No Oil for Pacifists

Charles Krauthammer in Friday's Washington Post:

The United States has the best health care in the world -- but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.

Worse, they are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes -- such as the 118 new boards, commissions and programs -- is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.

The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency. . .

The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.

Then do health care the right way -- one reform at a time, each simple and simplifying, aimed at reducing complexity, arbitrariness and inefficiency.

I've previously discussed what environmentalists rarely mention: that worldwide temperature data is "adjusted" before being compiled to "prove" global warming. I don't doubt that some tweaks are necessary to make data sets consistent over time. But the modifications are non-uniform -- almost always up -- despite the fact that appropriately compensating for the urban heat island effect should bring the data down. And the adjustments are made by those with the most "skin in the game."

We've recently confirmed that climate change advocates masquerading as scientists systematically pushed U.K. temperatures up and deleted data--"to hide the decline" in the raw data. And it's not just Britain--figures published last week by the New Zealand Climate Coalition show that most of the supposed warming was created by man-made adjustments to the data:


source: New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research



source: New Zealand Climate Coalition

In New Zealand, six of the seven weather stations "had their past (pre-1950) data heavily adjusted downwards. In all six cases this significantly increased the overall trend." And a N.Z. scientist who also formerly worked at Britain's CRU was quoted in the leaked emails reacting to a paper casting doubt on human causation for warming: "If it is not rebutted, then all sceptics will use this to justify their position."

I thought Jonah Goldberg's previously quoted reference to the No True Scotsman fallacy an apt analysis of how the media treats warming skeptics. It also applies to Rajendra Pachauri -- the "former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science" now chairing the UN's IPCC climate change group -- who repeatedly dissembled about statistics and suppressed dissent. Pachauri insists man-made global warming wasn't undermined by the hacked CRU emails because -- get this! -- all the science is peer reviewed. Yet that's precisely the problem--the warming zealots have hijacked peer review, as shown by two CRU emails discussing contrary studies:

• I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !



• This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...

This makes the response of warming zealots un-sound and un-scientific, as the November 27th Wall Street Journal editorialized:

The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged. . .

The response from the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science. The proof for this is circular. It's the best, we're told, because it's the most-published and most-cited--in that same peer-reviewed literature. The public has every reason to ask why they felt the need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim.

Conclusion: A summary of the most outrageous leaked emails is here. My favorite so far is dated October 12, 2009:

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong.

Got that? Like neo-Marxist Frenchmen -- though the CRU also stifled contrary French findings -- warming advocates only acknowledge facts that fit their pre-conceived theories. This isn't science--as Frank Tipler says, it's

an act of treason against science. It is also an act of treason against humanity, since it has been used to justify an attempt to destroy the world economy.

The only solution to test the conspiracy theory called climate change is to release everything, the raw numbers, the adjustment algorithms, the computer code. Stop confining the science to those with an axe to grind and let the data speak for themselves.

Up 'till now, it's been as Mark Steyn says, plus ça climate change, plus c'est la même chose. The White House still holds that line. But the coming slogan is: "Scientists lied, Kyoto died."

(via Instapundit, Best of the Web, Reboot Congress)

From Nick Schultz at the American Blog, "the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900":


source: Nick Schultz at American Blog via JPMorgan Private Bank's Michael Cembalest in Forbes magazine

Rob at Say Anything calls this display "damning"--prematurely, in my view. Cembalest limits his analysis to the the Departments of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, most of which were created long after 1900. Further, he arbitrarily discounts law firm jobs to only 1/3 of other private sector experience (see note (a)). And he doesn't explain how he accounts for multiple cabinet office-holders in previous Administrations.

The combination amounts to "cherry picking" the data. I hope someone re-works the chart in percentage terms over the entire cabinet without any phony weighting.

BTW, Cembalest also charts "companies that lost more than their entire 2007 book value, both in absolute terms, and as a multiple of pre-crisis book value." This is sufficiently scary and appears unbiased:


source: Michael Cembalest in Forbes magazine

(via reader Marc D.)

The Administration's inflated tally of stimulus-package jobs is increasingly unreliable: at least 90,000 of the 640,000 jobs claimed are phony. The Associated Press detailed the latest leakage:

In its report to the federal government last month, the [California] Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported saving 18,229 correctional officer jobs since May by using the stimulus money to pay their salaries as the state struggled with a massive budget deficit.

State Auditor Elaine Howle questioned the total. The department is planning about 5,000 layoffs, less than a third of the jobs it claims to have saved.

The remaining 13,229 jobs appear never to have been in danger, Howle said in a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders.

"It appears that Corrections simply reported how many correctional officers' salaries were paid with Recovery Act funding, regardless of whether these positions were truly at risk of being eliminated without federal funding," she wrote.

