Will it be Green Day or regime day?

Thursday, Feb. 11, is the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the regime plans extensive, massive staged demonstrations to celebrate. It is almost certain that the Green Movement that has bedeviled the regime ever since the (probably unnecessarily) stolen presidential election in June will stage demonstrations as well. As Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford, notes in this piece, it is a delicate time for the regime. Despite efforts to suggest to the public that the Green Movement has become reconciled to the regime -- newspaper stories saying Mohammad Khatami accepts Ahmadinejad's legitimacy, as does Mehdi Karroubi. The government wants to convince the people that the movcement has petered out, but Milani makes a strong case that this isn't true. The allegedly conciliatory statements by Green activists were taken out of context. I expect massive peaceful demonstrations. We'll see if the government feels the need to repress them violently.

Gabriela Montero an inspired improviser

As I write I'm listening to pianist Gabriela Montero's album "Bach and Beyond," (here's a link to an MP3 downloadable version) in which she starts playing various Bach pieces fairly straight and then improvises. Of course Bach improvised, as did most Baroque musicians, MOzart and others whom we think of as sticking to the music as written. I rather doubt if Bach improvised quite the way Gabriela does -- she has jazz-like riffs and 20th-century harmonies at her disposal (although one of Beethoven's late sonatas, I forget which one, suddenly goes into a variation that sounds just like jazz, so maybe Bach approached something like jazz as well, though I would be surprised. Gabriela was part of the token classical ensemble (including Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman) at the inauguration just over a year ago, so I guess I'm not the only one who appreciates her.

How government mostly created the financial crisis

The alternative narrative dominates the media, which mostly follows the lead of Obama. The financial crisis was created on Wall Street by greedy rule-breakers who just weren't regulated heavily enough. Fortunately the benevolent government saved us from complete meltdown just in time and has the answer to preventing such disasters from happening again. Trust us -- and give us more power.

The truth is rather different, as Johan Norberg's excellent book, "Financial Fiasco," which I reviewed for the Sunday Register, explains in reasonably irrefutable detail. Yes, there was greed and excessive risk-taking and bad judgment in the private sector. But it was operating in the environment created by government -- mainly the Fed's expansion of the money supply, the rules created to put teeth in the Community Reinvestment Act, which pressured/mandated banks to hand out risky mortgagaes, the shenanigans of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bush's fixation on the "ownership society" and much more.

Other books tell much the same story. Perhaps the best is Tom Sowell's "The Housing Boom and Bust," and Thomas Woods' "Meltdown." Economists and historians who understand the market got the story into print fairly quickly, but it may be that they have preached only to the converted. For anyone willing to probe a little, however, the story of how the mesltdown was almost entirely the government's doing is available. If only a few more people in the media were willing to probe that far.

Time -- past time -- to let gays serve openly in the military

I'm thinking I understand the attitude a little bit. When was 12-13-14 and starting to think about sex (and wishing I was doing it) the idea of guy-on-guy sex just struck me as unspeakably yucky. Beyond that knee-jerk attitude, which most of us eventually grow out of, I simply don't understand what seems to0 me to be an inordinate fear of homosexuality and the hostility to gays that seems so obvious in certain circles. It can't really be Christianity or the Bible properly understood. Jesus never said Word One about homosexuality and you have to search deeply to find the 3 or 4 references (some rather oblique) to homosexuality, all of which seem to me to reflect standard cultural biases more than religious statements.

All of which is prelude to this Register editorial yesterday urging the military -- well, I guess it has to be Congress to get it done this time around, which doesn't necessarily portend an enlightened approach -- to end the misbegotten "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and allow gays to serve openly. Not that I would suggest anybody of any orientation serving in the military in such an empire-besotted country these days, but if they want to, let them.

