Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

UK RAE Panel Members Announced (Edmundson)

The criteria for RAE 2008 for philosophy, just announced, are here and here .
Philosophy panel members are:

Antony Duff, Stirling (Chair)
Alexander Bird, Bristol
Ruth Chadwick, Lancaster
Roger Crisp, Oxford
Jonathan Dancy, Reading
Nicholas Davey, Dundee
Katherine Hawley, St. Andrews
Joanna Hodge, Manchester Metropolitan
Christopher Hookaway, Sheffield
Stephen Houlgate, Warwick
Peter Lamarque, York
Robin Le Poidevin, Leeds
Jonathan Lowe, Durham
Mike Martin, University College London
Suzanne Stern-Gillet, Bolton
Alan Weir, Queen's University Belfast

An Antidote to Bush's "State of the Union Address" (Leiter)

Gore Vidal is a lot closer to the mark as to the state of this union:

While contemplating the ill-starred presidency of G.W. Bush, I looked about for some sort of divine analogy. As usual, when in need of enlightenment, I fell upon the Holy Bible, authorized King James version of 1611; turning by chance to the Book of Jonah, I read that Jonah, who, like Bush, chats with God, had suffered a falling out with the Almighty and thus became a jinx dogged by luck so bad that a cruise liner, thanks to his presence aboard, was about to sink in a storm at sea. Once the crew had determined that Jonah, a passenger, was the jinx, they threw him overboard and—Lo!—the storm abated. The three days and nights he subsequently spent in the belly of a nauseous whale must have seemed like a serious jinx to the digestion-challenged whale who extruded him much as the decent opinion of mankind has done to Bush.

Originally, God wanted Jonah to give hell to Nineveh, whose people, God noted disdainfully, “cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,” so like the people of Baghdad who cannot fathom what democracy has to do with their destruction by the Cheney-Bush cabal. But the analogy becomes eerily precise when it comes to the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at a time when a president is not only incompetent but plainly jinxed by whatever faith he cringes before. Witness the ongoing screw-up of prescription drugs. Who knows what other disasters are in store for us thanks to the curse he is under? As the sailors fed the original Jonah to a whale, thus lifting the storm that was about to drown them, perhaps we the people can persuade President Jonah to retire to his other Eden in Crawford, Texas, taking his jinx with him. We deserve a rest. Plainly, so does he. Look at Nixon’s radiant features after his resignation! One can see former President Jonah in his sumptuous library happily catering to faith-based fans with animated scriptures rooted in “The Simpsons.”

Not since the glory days of Watergate and Nixon’s Luciferian fall has there been so much written about the dogged deceits and creative criminalities of our rulers. We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define despite a swarm of books and pamphlets like the vast cloud of locusts which dined on China in that ’30s movie “The Good Earth.”

I have read many of these descriptions of our fallen estate, looking for one that best describes in plain English how we got to this now and where we appear to be headed once our good Earth has been consumed and only Rapture is left to whisk aloft the Faithful. Meanwhile, the rest of us can learn quite a lot from “Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” by Morris Berman, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C....

[W]hat we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture—a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; and the political and economic marginalization of our culture…. The British historian Charles Freeman published an extended discussion of the transition that took place during the late Roman empire, the title of which could serve as a capsule summary of our current president: "The Closing of the Western Mind." Mr. Bush, God knows, is no Augustine; but Freeman points to the latter as the epitome of a more general process that was underway in the fourth century: namely, ‘the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.’ This is what we are seeing today, and it is a process that no society can undergo and still remain free. Yet it is a process of which administration officials, along with much of the American population, are aggressively proud.” In fact, close observers of this odd presidency note that Bush, like his evangelical base, believes he is on a mission from God and that faith trumps empirical evidence. Berman quotes a senior White House adviser who disdains what he calls the “reality-based” community, to which Berman sensibly responds: “If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed.”

Berman does a brief tour of the American horizon, revealing a cultural death valley. In secondary schools where evolution can still be taught too many teachers are afraid to bring up the subject to their so often un-evolved students. “Add to this the pervasive hostility toward science on the part of the current administration (e.g. stem-cell research) and we get a clear picture of the Enlightenment being steadily rolled back. Religion is used to explain terror attacks as part of a cosmic conflict between Good and Evil rather than in terms of political processes.... Manichaeanism rules across the United States. According to a poll taken by Time magazine fifty-nine percent of Americans believe that John’s apocalyptic prophecies in the Book of Revelation will be fulfilled, and nearly all of these believe that the faithful will be taken up into heaven in the ‘Rapture.’

“Finally, we shouldn’t be surprised at the antipathy toward democracy displayed by the Bush administration…. As already noted, fundamentalism and democracy are completely antithetical. The opposite of the Enlightenment, of course, is tribalism, groupthink; and more and more, this is the direction in which the United States is going…. Anthony Lewis who worked as a columnist for the New York Times for thirty-two years, observes that what has happened in the wake of 9/11 is not just the threatening of the rights of a few detainees, but the undermining of the very foundation of democracy. Detention without trial, denial of access to attorneys, years of interrogation in isolation—these are now standard American practice, and most Americans don’t care. Nor did they care about the revelation in July 2004 (reported in Newsweek), that for several months the White House and the Department of Justice had been discussing the feasibility of canceling the upcoming presidential election in the event of a possible terrorist attack.” I suspect that the technologically inclined prevailed against that extreme measure on the ground that the newly installed electronic ballot machines could be so calibrated that Bush would win handily no matter what (read Rep. Conyers’ report (.pdf file) on the rigging of Ohio’s vote)....

Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue AT&T ... (Hellie)

For conspiring with the NSA to violate its privacy contracts with its customers:

The government requires the collaboration of major telecommunications companies to implement its unprecedented and illegal domestic spying program.

AT&T Corp. (which was recently acquired by the new AT&T, Inc,. formerly known as SBC Communications) maintains domestic telecommunications facilities over which millions of Americans' telephone and Internet communications pass every day. It also manages some of the largest databases in the world, containing records of most or all communications made through its myriad telecommunications services.

The lawsuits alleges that AT&T Corp. has opened its key telecommunications facilities and databases to direct access by the NSA and/or other government agencies, thereby disclosing to the government the contents of its customers' communications as well as detailed communications records about millions of its customers, including the lawsuit's class members.

The lawsuit also alleges that AT&T has given the government unfettered access to its over 300 terabyte "Daytona" database of caller information -- one of the largest databases in the world. Moreover, by opening its network and databases to wholesale surveillance by the NSA, EFF alleges that AT&T has violated the privacy of its customers and the people they call and email, as well as broken longstanding communications privacy laws.

Princeton makes bid for Mark Richard

The Department of Philosophy at Princeton has voted out an offer to the eminent philosopher of language Mark Richard (PhD, University of Massachusetts at Amherst). In addition to numerous distinguished and creative contributions to the philosophy of language and related areas, Prof. Richard has helped train a series of outstanding young philosophers at the masters program at Tufts, who have gone on to shine at various graduate programs and beyond.

Is the AAUP Considering Endorsing an Academic Boycott of Israel? (Leiter)

Possibly.  Let us hope they learn from the British experience with this stupid idea, one antithetical to the ideals of academic freedom and scholarly discourse.

Philosopher of Biology Godfrey-Smith Full-Time to Harvard

Peter Godfrey-Smith (philosophy of biology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind), who had been half-time at Harvard and half-time at the Australian National University the last couple of years, is now moving full-time to the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University.  (He may still spend some time during Northern summers in Canberra, though will no longer have a regular faculty appointment there.)  Together with Ned Hall (metaphysics, philosophy of science), recently appointed from MIT, and Susanna Siegel (philosophy of mind and language), who was recently tenured, this will give Harvard a  strong group in philosophy of science and mind, something the Department has not had in quite some time.  (Other tenured faculty in the Department also do work in and around philosophy of mind, including Richard Moran and Alison Simmons.)

The Southern Strategy (Hellie)

Psychologists defend correlation between racism and voting Republican (big surprise).

Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes -- subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

{...}

Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said he disagreed with the study's conclusions but that it was difficult to offer a detailed critique, as the research had not yet been published and he could not review the methodology. He also questioned whether the researchers themselves had implicit biases -- against Republicans -- noting that Nosek and Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji had given campaign contributions to Democrats.

"There are a lot of factors that go into political affiliation, and snap determinations may be interesting for an academic study, but the real-world application seems somewhat murky," Jones said.

[...]

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji, "but it does show that George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-black prejudice."

Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the results matched his own findings in a study he conducted ahead of the 2000 presidential election: Volunteers shown visual images of blacks in contexts that implied they were getting welfare benefits were far more receptive to Republican political ads decrying government waste than volunteers shown ads with the same message but without images of black people.

Jon Krosnick, a psychologist and political scientist at Stanford University, who independently assessed the studies, said it remains to be seen how significant the correlation is between racial bias and political affiliation.

For example, he said, the study could not tell whether racial bias was a better predictor of voting preference than, say, policy preferences on gun control or abortion. But while those issues would be addressed in subsequent studies -- Krosnick plans to get random groups of future voters to take the psychological tests and discuss their policy preferences -- he said the basic correlation was not in doubt.

"If anyone in Washington is skeptical about these findings, they are in denial," he said. "We have 50 years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting. Republicans are supported by whites with prejudice against blacks. If people say, 'This takes me aback,' they are ignoring a huge volume of research."

As well as, for that matter, the GOP's own pronouncements.

(Hat tip to Steve Gilliard.)

