Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Bush Boasts of Boost from bin Laden (Edmundson)

Not one to boast of his own mastery of politics, George W. Bush credits Osama bin Laden with helping nudge him over the top in 2004.  As Reuters reports (Feb. 28):

U.S. President George W. Bush said his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, who issued a taped diatribe against him the Friday before Americans went to the polls...

"What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?'' Bush told [White House correspondent Bill] Sammon of the bin Laden tapes. "Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you're not sure of the effect.

"I thought it was going to help,'' Bush said. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.''

The next question, normally, would be: "Why would bin Laden want to make Americans believe that something must be right with Bush?"  Was it inadvertent?  Or might it have something to do with the fact that bin Laden had enjoyed three years of life and liberty following the attacks of 9/11, thanks to Bush?  (Osama'll never tell.)

Not to worry, though.  On his way to Pakistan, where bin Laden is known to reside, Bush gushed:

"So long as I'm the president, we'll stay on the hunt and we'll use resources and power and influence to convince others to join us on the hunt as well."  Bush told ABC [News], "I'm an optimistic person. I believe we will bring him to justice [omitting the 2001 "...or take justice to him" --ed.].

Will Osama issue a taped diatribe on the eve of this November's midterm elections (five years after 9/11), just to remind the American electorate once again that there must be something right with Bush?  Who knows? --It's worked before.

[Update: More detail of Bush's interview with Elizabeth Vargas of ABC News:

"VARGAS: If when you leave the Oval Office, the White House, Osama bin Laden is still at large, will you consider that a failure?

"BUSH: What I'm looking at is management structure, operators, and whether or not we're doing everything we can to protect the American people. Of course, we'd like to bring him to justice, and we'll stay up -- you know, the only thing I can tell the American people, so long as I'm the president, we'll stay on the hunt and we'll use resources and power and influence to convince others to join us on the hunt as well. And, you know, I'm an optimistic person. I believe we will bring him to justice."

Five years, five months, 18 days and counting.

...and our "operators" are staying up and still standing by.]

A telling detail in the Zogby poll (M. Stanley)

Following up on Bill Edmundson's post on the recent Zogby poll of U.S. troops in Iraq, I found one detail to be particularly telling.  Fully 85% of troops polled said that the U.S. mission was to "retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attack".There seem to be some misconceptions here. 

Writing on Steve Sailer's web site,  Greg Cochran gives the following insight on what might be driving these beliefs:

I think this is pretty easy to understand: the alternative [to the Saddam/9-11 link] for the average Joe is to conclude that we invaded for no reason that he can understand at all: i.e. that the government is insane. So, many people make up a reason. Because the alternative is too disturbing - more so if they think of the government as being run by _ their side_.. I had figured that the fraction  of our armed forces in Iraq that believed that we were retaliating (for things that Iraq never did) would be higher than at home, because a volunteer army  would self-select for such beliefs, and because the idea that friends would have been crippled or killed for no reason that anyone could understand would  be hateful.  I had guessed about two-thirds of the Army would believe this, but it's higher than that.

That observation lines up very well with my own beliefs about human nature.  There has been a curious unreality in the public debate about the war.  I think it is driven by just this type of cognitive dissonance.  People can't quite seem to handle the truth.  Especially in the case of soldiers serving in Iraq, I don't really blame them.

Zogby Poll of US Troops in Iraq (Edmundson)

Zogby International has just released a poll of US personnel stationed in Iraq.  "Staying the course" isn't the favorite option.  Sadly, almost 90% think the U.S. invaded Iraq to punish Saddam for his role in 9/11.  Commenting on the results, Nicholas Kristof, in "The Soldiers Speak, Will Pres. Bush Listen?" (New York Times Feb 28; registration required) suggests we take the troops' advice and set a one-year timetable for exit.  Kristof even recommends that the U.S. abandon the permanent bases we went over there to build.

Adoption Legislation We Can All Support (Leiter)

Details here; an excerpt:

If a Youngstown lawmaker's proposal becomes Ohio law, Republicans would be barred from being adoptive parents.

State Sen. Robert Hagan sent out e-mails to fellow lawmakers late Wednesday night, stating that he intends to ``introduce legislation in the near future that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents....''

Hagan said his legislation was written in response to a bill introduced in the Ohio House this month by Rep. Ron Hood, R-Ashville, that is aimed at prohibiting gay adoption....

Hood's bill, which does not have support of House leadership, seeks to ban children from being placed for adoption or foster care in homes where the prospective parent or a roommate is homosexual, bisexual or transgender.

To further lampoon Hood's bill, Hagan wrote in his mock proposal that ``credible research'' shows that adopted children raised in Republican households are more at risk for developing ``emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.''

However, Hagan admitted that he has no scientific evidence to support the above claims. Just as "Hood had no scientific evidence to back his assertion that having gay parents was detrimental to children", Hagan said. 

London Mayor Livingstone's Suspension for "Anti-Semitic" Remarks (Leiter)

Here's some information I had not seen elsewhere:

The news that the elected Mayor of London was to be suspended from office for a month at the direction of an appointed tribunal startled Londoners....

The tribunal ruled that Livingstone had been "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" to a Jewish journalist who approached him outside a private party in February last year. When the journalist identified himself as working for the Evening Standard, a long-time nemesis of the London Mayor, Livingstone chided him: "What did you do? Were you a German war criminal?" The reporter said he was Jewish and that he found the remarks offensive. Livingstone then told him he was acting "like a concentration camp guard -- you are just doing it because you are paid to."

The background here is that the right-wing Standard, London's biggest-selling daily paper, has been engaged in battle with the left-wing Livingstone, London's most popular politician, for a quarter of a century. The Standard is owned by Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, which opposed Jewish immigration in the early years of the twentieth century and championed Hitler in the 1930s. Since then, it has waged inflammatory campaigns against black and Irish people, and more recently against asylum seekers and Muslims.

When the story broke, Livingstone was accused of boorishness, insensitivity towards holocaust victims, and even anti-semitism. He was asked to apologise but refused, basically arguing that he had every right to be rude to a journalist working for this particular organisation. On the question of the alleged offence to Jewish people, he said: “I have been deeply affected by the concern of Jewish people in particular that my comments downplayed the horror and magnitude of the holocaust. I wish to say to those Londoners that my words were not intended to cause such offence and that my view remains that the holocaust against the Jews is the greatest racial crime of the 20th century.”

For some reason, that plain-spoken statement was not good enough for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who made a formal complaint to the local government watchdog....

