Drug policy action

The Drug Policy Action Network branch of the Drug Policy Alliance has two action items underway that I recommend very highly. One involves sending a message to Kellogg's asking for a meeting with drug policy reformers. As I've noted, Kellogg's public image actually took a hit when it suspended its endorsement contract with Michael Phelps after the latter was photographed with what appeared to be a marijuana bong. It might behoove Kellogg's (which was founded as a health-promoting company, believe it or not) to meet with reformers and learn a little bit about why it is less popular after doing the "right thing" in terms of conventional wisdom.

The other is to send a message to Congress urging it to eliminate federal marijuana laws and let the states -- which have traditionally regulated health issues, a tradition that is far from entirely dead -- decide what kind of marijuana policies they want. This is the kind of bold suggestion I like to see drug reformers take. I've advocated taking marijuana off Schedule I numerous times, but this is a much better idea. It would be wonderful to see Congress get a lot of e-mails on this.

No talk with Loretta Sanchez

The Obama event last week did not offer the opportunity to talk with Rep. Loretta Sanchez, as I had hoped it might. I'll try to call her office this week and see if we can't set up a meeting to talk seriously about her comment on CNN that it might be time for California to give marijuana legalization a try.

Saving the banks?

I posted the following on the Register's Orange Punch blog:

Just in case you want more information than anyone could possibly want about Tim Geithner’s latest plan to save the banks from themselves, here is the Treasury Department’s official news release on the plan and Geithner’s op-ed in the WSJ. Paul Krugman at the NYT is spitting mad because it isn’t socialist enouogh, while Brad DeLong is a little more optimistic. I talked with Alan Reynolds at Cato, who said it is a bit less-worse than most of the previous efforts, which tanked the stock market. Peter Wallison at AEI, who had sounded the alarm about Fannie and Freddie for years, thinks he has a plan for pricing the er, “legacy” assets, while Alex Pollack recommends a genuinely independent quasi-corporation along the lines of the Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corp.

Seems to me that taxpayers assume a lot of risk, especially if they’re guaranteeing the private-sector investors Geithner hopes to lure into this scheme. But short of letting a few bad banks fail, which would have been the way to handle it if the Bushies hadn’t panicked back in September, this might work, at least for a while. Of course we’ll have to see how many private investors want a piece of the action considering Congress’s proclivity, as shown in the bonus-tax legislation in the House last week, for changing the rules midway through the game.

Oil and Afghanistan

Obama is expected to announce an Afghan strategy soon, perhaps as soon as this week, and it looks as if it's going to involve "nation-building" over the next 3 to 5 years. Sheer foolishness. So I wrote about it for Antiwar.com again this week. I've already gotten several nasty responses from Antiwar readers suggesting I'm just incredibly naive for questioning whether Afghan and other American wars are really "all about oil," or chiding me for being unaware that we've already passed the "peak oil" tipping point -- I'm aware of the theory but not entirely convinced. I have no doubt that lust for oil plays a role, but I argue that going to war is perhaps the worst possible way to acquire "cheap oil." Oil may come along with it, but it ain't cheap if you factor in the cost of the military adventures (not to mention the lives lost). The best way to get access to oil is not to send occupation forces but to buy it. Quaint concept.

Scotch whiskey producers going green

This summary is from PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, the font of free-market environmentalism, market-based approaches to environmental conundrums and all kinds of good things. I haven't been to one of their seminars since 1984, but I cherish the memory -- challenging concepts, good fellowship, good food, and marvelous scenery and recreational opportunities at a Montana dude ranch.

How could anyone resist a story of good Scotch and good stewardship? The worldwide downturn may affect this initiative negatively before long, but it turns out that rich Asians, especially in China, love good Scotch, and consumption worldwide has increased 15 percent in the last 10 years, leading to expanding the industry. So in Speyside, Scotland, a consortium of distillers plans a biomass-powered heating and electricity plant. It will be powered by wood chips and something called draff, a solid grain product that is removed from the mash before fermentation, and is expected to produce enough electricity to power the plants and 9,000 homes. They're also adding a plant to turn pot ale, another by-product that had previously been discarded, into a concentrated organic fertilizer.

For more first-hand information, go here. For more on Scotch, my favorite whisky, in general, try here and here.

Our love for leaders

The Obama appearance in Costa Mesa this week impelled me to write this piece for the Register's Sunday Commentary section on the abiding love for leaders, maybe even mings abnd queens, which may be imprinted in the human DNA but is not necessarily good for us. If I do say so, I think this is one of my better recent efforts. The two bo0oks mentioned are Gene Healy's "The Cult of the Presidency" and Josiah Ober's "Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens."

Bonus mess reflects poorly on all involved

It wasn't supposed to turn out that way, but the AIG bonus situation is turning out to taint everybody who even sticks his hand into the jar. Obama jumped in with pandering, but several observers are now saying that part of the fallout will include making things even more difficult than expected when it comes either to gettingn his budget passed or getting further stimulus packages approved. This Register editorial mentions a few who came off stinking like week-old fish, and how they deserved opprobrium.

It's still a bit mysterious to me why this particular set of bonuses, admittedly hardly typical corporate practice, set off such a firestorm. I suspect there's something kinda cumulative going on. People have been having second thoughts about the whole magilla -- bailouts, pork spending called stimulus, baigger spending yet, failure to get serious about the bank crisis -- and were just ready to explode in disapproval. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Wait 'til next year!

Actually it's much too early to tell about next year yet. We don't even know whether Jrue Holliday will stay, although it would almost certaino6y be in his interest to spend at least another year in college, both because of what he will learn and gain in experience, and therefor in terms of his draft position and starting salary. Assuming he stays and gets better , the othger freshmen develop and Dragovich becomes a leader, it should be a solid team, though maybe not a deep-into-the-tournament team. Or it might just be a top ten team. How's that for brave prognostication?

What is clear is that Villanova admninistered an old-fashioned ass-whupping on the Bruins yesterday. I believe in respecting opponents and being able to admire what they do well, but this was painful to watch. At least the Bruins weren't acting as if they had given up toward the end, but for whatever reason they never had close to Villanova's energy. And I have to admit that while Villanova played hard and physical, they didn't really play dirty.

Down by 13 at the half -- but I'm not giving up

Of course I have to admit that Villanova has played with more intensity and perhaps even smarter so far. Also, what the commentators call the typical "physical" play of the Big East can look more like thuggishness: they don't just foul you to keep you from the basket, they put you on the floor. UCLA will have to give as good as they get in the second half, which I think they can do though it might surprise some. Still, the lead was bigger at various times, UCLA went through a period of almost total ineffectiveness that they seem to have snapped out of. Not guaranteeing anything, but it shold be at least competitive in the second half.

Troubles at the Philadelphia Orchestra

It is sad to read that the venerable Philadelphia Orchestra, which appeared in and played Disney's "Fantasia" film and developed a justly famous lush string sound under the legendary Eugene Ormandy, seems to be in some trouble just now. It doesn't have a permanent board chairman, chief executive officer or music director -- the lack of a music director being the biggest problem. It had to cancel a planned European tour for this summer, reduce salaries and cut some administrative staff.

The Philadelphia is hardly the only classical music institution hit by the recession. Opera Pacific in Orange County had to close not long ago. But many of its troubles seem to be unique to it. I think Christoph Eschenbach, who served as conductor five years until last year, had a good deal to do with it. I was never impressed by his musicianship and apparently he was unable to establish much chemistry with the players. Charles Dutoit, a fine conductor, is filling in temporarily. Don't know if he would be considered for the job permanently or not.

I hope they get their act together and reestablish the orchestra's preeminence. The first classical LP I ever bought, longer ago than I care to remember, was the famous Serenade for Strings with Ormandy conducting album, with Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and, of course, Samuel Barber's magnificent and moving Adagio.

Dispensary raids likely to end

Attorney Gen. Eric Holder has announced that the feds will quit raiding dispensaries and medical grows in states with medical marijuana laws. Naturally, the Register noted that he hedged it just a bit, and called for taking marijuana off Schedule I so doctors can prescribe it countrywide -- a step or two ahead of just about everybody else, of course. If I had my druthers, marijuana would have the same legal status as, say, parsley, but I wouldn't be too displeased if they decided to regulate it similarly to alcohol, which of course is much riskier, as Tom Ammiano has suggested in California. But I'll take what we can get. I still think Holder might have an inner drug warrior, so it's worth keeping an eye on him.

I note that Cato emphasized that this decision respects federalism. That's an aspect many still misunderstand. One news story said federal law "supersedes" state law, which just isn't so. I was at the Supreme Court when they argued the Oakland case, and Justice Ginsburg asked the government attorney why the doctrine of federal supremacy was not being invoked. She replied that this was simply one of many cases where state laws and federal laws are different, and law enforcement at each level is bound to enforce the laws of the jurisdictions to which they are sworn. (I would contend that if they took the oath to the constitution federal agents wouldn't enforce federal laws, which are unconstitutional, but I wouldn't depend on any current court -- well, maybe certain panels on the 9th Circuit -- to go along with me on that.)

Obama's Baracketology as good as his stimulus program

On the eve of his trip to Southern California, Barack Obama took some time out to go on ESPN and pick winners in the NCAA tournament (for which he took some criticism I thought was unwarranted) -- and picked both USC and UCLA to lose in the first round and the Pac-10, widely considered a relatively weak conference this year, to go 1-5 in the first round. So much for the First Fan's powers of prognostication. USC and UCLA both won (if a little close for comfort in the Bruins' case) and the Pac-10 went 5-1 -- and Cal really should have won too; don't know why they were so listless. He also picked Ohio State to beat Siena, which didn't pan out either. UCLA plays Villanova tomorrow morning, in Philadelphia, in a building where Nova plays at leasst three games a year. I'm hoping the Bruins recover from an inconsistent performance Thursday and really show something.

AIG bonuses -- another view

Daniel Drezner, of Tufts and Foreign Policy magazine, has a nice little post (that agrees with my views expressed earlier) that the AIG bonus issue involves much more distraction than substance. Of course it reflected a certain cluelessness on the part of AIG as to how it would play out -- though in truth it is always difficult to predict what will catch public attention and resonate, even for people who have been at the game a long time -- and of course there's a certain outrageousness to giving the bonuses to people who made huge mistakes. But the real outrage is the bailout itself, compared to which the bonus money is minuscule.

Small-scale trade war beginning?

I have been warning for some time, in various venues, about the possibility of a trade war developing from this global economic downturn. It's sad to report that it just might be coming true, although various trade agreements might moderate its intensity short of the kind of disaster created by Smoot-Hawley that lengthened and deepened the Great Depression. And it's even sadder to report that the United States has initiated one through its utterly unjustifiable and short-sighted decision to stop the pilot program of allowing Mexican long-haul trucks to operate in the U.S. rather than requiring them to change loads twice before U.S. truck finish the run. I think this Register editorial explains the situation reasonably well.

Whew!! 65-64 heartstopper -- but take that, Barack!

Well, you sure hope this was the kind of perhaps unnecessarily tough first round game that steels the Bruins for the next one -- and the one after that. But that inconsistency after being up by as much as 11 is hardly reassuring. And on Saturday it's almost Villanova's home floor, and they were tough enough to come back from down and win it tonight. I must admit that Eric Maynor of Virginia Commonwealth is a helluva player, and I was deathly afraid he was going to make that last shot. But Collison played solid defense without fouling, and we barely squeaked through. Holliday seems to having his shooting confidence back, Aboya was tough, but Shipp was the indispensable man tonight. I don't know what to think about the rest of the tournament -- the news that Freshman Drew Gordon, who has played well sometimes, has a concussion, is hardly encouraging. but a W is a W.

The shout-out, of course, is due to the fact that President Obama in his televised tournament picks, had UCLA losing in the first round -- though with a question mark. And on the eve of visiting SoCal! He also had USC losing, and it would be sweet if he were proven wrong on that one as well.

Sad days for newspapers: a little insight

Yesterday the Seattle Post-Intelligencer converted to an Internet-only news source -- but with a 20-person newsroom rather than 156. Who knows, that just might be the future of news gathering. Newspaper newsrooms are probably still somewhat padded even after all the layoffs, but 156 people can cover more news than 20 people can. Here's a Register editorial memorializing the sad event, with comments on the SF Chronicle and what I hope is a little bit of insight into why newspapers find themselves in trouble just now -- though it doesn't mention just how arrogant we were when our business model was working and providing profit margins of 20% and more. We're a lot less arrogant now.

Obama: impressive but incoherent

The event with Barack Obama today was quite interesting, although people who watched it on TV probably got a better sense of the man than those of us relegated to the print (and blog) portion of the media mob. We got to sit at long tables with plugs for power cords -- behind the risers set up for the TV and still cameras. It's obvious at most political events and has been for years that TV is more important to politicians than the near-obsolete print media, but it was really obvious at this event. From our spot we could see exactly nothing except the rear ends of some cameramen (they're still almost always men) and they didn't even provide a TV monitor. We could hear, however. And the amateur guards were officious.

Word is that the OC Fair folks got the word Friday that Obama wanted to do an event on Wednesday, so it was obviously set up rather hastily. The building was far from suitable, essentially a big barn-like structure usually used for trade shows and the like, with terrible acoustics (if any).

Must say Obama handled the event very well, and the audience was utterly gaga for him. If one expected intellectual coherence, however, one had come to the wrong place. I wonder if he actually believes this stuff. The financial crisis was caused by the banks being mysteriously loose with credit (the government played no role in this explanation) and the cure is to get credit markets going again with $1 trillion from the govt. and subsidize refinancing. I thought law professors were supposed to value at least a modicum of logic.

Here are the blogs Steve Greenhut and I produced on the event. Editorial here, with a little more detailed critique of the event.

A post-imperial America?

Fareed Zakaria, of all people, in Newsweek of all places, suggests strongly that the time has come to wind down the American empire -- not as strongly as I would, of course, but nonetheless . . . . I guess I'd better get my book done quickly to stay ahead of the polict discussion.

Hoping to talk to Loretta Sanchez

Santa Ana Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez will, of course, be in the arena for President Obama's visit to Costa Mesa tomorrow, and I hope to get a chance to talk with her about her recent CNN appearance where she suggested that California might do well to take the lead on legalizing marijuana. How did she arrive at this position? Has she trolled for support for the idea? Does she think it would help to reduce the current violence in Mexico that is spilling over into the U.S.? What kind of response has she gotten? Has she talked to key legislators in California (Ammiano for one)?
I hope to be able get answers to those and more questions if possible.

