For the time being, I’ll be posting …

… at the Denver Post Editorial Page blog found here .

Fun at the DNC

A good choice for McCain’s VP
In Denver, the end of capitalism
Oh, if only she had been the one

Posts on the Denver Post-Ed Notes blog.

Seattle it’s not

The threat of violent protests at the Democratic National Convention was a topic of endless discussion here in Denver leading up to the DNC. There were city council meetings, lawsuits, hand wringing and secret detentions centers (otherwise known as Gitmo on the Platte). Yet, up to this point, it seems, all of it was an overreaction to a clever public relations campaign waged by a handful of “anarchist” groups.

Protestors have numbered in the hundreds — at the largest demonstrations — rather than the anticipated tens of thousands. And protestors have generally been peaceful and predictably incoherent.

Good fortune for me, though. On my way to the Pepsi Center — a compound protestors can’t see much less yell at — I happen to run into some real live Communists. They had temporarily shut down the shuttle on 16th street (the pedestrian tourist mall downtown) until cops showed up on horseback to lead them away from the fragile psyches of the delegates. This harmless demonstration was indicative of others, with a potpourri of causes to choose from: Cures not Wars, free the Cuban Five and don’t lay a finger on Mumia Abu-Jamal (”Fire in the Sky if Mumia dies”.)

(Warning! Amateur videographer at work.)

Biden on Haditha

In June 2006, straight-talking Joe Biden went on Meet the Press and demanded accountability from the administration for the so-called Haditha massacre. Biden spoke about the incident as if the accused marines were guilty (before a trial) and called on the administration to proceed — and to be treated — as if there were a cover-up at the highest levels of government.

Well, it turned out Biden was wrong about Haditha. Eight of the Marines charged for the “massacre” and “coverup” have already been exonerated. (One case is still pending.)

RUSSERT: Let me ask you a last question on Iraq about Haditha and some of the other alleged atrocities. The fact is, our government knew about that for some time. How high up the chain, based on your information, do you think this goes?

SEN. BIDEN: The secretary of defense.

MR. RUSSERT: And what should be done?

SEN. BIDEN: He should be gone. He shouldn’t be in his office tomorrow morning. But I’m so tired of saying this on your show. I’ve been saying this for two years.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, the president knew about it in March.

SEN. BIDEN: Well, we can’t get rid of the president. He’s there for two and a half more years. There is a system of accountability. The system of accountability is, it used to be a gentlemanly thing, as they say, when you make serious mistakes, you step forward and you acknowledge them and you walk away. Presidents can’t and shouldn’t do that. Secretaries of defense can and should.

Maybe Biden was right about Rumsfeld. I’m not on the Foreign Relations Committee nor do I profess any special knowledge about the tactics of war or strategic blunders of rebuilding a nation. I leave Biden to pretend to know about those areas. But shouldn’t a veteran senator, supposedly renowned for his gravitas and understanding of the world stage, at the very least, caution us to wait for an investigation and trial of the Haditha Marines before jumping to a politically expedient conclusion?

So will Biden take his own advice and apologize to those eight marines?

On Biden …

… Slate’s Mickey Kaus nails it:

Biden: Maybe when I get to Denver I’ll find someone who’ll explain to me why Biden is an inspired choice. He doesn’t have gravitas. He has seniority. We’ve been waiting for him to mature for decades. Only Chuck Hagel (his chief competitor as Sunday morning gasbag) could make him look wise.

Also, I’ve read numerous articles stressing Biden’s Roman Catholicism. Isn’t John Kerry a Catholic, as well? A pro-choice Catholic is going to have little sway among believers who take the abortion issue seriously.

(Tough guy Biden once said: “The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious, I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat.” Gravitas. Perhaps Biden can use the rosary to count assaults rather than Hail Marys?)

Shouldn’t we be promoting literacy?

As Instapundit might say: They told us when Bush became president Americans would be arrested for reading. And they were right!

A Wisconsin woman was handcuffed by cops, “perp-walked down her parents’ suburban driveway and hustled into a waiting cruiser - all because she hadn’t returned two library books or paid the library’s $38 fine.”

The two books: “Angels and Demons” and “White Oleander.”

“It’s all my fault,” she said. “I should have paid the fines. I don’t know why I didn’t.

“But I do think the whole handcuffing thing was a little extreme,” she chuckled.

It’s nice to see the young lady taking personal responsibility.

Here is a case for lifting library fines completely.

And from a 2005 column, my case against the modern library.

