The repercussions of a recent New York Times article about how the Pentagon manipulated the American media have begun to be felt in the foreign press.

Serge Truffaut writes for Montreal’s Le Devoir,

“The old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth” is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect Read the rest of this entry »

Today Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert kicks off his Pennsylvania coverage with a guest: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. But is this symbolic for Campaign 2008 and journalism’s future? What’s the most effective way to deliver news to people on the Internet and to appeal to younger American voters? Video and web producer Joe Windish. offers this compelling original interview on the decline of traditional news an across-the-generations political information delivery system and the ascent of vehicles such as Comedy Central’s news-based comedy shows:

Stephen Colbert: A Media Maestro Plays Philly

by Joe Windish

The New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story this weekend was The Aria of Chris Matthews. Released to the web last Tuesday, bloggers had been baffled by it all week. Even Mark Leibovich, who wrote the story, noted that “three network officials asked me why I was writing about Matthews and not [Keith] Olbermann.”

The gist of the piece was that Matthews is an anachronism likely to be downsized when his $5 million a year contract is up next year. MSNBC’s now betting on Olbermann and David Gregory. Why the paper of record deemed it necessary to devote 8,000 words to that observation, I’ll never know.

Meanwhile, the whole way these guys are playing the cable news game seems a little passé to me. The big questions today are: how are we going to profitably port news over to the Internet, and how are we going to make it appealing to a younger demographic? Indications are that by either of these measures the leader in the cable news game right now is in not to be found at NBC, CNN, or FOX.

The hands-down champ is Comedy Central, whose Daily Show and Colbert Report have been playing by the fast and loose rules of comedy to beat journalism at the news game as far back as Indecision 2000. Since then Jon Stewart’s won two Peabody Awards for his election coverage, and he was joined just last week by Stephen Colbert when The Colbert Report won a Peabody of its own.

Today Stephen Colbert and his 80 staffers kick off a week of Colbert Report coverage of the Pennsylvania Primary from the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. As it happens, Chris Matthews, a Philadelphia native, is slated to be Stephen’s first guest.

To put all of this into perspective, I called up Dr. Robert J. Thompson, Professor of Television and Popular Culture and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

I first heard Bob speak on Radio Open Source after Colbert’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech. I first interviewed him after Colbert’s outstanding program on the WGA strike. We spoke again by phone last week:

JW: You’ve referred to comedy as The Fifth Estate. Can you explain?

BT: I started calling comedy the 5th Estate to keep the 4th Estate of journalism in check several years ago… I think this whole notion of comedy as the Fifth Estate really, in many ways, is more important in these new shows that are actually doing parodies of news shows because it’s the idea that the Fourth Estate is keeping those first three in check. The idea of what’s going on in Colbert and The Daily Show and even some of what Saturday Night Live and shows like that, is that it’s not only dealing with the political issues but it is dealing with the way in which the mainstream news operations are covering the issues.

Let’s take, for example, the classic example of what Jon Stewart did in the lead up to the war, when he was really examining that issue in a way that a lot of reporters were not for fear of being called unpatriotic and all the rest of it. The whole Dixie Chicks phenomenon. I think there Jon Stewart was a lone voice crying in the wilderness that this was the stuff that ought to be covered. And he was really making fun of – with evidence, showed the clip and that kind of thing – of how this was being inadequately covered by the traditional journalist operation. So there, I think, what Jon Stewart was doing was a really important message about the lead up to the war, but about the way it was being inadequately covered.

JW: What’s your take on Colbert’s Peabody?

BT: Certainly the Peabody is another feather in the cap of respectability that Comedy Central’s hour-long block in late night television has been garnering. That Peabody just goes on the mantelpiece right next to the invitation to speak at the Washington Correspondents Association Dinner, and all kinds of other things that have just been being heaped upon these shows. So, the Peabody is another example of how these late night comedy shows that Comedy Central are doing are really being taken very seriously by a whole range of people… Now we should remember that it also says something about the Peabody Awards. The Peabody Awards are one of my favorite of the awards given because they really don’t operate on the traditional criteria of what we think would be good. Let’s remember that Colbert got a Peabody I believe at the same time that Project Runway got a Peabody. Project Runway is not the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth estate! However, it’s a really good show and I think it deserved its Peabody as did Colbert, but for different reasons. When you think of when Comedy Central first started, and when you think of a lot of the other shows that are on Comedy Central, and you think of how Colbert does that whole act when he dances across the stage when he’s about to interview someone, it’s really pleasing to think that this is now the Peabody Award winning Stephen Colbert!

JW: Colbert is a really tough interview. There’s not a lot of fluff on his show. He brings on hugely complex topics and seems to help his interviewees make their point. And the arc of the show through a season is almost like a college course, he is educating his audience. I come away blown away sometimes. It seems like to me a very high-brow news show. Bring me back to earth Bob.
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On the occasion of the release of a Human Rights Watch report on the subject of “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners to Jordan, for detention, interrogation, and torture, in the course of the “war on terror,” I thank Team TMV for letting me bring you this installment in my ongoing series of interviews with knowledgeable players in “the war on terror,” and particularly American detention policy. I am particularly privileged to bring you this interview with Joanne Mariner, one of the most knowledgable people in the world on the subject of human rights abuses in the course of counter-terrorism.

Joanne is the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program Director at Human Rights Watch. She has worked on a wide variety of issues for the organization, documenting war crimes in Colombia, Kosovo and Darfur, political violence in Haiti, and the interface between terrorism and the laws of war, among others. Ms. Mariner is a regular contributor to “FindLaw’s Writ” and has written numerous articles on these subjects. On April 7, 2008, I had the privilege of interviewing Ms. Mariner by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, corrected as appropriate by Ms. Mariner.

The Talking Dog: The traditional first question, all the more compelling since you, like me, work in a New York skyscraper, where were you on September 11th?

Joanne Mariner: I do, and did, work in the Empire State Building, but I wasn’t yet at work that morning. I had a journalist friend visiting from out of town; someone had told her that something was happening at the World Trade Center: we went outside and we could see it from there.

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In this Guest Voice post, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Bill Steigerwald interviews Howard Fineman, the veteran Newsweek senior political correspondent/columnist and NBC analyst.

Hillary’s Last Chance — Interview With Howard Fineman

by Bill Steigerwald

With fresh polls showing Hillary Clinton’s huge lead over Barack Obama shrinking in the Pennsylvania primary, it was time to pick the politically savvy brain of Pittsburgh native Howard Fineman. The veteran Newsweek senior political correspondent/columnist and NBC analyst happened to be in New York City when I talked to him by telephone April 3. But he’s been busy studying Pennsylvania’s latest poll results, talking to party insiders in Pittsburgh and Philly and interviewing likely Democrat voters:

Q: With Obama making up so much ground here, is the Democrats’ primary effectively over for Hillary Clinton?

A: The chances are dwindling. I wouldn’t say they are over. Especially in politics, you are always reluctant to say “never” and to write a full conclusion on things. But it’s fading rapidly unless she can pull off a big victory in Pennsylvania — and the “big” part of it is looking less likely.

Q: New polls today show Obama actually leading. Do you have a sense of what’s happening?
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The women’s vote has been one of the biggest battlegrounds between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their battle for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. This Guest Voice post which blends original reporting and analysis is by NYU journalism student and writer Sophie Gilbert:

Who’s more of a feminist? Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama?

By Sophie Gilbert

Who’s more of a feminist? Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama?

This is the unexpected question dividing women as the race for the democratic nomination drags on to the bitter end. On one side, Feminists For Barack Obama. Almost 2000 noted feminists, including women’s rights historians Linda Gordon and Alice Kessler Harris, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt and author/activist Ellen Bravo have pledged their support for the Illinois Senator.

But Hillary’s not exactly being spurned by the Big Girls either. She’s received endorsements from some of the Grande Dames of feminism: Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Gloria Feldt. Steinem’s op-ed in the New York Times, “Women Are Never Front-Runners,” has proved almost as divisive as the race itself. It’s deeply troubling. As feminists, don’t we all have a common goal?

Maybe we don’t. Katha Pollitt, like many of her peers, was originally rooting for Edwards, even though she admits she doesn’t particularly like him. “The interesting question is, why isn’t every woman on earth for Hillary?” says Pollitt. “But why should they be? I think Hillary has done a B/B+ job for women. She’s been good on feminist issues but she hasn’t been great on them.”

The debate really got going in February, when 150 New York feminists signed a petition endorsing Barack Obama. “War and peace are as much “women’s issues” as health, the environment and the achievement of educational and occupational equality,” said the statement, the first official declaration that feminists didn’t have to support Clinton. But why not? The overwhelming majority of feminists for Obama cite not only Hillary Clinton’s initial vote in favor of the war as their main objection to her, but beyond that, her subsequent refusal to admit that it was a bad decision.

“It wasn’t just a vote,” says Ellen Bravo. “It was a couple of years of vigorous support and many speeches. I felt Obama on the other hand took a stand when it was unpopular, at a time when it could have cost him. That gave me more confidence about his judgment.”

“New York Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama” rapidly attracted media attention, and was opened up for feminists across the country to sign: people who resented the mainstream media’s assumption that all women, by virtue of their gender, supported the female candidate. “I think it’s very important not to fall into the identity politics trap,” says Linda Gordon, women’s rights historian, and one of the authors of the petition. “We shouldn’t think that the body people inhabit is the most important thing about their political identity. A lot of very conservative and extremely anti-feminist women have been elected to office. Look at Margaret Thatcher.”
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I have been a co-blogger at The Moderate Voice for nearly three years now. After alcohol and cigarettes, I found blogging to be highly addictive. I gave up smoking two years ago (one addicition at a time please!!!) and have heavily reduced my intake of alcohol. My wife/mother ensure that I have meals at the right time, and begin to howl in protest when I am at the computer for more than three hours at a stretch.

Thus, I remain a “healthy” blogger because I am under watch at home (and have not much time when I am travelling on professional assignments). A recent NYT story informs us that the bloggers are toiling “under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.”

The NYT goes on: “They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home. Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

“Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.”

More here…

I have never been (alas!) paid for my posts (and hence look for other work avenues for survival), I can understand the compulsions of other bloggers who have to keep hunting for, and then retaining, a position by working 24/7.

To me blogging is a pure joy. I have been a working journalist for most of my life but now find that the mainstream media has undergone a sea change, and those who learnt the professional nuances in the pre-1980 era have little opportunity to contribute. I and Joe Gandelman, editor-in-chief of this blog, began our mainstream journalism career almost at the same time and worked in New Delhi in the early 1970s.

I had almost begun to feel left out three years ago in the absence of a platform to write. By sheer chance I revived contact with Joe in the US. Joe motivated me to get back to writing…and got me out of my “writer’s block”. So in this way blogs can get people out of stress and listlessness. In fact one can make a contribution towards public good too…so long blogging does not become an addicition. And your entire life is not dependent on this activity…

PS: Maybe the governments should insist on warning signs on all blogs (as on cigarette packets) that “blogging for more than two/three hours at a stretch is dangerous for health”.

[For more blog reaction to this story GO HERE.]

[First, I apologize for my long absence (well, a few days). I covered a conference called Women, Action & the Media at MIT last weekend and am still catching up.]

Because, you know, having men and women trained to do that with ordinary weapons isn’t working out so well.

Read the article from Wired here and the 2006 report here.

From the report, highighted by the magazine article:

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence… to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.

And, the most favoritist part:

There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the control of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down. As has been the case with many such sites, the offending site will likely move to a different host server, often in a third country. Moreover, such action will likely produce even more interest in the site and its contents. Also, taking down a site that is known to pass enemy EEIs (essential elements of information) and that gives us their key messages denies us a valuable information source. This is not to say that once the information passed becomes redundant or is superseded by a better source that the site should be taken down. At that point the enemy blog might be used covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. Better yet, if the blogger happens to be passing enemy communications and logistics data, the information content could be corrupted. If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and either take down the site (and the blogger) themselves, or by threatening such action, give the U.S. an opportunity to offer the individual amnesty in exchange for information. (emphasis in the original)

Here’s the U.S. military’s disclaimer about the report (from the Wired article):

Lt. Commander Marc Boyd, a U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman, says the report was merely an academic exercise. “The comments are not ‘actionable’, merely thought provoking,” he tells Danger Room. “The views expressed in the article publication are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, USSOCOM [Special Operations Command], or the Joint Special Operations University.”

