Bush leaked!

OK, I've been reading in the papers about this, and seeing that some bloggers are freaking out about the fact that Bush declassified some stuff in order to leak it to the press, in order to manage the WMD issue back when the Wilson/Plame thing was going on.
Andrew Sullivan makes the case that this is the perfect excuse not to trust our President on anything.

The bottom line is that the president clearly used his prerogative to classify and declassify intelligence data to leak selectively to the press to give a misleading notion of what his own government believed about Saddam's WMDs before the war. He was personally involved; and he tasked his veep to coordinate it. The most plausible explanation is that the president believes grave national security prerogatives can be used for political purposes and/or that he had something embarrassing to hide. Bottom bottom line: we can't trust him to be fully honest with us on one of the bases on which he led us to war. That matters, doesn't it?

And Joe Gandelman...

In other words: a "whistle blower" with unflattering information that's leaked is a traitor, a criminal, and belongs in jail, but a President with information he wants to get across can leak it and it's OK because it's flattering and it's in the national interest for the public to get classified information that's flattering to the President.

OK, yes the President admitted it. I don't think that anywhere along the line Bush actually lied about what he was doing. If you look back at the stuff they are linking to it gets fuzzy whether the President was talking specifically about the Plame/Wilson stuff, which he leaked, or if he was talking about other leaks that had happened, or he could have been speaking in general. It does seem fishy. If you did the leaking, you would think that once it was apparent to the public that the information was leaked out of the White House you would say, OK sure we did it.
But no matter how Bush played that hand, the press would make him look bad.
OK everyone (and this includes most journalists and Sullivan and Gandelman) lets get some perspective. You and I might view leaked information as slimy politics, and the "sensitive" classified information as something important, as if all classified information is truly important. However 1. All presidents in recent memory have used leaks to get stuff to the public, and 2. Plame's status at the CIA was pretty well expired anyway. She hadn't been a covert agent in the field for years. The release of this information wasn't going to hurt anyone, and as it happened many people already knew that she worked at the CIA.
Bush's idea here was to try to get some useful information into the public arena without having it look like he's the one who put it there. If he had just come out with it, once again the media would have been all over him with accusations of playing politics with the issue by outing the wife of the guy opposing him.
Which was a shame, as the identity of Wilson's wife did in fact have implications, i.e. she is the one who got Wilson, who made no secret of being opposed to everything the administration seems to have stood for, the job of investigating something pretty serious for the administration. Don't you think that's important information to know?
The thing that really gets me, here, is what kind of a world we live in where in order to get some information out to the public, politicians feel the need to secretly leak it to the press instead of just tell us themselves. This betrays the utter lack of trust that Americans have for their representatives in Washington, that if they just told us themselves, we wouldn't believe them or would question their motives. But the American public didn't just get that way because we're mean spirited and untrusting. It's the result of congressmen and women letting us down time and time again with their institutionalized selfishness.

Meanwhile, Powerline notes that the press is going out on a limb with the "Bush Leaked" meme.

Bazinet's lead:

President Bush vowed to fire anyone caught blabbing classified information to the media, but he himself was the leaker-in-chief, a former top White House aide testified.

It seems to me that it would be difficult to pack a more misleading formulation of Fitzgerald's brief into fourteen words than Bazinet does in that lead. The great cloud of unknowing that descends in Bazinet's lead permeates the remainder of Bazinet's story.

Scott Johnson notes that the author of that article didn't have any quotes of Bush saying that leaks were bad in reference to that specific case (Plame/Wilson).
And anyway, here's a justification for Presidential authority to declassify information from the Reagan administration.

The History of Me

No, it's not a personal entry. It's political philosophy.
After the cold war ended and the wall fell, we entered into a period of relative serenity. History was behind us.

History was behind us. It was something our parents entered for a while during the war but they emerged into what was, essentially, the long peace. They'd had enough history, didn't want any more, and did what they could to keep history from happening. In general, the history of the Cold War is the history of what didn't happen punctuated by a few things every now and then such as Korea and Vietnam. But all in all, for over 50 years, history didn't happen.

