Thank You, President Bush

I disagreed with many things President Bush did while in office. This TARP nonsense, particularly.

However, I don't think anyone on September 12, 2001 would have predicted we would be 7 years down the road without a single follow up domestic attack. For that Bush deserves a great deal of credit.

And so, mission #1: accomplished.


Farewell and thank you for your service, President Bush.

Not the Fault of Deregulation

There is a growing effort from those on the left to blame our current economic problems on "deregulation."

According to leading Democrats:

House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank: "This is the fruit of decades of 'leave the market alone, don’t regulate it. It will take care of itself' ... Clearly we’ve got to get some regulation here."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "The Bush Administration’s eight long years of failed deregulation policies"

House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer: "A stark failure of the economy and this administration’s laissez faire, take the referee off the field, let anyone do whatever they want to do and everything will be fine"


As the Heritage Foundation puts it though, "The problem with the Democrats' 'deregulation did it' meme is that it didn’t happen – deregulation that is."


Although nowhere near being a socialist "command economy", the United States economy is quite heavily regulated, and a lot of new regulations have been put into place under the Bush administration, like Sarbanes Oxley.

Which is not to say that Bush has deregulated some things, but even far-left Democratic senators like Chuck Schumer have been pro-deregulation in recent times.


Furthermore, government interference with the economy shares a large share of the blame for the mess we are in.

I've stumbled across a number of solid articles that correct the record on this dubious "deregulation caused this" claim, which I think are worth sharing:


First, an editorial titled Is Capitalism Dead? explains the (well intentioned) role the government played in ultimately bringing down the housing market. It begins:

Is this the end of American capitalism? As financial panic spread across the globe and governments scrambled to contain the damage, reality seemed to announce the doom of U.S.-style free markets and President Bush's ideology. But this is wrong in two ways. The deregulation of U.S. financial markets did not reflect only the narrow ideology of a particular party or administration. And the problem with the U.S. economy, more than lack of regulation, has been government's failure to control systemic risks that government itself helped to create. We are not witnessing a crisis of the free market but a crisis of distorted markets.

A Union-Tribute editorial expands on this, beginning with "The mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is no orphan. It has many fathers, and deregulation of financial markets isn't one of them." and concluding "Appallingly, some Democrats still claim that deregulation fomented by Republicans and greedy investors caused the meltdown. Never mind that the policy of spreading homeownership around to folks who couldn't afford it will cost millions their homes and taxpayers an extra $700 billion."

Finally, I think Don Bourdeaux makes the case extremely well in a letter he sent to the Washington Times:

Your equating George W. Bush with FDR is spot-on ("Franklin Delano Bush," October 20). Both presidents recklessly increased government's role in the economy - a move that proved (in FDR's case) and will prove (in Bush's case) to do nothing but saturate the economy with such uncertainty as to frighten away entrepreneurs and investors.

But popular history will almost surely remember Bush, not as a second FDR, but as a second Herbert Hoover. The myth will be made that Bush was a staunch free-marketeer who was succeeded in the Oval Office by a charismatic saint whose hyperactive interventions saved the economy (even though precious little evidence of economic salvation will appear in the data). History will forget Bush's interventions just as it has forgotten Hoover's - as it has forgotten that Hoover signed the largest tariff hike in U.S. history; as it has forgotten that Hoover tried to create jobs by deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans; as it has forgotten that Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; as it has forgotten that, with the Revenue Act of 1932, Hoover raised the top marginal tax rate on personal incomes from 25 percent to 63 percent (in addition to raising the corporate-tax rate).

History will repeat itself, blaming capitalism for a problem caused and intensified by government interventions.

Update: Amity Shlaes responds to a critic, and expands on the forgotten history mentioned by Don Boudreaux.

Stay Classy, Eleanor Clift

A lack of class is sweeping ^* America...

Yesterday, it was apparently Eleanor Clift's turn. On the McLaughlin Group:

"George know-nothing Bush", huh? And here I was thinking that calling people stupid was so 2nd grade.

$3 Trillion

The era of big government clearly is not over.

Worthwhile commentary:

• Cato Daily Dispatch


• Cato @ Liberty - Bush’s Dishonest and Spendthrift Budget


• Captain's Quarters - It Keeps Growing, And Growing, And Growing, And ....


• Whiz Bang (DJ Drummond) - Government Spending Priorities

Barack H. Obama

For the record, I think those that make a big deal about Obama's middle name lack the courage to engage in meaningful discourse and should be ignored or rebuked. In watching his response to Bush's last State of the Union Address, however, it dawned on me that perhaps his middle name should be changed to "Hypocrite."

I could barely believe my ears when, after listening to him demonize Bush for a full three minutes of his speech, he then has the audacity (and, unlike hope, this actually was audacious) to hypocritically continue to rail against Bush with this nugget: "but from a broken politics in Washington; a politics that says it's OK to demonize your political opponents when we should be coming together to solve problems".

How do you possibly rationalize that statement three minutes into a rant railing against a political opponent with whom you have refused to "come to together, to solve problems"? Give me a break. Is he serious? Is he listening to himself?

In my judgment, a critical analysis reveals Obama offers nothing new. Just the continued push for the liberal-policies-du-jour, like abandoning Iraq and ending th e"tax cuts for the wealthy." Both policies have been the party-line for Democrats since 2004. Or the when it's the wealthy that are the ones that pay much more than their fair share of the tax burden and "the surge" is finally showing tremendous signs of progress, both policies would be awful.

I wish the Democrats would realize that "Bush is evil" is not a policy recommendation. But Obama simply continues to offer up more hatred of Bush and rants demeaning him and his record. Bush's is a mixed record for sure, but even liberals should acknowledge it's not all bad. Not a single US terrorist attack since 9/11. Years and years of continuous, and significant, economic growth -- despite a dot-com-boom bust and 9/11.

Senator Obama: If you want to prove you want to open a fresh chapter in America's political story, offer something actually new and stop hating on Bush. Offer some gratitude for the things Bush has done right. Do something during Bush's last term that shows actually shows you taking steps to work towards something in a bi-partisan fashion.

Until you do so, you, sir, are nothing but a hypocrite who happens to be able to spin some nice sounding prose.

Two Lies That Need To Die

I'm listening to this week's Bill Moyer's Journal (the show that the PBS Ombudsman calls "the gift that keeps on giving").

This week's episode is titled "John Grisham," and Grisham is one of the few fiction authors I enjoy, so I thought I might actually be able to stomach this week's episode. Well -- I'm 9 minutes into the episode, and no Grisham yet. But Moyers has been going (and on, and on) about how Bush lied us into war and how the economy is tanking because our jobs are going offshore.

And that leads me to: two lies that need to die:

1. Bush lied; people died.
   
   I'd like to be able to roll my eyes when I see this on a bumper sticker. I can't though because it seems that the entire far left honestly, and passionately, believes this (as does, apparently, Bill Moyers).
   
   Moyer's latest rant on this was inspired by the fact that someone has apparently compiled a list of every "lie" Bush and his administration told leading up to the war. I'm sure this will only add to the "Bush lied, people died" hysteria.
   
   Let's get a couple things straight. One, it's not unreasonable to objectively look at how we got into Iraq. But I would invite people still suck ruminating on this to move out of 2003 into 2008.
   
   Two, there is an implication in the statement that Bush intended to see people die. I think most people, if they consider that notion objectively, will conclude Bush didn't actually set out with the goal of killing thousands of Iraqis and US military service members. The problem is that I don't think most people actually think this through rationally.
   
   And three, Bush didn't lie. To have lied, he must have made statements he knew to be false with the intention of misleading. Bush's statements were based on national intelligence. That intelligence, tragically, wound up being faulty. But Bush did not go out and say things he believed to be un-true with the intention to deceive. Now, granted, Bush did cherry pick what he shared with the American people, but unless you want to call criminal prosecutors "liars" as well, you can't twist that into lying.



2. Job outsourcing is destroying the economy.
   
   It's unfortunate when someone gets laid off. I'll grant that. An individual who gets laid off has to find a new job, perhaps learn a new set of skills, has to figure out how to stay afloat financially while searching for the new job, etc., etc. But, lay-offs are not a.) unfair, nor are the b.) bad for the economy.
   
   Lay offs done rationally, and I assume almost all are done rationally, with a solid business case behind them, are done because the cost of keeping the person employed is either greater than the value they produce for the company or the value they can produce for the company can be done by someone else for a much lower cost. What would be unfair would be to tell companies "you can't have this job done by someone for $5,000/year; you must keep paying this person $50,000/year to do it!".
   
   Furthermore, the economics behind layoffs and outsourcing jobs overseas is precisely what keeps the economy moving forward. It's the law of comparative advantage at work. It's why the overwhelming majority of Americans don't have to worry about starving to death. It's why the overwhelming majority of Americans can afford to have free time watch television in the evenings. It's why I can afford to spend time ranting on a blog.
   
   I'll conclude by quoting a recent Steve Landsburg New York Times editorial (which happens to slam both Romney and McCain, but rightly so):
   

   
   In the days before Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary in Michigan, Mitt Romney and John McCain battled over what the government owes to workers who lose their jobs because of the foreign competition unleashed by free trade. Their rhetoric differed — Mr. Romney said he would “fight for every single job,” while Mr. McCain said some jobs “are not coming back” — but their proposed policies were remarkably similar: educate and retrain the workers for new jobs.
   
   All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices. In other words, the winners can more than afford to compensate the losers. Does that mean they ought to? Does it create a moral mandate for the taxpayer-subsidized retraining programs proposed by Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney?
   
   Um, no. Even if you’ve just lost your job, there’s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that’s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born. If the world owes you compensation for enduring the downside of trade, what do you owe the world for enjoying the upside?
   
   I doubt there’s a human being on earth who hasn’t benefited from the opportunity to trade freely with his neighbors. Imagine what your life would be like if you had to grow your own food, make your own clothes and rely on your grandmother’s home remedies for health care. Access to a trained physician might reduce the demand for grandma’s home remedies, but — especially at her age — she’s still got plenty of reason to be thankful for having a doctor.
   
   Some people suggest, however, that it makes sense to isolate the moral effects of a single new trading opportunity or free trade agreement. Surely we have fellow citizens who are hurt by those agreements, at least in the limited sense that they’d be better off in a world where trade flourishes, except in this one instance. What do we owe those fellow citizens?
   
   One way to think about that is to ask what your moral instincts tell you in analogous situations. Suppose, after years of buying shampoo at your local pharmacy, you discover you can order the same shampoo for less money on the Web. Do you have an obligation to compensate your pharmacist? If you move to a cheaper apartment, should you compensate your landlord? When you eat at McDonald’s, should you compensate the owners of the diner next door? Public policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts that we all reject every day of our lives.
   
   In what morally relevant way, then, might displaced workers differ from displaced pharmacists or displaced landlords? You might argue that pharmacists and landlords have always faced cutthroat competition and therefore knew what they were getting into, while decades of tariffs and quotas have led manufacturing workers to expect a modicum of protection. That expectation led them to develop certain skills, and now it’s unfair to pull the rug out from under them.
   
   Once again, that argument does not mesh with our everyday instincts. For many decades, schoolyard bullying has been a profitable occupation. All across America, bullies have built up skills so they can take advantage of that opportunity. If we toughen the rules to make bullying unprofitable, must we compensate the bullies?
   
   Bullying and protectionism have a lot in common. They both use force (either directly or through the power of the law) to enrich someone else at your involuntary expense. If you’re forced to pay $20 an hour to an American for goods you could have bought from a Mexican for $5 an hour, you’re being extorted. When a free trade agreement allows you to buy from the Mexican after all, rejoice in your liberation — even if Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and the rest of the presidential candidates don’t want you to.
   

Bush didn't lie.
Outsourcing jobs overseas helps us.
Let's move on.

A Thirty Five Year Tragedy

For starters, I have roughly the same thoughts as a year ago, so start there.

And, if I can direct you to just one additional place, it would be this: The Roe IQ Test. See how much you do or don't know.

There is some good news. The pro-life message appears to be taking hold:

The news that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years elicits various explanations, from increased use of contraceptives to lack of access to abortion clinics. But maybe the chief reason is that the great majority of Americans, even many who see themselves as pro-choice, are deeply uncomfortable with it.

In 1992, a Gallup/Newsweek poll found 34 percent of Americans thought abortion "should be legal under any circumstances," with 13 percent saying it should always be illegal. Last year, only 26 percent said it should always be allowed, with 18 percent saying it should never be permitted.

Sentiments are even more negative among the group that might place the highest value on being able to escape an unwanted pregnancy: young people. In 2003, Gallup found, one of every three kids from age 13 to 17 said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. More revealing yet is that 72 percent said abortion is "morally wrong."

And, that "lowest level in 30 years" is a level that's down 25% since 1990.

Also encouraging is that the Pro-Life movement still has the attention of the left.

Being an election year, it's worth noting where the candidates stand on the issue. It's an issue that continues to be a clear differentiator between Republicans and Democrats. There are exceptions, like Rudy, but even Ron Paul (an OB-GYN, for what that's worth) opposes abortion: "The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideals of liberty."

On the other side, you have the Clintons, and their position of "safe, legal, and rare". (One does wonder, if abortion is A.O.K., why does it need to be rare?) And, Obama, who voted against the "Born Alive Infants" bill which aimed to recognize that a fetus which survives an abortion to be treated as a human being.

Back on the Republican side, you also have John McCain, who, generally has a good pro-life record. But he's being taken to task for going after Wisconsin Right to Life (and rightly so).

Update:
Michelle Malkin notes Thousands march on Washington…MSM yawns.

Alexham, over at Red State, rightly points out that Bush has been right on the money on the life issue. From Bush's remarks:

Thirty-five years ago today the United States Supreme Court declared and decided that under the law an unborn child is not considered a person. But we know many things about the unborn. Biology confirms that from the start each unborn child is a separate individual with his or her own genetic code. Babies can now survive outside the mother's womb at younger and younger ages. And the fingers and toes and beating hearts that we can see on an unborn child's ultrasound come with something that we cannot see: a soul.

Today we're heartened -- we're heartened by the news that the number of abortions is declining. But the most recent data reports that more than one in five pregnancies end in an abortion. America is better than this, so we will continue to work for a culture of life where a woman with an unplanned pregnancy knows there are caring people who will support her; where a pregnant teen can carry her child and complete her education; where the dignity of both the mother and child is honored and cherished.

Finally, Ken Shepherd wonders "Was 2007 the Year of the Pro-Life Movie?".

Link Roundup - 1/20/08

• More good news about Iraq. Complete with pictures. Keywords: progress and impressive.
  
  
• The Bush stimulus program is an awful idea. Romney's also weighed in with his proposed plan. I wish he'd back up his tax cut proposals with spending cut proposals, but I do welcome this difference between his and Bush's:
  

  
  [Romney's plan] centered on several permanent tax cuts…permanently reducing the rate for the lowest income tax bracket to 7.5 percent from 10 percent, retroactive to 2007. He also wants to eliminate Social Security payroll taxes for workers over 65 and eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes on households earning less than $200,000 a year. He also would permanently reduce the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent over two years and allow businesses to depreciate the value of new equipment purchases faster.
  

  
  versus:
  

  
  President George W. Bush earlier on Friday called on Congress to enact a package of temporary tax cuts and other measures estimated to cost up to $150 billion.
  

  
  
  
• Do Democrats really want to return to the Cinton era? I can't even imagine what would happen if papers surfaced documenting the Bush administration had intent to "expose lifestyles, tactics and motives of [opponent] lobbyists" and "track personal information about interest group leaders, such as their home phone numbers, addresses, 'biographies, analysis of credibility in the media, and known relationships with Congresspeople.'"
  
  
• Meanwhile, Grassley's investigation continues to give me the heebeegeebees. I loathe the prosperity gospel movement. I think the prosperity gospel's message is wrong and that its theology is dangerous. But, these people pushing the prosperity gospel are still religious institutions that Congress has no business investigating.
  
  
• Finally, Iran: Still a threat.

The Commutation of Reason

Heavy sigh.

I was starting to come to like Al Gore. A month ago I even praised his book. I was sure he and I would disagree on plenty of things, but I was encouraged that he, having published a book called "The Assault on Reason," was going to keep things civil, and, well, reasoned.

Then, today, he goes and gives an interview with the following exchange:

Q. Before I let you go, I’d like to ask you about the Scooter Libby case and the fact the president commuted his sentence. What was your reaction to that?

GORE: Well, I thought it was very disappointing.

Q: Because?

GORE: Well, I thought it was improper. He is charged with having knowledge that could incriminate his bosses in the White House which included the vice president and the president. I thought it was very disappointing.

Q. And how is it different than when President Clinton pardoned, in some controversial cases…

GORE: Well it’s different because in this case the person involved is charged with activities that involve knowledge of what his superiors in the White House did.

Libby "is charged with having knowledge that could incriminate his bosses in the White House which included the vice president and the president"?!

Give me a break. Al Gore has absolutely no base on which to build that argument. What non-speculative proof does Gore have that Libby has "knowledge that could incriminate his bosses"? None. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

The notion that Libby has knowledge that could incriminate Bush and Cheney is a possibility, but it's not something one can state as a matter of fact. And yet, Gore went right ahead and did so.

Ugh.

Furthermore, unless Gore is going to equally criticize his former boss, who served no jail time for lying under oath, he has no moral platform from which he can lodge a reasoned argument against Libby also not serving jail time.

Apparently Gore only cares about reason when it serves his interests and helps him sell books... and otherwise, let the partisan slandering abound!

I can't believe I was no naive as to actually expect better than this...

Al Gore - Promoting Discourse

This is the third post of my three-part series on "Promoting Discourse". (The second was my my previous post, about Thank You For Smoking; the first was about Charlie Rose).

Perhaps you are surprised, given my political leanings to the right, that I'm writing a complementary post about Al Gore of all people. I'm a bit surprised as well. But discourse is about bringing opinions from all sides (and hopefully facts to back them up) out into the open in a healthy and productive way. No political party or group of people sharing a political philosophy have a monopoly on valid input about political discourse.

And Al Gore brings such input to the table. His new book, The Assault on Reason is precisely about the need for good public discourse.

A number of media outlets have spun the book to be something more sexy than I think it was intended to be. ABC News ran an article "Gore's 'Assault on Reason' an Assault on Bush", for instance. I'm sure feuding political figures makes a more attention grabbing story than "our public discourse system is broken."

Now, in fairness, I haven't read the book. I've read what excerpts I can find and listened through two interviews with Gore about it though. (One was, if you've been paying attention you can probably guess this..., with Charlie Rose. :D .)

Based on those interview and excepts, I think Gore's central message is summarized nicely in this excerpt of an excerpt from the book:

Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

American democracy is now in danger—not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

In that much, allow me to strongly concur with Mr. Gore.

Rather disappointingly (and ironically), the two interviews I listened to about Gore's book (or at least, that was their intended topic), turned into good examples of what's wrong with current public discourse. (By the way, the second interview was on The News Hour, moderated by Gwen Ifill.) (Brief aside ... I used to be an avid watcher of the Gwen Ifill-moderated Washington Week program, until she tried to make Bill Bennett out as a racist over the whole Freakonomics thing. Talk about bad discourse... Now I'm perhaps overly critical of anything Ifill does.)

Anyway. The Rose and Ifill interviews of Al Gore on "The Assault on Reason" themselves assaulted reason. Neither interviewer could resist devolving into questions about political "horse racing." The question of "Will you run in '08" made up a good bulk of both interviews that should have gone to discussing his book further. In the Rose interview, Gore answered with good humor that he was "worried about being repetitious" with his answer. (In 2000, of course, Gore was chided for being too repetitious.)

Both interviewers also tried to goad Gore into small minded partisan bickering. Ifill wanted Gore to endorse impeaching Bush. Rose wanted Gore to call Bush a "liar." I applaud Gore for overcoming both lines of questioning.

People generally blame political parties for driving issues to extremes, but in this case both interviewers were the ones abetting the political culture of "wedge issues."

I can forgive Charlie Rose (to some degree; and even to the degree I don't, I still think he's the television interviewer most positively impacting public discourse) for his questions because they were taken from a pool of questions provided by the live auditorium audience in front of whom he was interviewing. The whole series of impeachment questions Ifill asked were downright ridiculous, irrelevant, and outrageous though. Partisan fueled impeachment is perhaps the antithesis of good public discourse and the reign of reason. The series of questions should have had no place in the interview.

Getting back to Gore's book, I should point out that I emphatically support his main message - that public discourse and reason is desperately missing from today's political landscape. In his book though, Gore takes this premise to the next step with an argument I don't buy. He uses actions of the Bush Administration as his "proof" that reason and discourse have gone out the window.

Gore makes the assertion that anyone that is rational would have never gone into Iraq. I share Gore's outcry that so little discourse occurred prior to the invasion. But I disagree with the assertion that had all the available intelligence been put out for review in a public forum, it would have been impossible for someone to have arrived at the conclusion to invade.

Gore includes a statistic that "three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11" in 2001. That's a huge failure in public discourse, but I never believed that and it didn't factor into my judgment, at the time, that going into Iraq was the right choice. (My judgment was primarily influenced by Iraq's failure to comply with U.N. Resolutions 678, 687, and 1441. I am continually baffled as to why Iraq didn't comply with them given the fact they apparently didn't actually have WMD... ("We aren't developing or hiding weapons, so we must interfere with your weapons inspectors!" is a huge non sequitur.))

On the whole though, I'm glad Gore is putting his influence behind fixing our use of "the marketplace of ideas." If he can gain nearly as much traction on this issue as he did on "climate change," the American people will be much better off.

Elizabeth Edwards: Bush Is A Racist

Note to the Edwards Campaign: Stop letting Elizabeth Edwards say offensive things.

First it was the "Rabid Rabid Republican" thing. Now it's effectively calling Bush a racist.

Are Democrats really not offended by this stuff? I really hope no one is actually buying what she's putting out there... Sheesh.

via digg ...

On Embryo Ethics

Life size model of baby at 8 weeks after conception

The Boston Globe recently ran an article about embryonic stem cell research titled "Embryo ethics". I suspect the article's author, Michael J. Sandel, and I draw fairly different conclusions at the end of the day, but I welcome his article to the debate. For far too longer, there's been effectively no debate.

Let me start by addressing some minor "meta" things that irked me before engaging in the debate myself.

First, the article made the front page of Digg, with the Digg submission titled "Embryo ethics: Why Stem Cells Aren't People". I suspect from the article that Sandel would agree that "stem cells aren't people" but he never makes that stark claim, nor does he in any sense "prove" such a claim.

Second, the Digg submission is in Digg's "General Sciences" category. Most of the article deals specifically with President Bush's views on embryonic stem cell research and the article is pretty much devoid of scientific facts and figures. It's largely philosophical and political (which is fitting given the fact that Sandel is a political philosophy professor at Harvard). The article should have been filed under "politics," not science.

Third and final "irk." In the Digg submission title, in the article lead in, and in the article's introductory sentence, the phrase used for "embryonic stem cell" is just "stem cell." Doing so confuses the debate and I wish people (by which I really mean "the media," I guess) would take the time to regularly differentiate what kind of stem cells they're talking about.

OK, now to the content of Sandel's article. Sandel uses the four pages of his article to ultimately arrive at the conclusion that President Bush's position on embryonic stem cell research isn't logically coherent. Sandel's argument boils down to:

[Bush] vetoed a bill that would have funded new embryonic stem cell research, saying that he did not want to support "the taking of innocent human life."

But it is a striking feature of the president's position that, while restricting the funding of embryonic stem cell research, he has made no effort to ban it.

...

If harvesting stem cells from a blastocyst were truly on a par with harvesting organs from a baby, then the morally responsible policy would be to ban it, not merely deny it federal funding.

Sandel's argument is a valid one, and I can recall Bush highlighting the fact he wasn't working to ban embryonic stem cell research as though that was a "good thing" back in the 2004 debates. When he did that, it rubbed me the wrong way because it doesn't make sense. "I'm commited to not having the government fund murder - but, don't worry, I'm not going to ban it!"

Unfortunately, I suspect most American might actually hold a similar view. And, in fact, Sandel event hints at this, saying "But those who view embryos in this way should not only be opposing embryonic stem cell research; they should also be leading a campaign to shut down what they must regard as rampant infanticide in fertility clinics. Some principled right-to-life opponents of stem cell research meet this test of moral consistency", which leaves a pretty strong implication that there is a good portion of the right-to-life community that isn't part of that "principled" "some".

The fact that the President and a supposed outside-the-principled-some don't have a logically coherent moral position doesn't dismiss the claim that a blastocyst stage embryo is a human being however. Sandel hints at an implication that it does some how dismiss that claim (and the Digg community is apparently buying that implication.) That implication is nothing more than a twist on the argumentum ad populum fallacy. ("If the majority can't believe it in a logically consistent way, it must not be true!")

And at this point, I'd actually like to draw on another logical fallacy - Loki's Wager. To quote Wikipedia:

Loki is a trickster god [...] who [...] once made a bet with some dwarves. The price should Loki lose the wager, it was agreed, would be his head. Loki lost the bet, and in due time the dwarves came to collect the head which had become rightfully theirs. Loki had no problem with giving up his head, but he insisted they had absolutely no right to take any part of his neck. Everyone concerned discussed the matter; and, one could suppose, they are discussing the matter still. Certain parts were obviously head, and certain parts were obviously neck, but neither side could agree exactly where the one ended and the other began. As a result, Loki keeps his head indefinitely.

Consider the question of "when (human) life begins." Like identifying what's a "head," there are some example it's easy to classify. A 20 year old, a five year old, and a 1 month old are all easily classified as "human life." How about a fetus only still partially in the womb? A fetus entirely still in the womb? An eight week old fetus (a model of which is shown above)? An eight day blastocyst stage embryo?

Much like distinguishing exactly where the neck ends and the head begins, deciding a cut off on when life begins is currently, at best, nothing more than conjecture and is colored as much by theology as science.

To give in to Loki's fallacy would be to conclude that since the "concept cannot be defined, [it] therefore cannot be discussed". That's not what I'm aiming for here. Rather, what I'd like to add to the embryonic stem cell research debate is the claim that until we can say with absolute certainty that a six to eight day blastocyst stage embryo is not a human person, we should withhold government funding from embryonic stem cell research (and, in fact, ban embryonic stem cell research).

Moral relativism quickly enters the picture and tries to blur things with a counter claim along the lines of "well, if I don't believe a blastocyst is a human person, I should be able to do research and/or be benefited by research done on human embryonic stem cells." This is yet another fallacious argument; if I hold a sincere belief that you aren't a valid human person, that doesn't give me license to experiment in a way that would destroy your life.

What matters is the actual nature of the blastocyst stage embryo: is it a human life or not? Until it can be definitively shown as not being a life, how dare we engage in activities that destroy what may be a human life.

via digg ...

Oversight Can Prevent Hurricanes!!

Ronald Brownstein opines on the L.A. Times opinion page:

At times, President Bush's second term has resembled a laboratory test of what happens to a large institution when all mechanisms of accountability are disabled.

The results have not been pretty.

Hurricane Katrina, the chaotic occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, the breakdown at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the FBI's abuse of Patriot Act powers, the troubling dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys — everywhere, the administration has been plagued by an epidemic of incompetence.

...

The Republican majority so completely abdicated its responsibilities to conduct oversight on the executive branch that its governing motto might have been "don't ask, don't tell."

Key House and Senate committees sometimes went months without oversight hearings on Iraq.

...

Many of the decisions now causing Bush grief could have been made only by a politician who did not believe anyone was looking over his shoulder.

I'll grant Bush has made a multitude of mistakes while in office. And I wish the Republican Congress had been more aggressive with oversight while they had power. But this is over the top moonbat-ery.

First of all, which is it, Brownstein? Incompetence, or lack of oversight?

If you are as arrogant and ignorant as I'm sure Brownstein believes Bush to be, I really don't see how all the oversight in the world would make any difference.

Second, Brownstein makes it sound like the only way the Congress could have been keeping Bush in check is with "oversight hearings". What a bunch of bunk. The intelligence comittees regularly meet with the Whitehouse for briefings. You know, those briefings Silvestre Reyes apparently slept through?

Third, even though the Republican Congress didn't do much in adversarial oversight, the press sure did. Your paper has been criticizing Bush since he took office.

In fact, your paper's whole excuse for running the terrorist banking data surveillance program story was:

But we also have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make their own decisions. That's the role of the press in our democracy.

But Bush hasn't had any oversight, right?

Fourth and finally, oversight can't stop hurricanes. And your choice of wording — "The results have not been pretty. Hurricane Katrina, the chaotic occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, ..." — makes it sound like you either believe it can, or you're just out to get Bush as best you can.

via digg ...

Tony Blair Gets to the Heart of the Iraq Debate

Since the release of the Iraq Study Group's findings this past Wednesday, I've been thoroughly disappointed with how the report's findings have been covered in the mainstream media.

Most of the reporting has centered around the theme that the findings are a "rebuke of Bush['s policy]."

How does that add anything to the public debate? This is important. It's not a time to cast blame; it's not a time turn the fact the ISG has come up with differing ideas from the President into some sort of soap opera.

Refreshingly, in the midst of a very contentious press conference, Tony Blair cuts to the heart of the matter:

I think the analysis of the situation is not really in dispute. The question is, how do we find the right way forward?

- The Boston Globe, December 8, 2006

Everyone knows the situation in Iraq is bad. The question is, what do we do now? If we stay, we appear to be looking at more of the same. But what happens if we leave? This question is what the press should be investigating and reporting on.