Proceeding where Kucinich fears to tread?

Is there anyone besides Dennis Kucinich who's still interested in impeachment at this late date in the second Bush term? I doubt it. Besides, prosecution in the courts is the new rage.

Normally, in our country, a prosecution is conducted by the government in a criminal case. I suppose one can say that one "prosecutes" a civil action by pursuing it toward completion. There is, after all, a concept known as "failure to prosecute" as a result of which a civil case that's not being pursued is dismissed.

But somehow, I don't think that's what the criminally insane people at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover had in mind when they announced they were holding a conference to plan the "prosecution" of the President, Vice President, and other current and former administration officials:

A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.

"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."

"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s."

The blog Above the Law wonders: "Hangings? C'mon, Dean Velvel -- shouldn't a liberal like yourself view that as violating the Eighth Amendment?" And Legal Blog Watch says: "Three citizens of Andover -- the town where MSL is situated -- were among those hanged for witchcraft as part of the 17th century Salem witch trials. These days, however, the town is a chichi Boston bedroom community known as home to equally chichi Phillips Academy. No doubt, any proposal to erect a gallows on the MSL campus might not make it past the local planning board."

But the folks at the MS of L at A are apparently dead serious.

The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, among others.

No post on such looniness would be complete without some mockery of the institution itself. I'll leave that to Above the Law, which notes:

Since the Massachusetts School of Law isn't even ABA-accredited, one would expect its alums to have an especially tough time finding legal employment. They're immediately eligible to sit for the bar exam in just two jurisdictions. For more details, see here.

Well, if they can't find employment elsewhere, maybe they can go prosecute President Bush. Do you need to be admitted to the bar for that?

I don't think so. All you need is a furlough from St. Elizabeth's.

UPDATE: Point of Law has more background on the school and its dean, Larry Velvel, while the ABA Journal has a long quotation from the man:

Velvel tears into President Bush as well, writing: “The man ultimately responsible for the torture had a unique preparation and persona for the presidency: he is a former drunk, was a serial failure in business who had to repeatedly be bailed out by daddy's friends and wanna-be-friends, was unable to speak articulately despite the finest education(s) that money and influence can buy, has a dislike of reading, so that 100-page memos have to be boiled down to one page for him, is heedless of facts and evidence, and appears not even to know the meaning of truth.”

And DUmmie FUnnies has a long laugh about it.

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Productive aging and unproductive speaking

The Jewish Council for the Aging had its annual dinner last week, honoring Phil Donahue with the "Productive Aging Award."

Now, if you have even a clue about Donahue's career, including the fact (announced by JCA at the link above) that he was "the Executive Producer of Body of War," a documentary about "Tomas Young, a severely disabled Iraq War veteran and his turbulent postwar adjustments," you might think it would be appropriate for a non-political organization to ask the man to keep his speech non-political.

Then again, in the Jewish community, as in so many sectors of the left wing in this country, no one has ever spoken to a person who didn't agree with the whole litany of left-wing dogma. It's the old virtual echo chamber out there.

So Donahue did what any sentient being would have predicted: He used his speech at JCA to deliver a 45-minute tirade against Bush, the war, and today's leadership generally. The news article in the Washington Jewish Week is not online, but here is the key paragraph:

In his remarks, Donahue decried President George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, blasted those who call war critics and other dissenters unpatriotic, lamented that news media have cut foreign news bureaus, complained that the Jeffersonian ideal of democracy is "running off track" and wondered if today's leadership would support the Bill of Rights.

The article says that Donahue received a standing ovation when presented with the award, but "mild applause" at the end of his tirade (possibly because the people in attendance were impatient for dessert). The article also portentously notes that Donahue "did not mention the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

The other cute little nugget in the article is that Donahue traced his awakening to a 1960s meeting with Noam Chomsky, "who told him, 'Never trust the state.'"

