No, seriously: Time to kick Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus

Exactly what do Democrats gain by keeping him in?

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012.

“I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I’m going to call them as I see them,” Lieberman said in an ABC News “Subway Series” interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System.

So, Harry Reid: Joe Lieberman is working against you on domestic priorities. He’s against you on foreign policy priorities. And he’s stumping against your candidates. What’s the upside?

More of Victor Davis Hanson’s highfalutin’ neener-neenerism (And yes: He’s still a conservative Maureen Dowd)

Some commenters were mad that I equated National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson with the execrable Maureen Dowd. Only problem is: He keeps making my case for me.

Here he is today, posting at The Corner:

Since January 2009, we have seen plenty of radical Islamists apprehended in the United States while planning mayhem on a massive scale, and even more violence committed by Islamic terrorists abroad in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been a) serially assuring the Muslim world (often literally amid explosions going off nearby) that we are atoning for and hitting the reset button on the insensitive and cowboyish Bush administration that fostered unnecessary tensions, b) making the case that a kinder and gentler United States is apologizing for 200 years of assorted sins, and c) assuring Americans that the days of unnecessary, Constitution-shredding anti-terrorism policies are over (albeit while quietly keeping intact the Patriot Act, intercepts, wiretaps, renditions, tribunals, etc.). Why, then, are these darn terrorists, whether domestic or foreign, not getting the new “hope and change” message? (Or are they?)

I might not’ve noticed the post if Mike Potemra, another Corner poster, hadn’t commented:

Imagine if someone wrote in October of 2001, “The Republicans promised us that they would be better at keeping the nation safe. But we just lost 3,000 innocent lives to the terrorists — why are the terrorists not getting the ‘tough on national security’ message?” We conservatives would quite correctly have denounced this criticism as both simplistic and opportunistic – but at least it would have been criticism of an actual, you know, failure. The U.S. under Obama, in Victor’s own telling, has been busting the radical Islamists and breaking up the terrorist plots. I congratulate the president and all the federal, state, and local law-enforcement officials involved, and wish them continued success in doing so. There are legitimate questions to be raised about our current anti-terrorism policy; this approach, I think, is wrong-headed and counterproductive.

Right. Hanson has so committed himself to his arch satire of Obama that he’s satirizing success. At least he didn’t use Latin this time.

Tonight: Pedro. But first: Cliff Lee.

Yeah. This is still awesome:

Should Congress be investigating concussions in the NFL?

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on whether the NFL properly protects its players from — and educates them about — the long-term risks of concussions and head injuries to its players. Ever since the suicide of former Philadelphia Eagle Andre Waters (and the earlier tragedy of the Steelers’ Mike Webster) there’s a growing question about the damage the game takes on those who play it.

John J. Miller weighs in this morning, decrying the “war on football”:

If you don’t believe me, check out Malcom Gladwell’s latest article in The New Yorker, which compares the “suffering and destruction” in dogfighting to injuries in football. “We no longer find that kind of transaction morally acceptable in a sport,” he wrote. So football = dogfighting.

There are of course genuine concerns about the health and safety of football players at all levels, from the pros to youth leagues. But does the sport require the intervention of Congress? This isn’t a close call.

I don’t buy the football = dogfighting comparison either: Nobody forces young men to become NFL players. (Ta-Nehisi has a slightly different take.) And I think it’s true that there’s a growing movement to consider the morality and propriety of building a business that puts young men in the position of sacrificing their bodies, health and long-term brain functioning for our entertainment. The big hits that fans love may not destroy lives right away, but they can and do over the course of a player’s life. Me? I don’t really watch or enjoy watching football much anymore.

But that’s a different consideration from whether Congress should be getting involved. Miller is right: It’s not a close call. Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce — and hoo boy, the National Football League is certainly involved in interstate commerce. The players union hasn’t always looked out for the best health interest of its own constituency. So who does that leave? New York’s Anthony Weiner explains:

“This is a worker safety thing — no different than if someone was coming off the assembly line at a production plant and 20 years later, they all had arthritis in their right knee,” he added. “We’d look at it the exact same way.”

Is this the most important issue on Congress’ plate? Not by a long shot. But that doesn’t mean it is unimportant — given football’s outsize role in our culture — or inappropriate for Congress to be involved.

Goodbye, civil liberties: The FBI can investigate you for terrorism just because it feels like it

Charlie Savage uncovers the FBI guidelines for beginning terrorism investigations. (Read the document here.) Word to the wise: Never give an FBI agent a funny look.

The manual authorizes agents to open an “assessment” to “proactively” seek information about whether people or organizations are involved in national security threats.

Agents may begin such assessments against a target without a particular factual justification. The basis for such an inquiry “cannot be arbitrary or groundless speculation,” the manual says, but the standard is “difficult to define.”

Assessments permit agents to use potentially intrusive techniques, like sending confidential informants to infiltrate organizations and following and photographing targets in public.

If you cannot define the standard, you cannot violate the standard. Basically, this is a blank check to the FBI to investigate whomever it pleases for any reason — or no reason — at all. But the FBI denies that will happen:

But Valerie Caproni, the F.B.I.’s general counsel, said the bureau has adequate safeguards to protect civil liberties as it looks for people who could pose a threat.

“Those who say the F.B.I. should not collect information on a person or group unless there is a specific reason to suspect that the target is up to no good seriously miss the mark,” Ms. Caproni said. “The F.B.I. has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security — not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.”

I take seriously the need to prevent terror attacks. But: The FBI ought to have specific reasons to start delving into the lives of its citizens. Terrorism prevention by hunch will absolutely have bad results.

