Who is serious about national security?

Spook Lar­ry John­son explains new rev­e­la­tions from reporters at the Nation:

Valerie Plame was work­ing under­cov­er as a senior CIA oper­a­tions officer.

Valerie Plame was work­ing on issues relat­ed to Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion in order to keep Amer­i­ca safe.

Valerie Plame trav­eled over­seas as part of her under­cov­er work and was pro­tect­ed under the Intel­li­gence Iden­ti­ties Pro­tec­tion Act.

Valerie Plame was betrayed by Pres­i­dent Bush and his polit­i­cal appointees.

Is some­one seri­ous about the threat of Iraq going to out a secret agent work­ing to uncov­er where Iraq’s WMDs were?

Only if she was­n’t telling them what they want­ed to hear.

Read more “Who is seri­ous about nation­al secu­ri­ty?” →

Sebelius still strong in latest poll

Elec­tion Poll 2006: Kansas Gov­er­nor:

Now that Repub­li­can State Sen­a­tor Jim Bar­nett has won the August 1 pri­ma­ry, Gov­er­nor Kath­leen Sebe­lius leads her chal­lenger 48% to 37%, a drop from sev­en­teen per­cent­age points to eleven.

…the incum­bent con­tin­ues to enjoy high favor­ables and job rat­ings, with 35% view­ing her “very favor­ably,” only 11% “very unfa­vor­ably.” Thir­ty-two per­cent (32%) “strong­ly approve” of her per­for­mance as Governor.

Bar­nett is viewed very favor­ably by only 19%, and although few­er (9%) see him very unfa­vor­ably than see the Gov­er­nor that way, he’s still an unknown to 18%. By con­trast, only 3% are “not sure” what to think of the Gov­er­nor (and only 1% abstain from assess­ing her performance).

Gov­er­nor Sebe­lius has been very effec­tive at steady­ing the course of the state over her term, and for a Demo­c­rat in Kansas to have such high favor­a­bil­i­ty, and so many peo­ple pledg­ing to vote for her again, says a lot about her effectiveness.

In a Salon.com arti­cle about Sebe­lius and her skill at bring­ing Repub­li­cans into the blue fold, for­mer Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair and new­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor Parkin­son explains it like this:

“What she has done over the last four years is run the gov­ern­ment in an open and inde­pen­dent way … She has appoint­ed Repub­li­cans, Democ­rats, inde­pen­dents, to posts all over the state. It was not a one-shot deal to get elect­ed, but it was her demon­strat­ing a new way of lead­er­ship. As so often is the case, I was wrong.”

Wrong, that is, to call her selec­tion of a Repub­li­can as lieu­tenant gov­er­nor 4 years ago a “gim­mick.”

It isn’t. Kansas is chang­ing, and Nadia Pflum is right that this isn’t just Sebe­lius. It’s a reflec­tion of a state and nation­al par­ty that is aban­don­ing its roots and its mem­ber­ship. The Karl Rove strat­e­gy has spread to every race, a strat­e­gy of run­ning just far enough to the cen­ter to get that one vote past 50%. The Sebe­lius strat­e­gy is to look for the right answer, and fol­low where it leads. Some­times that leads to the left, oth­er times it takes pol­i­cy right­ward. Some­times it just means ham­mer­ing out a deal, regard­less of who can take cred­it for it.

That’s what hap­pened with school finance. There’s some crit­i­cism going around about Sebe­lius ads in which she takes cred­it for the school finance com­pro­mise. While it’s true that the spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion she rolled out nev­er got very far (expand­ing gam­bling just did­n’t sit right with too many peo­ple), she did use her lead­er­ship to shep­herd a deal through the divid­ed leg­is­la­ture. To do that, she had to get Democ­rats, mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tives to work togeth­er and to nego­ti­ate with one anoth­er. When Bar­net­t’s plan went down, he seemed unwill­ing to work with oth­er peo­ple to build a plan that would pass. The Gov­er­nor made it work, and is right to take credit.

And the peo­ple of Kansas are right to be hap­py with her.

Republican War on Science Redux

At long last my copy of the new paper­back edi­tion of The Repub­li­can War on Sci­ence by Chris Mooney has arrived.
The book is excel­lent, and always was. Had Mooney not writ­ten this detailed his­to­ry and analy­sis of the ways that the Repub­li­can Par­ty and its main con­stituen­cies have attacked the prac­tice of sci­ence, some­one less skilled might have had to attempt the task. Mooney has suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing the idea of a war on sci­ence (or on exper­tise) a com­mon phrase in polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions, a rare feat.

I reviewed the ear­li­er edi­tion when it came out, and I’ll put my updat­ed review below the fold.
Read more “Repub­li­can War on Sci­ence Redux” →

Labor

On Labor Day, we should remem­ber the heroes of labor, the peo­ple who gave us week­ends, over­time and safe work­sites. Yes, peo­ple like Joe Hill Peo­ple like my grand­fa­ther, who came to this coun­try from the Ukraine in 1922, where he had trained as a typographer.

He went through Ellis Island, and came ashore in Bat­tery Park. After a life in Czarist Rus­sia, hid­ing in the Jew­ish Pale, flee­ing from pogroms and Army raiders seek­ing “recruits,” he was aston­ished at the scene before him in New York. Men stood on soap box­es, rant­i­ng pub­licly against their gov­ern­ment. Crit­i­ciz­ing the pres­i­dent in pub­lic! Police­men did­n’t both­er them, peo­ple stopped and lis­tened. What a country.
He set­tled into life in New York, print­ing Yid­dish books and news­pa­pers, and joined the New York Typo­graph­i­cal Union, Local 6. The union had been found­ed in 1850 by Horace “Go West, Young Man” Gree­ley, and after becom­ing part of the Inter­na­tion­al Typo­graph­i­cal Union, fought for an 8 hour day, for week­ends, for over­time, for work­ers’ safe­ty, and for effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the inter­ests of work­ing peo­ple in government.

My grand­fa­ther rose through the ranks, and one fine day in about 1947, he spoke in Wash­ing­ton as the Local’s sec­re­tary-trea­sur­er. The occa­sion was the immi­nent pas­sage of the Taft-Hart­ley Act, union-bust­ing leg­is­la­tion that Tru­man vetoed and called a “slave-labor bill.” The bill placed restric­tions on how unions could exer­cise their col­lec­tive strength, cre­at­ing the sys­tem we now have that blocks union shops from bring­ing every new employ­ee into their col­lec­tive agree­ment. It also restrict­ed the sorts of employ­ees who could join a union, and made the process for cre­at­ing a new union more com­plex, as well as cre­at­ing new pro­ce­dures before call­ing a strike. The Pres­i­dent was also autho­rized to order a strike end­ed in the event of a nation­al emer­gency – forc­ing peo­ple to work against their will and under con­di­tions they did­n’t con­sent to.

The HUAC hear­ings were at their peak, with Richard Nixon call­ing wit­ness­es and mak­ing a name for him­self. My grand­fa­ther, in the foot­steps of the men he saw on exit­ing the boat 30 years before, declared that the peo­ple before HUAC weren’t un-Amer­i­can, “Richard Nixon is un-American.”

Lat­er, as he lunched in the Con­gres­sion­al din­ing room, who should enter but Tricky Dick him­self. The future pres­i­dent rec­og­nized my grand­fa­ther, angri­ly stormed up to him, wagged his fin­ger and demand­ed “How dare you call me un-American?”

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F—ing Moron

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again (and again, and again), Ted Stevens is an eff­ing moron. He’s the one who put an anony­mous hold on a bill that would cre­ate a data­base of gov­ern­ment spend­ing. Why? The man who demand­ed his $250 mil­lion bridge to nowhere rather than aid to Kat­ri­na was wor­ried about the pric­etag.

Stevens earned his title by oppos­ing fund­ing for avian flu pre­pared­ness because the virus “has not yet become a threat to human beings.” As if the right time to pre­pare for some­thing is after it’s become a pandemic.

Then he threat­ened to resign his seat if fund­ing for his bridge were cut, but then back out of that promise.

He recon­firmed his sta­tus by explain­ing that the inter­net is a series of tubes, and that it’s sort of like dumptrucks.

Moron.

School Boards Matter

A while back I point­ed out a new group in Ohio ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing pro­tect Ohio’s schools against fool­ish­ness, and that the biggest tar­get was one Deb­o­rah Owens “Tru­ly A” Fink. She’s been described as Ohio’s answer to Con­nie Mor­ris, and frankly, I don’t want to know what that ques­tion could have been.

Any­way, the excit­ing news is that for­mer con­gress­man and may­or Tom Sawyer has signed up to run against her. Sawyer says that his plat­form is focused on “the broad range of the cur­ricu­lum – the build­ing blocks that com­prise a thor­ough effi­cient edu­ca­tion” and that “sci­ence edu­ca­tion is only a part of that.

Mean­while, Owens Fink claims that Sawyer’s sup­port­ers, includ­ing Help Ohio Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion, are “mem­bers of the dog­mat­ic sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty” and that she just wants to “focus[] on being very clear about what stu­dents should know.” Which does­n’t, appar­ent­ly, include science.

Tom Sawyer’s Con­gres­sion­al biog­ra­phy explains that he was “active­ly involved in every edu­ca­tion mea­sure in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives since his elec­tion” in 1986. He left the House in 2003, hav­ing vot­ed for No Child Left Behind. Before his polit­i­cal work, he was a school teacher, so he knows what he’s doing.

School boards mat­ter. They set the tone for edu­ca­tion through­out a state. In states where there isn’t a cul­ture war being fought in the board, the focus can stay on what will best pre­pare a child for the com­plex world of the future. In Kansas or Ohio, where this is a con­stant issue, time is sucked away, time that should be spent on new approach­es to inte­grat­ing tech­nol­o­gy into the class­room, on pro­mot­ing new and effec­tive ways of teach­ing ideas, or on intro­duc­ing new­ly dis­cov­ered information.

Help Tom Sawyer take back the Board, and I promise he won’t make you white­wash his fence. 

In which I defend Chuck Klosterman and Chad Orzel

Chad posts this inter­est­ing com­ment from Chuck Kloster­man IV:

It strikes me that every wrong­head­ed sen­ti­ment in soci­ety ulti­mate­ly derives from the cul­ture of inher­ent, uncon­di­tion­al right­ness. As I grow old­er, I find myself less prone to have an opin­ion about any­thing, and to dis­trust just about every­one who does. When­ev­er I meet some­one who open­ly iden­ti­fies them­selves as a Repub­li­can of a Demo­c­rat, my imme­di­ate thought is always, Well, this per­son might be inter­est­ing, but they’ll nev­er say any­thing about pol­i­tics that’s remote­ly use­ful to me. I refuse to dis­cuss abor­tion with any­one who is pro-life or pro-choice; I refuse to dis­cuss affir­ma­tive action with any unem­ployed white guy or any unem­ployed black guy. All the world’s stu­pid­est peo­ple are either zealots or athe­ists. If you want to tru­ly deduce how intel­li­gent some­one is, just ask this per­son how they feel about any issue that does­n’t have an answer; the more cer­tain­ty they express, the less sense they have. This is because cer­tain­ty only comes from dogma

The com­ment thread is enraged. The line about athe­ists got var­i­ous peo­ple hacked off, which is to be expect­ed I sup­pose. The thing is, if you just read the pas­sage, Chuck and Chad are pret­ty much mak­ing sense. Dog­ma­tism is bad, and any­one who denies that athe­ists can be dog­mat­ic just isn’t pay­ing attention.

The oth­er canard of the com­ment thread is the idea that mod­er­a­tion is some­how an abdi­ca­tion of choice.
Read more “In which I defend Chuck Kloster­man and Chad Orzel” →

Long shots

From MyD­D’s list of 40 House Long­shots:

KS‑2 Ryun Ex-mil­er Jim was held to 56%, three points behind Bush in this dis­trict. Kansas Repub­li­cans are splin­ter­ing with promi­nent mod­er­ates flee­ing to the Democ­rats. Kath­leen Sebel­lius is a strong favorite to repeat as Gov­er­nor and GOP anti-evo­lu­tion can­di­dates are find­ing open oppo­si­tion not only from Democ­rats but from Repub­li­cans sworn to defeat them. Nan­cy Boy­da makes a repeat run with low­er expec­ta­tions but a great envi­ron­ment (at least for a Kansas Democrat).

Which I think is basi­cal­ly right. I think that if Boy­da runs the right cam­paign, she can turn this long shot into a sprint that Ryun won’t be able to keep up with. I’ve met with Boy­da a few times and I like her a lot, but I think a lot of peo­ple still have ques­tions about her cam­paign orga­ni­za­tion, ques­tions left over from 2 years ago, but not entire­ly put to rest by her cur­rent cam­paign. She has great endorse­ments, and a great opportunity.

Kansas Democ­rats are in the news, and she could be cap­i­tal­iz­ing on that by hit­ting Ryun on the issues that Democ­rats are win­ning on nation­wide. Health­care is a strong suit for her, giv­en her expe­ri­ence with the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. She’s got a chance to build on a chang­ing polit­i­cal cli­mate for dis­cus­sions of glob­al cli­mate. Sup­port for Iraq and for the Pres­i­dent are both plum­met­ing, and she has a chance now to show her­self to be pre­scient in oppos­ing an ill-con­ceived occu­pa­tion of Iraq.

Ryun him­self is an inco­her­ent buf­foon. This piece from the Iola Reg­is­ter has copi­ous evi­dence of that:

When asked for an alter­na­tive to amnesty for the undoc­u­ment­ed who have been in this coun­try for some time, he said had no answer to that ques­tion. “That is a very com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter. After the bor­ders are secure there should be a nation­al debate on immi­gra­tion” which will lead to those deci­sions, he said.

So we’ll rush to imple­ment a half-mea­sure, then decide what our pol­i­cy should be. Brilliant. 

On Iraq, he explained:

he agreed with the gen­er­al who said a civ­il war in Iraq is not under­way or likely.

Because Ryun serves on the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, he was asked to com­ment on com­plaints by some Marine and Army reservists about the “back door draft.”

He had nev­er heard the phrase, he said.

The gen­er­al Ryun is cit­ing defines a civ­il war as “typ­i­cal­ly and char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, … the col­lapse of the cen­tral insti­tu­tions of gov­ern­ment.” Gen­er­al Fry, and appar­ent­ly Con­gress­man Ryun, are appar­ent­ly not aware that dur­ing the Amer­i­can Civ­il War the cen­tral insti­tu­tions of gov­ern­ment per­sist­ed. We held elec­tions, Con­gress passed bills, the Pres­i­dent signed them, the Supreme Court ruled on cas­es and con­tro­ver­sies. This is the guid­ance Ryun prefers to the tes­ti­mo­ny of Fry’s supe­ri­ors, who tes­ti­fied “I believe that the sec­tar­i­an vio­lence is prob­a­bly as bad as I have seen it, in Bagh­dad in par­tic­u­lar, and that if not stopped it is pos­si­ble that Iraq could move toward civ­il war.”

Gen­er­al Abizaid also told reporters “that rais­ing the prospect — even if it is not like­ly — is nec­es­sary to dis­cuss how to ensure it does not hap­pen.” Per­haps Ryun missed that memo.

As for the “back door draft,” the phrase has been used by major papers for 2 years, and Lex­is­Nex­is shows the phrase to have orig­i­nat­ed in the Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. The ear­li­est cita­tion is a sto­ry in the June 3, 2004 Tam­pa Tribune:

John Ker­ry said Wednes­day that Pres­i­dent Bush’s fail­ure to recruit inter­na­tion­al assis­tance in Iraq has caused a “back-door draft” for U.S. reservists who had had their over­seas duties unex­pect­ed­ly extended.

“Peo­ple serv­ing beyond the time of their vol­un­tary ser­vice are no longer vol­un­teers,” Ker­ry said in a state­ment to reporters. “It is vital that we get oth­er coun­tries to com­mit resources and troops, boots on the ground … to relieve the bur­den on our troops.”

Sim­i­lar uses occurred in USA Today, the St. Louis Post-Dis­patch, and many oth­er papers for the fol­low­ing two years. I can under­stand Ryun not pay­ing atten­tion to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for Pres­i­dent. I can under­stand him ignor­ing his col­leagues in the Sen­ate. But this phrase is in com­mon use by vet­er­ans and by cur­rent­ly enlist­ed sol­diers, and is a per­sis­tent com­plaint from a mil­i­tary that’s bad­ly over­stretched. Is he not lis­ten­ing to the sol­diers, either? He over­sees the mil­i­tary, but does­n’t seem to know what the mil­i­tary is talk­ing about, at the high­est lev­els or on the ground.
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“Sick, twisted,” or Rebuilding the city below the waves

The words of a HUD spokes­woman on New Orleans:

“It’s real­ly a sick, twist­ed — I don’t even want to refer to it as a joke,” HUD spokes­woman White told CNN. “At this point, it’s not funny.”

You might think she was talk­ing about the fact that peo­ple are still wait­ing for trail­ers, or that pow­er and sewage lines aren’t out to all the hous­es, or that schools in No Man’s Land are still closed, all of which con­spires to keep peo­ple from com­ing home. But no, it’s her response to a prank by the Yes Men, in which they pre­tend­ed to be from HUD and pro­posed a pro­gram that actu­al­ly would restore the Gulf Coast.

The fail­ure of HUD, FEMA and the Pres­i­dent to take effec­tive action has left a lot of prob­lems, and it’s worth remem­ber­ing that peo­ple are step­ping up. The Yes Men are using satire, but TfK’s friend Nils Gore is bring­ing bright young archi­tec­ture stu­dents to help rebuild the 7th ward.

Gore is a pro­fes­sor in the KU School of Archi­tec­ture, and a fan of New Orleans. He tells me “I’ve been to NOLA 3 times since the storm, and am plan­ning to go again in the next 3 or 4 weeks. … You can’t invent learn­ing expe­ri­ences for archi­tec­ture stu­dents like we see down there right now.”

It’s impor­tant for my stu­dents to see the Ninth Ward, some of which was washed com­plete­ly away when the canal lev­ee failed. As future archi­tects they need to be aware that some places are just plain dan­ger­ous (in that case, because of the MS Riv­er Gulf Out­let’s direct line for storm surges from the Gulf to the city), and they need to be able to for­mu­late the cor­rect sort of response when expect­ed to build in such places.

It’s also impor­tant for them to hear the many peo­ple that are tru­ly brim­ming with opti­mism. We did­n’t run into too many peo­ple who were wring­ing their hands, spout­ing gloom and doom. (My guess is they won’t return.) Many see this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the city a bet­ter place.

Click through for more on what they’ve been build­ing, and how you can help rebuild the Cres­cent City.

Read more ““Sick, twist­ed,” or Rebuild­ing the city below the waves” →