Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

SC Democrats give sarcasm a try with new TV ad

This just in from SC Democrats:

COLUMBIA- South Carolina Democrats fired the opening shot of election season with a television ad criticizing Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley for her tax hypocrisies. The ad, titled “Thanks Nikki,” will begin airing today in Columbia.

In the ad Mark Sanford’s disciple, who voted for a two percent rise in the sales tax and against a sales-tax exemption for groceries, is “thanked” by her constituents for failing to vote for South Carolina interests. Video may be also viewed on the ad’s companion site, http://thanksnikki.com.

South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler said today that the ad will inform voters about Haley’s real legislative record.

“Voters deserve to know the truth about Nikki Haley and her record of broken promises,” said Fowler. “This ad only skims the surface of Haley’s hypocrisy and highlights the stark contrast between her campaign promises and her actions in the legislature. Voters are already starting to realize that Nikki Haley’s candidacy is all smoke and mirrors. South Carolinians are ready to move forward with real leadership.”

Nikki certainly asks for sarcasm, by running on transparency while dragging her heels on being transparent, and by touting her accounting abilities while failing repeatedly to do what most of us do every year (file our taxes on time).

But whether this approach will work remains to be seen. For one thing, it’s too focused on taxes, rather than the items that she’s really begging for sarcasm on. And yeah, Nikki voted for the execrable Act 388, which is a big reason why the Chamber is backing Vincent Sheheen. And while that act foolishly and carelessly raised the sales tax, it did so in order to (equally foolishly and carelessly) drastically reduce property taxes on owner-occupied homes. And if I’m a Haley supporter, I’d protest vociferously the use of a house (for the “through the roof” metaphor) to illustrate the point that she raised sales taxes, thereby subliminally giving the erroneous impression that she raised homeowner property taxes.

Of course, she DID raise property taxes — on businesses and rental property (thereby raising rents on those who can’t yet afford to buy) — by pushing the burden from those whiny people with houses on the lake to other categories of property tax. But this doesn’t make that point, at least not overtly.

There are two main problems with this ad. First, that it oversimplifies. Nikki is definitely guilty of voting for very bad ideas in the realm of taxation. She is one of the reasons why we so desperately need comprehensive tax reform, because she has so thoughtlessly participated in fouling up the system, making it less logical, less fair and less effective.

Second, this sidesteps the two things Nikki is most vulnerable about in order to go after her on taxes. This is no doubt based in an assumption (possibly backed by polling or focus groups, but I have no idea) that voters care more about taxes than about the fact that Nikki is such a hypocrite on her signature issues. It’s a risky move, trying to out-anti-tax a Republican in a general election. (Also, if you’re a Democrat, do you really want to call your opponent a “tax and spend…” anything?) But I guess they figure, what do they have to lose?

You’ll say that this calculation and oversimplification is just the way the game is played. Yep. And that’s a shame. Because there are very good reasons why no one should vote for Nikki Haley, and this ad only skirts them.

Don’t look for sanity inside Beltway this year

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To elevate a comment exchange to post status, back here Bart said:

The GOP may be a joke but it looks like they will have the last laugh come November when the American voters, who are a lot more intelligent than most give them credit for, sends a message that they don’t appreciate being Punk’d by a bunch of lying Democrats. Democrats, who by the way, are no picnic at the beach either.

The sword cuts both ways when it comes to deceit, dishonesty, and downright thievery by politicians.

I agree completely with you, Bart, about the Dems being no bargain. But no one should make the mistake of thinking a swing to the Republicans, particularly the Republicans of 2010, is in any way better.

Yes, the GOP will be more successful in November than Democrats, winning control of one or more of the two chambers of Congress.

And next time we have a Republican president, two years after he is elected, the Democrats will be more successful in the mid-term elections than Republicans.

And so on. It means nothing. The sad thing is that Republicans will foolishly believe that they won this year because of something they DID, and will give the credit to their mad rush to the extremes. So we’ll get more of that garbage.

Occasionally, something different from that happens. For instance, in 2006 a number of moderate Democrats won office, thanks in part to a campaign run by Rahm Emanuel. It drove the loony left even loonier, they hated it so. But it was better for the country. Unfortunately, those moderates — in both parties — make up such a tiny minority still that they have little impact upon the partisan insanity inside the Beltway.

My point is that these midterm shifts don’t have to be swings back and forth to the wacky fringes. They can pull us to the middle, toward sanity. It just doesn’t look at all like that’s going to happen this year.

This year — wow. This year, we see Sarah Palin not only NOT swept to history’s dustbin, as would happen in a country in which the voters were as sensible as Bart asserts (after all, she was a HUGE part of why the GOP lost the White House in 2008), but has such a secure brand (we Mad Men use words like “brand” a lot) that she is able to play kingmaker. Or queen maker, as the case may be. Although, reassuringly, it didn’t work out so well in Georgia last week.

If the voters choosing the GOP were so sensible, a sensible guy like Henry McMaster wouldn’t have fallen so easily to the likes of Nikki Haley. Nor would he have resorted to his own desperate attempts to prove that he, too, was suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome.

No, the Republicans winning the House this year will not be a good thing, any more than it was a good thing when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker. Same diff.

If only Karen Floyd cared about what I really think

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I got an invitation this morning, via e-mail, to participate in an opinion survey, from state GOP Chairwoman Karen Floyd. It was just another of those bogus surveys that the political parties send out — you know, the ones that are more about making partisan assertions and whipping up the faithful (so that they’ll give money), rather than actually trying to learn from what other people think.

To be fair, this one is better than most such. I get the impression that this one is more about testing messages with the faithful (which is a FORM of information seeking at least) than about merely whipping them up. So it could be worse.

But I can’t help wishing that a party would actually try to determine what other people think, and learn from that, rather than just spinning the plate. Of course, if it did that, I suppose it would no longer be a political party.

Here was the come-on to get folks to take the survey:

THE QUESTIONS: As we move through the 2010 election cycle, endure an economic decline and watch liberal leadership fail our nation, there are a lot of big questions that we must answer together.

YOUR ANSWERS: Please take the time to answer these short questions. We will be sending the results to every South Carolina Republican member of Congress and the General Assembly next week.

JUST 3 MINUTES: Will you take 3 minutes today to give us your opinion on the biggest issues facing South Carolina?

And here was the survey itself:

Please fill our out Summer Survey and give us your opinion on the biggest issues facing SC.

1. Do you think a mosque should be allowed to be built at ground zero?

Yes

No

2. Do you agree with our gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley that we can create jobs by cutting the income tax?

