George W. Bush, the Environmental President

The Left has been talk-pointing for years that the air is getting worse and worse, the sky is falling, and it's all George Bush's fault. But this is another thing they know that just isn't so.

From the annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators (pdf), Steven Hayward:

The latest findings are significant because they stand in sharp contrast to a refrain among some environmental campaigners and the media that air pollution is getting worse, and to the assertion that the Bush administration was “rolling back” the Clean Air Act. Final data for 2008 won’t be available for several months, but the EPA’s latest report shows that air pollution levels in every category fell from 2001 to 2007; moreover, air pollution levels in most categories fell at a faster rate than during the first seven years of the Clinton Administration.

Table 1 below displays the reduction in national mean ambient levels of the six criteria pollutants for comparable periods of the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Table 1: Ambient Air Quality Trends under Presidents Clinton and G. W. Bush

	Clinton (1993–1999)	Bush (2001–2007)
Ozone	–5.14%	–5.9%
Particulates (PM2.5)	N/A*	–9.1%
Carbon Monoxide	–24.6%	–39%
Sulfur Dioxide	–32.0%	–24%
Lead	–33.0%	–56%
Nitrogen Dioxide	–9.6%	–20%

*National PM2.5 emissions monitoring began in 199.
Source: EPA and author’s calculations

OBTW -- w/t NRO

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Big Boondoggle Rescues FutureGen Boondogglet

Chris Edwards has a piece on FutureGen in the Cato@Liberty blog. FutureGen is a project to take CO₂ from burning coal and pump it into layers of rock beneath Illinois farmland. I live and work near Mattoon, and would probably personally benefit from the boondogglet. Edwards:

FutureGen was launched in 2003 by President Bush as a public-private partnership to build a low-emission coal-fueled power plant and demonstrate technologies to capture carbon dioxide. The government was to share the cost of the project with 12 private energy companies. The project was originally estimated to cost $1 billion, but by 2008 the estimate had ballooned to $1.8 billion. By mid-2008, $176 million had been spent.

A lot of the money spent for FutureGen in the Mattoon area went to building an interstate exchange. The exchange also serves other light industry in the area. It was needed already.

The FutureGen decision to locate in Mattoon was still ringing in the air when Rod Blagojevich sent a letter to President Bush asking him to come to Mattoon for a photo op demonstrating the President's commitment to fighting greenhouse gases and such. The tone of the letter, and Blago's announcement of it, were a clear attempt to rub the President's nose in the fact that Illinois had been chosen over Texas. It was embarrassing to me that Blago thought Bush so small-minded, but that's what we had for a governor.

Immediately after that letter was announced, the project got the axe (or got sent back to the proverbial committee).

Maybe it was a coincidence, but I've always thought that if Blago had just kept his mouth shut, the project would have gone on as planned.

As a global warming skeptic, I see little need for this project. I've also seen too many B-movies not to be scared silly about pumping steamy-hot CO2 into underground rock formations. It just screams Godzilla plot.

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Obama Facts, Post-Inauguration Edition

Barack Obama took the oath of office for the first time since Abraham Lincoln.

Barack Hussein Obama can spell his own name.

Jesus walked on water; Barack Obama can emerge from the cesspool of Chicago politics and not smell like sewage -- (Rush Limbaugh).

Barack Obama has arms so long he can put one around Michelle and walk alongside.

George Bush liberated Iraq; Barack Obama fixed that by liberating Gitmo.

Barack Obama was elected, and now Global Warming is not a problem.

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Hosanna! Crucify!

Right now, two days past his inauguration, the media are all shouting hosannas at Barack Obama.

But I wonder how long it will be before the shouts of "Hosanna! Glory to Obama in the Highest!" turn to "Crucify!" or "Impeach!".

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When in Doubt, Blame Bush

Prediction: even though the stock market lost over 20% of its value, from 9600 to 7600, in the 16 days following Barack Obama's election, what will be reported is the big run up it will make getting back to 9600. It will be the Obama Bull Market.

You watch.

But when anything bad happens, it will be blamed on President Bush.

After the idiocy of the bailout mania under Bush and Paulson, I'm not sure I'll even disagree.

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Texas Prosecutor and Judge Seem Not To Be In Complete Harmony

The Texas judge assigned the corruption case against Vice President Dick Cheney signalled that he may wish to try the case before agreeing with District Attorney Juan Guerra on the Vice President's guilt. The judge's position follows State of Texas tradition that no one, not even those in power outside of the State's jurisdiction, should be presumed guilty before their case is argued.

The judge actually went so far as to entertain motions from the defense, a decision about which Guerra hinted a certain lack of enthusiasm. Guerra also appeared to dissent over being removed as prosecutor from the indictments in the case for which he is also a victim, even though Texas allows pro se legal represention:

And now all of a sudden, there is urgency. 18 months we kept this indictment, past my election. And I asked this court [to say if it would be] dismissed on a technicality. You already decided! You refused.

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Typical Bush Derangement Syndrome at Salon

Somehow managing to type wearing a helmet and drool bucket, David Sarota writes:

It wouldn't be the George W. Bush we all know if our shamed president didn't spend his remaining White House days in a final fit of polarization.

Wha? Talk about paranoia! Mr. Bush wants the Columbia Free Trade deal to go through, and knows that it's union opposition which makes Obama also oppose it. And why are the Democrats so in favor of an auto maker bailout? The unions want it, to keep their fat, blood-sucking lifestyle going.

But Sarota harkens back to NAFTA, managing to blame Bush41 for forcing it on Bill Clinton, which in Sirota's alternate reality caused the unions to skip voting in 1994. Those things must all be Known Facts on the Left, but having lived through that era I could have sworn I heard the centrist Bill Clinton championing NAFTA. And the 1994 elections were all about conservatives rallying behind conservatism as expressed by Newt Gingrich.

In Sarota's fantasies, George Bush is some kind of Machiavellian mastermind, rolling the dice with the world's economy in order to depress voter turnout in 2010:

Therefore, if Bush successfully uses the economic emergency to hustle a faction of Wall Street Democrats into supporting the deal, he will have potentially engineered 1994 redux: Democratic infighting, a demoralized progressive base, and these newly elected fair-trade Democrats humiliated — and thus electorally endangered — by their own party's standard bearers.

Dude. No one will vote, or not vote, two years from now based on whether there is a free trade agreement with Columbia. Lots of union members may not have jobs without one, but what do they care? They have the One.

Update: I think I like Kim Strassel's take better.

If there was a moment that highlights to what extent the Democratic Party has become captive to its special interests, this might be it. Mrs. Pelosi and Harry Reid have spent this week demanding that Washington stave off a car-maker collapse. What makes this a little weird is that Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid are Washington. If they so desperately want a Detroit bailout they could always, you know, pass one.

w/t Yid With Lid

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Swoosh

Writing at PJM, John Avalon misses the reasons for John McCain's loss so thoroughly and well that were it not for his obvious sincerity one would suspect his failure to be intentional. It is clear that Mr. Avalon starts with a "centrist" position which he tries desperately to justify.

In order to truly revive itself, the GOP should be more like the real John McCain in the future, and less like the conservative cast of the past decade: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Tom Delay. And it certainly should not look to the likes of Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin to lead a restoration.

You do the math: America has a moderate majority — 50% of Americans are centrists, compared to 20% who are liberal and 30% who call themselves conservative. Independents are the largest and fastest growing segment of the electorate. Republicans need to appeal to the center and find common cause with independents in order to win. And that’s something they have increasingly failed to do over the past decade.

The unspoken premise here is that the Party should attempt to mold itself to the electorate, rather than standing for principles -- both in campaign and in office. Republicans lost the moderates because they only mouthed conservativism, and didn't act on it.

