I liked your posts defending the Democtratic congress from critics on the left in recent threads, but this time time you are missing the point.

Because Libby only had his sentence commuted, he is still potentially eligible for a full pardon later. Don Key is asking whether he would get the fine, which was not commuted in today's action, refunded after a pardon.

This would be a particularly strange outcome if, as other have suggested (though I am not sure if it legally permissable), his fine is paid through his legal defense fund. Would the fine then be refunded to his donors or would he get to pocket it?

As strange and nonsensical as these questions may seem, they are no less outrageous than the President's big 'fuck you' to the American justice system today.

Posted at July 2, 2007 11:33 PM in response to Bush Commutes Libby Sentence

I checked the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_and_occupation_of_Iraq_casualties

and that lead me to http://icasualties.org/oif, which reports that of the 1895 of the 2403 U.S. deaths in Iraq as of May, 2006 were from hostile action, while the other 508 were "non-hostile."

Like you, I have seen reports that wounded who are evacuated to the U.S. and Germany and then die are being included in those totals. I haven't found anything that would confirm or deny the particularly fine parsing you are suggesting.

On the one hand, it would seem consistent with the Bush administrations approach to the truth. On the other hand, it seems hard to believe that difference in the casualty figures would be large enough to make it worth risking the public outcry if they were caught making that fine a distinction and denying that particular subset deceased soldiers the official recognition accorded to all the other casualties from the conflict.

Posted at May 2, 2006 2:15 AM in response to The Numbers Dead

From A Spy Speaks Out - 60 Minutes

"And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that you had this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilled with that," Bradley asked.

"The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.

Once they learned what it was the source had to say — that Saddam Hussein did not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMD program, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in the intelligence.""

Posted at May 1, 2006 11:26 PM in response to Delusional at The American Spectator

I agree with both Matt and jlkenny.

Jlkenny is right that people already pay an inordinate amount of attention to sports stars and that this is probably not going to change, so if it is possible to change at least some of that focus to the ordinary things they do that are worth emulating, that is worth doing.

Matt is right that it would also be nice to provide more attention to all the people who have average or slightly above average levels of success but still have useful and admirable achievements to honor. Doing this would require a concerted effort by media, politicians, schools and parents and I haven't seen any will to provide such an effort but that doesn't meen it isn't worth talking about.

Matt is also right that in most respects, sports stars and other entertainers are not people the rest of us should be trying to emulate. This is not because sports stars in general are bad people, most of the aren't.

However, simply being rich and famous inevitably distorts the life they live in all kinds of ways. From having people try to become their friends for all kinds of shallow reasons, to having agents, managers, lawyers and others trying to protect them from any poor choices they make to having the option to spend more money on one night's entertainment than most people make in a year.

Sometimes these influences lead sports stars to act in very self-destructive or unadmirable ways, and sometimes they don't. However, the resulting lifestyles will almost always lead to problems for anyone that tries to emulate them without having lots of money and a big support team.

Posted at April 13, 2006 1:52 AM in response to Pride and Flash-edness

I agree that the players deserve a reasonable cut of the total revenues in the sport. I specifically agree that the old pre-free agenc system of pro sports drastically underpaid the players compared to the profits being generated for the owners and gave them too little control over their careers.

On the other hand, the current huge revenues being generated by pro sports result in part from a variety of public subsidies and from pro sports using a century of goodwill plus massive advertising to convince fans to keep coming even as they raise the prices of everything from tickets to hot dogs to parking.

While sports salaries today are so high that the typical superstar has very little in common with the typical fan, any form of salary caps or other brute force attempt to reign them in is treating a symptom not a problem. High salaries for pro-athletes are no more of a problem that high incomes for other entertainers, or for CEOs. The real solution is to have an honest discussion on income inequality in this country and whether effectively removing progressivity from our tax system over the last half-century was a good idea.

Posted at April 13, 2006 1:08 AM in response to Pride and Flash-edness

Note, the previous post makes the much bigger assumptions that:

1) the two teams of military experts are not the figments of the imagination of some administration hack.

2) the two military teams did not submit reports with enough qualifications and reservations to render the conclusions essentially meaningless without the same kind of cherry-picking the administratin has applied to all the other intelligence on WMD issues.

If either of those two assumptions fail, then the comparisons suggested in the previous post are unnecessary and the attempts by Al and others to defend the administration's handling of this issue fail again.

Posted at April 13, 2006 12:39 AM in response to "Despite Evidence to the Contrary"

Actually, there is evidence that the other two teams either were or were not qualified to make judgements about whether the trailers were used for biological weapons production, but the evidence is classified.

It would be quite simple for the administration to release specific information about how many people were on these teams, what their relevant experience was, when and how they examined the trailers and specifically why they determined that the trailers were mobile weapons labs.

Then it would be possible to compare their expertise, evidence and methodology with that of the DIA's "Jefferson Project" team and determine whether it was reasonable for the CIA analysts preparing the white paper, and by extension the White House, to take those teams' word over that of a team that had over a century of experience in biological warfare technology that was specifically assembled and sent to Iraq to evaluate the trailers.

Until then, it is reasonable to assume that those other teams either were not qualified to make those judgements or did not make a good faith effort to honestly evaluate them given that:

1) if the military experts' areas of expertise were relevant, there would have been no need to put together the "Jefferson Project" team.

2) the Iraqi Survey Group subsequently and independently determined that the trailers were not mobile weapons labs (in other words, the Jefferson Project team was right and the other teams were wrong). They also definitively concluded that the trailers were for hydrogen gas production based on both further testing of samples from the trailers and on tracing the paperwork on the trailers right back to the plant where they were built.

3) if those teams did have specific relevant experience that made them more credible than those in the Jefferson Project, the administration would have released the information by now, instead of relying on the blustering, beligerent and largely irrelevant attacks they have made against the recent news reports.

Posted at April 12, 2006 11:51 PM in response to "Despite Evidence to the Contrary"

Posted at March 28, 2006 5:35 PM in response to Creating a "High Wage- One Tier Labor Market"

You previous comments had some value, but at this point you are ignoring the entire point of Nathan's argument and adding nothing new to the conversation while insulting the integrity of union leaders without providing any evidence to support your position.

The whole point of approach Nathan is describing here is to use a variety of methods, including minimum wage laws, union organizing rights and triple damages in civil suits for labor law violations to reduce the incentive for employers to use illegal immigrants as a way to drive down wages and working conditions.

In my opinion, border controls, deportation of undocumented workers and penalties for employers that knowingly hire such workers (over and above damages for cheating them) still have a place in such a system.  If we completely abandoned those parts of the system, we could see even more workers flowing into the country and they would put less downward pressure on wages but would still impact unemployment rates.  In addition, border enforcement is also worthwhile to control all kinds of smuggling and to make it more difficult for terrorists or other serious criminals to enter the country.

However, Nathan is right that simply increasing such enforcement without taking the profit motive away from unscrupulous employers will never eliminate and will probably not even signifcantly reduce undocumented workers.  On the other hand, policies such as those Nathan describes here should help the situation even with current levels of enforcement.  Additional monitoring of the situation can determine whether border enforcement still requires more resources or even if they can be reduced (if illegal immigration drops because workers aren't trying to enter, it would free up the resources being used to chase them for other uses).

Where both Nathan and Michael Lind would seem to agree is that the current laws coming from the House and Senate are disastrous.  By declaring all people in the country illegally to be felons and criminalizing any form of assistance to them, they increase the imbalance of power that lets these people be used against legal workers.  By including those whose immigration status has lapsed due to the arcane rules and inneficient beauracracy of the INS in such sanctions, they creates major issues of fairness.   By institutionalizing a two-tiered worker system through the guest-worker program, they make permanent the conflict between foreign workers and citizens and legal permanent residents in the workforce.

Posted at March 28, 2006 5:23 PM in response to Creating a "High Wage- One Tier Labor Market"

While the U.S. under Clinton found itself isolated by its insistence on carving out broad exemptions to ICC jurisdiction, Clinton remained engaged in ongoing negotiations over the ICC right up to the end of his term of office.

He actually signed the Rome Statute on December 31, 2001 but did not submit it to the Senate for ratification and indicated in his statement when he signed it that he did not recommend his successor submit it until U.S. concerns had been met.  He did this because as a signatory, even one that had not ratified the treaty, the U.S. had more rights to take part in negotiations over the formation of the court and future ammendments to the Rome Statute.

George Bush was far more hostile to the ICC.  Among other things, he has completely withdrawn the U.S. from all ICC negotiations, has used the threat of withdrawing military cooperation and other aid to negotiate bilateral agreements with other countries preventing them from surrending U.S. nationals to the ICC and refused to support any U.N. resolutions that recognize even the existence of the ICC.

See:

http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKRI8MPJpF&b=345925

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

for more information.

Posted at March 23, 2006 2:19 AM in response to Righting Our Human Rights Policy