i-sako.com

At last we see a few members of Congress doing what Congress is supposed to do. 

Sen. Mark Dayton, the Democrat from Minnesota, is just now coming around to the idea that Congress should be calling the shots when it comes to waging war. He is, unfortunately, both right and wrong. He’s right in the sense that the Constitution reserves that power for Congress, not the president, but he is wrong in thinking that now is the time to go after such a vote.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, also from Minnesota, correctly points out that the time for discussion of this issue was back in October, back when the Democrats were trying to focus attention on Social Security and other domestic problems instead of war. That was a foolish mistake, one that cost them dearly in the November mid-term elections. It is too late to undo that mistake now. 

As dreadfully unfortunate as it may be, the world now has no choice other than to allow the Bush-Cheney axis of evil have their way with Iraq, leaving the rest of us to pay for the clean-up and rebuilding efforts (and whatever other fallout there may be) for years to come.

May God bless and protect (and forgive!) our troops. They are about to kill a great many people who pose no real threat to us, all for the sake of the ambition of an ultra-right wing administration that our country would be better off without.

George Bush never gave diplomacy an honest chance. This war, no matter how “successful” it may be in military terms, is a failure of his ability to unite people around a common cause. Bush, who has never been more than an amateur in business or in politics in his entire life, is a failure as a leader. It is true that he has been very successful at his brand of political gambling, but the stakes are getting dangerously high--and are getting higher all the time. A better leader could have won the same victories without pushing the stakes so high.

We owe it to ourselves, and to the entire world, to choose better leaders at the very next opportunity. Unfortunately, I think this war--if it goes well for our forces--will give Bush the staying power he needs to remain in office for another four years.  I shudder at the thought of it. 

I see that Rep. Bob Ney, a Republican from Ohio who happens to be the chairman of the House Administration Committee, has ordered the substitution of the supposedly patriotic ”freedom fries” for french fries on House cafeteria menus. Likewise with french, oops, I mean “freedom toast”. I also see that foolish people in unimportant places around the country are following suit. 

Some people have pointed to the so-called “precedent” of calling sauerkraut “liberty cabbage” and hamburger “liberty steak” during WWI, but that was just as stupid then as “freedom fries” are now. Also, to cite that precedent misses an important point: We were at war with Germany at that time. Are we now at war with the French? Silly me, I thought it was Iraq that we are preparing to invade. It just goes to show you how deep the shortcomings of Bush’s “with us or against us” logic really are.

Another foolish thing that people are saying is something along the lines of, “if the French don’t support our country, we shouldn’t support them”. What a brilliant reason to rename french fries (which, I’m sorry to have to point out, in no way support French anything). This is another example of foolish logic at work. It’s not that the French do not support America’s fight against terrorism, but simply that they are not convinced that the Bush administration has shown that an entirely discretionary, unprovoked, unprecedented, pre-emptive war is necessary right now. I agree on that count. (I do generally concede, however, that a war could have positive effects--but only if it is handled properly, which this war effort has not been.)

It also really bothers me when people suggest that French policy about the U.N. resolution on Iraq should be dictated by their gratitude for saving them from German occupation during WWII. The way the press has characterized the French as “weasels” or “surrender monkeys” is really offensive--not just to the French, but to thinking Americans as well. Are we so dull that we are unable to make a distinction between the situation then and the one facing us now? 

First of all, if loyalty to one’s military saviors is a political bargaining chip (and I don’t think it should be), it is well worth pointing out that the United States would not even exist today if it were not for the French assistance we received during the Revolutionary War. 

Also, to claim that “we’ve always been there for them in times of need” falls short on two counts. First, no, we have not “always” been there for the French, which should be obvious to anyone who knows that the United States sat out for nearly two-thirds of the first world war and until we were directly attacked in the second. In both cases, it was our own national interest, not a desire to save the French, that led us into war. Second, to use the expression “times of need” implies that we need to attack Iraq right now, which is a point that is open to some dispute. A more pressing case of “need” could be made for attacking North Korea (which already has nukes and is defiantly making more) or Iran (whose nuclear program is far more developed than Iraq’s), or even Osama bin Laden (whose continued elusiveness gives the administration reason to scapegoat Iraq).

As our Congress abandons its constitutional duty to discuss the need for war and instead turns its attention to petty, childish ways to rename menu items as a way of expressing dissatisfaction with the French (who, I should add, are merely doing what they are perfectly entitled to do--the French government, unlike our own, did not cede all decision-making authority to George Bush), I cannot help but question those in our government who suggest that the United Nations is teetering on the brink of irrelevance. I would say that it is Congress, not the U.N., that is making itself irrelevant.

I’m afraid I have to side with Ted Rall on this issue: “French-bashing is a nasty symptom of an underlying American predilection for anti-intellectualism.”

I don’t know what else to say about my utter disappointment with this Republican-dominated Congress’s failure to grapple with relevant issues, except perhaps for an expression that we English speakers have borrowed from the French: c’est la vie!

Do let me know if anyone in Congress recommends that we pack up the Statue of Liberty and ship it back to France. Although I wouldn’t agree with that notion, either, at least it would be a meaningful, non-trivial expression of disapproval.

Entirely too much political capital is expended trying to control online smut.

