REDISTRICTING NORMS AND THE LAW

Rick Hasen doesn't agree with the editors over at the NYT, who castigate the Texas Republicans for redistricting as soon as they got into power, even though Dems had just done so and the norm seems to have been redistricting once in a decade. For him, it's all about politics anyway, at least above the threshold allowed by relevant state law. Matthew Yglesias provides a kind of counter with the following Balkin-esque point: "When substantial groups of people start regarding their entire job as a nihilistic pursuit of partisan advantage, the whole thing breaks down."

I guess a question I would put to Rick Hasen would be the following: based on your experience studying the field, how often have the bare requirements of state law served as the exclusive guideline in state redistricting matters? In the Texas and Colorado controversies currently brewing, one claim that the Dems have made is that relevant norms, rather than (at least in the Texas case) relevant state law, haven't been followed by the party in power. Is this just whining by a losing party, then? Or is it a more fundamental complaint that one could link with Balkin's and Yglesias's fears that some sort of tacit understanding has been broken by an excessive search for partisan advantage? The ability to have tacit understandings between party elites -- or trust -- is something that Balkin claims is required for two-party systems -- or at least this two-party system -- to work well over the long term.

One of the reasons for Delay's efforts is the razor-thin partisan balance in the electorate; having had precious few opportunities to exercise majority control in Congress over the past 50 years, Republicans are understandably anxious to solidify whatever narrow majority they have. Bitter fights over narrow gains are to be expected. Add to that recent Republican assertiveness (which I would probably -- tongue-in-cheek -- interpret in a Nietzschean fashion, at least with respect to the House, by looking at the psychological nastiness that being in the minority party for too long can engender), and you probably do get a breakdown in trust. But the trust that was visible in the House, to the extent that there was any, at least pre-1994, probably had to do with the particular institutional arrangements that the Democrats had built up there: candidates were primarily individual policy entrepreneurs, party wasn't that important, and major legislation got passed primarily through logrolling and smoothing passage with pork rather than through common commitment to principle. Trust works there because there is individual electoral advantage at stake and everyone knows it. You can certainly like that system of legislating, but it's not one that has much to do with ideas, and it's also one that voters would ritually slaughter in each round of public opinion polling on corruption in Congress (exempting their respective representatives, of course!).

So contra Yglesias, it's not really nihilism, but principle that leads to nasty Republican tactics. Granted, in Delay's case, the principle can be summed up as "government is evil, unless it's engaging in economic infrastructure development, military affairs, or building prisons." But that's still a principle. If there's a problem with respect to institutions working well, it's probably more due to Republican ideology than in a breakdown of norms of trust. [Balkin probably wouldn't disagree here, but it's still an interesting question: is trust a function of the lack of ideology? Then we've got a potential post-WWII, "end of ideology" argument on our hands, and that's a bit weird.} And as far as Delay is concerned, of course, the institutions are probably working just fine: the Texas Republicans just need to push a little harder next time, and, after all, the Pres got his tax cut. He may be hanging the House Republicans out to dry by praising the Senate plan, but that's nothing that a little Texas BBQ can't fix. . .

WHEN FUTURE IN-LAWS ATTACK

Saturday's a slow news day, but whatever you do, don't miss this NYT story about a marriage in India that (happily) didn't get off the ground. Seems that the groom's family, who sound like a nasty collection of individuals, made a last minute, wedding day demand for a bigger dowry -- $25,000 extra, to be exact -- and the bride called the cops, dowry having been officially illegal since 1961. The police didn't take the matter too seriously until the press got a hold of it, and now the groom is likely to spend a little time in the slammer instead of in the wedding bed. From the description in the article, he certainly doesn't deserved to be married to the bride, and his family really needs to spend some time reading their Miss Manners.

From the Times of India website, you can hear a radio interview (in Hindi and English) with the former bride, Nisha Sharma, who is being praised for sticking up to bullying in-laws. Looks like the groom's mom is also now in legal trouble, and a nasty aunt is on the lam. An editorial in ToI cautions that the media frenzy surrounding the case isn't likely to produce any lasting changes in the dowry system. ToI also has a good background article on the legal framework surrounding dowry: it has been illegal since 1961, but complaints are rarely brought to official notice. Reported cases of cruelty by husbands and in-laws (crimes that merit a special section of the criminal code) are up in recent years, however.