Yes

No

3. Should the Bush tax cuts be extended?

Yes

No

4. Do you agree with a judge’s decision to stop parts of Arizona’s immigration law from being implemented?

Yes

No

5. Should South Carolina should pass an Arizona style immigration plan?

Yes

No

6. Should South Carolina’s coastline be opened up for natural gas exploration?

Yes

No

7. Do you support or oppose the federal takeover of our health care system?

Yes

No

8. Should the state of South Carolina fight the nationalization of our health care system on the grounds that it is a violation of states’ rights?

Yes

No

9. Our Lt Governor candidate Ken Ard wants to resturcture the way we elect our Governor and Lt Governor so that they run together on a ticket and work more hand-in-hand to create jobs for our state. Do you agree with Ken Ard?

Yes

No

Do you think that Democratic 2nd Congressional district candidate Rob Miller should return the $370,000 he received from liberal activist group MoveOn.org?

Yes

No

10. Should South Carolina voters replace Nancy Pelosi’s chief budget writer John Spratt with a strong conservative like State Senator Mick Mulvaney?

Yes

No

11. What else would you like us to know today?

What gets me about these kinds of questions is that, aside from the last one they don’t allow you to answer truthfully. For so many of these questions, a “yes” or “no” answer is entirely inappropriate. But parties are about forcing people to choose “yes” or “no,” and unfortunately the MSM cooperate in rewriting our political language so that we can’t think in any other terms — which of course was the same idea behind Newspeak in 1984 — if you lack the words to think new thoughts, you can’t think them.

Here are the answers I gave, but please don’t do like the party and take them at face value. After each I am providing an answer, in italics, that tells what I REALLY think. But Karen didn’t ask for that, or provide me any way to give her that. Hence this post:

Please fill our out Summer Survey and give us your opinion on the biggest issues facing SC.

1. Do you think a mosque should be allowed to be built at ground zero? Yes. I say that only because the mosque indeed has the RIGHT to build there. And of course, that right is an important part of who we are in this country, and what we’re fighting for in the War on Terror. If the question, therefore, is should it be ALLOWED, then the answer has to be “yes.” But if you asked whether it should be built there, I’d say no. If you asked whether I think the choice of this site is a deliberate provocation of American sensibilities, I’d say I’m afraid that is likely the case, on some level — although I lack enough information to know. I find it very disturbing that the leader of this group wants America to share blame for 9/11 and refuses to say whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. And it doesn’t help a bit that Hamas endorses the plan to build there. Finally, if you ask whether I think building there represents a sincere attempt to bridge differences and heal wounds, I would say that if that’s what they truly wanted to do, they’d do it elsewhere. But in the end, do they have the right? In America, they do.

2. Do you agree with our gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley that we can create jobs by cutting the income tax? No. Can cutting a tax be part of a rational plan to stimulate the economy and thereby create jobs. Absolutely. But do I believe cutting a tax CONSTITUTES a rational plan to stimulate South Carolina’s economy, absent any plans to build physical or human infrastructure? To that, I say you’ve gotta be kidding. Bottom line, Nikki Haley doesn’t have a plan for creating jobs. She has a series of cookie-cutter GOP talking points: Cutting taxes, decreasing regulation, and privatization. That’s not a plan.

2. Should the Bush tax cuts be extended? No. Actually, I have no idea. Frankly, I’m loath to end them right now because of the condition of the economy. Any increase in the tax burden at any level, before we’ve got the economy growing again, is problematic. I never saw any need for these particular tax cuts to begin with, and had I been in Congress would likely have voted against them, as they were presented. But I’m not certain this is the time to end them. But I answered “no” because I don’t side with your party’s belief in the magical goodness of tax cuts in all circumstances, absent other measures, and I wanted you to know that.

3. Do you agree with a judge’s decision to stop parts of Arizona’s immigration law from being implemented? Yes. For the simple fact that immigration is a federal function. Yeah, I get it — your base believes it’s time for states to step in because the federal government isn’t getting the job done. I’m unpersuaded by that. I also know that the people across the political spectrum most adamant about this issue have been the main obstacle to the federal government adopting a comprehensive solution to the problem that does exist. Work on that if you want to have a constructive effect. Don’t advocate states usurping a federal function.

4. Should South Carolina should pass an Arizona style immigration plan? No. Of course not, for the reasons cited above.

5. Should South Carolina’s coastline be opened up for natural gas exploration? Yes. I said yes because that’s the Energy Party answer. We should do anything and everything, within reason, to make this country energy-independent. The objections on the left to such exploration are rigidly faith-based, like your party’s belief in the magical powers of tax cuts. It’s an article of faith that is immune to argument or circumstances. That said, my “yes” comes with a caveat — seems to me I’ve heard that the SC coast isn’t that likely a place to explore (tell me if I’m wrong on that; I can’t recall where I heard it). So let me amend my answer to say that by all means, we should explore in likely locations. If SC is a likely location, explore away.

6. Do you support or oppose the federal takeover of our health care system? Yes. Absolutely. If such a thing were proposed, I’d be all for it. That is, I’d be all for a substitution of a single payer for the insane way that we pay for health care now. Which is not the same thing as a “takeover of our health care system,” but it would come a heckuva lot closer to being that than anything that has been seriously proposed in this country, but less actually enacted. As for your implication that something that could be characterized a “federal takeover of our health care system,” that is an absurd fantasy on your part, a lie that you are trying to propagate in order to have a straw man to knock over. And there’s no way you should be allowed to get away with that. In the meantime, we need to let this feeble “reform” that Congress passed have a chance to be implemented so that we can see if it helps at all — which I doubt, but let’s give it a chance before condemning it. Your attempts to repeal it before it’s been implemented is unconscionable, because the need for some kind of change to our system is unquestionably dire.

7. Should the state of South Carolina fight the nationalization of our health care system on the grounds that it is a violation of states’ rights? No. Oh, get a life, people! How can we fight something for being something that it is NOT?

8. Our Lt Governor candidate Ken Ard wants to resturcture the way we elect our Governor and Lt Governor so that they run together on a ticket and work more hand-in-hand to create jobs for our state. Do you agree with Ken Ard? Yes. Although a better way to put it would be that Ken Ard, someone I hadn’t heard of before three or four months ago, agrees with me on something I’ve publicly advocated for almost 20 years. Not to toot my horn, but to suggest this Ard guy (who I strongly suspect to be an MSM plant because headline writers love a guy with a name that short) should get credit for the idea is patently ridiculous. If he does what the rest of us reformers have failed to do and actually gets the idea implemented, I’ll applaud. But not until then.

