Scalito

Bush has nominated Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to replace the position vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Alito has been nickname Scalia-lite or Scalito because his ideology resembles that of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Given that, I hope his nomination dies a bloody death in the Senate Confirmation hearings. Democratic Senators Harry Reid and Charles Schumer have already expressed their concerns over such a conservative nominee to the Supreme Court. Bush's base is clearly pleased though, after being upset over the nomination of Harriet Miers. Maybe my friend Smita was right -- Bush used Miers all along knowing that she would never get confirmed. Then he used it as an excuse to appoint someone ultra-conservative and someone who isn't a woman. I can just picture Bush saying, "I tried to appoint a woman, but you didn't like her." I get angry just thinking about it -- she clearly wasn't the most qualified woman for the job and there are plenty of other women besides Miers he could have nominated. I hope this is the last of the Supreme Court vacancies that Bush gets to fill. It would be sad if he replaced someone like Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer or Souter with someone like Samuel Alito, Jr.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

I recently saw "Good Night, and Good Luck" with my roommates. The movie is about the verbal sparring between Senator Joseph McCarthy and Edward R. Murrow, CBS journalist, in the early 1950s. I really enjoyed this movie and highly recommend it to others. I thought Murrow's lines in the movie were excellent, though I don't know if they were taken verbatim from his actual TV show. David Strathairn did an excellent job as Edward R. Murrow and I liked how McCarthy played himself via video clips from the past -- it was very natural. I liked that the film was black and white, it highlighted things such as cigarette smoke and women's nails and lips. I thought that the film would spend more time on the actual downfall of McCarthy and his behavior during the downfall -- it just showed a few clips of the Senate hearings to censure him. I admit I only have a 10th-grade history class knowledge of what actually happened during the Red Scare so I would be curious to hear what others (specifically those who lived during that time) thought of the movie.

Snowing in Boston

First snow of the season! At least it's not raining...

Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed!

I was told that I need to lighten up my blog, so I hope that you find this book amusing. Be sure to "search inside this book" and click on the "excerpt" and "surprise me!" sections for maximum entertainment value.

Is this indictment bad?

I am curious to know what my few readers think of this indictment. Both Kristof and Tierney said that its bad that special prosecutors have so much power and thought it would be a tragedy if Bush administration officials would be indicted on borderline charges that weren't the original charge (i.e. violation of the 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA agent). But if during the course of the investigation people lie about what happened, shouldn't that be punished? If Pat Fitzgerald caught four separate instances of where Libby lied to the grand jury and FBI agents, I'm sure there were more. If administration officials weren't charged on such things, they would have no incentive to cooperate with the investigation -- they could just lie about what happened and not be charged on anything.

Libby Indicted

I. Lewis Libby (aka Scooter Libby) has been indicted today on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements. (I'm not sure what the difference is between perjury and making false statements but I guess I will find out.) He has subsequently resigned from his White House post, as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Karl Rove apparently will not be indicted today, but news sources say Fitzgerald will ask for an extension from the grand jury to further investigate Rove's role. I would really love to see Karl Rove indicted. It may not be right according to Nicholas Kristof or others, whose opinion I respect, but I want his brand of politics to end because it is immoral. If Karl Rove is indicted, I think it will be a blow to his brand of politics.

More to come on this... Fitzgerald is making a statement at 2 pm. I wonder if the White House will say anything.

Harriet Miers Withdraws

It was the right thing to do. She didn't have the experience and she and the President were unwilling to hand over information about her capacity as a lawyer thus making it virtually impossible to learn anything about her.

White Sox Win the World Series

Following in the same style as the Red Sox, the White Sox have won their first World Series since 1917. Quite impressive, swept the series 4-0! I wish I had actually watched a full game of this series, especially the 14-inning one on Tuesday night. The Red Sox last year, the White Sox this year, who next year? Someone who hasn't one since 1906!?!

Yield to Pedestrians!

What is it with drivers in Cambridge, MA!?! Don't they know that they are supposed to yield to pedestrians not run them over! Today, walking home, this driver makes a right turn an inch in front of me and then proceeds to stare at me thinking, "How dare you cross when you have a walk signal!" Perhaps it's a good thing my bike got stolen, something tells me I'd be dead, or at least seriously injured, by now if I still had it.

