International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations. The question before us is whether, consistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, the Commonwealth may deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry. We conclude that it may not. The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens. In reaching our conclusion we have given full deference to the arguments made by the Commonwealth. But it has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.

We are mindful that our decision marks a change in the history of our marriage law. Many people hold deep-seated religious, moral, and ethical convictions that marriage should be limited to the union of one man and one woman, and that homosexual conduct is immoral. Many hold equally strong religious, moral, and ethical convictions that same-sex couples are entitled to be married, and that homosexual persons should be treated no differently than their heterosexual neighbors. Neither view answers the question before us. Our concern is with the Massachusetts Constitution as a charter of governance for every person properly within its reach. "Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code." Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S.Ct. 2472, 2480 (2003) (Lawrence ), quoting Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 850 (1992).

Whether the Commonwealth may use its formidable regulatory authority to bar same-sex couples from civil marriage is a question not previously addressed by a Massachusetts appellate court. [FN3] It is a question the United States Supreme Court left open as a matter of Federal law in Lawrence, supra at 2484, where it was not an issue. There, the Court affirmed that the core concept of common human dignity protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution precludes government intrusion into the deeply personal realms of consensual adult expressions of intimacy and one's choice of an intimate partner. The Court also reaffirmed the central role that decisions whether to marry or have children bear in shaping one's identity. Id. at 2481. The Massachusetts Constitution is, if anything, more protective of individual liberty and equality than the Federal Constitution; it may demand broader protection for fundamental rights; and it is less tolerant of government intrusion into the protected spheres of private life.

Barred access to the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate, exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one of our community's most rewarding and cherished institutions. That exclusion is incompatible with the constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law.

Divided into 50 entries (excluding the Preface), A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag comprises journalistic articles and columns that Noonan originally put out between September 13, 2001 and September 11, 2002. The compilation is purported to capture and reflect retrospectively the spirit of America in the wake of the terrorist attacks. What it really delivers are the baffling reactions of an opportunist pleased somewhere underneath that a colossal national tragedy has succeeded in mainstreaming the brand of ideology that she happens to cherish.

It really doesn't get more spot on than that last sentence there -- in fact, that is the single best description of the Right's full reaction to 9/11 that I have seen. They're like a kid who just inherited a huge fortune from their dead Uncle -- sure the death was a tragedy, but that doesn't mean the money is going to charity!

One of the things they teach you about in political philosophy is the idea of "levels of abstraction." At a very high level of abstraction you might have a political belief like "I support justice." At a very low level, you might have a belief like "I support the Hatch amendment to the whatever bill."

The trouble with free speech is that it's one of those very abstract things that everyone can be "for" without anyone actually agreeing about anything.
The founding fathers, after all, were pretty clearly in favor of free speech, since they wrote into the constitution the idea that "congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of speech." Nevertheless, historically the US used to have lots of laws that nowadays the courts would insist are inconsistent with the first amendment. Leaving the legal issues aside, it's clear that there's a disagreement here not about whether free speech is good but about what free speech is. Similarly, some people think that campaign finance laws are restrictions of free speech, while others disagree. What they don't disagree about is whether or not they favor free speech.

At any rate, the point here is that sliding around your levels of abstraction can be an effective piece of rhetoric. "Let's go invade Iraq" "But why?" "To promote democracy, of course" "Doesn't sound like a good idea to me." "Why do you hate democracy you dirty, lying, traitor."

The Bush-Dean Debate We'll Never See

JIM LEHRER: Thank you for joining us for the first Presidential debate between George W. Bush and Howard Dean.

The format tonight is a question to one candidate, followed by a comment from his opponent, and so on. Gentlemen, thank you for coming.

HOWARD DEAN: Thank you, Jim.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Thanks.

LEHRER: Mr. Bush, you won the coin toss for the first question.

Some of your critics have charged you with lying to the American people about the immediacy of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in order to wage a war against Iraq that you had intended regardless.

Can you comment?

BUSH: That’s not true, and good Americans know it. It is true that our intelligence was faulty, but in the end the Iraqi people are free.

LEHRER: Dr. Dean, care to respond?

DEAN: I sure do. In 2001 Colin Powell gave a press conference in Cairo and said, I quote now:

“Saddam has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.

“He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”

A year later, the administration reversed its view without any explanation.

BUSH: That’s not true. Not true at all.

DEAN: I’m sorry, Mr. President, but it is true, and it means you are a lying sack of shit.

LEHRER: Well, Dr. Dean, the next question goes to you.

Your opponent, President Bush, has said that you are a radical liberal who intends on growing government on the backs of business. What is your response?

DEAN: With all due respect, my opponent has all the intelligence of a dead dog’s dick, and twice the stink.

I’ve made it quite clear that my positions are my own, and not the result of any ideological leanings.

LEHRER: Mr. Bush?

BUSH: What did he just say? About a dog?

I...the man’s a liberal, Jim. I mean, he’s just... a liberal... that’s all.

LEHRER: Well, let’s keep moving on then. Mr. Bush, your question. If re-elected, what would you do to repair the deficit?

BUSH: Well, Jim, I .. um... sorry, still can’t figure out what he said there before.

Anyway, I have a different view about the deficit.

I think deficits have been misrepresented. Deficits are known to stimulate economies in some cases, and I think we are seeing that right now.

The stimulus packages I put into place during my first term will be directly responsible for both short-term and long-term economic growth.

