GRADES ARE IN, AND I AM OUT. Blogging will be intermittent until mid January, while I spend some time relaxing and some time writing. But YOU should still keep your finger on the pulse of the world.

MUSLIMS ROUNDED UP IN CA. These are not my words; they're Findlaw's, working from a Reuters report. Read the article here. The NYT carries an A.P. report about Iranians and others who protested against the detentions in Los Angeles today.

Thanks to my grad school friend John (Jack) Gould for calling my attention to the Financial Gazette online (Zimbabwe). Why? Check out the story that follows this lead:

Yuck! Gross is good: professor

CALGARY — A scene in the newest Harry Potter film, in which a young wizard coughs up one big, slimy slug after another, may be disgusting, but it doesn’t necessarily signal a breakdown in Western civilization.

I haven't seen the movie, but now, I just might.

NEW CHIEF JUSTICE SWORN IN: Justice Visheshwar Nath Khare was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court. You can read The Hindu's coverage here and the Times of India's article here. The Hindu's article is more detailed.

Chief Justices on the Indian Supreme Court are not as influential as their U.S. counterparts. They generally serve shorter terms because of a mandatory retirement age of 65 for all S.C. Justices. Indian S.C. Justices are generally picked from state high courts, so they are usually in their sixties to begin with. Khare is 63 and his birthday is in May, so he'll be C.J. for less than two years. In addition, the criterium for elevation to Chief Justice is almost always seniorty, so there is little opportunity for political wrangling over the appointment.

Finally, the caseload for the Indian Supreme Court is staggering; according to Charles Epp's The Rights Revolution (1998), the Court had close to a quarter million cases on its docket in 1990, and it disposed of almost 60,000. By contrast, about 7,000 cases are filed in the U.S. Supreme Court each year, and full hearings are granted to around 100. As Epp explains, the legislature's response to the caseload of the Indian Supreme Court was not greater Court discretion over the docket, but more members on the Court itself. According to the Indian Supreme Court's own website, there are now 23 sitting Justices, and, I believe, three vacant seats. Exerting control over a Court with two dozen members and hundreds of thousands of pending cases is quite a task.

So, good luck, Justice Khare, for the next seventeen months!

If you're shopping for a POLITICAL GEEK this holiday season, you might try to dig up a copy of Anthony King's Running Scared (Free Press, 1997). It's out of print, which is a real shame, but your friends probably haven't read it. I found my copy at Georgetown Used Books in Bethesda. The German immigration decision got me thinking about the fact that this book deserves a wider circulation. I encountered it in graduate school and just used it in my Introduction to Politics course this semester; I couldn't get my students all that excited about Locke or Tocqueville, but they really seemed to like this book -- judging by the exams, of course, which is not a perfectly reliable indicator of interest, to be sure. But the book is an excellent read. Plus, out of print books make really cool gifts: they show initiative, affection, and an eye for quality, IMHO.

The book begins with a comparative discussion of the campaign experiences of three legislators: Sir Alan Haselhurst, a conservative from Saffron Walden in the UK, Brigitte Schulte, from the SPD in Hameln, Germany, and Steny Hoyer, Democrat from Maryland's 5th District. The broad point is that Haselhurst and Schulte don't feel nearly as much electoral pressure as Mr. Hoyer. Haselhurst and Schulte don't have to face primary challenges. They don't have to raise bucketloads of cash for their campaigns (since there are severe restrictions on advertising in both Germany and the UK, and since parties finance the bulk of the campaign). They can position themselves as good party members and do just fine at the polls. Finally, they don't have to face a general election every two years.

King uses this discussion as an introduction to the institutional distortions that arise from our hyperdemocratic sensibilities. He argues that the U.S. has a strong tradition of "agency democracy," meaning a belief that representatives exist to give effect to their constituents' will at every moment, while the rest of the democratic world (perhaps with the exception of Switzerland) has a stronger tradition of "division of labor" democracy," the view that representatives are there to specialize in the task of governing, and the only real effective control over them is to get together and "kick the bums out" every once in a while.

King then describes the policy distortions that arise from the excessive electoral pressures on the U.S. House. A highlight is his discussion of the symbolic politics of the "war on crime."

This book will change your life. Or at least your perspective on politics. For King, the problem with American democracy is not that representatives are somehow out of touch with the public -- a view you can hear repeated almost hourly by pundits from both left and right. Rather, the problem with American democracy is that our legislators are too focused on the public's will. According to King, the cure for American democracy is not more democracy, but less democracy. Some of the proposals that King advances are to lengthen the term of office in the House from 2 to 4 years, the term in the Senate from 4 to 8, and to coordinate them all with the Presidential elections. Lest you dismiss these proposals as parliamentary imperialism: Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union Address from 1966 made similar proposals.

King's Tocquevillian impulse here is clear. Make the holidays special for the political geek in your life by giving him or her a provocative and intelligent book with a comparative perspective. They'll love you for it!

MORE ON THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION DECISION The Frankfurter Rundschau, which tends to lean left, argues that the Court did the political culture a favor with its decision, for similar reasons to the ones I noted in my last post. The article is titled "Recht so!"("THAT'S RIGHT!!"). FR's argument is that lack of accountability is endemic in German political culture nowadays, and the Court was right to make a "no" vote mean "no." The FR seems to be putting a somewhat more critical spin on the decision than I had thought of: if the parties on the right are going to stir up resentment against foreigners, they shouldn't be able to have the Court provide them with cover in the immigration issue. I'm not sure about this, but the implication is that the result in the Bundesrat was not entirely unintended by the CDU. But an article in the Tagesspiegel about Schoenbohm's apparently genuine celebration of the Court's decision ("He Would Have Loved to Shout 'Yoo-hoo'") casts doubt on the more extreme version of the "cover for the right" theory. The FR's broader point stands, however.

The German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) issued its ruling today: the German immigration law is unconstitutional because of Klaus Wowereit's procedure for counting votes in the Bundesrat. For the background, see my blog from Monday.

The New York Times has an article on it here, and you can read the Constitutional Court's press release here, and its opinion here. It looks as if the court adopted a straightforward approach to the intentions of the constitutional rule regarding unanimity in the state delegations in the Bundesrat. The dissenting judges were persuaded by the argument that Schönbohm's answer to Wowereit's request for a clarification amounted to an ambiguous declaration of his position ("You know my position, Mr. President") that should not be read in the context of Schönbohm's earlier rejection of the bill. The dissenters argued that Wowereit's second question started a whole new round of voting, suspended, as it were, in time and place without any contact with the earlier round that showed Brandenburg's partisan split.

Both the Times article and the editorial in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung note that the Court's decision means that parliament must take up the question of immigration anew. The SZ notes that both parties have declared that they will take up the exact same law and try to correct the deficient procedure, which the paper calls "correct". The SZ has no kind words for the Court, however: it accuses the Court of narrowness and a refusal to look at broader arguments that would address the position of the Bundesrat in the German constitutional framework. As far as I understand it, some had argued that the power of the Bundesrat to block legislation should be reexamined by the Court; a Court that undertook this investigation might have concluded that the procedures used by Wowereit were good enough to pass constitutional muster (as informed by a proper sense of the smaller role the Bundesrat should play in legislation). For the SZ, the fact of a powerfully reasoned dissent shows how easily the decision could have gone the other way.

I'd go with the majority here. The SZ seems to have hoped that the Court could save parliament from the difficulties of re-visiting this contentious issue. The NYT article gives a glimpse of the depth of the political disagreements that reign in German immigration policy. But looking to the Court for a way out of difficult political problems is not a good habit for legislators. German legislators already have a great deal of cover without an overhanging Court. Parties are strong in Germany, the electorate tends to identify with parties, elections are less frequent than in the U.S., and Germans still have a strong tradition of "division of labor" democracy, meaning that German voters are relatively content to let politicians struggle with difficult issues without the kind of intense, day-to-day popular pressure you see in the U.S.. Germans should treasure the legislative leadership skills that such a regime engenders.

If you're reading about McDonald's poor performance this year, don't forget to step into the McSpotlight.

McXhaustion. (Say it five times fast, you'll see what I'm getting at.)

Check out today's Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst biweekly briefing. Hooman Peimani discusses the growing economic and political alliance between Iran and the Ukraine. Nuclear reactors and civilian aircraft figure prominently in the story. Denis Trifonov discusses the latest Russian effort in Chechnya and argues that Russia's responses to the hostage taking in Moscow is likely to drag them even deeper into an Afghanistan-type unwinnable-occupation scenario. Stephen Blank discusses the convergence of Chinese, Russian, and U.S. military forces fighting terrorism in Kyrgyzstan. And Michael Denison updates readers on the Trans-Afghan gas pipeline.

Times of India journalist SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN has a stinging editorial in today's paper concerning the ability of Indian political parties to manipulate communal violence for partisan purposes without bringing the perpetrators to justice. Varadarajan draws parallels between the BJP in Gujarat and the Congress Party in 1984 after a masscre of Sikhs in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Two paragraphs are worth quoting in full:

It is a bitter lesson but the victims of Gujarat are realising today what the victims of 1984 realised some years ago: In India, if you are a victim of mass violence, votes will be sought in your name and any number of inquiry commissions set up. But justice will never be done and you will never be compensated or rehabilitated. Just ask the Kashmiri Pandit refugees still living in squalid camps in Jammu 12 years after fleeing their homes.

Today, BJP supporters will be jubilant at Mr Modi's victory and Congress supporters despondent. But from the point of view of the victims, the struggle for justice and rehabilitation was always an uphill one anyway and that struggle needs the widest possible support. We need to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a society where the police can turn against the victims of violence, and killers capable of the most heinous crimes are free to roam the streets.

Praveen Togadia is a scary, scary man.

Norbert Seitz has an excellent essay in Die Zeit that seeks to explain the current political use of comparisons to the Nazis. He breaks the history of the use of these comparisons into three phases: (1) the cold war, in which Nazi-comparisons served the purpose of vilifying communism and also demonstrating West German distance from the Nazi regime, (2) the late 1960s, in which the comparisons were used primarily on the left to attack bourgeois repressions (historical, economic, cultural, and otherwise), and (3) the post-Historikerstreitera, after 1986.

The Historikerstreit was a public battle in the pages of newspaper editorials over the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the proper moral and historical approaches that Germans should have toward it. The World Jewish Congress has a good overview of the issues involved in the Historikerstreit, in English, here. A German teacher of mine at Davidson College, Scott Denham, has a helpful short bibliography on line for a course he developed, here.

According to Seitz, after the Historikerstreit seemed to establish that the Holocaust was a unique event, some critics hoped that comparisons with the Nazis would fall out of fashion. But Seitz argues that two things have mitigated against such a development: the "scandalization" of politics and the de-historicization of the Holocaust itself. The rhetoric and practice of scandal is such that comparisons with the Nazis are used by politicians seeking media attention and by people who wish to tarnish the reputations of politicians (as, he implies, the Schwaebisches Tagblatt did when it repeated Herta Dauebler-Gmelin's off the cuff remarks at a party gathering last spring. See my earlier blog on this topic for links). Seitz also calls attention to the proliferating comparisons between Hitler and other figures in the 1990s, such as Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, and bin Laden. In this context, Hitler is used as an ahistorical metaphor for evil in an attempt to legitimate current political battles.

