No Oil for Pacifists

From CNN's "Political Ticker" May 28th:

Gay soldier appeals to Obama

As Best of the Web's James Taranto quips, "Not That There's Anything Wrong With That."

It seems like only yesterday that I re-examined the holes in the shop-worn meme that conservatives are stupid. Well, the May-June issue of Intelligence supplies a sequel by Lazar Stankov entitled "Conservatism and Cognitive Ability," the abstract of which says:

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States' universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.

I haven't read the article, which Stankov probably think proves I lack the IQ to understand, much less the vocabulary to critique, it. Plus, according to a 2007 paper by the same author, I'm freighted by "amoral social attitudes."

Wrong. I skipped the study because it costs $31.50. Bias backed by junk science just isn't that interesting. Which, per force, should disprove Stankov's superficial thesis. As Stuart Buck says:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the smartest group of all? Why, what a miracle, it’s the group I identify with!

(via The Corner)

President Obama interviewed by Steve Scully, Friday May 22nd, on C-SPAN (page 4), after the President expounded on his healthcare plan :

SCULLY: Yet, it all takes money. You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

As Instapundit translates:

"I’ve bankrupted the nation, so now your only hope is to pass my healthcare plan." That goes beyond chutzpah to the edge of pathological dishonesty. Except, I guess, that it’s not pathological if you get away with it. And so far, he has.

When you're the One, even cognitive dissonance supports collectivism.

From the May 27th Wall Street Journal:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

No doubt the majority of that loss in millionaire filings results from the recession. However, this is one reason that depending on the rich to finance government is so ill-advised: Progressive tax rates create mountains of cash during good times that vanish during recessions. . .

All of this means that the burden of paying for bloated government in Annapolis will fall on the middle class. Thanks to the futility of soaking the rich, these working families will now pay Mr. O'Malley's "fair share."

Mark Steyn in the May Commentary magazine:

[T]he Islamicization of Europe entails certain consequences, and it might be worth exploring what these might be. There are already many points of cultural friction--from British banks’ abolition of children’s "piggy banks" to the enjoining of public doughnut consumption by Brussels police during Ramadan. And yet on one issue there is remarkable comity between the aging ethnic Europeans and their young surging Muslim populations: A famous poll a couple of years back found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.

Fifty-nine percent? What the hell’s wrong with the rest of you? Hey, relax: In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. For purposes of comparison, in a recent poll of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates--i.e., the "moderate" Arab world--79 percent of respondents regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. As far as I know, in the last year or two, they haven’t re-tested that question in Europe, possibly in case Israel now scores as a higher threat level in the Netherlands than in Yemen. . .

In Britain in January, while "pro-Palestinian" demonstrators were permitted to dress up as hook-nosed Jews drinking the blood of Arab babies, the police ordered counter-protesters to put away their Israeli flags. In Alberta, in the heart of Calgary’s Jewish neighborhood, the flag of Hizballah (supposedly a proscribed terrorist organization) was proudly waved by demonstrators, but one solitary Israeli flag was deemed a threat to the Queen’s peace and officers told the brave fellow holding it to put it away or be arrested for "inciting public disorder." In Germany, a student in Duisburg put the Star of David in the window of an upstairs apartment on the day of a march by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, only to have the cops smash his door down and remove the flag. He’s now trying to get the police to pay for a new door. Ah, those Jews. It’s always about money, isn’t it? . . .

On the heels of his call for the incorporation of Sharia within British law, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to the Muslim News praising Islam for making "a very significant contribution to getting a debate about religion into public life." Well, that’s one way of putting it. The urge to look on the bright side of its own remorseless cultural retreat will intensify: Once Europeans have accepted a not entirely voluntary biculturalism, they will see no reason why Israel should not do the same, and they will embrace a one-state, one-man, one-vote solution for the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London Observer: "Who will dare to damn Israel?"

Well, take a number and get in line. . .

Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another "pro-Palestinian" protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, "Run, run, you cowards!" and "Allahu akbar!" You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.

(via No Pasaran via Maggie's Farm)

UPDATE: below

I'm a frequent critic of liberals who misuse statistics or lead with empty logic. Yet those of us devoted to neutral principles have an especial obligation publicly to reject conservative overreaching.

The latest such example is Stephen Dinan's op-ed in Wednesday's Washington Times:

Sotomayor reversed 60% by high court

With Judge Sonia Sotomayor already facing questions over her 60 percent reversal rate, the Supreme Court could dump another problem into her lap next month if, as many legal analysts predict, the court overturns one of her rulings upholding a race-based employment decision.

Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.

"Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senates duty to do so," said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

Sounds bad, right?

Well, it's false and misleading, as Powerline's John Hinderaker observes:

[T]he statistic appears to be meaningless. It relates only to Sotomayor's decisions as to which a petition for a writ of certiorari was granted by the Supreme Court--a total of only five. (The overwhelming majority of such petitions are denied.) Of the five cases in which the Supreme Court granted the writ of certiorari, it reversed three. Not only is this a ridiculously small sample, the overall rate of reversal of cases in which the Supreme Court grants cert appears to be around 70 percent. This shouldn't be too surprising, as it requires four votes on the court to grant a writ of certiorari, and five to reverse the Court of Appeals' decision.

By contrast, the Wall Street Journal got the story right:

Although Judge Sotomayor has had a number of her decisions overturned by the Supreme Court, Judge Guido Calabresi -- who taught Judge Sotomayor at Yale Law School and is today her colleague on the Second Circuit -- said such reversals are typical.

"It's standard for what we do because most of the cases that go up [to the Supreme Court] are difficult," he said.

In any event, Sotomayor's record is far better than, say, the historically leftist Ninth Circuit (see pages 511 & 523).

Yet, Dinan's exaggeration allowed the left-wing press watchdog Media Matters to blast unprincipled conservative statistics. Similarly, while some conservatives sounded the alarm about Sotomayor calling appellate courts policy-makers, her full quote makes clear that she wasn't advocating an extra-judicial role. Omitting the full context opening the door for difficult-to-counter critique of Republican politicians.