HAPPY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

All right. Time to quit the office. Here's my happy thought for the day. Enjoy.

MORE (2/18/04): For some reason, Google, Yahoo, and other search engines have picked up this link as a high-priority pug picture, and I've been getting lots of hits (and, I imagine, disappointed web surfers). This was not my intention, but as a consolation prize, here are a few pictures of our pug Bailey. Enjoy!

ANOTHER REASON TO PAY ATTENTION TO FOREIGN MEDIA

So President Bush is careful about staging his events so that they look good in the media. As Jeff Cooper notes, this is not particularly surprising as far as it goes, although it is in tension with Bush's image as a down-home, plainspoken, God-fearin' middle American type. (It's probably familiar to viewers of Pat Robertson and other televangelists, though.) Kevin Drum is a little coy today about his estimation of Bush's efforts here, but his earlier post is harsher. OxBlog's Daniel Urman is unqualifiedly impressed (no permalinks). And contra the administration's claims, Andrew Cline worries that Bush's achievements in stagecraft impede rather than contribute to public understanding of his policies.

No one seems to have said it yet, so I will: the problem here is not simply Bush's efforts, but the fact that the media allows itself to be played. One problem has got to be the way that camera operators and editors are trained in the U.S. For a comparative perspective, go and watch a typical German spot on a political event. There are always standard shots of what might be termed an ordinary view of the scene: cameras setting up, the field of journalists themselves, a bird's eye view of the whole scene, usually also someone preparing the stage or someone cleaning up afterwards. A good place to go for such spots is the German news icon, tagesschau.de. Even if you don't understand what they're saying, you'll still be struck at how German journalists portray political events as political events that are prepared, staged, covered, and then end at a specific point in time.

It would be pretty simple for the U.S. press to incorporate some of this more critical style of coverage into their own: just turn the camera around and show all of the other cameras covering the same event, for example. Don't allow your camera angles to be determined in advance by the politicians themselves: pick a funny angle for once. Try to think of the event as a staged event and show that fact as well.

EXAMPLE: Check out Tagesschau's coverage of Powell's visit in Berlin, for example. After the anchor introduces the segment, there is a shot of Powell and Fischer shaking hands. Immediately they cut to a shot of the press corps jotting stuff down. Some rhetoric from Fischer about "working together," then the fourth shot is extreme stage left, behind the lighting and over the heads of the press corps. Powell speaks. Then Shroeder and Powell approach another podium through a gauntlet of cameras, then a shot of journalists, sitting, with full gear, not necessarily paying attention. Schroeder speaks, Powell's walking on his way to another visit, then a shot behind a cameraman who is filming pols entering a building, then Angelika Merkel (CDU) speaks to someone else's camera, then a panoramic shot of the outdoor stage that apparently served as the spot for the Powell / Schroeder conference, ending with someone brushing the plastic sheeting underneath the podiums. Are German television journalists just better than those in the U.S.? Better at not being played, that is. Could be.

MORE: Papascott calls attention to an additional, more spectacular exampleof the German press refusing to be spun, and of one pol's attempt to fight back: Helmut Kohl's non-interview with the German news show Panorama, in which he at first refuses to talk with reporters from the show and then accuses them of treason. Other prominent conservative politicians don't come off very well either (Kohl's successor at the CDU's helm, Angelika Merkel, just says "alles klar" [like "fine, whatever"] when asked to comment), but Kohl's performance takes the cake. Wow.

BRITISH SEX LAWS BILL

From the BBC, we learn that the British are revising their Sex Offenses Bill. Link via Secular Blasphemy.

HAPPY CONSTITUTION DAY

in Norway. Tomorrow. One curmudgeonly take, from Secular Blasphemy, here.

FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TIMES:

Mecca's Grand Mosque imam blasts terror attacks as "unjustified crime"

US TROOPS IN DJIBOUTI

taz reports that the U.S. has opened its first permanent military station in Africa, in Djibouti; previous operations in the area had been based on ships. The International Herald Tribune notes that this move has been supported by France (Djibouti is a former French colony) and shows the extent of behind-the-scenes cooperation between France and the U.S. despite the heated rhetoric of recent days.

