembered outside of kazakhstan as little more than another tin-pot dictator.

ben ali runs away

wow. i didn't expect that to happen this fast (or that it would happen at all).

"Our relevant data are the movements of the planets within a zone defined by the relationship between the Earth and Sun."

the new astrology push back begins. as i read brezsny's post, his point seems to be basically this (not quoting, summarizing):

the "new astrology" is a scam because it assumes that modern astrologers still think that peoples' fate is determined by distant stars. of course that seems crazy, because it is crazy! instead modern astrology holds that peoples' fate is based on the relative positions of objects within this solar system.

um, why is that not also crazy?

(via tripp on FB)

UPDATE: susie posted a link to an even more detailed defense of "old astrology". but still there's no attempt to explain why "the zodiac of signs" can predict the future any better than "the zodiac of constellations",or, for that matter, better than "the zodiac of food splatters on the walls of my microwave".

important development in something that i don't believe in

apparently, i'm now a scorpio, which is... um, actually i'm having a hard time caring enough to even come up with an adjective.

on the other hand, i missed being an ophiuchus by a single day. that does suck. who wouldn't want to be the apocryphal 13th sign?

special relationship

scott lemieux slammed justice scalia for citing a house of lords opinion in a recent dissent because in the past scalia has led the charge against citing foreign law in american courts. atrios picked up on it and used the lemieux post to make a broader point.

there's a problem. lemieux's criticism doesn't really work. the right's campaign against citing foreign law generally doesn't include a ban on citing british law. when the u.s. was formed both the federal government and all the u.s. states (except louisiana when it became a state) adopted british common law. because they overtly adopted british law, british cases that came out prior to 1776 essentially became u.s. law. and british cases from after 1776 are still generally acceptable because they are interpreting the same background common law system that u.s. courts are using. there are a ton of legal doctrines that are part of the u.s. legal system that are based on old british rulings. (e.g. the rule in shelley's case). as far as i know, the anti-foreign law faction has never campaigned against that stuff.

even though in the dissent that lemieux referred to scalia was citing a house of lords case from 1942, it still would be viewed as persuasive (though not binding) precedent to judicial conservatives. i believe they don't have much of a beef with british opinions, they just do with everyone else's.

blood libel

palin once famously could not name a single newspaper or magazine that she reads, but today it looks like she's been reading instapundit! (or at least his wall street journal op-ed piece).

i love how she just naturally latched on to one of the most inflammatory lines used by the right to push back against the charge that its rhetoric is too inflammatory. palin even went too far for a dude who calls liberals "fascists". the statement also makes it pretty clear that palin has no idea what the phrase "blood libel" actually means.

on the other hand, maybe palin does use the blood of christian children when she makes matzah. i can honestly say that i have never seen her make it any other way.

alas

i'm missing the torch in taraz tomorrow.

(click to embiggen)

it's pretty lame how they're flying between almost all of the cities (with a drive for the karaganda to astana leg). i realize that it's a big cold country, but isn't running the tradition? that's what the snow leopard is doing in the picture! they could have started the torch run sooner to make it an actual, you know, run.

(via kzblog)

if they lost heller...

it occurs to me that peter kings proposal to ban carrying handguns within 1000 feet of government officials, if enacted, would effectively reinstate the DC handgun ban that was struck down in district of columbia v. heller. after all, DC has so many government officials living and working there that all those 1000 foot exclusion zone circles would probably cover a good portion of the city on any given day.

of course with all those roving zones, it would be a nightmare to determine when one was in a gun-free zone and when one was not. so in addition to the second amendment issues, there would also be a potential fifth amendment due process issue. it just seems a lot fairer in terms of giving people reasonable notice what the rules are to have a gun ban defined by the city limits rather than having it based on a distance measurement centered on people moving around who often may not be readily recognizable as government officials.

not just dangerous, also ineffective

it is interesting to see not just how often gun-related campaign rhetoric was used in mid-term campaigns, but also how ineffective it was. in a year when most republicans won, almost all of the GOPers on this list lost. maybe david kurtz is right politicians resort to those tactics in desperation when it looks like they are going to lose.