Editorials on the Plame leak

Today (well I guess now yesterday) there were a pair of Op-Eds in the New York Times on the Plame leak (well, mainly Fitzgerald's investigation) by Nicholas Kristof and John Tierney. Kristof is arguing that special prosecutors often go to far, "they become obsessive, pouncing on the picayune, distracting from governing and frustrating justice more than serving it." Kristof points out that Ken Starr was very much guilty of this, and it would be a tragedy just the same if Pat Fitzgerald also followed Starr's path. (Fitzgerald is supposedly courting the idea of indicting current White House officials on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and revealing classified information and not on the original charge at hand of knowlingly revealing a covert CIA agent). He also states that in his opinion the administration was on the war-path against Joe Wilson and his wife . Overall, I enjoyed the unbiased perspective of Kristof's article. He did make me feel guilty by saying, "So I find myself repulsed by the glee that some Democrats show at the possibility of Karl Rove and Mr. Libby being dragged off in handcuffs." Geez, Nick, you really hit this one on the bulls-eye, I was really looking forward to that.

Tierney's article on the other hand, considered along with his previous article, was hypocritical. He complains about Pat Fitzgerald, stating that, "The special prosecutor was assigned to look for serious crimes, not to uncover evidence that bureaucrats blame other bureaucrats when things go wrong" and "Neither [of Howard Dean's reasons for Fitzgerald's investigation] involves the original reason for the special prosecutor's investigation - the accusation that White House aides deliberately outed a covert C.I.A. agent." But didn't Tierney say in his previous article that Ken Starr rightly pinned a perjury charge on Bill Clinton. Hmm, doesn't that charge fit with the same mold of charges that Fitzgerald is considering? I guess the moral of his article is that it's okay to look for petty crimes and diverge from the original investigation when Democrats are the subject of the investigation. I might add that Tierney could learn a thing or two about writing from his colleagues, Friedman, Kristof, Krugman, and Rich.

An Interesting Letter to the Editor in the NYT

I was going to write something like this in response to Tierney's op-ed, but I see someone has already done it for me, so I'm copying this from the NYT letters to the editor devoted to the Plame leak.

"To the Editor:

In "Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges" (front page, Oct. 24), you quote Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, saying she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime."

Senator Hutchison, in denigrating perjury charges, has reached the heights of hypocrisy in defense of her White House friends. In 1999, based on perjury charges related to a much less significant matter, this same senator voted to remove the president of the United States from office.

Greg Litt

New York, Oct. 24, 2005"

Memoirs of a Geisha, the movie?

Yes, it will be a movie released on December 9th staring Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, and Michelle Yeoh. To watch the trailer, go here. I guess I will have to see this movie, since I liked the book, though books I liked turned into movies are often disappointing.

Former Administration Official Has Nothing But Criticism for the Administration

I found this article, very interesting. (I know, I know, it's from Friday). Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, has harsh words for the administration he once served. Not surprisingly, some his main complaints are that the foreign policy has been hijacked by the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" and that the current administration has made our country more succeptable to future crises (Hurricane Katrina being just one example). He also "suggested that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding has taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration, skewing its policies and undercutting its ability to handle crises." Wilkerson apparently also said that President Bush, "is not versed in international relations, and not too much interested in them, either." I guess that shouldn't really come as a surprise either, but wow, how can somebody be president when they don't care about international relations -- isn't that a huge part of being president? Especially if the globalization trend continues? Wilkerson also used the terms, "aberrations", "bastardizations", and "perturbations" to describe the Bush administration's twisting of the "national security apparatus". Apparently Wilkerson contrasted George W. Bush with his father, George H.W. Bush, and called the elder Bush, "one of the finest presidents we've ever had." That could be true, George H.W. Bush was certainly not a bad president. But it certainly seems as though he was a rather poor father.

Torture by the US government

The White House is threatening to veto a bill that, among other things, forbids the use of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of detainees held by the United States Government. For full details, see this article. The White House claims that this amendment to the bill should not apply to CIA actions oveseas because, "the president needed maximum flexibility in dealing with the global war on terrorism".

