Bolton as Reformer

I don't think Tom Friedman adds anything to the Bolton debate by suggesting that Bush should nominate his dad to go back to the UN, but he does characterize nicely the new conservative talking point on the need to name someone like Bolton in order to "reform the UN":

The White House claims it needs the pugnacious Mr. Bolton at the U.N. to whip it into shape and oversee real reform there. I have only one thing to say in response to that pablum: Give me a break. We do not need a U.N. ambassador to "reform" the U.N. That is not what America needs or wants from the U.N. You want to reform the U.N.? You want to analyze its budgets and overhaul its bureaucratic processes, well, then hire McKinsey & Co. — not John Bolton. (Everyone knows he prefers to torch the place.)

"Reforming the U.N." is without question one of the most tired, vacuous conservative mantras ever invented. It is right up there with squeezing "waste, fraud and abuse" out of the Pentagon's budget. If the White House is concerned about waste, fraud and abuse, let's start with Tom DeLay and our own House.

Sorry, but we don't need a management consultant as our U.N. ambassador. What we need is someone who can get the most out of what the U.N. does offer to America.

And let's face it, the people who are calling for reform of the UN don't really want to reform it — they want to destroy it by pulling the US out. They see internationalism not as something that can benefit US policy, but as an inherent impediment to what they view as our proper role as the global hyperpower looking out for its own.

I've never understood the wingnut opposition to the UN and other international organizations, but now is not the time to give any ground. As we know from the Social Security debate, the dirtiest trick is to say you support something in order to kill it. Let's not give them the chance.

Folley Lick Court

"Folley" is a rather unusual last name, and I've gotten used to all the various misspellings and mispronunciations. It's also not a name you see very often out in the world. So imagine my surprise when Mary sent me this link.

Without a doubt, if we ever move back to Northern Virginia, we will have to live there. We'd certainly be big local celebrities on the cul-de-sac. It looks like a nice neighborhood for the suburbs, and Herndon Golf course is only a mile away. It might take a while before I could say my address with a straight face, though.

John Bolton: Lessons Learned

In what will hopefully be the last nail in John Bolton's coffin, CNN reported yesterday that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw complained to Secretary Powell back in 2003 that Bolton was making it impossible to reach a deal on Iran's nuclear program. The British also managed to keep Bolton off the negotiating team that eventually convinced Libya to officially put an end to its nuclear ambitions. That America's closest ally didn't find Bolton qualified to do his job as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control should give a few Republican Senators the political cover they need to vote down his promotion in committee.

It is important to remember that we are only at this point because Democrats, from the beginning, fought hard against this nomination. What is surprising isn't that Bolton will eventually fail to be confirmed, but that it took so much effort and evidence to get Senate Republicans to give this nominee a second look.

Giving a President's nominee the "benefit of the doubt", as Republicans are now fond of saying, is one thing. But given the overwhelming evidence against Bolton's qualifications and temperament, it is very hard to see that there could be any doubt left. And yet, Bush and many Republicans still insist he should be confirmed out of deference to executive power despite these issues. So much for accountability.

As Jeffrey Dubner notes almost in passing today, the real lesson of the Bolton nomination is that Democrats need to push back even harder against some of Bush's more egregious nominees. After all, people like Bolton don't just represent the President; they represent us all. And it is in everyone's interest to see that obviously unqualified political hacks don't get a pass just because the President asks for one.

Not Qualified

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to send judicial nominees Priscilla Owens and Janice Rogers Brown to the Senate floor (again) for confirmation. Democrats are expected to continue their filibusters against both, and Republicans are expected to rule those filibusters unconstitutional and then vote to confirm.

It's easy to get caught up the politics of the whole thing and miss the essential point here, which is that neither Owens nor Brown is even close to being qualified to sit on the federal bench. The GOP would have you believe that the majority party should get everything they want as soon as they want it. But as these two nominations prove, that's an incredibly bad idea.

6th and Graham

This is what I saw this afternoon walking home from the Teeter. Given where the dents are, I can't figure out exactly what happened here.

Fixing Pharmacies

It's an interesting question: to what extent should pharmacists be allowed to exercise their own judgment when filling legal prescriptions for their customers? The Times has a good discussion on this issue today, and it includes several quotes from pharmacists who insist upon their "right of conscience" to decide what drugs to dispense. The American Pharmacists Association, it is noted, supports that position. And while recent consideration of this question centers on Plan B, the article reports that many pharmacists have been refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control products for years.

