Jim Miller on Politics

Privacy Rules In Public Libraries  have never made much sense to me.  Since taxpayers are paying for the libraries, taxpayers should be able to see who is using the money, and for what.  Libraries are not private places and should not be, as long as taxpayers finance them.  The attempt to make them private has led to many absurdities.  I have heard, for example, that the Seattle libraries will be installing screens so that patrons—if that is the right word—can download pornography without interruption.  This father's tale shows just how silly those privacy policies have become.

One day not long ago, while running too many errands, I ducked into the Olney library to return a stack of books for my daughters, Casey and Emily.  The clerk scanned them in, consulted her computer and announced that we still had five books out.

I sighed.  I could imagine having missed one library book in the chaotic piles scattered around our house.  But five?  Resigned to a treasure hunt once I got home, I asked for the delinquent titles.

The clerk gave me an apologetic-but-unyielding look from behind her monitor.  Sorry, she replied.  She couldn't provide that information.  It would be a violation of my daughters' privacy.

Privacy?  Did I mention that Casey is 8?  And Emily 5?

As you can learn from the rest of the article, the clerk was following the official policy of library, and that it is the same policy most libraries have.

(I have tried, I really have, to understand the librarians' argument.  But I keep bumping up against the fact that is tax money, not private funds, that pays for libraries.  Do librarians know that?)

Forty Years Ago Yesterday, President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald.  I had mixed feelings about Kennedy when he was alive, and all that I have learned since then have not changed that.  His assassination made him into a martyr and made it difficult to discuss his administration in a balanced way.  Now, Christopher Hitchens thinks, enough time has passed so that we may finally be able to have those discussions, which must include the negatives.

The biographers and archivists have done most of the relevant job of reporting and disclosing, and what they have reported and disclosed is a president frantically "high" on pills of all kinds (that's when he was not alarmingly "low" for the same reason), a president quick on the draw and willing to solicit Mafia hit men for his foreign policy, a president willing to risk nuclear war to save his own face; a president who bugged his own Oval Office, a president who used the executive mansion as a bordello, and a president whose name we might never have learned if not for the fanatical determination of his father to purchase him a political career.

One of the worst things about his administration was his willingness to use assassination as a tool of foreign policy, notably against Castro, and to accept it against allies like the Diems in South Vietnam.   Mark Steyn tells that sad story, which shows how little Kennedy understood Vietnam.

I have long thought that, even if you did not object to assassinations of foreign leaders on moral grounds, you should see that they are almost always a foolish tactic for the United States.  As Kennedy's own assassination—and Castro's longevity—show, it is far easier to kill the head of democratically elected government than it is to kill most dictators.  (If you want more examples, consider the narrow failures of assassination attempts against Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher.)  That the Kennedy administration did not see this obvious point shows how far they were from being the "Best and Brightest".

Even Kennedy's largest triumph, steering us through the Cuban missile crisis, is tarnished.   We now know that the crisis occurred in part because Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev concluded, after meeting with Kennedy, that the young president was weak and inexperienced.  That perception led, directly, to a series of crises, including the missile crisis.

Kennedy's assassination did another thing, besides make him a martyr.  It greatly increased the distrust of the American government here and abroad.  And, the KGB, which had worked with Oswald, fed that distrust for years, planting articles in Western journals and otherwise feeding conspiracy theorists.   one of the most famous, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, fell for the KGB scam, hook, line and sinker.

These early efforts to implicate the CIA met with little apparent success.  But the KGB kept on trying and finally hit the jackpot once a relatively unknown New Orleans district attorney named Jim Garrison took a sudden interest in the assassination in late 1966.  The word "dupe" has long been out of favor, but that's precisely what Garrison turned out to be after he arrested Clay Shaw in March 1967 and charged him with conspiring to assassinate Kennedy.  Owing to a clever piece of KGB disinformation planted in a Communist-owned Italian newspaper, Garrison came to believe that in Shaw he had apprehended an important "CIA operative."  And on the basis of this deception (again, revealed by KGB archivist Mitrokhin), Garrison constructed an entire conspiracy edifice, ultimately arguing that the CIA had plotted the assassination-coup d'etat in concert with the military-industrial complex -- again, because Kennedy was allegedly easing up in the Cold War.

