Back of the Envelope

Okay, I haven't blogged on this before, so I better start with the summary. What's happening is that the Democrats are filibustering President Bush's judicial nominees rather than giving them an up or down vote. This is unprecedented. Now, it's common, and accepted, to give judicial nominees a hard time, mostly in the Judiciary Committee, but once they're moved out of committee, the Senate has always voted on the nomination, either accepting or rejecting them, rather than using the Senate's debate rules to prevent a vote. Filibustering, by the way, is a tactic used in the Senate to prevent legislation from passing by refusing to shut up. Really. The Senate allows debate to continue indefinitely, and even if you're losing, you can just keep talking and a vote is never taken. Now, debate can be closed with a vote of cloture--it takes 60 votes to do that--but Senate Democrats have been highly disciplined in voting against cloture.

Why is this so important to the Democrats? Why work so hard to keep these judges off the bench? Primarily, it's a problem of judicial activism. I've said before that I think it's a problem that the courts have so much power, riding roughshod over the democratic process to enact their preferred policy. Before judicial activism became so widespread, the political beliefs of judges mattered very little. As long as they were competent and did their jobs, they were okay, and the Senate passed most judicial appointments with little difficulty. However, now that judges are setting policy, their politics do matter, and judges are voted for and against along party lines. This even happens when the President appoints judges who believe in judicial restraint--that it's not the place of judges to make policy. The reason for this is that judges have already made quite a bit of policy, and judges who believe that this is wrong might just go about dismantling it.

Now, as a general rule, conservatives are for judicial restraint, liberals are for judicial activism. Part of the reason for this is that the country as a whole is a good bit more conservative than the judiciary, so much of what the courts do would never become law if it were up to the elected representatives. And part of this is a matter of principles. Of course, even saying this, it's not unheard of for conservatives to favor a little judicial activism now and then when it supports their policies. This is simple political hypocrisy, and isn't a mark against the principles so much as the politicians. (And, yes, you may see some of that from me as well, but I readily admit that I'm more of a pragmatic conservative than a principled conservative. I honestly think of it more as having different priorities than hypocrisy, but feel free to call me on it anyway.)

Anyway, since having liberal judges is very important to the Democrats, and since they don't have the votes to reject the nominees, they are filibustering them. This is, as I said, unprecedented. (There was one case of a judge in 1968 who was debatably filibustered. Very debatably.) So the GOP is considering what's called the Nuclear Option. This would modify the cloture rules so that the number of votes needed to close debate over a judicial nominee would be 51. This is not a change of the Constitution, which contains no rules for debate in the Senate, but a change of the Senate's internal rules, which only requires a majority vote to happen. In fact, the Senate already has a number of rules to prevent filibusters in certain situations, and some of the same Democratic Senators who are criticizing Republican efforts to change the rules now voted for a rule change in 1995 that would have eliminated all filibusters.

So what will happen? John Hawkins writes that Republicans shouldn't be afraid to institute the rule change, and Captain Ed writes that now that Republicans have the votes for it, they should just do it. I agree. Unfortunately, as Captain Ed also reports, everytime they come close to winning, they seem to choke.

At least his Open Society Institute has done some useful and important work in this fascinating study:

The Chinese government's Internet controls have kept pace with rapid changes in technology and are buttressed by self-censorship, university researchers said in a study Thursday.
...
China's filters can block specific references to Tibetan independence without blocking all references to Tibet, according to the report by the OpenNet Initiative.

Likewise, the government limits discussions about Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square and other topics deemed sensitive, the study finds.

Numerous government agencies and thousands of public and private employees are involved in censorship at all levels, from the main pipelines, or backbones, hauling data over long distances to the cybercafes where many citizens access the Internet.

That breadth allows filtering tools to adapt to emerging forms of communications, such as Web journals, or blogs, the study finds.

Some key findings, which may also point to weaknesses, include:

_Though some dissidents complain that e-mail newsletters sent in bulk are sometimes blocked, individual messages tend not to get filtered.

_Much of the filtering occurs at the backbone, but individual Internet service providers sometimes deploy additional blocking. Cybercafes and operators of discussion boards also control content proactively under threat of penalties.

_Filtering tends to be triggered by the appearance of certain keywords, rather than a visit to a specific domain name or numeric Internet address. The keyword-based filters also allow blogs to keep people from completing posts containing banned topics.

