Common sense vs. ideological purity

There have been some primaries this year that have made it seem as if ideological purity has trumped common sense. That Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter had to leave the Republican Party — Crist to run as an independent, Specter becoming a Democrat but ending up rejected in their primary — speaks to the problem of ideological purists taking over both parties.

But we can score some points for common sense. All the polls in Arizona indicate a big win for John McCain in the primary there against J. D. Hayworth, despite the conservative radio talk show hosts' strong backing of ideologically pure Hayworth. This will be a good thing if the polls hold up.

In Arizona, at least, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin stayed true to the man who picked her for VP nominee, McCain. That at least was good. But in my own state of Maryland, where there will be a gubernatorial primary a month from now, she has come out for another ideologically pure conservative, Brian Murphy. Everyone must know that Maryland is a state where Democrats have an edge. But Bob Ehrlich has shown he can get the votes of people who normally vote Democratic. Based on polls, Ehrlich has a chance of winning in November. Murphy would lose to the incumbent, Martin O'Malley, in a walkover. No question that Ehrlich, who still has a lot of support based on his previous term in the governorship, is the more electable candidate. If you are conservative, even if you feel Ehrlich is insufficiently conservative, you should be able to accept him as better than O'Malley. And a vote for Murphy is perhaps not exactly a vote for O'Malley, but that is the likely consequence. I'm sorry, Gov. Palin, but common sense should trump ideological purity here.

Now of course people will say that I should keep quiet, call me a RINO or such, and that my supporting Bob Ehrlich is because I'm too liberal. Well, part of this may be true. I'd rather see an Ehrlich-type moderate than a far-right conservative. But in fact, for me it's more important to get someone else in O'Malley's place. I promise that if Murphy gets nominated, I'll vote for him in November. But I guarantee that he'll lose to O'Malley.

Which is better, O'Malley getting four more years, or a moderate beating him in the vote that counts, this November?

We need Proportional Representation!

The 2010 election is getting closer — less than three months away. But the chances that I will find a person to vote for to represent me in any legislative body are really remote. I live in a district that is represented in the House of Representatives by Chris Van Hollen, one of the most liberal members of the House. The VoteView rankings show Van Hollen as significantly more liberal than Nancy Pelosi! And since last year I have lived in the State legislative district that Van Hollen represented as a State Senator. Lots of luck finding anyone, in Annapolis or Washington, to represent me!


The problem is that our electoral system, known technically as Single-Member Plurality (SMP) generally allows for only one member of a legislative body to represent a whole geographical area. (In Maryland, the lower house of the State legislature, the House of Delegates, is mostly elected from three-member districts. But the voting method there (called block voting) guarantees that the three will be chosen by the same pluralities, so they are going to be ideological clones.) It doesn't have to be done that way. In foreign countries, Proportional Representation methods (PR) are used. A district elects several members, divided proportionally. If a district elects, say, five members, and 60% vote for one party and 40% for the other, then the first party will get three members and the second two. Both sides have representatives they can contact who will speak for them. In particular, it would be very easy for the Maryland House of Delegates to adopt a system called the Single Transferable Vote (STV), since three-member districts are already used, just like the system in Ireland. (Not all the districts in Ireland elect three members; some elect four or five. But for Maryland, the easiest way to go about it would be to use all three-member districts.) Actually, there is a better way than STV that has been proposed by voting methods expert Warren D. Smith, but it is untried, so it would be hard to get adopted: Reweighted Score Voting.


But whatever form of PR is used would give a better result than the way we do it now. The only problem is to convince the powers-that-be in the various legislatures. They got elected by the present SMP method, and many might lose their jobs if a new voting system were adopted.


(You might notice that I've been posting a lot more frequently recently. This is deliberate. Sometimes it's seemed that nobody has been reading this blog, so it's been hard to get the motivation up to post here. But lately, Google has provided stats, so I'm able to see how often people have come here. And it's been a lot more than I thought. Also, it's been said that you get more visits from frequent postings. Looking at July, I got about three hits per day; in August so far, it's been more than 8 — and it's only been the last few days I've really increased my posting frequency, so this is not the full story! That's why you'll be seeing me post a lot more from now on.)