President Obama comes to town

Well, tomorrow is shaping up to be an interesting day. It's not every day that the President of the United States (yes, I still would like to see the office and institution diminished in power and celebrity, but it is what it is) comes to an area in which you are the dominant media outlet, and the Register looks to be positioned to make something of it. So far as we know Steve Greenhut and I will be in the room for Obama's town hall in Costa Mesa tomorrow at 4:00 PST (though confirmation of our media credentials hasn't been officially confirmed as of when I left the office tonight). Given that it's supposed to be a "citizen" town hall we still don't know if they'll let the media ask questions, and we also don't know if we'll be able to bring in laptops to blog in real time. But we will be there, prepared to do an editorial for Thursday and columns for Sunday, and some blogging along the way on Orange Punch, the Register's opinion blog. I also don't know how many newsroom people will be in the room. But we'll cover it like a blanket. So please check Orange Punch and the Register's main news page. Of course print will still be second fiddle to TV, but we hope to be able to offer the kind insight and commentary TV simply can't offer.

A fair amount has been made of the supposed boldness of Barack Obama in venturing into Orange County, which has the reputation of being one of the most Republican places on earth. That's much less true than it has been in the past -- I think Obama pulled 48% in November and the demographics have been changing for at least 20 years; we may even be a "majority minority" place now. And judging by people willing to wait overnight last night for tickets, there are a lot of Obama fans in the county.

I'll probably be home later than usual tomorrow night, but should be able to record some thoughts and impressions here in the evening.

Still ambivalent about the drug czar

I must confess to going back and forth about the prospects for real reform of the unjust and counterproductive drug prohibition laws under President Obama -- and perhaps a little less optimistic even than a couple of weeks ago, when the name of Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske was floated to be "drug czar." On the one hand, he has cooperated with the voter-mandated policy of making marijuana enforcement the lowest priority of the police department, he has kept the police at a distance during the city's annual Hempfest celebration, standing on the outskirts to watch for possible signs of disruption but not making a move to arrest or bother the hordes of people lighting up, and he has cooperated in the city's needle-exchange program for heroin addicts. Washington has a medical marijuana law and Kerlikowske doesn't seem to have worked to undermine it. He has said, and observers have said that under him the emphasis of the "czar's" office will focus more on prevention and demand reduction than incarceration and even interdiction. And he's made some of the right enemies.

On the other hand, he has hardly been a crusader for drug law reform, as his predecessor as Seattle chief, Norm Stamper, has become. (It does seem to be the case that police and people in law enforcement tend to see the unwisdom of drug prohibitiuon after they have retiured -- their careers done and their pensions secure. All the more reason I have so much respect for my friend Judge James P. Gray, who began questioning prohibition in the early 1990s, when he was still a sitting judge; he only retired last year. I know his decision hurt his career.) And the word is that Joe Biden, an unreflective drug warrior who sponsored the bill to create the "drug czar" position, will play an active role in drug policies. Furthermore, they're talking about focusing on problems emerging from the bloody drug-police-cartel war in Mexico without a hint that they understand that U.S. encouragement has increased the violence and the least dangerous course would be to legalize drugs and reduce the monstrous profits.

But then there's Loretta Sanchez, not someone I ever expected to be a leader on an important issue, taking what is potentially a leadership position. Maybe she's found her issue? I hope so.

Then again, I happened to be at a Drug Policy Alliance function shortly after Bill Clinton was elected, and most everybody there was anticipating a new and more sensible day dawning. As we know, however, he set new records for federal marijuana arrests and prosecutions.

Keep your powder dry, pitchforks at the ready.

AIG bonuses: a side issue and a distraction

I couldn't believe (almost) that President Obama got so worked up over the AIG bonuses and promised to try to reverse them. Pardon me if it looks like pure populist pandering to me, and far beneath him -- as if any pandering is below any politician.

Of course I was opposed to "rescuing" AIG with taxpayer money in the first place, and it seems pretty apparent that it hasn't worked. And on the general "he who pays the piper calls the tune" principle, the government, having funneled billions, might seem to have a legitimate interest in telling AIG how to run its business. Specifically, however, as I understand it not all of AIG is unprofitable; some branches of the company are still quite profitable. And some of their executives had contractual arrangements prior to the bailout to the effect that if they performed to certain standards they would get bonuses. Even Tim Geithner and Larry Summers acknowledged that there were valid contractual arrangements that the government didn't have the power to void -- especially since that kind of micromanagement wasn't written into the TARP bill that was used to bail out AIG (differently from the way TARP was sold, if you want to talk about at least implied contractual arrangements). So the government doesn't seem to have any legal leverage here.

All that said, it would have been far preferable if at least a few AIG executives had said that considering the bailout and the predictable public perception, that they weren't going to take the bonuses. But we seem to live in a culture in which adhering to the letter of the law is considered the same as being moral, which is hardly the case -- indeed, a case can be made that the opposite is true. So Obama had his populist moment delivered to him on a silver platter.

Veering off-course in Afghanistan

I think I said previously that I would probably be returning to the subject of Afghanistan and the likelihood of escalating U.S. involvement in the war there, and sure enough, it seems appropriate to do so again. Although the Obamaites say they're sending that additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan just to try to improved stability a tad while they rethink the issue, as I explained in my most recent column for Antiwar.com, it doesn't look as if they are rethinking it deeply enough to suit me (as if that matters to them).

As I and a few others have suggested, the important thing to remember is that al-Qaida and the Taliban are not one and the same, that the Taliban is an indigenous Afghan outfit while al-Qaida has international ambitions. Our core interest in Afghanistan, therefore, whoever nominally rules there, is that al-Qaida not be able to use the country as a base from which to plan attacks on the U.S. (and Western Europe). They're not able to do so now, so the best course would be to remove our military forces, which have about as much chance of prevailing as the Russians in the 1980s and the British in the 19th century, and inform whoever reigns in Kabul that if we detect al-Qaida activity we'll take it out by whatever means promises to work, and might, if we feel like it, give the nominal government maybe five minutes' notice. But it looks as if the Obama administration is preparing for a long-term commitment

Avoiding jury duty -- again

I just got back home from another day of being called but not having to serve on jury duty. It took longer than it sometimes has, in that I was among a pool asked to report to a second location where they apparently hold civil trials, after lunch. Although they didn't tell us why we were dismissed for another year, it was probably because the attorneys in the case decided to settle -- or not to go to trial the next day.

It was nowhere near so dramatic as the last time I was called. I got very close to going on a trial in which, from what I could tell, I would probably have voted to convict. But when they asked the key question -- will you follow and abide by the law as explained by the judge scrupulously and without exception? -- I said I probably would but I couldn't guarantee it. That's because I believe as a juror and a free American I have the right to interpret the law myself, and if I think applying it in a specified way will lead to an injustice, I have the right to vote according to my conscience rather than according to the law and the judge's instructions.

The prosecuting attorney and I then had about a five-minute colloquy, in which I explained that as a newspaperman I was especially attached to this right of jurors because of my belief that the jurors who voted not to convict John Peter Zenger (I won an award named after him a few years ago) of libeling the government in colonial America led to our freedom of the press. However juries are instructed now, this is a proud tradition that also resulted in many slaves not being returned to their masters when slavery was still the law in part of the country. This all took place in front of a large courtroom filled with prospective jurors. He asked if I had ever heard of "jury nullification," and I said had, of course, though I preferred the term "jury rights." He then asked the judge to dismiss me for cause but the judge, who seemed quite amused by the whole proceeding, declined to do so, and he had to use one of his peremptories to dismiss me as I was walking toward the jury box. I don't know if saying similar things would have gotten me dismissed in a civil case.

