Right Wing Nut House

What conservatives have yet to do is confront the large but inescapable truth that movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead. And yet they should, because the death of movement politics can only be a boon to the right, since it has been clear for some time the movement is profoundly and defiantly un-conservative–in its ideas, arguments, strategies, and above all its vision.
(Stan Tanenhaus writing in The New Republic)

First in a series.

I hope I am forgiven by my regular readers for leaving behind arguments over stimulants, diuretics, laxatives, and other government remedies for what ails us while I return once again to the theme of making this site a “Blog of Self-Discovery” or, the “Writings of the Self-Absorbed Man” if you prefer. In truth, after more than 4 years of struggle, I am in many ways, more of a stranger in my minds eye than I was when I began this journey of self criticism; challenging everything I believe, forcing me to justify the underlying assumptions of my philosophy to my own satisfaction.

Although it should be the goal of any examined life to make such a quest a lifelong pursuit, it is a journey that is best begun when one is young, I think. At age 55, one has lived too much, experienced too much, seen too much, lived and loved and lost too much to retain the suppleness of mind that can process and absorb the terabytes of information we mainline every day. Can we recognize what all of this data is doing to us, how it is changing us, why it challenges our long and comfortably held assumptions as new insights are gleaned and new directions in thought are explored?

For those handful of you who have taken seriously my earnest but woefully inadequate attempts to put into words the “velocity of my thoughts” on the nature of man, of conservatism, and the threads of history and the evolution of man’s relationship to the state that seeks to find a complementary connection between them, please bear with me over the next few days as I attempt to explain the insights that have been granted to me recently. I hope by sharing them, some small part of the joy and satisfaction I received from the opening of new vistas, new horizons on this journey will help assuage your craving for acquiring knowledge for knowledge’s sake - learning for the simple happiness that comes from knowing.

I was pleased to discover that even at this point in my life, I could read something and have it reach out and slap me in the face with the power of the ideas contained therein. This essay by Sam Tanenhaus in The New Republic has, in one fell swoop, crystalized much of my thinking that has been taking shape over the life of this blog while connecting many of the unordered, incoherent threads of criticism through which I have vainly sought to explore my personal philosophy.

Also assisting in this process was Andrew Sullivan who has cataloged what appears to me to be a similar journey to my own on his site and in the pages of leading journals of opinion and news. I am well aware of the distaste most of the right has for Sullivan (Tanenhaus, who edits the New York Times Book Reivew, is no catch either for righties) and yet, when the filter of politics and ideology are removed, what you are left with are ideas and concepts - take them or leave them. There is much with which to disagree from both men, but rejecting their thoughts out of hand and in their totality smacks of a deliberate effort to remain ignorant - a tale too often told on the right in recent years. Not being open to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world has been our downfall both philosophically and electorally.

Tanenhaus has written what he calls “an intellectual autopsy of the movement” which dovetails with the title of his essay, “Conservatism is Dead.” What has died, Tanenhaus believes, is the post World War II strain of conservatism that grew into a “movement” in the 1950’s and ’60’s, reaching its apex, he believes, in the late 1970’s. He carefully separates this “Movement Conservatism” from the classical conservatism of Burke, Disraeli, and Matthew Arnold, seeing the movement as something of an antithesis to Burkean logic which eschewed ideology altogether in favor of a society that favored both “conservation and correction.”

The author takes us on a guided tour of the history (his version) of “movement conservatism” and where it’s failures to adhere to classical conservative thinking led to a gigantic contradiction - one I have explored in depth elsewhere - between the natural center of gravity of classical conservatism’s mandate to eschew the “totalizing nostrums” and ideological purity of revolutionary politics, and the rebellious revanchism of the Goldwater-Reagan “counterrevolutions” which sought, at bottom, to undo the New Deal and Great Society.

The story of postwar American conservatism is best understood as a continual replay of a single long-standing debate. On one side are those who have upheld the Burkean ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions. On the other are those committed to a revanchist counterrevolution, the restoration of America’s pre-welfare state ancien regime. And, time and again, the counterrevolutionaries have won. The result is that modern American conservatism has dedicated itself not to fortifying and replenishing civil society but rather to weakening it through a politics of civil warfare.

One might legitimately ask what conditions led to this contradiction. It takes two sides to make a war and Tanenhaus doesn’t excuse the radical left of the 1960’s from contributing to the growth of this backlash:

As liberals unwittingly squeezed themselves into the stereotypes conservatives had invented, conservative intellectuals began to look like prophets for identifying a self-appointed “managerial elite” (Burnham’s term from 1941) that was leading a “liberal revolution” (Kendall’s, from 1963). The poor–believers in the American dream, content to struggle upward on their own–had become “a project” for technocrats intoxicated with nostalgie de la boue. In his book Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, Moynihan–disillusioned with the programs he helped instate–ridiculed the pretensions of social scientists, “who love poor people [and] … get along fine with rich people” but “do not have much time for the people in between.” “In particular,” he wrote, “they would appear to have but little sympathy with the desire for order, and anxiety about change, that are commonly encountered among working-class and lower middle-class persons. The privileged children of the upper middle classes more and more devoted themselves, in the name of helping the oppressed, to outraging the people in between.” The absurdities of “social engineering” became sport for observers like Tom Wolfe, who satirized their excesses in Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers: “So the poverty professionals were always on the lookout for the bad-acting dudes who were the ‘real leaders,’ the ‘natural leaders,’ the ‘charismatic figures,’ in the ghetto jungle.”

This liberal overreach combined with the right’s new sophistication promised a new period in U.S. politics, one in which conservatives, fortified by Burkean principles, might emerge as the most articulate voices of “civil society,” separating out the strands of true reform, which drew on inherited values, from “liberal-left” attempts to make those values extinct. Perhaps the Great Society could be retooled, tamed into a legitimate extension of the New Deal. But, to accomplish this, the right would have to deal honestly with capitalism and its many ambiguities.

Dealing honestly with capitalism wasn’t in the cards for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was a fervent belief by the movement that entrepreneurs are gods and the “American system” was a self correcting mechanism where a level playing field for all economic actors was a a virtual given. “Bigger is better” was not necessarily a battle cry of the Movement but the dangers inherent to gigantic, international corporations to the very free markets that were enthusiastically espoused were largely ignored.

There have been harsh critiques of capitalism that have, of course, turned the tables in an equally exaggerated way and painted the businessman as a combination Beelzebub and Babbitt. How much of the Movement’s unquestioning support of capitalism was in response to the latter view espoused by many on the left to this day? Tanenhaus seems to acknowledge that the Movement’s failings were not born in a vacuum; that the whole idea of a “counterrevolution” is that there is something to counter in the first place.

So what happened? What sidetracked the movement from adopting Tanenhaus’s “Burkean principles” and becoming a partner with government in building not only a “just moral order” but a “civil society” as well?

One reason is that the most intellectually sophisticated founders of postwar conservatism were in many instances ex-Marxists, who moved from left to right but remained persuaded that they were living in revolutionary times and so retained their absolutist fervor. In place of the Marxist dialectic they formulated a Manichaean politics of good and evil, still with us today, and their strategy was to build a movement based on organizing cultural antagonisms. Many have observed that movement politics most clearly defines itself not by what it yearns to conserve but by what it longs to destroy–”statist” social programs; “socialized medicine”; “big labor”; “activist” Supreme Court justices, the “media elite”; “tenured radicals” on university faculties; “experts” in and out of government.

