From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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He
Wants Bodies?
On yesterday's terrorism conviction, The Wall Street Journal's editorial (link
for subscribers) expresses views this columnist also holds:
It took a Miami jury merely a day and a half to convict Jose Padilla, alias Abdullah al-Muhajir, and two co-defendants of terrorism charges that carry a sentence of life imprisonment.
The quick verdict yesterday suggests that the prosecution's evidence in the three-month trial was overwhelming and unambiguous. It ought to quiet opponents of the war on terror who claimed that the reason Padilla was originally held as an enemy combatant--because he was believed to have been involved in a plot to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city--was a figment of President Bush's or John Ashcroft's imagination.
Of course, it won't. Watch instead as they cite Padilla's conviction as evidence for another favorite claim: that the civilian criminal-justice system is adequate to the task of preventing terrorism, and thus the military shouldn't be holding enemy combatants at all.
In fact, Padilla's case demonstrates the opposite. Before yesterday's verdict, war foes were sneering that prosecutors weren't even charging him in the dirty-bomb plot. That is true, but the reason he wasn't charged for that crime is that the case was procedurally deficient: The military didn't read Padilla his Miranda rights or provide him a lawyer when it interrogated him. Padilla was convicted instead of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. That means that if war opponents had their way, and if Padilla had been guilty only of planning to kill Americans on U.S. soil, he would walk free today.
This problem may be remediable in a similar future case. No doubt the next time a terrorist is picked up at O'Hare International Airport, FBI agents will read him his rights and make sure to honor them. But it is unreasonable to expect soldiers, Marines and intelligence officers on foreign battlefields to follow police procedures at the same time they're dodging bullets and trying to extract information to prevent attacks on Americans back home. The Padilla decision is reassuring in many respects, but it is not a model for the future handling of enemy combatants.
Even the soft-on-terror New York Times opens its predictably caterwauling editorial by acknowledging that "it is hard to disagree with the jury's guilty verdict."
But CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen is up to that difficult task! He writes:
It apparently did not matter to these jurors that none of the facts alleged against the defendants took place after Sept. 11, 2001 (or at all during the 21st century), and that no people were ever murdered or injured as a result of any of the conversations that took place between the conspirators. In fact, no specific people ever were mentioned as possible targets--certainly not any Americans here at home. It was a case without victims or bodies.
Many opponents of the war on terror (including the Times) have argued that terrorists should be treated as civilian criminal defendants. These critics fail to appreciate that the primary purpose of detaining enemy combatants is preventive, not punitive.
Cohen goes further, implying that it is unjust to prosecute and punish someone for merely planning an attack. A normal person would feel relief and gratitude that "no people were ever murdered or injured" by the defendants. But Cohen is unhappy. If the government followed his advice, the result would surely be a lot more victims and bodies.
By
Any Other Name
Yesterday saw an interesting exchange on The Volokh Conspiracy about the politics
of racial discrimination. Orin Kerr notes a Quinnipiac
poll showing wide public approval of what the poll question described as the
U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling "that public schools may not consider
an individual's race when deciding which students are assigned to specific schools."
Result:
By a 71-24 percent margin, American voters agree with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that public schools may not consider an individual's race when deciding which students are assigned to specific schools. . . . Republican voters agree with the decision 79-17 percent, while Democrats agree 64-30 percent and independent voters agree 71-24 percent.
Kerr observes: "In light of recent claims that the Supreme Court is 'dangerously out of balance,' way off to the right of American public opinion, it's interesting to get a sense of where public opinion may in fact be on this question."
But co-conspirator Ilya Somin says "some caution is in order":
The true level of public opposition to affirmative action preferences in education is likely much lower than this. Public opinion scholars have known for years that most survey respondents will express hostility to anything described as a "racial preference" or as racial discrimination. This is particularly true if the question at issue--like Quinnipiac's--fails to distinguish between affirmative action and traditional racial discrimination against minorities. Many of the Quinnipiac respondents probably assumed that the Supreme Court forbade old-style racial discrimination against minorities.
