Kirk Going the Extra Distance for Stevenson Student
ArchPundit
For an update on the case, go here. \
I’m jealous of the students because they got to meet John Lewis (D-Georgia), a former Freedom Rider.
2005
Just So I can Say I linked to Derbyshire once
Via Drum
Fun with creationists at the National Review. I bet they get a lot of mail on that one and Derbyshire loses it responding.
The notion of the ID-ers, that you can find Him by staring hard at the gaps in our current scientific understanding, seems to me to be a sort of comic-book metaphysics, betraying a dire lack of imagination, and an utter waste of time.
14 Day Registration Passed
Dan Johnson-Weinberger has been pushing for this bill and it gets signed. Congrats to Dan–this is a good government bill that shouldn’t have been controversial.
It’s a Lot Like Christmas
Joe Birkett is thinking of running for Governor.
He’s very, very good to me. Anyone with that much of a sourpuss personality in font of a camera only makes this more fun.
First, we start with his handling of the Nicarico murder case. Eric Zorn will be happy for a Birkett candidacy because it’ll let him dredge up old columns, polish them, and meet a deadline easily.
In September of 2002 he wrote this column about Birkett’s inability to deal with the Nicarico case in an honorable fashion.
He added, “My opponent has no idea what a prosecution looks like.”
Of course, when it comes to Dugan, neither does Birkett.
For his entire six-year tenure as state’s attorney, his office has let the Nicarico case languish officially open and unsolved. After Cruz was acquitted and released from Death Row in late 1995 and charges were dropped against his former co-defendant, Alejandro Hernandez, the logical move was against Dugan, whose story starkly contradicted the version of events that DuPage authorities had been pushing for more than a decade.
But Birkett did not reopen plea negotiations with Dugan, who had offered to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. He has not indicted him, and there are no reports that he has even tried. His office has not even requested to talk to Dugan about the case, according to Dugan’s attorney Tom McCullough.
Instead, Birkett has claimed all along to be waiting on sleuths who are still hard at work gathering evidence against Dugan, whose detailed admissions can’t be used against him because they were part of plea negotiations. “The investigation is very aggressive and has been since Day 1,” he said Monday. He said one full-time investigator, one part-time investigator and a part-time special assistant state’s attorney are on the case.
And since the alleged investigation is always ongoing, Birkett always says that he can’t comment on it or what sort of dead end it will take for him to give up on getting a death sentence and accept Dugan’s guilty plea.
He’s in no hurry. Dugan is already serving life without parole for a similar murder and isn’t going anywhere. And as long as the case remains technically open, Birkett remains able to offer vague insinuations, as he did again Monday, that he doesn’t buy the story that Dugan acted alone and Cruz and his former co-defendants weren’t involved.
He wouldn’t offer a personal opinion on Cruz’s innocence when asked about it at Monday’s news conference, nor would he reveal the substance of any conversations he had with his supervisors and colleagues when he was the lead prosecutor in the case in late 1994 and early 1995. “That’s confidential work product,” he explained.
It’s also another dodge. Madigan may have been standing on a little girl’s grave Monday, but Birkett has been hiding behind her headstone for years.
Two years and what has changed.
That much.
Fun flashback from The Capitol Fax in 2002
A Tiny Taste of Capitol Fax from October 17, 2002:
STATEWIDE STUFF (excerpt) Joe Birkett, then and now.
Chicago Tribune, August 21, 1994: “Last week he formally was named the lead prosecutor in the upcoming third trial of Rolando Cruz.”
Daily Southtown: June 6, 2002: “Birkett says his bosses, not he, led the Cruz trials.”
Chicago Tribune, August 21, 1994: “‘I feel very comfortable taking on this case,’ said Birkett, who will prosecute the case with DuPage Assistant State’s Atty. Barbara Preiner and one other attorney, who has yet to be named.”
Chicago Tribune: October 1, 2002: “I inherited, obviously, a nightmare.”
I visited the grave Monday morning, in part because I never had. After nine years and more than 100 columns about the terrible course justice took after she was abducted from her home about 2 miles from the cemetery, raped and murdered, I had never gone to the place where the enormity of the crime that began it all seems most real.
I visited also in part because this week will mark a major transition point in this case. After Tuesday’s election, no matter what the results, the Jeanine Nicarico saga will pass from current event to history.
For the better part of two decades, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan has been the subject of much criticism for his prosecution of three innocent men for the crime when he was state’s attorney of DuPage County.
Add to it the shell game he played regarding whether he supports a concealed carry law and the campaign will be a trainwreck from the word go. In 2002 the Trib called him out on his inability to be clear on where he stood on a concealed carry law in Illinois. He was giving non-denials, but at the same time the Illinois State Rifle Association endorsed him while they wouldn’t endorse Jim Ryan-because Ryan didn’t support concealed carry. Concealed carry was opposed in Illinois by about 70% of the population in the last poll I saw on it.
Finally, Birkett is just unlikeable. In one of the most bizarre and bitter concessions during the 2002 cycle, Birkett was on TV in this desperate whiny voice while leaning against a table and said he just called Lisa Madigan and told her congratulations, she was now a Prosecutor. While Keyes has upped the ante on what classlessness is, Birkett still was nasty.
Beyond that night, he ranks up there as one of the most unlikeable candidates for public office I’ve ever watched. Many candidates are obnoxious, but they know how to look on TV. Birkett just sneers all of the time.
So welcome to the race Joe and if I were The Blagorgeous, I’d help fund this guys primary run.
Hiramand Austin Mayor have more
An Entire Industry Built On Financial Planning
Zorn points out that the debate over Social Security is more than one of accounting, but also one of values.
The problem is the Bush Administration is selling the idea as being just as secure and so opponents feel the need to point out it isn’t and demonstrate exactly why it isn’t, but I think that is the basic argument that most supporters of Social Security as it is now are making.
Two recent responses by more libertarian oriented supporters of privatization are certainly more honest about what privatization is about for them. First is Jacob Sullum’s piece in Reason that argues privatization isn’t about solvency, but of reducing the role of government in people’s live.
Although sold to the public as a pension system, Social Security is based on the forced transfer of resources between generations. It steals from the poor to give to the rich, and it substitutes dependence on a beneficent state for self-reliance and voluntary mutual aid. It may not be financially bankrupt, but it is morally so.
By contrast, private investment accounts represent genuine savings, as opposed to claims on other people’s money. There is no getting around the fact that requiring people to save also involves the use of force, but this sort of paternalism seems preferable to the predation at the heart of the current system.
And this is where Social Security is a conservative idea in terms of what Edmund Burke would say is conservative–a tie that binds generations.
?”Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” (Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.)
Libetarians believe that those ties don’t exist except in to maximize freedom. I, and probably most others in the US disagree with that notion of what society is and should be.
If you accept Sullum’s underlying propositions about the nature of society, Social Security is predation, but if you see generations as not autonomous individuals, but a larger part of a contract, Social Security isn’t paternalistic, but a partnership.
In response to Zorn’s column, Michael at the Chicago Report responds,
Zorn is right. The issue is the paternalistic state of FDR and its dismantling under Gingrich and Bush. The issue is about who is in a better position to make decisions about life and retirement you or the government. The issue is about whether the government is going to treat people as adults with the power to plan for the future and think for themselves and thus expect people to treat themselves as adults. Or is the government going to treat us as children who’ve got to be told what to do, thus creating a race of man that cannot plan for anything because they’ve never had to. Zorn is right the Social Security issue about more than money its about the ideal of what the federal government should be. Its a generational battle between Reagan and FDR.
Given Michael’s views, this is about how I’d expect him to describe it, but it gives short shrift to the overall impact of Social Security. Social Security, as with most forms of social insurance, allows one to engage in riskier behavior with a safety net whether it be changing jobs or investing, one can take chances knowing there is a floor there if it goes badly. That is a good thing for a society and an economy.