Imagine, if you will …

… the reaction from Democrats if a Republicans had nominated a vice presidential candidate who called Barack Obama “the first mainstream African American [presidential candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Or said this: “I’ve had a great relationship [with Indian Americans]. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

Joe Biden is the owner of both those comments.

Biden isn’t a racist, of course, he just talks a lot. Still, Obama made the safe pick, as he’s done throughout his career.Though Biden only further erodes the perception that Obama is a candidate of transcendent “change.”

Update: The spin on Biden’s gaffes has already started. Racially-insensitive comments are, naturally, an underlying “strength.” Now, I happen to agree that our hyper-sensitivity is a barrier to that honest discussion everyone is supposed to be having about race. But I wonder if we will ever hear similar adulation for the “strength” of Trent Lott? (good riddance)

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom frames the double standard perfectly:

All of which points back to the animating tenet in “liberal” ideology — namely, that, simply by virtue of adopting the left-liberal agenda, one is good, and so his “mistakes” are but minor slip-ups, hiccups in a life of sublime goodliness. Whereas any kind of minor slip-up by those on the “right” (classical liberals included, these days) are to be seen as brief inadvertent flashes revealing their grubby souls —

In other news, dreams of a “unity” blowout are being shelved.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has put the brakes on ads that were running in seven states carried by the GOP in the 2004 presidential election, FOX News has learned.

Of the seven states — including Alaska, Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota — Florida and Virginia are considered key battlegrounds this year. Obama’s decision to stop advertising in those states is raising eyebrows.

It seems that 2008 is looking more like 2004 and 2000 every day. A closely divided nation.

Government experiments in health care

Back in January 2007, I wrote a column taking Colorado legislators to task for sponsoring a bill that would have forced parents of girls 12 and older to either vaccinate their daughters with a HPV “vaccine” or “opt out.” Social conservatives argued that the bill would lead to promiscuous behavior in children. My concerns were different.

Not only is this bill an invasion of privacy and an implicit endorsement of the vaccine, the law has the potential to encourage many parents to give the vaccine to their children without educating themselves properly beforehand.

After all, shouldn’t parents “opt in” instead of being forced to “opt out”? Trust me, if in 10 years we learn that the HPV vaccine causes toe cancer, not a single lawmaker will be held responsible.

The same bill had been peddled in states across the nation. The reason I mention my column (which isn’t online anymore), is that I remember receiving a rather large number of angry emails and calls. One nurse practitioner, in an agitated letter that ran in the Denver Post, scolded me: “We have the potential to drastically reduce the incidence of cancer with the introduction of the HPV vaccine. To cloak this discussion in the “government forcefeeding parents” debate is an affront to the health and well-being of the public.”

How could I oppose the HPV drug? Did I hate children? (Well, some children.) Was I willing to put the lives of these poor creatures at risk for an ideology? The answer, of course, is yes. Freedom and choice is an ideology worth risking lives over. But, even more than that, there was no convincing proof that HPV vaccines were effective. Nor did we know enough about the side effects. Individuals, I argued, with detailed knowledge of their own situation, will, on the whole, make smarter and healthier choices for their children than detached government officials.

Now, the New York Times runs a story titles “Researchers Question Wide Use of HPV Vaccines.” The article quotes two New England Journal of Medicine articles that conclude, the “Two vaccines against cervical cancer are being widely used without sufficient evidence about whether they are worth their high cost or even whether they will effectively stop women from getting the disease …”

So will all those states that endorsed these vaccines through legislation now “educate” parents about the potential pitfalls? Highly unlikely.

No such thing as a tax break

A quick note on a politically convenient phrase: “tax break.”

According to the Left, and some on the Right, when the “rich” are paying the same tax rates as the middle class, they are being given a “tax break.” Obama’s new spot claims that McCain’s tax plan will give corporations $200 billion in “tax breaks” and oil companies $4 billion in “tax breaks” (which, in reality, means less taxes for the consumers — but that’s an entirely different story).

Whether you believe in progressive taxation or not, there is no such thing as a tax break. There is only the taking of taxes by the government — most often through coercion. There is no static rate of taxation that allows us to measure who is getting a “break” and who is paying a “fair share.” In fact, it’s not a “break” to keep your own money or the profit you generate.

(Plus: Clarifying the ridiculous GOA claim that two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.)

Back where we started

A new Reuters/Zogby poll – most polls show a tightening in the race– have Republican John McCain opening a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama. More strikingly, the poll suggests that likely voters see McCain as a “stronger manager of the economy.”

