Perhaps I wouldn't have felt quite so bad this Monday if I hadn't stayed up until almost 3 a.m. watching videos of Obama's victory celebrations. Oh well, it was still probably worth it. While the events of last week helped remind me that there are much, much more important things in this world than football, it's hard to underestimate it's importance to this city. A lot of times, "Washington" is used interchangably by people with the word "government," overlooking the fact that the District is a residential city with a truly unique identity. Me and JJ were talking yesterday about how the mood of the city is reflected by the Redskins' performance; success for them results in more civic pride and happiness throughout the city.
Which brings us to Washington's next game, which will be one of the most important regular season matches in some time. The rivalry between the Redskins and the C*wb*ys is so big, that the whole week leading up to the game has a name: Dallas Week.
The Skins come in at 6-3, while the enemy stands at 5-4. A Redskins win would drop Dallas to 5-5, give us a full two-game lead over them in the standings and result in a 1-3 record for them against division opponents. In addition to the humiliation of a season sweep for us over the Boy-Toys, we would also improve to 3-1 in the NFC East. This game is going to be huge.
The Obama celebrations were bigger than any Super Bowl win. All around the country and even the world, people danced in the streets as Tuesday turned into Wednesday. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that something more significant than the Redskins winning the Super Bowl just occured, as stupid as that may sound. But, this is still Dallas Week. Time to get in gear.
WE. HATE. DALLAS. Game on, gentlemen!
Monday, November 10, 2008
Okay, Maybe He Actually Will Be A Great President
I'm trying to be critical of the incoming Obama administration. But they are really making it difficult:
I can't stress enough that normalized secrecy is one of the scariest legal ideas there is. Public oversight is the only thing that keeps governments from imprisoning or abusing whomever they want. But while it's true that a new, secretive court system could deprive these high-stakes prisoners of their rights, it will almost certainly not be as bad as the totally isolated military tribunals and indefinite secret imprisonment they currently face. Further, I'm not even sure I'd want to argue that every potential terrorist be tried completely in public, since there is a real reason that classified information exists, and many of the prisoners aren't United States citizens anyway. The point isn't to make their trials easy at the price of contaminated intelligence, after all, it's to define their legal status and ensure that we don't violate their human rights.
Just because I disagree strongly with the way the Bush administration handled the problem, in other words, doesn't mean that I don't see the problem they were trying to solve. By encouraging abuse and fear with the secrecy and legal limbo of foreign prisons and "insurgent" prisoners, they became the monsters that they were trying to hunt. But it is only against the background of understanding why they did what they did that we can strongly urge the creation of a new system. There are no absolutes, in law: it's all an incredibly difficult balance, with incredibly high stakes. Part of what gives me hope about issues like this is Obama's history of legal scholarship, and the fact that he at least comes across as the smartest president since Nixon (with the added bonus of not being batshit insane).
The devil is obviously in the details here, and they are scant. But this is just about the best possible sign one could hope for right now. As far as I can tell, the incoming administration is getting good marks so far on its first big test – a test that I did not fully expect them to pass at all before today. Maybe it's just the low expectations of the last eight years, but the decision to promptly follow through with this particular issue truly impresses me. Could it be, that an Obama Administration will be all it's cracked up to be?
That the news comes on the morning after the NYTimes reveals extent of secret U.S. strikes in foreign countries without their authorization, of course, makes things a little more complicated.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice...
Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.
A third group of detainees _ the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information _ might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks...
The plan being developed by Obama's team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But it is almost certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. and from Democrats who oppose creating a new court system with fewer rights for detainees.
I can't stress enough that normalized secrecy is one of the scariest legal ideas there is. Public oversight is the only thing that keeps governments from imprisoning or abusing whomever they want. But while it's true that a new, secretive court system could deprive these high-stakes prisoners of their rights, it will almost certainly not be as bad as the totally isolated military tribunals and indefinite secret imprisonment they currently face. Further, I'm not even sure I'd want to argue that every potential terrorist be tried completely in public, since there is a real reason that classified information exists, and many of the prisoners aren't United States citizens anyway. The point isn't to make their trials easy at the price of contaminated intelligence, after all, it's to define their legal status and ensure that we don't violate their human rights.
