BeldarBlog

Video proof that Fred Thompson can and will respond instantly and in kind to sneak attacks on American soil

Fred defends aide Bob Davis from Christine Byun of ABC and John Bentley of CBS in snowy Iowa.

The GOP nomination continues to be wide open. A campaign contribution right now to any of the major GOP candidates except Gov. Romney (who can self-finance and has indeed done so) is likely to have more impact than anything you've given to any national political campaign in the past. If Fred's your guy too, now would be a very good time to open your wallet, even if it's only for $25.

Christmas 2007 musings on politics and history

Journalist Matt Bai is a clever fellow and a good writer. His coverage of the Left has not infrequently been "critical" both in the sense of offering a critique and of offering an unflattering portrayal, and that's true too of his lengthy essay in today's NYT Sunday Magazine entitled The Clinton Referrendum. But sometimes, for those of us well-educated grown-ups not deeply embedded in the Left — and I use the word "embedded" in exactly the same sense it's used to describe modern war correspondents in Iraq who live, sleep, and eat with the troops of a particular military unit — Bai's most telling observations are the ones to which he himself is entirely oblivious.

To test how many of you have the same reaction I do, I won't use italics or bold-face to set it off, but here's one, which I include among quite a bit of before-and-after contextual material that gives a sense of the intended subjects and scope of Bai's essay:

... [Bill Clinton] almost single-handedly pulled the Democratic Party back from its slide into irrelevance. Liberals swallowed hard and endured Clinton’s pragmatic brand of politics because they assumed that Clinton’s success would beget more success and, ultimately, a more progressive government.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way. First came the election of 2000, which Democrats believed was swiped from their grasp with little protest from the party’s Washington leaders. Next came compromises with George W. Bush on tax cuts and education reform. Then came the back-breaker: in the vote on the Iraq war resolution in 2002, many Democrats in Washington — including, most conspicuously, Hillary Clinton, then an unannounced presidential candidate — sided with President Bush in a move that antiwar liberals could only interpret as a Clintonian calculation to look tough on terror. If so, a lot of good it did; Congressional Democrats were demolished at the polls a few weeks later.

After that defeat, many longtime liberals, often coming together in the new online political space, began to voice a different thought: What if they had gone along with Clintonism for nothing? What if the path to victory lay not in compromising with Republicans but in having the fortitude to fight ruthlessly and to defend your own convictions, no matter how unpopular they might be? This was the moment in which Howard Dean’s explosive presidential campaign — and the grass-roots progressive movement it spawned — began to flourish. It was grounded in the idea that Clintonism, far from representing the postindustrial evolution of Democratic thought, had corrupted the party of the New Deal and the Great Society — and, taken to its logical end, had led Democrats and the country into a catastrophic war.

Even before they knew for sure that she was running for the presidency, Hillary Clinton’s top aides had to figure out how best to handle the growing tumult inside their own party. As a senator, Clinton had been, if anything, more centrist than her husband; she worked across the aisle with the likes of Bill Frist and Lindsey Graham, and her voting record on foreign policy placed her among the most conservative Democrats, only a few paces to the left of Joe Lieberman. There is no reason to think such stances on the issues didn’t accurately reflect Hillary’s convictions, but they had the added bonus of positioning her as eminently moderate and “electable” — both in New York State, where she won 67 percent of the vote in her 2006 re-election, and in the rest of the country.

The party, however, seemed to be moving in a different direction....

If one plugs the phrase "catastrophic war" into Google, its mysterious search engine algorithms will indeed rank references (mostly from politicians and pundits) to the Iraq War very prominently among the top few dozen returns.  But the inhabitants of Carthage during the Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.) would certainly have sooner been able to grasp the technology behind internet search engines than they could the mind-set of those who could label, from an American point of view, the Iraq War as "catastrophic." There are no more Carthagenians, because after their besieged city of between a quarter and a  half million people was finally captured by the Romans, the 50-odd thousand Carthaginians remaining alive were all sold into slavery and the city was methodically leveled back to pastureland. That was a "catastrophic war."

From the perspectives of Germany, the Soviet Union, or the European countries in between or around the two, World War II was certainly a catastrophic war. There wasn't just "regime change, although there was certainly lots of that. Nation-states were erased from the map; others were partitioned and/or occupied by foreign armies for decades thereafter. And tens of millions of soldiers and civilians were slaughtered. Even the United States, which unquestionably emerged victorious and, relatively, unscathed by World War II, suffered thousands of soldiers killed in battle in a single day, sometimes for obscure specks of coral so lost within the vastness of the Pacific Ocean that Americans both then and now couldn't accurately locate them on the globe within a distance of 10,000 miles.

Any rational student of history would conclude that America has had at most only one truly "catastrophic war" — that being its own Civil War, in which something on the order of 620,000 Americans were killed. Yet most Americans, and most serious students of history around the world, think that the "catastrophe" of that war would have been if the Union had been permanently sundered, instead of only temporarily split. Even the grim KIA figures from the American Civil War are dwarfed by the death toll from the Battle of Stalingrad alone from World War II. And there were dozens of individual battles in either World War II or the American Civil War in which more American soldiers were killed in one single day than have been killed in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan in all the days put together since 9/11/01.

If it's your husband or son or sister who's killed or wounded, then of course any war may be "catastrophic" for you and your family. For some (blessedly small) number of Americans, the rescue that Ronald Reagan effected on the island of Grenada in 1983 was a "catastrophic war."

But from a national point of view, "catastrophic war" — to have any meaning at all — seems to me to be a term that ought to be limited to those wars in which, at a minimum, the country has incurred comparatively large numbers of killed and wounded, using other actual wars as a basis for comparison. And it probably ought also be limited to those wars that a country has actually lost.

Such is the breath-taking historical ignorance of the Democrats, however, that their candidates, their partisans, and the members of the press who cover them can all presume — without giving the matter a second thought — that the Iraq War is a "catastrophic war," and that all further interesting debate and analysis, and all primary elections and party nominations, must proceed from that premise of fact and judgment.