Just weeks before Livingstone's contretemps with the Evening Standard journalist, Prince Harry was photographed wearing Nazi regalia at a private party (guests had been asked to dress in “colonial or native” attire). In contrast to its aggressive pursuit of Livingstone, the Board of Deputies adopted an emollient approach to the third in line to the throne. “It was clearly in bad taste,” said a spokesperson for the Board, but he added that the young royal had apologised and so there was no more to be said. When it was revealed, shortly after the Livingstone incident, that senior Daily Mail executives had donned Nazi costumes at a fancy dress party held in 1992, the Board said it was "not an issue at this moment in time". However, it did find the time and energy to denounce Interpal, a prominent Palestinian charity, as a “terrorist organisation”. As a result of an out-of-court settlement following a libel action, the Board was forced to retract the charge and apologise for making it.

Recently, the Board joined the Chief Rabbi in condemning the decision of the Church of England to withdraw its £2.5 million investment in Caterpillar, the US-based corporation that manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinian homes and farms. “The timing could not have been more inappropriate,” the Chief Rabbi argued, because Israel at this moment found itself “facing two enemies, Iran and Hamas”. The Caterpillar decision, he warned, would have “the most adverse repercussions on ... Jewish-Christian relations in Britain.”

And here the agenda becomes increasingly obvious. It's not about protecting the rights of Jews in Britain; it's about protecting Israel from scrutiny and protest. The aim is to muddy the waters – and the reputations of critics of Israel like Livingstone - with charges of anti-semitism....

Neither the vendetta against Livingstone nor the diatribe against the Church of England have served the real interests of Britain's diverse Jewish population. The cheapening of the grave charge of anti-semitism has made it harder to oppose and expose the real thing, which certainly exists. The elevation of brutal Israeli realpolitik into an article of faith is a mockery of the ethical, universalist strand of Judaism that once flowed into revolutionary social movements around the world. It's not Livingstone, but the Board of Deputies that has shown disrespect for the holcoaust – by seeking to exploit it in pursuit of a parochial political smear-campaign.

I would be interested to hear from the many London-based and UK readers what they make of this analysis and the whole Livingstone situation.  As usual, comments may take awhile to appear, so post only once and be patient; non-anonymous comments will be strongly preferred, as usual.

Dubai Our Debt, But Not Our Assets? (Edmundson)

Dubya's Dubai travails are indeed a case of tables-turned on the terror-monger.  But, as Nicholas von Hoffman points out in "Free Trade Planet," The Nation (Feb. 27), there are bigger chickens coming home to roost:

From a business point of view, the hollering and carrying on boils down to one kind of question: Are the dollars we pay foreigners for our imports spendable or not?

That is, spendable on anything more tangible than T-bills.  This President doesn't threaten to veto his Republican Congress unless somebody has explained the stakes to him as pretty dang high.

Dennett on Religion, Again (Leiter)

Thanks to Varol Akman (Philosophy, Bilkent) for calling to my attention a far more responsible (though certainly quite critical) review of Daniel Dennett's new book on religion.  Perhaps someone can send this to Leon Wieseltier, so he can learn what a grown-up, critical review of a book looks like.

Colyvan from Queensland to Sydney

Mark Colyvan (metaphysics; philosophy of science, logic, and mathematics) at the University of Queensland has accepted the senior offer from the University of Sydney, where he will hold a five-year research professorship, which will then revert to a regular professorial post thereafter.  Sydney may be making additional senior appointments in the near future.

For Fans of Syracuse Basketball (J. Stanley)

We may have lost to Georgetown this weekend, but we've got Etan Thomas.

Gerald Dworkin's rhetorical question (J. Stanley)

Over at left2right, Gerald Dworkin poses the following rhetorical question:

If you wanted someone to aid you in making a difficult ethical decision about medical treatment for your child would you be better off consulting a moral philosopher, or a physician who has dealt with similar cases for 30 years? I know whom I would choose.

The thought of leaving a significant personal moral decision in the hands of a moral philosopher in the analytic tradition would of course send a shudder through any professional philosopher. I myself also wouldn't be aided a great deal with the decision by a physician who has dealt with similar cases in the past, except insofar as she could provide me with additional facts about the consequences of past decisions.

The people I would turn to for aid in such a decision are those friends of mine whom I regard as having a certain kind of wisdom and insight about the human condition. I can think of a few moral philosophers who have this quality, and I can think of a few doctors I know who have this quality. But in my experience, moral philosophers as a group do not saliently have this characteristic any more than metaphysicians do (which is to say not much at all). Moral philosophers are not even more likely to be well-informed or concerned about history and politics than any other group of philosophers. In short, moral philosophers are no more likely than other philosophers to be humanists, with all that that vague word connotes.

It's clear to me why (say) someone working in metaphysics is not likely to have more insight into the human condition than the average mortal. It's because many people working in metaphysics are captured principally by the problem of working out the consistencies of an abstract problem space with only dubious connections to how we live our lives. Moral philosophers tend as a whole to be exactly the same as metaphysicians, except they have chosen a somewhat different problem space to explore the logical relations between theses. There are of course also strong practical considerations in favor of choosing this problem space, as it is more likely to result in gainful employment.

This is not to deny that medical ethicists have an important role to play in hospitals. Medical ethics boards in hospitals play important roles in helping doctors and families make difficult decisions. Some of these decisions are perhaps guided by the moral philosophy done by analytic moral theorists. But I would bet a considerably larger portion are guided by the factors cited by Dworkin, namely "sympathetic feelings, experience with the subject matter, and intuitive insight". As my physician wife has pointed out, the members of these committees are often doctors who are respected for their humanity by other doctors.

The fact that we professional philosophers clearly don't regard even those members of our community charged to reflect upon the good as exemplars of wisdom raises once again some of the issues about the relation between philosophy as currently practiced and philosophy as a humanistic tradition that we have discussed before.

UPDATE: David Velleman has some comments on the topic of this post here, which raise the issue of the responsibilities academic philosophers (not just moral philosophers, I think) have in the non-academic sphere. I hope to return to this topic later this term.

Who made the most accurate predictions about the outcome of the Iraq war? (Hellie)

I've been hunting around for the answer to this question a bit lately. Chomsky did an OK job, responsibly (and more-or-less accurately) warning against a potential death toll rising to the hundreds of thousands. But he seems to have been a bit squishy on the chemical and biological weapons issue, advancing a healthy but not especially focused skepticism about their existence. And I was unable to find predictions of sectarian strife leading to civil war.

Then I came across this excellent posting by Glenn Greenwald, who reminds us of Howard Dean's prewar position:

when one reviews the pre-war arguments made by Howard Dean as to why the war was ill-advised, it is glaringly self-evident just how right he was -- at a time when few others recognized it -- about virtually everything. Here are excerpts from a speech Dean gave on February 17, 2003 -- just over a month before we invaded -- at Drake University which reflects the prescient warnings he was making back then:

[...]

The Administration has not explained how a lasting peace, and lasting security, will be achieved in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is toppled.

I, for one, am not ready to abandon the search for better answers.

[...]

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.

We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

If we go to war, I certainly hope the Administration's assumptions are realized, and the conflict is swift, successful and clean. I certainly hope our armed forces will be welcomed like heroes and liberators in the streets of Baghdad.

