Because It's My Blog, That's Why

It's the fearsome Carmel "Fence Post Flex" defense.

Bob Kravitz, "Here's where the responsibility belongs: If allegations are true, perpetrators are the only ones to blame". May 18 [note: link to hyper-valuable Indianapolis Racist Beacon* material subject to expire in twenty minutes]

OUR story so far: sleepy farm-market village (Carmel, IN) north of Indianapolis grows explosively from 1960-2000 thanks to White Flight, Federally-funded, conveniently located interstate ring around Marion county, and Republican "zoning" "laws". (The population boom continued into the Naughts, but in part because it annexed every bit of unincorporated land that didn't have the money to defend itself.) Becomes the wealthiest city in the wealthiest county in the state, and even more Republican, though only about as white as it ever was. Or could be theoretically.

Now, much of what follows is even ranker speculation than is normal around here, sprinkled liberally (get it?) with class envy. And the simple reason for that--okay, the former--is that these are not the sort of people who volunteer information, or generally have it demanded of them by investigative reporters, police interrogators, or an opposition party. So, to begin with, back when I was in high school the town had a population of around 6500. Today it is almost 70,000 (they bought themselves a Special Census back in Naught Seven so they could gobble up more tax revenues. Republicans.) and the high school's almost the size the town was back when. Because it's still the same high school, expanded several times; it's whispered in educational circles ** that the intention is to maintain the benefits of super-sizing in athletic and other competitive, trophy-awarding educational tussles.

So: last February it suddenly became public knowledge that some sort of "hazing" incident had occurred on a Carmel bus heading home from a boy's basketball game in southern Indiana a month before. And that, as a result of this information--which had come to light only because schoolyard gossip had gotten back to some parents--three seniors had been thrown off the team. Rumors did what rumors do: they swirled, enough to disturb the slumber of the Local Media, which stuck a microphone in front of the principal so he could announce--this is not speculation, but observation--that the incident hadn't risen to the level of criminal behavior, that the suspensions were the appropriate and sufficient response, and there was nothing more to see here, folks.

But among the rumors was a report that one of the attacked freshmen had required a trip to the emergency room, and that the attack was sexual in nature. The latter, of course, kept the news hounds on the scent, and the school's story fell apart like a substandard library parking garage. By the next week the Carmel cops and Hamilton county prosecutor were launching investigations which somehow hadn't been triggered by the hospital's incident report of a month earlier.

The completion of the investigation and announcement of possible charges was delayed, and delayed again; another senior joined the suspended when an earlier incident came to light. At some point someone pointed out that the alleged attack on the alleged bus allegedly occurred in Hendricks county, which somehow turned the thing into some sort of ad-hoc cross-jurisdictional extra-legal CYA fest. And then yesterday, after an extra weekend's delay, prosecutors signed off on the recommendations of a grand jury. The four were charged with varying degrees of misdemeanor activity, though the rumored charges of criminal deviate conduct--which requires forced sexual behavior--were not among them.

Connoisseurs of political hegemony, small-town shenanigans, and the Constitutionally-enshrined privilege granted wealthy real-estate developers and corporation lawyers gathered in mid-sized groups probably have already guessed that the excessive redaction of the original investigation continued unabated into the release of actual charges. Out of concern for the victims, of course. Professor emeritus of Law Henry Karlson called it "one of the
most outrageous cover-ups I've ever seen." If you'd like a little whipped cream with that, the security tape from the bus, said for months to've been taped over the following week, turned up like magic Monday.

Which brings us to Bob "Contraindication" Kravitz, Indianapolis Racist Beacon sports columnist:

When it happens, when something as twisted and inexplicable as the Carmel hazing case happens, our base instinct is to cast blame. Who is responsible for the kind of venal behavior that landed four former Carmel basketball players with misdemeanor charges Monday? How could this happen on the parents' watch, on the coaches' watch, on the school administration's watch?

Let me simplify this:

The four young men -- Scott Laskowski, Oscar Falodun, Brandon Hoge and Robert Kitzinger -- would be the ones to blame, and nobody else.

Bzzzzzzt.

Here's what is generally accepted as established: the bus assault occurred on the freshman team bus, which was not supposed to be carrying any upperclassmen. There were three (!) freshman coaches on that bus, said to be sitting in the front and talking shop. The seniors boarded that bus at a rest stop, and the alleged assaults allegedly occurred in the back.

Let's just note for starters that teachers in many ways have a stricter legal responsibility towards their charges than even the parents, and that this is precisely the way it should be. "It was dark back there" or "Who knew?" or "The perps are the real criminals" are not excuses. It should be second nature for any teacher to watch for bullying, especially of younger students, and especially where athletic teams are concerned. Three coaches; none supervised the reloading of the bus, none walked to the back and checked out his charges, none noticed that two seniors got on board. As a result one student, whose crime was playing basketball, wound up in the emergency room, and who knows what else was visited upon those boys. At least one of the victims is said to no longer be enrolled at Carmel. We'll accept for the moment the Grand Jury's decision that none of the coaches should be indicted, but spare us the idea that they're simple victims of circumstance. They had a serious responsibility and they failed to live up to it. All were released as of yesterday, apparently, as was the head coach, but that should have happened at the onset, by their accepting responsibility and resigning in shame, if not by administrative action. Instead, once this became public knowledge, the head coach released a statement about "facing adversity", not facing up to your obligations and taking blame for not doing so.

Understand, I am not coming close to comparing the horror of Columbine, which happened just miles from my old house, with what happened at Carmel. I am only saying that when bad things happen, we, as a community, look for a way to place blame. Maybe it comforts us to believe that there's a reason, that this wasn't some completely random act that cannot begin to be understood.

