Category Archives: Character

Should Tandy Carter lose his job over this?

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The simple answer is NO, in the shoulda woulda coulda sense that things should not have come to this pass:

Columbia police chief’s job in jeopardy

Carter’s refusal to hand over crash probe to outside agency angers City Council
By ADAM BEAM and NOELLE PHILLIPS – abeam@thestate.com nophillips@thestate.com

Columbia Police Chief Tandy Carter, who has been staring down City Council over his decision to investigate Mayor-elect Steve Benjamin’s car accident, could lose his job next week.

Carter refused to hand over the investigation to an outside agency against the wishes of City Council, which is concerned about the public’s perception of special treatment. But the tipping point seems to be Carter’s request for a state attorney general’s opinion regarding what City Council can and cannot tell him to do.

“I just need to think about this whole situation on requesting an AG opinion on whether or not I have the authority to direct him to do something,” said city manager Steve Gantt, who under state law is the police chief’s supervisor. “I have to figure out what in the world he is thinking about and make a decision on what I think is in the long-term best interest for the city of Columbia.”…

But I wonder what choice Steve Gantt and City Council will have going forward. Gantt says he’s been asking the chief to request an outside review of the case for two weeks. Now, he’s going to tell him to do it.

Meanwhile, Chief Carter is asking the state attorney general to rule on whether his bosses can tell him what to do. Which is really, really weird.

Yes, I know that Columbia’s system of government diffuses and confuses the lines of accountability, but this is just too wild.

I hate that we may be about to lose a good police chief over this — and by most accounts, he has been a good chief at a time when Columbia needed one — but his behavior in this case has puzzled me from the start.

Mind you, I am sympathetic to his insistence on letting the duly sworn cops with jurisdiction in the case do their jobs. Normally, I say the same thing: When Congress starts calling for a special prosecutor, I always wish they’d let the FBI or whoever just investigate and be the professionals they are. But this case was especially sensitive. It happened to the soon-to-be mayor with whom Chief Carter was publicly disagreeing just a week before.

I could see myself saying, “Dammit, I know I’m a professional who can do his job with integrity, and I don’t care what anyone says.” But there are larger things than the professional pride of the police — such as the good of the city. And the good of the city required that any whiff of doubt about interest in this case be eliminated from the start.

And that didn’t happen. And the chief dug in. And the chief ignored the wishes of his bosses for two weeks. Why, I don’t know. But I also don’t know how they can sit still for it.

Welcome, NPR…

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Just got a call from Carol Klinger at NPR. She wanted to know what I’d written lately about the governor. I suggested checking out the blog.

To make it easier, here are a few key riffs:

And from back in the day, before all the current mess:

Carol, enjoy…

More power to Jenny (just not POLITICAL power, OK?)

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Last week, a Republican friend drew my attention to jennysanford.com, which he derided as being … I forget the word he used, but it was something like “egomaniacal.”

But when I looked at it I saw little to criticize. It’s apparently been up for awhile — I saw posts from 2008 and even 2007 — and why shouldn’t the First Lady have a Web presence? It was tasteful, and had been quietly updated with such language as:

Mrs. Sanford is enjoying spending more time in her most important role as mother of her four sons … and is separated from her husband…

I mean, what else are you gonna say?

Anyway, Jenny made a bit of a splash over the weekend when it was learned that, right after the Argentinian bimbo eruption, she went out and trademarked her name.

Well, so what? Hey, when you find yourself in the center ring of a media circus, which always creates the possibility that somebody‘s going to make some money off your name, why wouldn’t a reasonable person make sure that she is that someone?

You know what I did, first thing, when I learned I couldn’t take my old blog with me when I left the paper? I went out and bought bradwarthen.com. One of the few smart things I did, even if it hasn’t lead to any money yet. And I advised Robert to run out and buy robertariail.com, which he did.

More power to Jenny, say I. Just not any political power, please. We’ve had enough of where that leads, in the past seven years.

Mild-mannered demagoguery in the echo chamber

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Just now I got an automated phone call on my land line inviting me to take part in a telephone “town hall meeting” with Jim DeMint. So I listened in.

And first, I want to say that I appreciate that Jim DeMint is mild-mannered. None of that shouting, in-your-face demagoguery for him.

But that said, I have to say that after awhile, hearing some fairly extreme ideas espoused mildly and politely starts to creep me out.

Basically, the way this thing worked was that ordinary, regular, plain, normal, average Americans in the 2nd District asked the senator question after question in a manner that was rather like T-ball. Nobody was trying to throw it past him, and he kept saying “good question” to little sermonettes from folks who are worried about that Barack Obama guy giving away “our freedoms,” on issue after issue. Whether we’re talking global warming or trade or monetary policy to crime to health care, that’s what it always boiled down to: Thank goodness we have you, senator, to stand up for our freedoms. No problem, folks, glad to do it, and be sure to sign up for my “Freedom Alert” reports…

When somebody calls in, truly worried about crime — her house has been broken into twice, she said — and says “Is it possible that they’ll be able to take away our constitutional right to bear arms?,” it seems to me that the right thing to do would be say, “Of course, not — no one is trying to do that to you.” But not Jim. In his own mild, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth way, he makes sure he gives the impression that the only reason ATF goons aren’t about to batter down your door and take your guns from your cold, dead fingers is because he’s there stopping ’em: “I’m doing all I can,” he promises, “to make sure we don’t lose our constitutional rights.”

So why am I not reassured?

Yes, I could have hit a button and tried to butt in with a “Hey, wait a minute” sort of question, but all those years of not upstaging regular folks — of not wanting to become the story — stopped me.

One guy, though, did — right at the end — ask Jim what in the world would be wrong with ordinary working Americans having the same kind of health coverage as Congress (this was the only question I heard on the subject that wasn’t about that Obama wanting to take away our Medicare and turn it over to the gummint). Jim assured him that HE wanted ordinary Americans to have good health care, which was why he provided insurance when he was an employer in the private sector, and that he thought members of Congress should be forced to sign up for whatever gummint plan it cooked up, etc., etc. — everything, of course, except to say that yes, members of Congress are in a government health care system, and it works just great for them.

Far more typical was Hazel, who wanted to know why she had worked to pay into Medicare for over 40 years, and now that Obama “wants to take it away from us.”

And of course, Jim didn’t say, “You like Medicare? So what’s wrong with having it for everybody?” That would apparently defeat his purposes.

Anyway, when it was over Jim went away feeling all that much better about his brave stances against health care reform and cap and trade and so forth.

Maybe I should have said something. You think I should have said something? I should have said something…

Being “liberal” isn’t Daniel Schorr’s main problem

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One of the really irritating things about Twitter is that it is a tease. Time after time, I follow links to things that I hope will be interesting and informative, only to find that they don’t really tell me much more than the original Tweet.

For instance, a tweet from Romenesko said…

romenesko

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller is asked in a chat: “Why do you keep Daniel Schorr around?” (She admits he’s liberal, but…) http://is.gd/4RZz5

This grabbed my attention because I find myself wondering why NPR keeps Daniel Schorr around, too. But the link to the item at Romenesko in turn linked to a typo-ridden transcript of an interview, and here was the entire discussion of Schorr:

Derwood, Md.: Why do you keep Dan Schorr around? His analysis is reliably faulty, liberally-biased, and mean-spirited (yeah, I guess I’d feel the same way after what Nixon did to me). But still — he really knocks down any credibility you have of being ‘unbiased’, especially since he is a part of the news wing, not entertainment.

Vivian Schiller:

Dan Schor is a liberal commentator. I will not deny that is true. So what do we do about that? We balance his views with those of conservative guest commentators who frequently appear on our airwaves. Granted, they are not staff and you may think that makes a difference. But their voices are heard on our air, and I’m comfortable with that. We’re not planning to make 93- year old Dan Schor a freelancer at this point.

Not very satisfying. So I’ll add two cents worth of my own…

Excuse me for being disrespectful to the elderly, but I cannot abide listening to Daniel Schorr, even for a few seconds. And it’s not because he’s “liberal.” It’s because he’s so unpleasantly arrogant. It drips from every word he says.

Yeah, I get it, Dan: You were on Nixon’s enemies list. You were one of Murrow’s boys. You’ve been around, and had a storied career. Got it. It doesn’t make you God Almighty, and yet that’s what he sounds like he thinks he is with every pronouncement. And it’s not so much any particular thing he says; it’s the way he says it.

Bill Moyers is liberal, but he can be pleasant. David Broder has been around forever, but he acts like a normal, humble human being. Daniel Schorr is just obnoxious to listen to. It occurs to me, when I hear him, that any journalist about to express an opinion (or, allegedly, report) on radio or television would do well to tell himself, just before going on, “Don’t sound like Daniel Schorr.”

And yes, I admit this is probably an irrational prejudice on my part. Something about the frequency of his voice or something sets me off. He comes on the air, and it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard; I have to change the station away from NPR. Am I alone in this?

A bit of human warmth amid the concrete, steel and glass

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dietle's1

The pickin’ and grinnin’ downtown last night reminded me of one of my favorite parts of my trip up to suburban D.C. over the weekend. As you saw, I gave the usual sights a mere lick and a promise; I paid more attention to Montgomery County, Md. That’s where my Dad grew up.

On Friday night, we were taking our lives into our hands in the heavy traffic on Rockville Pike, looking for a place to eat, when Dad suddenly said, “Dietle’s!” Established in 1916, Hank Dietle’s tavern — Dad remembered it as “Pop Dietle’s” — really looked out of place amid the steel and glass and concrete towers and malls that crowd the once-sleepy town of Rockville. We didn’t stop there that night, but came back on Saturday morning, and it seemed almost like an archaeological find in that location.

Yet it remains very alive, very much a part of the community. As you see, on Saturday morning there was a group of musicians playing Celtic music over pitchers of dark beer, and we stopped to chat with them, which gave them a chance to recharge their glasses.

Dad remembers this as one of the places where my Grandad would stop and go in for a quick beer while Dad waited in the car. That may sound neglectful by modern standards, but my Dad remembers it fondly in the context of traveling around the county with his father. Now, of course, he’s old enough to go inside, and he sees that it’s a pretty cool place.

Here’s the way it’s described on a Washington Post site:

Hank Dietle’s white “Cold Beer” sign and front porch look more than a little out of place among the neon lights of Rockville Pike, but for people looking for a no-nonsense neighborhood bar, it’s a welcome spot.

Watching a Redskins game at Hank’s is like watching it in your friend’s living room. Snacks — free chips, dip in a crockpot and sandwiches — are provided on a card table in the small bar and patrons shout at the quarterback and the officials from their bar stool or booth. The regulars are mostly locals in their thirties and forties, although weekends can draw both a younger and less local crowd as well.

I find the existence of such places as this reassuring. We ended up eating Friday night at a Chili’s, which is more typical of what you find on that road. I wish we’d had more time to hang out at Dietle’s, which seemed a lot more real.

Dietle's2

Mullins grabs some attention, but fails on civility

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You may recall that I haven’t been too impressed with Mullins McLeod. I’ve generally dismissed his campaign as being… what’s the word… trite, I suppose. His campaign releases have sort of struck a generic populist pose, trying to project him as a regular guy who’s tired, just as you good people out there are, of all them blamed politicians and their shenanigans.

That pose is tiresome enough when done well, but as I said, his populist pronouncements have been so vanilla, as that genre goes, so as to be easily forgettable five minutes later. As I said back here, Mullins just hasn’t been able to get a hit in his few at-bats.

Well, he made a concerted effort to get on base yesterday, when he told Gresham Barrett to “shove it” on the Gitmo prisoners issue. Well, Gresham certainly deserved to have someone call him on his really ugly NIMBY ploy for attention, but while it might be cool for, say, a Dick Harpootlian to say something like that (except that Dick would be more imaginative, and he’d say it in Dwight’s behalf, not Mullins’), that’s not the kind of language we need from one who would be governor.