McCain now has a 9-point edge, 49 percent to 40 percent, over Obama on the critical question of who would be the best manager of the economy — an issue nearly half of voters said was their top concern in the November 4 presidential election.

With the overblown worries about the economy, fueled by the media’s incessant negativity, these numbers are somewhat surprising. Perhaps citizens inherently understand that more income redistribution, punitive taxes on industry and the investor class and a fantasyland energy policy that relies on taxpayer subsidized windmills and Everlasting Gobstoppers will only exacerbate the situation.

Zogby also points out that many of Obama’s equivocations and policy realignments are hurting him with the liberal base:

Obama’s support among Democrats fell 9 percentage points this month to 74 percent, while McCain has the backing of 81 percent of Republicans. Support for Obama, an Illinois senator, fell 12 percentage points among liberals, with 10 percent of liberals still undecided compared to 9 percent of conservatives.

All this is awfully reminiscent of 2004 and 2000. Just maybe, despite all the excitement surrounding Obama’s allegedly transcendent candidacy, we are exactly where we were the past two presidential contests.

But let’s not read too much into polls, especially national polls. First of all, states matter: Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and maybe Virginia. Second, we will likely see a big shift after the Democratic Party convention next week. Or, Obama should hope we do.

(Cross-posted Post Op-Ed Notes)

The Casey Defense

UPDATE: I erred below in stating that Casey was the “home-state” Governor at the 1992 convention. The convention was in New York. That mistake does not change the fact that Casey was denied a speaking role at the DNC because of his views on abortion.

In fact, here is a link to a 2000 story by Nat Hentoff in the New Republic, which includes a portion of a letter from Ron Brown, chief 1992 convention organizer. Responding to Casey’s request to speak at the convention, Brown wrote: “Your views are out of line with those of most Americans.”

I’ve received a number of emails from readers about a comment in my column today regarding the widely known and accepted fact that then Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey was denied a featured speaking role at the 1992 convention because of his pro-life positions. Then I saw Colorado Media Matters regurgitated the same misleading talking points.

To claim Casey was denied a role for his opinion is a “falsehood,” asserts CMM, because convention organizers and various Democratic Party and Clinton Administration flacks tell us so. And political flacks would never mislead the press, of course. (I wonder if we should give Ari Fleischer the same historical deference?)

Media Matters also makes another irrelevant point: there were other anti-abortion rights speakers at the convention. Yes. So what? None of those speakers broached the topic of abortion and Casey had promised he would. (A point that actually makes the case that Casey was censored even stronger.) Moreover, the home-state Governor is almost always offered a major speaking role at the convention, so everyone understood what was going on.

Casey thought he was censored. And here Kevin Drum, a liberal journalist for the progressive Washington Monthly magazine, offered an excellent rundown in 2005 (emphasis mine):

In fact, Casey’s abortion stand was so universally understood to be the real reason he wasn’t allowed to speak that most news stories barely even mentioned it. What’s more, Democrats widely seemed to accept this as well:

July 13, CNN, Rep. David McCurdy: “It’s clear they [Clinton and Gore] have a message that wants to — that they want to have come out of this convention. It’s a mainstream message….And I think a little toughness is in order.”

July 13, CNN, Gov. Ann Richards: “It’s a matter of timing and giving everybody equal opportunity. What would you do if you say to one person on your issue, and you didn’t come before any of the committees ahead of time, you get up and we’re going to allow you to make a five minute speech. Then, how are you going to turn down any of the hundreds of people that might want to get up and make a speech? And it’s just a practical matter. It really isn’t a big deal.”

July 15, Daily Oklahoman: Asked why Casey was not allowed to speak, [James] Carville said, “The convention schedule is set. The Democrats of the country have spoken as to the direction they want the country to go,” he said in defending refusal to deviate from Clinton’s agenda.

July 15, CBS This Morning, Bob Beckel: “It’s going to do a — take a lot to repair the damage there, I think. So they could have treated Casey better but don’t underestimate — the Democrats are not going to try to fudge it on this issue. You’ve got to be choice on this issue.”

July 16, CNN, Gov. Roy Romer: “There’s a process. We went through the process. Governor Casey had a full hearing. The majority of the Democrats didn’t buy his position. I respect him very much, but there is no slight to Governor Casey.”

Looks like lots of Democrats were also perpetuating falsehoods. Drumm offers many other examples.

This Casey rehabilitation is an organized effort to re-work history and the image of the party among social conservatives. The memo is out.

One could argue, I suppose, that the Casey incident is up for debate. But to claim this aside in the column is a “falsehood” is a stretch, even for folks who are always stretching.

