Archive for June, 2009
30
Jun
09
links for 2009-06-30
30
Jun
09
End it, don’t mend it
Rush Limbaugh fears for the safety of the 22nd Amendment:
You have to wonder if Obama is just trying to lay a foundation for not being a hypocrite when he tries to serve beyond 2016. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in the next number of years there is a move on the 22nd Amendment, which term limits the President of the United States. He may not do it that way, he may not openly try to change the Constitution. But there might be this movement in the country from his cult-like followers to support the notion that a democratically-elected leader who is loved and adored has carte blanc once elected. Just serve as long as he wants because the people demand it, because the people want it, because the people love it.
Of course, Limbaugh’s concerns are completely unfounded, and he’s doing little more than indulging his characteristic paranoia. That said, I can’t say that I would particularly mind it if President Obama spearheaded an effort to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Indeed, a few months ago, I even tried to build a case for repealing the 22nd Amendment. Here’s the key part:
What’s more, the current two term limit is demonstrably harmful to the quality of governance; it practically ensures that a president’s second term will be dramatically less effective than his first (lame duckitude). Added on top of that is the fact the status quo sets up incentives for ignoring public opinion, since when it comes down to it, a president in his second term is no longer accountable to the electorate. At that point, the only thing keeping the executive in check is Congress and political realities. But if Congress isn’t oppositional, and if the president is unconcerned with the fate of his party, then even those checks fall away, leaving us with a president virtually unencumbered by the concerns of the nation (i.e. George W. Bush). Which isn’t exactly a great place to be, all things considered.
Although Bush’s presidency was mostly worthless, it was helpful in that it revealed some fundamental structural weaknesses in the American system of government, one of which is the fact that there are few – if any – incentives for a second term president to pursue his/her agenda with gusto. Repealing the 22nd Amendment is a little dramatic, but I think that it would go a long way in ensuring that the president remains responsive to the concerns of the public.
Dwayne Betts, guest posting for Ta-Nehisi Coates, has written a really thought-provoking post on juvenile life without parole (JLWOP):
The issue of JLWOP will come before the Supreme Court soon – law firms all over the country are preparing amicus briefs in the effort to sway the courts one way or the other. The two cases in question are both Florida cases, chosen because they are both instances of JLWOP for crimes that didn’t result in murder. In one, Joe Sullivan was sentenced to JLWOP for raping at 72 year old woman. He was 13 at the time and it was 1989. In the other, Terrance Graham got life for committing a home invasion while on probation for robbery. He was 17. I think these cases were taken because they aren’t murders. It’s hard to argue for any kind of leniency (if you call life with the possibility of parole leniency) when someone has been killed. The backdrop of this case is the Court’s decision that the giving a juvenile a death the death penalty violates the 8th amendment.
Although the Supreme Court’s verdict in Ricci was disappointing, it has spurred some interesting discussion of racial discrimination and racial disparities. And in the interest of adding to that conversation, I think it’s worth exploring the racial dimensions of JLWOP. First, a little bit of background: harsh juvenile sentencing is itself a product of the “mandatory minimums” which state legislatures around the country adopted in panicked response to the severe drug-related violence of the 1980s. Crack-cocaine exploded in the early 1980s, and brought with it a near-epidemic of violence in the nation’s urban centers. From 1980 to 1989, the official rate violent crime in the United States increased by 23 percent to 731.8 violent crimes per 100,000 population. Along with that increase came a significant increase in the juvenile violent crime rate: according to the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, between 1983 and 1994, “arrest rates for juveniles charged with violent offenses jumped 78 percent. The juvenile homicide rate in America reached an all-time high in 1994, with more than 2,300 victims killed that year.”
A panic erupted among Americans, with some sociologists even warning that the country was witnessing the creation of a generation of “super predators.” An Amnesty International report on juvenile life without parole from a few years ago offers a good description of the national mood at the time:
Fear was rampant as television beamed images of young homicidal killers as lethal as the semi-automatic weapons they carried. Network news inundated homes across the United States with images of defiant teenage murderers, sometimes flashing gang signs.