As we've pointed out before, the principal of Columbine High took the stage shortly after the massacre to announce he didn't really know Harris and Klebold and had never heard of the Trenchcoat Mafia, despite a rather obvious and fairly disturbing yearbook picture from the year before. Columbine is a school no bigger than one class at Carmel. In both instances information well-known to the student body didn't seem to reach the ears of the administration. Is it not your job as an administrator to know what's going on in your school? Or as a coach to know what's up with a dozen students in your charge? If anything, it's the enormity of Columbine which could not have been fully anticipated. Hazing in the Carmel athletic program? The district had already been sued over it.

And it ain't like this is some unforeseen problem; the state just passed a (toothless) anti-school-bullying law a couple years ago. This is a serious problem in the forefront of educational issues, and people who're caught flat-footed by it aren't innocent bystanders. They're complicit.

The Carmel school board is going to vote in a new hazing rule, after which everyone will congratulate each other on bravely facing the problem head-on. Then they'll announce they're busy looking forward. Through the same old prescription lenses.

______________

* As has been the case since shortly after the story broke, the Racist Beacon has closed comments on any Carmel stories. Which, of course, merely serves to underline that the blatant racist garbage which half their stories attract are there at their sufferance.

** Joke. As with all circles, nothing in education is "whispered".

Olio

Matt Davies

• I don't suppose there's any reason for you to've seen last night's 60 Minutes, aside from anyone who checks in for my uncanny Andy Rooney impression, but the interview with Deepwater Horizon survivor (cut into convenient bite-sized chucks for you here) Mike Williams was a reminder that teevee journalism could be riveting if anyone ever decided to try some. Interesting, though, how no amount of repetition of the same damned story can quell our Shock! Shock! that corporate drones behave like corporate drones, that the upper-level management of corporate behemoths is utterly, irredeemably amoral, and that both groups' first inclination is to lie their asses off preparatory to dragging the whole thing out through the courts for two-and-one-half lifetimes.

Is it a shock that BP had no intention of protecting the rest of us from the catastrophic failure of its profit-making schemes? That corporations in general view the world the way my cats view a sandbox? I, on the other hand, am not permitted to drive a mile to the store without carrying proof any accidental harm I cause will be paid for by me or by proxy.

Kill a couple dozen workers--that's before you unleash an environmental disaster--pay a fine equal to a half-day's profits. Eventually. Drive the getaway car for some guy you don't know plans to rob the bank he goes into, drops his weapon and has it discharge, killing a security guard, you get a date with a lethal injection. There is a major political party in this country dedicated to the idea that these people shouldn't pay taxes, be subject to any regulations they didn't write themselves, or ask permission before they start drilling on public lands. And the New York Times thinks tomorrow's primaries will be a referendum on just how widespread the psychosis is.

• Speaking of the Times and massive flumes of noxious substances, this Douthat column is noteworthy in that the man can write a column (take the rest of the week off, Ross!) based on a reasonable, if watery, analysis of the facts ("The response to repeated hammer-blows to the global economy has been to consolidate power in the same hands that caused the problem") and still be full of shit ("It's all Robert Rubin's fault, and federal healthcare is the same thing as bailing out Goldman Sachs"). This is partly the inevitable, I suppose, result of spending your entire life in absolute certainty that the Vatican position on reproduction and US law ought to be identical; it leaves no room to recognize the validity of anyone else's point of view, let alone space in which to compromise. On matters of lesser ethical importance--war, say, or theft--it allows you to simply appropriate someone else's viewpoint and claim it as your own. With, naturally, a little anti-Obama rhetoric thrown in just to keep straight which sideline you're prowling. But discovering the Peter Principle eighteen months after George W. Bush left office?

• Speaking of the Peter Principle, Indiana Emperor Mitch "The Spork" Daniels is now facing a countersuit by IBM over the failed ("failed" is actually the kindest way you can put it) billion-dollar privatization of the state's Family and Social Services Agency, which was overseen by Republican Slush-Collector Designate Mitch Roob. Daniels was forced to cancel the program last fall after paying full dollar for eighteen months for a program which never met its goals (and "never met its goals" is actually a compliment). The state is now suing IBM for $400 million it paid in order to keep the whole Ponzi scheme going until after the 2008 elections. IBM is countersuing for an additional $50 million it claims it's owed. And it plans on offering as evidence the rosy public pronouncements Daniels kept making rather than admit he's a lying sack of excrement. (h/t Doug Masson)

By the way, it's nice to sit back and reflect on the times those of us who opposed The Brain's underhanded dealing on Daylight Savings, or the sale of the Toll Road, or the FSSA and other "privatization" schemes, were branded as hopeless hicks stuck in horse-and-buggy days, too dim to see that Mitch was bravely accomplishing for Indiana what he'd already done for the Iraq War.

A Small Malignancy

I DON'T generally single out local teleprompter readers by name, because a) it seems unduly harsh, and b) it's like choosing the whitest alto in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Now and then, though, one volunteers.

We've actually met Karen Hensel before, back in '07, when she threw an ice-cream and softball party for Fred Dumbo Thompson's 45-minute Presidential campaign. Channel 8 has decided to style her an Investigative Reporter, which is Happy Talk Newspeak for "someone who covers stories we might get complaints about". This has the added benefit--or, perhaps, the only benefit--that they're free to sensationalize to their hearts' content, making for damn good teasers.

Which is what caught my eye last night--I'm not made of stone, Your Honor!--and led me to assume the Big Panhandling Exposé being teased involved 2009's Anti-Panhandling ordinance, not to be confused with 1999's Anti-Panhandling ordinance. The 2009 law, reluctantly rewritten, for Constitutional reasons, to include everyone, not just the unsightly and odiferous, had gone unenforced while the police sought "clarification"; said clarity almost certainly will illuminate all of Downtown just before Super Bowl 2012. (It's, well, amazing how periodic tax-appropriation-funded Big Events spur draconian efforts to keep the skinned and scorned out of sight for a while. That 1999 law preceded the 2000 Final Four; the practice dates to 1986, when then-Prosecutor for Life Stephen Goldsmythe--you're welcome, New York City--used the upcoming Pan-American Games to try to run all the massage parlors and adult bookstores out of business. This did not noticeably improve public morals, or anything else besides Goldsmythe's campaign treasury, but it did make you drive all the way to Clermont for a handjob.)

