In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

William Saletan over at Slate asks:

Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?

If abortion is murder, the most efficient thing you could have done to prevent such murders this month was to kill George Tiller.

That's him, verbatim.

Is Saletan arguably the largest asshole on Earth today, or what? More verbatim.

Is that statement wrong? Is it wrong to defend the life of an unborn child as you would defend the life of a born child? Because that's the question this murder poses. Peaceful pro-lifers have already tried to prosecute Tiller for doing late-term abortions they claimed were against the law. They failed to convict him. If unborn children are morally equal to born children, then Tiller's assassin has just succeeded where the legal system failed: He has stopped a mass murderer from killing again.

I give up. Honestly. If you're a mainstream journalist and you're saying "Well, yeah, it's okay to question whether or not a doctor like this should have been killed but you really shouldn't kill people" you no longer have credibility at all. But here's his big finish:

If you don't accept what he did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter. We're looking for ways to prevent abortions—not just a few this month, but millions down the line—without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.

Yes, join us in preventing the next murder of the next abortionist by helping us outlaw all abortion! No abortions, no doctors getting murdered.

See how remarkably reasonable Saletan is?

Al Versus Norm, Part 1102

So, Minnesota's Republican Gov, Tim Pawlenty, is not running for re-election.

Pawlenty has remained a relatively popular chief executive of a state that is trending blue. But his "my-way-or-the-highway" stance on tax hikes may diminish his standing by the end of his term. His unflinching opposition has earned him plaudits from conservatives, but it has frustrated his Democratic state legislature. Pawlenty's name is now attached to $3 billion in budget cuts, resulting in praise from the Wall Street Journal and Americans for Tax Reform. Without re-election pressure, he's free to experiment even more.

57% of Minnesotans say they'd be open to someone else as governor, a sign that Pawlenty, although still personally liked by the voters, has worn out his welcome. Fairly conservative on most issues, Pawlenty has taken centrist stands on environmental legislation and health care; he is very frustrated with the tone his party has adopted; if, at some point before 2012, he decides to retire from politics altogether, I wouldn't be surprised.

As Josh Marshall points out, that's actually bad, bad news for Democrat Al Franken.

That's because the most probable next step in the endless Franken-Coleman drama is that the Minnesota Supreme Court will rule in Franken's favor and it will fall to Pawlenty to issue the certificate of election that will get him seated in the senate. The details are sort of murky. But the upshot is that Pawlenty will likely have just enough wiggle room to refuse to do so, if he wishes, perhaps using the excuse of possible litigation on Coleman's behalf in the federal judiciary.

As long as he was going to run for governor and had to face Minnesota voters again, there was good reason for him not to completely stick his finger in the eye of the election process. But now that's not holding him back. And since he's probably running for president, he'll have tons of incentive to pander to the hardcore tea-bagging wing of the GOP and keep Franken out of the senate as long as he can.

In other words, if Pawlenty doesn't have to worry about pleasing Minnesota's moderates anymore, he can earn points with primary voting GOP hardliners and earn 2012 primary cred by giving Al Franken the big screw you and refusing to sign off on Franken becoming a Senator until Norm Coleman exhausts all federal avenues, up to and including the US Supreme Court.

It's possible that worst case scenario may be Franken is denied his seat until well into 2010. And should the Supremes actually take up this case, it could end up setting a precedent where basically every election in 2010 is challeneged by the GOP.

The Pushback Begins

All I gotta say is "Called this on Saturday."

And lo and behold, the AIPAC lobby Democratic pushback on Obama is underway.

As President Barack Obama prepares to depart for his first trip to the Arab world, the administration’s escalating pressure on Israel to freeze all growth of its settlements on Palestinian land has begun to stir concern among Israel’s numerous allies in both parties on Capitol Hill.

“My concern is that we are applying pressure to the wrong party in this dispute,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.). “I think it would serve America’s interest better if we were pressuring the Iranians to eliminate the potential of a nuclear threat from Iran, and less time pressuring our allies and the only democracy in the Middle East to stop the natural growth of their settlements.”

