Office of the Independent Blogger

Here’s an article worth reading about the Texas Governor’s Mansion which caught fire and is being investigated to determine whether it was arson or an accident. (The article argues that it was an accident, and it makes a strong case about the nature of most arson cases.) The other article I would recommend this evening is this one about the global “food summit” going on as we speak. For the record, I agree that it is foolish to use food in place of oil when there are people who could use the food in place of hunger.

Now that Hillary Clinton has conceded and given a strong endorsement of Barack Obama can we stop accusing her of being evil for being the very first candidate to ever contest a primary until it was actually over?

Mark DeMoss is a conservative leader who most often works with Evangelicals. In an interview with Belief.net, he was asked if he thinks Barack Obama can gain Evangelical support. He answers:

If one third of white evangelicals voted for Bill Clinton the second time, at the height of Monica Lewinsky mess—that’s a statistic I didn’t believe at first but I double and triple checked it—I would not be surprised if that many or more voted for Barack Obama in this election. You’re seeing some movement among evangelicals as the term [evangelical] has become more pejorative. There’s a reaction among some evangelicals to swing out to the left in an effort to prove that evangelicals are really not that right wing. There’s some concern that maybe Republicans haven’t done that well. And there’s this fascination with Barack Obama. So I will not be surprised if he gets one third of the evangelical vote. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 40-percent.

First I would note that there are significant differences between Barack Obama and Bill Clinton which make it a different sort of challenge for Obama to gain Evangelical support over Clinton (for instance, Obama does not have a strong religious tradition, especially not now that he dumped his pastor and his church, and Clinton talks about religion and Christ far more often than any politician of our age except maybe George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, and that’s just an introduction). But beyond that, I’m flustered by his claim that he “double and tripled checked” that voters voted for Clinton “the second time,” during the “height” of the “Lewinsky mess.” The Lewinsky scandal did not erupt until significantly after the election, so it certainly wasn’t at its “height” during the election cycle. Maybe a fourth check might’ve done him good? (In fact, in 1996 some people believed it was almost impossible logistically for the President to have an affair, but that’s just an aside. The greater point is that he didn’t “double and triple check” a damn thing.)

I do not know how Evangelicals will vote when it comes to McCain in the fall, but I doubt Obama gets forty percent of them for a variety of reasons. The greatest might well be that he disowned his church, and DeMoss talks about McCain being critical of the Religious Right but that will pale in comparison to the fact that Obama left his church for political purposes. Besides, I think it’s incredibly foolish to expect Evangelicals to vote for a Democrat when there are so many aging Supreme Court Justices on the bench waiting to retire.

John McCain challenged Barack Obama to hold a series of town-hall meetings between now and the Democratic National Convention. Obama’s people are now working it out with McCain’s people. I hope they hammer out the details soon and hold the events shortly after, because it would make an unbearably long campaign much better for the average voter, reporter and independent blogger. Obama better be careful, though, because he’s giving free air-time to McCain and putting himself in a position where he might be upstaged by contrast. Of course, some people worry that that’ll happen to McCain because of their difference in age, so who knows?

Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan, who has in the past confessed to spreading nuclear technology to rogue nations, is recanting his confession.

He explained in an interview with ABC News that the Pakistani government and President Pervez Musharraf forced him to be a “scapegoat” for the “national interest.” He also denies ever traveling to Iran or Libya and said that North Korea’s nuclear program was well advanced before his visit. When asked whether Musharraf would admit this, Khan told CNN: “It is his business. Whatever he has been telling people in the country. Whatever he says is up to them. But I can tell you that the man on the street is more knowledgeable than the man on the street in the United States.”

In a further twist, the normally placid Switzerland announced on May 23 that it had secretly destroyed highly technical blueprints for producing nuclear weapons.

The information was seized from the home of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old Swiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring allegedly run by Khan. At a news conference, Swiss President Pascal Couchepin said the documents had been shredded to prevent them from falling into terrorists’ hands. “The information contained in these papers presented a considerable risk to the security of Switzerland and the international community as a whole,” he said.

What a strange series of events these are.

Barack Obama officially has the delegates he needs to win the nomination for the Presidency. Hillary Clinton didn’t concede, but I imagine that she’s going to soon enough. It’ll be interesting to watch the campaigns unfold from here, but I have little to say tonight as I just got back from a ballgame and have a few more obligations this evening. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Vanity Fair ran an article about Bill Clinton’s business dealings since he left the Oval Office, and I found it to be a revelation about the President’s behavior since he left the White House. I certainly do not approve of his globetrotting with billionaires, as I think it cheapens the Presidency, and that goes for George H.W. Bush, too. It is interesting that this is how the Hillary Clinton campaign for President is going to end, with her husband’s most recent controversy overshadowing her presumed knockout in this race. I personally expect Hillary to hang on for a couple of days, but this race is over, so while we wait and see what Hillary has to say tomorrow let’s take a look at this article about Clinton’s criticisms of the Vanity Fair article.

Since when do individual stories have to be “balanced”? I blame the “fair and balanced” Fox News Channel for popularizing the idea that reporters must strive for some sort of Platonic equilibrium or they’re not producing proper journalism. Such comprehensive coverage is neither possible nor desirable (”Mr. Hitler, who was responsible for the unnecessary deaths of millions, loved children”), and the testimonies of the 1.3 million people whose lives President Clinton has “helped save” don’t really have any bearing on Purdum’s thesis that Clinton’s post-presidential personal behavior, personal associations, and financial dealings all suggest conduct not becoming the spouse of a U.S. senator who is running for president.

The rest is worth a read as well.

Now that it’s become clearer that Barack Obama is going to be our nominee for President, there is heightened speculation about what sort of exit strategy Hillary Clinton is going to employ. This idea is the worst.

Hillary Clinton will be offered a dignified exit from the presidential race and the prospect of a place in Barack Obama’s cabinet under plans for a “negotiated surrender” of her White House ambitions being drawn up by Senator Obama’s aides. The former First Lady would get the chance to pilot Mr Obama’s reforms of the American healthcare system if she agrees to clear the path to his nomination as Democratic presidential candidate.

Because we all know how that turned out the last time it happened, right? I don’t doubt that Clinton is capable of crafting sensible, effective healthcare reform but I have no doubt that she would not be able to push her plan through this time anymore than she was able to last time. Worse for Obama might be the possibility that Clinton sabotages his healthcare reforms in the Senate like Bob Kerrey did to Bill Clinton in the early-1990s because of problems caused by the primary. It might become a matter of Obama offering her the Vice Presidency before all is said and done.

I was having dinner with a very close friend a few hours ago when the nightly news informed us that Barack Obama had left his Church. As in, he quit, ripped up the membership card, walked out of Reverend Wright’s life for good. I listened to Obama explain that his pastor had said some things that do not belong in politics or the pulpit, and that was that. He was gone. Pardon me the cynicism, but I don’t believe for a second that Obama left out of principle. Reverend Wright is not a stranger to him, and even though he didn’t attend all of his sermons the very first one, which he writes about in his book, was controversial enough for him to have known what he was getting into at that church from the beginning. For anyone to suggest that Obama wasn’t aware of that church’s going-ons is disingenuous or naive.

I have heard some people suggest that Obama never really believed in the teachings of that church, that he was merely using that influential house of worship to advance himself politically in the city of Chicago, but I take him at his word when he says that his character was forged there, where he was married, where his children were baptized, where he found Jesus Christ and himself. If these things were not true and he were merely using that church and its people to start a political career for the last twenty years, then that would be absolutely repugnant and it is unthinkable that someone could be so cynical. Obama’s withdrawal from the Church is supposed to kill the story that his advisors rightly believe to be an albatross around his neck heading into the general election, and it is meant to separate him from Wright forever. It is a political decision, and it is indefensible. This is an awful way to treat a man who is better than a father to you, and Obama ought to be ashamed of himself.

My hero Harry Truman’s career was made by a political boss named Tom Pendergast in Missouri. This man was despised around the country and when Truman gained election to the Senate he was derided as “The Senator from Pendergast.” Truman’s own integrity was beyond reproach, but Pendergast was an embarrassing friend to have. In 1940, Pendergast was thrown into prison for racketeering and everyone whom he had helped gain power or money over the years turned on him once he had lost all of his influence. Shortly after he came out of prison in 1945 he died a lonely death, and no one except the family and Harry Truman attended the funeral. Truman did this knowing he’d be hammered by the press but for Truman that was never a problem: it was important to pay respects to this man, even if he was a convicted felon, and he never spoke a word against his old friend before or after his death. (This is only one of several great Truman-friend stories, along with his great quote that “friends don’t count in fair weather. It is when trouble comes that friends count.”)

This is not the sort of loyalty George W. Bush seems to insist upon, where even questioning your friends is disloyal. This is the sort of loyalty we should all insist upon with our friends. We all do things we regret, and we all make mistakes. If we can not count on our friends to be with us in those times, who can we count on? If we can not count on our friends to stand by their closest friends, how can we count on them to stand by us? If we can not be counted on to stand by our friends, how can we be counted on to stand by anyone? I have never had to renounce a friend and I hope that I never do, because I wouldn’t unless that friend were guilty of some great moral or legal crime. Wright is not a stranger to Barack Obama, someone he’s met once or twice, and so it is not right for Obama to treat him like he were some rich man who he met for twenty minutes at a fundraiser. It simply is not right to treat your friends that way.

