For a good substantive comment on the background to the Estrada filibuster, go to the post by the mysterious "Phillipe de Croy" at The Volokh Conspiracy.

De Croy is good at describing the meaning of the 2000 election and Bush v. Gore for the current controversies: Democrats see the election controversy as putting in doubt Bush's mandate to appoint conservative judges to the federal judiciary. Plus, according to de Croy's readings of the Demcratic view here, the Supreme Court brought this controversy on itself by getting involved in the election dispute to begin with. Republicans, on the other hand, have largely forgotten about the election controversy.

Put this partisan difference together with Jack Balkin's recent reading of Bush's hard-nosed approach to political strategy, and you have a good account of the kind of fight we're going to get over judicial nominations.

I think I disagree with de Croy on two points, however. First, I think that the nomination battles run deeper than he/she/it seems to believe; given the current positions of the political parties with respect to highly charged issues such as race, abortion, and so on, these nominations would be politicized under any circumstances. The 2000 election exacerbated already existing tensions. Perhaps de Croy wouldn't disagree here, of course; perhaps the focus of his/her/its post is on the specific impact of BvG.

De Croy also counsels readers to discount the immediate reasons that Democrats have given for opposing the nomination: Estrada's refusal to produce memos from his days at the Solicitor General's office. De Croy might be right to say that Democrats never expected to get the memos, but Senators are within their rights and responsibilities when they ask for evidence on matters of legal interpretation from a nominee. It seems to me that Democratic fears of a Republican "stealth" candidate are not unfounded. It also should be noted that Estrada's relative lack of an immediately accessible paper trail no doubt increased his standing in administration working groups on judicial nominations.

RNC TRIES TO SCARE PEOPLE INTO ACCEPTING ADMINISTRATION'S JUDICIAL NOMINEES. I don't think there is any other way to describe the mass e-mail from the RNC that I got on Friday, and that prompted me to fire off suppportive e-mails to both New York Senators (see below for one) and two cranky e-mails to the RNC itself. For recent coverage of the issue [of Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada and the threatened Democratic filibuster, that is], see this article in The Hill.

Here's the beginning of the original mass e-mail from the RNC:

A pattern is forming. President Bush puts forward a positive agenda to move our nation forward. Democrat presidential candidates oppose it because of politics. So it is no surprise that Senator Joe Lieberman has joined liberal democrats in filibustering President Bush’s nomination of the first Hispanic to possibly sit on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals - viewed by many as the second highest court in the U.S. Senate Democrat's continue to obstruct the judicial nomination process, a move that has shocked legal scholars and even more moderate members of the Democrat party.

Democrat Senator John Breaux responded by saying, "The country is at orange alert. People are stockpiling water and duct tape. Who knows if we're going to war in two weeks, and we're going to shut down everything to filibuster a person the American Bar Association has unanimously said is well qualified?"

With our courts in crisis and serious challenges facing our nation, we cannot afford such reckless and shameful partisan politics.. Contact Senator Joe Lieberman today and tell him to stop pandering to liberal interest groups and end this filibuster now.

The last sentence of the paragraph is hyperlinked and eventually sends you to a page where you can, in one click, mail or e-mail a pre-written letter to Senator Lieberman. I must have gotten on the RNC's mailing list when I was in Connecticut; I imagine that folks on their list will get custom e-mails for their own state. This letter reads as follows:

I am outraged that some in the Senate are playing politics with the nomination of Miguel Estrada, a highly qualified nominee for the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. Estrada has earned the support of a bipartisan majority of your colleagues, and his experience and integrity have been praised by leading Democrats. However, Senator Tom Daschle is now proposing to throw out the Senate’s tradition of never filibustering a judicial nominee, and block a vote on Estrada no matter what the cost. That is wrong.

Senator Lieberman, I hope you remember that the concerns of your consituents are more important than 2004 presidential politics. I ask you to oppose this reckless and outrageous filibuster against a good man who is uniquely qualified to serve by virtue of his superb credentials and extensive legal experience. Miguel Estrada deserves an up or down vote. At this critical time for our nation, we cannot afford this shameful and petty display of partisan politics.

Now, I understand that everyone is going to play hardball here. They should. Both Republicans and Democrats disagree on critical issues related to the role of judges and the proper direction for law on crime, abortion, race, property, and, in many cases, public support for religion. In addition, President Bush has been pretty consistent at seeing the issue of judicial confirmations through the eyes of religiously-motivated members of his governing coalition. So, in a sense, I don't begrudge the Republicans the fact that they are going for gold.