So basically, Mullins has managed briefly to get our attention by passing first and running the basepaths, but he’s immediately alienated us by coming into seconds with sharpened spikes high, a la Ty Cobb. In other words, the first time he gets our attention, he fails the civility test.

Hey, if we wanted a guy who talks like this as governor, we could turn to Joe Wilson.

Delleney’s approach on impeachment was most promising one

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I remain unconvinced that impeachment proceedings against Mark Sanford would be worthwhile. As you know, I believe he should have resigned by now (if nothing else, thereby sparing us from Andre Bauer’s candidacy), but I hate to see the State House stroke the gov’s narcissism with another session all about him.

And I certainly thought it appropriate that lawmakers not try to wrestle the subject to the ground in a two-day special session.

All of that said, I was encouraged that Greg Delleney at least took the most promising approach in his impeachment resolution. He didn’t mess around with all of that dull stuff about airplane rides and such, but concentrated on the one most glaring instance of dereliction of duty — the week that the governor ran off to Argentina, the trip that started this whole mess rolling:

Whereas, Governor Mark Sanford was absent from the State of South Carolina and from the United States from Thursday, June 18, 2009, until Wednesday, June 24, 2009, while in or in route to and from Argentina for reasons unrelated to his gubernatorial responsibilities; and

Whereas, from Thursday, June 18, 2009, until at least on or about Monday, June 22, 2009, Governor Sanford was not in official communication with any person in the chain of command within the Office of Governor of the State of South Carolina; and

Whereas, the Lieutenant Governor was not aware of the Governor’s absence from the State and there was no established chain of command or protocol for the exercise of the executive authority of the State; and

Whereas, the Governor intentionally and clandestinely evaded South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents assigned to secure his safety in order to effect his absence from the State; and

Whereas, the Governor directed members of his staff in a manner that caused them to deceive and mislead the public officials of the State of South Carolina as well as the public of the State of South Carolina as to the Governor’s whereabouts; and

Whereas, the purpose of the Governor’s absence from the State of South Carolina served no furtherance of his duties as Governor; and

Whereas, the Governor’s conduct in being absent brought extreme dishonor and shame to the Office of Governor of South Carolina and to the reputation of the State of South Carolina, and furthermore, has caused the Office of the Governor of South Carolina and the State of South Carolina to suffer ridicule resulting in extreme shame and disgrace; and

Whereas, the Governor’s conduct and actions under these circumstances constitute serious misconduct in office pursuant to and for the purposes of Article XV, Section 1, of the Constitution of this State. Now, therefore,

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives:

That pursuant to Article XV, Section 1, of the Constitution of South Carolina, 1895, the Governor of South Carolina, the Honorable Marshall C. Sanford, Jr., is impeached for serious misconduct in office.

Is that enough to warrant impeachment? Maybe not. But it certainly makes the case that this guy shouldn’t be governor, which is not quite the same thing, is it?

Delleney sounds (almost) like my kind of conservative

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Not really knowing Greg Delleney, I took some interest in this mini-profile John O’Connor included in his story today:

Often quiet and funny, Delleney is a member of a loose-knit – and often low-brow – lawmaker lunch group, the House Bi-Partisan Eatin’ Caucus.

Prior to this year, Delleney was not among Sanford’s chief critics. “I agreed with him more than I disagreed with him.”

Chester County GOP chairwoman Sandra Stroman said she has known Delleney, who served in the Navy for three years, for 15 years.

“He’s generally a very quiet person,” she said. “He listens a lot.”

Though many South Carolinians are tired of hearing about Sanford, Stroman thinks Chester Republicans support Delleney.

“I don’t think it’s personal,” Stroman said. “Greg Delleney is a man who believes in right and wrong, and I think he comes down on the side of right every time.”

Delleney is among the strongest right-to-life supporters in the Legislature, typically introducing a new bill each year to limit access to abortions.

This year, Delleney successfully shepherded through the House a bill that requires a 24-hour wait before a woman can receive an abortion. He also scuttled a bill that would have provided dating violence counseling for teens by adding an amendment restricting the counseling to heterosexual couples.

Delleney has critics.

“I like Greg. He is very passionate about what he believes,” said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg. “My problem is he is foisting his moral beliefs on public policy. I’m not surprised he’s pushing this, particularly when sex is involved.”

That makes him sound, in general terms, like the kind of conservative I like — as opposed to the Sanford hyperlibertarian type, or the type that gets extremely worked up over illegal immigration. I much prefer the Brownbacks and the Huckabees to the Sanfords and the DeMints.

Not that I would do everything he does. I don’t think I would have adding the hetero clause to the violence counseling thing. That’s the kind of making-an-issue-of-something-that-isn’t-an-issue stuff where social conservatives lose me (at least, that’s the impression I remember having at the time).

So he’s not exactly the kind of conservative I’d be were I to consent to being called a conservative (or a liberal, or any of those oversimplifications). I’m still more the John McCain type.

Hey, where are all my yes-men?

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There were those who said that if I went back to moderating comments, you’d only find those who agree with me.

That was, of course, patently ridiculous — nothing in my background would suggest that (I mean, have you EVER read the letters to the editor?) — but people said it as a way of trying to get me to back off. It’s the sort of wild, slashing insult that’s supposed to rock me on my heels and let the bad actors stay.

Not even I had expected the degree to which folks who used to defend me against the screamers now take me to task. Have you noticed it? I mean, I can’t seem to say anything right. Look back through the threads, and see if I’m right.

But the difference is, it’s civil. And that encourages people to step out and disagree, knowing they won’t be subjected to unwarranted hostility, that their disagreement will be respected — even when they disagree with me and are, therefore, wrong. (People even give me the room to kid around, but of course I won’t abuse the opportunity.)

It’s lively, and it’s constructive. In other words, it’s working. Have you noticed?

And, for a less nuanced view, here’s Jon Stewart

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Earlier today, I set forth a morally ambiguous view of the Franken amendment. For the simpler, this-is-such-a-slam-dunk-it’s-funny view, I share with you the way the matter was presented by Jon Stewart.

