Binky Ping

2007-02-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

Romney Announces

"Political outsider" Mitt Romney announced his candidacy for President today. Remember that in a world where George W. Bush, a president's son and senator's grandson, can run for president as the anti-Washington candidate, Mitt Romney, a second-generation governor and now second-generation presidential hopeful, may as well be from Mars.

Unfortunately for Mitt, his campaign for the White House is almost certain to be a non-starter. His chances rest heavily on his credentials as a social conservative, and those credentials are as flimsy as...well, as flimsy as his credentials as a political outsider.

The New York Times story linked above points out some of his problems: Romney was once actively pro-choice, and during his 1994 Senate run he claimed to be an ardent defender of gay rights.

But this pales in comparison to the elephant in the room: polls indicate that many Americans, including a sizeable chunk of evangelical Christians, are not comfortable with a Mormon president.

To put these views in perspective, here's what South Carolina State Rep. Gloria Arias Haskins said after hearing Romney speak before the state GOP Caucus: "As an evangelical Christian, it is a big thing for me, yes. His faith is inconsistent with my faith. His faith is consistent with the Book of Mormon. My faith is consistent with God's word, the Bible, and they're not compatible."

Yikes.

Conservative Christians vote like crazy in primaries, and they have to vote for somebody. So who will they vote for? Since George Allen's macaca implosion, this is an open question.

I don't think Sam Brownback will make much of a splash. He's about as right-wing as possible on the red meat issues; he calls American abortions "a holocaust" and believes evolution and creationism should be taught alongside each other in public schools. However, he's heterodox on many other issues, including terrorism (he opposed Bush's NSA wiretapping program) and the death penalty (he's noncommittal). Additionally, he has his own sectarian problem: Brownback is Roman Catholic, not evangelical Protestant.

My bet is that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will significantly grow in prominence over the next few months. He's a Southern Baptist minister who actually personally opposes Darwinian evolutionary theory . Moreover, he's pro-death penalty, anti-gay (he opposes same-sex civil unions and sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws), wants the Ten Commandments in schools, and opposes comprehensive sex education.

Additionally, he'll definitely get the dieter vote: after being diagnosed with diabetes in 2003, he lost 110 pounds. Last year, he ran the New York Marathon .

The good news here is Huckabee won't stand a chance in the general election. He's much further to the right on social issues than most of the GOP leadership, and he's not going to impress fiscal and economic conservatives: the Cato Institute gave him an "F" grade for tax and expenditure policy, a record that, when combined with his status as a social reactionary, could drive corporate donors to the Democratic nominee.

Additionally, do you really think we'll elect a guy named "Huckabee"? Seriously, is that a real name, or did he just make it up? It sounds like a joke name.

This post ended up being as much about Mike Huckabee as Mitt Romney. Maybe I should change the title? Nah.

2006-03-13T18:02:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts on '08

2008 is still far on the horizon, but since I can never keep my mind off of presidential elections, here is the first of many posts on the 2008 presidential elections.

There were three articles in the New York Times today that directly or indirectly dealt with the 2008 election (here and here are two of them; you can't get the third unless you're a Times Select subscriber). And each of them was interesting for different reasons.

The first, which was about the "budgetary restraint" theme in the GOP primary, was interesting enough in its own right, but the funniest bit was a glaring error by its author, Adam Nagourney:

One of the most striking moments involved a speech not by a possible presidential candidate, but by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Mr. Graham stood up, speaking softly but urgently, and apologized to the audience for what had happened with spending in this era of Republican rule in Washington.

Since when is Lindsey Graham not a potential presidential candidate in '08? He was lumped in with the "potential candidates" group by others reporting at the event, and I would consider him the strongest candidate the Republicans have to offer (certainly more so than the cat-torturer Frist, the too-edgy-for-GOP-primetime McCain or Giuliani, or the funny-named Huckabee). If he doesn't receive the nomination, I'll thank the Democratic Party's lucky stars.

But how about that Republican primary? I know I will be contradicting what I just wrote, but the liberal candidates (which do not include McCain, as Paul Krugman rightly pointed out today) may have a better chance than conventional wisdom tells us. The reason is clear: the field is crowded with conservatives. Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, George Allen, Bill Frist, Tom Tancredo, John McCain, and potentially more. The liberal side, in contrast, is meager: Giuliani is all alone right now. Giuliani has little chance of winning the primary, but not because of his politics; no, personal baggage will derail his chances. However, if Condi Rice entered the race, I would call the nomination for her right there and then. Not only would she be the only credible liberal, but she would probably pick up some conservative votes to boot. She recently won an online poll of Human Events readers as the favorite GOP candidate; this is hardly scientific, but impressive nevertheless considering HE's radical conservative credentials.

Finally, on the Democratic side. I like what Russ Feingold is doing. No, that doesn't mean I would like him to win the primary (I like the guy, but he would be a disastrous nominee). Rather, I like that he's putting pressure on Hillary from the left by tossing some slabs of red meat to the Democratic base. Caught between Feingold and Clark on the left and Warner and Vilsack on the right, it's looking more and more possible that the nomination will slip through her fingers. From there, hopefully it will fall onto Mark Warner's lap...

Anyway, that's my round up. I'm sure there will be more as the months wear on.

2006-03-09T12:34:00.000-08:00

Dubai

Perhaps making this the subject of my first post in months is akin to Bush threatening to make it his first veto, but here goes...

The Dubai deal was not a very big deal.

This is certainly not administration apologism. There are a million things I disagree with Bush about. But this wasn't one of them.

The argument that this was a security threat was always ridiculous. The firm would not be handling security at the ports. 80% of U.S. ports are held by foreign companies in the status quo. And port security in America couldn't get much worse.

Unfortunately, I think it's telling that Michael Savage was the one who first made this issue nationally prominent. Even more unfortunate is that Democrats joined him. I don't think the Dems are guilty of racism by any means (as Savage, Hannity, et al certainly are). But I do think they're guilty of political grandstanding.

At least it's all over now.

2005-12-16T00:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, yes. I know, I know.

Okay, so I haven't posted in a long, long time. But look: there's this thing called school, and there's this thing seniors need to write called a thesis. Give me a mo'fo'n break, yeah?

But anyway, the life political has been intriguing in my absence, n'est-ce pas? Where to begin?

Well, this one will be quick. It's only the second night off after finals, so I have a lot of partying to do. All I want to say is that everyone ought to take a look at the post-riposte between Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Sullivan of (respectively) the Weekly Standard and my favorite magazine. The topic is torture, and it's an excellent demonstration of the pro-torture intellectuals' ethical bankruptcy (that's you, Ben Schifman).

Anyway, I just wanted to spread the word on some good writing and thinking. And please check up on this blog over the next month or so! I'm off school, and I'll have nothing better to do than write about politics! It's all I really think about, honest!

2005-09-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

The Hammer Falls

After months of waiting, hoping, it has finally happened: Tom DeLay was indicted and forced to step down as House Majority Leader. It's hard to say what will ultimately happen, but one thing's for sure: the stench from this affair will be hard for the GOP to shake.

The indictment opens up a whole line of attack that only vaguely existed before for the Democrats. Instead of vague charges about escapades with Jack Abramoff, we now have explicit transgressions to work with: Tom DeLay is a money-laundering, gerrymandering, election cheater.

It may be cynical of me, but I'm pretty pleased. I've considered Tom DeLay to be an arch-villain of comic book proportions for some time now, and he'll finally get his day in court. Stay tuned.

2005-09-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

First things first...

...go to www.hannity.com and check out the "Hannidate" feature. It is probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Is Sean Hannity really the person people should use as a hub to the dating world? Apparently his listeners think so.

Anyway, on to more serious matters: Am I more conservative than John Roberts? The prospect of a "yes" answer naturally frightens me. This is a man who worked in the Justice Department of Ronald Reagan, the figurehead of our current political realignment. He is George W. Bush's appointee to be Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. And he believes in a constitutional right to privacy.

This last issue is my sticking point. "Wait," you cry, "are you (gulp) anti-choice?" No, my legions of readers, I am not opposed to abortion. In fact, I'm a strong supporter of reproductive rights; I even believe in federal funding for abortions (why do we only force poor women to have unwanted children?). The problem is whether federal privacy law stands up to scrutiny, and I don't think it does.

Unfortunately, the American privacy caselaw is held together by duct tape. Even more unfortunately, it isn't particularly high-grade duct tape. The main problem is that the concept on which it is based, Substantive Due Process, is self-contradictory. Any ninth-grade English student fresh out of his lesson on Greek roots can tell you that distinguishing between "procedural" and "substantive" due process is a bit silly, because "procedural due process" is a reduncancy. You see, "procedural" is the adjective form of "procedure," which, in turn, shares the same root and basic meaning as "process." When you start talking about "substantive due process" (e.g. right to privacy, right to contract, etc.), you're no longer talking about "process" at all. At least in the abstract sense, it cannot exist.

Then where did this absurd doctrine come from? A good place to start is a single Supreme Court case, now recognized as one of the worst decisions in its history: Lochner v. New York. This 1905 case established the legally specious "right to contract," on the grounds that it was contained in the substantive component of the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The reaction of liberal legal scholars was a little similar to the reaction of conservative scholars to today's privacy caselaw: "There's no such thing as substantive due process!"

The same specious concept with the unfortunate name controls privacy law in the 21st Century. And thusly, I don't support the privacy caselaw.

Besides the simple intellectual dishonesty of SDP, it should be opposed to prevent pernicious effects in the future. The fact is, if it can prop up rights as disparate as privacy and contracts, it can prop up pretty much any right a crafty judge chooses to put under its umbrella. Or, worse yet, it could bring back Lochner-era rulings that gutted economic regulation for several decades: the right to contract resulted in maximum hour and minimum wage laws being struck down, which means there's a lot of contemporary stuff us liberals like that would disappear pretty quickly (such as Social Security, the Environmental Protection Act, and the Civil Rights Act). The political process will never allow conservatives to take these things away, so the Court is their only recourse.

So, we have to punt SDP. I think a constitutional amendment establishing the right to privacy is a fantastic idea, intellectually and (more importantly) politically (after all, how can anyone who claims to be conservative vote against privacy?). But, we shouldn't let it stand as an artificial construction. There's just too much at stake.

Oh, and for an alternative to traditional liberal judicial review theory, check out John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust. It's not perfect, but it's a pretty good start.

2005-09-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Katrina and other thoughts

Sorry I haven't posted in quite some time. Too intellectually lazy during those last weeks of summer, I suppose. Regardless, I'm back and ought to be posting more regularly than ever now that school's back in session. And now to the point.

Red America has gone red in the face over post-Katrina criticism of the Bush administration and the GOP in general. They charge liberals with exploiting a national tragedy to make political points, and distorting facts in the process. David Frum at National Review, Oliver North at Human Events, and Pat Buchanan, also at Human Events, provide a good sampling of the talking points.

War Criminal Oliver North provides the most ridiculous indictment of all: "...while hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast are mourning dead family and friends and trying to comprehend their losses in the flooded streets, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is blaming Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, and the GOP for the devastation caused by the hurricane." In one sentence, Tehran Ollie summarizes the impotence of the Republican response to charges of hurricane exacerbation. He completely misses the point of Kyoto- and Iraq-related post-hurricane critisms: nobody is charging that Bush and the GOP literally and directly caused the hurricane. Rather, they make two legitimate charges that conservatives can't dodge. First, as David Corn points out, liberals charge that American conservatives' neglect of emissions-related climate change has worsened the impacts of land-falling hurricanes, which, research indicates, may be intensified by global warming. Second, and most obviously, liberals charge that the national guard was unable to respond to the disaster as rapidly as possible due to its deployment in Iraq. This is almost indisputable; as a result, regular active-duty Army troops have been deployed (technically illegally) to help in the relief efforts.

Perhaps worse, some conservatives question the very idea of Federal rebuilding in New Orleans. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is one of these conservatives.

In situations like these, the people who are crying "exploitation" or "opportunism" tend to those who are unable to formulate rational, convincing responses. Sure, if Kyoto had been ratified by the U.S., or if U.S. troops had never invaded Iraq, Hurricane Katrina probably would have still happened, and it would have still caused significant damage. But we should not avert our eyes to the ways conservative policy can worsen natural disasters, especially in the face of the most damaging act of God in the modern history.

2005-07-23T22:57:00.000-07:00

I'm at a hostel computer in Seattle right now, so I can't make this too long. Just had to catch up on the last week or three that I haven't been writing.

Let's start with (soon to be) Justice John Roberts. My prediction for his career on the Court is long and solid. He has every indication of being a rational, Burkean conservative legal mind. Sure, he once wrote a brief against Roe. But the important part is that he wrote that brief while he was in the Justice Department for Bush I; he was just reflecting the policy of that administration. As has been mentioned a few times, John Roberts is an "advocate." He even filled in for a colleague on an environmental protection case before taking his seat on the Federal bench (that's right: for environmental protection). I would even give 1 to 2 odds that when push came to shove, he'll be a vote for narrowing but not overturning Roe.

Much more entertaining, of course, is the Rove debacle. Seeing Scott McClellan whimper under the pressure of the White House press corps was one of the best recorded moments in recent memory. The fact that it appears Rove leaked Valerie Plame's identity is an excellent consolation prize after the extremely boring, long-awaited revelation of Deep Throat's identity. Mark Felt? Who the Hell is Mark Felt? Karl Rove! Now there's a name I know!

Oh, and props to the current administration for hastening its Court decision in light of unsavory activity by top aides. Brilliant political move, and (no joke) barely anyone noticed.

Anyway, there's my stream of consciousness to cover a couple weeks of news. Sorry I don't have anything to say about the London bombings. That would require thinking more than I'm prepared to do right now.v

2005-07-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

Enough with all the nonsense

I'm still standing by my Garza prediction for Chief Justice. In the meantime, O'Connor's seat really is up for grabs. There are so many dang possibilities. Redstate is reporting a possible Cornyn appointment, but they later backed off. So nobody really knows.

I would say Edith Clements is the natural choice. She has a limited paper trail and has demonstrated a liking for a very narrow reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause; she would be an effective stealth conservative nominee, defusing some of the insanity that will certainly ensue in the double-whammy bloodsport we'll be witnessing in the next few days.

By the way, the O'Connor nomination enhances what I said in my last post: Bush pretty much has to nominate someone directly to Chief Justice. There is no way activist conservatives (or, for that matter, the Bush Administration) could handle the elevation of anyone but Thomas or Scalia, and that would be an untenable position for Bush and Senate Republicans; one of the three would almost definitely not make it.

So there you go. My new blog has been pretty much exclusively devoted to Supreme Court stuff. Maybe in the next couple days I'll write about something else.

But probably not.

2005-06-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

A Prediction

I am now going on the record with a prediction: Emilio Garza will be nominated and confirmed this summer as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The political importance of nominating a Latino Justice has been widely discussed. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is an unlikely pick despite his cultural heritage: in decisions for the Texas Supreme Court, he seemed to demonstrate a soft spot for abortion rights. Garza, on the other hand, has explicitly stated in numerous opinions that he is does not believe the Constitution protects abortion rights, making him a prime candidate to renew the chipping away of Roe v. Wade.

Furthermore, there is no doubt the Bush administration, in line with its other high-profile minority appointments, would love to be remembered as the stewards of the first minority Chief Justice. This has caused some to cry "Thomas." But there's plenty of reason to doubt. It is unlikely that an appointment of a brand new conservative judge and the elevation of ultraconservative Justice Clarence Thomas would happen before the August recess, meaning it's unlikely it would happen before the 2005-06 Supreme Court term. Nobody wants to start business with an eight-member Court, so Bush seems likely to kill two birds with one stone by nominating Emilio Garza directly to Chief Justice.

This, of course, is speculation. But if I end up being right, it will be for all the reasons written above.

2005-06-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

Free Speech All Around

My, what a busy week for the First Amendment! First, in a dark day for the Bill of Rights, the House of Representatives passes a Constitutional Amendment that allows Congress to ban flag desecration. The substantive debate over whether the U.S. flag needs protection, of course, is more worthy of ridicule than serious argument. As my favorite magazine puts it:

In 1989, when the Supreme Court ruled that desecration of the American flag fell under the protection of the First Amendment [Johnson v. Texas], it seemed like a perfectly sensible decision...But that was before our current epidemic of flag-burning swept the nation.

This would all be fun and games, if it weren't for the fact that this time it might be for real. Unlike the last several times the House has passed such an amendment, today's U.S. Senate is a conducive place for right-wing populist wedge issues. The Republicans have a 55-44 edge in the upper house, and even opponents of this absurd proposal say that if they prevail, it will probably only be by a couple of votes. A dark day indeed.

The second and third events in this week of fun both came today: the U.S. Supreme Court did and didn't uphold the display of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of public buildings, and the same pack of judges declined to rule on the case of two journalists who have refused to reveal their sources in the Valerie Plame leak case.

Since these cases don't concern a Constitutional Amendment, a quick application of legal precedent ought to suffice. On the Ten Commandment cases, the Court issued decisions that are separated by a line so thin it takes an electron microscope to see it. The Kentucky displays, which the Court struck down, were ruled to be conscious attempts by the state to advance the cause of religion. The Texas displays, however, were determined to have a passive, secular purpose. The former were erected fairly recently by the government, which means their erection is illegal; the latter were erected a long time ago by the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, which means their erection is okay.

However, what we're forgetting is that we have a very easy test we can apply to determine whether either display is constitutional. In the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote that laws involving religion are permissible only if they pass the following tests:

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion.

Where does the Kentucky trip and the Texas case stand? The physical location of the Texas display, according to Justice Breyer (the only Justice to vote with the 5-4 majority in both cases), "suggests little or nothing of the sacred," and the monument's forty year history without dispute suggests it is simply part of a "broader moral and historical message reflective of a cultural heritage."

But is this difference really anything more than semantic? It doesn't seem so. The Eagles erected the Texas display in hopes that its presence would deter juvenile delinquets from carrying out their dastardly deeds. But did they really believe the monument's power came from a secular source? Without the authority of a higher power, it doesn't seem that there is much intrinsic, compelling power held by the command not to "covet thy neighbor's ox." It seems extremely dubious that the Eagles' erection, or the states' complicity, was rooted in a "secular purpose."

Furthermore, the display seems to violate Lemon's second commandment (to neither advance nor inhibit religion) even more explicitly. As Justice Stevens writes in his dissenting opinion, by paying tribute to the Ten Commandments but not, say, to the Islamic Sharia, Texas delivers the message that "this state endorses the divine code of the Judeo-Christian God."

By allowing a Ten Commandments monument to stand, the states of Kentucky and Texas violate the First Amendment. The displays are meant to advance a religious agenda; if the truth were otherwise, monuments to the English common law (much more important to the American system of jurisprudence) would be heck of a lot more common (no pun intended).

So, on the issue of the First Amendment and its wedge-applying enemies on the hard right, I close with one last thought from my favorite magazine:

...Senator Orrin Hatch understands where the true threat lies. "It's time to stand up for our symbol," he told The New York Times. "I consider defecating on the flag, urinating on the flag, burning the flag with contempt--just to mention three--to be offensive conduct, not speech." Yes, let's save that sort of behavior for the Bill of Rights.

PS: Since the Valerie Plame case is just beginning, and should be replete with rapid-fire developments over the next few days, I'll save more on that case for later.

2005-06-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

This is my first post. I feel like I'm writing this a little forced, since there needs to be something on here, and I'm sort of writing this for the sake of not having an empty blog. However, stay tuned for news and opinion jetting onto the web faster than you can say "wait a second"...