which makes me wonder whether this kind of rhetoric would have much of a future even if the giffords shooting had not happened. politicians tend to do what they think will work. their handlers will notice a pattern when it's as stark as this one. and that's on top of the fact that if you put someone in cross hairs, you're risking blame if some random nutcase actually shoots that person.

referendum neither delayed nor marred by violence

not to minimize the giffords shooting or its inevitable political fallout here in the u.s., but it looks like that story is eclipsing yesterday's vote in sudan.

that vote is a really an important event. for quite a while the civil war in south sudan was one of the world's more intractable festering problems. the 2005 peace agreement brokered by the u.s. was the bush administration's only real foreign policy accomplishment, lying among the wreckage of countless bush-era foreign policy disasters. just the fact that the vote seemed to be largely violence-free is nothing short of amazing given the personalities of the people involved.

the fact that the peace deal might actually hold and the south could peacefully secede is a major deal. it's success (if indeed it does succeed) would be a testament to the potential of the kind of engagement that the GOP otherwise tends to turn its nose up to. the reason the bush administration was willing to do it in this case was itself an unusual quirk in american domestic politics. because the christian (although really christian and animist) south was being oppressed by the muslim fundamentalist north, american evangelicals got the bush administration to try constructive engagement in a way that administration wasn't willing to try anywhere else.

the irresponsible fetishism of violence

what she said (and that includes the "EDIT 11" bit at the end).

recognizing the obvious

while i'm all for a palestinian state, i don't see the point in recognizing one before it is even declared. besides, what does it mean to recognize a country that, for all practical purposes, has neither independence nor real sovereignty? i realize the move is viewed as a pro-palestinian thing, all it really does is implicitly let israel off the hook. if the west bank is an independent country, then israel no longer has responsibility for the people who in reality are still living under israeli occupation.

too good to be true

recently there have been a bunch of republicans hinting that they might run for president in 2012 and who look frankly awesome to this liberal democrat. palin, bachmann, rudy, could i even conceived of a better bunch of fatally weak lunatics?

the only thing i'm really concerned about is what i call "the toomey effect", or what josh marshall noted last october during the mid-term election campaign:

The best thing ever to happen to Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio (especially Toomey) is the crop of completely whacky Tea Party nominees in maybe a half dozen Senate races across the country. Back under the old normal, Pat Toomey was a pretty out there guy. Club for Growth politics, a staunch advocate of phasing out Social Security. He seemed close to unelectable in Pennsylvania. But up against Angle, Miller, O'Donnell, he's like Bob Dole.

similarly, if the GOP floats a bunch of nutballs in its presidential primary, the nutball bar will rise and suddenly people who would otherwise be written off as total lunatics will be treated like certified sane people, just by virtue of the contrast.

still, it's not hard to be excited every time another loony makes a big announcement. i just need to remind myself that there is a potential downside when the craziest of the crazy right wing start getting all the attention.

sunday bloody sunday

i've known that southern sudan's referendum on independence will be on january 9, 2011 for a while. it was only this afternoon that i realized that day is a sunday.

i can't help but wonder if that isn't some last ditch lame-ass effort to keep southern sudanese christians from voting for independence. it won't work (that's what makes it lame-ass), but maybe it seemed like it might when they negotiated the naivasha agreement six years ago.

has anyone checked pelosi for a glue stick?

there's a joke somewhere in the fact that after the new republican house majority insisted that this congress open with a reading of the u.s. constitution, they accidentally skipped the part that requires "a Republican Form of Government".

yes, the founders didn't mean "republican" in the partisan sense (the GOP wasn't founded for another three score and five). but i'm not sure if the teatards know that. so maybe it's better that those pages stuck together.

god is russian orthodox?

for the second year in a row, it's snowing (where i am) on january 7th when it wasn't on december 25th. irving berlin was born in russia/belarus, so maybe we've been interpreting that song wrong all along.

deep thoughts

statements including the words "orange" or "tan" will be big laugh lines in left blogistan this year.

mmmmm, children

the full story is here, but the state of virginia has revoked the above vanity plate, finding it to be "profane, obscene or vulgar in nature."