I’m disturbed by the fact that Barack Obama would tell a man who is like a father to him to get out of his life because he holds ridiculous views. If he weren’t running for President, it wouldn’t even be an issue. Obama himself had said that he could not renounce Wright anymore than he could renounce his own grandmother and now here he is, leaving his church to avoid hard questions and criticism because it became too much for him. What sort of a man would do such a thing to the man who is like a father to him? Obama likes to pretend that he is different than most politicians but he is just another politician, and this shows it. I’m sorry to hear that because a part of me very much wants to believe in my Senator but I can’t put my trust into a man whose closest friends can’t trust him not to get out of the kitchen because he can’t stand the heat. That’s no good.

What is the Democratic Party going to do to defeat John McCain? According to Rasmussen polling data, the American public trusts McCain over Obama to deal with the economy, the war in Iraq, general national security and taxes. Convention holds that the numbers are going to close up in the coming months, as Obama focuses exclusively on the Senator from Arizona, but what if they don’t? What if the Republicans convince Americans that leaving Iraq is surrender — data says very few Americans want to withdraw “immediately,” so if Republicans can drive that home it might doom Obama — and stand strong on all other national security issues? What are we going to do when McCain argues that Obama is going to raise all our taxes to pay for his crazy socialist ideas, which will be a potent argument considering the lack of money Americans have now. “The Democrats want to take even more away.” Worst of all, I fear we have a candidate running who is not positioned to counter character attacks because superficially he is vulnerable in ways that McCain isn’t, and the newest controversy from his church is a great example of this. I believe that Hillary Clinton has stayed in this race (and might remain in this race) for two reasons: she wants to be President, like any of the other people in this race, and she believes that Obama is not going to win the election, so she wishes to spare the party a disaster. I’m willing to vote for Obama, but I am very concerned about the election. This will be one to watch and read about for a long time to come.

There is no lawyer I look up to more than Vincent Bugliosi. For years he has been an inspiration to me, but I must say I am thoroughly disappointed by his latest book about prosecuting George W. Bush for murder. Bugliosi is a genuine American hero, a fair-minded individual who is hyper-competent and brilliant (a rare combination). He’s written other political works that I enjoyed, including None Dare Call it Treason, but I can not get on board with this book. For anyone to go before the nation and argue that Bush is guilty of murdering our soldiers in Iraq and Iraqi citizens is in extremely poor taste and it reeks of demagogy, especially when they are not historians examining the matter in several years when everything has come to light but they are merely non-political observers with little to drawn on. I know it’s chic to rip President Bush and the War in Iraq, but I can’t get behind such a book. I was deeply disappointed to read about it, as Bugliosi should know better than to work on such a project.

Edit: I’ve read the excerpt, “Legal Framework for the Prosecution” and this is not worth the paper it’s printed on. Bugliosi has written fine books on a wide variety of subjects, and as a lawyer he has no rival, but this book is not worthy of him.

Second edit: I also read “George Bush’s Unseemly Response to the Suffering He Has Caused” and that is absolute garbage. Just like psychologists are entering murky waters if they diagnose people they’ve never met, Bugliosi is making a ridiculous argument about George W. Bush not feeling any pain from the War in Iraq because he sees him smile on the way to fundraisers. No one who works with the President has written anything to indicate he doesn’t care deeply about the dead, and Bugliosi is just being silly.

I was shocked to hear about Scott McClellan’s new book criticizing the Bush Administration for its “propaganda” leading up to the war and its general lack of candor. Not because I believe in the Administration’s honesty but because McClellan was, as has been noted, a faithful shill who has been around the President since before he was President. His criticisms about the “permanent campaign” mentality of the White House mean less to me than his other comments because every President since at least Carter has run their White House in such a manner, with Clinton especially receiving criticism for having his pollster ask voters where he should be go on vacation! On the other hand, I do think it is significant to criticize the Administration for putting more emphasis on politics over policy, but John John DiIulio Jr.’s comments on the subject are far more useful: he refers to the Administration as the reign of “the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

Most damaging to history might well be the argument that as one pundit put it: “Iraq was a Hail Mary Pass to Presidential greatness and Middle East stability to be justified in any way possible.” This appears to be a central argument put forth in McClellan’s book and the President is being hammered for it. I’m not sure how much significance I put into this book, as he is not saying anything that has not been said before except he is saying it as the first Texan to break with Bush, but it is interesting to watch him come under attack all the same. I don’t doubt his honesty, however, and I do not believe that anyone should. “Why not come out sooner?” some people ask, and I think the answer to that is obvious. (And no, it is not “because there’s money involved now.” He’ll never find work in the GOP again and he’s lost a lot of his friends with this book. Besides, it takes time to break with a close friend.)

