D-DAY AUS DEUTSCHER SICHT

Die Zeit's Richard Herzinger has some thoughts on D-Day, here.

WOWSAH

Speaks for itself:

The Texas Republican Party platform committee wants to add a provision in the document urging that it be made a felony for a government official to perform a same-sex wedding -- or issue a same-sex marriage license.

Proposed changes to the state platform will be debated by the full convention later this week.

The current platform opposes same-sex marriage, but the committee adopted a change that says officials who perform same-sex weddings should go to prison.

Via AMERICAblog.

For some more fun with the Texas GOP platform, go here. I wish I was making this stuff up.

FRANCE'S GAVIN NEWSOM

Read about Noël Mamère, Green party mayor of Bègles, who will perform France's first gay marriage tomorrow. See the BBC, here, and the Christian Science Monitor here.

And for folks interested in political parties on the right: Le Pen has been in some difficulty on this issue recently. L'Humanite quotes him as saying, "why not?" See the original story in Le Monde here. But a press release from his party claims that his comments were meant in an ironic fashion. See also TV5's story, here.

And Le Monde asks what appear to me to be the right questions:

La société est invitée à réfléchir sur son destin. Bref, à son avenir. Se sent-elle assez forte, assez en accord avec ses valeurs de tolérance, d'égalité et de fraternité pour admettre le mariage homosexuel ? Pense-t-elle suffisamment dominer les mille et une variantes de procréation médicalement assistée qui recomposent en permanence notre vision du couple et des hommes ?

2ND CIRCUIT NEWS

Check it out.

LIGHT IT UP

Bonfire of the Vanities up at Poliblog. My favorite -- this post, just in time for summer boating season. Glad I saw this well after lunch.

GOOD DISCUSSION ON MEDIA BIAS

On the Kojo Nnamdi show, now. A propos my last point post: accuracy suffers when members of the media are afraid of appearing to be un-American.

THESE REACTIONS THREE

1) The Curmudgeonly Clerk has some thoughtful things to say about my post on Brit Hume.

2) My good friend P. writes to chide me for quoting Glenn Reynolds out of context, and for putting words in his mouth (or the online equivalent):

Reynolds had talked about prosecution for sedition after publication of print media, and of libel law. So your example wasn't responsive to the examples he was holding up, and to the point he was making about the media not about spoken speech elsewhere. You avoided the conflict by the convenient expedient of not including Reynolds' main points (perhaps unintentionally) in your excerpt. But the moral is: this is what comes of quoting little snippets and leaving out context.

And:

Since when does "Maybe. Maybe not" = "must"? If one of your students had asserted such an equivalency, what would you have said? [Note: additional sentence here deleted. --BEM]

And:

[Y]ou inferred a sinister import to Reynolds' statement, linking it to the guy who said Bild-like efforts were "the attempt to root out internal enemies." [How] would [you] respond to a student who drew such a parallel between 'root[ing] out internal enemies" and Reynolds' ambivalence?

I'm not sure that my post does all of the things that P. claims. First, I wrote the post assuming that readers would take the time to follow the link to the original post by Reynolds, which is very short, almost elusively so, as is typical (and P. suggests that I criticize Stephen Den Beste instead, since his comments are meatier). That's the point of the link. Click through! It won't hurt!

Second, I don't say* that Reynolds is definite in his causal account (and he does cite Brandenburg v. Ohio, a case that has nothing to do with the press, so his argument is meant to be broader than a discussion of press freedoms alone). But Reynolds does provide a causal account, and as far as I can tell, bases his conclusion on the assumption that the causal account is true.

(P. points out that I write "patriotic," in quotes, and that is misleading; Reynolds uses the term "un-American," and I took the terms ["unpatriotic" and "un-American"] to be equivalent. They might not be. [And at any rate I shouldn't have put "patriotic" in quotes.])

My broad claims are simple: a) contra Reynolds's causal account (or causal hunch?), press and speech protections flourished because the press and radical groups were organized and not arise because of public support for the press or of radical groups (thus, public perceptions of the press and of unpopular groups can fluctuate safely), and b) Reynolds is veering dangerously close to asking the press to join the bandwagon in proving its "Americanness."

Reynolds is certainly ambivalent in his post, as P. notes, but in my view this is not a subject about which one should be ambivalent. Let's imagine that the FOX poll that Reynolds relies upon is not flawed, methodologically. In other words, let's imagine that FOX did a different poll that had two characteristics: it rotated the responses about the source of problems in Iraq (just as it rotated the responses about attitudes toward candidates), and it didn't prompt subjects to blame the press for problems in Iraq. (As I note here, the FOX poll in question did in fact do both of these things, but apparently no one is interested in pointing that out; in my view, spreading the results of a misleading poll makes you complicit in the deception that the poll is trying to spread, but I suppose that's a bit severe.) Let's imagine that people really do believe that pressrooms are filled with the "un-American." What should one say about those public perceptions? Should one encourage them, perhaps? Should one warn the press that they should try to appear less "un-American" lest they suffer the consequences?