Though Sotomayor's confirmation is virtually assured, there are legitimate concerns about her judicial philosophy that should be fully vetted in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Overstating the case against her only undermines such an inquiry--and taints the conservative cause.

MORE:

In an excellent post, Wolf Howling agrees.

Continuing his practice of flip-flopping on Fridays, on May 29th, President Obama said "that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor regrets her choice of words in a 2001 speech in which she said a "wise Latina" judge would often make better decisions than a white male."

From Steven Hayward of Pacific Research Institute and AEI, in his 2009 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators:


source: 2009 Index at 21
(via FOX News)

Leftist Oliver Kamm in the May 23rd Times of London:

Liberalism, in its broadest sense, has become suspicious of its own ideals. . .

When you encountered someone of professed left-of-centre opinions, you used to be able to draw broad but important, and generally reliable, inferences about what these entailed.

They included, at a minimum, commitments to secularism, freedom of expression, individual liberty against collective authority, women’s rights, homosexual equality and the combating of xenophobia. Times have changed. Now these stances are unusual, even heterodox.

The degeneration of progressive idealism has many roots. But among the most important is the instinct that the ideas of Western liberty are specific to time and place -- that they are Eurocentric. . .

The only characteristic that matters for politics is common citizenship with equality under the law. The notion that democratic politics acknowledges, even celebrates, group identities leads inexorably to the idea that the loudest figures in such groups have a claim on the attention of everyone else. Livingstone notoriously (and literally) embraced a visiting Islamic cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who defends suicide terrorism in Israel and advocates the "punishment" of homosexuals.

It ought to be obvious that liberalism should not stomach that type of thing. Yet there is a type of left-wing thinking that regards militant Islam almost as idiosyncratic liberation theology.

(via Normblog)

Leftist repeatedly insist the Iraq invasion was illegal, for various reasons. I've shown why this is wrong on the merits. But more fundamentally, such challenges are beyond the competency of courts because "political questions, including many inter-branch disputes, involving Presidential actions in foreign affairs are non-justiciable." Further, the Plaintiffs in such cases invariably lack the Constitutional "standing" necessary to sue.

In 2008, the pacifistic New Jersey Peace Action organization--represented by Rutgers law professors and students--sued President Bush for violating the Constitution by failing to secure prior Congressional approval. Earlier this month, New Jersey Federal District Judge Jose Linares dismissed the complaint without reaching the merits precisely for the reasons previously outlined. The key quote is from pages 16-17:

Rather than leaving to Congress the issue of whether to declare war and thereby invoke various corresponding obligations, Plaintiff's would have this Court second-guess Congress's decision to authorize something short of "war." This is plainly not the judiciary's role. . . Congress is fully-equipped to analyze the treaties, policy considerations, and accompanying obligations that would follow from a declaration of war and to choose a separate path accordingly. The fact that the United States is engaged in military action absent a declaration of war does not automatically invite the judiciary's analysis as to whether that action is "constitutionally sanctioned."

The order also cited (at 9-12) lack of sufficient standing in view of the fact that no judicial remedy could redress Plaintiffs' alleged injuries, rending any judicial declaration an "advisory opinion"--impermissible under the Constitution's Article III.

As the Wall Street Journal's Ashby Jones concludes, liberals fought the war and "the war won." Chortle.

. . . for forthcoming enhanced security requirements when entering America via our northern border? One Canadian is dumbfounded:

Like most Canadians I rooted for you madly and cried when you were elected President-of-The-World.

Yes, Mr. President, I know your border policy is just a continuation of Bush-league ones you inherited. But you don't have the excuse Bush did: He was dim and you're brilliant. So why blame us?

(via The Corner)

As I have suggested, the Massachusetts healthcare model is no miracle--even its original author sees need for change. Further confirmation came in the May 15th Boston Globe:

Despite Boston's abundance of top-notch medical specialists, the waits to see dermatologists, obstetrician-gynecologists, and orthopedic surgeons for routine care have grown longer - to as much as a year for the busiest doctors.

A study of five specialties shows that the wait for a nonurgent appointment in the Boston area has increased in the past five years, and now averages 50 days - more than three weeks longer than in any other city studied.

Patients in Boston and other areas of Massachusetts for years have faced notoriously long delays, according to earlier surveys of physicians' offices. A number of factors contribute, doctors said, but the 2006 health insurance law, which has required hundreds of thousands of state residents to obtain coverage, probably has worsened the waits.

(via Don Surber)

NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is co-founder of an organization called Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Now, I, too, am against illegal guns--but Bloomberg's phraseology begs the question of the permissible scope of gun control consistent with the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. And I'm suspicious of those making the rarely examined, much less established, assumption that restricting the possession of guns by law-abiding citizens reduces violence.

Which brings me to the Gotham Gazette, a web site focusing on NYC law and policy, funded by the liberal Citizens Union Foundation. On May 18th, it featured David King's long article titled New York's Gun Battle, which included this (para 8):

Bloomberg's push to rid New York City of illegal guns has seen results. The number of guns recovered from crime scenes in the city dropped by 13 percent from last year. The number of people shot to death dropped from 347 in 2007 to 292 in 2008. Overall, murders increased from 2007 to 2008, but only due to an increase in crimes committed with knives.

I agree with Kurt Hoffman in the Examiner:

The implication is that Mayor Bloomberg's anti-gun jihad has been successful, despite an increase in murders, simply because fewer of those murders were committed with guns. Somehow, we are to believe that murders committed with knives are less tragic than those committed with guns. That's something in which to take comfort in your last seconds of consciousness, as you bleed out from your slashed carotid artery.

So as not to appear to be picking on the Gotham Gazette, I should point out that the above paragraph is merely a particularly illustrative example of my point. Another example can be found in the fact that in an average year, approximately half of the deaths by gunshot in the U.S. are suicides. These deaths are very often lumped in with the "gun violence" statistics, despite the rather questionable characterization of suicide as "violence." One does not, for instance, generally hear of a person who washes down a fistful of valium with a fifth of vodka as having committed "pharmaceutical violence," or of a swan dive off a penthouse balcony described as "gravitational violence."

