Maybe you've seen this story. If not, and if you need more proof that the DISNEY CORPORATION is run by satan and his minions, read this story about the latest development in what I'll call the Winnie the Pooh Disney Document Shredding Case. [Not too imaginative, I know. I plead late afternoon, low caffeine brain fatigue.] The link is to a story on the San Jose Mercury News. An earlier story on Findlaw shows that this has been a nasty litigation battle on all fronts.

Eyeore wouldn't be surprised. He would say, in his sad, slow voice, "oh well, I guess that's what happens when giant corporations duke it out for mega-millions."

HUMOR ALERT **CODE ORANGE** TODAY: I'm tired of hearing people bash the French. French people are cool. Here, for example, is an article in Liberation that will set the record straight.

The article ends with an amusing anecdote that I post below for your enjoyment.

Les strings pour hommes commencent à se banaliser. Ils sont maintenant en vente dans les hypermarchés. Frédéric dit qu'il s'est trompé. Il a voulu acheter un slip ordinaire et s'est retrouvé avec un string à la maison. «Au début, j'ai trouvé ça moins désagréable que prévu. Mais, plus les heures avançaient, plus c'était inconfortable.» Il ne l'a porté qu'une journée. Mais il ne l'a pas jeté.

The supermarket, no less!!! To all you French-haters in the world nowadays: if it weren't for the French, we'd ALL be wearing dorky underwear right now.

Staccato nature of today's blogging due to Friday fatigue. More thoughtful stuff later, after I take a chunk out of the mountain of grading I have to do this weekend (finishing grading papers on Everson and Zobrest and on the disputes over the 1798 Sedition Act, as well as my first American Government exams). Plus, the weather was beautiful today but should turn pretty crappy tomorrow, so I'll be indoors for the next few days, turning pale. . .

Administration bullies GAO. Ugly. Link via Sisyphus Shrugged.

Indian Supreme Court claims:

"We are never pressurised. Be sure about it."

The issue is Ayodhya. Look for more judicial action on the issue in early March after the hearing on an order banning religious activities at the disputed site.

Dilbert illuminates the Iraq-US-UN battles. From Defective Yeti.

Get your Japanese baseball fix, etc. From Laughing Boy.

DIONNE ON ESTRADA. On the money.

Is the U.S. committed to democracy in post-war Iraq? Andrew Sullivan doesn't think so.

Over at OxBlog, look at Josh's post on Iranian students' reactions to Bush. This is really important.

When the weather is good here, it's really beautiful. Cloudless sky. Pink highlights on the ice floes in Lake Ontario.

From the Swiss: Depends on what the meaning of "SPIT" is.

Vincent Truffy rocks. Wish I had time to read all his links.

BUSY NEWS DAY IN GERMANY: Prominent German opposition politician Wolfgang Schäuble gives a detailed statement of the CDU/CSU position on Iraq, the UN, and the US.

Environmental Minister Juergen Trittin (Green) claims that the US is only concerned about "oil" and that the WMD-thing is a distraction.

The German parliament unites in pushing for a worldwide ban on all types of human cloning.

Motassadeq's sentencing sets off a flurry of commentary.

And that's just the Tagesspiegel!

More to follow. . .

"HYPERTROPHY OF GOOD GRADES." One of the finest ways of describing grade inflation I have seen. According to an article in Die Zeit, grade inflation is growing in German universities. [Wait a minute: can inflation "grow" in english?] The article discusses the recently released report on university grades from the "Wissenschaftsrat," an advisory body whose members are nominated by the German President and by prominent scientific organizations. You can see their website here. The report is not out in english, however.

Reasons for the grade inflation? Several candidates: 1) The quality of work done at universities is in fact high. 2) Professors feel bad for students who won't be able to find jobs in certain fields (like history, I gather from the article). 3) And professors and students work together on major assignments, so expectations are fairly clear and students are able to meet them.

"Hypertrophy of Good Grades." HGG. Has a certain ring to it. Not quite as slick as Yale's "upward grade homogenization" (or, as I like to call it in pure bureaucratese, UGH), of course.

Today's LATIMES Bruce Ackerman editorial on borrowing from the Germans: there, nominations to highest court require 2/3 vote in legislature for confirmation, and terms are limited to 12 years. Ackerman says we should amend the Constitution to do the same here. Seems like a good idea to me. In case that doesn't fly (and Ackerman has no illusions that it will), Ackerman counsels the Dems to approve Estrada now but filibuster him later, if nominated to sit with the Supremes.

Sounds good to me, but I doubt that Dems should fight this war later rather than sooner.

U.S. increases aid to Afghanistan. Read the article by Scott Baldauf in the Christian Science Monitor. I have expressed my suspicions of the administration's long-term goals already, but I'm willing to be proven wrong by events. The systematic weakness of state department programs in the annual appropriations battles should still be a concern.

IF YOU CRITICIZE COBLE, YOU'RE A FANATIC AND AN IDEOLOGUE. At least according to Ken Masugi over at the Claremont Institute. For my (short) discussion of Representative Coble's understanding of internment, see here. Go also to Eric Muller's website, Is That Legal?, for the most comprehensive discussion of the controversy to date. But be warned: Muller is probably the kind of "fanatic" that Masugi is talking about.

Masugi takes the critics of Coble to task for being blind to the very real concerns about loyalty that were raised concerning Japanese-Americans during WWII. As far as I understand the critics of internment, none of them are saying that loyalty is never a valid concern. Nonetheless, it's very hard to take the Roosevelt administration's loyalty concerns seriously given the disparate treatment meted out to Japanese-Americans on the west coast compared to German-Americans, Italian-Americans, not to mention Japanese-Americans in Hawaii itself.

He also implies that the people who criticize Coble for not knowing his history are more dangerous than Coble himself, even though Coble is chair of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. I don't know what to make of this argument.

They key to Masugi's argument, though, is the following claim:

"[T]he great need here is to defuse the charge of American racism (in a war against what can be called Japanese racism) and thus permit thoughtful consideration of the domestic security measures we need to deal with the crisis confronting us."

This claim is not actually defended in detail in the article. But what it seems to mean, at least, is that some sorts of uses of racial categories might be necessary in the current war on terrorism. Especially if that is true (and the cross-racial nature of al-Qaeda itself seems to make it seem a naive suggestion that race will tell us anything about terrorists), it's necessary to have as much knowledge as possible of past, abusive uses of race in order to avoid their pitfalls. In addition, precisely because terrorism feeds off of inappropriate reactions on the part of its targets, we should be extraordinarily careful in enacting measures that seem to confirm the al-Qaeda, "war on islam" theory of U.S. international involvement.

THANKS, RAJI!!! My girlfriend's mom sent me a care package with sweets from Sukadia. Check out the offerings on their website, here. They're having some web problems, so I linked the sweets page directly. You should call them up and place an order right now, or visit them if you're in New Jersey (Iselin and Edison) or Chicago.

UPDATE: I'm getting fatter by the minute, but loving it. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM-MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

STRANGE BUT TRUE: As this story about the partisan battle going on over the Estrada nomination makes clear, the Washington Post's REPORTERS are smarter than their EDITORIAL STAFF. For the reasons why I think so, in addition to the comments below, see my post here.

Just to add to the argument: what really seems to bother the good folks at WP is that Democrats are holding up a nomination for partisan reasons. For the life of me I can't really understand why this is surprising or even troubling. Telling the Democrats to cave doesn't make any sense. Why not castigate Bush for the kind of "politics" that he's been playing all along with respect to judicial nominations? Check out the RNC's partisan battle-axe e-mail recently and my comments on it here, for example.

Democrats should push this as far as they can and try to get Bush NOT to nominate stealth conservative candidates. If they lose, too bad. But telling them to give up is telling them to stop representing the interests of those constituents who express intense preferences. Call this: the Seventeenth Amendment meets interest group politics in the aftermath of the Bork confirmation hearings. The confirmation process might be ugly. So are a lot of things. Unilateral disarmament is no solution.

COMIC GENIUS, I say. Adam Felber rocks.

Once again, the Washington Post chickens out when it comes to the Senate-executive judicial nomination contest over Estrada. Read the comments over at the Volokh Conspiracy here and here. Anyone who has followed the WP's editorial line over the past year will notice the following ideas:

1) judicial nominations shouldn't be a partisan affair

2) the Senate should approve nominees who are "qualified" even if they are ideologically suspicious for one reason or another, to one group in the Senate or the other.

