Dumb Money Debacle - The Rich vs. The Rich

Lots of people are getting hurt in the current downturn. But no group is getting creamed more than the rich. Of all the people who should be clamoring for greater financial regulation and greater transparency on Wall Street, rich people should be shouting the loudest!

Joe H.

John Yoo and the Secret Memos

Okay, I dare anyone to read this piece by Gary Kaima and then argue with a staight face that we shouldn't prosecute Bush administration officials, starting with John Yoo.

Joe H.

The Sanctity of Life Argument

Last week, President Obama overturned the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research put in place by former President Bush. Its worth noting that seven out of ten Americans support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. It is also extremely unlikely that those many millions of Americans believe that embryos are "someones" who can be murdered and nonetheless support federal funding for research that destroys embryos. This means that these Americans, like me, implicitly reject the Right to Life argument as applied to early fetal life.

That being said, the related conviction that human life is "sacred," expressed by anti-abortion groups claiming to defend the “sanctity of life,” is far less controversial. To be sacred a thing need only be thought to embody a significant degree of intrinsic value. Even non-living things such as flags, songs, scriptures, famous paintings, and natural wonders can be thought of as sacred. The claim that abortion is morally profane, even at the earliest stages of pregnancy, is far more credible than the "abortion is murder" claim. It is more reasonable to think that human life is unique and precious at every stage of its development, given what human life is, how it came to be, and what it can do, than it is to think that microscopic embryos are “subjects” who can be “murdered.”

Unfortunately, the sanctity of life argument is not nearly as powerful a justification for legal proscription of abortion as the right to life argument. Rights, after all, are well recognized moral trumps. A belief that a thing is sacred, to the contrary, although not without moral weight, is less significant, morally speaking. This is true for a number of reasons.

First, much of human opinion regarding what is "sacred" is inherently religious. For this reason, the premise that a thing or practice is sacred, and therefore inviolable, will rarely be universally accepted. Moreover, there is no way to reconcile antithetical religious convictions on such matters.

Second, even when people agree about what is sacred, they will often differ sharply about the proper way to show respect for the sanctity of that thing. Consider end of life decisions. Many people agree that human life is sacred in some sense or other. But these same people differ sharply about what follows from this premise. Some think the best way to show respect for the sanctity of human life is to preserve it as long as possible, regardless of the circumstances. Others think it profane to allow a life to deteriorate beyond recognition and usefulness.

Who is right? I'm not convinced we can know - both arguments are plausible. And both appeal equally to the notion that human life is sacred.

Third, in cases of significant disagreement about whether a thing is sacred, or disagreement about the proper way to honor the sacred, it is problematic for those holding a majority view to impose that view, by law, on those who reject it. Consider the following example. We agree that the right to life argument lacks moral force until week 13. We further agree that fetal life is sacred at all stages of its development, simply because it is human.

Now suppose that we discover at week eight that the fetus will develop into a child with extremely severe birth defects. One of us thinks the sacred status of the developing fetus requires us to preserve its life. The other thinks the sacred nature of human life (in conjunction with feelings of compassion for the entity's future suffering) requires that this particular life be terminated. Assuming that both opinions are plausible applications of the premise that human life is sacred, which I think they are, should one of us be allowed to use the law to impose our vision of the sacred and its proper application on the other (remembering that we are not talking about a right to life - only about what we personally consider the proper application of our conception of the sanctity of human life). Clearly not, it would seem. If resepect for the sacred is the sole basis for our disagreement, it would seem that each of us ought to be free to act from his or her own conscience.

Finally, it is widely recognized that circumstances sometimes justify our intruding upon the sacred. Jesus himself taught, by word and example, at numerous points in the New Testament, that concerns about human well being sometimes trump respect for sacred things. Regarding consecrated days of worship Jesus could not have put this point more clearly. “Man” he said “was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man!”

In summary, the premise that human life is sacred, at all stages, and is thus morally entitled to respect, is a plausible moral premise. But that premise seems inadequate to justify legal prohibitions.

Any thoughts?

Joe

Internet Porn Use

I hope this report will not affect your understanding of why we moved to Utah, or why we decided to return to the Islands.

It is an anomaly. Honestly!

:)

Joe H.

Secret Military Dictatorship

Yesterday, the Obama administration released nine previously classified legal memorandums. These memorandums were drafted in secret and kept classified by the Bush administration. They served as the legal basis for the administration's actions in its "War on Terror" - including domestic spying in violation of the FISA statute, the arrest and indefinite detention (on U.S. soil) of U.S. citizens, without charges, and its rendition/torture program.