With the end of the Soviet Union in a whimper and not a bang brighter than the sun on earth, history was officially over. The moment even got its own book, "The End of History," which stimulated an argument that even more than the book emphasized that history was over.

Most sensible people liked it that way. In fact, a lot of people really liked it that way. Because if history for the world was over, these people could get on making the history that really mattered to them: The History of Me.

More and more throughout the 90s "History" was "out," and "Me" was in. "Me," "Having My Space," "How to Be Your Own Best Friend," "Me, Myself, I," were hallmarks of that self-besotted age. The History of Me was huge in the 90s and rolled right through the millennium. It even had a Customized President to preside over those years; the Most Me President ever. A perfect man for the time and one who, in the end, did not disappoint in choosing "Me" over "Country." How could he do otherwise? It was the option his constituency of Many-Million-Mes elected him to select. I know because I was into Me then and I voted for him because, well, because he seemed to be "just like me." It was a sad day when "Me" couldn't run for a third term, but The Party of Me offered up "Mini-Me" and a lot of Mes turned out for him too.

That's right, the Me generation took over. The 90s were a period of excess, technology, booming stock markets and most of all peace in America. The minor skirmishes, like Bosnia and Somalia couldn't break the fun. No longer did we have to worry about anything but having fun.
And then 9/11 happened.

It was better when we lived in The History of Me. We knew how Me would end -- birth, fun, school, fun, job, fun, family, fun, age, fun, death and then ... probably fun, who knew, who cared? The meaning of this history was not deep but was to be found in the world "fun." Mini-Mes love fun. You could almost say it is their religion, a religion of fun. A funny concept, fun. Fills the space between birth and death. "He was a fun guy" could be a generic epitaph for the era. Now we find ourselves back in history as it has always been and it is not fun. Not fun at all. The history of history has little to do with fun, almost nothing at all. Most of the Mini-Mes don't know what to do in a history that isn't fun. All their lives have been about shaping history towards fun and they've been having a good run at it. They like it so much, they are now willing to do anything to bring it back -- the Kennedy Era, such elegant fun; the Clinton Years, "Hey, we partied like it was 1999." In the run-up to the last election and now for the next, there's been and there will be a lot of code swapped about getting the fun back in the game. "Remember the fun of the 90s? You can have it all back. Peace. Love. Understanding. Stock-market Boom. Money. Any number of genders can play." Indeed, these Merry Pranksters of our politics are setting up to run "The Bride of Fun" for President in 2008, even though it is clear she is the least fun of any of them.

We need to return to a national identity and ideal that thinks about Us, not Me. Because in history "little will be required of Me, but much from Us."
At this point I must entreat you to read the entire article. If you don't your missing good stuff.

And, finishing that, I would like to add that this push toward the Me isn't really all that surprising. Nor is the resistance with which the Mes out there are putting up in order to convince themselves that they are still outside history and that there is no war. Or no reason to fight any more. They want to go back to that happy time where they didn't have to show resolve and sacrifice.
But this is human nature. We wish to avoid the horrible things we must face in this life. And our nature, Christianity would call it our sinful nature, prompts us to think about the Me. The government should leave Me alone, except in the areas that are important to Me. Government should make it easier for me to make money and have nice things, regardless of how hard I'm willing to work. Why should I have to suffer for something that's not MY fault.
But we cannot escape history. History did not end in 1989. Nor will it end when the war on terror is over. Things like hurricanes and tsunamis constantly remind us of that. People dying in places like Darfur and Zimbabwe remind us of that. Or they should.

It's just a suggestion, really

Big Brother is looking after you. Well, he’s not directly telling you what to do, he’s only giving you incentive to move in one direction or the other. This is an interesting article in the Economist about a concept called Soft Paternalism.