I'd prefer to ask some more questions, namely: do we in fact have a press that is "un-American"? What are the incentives for incumbents to blame the supposedly "un-American" press for current policy failures? And how does the branding effort of FOX news play into all of this? After all, if people believe that the press is un-American, then clearly FOX has potential market share to conquer!

3) And finally, reader J. writes:

I'm sure you realize that your limited efforts [to quantify media bias] don't prove [anything] one way or another. Perhaps this is only anecdotal but I was watching on PBS friday night, hot date night, let me tell you, [a man after my own heart! --BEM] their Washington Weekly program and Gloria Borger was discussing a recently postponed Senate Judiciary Cmte hearing on Same Sex marriage in a larger discussion of the issue on Capital Hill. She said that it seems that the postponement was because "perhaps they [Republicans] feel they don't have the support they thought they had." The unfortunate statement is actually wrong. It was common knowledge that Gov. Romney decided he needed to be in Mass rather than Washington, D.C. when the marriage liscenses started being issued last week. That said, I don't automatically presume she is biased in a liberal way, I do think that she didn't do her fact checking on the reason why the hearing was delayed. The assumption that she made, and was presumed to be fact, was where I think bias comes from whether it is from the left or the right. Fox news does the same thing. They don't fact check everything and get things wrong, leaving the assertion that x is true when perhaps the answer is D.

I'll let J.'s thoughts speak for themselves, and I won't even check them. I'm not a journalist. Well, not now, at any rate.



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

* To be precise, I write:

he seems to view public support for press freedom as connected -- causally -- to public views on the press itself, and in particular, public views on the trustworthiness and patriotism of the press.

So I should write now: "for the purposes of the post, Reynolds argues that public support" etc.

ISRAELI SUPREME COURT ON IDF DUTIES TOWARD CIVILIANS

From Reuters:

Israel's top court has told the army to safeguard "the lives and dignity" of Palestinian civilians in combat operations, a ruling welcomed on Monday by human-rights groups alarmed by the bloodiest Gaza raid in years.

Answering a petition by four rights groups over the army's sweep into the Rafah refugee camp, the Supreme Court said the military bore prime responsibility for civilians in areas it controlled and laid down specific humanitarian guidelines.

"When civilians enter a zone of combat...everything must be done in order to protect the dignity of the local civilian population," the court said in its ruling, issued on Sunday.

The court said the army was responsible for ensuring provision of food, water and medical supplies to the local population during such incursions and must take "all measures required" to ensure civilians' safety.

Such duties extended to the dead, the court said. It ordered the army to ensure a "dignified burial" for Palestinians killed -- an obligation it said the army had not met in Rafah.

The case is Physicians for Human Rights v. Commander of the IDF Forces in the Gaza Strip, HCJ 4764/04 (html here, PDF here).The following paragraph from S.C. President Barak's opinion (para. 68) sums up the Court's conclusions:

In the framework of our discussion regarding the internalization of humanitarian laws, we emphasize that it is the duty of the military commander not only to prevent the army from harming the lives and dignity of the local residents (the “negative” duty: see supra para. 11). He also has a “positive” duty (para. 11). He must protect the lives and dignity of the local residents. For example, regarding the burial of local residents, the military commander was satisfied that the corpses were transferred to A-Najar Hospital. But this was not enough. He is obligated to do his utmost to ensure that the bodies be brought to a dignified burial according to local custom. He must make prior arrangements in order to ensure there are sufficient supplies of food and water. Damage to the water supply is something that can be anticipated from the outset, and if it cannot be avoided, a solution to this problem must be prearranged. Supplies of medicines, medical equipment and food should also be prepared in advance. Harm to local residents is expected and if, despite every effort to limit this, in the end there will be casualties among residents, this must be prepared for from the outset. Respondent should not rely solely on international and Israeli aid organizations to solve these problems, though their aid is important. The recognition that the basic duty belongs to the military commander must be internalized, and it is his job to adopt different measures from the outset so that he can fulfill his duty on the battlefield.

ISRAELI SUPREME COURT RULING ON CITIZENSHIP

From Ha'aretz:

The Law of Return applies to non-Jews who come to Israel and during their stay undergo a conversion process in Israel or outside it, the High Court of Justice ruled yesterday.

The ruling, which passed by a 7-4 majority, is another link in the chain of decisions concerning non-Orthodox conversion. However, the court declined to take a stand on the question of whether Reform or Conservative conversion can be the basis for recognition.

The justices requested the Interior Minister and the state to inform the court of their position on this question within 45 days, after which it will rule on the question of "Who is a Jew?" according to the Law of Return.