This was their line on Pickering and Owen, if I remember correctly. I suspect a kind of post-Warren Court liberalism at play here: I think that the editors at the WP hope that the judiciary can emerge from partisan disputes and begin to look like a non-political, justice-dispensing body, perhaps so that minority rights will be more secure against the predations of the majority: a court that is held in "respect" by the public will be more likely to get compliance.

I'm just guessing on the reasons for the WP line, of course, so you can take it for what it's worth.

I think that the WP's opposition to the Senate Democrats' moves on Estrada is wrong, for a variety of reasons. Courts produce controversial decisions that should be taken into account in the judicial nominations process. There is a constitutionally legitimate procedure in place for strong interest groups to attempt to influence Senators to block judicial nominations that they don't like, and a procedure that Senators can follow to try to block appointments. This administration in particular likes to play a game of "who will blink first" in all matters -- a little different from the "uniter, not a divider" rhetoric of the campaign, if you'll care to recall. And just because the President cries "politics" whenever Democrats oppose him, that doesn't mean that he isn't playing "politics" as well. The nominations process is about politics and should remain about politics, even if that offends the sensitivities of heroic-court believers and law professors.

So I say to the Senate, ignore the WP and give the filibuster a shot. It would be really nice if we could all just hush and return to the days when courts could look like nonpolitical institutions. If those days ever existed, they're gone now, at least with respect to the controversial issues that are on the Court's docket and the docket of appellate courts throughout the country. Make Estrada pay for not being forthcoming with the committee. And don't let the Bush administration stare you down.

AND MORE: If it is generally true that administrations try to nominate stealth candidates (or at least candidates with no readily accessible paper trail), then the Senate needs to become even more serious about trying to find out the views of judicial nominees before they get lifetime appointments. The fact that no Senate ever asked for the precise kinds of memos that Democrats in the Senate want is flat-out irrelevant. If they're going to do their job of checking the President's ability to stack the courts with ideologues, they will need to be aggressive. Good for them.

Andrew Sullivan is now arguing along with Josh Marshall that Schroeder's smallpox scandal shows the following:

["]By appeasing these thugs, we could deflect the horror toward the Brits and Americans.["] I do think that's an underlying assumption on the part of Germany and France. By taking the anti-American line, they risk nothing.

This doesn't make any sense with respect to the smallpox issue. The health ministry report contemplates the extreme dangers posed to Germany of a smallpox release IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD. On the face of it, a release in the U.S. could also kill 25 million people because Germany's vaccine stocks are too low and because people are mobile in this day and age. I understand wanting to nail the Germans, and maybe the Germans do have this "underlying assumption." But in this case, it's inconsistent with the Health Ministry's own assessments.

Read my earlier blog, with a translation of the important part of the Health Ministry memo, here.

THE GERMANY-IRAQ CONNECTION? As I noted earlier, I think that people are probably trying to make too much of the "smallpox scandal" in Germany right now. But if you're looking for additional reasons to be upset with Germany on the subject of Iraq, read THIS ARTICLE IN THE ASIA TIMES.

ARE YOU SUCKING UP TO SCHROEDER or what? This is a question that I am sure has run through the minds of loyal readers. Reader Jack Ben-Levi gently asked me a version of this question recently, in reaction to my selective translation of Schroeder's Bundestag speech last week. You can read the German government's translation of Schroeder's speech here. In addition, Jack wonders why I haven't been more detailed with respect to German anti-war claims in general.

I am preparing my defense (seriously). Just need to make a few calls first.

Let's see here, zero, one, one, four, nine, leave out the zero 'cause I'm "abroad," three, zero. . .

"Hallo, Gerdi? Marston am Apparat. . .Nichts zu danken, nichts zu danken. . ."

SCHROEDER'S SMALLPOX SCANDAL: As Andrew Sullivan notes, on Sunday the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a German health ministry report from last year that called attention to the disasterous effects that a smallpox outbreak would have on the German population. (Thanks to my friend, Journal of Democracy editor and Tocqueville scholar extraordinaire John Gould for calling my attention to the story.) A Times online story discusses the report here.

The report is dated August 9th and reads in partinent parts -- and in a quick translation that minimizes the bureaucratic language -- as follows:

Bonn, 9 August 2002

German Health Ministry

[. . .]