Another Jack Herer update

Here's another comment from Eve Lentz on Jack Herer's post-heart-attack condition:

Hi, again, Alan. I also wanted you to know that Jack WAS speaking and singing during the 12 days that Joy Graves and I were with Jack Herer at the Care Center he was in (Avamere Riverpark of Eugene) and in the hospital when he went into Renal Failure (Mckensie-Williamette Hospital). He was, at that time "in there" and I do not believe that he will be allowed, now, to get expert treatment and therapy, as I know he deserves.
As Jack Herer's Secretary and editor of his manuscript "The Most High- Plant Secrets of the Gods and Explorations Revealing the End of the World as You Know It", I have seen many things these past months. You wouldn't believe me if I told you even some of the awful things that I have seen done in the name of Jack Herer, that ARE NOT done in his best interests or for his sake. The freedom of Jack to choose his own Powers of Attorney to protect his manuscript from his estranged wife, (who has said she will not let it be published) has now been taken away. I am now fighting to protect Jack's manuscript, with every fiber of my being, so that it will one day be published as Jack wished it to be. Thank-you, again, for reporting his condition and giving us the chance to comment!

Any hope for Haiti?

When I agreed to write this piece on Haiti for the Register's Sunday Commentary section, I thought I might be able to deliver a marginally upbeat verdict on Haiti's chances for improving its condition post-earthquake. After all, Haiti's criminally corrupt government is largely responsible for Haiti being so impoverished, and the erthquake virtually destroyed the government. Maybe, just maybe, it might be possible to start with a relatively clean slate?

The more people I talked to and the more I read, however, the less optimistic I became. There's a formula (adaptable to local conditions,and customs, of course) for poor nations becoming rich, as this book rather persuasively demonstrates, but it involves protection of private property rights and a welcoming environment for entrepreneurial activity. It turns out that Haiti's government has been ineffectual for years and that what governance Haiti has experienced recently has come from the UN, which doesn't come close to understanding what might work; indeed, it's wedded (not surprisingly) to the kind of top-down model that makes "experts" from international organizations the key players. Haiti's best chance is for the experts to get out of the way (once private property rights are secured), but the chances for such a development approach zero. Too bad. I'd love to be wrong.

Guantanamo deaths: some pushback

Since I did a post earlier about Scott Horton's article that raised serious questions about the official investigation into three deaths at Guantanamo in 2006 -- strongly suggesting that an unacknowledged site might have been where they met their deaths rather than by hanging themselves in their cells -- I thought it only fair to note that Horton's article has been criticized by people whose opinions I believe are worth considering. Jack Shafer, who does media criticism for Slate, is to my mind the best media critic out there and a long way from being a kneejerk apologist for the government, so his comments that Horton “never comes close to making its case that prisoners Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani may have been murdered at a secret CIA installation at Gitmo . . .” is worth considering. There's also a blogger at First Things, the theocon site, named Joe Carter, who has critiqued Horton's piece here, here, here, and here. Neocons are seldom right, but his posts are mostly critiques and some of his p[oints are worth considering.

I still think Horton's piece is important, and taken with the critique of the official Navy investigation done at University at least make the case that that report is seriously lacking. And Scott was pretty careful not to go beyond his evidence. He doesn't say he's proven the site was a secret CIA installation, he says that's one of the possibilities, and that the official Navy report failed to reach all potential eyewitnesses including the ones he interviewed. Troubling enough.

Newt usually interesting, and he was today

Newt Gingrich came to the Register to meet with the editorial board today, and we had an interesting discussion. As this editorial notes, the topic was mostly jobs, inasmuch as his American Solutions organization held a "jobs summit" tonight in Irvine. Newt's handlers said they had 2,000 RSVPs, but they weren't sure how many would show. Newt talked about a cutting the payroll tax (SS and Medicare) in half for two years, letting the death tax stay dead, cutting the corporate rate to 12.5 percent (like Ireland), and the capital gains rate to zero (like China).

Newt is hardly a libertarian; I suspect if we had touched on foreign policy he would defend the empire, just urge it to be smarter. For a generally conventional conservative, however, he is intellectually aware and interested in ideas as well as strategy. Here's a blog post I did, here is a short interview Brian Calle conducted, and here's a video of the entire discussion/interview (maybe not). I suspect he would still run for president if he thought he had a chance, but I doubt if he does. Nonetheless, an interesting person.

UCLA 77, Stanford 73

The commentators talked of Honeycutt, Reeves, and Michael Roll knocking down free throws late in the game. However, I'm taking full credit for this marvelous victory. At halftime, with the Bruins down -- what was it, 6? -- I donned my UCLA sweatshirt and put on my ugliest old-school Bruins cap in corduroy(!) baby-blue as a rally cap, cracked open a beer, and went to our outside room where I could smoke, yell and cuss without disturbing Jen, and carried them through.

