Sambal

Via Colby Cosh, this article in the Washington Post (registration required) by an American who moved to Toronto in 2000.

Living in Alberta is a lot better than what Ms. Jacobson describes in Toronto, but I’ll always remember the first time I really saw the face of Canadian anti-Americanism. A school friend of my then-fiancee was ecstatic about the result of the Michael Johnson-Donovan Bailey race because Bailey’s victory somehow meant to her that Canada had beaten America.

Got back into town tonight. We took three days to drive from LA to Edmonton, stopping in Fillmore, UT and Helena, MT. (Fillmore is in Millard County. Har har.)

We were delayed about three hours by a snowstorm; we lost an hour’s travel by stopping early in Fillmore instead of pressing on (very worthwhile: we got a nice room while the inn was still mostly empty), and the next morning we had to drive slowly until we cleared the snow, about even with the Great Salt Lake.

Not much else to say. The world has been holding itself together surprisingly well for the last month.

Another random thought from about a month ago — amend the constitution so that -

Each member of the House of Representatives is paid no more than an Army captain’s base pay, and each member of the Senate is paid no more than an Army colonel’s base pay.

Obviously it has to be an amendment, otherwise the legislature will just weasel out of it. The implications are fun to consider, though. I predict military pay will go up, starting with officers’ pay. So defense expenditures will increase, especially on manpower. So we won’t be able to afford as much of a military.

And maybe we’d lose some of the more obnoxious Congressmembers.

I don’t think “Amend for Arnold” has the requisite momentum for 2008, nor do I think the Democrats would go along. But here’s my favorite future history scenario regarding the 2008 election and amendments:

Democrats and Republicans broker a deal to pass a new amendment which
a) allows non-citizens to be president and VP and
b) repeals the 22nd Amendment (presidential term limits).

The result: Clinton-Clinton vs. Schwarzenegger-Rice in 2008!

Been watching movies, working, visiting, and enjoying the weather. I watched Knute Rockne, All-American last night, for example.

A good quote from last night — “I’m a lapsed Protestant. Actually, lapsed United-Church-of-Canada. I’m not sure if there’s anything lower than that… maybe a lapsed Unitarian?”

More to come maybe. Thanksgiving is coming up — we have our turkey.

As I said earlier, I hope that any Supreme Court appointments that come up in Bush’s second term will be handled by negotiation. For example, the Senate, President and Supreme Court could agree that four SC justices are going to resign en masse; that their replacements will be two conservative Republicans, one moderate Republican (picked by Olympia Snowe, for example) and one Democrat of the Democrats’ choosing; and that there would be no filibuster of the confirmation vote. That’s what I would do if I were in control of the confirmation process and wanted to do what was best for the country.

But a nasty thought occurred to me this morning.

If I were a Republican strategist seeking the best possible outcome for the Republican party, I would be aiming to destroy the filibuster privilege in the Senate.

I would do that by forcing the Senate Democrats to start out the next session by filibustering a Supreme Court nominee and preventing any other Senate business until the vote is called and the nominee confirmed. I would have the Republicans in the Senate call this issue before any other nomination, so that the offices of Secretary of State and (possibly) Secretary of Defense are sitting vacant while the Democrats filibuster the Supreme Court nominee and their continued vacancy can be blamed on the Democrats. They could say: “The Democrats in the Senate don’t really care about the war on terror or our foreign policy. Look, they’re holding up the entire government trying to force the President to appoint liberal judges!”

And in order to bring even more pressure on the Democrats to confirm the nominee, the President could make a recess appointment^* to the Supreme Court. The recess appointee would have to be conservative to maintain the 5-4 conservative majority, ideally very conservative. It would have to be someone willing to sacrifice any future political or judicial career for a less-than-one-year term of service.

Somebody like soon-to-be-former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Chief Justice John Ashcroft? Compared to Ashcroft, Bork would look positively liberal.

We may know quite soon if something like this is planned. The Chief Justice would probably be the one to resign, during the Christmas 2004 recess. Bush would name his nominee immediately and appoint his recess nominee just before the new Congress is convened and the filibuster would start more or less immediately.

But it wouldn’t have to be this year. Assuming Rhenquist and the other justices who want to retire can hold out for one more year, there would be a year to test the waters and try to work with the Democrats. This recess appointment strategy would work just as well in 2006 as in 2005. The only pressure is to get it done before the 2006 elections when the Democrats might gain more seats in the Senate.

Let me make it clear that I would be opposed to this strategy. It would be profoundly unconservative to appoint a recess nominee to the Supreme Court, and especially to appoint a non-Supreme Court, non-Appeals Court justice to the Chief Justice’s position. (Although the pressure would be just as strong if Scalia or (stronger) Thomas were appointed acting Chief justice and Ashcroft or whoever were recess appointed as an Associate Justice.) It would also be unconservative to dismantle the filibuster rule after over 200 years. For those and other reasons, I think the strategy I outline above would be bad for the country as a whole.

* I’m not sure that the President’s recess appointment power extends to the Supreme Court. If not, this whole house of cards scenario comes crashing down.

Here’s a short article about a voting machine error which caused a precinct to report 4258 votes for Bush when only 638 votes were cast in all.

I had hoped that it was all over on Wednesday morning.

I saw this on Google news:

Post-Election, Hollywood Seen as Liability to Left

and I felt sure that someone had submitted The Onion to Google’s news spools. But it’s apparently a real news story. Or perhaps an anti-news story?

Here’s a nice article on CBS News’ site (of all places) which gives the lie to the “moral values” explanation of the last election — an explanation which is rapidly moving from conventional wisdom to indisputable fact.

In addition to the issue I raised earlier (that if you combine “Iraq” and “terrorism” then the combined issue — “security” — dominates “moral values” 34 to 22), Meyer has a variety of other arguments against the claim that “moral values” voters were particularly important in this election:
- only 22% of voters cited moral values as their greatest concern, up from 17% citing “family values” in 1996.
- what about a voter who votes Kerry because of a strong pro-choice commitment — isn’t that a “moral values” voter?
- what about all the other stark divisions by demographic or issue?

I understand why “Iraq” and “terrorism” are separated in the poll — because “terrorism” is the name that Bush supporters give to the security issue, and “Iraq” is what Kerry voters call it. When combined, the security voters make up a third of the electorate, and break 60/40 for Bush.

If I had to rank my preferences for this election, they would be:

1. Bush by a lot (most preferred)
2. Kerry by a lot
3. Kerry by a little
4. Bush by a little (least preferred)

I’d rather there be a clear winner in a more-or-less landslide victory than any sort of a tight race. If it had to be a tight race, I’d rather see Kerry win because I think it would be better for the country in the long term not to have the Democratic party self-destruct. If the race wasn’t going to be tight, I’d rather have Bush over Kerry because I can’t trust Kerry to handle the war.

I’m not sure whether I got #1 or #4 so far. It’s looking like #4. Even though the race is not being contested, I don’t see any significant change among the anyone-but-Bush wing of the Democratic party. I don’t buy the argument that it’s too soon to look for it - if you are going to be gracious and supportive of a candidate you mistrust, I think you would need all the practice you could get — and necessarily, would need to start immediately. I certainly planned to.