The major violators of the Ordinance, at least as far as I can tell by touring the Midwest's Largest Continuous Strip Mall as infrequently as I can, are fast-food joints and fly-by-night storefront scammers who send minimum-wage-earning and shame-free young people to the street to dance in stupid costumes, thus, apparently, convincing passers-by that this is just the spot to fulfill their gastronomic longings or turn their unused jewelry into cash. Or just a great location to take their eyes off the road while driving, assuming they hadn't already. This, of course, presents a major dilemma, as the sort of person who finds panhandlers an unspeakable nuisance is almost guaranteed to be the sort of person who finds any behavior, no matter how loud, annoying, ceaseless, disquieting, or insulting, to be sacred protected speech provided it's in the pursuit of Profit. With the possible exception of handjobs.

But the 8 Investigation neatly sidestepped any tricky ethical considerations by simply focusing on panhandlers themselves, and following them around with hidden cameras.

And, as disturbing as that might sound, what grabbed me by the sigmoid colon was Hensel's apparently unself-conscious announcement in the intro that she'd noticed these people while driving in to work each morning and begun to wonder if they really were Homeless and in Need of Food, or whether they truly did beseech God to bless donors. Maybe they weren't even monotheists at all! There's nothing like a reporter's nose for a story, even if said nose has been surgically reconstructed three or four times.

Oh, you can throw in the proud declaration that the following is the result of a Six Month Investigation, if you like, but that was more of a garnish than a turd sandwich.

Okay, okay; these people are scofflaws at best. News flash. I'm not quite sure who was supposed to have believed otherwise, or how their behavior is distinguished from the Makers of Airborne™, Emeril Lagasse™ Signature Cookware, or the Daniels administration. But, sheesh, a six-month investigation triggered by something which disturbed your view out the SUV windshield one morning? It's the local business paper, not the considerably better-funded local network affiliates, which exposed Tim Durham and his connection to sleazy Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi (a man you people gave nightly face-time to so he could flack his political career); we have to wait for them, or local bloggers, to fill us in on Brizzi's contributors and business partners getting questionable deals in murder and drug cases. You stovepiped the Ur-Teabagging Property Tax Protests without ever identifying the Governor, and the state Republican party (the primary beneficiaries of all that "grassroots" anger) as the people who'd fucked the system up in the first place. You missed the Capital Improvement Board losing $45 million tax dollars per year, but you didn't miss the free buffet at the new Football Barn. The Goldsmythe-era New Main Library Palace nearly had to collapse into a heap of substandard concrete and insufficient support before you stopped touting it as an architectural marvel, and you never did show much interest in just who wasted millions of tax dollars by not hiring a general contractor. The Simons demand an extra $15 million/year lest they find some other city which wants the Crappiest Product in the NBA; Indiana Barrister suggests the "renegotiation clause" in the Pacers' lease agreement doesn't actually exist; you people seem too busy calculating how much Simon Malls spend on advertising to get around to looking in to it.

Hey, by all means: scammers don't deserve a free pass just because they're small. My point is that we deserve news reporting which also looks up, at least once in a while.

Olio

• I'm one of the maybe two dozen living Americans who listened to Nick Drake while he was alive, and I spent the next twenty-five years like some gormless junior-high swain, pushing his stuff on anyone I thought would listen. (In fact, I didn't actually see the Pink Moon Volkswagen ad that kick-started his career until much later; the first notice I got was an email from someone I'd turned into a fan years before, who wrote to ask how Nick could've turned into a sell-out (!), to which I had to point out that his death twenty-six years previous was the likely cause.)

So, of course: that new AT&T ad, which not only abuses Nick but the recently bereaved Christo into the bargain. And, y'know, Art has always been co-opted, and sometimes even advanced, by rich shits and their stolen loot; I thought the VW ad did well by the Estate, and I'm glad more people found out about him. But the AT&T ad hacks "From the Morning" into a sound effect. Fucking unlistenable to anyone who knows the song, which, I might add, was the last any of us got to hear from him while he was alive, as it's the last cut of Pink Moon.

And yet that beautiful soul, painful and anodyne at the same time, still comes through. But whoever's responsible for that cut should be cast adrift. In the Gulf.

(Joe Boyd, whose memoir White Bicycles is a worthy read, had a clause in his contract requiring Island Records keep the Drake catalogue in print. Imagine such stupidity these days.)

• Eric Lipton, "With Obama, Regulations Are Back in Fashion".

Jesus wept.

• If All Your Friends Jumped Off A Cliff, Would You Jump, Too? State Senator Mike Delph (R-Carmel) will introduce a proposal to empower anyone with Indiana police powers to enforce immigration laws. As though it hasn't been against the law since the 19th century to drive, stroll, or remove oxygen from The Alabaster City while colored. I suppose the good news is we don't really have anything for anyone to boycott.

• Speaking of America's Third-Worst State Legislature and its unfortunate habit of meeting, State Senator Luke Kenley, whose standing Senate committee on Government Finance, Daniels PR Damage Control, and Covered Per Diem Expenses is now in permanent session, found hisself an actuary willing to claim that Indiana's share of the Obama/Hitler Healthcare program will be twice the national average, provided you approach it with that result in mind. This, of course, led local teleprompter readers to read this off their teleprompters as though the results had been carved in stone by Cecil B. DeMille.