“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation,” was a warning by Burke that accepting the reality of government was paramount to stability. Tanenhaus avers that the Movement ” placed an idea of the perfect society over and above the need to improve society as it really existed” which describes perfectly the Utopian moral universe of many on the right who believe only through God can America prosper and achieve the pinnacle of a perfect moral order - a world where gays would still be in the closet, abortions performed in back alleys or not at all, everyone would pull their own weight, and school children would be taught the Bible in public schools. Removing God from the equation was unthinkable because only through the Creator was true harmony possible.

It is a determinedly myopic view of modern industrialized society that has caused many, less ideological conservatives to revolt. This has led to the spectacle of the Movement imposing “litmus tests” and enforcing a stifling ideological purity, something Tanenhaus argues convincingly is very unconservative.

And it highlights perhaps the greatest problem with modern Movement conservatism: It’s lack of a coherent, positive agenda setting out what it supports that would improve a modern society. “Tax cuts, less regulation, and a strong national defense” are catch phrases and bear little on the realities of living in a 21st century industrialized democracy of 300 million people. Tanenhaus recognizes this dilemma for conservatives - that being against everything means that you can’t be for anything - and how this principle has led to the slow strangulation of the Movement over time. He tells the story of one of the lions of the old guard, Whittaker Chambers whose own intellectual journey from Communist to conservative was so consequential to 20th century thought:

But, if it’s clear what the right is against, what exactly has it been for? This question has haunted the movement from its inception in the 1950s, when its principal objective was to undo the New Deal and reinstate the laissez-faire Republicanism of the 1920s. This backward-looking program mystified one leading conservative. Whittaker Chambers, a repentant ex-communist, had passed through a brief counterrevolutionary phase but then, in his last years, had gravitated toward a genuinely classic conservatism. He distilled his thinking in a remarkable sequence of letters written from the self-imposed exile of his Maryland farm, and sent to a young admirer, William F. Buckley Jr. When their relationship began, Buckley–a self-described “radical conservative”–was assembling the group of thinkers and writers who would form the core of National Review, a journal conceived to contest the “liberal monopolists of ‘public opinion.’” Buckley was especially keen to recruit Chambers. But Chambers turned him down. He sympathized with the magazine’s opposition to increasingly centralized government, but, in practical terms, he believed challenging it was futile. It was evident that New Deal economics had become the basis for governing in postwar America, and the right had no plausible choice but to accept this fact–not because liberals were all-powerful (as some on the right believed) but rather because what the right called “statism” looked very much like a Burkean “correction.”

Chambers witnessed the popular demand for the New Deal firsthand. He raised milch cattle, and his neighbors were farmers. Most were archconservative, even reactionary. They had sent the segregationist Democrat Millard Tydings to the Senate, and then, when Tydings had opposed McCarthy’s Red-hunting investigations, they had voted him out of office. They were also sworn enemies of programs like FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, which tried to offset the volatility of markets by controlling crop yields and fixing prices. Some had even been indicted for refusing to allow farm officials to inspect their crops. Nonetheless, Chambers observed, his typical neighbor happily accepted federal subsidies. In other words, the farmers wanted it both ways. They wanted the freedom to grow as much as they could, even though it was against their best interests. But they also expected the government to bail them out in difficult times. In sum, “the farmers are signing for a socialist agriculture with their feet.”

It is this schizophrenia that has marked the skein of conservatism from Taft to Bush; people actually want government to do for them, just not everyone else. And to make matters worse, they don’t want to pay for it - a singularly unhappy outgrowth of conservatives telling them on the one hand that government is the problem and on the other, showering them with tax cuts while the beneficiaries of this largess want social welfare programs to make their lives easier. No matter what legerdemain is performed, the numbers will never, ever add up to anything even approaching a zero balance. You can spout supply side nostrums from here to Christmas and not make what we spend match what we take in.

Deep down, I really think even Movement conservatives know this but are reluctant to abandon the contradiction because if they do, a chasm opens beneath their feet and the stark reality of being wrong about a fundamental tenet of Movement conservatism stares them in the face. Infallibility is another by-product of the Movement, as Tanenhaus points out, and the dreadful consequences of opening a crack in the dam might mean catastrophe if further self-examination revealed other weak points in their thinking.

Tomorrow: Small government, big government, or the right government?

Previous to the elevation of Pope Obama I to the throne of St. George, ideological battles were marked by some pretty tough accusations being flung by the right against the hard left. Among the charges were that the hard left was actually praying for failure in Iraq as well as hoping for an economic downturn, believing that this would bring them electoral success.

I know this was a widespread meme on the right because I wrote similar stuff myself. Was it true? On some level, I’m sure it was. The almost gleeful portrayal of our struggles in Iraq - dwelling obsessively on whatever negative news was coming out of that bloody country at the expense of the small steps being taken in the right direction marked most hard left blogs as being uninterested in presenting a balanced and realistic view of the war to their readers but rather a partisan, hateful, picture that included George Bush as a horned devil, our servicemen as barbarians, and Republicans as bloodthirsty war mongers.

There was also a celebratory mood on hard left blogs whenever some piece of dire economic news hit the wires. The belief that the Republicans would be brought down only through failure and tragedy was widespread on the left and even some of the less radical liberal sites were not immune from advancing this theme.

Not that much has changed today: Except, the accusations are now coming from the other side:

It occurred to me while reading Politico’s interview with Dick Cheney, that the GOP’s plan to regain political viability in the short term rests on two disaster scenarios: the failure of the financial rescue efforts (stimulus, TARP, and other bailouts) to stave off complete economic collapse and a new mass casualty terrorist attack — both of which they are positioning themselves to blame Obama for.

Without one of those two, they have to figure it’s going to be a long time wandering in the political wilderness. Now think about the curdling effect, the blight on the soul that comes with rooting for such disasters to befall your country. The rot is now eating at the party’s very core.

The more things change…

As proof that there is so little original thinking on both sides that arguments over policy can be interchangeable with minimal substituting, here is Elana Schor writing at Josh Marshall’s TPMDC on charges made by the right that Obama will “cut” defense spending:

The short answer is no. But conservative columnist Tony Blankley still does his part today to flog an already tired line of faux-skepticism about the Obama administration’s alleged plans to “cut” defense spending in the upcoming budget.

Blankley claims that while total Pentagon spending for next year is in line for an 8% increase, the wild card of continuing Iraq and Afghanistan expenses raises the specter of a defense cut under Obama. It’s almost as if he hasn’t been keeping up with TPM alum Spencer Ackerman, who demolished this talking point as hogwash two days ago.

(Robert Kagan was the first right-leaning pundit out of the gate on this one.)

The tale is a simple one: Pentagon officials, aiming to start budget negotiations from a wildly advantageous point, submitted a spending estimate that wasn’t completely vetted by the departing Bush administration. The Obama folks knocked the number down to a more realistic number — that still reflects a higher military budget.

Sound familiar? Substitute the words “food stamps” for “military spending” and you have the exact same argument being made by Republicans when Democrats accuse them of trying to force the poor to live in the street and eat dog food. “Spending is going up in actual dollars. It’s only the projected increase that is being cut,” was the conservative defense of the meaningless reductions in projected outlays for social programs from Reagan through Bush 43.

It’s eerie, isn’t it? Now that the world has been turned upsisde down and “bottom rail is on the top,” there has been an almost seamless transition to both sides using the same arguments their opponents used in previous years over the same or similar issues. It’s even weirder that the towering irony of the whole thing has gone over the heads of both sides without even musing their hair.

Now, I can be as partisan as the next blogger when the situation calls for it so it’s not like I am washing my hands of responsibility in the matter. I can play the game as well or better than any lefty out there. But besides the bodaciously delicious irony of the whole thing, there is a troubling revelation that needs to be discussed; the paucity of ideas and lack of original thought by both sides in debate over the weighty issues of the day.

Political debate - or what passes for debate in this world of media talking points and one line zingers - accomplishes nothing today. It isn’t just the rancorous partisanship that prevents a serious discussion of the weighty problems that confront us. It is the failure of the political class to project their ideas outside of the extremely superficial and predictable framework of simple minded ideology that has us talking past one another instead of communicating back and forth. There is no effort to stand for a while in our opponent’s shoes or even examine an issue for points of commonality upon which any compromise is to be based.

At bottom, this is a failure of imagination. No one is asking either side to abandon principles or betray one’s party. But what real political debate accomplishes is that both sides must constantly re-examine and justify their positions, bringing fresh insight to bear that might lead to a closing of the gap between the two sides and form the beginnings of a political understanding.

As superficial and half hearted as it has appeared to me, President Obama should still be commended for reaching out to Republicans on his stimulus bill. I think it is not enough but is that his fault? He seems constrained by his own base who view any outreach effort as both a waste of time and dangerously naive. But what Obama appeared to be doing was trying to alter the framework of ideology that grips both parties and makes our politics so poisonously partisan. He opened the door - with the chain still on to be sure - not to give in, not to dictate, but to listen. It seems such a small thing but in the end, it forced him to rethink his own position on the bill and find additional justifications for it. It was a political act that served a higher purpose.

Did it do any good at all? Republicans have their own base to worry about and clearly, there will be little or no middle ground to be found on the stimulus bill. Nor should there be. It would take a great leader to abandon what has been crafted by the president’s allies in Congress and start over. What the Democrats are doing with the stimulus is actually proposing 4 or 5 bills that have been combined for reasons not having to do with legislative logic or stimulating job growth but because the president feels he can leverage his enormous popularity to pass items unrelated to jumpstarting the economy and because those unrelated items would have a hard time being made into law at a later date. The president is using this primal legislative thrust of the stimulus to make an end run around not only the GOP but the American people as well.

But the bill is out there and Obama is committed. And when a president invests as much in something as Obama has invested in the stimulus, he will do everything in his considerable power to pass it. It may end up being an exercise in partisanship but he can’t worry about that now. His credibility as a leader is on the line and any stumble so soon out of the box - as Carter’s stumbles on energy during his first months - could doom his presidency to irrelevancy.

So despite a manful effort to force the GOP to rethink their position on the stimulus, in the end Obama is trapped by history and his own needs as a leader. It will be interesting to see how the president reaches out to Republicans in the future. Will this experience have soured him on the whole idea of “post partisanship?” Or will he gamely make the effort on future issues like health care and card check?

That will depend on how much he really believes that he can change the tone and tenor of debate and get the two sides to listen to one another.

The pages of punditdom are full today of breathless questions about the Obama White House. Is Obama an incompetent empty suit as the right was charging all those months? What happened to the candidate who so confidently talked of hope and change, igniting a grass roots political effort this nation has never seen? Is the Obama Administration already “in trouble” - whatever that means?

Rule Number 1 for success as a serious commentator on politics is never get too far ahead of the pack. In this respect, it appears that many of my fellow bloggers - especially on the right side of the sphere - are sipping some heavy duty koolade. A couple of missteps by the newbies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and we’re already talking about an “Epic Fail” for the Obama presidency? Let’s hope not. If Obama “fails” it will mean this nation will go into an economic tailspin the likes of which haven’t been seen since Clark Gable was the bees knees and Al Jolsen could wear blackface and sing about his “Mammy.”

Actually, I am exaggerating a bit. But there is no doubt the subtext of many analyses is that Obama is not inspiring much confidence so far and that in some areas - personnel selection, Congressional relations, and foreign policy - he has shown a troubling lack of basic competence. In vetting his cabinet, controlling the debate on his stimulus bill, and moving to assure the rest of the world, Obama has stumbled, froze, and failed to engender confidence in his leadership overseas.

It must be pointed out that there is nothing new in this, that a new president and his people have to get the kinks out of their operation as they power up. Talk of “hitting the ground running” is all well and good but, as Theodore H. White pointed out in his brilliant Making of a President series, all Administrations eventually face a period as Obama and his people have faced the last 72 hours. That is, the “well oiled machine” of the campaign runs smack into the reality of governing a nation. New faces and personalities with new responsibilities take time to mesh. This is made especially obvious in their Congressional outreach operation and the seemingly incomprehensible surrender of the process on the stimulus bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The Democrats loaded up what is essentially an infrastructure and jobs bill with so much outrageous pork having nothing whatsoever to do with stimulating anything (except perhaps the saliva glands of Democratic constituencies) that Republicans in the House were able to safely band together and reject it. Support for that monstrosity in its current incarnation is dropping like a stone, a fact not lost on Senate Republicans or Democrats.

The fact that so many items have already been dropped from the measure shows that the White House simply didn’t think this thing through very thoroughly. Allowing liberal Democrats to lard up the bill with goodies for teachers, unions, feminists, and other loyalists and then using the economic crisis to try and ram it down the throats of the country has been exposed and it doesn’t make the Administration look very good. The Senate could pull Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire and radically alter the package, reducing its cost substantially while doing a better job of targeting tax cuts and infrastructure improvements where it will do the most good. If that occurs, the Administration would do well not to fight it but rather embrace the alterations in the Senate and then try and convince Pelosi and House Democrats to go along with the changes.

At least the stimulus bill is salvageable. But what about the rash of personnel problems being experienced by the Obama White House? Two cabinet nominees have already withdrawn with another presidential appointee Nancy Killefer also walking the plank. That doesn’t include a tax dodging Treasury Secretary and an Attorney General who has proven adept at playing politics at the Justice Department when it suits the goals of the man in the Oval Office. (See Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists.) There has also been a rash of appointments where the president has gone back on his promise not to hire lobbyists for his administration. Politico counts 12 former lobbyists so far which gives a whole new meaning to “Hope and Change” - as in, “I hope no one will notice what a hypocrite I am by hiring all these lobbyists who won’t change much of anything.”

Amazingly, the only appointee who has had relatively smooth sailing so far is - Hillary Clinton? But don’t worry. With Bill Clinton on the loose, something is bound to pop up to embarrass everyone. The smart money is on women trouble but I’d lay odds that it will be a money issue that explodes in Obama’s face.

Perhaps even more troubling than the withdrawals and the reasons for them is the fact that the Obama people apparently knew of both Geithner and Daschle’s tax problems before announcing their names. This wasn’t a matter of bad vetting, just a tone deaf approach to the process. How could they possibly think that no one would care that the Treasury and HHS Secretaries are tax scofflaws.

And while we’re on the subject of insensitivity, the Administration’s response to the suffering of people in the Midwest as a result of the winter storm may not have reached the Katrina level of “Heckuva job, Brownie” but has certainly not been Obama’s finest hour. His aide David Axelrod brags about how warm the Oval Office is while people are shivering in unheated homes? The president dines on exotic steak while some can’t get out of their driveways to go to the grocery store? He has chosen to remain virtually silent on the tragedy, quite rightly fearing comparisons with Katrina. Meanwhile, a week after the storm winds stopped, there are still tens of thousands without power in Kentucky alone. The National Guard has just now made it to Western Kentucky and officials are going door to door to hand out welfare checks.

My ironic post on the storm’s aftermath and the failure of FEMA to alleviate suffering in a timely manner scooted over the head of most lefties without even musing their hair. The feds are not to blame for this suffering, Mother Nature is. But I found the schadenfreude irresistable in that it was the left who chose to politicize natural disasters and Obama will almost certainly have his own “Katrina moment” eventually.

And Obama’s initial steps into the foreign policy arena have not been without a slip or two. His interview with Al-Arabiya TV - the first interview he granted following his inauguration - was chock full of moral equivalence and a curious detatchment about Iran’s ambitions, undercutting his own sanctions policy at the UN in the process.

But the reported rift between Obama and the military brass may prove most damaging in the long run. Obama cannot simply say “I won” to Petreaus and the Chiefs - especially since he promised to listen to the commanders before committing to a hard timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Well, he apparently thinks it better that he keep a campaign promise to the anti-war crowd than follow the advice of his generals. This is his prerogative, of course. And it may end up being a tempest in a teapot. But the potential for trouble between Obama and the military when we have a war to win yet in Afghanistan does not bode well for the future.

But given all these pratfalls and miscalculations, Obama is still in good shape with the people who elected him. They are much more willing to stick with him than right wing pundits and mainstream media critics who seek to create a little news by trying to rain on the president’s honeymoon. He still has plenty of time to right the ship. And admitting mistakes is a good first step.

But if the president continues to stumble over the next few weeks, then he can expect the tenor of the criticism directed against him to change. America doesn’t have time to break in a new president. Fairly, or unfairly, Obama will not have the luxury of a long, leisurely shake down cruise for his Administration. He has already lost a significant amount of goodwill with his faux pas. Given the enormous challenges we face, it would behoove the new Administration to get its act together sooner rather than later.

UPDATE

As usual, Ed Morrissey and I are on something of the same wavelength this morning.

This is pretty surreal. There have been dozens of posts on the discontinuation of PJM’s ad network and the majority of them seem to think that PJ Media is going under or has gone under.

It re-confirms a longstanding suspicion of mine - one that I’ve shared with other “long form” bloggers and essayists on the web. The fact is, the majority of people do not read what we write. They either skim the piece and choose one bone to pick with the author or, even more commonly, don’t even bother to do that and simply glean the subject matter from the title of the post and say any old thing in the comments about what we wrote.

This becomes painfully obvious when some commenter throws 200 words at me, complaining I didn’t raise this point or that one when, in fact, the point was raised - sometimes repeatedly.

Now, I will be the first to say (although I can guarantee you it will appear in the comments at least once) that I am pretty full of myself if I actually believe most people want to read a 1500 word blog post from some guy named Moran - at least on a daily basis. No doubt, some of what I write is indeed worth reading from beginning to end. Other posts, not so much. My beef isn’t necessarily with those who think I’m a crummy writer but rather with those who comment on what I write pretending to have read and absorbed what I’ve written. If I demand honesty from myself when writing, shouldn’t I hold my readers to the same standard?

A few years ago, I actually took to banning people who played that game but in the end, realized it is a function of the internet that very few have the time or interest to read an essay - unless it’s by Bill Whittle, Mark Steyn, or some other brilliant writer. So I relented and allowed all the banned folks back in. (I will do the same on “Blogroll Amnesty Day” this week. My list of banned IP’s over the last year runs to less than 2 a month.)

So it is not a shock that people have substituted their own interpretation of the news regarding the demise of PJM’s ad network, pulling from it the erroneous information that PJ Media is toast, that the website is kaput, that PJTV is on the ropes (or a hopeless cause), and that the company will be out of business in a few months. Some of this is surely wishful thinking on the part of long time critics. Some of it may be jealousy or hurt feelings (lots of that over the years). Some of it is political partisan warfare as the left universally celebrates the “downfall” of a conservative media platform - not recognizing because they never read it, that the range of opinion on the PJ website so far outstrips anything on “progressive sites” that it is obvious lefty detractors don’t have a clue what kind of site PJM actually strives to be or they wouldn’t reveal their ignorance so proudly.

We have had liberal writers in the past contribute to the site and I hope we can increase the participation of the left in the future. We have featured many dozens of articles that were highly critical of conservatives, Republicans, and Bush with many dozens more supportive. We have had religious conservatives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, and moderate liberals write on every political and public policy topic you can think of. I am sorry but the idea that The Huffington Post or any comparable site on the left has one tenth the range of opinion and thought featured regularly at the PJ Media site just doesn’t hold water. And liberals would realize that if they bothered to visit every once and a while. The fact that the demise of the ad network has smoked them out of the walls and has them trying to outdo one another in snarky tropes, gloating at the perceived “failure” of PJM without even being familiar with what regularly appears on the webpage reveals PJM’s critics to have the intellectual shallowness we’ve come to know and love.

This becomes painfully obvious when the reader of these screeds is informed that PJM is a “far-right” website. (Since most liberals believe anyone to the right of Che is “far right,” I suppose it makes sense - in a twisted sort of way.) Even if you were to stop by the site and read a couple of articles once a month, anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence would realize immediately the falsity of that statement. If one wants uniformity of opinion, go left, young man, go left.

I doubt whether any left wing site would have featured a pro-con argument at the top of the webpage that defended and criticized a controversial decision made by the parent company and yet PJM did exactly that regarding the decision to send Joe the Plumber to Israel. (There were also a couple of other articles that examined the issue and criticized the decision.) PJM has featured other writers that went entirely against the grain of conservative thought on torture, immigration, the war, health care, and other policy prescriptions. We have featured several articles highly critical of Sarah Palin, John McCain, the Republican leadership, and yes, the far right of the movement.

To refer to PJ Media as a “far right” website is ludicrous. Worse, it is ignorant. It reveals the writer of such nonsense to not know what they are talking about - something that is not unusual even among the largest lefty blogs. And to top it off, gloating over the demise of a website that will not be demising adds a little schadenfruede right back at ya. To spend 1000 words doing a verbal sack dance over a foe that is still on its feet and has just tossed a 50 yard bomb for a touchdown only makes the writer look silly indeed.

I have taken some time to defend PJ Media not just because I work there but because the amount of false, misleading, and just plain dumb information that has exploded on the net as a result of the news that the blogger network has been discontinued requires a response. Setting the record straight is not my job (what I write here is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the thinking of PJ Media’s management or employees). But long time readers of this site know I take particular pleasure in showing the right’s critics to be shallow, stupid, obstinate, and without honor. And the inability of PJM’s critics to even get the elementary facts of the story correct continues to prove my point.

ADDENDUM:

I didn’t mention that there will be a new approach to bringing revenue in through the website. One model has been discarded and another will take its place. To be completely accurate, one could say that the original model has indeed failed but how you can stretch that notion and say the entire enterprise is a failure is beyond me.