You can’t say you don’t get all sorts of views here. And there’s no question, this whole gang-rape issue is funnier the way Jon Stewart tells it than the way I do, but… oops — is the way I just put that prejudicial? (Could it be I’m one of those fogeys who is offended by the idea that so many college-educated young people rely on this guy for their news?)

Whatever. Just go ahead and make up your own minds.

Graham and his vote on the Franken amendment

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Randy suggested a couple of days back that we have a string on the Franken amendment vote, which, according to some of my friends here on the blog, can be summarized as, “Graham and DeMint were among 30 Republicans who sided against rape victims.”

Personally, I still don’t know who was right about this. But I had, and still do, a suspicion over a vote that allows one side to paint the other that black. The world isn’t that simple. And I know Lindsey Graham — he’s not a guy to vote for “pure evil” over good, particularly not for the sake of party solidarity. This is a guy who breaks with his side when he thinks it’s wrong.

The idea that he had suddenly become a different sort of guy just didn’t smell right to me. What it smelled like was one of these deals where one side or the other sets up a vote on something just to get the other side to vote against it, so the party of the first part can use it against the party of the second part politically.

This is going to drive Kathryn and others crazy (they hate it that I sometimes base my initial impressions on things on the degree to which the people doing the advocating have or have not earned my trust over time, but you know what? our entire system of representative democracy is based on that, to a huge degree), but just as I have come to trust Graham over time to have a good reason for his vote (even when he’s wrong, as on health care), I do not have a similar level of trust with Al Franken. Maybe I’ll get to the point where I do, but so far he’s still the guy with the “Al Franken Decade,” the guy who started a radio network because he thought the left needed its own Rush Limbaugh — in other words, just the sort of guy who likes to strike poses, whether for laughs or for partisan advantage.

And folks, this initially started as a discussion about character. I called Roman Polansky a perv, that got us on the subject of rape, and next we were talking about how horrible those Republicans were to vote against this measure.

So, in the process of trying to make up my mind on this so I could post something, I e-mailed Kevin Bishop in Graham’s office yesterday to ask whether they had any releases or written position on the subject. In other words, what did the senator have to say for himself? Kevin responded promptly (probably thinking I was about to post), but I got too tied up to blog yesterday, so I’m just sharing this now:

We did not send out a release….here is some background information on the Franken Amendment.

It’s also important to note the Department of Defense—ie the Obama Administration — opposed the Franken Amendment:

DoD Position

Proposed Franken Amendment (# 2588) re: H.R. 3326 Prohibition against requiring arbitration of any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment.

  • The DoD opposes the proposed amendment.

  • The proposed amendment effectively would require debarment of any contractor or subcontractor or would require termination of any contract if the contractor or a subcontractor, at any tier, compels an employee or independent contractor, as a condition of employment, to agree to the use of arbitration to resolve sexual harassment claims of all sorts.  The Department of Defense, the prime contractor, and higher tier subcontractors may not be in a position to know about such things. Enforcement would be problematic, especially in cases where privity of contract does not exist between parties within the supply chain that supports a contract.

  • It may be more effective to seek a statutory prohibition of all such arrangements in any business transaction entered into within the jurisdiction of the United States, if these arrangements are deemed to pose an unacceptable method of recourse

Here is some additional background on the amendment from the Senate Republican Policy Committee:

As you recall, Franken amendment 2588 to the defense appropriations bill banned the Department of Defense from using any funds to pay for an existing defense contract if the contractor decides with its employees to agree to arbitration of certain civil rights claims and torts.  In effect, it bans the Department from doing business with any defense contractor with an arbitration clause with its employees.  This would have an enormous negative impact on any state with any sort of defense contractor presence, or any state with a military base for which contractors perform support services.  It is our understanding that many offices that opposed the Franken amendment are the subject of ridiculous media campaigns attacking the offices for favoring Halliburton over rape victims, amongst other scurrilous charges.  As an after action report, we pass along the following points:

  • First and foremost, the Obama Department of Defense opposed the amendment.

  • The Franken amendment was marketed as providing protections to victims of sexual assault.  Groups have then denigrated those who voted against the Franken Amendment as seeking to deny rape victims their day in court.
  • The Franken Amendment seems particularly to be an overreaction given that Jamie Leigh Jones, the main case to which Senator Franken cites as demonstrating that his amendment is necessary, has not been denied her day in court.

o       A federal appellate court recently found that her employment arbitration agreement does not cover claims of (1) assault and battery; (2) intentional infliction of emotional distress arising out of the alleged assault; (3) negligent hiring, retention, and supervision of employees involved in the alleged assault; and (4) false imprisonment.

o       This means that the arbitration agreement Ms. Jones signed does not foreclose her from bringing these causes of action against her employer in a federal court.

  • Proponents of the amendment have argued that it was necessary so that justice is done in cases of crimes and serious civil rights violations.  They fail to note that arbitration clauses only bind the parties, and thus cannot prohibit prosecution of crimes.  Crimes and civil rights violations can still be prosecuted by the government through criminal and other means.

o       The Franken anti-arbitration amendment is less directed at rape or assault and more designed to prohibit the Department of Defense from paying for a contract with a contractor who chooses with its employees in employment contracts to have a clause pertaining to arbitration as alternative dispute resolution.

  • Since the Franken amendment applies to existing contracts, it would disallow the use of federal funds to pay a federal contractor, for example, to provide protective services for American personnel in Iraq if that contractor has an arbitration agreement in its contract with its employees. 

o       This raises substantial risk of disruption of services to troops in the field, as the existing contracts would have to be stopped and some substitute contract negotiated and agreed to. 

o       Moreover, to the extent this amendment forces the Department to default on existing contracts, even where the contractors are providing exceptional results, this would likely place the Department at great risk for substantial liability grounded in breach of contract.