So the question is: Negligence or recklessness on the part of JCA? I vote for the latter. I figure what most likely happened is that they decided to honor Donahue, and no one worried about the politics, because they all are in basic agreement with him. But they probably just didn't expect him to say publicly at the dinner what they all say privately.

From my perspective, as a minor contributor to JCA, there are plenty of organizations out there in need of money that don't give honors to loud-mouthed left-wing fools. And I intend to give the money that I used to give to JCA to one of those organizations.

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Shut up and play the piano

I'm sorry to report that Leon Fleisher, the pianist, is an ignorant fool.

Techically, I'm not reporting that; he reported it himself in an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday.

The story he told is that he was honored by the Kennedy Center but didn't want to have to attend the White House ceremony, because, when it comes to the current occupant of that building, he's completely deranged.

Come on, man! You're an artist! Don't just use the same tired language about "shredding the Constitution," etc.!

Anyway, the "powers that be" told him not to rock the boat. Go and be silent. So he went and presented a daisy to the military thugs who were pointing rifles at him.

OK, I'm kidding about that. But it was close; he went and wore "a peace symbol around my neck and a purple ribbon on my lapel."

And then wrote about it in the Post.

Totally true fact: During a significant part of his musical career, Fleisher was unable to use his right hand and performed works written entirely for the left hand.

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As knitters go, so go the mah jongg players

As Jimmy Durante might have said, "Everybody wants ta get inta da act."

I saw a bumper sticker this morning -- on a BMW, an SUV, no less -- that read "Knitters Against Bush: Don't Unravel Our Rights." Link here, if you want to buy one, you sick human being.

SOMEWHAT RELATED: Darleen Click at protein wisdom quotes some of the commenters at Huffington Post on the wedding of Jenna Bush, now scheduled for May. Speaking of sick human beings suffering from BDS.

BONUS: Click here to Ace's to see a political teeshirt that gave me a chuckle: "Pot Makes You Vote Wrong."

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Classy political ad

A couple of nurses' unions are running an ad campaign that says it's too bad Dick Cheney isn't dead.

They say it a little differently, but that's the secondary message, at least.

The ad, which appeared in several newspapers today, starts with a Times clip headlined "Cheney Treated in Hospital For an Irregular Heartbeat." And the big follow-up line to that is: "If he were anyone else, he'd probably be dead by now."

To see the whole ad in PDF, click here. It's a very classy job. And by classy, I mean having no class whatsoever.

Technically, I suppose, this would be called Cheney Derangement Syndrome, but I'm putting it in the BDS category, anyway.

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Sunday linkfest

Tonight's linkfest is divided into categories.

1. Bush Derangement Syndrome.

BDS at the New York Public Library: an exhibit of fake mug shots of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. (via HotAir)

And BDS in Gene Weingarten's column in the Post, which actually is mildly amusing, for a change.

2. The Muhammed Teddy Bear in the Sudan.

When a British school teacher is put on trial in the Sudan for letting her 7-year-old student name a teddy bear "Muhammed," after himself, and Sudanese Islamist radicals are calling for her death, Amnesty International is nowhere to be seen.

In response, the inventors of "Islamic Rage Boy" come up with some new toys and games. (via Ace)

3. Inventions and patents.

Speaking of inventions, I discovered the InventorSpot blog through a link at HotAir. The link was to a post discussing a patent for a support for men's foreheads over a urinal. If you think I'm kidding, you'd better click that link right now. Personally, I see the need for such a device in airplanes and trains -- especially the latter, which make the business hardly smooth sailing (to mix metaphors). I wonder how much good it would do, however, in a bar.

Also at IS are two other useful inventions. One combines the scent of lavender, pumpkin pie, doughnuts and licorice to perform the function formerly performed by certain well known male potency drugs. (On the other hand, maybe pomegranate juice would be enough.)