Somin cites several other polls that produce different results by using language favorable to the defendants in the recent case, or to the idea of racial preferences in general:
- A Washington
Post-ABC News survey said the decision "restricted how local school
boards can use race to assign children to schools" and said that "some
argue this is a significant setback for efforts to diversify public schools,
others say race should not be used in school assignments." Result: 56%
disapproved, only 40% approved.
- A Newsweek
poll said the Supreme Court had decided "to limit the use of race for
school integration plans." (This is not an accurate description of the
decision, which expressly excluded schools subject to court-ordered desegregation.)
Result: 36% disapproved, 32% approved, 32% were "unsure."
- A 2003 Pew
survey found that 57% of Americans support "affirmative action programs
that give special preferences to qualified blacks, women, and other minorities,
in hiring and education" and only 35% oppose them.
- A 2005 USA Today-Gallup poll found that 49% of Americans support "affirmative action programs for racial minorities," while only 43% oppose them.
But this proposition has actually been put to a test at the ballot box. Voters in three states have been presented with ballot measures banning racial discrimination of the "affirmative" as well as the old-fangled kind. The measures used the language of "discrimination" and "preferences," but opponents waged vigorous campaigns arguing that the measures would outlaw "affirmative action," and they vastly outspent supporters.
Thus voters in these states had the opportunity to hear both sides of the argument. Result: All three measures passed, with 54% of the vote in California in 1996 and 58% each in Washington in 1998 and Michigan in 2006. All three states are more liberal than the country as a whole--no Republican presidential candidate has carried them since at least 1988--so the overall level of public opposition to racial preferences is probably somewhat higher.
Somin addresses this question in a follow-up post, in which he notes that voters in Houston rejected a citywide referendum in 1997 after a judge ordered that the words "racial preferences" be replaced with "affirmative action." As Somin notes, "in referenda as in polls, whether the public supports affirmative action policies depends on how the question is worded."
While that last statement is obviously true, the Houston referendum wasn't a fair test, because changing "racial preferences" to "affirmative action" is a change of meaning, not just wording. "Affirmative action" is not only a euphemism for discrimination in favor of minorities; it is also a blanket term that encompasses other, less controversial policies.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, concurring in Parents Involved v. Seattle, the recent discrimination case, wrote:
School boards may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race.
All of these approaches fall under the general rubric of "affirmative action" but do not amount to "racial preferences" in the commonly understood sense. Thus one could oppose the rewritten Houston measure, favor the statewide initiatives, and have a consistent position in favor of affirmative action but only if it does not entail actual discrimination on the basis of race.
That would seem to be where Americans come down in the aggregate, based on all the poll and election results cited here.
MediaMutters
and the Muttering Mutterers Who Mutter Them
The cutie-pies at MediaMutters.org have what they seem to think is a rebuttal
of our item
yesterday, in which we contrasted the current Democratic presidential candidates'
campaign of invective against President Bush with the campaign eight years ago,
in which, as we wrote, "Bush understood that he was not running against
Bill Clinton and for the most part ignored him."
"In fact," MediaMutters mutters, "in 1999, Bush attacked the Clinton administration on numerous issues." Here is an example of such an "attack," in an exchange with NBC's Tim Russert:
Russert: Would you ever send American troops to a place like Haiti or Somalia?
Bush: I strongly doubt it. I strongly doubt it.
Russert: As you know, your dad--
Bush: He did on what was called a humanitarian mission and as you know the current administration changed the mission.
Russert: Was that a mistake initially to send 30,000 troops to Somalia?
Bush: I'm not going to second-guess my good father. My good dad--
Russert: How about Haiti?
Bush: I think it was a mistake. I do. And I think we're--and the reason why, we're overdeployed in America.
"I think it was a mistake." If the MediaMutters guys think this was an "attack," they don't remember what their own founder was doing during the Clinton years. All of the examples they cite turn out to be respectful expressions of disagreement over policy, far different from the sort of personal insults that are the Democrats' favored idiom these days. It seems the MediaMutters folks are so blinded by partisanship that they fail to see they are bolstering rather than refuting our point.
The
Strangeness of New Hampshire
"Republican Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that people should 'leave my family
alone' when asked by a New Hampshire woman why the presidential candidate should
expect loyalty from voters when he doesn't get it from his children," the
Associated Press reports from Derry, N.H.:
The questioner, Derry mother Katherine Prudhomme-O'Brien, opened by thanking Giuliani for how he handled the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and introduced him to her 5-year-old daughter, Abby, who was playing on the floor next to the platform where Giuliani stood.
Prudhomme-O'Brien, 36, wasn't certain about Giuliani's answer.
"If a person is running for president, I would assume their children would be behind them," she said. "If they're not, you've got to wonder."
She said the issue is a question mark that is "going to stay there for a lot of people."
This nicely illustrates one of the hazards that face reporters in New Hampshire (Iowa, too). The AP describes Prudhomme-O'Brien as a "Derry mother," but a Google search shows that she is quite an activist. As Manchester's Union Leader reports:
Prudhomme-O'Brien said she is not a novice to retail politics and has taken advantage of face-time with other candidates to ask similarly tough questions, including an exchange with Al Gore in 1999 about an alleged rape committed by Bill Clinton.
At an evening town hall meeting with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in Londonderry, she said if given the chance she would press him on why New Hampshire residents who work in Massachusetts and pay income taxes there do not get in-state tuition for college or other benefits.
She even has an entry on Wikipedia, the nonauthoritative user-written online encyclopedia, according to which she is a supporter of Tom Tancredo, whoever he is.
The AP story would have been more informative if it had revealed Prudhomme-O'Brien's unusual background--although what's creepy is the thought that maybe, in New Hampshire, she isn't all that unusual.
Win,
Lose, Draw
From a USA Today "opposing view" by Barry Schwartz, a professor of
psychology at Swarthmore College:
Unfortunately, the assumption that adding incentives always helps is false. There are circumstances in which adding an incentive competes with other motives and diminishes their impact. Psychologists have known this for more than 30 years.
In one example, nursery school children were given the opportunity to draw with special markers. After playing, some of the children were given "good player" awards. Later, the markers were reintroduced to the classroom, and researchers kept track of which children used them. The youngsters previously given awards were less likely to draw at all, and drew worse pictures, than those who were not given awards.
Is this why the National Endowment for the Arts stopped giving grants to individuals?
The
Population Implosion
"A 35-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets,"
the Associated Press reports from Great Falls, Mont. It's also worth noting,
as the AP does, that the parents are Canadian but came to Montana to give birth
because Canada's vaunted socialized hospitals were "at capacity."
But while this is certainly news, the AP buries the lead, which is that humanity is in imminent danger of extinction. We base this conclusion on the following information from the report:
The chances of giving birth to identical quadruplets is about one in 13 million, Key said.
"This is a very big medical event," he said. "Identical quadruplets are extremely rare."
Medical literature indicates there are less than 50 sets of identical quadruplets, said Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of the NYU Fertility Center in New York.
The last reported set were born in April 2006 to a 26-year-old Indian woman.
Let's round it up and say there are 50 sets of identical quads. If these account for 1 birth in 13 million, that means the entire human population is the product of only 650 million births. This would be somewhat over 650 million people, since "births" includes twins, triplets, fraternal quads, etc. But if the figures are accurate, there can't be more than a billion humans, far fewer than the six billion or so usually assumed.
If the last reported set of quads was born in April 2006--16 months ago--and if this is typical of how much time passes between such births, then the total number of births is somewhere in the vicinity of 10 million a year, less than 1% of the total population.
Thus if you're of childbearing age, please get busy having babies. If you don't, we may all be doomed.
Global
Warming Strikes Again
"Snow to Leave Before Bush"--healdine, Associated Press, Aug. 17
Life Imitates the Onion
- "Though Tiger Woods told reporters he was 'pleased' to win the PGA
Championship last Sunday, the 13-time major winner said he was also deeply
annoyed that Sam Alexis, his two-month-old daughter, was 'not even paying
attention' when Woods sank his tournament-winning putt on the 18th hole."--Onion,
Aug. 16
- "Weeks after their much-hyped arrival in the US, with his debut delayed due to a pesky ankle injury, David Beckham finally scored for team LA Galaxy--but wife Victoria remained strangely unmoved. A bored-looking Victoria clapped politely as David and his teammates wildly celebrated his first goal for the Los Angeles Major League Soccer Team which helped secure their place in the SuperLiga final."--Evening Standard (London), Aug. 16
Come
to Think of It, Bill Shatner Has Put On a Few Pounds
"Burned-Out Star Harbors Signs of Earthlike Planets"--headline, Reuters,
Aug. 16
Doesn't
He Get a Trial First?
"Man Arraigned in Death of Wife Thrown From Balcony"--headline, KCTV
Web site (Kansas City), Aug. 15
She
Should Have Another Piña Colada
"Erin Weakens to Tropical Depression"--headline, Associated Press,
Aug. 16
Good
Thing It Isn't Thanksgiving
"Team USA Burns Turkey"--headline, Charlotte Observer, Aug. 16
News of the Tautological
- "Job Seekers Push Up Unemployment"--headline, Crain's
New York Business, Aug. 16
- "Speakers to Speak in Sweden"--headline, Baltic
Times (Riga, Latvia), Aug. 17
- "Half the nation's families earn below the median family income of about $56,000."--McClatchy, Aug. 15
News
You Can Use
"Sorry We Ate Your Forefathers"--headline, Herald Sun (Melbourne,
Australia), Aug. 16
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Employees Like the Pay but Not the Work"--headline, Daily
Telegraph (London), Aug. 17
- "Four Pandas Born in One Day at Chinese Breeding Center"--headline,
FoxNews.com,
Aug. 16
- "Cardboard Boat Races Not Part of Weekend's L&C Festival"--headline, Press & Dakotan (Yankton, S.D.), Aug. 17
The
One-Eyed Man Is King
WVEC-TV reports on an arrest in Suffolk, Va., of a man accused of practicing
medicine without a license:
According to police, Francis Renee White, 36, injected silicone into subjects without their consent at his South Main Street home. . . .
According to police, White catered to the transgender population.
The WVEC Web site includes the police's mug shot of White, and it looks as if he has had some work done:
He must've catered to the blind transgender population.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Dan O'Shea, Ed Lasky, Jason Roten, Doug Levene, Steven Platzer, Israel Pickholtz, Joseph Kershenbaum, Bill DeLaney, Lynn Leifker, Marty Daks, Kenneth Green, Rod Pennington, Tom Boynton, Glen Leinbach, Jared Shultz, Marion Dreyfus, Daniel Foty, W. Garner Robinson, Michael Ellard, Jay Brinkmann, Steve Karass, Jim Weidman and Paul Wood. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: What works, and what doesn't, in a credit crisis.
- Kim Strassel: The Kos kids try but fail to devour Democratic moderates.
- Peggy Noonan: The NYPD looks at what turns young Westerners into jihadis.
- The Journal Editorial Report: Tune in this weekend for discussions of the Romney campaign, the White House after Rove, and Muslim footbaths.
And on the Taste page:
- Eric Gibson: The wall between art-world realms is going, going . . .
- Evan Goldstein: Professors on the battlefield: Where the warfare is more than just academic.
- Jennifer Graham: This summer, why not vacation with Jesus?
