Quoted: Obama in Cairo

I thought of this today:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.

Nothing else I'm thinking is printable.

Comment Elsewhere: Judeo-Calvinism?

here:

on Winchester: “Judeo-Calvinist dreariness”?????

It’s bad enough we get folded in with Christendom, but you’d think the culture that produced the Song of Songs would get an exemption from accusations of Calvinst Victorianism.

[Yes, I know "Calvinist Victorianism" is a linguistic and historical atrocity. That's my point.]

Comment Elsewhere: Pseudonymity and Politics

In response to the unmasking of Publius, I asked

There have been three fairly prominent pseudonymous bloggers outed in the last two months (Hilzoy, Alaska Muckraker, and now Publius), all two by conservatives. Can anyone name a pseudonymous blogger -- conservative or liberal -- outed by a liberal for something other than vicious harassment or sock-puppetry?

I've discussed my pseudonymity here (and a little bit here).
Update: Someone at WashingtonMonthly reminded me that the Alaska case actually involved a Democrat; that doesn't mean that he's not a conservative, especially in Alaska, but I don't actually know.

Update (6/9): Shockingly, the culprit has apologized. It even appears to be a fairly sincere and complete apology, which is very unusual for a lawyer (or a blogger):

On reflection, I now realize that, completely apart from any debate over our respective rights and completely apart from our competing views on the merits of pseudonymous blogging, I have been uncharitable in my conduct towards the blogger who has used the pseudonym Publius. Earlier this evening, I sent him an e-mail setting forth my apology for my uncharitable conduct. As I stated in that e-mail, I realize that, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to undo my ill-considered disclosure of his identity. For that reason, I recognize that Publius may understandably regard my apology as inadequate.

He does not seem, in this, to be retracting any of the supposedly substantive arguments he and his supporters made against pseudonymity. But it's more than I expected, and a very positive result. Publius has "of course accepted." Moving on....

Picture: Pine Fingers

Compare and Contrast: Killings in Kansas and Arkansas

There's been a lot of discussion, primarily on conservative blogs, about the different reactions to the Tiller assassination and the Little Rock Army-Navy Recruitment Office attack which killed Private William Long. Most of the discussion is based on a logical fallacy: that one must be entirely consistent in one's condemnations to be taken entirely seriously on any of them. "But what about..." is a classic rhetorical tactic, shifting the grounds of an argument and sometimes derailing it entirely.

That said, though, I'm largely in agreement that all violence needs to be taken seriously -- I'm a procedural liberal who thinks that political processes need to be settled by political and legal means, and I want to be protected when I make unpopular stands.

Still, I think there's a reasonable question: what, if anything, are the differences between these cases that might explain different reactions? Some of this is, clearly, speculative, as we haven't gotten the full details on either (alleged? Seems unnecessary) killer yet, but I'm working from the information available.

First, the similarities:

1. unmistakeably violent murders, illegal acts
   
2. May 2009
   
3. used legal firearms
   
4. apparent religious motivation
5. clear political motivation
6. perpetrator seems to believe they are acting in defense of the innocent
   
7. victim was a firm believer in their cause
   
8. individual perpetrators without organizational support, no conspiracy
   
9. targetting respected social institutions (medicine, the military)
   
10. targets demonized by political partisans, in long-running, public and intense disputes

I may be overstating some of the similarities, but the parallels are strong, nonetheless. Now, the differences:

1. abortion rights v. the military
   
2. civilian v. military victim
   
3. handgun v. assault rifle
4. individual target v. institutional target
5. individual target v. potential mass casualties
   
6. mission-critical individual v. low-ranking support staff (or, to put it another way, tactical v. symbolic)
7. high-profile target v. previously anonymous victim
   
8. domestic policy v. foreign policy
9. at church v. at work
10. older family man v. younger unmarried
    

The conservative charge of hypocrisy is based on the assumption that difference #1 is the critical one, really the only one. But it's #6 and #7, I think, which actually drive media coverage: the immediate effects of these deaths are different, as are the likely long-term effects. To a large extent, I'd say that #8, because it directly impacts more people's lives locally, and #2 also, are significant factors. Not to downplay the tragic death of this member of the military, but it is an occupation in which violent death in the line of duty is less shocking.