I don't understand why they fight it

Why do the homophobes fight gay marriage? That is one point I can't figure out.


The only argument they can raise is that it's against God's will. Some readings of the Bible certainly make that case. However, the laws of the U. S. are not supposed to discriminate between different religions, and it is clear that other readings of the Bible disagree, as there are churches that are willing to perform gay marriages. So that argument loses.


Another argument is that "marriage always has been between a man and a woman." That one has even less chance of being upheld in a court of law. The fact is that "just because it's always been that way" has never been a valid argument in court. Traditionally, women could not vote, own property, etc. Unlil Loving v. Virginia, miscegenation laws upheld the "traditional" view that marriage has always been between two white people. And there are many other "traditions" that restricted people's rights that have been thrown out in court.


Really, the only argument there is against gay marriage is in fact, "I don't like it." And the last time that won a court case was ... never? Actually, the more they fight the concept of gay marriage, the more they advance it. If the homophobes had not bothered to fight it, the gay rights advocates would have to fight in fifty State legislatures, and it would take many years to happen — in some states the gay rights advocates would never get a legislative majority. But because they pushed Proposition 8 in California, there was Perry v. Schwarzenegger (which, ironically, put Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the position of nominally being the one being sued, even though he did not agree with the referendum result!). (See my August 7 post.) The result of this may end up requiring States to implement gay marriage! The case will go to the Supreme Court, since the homophobes will not take this judge's opinion lying down, and the Court will find for the gay couples. (There are 4 liberals and 4 conservatives. Justice Kennedy, the ninth, has in recent years been sympathetic to gay rights. Even if all the conservatives side with the homophobes, which is not guaranteed — after all, one of the lawyers for the gay couples is a prominent conservative, so "conservatives" are not always anti-gay — there are probably five votes to extend Loving v. Virginia to gay marriage.)


I have not, in the past, supported gay marriage in those places where I felt that the gay couples were more likely to succeed by taking the "half a loaf" of civil unions. I have always felt that it was more important to have the rights of a married couple, regardless of what the law called it. But I have also seen no "other side of the coin" — there is really no reason to avoid gay marriage except that using the word "marriage" angers some people — so wherever (whether by legislative or judicial action) gay people get the right to marry, I will view it with favor. It is basically a case of freedom, and I agree with the position (expressed by the Modern Whig Party, which I recently mentioned in this blog) that the government should not be in the business of legislating morality.

A frustrating dilemma

While the issues and candidates I'm discussing in this post are local, the basic nature of the dilemma I'm discussing are not. So I apologize to people in other parts of the country, and even outside, to whom these issues do not mean anything. But it is a serious dilemma, which I need to vent about.



Part 1.



Since the mid-1970s, I have been living in the metropolitan area of Washington, D. C. And since 1984, I have lived in the State of Maryland, specifically Montgomery County, directly north of Washington, D. C. Now if you don't know, Maryland is a rather strongly Democratic state, and most of the time I've been here, the Governor has been a Democrat. However, from 2003 to 2007, we had a Republican Governor, Bob Ehrlich. He gave up a seat in Congress to run for the Governorship, and beat a member of the Kennedy family, in fact, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, which shows you how popular he was. And I think he was, in general, a good Governor. (But see below.) However, in 2006, the state reverted to its normal Democratic allegiance, and though Ehrlich was favorably viewed by a large proportion of Marylanders, he was defeated in his attempt at re-election by the then Mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley.



It should not surprise anyone, knowing me from this blog, that I say that O'Malley has been a much worse Governor than Ehrlich, and I will certainly oppose his attempt to be re-elected this November. And it will be very likely that his opponent will be Bob Ehrlich again. (This is not certain. Ehrlich still has to win his primary. And the likes of Sarah Palin have come out against him in the primary campaign. But the opponent that Palin has endorsed is virtually unknown, and Ehrlich still has a lot of popular support, so I believe that Ehrlich will easily win the nomination.) So I fully expect to be a strong supporter of Bob Ehrlich for Governor against Martin O'Malley.



Part 2.



Now to another point, at first unrelated, but as I proceed you will see what the connection is. Shortly after moving to Maryland I became aware of a movement to establish a light rail transit line which would (at first) run from Silver Spring (right near where I then lived) to Bethesda. (The plan has been vastly extended, and now they are talking about a line, now called the Purple Line, from New Carrollton to Bethesda, passing through Silver Spring, three or more times as long as the original plan.) I immediately became a strong enthusiast for this proposal, and have remained so even though I no longer live that close to the proposed route. But it has taken 25 years, and the line is still only a proposal. There is strong support for it, but opposition comes from two sources: a golf course whose property the line would traverse, and a few property owners who apparently do not want anyone that they consider riff-raff passing so close to their property.



Part 3.



Now here comes the dilemma: Martin O'Malley, as bad as he has been on every other issue that matters to me, has been a supporter of the Purple Line. And Bob Ehrlich, for all I like about him on other issues, opposes it — he worked against it as Governor, and he has made negative statements about it this year. (One reason seems to be that he likes to play golf, so the golf course has a strong call on him.) Just yesterday, at a meeting of the organization that has been pushing the Purple Line and its predecessor plans for the past 25 years, I mentioned I intended to vote for Ehrlich in the primary and general election, if I get the chance. And the (perfectly reasonable) response was "Even with his position on the Purple Line?" I had to say that I am not a one-issue voter, and on many other issues (just about everything except the Purple Line) I find Ehrlich vastly preferable to O'Malley. And at least one bystander understood, and said something like "You always have to make compromises."



Conclusion.



But this is the problem. How do you work for a candidate you believe in, and for a cause you believe in, simultaneously, when the candidate is so opposed to the cause? Comments are very welcome.

The Modern Whig Party

I have, ever since being old enough to vote, considered myself a Republican, and enrolled in that party both in my native state of New York and my current residence of Maryland. And of the two major parties, certainly the Republican Party is much closer to my political views than the Democratic Party. So I'm certainly not going to emulate Arlen Specter, even though he was very close to me on many issues, and leave the Republican Party for the Democrats. This is so, even though in many ways the Republican Party has moved well to my right. It's hard to be in favor of legal abortion, gay rights, and gun control, and remain a Republican; it would be harder, however, to be in favor of low taxes, limited government, free-market economics, and military preparedness, and become a Democrat! So a Republican I remain.

As I have stated before on this blog, I have some sympathies for the Libertarian Party, and would be happy if they got some seats in Congress, but they have some extreme ideas, even approaching anarchism, that I could not accept, and they are even more ideologically homogeneous than what the Republicans have threatened to become. So at best I could applaud their making some progress, but I could never join them, since (for one thing) joining any third party is senseless in this country. (By remaining a Republican, I get to vote in the Republican primaries, for example, and can help a little in slowing this ideological drift to the right of where I stand. If I left, I would not be able even to vote in a primary, and my November vote would be an exercise in futility. Though, truthfully, for things like the State legislative elections, I'm in such a strong Democratic district that my November vote already is an exercise in futility.)

Recently I was looking at something about third parties, and saw a reference to the Modern Whig Party. I was really curious about what sort of party would adopt "Whig" for a name; after all, the original Whig Party died in the days prior to the Civil War. So I found their Website, and read some interesting ideas:

These principles are critical to the welfare of the country and the Party. They bind us as moderates, unify us as Americans, and serve to exclude extremes.
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY - Any action of the government must respect principles of fiscal responsibility and public accountability.
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE - Develop practical domestic energy sources to reduce dependence on foreign energy sources.
STATE'S RESPONSIBILITY - Each state can generally determine its course of action based on local values and unique needs.
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE - When the government is compelled to legislate morality, every citizen should be considered as equal.
EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT - Increase public and private emphasis on math and science to promote American innovation to compete in the global economy.
VETERANS AFFAIRS - Vigilant advocacy relating to the medical, financial, and overall well-being of our military families and veterans.

