Sick Transit

Alex Tabarrok makes a faulty analogy on electronic voting:

I work for a payroll company, and the core of our business is a computerized payroll system. But we also keep a good deal of paper files; and I can assure you that any audits or disputes are going to pull in that paper file for comparison.

It’s true that most consumers (myself included) don’t keep high accounting standards in managing our personal finances. But if anyone were to run a public company–let alone an election–the way that most of us run our finances, the executives would soon end up in jail. (Or at least at the wrong end of an SEC investigation.)

So I agree with Tabarrok that there’s no need to be paranoid about computerized voting, especially if the software is open source. But that doesn’t eliminate the need for an audit trail.

Update: Boy am I red-faced! Apologies to Alex for misspelling his name.

From WaPo:

So now they’re not just weapons inspectors, they’re mind-readers?

Volokh has a story about a state legislator in California who wants to create an optional firearms safety curriculum. Of course, opposition is strong. What struck me most is Volokh’s heading for the post: he wonders if there are “shades of the sex education debate.”

Obviously, gun use, unlike sex, is not a natural biological function. Teenagers do not spontaneously acquire guns (and an intense urge to shoot them) at puberty.

However, there is a common principle: if a problem exists, education is a much better solution than denial. So in areas where gun usage is common, I think that a gun-safety curriculum at school makes sense. And I think that Volokh is very insightful in recognizing the instinctive repression–one could almost call it prudery–inherent in anti-gun activists’ reactions to proposals like this.

WSJ is subscription-only, so I can’t verify the quote for myself. But according to Slate, the Journal has criticized the copyright regime:

Right on, Journal.

NYT Magazine profiles Jason West, the New Paltz mayor who jumped to national prominence when he solemnized 25 gay marriages.

The article is kind of a “what if the kids were in charge” story. West, 27, is one of three Green Party members on the town board; one of the others is a student at SUNY. He was elected only because the two establishment candidates (the former Mayor and Deputy Mayor) split the majority vote between them. He works as a house-painter, and when he decided to perform the gay marriages, his attorneys had to lend him dress shoes and a tie.

West was an artist in high school, and is currently a member of a puppetry troupe. At his inaugaration,

West is no naif, however, and from the article it appears that he has strong political skills. Especially now that he has been catapulted to national prominence by the gay marriage issue, he probably has a fruitful career as an activist ahead of him.

It seems that sometimes, putting the kids in charge can be a good thing.

…his sense of humor! In an NYT interview, Blix says:

Richard Clarke was given the royal softball treatment by Salon. It’s still an intereting interview, however. It has good responses by Clarke to some of the charges against him.

I found this snippet particularly amusing:

In other words: “I think she’s in a time-warp and is still stuck in the Cold War.”

Clarke is great at this sort of thing. Here’s another one from earlier in the interview:

Zing! Of course, there were important differences. During the Reagan administration, there was a hostage situation, which made direct military response much more difficult. And in the case of Pan Am 103, few of those killed were actually Americans. But Clarke makes his charges sound plausible. As Noam Scheiber put it: “The Bush administration may finally have met its match, political street-fighter-wise.”

Slate has decided that the Pledge of Allegiance is too long and wordy, and so they’ve transformed it into a bulleted PowerPoint presentation. Slide #4 is my favorite.

Just about every piece on the Richard Clarke story that I’ve read in the past few days seems to have relied on one of two arguments, exemplified in Stuart Benjamin and Randy Barnett’s dueling Volokh posts.

Argument 1 is that since the White House has not responded to Clarke’s factual charges, but instead focused on undermining his credibility, that means that the charges are probably true.

Argument 2 is that we only have Clarke’s word for the accusations, so since his credibility is being undermined, the charges are probably not true.

The problem with the latter argument is that while it’s true that the public does not have the facts to evaluate Clarke’s claims, the Bush administration does. And they proved their willingness to use those facts, by releasing Clarke’s background briefing from August 2002.

But the background briefing doesn’t prove much, other than that Clarke was good at doing his job (which included defending administration policy). If any of the other facts in the White House’s posession–memos, notes, recordings, eyewitness accounts–could be used to discredit Clarke’s account, the administration would have released them.

It’s true that Clarke probably wants to clear his own name. It’s a pretty bum rap to have been the top official in charge of counterterrorism during the worst terrorist attack ever on US soil. And Clarke probably does share significant responsibility for the US’ weak response to the terrorist threat before 9/11.

But you don’t have to swallow Clarke’s spin to realize that he has some facts. His claims about meetings (or lack thereof) can be checked against documentary evidence. And his account of the administration’s obsession with Iraq immediately after 9/11 tallies with what we know from other sources.

Whistleblowers rarely have clean hands. The Bush administration’s response to Clarke is to try to get us to focus on the accuser–who is no longer in public service–instead of the accused, who is running for re-election to the highest office of the nation. And that is just bass-ackwards.

(Now come on. The headline’s a gimme.)

This year is the 25th anniversary of Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, and the movie is going to return to theaters in major cities in the US this Christmas. The President of the distributor said: “We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programming to The Passion.”

Just remember, he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!

(Link via Secular Blasphemy, which describes The Passion as a “deicide splatter fest”.)

This parenthetical remark in a Slate article got me thinking:

Clinton’s administration was considered to be scandal- and investigation-ridden. It became so ridiculous that it finally led to a bipartisan consensus to sunset the Independent Counsel law.

But what was Clinton actually investigated for? Whitewater, Paula Jones and Lewinsky, however you feel about their seriousness, were still about private–not governmental–conduct. Travelgate and the FBI files had to do with possible staffing violations. The only investigations that I can think of that were directly related to the functioning of government were the campaign finance issues and Cisneros’ acceptance of illegal gifts.

On the other hand, what is the Bush administration being investigated for? Taking the nation to war on false pretenses; leaking the identity of a CIA agent; and concealing budget information from Congress. Fundamental offenses against democracy and national security.

Bush campaigned on a promise to “restore integrity to the white house.” Gotta love his definition of integrity.

Michael Kinsley uses the neologism “statistoid” in his latest column. At least, the word is new to me; and I could only find one other usage on Google.

Frankly, I don’t like the sound of the word, but I think there’s definitely a use for it, especially now that the word ‘factoid’ is often used to mean ‘a piece of trivia’ instead of ‘a false but generally repated fact’.

So much for the culture wars! The RNC has released an add riffing off of Austin Powers. I guess they’re aiming for the “South Park Republicans”. It’s a great ad, though; see for yourself.

(Link via Lessig)

More confirmation for the Clarke story… Colin Powell says that Wolfowitz wanted to attack Iraq after 9/11.

Tyler Cowen comes down on the side of copyright owners. He says that the strongest argument against allowing remixes such as the Grey Album is:

He believes that this “latter view is correct.”

But what exactly is so horrible about this universe of “out of control” musical creativity? If you feel that musicians deserve some compensation for the sampling of their work, then institute a compulsory license, such as exists for covers and public performanes. But this apocalyptic “out of control” scenario sounds to me like a utopia. Sure, a lot of what is produced will be schlock. But that’s the only way to get the good stuff.

Juan Cole writes:

Here are a few excerpts from this “excellent piece”:

So neocons are anxious to “destroy Iraq”, “thwart detente” with the Arab world, and install a “Vichy government” in Iraq? I’m no fan of the President’s policies, but I have to say that this is the gutter of political argument.

Juan Cole is far too intelligent to write such tripe. I’m surprised, to say the least, that he would endorse it.

Via Juan Cole, a link to the revelation that Clarke’s charges are not new.

Back in April of 2003, the retiring British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, said that Wolfowitz was pushing for an attack on Iraq after 9/11, and that Blair was instrumental in supporting Colin Powell to get the focus shifted to Afghanistan.

Now it should be noted that April of 2003 was shortly after the Iraqi invasion, when Blair was taking a lot of heat in Britain for supporting Bush. So he would certainly have strong motivation for spreading the story that he had actually restrained Bush from attacking Iraq earlier.

Still, the fact is, we’re not going to get the truth on this matter from anyone without an agenda. So for everyone who’s claiming that it’s a he-said/he-said situation between Clarke and the White House, it’s worth nothing that Clarke has a second witness.

P.S. See also some strong analysis of the Clarke accusations at Intel Dump

From an NYT interview with Lou Dobbs, CNN financial journalist and anti-outsourcing advocate:

Really, Lou? It seems far more insensitive to me to claim that American families matter more than Indian families.

And that, to me, is the key of the outsourcing debate. Forty years ago, white laborers tried to keep blacks out of unions, not because of any inherent racial ill will, but because it would mean increased competition for jobs. This time around, instead of whites vs blacks, it’s Americans vs Mexicans and Indians. Except the liberal elite has changed sides, and is now promoting self-interest over social justice.

Via Religion-Related Injuries, this link to Pastor Lancaster:

I believe in the right to free speech. That means that “Pastor” Lancaster has a right to spew this tripe. But I hope that the government finds every one of his adherents and puts them in jail for child abuse.

I had the good luck of studying one semester with John Sexton, at the time Dean of NYU Law School, now President of NYU. One of his many anecdotes was about the Justice Scalia touring a law school. The Justice’s host took took him to see the students rehearsing for the Law Revue (no, that’s not a typo). Unfortuantely, the theme of the piece being rehearsed was, as Dean Sexton put it, “Scalia is a big fat idiot.”

I suspect that Publius would agree with that sentiment. In a post on Legal Fiction, he swipes at Scalia and takes issue with originalism (the theory of constitutional interpretation based on original understanding). His argument is that originalism posits a single, original understanding of the text that is impossible to precisely determine, if it even existed.

The problem with this argument is that originalism is an epistemology, not an algorithm. All but the most basic legal interpretation has a degree of subjectivity. Originalism is simply a set of criteria for reducing that subjectivity as much as possible.

Theories of interpretation are meant to replace the question ‘What does this construct mean?’ with another question that is easier to answer. In the case of originalism, the replacement question is: ‘What was this construct understood to mean at the time that it was passed?’

You can argue that this question is not easier to answer; or that it’s not a good question to ask. But Publius rails against it simply because it has a question mark.

He also charges that originalists choose the philosophy subconsciously because it fits their political beliefs. It’s perfectly fine to make that argument, of course, as long as he recognizes that he, too, chooses his favored theory of interpretation because it fits his political beliefs. Which leaves us no closer to determining which is actually the better theory.

Personally, I’m against originalism on pragmatic grounds. Basically, it binds us to an outdated constitution. One could argue, as originalists do, that changes to the constitution should come through amendments, rather than through the judiciary. But we’ve evolved a tradition of avoiding constitutional amendments. And we’ve also evolved a tradition of judge-made constitutional law. Whether or not you like this, it’s as much a part of our system as judicial review, common law, and other concepts that are not found in the constitution.

So basically, unless we want to regress two hundred years in justice and equity (which not even conservatives want to do), we have two alternatives. One is to stick with judge-made constitutional law. The other is to switch to a European-style constitution: much more detailed, and needing to be amended every few years.

Out of those two, I’ll take the judge-made law.

I am not a lawyer, and I’m sure that Publius could have made the above argument much better than I did. I wish he had done so, instead of arbitrarily dismissing originalism with little evidence and less argument.