What a day!

If you want to know why I prefer living in Southern California, today will serve as a good reason. Clear skies, temperature almost to 80. I had to stay inside to work on my article for Antiwar.com in the morning, and found when I went outside it was warmer outside than inside -- shirtsleeve weather. A few clouds, mountains in the distance across the lake with still a bit of snowcap. A day to make you want to sing, which I did while cleaning the pool filter and watering plants. They say we may get rain on Friday, and we can probably use it. But it's slated to be beautiful 'til then.

Of course that's what the state government counts on. We are overtaxed and overregulated and facing about a $40 billion deficit over the next 18-19 months. Sacramento is polarized, with both sides in deep denial about just how serious the problems are, unable to do anything remotely sensible. Government worker unions have a lock on state government, so the unsustainable spending continues. While housing prices have dropped they are still not affordable for lots of average-income people. But when you have beautiful days like today people stay and hope for the best.

Bruins looking strong!

As a dinterested fan with no stake in either team I like close games, of course. Preferably with doubtle overtime. But as an unabashed and very partisan fan, I love the way the Bruins handled Stanford this afternoon. Take a lead going into halftime, then come out in the first few minutes of the second half and take over, putting the other team on notice that it's not going to make a comeback and win this one. 97-63, not bad!

If this is a harbinger of things to come rather than just a very strong week, the Bruins should go deep into March Madness. Sign that it might be a harbinger is that several of the freshmen besides Holiday got significant playing time and extended the lead while they were in. Toward the end, in garbage time, some of those who had played few minutes kept driving into traffic and taking bad shots when they might have been better to kick it out, but that's inexperience and adrenaline. I can't wait to play ASU and Washington again and see if those losses are avenged. If think they just mnight run the table.

Only stimulating pork

Peggy Noonan has a tendency to over-romanticize politics and its capacity to be ennobling or even sometimes constructive. Still, she has a point in yesterday's column. Obama missed a big chance to assert himself and come up with a "stimulus" that might have actually stimulated some economic activity instead of just being a pastiche of pork (assuming government spending is actually stimulative, which is far from certain. Tax cuts can be, however.). Both Democrats and Republicans couldn't wait to return to their hyper-partisan habits, with the Democrats crafting a bill with everything on their wish-list for the last couple of decades with zero GOP input, and all House Republicans taking a stand and voting against it. I'm inclined to agree that there's a stupid party and an evil party, and when they get together and produce something both stupid and evil they call it bipartisanship. But the swiftness with which both parties were so eager to let Obama know post-partisanship wouldn't last a week was kinda shocking. If he had had more legislative experience or had thought this stimulus thing through more, I think he could have knocked some Dem heads together and forced a slightly less obnoxious bill. Maybe it will happen in the Senate. Here's the Register's take on the situation.

Et tu, EBay?

Unemployment is up again, companies one might have thought were solid are announcing layoffs, the LA Times announced layoffs today, and the Philadelphia Inquirer is reported to be flirting with Pa. Gov. Ed Rendell about a $10 million state bailout. (Presumably the only way to have a free and independent press in this country is to make it a ward of government.) But perhaps the most important signal that this recession is real and not likely to go away very soon is that EBay has announced a hefty year-to-year decline, with profit falling 31% from last year, the first decline since 1995 (which means it weathered the dot.com bubble-burst). We in the newspaper business, who have seen our revenues decline in large part because of migration to the Net, not only for news but advertising (Craigslist and Monster.com have hammered us; Register employment ad revenue was down 40% in 2008) had tended to see Net businesses as somehow all-powerful. (Incidentally, one of the best commentaries I've seen on the slow death of newspapers is this from Slate.com's Jack Shafer.) If EBay is seeing profits decline and laying people off, the recession is serious indeed.

Why Afghanistan?

Obama has said repeatedly that Afghanistan is the real central front in the misnamed "war on terror," and is apparently planning to commit up to 30,000 more U.S. troops (in addition to 36,000 there now) to the fight. SecDef Gates testified this week that we should scale back our objectives and focus on the military battle against the Taliban rather than nation-building (leave that to NATO, he said, though he didn't take enough notice that the Europeans would just as soon get their troops out). This strikes me as profoundly misguided.