I certainly hope Iraq emerges from the war stable, united and democratic.

I certainly hope terrorists around the world conclude it is a mistake to defy America and cease, thereafter, to be terrorists.

It is possible, however, that events could go differently, . . . .

Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Anti-American feelings will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.

And last week's tape by Osama bin Laden tells us that our enemies will seek relentlessly to transform a war into a tool for inspiring and recruiting more terrorists.

[...] Those who claim that there was nobody before the war who doubted that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs which compelled our invasion ought to read this passage from Dean's speech:

Now, I am not among those who say that America should never use its armed forces unilaterally. In some circumstances, we have no choice. In Iraq, I would be prepared to go ahead without further Security Council backing if it were clear the threat posed to us by Saddam Hussein was imminent, and could neither be contained nor deterred.

However, that case has not been made, and I believe we should continue the hard work of diplomacy and inspection. . . .

Secretary Powell's recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness. . .

Can anyone dispute that Dean was right about virtually every prediction and claim he made, every warning that he issued about why invading Iraq was ill-advised and counter-productive? Compare this outright prescience from Dean to the war supporters’ declarations of cakewalks, predictions of glorious victory celebrations, promises that the war would pay for itself, Purple Finger celebrations where they insisted that democracy was upon us, errors regarding the number of troops needed, inexcusable failure to anticipate or plan the insurgency, and shrill fear-mongering about Saddam’s non-existent weapons.

Chalk one up for the left, I was prepared to think -- against the Pentagon's absurd faith-based mums and mints prediction, we in the reality-based community were right on.

Not so fast. I was astounded to come across this (h/t Wolcott):

With Iraq perched at the very precipice of an ethnic and sectarian holocaust, the utter failure of the Bush administration’s policy is revealed with starkest clarity. Iraq may or may not fall into the abyss in the next few days and weeks, but what is no longer in doubt is who is to blame: If Iraq is engulfed in civil war then Americans, Iraqis and the international community must hold President Bush and Vice President Cheney responsible for the destruction of Iraq.

The CIA, the State Department, members of Congress and countless Middle East experts warned Bush and Cheney— to no avail— that toppling Saddam could unleash the demons of civil war. They said so before the war, during it and in the aftermath, and each time the warnings were dismissed. Those warnings came from people like Paul Pillar, the CIA veteran who served as the U.S. intelligence community’s chief Middle East analyst, from Wayne White, the State Department’s chief intelligence analyst on Iraq and from two CIA Baghdad station chiefs who were purged for their analysis. Pillar, who wrote this month in Foreign Affairs that pre-war intelligence on Iraq was distorted by the Bush-Cheney team, is being excoriated by the right.

For the most radical-right neoconservative Jacobins amongst the Bush-Cheney team, the possibility that Iraq might fall apart wasn’t even alarming: they just didn’t care, and in their obsessive zeal to overthrow Saddam Hussein they were more than willing to take the risk. David Wurmser, who migrated from the Israeli-connected Washington Institute on Near East Policy to the American Enterprise Institute to the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans to John Bolton’s arms control shop at the State Department to Dick Cheney’s shadow National Security Council in the Office of the Vice President from 2001 to 2006, wrote during the 1990s that Iraq after Saddam was likely to descend into violent tribal, ethnic and sectarian war.

In a paper for an Israeli think tank, the same think tank for which Wurmser, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith prepared the famous “Clean Break” paper in 1996, Wurmser wrote in 1997 : “The residual unity of the nation is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state.” After Saddam, Iraq would “be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families,” he wrote. “Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq’s] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition.” Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to “expedite” such a collapse. “The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance.”

(As far as I can tell from skimming Wurmser's paper, what he didn't like about the then current situation was the nationalism of the Baathist rulers. Like many tories, his brow became dewy in the presence of the our-class-dear hereditarily fancy; correspondingly his bizarre "Hashemite option" for expediting the chaotic collapse was to induce the royals of Jordan to woo clan leaders throughout the region, establishing a great big feudal-monarchic structure along the lines of mediaeval Britain: in other words, to restore the "natural" royalist system installed with great brutality by the Brits in the '20s. So much for the Wilsonian rhetoric. As we now know, the Bush Gang had worked overtime with great care and delicacy prior to the invasion to bring this option about, by establishing the necessary diplomatic ties among the Hashemite clan bosses.)

Wow! So the leading war "planners" at the Pentagon themselves had no illusions about the inevitability of "chaotic collapse". The left from top to bottom, and the upper echelons of the right, were in total agreement! All the "peeance and freeance" rhetoric from the right was not just moronic drivel, but pure unadulterated bullshit. The only suckers here were the lumpen-right.

Memo to the lumpen-right: don't get fooled again.

Iraq "Awash in Weapons" (Edmundson)

David Wood's report from May 2004 explains why Iraq now possesses Weapons in Massive numbers for its own Destruction. 

[Update, Feb. 27:  The death toll from the orgy of of sectarian violence in Iraq is reported to stand at 1,300, or three times the earlier, official, figures.]

Friday Poem: "Missing Person"

Missing Person

At tax time I discharge my obligation
To whatever grateful nation
Is inclined to let me be

Myself I arouse no interest
My correspondents are computers
That sense an affinity

My calls are all wrong numbers
For a stranger named Maurice
Who’s not at all like me

Yesterday I returned from traveling
(But where could I have been)
My mailbox moldy my phone at liberty

If only that dog would stop barking
I’d be able to write in peace
My subject anonymity

After a while I’ll phone somebody
To find out who I am
I wonder who I’ll be

In America a lonely man
Can always report himself missing
It’s what they mean by free

3/16-4/29/95, 7/19/96, 5/28/97, 6/10/98

Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

A Finely Wrought Essay on Bolivia (Leiter)

Here, by Galeano.  I recommend reading the whole (short) essay.

South Dakota tests Scalito [UPDATED] (Hellie)

South Dakota has just passed an unconsitutional anti-abortion bill, in a deliberate attempt to give the Roberts court a quick opportunity to overturn Roe. An especially odd aspect of this frightening turn of events is the promise by an anonymous donor to give SD $1 million for legal defense.

UPDATE: this post was a bit telegraphic, as indicated by the following correspondence, apparently taking me to task for missing that "[the SD statute] will be enjoined; the 8th Cir will affirm and Ct deny cert". The writer apparently takes me to be "frightened" that Roe would soon be overturned, not my intent -- after all, as the writer correctly indicates, there's no reason to suppose any of Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, or Breyer would vote to overturn Roe (or, for that matter, to even consider hearing the case; from what I've been able to determine, the same may be true of Roberts), so there's little to fear on that front (though we should not ignore the possibility that wishful thinking by the SD right may well have interfered with their ability to count).