  • The real motivation behind this amendment is, of course, Democrat hostility to all things arbitration, on behalf of trial lawyers.  This is exemplified by the last sentence of DOD’s opposition to the amendment, which suggests that all arbitration agreements be prohibited, stating “it may be more effective to seek a statutory prohibition of all such arrangements in any business transaction entered into within the jurisdiction of the United States, if these arrangements are deemed to pose an unacceptable method of recourse.”

o       Providing further evidence of this interest is Senator Feingold’s so-called Arbitration Fairness Act (S. 931), which would invalidate all arbitration agreements related to employment, consumer, franchise, and civil rights disputes.

  • This is contrary to long-standing federal law and policy, as the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 seeks to ensure the enforcement of arbitration agreements, and, as the non-partisan Congressional Research Service describes, the “FAA evidences a national policy favoring arbitration.”  CRS Rpt. RL30934.

o       The FAA specifically contemplates mandatory arbitration clauses, providing that “A written provision in any . . . contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce to settle by arbitration . . . shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.”  9 U.S.C. § 2.

  • The Federal Arbitration Act includes provisions to ensure that proceedings are fair.  Additionally, arbitration clauses will not be enforced if the contract itself or its arbitration provisions are entered into unlawfully.

  • To the extent there are jurisdictional problems making it difficult to prosecute some of the cases animating the Franken amendment, more targeted responses are in order rather than the wholesale jettisoning of arbitration clauses in employment agreements.

o       For example, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) was initially intended to provide extraterritorial federal jurisdiction for certain crimes over U.S. defense contractors working overseas. A Republican-led Congress in 2004 expanded MEJA to cover other U.S. government contractors working overseas where their employment relates to supporting the mission of the Department of Defense overseas.

Conservative Heritage Foundation

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/16/the-truth-about-the-franken-amendment/

As I said, I still don’t know what to think, but I think it’s more complex than Lindsey Graham voting against rape victims. What do y’all think?

Goys will be goys

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There is a saying that negroes like watermelon because…

No, that doesn’t quite capture it, does it? By comparison, it’s pretty innocuous. After all, you could end the sentence, “everyone does.” What’s the harm in liking watermelon? Rather insensitive, not the sort of thing you’d go around saying if you had half a brain and cared anything about other people’s feelings, but it’s not in the same league with Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer Jr. invoking the myth of the rich, avaricious Jew, a stereotype that helped feed the resentments that led to the Holocaust.

No, for an analogy, you’d have to reach to something that actually resulted in the murders of black people, something like, “There is a saying that black men lust after white women because…”

Where did the GOP find these guys? In case you missed it, these two geniuses Merwin and Ulmer — Republican Party chairmen in Bamberg and Orangeburg counties, respectively — wrote the following in an opinion piece published in The (Orangeburg) Times and Democrat:

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

I find myself wondering, What saying? Who says it?

These guys actually could make a guy sympathetic toward earmarks, which one assumes was not their aim.

Karen Floyd says they’ve apologized, and that’s that. What do y’all think?

Of COURSE most of Wilson’s and Miller’s money is from outside SC. Those donors don’t know them.

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I see that most of the money that has unfortunately flowed into the coffers of Joe Wilson and Rob Miller came from out-of-state:

Over the next 21 days, through the Sept. 30 end of this year’s third quarter, Wilson and Miller combined to raise $4.34 million – more than Democratic Rep. John Spratt and GOP challenger Ralph Norman collected over two years for their 2000 election in what had been the state’s richest U.S. House race ever.

No less remarkably, the vast majority of the largest donors to Wilson or Miller live outside South Carolina – 77 percent of Wilson’s new backers, and 86 percent of Miller’s recent supporters…

Nothing remarkable about it. It stands to reason — out-of-state donors don’t know these guys.

A more discriminating, local giver would probably wait and give to a candidate who could provide better representation to the 2nd District (ahem!). These ideologues from elsewhere couldn’t care less about the 2nd District or any other part of South Carolina; they’re just doing their bit to keep the partisan spin cycle spinning.

A donor who’s giving money to Joe Wilson because he yelled “You lie!” probably wouldn’t give it if he knew that normally, Joe is not a natural vessel for delivering such hostility. He’s a fairly mild-mannered guy who lost control for a moment, and initially did what came naturally and apologized, before getting swept up in something ugly.

A donor who wishes to express outrage over what Wilson does probably wouldn’t give to Rob Miller if he knew what a weak candidate he was. (My prediction: If no other candidates get into this — and unfortunately, with them sitting on all this money now, probably no one will — Miller will probably lose to Wilson by almost the same margin by which he’s trailing him in fund-raising. $2.7 million to $1.69 million — well, maybe the Democrat would do a little better than just under 40 percent, but he still will lose substantially.)

Polanski’s a perv, and they finally locked him up. What’s the issue?

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It’s come to my attention that some people are actually making like it’s a bad thing that the Swiss locked up Roman Polanski.

I can’t imagine why. A word in your shell-like: The guy’s a major perv. Here’s a source who seems to have her head on straight about it. But DON”T READ THIS if you don’t want some pretty horrific details:

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in “exile” (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never — poor baby — being able to return to the U.S.). Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she’d rather not see him prosecuted because she can’t stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let’s take a moment to recall that according to the victim’s grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, “No,” then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

I don’t even get what she’s on about with that “how awesome his movies are” stuff. Not really. “Chinatown” had something going for it, but it had some pretty perv-y elements to it also, as I recall.

Here’s Calvin Trillin’s take on it, which is also dead-on (and thanks to KBFenner for passing on the links):

A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he’s been punished for this lapse–
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He’ll miss the movers and the shakers.
He’ll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He’s suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.

Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that’s for sure–
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too–
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people’s rules.
So Roman’s banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

What more is there to say?

