Forget the Militias

The Supreme Court struck down the DC handgun ban by rethinking the original meaning of the Second Amendment.

Since DC falls under federal jurisdiction the ruling does not immediately apply to the states, but commentators predict an immediate deluge of court cases.

For comments and links, follow this link to the American Constitution Society and this one to the Federalist Society.

My two cents: This decision is a stretch. It has redefined the clear meaning of the Constitution, despite claims that it does not, and this redefinition has been driven by individuals who usually parse the words on the page as they are written on the page. And despite past efforts to leave policymaking to the policymakers and shun decisions that open the floodgates to court actions, this decision does both. It is difficult to reconcile this decision with past court decisions. It seems to me capricious and arbitrary.

I would have liked to see this decision wholly based on a Ninth Amendment argument that self defense is an unenumerated right that exists despite its omission in the language of the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment scares some on the court though. It reminds people that the country was founded on the belief that natural rights come first. That's a bit too originalist for this crowd.

Zimbabwe Votes

The Christian Science Monitor covers the election in Zimbabwe and, given that there is only one choice available for voters asks:

Why hold a vote at all?

"Since liberation, the [ruling] ZANU-PF has see elections as a ritual that has to be gone through to give them legitimacy in the eyes of the region, the continent and the international community," says Ozias Tungwarara, a senior analyst for the Open Society Institute in Johannesburg. The ruling party is now desperate to have that legitimacy, after having lost the first round to Mr. Tsvangirai.

But, he says, "if you give the people even 20 percent of a chance to express themselves, there is no way the Mugabe regime would survive a vote," and thus, the regime uses violence to seal off any chance of legitimate political expression.

This touches on one of the reasons why nations hold elections, but not one of the more legitimate ones.

The Consequences of Gerrymandering

The Democratic Leadership Council released a report on the negative consequences of partisan gerrymandering. By their estimation, as many as 11 million votes might be suppressed because gerrymandered district are uncompetitive. Why vote if you know the result already?

They base their study on an observation that turnout in competitive districts is substantively higher than turnout in non-competitive districts.

Attention is drawn to the "dirty dozen" states where most of this activity occurs. Big surprise: Texas is not among them.

About the Confrontation Clause

The Supreme Court has also ruled that there is no exception to the Constitution's Confrontation clause (where it is established that on can confront one's accuser in court) even if the accuser cannot be confronted because they were killed by the defendant.

From the American Constitutional Society:

In Giles v. California, the Supreme Court held a criminal defendant does not forfeit his Sixth Amendment right to confront his accuser when his wrongful act kept a witness away from trial, unless the the defendant intended the act to have that effect. The Court struck down a California court’s broad interpretation of the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing exception to the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause. The California court had removed the intent element from the common law exception, holding that statements by witnesses unavailable at trial could be introduced if the judge determines that a wrongful act by the defendant has kept the witness away from trial, even if keeping the witness away from trial was not the purpose of the act.

Justice Scalia, writing in a 6-1-3 decision, stated that since the broader exception was not present at the Founding, and not established in American jurisprudence since, it is prohibited by the Sixth Amendment. The question of the defendant's intent is an open question to be determined on remand to the lower court. The case revolved around a domestic violence killing, and domestic violence is often perpetrated with the intent to keep a the victim from going to trial, so the statements may make it into the trial record regardless. Justices Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens, and Anthony Kennedy dissented.

For our purposes in class, it worth noting not only Scalia's reliance on his understanding of the original meaning of the Constitution, but that the decision cites common law precedence going back to the 1600's.

Death Penalty only for Killers

The Supreme Court narrowly ruled against a Louisiana law that would have applied the death penalty for people found guilty of child rape. The issue proportionality. Does the punishment fit the crime? From the American Constitution Society:

In Kennedy v. Louisiana, a split 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that, under the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty cannot apply to crimes against individuals that do not end with or intend the death of the victim. Specifically, the Court held the Constitution prohibits the death penalty for the crime of child rape where the crime did not, and was not intended to, end in the death of the child. After examining the practice of states and death penalty statistics and finding no support for pro-death penalty arguments, Justice Kennedy, writing for the Court, turned to precedent and the Court’s own judgment.

He reasoned that applying the death penalty would not balance the wrong done to the victim, noted the particular evidentiary problems with often-unreliable child testimony, and voiced the concern that applying the death penalty to non-murder crimes might cause the perpetrator to commit murder to hide the crime. The Court distinguished between crimes against the State (like treason) and crimes against individuals. Justice Samuel Alito authored the dissent, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas.

The death penalty was the de facto punishment for many crimes in American history. Are we seeing support for further expansion?

More from the Associated Press.

Lessons in Authoritarian Rule

Robert Mugabe gives an effective lesson in how to hold onto power despite solid opposition. Kill them and deny them the right to hold political rallies.

The UK hits him where it hurts.

Ideology and the Justice Department

From the New York Times comes a report detailing attempts by the Bush Administration to inject ideological considerations into hiring practices in the Justice Department:

Justice Department officials illegally used “political or ideological” factors in elite recruiting programs in recent years, tapping law school graduates with Federalist Society membership or other conservative credentials over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding résumés, an internal report found Tuesday.

The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s own inspector general and its ethics office, portrays a clumsy effort by senior Justice Department screeners to weed out candidates for career positions whom they considered “leftists,” using Internet search engines to look for incriminating information or evidence of possible liberal bias.

One rejected candidate from Harvard Law School worked for Planned Parenthood. Another wrote opinion pieces critical of the USA Patriot Act and the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. A third applicant worked for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and posted an unflattering cartoon of President Bush on his MySpace page.

The current Attorney General promises to stop the practice. The article also states what exactly is wrong with the practice.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Tuesday that using politics in hiring career lawyers was “impermissible and unacceptable” and that the department had taken steps to fix the problems. The report recommended further tightening of internal policies, which Mr. Mukasey said he would welcome.

Ideological and political factors can be used in hiring political appointees, but it is illegal to do so under federal civil service law and Justice Department guidelines in hiring career lawyers. Victims can sue, but offenders cannot generally be prosecuted under criminal law.

Executive Privilege over EPA Investigation

From the Los Angeles Times:

Escalating a fight with Democrats on Capitol Hill, the White House on Friday invoked executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents to a congressional committee investigating the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California permission to implement its own vehicle emission standards.

The Bush administration asserted executive privilege hours before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to vote on whether to bring contempt-of-Congress proceedings against EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson and Susan Dudley, administrator of regulatory affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents.

...

Presidents since George Washington have claimed rights to executive branch confidentiality, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Bush White House invoked executive privilege to prevent officials from testifying about the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. President Clinton cited presidential privilege during investigations into the Monica Lewinsky scandal and on other issues.

House and Senate committees have been investigating what role the White House played in EPA decisions preventing California and other states from enacting tougher emissions rules than the federal government and in the EPA's approval of new ozone pollution standards.

The administration's claim of executive privilege is the latest twist in the escalating legal and political battle over California's efforts to implement its own law combating global warming. Critics of the EPA decision contend that it was based on politics, not science or the law.

....

In asserting executive privilege in the EPA inquiry, the administration made public a copy of a letter sent to the president by Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey saying that releasing internal documents "could inhibit the candor of future deliberations among the president's staff."

For the relevant documents, click here for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

It's the Speculators Stupid

Students who responded to my online poll think the oil companies are primarily to blame for the increase in oil process, with the marker second, a single vote for the Republicans and no votes for the Democrats.

Recent attention has focused on the role oil speculators play in pushing prices up despite the apparent fact that there is plenty of of crude oil available on the world market. Nader.org tells us:

Last week the price of crude oil reached about $130 a barrel after spiking to $140 briefly. The immediate cause? Guesses by oil man T. Boone Pickens and Goldman Sachs that the price could go to $150 and $200 a barrel respectively in the near future. They were referring to what can be called the hoopla pricing party on the New York Mercantile Exchange. (NYMEX)

This is a classic bubble, prices are driven up by increased demand fueled by the expectation that prices will continue to go up. Bloomberg reports that the Senate is about to get involved:

Democrats and Republicans should work together in the U.S. Congress to attack oil and gas speculators as part of a strategy that includes increased production to bring down energy prices, North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan said.

``We ought to get at this,'' Democrat Dorgan, a member of the Senate's energy committee, said on ``Fox News Sunday'' today. ``There's an orgy of speculation going on in the futures markets, an unbelievable amount of speculation by hedge funds, investment banks and others, that are driving up prices.''

Legislation designed to limit speculation in oil markets was introduced last week by Senators Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, and Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska. The bill would require the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to review trading practices of institutional investors and impose limits on how much those investors can hold in a given market.

If this is in fact a bubble, we should expect to see a crash at some point. Hopefully before Labor Day. I still think, warts and all, $4 gas will have long term benefits by spurring renewable technologies.

Self Esteem v. Self Control

There was a worthy opinion piece in the Chron Sunday on the self-esteem movement and the damage it seems to be doing to American education:

Self-esteem education begins in the early grades. Students read books with titles like Everyone is Special and complete All About Me projects that emphasize their good qualities. Teachers refrain from criticizing children too much, and are careful never to make self-esteem contingent on performance or behavior. As Dr. Jean Twenge, author of the book Generation Me, points out, most self-esteem programs encourage kids to feel good about themselves for no particular reason.

"We want to anchor self-esteem firmly to the child so no matter what the performance might be, the self-esteem remains high," explained one educational theorist quoted in Twenge's book.

According to the touchy-feely pop psychology of the education establishment, high self-esteem makes children smarter and more productive. However, this approach has never been proved to work.

...

At its worst, self-esteem education might actually be fostering violent personalities. In the wake of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, Iowa State University psychologist Brad Bushman admitted, "If kids develop unrealistic opinions of themselves and those views are rejected by others, the kids are potentially dangerous."

However, there is one personality trait that is definitely linked to achievement and harmonious social relationships: self-control. Although "discipline" and "obedience" have become dirty words in the education establishment, people with high levels of self-control are the most likely to succeed. They earn higher grades and finish more years of education, and they're less likely to abuse drugs or have children out of wedlock. As Twenge says, "Self-control predicts all of those things researchers had hoped self-esteem would, but hasn't."

As American children fall further behind, it would serve them well for school to throw out the uproven trend of "self-esteem"and instead start teaching the time-tested values of self-respect and self-control.

I second that.

Habeas Corpus and Guantanamo

The Supreme Court has once again rebuked the Bush Administration for its handing of the detainment of terrorist suspects, this time their refusal to allow the detainees to challenge their detentions. Allegations persist that some were randomly picked up off the streets, some allegedly in order for captors to collect bounties. The decision was close and the court is divided on the role they are to play in wartime.

As both sides of the court acknowledged in Thursday's decision, the cases exposed fundamental differences in the court's vision of judicial power. The conservatives favor adherence to strict rules and regulations promulgated by the political branches. The liberals are content to let judges judge, working out the boundaries between constitutional rights and national security.

The tie-breaker was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the nomadic conservative who in this case espoused a strong role for independent judges.

His cool assertion in the majority opinion of an essential role for the judiciary brought heated dissents from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia. It lauded the role of the courts as a check on executive power and downplayed deference to the political branches.

"Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person," Kennedy wrote. He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Roberts stopped just short of calling the opinion a power grab. "One cannot help but think . . . this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants," he wrote.

He lamented that military and intelligence officials would have a lesser role in shaping policy toward enemy combatants than lawyers and "unelected, politically unaccountable judges."

Scalia called the judiciary "the branch that knows least about . . . national security concerns" and penned the darkest line of the court's 126 pages of back-and-forth: "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

The decision, Boumediene v. Bush, can be found here. A synopsis can be found here.

The Chron points out in its editorial that Kennedy's majority decision quotes Federalist #84:

Kennedy quoted Alexander Hamilton's explanation in Federalist Paper No. 84 why providing a judicial forum to detainees was vital to preserving limited government: "Confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government."

Capable intelligence agencies and military forces are not the only considerations in defending national security, wrote Kennedy. "Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among those are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers."

Just in case you think that what we cover in class is inconsequential, here is proof that it isn't.

Recall in Alvin

In the May 10th election, Alvin residents were given the opportunity to recall Jim Landriault, a city council member representing District C.

According to the Brazoria County Facts, the issue stems from Landriault's support of a Mobile Home ordinance that passed last October. The paper tells us that the ordinance: gives mobile home owners up to five years to create paved roads, have proper and readable signs and make designated pedestrian walkways, among other improvements.

Up to a third of Alvin residents are said to live in mobile homes of some sort, so the industry has some clout. Following the passage of the ordinance the industry spearheaded an effort to remove Landriault from office. A source tells me that he shifted his position on the issue once in office.

From the Facts:

Those who organized the petition claimed Landriault voted to raise taxes, trash rates and to close Hugh Adams Park, Landriault has said.

Alvin City Clerk Tommy Peebles has said the trash contract was approved nine years before Landriault came to the council and property taxes have not been increased since 1994.

Landriault also has said he voted to keep the half-acre Hugh Adams Park open.

“None of it was true,” Landriault said of the petitioners’ claims.

Landriault said he has been campaigning throughout his district telling voters the facts about his voting record. Many of those who signed the petition have called him and said they were sorry for signing the petition, he said.

Landriault said he believes the recall has to do with his support for the mobile home ordinance.

For those who want him removed, Landriault said, “I don’t hold any hard feelings for that.”

A woman hired to speak for the mobile home owners who organized the petition drive did not return calls Friday seeking comment.

Landriault survived the vote 2/3rds to 1/3rd.

A website, Citizens for Alvin, accusing the mobile home industry of attempting to control Alvin politics can be found here.

Defining "Religion"

I missed this story when it happened (2004) but apparently a recent Texas Comptroller attempted to remove the tax exempt status of the Unitarian Universalist Church, by denying that it did not fit Texas' definition of a church because it did not advocate one strict doctrine. This put the state of Texas in the business of defining what a religion is, and specifically stating that it must involve belief in a higher power. Without such belief, the religion is "creedless" and not a religion in the eyes of the state.

Here's commentary from GaraLog:

The comptroller's office has not always barred "creedless" religions from tax exemption, said Douglas Laycock, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in religious liberty issues.

That standard first came up in 1997, when then-Comptroller Sharp ruled against the Ethical Culture Fellowship of Austin. In making that decision, Sharp overturned the recommendation of his staff.

The Ethical Culture Fellowship sued, claiming that Sharp overstepped his authority. Allied with the group in the ongoing lawsuit are pastors from a broad range of faiths, including Baptists, Lutherans and Mennonites.

Both the lower court and the Texas Supreme Court have ruled against the state's decision. In one opinion, an appeals court said the comptroller's test "fails to include the whole range of belief systems that may, in our diverse and pluralistic society, merit the First Amendment protection."

Strayhorn vows to continue the legal fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. "Otherwise, any wannabe cult who dresses up and parades down Sixth Street on Halloween will be applying for an exemption," she said in a April 23 news release.

The problem with rejecting the Unitarians is that they are part of a tradition that includes John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

The Associated Baptist Press defended the church:

The state office's initial willingness to set up belief in a supreme being or beings as the criterion for tax exemption troubled some religious-liberty advocates.

"Religious liberty is always threatened when state officials attempt to define religion -- all the more when they do so narrowly. They should always err on the side of inclusion in close cases," said Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court has called attempts to define religion "a dangerous and difficult task," and the court has ruled religion does not have to be reasonable or logical -- much less orthodox -- to be protected by the First Amendment, Walker noted.

"Any purported standard that requires a formal creed or belief in God leaves a lot of faith traditions out," Walker said.
...

The Unitarian Universalist Association developed historically from two related strands of liberal Christianity -- Unitarians, who believed in the unity of God rather than the Trinity, and Universalists, who believed in universal salvation of all people. Modern Unitarian Universalists look to a variety of world religions and secular sources for inspiration.

The Red River Unitarian Universalists' website notes: "Unitarian Universalism is a free and open faith which does not demand that its members subscribe to any particular religious creed or doctrine. Instead, it emphasizes the right and responsibility of each individual to search for his or her own religious truth and meaning."
...

Strickland [Phil Strickland, director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission] expressed sympathy for the comptroller's desire to deal with "illegitimate groups that are not really interested in religion but are only interested in a tax exemption." But he suggested that the state judge the legitimacy of claims for tax exemption based on whether groups have established places of worship and a history of religious practices -- not on the basis of their theology.

"When the state uses a theological criteria, then it clearly is usurping its power by trying to define good religions and bad religions. That is not the role of government," he said.

Walker of the BJC also agreed that "obvious shams and clear cases of fraud" rightly can be denied tax exemption. "But I don't see that here," he added. "If the Unitarian Universalists -- a denomination of long standing -- don't qualify, then we all are in jeopardy."

Here's more commentary from The Decembrist.

Filling the Tree

Legislative assemblies have developed a variety of arcane procedures often meant to stifle dissent and smooth things for the majority. In the House, no big deal because it was designed to be contentious and subject to majoritarian whims, but in the Senate these processes have been argued to negate the intent that the assembly allow minority interests to influence the process.

Over the past two decades Senate majority leaders have developed a process called "filling the tree" which prevents the minority party from adding amendments to a bill by filling up available amendment slots before the minority has the chance to offer any.

Robert Novak is critical of the current majority leader's use of the procedure and calls it a new low in Senate history. The Senate is no longer the world's greatest deliberative body as it has come to call itself. It is worth speculating about whether this has in fact ever been the case. Here's a good read along these lines from a man calling himself The Decembrist.

Ex-Offenders and the Vote

In response to a question I received about the ability of ex-offenders to vote I pulled this up from nonprofitvote.org:

In Texas, ex-offenders regain the right to vote only after completion of both their prison term and time served on probation and parole. It is recommended that ex-offenders re-register or update their voter registration after completion of sentence.

They also provide links to further information regrading such laws across the country from The Brennan Center and The Sentencing Project.

Looking at the map in the Brennan Center site made me wonder whether there is a relationship between state laws about voter and partisan results. One of the arguments made about party positions on the issue is that it all boils down to whether they think the ex-felons will vote for them or not. Here's an opportunity to find out if the argument has merit.

Class of One

The Supreme Court has issued a ruling scaling back the meaning of the equal protection clause. The case is Engquist v. Oregon Department of Agriculture.

From the Washington Post:

The Supreme Court decided yesterday that public employees may not bring their discrimination complaints to federal court when they are alleging that adverse job actions resulted from arbitrary or malicious reasons unique to their situation.

"Such a 'class of one' theory of equal protection has no place in the public employment context," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in a 6 to 3 decision involving Anup Engquist, an Oregon public employee whose job was eliminated after what she said were repeated problems with her boss.

"Public employees typically have a variety of protections from just the sort of personnel actions about which Engquist complains," Roberts wrote, "but the Equal Protection Clause is not one of them."

This seemingly makes discrimination against a single person OK, as long as it has nothing to do with their race, gender or national origin. The Post points out that this is a different decision than it had made in a case involving a landowner who claimed arbitrary treatment by city officials.

Roberts acknowledged that the court had decided in a 2000 case that an individual property owner had the right to sue the government over arbitrary treatment by city officials. But there is a difference between government's legislative and regulatory actions and its employment practices, Roberts said.

Employment decisions "are quite often subjective and individualized, resting on a wide array of factors that are difficult to articulate and quantify," Roberts wrote.

"The practical problem with allowing class-of-one claims to go forward in this context is not that it will be too easy for plaintiffs to prevail, but that governments will be forced to defend a multitude of such claims in the first place, and courts will be obliged to sort through them in a search for the proverbial needle in a haystack," he said.

The dissenters, well, dissent.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in a dissent joined by Justices David H. Souter and Ginsburg, said that the hypothetical needle is clearly identified in Engquist's complaint and that it should not be necessary to prohibit all such suits in order for the courts to decide which ones have merit.

"Even if some surgery were truly necessary to prevent government from being forced to defend a multitude of equal protection 'class of one' claims," Stevens wrote, "the Court should use a scalpel rather than a meat-axe."

In class we covered the idea that a republican system of government, with rules determining how citizens were to be treated, was intended to avoid the arbitrary and capricious treatment common in autocracies.

Perhaps I was wrong.

Links to further commentary are available from scotusblog.

Unintended Consequences

Public policy scholars speak of the unintended consequences of public policy, the solution of one problem can create others. The drinking age was raised from 18 to 21 as a way to deal with under aged drunk driving, but may have led to binge drinking on campus.

Here is a story about the occasional fatalities that occur when some try to down 21 shots to commemorate their 21st birthday.

Is this a product of a drinking age that is too high? When I was 21, drinking wasn't such a big deal since it hadn't been forbidden fruit for so long. Others point out that by being 18 and drinking in a bar, one is in an environment with far more supervision that exists in a keg party.

On Party Organization

One of the most notable political shifts of the past year or so has been in the relative strengths of the Democratic and Republican Party organizations. More important than the ideas parties stand for, is their ability get voters to identify and support them and then to communicate and mobilize them when necessary.

Republicans have had a significant advantage in doing so, and this probably dates to Nixon's 1968 election. Reagan represents the apex of this effort, and W. Bush was an echo, but recent failures seem to have thrown this effort off course. This is an amazing development considering the fact that Republicans were talking about having created a permanent majority after the 2004 election. Karl Rove's goal was to further peal off key constituents of the Democratic Party and build a communications network that would maintain their commitment to the Republicans for at least a generation. Things do not seems to have worked out as hoped.

The major stories of the Clinton-Obama struggle, to me anyway, has been the way that they have developed organizations in the states and localities that they have competed in, and the opportunities that gives the Democratic Party to redevelop the organizational strength it enjoyed back in the New Deal era. The very fact that the Democratic primary was fought to the end, and forced both candidates to connect with the state party organizations in each of the 50 states gives them an organizational advantage. There is no guarantee of course that this will work to their advantage, but it seems that they have identified where there problems have lied in the past few electoral cycles.

In Texas, organizational redevelopment seems to be the hallmark of their recently reelected party chair Boyd Richie. In Burnt Orange Report's support of his candidacy, Richie's ability to drag the party into the 21st Century was touted as his key contribution to the party's resurgence:

Boyd Richie has accomplished a great deal during his time as TDP Chair, and his leadership has changed the landscape of Texas politics in favor of Democrats in remarkable, tangible ways. Chief among those positive changes are developments in the areas of finance, field organization, technology, and staff.

I have often argued that money in politics is neither good nor evil but absolutely necessary, and the Texas Democratic Party's fundraising has surged over the last two years. The party has increased the number of donors a great deal, taken in significant money on the internet, and initiated a monthly Democracy-Bond-esque small donor program called Majority Builders. The Majority Builder program is precisely the kind of revolving continual revenue system a political party requires to not only keep the lights on but reach for new highs in communications and organizing capabilities. For the TDP this has already proven to be a great success.

Field organizing and the TDP's connection to and engagement of grassroots Democrats all across Texas has also been an arena of extraordinary advance in the last two years, and much of this is directly attributable to Boyd Richie. His marathon tour across Texas last summer, during which he held 18 Town Hall meetings with grassroots progressive activists and party organizations at the county level and below, allowed the party to bridge the somewhat overhyped ideological gap between grassroots activists and party officials. Through that process the party's leadership learned (in a sometimes visceral way) what Texas Democrats wanted out of their state party organization. Many of those ideas translated into real action and outreach on behalf of the party, and a more engaged and strengthened Democratic base augmented an already robust and growing infrastructure.

It's a good post and speaks far more to the nitty gritty of politics than I tend to get into. We cover theories, arguments and principles, but what wins elections is money, passion and organization.

The Age of Consent

Our conflicted attitudes about the status of 15 and 16 years olds (not quite children, not quite adults) is manifested in our laws. A current article in Slate details this confusion in two cases involving 15 year olds: the Texas polygamists, accused of marrying off under aged girls, and a 21 years old defendant in Guantanamo Bay who committed his crimes when he was 15, and after several years of indoctrination by his father.

In some cases the law treats 15 years olds like children who cannot be held responsible for their decisions and must be protected, and in others like adults fully responsible for their actions. Is there a clear and sensible way to determine when each is appropriate?

So, which one is it? Are we looking at innocent teenage victims or incorrigible adolescent demons? Are they grown-ups with slightly less facial hair? Or the lap dogs of adults who brainwash and manipulate them?

One way to reconcile the confused legal decisions about the children of the Texas polygamists and Omar Khadr is to recognize that the legal system operates in broad caricatures when it comes to children, manifesting a disproportionate fear of violent kids as wholly out of control, while treating all victims as though they are incapable of protecting themselves. Maybe all of this legal confusion is just a function of the dual nature of American teenagers, who always somehow seem too old and too young for their own good. Or maybe it just reflects our own uncertainty about whether to believe too broadly that teens are perfect and pure, or dangerous, unguided missiles.

This raises an important question regarding policy in general. There are some areas where we just aren't clear on what we are doing and why, and just make do with what seems best at the time we do it.

Regarding Harris County Grand Juries

The Sunday Chron ran an opinion piece from a man who recently served on a Harris County grand jury. He has harsh words about the process. Recall that grand juries determine who goes to trial and who does not, so they play a tremendous role in the criminal justice system, but they do not reflect the demographics of the county so can contribute to a biased judicial process.

Thanks to years of struggle, Americans of all backgrounds can vote in Harris County, as they can across the country. Poll taxes and literacy tests, which were both blatant efforts by the white majority to limit the right of minorities to vote, are a thing of the past. But while extending voting rights to all citizens has largely been a success, the right to serve on a Harris County grand jury is a throwback to our segregated past. In Harris County, it is little more than a clever way for the white Republican majority to limit minority and Democratic Party representation on grand juries.

...

By fostering an organization — the grand jury - that exists in the shadows of our legal system, the power elite effectively maintains a segregated grand jury system. By using a system that closely resembles the old spoils system, the winning political party gets to select who will serve as a grand juror.

The root of the problem, he argues, is that Harris County grand jurors volunteer, and are then selected in a process that involves district court judges. The resulting composition is not only biased, but unlikely to result in the deliberation necessary to ensure just outcomes:

When the grand jurors, the prosecutors and the judges generally share the same world view, there is little room for dissent. Good and bad may not be limited to what the law books state, but may include political animus. The grand jury could be used as a weapon to viciously pursue and destroy political opponents. Fair-minded grand jurors may be coerced into silence because of their own political self-interest or out of fear of being held in contempt by the judge they serve.

He suggests that Harris County adopt a random process to assign people to grand jurors much like is done at the federal level.

About those STDs ...

The National Journal tells us that a much publicized report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that stated that one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease was flawed, inaccurately released, and sensationalized in the press.

The original report stated luridly: “1 in 4 Teenage Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease.”

Apparently the truth is far more nuanced, less lurid, and even positive.

- the study concerned infections, not disease.
- HIV/AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhea were not part of the study.
- teenage girls were only a subset of a larger study which contained older women, the 25% figure came from the larger study.
- there is a great variation in the infection rates, as well as sexual activity in general, within age categories among teenagers. 14 years old girls have far less sex than do 19 year old girls.
- in historical terms, the infection rates, and sexual activity in general, is lower than in years past.

But the original report created a stir that subsequent corrections will probably not clarify effectively. It remind us how the bureaucracy, the media, and interest groups work in our democratic system, to say nothing about human psychology--it's touch to change a story once it's been spun in a particular direction.

The CDC needs headlines to bolster its image and convince the population to contiune, if not increase, its funding levels. The greater sense that a problems exists, the greater need for the agency responsible for solving the problem.

Interest groups on either side of the Bush Administration's health poicies, which tends to promote abstinence only programs, used the original headlines to argue their respective cases:

Rival Washington advocates pounced on the CDC’s startling statistic. One faction, led by Planned Parenthood and other groups that get federal grants, said the number shows that the Bush administration’s abstinence-promotion programs don’t work and that funding should be transferred to sex-education and condom-distribution programs. The rival faction, led by social conservatives, said that the one-in-four number demonstrates the failure of condoms and sex-education classes.

And the media of course needs juicy headlines to grab viewers, and what better way to do it than with lurid tales of underage girls and sex?

Facts are a killjoy.

Houston Repositions Itself

The city of Houston, perhaps in the interest of ensuring that it remains the energy capital of the world, is attempting to make itself a center for wind based energy. This week it has hosted WINDPOWER 2008, the annual meeting of the American Wind Energy Association and has recently announced the formation of new research and development partnerships.

Part of the lure is the preexisting cluster of energy companies and individuals with the expertise necessary to make this idea a reality:

Houston is already home to a handful of major wind power project developers, including those owned by oil and gas giants BP and Shell, thanks in large part to the state's ample wind resources, renewable energy incentives created by lawmakers and competitive power markets.

And the industry blew this way again Monday when Danish powerhouse Vestas Wind Systems said it will open its first U.S. research and development facility here. The office will open in 2009 and grow to about 100 researchers by early 2010, not including support staff, with more positions likely to come.

...

Vestas considered sites in 35 states in its search for a research office location, [CEO] Engel said. It recently chose Colorado for two manufacturing facilities, but Houston's high concentration of engineers, relatively low cost of doing business, critical mass of wind developers and other major energy companies were the main drivers for landing the research and development site.

"It was important to be part of this kind of cluster of energy businesses," Engel said.

This concentration of expertise, capital, and business is central to a city's success and argues against predictions that had been made by some that the internet made "place" obsolete. It is still necessary for cities to market themselves as viable and exciting places to be in order to attract the talent that can preserve and enhance their economic viability.

I find it interesting that the conference is happening downtown right after the opening of Discovery Green, a new and very nice park across from the convention center. This may be the only view people get of Houston, and the powers that be want it to be a good one to entice them to return.

For more on wind energy and related matters click on this blog.

The Market Speaks

The first casualty of the $4 gallon of gas appears to be the almost two decades long run of the Ford F-150 pickup truck as the top selling vehicle in the country.

"It's a sign of the times," said George Pipas, U.S. sales analysis manager for Ford. "I was convinced and several others of us were convinced that this would be a watershed month."

The F-series truck saw its monthly sales plummet 31 percent in May to 42,973.

Ford isn't the only manufacturer facing a grim future for its trucks. General Motors said Tuesday it was shifting from a truck and SUV-dominated product mix to more of a car-based mix. It also plans to close four truck plants and possibly sell the Hummer brand.

Toyota, which invested $1.3 billion in a Tundra plant and supplier park in San Antonio, saw sales of its full-size pickup truck fall 31.5 percent in May from a year earlier.

The winners?

Honda, riding the wave of customers seeking better fuel efficiency, said its sales rose 18 percent; a 36 percent increase in car sales made up for an 8 percent decline in truck and SUV sales.

Nissan said its sales rose 8 percent, with a 19 percent increase in car sales offsetting a 10 percent decline in trucks.

Are we surprised? If you've been laid off of your job at a truck plant--or perhaps an American who would like to see American companies at the forefront of industry, who do you blame?

Money for Dems

So you want to be a player in politics? A story in Quorum Report tells you how:

Last week, one of the state Democratic Party’s premier number crunchers, Leland Beatty, said that a large influx of new voters are excited about the Democratic brand because of the presidential nomination contest but that the Party needs to follow through with the resources for that enthusiasm to translate into success at the ballot box in November.

Since then, QR has gotten wind of one such effort to do exactly that. Dubbed Paint Texas Blue, this new effort has a tightly defined focus – raising money for Texas House contests as a way to nudge control of that chamber into Democratic hands or perhaps away from the current Speaker.

The group is new (its PAC filing papers are less than a month old) but its ambitions are large. Sources tell QR that the immediate goal for the group is to raise $2 million for the current cycle, which if accomplished would certainly make them a player.

So here's what you do: wait until opportunity shifts the current political landscape and rally a couple million bucks behind that shift. If you win, you're in the middle of the action. The trick is being in the right place at the right time and controlling distribution of a couple million bucks. Good luck with that.

Following Political Networks

I've stumbled across a good looking site: muckety.com.

It claims to detail the relationships that connect the various players and institutions in contemporary government and politics. For an example, here are the relationships established when presidential daughter Jenna married Henry Hager. This wasn't a random hookup.

Social network analysis has been a growth field in a variety of academic subjects in recent years. Recent studies have also suggested that any impact a government class, or education in general, is likely to have on individual behavior has less to do with what one learns than with who one meets.

The Inside Game Circa 2008

The NYT has a terrific piece today on two Washington DC insiders, one from each major party, each of whom is working on the vetting process for his party's presumptive VP. The men are Arthur Culvahouse and James Johnson. You didn't vote them in and can't vote them out. Recall that what they do--petioning government for a redress of grievances--is constitutionally protected, and also something predicted by the country's founders.

It would be hard to find two more experienced or better certified Washington insiders than Mr. Culvahouse and Mr. Johnson. They probably come as close to the old model of Washington wise men as anyone left and both are known for their experience and tact. The likely presidential nominees “know they better find someone who knows the local travel customs,” says Evan Thomas, co-author of the book “The Wise Men,” and author of “The Man to See,” a biography of Edward Bennett Williams, the superlawyer who advised many Democratic politicians.

It suggests that real power in government does not lie in the elected leaders but in the permanent group of well connected figures who actually know how the governing process works. Those who choose to ignore these figures, like Carter in the late 1970s, risk being ineffective.

Men like Mr. Culvahouse and Mr. Johnson are really more mediators than fixers. They are the sages of what Ralph Nader famously dubbed Washington’s “permanent government.” Elected officials came and went, but their aides stayed, earning their stripes as lobbyists and consultants, or joining the city’s leading law firms, some of which became as influential as the real pillars of government. Beginning in the 1980s, an increasing number of former senators and House members joined their ranks.

At a time when government was being derided as bloated and gridlocked, these mediators became the capital’s institutional memory and storehouse of arcane legislative expertise. They were necessary for enacting bills, advising lawmakers and politicians running for office, and brokering deals. When confirmation hearings become rocky, the mediators almost always surface, to escort and whisper in the ears of nominees as they testify.

Whether this is good or bad is something we can discuss in class.