Nouriel Roubini on the Economic Crisis

Here's this from a symposium on the economic crisis presented by The New York Review of Books, "The Crisis and How to Deal with It."

The featured commentators are all liberals (including Bill Bradley, Paul Krugman, and George Soros). I probably wouldn't post them here except Nouriel Roubini's among them. Roubini's been recognized for the predictive accuracy of his economic analysis this last year. He published, "Warning: More Doom Ahead," in the January/February issue of Foreign Policy.

Here's Roubini's comments on the way forward at the NY Books symposium:

It's pretty clear by now that this is the worst financial crisis, economic crisis and recession since the Great Depression. A number of us were worrying about it a while ago. At this point it's becoming conventional wisdom.

The good news is probably that six months ago there was a risk of a near depression, but we have seen very aggressive actions by US policymakers, and around the world. I think the policymakers finally looked into the abyss: they saw that the economy was contracting at a rate of 6 percent–plus in the US and around the world, and decided to use almost all of the weapons in their arsenals. Because of that I think that the risk of a near depression has been somewhat reduced. I don't think that there is zero probability, but most likely we are not going to end up in a near depression.

However, the consensus is now becoming optimistic again and says that we are going to go from minus 6 percent growth to positive growth in the second half of this year, meaning that the recession is going to be over by June. By the fourth quarter of 2009, the consensus estimates that growth is going to be positive, by 2 percent, and next year more than 2 percent. Now, compared to that new consensus among macro forecasters, who got it wrong in the past, my views are much more bearish.

I would agree that the rate of economic contraction is slowing down. But we're still contracting at a pretty fast rate. I see the economy contracting all the way through the end of the year, going from minus 6 to minus 2, not plus 2. And next year the growth of the economy is going to be very slow, 0.5 percent as opposed to the 2 percent–plus predicted by the consensus. Also, the unemployment rate this year is going to be above 10 percent, and is likely to be close to 11 percent next year. Thus, next year is still going to feel like a recession, even if we're technically out of the recession.

The outlook for Europe and Japan, both this year and next year, is even worse. Most of the advanced economies are going to do worse than the United States for a number of reasons, including structural factors in Japan and weak policy response in the case of the Euro zone.

The problems of the financial system are severe. Many banks are still insolvent. If you don't want to end up like Japan with zombie banks, it's better, as Bill Bradley suggested, to do what Sweden did: take over the insolvent banks, clean them up, separate good and bad assets, and sell them back in short order to the private sector.

Now, on the question of policy responses, there is no inconsistency between monetary easing and fiscal easing. Both of them should be stimulating demand, and the monetary easing should be leading also to restoration of credit. Of course, in a situation in which the economy is suffering not just from a lack of liquidity but also problems of solvency and a lack of credit, traditional monetary policy doesn't work as well. You also have to take unconventional monetary actions, and you have to fix the banks. And we need a fiscal stimulus because every component of our economy is sharply falling: consumption, residential investment, nonresidential construction, capital spending, inventories, exports. The only thing that can go up and sustain the economy for the time being is the fiscal spending of the government.

However, fiscal policy cannot resolve problems of credit, and it is not without cost. Over the next few years it's going to add about $9 trillion to the US public debt. Niall Ferguson said it's the end of the age of leverage. It's not really. There is not deleveraging. We have all the liabilities of the household sector, of the banks and financial institutions, of the corporate sectors; and now we've decided to socialize these bad debts and to put them on the balance sheet of the government. That's why the public debt is rising. Instead, when you have an excessive debt problem, you have to convert such debt into equity. That's what you do with corporate restructuring—it converts unsecured debt into equity. That's what you should do with the banks: induce the unsecured creditors to convert their claims into equity. You could do the same thing with the housing market. But we're not doing the debt-into-equity conversion. What we're doing is piling public debt on top of private debt to socialize the losses; and at some point the back of some governments' balance sheet is going to break, and if that happens, it's going to be a disaster. So we need fiscal stimulus in the short run, but we have to worry about the long-run fiscal sustainability, too.

The whole symposium is here, if you want to get your dose of big-government liberalism for the day.

Texting Teens

I saw this earlier, but since The Rhetorican's blogging it, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. From the New York Times, "Texting May Be Taking a Toll":

They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt.

Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

Dr. Martin Joffe, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, Calif., recently surveyed students at two local high schools and said he found that many were routinely sending hundreds of texts every day.

“That’s one every few minutes,” he said. “Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That’s going to cause sleep issues in an age group that’s already plagued with sleep issues.”

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

Psychologists expect to see teenagers break free from their parents as they grow into autonomous adults, Professor Turkle went on, “but if technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’ ”

As for peace and quiet, she said, “if something next to you is vibrating every couple of minutes, it makes it very difficult to be in that state of mind.

“If you’re being deluged by constant communication, the pressure to answer immediately is quite high,” she added. “So if you’re in the middle of a thought, forget it.”

I was actually sitting with my 13 year-old son when I first read this piece. He said he'd done 52 text messages that afteroon!

Video Credit: Fox News, "Can texting harm teens' development?"?

Rule 5 Rescue: Lady GaGa Nude!

Well, I thought I was done blogging for the night, but I might as well get a post up on Lady GaGa (partially) nude before Robert Stacy McCain can snag the Google bomb.

She really does take it (almost) all off. See the video, "Behind the Rolling Stone Cover Shoot: Lady Gaga."

Also at Rolling Stone, "Lady Gaga's Wild Looks: The New Princess of Pop's Craziest Wardrobe Moments." For excerpts from the interview, see "The New Issue of Rolling Stone: The Rise of Lady Gaga."

For an added bonus, check London's Daily Mail, "'My Attraction to Women Makes Boyfriends Uncomfortable,'Ssays Lady GaGa as She Poses Semi-Nude for Rolling Stone."

