Firsthand reporting on the situation in Baghdad is being made continuously available by Rhode Islander Rocco DiPippo on his Autonomist website. Rocco bleeds red, white and blue, but he’s no Pollyanna. He calls it like he sees it and reports the good with the bad. For example, there was a lot of the bad in his February 12 report…
So much for the peace and quiet in Baghdad. While I was at lunch today, three huge bombs exploded in the heart of Baghdad. The first one was hidden in a plastic bag and targeted a popular falafel restaurant. When it detonated, at least nine people were killed. Falafel restaurants are targeted by Islamic extremists based on the (il)logic that in Mohammed’s day, there was no such thing as falafel, so it is therefore un-Islamic to eat it today…Fortunately, the good is more prominent in his more recent reports. First, U.S. forces are definitely on the offensive. Here’s a report with some analysis from February 15…
Approximately thirty minutes after the first blast, two car bombs blew up almost simultaneously near the Shorja market district, collapsing a building and wrecking stalls and shops. Approximately fifty people were murdered in those explosions.
During the evening, I went outside and watched our pilots drop signal flares in support of Stryker brigades who were conducting block-by-block, house-to-house searches of Baghdad’s neighborhoods. They met little resistance, but confiscated a lot of small arms and ammo. That’s mixed news — what it likely indicates is that the militias and other crazies are laying low until sweep operations end.…and another from just yesterday…
A check of today’s headlines earlier today showed only brief mention of the massive bombing raid that took place in a terrorist enclave in the Doura area last night. I’d never heard anything like it. About 9:00pm, while on the phone to the Autonomistress, my apartment was rocked by about 20 distant, but massive, detonations in quick succession. I knew immediately, from both the tone and number of the detonations, that it was US firepower in action. Halfway through the barrage, the electricity in my apartment went down. To my relief, I was able to contact some friends who live closer to where the bombs were being dropped and confirmed they were OK. Then I walked back to my office, climbed a ladder to the roof and scanned the horizon. I could see no fires or smoke, which, believe it or not, is sometimes the case when blast ordinance is used.Most importantly, consistent with other reports becoming available, the U.S. offensive appears to have calmed Baghdad and maybe beyond, at least for the moment. Here are Rocco’s observations and analysis from February 17…
There was a dramatic countrywide decrease in violence yesterday. Baghdad experienced an enormous drop in the number of sectarian killings, bombings and shootings. Normally, the number of violent incidents reported in the city averages around 100 per day. Since the start of the recent security sweeps, that number has steadily dropped but on Friday, it plumetted to 38 reported incidents. Since I’ve been in Baghdad, that’s the lowest total yet. May it get even lower.[Open full post]
I have no solid explanation why violence has also dropped dramatically in other parts of the country. However, I’ll go out on a limb by theorizing that the Baghdad crackdown on militias, coupled with a surprisingly effective performance by the Iraqi Army, has sent a message to the murderers that their activities will no longer be tolerated. Behind the scenes, I think that the Bush Administration has threatened to end support for the corrupt Maliki government, and is successfully pressuring that government to end its implicit support for the Islamist Mehdi Army, Iran’s proxy.
Reacting to a comment of mine (in the conversation appended to a previous post) concerning the inevitable collision of the gay rights movement with certain fundamental freedoms, such as that of religion, Matt, of Unlikely Words, posting as MRH, writes:
Two very interesting cases. I’m going to have to think about my response a bit. I think your hypothetical invitation company ought to be free to refuse any customer they want, and I’ll have to think a bit more about the Christian adoption agency.
In my view, these are two examples of groups that are indefensibly discriminating against homosexuals. From my own personal moral point of view, I have no sympathy for them if, in a hypothetical world where two men can get married, they are barred from such discrimination. In general, my sympathies attach more strongly to the victims of discrimination than to agents of discrimination. As a matter of law and policy, however, it’s a bit more complicated, and I need to mull it over a bit.
My first response — said, given my appreciation for Matt’s cordiality, with no intended slight — is: What a strange thing for the ostensible champion of liberty and tolerance in this exchange to say! I certainly have sympathy for those who desire same-sex marriage. I think they’re wrong, and I think the factors that lead them to their conclusions are ultimately detrimental to them and to society, but I can assure readers that you would find me neither gloating nor joining any spontaneous parades were the traditional definition of marriage to be affirmed with the maximum solidity available in law. Above most issues, matters of love and family affect people very personally — and are bound up with their visions for the future — and for me to have a lack of sympathy for those whose conclusions I oppose would require me to believe that they are all lying about their motives and are, in fact, consciously striving for the downfall of our society. It is disheartening to think that the courteous and discoursive MRH might believe something equivalent from the other side.
My response to the expression of sympathy for “the victims of discrimination,” rather than “agents of discrimination,” is to wonder whether Matt’s sympathies are applied on the basis of individual cases or he’s speaking of victims and agents as class distinctions. If the former, one would expect his sympathies to cycle: The Catholics who are rebuffed for discriminating against homosexuals for purposes of adoption (to keep with the prior example) are, in turn, being discriminated against by the government in relation to the their ability to take private initiative in keeping with their beliefs about the most beneficial homes for children. If the latter, the application of sympathy — presumptuous in its assignment of roles — amounts to declaring a moral preference for homosexuals versus traditional Christians.
Either way, it oughtn’t take but so much intellectual distance to realize that the struggle isn’t between religious dogma and objective civil rights, but between two competing ideological worldviews with different understandings of what marriage, in its essence, is:
- On one side is the romantic vision of two people drawn together by love and a desire for each other’s intimate, usually sexual, company. (I’ve felt there to be evidence of this ethereal romanticism in the incredulity with which some proponents of same-sex marriage react to suggestions that polygamy could follow in the redefinition of allowable “soul mates.”) Clearly, if this is the vision of marriage that one holds, and if one believes that homosexuals really do have these feelings in equal capacity to heterosexuals, then it is nothing other than invidious discrimination to deny them equal rights.
- The other side incorporates a healthy dose of this romantic vision, but it is sublimated to the utility of marriage to bind the genders in biologically affirmed union and to tie generations in an historical thread of ancestry and progeny, often with religious underpinnings. If this is the vision of marriage that one holds, then homosexual relationships, whether they inspire approval or disapprobation, are simply not marriage, and to redefine marriage to include them would inevitably erode the institution’s utility.
Understanding that a critical component of our argument is our claim to a right — through the democratic process — to help to determine marriage law, many who oppose same-sex marriage have striven to express our views in ways that discard diversions and murkiness. That our position remains inexplicable to many on the other side strikes me as an indication that they lack either the sympathy and tolerance to think through foreign arguments or the respect to make the effort.
[Open full post]In this week’s Providence Phoenix, Ian Donnis has 6 items from Giovanni Cicione’s 10 point plan for turning around the state Republican Party, if he is selected as chairman…
[Open full post]The state party needs a leadership team — not just a leader. There is too much for any one person to do alone and without the constant and energetic support of dozens of key players we will never create the structure required to put this state on a more even keel. We need a fundraising plan and a fundraising team that work together to sustain the party. Establish system within the party for monitoring and pursuing ethics and election law violations by Democrats. These charges are too often ignored, pursued on a shoestring, or not followed through. Provide logistical support and voter ID information for all Republican candidates. Clean up the voter rolls statewide — this is long overdue and we need to be vigilant. When dead people vote, they seem to be for Democrats. Provide resources to reinvigorate city and town committee. Without active city and town committees we can’t get people excited about being Republicans. A business plan with defined goals. Quantifiable targets and a responsible leadership tasked with meeting them.
The Sisto family school choice program reminds me of another news story that is not receiving the attention it should be getting. This fall, Utah will become the first state in the nation to implement a universal school-choice voucher plan. Here is a description of the program, from Dan Lips and Evan Feinberg of the Heritage Foundation…
The “Parent Choice in Education” Act will provide scholarships to assist families that choose to send their children to private schools. The scholarship amount varies between $500 and $3,000 depending on family income.Dave Talan proposed a plan similar to the Utah plan in his recent campaign for mayor of Providence. (Unlike Mr. Sisto, Mr. Talan thinks that school choice should be extended to everyone, not just his own family). Mr. Talan’s plan was a little more libertarian than the Utah plan, calling for a flat voucher amount, regardless of family income, and skipping the part where the public system keeps any aid associated with students who leave.
All current public school students will be able to use a voucher to transfer to a private school. Among current private school students, only those who meet the income guidelines for the federal free and reduced school lunch program will be eligible to receive scholarships. Moving forward, all students entering kindergarten in 2007 and thereafter will be eligible to use scholarships to attend a school of choice. This means that by 2020 all children in the state will be eligible to participate.
In order to admit students participating in the voucher program, private schools must meet a number of guidelines. For example, they must administer a nationally norm-referenced test, report individual test results to parents, and report school-wide performance results to the state government. Further, participating private schools must disclose information relating to teachers’ credentials and the school’s accreditation status. Schools also must have an independent auditor assess relevant information about the school’s budget and accounting procedures and include this information in the school’s application to the state….
The program is structured to spare public schools a portion of the potential revenue losses that result from students transferring into private schools. When a student leaves a public school, the legislation requires the state to continue to supply that public school’s district the portion of the per-pupil funding that is over and above the state-wide average voucher amount, and to continue doing so for a period of five years following the transfer or until the student was scheduled to graduate. Unfortunately, this will minimize the voucher program’s competitive effect that might otherwise spur innovation in the public school system.
Suppose we merged some of the features from the Utah plan into the Talan plan. Is there any reason it couldn’t work here? [Open full post]
I’ll admit to being surprised by the spirited defense of employment-based healthcare offered by commenters on this blog and in a few face-to-face discussions I’ve had. Mark Schmitt, writing just yesterday on the American Prospect’s weblog, adds an angle to this discussion not yet mentioned here, suggesting that many people prefer employer-based health insurance for the simple reason that they don’t want the responsibility of choosing a health plan on their own…
On the other hand, an immediate transition to an individualized system seems unrealistic, and also politically dangerous. Not only do you have to give up the dollars that employers are putting in, but you also lose their role in helping to navigate the choices in the system (as Bruce Vladek, former head of HCFA, once pointed out, people may say they want choices but they really want somebody in HR to tell them what to do)…There is also a more extreme view, expressed by Lord Douglas Jay, a member of the British Parliament in the 1940s. Lord Jay’s sentiment is rarely expressed in direct fashion today, but almost certainly exists in the minds of some healthcare reformers…
Housewives on the whole cannot be trusted to buy all the right things where nutrition and health care are concerned. This is really no more an extension of the principle according to which the housewife herself would not trust a child of 4 to select the week’s purchases. For in the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for the people than the people know themselves.(Original quote taken from David Gratzer’s The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care).
{Note from the blogger: Americanizing the end of the last sentence would translate to something like “the Department of Health and Human Services really does know better what is good for the people than the people know themselves.”}
Whether it’s Mr. Schmitt’s soft view (people want someone else to make their insurance decisions for them), or Lord Jay’s harder one (people need someone else to make their insurance decisions for them), the implication is the same — the debate about employer-based healthcare is more than a debate about economic factors, it is also a debate about government co-opting corporate bureaucracies in an attempt to engineer better lives for individuals.
Is Mark Schmitt right? Do people support the employer-based system because, at some level, they want someone to help them choose their coverage, and not just because they are afraid that the employer-based healthcare system is the only non-directly government run system that can provide them with affordable coverage?
People who believe there’s a better way to provide insurance than through the existing system need to know the answer to this question, so they will know if they need to make the case for a more open insurance market in terms broader than just fiscal and economic viability. [Open full post]
What happens when young co-eds “fight the power” and win a loosening of on-campus speech codes? Why, they seek to reimpose them when they become “the power.” As Greg Lukianoff and Will Creeley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) explain in a campus free speech expose in today’s Providence Phoenix (Via N4N):
College administrators didn’t decide to start cracking down on student speech just because of Facebook’s popularity. Despite the fact that such institutions rely on free and open exchange to serve their societal functions, universities both public and private have been policing student speech for decades. While we do ourselves no favors imagining that there was ever a time in collegiate history that students’ rights were perfectly respected, the campus free-speech movement of the 1960s and ’70s was highly successful. The sad irony is that many from the generation that fought so hard for free speech in the ’60s and ’70s were the pioneers of speech codes and PC restrictions in the ’80s and ’90s and that we still see today.