There is another option to giving up: teaching. McCain lost because an uninformed electorate judges the President specifically and the party they perceive to be in power generally on the basis of the economy. When McCain A) suspended his campaign to B) back the bailout bill and C) failed to deliver on even that, his fate was sealed.

But ironically due to that loathsome bailout, there is going to be an insidious increase in the level of government intervention in the economy, so that the President will begin to have an actual part to play in it. This is legion of disasters waiting to happen.

But back to the issue at hand. Avalon lists many reasons for McCain's loss, ignoring the elephant in the room: Barack Obama's "historic" campaign. There, how's that for a code word.

McCain’s come-from-behind win in the primaries was not only proof of the strength of the center but a repudiation of Karl Rove’s play-to-the-base approach because he won the Republican nomination without the support of right-wing talk radio and evangelicals.

The base was split between Huckabee, Romney, and a ghost: they were waiting for a conservative. With either Huckabee or Romney out of the race, the remaining conservative would have trounced McCain.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama appealed explicitly to centrists and independents early on in this campaign. They ran against the polarizing establishment of their respective parties. Their differences on this ground can be fairly characterized as substance versus style, rhetoric versus record. But Obama’s appeals to the center were relentless, beginning with his introduction to the American people at the Democratic convention in 2004, which expressed the underlying insight, “There are no red states. There are no blue states. There are the United States of America.”

John McCain lost in the general election because, the method of doing so aside, Barack Obama had his base locked up, and could afford to play to the center. McCain did not have his base locked up, and was forced to swerve this way and that.

The Republican Party is at a crossroads. Should it abandon its modern history as the home of conservatism, both social and fiscal? Should it return to its roots in classical liberalism? Or should it renounce the excesses of its recent past and become the home of Reaganism again?

I just hope it becomes something, and not the nothing that John Avalon desires for it.

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Shrug.

Commenter DelD at AoSHQ does a splendid job of capturing my attitude, minus the moving-to-Alaska fantasies. Quoted without permission:

So Obama won. It's not the end of the world. Everybody chill out.

1) It's hardly a popular vote blowout. McCain kept it close in a tough anti-republican climate, and there's a still a significant proportion of the population that's with us, nearly 50%, in fact.

2) If Barack does win, he do so only by pretending to be a centrist and a tax-cutter. And that lie is going to be exposed riki-tik. By 2010, the entire country will know just how liberal Obama is, and the pendulum will swing. It'll be up to us to see that it swings far enough.

3) It's important to remember that we're conservatives, not liberals, or "progressives" or whatever they're calling themselves this week.

Politics isn't our life, and if we lose an election cycle, we're still going to be happier as a group then they will ever be, even after they've won this one.

Like they always do, hardcore liberal voters have placed all their hopes and dreams into one, terribly flawed, terribly human basket. And without doubt they will be terribly disappointed, especially when they learn they've still got to pay their own mortgage and buy their own gas.

Their Messiah, ain't one, which will become painfully apparent to them soon enough.

Meanwhile, here on the right, we have low expectations of human nature and even lower expectations of government. It's hard to disappoint us.

And unlike the liberals, all of our hopes and dreams are in exactly the same place they were yesterday, in our family, our friends, our local community, in our work, in our religious faith, and in our country. Those are the great constants, always there for us even when we suffer the greatest of setbacks.

Yep, tough times are ahead, and we're going to have to fight like somsabitches to keep Obama and the Congress from screwing things up too much in the next two years. But, we've been there before, and we've prevailed before.


4) Don't give the f*tards on the left the satisfaction of seeing you all act like a bunch of hysterical schoolgirls. They're the ones who can't take defeat. We can take our lumps, get up, and keep fighting. We should be Happy Warriors. whose proper response to this is mockery, good humor, and hard work. We lost and elction, but we're still right, and they're still wrong.

Anyway, it's time to cowboy up, and get ready for the next go round.

The only thing I would add to that is that this election doesn't hurt. John McCain was a centrist, and was only our guy because he chose Sarah Palin for VP. This election isn't a repudiation of us or her, but of him.