Which begs the question,”So how much did we taxpayers pay for this here merely thought provoking academic exercise?”

I guess they haven’t heard about the Pollara report that says bloggers don’t really influence anyway, they are just a source of information.

And we wonder about stalking, cyberbullying and third graders getting it in their heads to injure teachers?

Hey - there’s an idea. Maybe the military should recruit third graders.

Sigh. There are some very sick people governing some other very sick people.

Oh no. One of the report’s co-authors? Dorothy Denning? Was the chair of my alma mater Georgetown’s Computer Science department in the 1990s. Jeez. On the other hand, maybe we’ll get lucky and she’s as unique as Patrick Ewing.

Okay - you know what? I’m not being very nice here. I’m going to e-mail Professor Denning and see if she will speak with me. Otherwise, I’m being as bad as everyone else who I also think of as being bad.

Update: the e-mail to Professor Denning has been sent. I’ll let you know what I hear.

Updatex2: I will be conducting a phone interview with Prof. Denning tomorrow. Much thanks to her for being so open to it.

The e-mails, phone calls - robo and live, invites and blogs are buzzing through every inch of available space, cyber and otherwise, in Ohio right now. In the last two hours alone I’ve received information about Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Jewish community in Northeast Ohio, I was called by a live (as opposed to recorded) Hillary Clinton supporter about attending a rally tomorrow at a local high school and I’m gathering information for a fellow blogger coming into Cincinnati soon, from California, who may drop in on some campaign events.

And there’s still 19 days before Ohio’s primary on March 4.

For those who are curious, the NBC debate - the one that seemed to be in jeopardy because of MSNBC’s David Shuster “pimped out” comment regarding Chelsea Clinton’s activities on behalf of her mother’s campaign - will occur. Tickets are being issued by lottery to Cleveland State University students only, but students, faculty and staff can volunteer. Hardball will be broadcasting all day from an adjacent location with a different sign-up for tickets process, and information on press credentials has yet to be released.

Here are on the ground reports by Ohioans about the campaign events so far:

Scott Piepho reviews Chelsea speaking to students at the University of Akron, 2/14 (with photos)

Annie at The Chief Source describes the same event (with photos)

Eric Vessels gives his account of the Obama organizational meeting in Columbus last night (2/13) (with photos)

Jen at Democratic Underground describes the Obama organizational event in Cincinnati, 2/13

Man with the Muck-rake was at the Obama HQ opening event in Toledo, also on 2/13

For a population that was convinced as recently as the first week of January that Ohio wouldn’t make a difference, we are mostly very glad that we didn’t kowtow and change our primary date.

[I continue my series of interviews with some of the most interesting thinkers of our time with John Byrne Cooke. Mr. Cooke wrote the book on the subject of the history of reporting of America’s wars from the Revolution to the so-called war on terror and how the press has interacted with government efforts aimed at suppressing or censoring it over the course of our history. The full interview follows below, after the jump, and is also cross-posted at the talking dog. As always, thanks to Joe and Team TMV for the opportunity to present these interviews here.]

John Byrne Cooke, a graduate of Harvard College and son of legendary
journalist Alistair Cooke, is the author of a number of historical novels, articles and other media. His latest book is Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War on Terrorism. Reporting the War was described by former Cox Newspapers war correspondent Joseph Albright as “a definitive and compelling account of the evolving struggle between a free press and censorious officialdom,” and documents the issue of press freedom and press performance over wars ranging from the American Revolution to the “War on Terror”. On January 21, 2008, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Cooke by telephone; what follows are my interview notes, corrected as appropriate by Mr. Cooke.

The Talking Dog: My usual first question is where were you on September 11th?” [I ask because my office then was, and now is (they are different offices, btw) about one city block from the WTC; the 9-11 question is certainly relevant to the subject matter of your book.]

John Byrne Cooke: I was at home in Jackson Hole, WY. I came downstairs just before 8:00 a.m. and turned on the radio, which was set to NPR’s Morning Edition. There was something odd in the announcer’s tone — He was talking about the “situation in New York City,” when he should have been wrapping up to prepare for news on the hour.

I turned on the television, just in time to either see the first tower fall, or possibly the very first replay of the first tower falling, and from then on I was glued to the television. Because I was so far from New York and my calls
weren’t being routed through switching exchanges near the city, I could call my father in Manhattan and my stepmother in Long Island, but they couldn’t reach each other, so I was acting as a messenger between them, and my sister in Montpelier in Vermont. My father was in New York, at 96th and 5th Avenue.

We all remember the events of that day vividly, the way those old enough remember about JFK’s assassination, or where they were when they first
heard about Pearl Harbor. Although I saw it on television, as a New Yorker, it was certainly something that hit me as very real and personal. I was in New York within three weeks, and we visited “Ground Zero”, when the fences were covered with pictures of “the missing”, who were not, of course, missing, but just gone.

This was a magnitude of shock to the United States that I don’t believe we ever experienced before. In my view, this was much more like the JFK assassination than like Pearl Harbor — a big part of the shock was that it happened here, within the United States proper, like the JFK Assassination. Somehow we were attacked here, in downtown New York, and Washington. Three thousand people gone, in a matter of an hour or so. Nothing quite like it had ever happened before.
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William F. Buckley Jr., the leading political and cultural symbol of American conservatism for almost 50 years, is universally credited with godfathering the ideological revolution that carried Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980. Author, lecturer, debater and host of “Firing Line” on PBS from 1966 to 1999, Buckley founded National Review magazine in 1955 and turned it into the country’s leading conservative journal of opinion. He retired as its active editor in 1990, but his syndicated newspaper column, “On the Right,” which he began in 1962, continues to appear twice a week. He’s also written 10 novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Bill Steigerwald talked to the erudite, always-gracious 1991 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient — who turns 82 this coming Saturday (Nov. 24) — by telephone on Nov. 14 from his home in Stamford, Conn. This is the interview’s full text:

Q: What’s become of the conservative revolution that you fathered 50-some years ago?
A: Well, all revolutions have to either keep moving or else be consolidated. Ours is a little bit of each. I think that there is less appetite now, or patience, for revolutionary dogmas of the kind that all Europe and America faced right after the world war. That is an aspect of a revolution that has been consummated. It doesn’t mean that it mightn’t reawaken but, in fact, it has not yet. So we cay say that’s what happened to that revolution — we won.

Q: Do you feel today that that revolution peaked with Ronald Reagan?
A: Yes, I think it did. Viewed as a straight political trajectory, that, in my judgment, would be correct: It peaked in 1980.

Q: Can you give us a concise definition of conservatism?
A: Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition.
Now this leaves room, of course, for deposition, and there is deposition — the Civil War being the most monstrous account. But it also urges a kind of loyalty that breeds a devotion to those ideals sufficient to surmount the current crisis. When the Soviet Union challenged America and our set of loyalties, it did so at gunpoint. It became necessary at a certain point to show them our clenched fist and advise them that we were not going to deal lightly with our primal commitment to preserve those loyalties. That’s the most general definition of conservatism.

Q: In American politics, in the day-to-day political struggle, what is conservatism? How does it manifest itself?
A: I think it manifests itself at different levels. It is more provoked by Soviet challenges than it is by challenges in trivial quarters by local school teachers. People always continue to ask themselves are they furthering the cause of conservatism by accepting this quarrel or that quarrel and inevitably we reach a situation -– especially because of the politicization of our culture -– in which it’s impossible absolutely to say whether John Jones by voting Democratic is manifestly entitled to the gratitude of conservatives rather than if he had voted Republican. So there is that diffusion and the difficulty in concentrating in a few words all the ideals involved.
Much depends, of course, on the emphasis that is placed on them, so that all of that must be kept in mind. I thought it was awfully well done by Russell Kirk in his book “What is Conservatism?,” which I thoroughly recommend.

Q: Is Russell Kirk spinning in his grave at what passes for conservatism today?
A: I don’t know what you have reference to. There’s a lot of fanciful ideologizing which he would not approve of but I don’t think of him as spinning in the grave as a result of particular irritations.

Q: Which politician best exemplifies conservatism in America today?
A: Well, I don’t know more about that than you do. All I can say is that the people who write for National Review, year in, year out, in my judgment, are conservatives leading a useful and creative life. To mention them individually wouldn’t do anything other than to distract from the search you are undertaking.

Q: Book publisher Henry Regnery once said, “Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma, and conservatives inherit from Burke a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the times.”
A: I agree with the last part of what you just said, but I’ve forgotten what the first part was.

Q: That “conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma” …
A: I agree, I agree. It is not.

Q: Yet it does have certain tenets that can’t be thrown overboard. Is that true?
A: Yeah. It is difficult to imagine a regnant conservatism which authorized random mercy killing.
Or for that matter, the taking of life lightly. But there are permutations there. Some conservatives are against capital punishment; others are not. But I think both would agree that conservatism would frown on a flippant attitude toward life which allowed capital punishment to proceed at other than a grave level of investigation.

Q: When you look at the current state of conservatism, do you see the sun rising or the sun setting?
A: We’ve accomplished an enormous amount historically in the last 50 years. We emerged from the Second World War gravely threatened at many levels; threatened by a kind of an attitudinal socialism, which I think we have fought through successfully; and of course by huge, direct political talent — and a lot of tributary talent, as in Europe and so on and so forth — over these (threats) we have prevailed.

There is no Soviet threat. There is no tidal demand for a change in government of a kind that would ignore human rights and private property rights. A lot of problems continue — education primary among them, the allocation of resources. But the fact of the matter is that what we have accomplished is signal, important and enduring and under those circumstances, conservatives can legitimately take some pride in what has happened.

Q: Is there any single biggest or single worst mistake that conservatives have committed in the last 20 years that you really, really wish had not happened?
A: That’s an interesting question. Let me, if I may, proceed with a question and take one step at a higher level of political discourse. Anything that seeks to propound the theory of equality other than in the eyes of God is, in my judgment, unnatural. So that any emphasis that’s put on equality that defies a general intelligence makes a mistake on the altar of that equality which is injurious.

If you say, “Give me an example of where that happened,” you would turn to such matters as required graduation in the high schools based on one’s commitment to equality; that would be a mistake. There’s such a variety of those, it’s hard to single one out as the principal offender.

Q: The prefix “neo” being placed in front of the word “conservative” has given conservatism quite a different spin. Many old-time or traditional conservatives are not too happy with the idea that the United States is trying to spread democracy around the world a la Woodrow Wilson, as is going on in Iraq. Is that something conservatives can be blamed for or is that something that is not conservative in nature?
A: I think it’s the latter. Conservatives can be blamed to the extent that they are thought of having acquiesced in that definition of their goal in a free society. But it has been by no means unanimous in the belief that conservatism consists in that kind of evangelistic extreme.
There are people whom I enormously admire, as perhaps you do, who take a pretty Wilsonian view about the responsibility of states like ours vis-a-vis states that simply reject learning that we consider to be primary, that’s true.

But I don’t think that the existence of the neoconservative movement has the effect of vitiating legitimate conservatism — or even of putting such pressure on traditional conservatives as to feel that they are missing a great historical tide.

Some people that I very much respect, like (Weekly Standard editor) Bill Kristol, disagree with me on that, but there we are.

Q: You’ve said that President Bush is not a true conservative -– if that’s a fair repeating of what you said — primarily because of intervention in Iraq and his extravagant domestic spending.
A: I have distinguished in the past between somebody who “is conservative” and somebody who is “a conservative.”

By somebody who is “a conservative,” I’m referring to people like Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, the totality of whose respect for those ideals is such as to say they are guided by them. But if you say of someone, “Well, he’s ‘conservative,’ ” by no means could it be said that he is guided by conservative lodestars. That would include President Eisenhower and President Bush.

In the matter of the incumbent Bush, the challenge is very keen because of the central role that Iraq is playing. It’s a challenge not only in that we are being asked to turn toward neoconservatism in our foreign policy but also in that the acid test is coming in an area of the world in which we haven’t, in my judgment, devised an arresting and persuasive stance. We don’t really know whether Islam is a consolidated challenge to Western Christianity and, as such, we haven’t, in my judgment, come up with the persuasive weaponry with which to press our own field and deny theirs.

Q: Has conservatism made a bargain with the state or with government power that it should not have made over the last 50 years? Has conservatism forgotten the message of Albert J. Nock’s seminal book, “Our Enemy, the State”?
A: The answer is, “Yes, it has.” Accommodations have been made, the consequences of which we have yet to pay for. Albert J. Nock, although he could express himself fanatically on these subjects, would certainly have pronounced these as major, major mistakes. So, the answer to your question is, indeed those excesses have been engaged in and they affect the probity of the conservative faith.

Q: You know who Ron Paul is — the congressman. He’s derided and discounted by many conservatives and his fellow Republicans as a kook. Yet his strong stands in favor of limited constitutional government, lower taxes, more personal freedoms and nonintervention overseas make him in many ways sound like a conservative of old — a Robert Taft, or a Coolidge kind of conservative in some ways.
A: I agree, yeah.

Q: Is he getting a bum rap? Read the rest of this entry »

[And so I continue my series of posts, as usual, cross-posted to the talking dog, where I interview, among others, lawyers for those men unfortunate enough to have become guests of the United States at its tropical resort/ maximum security prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The current interview subject, Prof. Martha Rayner of Fordham University Law School, is paradigmatic of much of our government’s policy at GTMO. She represents five detainees (whom we are told by the Bush Administration are the “worst of the worst”); and yet, the military has released three of her clients to their home countries, and the remaining two will likely be released not based on any assessment of their guilt or innocence to terrorism charges or an assessment of any “threat” they might pose, but on the basis of the political will of their home countries to insist on their return. In short, arbitrariness appears to be the hallmark of most aspects of GTMO. Whether or not one agrees or disagrees with Prof. Rayner’s viewpoint, you are sure to learn new information from the interview, information that our celebrity-obsessed commercial media has little or no interest in you receiving. The entire interview and links to the other thirty-five interviews in this series follow below after the jump.]

Martha Rayner is Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International Justice Clinic at Fordham University School of Law in New York, and is counsel to five men who have been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or “GTMO” (three of whom have been released to their home countries). On November 5, 2007, I had the privilege of interviewing Professor Rayner by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, corrected where appropriate by Professor Rayner.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on September 11th?

Martha Rayner: I was in New York City (I live on the Upper West Side). I just dropped off my kids at school; someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I went home to see what was happening on television. I saw the second tower hit, and the rest, as they say, is history. We put up friends who couldn’t get home to Queens that day, as the subways, of course, were closed. I remember the sea of people walking north, away from the Towers, away from the smoke. My partner was in the Bronx far away from danger, but I was greatly relieved when he made his way home by foot.

The Talking Dog: Can you identify your clients, their nationality, and their location (e.g. “released to Yemen”, “Camp 6 GTMO”, or whatever the applicable answer is), and can you tell me your personal impression of them as individuals? Have you met any of their family members?

Martha Rayner: The clinic has represented five clients over the years. One was released in May, 2006, to Saudi Arabia, Saleh al-Khatemi, who I understand is no longer in Saudi custody. We only met him once before he was released. Another Saudi, Fahd al Fawzan was released in September of this year, and he is in Saudi custody, in their “re-education program.” We are optimistic he will be released within six months. We met Mr. Al-Fawzan’s cousin in Bahrain (an island nation just 15 miles off the coast of Saudi Arabia). A third client, Ali Mohammed Nasser Mohammed, was released to Yemen at the end of September. He is currently in Yemen’s Political Security prison. We met Ali’s family when we were in the capital of Yemen, Sana’a, this year.

We have two clients still held at Guantanamo, Sanad Al-Kazimi of Yemen, who is held at Camp 6, and Mohammed Al-Shimrani of Saudi Arabia who is imprisoned at Camp 1. Neither has been designated as “approved for release,” though that could happen at any point without me or my clients being notified. We’ve met with Mr. Al-Kazimi’s family and other American lawyers met with Mr. Al-Shimrani’s family.

Making and maintaining contact with our clients’ families is very important since they cannot visit their loved one (only the Australian, David Hicks—now repatriated—has been allowed a family visit) and mail is heavily censored and sporadic. Information about the status and future prospects of their loved ones is so limited that we feel an obligation to focus on communicating with family members.

The International Justice Clinic’s clients are all unique individuals—each quite different in their own way, with different personalities and views of their situation. This perspective is often overlooked because the military portrays our clients as a unified group of men with a common ideology. The fact that our clients are all Muslims means they share a religion, but they each have a unique world view.

Read the rest of this entry »

[This is cross-posted at the talking dog. The interview below is with Angela Campbell, an attorney who has represented Guantanamo detainees. Interestingly, her clients have been “released” from Guantanamo, although one has left the frying pan of Guantanamo and gone into the fire of a maximum security prison facility under American control in Afghanistan; Ms. Campbell does not even know the whereabouts of her other three clients, who were released before she even had a chance to meet them. Whether you agree with her perspective or not, Ms. Campbell addresses some extremely serious issues concerning some of the key issues raised in the war on terror, particularly, the scope of executive power. The purpose of these interviews is to take you to where our commercial media has no interest in going: to the front lines of battles being fought by courageous lawyers over the issue that goes to the very essence of our republic, i.e., whether our “leaders” are really, in fact, ultimately answerable to us and to the law, as our servants, or not. I hope you find this interview of interest; the interview follows in full after the jump, and the other 33 interviews in this series are linked to at the end of the post.]

Angela Campbell is a partner at the law firm of Dickey & Campbell in Des Moines, Iowa, and previously served as an attorney with the Office of the Federal Defender in Iowa. Ms. Campbell represented four Afghan nationals previously detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one of whom was released approximately two weeks ago. On October 12, 2007, I had the privilege of speaking with Ms. Campbell by telephone. My interview notes, as corrected by Ms. Campbell, are below.

The Talking Dog Where were you on 11 September 2001?

Angela Campbell: At the time that the planes crashed, I was in a Boston College Law School Class for Section 1983 prisoners rights. I lived about 6 blocks from where some of the 9-11 terrorists did in Chestnut Hill, Mass.; my brother was in Brooklyn, and watched the towers fall from there. I recall Boston shutting down on 9-11– no cars, and no airplanes except fighter jets. It is ironic, as it turns out, that at that moment, I was in a class on prisoners rights issues!

The Talking Dog Please identify your clients by name, nationality, and their current location (e.g., “released to Afghanistan”, etc.). Please tell me something briefly about your clients, or any impressions they have made upon you, impressions their family made on you, and, to the extent possible, can you tell me what it is our government accuses them of doing? Please tell me your personal impressions of the people and environment you have encountered at Guantanamo Bay. Also, please tell me your impressions of the people and environment you encountered when you traveled to Afghanistan, and anything else of note about that trip.

Read the rest of this entry »

For most of them, they aren’t far away from home.

Yet, they’re a world away.

Some of the adults look stunned. And some of the kids look overwhelmed.

You can see literally thousands of them here in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, the 71,500 seat football stadium that normally hosts happier events, such as San Diego Chargers football games and rock concerts.

But this time the massive stadium built 40 years ago isn’t hosting boisterous, tailgating, sometimes combative Chargers fans. Now, it’s a makeshift refuge for San Diegans of all income levels and all religious, ethnic nationalities and political persuasions — and of all ages.

This time, the stadium’s 18,500 parking spaces aren’t dotted with fired-up people “tailgating” by grilling hotdogs and hamburgers but with fire-chased people — some of them with uneasy looking displaced pets. These people sit in beach chairs next to cars filled to the brims, or under canopies of two person tents sleeping bags.

This time, it isn’t friends who come over to the people in these spaces to playfully steal a beer but volunteers of all ages including diligent San Diego teens handing out coloring books, canned food, water and offering news on cots that’ll be available later in the night. This time, the uniformed people aren’t stadium security people but tirelessly working National Guardsmen unloading huge bags of food, used clothing, emergency bedding and other supplies from big trucks.

TO READ THE FULL POST GO HERE

In an implied rebuke to junk journalism, a rich California couple is underwriting investigative reporters to give away their work to mainstream media. It won’t work.

Acting in a free-lance role, a nonprofit organization, Pro Publica, will offer long-term projects to uncover misdeeds in government, business and organizations on an exclusive basis for newspapers, magazines or other media outlets.

To start, their offers won’t thrill thin-skinned editors. Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, is quoted as being “open to using work from an outside source, assuming we were confident of its quality,” but adding that “we’ll always have a preference for work we can vouch for ourselves.”

Beyond that hurdle is the fact that the backers are Herbert and Marion Sandler, former chief executives of Golden West Financial Corporation, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, who are major Democratic political donors and critics of President Bush.

Pro Publica will be staffed by distinguished journalists, but even so, how will it overcome the long-standing prejudice against outsourcing the search for truth along with the current climate of distrust over ulterior motives?

Over eighty years ago, in “Public Opinion,” Walter Lippmann wrote that journalism suffers from “the failure of self-governing people to transcend their casual experience and their prejudice by inventing, creating and organizing a machinery of knowledge.” He proposed that social institutions use reason and intelligence to “work by a steady light of their own” so that journalists could concentrate on amplifying and transmitting that light to the public.

Now we have machineries of knowledge, but their aim is to hide the truth. If the Sandlers want to use their money to remedy that, it might be better spent training motivated poor kids to become journalists with the now outdated ambition to do good rather than do well.

Cross-posted from my blog.

[This is cross-posted to the talking dog. Regardless of one’s political background or viewpoint, American detention policy and practice in the so-called “war on terror” is one of the biggest stories of our time. And yet, this story continues to receive far less media coverage than does trivial celebrity gossip. For my part, I continue to seek out relevant players who can knowledgably comment on this field, and am delighted that so many are willing to talk to me. A veritable treasure trove of information is available from detainees’ lawyers, though this treasure trove is by and large ignored by our paid commercial media. Whether you agree or disagree with what Messrs. Truitt and Carpenter have to say, there is no doubt that you will learn something from reading what they have to say. What they have to say is important, if not critically important to the future of this country. The interview follows, in its entirety after the jump. Continued thanks to Joe and the TMV team for letting me post these interviews here, and thanks to you all for your interest in them.]

Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter are attorneys at the Washington, DC office of the firm of Pepper Hamilton (Mr. Truitt is now retired), and are counsel to three detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (one of whom was recently released). On October 9, 2007, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Truitt and Mr. Carpenter by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, corrected as appropriate by Messrs. Truitt and Carpenter.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on 11 September 2001?

Stephen Truitt: I was in or near our law firm’s office, which is near the Treasury Building, around 200 yards from the White House, which was believed to have been a target. From the top floor of our office building, you have a good view of the Pentagon. There was also a view of the beginnings of a major traffic jam. I got to the roof to see things burning at the Pentagon. The skies were eerily empty, and were that way for weeks (rather than the usual plane landing at Reagan National every 30 seconds or so). And then the traffic jam ensued that reminded me only of the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, by comparison. I came to work on a motorcycle, and could get back to where I was going the same way– often by going on sidewalks. The government simultaneously announced that bridges would be closed, but then told everyone to leave work, a particular problem for people who needed to cross into Virginia, not a small number in Washington.

Charles Carpenter: I was also in the office, and at one point in the morning, when the fourth plane was still believed at large (though it had by then crashed), a public address announcement told us to go to a shelter in the 4th level subbasement. We didn’t think this was a good idea, and a small group of us went on foot. While we considered rumors of the metro closed, a colleague who had lived in Tokyo during the sarin attacks by the Aum Shinrikyo cult there suggested we not take the subway under these circumstances. We walked several miles to a colleague’s house, and eventually, drove home from there.

The Talking Dog: Please identify your clients by name, nationality, and their current location (e.g., “Guantanamo Bay, Camp 6″, “released to Saudi Arabia”, etc.)

Stephen Truitt: We had one client who discharged us, Al Oteibi from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who was released about a month ago. Next is Abdullah from Yemen, who is in Camp 6, GTMO. The third is Maher el Falesteny, which means “from Palestine”, who has lived in Jordan and elsewhere, though he has no nationality or papers (and hence no country to say it will take him right now); he has been “cleared for release” since February as representing “no threat” to the United States or its allies. We are still wondering where he will go, given that he has never had nationality papers in his life. He presents a challenge to find a place for him, as he’d likely be at risk if he went to some of the likeliest places he might be sent. We have hoped to find a place for him in Serbia, perhaps, which has a Muslim population, and where we have connections with a local lawyer versed in Serbian asylum law and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees practices.

A little something about Abdullah–he is a small man, he listens well, like most of the prisoners he is quite religious, and surprisingly, laughs a fair amount despite the grave cruelties of his detention. While he believes lawyers are good to meet (perhaps to break up the monotony of his detention) he believes that his ultimate release will come not through us, but from Allah.

Charles Carpenter: He allows us to entertain our delusions that we can help him. He respectfully listens to our discussion of the evolution of the law, and he asks intelligent questions. He smiles, and allows us to play out what he believes is a game. The proof of the efficacy of our legal strategy is in the pudding — he is still imprisoned, as are other prisoners who have “won” cases in the US legal system.

Stephen Truitt: And Al Falesteny in his mid-40’s; he has a full beard, and is very intense. He is extremely bright… I remember one incident he relayed where he had been asked to take a lie detector test, but after suggesting he’d only agree if he was asked ten questions to which only he knew the truth or falsity of so he could test the reliability of the lie detector, the interrogators backed down.

Charles Carpenter: As to the Saudi client who discharged us, he made it clear that it was “nothing personal”– I spoke to him recently, and he reiterated what he had said a year before, that he wanted no affirmative involvement in his captivity whatsoever, even participating in the American legal system which he believed acted to legitimate his illegitimate detention; I suppose you could say this is the equivalent of going limp or standing mute. He simply did not want to participate affirmatively in his own captivity. Perhaps one cannot argue with his approach, as he has been sent home before our other clients. As far as we know he is still in captivity in Saudi Arabia, but part of the rehabilitation program they have there, which includes, I understand, visits with family members.
Read the rest of this entry »

A Conversation with Dr. Jack Kornfield, American Buddhist Teacher trained in Thailand, Burma and India…on Burma, Buddhism, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and non-violence.

Kornfield is one of the foremost teachers of Theravada Buddhism in the West. He was trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India (He is on the far right in the photo). He graduated from Dartmouth in 1967, joined the Peace Corps in Public Health Service in northeast Thailand, home to some of the last forest monasteries of Buddhist monks and nuns.

There Buddhist master Ajahn Chah became his teacher for many years. Returning to the United States, Kornfield took a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and became a founding teacher of the Buddhist Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California.

I met Jack some years ago when we were both teaching at a symposium in D.C. His father suddenly took a turn for the worse, and Jack was called away. I joined in teaching Jack’s group in order to help, and we have had a friendship since then.

Now 62 years old, he is a soft spoken, devout man with a secular sense of humor lurking beneath the surface, a wonderful trait in a religious. He meets yearly with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and has published twenty books.

Here is a part of our conversation from October 9, 2007, about the use of violence against violence; the potential use of violence to effect change in Burma… from one man’s deeply Buddhist point of view.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés: “Jack, Buddhists often seem simpatico with others I grew up amongst and admired; Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Dunkards, priests, brothers and nuns of The Holy Cross … most all being people who often managed to act calmly in helping to aright injustices in the midst of mayhem all around. It’s one thing to be calm in a peaceful mountain monastery, and quite another to act calmly on a festering street corner in East L.A.

“But, right now, looking between the worlds at the murderous mayhems of our times, many hearts are breaking for the millionth time, Jack, and this time, it’s Burma again. On the newsblog I write for, Themoderatevoice.com, some thoughtful commenters have said, amongst other cogent ideas, that the Burmese monks and nuns perhaps ought arm themselves and overtake the junta.

“As an old believer, I know a literal warrior pledges to strive to act with courage in the face of scorn, ridicule and aggression… but not to act in violence. Yet, I know there are warrior traditions in my faiths, amongst them, the Knights, and that there is a warrior-monk tradition in Buddhism from times of old too, as amongst some of the Samurai. Neither of these ancient traditions are portrayed well in modern works, seeming instead to have been severed from their mystical underpinnings…

“… But, thinking of the Burmese again, can holy monks and nuns arm themselves in aggression? Can this be integrated somehow in the non-violent heart of Buddhism?”

Jack Kornfield: ”I’d tell you a story about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. A group of young Tibetans came to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. They told him they were very distraught by the suffering of the Tibetans, and thought they should go back into Tibet armed. They said, We have lost temples, nuns, monks, our culture. We want Stinger missiles for we have nomads who know the mountains and the Chinese don’t know our mountains, and we can launch from there.

“The Dalai Lama put his head in his hands and wept. He reminded them of the Buddhist precept of no killing, no harming living beings, the precept the Dalai Lama has taught all his life as the incarnate head of Buddhism. His Holiness told the young Tibetans, I don’t know if I have done the right thing; but I’ll step down if I have done it wrong. If I believed I have taught untruth, I would resign.

“I’ll tell you another story. We have in our history as Buddhists, many times of being treated unjustly… Yet, I knew Maha Ghosananda, the holy man of Cambodia. After Pol Pot, one-third of the population of Cambodia was massacred. Ninety-five percent of the monks and nuns were felled.

“We were in Thailand at the time, and traveled to where refugees were from Cambodia. And Maha Ghosananda came as the elder to the refugee camps, and he asked permission from UN to reopen a Buddhist temple right there in the camps.

“It was dangerous to do. The Khmer Rouge were underground in the refugee camps. The KR said to the refugees, You go to this man, this ceremony, and we will kill you later.

“But, there in the midst of thousands and thousands of tiny bamboo huts, Maha Ghosananda rang a sacred bell.

“25,000 refugees came; the ones who’d’ had their village temples burned, the ones who’d survived the murders by the Khmer Rouge of their elders, their children, their sisters, brothers, parents, so that now a family was one grandparent and two children left, or one uncle and one niece, left.

“Mahan Ghosananda chanted in Cambodian and Sanskrit, chanting from the Dhammapada, that Hatred never ceases by hatred, that hatred is conquered by love, that this is the ancient and eternal law…

“25 thousand Cambodians who had not heard the holy scripture aloud in years, were chanting and weeping. Read the rest of this entry »

[This is cross-posted to “the talking dog”. Larry Sabato of “crystal ball” fame is frequently quoted here on TMV, and is widely regarded as one of the most quoted professors in America for his prowess at political prognostication. Larry recently wrote a book on proposals for changing our Constitution, and he was kind enough to answer my questions by e-mail, and as always, Joe is kind enough to let me post this interview here. Joe also gave me some helpful hints on some questions for Larry. Regardless of your political viewpoint, everyone reading this here at TMV should find something of interest in this interview. I hope you find it interesting, anyway. The interview is below, and continues in its entirety after the jump.]

Larry Sabato is the founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Professor Sabato has appeared on national television and radio programs including 60 Minutes, Today, Hardball, and Nightline. A Rhodes scholar, he received his doctorate in politics from Oxford, and has been at UVA since 1978. In 2002, the University of Virginia gave him its highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award. Professor Sabato has written numerous articles and twenty books, most recently “A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country“. On October 3, 2007, I had the privilege of interviewing Professor Sabato by e-mail exchange.

The Talking Dog: My customary first question is “where were you on September 11, 2001″?

Larry Sabato: I was in my office preparing for my very first politics seminar of the new semester. It was one of the only classes I have ever canceled in my 29 years of college teaching.

The Talking Dog: Following on the 9-11 theme, let me jump right in with one of the key structural suggestions you make in your book, i.e., limiting the President’s war making powers and requiring regular Congressional action to permit the continuation of such war making… Your book, of course, notes the natural tension between a deliberation oriented legislature and an action oriented executive in war powers… That said, do you have any doubt that in the national post 9-11 shock, helped by a surprisingly lazy media and weak willed opposition party– do you have any doubt that the last 4 or 5 years re: our now widely-regarded-as-disastrous invasion of Iraq would not have gone down almost exactly the same way, even with the suggestions you make on war powers limitation (for example, Congress would have to face the same issue of “political courage” to continue such a war that the current one faces on funding votes right now… even under the current Constitution, Congress can stop paying for the war and end it that way)? In other words, would you not agree that while structure is important, ultimately, enough people can fall down on the job so that even the soundest structure can collapse?

Larry Sabato: Some have suggested that the better way to end a war like Vietnam or Iraq is simply to have Congress stop the funding of it. But both Vietnam and Iraq prove why this is very difficult to achieve. It becomes a question of “supporting the troops” rather than “supporting the war.” So many Congressmen and Senators who have doubts about a particular war nonetheless continue to vote for the appropriations, lest they be accused of not supplying troops with the best equipment, protection, etc. It was precisely this set of experiences that caused me to come up with a completely new and creative solution.

For those who haven’t read the book, A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country, or seen the website, the short version is this: both the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts have illustrated a modern imbalance in the constitutional power to wage war. Once Congress consented to these wars, presidents were able to continue them for many years–long after popular support had drastically declined. A possible change is to limit the president’s war-making authority by creating a provision that requires Congress to vote affirmatively every six months to continue American military involvement. Debate in both houses would be limited so that the vote could not be delayed. If either house of Congress voted to end a war, the president would have one year to withdraw all combat troops.

By no means do I intend this as the end of the discussion. Each of my proposals is intended to be the beginning of the debate. There may well be better ways to accomplish the goals I am suggestions than with the proposal that I have outlined. I hope people will go to the website and make their own suggestions. You don’t rush into amending a constitution or holding a constitutional convention; it is a generational process, and indeed, it will be here, if anything actually happens. By the way, while I certainly support change myself, I will be pleased if this book does nothing more than encourage many thousands of Americans to go to their Constitution, read it, and think about it.

The Talking Dog: You note that among the most popular of the constitutional reform proposals you make is the elimination of lifetime tenure for the federal judiciary to be replaced with 15 year terms (presumably per level… i.e., one can serve as a circuit court judge for up to 15 years, and then a Supreme Court judge for up to 15 years) with a maximum retirement age. Let me ask you this… to what extent two particular cases– Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore– have led to the popularity of this view? Given that the stakes of matters entrusted to the courts keep rising in our ever more litigious society– how would you respond to my suggestion (made perhaps because I’m a lawyer), that of all your changes proposed, this court reform proposal alone may be the most critical– as well as the most popular and probably least disruptive of the other branches?

Larry Sabato: Since you are a lawyer, you have clearly picked up on the support that this proposal has been gathering in the legal community. I actually wrote this independently several years ago, but since my first, similar proposals have been published by quite a number of others. I welcome this, obviously. I do agree with you that it could be quite a popular suggestion, and not terribly disruptive for either the executive or the legislature. I hope that people will take a look at the book to see the extended arguments that I make in support of these changes in the courts. A whole series of controversial decisions, including the two you have mentioned, have contributed to the public view of the Supreme Court and the inferior courts as being “super-legislative.” This is not a healthy development for the courts or for the country.
Read the rest of this entry »

The good folks at ImmigrationProf (Kevin Johnson, Bill Hing, and Jennifer Chacon — all professors of law at UC-Davis) have managed to score an exclusive interview with Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, which they will post on Tuesday morning. The questions will be across a range of immigration issues, “including immigration reform, undocumented immigration, family immigration, deportation and immigration raids, local (anti-)immigration ordinances, integration of immigrants into U.S. society, the deaths along the U.S./Mexico border, and his vote in favor of the Secure Fence Act.”

It looks to be very interesting and worth a read when it comes out. So thanks to the ImmigrationProf fellows (and congratulations, on scoring quite the blogosphere coup!).

Via Adrien Wing of BlackProf.

[Hi, there! The blogger known as “the talking dog” here. I recently brought you an