Roberts NOW!

My two favorite factoids so far related to the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court by President Bush are (1) that his wife is an executive of a group called "Feminists for Life"; and (2) that NOW has already organized a rally against Roberts for this morning in Washington. The second factoid provides an example of what I wrote 2 weeks ago here, namely, that groups like NOW have to oppose any nominee of President Bush because that's what they do for a living. (See my post below, "Moderation and Money.")

But the first and second combined point to what I can only hope (I don't think it will come true, though) will be an epiphanic moment in American culture when the MSM is forced to confront the fact that there are many, many, many women who are not only not pro-choice, but are actively pro-life, so that to cede to fringe interest groups like NOW the mantle of "speaking for women," or protecting "women's rights" is silly and illogical. I know in my only life in a Catholic parish in Wisconsin that I can go whole days without ever bumping into a woman who is pro-choice. (My wife sure as heck isn't.) Women simply aren't monolithic.

Which brings me to a philosophical point. If "rights" mean anything, they must mean those things that are "self-evident." It is self-evident that people should be able to worship the God of their choosing. It is self-evident that citizens should be able to choose their governors. It is self-evident that citizens should have the right to speak freely in criticism of their government. It is self-evident that government should not be able to seize the property of private citizens without just compensation. It is self-evident that the law should treat people equally without regard to race. Etc. Etc. But if half of the people in America don't believe that they have a right to privacy that extends to killing their unborn children, doesn't that seem like pretty strong evidence that such a right isn't "self-evident," and therefore isn't a right at all?

Roberts will be confirmed. But it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I would expect Democrats to focus a little bit (although sub rosa because wives are typically off limits) on Roberts' wife's pro-life activities. But it might backfire.

Plame Explained

The Plame Kerfuffle presents a conundrum: why is Judith Miller in jail for refusing to reveal a source if the source is Karl Rove, who has given blanket permission to all reporters to reveal him as a source? The answer logically must be that Karl Rove wasn't the source for Judith Miller's information, but someone else was. Who?

The answer is relatively simple if you use your imagination and think about how a Joe Wilson op-ed piece might get onto the New York Times' op-ed page in the first place:

1. The NYT is always looking for copy that will blast Bush.

2. Meanwhile, getting an op-ed column in the NYT blasting Bush is a big deal, a career-enhancer, a ticket to book deals and face time on the networks. The NYT wanted a blast-Bush piece; Joe Wilson wanted to be the guy to give it to them.

3. Some editor either met Wilson at a cocktail party or met someone who had met Wilson at a cocktail party and they were hooked up. But the NYT needs to know why Wilson is the guy to write the piece… does he have credentials that are weighty enough so that his bashing of Bush will gain some traction?

4. So they ask Wilson to provide his bona fides and he tells them that his wife is in the CIA.

5. Or they ask Plame herself to provide his bona fides because they met her at the same cocktail party.

6. Or they ask other Washington-based reporters whether Wilson has bona fides and they say that his wife is in the CIA, which they all know because they all go to the same cocktail parties.

7. They don’t publish this fact, of course, because it’s not germane to Wilson’s bash-Bush piece, it’s only germane to whether they are going to choose Wilson to bash-Bush from among the hundreds of liberal Democrats/ex-government hacks who would like to punch their ticket to talk shows and book deals by bashing Bush.

8. Q.E.D. The NYT is probably hiding their sources because their sources are either Plame and Wilson themselves, or (more dangerously) other NYT reporters or editors, who themselves might be liable for “outing” Plame.

9. The fact that other reporters may be the sources for the Plame information may also account for the brief the major news organizations all filed arguing that Plame wasn’t “covert” to begin with.

BTW, every single story by the AP, the NYT, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc., that does not state the fact that they have already taken the position in court documents that there was no crime committed in revealing Plame’s identity because she wasn’t covert to begin with and the CIA wasn’t trying to keep her identity secret is a LIE. In the law they would be “estopped” from arguing that any crime had been committed. And, having failed to alert the court to the existence of their prior positions, they might even be sanctioned for violating their duty of "candor to the tribunal."

Plame Paranoia

The media is in a tizzy over the chance that it was Karl Rove, President Bush's key advisor, who "outed" Valerie Plame. Some facts (and common sense) that are never mentioned in the reporting:

1. Many, many people, including many members of the press, knew Valerie Plame was in the CIA.
2. Valerie Plame had twins three years ago -- not likely to be James Bonding it up overseas.
3. The CIA is a big governmental agency with lots and lots of employees, most of whom are not "covert." You can look at their job postings on their webpage for crying out loud. Just because someone is in the CIA does not mean they are "covert." In fact, it is vastly more likely that they are not covert. Jumping from CIA to "covert" agent is like saying someone must be a member of Special Forces because they happen to be in the Army.
4. Given 1, 2 and 3, it is highly likely that Karl Rove (and probably other sources) had no idea that Valerie Plame was "undercover."
5. It is not clear, in any event, that Plame was, in fact, "undercover." The definition is pretty clear in the statute that you have to have been overseas undercover within the previous five years (neither Wilson nor Plame have, to my knowledge, claimed this to be true of her), and the CIA has to be taking steps to keep your identity secret (no evidence that this was true).

The upshot of this is that it is highly unlikely that a prosecutor would even consider indicting Karl Rove based on the email from Matt Cooper. The extreme unlikelihood that the whole episode amounts to a hill of beans is why there are several oddly synchronous articles in the left-wing press calling for Rove to be fired regardless of whether he did anything wrong:

“But let's put aside the legal issues for a moment. This email demonstrates that Rove committed a firing offense. He leaked national security information as part of a fierce campaign to undermine Wilson, who had criticized the White House on the war on Iraq.”

--David Corn, “Why Bush Has to Fire Rove” in The Nation

"Rove did not mention Plame by name, but that hardly matters (except possibly in a narrow legalistic sense, and I have serious doubts even about that). Merely saying that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA was enough to blow Valerie Plame's cover. It's possible, even likely, that Rove didn't know Plame was undercover. But that distinction is relevant only to the question of whether Patrick Fitzgerald should prosecute Rove under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which requires that a covert agent be exposed "intentionally." For a White House official to be so reckless as to reveal, even unknowingly, the identity of an undercover CIA employee is a firing offense. Period."

--Timothy Noah, “Turd Blossom [Bush’s nickname for Rove] Must Go” in Slate

The jig is up when even left-wing pundits are admitting that Rove probably didn't do anything illegal. So what is it that they are saying... Rove played hardball with political enemies? Wow! I'm shocked, shocked that there's gambling going on here.

The House of Saud Is No More.

A post at NRO's The Corner got me thinking. A reader had emailed John Derbyshire providing a framework of all possible responses to terrorism:

1. Do what they want. If their goals are limited and discrete, and the cost of giving into their demands is less than the cost of resistance, complying with the terrorists's demands solves the problem. Here, terrorism works.

2. Do nothing. Accept a certain level of death and destruction indefinitely. Use criminal law within your own country to punish who can catch, and that's all. It's hard to say whether this means terrorism is 'working' or not. Since the terrorists aren't really suffering any consequences and they're inflicting casualties, I say terrorism is working here too.

3. Kill every last terrorist and eliminate the breeding grounds for terrorists. Probably the most expensive option. You have to send military or paramilitary forces all over the place, angering lots of people and suffering casualties. It takes a long time and you're never really sure when you're done. The terrorists may eventually be defeated, but it costs plenty of blood and treasure. Does terrorism work here? Beats me.

4. Make the cost of terrorism to the terrorists much greater than the benefits. For example, carpet bomb or nuke something important to them if they attack. If you're credible, this is a very reliable method. Problem is, credibility means you have to do it once, killing thousands or tens of thousands of noncombatants. Definitely a case of terrorism not working.