OK, part of it is your track record, not just what you say today

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Now that I’ve actually tried to implement the new comments policy for nearly a full day, I’m realizing something more fully than I did before. Yesterday, I wrote of my dilemma:

I see, for instance, that WordPress provides the option of “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” which sounds nice, but what good is it really? I prefer to judge a comment by its own merits, not by who posted it. Lee, for instance (and Lee really resents being picked on, and he’ll probably see this as being picked on, but let’s face it; his name is the one my readers most frequently bring up as an irritant), sometimes posts perfectly fine comments that add to the conversation. I’m not saying it happens every day, but it happens. So, going by my own preferred standards, I would approve that one good comment — and under the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” he would then have carte blanche to return to his habitual ways.

See, at that point I was undecided: Under this new approach, should I reward Lee, or “Mike Toreno” or “BillC,” by posting their comments when they behave themselves? Or should I just ban them for their past sins?

When I first posted the new rules, I was leaning toward the former. But I find I’m implementing the latter.

That’s because my goal is to make this a more comfortable place for people who are not shouters or trolls or flamers or whatever to air their thoughts without being dismissed or insulted, which has kept a LOT of good people away. The three I mention above — Lee and “Toreno” and “BillC” — sometimes seem like the only readers of my blog, because of the way they dominate conversations. Especially Lee, who posts early (generally first) and often (alarmingly often). After awhile, they have more impact on the general tone and feel of the blog than I do. Which will sort of make a guy wonder why he’s bothering.

So — even though they may be trying to post some comments that provoke thought without insulting anyone, so as not to be barred, I’m reluctant to approve anything by those three. And so I haven’t. If I let them back in now, I know that gradually they’ll push a little more, and a little more, and my attention will wander, and pretty soon we’re back where we were. I’ve been here before with repeat offenders, and I know the trajectory that these things follow.

If one is of a legalistic mind, this will seem unfair. After all, the judge and jury are only supposed to consider whether the accused committed THIS crime, rather than convict him on the basis of his past offense (right? you lawyers, feel free to jump in at this point).

But folks, I am not obliged to approve anybody’s comment, ever. I don’t even have to allow comments. I do it because I want to. And if somebody has created an ugly disturbance in my living room too many times, I’m not going to invite that person any more, lest my more desirable guests stop coming (and who would blame them).

So I haven’t approved anything by the three I mentioned above, even though they have tried several times. Not for the foreseeable future. They will no doubt find this frustrating. Well, they can go start their own blogs, and dedicate them to trashing this one, if they are so inclined. And if they can get anybody to read them, then more power to them. I’m not going to let them feed off of, and undermine, my ability to draw an audience any longer. They are personae non grata.

(And yes, I know that they can always come back under a new pseudonym — actually, I suspect one of the three of having done so quite a few times before — but that’s why I’m also monitoring the content of comments, rather than simply barring those names.)

Now, for the rest of you, you’re being judged by each comment. Yeah, some others among you aside from the banned three have contributed to ugliness on this blog. So, many of you will accuse, have I. But you’ve also contributed positively, and by approving some of your comments and not others, I hope to get all of us into the habit of listening to our better angels, and reflecting that in our writing.

If it seems like I’m making up the rules as I go along, then you’re very astute. But I’m doing the best I can. If you don’t like it, again: Go to another blog, or start your own. But if you want to be part of building a better public forum, welcome.

The New Blog Order, Mark IV

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OK, I really don’t know how many “New Blog Orders” there have been; I just thought “Mark IV” sounded good.

Anyway, here’s the new deal, for now: Comments won’t appear unless I approve them. (And yes, we’ve been here before, in a previous regime change. The video above of me explaining this very same approach was shot during a family gathering at my house in July 2007. See how unhappy I was with having to take this approach? That’s the way I look now, only without the grubby beginning of a beard. Sort of amazing, isn’t it, that as fed up as I was then, I’m still trying? I’m nothing if not persistent.)

I’m going to do that for a few days at least, and then I hope to go to something less stringent, not that there are a lot of options. I see, for instance, that WordPress provides the option of “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” which sounds nice, but what good is it really? I prefer to judge a comment by its own merits, not by who posted it. Lee, for instance (and Lee really resents being picked on, and he’ll probably see this as being picked on, but let’s face it; his name is the one my readers most frequently bring up as an irritant), sometimes posts perfectly fine comments that add to the conversation. I’m not saying it happens every day, but it happens. So, going by my own preferred standards, I would approve that one good comment — and under the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” he would then have carte blanche to return to his habitual ways.

Ultimately, the place where I think I’ll end up is that I’ll open the gates back up, but I’ll make a point of checking comments several times a day, and just delete anything that doesn’t contribute to this being a place that encourages thoughtful people who want to engage in good-faith dialogue.

And I know those people are out there. Just this morning, I was meeting with a prominent local attorney — a public-spirited guy who is a great public speaker and has a lot to say — mentioned to me that there was NO WAY he was going to spend any of his life wrestling in the mud with a bunch of trolls on a blog. And the bad thing about that is, he is just the kind of person I wish would join in with our dialogues here — I want lots of people like him, from across the political spectrum (and those of you on the left or right who think there are no thoughtful people with something worthwhile to say on the opposite end of the spectrum; well, you’re part of the problem).

So in this latest effort to foster the kind of place that he and other like him would consider worthy of his time, I’m going with a standard that goes beyond the mere absence of incivility. I’m going to look for posts that actually contribute something. I’m going for positive attributes, rather than just the absence of negative ones. Because serious people (or for that matter, people who like to have a little fun, just not at other people’s expense) deserve a blog that answers that description.

At this point, some of you are furiously writing to me to say, “You just want comments that agree with you!” which is ridiculous. That’s a ploy to get me to back down on enforcing standards, and post something that calls me and people who agree with me names just to prove how “fair” I am. Well, you know what? I’m not falling for that. I’ve heard it too many thousands of times from people who just can’t be bothered to disagree in a civilized manner.

I know that I’ve always given precedence to people who disagree with me. And anyone who’s followed my career and is not seriously challenged in the reading comprehension department knows that about me. But from now on, you’re going to disagree in a way that it doesn’t run off well-behaved people. You’re going to disagree in a way that makes people think, “Maybe he’s got a point” instead of “What a jerk!” I realize this is going to be a challenge for some, but I hope the rest of you will appreciate it.