Kenley, whose sad descent into Wingnuttery has been traceable by the hour over the past three-four years, suggested that as a result Indiana should withdraw from the Medicaid program, thereby eliminating all healthcare costs for everyone who remains in the state. Save, of course, footing the bill for state legislators.

• Speaking of which: last Friday afternoon I developed a pain in me guts, which only got worse, and after an early bedtime I woke in the middle of the night, stood up, and discovered I had a fever and the sort of chills generally associated with epidemics stemming from 18th century hygiene practices (which, with any luck, Indiana's Republican majorities will be reinstating in January 2011). This meant one thing: my first diverticulitis attack in three years. I slept away 22 of the next 24 hours, waking only long enough to ponder the fact that what I needed were antibiotics, and that what I was likely to get from a visit to clinic, or direct to the emergency room the clinic would have directed me to after extracting $200 for its trouble, was a date with MRI, an effort to keep me there for 72 hours, and another opportunity to be reminded that Medical Insurance Accounting is a far more creative activity than I imagined back on Senior Careers Day. And I'm one of the fortunate who has sufficient insurance to prevent penury in case of catastrophic illness. Unless the insurance company gets involved.

Because, of course, it was a weekend. Now, if what I'd needed was access to fireworks and/or liquor...

A couple things are worth mentioning here. One, Indiana has limited medical malpractice awards since the mid-70s reign of Governor Otis R. "Kindly Doc" Bowen, the Unindicted Bremen Physician, so I am presumably benefitting, cost-wise, from all the inattention I can stand. And so the incontinent testing is either a) excessive caution; b) a professional tic; or c) pure profit. Take your pick. The other thing is that I shelled out $600 my cost for some Glamor Shots of my damaged knee a couple years back, and the surgeon still found some surprises once he got inside; this is the same industry which informed us that my severely demented Mother was "just a little blue" and probably needed a dog or something. Though this does lessen the threat of Indiana's impending return to leeching and Humour Balancing, at least somewhat.

Reasons To Just Stay On The Futon

1. Because Roy and R. Porrofatto handled this Brooks excrescence, a helluva lot quicker than I ever would, the latter by the simple expedient of pointing out how recently (say, during the nomination of Sam Alito) Brooks was part of the vogue for Gray Organizational Mantypes.

2. Because somebody's gonna invite Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction and Mitch Daniels Luggage Assistant Tony Bennett to Washington, specifically to the House Committee on Education and Labor, so he can say this:

Our greatest challenge is to unite aggressively against all forces working to oppose reform that benefits school children. In Indiana and states across the nation, the most striking, most powerful impediment to improving instructional quality and school leadership has been those organizations charged, principally, to protect the integrity of the teaching profession: teachers’ unions.

Y'know, it's funny, but Bennett, who's been increasingly at odds with Indiana's teachers ever since Mitch Daniels decided he'd run for President a little--"at odds" here being defined as "refusing to talk to, then blaming them for their lack of communication"--doesn't actually talk like this for local consumption, even though his position as Daniels torpedo is well understood. He didn't talk like that during the 2008 campaign (the position used to be appointed, but The Bantam Menace found himself saddled with an Uppity Woman, albeit a Republican one, and the World's Third-Worst State Legislature™ obligingly changed the rules so the all-important "ability to pander to campaign contributors" was added to the list of qualifications). In 2008, for some unknown reason, the big Daniels Team theme (throw in the Attorney General candidate) was some vague weirdness about Defending Teachers Against Nuisance Assault Charges For Telling Children To Sit Down, something which became part of the landmark Omnibus Educational Sassmouth legislation passed last year.

And Bennett doesn't seem to've done much reforming back when he was Superintendent of a public school district, though he did have his hands full making sure the Greater Clark County Schools continued to underperform on state proficiency tests. In fairness, though, I guess that's how you learn.

3. Because this:

unfortunately, is the link to the article, not the whole thing.

You Know (Cough Cough) I'd (Cough) Be There If I Could (Hack Hack)

TAKING a couple sick days, not because I'm sick, but because I was sick, and now I have to catch up on the work I didn't do when I did have a legitimate excuse. My Poor Wife'll vouch for me. Really.

Chuckles

Charles "Merkwürdigeliebe" Krauthammer, "How to Modernize Miranda for the Age of Terror". May 7

AH, yes, the Grand Old Notion that the American Right is competent and effective, despite all evidence pointing the opposite direction, because it talks like John Wayne doing An Evening with Richard Nixon. Brings back a lot of memories.

Leave us note at the beginning that Dr. Krauthammer is the intellectual force behind Bush Derangement Syndrome, a complex set of pathologies he and his colleagues at the Goldberg Flatulence Clinic identified about twenty minutes into Worst Presidency in History. And that's in his (thankfully non-practicing) professional capacity. Gives a little perspective on his amateur Constitutional Law rulings.

[We might, as long as we're at it, ask where, in (another) week dominated by his colleagues flying off the rails over immigrants, non-bombings, and, in perpetuity, The Socialism, Krauthammer's keeping his update on BDS-like manias? I'm sure the clinical world is getting anxious.]

"[Law enforcement] interviewed Mr. Shahzad . . . under the public safety exception to the Miranda rule. . . . He was eventually transported to another location, Mirandized and continued talking."
-- John Pistole, FBI deputy director, May 4

All well and good. But what if Faisal Shahzad, the confessed Times Square bomber, had stopped talking? When you tell someone he has the right to remain silent, there is a distinct possibility that he will remain silent, is there not? And then what?

Good point. We might've had to wait an extra twenty minutes for The Pakistani Taliban, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or Al-Sharpton in Flatbush to claim credit. No worries, though; if there's one thing this country's still good at it's drumming up blind terror and blinder analysis.

The authorities deserve full credit for capturing Shahzad within 54 hours. Credit is also due them for obtaining information from him by invoking the "public safety" exception to the Miranda rule.