The immediate procurement of [funds] for immunization against smallpox is needed immediately for the following reasons:

1. The Risk of an Attack

The international situation as perceived by our intelligence services indicates a heightened increase in the danger [of an attack]. German intelligence services have documented evidence that shows that smallpox is stored illegally outside of the official laboratories in Atlanta and Koltsovo, for example in Russia, Iraq and North Korea. There are also indications that terrorist groups seek to produce biological weapons. Because of the extremely contagious nature of the virus and the mobility of the world population, an attack [with such weapons] anywhere in the world poses an extraordinary danger for Germany as well. Signs of a possible US attack on Iraq are accumulating. It is possible that Iraq may react to such an attack with biological weapons, including smallpox, within its possession.

[Then the report details the possible disaster that could result from a smallpox attack -- up to 25 million German casualties -- and the lack of German preparedness in this area when compared with the US and Israel.]

FAZ notes that the government kept this report a secret for months, and it has quickly become a partisan issue in Germany, as an article in the Tagesspiegel notes ("Smallpox Panic becomes a Topic of Dispute"). In that article, the German minister for the interior, Otto Schilly (SPD) is quoted as saying that the paper speaks only of an "abstract danger" that smallpox could be used by terrorists, and that Germans have known, since the 1990s, that Iraq has "experimented with smallpox virus."

So far, I haven't seen this "documented evidence." It might not even exist, really. It's not clear the extent to which this health ministry report is an indication that Germans knew any more that I know about current Iraqi possession of smallpox. It's common knowledge, I gather, that Iraq did have an active bio-weapons program in the 1990s. Do the Germans have any more information?

The story does raise the question of the integrity of Schroeder's case against war, however: if he knows that bio-weapons exist in Iraq, then he should at least be sharing this information. Speculations crowd upon speculations. But, again, the document is from the health ministry, and as you can see, it speaks in a general way about "documented evidence" without discussing the evidence in detail. The ministry might simply be thinking responsibly here: in light of the danger a smallpox outbreak could pose for a country with low immunization supplies, it's worth taking even common-knowledge-type evidence quite seriously.

Surely more infomation is needed from the German government on this issue.

UPDATE: As Josh Marshall writes here, one criticism of Schroeder's suppression of the Health Ministry's smallpox memo is that it looks like Schroeder suppressed the document in order to keep its opposition to the U.S. Iraq policy alive. This interpretation is plausible in the following respect: the original memo notes the danger to Germany of a smallpox outbreak is of monumental proportions, and if the Bush administration is right in claiming that Iraqi bio-weapons could make it into the hands of terrorists, and that a war is the only way to prevent this from happening, and Schroeder believes all these things, then Schroeder is being duplicitous. But there's a long chain of reasoning to get there, I'd say.

I prefer one of two alternate interpretations:

1) the memo is really nothing new (it's merely a worst-case-scenario attempt to justify a sensible public health policy measure, namely, increasing stockpiles of smallpox vaccinations to levels commensurate with those in the U.S. or Israel; we had this kind of discussion last year, and Germany is often behind the ball on security issues, as I noted here).

2) or it may strengthen Schroeder's anti-war stance, since in the Health Ministry's estimation, a war with Iraq will increase the risk that terrorists will use their existing bio-weapons, and perhaps smallpox is among those weapons. So Schroeder would have another reason to oppose war.

Neither interpretation explains the "suppression" of the memo. But given the fact that the memo speaks of the possibility of catastrophe as a result of a smallpox outbreak and thus exposes a grave weakness in the preparedness of the German government, I don't think it's really surprising that Schroeder would want to keep the thing under wraps.

ANOTHER THOUGHT: The official explanation from the government is that the report was carelessly worded. Read the Guardian article here.

Over at Earth-Info.net, Matt has been busily preparing answers to the following questions: What were the environmental effects of the Gulf War? What are the likely humanitarian effects of another one?

UGH.

You may not like some kinds of arguments. But flaming bloggers is stupid. (Read "Jane Galt"'s response here, as well.) If you need to engage in a little invective in order to clear your chest, send it to groups that are organized to take care of it (like the RNC, for example). They'll probably ignore you, which is, frankly, what you need right now anyway.

Is THIS supposed to be NEWS? What a joke. Noted at the Rittenhouse Review. Read Rittenhouse's comments here.