She also said that the F.B.I. takes seriously its duty to protect freedom while preventing terrorist attacks. “I don’t like to think of us as a spy agency because that makes me really nervous,” she said. “We don’t want to live in an environment where people in the United States think the government is spying on them. That’s an oppressive environment to live in and we don’t want to live that way.”

Indeed.

The meaning of Dover: Afghanistan is Obama’s war now

Here’s a picture that you never saw during the Bush Administration: The commander-in-chief at Dover Air Force base, solemnly welcoming home America’s fallen dead.

I’m certain that some folks on the right will pooh-pooh President Obama’s trip to Dover as making it “all about him.” (Though reaction at The Corner is surprisingly restrained.)

To me, this is the biggest signal that Obama understands — whatever his cherished domestic priorities — that he is a war president, like it or not. Allowing himself to be photographed with a flag-draped coffin shows that he understands that he is accountable for the results of that war: Not just to the American public, but to every family that sacrifices a son or daughter because of the president’s decision to continue to commit troops to battle. And that, in turn, signals that he won’t make his war decisions based on how well it’s polling, but with the safety of Americans — at home and abroad — in mind.

At least, that’s what I hope. It could be that the president doubles down in Afghanistan, and while I think that would be a mistake, I have renewed confidence that he understands the stakes.

National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson is just Maureen Dowd with a better knowledge of Latin

If you’ve never heard of Hanson, here’s an excellent and representative example of his writing for National Review’s blog:

Morituri te salutant [Victor Davis Hanson]

The Victory Column and vero possumus megalomania of 2008 have now led to the deification of Obama as our new Caesar, man of letters (who, in the ancient tradition, enslaved a million in Gaul), and to his communications czar’s praising the embattled Mao (her favorite “political philosopher”) for leading China’s Communist legions to glorious victory over those running-dog Nationalists. Add in the classical-column props at the convention and the Moses-like talk about the seas’ receding and the planet’s cooling, and I think this administration assumes we have a Holy Man in the White House. And when you consider the depiction of Fox News as heresy, Rush as the anti-Christ, and the NEA as the medieval church, it all gets, well, sort of creepy.

He does this kind of thing regularly. He’s supposedly an intellectual because he’s written a book about military history (which was hilariously and devastatingly debunked by an actual military historian) but this stuff is really more his stock in trade these days: Every few days, he writes 200 words or so mocking Obama as a “messiah” — and ask yourself when, despite the missteps, anybody in Obama’s crew has ever referred to Fox News, Limbaugh or the NEA in anything approaching religious terms — collects his National Review paycheck and returns a few days later to do the same thing.

It’s all rather Dowdian, his obsession with issues of personality and symbology instead of using his classics education to actually illuminate his readers on the issues of the day. It makes for rather flamboyant reading experience, but I don’t come away feeling like I’ve learned something or heard an argument that I have to carefully consider or respond to. It’s highfalutin’ neener-neenerism masquerading as something deeper.

The sexist wackjobs at StandYourGround.com

It’s sometimes enlightening and sometimes frightening to see how your work gets used. Today: Kind of frightening. Apparently my post mocking John Derbyshire for his sexism was used as a jumping-off point for a thread at StandYourGround.com, a website that appears to be a gathering point for men who feel emasculated by women having, you know, human rights.

Question of the day? Whether women deserve the right to vote. (”Suffrage,” of course, spelled “souffrage.) Seriously. And here is one of the more egregious — but by no means atypical — responses. Warning: This is as offensive as it gets.

Perhaps women should EARN the right to vote same as men? Perhaps women should have to sign up for selective service and face the same mortal dangers in combat that men face? For those that think women can’t cut it, let’s go another way. Selective Service for women would involve creating a Department of Forced Intimacy where those chosen by lottery would be required to perform sex for the male population at large. Rape, you say? Forced penetration is a heinous act, you say? What say you of a heavy piece of metal ploughing through a male body shredding tendons, muscle, bone, brains, etc? Sounds like forced penetration to me. Spending a day on your back for patriotic reasons sounds like a day at the beach in comaparison. No, women HAVE NOT earned the right to vote. It was handed to them as is any other pussy pass. AmeriKa has exponentially gone downhill since. 

Nice, right? Now of course, the United States as a matter of policy doesn’t actually let women serve in combat. (The reality is a little different.) But no mind: Women don’t deserve full citizenship because the government … doesn’t give them the opportunity to serve as full citizens. So the solution? Rape. Of course.

Let’s be clear: This is a fringe, crazy, stupid and venal position to hold — and StandYourGround.com’s sexist wackjobbery doesn’t represent mainstream “conservatism” any more than Code Pink represents my anti-war views. I feel reasonably sure Derbyshire, despite his sexism, would disdain these folks — even though his work gives a veneer of respectable conservative intellectualism to their discussions. But it’s terrifying to see such such naked misogyny on display.

Joe Lieberman will join Republican filibuster of health reform. He should just join the Republicans already.

Politico:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid’s has said the Senate bill will.

It’s time for Democrats to kick Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus and strip him of every perk of seniority he gets from them.

He’s with Republicans on the war. He’s with them in the presidential campaign — he was almost the GOP vice presidential nominee! — and now he’s with them on the most significant domestic policy debate of this generation. I wouldn’t suggest kicking him out if he was merely voting against the public option. The fact that he’s willing to filibuster, however, means he’s of no use to Democrats whatsoever. Get rid of him.

The most popular story at the Los Angeles Times is the news of its demise

A screen grab from its “most-viewed” list: