Once again, it's not Obama being critical of Fox that is the problem. He can be critical of Fox if he wants. I daresay he probably should be critical of Fox; I am critical of Fox. To understand the point, you should stop looking at Fox and saying "I don't like Fox because [x]." Fox is not the issue. Like it or not, Fox is a major outlet for reporting the news and whatever objective criteria exist for deciding what a "news organization" is, Fox meets them. Therefore, while performing an official activity, the President and his aides should* not engage in viewpoint discrimination against Fox or anyone else. They should* do the government's business in as evenhanded and fair a manner as they can -- because the President is the President of all the people, not just the President of the people who watch MSNBC.
* Note my use of the normative rather than the imperative.
The governmental interference with freedom of speech is quite obvious to me:
"Fox News, we don't like how you report the news. Specifically, we don't like the viewpoint that you blend in to your reporting of the news. Therefore, we will punish your opinion by denying you access to public officers -- access which we do grant to those of your competitors who report the news in a manner which we deem acceptable, and which we deny to you despite the fact that you meet all of our pre-published criteria for what it would otherwise take to get that access.
"By the way, all of you non-Fox reporters in the press pool, this can happen to you, too, so if you want to continue having access to policymakers and interviews, you'd be well-advised to continue to toe the line and report about what the Administration is doing in a favorable way."
That's not just a "chilling effect." It's the White House dictating the editorial slant of the press (or attempting to do so) by selectively rewarding and punishing particular viewpoints. I withheld objection when White House staffers merely criticized Fox News. But when official governmental benefits (like press access to policymakers) get dispensed or withheld openly based on sucking up to or criticizing the President, a line has been crossed.
It does not matter if this effort is successful -- it shouldn't even be attempted in the first place.
What we're seeing is not a rebuke of Obama, it's a rebuke of the Nobels. The awards given to genuine heroes like Lech Walesa are now demonstrated (again, in my opinion) to have less meaning than the pomp and circumstance in which they were given. I agree that many of the right-wing kool-aid drinkers can't make that distinction, so bad on them.
Obama's test will come in a few hours when he reacts to the award at a press conference.
Bob, I think you're being sarcastic, but in case you aren't -- there are values other than loyalty and no, loyalty wasn't the target of my attack. The lack of ideas for that loyalty to advance was.
Lev, what you're seeing is the substitution of tactics and loyalty for principles and ideas. It is the last refuge of a group of people who have worked very hard for twenty years to first get a place at the political table, and then worked hard to take the chairmanship of that table, but along the way ran out of politically viable policy ideas for what to do once they got into that position of power. In fact, it is quite sad and to the detriment of the country that this is the situation.
All Green Bay really needed was better RB rotation and a stronger right tackle and it would have dominated -- Urlacher or no Urlacher. As it was, the O-line gave up too much to Chicago's defense and that's what made Rodgers' call with less than eighty seconds left in the game such a call for the mass sucking in breath responsible for last night's sudden drop in air pressure extending from Superior, WI to Cairo, IL.
Collinsworth, however, failed to impress -- at least during this game.
I recommend The Baroque Cycle in the strongest possible terms. Yes, it seems intimidatingly long but didn't Cryptonomicon seem that way at first, too? Its intellectualism is more subtle than what you came across in Anathem, at least until the final book, but that is sometimes a good thing.
Because they're worth paying for, and you should pay for them. My dead-trees-and-ink subscription to The Atlantic is about out but I'm now getting it on my Kindle. Worth every penny.
First off, I totally agree with other commenters on the use of strip clubs. If someone really really has to see nekkid wimmins, he can go buy a magazine or watch a DVD on his own time. Your bachelor sounds like he's pretty much over that, and the party is about him, after all.
For my own BP, my best man got us good seats to a baseball game in the afternoon (in your case, you'd have to go see the Nats, who have day games on Sunday August 23 against Milwaukee, Sunday September 6 against Florida and Saturday September 26 against Atlanta), followed by an indulgent steakhouse dinner (in your case, I'd suggest the Palm -- but when I've been in DC in the past, I noticed no shortage of places for heavy indulgent dinners so I'm sure you can find a suitable place to the bachelor's liking).
When the shock of ingesting 4,000 calories over six hours and consuming "a little too much" alcohol along the way proved to be not enough partying for some, we went to a cigar bar for martinis and stogies.
I pick the ability to download knowledge and skills directly into my brain on an as-needed basis, the way an iPod downloads music or a Kindle downloads a book. When getting into a scrape, I could say, "Whoa. I know kung fu," and it wouldn't be ironic.
A money cheat key for life would be good, too. As long as only I had it, so as to avoid the inflationary side-effects of the rest of you having one, too.