And if you don’t, or if you just can’t bring yourself to meet the new standard, you are completely free to go start your own blog. This one’s mine, and I’m not going to waste time with it unless I think it’s getting better, and providing a worthwhile forum.

Hey, guys: Just insult the president, and RAKE in the dough

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This morning I ran into Dwight Drake yet again at breakfast — I swear, all that guy does is eat — and he told me that he exceeded his goal of raising $250,000 in the past quarter, reaching $300k.

Then, at another Kaffeeklatsch in Five Points with Steve Benjamin and Jack Van Loan, Steve told me that he raised $100,000 in the same period — which he says Richard Gergel tells him is a record, although he doesn’t know for sure.

Here’s what I told both of them: Hey, guys; you’re missing the boat: Just shout an insult at the president of the United States, and you can be rolling in the dough…

Can you believe this guy? As I said this morning on Twitter:

How does Joe Wilson live with himself, KNOWING he’s cashing in on something he did that was inappropriate?

He knew he did wrong as soon as he yelled “You lie!” His first instinct, and it was the right one, was to apologize. The Joe Wilson I know, while he’s an excitable guy, is better than that.

But then he got a taste of the wages of demagoguery, and he was ruined. Now, he basks in the adoration of those who celebrate the degradation of political deliberation in our country.

It’s disgusting. And while a guy who’s unemployed like me could use $2.7 million (and think about what an UnParty candidate could do with that — he’d have the chance to really torpedo this crazy partisan system), I honestly don’t see how he looks himself in the mirror as it comes pouring in.

Obama should seize historic opportunity, say “No, thanks” to Nobel

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Barack Obama has a tremendous opportunity now to recapture lost political capital, unify this country behind his leadership and increase (if that’s possible, in light of today’s development) his international prestige — all of which would be an enormous boost to the things he’s trying to achieve:

He should say, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the Nobel Peace prize.

If he does that, everyone will think more of him. That is to say, everyone who is susceptible to being influenced. The Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks who make a good living from criticizing him will still do so, but no one but the nuttiest fringe types would still be listening. Everyone with a scintilla of fairmindedness would be impressed if he declined this honor.

If he doesn’t do it, this award will simply be another occasion for the Right to hoot and holler and deride, and the Left to dig in its heels and defend Their Guy, and the crazy polarizing spin cycle will spin on, while health care and everything else gets lost amid the shouting.

I got a foretaste of this this morning. I was about to get out of my truck to go in and have breakfast when I heard the news that had stunned the White House and everyone else: Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the next few moments, I quickly filed the following three tweets:

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize? The White House is stunned, and so am I. Isn’t it a tad premature or something?

What did Obama win the Nobel FOR? Good intentions? I mean, seriously, the man just GOT here…

Hey, I LIKE Obama; I have hopes he’ll EARN a Nobel one day soon. But he hasn’t had the chance to do so yet…

Then, when I walked in to get my breakfast, I ran into Steve Benjamin and Samuel Tenenbaum, and asked them if they’d heard the news. They had. I expected them to share my shock. I mean, I saw one report (which I haven’t been able to confirm yet) that Obama was only sworn into office TWO WEEKS before the nominations for the Nobel had to be in. The president himself knows better than to claim he’d earned it. Here’s what he said this morning:

Mr. Obama said he doesn’t view the award “as a recognition of my own accomplishments,” but rather as a recognition of goals he has set for the U.S. and the world. Mr. Obama said, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize.”

But Steve and Samuel — especially Samuel — felt like they had to defend the president’s receiving the prize. And here’s why: While I had just heard the news and was naturally flabbergasted, with no other stimuli acting on me, Samuel gets up at 4:30 every morning, and has usually had several full cycles of spin by the time I leave my house. He had already heard right-wingers attacking the award on the airwaves, so he was in defensive mode.

This is what the whole Left vs. Right thing gets us: We can’t even agree when something wild and crazy happens. And the president of the United States getting the Nobel Peace Prize for what he MIGHT do, for what he INTENDS to do, for his POTENTIAL, is wild and crazy.

Face it, folks: The Nobel committee gave him this prize for Not Being George W. Bush. This is a measure of how much they hated that guy. I didn’t like him much either, but come on… (While I haven’t talked to my friend Robert Ariail today, I can picture the cartoon already: Obama clutching the prize to his cheek saying, “They LIKE me! The really, really LIKE me!…”

Here’s where the opportunity comes in. The president was on the right track with the humble talk, but he should go a big step further: He should decline the prize, insisting that he hasn’t earned it yet.

This would transform perception of Barack Obama both domestically and internationally. If he simply takes the award, no matter how eloquent his words, he’ll be seen as an ordinary guy who can’t resist being honored, whether he deserves it or not. The Right will go ape over it and keep on going ape over it, and the Left will ferociously defend him, making all sorts of improbable claims to support his receiving it, and those of us in the middle will see the Right as having the stronger point at the same time that we’re put off by their meanspiritedness, and nothing will be accomplished.

But turning it down, saying, “Not yet; wait until I’ve earned it” would catapult Obama to such a state of greatness that he would overarch all ordinary partisan argument. No one could say he was wrong, and most people would be blown away by such selflessness. It would give him tremendous amounts of juice to get REAL health care reform instead of some watered-down nothing, which is probably what we’re going to get.

Internationally… well, if they love the guy now, they’d be ecstatic over him if he turned it down. I mean it. Think about it: What do they love about this guy? His perceived nobility and humility. They hated Bush for what they perceived as his arrogance, and they love Obama for what they perceive as his humility before the rest of the world. If he just took the prize, the world would just shake his hand and that would be that. But if he turned it down, suddenly Iran would be negotiating with a guy with more respect than anyone in the whole wide world has had in a long time. And maybe we’d get somewhere — with Iran, with Russia, with China, in Afghanistan, in Palestine, take your pick.

As I said, I like Obama, and I want him to succeed. But I know he hasn’t earned this honor yet. And I’m firmly convinced that turning it down would afford him the greatest opportunity to succeed with his agenda that he’ll ever have.

Trying to explain Joe Wilson to France

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This morning I had a very pleasant breakfast at the usual place with Philippe Boulet-Gercourt, the U.S. Bureau Chief for Le Nouvel Observateur, France’s largest weekly newsmagazine. I forgot to take a picture of him, but I found the video above from 2008 (I think), in which I think he’s telling the folks back home that Obama was going to win the election. That’s what “Obama va gagner” means, right? Alas, I have no French, although I’ve always felt that I understand Segolene Royal perfectly. Fortunately, Philippe’s English is superb.

It was my first encounter with a French journalist since I shot this video of Cyprien d’Haese shooting video of me back in 2008, in a supremely Marshall McLuhan moment. If you’ll recall, I was interviewed by a lot of national and foreign journalists in the weeks and months leading up to the presidential primaries here. (You may also recall that a lot of them came to me because of my blog, not because I was editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Philippe, of course, also contacted me because of the blog, although he was aware of my former association, and expressed his kind concern for my joblessness.)

He had come to Columbia from New York, which has been his home for 14 years, to ask about “this summer uprising among the conservatives, peaking with the Joe Wilson incident,” as he had put it in his e-mail.

Well, to begin with, I disputed his premise. I don’t think there has been a resurgence of conservatives or of the Republican Party, which is still groping for its identity in the wake of last year’s election. What we’ve seen in the case of Joe Wilson — the outpouring of support, monetary and otherwise, after the moment in which he embarrassed the 2nd District — was merely the concentration of political elements that are always there, and are neither stronger nor weaker because of what Joe has said and done. Just as outrage over Joe’s outburst has expressed itself (unfortunately) in an outpouring (I’m trying to see how many words with the prefix “out-” I can use in this sentence) of material support for the unimpressive Rob Miller, the incident was a magnet for the forces of political polarization, in South Carolina and across the country.

What I tried to do is provide historical and sociological context for the fact that Joe Wilson is the natural representative for the 2nd District, and will probably be re-elected (unless someone a lot stronger than Rob Miller emerges and miraculously overcomes his huge warchest). It’s not about Obama (although resistance to the “expansion of government” that he represents is a factor) and it’s not about race (although the fact that districts are gerrymandered to make the 2nd unnaturally white, and the 6th unnaturally black, helps define the districts and their representatives).

In other words, I said a lot of stuff that I said back in this post.

We spoke about a number of other topics as well, some related, some not:

He asked about the reaction in South Carolina to Obama’s election. I told him that obviously, the Democratic minority — which had been energized to an unprecedented degree in the primary, having higher turnout than the Republicans for the first time in many years — was jubilant. The reaction among the Republican minority was more like resignation. Republicans had known that McCain would win South Carolina, but Obama would win the election. I explained that McCain’s win here did not express a rejection of Obama (as some Democrats have chosen to misinterpret), but simply political business as usual — it would have been shocking had the Republican, any Republican, not won against any national Democrat. I spoke, as I explained to him, from the unusual perspective of someone who liked both Obama and McCain very much, but voted for McCain. I think I drew the distinction fairly well between what I think and what various subsets of Republicans and Democrats in South Carolina think…

That got us on the topic of McCain-Bush in 2000, because as I explained to Philippe, I was destined to support McCain even over someone I liked as much as Obama, because I had waited eight years for the opportunity to make up for what happened here in 2000. Philippe agreed that the world would have been a better place had McCain been elected then, but I gather that he subscribes to the conventional wisdom (held by many of you here on the blog) that the McCain of 2008 was much diminished.

Philippe understood 2000, but as a Frenchman, he had trouble understanding how the country re-elected Bush in 2004 (And let me quickly say, for those of you who may be quick to bridle at the French, that Philippe was very gentlemanly about this, the very soul of politeness). So I explained to him how I came to write an endorsement of Bush again in 2004 — a very negative endorsement which indicted him for being wrong about many things, but in the end an endorsement. There was a long explanation of that, and a short one. Here’s the short one: John Kerry. And Philippe understood why a newspaper that generally reflects its state (close to three-fourths of those we endorsed during my tenure won their general election contests) would find it hard to endorse Kerry, once I put it that way. (As those of you who pay attention know, under my leadership The State endorsed slightly more Democrats than Republicans overall, but never broke its string of endorsing Republicans for the presidency, although we came close in 2008.)

Anyway, when we finished our long breakfast (I hadn’t eaten much because I was talking too much, drinking coffee all the while) I gave him a brief “tour” of the Midlands as seen from the 25th floor of Columbia’s tallest building, then gave him numbers for several other sources who might be helpful. He particularly was interested in folks from Joe’s Lexington County base, as well as some political science types, so I referred him to:

  • Rep. Kenny Bingham, the S.C. House Majority Leader who recently held a “Welcome Home” event for Joe Wilson at his (Kenny’s) home.
  • Rep. Nikki Haley, who until recently was the designated Mark Sanford candidate for governor, before she had occasion to distance herself.
  • Sen. Nikki Setzler (I gave him all the Lexington County Nikkis I knew), who could describe the county’s politics from the perspective of the minority party.
  • Blease Graham, the USC political science professor who recently retired but remained plugged in and knowledgeable. (Philippe remarked upon Blease’s unusual name, which started me on a tangent about his ancestor Cole Blease, Ben Tillman, N.G. Gonzales, etc.)
  • Walter Edgar, the author of the definitive history of our state.
  • Neal Thigpen, the longtime political scientist at Francis Marion University who tends to comment from a Republican perspective.
  • Jack Bass, the ex-journalist and political commentator known for his biography of Strom Thurmond and for his liberal Democratic point of view.

I also suggested he stop in at the Gervais Street Starbucks for a downtown Columbia perspective, and the Sunset Restaurant in West Columbia.

I look forward to reading his article, although I might have to get some of y’all to help me with understanding it. With my background in Spanish and two years of Latin I can generally understand French better when written than spoken, but I still might need some help…