And once again, let's count this as a preview of Full Metal Saturday. Here are the links to my good blogging buddies: Ann Althouse, The Blog Prof, Chris Wysocki, Dana at CSPT, Dan Collins, Dan Riehl, Glenn Reynolds, Jimmie Bise, Little Miss Attila, Moe Lane, Monique Stuart, No Sheeples Here!, Private Pigg, Pundit & Pundette, The Rhetorican, R.S. McCain, Saber Point, Suzanna Logan, TrogloPundit, and William Jacobson.

Now, I'm really done for the day! I'm going to go read!

The “Israel Lobby” and American Politics

Robert Lieberman, at the new Perspectives on Politics, offers a powerful empirical political analysis of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. See Robert Lieberman, "The “Israel Lobby” and American Politics." The article's behind a subscription firewall, but I can give readers some flavor here. There's a response from Mearsheimer and Walt as well, but I'll save that for a later post. Here's Lieberman:

Why does the United States support Israel so strongly when that support appears to violate American national interests? In their recent book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that Israel is of little strategic value to American interests and that the moral case for supporting Israel is weak at best. They then argue that this apparent distortion in American foreign policy is due to the extraordinary influence of pro-Israel groups and individuals—a collection of actors they dub the “Israel lobby”—in American domestic politics. Not surprisingly, this book and the article that preceded it have provoked a great deal of criticism, as well as a fair amount of praise, focused largely on the merits of the book’s foreign policy argument. Much less attention has been paid, however, to their core argument, which consists of a set of causal claims about American politics and policymaking. In this article I examine this argument and conclude that the case for an “Israel lobby” as the primary cause of American support for Israel, although it points to a number of interesting questions about the mechanisms of power in American politics, is weak at best.

I treat Mearsheimer and Walt’s work as an exercise in the study of American politics, in which they attempt to mount an argument about the reasons for a particular set of American policy choices and the possible influence of an interest group in guiding those choices in the context of American policymaking institutions. My focus is exclusively on this part of their argument, and not on their assessment of American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East. I ask three sets of questions about their argument. First, what, exactly, are their causal claims? By what mechanisms do they suggest that pro-Israel individuals and organizations influence policy outcomes? What are their hypotheses about the forces that shape American policy toward the Middle East? Second, what does political science have to say about these mechanisms? Many of the political processes that Mearsheimer and Walt discuss have, of course, been the subject of extensive research by scholars of American politics. What guidance can the discipline’s state-of-the-art knowledge about policymaking in the American political system give us in evaluating their argument? And finally, what kind of evidence would be necessary to substantiate their hypotheses? Do Mearsheimer and Walt provide such evidence? What might systematic empirical tests of their claims look like?

How does their argument hold up when subjected to this kind of critical scrutiny? Not well. Their causal claims about American politics are often illogical or impossibly vague, are almost never supported by dispositive evidence, and frequently contradict well-established research findings in American politics. I begin by describing their argument in some detail in order to expose the argument’s theoretical underpinnings and discern the causal hypotheses that they explore. I then zero in on these causal claims and examine Mearsheimer and Walt’s treatment of them—the logic by which they submit these hypotheses to critical tests, the evidence they use to test them, and alternative approaches that might illuminate the problems they address. My primary purpose is to unpack and evaluate Mearsheimer and Walt’s claims about influence on American policymaking and not to propose and test a fully fledged alternative argument about the links between the activities of pro-Israel individuals and organizations and American foreign policy. To the extent that there are conventional standards for making causal inferences from empirical observations about influence in American politics, Mearsheimer and Walt generally fail to meet them. I note, however, that their argument involves claims not only about the lobby’s direct influence on policy outcomes but also about its ability to shape the policy agenda through the stifling of open debate and discourse in the United States about Israel and American policy toward Israel. These more subtle mechanisms of power are considerably harder to observe and there is no consensus among scholars of American politics about how to demonstrate their effects. Nevertheless, they offer a provocative and suggestive account of political influence that merits careful attention.

Notice how Lieberman finds that the arguments in The Israel Lobby are "almost never supported by dispositive evidence."

Frankly, I was shaking my head reading the book, especially chapter 3, "A Dwindling Moral Case." Mearsheimer and Walt mean a "dwindling moral case" for U.S. support for Israel, but reading the book it's hard not to see the authors as arguing the "dwindling moral case" for the existence of Israel. And that's why Lieberman's piece is so valuable. Mearsheimer and Walt are political scientists. But their work has been the focus of intense criticism outside of academe. One thing that Lieberman indicates is that Mearsheimer and Walt really do single out Jews as at the center of The Israel Lobby, at the expense of alternative interest-group actors likely to have just as important an influence on U.S. Middle East Policy.

For example, Lieberman dissects Mearsheimer and Walt's contention that The Israel Lobby enjoys inordinate influence in presidential elections:

Here the contention is that Jewish voters are decisive in presidential election—that the outcome of the election hangs, at least in part, on their vote choices and, presumably, that these vote choices depend on the stances or records of the candidates toward Israel. If, in fact, Jewish (or pro-Israel) voters ever cast the decisive votes in presidential elections, then it might be reasonable to expect more pro-Israel policies from the ensuing administrations than from administrations in which Jewish voters were not decisive—assuming, that is, that it is reasonable to equate “Jewish” and “pro-Israel” votes. Once again, the argument slides from a broader claim about the Israel lobby to more particular claims about Jewish voters; they do not discuss the potential electoral influence of evangelical “Christian Zionists” as a factor in pro-Israel electoral pressure, although such voters have received a great deal of attention in recent years as a powerful and decisive force in American politics.9 They also seem, once again, to ignore their own precaution against assuming that pro-Israel policies are of high importance to all American Jews.