Frankly, I do think it's a coincidence. Iran and Hezbollah were successful while Clinton was President; they did not need a Republican in the White House to use as a bogeyman. Whatever the virtues or drawbacks of a purportedly "realist liberal" U.S. Administration, it must be the case that leadership groups in Iran and Hezbollah have their own dynamics and their own politics.
If you are recently divorced, or going through a divorce, please: do the world a favor and leave your “marriage is a sham” testimonial to yourself.
Excellent advice for overrated social trend columnists in The Atlantic. But maybe not so good advice for songwriters and other artists who actually have talent. Painful divorces and breakups have been fertilizer for some of the best and most moving music and poetry yet written. It's probably no consolation for the pain, but a benefit to the rest of us.
Chris -- this is why the memos are so pernicious. A non-lawyer (or even a lawyer who does not take the time to read the memos critically) would not be able to tell the difference between them and a real, defensible legal opinion indicating that the torture was legally permitted. In effect, the CIA asked the Justice Department, "Hey, we want to waterboard this guy, can we do it?" and the Justice Department said, "Yeah, go ahead, just not too much and only in Cuba!" Qualified immunity comes in to play because the CIA interrogators are entitled to rely on that advice, even if the advice later turns out to be wrong.
Thanks for the reference, Mark; I'd not done the research yet. I notice that the definition in 18 USC 2340(A)(a) only applies to acts taking place "outside the United States", but we're talking about Guantanamo Bay here, so everything in the realm of this discussion would be extraterritorial.
Cascadian, if U.S. law is sufficient to prosecute a U.S. citizen, then we should use our own law and do the prosecution and punishment ourselves. We need to keep our own house clean, rather than relying on someone else to do it for us -- if for no other reason than the imperative to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we can be trusted to pursue justice.
Nadezhda, and others -- what statute or common-law criminal charge might these guys actually be guilty of? Lèse majesté is not a crime, nor should it be one. Treason is a crime, but while I find their actions morally odious, it doesn't look like treason to me; these fellows obviously didn't have the intent to provide aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.
The best I can come up with is aiding and abetting, and conspiring to commit, aggravated assault. That is a relatively mild charge, although it would be a felony of moral turpitude in this case, so a conviction would potentially strip them of their licenses and that's not a small deal at all.
For the record, Roque's post suggests that I wrote the following:
The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.
It's a very good point, and I wish I had written it. But I didn't write it, so I can't take credit for it.
Matako, while I agree with you that sexual orientation is not a choice, other people would disagree with us. There is also a distinction between sexual orientation and behavior. Finally, some people insist that their religious beliefs are not something over which have conscious control. (Could you really change your religious beliefs just to get into a better school? If so, you probably never took them very seriously to begin with.)
Respecting civil liberties means giving people breathing room to think, say, and do things that you dislike. These girls are the victims of bigots. It kind of sucks, but at some point, bigots have a right to their keep and act upon their bigoted beliefs. I hope you'd agree that they have the rights to be bigots in their own homes. I would agree that they do not have the right to be bigots when hiring and firing employees. Somewhere in between is a gray area, and this case falls into that third category.
I respect your position and the moral force behind it. But I disagree with your conclusion.
But should a religious school be able to discriminate against non-religionists? In this case, it was a Lutheran school, and it charged higher tuition to non-Lutherans who attended. Can't a Catholic school legitimately say, "This school is for Catholics," and exclude non-Catholics?
What you're saying is that if a Catholic school did that, it ought to be subject to a lawsuit and a court order requiring that the school admit a non-Catholic student. Is that correct, or is there some principled way you can distinguish between religion on the one hand and race on the other, and find perceived sexual orientation to be more similar to race than religion?
I couldn't agree more that what the school did is morally reprehensible. But the problem is that within the scope of the law is it is written today, it was within its rights to act as it did. A public school is a different story entirely. But we're not talking about a public school here. (Nor are we talking about adults, which means we have to take the rights and preferences of the parents into account, too; they sent their girls to this school for a reason.)
Freddie, you are suggesting that we alter the law so that a private school would not be able to (legally) expel these girls. That means that society as a whole is telling a private school that it cannot decide who it will or will not educate, and that goes a little further than I would be prepared to in terms of balancing a law that actively polices against discrimination (which I generally applaud) and some basic freedoms that I'm not prepared to dispense with (even if some people use those freedoms to do things I object to).
I also take issue with your implication that these girls will not get their degrees. They will have to go to a different school but there is little reason to think that because they were expelled from one private school that they cannot go to a different school later. At worst, they will have to go to a public school. Stipulated that this is a setback to their educations, but it is hardly a fatal one.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Obama Administration and the Bill of Rights”
Once again, it's not Obama being critical of Fox that is the problem. He can be critical of Fox if he wants. I daresay he probably should be critical of Fox; I am critical of Fox. To understand the point, you should stop looking at Fox and saying "I don't like Fox because [x]." Fox is not the issue. Like it or not, Fox is a major outlet for reporting the news and whatever objective criteria exist for deciding what a "news organization" is, Fox meets them. Therefore, while performing an official activity, the President and his aides should* not engage in viewpoint discrimination against Fox or anyone else. They should* do the government's business in as evenhanded and fair a manner as they can -- because the President is the President of all the people, not just the President of the people who watch MSNBC.
* Note my use of the normative rather than the imperative.
On “The President’s War on Fox”
The governmental interference with freedom of speech is quite obvious to me:
"Fox News, we don't like how you report the news. Specifically, we don't like the viewpoint that you blend in to your reporting of the news. Therefore, we will punish your opinion by denying you access to public officers -- access which we do grant to those of your competitors who report the news in a manner which we deem acceptable, and which we deny to you despite the fact that you meet all of our pre-published criteria for what it would otherwise take to get that access.
"By the way, all of you non-Fox reporters in the press pool, this can happen to you, too, so if you want to continue having access to policymakers and interviews, you'd be well-advised to continue to toe the line and report about what the Administration is doing in a favorable way."
That's not just a "chilling effect." It's the White House dictating the editorial slant of the press (or attempting to do so) by selectively rewarding and punishing particular viewpoints. I withheld objection when White House staffers merely criticized Fox News. But when official governmental benefits (like press access to policymakers) get dispensed or withheld openly based on sucking up to or criticizing the President, a line has been crossed.
It does not matter if this effort is successful -- it shouldn't even be attempted in the first place.
On “Nobel Committee gives gift to our shallow culture”
What we're seeing is not a rebuke of Obama, it's a rebuke of the Nobels. The awards given to genuine heroes like Lech Walesa are now demonstrated (again, in my opinion) to have less meaning than the pomp and circumstance in which they were given. I agree that many of the right-wing kool-aid drinkers can't make that distinction, so bad on them.
Obama's test will come in a few hours when he reacts to the award at a press conference.
On “the last fiscal conservative”
Bob, I think you're being sarcastic, but in case you aren't -- there are values other than loyalty and no, loyalty wasn't the target of my attack. The lack of ideas for that loyalty to advance was.
"
Lev, what you're seeing is the substitution of tactics and loyalty for principles and ideas. It is the last refuge of a group of people who have worked very hard for twenty years to first get a place at the political table, and then worked hard to take the chairmanship of that table, but along the way ran out of politically viable policy ideas for what to do once they got into that position of power. In fact, it is quite sad and to the detriment of the country that this is the situation.
On “Seriously?”
Dude, you just won the entire internet.
On “I think the best part about the Bears-Packers game . . .”
All Green Bay really needed was better RB rotation and a stronger right tackle and it would have dominated -- Urlacher or no Urlacher. As it was, the O-line gave up too much to Chicago's defense and that's what made Rodgers' call with less than eighty seconds left in the game such a call for the mass sucking in breath responsible for last night's sudden drop in air pressure extending from Superior, WI to Cairo, IL.
Collinsworth, however, failed to impress -- at least during this game.
On “Late to the party: Anathem edition.”
I recommend The Baroque Cycle in the strongest possible terms. Yes, it seems intimidatingly long but didn't Cryptonomicon seem that way at first, too? Its intellectualism is more subtle than what you came across in Anathem, at least until the final book, but that is sometimes a good thing.
On “I’m thinking of subscribing to a magazine . . .”
Because they're worth paying for, and you should pay for them. My dead-trees-and-ink subscription to The Atlantic is about out but I'm now getting it on my Kindle. Worth every penny.
On “Bachelor Party Bleg”
First off, I totally agree with other commenters on the use of strip clubs. If someone really really has to see nekkid wimmins, he can go buy a magazine or watch a DVD on his own time. Your bachelor sounds like he's pretty much over that, and the party is about him, after all.
For my own BP, my best man got us good seats to a baseball game in the afternoon (in your case, you'd have to go see the Nats, who have day games on Sunday August 23 against Milwaukee, Sunday September 6 against Florida and Saturday September 26 against Atlanta), followed by an indulgent steakhouse dinner (in your case, I'd suggest the Palm -- but when I've been in DC in the past, I noticed no shortage of places for heavy indulgent dinners so I'm sure you can find a suitable place to the bachelor's liking).
When the shock of ingesting 4,000 calories over six hours and consuming "a little too much" alcohol along the way proved to be not enough partying for some, we went to a cigar bar for martinis and stogies.
On “name your superpower”
I pick the ability to download knowledge and skills directly into my brain on an as-needed basis, the way an iPod downloads music or a Kindle downloads a book. When getting into a scrape, I could say, "Whoa. I know kung fu," and it wouldn't be ironic.
A money cheat key for life would be good, too. As long as only I had it, so as to avoid the inflationary side-effects of the rest of you having one, too.