Oh, surely some of the credit goes to the thousands of dedicated bloggers who dropped everything at the merest suggestion the perp was a lone white guy.

Look, what is any of that supposed to mean? Who else would deserve the credit? He was caught, evidently, by standard, detail-oriented police work aided by the sorts of resources we're paying billions in Homeland Security Bucks to maintain. A job well done; the timing was partly due to luck. Appending this stuff to the Right's Jack Bauer fantasies accomplishes exactly nothing. (Okay, it furthers the cause of conflating pissed-off but incompetent homicidal maniacs with The Legion of Doom. So I take that back. It accomplishes less than nothing.)

As for "invoking" the public safety exception to Miranda, they didn't and don't. They may have acted under the exception; Holder said they did, but that was after he'd come under fire because an apprehended criminal, and US citizen, was treated like an apprehended criminal and US citizen. You can question a subject for hours or days without reading his Miranda warning, but at the risk of losing before the bar whatever evidence you obtain. You don't "invoke" the public safety exception to do so; you use that in court as a justification for having done so. Given the timbre of such cases over the past eight years, and the extra-Constitutional powers claimed, or merely grabbed, by the Executive branch, the authorities already operate with something between a reasonable belief and a dead-on certainty that the suspect isn't going anywhere for a decade or more anyway.

But then Shahzad was Mirandized. If he had decided to shut up, it would have denied us valuable information -- everything he is presumably telling us now about Pakistani contacts, training, plans for other possible plots beyond the Times Square attack.

The public safety exception is sometimes called the "ticking time bomb" exception. But what about information regarding bombs not yet ticking but being planned and readied to kill later?

What about the very abuses the Constitutional protections are designed to prevent?

Why is that never part of the equation? Krauthammer's argument applies to any sort of criminal activity. Why not use the public safety exception to ignore Miranda altogether? The possibility for unnamed, unready, and yet unplanned conspiracies is practically infinite, and it's not restricted to "enemy combatants".

This is the worst sort of libertoonian logic wedded to Nixonian politics. It's a simple thing to propose draconian measures when you think they'll be restricted to your enemies. And it's particularly easy when you get to announce that your plan is effective, and you're not required to even suggest how such a thing is worded to assure it's only little brown men who get the pike.

John McCain's been in Congress since before 9/11. Joe Lieberman, too (have I thanked you lately, Connecticut?). Where's the Constitutional amendment? Where's the legislation from the Homeland Security committee? This is another goddam Flag Burning amendment, something designed to swing at, miss, and let the bat fly out of your hands and hit a Democrat with. How did an entire party turn into ratfuckers?

In this case, however, Miranda warnings were superfluous. Shahzad had confessed to the car-bombing attempt while being interrogated under the public safety exception. That's admissible evidence.

Seven-hundred-fifty words on Constitutional law from "the most important conservative columnist" and he's never heard of a confession being ruled inadmissible, over Miranda or anything else? Have I thanked you lately, Washington Post?

Second, even assuming that by not Mirandizing him we might have jeopardized our chances of getting some convictions -- so what?

Yeah, I'm sure all those members of the Senate appropriations subcommittee would've leapt in unison to Eric Holder's defense.

Which is more important: (a) gaining, a year or two hence, the conviction of a pigeon -- the last and now least important link in this terror chain -- whom we could surely lock up on explosives and weapons charges, or (b) preventing future terror attacks on Americans by learning from Shahzad what he might know about terror plots in Pakistan and sleeper cells in the United States?

Wait. Do either of those options come with "Locking up Charles Krauthammer for the public good"? Or pie?

But let's assume you're wedded to the civilian law-enforcement model, as is the Obama administration.

That's the same Obama administration which has escalated the Afghan war and spread it into Pakistan in search of these guys, right? Yeah, total wimps.

At least make an attempt to expand the public safety exception to Miranda in a way that takes into account the jihadist war that did not exist when that exception was narrowly drawn by the Supreme Court in the 1984 Quarles case.

I've got a better idea. Why not use the existing Constitution (you know, the one you guys are always going on about how the Original Intent of the Founders is the only proper way to interpret it?) and simply make the War on Terra a declared war? Then you could treat them as civilians in violation of International Humanitarian Law, and they'd be subject to criminal prosecution under the domestic laws of the United States.

Oh. Never mind.

The Garage-Sale SPECTRE

Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, "Evidence Mounts for Taliban Role in Car Bomb Plot". May 5

HERE'S a fun rainy-day activity for the kids: have 'em read this article--as I write it occupies the Sweet Spot on the Times homepage--and Find the Evidence! Have them circle anything that isn't rank speculation, groundless fear-mongering, a factoid already in evidence, or downright risible given the facts of the case. First one to one wins.

Look, guys: these are the people who brought you the Iraq war intel, the Color Coded Terror Alert System, and the death or capture of enough #2 Men in al-Qaeda to fill the Rose Bowl. I'm not saying you don't report the Twinkee filling "American officials" are squeezing out; I'm just saying you might give some indication that you realize some air might've gotten whipped into the mix at some point.

WASHINGTON — American officials said Wednesday that it was very likely that a radical group once thought unable to attack the United States had played a role in the bombing attempt in Times Square, elevating concerns about whether other militant groups could deliver at least a glancing blow on American soil.

A glancing blow?

Officials said that after two days of intense questioning of the bombing suspect, Faisal Shahzad, evidence was mounting that the group, the Pakistani Taliban, had helped inspire and train Mr. Shahzad in the months before he is alleged to have parked an explosives-filled sport utility vehicle in a busy Manhattan intersection on Saturday night. Officials said Mr. Shahzad had discussed his contacts with the group, and investigators had accumulated other evidence that they would not disclose.

Yeah. Because they hope it will lead them right to The Pakistani Taliban's #2 Man.