So the question I'm left to ponder — as I prepare for a quick holiday trip back to my hometown, where I'll give thanks this Christmas for God's boundless blessings upon me, my family, and my nation — is this: I think America can, if need be, survive the occasional presidency like Jimmy Carter's or Bill Clinton's. But is the historical ignorance of the Democrats becoming so pronounced that it's beginning to run the risk of becoming "catastrophic ignorance"?

I'm With Fred

I.  Why now?

There has never been, nor will there be, any question that I will vote against the Democratic Party's 2008 nominee for president. And because I don't care to waste my vote on a protest, it will be cast for the GOP's nominee, whoever that turns out to be.

Moreover, I'm not, and have never been, among those who thought that a Democratic win in 2008 is inevitable. To the contrary, notwithstanding Dubya's low polling numbers, I'm convinced that the GOP's chances are at least as good as his were in 2000 or 2004, and that every single one of the potential Democratic nominees is eminently beatable. Indeed, depending on intervening events, some of them may turn out to be beatable in a landslide; and I'm convinced that whether it's Hillary, Obama, or Edwards, the Dems are going to feel serious buyers' remorse on the day after their nominee is finally decided. So I think that it does matter — indeed, that it matters a whole lot — who the GOP picks from among the present major candidates.

I've been genuinely, and intentionally, undecided among most of those major GOP candidates until now. But by March 4, 2008, when votes including mine will be tallied in Texas' primary elections, the GOP nominee may already have been effectively decided. That's far from certain — the possibility of a genuine national nominating convention, brokered or otherwise, is no longer a silly notion — but the possibility of my own primary vote becoming moot is still high enough to impel me to publicly express my preference and open my checkbook now, in hopes of affecting things even slightly in other states with earlier primaries.

Thus go I on record today: Fred Thompson is my guy for 2008.

II.  Why Fred?

On every issue I care deeply about, Fred Thompson is a genuine, thoughtful conservative — without any major exceptions or doubtful areas that I have to forgive or ignore. And in the simplest possible words: I trust him because he's demonstrated that he has a real political spine.

Fred's my "Goldilocks candidate": On national defense and foreign policy generally, on taxes (and, in particular, income tax reform), on spending, on judicial appointments, on immigration, on increasing the size and capacities of the military, and on a host of other issues, he's "Just Right." And not only do his present views and positions match my own, but they've been consistent views throughout his career, so I don't have to worry that he'll be easily talked out of them through some rationalization in the name of "expediency."

Ironically, Thompson's political spine has been most evident in some of the very same episodes that his detractors will try to spin as grounds for conservative alarm. As a senator, Thompson cast lonely, politically unpopular votes grounded on a genuine understanding of and reverence for federalism, for example, that his political opponents have characterized as being "anti-tort reform." I could write for pages about all that, but let me boil it down to a sentence: Fred Thompson has far more in common with John Roberts (for whose SCOTUS confirmation he served as sherpa) than with John Edwards, and if you can't tell the difference, you ought not be voting in the GOP primaries anyway.

Even my biggest reservation about Thompson actually reflects well on his political spine: If simply getting elected and staying atop the polls were what Fred Thompson were all about, he'd be a much better candidate, but ultimately a much worse president. For better or worse, he's running his campaign the way he believes it should be run — meaning he wasn't stampeded into an early start, and there are definite limits to the indignities that he'll willingly suffer for the sake of retail campaigning. His abrupt refusal to participate in the recent "show of hands on global warming" in the televised Iowa debate, for example, was the act of a self-secure grown-up with a serious sense of statesmanship. Fred may be a good old boy, and indeed he's charming as heck, but he's just not a panderer.

Thompson has come a long way from a very humble start, so it's wrong to say that he's unambitious. But he does lack the overweening, compulsive degree of personal ambition that's characteristic of many presidential candidates in both parties. Too much ambition is a bad thing, and Hillary Clinton, in fact, is an example of pathological ambition — a trait she entirely shares with her husband (while utterly lacking his charm). But during the late summer and fall, prompted at least in part by Fred's critics among the pundit elites, I nevertheless wondered if Thompson had "enough" ambition. And indeed, if this were like 2000, in which a single, obvious GOP front-runner was cruising to the nomination with massive funding, and without serious missteps or questions about his candidacy, then the amount of fire in Fred's belly might be inadequate for him to secure the nomination.

But historically, Thompson has been a strong closer, and he's gotten sharper over the course of the fall. The GOP race — as evidenced by the remarkable Huckabee surge (which I am convinced will be followed with a Howard Dean-like collapse) — could not possibly be more wide open. I'm satisfied that Fred has plenty enough ambition to win the nomination in these particular circumstances. And at that point — when he's past the humiliating cattle-call debates and onto a national stage from which tedious retail politics become less key — I'm convinced that Thompson will rise ever more enthusiastically to the challenge, and that he can be at least as enthusiastic and effective a campaigner as Ronald Reagan was in 1976, 1980, and 1984.

III.  Why not Mitt?

The more I've learned about Mitt Romney, the more impressed I've become with him. And it's going to take a few paragraphs to explain why he's not my guy this time around.

Basically, as I've aged, I've gradually come to treasure genuine resolve and commitment over short-term expediency. As a young adult, I was a slow and late convert to Reaganism. I supported and voted for Gerald Ford in 1976, when I viewed Reagan almost with alarm as an "extremist." I supported George H.W. Bush in the 1980 primaries, and I still thought that he was the better man of the two when they beat Carter-Mondale. To this good day, I'm still a fan of Bush-41: his assembly of the coalition that drove Saddam out of Kuwait in the Gulf War remains the single most impressive feat of international diplomacy in modern history, and I believe he is a competent and decent and honorable man who would be better appreciated now if he'd won and served out a second term.

