“I have never yet read a memorandum of conversation in which the writer comes off second best.”
— Dean Acheson
The Tea Party Justice Tuesday, Dec 7 2010
Politics Antonin Scalia, Tea Party 1:26 pm
Who would have guessed Antonin Scalia was a Tea Partier? In a recent appearance at Texas Tech University, Scalia threw his considerable weight behind a pet Tea Party project, repeal of the 17th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
That, in case you don’t have your Glenn Beck-autographed copy of the Constitution nearby, is the amendment providing that U.S. Senators be elected by popular vote rather than selected by state legislatures.
Passage of the 17th amendment in 1913, argues the irrepressible Scalia, was a “progressive” abomination that brought on “the decline of so-called states’ rights throughout the rest of the 20th century.”
Which is to say that allowing voters of a state to choose their senators directly, at the polls, was the first step leading to the expansion of centralized federal power at the expense of the individual states.
Quite a stretch, if you ask me, but who am I to cross juridical swords with the godfather of constitutional originalism? Irrepressible he may be, but give Scalia credit for coming up with an original idea for cutting the cost of U.S. Senate races: The going rate for buying votes in state legislatures – the way U.S. Senators were sent to Washington before 1913 – is a helluva lot cheaper than campaigning for popular support. Just think how many millions Meg Whitman might have saved.
Advice to Wikileaking U.S. Diplomats Tuesday, Dec 7 2010
History and Politics Earl K. Long, quotations 1:25 pm
“Don’t write anything you can talk, don’t talk anything you can nod, don’t nod anything you can wink.”
— Louisiana Governor Earl K. Long, circa 1955
McCAIN DEFEATS OBAMA! Wednesday, Nov 17 2010
Politics John McCain, Michael Bloomberg, Sarah Palin 5:03 pm
It turns out that Tea Party members are not alone in their depressing view of the direction the country is headed. According to one over-caffeinated Left-wing hysteric — there are a few of those around — Michael Bloomberg will run for president in 2012 and take enough votes away from Barack Obama to elect Sarah Palin president.
I find several glitches in that scenario, not the least of which that we have yet to see a birth certificate proving that Sarah Palin was born on this planet. That aside, I have already dreamed my worst-case Palin narrative, a hallucinated alternative history reversing the result of the 2008 election.
Think of it: President McCain in the Oval Office, mulling whether he can spare troops from the 200,000 boots-on-the-ground in Afghanistan to add to the 50,000 on-the-ground in Yemen, without reducing the number available for the pending invasion of Iran; while one heartbeat away Vice President Palin, just returned from her most recent book tour, preps her family for the first installment of the new Fox reality show, “Mama Grizzly Goes to Washington.”
Rhetoric Americana Wednesday, Nov 17 2010
Politics quotations 5:03 pm
“I am a rube of the rubes. The odor of the barnyard is on me yet. I have greased my hair with goose grease, wiped my proboscis with a gunny-sack towel, drunk coffee out of my saucer, and eaten with my knife. I have said ‘I done it’ when I should have said ‘did it’, and ‘I have saw’ when I should have said ‘I have seen,’ and I expect to go to heaven just the same.”
WHO SAID IT? Choose One of Three:
(a) Alaska’s Joe Miller, circa 2010; (b) Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, circa 2008; (c) Evangelist Billy Sunday, circa 1925.
Answer: (c)
When Is An Issue Not An Issue? Monday, Nov 8 2010
History and Politics Afghanistan, Andrew Bacevich, Henry Kissinger 4:03 pm
Let me show my age by revealing that I grew up in a time when there was no penalty for face-masking in football because there were no face masks; when people rode in vehicles called streetcars to baseball games that were played in daylight; when characters in movies could smoke but not curse; and when the Number One issue in any election held while Americans were fighting and dying overseas was that Americans were fighting and dying overseas.
That said, please tell this relic of the 20th century how the most heated, divisive mid-term election in a generation could take place with candidates venting their feelings over health care, bailouts, taxes, deficits, immigration, but with no question raised over a decade-old war in which young Americans are fighting and dying.
What’s more, fighting and dying with no clear objective and, as the man in charge of the war, General David Petraeus, tells us, no end in sight. This, says Petraeus, is a war our children will inherit, the same view held by that great sage of the Vietnam era, Henry Kissinger, who warns that Americans “must be prepared for a long struggle.”
Read now, as quoted by Andrew J. Bacevich in “The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War,” what another sage observer once said about long struggles: (more…)
Foreign Policy Quote of the Week Monday, Nov 8 2010
Politics Billy Wilder, foreign policy 4:03 pm
“If you give them food it’s spreading democracy, but if you leave the label on it, it’s imperialism.”
— From Billy Wilder’s film “A Foreign Affair”
The Wayward Lemming 