“When Congress gets back into session the administration is going to hear from many more members than just me,” she said.

Yeah, that's not an open threat. Jesus.

Presidents from Jimmy Carter to George H.W. Bush saw attempts to pressure Israel draw furious objections from Congress, but members of Congress and observers say Obama will most likely prevail as long as he shows that he’s putting effective pressure on Israel’s Arab foes as well.

But even a key defender of Obama’s Mideast policy, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), is seeking to narrow the administration’s definition of “settlement” to take pressure off Obama. And the unusual criticism by congressional Democrats of the popular president is a sign that it may take more than a transformative presidential election to change the domestic politics of Israel.

Other Democrats, in interviews with POLITICO, raised similar concerns. While few will defend illegal Jewish outposts on land they hope will be part of a Palestinian state, they question putting public pressure on Israel while — so far — paying less public attention to Palestinian terrorism and other Arab states’ hostility to Israel.

In other words, Dems are privately admitting that Israel is making things worse with the settlement issue, but publicly they are saying that Obama isn't allowed to call Israel on it.

The issue is always how horrible and evil the Palestinian terrorists are, not how Israel is making things worse. The message for Obama is clear: "Why are you wasting America's bully pulpit with Israel's settlements when you should be railing against Iran? Do you not know what your job is as President?"

What Comes Around, Goes Around

Over at Eunomia, Dan Larison makes one of those Good Points I keep mentioning in passing, this on Sotomayor (emphasis mine)

It is questionable whether “color-blind justice” is actually in danger here, or at least it is questionable whether it is in danger because of a judge such as Sotomayor. More to the point, it is much less likely that Americans will be able to “celebrate their rootedness in unique, decentralized communities,” if they are going to be able to do this at all, if Americans of all backgrounds are confronted with social stigma and ostracism for expressing pride in their roots and communities. The question, then, is why those conservatives who presumably could see some virtue in “rootedness in unique, decentralized communities” should be so scandalized by statements that reflect positively on particularity and diversity. Indeed, one of the main things that is so deeply troubling about official celebrations of diversity is that they are so very often wedded to programs of political centralization and uniformity.

As for the other point, it is true that refraining from making baseless charges of racism against Sotomayor will not stop other baseless attacks against conservatives from being made. However, it does seem all but certain that making such baseless charges one of the main lines of attack against Sotomayor will make it far more likely that even those conservative arguments that were once given the benefit of the doubt will be willfully misread in just the same way that critics seem to have been misreading Sotomayor’s statements. If there are already some conservative arguments on immigration, affirmative action or other policy questions that are frequently dismissed and ridiculed as racist, how many more will be tarred with this label as a result of conservatives’ having dramatically lowered the standards of what counts as a racist statement? How many conservative pundits and radio talk show hosts will wind up on the wrong side of the sweeping, unreasonably broad defintion of racism that conservatives are now employing to try to trip up Sotomayor? Perhaps most telling of all, this smear on Sotomayor will not advance conservative causes one inch, but will boomerang and harm them significantly, and those who recklessly flung these charges should not be surprised if they come back to haunt them later on.

And he's got a point: there are legitimate arguments for example that affirmative action is not an optimal solution to institutionalized racism, and it is flawed (but necessary) solution to a pervasive problem. I think everyone realized affirmative action is flawed, the argument is "do these flaws render the good that affirmative action tries to accomplish moot or not?" As an African-American, I can see both sides of that argument.

But if you're willing to lower the bar on what qualifies as racism to include people expressing pride in their culture or race, then yes, it's going to bite you in the ass.

I'm going to argue in fact that it already has bitten conservatives in the ass.

Fear Will Keep The Systems In Line

Dick Cheney and Fear have won the Gitmo debate, hands down.

Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to closing the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and moving some of the detainees to prisons on U.S. soil, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.

By more than 2-1, those surveyed say Guantanamo shouldn't be closed. By more than 3-1, they oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in their own states.

The findings underscore the difficult task President Obama faces in convincing those at home that he should follow through on his campaign promise to close the prison in Cuba, especially in the absence of a plan of where the prisoners would go.

In many parts of the world, however, Gitmo has become a symbol of U.S. arrogance and abuse, and Obama has cited its closure as a way to lay the foundation for better relations. He is scheduled to deliver a major address aimed at the Muslim world on Thursday from Cairo.

Despite the fact American prisons house more terrorists then ever (especially the Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado) the Village and the GOP have effectively killed Obama's plan to close Gitmo. Milions of Americans are now convinced that closing Gitmo will mean whatever facility in the US houses terrorists will make the cities and towns around that prison target number one for legions of jihadi killers.

Eight years of abject, constant fear is a hard drug to quit cold turkey, but Obama's lack of a distinct plan to present the American people also had just as much to do with the failure of the initiative.

Obama fumbled this one badly...but then again, now he's under no political pressure to close Gitmo.

And maybe that was the plan all along.

Domestic Terrorism Reminder

And just to remind everyone that while the shooting murder of George Tiller in church was a prime example of domestic terrorism, yesterday's shooting murder of Pvt. William Long outside a Little Rock Army recruiter's office also most certainly qualifies as domestic terrorism as well.

An Arkansas man was arrested Monday in connection with a shooting at a Little Rock military recruiting center that killed one soldier and wounded another, authorities said.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad -- a 24-year-old Little Rock resident formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe -- faces a first-degree murder charge and 15 counts of engaging in a terrorist act, Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said. The terrorist counts stem from the shots fired at an occupied building.

While authorities continued to investigate a motive, Thomas said Muhammad is a Muslim convert and, based on preliminary interviews with him, investigators believe there were "political and religious motives" in the shooting.

Military officials initially believed the shooting was a random act, but Thomas said police believe the shooter acted alone "with the specific purpose of targeting military personnel."

Make no mistake, this is just as vile and horrific as Tiller's murder on Sunday. It was done with the intention of keeping people out of military recruitment centers the same way Tiller's murder was done with the intention of keeping women out of abortion clinics. It was done for a political motive. That makes it terrorism.

Neither murder is justifiable in any way, shape, form, or fashion. Both the extreme Left and the extreme Right have crazies, and they both kill people. There are "Wingnuts" on the Left, too...and they are pretty insane.

Domestic terrorism is still a problem in this country. Extremism on both sides is evident this week.

StupidiNews!

• The search continues for Air France flight 447, missing off the coast of Brazil.
• A federal judge ordered thousands of classified Gitmo court documents to be made public.
• President Obama supposedly reversed his position on releasing torture photos at the request of Iraq's PM.
• GM has agreed to sell the Hummer brand as one of its first acts in bankruptcy.
• Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were on hand at E3 to show off "Rock Band: The Beatles."

Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

And this time it's a big one. Dick Cheney may not be my favorite person, and he has done some pretty execrable things in his political career.

He is however one of the more enlightened Republicans on the subject of gay marriage.

Speaking at the National Press Club for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards, Cheney was asked about recent rulings and legislative action in Iowa and elsewhere that allowed for gay couples to legally wed.

"I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," replied the former V.P. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. ... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."

Which is funny, because I honestly want to see which Republican is going to attack Cheney's position on gay marriage first.

It doesn't begin to make up for the horrific things Cheney has done. But even he is human, and has a lesbian daughter who he cares about enough to think she should be able to get married.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

John Cole asks:

What major manufacturing do we have left in the United States?

We don't. The US has reached a critical collapse in manufacturing base. Those jobs aren't coming back, no matter what Obama or anyone does. They will be replaced by low-paying service jobs or temp jobs with little or no benefits.

No modern economy can survive without manufacturing, and in the last 30 years we've killed it.

Ground Control To Helicopter Ben

Dean Baker: We don't need a new systemic risk regulatory agency. We already have one, the Fed. The guy in charge of it? Fire his ass.

Firing Bernanke is not just a question of justice, although the millions of workers who have lost their jobs because of his mistake may see it that way. It is also an essential step in creating regulators who are actually held accountable for the quality of their work and therefore have a reason for taking their job responsibilities seriously.