But Poppie ran for election in 1988 on the famous "read my lips" pledge of no new taxes — and he broke that pledge in 1990. He genuinely thought he had compelling grounds to do so; he let Democrats and his own advisers talk him into it; and he therefore rationalized a compromise that violated what he had portrayed as, and what many voters genuinely believed had become, one of his fundamental, core principles. He also over-relied on minions to select and vet SCOTUS nominee David Souter — an indefensibly reckless and indisputably awful-in-hindsight nomination. It's not that Bush the Elder's heart was in the wrong place, but rather, that it wasn't balanced by a stiff enough political spine: he wasn't stubborn enough, and he was too flexible. He was certainly not the kind of entirely spineless, calculating, cynical snake oil salesman that Bill Clinton exemplifies, but Bush-41's dazzling résumé and political history (e.g., his own conversion to pro-life from pro-choice as Reagan's running-mate) always clearly telegraphed that he was more about the perceivedly practical than the thoroughly principled.

Mitt Romney reminds me of George H.W. Bush in many respects. I believe he's a good man, one who's clearly energetic and capable. But "Romneycare" scares the hell out of me — not just because I think it's a poor template for national health-care reform, but because it bespeaks a willingness to make and justify compromises with his political enemies that looks an awful lot like Poppie Bush on taxes in 1990. Mitt Romney has been a political pragmatist, not a political idealist, and it's probably true that the former is the only sort of Republican who can be elected governor of Massachusetts. But that's also a damned good reason why the GOP generally ought not look to Massachusetts as a breeding-ground for its national presidential nominees!

Mind you, it's not that I actively distrust Romney, but rather simply that I trust Fred more. The objective consistency of Fred's record comforts me in my subjective evaluation of his political backbone, and I haven't had to be talked into accepting that Fred's a conservative in his bones. Indeed, Romney's my second choice behind Fred, and I'd be perfectly content to see Romney as the GOP's Veep nominee, with him playing fully as active a management role in a Thompson Administration as Dick Cheney has played in Dubya's or as Bush-41 played in Reagan's.

IV.  Why not McCain, Giuliani, or Huckabee?

John McCain is a genuine American hero, and he's been a thoughtful and steady pillar on matters of national security in particular — if that's defined to exclude security threats from our porous borders. But he, too, is a politician of "expedience" on immigration and far too many other areas — most prominently, as the leader of the Gang of Fourteen on judicial nominees and, of course, the abomination that is McCain-Feingold. I'm still offended, and doubtful of McCain's presidential temperament, based on McCain's May 2007 incident with my home-state senator John Cornyn, who was very professionally and effectively representing the position of many concerned Texans, including me: "'F**k you! I know more about [immigration] than anyone else in the room,' shouted McCain at Cornyn." I'll vote for McCain and support him if he gets the GOP nomination. But I cannot support him in the primaries, and I still think that he's extremely unlikely to be the GOP nominee.

Rudy Giuliani is a tough, smart S.O.B., and the country could do much worse. I don't doubt Rudy's backbone, but I'm still concerned about exactly where it's located. Most of the time, he would probably govern as a conservative. But he isn't one — he's just not, he's too liberal on too many issues to be considered, overall, as anything other than a political moderate who's in the left wing of the Republican Party. If I were more pessimistic about the party's chances in the general election or more impressed by any of the Democratic candidates, I might be persuaded to support Rudy on "electability" grounds, and I won't be distressed if he gets the nod. But I can't support him over Thompson.

And as I mentioned above, I think Huckabee won't hold up to intense scrutiny, and his campaign is likely to crash as fast as it has boomed. I was much amused and originally impressed by Huckabee's humor. But I've now concluded that his weak grasp of foreign policy — compounded by his subsequent incredible disingenuousness in claiming not to owe Pres. Bush an apology after twice referring to Dubya as "arrogant" and guilty of a "bunker mentality" — is by itself sufficient to make him a candidate I can't support in the GOP primaries. And I have other serious and growing doubts about Huckabee as well.

V.  What's next?

Due to pressing professional commitments, I'm still unlikely to be blogging regularly through the remainder of this year or January. But I may post a few observations about the political race from time to time, and/or such other whimsy as the muse dictates and time permits.

In the meantime, there's now a Fred08 contribution form on my sidebar. With the wide-open races in both parties, but the front-loaded primary season nearly upon us, the month of December is obviously an awfully good time for you to make a contribution, in terms of getting lots of potential bang for your political buck in the states that will decide the nominees. Whether it's to Fred or one of the other candidates, I hope you'll consider contributing.

Huckabee confirms worst fears re his foreign policy inexperience

I'm taking a very short break from my blogging sabbatical just to express a moment of disgust:

This — from a foreign affairs white paper purportedly written by GOP presidential candidate "Michael D. Huckabee" and entitledAmerica's Priorities in the War on Terror: Islamists, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan" — is just awful:

Summary:  The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. In particular, it should focus on eliminating Islamist terrorists, stabilizing Iraq, containing Iran, and toughening its stance with Pakistan.

The first two sentences (emphasis mine) are Kumbaya diplomacy at its most deplorable, and if the candidate really believes them, then he's far too naïve to become president — at least as the GOP nominee. Anyone who really thinks that the problems of the world boil down to American unwillingness to "open up [and] reach out" is an irredeemable idiot.

Unfortunately, the balance of the article after that summary is also riddled with platitudes and soft-headed mush. Some of the platitudes are nominally "conservative" in tone, and Huckabee gets a few substantive points right, but that's almost (it seems) by accident, or in contradiction to other themes. His Obamaesque policy toward Pakistan is reckless and feckless (and even if it were wise to pursue, it would not be wise to telegraph). I agree with many (but not quite all) of the criticisms of this paper leveled or quoted by Dr. James Joyner on Outside the Beltway, and I found another jaw-dropper there in this NYT quote:

At lunch, when I asked [Huckabee] who influences his thinking on foreign affairs, he mentioned Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, and Frank Gaffney, a neoconservative and the founder of a research group called the Center for Security Policy. This is like taking travel advice from Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, but the governor seemed unaware of the incongruity.

Friedman is a well-meaning crackpot who just barely manages to beat the stopped-clock accuracy rate (twice a day), and with even less profundity. I guess this means that Huckabee was one of several dozen Times Select subscribers. So is he also going to be influenced in the White House by Maureen Dowd?

