Did I die?
-- Jon Stewart, 2-11-2015
This week's featured article "When Hate Stays in the Closet" is my attempt to answer some of the more well-intentioned arguments against same-sex marriage.
This week everybody was talking about war
Once in a while, it's instructive to take the long view and consider how different the world is from the one the Founders envisioned. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but makes the the President commander-in-chief. Today, that separation of powers tilts in the President's direction. But originally it tilted towards Congress.
In the Founders' vision, the United States wouldn't have much of a peacetime military. State and local militias would handle smaller-scale stuff like Indian raids, slave uprisings, and criminal gangs -- that's what the 2nd amendment was really about* -- while the federal military would only come into play in the event of a war with a distant power like Britain, France, or Spain. Wars on that scale took a long time to develop, so as long as we had an officers corps to build a larger force around, a big standing army wouldn't be necessary.
Most of the time, then, the President would be commander of not very much. To move towards war, he'd have to ask Congress for a larger military appropriation or to federalize the state militias (a power that Article I, Section 8 assigns to Congress). Probably it would probably say no unless it was ready to declare war.
That's all turned around now. There's huge standing military establishment, which the President needs to be able to put into action instantaneously, without waiting for Congress. (During the Cold War, the Soviet Union could have destroyed most of the country by the time Congress could assemble.) And once hostilities begin, Congress has a hard time refusing to support a war the President has already committed forces to.
So we wind up with after-the-fact debates like the current one about whether Congress should authorize the ongoing air war against ISIL. President Obama has been fighting that war since September, under the authority that he claims was granted by the AUMF Congress passed immediately after 9-11, against
those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
That's kind of a stretch, since ISIL didn't exist in 2001, but might be considered a successor of Al Qaeda. President Obama says he'd ultimately like Congress to repeal that open-ended AUMF and replace it with a narrower authorization. This week he proposed a more specific ISIL authorization, which would include a repeal of the 2002 authorization to use force in Iraq.
Obama's proposal has some good features that I hope will be in any future AUMFs: It's time-limited, for example, so Congress would need to re-authorize it (or not) in three years. But it may still be too broad. Politico has a good discussion of the issues involved.
* The 2nd amendment starts "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ..." The NRA thinks that means that in order to maintain their freedom, the People need to have the weapons necessary to rebel against an oppressive central government. But originally it just meant that locally-controlled militias would eliminate the need for a large peacetime army that might tempt a President (or some general) to start a military coup, as Rome's Praetorian Guard often had.
and news anchors, real and otherwise
Jon Stewart announced he is leaving The Daily Show later this year. That inspired a number of tributes and summaries of his 17-year run, prompting Stewart to ask, "Did I die?"
Meanwhile, Brian Williams has been suspended for six months by NBC News, following the revelation that his account of being on a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in 2003 was not true. Subsequently, questions are being raised about his claims that he flew with Seal Team 6, that he was present when the Berlin Wall came down, and that he saw a dead body float by in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Except for the Katrina piece (which seems unlikely, but is not obviously untrue), the questions are not about his news reporting, but about exaggerated accounts of his experiences that he gave later. (His original report of the RPG incident appears to have been accurate: He was in a copter that was behind the one that was hit.) So given what we know so far, NBC's response seems to be based on a Caesar's-wife principle: The public ought to be able to trust everything that NBC's news anchor says, no matter where he says it.
Humorist P. J. O'Rourke was a little less outraged, and observed that all correspondents tell tall tales about the dangers they've faced.
Welcome, Brian Williams, to the International Association of Guys Who’ve Been to War – And Lied About It Later in the Bar. (I.A.G.W.B2W. -- L.A.I.L.) Membership includes everybody who’s been to war or near a war or in rough proximity to something that is remotely comparable to the dangers and hazards of war, such a being a teenage volunteer fireman who saved puppies from a smoky building.
