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May 12, 2005

The History of the Filibuster by Lee Harris

Lee Harris has just published an essay in which he explains the history of the filibuster in the Senate. In a real sense, the filibuster dates from 1872 when Vice President Schuyler Colfax made a ruling that "under the practice of the Senate the presiding officer could not restrain a Senator in remarks which the Senator considers pertinent to the pending matter." Up until that point, it was part of the Senate Rules that the head of the Senate could shut down the speech by any Senator but that decision could be appealed to the full Senate.

Then, in 1917, the rules were changed to allow stop the filibuster if 2/3s of the Senators in the room voted to end it. The rules were changed again in 1949 so that the filibuster could only be ended if 2/3 of all the elected Senators voted to end it. And the rules were changed again in 1975.

So, the filibuster has only existed since 1872, and the rules about ending the filibuster have changed a number of times since then.

However, Mr. Harris goes on to point out that the filibuster is a good idea. It is, as he says, one of the tricks invented by our government to prevent the majority from opressing the minority and, as a result, keeping the country from tearing itself apart.

The Achilles' heel of all democracies, and the explanation for why so many of them fail, lies in this ceaseless struggle. Each party, each faction becomes increasingly preoccupied with getting power or holding on to power. But because power comes from the rule of the majority, the trick to obtaining power is to get the majority of the population sufficiently worked up and disturbed over a "hot button" issue, and then to artfully channel their emotional agitation into support for a political candidate. But, obviously, such a policy, while beneficial to the interests of the parties that exploit it, is disastrous to the interests of the nation as a whole. Politics, instead of being the art of compromise, becomes the tactic of the demagogue, while politicians, instead of working to settle differences between opposing parties, devote themselves to inflaming their partisan passions, in order to exploit their quarrels for their own purposes.

According to Calhoun, the only defense against this fatal tendency within any democracy is to make it extraordinarily difficult for any partisan faction -- even when the faction constitutes a numerical majority -- to obtain control over the central resource of governmental power. And how else to achieve this goal than by setting up a series of obstacles on the path that leads toward the consolidation of central power, thereby lessening the odds that the citadel of power will fall into the hands of zealots out to impose their own will on the rest of society.

Calhoun did not want the Liberum Veto; but he wanted to make sure that any considerable segment of American society could veto the effort of a majority to enforce their will upon them. His own solution was to require, on hot button issues (such as tariffs and slavery), the concurrence of three-fourths of the various states that made up the confederation known as The United States of America. But there is no question that he would have approved, as a partial substitute, the most expansive interpretation of the filibuster rule, as his conduct in dealing with John Randolph's proto-filibuster certainly implies; nor is there any doubt that he would have regarded a filibuster against judicial nominations as a perfectly legitimate means of political self-defense.

Harris, one of the most brilliant Americans writing today, makes a very valid point.

Posted by rakhier at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

Two New Blogs...

I've added Chester's Blog on War and Foreign Affairs to my blog roll and I've added Neo-NeoCon. I've also removed some non-performing blogs.

Posted by rakhier at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

Chester interview Dr. Bacevich on the new Militarism in the US

Interesting interview with former Colonel Bacevich on the growing militarism in the US. Read it here.

On the other hand, here is the best response in a comment by Subsunk

His points may make me think, but they make me think he has no common sense. What is a military for if not to act through force? Since we insist on civilian control of our military, what other possible focus could our civilian leaders have than to think of the appropriate uses of our military and use them accordingly? Obviously, we should insist that the bar for commitment to force be very high. But what possible events can any of you point to which indicate we speed willy-nilly into conflict without thinking through the consequences and preparations needed?

My God, we spent 9 months preparing the country politically for war in Iraq, and over 4 weeks to retaliate in Afghanistan with the press and Congress baying for blood after 9/11. Hitler spent less than 2 weeks mobilizing for the Polish invasion.

In my opinion, our civilian leadership is less militarisitic than Britain (Falklands war), Argentina (Falklands), Israel, Any Middle Eastern country, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, or a host of other minor players who fight amongst themselves without any Western press attention whatsoever. Even France sent troops to Africa without discussing things with the US very loudly.

War is an evil thing. Mobilizing the full might of the US through draft/full mobilization or whatever means you use is like loading your 16 inch cannons to kill a mosquito. Way overkill. And it is a position the country cannot stand if we aren't going to target the mobilized against an enemy. So after 9/11, with say 6 million military personnel drafted and mobilized, where do you want them sent, and how do you want to pay for it? I'm sure sending 4 million men to Afghanistan would have been much less useful, and certainly more costly money and timewise than using 200 special forces operators and 100 or so aircraft to eliminate the equivalent of the Light Brigade in Afghanistan.

MSgtMac is correct when he says the Bottom Up Review gutted us and left us where we are today with the reserve call ups we have. I observed my Joint Staff colleagues tie themselves in knots trying to find a way to justify spending only what we were going to get and making the mission fit that budget.

So far we have used an appropriate amount of force (at least the correct order of magnitude) at the appropriate times (after 12 years of lying and cheating by Saddam, someone finally made the cur obey, and Iran and N Korea have been given their warnings over the last 2 years and are still getting slack). If we were truly too militaristic in our outlook, then our military would be used everyday to handle the little problems. Mr Bacevich clearly thinks diplomacy, including talking and offering economic incentives, should be all that is needed to change our enemies behavior. As if that has ever worked in human history where the adversary is motivated by pure power, ego or religious zeal.

Our people are too militaristic? Then --- Bully for them!!!! And shame on you who think they don't deserve our adoration and respect.

Subsunk is right. We have a military, we are the only country in the world able to interven in any country. That we choose to do so now, while we didn't (often) in the past is more a reflection of our power than some sense of "rah-rah-lets-go-kill-some-foreigners". Remember: if we don't send our forces to do something in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan... no one else will. 100 years ago that wasn't true. We didn't have to lift a finger, the British would take care of stuff. 200 years ago we couldn't do anything beyond our borders, we lacked the power.

Posted by rakhier at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

Neo-NeoCon talks about Betrayal...

Neo-NeoCon has a very long post in which she describes, very accuratly, the sense of betrayal which caused the people of the US to turn against the Vietnam War. As I say, its a long post but worth the read. Here is an excerpt from the end

I think the word "betrayal" is absolutely appropriate here, and accounts for many of the still-powerful reactions and repercussions from the Vietnam era. Because the pre-existing trust was profound, the reversal, when it came, was exquisitely sharp also. The loss of trust in our government and military had to be dealt with emotionally and cognitively, and people dealt with it in different ways. The vast majority of liberals seem to have taken that trust and re-invested it--this time in the press, who were seen as whistleblowers, the exposers of the government's lying, cheating ways. That is one way to respond to a loss of faith--by reinvesting in it something else perceived as replacing it (you might say it's somewhat analogous to starting a new relationship on the rebound). Other people had a more extreme reaction, and decided to withdraw trust from both the government and the press, and to place their trust in nothing and became cynics. Still others (leftists) reacted to the betrayal by supporting whomever and whatever was against the US. Many conservatives, on the other hand, withdrew their trust from the press, previously seen as an ally of sorts, but now perceived as an enemy. They also solidified their anger at liberals and a left seen to have ignominously betrayed the South Vietnamese people and our nation's honor.

However, some feelings were more universally shared. Anger at having been lied to by a previously-trusted government, for example, was a feeling shared by many liberals and by some conservatives (I'm exempting leftists, since they started out feeling anger and distrust towards the governement--there was no disillusionment there). The feeling of betrayal by the government because of its lack of full commitment to winning the war was shared by some liberals and many conservatives. The feeling that the soldiers responsible for atrocities such as My Lai had betrayed American values and honor was, likewise, fairly universal.

Powerful words. As she points out, the Vietnam war, in nightly news broadcasts, was the first war in world history to be fought in full view of the public. Frankly, the public wasn't ready for it, wasn't educated enough. Nor was the U.S. Army up to the task of making sure that the news which was broadcast was put in context so the images would make sense. This last war (Iraq - 2003) was done much better by the U.S. Military. We've learned from our mistakes.

Posted by rakhier at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

VanDerLuen on God...

Gerard Vanderluen has a long and extraordinary post about how he survived his encounter with rage and self-hatred. It is a wonderful story, very moving. This little piece is from the end

Then it came to me that it would be a really good idea, a perfect idea, a shiningly stunning idea, if I would simply reach out my hand and turn the engine on. A glance at the gauge on the way home had informed me I had over half a tank. That would certainly be enough to get me where I had to go. It was a warm summer night and I could even leave the windows down. Better still, I didn't need to worry about being a little drunk and getting pulled over and having to breathe in a tube since I wouldn't be driving on any roads at all. I looked at this plan from a lot of angles and I could find no flaw in it.