I know that Huckabee is having to assemble a foreign policy platform on the fly and without any substantial experience in the field. But the fact that he's chosen to engage in mindless (and in my view, very badly unjustified) Bush-bashing in the lead sentences of his most important foreign policy statement troubles me a great deal. He literally doesn't know what he's talking about himself, and he's obviously repeating things from others who are either equally as clueless or else affirmatively hostile to at least some of the basic tenets that have characterized Republican presidential foreign policy for many decades.

I want a GOP candidate to identify with and promise to emulate Teddy Roosevelt, not Franklin. This article is enough to ensure that Huckabee won't get my vote in a GOP primary.

Jindal's prescription for the GOP

From his interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this morning, Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal:

WALLACE: We've got about 45 seconds left. There's a lot of talk — and I don't know whether you like it or hate it — that you're a new GOP rock star. What lesson do you think your party should learn from your campaign and your success in Louisiana?

JINDAL: Well, my primary obligation is obviously to Louisiana. But I think the reason Republicans did so poorly in 2006 wasn't that the country stopped being conservative, it was that the party stopped being conservative. It's not enough to want power for the sake of wanting power. We waged here a principled campaign against corruption, against out of control spending [and] pledged to cut taxes. I think as the Republican Party gets [back] to its principled roots, it'll see more enthusiasm among voters. Voters don't want you to pretend to be an imitation of your opponents. They want you to stick to your principles, and to be honest — even if you disagree with a voter, tell 'em where you stand. So if we'll get back to our roots — against the earmarks, the pork barrel spending, the bridges to nowhere — if we will get back to not just covering up corruption, but standing for the strongest ethical standards, I think the voters will reward that.

Jindal is a rock star. He's got his work cut out for him in Louisiana. But if he can do a good job there, his future political potential is boundless.

And I entirely agree with what he said in this answer, but I would go farther: It's not enough to put thin Republican clothes on Democratic memes.

To take one of the three most conspicuous domestic policy examples (tax reform and social security reform being the other two): We already can be absolutely certain that the Democratic candidate in 2008 will be pushing for a radical change in our national health-care system. And in percentage of voter terms, almost no one in America is satisfied with the current system (including me). Even though improvements can still be made, the quality and availability of health care (as distinct from health care insurance coverage) in the United States is by far the best that it's been at any time or any place in the history of the world. But our system of linking health insurance coverage to employment through (mostly large) businesses has effectively unlinked the entire system from market economics — and efforts to combat that problem via "managed care" have generally resembled the Soviet Union's management of its steel industry circa 1953.

Radical change is needed — but not to a single-payer government (or government micro-directed) system like the Dems want. Nobody — not even Bill or Hillary Clinton — is smarter than the market. Merely tacking on symbolic tax deductions or even tax credits to a program claimed to "expand personal choices" isn't going to remotely address the enormous economic distortions already built into the existing system — in which economic decisions and the resulting "marketplace" are continuously distorted by decisions made by insurance-covered patients and their doctors (mostly, really by the doctors) without any regard for those decisions' cost-to-benefit ratio.

Simply put, the existing system can't be fixed; it must be replaced. And that is going to mean (in the short term) the literal destruction of vast economic domains belonging to those whose livelihoods are tied up in the maintenance of the existing system. Decoupling insurance coverage from employment is actually a far more bold proposition than anything Hillary or the other Dems are proposing — but it's a return to a traditional Republican and conservative value, i.e., the paramount importance of individual decision-making in a genuinely free market environment.

Why Mike Huckabee could be on the 2008 GOP ticket

I still plan to blog at greater length, later this week, about my most-current views of the race for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. But here's a teaser:

I'm now convinced that the party needs former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to be in one of the top two slots (the only remaining questions being, which one, and with whom).

An entirely sufficient reason: Having this ordained Baptist minister on the ticket is likely to make humorless lefties' heads explode.

Evidence: This post, from the normally good-humored Jeralyn Merritt, entitled "Huckabee: No Health Care for Dirty Hippies," and the forty-two comments prior to mine — none of which could recognize a terrific joke by Gov. Huckabee during Sunday's GOP debate in Florida that even the New York Times' debate transcriber caught.

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UPDATE (Wed. Dec. 5 @ 8:30 pm): In the weeks since this post was written, I've continued, by and large, to be impressed by Huckabee's campaign skills. And I still would consider him for the second spot on the GOP's 2008 ticket. Enough serious questions have been raised about him, though — in particular, regarding his collaboration with tax-and-spend Democrats and soft-heartedness with pardons as governor, and regarding his lack of experience but worse, interest in serious foreign policy ideas — that I have grown unenthusiastic about him as a prospective top-ticket nominee. I've changed the title of this post from "needs to be on the 2008 GOP ticket" to "could be on the 2008 GOP ticket."

There are ways in which I continue to be dissatisfied with Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson in small to medium-sized measures, and with McCain in several large ones. But I am definitely, positively never going to be one of those "I'd rather stay home" Republicans come either primary or general election days. And, probably, around New Year's, I'll announce my own considered preference for the nomination.

"Don't Tase me, bro!" incident report due today

I haven't previously been able to find any sort of update on the disposition of the criminal charges that were filed against University of Florida student Andrew Meyer after he resisted arrest while being removed from a John Kerry rally. However, the UF student newspaper, The Alligator, reported on Monday that "[t]he investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into [Meyer's Tasering] is complete, but the report isn't available to the public yet." A university spokesman is credited with predicting that the 300-page report will be made public today (Wednesday).

As for the criminal charges, the article says: "The State Attorney's Office will make the final judgment on Meyer's criminal charges after it reviews the department's findings." Although cryptic, this suggests to me that the charges may have been put on hold pending the release of this report by agreement of everyone concerned. If the report is critical of the campus police's reaction, however, that conceivably might trigger a voluntary reduction or even a dismissal of the charges.

I continue to predict that the use of the Taser will be found to have been appropriate, and that at least the resisting arrest charge will be deemed appropriate for the prosecution to pursue. But I presume that short of a complete voluntary dismissal by the prosecution, "final judgment" will actually be made by a judge or a jury, either pursuant to a plea bargain or the results of a trial.