Rather, among the obviously frightening facts about the SD law are (a) that the right is now pushing their aims much more aggressively than would have been dared not long ago; (b) that a few not-excessively-unlikely events would now tip the balance the other way on the bench; (c) that enough residents of the once-sensible Upper Midwest are now buying into rightwing beliefs about women that their elected representatives either feel forced into this dreadful position, or are the sort of people who relish being in it; (d) the still greater hardships that, until the law is struck down, are likely to be forced on South Dakotan women and girls wishing to terminate pregnancies, and healthcare workers seeking to help them; (e) the danger that other red state legislatures may be tempted to pursue similar actions, forcing comparable hardships on women and girls residing in them.

Dawkins surrounded by idiots (Hellie)

In two episodes of his UK Channel 4 TV show, eminent British biologist Richard Dawkins visits the heart of darkness -- Colorado Springs, USA, ground zero of irrationalist bronze age Christian fundamentalism. In the seven minute video clip linked here, Dawkins converses with the creepily toothy pastor Ted Haggart, comparing his sermon to a Nuremberg rally, and in return being told by Haggart that he needs to brush up on his knowledge of the biology literature. The clip is very much worth watching, and the page to which I link provides information on how to acquire the rest of the episode.

Happiness = S+U+V (Edmundson)

"All we want in this world is crazy beautiful happiness," said Delores del Rio, expounding her version of eudaemonism, in Flying Down to Rio.  For a guy who seems not to have heard of Epicurus, John Lanchester, writing in The New Yorker (Feb. 27) does a nice job reviewing two recent books: Jonathan Haidt (Psychology, Virginia), The Happiness Hypothesis, and Darrin McMahon (History, Florida State), Happiness: A History.  Enjoy!

Really, really wanna be happy?  George Will, in "Smile If (and Only If) You're Conservative" advises being right wing--just not "professionally" right wing, which can make you surlier than a bumper sticker on a Volvo.

Ohio State Makes Offer to Samuels at King's (London)

Ohio State University has made a senior offer to Richard Samuels (philosophy of psychology and cognitive science) at King's College, London. 

Theocrats Still Have Their Sights Set on South Carolina (Leiter)

This must be pretty scary for the friends of the Enlightenment in that state:

From his home in rural Calaveras County, Calif., Cory Burnell keeps close watch over the news in South Carolina, and he likes what he sees.

Turning the state into a conservative Christian Promised Land will be easier than he had thought, he says.

Burnell, founder of Christian Exodus, has called for thousands of people who share his political and religious outlook to move to South Carolina, where they could push an already conservative state further to the right.  Greenville, Anderson, Pickens and Spartanburg counties are among his first "target" counties, along with Lexington and Dorchester, Burnell said.

With a decisive majority, they would be able to pass laws that line up with their view of biblical principles and the U.S. Constitution -- such things as outlawing abortion, allowing governmental displays of biblical symbols and abolishing the state education system.

Considering the size of the exodus so far -- only about 20 people have relocated in the state as a result of his efforts -- Burnell's optimism might seem quixotic.

He finds reason to believe the movement will succeed, though, in the support he and his immigrants are finding here and in the direction things are going even without his help.

Case in point: Local governments, with the support of the state attorney general, have refused to fall in line with a federal court ruling that offering prayer at official meetings "in Jesus' name" is unconstitutional.

"What we're finding is that in these conservative cities and counties, we already have a pretty good concentration of conservatives with that mindset," Burnell said....

In counties where he had calculated it would take 500 immigrants to turn the tide, he now thinks it will take only 100, based on the level of support already here. By 2008, he hopes to see a strong presence of Christian Exodus-backed candidates in all six counties, and he plans for the group to "overwhelmingly impact" statewide elections in 2014.

The idea isn't beyond the realm of possibility, said Dr. Laura Olson, a political science professor at Clemson University who studies the influence of religion on politics....

The group is quietly forming coalitions with members of like-minded organizations such as the League of the South, which advocates Southern secession, and Columbia Christians for Life, a pro-life, anti-President Bush group, according to Burnell and those groups.

"Christian Exodus is a very workable program, especially in South Carolina," said Robert Clarkson of Anderson, a disabled Vietnam vet with a law degree who heads the Patriot Network, a group that believes the federal government is overstepping constitutional bounds. "It doesn't take many people to affect political change...."

Steve Lefemine, director of Columbia Christians for Life, said he "joins hands" with Christian Exodus in believing that "God's law should be the moral foundation of our civil law."

And he shares the Christian Exodus belief in secession from the union as a possible necessity -- although he prefers the word "separation."

"If South Carolina passed the Right to Life Act and the federal government would not let South Carolina protect the lives of human beings from fertilization as the Legislature and governor had signed, then I would support separation from the union," he said....

Burnell is undaunted. More than 1,200 people have signed up on his Web site as either planning to move here or financially supporting the project, he said. About 500 of those have made a commitment to move to South Carolina by the end of 2008, he said.

He is focusing on recruiting retirees -- who have time to devote to the cause and are more able to relocate than working families. And he's networking with conservative college groups to find young people who would look for jobs in South Carolina after graduating.

Some immigrants are in the process now. Robert Iacomacci, a former Republican town chairman in Hartford, Conn., bought five acres near Abbeville and plans to help Burnell and members of the League of the South to "advance the cause of liberty."

"I've had some friends raise their eyebrows and kind of laugh. But that's OK," he said. "I've gotten in trouble standing up for what's right before."

Charles Lewis, Christian Exodus' outreach director, has appeared on local radio talk shows and spoken to various political and church groups.

The former principal of a charter school in Washington, D.C., Lewis, his wife, Nilda, and 6-year-old daughter Vicky, moved to Simpsonville last year to try to help advance the cause.

"We're not an extremist group," he said. "What we are doing is reacting to the extreme marginalization of Christianity in America...."

Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, said he welcomes any conservatives who want to move here, but he thinks the conservative agenda is moving forward fine without any outside help. And most of the state's Republicans would disagree with Christian Exodus if it hopes to fracture the state from the national GOP, he said.

"I think someone who would attempt to try to paint President Bush in an unfavorable light down here in South Carolina would not find a cheering audience," he said.

(Thanks to Brian Erb for the pointer.)

iPeach (Edmundson)

Impeachment talk is welling up from the magma of private discussion, and fumeroles are starting to appear on the media surface.  Bonnie Erbe, a Scripps-Howard columnist, bluntly states that it's "Time to Impeach Bush" (Feb. 20).  A Zogby International poll taken last month showed that Americans by a 52-43 % margin favor impeaching George W. Bush if he "if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval," as he has audaciously claimed to have authority to do, even as he frantically resists congressional efforts to examine what he has in fact done.  Why no media brouhaha? she rightly wonders.

Yes, the poll results have been reported on a few Web sites. But they have not exactly been trumpeted by the Blow Hard Boys on the Fox News Channel, nor even "front-paged" on the New York Times. Nor have they appeared as the lead story on any of the evening newscasts. From the right to the left, this poll has been ignored--as has a recent Gallup poll showing a majority of Americans consider the Bush presidency to be a failure. Why? Because it's seen as risky.