9. Do you think that Democratic 2nd Congressional district candidate Rob Miller should return the $370,000 he received from liberal activist group MoveOn.org? Yes. But only because I think he and Joe Wilson have both raised far too much money already to waste on their campaign, which presents voters with a no-win proposition. That’s why I say yes, not because I despise. MoveOn.org. I mean, I DO despise MoveOn.org, but that’s not my reasoning here. I just think this race is a total waste, and wish I had a better candidate than either of these guys to vote for.

10. Should South Carolina voters replace Nancy Pelosi’s chief budget writer John Spratt with a strong conservative like State Senator Mick Mulvaney? No. Give me a frickin’ break. What you meant to say, of course, was “Should 5th District voters replace the smartest and most capable guy in our House delegation, the very moderate and sensible John Spratt, with some ideologue more to our suiting?

11. What else would you like us to know today? I’d love, absolutely LOVE, a survey that sought thoughtful answers, rather than mere fodder for keeping the partisan spin machine turning.

Oh, and thank you for the opportunity, Karen. My answers were rather hasty, and not as in-depth as such complex questions demand — but they’re far more thoughtful than what you were looking for. Which is my point.

Huck says nay to Graham citizenship proposal

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Lindsey Graham may have decided to go way harsh on letting the U.S.-born children of illegals be citizens, but Mike Huckabee, charting his own course among leading GOP lights these days, begs to differ:

Huckabee on Immigration: Don’t Punish the Kids

Posted by John Wihbey on Wednesday, August 11, 2010

In a Wednesday interview with NPR’s On Point, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an ‘08 GOP candidate for president and a potential candidate again in 2012, said he did not favor repeal of the 14th Amendment — which grants citizenship to all children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status – and said that all children of illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship.

Asked if he would favor changing the Constitution, Huckabee said, “No. Let me tell you what I would favor. I would favor having controlled borders.”

He also elaborated on his views on illegal immigrants’ children who came to the U.S. later on. “You do not punish a child for something the parent did,” he told On Point host Tom Ashbrook. “…I’d rather have that kid a neurosurgeon than a tomato picker.”

Huckabee’s positions likely represent dividing lines in any future GOP presidential primary. As the illegal immigration issue has flared up again in American politics, the issue of birthright citizenship has become a hot topic in GOP circles, as various people have called for its repeal or reinterpretation by the courts. (Listen back to On Point’s Monday segment on the issue.)

Huckabee is an interesting guy who thinks for himself on a number of issues. Sort of like Lindsey Graham, so this contrast is all the more interesting for that.

Privacy gone mad (again)

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In a book review in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal — of The Five-Year Party, by Craig Brandon — there was a passage about yet another weird path down which our national obsession with, and perversion of, the notion of “privacy” has led us:

Mr. Brandon is especially bothered by colleges’ obsession with secrecy and by what he sees as their misuse of the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which Congress passed in 1974. Ferpa made student grade reports off-limits to parents. But many colleges have adopted an expansive view of Ferpa, claiming that the law applies to all student records. Schools are reluctant to give parents any information about their children, even when it concerns academic, disciplinary and health matters that might help mom and dad nip a problem in the bud.

Such policies can have tragic consequences, as was the case with a University of Kansas student who died of alcohol poisoning in 2009 and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who committed suicide in 2000. In both instances there were warning signs, but the parents were not notified. Ferpa’s most notorious failure was Seung-Hui Cho, the mentally ill Virginia Tech student who murdered 32 people and wounded 25 others during a daylong rampage in 2007. Cho’s high school did not alert Virginia Tech to Cho’s violent behavior, professors were barred from conferring with one another about Cho, and the university did not inform Cho’s parents about their son’s troubles—all on the basis of an excessively expansive interpretation of Ferpa, Mr. Brandon says. He recommends that parents have their child sign a Ferpa release form before heading off to college.

Good advice. Those of you who argue with me about curfews and bar closings and the like may side with those who gave us this situation. But I have a parent’s perspective. I want to know what’s going on with my kids. And moreover, I have a right to know — one that in a rational world would easily supersede any imagined “rights” granted by FERPA.

There is nothing wrong with this cartoon

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In fact, it’s quite awesome.

I missed it when Robert put it out week before last, and I’m glad it’s been called to my attention now. It’s hard to imagine a more pointed evocation of exactly what’s wrong with Nikki Haley. Or one of the things wrong with her, anyway.

What might be harder to imagine, to a sensible person who understands the concepts of satire and the idioms of topical visual communication, is the controversy it engendered.

It wasn’t all that much, of course. Just intimations that he was essentially calling her a “raghead.” Or check this one out, helpfully headlined, “Reminder: Nikki Haley is a Secret Muslim Whore.” An excerpt:

Now, just a month after Haley’s victory, one Republican cartoonist has emerged from his gutterto dredge up the same vile race-baiting and sexism that failed to derail her primary campaign. In a cartoon published Tuesday (pictured above), Robert Ariail portrays the Indian-American gubernatorial candidate as a bikini-clad pageant queen in the first panel and a niqab-clad Muslim in the second. The cartoon explicitly echos previous race-, religion-, and gender-based attacks against Haley, a practicing Methodist raised in the Sikh tradition by her immigrant parents.

Ariail depicts Haley as a radical Muslim posing as an all American pageant contestant so she can put one over on voters. He claims that’s totally different than when State Senator Jake Knotts described Haley as “a raghead that’s ashamed of her religion trying to hide it behind being Methodist for political reasons.”

All utter … let me think of a nice word… nonsense. An ironic side note: Robert’s used to getting this kind of … nonsense… from the left, so at least this is a change of pace, reflecting the extreme right’s recent and sudden discovery of the power of Identity Politics.

Silly as it all was, Robert was nevertheless asked by a local TV station to account for himself, which he dutifully did:

The cartoon on Ms. Haley is, I think, pretty straight forward: It contrasts her campaign’s message of open government and transparency ( which I support ) with her recent closed-door meetings, her refusal to release House e-mail accounts and her explanations on consulting fees and what she did to earn them. The cartoon is neither salacious nor an ethnic or religious slur. I came up with the idea of her as “Miss Transparency” wearing the title sash and bikini and chose the burqa as the best clothing metaphor representing the opposite of transparency. The burqa is a visual metaphore I’ve used before to make similar points. It is not about Ms. Haley’s religion- after all, she was a Sikh, not a Muslim, before she became a Christian. Anyone who claims this cartoon is an ethnic or religious slur is deliberately misconstruing its simple, issue-oriented meaning.

Robert Ariail
robertariail.com

I appreciate Robert’s extreme patience in providing this “hold-you-by-the-hand-and-explain-the-obvious” explication, but it almost ruins the cartoon for me that he had to. Explanation is death to comedy. And if there must be an explanation, I prefer the one that Robert suggested to me when I told him this morning I might post something about the foolishness that some chose to read into the cartoon. He suggested that I tell y’all, “Robert’s not thinking about s__t like that” when he does his thing. Please excuse his technical newspaperman jargon.

My message is, this is everything a cartoon should be: It makes an excellent political point that needs to be made, and it provides a laugh along the way. Good job, Robert.

Oh, one other thing. Today Wes Wolfe raised a new question about the cartoon (which is what got me to thinking about it): After saying that “After discussing the piece with friends, we decided that was perhaps not the best way to go” (which suggests to me he might need some new friends), Wes suggested that the cartoon may have had something to do with Robert parting company with The Nerve, the S.C. Policy Council Web pub Robert had done some cartoons for recently — since, you know, Nikki’s their kind of gal.

Well, that seemed unlikely to me, and Robert confirms: When you go back to work for the MSM, you can’t still be associated with what is essentially a propaganda entity. It’s just not a good fit. So he chose, wisely, the Spartanburg paper over The Nerve — and those folks understood, and they parted on good terms — as Wes notes. And now Robert’s back doing what he ought to do.

Finally, a bonus: Robert’s gotten into hot water over burqas before, ALSO over a hilarious, pointed cartoon that had absolutely nothing wrong with it. It was the one making fun over the controversy in the Legislature over young female pages being dressed too provocatively. The hoo-hah over that one at least led to something good — a conversation between me and Robert about how everybody seemed to be after him with the torches and pitchforks, which in turn led to the cover of his last book.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, a look at that earlier “offensive” cartoon:

Mike Fitts’ piece on Sheheen and the Chamber

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The lead story in the latest print version of Columbia Regional Business Report was about the S.C. Chamber of Commerce’s historic decision to endorse a candidate in the governor’s race — specifically, Vincent Sheheen. I can’t link you to the full piece because for some reason it’s not online. But Mike Fitts shot me a copy of his piece to save me all that nasty typing as I give you this excerpt:

Chamber weighs in on governor’s race

Executive summary: Frustration with Gov. Mark Sanford has helped prod the S.C. Chamber of Commerce to give its first gubernatorial endorsement, to Vincent Sheheen.

By Mike Fitts
mfitts@scbiznews.com

There was one overriding factor that prompted the S.C. Chamber of Commerce to make an endorsement for the governor’s race for the first time: the gridlock around the current occupant.

A large majority of the members of the chamber’s board, which is made up of more than 50 business executives from across the state, thought that it was time for the chamber to do its first endorsement in a statewide race. The view that Gov. Mark Sanford had failed to get things done for eight years was a major driver in that decision, said chamber CEO Otis Rawl. The business community “didn’t make much headway” with the governor’s office during his term, he said.

“Our board didn’t want that to happen again,” Rawl said…

Here are some things that interested me about the piece:

The fact that it was for the first time. That hadn’t fully registered on me. It seems to me a reflection of business leaders’ realization that sitting on the sidelines has led to stagnation in South Carolina’s political leadership. Rather than let another do-nothing governor get elected on the base of ideological slogans, they wanted to act to get some real leadership.
Although I’d read it before, I was struck again by the vapid immaturity of the Haley campaign’s response: Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey had said to the AP: “The state chamber is a big fan of bailouts and corporate welfare, so it’s no surprise that they would prefer a liberal like Vincent Sheheen over a conservative like Nikki Haley.” I wonder if Nikki opened her secret meetings with business people with those words. If she truly believed in transparency, if she really wanted to let those people know what her campaign stood for, she would have. A response like this confirms that the Chamber chose wisely.
A factor in the Chamber’s decision was that Sheheen, rather than resorting to ideological slogans, had more specifics about what he’d do to build our state’s economy: “Sheheen offered better answers on keeping the state’s ports successful, building up the state’s infrastructure and improving the state’s workforce, which is vital to keeping such employers and Boeing and BMW happy, Rawl said.”
Sheheen also made the case — and this should truly be the measure of this campaign — that unlike Haley, who has built her brief career on fighting against the Legislature, he could actually get his plans acted upon: “It’s OK to rail against the good ol’ boy system, Rawl said, but a governor has to be able to get legislation thru the General Assembly.”
Then there’s the execrable Act 388, which distorted our whole tax system — putting an excessive burden on businesses and renters, and shifting the load for supporting public schools onto the volatile, exemption-ridden sales tax — for the sake of the subset of homeowners who lived in high-growth areas. Vincent did what he could to stop it; Nikki voted for it.
The vote of confidence by the Chamber’s board was huge and dramatic. They didn’t even wait for the GOP runoff to be over before 75 percent of them voted to support Sheheen in the fall. As for the broader membership, there has been “scattered pushback” from some individual members, but nothing to make the Chamber leadership (which has not been given to taking such risks) sweat. Which is truly remarkable with such a broad, conservative membership as the Chamber’s.

Finally, the thing that got the Chamber to take this unprecedented step was the fact that this election is so pivotal, a fact that I started writing about before I left the paper (which is normally LONG before I would focus on something like this). South Carolina simply cannot continue to drift while our elected leaders play ideological footsie (when you go to that link, scroll down to “Sanford on Fox 46 times”) with national media. We have to get serious. That’s a conclusion that the Chamber has reached as well.

“Graham’s courageous stand for the republic”

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After I got done stewing about having screwed up on the Biden thing, I remembered that I owed Cindi Scoppe a phone call. Speaking to her reminded me that I meant to call your attention to The State‘s editorial yesterday, “Graham’s courageous stand for the republic.”

It was really, really good. So good that after I read it at breakfast yesterday, I e-mailed Cindi to say:

Excellent lede today. Did you write that, or did I?

It needs to be said loudly and often.

OK, so maybe that wouldn’t be a compliment to you, but I think Cindi saw it as such. You know, knowing my ego as she does.

But it really did say pretty much everything I would have said — of course, one of the great things about working with Cindi over the years was that she could do that. There was a time when I felt like I had to write any important edit about state government or politics to get the message just right, and the right tone and feel into it (to please me, anyway). But I realized shortly after I brought Cindi up from the newsroom that if I just spent a few minutes explaining to her what I wanted, in a few minutes she’d turn it around into an edit that was everything I had wanted, and just as good as if I’d written it — and several hours faster.

The great thing about this was that I didn’t have occasion to tell her what I wanted (you may have heard, I don’t word there any more), and yet I got it anyway. But more important than it being what I wanted, it’s what South Carolina needed to hear about Graham’s decision to vote for Elena Kagan’s nomination, and his cogent explanation of his reasoning.

An excerpt:

THROUGHOUT the first two centuries or so of our nation’s history, what Sen. Lindsay Graham did on Wednesday when he voted to confirm President Obama’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court would have been thoroughly unremarkable. What would have been remarkable would have been for a senator to do otherwise — to vote against confirming a nominee who did not have serious ethical, legal, mental or intellectual problems.

But as Sen. Graham told the Judiciary Committee, things are changing…. What matters today are individual agendas, and punishing anyone who doesn’t agree with their every opinion.

That’s a threat not just to the independence of the judiciary but to the republic itself…

As when he voted to confirm Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court appointment a year ago, Sen. Graham said Wednesday that Ms. Kagan was not someone he would have appointed, but Mr. Obama won the election; the job of the Senate is merely to stop a president from appointing people who are objectively unfit to be judges.

Will Ms. Kagan join the liberal wing of the court? Probably. Just as President Bush’s appointments joined the conservative wing. We wish there weren’t such clearly defined wings…. But that’s a political preference we have; not a constitutional standard appropriate for senators to consider. As far as confirmation goes, there’s nothing wrong with Ms. Kagan. Just as there was nothing wrong with Sonia Sotomayor. Or with John Roberts. Or with Samuel Alito. And any senator who votes or voted against any of them was simply wrong.

But go read the whole thing. And share it with every South Carolinian you know.

… but no pledges, please, Vincent

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Having praised Vincent Sheheen for challenging Nikki Haley to actually be transparent for a change (since that’s, you know, her platform), I’ve gotta say I’m with Nikki on this:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen has signed a pledge, promising to make an effort to appoint qualified women to senior level positions on state boards and commissions if he is elected.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley declined to sign the pledge.

Like Nikki, I wouldn’t sign the pledge, either.

Now settle down, ladies. (If you’re OK with me calling you ladies.) Nothing against hiring women.

The problem is the pledge.

My objection may seem a bit wonkish and technical, but please attend:

I believe candidates should not sign pledges about what they will do or not do in office. The cause doesn’t matter; the problem is the pledge itself. It undermines the integrity of the political process. Candidates may speak of general intentions, but specific promises — particularly when taken to the extreme of putting them in writing — are a bad idea.

It is essential to self-government, and particularly to our system of representative democracy, that once in office a public servant should study the actual situation that he faces in office (which can never be accurately, fully anticipated before the election), and engage as an honest, unencumbered agent in deliberation with others to reach a decision about what to do.

You think this is just a fine point, a mere ephemeral abstraction? Well, you liberals applauding Vincent for this stand should take a moment and contemplate the severe damage done to South Carolina by the fact that Grover Norquist got so many GOP lawmakers to sign his anti-tax pledge. It has made comprehensive tax reform impossible, and led to a downward ratcheting of tax revenues that had nothing to do with the state’s actual spending needs, and everything to do with Norquist’s aim of shrinking government to the point that he can drown it in a bathtub.

But whether you like the aim of the pledge or not, they are a bad idea — that includes the pledge that Democrats were passing around awhile back to promise to spend more on education — because they shackle an officeholder from dealing in the future with the actual, practical situation that lies before him.

So Vincent — please do express your desire to see more qualified women serve in your administration. That’s great. But no pledges, please.

Graham’s vote for Kagan, in his own words

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To follow up on the previous, here’s how Lindsey Graham explained his vote for Elena Kagan for the court.

I have defended, and will defend, our senior senator for his thoughtfulness, while at the same time being mortified that it is necessary to defend someone for acting with intellectual honesty and not acting like a partisan automaton. What has our country come to that this sort of thought-based action has to be defended? What happened to us that such principle has become so rare?

In any case, he defends himself better than I could.

I like in particular that he gave a Federalist explanation for his decision. It harks back to a time when intelligence and principle were not rare at all in this country:

Graham Supports Kagan Nomination

WASHINGTON – Citing the Constitutional and historical role the Senate has played in Supreme Court nominations, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today said he would support the nomination of Elena Kagan.

“No one, outside of maybe John McCain, spent more time trying to beat President Obama than I did,” said Graham. “But we lost and President Obama won.”

Graham cited Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Number 76 in listing the reasons he would vote for Kagan. Graham noted Hamilton wrote, “To what purpose then require the cooperation of the Senate? I answer that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though in general a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, would tend generally to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from family connection, from personal attachment, and from a view to popularity.”

“The Constitution puts a requirement on me, as a senator, to not replace my judgment for the President’s,” said Graham. “I’m not supposed to think of the 100 reasons I would pick somebody different. It puts upon me a standard that stood the test of time: Is the person qualified? Is it a person of good character? Are they someone that understands the difference between being a judge and a politician? And, quite frankly, I think she’s passed all those tests.”

“Are we taking the language of the Constitution that stood the test of time and putting a political standard in the place of a constitutional standard?” asked Graham. “Objectively speaking, things are changing, and they’re unnerving to me. The court is the most fragile of the three branches. So while it is our responsibility to challenge and scrutinize the court, it is also our obligation to honor elections, respect elections, and protect the court.”

“I view my role as a United States Senator in part by protecting the independence of the judiciary, and by making sure that hard-fought elections have meaning in terms of their results within our Constitution,” said Graham. “At the end of the day, Ms. Kagan is not someone I would have chosen, but I think she will serve honorably.”

#####

Cindi’s column on Lost Trust, 20 years on

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I missed Cindi Scoppe’s column over the weekend reminiscing about Lost Trust (which broke 20 years ago Sunday) until a reader mentioned Cindi’s “shout-out” to me:

If anything happened in the next year that wasn’t related to the sting, I can’t remember it. While I dissected the ethics proposals, my editor Brad Warthen led the newsroom on a yearlong examination of how the Legislative State produced not only corruption but a hapless government that answered to no one — laying the groundwork for one of the primary focuses of our later work on this editorial board.

Pushed along by Lost Trust, Gov. Carroll Campbell and Brad’s “Power Failure” series, the Legislature voted two years later to hand a third of the government over to the governor. Lawmakers unleashed the powerful State Grand Jury to investigate political corruption cases. They passed a reporter shield law after a judge ordered me and three other reporters held in federal custody for two days for refusing to testify in a corruption trial.

It was interesting to read Cindi’s memory of that from her perspective. I had forgotten a lot of the intrigue that my reporters — particularly Cindi — had to go through to find out what was going on. But then, I was mostly experiencing it second-hand, being the desk man that I was. Cindi and the others would come in with this stuff they had garnered in encounters reminiscent of Bob Woodward’s meetings with Deep Throat in the parking garage, and we’d figure out which outrageous items were worth pursuing to try to confirm immediately and which ones to set aside. And then, how in the world to nail down the relevant ones.

For me, at the epicenter of The State‘s coverage, it was a time for keeping a couple of dozen plates spinning, and was a daily challenge to an editor managing finite resources in the midst of stories that seemed to have an infinite number of branches, each one of which was a hot story in itself.

Mind you, Lost Trust wasn’t the only government scandal breaking that summer. We had the final act of the Jim Holderman collapse, a purchasing scandal involving a major agency (I don’t even remember which one now), the head of the Highway Patrol directly personally interfering with the DUI of the head of the local FBI office, and those are just the things that I remember sitting here. There was more. Fortunately, the governmental affairs staff in those days amounted to something (I may have been slightly down from my 1988 high of 10 reporters, but not by much), but there’s only so much that even that many people can do when so much is popping at the same time — and during the time of year when things are usually quiet.

And Lost Trust itself, alone, without those other scandals, would have totally consumed us days, nights and weekends. A full 10 percent of the Legislature indicted? Heady stuff.

We were well out ahead of the competition most days, and I felt proud of my team — Cindi and the others. Then the executive editor, who was new in the job (Gil Thelen), one busy day stopped by my desk to say it was all very well and good that we were staying ahead of the story and beating everybody on it, but what about the future? What, out of all this mess, might we be able to offer readers to give them the sense that something could be done about the dysfunction of SC government? I probably stared at him like he was a lunatic for wanting me to think about anything ELSE on top of the mad juggling I was doing at the moment, but I did think about it. And the result was the Power Failure series. I spent a year on it, supervising reporters from across the newsroom in producing a 17-installment opus that explained just how SC government was designed to fail.

And as Cindi notes, the themes developed at that time resonated through my work, and hers, for my entire 15 years on the editorial board.

“We Coloreds,” or, How do you get kicked out of the Tea Party?

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By now, you’ve probably heard that Mark Williams, the Tea Party guy I quoted back here, has been kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation for the satirical letter he wrote, which I will provide here in its entirety when I can find a link. Until then, here’s what several news organizations have reported of it:

In the voice of slaves, Williams wrote: “Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house.

“We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”

He went on to say blacks don’t want taxes cut because “how will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?”

This, of course, raises a number of questions, beginning with “What? You can get kicked out of the Tea Party? How does that work?” I didn’t know there was anybody in Tea Party who had authority over anybody else in the Tea Party. And indeed, this seems to be a battle between different factions in the movement, which seems to have as many iterations as the competing bands of communists in the Russian revolution.

Interesting how, in the four days since a letter writer in The State said that the “millions” of Tea Partiers “never have been documented to have said or done anything racist,” one Tea Partier alone has provided us with two instances that might seem to call that assertion into just a tad of doubt.

Hey, I missed that amendment…

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Man, I’ve just got to do a better job of keeping up with new wrinkles in the U.S. Constitution. Apparently there’s a provision now that requires that governors to vote on U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

Who knew?

That’s the only way I can explain this development, brought to my attention by an alert reader…

It’s an advisory about the same unveiling, in Columbia on Thursday, of the campaign I mentioned back here, but there’s a new wrinkle: It says in part that Nikki Haley is expected to attend. The event will be put on by “the nation’s leading grassroots military-support organization, Move America Forward” along with “the Judicial Action Group and Tea Party Express” to call on Sens. DeMint and Graham to opposed the nomination of Elena Kagan.

And why will Nikki, a candidate for governor of South Carolina, be there? To “give her reasons for opposing a Kagan nomination.”

Really.

This is a new one on me.

Anyway, this event will apparently be at 10 a.m., which leaves Nikki two hours before her secret meeting with business folk. I’m sure the business people will be thrilled to hear that she went out of her way to express herself about the Kagan issue — because, you know, that’s such a huge factor in improving the business climate in South Carolina…

Tea Party pressing Graham over Kagan

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Not that he’s asked them what they want, since he thinks of the Tea Party pretty much the way I do.

Anyway, here’s their TV ad on the subject.

I’m guessing they’re NOT releasing an ad today aimed at Jim DeMint. Because they don’t have to worry about him. He won’t think about his vote. You can count on that. So to me, this ad is a tribute to Lindsey Graham for being someone who can be lobbied and courted, because he will consider each nominee. He’s the fair judge in this. He’s the thinking senator. So it’s fitting that interest groups would work to influence his thinking.

Sorry I haven’t been posting today; just busy. Among other things I had lunch with ex-Mayor Bob today over at the Townhouse. And in a few minutes I’m going over to meet with his successor in his new office. Maybe I’ll get something to file out of it; we’ll see. Then at 6, I’ll be on that Sirius radio show. If you have access, it will be at Sirius 112 / XM 157, they tell me.

Catch you later…

Show us transparency, Nikki: Release the e-mails

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Did you see the strong editorial in The State Sunday, challenging Nikki “Transparency” Haley for hiding behind a loophole in FOI specifically carved out to protect legislators, and legislators alone, from transparency in order to keep her state-issued e-mail secret?

I was very glad to see it. As the edit pointed out, this isn’t about Will Folks or disgusting sex allegations. Neither The State‘s editorial board nor I expect to find anything about that if we ever see those e-mails. But the fact that this started with such accusations creates a smoke screen that lets Nikki get away with a flagrant flouting of the principles she lets on to hold most dear. From the heart of the editorial:

Ms. Haley, after all, is not just someone who thinks government transparency is a nice thing. Her one claim to fame as a legislator is her crusade to bring sunlight to a legislative process that for too long has protected lawmakers from accountability rather than giving the voters information they deserve. Her entire campaign for governor is built on that push for openness, for letting the public in on the Legislature’s secrets, for eliminating the special perks and privileges legislators give themselves and their friends.

Does that apply only to the direct expenditure of public money?

Does it apply only to other people?

Imagine if the blogger had claimed that he helped Rep. Haley secretly funnel millions of tax dollars into a green-bean museum and steer tens of millions more in cushy no-bid contracts to her campaign donors, and that messages on her government e-mail account would back up his claim. Is there anyone who would not be demanding that she make the correspondence public?

What is she hiding? Why doesn’t she want us to see the messages she has been sending as she juggled her campaign for governor with doing her job as a legislator?

It is not Ms. Haley’s job to disprove unsubstantiated allegations. It is, however, her job to prove that her commitment to ushering in government transparency and ushering out special legislative privileges is sincere — even more since it has been called into question before. She still hasn’t explained what she did to earn more than $40,000 in consulting fees from a government contractor that hired her for her “good contacts.”

If Ms. Haley were governor, we already would have seen her e-mails, because what governors write on their government e-mail accounts is public record. In fact, Gov. Mark Sanford’s attorney saw fit to turn over some e-mails from his personal account, because she determined that he was using it to discuss public business.

If Ms. Haley were the president of the University of South Carolina, we already would have seen her e-mails. Ditto if she were a $30,000-a-year clerk in the bowels of the bureaucracy, because what nearly all state employees write on their government e-mail accounts is public record.

The only reason her public e-mail correspondence has remained hidden is that she is a legislator, and legislators have written themselves a special exemption to the Freedom of Information Act.

This exemption is the very epitome of the secrecy that Ms. Haley vows to eliminate.

I’m glad to see this now. Because at some point, someone was going to point out this obvious inconsistency and raise a stink about it. My concern has been that it would happen in late October, thereby engendering another tidal wave of protective emotion that would sweep Rep. Haley to victory.

The time to address this is now, when there’s time to be calm. Time to see that she cannot possibly have any legitimate excuse not to share these state-sponsored communications.

What is she hiding, indeed? For all I know, absolutely nothing. But then I don’t know, because she’s hiding it, in a stunning display of contempt for the ideals she says she stands for.

Greene media juggernaut cranks up (snicker!)

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Two things to share…

First, this photo, which may or may not be legitimate; I have no idea. It was brought to my attention by Scott English, Mark Sanford’s chief of staff, via Twitter. He got it from the Washington Examiner. PhotoShop or reality? Either way, it’s a primo example of the current rage in political comedy, the item that allows us all to sneer at Alvin Greene. (Speaking of PhotoShop: I not only cropped the picture before posting it here; I also lightened it up and increased the contrast. We have standards here at bradwarthen.com.) The knee-slapping cutline that came with the picture:

This sign is from US 521, near Greene’s hometown, and hotbed of support, in Manning, SC. No signs for Republican Sen. Jim DeMint were spotted anywhere near the area, suggesting that Greene has opened an imposing lead in the early-advertising race.

Yuk, yuk, chortle, snort.

Which brings me to my second point: At what point does mocking Alvin Greene simply becoming mocking a man for being poor, black and unemployed and from a small town in South Carolina? At what point do the Republicans who are LOVING this, or the mortified Democrats who hide their faces in shame that THIS is their nominee, or smart-ass bloggers who post satirical photos (real or fake; irresponsible bloggers just don’t care, do they?) get called on the carpet for the so-far socially acceptable practice of running down Alvin Greene?

Food for thought, there…

Graham said what I think about the Tea Party

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On Sunday, my wife was reading the paper, and announced that there was something in there about what Lindsey Graham said in that New York Times Magazine profile recently.

Turns out it was a rehash of the quote about not being gay.

What I had HOPED was being quoted was what he said about the Tea Partiers, because it’s the one question that ought to be asked of those folks repeatedly:

“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham said as Cato drove him to the city of Greenwood, where he was to give a commencement address at Lander University later that morning. On four occasions, Graham met with Tea Party groups. The first, in his Senate office, was “very, very contentious,” he recalled. During a later meeting, in Charleston, Graham said he challenged them: “ ‘What do you want to do? You take back your country — and do what with it?’ . . . Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent.”

In a previous conversation, Graham told me: “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.” Now he said, in a tone of casual lament: “We don’t have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.” Chortling, he added, “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.”

Whenever I hear Nikki Haley (you know Nikki Haley — she’s that extremist who wants to censure her own party’s senior U.S. senator for being a rational human being) say that line, “take our government back” to Tea Party cheers, I wonder the same things. Take it back from whom? To do what with it?

Yeah, good luck with that, professor

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Enjoyed the book review in the WSJ this morning of the book “Getting it Wrong,” debunking some epic media myths:

William Randolph Hearst never said, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast didn’t panic America. Ed Murrow’s “See It Now” TV show didn’t destroy Sen. Joseph McCarthy. JFK didn’t talk the New York Times into spiking its scoop on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Far from being the first hero of the Iraq War, captured Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch was caught sobbing “Oh, God help us” and never fired a shot.

But the best part was at the very end:

For all Mr. Campbell’s earnest scholarship, these media myths are certain to survive his efforts to slay them. Journalism can’t help itself — it loves and perpetuates its sacred legends of evil power-mongers, courageous underdogs, dread plagues and human folly. At the end of the book, Mr. Campbell offers some remedies for media mythologizing, urging journalists, among other things, “to deepen their appreciation of complexity and ambiguity.” Good luck with that, professor.

Yeah, good luck indeed. For instance, good luck expecting any depth or perspective in the PC tsunami that will wash over us from the national media as they thrill over the idea of “an Indian-American woman” becoming governor in the South. Never mind what she would do as governor, the simplistic identity politics narrative overrides all…

Sexual predator price tag seems a bargain

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Non-journalists are always complaining about editorials masquerading as news. Usually, they’re wrong. But sometimes reporters and their news editors are so obviously, nakedly, unabashedly (although not admittedly) making an editorial point that it’s painful to read. And mainly (to one like myself, who does not worship at the altar of the god Objectivity or even belief humans are capable of it) because it’s so badly done.

It’s particularly painful if you happen to be a real editorialist. News people, generally speaking, simply don’t think about what they’re writing about in the necessary ways to do it well. So they come blundering into an issue that they have defined poorly and explained badly, making a mockery of serious commentary. This is not because they lack intelligence. It’s because their jobs don’t require them to think about things that way. When you have to set out your opinion on various aspects of an issue, day after day, for the world to pick apart and throw stones at, you think a lot harder about what you DO think, and WHY, and what the implications are. And parts of your brain that were shut off when you were in news and strictly forbidden to air opinions suddenly get oxygen and start to function. It’s sort of weird. After I’d been in editorial for a couple of years, I was sort of embarrassed to recall some of the facile assumptions I held about issues before I really started thinking about them.

But when you are telling yourself that you don’t HAVE an opinion about it, that you are utterly objective, and yet have an editorial point you’re pushing with all your might, the result is likely to reflect that lack of understanding about what you’re doing.

And the thing is, you can’t even fully explain to news people this epiphany that hit me after I made the transition. You couldn’t even state it without insulting them. (In fact, I’m sure you are horrified at my arrogance, and you’re nothing but a layperson. But seriously, it’s not that I’m BETTER or SMARTER. It’s that the different functions make different demands of whatever poor faculties I may possess.) So you just held your tongue, and were frequently appalled by news people’s ventures into places where they should not go.

For instance, take a look at the piece that ran on the Metro front of The State over the weekend. But this is not about The State, but about the Charleston Post and Courier, from which the piece was reprinted.

The original headline was “S.C.’s tab $7.4M for predators,” which wasn’t particularly helpful, so we go to the subhead “Treating each sex offender in program costs state about $63,000 per year.”

An excerpt:

For 12 years, South Carolina has tried to protect the public by keeping its most-dangerous sex offenders locked up behind concrete walls and razor wire long after their prison sentences have ended.

But that sense of security comes at a steep price.

The state shells out about $7.4 million each year to treat those confined under the Sexually Violent Predator Act, which allows authorities to lock up some sex offenders indefinitely for the purpose of alternative care. That translates to about $63,000 per offender annually for each of the 119 predators in the program…

Oooh, golly — $63,000! Of course, it occurred to me immediately that that was probably less than what other states spend on similar programs, because SC always goes the cheap route. And sure enough, the story admits that inconvenient fact down below, but sandwiches it between TWO admonitions to ignore that fact, because… well, because it’s still just too damned much money we’re spending:

Those costs have put the squeeze on many governments struggling to cut expenditures in a crippling recession that has forced layoffs, furloughs and deep program cuts. Though South Carolina spends a good deal less than many other states on its predator program — New York spends $175,000 per inmate and California, $173,000 — the effort is still a drain on already strained coffers.

I mean, knock me down and hit me with a club, why don’t you?

So really, what we’re left with here is whether we think is whether we should keep sexual predators locked up. I happen to think we do. Lots of other people think we do as well.

But that’s just because we’re dumb as a bag of hammers, apparently. We’re a bunch of Neanderthals taken in by “this get-tough tactic” sold by pandering politicians. We are fooled by a “sense of security” rather than the real thing. And the politicians aren’t about to back down and “be seen as soft on rapists and child molesters.”

That’s what it’s about, you see. The mob’s desire for vengeance. Pitchforks and flaming torches. Irrational, emotional responses to problems that could easily be resolved by putting the money into “increased supervision of sex offenders in the community,” the way Colorado has done.

I find this irritating for several reasons, including the fact that I am NOT a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” yahoo. I actually happen to believe that one of THE greatest policy errors committed year after year in South Carolina is that we lock up WAY too many people who don’t need to be locked up. And we do it because politicians DO play on irrational fears of crime and desires for vengeance on the part of the public. This is foolish, because it simply makes no sense to lock up a guy who wrote back checks. It DOES make sense to lock up a guy who robbed a liquor store and pistol-whipped the clerk into a coma. There’s a difference.

And difference involves a calm, rational assessment of whether someone is a threat to others.

But here’s the thing about sexual predators. Their crimes are not like other crimes. One can rationally understand why an unemployed person — particularly one with a drug addiction — might hold up a liquor store. If he was particularly desperate or high from his latest fix, you can understand his getting violent. You don’t condone it; you punish it; you lock him away for a while to protect society. But someday, when he’s clean and sober, when he’s established a record for calm behavior and maybe when he’s no longer 19 years old or even close, you let him out. It’s a rational decision to lock him up, and a rational decision, under the right circumstances, to let him out again.

But while we’re all prone to greed and many of us have violent impulses, we know about living with those things and dealing with them. But most of us find it unimaginable that anyone would ever, under any circumstances, be attracted to child pornography. And while the thought of anyone having to do with such may make us angry, may make us want to run for the torches and pitchforks, it’s perfectly rational to think, “If someone can EVER have such an impulse, can they ever be sufficiently normal, or sufficiently in control, to be allowed to walk free in the world where our children play?”

Sexual desire is such a complicated, mysterious mechanism even at its healthiest. The sheer galaxy of factors — the light traveling to my eye and through neurons to parts of my brain that process color and contrast and pattern recognition combined with experience-based understanding of such subtleties as facial expression combined with precognitive programming on the cellular level all mixed up with the biological imperative to reproduce — that causes me to react as I do when I look at this picture or this one or, for comic relief, this one is so independent of will and resistant to reasoning, that it’s quite natural to assume that in a person in whom such mechanisms are so twisted as to lead them to unspeakable crimes… well, it’s just not going to go away because of a few years in a quiet place with regular sessions with a therapist.

Of course, we could assume wrongly. And indeed, a quick search on Google establishes that there is no end of arguments out there against the widely-held notion that sexual predators — rapists, and those who prey on children — are incurable.

Fine. Let’s have that discussion. Let’s see the data, and hear the latest findings. But of course, that news story didn’t bother with that. In other words, it didn’t touch upon the one question upon which the issue of whether to treat sexual predators different from other criminal was well-founded or not.

But then, that’s a common flaw in news stories, especially (but not only) those of the ersatz-editorial type: They don’t mention, much less answer, the one question I most want to see addressed. I have spent a huge portion of my life reading, all the way to the bottom, news stories that piqued my interest and made me think, “Maybe there’s an editorial or a column here,” only to find that the one ingredient most needed to help me decide what I thought about it was entirely missing. Which means it got into print with neither the writer nor his editor thinking of it. Which means that the one ingredient most valuable to the reader, as a citizen trying to decide what to think about this issue, is missing.

Nor did it touch upon the second question that should arise, which is whether the circumstances surrounding such crimes are indeed so different as to cause us to set aside such constitutional considerations as equal treatment before the law (due process would seem to be covered by the additional hearings necessary for such commitment). But newspaper stories have finite length, and I would have been happy merely to have had the first question answered, or even acknowledged. But it wasn’t.

And I find that hugely frustrating.