I don't recommend doing this yourself unless you really believe in it and know a little more about it. A good source of information is the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) and Cato's book titled "Jury Nullification."

Further confusing First Amendment jurisprudence

It was a couple of weeks ago, but it seems to me that in the case of City of Pleasant Grove, v. Summum, the Supreme Court acted very politically -- coming out with a decision that everybody wanted and that most people might say comports with common sense, or at least with what most cities would probably prefer, at the expense of anything resembling a coherent principle, further muddling First Amendment jurisprudence. The small city in Utah has all kinds of memorials in its city park -- historic and such -- including a Ten Commandments monument donated atround 1959 by a private group. A "new age" religion called Summum requested permission to erect a monument with its Seven Principles and the city turned them down.

The Supreme Court rejected Summum's argument that it was a matter of free speech to which it had a right in the "public forum" that was the city park. The court said it was the government's park and the government had the right to decide what could be put there permanently. But that seems to make the Ten Commandments monument "government speech." Could it then be removed on establishment grounds. I think the issue is far from settled, and the Supreme Court, which is supposed to provide guidance on confusing matters, has muddied the waters again.

Earmarks: hypocrisy all around

You've got to love that Barack Obama gave a speech denouncing earmarks the very same day he sighed (away from the cameras) a spending bill containing over 8,500 earmarks. Here's the Register's editorial on the occasion, which I think actually bent over backwards to be fair to the earmarkers. But of course it's way out of hand. And of course even now, although the Republicans claim to have gotten fiscal religion after eight years of backsliding under Bush, they received 40% of the earmarks, and most of the most vigorous seekers of earmarks were Republicans.

To be sure, earmarks are a tiny part of the massive federal budget -- 1-3% of discretionary spending -- but are still indicative of a spending system out of control.

Freedom of choice to be undermined?

Here's a piece I did for the Register on the Employee Free Choice Act, or "card check," which seems to be unionized labor's major legislative priority for this year. Under the bill, if a majorioty of emplyees sign a card saying they're interested in having a union, then it's in -- not option for a secret-ballot election. A huge irony. Both unions and management say they're interested in preventing intimidation. But a secret ballot is certainly a better preventive against intimidation than a situation where union organizers can come to your home with a card and say "how 'bout it?".

Well, maybe if the unions get this one they'll be less intense about seeking protectionism during a global downturn, which just might tip it into a global depression.

At a tipping point on marijuana?

I've seen wild anticipation in the drug reform community before, but maybe, just maybe, it's getting close to the time when the tide will turn. Loretta Sanchez, Congresswoman from Santa Ana, last week came right out and said it's time to experiment and California is probably the place to test the legalization of marijuana in some form or another. Of course as a federal legislator she has no control over California law. But she is chair of a subcommittee on border security of the Homeland Security Committee. Perhaps she has looked at all the violence in Mexico, spilling over into the United States, and determined, as Steve Greenhut, I and at least a few others have, that the best way to neutralize and defuse the violent cartels there is to legalize and reduce the profit margins exponentially.

Some months ago Kathy Smith and a few others of us (I think Judge Jim Gray was along) visited Loretta's district office and urged her administrative assistant to urge her to get out front on marijuana reform. We were mainly talking about halting federal raids on California medical marijuana dispensaries, but the conversation was pretty wide-ranging. I have no idea whether this visit played a role in her decision to go out front on this issue, but one can hope. At least we made the effort.

Family business

It's been a family business weekend, though hardly one full of unpleasant chores. We went to San Diego yesterday to joine Jen's brother Joe and his wife Alane, who had taken their RV to Campland on Mission Bay. Spent a pleasant day there (though it was mostly overcast and not especially warm) and ate corned beef and cabbage with green beer in anticipation of St. Patrick's Day. Campland really is a pleasant -place to vacation -- lots of activities and nice people.

Then today we had chores and shopping to do and didn't get back until fairly late. Perhaps it was just as well. I might have been inclined to be in a funk about UCLA losing on Friday. Can't do anything about it except to congratulate the Trojans and hope for a better-than-seeded run in the NCAA Tournament.

Down by 5 at the half -- maybe not bad

I have to give USC a lot of credit. They came out with more intensity and dominated the first part of the half pretty decisively, going up by as much as 11. And when we pulled to within 3 they went on another run. Considering how hard (and skillfully) they were playing, I'm modestly encouraged to be down by "only" 5 at the half. But it will take the kind of lock-down defense the Bruins showed at times last night to win this thing.

Of course USC has nothing to lose and (maybe) everything to gain by winning tonight. It just might give them a chance to get to the NCAA Tournament, whereas the Bruins are already in, though hardly guaranteed a good seed.

Arizona State, which has beaten UCLA twice this year, was impressive in beating Washington, the champion after league play, in the first game. This is shaping up to be a terrific tournament.

Of course there's no Israeli lobby

This post, which I put up earlier today at the Register's Orange Punch blog, says pretty much what I wanted to say about the decision of Charles "Chas" Freeman (got to like that name!) withdrawing from consideration for a top Intelligence position, so I'm cross-posting it here:

The withdrawal of former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and China Charles W. “Chas” Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, which prepares those sometimes controversial, often-politicized National Intelligence Estimates, has raised anew questions about the possible power in Washington of what we might call the Israeli Lobby. I don’t know Freeman, but by most accounts he is very bright and rather opinionated. He’s one of the unusual denizens of Washington willing to criticize Israeli policy in public, as in a 2005 speech to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, referring to Israel’s “high-handed and self-defeating policies” its “occupation and settlement of Arab lands” which he called “inherently violent.”

More commentary from various sides later, but two things are especially interesting here. The first is that almost the entire controversy over Freeman took place in the blogosphere rather than in the newspapers or on TV. Neither the NYT nor the WaPo ran a story about the controversy, which was bubbling rather actively, until it was over. The second is that Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (holder of the position created when the Bushies streamlined the “intelligence community” by adding another layer of bureaucracy) said he wanted Freeman precisely because he was outspoken and opinionated; he said he wanted a mix of independent thinkers working on intelligence. I would question whether you would want someone with such a long paper trail in charge of preparing intelligence estimates, as compared to contributing information and ideas, to be compiled by people with less skin in the game. But Blair isn’t stupid, and right up until Freeman withdrew his name he defended the choice.

It does seem that Freeman had other baggage. He served on the board of the China National Offshore Oil Corp., a past position his critics said could lead to conflicts of interest in the proposed new job. Critics also unearthed old e-mails that might seem to justify China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, though Freeman said they were taken out of context, that he was describing the prevailing view in China, not expressing his own opinion.

As to where various players stood: The Zionist Organization of America jumped into the fray early and publicly. AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee was more circumspect. Its former top official Steve Rosen (who resigned after being indicted for violating the Espionage Act for allegedly passing secrets to Israel, no trial yet), campaigned against Freeman on his own blog beginning three weeks ago. But AIPAC itself officially took no position, though spokesman Josh Block said he had given information to bloggers and reporters on background, which concealed his involvement.

Cranky semi-conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan was outraged at the campaign against Freeman, though he later recognized that Freeman would probably have been under attack after taking the job, which would have undermined his effectiveness. He also hypothesized that it was a clever ploy by the Obama people who wanted cover because they plan to change the pro-Israeli tilt of U.S. foreign policy, but if a critic like Freeman was proposed and then gone it couldn’t be hung on him. Seems unlikely.

Jonathan Chait at the New Republic fulminated against Freeman. At the WaPo venerable columnist David Broder regretted that he felt pushed to resign, but the paper’s editorial page said good riddance. Joe Klein at Time was dismayed.

As a not-uncritical fan of Israel, I’m not quite sure what to think of all this. I don’t know if Freeman is really the paragon his friends and supporters make him out to be (though it’s interesting that those who know him well seem most impressed). I also don’t think the U.S. has tied its foreign policy slavishly to Israel over the years (though Dubya did seem to) so it seems aparent that while the Israel Lobby is powerful, it is not all-powerful. So I don’t know whether the incident is tragic or not. But it sure is interesting.

Not pretty, but solid, 64-53

I'm not counting USC tomorrow, given that they beat Cal and the team is fully healthy for the first time this season. But the way the Bruins ground this one out gives me a certain amount of confidence. Holding WSU to 30% shooting (even though some of it was just off-target shooting on their part) was impressive. If they keep playing defense that well -- it's been shaky more often than one would like or expect from a Ben Howland team -- they'll go deep into March. I think.

Up by 11 at the half -- but I'm not counting a W yet

It's Pac-10 tournament time. For some stretches during the first half the Bruins looked virtually unbeatable -- up by 20 at one point -- but I suppose I have to give Washington State credit for staying after it even after some stretches when their shots weren't falling. This a pesky team that beat UCLA three weeks ago. The best sign is that for stretches the defense was downright lock-down, but WSU did get some easy shots toward the end, and UCLA committed some silly fouls. Keep up the defensive intensity for another half (without fouling much) and it should be a win, but I'll stay on thre edge of my seat.

US Attorney in L.A. ending medical marijuana prosecutions? Or not?

Alex Coolman over at the Drug Law Blog has an interesting item based on an L.A. Times story. Apparently the U.S. Attorney in L.A. sent a memo to federal prosecutors on Feb. 27 telling them to cease prosecutions of medicalk marijuana dispensaries, then later sent an order rescinding the ban. What's up.

It's just possible that the original e-mail represented compliance with the apparent new Obama administration policy against trying to subvert state medical marijuana laws. Or it could have been a recognition of the obvious: that they just don't have the personnel to go after all the dispensaries in L.A. But what about rescinding the order? A reversion to primal drug warriorism? Embarrassment that the first order became public?

Just don't know, but I'll try to look into it.

Unleashing the lawyers

I'm actually mildly conflicted by the Supreme Court's decision in Wyeth v. Levine, where the court held Wyeth liable even though the fact that a patient got gangrene and lost her arm was because a medical assistant failed to follow several clear warnings on the drug's packaging. On the one hand, as this Register editorial points out) it's not unhealthy to note that the FDA (which makes plenty of mistakes) is not necessarily the final adjudicator, that juries can have a say. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I agree with this jury's verdict; the warnings were pretty clear and it's not necessarily Wyet's fault that the medical assistant ignored them or didn't know how to pay attention. This decision will no doubt unleash all kinds of lawyers with clients looking for deep pockets even though their cases may be marginal.

I'm a little surprised that MPP and other drug-law reform groups haven't taken note of the fact I noted: that the FDA-approved drug in question whose side effect for improper application was gangrene(!), while there's another effective anti-nauseant available, cannabis, whose only side effects might be a scratchy thorat and a cheerful disposition.

Stem-cell funding a symbolic gesture to those whose sacrament is abortion

Obama's grand announcement that he was lifting the restrictions on federal funding of research on (possibly) newly available lines of embryonic stem cells was a gesture to those who believe in abortion in a manner that approaches the way evangelicals and what Andrew Sullivan calls "Christianists" believe in their version of religion. As this Register editorial notes, the issue was made moot from a scientific perspective around November 2007, when scientists at UCLA and in Hawaii discovered a way through genetic manipulation to give adult skin (!) cells almost all the pluripotent (able to be transaformed into almost any other kind of cell) qualities of embryonic stem cells. Since than an even simpler method has been discovered.

The idea that Bush's "ban" on federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells deterred progress toward a cure for Parkinsons and Alzheimers by eight years is wrong on several counts. He didn't ban all federal funding, but limited it to existing lines of stem cells. He didn't ban state or private research, which he (still) didn't have the power to do. California famously passed a law allowing state government-funded stem cell research, but the program has mainly been tied up in bureaucratic wrangling and turf battles. That brings us to the most egregious fallacy: that government funding is the key to progress in scientific endeavors. More often it is a deterrent to progress.

Years ago (late 1970s) when I was an aide to Bob Bauman in the House, some of us came up with a proposal to have a congressional veto on National Science Foundation, and it actually passed the House so I had to do a lot of research in preparation for Senate testimony. The short version is that the government is most likely to fund "safe" projects that promise measurable, minor, integral results, and it ties these in miles of red tape. The real innovators are almost always despised and on their own until they make a breakthrough that is widely recognized, whereupon they tend to become respectable and tamed (neutered?). Grant masters tend to be the least innovative scientists. The whole process is poison for real scientific innovation.

On the Separation of Powers

"The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted . . . not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy." -- Louis D. Brandeis

Brandeis, by my lights, was not consistent in his concern for liberty, but this is a wondrously enlightened remark. I suppose it seemed appropriate today because I attended a luncheon where the speaker was John Yoo, author of the notorious "torture" memos and noted advocate of "plenary" or "unitary" power in the executive, especially in time of war or national security crisis (defined much more broadly than I would). The speech was not on the record so I'm not at liberty to say much beyond that it was about Lincoln's use of extraordinary powers during the civil war -- one reason why, in contrast to establishment historians, Lincoln vies in my mind with Wilson and FDR for worst president in our history rather than best, where a recent C-SPAN-sponsored poll of historians put him. Yoo didn't find his conduct shocking or especially reprehensible, not surprisingly.

I hate it when people whose political views I find dubious or even reprehensible turn out to be pleasant and likeable, and that is the case with John Yoo. He is soft-spoken, pleasant and unfailingly civil, and I liked him personally. Maybe that's an advantage, however. He agreed to spend a couple of hours with me in the near future in an on-the-record interview. He says he's almost libertarian on domestic issues but thinks the constitution gives the president extraordinary latitude when war or near-war is the issue. I'll see if I can't prod him to be a bit more libertarian on foreign policy.

One more argument for medical marijuana

I don't think anybody else has noticed a possible side effect of the Supreme Court decision last week in Wyeth v. Levine. The issue involved an anti-nauseant drug that had genuinely nasty side effects when injected intravenously, and carried half a dozen warnings approved by the FDA to that effect. Unfortunately, a medical assistant was careless and injected Diana Levine in the arm with the drug. She developed gangrene and lost the arm. She not only sued the assistant but the drug manufacturer, which thought that including all the warnings in capital letters, duly approved by the FDA, protected it from liability. The Supreme Court -- differently than in a case last year involving medical devices, ruled 6-3 that it didn't.

Regardless of what one thinks of the outcome of this case, notice that the drug with the potnetially horrendous side effects was an anti-nauseant. It happenes that cancer patients and oncologists have discovered that cannabis has anti-nauseant qualities when used by patients undergoing chemotherapy, which often leads to patients throwing up uncontrollably (and miserably) for hours and even for days. Yet it has virtually no unpleasant side effects, and certainly none remotely approaching causing gangrene if improperly ingested. It should be removed from Schedule I immediately so doctors can at least prescribe it as an alternative to genuinely dangerous anti-nauseants.

Trade wars: are they here?

The World Bank announced that global trade levels are likely to decline this year for the first year in almost forever. The recession is really shaping up as a serious global problem. In that light, this piece for the Register's Sunday Commentary section discussing the possibility of emerging protectionism that could develop into trade wars, seems rather timely. The bottom line is that I don't expect protectionist overkill on the order of what followed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 and most certainly contributed to deepening and prolonging the Great Depression. But there are opportunities for plenty of protectionist beggar-thy-neighbor (and thyself) mischief. Even within the confines of the WTO, which I regard as managed trade with a bias toward free trade rather than really free trade, opportunities for essentially protectionist activities.

I have mentioned previously how much I enjoyed talking with Jagdish Bhagwati and how much I got out of his great wisdom and knowledge regarding these issues. I hope you'll agree that I used the information he gave me fairly deftly. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Cram the cramdowns

The radicalism of what is emerging as Obama's program is shown in part by the proposal to give bankruptcy judges the ability to reduce the principal on mortgages. I suppose you could argue that the sanctity-of-c0ntracts clause in the constitution was compromised long ago, when bankruptcy itself was allowed, in the early 1800s. One forgets that it was controversial at the time. But eroding it further by allowing judges to change the terms of contracts at will, as this Register editorial explains, would have approximately the opposite of the ostensibly desired effect. Knowing that a bankruptcy judge could alter a mortgage, banks and other lending institutions wold simply charge higher interest rates and demand larger down payments. This would dispropportionately affect lower-middle-income people and first-time buyers.

I suppose one could argue that since one of the reasons for the financial meltdown was government-mandated more "affordable" mortgages and the undermining of lending standards, that making mortgages more difficult to get might not be such a bad idea. But it's not what Obama claims to want and not what mnost of those in favor of giving BK judges this power claim to want. But then it's a fairly standard pattern. Most government interventions, perhaps especially those aimed at helping the poor, end up hurting the poor most of all. Governments generally produce the opposite of what they promise.

Tom Woods Diagnoses the financial meltdown

I promised a link to my review of Thomas E. Woods' book, "Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed," and here it is. While he mentions the Community Reinvestment Act and various government mandates to give mortgages to people of marginal (at best) creditworthiness, he pins most of the responsibility on the Federal Reserve's enormous expansion of the money supply after 9/11, and argues that we could get along quite nicely -- in fact much better -- without the Fed. I'm inclined to agree. Best line, I think from the introduction by Ron Paul: To blame the financial meltdown on greed is like blaming a plane crash on gravity.

Sadly resigned about Iraq

Here's a link to my most recent piece for Antiwar.com, written yesterday almost in a burst. I am deeply disappointed but unfortunately not all that surprised that Obama is stretching out the timetable for withdrawal from Iraq -- and planning to leave 35,00-50,000 U.S. troops in the country after that. Interestingly, the best chance for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops seems to be because of the Iraqi government, not the U.S. The Iraqi government as constituted may be a poor thing that has made little political progress toward reconciling the still-deep divisions within the country, but it is still more independent than the U.S. undoubtedly had in mind. It wants all U.S. troops out by the end of 2011, and there's just a chance that might happen. If it had been up to the U.S., troops might have been there for the duration, as in Korea and Germany. We need to get over the notion that we need troops stationed all over the world, ostensibly to safeguard U.S. interests but more often to serve as a tripwire to assure that the U.S. is automatically part of whatever local conflicts might break out. The country is in a financial/economic crisis in part because of these unnecessary commitments, and we wants to ensure more of them. Guess I have to finish my book and see if it has any impact on thinking and action.

Trying for accountability

Peggy Noonan has an interesting piece in the WSJ, contrasting the way the Marines handled the plane crash near Miramar in December -- complete investigation, identifying mistakes, naming names, suspending or firing people responsible, doing it in public -- and contrasting it with the financiual crisis, where pretty much nobody took anything resembling personal responsibility.

If you want to know who really was responsible, however, I would recommend reading Thomas E. Woods' new book, "Meltdown." I'll link to the review I did for the Register when they put it up.

Some anxious moments, but up by 7 at the half

The defense was sloppy until the last few minutes, but I didn't think Shipp would end up scoreless in the first half. Back to it.

Last home game for unique senior class

Of course I will watch, and I expect that the Bruins will not lose concentration and allow a Pac 10 bottom-dweller to beat the odds and spoil their last game of the regular season with an upset. The game against Oregon State Thursday was a good portent, suggesting that pretty much the whole team, including little-used subs, has bought into the idea that it is time, and it is possible, to put behind the inconsistencies that have shown up this season and demonstrate the potential that has been there all along to be one of the most powerful teams in the country -- more so than a #20 ranking suggests -- and go deeper in the NCAA tournament than most outside observers expect at this point.

One of the reasons I expect good things has to do with the three seniors. As pointed out here, it is unusual in this day and age to have three first-line players stay in school long enough to graduate; the lure of the NBA is simply too much -- and Love, Westbrook and M'bah a Moute are showing they were ready for that challenge. Collison probably was too, but he stayed, as did Shipp and Alfred Aboya. All three have been playing very well in the last couple of weeks, and I think they want their last hurrah to be special. But we'll see. They still have to play the actual games, and today and in the Pac-10 tournament other teams will be gunning for them.

Why so many czars?

It is a sign of just how unthinkingly authoritarian this country has become that we pay virtually no attention to the phenomenon of presidents naming almost completely unaccountable officials to breathtakingly powerful positions and calling them "czars." You would think that in a remotely democratic country, or one with a semblance of residual respect for freedom, that the very utterance of the word "czar" would cause the gorge to rise in millions of patriotic throats to the point that no president would even think of calling an appointee by such a reprehensible name. Yet every president since Nixon has appointed some kind of "czar," and however skeptical many of us might be deep down, hardly anyone rises to complain.

As this Register editorial notes, Obama has gone previous presidents several better (or worse), naming health, energy, urban affairs and economic czare, "super-aides who don't require congressional confirmation and answer to nobody but the ultimate czar, the president himself, the capo di tutti capi. How interesting that it should be that shameless old pork barreler, Bobby Byrd of West Virgina, who is the only one to raise a feeble voice of protest, showing some residual respect for the constitution. Thus does the cult of the Imperial Presidency grow, and Americans, battered by a government-induced recession that will probably be longer than any of us hope, sit back in submissive hope that maybe power can save us. But as Ring trilogy fans should know, the ring of power cannot be used for good.

Celebrating private transport

Virtually every aspect of the near-miraculous story of Flight 1549, the airplane that had its engines wrecked by birds that landed on the river without killing any of the passengers has been celebrated except one, that I was unaware of until I read this little piece by Randal O'Toole in the Reflections section in the current issue of Liberty magazine, a consistently interesting magazine for which I used to write regularly, and to which I sent some Reflections of my own for the next issue:

Ferry tale — When U.S. Airways flight 1549 landed in the Hudson in early January, most of the passengers and crew were rescued by 14 boats from the NY Waterway ferry fleet. Not many people know that this system of ferries between New Jersey and Manhattan is almost completely unsubsidized.

Supporters of America’s socialized transit systems love to say that all public transit is subsidized, in order to justify their insatiable hunger for more tax dollars. NY Waterway proves them wrong. Though New York and New Jersey have numerous government transit agencies, none of them thought of starting ferry services across the Hudson.

That idea was developed by Arthur Imperatore, a trucking company owner who had acquired some land on the New Jersey waterfront. To promote developments on that land, he decided in 1986 to start running ferries between the developments and midtown Manhattan. The developments never went very far, but the ferry service took off, and today his ferries earn nearly $12 million in profits each year.

The only subsidies he ever received were some loans and grants after 9/11 to start running ferries to downtown Manhattan in order to replace the Port Authority subway whose World Trade Center station was destroyed in the attack. When rail service was restored in 2004, he sold those ferry routes to another entrepreneur who also operates without subsidies.

NY Waterway shows that, if government-subsidized transit disappeared, it would be quickly replaced by private transit that would probably be more efficient and more innovative. Anyone who assumes that transit requires subsidies both lacks faith in entrepreneurs and has too much faith in the altruism of government bureaucrats. — Randal O’Toole

On the radio again

I did another radio interview yesterday with Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio, this time on the brutal and tragic violence in Mexico that has followed the government's decision a couple of years ago to make the drug war literal rather than a metaphor. More than 5,000 killed last year according to a State Dept. official I talked with today, and probably more beheadings than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. When will the governments of the world end this futile exercise in violent puritanism? I'll post a link when Scott gets it up on the site.

Officium with Jan Garbarek a great listen

As I work here I'm listening to a fascinating CD that I got some years ago -- shortly after its 1994 release -- but hadn't listened to in a while. "Officium" features a male chorus, the Hilliard Ensemble, doing chants in Latin, done perfectly straight and very nicely , with Norwegian (!) saxophonist Jan Garbarek (take a listen -- or a look here or here))doing obligattos and variations around the basic melody, sometimes sounding mildly jazzy, sometimes liturgical, sometimes just blending in and filling out chords. It's soothing and exciting at the same time. You would love it!

Congress tells DC voucher students to take a hike

The issue did get some attention, including this editorial and this one -- oh, and this one too -- from the Washington Post, but Congress appears to be ploughing ahead, doing the bidding of the teachers unions. D.C., probably the most expensive government school system in the country at $14,000 per student per year, and one of the poorest in terms of academic achievement and violence, has had an Opportunity Scholarship program since 2004, with about 1,800 students in private schools this year thanks to a $7,500 voucher program. Of course the teachers unions hate voucher programs with an intensity verging on the monomaniacal.

So as this Register editorial explains, the $410 billion omnibus spending bill didn't authorize reauthorization of the program, through a tricky maneuver that keeps some fingerprints off the dastardly deed. So a number of poor and minority kids who were on the road to getting past certain handicaps will be screwed by the politicians. It's "for the children," after all.

Bruins pummel Craig Robinson -- but not as badly as the stock market is pummeling his brother-in-law

Craig Robinson, in his first year coaching Oregon State, is, of course, Michelle Obama's brother. He was the reason Michelle went to Princeton -- he preceded her on a basketball scholarship and coached at Brown last year. The story, which might even be true, is that when Barack and Michelle started dating, Craig insisted on playing a little basketball with Barack, and after that he gave him the big brother seal of approval. He has certainly made a mark at OSU, tonight's game (79-54 Bruins) notwithstanding. Last year OSU was 0-18 in the Pac 10, and this year they've won 7 league games. Might even be able to beat USC, which has been in a bit of a funk lately (don't know yet how they did -- now I do -- tonight) on Saturday. So he must be a pretty good coach.

This was a nice win in every way. Alfred Aboya's parents were here from Cameroon (the sports pages say Alfred is thinking about being president of the country one day, but I hope he gets a few years in the NBA first) and the cameras honed in on them several times -- very distinguished-looking couple. Josh Shipp was just unconscious, getting 22 points in the first half and 27 in the game. The reserves got quite a few minutes, which should serve the team well in the NCAA tournament. And they came out strong and got a decisive win, better than grinding out a close one at this time of the year with tournaments coming up.

Talking with Jagdish Bhagwati

I suppose I get my kicks in strange and mysterious ways.Talking to somebody I haven't had a chance to talk with before, learning new things from him (or her) and feeling at least a modicum or rapport with somebody I respect highly probably doesn't strike too many people as all that exciting. But I get a jolt from it.

I've been working on a piece for next Sunday's Register on the prospects for international trade during an Obama administration and during a time of international economic downturn that I'm afraid will last longer than most anyone would prefer, since the governments who claim to be trying to fix it are throwing gasoline on the fire instead. So I decided to call Jagdish Bhagwati, economist at Columbia for many years and perhaps the foremost expert on international trade on the planet. I had read and admired his book, "In Defense of Globalization," which corrects a lot of yahoos left and right. We had a nice long talk, and it sounded as if he enjoyed it too. He's very concerned about the possibility of what he calls a WTO-consistent trade war and thinks Obama to date has been extremely disappointing, that the economists around him may be generally pro-trade but don't really know much about the subject. It's an opinion he's expressed here, and here as well as to me.

I'll link to my piece when it's published.

Obama's wussy Iraq stand

Since I opposed the Iraq war from before the U.S. act of naked aggression that started it and am far from convinced that the U.S. military is even yet a stabilizing influence in Iraq, I suppose I should be angry at the fact that President Obama has set such a long tentative timetable for removing U.S. troops from Iraq. It's to be 19 months before all "combat" troops are out and after that 35,000-50,000 will be left, presumably as a sort of colonial permanent occupation force to keep the wogs under control? Although the issue faded in importance as the endless campaign dragged on, it is highly likely that Barack Obama had not separated himself from the pack as one who also opposed the war from the outset and was determined to end it as quickly as feasible, he would not be president now. He's going soft on arguably his most important implicit promise to voters.

I think that the longer U.S. troops stay in Iraq even only a peripheral combat or training role, the longer Iraqis will have a crutch to keep them from taking responsibility for their own future. It's incredibly patronizing and arrogant for U.S. officials and military leaders to have the attitude that the guys that came in and wrecked the joint -- the U.S. -- and enhanced the regional power and potential dangerousness of the most militantly anti-American regime in the neighborhood, Iran, are the only thing that prevents a descent into chaos. Our imperial leaders remain incredibly ignorant about the countries they want to run, and don't feel any obligation to learn anything, expecting occupied countries to feel grateful to us for treating ancient cultures like adolescents who need out "adult" supervisions.

Having gotten all that out of my system, however, it's hard to work up real anger. I'm disappointed -- the logistics of withdrawal will take a few months, but the process really should begin today -- but not surprised. This is pretty much what Obama was promising -- a few months longer, perhaps -- from about the middle of last year. Americans and Iraqis will be killed for nothing but the foolish pride of our political leaders for another year and a half, but that's been happening for the last 6 years already, and if we're lucky the body count won't be too high.

Quote of the Day

"In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war ... and in the degeneracy of manners and morals engendered by both. ... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." -- James Madison

That's what the Father of the Constitution thought. That John Yoo and other Bush lawyers could offer the opinion that a state of war means the president can do virtually anything he wants, including violating the Fourth and First Amendments, without informing or telling Congress - when there hasn't even been a declaration of war by Congress, as the constitution requires -- is beyond shocking.

Relief for medical marijuana patients

I've discussed this before, but this Register editorial makes the case a little more comprehensively. Attorney General Eric Holder (who may or may not be personally enthusiastic) has announced that the DEA will stop doing raids on medical marijuana patients in states that have medical marijuana laws. This is only sensible in that the government has limited resources and going after sick people and those who provide them their medicine is a huge misprioritization (is that a word?) of resources.