The one issue I’ll take issue with is that social security discourages planning. This isn’t true–and the evidence is that if it did there wouldn’t be a financial planning industry as we see it today. Social Security is a portion of people’s retirement plan and it allows them to plan knowing that they have a guarantee they will not do worse than. Those that don’t plan are largely those at the bottom of the economic rung who most need the security of the system. If you were to remove required contributions, that money would likely be spent on more pressing needs for many working poor like child care, better housing or other necessity they aren’t doing well providing for now. Social Security guarantees them a minimum when they are older even if they haven’t planned, but for those with less pressure in the immediate term, there is a lot of planning that goes on. Before social security there wasn’t much planning by those for retirement who were poor because that was a luxury to them. Now, most died before retirement, but many did not.
It just gets worse
From comments, more on the Proft/Pascoe brain trust in naming themselves after a character on House of Cards (which I have not seen)
Choosing the name “Urquhart” is interesting. In the first of the series, “House of Cards,” Francis Urquhart ends up murdering a young journalist, Mattie Storin, with whom he had an affair. Throughout the series, Urquhart routinely blackmails and frames his political enemies, and arranges murders of his opponents.
Urquhart’s murderous political games continue in “To Play the King” and the “Final Cut.” In none of the installments does Urquhart come close to being human, let alone someone to emulate.
Urquhart meets his end when his wife arranges to have him assassinated in order to avoid public revelation of his murderous past.
Anyone who has watched the series — and it is a great series — must wonder why a communications professional would want to be associated with Francis Urquhart — or FU as his confidants call him.
On the good side, no one appears smart enough in real life to successfully murder someone and get away with it.
Zorn’s Adding Comments
LOL—don’t say I didn’t warn you Eric, but somebody is going to be spending a lot of time policing those. Look at Miller’s comments if you need a hint. Mine get some problems, but generally, not being a big media outlet of any sort, I avoid the worst. The Trib is to trolls what light are to moths.
It’s a workin progress, but the new blog is up at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/weblog/
About those Benchmarks, Governor
As someone who does policy evaluation, I’m a big fan of benchmarks to determine how effective something is being implemented.
Right now, the Gov Gets an F
Via OneMan
Perhaps one reason for a change of heart is the lack of legislative success that followed last year’s education focus, where he held up a sheaf of 2,800 pages he said represented the state’s burdensome school regulations. The legislature gave him only modest powers to reshape that bureaucracy.
Six months after he gained control of the board, not a page of regulations has been removed, and the staff he ridiculed has been trimmed by only three people, to 492 from 495.
You only get to claim credit when you’ve done something.
Nah, I still Think You are Wrong Jeff
I playfully jabbed Jeff about his criticism of Mark Caro who had criticized Members of Congress for wagging purple thumbs at the State of the Union Speech. I pointed out one finger wagger was El Geraldo–Jerry Weller and Weller’s a bit suspect in consistency regarding democratization.
But to a larger point, the point that Caro makes is strong–finger wagging by one political party is a bit weak. Were Democrats who supported the war included in the effort? If not, why not?
Cynicism about cheerleading by Members of Congress is generally in order. They are a group that by the very process that got them there–that likes publicity and making a show.
Were any of them criticizing the President’s policy when Bremer was ignoring the fatwa by Sistani to call elections?
If not, how can this be viewed as a victory for American policy or for the Republican Party? Caving to Sistani is a success?
Even if the post-invasion process had been handled better, we might still have ended up right here with Sistani dictating the election. While I think we should have tried to handle this better, it’s an open question whether we could have managed Sistani successfully.
That said, having Sistani dictate the election has taken a toll on the US goals in the region. The election doesn’t seem to bode well for a liberal democracy. Lawrence Kaplan has a very strong article in The New Republic, The Last Casualty (subscription required), on what has happened to the liberal democrat efforts in Iraq.
So, yeah, I think Mark is right. The sort of cheerleading that was done at the State of the Unions is a serious disconnect from how these elections came about and the cheering is far too early. We all should hope that Iraq develops into a democratic country with strong safeguards for people’s liberty, but as of right now, that is a very open question.
Let me add, it wasn’t nearly as offensive as Republicans in Washington state who wore orange pins to compare themselves to the reformers in the Ukraine.
I flippantly referred to the Shiite domination of this election as a sign of a unified Shiite band across the Middle East and commenter took me to task–largely correctly.