In the meantime, a Palm Beach newspaper reports that sales of "Don't Tase Me, Bro" merchandise (sporting graphics like the one I've reprinted here from Cafe Express) continue to be "shockingly profitable."

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UPDATE (Thu Oct 25 @ 6:20pm): My thanks to commenter rfy for a link to the report, which is actually only 17 pages (presumably the 300 estimate included backup documentation). My prediction was correct:

The report found that the event organizers were within their rights and had ample justification in ordering Meyer to be removed, and that the campus police made reasonable choices in dealing with Meyer's resistance, including in the use of the Taser in "drive-stun" mode (using direct contact, rather than firing the prongs). It provides more detail than I'd previously read about Meyer's previous campus disruptions, along with further circumstantial evidence that he intended to provoke this incident and arrest.

According to the UF student newspaper, "Eddie King and Nicole Lynn Mallo — the two officers who were suspended with pay after the event — are back on duty, UF President Bernie Machen wrote in an e-mailed statement." My guess is that they'll get a fresh round of applause the next time they walk into the campus police station.

This report, of course, will be dismissed by Meyer's defenders on grounds that it's biased as coming from another law enforcement source, and it should indeed be read with awareness of that fact. But that doesn't mean it's wrong, and I don't think it is.

My guess is that Meyer is going to have to do some non-trivial jail time if he wants to plead out; and if he rolls the dice and insists on a jury trial, my prediction is that he's quite likely to be convicted on the "resisting arrest with violence" felony charge, which could mean serious prison time.

Were I Meyer's lawyer, I'd do my best to establish whatever credibility I could for my client's and my willingness to go to trial, and then leverage from that the best plea agreement I could get. I'd try to trade public service and acts of contrition for as much jail time as I could, and I'd try to negotiate for flex-time service that would permit Meyer to serve his sentence on weekends or holidays so that he could stay in school. That done, I might not Taser young Meyer in my private counseling on whether to take that best offer from the prosecutors, but I would indulge in every bit of verbal arm-twisting and brow-beating that I could manage. My guess is that Meyer and his parents would then fire me and get new counsel who's less candid and more publicity-hungry — someone who'll be happy for the TV time as Meyer's led back in handcuffs after the guilty verdict, at which point the lawyer can shake his fist and valiantly vow to appeal "Against These Fascists All the Way to the U.S. Supreme Court!"

Minnesota trial court rejects Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea

Sen. Larry Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea has been denied. Here's Judge Charles A. Porter's 27-page order, along with the Metropolitan Airport Commission's one-page press release. I'll have more analysis after reviewing the order.

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UPDATE (Thu Oct 4 @ 2:40 pm): I've now read the order. Craig is toast.

This is an order written by a judge who is very experienced; who knew that what he was writing is likely to be appealed; and who was therefore being very thorough and very careful to do everything possible to make his ruling bulletproof on appeal. He's almost certainly succeeded.

For example, Judge Porter's order recites (page 2 of the .pdf) that Craig "concedes for the purposes of this motion that the facts contained in the Complaint and in the affidavits and statements of the two Metropolitan Airport Commission ("MAC") Police Department officers are true." That is undoubtedly based on a concession sought and obtained by Judge Porter from Craig's counsel during the oral argument. It's the kind of thing that is incredibly important for purposes of a future appeal — but of course, none of the news media who covered the hearing bothered to mention it. The practical effect is that the prosecution's version of the facts hasn't been challenged at all. And any reviewing appellate court won't even consider any contrary factual arguments.

Similarly, the opinion recites (page 7 of the .pdf file) that Craig's lawyers conceded "that when he accepted the guilty plea, Judge Larson had access to the official court file, which included the Complaint." That's doubtless another concession extracted during the oral argument, and it further bolsters the factual worst-case scenario against Craig, while simultaneously expanding and maximizing the fact pattern from which Judge Larson could have found a basis to conclude that the disorderly conduct statute had indeed been violated. This concession renders moot, in other words, any argument that Craig's lawyers made to the effect that there was an inadequate showing in the written motion to accept his guilty plea, by itself, of facts tending to show a violation of the statute.

Mind you, I'm not faulting Craig's lawyers for making these concessions. As a practical matter, they had to do so if they were to maintain any credibility whatsoever. My point is that by nailing these points down,  first at the hearing and then again in the written order, Judge Porter was adding Kevlar to his ultimate ruling for appellate purposes — anticipating, and then pre-negating, what otherwise might have turned into appellate arguments for Craig.

On two subsidiary points on which he had discretionary rulings to make, Judge Porter actually ruled against the prosecution: First, he refused to reject Craig's motion in its entirety as being untimely; and second, he refused to strike the profoundly silly amicus brief filed by the ACLU. Contrary rulings would have given Craig (or the ACLU) something to complain about in an appeal. But they're deprived now of those arguments, and Judge Porter has also demonstrated that he wasn't just blindly following the prosecution's lead or wholly unreceptive to opposing positions. And yet these subsidiary rulings didn't affect Judge Porter's ultimate ruling in rejecting Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Though timely, Judge Porter concluded that Craig's motion lacked merit; and he spent a page near the end (page 26 of the .pdf) explaining why the ACLU's arguments also lacked merit.

The rest of the opinion just methodically examines and then demolishes every one of Craig's sprawling, sometimes conflicting arguments — often displaying a light sense of irony in the process. For example, after quoting from the petition to enter a guilty plea that prosecutor Renz prepared for Craig's review and signature, Judge Porter examines Craig's argument that his "guilty plea lacked a sufficient factual basis" (page 12 of the .pdf; emphasis mine):

This factual basis contains the requisite date, location, and elements of the offense, but clearly does not describe, in detail, the conduct that substantively supports each element of the offense. The Defendant argues that because the factual basis in the petition lacks detail, he was therefore not aware of the facts  underlying his conduct coinciding with the elements of the offense, or more importantly, that he was not admitting to having engaged in that conduct. This is illogical. The Defendant admits in his post-conviction affidavit that he pled [guilty] in haste in an effort to avoid the public disclosure of the very facts which he now maintains should have been painstakingly detailed in the petition and therefore of record memorializing his admission to specific facts. This Court believes that the Defendant's plea had a more than sufficient factual basis on the face of the petition.

In effect, this is chiding Craig (my paraphrase, not a quote): "Don't be faulting the prosecutor or the court for not rubbing your face in all the sordid details of your crime, Sen. Craig! We were cutting you some slack." But the opinion then proceeds to go through the rest of the conduct in all its detail as revealed in the complaint, lest there be any doubt.

And of course, by the end, there's really not. There never really has been — except in the minds of well-meaning civil libertarians whose zeal to protect gay rights blinded them to the simpler reality that, whether intended as part of a gay cruising ritual or not, an airport traveler's protracted staring into someone else's bathroom stall, and then poking his hand and foot into it to wave at and then rub against that stall's occupant, is just not acceptable conduct in a public restroom.

The opinion also includes an exoneration of both Sgt. Karsnia and prosecutor Renz from any blame or overreaching. It quite appropriately puts all of the responsibility — first for the crime, and then for the guilty plea — directly where it should be, which is to say, directly on Sen. Larry Craig.

What's missing from the opinion? The same damn thing that was missing — inexplicably to me — from Craig's lawyers' written papers: A focused discussion of Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 15.02(3), as made applicable to mail-in pleas by Rule 15.03. In fact, there's no mention of either rule. That may well reflect the absolutely lousy job that Craig's lawyers did of pointing out that these proceedings didn't strictly comply with those rules. But as a result, what I and other legal pundits thought was Craig's very best argument isn't addressed at all. An appellate court would probably conclude, if asked, that Craig has waived that argument by failing to make it more clearly.

And now it simply remains to see whether Sen. Craig plans to become a professional pariah. His chances of successfully appealing this ruling are somewhere below 1% in my opinion; this motion was a farce, but an appeal from this ruling would be nothing but tragic. Will he add "oath-breaker" to his record by continuing to disregard his pledge to resign?

Just quit, Larry. For the sake of your family, if for no one else. Just ... quit.

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UPDATE (Thu Oct 4 @ 5:10 pm): He says he's staying through the end of his current term (January 2009). As part of the press release, he says: "I am innocent of the charges against me. I continue to work with my legal team to explore my additional legal options."

Bring on the Senate hearings. Roll in the klieg lights. It looks as though columnist Dan Popkey was right in predicting that Craig actually wanted to lose this ruling because it would permit him to continue appeals through the end of his term while avoiding an actual trial. So: The Senate should force that trial upon him, in the context of an ethics hearing. Those proceedings are likely to be many times more nasty than a criminal trial anyway. Heat the tar, gather the feathers, and strike up the band, boys, the circus is coming to town.

A lawmaker who is a convicted lawbreaker says the law's rulings don't apply to him, and such a man can't be permitted to remain in office.

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UPDATE (Fri Oct 5 @ 3:15 pm): James Joyner very ably fisks Craig's "not gunna resign nyah-nyah" press release.

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Previous posts on the Craig matter, oldest to most recent:

1. The answer to the "Why was this a crime?" crowd on the Craig matter
2. Craig "reconsidering" resignation; and his chance to withdraw his guilty plea is probably better than Beldar first presumed
3. Has Larry Craig hired the part-time prosecutor who filed the complaint against him?
4. Craig swears that on the date of his arrest, he "decided to seek a guilty plea to whatever charge would be lodged" against him
5. In letter forwarding proposed plea, prosecutor Renz repeatedly reminded Craig of his right to counsel and warned that plea would result in "a conviction for Disorderly Conduct appearing on [his] criminal record"
6. ACLU files silly brief in support of Craig's plea withdrawal
7. Prosecution moves to strike ACLU amicus brief supporting Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea
8. Of pleas and piñatas: No surprises in prosecution's response to Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea
9. Craig plans to ditch hearing, but Renz should object to his affidavit as hearsay and force Craig to take the stand
10. Just "one procedural question" for prosecutor Renz as he opposed Sen. Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea
11. Is Craig's strategy "winning by losing," counting on colleagues and constituents to confuse "innocent until proven guilty" with "guilty (pending further appeals)"?

Should the C-in-C be able to distinguish hostile from friendly fire?

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), in the opening paragraphs of a Wednesday WaPo op-ed entitled "Federalism, Not Partition":

The Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki greeted last week's Senate vote on Iraq policy — based on a plan we proposed in 2006 — with misrepresentations and untruths. Seventy-five senators, including 26 Republicans, voted to promote a political settlement based on decentralized power-sharing. It was a life raft for an Iraq policy that is adrift.

Instead, Maliki and the administration — through our embassy in Baghdad — distorted the Biden-Brownback amendment beyond recognition, charging that we seek to "partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means."

Yes, damn those Republicans and their Iraqi stooges, always making their misrepresentations and untruths! Why, here's one:

Today, I joined with many of my colleagues in voting for Senator Biden’s plan — slightly different that he’d been presenting it, but still the basic structure was to move toward what is a de facto partition if the Iraqi people and government so choose.

Ah, except that was Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), speaking at the September 27th debate among Democratic presidential hopefuls, standing about ten yards away from Sen. Biden. Now, I know Old Joe is Slow, but is his eyesight and hearing so bad that he really couldn't recognize Hillary's rather distinctive appearance and voice on the stage with him? He thought she was a Republican?

Well, at least Sen. Biden didst protesteth Hillary's misrepresentation and untruth, thusly:

BIDEN:  What we voted on was not partition.  I don’t want anybody thinking it was partition.  And it’s the only time we got 26 Republicans to reject the president’s policies.

KUCINICH:  You’re splitting...

RUSSERT:  All right, fine.

KUCINICH:  ... Iraq up.

RUSSERT:  Fine.  Fine.

KUCINICH:  That’s what it does.

Yes, that was noted hard-line Republican Dennis Kucinich, on that same stage on the same night, busily engaging — right to Sen. Biden's face! — in more Republican misrepresentations and untruths.

In fairness, Biden's op-ed also notes that "our plan is not partition, though even some supporters and the media mistakenly call it that." He simply expects the Iraqis and their struggling government to make more sophisticated and nuanced political distinctions than, say, a political neophyte like Hillary Clinton can manage to make.

