The Rule of Rules
February 18, 2009
In this TED Talk, Barry Schwartz speaks on a society gone over the edge with regulations, and the ethical nature of autonomy.
It is easy to fall into the habit of seeing the populace as a conglomerate of ignorant sheep, and there is some truth to it. As a group we consistently make poor decisions, but the group is made up of individuals. They have their failings, but most of them get up every morning and go to work. When faced with decisions in their daily lives, they tend to make good ones. They share your outrage over the state of the system. It isn’t until they are corralled and herded through all the little reverberating insurance policies against litigation that most of their decisions tend to be bad ones. We haven’t added rules over the years because people have become less upstanding, people have become less upstanding because society has increasingly suppressed their spirit of ingenuity and drive with devices designed to take all of the rewards in order to ensure that no risks are taken. We now reap what we have sown. Fear of innovation. Bloated government, a litigious populace, listless children, high taxes, and low-flow toilets.
Dirty Politcs by the Obama Administration?
February 17, 2009
In this interview Ron Paul talks a bit about the stimulus bill, and the process by which it was introduced. Ron Paul is an honest guy, so I’ll take him at his word until I see strong evidence otherwise. Obama made a campaign promise to publish all legislation five days ahead of time to allow congress and the public to peruse it. He didn’t do this for the stimulus. It could be argued that the stimulus is an emergency measure and should be exempt, but he also didn’t do this for children’s health insurance, which was hardly an emergency since it doesn’t kick in until mid-year. But this was more than a simple broken campaign promise; according to Ron Paul, the bill wasn’t revealed until the midnight before the vote, and was 1,000 pages. This was made worse by making only five hard copies available, which seems to me to be a clear tactic to prevent the opposition from being able to work together to get it read and discussed before the vote. Lets get this info out to the public at large. I want to see either a denial, an explanation, or a loss of credibility over of this one. If it is true, it is disappointing.
Ball Back in Obama’s Court on Gitmo Tribunals
February 1, 2009
The chief judge at the Guantanamo Bay war crimes court Thursday rejected President Obama’s request to halt the prosecution of terrorism suspects. Obama had made a request rather than an order. The judge does have a lot of jurisdiction here, but I can’t imagine it holding up if Obama really pushed. I don’t really see the judges rejection of a request like this from the commander in chief as defensible. This could get interesting. There is a full and well written report on the issue over at the LA. times.
Extraordinary Rendition
February 1, 2009
Under the Bush administration, the CIA began a practice of nabbing people off of the streets all over the world. They would be stripped, drugged, and flown via secret flights to secret locations, often allegedly chosen because of their lax laws on torture and interrogation. They were mistreated and interrogated, all without accusation, trial, or notification to either the country they were stolen from or their families. Many were released after years of torture without so much as an official accusation or apology.
Barack Obama has been conspicuously silent about the practice. He created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they “do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture”, but has otherwise taken no action to ban the practice. The L.A. Times cites an anonymous source within the Obama administration as saying, “The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”.
At some point things like this have to fall under some sort of oversight. The danger of knowledge of capture affecting results is a short term one. Once an individual is noticed as missing, any organization they belong to would act under the assumption of capture. The risk of corruption that inevitably follows government unaccountability is then the greater threat. I could support the practice under very short term conditions. I can’t see holding anyone or more than a week without at least notification to their country of origin. Obama has banned torture and closed Gitmo. He has some credibility on the subject with me, but I’m going to be watching this one closely. I’ll update this post as more becomes available.
Keith Olbermann on Torture
January 17, 2009
I know, there is something wrong with posting Pat Buchanan and Keith Olbermann videos back to back, but as an extremophile, I find both of them more palatable than the center.
Olberman is speaking here about the exit of Bush and the confirmation hearings for Barack Obama’s choice to head the Justice Dept, Eric Holder. Holder is asked whether he believes waterboarding is torture.
I take the position that if we prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding as a war crime, then we can’t just decide to do it ourselves as if it is ok, without any previous public discussion.
The whole Jack Bauer argument is ludicrous. If anyone were in such a position, they wouldn’t hold back over legalities, they would take whatever action was necessary and damn the consequences. If they prevented a major terrorist attack, they would be pardoned. Laws don’t prevent things from happening, they merely provide consequences.
Jonathan Turley also has a great quote in this: “There is a big difference between criminalizing policies, and a policy of crimes” Bush should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, not for the things he did, but for trying to destroy the evidence that he did them.