Note: I am pro-choice. I also believe Democrats have every right to include speakers that adhere to the platform. Republicans certainly do not feature speeches advocating for Planned Parenthood, so I’m not sure why Democrats should have featured a Casey speech on abortion.

Union sellout in Colorado

For the slither of American “working” men and women who belong to unions (because if you’re not in a union you’re not working, apparently) there is some good news from Colorado: According to Ben DeGrow of the Independence Institute, “As of today, the entirety of Colorado state government is officially unionized.”

How do they do it? First, Democratic Governor Bill Ritter signed an executive order (”state employee partnerships”) last year rather than allowing a debate in the legislature or bringing the issue to the people. Then, 7,669 workers imposed unionization and so-called “protections” on 24,305 workers who didn’t vote for it.

Presto, the state of Colorado is ready for the Democratic National Convention.

Soon they’ll be even more to celebrate. In the Senate, there is a bill co-sponsored by Barack Obama that would give unions the right to organize workers without a secret election — Soviet style — called, laughably enough, the Employee Free Choice Act*.

Those who believe in individual liberty, meritocracy and free markets need not fret, too much, however. Unions can slip through as many quasi-authoritarian laws as they want.
Few people want, or, perhaps the more precise word is care, about unions. A mere 7.5 percent of private sector workers belong to unions. How many of those workers are in states that allow “union shops” and would quit if they could, who knows?

Coincidentally, today Steven Malanga points out today, union-backed state legislation is often a burden to state economies.

States with the friendliest and most pro-union legislation, including elaborate prevailing wage laws, haven’t fared very well. In California, which not only has some of the most detailed statewide laws protecting unions as well as dozens of local ordinances in left-leaning municipalities, the portion of the construction industry that’s unionized has slumped in 25 years to 17 percent from 41 percent. In New Jersey, where union-friendly legislators have made it a felony for a company to violate prevailing wage laws (in most states it’s a civil violation publishable by fines), union rates in construction are down to 23 percent of all workers, from 38 percent.

Sounds delightful, doesn’t it, Governor?

*And as David Freddoso reminds me, liberal icon George McGovern has come out strongly against the “Employee Free Choice Act.”

“Like being governed by Maude Flanders”

Olaf Tyaransen seems like my sort of fellow. And since he mentions my book in his Dublin Herald.ie column — “Don’t get me started: Drinking is what we do … and it’ll take more than restricting alcohol sales to change that” — I will admit to a tinge of jealousy, as well. In his piece, Olaf describes invasive government officials as “unutterably useless gobshites.” Poetry. I wasn’t even sure what a gobshite was until I looked it up. And I’m relatively certain gobshite would be swiftly rejected by my editor. Oh well.

Apparently, some Irish officials have cracked down on “binge” drinking, happy hours and so forth … in other words joy and freedom.

With a recession just getting into full swing, what’s wrong with giving cash-strapped citizens the opportunity to save a few quid when they’re out drowning their miseries?

Amen.

The War on Drugs, or Canines, or whatever

When Mayor Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Maryland got home from a long day of work he was provided a first-hand lesson on drug war tactics. After bringing in a package addressed to his wife and laying it on his kitchen table, “police with guns drawn kicked in the door and stormed in, shooting to death the couple’s two dogs and seizing the unopened package.”

After they murdered his two dogs, Calvo was handcuffed for two hours in his boxer shorts because officers didn’t believe he was the mayor. Ouch.

Calvo insisted the couple’s two black Labradors were gentle creatures and said police apparently killed them “for sport,” gunning down one of them as it was running away.

“Our dogs were our children,” said the 37-year-old Calvo. “They were the reason we bought this house because it had a big yard for them to run in.”

Perhaps we should be grateful that officers didn’t shoot any real children.

Equal Time?

According to Drudge, an editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the New York Times, though the paper published an essay written by Barack Obama just last week.

‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

Now, I don’t think it bodes well for any paper to play these sorts of games, but I also don’t see anything particularly infuriating about the Times denying a candidate space on its page. It’s the paper’s prerogative, after all.

Politically, though, this double standard will serve McCain well. The conservative base has no interest in reading what the candidate says about Iraq in a New York Times op-ed. But the base can now be appropriately infuriated with the liberal New York Times, which denied a Republican candidate the chance to write an op-ed on Iraq that the base wasn’t going to read anyway. There’s a huge difference.

The original McCain essay can be found here (scroll down.)

(Cross-posted Post-Ed Blog)

These folks are scientists, right?

