Submitted to a Candid World
Archive for June 15, 2008
Debating Debates: Town Hall, Formal, or None of the Above
I’ve said before that I think Barack Obama is foolish to turn down John McCain’s invitation to do a series of town hall debates before the general election debate season starts aright. But apparently Plouffe matters more than I, and my opinion has not carried the day here. While I think he’s making a mistake, though, I do not think that Obama can be accused of cowardice, a chance that my friend at “The Big Stick” apparently reluctantly jumps at.
After all, Obama’s rejection of the town hall deal can’t be looked at alone. In context, John McCain has also turned down Obama’s offer of five full debates, which David Plouffe points out would have been more debates than any other election campaign in history. They’re not settling on a number for some reason, but I don’t think it’s cowardice: Obama is more than willing to engage, he just wants it on different terms. As David Plouffe has said, he wants something…
[L]ess structured and lengthier than the McCain campaign suggests, …that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.
This suggests to me that there’s something about the town hall setting, aside from the more standard moderated debate format, that Obama does not like. Perhaps more length, less structure is it, but it is not numerosity. Arguably longer free-form debates play more into Obama’s strengths. But whatever the debate over debates is about – political posturing, what have you – it sure isn’t about cowardice.
Our friend at “The Big Stick” should look a little deeper at the issue. However, he does prove that the Republicans can easily spin the refusal to meet at town halls in the negative, lending more weight to my suggestion that Obama accept. Listen up, Plouffe!
Playing Dirty in the Vaccine Wars
I’ve recently become a reluctant participant in the debate over the health or danger of modern vaccination technology. However, now I see that “debate” may be the wrong word – all out war is more like it.
It’s never okay to turn an internet debate into a real-life feud, with concomitant consequences on families and professions. Thanks to the commenter who brought this to my attention.
Teaching Creationism as “Intellectual Welfare”
Long-time readers will know that I’m a big fan of NPR’s “Science Friday” program. Under the skilled direction of Ira Flatow, it ranges from the occasionally dry to the frequently sublime.
This past Friday, guest host Joe Palca interviewed biology textbook author and Brown University professor of biology Ken Miller, one of the plaintiffs’ star witnesses in the Kitzmiller trial and an outspoken defender of science. I advise anybody reading this to listen to the interview; if you’ve ever had doubts about evolution as good science, or had questions about how to debate the subject with creationists, this man will either bring you back around or reload your intellectual clip of ammo.
I want to bring your attention to one point in particular, however: near the beginning of the program, Miller explains how creationism and intelligent design have utterly washed out of the marketplace of scientific ideas (which, unlike the media marketplace, seems to be functioning fine), and he likens any legislatively imposed requirement to teach creationism in schools to a form of “intellectual welfare,” a subsidy for poor science. I find this argument particularly poignant: in fact, I’ve found it compelling for a while, as one of my friends at NYU Law (who’s since graduated and is now practicing in Arizona) wrote a long paper on the same subject, though I don’t think he published it. So the next time you hear, “teach the controversy,” think “government bailouts for crappy science pseudoscience.” Thanks Ken, and thanks Anonymous NYU Law Friend, for this golden talking point.
Light Side Points for SCOTUS & Habeas Corpus for Detainees
For the detainees languishing in the legal black hole of Guantanamo-by-the-Bay, the light at the end of the tunnel and hoped for release need no longer be death. The Supreme Court ruled this last Thursday that the Military Commissions Act (MCA), which delegated trials of “enemy combatants” to Star Chamber military adjudicative proceedings with a presumption of guilt for the detainee, fell far short of creating a constitutional replacement for habeas corpus, and that the Great Writ ought therefore be extended to the beleaguered detainees.
This is a constitutionally significant event. Under pre-Thursday Supreme Court jurisprudence, the limits of executive power, even during wartime, have always been institutional and based on the principles of checks and balances, rather than any affirmative constitutional mandate. The rule of Youngstown, confirmed recently in Hamdi and Hamdan, had been that the president could in theory do anything he wanted so long as the legislature was willing to accede (a paper by NYU Law professors Issacharoff and Pildes on the subject – here). Whether there were any constitutional limits beyond which an energetic executive and a willing Congress could not transgress in the name of “war powers” was a constitutional gray area.
Now we know the answer: the President may not refuse to extend habeas or similar rights to the enemy. Even in war, we must be a paragon of virtue, and a living example of the rights we defend, to the world.
I do not purport to defend the detainees in Guantanamo for the evil deeds that some of them have no doubt committed. Rather, I simply believe that no-one is so evil that the law itself must abandon them. We are a nation of laws, and when we confront our enemies, we must do so with our laws and our rational minds, not with our blind hatred and closed fists alone. If evil lies in the hearts of the men at Guantanamo, then the truth will out, no matter what process. But a presumption of guilt without recourse to federal courts does not guarantee the same for those who are innocent.
The fight for our nation began, and our national conscience was in its early stages defined, when we declined to execute the perpetrators of the Boston Massacre before a fair jury trial could take place. We as a nation – not yet then a nation-state – suborned hate to the ordered law then, and we did it again this past week. Good for us.
Additionally, this recent case has given us a chance to look at the soul of our Republican candidate, John McCain. And the first look isn’t that great. McCain, a former prisoner war himself, has taken the chance to decry the extension of reasonable legal protections to detainees. This is (1) cognitive dissonance on is part in the extreme, and (2) a poignant rebuttal to the contention that McCain is a “moderate.” Now more than ever, he’s a Bush copy.
(P.S. – bonus points to anyone who gets the KotOR/ME inside joke).