I agree with Michael Kinsley's editorial in the Washington Post this week, however: Estrada has sought to avoid giving his views on controversial matters, and the Senate is right to raise a fuss about this. In addition, Kinsley is right to point out that judicial confirmation battles "bring out the hypocrite in politicians of both parties."

The main problem I have with the RNC's strategy is that it brings the issue of terrorism into play in a particularly shocking fashion. In attempting to spin the issue of Democratic threats of a filibuster as an act of irresponsibility "at this critical time for our nation," the RNC is signalling their willingness to use public fears of terrorism for their own narrowly partisan goals. At a time in which many of my friends are nervously worrying whether or not they should stock up on duct tape, the last thing they should be thinking about is whether or not their fears are being used for narrow -- not public-good seeking -- ends.

For good measure, here is an e-mail I sent to the RNC:

From "Brett Marston"
Subject your e-mails
Date Fri, February 14, 2003 8:39 am
To info@rnc.org

----------------------------------------------------------

Generally I appreciate receiving your mass e-mails, but the latest one you sent me regarding the Estrada nomination has really highlighted the incredible dangers that your strategies can create. In explicitly linking the entirely understandable Democratic desire to filibuster a judicial nominee (these are, as Republicans are not loath to point out when "liberal" judges are on the docket, lifetime appointments after all, and the DC is a feeder court for the Supreme Court as well) to the dangers this country is facing with respect to terrorism, you expose yourself to the worst kind of criticism: true, pointblank, angry criticism concerning your willingness to exploit fears of terrorism for partisan ends. You should be ashamed of yourself. When Gerhard Schroeder uses this same tactic in Germany, Republicans in particular level the most insulting charges. As far as I'm concerned, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If the Republicans want to be a responsible, trustworthy party, you all should start acting like it.

Sincerely,

Brett Marston

Needless to say, I haven't heard back from them.

If their lack of a financial commitment to Afghanistan is any indication (Oxblog's David Adesnik proclaims "Bush Screws Afghanistan" and links to some commentary), the administration's sweet-smelling rhetoric about democracy-building is setting off horse-puckey detection warnings all over the world. Weapons of mass disinformation, even? Not to put too fine a point on it, of course.

Let me go out on a limb here and predict a revival of the division-of-labor argument, often detected under the "comparative advantage" label as well, the most simple form of which will be: the U.S. should fight the wars (when and where we want) and the rest of the world can engage in "humanitarian" causes. Where democracy promotion will fit in this agenda is clear: it's something for the other folks to do.

Will Iraq be any different?

FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

Dear Senator Clinton:

Thank you for opposing the nomination of Estrada for the DC Court of Appeals. I am outraged that the Republicans (and some Democrats, if the reports are right) are decrying the Democratic opposition and its institutional manifestation in a filibuster as somehow in conflict with other important national policy goals, i.e., security. This is a time in which we need to trust the administration NOT to be playing politics with security matters, but, unfortunately, the RNC does not see things that way. What a shame.

The Senate's traditional role of investigating nominees for lifetime appointments on the federal bench should be secured against attempts by the executive branch to bully Senators into compliance with a controversial and divisive judicial agenda.

Sincerely,

Brett Marston

Quote of the day:

"There are other reasons why something should be classed as a religion, rather than a group of people getting together on the Internet to arrange it."

Read the Times Online article on the failure of the campaign to get "Jedi" recognized as a religion in the UK for census purposes, here.

If I were cranky today, I'd quote from Scalia's dissent in Lee v. Weisman.

Unbelievable last night. Unbelievable. Old man winter is a big fat bully.

TRANSLATION PROBLEMS?: let's see if the American public and press bother to pick up on the following sentences in Schroeder's speech, sentences that I render below, with comments afterwards:

"Our population and people throughout the world have a right to know the following: we will never make casual ["leicht"] decisions about the use of military force and sending troops." In other words, we may, in fact, use military force and send troops, but we will consider this to be a grave step. Later on in the speech, Schroeder notes that the decision to use force is legitimate only as a last step and when taken by the legitimate authority (here, the UN). But unless you really believe that these restrictive conditions nullify Schroeder's commitment to the use of force in appropriate circumstances, it's a little unfair to accuse Germans of being entirely unwilling to employ force.

"Since 1998, we have increased tenfold the German contribution to peacekeeping efforts: from 200 million to 2 billion euros per year. After the U.S., Germany has made the second largest contributions in terms of troops in international efforts to create and secure peace. Since 1998, more than 100,000 German soldiers have risked their lives and health in such enterprises." Americans are likely to think that somehow the total U.S. military strength should be relevant here, and they may be right. But it's also worth noting that popular U.S. rhetoric about Germans shirking their international duties is gravely overstated. Do you think, if we had 10% unemployment, that a $2 billion+ commitment to foreign affairs could be sustained in Congress?