With nearly 1.5 million people in the mid-west without power during a cold snap, what other possible reason is there that this new “competent” administration and FEMA would be failing so spectacularly in helping in this natural disaster?

IT’S GOT TO BE THAT OBAMA HATES WHITE PEOPLE AND WANTS THEM TO DIE!

Of course, I am just aping what lefty blogs were saying about Bush less than 24 hours after Katrina’s hurricane winds stopped blowing. But AP is reporting that Midwest disaster relief people are none too pleased with our new president’s FEMA.

In Kentucky’s Grayson County, there are 25 National Guardsmen there to help - but no chain saws to cut away fallen limbs and trees. EM Director Randell Smith is quoted as saying, “We’ve got people out in some areas we haven’t even visited yet,” Smith said. “We don’t even know that they’re alive.”

Smith is also quoted as saying that FEMA is a “no show.”

And then there’s this:

FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak said some agency workers had begun working Friday in Kentucky and more help was on the way. Hudak said FEMA also has shipped 50 to 100 generators to the state to supply electricity to such facilities as hospitals, nursing homes and water treatment plants.

“We have plenty of folks ready to go, but there are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions,” she noted.

Gee - you mean the conditions of the roads has something to do with FEMA’s response time? Now, don’t you wonder what the roads near New Orleans looked like after a Category 4 storm made landfall?  If you listened to all the screaming coming from the left about FEMA inaction, you would have to believe that those roads were as clean as a whistle, just like driving down the Interstate on a summer day. The only reason FEMA failed was because George Bush HATED BLACK PEOPLE AND WANTED THEM TO DIE!  And in this case, FEMA is being stopped by a few trees, not roads made impassable due to flooding and other debris.

Here we are, 5 days after the storm ended and STILL NO FEMA? I demand a Congressional investigation. And let’s get all the anchors and media people down here pronto. People’s lives are at stake. For all we know, there are babies being eaten and people jumping off their roofs committing suicide because FEMA is nowhere to be found.

And where is our president? Shouldn’t he be visiting these ravaged areas? It must be that he HATES WHITE PEOPLE AND WANTS THEM TO DIE. That is the only possible explanation for this incredible failure of our national government to relieve the suffering of these people.

Isn’t it interesting that now that we have a Democrat as president that all of a sudden, disaster relief is a state and local matter and the federal government should stand aside and allow them to do their jobs?

Just wondering…

My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s on Mayor Daley’s efforts to expand O’Hare Airport - unnecessarily in the opinion of almost everybody - by getting a slice of the bail out money Congress just passed.

Now that Governor Rod Blagojevich is, politically speaking, pushing up daises, attention in the Land of Lincoln is going to be drawn to efforts by Chicago’s Mayor Daley to latch on to a portion of the coming “stimulus package” in order to fund his dream of expanding O’Hare Airport.

Never mind that no one wants to pay for it — including the city, the county, the state, the airlines, the taxpayers, or, until now, the federal government. Never mind that the FAA’s own studies show that the expansion will not relieve the heavily congested runways or mitigate the problem with delays. Never mind that getting around the expanded airport would be a nightmare for passengers, some of whom would be forced to take an hour-long shuttle ride from one parking lot to the American Airlines terminal. Never mind that an airplane that lands on the northern runway will have to taxi 45 minutes to get to the United terminal. And never mind that hundreds of residents from tiny Bensenville, IL, have already been forcibly removed from their homes despite the fact that the next phase of the expansion is in financial limbo and may never be completed.

No one contests the idea that the traffic problems at O’Hare are serious and must be addressed. Anyone who has spent an hour on a runway waiting to take off or circled the airport for even longer waiting to land cannot deny that what once was “the busiest airport in the world” has become a quagmire of delays, impossibly long lines for security, and a traffic nightmare guaranteed to give even the most even tempered driver a severe case of road rage.

But Hizzoner, for personal, political, and financial reasons, insists that expanding O’Hare is just the ticket. And when Mayor Richard Daley gets it in his head that something is absolutely necessary for his beloved city, he can be a fearsome force with which to tangle. You don’t cross Daley in Chicago unless you’re on pretty solid footing, which is why he has a legion of opponents who are making his life miserable by trying to block the expansion.

Read the whole thing before commenting please.

I am not a well read man - or, at least, not as well read as I should be. Nor do I claim any extraordinary intellectual gifts. I regularly fail the test of possesing a “well ordered mind” in that my insights at times lack depth and even coherence. I admit to emotionalism when logic and reason are called for. And I lack the discipline to rigorously examine concepts that do not generally conform to my own, narrow view of the world.

I guess that makes me human. And a blogger. “Humility is truth,” said my favorite philosopher Erasmus. Would that all of us take those words to heart and perhaps even etch them onto our monitors. “A man’s got to know his limitations,” said my favorite movie character Harry Callahan. That adage should be branded on our hearts to remind us that an examined life is a fulfilling life.

One can immediately see the connection between the 16th century Dutch humanist and Dirty Harry. If we give ourselves permission to not have all the answers, it liberates our minds from the slavery of formalism and allows us to freely explore ideas that we otherwise might reject out of hand or worse, adopt without question as dogma.

If, at times, it seems to some of my regular readers that my conservatism appears “inconsistent,” it is only because the principles upon which my political philosophy is based might be unchanging but the ideas that animate those principles are in a constant state of flux. For instance, I believe in the conservative principle of a just moral order being necessary for a society to thrive. But the idea of what constitutes a “just moral order” has changed for me - from one informed by a belief in a diety to one informed by a belief in the ultimate wisdom of man to manage his own affairs.

Does being an atheist make me any less of a conservative? Some would say yes, judging by the outcry over Obama including “non-believers” in his inuagural address. But I think I share most of the same basic principles of conservatism with conservatives of faith. The difference is in how we internalize those principles through our own, individual and unique life experiences and beliefs. There’s more than one way to skin a cat as there is more than one way of seeing the world through the prism of bedrock conservative principles - immutable and unchanging as those principles are.

I have taken some pains to explain my personal thoughts because the subject is so important. I don’t claim to have all the answers or have any better insight into the great issues of the day than anyone else. But to my mind, the question of whether we in the United States will be living an “easier life” in a European style welfare state were the poor and middle class are dependent on government for many things they could or should be doing for themselves or enjoying an “earned life” in a state that promotes individual responsibilty and self sufficiency will be answered in the next 4 to 8 years. And as it stands now, conservatives haven’t come up with a philosophical or political answer to the idea that whatever the people want from government, they should receive even if, as is many times the case, individual liberty is the price to be paid.

The transformation of American society from one that values liberty to one that embraces dependency has taken longer than any other western nation. This has largely been due to American conservatisms steadfast refusal to abandon what Kirk calls the “voluntary community” in favor of the stifling hand of collectivism. Where once only the poor felt the deadening hand of statism which created a permanent underclass, destroyed the family, and smother ambition, now the middle class is in line to be granted similar attention. Health care, education, even important life choices such as whether to open one’s own business or questions about child rearing are soon to be made at least partly matters of state and not wholly questions to be resolved by individuals and families.

Liberals do not like to discuss the loss of freedom their collectivist ideas entail. But we are clearly in an era where choices are to be limited for the middle class in order to make life less of a burden . And any society that limits choice, limits freedom.

