DOES ANYONE KNOW OF RESEARCH

on the loss of spelling ability through the aging process? Recently I've found that words are just beginning to look strange to me. I stared at the word "organizationally" for about a minute before finally reaching for the dictionary. I hope this is not the sign of early onset dementia or something horrible like that.

Anita, my girlfriend, if she is reading this, is probably laughing right now.

Well, dearie, neither my loss of spelling ability nor my evident hypochondria has adversely affected my Scrabble skills, now, has it? Hmmm?

SCHROEDER, KOSOVO, IRAQ, AND TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

I've been trying to figure out how to respond to an excellent e-mail that I received from reader Jack Ben-Levi about how Gerhard Schroeder's apparent piety regardling international norms (specifically, the need for Security Council authoriziation for any use of force in Iraq) squares with his government's claim that such authorization was not necessary to legitimize NATO intervention in Kosovo and Germany's participation in that intervention. The point takes aim at a broader target than simply Schroeder's respect for international norms: I hope I'm not presmptuous in surmising that the looming question is whether or not Schroeder is simply a political opportunist who has tried to stop his party's precipitous decline by pandering to a native anti-americanism and pious pacifism.

I have had to refresh my memory of the events in Kosovo, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But I would respond to Jack's criticism of Schroeder with the following points:

• The UN Security Council did get in on the act with resolutions that didn't explicitly authorize the use of military force (much like the current resolutions on Iraq). But it seems to me that it's the nature of such resolutions that they are indeterminate in such a way that their meaning needs to be shaped by diplomacy and agreements between member states. Both sides of a dispute on the interpretation of a resolution have an incentive to claim the high ground of international law. The answer to the obvious question -- who has the correct interpretation? -- is probably that both do. Resolutions have a built-in ambiguity that needs to be shaped by further discussion, not unlike other written statements such as statutes and constitutions.


• The shaping that was done to convince German leaders that the Kosovo conflict required a military solution through NATO involved two fronts: the international front (primarily centered on NATO) and the domestic front (centered, especially, on the questions of domestic refugee populations and the politics of national memory). The U.S. helped to craft a consensual set of decisionmaking procedures to govern the NATO campaign, allowing Germans and others to have control over the campaign itself. Only fair, of course, if Germans were to face the difficult political choices necessary in the crisis. But we should note that the Bush administration has not attempted anything similar -- bullying Germans with claims that they're "old Europe" does not count, I'm afraid. And forcing the NATO troops in Turkey issue in the way that the administration did was hardly an attempt to bring the Germans into the decisionmaking process.


• So the Clinton administration made sure that Germans had a stake in the military side of the process. Hardly likely this time around, with a President who essentially says to everyone on the planet: I have the authority to bomb wherever and whenever I want because of my role as commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. See the press briefing, Dec. 5th, 2001:
  

  Q What gives him the authority to go into other countries and bomb them, which is what he is threatening to do?
  

  
  MR. FLEISCHER: The right as the Commander-in-Chief to protect and defend the American people.

  
  But aside from the role that the Bush administration has played in boxing Germany out of the process, it should also be clear that the domestic political concerns are different this time around. Germany already had a political controversy over immigration and asylum policy. Kosovo was about a displaced ethnic minority subject to genocidal attacks of the kind that had already created mass migrations within Europe over the past half-decade. The context of genocide made the German discussion of intervention in Kosovo much more complicated. If I remember correctly, the debate was centered on the following question: Should we Germans, with our history of both brutal militarism and committed pacifism, intervene to prevent a genocidal campaign within Europe's borders? How can we not intervene, yet still hold to a belief that we have learned to oppose large-scale, state-sponsored ethnic violence within Europe? That intervention became politically palatable is not particularly surprising. And that all of these concerns influenced the interpretation of UN - SC resolutions is to be expected.

So, since I don't think that security council resolutions are self-evident guides to whether or not military action is necessary, I am not that troubled by the apparent inconsistency in Schroeder's positions here. Resolutions are embedded in a diplomatic, international, and domestic political context, At the end of the day, what probably counts most are the reasons advanced for intervention or non-intervention. Kosovo was certainly a clearer case.

To prove this point further, though, I need to do some more work on Schroeder's reasons for opposing the U.S. efforts in Iraq. So, Jack, I realize that my burden has not quite been met. . .yet!

FOR MORE CNN SILLINESS,

go to the Hamster's discussion of CNN's anti-anti-war-celebrity spot. And while you're there, don't leave the page without checking out Emotion Eric's response to Bush's press conference. [It's not individually linked, so you'll have to scroll down the page to the end of the CNN story.] As far as I can tell from the commentary I've seen, Emotion Eric just about sums it up for most of us. When you visit Emotion Eric's site, try not to fall off your chair in paroxysms of laughter.

CNN AGAIN DEMONSTRATES

the sublime objectivity of the wire story qua sound bite.

There are two quotes in this story about the end of the combined strike at Yale. One is from union spokesman Bill Meyerson. The other is from a random Yale sophomore who implies that grad students are spoiled because they are "treated pretty well by professors" and "paid well."

I understand that one can have different views on grad student unionization. I happen to think that it is a fantastic idea, mostly because I am persuaded by the union's argument that PhD's have been systematically overproduced and that this has, coincidentally (for university administrators) or not, driven down the cost of teaching labor. Instead of taking on the issue, though, CNN follows the wire story and goes for the closing quote from some random Yale student. The network is presumably looking for a punchy "hmmm" exit line.

That's why I can't watch CNN any more.

Not having a TV is a pretty good way to avoid CNN as well, of course, so I don't know if this story aired in a similarly ridiculous way.

For a much better take on grad student unionization, read the op-ed in yesterday's New York Times by CUNY-Brooklyn political science professor Corey Robin. Full disclosure: when I was a grad student in residence at Yale, Corey turned me around from a grad student union skeptic to a genuine (if not always organizationally reliable) member.

UPDATE: for another perspective on Corey's editorial, go to David Adesnik's acid commentary at Oxblog. According to David, Corey and other pro-union grad students "delude themselves into believing that Yale's undergraduates are the heartless scions of an American plutocracy, rather than the middle-of-the-road middle-class liberals that they actually are." And to be fair, I think that David is largely right in his criticism of the editorial: to the extent that it leaves the impression that Yale students are all GWB in training, then the editorial is harsh. Nonetheless, Corey's broader point stands: in negotiations with its unions, Yale has been exceedingly harsh, and that is hardly a good lesson for a shining star of the so-called "liberal academy" to be propagating. And whatever the source of his or her beliefs, any undergraduate who tells striking graduate students that they should just "get back to work" or "go teach a section" is basically mirroring the administration's approach. That's the real point of the article.

THAT'S ME

in the picture, on the right. I think I'm reaching for a Fisherman's Friend. On the left is historian Tom Judd, originally from New Bedford, MA and a fan of both the U-Conn Huskies and the Red Sox -- hence, an excellent man. Tom talked about the post-Gulf War military situation in Iraq. In the middle is Steve Rosow. Steve's expertise are in political theory and international relations. He talked about this administration's National Security Strategy. I talked mostly about Doe v. Bush and why you shouldn't go to the courts to challenge executive authority during wartime (i.e., because you'll probably lose).

Read the article in the Oswegonian here. I don't remember using the phrase "spew one-sided information," but it's also not a direct quote, and I was running on a sleep deficit, so I'm not too certain. At any rate, the phrase captures what I meant to say.

[addendum: I forgot to mention that I talked about a couple of other things on Wednesday, including the anti-war conservative Christians I mentioned here, and pro-administration student groups such as OxDem, a project by, among others, the folks over at Oxblog. One thing that I said about OxDem is that student groups that are beginning to sign on to the administration's plans could, in the end, turn into severe critics of the administration if the plans for a democratic post-war Iraq do not materialize. --BEM]

GEORGE WILL,

WAR POET:

Soon the bow wave created by the movement of the great ship America into full-scale war will wash away Lilliputian nuisances, such as French diplomacy.

Thanks to Jim Joyner at Outside the Beltway for the link. I'm not sure I like this paragraph as much as he does, though! I don't know if Will is trying to evoke an image of "gunboat diplomacy" or U.S. imperialism, but he sure as heck is succeeding. (BTW, thanks to OTB for the recent plug, as well!)

GEORGE WILL, APOLOGIZER

And at the bottom of the page, Will corrects an error in his Estrada editorial. No, he doesn't admit that he defended the filibuster when Republicans were using it, or that he defended Republican attempts to torpedo Bill Lan Lee's nomination for "political payback" (narrow interpretation of "advice and consent"?), or that he attacked Bill Clinton for thinking of nominating an Hispanic to the Supreme Court, but while Bush is openly pushing the idea, he (Will) says nothing.

Here is Will's correction:

THIS COLUMN recently erroneously stated that Thurgood Marshall had no judicial experience when appointed to the Supreme Court. Marshall had served on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to which he was appointed with no judicial experience.

Everyone makes factual mistakes. Good for Will to admit them. Probably it's more important to admit that he is advancing a view that he now claims is constitutionally grounded, but that he earlier rejected this view when his party would have been hurt by those arguments. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Is there possibly something wrong

with a jurispridential vision that leads to the striking down of hate crimes laws but allows 25 years for a shoplifting sentence? I haven't read Lockeyer yet, so this is only a first impression. But, still. . .

If Bork had blogged, he would have been "blorked," not just borked. Link from Ernie the Attorney.

Sorry. . .

YOU DIE, WE GET MONEY

See Amitai Etzioni's post here. Link from Mark Kleiman.

Doe v. Bush:

This case is so seemingly insignificant that an appeals court hearing on Tuesday doesn't merit much news commentary. The Boston Globe picks it up under its "New England in brief" section. The title of the Globe's web page for this section is: "Student was paid to send e-mail spam in Medford." Spammers in Medford above separation of powers. Hmm.

Nonetheless, the case shows three things:

• The President is advancing an almost unbelievably expansive conception of executive powers during wartime -- and one that is not consistent with George Bush's avowed attachment to "strict construction." See the excellent article by Margaret Burnham (one of the lawyers for Doe) on this point. This conception of executive powers is one of the fixed points in the Bush presidency, as its handling of innumerable issues shows, from the conflict with GAO over access to memos on energy policy, to the attempt to force the Estrada nomination and destroy the anti-majoritarian rules and traditions in the Senate in the process. Read Bush's statement on the Senate's rejection of the cloture motion here.


• Courts have given at least one important hook to those who challenge the President's power to go to war without congressional declaration. In Dellums v. Bush, a case in which over fifty members of Congress challenged the first President Bush's power to go to war against Saddam Hussein without congressional approval (!), the District Court of D.C. said that it would not "read out of the Constitution the clause granting to Congress, and to it alone, the authority to 'declare war.'"


• BUT, this hook is irrelevant. The courts are reluctant to take these kinds of cases unless there is an explicit conflict between "Congress" (meaning the Congress as a whole, or a majority in Congress) and the executive. Unless a majority in Congress clearly tells Bush not to engage in war-making, and Bush says no and goes to war anyway, the courts are not likely to get involved in this issue -- and even then, it's not clear what they would do. In addition, courts will not take cases unless they are "ripe," probably meaning that a war has to have already started. But they also will not take cases that are "moot," probably meaning that a war can't have already ended. So there are some very high hurdles here for anti-war members of Congress: they have to get the Congress as a whole to act, and they have to get to court after the shooting (or bombing) starts but before it ends. If they've got a majority in Congress, of course, they probably won't need the courts anyway. So courts are not going to be much help in challenging executive war powers.

I don't think that this is necessarily a bad situation for courts to be in. Courts become shy during wartime. They probably should be shy: war raises people's partisan passions to a fever pitch, and when partisan passions go to court, the only real loser is likely to be the courts themselves, at least in the short term. In the long term, courts are pretty resilient: how many people are still really upset at the Supreme Court for Dred Scott -- or even Bush v. Gore, for that matter? But courts during wartime are not only afraid of partisanship. They're also afraid of the executive and Congress, both of which may be tempted to use their "checks and balances" to punish the court for rulings adverse to their perceived interests.

GEORGE WILL, HYPOCRITE, THE SECOND WAVE:

As Atrios reports, Edward Lazarus has an article on George Will's hypocritical attack on the filibuster here. Turns out that Will is on record defending the prerogatives of the Senate against earlier attacks on the filibuster. The difference? One important one: Dems are using it now, Reps were using it then. Lazarus uses Will's unfortunate strategic use of constitutional argument to make a broader point about the death of intellectual shame.

I also noted a few additional problems with Will's Estrada editorial here. To recap: Will told Senate Republicans to reject Bill Lan Lee for reasons of political "payback" (hardly consistent with Will's pompous defense of a limited definition of "advice and consent" in the Estrada editorial), and he also wondered aloud whether or not Clinton would seek out Hispanic judges for electoral reasons. The second quote is worth stating again, since, if you omit the antecedent and a knowledge of Will's partisan orientation, it's hard to know whom he is referring to:

Again the president is allowing the selection process to become so protracted that all the ideological, racial, ethnic and sexual lobbies can work up a robust sense of entitlement to the court seat. Given the importance of California - and Florida and Texas - to the president's re-election plans, he may be looking for someone with a Hispanic surname.

As Lazarus points out, there's nothing wrong with changing your mind over time. Just explain the difference.

[And it is also worth pointing out that it was the work of bloggers such as Atrios who helped to ferret out the differences in Will's positions here. Strong work, folks!]

ACADEMIC FREEDOM?

I have been following my fellow political science bloggers Jacob Levy (now a Conspirator), James Joyner (Outside the Beltway), and Poliblog (a.k.a. the mysterious Aristotelian) for some time now. I have a sense that we do not agree on politics. But can we at least agree that the heavy-handed tactics of this administration with respect to domestic prosecutions pose a threat to academic freedom? The canard that "if you didn't do something wrong, you've got nothing to worry about" strikes me as naive.

I've seen a few T-shirts that say "Who is John Gault?" in the past year or so, but none that ask a much more pertinent question, in my view, even if slightly exaggerated: "Who is Doremus Jessup?"

AL WAHAIDY LOSES JOB AT SUNY-OSWEGO.

Read the Newsday story here.

I am not interested in navel-gazing, but I should say that I am beginning to understand why tenure is important. As another SUNY-Oswego employee terminable at will, how much should I censor myself? What happens if I think that the administration has done something wrong here -- or if I think that the federal or state government has applied inappropriate pressure? Knowing the vulnerability of my own employment position, I can't help but be less willing to speak my mind.

I also have learned a rather simple lesson about the media: record your interviews. This article from Oswego's Palladium Times is about 70% right in its attributions to me. But the 30% wrong is a bit of a doozer. For those of you who know me personally, does this sound like me?

The charges against the four are connected to the "Help the Needy" fund, which Al Wahaidy and three others solicited money with the claim that all proceeds would go to the needy children of Iraq.

Marston said he believes that it was dangerous for Al Wahaidy to associate with such an organization.

"The charges have already gotten him suspended from his job (as Imam of the Auburn Correctional Facility). The allegations are very severe. You have to be careful who you associate with," Marston said.

