Amos Schuman

I'm sure the Constitution will survive this.

Good question. Brazoria went heavily Republican in 2004. On the other hand, the ordinance isn't all that offensive and why would people feel compelled to stand up for the rights of dicks? Neither do I, but it is arguable and the case law is mixed. We'll see how the current judicial climate treats it.

I'd just point out that there's no text of proposed ordinance available for anyone to look at. We can conceive an ordinance constructed in a way that the Fifth Circuit would find as tolerable as the Sixth Circuit did when it upheld the removal of an elected district attorney in North Carolina, Jerry L. Spivey, back in 1995. On the other hand, findings that the use of the word nigger amounts to fighting words simply on the basis that it leads to subsequent litigation is uneven. If it isn't sufficient in civil litigation to simply show offense (as simply filing suit indicates) then it's probably not sufficient evidence of risk of injury in a criminal setting.

I think you're taking ThinkProgress' spin on this and substituting it for the case Fitzgerald's arguing. That the Vice President's office felt it had to respond to Ambassador Wilson's criticism of its handling of the Niger intelligence was common knowledge two years ago. That Fitzgerald believes Vice President Cheney was the first to inform Libby of Wilson's wife's employment has been common knowledge since the indictment came out. No one, not Fitzgerald or the defense, is arguing that the Vice President directed Libby to reveal Wilson's wife's employment to the press, that Libby did so knowingly and purposefully in contravention to the law, or that Libby destroyed evidence. In fact, the note in question is being presented as evidence by the prosecution.

C'mon, Pang. You should know that Republican Senate support for this is far from clear. Which is the House. It still needs to clear the Senate, the only thing the President needs is 34 Republicans willing to pull a Reid and offer an alternative hybridization to block an override. If they can managed 40 votes, they can block consideration on the first run period. Which predicts what? They can plausibly look at what Reid was able to do and calculate that they can vote against this measure. It's been three months since the election, I think it's a bit early to start deciding what fight the Republicans have a stomach for. Me neither, especially since it's early in 2007, the next Congressional elections are two years away, and the majority of House Republicans still voted against the minimum wage increase as the Democrats presented it, the Republicans hold more than 34 and 40 seats in the Senate, and the President still has his veto and bully pulpit. It's not clear yet, because a final version hasn't been reported out of conference. Assuming any of the tax relief amendments survive, the Administration was clear on the 10th and the 19th that we can expect it's support. But then again, the Administration backed HR 5970 last year as well using the same reasoning. That said, if the Senate version fails and Pelosi prevails, it is very uncertain as to whether or not the House version will pass in the Senate, let alone survive a veto.

How do you end up with President Pelosi? Even if you had all your Democrats and both independents in line you'd need twenty six Republican senators to vote to strip the President and Vice President. All the Republicans need is one Democrat and Joe Lieberman to confirm a new body for any resulting Vice President vacancy.

Where'd you get the idea that there's enough votes to override the veto?

Presumably 100 Hours comes first.

Dude! Bullet number 1! Here you go [1]. Read up and let me know specifically what you mean by "subsidies." I take issue with the premise of your question, particularly: 1. "Subsidizing oil exploration v. investing in alternative fuel research." You have established that these are competing interests in a zero sum game, or even that redirecting oil "subsidies" to alternative fuel research will show any profitable return. 2. Characterizing "subsidy" of domestic oil exploitation as a band-aid for an as yet unnamed "problem." 3. The unnamed "problem." I've got no problems with debating you on the general issue. I just don't have any intentions of parsing vague claims or answering ambiguous questions of dubious merit. Otherwise, this is just boils down into an exercise in regurgitating soundbites and cliches.