On “a quote for a sunny summer day”
Frankly, I do think it's a coincidence. Iran and Hezbollah were successful while Clinton was President; they did not need a Republican in the White House to use as a bogeyman. Whatever the virtues or drawbacks of a purportedly "realist liberal" U.S. Administration, it must be the case that leadership groups in Iran and Hezbollah have their own dynamics and their own politics.
On “Let Me Love– Til Death Do Us Part”
If you are recently divorced, or going through a divorce, please: do the world a favor and leave your “marriage is a sham” testimonial to yourself.
Excellent advice for overrated social trend columnists in The Atlantic. But maybe not so good advice for songwriters and other artists who actually have talent. Painful divorces and breakups have been fertilizer for some of the best and most moving music and poetry yet written. It's probably no consolation for the pain, but a benefit to the rest of us.
On “Why I’m Conflicted on Torture Prosecutions”
Chris -- this is why the memos are so pernicious. A non-lawyer (or even a lawyer who does not take the time to read the memos critically) would not be able to tell the difference between them and a real, defensible legal opinion indicating that the torture was legally permitted. In effect, the CIA asked the Justice Department, "Hey, we want to waterboard this guy, can we do it?" and the Justice Department said, "Yeah, go ahead, just not too much and only in Cuba!" Qualified immunity comes in to play because the CIA interrogators are entitled to rely on that advice, even if the advice later turns out to be wrong.
"
Thanks for the reference, Mark; I'd not done the research yet. I notice that the definition in 18 USC 2340(A)(a) only applies to acts taking place "outside the United States", but we're talking about Guantanamo Bay here, so everything in the realm of this discussion would be extraterritorial.
Cascadian, if U.S. law is sufficient to prosecute a U.S. citizen, then we should use our own law and do the prosecution and punishment ourselves. We need to keep our own house clean, rather than relying on someone else to do it for us -- if for no other reason than the imperative to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we can be trusted to pursue justice.
"
Nadezhda, and others -- what statute or common-law criminal charge might these guys actually be guilty of? Lèse majesté is not a crime, nor should it be one. Treason is a crime, but while I find their actions morally odious, it doesn't look like treason to me; these fellows obviously didn't have the intent to provide aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.
The best I can come up with is aiding and abetting, and conspiring to commit, aggravated assault. That is a relatively mild charge, although it would be a felony of moral turpitude in this case, so a conviction would potentially strip them of their licenses and that's not a small deal at all.
"
For the record, Roque's post suggests that I wrote the following:
It's a very good point, and I wish I had written it. But I didn't write it, so I can't take credit for it.
On “pragmatics first”
Matako, while I agree with you that sexual orientation is not a choice, other people would disagree with us. There is also a distinction between sexual orientation and behavior. Finally, some people insist that their religious beliefs are not something over which have conscious control. (Could you really change your religious beliefs just to get into a better school? If so, you probably never took them very seriously to begin with.)
Respecting civil liberties means giving people breathing room to think, say, and do things that you dislike. These girls are the victims of bigots. It kind of sucks, but at some point, bigots have a right to their keep and act upon their bigoted beliefs. I hope you'd agree that they have the rights to be bigots in their own homes. I would agree that they do not have the right to be bigots when hiring and firing employees. Somewhere in between is a gray area, and this case falls into that third category.
I respect your position and the moral force behind it. But I disagree with your conclusion.
"
I get the argument about racial segregation.
But should a religious school be able to discriminate against non-religionists? In this case, it was a Lutheran school, and it charged higher tuition to non-Lutherans who attended. Can't a Catholic school legitimately say, "This school is for Catholics," and exclude non-Catholics?
What you're saying is that if a Catholic school did that, it ought to be subject to a lawsuit and a court order requiring that the school admit a non-Catholic student. Is that correct, or is there some principled way you can distinguish between religion on the one hand and race on the other, and find perceived sexual orientation to be more similar to race than religion?
"
I couldn't agree more that what the school did is morally reprehensible. But the problem is that within the scope of the law is it is written today, it was within its rights to act as it did. A public school is a different story entirely. But we're not talking about a public school here. (Nor are we talking about adults, which means we have to take the rights and preferences of the parents into account, too; they sent their girls to this school for a reason.)
Freddie, you are suggesting that we alter the law so that a private school would not be able to (legally) expel these girls. That means that society as a whole is telling a private school that it cannot decide who it will or will not educate, and that goes a little further than I would be prepared to in terms of balancing a law that actively polices against discrimination (which I generally applaud) and some basic freedoms that I'm not prepared to dispense with (even if some people use those freedoms to do things I object to).
I also take issue with your implication that these girls will not get their degrees. They will have to go to a different school but there is little reason to think that because they were expelled from one private school that they cannot go to a different school later. At worst, they will have to go to a public school. Stipulated that this is a setback to their educations, but it is hardly a fatal one.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.