Seriously, true federalism is a luxury — a finely calibrated system that the fledgling American states weren't able to embrace until years after they'd secured their own independence and a relatively stable (if highly unsatisfactory) sort-of central government under the Articles of Confederation. Even in the most enlightened American political debates today — e.g., that which recently went on between Sen. Fred Thompson and National Review pundit Ramesh Ponnuru — highly educated thinkers can have trouble reaching agreement on whether particular policies do or don't represent "true federalism." (With due respect to Ramesh, Fred kicked his butt in that argument, even though Ramesh is a very smart man.)

Encouraging the Iraqis out onto a tightrope that looks, tastes, and feels like "partition" — but that Sen. Biden (and, with equal blameworthiness, Sen. Brownback (R-KS)) insist on calling a fine-tuning of Iraqi "federalism" — is either a very foolish or very cynical approach. But Biden, of course, will always blame Dubya even for what Biden perceives to be the "shortcomings" in understanding on the parts of Hillary Clinton or Dennis Kucinich.

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UPDATE (Wed Oct 3 @ 6:00am): Here's a not-bad ABC News piece on just what the "Biden-Brownback Amendment" is, and what it means. Biden wants to claim that this is some sort of triumph on his part — that he's engineered a long-sought "defeat" for the White House that marks some sort of significant new direction in Iraq. And that's just baloney.

This was a vague, non-binding sense of the Senate resolution that could be read to say nothing more than that the U.S. and other countries ought to respect and encourage the existing Iraqi federal system as part of the maturation of that nascent government. Nobody at the White House or anywhere else has a problem with that.

I'm dismayed, though, that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) and quite a few other Republican senators voted for this amendment because of the surrounding context, which is quite unhelpful. Biden, Brownback, and others have been making vague and exceedingly ill-informed noises for months and months to the effect that (my paraphrase, not a direct quote) "This Iraq mess is likely going to end up in a three-way partition between the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds." At a minimum, the kind of "federalism" that Biden seems to have in mind is something that's a partition in all but name. In his op-ed, Biden writes,

[W]e are not trying to impose our plan. If the Iraqis don't want it, they won't and shouldn't take it, as the Senate amendment makes clear. But Iraqis and the White House might consider the facts. Iraq's constitution already provides for a federal system. As for the regions forming along sectarian lines, the constitution leaves the choice to the people of its 18 provinces.

So Biden clearly doesn't have in mind the kind of large-set federalism we have in the United States, with 50 "laboratories of democracy" coexisting and interacting with one another and with a robust and unified central federal government. He's not thinking in terms of the existing 18 provinces remaining the active elements of federal interaction, he's thinking in terms of only three. And that history and context, of course, is why — contrary to what Biden insisted at the debate and repeats in his op-ed — people like Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich will take one look at this and immediately understand, "Ah, sure: This is about partition."

In another ill-advised Dallas Morning News op-ed from last March, Sen. Hutchison effectively endorsed partition. She wrote:

Such a plan would create at least three separate, semiautonomous regions in which local law enforcement, commerce, security and education would be managed by local authorities. A limited central government would be responsible for ensuring an equitable division of oil revenue, conducting foreign policy and protecting national security....

An international peacekeeping force would need to be utilized. Much as the long-term success in Bosnia has depended on the involvement of peacekeeping efforts by NATO and the European Union, long-term success in Iraq will require the involvement of many nations. Regional neighbors with a large stake in a peaceful outcome could make a major contribution to a successful transition in Iraq.

I'm sorry, Sen. Hutchinson, but this is the kind of drivel that I'd expect from John Kerry. "Let's all have an international conference and this will just sort itself out!" The only way that this makes sense is if the second paragraph I've quoted is a disguised code for, "We're going to keep sufficient American combat troops there that we'll be able to prop up the so-called Iraqi central government forever." Many of the "regional neighbors" — among them Iran, Syria, and Turkey — have their own agendas, and not even Turkey can be counted upon to always work with us to ensure a "peaceful outcome." Indeed, Iran and Syria both have vested interests in continuing the bloodshed. If the only thing the Iraqi central government is doing is dividing up national loot and "conducting foreign policy" (a/k/a hosting the American embassy), there's no reason for anyone to continue to pretend that there is an "Iraq." This only makes sense as a recipe for either overt American imperialism or failure.

Things may yet someday come to a partition. But there are a large number of reasons why that would be an awkward, unfortunate, and profoundly dangerous result. Because Slow Joe is looking for easy solutions in Iraq that redound to his political credit in D.C., he's overlooking or under-appreciating those risks (which include handing a huge victory to Iran on a silver platter and creating an enormous rift that could potentially lead to military conflict involving America's strategic ally Turkey). Ultimately, "Biden-Brownback" — toothless though it is — can't be seen as anything but indirect promotion of partition. And the U.S. Congress, in the guise of Slow Joe Biden, ought not be in the business of promoting that result, directly or indirectly.

Biden, though, wants to have his cake and eat it too. He — and here again, he's joined by the earnest but thoroughly naïve Sam Brownback — wants to claim some broad bipartisan achievement by the Congress in bringing about a change in course. But they know they wouldn't have picked up all of those Republican votes if they were candid about their real intended direction — toward not genuine federalism, but effective partition. So that's why you have the silly spectacle of Biden writing an op-ed insisting that what's really important is the fig leaf, and that all the naked partition ambition behind it should be ignored — and then blaming Dubya when members of his own party refuse to play along.

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UPDATE (Thu Oct 4 @ 9:30am): In this WaPo op-ed, David Ignatius seems to be saying the same thing I've been trying to say, with some additional supporting historical details.

Is Craig's strategy "winning by losing," counting on colleagues and constituents to confuse "innocent until proven guilty" with "guilty (pending further appeals)"?

