And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Ezra Klein says a stupid thing…
…but it’s not the stupid thing that some on the right have accused him of saying.
First, watch the video:
Now, what he didn’t say. He didn’t say the Constitution has no binding power. His statement was in answer to a question about reading the Constitution aloud in Congress; the act of reading has no binding power, according to Klein, and is merely a gimmick—although that does sound rather deprecating, and he probably wishes now he’d kept his mouth shut.
Nor did he say that interpreting the Constitution is “impossible.”
But Klein did say the following stupid thing:
The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago.
Ezra Klein is young. Very young, as I’ve written about at some length here. Why he has been hired by many of the supposed heavy hitters of the MSM as a major political commentator, I’ll never know. His errors are often those of youth, and this case is no exception.
The Constitution is not confusing because it is old. If you don’t believe me, Ezra, ask members of the current Congress to devise a clearer one and see what they’ll come up with in the new 20,000-plus page document that would undoubtedly result.
Legal documents of any length must nearly always be interpreted when they are applied in the real world; that’s one of the main functions of our court system. Longer and more specific is not necessarily better, and older documents at least have accrued a host of common law cases on which to rely when interpretation is necessary.
Klein also implies that interpretation is arbitrary, and each side is merely seeing in the Constitution what it wishes to see. But the Constitution is not merely a blank slate onto which people can project their own wishes. There is a host of evidence of the intent of the original authors, for example. Those who want to expand the reach of the Constitution beyond that are doing something qualitatively different than those who consider themselves contructionists.
It’s not just a difference about what people “want to get done.” It’s usually about wanting to expand the reach of government versus wanting to restrict it. There are powers enumerated to the federal government in the Constitution, and one might say that the disagreement is about extending and expanding those powers because people on the left want to “get things done,” and keeping limits on those powers because people on the right believe that’s just the sort of tyranny the founders wisely wanted to prevent by writing the Constitution and limiting those powers in the first place.
Still a Diva
The results of the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Contest have been announced, and they’re not too shabby after all. Due to complexities too complex to describe here, Robin of Berkeley is Diva and there were two regents named this year, myself and Clarice Feldman. So I retain my title.
Couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks!
And Happy New Year! Have you kept your resolutions?
At the retro concert
I’d never been to one before—you know, one of those concerts that specializes in 60s music. And I probably wouldn’t have gone to this one had it not been free.
But there I was, standing because all the seats were already taken. As I waited for the music to begin, I looked around at the sea of people in the audience. There were some young ones, to be sure, but it was mostly a motley crew of gray-haired or balding and generally-gone-to-seed boomers ready to rock and roll.
Soon the crowd was bouncing around to the music, and singing because we all knew the words. The most active were my fellow standees. A heavyset woman next to me had all the moves of the go-go dancers on Shindig and Hullaballo, a genre I hadn’t thought of in many a long year. She was doing some amalgam of the twist, the frug, the jerk, the mashed potato, and the monkey, complete with saucy head tosses. Don’t ask me to explain, but somehow it all worked.
As I gazed at the crowd, particularly some couples dancing together and smooching a bit, I suddenly pictured these same people, forty-odd years earlier, at a rock concert of ages past. Young, slim, long hair restored to its original vibrant colors, faces unlined and glowing with hope and/or drugs—there they were, the young boomers of the 60s, with their lives all ahead of them and sure to be just wonderful.
Well, they’re still dancin’, anyway; if not in the streets, then in the seats:
The war against Middle Eastern Christians…
No surprise who’s behind it:
Tensions have been running high between Egypt’s Muslim majority and minority Christians.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in November that 10 Coptic Christian homes and several businesses were burned and looted in Qena province in southern Egypt following rumors of a romantic relationship between a Christian man and Muslim woman. Security officials imposed a curfew and arrested several Muslims, the commission said.
This appears to be an escalation of that conflict. The Christians of Egypt (an ancient denominiation known as Copts) were specifically targeted in a statement by an al Qaeda affiliate with strong Iraqi ties back in October, and security for Copt churches was beefed up after that. But not enough; it can probably never be enough.
Egypt’s president Mubarak denounced the present attack as one on Egypt by foreign elements, and perhaps this is so. It wouldn’t be the first time, either. He said:
This sinful act is part of a series of efforts to drive a wedge between Copts and Muslims…It was a terrorist operation which carries, within itself, the hallmark of foreign hands which want to turn Egypt into another scene of terrorism like elsewhere in the region and the wider world.
Terrorism is a tool with a great many purposes. There is the simple joy of destruction, the rejoicing in the death of enemies. With suicide attacks—and it is thought this was one—there is also the supposed reward of martyrdom. There is the sowing of fear among the targeted population. There is the need for authorities to spend increased, expensive, and difficult time and effort to thwart future attacks. There is the inconvenience to the rest of the population as these measures impact their lives. There is the terrorist hope of a repressive countermove by the government that will further enrage Muslims and cause more to support the terrorists. And lastly there is the desire to provoke a backlash from the population to increase conflict and bloodshed between the two groups.
And all for the price of a bomb and a couple of willing terrorist lives lost.
Memo to David Corn
I do not think the word “hate” means what you think it means.
It’s Grande Conservative Blogress Diva time again
Please help me defend my title and vote early, vote often.
[NOTE: Bumped up. Last day! Don’t give up—there’s still time to pull it out.]
Happy New Year!
Here it comes again, the day it’s obligatory to have a rollicking good time.
Why, I’m not so sure. Perhaps because the passage of the years can be depressing, especially after the age of forty or so. Or perhaps it’s because we have to learn to write a different number on our checks, just when we’ve finally gotten used to the old one.
And then there’s the drinking. In previous years, I offered this hangover recipe for the day after, even though I (she says smugly) don’t really drink.
As for tonight, I’m planning to journey to one of those towns that has decided to ignore the fact that New Years Eve occurs in winter, and that the venue is New England, and so it’s usually so cold that no one wants to go anywhere. But go we do, to a place where the local kidees show off their talents, and the local musicians and actors and clowns and what-have-yous do the same, only less cutely.
I remember one memorable New Years Eve of -5 degrees and not inconsiderable wind; whatever was I thinking going out? This year the forecast is not nearly that bad. I’ll go out, I’ll walk around, I’ll see some folks, I’ll come back in. Sounds like a plan.
And then there are the resolutions. This year I’ve fastened on a single one: to go to bed earlier. But just cause there’s only one doesn’t mean I’ll have any less trouble keeping it. I’ve always been a tremendous nightowl, and being a blogger hasn’t helped me any in my (admittedly weak) efforts to change my nightowl proclivities.
And a very HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you!
Maine wants an exemption from provision of health care law
The state of Maine has requested that it be exempted from that portion of Obamacare, about to go into effect soon, which dictates that “insurers must devote at least 80 percent of the premiums they collect to medical claims or other activities that improve customers’ health – leaving no more than 20 percent for the insurer’s administrative costs or profits.”
Maine (and a host of other states who haven’t yet made the same formal request) is afraid that the provision would make it so difficult for insurers in the risky individual market to keep going financially that the companies will abandon that market. Thus, the request for the waiver.
Isn’t it odd how so many things that those mean old avaricious old greedy old insurance companies were doing were just good monetary policy, necessary for them to stay afloat? That individual insurance has become the last refuge of those who are more ill and use more health care resources than others, and that’s why it’s more expensive? That government high risk pools can only work out if everyone, especially the young and healthy, is forced to buy insurance to help the others?
In other words, that there is no free lunch. Fancy that.
Much better to ignore that fact, though, and pretend that mathematics has been suspended for the purpose of feeling a warm glow about how kind we are to the poor and sick, whether or not we’ve actually taken the trouble to think about the inherent problems involved in so doing. If we faced reality for a change, we might even be able to devise a better system, although it might end up involving less government involvement rather than more.
Krauthammer and I agree
Obama knows he has only so many years to change the country. In his first two, he achieved much: the first stimulus, Obamacare and financial regulation. For the next two, however, the Republican House will prevent any repetition of that. Obama’s agenda will therefore have to be advanced by the more subterranean means of rule-by-regulation.
But this must simultaneously be mixed with ostentatious displays of legislative bipartisanship (e.g., the lame-duck tax-cut deal) in order to pull off the (apparent) centrist repositioning required for reelection. This, in turn, would grant Obama four more years when, freed from the need for pretense, he can reassert himself ideologically and complete the social-democratic transformation – begun Jan. 20, 2009; derailed Nov. 2, 2010 – that is the mission of his presidency.