The move to shore in Djibouti has generated much more interest abroad than it has in the American press. Aside from the taz article linked above, see here, here, here, and here.

MORE ON TAX CUTS

Just thought I'd pass on this from Freddie Mac economist Frank Nothaft, on the likely economic effects of the President's tax cuts:

By stimulating consumption and business investment spending, the short-term effect will be to accelerate economic growth and reduce the unemployment rate more rapidly. The "cost," however, is larger federal budget deficits that raise real interest rates (current rates minus inflation) and crowd out private-sector borrowings longer term. Economy.com has estimated that enactment of the administration's proposal by the end of the first quarter will lift 2003 GDP growth by 0.7 percent. Macroeconomic Advisers estimated that enactment by mid-year with tax cuts retroactive to January 1 will boost growth by a whopping 1.1 percent in 2003 and 0.6 percent in 2004, with the unemployment rate 0.6 percent lower in 2004 than it otherwise would be; however, cumulated over the next five years, the effect on GDP is negligible, as higher interest rates reduce growth in 2005-2007.

It would be hard to imagine a plan more calculated to increase Republican electoral success in 2004, but decrease Republican electoral chances in 2008. Now, 2008 is a long way off, of course, and it will probably be hard to make a persuasive public pitch that future economic problems, should they materialize, are due to Bush's irresponsible tax cut plans (supported by congressional Republicans and, it should be said, whimpy Democrats). Still, if this stuff pans out as predicted, and there are no other wrinkles, there could be a real drag on the economy again, in 2006, just in time for some big midterm congressional losses for the President's party.

TEST OF DEM NASTINESS #1

Plane-crashgate. Smythe's words: sinister. If the Democrats don't go after this with all they've got, they're a bunch of whimps. Yes, that's the partisan attack dog in me talking.

SQUISHY CATEGORIES AND THE JUDICIAL CONFIRMATION WARS

[That last post was still a draft, but now it's complete: sorry!] Lawrence Solum's discussion of the role of preferences and perceptions in the selection of judges for confirmation is illuminating. Solum applies a simple model of preference along two dimensions (realism-legalism and left-right in political ideology) and then argues that one of the problems in the current confirmation battle is that Reps and Dems mistakenly evaluate the position of their opponents' respective judicial picks along the realism-legalism axis. What I would want to add to his chart is a somewhat churlish horizontal line and shaded box, like this:

There is certainly a point at which "realism" runs counter to the rule of law, but that point is not simply the point at which any amount of realism is present. There are rhetorical gains to be had by portraying the judicial picks of one's partisan rivals as counter to the rule of law (and perhaps perceptions really do matter here and the claims that a given judge is too realist may not be wholly strategic).

MORE: Lawrence Solum gives a kind response to my post, here, by modestly outlining a few conditions under which moderate realism can be consistent with the rule of law: where there is (1) a high degree of political or ideological consensus, (2) a high degree of judicial ideological / methodological consensus (around moderate realism), and / or (3) a history of formalist judging that can act to contain, I gather, the more extreme reaches of realist judging. The unstated but clear implication is that the judicial culture and political culture in the U.S., right now, do not fulfill any of these three conditions -- look, for example, at his post in response to one of Jack Balkin's recent posts, here. Solum seems to be making the claim that there is no dominant approach among judges -- indeed, the fracturing of judicial theory (2) seems partly to be the result of attempts to come to terms with the high realism of the Warren and Burger courts (3). As for (1), although it may be true that American political discourse typically runs along more narrow bands than, say, German or French political discourse, differences over abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, criminal justice, and other high profile issues should definitely count against a finding of widespread political or ideological consensus.

One of the important but subtle questions that divides neoformalism from neorealism seems to be the different narrative mood of their respective accounts of judging. Not to overdo it, but it seems to me that for neoformalists, neorealists are cynical, and for neorealists, neoformalists are naive. These seem like very basic categories to me, almost like Heidegger's "basic moods," and the respective positions are not that far off in their evaluations of each other: neoformalism is about judicial and political self-limitation after the fall (into realism, as it were), and neorealism is (often) about a hard-nosed approach to power, including the forms of judicial power that neoformalism wants to renounce.

