Well, I see that Congressional Republicans bowed to the inevitable–aka looming voter outrage–and passed an extension of the measure to keep student loan interest rates at their current levels. The rates would have doubled without congressional action, and while the Tea Party faction supported letting the rates increase (who cares about those snotty little elitists who go to college?….), the few remaining realists in the party prevailed–at least to the extent of a one-year extension. (Down, Rover! Once the election’s over, then we can screw the college kids, but not now!)
Of course, the legislation had to be paid for. So the “family-friendly” party emptied out a fund that had been established to pay for poor children’s immunizations and women’s health–pap smears, breast exams, silly shit like that.
After all, we couldn’t expect them to take the money out of the massive subsidies we give the oil companies! How long will those obscene profits last, anyway? And god forbid we might raise the marginal rates on those overburdened “job creators” raking in a paltry million or two a year.
This extended essay is well worth reading in its entirety, but let me whet your appetite with my “favorite” Bork quote: “No activity that society thinks immoral is victimless. Knowledge that an activity is taking place is a harm to those who find it profoundly immoral.”
The U.S. Constitution was based upon the Enlightenment belief in personal autonomy; the libertarian principle that humans have the right to pursue their own ends–the right to “do their own thing”–so long as they respect the equal right of others and do not cause harm to the person or property of a non-consenting other.
This is sometimes called “the harm principle,” and it limits the zone of freedom individuals enjoy. If something I am doing harms you, the government is justified in intervening. So, for example, free people can choose to smoke, even though it may be bad for them, but when substantial scientific evidence confirms the harm done to others by passive smoke, government can constitutionally prohibit smoking in public places. People of good will can and do debate whether a particular activity is harmful, of course, but in our system, if your personal behaviors don’t affect anyone else, the government is supposed to butt out.
In Bork’s world, however, simple awareness that someone is doing something of which you disapprove constitutes a harm.
In Bork’s world, if “society” believes that a behavior–contraceptive use, sex between unmarried adults, homosexual sex, masturbation, smoking, whatever–is immoral, that disapproval constitutes a harm sufficient to justify outlawing that activity.
Freedom, in Bork’s cramped vision of that word, is freedom to do the “right” thing–as defined by Robert Bork and his ilk. It is hard to imagine a more unAmerican understanding of our legal system.
Bork actually makes Jay Sekelow–Pat Robertson’s lawyer, and the other Romney legal advisor–look moderate.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to choose the most appalling news of the day.
I could begin with the continued embarrassment that is Dick Lugar’s campaign.
Yesterday, Lugar was one of 31 (male) Republican Senators who voted against reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act; evidently, “true Indiana conservatives” consider laws against wife-beating an infringement of their liberty. Today, we learn that Lugar has invited aging crooner Pat Boone to campaign for him. Whatever his merits as a singer, Boone is primarily known today as a right-wing crank. He is a creationist. He has compared gay activists to terrorists. He is a “birther” who insists that Obama was not born in the U.S. and is not a Christian. He is exactly the sort of person the Dick Lugar I once admired would have avoided like the plague.
Granted, Mourdock is a toad. But watching Lugar frantically shed what is left of his integrity in an effort to appeal to the baseness of the GOP base has been endlessly disheartening.
Lugar is hardly the only public figure who has allowed his ego to trump his judgment. Today’s news also focuses on Eugene White, who seems equally intent upon disgracing himself.
It seems that White is doing everything he can to torpedo the impending State takeover of several IPS schools. He’s refusing to turn over student information, spreading misinformation to IPS parents, removing equipment from the targeted schools and otherwise making the transition as difficult as possible–all without any apparent regard for the children whose education is supposed to be his first concern.
I am no fan of State Superintendent Tony Bennett, who clearly has an ego problem of his own, and I harbor grave doubts about the wisdom of the state takeover. But White’s response is infantile and destructive–a description which, come to think of it, has characterized his entire tenure at IPS. A school board that took its responsibilities to children seriously would have fired him long before this.
Whatever happened to public servants who wanted to–you know–serve the public?
There is a report in this morning’s Indianapolis Star—buried between breathless reports about the Colt’s new quarterback, true, but an actual story with real news in it–about efforts to address Indianapolis’ longstanding sewer problem.
When it rains, tons of raw sewage are dumped into our water supply. Citizens, which bought the water and sewer utilities last year, is beginning construction of massive tunnels beneath the city to divert that sewage and correct the problem–and not so incidentally, fulfill the City’s obligations under a 2006 consent decree with the EPA.
I was delighted to read that we are finally going to address this problem. But I couldn’t help marveling over the amount of time it has taken.
I was in City Hall from 1977-80. Indianapolis’ sewer problems were already a regular topic of conversation at cabinet meetings. The City had been in discussion with the (then new) EPA since the Lugar Administration. (I wouldnt say there was a lot of resistance to demands that the problems be fixed, but an engineer with DPW reportedly protested that it would be cheaper to clean White River than comply with federal demands.)
It took from 1975 to 2006 for Indianapolis to agree to stop dumping raw sewage into our drinking water. It took another six years to begin remediation. Of course, City leaders have been trying for almost that long to address our need for decent public transportation, and we’re nowhere close to getting that job done.
If it took us 37 years to begin fixing a problem that everyone acknowledged we had, a problem we knew how to solve–how many years do you suppose it will it take to fix public education?
Like many other civil libertarians, I have been deeply disappointed by President Obama’s willingness to continue many of the security practices of the Bush Administration. It is especially galling because–unlike Bush–Obama quite obviously knows what the Constitution requires, and has nevertheless been willing to engage in surveillance and other practices which most civil libertarians believe cross the line.President Obama gets blamed for many things he clearly doesn’t do, but in this area, disappointment in his performance is justifiable.
Because I have been pretty critical of Administration policy in this area, I was interested in the following observation posted on the Law and Courts Listserv, a scholarly exchange to which I subscribe.
In response to a post suggesting an equivalency between the policies of the two administrations, Professor Alexander wrote:
“Eugene says the Bush antiterrorism policy “is quite similar to the Obama Administration’s antiterrorism policy.”
I like many others have been deeply disappointed in aspects of the Obama Administration’s policy on detainees and counterterrorism, as well as the efforts by Congress and judges on the D.C. Circuit to force the administration to continue Bush policies. But Eugene’s statement is simply not the case. Contrary to the Bush administration:
* Obama has withdrawn from combat operations in Iraq and plans to
withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014;
* Obama found and killed bin Laden;
* on his first day in office Obama
1) revoked all the Bush administration OLC memos, executive
orders, and directives on interrogations;
2) ordered an end to torture, and cruel, inhumane, or
degrading treatment, and compliance with the Army field manual
(regardless of whether one thinks that is the end-all of good
interrogation practice);
3) ordered all CIA prisons worldwide to be closed;
4) ordered the closure of Guantanamo — it is decidedly not
his fault that the facility remains open;
5) ordered that the Geneva Conventions are the “minimum
baseline” for treatment of any individuals detained in “any armed conflict”;
6) ordered that the International Red Cross be given access
to all detainees;
* Obama ordered the trial in Art III court of KSM and the other
captured 9/11 plotters — again, not his fault that they must be tried
in military commissions;
* in March 2011 Obama issued an executive order directing that the
government comply with Art 75 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva
Conventions “out of a sense of legal obligation” — thereby
acknowledging the binding nature of international law in connection with
the detention of suspected terrorists — and urged Congress to ratify
Additional Protocol II;
* the Obama administration revamped the military commission
procedures so that — although not as good as Art III courts — they are
much improved over the Bush versions;
* in particular, evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment is barred;
* it appears that DOJ and DOD are pursuing and concluding military
commission plea bargains so that evidence in MC trials (such as the KSM
trial) will conform to Art III standards;
* the President and Attorney General have repeatedly declared that
waterboarding is torture and is illegal (in stark contrast to Bush,
Cheney, and Yoo, who have gleefully affirmed torture as good policy); and
* no prisoners have been transferred to Guantanamo and the
administration has repeatedly stated that none will be.”
Clearly, Professor Alexander has been following these matters far more closely than I have.
Now, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that being better than the Bush Administration on civil liberties is hardly a “get out of jail free” card. But this list did make me feel better.