As this Register editorial points out, Afghanistan is bigger than Iraq, with more difficult terrain and no tyradition of having a central government. Karzai's government is corrupt and ineffective and the Taliban is mostly indigenous rather than being foreign fighters. And they have that safe haven in Pakistan. We should leave Afghanistan to the Afghans after putting them on notice that we'll strike if we have a bead on Osama bin Laden, perhaps after giving them maybe five minutes notice. Otherwise we could be there and unlikely to dominate in the graveyard of empires. Even Stratfor.com, hardly a bunch of pansy isolationists, is inclined to agree, arguing that the real focus shold be on al-Qaida, by withdrawing troops from AFghanistan and giviung the anti-al-Qaida burdfen to intelligence and special forces.

Bruins are back! 81-66

Of course I attribute the victory tonight to the fact that I donned the UCLA sweatshirt I got for Christmas before even turning on the game. Right!

The victory over Cal tonight was satisfying because it showed they weren't demoralized by the loss to Washington but rather took to heart the need to tighten up the defense (16 Cal turnovers including 12 steals in the first half) and take the ball to the basket rather than settling for long jumpers. We'll see Saturday, playing Stanford, which will be smarting after a 1-point loss to USC where the difference was one that rolled around and came out, whether they can sustain it. They have shown a troubling inconsistency in the last week or so. It looked tonight as if the loss refocused them. I hope so.

Reversal of principles

Here's a WSJ editorial that illustrates how completely many self-styled conservatives have reversed field on the all-important issue of executive-branch power. It deplores the fact that Dawn Johnsen, Obama's choice to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Dept., is not totally dedicated to an expansive vision of executive power. Ms. Johnsen has not only criticized the Bushies' power-grabs but written that it would be good if forces within the executive branch, mainly legal advisers, exercised constraint on the tendency of the executive branch to go for the gusto in the power-grab department. The Journal sniffs that this is like hiring your wife's divorce lawyer. The notion that a president or his advisers might have a slightly more modest view of their powers and that this might be good for America doesn't occur to them.

This is almost a complete reversal of the dominant conservative view of executive power back when the movement was younger. Russell Kirk used the term "the imperial presidency" before Arthur Schlesinger Jr. did. James Burnham, a senior editor of National Review, wrote a book, "Congress and the American Tradition," deploring the flow of power to the executive branch and away from Congress. But beginning in the Reagan administration increasing numbers of conservatives became Hamiltonian advocates of "energy in the executive," and most conservatives became uncritical fans of unlimited executive power during the Bush administration. You can check the process in Gene Healey's recent book, "The Cult of the Presidency."

Maybe with a Democrat in power they'll come to appreciate the original intent better. That's generally what dictates attitude rather than principle. When a Republican is in the White House conservatives worship executive power and liberals worry about imperial tendencies, and vice versa when a Democrat is there.

Wha hoppen to Princess Caroline?

Both the New Yorker and New York magazine have long pieces that purport to go behind the scenes of Caroline Kennedy-Schlosser's aborted bid to be appointed U.S. Senator from New York. Unfortunately, while both have a fair amount of interesting detail, neither really tells us exactly what happened or why? Did Paterson always plan to appoint her, or did she drop out because she'd gotten word he didn't plan to? My hypothesis is that she got a big taste of New York-style politics, developed a pretty good idea of how drastically life would change if she went to the Senate, and decidedshe didn't want it that badly. John seemed more like the natural politician of the family.

Eric Holder: bad on guns and grass

Eric Holder is almost sure to be confirmed as Obama's attorney general some time this week, but my doubts about him are growing. As this Register editorial outlines, he signed on to a "no individual right to keep and bear arms" amicue curiae before the Suptreme Court's Heller decision, and at least in 1996-97 he was a militant drug warrior who sought a five-year mandatory-minimum sentence for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. He was questioned briefly about guns during confirmation hearings, but although the Marijuana Policy Project and NORML have expressed concern, nobody questioned him about his retrograde views on the war on (some) drugs.

All this is germane because during the campaign Obama promised he would stop the DEA from conducting raids on atients and providers in states with medical marijuana laws (though the DEA conducted raids in California and Colorado last Thursday, after the inauguration. But the DEA is part of the Justice Department. Will Eric Holder implement Obama's promises or drag his feet?

Besides, torture doesn't work

Here's my most recent column for Antiwar.com, expressing satisfaction at Obama people being reasonably straightforward in renouncing torture -- and making the oft-overlooked point that there's no evidence that torture actually works at getting reliable information, that it's inferior to patient and intelligent interrogation. Jack Bauer is a fictional character.

Don't nationalize the banks (any more)

I'm not sure whether the idea of outright nationalizing banks is a dead letter now (though the idea has been in the air, or on the Net) or whether the banks are so close to being nationalized now that it doesn't matter much if the government takes the formal step or not. Anyway, it's a bad idea. I enjoyed talking to Lawrence White, at U. of Missouri-St. Louis to prepare for the Register's editorial denouncing the idea. Larry, who got his doctorate at UCLA (after my time), has made the economics of banking something of a specialty. His latest book is "Theory of Monetary Institutions." We didn't have time to discuss just how we might get all the way to free banking from here. As most freedom-oriented reforms like privatization and deregulation, it will likely come only after all the lousy alternatives have been exhausted, grounded in desperation rather than because of the impeccable arguments of scholars like Larry White. But he has laid intellectual groundwork.

Double-standard on Geithner

The Senate approved Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary today. He may well be an able person, but if you or I had "neglected" to pay more than $30,000 on federal taxes we wouldn't be hearing complimentary speeches from the world most dubious deliberative body. More likely they'd be demanding jail time. But both Reps and Dems seemed to want him, so once again a member of the political/bureaucratic class gets a pass. Here's the Register's disapproving editorial.

Good start on Gitmo

As expected, Pres. Obama has announced the the prison camp at Guantanamo will be closed within a year. As I've mentioned in several places, it won't be easy. A few of those characters are really dangerous, some can't be released to their home countries without serious fear that they'll be seriously tortured, and the European countries have refused to take any of them in large part because the U.S. won't take any (even the Uighurs, Chinese Muslims everybody acknowledges should never have been there). But even the Bushies acknowledge that some have no business being there, so making the decision is a good start.

Incidentally, the WaPo ran a fascinating story Sunday, noting that the military officers first assigned to Gitmo did almost everything right, obeying the Geneva conventions though it wasn't strictly required and establishing a reasonably humane environment. Then the civilians, mainly Rumsfeld, got involved and things went downhill.

Here's the Register's editorial. On this one my old friend Steve Chapman agrees.

Bruins need help

Well, I'm not quite ready to give up hope of going deep into the tournament, but it sure looks as if the Bruins have a closing problem. Maybe they need a little pep talk from Kyra Sedgwick.

Yes, they've lost in Seattle the last five years and have still won the Pac 10 most of those years. Yes, Lorenzo Romar is a terrific coach who seems to have put together a good team this year, one that plays solid defense. But you can't go 5 minutes without making a hoop (12 minutes against ASU) as the clock winds down and expect to win games. I don't know just what winner's mentality the Bruins lack this year. I think they have the talent, some of the freshmen besides Holliday are starting to contribute, and people were saying just a week or so ago that they just might sweep through the league schedule. So much for that idea!

Time to suck it up.

Feds fumbled digital transition

Well it looks as if we're in for four more months of those annoying commercials about the imminent changeover to digital TV signals, commercials apparently aimed at people with a room-temperature (in winter! without a furnace!) IQ who are so clueless only the government can get them through this traumatic transition. The Senate passed a bill to delay the changeover and the House is more than likely to go along. The Obamaites have already floated the balloon.