The next step we should hope for (indeed, demand) is "rescheduling" of marijuana so doctors nationwide can prescribe it legally. Marijuana does not meet any of the criteria required to put a drug or substance on Schedule I, the most restrictive schedule under the (unconstitutional) Controlled Substances Act, so keeping it there is actually a violation of that law. (In fact a strong scientific case can be made that it shouldn't be part of the CSA at all, but I'll take whatever tiny piece of reform we can get.) Keeping an efficacious medicine from sick people who could benefit from using it is incredibly cruel. The whole War on (some) Drugs is cruel, of course, but punishing sick people is downright vicious.

AIG: not too big to fail

I had a nice chat with Bill Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, while writing this editorial for the Register on the decision to offer another $30 billion in bailout money from the taxpayers to AIG, the insurance behemoth. As he put it, when the gurus say a company is "too big to fail," the proper response is that it's too big to subsidize, because it has all the leverage over taxpayers. The ironic thing is that there are pieces of AIG that are nicely profitable, but it got caught up in exotic secondary mortgage market instruments like Fannie and Freddie (which should be cut up into little pieces and sold to the private sector instead of being given another $200 billion to squander).

Quote of the Day

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office." -- H.L. Mencken

Much worse than the politicians can admit

Various people have criticized President Obama for being too downbeat about the economic crisis, and in fact, as his budget demonstrates, he has used the sense of crisis to put forward a quite radical agenda that, like his stimulus bill that mainly stimulated bigger government, is likely to receive much less extensive informed debate than it deserves to the overweening sense of crisis. I view that as reasonably unconscionable, of course, and the argument that the American people bought every aspect of everything he hinted at vaguely in the campaign is absurd; they bought him largely because he made them feel less nervous than McCain did.

In fact, however, as I argue in this piece for the Register's Commentary section yesterday, he and most politicians have been all too upbeat about the crisis, in part by failing to acknowledge the entitlement crisis that is still breathing down our necks and madly expanding the government house of cards in the face of it. Barack's program is virtually guaranteed to make things worse rather than better -- at which time the media courtiers who dance attendance on the emperor will blame the fialure on the unfettered free market and demand even bigger government.

Mexicans dying in our drug war

College students have officially been warned now that it would be dangerous to celebrate (if that's the right word) Spring Break south of the border in Mexico, because the level of violence is so alarming. The reason is that thr Mexican government, largely at the behest of the U.S. government (and with partial funding from U.S. taxpayers), has decided to get really serious about the Holy War on Drugs and really go after those producers, traffickers and dealers. While this has disrupted a few of the cartels, leading to struggles for power -- which are settled by gun battle rather than quiet negotiations among honchos and lawyers, as would be the case with legal substances -- it has also led many traffickers to shoot back and target police, mayors and other officials. Of course innocents and children are getting caught in the crossfire.

The best way to quell the violence, of course, would be to end the drug war by respecting the right of adults to decide what substances to put in their own bodies. As far as I know, only my colleague Steven Greenhut at the Register, Ted Carpenter at Cato, and I, in my most recent column for Antiwar.com, have put forward this eminently sensible and just approach. I look forward to somebody challenging us on the merits, but I don't expect it; the merits are simply too obvious. But I also don't expect common sense to prevail. On this issue, differently from medical marijuana raids in states with medical marijuana laws (about which Obama made a verifiable campaign promise several times) I expect Eric Holder's inner drug warrior to prevail.

Obama's big-government agenda

President Obama's budget tells us more than his speeches about how intends (or hopes) to govern, and it ain't "from the center" as so many pundits and prognosticators have figured (some with relief, some with impatience) based on his early appointments and his soothing rheotric and cool, easy-going manner. As this Register editorial notes, he really plans the kind of statist transformation he alluded to from time to time during the campaign (if somewhat vaguely). You can't say he was dishonest, exactly, though he wasn't all that specific. Money quote:

"We can add millions of people to government-paid health care while finding savings that reduce overall health expenditures? Not exactly. This budget projects additional spending in health care of some $634 billion over 10 years as a "down payment" on health care "reform."
The extra spending can be paid for by winding down the Iraq war and raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000, with everyone else not paying a dime more in taxes? Well the Iraq and Afghan wars cost about $190 billion in 2008, and this budget calls for spending $140 billion this year and $130 billion next year."

Fantasyland, folks.

Holder: medical marijuana raids to end

I did this post for the Register's Orange Punch blog and am cross-posting it here because it says most of what I wanted to say. I'm still skeptical to some extent, given Holder's past as an unthinking drug warrior. The logical next step, of course, is to take marijuana off Schedule I of the unconstitutional Controlled Substances Act so doctors can prescribe it nationwide. If the politicians really followed public sentiment, this would have been done at least a decade ago. But the Drug Abuse Industrial Complex may still be too powerful.

"He didn’t sound very enthusiastic about it which might not be amazing considering his record as something of a mindless drug warrior when he was US Attorney for DC in the ’90s, but US Atty. Gen. Eric Holder affirmed Wednesday, in response to a question, that his department will keep Obama’s campaign promise and stop medical marijuana raids in California and other states with medical marijuana laws. That was the second time in a week an administration spokesman had affirmed that the raids will stop. “The president’s my boss” is less than gung-ho, but I’ll take it.
"The raids conducted just after the inauguration seem to have been the last hurrah of Bush holdovers who figured policy might change and this was the last chance to demonstrate their commitment to persecuting patients in the name of an unconstitutional (my view, but I’m not sure I’d trust a current court to adjudicate it) law. Now we need to pay attention to whom Obama appoints to head the DEA. His “drug czar,” Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowseke, looks a lot less worse than any of the Bushies. Perhaps the best signal would be a willingness to revisit keeping marijuana on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which the science and any common-sense understanding of the law as written would seem to dictate."

Verdi with a Vengeance

I've recently finished reading an excellent handbook for listening the the music of the great composer Giuseppe Verdi (or Joe Green, as we Americanos might like to call him). Verdi with a Vengeance is by William Berger, who did a similar treatment of Wagner that I have not read, but if this book is a hint I would enjoy it. It includes synopses of all the operas -- including several I had never even heard of. Any opera fan knows "La Traviata" and "Il Trovatore" and "Otello" and "Falstaff" and "Rigoletto" and "Aida," perhaps the grandest of the grand operas. I hasd even heard of "Luisa Miller" and "Nabucco," with its great chorus "Va Pensiero," which became a patriotic hymn for Italians under Austrian domination. In opera the hero or principal character is usually a tenor, but Verdi often made his heros baritones, which set the stage for guys like Leonard Warren and Sherrill Milnes and Robert Merrill and BrynTerfel. But "Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio," "Alzira," "Il Corsaro" and "La battaglia si Legnano" has never come across my radar screen and I was happy to know something of them.

One of the first opera excerpt records I bought on LP as a youngster was Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera," but I didn't realize just how thoroughly political it was -- involving a regicide and all -- until I read this book. It had to be set in Boston in the colonial period with a mere colonial governor (rather than a king, heaven forfend!) being done in, not the most likely possible setting for an Italian opera (with all those Italian names!) to get past the censors.

Anyway, Berger, of whom I know almost nothing but this book, is an informed and sprightly guide, hardly above a sardonic comment or two when the plot is especially ridiculous (as most opera plots are) and ready to tell you when a piece is not Verdi's best work, but thoroughly in love with the music, which is the important thing in opera and able to explain (though words can never quite do it justice) why certain passages tug at your heartstrings and bring a tear to the eye. There's also a short synopsis of Verdi's life and a chapter on Italian opera that sets Verdi's work in context. Highly recommended.