Since 1996, Congress has passed three different laws with this aim. I’ve been opposed to all of them. Fortunately, so have our courts, which struck down one and blocked another, leaving only the most recent, the Children’s Internet Protection Act, remaining.

Now even CIPA is going before the Supreme Court in a case that pits the government against the American Library Association. With any luck, this law will be tossed out, too.

Frankly, I think the controversy of the issue stems from a holdover sense of Puritanism that America would do well to slough off. As Molly Haskell put it, “Puritanism is the source of our greatest hypocrisies and most crippling illusions.”

The crippling illusion, in this case, is that filtering Internet content at libraries is a worthwhile idea. Libraries are places where people go to get information. Filters have an atrocious record when it comes to being able to accurately distinguish between smut and legitimate information (about health or human sexuality, for example). They have also been shown to let offending material slip through at an unacceptably high rate. In short, filtering doesn’t work well.

In fact, during the same news cycle that brought the news of this ALA case, Slashdot pointed to this example of the complete failure of a filtering approach mandated in Australia. This is far from the only example; it is merely the most recent in the long history of the failures of filtering.

Beyond that simple consideration, however, is a more fundamental problem: Filtering imposed on local libraries by the federal government is the wrong solution to the problem. It is a problem that should be handled by decision-makers at a local level. What Congress should do, however, is instruct those libraries that receive federal funding (most of them do, I imagine) to use some of that money to ensure this issue is addressed. Better yet, set aside a portion of funding to help libraries deal with it—on their own terms.

Librarians are generally sensible, professional people. (Although acts of legislation like the CIPA and the USA PATRIOT Act seem to view them as threats to society.) They are not going to let public libraries devolve into cesspits of filth and decadence. What they need is autonomy and adequate funding, not federally mandated filters.

[2003.03.07 Update - Yet more evidence that the notion that Congress can legislate Internet decency are inconsistent with our Constitution.]

I worry a great deal these days that the American people are giving up their freedom to a power-grabbing executive branch that has failed to justify the many new powers it demands.

From Ashcroft’s worrisome spy plans and determination to create a new surveillance society in America, it seems clear that the Bush administration seeks to sweep away the very freedoms it claims to be defending in its so-called “war on terror” (frankly, I find that I must agree with Terry Jones of Monty Python fame: you can’t wage war on an abstract noun). “War on freedom” would be more like it. Given his “with us or against us” behavior both at home and abroad, “war on democracy” wouldn’t be much of a stretch, either.

Hasn’t anyone in the Bush administration gotten the hint yet? Apparently, our judiciary hasn’t.

So we have a Congress that willingly abdicates its authority to declare war to a power-grabbing president, and courts that are unwilling to assert their right to challenge his judgment. What exactly happened to the idea of checks and balances in government? Has it been discarded, along with civil liberties, as a threat to our security? Is there any way this bedrock principle of our Founding Fathers can be restored? Or have we unwittingly ensconced America’s first king?

I do hope that all of these sweeping powers help Bush defend us all from the terrorists, but who will protect us from Bush?

A recent AP story notes that a bookseller in Vermont will purge its sales records at the request of customers as a means of avoiding searches conducted by federal investigators under the auspices of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Although the story itself is interesting, what intrigues me most was this comment from U.S. Attorney Peter Hall, who seemed to be playing down the seriousness of such searches:

“Only in very rare and limited and supervised circumstances would anyone be seeking that sort of business information from a bookseller, a library or a business of any sort,” Hall said. 

I wonder if Mr. Hall has heard of the Total Information Awareness program that the Bush administration has been advocating (and DARPA has been quietly developing under the questionable guidance of John M. Poindexter, remember that name from the Iran-Contra scandal?), the one Congress recently decided was too much of a threat to civil liberties to be permitted. As I understand it, TIA would make liberal use of sweeping legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act to make this kind of activity routine, even automatic—and, uhm, universal. How exactly does that fit under the category of “rare and limited”? 

Sure, you can argue that Congress pulled the plug on TIA, so it isn’t a threat anymore, but the fact remains that the thinking behind it is present in the USA PATRIOT Act as well. It is also engendered in the draft of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, which was leaked by The Center for Public Integrity earlier this year. (The same logic was also present in the administration’s ideas for the TIPS program, which was also axed by Congress for being an unwarranted invasion of privacy.)

It is clear that the administration has not given up its plans to create a large-scale domestic surveillance program of some sort, so I see no reason to take comfort in Mr. Hall’s assurances that such searches are intended to be “rare and limited”. Sorry, but when it comes to such glaring inconsistencies between the administration’s rhetoric and its actions, I’ll watch the actions carefully and ignore the words, thank you very much.

In the meantime, while librarians and booksellers in the States brace themselves for who knows how many PATRIOT-authorized searches (the Act itself prevents any public notification that records are being sought, serving as a kind of built-in gag order for people in these jobs), I think I will limit my book purchases to Amazon.co.jp, which presumably is not subject to the terms of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Not that I have anything to fear, mind you, but I do so simply in the interest of protecting my privacy, which is an option my fellow Americans no longer have, unfortunately. (Not that you don’t already know what I’m reading—I advertise my reading list pretty openly on this site. But none of that is Uncle Sam’s business, even if I do choose to share it with the public.)