The other is a tape-on pad to absorb unpleasant emissions from the southbound end of a northbound human. This one is interesting to me, not simply because I have an odd attraction to flatulence humor but because it relates to the punchline to my first Hillary photo comic -- "Hillary begins a conversation."

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The Dixie Chicks of bridge

(Click to enlarge.)

I was actually a two-letter man in high school. Math team and bridge team.

If that sounds incredibly dorky, you don't know the half of it. I was on the "B" team in bridge. One of the highlights of my high school career was beating the "A" team in our only match against each other. One of the lowlights was narrowly losing the final round, the veritable World Series of Bridge, to the feared X High School.

But it wasn't too long after high school that I became disillusioned with bridge. Some of it was just dealing with the morons who played in tournaments. At my name-brand college, where all the children were way above average, bridge tournaments took approximately forever, because all the Philosopher Kings (no pun intended) had to ponder the geopolitical and philosophical implications of every single card played. I, on the other hand, had played tournaments in high school under the watchful eye of a director known for her motto "Play fast and make mistakes." I couldn't stand how slow things were.

Another part of the reason I became disillusioned with bridge was the cheating. Bridge has a long history of cheating -- even at the international level. Back in 1965, Reese and Schapiro caused an international furor over accusations of cheating. Later on, the international tournaments were set up with numerous devices to prevent cheating. Reflected well on the players, didn't it?

Most of all, I didn't like the way partners treated each other. We'd see long-time married couples yelling at each other for failing to reach the right contract, or for supposedly misplaying the hand. One older woman denounced her husband, because he "bid like a fish." Another earned the nickname "Mrs. Results."

In fact, when I became engaged to Mrs. Attila, I made her promise she would never learn how to play bridge. That's a true story, by the way.

So when I read about the yahoo who held up a sign reading "We didn't vote for Bush" at an international bridge tournament, I can't say it surprised me. She was probably signaling the number of spades she was holding.

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Picking the right ethicist

To quote Dilbert, "90% of happiness is picking the right ethicist." So let's be happy by picking the right ethicist to roll our collective eyes over.

Why do people actually write to Randy Cohen, author of the "The Ethicist" column in the New York Times Sunday Magazine? Do they actually think he provides useful ethical advice? What about asking him questions that involve politics, or etiquette, or social advice, but not so much ethics?

And more important, why does he answer these letters as if they involved ethics?

As I've said before, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This Sunday's column answers two questions. The first is written by a man whose wife's sister is recently separated after 15 years of marriage and is now living with a boyfriend. The sister invites the man and his wife to visit and stay overnight. The man doesn't like the idea of seeming to bless the relationship between the sister and this fellow, whom he derides as the sister's "cohabiter du jour." The wife, whose sister it is, says is it not for them to judge.

Before I discuss Cohen's response, I'd like someone to explain why this an ethics question. It's more an "Ann Landers" kind of social advice question. One may take a moral stand here, too, but it's hard to see the decision either way as one involving ethics.

If you've ever read Cohen's column, you'll know what the response is. Whenever anyone is troubled by what we old-fashioned folks think of as an illicit sexual relationship, Cohen shows off his superior, open-minded moral code: anything goes, except perhaps sex with a Republican. (For a wonderful TV anecdote on this subject, see the beginning of this article in the Weekly Standard.)

And he can't possibly miss an opportunity, in obiter dicta, to invoke the horrors of the Bush administration: "A principled refusal can be estimable in the public arena. For example, as a protest against the war in Iraq, the poet Sharon Olds declined an invitation from Laura Bush to attend the fifth National Book Festival and eat breakfast at the White House." In contrast, he says, a protest is typically not appropriate in private life, where understanding and tolerance are required.

The second letter to "The Ethicist" begins: "Two years ago, I lived in Singapore, and my apartment was robbed." OK, technically, his apartment was burglarized, not robbed, but let that pass. The writer discovers, upon returning to Singapore two years later that the robber/burglar was punished with 10 years in the clink and 10 strokes of the cane. "The sentence seems excessive and the caning barbaric." Mind you, this is the letter writer, not Randy Cohen saying this. I guess that's why he'd write to Cohen. "I want to appeal for mercy on his behalf, but must I accept Singaporean justice? When in Asia, do I do as the Asians do?"