The current legislative battle here seems to be between bills that exempt pharmacists from having to dispense certain classes of drugs, like birth control and "morning after" pills, verses bills that require pharmacists to fill every legal prescription. However, as we know from the aftermath of the Terri Schiavo case, narrowly-tailored bills that propose to speak to broad moral issues rarely stay narrowly-tailored for long.

The real, underlying question, then, isn't where to draw the line, but whether to have a line at all. If some pharmacists are demanding the right to consult their consciences, it isn't necessarily the case that all such consultation will involve specific drugs we can name in advance. Will a pharmacist opposed to birth control refuse to dispense drugs with "serious sexual side effects"? Will another not fill some prescriptions for antibiotics, believing that your case of the clap is God's punishment for sin? And should something be done about the strict Freudian who opposes the use of anti-depressants, and instead recommends some time on the couch?

Or how about these cases: Should a fire fighter be allowed to opt out of responding to the fire at the mosque because he believes that all Muslims are terrorists who hate America? Should a police officer be able to pass on investigating a certain crime (for example, marital rape) if he doesn't believe that it is "really" a crime?

There is no end to these sorts of troubling questions, and the only way to provide order to this moral mess is to draw the line, and draw it brightly: all pharmacies must be required to fill any legal prescription without delay. Once a legal prescription is written, pharmacists don't get to second-guess the doctor or the patient, in the same way that fire fighters don't get to choose which alarms they will respond to. If a particular pharmacist has moral qualms about filling certain prescriptions, he or she is free to work that out with the employer (e.g. arrange to always work with another pharmacist who can fill those problematic scripts). But no pharmacy should have the right to deny lawful medical care to anyone — the rights of the patient must take priority.

It's About Credibility

Read this article in yesterday's Washington Post and see if you think the Heritage Foundation has any.

More on Frist

Just when you thought the whining by Senate Republicans about the handful of Bush's ultra-fringe judicial nominees that the Democrats can't bring themselves in good conscience to support couldn't get any more ludicrous, it just did. According to Senator Frist, the debate over debating rules in the Senate isn't just about the Constitutional meaning of "advise and consent", it's really about how much the Democrats hate Jesus.

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Now really, this is as outrageous as it is pathetic. Senator Reid and the ADL get the response absolutely right. Much has already been said about the right's new war against the core principles of American democracy, and I don't have much to add. And while I really don't expect the Republican establishment to condemn Frist's atroicious behavior, they should, and so should everyone else.

Finally Pulling the Trigger

First and his political allies couldn't have been too happy with this story in the Washington Post this morning. Claiming that Sen. Frist "all but certain to press for a rule change that would ban filibusters of judicial nominations in the next few weeks," the article makes it clear that Frist, despite his protestations, is motivated by something less than a principled defense of the Constitution:

Conservative activists are giving Frist little wiggle room. "If Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist hopes to capture the Republican nomination for president in 2008, then he has to see to it that the Bush judicial nominees are confirmed," Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, wrote in a recent article. "If he fails, then he is dead as a presidential wannabe."

Lessner is not somebody to be taken likely in conservative Republican circles, and he has the attention of a couple of other Senators considering a 2008 run:

At least two GOP colleagues who are pressing [Frist] to seek the rule change — George Allen (Va.) and Rick Santorum (Pa.) — also are weighing presidential bids. Both of them are wooing key conservatives clamoring for the filibuster ban.

But the political risks of banning the filibuster are high, too. No wonder, then, that Frist, who has been talking about "going nuclear" for months, seems to have hesitated for as long as he could before finally agreeing to pull the trigger. And, I think, he waited just a little too long.

A few weeks back, the Schiavo case clearly demonstrated that when the Republicans talk about "principle", they're really talking about power politics. Frist's grandstanding during that bit of unpleasantness also demonstrated that many voters are increasingly willing to call bullshit on the GOP when it engages in that kind of crass and transparent gamesmanship. As Frist gets ready to go all high and mightly in the service of the GOP majority and his own personal political future, I can only say, "bring it on". The Republicans who think that it will be the Democrats who will pay the price for Frist's power play will soon be proven to have been just as wrong as the Senate staffer who said that Terri Schiavo represented a "great political opportunity" for the GOP.

Just Plain Normal

Several years ago, I had an experience I've never really been able to explain. I woke up in the middle of the night, and became aware of an evil force in my bedroom closet. I couldn't move, and at the time it seemed that the evil in my closet had some kind of strange hold over my mind and body. After what seemed like about a minute, I sprang up in bed, able to move again, and the ghostly presence was gone.

I've always been vaguely embarrassed by this experience. I don't put any stock in the paranormal: I don't believe in ghosts, demons or vampires, and while I don't prima facie rule out psychic abilities, I've not seen any convincing evidence for it, either. So the question remained: how could I explain what happened within my rationalist paradigm?

I thank Chris Mooney for finally providing me with the answer: sleep paralysis:

Sleep paralysis occurs in 30% of the general population. In it you wake up in bed, feel paralyzed, and tend to sense a terrifying presence in your room. Sometimes you see something; sometimes you hear noises or even feel electrical shocks throughout your body.

The paralysis is the natural effect of REM sleep; the hallucinations come from not having emerged fully from the dream state. It is a rational answer to an irrational fear, and I feel better already.

Like This Will Happen

Today's Washington Post editorial on the raft of immigration amendments that are being added to the Iraq/Afghanistan emergency spending bill has one of the funniest lines I've read in a long time (at least on the op-ed page):

Senate leaders should do their best to persuade members to hold their fire, hold a proper debate and craft a proper bill, taking time to think through the implications.

Are they kidding? Are they talking about the same crew that proudly grandstanded and rushed to judgment in the Schiavo case? Are they talking about Frist and Santorum and McConnell, men known for anything but their forbearance and willingness to debate issues on the merits?

Look, I know the Post hesitates to criticize Republicans these days, but if the editors really believe that the Senate leadership has mishandled the immigration issue, then they should just come out and say so, rather than clicking their heels together three times and wishing for the impossible.

Charlotte Mayoral Race

It's been 18 years since a Democrat was elected Mayor of Charlotte. But since I like to see all my electeds have a (D) next to their name, I have an interest in seeing that this year the result will be different. So what do we know?

On the GOP side, there is the 5-term incumbent, Pat McCrory. For the Democrats, two candidates are in the race: Craig Madans, who has run and lost twice before, and at-large City Councilman Patrick Cannon. A quick look at the Democratic candidates is in today's Charlotte Observer.

The primary isn't until September, and neither Democrat seems to have an online presence yet. McCrory has a site up, no doubt left over from at least 2003, so I'm a little surprised that Madans, also a 2003 candidate, has nothing that I (or Google) can find. If this were 1999, I could understand the late start, but these days, building a campaign website and email list is one of the first things any candidate for office should do.

On the plus side, online-wise, the county does have a site that lets you look up your elected officials and polling place. It's nicely implemented, and very handy for area newbies like myself.

If you have any more information about this race, please let me know.

Just Ugly

In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank pens a piece on the "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" conference held in DC yesterday and attended by a host of mainline conservatives. The article is just one ugly quote after another, and you should read the whole thing. But here's a taste:

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."

There is no shame left in the conservative movement. This conference clearly exemplifies what has been evident for years — for all the talk of principle, contemporary conservatism stands for nothing but the power to enrich itself and punish its political enemies.

Friday Cat Blogging

Sometimes I just don't want to get out of bed.

Threat Level: Milkshake

OK, everyone makes fun of the DHS color-coded terror alert system. And what's not to make fun of? But while riffing on its absurdity is so 2003, I've finally found a color-coded system I can support. I feel safer already knowing that the Aqua Teen Hunger Force is "check-checking" it.

Just one question, though: why does one of the Mooninites represent the lowest alert level? I mean, we all know the threat level is always highest when they're around.

(Hat tip: North Cacalacky Politics)

CMS Stays Intact (For Now)

Yesterday in the NC House, the Education Committee killed a bill to put the deconsolidation of Charlotte-Mecklenbury Schools (CMS), the state's largest school district, on the local ballot in November. CMS critics argue that the district's size leads to overcrowded classrooms and a bureaucracy unresponsive to parental concerns, and want it split up into several smaller disticts.

Is deconsolidation a good idea in the abstract? I doubt it, but I'm open to hearing the argument. But I'm quite certain that deconsolidation in this particular case would be done badly. All the pressure for the split-up is coming from the newer, more affluent suburbs, who want to formally separate themselves from the older, poorer Charlotte city center. Any new district map would be drawn accordingly.

I can understand why some people leave the city in search of larger back yards and lower property taxes (although I'm not one of them). But leaving the city limits doesn't mean you leave the Charlotte community. An interdependence exists between city and suburb (and, increasingly, exurb). If anything, the level of integration in the metropolitan area should be greater than it is now to enable the kind of consistent, planned "smart growth" that will keep the area moving forward.

All school systems have problems. Suburban parents might think that they will benefit from succession, but a few things are clear looking at the experiences of other cities. First, today's suburbs are tomorrow's urban neighborhoods, and modern schools eventually become old and outdated. Second, when suburbs begin to abandon the city, the quality of life for the whole community degrades. I hope Charlotte can learn from history and avoid the mistakes other cities have made.