"Germans and Americans are connected by the gratitude that we feel [toward the U.S.] for freeing us from the Nazi dictatorship and [for giving us] a chance for a democratic reconstruction." I've heard a lot about how "ungrateful" the Germans are being these days. See, for example, Senator John Kyl's contribution to the debate here. This doesn't sound like an ungrateful sentence to me.

My main point here is not that we should agree with Schroeder in all points. I'm just curious how many folks in the U.S. a) will bother to study the speech (repeat after me: Americans should learn foreign languages), or b) will bother to note the potentially deflating moments in the speech itself.

Or perhaps I'm just reacting to my recent attempts to listen to the terminally stupid Laura Ingraham show on AM radio. More on all of this as the week progresses, I'm sure.

Schroeder's speech is available as a PDF file here.

For my recent discussion of the sorry state of the U.S. State Department budget and its potential impact on democracy promotion, go here. Compare the figures there with the second quote, above.

UPDATE: NPR reporter Emily Harris filed a story on Thursday afternoon that mentioned the sentence on German gratefulness, but, as far as I can tell, she's the only American journalist to have done so. A story in the Washington Post doesn't mention any of the particular sentences I noted above, but my criterium is admittedly severe: the story does quote some related lines about "common aims." But what sounds vanilla and lame in the WaPo story sounds pretty forceful in the original speech, I'd say.

SPARKS FLY IN BUNDESTAG

Early accounts of the parliamentary debate in Germany on the disarmament of Iraq stress a few things:

1) Schroeder and Fischer hold to the line that disarmament is possible "without war." Schroeder and Fischer are on the same page here. Schroeder argued that the U.S. has presented no convincing evidence linking the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon and Iraq; Bush is too quick to reach for war as a foreign policy instrument; the inspections regime should continue, with appropriate strengthening. Inspections will suffice for disarmament. No mention of an invasion of "blue-helmeted" U.N. peacekeepers; rather, Schroeder's tack seems to be to support the French position on inspectors.

2) Schroeder and Fischer accuse the opposition CDU/CSU of being part of the U.S.'s "coalition of the willing," i.e., that they are warmongers.

3) Angelika Merkel (CDU) and Edmund Stoiber (CSU) accuse the ruling SPD/Greens of pursuing a foreign policy of "amatures," of carrying a foreign policy line for electoral reasons, of making war with Iraq "more likely" (through "releasing pressure" on Saddam) and of encouraging both irrational fears of war as well as anti-American sentiment. Merkel said that Schroeder and Fischer were "slandering" the CDU by calling them warmongers.

4) Schroeder and Fischer are still more in touch with German public opinion on the issue of war. They're continuing their opposition knowing that their stance here was their major winning issue in the last elections.

5) The FDP (also known as the 'liberals,' in a classical liberal sense), the fifth major party in Germany but always struggling to stay alive electorally, usually by aligning themselves with the CDU/CSU, didn't pull any punches, either. Their parliamentary leader, Guido Westerwelle, is quoted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine (need registration) as saying, "this government has ruined Germany economically, and now it is working on isolating Germany internationally. The best thing for the country would be new elections, and soon."

The BBC has good english language coverage of the speeches here. For German coverage, go to the Tagesspiegel's article here, the Tagesschau's article here, and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung's article here. The Sueddeutsche also has a link to Schroeder's remarks in full.

GLOBALIZATION AND THE FURNITURE BUSINESS. Hop on over to the Jamaican Observer for a little break from war-thoughts and some reflections on commerce, local industries, economies of scale, the role of government, and consumer choice. Written by the director of the Jamaica Wood Products & Furniture Association.

STROBE TALBOTT on India, the U.S., Pakistan, Iraq, terrorism, war, and trade. Check out his interview at the online edition of the Indian Express.

Josh Marshall's comments today on the Bush administration's approach to NATO are smart. I suppose it remains to be seen if, and how, NATO will be weakened by the current disputes over Turkey and Iraq. In much of what the administration is doing in the international arena, I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt in at least one respect: it's o.k. to try to drive a hard bargain -- as long as you don't back yourself into too tight of a corner. What I'm worried about is the administration's courting of unilateralist sentiment on the home front. Democracy promotion, if it's going to happen, will require allies.