Setiz's essay is an interesting example of the theoretically rich discussion that Germans have had over the relationship between national self-understanding, memory, and politics. It could be that there is a similarly rich discussion going on in the U.S. concerning our relationship to chattle slavery and racial segregation, but so far I haven't really been able to find it, even though one might expect to see hints of it in the wake of Trent Lott's recent troubles. The only thing that the furor over Lott's comments has in common with the furor over Roland Koch's comments is that both occur within the politics of scandal mode. So far I haven't seen anyone say anything particularly interesting about those politics with respect to American national memory.

I want to be like Klaus Wowereit. He's a Social Democrat. He's super cool: artsy black-and-white photo before Berlin's Rotes Rathaus ("Red Town Hall"), wistful yet confident gaze (toward Alexanderplatz?). Look at all those smiling people, happy to be talking to the MAN himself. And his website is available in German, English and Turkish. Cool.

Wowereit is also a cool operator, and his actions in the Bundesrat, the upper house of Germany's parliament, are at the heart of a constitutional controversy that will be before the German Constitutional Court this week. The Tagesspiegel (Berlin) has a story on the case today. You can also read a good account of the story in an April edition of "Migration News" from UC-Davis, here. The German Embassy's account of the controversy is available here.

Back in March, the Bundesrat was voting on a controversial new immigration law. The votes were split on party lines: the SPD liked the law, which they wrote, because it loosened some restraints on immigrants seeking permanent residency (especially university-educated immigrants), because it relaxed the asylum procedure, and, in general, because the SPD likes to be tolerant of immigrants. The opposition CDU/CSU argued that the new rules would increase unemployment among Germans and lead to higher costs for welfare programs. The bill passed the lower house on March 1 and went to the upper house on March 22. Near the end of the tally, the votes were split. It was clear that the success of the bill depended on the vote from the last delegation, from the German state of Brandenburg. But Brandenburg's government was at that time a "big coaltion" of both the SPD and the CDU, so their delegation consisted of a member from each party. Seemed like a deadlock.

The Bundesrat is like the U.S. Senate, but composed of governors and ministers from each province. According to the German Constitution (Article 51), delegations from each state must cast a unanimous vote. On May 22, however, the delegation from Brandenburg was split along party lines. Klaus Wowereit was presiding as President of the Bundesrat. There was a voice vote. Governor Manfred Stolpe (SPD) voted "yes," while State Interior Minister Jörg Schönbohm (CDU) voted "no." Wowereit asked Stolpe to speak for the state of Brandenburg; as governor of the state, he was technically the higher-ranking official within the state government, although the Constitution does not rank members of the delegation. Stolpe replied again, "yes." Schönbohm objected: "You know my position (Auffassung), Mr. President."

Wowereit declared that Brandenburg had voted "yes" and that the measure had passed. Cries of disbelief arose from the CDU/CSU. Roland Koch (yes, that Roland Koch) from Hessen accused Wowereit of being ignorant of the Constitution. The conservatives then left the room in protest.

Germany's President Johannes Rau signed the bill in June, declaring that the constitutional objections raised by the conservatives were not serious. In turn, the conservatives asked the Constitutional Court to declare the law invalid.

I admit my complete astonishment at this case. The Tagesspiegel seems to believe that the Court will declare the law unconstitutional because of the procedure used by Wowereit. His actions seem to have been in plain violation of the (rather sparse) procedures outlined for voting in the Bundesrat. Article 51 clearly mandates unanimity. One might claim that there was really no "division" since Stolpe spoke for the delegation (can you say, "payroll tax isn't a 'tax'"?). But that would seem to be absurd. Hmmm.

Wowereit wants looser immigration rules. One can imagine that the new law would benefit the thousands of ethnic Turks who live in Berlin, which has the world's largest community of Turks outside of Turkey. Was Wowereit positioning himself as a friend of immigration, even at the cost of creating a constitutional controversy? Maybe. This is what hardball, entrepreneurial politics looks like in a state with a strong constitutional court.