Lieberman's argument is way more complicated than this. He subjects the electoral arguments in The Israel Lobby to empirical analysis. And he digs down into a number of issues specific to congressional policymaking as well. He finds the book wanting, and bad.

Lieberman also addresses Mearsheimer and Walt's thesis that the lobby attacks "Anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite." But as Lieberman indicates, there's little empirical support for the claim, other than a few high profile examples (Jimmy Carter, Francis Fukuyama):

In most of these high-profile cases, as they also point out, the tactic was singularly unsuccessful as a means of silencing its intended targets (195–96). More to the point, however, they offer very little in the way of systematic empirical analysis that shows a causal connection between this threat and the behavior of would-be critics of Israel or American policy toward Israel.

After additional testing, Lieberman concludes:

It is quite clear that the book’s argument does not support Mearsheimer and Walt’s central contention, that the existence and activities of an Israel lobby are the primary causes of American policy in the Middle East. The claim is supported neither by logic nor evidence nor even a rudimentary understanding of how the American policymaking system works. Several questions remain, however. If the unified Israel lobby of Mearsheimer and Walt’s analysis is not the prime mover in shaping American foreign policy toward the Middle East, what alternative explanations might account for these policy outcomes?

I'll update with more on this debate later.

But before I close, I want to remind readers of the backlash I received from some trolling Israel-bashers at my earlier post, "William Robinson, UCSB Sociology Professor, Compares Israel to the Nazis."

Especially interesting was this cat called "Infensus Mentis." He writes the blog, "Crimes of Zion." A typical post there is like this one, "AIPAC Caught Meddling in U.S. Foreign Policy - Yet Again."

This guy's method is to launch preemptive attacks of distortion and slander, and then to shortcut any criticism of his slurs by bewailing, "Don't worry, I know, I know - I'm an "anti-Semite", right?"

Unfortunately, the flawed work of Mearsheimer and Walt pumps-up such anti-Semitic folks with an outlandish sense of moral righteosness. It's pretty awful, really.

L.A. Community Colleges Cut Summer Sessions

My college is not part of the Los Angeles Community College system. But the budget crisis is statewide, so my union's keeping close tabs on what's happening at other districts.

I'm getty a flurry of e-mails this week between faculty and the union. Also, the college president has warned, "Not since the passage of Proposition 13 have we seen such challenges to our community college system."

Anyway, the Los Angeles Times has this report, "L.A. Colleges Cancel Summer Sessions:"

Video Hat Tip: KABC-TV Los Angeles, "L.A. Colleges Cancel July Summer Session."

She Started to Hate Every Nigger and Jew...

You know, I had a copy of the X's LP, Los Angeles, right when it came out. And as I'm getting ready to post this video, I'm seeing a couple of different versions of the lyrics. Did she buy "a clock on Hollywood Boulevard the day she left," or "a Glock on Hollywood Boulevard the day she left"?

John Doe's clearly sing a "Glock" here. But I don't think I knew what a "Glock" was in 1980, and the record lyrics had "clock" at the time. It makes more sense now, obviously. But why the political correctness on the album? Hating "Niggers and "Jews" was AOK? Check it out:

And check this from the sidebar comments at the YouTube: "Many complaints about Exene's singing here." Actually, she practically sounds like Billy Holiday in this cut. After seeing X in concert numerous times, I can tell you: That woman can't sing for squat.

They were grubby and cool, though, and John Doe has appeared in a number movies over the years. Billy Zoom was probably the coolest guitarest ever to come out of the L.A.'s punk rock scene.

Obama Wussies Out on Backing Prop 8 Challenge

Allahpundit has the video of President Obama's DNC fundraiser at L.A.'s Beverly Hilton.

Not surprisingly, Obama wussied out on endorsing the challenges to Proposition 8. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Speaking to a well-heeled audience of campaign donors in Beverly Hills, Obama was strikingly upbeat and assured. He said he would stack his first four months in office against any president going back as far as Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"I'm confident in the future," Obama said. "I'm not yet content" ....

The enthusiasm inside the Beverly Hilton was palpable -- the president was greeted with repeated ovations -- and the payoff was handsome: between $3 million and $4 million in contributions to the Democratic National Committee.

But Obama notably sidestepped two of the biggest issues facing California: He said nothing about the state's disastrous financial condition or the issue of same-sex marriage, which heated up Tuesday when the state Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, a measure banning the practice.

Outside the hotel, about 200 demonstrators chanted and carried flags and protest signs, many urging Obama to take a stronger stand in favor of gay rights.

"The president made a promise when he made his speech about hope," said Rick Jacobs, one of the protest organizers. "I bought that promise and I still buy that promise, but it's time for him to start fulfilling that promise for all Americans."

Nancy Pelosi: Safe Environment a "Basic Human Right"

The Associated Press reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared a clean environment a "basic human right."

See also, Gateway Pundit, "Pelosi Preaches Junk Science to Chinese - Pushes 'Environmental Justice'."

Sotomayor's Abortion Stance

Leftists and the mainstream press are trying to portray Sonia Sotomayor as "iffy" on abortion. See the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Greg Sargent, "Sotomayor’s Thin Abortion Record Puts Dem Senators in a Bind."

And Daily Kos diarists are even launching a jihad against the nominee, "Sonia Sotomayor is a Stealth ANTI-CHOICE Supreme Court Pick."

An activist from the Faith and Action, an anti-abortion religious group, takes part in a prayer for Judge Sonia Sotomayor in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on May 26, 2009. US President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to take the place of Justice David Souter on the US Supreme Court. If confirmed, Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice in the nation's history.