As you may already have guessed, the Oliver Stone movie, which convinced so many that there was a right wing plot against Kennedy, was based on the same disinformation.  Will Stone every admit he was suckered by the KGB?  I wouldn't stay up waiting for that to happen.  You can see just how far the KGB story has spread in this Seattle Times article.   The Times, a usually respectable newspaper, uncritically recycles all the conspiracy theories, including those devised by the KGB.

Finally, just because it is so absurd, I have to mention this Guardian editorial, which tries to link three events that happened on November 22.  They have to strain to link Kennedy's assassination to Margaret Thatcher's defeat 13 years ago.  And to explain their attempt to link a third event, one would almost have to conclude that the editors were high, drunk, or otherwise mentally incapacitated.  The third event?  England's possible victory over Australia in the world championship of rugby.  (Americans may need to be informed, that, yes, England did win.)

Three Weeks Ago , in this post, I discussed Senator Zell Miller's almost unprecedented endorsement of President Bush—and the press indifference to the story.   Today, the New York Times finally catches up to the story.  You can sense how puzzled they are by the endorsement, and by the senator's views.  This illustrates my original point, that the Times is out of touch with much of the American public.  (I haven't checked to see whether either of the Seattle papers have carried the story, though they had not, the last time I looked.)

Fizz, Fizz, Fizz, Bang!  Volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens explode for some of the same reasons that champagne corks pop.  Pressure from bubbles builds up until something has to give.  Scientists are beginning to understand these processes better, and the seismic signals that can warn when the volcanoes are about to blow.   There are strong practical reasons for studying volcanoes; half a billion people live within 60 miles of volcanoes that have been active recently.  Here's the New York Times story, which is illustrated with a beautiful picture of the Redoubt volcano in Alaska.

Washington Post Eliminates 5 Million Britons:  Dana Milbank fills his article on Bush's trip to Britain with Milbank's usual nasty comments.  And, as he often does, he gets a fact wrong, giving the population of Britain as 55 million, when it is actually about 60 million.  I wonder.  Would the Post tolerate Milbank's frequent errors and consistent petulance if he were pro-Bush?

Our Ignorant College Administrators:  Here's the full text of the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech; or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Got that?  Now you know more than nearly all college administrators.  A poll, done for an invaluable organization, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), shows that college administrators are poorly informed about 1st Amendment rights, especially religion.  When asked to name "any of the specific rights" guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, 11 percent of the administrators could not name any and only 21 percent mentioned religion, the first right mentioned in the amendment.

(Technical point: A better phrasing for the question would have made it clear that the person answering should name as many of the rights as they can remember.  "Any" suggests that naming one would be a complete answer.  They probably chose this phrasing because it had been used in earlier national polls of the public.  And how did the public do on the same question, you wonder?  Worse than the administrators, but not by as big a margin as you might think.  Thirty-five percent of the public could not name any rights.)

A significant minority of administrators, at least 12 percent for each of the rights, did not think the right was essential.  A full 26 percent of public school administrators and 33 percent of private school administrators did not think the right to assemble was essential.  And 31 percent of the public school administrators agreed somewhat that they could ban a religious club to ensure a "supportive and nurturing campus environment".   What they mean by that, if you are wondering, is that they could ban a religious club that taught that homosexuality was sinful.

There's much more in this troubling survey.  I'll probably come back to it, and the parallel survey done of students, in a few days.  For now, here's a reasonably accurate summary of the religious highlights from the Wall Street Journal.

If You Are Unfamiliar  with Hernando de Soto and his ideas about poverty in the developing world, here's an introduction.   What the poor in the developing world really need, he thinks, are property rights.

Imagine a country where the law that governs property rights is so deficient that nobody can easily identify who owns what, addresses cannot be systematically verified, and people cannot be made to pay their debts.  Consider not being able to use your own house or business to guarantee credit.  Imagine a property system in which you can't divide your ownership in a business into shares that investors can buy, or where descriptions of assets are not standardized.

Welcome to life in the developing world, home of five-sixths of the global population.   These people's plight underlines a paradoxical reality: Capitalism was supposed to be the answer to global underdevelopment, but here it never had a chance. It hasn't even been tried.

Worth reading, especially for those on the left.

What News Is Important To Katie Couric?  Out of curiosity, I watched the first part of the Today show and found it even worse than I expected.  After the beginning news briefs, Couric gave a full 15 minutes to the Michael Jackson arrest, most of it devoted to defenses of Jackson from his family and lawyer.  After that came 2 minutes on the Bush trip to Britain, and then another 2 minutes on the controversy over showing the coffins of American servicemen.  The show had promised an interview with the Dixie Chicks, but by that point, I had had enough and turned off the television set.  (My impression is that Couric and company think that, since Jackson is a celebrity, he should not be judged too harshly.  I hope I am wrong about that.)

Couric is not alone in these news judgments; Today is supposed to be a light program, but Nightline with Ted Koppel is supposed to be be far more serious.  I learned from this James Lileks bleat Nightline was split on which story was more important.

The staff was split.  Nightline, supposedly the Thinking Person's Late Night Show, was split about whether a repudiation of 50 years of foreign policy was slightly more important than the arrest of a washed-up, crotch-grabbing yee-hee! squeaking nutball who was probably the horrid pedophile everyone already thought he was.

These choices show something about how the TV networks view the war on terrorism.

They fear Islamic terrorism, but it's an abstract fear now.  Their distaste of Bush is much more tangible and immediate; it's part of the atmosphere in the newsroom.  This is his war, not theirs.  If it is a war at all.

No wonder they would rather cover Jackson.

(Here's the NBC bio of Couric, if you want to know more about her, and here's an extended critique from Media Research.)

Dick Armey Versus The Seattle Left:  Yesterday, Steve Scher interviewed the former Republican majority leader on the Weekday program, with results that were either amusing or dismaying, depending on your point of view.  Armey, for those not familiar with him, has strongly libertarian views on economic issues.  And, coming from North Dakota, he has that thrifty state's objections to receiving handouts.  (Excluding farm subsidies for the state, though not for Armey, who opposed them vigorously.)  Since he desires freedom so strongly, Armey does not want to be enrolled in the Medicare program.   But, since he is turning 65, he has no choice.  As he explained, the law does not allow him to opt out of Medicare entirely and buy his own insurance.

These ideas do not seem complicated or foreign to me, but they were to the interviewer, Steve Scher, and to the callers.  Armey asked again and again why he could not opt out of the Medicare—and never got an answer.  The idea that people might prefer freedom to economic subsidies was so strange to the Seattle left, apparently, that Scher and his callers had no answer for Armey's rather simple question.  (Some of the callers, as anyone familiar with talk radio will understand, just used the interview as an opportunity to press their own views.)  This ignorance, for that is what it is, hurts the left in many ways.   KUOW, and other organizations on the left, would be improved if they were more open to ideas from outside a fairly narrow segment of the political spectrum.

However, if the comment I heard after the interview is any indication, Glasnost will not come to KUOW soon.  One of the regulars on Weekday is Carl Elliot, a gardening expert.   When Elliot was introduced by Scher, after the Armey interview, he took the opportunity to sneer at Armey as a "know nothing".  Scher merely chuckled at this.  It is so much easier to call our opponents names than to think about what they say.

(In American politics, there are two possible meanings for "know nothing".  It can mean someone who has no knowledge, the literal meaning, or it can mean someone with views like those held by the Know Nothing party, which was important for several decades before the Civil War.   Neither applies to Armey.  Before he entered politics, Armey had been a college professor, teaching economics at the University of North Texas.  His intelligence was one reason he was so effective in the House.  For example, Armey was the one who worked out a way to close superfluous military bases, which has save the nation billions of dollars.  Armey has a softer side that most would admire, too.  When he was blocked by limousine liberals like Ted Kennedy from providing vouchers to the students in the Washington, D. C. public schools, he set up an organization to provide scholarships for them.