I'm not sure how much of this I agree with, but I think the Modern Whig Party may be interesting to look into more deeply. Of course, as I said, joining any third party is senseless in this country, so I would probably not join them. But the Modern Whig Party, rather than the Libertarians, may be the third party closest to my ideals.

The gay marriage decision

I'm pretty happy, actually, with the California district judge's decision setting down Proposition 8. (I've generally favored the "civil union" compromise, but only on the basis of being easier to attain in the near future.) But of course, opponents of the decision may point to the fact that it was issued by a gay judge. (It would have had more convincing effect if the judge were straight.) Nevertheless, it was a good decision in my opinion. (And it is very nice that one of the lawyers for the pro-gay-marriage side was a prominent conservative lawyer! Why political conservatism should get linked with homophobia is beyond me.)

It will, of course, be appealed, almost certainly all the way to the Supreme Court, and nobody can tell, at this point, how that is going to turn out. But that is the way our system works. We now have two recent judicial decisions, one of which I dislike (the one on Arizona's anti-illegal-immigrant law) and one of which I applaud (this one), both of which are really initial steps on a path to the Supreme Court. Both bear watching.

Apropos of nothing...

... but, since it is my blog, I can discuss it!

Back in the early 1990s, before the proliferation of the Internet, I was a member of several online services which provided various types of features, including chat rooms. On one of them, I made an online friend, a 13- or 14-year-old boy. He was truly a friend, staying on my side even when some others had become very nasty to me for reasons I will not go into here. And the friendship has continued. Six years ago, he was the one who sent me the invitation I needed then to get a gmail account, for example.

A lot has happened since then, of course. My friend is no longer a teenager, but in his late 20s. And after some time in college that took more than the usual four years because he was unsure what he wanted to major in, and no doubt a lot of changes of mind on the way (he's told me that his ideas had come close to atheism in those college years), he's recently taken a direction that very much surprised me — this June he got himself ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.

Now I knew he was Catholic — I've known it for most of the nearly 20 years that I've known him — but of all the decisions that anyone I've known (whether my knowledge of them is in real life or online) has made, this has to qualify as the most surprising.

Mind you, I strongly believe anyone has a right to their own religious beliefs. And I'd never engage in proselytization; I think that trying to convince someone to change their religion is futile. I may put forth my own beliefs, and explain why I believe them, but it's always on a "read, and judge for yourself" basis. And there are certainly people I like and respect who are Roman Catholics. But I must say that I find it hard to fathom that an intelligent person would embrace that faith. I really cannot understand, for example, the concept of Papal infallibility. If some person makes a statement of faith — anyone, whether elected to his position or whatever — I think we need to be able to use our own powers of reasoning to see whether it makes sense to us. Resigning this power of reasoning, and simply believing that "the Pope said it, so it's true" is something I could never do, and something I cannot understand why anyone who is as intelligent as my friend would ever do. But in any case, he is still my friend.

A stupid judge

Judge Susan Bolton, a Federal judge in the district court for Arizona, has granted a preliminary injunction to the Federal Government against the Arizona law on illegal immigration. She did not give the Federal Government all that it requested — there are clauses that were allowed to go into effect — but Arizona cannot enforce some of the more controversial parts of the law for the time being.