But isn’t this what the people want, what they are demanding? How can you live in a democracy and tell people that government acting to make your life easier is wrong and that the alternative - struggling to make the right choices for yourself and your family and where not choosing wisely might cost you - is the preferred, indeed the “American” way of self sufficiency and taking responsibility for your own life?

There is nothing noble in suffering but I would posit the notion that independence is, in and of itself, enobling and in any society that values freedom, the slide into dependency cannot be allowed without a recognition of what we lose as well as what is gained. There are 400 years of struggle behind us to create a society where the individual took responsibility for his own well being and that of his family, his fortunes rising or falling based on his native abilities and talents. The reward was “an earned life” of personal satisfaction and a feeling of self worth and accomplishment that you simply cannot experience if you depend on government for as much as we do today. Or as much as we will in the near future if more of our freedoms are given up in the name of personal security and comfort.

What do we care how our ancestors lived? This is, after all, the 21st century and the need for a large government is self-evident. A nation of 300 million people have legitimate needs that no one except government can fill. We can’t walk out our door and shoot a deer to feed our families. Nor can we build a cabin to house them. And few of us have the skill necessary to make our own clothing. There’s no alternative to modern medicine if we get sick - a hugely expensive proposition as we all know. Beyond that, we must be protected from those who would abuse the freedoms they’ve been given to deliberately pollute the land and water, make dangerous products, place workers in unnecessarily hazardous conditions, and take untoward advantage in the marketplace.

On the one hand, we are presented with the abstract - the ideal as it were - of self sufficiency and independence while on the other the real world problems of living in an industrialized democracy. But recognizing the value of possessing as much independence as possible within that reality seems to me to be an unargued proposition. We don’t say “this far and no farther.” We don’t even think it. Government is a juggernaut with a life of its own, gathering momentum over the last half century like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and size, until it is impossible to control only get out of its way.

Does any of this matter? I believe it should. The issue is choice not the size of government. Restraining government growth would be nice but it is not necessary in order to restrain it from taking away our choices. I would say to my friends on the left that everything you wish to accomplish for the middle class and the rest of us that will unburden our lives and supposedly make them easier also involves a price that we pay in independence of action. And it disturbs me that I hear nothing about how that affects the manner in which liberty is diminished and we become that much farther removed from our roots as a people who valued freedom more than life itself.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

It is probably too early to get a good handle on what kind of president Barack Obama will turn out to be. After all, it’s been less than 4 days since he took the oath for keeps.

Still, the study of the American presidency is a study in the exercise of power in a democratic republic. How does Obama turn his comfortable electoral victory into actionable policies and programs?

Taking the raw, unformed mandate of victory at the polls and shaping it into a club to get Congress and the various departments to do his bidding has been his first chore. In this, he has succeeded. He controls the agenda. His own party looks to him for leadership, while the Republicans — both for political and traditional reasons — are generally inclined to grant him the benefit of the doubt. This so-called “honeymoon” is nothing more than recognition by the opposition of political reality. The Republicans lost by near-landslide proportions, and now that his popularity has skyrocketed during the transition, to be seen hindering Obama is to be seen as obstructing the will of the people. At least, that’s the argument that Democrats would make.

Obama made it quite plain what that means when Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) went into a critique of the new president’s “stimulus plan.” Reportedly, Obama waited for Cantor to finish and then said, simply “I won.” Obama’s two word put down trumped the discussion. (Glenn Reynolds points out that if George Bush had tried something like that, he would have been considered arrogant.)

Obama will eventually discover, as all presidents do, that the office is, at one and the same time, both the weakest of Constitutional offices and the strongest. All Article II says about a president’s powers is that he must execute the laws, act as Commander in Chief, make treaties, and fill vacancies in the departments during congressional recesses. And that’s basically it. He cannot “propose”, only “dispose.”

The office of president draws some of its strength from the direct support of the people. In parliamentary systems, it is the prime minister’s power base among MP’s that allows him to exercise his authority. If he loses support among the people, he can still wield a considerable amount of influence as long as his party has “confidence” in his leadership. A president, as amply demonstrated by the last 18 months of the Bush presidency, has no such luxury. Power ebbs and flows as a result of the will of the people and a weak president is next to useless except in matters of national security where his undoubted supremacy as Commander in Chief imbues the office with the ability to respond to any crisis involving the safety and security of the people.

For the first 2 or 3 months, Obama will be more powerful than at any other point during his term in office. During these first few days, he has sought to use that power both symbolically and practically, altering some of the policies of his predecessor while staying the course on others.

Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of Obama’s first week.

The Ugly

The entire inaugural was a disaster area. The program was marked by a poem that some consider to have been the worst in inaugural history. A flat, strangely subdued (almost dirge-like) performance by some of the world’s greatest musicians turned out to be taped. A hugely inappropriate benediction was given by the Reverend Joseph Lowrey. The huge crowd booed and mocked the outgoing president thus insulting not only Bush but Obama. And, after a flubbed oath of office that forced him to take it over again, a strangely uninspiring and forgettable address by the President himself.

There was also the evening festivities where President and Mrs. Obama found time for Hollywood celebrities, Washington glitterati, and politicos of every shape and size but somehow had no room on his dance card for the 48 Medal of Honor winners who attended the “Salute to Heroes” ball — the first time in 56 years the Commander in Chief failed to show. The new president attended another mostly military ball but broke faith with his predecessors when he snubbed the MOH winners and other wounded vets — some of whom had limped to the Ball from Walter Reed hospital.

The launch of the new WhiteHouse.gov website got a black eye when it was discovered the worst kind of partisan language was used to describe the reconstruction of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Someone should tell Obama’s partisans on the White House staff that the campaign is over and the American people will judge him based on his performance and not on how cleverly he can pass the buck for any failures on his predecessor.

There was the ugly scene in the press room on Wednesday night where Obama became irritated when a reporter asked a question he didn’t like. For a president to treat the press as an extension of his administration’s PR arm — which is what Obama was expecting when he entered the press room in the first place — and not working reporters with a job to do, is clearly a troubling indication, first noticed during the campaign, that this president will not accept criticism or opposition very graciously. This attitude is probably going to make the press even less likely to challenge him — if they had a mind to do so in the first place.

Finally, the question that got Obama’s dander up regarded his intention to name lobbyist William Lynn to the position of Deputy Defense Secretary. In order to do so, Obama has to waive his own rules not to hire any lobbyists for his administration.

Not even 72 hours into his presidency and he’s already broken one of his major campaign promises. And he wonders why people are cynical about politics? Ugly, indeed.

The Good

The high point of the inaugural may have been the playing of the national anthem by the Navy Band and sung by the “Sea Chanters” — played and sung as it should be played and sung, at the proper speed (a fairly brisk 135 beats a minute) and without the pop-culture trashing of the piece with unnecessary jazzy lilts and rock ‘n roll screams. And the parade was pretty good.

Obama’s choice of Richard Holbrooke for special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (”AFPAK”) may be the best move of the week. Holbrooke is a no-nonsense, straight from the shoulder, tell-it-like-it-is diplomat. He was the chief architect of the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War, knocking heads together until the two sides came to an agreement. As UN Ambassador, he got our contribution reduced while forcing the first tentative steps at reforming the corrupt finances of that body. (John Bolton, in his short time at the UN, did far more and was much more honest about the scandalous state of UN finances.)

If there is anyone who can persuade the Pakistani government to crack down on the Taliban and al-Qaeda who are currently crossing the border into Afghanistan almost at will it is Holbrooke. His portfolio does not include any power to negotiate with the Taliban, which is good. But neither does it include any instructions regarding India or the Kashmir, which is bad. Obviously, the Kashmir is a breeding ground for terrorists and the big bone of contention between the two countries. (Laura Rozen outlines the downside to this at the Foreign Policy magazine blog The Cable. )

President Obama also issued an executive order that will bring some sunshine back into the Oval Office, when he nixed a Bush era rule that not only hid many presidential documents behind executive privilege but allowed surviving family members to make the same claim even after the death of the ex-president. Any move that opens the government to scrutiny is a good one — even if, as seems likely, Democrats will use Bush documents to press for an investigation into his presidency. Obama could have grandfathered the executive order to include the papers of future presidents only but such a move would have had his base howling in protest.

Finally, it was heartening to find out that President Obama will continue the Bush policy of attacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The missile attack ordered by the president struck compounds in North and South Waziristan - a hot bed of al-Qaeda and Taliban activity. Past attacks have targeted the terrorist’s leadership but there’s no word yet on any success in that regard.

The Bad

Obama’s choice of George Mitchell for Middle East Envoy in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli-Hamas War may turn out to be a big mistake. As AT’s news editor Ed Lasky points out here, Mitchell has a history of seeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a question of Israel needing to give more in negotiations than the Palestinians. Expectations of Mitchell’s “friendliness” in the Arab world may be raised due to his Lebanese ancestry and his promotion of a more “evenhanded” approach to the conflict. How this will affect US-Israel ties is unknown, but after 8 years of strong support for Israel from George Bush, there is no doubt that the appointment of Mitchell signals a big change.

Another big change is perhaps Obama’s worst decision this week; the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility along with all other “black sites” run by the CIA. This was done with absolutely no plan regarding what to do with the remaining inmates at Gitmo nor coming up with an alternate for the CIA sites that isolated the “worst of the worst” terrorists in total security and secrecy.

One can look at most of Obama’s actions this first week as payoffs to constituent groups who supported him in the election. His decision to close Gitmo can be seen in that light. The base of the Democratic Party had been suffering apoplectic fits for years over Gitmo and the terrorist trials. Closing the facility and suspending the tribunals was shortsighted. There is no plan in place on where to put the prisoners, how to judge them, or how to make sure that further releases do not return to fight us again. It is irresponsible and dangerous to our security, it’s cheered the base of the Democratic party nonetheless. Apparently, President Obama prefers to indulge in symbolism at the expense of our safety.

Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close Guantánamo by a year from now “places hope ahead of reality — it sets an objective without a plan to get there.” I would add that it places atmospherics ahead of common sense — a bad sign for any presidency, but especially one where the new chief executive has so little experience on national security issues.

An argument can be made to close Guantanamo and the black sites. But to make such an announcement without an alternate plan for where to house the prisoners, what legal structure will replace the tribunals, what, if any, rights will be granted the enemy combatants, what to do with future al-Qaeda leaders who are captured, and other questions Obama didn’t bother to address with this political grandstanding and pandering to his base, suggests that the new president is unserious about issues affecting our security. Such may not be the case. But it is hard to judge otherwise given the cavalier manner in which Obama has taken these steps.

Another decision made rather cavalierly was the rescinding of the “Mexico City Policy” which prevents groups receiving federal funds from promoting or performing abortions overseas.

Americans supported the Mexico City Policy by more than 2-1. It is a good policy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it prevented overly zealous groups from promoting abortion as a means of birth control in poor countries. This is an inherently racist attitude as it attaches less worth to babies of color than white babies. It also saved the lives of countless women who would have been exposed to dangerous procedures performed in less than ideal facilities from a medical point of view.

Rescinding this order (a payoff to feminists) will do little to improve the lot of women in poor countries and may even put their lives at risk. Quite a price to pay for pandering to a constituency.

Finally, Obama made his first really dumb political move when he picked a fight with Rush Limbaugh, telling GOP senators that they shouldn’t listen to the talk show host and get on board with his stimulus package.

Obama broke the first rule of political gunslinging: never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel — or in the case of Rush Limbaugh, someone with 23 million daily listeners and 3 hours every day with which to make you look like an idiot.

Limbaugh correctly diagnosed Obama’s attack:

There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier’s plan is to isolate elected Republicans from their voters and supporters by making the argument about me and not about his plan. He is hoping that these Republicans will also publicly denounce me and thus marginalize me. And who knows? Are ideological and philosophical ties enough to keep the GOP loyal to their voters? Meanwhile, the effort to foist all blame for this mess on the private sector continues unabated when most of the blame for this current debacle can be laid at the feet of the Congress and a couple of former presidents. And there is a strategic reason for this.

It won’t be much of a war. Obama can’t respond to Limbaugh every day while Rush will pummel him mercilessly. He was going to do so anyway but now Obama has made it personal. Aside from being a stupid move, it is simply bad politics.

As of Sunday, Obama’s approval rating stands at a robust 68%. But with more questions being raised about his stimulus bill and the entire bailout culture that has sprung up in recent months. it stands to reason there is only one direction those numbers can go. And because as Peter Wehner points out in Commentary Magazine, Obama’s support is “aesthetic rather than substantive” — driven by a cult of personality rather than ideas — it is likely we will see those numbers travel south as the reality of our economic situation and security concerns set in and people realize that The One does not have all the answers.

The Kepler mission will be the first serious search for habitable planets in our galaxy.

Taking a break from politics this weekend (at least on this blog) because I’ve had a hankerin’ to do some gee-whiz, wowie-zowie, omigod, eye-popping, knock you out of your sox, space blogging.

There’s a lot going on at NASA besides trying to keep the dinosaur Shuttle fleet in one piece. (I pray every time they launch that Edsel that humans will not pay with their lives for the bureaucratic bungling that has us using this antique rather than modernizing years ago.) It is a consequence of a lazy media and their even lazier audience that the truly stunning scientific accomplishments that NASA is generally responsible for (in partnership with the EU, the Russians, and others on occasion) are barely reported and commented on.

NASA may be an agency in search of a grand vision but when it comes to cutting edge science, they do alright. The Mars rovers, orbiters, and the most recent laboratory lander, the Phoenix, that discovered what almost certainly is water ice at the north pole, are radically changing our view of the “dead” red planet (recent discoveries of plumes of methane suggest the possibility of life).

The agency’s New Horizon’s mission to Pluto and the Kuyper Belt is chugging along about a third of the way to crossing the orbit of Uranus. Launched 3 years ago, the spacecraft is the fastest man made object in the solar system traveling at more than 43,000 MPH. Even at that speed, it won’t reach Pluto until July of 2015.

The Hubbell Space Telescope is still amazing scientists with its discoveries. And for pure, geeky, kewlness, the pictures that are beamed to earth from Hubbell can’t be beat. Hubbell’s successor - The James Webb Space Telescope - will, if it works properly, probably have the capability to see earth-like planets in enough detail that we will be able to discern whether any intelligent life exists there.

But the launch of Webb is four years off. In the meantime, the most sophisticated effort in history to find earth like planets will be undertaken on March 6 of this year when NASA launches the Kepler Spacecraft into orbit.

A different kind of telescope, Kepler will be equipped with a gigantic photometer and will peer at one, small section of the sky continuously, comprising about 100,000 stars. It’s job will be to catch earth-like planets crossing in front of its star - “transiting” is the scientific term - and then determining the shape of its orbit.

The goal is to discover those planets in the “Goldilocks Zone” or habital zone, where water can exist in liquid form and planetary temperatures would at least give life a chance to arise. It’s called the “Goldilocks Zone” because the orbit would place the planet in a zone not too cold and not too hot but “just right.” This is a narrow zone indeed if you think about it. Of our two closest planetary neighbors, Venus is probably too close to the sun for life to have arisen (other factors like a runaway greenhouse effect also doomed life there) and Mars may be at the outer edge of the habital zone, having seen liquid water early in its formation as well as the possibility mentioned previously that some form of microbial life still exists there.

Here’s a brief overview of the mission from the Kepler website:

The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:

1. Determine the percentage of terrestrial and larger planets there are in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars;
2. Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets;
3. Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems;
4. Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets;
5. Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; and
6. Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

Using supercooled charge coupled devices (CCD’s), the sensitive photometer will be able to determine a small body transiting a distant star by measuring light before and during the transit. It is described as akin to measuring the light blocked by a moth as it transits a searchlight. The telescope will have its eye fixed on one, relatively small section of the sky and study such transits for 100,000 stars over a 5 year period.

There are a couple of drawbacks to this method of detecting earth-like planets. First, Kepler will only be able to see planets orbiting within the plane of the star. In our solar system, Neptune orbits outide of the plane of the sun which means its transits are very, very rare. An earth like planet orbiting closer to the star but not in its plane would have more transits but probably not enough to be detected during the 5 year life span of Kepler. (Scientists believe they have to see at least 3 or 4 transits in that period that will show the exact same drop off in starlight due to the object’s transit in order to be able to have a “robust” confidence in the data.)

Secondly, there is a possibility (some astronomers believe a probability) that Kepler won’t discover many of these earth like planets at all, that there are just too few of them. NASA says that this will also be valuable knowledge and I agree. But with cost overruns pushing Kepler’s price tag toward $500 million, the Republican in me questions whether earth-based observations could eventually achieve the same results for about 1/10 the cost.

At any rate, here are NASA’s expectations for Kepler:

Expected Results:

Based on the mission described above, including conservative assumptions about detection criteria, stellar variability, taking into account only orbits with 4 transits in 3.5 years, etc., and assuming that planets are common around other stars like our Sun, then we expect to detect:

From transits of terrestrial planets in one year orbits:

• About 50 planets if most are the same size as Earth (R~1.0 R_e) and none larger,
• About 185 planets if most have a size of R~1.3 R_e,
• About 640 planets if most have a size of R~2.2 R_e,
• About 12% with two or more planets per system.

These numbers come out substantially higher, when one takes into consideration all orbits from a few days to more than one year.

From modulation of the reflected light from giant inner planets:

• About 870 planets with periods less than one week.

From transits of giant planets:

• About 135 inner-orbit planet detections,
• Densities for 35 inner-orbit planets, and
• About 30 outer-orbit planet detections.

Detection of the short-period giant planets should occur within the first several months of the mission.

The sample size of stars for this mission is large enough to capture the richness of the unexpected. Should no detection be made, a null result would still be very significant.

As you can see, there would still be valuable data gleaned from the mission even if they only discovered a handful of earth like planets. To date, extra-solar planets have overwhelmingly been of the “hot giant” class due to the methods employed to discover extra-solar planets using earth based observations. The debate over why this is so is fascinating. Are these Hot Giants failed stars? Since about half of the stars in our galaxy are binary star systems with two suns in close proximity to one another, that explanation makes sense. Or are our theories on how planets form wrong? The “accretion disc” theory has been with us for several decades but suppose there are alternate means by which the dust and gas surrounding a new star resolves itself?

The big question is can both short period Hot Giants and earth like planets exist in the same solar system? Kepler may help answer that.

Kepler is the next step in NASA’s efforts to discover extra-solar life and perhaps, intelligent neighbors who might also be searching the heavens for signs they are not alone. More likely, those planets Kepler will find, if they harbor intelligent life, feature civilizations far more advanced or far less advanced than ours. But the discovery that there are perhaps thousands of earth like planets in the habital zones of stars in our galaxy alone would almost certainly change the way we look at our universe. Even many skeptics would be forced to rethink their notions of life in the universe if Kepler meets expectations.

Enjoy these discoveries while you can. With trillion dollar deficits staring Congress in the face, the probability that NASA funds will be cut to the bone are about 95%. Congressmen find it easy to cut programs that don’t enrich cronies or buy them votes back home. Most of the pure scientific exploration represented by Kepler, New Horizons, the Mars probes, and the Webb telescope are easy pickings for the budget cutters.

The paltry amounts that will be saved pale in comparison to what we will be losing.

Oath of Office - take two?

Several constitutional lawyers said President Obama should, just to be safe, retake the oath of office that was flubbed by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The 35-word oath is explicitly prescribed in the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, which begins by saying the president “shall” take the oath “before he enter on the execution of his office.”

The oath reads: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

In giving the oath, Roberts misplaced the word “faithfully,” at which point Obama paused quizzically. Roberts then corrected himself, but Obama repeated the words as Roberts initially said them.

A do-over “would take him 30 seconds, he can do it in private, it’s not a big deal, and he ought to do it just to be safe,” said Boston University constitutional scholar and Supreme Court watcher Jack Beermann. “It’s an open question whether he’s president until he takes the proper oath.”

This is truly a fascinating little tidbit of Americana. The oath, according to law, must be administered word for word. Since Roberts and Obama flubbed it, legally speaking, Obama had not fulfilled the Constitutional requirement to take the oath before assuming the presidency.

But then there’s the little matter of the 25th Amendment that made Obama president at 12 noon regardless of whether he had taken the oath or not. The amendment was passed to deal with crisis in a nuclear age with the death of a president and the immediate ascension of the Vice President to the office. The reasoning goes that the office of president can never be vacant, that if the president dies (or if both die) the next Constitutional officer in the line of succession automatically becomes president.

The article notes that both Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur took the oath twice. But both men were vice president at the time and Arthur, who was sworn in immediately, decided on a formal swearing in when he got back to Washington.

Coolidge, on the other hand, had his father, a notary public, swear him in upon hearing of the death of Harding. At the time, it was uncertain if a notary could actually swear in a president. To avoid confusion, Silent Cal had the Chief Justice swear him in when he got back to Washington.

In both of those cases, those men were following a tradition set down by John Tyler who ascended to the office of president following the death of William Henry Harrison in 1841. Constitutional scholars argue to this day whether Tyler was required to take the oath at all. (There was also a huge to do about whether Tyler was “Acting President” or actually possessed the office of president). There is nothing in the Constitution that clears up the matter and all vice presidents who have ascended to the presidency have followed Tyler’s example “for greater caution.” There is also great symbolic meaning to taking the oath which, in time of national emergency as when Kennedy was killed, can be an effective balm for the country.

But this situation is without precedent - flubbing the words of the oath. Is Obama really president? Yes, that much is clear. He was duly elected by the electoral college and the Congress certified it. From 12 noon yesterday, he was the legitimate president in the eyes of the law.

But challenges could still be forthcoming. If I were him, I’d give Roberts a call and invite him for lunch, taking the oath with a couple of witnesses “for greater caution.”

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker