RedState

Erick Erickson’s Childish Rememberance of Pearl Harbor

The RedState founder urges you to “never forget” by boycotting Japanese restaurants, one day only. Thanks, but I’ll make point of going to my favorite sushi place tonight, because I support American small businesses regardless of the owner’s ethnicity, and our international allies regardless of their past mistakes. This Pearl Harbor Day, remember by not forgetting that the values we fought for in World War II include, as critical elements, respect and pluralism. And CNN — when are you going to fire this guy? [Update: Fox joins in the idiocy.]

Ultimate Partisan Effect: the Barrier to Good Government Reforms

How do we talk about reforms that make government more effective, and that better represent the people overall, without being swayed by likely partisan effect? For Moe Lane (of HotAir and RedState), the answer is… we don’t.

This poor stewardship is sadly common among not just the far right, but the far left, too, and it’s something we should all struggle to escape. Both sides will often find themselves the beneficiaries of peculiar legal artifacts — especially in election law — that just no longer make sense. These will often distort the effects of elections in a particular party’s favor: but when we encounter them, it’s the former quality, not the latter, that should grab our attention.

Instant runoff voting (IRV, here called “alternative voting”) is an ideal example. In IRV, voters select their candidates in order of preference: first X, but if X loses Y, but if Y loses Z, and so on. Functionally, this eliminates the “wasted vote” — it also entirely eliminates the “split the vote” strategy of winning an election. Under IRV, but not first-past-the-post systems, a clear majority can win even if the ideological bloc finds itself too fractured to solidify behind a single candidate, because voters can select first one faction, then the other, and so on.

In England, this could amount to perpetual domination by the left (assuming Labour + LibDem > 51%). That’s a tough blow to the Tories, but it’s not clear to me why they entitled to anything more. Regardless of the merit of any of Britain’s parties, we should all agree that parties shouldn’t be allowed to win (and maintain) by gamesmanship what they could not in the absence of rules that distort electoral outcomes away from the majority’s policy preference.

New York has similar issues. It’s an open secret that the state Senate — more so than most other state houses — is not a representative body, thanks to forty-plus years of pro-Republican gerrymandering. In the absence of distortion — to wit, smaller districts upstate, larger districts downstate, prisoners counted where imprisoned in the north rather than at home in the south — the state would have around two fewer “conservative” districts, and two more “liberal” districts. And soon it will, since we finally have a governor with the stones to stand up to the Senate and force judicially-brokered reapportionment.

We’ll win this round. But I would like to think we would support a more representative system, even if it meant Republican control. It’s something to remember.

Misunderestimating President Obama

It’s fun to see conservatives try to rationalize how one of ours had the wit, and the, uh, balls, to go after Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, without Pakistan’s say-so. Here’s Erick Erickson from RedState:

Say what you will about President Obama, but it is hard to imagine two years ago he would have taken unilateral military action in Pakistan without telling the Pakistani government. He has grown in office.

That’s demonstrably false, and an obvious lie, since Politico‘s done us the favor of dredging up Obama’s campaign position on Pakistan, for which he caught all manner of flak from his primary opponents. From CNN, August 7, 2007:

Last Wednesday, the Illinois senator said that if it were necessary to root out terrorists, he would send U.S. forces into Pakistan without the country’s approval.

Obama hasn’t become anything. He simply never was the liberal caricature that the Republican Party imagines him to be.

The GOP’s Small Tent

RedState sees The Gays, and libertarians, as entertaining sideshows who might contribute meaningfully, maybe, but are “irritating” and “grating” otherwise. The Big Tent’s now basically a bivy sack.

Republican Radicalization, Part 1 of ?: Nuclear Arms

RedState denounces partial Republican accession to a new START treaty, as “send[ing] an unmistakable signal of weakness to the rest of the world.” In recent years, this same sentiment hasn’t been confined to internet tabloids, but has been echoed Giuliani, and Sarah Palin.

Compare this with President Reagan, the putative mythological founder of conservatism, who executed the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) treaty, laid the groundwork for START I & II (later signed by George H. W. Bush, although the latter never entered into force), and dreamed of a world without nuclear weapons, which he regarded as “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.” His words:

[F]or the eight years I was president, I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my mind.

Query whether the myth of Reagan has so completely replaced the reality that we can forget these things, or whether the GOP has simply descended into belligerent jingoism with such alacrity that abstract civilizational goals are no longer within contemplation.