The final decision has not been made by Judge Bolton — and when it has, an appeal will certainly be made by the State of Arizona — but even this much is a stupid action on her part. The whole case rests on a question of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution — which addresses conflicts between Federal and State laws. But the Arizona law does not attempt to nullify a Federal law. How any judge can see a case of the Supremacy Clause applying is beyond me. The Arizona law clearly states that it is enacted in conformity with the applicable Federal law. The judge issued a 36-page ruling, and while I have only partially read it, I do not see anywhere where Judge Bolton has made a case that there is, in fact, a conflict between the Arizona law and Federal law. She is clearly acting as a politician, and not a judge. She was appointed by Pres. William J. Clinton, and does not want to rule against a Democratic administration on what has become a highly partisan issue.

So now we await the appeal. It probably will need to go to the Supreme Court, which I trust to be reasonable.

A message to readers

Just recently the folks at Google added an experimental draft feature to enable bloggers on here to get statistics on people visiting the blogs. I tried it, and found that this blog does get visitors -- a reasonable amount of traffic, actually.

The thing I wonder is: Why does hardly anyone comment? Up until this new stats feature, the only way I had to see whether anyone was reading my posts here was looking for comments. And with so few comments, I had to assume nobody was reading them. The only comments seemed to have been put by spammers, and of course those I deleted as soon as I saw them. (Strangely, they nearly all were posted as comments to one post, which I put up around two years ago!) And really, thst's pretty discouraging.

So please, I'd like to see people comment -- to say they agree, or they disagree, or to raise a question, or whatever!

Elena Kagan (again)

On May 13, I posted a message about Elena Kagan, Pres. Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Stevens' retirement. And in the intervening 2½ months, nothing much has happened to change my thoughts.


The only Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote to confirm her nomination was Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina. It does seem strange that the others are trying to fight this nomination. After all, as I stated in my May 13 posting, it's Justice Stevens she'd be replacing. She could hardly swing the court much further leftward.


Hopefully, this November the composition of the Senate will change in a more Republican direction. Why not save your energy for the next nomination?

Marijuana and immigration

Marijuana is a dangerous, mind-altering drug. So dangerous that there are Federal laws that say that even possession of it is a crime. But the potheads of several States have managed to convince their State legislatures to enact laws making it legal to prescribe it for "medicinal" purposes. This, despite the fact that the medical profession has declared that there is no valid medicinal use for the drug, so "medical marijuana" is a serious oxymoron. So these States' laws are in conflict with Federal drug laws, as well as with common sense.

On the other hand, the State of Arizona has enacted a law that basically states that if you are illegally in this country under Federal law, it is also a violation of State law for you to be in Arizona. Obviously, no conflict with Federal law; it simply gives the state the power to declare illegals to be in violation of Arizona law, so they can be punished in accordance with State laws.

The Obama administration has declared that it will not enforce Federal law in the States which have flouted Federal drug laws to legalize "medical marijuana," but it intens to bring a lawsuit against Arizona, whose law is fully in accordance with Federal immigration law.

Isn't this absolutely crazy? But I guess that potheads vote, and are more likely to vote Democratic, while most Arizonans vote Republican anyway.

Obama and McChrystal

President Obama has fired General Stanley McChrystal and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus. And no matter what you think of Pres. Obama, he had to do it.

The military operates under a "chain of command" system. And under our Constitution, the President is the commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy. So while Gen. McChrystal, had he been a civilian, would have been protected by the First Amendment, as a soldier, he was bound to defer to higher rank.

As commander-in-chief, Pres. Obama outranks any general, even the highest. And certainly, when such people as Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman (none of whom is a great friend of Pres. Obama!) condemned McChrystal's remarks, it was clear that they were beyond the limits of his free speech rights.

I cannot say how justified McChrystal was in his comments. But whatever their accuracy, they certainly constituted insubordination. I am one of the few people still alive who remembers Pres. Harry Truman's dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and as a child I was with MacArthur and against Truman. But if Truman was justified then, and after 60 years I think he probably was, so Obama is justified in getting rid of McChrystal.

Insulting Vice-President Biden was not such a great thing to do, either!

Arkansas and Nevada

Continuing the comments on Tuesday's primaries.

I usually do not comment on Democratic primaries, because I do not usually support Democrats and so I feel I should keep my nose out of their business, but I really have to remark on the result in Arkansas, where Senator Blanche Lincoln, though a Democrat, has defied the big leaders of Big Labor, and opposed the "card check" bill (which, in an irony of terminology worthy of George Orwell's "1984," they choose to call the "Employee Free Choice Act." In fact, it denies workers a free choice, opening them up to bullying by labor goons!)

But Arkansans rewarded Sen. Lincoln Tuesday with a renomination, though the Big Labor-endorsed candidate had forced her into a run-off. That is certainly good news.

In Nevada, the news was not so good. The candidate considered to have the best chance to beat Sen. Harry Reid in November, Sue Lowden, was unfortunately beaten by an extremist candidate named Sharron Angle. While Reid is so unpopular that Angle might yet beat him in November, his chances to remain in the Senate are a lot better than they would have been if Lowden had won. Here, it seems that ideological purity has unfortunately triumphed.

The California primary results

Well, I am certainly happy to see that both Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman got their nominations in yesterday's primaries. As I've said before, it is people like these who are desperately needed to fix this government. Now it's on to November for these candidates, and I'm cheering from afar. I don't have money to contribute — and neither of these candidates needs money; both have heavily supported their primary campaigns with their own money — but they have all the moral support I can offer.

I hate the telephone!

For a change, a posting about something more personal than the usual political and religious topics on this blog. But I needed to get this off my chest.

As the title says, I hate the telephone! And people always act weird when I tell them I don't have one, but, really, why should I pay tens of dollars a month for a service I hardly use? If I really need to make a phone call, I can go to a pay phone and make one for 50¢. Can you figure out how many of those 50¢ calls I could make for the cost of one month's service if I had a phone in my residence (much worse, if I had a {shudder!} cell phone? As you might imagine, I'll never own a cell phone. I used to say I'd never own one unless I had a job that required me to, but now I'm retired, so that exception isn't going to happen.)

Surprisingly, in the 1990s I actually had two phone lines in my apartment, but one was so I could access a dial-up account (and I didn't even have a phone on that line! Some few friends attempted to dial it, and it never got answered, because even if I weren't online, I would not hear a phone ring on that number!) The other line was at my wife's insistence; I so rarely used it that if it had just been up to me, I would not have had it.

Right now I'm no longer living with her, and my current landlord has a high-speed Internet connection installed, so I do not need a phone for either of these purposes.

The telephone is really the worst mode of communication that anyone has devised; it requires both participants' real-time presence. If I call someone and they're out, the best possibility is that it rings a few times and I hang up and call again sometime. Much worse is if they have an answering machine (or even a secretary) — If I'm at a place where there is a phone (say I was calling from my residence, and I still had one as in the 1990s), I could leave that number for a callback, but then I couldn't go out until the person calls back; I'd have to sit by the phone waiting for it to ring! Otherwise, as in my present situation, all I could do is say I would call again, but I'm still out the cost of a call, and with nothing to show for it!

The telephone is a 19^th century invention, and I wish it would go away. People who insist on getting a phone number are my bane — even on the Internet there are sites where a phone number is obligatory, and I have to enter a bunch of digits like 000-000-0000 or 999-999-9999 (Heaven forbid I'd use someone's real number, so that's why I'd have to use one of those!) But then they sometimes check for a real area code, so I have to make it 301-999-9999, which usually goes by.

I have an e-mail address, so people can communicate with me that way. And anyone could send me a letter at my Post Office box. So it's not as if I'm unreachable.

Just this morning, I tried to contact my doctor. She had left a message on my wife's voice-mail to call her, which my wife relayed to me on the weekend, so I had to wait till today. When I called, the receptionist said she was with a patient and asked for a number to call me back, which of course I could not give her. She suggested I call back in an hour, but of course the doctor could well be with a patient again, so this could go on for days. Finally it was agreed that the receptionist would find out what it was all about and write it down, so if I called again and could not reach the doctor then, the receptionist could give me the information. But why couldn't they just use e-mail? The whole thing would have been completed by now!

Down with the telephone!

California and Kentucky

I've made some comments in this blog about Senate races in Pennsylvania and Florida, where I do not live, and now I'm adding some comments on two more states where I do not live, California and Kentucky. I hope that residents of those states who read this blog do not feel I should just mind my own business, but I think I need to make these comments.



In California, I've been very much attracted to the candidacies of two female entrepreneurs, Carly Fiorina for Senator and Meg Whitman for Governor. If either one wins the post she is seeking, she will instantly be my first choice for the Presidency in 2012.


Whitman seems to have a good chance of winning, and from 3000 miles away I am cheering her cause. In the primary, she is leading her closest opponent in recent polls by about 2 to 1. Fiorina may not even get the nomination, though she too is leading, more closely than Whitman, in recent polls, so lately I've been looking at her primary opponents, and I see one I like and one I do not.


What I've seen of Tom Campbell looks good. He's the sort of moderate Republican I think we need more of. It's too bad that Californians have to choose between Campbell and Fiorina; it would be nice to have both in Washington.

Unfortunately there is a third candidate, Chuck DeVore, exactly the sort of ideological purist I have been criticizing for weakening the party. I hope he is resoundingly rejected by California Republicans this coming week. (Latest polls show that he will be -- they show him getting around 15% of the vote.)


Kentucky already has had its primary, with Ron Paul's son, Rand Paul, getting a surprisingly strong win. While Rand Paul is not exactly an ideological clone of his father, they are not too different. And while Ron Paul is such an extreme libertarian that I'd be hard pressed to support him for the Presidency, I think his being in the House of Representatives as one of 435 is a good thing, as it gives libertarian ideas some exposure. And I think his son will serve the same purpose in the Senate. If the senate can have an openly avowed Socialist (Bernie Sanders), why not a far-out libertarian? It would be a good thing, I think, if Kentucky puts him in the Senate in the November election.

Israel under attack -- by words as well as weapons

The Israelis recently attacked a ship bringing stuff to Gaza, and were condemned for it. Oh come now... what do you expect?

Israel, the only free country in the Middle East, has enemies all over the world. At least when George W. Bush was president, the US was its friend. But not with Barack Obama. The Obama administration, through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called the Israeli blockade of Gaza "unsustainable and unacceptable." In other words, the US government wants Israel to just lean back and let Hamas do its best to destroy Israel.


Christian countries can do whatever they want. Moslem countries can do whatever they want -- no matter what people say about Ahmedinejad, nobody really does anything to stop him. But let Israel engage in self-defense, in the face of a Hamas regime in Gaza that has its mind set on destroying Israel, and it is "unsustainable and unacceptable." My loyalty is to the US; I'm a citizen of this nation. But I cannot defend the position of the US government here, nor of such "friendly" governments as most of the ones in Europe. If they were under the same kind of attack as Israel is from Hamas, I'm sure they'd do at least as much as the Israelis did.

End of the line for Arlen Specter, but for moderation as well?

It looks as though Joseph Sestak has beaten Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. And this follows Specter's becoming a Democrat to avoid being defeated by Pat Toomey in a Republican primary. I'm not happy, though obviously if I lived in Pennsylvania it would bring some relief, as I'd have a tough choice in November if I'd lived there and Specter had won. For on many issues I agreed with Specter, but I could not be very comfortable with supporting a Democrat who would vote for Harry Reid's leadership in the Senate.

What really hurts is that Specter, when he was a moderate Republican, was almost my ideal Senator. And seeing that he left the party because he could not win the Republican nomination, and yet, with all his support from both sides in Pensylvania, he could not win the Democratic nomination either, makes me wonder: Is there any place in American politics for someone who is not an extremist? I hope so, but it certainly seems grim. Charlie Crist, in Florida, had to run as an independent; he may be popular enough to win that way; independents rarely do, but Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and Lowell Weicker and Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut have done so. (Though it was years ago for some of these; have things changed?)