Yes, it’s only “free speech” if they agree with it. Yet, there is a reason behind the speech codes: “In an attempt to prevent these claims, educational institutions have adopted a corporate risk-management posture.” By this, they explain:
[Open full post]…speech codes are maintained by schools in no small part due to a deeply held fear of civil liability for harassment lawsuits arising from Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX prohibits discrimination — including sexual harassment — in any education program receiving federal funding. Plaintiffs in meritorious sexual-harassment lawsuits stand to win large damage awards, and the sheer number of those suits has become quite significant. Even when the claim is truly frivolous, the cost of mounting a defense is substantial.
Projo columnist Charles Bakst is unhappy with Rhode Island’s new junior Senator…
Whether you voted for Republican Lincoln Chafee — a perfectly good antiwar senator — or embraced the arguments for a Democratic Senate and went with Sheldon Whitehouse, you must be furious today.Actually, as someone who pays very close attention to politics, Bakst has little excuse to be frustrated with Senator Whitehouse. Candidate Whitehouse dramatically altered his position on Iraq during the course of the 2006 Senate campaign. It was not reasonable to expect that a candidate who couldn’t hold a coherent position would become a Senator who would take direct, meaningful actions. [Open full post]
It’s late February and the Democrats — who promised that with Whitehouse’s election and a Senate majority they’d begin to change the world — can’t even pass a meaningless resolution to denounce President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq.
I told Whitehouse the other day that I’m angry and frustrated. He said I “absolutely” had the right to be.
…two of them, anyway. The two would be North Providence City Councilman (and Mayoral Candidate) John Sisto and North Providence School Committee Chairman Donald Cataldi. According to WLNE-TV (ABC 6) news reporter Jim Hummel, Councilman Sisto’s grandson, who lives in Providence, has been attending school in North Providence. Hummel has a week’s worth of video showing the Councilman picking up his grandson at his Providence home and driving him to a North Providence elementary school. (This being Rhode Island, Mr. Sisto uses a town-owned car to take of family business). Chairman Cataldi is quoted as saying he sees nothing wrong with the arrangement.
Although the reporting on the story is first rate, it does not belong under the WLNE’s “You Paid for It” banner. Providence receives about $7,000 per-pupil in state-aid, funded through taxes on all Rhode Island residents while North Providence receives only around $4,000 per-pupil. Most of Rhode Island, therefore, is actually contributing less to a student who enrolls in North Providence instead of Providence. To really make the deal work for everyone (except the city of Providence’s ineffective education bureaucracy) all RI needs to do is compensate North Providence taxpayers by transferring a portion of the state aid associated with Councilman Sisto’s grandson from Providence to North Providence.
Councilman Sisto’s explicit defense is that his grandson lives with him in North Providence, but his implict defense is more interesting and more compelling. Why should his grandson be forced to go to an inferior school, when a better alternative is easily available? The counter is that Sisto’s grandson can’t attend school in North Providence because as a resident of Rhode Island, he is a serf, tied to the land that he tills for his lord… OK, maybe I went a bit over the edge there, but what exactly is the counter argument? Julia Steiny had an excellent column in the Projo from two Sundays ago noting how public schools seem more designed to instill compliance with authority than to provide an education. Isn’t that also the message we’re sending at the macro level, that it is more important for families to be compliant with geographic monopoly districting rules than it is to find the best education alternatives for their children?
Finally, if Councilman Sisto and Chairman Cataldi think it’s a good idea for a city councilman’s grandson to be able to choose the public school his child goes to, shouldn’t they be in favor of extending that right to every family in Rhode Island? If school choice is good for the families of our pols, shouldn’t it be good for the families of regular citizens too?
As brought to my attention by the Rhode Island Republican Assembly:
In an unprecedented attack on the Rhode Island Constitution and with complete disregard to the citizens of Rhode Island, Attorney General Patrick Lynch has today, taken on the role of Lord and Master of the citizens of this state by proclaiming that “Rhode Island will recognize same sex marriages lawfully performed in Massachusetts as marriages in Rhode Island.”
He has proclaimed this recognition without the citizens of Rhode Island being given the right to vote on the matter as the citizens in other states have. He has also lifted himself above the Legislative and Executive branches of the State government which have passed no laws recognizing these Massachusetts “activist judges allowed unions”.
This is a great miscarriage of justice and law by the individual that is charged with the responsibility of enforcing Rhode Island law and protecting our State Constitution, not Creating Laws and issuing Executive Decisions from the office of the Attorney General.
Details from the Providence Journal’s 7 to 7 blog add a little murk to the water:
Lynch said his office took “great pains” to review state law before determining that legal out-of-state marriages don’t contradict the state’s public policy.
“I’m saying there is no legal reason that a couple validly married in Massachusetts should be denied any basic rights in Rhode Island,” he said. “That would be wrong.”
Lynch’s opinion was issued in response to a recent request from the Board of Governor’s for Higher Education. Three state employees had asked their personnel files to be changed to reflect their same-sex marriage status, according to board spokesman Steve Maurano.
Unless I’ve missed something in Rhode Island law concerning the attorney general, his power does appear to leave room for him to be “forced to intervene” beyond rulings and statutes put forward by the legislative and judicial branches of Rhode Island state government. The AG’s allocated modes of action are to prosecute, to investigate, and to advise. Nowhere are his interpretations deemed legally binding. When faced with civil rights violations, for example, the AG’s recourse is to “bring a civil action for injunctive or other appropriate equitable relief” — that is, bring it to the courts.
Like any lawyer/politician, however, Lynch has left himself (and 7 to 7 reporter Steve Peoples has perpetuated) an ambiguity cum escape clause. The Board of Governor’s appears to have approached Lynch in his capacity as the state government’s “legal adviser.” But unless an adviser is a much different creature in the halls of government, it is not his role to decide that the “Board of Education was threatening to deny people basic rights” and declare, “I wasn’t going to wait.” Rather, one would expect him to give the board his opinion, in confidence, and then to defend it against any lawsuits that might arise. Even beyond any question of whether the action that he did take represents a power grab, one must wonder how effectively he would defend a dissenting public board against a lawsuit concerning what he agrees to be “a basic civil rights issue.”
A further astonishing aspect of Lynch’s declaration is that it comes at a time when the General Assembly has legislation addressing the matter on the table and the judiciary is grappling with a related question. Although same-sex marriage advocates have successfully framed the debate in the legalistic-sounding terms of whether the “marriages were validly entered into,” and despite Lynch’s decidedly nonlegalistic rhetoric, the state can deny the benefits of marriage if, as I’ve argued before, the relationship is simply not marriage according to Rhode Island law.
On such fundamental matters of social construction, the people of Rhode Island have a right to a say. But since when have these false and manipulative “civil rights” advocates cared about disenfranchising anybody with whom they disagree?
ADDENDUM:
I caught a segment on this on the eleven o’clock news and it was clear that Lynch had already backed off the “I had to take action” stuff. Now if the rest of the news media and activist groups (I’m thinking mainly, but not exclusively, pro-SSM) would do the same, perhaps legal processes could flow as intended.
In an unsigned editorial about some election that Senator John McCain would like to run in in 2008, the Projo editorial board rather casually throws out this sentence…
[McCain] has backed the “surge” of troops into Baghdad even as most Americans are increasingly skeptical about it.It is unclear how the editorial board knows that the surge is becoming “increasingly” unpopular. According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, support for the surge has grown since it was announced by President Bush, though support is still not the majority position…
Sixty-three percent of people surveyed oppose Bush’s decision to send more troops, although support for the president’s plan has risen in the past few weeks from 26 percent to 35 percent, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.Perhaps if the Projo subscribed to the AP, they would be able to keep their information more up to date. Oh, wait…
Also, we shouldn’t forget to consider the opinion of Baghdad residents when trying to determine the overall popularity of the surge. This is from Mohammed Fadhil, reporting for Pajamas Media (h/t Mickey Kaus)…
Al-Sabah reports that yesterday alone 327 families returned home and that the scene of vans loaded with furniture of refugees leaving Baghdad is no more. There were times when the average was around 20 a day. The 327 figure brought the total to more than 500 families across Baghdad.I suspect the surge is popular with at least the 500 families mentioned above. [Open full post]
Al-Hurra TV aired a report on the story and interviewed some of the returning Baghdadis, one man said “those who returned earlier and saw the change in the situation called us and encouraged us to return, and I too will encourage the rest to come back”. The report showed those families asking the army to stay and not abandon their neighborhood, and showed the officer in charge giving his number to the locals so that they can contact him directly in case of emergency.