IMHO, the revocation decision is pretty humorless and stupid of them (the stupid part is that they seem to think it is about pedophilia and not merely cannibalism). but this is what happens when the state is allowed to censor vanity plates. if i were ruling the world, i would let people put whatever they want on a vanity plate. yes, even profanity. if someone wants to announce to the world that he or she is an asshole, then why should the state stop him/her from doing it? state authorities don't have to give us the ability to choose our own license plate number/letter, but once they do, they have no business telling us what we're allowed to have on our car. once they can make content-based decisions over what is allowed, it's inevitable that they will make some that look stupid and ridiculous to at least some people.

sudan

it only took a day or so before i changed my mind on my sudan prediction (#21). i still could be right, but i realize that my certainty that there would not be a peaceful succession of southern sudan did not take into account the pipeline situation.

the fact that succession would mean that 75% of sudan's current oil reserves would leave khartoum's control coupled with a war criminal president who has not hesitated to unleash violence before, seemed to be a slam-dunk for the notion that either the referendum would not happen or that southern independence would not come peacefully. but i hadn't considered that the new country, for all its oil wealth, would be landlocked and with a pipeline infrastructure that is only designed to bring that oil to the international market via the north. thus, the north is guaranteed to get a cut of the south's oil production and has an incentive to keep violence away from oil producing areas to avoid production disruptions. in this case, most of the oil fields happen to lie on the likely frontier between north and south. so once you take the geography and pipelines into account, it looks like more of a peaceful split. you'd think that after spending so much time in another land-locked oil producing nation last year i would have realized that without a port, oil wealth is only as good your pipeline network.

meanwhile, i'm beginning to wonder what they will call the new southern sudanese nation. will they just call it southern sudan? or will the new leaders come up with something else?

for that matter, will northern sudan still call itself "sudan"? the current name is a shortened version of the arabic phrase "bilad al-sudan" (بلاد السودان) which means "land of the black [people]" "sudan" by itself essentially means "black people". if the predominantly black south secedes, leaving the predominantly lighter skinned arab north, will they still call it "sudan"?

our bailout money at work

Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive domain names for its senior executives and board members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing Website WikiLeaks.

According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of Directors' and senior executives' names followed by "sucks" and "blows".

brianmoynihanisagreedymotherfucker.com is still available! act now!!!

(via matthew yglesias)

not bilandic, just a dick

i'm guessing that chris christie never heard of michael bilandic.

decade's end again

i keep telling people the twenty-zero decade ended a year ago. decades do not work the same way as centuries. that's because we refer to decades using cardinal numbers (e.g. the "nineties") and we refer to centuries using ordinal numbers (e.g. the "twenty-first century").

when you use ordinal numbers, it means you're counting, and that means you need to make sure you count the first set. this is the 21st century, because the first century was the set of 100 years that ran from 1-100, the second century was the set of 100 years that ran from 101-200, etc. for decades, we're not acting like we're counting the decades. by calling a decade "the oughts" or "the zeros" or the prior decade "the nineties", we're instead referring to the digit in the tens column when we write or say the date. 1990 thus was part of the 90s, just as 2000 was part of the 00s. 2010 was part of the "teens" because there is a 1 in the tens column of 2010. the current decade would only begin with 2011 if we referred to it as "the second decade of this century" or the "202nd decade".

no one listens to me. luckily, i'm unlike to have to make this point next year.

tron: legacy

i finally saw tron: legacy last night. it's an odd experience watching the sequel to a film that i saw 29 years ago when i was twelve and that i now barely remember. somehow i doubt i would have enjoyed it any more or less if i had rewatched the original more recently.

"legacy" completely met my expectations in that it was just as incoherent and mediocre as i thought it would be. but hey, consider the curiosity satisfied. and at least now i know what it would be like if the dude was cast as obiwan kenobi.

how many more milestones must we endure?

the biggest effect that the baby boomers have had on american society is that they have condemned the nation to spend decades reading articles based on the half-baked notion that a "generation" is a meaningful basis for cultural analysis.

sure, culture changes over time. and people born at different times end up growing up with different cultural imprints than the people who come before and after them. but the idea that these arbitrary 20 year divisions between "generations" is meaningful always seems
to rely a lot more on overdrawn stereotyped than anything real. i'm really hoping the trend dies off with the boomers. that way i will, at least briefly, live to see the day.