STILL STUNNED. The Payroll Tax is not a tax. Here is the quote from the Washington Post article that still has me gap-jawed with disbelief.:

Answering critics who say the working poor do face high taxes because they pay high Social Security payroll taxes, outgoing White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey told the AEI tax forum that the 12.4 percent Social Security levy should not be considered when tax burdens are calculated. Lindsey said the Social Security tax is ultimately returned to the taxpayer as a benefit.

Lindsey compared the Social Security tax to a deposit in a neighborhood bank's Christmas Club. In such clubs, periodic deposits are returned in a lump sum during the holiday season, and Lindsey said no one would consider such deposits a tax.

Let me just note that, as someone who occasionally explains contemporary political theory to students, I understand the difference between professional understanding of words and their everyday understanding. When I use the word "liberal" or "republican" in my lectures, I always need to explain that "liberal" (i.e., John Locke) does not mean "liberal" (i.e. Barney Frank), and that "republican" (i.e., Ben Barber) does not mean "Republican" (i.e., Trent Lott). But I would never dream of insisting that Barney Frank isn't a liberal, because that would be really stupid. Language doesn't work that way.

Unless, of course, you're Lawrence Lindsey, for whom the payroll tax is not a "tax," but more akin to a "Christmas Club deposit."

Two things to note here:

1) Imagine an 87.6% income tax rate, and imagine that you're only paying payroll and the income tax. Your take-home pay would be zero. It would be cold comfort for someone to tell you, "well, you're not really taxed at 100%, since the payroll tax isn't really a tax." Give me a break.

2) Why a Christmas Club deposit? I think you can see the idea here: payroll taxes result in future benefits. The rest of the money we pay in taxes apparently disappears into a hole and doesn't provide any benefits whatsoever. The implications here are stunningly ridiculous, but they certainly serve an anti-tax agenda. Plus, the association of Social Security support with "Christmas" is really stupid. I'd like to see Mr. Lindsey write that on the checks my grandmother used to get: here's your Christmas Club check, Mrs. Wonson. How condescending.

Here's a hint to anyone who tries to appropriate Lindsey's line of thinking: you're a fool. Words don't mean whatever you want them to mean. Attempts to advance an ideological program under cover of the redefinition of words are creepy. (We need a new phrase for this. How about, GOPspeak?) And, you need to get out more.

I should have titled the last post: FROM 'REVENUE ENHANCEMENTS' TO 'CHRISTMAS CLUB DEPOSITS,' OR, HOW TO AVOID A CERTAIN THREE-LETTER WORD.

BY THE WAY: the big chunk that comes out of your paycheck every month and goes to fund Social Security is not a tax, according to White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsay. The Washington Post has an excellent (and frightening) article about how this argument fits into a potential Republican plan to soak the poor and middle class, who are paying too little in taxes (apparently). Predictably, according to the Reps, the rich are paying too much in taxes.

I wish I was overstating the case here. Let me drop my admittedly only semi-objective stance and say: WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS THE G.O.P. DOING? It certainly makes sense to be concerned about tax policy and "fiscal discipline." But to attempt to argue that the payroll tax is not a "tax" seems hopelessly abstract, and not likely to increase the Reps' standing among voters, as in: "Not a tax?? What friggin' Orwellian planet are you from? Who are these people?? Get them out of here!!!"

Thanks to Slate's Today's Papers for picking up this one.

Also, for your holiday wish list, you might consider the Talking Bush Doll (courtesy of Politics in the Zeros).

Farzaneh Milani has an excellent editorial in today's Washington Post noting the rise of fashion-conscious men in Iran, and linking this change to the broader trend of increased dissent in contemporary Iran.

BTW, if you like the Milani article, you might consider Robin Wright's The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran (New York: Knopf, 2000), for your holiday reading list. Wright describes in great detail many of the social and political changes that have taken place since the Iranian Revolution, including a loosening of restraints on women, fluctuating levels of control over intellectuals and cultural production, and increasing levels of tolerance for minority religions. Wright's discussion of mandatory birth control education classes might also surprise you. Her basic thesis is that a relatively tolerant pragmatism is winning in a fight against conservative clerical rule. Foreign Affairs has a review here.

NOT SO GOOD, I'd say. Looks like the exit poll results in Gujarat were wrong because they underestimated the strength of Modi and the BJP. Read the New York Times piece here, and read the Times of India piece here. The ToI's Manoj Joshi tries to read the results in as Congress-friendly a way as possible. According to Joshi, it's possible that the results will strengthen the hand of the hindutva radicals; ultimately, Congress might benefit from overreaching on their part. The lead editorial in the ToI notes that the electoral success of the BJP was localized: in central Gujarat, i.e., in areas hard-hit by violence, voters turned their backs on the Congress and voted for the BJP, while voters in the south and the north increased their support for Congress. Plus, Congress made the mistake of downplaying the secularism angle, even as their english-language campaign materials sought to highlight the link between Modi and communal violence. For links on the English-language materials claim, see my earlier blog on this subject.

One critical question will be whether or not Modi's star rises in the national BJP, and whether, with increased pressure from the right, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (also BJP) will be able to continue charting a moderate course. India's political, social, linguistic, and geographical fragmentation has often been considered an important condition in guaranteeing an impressive measure of political tolerance -- if not in all areas, at least in many and seen in the aggregate. Congress needs to develop an explicit emphasis on that tolerance as a national-level platform for the 2004 national elections. Again, keep your fingers crossed for Congress in the next few years.

(SOMEWHAT) MINOR QUIBBLE: While looking over Jonah Golberg's September comments on Herta Däubler-Gmelin's criticisms of Bush (for Friday's blog), I noticed one point that I will now turn, gleefully, into a plea for more American attention to education in foreign languages. The background for my comment is the continuing decline in American job listings for university positions in language and literature (a phenomenon noticed by the New York Times on Saturday).

Here's the relevant quote from Goldberg's piece:

We also learned this week that Schröder's justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin (try not spit when you say it), had said all sorts of nasty things about America and George Bush — who, she thinks, should be in jail. According to Daeubler-Gmelin, Bush is using the war to distract from his domestic problems. "That's a popular method," she noted. "Even Hitler did that."

Catch that "even" in "even Hitler did that"? What the hell does that mean? Is she suggesting Hitler was somehow more disciplined than Bush when it comes to indulging the base instincts of the populace? Imagine saying that attacking Jews is a popular tactic — "even Hitler did it."

Ignore Goldberg's snide comment on the supposed production of saliva that accompanies attempts to speak German. And ignore the part about "jail" (which had to do with changes in insider-trading laws). Sounds like Goldberg's got a point, no? What, indeed, does it mean to say that "even Hitler did that"? Is it possible that Herta Däubler-Gmelin is saying something even worse than we thought, namely, that Bush is worse than Hitler with respect to strategic use of demagoguery?

Actually, no. Here is the quote from the original newspaper article in the Schwaebisches Tagblatt:

“Bush will von seinen innenpolitischen Schwierigkeiten ablenken. Das ist eine beliebte Methode. Das hat auch Hitler schon gemacht.”[Emphasis added.]

My rough translation: "Bush wants to divert attention from domestic difficulties. That's a much-loved method. Even Hitler did that."

The problem with Goldberg's interpretation of the word "even" is that it ignores a translation difficulty with respect to a basic word combination in German. The phrase "auch schon" is rendered as "even" in English, but the two words that make up the phrase, rendered separately, are "also" and "already." The phrase "auch schon" in German weighs heavily in the temporal direction. You could also translate the phrase as meaning, "Hitler did that, too," or "Hitler did that also, already." In his search for reasons to nail Germans for being morally bankrupt, Goldberg is reading an extra meaning into a translation that doesn't quite support the interpretation.

To be fair, it's not really Goldberg's fault. He probably never took German in school, or if he did, he's forgotten it already. Even I've forgotten much of my French -- or, I've forgotten much of my French also, already.