As things work now, there is no risk for simply going with the flow. If you just repeat what everyone else is saying, and it turns out to be wrong, the Washington elite steps in for you with a supportive chorus of "who could have known?"

However, if a regulator were to step out line - imagine someone at another regulatory agency began to openly challenge Alan Greenspan and warn about the enormous danger created by an $8 trillion housing bubble - then they would be risking their future career path and their current job. It is an extremely rare public servant who will put their career path in jeopardy to promote the public good.

This is why none of the other regulators could see an $8 trillion housing bubble. They would have borne enormous career risk to make an issue out of the bubble after Alan Greenspan and Co. at the Fed had said that everything was fine.

It is not the responsibilities of the regulatory agencies that needs to be changed, but the incentives for the regulators. If the regulators face no sanction for just going along - even when they thereby get it horribly wrong - then they will always just go along.

In short, if we want regulators that actually police against systemic risk rather than ignore it, then we have to fire the regulators who failed horribly in the past. If we are serious about getting a real systemic risk regulator then Ben Bernanke must go.

Works for me. As long as we're holding people accountable, how about the guy that failed to see an $8 trillion problem and in fact made it much, much worse?

Why Did GM Go Bankrupt?

So why is GM filing for bankruptcy today?



Here endeth the lesson. Note that is for domestic brands, not imports. Less than 20% of American cars are GM. The company's market share including imports is much, much smaller.

GM also announced up to 20,000 job cuts today as it's closing 14 facilities.

A Law Enforcement Issue

Ann Freidman has a very informative article on what Congress's reponse to the George Tiller murder should be. Long story short, there are federal laws on the books protecting abortion clinics and their employees from harassment -- but surprise! -- during the Bush Administration, these laws and the task force Janet Reno created to enforce them went MIA.

From the immediate post-Roe years to the mid-1990s, clinic violence and blockades were a constant threat. After Dr. David Gunn was assassinated in 1993, Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which specifically banned such acts as blocking clinic doors, trespassing, making violent threats, arson, vandalism, stalking clinic employees, and other forms of violence. Many of these acts were illegal already, but the law made clear that targeting a clinic with these crimes merited a federal response.

While FACE improved the situation (the number of clinics experiencing severe violence dropped from 52 percent in 1994 to 20 percent in 2000), it didn't succeed in ending the violence. Attacks against women's health clinics -- both those that provide abortions and those that do not -- continued throughout the Bush years. According to the National Abortion Federation, since 2000 abortion providers have reported 14 arsons, 78 death threats, 66 incidents of assault and battery, 117 anthrax threats, 128 bomb threats, 109 incidents of stalking, 541 acts of vandalism, one bombing, and one attempted murder.

Add one murder to that list.

The last time an abortion provider was murdered, when Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed in 1998, it was a wake-up call to the fact that passing the FACE Act wasn't enough. Attorney General Janet Reno established the National Task Force on Violence against Health Care Providers, which committed the Department of Justice to enforcing FACE, coordinating information on national anti-abortion extremist groups, funding clinic safety efforts, and training local law enforcement. The following year, the White House budget requested $4.5 million to beef up security at abortion clinics. But other than finally bringing James Kopp, Slepian's killer, to justice in 2003, the task force was largely dormant for eight years under the Bush administration.

Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement responding to Tiller's murder, promising that "Federal law enforcement is coordinating with local law enforcement officials in Kansas on the investigation of this crime, and I have directed the United States Marshals Service to offer protection to other appropriate people and facilities around the nation." He also pledged to take steps to prevent related acts of violence. Obama expressed that he was "shocked and outraged" by the killing. Neither mentioned the FACE Act or reviving the task force.

Make no mistake: the targeting of abortion clinic employees with intent to bring about political change is the very definition of terrorism. The difference between murdering abortion providers to in effect eliminate abortion and terrify clinic employees and their families and those who murder Iraqi or Afghan officials in order to in effect eliminate democracy is only a matter of degree and location. It's still terrorism. It's going on in America right now.