The state auditor's finding reflects broader concerns about how the federal government is tracking the $787 billion stimulus package and determining how many jobs across the country were saved or created. Corrections Undersecretary Mary Fernandez defended the department's calculations.

"We followed the federal formula," she said.

Perhaps. Unless the formula is part of the problem.

From the Economist:


source: November 19th Economist

The magazine explains:

Most of the growth in the deficit comes from spending, which averaged 21% of GDP from 1980 to 2007 but will approach 25% by 2019, according to the CBO (see chart 1). Some of that comes from interest charges on the debt, expected to more than triple from their current 5% of total spending. But entitlements are the elephant in the budget. On current policies, pensions and health care for the retired (Social Security and Medicare, respectively) and health care for the poor (Medicaid) will grow from 10% of GDP in 2011 to 18% by 2050.

Agreed.

Happy Thanksgiving--blogging will be light.

I've set forth my views on healthcare and health insurance reform in multiple posts over several years. Last week, I posted what amounted to a summary of the underlying data on the number of uninsured in America. In comments, Thai generously praised the piece. I'm not impugning Thai's sincerity -- he works in the field, is keenly interested in healthcare policy, has been copious in his regard for my reasoning even when the reverse of his results, and supplies some useful insights.

Instead, this post is about the nature of and reasons for policy disagreements. Thai is a self-described liberal. And his comment a week ago included this hypothesis about our debate:

We may disagree around some of the issues inherent in a system of universal coverage, yet I truly see your point and see our differences as an an outcome of our slightly different moral matrices more than I do as any specific criticism with your particular value system.

Is Thai right?

Partly. I agree that distinct "moral matrices" and priorities are crucial the difference between liberal and conservative platforms. And I welcome Thai's characterization of our differences as "slight" and his ability to appreciate a contrary perspective. But at least for those actually debating, I presume that left and right share the same public policy goals.

In the context of health reform, I'm saying that I, too, favor extending healthcare as universally as possible. And that most Republicans would agree. At the same time, we don't think health utopia is achievable, distrust mere "cost cutting", coverage mandates and compelled universality. Not because we oppose increased insurance coverage; rather, because our experience informs us that rewarding education and merit, aligning incentives with objectives and allowing competition are the surest and swiftest path to achieving such anti-poverty policy goals such as affordably expanding healthcare. Put differently, righties say market-based solutions out-perform typical European-style top-down bureaucracies. (Thai cites a contrary article which I have not purchased or read.)

I understand that lefties prefer a different mechanism. (I also understand that they've probably got the votes.) Still, I think our values and desires -- Thai's and mine -- are more alike than not. Including striving for universal coverage.

Am I right? Or over-thinking? Comment please.

The "hottest" topic in global warming has been the leaked files from Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. They reveal scientific fraud, suppression of debate and anything-but-objective researchers. Which makes "Climategate" a journalistic scandal as well, says Jonah Goldberg:

The elite press treats skepticism about global warming as a mental defect. It uses a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy to delegitimize people who dissent from the (manufactured) "consensus." Dissent is scientifically unserious, therefore dissenting scientist A is unserious. There's no way to break in. The moment someone disagrees with the "consensus" they disqualify themselves from criticizing the consensus.

True enough--but the New York Times tops them all. It first covered the scandal in an Andrew Revkin story last Saturday. On his NYT blog the same day, Revkin wrote:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here. But a quick sift of skeptics’ Web sites will point anyone to plenty of sources.

Hilariously hypocritical, observes Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard:

This is the position of the New York Times when given the chance to publish sensitive information that might hinder the liberal agenda. Of course, when the choice is between publishing classified information that might endanger the lives of U.S. troops in the field or intelligence programs vital to national security, that information is published without hesitation by the nation's paper of record. But in this case -- the documents were "never intended for the public eye," so the New York Times will take a pass. I guess that policy wasn't in place when Neil Sheehan was working at the paper.

As a journalist, there is no greater glory than publishing materials that were not meant to be published. If I could, I would only publish emails and documents that were never meant to see the light of day -- though, unlike the New York Times, I draw the line at jeopardizing the lives of American troops rather than jeopardizing the contrived "consensus" on global warming.

Moreover, this comes only months after the Times tied warming to national in-security.

In the liberal media and especially at the New York Times, man-made climate change will continue to be "a consensus". Even by suppressing supported science as not fit to print.

(via TimesWatch)

From Der Spiegel:

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.

"It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community," says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. "We don't really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point."

Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius -- in other words, a standstill.

Agreed.