“America is now home to thickening ranks of juvenile ‘Super Predators,’ radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters,” Princeton professor John J. DiIulio wrote in the 1996 book Body Count, co-authored with John P. Walters and William J. Bennett.
I don’t think it would shock you if I mentioned that most of these images were of young African-American and Latino men. Remember, the proximate cause of the violent crime wave was the crack/cocaine trade, which was concentrated in urban areas mostly populated by minorities. As is the case with crime more generally in this country, “juvenile crime” came to be associated with “dangerous minorities.” And so when state legislatures began passing JLWOP statutes in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a corresponding and dramatic increase in the number of minority youths being tried and sentenced as adults. Of course, the obvious rejoinder is that minority youth are being tried and sentenced as adults at a higher rate because they are committing crimes at a higher rate. But the data doesn’t back this up. Even when you adjust for crime rates, African-Americans (in particular) are far more likely to be tried as adults when compared to their white peers. Indeed, according to a 2003 report by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, despite the juvenile violent crime rate dropping by more than 25 percent after its peak in 1994, minorities are twice more likely to be certified as an adult. For violent crime, they were 8 times more likely to be detained, and for drug-related crime, they were 10 times more likely to be detained. When it comes to JLWOP, an Amnesty International/Human Rights Watch report finds that black youth are serving life without parole sentences at a rate 10 times higher than white youth.
In his post, Betts says that he “can’t begin [to] understand never giving someone who was fourteen at the time of their offense a chance to walk in front of a parole board and plead his case.” But if you think about JLWOP within the context the broader narrative of black criminality, it makes perfect sense. Then as now, African-American males – regardless of age – are considered to have a naturally higher disposition towards criminality. As such, when an African-American teenager – or even boy, in the case of school “zero tolerance” policies – does something wrong, there is not only a far greater chance that it will be considered “criminal” and punished more harshly as a result, but there is also a far greater chance that the child or teenager will be considered irrevocably criminal. Which, of course, can only be dealt with by lifetime imprisonment.
After seven long months of constant litigation, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled unanimously favor of Al Franken. Welcome to the Senate. Talking Points Memo has the full rundown.
Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
For a president who came into office literally selling the Audacity of Hope — not just for Americans but for all mankind — his Iran policy can so far be summed up as the timidity of “realism.” That’s realism as a theory of international relations that prescribes a foreign policy based on ostensibly rational calculations of the national interest and assumes that other nations act in similarly rational fashion. [...]
What did all this achieve? Iran’s nuclear programs are accelerating. It is testing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. Its support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is unabated. Ahmadinejad stole an election in broad daylight. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blessed the result. British Embassy staff are under siege. A campaign of mass arrests and intimidation is underway and a young woman named Neda Soltan was shot in the heart simply for choosing none of the above.
Oh, and Iran still accuses the U.S. of “meddling.”
Now Mr. Obama is promising more of the same, plus the equivalent of a group hug for the demonstrators. Is this supposed to be “realism”?
To answer Stephens directly, yes, this is supposed to be realism. Granted, the events in Iran are incredibly compelling, but as President Obama has repeatedly stressed over the past several weeks, they fall far outside of our purview. In this case at least, it seems that the Obama administration has accepted as a matter of principle the apparently outlandish idea that the internal affairs of another nation are simply none of our business. Stephens assails this as the “timidity of realism” (and then goes on to outline the conclusions that a more “sensible” realist – or a neoconservative – would reach), but that’s because he doesn’t seem to understand the limits of American influence. Take Stephens’ concluding sentences for instance:
Maybe ordinary Iranians welcome Mr. Obama’s solicitude. What they need is Mr. Obama’s spine. If that means “democracy promotion” and tough talk about “regime change,” well, it wouldn’t be the first time this president has made his predecessor’s policy his own.