Just because I disagree strongly with the way the Bush administration handled the problem, in other words, doesn't mean that I don't see the problem they were trying to solve. By encouraging abuse and fear with the secrecy and legal limbo of foreign prisons and "insurgent" prisoners, they became the monsters that they were trying to hunt. But it is only against the background of understanding why they did what they did that we can strongly urge the creation of a new system. There are no absolutes, in law: it's all an incredibly difficult balance, with incredibly high stakes. Part of what gives me hope about issues like this is Obama's history of legal scholarship, and the fact that he at least comes across as the smartest president since Nixon (with the added bonus of not being batshit insane).
The devil is obviously in the details here, and they are scant. But this is just about the best possible sign one could hope for right now. As far as I can tell, the incoming administration is getting good marks so far on its first big test – a test that I did not fully expect them to pass at all before today. Maybe it's just the low expectations of the last eight years, but the decision to promptly follow through with this particular issue truly impresses me. Could it be, that an Obama Administration will be all it's cracked up to be?
That the news comes on the morning after the NYTimes reveals extent of secret U.S. strikes in foreign countries without their authorization, of course, makes things a little more complicated.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
We Wonder, and He Delivers
No mention of torture, but it looks like Obama is setting up a massive wave of executive orders designed to mitigate the damage done by the Bush Administration as quickly as possible after he takes office in January. According to an article in the Washington Post, the list of items to be overturned already contains about 200 Bush actions, and is likely to grow in the coming months.
All good news. I should say, too, that while the lack of any mention of the legal human rights of suspected insurgents and terrorists could be taken as a troubling sign, it's far too complicated an issue to undo with a single executive order. Nor would I expect him to talk about it publicly or with ease, since the law is ungodly complicated and it's hard to get a handle even on what it means now, let alone how you're going to change it.
But yes, I maintain that there would be no excuse for Obama failing to deal with the potential for United States sponsored torture immediately after taking office. Letting it slide would not only be wrong and easy, it would be tremendously dangerous from a strategic perspective.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition...
Still, the preelection transition team, comprising mainly lawyers, has positioned the incoming president to move fast on high-priority items without waiting for Congress.
Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's...
The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it...
While Obama said at a news conference last week that his top priority would be to stimulate the economy and create jobs, his advisers say that focus will not delay key shifts in social and regulatory policies, including some -- such as the embrace of new environmental safeguards -- that Obama has said will have long-term, beneficial impacts on the economy.
All good news. I should say, too, that while the lack of any mention of the legal human rights of suspected insurgents and terrorists could be taken as a troubling sign, it's far too complicated an issue to undo with a single executive order. Nor would I expect him to talk about it publicly or with ease, since the law is ungodly complicated and it's hard to get a handle even on what it means now, let alone how you're going to change it.
But yes, I maintain that there would be no excuse for Obama failing to deal with the potential for United States sponsored torture immediately after taking office. Letting it slide would not only be wrong and easy, it would be tremendously dangerous from a strategic perspective.
Inauguration Tickets: Get Them While You Can
Tickets are free but there are only 250,000 of them and they're going fast. You can get one by contacting your senator or representative, and then picking them up in person at their office. I believe Eleanor Holmes Norton's batch is already gone, perhaps predictably, but I'd imagine other states will have an easier time.
More information here.
More information here.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
No Kidding: A Cure for AIDS?
The procedure as stands kills 30% of patients, and science hasn't advanced far enough for full-fledged gene alteration to be a remotely safe (hell, a remotely sane) idea except in the most dire of circumstances. And it should be noted that a single instance of a phenomenon isn't so different, scientifically speaking, from no instances of a phenomenon.
But it looks like they've found a potential cure for AIDS.
But it looks like they've found a potential cure for AIDS.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Rahmbo!!!
As we mentioned here when it was a rumor a week or so ago, Barack Obama has named Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff. Not overly surprising, but annoying, to say the least.
Some people like the choice because he's a fighter, and there's no argument about that. His brutal assault against organized labor and opponents of NAFTA during the first years of the Clinton Administration was how he cut his political teeth (as documented in the must read book "The Selling of Free Trade" by John R. MacArthur). I want a fighter, but Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich were fighters. I want a fighter who cares the slightest bit about passing good legislation, not just stuff that he wrongly ("At the right time we will have a position on the war") thinks will win the next election. Bowers:
In other appointee news, Obama made David Axelrod a senior adviser, which is a solid move. Axelrod proved to be a shrewed strategist throughout the campaign, so moving him into the Rove/Carville white house position makes sense.
As much as I can't stand Emanuel, at least this isn't cabinet position, where the appointees have significant amounts of autonomy. When those posts start to become filled, we'll go through and rate them one by one to see how his team stacks up in the end.
Update: Chris Bowers another good piece on Rahm, with a truly damning story on the notion that he will be good at taking orders and towing Obama's line:
Some people like the choice because he's a fighter, and there's no argument about that. His brutal assault against organized labor and opponents of NAFTA during the first years of the Clinton Administration was how he cut his political teeth (as documented in the must read book "The Selling of Free Trade" by John R. MacArthur). I want a fighter, but Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich were fighters. I want a fighter who cares the slightest bit about passing good legislation, not just stuff that he wrongly ("At the right time we will have a position on the war") thinks will win the next election. Bowers:
Still, that Obama was looking for a Chief of Staff in Rahm's mold is disturbing. Over the last few years, I agree with Kagro X in that it appears that Rahm's defining governing characteristic has been to approach legislation almost entirely from the perspective of how it will play in an election. That is a big negative, both because we just suffered through too much of that during the Bush administration and because it is a erroneous way of viewing the relationship between legislation and elections. People don't vote for or against you because of how you voted in legislation in the abstract. Instead, people vote for or against you because of how the legislation you voted on affected their lives. As such, the key is to pass legislation that will make most people's lives better, not legislation that will look good in the abstract the moment it is passed. The Bush administration was constantly focused on passing legislation that looked good in the abstract the moment it was passed. However, not matter how good the legislation looked once it was passed, it ended up ruining people's lives, and so those people voted against Republicans later on.Instead of ranting more about Emmanuel like did I here, here and here, let's just look at it from a practical matter. The chief of staff mostly negotiates with congress, so this is only disappointing because I have funny feeling who will have Rahm's ear, and who definitely won't.
It also doesn't help that Emanuel has a very right-wing view on how to win elections. He is vehemently opposed to progressive immigration reform, arguing both that Democratic candidates should ignore immigrants because they don't vote and that women congressional candidates performed poorly in the 2006 elections because they weren't right-wing enough on immigration (see here for more on this). He is afraid of the damage Democrats can take even from the stupidest of right-wing smears, as seen by his organizing of endangered House Democrats to vote against their party on substantively meaningless motions to recommit for fear that such motions can be used in attack ads. He deplores using aggressive tactics against obstructionist Republicans, for fear that such aggression will hurt Democrats among voters. He despises the fifty-state strategy, and grassroots activism in general. He favors wealthy, conservative candidates, and helped elect a more right-wing group of freshman than it appears Van Hollen did even though more blue districts were available in 2006.(Emphasis mine)
In other appointee news, Obama made David Axelrod a senior adviser, which is a solid move. Axelrod proved to be a shrewed strategist throughout the campaign, so moving him into the Rove/Carville white house position makes sense.
As much as I can't stand Emanuel, at least this isn't cabinet position, where the appointees have significant amounts of autonomy. When those posts start to become filled, we'll go through and rate them one by one to see how his team stacks up in the end.
Update: Chris Bowers another good piece on Rahm, with a truly damning story on the notion that he will be good at taking orders and towing Obama's line:
Second, as far as just taking orders goes, I'd like to relate a story I heard about Emanuel's s role in the Iraq supplemental fight back in early 2007. Representative Obey, who was leading the fight, was convinced that Emanuel, who as Caucus Chair was in the on the senior strategy sessions, was leaking their strategy to the press. To test this theory, Obey leaked some inaccurate information to Emanuel and Emanuel only. When that inaccurate information turned up in the media, Emanuel was kicked out of all further strategy sessions on the Iraq supplemental fight. In short, Emanuel was undermining the House leadership he was supposedly working for during the Iraq supplemental fight.Fannnnnnntastic...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)