Beating the Drum

One thing the Republicans are very good at is reminding the public, again and again and again, of the problems they perceive with Democratic leaders. During the Clinton years, even the smallest scandals -- Travelgate, say -- got mentioned endlessly, again and again, for years on end, even long after they were over.

The Democrats need to take this page out of the Republican playbook. As 2007 comes to a close, the chief scandal of the Bush administration, the Iraq war, seems to be in a somewhat equivocal state. On the one hand, 2007 was the deadliest year of all for U.S. troops, with nearly 900 fatalities; on the other hand, Iraq's security situation has improved considerably over the last few months and the rate of fatalities is down sharply.

But no matter how you look at it, it's still a scandal. The Democrats need to help the public remember:

* In 2003, before the start of the war, Donald Rumsfeld originally said the war would cost less than $50 billion.

* Some weeks later, the Pentagon estimated that the war would cost $60 - $95 billion. Paul Wolfowitz criticized the $95 billion upper end as too high.

* In fact, direct military spending alone already exceeds $368 billion and the total cost may be $1 trillion. Why, the White House just demanded and got another $70 billion.

Perhaps Democrats think the public would get bored if these figures were mentioned over and over again. But if the party situations were reversed, you'd be hearing them every day -- probably more than once.

What Would We Do?

Pakistan's ruling party says that the country's upcoming elections, scheduled for January 8, may be delayed up to four months in the wake of the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

What would we do if one of our leading presidential candidates were assassinated or otherwise died two weeks before the presidential election? We've been lucky on this score for two hundred years, but even with good security there could always be a plane crash, like the one that tragically killed Senator Paul Wellstone shortly before he was up for reelection in 2002.

The answer is that this is a constitutional accident waiting to happen -- as is the case of the winning candidate's dying shortly after Election Day. The Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution takes care of the case of the death of the President-Elect before his term of office begins, but the successful candidate is not the President-Elect immediately after Election Day, because the real election doesn't take place until the electors (the members of the Electoral College) cast their votes, and even then the candidate is probably not really the President-Elect until the electoral votes are officially counted in Congress. If the apparently successful candidate died before the electors cast their votes, their would be massive confusion and no one would really know what to do or what would happen.

But going back to the case of a leading candidate's dying, by assassination, plane crash, or otherwise, shortly before Election Day, it would on the one hand seem grossly unfair to go forward with the election, but equally unfair to postpone it. Unfair to go forward, because no one would have the slightest idea what to do -- the ballots would already be printed, the computers already programmed, and there would be enormous confusion about the effect of voting for the deceased candidate, whether a replacement could be named, and so on, and even if the legal experts could agree on what should happen (most unlikely), there would be no time to communicate it effectively to the voting public. But unfair to postpone, because campaigns spend hundreds of millions of dollars with the goal of peaking at precisely the right moment. Everything is keyed to the precise date of the election.

And that's not to mention that there's no legal basis for postponing anyway, and no one with the authority to order a postponement. There was some discussion of who could order a postponement in the event of a terrorist attack or natural disaster shortly before the 2004 elections (the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking whether it had a contingency plan), but the subject got everyone so spooked that the discussion was quickly dropped.

Pakistan's terrible assassination should make us rethink this issue. Yes, it's awful to contemplate the possibility. And a postponement authority would be dangerous -- you just know an administration like the current one would trump up some excuse and use it for political gain if it looked like its party was behind in the days before Election Day. Maybe the risk of improper postponement is greater than the risk of having a genuine need for a postponement, in which case we're better off with our traditional strategy of trusting to luck. But it wouldn't hurt to appoint a commission to think about this issue and make some recommendations. The best time would be immediately after the next presidential election, when the issue could be discussed with at least a modicum of neutrality and calm. Meanwhile, cross your fingers and hope.

Enemies of the State

Just in case you had any remaining doubts about the importance of the writ of habeas corpus, recently declassified documents show that in 1950, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover floated a plan to detain about twelve thousand people, almost all American citizens, without judicial trial on the ground that they were "potentially dangerous to the internal security of the country." The plan called for suspension of habeas corpus and detention in military prisons. Eventually, those detained would have received a hearing by a Hearing Board consisting of a judge (either federal or state) and two citizens chosen by the Attorney General. The decision of the Hearing Board would be subject to review by the Attorney General, whose decision would be final except for appeal to the President.

Well, isn't that lovely -- throw everyone in jail and allow the Attorney General's handpicked flunkies to decide whether to let them out, with review by the Attorney General.

America's current wave of extrajudicial detentions continues with only muted outcry because it affects people whom most Americans can comfortably regard as the "other." Hoover's extreme plan usefully reminds us that abuse of freedom is everybody's business. Once procedures for locking people up without charge and trial exist, they endanger everybody. The FBI Director had a plan to lock American citizens up en masse. Who knows what plans Alberto Gonzales put together that have yet to be discovered. This isn't just a danger to other people -- our own freedom is at stake.

Weblog Anniversary

Not my blog anniversary or anything like that, but it appears that this is the tenth anniversary of the invention of the term "weblog." (Actually, it appears that the tenth anniversary occurred a week ago but news organizations have just caught up.) The term got shortened to "blog" later.

The anniversary reminds us that weblogs started as, well, logs of what someone was doing on the web. Back in the day, oh so long ago, it was a little harder to find web content than it is now, so people appreciated links to good stuff. And even today a lot of very popular blogs -- certainly many that are thousands of times more popular than this modest effort -- seem to consist largely of links to other content.

The key to success, it seems, is to surf the web, find good content and link to it. My basic error is trying provide content of my own.

In the spirit of the anniversary, here's a little time-waster for you: the top 20 viral videos of 2007. If you only have 10 seconds to spare, be sure to watch "Dramatic Chipmunk."

Yes, I did watch some of them this morning. But hey, it's a University holiday.

Cue Bill Clinton

So Mitt Romney first said that he "saw" his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he's backing away from that statement. OK, he screwed up. But the most delicious part of the whole thing is that Romeny now says:

"If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described. It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort."

Could there be a more Clintonesque explanation? (I mean President Clinton here, not Senator Clinton.) Aren't we entitled to one politician who can talk about things in straightforward terms that don't need footnotes and hypertechnical exegesis? Isn't there a politician who's capable of admitting error?

Fair Tax Follow-Up

After writing these posts about the "Fair Tax," which seems mostly like yet another way to repackage a truly stunning tax cut for the very richest, I sent the following question to the "Ask the Expert" section at the Fair Tax website:

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You call the Fair Tax "progressive" because the rich would pay more as a percentage of spending. But the rich can save more (which would not be taxed), so wouldn't they likely pay a lower percentage of their income than the middle class?

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I sent this in on December 2. No reply yet. Hmmmm . . .

A Little Strike Relief

If, like me, you're waiting wistfully for the Daily Show to come back following the writers' strike, check this out. And of course come back and follow the blog.