Did you even read this list? Whatever crazy wrote this up has decided oil companies should expense, presumably out of their profits and without any change in the price of futures, the costs of federal expenditure on USCENTCOM's AOR and the strategic strategic (upwards north of 4/5ths of the final total) and savings from asset depreciation of equipment in use (well damn, when was the last time you drove your Prius into several hundred meters of sand and basalt looking for oil?). What a hoot! Well, if you remove all those subsidies that you have listed there, and divide the burden by market volume, Exxon Mobil's starting with a net annual income $30 bilion with $36 billion in liabilities and shareholder obligations. That leaves XOM $6 billion in the hole [1], and that's before their stock price tanks. You want to try this again? No it's not. For one thing the Gulf lesses are going to be forced to renegotiate their leases, the intent to raise upwards $5 billion of the $14 that way. That's going to be financial expense on top of existing tax conditions. Then you're also going to repeal the tax breaks as well. Now there's a case to be made that XOM can do without an extra $7 billion, but then the question is what will happen to oil futures as a result? And will XOM respond by simply coughing up the dough or divesting from domestic production. Now you're in the space of uprooting American jobs. The government already takes half of what XOM makes annually. Why should XOM feel that it's not being a good corporate citizen? ConocoPhillips does a lot of deepwater work. It's worth three quarters of XOM and makes only a tenth of its annual net.

We should examine the timeline to see if the American news narrative holds water. Late 2005 and early 2006 passed with Maliki's embrace of the Sadrists blessed by most all parties in Iraq (with the Sunnis as exception) and outside--there was strong bipartisan willingness in the United States as well as an agreement in Europe that the best way to deal with Sadr's wing of al Dawa was through engagement and enlargement of the political process. Arguably al Qaeda's attack on the Shi'a mosque in Samarra in February 2006 change the game significantly. The single security ministry where Sadrites held influence, the Interior Ministry, acted surreptitiously to support Sadrite militias and even leant weapons and men in attacks against Sunni civilians. Maliki's government has been reeling from this scandal since early last year (if you need a comparison, consider how long the Clinton impeachment or the Plame affair drug out). It also took several months for Maliki and the rest of al Dawa and SCIRI to work out their approach to Sadr as well as get the Americans onboard (apparently, the Europeans have forfeited any stake in this argument). Throughout the summer we saw entire units of the national police--including more than a few whole battalions--stricken from operations by a still reforming Interior Ministry and the Iraqi Army taking on the daunting task of policing Baghdad. By October, we were already seeing the central government attacking and detaining scores of Sadr militiamen as well as Sunni insurgents. By the way, with the exception of Operation Together Forward we should note that the Americans attention was principally in dismantling al Qaeda, former regime fighters, and other Sunni Islamists Anbar and Ninawa. The point is that Maliki's response, indeed the American's response, to various threat, while properly criticized, should not be viewed as simply being recent or long delayed or whatever. I think that impression carries through the media due to a lack of geographical and temporal context to actions taken by the Coalition, the Iraqi government and the various fighting organizations in theater. This crude simplification leaves the impression that violence in Iraq (actually the insecure governates, though these are arguably all that matter in Iraq) is isotropic and damn near without purpose. EDIT: Just something else that annoys me. Anybody notice that news media treats Iraqi insurgent groups as shadowy, elusive organizations that seem to lack any sort of sustainable structure or leadership? We've seen this happen before. Journalists in World War II took time to tell the Allied publics about Hideki Tojo, Admirals Yamamato and Nagumo, the Black Dragons, the Nazis, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler, Erwin Rommel. But by the time Korea rolled around most Americans couldn't name the commander of Chinese forces in theater. Vietnam, you might've heard of Ho Chi Minh but General Giap wasn't a household name. The Battle for Iraq has gone on for at least as long as it took to see Victory in Europe, but most people don't know names like al Douri or the Fedayeen Saddam or the Party of the Protectors of the Faithful. Muqtada Sadr is finally gaining traction in the American news, but he's been talked up almost as much as Sistani for even longer than he's been a threat. Why do you guys think this is?