Seriously, they're starting to make a believer of me. And it's worth noting that while the Pac-10 may be a bit down as a power conference this year, a consequence is that the teams are fairly evenly matched and prone to lose games you would think they should win. That makes for generally interesting games, especially if you watch, as I have several non-Bruin Pac-10 games, without a particular favorite in your heart, almost all the games will be tightly contested and generally won by 5 points or less. An example: Cal lost to USC 66-63 tonight, and I think that puts the Bruins, improbably enough, in a tie for first. Those are the kinds of games that, as a generic basketball fan, I most enjoy watching. Every team has one 0r two really top-notch players -- Landry Fields on Stanford was amazing tonight. Of course if you have a favorite in the game, as I did tonight, it can make for tense experiences too.

Airport screening: is low-tech best?

As an update to my recent post about the conventional response to the latest foiled terrorist plot -- further inconveniencing and invading the privacy of airline passengers, something that is invasive, expensive and mostly ineffective, but highly visible so the authorities can say they are "doing something" -- here's a post by Michael Zantovsky, former press secretary to Vaclav Havel and Czech ambassador to the U.S. and elsewhere. He notes that for would-be bombers with a modicum of ingenuity the possibilities are almost endless, while the possible solution, especially the technological ones, the defenses are expensive and hardly guaranteed to succeed. Money quote:

"There are countless ways to disguise, smuggle through, and assemble an explosive. One thing that cannot be easily disguised is the bomber’s mind, high on adrenaline, racing with doubts, insane with fear and hatred. Experience in countries better left unnamed shows that an airport security team of interviewers, trained to look for signs, symptoms, evasions, inconsistencies, and deceptions can do the job faster, less expensively and more effectively than any piece of hardware. Technology is still employed but not relied upon for infallibility."

I'm pretty sure the "left unnamed" country he has in mind is Israel. When I flew there the security was pretty painstaking and included at least a short interview with every passenger. Mildly uncomfortable but hardly unbearable. And for my money much less degrading than a full body scam, er, scan.

More on Jack Herer's condition/situation

Eve Lentz left the following as a comment on my previous post regarding Jack Herer in his post-heart-attack situation. I thought it was interesting enough to make a new post of it. I'll try (maybe tonight when time permits) to get more current news:

Alan, thanks for putting up the Cannabis Culture link to "most" of the truth. As with everything else, many believe different things. After knowing Joy Graves through thick and thin, I believe she is telling the truth; that Jack did sign a Power of Attorney naming her and Chuck to "protect his manuscript" and a Medical Directive giving them the right to medical decisions. I believe that Joy is fulfilling her obligation to Jack and that Chuck has done the opposite of Jack's true wishes.
Jeannie Herer, though,has been untruthful, starting with the statement that she never left Jack to begin with. I have witnessed other lies, myself and there is no reason for them if she has nothing to hide! She has something to hide and it isn't pretty! Ask her where is all of the money she collected from the many benefits and bank accounts, to pay Jack's medical bills with? Why is Joy Graves receiving all of the medical bills? Where are all of the "Get Well" cards that Jeannie and Mark Herer have been receiving for Jack? Why isn't Jack getting any of the many cards his fans, friends and family are sending, to at least "brighten up his room"? So many questions to go, but I will leave that for later!
Before Jack's heart attack, I watched how much he loved Joy as a daughter and how she loved him. I watched the same thing at Avamere, after his heart attack and he showed his love to her there. I also watched Jack scream for me one day while Jeannie was stroking his arm. He is terrified of her, as much as he said he was before his heart attack! Would YOU want the "estranged" spouse who you were divorcing and who you specifically did a POA to protect your manuscript from, to now be IN CHARGE of everything YOU do for the rest of your life? Many know better!!

Terrorizing (and violating) airline passengers

I found this piece by TNR's legal commentator Jeffrey Rosen on those full-body scanners at airports striking and persuasive. His contention is that the millimeter scanners "are a virtual strip search -- and an outrage." They give somebody somewhere in a booth an anatomically correct view of the passenger, but they would not have detected the explosives the panty-bomber carried. Earlier in the development of the machines models that at least blurred facial features, but those have not been adopted. Maximum invasion of privacy almost seems to be the goal.

The upshot is that in response to the Christmas would-be bomber, we have imposed yet another degrading invasion of privacy on ordinary airline passengers, and one that doesn't really increase safety or security. It's like a knee-jerk response. Screw up -- this was a government screw-up caused largely by the fact that we have too much security bureaucracy, too many different agencies looking at various pieces of the terrorism puzzle but so caught up in bureaucratic procedures, turf issues and empire-building that they don't -- perhaps can't -- communicate with one another. A would-be terrorist fails on a difficult, long-shot bombing attempt and the government responds by terrorizing ordinary innocent passengers. Truly the terrorists have won.

Obama's bloated budget

The fascinating thing is that even as Obama unveiled the biggest budget ever (3.8 trillion -- how striking that the T-word has now become commonplace but is still a concept few people can grasp -- one billion minutes ago the Gospel of John was written and a trillion is a thousand times that -- so it becomes meaningless) with the biggest projected deficit ($1.56 trillion) ever, and use the language of fiscal restraint and responsibility. I know, this is supposed to be part of his "I get it" campaign as he tries to convince us that he really-really cares about jobs and the middle class and turning the economy around rather than dabbling with a new open-ended entitlement, but just how dim does he think we are? As this Register editorial points out, it's a bit like the prayer St. Augustine is reputed to have prayed as he was trying to come to terms with what the implications of conversion really are: Lord grant me chastity -- but not just yet. The "freeze is worse than a joke.

Job creation requires capital formation and the confidence to deploy capital in productive or at least promising ways that expand or build a business to the point that one needs more people to help out. The only jobs Obama has "saved or created" so far have been government jobs, which bear a distinctly parasitic relationship to the real economy, and are a deterrent to private job creation. Even aside from the fact that government spending, while it may stimulate a little activity in the short run, is not the key to sustainable economic recovery and growth, the fact that we're in a recession is a lame excuse for not having a plan to control long-term deficits.

Iranian opposition group seeking justice

I talked again Friday with Nasser Sharif of Californians for a Democratic Iran about the unfortunate fact that the U.S. has designated the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known and Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist organization. As I explained in a piece I wrote last June, the designation occurred in the 1990s, when the Clinton administration had some hope of breaking the US-Iranian ice with supposed moderates in power in Iran and fulfilled a request by the Iranian regime to make the designation. Both the European Community and the UK have done extensive investigation and determined that the PMOI doesn't deserve the terrorist designation and have lifted it. As Nasser argued, and I think I agree, this not only harms one of the main Iranian opposition groups (and a democratic and secular one to boot), it effectively puts the U.S. on the side of the regime.

Despite support from some congresscritters of both parties and a lawsuit, little or not progress has been made on this issue. I'm afraid that since it was a Clinton-era decision, the job of officially identifying terrorist organizations lies with the State Dept, and Hillary is SecState, that it will take dynamite or the political equivalent to get action on this issue. But it would be smart.

Medical marijuana just might come to Elsinore

It was fascinating to attend the town hall meeting last Monday put on by We the People of Elsinore, a group trying to get the city council, which is inclined to ban medical marijuana facilities, to change its mind or put the issue on the ballot and let the people decide. All the panelists, including my old friends Judge Jim Gray and Ed Rosenthal, but also including a Dr. Fichter and the lady in charge of the medmar ID card program for Riverside County, were quite good. A lot of information was dispensed, a lot of questions were asked and answered, and I got to meet Wayne Williams, a local businessman who put the program together. I hadn't seen Ed Rosenthal for several years and we made plans to get togethernext time he's in Southern California.

Of course it's possible that the issue will become moot if California approves the tax-and-regulate-on-the-alcohol model initiative that officially now will be on the ballot in November. But it is encouraging to see medical marijuana advocates (much of the audience of 150, which filled the cultural center to overflowing seemed to be patients, but not all) and other citizens getting together to take action in the light of recalcitrance from City Hall. Of course none of the citi council members showed up.

Fisking Obama's speech

Now I have been a skeptic of what is laughingly called campaign finance reform, which simply increases the already considerable advantages of incumbency, for decades -- since it was put in place after Watergate, which happened to be when I was working on the Hill. So I supported the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case that took the gag off political speakers and advertisers in the period prior to an election. So I have predilections. Still, the more I looked into the Obama/Alito incident at the State of the Union, the more Obama not only looked like the aggressor, the clearer it became that he utterly mischaracterized the case, extrapolating to an unlikely worst-case scenario . Here's the piece I did for the Register's Sunday Commentary section.

Maybe Obama owes the Court an apology

Actually, I admit I'm a bit torn. The founders set up three co-equal branches of government with the idea that they would check and balance each other, each preventing the others from accumulating too much power. It hasn't necessarily worked out that way; most often the three branches connive with one another against the populace, and the chief executive, envisioned as an administrator without much power of his own beyond commanding the military on the rare occasions when its use was necessary, has become, as Andrew Bacevich put it, the American Idol. But insofar as they are checking one another, there are bound to be disagreements that sometimes break out in open criticism. Such criticism might just mean that to some small degree the founders' scheme is still working, so perhaps it should be welcomed and encouraged.

That said, the more I've looked into this -- I wrote a critical piece on the speech for the Register's Sunday Commentary section -- will link once it's up -- the clearer it seems that while Alito's probably spontaneous pantomiming was probably ill-advised, it was Obama who was the clear breaker of precedent and the aggressor -- and something of a cowardly one at that, with the pointed criticism directed at people who by protocol are expected to sit motionless and expressionless during a rather pointed and highly inaccurate tongue-lashing, of the kind that any con law professor with a speck of integrity would give a failing grade to. Presidents hardly ever have referred to the Supremes in SOTU speeches, and never before in such a pointed way right to their faces. Attendance at SOTU is optional for Supremes, and it might not be surprising if none showed up next year. Maybe not so bad. Catfights between the branches just might be a good sign for freedom.

Bringing in the lobbyists

I was glad to see that the AP, the NYT and the WaPo all did some fact-checking on the State of the Onion message. Especially rich, however, was Obama bashing lobbyists when despite his promises he hired a bunch of them and the day after the SOTU the White House was calling bunches of them for "special consultations" and of course they were being dunned for money by Dems on the Hill. I think Obama is losing credibility by the moment. We all knew it was inevitable, but the SOTU crystallized a number of memes, especially denial of reality. He couldn't get anything significant through with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a big majority in the House and it's not because of any problem with policy but a failure to communicate?

Back to inconsistency -- or were the Ducks better?

I knew it would be tough to win in Oregon, but the Bruins came so close to pulling it out that it was frustrating to watch. Even wearing my cap backwards as a rally cap didn't seem to help. I'
ll give them that they kept battling and never conceded the game, but for stretches in the second half it seemed as it there was a lid on the basket. Don McLean said the Bruins were playing good offense in the first half, but I'm not sure I agreed. They hardly ever penetrated and were content to take three-pointers. Roll hit a key one to send it into overtime, but as so often happens in overtime, when one team got more than a one-possession lead it was able to pull away; trying to come back makes for desperate plays.

Still, Nelson and Honeycutt are going to be good players and the Pac-10 is tangled, with no one quite pulling away yet. Let's hope for better on Saturday.

First Amendment means nothing?

I'm fascinated at how little the First Amendment means to so many people in the United States (check some of the comments on this Orange Punch blog post). Obama specifically criticized the Supremes for their Citizens United decision with a wildly inaccurate characterization of it and Sam Alito gets criticized for being seen to silently mouth the words "not true." All right, it was a minor breach of protocol. Obama's characterization was a major breach of SOTU precedent -- no president has used it to make such a direct criticism -- and a major breach of the truth. In the fuss, we forget about the First Amendment.

The McCain-Feingold law included a novel restriction on advocacy organizations, a rule that they couldn't air any ads or other kinds of modes of persuasion in a way that the FEC could interpret as electioneering just before -- 60 days before -- an election, when election-related speech should be at its most robust and political speech most carefully protected. The campaign restrictionist crowd didn't like it, and the Supremes could have issued a narrower decision, but the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law," remember?) was clearly violated. It was correct to strike the clearly unconstitutional law down. That's the Supreme Court's job, arguably its only important job. But the restrictionists reverse the logic of democracy. Elections are supposed to be how the people control the government, but if the government controls the electoral process, declaring who can participate and how, the permanent government cannot be really held accountable. That's what campaign finance "reform" is really all about, giving government more control over the process that is supposed to control it.