My final thought is one which others have also made. Given the parallels between the cases, why have so many prominent conservative voices failed to call the Tiller assassination an act of domestic terrorism, and to address the implications of that for domestic politics?

[edited to add images; crossposted at Progressive Historians]

Comment Elsewhere: Murder Movement

Describing the murder of Dr. George Tiller, one-third of the doctors in the US who could and would provide late-term abortion procedures when necessary, Ann Friedman said "It is the culmination of an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services."
My response

My only question is why would you call this "the culmination" of anything? For the last quarter-century there's been a fairly steady stream of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at abortion providers. True, assassination murders have been rare compared to, say deaths in traffic (but not compared to Muslim-originated terror attacks in the US) but Tiller himself was the subject of a half dozen physical and vandalism attacks since the last abortion doctor assassination murder. The killing is a tragedy, but entirely within the normal range of operations for the movement which has been pushing against reproductive rights for the last 25 years or more.

This isn't an "end" or "peak" in any meaningful sense, unless there is some kind of political and cultural shift which actually pushes these radicals out of the mainstream.

To clarify, I'm quite sure that the anti-rights movement is going to move on to another target, which will inevitably "culminate" similarly, then another, and another....

For more, I recommend Sara Robinson and Digby. Meanwhile, over at Terry's I said

You know what I just realized?

Operation Rescue had an immediate statement ready, with just the right mix of violence-rejection to cover their asses and not-backing-down-abortion-is-murder brimstone to let us weak-kneed liberals know that they aren’t going to let some negative attention shift their rhetoric or tactics. They knew something like this was going to happen, and they don’t care.

New Google Meme: Fun with autocomplete

Via EotAW:

Newest mental toy:

1. Go to Google.
2. Type in the beginning of a common phrase (e.g., “how do I..”, “where are…”, “is barack…”)
3. Look at the drop-down list of suggested searches.
4. If appropriate, laugh riotously.

My result was, for me professionally, deeply disturbing

Read 'em and weep:

history of valentine's day
history of basketball
history of soccer
history of the internet
history of israel
history of mardi gras
history of st. patrick's day
history of computers
history of baseball
history of football

What comes up for you?

Don't tell the kids....

I was reading detailed analysis of Sotomayor's past decisions and came across the following potentially explosive revelation [emphasis added]:

United States v. Santa, 180 F.3d 20 (1999), involved a question the Supreme Court eventually considered this term in Herring v. United States, No. 07-513. At one time, there had been an arrest warrant issued for Mr. Santa. That fact was put into a statewide computer database. The warrant was subsequently recalled, but that fact never made it into the database. When the police arrested Santa, wrongly believing there was still a warrant out for him, they searched him and found drugs. He moved to suppress the evidence as the result of an unconstitutional arrest (i.e., an arrest without probable cause or a warrant). Judge Sotomayor, writing for the majority, ruled that the evidence should not be suppressed under the exclusionary rule – the same conclusion reached by the Supreme Court in Herring. Judge Newman joined the opinion but wrote separately to voice his disquiet over the fact that the defendant had been arrested by the local police but was prosecuted in federal court because New York courts would have suppressed the evidence as a matter of state law had he been prosecuted locally.

Humor aside, as a matter of law, Sotomayor's decision was a correct application of a deeply disturbing existing precedent....

Pictures: Mushrooms

Comments Elsewhere: Quips

I got in a couple of good lines at Terry's place and elsewhere.

On the pandemic:

Since H1N1 includes both avian flu and swine flu material, we could call it the “pigs fly flu.”

On computer problems:

And backups? Like true love, you don’t really understand backups until you don’t have one….

On Souter's retirement:

don’t conservative justices ever get sick? And why do the liberal ones keep eating in the cafeteria?