... but Typepad was down all last evening. I'm playing catch up.
While I'm at it, let me point you to the right sidebar. You may have noticed a new blogroll, the 101st Fighting Keyboardists. For the group's history, see this post at Captain's Quarters. Apparently CentCom has taken an interest.
Now a look around.
- Jeff Goldstein wrote a lengthy piece discussing a Shelby Steele WSJ op-ed. He then got hundreds of comments setting up straw men in place of his argument, which were then summarily knocked down, with the debaters dancing atop the flattened Ray Bolgers. The point of Mr. Steele's piece was that "white man's guilt" in dealing with "brown" adversaries was causing us to pull our punches at times when aggressiveness and determination were necessary. As Mr. Goldstein puts it in a post today,
What I did suggest is that we shouldn’t fear the kind of screeching and moaning coming from people like you should US military command let it be known that, say, should insurgents set up shop inside or atop mosques, we will not hesitate to shoot up said mosque with helicopter gunships—or raze the thing entirely—if the situation calls for it.
I think General Patton may have had a handle on this, cutting away the brush to see the target clearly:
Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
- Scot Lehigh in yesterday's Boston Globe on "Our Monarch":
HAS GEORGE W. Bush come to believe he's king?
That's the question that springs to mind upon reading Charlie Savage's front-page report in Sunday's Globe detailing the president's sotto voce assertion that he can disregard laws if he thinks they impinge on his constitutional powers.
That novel claim resides in the ''signing statements" the administration issues outlining its legal interpretation of laws the president has signed -- interpretations that often run contrary to the statute's clear intent.
[...]
Bush's position reduces to this: The president needn't execute the laws as they are written and passed, but rather, has the right to implement -- or ignore -- them as he sees fit. (Were it not for our pesky written Constitution, perhaps George II could take his cue from Charles I, dismiss Congress, and rule -- ah, govern -- without any legislative interference whatsoever.)
The snark is rather unbecoming, Mr. Lehigh. As I pointed out here, there is ample precedent from prior administrations, and in fact the legal arm of Mr. Clinton's administration produced a spirited defense of this approach, from which I quoted extensively.
The issue is not can or should Mr. Bush use these statements to point out problems in the laws he has signed, or to carve out areas where his legitimate belief is that there is encroachment on executive powers. Clearly he can and should when necessary in his opinion. That his opinion of when that's necessary differs from the Boston Globe's is unsurprising.
There may be a legitimate argument in saying that he has done so too much. I suspect it would have been a lot less but for the fact we're at war, and Mr. Bush rightly finds congressional usurpation of executive war powers to be not in the nation's best interest. To make that argument requres not numbers, but review of each of the individual situations when it has been used, preferably before an appropriately informed constitutional tribunal, and not in the court of public opinion.
- In this post I found it difficult to consider the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, not because I abhor the death penalty, but because he committed a passive crime. That is, he didn't take affirmative action to stop the attacks of 9/11. Apparently the jury agreed with me.
That said, he is a poor excuse for a human being, and I'm ashamed that he's part of the race, so let's make the "life in prison" tag really mean something, and keep this guy in a small dark place until he's dust.
- I've taken Bob Herbert to task in the past; it's something that could be done most anytime he puts pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). He does follow recurring themes, certainly, with familiar phrasing, and someone noticed. Evan Coyne Maloney, showing the entrepreneurial spirit of a modern day Henry Ford, found a way to automate the production of a Bob Herbert column. This should free Mr. Herbert up for more productive efforts - like alphabetizing his refrigerator.
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