Trouble is, insofar as the transition really is likely to be even mildly traumatic it's because the government decided to handle it through mandates rather than letting the TV stations do it within the context of a competitive marketplace. I talked to Tom Hazlett, who was chief economist at the FCC in the early 1990s and now teaches at George Mason. He says they've been talking about this transition since 1988 (!) and are acting in rough accordance with a law the congresscritters passed in 1996. If the government hadn't decided that only the government could handle this little problem, it probably would have been done years ago and we would never have noticed because it was so smooth.

Did you know the cellphone industry made the switch from analog to digital a few years ago. Did you notice? Was it a big problem? No, because it was handled in the marketplace.

Here's the Register's angry editorial.

Excluding the exclusionary rule

Here is the Register's editorial on the recent U.S. v. Herring Supreme Court decision, which decided that the exclusionary rule did not apply in the case of a guy who came in to get some personal stuff from an impounded truck. A police officer thought there might be a warrant and asked the clerk to check. No warrant in that county, but they checked a neighboring Alabama county and the database showed a warrant and they went out, pulled him over and found meth and a gun he wasn't authorized to have as a felon. Then word came from the neighboring county that the warrant had been pulled but the info not entered on the database. Thus the search was unwarranted, but the court decided not to exclude the results of the search since the error was not purposeful or aimed at Herring.

After talking to Roger Pilon at Cato, I concluded that although it was a close call, the decision was correct because the exclusionary rule is designed to guard against police misconduct and this was an honest mistake rather than outright misconduct. Herring was guilty (although of offenses that shouldn't have been crimes, but that's a different issue).

My old friend Steve Chapman disagrees.

Bruins hang on. Whew!

That was the kind of game you love to see if you're not invested in either team, but if you're rooting for one side or another it's a little tough to watch. The Bruins hung on to beat WSU 61-59, but it wasn't very convincing. They dominated in stretches but were in jeopardy when it came time to close it out. I think Darren Collison remembered the collapse against Arizona State and took it upon himself to make sure it didn't happen again, and he made two of three down the stretch to stay ahead; then the team did play good defense on the last play.

I think they'll need to play better to beat Washington, which is leading USC 31-30 at the half as I write. Looking forward to Saturday.

Facing the Cougars -- bouncing back?

Some may have noticed that I didn't post immediately after the Bruins lost to Arizona State on Saturday. It's pretty tough to win when you don't score a field goal for 12 minutes. ASU's defense was good -- they use a fairly complex zone -- but there was something fundamentally wrong with the way the Bruins approached the end of the game. They don't seem to have that closing instinct yet, though some of the Freshmen have definitely come a long way. But after that loss, I feel a little bit of trepidation. I think the Bruins on the right night could beat almost any team in the country, but there's also a tendency to play down to the competition, which truly great teams seldom do.

All that is prologue to worrying a bit about tonight's game with Washington State. The Cougars have often posed problems for the Bruins, for reasons I don't fully understand. I hope the Arizona State loss was the kind that encourages them to redouble their efforts to play smarter rather than the kind that allows them and others to get the idea that they are vulnerable. We'll get a start on assessing that tonight.

The more things change . . .

I guess it's becoming something of a refrain with me, but the notion that we can't expect much change in foreign policy from Barack Obama was the subject of my Antiwar.com column this week. The tone will surely be different, but he's escalating in Afghanistan and called four Middle East leaders today to assure them that the U.S. will continue to stick its nose in their business. Heck, he's even squabbling with Hugo Chavez. The best hope, perhaps, is that throwing money at domestic problems and the worldwide crisis that will have China less eager to lend us money just might leave the U.S. too broke to do much mischief in the world at large.

Remarkably flat inaugural

Given the pre-hype and the expectations, I thought the inaugural itself was rather flat. DiFi was a good MC, but it went downhill from there. Poor Aretha, who used to be so marvelous, shouldn't sing in public anymore unless this was a fluke. And that poet was just lame -- that's a recent tradition worthy of abandonment. The Perlman-Ma-etc. quartet was excellent, however. And Pres. Obama's speech was more workmanlike than eloquent. And while he invokes some nice values, he clearly thinks that government is the engine of the economy rather than the other way around. Here's the Register's editorial, in which we politely take exception to his idea of a government-centric society, and some other reporting.