Month: January 2006

Posted on Uncategorized

haven’t we seen this movie before?

a country who actually has admitted to having a nuclear program and that defiantly refuses to stop that program (iran) has been given the ultimate warning: a referral to the UN security council. threats like this worked so well against saddam’s iraq…why not try it again? for reasons not to trust the UN in serious international affairs, read this. if sanctions imposed by the UN are not strongly enforced, and if the UN’s resolutions are ignored by rogue dictators with evil intent, what then?

do you want a man (iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad) who makes statements such as these to have access to nuclear weapons? i think not.

victor david hanson has an excellent analysis here. he says:

When a supposedly unhinged Mr. Ahmadinejad threatens the destruction of Israel and then summarily proceeds to violate international protocols aimed at monitoring Iran’s nuclear industry, we all take note. Any country that burns off some of its natural gas at the wellhead while claiming that it needs nuclear power for domestic energy is simply lying. Terrorism, vast petroleum reserves, nuclear weapons, and boasts of wiping neighboring nations off the map are a bad combination.

there’s no simple solution for what exactly to do about iran, because each alternative comes with its own set of negative consequences, as hanson points out. for now, (even though i remain skeptical of the UN’s ability to successfully negotiate a satisfactory compromise for both sides) we should seek a diplomatic solution. the results of this effort should determine what steps to take next.

scott ott at scrappleface gives the rest of us his unique take on iran and the UN. it would be really funny if it weren’t so close to the truth. read. enjoy. bookmark.

related:

Iran defiant over nuclear warning–BBC
Q & A Iran nuclear stand-off–BBC
Bush, Merkel united on Iran’s nuclear threat – Jan 13, 2006— CNN.com
Victor Davis Hanson on Iran— NRO
Iran Threatens to End Nuclear Cooperation –Los Angeles Times

Let’s make sure we do better with Iran than we did with Iraq –some suggestions from across the pond (The Guardian). some are worth considering. some are not. judge for yourself.

Posted on Democrats

another bad precedent

i’m not talking about roe here. i’m talking about the bork precedent. what happened to judge bork during his confirmation hearings is the reason why we have the carefully scripted SCOTUS nominee answers today. i’m just waiting for alito to forget decorum for a second and say to these long-winded senators, “wake me up when it’s my turn to say something.” while there may have been legitimate questions in there somewhere from the democrats, they didn’t really want to know the answers to those questions. there’s already a filibuster taking place, and both sides are engaged in it. if anyone is expecting any breaking news out of this hearing, they will be sorely disappointed.

some excerpts from FNC:

Of course, almost nothing that occurs during televised confirmation hearings comes close to being spontaneous, said Richard Davis, author of “Electing Justice: Fixing the Supreme Court Nomination Process.”

“Interest groups want Alito to do what Bork did, and take on Kennedy and [California Democrat Dianne] Feinstein, but Republican senators and the White House know that is not how it works,” Davis said. “You don’t do a head-on confrontation with these senators. You respond in vague statements, nod your head in response.”

this is the end result of judge bork’s confirmation hearings. both republicans and democrats are complicit in the game. they both pretend to ask questions (while making their own case pro or con) and pretend to want the answers. in this environment, how could SCOTUS confirmation hearings have any other outcome than they have now? if you want unvarnished straight answers from the nominees, then both sides must agree to base their votes on the nominee’s experience instead of his views on roe v. wade. don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

In fact, Democrats may find that is the only argument they have for rejecting Alito. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking member on the panel, said in a statement after day two of the hearing that Alito needs to be more candid.

“Fresh in our memories and experience is the example of the testimony of Chief Justice Roberts, whose consistent answers helped build a record that gave many of us who voted for him the confidence in his candidacy that we needed to have. Judge Alito needs to do more than distance himself from his early, troubling writings and views – he needs to explain why his views are different today and that what he says is not simply the pledge of an eager applicant trying to win a job,” Leahy said.

ok. so how much more candid was justice roberts than judge alito? let’s see the numbers from bench memos at NRO. it’s an interesting breakdown.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Answered A Higher Percentage (95%) Of Questions On His Opening Day Of Questioning Than Justices John Roberts (89%) Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg (79%) Did During Their Full Confirmation Hearings.

those poor democrats. they are trying so hard to find something damaging on this guy and they have been unsuccessful so far. they know they are fighting a losing battle here, and their only recourse is to make sure their left-wing special interest constituencies are still in their corner. forget what the rest of us think, because we don’t seem to matter to schumer, kennedy, feingold, and biden.

related:

ALITO WATCH: BIGGEST SENATE WINDBAG–michelle malkin
Justice vs. politics–LA Times
Alito must avoid being ‘Borked’–sfgate.com
bench memos–NRO

Posted on Democracy

because it is still true…. (re-post)

“Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it…”

“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then?”

“The only obligation I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

“There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.”

–henry david thoreau, from civil disobedience

my hero. for too long, we have resigned ourselves to a government structure that encourages corruption and wasteful spending. this criticism is not restricted to a single political party. the current system is broken, and it’s up to us to demand changes in that system. i believe that the american people are starting to realize that change is possible, and that we can play a part in the implementation of that change.

why is it that so many people in this country have disconnected from the political process? it is because they have become disillusioned with politicians who make and break big promises to them. it is because they can’t see the difference between republicans and democrats right now. it is also because they have become convinced that there is nothing they can do to change the system. so they give up and vote for the lesser of two evils, for a third party, or for nobody at all.

it’s time to shed the woe-is-me attitude. a democracy such as ours is crippled unless everyone plays a part in its growth and continued evolution. if you don’t like what’s going on in washington, speak up. if you’re tired of excessive government spending and useless regulations on everything, stomp your feet and make some noise (and talk to your congressmen and senators while you are at it). we must demand accountability from our elected officials and hold their feet to the fire on promises they made — but only if they are good policy for the country.

active participation means that we stay engaged in the political process. being an informed voter is important. being an informed citizen and agent of accountability for elected officials is more important. if we do not want our country to be ruled by the whims of small numbers of connected political irritants, we must not stay silent. speak up. there’s no better time than now.

to those already in d.c., we ask you to care more about what we want and need. we require that you ask us, and honestly listen to the answer. if you cannot in good conscience serve us in good faith, then we will support someone else to replace you. that’s a threat, not a promise. think about it. then do the right thing.

Technorati :

Posted on Random Musings

programming note

just wanted to let everybody know that this week i’m renting space on one of my favorite blogs, ogre’s politics and views. so go check out his blog too. you won’t be sorry you did. to everyone visiting from ogre’s blog, thanks for stopping by…and feel free to comment.

expect brand new posts to return some time closer to monday. 🙂

Posted on Republicans

foxes + henhouse = scandal

color me confused. i thought that campaign finance reform was supposed to keep the money out of politics. oops…guess it doesn’t cover lobbyist scum like jack abramoff (via breitbart.com/AP). i am not going to join anyone who wishes to defend republicans for taking this guy’s money. just because the guy is a sleazeball and a con artist, that still doesn’t excuse those who benefited from his scams. it’s possible that some innocent people will be caught in the crossfire when all the facts come out in this case, and that’s a shame. we still need to examine the whole system, and demand some accountability from both sides, because we have a serious problem here that cannot be solved by simply changing more campaign finance rules.

the pointing of fingers has already begun. some democrats are guilty of taking abramoff’s money as well. both sides of the political aisle need to put integrity above party loyalty. losing control of Congress in ’06 might actually be the best thing that could happen to the republicans. maybe it would wake them up. they are depending upon the weakness of the democrats right now to save them in ’06. once all the details in this case are known, this may not be enough to keep the republicans in power. it would be wise for the guilty parties to come clean now and to return the money they received or donate it to charity. it may help to restore their reputations, although it may not save their jobs. we shall see what happens with this story. the important thing is that we permanently fix what’s broken in this system.

related:
Don’t Delay, DeLay–NRO editorial
Money, Mobsters, Murder –the weekly standard
Abramoff Pleads Guilty, Will Cooperate–breitbart.com/AP
THE “A-BOMB” DETONATES —michelle malkin

Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

a (dark) horse of a different color in ’08

ladies and gentlemen, massachusetts governor mitt romney.

from the atlantic monthly’s the holy cow candidate:

“I believe people who are in a position of visibility and leadership affect the character of young people and individuals who look to them as leaders. And in some respects just as important as their policies and positions is their character and their substance. What for me makes people like Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and John Adams and George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan such extraordinary leaders is that they had integrity through and through. What they were on the inside and what they said on the outside was harmonious. There are a lot of people like that. I think that if people try to live a very different personal life not consistent with the role they’ve assumed as a governor or a senator or a president, we lose something as a nation.”

mitt romney

i like governor romney’s statement here. he’s got all the right words…character, integrity, substance. music to the ears of red state republicans. romney is definitely running for president, and i like the idea of his candidacy for several reasons. the republicans have ceded the issues of education, healthcare and concern for the poor to the democrats. they have fought elections on tax cuts and strong foreign policy, which has been a winning formula the past two elections. i’m not opposed to tax cuts. i think that we need to have continued vigilance in our approach to foreign policy concerns. that was an effective tack against john kerry, but for the republicans to win the white house in ’08, they need to address other issues in addition to foreign policy and tax cuts.

governor romney understands this, which is why he speaks about these other issues. he made education, healthcare, and government reform top priorities in massachusetts, and he has had some success in all three areas. he stresses the importance of education and technology advancements in a december 12th speech to new hampshire republicans (which i would quote here if i had the transcript). massachusetts is not a friendly state for conservatives. after all, this is the state that continues to elect john kerry and ted kennedy. some conservatives may question how genuine romney’s position on abortion is and whether he takes the convenient position politically depending on the audience. some on the religious right may take issue with his position on using unused embryos from fertility clinics for stem-cell research(wikipedia). there is also the question of how the religious right will react to romney being a mormon, which shouldn’t be something that disqualifies him to be president.

from the james taranto article at opinionjournal.com:

Yet on the issues, Mr. Romney is largely in tune with the Christian right. “I am pro-life,” he says, though he’s not an absolutist. He favors a return to the status quo ante Roe v. Wade, when states decided abortion policy. In 2002, recognizing that Massachusetts is an “overwhelmingly pro-choice state,” he campaigned only on a promise to veto any legislation changing the state’s abortion laws, including a proposal, which Ms. O’Brien [romney’s democratic opponent] endorsed, to reduce the age of parental consent to 16 from 18. The Legislature never passed that measure.

Some question whether he is antiabortion enough to satisfy his party’s base. But George W. Bush has made similar nods to political reality–“I’m a realistic enough person to know that America is not ready to ban abortions,” he said in 1999–and few dispute the president’s pro-life credentials.

this makes sense to me, even as someone who is somewhat in tune with the Christian right myself. romney’s position is a reasonable one, and i wouldn’t disqualify him from the republican nomination in ’08 just for this reason. i’m ok with states deciding issues like abortion. i don’t believe that abortion will ever be banned across the board as a practical matter. that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t want abortions to happen less often than they do now. i am concerned that he supported the legalization of ru-486 (at least he did back in 1994), but it’s possible that his position could have changed on this from 10+ years ago.

as for the question of whether romney’s mormon faith will keep him from getting necessary support from the religious right…from the weekly standard:

Someone willing to go on the record was Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship. Notwithstanding his “fundamental” theological differences with Mormonism, Colson said, “I could in very good conscience support Romney,” calling him “a first-rate guy in every respect” and “a social conservative on most of the issues we care about.” Colson obviously wasn’t declaring for Romney, but simply indicating that he would not in religious principle, so to speak, be opposed to Romney and indeed could find political reasons to support him. Whether he would actually do so, of course, would “all depend on what the lineup is” and “where each person stands.” The other evangelical leaders I contacted took the same view. Colson offered the likely correct forecast: Romney’s appeal to evangelicals might slacken if a competent evangelical or Catholic with social views similar to Romney’s were in the race; on the other hand, Romney’s stock with evangelicals might go up if he were pitted against candidates holding more liberal social views, regardless of their religion.

the bad news right now for a romney candidacy is the not-so-small matter of name recognition. nobody knows who the guy is, especially compared to more popular potential ’08 contenders like giuliani, mccain, allen, etc. the democrats are even trying to find skeletons in romney’s closet. good luck with that attempt.

don’t count romney out. he’s been preparing for this since the ’04 republican national convention. he’s got a better shot at the nomination than mccain, who hasn’t convinced me that he can win over the religious right or that he can run an effective campaign against more socially conservative republican opponents. whether romney gets my support or not depends on who the opposition is. i like his views on government reform, education, foreign policy, and healthcare. republicans need to talk about all these issues, and not just surrender the discussion of them to the democrats. the other contenders should adopt romney’s message, because it’s a winning one for republicans.

related:

Matinee Mitt–NRO
Mitt Romney-Wikipedia
The Holy Cow Candidate–the atlantic monthly
In 2008, Will It Be Mormon in America?–the weekly standard
Mass. Gov. Romney Wants Nation to Improve Education–FNC