Probably the correct answer is "Rob him again!" But that isn't Cohen's answer. The victim should speak up, he says, with proper sensitivity to local values.

That really would not be such a terrible answer, I suppose, if it were concluded there. But that is not the job of "The Ethicist." His job is to reaffirm continually that ethics and liberal pieties are one and the same.

So Cohen concludes thus: "Such appeals cut both ways. One hundred and fifty years ago, Europeans criticized America's slave-owning and, more recently, our treatment of prisoners. It can be instructive to have one's conduct examined from another perspective." Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, anyone?

Of course, this totally undercuts his advice of showing sensitivity to local values. The victim could validly make an appeal in his specific case based on his own sense of appropriate punishment. But Cohen, having advised him thus, now seems to call for the victim to make a global attack on Singaporean justice.

Never mind this. The point of Cohen's column is not so much to guide behavior as to validate how rich, self-satisfied liberals think.

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Is Maryland risking its congressional representation?

Last month, I wrote about the bill passed in Maryland that would "throw out the traditional winner-takes-all method of assigning electoral votes for the state and substitute a rule that gives all of the state's electoral votes to the national popular vote winner," if enough states passed similar legislation. I analyzed this as a manifestation of Bush Derangement Syndrome, in which Democrats were refighting the 2000 presidential election.

Now, via Instapundit, I notice there's a decent argument that joining the interstate voting compact (which is how this is described) risks depriving states of their congressional representation under section 2 of the 14th amendment, which says that "when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."

Please read the argument I've linked, but the basic idea is that if a state ignores the vote of its citizens and throws its electoral votes to the popular-vote winner (assume for now it's someone different), that would abridge their right to vote for electors. The constitutional remedy would be to reduce the state's representation proportionately.

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Maryland fights the last war

How deeply has Bush Derangement Syndrome been absorbed into the bloodstream of the Democrats? I can't say with any precision, but if recent events in Maryland are indicative, the answer is very deeply.

Let's imagine for a moment that in a particular presidential election, you vote for some loud, angry moron with a huge carbon footprint, and the election is very close. Your candidate wins the national popular vote by about half a percent but loses by a handful of votes in one specific state, whose electoral votes completely determine the winner. Your candidate choses not to recognize the results gracefully -- as even Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon did in the face of voter fraud several decades earlier -- but instead forces the country to endure six weeks of recounts, invoking new standards for eligible ballots and (naturally) bringing multiple lawsuits before finally giving up.

As a result of this, you are royally p'ed off, and you throw around accusations that the election has been stolen. It becomes far worse for you, because you absolutely despise the guy who wins the election. Perhaps you come to believe that the next election is stolen, too, even though it isn't nearly as close.

So about six years later, you decide you're going to shoot the winner -- metaphorically speaking -- while he's down. You aim low to hit him.

Unfortunately for you, you miss and hit your foot by mistake.

If this story applies to you, you might be a member of the Maryland legislature, which has just passed a bill that would throw out the traditional winner-takes-all method of assigning electoral votes for the state and substitute a rule that gives all of the state's electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The text of the state senate's bill is here.

The joke's on you. Maryland is a blue state for the foreseeable future. Under current electoral-vote rules, Maryland's electoral votes will be a lock for the Democrats' candidate. If this change is ever going to make any difference at all, it can only be to throw Maryland's electoral votes to a Republican candidate who narrowly wins the popular vote but loses the electoral vote under traditional rules. Any damn fool knows this. The only reason for Democrats in Maryland to support this bill is Bush Derangement Syndrome. By changing the way electoral votes are assigned, they get to refight the election of 2000 and to say to themselves, "If only this rule had been in effect . . ."