The More the Merrier

According to the Washington Post, Republicans in the House are rallying around Tom DeLay:

House Republicans once again rallied in support of embattled Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) yesterday, dismissing new reports that raise questions about his travel and payments to members of his family as part of a partisan character assault.

Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), the No. 3 Republican in the House, said at a news conference: "I don't see any wavering of support for the leader. I think a lot of members think he's taking arrows for all of us."

Hearing this news, I couldn't be happier. DeLay is going down, and it looks as though his loyal minions intend on going down with him. Good riddance.

The Vision Thing

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is off to a strong start against Gov. Rick Perry in the GOP gubernatorial primary as she explains the compelling vision that is driving her candidacy.

A West Texas Republican on Tuesday said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told her she wants to challenge Gov. Rick Perry in next year's GOP primary because she is tired of commuting and having her children raised by a nanny in Dallas.

Rumor has it that she also misses two-for-one margarita night at Chuy's, but that hasn't been confirmed.

Cornyn: Now and Then

There is a lot of talk today about what Senator John Cornyn said on the Senate floor yesterday about violence against judges:

I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country…. And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have.

Only a year ago, however, Cornyn had a much different take on the act of blaming the victim:

Mr. President, I want to talk a few minutes about the work of the 9/11 Commission. I know it has become popular — perhaps it has always been that way — for those who sit on commissions, those who engage in political debate about the great causes of the day in Washington, DC, to try to find blame for various things that happen. That is no less true of the work of the 9/11 Commission in looking into both the causes of the terrible events of that day and also when it comes to coming up with recommendations about what we might be able to do to make sure that sort of tragedy never occurs on our own soil again.

But I think we ought to be clear about who is to blame for the terrible events of 9/11. It was not President Clinton or his administration. It was not President Bush or his administration. The individual and the organization at fault for the events of 9/11 were Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Regardless of our differences, especially in this election year where we are going to select a President, I think we ought to make sure our enemies do not draw any comfort from the debates we have on the floor of the U.S. Senate or elsewhere that we somehow are redirecting the blame to others for political gain and to score political points. I think all Members of the U.S. Senate — indeed, all Members of the U.S. Congress — should be absolutely clear where the blame lies. As I said, that lies with al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

Each of Cornyn's statements is stupid and inflamatory in its own way, and not coincidentally in a way that serves his political ends. But if I had to choose between them now, I'd prefer that Cornyn take his earlier advice and just shut the hell up.

Cleaning Up

I just finished cleaning up the Errata section, and added an entry on installing Fedora Core 3 on a Thinkpad T41, my latest laptop. If you're into that kind of thing, have at it.

ProtectYourCheck.org

Opponents of privatization, unite! You have nothing to lose but your benefit cuts.

So, the people who brought you The Media Fund are back with a new project, ProtectYourCheck.org, an umbrella group to run advertising against Bush's Social Security privatization plan. They have a TV spot up on the website now which will be featured in a $1 million national cable buy. The ad itself is OK, but I think they need some help tightening up the text on the site itself. For example, this is on the front page:

Table 2 of a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Long-Term Analysis of Plan 2 of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, 7/ 21/ 2004, indicates that a worker whose earnings are at the median of the middle household earnings quintile, who was born between 2000 and 2009, and who is retiring in the future at age 65, would have his/her Social Security benefits scheduled under current law reduced by about 45%. For a retiree receiving a benefit of $1,277 a month in 2005, a reduction in benefits of about 45% would result in a benefit of about $690 a month.

That's a lot of work to get to the punchline.

Still, it's great to see so many solid organizations get together to push a unified message. Now, let's hope it works.

"Keep Your Ideology Off My Body"

According to local wingnut attorney Thomas Ashcraft, this is what the Schiavo case was really all about:

In Terri's case, the legal analysis assumed that, if she wanted, she was free to direct the elimination of what has now become ordinary medical treatment, the provision of food and water by feeding tube. The litigation thus centered on conflicting evidence about her wishes.

Apparently it's become passé to argue in court that nobody, including the patient, has the right to decline ordinary treatment needed to preserve life. As with the court-created right to abortion, traditional values affirming life are no longer basic to American jurisprudence. The law is now hostile to the preservation of certain innocent human life. In this tilt toward death, many Americans believe the courts have abandoned them and what their ancestors taught them about right and wrong.

As I've said before, the political fallout from this sad episode will embolden those people who believe that God has dictated that individuals should be prohibited from making the most basic decisions about how they live their lives and how they face their deaths. You should expect to see this theological argument repeated a lot in the coming weeks and months.