Nobody in the West is willing to do #4, and of the few who are capable of doing #3, most of them don't bother. So, if most countries are generally using only #1 and #2, and #3 is uncommon and a wash anyway, then it's only natural that terrorism, on the whole, works.

Here's my thought. Post-Madrid Spain is #1, pre-Bush (read Clinton) America was #2, and only Blair's Britain and Bush's America are truly doing #3. Why aren't we contemplating #4 in a particularly focused way? We know that Saudi Arabia is funding Wahabbism world-wide. We know that 15 of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. We know that Bin Laden is Saudi, etc. Why doesn't President Bush say essentially the following? "We are tired of living in fear of terrorism. We don't like it. We know that the House of Saud is either behind the terrorism, or has funded the madrassas that teach terrorism, or else looks the other way at terrorism. We think they could go a long way toward stopping terrorism if they made the effort. So here's what we're going to do. The next time a terror attack hits an American city or an American ally's city, we are going to put a 5000 lb. cluster bomb on top of every palace of every member of the House of Saud. Put bluntly, if we get hit even a little bit, the House of Saud is no more."

I like saying this. My dad used to say this in every semi-crisis about every potential enemy, except he wanted to use nuclear weapons. "If X, then Pyongyang is no more." "If Y, then Hanoi is no more." "If Z, then Tehran is no more." My way would keep it simple and non-nuclear, and, with the advances in technology, would limit damage to the Saud royal family -- despots that they are -- and their hangers-on. Terrorism might work for people who don't mind living in caves in far corners of the world. But we can certainly make in not work for people like the House of Saud, since we know where they live.

Heck, it might even push that vicious dictatorship toward democracy. The 101st Airborne is about ready for another takedown, and they're just next door.

Moderation and Money

Shannen Coffin has a good article up in NRO about the upcoming fight over Justice O'Connor's replacement on the Supreme Court. Here is a snippet that caught my eye:

Don't look now, but the sky is falling. At least that's what the liberal interest groups that have mobilized this week in preparation for the battle over Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement to the Supreme Court would have you believe. Within minutes of the announcement of O'Connor's retirement, the dinosaurs of the Left took to the airwaves to attempt to frame the debate. Planned Parenthood cried that "women's health and safety [are] on the line." People for the American Way shrieked that our "very national identity hangs in the balance." Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, declared "a state of emergency for women's rights." Nan Aron, of left wing Alliance for Justice, spelled out what was to come: "a fight that will shape our lives for decades."

A threshold understanding that will be useful to all of us who will inevitably be disgusted by the vitriolic attacks that are sure to greet any nominee to the Court by a Republican President is that all of these groups -- Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, NOW, Alliance for Justice -- are professional organizations whose sole product is, in fact, vitriol. They sell vitriol and anger and fear and anxiety about how "women's health... is on the line" (it isn't, women have never been healthier), our "national identity hangs in the balance" (it doesn't, or at least not because one Republican-nominated Justice will be replaced by another nominated by a Republican President and confirmed by a Republican-majority Senate), how there is a "state of emergency for women's rights" (there isn't), how this fight will "shape our lives for decades" (it won't). They sell a sense of self-importance and "involvement" to their customers, the well-heeled liberals who long for the 1960s barricades.

The people who work in these organizations cannot afford to be moderate and reasonable, not because there is so much at stake politically, but because they have so much at stake in terms of their personal financial health -- they literally cannot afford to be moderate. These organizations view this Supreme Court fight like other companies view the chance to get a patent on a new wonder drug -- it's an opportunity to rake in the dough that will only exist for a short window of opportunity. They have to engage in a Bork-like or Clarence Thomas-like fight, because if they don't, they won't be able to pay the mortgage on their homes in Bethesda or Chevy Chase or McLean or Georgetown or Alexandria. (Democratic Senators are in the same predicament; because their base demands a fight, they have to give them one, or else the stream of contributions to their essentially permanent campaigns will dry up.)

So, buckle up. This is going to be a bumpy ride.