The situation in Iraq has been evolving, and U.S. forces have adjusted, over time, from major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence.

In my view it is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.

This memo is, frankly, strange. A wide assortment of contradictory options are sort of spread about without any apparent preference or analysis. Do we really make strategic decisions this way? Or was this memo created for public disclosure. Bush could very well pin this to a dart board.

Rumsfeld’s Memo of Options for Iraq War

Even beyond these affiliations, Justice Scalia’s flamethrowing rhetoric and his hostility to whole chapters of 20th-century jurisprudence have made him a conservative icon and a favorite face on liberal dart boards.

Thats because partisanship is stupid. Scalia's position, generally speaking, is that the Constitution means what it says. When it says freedom of speech it means it. When it doesn't say anything at all about abortion, it doesn't say anything at all about abortion. His position is that if you want to protect something like abortion, you ought to amend the Constitution. As the Constitutional jurisprudence pendellum has swung quite far to the left, in general his perspective ends up meaning that the Constitution protects less rights than we think it does. The result is that authoritarians are happy and liberals are unhappy. But this isn't actually Scalia's goal. Scalia imagines a world in which loose interpretation of the Constitution is employed by authoritarians in the way that it is employed today by liberals. Take the arguements that are made by the left about the second amendment and apply them to the first... "Back in those days you didn't have the Internet (nuclear weapons), you just had pamphlets (muskets)... Allowing people to freely run websites (own nuclear weapons) is crazy, so the Constitution must mean something else... its a vestige of a different time..." This is the future he is trying to fight. He doesn't per say argue that homosexuality ought to be illegal. He argues that if you want to protect it as a constitutional right, you ought to do so with an amendment, which has teeth, rather than a judicial interpretation, which doesn't.

The problem is that the only reason he is allowed to make these arguments in that place is that the authoritarians find him useful. They're not interested in philosophy, and law is not merely a technical pursuit. It is inherently political, and frankly the politics this country most needs is a return to a healthy distrust of authority. I'd trust not the soccer mom Democrats nor the moralizing Republicans nor even the "me first" Libertarians with the task of properly unfucking the Constitution so that the values we actually have are really represented in the text.

Scalia the Civil Libertarian? - New York Times

Stratfor provides an observation on the draft which they think no one will ever accept, but from a sociological standpoint I would not be the least bit suprised to see an active draft of adult GenXers 10 years from now. But unless the circumstances were dire I would oppose it.

To me, I think the deal with the draft is that if you can't get people to volunteer to sign up for the fight, you're fighting the wrong war. Its not about social equity. Its about the right of people to make their own choices about their lives. In WWII everyone was ready to serve. They had a draft for technical reasons but no one was bitching about non-volunteer soldiers having poor morale. Vietnam, on the other hand, was the wrong war.

Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report - November 21, 2006

A Fresh Look at the Draft

By George Friedman

New York Democrat Charles Rangel, the new chairman of the House
Armed Services Committee, has called for the reinstatement of the
draft. This is not new for him; he has argued for it for several
years. Nor does Rangel -- or anyone else -- expect a proposal for
conscription to pass. However, whether this is political posturing
or a sincere attempt to start a conversation about America's
military, Rangel is making an important point that should be
considered. This is doubly true at a time when future strategies
are being considered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the available
force is being strained to its limits.

The United States has practiced conscription in all major wars
since the Civil War. During the Cold War, the United States
practiced conscription continually, using it to fight both the
Korean and Vietnam wars, but also to maintain the peacetime army.
Conscription ended in 1973 as the U.S. role in Vietnam declined and
as political opposition to the draft surged. From that point on,
the United States shifted to a volunteer force.

Rangel's core criticism of the volunteer force is social. He argues
that the burden of manning the military and fighting the war has
fallen, both during Vietnam War conscription and in the volunteer
army, for different reasons, on the lower and middle-lower classes.
Apart from other arguments -- such as the view that if the rich
were being drafted, the Vietnam and Iraq wars would have ended
sooner -- Rangel's essential point is that the way the United
States has manned the military since World War II is inherently
unjust. It puts the lower classes at risk in fighting wars, leaving
the upper classes free to pursue their lives and careers.

The problem with this argument is not the moral point, which is
that the burden of national defense should be borne by all classes,
but rather the argument that a draft would be more equitable.
Rangel's view of the military and the draft was shaped by Vietnam
-- and during Vietnam, t... [ Read More (1.8k in body) ]

Curling also said that society needed to learn to be more forgiving of past mistakes that come to light through background checks, but said that companies are afraid of hiring people with any spot on their record due to the threat of civil litigation.

That's a fine sentiment, and ChoicePoint is clearly hoping that the first one that gets to be forgiven for its past mistakes is itself. As for the Joes and Janes of the world who might have shoplifted or passed a bad check and can't get a job now, Curling suggested Tuesday that their forgiveness will have to wait for either litigation reform or a really tight job market.

This is so fucked up. I don't know what else to say.

Companies that buy this data and refuse to employ or do business with people who have some poc mark in their past claim they have to do this in order to avoid liability. Of course, liability can only exist because the data is available and so failure to access it could be considered negligent. The data is available because Choicepoint makes it available. Choicepoint could refuse to sell data that is more than 5 or 10 years old, because unethical, but they don't, because its profitable, because of the liability, which is created by the fact that they sell it. Now they claim that they wish people were more forgiving, in the same breath that they ask forgivness for their own fuckups. How these people sleep with this tangle of contradictions is extremely hard for me to understand.

Litigation reform? Actual litigation is not required before lawyers will act skitish. Why don't we just make it illegal to traffic in this information? Oh, I forgot, they're funding Senators.

27B Stroke 6 | ChoicePoint's Comeback Tour

The ACLU fights just as hard for INDIVIDUAL free exercise of religion as the ACLU fights against GOVERNMENT endorsement, sponsorship, or establishment of religion.

Someone who has finally had it with the "ACLU has an anti-christian agenda" meme and started keep a list.

Of course, we're now heading into what used to be a happy time of year until conversative pundits decided to motivate their base by encouraging them to get belligerent everytime someone wishes them a Happy Holidays. The ranting and raving appears to have already started. Someone needs to remind Neal Boortz that if you're socially conservative, you're not a libertarian.

The ACLU Fights for Christians

Did YouTube Win the US Senate for the Democrats?

YouTube - Did YouTube Win the US Senate for the Democrats?

Mike the Usurper wrote:
The Katrina debacle wasn't about fixing the levees, it was about handling evacuations properly and failing that, getting emergency workers to the places they were needed immediately after.

I don't entirely agree. I think thats half the picture. With regard to confidence in this administration, its the whole picture. Clearly, as you said, they didn't respond competently. People are trusting them to handle terrorist attacks. They've asked for support in a war no one understands and for the unilateral ability to spy on people and imprison them. They got the people's support for those things, in 2004, because most people trusted them to do the right stuff. This event is a close analog to a terrorist attack. They failed to handle it well, and that broke the trust, which I think is the reason they lost in 2006. I think people are asking, if they can't be trusted with this, then can they be trusted with Iraq?

But, the Katrina story as a whole is bigger then that, and thats why I don't think anyone wants to talk about it. It doesn't work as a partisan issue, because Democratic leadership in Louisiana may have been as much a problem as the Bush administration. The right wing plays that up as an excuse, and its no excuse. The administration was clearly incompetent. One's incompetence is not excused by another's incompetence. And most of us don't vote in Louisiana.

More importantly; the fact is that this was an avoidable catasrophy. Even if the Administration had handled it beautifully it still would have been a problem, because we anticipated that this was going to happen and did not act decisively to stop it. Its an indictment of the whole system. No one cared about the people in the 9th ward. Everyone in the city knew the area was doomed. The people who lived there were poor. And everyone's attitude was that its stupid to live there and if they die it's their own damn problem. Thats a terrible attitude to have. And I think that any President, or Louisiana politician, who has sat in power for the past 30 years, and didn't move the ball forward on this, deserves a bit of the blame.

And I think everyone knows that. If the partisan blame game started back up on Katrina, everyone would loose. Its mutually assured destruction. So instead we're focused on other things.

I don't think the people trust the Democrats either. They're being given a chance to prove themselves. Its their game to loose now. But they have a real problem... the Republicans handed them a ticking bomb as they went out the door... We're probably not going to get Democracy in Iraq. It probably isn't possible. There is a good chance that we are going to get a massive increase in the violence there. And you can rest assured that regardless of what policy position the Democrats take on Iraq, Republicans will blame their policy for the problems we're going to see there. The buck just got passed.

So, those who've argued with conservatives for years that going into Iraq was a mistake can look forward to being blamed by conservatives when that prognosis turns out to be correct. It has already started.

RE: For Conservatives, It’s Back to Basics

John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, called the midterms “the end of the grand conservative experiment.”

Delusion on the left.

“There were no conservative grass-roots group saying, ‘Invade Iraq,’ ” Mr. Norquist said. “If Bush changed the policy, you’d have four neocons whine and the rest of the movement would be fine.”

Delusion on the right.

Apparently the big K was insufficiently shocking.

The pundit class must have secretly declared it a political third rail. There is too much blame to go around.

Bush's story is "trust us." We'll protect you from terrorists. You don't need to worry about laws and checks and balances and international opinions. We're the good guys. Make us powerful and we'll take care of it. Katrina broke that spell. People saw them clearly being incompetent and spinning it, and the trust went away.

But, if you were going to avoid Katrina you'd have had to start working on the new levy back in Clinton's time, or even earlier.

RE: For Conservatives, It’s Back to Basics

Here is an attempt to portray various philosophical and political factions under the Republicans' big tent ...

Here is an attempt to portray the major coalitions and blocs among Democrats ... Rather than the donkey, perhaps the cat, notoriously resistant to herding, would make a better symbol.

Those enamored by the pre-9/11 Washington Post analysis may appreciate this update.

A Guide to the Political Herds

Why don't you just vote on a weekend?! in germany, voting day is always a sunday, so most citizens combine a nice leisure day with some voting...

Voting on a tuesday is dumb.

27 Stroke B: Voting on veteran's day?