The Know Nothing party, as it is usually called, was an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic party that was strongest from 1850 to 1860.  It grew out of secret societies, whose members were told to say they "know nothing" if asked about the societies.  Armey has the acceptance of immigrants common to libertarians, has never shown any hostility to Catholics, and favors open debate.  Know Nothings were opposed to Catholic schools; Armey had raised money so that poor black kids can go to them.)

Last Week, in this post, I explained why Kennedy lost the popular vote in 1960, a fact known to students of elections for decades, though it has yet to reach the popular culture.  Here's John Fund's discussion of the 1960 election, with similar conclusions, but some different details.  (I seem to recall reading that the mixed slate of electors was the result of a compromise within the Democratic party, though Fund says they were chosen in a primary.  Both could be true.)

Elections have been won in other democracies by parties that have lost the popular vote.   I have read that Britain has had two such elections since World War II, one won by the Conservatives and one won by Labour.

So Far, So Good:  Three days ago, I predicted here that President Bush's trip to Britain would be a success.  Judging by the admission in this Guardian article, that seems to be happening.

For Bush delivered a very good speech yesterday, well-constructed, well-written and, yes, well-delivered - even without the help of autocue.  He said what many Britons want to hear from an American president, invoking the internationalist idealism of the last of his predecessors to sleep at Buckingham Palace, Woodrow Wilson.

The Guardian's editorial page agreed.

Conscious that he has a bit of catching up to do, George Bush piled on the charm yesterday.   The US president lavished praise on Britain, America's "closest friend in the world".  He stressed the shared bonds of history, values and belief; the key importance of the transatlantic relationship; and the two countries' common cause in pursuit of global freedom and democracy.

His forceful defence of military action and post-war policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, his support for multilateralism and his recognition of the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict will both delight, and give political reinforcement, to Tony Blair.  But while Mr Bush's message was rendered palatable, even attractive, to his British audience, his methods remain problematic.   Mr Bush may be a better leader than he is given credit for, as Mr Blair maintains.

I can imagine the grim faces at the Guardian and can almost hear the teeth grinding as they had to admit that Bush, who is, after all, a talented politician, might appeal to his British audience.

World's Smallest Flying Robot:  That's what Epson claims they have developed.  Here's the press release.   Click the diagram at the bottom for more technical details.  I wrote "claims" because I know the US Defense Department has been interested in similar technology for many years, and may well have built prototypes of similar robots, but kept them secret.

Routine Anti-Americanism, Example 13:  Reuters, a "news organization" that almost never uses the word terrorist, without adding scare quotes, slurs the United States, by comparing us to the Nazis.   Yes, the name of the current operation, "Iron Hammer", is the same as a never executed German plan in World War II, but the phrase was not exactly original with the Nazis.  Iron working goes back at least two millennia, so a few people must have beaten Hitler and company to iron hammer.   The implied argument in the article is as silly as pointing out that both Reuters and the Nazis used typewriters.  Or it would be silly if the motive weren't so obvious and so nasty.

I don't blame American planners for not knowing about the name coincidence.  I have read a fair amount of World War II history and can't recall hearing about it.  (If you are curious about the German plan, here's a description.)

Lip Gloss:  That's what Margaret Wente found she really needed to bring on her trip to Iraq.  

Before I went to Baghdad I had no idea what to take.  Everyone gave me conflicting advice.  One journalist told me to take a first-aid kit, a water purifier, and a week's worth of bottled water.  Someone else thought I should take a flak jacket, which seemed impractical because by the time you know you need to put it on, it will probably be too late.  Finally, I phoned a woman named Suzanne, who had just wound up a lengthy road trip through the boonies.   "Hmm," she said when I asked her what to take.  "Some nice red wine.  It's hard to get red wine there.  And also lip gloss.  It's very hot and dry.  You definitely need lip gloss."

That struck me as excellent advice.  Someone else told me to pack Scotch and crayons, in case I needed gifts, and another person warned that it's sometimes hard to find decent food to eat.   So I packed some Scotch, some packs of crayons, and a jar of President's Choice Chunky Peanut Butter.  As soon as I reached Baghdad, another journalist took me to a grocery store to stock up on snacks.  It was jammed with Iraqis buying German apple juice, French yogurt, and delicious juicy watermelons from Egypt.  The first thing I saw was a display of Pringles.   I felt like an idiot, and decided I'd better hide my peanut butter.

The other supplies came in handy, though.  Kind Iraqis kept inviting me to their houses for tea or dinner, and their kids seemed to like the crayons.  As for the Scotch, I wound up drinking it myself.  I felt foolish about that, too, because you can get it in Baghdad cheaper.

Her account of her stay at the barracks being used by part of the 101st Airborne will give you some sense of how our troops are adapting.  And, another Wente column, which sketches some ideas in the Iraqi mindset, is worth reading, too.  Many Iraqis believe in genies, I learned, which makes them almost as superstitious as the average member of Greenpeace.

Why The Democrats Need Gerrymandering:  After the Republicans redistricted Texas, there were many complaints, not all of them from Democrats, about the new districts.  I could not take the complaints too seriously, since the Republicans were simply replacing one gerrymander, done by the Democrats, with another.  And very few of those who complained about the lines in Texas have made similar criticisms of the districts in, for example, Massachusetts, where the Democrats have all of the Congressional seats, thanks in part to convoluted district boundaries.

Some, after the bitter battle in Texas, are now looking with favor on having nonpartisan boards do the districting, as is done in Iowa, Washington, and, as I understand it, Arizona.  This is, I have long thought, the right approach for many reasons.  The districts will be more compact, so that campaigning is easier and less expensive.   Districts are more likely to coincide with community lines, which makes it easier for both Congressmen and their constituents.  There are more swing districts, which either party can win.

Nearly everyone would agree that those consequences would be good ones, but only about half of the country would agree with another likely consequence of this kind of districting.  It would help the Republicans.

To understand this, let me review the theory behind gerrymandering with the help of a mythical state, Gerry, after Elbridge Gerry, for whom the gerrymander is named.  The inhabitants of Gerry are half Democrats and half Republicans, and are evenly distributed across the state.   Partisanship has a simple relationship to geography in Gerry.  The chance that a voter will be Republican varies linearly with how far east they are of the state's western boundary.  Let's suppose that Gerry has 5 districts.  A nonpartisan commission (or computer program) might draw the lines as below:



As you can see, there are two Democratic districts, two Republican districts, and a swing district balanced between the two parties.

Now suppose that we want to gerrymander Gerry.  Thanks to the way the voters are distributed, this is quite easy.  A Republican would draw the lines as below:



If you do a little arithmetic, you will see that the Democrats will win one district, with 90 percent of the vote, and the Republicans will win four districts with 60 percent of the vote in each.  That demonstrates the principle used for constructing a gerrymander when the two parties are balanced in strength.  You try to give your opponent a few districts with very large margins, and yourself many districts, with smaller margins.

That's where the Republicans gain an advantage.  Democratic voters are naturally concentrated very highly in some areas, specifically the inner cities.  Compact districts in places like the south side of Chicago will be 90 percent Democratic, without any help from Republicans.  There are enough such areas that, with "fair" districting in the entire country, the Republicans would have, at a guess, an advantage of 10 to 20 seats, or more, in the House of Representatives.

The only way that Democrats can keep even, as long as the parties are balanced in strength, is by gerrymandering the states they control.  But they control fewer and fewer, and so that no longer works as it did for so many years.  The Democrats need gerrymandering, but no longer have it available in enough states to even the score.  I would feel a little sorry for the party had they not abused the districting for so many decades, in so many states.