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McCain Lead Mystifies HuffPo Blogger

Writing at the Huffington Post, Adam McCay is perplexed at why the addition of Sarah Palin has given John McCain such a huge polling bump.

I was going to go through all of the points he makes and deal with them individually, but I decided to do a shorter me: if your logic is valid and leads to a false conclusion, then at least one of your premises is incorrect.

The details are left as an exercise for the reader.

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Charging the mound on a curve in the dirt

(via Redstate) A reporter from the Las Vegas CBS affiliate asked presidential candidate and presumptive Democratic Party nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) why he supported a bill put forth by Sith Lord Darth Chenius that contained tax breaks for oil companies.

All Obama should have said was that there are lots of things in every bill, some good and some bad, and if the good things in the bill outweigh the bad you vote for it.

But instead he accused the reporter of being in the tank for McCain. And then he said what he should have said.

That pitch wasn't at your head, Senator. It wasn't even a fastball.

In the same interview, Obama flip-flopped on nuclear power, saying there's room for nuclear power in our "energy mix", but pandered to the Nevadans that the waste shouldn't go in their back yard.

Politicians shouldn't be designing our energy mix. The free market should. If people don't want oil, or nuclear, or whatever, they won't buy it. But they do want those things. Politicians like Obama want to control everything and make decisions for us, because they don't think we can figure out what's good for us on our own.

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Even a Stopped Clock Is Right Twice a Day

Barack Obama has been calling for a pullout from Iraq for years. Now that the battle is largely won, and there will soon be no need for a war-sized contingent of Americn troops there, it's time for that to actually happen. But it isn't because of anything Obama said. It's because of what John McCain said.

All during the war, McCain consistently called for increased troop strength in Iraq, declaring that he had "no confidence" in Donald Rumsfeld and his inadequate numbers. Obama consistently called for throwing in the towel, as he's still doing. His time frame varied from immediate withdrawal to some vague schedule implemented on consultation with generals of his choosing. He didn't ask the Iraqis, because he wasn't ever there long enough to lose jet lag, much less talk to anyone.

Obama, having stumbled onto a 16-month withdrawal schedule, must have been pleased when Iraqi President Nouri Al-Maliki said that 16 months was about the right amount of time for a US drawdown.

The only problem is that Al-Maliki only wants the US to leave if things stay stable. His motivation is not that the US leave, but for Iraq to stand on its own, without the US presence. So his motivation for wanting our troops to leave is that they are no longer needed. Victory has been or soon will be achieved, so it's time.

Obama, in his partisan zeal to achieve defeat in Iraq, got something right in spite of himself.

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Supreme Court Flunks Civics Test

This post is for those who are glad that the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are going to be allowed habeas corpus hearings in U.S. Federal Court. Boumedine vs Bush (pdf) was an awful decision. And even if you believe that on the merits that this particular case was decided correctly, none of us should be happy at all about the way it came to be decided. The Supreme Court overstepped its bounds on emotional grounds, and it is doubtful that either of the other branches have the will to tell them so.

The government of the Unitied States is built on a system of checks and balances. One of the balances is that while Congress passes laws, the Courts get to decide how those laws are applied. Since early in the history of the republic, the courts have decided if laws are in accord with the Constitution.

Another of the checks and balance is that Congress gets to decide the makeup of the Judiciary, within limits. In particular, Congress, as set forth in Article III section 2, gets to decide jurisdiction (emphasis mine):

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and
those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original
Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall
have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

This is not a matter for the courts to judge. If Congress passes a bill and the President signs into law a measure exempting some class of cases from Supreme Court jurisdiction, then by the plain text of the Constitution the Court cannot exert authority over that class of cases. Professor Bainbridge agrees.

Although the law here is not well developed, I have always assumed that Congress could strip the courts of jurisidiction to hear even claims that constitutional rights were being violated. Not that that’s a good idea. But it does seem to be what the framers intended.

And yet Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority(pdf), says:

Our basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply.