What they propose is “soft paternalism” . Thanks to years of patient observation of people's behaviour, they have come to understand your weaknesses and blindspots better than you might know them yourself. Now they hope to turn them to your advantage. They are paternalists, because they want to help you make the choices you would make for yourself—if only you had the strength of will and the sharpness of mind. But unlike “hard” paternalists, who ban some things and mandate others, the softer kind aim only to skew your decisions, without infringing greatly on your freedom of choice. Technocrats, itching to perfect society, find it irresistible. What should the supposed beneficiaries think?

I think that we already do this to a certain extent. It does attract me better than the government absolutely telling me what to do. The ways in which we do this involve things like tax breaks for charitable giving and home ownership. These are things that better our society, but are encouraged by the government (although imagine Uncle Sam telling us we HAVE to own a house by age 30 or something).

The article also brings up things like cooling off periods for marriage, divorce, buying guns and smoking (we already do have them for divorce and guns in many cases). Automatic enrollment in things, like pension plans (think Social Security) that you can opt out of if you want. Hmmmm.

Soft paternalism has much in its favour. First, it is certainly better than hard paternalism. Second, a government has to provide information to citizens in order for them to make rational decisions on everything from smoking to breastfeeding to organ donation. Even a government reluctant to second-guess its citizens ends up advising them in one way or another. What people decide they want is often a product of the way a choice is framed for them—they take the first thing on the menu, or a bit of everything. Even a truly liberal government would find itself shaping the wishes and choices to which it earnestly wants to defer. It's surely better to lure people into pension schemes than out of them.

Yet from the point of view of liberty, there is a serious danger of overreach, and therefore grounds for caution. Politicians, after all, are hardly strangers to the art of framing the public's choices and rigging its decisions for partisan ends. And what is to stop lobbyists, axe-grinders and busybodies of all kinds hijacking the whole effort? There is, admittedly, a safety valve. People remain free to reject the choices soft paternalism tries to guide them into—that is what is distinctive about it. But though people will still have this freedom, most won't bother to use it—that is what makes soft paternalism work. For all its potential, and its advantage over paternalism of the hard sort, this is a tool that transfers power from the individual to the state, which only sometimes knows best.

OK, so there’s chance of corruption in any system. You wouldn’t want this getting out of hand, but I find the train of thought coming from policy wonks in Washington a step in a fresher direction. It’s certainly better than Hard Paternalism.

GPS-less location

OK, this is really neat technologically.  Or really freaky if you get the willies about people knowing where you are.  Won’t matter that you don’t have GPS installed.

Some positioning systems make use of natural objects or phenomena; for example, celestial navigation uses the stars, compasses use Earth's magnetic field, and ancient mariners relied on trade winds. Other positioning systems rely on facilities or networks built for the purpose; for example, lighthouses, buoys, or Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. Yet a third way is to exploit devices that were built and deployed for other purposes. That is what Skyhook Wireless is demonstrating, by implementing what it calls a WiFi positioning system (WPS). This new technique relies on the growing popularity, in U.S. urban areas, of wireless Internet access points and uses them as signals of opportunity to determine the position of mobile WiFi-enabled devices, such as laptop computers, PDAs, and cell phones.

In one sense it’s neat, in that you are locationally enabled, even though you don’t have a GPS, or if your GPS doesn’t get proper signals in certain areas in urban zones.  On the other hand, if you are freaked out about people knowing where you are at all times, you have one more item of technology to avoid.

Mali and Islamists

News from Mali.  Hat tip from Instapundit.
Mali is one of the most stable democracies in Africa.  They have orderly elections and relatively little disturbance, and up until this point little in the way of Islamic extremism problems.  That seems to be changing.

The desert regions of the far north of the country, up against the Algerian frontier, are not only the most thinly populated region, but also the least well-controlled by the central government. Banditry and feuds among the largely Tuareg Berber tribes are common in the north. In addition, the region seems to have attracted Islamist fundamentalists fleeing defeat in Algeria, who have reportedly set up base camps in order to regroup. This is causing concern not only in Mali, but also in Algeria and nearby Mauritania. All three countries have recently reached a number of agreements to promote greater security in the region, and these include rights of "hot pursuit" during operations against extremists.

There’s long term animosity between the Tuareg tribes of the northern Sahara and the darker skinned, southern cultures of sub Saharan Africa that stretches back thousands of years.  Islamic terrorists are trying to take advantage of that, not just in Mali, but in all countries surrounding the Sahara.  It’ll be interesting to see how the Tuareg take to Al Qaeda’s form of Islam (which is different than theirs, in that they incorporate lots of ancient Tuareg practices) and how the nations in that area are able to deal with it.

Battle in the Classroom Redux

Rehash on Wednesday’s post.   I got a comment from someone who got the impression that I would throw out Darwinism in schools for the sake of Intelligent Design (ID) and that the “Ouch” is for teachers who don’t adjust to a methodology of teaching that allows any and all quirky theories on how life originated and develops.

Not so, and I think that I probably didn’t spend enough, or any, time discussing this at greater length in order not to be misunderstood.  You might be confused as to where my “ouch” came from.

I am conservative, but I definitely don’t want something taught in schools that doesn’t have some solid foundations in logical thought and scientific fact.  However, I think that too much faith is often put in some areas of science, and taught in school as so much dogma.  Yes, I’m talking about Darwinism here.  However, I’ve often made the point, once or twice on this blog, that I wouldn’t mind not including ID in public education (as ID is more of a theory on origins of life than changes over time) as long as it was made clear in science classes that Darwinism is only theory and not fact, which is too often how it’s presented.  Darwinism has its place in science, but it also has definite drawbacks and pitfalls.

I was encouraged to hear that students were challenging their teachers on this point.  The point of the piece I linked to was that teachers should be able to defend what they are teaching, and if they can’t either they shouldn’t be there or what they are teaching should be re-evaluated.

I was also displaying my not too hidden angst at popular evolutionary theory proponents who insist that life evolves and that nature is in a constant battle where only the stronger species survives, but in their actual practice do everything they can to stop the process.  What I mean by this is that liberal practice today means that you have to act to keep the environment in some static state (whether in a form that existed before “white men” came, or in some form that never really existed), or society must act to promote equality amongst people, regardless of their ability or desire to compete in the economic and social environment they find themselves in.  Welfare, affirmative action, minimum wage, and complaining about corporate executive salaries all work to drive equality of lifestyle, when this country was founded on equality of opportunity, which is all you can really hope to successfully implement.  Marxism hopes to achieve equality of lifestyle, but they’ll never achieve it.

For those of you who’ll freak at the examples I used above, I think that affirmative action and welfare have their place and have had their uses.  Affirmative action was necessary to bring about equality of opportunity for a segment of the population in the 60s and possibly 70s.  Limited welfare might be achievable if you place strict limits on it to help those who are temporarily out of luck and just need a short boost to get going again.  Neither should be permanent parts of society.

Anyway, my ouch is the irony of a teacher getting replaced by a better “species” of teacher that is more able to thrive in an environment of free ideas and inquiry.  Even if some of that inquiry involves challenging dogmatic memes by students.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

Michael Totten is not afraid of the Big Bad Hezbollah anyway.  I’ve never quite read such a ripping on the “friendly face” of a radical militant Muslim organization before as I did with this Dear Hussein letter.

What do you people expect? It’s one thing when you trot out your impotent Death to America slogans. It’s another thing altogether when you threaten and bully us personally. I’m not a wire agency reporter. When you talk to me you’re on the record. When you say “We know who you are, we read everything you write, and we know where you live,” you’re on the record. Of course I’m going to quote you. If you don’t want to look like an a******* in print, don’t act like an a****** in life.

Battle of the Classroom

LA Times:

"Two decades of political and legal maneuvering on evolution has spilled over into public schools, and biology teachers are struggling to respond. Loyal to the accounts they've learned in church, students are taking it upon themselves to wedge creationism into the classroom, sometimes with snide comments but also with sophisticated questions - and a fervent faith."

Joe Katzman:

I'll add that a teacher who doesn't know and understand science in enough depth to handle this, and can't learn the lessons of persuasion well enough to put it forward in a strong but respectful way... probably needs to find another line of work. When they're replaced by someone who can cope, the subject will become stronger. As it needs to be, these days.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Ouch.

Mexican election looming

Mexico is going to have Presidential elections this summer.  They are poised between voting for Vicente Fox’s successor in the National Action party, who would continue the support for trade with the U.S. under NAFTA and more often support the U.S. in cross border issues, and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. 

Obrador has received campaign funds from Hugo Chavez, and would represent a leftist front opposing the U.S. on many fronts.  Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico and most likely Peru.

Dick Morris discusses that a bit, as well as how legislation on immigration policy here in the U.S. might influence that election for the better or worse.

Al Qaeda fires Zarqawi?

Fired.  Shown the front door.  Given walking papers.  Canned.  Let go.  Downsized.
Seems that the leadership, if it can be called that, wasn’t really pleased with the way things were going in Iraq.

Wow! African nations are pondering the possibilities for all the former (and future) dictators who committed atrocities yet get away scott free by exiling themselves in some other country.

Hopes have been raised by the case of Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president accused of greed and savagery extraordinary even for a continent that has known some of the worst tyrants of modern times. He was extradited Wednesday to face crimes against humanity charges at a U.N.-supported Special Court for his role in fomenting civil wars in Sierra Leone.

Seriously, the UN court is finally getting serious about this after watching passively while dictators left and right fled from revolutions and then lived high on the hog in some other third world country that couldn't have cared less about harboring them.
But I'm wondering what tone this will set for fascist leaders of nations around the world, not just in Africa. Sure, the dark continent has more of them, and banana dictatorships have been more of a problem there, but there are other bad boys around the world who have to be reading the writing on the wall. Chavez of Venezuela, Kim Jong Il in North Korea, Burma, Thailand, Iran. You can't just expect to run your country into the ground and then slip away with the spoils to a happy retirement on some sandy third world beach any more.

Darfur update

Instapundit relates that Sudanese fighters have entered Chad, where the refugee camps are, and are attacking them, while the Darfur rebels are trying to recruit from those camps.
He also links to this site for Darfur happenings.
Just so you know, things are not getting any better. They're getting worse.
I watched a movie that didn't get much fanfare the other night: Tears of the Sun. Bruce Willis stars as this Navy Seal commander who leads sorties into Nigeria during the ethnic uprisings to rescue Foreign nationals. When he finds that the army is killing entire villages of people just because they are not of the ethnic group the general is in, they start killing the soldiers and get directly involved. Most of Willis' troop get killed trying to get 20 or so villagers out into neighboring Cameroon. After the film, in the commentary, Bruce and the film makers express shock that stuff like this goes on and the world doesn't do anything about it.
Welcome to the age of the UN. It doesn't shock me at all. It infuriates me. Millions of people in this world care about this sort of stuff, but politicians, who care more about their status and the balance of power (and in most cases about economics and status quo) always seem to be able to turn the blind eye. It happens more often than you might think.

The longevity genes

As we age, our bodies lose the ability to regenerate cells at the rate that they do when they are younger. Why that is and what processes guide the regeneration of cells are questions that biologists have been trying to discover for years, if not centuries. Answering this question may lead scientists to discover all sorts of treatments that could extend the human lifespan.

Yet we and other researchers have found that a family of genes involved in an organism's ability to withstand a stressful environment, such as excessive heat or scarcity of food or water, have the power to keep its natural defense and repair activities going strong regardless of age. By optimizing the body's functioning for survival, these genes maximize the individual's chances of getting through the crisis. And if they remain activated long enough, they can also dramatically enhance the organism's health and extend its life span. In essence, they represent the opposite of aging genes--longevity genes.

Scientists are now finding that individual cells divide for a period, but over time a "mother" cell, which is a cell that has divided many times, ends up having stray copies of DNA rings that have spun off the main DNA chain when it copies itself. Cells that build up stray rings become crippled and die.

But there is an enzyme in cells that controls how tightly DNA coils around host proteins, preventing them from releasing stray rings leading to the deterioration of the cell.

This sounds complicated, but the article explains it well. The authors are trying to find out and explain what produces or activates the enzymes, and they think that it is biological stressors. Things that stress our systems (not emotional or psychological stress) into fighting for survival. For instance, they discovered that reducing the caloric intake of certain simple organisms and animals, that they lived longer and were healthier.

Restricting an animal's calorie intake is the most famous intervention known to extend life span. Discovered more than 70 years ago, it is still the only one absolutely proven to work. The restricted regime typically involves reducing an individual's food consumption by 30 to 40 percent compared with what is considered normal for its species. Animals ranging from rats and mice to dogs and possibly primates that remain on this diet not only live longer but are far healthier during their prolonged lives. Most diseases, including cancer, diabetes and even neurodegenerative illnesses, are forestalled. The organism seems to be supercharged for survival.

...

The phenomenon was long attributed to a simple slowing down of metabolism--cells' production of energy from fuel molecules--and therefore reduction of its toxic by-products in response to less food.

But this view now appears to be incorrect. Calorie restriction does not slow metabolism in mammals, and in yeast and worms, metabolism is both sped up and altered by the diet. We believe, therefore, that calorie restriction is a biological stressor like natural food scarcity that induces a defensive response to boost the organism's chances of survival. In mammals, its effects include changes in cellular defenses, repair, energy production and activation of programmed cell death known as apoptosis.

They then spend much time talking about the enzyme SIRT1 and how it might be the key in how the body reacts to reduced caloric intake.

Over the course of a lifetime, cell loss from apoptosis may be an important factor in aging, particularly in nonrenewable tissues such as the heart and brain, and slowing cell death may be one way Sirtuins promote health and longevity.

So they haven’t really discovered why it is that caloric reduction causes sirtuin reaction to delay cellular decay. But it’s a really interesting article, and fascinating to think that scientists are on the verge of extending life another 20 or 30 years with the knowledge.

I’ve been finding it hard to reduce my diet lately. My lovely wife cooks way to well, and I really enjoy food. I have this tendency to dress down in cold weather, liking cold weather as I do, and I tried to convince her that perhaps I’m just stressing my body into some sort of survival mode that’s increasing my siruins, and so by wearing shorts on cold days it’s actually increasing my lifespan and improving my health. I don’t think she’s buying it.

Men's rights

In regards to the post I made last week regarding “Roe v. Wade for Men” here is another situation that is getting attention.  Unwed fathers who want to raise their children when the mother does not have very little power to override whatever the mother decides. 

In this case it’s a man who did not know that he was a father, but the mother was putting the baby up for adoption.  The father tried to get custody of the child, but was forced out of the equation because he didn’t file with the Putative Father Registry.

Today, partly as a result of several legal controversies in which unmarried fathers successfully contested adoptions, the majority of states have "putative father registries" by means of which a man can assert his paternity. But the purpose of these registries often seems to be less to protect the rights of the father than to protect the rights of everyone else: the mother who wants to give up the baby, the adoption agency, and the adoptive parents. Some would say that they also protect the rights of the child. But that depends on whether you believe that a child is better off being adopted than being raised by the biological father.

In most states, the unwed father has to file with the registry either within a certain period of the child's birth—from five to 30 days—or, as in Massachusetts, at any time before the adoption petition is filed. But neither the mother nor the adoption agency has any obligation to notify the man of the adoption, or of the fact that he is a father or father-to-be. Even when the father is notified, he may not be told about the putative father registry—which is what happened to Jones, whose attorney, Allison Perry, refers to the Florida registry as a "well-kept secret." That is the situation in most states. Not only are most men unaware of the registries' existence, even some lawyers don't know about them.

In both cases, whether the father wants responsibility or not, there’s a good argument that what’s good for the woman should be fairly applied to men.  My impression is still that “fairness”, in regards to case law, would indicate that both of these cases will end up giving men this latitude.  I’m only encouraged by the above application of men’s rights, rather than the one in my post last week, will be better for society as a whole.