Okay, I thought, lets get on with it. So I told my hand to reach out and turn the key.

And for the second time that day, I couldn't move my hand. I mean, I really could not move my hand. I told it to move with my mind in no uncertain terms over and over to no effect. It just stayed in my lap in that limp and unresponsive state your limbs get to if you sleep on them and cut off the circulation. When I thought about reaching across with my left hand to do the duty of my right hand, that entire arm stopped working. That made me angry enough to talk to my hand out loud, "Just get with it. Quit screwing around and turn the damn key!"

Which is when I wept, very loudly and for a very long time, but not for the last time. It was okay to weep though because, as I thought at the time, I was the only one there.

It is remarkable the writing one can find on the web these days.

Posted by rakhier at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2005

Dean on Vietnam War Protesters...

Dean of Dean's World has this cogent critique of some Vietnam War protesters.

I think it's clear that there were basically five types of people who opposed the Vietnam war:

1) Isolationists of the "this is none of our business" variety.

2) People who just didn't want themselves or their brothers, husbands, and sons drafted.

3) Liberals who thought it was a lost, doomed cause.

4) Pacifists of the "all war is bad" variety.

5) Communists, communist apologists, and generally anti-American dips***s.

The only people I really hold in contempt are groups 4 and 5. Pacifism is immoral, selfish, and destructive. Communism is as evil as Nazism. But the others are people I can understand and respect.

What disturbs me is that, in retrospect, a lot of people just sort of accept as axiomatic an historical view which reads, "this was an evil racist immoral war fought becuase America was a bunch of bullies and/or wanted to fuel the military-industrial complex." Honestly, that's the only position I take strong exception to. That and the revisionist history that goes along with it, most of which seems to have been concocted by groups 4 and 5.

Ho Chi Minh was never, ever a "freedom fighter," nor even a home-grown hero. Nor was he ever a sincere revolutionary who wanted help from the Western powers and only turned communist because "we gave him no choice." All of that is pure commie propaganda bulls**t. He was a KGB stooge and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist radical from day one. And when he got into power, exactly what the anti-communists said would happen did happen: the bloodletting was horrendous, and the oppression incalculable. The much-maligned "domino theory" was also vindicated, as neighboring regimes quickly fell (or in some cases very nearly fell) to totalitarianism.

Now it may be that we never should have gone there in the first place. It may also be that we made the right choice in going but conducted ourselves poorly. All of that is debateable. Either way, it is fair to say that America cannot stop all oppression and genocide worldwide.

In retrospect, the only thing I find genuinely contemptible in our exit was that, after the U.S. troop withdrawl, we broke our promise to the government of South Vietnam. We suddenly, and with little warning, cut off all the funding we had promised to give them so that they could defend themselves--and then sat on our hands while hundreds of thousands were butchered in the camps and millions more fled for their lives, with quite possibly as many drowning or dying of exposure as died in Uncle Ho's "re-education" camps.

What he says is true. Ho was a Communist from the begining. It is also the case that the domino theory was vindicated by events following our withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. It is also the case that the Congress (and the American people) left South Vietnam in the lurch, despite our sworn agreements to the contrary - with the result being that about 1 million South Vietnamese lost their homes and at least 150,000 were killed.

Posted by rakhier at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

Neo-NeoCon on Vietnam...

Interesting series of posts by Neo-NeoCon on the Vietnam war. The best is this one Vietnam - After the Fall

Vietpundit links not only to the series by Neo-NeoCon but also to an essay by Thi Hoai called Vietnam in my Heart

The Vietnam war did not result in the collapse of the United States. Rather, it led to the disappearance of the southern Republic of Vietnam, a nation that once dominated half of the country and which was no less legitimate than its brother in the north.

After liberation, however, southern society was subjected to intense repression: prison, concentration camp, the seizure of property, discrimination against bi-racial children, the purge of intellectuals, the destruction and prohibition of southern culture, the complete erasure of numerous careers and many lives. These are not the actions of righteous winners. Nor are they evidence of the superiority of the new regime in relation to its recently vanquished enemy.

Thirty years after the war, the country has never once acknowledged the painful exodus of almost 1 million southern Vietnamese, the “boat people”. It is as if they are no longer Vietnamese and have been excommunicated from the unified nation. It is as if the country belongs to only a single group of Vietnamese but not to another. It is as if they believed that national feeling can grow naturally from out of a deep hole of division and hatred, like a rice plant growing out from a trench.