It is very appalling to me that this administration thinks that torture is an acceptable means of questioning prisoners. Not only is it inhumane and uncivil, our government has a policy of "innocent until proven guilty." If a prisoner is tortured enough, he or she will admit to just about anything, so torture is in fact a very ineffective method of capturing and identifying true terrorists. Torture is also bad from a selfish perspective because it increases anti-American sentiment and makes foreign governments more likely to torture American prisoners of war. It is very hypocritcal of our government to think that they have the right to torture foreign prisoners yet expect our P.O.W.s to be treated better. One might argue our administration's policy of torturing prisoners actually makes us more vulnerable to terrorists attacks. Our administration needs to unequivocally codemn all torture practices, thereby setting a standard for human rights. This is another example of the administration using "terrorism" as an excuse to do just about anything they please.

Critique of Tierney's New Op-Ed

I realize that I am a day late commenting on Tierney's Op-Ed, but I was frantically trying to finish a homework assignment yesterday so it wasn't more than two days late!

Tierney's Op-Ed entitled, "What Democrats Can Learn From Howard Stern", suggests that Democrats should try to explore alternate means of achieving their goals just as Howard Stern pursued alternate means of broadcasting his show despite censorship from the FCC. The alternate means that Democrats should pursue, according to Tierney, are to look for solutions other than big government to solve issues such as education. Overall, I thought his analogy was very loosely constructed and poorly written. He simply used the Howard Stern-Democrats analogy so he could associate Democrats with something ridiculous and "out there", which is just a cheap shot. He could have used any other example of someone who overcame a barrier by pursuing alternate means of achieving their goal.

So yeah, overall I thought it his Op-Ed was just plain bad, but there were other things mentioned in the article that bothered me. For one thing he keeps referring to the fact that Democrats and liberals love big government and bureaucracy, thereby also implying that Republicans and conservatives are for small government. While this certainly was the case 20-30 years ago, I'm not so sure that this is still the case. In case Tierney hasn't noticed, our political climate is changing. George W. Bush and others in the administration are referred to as Republicans and/or conservatives, but I wouldn't say they are necessarily for small government. In fact, their policy can be defined very simply -- they are simply against things that threaten their power (my entries about the Supreme Court Nominations and the Rove/Libby mess are related to this). Hence the need for the Patriot Act, the right to torture and detain prisoners for any length, judges to defer to the president's every whim, aides who act maliciously towards those who speak against the government, etc. While the currrent administration doesn't necessarily want large government, its desire for an all powerful executive branch contradicts the notion of small government.

Supreme Court Nominations

There is an interesting pair of editorials in the New York Times, one by Dahlia Lithwick and another by a state trial judge in Denver (If you are short of time, I would read the Lithwick article). The two articles complement each other though its obvious that the two writers have opposing views. Dahlia Lithwick argues that the nomination of John Roberts and Harriet Miers follows a pattern of President Bush's. By nominating Roberts, the president ensured that there would be one more judge in the nation's highest court that limits judicial power. Roberts believes that judges should strictly interpret the law of the land, thereby giving deference to the executive and legislative brances. Miers, being loyal to the current president, would also defer to the executive branch. Lithwick aptly sums up, "Justice Roberts and Ms. Miers represent a one-two punch for presidential supremacy." All I can say is hopefully Bush will be out of office before Roberts and Miers have a chance to make an impact. The other article contrasts the styles of judges who strictly interpret the law and "activist" judges. He clearly does not like "activist" judges and seems to think an "activist" judge is analogous to "a philosopher-king unencumbered by the legislation of mere mortals". It is hard for me to whole-heartedly disagree with this author, because he does not provide specific examples of "activist" judges gone wrong. But, I do think the framers of our Constitution would have wanted judges to think independently about the case at hand since our Constitution and laws provide a general framework, but are an imperfect system. There is no way to accurately represent every single legal case that might occur in a Constitution and a set of laws.

I feel obligated now to comment on the columnists Op-Eds since I have started doing that. All I can say is that Friedman's article rather bored me. He has gotten a bit carried away with the word "globalization".

Is it just me or does CNN, every other day, have a headline about someone being bit by a shark? Tragic as shark bites are, they are still extremely unlikely -- not nearly as likely as a car crash, but perhaps they are just going for sensational stories that attract more readers.

If you want to learn more about the Valerie Plame case...

Please look at this timeline from factcheck.org. It is the most comprehensive timeline I've seen of the Valerie Plame case. It certainly helped refresh my memory of this case, since it has now spanned over 2 years and there have been many, many articles.

Will Libby take one for the team?

Looks like Libby will be the fall-guy in the Valerie Plame affair. That was my impression after reading this article. Libby is less important of the Rove-Libby pair and was therefore probably chosen to take the hit. This administration seems to have a great supply of people willing to take a hit for the team in order for the administration as a whole to stay in tact.

White Sox vs. Astros

So sad! I wanted the Cardinals in the World Series so I could watch the games with my friends Mark (Cardinals fan) and Matt (White Sox fan).

Harriet Miers

Apparently Harriet Miers was asked to redo her questionaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Supposedly her responses were "inadequate", "insufficient", and "insulting", according to articles in both CNN and the New York Times.

My thoughts: We don't really how John Roberts is going to turn out as a Supreme Court Justice since he was sort of vague during the hearings and his track record so far as a judge does not have many clues as how he would vote on very polarizing issues, but at least we felt that he was competent. With Harriet Miers I'm not so sure. All I know about her is that she's a "pitbull in size 6 shoes" and that she's a born-again, devout Christian (It seems as though the White House was constantly mentioning her religion to prevent any real questions from being asked about her legal background). From the articles I read about her, she seems extremely loyal to President Bush, can't write very well (David Brooks Op-Ed), forgot to pay her bar dues in Washington D.C. so her law license was temporarily suspended (Maureen Dowd Op-Ed), and apparently gave Arlen Specter the impression that she needs a crash course in constitutional law. The more I hear about Harriet Miers the more I begin to doubt her qualifications for the job. If she cannot write a thorough response for the Senate Judiciary Committee, either she does not take the job very seriously or is very incompetent. I like the idea of having more women (and minorities) on the Supreme Court since it was dominated by men in the past, however it seems as all Bush was looking for when he picked Harriet Miers was a woman and a loyalty vote on the bench. That is really an insult to women everywhere and seriously undermines the goal of diversity.

Friedman article

Friedman's new article is excellent. He parallels Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush in their uses and advocacy of torture and paying off journalists to promote their regime/administration. He also parallels George W. Bush and Islamic fundamentalism (i.e. George W. Bush picking Harriet Miers on her religion and telling everyone to have faith in her because she is a good Christian despite her lack of legal expertise).

The Valerie Plame Affair

Of course I have to comment on the new John Tierney Op-Ed.

Basically Tierney is certain that there has been no crime committed on the part of Karl Rove or Scooter Libby in the leaking of Valerie Plame's name. He subsequently refers to Pat Fitzgerald's investigation as "Nadagate". A lot of details surrounding the Valerie Plame affair are very unclear to me, probably because only Pat Fitzgerald has a good idea of what actually happened, but I'm surprised that Tierney states unequivocally that Rove and Libby did not commit a crime and clears them of any ethical wrongdoing. Tierney makes little of what Rove and Libby likely did by saying that a prosecutor could indite just about anyone inside the government on such charges, which is completely ridiculous and stretching the truth. Even if Rove and Libby did leak her name, it's okay, because according to him, Valerie Plame was in no real danger. He also makes it seem as though Pat Fitzgerald started this investigation on a witch hunt and the investigation is getting more and more desperate to find some sort of charges against people in the current administration. Actually though, this investigation was originally started by John Ashcroft, a small detail that Tierney fails to mention.

I also object to his comparison of the Rove-Libby scandal to the Clinton scandal. Tierney makes the Clinton scandal sound worse than the Rove-Libby scandal, because in his mind Clinton in fact committed a crime whereas Rove and Libby did not. Although what Clinton did was unethical, he certainly didn't play chicken with other people's lives. Whether or not Rove and/or Libby committed a crime, it certainly seems as though as someone was trying to send Joe Wilson and others a message about what happens to those who defy the current administration. We should hold our elected officials to a high standard of professional conduct and the Plame affair certainly seems to violate that standard. I really cannot think of Pat Fitzgerald as someone on a witch hunt -- really Rove and Libby brought this investigation upon themselves as Clinton brought the Lewinsky investigation by Starr upon himself.