Last week, I addressed the mangled jobs math the Administration used to justify its stimulus package. On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office agreed, confirming "a range of significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed" regarding the accuracy of job claims credited to the stimulus package. In particular, GAO Report 10-223, Recipient Reported Jobs Data Provide Some Insight into Use of Recovery Act Funding, but Data Quality and Reporting Issues Need Attention, found (Highlights at 2):

Erroneous or questionable data entries that merit further review:

• 3,978 reports that showed no dollar amount received or expended but included more than 50,000 jobs created or retained;
• 9,247 reports that showed no jobs but included expended amounts approaching $1 billion, and
• Instances of other reporting anomalies such as discrepancies between award amounts and the amounts reported as received which, although relatively small in number, indicate problematic issues in the reporting.

So, the GAO concluded (at 40): "At this point, due to issues in reporting and data quality including uncertainty created by varying interpretations of the guidance on FTEs, we cannot draw a conclusion about the validity of the data reported as a measure of the direct employment effect of spending covered by the recipient reports."

Which doubtlessly will become an argument for a second jobs bill.

(via Bloomberg News)

The press and progressives often panic about America's economy falling behind Europe and China. Should we be alarmed? Not so fast.

On his Carpe Diem blog, econ prof Mark Perry linked to recent U.S. Department of Agriculture data on historical GDP by country. Here's my plot of GDP share (real, not PPP) by region over the past 40 years:


source: NOfP Chart via Agriculture Department spreadsheet

After plotting a similar series, Perry explains:

What might be surprising is that the U.S. share of world GDP has been relatively constant for the last 40 years, and is actually slightly higher in 2009 (26.7%) that it was in 1975 (26.3%). It's also interesting that [Europe's] share of world GDP has declined from about [40%] of world output in 1969 to only [30%] in 2009. Further, despite having a large share of the world's oil reserves, the Middle East's share of global output has increased from only 2.23% in 1969 to 3.16% in 2009 . . .

World GDP (real) doubled between 1969 and 1990, and has increased by another 60% since then, so that world output in 2009 is more than three times greater than in 1969. We might mistakenly assume that the significant economic growth over the last 40 years in China, India and Brazil has somehow come "at the expense of economic growth in the U.S." (based on the "fixed pie fallacy") but the data suggest otherwise. Because of advances in technology, innovation, and significant improvements in U.S. productivity, America's share of total world output has remained remarkably constant at a little more than 25%, despite the significant increases in output around the world, especially in Asia.

Agreed--both as to the U.S. vs. Europe and the fixed pie fallacy. And I suspect that, measured at purchasing power parity, the share of U.S. GDP might be rising.

Tracking economic trends during a recession is hazardous: after all, unemployment's up; so something's wrong; and Bush is the immortal culprit. But I'm not departing from previous conclusions: In the long run, our living standards are rising (and better than Europe); the decline in manufacturing employment stems largely from productivity increases, not free trade, and in any event is offset by increased service sector jobs. So America isn't doomed--unless by the depression Obamacare and carbon cuts will induce.

BTW, a regional GDP share chart over a longer term is here.

Assistant Village Idiot:

There are closed circles on both sides, of course. But far more often than is commonly believed, it is the dogmatic who are ultimately tolerant; those who believe themselves tolerant are always in peril that a deeper dogmatism is disguised within them. Those who know they rely ultimately on faith apply reason forcefully nonetheless; those who claim to rely only on reason conceal a hundred unquestioned creeds from their own sight.

Agreed.

UPDATE: below

Long-time reader Powerboss asked my views on Attorney General Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York City Federal District Court rather than have him face a military tribunal. This post touches on the practical problems with the decision while focusing on an erroneous legal presumption that's become widespread among lefties.

Background: For those who've been on Mars for a decade, KSM is:

A U.S.-educated engineer [who] had a government job in Qatar’s ministry of electricity and water when he was tipped off in 1996 that the Americans were closing in. In the nick of time, he fled to Afghanistan. That’s where Osama bin Laden, having recently worn out his welcome in Sudan, was just setting up shop.

The rest, as they say, is history. Years later, while confirming his status as an enemy combatant, KSM recounted how he’d become al-Qaeda’s "military operational commander" for all foreign operations, running the 9/11 attacks "from A to Z."

Captured in Pakistan in early 2003 and transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in 2006, KSM was "waterboarded" in five sessions of CIA interrogation. And he admitted he was OBL's chief deputy responsible for 9/11 and several other attacks and that he "decapitated with my blessed right hand" WSJ reporter "the American Jew, Daniel Pearl" (page 17-19). Last December, he wanted to plead guilty before a military tribunal, seeking to be executed. However, the United States wouldn't let him. With Obama about to take office, we worried that accepting KSM's guilty plea there could bar future prosecution in civilian criminal courts if the new President ended military tribunals for terrorists -- as he promised -- before KSM's conviction and appeal became final.

While KSM and some cohorts will be transferred to the Federal Courts, Holder decided to subject those who supposedly attacked the USS Cole to a military court.