A more biting response came from Scott Long at Mondoweiss:
What I don’t get is why this is an issue. Williams made up a story. But he was in the middle of the most fantastic made-up story in American history. The Iraq war, written by Bush with a little help from Tony Blair and Micronesia and Poland, was a gigantic fiction, as beautifully told and expressive of the moment’s cultural mythology as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, or A Million Little Pieces, or Three Cups of Tea. The reasons were fake, the goals were fake, the triumph was fake. Nothing was true except the dead people, who aren’t talking. The war countered imaginary threats and villainies with imaginary victories and valor. Williams added his embroidery in the spirit of invention. Why are the other tale-spinners turning on him now?
Or, as Jon Stewart put it:
I am happy. Finally, someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War. Finally. Now, it might not necessarily be the first person you'd want held accountable on that list. But never again will Brian Williams mislead this great nation about being shot at in a war we probably wouldn't have ended up in if the media had applied this level of scrutiny to the actual f--king war.
What will we do without you, Jon?
This is a good time to look back at Atlantic's discussion of why there's no conservative Jon Stewart. It's a little more complicated than just the observable fact that conservatives aren't funny, but not a lot more complicated.
and a government shutdown
When the 2014 elections completed the Republican takeover of Congress, a lot of ink was spilled about governing responsibly and not playing chicken with government shutdowns.
Well, now John Boehner is starting to talk about shutting down the government. Not the whole thing, just the part that keeps us safe.
and you also might be interested in ...
Not all of us in New England are as happy about the weather as the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore was when he recorded thundersnow -- or as happy as the toddler who watched him do it.
Science is still too suspicious an activity for a Republican presidential candidate to associate himself with. Asked if he believed in the theory of evolution, Scott Walker replied "I'm going to punt on that one."
Here's a question I'd like to ask every candidate who courts the Religious Right: "Do you believe we are in the end times described in the Book of Revelation?" And if the answer is yes, follow up with: "How will that affect your foreign policy? In particular, if events in the Middle East seemed headed towards the Battle of Armageddon that heralds the return of Christ, would you regard that as a good thing or a bad thing?"
Bad Astronomy explains why the adjustments scientists make to temperature data are just good science, and not the "scandal" that global-warming deniers claim.
Authorities are still trying to figure out whether the murder of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, NC was a hate crime or not. The alleged shooter's alleged Facebook page is full of anti-religious stuff, but a quick scan didn't reveal anything uglier than what comes across my news feed every day from people who don't seem particularly dangerous. I didn't see any threats of violence or Muslims-must-die messages. Neither did atheist blogger Michael Nugent, who has done a more thorough search.
Still, the idea of an self-described "anti-theist" turning violent has captured the dark side of the public imagination (and promoted some introspection among atheists). For example, what happens if someone takes literally a text cherry-picked from, say, Sam Harris' The End of Faith:
Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.
(The quote is really there, but the link argues -- I'm not sure how convincingly -- that it isn't nearly so bad in its larger context.)
Secularist groups (including a local one I have spoken to and am a not-terribly-active member of) have been debating whether to issue a statement denouncing hate crimes against believers, or whether such statements might cement the public's speculative interpretation that this really was an atheist hate crime. On the flip side, I'm not aware of any atheist group that has endorsed the murders. (I'm sure that would make headlines, so I'll go out on a limb and say it hasn't happened.)
Whatever the facts turn out to be, one lesson to draw from this is that there are violent people in every religious and/or political movement. If you yourself are non-violent and see the essence of your movement as non-violent, it stings to suddenly feel like the public is picking out that one lunatic to be the poster boy who represents you.
If you've ever had that experience, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The next time somebody from a different religious/political group does something horrible, don't hold everybody from that group responsible -- or cherry-pick the movement's favorite texts to find justifications.
Meanwhile, somebody burned down a Muslim school in Houston.
TPM's Ed Kilgore sees the religious-right's freak-out over President Obama's prayer breakfast remarks as an attack on liberal Christianity in general.
and let's close with something amazing
Linsey Pollack shows TedxSydney how to turn a carrot into a clarinet. (Why do I think this is harder than he makes it look?)
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