But I digress. Let us not quibble with the notion of classifying the deliberate shooting of oneself to death as "gun violence," despite the fact that other methods of suicide are rarely, if ever, thought of as being "violent" acts. Instead, let us consider the fact that in Japan, where private ownership of firearms is regulated to an extent that even extremist anti-gun organizations like the Violence Policy Center only dream of, suicide rates are significantly higher than in the U.S. At least, though, very few of those suicides are committed with firearms. Apparently that is something from which the Japanese should take comfort.

My point: the contention that gun control makes us safer is--at best--unproven. As the liberal Gotham Gazette confirmed--albeit unintentionally, and only by overlooking the logic of its own language.

BTW, the GG article didn't mention DC Attorney General Peter Nickles's March 15th Washington Post op-ed on law enforcement since the Heller decision overturned the District's gun ban:

The D.C. police department's aggressive gun recovery efforts and the office of the attorney general's coordinated emphasis on prosecuting gun-related crimes are showing strong results: In the past year, robberies with guns have decreased 12 percent; assaults with guns have decreased 14 percent; and overall violent crime has decreased by 5 percent in the District.

(via Maggie's Farm, Never Yet Melted, SayUncle)

From the May 15th Miami Herald:

43 stun-gunned at prisons' Take Your Kids to Work Day

TALLAHASSEE -- A total of 43 children were directly and indirectly shocked by electric stun guns during simultaneous "Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day" events gone wrong at three state prisons, according to new information provided Friday by the Florida Department of Corrections.

Also, a group of kids was exposed to tear gas during a demonstration at another lockup.

Three prison guards have been fired, two have resigned and 16 more employees -- from corrections officers to a warden -- will be disciplined due to the incidents that unfolded April 23, said DOC Secretary Walt McNeil. An investigation is ongoing.

None of the children in any of the incidents required medical attention or was notably harmed, McNeil said. He said the children, who ranged in age from 5 to 17, were all children of prison officials.

In nearly every case, the guards had permission from parents or grandparents to administer the "electronic immobilization devices," McNeil said.

"I can't imagine what these officers were thinking to administer this device to children, nor can I imagine why any parent would allow them to do so," McNeil said. "This must not happen again."

This never would have happened at Git'mo under the Bush Administration.

(via Instapundit)

Democraps and libtards attempt to claim a moral high ground doing the right thing. The typical democrat whine is for a transfer of wealth 'because it is right' and the results will speak for themselves.  
How seldom we hold our dear leaders accountable for those results, but Randall Hoven over at American Thinker has compiled a nice synopsis of some results of action in the name of social justice and other silliness.

On the environment:

Electric cars were studied by a German branch of the World Wildlife Foundation . "What surprised us was that the carbon dioxide savings were so small." In the best-case scenario, the savings would be 0.1 percent. In the worst-case scenario, electric cars would be 25% worse than gasoline-powered.

Acid Rain was once the environmental biggie, the Global Warming of the 70s and 80s. So the government spent 10 years and $550 million to look into it. The National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project (NAPAP) essentially concluded it is not a problem. For example, "The NAPAP study found that among thousands of U.S. lakes, only 4 percent were somewhat acidic. One-quarter of those were acidic due to natural causes, leaving only 3 percent somewhat influenced by human activities." The NAPAP report came out in 1990, suspiciously about the time Global Warming became the new big thing in environmental causes.

Carbon credits (a) are costing a lot of money, (b) may do nothing to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and (c) incentivize the destruction of the environment and people's homes. Or so the Associated Press reported. The carbon credit system "is an excessive subsidy that represents a massive waste of developed world resources," said Stanford University's Michael Wara.

On Doing The Right Thing:

"And how do you know when you're doing something right? How do you know that? It feels so. What I know now is that feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you're supposed to do something or not supposed to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know." Oprah Winfrey

Oprah's feelings were touched by "A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey. She was so touched by this come-back-from-hard-times story that she chose it for her book club, where "more than two million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling book in the club's 10-year history." Trouble is, the supposedly non-fiction story was entirely made up; it was a hoax.

Oprah was also touched by "Angel at the Fence," a story of love during the Holocaust written by Herman Rosenblat. Lo and behold, it too was a hoax.

On Public Policy:

From 1900 to 1965, life expectancy for men in the US rose from 46 to 67 years. In 1965, health spending in the US was 5.9% of GDP. That was the year LBJ gave us Medicare. Life expectancy continued to go up after that, but more slowly. Today it is about 75 years for men. And by 2007, health spending took 16.2% of GDP. Medicare is now about to go completely broke. It paid out more than it took in for the first time in 2008. The Medicare "fund" is expected to be depleted by 2017.

Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What's the matter? Oh, you were finished! Well, allow me to retort.

There is a group called Beyond Good Intentions, for example, that recognizes that most international aid is not only ineffective, but also counterproductive. The MIT Poverty Action Lab appears to be using evidence to guide global anti-poverty policy.

I have no idea if these groups are being effective, but it is nice to know there are at least a few liberals willing to go beyond good intentions, their own feelings, and showering problems with other people's money.

Head over and read the whole thing. Read the comments, too, with gems like this: "I have found that liberal behavior can be better explained when liberalism is thought of as a religion.... And like any religion, liberalism becomes the most important aspect of life to the true believer.This is why liberals tend to be more fanatic in their views than conservatives. ... liberalism ... is a devotion to the belief that the state knows better than the people and should be the main focus of power and resources."

In the Sunday May 17th New York Times Magazine, journalist Edmund Andrews told his own story:

At any other time in history, the idea of someone like me borrowing more than $400,000 would have seemed insane. . . As I quickly found out, American Home Mortgage had become one of the fastest-growing mortgage lenders in the country. One of its specialties was serving people just like me: borrowers with good credit scores who wanted to stretch their finances far beyond what our incomes could justify. In industry jargon, we were "Alt-A customers, and we usually paid slightly higher rates for the privilege of concealing our financial weaknesses.