Issues: Progressives and the partisan press applauded. The ACLU called Holder's decision "a major victory for due process and the rule of law," while the New York Times crowed that the civilian criminal trial would redeem the injustice of the Bush Administration. Conservatives were appalled over the risk of exposure of classified information, the potential logistical nightmare, and even the possibility that the trial could expose NYC to terrorist attacks. Further -- especially because supporters of the decision concede that the case could become a circus publicizing Islamic extremism and trying torture, not terrorism -- those on the right, such as Bush Administration lawyer John Yoo, see the move to a civilian court as "a Boon to al Qaeda."

Analysis: I agree that a civilian trial will make whether he was tortured and kidnapped the issue, as opposed to KSM's responsibility for mass murder. Which will be a disaster, as Andy McCarthy says on The Corner:

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and -- depending on what judge catches the case -- they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see -- in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Yet, even should these practical problems (somehow) never arise -- and reasonable Democrat lawyer/author Stuart Taylor seems confident they won't -- many lefties start from fundamental assumptions that are both legally erroneous and contradicted by the Obama Administration itself.

First, supporters of the decision claim to be upholding the rule of law, specifically the Federal Constitutional protections KSM will have in a civilian trial. This is nonsense: there always has been parallel civil and military justice systems, used for different purposes, as a recent D.C. Circuit case explained (page 15):

Indeed, civilian justice and military justice differ in ways even as fundamental as the purposes that the two systems of justice serve. [O]ne of the purposes of military law, unlike civilian law, is "to assist in maintaining good order and discipline in the armed forces, to promote efficiency and effectiveness in the military establishment, and thereby to strengthen the national security of the United States."

Here, KSM and others, "were detained for interrogation and to prevent their participation in future terrorism," not primarily for punishment or rehabilitation. This should not be forgotten.

So it's no surprise that military tribunals are subject to different standards: the Supreme Court has determined that military courts fall outside the Sixth Amendment jury trial right and aren't Article III courts. Still, the American military justice system has ample procedural protections. If military justice is good enough for our soldiers, what's wrong with applying similar rules to KSM?

Nothing. International law treats terrorists just like pirates, which is the same as war criminals -- in the words of 16th-century jurist Alberico Gentili:

Pirates are common enemies, and they are attacked with impunity by all, because they are without the pale of the law. They are scorners of the law of nations; hence they find no protection in that law.

Either Bush's or Obama's military commissions are far more deferential to defendants than that.

Second, those advocating a civil trial say they would rather see Mohammed face a New York jury than sit before a military tribunal because the attacks on Sept. 11 -- despite being aimed in part at the Pentagon -- were not "military infractions." Similarly, some claim the location of the terrorism matters, so attacks in the U.S. belong in civilian, not military, courts. Again, for belligerents, the precedent (Nazi spies arrested in New York, one a citizen) is to the contrary, as are the Geneva conventions (especially as to "unlawful combatants" such as terrorists). KSM, a non-citizen, plotted from the Middle East and was captured in Pakistan--insisting on full Bill of Rights protections extends the Constitution extra-territorially, something lefties typically decry as acting as the world's policeman.

Third, the Attorney General himself said the opposite:

The 9/11 attacks were both an act of war and a violation of our federal criminal law, and they could have been prosecuted in either federal courts or military commissions. Courts and commissions are both essential tools in our fight against terrorism.

Indeed, consigning other Gitmo detainees to military tribunals is an admission that such procedures can be just and lawful.

So the question becomes, as law prof Eric Posner argues, not "the rule of law" but the logic behind the choice of a civilian trial. Yet, I depart from Posner's conclusion, siding for once with Virginia Democrat Senator Jim Webb quoted in the Washington Examiner:

I have never disputed the constitutional authority of the President to convene Article III courts in cases of international terrorism. However, I remain very concerned about the wisdom of doing so. Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor. It will be disruptive, costly, and potentially counterproductive to try them as criminals in our civilian courts.

The precedent set by this decision deserves careful scrutiny as we consider proper venues for trying those now held at Guantanamo who were apprehended outside of this country for acts that occurred outside of the country. And we must be especially careful with any decisions to bring onto American soil any of those prisoners who remain a threat to our country but whose cases have been adjudged as inappropriate for trial at all. They do not belong in our country, they do not belong in our courts, and they do not belong in our prisons.

I have consistently argued that military commissions, with the additional procedural rules added by Congress and enacted by President Obama, are the most appropriate venue for trying individuals adjudged to be enemy combatants.