Okay, so, a couple things: one, what sort of terrorist threat is supposed to come from an organization which names itself like a Bush administration (I or II) military operation in reverse? "Operation Eternal Freedom From Above". "Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia". "The Pakistani Taliban". "Quad Cities Islamofascist Club". It's like the DYMO™ label you'd stick on your collection of terrorists if you wanted to keep them organized. Two, how is it the Couldabomber threat has increased the farther we are away from it, y'know, not exploding an' killing all those people? Are we now supposed to treat the initial reports of amateurishness as inoperative? Propane tanks, fireworks, gasoline, and (non-explosive) fertilizer. That's not "an explosives-filled sport utility vehicle"; it's a wish list for an incompetent 13-year-old suburban kid who's planning on offing some neighborhood pets. It's actually "a vehicle filled with shit that might explode, under certain (and very different) circumstances". What sort of training do you need for that? We're certainly not privy to all the info, but in the absence of any American officials saying otherwise, you appear to have a guy who filled his beater car with stuff that would explode, or he thought would explode, based on nothing more than a cursory familiarity with the concept of "fertilizer bomb", left some ignition source burning, and took off. Lo! and Behold! somebody in Times Fucking Square noticed the thing smoking and sounded the alarm. I guess that's something no amount of high-tech terror training could have prepared you for, but what's next? The M-80s go off? Which accomplishes what? Somebody twists an ankle on the curb while running away? Vast throngs gather around a strange vehicle to enjoy the unscheduled fireworks display? And then what? They set off the gasoline? Maybe. Given the apparent level of expertise we've seen up to now I'm betting against it, but if so, sure, big explosion. Enough to set off the propane tanks? Maybe, assuming the fire burns long and hot enough, at which point you might kill or injure a responding fireman or two, but for any of this to've killed large numbers of civilians they'd practically have had to volunteer.

And, look, as for The Pakistani Taliban "inspiring" Mr. Shahzad's murderous intentions, wouldn't five minutes reading Red State have accomplished the same thing?

The failed attack has produced a flurry of other proposals to tighten security procedures, including calls by members of Congress to more closely scrutinize passengers who buy tickets with cash, as Mr. Shahzad did. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, proposed stripping terrorism suspects of American citizenship

Which reminds me: thanks again, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked Congress to block the sale of firearms and explosives to those on terrorist watch lists.

Which reminds me: whatever happened to John Ashcroft?

One issue that investigators are vigorously pursuing is who provided Mr. Shahzad cash to buy the S.U.V. and his plane ticket to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. “Somebody’s financially sponsoring him, and that’s the link we’re pursuing,” one official said. “And that would take you on the logic train back to Pak-Taliban authorizations,” the official said, referring to the group.

A twenty-year-old Nissan Pathfinder and a $1000 ticket to Dubai. Plus snacks and tips. Are we sure Goldfinger was killed when he was sucked out of that plane?

American officials said it had become increasingly difficult to separate the operations of the militant groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The region, they said, has become a stew of like-minded organizations plotting attacks in Pakistani cities, across the border into Afghanistan, and on targets in Western Europe and the United States.

Well, it's a good thing we're there, then.

The C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan, which was accelerated in 2008 and expanded by President Obama last year, has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Washington in part because it was perceived as eliminating dangerous militants while keeping Americans safe.

Well, it's a good thing we're there, then.

Denis McDonough, the chief of staff for the National Security Council, said the Times Square attempted bombing showed that Pakistan and the United States faced a common enemy, calling it “a pretty stark reminder that the same collection of terrorists that are threatening them are threatening us.”

And the only thing standing between us and them is a massive military, a nuclear arsenal, and our Strategic Steet-Corner Vendor reserves.

But the attack in December on a C.I.A. base in Afghanistan, and now possibly the failed S.U.V. attack in Manhattan, are reminders that the drones’ very success may be provoking a costly response.

Reminders? Then could you please remind me the first time that possibility was part of the national debate on our Mideast adventurism?

But, Then, We All Like Meatballs

David Brooks, "The Limits of Policy". May 3

A PARTICULARLY filling exercise from Brooks. Dread, nausea, disgust, despair, weltschmerz, take your pick. Or try the combo platter:

Roughly a century ago, many Swedes immigrated to America. They’ve done very well here. Only about 6.7 percent of Swedish-Americans live in poverty. Also a century ago, many Swedes decided to remain in Sweden. They’ve done well there, too. When two economists calculated Swedish poverty rates according to the American standard, they found that 6.7 percent of the Swedes in Sweden were living in poverty.

O Lord, this is not going to be good…

In other words, you had two groups with similar historical backgrounds living in entirely different political systems, and the poverty outcomes were the same.

Dear God, it's going to be worse than that…

A similar pattern applies to health care. In 1950, Swedes lived an average of 2.6 years longer than Americans. Over the next half-century, Sweden and the U.S. diverged politically. Sweden built a large welfare state with a national health service, while the U.S. did not. The result? There was basically no change in the life expectancy gap. Swedes now live 2.7 years longer.

Again, huge policy differences. Not huge outcome differences.

Okay, we haven't even started the column yet, and we've already managed to combine 1) The Amateur Sociology Means Never Having To Spell Rigor routine; 2) The Government Never Completely Solves Any Problems, So Let's Not Try (Defense and Protection of Capital Excluded) gambit; and 3) The Look, It's Not Racism, It's Just A Cold, Hard Appraisal of the Facts maneuver these guys have been scrabbling for since The Bell Curve.

And y'know, you'd think that with two "reasonable" "conservatives" pushing t-shirt carts around the Times Op-Ed mall, at least one of 'em could manage to remain calm, or whatever it is passes for rational, in the wake of the Arizona party disgracing its entire end of the political spectrum (assuming, arguendo, that such a thing is even possible any more). And, as so often, you'd be wrong, although Douthat (!) did manage to remain calm enough to try to frame the issue as A Question of Immigration and the Unhelpful Lefty Elites Who Scream "Fascist!" at People Who Are Only Trying To Clean Up The Federal Government's Mess.

[This reminds me, by the way, that at some point since the Times Square Couldabomber story broke I overheard some national news hairdo describe the Vietnam vets who alerted the authorities as "men who'd fought for Our Freedom". Now, my experience of that war and the men who served in it comes direct, not as some facile, third-hand, Hallmark-card-magnetic-yellow-ribbon-on-the-family-Panzer sentiment. I knew men--boys--who went because they were drafted, who volunteered, who never thought of anything but becoming soldiers, or who saw no other economic opportunities. I had a friend come back a paraplegic, fail to adjust to life in a chair, and die within five years. I've known men who came home to lead normal lives, and men who spent years on the streets in their BDUs. And I've never heard even the Gungest of the Hos among them talk about "fighting for Our Freedom", at least not before the eleventh beer. The right to prop up a corrupt and decadent colonial mandarin system a century out of date against the wishes of an agrarian people who'd done us no harm and who, in fact, had bravely fought the Japanese, while their colonial masters were busy collaborating, by dropping more ordinance on 'em than the combined tonnage of two world wars is not "Freedom." Freedom's just another word for "I don't want to trouble my beautiful mind learning unpleasant facts, at least not right before my Pilates class." ]

There, now. All better.

This is not to say that policy choices are meaningless.

Of, of course not. It's to say we shouldn't make any social policy, because someone in the chattering classes might point out it's not perfect.

But we should be realistic about them. The influence of politics and policy is usually swamped by the influence of culture, ethnicity, psychology and a dozen other factors.

Of course, that's just the sort of thing you'd expect a New York Jew to say.

The region you live in also makes a gigantic difference in how you will live. There are certain high-trust regions where highly educated people congregate, producing positive feedback loops of good culture and good human capital programs. This mostly happens in the northeastern states like New Jersey and Connecticut. There are other regions with low social trust, low education levels and negative feedback loops. This mostly happens in southern states like Arkansas and West Virginia.

Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped would you really, Old Man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, Old Man; free of income tax. Only way you can save money nowadays.

If you combine the influence of ethnicity and region, you get astounding lifestyle gaps. The average Asian-American in New Jersey lives an amazing 26 years longer and is 11 times more likely to have a graduate degree than the average American Indian in South Dakota.

Dear God, this sort of thing passes for reasoned opinion these days at the Times, and it passes for argument in David Brooks' head. I don't know which is worse.

Y'know, Mr. Brooks, maybe in the place of your umpteenth rereading of Burke this weekend, and those endless salons where the fifty-seven varieties of American "Conservatism" are endlessly reforged in philosophy's fires, you could, I dunno, read any standard text on the history of Native Americans post-contact, or start in on Taylor Branch's history of the King years, or All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw. In other words, maybe you could spare a few minutes to consider what was actually done politically, over centuries, what enormities were visited on the African-American and Native American populations, and how those have shaped and shaded various "cultures and ethnic philosophies". Y'know, instead of contenting yourself with the idea that you're not being racist because the Heathen Chinee seem to be doing okay. There's no such thing as absolving yourself of the moral, ethical, and political responsibility just because you find them convenient to ignore when profit's involved. Sure, it may be trite to point out that it isn't your ox being gored here, but the point is that it's still fucking necessary, even though it's within your lifetime that African-Americans weren't allowed to sully the drinking fountains of their White betters. If you really believed all this then your professional career would be studded with severe criticism of your own party for capitalizing on Race, and for using the poor as a political football. Instead we get your stagy pretense that you personally are above it all. And closing your ears to it doesn't ameliorate the shame.

It is very hard for policy makers to use money to directly alter these viewpoints.

Yeah. The only thing money can buy you is an invincible military.

In her book, “What Money Can’t Buy,” Susan E. Mayer of the University of Chicago calculated what would happen if you could double the income of the poorest Americans. The results would be disappointingly small. Doubling parental income would barely reduce dropout rates of the children. It would have a small effect on reducing teen pregnancy. It would barely improve child outcomes overall.

Sheesh. The poorest Americans? According to the Official poverty guidelines, it's $22,000 for a family of four. At $44,000 they're supposed to be living high on the hog, watching Masterpiece Theatre, and selecting grad schools? All worry free? Because all social obstacles just melt away when you can afford to eat at Red Lobster twice a month?

Shit. You can't even maintain the façade of the argument ("We shouldn't strive to do much by social legislation because there's no overweening consensus in the social sciences") for 800 words; all evidence that agrees with you is unquestioned. You're talking about great masses of people who were legally prohibited from cultural enrichment for centuries, whose own culture was scorned and dismissed, and whose incredibly brave struggle for basic rights under the law has been systematically opposed for forty-five years by one of our two political parties. Yours, Mr. Brooks. Not coincidentally.

Finally, we should all probably calm down about politics. Most of the proposals we argue about so ferociously will have only marginal effects on how we live, especially compared with the ethnic, regional and social differences that we so studiously ignore.

By dredging them up every election cycle.

Moderate, n. A Guy Who Needs Only One House To Fall On Him Before He Notices.

ITEM: Schwarzenegger Withdraws Support for Offshore Drilling. Which, mind you, was "supposed to" fund Cali's state parks, a sort of West Coast version of Mitch Daniels™ Brand fiscal responsibility, where you sell off state assets you're only temporarily in charge of in order to provide something your base wants to have without paying for it. Though in Indiana's case it's pavement, not trees.