What about my alimony and child-support obligations? No need to mention them. What would happen when they saw the automatic withholdings in my paycheck? No need to show them. If I wanted to buy a house, Bob [Edmund Andrews's loan officer], figured, it was my job to decide whether I could afford it. His job was to make it happen.

"I am here to enable dreams," he explained to me long afterward. Bob’s view was that if I’d been unemployed for seven years and didn’t have a dime to my name but I wanted a house, he wouldn’t question my prudence. "Who am I to tell you that you shouldn’t do what you want to do? I am here to sell money and to help you do what you want to do. At the end of the day, it’s your signature on the mortgage -- not mine."

You had to admire this muscular logic. My lenders weren’t assuming that I was an angel. They were betting that a default would be more painful to me than to them. If I wanted to take a risk, for whatever reason, they were not going to second-guess me. . .

By 2008, Andrews and his wife fell behind on mortgage payments, and became subject to foreclosure. Two points:

1. Bad outcomes don't necessarily imply a flawed or fraudulent process. I sympathize with Andrews. But, Andrews calls it "mortgage madness." And, this being the New York Times, he paints himself as a victim--of greedy bankers:

   If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.
   
   But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others -- borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them -- I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived. . .

   Got that?--neither duped not hypnotized, but deceived. An economic expert, yet helpless to resist a loan officer trying to help Andrews realize his dream.
   
   This is Wall Street's fault? Isn't it more like comedian Mort Sahl's famous parody NY Times headline: "World Ends. Nuclear Holocaust. Women and Minorities Hit Hardest"?



2. The Times still doesn't fact check. Contrary to the ombudsman's whitewash, something's missing from Andrews' tale. Megan McArdle revealed it in her Atlantic magazine blog:

   [Andrews' writing] reads like the story of an American Everyman, easily sucked in to the alluring world of easy credit as he struggled to blend a new family. The terrifying implication is that it could happen to you--to anyone who leads with their heart and not their head.
   
   But en route to that moral, it turns out the story has been tidied up a little. Patty Barreiro, Andrews' wife, has declared bankruptcy twice. The second time was while they were married, a detail that didn't make it into either the book or the excerpt that ran in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
   
   Andrews' desire to shield his wife is understandable--hell, laudable. No decent person wants to parade their spouse's financial trouble in front of the world. But this is material information that changes the tenor of his story. Serial bankruptcy is not a creation of the current credit crisis, and it doesn't just happen to anyone, particularly anyone with a six figure salary. . .
   
   Serial bankruptcies can, of course, happen to anyone with enough bad luck. But they usually don't. And when they do, they usually hit people with marginal incomes that leave no margin for error in the budget. . .
   
   Moreover, pesky bad luck isn't really the picture painted by either filing. Rather, Ms. Barreiro seems to have spent most of the last two decades living right up to the edge of her income, and beyond, and then massively defaulting. If you structure your finances so that absolutely everything has to go right, it's hard to blame the mortgage company when you don't quite make it.
   
   Andrews has been admirably open about many of the poor decisions and the wishful thinking that led him deep into debt. Nonetheless, he has laid much of the blame onto irresponsible bankers and mortgage brokers. The missing bankruptcies substantially undermine this basic narrative arc of Andrews' story. Particularly in his book, the bankers are the villains, America's current troubles are the inevitable denouement of their maniacal greed, and the Andrews household stands in for an American public led, by their own greed and longing and hopeful trust, into the money pit.

   BTW, a comment on another blog says that Andrews' 2004 mortgage was interest-only, and he refinanced twice since--with the attendant costs and taxes.

Conclusions: Despite the class-warfare narrative, the credit crunch wasn't caused by fraudulent fat-cats nor Federal "swindlers". There were systemic failures, many of which are fixable. But mostly, the mistakes were made by millions of individuals such as Andrews chasing a dream and--unfortunately--reaching a bit too far.

Although the current confusion is understandable when the mainstream media fails to fact-check liberal presumptions and limits what's "fit to print" to the spectrum from fables to politically convenient half-truths.

(via Instapundit, TimesWatch)

Bjorn Lomborg in the May 22nd Wall Street Journal:

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a "climate-industrial complex" is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain. . .

U.S. companies and interest groups involved with climate change hired 2,430 lobbyists just last year, up 300% from five years ago. Fifty of the biggest U.S. electric utilities -- including Duke -- spent $51 million on lobbyists in just six months.

The massive transfer of wealth that many businesses seek is not necessarily good for the rest of the economy. Spain has been proclaimed a global example in providing financial aid to renewable energy companies to create green jobs. But research shows that each new job cost Spain 571,138 euros, with subsidies of more than one million euros required to create each new job in the uncompetitive wind industry. Moreover, the programs resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs for every job created. . .

There would be an outcry -- and rightfully so -- if big oil organized a climate change conference and invited only climate-change deniers.

The partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners truly is an unholy alliance. The climate-industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everybody. We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act. Spending a fortune on global carbon regulations will benefit a few, but dearly cost everybody else.

(via Six Meat Buffet)

UPDATE: below

At 1pm EDT, the California Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 8's ban on gay marriage. The 6-1 decision is here (the majority opinion is 136 pages!). Key quote from page 11:

[N]o authority supports the Attorney General's claim that a constitutional amendment adopted through the constitutionally prescribed procedure is invalid simply because the amendment affects a prior judicial interpretation of a right that the Constitution denominates "inalienable." The natural-law jurisprudence reflected in passages from the few early judicial opinions relied upon by the Attorney General has been discredited for many years, and, in any event, no decision suggests that when a constitution has been explicitly amended to modify a constitutional right. . . the amendment may be found unconstitutional on the ground that it conflicts with some implicit or extraconstitutional limitation that is to be framed and enforced by the judiciary.

MORE:

I believe I called this right, especially based on page 3 of the majority opinion:

[O]ur task in the present proceeding is not to determine whether the provision at issue is wise of sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be part of the California Constitution. Regardless of our views as individuals on this question of policy, we recognize as judges and as a court our responsibility to confine our consideration to a determination of the constitutional validity and legal effect of the measure in question. It bears emphasis in this regard that our role is limited to interpreting and applying the principles and rules embodied in the California Constitution, setting aside our own personal beliefs and values.

Compare this Democratic Underground thread of progressives with no notion of popular sovereignty. And see this at Ace of Spades:

[T]he reason this attitude pisses me off so much is because it undermines our system of government and our system of justice. If it is true that there's nothing we can do except bow down to our judicial overlords then we might as well shut up and die or rise up in revolution. If you believe that our laws and constitutions are meaningless then you might as well lay down and die or rise up in revolution.

I don't believe that our options are so extreme and California (yes, CALIFORNIA!) proved it in November and today. Our laws and constitutions are not meaningless. And our courts are not so broken as people claim. The justice system works and works well most of the time. Should we tweak it with appropriate legislation (and props, where possible) and by appointing hard-working minimalist judges? Hell yeah. But exclaiming every time a court decision goes the other way that "the activist black-robed tyrants are at it again" undermines the very point that laws exist for a reason.

There would have been no point to passing Prop 8 if people truly believed that laws and constitutions have no meaning.

More importantly: if it were true that they were activist black-robed tyrants when they ruled against us then it is equally true that they are activist black-robed tyrants when they rule for us. It's the same judges. Nothing has changed except now we like the ruling. So make your choice: either the courts generally work and we should stay the course or the courts are arbitrary, results-oriented tyrannies and we should burn the whole place down. But you can't do both. Make your choice.

(via LawDork)

May 14th New York Times page A1:

Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson

May 20th New York Times page B2:

Despite Energy Reserves, Norway Slips Into Recession

"Lesson" learned--don't rely on the Times.

(via Best of the Web)

Niall Ferguson in the May 17th New York Times:

Human beings are as good at devising ex post facto explanations for big disasters as they are bad at anticipating those disasters. It is indeed impressive how rapidly the economists who failed to predict this crisis -- or predicted the wrong crisis (a dollar crash) -- have been able to produce such a satisfying story about its origins. Yes, it was all the fault of deregulation.

There are just three problems with this story. First, deregulation began quite a while ago (the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act was passed in 1980). If deregulation is to blame for the recession that began in December 2007, presumably it should also get some of the credit for the intervening growth. Second, the much greater financial regulation of the 1970s failed to prevent the United States from suffering not only double-digit inflation in that decade but also a recession (between 1973 and 1975) every bit as severe and protracted as the one we’re in now. Third, the continental Europeans -- who supposedly have much better-regulated financial sectors than the United States -- have even worse problems in their banking sector than we do. The German government likes to wag its finger disapprovingly at the "Anglo Saxon" financial model, but last year average bank leverage was four times higher in Germany than in the United States. Schadenfreude will be in order when the German banking crisis strikes.

We need to remember that much financial innovation over the past 30 years was economically beneficial, and not just to the fat cats of Wall Street. New vehicles like hedge funds gave investors like pension funds and endowments vastly more to choose from than the time-honored choice among cash, bonds and stocks. Likewise, innovations like securitization lowered borrowing costs for most consumers. And the globalization of finance played a crucial role in raising growth rates in emerging markets, particularly in Asia, propelling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

The reality is that crises are more often caused by bad regulation than by deregulation. For one thing, both the international rules governing bank-capital adequacy so elaborately codified in the Basel I and Basel II accords and the national rules administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission failed miserably. It was the Basel system of weighting assets by their supposed riskiness that essentially allowed the Enronization of banks’ balance sheets, so that (for example) the ratio of Citigroup’s tangible on- and off-balance-sheet assets to its common equity reached a staggering 56 to 1 last year. The good health of Canada’s banks is due to better regulation. Simply by capping leverage at 20 to 1, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions spared Canada the need for bank bailouts.

The biggest blunder of all had nothing to do with deregulation. For some reason, the Federal Reserve convinced itself that it could focus exclusively on the prices of consumer goods instead of taking asset prices into account when setting monetary policy. In July 2004, the federal funds rate was just 1.25 percent, at a time when urban property prices were rising at an annual rate of 17 percent. Negative real interest rates at this time were arguably the single most important cause of the property bubble.

All of these were sins of commission, not omission, by Washington, and some at least were not unrelated to the very considerable political contributions and lobbying expenditures of the financial sector. Taxpayers, therefore, should beware. It is more than a little convenient for America’s political class to blame deregulation for this financial crisis and the resulting excesses of the free market. Not only does that neatly pass the buck, but it also creates a justification for . . . more regulation. The old Latin question is highly apposite here: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -- Who regulates the regulators? Until that question is answered, calls for more regulation are symptoms of the very disease they purport to cure.

From Tom McMahon's 4-Block World:


source: May 20th 4-Block World

Larry, I read the little excerpt you are using to sell your book and it was amusing.  Also amusing:  CNN is helping you sell your book by publishing this excerpt.  Also amusing:  Larry King works for CNN.  Coincidence?  

In this excerpt, Larry talks about being over $200,000 in debt (in 1971). Larry has no job, a three-pack-a-day habit, and oh by the way, only $42 to his name. So what does he do? He goes to the track. He apparently spends a lot of time at the track as he is on a first-name basis with the valet. Oh yes he is broke but he has style, and he of course uses the valet at the track.

This day at the track, Larry bets all but $2 of his hoard on a single horse at 70 to 1 odds. He plays the wheel, the trifecta, and he bets him to win. He hits all of them and on a single horse makes nearly $8,000. Amazing. Read his story, he's a pretty good writer and it is a quick read. Then come back here to read the smack-down I'm going to lay on Larry.

If you don't want to bother giving CNN a click-through then just review this, the finale to his little story:

My [Larry's] birthday is November 19. Lady Forli was number 11. So I bet 11 to win, 1 to place, and 9 to show. Now I had bets in for 11 on top, 11 on bottom, and 11 to win. And I had a trifecta -- 11-1-9.

When the race began, I had two dollars left to my name -- and that was for the valet.

There was no question about it. The 11 won by five lengths. The 1 was three lengths ahead of the 9. I had every winning ticket. I had it to win. I had the exacta. I had the trifecta. I collected nearly eight thousand dollars. Eight thousand dollars!

So I stuffed all the money in my jacket. It was bundled up. I didn't know what to do with it. I ran out of the track. The valet attendant came over and said, "You leaving so early?"

"Yeah."

"Bad day, Mr. King?"

I tipped him fifty dollars. The guy nearly fainted.

I paid my child support for the next year. I paid my rent for a year. I bought twenty cartons of cigarettes and stacked them up in my apartment, and I filled the refrigerator.

Please observe that Larry had so little self-control that he had to pay his bills in advance. Presumably, the money would have burned a hole in his pocket. 

UPDATE: she's the One's one!

FURTHER UPDATE: below

Sonia Sotomayor, a Federal judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, is widely believed to be near the top of President Obama's potential picks to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Souter. Sotomayor's candidacy is driven by the fact that, if confirmed, she would be the first non-white Hispanic on the Supreme Court. If nominated, should conservatives back her?

Be very, very afraid. Not because of her liberal reasoning--conservatives shouldn't mimic the left's deplorable tendency to abandon objectivity and neutral principles for partisan politics. And not based on the disputed and controversial assertion that she's insufficiently smart and judicious. If true, that would be reason to oppose, but I think the claims poorly-researched, overstated and unproven. Indeed, lawyers I know who have appeared before Sotomayor give her good marks, though this, too, is contradicted.

Rather, the danger in elevating Sotomayor to the Supremes is that the high court becomes a "Bantustan" of "balanced" representation. Yet, that seems to be how Sotomayor herself sees it, based on her 2001 remarks for the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law:

I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives - no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. . .

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

We don't want an Associate Justice whose judicial philosophy is based on denying neutral objectivity. Unwilling to accept the word of a neo-con Republican? Well, read the intelligent and always-fair analysis by Democrat lawyer/columnist Stuart Taylor in the May 23rd National Journal:

So accustomed have we become to identity politics that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males.

Indeed, unless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.

Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.

Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: "I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life" -- and had proceeded to speak of "inherent physiological or cultural differences."

I have been hoping that despite our deep divisions, President Obama would coax his party, and the country, to think of Americans more as united by allegiance to democratic ideals and the rule of law and less as competing ethnic and racial groups driven by grievances that are rooted more in our troubled history than in today's reality.

Agreed.

MORE:

The National Review's May 26th editorial on the nomination:

Sotomayor’s liberalism would not constitute a reason for denying her a seat on the Supreme Court if it merely consisted of a set of policy positions identical to those of the Senate’s 15 most liberal members. Unfortunately, liberalism has for some time now incorporated a tacit judicial philosophy in which the goal is to impose policies as left-wing as a judge can get away with. Sotomayor seems to march to that beat. More to the point, perhaps, she has shown no signs of marching to any other one.

Judges who decide cases in this manner abuse their office and undermine the rule of law. They also generate policies that are harmful to our economy, dangerous to our national security, and destructive to our social fabric. Liberal activism on the bench has these effects even when the offending judges are geniuses. The nominee’s approach to judging is more important than her IQ, and it is on that subject that senators ought to be trying to shed light.

(via reader Doug J.)

In light of GayPatriot's comparison, can we expect a liberals and the mainstream media frenzy insisting that "Obama lied"?

Never mind--aside from Robert Samuelson, it was a rhetorical question.

(via Instapundit)

From a May 18th Financial Times editorial:

Whether a climate change bill emerges from the US Congress this year is much in doubt. Most Republicans still oppose the very idea of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Democrats are less than united in their commitment to it, once forced to consider the implications. The signs are that if a bill does somehow pass, it will be ugly.

A subcommittee of the House of Representatives has taken the lead in drafting a cap-and-trade plan -- the approach promised by Barack Obama -- but its initial efforts give one pause. . .

During the campaign for the presidency, Mr Obama promised that all permits would be auctioned. His first budget counts on revenues from that source to finance his "Make Work Pay" tax credits for the low-paid -- to the tune of more than $600bn over 10 years. The House committee’s current proposal chooses to give 85 per cent of the permits away. The hole in Mr Obama’s long-term fiscal arithmetic just got bigger.

That is not all. Predictably, in the disbursement of this enormous windfall gain, the House proposes to reward favourites, such as regulated utilities, and punish villains, notably the oil companies. Some emitters will receive more permits in relation to their needs than others. This would create a perpetual struggle for political advantage. If you wanted to promote corruption, this would be a good way.

Last month, commenter "Thai" praised British healthcare:

The UK's NHS NICE is probably the fairest health care system on the planet. I would think conservatives would love it. Brits can always "top up" if they want.

Thai subsequently said good things about my suggested transnational healthcare metric, so I don't want to be too hard on him. But. . .

Isn't it a bit odd to praise NICE's fairness, supporting that two sentences later by arguing that fairness is enhanced by allowing those who find it unfair to pay more? Don't get me wrong--I support an individual's ability to allocate more of his resources for healthcare than the government recommends--not everyone is equally risk adverse. But isn't that an implicit recognition that the U.K.'s National Health under-spends--and under-performs?

And, more substantively, how would Thai counter the personal experience of U.K. oncologist Karol Sikora, who in the May 12th Manchester Union Leader (New Hampshire), counseled Americans to eschew NICE as a template for healthcare reform:

As the government takes increasing control of the health sector with schemes such as Medicare and SCHIP (State Children's Health-care Insurance Program), it is under pressure to control expenditures. Some American health-policy experts have looked favorably at Britain, which uses its National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) to appraise the cost-benefit of new treatments before they can be used in the public system.

If NICE concludes that a new drug gives insufficient bang for the buck, it will not be available through our public National Health Service, which provides care for the majority of Britons.

There is a good reason NICE has attracted interest from U.S. policymakers: It has proved highly effective at keeping expensive new medicines out of the state formulary. Recent research by Sweden's Karolinska Institute shows that Britain uses far fewer innovative cancer drugs than its European neighbors. Compared to France, Britain only uses a tenth of the drugs marketed in the last two years.

Partly as a result of these restrictions on new medicines, British patients die earlier. In Sweden, 60.3 percent of men and 61.7 percent of women survive a cancer diagnosis. In Britain the figure ranges between 40.2 to 48.1 percent for men and 48 to 54.1 percent for women. We are stuck with Soviet-quality care, in spite of the government massively increasing health spending since 2000 to bring the United Kingdom into line with other European countries. . .

In Britain, the reality is that life-and-death decisions are driven by electoral politics rather than clinical need. Diseases with less vocal lobby groups, such as strokes and mental health, get neglected at the expense of those that can shout louder. This is a principle that could soon be exported to America.

Ironically, rationing medicines doesn't help the government's finances in the long run. We are entering a period of rapid scientific progress that will convert previous killers such as heart disease, stroke and cancer into chronic, controllable conditions. In cancer treatment, my specialty, the next generation of medicines could eliminate the need for time-consuming, expensive and unpleasant chemo and radiotherapy. These treatments mean less would have to be spent later on expensive hospitalization and surgery.

The risks of America's move toward British-style drug evaluation are clear: In Britain it has harmed patients. This is one British import Americans should refuse.

Agreed.

See also the May 22nd Daily Mail (U.K.):

A Normandy veteran died after being abandoned on a hospital trolley for 19 hours - on two separate occasions.

Walter Gibson, 86, suffered an agonising death from infected bedsores caused by his ordeal.

Yesterday a coroner condemned the 'gross failings' and 'neglect' that contributed to the great-grandfather's death.

Mr Gibson, who had Parkinson's disease, was admitted to Queen's Hospital in Romford, Essex, in December 2007 with a chest infection.

But the flagship £200million, three-year-old hospital did not have enough beds to accommodate him, an inquest heard.

(via Betsy Newmark, Don Surber)

March 17, 2009, Chicago Tribune editorial:

Money for nothing?

Last fall, the American International Group Inc. took heat for a $440,000 weekend bash that it threw for its top performers at the posh St. Regis resort, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But that was just chump change compared to the bombshell revelation that AIG plans to dole out hundreds of millions in corporate bonuses for performance in 2008.

The rant heard ‘round the water cooler went something like this: Performance? In an insurance company that just reported the biggest quarterly loss in American history--$61.7 billion in the final quarter of 2008?

How could it be that AIG was paying out $450 million in bonuses to people in one company unit that drove $40.5 billion in losses last year? Shouldn’t that kind of "performance" require those employees to return some of their salaries, if not be fired altogether?

May 14, 2009, Washington Times article:

Bankrupt Tribune gives bonuses after editorializing about AIG

[T]his week, the Tribune Co. -- which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant and other dailies, along with 23 TV stations -- received permission from a Delaware bankruptcy judge to pay out $13.3 million in bonuses to some 700 local and corporate managers.

The payouts come as $2.7 million in severance pay to 68 employees who lost their jobs last year remains frozen.

Tribune Chief Financial Officer Chandler Bigelow III explained the rationale for the bonuses during an appearance in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Tuesday, using an argument reminiscent of that used by AIG.

"We need to motivate and incentivize the key people who will implement change. These are really good people we're talking about. They're the best and the brightest in the company," Mr. Bigelow told Judge Kevin Carey.

(via Instapundit)

Senator Jim Webb, speaking to University of Virginia politics students, as reported by the Associated Press, April 10, 2007:

The United States should begin phasing out its detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where terrorist suspects are being held, freshman U.S. Sen. Jim Webb told a group of University of Virginia politics students Monday.

Webb said he agreed early in the War on Terror that such a facility was needed. "But there comes a point where people need to be dealt with through the legal system," Webb said. "I think that time has come."

About 385 men are imprisoned at the U.S. Naval Base in southeast Cuba on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Some have been held for more than five years.

After speaking to the students in professor Larry J. Sabato's class on American politics, Webb told reporters that the detainees should either be declared prisoners of war or charged in the American judicial system if the U.S. continues to hold them captive.

"We can't just continue to hold people in limbo without charges for this period of time and still call ourselves Americans," Webb said.

Senator Jim Webb interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week, May 17th:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's move on to some of the other issues, because President Obama this week . . . shifted on the issue of military tribunals, even though he had been for them in the past, he heavily criticized the Bush tribunals, now he is bringing them back with some reforms. . .

Now you were also against the commissions during your campaign. Do you support what the president is doing here?

WEBB: I wasn't against commissions per se. . . If I said charged in the American judicial system, I would mean under the traditions of the rules of evidence and these sorts of things. But my view has always been that we need to move these people forward.

We need to find those people who should be held accountable and hold them accountable. And people who have been held inappropriately should be released.

But I don't believe that the situation with people in Guantanamo, as opposed to others who have conducted activities in the United States are the same. I think that the people who have been held in Guantanamo are being charged essentially for acts of international terror, for acts of war, and they don't belong in judicial system, and they don't belong in our jails.

STEPHANOPOULOS: This is what the commissions. . .

WEBB: And I don't believe -- I do, I do. But with this caveat, we need commissions like this because there are issues of evidence that you cannot take care of inside the regular American court system, classified information that might have an impact on how we collect intelligence and those sorts of things.

And there are facilities built in Guantanamo right now that are able to do that. . .

We spend hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions in Guantanamo to try these cases. There are cases against international law.

These aren't people who were in the United States, committing a crime in the United States. These are people who were brought to Guantanamo for international terrorism. I do not believe they should be tried in the United States.

I'll take door number 2.

See also Charles Krauthammer in Friday's Washington Post, Andy McCarthy on The Corner and blogger Wolf Howling.

(via the Wall Street Journal)

No, not about national security, about Valerie Plame. Remember Plame? She's a liar, whose attempt to collect damages from Bush Administration officials was rejected by the Federal District Court and Court of Appeals. Early this year, Plame and husband Joe Wilson sought Supreme Court review of the ruling.

Last Wednesday, the Obama Administration officially opposed further consideration of the case thus, says SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston, "adopting the same opposition arguments that were advanced by the Bush Administration." As the Washington Times reported:

"The decision of the court of appeals is correct and does not conflict with any decision of this Court or any other court of appeals," said the brief filed by Solicitor General Elena Kagan [NOfP note: under consideration for Souter's seat], Assistant Attorney General Tony West, and Justice Department attorneys Mark B. Stern and Charles W. Scarborough. "Further review is unwarranted."

The Justice Department filing agreed with the lower courts that none of the Wilsons' several legal arguments gave an appropriate basis for such a lawsuit.

Plame's liberal pressure group lawyers assert "The government’s position cannot be reconciled with President Obama’s oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions." To coin a phrase, yes it can.

I said Plame/Wilson had no case long ago. So any possible "irritation" is outweighed by the justness of the Administration's position. Besides, don't bother me: I'm basking in the outrage from the online lefty zoo.

From the Economist:


source: May 16th Economist at 77

UPDATE: below--and again

After years of trumpeting "Bush Lied," including about supposed torture, when it turns out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lied about not knowing terrorist detainees were being waterboarded, press progressives at the New York Times hid the story on page 15. To its credit, the WaPo put it on the front page.

No wonder no one's buying the paper. Or buying Pelosi's unconvincing amnesia--as Insty says:

Another pro-torture Democrat. There used to be a lot of ‘em. Now it’s their logic that’s tortured.

But both the Times and the Speaker prefer blaming Bush to growing up.

MORE:

No wonder the New York Times Company corporate bonds have become junk.

MORE & MORE:

FactCheck.org weighs in: "It is clear that Pelosi has contradicted herself, and that she knew as early as 2003 that waterboarding was in use, long before she raised any public or private objection."

• President Barack Obama May 21st:

  I . . . believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight. . .
  
  The second decision that I made was to order the closing of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
  
  For over seven years, we have detained hundreds of people at Guantanamo. During that time, the system of military commissions that were in place at Guantanamo succeeded in convicting a grand total of three suspected terrorists. Let me repeat that: three convictions in over seven years. Instead of bringing terrorists to justice, efforts at prosecution met setback after setback, cases lingered on, and in 2006 the Supreme Court invalidated the entire system. Meanwhile, over 525 detainees were released from Guantanamo under not my administration, under the previous administration. Let me repeat that: Two-thirds of the detainees were released before I took office and ordered the closure of Guantanamo. . .
  
  [I]nstead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.
  
  So the record is clear: Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.

• The New York Times page A1 that same day:

  An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

• Former Vice President Dick Cheney that same day:

  Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.
  
  As a practical matter, too, terrorists may lack much, but they have never lacked for grievances against the United States. Our belief in freedom of speech and religion, our belief in equal rights for women, our support for Israel, our cultural and political influence in the world--these are the true sources of resentment, all mixed in with the lies and conspiracy theories of the radical clerics. These recruitment tools were in vigorous use throughout the 1990s, and they were sufficient to motivate the nineteen recruits who boarded those planes on September 11, 2001.
  
  The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world--for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences--and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for--our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.
  
  What is equally certain is this: The broad-based strategy set in motion by President Bush obviously had nothing to do with causing the events of 9/11. But the serious way we dealt with terrorists from then on, and all the intelligence we gathered in that time, had everything to do with preventing another 9/11 on our watch.

• The New York Post published on the web that same day:

  Four homegrown Muslim terrorists on a mission from hell were arrested last night as they planted what they thought were high-powered plastic explosives at two Bronx synagogues, authorities said.
  
  The men were also allegedly plotting to use a Stinger missile to shoot a military plane out of the sky in upstate New York immediately after the bombings.
  
  "They stated they wanted to commit jihad," NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a press conference this morning. "These men meant to do some serious damage. . . They were certainly intent on doing damage, on killing people." . . .
  
  After bombing the temples, the men planned to split up and head to the New York Air National Guard Base at Stewart Airport in their hometown and shoot down a plane with a weapon they believed was a Stinger surface-to-air guided missile, sources said.
  
  "They [the United States military] are killing Muslim brothers and sisters in Muslim countries, so if we kill them here [in the United States] with IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and Stingers, it is equal," one of the busted men, Onta Williams, allegedly told the informant.

• Jennifer Rubin in Commentary that same day:

  [Obama] has continued all those supposedly fear-based policies put in place by the Bush administration. He has continued the military tribunals, propounded the state secrets doctrine, and refused to release the detainee abuse photos. We have a robust domestic surveillance program, are completing the mission in Iraq, and seeking victory in Afghanistan. Why? I’d imagine because Obama would fear for Americans’ safety if he did otherwise. Indeed, that was the explicit justification for refusing to release the photos.
  
  So if Bush got it all wrong and capitulated to fear, why are so many of his policies remaining in place -- on advice of our military? Although George W. Bush is happily retired in Texas, Obama feels compelled to continue the fight rhetorically but not substantively against the former president in absentia and in the same news cycle as the former vice president. . . Obama hasn’t actually departed in any meaningful way from the "mess" of the Bush "fear-inspired" policies he inherited. To do that would be dangerous. Well, there are people out there who want to kill us, right? And so we come full circle. . .
  
  One final thought: Obama has placed his presidency in the hands of America’s enemies. Should they succeed in any significant operation, his words disparaging his predecessors’ efforts will come crashing down on him and his party. In politics, as in life, you never want to give over control of your destiny to others. But in a shocking way the President of the United States did just that today.

• Con Coughlin in a Daily Telegraph (U.K.) blog that same day:

  I always thought his knee-jerk promise to close Guantanamo Bay detention facility was cheap politics and displayed a profound lack of understanding about the very real security issues relating to Guantanamo and its remaining inmates.
  
  And so it has proved. . .
  
  Perhaps there is an important lesson the president can learn for the future: think through the consequences before making cheap political points.

(via The Corner, Campaign Spot, Don Surber)