A few hypotheticals illustrate Webb's point: Should we have to read Bin Laden his Miranda rights? Holder waffled when Senator Graham asked--and KSM was interrogated without such warnings. Or what happens should KSM be acquitted--would they release him? Even Obama and Holder wouldn't go that far, suggesting they're withholding the presumption of innocence and reserving indefinite detention, despite the President's simultaneous commitment to full Constitutional protections. And, having spent years in Gitmo, hasn't KSM already been denied the right to a speedy trial? If so, the sole remedy is acquittal. Indeed, given the multiple departures from civilian criminal procedure, if KSM is convicted in New York, liberal civil liberties advocates arguably have the most to fear.

Conclusion: Historically, combatants haven't had a legal entitlement to a civilian trial. Yet neither are they flatly forbidden--we did so for attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid. So the question is whether they're justified here. Power Line's Scott Johnson says no:

[W]e can do a little reverse engineering to figure out how the enumerated factors are apparently applied by the Obama administration. If the attack occurred in the United States, it weighs in favor of criminal prosecution. If the attack focused on American civilians, it weighs in favor of criminal prosecution. (It is less clear to me how the other factors are weighed and applied in practice.) Application of these factors can convert heinous acts of war and war crimes into criminal offenses with respect to which the perpetrators are subject to the protections of the Constitution of the United States.

That way madness lies. The Obama administration is engaged in a venture that will simultaneously undermine the prosecution of the war in which we are engaged while it blurs the distinction between war and crime.

Charles Krauthammer agrees:

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime -- an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war that the United States itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

Just this, I think: as Stuart Taylor suggests (and supports), the real reasoning was deliberate deference to anti-American sentiment abroad.

In sum, the decision to try KSM in a New York Federal court isn't plainly illegal. Just profoundly illogical. Except as another example of Obama bowing to foreigners.

MORE:

See also the San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders: "I'm not scared of what KSM has to say in court either. I'm scared of what a federal judge might say and do."

(via American Power, Just One Minute, Volokh Conspiracy, News Busters, reader Doug J., reader Marc D.)

Democrat John Kerry, finally the senior Senator from Massachusetts, interviewed in the November 18th USA Today:

Q: We've talked about many challenges today, but in the current U.S. political system, do we have the ability to make the difficult, long-term choices that come with costs?

A: It takes leadership to change it. The president is offering leadership. But we're witnessing literally the most obstructionist Congress that I've seen in 26 years here. And the pressure that is put on our colleagues on the other side of the aisle not to work with us is just enormous. None of us has cornered the market on virtue, but we can have an honest debate and have a give-and-take. We don't have to lie about things and come up with phony studies that cloud the scene. But that's the nature of the battle, and we just have to keep plugging away.

Huh? This Congress already passed an economically illiterate stimulus package that paid people not to work, is about to authorize substantially increased government intervention into healthcare and will consider an depression-inducing, un-scientific climate change measure next year. What is John Kerry smoking? Probably whatever it was in 1971.

As Best of the Web's James Taranto responds:

[I]s Congress really "the most obstructionist" it has been during Kerry's tenure? If so, perhaps the answer is to elect more Republicans. The House currently has a 258-177 Democratic majority, which is as many Democrats as it has had at any time during Kerry's congressional tenure except the administration of George H.W. Bush, when the Democratic total reached as high as 267. The Senate Democratic caucus has 60 members, 58 of whom are formally Democrats, making it the most Democratic Senate since Kerry's arrival (the previous high was 57, in 1993-95).

If this Congress is unusually "obstructionist," it is because the president is giving it so much to obstruct. Massachusetts Democrats like Kerry may support a government health-care takeover and massive taxes on energy, but the American people on the whole--including those who elected many of the Democrats in those big majorities--do not. What really frustrates Kerry is not "obstructionism" but democracy.

Or, as MaxedOutMama quips:

I do not care if Obama bows to the Japanese emperor, although it is a gross violation of US tradition, based in our founding national precepts, if he would only start bowing to reality.

I've previously shown that American measures of poverty over-estimate the population of the poor and under-state their material improvement. On his Carpe Diem blog, econ prof Mark Perry spots a 2006 Bureau of Labor Statistics chart clearly illustrating the point:


source: Carpe Diem via BLS at 68

As the BLS report says (pages 66, 69):

The material well-being of families in the United States improved dramatically, as demonstrated by the change over time in the percentage of expenditures allocated for food, clothing, and housing. In 1901, the average U.S. family devoted 79.8 percent of its spending to these necessities, while families in New York City spent 80.3 percent, and families in Boston allocated 86.0 percent. By 2002-03, allocations on necessities had been reduced substantially, for U.S. families to 50.1 percent of spending, for New York City families to 56.7 percent, and for Boston families to 53.8 percent. . .

In 2002-03, the average U.S. family could allocate 49.9 percent ($20,333) of total expenditures for a variety of discretionary consumer goods and services, while the average family in 1901 could allocate only 20.2 percent, or $155, for discretionary spending.

Of course, most of the poor don't stay poor. And today's poor are better off than ever before. Not that the left ever will acknowledge the poverty reduction effect of free market capitalism.

David Harsanyi in the November 11th Denver Post:

If liberals are so disturbed by Congress dictating whether abortion is a legitimate health care issue or not, it only makes sense that they should be equally troubled by government management of other health care decisions.

Undoubtedly, this is zealously naive thinking on my part. Reaching such a conclusion demands a modicum of consistency. And as we've seen, health care "reform" is an ideological crusade immune from logic.

Take the torrent of hypocrisy that spilled from the jilted pro-choice wing of the Democratic Party after a House amendment to the health care reform bill tightened a ban on federal funds for abortions by a vote of 240-194 -- a more substantial mandate against abortion funding, incidentally, than for health-care reform. . .

I have no doubt that the progressive wing of Congress -- folks who generally support a single-payer plan that would eradicate choice and freedom in health care -- believe government failing to give you something is indistinguishable from government taking something away from you.

Yet, while no one will be stripped of their right to have an abortion under this legislation, the vast majority of citizens will have to deal with a cluster of new mandates and more than 100 new government bureaucracies to enforce them.

Citizens will be ordered to buy insurance or face jail time. Americans will answer to a "commissioner of health choices" and pay extra taxes for having the gall to buy top-of-the- line insurance plans. They will no longer have the right to choose health savings accounts or high-deductible plans or, in most cases, flexible spending accounts.

That's just for starters.

Accordingly, . . . all who voted for America's Affordable Health Choices Act (sic) should, for credibility's sake, refrain from evoking "choice" or "freedom," as they voted against those principles this past week.

(via Protein Wisdom)

On November 13th, an Eli Lake Washington Times story accused the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and various lobbying disclosure laws and rules. Essentially, the article claims NIAC was unlawfully lobbying for Iran. I take no position on whether those charges are true.

This post is about a (controversial) writer for NIAC's blog, Artin Afkhami. Or should I say former writer. He's not listed on NIAC's "staff" page. And, as Michael Rubin notes on The Corner, Afkhami's Linkedin profile now is fairly anodyne. However, the cached version lists Afkhami as:

• Research Associate at Princeton University


• Iran Analyst at The New York Times


• Iran Blogger at NIAC

Question: Why was the New York Times using an analyst from an organization whose admitted goals were "advancing the interests of the Iranian-American community"?

Michael Rubin asked that of the Times, which responded:

Since July, Artin Afkhami has worked for The Times part time, on a freelance basis, providing translations of articles and speeches and monitoring news reports from Iran. He does not write for The Times.

We are reviewing his other affiliations to determine whether any of them pose the possibility or the appearance of a conflict.

Expect reports on the results of this investigation to be delayed until the Times prints at least a half-dozen more articles slamming bias on FOX News.

Conclusion: Western media reports on Middle East issues are particularly slanted because of the press' predilection for employing locals with an anti-American or -Israeli agenda. They rarely disclose the fact--until they're caught. And they often ignore contrary views. So much for leftist media objectivity and ethics.

Earlier this week, I critiqued a provision of the House healthcare bill (HR 3962) that would incentivize states away from alternative dispute resolution procedures that cap malpractice liability or lawyer fees. Well there's another gift to trial lawyers buried in the bill.

Specifically, to achieve President Obama's claimed desire to reduce healthcare costs, the bill's government-run plan would fix doctor compensation based on what a committee of bureaucrats believes appropriate to treat a given illness. See Sections 323-24 starting on page 216. Yet, Section 261(a) on page 149 says:

The development, recognition, or implementation of any guideline or other standard under a provision described in [the payment provisions] shall not be construed to establish the standard of care or duty of care owed by health care providers to their patients in any medical malpractice action or claim.

Critical Condition's Joseph Nixon explains that this:

puts physicians in an impossible conundrum. Doctors will only be reimbursed that amount for which the health-care commissioner determines is the appropriate treatment for a particular set of symptoms. However, doctors may still be held legally liable for failing to give that care which they could or should have given if additional care is actually more appropriate for the patient's well being.

So doctors are left with a choice between providing care that they know will benefit the patient but for which they may not be reimbursed, or providing limited care for which they will be reimbursed but quite possibly also sued by the patient.

Advantage -- again -- to the trial lawyers' lobby: the sixth largest campaign contributor over the past two decades. As for doctors: prepare to be assimilated.

Brendan O’Neill on Planet Gore:

If a climate-change sceptic suggests that the Sun, rather than man, is responsible for climatic variations he is denounced as evil, a heretic, someone whose words are so foul and twisted that they will be "partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead." In other words, question the environmentalist consensus, and you are endangering life itself -- your words are literally poisonous.

Yet when a climate-change activist openly calls for calamitous events and the deaths of thousands of people as a way of focusing our leaders’ minds on the problem of climate change, no one bats an eye.