RMTCFG WINDOWS ATTACK

I keep getting a lot of hits on this topic, but haven't been able to find out much for myself. If someone comes here looking for information, and eventually finds some, do you mind sending me an e-mail? I'd be very grateful. I deleted my RMTCFG files some time ago and my computer seems to be working fine.

JAPANESE WAR POWERS BILL PASSES LOWER HOUSE.

An article in the Straits Times discusses briefly the legislation that is expected to become law next week. Here are the critical paragraphs of the article:

But the bills spell out for the first time the circumstances under which the government can mobilise Japan's armed forces and the powers the military would have in an emergency to requisition land and other property including private vehicles, fuel and food.

They also outline the responsibilities of central government and its power to order local governments in wartime, and expand the size and scope of the Security Council headed by the prime minister in national emergencies.

The Daily Yomuiri has a sunny piece on the partisan cooperation that produced the bills, and a more informative piece that puts the bills in a larger context and also praises the main opposition party for its support. A third article details some criticisms of the bills on human rights grounds. The Japan Times also has a roundup on the passage of the bill.

In the Asia Times, Alex Berkovsky has a critical piece warning of resurgent Japanese militarism.

YOU WOULDN'T LIKE HIM WHEN HE'S ANGRY.

I'm also fighting the blue books and wearing clothes that I don't mind being shredded, just in case.

WHISTLIN' DIXIE?

The web is a good place to find people with whom you disagree, and also a good place to try to hash out both ordinary and professional accounts of the world with people on a different side of a given topic. If I understand what's at issue on the question of the elusive southern strategy, there are really two questions: first, Jim and Steven don't think that there really was a southern strategy, or that if there was one, it wasn't a strong causal factor in the rise of the Republican south. The second question concerns the differences between Reps and Dems on race.

As for the first: In the wide world out there, causal stories are elusive because the world is complex. "Reality is overdetermined." I'm sure you've seen Polsby's (?) argument that air conditioning helped get Republicans elected in the south, because it allowed northern liberal Democrats to move south without sweating to death, and thus helped to move the Democratic party in the south more leftward and thus polarize both parties, to the advantage of Republicans who could pick up conservative southern Democrats. If for some odd reason you had to choose between the invention of air conditioning and Nixon's appeals to southern whites to explain the rise of Republicans in the south, it might be a tough choice. That doesn't mean that Republicans in the south haven't pushed the race issue really, really hard over the past thirty years, in a variety of ways that have varied in their subtlety, however you want to link that push to electoral success. A monocausal account that only looks at race would be silly, if for no other reason than the way that race gets talked about or not talked about is itself complex. But still, the Trent Lott affair shows Republicans overcompensating for a weakness that exposes them to some real heat. Republicans can grumble about unfair treatment of Lott, but the existence of ex-segregationist, ex-dixiecrats among their ranks is something that Republicans do have to explain, even if the first generation is finally dying off. With Trent Lott, Republicans chose a ritual ablution ceremony -- albeit only after the initial testy denials.

The long and short of it is that however you want to tell the causal story (and the details are interesting), what needs explaining is the fact that Democrats killed their segregationist wing and Republicans picked up conservative southerners and also ran hard on issues linked to race, such as "law and order" and, eventually, opposition to affirmative action. Opposition to affirmative action doesn't make you racist, to be sure. Attempting to whip up white resentment against a black opponent as Jesse Helms did against Harvey Gant, using affirmative action, is racist and should be acknowledged as such. By the way, as Steven notes, Jesse Helms may have been only one of 5 NC Rep Senators since Reconstruction, but numbers certainly do not tell the whole story about this nasty individual who represented NC for three decades.