On the same day that Al Gore delivered one of the most "ridiculous" speeches of his career, The American Physical Society, an organization representing 50,000 physicists, reversed* begun to debate its stance on climate change and is now claiming that many of its members do not believe in human-induced global warming theory.

APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling.

A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate. Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

I guess the debate about the anthropological warming isn’t over yet. Though I’m sure one of these guys has gotten a coupon from "Big Oil" so we can dismiss the whole thing.

UPDATE: The Daily Tech piece was somewhat misleading. A reader pointed out to me that it is "APS Forum on Physics and Society," that is sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. So members, not APS leadership, have challenged the APS’s official position, which has not changed. It doesn’t change the fact that debate is ongoing but it is an important distinction that should be noted by those emailing and posting this story.

The Colorado Model

I had the pleasure of meeting the Fred Barnes, executive editor of Weekly Standard and Fox News personality, a couple of weeks ago when he was visiting Denver for the Independence Institute’s sixth annual Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Party. (Which was somewhat anti-climatic considering Fred doesn’t drink, smoke or shoot.)

Barnes spent some time hanging around Colorado. And here is his cover story assessing the state’s political situation.

The Democratic surge in Colorado reflects the national trend, but it involves a great deal more. There’s something unique going on in Colorado that, if copied in other states, has the potential to produce sweeping Democratic gains nationwide. That something is the “Colorado Model,” and it’s certain to be a major topic of discussion when Democrats convene in Denver in the last week of August for their national convention.

It’s a worthwhile read even for those who understand the dynamics of Colorado politics. But if you happen to be a member of the state’s shrinking Republican Party, it’s sure to be sobering.

(Cross-posted Post-Ed Notes.)

Addendum to Ramsey column

I’ve received a ton of responses to Thursday’s column which focused on the despicable behavior of Boulder DA Mary Lacy and her dubious “clearing” and apology to the Ramseys. Around 75 percent of the emails and calls I received were supportive.

In a world crawling with batty conspiracy theorists, I ran across a particularly mind-numbing post by a fringy blowhard named “Dr. Sammy“. It’s a nearly unreadable tirade full of ad hominem attacks and baseless assertions.

The only reason I mention “Dr. Sammy” is that he, like others who are emotionally invested in seeing the Ramseys cleared, have held up the work of Professor Michael Tracey as the exemplar of fairness and professionalism in the Ramsey case. Yes, the same Michael Tracey brought us the mentally unstable John Mark Karr as the fall guy on his never-ending crusade to exonerate the Ramseys. For more on Tracey, read Alan Prendergast and Michael Roberts in Westword.

I don’t know Tracey personally, though I may have met him at some point, and he may be the finest professor in Colorado. What I do know, however, is that his actions during the Karr fiasco disqualify him from being the go-to guy on the topic.

To be frank, the rehashing of the JonBenet case is, for the most part, a worthless endeavor. (One commenter on the DPO claims that I have, like radio talk show host Peter Boyles, been “harping” on this topic for years. I’m not sure what Peter has done; I wasn’t here. But in approximately 400+ columns I’ve written for the Post since 2004, I’ve editorialized on the case twice. Once when Karr was brought in and once on Thursday.)

The focus here is Mary Lacy’s irresponsible, unprofessional and hypocritical behavior. For anyone who still doubts Lacy’s breathtaking incompetence, peruse these quotes from a piece by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, who was an investigative reporter on the case. (Yes, I realize Shapiro has his own bias, but the Lacy quotes speak for themselves.)

In 2006, after Lacy extradited John Mark Karr, an otherwise innocent man, from Thailand, to erroneously charge him with the murder, she announced: “The DNA could be an artifact. It isn’t necessarily the killer’s. There’s a probability that it’s the killer’s. But it could be something else.

And …

In fact, during the Karr debacle, Lacy also said that “no one is really cleared of a homicide until there’s a conviction in court, beyond a reasonable doubt. And I don’t think you will get any prosecutor, unless they were present with the person at the time of the crime, to clear someone.

What has changed for Lacy? If she didn’t know then that the DNA was the killer’s, how does she know it now? If DNA was there, finding a trace amount in another spot doesn’t change any facts. Nor does it “clear” the Ramseys.

(Cross-posted on Post-Ed Notes.)

Drew Carey on paternalism

Be a patriot! Get a job

From my new column on the meaning of patriotism:

“Loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the Fourth of July,” Barack Obama explained to a crowd in Colorado Springs this week. “Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it.”

Yes. He said must.