One central impetus for healthcare reform is extending insurance to those not now covered. But there's serious disagreement about just how many Americans can't afford health insurance: many of the uninsured have the money but choose to forgo coverage (especially the young and healthy) or opt-out of employer-sponsored health plans; some say they lack insurance though covered by Medicare or Medicaid already; others are illegal immigrants. Perhaps for those reasons, even President Obama dropped his estimate of the uninsured from 47 million to 30 million.

In last month's New York Post, Jeffrey Anderson says that figure still is too high:

The health-care-reform debate is plagued by different numbers on how many Americans lack health insurance, but we actually have excellent data on the question: Ninety percent of Americans are insured, according to the Census -- and even the president more or less concurs.

The Census is the source for the much-cited figure of 46 million uninsured. Yet the very same table plainly indicates that 9 million of those are not US citizens. That leaves 37 million uninsured who are Americans.

But there's more. In the same document, the Census also plainly states that "health-insurance coverage is underreported" in its survey. When it cross-checked its survey results with the official Medicaid rolls, it found that 16.9 percent of those on Medicaid had claimed on their Census forms that they were uninsured. That 16.9 percent amounts to 9 million people.

So the actual tally, according to the most authoritative source we have, is just 28 million uninsured citizens (46 million minus 9 million non-citizens, minus 9 million on Medicaid who were falsely recorded as uninsured).

To be more exact, it leaves 28,157,000 uninsured out of a total of 280,209,000. That leaves us with 90 percent of American citizens covered by insurance, according to the Census.

Remind me why we're seeking to increase inefficient government intervention into a system that works pretty well?

(via Critical Condition)

UPDATE: below

A new study by Georgia Tech Professor Brian Stone in the Environmental Science & Technology journal concludes that "Mitigating climate change could be better achieved by regulating land use change than emissions reductions alone":


source: Stone, Land Use as Climate Change Mitigation

caption (first sentence only): Urban and rural temperature anomalies (5 year means) for 50 large U.S. metropolitan regions over the period of 1957-2006.

The study's press release quotes the author:

"Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases," said Stone. "Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole -- a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs -- like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress -- may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming."

No kidding--this is old news:


source: NASA's Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program

Except to Congressmen Waxman and Markey.

MORE:

Warming skeptic Princeton physics prof Freeman Dyson agrees at about 3:35 into this video.

(via Watts Up With That?, reader Marc D.)

Victor Davis Hanson on The Corner:

George W. Bush inherited a recession. He also inherited the Iraq no-fly zones, a Middle East boiling after the failed last-minute Clintonian rush for an imposed peace, an intelligence community wedded to the notion of Saddam's WMD proliferation, a Congress on record supporting "regime change" in Iraq, a WMD program in Libya, a Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Osama bin Laden enjoying free rein in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a renegade Pakistan that had gone nuclear on Clinton's watch with Dr. Khan in full export mode, and a pattern of appeasing radical Islam after its serial attacks (on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, U.S. embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole).

In other words, Bush inherited the regular "stuff" that confronts most presidents when they take office. What is strange is that Obama has established a narrative that he, supposedly unlike any other president, inherited a mess.

At some point, Team Obama might have at least acknowledged that, by January 2009, Iraq was largely quiet; Libya was free of WMD; Syria was out of Lebanon; most of the al-Qaeda leadership had been attrited or was in hiding; a homeland-security protocol was in place to deal with domestic terror plots; European governments were mostly friendly to the U.S. (unlike during the Chirac-Schröder years); and the U.S. enjoyed good relations with one-third of the planet in China and India.

The fact that in the Bush years we were increasingly disliked by Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chávez, Kim Jong Il, Morales, Ortega, and Putin, may in retrospect seem logical, just as their current warming to the U.S. may prove to be cause for alarm, given the repugnant nature of these strongmen.

Agreed.

Remember how the Obama Administration first announced that the $787 billion stimulus package had saved or created a whopping 30 thousand jobs? Embarrassed by the absurdly low figures -- which the Associated Press said were overstated -- the Federal bean counters quickly upped the official number to 640 thousand jobs. According to Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to Vice President Biden, that meant the cost per job saved/created was an amazing $92,000! (Amusingly, CNN published a chart implying that jobs were created by money not yet spent.)

My first reaction was to chortle over the fact that the cost per job is twice the mean annual personal income--it would have been cheaper just to give the money away. Or that the figures fail to account for jobs foregone when government spending crowded-out private sector wealth creation.