A letter I wrote in response to David Brooks' Op-Ed

David Brooks recenly wrote an Op-Ed that I take issue with.

Here is the letter I sent him:

Everyone these days seems so eager to uncover the differences between men and women, boys and girls -- to study the fundamental differences between the sexes that will allow each one to learn better and understand each other. I must say I have serious doubts. Not only does such a research agenda sound extremely ambitious -- it sounds as one fueled by stereotypes that would only lead to more stereotypes. It seems as though, by proposing to study the innate differences between men and women, people are looking to classify the entire set of men in the world and the entire set of women in the world. The most likely scenario is that the set of women and the set of men are such rich classes incapable of being characterized, making it virtually impossible to find these "fundamental differences", if in fact, men and women are really as different as some believe.

Suppose that we were able to one day uncover the natural tendencies within a sex. Say that such a study states that men are better at math and science and women are better at art and humanities. What happens to the boy who likes art and the girl who excels at math? They will be treated as anomalies, because science says their gender was not meant for such subjects.

How does one even study the innate differences between men and women, boys and girls? From day one boys and girls are treated differently. Girls are rarely ever given tanks or G.I. Joe's for their birthdays, so its really no surprise that men prefer to read combat books over women (as you mention). Perhaps if girls were given such presents, they would also like to read combat books with the same frequency as men. Also you suggest the possibility that if boys were not required to sit still for so long, they might do better in the classroom setting. Is this not based on some stereotype that boys are rowdier than girls? If boys are in fact rowdier than girls, how do we know that it is not because we have the attitude that, "boys will be boys" while we expect our girls to be prim and proper? It seems that separating innate differences from differences that were the result of stereotypes will be an insurmountable task. Even your article, which tried to be free of stereotypes, could not.

Part of being socially responsible is asking questions we know can be answered and considering the impacts of such a study. In a society obsessed with classifications, a society where women are expected to be a certain way and men another, a society where we have names for masculine women and effeminate men, would such a study be a good thing? I am not convinced of this.

A letter I wrote in response to Tierney's Op-Eds

Links to Tierney's two Op-Ed pieces: number 1 and number 2.

And here is my rebuttal letter:

After reading your last two articles, I am left with a number of comments I would like to share.

First of all, I must state that it is very surprising to me that after you wrote columns about how the innate differences between men and women lead to the fact that the top tier Scrabble players are predominately men, that you cannot understand that differences between the way liberals and conservatives think affect what career paths they choose.

You cite examples of where a conservative student in Sociology or English might have trouble pursuing their research interests, which is a valid point, but does not explain why fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or Engineering are also very much dominated by liberals. In fact, it has been my experience that all fields of academia are dominated by liberals, whether or not politics are related to the field in question. The fact that liberals dominate every branch of academia actually weakens your claim that law professors, English professors, sociology professors and other humanities professors act maliciously to drive away conservatives. To even think about making this claim, you would need some sort of statistic that Law, English, Sociology and other humanities fields have more of a liberal bias than other fields. I would very much like to hear your reasons for why Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, etc. also have this "liberal bias".

I also disagree that there are many conservative scholars who pursue Ph.D.s but choose to work in think tanks over academia. As a Ph.D. student at Harvard, the number of conservatives I meet are very few and far between so I would argue that those who choose to pursue a Ph.D. are much more likely to be liberal. As an undergrad, I noticed that the split between conservatives and liberals was not very big, so perhaps conservatives are more likely to go to professional schools or get jobs than liberals are.

You should be able to sleep easier at night, knowing that Republicans have been making every attempt to shoot down "liberal" branches of research such as evolution, stem cell research, and global warming.

My life experiences and observations cause me to strongly disagree with much of your article. I do not dispute the facts, but the conclusions you drew from them.

Welcome to My New Blog!

At the suggestion of my sister Sonia, I decided to start a blog. It will mostly be about politics as the title suggests since I seem to have a lot to say about the New York Times op-eds in particular, but I imagine I will throw in the occasional book or movie review. The title is also a suggestion from my dear sister.