Hollow Force? (Edmundson)

Shortfalls in U.S. armed forces recruiting have been widely publicized; but the Pentagon has recently pointed to improving re-enlistment numbers. A puzzle: fewer want to join, but fewer want to leave.  Today, the Los Angeles Times (Jan. 30) reports--in "Army's Rising Promotion Rate Called Ominous"-- that Rumsfeld has resorted to what amounts to "social promotion" within the officer ranks.  In just the past  year, historical average promotion rates have been bumped from 70-80% to 97% for captains (to major) and from 65-75% to 86% for majors (to lieutenant colonel).  According to the LA Times's high-ranking Pentagon source, "Basically, if you haven't been court-martialed, you're going to be promoted [from captain] to major."  Not a trivial incentive to re-enlist if you're among the bottom 20% that traditionally would dead-end at captain.  One might assume that Rumsfeld's motive was simply to disguise the crisis in officer retention; but, the LA Times reports that "Army officials say the primary cause of the jump in promotions is the service's ongoing effort to create more combat units without an overall expansion."   More units--better retention--but without more troops--an "ongoing effort."  ("Helluva job, Rummy!")  Are units like these intended to back up the tough talk in Washington about Iran?

The Ominous Signs on Iran (Leiter)

The war clouds gather again; quoth Senator McCain (who represents the non-sociopathic wing of the Republican Party these days):

"There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option," Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said, "and that is Iran having nuclear weapons."

I do not know what moral or amoral calculus Senator McCain has employed to reach this conclusion.  It presumably did not include weighing the costs of yet another illegal war, the damage to international legal order, the risks of retaliation, the people whose lives will be lost, let alone the actual consequences of there being a second nuclear power in the Mideast, to join Israel.  We somehow managed with Pakistan, which until 9/11 was an Islamic nuclear power "beyond the pale."  We managed with India as a nuclear power ruled by Hindu fundamentalists, who almost brought the world to the brink of nuclear war a few years back.  The bizarre totalitarian regime in North Korea is now a nuclear power.  (No doubt it is not lost on Iran that we have not attacked them.)  Perhaps if the U.S. were not now the world's leading lawless aggressor on the international scene, there would be less of a rush to acquire nuclear weapons.

Paul Craig Roberts comments on some of the factors that apparently did not go into Senator McCain's "calculus":

We are witnessing the same drumbeat against Iranian WMD as we witnessed in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Fox "News," which in fact is the most thorough-going dispenser of war propaganda since the Nazi Third Reich, provides a parade of bought-and-paid-for-consultants who assure credulous audiences that Osama bin Laden has forged an alliance with Iran, which will soon be providing al Qaeda with nuclear weapons.

Even the Bush administration's chief warmonger, VP Dick Cheney, found the Fox "News" charges too absurd to be useful propaganda. Cheney disavowed close relations between al Qaeda Sunnis and Iranian Shi'ites: "there's not a natural fit there."

The New York Times, prostituted itself by permitting Judith Miller to use the newspaper as a tool for neoconservative war propaganda against Iraq. The Times prostituted itself a second time by withholding for an entire year the information that President Bush was illegally spying on Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and a third time by not reporting Al Gore's challenge to the Bush administration's criminal behavior. Now the Times is prostituting itself a fourth time in serving as a Bush administration propaganda organ against Iran.

Unlike Israel, which does have nuclear weapons, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Under the treaty countries are permitted nuclear energy. Inspections make certain no weapons are produced. Iran agrees to abide by the treaty and to have the inspections.

Israel, however, and its neocon allies in the Bush administration, claim without any evidence that Iran is making a bomb. The nuclear inspectors find no evidence of a weapons program. Israel and its neocon allies reply that once Iran has the know-how for nuclear power, it will be able to make the material from which to make a bomb, therefore, Iran must not be permitted its rights under the non-proliferation treaty. Since Iran refuses to give up its treaty rights to develop nuclear energy, Israel and the neocons maintain that Iran's facilities must be bombed and destroyed....The entire world knows that Israel cannot bomb Iran without US weapons and cooperation.

A US attack on Iran would be another instance of naked American aggression against a Muslim country. Aggression is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the US. Such an attack would further isolate the US as a rogue country. It would further inflame the Muslim world against the US and Israel, making any settlement of the Palestinian issue emotionally impossible for Muslims.

If tactical nuclear weapons are used in the bombing of Iran, as the neoconservatives advocate, America will be reviled throughout the world. Americans will never recover from the burden of shame and war crimes inflicted upon them by the Bush administration.

An attack on Iran could be the death knell for our troops in Iraq and for our puppets in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The majority Iraqi Shi'ites have tolerated the US occupation because the majority Shi'ites are the gainers from the US insistence on majority rule. The Iraqi Shi'ites are allied with Shi'ite Iran. They will recognize an attack on Iran as a blow struck against Shi'ite power. If the Iraqi Shi'ites turn on our troops, US casualties will soar.

The best way to ensure US defeat in Iraq is to attack Iran.

Would Bush and the neocons accept embarrassing defeat or would they escalate the conflict?
Would a sane government pursue a policy that has no favorable outcome?  Some analysts believe that Russia and China will protect their Iranian energy and trade agreements by vetoing UN sanctions that the Bush administration seeks as a pretext for its aggression. These two powers, however, might abstain as it is in their interest to let Bush dig a deeper hole for the US. Disruption of Iranian oil supplies increases Europe's energy dependence on Russia and serves to further weaken US influence in Europe.

The American people need to understand that with its massive budget and trade deficits, the US is able to go to war only because the Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, and oil producing countries finance Bush's war by purchasing US debt and holding dollar denominated assets. Once Bush has the US over-extended, it will be the end of the American superpower if one of our bankers decides to rein in the rogue American state by dumping dollar holdings....

The US breeds terrorism by its 60-year old policy of interfering in the internal affairs of Muslim lands and ruling them through surrogates....The US creates enormous animosity by appearing to exploit Muslim oil wealth and by turning a blind eye while Israel expropriates the West Bank.

Doesn't it make more sense to mend our ill-considered ways than to go to war against Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and who else? Is there no one in the Republican or Democratic parties who is capable of intelligent leadership? How many more Americans and Muslims are going to pay for Bush's insane policy with their lives, arms, legs, and eyes? How stupid are the American people?

"Secretly Reads Brian Leiter" (Leiter)

T-shirts here.  A couple of folks have pointed this out to me recently, so I should note, publically, that I know about it, and I even get some modest payment per shirt sold.  That being said, I don't own one myself, and can't vouch for their quality or long-term value.  It's the product of a former Princeton grad student.  Apparently at Princeton, they all read the PGR, but no one wants to admit it!

Italian Priest May Face Trial for Asserting the Existence of Jesus (Leiter)

Curious story:

An Italian judge heard arguments Friday on whether a small-town parish priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed.

The priest’s atheist accuser, Luigi Cascioli, says the Roman Catholic Church has been deceiving people for 2,000 years with a fable that Christ existed, and that the Rev. Enrico Righi violated two Italian laws by reasserting the claim....

Cascioli filed a criminal complaint in 2002 after Righi wrote in a parish bulletin that Jesus did indeed exist, and that he was born of a couple named Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth.

Cascioli claims that Righi’s assertion constituted two crimes under Italian law: so-called “abuse of popular belief,” in which someone fraudulently deceives people; and “impersonation,” in which someone gains by attributing a false name to a person....

Cascioli says the church has been gaining financially by “impersonating” as Christ someone by the name of John of Gamala, the son of Judas from Gamala.

He has said he has little hope of the case succeeding in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, but that he is merely going through the necessary legal steps to reach the European Court of Human Rights, where he intends to accuse the church of what he calls “religious racism.”

Righi, 76, has stressed substantial historical evidence — both Christian and non-Christian — of Jesus’ existence....

“When Don Righi spoke about Christ’s humanity ... he was affirming that he needs to be considered as a man. What his name is, where he comes from or who his parents are is secondary,” [his lawyer] said.

So the "defense" is that "Jesus Christ" is not a rigid designator?

(Thanks to Chris Pynes for the pointer.)

Kripke Profiled in the NY Times (Leiter)

Amusing story here.  (I'm told you can also get the story here without registering.)

US takes hostages in Iraq war (Hellie)

[Cross-posted at For the Record]

This war crime outrages Sully:

You may have heard of the tactic. As a way to leverage information or capture an enemy, terrorists sometimes kidnap innocent women and children in order to put pressure on their husbands or relatives. It's called kidnapping and blackmail. Except that in Rumsfeld's military, the United States now uses the tactic. Sure, it's against the Geneva Conventions. Sure, those Conventions are supposed to apply in Iraq. But this is the Bush administration. King George doesn't have to obey the law; and his military can do anything they want. The Pentagon has gotten used to denying hard evidence of abuse - and no one, of course, has been disciplined for following the instructions given ultimately in Washington. "It's very hard, obviously, from some of these documents to determine what, if anything, actually happened," says the Pentagon spokesman. No, it isn't. And so we slowly descend toward the level of the enemy. Because King George can.

Yet another issue on which the blogosphere was well out ahead of the curve (nearly two years ahead, in this case).

Call senators and encourage support for Kerry's Alito filibuster (Hellie)

Those inclined toward activism -- and now is as good a time as any -- should call as many of the following as time permits and urge support for the Scalito filibuster. It doesn't seem to matter whether you are a constituent.

Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D- AR), 202-224-4843
Joseph I. Lieberman (D- CT), 202-224-4041
Thomas R. Carper (D- DE), 202-224-2441
Daniel K. Inouye (D- HI), 202-224-3934
Tom Harkin (D- IA), 202-224-3254
Evan Bayh (D- IN), 202-224-5623
Barbara A. Mikulski (D- MD), 202-224-4654
Carl Levin (D- MI), 202-224-6221
Mark Dayton (D- MN), 202-224-3244
Max Baucus (D- MT), 202-224-2651
Frank Lautenberg (D- NJ), 202-224-3224
Jeff Bingaman (D- NM), 202-224-5521
Jack Reed (D- RI), 202-224-4642
Patrick J. Leahy (D- VT), 202-224-4242
Maria Cantwell (D- WA), 202-224-3441
Patty Murray (D- WA), 202-224-2621
Herb Kohl (D- WI), 202-224-5653
John D. Rockefeller, IV (D- WV), 202-224-6472
James M. Jeffords (I- VT), 202-224-5141

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D- DE) , 202-224-5042
Bill Nelson (D- FL), 202-224-5274
Daniel K. Akaka (D- HI), 202-224-6361
Mary Landrieu (D- LA), 202-224-5824
Byron L. Dorgan (D- ND), 202-224-2551
Olympia Snowe (R- ME), 202-224-5344

Carving out the Republicans: coverage of NSA vs. Lewinsky and Whitewater stories (Wilson)

[Cross-posted at For the Record]

Jamison Foster of Media Matters has done a great job of compiling the stats on the differential treatment in the NYT and WaPo of stories (and related opinion-page calls for independent investigations) pertaining to Bush's authorizing NSA eavesdropping without a warrant (in clear violation of the law) vs. stories pertaining to Clinton's sexual peccadillos with a willing intern, and to a 20-year-old land deal in which the Clintons lost money.

Foster first compared coverage of the Lewinsky vs. NSA affairs.  The summary for coverage the day after the stories broke:

All told, on January 22, 1998, the Times and the Post ran 19 articles (five on the front page) dealing with the Clinton investigation, totaling more than 20,000 words and reflecting the words of at least 28 reporters -- plus the editorial boards of both newspapers.

In contrast, on December 17, the Times and the Post combined to run five articles about the NSA spying operation, involving 12 reporters and consisting of 6,303 words.

And 35 days later:

On February 25, 1998, 35 days after the story first broke, the Post ran four articles and an editorial about the Clinton investigation, totaling 5,046 words, involving 11 reporters, and the paper's editorial board. The Times ran four articles, two opinion columns, and an editorial -- seven pieces in all, totaling 5,852 words and involving at least six reporters and columnists, in addition to its editorial board. The papers combined for 12 articles, columns, and editorials, involving 17 reporters and columnists, as well as both editorial boards.

On January 20, 35 days after the NSA story first broke, the Times ran one 1,324-word article about the NSA operation written by two reporters. The Post ran one 945-word article written by one reporter. Combined: two articles, three reporters, 2,269 words.

Some readers responded that maybe the differential coverage could be explained by the fact that sex supposedly sells.  So Foster compared media coverage of the NSA scandal with the oh-so-unsexy Whitewater story:

Media coverage of Whitewater reached a frenzy, with calls for special counsels and investigations, long before the Lewinsky story broke. In the mid-1990s, Whitewater was a nearly 20-year-old land deal in which the Clintons lost money. As a January 5, 1994, Washington Post editorial explained, "[t]his should be stressed -- there has been no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong."

And yet the news media covered Whitewater as though it was Watergate, Teapot Dome, and Iran-Contra all rolled into one. [...]

Whitewater was a story that, according to Kurtz, the American people weren't following closely. According to the Post, there had been "no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong." Yet ABC devoted an entire broadcast of Nightline and 18 of 22 minutes of World News Tonight to it -- and that's just one network, one day. [...]

[Surveys show that] the public didn't care about Whitewater and didn't think Clinton had done anything wrong. Most Americans approved of Clinton's handling of his job, and even more of them had a favorable personal opinion of him. There was "no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong," according to The Washington Post's editorial board.

And yet, that same Washington Post editorial called for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate ... well, to investigate "no credible charge."

If a charge with no apparent credibility is worthy of independent counsel, you'd think that the charge that Bush ignored [uh... do we mean violated?] "a clearly worded criminal law" would be so worthy:

[T]he Post argues that the Bush administration is "ignor[ing] a clearly worded criminal law," "show[ing] a profound disregard for Congress and the laws it passes," "appears to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," and "must be forced to explain itself comprehensively." The Post finds the administration's "legal justification" for the spying program unconvincing and "disturbing." And yet the Post has not called for an independent investigation.

Why not?

It cannot be because the Post considers the allegations against Bush less credible than those against Clinton; the paper itself has argued exactly the opposite. It cannot be because there is no public desire for an independent investigation -- there is. A January 20-22 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Americans think a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the spying program.

How 'bout the NYT?  As Foster documents, the editors had a slathering fit over the failure of Janet Reno (Clinton's Attorney General) to seek an independent prosecutor to investigate the Clintons's Whitewater connections.  But the NYT calls for in response to the NSA scandal is that Bush take back that darned illegal authorization, and if he won't do it himself (the meanie) then Congress should "force" him to cry uncle:

... The New York Times denounces, as it did in a December 18, 2005, editorial, "illegal government spying on Americans." It asserts that "Nobody with a real regard for the rule of law and the Constitution would have difficulty seeing" the program as a violation of civil liberties. It concludes "[W]e have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them."

Yet the Times does not call for a special counsel. Instead, it declares "Mr. Bush should retract and renounce his secret directive and halt any illegal spying, or Congress should find a way to force him to do it."

But what gives the Times reason to believe that Congress would do so even if it could? Five days later, another Times editorial described the relationship between the Bush administration and Congress: "Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are tenacious. They still control both houses of Congress and are determined to pack the judiciary with like-minded ideologues."

Why on earth would the Times dare to hope that a Congress under the "control" of Bush and Cheney would "find a way to force" Bush to do anything? Just this week, the Times reported that the Bush Administration "declines" to provide the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee documents it has requested as part of its investigation of the administration's handing of Hurricane Katrina, and refused to make administration officials available for sworn testimony. What makes the Times think the Republican-controlled Congress will want to "find a way to force" Bush to do anything? Or that it would be able to even if it wanted to?

Today's NYT editorial comes right out and uses the l-word concerning Bush admin claims about the warrantless spying program, but still fails to call for an independent counsel:

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.

So despite the NYT's board noting that "Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them" and that the Senate Judiciary Committee has "failed, tragically ... to rein in Mr. Bush" for the last five years, it still fails to call for an independent counsel.

Foster asks:

What explains the Times' refusal to call for a special counsel in the case when it believes the Bush administration, led by the president himself, is acting illegally? Why was a special counsel more justified in 1994 than now?

Why oh why?  As usual in the U.S., one just has to follow the money (readers may be getting tired of this post... but if the explanation fits, I say advertise it).  In order for the WaPo and NYT to retain any semblance of respectability as sources of information, they can't entirely ignore the breathtakingly myriad Republican scandals.  Corporate understands this, but (as Foster's analysis makes crystal clear) there are limits (and imperatives):

1. Bare minimum coverage of Republican misdeeds on the news pages
2. The occasional hand-wringing editorial about Republican misdeeds allowed
3. Explicit calls for prosecution of Republican misdeeds not allowed (unless, as with Delay, the Godfathers deem said miscreant an un-made man).  Obviously, sitting presidents and vice-presidents are completely off limits.
4. So long as the Democratic party remains less Corporate-friendly than the Republican party, Democratic misdeeds (real or imagined) are to be hyped to the high heavens.

In other words: Corporate allows media to whine a bit at Republicans from their editorial corner, but growling is strongly discouraged and under no circumstances can media bite the hand that feeds it.  Mauling of Democrats for any and all reasons, however, will get Scooby lots of revenue snacks.

Frank Jackson Honored by Australian Government

Brian Weatherson has the details.  The last philosopher so honored appears to have been David Armstrong about a dozen years ago.

N.Y. Times Knocks "Imperial Arrogance" (Edmundson)

With unusual vigor, The New York Times (Jan. 29)--"Spies, Lies, and Wiretaps"-- editorializes against the Bush Administration's smarmy defense of its illegal secret eavesdopping campaign.  Exerpts:

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple [sic] of big, dangerous lies.
...
Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

We won't soon have a Rove answer to the question "Which important Democrats did you refer to?"  But, in the UK, "important" members of Parliament seem to "disagree" with Tony Blair's determination to lift a 40-year-old ban on MI5's snooping on MPs, as revealed by The Telegraph (Jan. 16).  Could it be that Bush has for years been warrantlessly intercepting communications to minority-party members of Congress? 

Only bad guys  are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch — a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It's that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from "probable cause" to "reasonable belief" and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.
...
The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator — Mike DeWine of Ohio — introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion" for a "non-United States person." But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised "both significant legal and practical issues" and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans — and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof — and dispensed with judges and warrants — for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.
...
The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.

The Times hits a few false notes: e.g. "The secret program violates the law as currently written. It's that simple."  No.  It's simpler: The secret program violates the law, period.  To qualify, with "as currently written," is to suggest that the relevant law has been in a state of flux.  That's precisely what Gonzales et al. would like us to believe: as though quicksilver changes had made the law difficult to pin down.  Not so.  In fact, as Bush himself acknowledges, warrantless  snooping contravenes a law that has been on the books since 1978.  But The Times is showing improvement, and it seems unlikely that the minority members of the Judiciary Committee will let go of this one--at least not until they get assurances that their communications aren't being warrantlessly monitored.