LEHRER: Dr. Dean?

DEAN: My opponent is a fuckbrained moron who went AWOL in the military, snorted coke, drove drunk, and almost ruined the Texas Rangers.

To expect him to understand the delicacies of economics is like asking a mule to conduct an orchestra, except the mule has a better chance of coming up with Mahler than Bush has of creating any economic growth.

His policies are designed to benefit the rich, shift the tax burden onto the poor, and permanently bankrupt social programs that have benefited millions of poor and middle class Americans.

LEHRER: Well, I ...

DEAN: ... Hold on, I’m not done.

LEHRER: Go ahead, sir.

DEAN: He is also an incompetent jackass, a repugnant blowhard, a flatulent bag of pus, and an insult to every pissfaced, dildoheaded bunghole on the planet.

LEHRER: Mr. Bush, would you care to rebut?

BUSH: ... I ... I can’t feel my legs ....

LEHRER: Next question, then. This one is for Dr. Dean.

How do you feel your experience as governor of a small state like Vermont helped prepare you for the role of leader of the free world?

DEAN: Better than being the governor of Texas helped that pork-assed pile of dung standing over there.

His only qualifications to become President were his daddy’s name and a photo he had of Antonin Scalia screwing some court clerk.

If my opponent were a block of cheese, he’d be smarter than he is now.

The only thing keeping him standing is his center of gravity, and the fact that his legs are too stupid to know how to fold over.

LEHRER: Okay, final question goes to Mr. Bush.

Mr. President, if re-elected, would you seek to permanently defeat Roe v. Wade through Supreme Court appointments?

BUSH: ... so dizzy... can’t.... can’t feel my tongue....

LEHRER: Dr. Dean, final reply.

DEAN: I want to say to the American people that if you elect me President, I promise to put the entire Bush family on a raft with no food or water, and set them adrift in the Pacific next to a school of ravenous sharks.

And I’ll balance the budget, too. Thank you.

LEHRER: Thank you, Dr. Dean. Good night.

BUSH: ... gurgle....

One other thing: It's become conventional wisdom that the Pentagon, or rather the civilians at the Pentagon, muscled out the State Department on key issues of planning for Iraq. My recent reporting tells me it's much more a matter of Cheney and the Office of the Vice President. Much more.

Presidential politics will always attract the best of whatever you've got, so we can still find credible nominees there, but as you descend from the White House to the Senate to the House, etc. it gets harder and harder.

If you take a look at the midterms from '02 and look at the seats that "should" have gone Democratic (i.e., lean left in presidential politics) but that the GOP won, you'll see a shocking proliferation of terrible campaigns, oftentimes run by deeply-flawed candidates, featuring ethical problems more frequently than one would think. This is a bad situation. Not all politics is local, and personality isn't everything, but it's an awful lot. If you can't get good people excited about running for office, you're not going to get far in the long run.

The Selective Service System wants to hear from men and women in the community who might be willing to serve as members of a local draft board.
[ . . . ]
Local Board Members are uncompensated volunteers who play an important community role closely connected with our Nation's defense. If a military draft becomes necessary, approximately 2,000 Local and Appeal Boards throughout America would decide which young men, who submit a claim, receive deferments, postponements or exemptions from military service, based on Federal guidelines.

Positions are available in many communities across the Nation. If you believe you meet the standards for Selective Service Board Membership, and wish to be considered for appointment please visit our web site.

Is this brilliant jurist losing his mind? Is he so frustrated by 17 years of failure to sway an allegedly conservative court to his side on social issues that he no longer cares who he offends or how biased he may appear? Has he become so swept up by the Coulter/Limbaugh/O'Reilly game of court-bashing that he cannot see how damaging it is when played by a justice? Or is he running for elected office? What possesses Justice Scalia to eschew the reclusive public life of many justices, or at least the blandly apolitical public lives of most, to play the role of benighted public intellectual and knight gallant in the culture wars?

But one cannot ignore—and Scalia would not have us ignore—the fact that he is also a deeply religious man. Scalia worships at a conservative Virginia church that erected a monument to unborn children several years back. And he joins many of the nation's religious groups in feeling besieged and marginalized by the constitutional wall that's been erected between church and state—a wall that keeps the devout from practicing and proselytizing in the public square. He is convinced that civilization is in decline and that this banishment of religion is directly responsible. He truly believes that the coarseness and callousness of modern mores and practices have imperiled us all. And if those beliefs make him sound more Jeremiah than Judge, well, Scalia would probably welcome the comparison.

We hear again and again how all the bombings and mayhem are obscuring all the good things that are happening in Iraq. But this is like how the thunderstorm ‘obscures’ the underlying sunny day.

We know that everything got started when Dick Cheney brought up the Niger claims at a regularly scheduled CIA briefing in the early spring of 2002. Apparently, the briefer didn’t bring it up. Cheney did [ . . . ] [I]f Cheney didn’t hear about it from one of his intel briefings, where’d he hear about it? Specifically, who put Cheney on to the Niger uranium story?

Who’s this “Italian businessman and security consultant”? Who’s he do his security consulting for? Any associations to any folks with names we know? Any connections to noteworthy figures in the United States?

It was precisely at this moment (in the last days of September and the first of October) that the advocates of the Niger story were most in need of some new evidence. And it was precisely at this moment when the new evidence --- at first seemingly incontrovertible --- popped up in Rome.