Posted by rakhier at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2005

Say Goodbye to Genetic Privacy...

Give up on the idea that your genetic sequence will remain private information 30 years from now. So argues FuturePundit in this essay.

[L]ong before personal DNA sequencers hit the market commercial DNA testing labs will be competing to tell us increasing numbers of insights about our minds and bodies that will be gleanable from DNA testing. Once those services start producing useful information with predictive value about health and physical and mental performance what is to stop any person from impersonating another person and submitting another person's DNA as their own?

Consider that identity theft is a rapidly growing problem. Most cases of identity theft are discovered when someone gets a bill for a product or service they didn't buy. But identity theft for the purpose of getting DNA tested would necessarily eventually result in the victim ever benig notified that someone else temporarily masqueraded as them. Why? Because when the DNA sample is submitted it would not have to be submitted with the real name of the person the DNA sample was stolen from.

As he argues, there is no plasible regulatory method for keeping your DNA private. Better hope you have good genes in the future because prospective mates ARE going to check you out before committing to having a child with you.

Posted by rakhier at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

Where does Natural Gas Come From? Archaic Bacteria!

This is going to shake up our understanding of life on Earth (again). FuturePundit has an essay in which he describes the results of research into bacteria which eats oil and turns it into methane.

It has been a mystery as to where oil fields come from. The old explaination that it was organic material once on the Earth's surface and then "subducted" and compressed and heated and turned to oil only explained a small amount of the world's oil fields. Where did the rest of the oil come from? Leaving that mystery aside, I have never heard an explaination for why natural gas was almost always found at the same time as oil deposits.

But now we know at least part of the answer: there are methane-generating microorganisms in at least one oil field.

Luca scientists have also begun to isolate and identify particular members of the Monument Butte microbial consortium. Through partial DNA sequence analysis, the company has identified Clostridia and Thermatoga as two of the key members of this consortium. Clostridia form a broad genus of bacteria known for their diverse metabolic pathways. Clostridia frequently thrive in anaerobic environments and many species are known for their heat tolerance. Thermatoga microorganisms are known to play a role in the anaerobic oxidation of hydrocarbons to alcohols, organic acids and carbon dioxide. Thermatoga also thrive in high temperature environments, such as those found in sub-surface oil wells.

This is significant news. Could previously unknown microorganisms be responsible for most of the world's natural gas? Imagine these creatures, eating oil, expelling methane as a waste product. These things could be found throughout the Earth's crust.

Because their environment is hostile to familiar forms of surface life, oil reservoirs were originally thought to be devoid of life. However, more recent research has revealed that many oil reserves contain a variety of active and diverse microorganisms (19). In general, these microorganisms have been studied in the context of fouling, souring, and degradation of oil 8 reservoirs. Various gases are frequently associated with oil wells, and Luca’s data indicate that methanogenesis, the creation of methane, is another biological process occurring in some oil reservoirs. In addition to identifying these active systems (Geobioreactors), it will be important to understand the variables that control this overall methanogenic process.

Because oil is a liquid, it is likely to be an easier substrate for the microbial consortia to contact, biodegrade, and convert to methane compared to solid-phase substrates such as coal and the kerogen in shale. Biodegradation is carried out by the consortia, and it has been shown that a mixed group of microorganisms is more effective at biodegrading organic compounds than any of the component strains acting alone. These microorganisms utilize the hydrocarbons as both a carbon and energy source, and the process most likely takes place at the oil/water interface (13). The enzymatic diversity within these microorganisms required to carry out the myriad of metabolic steps involved in methanogenesis is extensive. The ability to influence and control these microbial reactions in situ has major economic implications.

It is now known that there is a lot of living things far below the surface of the Earth.

Bottom line: introducing colonies of these microbes into depleted oil fields could transform useless oil fields into the long term sources of natural gas.

Posted by rakhier at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

The End of the MRI Scan - Hello HUTT

FuturePundit has an article which talks about the development of the successor to the MRI Scanner: the HUTT - High-resolution Ultrasonic Transmission Tomography. HUTT is much better than MRI, it is essentially a super UltraSound scanner. No radiation. No giant super-conductors. Just sound waves that travel through the body and then are analyzed by computer programs. Read about it here.

Posted by rakhier at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)