And here I am, on November 7, right after the election:
[A possibility for the next two years] is that Obama actually will move towards the middle, in deed as in word. But it will be a temporary feint, a move made to convince doubters that he’s gotten the message and changed his ways.
It need only be until the next election. If Obama can moderate himself enough to be able to point to a few small but real compromises with the Republicans, he won’t be losing much and he’ll be gaining a lot. The American people are a generally genial and forgiving (not to say trusting) lot, predisposed to like him, and by then he may indeed have rehabilitated himself in the eyes of enough voters that he will win his bid for re-election and even increase the Democrats’ Congressional representation.
And then, and then””voila! Four more years! Four years in which he won’t have to answer to the electorate at all. He will be unleashed to do whatever it is he really wants. And does anyone think that would look moderate at all?
Want a Chevy Volt?
If you do, be prepared to pay a $41,000 sticker price (you’ll get a $7,500 tax credit) for a blah sedan that can go about 50 miles on batteries if you charge it overnight, or can use conventional fuel.
How much money you save in gas costs depends on how long your trips are and how expensive your electricity is. But the car’s not primarily about savings (with a price like that, most people will never recoup their initial extra outlay), it’s about self-righteousness. My sentiments are with commenter “Lincoltf” at Althouse:
Who would’ve ever thought that the AGW cult would’ve thrown their lot behind a coal-powered car? Or maybe they’re all too stupid to realize where all that magical electricity comes from?
Nah, that couldn’t be it. They’re all wicked smart, just ask them.
The phrase “wickd smart” marks Lincolntf as a likely New Englander, although properly pronounced it’s “wicked smaaht.” Case in point (stay with it till the last line):
Of course, Damon himself is another case of “wicked smaaht” being awful dumb sometimes.
Gee. All roads seem to lead to Sarah Palin, even when you start out driving a Chevy Volt.
Obama’s interim appointment: Cole to Justice Department
There’s a big hue and cry over Obama’s interim appointment of James Cole as Deputy Attorney General. It’s a controversial pick, and the use of the interim method to bypass Congress is obviously a strategic gambit to get him in there without the legislative battle that would otherwise inevitably occur.
Should we be shocked, or even surprised? No. Obama is not alone among presidents in using such ploys to get around the opposition; he’s merely more blatant about it, as well as more inclined to avoid Congress through executive orders and czars and the like.
The main objections to Cole’s appointment appear to be (a) his function as independent monitor of AIG from 2005-2009, the years when the company was making the risky decisions that ultimately led to a mega-crisis; and (b) his position on trials for terrorists, which is that it is a criminal matter for the civilian justice system.
I’d have to know more about exactly what Cole was hired to do regarding AIG, and whether he could have been expected to uncover the problems there, before I would condemn him for that association. The best information I’ve been able to uncover is this article, where it says he was responsible for monitoring AIG’s “regulatory compliance, financial reporting, whistle-blower protection and employee retention policies.” It’s not immediately apparent to me whether, given that mandate, he should have been able to uncover the rot—especially since the problems in virtually all the companies trading the shaky credit instruments that eventually brought the whole edifice crashing down seemed to elude everyone charged with regulating the industry. I’d like to hear why Cole should be singled out for special condemnation for failing to uncover what nobody else seemed able to uncover.
Then there’s his stance on terror suspects and civilian trials. I find it stupid and reprehensible, but that hardly differentiates him from Holder, his boss at Justice—or, for that matter, from the president himself. His position appears identical to the position of the Obama administration, and even if by some miracle someone opposed to it were to be nominated, the policy (and rot) begins at the top and nothing would change.
So, although I agree that interim appointments of controversial figures should be opposed, I can’t quite understand why this particular pick is so much more of a problem than many of Obama’s other nominees. The problem is the Obama administration itself, which will continue its attempts to name people simpatico to its philosophies any way it can until it is voted out in 2012, or until it finishes its second term in 2016.
What can be done? Jennifer Rubin points out that the Republican caucus could inform Obama that it will refuse to confirm any future nominations unless he promises to stop making recess appointments. I don’t see this particular group of Republicans doing that, however. It would be a declaration of war over something that isn’t necessarily worth it, and would leave them open to charges of obstructionism while Obama could wave the “I’m a bipartisan” banner and criticize them for it.
The next Congress will need to choose its battles well. Make no mistake; there will be plenty of them.