Check out the SUNY Oswego webcam today. If you're using IE, go here, Netscape Navigator, go here. It's insane out there. Looks like classes are still on, though, even with, and I quote from the local NPR station, WRVO, "zero visibility" in some areas.

MERKEL VS. SCHROEDER: Angelika Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrats, the main German opposition party, is quoted today as saying: "It's my impression that the chancellor is slowly developing into a danger for Germany and [our] entire historical inheritance." As quoted in an article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the sentence reads, in German, "Ich habe den Eindruck, dass der Bundeskanzler sich langsam zu einer Gefahr für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und das gesamte historische Erbe entwickelt.“ The Sueddeutsche gives disputes over Iraq as a context for the quote.

Looks like Merkel is underlining the CDU's insistence that Schroeder is not an attractive coalition partner. I suppose there's still hope: a slow development can be interrupted. Probably a better way of translating the verb she's using would be to say, "the chancellor is slowly turning into a danger," etc.

Will the Bush administration win the peace in a postwar Iraq? Paul Krugman says there is reason to think they won't.

Josh Chafetz over at OxBlog kindly asked me what I thought of the trouble brewing between Joschka Fischer and Gerhard Schroeder, as described in the Times (UK) article here. Josh notes that Schroeder seems to have out-doved Fischer on Iraq. What gives?

The Times rather dramatically speaks of the impending "collapse" of the coalition, but I think they're laying it on too thick. Apparently there's a coalition meeting tonight between SPD and the Greens, perhaps the topic of the relationship between Schroeder and Fischer is on the table, and apparently the SPD has been making steps to cooperate with the CDU/CSU, as this Tagesschau article notes. But I can't imagine that the apparent dispute between Schroeder and Fischer will cause a formal rupture in the coalition. I could be wrong, but the account just doesn't make sense to me, for a few reasons.

First of all, the SPD is already nailed to the wall by its low standing in the public, evidenced by abysmal opinion poll ratings and recent electoral defeats in regional elections. (The Sunday Herald has a good article discussing these developments here.) If the SPD were to split with the Greens, they'd have to bank on either a "grand coalition" with the CDU or a change of heart on the part of the voters. The smart thing for the CDU/CSU to do, it seems to me, is to let Schroeder flounder, not join with the SPD. Plus, the SPD/Greens and the CDU are on opposite sides in the Iraq issue, as you can see in a Tagesspiegel article here: the parliamentary leader of the CDU is on record saying that Schroeder has placed the German government in a "catastrophic situation without precedent." These are the Tagesspiegel's words, but it's still a pretty strong condemnation.

Secondly, all accounts I've read minimize the difference between Schroeder and Fischer on the substance of Iraq policy. Both seem to be firmly against war and firmly against the Bush administration's plans. Robert Leicht asked in Die Zeit recently whether the German government even has an Iraq policy, or just a "no" for the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and I think that that question goes for both Schroeder and Fischer. Fischer visits the pope, Fischer assures the party faithful, and so on.

Finally, while there do indeed seem to be some differences between Fischer and Schroeder, they haven't acknowledged these differences in public. In an editorial that raises the question of whether or not Fischer is going to step down from his post, the Berliner Morgenpost leans in the direction of saying that he won't. The editorial ends with descriptions of Fischer's "crystal clear" denials of any serious conflict between Schroeder and himself. In addition, the Morgenpost rightly questions the source of at least some of the accounts of angry confrontations between the two: the stories come from either Die Bildzeitung, a high circulation tabloid in the best European tradition (well endowed, topless Frauen and all), or from Der Spiegel, which cites the Bildzeitung for an account of the juiciest incident.

So, add all that up and I'm not quite sure what you get, but it doesn't seem like there's a substantive split between Fischer and Schroeder, although Fischer surely has some reason to complain about Schroeder's tactical moves recently, as the Times article points out.

The Paul Berman TNR article on Fischer that Josh cites, by the way, is brilliant--and all of a sudden, there went a big chunk of my afternoon! But I don't think that the coalition problems are an indication that Fischer is continuing the transformation that Berman describes, left to green to pro-NATO involvement in Yugoslavia, to the apparently logical next step, which we might describe as the move toward Christopher Hitchens. . .I imagine that Josh and David will be disappointed here! Truth be told, I don't think that the German government is doing all that well with respect to Iraq, either, although I'm glad that someone is at least attempting to float an alternate plan. We'll see if the folks in Berlin and Paris are really serious about this, though. The jury is definitely still out.

HOPEFULNESS at taz: Germany's leftist die tageszeitung greets the Berlin-Paris peacekeeping invasion plan as a possibility to save the authority of the U.N., to counter the authority of the U.S., and to prevent the "clear" results that would follow from a war, namely, "chaos" in the region and an influx of new sympathizers for islamist radicalism. taz adds a bit of realism as well: Schroeder will be able to save himself with the plan at any rate: if the plan fails either in the U.N. or, later, in Iraq, he can more easily frame his seemingly necessary move away from a bare "no" to U.S. policy.

AMBIVALENCE at Le Monde toward the Paris-Berlin proposal for a U.N. peacekeeping invasion of Iraq. Today's editorial seems to evaluate the plan as a tactical move but not much more.

Go OxBlog!!! Sometimes you're wrong (IMHO), but you always rock.

IT'S NOT A PLAN, REALLY, IT'S JUST "COMMON IDEAS" (and that last part is a quote): Berlin's Tagesspiegel notes that Schroeder has backed away somewhat from the French-German plans for a U.N. peace-keeping troop "invasion" of Iraq, codename "Mirage," discussed in a Spiegel article on Friday (and in my blog that evening). I suppose we'll have to wait until Schroeder's speech in Parliament on Thursday to find out what's really going on.

PRI"S EFFORTS AT "BRANDING": In an critical article in el Norte today, you can read about PRI's attempts to position itself as the party of "experience in governing." PRI is also planning to attack President Vicente Fox by claiming that he hasn't produced the changes that he promised.

The article notes that PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for most of the twentieth century and against whom Fox was campaigning for change, is opening itself up to charges of cynicism. Check out PRI's official website here, though. They've at least got some cool design concepts. I like the spinning party button. Fox's website (here) is pretty slick, too.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Whatever your tasks, arm your soul with Chris Potter.

DEMOCRACY-PROMOTING ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET? As you'll remember, I've argued that the administration's professed goal of bringing democracy to a post-war Iraq should be met with skepticism. In the mail on Friday I got the latest volume of PS: Political Science and Politics, the American Political Science Association's hip publication (as opposed to the American Political Science Review, its boring but professional publication). An article by Steven Hook (Kent State) provides more reason to doubt the administration's commitments here: low levels of funding at the state department.

Hook notes the decline in federal outlays spent on international affairs since 1964, from 4% of total spending in 1964 to less than 1% now (the high was 1947, with almost 17% of all federal outlays going to foreign affairs), as well as the long, slow decline in foreign assistance as a percentage of GDP (spikes in the immediate postwar period, with a high of over 3%, but now down to less than 0.25%). The president's budget does ask for increases in these areas, as Colin Powell notes in his Senate testimony here. But at the same time, the President proclaimed in his SOTU that federal spending needs to be constrained. The benchmark? Growth of median household income. The silly populist appeal of this argument aside, what this rhetoric means is that the President has already encouraged the budget hounds to snip away at his proposals.

As Hook notes, foreign aid is always vulnerable in Congress. Hook recalls Senator Jesse Helms's description of the foreign aid budget as a "rat hole." Does anyone really think that Bush is going to expend political capital in the attempt to blaze a new trail here? Signs from the SOTU rhetoric, at least, are not encouraging. I also doubt that the democracy-promoting wing of the Republican party will be strong enough for the task.

In his contribution to Die Zeit's series of answers to the question, "Should the U.S.wage a preventive war against Iraq?," Hebrew University Philosophy Professor Avishai Margalit agrees with some of the Bush administration's critics that there is no reason to assume that Saddam Hussein would give WMD's to al-Qaeda, since the radical Islamists see Hussein's secular government as an enemy as well. There is reason to be skeptical of this argument: wars often make strange bedfellows.

But Margalit's strongest point lies elsewhere. Terrorism aims at causing an "overreaction from its victims." These victims -- in this case, us -- will then lash out and create more suffering, a result that the terrorists can then use in their attempts to recruit new followers. The aims of al-Qaeda, which Margolit calls a "trotskyist offering of a permanent and universal islamic revolution," meet up with poverty, youth, and failed states in the islamic world to heighten the dangers attendant on U.S. overreacting. Add the 150,000 Iraqi deaths in the last war, a figure more likely to be found in foreign media coverage of the issue than in U.S. coverage, and you've got a good reason to doubt the wisdom of an attack, or at least an attack in which the U.S. plays the central role, and in which the U.S. seems to be acting in a hasty fashion.

I discussed Mark Lilla's essay in Die Zeit's series on Friday, see here, and you can read the series as a whole here. Once I've figured out what Richard Rorty is saying, I'll tell you what I think about his essay, too.

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