So I’m sitting with my laptop working on a couple of things and Pat Buchanan comes on CNN to talk about his latest book about how Churchill is responsible for World War II and the Holocaust, and Hitler really didn’t mean any harm but Churchill’s cabal pushed him into a corner. I said, “Get that Nazi off of my television!” and you could see that Wolf Blitzer was as unenthusiastic about listening to his nonsense as I am. What might offend me more than his heinous refusal to acknowledge unequivocally that Hitler was an evil man responsible for some of the world’s worst atrocities because of his expansionist ambitions is his attempt to pawn the Cold War off on Winston Churchill, not in the way that far-leftists claim that we were too aggressive but in his more-alarming and equally-disingenuous assertion that Churchill was “blind” to Stalin’s “true ambitions.” Churchill was among the first leaders of the world to understand what Stalin and the USSR were, and what the relationship with them would be after the War. To blame him for coddling Stalin or loving Stalin or whatever spurious claims Buchanan makes of the Prime Minister is reprehensible, and I am disappointed that CNN would allow an apologist for Hitler valuable air-time. Wolf Blitzer is too.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune about this story, Julie Deardorff is critical of the teacher responsible for the bullying of a kindergarten student who has been revealed to be autistic, but she argues that we should wait to hear the teacher’s side of the story. Generally speaking, it is wise to wait for all details to emerge on any given subject but I wonder if there is anything that can be said in defense of this:

Barton and Port St. Lucie Police Department officials said teacher Wendy Portillo made Alex stand in front of the room while his classmates told him what bothered them about him. Because the class was studying tallies and vote-taking, Portillo then led a class vote as to whether Alex should be allowed to stay in the class. Alex was voted out, by a 14 to 2 margin. He spent the rest of the day in the nurse’s office and was upset when Barton picked him up after school. Alex hasn’t been back to the school since Wednesday, when the vote occurred.”He’s doing a little better,” said Barton on Tuesday.

Barton said Tuesday morning Alex was officially diagnosed with an autism-spectrum disorder and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. He is not in school, but he misses the one friend he made in the classroom since he moved to the school in January, she said. And the class vote didn’t just affect Alex. His friend and classmate Spencer Clawson has been upset by what happened, Spencer’s mother Stacie Clawson said. Clawson said she talked with her 6-year-old son after she heard about the incident. She said she asked him to close his eyes and imagine how he would feel if this happened to him. As he did, his face changed, Clawson said.

“He said, ‘That was mean,’” Clawson said.

This is beyond inappropriate for a kindergarten class and a kindergarten teacher. Apparently, the teacher did not know that the child was autistic but even if she was unaware of that there is still no reason for a teacher to hold a class vote to decide whether or not a child deserves to be kicked out of class. If the boy was behaving badly, which is certainly possible, then he should have been removed, but not so publicly and cruelly at the hands of his classmates. I don’t support ending her career in education unless she genuinely does not understand that she did wrong and ought to apologize for it. I do think she should be reprimanded, and should be trained to deal with young students with a greater understanding of children and their circumstances before she scars someone else for life.

I was reading Slate today and their double X section had a link to this article about “honor” killings in the Middle East. I’m not sure there’s anything that horrifies me more than reading about these atrocities against women. How people can be so cruel and have it justified by those around them is astonishing to me. I was also shocked by this article when it turned out on my news feed this morning:

A new report by Save the Children U.K. accuses some aid workers and peacekeepers of sexually exploiting children living in countries affected by conflict and natural disaster. As Tendai Maphosa reports from London, the report says the general silence surrounding the abuse is also shocking. Children as young as six are victims of the abuse, says the Save the Children report. It adds that the practice, though widespread, is chronically under-reported.

Save the Children’s Dominic Nutt says the children rarely speak out. He says while it is difficult for any child anywhere to come forward with information on being abused it is harder for children in difficult circumstances. “Imagine what it is like,” Nutt said. “Say you are a six-year-old child in a war zone, maybe you have lost your parents, maybe they are dead, you are being looked after by aid workers in a refugee camp. All is confusion, you have no security and the only people keeping you alive with food and shelter are aid workers. If those aid workers are also abusing you, how hard is it to go to them and complain? Because the children fear that their food, their aid help will be taken away.”

I just hope that someone in a position of power takes these claims seriously and investigates them because it is unacceptable and evil.