ITEM: Administration in PR "Panic" Over Oil Spill. First, if I woke up to Mike Allen every morning I'd give serious consideration to sleeping until noon, or Eternal Rest; hell, just the fact that I live in a country where administration officials won't eat breakfast without checking the US magazine of politics is enough to make me ponder the Big Sleep.

In fact, conversations at the time of the spill on April 20 show that West Wing aides were worried about the rig tragedy from the moment it was reported. Even before the scope of the disaster was clear, these aides knew that it would undermine, if not reverse, Obama’s support for increased offshore oil drilling.

Aw, gee, ya think?

Maybe it's just that I'm old, but I find myself more astonished, on an almost hourly basis, at the fact that "adulthood" is supposed to require balancing of Obvious Fucking Facts Staring You in the Face with some abiding metaphysical assurance that Profits are talismanic. This, despite the fact that it always winds up operating in reverse; once you deed control over the environment to someone whose sole concern is how much money can be wrung from it, the only question is how big the disaster is going to be.

Okay, that, plus how much we're going to increase it by playing footsie with the profiteers beforehand. (See Joe Conason on Norway's offshore drilling.)

What changed, exactly, between the Drill Baby Drill Convention of '08 and last month? What changed between last month and today? Why does it take an environmental disaster (and far from the first one) to alert you to the potential for environmental disaster?

Would now be a good time to remind you that one reason we're having this "debate" is that we had this debate thirty years ago, when "conservation" and "energy independence" were synonymous with "Malaise"? When the President's PR "Panic" was that someone would catch him with Jimmy Carter's solar panels on his roof?

Incidentally, it's interesting that one of our two major political parties voted en mass against the notion that we can give every American health care, but apparently think we can afford unlimited risk to life and livelihood so long as it's in the name of private enrichment. The Indiana primaries are today, and thank god, as we might get a week's respite from political ads. All Republicans favor jobs and small children, so long as they're their own or their grandchildren, though in Dan Burton's case they could be Romanian stunt doubles. Todd Rokita, best known as the Indiana Secretary of State who figured his office was a grand excuse for putting his name on everything that wasn't nailed down, then buying teevee time to publicize it, bemoans the fact that his newborn son was born $40,000 in debt thanks to the Gubmint. Or some number he pulled from his ass. It's funny that this concern never extends to Young Rokita being born hostage to utility companies, landlords, currency speculators, multinational corporations, or all the people his father's beholden to for financing his million-dollar campaigns. Cute kid, though.

There Are 8 Million Stories In The Naked City. F*ck The Rest Of Them.

I am more dismayed at the continuing degeneration of criminal initiative in my city. In the Times Square of my youth a Nissan parked with the keys in the ignition would've been gone in sixty seconds whether smoking or not.

R. Porrofatto, at Roy's.

MAYBE it's just me, but I could swear that Times Square White Male Loner Amateur Concoction of Propane Tanks, M-80s, and Miracle-Gro™ Car Bomb of Mass Destruction got more dangerous the longer it had been defused. By Sunday, of course, the ear-splitting non-explosion was possibly the work of the Pakistani Taliban, an organization previously known as an adjective and a noun; earlier, NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had told a not-quite-anxious-enough city that the arrangement could have caused "a significant fireball". Sheesh, Officer, it was a Nissan SUV beater. Could'a caused a significant fireball with a loose fuel line and a discarded cigarette. Could'a caused double-digit fatalities just being a vehicle.

I live in Indianapolis, 700 miles and half a world away, and just within the past week a) the Targeted Polyhedron Weather Siren program was shelved, due to a software glitch; we're returning for the nonce to the old "set 'em off whenever the barometer falls" program, which was scheduled to be replaced because everybody ignores constant warnings that don't pan out; and b) it was announced that the 9/11-based hydraulic vehicle barrier around the Statehouse hasn't been working for over a year, because it got rained on. You'll forgive a certain jaundiced view of the whole Emergency Response Game if you detect one coming from this direction. Funny thing about Expertise: you always have much more of it before it's tested.

As far as I'm concern the "News" can fluff the Terra angle every time the cops find a car with a gas can and a bag of potting soil in the back; it makes it less likely the public will listen to professional pants-pissing of the politically-motivated variety. What I don't quite get, or maybe I do, is how this little Factlet of Life gets missed. Especially as this comes from the same "News" readers who've reported the difficulty the weather service has trying to balance awareness and Klaxon Fatigue. Or who might be in the best position to recall that Liberal Touchy-Feely Trying To Understand The Terrorists After 9/11 was Objectively Pro-Fifth Columnist.

Why do we still give Terrists (and Army Germ Bomb doctors, and other White Male psychopaths) the publicity they crave? It's curious that this time, just like the Underpants Bomber Disaster and the Smartass Middle-Eastern Diplomat Rogue Bathroom Smoker Disaster, the initial reports were almost businesslike. And the initial reticence lasts about sixty minutes, after which the hunt for some connection to Islam is in full bray, and never mind that anyone who paid attention already knows the threat was a) amateurish, or b) non-existent. The only thing that's served by reporting on how significant ("very") the fireball could have been, had there been a fireball, is the presumption of improved ratings for newscasts and public servants. It's as though every Terra Event now has a criminal trial phase, where the Lousy Islamic Perps get off once again on technicalities like not being involved, or the whole thing having been blown out of all proportion, followed by the civil suit, where the rules of evidence are relaxed and we can bask in convicting 'em anyway. And give the nation's hard-pressed Counterterrorism Experts a little shot in the arm into the bargain, by allowing them to ask "C'mon, Why Don't We Have More Car Bombings?" ("Terror in the Trunk". Nice touch.)

The Best Thing Ever Said On The Internets, Vol. V

WONKETTE highlights Sarah Palin's concern-tweeting the Gulf oil disaster ("All industry efforts must b employed"). Not_So_Much responds:

How's that drilly-spilly thing workin' out for ya?