But as noted, Congress does have the power to limit the Court's jurisdiction, and with the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Tribunals Act, Congress did exactly that.

To illustrate some of the arguments in this matter, and to show why those who side with the Court got it wrong, we take a little side trip to Geneva. A story in the Jun 23, 2008 issue of Newsweek makes some fundamental errors in its analysis, I think primarily because of its full-throttle Bush Derangement. The story says the Bush team "overplayed a winning hand" by, among other things, not giving enough rights to detainees.

Historically, prisoners of war have no rights in U.S. courts. But even so, they are released when the war ends. The War on Terror has no foreseeable end. What's more, since the terrorists don't wear uniforms, it can be hard to discern who the real enemies are. Under the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war have some rights. But after 9/11, hard-liners in the administration decided that terror suspects brought to Guantánamo and various secret prisons around the world lacked any of the protections of the Geneva accords because they were "unlawful combatants."

The Geneva Conventions are supposed to reflect how we treat prisoners we capture in war. At least, we should not be in violation of the Conventions.

The Conventions are multinational treaties adopted among nations desiring to retain a modicum of civilization, even in time of war. To that end, the signatory nations have agreed to treat four classes of people differently when captured during war:

1. Noncombatants - individuals neither wearing a uniform nor engaging in hostilities
   
2. Lawful Combatants - individuals in uniform and subject to chain of command, whether engaging in hostilities or not
   
3. Unlawful Combatants - individuals engaging in hostilities but either not wearing a mark or uniform or not subject to command, and in any case, disguising their combatant status
   
4. War criminals - those who attack noncombatants or use banned weapons or tactics

Noncombatants are not to be harmed or detained, except as unavoidable in the prosecution of war.

Lawful combatants may be detained to prevent them from engaging in hostilities, but must be provided with food, clothing, medical care, and be permitted to abide by their rank structure. They may not forced to answer questions other than to identify themselves.

Unlawful combatants are 'not to be afforded the same protection as lawful ones, so as to encourage the wearing of uniforms. As Toni Pfanner, Editor-in-Chief of the International Review of the Red Cross, said in his 2004 Military Uniforms and the Law of War:

The legal history of Article 4 (A) of the Third Geneva Convention shows clearly that only irregular forces must fulfil the four criteria in order to qualify as prisoners of war, and that the two categories were separated deliberately. Early on, the Rapporteur of the Special Committee dealing with the question of definition of prisoners of war specified that only militias and volunteers not forming part of the regular armed forces should be subject to thefour criteria [...]

"A fundamental premise of the Geneva Conventions has been that to earn the right to protection as military fighters, soldiers must distinguish themselves from civilians by wearing uniforms and carrying their weapons openly (…). Fighters, who attempt to take advantage of civilians by hiding among them in civilian dress, with their weapons out of view, lose their claim to be treated as soldiers. The law thus attempts to encourage fighters to avoid placing civilians in unconscionable jeopardy."

Two years ago, the Bush Administration responded to criticism from Congress and Court decisions by granting Geneva rights to all prisoners, no matter if they were captured in or out of uniform. This fundamental error, disregarding the very purpose of the Geneva Conventions, led directly to the current situation.

The implications of the Court's decision in Boumedine are ominous. The Supreme Court has arrogated to itself the right to decide its own jurisdiction, contrary to the Constitution. The Court inserted itself into the conduct of our national defense, clearly the prerogative of the Commander-in-Chief. It did it in such a way as to extend the rights reserved for citizens not only to prisoners of war, but to those who by the Geneva Conventions are not even supposed to have the rights accorded POWs. And they did it in disregard of their own precedent.

But my guess is that no one will call them to account.

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Presidents Govern As They Campaigned

For the most part, presidential candidates will govern the way they campaigned, or as they said they would while campaigning. It's true that many politicians are duplicitous liars who will say anything it takes to get elected. But they do so equally while campaigning and governing, and the President is too visible to change on too much.

There are exceptions, and most politicians break a campaign promise or two, or fail to follow through on their promises, once elected. But few do a dramatic turnaround.

Consider all of the Presidents in the multimedia era, since 1960.

John Kennedy campaigned as a social liberal who was hawkish enough on defense, and in his brief time in office that's how he presided.

I'm not actually that familiar with the Johnson campaign in '64, but I know he contrasted himself with the conservative Goldwater, and as Presidents go he was quite liberal.

Nixon, though he came to prominence as a commie-fighter, campaigned and governed from the middle, with realist foreign policy and activist economics.

Gerald Ford campaigned the way he governed, though we'll never know how he would have changed as an elected President.

Jimmy Carter governed as a witless smile, as we should have expected.

Ronald Reagan governed exactly as he campaigned, by confronting liberalism in all its ignominy.

President G H W Bush campaigned as a caretaker, promising "Read my lips: No New Taxes!". In office he caretook and compromised his way to a huge tax increase, which resulted in fertile economic ground for a Ross Perot candidacy and a Clinton victory.

Bill Clinton was the same guy on the campaign trail in 1992 that we saw in office, and indeed that we see on the campaign trail in 2008.

George W Bush campaigned on "compassionate conservatism", promising education reform and free prescription drugs. While 9/11 took him away from his isolationist foreign policy leanings, he was the same guy all along. And I must note here: the President campaigned as a uniter, who would reach across party lines and not be divisive. That's how he was in office, but he got steamrolled by the unhinged left.

Which brings us to John McCain and Barack Obama.

McCain is campaigning as a centrist. He is a social and fiscal conservative and a war hawk, but with a natural tendency toward bipartisan cooperation. Democrats paint him as Bush's Third Term without noting that habit of compromise, because they also ignore Bush's similar trait. And yet, to the public who know of McCain, it is as a centrist maverick.

McCain will not turn from his bipartisan leanings. As President he will govern from the middle.

Barack Obama has a tendency to make absurd statements and then have to backtrack from them, or to make reasonable, centrist ones and be forced to nuance them into far left ones. He is constantly Changing his wide stances, shifting positions, and Hoping no one notices. He says that to heal the national division on race, all that's needed is to vote for him. As President he would argue for his proposals in the same way, implying or explicitly saying that those who are against him are against racial reconciliation. And he would lose a member of his staff every time he made a gaffe, which during the campaign has occurred several times a week.

Because people don't change that much.

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House Votes Greater Dependence on OPEC

oh no, i am not making this stuff up

According to shortnews.com (which links to a Reuters story at yahoo):

The U.S. House of Representatives passed in a landslide legislation that would allow the Justice Department to sue OPEC for cooperating to set high oil prices and limiting supply, but President Bush said he will veto the bill.

The bill would attempt to subject OPEC to U.S. antitrust laws and would include Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela. The vote margin, 324-84, is large enough to override a presidential veto, which was threatened in fear of retaliation by OPEC.

This attempt by Congress to extend our antitrust laws to cover an organization made up of other sovereign nations is wrong-headed for several reasons, some obvious and some not.

OPEC, as known to everyone not a member of the House of Representatives, stands for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. These countries, not being part of the United States, are not required to recognize our laws or courts.

However, the bill would leverage regulation of foreign-owned oil refinery and transport properties in the U.S to get cooperation from the individual OPEC nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela.

The entire stated purpose of OPEC is to cooperate to set high oil prices and limit supply. Congress may as well say that the United States has authority over the treaties other nations may make with one another, or over the legal systems of any country doing business in the United States.

And their price-fixing scheme is not totally effective. The price of oil is set by the international oil market: sellers try to find the buyer willing to pay the highest price, and buyers try to find the cheapest source. OPEC is simply one group of sellers in the international oil market. The way to get them to lower their price is to buy from a less expensive source.

Another group of sellers is U.S. domestic oil producers. If Congress wishes to increase supply, it can allow domestic producers to drill for oil in places which are already known to have oil, such as the continental shelf off our own coasts and in Alaska.

But rather than stand up to the environmental lobby, Congressional Democrats would encourage OPEC to increase its supply, thereby increasing our dependence on foreign oil.

There is no rule or law that says an OPEC country must produce a single drop of oil. The only thing keeping them producing oil is the international market price. You can't sue someone into selling you something at your price.

What's next: legislating that pi henceforth will be equal to 3.0? Perhaps instead the Congress would like to ensure that the oil fields in Saudia Arabia meet OSHA requirements, or those in Kenya aren't harming the sensitive East African environment.

And if OPEC decides to retaliate against Congressional arrogance, they can turn off the spigot, or merely lower their output even further. That would be a minor inconvenience for them, and the consequences for us would be disastrous.

But perhaps the Democrats in Congress know that already, and believe they can blame President Bush for the economic depression that would follow their attempt to extend our laws to the whole world.

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Democracy Demands That Hillary Stays In The Race

To hear Obama supporters and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) talk, Hillary must drop out for the good of the Party, and for the good of the country. If Hillary stays in, John McCain could win and that would be ... bad.

But neither Hillary nor Barack Obama can realistically achieve a majority of pledged delegates unless the other one drops out of the race. The mathematics of that have not changed in several weeks.

Those urging Hillary to concede the nomination to Obama are essentially saying that if one candidate takes a lead, the others should all drop out. They have an understanding of consensus that is different from mine.

The primary system is designed to take into account the wishes of the members of each party, who then go to their respective conventions and hash it all out. There is nothing wrong with not having a nominee going to the convention. Those wanting Hillary to drop out now are afraid that the Party is incapable of doing that hashing without resort to the sort of riots and discord that accompanied the convention of 1968 in Chicago.

No, now they want popular opinion as given by the media and pundits to select the nominee, rather than doing it at the convention. Is the Democratic Party so weak and fractious that it must rely on Tim Russert and Keith Olbermann to make its decisions?

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The Katrina Narrative

The criticism of the Bush Administration for its handling of hurricanes Katrina/Rita was, in my increasingly lonely opinion, unjustified Democrat and liberal media opportunism. I am disappointed, but unsurprised, that John McCain has made that narrative his own, and is running against President Bush's unpopular reputation. As I said, my voice is joined by few others.

I will agree that government, at all levels, failed to solve the problems created by nature.

But before Katrina, the expectation of the Federal role was as a backup to local authorities, rather than as a front-line emergency response agent. Katrina marked a turning point, after which disaster response will be henceforth primarily a Federal responsibility.

Government cannot solve every problem, nor can it solve any problem overnight. In particular, natural disasters, even ones for which we have some warning, are going to happen. Government will fail to address them. It's going to happen again, and moving the problem up the food chain from local to Federal will not help.

Whether or not government responds well to an emergency is subject to a toss of dice. Some local officials on the Gulf Coast responded well, for instance, while others worried about disarming the citizenry. Tasking the Federal government with emergency response will make a single toss of the dice matter much more. Each local agency might succeed or fail, but the failure would be limited to only the area of their jurisdiction. A Federal failure is a failure for all.

I understand the political reality: McCain (even if he were not genetically predisposed to solving problems with governmental action) must take responsibility for every woe that falls to Man, and especially for this particular woe.

It would be nice to hear him praise the individuals, who are legion, and local officials, if such there be, who responded with selfless courage to the challenges they faced in the hour of disaster.

It would be even nicer to hear a Federal official make a stand against the growth of Federal power at the expense of State and local authority.

This is one more area in which we've ceded more power to the State to do us good, which power will eventually be used, with the best of intentions or the worst of malice, to do us harm.

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Illegal War in Iraq

In a dull repetition of melodramatic echo, never quite dying out but never fully explained, we hear the phrase "illegal war" applied to the conflict in Iraq.

"Illegal war" means that by the very existence of the war a law has been broken. But whose law has been broken? Is it a law of the United States, or some other law, say perhaps of France or Sweden, or more likely, of the United Nations?

The United Nations doesn't have laws, despite what some power-grabbing third worlder might think. It's an organization, not a nation or sovereign entity. At most, its leadership can say that a member country is in violation of its treaty obligations, which is a different thing from being "illegal".

But even so, the United Nations authorized the use of force against Iraq (not just against the government of Saddam Hussein, but of Iraq), though such authorization is not necessary for the United States, sovereign nation that it is, to go to war against some other sovereign nation. We are subject to United Nations edicts only by our own consent. And yet, in this instance and every other of which I'm aware, we have complied with U.N. dictates.

If a law of the United States, then which United States law is it that has been broken? It can only be that the very Constitution has been "shredded" by the use of the armed forces without a formal declaration of war, And yet the Constitution gives the President the authority as Commander in Chief, and to the Congress to declare war and to establish funding and regulations for the armed forces.

Of course in the United States our laws come to be laws when the Congress passes bills and the President signs them, or when a Court decides something (which is then subject to review by higher courts). Congress can change a law made either by itself or by judicial decision at any time, with or without the President's approval.

Now, Congress has issued several bills authorizing the use of force against Iraq (not only against the government of Sadaam Hussein, but of Iraq) which the President duly signed into law, both six months before and several times after the President followed through on that authorization. Congress can, at any time, rescind its authorization. Congress can defund the war at any time also, without the President's approval.

According to WhatReallyHappened.com, the war is illegal because there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) found, but of course, the authorization says no such thing, and there were WMD found. They also claim that the authorization is only valid against the people involved in 9/11. But here is the text they claim says this:

... acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

But that says terrorist organizations including those responsible for 9/11, not only those responsible for it. That authorization included Saddam Hussein as a supporter of international terrorism, whether he was directly involved in 9/11 or not, and it includes our current enemies in Iraq, many of whom do belong to the Al Qaeda organization responsible for 9/11. It also includes Iran, when they operate in Iraq.

It therefore must be that the war is illegal despite Congress having authorized it, and having voted several times to continue its authorization; and despite the fact that the President has certainly given his authority for the work in Iraq; and that the Supreme Court has allowed these actions to continue in the numerous attempts which have been made to bring suit to stop it.

There must then be some other branch of the government which is violating the law.

My money's on Haliburton.

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Torture, again? Yawn.

The Washington Post is aghast that the President should assert the power, in time of war, not to allow the use of torture to defend us against foreign enemies. They point to a declassied memo, the text of which they may or may not have in full, justifying such methods as do not "shock the conscience".

There's a problem with that, of course, in that consciences differ.

But neither was the author of the memo writing a tutorial.

No sane person likes torture. No patriot wants to see his country defeated. So if we can avoid techniques which "shock the conscience", as the memo insists we must, we can avoid both torture and defeat.

And that is everyone's goal.

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In which I agree with Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and really bad economist, has one thing right. China is our enemy.

When Bill Clinton arranged for China to get Most Favored Nation trading status, he said trading with them would encourage them on the road to democracy. Nancy opposed him, saying we should not trade with wicked nations. In 1991, while Bill Clinton was seeking to pay back his Chinese masters, Pelosi went to China, as well, and found her way to Tiananmen Square:

Along with two other members of Congress, Pelosi unwrapped a banner that read, "To those who died for democracy in China." The decidedly undiplomatic delegation was immediately surrounded by police and Chinese "tourists" who pulled walkie-talkies from their backpacks.

Pelosi continues her fight against the state of affairs in China. While the Chinese Communists are calling for 'stepped up "patriotic campaigns"' in Tibet, which yearns for freedom:

Unrest among Tibet's Buddhist clergy has been blamed in part on compulsory "patriotic education" classes, widely reviled by monks for cutting into religious study and forcing them to make ritual denouncements of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Freedom of thought, religion, and speech are non-negotiable. I encourage athletes all over the world to reject the Chinese demand for their complicit silence during the Games.

While I disagree with Speaker Pelosi on a wide range of topics, this is not one of them.

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