It is very true that the Shiites in Iraq generally are not pushing for the same mechanisms of clerical rule in Iran. Iran’s system of government effectively gives the clerics a veto over many decisions. To many Shiites this is heretical as the tradition in Shia Islam is a fairly distinct break between the clerics and the government. Khomeini broke that down in Iran during his long crusade against the Shah’s rule and many Shiite Clerics were appalled.
One of the appalled was Sistani who takes what I would call a traditionalist approach to church and state in Shia Islam. Sistani is Iranian, but he is also fairly critical of how Khomeini organized the government and strictly speaking, Sistani appears to be sincere.
So the good news is that if Sistani is the guy who continues to be the major voice in Iraq in regard to Shiites, the Iranians and Iraqis will be closer, but not too close. The bad news is it’s anything but certain that Sistani will be the long term guy doing that. First, he is older, second there are both internal Iraqi challenges to him as well as external challenges from Iran.
In addition, a Shiite dominated non-clerical government could still be very friendly to Iran and we don’t need to be providing Iran with allies, even if only marginal ones, right now.
More troubling is the nature of the candidates he backed and who won a large plurality from the looks of it–they are very much in the vein of conservative religious based candidates who are unlikely to back a modern state based on liberty and democracy as we understand it. The candidates and Sistani have made it clear that they want Islam as the basis of the law.
Perhaps that won’t concern Judge Roy Moore types, but the rest of us probably were thinking of a more liberal democratic model that was modified to fit Iraqi’s peculiar population.
Well, label me all the above because I’m going to speak up and say the gay agenda-pushers are going way too far when they start putting lesbians and blacks in kid’s cartoons
Strangely enough, kids run into families with two mommies so showing that they exist wouldn’t normally be controversial.
I grew up with a single mother and while I’m the first to admit that isn’t ideal (think about trying to do it all alone amazes me), but it certainly is normal.
What people seem to miss in ranting about the ‘gay agenda’ is that one doesn’t have to approve of the gay relationships, but teaching kids to understand that there are differences in families and you’ll run into those differences is a good thing generally.
There are families in which the wife is subservient to the husband due to religious beliefs. I believe that is wrong and I teach my girls that, but I don’t expect them to be sheltered from such beliefs and I certainly expect them to be tolerant of such relationships. Would I be offended by a cartoon that showed such a family? No. I’d point out to my girls why we don’t believe in women being subservient and let them think about it. It’s called broadening their horizons.
And as I like to point ad naseum to people like Muir, the public opinion polling is pretty murky on same sex relationships. A majority of people oppose same sex marriages, but a majority also supports domestic partnerships.
In more reactionary fun, Muir takes to task a woman who is in a same-sex relationship comparing the qualifications for marriage to that of a drivers license:
This comment is simply another tired ploy by the gay community to liken its cause to the civil rights movement, which is insulting at best and absurd at worst. And let me also say her allegation that individuals have been denied equal rights concerning marriage is unequivocally wrong. […]
(I)t seems that proponents of gay marriage really don’t want equal rights — they already have equal rights just like the rest of us — they want special rights. This argument would be comparable to a 16-year-old screaming discrimination because he or she can’t vote or a 12-year-old claiming their equal rights have been denied because they can’t obtain a driver’s license.
Ummm..no, actually the point of the drivers license is that it is age tested because age is a factor in how well one can operate a motor vehicle.
Now, if one views marriage as only for procreation, then there is an argument against gays and lesbians, but also anyone infertile. Otherwise, whether someone is of the same sex as their partner should have no impact on the state’s interest in extending contractual benefits between two adults. Muir seems to stop the analysis at the point of saying “It’s the law”.
When we discriminate, I’d like to think we do it for cause–something about the identified trait makes it important to exclude someone–such as age and driving. In terms of same sex partnerships or marriage, the question should be is there a compelling state interest to denying such relationships. In this case, the argument appears to be that it makes a majority of people feel icky.
There are others who make the argument that gay marriages destroy straight ones, but there’s little evidence to support such an argument.
I don’t know if Muir is a redneck and I don’t care. I do care that he can barely string an argument together other than to say, the world is eroding because of two bunnies on a children’s cartoon make him feel uncomfortable.
Via Capitol Fax