But before shuffling off to the spreadsheets, I realized that the Administration's math still is wrong. According to the AP:

Despite White House promises that errors would be corrected, the latest stimulus job count still includes mistakes such as the ones discovered in the AP's earlier sampling of contracts. For example, the Palm Beach County, Fla., water department reported 57 meter readers, customer service representatives and other positions as part of two water projects. That got incorrectly doubled to 114. Some agencies that received stimulus money continue to report saving jobs, despite using the money for employee pay raises. And the new data appeared to include at least dozens of entries in which contractors listed the same number of jobs as created or saved on different projects, which suggested double- or triple-counting of the same workers used on all projects.

The AP follow-up a few days later was even more dismissive:

An Associated Press review of the latest stimulus reports -- which the White House promised would undergo extensive reviews to ensure accuracy -- found that more than two-thirds of 14,506 jobs credited to the recovery act under spending by just one federal office were overstated because they counted pay increases for existing workers as jobs saved.

The inflated job count is at least partly the product of the administration instructing local community agencies that received money to count the raises as jobs saved.

"That's more than ridiculous," said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Most of the inflated figures were like those cited in the 935 saved jobs reported by the Southwest Georgia Community Action in Moultrie, Ga. The agency, like hundreds of others collecting Head Start money, claimed all its existing employees' jobs were saved because they received a pay raise with the stimulus cash.

Similar claims led to overstating by more than 9,300 the number of jobs saved with more than $323 million in stimulus money distributed by the Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, the AP's review found.

More than 250 other community agencies in the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay raises, pay for training and continuing education, extend employee work hours or buy equipment, according to their spending reports.

The Georgia program inflated the numbers even further by claiming the recovery money saved more jobs than the number of people it actually employs. The agency employs 508 people but claimed 935 jobs were saved because of confusion over government reports.

Tallying the various press investigations into the 640,000 jobs figure, the Washington Examiner concluded, "[m]ore than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were 'created or saved' by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary." Surf over to the Examiner's interactive map of bogus jobs, many with hyperlinked sources. One example is Fayettville, Arkansas where, according to the New York Times, a $1,000 grant to purchase a single lawn mower improbably was credited with saving 50 jobs. Or try North Chicago, Illinois, where $4.7 million was given to local schools supposedly saving the jobs of 473 teachers--except that the Chicago Tribune says the school district employs only 290 teachers. They also showed job growth in non-existent Congressional districts.

No wonder Congressional Democrats want to pass a second jobs bill. And they want similar bureaucrats to run healthcare.

(via Washington Examiner, The Problem With Kevin, Don McKee)

From a November 11th AP story:

Statistically, CNN's audience is far from nonpartisan.

Of people who say their main source of news is CNN, 46 percent identify themselves as Democrats and 13 percent as Republicans, according to a July survey by the Pew Research Center (the rest say they're independent or don't identify themselves politically). The same study found that Fox's main source audience was 38 percent Republican and 18 percent Democratic.

I think Lou Dobbs recently discovered the consequences of the slant in CNN's audience.

(via Don Surber)

Several posts starting in August detailed the Obama Administration's attempt to hijack the National Endowment for the Arts for political purposes. In what I thought the final chapter, the NEA admitted error and fired its communications director, Yosi Sergant--but NEA's chairman claimed Sergant had acted without authority or approval. In other words, they fingered Sergant as a rogue staffer. Even if accurate, that didn't explain the role of White House staffers participating in the process.

Never mind--it's not true anyway. The conservative foundation Judicial Watch used the Freedom of Information Act to get NEA emails, including some between Sergant and White House and The Corporation for National and Community Service staffers. These documents make clear that the notion of soliciting artists to proselytize the President's position's wasn't Sergant's but originated with an unnamed Obama campaign activist. Thereafter, there were numerous emails between Sergant and an employee of the federal program United We Serve where the latter appears to be organizing the campaign. Some of those emails were copied to a second NEA employee, Elizabeth Stark. And, following that, Sergant himself sent a conference call invitation saying:

A call has come in to our generation. A call from the top. A call from a house that is White. A call that we must answer. And to answer it, we need you. . .

United We Serve is President Obama's call to service challenging all Americans to engage in sustained, meaningful community service. With the knowledge that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things when given the proper tools, President Obama is asking us to come together to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda -- health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.

Now is the time for us to answer this call. It is time for us as a group of artists, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, tastemakers, leaders or just plain, cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!

In sum, the documents demonstrate that the idea originated not with Sergant but with an outside Obama partisan; that White House and other Federal employees were intimately involved; that others in the NEA knew of the plan; and that Sergant himself said the idea came from the White House. This is no more a rouge staffer than the Cuban burglars were the brains behind the Watergate break-in.

Conclusion: Yosi Sergant was the fall-guy for an extensive effort to twist tax-supported arts funding to advance Obama's political agenda. All Federal employees named in the documents should be the subject of an immediate investigation, whose outcome should be disclosed publicly. After all, didn't the President promise:

an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Or, like NEA's last fable, is that statement also "inoperative"?