The first thing to notice is how genuinely radical the people who have been running our government the last eight years truly were. I use the term "radical" not as a synonym for "extreme," but in the more accurate sense of the Bush Administration's rejection of the core (or root) precepts of the American constitutional order. Here's just one of the memorandums in which the Administration granted itself the authority to conduct domestic military operations within the United States, against U.S. citizens! The memorandum has to be read to be believed, but it essentially advises the President that he, as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Military, has the authority to ignore all federal laws and the entire Bill of Rights in his prosecution of the "war on terror" within the United States.

(For what its worth, in October of 2008, Stephen Bradbury, Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, withdrew this memo and denounced both its legal reasoning and its conclusions).

The second thing to be grasped is that the Obama administration released these memorandums in unredacted form. Unredacted! This conclusively demonstrates that the memorandums never contained information that posed a threat to national security. All the memorandums ever contained was the Bush administration's understanding of its authority under the constitution. Why did that have to be secret?

Far more importantly, how could we, the citizens of the United States of America, have tolerated, much less supported and relected, a President who claimed (and exercised) sweeping, unreviewable, and heretofore unprecedented tyrannical powers, based only on his (and his lawyers') reading of the constitution? How could we tolerate this while that very same president refused to reveal the legal reasoning supporting his claims?

And now that we can see for ourselves how utterly ridiculous the legal reasoning supporting those claims was, how can we simply "fix it and move on" as President Obama suggests?

Who are we?

Its hard to come to terms with this. I keep asking myself, "did we really have a secret coup?" Is it possible for lawyers working in the Office of Legal Counsel (whose opinions supposedly have immunizing power for officials who rely on them) to replace our entire constitutional order, in secret, and then have their legal opinions immunize their benefactors from all legal accountability?

Remember, these memorandums formed the legal basis for: (1) the administration's indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without charges; (2) the administration's torture program ("torture" is the description given to the administration's actions by its own officials); and (3) the Administration's domestic surveillance program (which was unmistakeably illegal and felonious). Each of these actions/programs violated very specific federal statutes, as well as the U.S. Constitution's Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Yet they were all premised on nothing more the President's alleged constitutional authority as Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, as interpreted secretly, by Administration appointed lawyers working in the Office of Legal Counsel.

Think about that for a minute. Our elected leaders commit war crimes and other felonies in our names. Their acts are then immunized by secret (and truly ridiculous) interpretations of the Constitution's "commander and chief" clause, drafted by lawyers appointed by that very same commander and chief. And now that all of this has come to light, everyone wants to simply "move on?"

That is truly insane! I find that set of facts absolutely incomprehensible!

But however insane it appears to me, no prosecutions appear to be in the works. What's more, our entire political class, including President Obama, is recommending that we look forward rather than backward. And however incomprehensible it appears to me, it looks as if President Bush's radical (and hitherto secret) interpretation of our constitution has effectively immunized him and other Bush administration officials from legal accountability.

Hey, if this is how it works, here's a message to President Obama: Appoint me to the OLC and you'll be our next King.

I'll tell you, unless we find a way to officially repudiate all of this constitutional nonsense and, at minimum, publicly denounce the authoritarian radicals who ran our country for the last eight years, our constitutional order is finished.

Its just a matter of time.

Joe H.

UPDATE

Andrew Sullivan expresses this point as well as anyone has.

UPDATE II.

Here's another good summary of the dictatorial powers the President secretly claimed as war time powers (and remember, there was no forseeable end to the "war on Terror."

Money Gurus?

This is a good article calling into question the credibility of the cable news talking head dispensers of financial advice. Its a confessional of sorts. Highly worth reading.

Joe H.

A Judicial Ruling on Illegal Spying?

Is it too much to hope that a Court will actually get to rule on the legality (or rather, the blatant illegality) of former President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program?

I don't want to get my hopes up, but this is a good sign.

I'm also wondering if the Obama administration refused to back away from Bush's eggregious misuse of the "state secrets" privelege, not to cover for Bush, but to force the courts to rule on the scope of the privilege. It seems unthinkable that a federal appellate court would uphold the right of the executive to assert the state secrets privilege to stop entire lawsuits - and thereby preclude any and all judicial review of alleged executive misconduct. Perhaps Obama realized that if he simply withdrew the assertion of the priviledge, a subsequent President could simply reassert it. Perhaps he wanted a judicial ruling on the privilege's scope? I would have wanted such a ruling and am now thrilled that we've got one.

Am I looking for reasons to give Obama a break? Perhaps. I guess we all have a little bit of Polyanna like innocence floating around in our hearts.

Joe H.