Friday Poem: "Lessons of History"

    Lessons of History

It was thirty or forty years ago
But I still remember the day he spoke
This president of a giant company
And arrogant because of it
What’s good for General Motors
he boasted is good for America

In a legislative inquiry
He had been caught red-handed
Trying to destroy the reputation
Of a young man who challenged his company
At the time it seemed an historic moment
And the young man’s career rocketed
Later we realized nothing had changed

But imagine my feelings this morning
When I read an article in the Times
About powerful men in Russia
Now that capitalism has been installed

A media mogul stuffed with money
Puffed with the same pride as that other
Pronounced that business embraced everything
And here he’s quoted what’s good for business
He said is also good for Russia

Have we not met this barbarian before
Who remembers only what flatters
Small consolation for the Russian people
Innocent of what’s in store for them

3/19-3/29/97, 5/11/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Bad News for British Readers: Your Fellow Citizens Are Almost as Ignorant as Americans! (Leiter)

Story here; an excerpt:

Just under half of Britons accept the theory of evolution as the best description for the development of life, according to an opinion poll.

Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design (ID) should be taught in school science lessons.

The survey was conducted by Ipsos MORI for the BBC's Horizon series....

Over 2,000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life:

• 22% chose creationism
• 17% opted for intelligent design
• 48% selected evolution theory
• and the rest did not know....

When given a choice of three descriptions for the development of life on Earth, people were asked which one or ones they would like to see taught in science lessons in British schools:

• 44% said creationism should be included
• 41% intelligent design
• 69% wanted evolution as part of the science curriculum.

Participants over 55 were less likely to choose evolution over other groups....

The findings prompted surprise from the scientific community. Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, said: "It is surprising that many should still be sceptical of Darwinian evolution. Darwin proposed his theory nearly 150 years ago, and it is now supported by an immense weight of evidence.

"We are, however, fortunate compared to the US in that no major segment of UK religious or cultural life opposes the inclusion of evolution in the school science curriculum."

In the credit where credit is due department (Wilson)

Though I'm generally grumpy about the state of the world, it's good to remember that things have definitely improved along certain dimensions in the last few decades, especially so far as women's access to various opportunities are concerned (with the usual caveats and defeaters, of course, especially concerning race, class, and other factors).  My mother (who started her career as a labor journalist in the mid-70's, at a small paper in NJ) has some telling stories along these lines. 

Apropos of Alito's '72 membership in the anti-coed Concerned Alumni of Princeton... mom went to Princeton on a Woodrow Wilson graduate fellowship in '76 to study economics, just seven years after Princeton admitted women into its undergraduate program.  Evidently Princeton had long been admitting women into its graduate programs (I've been unable to find out just when this occurred), but in any case in her day the continuing supposition in "Princetonian" contexts was that Princetonians were male.

So, for example, her grad studies done, my mother (living in NYC) would take friends or interviewees to the Princeton Club for dinner or a drink.   It was (probably still is) a lush place, which at the time was staffed by a froggery of ancient waiters, who at the end of the meal would shuffle up and ask with decades-old presumption: "Which of you gentlemen have the card?".  At which point my mother, with great satisfaction, would say, "I have the card", and whip it out with great flourish (we're big on flourish in my family).

Speaking of cards, younger readers may not know that just a short while ago women couldn't even get credit.  After my mother and father divorced in '77, my mother (paid as poorly as journalists are usually paid, and with custody of 3 children, etc.) was short on cash.  She had been using an Amex card for years (and had a perfect credit history, had been working, etc.), but the card was primarily in my dad's name; so she called up Amex and requested her own card.  Some time later she got a letter saying, "We're sorry, but we are unable to give you credit at this time".  No explanation.

Conveniently enough, my mother was working for PBS as a writer for a show called Economically Speaking.  So she called Amex back and said "Hi there.  I'm a scriptwriter for PBS and we're interested in doing a story on women and credit; conveniently enough you have just refused me credit.  We'd like to bring down a camera crew and interview you about your reasons for doing so".  (To be sure, the story wasn't actually on the drawing board; but my mother could have made it the case that it was.) The person at the end of the line said: "Let me get right back to you".  One minute later they called to say "Your Amex card is in express mail, you should have it by tomorrow".  Sensing a successful strategy, mama-san did the same thing with MC and Visa.  In each case, she applied for the card, and was flatly turned down (no reason given).  In both cases, she called and suggested that they might like to talk about it on-camera, in reference to a story about women and credit; in both cases, she not only got the card, she got it by overnight mail.

The story continues.  A couple of years pass.  My mom has moved from PBS to US News and World Report, where every month they brought in a speaker for a roundtable discussion with the reporters and editors.  One month they bring in the president of Diner's Club.  My mom is the only woman at the table.  The president looks at her and says: do you have a Diner's Club card?  Mom says no.  He says, you really should apply for one -- we need more women with cards.  So she says OK, fills in an application, and  of course gets rejected.  At this point she has had an Amex, MC, and Visa, respectable jobs, and perfect credit, for years.  She calls up the prez, tells him what happened, and expresses her opinion that this would make a great article for US News.  He says: I'm putting you on hold ... Something has gone wrong".  Back in a flash: "There was a horrible mishap.  Your card is in overnight mail".

The sad news is that most women in the late 70's weren't in a position to bring such pressure to bear (and now my mom regrets that she didn't pursue the story, anyway).  But the good news is that at least women don't have to deal with quite as much overt institutionalized sexism in the U.S. as we used to.  See you at Holt Renfrew.

Philosopher Forbes from Tulane to Colorado

Graeme Forbes (philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophical logic) at Tulane University has accepted a senior offer from the University of Colorado at Boulder, to start in the fall.  That's a huge loss for Tulane and a significant hire for Colorado which, together with other recent (mostly junior) hires, gives the Colorado program a realistic chance of moving back into the top 30 in the U.S.

So just what would be sufficiently radical? (Wilson)

The reasons why Alito should not be confirmed are about as clear and distinct as it gets.  There's his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton (in 1972, when it was still the 60's, people... a college student that was a member of such a sexist, conservative, good-ol-rich-boys club would have to have been a certifiable freak, no doubt unable to get laid even in the age of free love).  There's his view that it's OK to strip-search 10-year-old girls, and more generally strip-search people who aren't named in warrants.  There's his dissenting option (in a case upholding waiting periods and notification of parents in cases of minors seeking abortions---bad enough, to be sure) against the cases's also striking down a spousal notification requirement (and not to worry about cases where said husband is abusive or said couple is separated -- after all, the "vast majority" of married women seeking abortions tell their husbands of their own free will).  Speaking of abortion, Alito is on record (1985) that the Constitution ''does not protect the right to an abortion," flatly contradicting Roe v. Wade.  Oh, and there's Alito's repeated judgments against worker's rights (if you click through on anything, do so on previous link; you might want to put on a bib first first because your jaw is going to drop), and in general in favor of fucking over individuals in the most stunningly poorly argued and blatant of fashions, in favor of entities with power and money:

If confirmed, Alito would tip the high court's delicate balance radically to the right. Nearly always favoring the government, corporations and universities, Alito has ruled against individual rights in 84 percent of his dissents.

Oh, and don't forget he's a creepy non-recuser, who doesn't mind judging cases involving (and it goes without saying, ruling in favor of) corporations in which he has a personal financial interest (to the non-minor tune of 390K).  Perhaps worse of all, as regards the consequences of installing this power-sucking freak on the court, are his views on executive power:

[I]n a speech to the Federalist Society in November 2000, while a sitting appellate judge, Alito claimed almost limitless powers for the presidency and criticized other courts for limiting executive power. ''The president has not just some executive power," he declared, ''but the executive power -- the whole thing." [...] Alito favors an almost monarchic executive...

Maybe it's just me, but the idea of an all-powerful Bush might be something we would want to avoid... assuming, that is, that death, destruction, corruption, more corruption, more corruption, propaganda, surveillance, global warming, and various other civil, economic, environmental and other disasters aren't our primary goals.

Democrats could block the nomination if they got their act together:

Despite the repeated setbacks to the Bush administration and its allies and Alito's own far-right record, most observers expect him to be confirmed. Blocking Alito would take a filibuster supported by at least 41 senators. Though the Democrats have 45 senators (counting independent James Jeffords), the Senate Democratic leadership frets that a filibuster would divert attention from other Republican woes, might make Democrats look obstructionist, and might lead Republicans to use the so-called ''nuclear option," abolishing filibusters on judicial nominations.

They're fretting about other Republican woes, are they?  If Alito gets in he'll give them something to really fret about.  But it seems that it isn't enough for some Democrats not to be able to just say no (talk about battered person syndrome).  No, some Democrats want to moreover lick the foot that kicks them, by voting for Alito.  Why?  As Tim Johnson (D-Sd) spins it: ya see, he's just not radical enough to block:

"I am troubled by Judge Alito's apparent views on matters such as executive power, his past opposition to the principle of one person, one vote, and his narrow interpretation of certain civil rights laws," Johnson said. "Even so, I cannot accept an argument that his views are so radical that the Senate is justified in denying his confirmation."

Wow.  Anti-coeducation, anti-Roe, anti-worker and individual rights, personal corruption unbefitting any decent person much less a Supreme Court Justice, and pro-executive-monarchy.  So just what would it take for Johnson to find a nominee radical enough to block?  Maybe the nominee would have to do something as bad as this.

Meanwhile, to add gross insult to injury, another Democrat---Robert Byrd, West Virginia---has chosen to close the long chapter of his tenure as (in the main) a stand-up Democrat by casting his vote for Alito.  Evidently his decision is motivated, in part, by his desire to win a record-breaking ninth term as senator, against a monetarily strong opponent.  So, rather than retiring with principles intact, in the process preventing generations of Americans (and non-Americans, for that matter) from suffering Alito's presence on the court, Byrd takes a dive so he can enter his 90th year as a Senator.  Ah, vanity.