On the second question -- how do Reps and Dems differ on race -- the issue is, if possible, even more muddy than the causal account, simply because causality at least can be approached relatively neutrally, but it's hard to find neutral commentators on such a question as the difference between Reps and Dems on race, even if you can frame the question in a fairly neutral fashion. As far as I'm concerned, you certainly don't need to be a racist in order to be a Republican, but that issue is really a distraction. Appealling to racial groups is a traditional move in American politics. It's something that both parties do, of course. But the main problem with Republican rhetoric on race is that they have to do a fancy dance every time someone claims that racial inequalities matter and should be addressed. First, Reps say that racism is in the past (and that current inequalities, by implication, are the fault of the individual). Then there are the standard Republican responses -- "grow the economy," get government off people's backs, allow private initiative to take over, use state power only when there is proof of discriminatory intent on the part of the state, cut social welfare programs, lock more people up for longer terms -- these policies are not necessarily great ideas to begin with, in my view, and they probably are not going to help people who face inequalities structured by race. If anything, many of these policies have strong racial overtones and racial histories to them.

So much for a crude outline of my private, partisan views. A more subtle discussion of race and the Republicans would look at something like colorblindness as a Republican constitutional ideal, for example. See Jack Balkin's discussions here and here, especially the second post, which explains the differences between the visions of the civil rights movement and "colorblind" opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

WAS THERE NO SOUTHERN STRATEGY?

I've seen this argument before, but I can't figure it out (from Poliblog):

the Republican party in the 1960s was the Party primarily responsible for passing the Civil Rights Bills, given the obstructionism of many Southern Democrats. Now, racial politics are part of the reason for the realignment in the South, but to focus solely on that issue to wholly miss the point. The bottom line is that conservative Southern Democrats were actually a better fit in the Republican Party, but Reconstruction-linked resentment had made it impossible to be a Republican in the South. However, over time it became clear that Southern states favored the Republicans in national elections for ideological reasons (not racism) and a slow transformation began that really only recently has been complete

I'm in fundamental agreement with the recent comments by Jack Balkin and Ted Rall (via Free Pie) that Dems need to learn how to play the game of political nastiness if they want to counter the Republican tide of the past few decades. At the very least they will need to learn to remind Republicans, continually, that there was such a thing as a southern strategy, and that this really did represent the Republican party's voluntary renunciation of the honor of being the heirs to "the party of Lincoln," and that it was Democratic willingness to take on the segregationist wing of their* party that drove the major civil rights bills of the 1960s. With all due respect to my political science colleague at Poliblog, it is emphatically not to miss the point to focus on these facts, facts that are within the living memory of my parents' generation.

I agree that the Republican party became a better "fit" for conservative Southern Democrats, but this is not simply because "resentment" over reconstruction magically disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s. It's because national-level Democrats tried to steal away black voters from Republicans among the growing minority populations in the north; by enacting civil rights legislation and winning enough northern votes to offset their southern losses, Democrats forged a new governing coalition in the 1950s and 1960s. Republicans responded by stealing the previously Democratic constituencies in the South through more or less explicit appeals to race, often mixed in with claims about "states' rights" and "law and order." Southern Democrats didn't just suddenly forgive Republicans for reconstruction and realize that there was an ideological kinship there, any more than northern black voters suddenly forgave Democrats for being the heirrs of Stephen Douglas and the confederacy. Both parties changed their tunes and reshuffled their constituencies. You may not like the tune that Republicans were singing in the 1970s -- the whole affair with Trent Lott indicated not that Democrats are unfair, but that Republicans know that they have an exposed flank here -- but you can't just wish it away. And Democrats sure as heck shouldn't let you!

*Apparently it's not sufficiently clear that I meant "their own" party, i.e., southern democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the civil rights bills. Sorry for the unclear possessive pronoun (but really it should be pretty clear given the context; everyone knows that there was a big split in the Democrats over segregation, and that the southern Democrats lost and then defected to the Republican party).

WAR GAMES IN RUSSIA

. . .Remember when Pravda was just a cool, comically distorted, subversive thing to read, something you couldn't find at your local bookstore and had to go to Northampton to get your hands on? Well, stories like these make me long for those days, when we had the certainties of the cold war and the insane but stable logic of mutually assured destruction. Politics, like life, is lived forward, of course, and it's futile to spend too much time reminiscing on the stability of the bipolar world of yesteryear. Still, this story plus the Russian split with Bush on Iraq, plus the struggles between Russia and the U.S. for dominance in central Asia, plus lots of other stuff, lead to some long-term worries that I don't have the categorical or theoretical acuteness to define precisely.

WISE WORDS FROM RITTENHOUSE

Read this important post. The phrase "age of unseriousness" is slowly making its way into my lecture notes for next semester.

THIS MADE ME LAUGH

. . .Bull's eye, from Jane Finch.

TOM DELAY HAS NERVE

Here's one of Tom Delay's complaints about what he calls the "Democrats' so-called economic proposal":

The Democrat proposal [b]usts a $30 billion hole in the budget.

I gather that Delay's complaint is that a $30 billion hole isn't big enough. Or he's just unbelievably slimy and is criticizing the Democrats for being budget busters while supporting the President, who is an even bigger budget buster (a fact both Bush and Delay like to omit in their descriptions of the President's plan).

I suppose both could be true. . .

MORE: Jim at OTB thinks I'm being naive, perhaps. Actually, I'm just in awe at Delay's amazing political abilities here, especially the ability to stifle anything resembling the normal human emotion of shame. I also want to highlight his good deeds as much as possible, since Tom Delay is one of the top ten reasons to vote Democrat in 2004, in my increasingly partisan opinion!

SAIMA WAHEED

The Pakistani Supreme Court heard arguments in the Saima Waheed case today. See the articles in Dawn and the Pak Tribune. This case has been in the court system for over half a decade, and there are over 200 similar cases also pending. Here's Human Rights Watch's discussion of the issues at stake:

[S]ince 1996 courts have admitted cases challenging an adult woman's right to marry of her own free will, ostensibly an established right under family laws. Judges have looked to theKoran to settle the question, in some cases holding that a Muslim woman's marriage is illegal without familial consent. A 1997 ruling by the Lahore High Court, in the highly publicized Saima Waheed case, upheld a woman's right to marry freely but called for amendments to the family laws, on the basis of Islamic norms, to enforce parental authority to discourage "love marriages."

See also another article in Dawn, this one an overview of the contemporary status of women in Pakistan. Here's the relevant paragraph on some of the controversies over so-called "love marriages":

Technically, for instance, there is no excuse for the huge controversies that have raged - both in and out of court - about women marrying men of their own choice. On reaching majority, this right is theirs. Yet, who can forget the unbelievable fury unleashed when Riffat Afridi, Saima Waheed, and Humaira Butt - to name a few - married men their families did not approve of. Two of the couples have had to leave the country, and the fate of Riffat's spouse, shot and badly injured in the court premises, remains unknown. Most recently, the brutal murder of Samia Sarwar when she moved to divorce an abusive husband (who threw her down the stairs in her last pregnancy) serves to remind us of the unwillingness of certain sections of our society to move into the twenty-first century. Even more disgraceful was that the Senate - whose purpose should be to contribute meaningfully to legislation - not only failed to pass a resolution condemning this barbaric act but certain senators went so far as to justify a brutal murder in the name of upholding customs and culture!

VERFASSUNGSSCHUTZ REPORT

If you're up for some light reading on the state of terrorism and political subversion in Germany, check out the Verfassungsschutzbericht 2002 just put out by German Interior Minister Otto Schily and the President of the Federal Bureau of Constitutional Protection (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz) Heinz Fromm. The report is accessible as a monster, 272 page PDF file here. For the short versions, you can read the Tagesspiegel article here, and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung article here.

The main lines of the story are that official numbers show that political violence was down slightly in Germany in 2002 over 2001's totals, from 14,275 to 12,933 crimes from right-wing extremists, and from 4,418 to 3,639 crimes from left-wing extremists. Membership in domestic extremists groups seems to have declined slightly, although the number of skinheads is up slightly (by 300, to 10,700). Membership in extremist groups with foreign connections is also down, partly due to German crack-downs on such parties as Hizb ut-Tahir, which has its base in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

A few things are worth noting about the report. First of all, while Germans have also responded to international terrorist threats by strengthening the powers of the Verfassungsschutzers, the distribution of those powers and their relationship to law enforcement is different from in the U.S. The Verfassungsschutzers are not a law-enforcement organization and have no powers to arrest or detain anyone, and no powers to seize any items or search homes or apartments. Much of what they do have power to do, however, would be considered a "search" under U.S. law: they can get permission to place informants, record conversations, take pictures, and, under certain conditions, place wiretaps and go through people's mail and other correspondence. And they do apparently share information with police and intelligence services. They claim that most of their observations are of publicly available information, however. Plus, anyone who is the subject of a Verfassungsschutz information operation has a right to view their records and a reason for the observation, and the bureau is subject to judicial oversight.

Control over the Verfassungsschutz has not been substantially limited over the past few years, as far as I understand it, unlike what appears to be the case in the U.S. after the PATRIOT Act. Nonetheless, the bureau's power to observe and record what would here be called "first amendment activities" would likely be frightening to civil liberties activists in the States, even though the right to access the files surely does add a layer of citizen protection that appears to be absent in the U.S. in practice.

Secondly, the bureau casts a wide net, including observations of the Church of Scientology and legal parties such as the NPD and the Republikaner, both extremist right-wing groups. The state tried to ban the NPD but the German constitutional court nixed the attempt a few weeks ago, partly because much of the evidence that the government used in arguing for the ban was prepared by paid informants in the party. (See this article from the Guardian on the court's ruling.)

Finally,here a few tidbits in the report itself that are missed by the papers:

• There are nine pages on efforts of Russian organizations to spy in Germany for diplomatic, military and economic purposes.


• Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Libya all are reported to have active intelligence-gathering operations in Germany, mostly for the purposes of gathering information on expatriate opposition forces. The Iraqis also had contacts with right-wing extremists.


• China and North Korea are also listed as having agents in Germany; the papers picked up on the North Korean connection only.

Interestingly, Schily's press release leaves out the names of particular countries involved in active spying efforts in Germany. To get the details -- such as they are, beneath the flat bureaucratic language -- you have to go to the report itself.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS

I generally like protests. . .the pageantry, the idea of a public commitment to political action, the cool signs and masks. But I'm not quite sure about the symbolism that is present here:

So, "no to a retirement age of 70+" because the elderly are scary? Because the grim reaper doesn't want a later retirement age? I don't get it. Oh well.

BITTER BITTER TRUTH

This site is called Whiskey Bar because you'll need a stiff one (exhibit A) after reading it.

Case in point.

WHY I LOVE POLITICS

On urging of national party leaders, Texas Republicans draw up a redistricting plan to solidify Republican seats. Texas Democrats hide out in Oklahoma to prevent a quorum and to attempt to defeat the bill. Texas troopers are sent to find them and "tell them" to come back, but because the Dems are across the state line, the police can't arrest them. Brilliant.

The Texas redistricting battle has been pretty spectacular this year. See Rick Hasen's links here and here to articles on a theft of a redistricting map, and a Houston Chronicle article on Democratic reactions to the map itself, which apparently would lock in Republican seats in 19 of 32 Texas districts.

MORE: Kevin Drum has got the map, and Atrios has got some interesting tidbits here and here.

THAT'S MISTER DOCTOR TO YOU. . .

Before I start what is going to be a week of grading, grading, grading, and grading, let me say something brief about the fantastic weekend I just had.

Just pulled in from a whirlwind Northeast metropolitan tour in which I saw my family and several friends. My brother's graduation ceremony at Berklee College of Music was a trip: this year's graduation speakers and honorary doctorate recipients were Diane Reeves and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith (their clunky, graphics-heavy site is here). Yes, now it is DOCTOR Steven Tyler. Reeves's speech was beautiful: she reminded the students that the day was for them, and that the love that brought people to celebrate their graduation is a phenomenon that structures the world in a fundamental fashion. Well, she put it more eloquently than that, of course. She also sang a bit.

Tyler mostly talked about himself, but he's humorous and also inspiring in his own way. And not addled, actually.

The long and the short of it is that somewhere there is a picture of my brother with a big, goofy grin on his face, shaking hands with Steven Tyler. Updates will, of course, follow.

Another highlight of the trip was meeting my blog dad, Josh of Oxblog fame, for a few hours in midtown Manhattan, who, as he put it, has brought Oxford's (dismal) weather with him. Before next year is out, if all goes well, we may have to start calling him Doctor Chafetz before too long, also. . .

The pleasure of that paragraph was in putting Josh and Steven Tyler in the same line of thought.