This was a terror attack on American soil, folks. We already have laws on the books...let's enforce them.

[UPDATE] As Atrios points out, somebody in the Obama administration got the message loud and clear.

Knocking Heads On The Norks

Ahh, good to see our neocon buddies are more than willing to have us get into our third fourth ahh screw it next war, this time with North Korea.

In light of North Korea's recent nuclear and missile tests, international leaders are pondering how best to proceed, weighing a series of unsatisfying options. On Fox News yesterday, Bill Kristol presented the same idea he always presents when faced with a national security challenge.

Kristol explained, "I don't rule out the possibility of us deciding -- and I think it might be wise for us to decide -- to knock out a few. They're apparently rolling a long-term missile to a base to test another one, long-range missile to test another one. You know, it might be worth doing some targeted air strikes to show the North Koreans, instead of always talking about, 'Gee, there could be consequences,' to show that they can't simply keep going down this path."

Brit Hume, on the same program, endorsed Kristol's proposal, but said he "can't imagine" the Obama administration actually launching a military strike on North Korea. (They follow Newt Gingrich, who began urging strikes in April, calling on the administration to use "lasers" to attack North Korea.)

Matt Yglesias noted, "Kristol doesn't even attempt to say what he thinks this will accomplish. He just kind of tosses it out there for no reason because arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does."

Yeah, let's just send a few missiles into Pyongyang. I'm sure that'll shut Kim Jong-Il up real fast, before he decides to start lobbing his own nifty missiles at other Asian capitals.

Also, that won't draw China into this mess with their huge army and their own missiles and air force or anything. But the Village Neocons do love their wars so. What's another conflict when you have three on your plate already? Just add to the Pentagon budget.

Reaping Whirlwinds

In probably the least-surprising story of the year, the Kansas City Star is reporting that the suspect held in Sunday's murder of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller at Tiller's church is a man named Scott P. Roeder who -- surprise! -- belonged to a right-wing anti-government militia movement and viewed the murder of abortion providers as justifiable homicide.(emphasis mine)

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.

"Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she said. "Then he (Roeder) said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, 'I've seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you're doing.'^"

Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.

"I met him once, and he wrote to me a few times," Leach said. "I remember that he was sympathetic to our cause, but I don't remember any details."

Leach said he met Roeder in Topeka when he went there to visit Shelley Shannon, who was in prison for the 1993 shooting of Tiller.

"He told me about a lot of conspiracy stuff and showed me how to take the magnetic strip out of a five-dollar bill," Leach said. "He said it was to keep the government from tracking your money."

Roeder, who in the 1990s was a manufacturing assemblyman, also was involved in the "Freemen" movement.

"Freemen" was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.

In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.

Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.

"There wasn't enough there to blow up a building,'' Jimerson said at the time, ``but it could make several powerful pipe bombs...There was definitely enough there to kill somebody.''

Well apparently he's being held because he's suspected of doing just that. All the warning signs were there, this guy was a hard core domestic terrorist with a record of anti-government activity, exactly the kind of right-wing nutjob Bush's Homeland Security department issued a report about.

But the Wingers said it was another sign of fascism that the Obama administration dare to worry about the "politically motivated exaggeration" of the threat of right-wing domestic terrorists. These are the same folks who say if waterboarding saves a single American life, then we're bound to torture people for information.

So how many late-term abortion providers have to die before the Right realizes the screaming hatred they direct at the groups they don't agree with has consequences? After all, there's only two left in the country now.

StupidiNews!

• An Air France Jet bound from Rio de Janerio to Paris has vanished from radar off the coast of Brazil.
• A European company has signed the Octomom and her 14 kids to a reality TV show deal.
• President Obama plans to give a major speech on Islam and America on Thursday in Cairo.
• Chrysler has won approval to sell its assets to Fiat and move ahead with its plan to emerge from Chapter 11.
• This week is the E3 2009 Expo in Los Angeles as the gaming industry reveals its new surprises.