But this is really a leftist smokescreen. There's no political "bind" here, and Sotomayor's hardly "anti-choice."

Check out Jill Stanek's post, "Plot Thickens Re: Sotomayor's Abortion Stance":

Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Sonia Sotomayor, spent 7 hours at the White House last Thursday and before that was vetted thoroughly by Obama's pro-abortion staff. Even if Obama did not ask Sotomayor directly about her opinion re: Roe v. Wade when they met, he knows. The key to Obama's statement when naming Sotomayor (interestingly while attempting to make her sound conservative) is highlighted below ...

"Precedent" is code for belief that Roe v. Wade should stand simply under the legal principle of stare decisis, a Latin phrase you'll be hearing a lot in the coming months, meaning "settled law."

Stanek also has the statements on Sotomayor endorsement at Planned Parenthoold and Emily's List. NARAL is taking a "wait-and-see" approach, but Stanek links to this essay from Terence Jeffrrey:

Sonia Sotomayor should be asked in her confirmation hearing whether she believes the Constitution guarantees a right to kill an unborn child.

If she says it does, it means she believes Supreme Court justices have the power to change the meaning of the Constitution itself, even to the point of depriving a whole class of human beings of their most fundamental right.

There can be no better reason for denying confirmation to a would-be justice.

Actually, even if Sotomayor agreed with the constitutional right to an abortion - and hence the right to kill an unborn child - she's not likely to comment truthfully in the question. She'll say what nominees always say, that "it wouldn't be appropriate for me to prejudge an issue before I become a member of the court," blah, blah.

The fact that President Infanticide appointed her and has trumpeted her "respect for precedent" is enough to give me the creeps.

See also, Hot Air: "Would Sotomayor Overturn Roe?"

Photo Credit: Getty Images.

Bill O'Reilly Slams Hot Air!

I like Bill O'Reilly. The guy is literally the only commentator in the mainstream media who routinely calls out left wing extremism.

Well, O'Reilly went after both left and right in last night's broadcast - and the Free Republic comment in the video is reprehensible. But check out Amanda Carpenter. She provides the response to O'Reilly's jab at Hot Air:

Allahpundit defends himself here: "Video: O’Reilly Smears Hot Air."

The Lonely Conservative says he's had it with O'Reilly. But I think Dan Riehl nails it, "Bill "Blowhard" O'Reilly":

I like that Bill O'Reilly stands up for traditional American culture in a great many ways. He's a bit too much of a self-promoter for me to do headstands over him. But on many levels, he's fighting the good fight. That's cool.

But it's always been clear that when it comes to the Internet and blogs especially, he doesn't know his butt from his elbow. Besides that, Hussein is the freaking guys actual name. I realize it is often used against him as sort of a smear. But it's his name, ... too freaking bad. It should have been used more before the election, not after. But I fight to win. More on certain related naming conventions here.

Ah, there’s nothing like yanking a comment out of context and using it to smear the entire site, even though neither Ed nor I have ever referred to Obama as “Hussein.”

Grandma Bill, so intent on looking after his fans, should try to stick more to things he knows something about. But then, that's never stopped him before. And as for Amanda Carpenter, I give her a pass. She's an excellent Right-side journalist and has a sweet gig there that doesn't include challenging Mount Blovious.

Besides, I've met Amanda, and she's a freaking babe. How can you not like all that.

Sotomayor's Skeletons

Yesteday I noted that "we're starting to see the perils in Barack Obama's selection of Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court of the United States."

Boy, are we ever!

There's lots of blog-reporting on the Sotomayor nomination this morning.

For example, see Pamela Geller, "Sotomayor: Radical on the SCOTUS":

It seems to me this is a watershed moment. Every Republican must vote against this incompetent radical. No more pandering to the soft mushy middle. The Republicans better man up. The folks are fed up. There's more on the nomination of the pro-gun control judicial activist Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Also, The Blog Prof covers Sotomayor's La Raza member, "Sonia Sotomayor Is A Member Of Racist Group La Raza ("The Race")." See also, World Net Daily, "Sonia Sotomayor 'La Raza member'." (More at Memeorandum.)

And William Jacobson reports on the extreme secrecy surrounding Sotomayor's appointment, "Release The Sotomayor Memos":

Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of a new era of transparency. Obama used that theme as a justification for the release of four highly classified internal Justice Department memos detailing strategies for interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees, over the objections of Obama's own Director of the CIA.

It's time to bring that same level of transparency to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The New York Times is reporting that each of the candidates on Obama's short-list was the subject of an 60-70-page memo detailing the investigation into her background, including judicial writings and other information gleaned by the vetters. Obama should release the memos on Sotomayor, as well as any other documents used in the decision-making process.

The release of the memos will have a positive effect on the debate over Sotomayor. One of the problems in assessing the nomination, and why I have not opined on Sotomayor, is that the public really doesn't know who she is or where she stands on important legal issues. This is a concern mostly from the right, but also from pro-abortion activists on the left.

Sotomayor has few if any significant judicial decisions on many issues, which is not surprising since as a trial judge or appeals court judge she was bound by Supreme Court precedent. To the extent published judicial decisions are important, those decisions are being carefully analyzed, but do not tell the full story of who a nominee will be once confirmed.

And Sotomayor clearly was someone who protected her record. The most disturbing aspect to me of the 2005 Duke Law School video, in which Sotomayor stated that appeals court judges make policy, was not her words. Those words can be explained away, as I'm sure she will do at the confirmation hearings.

Read the whole thing, here.

Cartoon Credit: William Warren.

Borking Sotomayor?

In just a little over a day we're starting to see the perils in Barack Obama's selection of Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sotomayor practices an extremely race-conscious jurisprudence. And there's some debate today over allegations that she's in fact racist. Newt Gingrich has even called on the nominee to withdraw her name from consideration.

George Will pins down a key issue here, with respect to the politics of judicial confirmation. Prior to the 1980s - and especially before Ronald Reagan's appointment of Robert Bork to the High Court - nominees were rarely grilled over questions of ideology and judicial philosophy. The major criteria had been competence and ethics. And as Bork was an unimpeachable nominee in that respect, the Democratic-left launched the most ideologically unprincipled attack on a Supreme Court appointment in history. Here's Will's key line:

The 1987 fight over President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork interred the tradition that the Senate, in evaluating judicial nominees, would not delve deeply into the nominee's jurisprudential thinking. Bork's defeat was unjust, but the new approach to confirmations was overdue, given the court's increasingly central role in American governance.

Yes, the attack on Bork was "unjust," but that's the way it goes now, thanks to the smear-merchants of the Democratic Party. As Will indicates, Sotomayor is a hardline affirmative action activist (the 2nd Circuit's New Haven reverse discrimination case is currently on the docket at the John Roberts Supreme Court). As one of the New Haven judges, Sotomayer has shown a willingness to set aside merit-based criteria for bureaucratic hiring and promotion. She's frankly a quota queen in the classic sense of the term.

But it's not just her record on the appellate bench that's devastating. Her own statements are a virtual treasure trove for Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee. The best piece I've seen on this is Alexander Bolton's, "Critics focus on Sotomayor speech in La Raza journal." This passage is key:

Sotomayor delivered the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal published the lecture the following year.

Conservative critics have latched onto the speech as evidence that Sotomayor is an “activist judge,” who will rule on the basis of her personal beliefs instead of facts and law ....

In her 2001 speech, after citing legal thinkers who called on jurists to transcend personal biases, Sotomayor questioned whether judges could in fact escape such prejudices.

“While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law,” Sotomayor said.

“Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”

Some Republican critics say these statements raise concerns about whether Sotomayor, who was raised under modest circumstances in the Bronx, would serve as a neutral arbiter in a case pitting a wealthy white male against a less wealthy man or woman of color.

Read Bolton's piece in full. Sotomayor is also quoted as saying, "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see ... My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."

Confirming Sonia Sotomayor at the Supreme Court will provide the Democratic-left a smashing blow against color-blind justice and equality under the law. Racial identity politics will emerge as the guiding focus of Obama-era jurisprudence, and future retirements at the Court will give this administration an opportunity to seal a long-term reverse discrimination program in the American judicial system.

Yet, Sotomayor will not in fact be "borked." There's nothing scurrilous in lifting up the carpet on this race-monger's ideological program. Unlike in Robert Bork's time, ideological opposition to a nomineed is fair game. The Democrats brought it on. And now the American people deserve a full accounting of this woman's radical views.

Sotomayor has asked if a better judicial ruling might be found if a person of color makes that determination rather than "a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

If a conservative judge had made an equivalent statement a GOP president's nomination would have already been withdrawn.

Sotomayor is a poor choice for the nation's highest court. She deserves a level of ideological scrutiny as close as Judge Bork received in 1987. The difference now is that Sotomayor won't in fact be "borked."

Mark Levin on David Frum

There's a genuinely bitter partisan brawl going on between Mark Levin and some of his prominent faux-conservative antagonists.

You might have caught the initial attacks on Levin last week, from Conor Friedersdorf and then Rod Dreher. I first caught wind of all this in Dan Riehl's response to Friedersdorf, "In Defense of Mark Levin." Dan has a number of other posts covering various iterations of the debate. In an earlier post, Levin suggested that "I have to lower myself to deal with the undeveloped minds of kooks like Rod Dreher." Then Dreher returned fire, calling Levin a "bumptious vulgarian."

You might have also caught David Frum piling on to Conor Friedersdorf's attack: "No Wonder People Hate Us." I also read this last week. I didn't think much of it, since I see Frum as a marginal faux-conservative on the wrong side of the big issues of the day.

Now Levin has responded to Frum, at Riehl World View (and there's a thread at Memeorandum):

David Frum was never much of a thinker. Try as he might, he just can't seem to attract interest, let alone a following, even when stabbing his old boss, President George W. Bush, in the back with a rambling screed. Profiting from a confidential relationship with a president is about as low as it gets. But Frum, the ex-speech-writer turned self-hating blogger, isn't done descending. Now he spends his lonely days and nights at his keyboard trying to settle personal scores and demonizing those who dare to dismiss his ramblings as the work of an emotional wreck.

My interactions with Frum have been minimal, despite his past suggestions that they were something more. As best I recall, I met him first on an Amtrak train. He was sitting near the restroom feverishly working his lap top's keyboard. We exchanged pleasantries, and that was about it. I believe the next time I met him was at the Ledeen's home. He seemed harmless enough. The next thing I knew, he had a blog at NRO. I rarely read it, but when I did, I noticed he displayed a quirkiness and psuedo-intellectualism which suggested to me that something was a little off with the guy. But I didn't give it much thought. I became reacquainted with Frum after he viciously attacked Rush Limbaugh, after having attempted to spar with Rush over a period of months. And it was this unhinged, emotional outburst that caught my attention. I then realized, as did others, that Frum was a truly pathetic character subject to wild personality lurches and obsessed with drawing attention to himself.

In one truly bizarre incident, after I responded to another of Frum's hate-Rush outbursts, Frum had his own 15 year old son call my talk show. Realizing Frum had become emotionally uncontrollable, I told my producer to tell his son that it would not be appropriate for him to come on the air. If his father called in, I would put him on the show. Within minutes, Frum called, and he proceeded to make a fool of himself by interrupting, name-calling, etc. He could not gather his thoughts or make coherent, reasoned points. So, as the host, with a responsibility to my audience, I had to repeatedly lower the noise-level on his rantings. Frum made a fool of himself.