Overall, it's some truly interesting work they did, especially how they went about testing China's filters. I wonder if I'm banned in China? I should hope so! But if the e-mails aren't filtered, then people ought to be able to join my blog's mailing list and still get the posts e-mailed to them. Too bad that they can't learn about it if they can't get to my blog in the first place.

At least you'd think so from quotes like this:

"It frightens me ... as an artist and curator. Now we're being watched," Hernandez said. "It's a new world. It's a Big Brother world. I think it's frightening for any artist who wants to do edgy art."

What's she so worked up about? This:

Organizers of a politically charged art exhibit at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery thought their show might draw controversy.

But they didn't expect two U.S. Secret Service agents would be among the show's first visitors.

The agents turned up Thursday evening, just before the public opening of "Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin," and took pictures of some of the art pieces — including "Patriot Act," showing President Bush on a mock 37-cent stamp with a revolver pointed at his head.

The agents asked what the artists meant by their work and wanted museum director CarolAnn Brown to turn over the names and phone numbers of all the artists. They wanted to hear from the exhibit's curator, Michael Hernandez deLuna, within 24 hours, she said.

(Hat tip to Dean Esmay and Jeff Quinton.)

I agree with Hernandez. The Secret Service is completely out-of-control. It's the new Gestapo! Things were never like this under Clinton. Well, aside from incidents like this:

President Clinton's Secret Service agents searched the apartment of a student columnist for Cal's Daily Californian who wrote a satirical Big Game column mentioning Chelsea Clinton that appeared in the school paper lat week.
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Branum, who stood by his column but disclosed that he has published an apology Friday. He also produced a tape recording he made during the search by the two agents. On the tape, one of the voices, depicted by Barnum as Secret Service agent Chris Von Holt from the San Jose office, can be heard saying '...What happened is Mrs. Clinton turned to one of her agents and yelled what the f--- is going on . . . and he called me and said, Jesus, let's get out and talk to this gentleman!'

Incidentally, Hillary Clinton had arrived in San Jose on Monday. When she was spotted by reporters, she refused to respond to shouted questions about the column incident. Clinton aides declined comment.

Special Agent, Arnette Heintze, in Washington, D.C., denied that Clinton had anything to do with initiating the investigation.
...
Sources on campus there report the two Clinton Secret Service agents bullied Branum to coerce his 'permission' to search the apartment after telling him they would otherwise hold him while getting a search warrant, Branum told reporters.

The pair then lectured Barnum about an earlier editorial column in which Barnum referred to the president Bill Clinton as Sexual Predator-in-Chief which Von Holt then referred to as a '...low blow.' Branum contends.

The agent whom Branum identified as Von Holt reportedly told him 'I want to make sure you don't have any weapons or any of the stuff you see on TV that actually happens in apartments, like a big picture of Chelsea with a big `X' in blood on it.'

They instructed Branum to stay home from work at the student newspaper for the day, except during his scheduled class hours, which they had obtained from the university, Branum said.

Before leaving the Secret Service agents demanded that he sign a waiver giving the Secret Service access to his confidential medical records, including any pertaining to mental health, Barnum said.

Okay, I'll admit that I quoted from this article partly because it is so one-sided, even if it can't decide how Branum's name is spelled. You have to look in another article to see what had the Secret Service so worried:

Branum, who said his column was intended to boost support for the school's annual football game against Stanford University, wrote: "Show your spirit on Chelsea's bloodied carcass, because as the Stanford Daily lets us know, she is JUST ANOTHER STUDENT.

"She embodies the Stanford ethos of establishment worship that must be subverted and destroyed. ... Is hate a strong word? Yes. Is it applicable? Certainly."

I think the Secret Service had not just the right but the responsibility to look into the matter both times.

I haven't blogged on this since the original story broke, but recently Sandy Berger admitted that he deliberately removed classified documents from the archives and destroyed them:

For months, he called it an honest mistake.

But on Friday, Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in federal court. Berger, who served as President Clinton's national security adviser, is acknowledging that it wasn't an honest mistake and that he intentionally took and destroyed copies of classified documents from the National Archives and cut them up with scissors.

Now, for some time there's been speculation about what was in those documents that Mr. Berger destroyed. The documents were copies, rather than originals, so destroying them wouldn't do any good, unless, as some of the rumors said, they also contained handwritten notes from various officials commenting on them. This has been firmly denied by the Department of Justice prosecutor in charge of the case:

"Those documents, emphatically, without doubt--I reviewed them myself--don't have notations on them," Mr. Hillman tells us. Further, "there is no evidence after comprehensive investigation to suggest he took anything other than the five documents at issue and they didn't have notes." Mr. Berger's sentencing is scheduled for July, and Mr. Hillman assures us Justice's sentencing memo will lay out the facts and "make sure Mr. Berger explains what he did and why he did it." Meanwhile, conservatives don't do themselves any credit when they are as impervious to facts as the loony left.

Doc Rampage is putting forth one of those conspiracy theories on his blog.

So, leaving the conspiracies aside for the moment, why did he take the documents and destroy them? According to Berger, he took them to review for the 9/11 Commission Hearings, even though he should not have removed classified documents from the archives. He then destroyed them because he was nervous about being caught. Innocent? I suppose, but as has been pointed out before, he has an awfully lax attitude towards classified documents for a former National Security Advisor. At the end of the day, he's going to get a slap on the wrist, whereas you or I would likely see prison time.

Now that the full facts have come out, Powerline has published the full story:

The following morning, the mystery was finally solved. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin telephoned Republican Senator Mel Martinez and said that Martinez had handed him a copy of the memo on the Senate floor. This caused Martinez to interrogate has staff, and an aide named Brian Darling confessed that he authored the memo. The story, as related by Martinez and his staff, is that Darling wrote the memo in draft form, and Martinez, thinking it was a standard checklist of arguments in favor of preserving Terri Schiavo's life, then handed it to Harkin. From Harkin, the memo found its way to ABC News and the Washington Post.

The Democrats were thus not guilty, as many of us believed, of creating the memo as a dirty trick. However, the central claim of many Democrats, newspapers, and commentators--that the memo was the product of the Republican congressional leadership and constituted an official "GOP talking points memo"--has likewise been proved false. It was this characterization that justified the memo's use as an indictment of congressional Republicans' motives in the Schiavo case. If the memo had been correctly described from the beginning, as the inept product of a freshman senator's aide, with no responsibility for Republican political strategy, which may not have been read by a single Republican senator, it is questionable whether it would even have merited a news story.

It looks like I was essentially correct in my initial take, that there really didn't seem to be the evidence to pin the memo on the Republican leadership or the Democrats.

That's what Byron York says in his new book, although what he's describing is less a conspiracy than a political network with influential figures shaping it. As York says:

While conservatives were perhaps paying too little attention, the phrase "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy" has become a kind of shorthand on the Left for the biggest, richest, and most focused political movement in generations. MoveOn.org, George Soros, the 527 groups, Michael Moore, Al Franken and Air America, John Podesta's Center for American Progress, and other individuals and organizations are self-consciously building a new political infrastructure — a well-funded message machine which they plan to use to inject new ideas into the national conversation, attack enemies, and spark political action. Unlike the conservative movement, which grew up over decades, they are trying to do it all virtually instantly — and in many ways, they have succeeded. The book is their story.

As for the specific phrase — a variation on Hillary Rodham Clinton's famous charge that there was a "vast right wing conspiracy" against Bill Clinton — here's what Franken said last month about his work with Air America radio: "I think it's a counterpoint to [the Right] and to the administration and to just the whole right-wing echo machine. We're trying to just be part of this vast left wing conspiracy..." As another example, at last year's Democratic convention in Boston, a group of young activists put on a program called "Building the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." And as far back as 2001, the liberal online magazine Slate published an article entitled, "Wanted: A Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." There are plenty of other examples to show that the Left actually kind of likes the phrase.

That's not really surprising. Remember back in 1998, when Mrs. Clinton first used "vast right wing conspiracy"? Conservatives loved it. You couldn't go to a party without someone saying, "Well, it looks like the whole conspiracy is here." Well, the left-wing variation is being heard more and more these days.

And one of the most influential figures is George Soros, with a little assist from Karl Rove:

The PowerPoint presentation that Steitz and other Democrats had was a completely different document — much more detailed and sophisticated. It was apparently acquired by Democrats sometime in the late spring of 2003. I asked Steitz if he would show it to me, and he agreed. What I saw was a remarkable work. It's no wonder it had a profound effect on the Soros group.

The presentation, titled the "72 Hour Task Force," contained the results of a "top to bottom review," ordered by Rove, of GOP turnout efforts in the 2000 race.What was perhaps most remarkable about it was that it was a harrowingly self-critical assessment of the Bush campaign's performance. The essential question it asked was,Why did we come so close to losing? To find an answer, Rove began by taking a sober look at the difference between preelection state polls, which often showed Bush leading by significant margins, and the actual results of the election, in which Bush sometimes squeaked by. "In Arizona, the polling said we would win by ten, but we won by just six," the presentation said. "In Florida, the polling said we would win by two — we won by just a chad." That trend, Rove concluded, held true in nearly every other state Bush won.

You know, I still haven't gotten my memebership card to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Right after Terri Schiavo died, I saw about three or four headlines that all said something along the lines of "Schiavo Dead, Divisions Remain," which struck me as a really dumb thing to say. Of course divisions remain. You think all the people who were fighting to keep her alive are just going to shrug their shoulders and say "Ah, well" now that she's dead? They believe that she was unjustly killed, and they're not going to just forget that.

Mark Steyn has some insightful thoughts on the recently departed Pope and the Western elite's inability to understand him:

If I were Pope - and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change - but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man - James Callaghan - got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a 40 per cent pay rise and, on the other, rational human beings? What would the middle ground between the real world and Planet Zongo look like? A 30 per cent pay rise, rising to 40 per cent over 18 months or the next strike, whichever comes sooner?

By contrast, the Guardian thought Karol Wojtyla was "a doctrinaire, authoritarian pontiff". That "doctrinaire" at least suggests the inflexible authoritarian derived his inflexibility from some ancient operating manual - he was dogmatic about his dogma - unlike the New York Times and the Washington Post, which came close to implying that John Paul II had taken against abortion and gay marriage off the top of his head, principally to irk "liberal Catholics". The assumption is always that there's some middle ground that a less "doctrinaire" pope might have staked out: he might have supported abortion in the first trimester, say, or reciprocal partner benefits for gays in committed relationships.

The root of the Pope's thinking - that there are eternal truths no one can change even if one wanted to - is completely incomprehensible to the progressivist mindset. There are no absolute truths, everything's in play, and by "consensus" all we're really arguing is the rate of concession to the inevitable: abortion's here to stay, gay marriage will be here any day now, in a year or two it'll be something else - it's all gonna happen anyway, man, so why be the last squaresville daddy-o on the block?

Read the whole thing.

Captain Ed is publishing information on a Canadian scandal despite the publication ban. As the Captain isn't Canadian, he can get away with it, but it's becoming awfully dangerous for Canadians to link to his blog.

By now, I'm sure you've heard, but Terri has died. I think I've said all that I have to say on this matter, but I will point out that John Hawkins has a good FAQ for those who aren't clear on all the facts. Here's part what he has to say:

Is Terri Schiavo in a persistent vegetative state? This is of course, the key issue in the case because if Terri Schiavo is judged to be in a PVS, she can be legally denied food and water. On the other hand, if the diagnosis is that she's minimally conscious, the law requires that she be given food and water no matter what the wishes of her guardian may be.

There's also quite a bit of controversy over what her condition actually is and with good reason.

According to the New York Times:

"At least six neurologists have examined Ms. Schiavo, and in affidavits or testimony four of them agreed that she was in a persistent vegetative state and highly unlikely to recover."

The flip side of this argument is that there are many qualified experts who disagree with that diagnosis. Florida neurologist William Hammesfahr & neurologist William Cheshire of the Mayo Clinic have gotten the most attention in the last week, but based on the videos that have been made public, 33 physicians (including 15 board-certified neurologists) have signed affidavits stating that Terri's condition should be reevaluated.

Combine those conflicting diagnoses with the fact that Terri Schiavo has never had a MRI or a PET and the fact that the error rate in diagnosing PVS has been reported to be as high as "43 percent," and it's clear that there is still more than a little room for doubt about her true condition.

If you want just the facts, with links to the relevant documents, read the whole thing.