The Problem with Conservatism

The highest aspiration isn’t elected office. It’s talk radio.

We’ll Raise Up Our Glasses Against Evil Forces, Singin’ —

There’s an old Toby Keith song that numbers among my guiltiest pleasures. It begins:

Granpappy told my pappy, “Back in my day, suh-uhn,
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done.
They call a rope in Texas, find a tall old tree,
Round up all of them bad boys, hang ‘em high in the street.”

For all the people to see.

That Justice is the one thing you should always find,
You gotta saddle up your boys, you gotta draw a hard line…

Has a sort of late Roman Republic ring to it, doesn’t it? Crucify ‘em all, and line the Via Appia with their remains?

Catchy song, though — and it stands as an anthem to the conservative notion that Justice should be swift, brutal, and unburdened by a surfeit of procedural protections, pre- or post-conviction. Let’s see how that stacks up against the modern GOP’s anti-populist, neo-Lochner respect for corporate “liberty” above all:

Let’s be honest. The White House meeting with British Petroleum was a shakedown.

The White House threatened criminal prosecution of BP, the President gave a miserably received speech, then he hauled BP into the White House and put the Attorney General in the room with the CEO to stare at him, then the President demanded $20 billion.

It was a shakedown.

Poorly. RedState’s Erick Erickson continues:

Had British Petroleum affiliated with Al Qaeda and tried to blow up an airplane, it would have gotten due process rights, a court appointed lawyer, and miranda warning while avoiding Henry Waxman.

Obviously, this is an unfair characterization. The criminal presumption of innocence is a much stronger shield than the civil fact of, “I saw your company flout safety regulations, flood our shores with oil, and not do a damn thing about it.” And there’s nothing improper about threatening a company with prosecution for crimes and civil wrongs it did in fact commit. In fact, it’s the very definition of fairness: compensate our citizens and our country for what you did to us, or we will gut your company to the fullest extent of the law. The last caveat is key, but Erickson never even attempts to argue that BP hasn’t committed a wrong that would justify prosecution, to the tune of $20 billion or more (including legal fees).

Has the GOP so far abandoned populism, and a decent respect for the dignity of this nation and its people, that we’ll shed tears over the plight of a megacorporation, and not the citizens of the Gulf, whose lives will never be the same? Well, when John Boehner has to remind his ranks — unsuccessfully — not to appear “sympathetic” to the oil industry, yes. So much for “draw[ing] a hard line.”

How is this, too, not a homeland security issue?

For your, ah, enjoyment, Toby Keith & Willie Nelson’s music video, below the line: Continue reading »

Erick Erickson Gets Blow[back]; Issues Epic Disclaimer

SHOCKING.

Elena Kagan wrote her college thesis on the history of the New York socialist party. It’s kind of interesting (pdf), but never makes a value judgment about the movement.

Scholars will know that studying a topic doesn’t mean you’re a fan of it. My Criminal Law professor was a rape scholar who did not in fact rape people, and my favorite college professor, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, once told me and several friends that, like Procopius, he thought Justinian was “kind of a dick.” True story.

Acknowledging this, Erickson conditions his statement that “the woman [!!!!! -Ed.] declares that socialists must stick together instead of fracture in order to advance a socialist agenda, which Kagan advocates,” adding:

I’m getting blowback on this statement. When you couple Kagan’s thesis with her op-eds in the 80’s and her later work, I think it is a complete and fair statement. Look at the forest, not the trees.

In other words, ignore the individual facts on the ground and, instead, roll together thirty years of Kagan’s life, make generalizations, trust your gut, and run with it, all the way to CNN.

The key paragraph, most amenable to distortion, is below the line: Continue reading »

By Republican Logic, What Else Is Unconstitutional?

CNN’s newest correspondent, Erick Erickson of RedState, offers this explanation of why the new healthcare act is unconstitutional:

Insurance contracts are not within the stream of interstate commerce. That’s why when you buy insurance for your house, your car, or your health you deal with state insurance commissioners, not a federal insurance czar.

Congress does not really regulate insurance contracts. They are contractual obligations at the state level, not goods and services in the stream of commerce. So can Congress then force you to buy a product not in interstate commerce to regulate interstate commerce, when insurance regulations are clearly within the purview of the states?

He goes on to argue that, a fortiori, this means that you’re now a slave. To a black man. Yeah, the rest of the article is worth a read, and it’s not race-baiting at all. Three cheers for intellectual integrity!

Anyways, try to parse the law from the rhetoric. It’s not easy, but Erickson’s argument seems to be that insurance contracts are regulated by the states, and therefore not “interstate”; and further, they’re not “goods,” and therefore not within the stream of commerce anyways, so neither do they constitute “commerce.” Let’s unpack and apply.

If state regulation rebutted the interstate quality of a good, nothing would be within Congress’ power. Most regulatory regimes consist of overlapping zones of federal and state power. For example, federal securities laws, like § 10(b) of the Exchange Act and its critical Rule 10b-5, coincide with state “Blue Sky” laws to create a regime for the punishment of fraud. None dispute that, despite state “Blue Sky” laws and strong state regulation, these financial products constitute “interstate”

In much the same way, “contractual obligations” are most certainly commerce, and comprise the greater part of the American economy. When I walk to work in the morning, I don’t pass factories: I pass securities clearinghouses, and the law firms that represent them. If you live in a city, you do too. These financial products enter the stream of commerce and have the potential to enrich, or wreak havoc on, the parties that control and are controlled by them. None dispute that they constitute commerce.

But under Erickson’s view of the Constitution, because they supplement or preempt state solutions, and concern neither goods nor services in the traditional sense, the Securities Act of ’33, the Exchange Act of ’34, and all related acts are flat-out unconstitutional.

Similarly, if you work for a large company, or state government, odds are your retirement plan is backed by the federal ERISA regime (Employee Retirement Income Savings Act). This is a good thing. It’s like an FDIC for your pension — at least in that it’s a safety net, and requires state-law plans to meet certain federal minima to guarantee solvency. Under Erickson’s logic, ERISA is gone too.

Erickson’s is not a responsible way of looking at the world. Going beyond these examples, Erickson’s reasoning would gut the Department of Labor — so long OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Act), FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act), etcetera. That means a return to child labor, and a thousand new Triangle Shirtwaist incidents.

This is the world in which the newly mainstreamed, radical right wants you to live: a world where the Progressive Era and the 20th century never happened, where employees and families remain at the mercy of the unregulated market. The 1800s were not a happy time. We forget that at our peril, and repeat it at our pain.

CNN — fire this man.

Equating the Trend with the End

This statement may be incredibly obvious, but just in case:

The chief (only?) Republican strategy lately takes the form of a dishonest attempt to equate the fact that a given political issue implicates a principle, with the opinion that it in fact destroys the principle. Let’s canvass common examples:

• Government expenditure tends to implicate the question of fiscal responsibility. Therefore, any spending measure independently and on its own force destroys the budget.
• Regulation tends to implicate the question of the limits of regulatory power. Therefore, any regulation necessarily violates the Commerce Clause.
• Federal programs tend to implicate state sovereignty. Therefore, any regulation violates whatever power is left in the residual Tenth Amendment. (Nota bene: this is a case where the premise isn’t even true.)
• A commitment to decency tends to trigger personal impulses to suppress potentially offensive commentary. Therefore, urging self-restraint is the equivalent of government suppression of speech, somehow (?). This is a Palin favorite.
• Civil rights (e.g., freedom from search & seizure; the guarantee of trial by jury) sometimes require that we trade away safety. Therefore, independent of the right’s textual existence, any recourse to any right compromises national security.
• Rules of criminal procedure circumscribe the government’s ability to try accused criminals. Therefore, independent of any requirement that the rules be used, their reference or use constitutes the complete abdication of the government’s ability to convict the guilty.
• Gay marriage relaxes one part of traditional societal limitations on the marriage tradition. Therefore it obliterates all societal limitations. On everything.

Numbers one through three figured prominently in what passed for a health care “debate” in this country.

Each argument, clearly, relies on a deep-seated dishonesty, but the sin of the tactic goes deeper still. This type of argumentation implicitly rejects a middle ground. When every step down a road implies reaching the destination, there’s no honest way to reach a compromise. If you want to know why we never saw any bipartisanship in the health care debate, that’s your answer. By their rhetorical choices, the Republican Party sold their constituents, and ultimately themselves, on the concept that bipartisanship implied a complete loss. The result is people like this.