I can't remember intending to say anything like the highlighted parts. It was, as an empirical matter, dangerous for Al Wahaidy to associate with "Help the Needy." No doubt about it: he now faces a fine, a prison term, unemployment and unemployability. What I certainly meant is that charges alone have consequences in the real world. I actually deplore the fact that for many people, associates need to be chosen more carefully nowadays. The above quote makes it sound as if I am resigned to that fact.

'HELP THE NEEDY': FEDS INSINUATE TERRORIST CONNECTION

In a bail hearing for Ayman Jarwan, a defendant in the case, prosecutors made the following moves, according to an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard:

[Asst. U.S. Attorney] West urged the court to consider reports that terrorists were planning to detonate a "dirty bomb" designed to spread radioactive material.

Jarwan has academic degrees in nuclear and radiological engineering, West said, adding: "This man knows how to use and has access to this material."

Agents found excerpts of a published interview with Sheikh Safar al-Hawali in Jarwan's apartment, West said. Al-Hawali, a radical Saudi Arabian cleric, advocated war with the West in the interview, the prosecutor said.

"Although these are not (Jarwan's) own words, the fact that he has it and kept it suggests he might subscribe to those views," West said.

That claim bothered [Judge] Peebles. "Have we come to the point in this country where we are willing to detain a person based on what they may read?" Peebles asked.

"I reject that because he holds advanced degrees or reads radical material, he's a danger," Peebles ruled.

Prosecutors have said they know of no link between Help the Needy and terrorists. [. . .]

McGraw [Jarwan's lawyer] said it was irresponsible of West to present Jarwan's education as evidence he posed a threat.

"It just raises the level of prejudice," he said. "It will be difficult to get a fair trial when there are those implicit suggestions that he's a terrorist because he has a degree."

So possession of radical literature and advanced degrees makes you a threat, even though there's no evidence of a terrorist link whatsoever? "Have we come this far?" indeed.

WaPo TO DEMS: BE NICE! WaPo TO BUSH: BE NICE!

In an editorial on September 13, 2002, attacking the Democrat-controlled judiciary committee for rejecting Priscilla Owen, WaPo argued that the committee should never reject a "qualified nominee" because of "ideological disagreement." The reason why such a rejection would be bad, according to WaPo is that it "sends a message to the public that the confirmation process is not a principled exercise but an expression of political power." Let's call this the A-list editorial. Its invariate message: Democrats shouldn't reject candidates because they're too conservative.

Five weeks later, on October 24, 2002, WaPo moved westward with its attacks:

"Mr. Bush has sought fairly consistently to nominate conservatives -- and even as he has demanded that they be considered without regard to politics, he has used their ideological hue to play to his own base. [. . .] [Bush's] unwillingness to seek Democratic input with respect to vacancies [. . .] risks increasing the polarization that has made appellate court vacancies so difficult to fill in recent years. True, it is the president's prerogative to nominate judges, but nowhere does the Constitution require him to do so without meaningful consultation and in the fashion that most irritates the opposition party."

Let's call this the B-list editorial. Its invariate message: Bush should consult with Dems and nominate consensus candidates.

Fast forward to February 18 of this year. In an editorial titled "Just Vote," WaPo goes with the A-list again and tells Democrats to play nice, stop the games, and allow a vote on Estrada. Then, on Monday, we got the B-list again, with a minor A-list theme.

"Democrats should [. . .] make recommendations, and President Bush should listen and accomodate. The future of the judiciary is certainly a legitimate electoral issue. But a presidential election does not take place each time the Senate must vote on a judge."

It's all well and good for WaPo to just tell the parties to declare a cease fire and talk to each other. But it's also obvious that neither side will follow WaPo's advice. WaPo seems to think that they're in a prisoner's dilemma: each side really would be better off cooperating, but neither trusts each other not to defect once an agreement is reached. The benefit to cooperation, presumably, is the maintenance of the public appearance of a principled nominations process.

But WaPo has got it wrong. Each side is responding to interest groups with intense preferences and electoral clout. Reps get more out of sticking it to the Dems than they would by cooperating. And Dems get more out of resisting conservative judges than they would by cooperating. Neither side has any real incentive to try to design a more consensual process. In fact, as Orrin Hatch's recent moves to suppress debate on the judiciary committee shows, Reps would rather dismantle the consensus-intending rules of the Senate than be seen to be compromising on the issue of "activist judges." Neither side is going to follow WaPo's nice sounding advice aimed at protecting the appearance of principle rather than power in the federal judicial nominations process.

And who still believes that principle itself governs the process anyway? Do we really need this "noble lie"? For whom?

Marston to WaPo: time for a C-list editorial analyzing the partisan incentives that drive the process and proposing something more substantive than "playing nice." How about ditching lifetime appointments?

ABA ONE-UPMANSHIP:

Republicans have touted Estrada's "well qualified" designation by the ABA as a reason to confirm him. This, after President Bush said he would stop using the ABA because of perceived liberal bias. Today, in the Senate, it looks like Harry Reid (D-Nev.), one of the leaders in blocking Estrada's nomination, took the next logical step. I only caught the end of the speech, but it sounded like he was announcing that now he also considers the ABA to be biased and will stop relying on their recommendations. The immediate background is Reid's complaints over the term of Bush supporter Fred Fielding on the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

The immediate, strategic benefits of Reid's announcement may be minimal: he's clearly trying to take away one of the weapons in the Republican case for their judicial nominees, but it probably won't work in the short term. It is weird for Reps to rely on the ABA when the ABA like their candidates and excoriate the body when the ABA rejects their candidates. But that kind of move is nothing new in the nominations process. I doubt that Reps will change their strategy just because Reid now rejects the ABA rating as well.

The potential significance of Reid's announcement in the long term, however, is that it might force a more open and honest confrontation of the role of partisanship and judicial ideology in the nominations process. If neither party has an independent body that they consistently rely on for neutral qualifications, both may be forced to advance substantive, rather than neutral-sounding, arguments for their candidates. We all know that competence does matter. We also all know that competence alone does not make you a candidate for the federal bench. It would be nice to be able to talk about that in the open.

I'm with Senator Schumer here: I can't help but think that the open confrontation of partisanship in the nominations process would be a good thing, and that it would be especially good if the nominations process would be structured around that recognition. I also realize that this suggestion is in no way neutral. Partisan benefits to such a discussion would probably accrue to the Dems in a disproportionate fashion, since one of Schumer's prime targets is the claim that in controversial and difficult cases, judges can somehow rely on a neutral understanding of the law. This claim is one of the main Republican weapons in the nominations process, as Senator Jeff Sessions's rant against five decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence yesterday shows. Sessions used the Pledge decision as a hook to attack the wall of separation idea, "liberals" who persecute christians by trying to empty the public square of references to God, activist judges who presume to have superior moral knowledge and know, for example, that the death penalty is unconstitutional because of "evolving norms," and those Democrats who oppose the Estrada nominations.

That this rant is part of an overall political argument is clear. One element of that argument, however, is that it understands itself as upholding the Constitution, as such, in a neutral fashion. (Thanks to my friend John Gould for help with that formulation.) Clearly Republicans are not going to give up this argument. It's a winner. And at the end of the day, Reps probably get more mileage out of positions like Sessions's than they would get out of being percieved as cooperating with Democrats on designing a nominations process that puts moderates on the bench.

I HOPE IT'S NOT LIKE THE LIBERATION OF PARIS:

Over the weekend, as this Washington Post editorial reminds us, Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) exclaimed that the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed over the weekend was equivalent to the "liberation of Paris."

I don't want to be too picky, but wasn't the liberation of Paris more of a symbolic victory, pushed by de Gaulle and resisted by Eisenhower, than an actual military victory? If I remember correctly, Eisenhower preferred the following plan: encircle Paris, continue pursuing the German army, and conserve the resources that would be necessary to fight in Paris as well as provide materially for an embattered population. De Gaulle resisted, partly because it was Paris, after all, and partly because he was looking toward enhancing his presitge in the postwar period by countering Communist resistance fighters as quickly as possible.

Paris was liberated in order to make de Gaulle happy. The move had little military value. Or that's the story I remember, at least. I don't think Goss meant to invoke that kind of story.

[The lingering questions: what would victory in the war on terrorism look like? How long are we going to be at war with terrorism? Forever? Certainly longer than the time between the liberation of Paris and VJ-Day. Does anyone really think otherwise? Why are people invoking the relatively comforting symbols of WWII (and badly)?]

RAKI.

You folks forgot raki. MMMM. Raki.

SOCIAL DEMOCRAT NOSE-DIVE:

An upbeat-titled article in the New York Times on Gerhard Schroeder's "hopes" actually buries the lead. The wire story, filed this evening, notes in the final paragraph:

Voters handed [Schroeder's] Social Democrats a new setback Sunday in local council elections in Schleswig-Holstein, where the party tumbled to 29 percent voter support from 42 percent. The opposition Christian Democrats won nearly 51 percent across the state, up from 39 percent five years ago.

In Kiel, the major city in Schleswig-Holstein and usually a safe bet, the SPD has lost the office of mayor and the majority on the city council. The Tagesspiegel notes a grim mood among Social Democrats in the state. SPD state legislative leader Lothar Hay is quoted as saying: "I have never experienced that kind of a defeat before."

The NYT is probably right to contextualize the defeats by focusing on Schroeder's difficulties with the economy, however. An editorial in the Tagesspiegel by Robert Birnbaum argues that the CDU is in a position to build on earlier reform plans that were unpopular with voters a few years ago, but that now are "beginning to look necessary." The programs that the CDU has on offer are: lower taxes, tougher job-seeking requirements for those receiving unemployment, limited privatization of elder care, later retirement -- or, as the position paper, "Peformance and Security," puts it, "reversal of the trend toward more early retirements," market-based reforms in the health insurance industry, law and order, limits on immigration and an emphasis on cultural integration, and a stronger German army.

If the trend of CDU success continues, I suppose Angelika Merkel could end up playing the new "iron lady" to our current day Reagan. She's certainly off to a good start.

"HELP THE NEEDY" PROSECUTIONS:

The three central New York men who have been accused of violating sanctions against Iraq by collecting money for Iraqi children have begun to suffer serious repercussions even though they have only been charged with crimes. Fox news out of Albany reports that Osameh Al Wahaidy has been suspended from his job as a prison chaplain. Read also the Syracuse Post Standard article here, and the Austin-American Statesman's article here. Findlaw's story based on the wire reports is available here. SUNY-Oswego's newspaper, the Oswegonian, has an article here. Two of the men have been denied bail, and one was (I believe) released on bail after surrendering his passport and putting up his house as collateral. Read the Post Standard article from Friday here.

Ashcroft's announcement of the arrests last week, as reported in the Statesman article, was as follows:

``As President Bush leads an international coalition to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny and support for terror, the Justice Department will see that individuals within our borders cannot undermine these efforts. [. . .] Those who covertly seek to channel money into Iraq under the guise of charitable work will be caught and prosecuted.''

You can see Ashcroft's strategy here: link these kinds of prosecutions to the attempt to wage war against Iraq and the war on terrorism. The indictment gives no indication of the ultimate source for the funds that the government says were illegally sent to Iraq through a Jordanian bank. You can read the indictment here. The indictment makes no claim that Help the Needy was any way involved in terrorism, and the government has consistently denied that there is an explicit connection. But the initial announcements seem to create the presumption that there is some link. The Findlaw story quotes U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby below:

The indictments contained no allegations of terrorism. And U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby said he does not know where the money went or what it was intended for.

"That's one of the questions we are unable to answer," Suddaby said at a news conference. "As money makes its way into Iraq, it becomes exceedingly difficult to say where it ends up."