I'd help if you were more specific when say that "record profits" justifies "redirect[ing] oil subsidies to alternative energy." What exactly is this subsidy? What purpose did it ostensibly serve. Does Domestic Oil's profit margin really justify a repeal of the relevant tax breaks? If the government already takes 4/9ths of oil's profits, and the shareholders get a quarter on the gross, and if this legislation is proposing to fund a third of its new spending by renegotiating exploitation rights in the Gulf, then what exactly are the risks? I'm not saying that HR 6 is necessarily inappropriate or undesirable, just that its merits cannot be weighed on the strength of a soundbite.

Oh, in that case I'd definitely have to disagree that your opinion reflects "political realities." It likely reflects a gut feeling resulting from an imperfect digest of the events, but in the end its still a broad based, loaded point of view based on a vague representation of the facts. There's plenty of room for criticism and hyperbole, but I think it serves the stated purpose of these forums to frame criticism in a rigorous, precise way. I apologize for not being clear before. On the other hand, it seems like a waste of time to go back and forth about form. I took issue with a number of other points you've laid out. Do you have anything to add?

Wow, testy. I'm curious as to how you mined a personal attack out of that sentence, especially since you made no prediction regarding the course of events in Iraq over the next six months. There's no such consensus. At the most there's a consensus that Shi'is and Kurds are working together to push through policy Sunnis cannot suffer. I can't even find a mainstream editorial that describes Maliki's government as a junta. Broad statements like that aren't terribly useful, and they do great malpractice to the reality on the ground. There are over 130,000 Iraqis in uniform, and an additional 25,000 in service of the the most problematic national police. Estimates range from 5 to 20 percent rates of infiltration by not just insurgents, but al Dawa partisans, Sadrists and other unreliable elements in units raised in the Baghdad and neighboring governate, they dip to 1 percent outside of the capital area. The infiltration hinders Iraqi capacity to manage political violence in Baghdad particular, but over 20,000 Iraq policemen of all stripes--not just the National Police--have died in the line of duty the past two years. It's one thing to say the Iraqi police has been unable to provide a level of security necessary to mollify the need for American forces, reverse an increased trend in insurgent and sectarian violence, and set the conditions for economic revival in Baghdad. It's quite another thing to say that the entire system is rotten the core and consequently unworkable without any appeal to the actual numbers. No argument here. I also think we should find some comfort in the fact that America's allies have largely wrapped up their missions in Southern Iraq and are largely redeploying out. We know that at least under the best circumstances that Iraqi security services can stand up as Coalition forces stand down. The question is what it would take to repeat this trend in the three most critical governates. I think a great deal more Americans would at least be more circumspect in their criticism if they knew more about the operational character of what the Americans and Iraqis are doing rather than just the presence of violence. I didn't quote anyone, so I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. Here we'll have to disagree. I think you might misunderstand exactly what the augmentation is and aims to accomplish. Instead of thinking of it as 20,000 American troops, think of it as nine to twelve brigades, two-thirds Iraqi, one-third American, entering into Baghdad with the specific responsibility of capturing or killing insurgents, militiamen, and other threats to peace. Also consider that operations will begin in disparate parts of the greater metropolitan area and will grow as concentric circles over the next few months. Iraqis will have the first opportunity to act on intelligence regarding enemy locations and respond to attacks en force in the nation's capital. The three or four American brigades will principally support Iraqi units with logistics and intelligence, relieving the front where special expertise is required. For this to go totally wrong (and it can, and that means for the surge to provide not even an increase in American combat power), more than half of the Iraqi contribution to the augmented force will have to be ineffective and replaced with American troops in theater. If we get to that point, you can say that this particular thrust has failed. This is where the Administration's pressure on Maliki is entirely crucial. It's going to be his responsibility to perform at least as well as he has since October for the military component of this new operation to succeed.

There's a ridiculous amount of literature on the subject. And just like most things in the social sciences the particular findings are highly local and conditional. Presently, there is no macroeconomic model of efficiency for the total space of mixed economic configurations that's entered into the realm of theory. At present, I've seen nothing to suggest that any simple laws are forthcoming.