There's more at the link.

This is especially interesting to me, as I'm blog buddies with Dan Riehl.

But if you check over at Rod Dreher's blog, and click the "conservative" tag, you'll find that he's also been attacking Robert Stacy McCain (as a side skirmish in the debate). Dreher cites Freddie de Boer for support, which is even more interesting. Freddie's the resident left-wing extremist at Ordinary Gentlemen. That blog, as I've written many times, is the home of the net's Andrew Sullivan myrmidon project. A classic essay which encapsulates the ideological foundations of this project is "Twenty-First Century Conservativsm."

And therein lies why Levin's engagement in this debate is important. The attacks on Levin by Friedersdorf, Dreher, and Frum are like the wobbly swings of a late-round boxer on the ropes. The challenger's last-breath hope is that he might land a blow on the champ, securing a fleeting chance at taking the championship belt. But Levin's takedown today has knocked Frum off his feet, and the rest of his postmodern allies aren't far behind.

These people are kind of sick, actually. But that's where such "Meghan McCain Republicans" have been taking the debate over the future of the right. These "twenty-first century conservatives" have basically pitched their tent with the likes of Andrew Sullivan. It's thus no surprise that their attacks have taken on the unhinged likeness of "trig-trutherism."

There's a principled conservative movement currently making a comeback. Levin's #1 book is the right's manifesto for the fight back to power. As folks can see from the pushback against Levin, it's not just the Democrats who are standing in the way ...

Majority of Americans Continue to Oppose Gay Marriage

Well, I guess all of my blogging on gay rights hasn't been in vain!

Here's this from Gallup, "Majority of Americans Continue to Oppose Gay Marriage":

Americans' views on same-sex marriage have essentially stayed the same in the past year, with a majority of 57% opposed to granting such marriages legal status and 40% in favor of doing so ....

The lack of change in public opinion on same-sex marriage seen in the new USA Today/Gallup poll occurs in an environment in which an increasing number of states have taken steps to legalize such unions. Same-sex marriages are now legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and Iowa, and will be legal in Vermont in September.

On Tuesday, California's Supreme Court refused to add that state to the list, by upholding the Proposition 8 referendum, approved by voters, that banned same-sex marriage in the state. The referendum was put on the November 2008 ballot in response to an earlier court decision that allowed same-sex couples to legally marry in California.

Among major demographic or attitudinal subgroups, self-identified liberals show the greatest support for legal gay marriage at 75% in the May 7-10 poll. By contrast, only 19% of conservatives think same-sex marriages should be legally valid.

Check the link for the full report, and also Memeorandum.

There's been some tightening in the numbers, with support for same-sex marriage improving since the 1990s. But by now it's likely that there are few "undecideds" on the choice between gay marriage and civil unions. What we'll likely see in the coming months in an increasingly frantic campaign on the radical left to paint the great majority of Americans as "Christianists" and "gay-hating Dominionists."

It's just pure hysteria, really. But apocalyptic fearmongering is the last resort for leftists. Be prepared for more unhinged extremism as gay radicals try to cram homosexual licentiousness down the throats of the mainstream majority.

For my recent essay on this, see "Same-Sex Hate-Seekers."

Huckabee to Endorse Rubio in Florida GOP Primary

I'm beating Not One Red Cent to this story!

Via Memeorandum, It turns out that Mike Huckabee will endorse Marco Rubio in the epic GOP Senate primary against Governor Charlie Crist. CNN has the details:

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has rolled out a succession of endorsements from national Republicans since announcing his entrance into the 2010 Senate race.

Now his Republican primary rival, former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio, has a national endorsement of his own from a conservative heavyweight: Mike Huckabee.

The former Arkansas governor will formally endorse Rubio in about two weeks, according to a Florida Republican familiar with the plans. The details of where the endorsement will take place have not been decided.

Rubio endorsed Huckabee's presidential bid in late 2007.

I got a note from Erick Erickson in my Facebook inbox. It's turns out that Erickson's group raised $10,000 for Marco Rubio in one day. See "Not One Penny to the National Republican Senatorial Committee":

Thanks to you all, we raised about $10,000.00 in a little over 24 hours for the Rubio campaign.

The NRSC should pay attention.

Marco Rubio's homepage is here.

Bolton: "Iran and North Korea Trade Information on Ballistic Missiles"

Via Atlas Shrugs, check out Grata Van Susterin's interview with Ambassador John Bolton on North Korean nukes: "We Need to Apply More Pressure to North Korea's Regime":

This section's key:

VAN SUSTEREN: How do we know they have enough money? If they get $10, it does not go to feeding their people. It goes to their weapons program. But if their weapons program ends up costing $30, $40, or $50, they still do not have enough money for their weapons program.

Is it possible that they will be strangled economically so they can't even build their weapons program?

BOLTON: Well, there is some reason to believe that there may be an Iranian financial connection here, as well. Certainly Iran and North Korea trade information on ballistic missiles. We know that. That is been going on for over 10 years.

They may be trading information on the nuclear programs too. It has not gone unnoticed that North Korea was building a nuclear reactor in Syria, very unlikely that Syria could pay for that.

So the Iranian connection is quite significant. And it's a major reason why I do not think you can look at North Korea's nuclear program only as an east Asia problem. It is a Middle East problem, too.

See also, Fausta, "North Korea Threatens Strike" (with a Charles Krauthammer video, "We Need a Nuclear Japan").

Related: New York Post, "North Korean Nuke: O's Kick in the Teeth," via Memeorandum.

Carrie Prejean Hosts Fox & Friends

Via Gateway Pundit, here's Miss California Carrie Prejean on Fox & Friends:

Related: Whan Sarah Palin remarked recently that she could relate to Carrie Prejean "as a liberal target myself," the Alaska Governor's comments gave rise to talk of a new "hotness coalition"!

The Chaff and Flares of Barack Obama

Two of my good blogging buddies have posts up this morning blowing the lid off Barack Obama's surreptitious radicalism. Heidi at Big Girl Pants has come out out of blogging retirement to lay down some withering fire against this administration:

I have long been silent here because it seems like there is nothing but negativism. I KNOW how I feel about things and it's all been so overwhelming. That is what has been keeping me quiet, and that is what now compels me to make an offering of my blog once again ....

I'm so disgusted with what is happening. It's demoralizing and damaging. And wrong. So now what? All of this puts me in mind of some of the final words George Washington spoke as president of this nation. In his farewell address he said "Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." A wise man he was to know that THEY would come.

Heidi's theme of Obama's posturing patriotism is also hammered home by Mark at Snooper's Report, "Chaff, White Noise and Barack Obama":

I named this article Chaff, White Noise and Barack Obama for a reason. Everything since the coronation of the One, the Messiah (as Calypso Louie named Barack) has been a distraction and the vast majority of Americans, and the world for that matter, have forgotten about the constitutionality of Barack Hussein Obama's ascendancy to the White Marxist House. Abortion, economy, business, banks, investors, cars, Iran, Korea, Israel and any number of other issues dwarf in comparison of Barack's American Natural Born Status. Was he or was he not born in the United States, one of her territories or on a military base, consul, foreign mission or embassy? All the evidence points to his not being a natural-born American citizen and that is The Issue of our time. And, apparently, there are no brave souls with the ability to bear this out. They are cowards all.

It leads me to believe that they all know and to expose what they know would expose them as the inept buffoons we all know them to be.

Wake up America, while we still have the letter "C" in our name.

The first two elements of the title of this article are military terms. Chaff is described as follows:

Chaff and flares are defensive mechanisms employed from military aircrafi to avoid detection and/or attack by adversary air defense systems. Chaff consists of small fibers that reflect radar signals and, when dispensed in large quantities from aircraft, form a cloud that temporarily hides the aircraft from radar detection. The two major types of military chaff in use are aluminum foil and aluminum-coated glass fibers. The aluminum foil-type is no longer manufactured, although it may still be in use. [...]

White Noise is that which a radar receiver tries to "burn through" when chaff or other radar foiling devices are encountered.

Barack Obama is the chaff and white noise generator. Chaff and white noise are distractions and attempt to hide the true target thus foiling tracking devices to properly aquire a target such as an incoming missile, aircraft or ship. Barack and his Clan use chaff and white noise effectively - to the unlearned and unaware. He nor they have fooled me or distracted me for one second.

A big thank you to Heidi and Mark! You can read their blogs here and here, respectively.

I Wanna Push You Around...

Well, I don't know if I can compete with everybody else commenting on the Sotomayor nomination. I did get linked today by Allison Kilkenny at Huffington Post for my post on the tokenism in a possible Sotomayor nomination. It turns out that Kilkenny's pretty radical. I wonder if she was one of the feminists who were "outraged" at the alleged sexism when Matchbox Twenty's "Push" topped the charts in 1997-1998. Rob Thomas is one of my favorites. So until tomorrow, please enjoy "Push":

Assessing GOP Partisan Identification

Jay Cost, at RealClearPolitics, demonstrates how recent surveys have exaggerated the decline of Repubican Party identification in the electorate:

The key is in comparing Gallup and Pew's polling data on party identifcation to the findings from exit polls over time. As Cost notes:

Gallup and Pew Consistently Underestimate Republican Identifiers Relative to the Exit Poll. Pew tends to be more pessimistic about the GOP's standing than Gallup, but both always show fewer Republicans than the exit polls. The difference is typically 5 to 7 points. What could account for this? I can think of two explanations.

(a) The exit polls are a snapshot of party identification on a single day, while the Gallup and Pew numbers are an average of the whole year. In 2008, both Gallup and Pew showed the GOP at its strongest point shortly before Election Day. Gallup generally showed the GOP stronger in the fall of 2004 than in the Spring or Summer of that year. [Unfortunately, I was unable to locate monthly or quarterly party identification numbers for prior presidential election years.] Why might this be? Some subset of "natural" Republican partisans might only return to their political home when the campaign begins in earnest, around Labor Day. If so, an annual average of party identification - or one that looks at out-years - might systematically underestimate GOP strength relative to where it is on Election Day.

(b) Non-voters are less likely to identify themselves as Republicans than voters, and they are included in the Gallup and Pew numbers. In fact, recent turnout - which is at its highest in some time - is still less than 60% of the voting age population, which means that about 40% of the Gallup and Pew samples in recent years should be non-voters. In a year like 1996, non-voters will constitute more than half of these samples. According to the National Election Study, non-voters are not as inclined to see themselves as Republicans as voters (on a five point partisanship scale: strong Democrat, weak Democrat, Independent, weak Republican, strong Republican). In fact, from 1972 to 2004, the average difference in Republican identification between non-voters and voters was fourteen points. This trend is muted on the Democratic side, as a good portion of non-voters are inclined to see themselves as "weak" Democrats.

I think the take home point from all of this is fairly clear. The Gallup, Pew, and other media pollsters tracking party identification offer data that is of real value - but it has to be interpreted with care. There are big, consistent differences between media polling data on partisanship throughout the year versus the Exit Poll, which is a better metric for partisanship on the day that it matters, Election Day.

Gay Sex in the City! Kissing Demonstrators Block Traffic!

Lesbian Cynthia Nixon, of Sex and the City fame, has spoken out against the California Supreme Court's ruling on Proposition 8:

“Upholding the discriminatory Proposition 8 marks May 26, 2009 as a dark day for the people of California. The idea that gay families like mine should not be included in our country's promise of equal rights for all citizens is deeply un-American. While California has taken a giant step backwards, states like Maine and Iowa (and soon, I hope, New York) are leading with way towards a fairer and better tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, police have arrested kissing demonstrators blocking traffic in downtown San Francisco:

A few minutes before noon, police in riot gear began warning the crowd it had to disperse because it was blocking a public thoroughfare. Another warning came around noon. Then at 12:25 p.m. the arrests started.

Among the first to go were Shawn Higgins and Robert Franco of San Francisco. The two men, who said they are engaged in marry, had stood for about an hour in the intersection calmly kissing while demonstrators all around them screamed, "Prop. 8 will go down, San Francisco (is a) big queer town" and other slogans.

"Going down," eh? These folks love the vivid sexual protest imagery! No wonder John Aravosis exclaims, "we have just scored"!

Also, via Michelle Malkin and Memeorandum, the San Francisco Chronicle is providing directions for protesters to "find the nearest pro-same sex marriage rally by using SMS":

Nope, the paper did NOT provide similar services for Tea Party activists. But Garofoli — an Anderson Cooper wannabe, apparently — provided plenty of derisive commentary about “teabagging.”

Video Credit: "Angry Crowd Marches After Prop 8 Upheld."

California Supreme Court Upholds Proposition 8

From the Los Angeles Times, "California Supreme Court Upholds Prop. 8; Gay Marriage Remains Banned in State."

I'm not quoting the Times' piece, for obvous reasons.

William Jacobson's got a post up already, "Split Decision on Prop. 8" (via Memeorandum):

The California Supreme Court has issued a split ruling, upholding Proposition 8 but also upholding the validity of gay marriages which took place prior to passage of Prop. 8.

Andrew Pugno, one of the authors of 2000's Proposition 22, which was struck down by the California Court last year, offers his perspective at the Times' opinion page today, "'You Just Can't Just Change Marriage ...'." Gay marriage is not demographically inevitable:

Today's younger voters will be tomorrow's older voters. Their views will likely evolve as they have children of their own.

This issue has been so strongly debated that there are very few people who are undecided. And very few people's opinions will change. The polls indicate that, since election day, there has been no continued slide in the percentage of voters who want to protect marriage for a man and a woman.

I think the argument that gay marriage is inevitable is completely wrong. I think we are headed toward what you see in Europe, where traditional marriage has been protected but there are alternative relationships recognized by governments to provide benefits and protections. That will be the equilibrium that we will ultimately find.

I'll have more later. As noted previously, I'm interested in the backlash on the left.

But for now, Towleroad is blogging, "California Supreme Court Upholds Proposition 8." Also, Joe. My. God., "Prop 8 Upheld - Bigotry Rules In CA."

Pam's House Blend has the text of the ruling, "California Supreme Court Ruling - Upheld Prop 8 - Marriages Preformed Last Year Still Valid."

Now, let the leftist hate-fest begin!

**********

UPDATE: Via Memeorandum, the New York Times reports, "California Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Same-Sex Marriage."

See also, the Los Angeles Times, "Prop. 8 Upheld by California Supreme Court."

Obama to Nominate Sotomayor

President Obama will nominate Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court at 10:15am. The New York Times has the story, "Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee."

Tom Goldstein discusses Sotoymayor and the politics of judicial appointments at SCOTUS Blog, "The Dynamic of the Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor":

Republicans cannot afford to find themselves in the position of implicitly opposing Judge Sotomayor. To Hispanics, the nomination would be an absolutely historic landmark. It really is impossible to overstate its significance. The achievement of a lifetime appointment at the absolute highest levels of the government is a profound event for that community, which in turn is a vital electoral group now and in the future.

Equally significant for not only Hispanics but all Americans, Sotomayor has an extraordinarily compelling personal narrative. She is a first generation American, born of immigrant parents. She grew up in a housing project, losing her father as an adolescent, raised (with her brother) by her mother, who worked as a nurse. She got herself to Princeton, graduating as one of the top two people in her class, then went to Yale Law. Almost all of her career has been in public service–as a prosecutor, trial judge, and now appellate judge. She has almost no money to her name.

For Republican Senators to come after Judge Sotomayor is not only hopeless when it comes to confirmation (something that did not deter Democrats in their attacks on Roberts and Alito) but a strategy that risks exacting a very significant political cost among Hispanics and independent voters generally, assuming that the attacks aren’t backed up with considerable substance.

The most likely dynamic by far is the one that played out for Democrats with respect to Chief Justice Roberts. Democratic senators, recognizing the inevitable confirmation of a qualified and popular nominee, decided to hold their fire and instead direct their attacks to President Bush’s second nominee. Justice Alito was the collateral damage to that strategy. Here, with Justice Stevens’s retirement inevitable in the next few years, Republican senators are very likely to hold off conservative interest groups with promises to sharply examine President Obama’s second (potentially white male) nominee.

Overall, the White House’s biggest task is simply demonstrating that Judge Sotomayor is the most qualified candidate, not a choice based on her gender and ethnicity. The public wants to know that her greatness as a Justice is informed by her personal history and her diversity, not that it is defined by those characteristics. For that reason, the focus on “empathy” — rather than the “wisdom” or “good sense” of the nominee in light of her experience — plays out poorly, in my opinion.

See also my earlier entry, "Sonia Sotomayor: The Next Token Justice?"

Related: Conservative Rumblings, "Probable Obama SCOTUS Pick Sotomayor: Dangerous and Ignorant."