In the end, this issue is all about who gets to choose, and I'd prefer to retain that right for myself. As the bumper sticker says, "Keep your ideology off my body." That goes double for the ideology of the Tom Ashcraft's of the world.

Useful Forms

One of the most difficult design decisions when working on any website is determining how to lay out the forms. Simple forms are easy; it gets more problematic when the forms and the instructions needed to fill them out correctly get more complex.

All of which is just to prelude to saying that I really like the way Meetup.com has put their forms together. Look at their registration form, for example. The real innovation here is the use of a third column to offer information to the user about what kind of data is expected, why it is being asked for, and to answer a few FAQs as well. This form is eminently usable, and no doubt improves the quality of the data provided.

Other approaches, such as cramming this kind of information into the field label or putting it all at the top of the page, all run into the same basic trade-off: short, sometimes cryptic instructions inline where users can see them, or longer messages above the form where users won't read them. A seeming compromise — putting longer instructions above each field or section — breaks up the form unnecessarily and creates its own usability problems. Another option — popup help instructions — take too long because of the extra tip to the server, not to mention the generic popup usability problems.

One drawback to Meetup's approach is that users will have to scroll to view all the fields in longer forms. However, scrolling is an established fact of web life and shouldn't be seen as a problem in itself.

I see these kinds of form used most productively on intranets to reduce learning curves, as well as on heavily-travelled gateway forms on public sites where experience can be a good guide for what help information to include. But as always, consistency is the mark of a well-designed site, so if you choose to go this route, deploy it throughout.

Discovery Place Believes in Science After All

Good news today from the front line of the local culture wars: Discovery Place, Charlotte's "ever-changing ever-growing, cutting edge science center," has decided to weather the inevitable storm of public criticism and show a movie about science after all.

The movie in question, "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea", was rejected by the museum two years ago, but the decision was first made public only last week. Apparently, when the museum learned that the movie touched on the creation of the solar system and the evolution of life on earth without reference to God, the museum made what it though was the politically safer choice and opted against adding the film to its schedule. Later, the museum clarified its decision-making process and proudly stated that "evolution was only one minor reason" why the film wasn't chosen.

I've spent enough time in the Bible Belt to know that certain religious groups are very easily offended (and very easily mobilized) when they perceive that their God isn't at the center of every public discussion on every topic. I can therefore understand why Discovery Place might have had to think twice about this issue. But while I'm happy that Discovery Place has decided to do the right thing in the end, it really bothers me that a desire to avoid acknowledging one of the core tenets of modern science affected the decision in the first place, even if only in a "minor" way. If you value science, it should bother you, too.

Hello, Charlotte!

The books are packed into boxes, the furniture is loaded onto the moving van, and I'm now living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

March was a very hectic month for Mary and me. The first weekend, Mary and Caledonia moved down to Charlotte. Mary works for the Bank of America, which is headquartered here. I came down for the week, and by the time I was on my way back to DC, we had a new condo under contract and most of our new furniture picked out.

Next up, my job change. March 18th was my last day at the DNC, and I'm now working for Plus Three. Because of their role as the DNC's lead technology consultants, I've worked with Plus Three for the last three and a half years, and I'm thrilled to be able to continue the relationship.

Mary came back up to DC last week to help prepare for the big move, and yesterday the movers came to load up the truck and put our stuff into storage. It was a long day, and there were a few bumps (note to management: it takes five hours to move a large top-floor apartment, not two, so please revise your loading bay/evevator reservation system to allow for larger blocks of time). But Mary and I made it down to Charlotte safe and sound, and a very adorable kitten was waiting impatiently for us when we arrived.

I'm going to try to make a few changes to the blog to accompany the change in venue. Mostly, I want to focus more on my new city and region. I lived in Charlotte as a kid, and I spent my secondary school years and a some scattered time after in South Carolina, so I'm not a complete stranger to the area. Still, I've got a lot to learn, so I might as well share what I can.

I also want to spend more time talking about technology. Originally, this blog was supposed to focus on the intersection of politics and technology, but politics eventually garnered the lion's share of the posts. A natural outcome, I suppose, when one works for a national political party (even if the job is on the tech side). But the web development sphere is hotting up again after a few stagnant years following the first browser wars, and I want to talk more (i.e. learn more) about that.

I have no doubt that I will continue to find enough material in the online editions of the Post and the Times to feed my need to vent about politics on occasion, so if you come here for that product, have no fear. In the end, I just want to write more things about more stuff. Easier said than done, but fresh starts are made for such heady optimistic promises.