For comment, see Israpundit here, and this roundup from the attractively designed blog Religion & Society.

IRAQ, THE TWELVE STEP PLAN

From Defective Yeti.

THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY, 21ST CENTURY EDITION

(Title with apologies to Brad DeLong.)

William at Southern Appeal points to an article by Paul Starobin in the Atlantic Monthly called "The Dawn of the Daddy State." Starobin writes:

[T]he necessary response to terrorism is not to limit the power of the state but, rather, to bolster it, so as to preserve the basic order without which the defenseless citizen has no prospect of enjoying the splendors of liberty. In the wake of Madrid, in the wake of 9/11, in the wake of suicide bombings in Moscow subway stations and Jerusalem cafés, the state is impelled to become even more intrusive and muscular than it already is. How well today's leaders meet this obligation to construct more-vigilant states is very likely to stand as one of history's most important criteria for assessing their stewardship.

An authoritarian push is often seen as coming from above, forced on an unsuspecting public by would-be autocrats. But today's global trend toward what might be called the Daddy State is propelled by the anxious demands of majority blocs of citizens. . . .

[W]e are at the dawn of a popularly sanctioned movement toward greater authoritarianism in the domain of what is now fashionably called "homeland security."

. . .

Life in a Daddy State global order promises to be a somewhat mixed affair. Life will be best for majority groups in well-fortified but not overly heavy-handed Daddy States. As ever, life will be rough for anyone under the boot-heel of an unconstrained autocrat. But perhaps the most terrible fate awaits those trapped in the primeval chaos, without any sort of state protection. That condition of extreme vulnerability is borne by, for instance, Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. And should state-building fail in Afghanistan and Iraq, their peoples, too, will inhabit this sort of limbo, in which, as Hobbes memorably wrote, "there is no place for Industry ... no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

Starobin then evokes Hobbes for the proposition that security is the most important aim of the state.

William finds the article frightening:

This article gave me quite a jolt. The central state is more involved in our lives today than ever before. Yet, we see the intellectuals calling for more state power--calling for "authoritarianism." James Madison once observed that "it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." Fear of foreign perils, Madison realized, can easily persuade a freedom-loving people to voluntarily part with liberties they would otherwise consider indispensable. In Thomas Jefferson's words, the people are "made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves."

For a contrary view, see this blogger.

In the context of the regime typology that he employs, Starobin probably gets the ordering right, at least for most people: if your only choices are constrained autocracies, unconstrained autocracies, or statelessness, the first is better than the second, and the second is better than the third. In good Hobbesian fashion, though, this description of available state forms narrows the horizon too quickly.

In addition, Starobin is not particularly interested (at least here) in the ways in which politicians can inflame and encourage popular fear of terrorists like al Qaeda in order to increase state power. We have seen this kind of argument before, at the beginning of the last century in the U.S., when anarchist bombings helped create a climate that produced harsher approaches to radical groups and political parties. But the popular demand for such approaches should not be overstated. First, most law enforcement took place at a local level, so individual citizens probably felt that they had a stronger hand in participating in collective efforts at security. This also could provide a certain kind of check on police power, if one that was highly contingent on circumstance and organization, as the quote from Richard Frost's The Mooney Case below shows. Not sure about how widespread such checks were, but it is worth thinking about at least, especially if you are interested in the possibilities of popular checks on increased state authority.

Second, popular fear does not exist as such, any more than popular demands for particular kinds of legislation. Popular fears can be shaped by various forces, including (and perhaps especially) the news and entertainment media. Think of William Randolph Hearst. And popular demands are mediated through the activities of organized interest groups. Think of the role of the Native Sons of the Golden West in pushing for Japanese internment (see here, for example).

SC OF CANADA'S LIBRARY

if you want to know what the library of the Supreme Court of Canada is acquiring, here's how.

USAID CUTS AID TO PANAMANIAN COURTS

From the article "Aid pipeline to RP courts runs dry
" (Via CaribPundit):

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has reassigned aid money previously destined for the Panamanian courts to other, non-governmental legal reform efforts. According to a US Embassy source, this move was made because the aid program --- most of whose funds for this fiscal year have already been spent --- had certain conditions attached that had been agreed when Adán Arnulfo Arjona was the Supreme Court’s presiding magistrate, but after César Pereira Burgos succeeded Arjona he would not agree to those conditions and subsequent negotiations between Pereira and USAID proved fruitless.

[T]he US is also interested in procedural reforms that would allow cases without merit to be more easily dismissed and oral testimony in open court rather than time-consuming pretrial prosecutorial interrogations with the subsequent reading of non-verbatim transcripts at trial. Pereira, according the embassy source, has “philosophical” objections to the latter suggestions, which he considers to be an attempt to impose the Anglo-American Common Law system on Panamanian justice.