Yes, I know this bill doesn't go into effect until enough other states, whose electoral votes represent a majority, pass similar legislation. That doesn't alter my analysis. It's the blue states that are most likely to demand changes in the electoral college.

So how can this legislation help the Democrats? Only if the country as a whole eventually moves toward a pure popular vote. A pure popular vote regime enhances the value of voter fraud, which traditionally favors the Democrats. This is a large enough problem at the state level. In a national election, every single vote in the country could affect the result, and even if the Democrat won in California by two million votes, the Republican would have an interest in reducing that margin by even 50,000 votes. Hello, statewide recount in California! A close election would absolutely paralyze the country. Just imagine 50 separate state recounts like what we had in Florida. The final results could be delayed for months, if not years, into the presidential term.

Whatever else you think about the Electoral College, it has one clear advantage: It almost always magnifies the size of a victory. (For example, in 1992, Clinton won 43% of the popular vote, Bush 38%, and Perot 19%. In electoral votes, Clinton won 370, Bush 168.) In some ways, I guess that doesn't seem "fair." On the other hand, it isn't so bad if you place any value on finding a winner and moving on.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike, although others are not as immature as I am.

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Go to work on Presidents' Day

I realize that a lot of Americans have to work on Presidents' Day, but those of us who are tax eaters got the day off.

Back when I was growing up in New York state, we had Lincoln's birthday on February 12 and Washington's on February 22. There were places in this country where Lincoln was still hated and his birthday was not observed. Eventually the folks in Congress worked out an arrangement for a single day to be observed everywhere, on a Monday, so that we now get a three-day weekend. Supposedly, it's technically still officially Washington's birthday, but everyone refers to it as Presidents' Day. Now, no one who hates Lincoln has to celebrate Lincoln's birthday.

The trouble with calling it Presidents' Day, though, is that this treats all presidents alike. There's good reason to honor our great presidents, like Washington and Lincoln, but not much reason to honor the bottom dwellers, like Harding and Carter. One size doesn't fit all.

The thought occurred to me a week or two ago, but I didn't get around to writing about it until now, that the BDS crowd must really hate this holiday. I've had surprising difficulty finding people complaining about it, but I've found this: "Of course, then we have the President of the present day. Honestly, am I supposed to stay home from work today and think about this guy? C'mon."

So what I'm going to do next year at this point is to try to organize a "Go To Work On Presidents' Day" campaign to encourage all the lefties around town to give up their day off. Because, you know, if they take advantage of the holiday by taking the day off from work, they're necessarily honoring ChimpyMcHitlerBurton, or whatever they call him these days.

This won't accomplish very much, but the idea that they're giving up a long weekend to avoid honoring Bush would at least make me, mmm, smirk.

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BDS goes to MetsBlog

Earlier today, Matt Cerrone, proprietor of the invaluable MetsBlog.com, cited a NY Post article on David Wright's dinner with President Bush. The article noted: "The Mets All-Star third baseman was invited to a 'baseball dinner' along with San Diego's Trevor Hoffman, Toronto's Vernon Wells, Cubs manager Lou Piniella, broadcaster Tim McCarver and journalist George Will." Wright was allowed to bring his father to the White House. The article quoted Wright about how exciting it was to meet and dine with the President and to see the Oval Office.

You won't be surprised to learn, New York being a deep blue state, that Cerrone's readers immediately weighed in with anti-Bush comments. The first was: "Wright shoulda smacked George W. in the head, for the sake of America." And it went down hill from there. My favorite exchange went like this. One commenter: "Unfortunately, most baseball players (and professional athletes in general) seem to be Republican. Remember when Piazza compared meeting Rush Limbaugh to meeting George Washington? I still cringe about that." Next commenter: "amen. if i find out that d-wright is a republican i dont know what im going to do."

Stop rooting for the man, that's what you'll do -- "for the sake of America."

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