I hope that this trend toward extremism can be reversed; I'm not sure my hope will be fulfilled, however.

Elena Kagan

The battle lines seem to be drawn for President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan for the Stevens seat on the Supreme Court. She is, clearly, a different sort of nominee from what we have had recently; the first nominee who was not a sitting judge for many years. Whether this is good or bad is unclear to me; I've generally believed that relevant experience is important, and if I were President I certainly would not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who was not an experienced appellate court judge. But some people have made the point that a greater diversity of backgrounds might be a good idea. I'm certainly willing to see this tried.

Of course, conservatives are up in arms about Kagan, because her actions as a law school dean were very liberal (people especially point to her barring military recruiters from the Harvard Law School campus over their "don't ask — don't tell" policy). I probably would be too, if it weren't for the fact that it is Justice Stevens whose seat is being filled.

As I posted a while ago, Justice Stevens has been one of the most liberal ones on the Court. So the court's composition is not going to change that much by her being put on it. The only point some people have made that warrants looking at is that Kagan has had a great ability to convince others of the reasonability of her arguments, and they fear she will do the same. But can they really think that Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito are so weak in their convictions that a Justice Kagan could convince them to change? I do not believe so!

Then there are the allegations that she is a Lesbian. To that I say "if so, so what?" If there is anything that should be irrelevant to this question, this is it! However, of course, there are the so-called "social conservatives," who are so afraid of a "gay agenda" to undermine what they consider our moral fiber that this troubles them. Actually, if she is in fact gay, this might be a point in her favor. The idea that homosexuality is a terrible thing perhaps still needs to be dispelled. But it seems that she really isn't. The real problem is that those "social conservatives," by raising this issue, are creating a diversion from real issues — but then, their whole focus is on trying to force-feed their own (anti-gay) agenda on the American people. So let's forget about that issue.

So, opposed as I am to Obama's hyper-liberalism, I would probably vote (if I were a Senator) to confirm Elena Kagan's nomination. Save the fight for the next Supreme Court vacancy.

The new British Government

Britain now has a Prime Minister: David Cameron. It took a while, though less time, of course, than it took in 2000 for us to verify the election of a President. But I still think we do things better.

At least Nicholas Clegg, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, did the honorable thing. He had said that if one party got both a majority of seats and a majority of votes, it had the right to try to form a Government. And the party that did, of course, was Cameron’s Conservative Party, So Clegg was right to accept Cameron’s offer of a coalition. But Cameron was forced to accept the idea of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, though his membership mostly opposes coalition-building with that party. Yet, a coalition is the only way the Conservatives could have a stable government, with majority support in the House of Commons.

But the British Liberal Democrats, it appears, are rather further to the left than the German Free Democratic Party (FDP), so there is more political distance between them and the Conservatives than between Germany’s FDP and Christian Democratic Union (CDU). So while CDU-FDP coalitions have been common in Germany, this will be a difficult coalition to maintain. I suspect there will be another election soon.

And this is one more thing I do not like about the British system. Unlike ours, it depends on a monolithic uniformity of each party’s votes in the House of Commons. While Susan Collins and Richard Shelby both call themselves Republicans (and Bart Stupak and Nancy Pelosi both call themselves Democrats), they are free to vote their conscience and if they differ, no new elections are necessary, in the British system if the Conservative leadership decides the party’s members of Commons should vote a certain way, they all do, whatever the members may think. (I would hate to be an MP in Britain.) And if the Conservative and Liberal Democratic leadership have a falling-out, there will need to be a new British election.

Nobody knows how long this coalition will last. Coalitions, outside of the two World Wars, have never existed in Britain. And this is another problem with the British system. You have to expect that an election could be called at any time. So there is a permanent campaign in Britain. Each of the parties will be trying to position itself for the next election.