11.30.2004

Stephen Breyer for Chief Justice

I think Stephen Breyer would be an excellent choice as President Bush's nominee for Chief Justice, were Chief Justice Rehnquist to retire, as is widely expected.

Politically, the move would make a lot of sense. Promoting a Democratic appointee who voted with the minority in Bush v. Gore (but notably in the majority of the 7-2 decision in favor of overturning the absurd recount demanded by the Florida Supreme Court) would provide much needed cover for supporting a more conservative nominee for the open seat than he'd get otherwise.

It would also conserve political capital that would be better put to use on legislative priorities than on promoting Justices Scalia or Thomas to the top spot, which is largely an administrative post. This is particularly true when the Chief is in the minority on a case, as the most senior member of the majority gets to assign the opinion. As a not-insignificant aside, were Justice O'Connor to retire, the most senior member of the conservative side of the court would be Justice Scalia.

From a less calculating perspective, of course, Justice Breyer is a smart, pragmatic jurist. Although he doesn't share the court's current appetite for federalism, he hasn't shown an inclination to "legislate from the bench." His contributions to oral arguments are uniquely insightful.

Of course, it's unlikely President Bush would make such an appointment, as it would be seen as a symbolic betrayal of the conservative base. Conservatives, though, should concentrate less on the symbolism and more on the pragmatic gains. Unless the president makes at least a token gesture of reconciliation with the Democrats, it's hard to see how we get through the next Supreme Court nomination without either an earth-shaking partisan battle that stops the rest of the Bush agenda in its tracks, or a mushy-middle appointment that could end up as the next Souter.




11.23.2004

The Ukraine is not weak!

On the one year anniversary of the "velvet revolution" in Georgia, similar events seem to be playing out in the Ukraine. Former congressman Bob Schaffer is broadcasting to the blogosphere from the scene, and it makes for fascinating reading. Obviously, reports from the ground should be taken with a grain of salt, but if, in fact, Russian special forces are protecting the current (seemingly corrupt) government, that's a big story.

11.22.2004

So what's their excuse?

According to a shockingly irony-free AFP release:
Violence and boycotts could yet stop promised Iraqi elections going ahead on time, Arab ministers said, despite Baghdad's confident assertion the landmark vote would be held on January 30.
No word on when we can expect a non-Iraqi Arab nation to schedule a multi-party election.

The return of the xapping

The clever folks at Google Labs seems to have reinvented the xapping of Connection Machine Lisp fame. Of all the ideas, great and small, that came out of the CM project, xappings stood out to me as the most practical.

Both of these papers are worth reading in their entirety. I think it says something about the fundamental importance of map/reduce as a tool for parallelism that it shows up in essentially the same form in two radically different architectures.

Imperial Hypocrisy

I couldn't agree more with RealClearPolitics' assessment of Michael Scheuer's appearance on Meet the Press Sunday. It's hard to believe this guy was a top CIA analyst when he can make the following set of assertions with a straight face:
  • Osama bin Laden doesn't hate who we are, he hates specific U.S. policies.

  • We should reevaluate those policies, as they motivate bin Laden and encourage support for him in the Muslim world.

  • Changing our policies won't assuage bin Laden.

  • We (i.e. President Clinton) should have killed bin Laden when we had the chance, even if it meant the death of Arab princes, damage to a mosque, or other consequences sure to enrage the Muslim world.

The most generous way to thread this needle is to suggest that while bin Laden won't give up the jihad just because we change the policies he doesn't like, the rest of the Muslim world will lose its affinity for him, and he won't have the popular support to keep planning and executing terror operations.

Putting aside the fact that Scheuer explicitly advocates aggressively going after bin Laden in a manner sure to upset even moderate Muslims (his manner suggested he wouldn't mind us carpet bombing the Pakistani border!), does he really think that should we give in to some of bin Laden's demands, he would become less popular in the Muslim world? Wouldn't it just validate his "strong horse" hypothesis and encourage him to make even more "popular" demands (say, Jerusalem entirely in Muslim hands) with the expectation that we'll try to appease Muslim sentiment?

It seems to me that the rational means to remove bin Laden's capabilities are to aggressively go after al Qaeda and other radical groups, while at the same time changing Muslim minds about what's in their best interests (say democracy and pluralism) rather than trying to out-do bin Laden in sucking up to existing prejudices.

11.19.2004

Hail Britannia

Via OxBlog, I see that the Guardian has a terrific article on how French women stay thin, despite living in a country whose main contribution to civilization is massively indulgent cuisine. The theory involves a complex combination of with playfully teasing every bite and wearing sexy lingerie, or whatever, but the real news is that you can get Tandoori Doritos in the U.K.!

I always thought we Americans had it good in the snack department until I stepped into a Tesco's while visiting my sister in Scotland.

Mmm... rosemary-chicken-flavored potato chips...err..crisps.

11.12.2004

On to the Ides of November

Yes, I'm still alive. However the twin excitement/gut-wrenching suspense shows of the baseball postseason and the Presidential election had my mind on other things than blogging. However since both of those things turned out as I hoped, I can hopefully focus on more mundane concerns.

One thing I'd really like to do is figure out how to make posts (even better with pictures) pictures directly from my Nokia 3650 phone on T-Mobile. Since I got the phone and an accompanying 128MB memory card, I've been snapping an absurd amount of small, meaningless pictures that would go great on my small, meaningless blog.

In booknotes, for the first time (in many attempts) I'm actually getting in to Ulysses, which so far is indeed about as enjoyable (no, really!) as its reputation suggests it should be.