Should the story get into play, though, the calculus of risk may shift--journalists hate to be scooped.  The "Blow Hard Boys" in the blogosphere have been chattering about impeachment-crazed lib'ruls for months now.   [Update: MSNBC is running an online poll, here.]

Funny Moments in Student Journalism (Leiter)

I generally like The Daily Texan, but this howler from Monday's paper is too good to let pass in silence.  This is from an article on a conference on campus organized by "Historians Against the War":

U.S. citizens must understand the United States' history of empiricism in order to speak out against and stop the war in Iraq, said historian, author and political activist Howard Zinn Friday....

He went on to say the United States has had a long history of civilizing people, or at least claiming to.

"The United States is behaving like all the empirical powers have in the past," Zinn said.

Who knew that if we had only been a rationalist nation, instead of an empiricist one, the U.S. never would have inflicted so much carnage on Indonesia, Guatemala, Iraq, Chile, Nicaragua, etc.?

Famous Political Pundit Says "God is dead" and Hilary Has No Chance (Leiter)

Well, OK, he's not famous, but he's surely more sensible than the famous ones, and even if he is a self-described drunk Wisconsin law student, he's probably right anyway:

It's not that I hate the Democratic Party. On the contrary, I think the Republican Party is just as chock-full of penguin-fuckers as the Democrats. And don't even get me started on the Green "Party." Hell, I might have even voted for a Democrat in the last election if they had nominated a canditate who had a platform that went beyond "I am not George Bush." But I can tell you this much: I would pierce my scrotum with a plastic cocktail sabre before I would even think of voting for Hillary Clinton.

Look, I'm not "liberal" by any stretch of the imagination - I may substantively concur with y'all on a number of issues (i.e. abortion), but I generally vote Republican in any contested election. I am, however, fucking sick of incompetence and scandal. I'm also sick of religious wackos dictating policy to what should be an economically-based party. I mean, God is dead - fucking get over it. In other words, y'all have a potential cross-over voter here, and I don't think I'm alone.

This looks like the beginnings of an election strategy here:  mobilize the plastic-cocktail-sabre wielding stark raving "let the rich get richer" atheists!

Resignation of Harvard President Summers (Leiter)

Larry Summers, President of Harvard, has resigned.  (Thanks to the many readers who e-mailed me links.)  What Kieran Healy (Sociology, Arizona) says about the resignation is consistent with what I've heard from various folks, namely, that his unlovely bedside manner cost him a lot of support.  Here are my comments on the earlier brouhaha about his ignorant remarks on women in the sciences, which was only the tip of the iceberg as to why he irritated his faculty.  His departure, though, is probably a loss for Harvard:  he forced the Harvard Law School to have actual tenure standards, and he had rather sensible instincts about academic merit.  (He was also the President who oversaw a total change in tenure policies in the Harvard Philosophy Department [note:  see Update below]--something that, if it had happened 20 years ago, might have prevented Harvard's slide from the very top ranks of U.S. departments.)  Yes, he was a somewhat arrogant economist who didn't know what he didn't know.  And the first rule of university administration is:  if you are an administrator, you have no free speech rights.  The combination of the former attribute, together with his failure to honor the second rule, probably doomed his tenure.

UPDATE:  Richard Moran, Chair of the Harvard Philosophy Department, writes:  "In the...cases [of Siegel, Pryor, and Simmons, the tenure decisions during Summers's Presidency] Summers played no role until the final stage of approval, as is normal across the University. These decisions were all initiated from the Philosophy Department, and not in response to any change in policy from the President. Insofar as there is now an initiative across Harvard to make it a more realistically tenure-track place, this is an initiative from former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Bill Kirby."  The original posting wrongly implied that President Summers played a role specifically in the Philosophy Department, which was not my intent.  He certainly did trumpet publically the need to tenure from within the junior ranks at Harvard, though as Professor Moran reports, this initiative apparently came from the Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences.  (President Summers's role in tenure cases in the Law School has been more significant, based on reports from faculty.)

Outcry Among Top Republicans Stuns Bush (Edmundson)

Misreading his "base" in a manner eerily reminsicent of the Harriet Miers debacle, George W. Bush has again infuriated powerful Republicans.  The New York Times (Feb. 21) reports:

President Bush said this afternoon that he would veto any legislation seeking to block the administration's decision to allow a state-owned company from Dubai to assume control of port terminals in New York and other cities.   

Mr. Bush's rare veto threat came as Republican leaders and many of their Democratic counterparts called up today for the port takeover to be put on hold. They demanded that the Bush administration conduct a further investigation of the Dubai company's acquisition of the British operator of the six American ports.

"After careful review by our government, I believe the transaction ought to go forward," Mr. Bush told reporters who were traveling with him on Air Force One to Washington, according to news agencies. "I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. I am trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, 'We'll treat you fairly." '

Bush seemed nearly apoplectic, as his remarks were reported in the Washington Post:

"They ought to listen to what I have to say about this," the president said after inviting pool reporters on his plane back to his compartment to talk. "They ought to look at the facts, and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it, with a veto."

(The Los Angeles Times notes that Bush has yet to exercise the veto in his five years in office.)  The New York Times account continues:

The confrontation between Mr. Bush and his own supporters escalated rapidly after the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, and the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, joined Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Gov. George E. Pataki and a host of other Republicans in insisting that the transaction must be extensively reviewed, if not killed. That put them on essentially the same side of the issue as a chorus of Democrats [including Sens. Clinton and Boxer], who have seized on the issue to argue that Mr. Bush was ignoring a potential security threat.

The White House appeared stunned by the uprising, over a transaction that they considered routine — especially since China's biggest state-owned shipper runs major ports in the United States, as do a host of other foreign companies. Mr. Bush's aides defended their decision, saying the company, Dubai Ports World, which is owned by the United Arab Emirates, would have no control over security issues.

Hmmm, "no control over" and no knowledge of security measures, either?  It won't be easy to explain between now and November why the UAE can be trusted to know how security is maintained in American ports, but Congress and the FISA court can't be trusted to know the operational details of the secret, warrantless wiretapping program the NSA has been running for the last four years.  Karl Rove must have seen this problem coming, unless he was distracted, maybe....by what?

[Update: The mighty New York Times piles on, with an editorial calling on the President to undo the Dubai deal himself.  The Times astutely notes that an Administration quick to brush aside individual rights in the war on terror is, all of a sudden, oilily solicitous of business interests that might be set back in that same cause.  Maureen Dowd irrepressibly opines that W. is in the process of being "hoist on his own petard" of terror-mongering.

Further update: W's veto threat has so incensed congressional Republicans that he has now, only a day later, disclaimed personal involvement in the decision.  "Trust them, not me--I knew nothing about it."] 

NSA Scandal: No Reason for Pessimism ... (Hellie)

At least not in excess of the usual, in light of the Senate Intel Ctee's recent cover-up activities. While I agree with most of Professor Wilson's post immediately below this, Greenwald provides an excellent morale-boost here --- in brief: of course Bush lackey Roberts is trying to cover up the NSA scandal; the Bush Gang won't go down without a fight. But remember the Saturday Night Massacre: that was just the beginning of the long hard slog it took to rid the country of Nixon.

Political angst (Wilson)

Remember existential angst?  Neither do I.  OK, maybe once in a while I experience a vague yearning for meaning, but then I read some Frege and feel better right away.

But seriously, folks, there's a new distinctively political angst in town (and I'm not just talking about that uneasy feeling you get when you hear Bush try to speak) that is associated with scandal overload and which more specifically reflects the past five years' bearing witness to a continuing series of crimes and scandals that we are evidently powerless either to prevent or to prosecute.  None of the usual conduits of resistance, change, justice are working.  As Burbules notes, elected Democrats aren't trying to stop (or even slow down) the criminals in office.  And nothing individuals do---including vote---seems to be making much difference.  Every day a new outrage (or several) with the now-predictably-tiny half-life.  It's getting even Digby down:

I'm feeling down right now. I know I shouldn't. The fact that Tom DeLay has stepped down is such a huge victory for humanity all by itself that I should be dancing a jig for the next six months. But, I'm down in the dumps, mostly because I am watching George W. Bush repeat his patented mantra for the 514,346th time. It's filled with lies, mischaracterizations and simple-minded gibberish, as always, and I'm watching it go out unfiltered, in its entirety, unchallenged by the media, no Democrats in sight, on every cable channel. I think they are personally trying to drive me crazy. [...]

They are going to the 9/11 well again. They say that Democrats are sending talking points to Osama and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Rove says we don't believe that the government should monitor al Qaeda's telephone calls. The next several months will be spent fending off accusations that if we don't let the president do anything he damned well pleases we are all going to die.

I don't know if it will work again. But I also don't know if I can take this campaign one more time. Five years of hearing the same thing over and over again and watching American sheeple fall for it over and over again is just too depressing. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to January 20, 2009 (and I'm of an age where rushing the future is no longer wise.) The day I no longer have to listen to one more word from this immoral, dishonest, incompetent, delusional prick will be the best day of my life.

Of course it worked again.

A few of the comments on Digby's post are of the "buck up, have courage" variety, but I was struck by how many echoed Digby's angst:

Digby, this country is becoming fascist. No doubt about it. Look, its time to start planning an escape - a life somewhere else. America is dead.

Well, the death of a democratic society is never pretty. Our country has become incapable of self governance and will, like all countries that lose that capacity, soon lose that privilege, if it has not been lost already. Our press has become a complicit player in the deceptions of a secretive, autocratic government. Our populace has become conditioned to accept as credible anything presented to it with high enough production values. High barriers to entry preclude the high-risk game of speaking truth to power.  We have blogs, that's about all.

I, too, know how you feel. The nausea and shame I feel when I watch George W. Bush speak in public has become almost unbearable.  Lately I have found it harder than ever to fight the notion that he understands my country better than I do: that America has truly become the small-minded, ignorant place he seems to believe it is, a place that no longer values either democracy, republican government, or the truth.

[T]he  United States of America, as it was historically conceived and developed, is deader than a squashed armadillo...

I'm in the same boat. Without a functioning press and opposition party, I don't know what to do...

I'm really sorry to read this post and the comments, because I've been feeling exactly the same lately. I was hoping it was just a case of the wintertime blues for me and not that everyone who actually cares about our country is becoming exhausted.  [...] Our country is sick, and it seems like there is no cure.

...if we haven't made a dent in this tragi-comic farce of the last five years it seems like we never will ... no matter how much truth we have on our side.

Does anyone actually believe, since [the U.S.] has gone this far already, it can possibly right itself? What kind of a country could even have "elected" him in the first place? "America is dead."

Agreed. But in the death throes it will take everyone down with it. There are no countervailing institutions operating in American society to halt the inexorable fascism. Legitimation crisis? My ass. They don't need no stinking badges.

I agree with every single word in this post [...] You've said exactly what I've been feeling. And I am depressed, resigned. These guys have got a lock, and there's nothing -- not corruption, not blatant lying, not Katrina screwups, not kiling and maiming in Iraq -- that makes a difference. Fascism is on the march. I really feel that. AAGh.

One more "me too." All well and good to hear that the country is with us, we're in the mainstream, 36% approval rating... But what difference does it make? We're still sitting ducks for these ass-clowns; our voices are still drowned out by money interests; we still have no opposition party. Get a Democrat in office in 2009? Which war-supporting, non-filibustering, bankruptcy-bill supporting, couldn't find his spine with both hands, a flashlight and a blinking neon sign Democrat is that going to be? And how do you begin to rebuild all that's been destroyed over the past several years?  Sorry -- I hope the optimists here are right; I really do. Me, I'm curling up with a Garbo movie tonight and dreaming of Sweden.

Most succinct of all:

Oh god.  We're fucked.

These people aren't just having a bad day.  They're expressing a deep-seated and perfectly understandable resignation born of the fact that nothing they do seems to matter to the course of terrible events.

Of course, maybe our efforts are not entirely inefficacious, in that without them things would be (god forbid) even worse.  Even so, given how little positive effect we are having, it is irrational to keep on doing (only) what we're doing.  What we're doing isn't good enough.

We need as a community to come up with a better strategy.

To start (as I've previously discussed here) progressives need to stop (only) describing the symptoms of U.S. decay in however brilliant analytic detail and start talking, plainly and simply, about the disease.  The larger part of the disease is, of course, corporate capitalism, and it explains not only the symptoms but the fact that we have been unable to cure them via the usual treatments.    Prominent liberal bloggers could do some good here, by contextualizing their criticism.

Speaking from experience, it goes some distance towards dealing with political angst to realize that our inefficacy has a comprehensible, relatively straightforward institutional explanation.  And while identifying the inherent failures and dangers of corporate capitalism as the basis for social and economic policy need not imply the embracing of any of the standard alternatives, it wouldn't be such a bad idea if "socialism" reentered the lexicon as an alternative with comparatively positive valence.

That's the easy part, I think.

The hard part will be figuring out how to cure the disease.  In lieu of palace revolution, I'm inclined to suggest radical surgery: we need to cut ourselves off from the Democratic party.  If they haven't risen to the occasion by this time and in response to these pressures, they aren't ever going to do so.  We need a real live opposition party -- why not call it the Progressive Party? -- capable of taking our outrage and anger and turning it into action of the sort that can make a difference. 

I can see the leading lights of the party now...  Steve Gilliard as Prez, Jane Hamsher as Vice-prez, Juan Cole as Secretary of State, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga as Secretary of Defense, Glenn Glenwald as Attorney General, Brad Delong as Secretary of the Treasury, Duncan Black as Secretary of Commerce, Nathan Newman as Secretary of Labor, PZ Meyers as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Jerome a Paris as Secretary of Energy, Bob Whitson as Secretary of the Interior, and (of course) Brian Leiter as Secretary of Education.  Me, I'll settle for a diplomatic post.

Ah.  I feel better already.

"Liberal bias" in Philosophy? (Leiter)

The following comment was submitted anonymously to the thread about Liz Harman's move to a tenure-track post at Princeton:

Would it be totally unreasonable to take Ms. Harman as a case in point for liberal bias in academe?

If you take a look at one of her papers,

http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1165/Potentiality.pdf

she argues that embryos have a lower moral status than cats. The conclusions are that contraception and early abortion are OK because embryos have no moral status.

Now without judging the merits of the arguments, is it plausible to think that a philosopher with the contrary argument, that embryos do have a moral status superior to cats, would get tenure at Princeton? Which is of course a private institution and is free to hire whoever they like. I just raise this as interesting and rather clear-cut instance of a possible liberal bias at work.

I was tempted just to delete it, since it was both off-topic and betrayed considerable ignorance about philosophy (not to mention "liberalism"!), but then it occurred to me that it might be useful to air this confusion publically, so that philosophers might take the opportunity to educate at least a small part of the public about our discipline.  I am pressed for time today, so may not weigh in for a day or two.   Comments are open; they may take awhile to appear, so please be patient and only post once.  Non-anonymous comments will stand a much better chance of seeing the light of day. 

Blog Stat Milestone (Leiter)

A typical Monday (at least in recent weeks) will have about 5,000 visits to the blog, but yesterday it topped 12,000 (an all-time high for a single day), as dozens of blogs linked to the item from Sunday about Wieseltier's embarrassingly ignorant review of Dennett, including several highly trafficked sites--DeLong, Yglesisas, Pharyngula, and, most importantly in terms of traffic, Atrios, which single-handedly sent over 5,000 visitors yesterday, and looks to send several thousand more today.  Will any of these folks come back again?  We'll see...

I hope readers have been enjoying the group blog format as much as I have been--and not only because it has given me essential time to do other work.  I quite enjoy being surprised at "what's new" at my own site, and I appreciate the distinctive voices and perspectives of the four other contributors (so far, Marcus has been missing in action, alas).  I'd be interested to hear from readers what they think of the experiment so far.  Maybe it should be extended, assuming I can cajole my busy colleagues into hanging around?

Permanent US Bases in Iraq (Edmundson)

Did you know that the US has long planned a permanent military presence in Iraq?  And that billions of dollars are being spent to build permanent US "super" bases housing tens of thousands of personnel?  These facts have never been made plain in the mainstream media--and are ever less likely to be visible through the smokescreens blowing from the White House and the Pentagon.  With "drawdown" and "Iraqification" as their focus, media reports leave unasked the question: What permanent military presence, on the ground, is intended whether or not (as seems ever less likely) a friendly, stable, non-sectarian Iraqi regime gets established?  Mother Jones (Feb 14) asks the mainstream media, "Can You Say 'Permanent Bases'?"--expecting the answer, No.

Will that change?  "Big" is the media's favored euphemism for "permanent," apparently.  Balad, currently the biggest US base in Iraq, houses 20,000 troops, few of whom ever come into any kind of contact with an Iraqi, as reported in the Washington Post (Feb 4.), "Biggest Base in Iraq Has Small-Town Feel". Balad--located in the Sunni triangle--has been compared to O'Hare, Heathrow, and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson and their suburban environs.  The base is the handiwork of KBR, a subsidiary of (you guessed it) Halliburton.  Encapsulated and (despite the location) safe, Balad servicepeople gain an average of ten pounds during their tours--a mirror-image of the ten-pound loss that troops stationed elsewhere in Iraq average.  Balad is (presumably) one of four "super-bases" that the US has quietly been establishing, as reported in the Telegraph (Feb. 11), "Football and pizza point to US staying for long haul", which draws the not-too-remote inference that withdrawal is not anticipated.  (Was it ever?)   According to a recent World Public Opinion poll, a wide majority of Iraqis realize that the US plans to maintain permanent bases even if officially asked to leave; and about half approve of violent attacks intended to oust their slow-to-depart liberators.  What could possibly justify these bases, if the Iraqis demand they be abandoned?  The Bush Administation may have left itself no choice but to open another front in "the long war," ready or not.

[Update. March 20:  The AP rouses itself and asks, "How Long Does U.S. Plan to Stay in Iraq?"]

New Philosophers' Carnival...

...here.

Gendler and Szabo to Yale

Tamar Szabo Gendler (PhD Harvard 1996) and Zoltan Gendler Szabo (PhD MIT 1995), currently associate professors at Cornell University, have accepted the tenured offers from Yale University. In addition to her appointment in the Department of Philosophy, Prof. Gendler will also be the eventual director of the Cognitive Science Program.

This is great news for Yale. Zoltan Szabo is the author of what are in my view two of the more important papers in the philosophy of language in the last ten years ("Descriptions and Uniqueness" and "Compositionality as Supervenience). In addition to being one of the leading philosophers of language in the world, he has also published widely in metaphysics and the history of modern philosophy. Tamar Gendler is one of the more creative and wide-ranging thinkers in philosophy, whose work ranges over philosophy of mind, aesthetics, epistemology, and metaphysics.

How to Respond to Charges of Media Bias (Hellie)

The great reporter Helen Thomas, of roughly 50 years of distinguished service to UPI, one of the very few members of the gaggle with the tenacity, intelligence, and moral compass to confront the slimy McLellan and describe his evasions and lies as such, was subjected to a really obnoxious and abusive line of questioning by one Hugh Hewitt. Phoned up on Hewitt's radio show to discuss Cheney's craven failure to report his hunting accident, Hewitt started asking Thomas whether she owned a gun or supported abortion rights, and speculating that she'd voted for the Dem in each presidential election since 1976; the insinuation being that she exemplified Hewitt's accusation against the "entire White House press corps" of being "biased and liberal", a "liberalism" which consists in failure to like Bush and Cheney -- evidence of effeteness and corruption -- and seeing themselves as arrogant "gods of the universe", who judge but are immune to judgement.

Thomas responded in the old-school way, correctly accusing Hewitt of getting into issues of no bearing of on her or anyone else's ability to report the facts objectively (indeed, adhering to a somewhat romanticized view of her profession, she didn't accuse the gaggle of being too deferential to the dictators and their fascist party).

I thought she was correct here. But to Hewitt's audience, she must have come off as refusing to acknowledge obvious facts, due either to blindness or deliberate dishonesty.

I thought there was a more effective line for her to take: your central claim is that the gaggle is untruthful. You argue that this is somehow due to the corrupting influence of effete tastes (for instance, dislike of Bush). Obviously you have no backup for the causal claim here, so let's test the central claim directly. Can you provide direct proof that the gaggle is untruthful?

The excellent Peter Daou makes a similar point, strongly indicating that no direct proof is likely to appear:

A Challenge to Rightwing Bloggers Who Blame the Media for the Cheney Mess: Prove it. One of the great absurdities of our time is the persistent notion that the traditional media skews left. Reporters buy into it, Democratic strategists and leaders buy into it, and rank and file rightwingers live by it. As I've written previously, the right controls all branches of government, talk radio is dominated by rightwing voices, there's a cable channel devoted to the rightwing perspective (and two others racing to do the same), there's a herd of rightwing pundits spewing anti-left venom across editorial pages, radio, television, the internet, etc., Bush's press conferences are cloying jokefests, and "neutral" journalists echo deep-seated pro-GOP myths.

Despite the glaringly obvious fact that major media narratives favor the right, we get bloggers like this, this, and this attacking the "MSM" for hyping the Cheney hunting scandal. Rather than waste cyber-ink explaining why it's a big deal that the Vice President of the United States shot a man in the face and heart and went to bed without letting the American people know about it, let me share a question I asked of a blogger at Real Clear Politics who questioned my premise about the pro-Bush press:

I know the assertion that [supposedly neutral or liberal] reporters favor rightwing narratives blows your mind; after all, the liberal media fiction is hard-wired into the right's political nervous system. But why should I believe your foregone conclusion that these people are left-leaning? Just because you say it with such conviction? Give me concrete examples of bias, not of negative coverage. (How can there not be negative coverage of the mess in Iraq? Or Katrina? Or the Plame outing? Or the NSA fiasco? Or do you want our media to simply fawn over the government? Is anything less than total pro-Bush propaganda considered media bias?)

This ties in - albeit tangentially - to a recent post by Glenn Greenwald about the Bush-cultism masquerading as conservatism on rightwing blogs. Glenn unmasks the ideological lie at the core of rightwing blogging. Similarly, digging beneath the surface of the anti-media stance of these bloggers reveals a philosophically bankrupt and logically fallacious position. If the definition of media bias is anything critical of the administration, then these bloggers must be advocating for a servile, state-run press. Which, ironically, seems to be where we're heading.

Of course, reporters take some comfort in being attacked from both sides, believing that it somehow justifies their actions and nullifies the complaints.

So here's my challenge to rightwing bloggers who assail the media for liberal bias (and to journalists who think it's all a he-said-she-said pissing match): Back up your claims. With concrete examples of bias. And without the tautological crutch that any story critical of the administration is proof of liberal bias.

I'll back up mine:

++ ISSUE: Cheney shooting incident --- NARRATIVE: Bush and Cheney are infallible --- EXAMPLE:  ABC News covered the Cheney  hunting incident by downplaying the significance of the weapon itself.  ABC  reported that "the vice president accidentally shot prominent Texas lawyer  Harry Whittington with a pellet gun while hunting for quail." Cheney used a shotgun, not  a pellet gun. ABC later altered the story to read, "a shotgun loaded with birdshot." (Which is why we maintain screenshots of all print stories we reference.) This exemplifies a common tendency of the media, namely, to play defense for Bush and his team, downplaying negative news or polls.

++ ISSUE: Cheney shooting incident --- NARRATIVE: Bush strong, Dems weak  --- EXAMPLE: CNN's Bruce Morton used the VP's shooting to repeat the tired GOP spin that Republicans are tougher than Democrats, and specifically tougher than war hero John Kerry. Morton  commented that Bush and Cheney are avid hunters, and contrasted the observation with 2004 Bush campaign talking points by saying Sen. John Kerry "spent time posing with guns" two years ago, and that "voters probably saw more of him pursuing exotic sports, windsurfing and so on." The truth is Kerry has been hunting since the age of 12. As Media Matters points out,  "Morton's jab echoed language Cheney used during the 2004 campaign to attack  Kerry as effete and elitist."

++ ISSUE: Cheney shooting incident --- NARRATIVE: Bush and Cheney are infallible --- EXAMPLE: Jane  Hamsher notes that CBS News ran a provocative news item on Monday,  explaining that "Texas authorities are complaining that the Secret Service  barred them from speaking to Cheney after the incident." For reasons that are  still unexplained, CBS has scrubbed the report from its website without  explanation.

Etc. Daou presents 29 other case studies. After a week, no right-wingers have responded to his challenge.

Who Are the Armstrongs? (Hellie)

And could Cheney have been plotting war during his hunting trip? Details here.

Utah Makes Tenured Offer to Philosopher Vargas

Manuel Vargas (ethics, philosophy of action, Latin American Philosophy), currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco, has received a tenured offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Utah.

Philosopher Liz Harman from NYU to Princeton

Elizabeth Harman (ethics, metaphysics), currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at New York University, has accepted a tenure-track offer from Princeton University, where she will half in the Department of Philosophy and half in the Center for Human Values.  (Her father, Gilbert Harman--known for important contributions in many fields, including ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology, among others--has, of course, been a long-time member of the Princeton Department.  This is the first case of which I'm aware in which a parent and child have been non-emeritus faculty members in the same department of philosophy.  [I am aware of some cases where faculty join a department where a parent is a retired member of the faculty:  most recently, Christopher Wellman's move from Georgia State to Washington University, St. Louis, where his father Carl Wellman, now retired, was a longtime member of that department.]  If there are other such cases, please add them in the comments.)

Arar v. Ashcroft: Contract Torture and State Secrecy (Edmundson)

The Alien Tort Claims Act was enacted in 1789 to assure a federal judicial forum to anyone seeking redress for a wrong "committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."  Congress in 1991 passed the Torture Victim Prevention Act further to assure that victims of torture or extra-judicial killing carried out under color of the law of any state may seek redress in the courts of the United States.  What then of the suit brought by Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer seized by US officials at Kennedy Airport in 2002, and "rendered" to Syria to be abused and tortured?   Well, if officials of our government invoke unspecified "state secrets" in their defense, there is no jurisdiction, or so a US District Court in New York ruled last week  Op-Ed columnist Bob Herbert, in "The Torturers Win" (New York Times, Feb. 20) has the story; and the Center For Constitutional Rights has a description and synopsis, as well as a link to Judge David Trager's opinion in Arar v. Ashcroft.  (Shhh....)

Berkeley, Irvine make bids for Sherrilyn Roush

The department of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley and the Department of Logic and the Philosophy of Science at the University of California at Irvine have voted out tenured offers to Sherrilyn Roush (PhD Harvard 1999), who is currently an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the recent book, Tracking Truth.

Why review a book of philosophy when you can sneer at it? (Leiter)

The New York Times has done it ag