Neoconservatives, like Stephens, have this curious (and incredibly arrogant) habit of completely disregarding the stated wishes of the people they wish to “save.” Ordinary Iranians have been quite clear about what they need – noninterference from the United States – and my guess is that they have a far better understanding of their situation than Stephens does. Again, Stephens’ mistake – and this is common to neoconservatives – is in taking an extremely optimistic and frankly magical view of the efficacy of American influence. It simply doesn’t occur to Stephens that the United States could harm the efforts of Iranian reformers by actively siding with them. Indeed, the fact that Stephens can endorse the previous administration’s approach to Iran in the face of overwhelming evidence of its failure is indicative of this perceptual flaw. President Bush’s threats of regime change did little to discourage the Iranian government from pursuing nuclear weapons, and indeed, may have even provided the means through which Tehran could whip up nationalist sentiment in the service of building domestic support for a nuclear weapons program.
A careful realist approach might not be as flashy and psychologically satisfying as idealistic denunciations of a tyrannical regime, but that’s okay, because the goal of foreign policy isn’t to make yourself feel better, it’s to advance the interests of your country. And judging from the broad sweep of American foreign policy history since the Second World War, I think it’s safe to say that a realist approach has served us pretty damn well.
Hilzoy’s rejoinder to conservative blogger Ed Morrissey’s criticism of Obama’s health care plans is informative and fun to read. I don’t have much to add to Hilzoy’s substantive discussion, but I do want to comment on Morrissey’s method of criticism, since he uses a rhetorical technique which really doesn’t make very much sense. Here’s the comment:
“Oopsie! So ObamaCare for thee, but not for me? Hope and change, baby! (…)
If ObamaCare isn’t good enough for Sasha, Malia, or Michelle, then it’s not good enough for America. Instead of fighting that impulse, Obama should be working to boost the private sector to encourage more care providers, less red tape and expense, and better care for everyone.” [Emphasis mine]
Again, I don’t see how this makes any sense. We readily admit that there are plenty of things which are good enough for “America” but not quite good enough for the President of the United States and his family. The Secret Service could shuttle Obama around in a consumer grade limousine; if it’s good enough for America’s wealthy, why isn’t it good enough for President Obama? The obvious answer, of course, is that President Obama requires a specialized limo because of the relatively high physical risk associated with being the president. A regular limo isn’t adequate for the job of protecting the president. The same goes for health care: the president receives astoundingly high quality health care because he is integral to the functioning of the country. It is in our best interest to ensure that the president is as healthy as possible, and that requires extremely comprehensive health care. If a hypothetical “ObamaCare” isn’t good enough for President Obama, its because Obama is in a fairly unique situation, not because “ObamaCare” is terrible.
28
Jun
09
links for 2009-06-28
24
Jun
09
links for 2009-06-24
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"Iran’s 1979 revolution took a full year to gestate. The uprising of 2009 has now ended its first phase. But the volatility ushered in by the June 12 ballot-box putsch of Iran’s New Right is certain to endure over the coming year. The Islamic Republic has been weakened."
24
Jun
09
Well that explains everything
Why was Mark Sanford in Argentina? Apparently, he was having an affair (via Politico):
South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday to an affair, and resigned his position as chair of the Republican Governor’s Association following a strange week in which the governor dropped off the grid and could not be located.
“I have been unfaithful to my wife. I developed a relationship with what started out as a dear, dear friend from Argentina,” Sanford said.
“I’m a bottom line kind of guy I’m just gonna lay it out. It’s gonna hurt and I’m going to let the chips fall where they may,” Sanford said.
Sanford apologized to his wife, Jenny, and his children. “To Jenny, anybody who has observed her over the last 40 year of my life knows how closely she has stood by my side in campaign, after campaign, after campaign,” he said.
“I’ve let down a lot of people, and that’s the bottom line,” he said.
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