Chile

According to the book, Operation World, the country to pray for on the 23rd was Chile. I didn't cover it then, but since the book has China scheduled until April 5th, I thought I would cover it now.

Chile is that long stringy looking country next to Argentina, and stretches from Peru in the north to the arctic tundra of Tierra Del Fuego at the tip of South America. It's area is about 750,000 square Km, which is just slightly bigger than California and Oregon put together. With a population of about 16 million people, it's about as well populated as the two states.
The terrain ranges from arid deserts along the coast in the north part of the country, to alpine glaciers in the Andes between Chile and Argentina, to fertile valleys and arctic tundra.

Prior to the conquest by Europeans, the narrow strip of land between the Pacific and the Andes was ruled by the Incan Empire, although it hadn't been that way for long. The Incas only captured the area early in the 15th century, just before the Spanish got there. The country became independent of Spain fairly early in the grand scheme of things. They got their independence in 1810. The northern parts of the country were captured from Peru and Bolivia in 1884, and finally subdued the Mapuche of the south, who had kept the Incas and Spanish in fits for centuries.

Chile has had a representative democracy for almost all of that 200 years, although some of the pathways have been rocky. As recently as 1970, a Marxist government came into power, but soon was resisted by the right-wing military and the CIA helped Augusto Pinochet Ugarte take hold of the government. Pinochet didn't relinquish power until 1989. His entire reign was rife with oppression and human rights abuses, which are even now still getting sorted out.

They just elected a new President, Michelle Bachelet, one of the first female presidents ever in Latin America. Although she is liberal, the relative state of politics in South America makes her look conservative.

There is still a dispute with Bolivia over northern parts of the country. Bolivia wants the territory it lost in the 1884 war with Chile because otherwise it is land locked. Evo Morales called for the OAS (Organization of American States) to help with the dispute, but Chile doesn't want the OAS to get involved.

Chile's population is 90% Christian, of various denominations (although majority Catholic). The Catholic church has been hit hard by identification with liberation theology (with it's Marxist presuppositions), and many have left to protestant denominations. The wounds of the Pinochet years are still sensitive, and continue to haunt life and politics there.

Lite blogging caused by March Madness

OK, I've gotten over Gonzaga losing in the Sweet 16 on Thursday. But only just. They end up being like the Portland Blazers every year; promise, but can't gut out the playoffs. I was pretty depressed, but I'm back now, so prep for some posts.

Men's Roe v Wade

I saw this last week on CNN, and I thought, “Oh, no.  There goes male parental responsibility.”  Really.  This guy Matt Dubay is suing  his ex-girlfriend because she is trying to get him to make child support payments for a child he plainly said he never wanted.

Jeff Jacoby states the issue pretty well.

A 25-year-old computer programmer in Michigan, Dubay wants to know why it is only women who have "reproductive rights." He is upset about having to pay child support for a baby he never wanted. Not only did his former girlfriend know he didn't want children, says Dubay, she had told him she was infertile. When she got pregnant nonetheless, he asked her to get an abortion or place the baby for adoption. She decided instead to keep her child and secured a court order requiring him to pay $500 a month in support.

Not fair, Dubay complains. His ex-girlfriend chose to become a mother. It was her choice not to have an abortion, her choice to carry the baby to term, her choice not to have the child adopted. She even had the option, under the "baby safe haven" laws most states have enacted, to simply leave her newborn at a hospital or police station. Roe v. Wade gives her and all women the right - the constitutional right! - to avoid parenthood and its responsibilities. Dubay argues that he should have the same right, and has filed a federal lawsuit that his supporters are calling "Roe v. Wade for men." Drafted by the National Center for Men, it contends that as a matter of equal rights, men who don't want a child should be permitted, early in pregnancy, to get "a financial abortion" releasing them from any future responsibility to the baby.

Does Dubay have a point? Of course. Contemporary American society does send very mixed messages about sex and the sexes. For women, the decision to have sex is the first of a series of choices, including the choice to abort a pregnancy - or, if she prefers, to give birth and collect child support from the father. For men, legal choices end with the decision to have sex. If conception takes place, he can be forced to accept the abortion of a baby he wants - or to spend at least the next 18 years turning over a chunk of his income to support a child he didn't want.

All true. But it is also true that predatory males have done enormous damage to American society, and the last thing our culture needs is one more way for men to escape accountability for the children they father. Dubay wants more than the freedom to be sexually reckless - he wants that freedom to be constitutionally guaranteed. Truly he is a child of his time, passionate on the subject of rights and eager to duck responsibility.

Truly this is just a natural extension of the legal precedents that women’s rights groups have been asking for all these years.   Instead of their choice ending with the decision to have sex, the woman is afforded all sorts of options after that fact, and the men are not. 

But if I’m indignant about that situation it’s because I’m being consistent about the issue.  Having sex comes with the risk of consequences, and considering the result of there being a new and completely unique human being growing inside the mother, the choice should be over the moment that happens.  For both participants in the sexual act.

Will pro-abortion (pro-choice if you must) groups look hypocritical unless they fully support what Dubay is fighting for?

Military casualty by President

Instapundit links to RedState, who has some interesting numbers.  Here is the breakdown of how many people died in the military during the first terms of the last four Presidents:

George W. Bush . . . . . 5187 (2001-2004)
Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . 4302 (1993-1996)
George H.W. Bush . . . . 6223 (1989-1992)
Ronald Reagan . . . . . . 9163 (1981-1984)
Not statistically that different, is it?  Take away the 2500 or so that we’ve lost in the two theaters of battle, Iraq and Afghanistan (which leaves training accidents, diseases and other causes), and Bush’s numbers drop to 2687, or half of what Clinton lost in an era of relative peace.  What does this mean?  I think that all it means is that you can’t say that more soldiers are dying now than in past presidencies.  All you are changing is the circumstance, and given the threat that certain countries in that region of the world, it’s not a bad circumstance.

Note that the size of the military was far greater in the 1980s, before significant downsizing by Clinton, which makes the numbers for Reagan and H.W. Bush smaller by proportion.

Afghanistan drops the ball

A man who converted to Christianity 16 years ago is on trial for the crime of converting from Islam, and by Sharia law that means he could get the death penalty.  The court is maintaining that since one of the articles of the Afghani constitution is that “no law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam” that means that constitutionally the man should be punished.

The article points out that their constitution also says, “followers of other faiths shall be free within the bounds of law in the exercise and performance of their religious rights.”

So we appear to have a contradiction in the fundamental law governing this new democracy.  The US should push hard to get this law clear and clarified in the direction of religious tolerance. 

Cape Verde Islands

I bought this book from my local Christian book store called Operation World. The idea of the book is to make Christians aware of the world that they live in and what the situation for Christians and other people is in every country of the world. Each day of the year is a different country (weekends are one country for both days). The idea is to pray for the peoples of each country of the world in the course of a year, for missionaries, and for non-Christians too.

For instance, today's country is the Cape Verde Islands, a small set of islands off the west coast of Africa. Specifically it's about 600 km off the coast of Senegal. The total area of the islands is about 4000 sq km, or about the size of Rhode Island, but the population is less than a half a million.
Cape Verde was discovered by the Portuguese in the 15th century, as a part of their ongoing slew of discoveries along with the Spanish. They used it as a trading center, notably slaves to America.
It became independent of Portugal in 1975 and began a slow transition that ended with multi party elections in 1990. It continues to be one of the most stable democracies in Africa. It has a President, whose powers are fairly strong due to constitutional changes in 1995, a 75 person legislature and a judicial branch. There is also a Prime Minister appointed by the President.

About 95 percent of Caboverdians are listed as Christians, but that's in name only. Tribal customs and superstitions remain a strong part of lifestyle, and so that's one of the things we are supposed to pray for: the true conversion of those who consider themselves in the faith.

Cape Verde is a member of NATO.