The Anchoress Spanks Republican Leaders

In a post titled Attention GOP Leadership the Anchoress makes some points that I have been stewing about for weeks:

The world is tilting, and you useless, ineffectual, dithering moneysuckers seem increasingly to be empty suits, given shape and movement not by ideas and a willingness to serve the electorate, but by wispy tufts of ambitious smoke. You seem directed toward nothing more than keeping your almighty Senate or House seat in your name. You give away your power, you give away your advantages in committee, you leave in place utterly feckless people like Arlen Specter and then, when you finally seem like you are on the cusp of doing something productive and right, like investigating the CIA or okaying drilling in a bare, muddly, uninhabitable tundra, you fall into a faint and go slinking back to your states and districts to gladhand and pump for money and then gladhand some more.

This is harsh rhetoric, but it perfectly captures the frustration that many principled conservatives feel with our unprincipled representatives. More, their lack of principle is reflecting badly on us -- unfairly, since politicians are rarely as interested in principle as their intellectual defenders, but inevitably.

In an update, the Anchoress claims that this disaffection from the GOP is different from criticisms of the Harriet Miers nomination. But I think she was wrong to object to the treatment of Miers, "due to her not being permitted her hearing". Miers and Bush were not owed any such hearing. People voicing their opiinion is precisely the data that Senators should have taken into account in making their decision whether or not to confirm, and the fact that the opinions expressed caused Bush to withdraw the nomination is a perfectly acceptable outcome.

Robertson on Intelligent Design

Tammy Bruce rightly excoriates this bit of idiocy from Pat Robertson:

Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.

One of the irritating things about this is that, by associating Intelligent Design with Christianity (if that is what you call the worldly and mendacious religion that he practices), Robertson is actually feeding the very slander that critics of ID have so successfully achieved. Michael Behe and William Dembski have gone to great lengths to demonstrate that what they do is legitimate science and has no basis in any religion, Christian or otherwise. Then along comes Robertson and pisses it all away by calling down the wrath of God.

He is even wrong from a theological point of view. Here is his actual quote:

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."

"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said.

Even assuming that Robertson had the authority to speak on God's behalf (which I categorically deny), this is just not a biblical view of God's judgment. Telling people not to turn to God has no precedent in even the harshest prophets of the Old Testament.

It is true that God will sometimes respond to extreme unfaithfulness with and implacable justice which he declares in advance will not be remitted. I am currently teaching a study on the book of the prophet Hosea who had the thankless task of telling the Northern kingdom of Israel that their doom was fixed. Chapter 1 contains one of the two or three scariest passages in the entire bible: "Call her name Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away." [Hos 1:6] Yet, in several times throughout the book, Hosea is careful to say that, after the judgment has occurred and the people are repentant "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him." [Hos 14:4] (If you want a more complete discussion of this book, you will have to show up at St. Luke's. :)

Tammy comments:

Just as we demand that "modern" Muslims condemn the extremists in their midst, good Christians really ought to send Robertson packing. This is just ridiculous and should embarrass every decent person of faith out there. Absolutely outrageous.

I agree. One minor quibble with Tammy's post, however. Many conservative Christians do deplore Robertson and Falwell and do so as publicly as we are able. However, our objections do not make the front pages -- much less the careful, thoughtful and constructive contributions we make in our churches and daily lives. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but I have become convinced that Robertson and his ilk are useful to the MSM precisely because they show Christianity in a bad light. Sending him packing would be a dream come true for many of us, but is not a very realistic option in the current environment.

Update: Incidentally, here is what Michael Behe has to say about the court case (mentioned in the article):

As far as the "ordeal" goes, despite what the LA Times article makes it seem, it was actually all rather exhilirating. I rather enjoyed myself on the witness stand, because I got to explain in very great detail the argument for intelligent design, and the other side had to sit there and listen.

The cross examination was fun too, and showed that the other side really does have only rhetoric and bluster. At one point the lawyer for the other side who was cross examining me ostentatiously piled a bunch of papers on the witness stand that putatively had to do with the evolution of the immune system. But it was obvious from a cursory examination that they were more examples of hand waving speculations, which I had earlier discussed in my direct testimony. So I was able to smile and say that they had nothing more to say than the other papers. I then thought to myself, that here the NCSE, ACLU, and everyone in the world who is against ID had their shot to show where we were wrong, and just trotted out more speculation. It actually made me feel real good about things.

From what I read from Casey's blog about Scott Minnich's testimony, he seemed to have the same experience. I haven't the foggiest idea how the Judge will rule, but I think we got to show a lot of people that ID is a very serious idea.

Support Free Speech: Kill HR 4194

RedState and DailyKos have co-authored a letter to congress urging the defeat of HR 4194 which has been offered as an alternative to the Online Freedom of Speech Act (H.R. 1606):

As bloggers from the right and left, we don't often agree on much. But when it comes to free speech online, we couldn't agree more.

[...]

For those members committed to extending the BCRA rules and regulations to the Internet, it would be preferable to pass no bill at all rather than H.R. 4194, which would only chill free speech and technological growth, and instead wait for the Federal Election Commission to complete its current rulemaking process.

Better still would be to pass H.R. 1606, the Online Freedom of Speech Act. H.R. 1606 would preserve the status quo which governed the 2004 election cycle, during which none of the fears now trumpeted by H.R. 4194's supporters came to pass.

[...]

In sum, the Internet now fulfills through technology what the rest of campaign finance reform attempts via law - and this occurred under the legal regime which H.R. 1606 seeks to codify. We urge you to proceed cautiously, and steer clear of additional restrictions like H.R. 4194 until real corruption becomes evident.

Personally, I would rather repeal the entire McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law and (all similar laws) and simply let people decide for themselves what to think. I don't believe money really has such an impact on elections, even in traditional media, as we are generally led to believe.

But since such a repeal is probably not politically possible in the near future, at least we should prevent Congress from extending the restrictions on free speech to the one internet.

(Cross posted on Love America First)

Alito on Casey

Most commentators have rightly recognized that the battle for the confirmation of Samuel Alito will center on his dissent in Planned Parenthood v Casey. Tammy Bruce, who is mildly supportive of the nomination with some reservations, has this to say:

Let me say immediately I was disappointed he did not pick a woman. I realize many of you think it makes no difference, but I beg to differ. All people in important positions also serve as role models. If the president were to have picked a woman, a conservative woman of course, it would have sent an additional message that women can think in a variety of different ways. That is one reason why the Dems become especially apoplectic when it comes to women who dare to be different. It is the reason why Barbara Boxer treated Secretary Rice so badly during her confirmation hearing. They can not stand women who challenge the Left's status quo, who dare to leave their plantation.

[...]

And when it comes to being conservative, there is nothing conservative about ruling in a manner that says government has a right to control communications between spouses. I think all of you would certainly agree with that. And yet consider this when it came to his dissent in Planned Parenthood Vs. Casey:

In the early 1990s, Alito was the lone dissenter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case in which the 3rd Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

While many of you probably would, of course, personally prefer that a woman tell her husband what she's doing, especially if she's getting an abortion, legislating what a wife or husband should tell each other is the opposite of a conservative view of government. Obviously, he's pro-life, and that's fine. But that's a religious position, not an authentically conservative 'political' position. The two are very different.

At any rate, the president is in for a fight, and Alito is a smart man and a good jurist in general. His action in Casey indicates that he thinks government has a right to reach into our lives. That is troubling when it comes to a decision like Kelo and our private property rights.

Harry Reid isn't happy, so that's one excellent sign that Alito is overall a good choice. We shall see.

Here is my response, which I also posted as a comment on Tammy's blog:

I am also mildly disappointed that a conservative woman was not nominated, not for affirmative action-type reasons but for the simple political calculation that it would improve the image of the Republican Party among those who care about such things. Also it would be a huge thumb in the eye of the opposition.

But I respectfully disagree with your assessment of Alito's role in PP v Casey. His dissent was perfectly justifiable on conservative principles, in both a substantive and legal sense.

Substantively, it has always been the case that government has some role in defining the behavior of married couples. Consider the case of jointly buying a house. I could not legally sell my house without my wife's consent. There are probably other restrictions as well that I am not aware of. Note, incidentally, that this is quite apart from any moral or religious considerations. Marriage is, among other things, a public and legal relationship, which the government has an interest in regulating. While you rightly suggest that governmental interference should be minimal -- and we can agree to disagree on what the limits of that interference should be -- it is by no means contrary to conservative principle that there might be some.

Unfortunately, I am not able to find the original 3rd Circuit decision with Alito's dissent, but he is quoted in the SCOTUS case as saying "[t]he Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands' knowledge because of perceived problems - such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition - that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion." This suggests that he was using a "rational basis" test for the constitutionality of the legislation. What this means is that the court defers to the legislature if it can find any legitimate end that the law could be pursuing, as opposed to strict scrutiny which puts more burden of proof on the government in cases where an enumerated constitutional right is at issue. As Rehnquist points out in his dissent (footnote 2), the law made several exceptions to the notification requirement, thus avoiding the imposition of an "undue burden" on the woman, thus avoiding the need for strict scrutiny. I happen to disagree with this taxonomy of scrutiny, but it is established doctrine handed down from prior Supreme Court decisions, so using it qualifies as "conservative" in the judicial sense.

I neglected to mention it above, but for the sake of clarity let me explain the reference to affirmative action. I think that the first issue that should be considered is always merit. But, once you have a pool of equally qualified people, it is perfectly legitimate to promote on the basis of such things as race or sex, especially when you are trying to maintain a certain public image. This isn't mandatory, of course, but it makes sense from a political perspective.

UPDATE: Commenter Joe at ConfirmThem.com has posted the text of Judge Alito's dissent in PP v Casey. It pretty much confirms my guesses above, viz. that his dissent was based on a "rational basis" test and that no "undue burden" was established (which would have required a higher standard of scrutiny). Fascinatingly, he bases his dissent on prior opinions of ... Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom he is slated to replace.

Iraqi Women Take Up Arms

From the Washington Times:

While most Iraqi women live in fear of terrorists and criminals, one small band of women has taken up arms and is prepared to fight back.

Employed by a private security company, the women ride in the front passenger seat posing as ordinary housewives when the company's drivers transport customers around the city in nondescript vehicles.

But their firearms are always close at hand, and they are trained to respond with force if they come under attack.

[...]

"Before I got into this, I was like a normal female; when I heard bullets, I would hide," said Muna, a stocky young woman in a black T-shirt and black pants.

"Now, I feel like a man. When I hear a bullet, I want to know where it came from," she said, sitting comfortably with an AK-47 assault rifle across her legs, red toenails poking out from a pair of stacked sandals. "Now I feel equal to my husband."

If the work provides personal fulfillment for Muna, her colleague Assal -- a divorced mother -- sees it as a cause.

"I have seen a lot of innocent people die," she said, staring out with intense black eyes. "We are trying to defend ourselves and defend each other. I am doing this for my country."

I'm not too thrilled with the "now I feel like a man" line, but in context I think we know what she means. One of the primary guarantees of liberty is the right to defend oneself. I am glad to see that at least some Iraqi women are refusing to be victims.

Elitism and Sexism

David Frum of NRO notes the following irony in an email he received from the National Senate Republican Committee:

Defenders of the Miers nomination often suggest that it is "elitist" to demand qualifications for the Supreme Court. It turns out, though, that these same folks think it perfectly OK to demand qualifications to sign an open letter about the Supreme Court.

[...]

"The Republican National Committee is asking our help with placing op ed letters in various papers throughout the country to show support of the nomination of Harriett Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. The op ed letter can be signed by one or many women. We are looking for prominent community leaders and especially those in top legal positions to help us with this effort. I’m happy to help and [NAME REMOVED] at the RNC (women’s outreach director) is ready to help you place the ad."

Attached to the email is a draft of the suggested letter. The last line reads as follows:
"Sincerely,
"(the strongest bunch of female legal scholars, law school deans, bar association chairs, and elected officials you can tap—I’d be glad to assist)."

I guess sometimes excellence does matter.

Frum also has a petition requesting the withdrawal of Miers' nomination. I am number 5999 on the list. I was originally ambivalent about signing, since the Congressional hearings might still provide some hope that Miers isn't a completely worthless candidate, but recent reading has convinced me that the there is no such hope. This has gone past the point of potentially damaging and has become downright embarassing. I feel bad for Ms. Miers, who is daily proving that she is out of her league. I don't know if she put herself forward or if it was Bush's idea (I suspect the latter) but she certainly should have realized that this was a bad move and respectfully declined the nomination.

Miers on Proportional Representation

Several bloggers have noted this WaPo story about Senator's reactions to Harriet Miers' questionaire responses. Particularly troubling are these two paragraphs:

Meanwhile, several constitutional law scholars said they were surprised and puzzled by Miers's response to the committee's request for information on cases she has handled dealing with constitutional issues. In describing one matter on the Dallas City Council, Miers referred to "the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause" as it relates to the Voting Rights Act.

"There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause," said Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. He and several other scholars said it appeared that Miers was confusing proportional representation -- which typically deals with ethnic groups having members on elected bodies -- with the one-man, one-vote Supreme Court ruling that requires, for example, legislative districts to have equal populations.

I wonder if she was perhaps thinking of the 14th Amendment as a whole, which refers to both Equal Protection (in section 1) and proportional representation (section 2). Her comment is still somewhat incoherent, since these provisions are not in the same "clause", but the error becomes somewhat less egregious. Someone with better access to legal research than I have can probably discover whether the case in question would have anything to do with this provision of the 14th Amendment.
(Via Oxblog, Michelle Malkin, Carol Platt Liebau and others)

Update: Other responses to the Miers questionaire include this from James Taranto at Opinion Journal:

The Miers debacle is beginning to remind us of New Coke--a product introduced in an effort to expand market share, which instead infuriated loyal customers. If Bush wants to "save his presidency," the way to do so is clear: withdraw the Miers nomination and reintroduce Court Classic.

This has been the methaphor I have been searching for this past week. Brilliant! Also, I'm thinking the Bush administration will not be too pleased having his name associated with Coke...
(Via Instapundit)

Red Crescent Dhimmitude

I have commented on this story from the Washington Post at Love America First.

The president of the Iraqi Red Crescent has urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to stop sending aid marked with red crosses after the internationally protected symbol almost cost four staffers their lives.

Two truck drivers and two volunteers were delivering water and medicine to the city of Haditha four weeks ago when they were captured by insurgents, said Said Hakki, a neurology professor who returned from Florida last year to take charge of Iraqi relief operations.

"They were seized by a terrorist group who threatened to behead them because they thought the crosses on the water and food containers meant the men were Christian missionaries," said Mr. Hakki, who made his plea during a visit last week to ICRC headquarters in Geneva.

He said the terrorists seemed unmoved by the fact that the two trucks themselves were marked with the red crescent symbol typically used in Muslim countries.

[...]

In Geneva, an ICRC spokeswoman said the red cross and red crescent are not religious symbols and that international treaties require that both must be respected everywhere.

[...] the kidnappers had bound and blindfolded the four men and told them to say their final prayers before the aid workers convinced their captors that they were Sunni Muslims from Fallujah and that their supervisor was a Sunni with strong tribal connections in the area.

In addition to the comments I made there, I wanted to note a bit more about the background of Jean Henri Dunant, founder of the International Red Cross (from Wikipedia):

Dunant was born in Geneva as the first son of businessman Jean-Jacques Dunant and his wife Antoinette Dunant-Colladon. His family was very devoutly Calvinist and had significant influence in Geneva society. His parents strongly stressed the value of social work, and his father was active helping orphans and parolees, while his mother worked with the sick and poor. Particularly influential for young Dunant was a visit to Toulon where he saw the suffering of prison inmates.

Dunant grew up during the period of religious awakening known as the Réveil, and at age eighteen he joined the Geneva Society for Alms giving. In the following year, together with friends, he founded the so-called "Thursday Association", a loose band of young men that met to study the Bible and help the poor, and he spent much of his free time engaged in prison visits and social work. On November 30, 1852, he founded the Geneva chapter of the YMCA and three years later he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of its international organization.

I post this here rather than on LAF because that site is more specifically political and this isn't really relevant to the point I am making. I just found the subject interesting.

Update: The complete text of Dunant's "A Memory of Solferino" can be found here.

Losing the Reagan Legacy

Randy Barnett, at the Volokh Conspiracy, links to this article by Dennis Coyle on Harriet Miers. The conclusion is rather sobering:

The nomination of Harriet Miers is another chapter in the lost promise of the Reagan revolution. From the heady days of the 1980s, there have been so many missteps, perhaps including the selection of the current president's father as the custodian of the Reagan revolution. The judicial legacy of the Bushes has been raised hopes and dashed expectations: The father left us Thomas, but also Souter; the son brings Roberts, but now Miers. This may be Bush's last opportunity to make an imprint on the Supreme Court, unless health forces Justice Stevens off the bench. The next resignation may well be that of Justice Scalia, fleeing in frustration.

The Republican hold on the presidency is razor thin, control of the Senate uncertain. There could well come a day, possibly sooner rather than later, when a Democratic president places a nominee before a Democratic Senate, and there will be little talk of keeping a balance on the Court. The Court will resume its leftward march, occasionally staggering back to the right. Conservatives slowed, but did not reverse, this trend.

The moment has passed; unless this nomination is derailed by the oddest of bedfellows, it would seem that this is, as Jim Morrison intoned, the end.

I hope he is wrong, but I fear he may be right.

Tammy Talks Intelligent Design

I am pretty sure Tammy Bruce is agnostic or atheist, but she is often one of the most articulate defenders of the intellectual integrity and legitimacy of Christians and the Judeo-Christian paradigm. Here is a brief post she makes regarding the teaching of intelligent design:

To suggest that we ignore or ban the teaching of Intelligent Design alongside evolution is the equivalent of Stalin having the people he executed literally erased from pictures so as to deny they ever existed. If you're having trouble determining if something is right or wrong, ask yourself what Stalin would prefer, and there you have determined the 'wrong' part of the equation.

In this instance, I think it's safe to say Stalin would be rooting for the ACLU.

That, of course, is the root of the matter: whether or not you agree with it, free inquiry demands that people be given the opportunity to investigate for themselves. As noted elsewhere, I have problems with the idea of public schools for precisely the reason that it tends to dangerously intermingle the government's legitimate monopoly on force with the spirit of investigation and dissent necessary for a true liberal education. But, if we must have public education, the smelly little orthodoxies exemplified by the Darwinian establishment should be opposed at all costs.

Update: The comment I left on her post is now available. It addresses the issue of whether or not ID is science or religion, which is off-topic from Tammy's original post, but seems to be the only thing people want to discuss:

With all due respect to the posters above, there seems to be little evidence that they have ever actually read any primary source material on Intelligent Design. Which is remarkable, since the scientific approach they are advocating specifies that we don't take conventional wisdom for granted but investigate directly. If Galileo had followed their method, we would still accept the proposition that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones, since that was the prevailing "scientific" theory of gravity in his era.

The central question of ID is not "who created the world?" but "can we discern evidence of design in physical structures?" This question is to be answered by the commonly accepted investigative tools that other scientific disciplines use. Those who object that "design" is too amorphous a category to be properly scientific should consider the disciplines of archaeology and psychology.

Archaeologists regularly sift through dirt and other random debris in search of artifacts from prior cultures. But if "design" is not a recognizable property, there is really no way to tell if the piece of clay you are looking at is the product of human intelligence or just some random feature of the environment.

Similarly, psychologists attempt to investigate human behavior in search of intentions and motivations. But these are just synonyms for design, which makes the discipline pointless if design is not a valid object of scientific investigation.

During the 19th century, the Vienna school (which later morphed into Logical Positivism) debated whether it was appropriate to include such disciplines as archaeology and geology in the category of science, since they did not deal with subjects that were amenable to repeatable experiments. Similarly, B. F. Skinner formed the school of Behaviorism, because he did not accept the notion of the independent soul ("psyche") and wanted to deal only with empirically observable facts. These arguments are interesting philosophically, but most people now accept these disciplines as fully scientific, even though they deal with subject matter that has an element of the non-physical.

I would suggest that ID is a discipline in its infancy, and that the question of whether it is properly science is an appropriate one. But that question cannot be answered by misstating its premises, or by refusing to evaluate its conclusions on their own merits.