Kerry, by way of admirable contrast, has called for a filibuster.  Do what you can to support it; the decent life you save may be your own.

Why Not Comply with FISA and Get a Post-Facto Warrant? (Edmundson)

The Wall Street Journal released a transcript today (Jan. 26) of a rare interview with Pres. Bush.  Along the way, the WSJ asked a question that many have been eager to hear the President answer:

WSJ: OK. Why not just -- why didn't you go back to the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court and get approval, because they surely would have given you approval even after the fact?

Mr. Bush: It's a different -- the FISA law was written in 1978, and we require a different response to an enemy. And what I said -- here, let me just give you my management style. I talked to people like General Hayden. I said: Can we do a better of job of protecting the American people within the Constitution and guaranteeing civil rights? Those were the parameters, because I want to make sure what I do, I've got the legal authority to do. So you design the program and look at all options. And this is the program they brought back to me. I'm not going to describe it to you, nor should anybody else, because all that does is tell the enemy how to adjust.

Now if the people don't believe there's an enemy there, fine. But there is an enemy. Their leader [i.e.Osama bin Laden] announced just the other day that [they're] going to attack. And so to answer your question, we had the legal scholars, we had our operators all look at the best way to be able to deal with a 21st century problem -- and that is phone calls from outside the country to inside the country -- not within the country; it's important for people -- I think some are beginning -- I thought initially because this was within the country -- a known al Qaeda, or suspected al Qaeda calling in requires instant reaction. And so with FISA being used, the '78 law is relevant for some activities to protect the American people. These people came up with a different plan. And I'm sorry we're talking about it.

End of interview.  (Our operators are standing by.)

Ideological Diversity in Law Schools (Leiter)

Peter Schuck (Yale Law School) and I are "debating" whether law schools need more ideological diversity over at the Legal Affairs "debate club" site.  Some of the discussion may interest non-law readers.  We "pre-recorded" the debate a couple of weeks ago, but officially there is just one more day (tomorrow) of back-and-forth.

Bush Renews Assault on Nation's Health (Edmundson)

Dan Froomkin is back from paternity leave, and his latest White House Briefing--"Another Shot at the Safety Net"--features a heads-up on Bush's state-of-the-union address.  Bush will plump for "Health Savings Accounts"--a catchy name for tax cuts for the healthy and wealthy.  Bold thinking, coming as it does, so hard on the heels of "Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage," the botched and misbranded giveway to the pharmaceutical lobby.  But be warned that The Washington Post is nervous about Froomkin being mistaken for a "real" Post reporter: the "Froomkin Foofaraw" detailed at PressThink bolsters Jessica Wilson's case that the Press is now looking over its collective shoulder to a degree not seen since the McCarthy era.

Who is Stephen Harper? (Hellie)

Short answer: the new (presumptive?) PM of Canada.

Longer answer: the speaker of the following words, a mere nine years ago:

Canada is a Northern European welfare state in
the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it. Canadians make no
connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state
and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living
substantially lower than yours, a massive brain drain of young
professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the
United States.

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half,
don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad
about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social
assistance and unemployment insurance.

Apparently, during the campaign Harper was wrapping up speeches with "God Bless Canada", emulating, of course, Bush:

Some may think this a harmless, or even beneficent, expression for a politician to use, but for those with knowledge of history, nothing could be a more frightening.

I do believe we all know to whom Harper is tipping his hat with these words. George Bush, author of two wars which have killed more than a hundred thousand innocent people and the champion of an ugly set of repressive laws in the United States, says "God Bless America!" every chance he gets.

Some might say Bush uses the line because he has nothing else to say, and I don't doubt this is part of the truth. But slogans of this kind are always used to protect dangerous people from criticism. The words are used also as code, a kind of insidious political wink, to bloodthirsty supporters, the Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell types. They says things that cannot be uttered in public.

Bush usually says it in front of a set of gigantic, eagle-topped American flags, reminiscent of nothing so much as the days when Germany's leader spoke and sputtered in front of platoons of monstrous, threatening flags.

Bush also always wears a prominently-placed American flag pin on his lapel, just in case you forget where he's from. I can never help thinking of the image of Hitler wearing his quiet Iron Cross on an otherwise plain, neatly-tailored uniform. Neatness and patriotism for the cameras instead of troops sloshing through human blood.

The belt buckle of the German legions which murdered their way across Europe were embossed with "Gott Mit Uns" (God With Us) over a fierce eagle grasping the swastika. This is only to say that there is a record in fairly recent history of the use of religious slogans in politics to cover horrors. I recall a photograph of American Marines, having illegally invaded Iraq, kneeling for a quick blessing before going out to kill more Iraqis in their own land.

Were I to dip further into European history, I would name the countless wars and persecutions in which God Bless Something Or Other! was invoked over the bodies of burning, bleeding, or broken victims.

Religion does not belong in public life, and Stephen Harper's efforts to drag it in, says a great deal about him to those choosing to listen. This principle is as much a defense of freedom of religion as anything else: millions of Christians have been slain by other Christians over subtle differences of belief.

Religion in politics violates Canadians' traditional political civility. While God may be understood as a translation for Allah or Jehovah, the name is completely unsuitable for those embracing Buddhism or Hinduism or Humanism or no religion at all. This usage opens wounds where none need exist.

Even among today's Christians, God does not have the same meaning to everyone. To a Pat Robertson, God is someone who destroys communities with hurricanes when they fail to recognize the truth of Pat's preaching. Pat's God is also someone who sanctions the assassination of democratically-elected leaders who happen to oppose American policies.

And please, make no mistake, a core portion of Harper's Alberta-based party are people with just such views.

Not a lot of Canadians understand that a large portion of Alberta Crown land was taken up by Americans looking for farmland at the beginning of the 20th century. There was a heavy in-migration of American attitudes from the province's beginning. This was reinforced by the development of oil and gas in the 1940s and 1950s, and has been reinforced further still with the recent development of the tar sands.

Alberta, home to the one-party rule derided by yesterday's post-election gloat in the soft-right National Post. Terrible thing iff it's the opposition party.

I'm still optimistic that the Conservatives can be contained: after all, 54% of Tory voters just wanted a change, only 41% wanted a Tory government (compare this to US polls where 80% of Republican respondants can be counted on to believe totally insane claims). Still, there's a danger. First, my politically savvy neighbor anticipates that the Tory strategy will be to lay low for two years, working for a majority government, at which point they can really go bonkers.  And second, rivalry between the two major left-of-center parties outside Quebec, the Liberals and the New Democrats, was a clear source of the election debacle. Canada, like every democracy that lacks it, needs to move to proportional representation swiftly.

The Left Blogosphere and the Corporate Media (Hellie)

Peter Daou, Kerry's former "netroots" advisor, recognizes that the Republican Party works effectively with rightwing blogs to get its message out through the corporate media, but the Democratic Party doesn't. Here's a dead-on explanation of this asymmetry, picking up on themes Professor Wilson has discussed extensively on For the Record:

Are right-wing bloggers and activists really more effective at flooding Corporate Media outlets with complaints about unfavorable coverage than progressive bloggers?

Or is it perhaps that decisionmakers, players and talk show hosts in the Corporate Media are, for the most part, ideologically aligned with the Republicans?

If this is the case, claiming that complaints from members of the Right-Wing audience forced the Corporate Media to follow the GOP spin would be extremely convenient and self serving.

This would also explain the broken Progressive Blogger/Corporate Media link. No matter how timely and fact-based the Progressive Bloggers’ information is, the Corporate Media consistently refuses to give positive attention to what Progressive Bloggers have to say. Could be because they really do not like what they have to say.

While Right-Wing bloggers’ views are more extreme and more crudely expressed than the Official Republican party line, they’re basically the same ideology: pro-corporate, pro-imperialist, theocratic and totalitarian. And the GOP delivers, consistently, for the Right-Wing activist base in the form of legislation and appointments.

That's the Republican carve-out, in a nutshell.

Overheard from Congressman Seuss (Hellie)

Funny:

That Abramoff!

That Abramoff!

I do not like that Abramoff!

"Would you like to play some golf?"

I do not want to play some golf.

I do not want to, Abramoff.

"We could fly you there for free.

Off to Scotland, by the sea."

I do not want to fly for free.

I don't like Scotland by the sea.

I do not want to play some golf.

I do not want to, Abramoff.

"Would you, could you, take this bribe?

Could you, would you, for the tribe?"

I would not, could not, take this bribe.

I could not, would not, for the tribe.

"If we strong-armed corporations

Into giving you donations?

They'd be funneled to your PAC.

Would you then cut us some slack?"

I would not, could not, cut you slack.

I do not care about my PAC.

I do not want to play some golf.

I do not want to, Abramoff.

"A plane! A plane! A plane! A plane!

Would you, could you, for a plane?"

I could not, would not, for a plane.

Not for a bribe, not for the tribe.

Not for donations from corporations.

Not for my PAC, not for some slack.

Not from any schmoe named Jack.

"Would you help us buy some ships

Perfect for quick gambling trips?

Talk to people in the know

For a little quid pro quo?

Oh come now, don't be a snob.

Let us give your wife a job."

I will not help you buy some ships.

I do not wish for gambling trips.

My wife does not need a job

Even if she is a snob.

We do not like bribes, can't you see?

Why won't you just let me be?

"You do not like bribes, so you say.

Try them, try them, and you may.

Try them and you may, I say."

Jack. If you will let me be

I will try them, then you'll see.

Say.... I do like playing golf!

I like it, I do, Abramoff!

I do like Scotland by the sea.

It's such a thrilling place to be!

And I will take this bribe.

And I will help the tribe.

And I will take donations

From big corporations.

And I will help you buy some ships.

And I will take quick gambling trips.

Say, I'll give anyone the shaft

As long as it involves some graft!

I do so like playing golf!

Thank you! Thank you,

Abramoff!

UPDATE: That should be Congressman Seuss (R).

A National Police Force? (Hellie)

[Cross-posted at For the Record]

The USA-PATRIOT Act renewal calls for the creation of a national uniformed police force:

"A permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division,'" empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence" ... "or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

UPDATE: Professor Leiter calls my attention to the following commentary:

A provision in the "PATRIOT Act" creates a new federal police force with the power to violate the Bill of Rights. You might think that this cannot be true, as you have not read about it in newspapers or heard it discussed by talking heads on TV.

Go to House Report 109-333 USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R?cp109:FLD010:@1(hr333)>  and check it out for yourself. Sec. 605 <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&dbname=cp109&sid=cp109lxkwK&refer=&r_n=hr333.109&item=&sel=TOC_208072&>  reads:

"There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'"

This new federal police force is "subject to the supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security."

The new police are empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

The new police are assigned a variety of jurisdictions, including "an event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance" (SENS).

"A special event of national significance" is neither defined nor does it require the presence of a "protected person" such as the president in order to trigger it. Thus, the administration, and perhaps the police themselves, can place the SENS designation on any event. Once a SENS designation is placed on an event, the new federal police are empowered to keep out and arrest people at their discretion.

The language conveys enormous discretionary and arbitrary powers. What is "an offense against the United States"? What are "reasonable grounds"?

You can bet the Alito/Roberts court will rule that it is whatever the executive branch says.

The obvious purpose of the act is to prevent demonstrations at Bush/Cheney events. However, nothing in the language limits the police powers from being used only in this way. Like every law in the U.S., this law also will be expansively interpreted and abused. It has dire implications for freedom of association and First Amendment rights. We can take for granted that the new federal police will be used to suppress dissent and to break up opposition. The Brownshirts are now arming themselves with a Gestapo.

Many naïve Americans will write to me to explain that this new provision in the reauthorization of the "PATRIOT Act" is necessary to protect the president and other high officials from terrorists or from harm at the hands of angry demonstrators: "No one else will have anything to fear." Some will accuse me of being an alarmist, and others will say that it is unpatriotic to doubt the law's good intentions.

Americans will write such nonsense despite the fact that the president and foreign dignitaries are already provided superb protection by the Secret Service. The naïve will not comprehend that the president cannot be endangered by demonstrators at SENS at which the president is not present. For many Americans, the light refuses to turn on.

In Nazi Germany, did no one but Jews have anything to fear from the Gestapo?

By Stalin's time, Lenin and Trotsky had eliminated all members of the "oppressor class," but that did not stop Stalin from sending millions of "enemies of the people" to the Gulag.

It is extremely difficult to hold even local police forces accountable. Who is going to hold accountable a federal police protected by Homeland Security and the president?

Oh great ... (Benj Hellie)

[Cross-posted at For the Record]

... I just can't seem to shake these damn tories!

As you may have heard by now, the Conservative Party just "won" the national election in Canada. In more concrete terms, the CP now holds 124 of the seats in Canada's 308-seat House of Commons, up from 99. The old plurality party, the Liberals, dropped from 135 to 103. The balance of the seats are held by the Bloc Quebecois (51, down from 54), and the New Democratic Party (up from 19 to 29).

Conrad Black's soft right-wing national newspaper National Post -- which published on the op-ed page a few months back (sorry, no link) a big excerpt from a book arguing that Canada is well-behind the US in its spawning of a vast right-wing noise machine, and needs to get on the stick in following Lewis Powell's sage advice (yeah great idea guys) -- is gloating that the victory is "historic", and results from Conservative leader Stephen Harper's "coherent vision for the country" (so far as I can tell, this coherent vision consists of a very large number of policies, some less nannyish, others more nannyish than those favored by the Libs -- track road congestion anyone? how about a 16% tax credit for using transit, or investigate the decline in sockeye salmon, or preserve the National Film Board, or donate $140M to amateur sport? The picture is rapidly coming into focus, and the Post is right, it has the coherence of a photograph of the Parthenon). They also threaten us with the following: "Under the Liberals, it seemed the dream of smaller government grew more distant with every passing year. Thanks to Mr. Harper, it has returned."

Even more terrifying is this:

It's possible, though not likely, that the Conservatives will win an outright majority in Parliament. But even if they don't, and need to form a coalition government, they will have more of a chance to move an agenda than one would expect. As a political consultant explained to me in Washington a few months ago before heading north to work for the Conservatives, the leaders of the Tories' prospective coalition partner, the separatist Bloc Quebecois, are willing to give Harper several years of rule (but expect lots of Tory reforms to exempt Quebec). The Conservative victory will be a real one, and not just for Harper and his party but for Canada, for North America, and for the world.

Stephen Harper has American political consultants working for him? Eeek! Is Canada becoming "America junior", as warned of by a Liberal canvasser trolling for votes in my building's cafeteria, and darkly predicted by Leiter?

There is reason for concern. The Conservatives seem tax-revoltish, and seem to be interested in weakening the national health system by increasing the role of the private sector, and Harper has been exploitatively support-our-troopish about the 650 Canadians "keeping us safe" in Afghanistan.

Still, I'm not ready to freak out yet, for several reasons.

1. Canada has great election laws: TV stations are compelled to give out a designated number of minutes to political parties large and small (including the Marijuana Party, the Christian Heritage Party, the Marxist Leninist Party, the Absolutely Absurd Party, and the Ontario Party of Canada); campaign cash is limited by how much candidates and arties can spend in an election cycle, the number once again designated by a board of impartial wise old sages; a similar board draws electoral boundaries; paper ballots are individually hand-counted in a single, uniform fashion in every precinct of every election (sigh); and big decisions are made by a just machine programmed by fellas with compassion and vision.

2. As the National Post ruefully acknowledges, Harper's is "not a majority mandate, and Mr. Harper will consequently not be entirely his own master. He will need to build a rolling coalition, finding support from different opposition parties for different pieces of legislation." 135 seats is evidently far short of the 154 needed to pass any laws. The Xinhua Daily points out the ramifications of this in stark terms: "Unlike the Liberals, the Conservatives have no traditional allies in the parliament and will have to seek support from political rivals on an issue-by-issue basis". The NDP is a heavily social-democratic party (run by Jack Layton, the member from our "riding" or district -- yay Jack!), so no way will they participate in the dismantling of the social welfare state, and the Libs are furious at the Conservatives for allying with the NDP to undermine their government after a bare two years. So the only hope for the Conservatives is to ally with the Bloc Quebecois. How much can they get away with there? As I understand it, Quebec's strategy, put bluntly, is to threaten to secede unless the federal govt pays them off. So Quebec gets lots of federal money. This comes from oil-rich Alberta, the Conservative Party's stronghold. Albertans want to hold on to "their" money, and want a weaker federal government. Clearly a delicate balancing act will be required. This might be impossible, confirming Steve Gilliard's prediction:

Brian Mulroney served two terms, but other recent Tory PM's have served months. To wit, Joe Clark served nine months and Kim Campbell six months. When she was turned out, she even lost her riding.

If Harper is interested in pushing a conservative agenda and growing closer to the deeply unpopular Bush, with a minority government, he could count the months as well.

3. There may be a good case to be made that the NDP were the real winners of this election. The Conservatives got a mere 36% of the vote, for a mere 40% of the seats (the House of Commons is elected like the US House of Reps rather than proportionally). Leftish parties by contrast got 51% of the vote and hold 42% of the parliament (the BQ making up the remaining seats). The NDP helped to bring down the Libs by allying with the Conservatives over a no-confidence vote -- my sense is that the NDP are a genuine social democratic party, and were successful in moving the Libs to the left over the last two years of Lib minority government; they've had it with a governing party that's a bit too centrist and pro-business for most Canadians, and are eager to take the reins and fight it out with the Libs for control as soon as the Conservatives collapse (for more detail, read this).The NDP picked up 10 seats this election, taking all their additional five seats in BC from the Conservatives, and their additional five seats in Ontario from the Libs (the free weekly I read indicated a big priority was to force the feds to stop ignoring Toronto; my guess is this made the difference here, though I haven't seen detailed results.

4. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Canada does not seem (impressionistically, anyway) to be succumbing to the same sick cultural pathology as the US, as discovered here, analyzed here, and manifested here. So any attempt to engage in the sort of caudillo-style, elites-my-base politics familiar in the US is liable to be met with a powerful shockwave of revulsion.

UPDATE: I overlooked Leiter's post immediately below this -- silly me. I'm pleased to note that my prognosis overlaps at least in broad outline with those of several long-time residents, including professors Hurka and Matthen.

Thoughts from Canadian Readers on the Election Results? (Leiter)

A news item about the election is here.  Comments are open; they may take awhile to appear.  I'd be interested in your thoughts on what it signifies (if anything) and what the future may hold.  Non-anonymous comments will be very strongly preferred.

Against Confirming Judge Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court (Leiter)

There is a strong statement of the case by Geoffrey Stone (Law, Chicago) here, which emphasizes, as we have, the danger Judge Alito poses during a time when legal and constitutional restraints on authoritarian rule are being challenged.

The Yousry Case, or New Perils of Taking Too Long on Your Dissertation (Edmundson)

“Translator’s Conviction Raises Legal Concerns: Trial Transcripts Show Lack of Evidence” (Jan. 16, 2006), by Washington Post staff writers Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia, raises troubling questions about prosecutorial tactics in the war on terror.  The Post writes:

For three years federal agents trailed Mohammed Yousry, a chubby 50-year-old translator and U.S. citizen who worked for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart. Prosecutors wiretapped his phone, and FBI agents shadowed and interviewed him. They read his books and notepads and every file on his computer.

This was their conclusion: “Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist,” prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan.... “Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence.”

Still, the prosecutor persuaded the jury to convict Yousry of supporting terrorism. Yousry now awaits sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman [a/k/a "Sheik Omar," "the Blind Sheik"] to Rahman’s lawyer in Egypt. In June 2000, Stewart released to a reporter a version of the letter, which discussed a cease-fire between Islamic militants and the Egyptian government. Prosecutors said that the lawyer and the translator, by these acts, conspired to use Rahman’s words to incite others to carry out kidnappings and killings. No attack took place.

“Kill who? What are they talking about?” Yousry asked recently as he sat alongside his wife, Sarah, an evangelical Christian, in their modest Connecticut condominium. “The words I'm looking for, it’s insane.”

The Post describes how Yousry became engaged as translator for Rahman’s defense team:

In 1995, Yousry’s translation agency offered him a job with the legal defense team for Rahman, a prominent Egyptian radical who was accused of conspiring to blow up the United Nations building and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels. Yousry struck up a cordial if fractious relationship with Rahman, who speaks little English. “He liked to torture me about drinking and not praying and all that good stuff,” Yousry recalled.

In October 1995, Rahman was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Stewart and former attorney general Ramsey Clark, a courtly Texan with decidedly left-wing politics, set about trying to persuade the United States to transfer Rahman to an Egyptian prison. They asked Yousry to return to the case in 1997.

Yousry declined-–he wanted to write his dissertation and teach.  His adviser, historian Zachary Lockman, suggested a marriage of academics and work. “Knowing that he would have access to the FBI tapes and to Rahman, I suggested a biography of Rahman and his movement,” Lockman said. “I guess I’m responsible in a very sad way for the trouble he’s in.”

Although the conviction of codefendant Lynne Stewart has gotten wide attention (e.g., this Blog, Feb. 16, 2005), the justice of Yousry’s treatment began to come into focus when, a month after the trial, a female juror, “Juror 39,” complained to trial judge John G. Koeltl of hysteria in the jury room.  Some of her fellow jurors “had an agenda,” Juror 39 told The Post.  “People are so fearful that if you disagree with the government on one thing it makes you a terrorist.”  The presiding judge denied motions for a new trial, despite Juror 39's disowning her guilty vote as ''only as a result of the fear and intimidation I was made to feel for my life....Never in my life did I imagine that I could be intimidated or coerced into rendering a verdict against my will, but that is exactly what occurred.”

    Yousry’s conviction, according to The Post, “raises many troubling questions, not least how a court-appointed translator working on instruction from lawyers could be held responsible for navigating complicated and dangerous legal waters.”  Central to the government’s case was an undertaking by Clarke and Stewart to abide by Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that elaborately restricted Rahman's access to media and others inside and outside prison walls.  Although the SAMs restricted defense counsel's use of translators to “legal matters,” the SAMs did not purport to deny Rahman the right to consult privately with counsel, nor did they require counsel to acquiesce in eavesdropping.  Yousry was not a party to the SAMs agreement. 

    Perhaps the most chilling detail revealed by The Post is that

In the spring of 2002, a federal prosecutor suggested Yousry testify if the government indicted Stewart and Clark. This was confirmed by a federal law enforcement source. “They wanted me to entrap Lynne and Ramsey,” Yousry said. “I said no.”

Turning a member of a criminal defense team against a former Attorney General of the United States is high-stakes poker (who could be so bold?).  But failure to become a cooperating witness does not make a case; so what-–besides having the irrepressible Stewart and one of Rahman's henchmen as codefendants-–was the government’s case against Yousry?  It rested upon Yousry's presence in meetings between Stewart and Rahman in which, as revealed by surreptitious videotaping, Stewart tried--by chattering and clattering--to frustrate possible eavesdropping by prison guards.  The Post reports:

“He stuck his head in the sand and deliberately avoided knowing what would have been obvious,” prosecutor Robin Baker told the jury. “We don't need to prove why.”

But, according to The Post, the “Why?” question wasn’t left entirely to the jurors’ imaginations:

Prosecutors [not only] argued that Yousry metaphorically closed his eyes to the bad characters around him. They noted that he padded his résumé and suggested that he addressed Rahman as “spiritual master” to show allegiance; in fact, it’s a common Arabic honorific. Prosecutors speculated that Yousry betrayed the nation in hopes of gaining a Harvard teaching position.

Juror 39 recounted what ensued when the jury retired to deliberate:

“A woman was in tears she was so scared of terrorism....Another kept asking why it took Yousry so long to finish his dissertation, that it was suspicious.”

(The Daily Kos is running a grad-student poll on the question of what taking too long on the dissertation might mean-–click here to participate.)  Yousry and his co-defendants were found guilty on all counts last February.

    The Right has been more attentive to Yousry’s fate than the Left.  The Rightist site The One Republic (Jan. 18, 2006) writes: “Prosecutors were able to show that Yousry was aware that he was helping Stewart break the law [i.e., the SAMs] because he had written about the communications ban the government had imposed in his New York University doctoral thesis.”  --After all, what better place to bury one’s guilty knowledge? 

    Anticipating that The Post story heralds a liberal whitewash, the sweltering New York Sun warns, in “The Case of the Terror Interpreter” (Jan. 17, 2006):

No doubt the [“terror”] interpreter conveys the impression of being a kindly scholar. But it is one of the facts in the kind of twilight war being levied against our country that not everyone is what they seem and danger comes in disguises.

CUNY, where Yousry taught as an adjunct, took no chances, and–-without troubling with academic due process–-summarily dismissed him in the wake of his indictment.  (The full AAUP Report is here.) 

    “Danger comes in disguises,” indeed.

"Leiter Reports" Becomes a Group Blog Starting Today... (Leiter)

...and continuing through the end of May.  More details here.  I've added links to the homepages of the contributors on the left.  Unfortunately, Typepad can only list who posted an item as a footer; to make it easier for readers, each of us will put our last name (or in the case of the Stanley brothers, first initial and last name) in parentheses after the post title. 

I hope readers enjoy this experiment, and I'm grateful to Bill Edmundson, Benj Hellie, Jason Stanley, Marcus Stanley, and Jessica Wilson for agreeing to join me in sharing perspectives, ideas and arguments on matters philosophical, cultural, political, and economic.

Friday Poem: "Bukhara"

Bukhara

Follow the silk road unwinding
To a place of plentiful surprises
Where no one inquires or surmises
In which language you’re declining

Here the click of abacus arises
Near gowns impersonating Madras
Oh do not dare to ask the address
Just don a costume join the fracas

Does it really matter in this riot
If words emerge cacaphonous or tonic
When the world’s rush is supersonic
Only the catatonic long for quiet

Why even Khan’s famous deadly Tower
Dips camellike respecting tourist power
And all that fall amid the crying
Are mere daguerreotypes of dying

The jade rivers overflow tricolored
With cologne to lave on startled lovers
And throat-singers breathlessly catarrhal
Celebrate this life without a moral

Come morning we awaken darkly chastened
And vowing an end to lamentation
Flee to Tashkent or perhaps Bukhara
On bristles of laughter harsh as horror

10/23-12/16/96, 1/31/98
(based on Michael Mewshaw’s 10/26/96
NYTimes travel piece)

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission

Leave it to a Real Texan to Speak the Truth: Molly Ivins Says, "Go Away Hillary!"

Here; an excerpt:

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone....Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her....

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

...

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

Sock it to 'em, Molly!

New On-Line Survey of Graduate Students in Philosophy

Jonathan, whose comments here about poor mentoring of graduate students sparked a lively discussion back in November, has now created an on-line survey in an effort to compile feedback from students on how different programs fare in this regard.  Jonathan, with whom I've corresponded at some length about this, has made a conscientious effort to make this survey fair and informative.  No references to individual faculty, for example, will be permitted, both to avoid legal liability and because the goal of this survey is not to permit score-settling by the disgruntled.  Results will also only be published for programs with a representative response rate.  This strikes me as particularly crucial.  Some may recall that several years ago I tried to elicit this kind of feedback via the Update Service of the PGR.  Two things happened that made the exercise useless:  first, some departments rallied their grad students to send cheer-leading e-mails; and second, most departments had very low response rates, so that there was no way to gauge whether any of the reports were representative.

If this survey is to work, students will have to take it.  Jonathan, as noted, has given this a lot of thought and time, and he has invited me (and a committee of grad students) to review the responses (all of which will be anonymized) before they are made public in an effort to insure that there are not implied personal attacks on anyone.  In the end, I doubt the results will be a substitute for careful, individualized scrutiny of programs by prospective students, but if the response rate is high enough, this will prove a useful resource, and I hope it succeeds.

"The New Fascism"

A sensible exposition of a topic we've visited many times before:

All the parroted recitations of grade school civics cannot erase the fact that a new order is rising. Call it "secret fascism" or "smiley-faced fascism." Call it a quiet dictatorship. Call it what you like, but it is here with us in America today, and it is growing....

The core strength of our new fascism is that it speaks softly. It does not present itself in such an obvious way that those who subsist on the dogmas of our greatness can point and say there, there it is, I see it.

This new fascism is not fed only by lies, though to be sure the lies are there in preposterous abundance. This new fascism is fed by myths, our myths, the myths by which we rock ourselves to sleep. This new fascism is in truth an elemental fascism, reborn today by a confluence of events; the diligent work of the few, in combination with the passivity of the many, have brought forth this new order.

The writer Umberto Eco, in a 1995 essay titled "Ur-Fascism," delineated several core elements that have existed in one form or another in every fascist state in history: "Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader. Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect. The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies. Argument is tantamount to treason. Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state."

Take these one at a time.

"Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader."

George W. Bush has all but gelded Congress in recent months, attaching so-called "signing statements" to a variety of laws, which state that the president may act beyond the laws whenever he so chooses. The United States, fashioned as a republic, has as its voice the congressional body. This is all but finished. To cement his victory over the parliamentary system, Bush has put forth one Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, a man who believes in the ultimate power of the one leader over the many. The gelded congress does not appear able to keep this man from the high court, thus rendering the balancing branches of government into a satellite system of the Executive.

"Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect."

The supremacy of religious fundamentalism within and without government carries this banner before all others. What is reason in the face of the zealot's faith? Science has become a watered-down vessel for Intelligent Design, and the incontrovertible truths of empirical data are slapped aside. Spencer Tracy, in the film "Inherit the Wind," bellows the warning here: "Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, backward, through the glorious ages of that sixteenth century, when bigots burned the man who dared to bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind."

"The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies."

This has been with us for generations now. Our nation defined ourselves through a comparison to the Nazis, to the Imperial Japanese, and then through decades of comparison to Communism. Terrorism has supplanted all of these, hammered into place on a Tuesday in September by the actions of madmen. We are not them, all is justified in the struggle against them, and so we are defined.

"Argument is tantamount to treason."

All one need do to see this in action is spend some hours with the Fox News channel. Freedom fries. Why do you hate America? You are with us or you are with the terrorists. Watch what you say.

"Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear."

The manipulation of this population by fear has been ham-fisted, to be sure, but has also been cruelly effective. We do not want the evidence to be a mushroom cloud. Weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda in Iraq. Nuclear designs in Iran. Plastic sheeting and duct tape. Orange alert. Argument becomes tantamount to treason simply because everyone has been made to feel fear at all times. A frightened populace is easily governed, and governs itself; this lesson was well-learned in the duck-and-cover days of the Cold War. Those lessons have been masterfully applied once again. Today, the citizenry polices itself, and the herd moves as one body. Even the surveillance of innocent citizens by the state is brushed off as a necessary evil. Remember: you are being watched....

We must disenthrall ourselves from the idea that our institutions, our traditions, the barriers that protect us from absolute and authoritarian powers, cannot be broken down. They are being dismantled a brick at a time. The separation of powers has already been annihilated. It is a whispered fascism, not yet marching down your street or pounding upon your door in the dead of night. But it is here, and it is laying deep roots. We must listen beyond the whispered fascism of today to the shouted fascism of tomorrow. We must look beyond the lies and the myths, beyond the dogmas by which we sleep.

The Left2Right Blog Appears to Have...

...come back to life!

A "Culture of Life"

What it really means in America.

Historian of Modern Philosophy Winkler to Visit Yale in 06-07

Kenneth Winkler at Wellesley College, who is best-known for important work on Berkeley and Hume, will be a visiting professor at Yale during 2006-07, at which point he will decide whether to accept the senior offer he has had outstanding from Yale since last year. 

Soames on Hacker on Soames

Soames replies to the latest critique of his history of analytic philosophy in the 20th-century, by Peter Hacker (about whose sometimes curious readings of figures in the tradition we have had occasion to comment previously).  It is quite amusing.  A memorable line (p. 7):  "Concerning Kripke, Hacker's incomprehension is astonishing."  And the conclusion:

Perhaps, as with his criticism of my principles of selection [of philosophers to discuss], and his dismissal of my discussion of the significance of Kripke, he refused to engage with the work, or try to understand its basic premises.  Noting that much of it threatened his own view of material to which he had come to feel a proprietary right, he may simply have decided to reject it, and do what he could to minimize its impact.  If so, then his critique scarcely qualifies as scholarship.

Stich's "Experimental Philosophy" Seminar at Rutgers

The syllabus is on-line here, and provides a handy literature guide to anyone wanting to get up-to-speed on one of the more interesting developments in recent philosophy.

Bias in the Confirmation System: The Case of Judge Alito

Interesting observations by Cass Sunstein (Law, Chicago):

A significant bias is built into the system: Those who know a nominee best, or well, are unlikely to be willing to raise questions in public. I have heard from several friends of Judge Alito who do not want to see him on the Supreme Court, but who like and admire him and will not say a public word against him. The reason for their silence is personal loyalty. For lawyers and law professors generally, there is good reason to be circumspect, especially but not only if you know a nominee well: You might well make an enemy, and a lawyer or law professor doesn't much like having an enemy on the Supreme Court. (It's true that many law professors sign petitions against nominees, but the signatories rarely know the nominee personally, and many potential signatories have refrained from signing on the ground that I'm describing.) The same point holds even more strongly for lower court judges, who can easily support, and uneasily criticize, any presidential nominee. Law clerks have the same bias in even stronger form. I clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was, on many issues, far to my "left"; but even now, long after his death, it's not comfortable to criticize my old boss.

All indications, sad to say, are that Judge Alito will be more like Justice Thomas than like Justice Scalia or the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, especially on the crucial issue of our time, namely, the erosion of the constitutional protections from authoritarian rule.

UPDATE:  Comments by Paul Craig Roberts are also pertinent here:

The Republican interest in strengthening executive power has its origin in agenda frustration from the constraints placed on Republican administrations by Democratic congresses. The thrust to enlarge the President's powers predates the Bush administration but is being furthered to a dangerous extent during Bush's second term. The confirmation of Bush's nominee, Samuel Alito, a member of the Federalist Society, to the Supreme Court will provide five votes in favor of enlarged presidential powers.

President Bush has used "signing statements" hundreds of times to vitiate the meaning of statutes passed by Congress. In effect, Bush is vetoing the bills he signs into law by asserting unilateral authority as commander-in-chief to bypass or set aside the laws he signs. For example, Bush has asserted that he has the power to ignore the McCain amendment against torture, to ignore the law that requires a warrant to spy on Americans, to ignore the prohibition against indefinite detention without charges or trial, and to ignore the Geneva Conventions to which the US is signatory.

In effect, Bush is asserting the powers that accrued to Hitler in 1933. His Federalist Society apologists and Department of Justice appointees claim that President Bush has the same power to interpret the Constitution as the Supreme Court. An Alito Court is likely to agree with this false claim.

This is the great issue that is before the country.

Guggenheim Foundation Biased Against M&E and "Technical" Areas of Philosophy?

Ned Block (Philosophy, NYU) writes:

I just got my copy of the Guggenheim Foundation report for 2004 and was shocked to find that by their own reckoning, they gave NO fellowships to philosophers in 2004.  A closer look at the list reveals that actually they gave one in 2004 to Peter Kivy whom they classified in the field of Literary Criticism!  Their web site shows, ostensibly, 3 awards in 2005 that involved philosophy, one to Eckart Förster on Kant and Hegel, one to Alexander Jones (who is a professor of classics, history and philosophy of science and technology) and one to Gerald Postema on philosophy of law.    Looking back over the last few years, there seems a strong bias against certain central non-historical areas of analytic philosophy. Since 2001: I counted only two that I would categorize in any of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, mind, math, logic or science (and one of those two had a continental and probably historical aspect), even as they regularly give out 2 or 3 in many subfields of history and literature.  For example, in 2004, they gave out 3 in medieval literature plus another in medieval history, 3 in Iberian and Latin American history, 4 in near eastern studies, 2 in American literature, 2 in folklore and popular culture and 4 in history of science and technology. (These listings by fields are in the annual reports sent to former fellows but do not appear to be on the web. But the web does have an annual list for each year from 1925.)  A quick scan of the awards they have given since 1980 suggests a change of policy in the 1990s compared to the 1980s when awards in the areas of philosophy I mentioned were much more numerous as were total awards to philosophers.  I estimate that they gave out 50% more fellowships to philosophers in the 1980s than in the 1990s.  Maybe some of your readers will have some insight into what is going on that will lead to a letter to the Foundation.   The selection committee of 2004 was Neil J. Smelser, Roger D. Abrahams, Lynn A. Hunt, Jack Miles, Peter H. Raven and J. Robert Schrieffer.

An unknown here is how many philosophers have been applying for these awards.  Comments are open for any additional information or insight into what is going on here.  (Remember:  comments may take awhile to appear; please post only once.)

How Morally Insensitive is George Bush?

This gem--courtesy of a White House press release!--gives us some insight.  Here is the alleged President speaking to injured and maimed soldiers (folks without limbs, many disabled for life) who served in Iraq:

As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel.

Ha-ha.

UPDATE:  Ruchira Paul had apt observations on this story last week.

The Continuing Crisis in New Orleans

Some stories I haven't seen elsewhere.

Economist and Philosopher of Economics Hoover from UC Davis to Joint Appointment at Duke

Kevin Hoover, an economist at the University of California at Davis who has also written extensively on issues in the philosophy of economics, has accepted a senior offer from Duke University (to start this fall), where he will be half in Economics and half in Philosophy.  In Philosophy, he will join Alexander Rosenberg, thus solidifying Duke's position as the leading center for work in philosophy of economics in the U.S.

Friday Poem: "Let Nothing In But Art"

Let Nothing In But Art

Let nothing in but art

Ignore the temporal
Daily doings atrophy
The muscle of purpose

Rather than grapple flee
Dart like the doe
Dodge like the eel

Defy encumbrance
Nothing bought is something freed
Density hardens the spirit

Abandon enumeration
Numbers gather like mourners
Records make caskets of our days

Shut the door to dreams

4/94-1/21/95, 2/10/98, 3/15, 3/30/98, 5/27/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

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