. . .According to law professor and radio talk show host Miguel Antonio Bernal, there is a combined effort by the various international aid donors to Panama courts --- including the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) --- to apply economic pressure against this country’s court system. The causes, according to Bernal, are multiple and complex, including intra-judicial and intra-governmental power struggles and the Panamanian judiciary’s sordid reputation for corruption. However, Bernal alleged, the last straw appears to have been an attempt by Foreign Minister Harmodio Arias Cerjak to appoint a Mireyista to take charge of all foreign aid coming to the Panamanian courts, notwithstanding that faction’s severe defeat in the recent elections.

ON NOT BEING CYNICAL

Just heard Brit Hume mock Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday for saying that journalists should be critical of authority. Don't have the transcript, but it sounded to me like Hume said "ah, the romance of journalism. . .speak truth to power." Would be funny if it weren't so revealing about the journalistic ethos of Fox's managing editor and chief Washington correspondent.

If I were having a discussion with another teacher, and if, in response to my belief that the role of teaching is to get students to develop their capacities, that teacher mocked me with something like "ah, the romance of teaching: Humboldt, Socrates, Mill, oh my!" -- I'd think that person was irretrievably corrupt.

What is journalism about if it's not about checking authority? A network that bills itself as featuring "the most powerful name in news" has already given its answer, I think.

MORE:

Here's the transcript from the exchange:

WILLIAMS: No, I think [American journalism] should tilt in a way that would challenge authority.

HUME: Ah, here we go. Ah, yes.

WILLIAMS: You don't think journalism should, in fact, challenge...

HUME: Ah, the romance of journalism, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: To challenge authority, speak truth to power.

WILLIAMS: Is that wrong, Brit?

KRISTOL: They should challenge liberal authority.

WILLIAMS: They should challenge all authority.

Funny stuff. Makes my side hurt.

FREE SPEECH ACCORDING TO INSTA

There are two things that are odd about this post by Glenn Reynolds.

Reynolds writes:

[W]hat happens if the public comes to regard the press as untrustworthy and un-American? Will the First Amendment continue to be regarded expansively? Maybe. Maybe not.

First, and perhaps most interestingly, he seems to view public support for press freedom as connected -- causally -- to public views on the press itself, and in particular, public views on the trustworthiness and patriotism of the press.

What's odd about that claim is that 1st Amendment freedoms have not only been extended to groups that the public has found trustworthy, although public support no doubt helps. Consider the following passage from Richard Frost's The Mooney Case (1968):

The IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] was repeatedly engaged in 'free speech' crusades on the West Coast. Wherever local police interfered with IWW street-corner preaching, Wobblies from all over the West descended upon the offending town to exercise their constitutional right of free speech until thrown into jail. Singing, rioting prisoners filled the jails until local authorities, harassed by the overflow and the attendant embarrassing publicity, called a truce, expelled the prisoners from town, and left street speakers unmolested. As prisoners the Wobblies were roughly, sometimes brutally, handled. In a sense that was what they wanted, for it helped inspire fellow radicals to greater efforts on their behalf and deprived the police of moderate community support. (11-12)

What this passage suggests is that the history of protections of speech rights has much in common with the history of other kinds of political goods: organized interests are able to secure the goods, and unorganized interests are at a disadvantage. Note that few of Frost's "moderates" would probably view the Wobblies as "patriotic." My memory of the argument in David Rabban's Free Speech in its Forgotten Years is that Rabban makes a similar point: radical and unpopular groups were instrumental in pushing free speech arguments, and their successes had little to do with an increase in the popularity of their substantive message.

Second, Reynolds seems unaware of any sense in which he might be contributing to perceptions that the media is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. First, his post bleeds quite smoothly from untrustworthiness and un-American-ness to "malfeasance and self-serving behavior." Don't quite know how to read that one. But, secondly, he also links to the crappy poll put out by Fox news that I discuss here (you remember: it's the one that is designed to prompt respondents for bad opinions on the press; the only interesting thing to be said about this poll is that with it, Fox News is both creating the story and furthering its own brand image).

This poll is an expression of a worrisome journalistic practice, one that has close historical parallels with the German experience with Axel Springer and the Bild Zeitung's self-described patriotic, anti-radical denunciation trip in the early 1970s. The most famous depiction of Bild in action is the Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Boell's story made into a movie by Volker Schloendorff.

The lesson of Lost Honor is partly that the attempt to root out internal enemies is itself a graver danger to freedom than the internal enemies themselves. The press can be enlisted in the cause of rooting out internal enemies.

Even through its polling, Fox is promoting a brand of journalism that veers too close to Springer's Bild for my taste. And Reynolds's view that the press must appear to be "patriotic" if it wants to safeguard free speech values seems a convenient justification for Bild-like efforts.

MORE: See above.