Monthly Archives: July 2007

What’s So Bad About John Doe Protection ?

Last week, the Democrats in Congress blocked an effort to give immunity from civil lawsuits to private citizens who reported what they believed to be suspicious activity from fellow airplane passengers:

[L]ast March, the House of Representatives passed by a 304-121 vote the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007, with language protecting from such lawsuits airline passengers who might report suspicious activity. All seemed well.

But last week, as Republicans tried to have the “John Doe” protection included in final homeland security legislation crafted by a House-Senate conference committee to implement the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, they found Democratic conferees blocking its inclusion.

“Democrats are trying to find any technical excuse to keep immunity out of the language of the bill to protect citizens, who in good faith, report suspicious activity to police,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. “I don’t see how you can have a homeland security bill without protecting people who come forward to report suspicious activity.”

But that, it would seem, is exactly what the Democratic Congress is proposing.

All of this, of course, goes back to the case of the so-called Flying Imams, a group of six supposed Muslim Imams who were flying on US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix.

As more than one person who was present on the flight has stated, these “imams” exhibited behavior that could, at best, have been described as suspicious.  They apparently refused to sit in their assigned seats, requested seatbelt extensions that they plainly did not need, traveled on one-way tickets, and were overheard praising Osama bin Laden.

Whether any of this is true or not is, quite honestly, is irrelevent.

What matters is whether someone who notices these things and reports them to those in charge should be held liable in a civil court for doing so.

Given the current state of the world, and absent any evidence of an intent to specifically injure a specific person, the answer, it would seem should be quite obviously no.

Quite honestly, the War on Terror is far too serious to start getting the trial lawyers involved.

There’s No Good Reason To Bring Back The Draft….And Plenty Of Bad Ones

Motivated mostly by his opposition to the Iraq War, Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, along with New York Congressman Charles Rangel, has been among the most vocal members of Congress talking about the idea of bringing back the draft, and forcing young men, and presumably women, into military service whether they like it or not.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the individual rights argument against the draft….and it is a powerful one in that it argues that no person should be forced to put their life at risk against their will, or otherwise forced to engage in “service to their country” that they don’t wish to perform, and ask ourselves if it is really militarily efficient.

According to a study requested by Congressman Murtha himself, the answer is no:

The report, requested by Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, says that drafting people could make it easier for the Army to reach its 2012 goal of 547,000 soldiers. It might also save some money if Congress opted to pay draftees less than volunteers. But the downside, the report claims, would be a less effective fighting force, thanks to a sudden influx of draftees who would remain in uniform for much shorter spells than today’s all-volunteer soldiers.

“Usually, greater accumulated knowledge and skills come with increased experience,” the report notes. “Because most draftees leave after completing a two-year obligation, a draft might affect the services’ ability to perform those functions efficiently.” To maintain the same capability, the CBO suggests, the Army might have to grow, which could eliminate any savings. On the other hand, increased training costs for draftees – with less time in uniform, more have to be trained – could be offset by cuts in advertising and bonuses now used to entice volunteer recruits.

The report says that while 91% of last year’s recruits were high school graduates, only 80% of U.S. residents aged 18 to 24 have attained that level of education. And high-school graduates, the military says, make better soldiers than dropouts. The CBO, which does not make recommendations but only charts options for lawmakers, estimates that somewhere between 27,000 and 165,000 would be drafted each year. That relative small slice – some 2 million males turn 18 each year – could resurrect the problems seen in the Vietnam era when deferments and friendly draft boards kept some well-connected young men out of uniform. Under current law, women could not be drafted.

If it doesn’t make military or economic sense to launch the draft, what about the notion of fairness? Critics have claimed that minorities are over-represented in the all-volunteer military because they have fewer options in the civilian world. The CBO disputes that, saying that “members of the armed forces are racially and ethnically diverse.” African Americans accounted for 13% of active-duty recruits in 2005, just under their 14% share of 17-to-49-year-olds in the overall U.S. population. And minorities are not being used as cannon fodder. “Data on fatalities indicate that minorities are not being killed [in Iraq and Afghanistan] at greater rates than their representation in the force,” the study says. “Rather, fatalities of white service members have been higher than their representation in the force,” in large part because whites are over-represented in the military’s combat, as opposed to support, jobs.

As more than one military expert has made clear in the years since 9/11, the draft simply doesn’t make sense in the modern military. In the past — whether it’s World War I, World II, Korea, or Vietnam — brute force of arms was a far more important factor on the battlefield than it is today. Today, it’s not the number of men that matter, it’s their ability to use and understand the technology of modern warfare that matters.

And that’s not something you can instill in a raw draftee off the streets the way you could teach him to march and shoot a rifle at Nazis or Japs in WW 2.

But that’s only part of the equation. The other part is the one I mentioned before, the individual rights part. Outside of an immediate threat to the internal security of the United States, what right does the Federal Government have to force me, you, or our children to fight and die in a foreign land ? None that I can think of and, quite honestly, the Thirteenth Amendment would seem to make clear that no person can be forced into servitude against their will.

And then there’s yet another part to the equation.

When a government is able force it’s citizens into military service, it has the ability to raise an army that can accomplish nearly anything, including expanding spheres of influence and creating empires. As Randolph Bourne said, war is the health of the state. And a state capable of making war when it wishes, is capable of expanding its power, both at home and abroad, far beyond what anyone ever intended.

H/T: Outside The Beltway

autoDogmatic Reports On SC Ron Paul Rally

Aaron, one of the bloggers over at autoDogmatic and the founder of the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, recently attended a Ron Paul rally in South Carolina, particularly looking for freaks and fringe groups.

He found none:

You see, I went in expecting an audience which was somehow “not normal”, indescribably; maybe quirky or geeky; paranoid; socially-awkward; heavily biased towards “fringe” types. You know, internet people.

Well, if these were “internet people,” we apparently need to rethink our notion of what the internet consists of. Because this audience was America.

That is perhaps the most succinct way I can put it. It was as if 2,000 of my nicest neighbors were brought together in one place.

No trace of “fringe groups”; this was as far from a “circus” as you could get.

Now, I always knew that Ron Paul was supported by “regular people” (though I’m not sure I consider myself one). But after reading mainstream Ron Paul “expose`” articles like this one, I expected to see a few more conspicious “9/11 Truthers”; ranters-on about the Bilderbergers, “gold-bugs,” whatever. Pick your clique. I don’t mean to diminish these groups — in fact I sympathize with all their views somewhat — but they are simply considered “fringe” in the popular conception. You aren’t supposed to associate with them.

And there was no sign of them at the rally.

Ok, I saw one young man with a “Kissinger – war crimes” t-shirt (which I’m actually sympathetic to), and maybe one guy with a 9/11 Truth t-shirt. That was it.

I think I may have seen fewer such “fringe” themes displayed at the Ron Paul rally than I might have seen walking down the street on a typical day.

What’s the signifiance of all this? Well, to me, the above is incredibly encouraging. It means the support for Ron Paul, and more importantly the ideas of his campaign, is broad-based. “Average Americans” — middle-class, hard-working, honest folk — buy into Ron Paul’s freedom message big-time. They just need the chance to hear it.

And that means the sky is the limit for the “Ron Paul Revolution.” It means anywhere you find an honest American, you’ve found a potential Paul supporter. The only limit is how fast the message can travel, and once again, the internet appears to be breaking records on that front.

This is a positive sign. One of the typical criticisms of Ron Paul is that only freaks and weirdos support him. Some of the commenters at this site have certainly shown that some of those people support him, but don’t prove that only those people support him.

The simple fact is that there are a lot of people in this country who are sick and tired of pulling a lever to choose between big, intrusive government, and bigger, more intrusive government. There are a lot of people out there who may not agree on everything, but agree that they’re ready for a new message. They’re not getting that from any of the mainstream candidates on either side.

I’ve said that I don’t think America is truly ready for freedom, at least as Ron Paul and many libertarians understand it. But America is changing. I really see the internet as a liberating force in America, and the internet is inherently libertarian. The internet’s weight behind Ron Paul has been the difference between him being a third-tier nobody candidate and a second-tier candidate rapidly gaining name recognition.

But Aaron’s experience reminds me of something. “Internet support” no longer means a bunch of freaks and weirdos, sitting in their pajamas in their parents’ basement, hoping to someday make a friend. That might have been true of the internet of 1997, but the internet of 2007 is a cross-section of America. Ron Paul’s message is reaching those people.

I can’t say whether Paul will win the nomination, or win the presidency. Like co-blogger Doug, I support Paul but I think the chances are low. I don’t know that America is ready for him. But when I see the effect he’s having at this early stage, I think that maybe, just maybe, America still has a chance. I support Ron Paul because I want to advance freedom, and that’s something that I want to do whether he makes it to the Oval Office or not.

America: More Likely To Elect A Gay, Muslim, Former Drug User Than An Athiest

That is the somewhat interesting result of a recent New York Times poll:

THE probing about his Mormon beliefs has by now become familiar to the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But when Mary Van Steenis, a teacher at a local Christian school, took the microphone at a recent “Ask Mitt Anything” forum in Pella, Iowa, to ask her question, it still felt as if some sort of unspoken boundary of social etiquette had been breached.

Mrs. Van Steenis wanted Mr. Romney to say where the Book of Mormon would figure in his decision making as president.

“Where would the Bible be?” she asked. “Would it be above the Book of the Mormon, or would it be beneath it?”

Although the Constitution bars any religious test for office, if polls are to be believed, Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, faces a serious obstacle to winning the presidency because of his faith. Surveys show a substantial percentage of Americans would be less likely to vote for a Mormon, or for that matter a Muslim or an atheist. But how rigid is that sentiment?

Just take a look at the numbers and it seems pretty rigid.

This is why candidates appearing at churches and Presidents invoking God are part of the public religion of the United States. The voters expect it, heck in some parts of the country I’d go so far as to say they demand it. This is hardly surprising, since the United States has always been a far more openly religious country than most of the West.

And repression has often been part of the package.

The Puritans, for example, didn’t come to the New World for religious freedom so much as they came so that they’d be able to impose their own brand of religious tyranny free from interference by the Church of England. And it happened in other colonies as well, with the exception of Quaker dominated Pennsylvania. That’s why we have a First Amendment and that’s why the Constitution specifically provides that there is no religious test for holding office.

But Constitutional amendments can only go so far. Toleration for other’s beliefs is not something that can be imposed, it must be learned. And it would seem we still have a long way to go.

H/T: Althouse

Ron Paul In The New York Times

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features a profile of Ron Paul, his campaign for President, and the motley crew of supporters that he’s attracted.

For The Times, it is, I suppose, a mostly positive piece. Being The Times, of course, there is much discussion of his position on the Iraq War:

Alone among Republican candidates for the presidency, Paul has always opposed the Iraq war. He blames “a dozen or two neocons who got control of our foreign policy,” chief among them Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Bush advisers Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, for the debacle. On the assumption that a bad situation could get worse if the war spreads into Iran, he has a simple plan. It is: “Just leave.” During a May debate in South Carolina, he suggested the 9/11 attacks could be attributed to United States policy. “Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us?” he asked, referring to one of Osama bin Laden’s communiqués. “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.” Rudolph Giuliani reacted by demanding a retraction, drawing gales of applause from the audience. But the incident helped Paul too. Overnight, he became the country’s most conspicuous antiwar Republican.

Paul’s opposition to the war in Iraq did not come out of nowhere. He was against the first gulf war, the war in Kosovo and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which he called a “declaration of virtual war.” Although he voted after Sept. 11 to approve the use of force in Afghanistan and spend $40 billion in emergency appropriations, he has sounded less thrilled with those votes as time has passed. “I voted for the authority and the money,” he now says. “I thought it was misused.”

Though I think he was wrong to oppose the first Gulf War on the simple ground that naked aggression such as that displayed by Saddam Hussein in August 1991 cannot be tolerated, he was right about Kosovo, and, as time has shown, he’s right about Iraq. Of all of America’s recent military ventures, the war in Afghanistan is clearly the most justified, but it’s undeniable that it’s execution has been less than satisfactory. And, of course, the Times loves him for his anti-war stance.

And, then, there’s mention of an old friend of The Liberty Papers, Eric Dondero:

Anyone who is elected to Congress three times as a nonincumbent, as Paul has been, is a politician of prodigious gifts. Especially since Paul has real vulnerabilities in his district. For Eric Dondero, who plans to challenge him in the Republican Congressional primary next fall, foreign policy is Paul’s central failing. Dondero, who is 44, was Paul’s aide and sometime spokesman for more than a decade. According to Dondero, “When 9/11 happened, he just completely changed. One of the first things he said was not how awful the tragedy was . . . it was, ‘Now we’re gonna get big government.’ ”

Dondero claims that Paul’s vote to authorize force in Afghanistan was made only after warnings from a longtime staffer that voting otherwise would cost him Victoria, a pivotal city in his district. (“Completely false,” Paul says.) One day just after the Iraq invasion, when Dondero was driving Paul around the district, the two had words. “He said he did not want to have someone on staff who did not support him 100 percent on foreign policy,” Dondero recalls. Paul says Dondero’s outspoken enthusiasm for the military’s “shock and awe” strategy made him an awkward spokesman for an antiwar congressman. The two parted on bad terms.

Given Dondero’s rhetoric, both here and elsewhere on the Internet, I’m inclined to take the Congressman’s side in this dispute. Like him or not, Congressman Paul is a man of principle and his stand on the Iraq War , which I happen to agree with, is entirely consistent with those principles. Dondero has always struck me as, to put it nicely, a political opportunist.

There’s alot more to the article, including reference to the fact that many Ron Paul meetups have brought in John Birchers and other kooks, but, on the whole, its a rather positive piece, and the closing paragraph may be the best part:

[W]hat is “Ron’s message”? Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.

In other words, it’s the same thing I’ve said many times before. Ron Paul may not win the Republican nomination, but his candidacy is important because it gives voice to ideas that haven’t been spoken loudly by a Presidential candidate for at least the past three decades.

1 5 6 7 8 9 21