Palin and The Median Voter Theory

While many are blasting McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice President (visit today's huffingtonpost for a sample), I believe the choice was actually a smart strategic move. Both McCain and Obama are fighting for the votes of independents and undecideds. By selecting a female vice presidential candidate, McCain moves himself closer to Obama's "change" platform, and also creates a historical ticket of his own. Now, any voters who felt compelled to vote for Obama because of the groundbreaking nature of his candidacy may be tempted to do likewise for the McCain ticket. McCain's choice seems influenced by the median voter theory, which holds that in a two candidate race, the candidates should position themselves as closely as possible to each other on as many issues and factors as possible. This allows the race to be decided on "intangibles" such as "is he one of us" feelings.

Executive Privilege

The Bush administration has claimed executive privilege in response to a subpoena request from the House Judiciary committee. Members of the House committee are seeking testimony about the CIA leak that revealed Valerie's Plame's covert standing. Attorney General Micheal Muskasy advised Bush to claim privilege, stating "I am greatly concerned about the chilling effect that compliance with the committee's subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations." But the precise point of this subpoena is to create a chilling effect. There is some indication that members of the Bush Administration revealed Plame's identity as retribution for public comments unfavorable to the Bush administration made by Plame's husband, Joe Wilson. If this is the case, the oversight role of Congress should do everything in its power to prevent such a scenario from happening again. In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court decision that affirmed the notion of executive privilege, the justices noted "the valid need for protection of communications between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them in the performance of their manifold duties." Political retaliation does not fall under the label of "performance of their manifold duties."
It is also worth noting that conservatives frequently assail the right to privacy as a made up right, not to be found in the Constitution. But executive privilege falls into the same category. Will there be an outcry from conservatives commentators over the Bush administration's loose interpretation of the Constitution?

Of Rights and Apes

The New York Times reports that the Spanish Parliament is about to take up a bill granting limited human rights to the great apes--chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos. The bill would prevent torture, including medical testing, and imprisonment of apes, as in circuses. Additionally, an ape may only be killed in self-defense. I for one am skeptical of the notion of inherent "human rights." All rights exist only through the real or implied contracts of the societies that we live in, and those contracts are subject to change or become void. But I am for the expansion of decency and compassion throughout our civilization. If the Spanish people have decided that it is a worthy endeavor to treat apes with some of the same dignities afforded to humans, I am all for it.

Telecoms, Rove, and The Rule of Law

Fast on the heels of the Democratically controlled Senate's capitulation on Bush's telecom immunity bill comes former Bush political guru Karl Rove's refusal to answer a subpoena. The House had summoned Rove to testify in a hearing about the dismissal of Justice Department lawyers, allegedly for political reasons. Rove, however, ignored the subpoena and offered instead to make a statement off the record and not under oath. Both actions indicate a surprising disdain for the rule of law and send a particularly disturbing message. The Bush Administration is setting the precedent that those in power are able to decide when and to what degree to follow the law. Such a principle is anathema to the idea of government by laws, not men. Even more disturbing is the Democrats complete lack of principle. Although some members of Congress have stood up for the rule of law--particularly Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin--far too many have done nothing to check the power of a lame duck president with atrocious approval ratings.

Iraq Withdrawal

In an earlier post, I detailed some of the demands the US made to the Iraqi government, including legal immunity and control of Iraqi airspace. However, it appears that the al-Maliki government is pushing back, calling for a withdrawal timetable and indicating that immunity and air control are unpalatable to the Iraqi people. Read the article here.

A True Senator

When the founders put together the American government, they made the senators up for reelection every six years, as opposed to four years for the president and two years for representatives. Why? Because the Senate was intended to be an august body, where wise and experienced men could rationally debate the issues, free from the shifting whims of the body politic. And yet, most senators today are concerned solely with their own reelection--witness the Democrats numerous votes on the Bush administration's war on terror legislation. No senator wants to be branded as "weak on terror," so we have many Democrats marching lockstep with the administration. Fortunately, there is Russ Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin. Feingold was the lone senator to oppose the Patriot Act. And now, Feingold (along with Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd) has pledged to filibuster the telecom immunity bill working its way through the Senate. Regardless of what you think of Feingold's politics, it is refreshing to see at at least one senator standing on principle and forgoing the politically expedient decision.

Evolution Debate

Full disclosure: I am a hard-core Darwinist. I started studying Darwin's theories seriously in college, and came to conclude, to paraphrase an eminent biologist, "That nothing makes sense except in terms of evolution." So it is with particular antipathy that I see that a McCain vice president possibility, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, is on the record defending "intelligent design" theories as the "very best science." For those of you who haven't followed the debate, intelligent design is a creationist alternative to evolution. Advocates of the movement are determined to get god back into the classroom through the introduction of this spurious theory. Not one paper on intelligent design theory has made it into a peer reviewed biology journal. It is junk science of the highest degree, no better than astrology or phrenology. Intelligent design proponents argue that they are being discriminated against by the establishment, that evolutionists hold as tightly to their theory as creationists do to theirs, but this is flatly untrue. Any biologist who discovered a viable alternative to Darwinian evolution would usher in a true revolution, tantamount to Einstein's overthrow of Newtonian physics. Such a breakthrough would be embraced. Intelligent design is not such a breakthrough.