All the protestations that these men are "innocent until proven guilty" will look cynical, at best, in the current environment. This case illustrates one of the main dangers of the war on terrorism, namely, that it will draw other prosecutions into its wake and lead to extraordinary difficulties for those charged -- and presumed innocent -- of crimes. Meanwhile, the private difficulties involved in being charged -- and presumed innocent -- commence for these men.

Let's just say [or assume for the moment] that all these men did was send money to Iraq for charitable causes without the requisite paperwork and approval. For an administration that says that it does not "use food as a weapon," the charges seem harsh indeed (and somewhat in tension with the theory of sanctions, at the margins).

CONSERVATIVE, CHRISTIAN AND ANTI-WAR:

Read John Whitehead's essay, "On the Highway of Death." John Whitehead is the president and founder of The Rutherford Institute, a civil rights and civil liberties interest group that is like a combination of the ACLU with the Moral Majority. They're anti-abortion, pro-free speech (especially when the speech is religious or anti-abortion), pro-religious freedom (especially if the issue is prayer), but also anti-death penalty. And they're also very skeptical about a war in Iraq. Whitehead is also a Vietnam vet, and he bases his anti-war arguments on the brutal nature of the warfare that he experienced firsthand, as well as the stories of the "highway of death" after the first Gulf War.

Read also Rutherford's essay on WBAL radio host Ron Smith, a self-described conservative who has alienated his core listening audience by questioning the wisdom of an attack on Iraq. Smith argues that the mainstream media has irresponsibly drummed up support for an attack, leaving few voices to take Bush to task for the ad hoc nature of his arguments for war.

BOND, DEREK BOND: or, why does a completely harmless and innocent septuagenarian oinophile find himself in a South African prison for twenty days? Because the FBI was fooled by a case of identity theft and didn't work too hard to sort it out. Go to TalkLeft's post here for links and commentary on why the case of Derek Bond means we should be wary of more secret detentions on the authority of Ashcroft's assertions alone.

GUJARAT, ONE YEAR ON:

Times of India has two relatively upbeat pieces on the healing process in Gujarat, one year after the brutal sectarian riots that engulfed the region. One article notes the peace and healing efforts of students, some of whom are staging plays in an effort to reach across the communal and religious divides that led to the riots (and donating the proceeds to help victims and their families), and another describes rebuilding efforts in the restaurant industry. The second article has more ominous overtones: many restarted restaurants now have Hindu owners, the previous Muslim owners having sold their property and fled the area.

And, across the "Line of Control," an editorial in Dawn castigates Indian leaders for not bringing Hindu rioters to justice. Dawn references reports by Amnesty International, which you can read here, and Human Rights Watch, which you can read here. Both organizations complain that authorities have released most Hindus arrested after the riots, but have retained Muslims and Dalits.

And in a warning that should resonate outside of India as well, according to the Human Rights Watch report, new anti-terrorism laws have been employed in prosecuting Muslim rioters, but not Hindu rioters. Muslims made up by far the majority of the 2,000 victims in attacks that were facilitated and partly orchestrated by Hindu political authorities.

No reports of serious violence on the anniversary of the massacre have been noted, although there were some isolated incidents of property damage and police actions after India beat Pakistan in a long-awaited cricket match.

TURKEY'S ANTI-AKP ISLAMISTS? An article in the Turkish Daily news that you can read here notes protests against the ruling Justice and Develpment party -- on the part of islamists. I can't figure out the extent to which this kind of story has been followed in the U.S. press. My sense is that there is a tendency to view the AKP as a front for more radical islamist groups, if not as a radical islamist group itself, following the rules of parliamentary life only for the meantime. This is not the only view of Erdogan and the party that he unofficially leads, of course. But I wonder if it will become a more prominent U.S. view as Turkey's recent recalcitrance reveals itself as a serious logistical and strategic roadblock for the administration. Stories like this are necessary to help counter the "stalking-horse" view of the AKP.