It's October 1st, and Sen. Larry Craig's self-imposed resignation deadline has passed without his formal resignation being tendered. Dan Popkey, a columnist for the homestate newspaper whose investigation Craig claims "panicked" him into pleading guilty, the Idaho Statesman, hypothesizes today that the senator may have a new plan — one that not only anticipates, but depends upon Craig losing last Wednesday's trial court hearing on his motion to withdraw his guilty plea (boldface mine):

On Sept. 1, Sen. Larry Craig told Idaho and the world he intended to resign Sept. 30. That's today. Instead, Craig says he plans to stay "for now." ...

... Now, Idaho Republican leaders tell me they've come to believe Craig will likely complete his term in January 2009.

"'‘For now' is permanent," said one. "He ain't leaving."

....

Craig has about $500,000 in the bank for his 2008 re-election campaign. He is authorized to use that to pay lawyers.

....

Craig's bid to complete his term would be best served by heading off a trial. A trial would mean testimony from the arresting officer and experts on the culture of anonymous homosexual sex. That's not something Craig, his family, Idahoans or the GOP want to endure.

So far, Craig's strategy is working. Minnesota's Fourth District Judge Charles Porter was skeptical of the arguments of Craig's lawyers. If Porter rules against Craig, as most legal experts expect, Craig won't face a jury anytime soon.

Porter might surprise us and set a trial date in coming months. But the likely scenario is Craig will head to the Minnesota Court of Appeals. He can expect oral argument within two or three months after filing his challenge to an unsatisfactory ruling. An appellate decision would come within another 90 days, extending Craig's battle to spring.

Next step: the Minnesota Supreme Court, with arguments to come two or three months after a second appeal. The average time between argument and a decision is 4 months. That gets Craig to term's end in January 2009.

Well. That certainly would explain the abysmal quality of Craig's legal team's strategy, tactics, and written work product so far: Maybe their instructions were to get in there and throw the game!

*******

As of today, as on every day since his guilty plea was accepted on August 8, 2007, in the eyes of the law, Craig is a convicted criminal — one conclusively proved by his own admissions to have committed the misdemeanor disorderly conduct offense alleged in the complaint against him. Unless Judge Porter permits him to withdraw his plea, Craig will remain a convicted criminal — subject only to the shall and successively diminishing chances of Judge Porter's decision being reversed on appeal.

I don't know whether Judge Porter will issue a written opinion, or simply issue a thumbs up-or-down ruling granting or denying Craig's motion. But if — as seems likely, given his taking the motion under advisement at the hearing, and waiting until some time this week to announce his decision — Judge Porter both denies the motion and issues an opinion explaining that ruling, the opinion is almost certain to contain language affirming that Craig's guilty plea (and waiver of associated rights as part thereof) was voluntary and uncoerced. In any event, if Craig's planning on "hanging tough" and "holding out," he has to anticipate doing so not only in the face of a continuing legal adjudication of guilt, but also in the face of Judge Porter's public re-affirmation of Craig's guilty plea (either implicitly or explicitly).

It's unlikely that Craig's misdemeanor crime (involving no abuse of his office), his breaking of his pledge to resign, or his general hypocrisy — even when taken collectively — are adequate grounds for his formal impeachment and removal from office. So in that very important sense, it doesn't matter what Judge Porter, the Minnesota Court of Appeals, or the Minnesota Supreme Court ultimately do with Craig's conviction, nor when they do it.

However, for purposes of the entry of a judgment of conviction, the Constitution presumes that everyone's innocent until proven guilty. That presumption of innocence is one of the rights that Craig waived when he entered his guilty plea. And with the waiver of that legal right, Craig also forfeited any moral right to ask his colleagues and constituents to reserve or withhold their own judgments. Asking them to withhold their political judgment for a month, while he asked for a mulligan at the trial court level, was damned presumptuous of him. Asking them to withhold their political judgment for many months, while he exhausts further appeals, would be outrageous, and indeed, insulting.

If Craig insists on staying even if Judge Porter rules against his plea withdrawal motion, the pendency of further appeals ought furnish him with zero political cover. The Constitution may grant Sen. Craig the effective opportunity to make a mockery of his own office, and to poke his thumb repeatedly in the eyes of everyone around him — and that's what he'll be doing if he stays on despite an unfavorable ruling this week. But that doesn't mean anyone whom he's thus abusing has to be nice, or polite, or even minimally respectful to him in return.

Whoever among his senate colleagues is presently shaking his hand and encouraging him, even by acting as though his continued presence is "normal" — and I'm looking directly at you, Sen. Specter, you great sanctimonious buffoon, but also at you, Senators Crapo, Smith, and Lott — is doing neither Craig, his constituents, nor his party any favors at all. You're not even being his "friend" by helping him block out reality; you're just enabling more bad behavior that will ultimately heighten and prolong his disgrace. And even if it's likely to result in no more than a public censure, the Senate should definitely proceed with its threatened open ethics hearing (complete with klieg lights, C-SPAN, and vigorous inquiries into "patterns" of misbehavior), and his office space should be relocated to a post office somewhere in central Virginia or Maryland.

Right now, I mostly still pity the man. Is he going to deliberately earn our contempt as well?

I hope columnist Popkey is wrong, and that "for now" really does mean "for now while my motion is still pending at the trial court level, which will be the immediate end of it when and if my pending motion is denied."

-----------------------

Previous posts on the Craig matter, oldest to most recent:

1. The answer to the "Why was this a crime?" crowd on the Craig matter
2. Craig "reconsidering" resignation; and his chance to withdraw his guilty plea is probably better than Beldar first presumed
3. Has Larry Craig hired the part-time prosecutor who filed the complaint against him?
4. Craig swears that on the date of his arrest, he "decided to seek a guilty plea to whatever charge would be lodged" against him
5. In letter forwarding proposed plea, prosecutor Renz repeatedly reminded Craig of his right to counsel and warned that plea would result in "a conviction for Disorderly Conduct appearing on [his] criminal record"
6. ACLU files silly brief in support of Craig's plea withdrawal
7. Prosecution moves to strike ACLU amicus brief supporting Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea
8. Of pleas and piñatas: No surprises in prosecution's response to Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea
9. Craig plans to ditch hearing, but Renz should object to his affidavit as hearsay and force Craig to take the stand
10. Just "one procedural question" for prosecutor Renz as he opposed Sen. Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea