"As a veteran, I certainly recognize that this weekend's violence and killing of Chris Kyle were a tragic and sad event."

"My condolences and prayers go out to Mr. Kyle’s family. Unconstitutional and unnecessary wars have endless unintended consequences. A policy of non-violence, as Christ preached, would have prevented this and similar tragedies."

Ron Paul, on Facebook.

Via Memeorandum.

The America Christopher Columbus discovered on October 12, 1492 was an island in what is today the Bahamas.

The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is today's "History of" country. It was an island that was inhabited by the Lucayans, who called it Guanahani. The Lucayans had canoed over to the Bahama islands between 500 and 800 A.D.

The Bahamas held little of interest to the Spanish other than as a source of slave labor. Nearly the entire population of Lucayans (almost 40,000 people total) were deported over the next 30 years. When the Spanish decided to evacuate the remaining Lucayans to Hispaniola in 1520, they could find only eleven in all of the Bahamas. The islands remained abandoned and depopulated for 130 years afterwards....

English settlers began arriving in 1648. The first, who called themselves Eleutherians, were farmers who didn't do too well. The New Providence settlement, begun in 1666 "made their living from the sea, salvaging (mainly Spanish) wrecks, making salt, and taking fish, turtles, conchs and ambergris."

Conflicts with the Spanish ensued over this salvaging of Spanish wrecks, and in 1685, the Spanish burned down New Providence and Eleuthera and these places were "largely abandoned." Five years later, the place was full of English privateers, who — after England made peace with France — became pirates. Then — if I'm reading this right — the pirates got back to being privateers or back again to being pirates depending on whether there was there was a war going on.

If you want to investigate the privateer/pirate distinction, you can look here.

Nowadays, the Bahamas seems like a nice place to go for vacation, and it looks like the tourists like the pirate-related attractions, like the Pirates of Nassau Museum, which invites you to "plunder" its gift shop.

Count back 7 decades to appreciate the euphemistic understatement.

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 is to be awarded to the European Union (EU). The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe."

If Obama talked like this in 2008...

... how can it be awesomely awful for candidate Romney to articulate his criticism of the present administration?

Video via Ed Morrissey ("I think that policy in Iraq and Afghanistan were perfectly acceptable topics for political debate at that time"), via Instapundit (FLASHBACK: Major-Party Nominee Uses War Deaths To Score Political Points. Yeah, but he was a Democrat, and black, and hence above media criticism.").

Can we get some consistency from the big-media pundits? Shouldn't the NYT, for example, have noticed by now that new media is dogging them, and we have YouTube? I mean, they've got to feel how it's screwed up the economics of newspapers. But to ignore the way they undermine their credibility — don't they see how damaging it is to the political power they clearly want? That is, if they want that power, they need to make sure it is not clear.

The more MSM lets their lust show, the less likely we highly selective swing voters will spend any time with you. You have to insinuate yourself into our minds, and you've triggered our resistance. We're turned off. Yes, the base loves what you're saying, but they didn't need to be seduced.

"Romney leads by nine among men but is down by one among women."

Says Rasmussen, in its announcement of the daily presidential tracking poll. The basic numbers are the same as yesterday: Romney 48%, Obama 44%. This is the first day in which the tracking poll — which includes 3 days — is based entirely on post-convention polling.

I'm very interested in the way the gender politics game is playing out. It seems that the Democrats have pushed very hard making a special offer to women — positing a "war on women" and so forth. But they're only up one point with women, which seems to be less than the usual skewing of females toward the Democratic Party. One might anticipate that the war-on-women politics would repel some men, but it looks like it's failing to work on women too.

You've got Republicans getting a 10-point advantage in the gender gap, when it's the other party doing the gender politics. Does that mean gender politics is now a bad strategy? Not necessarily. Obama might be doing even worse without it. (That's an argument in the pattern of Obama's argument about the economy: You're not better off than you were 4 years ago, but the economy would have plunged worse without the help I've been providing.)

It's also possible that gender politics can work for the Democrats, but they haven't been doing it right this time. What's distinctive about the way they've been doing it in 2012?

First, they're doing it so intensely, with the "war" trope. That's not believable, and it makes it too obvious that they're mostly begging us to look at this and not the economy, when everyone — women included — thinks the economy is the main concern.

Second, they seem to be offering special benefits for women, rather than presenting general issues in an emotionally empathetic way that appeals to women. For example, in the past, we've seen Democrats talk about the wars in terms of tired, worn-out soldiers who need to be returned to the care of their families. This year, the Democrats are talking about seemingly free birth control treatments — something for women that men don't get.

Perhaps it's caring and altruism that resonates with women, not special benefits for us. We like to think of ourselves as unselfish, trying to help others. That's the classic pull of the liberal agenda. Maybe it doesn't work to give us stuff. You need to make us feel that we are giving.

If you're going to pander, you have to pander the right way.

200 years ago today, who won the War of 1812?

We like to think we did, but...

[F]or some Canadians, the war is a seminal conflict and its commemoration an important event. Richard Merritt remembers being fed cookies and tales of Canadian heroics in 1812 by "elderly aunts" in Niagara-on-the-Lake, next to Fort George....

Presentation boards inside a former Fort George barrack aim to tell the history from all perspectives. But as he read of America's "overwhelming" numerical advantage and its "shameful retreat" from Fort George, Jim Auker, from Elkhart, Ind., thought: "There's a dig." The presentation's conclusion: "The United States did not succeed in conquering Canada or achieve the 'final expulsion of England from the American continent'."

After reports of burned Korans, "a deadly chain of events that has not only inflamed tensions but possibly exposed a crippling weakness" in the Afghanistan exit strategy.

WaPo puts it this way:

The killing of the U.S. officers on Saturday occurred two days after a man wearing an Afghan army uniform fatally shot two American troops in eastern Afghanistan, the latest in a string of incidents in recent months in which local security forces have turned against NATO personnel.

Some of the killings have been perpetrated by Afghan troops whose loyalties lay with the Taliban. But, in most cases, the attacks have been the result of tensions between U.S. forces and Afghans who felt as though they had suffered an insult to themselves or their faith.

But Obama apologized. The article doesn't mention Obama. Only "Senior Obama administration officials," who, we're told, "have sought to reassure a war-weary American public that the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan would draw to a close by the middle of next year." The middle of next year, that is, after the election. We weren't supposed to be thinking about Afghanistan during the election season.

Here's the NYT article:

American officials sought to reassure both Afghanistan’s government and a domestic audience on Sunday that the United States remained committed to the war after the weekend killing of two American military officers inside the Afghan Interior Ministry and days of deadly anti-American protests.

But behind the public pronouncements, American officials described a growing concern, even at the highest levels of the Obama administration and Pentagon, about the challenges of pulling off a troop withdrawal in Afghanistan that hinges on the close mentoring and training of army and police forces.

This article does refer to Obama, his apology for the Koran burnings, and the impending presidential election — in the context of things Romney and Santorum said. Romney's comment is so bland, it's not worth quoting. Santorum, in what the NYT calls "harsh criticism," faults Obama for apologizing when the burning of the Korans was not an intentional display of disrespect.

Here's the full transcript of what Santorum said (on ABC's "This Week," i.e., the George Stephanopoulos show). Santorum, referring to the Koran burnings, says "a mistake was made, clearly a mistake, which we should not have apologized for."

[S]ay it's unfortunate, say that this is something that should have been done.... But to apologize for something that was not an intentional act is something that the President of the United States... suggests that there is somehow blame, this is somehow that we did something wrong in the sense of doing a deliberate act wrong. I think it shows that we are -- that I think it shows weakness. I think what we say is, look, what happened here was wrong. But it was -- it was not something that was deliberate, and we are -- we -- you know, we take responsibility for it. It's unfortunate. But to apologize, I think, lends credibility that somehow or another that it was more than that.

Do we have any actual experts on Afghan culture who can tell us what apologies mean to Afghans? Obviously, we have trouble understanding what counts as a manifestation of disrespect and why it inflames the Afghan people to such a degree, or whether it's bogus inflammation used as an excuse for violence, so I have no confidence that Obama or Santorum is any good at predicting the effect of apologizing or not apologizing on the events in Afghanistan.

Both of them seem to take a position on apologizing that has to do with their American cultural values. As Americans, we can talk about the meaning of apologies and form opinions about whether Obama or Santorum has the better philosophy. But choosing a President, I want someone effective at doing what is in American interests around the world.

Obama came into office claiming some special insight into how we are perceived in other countries, and he made us feel that he would improve these perceptions. This has not happened.

Santorum offers a different approach. Perhaps reciting and adhering to clearly stated American values would work better than Obama's apologies for America. But I don't see any special understanding or expertise in either of these men. They are just 2 American men behaving according to their instincts and ideology.

December 7, 1941 — 70 years ago, today...

... 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time:

About 120 survivors will join Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, military leaders and civilians to observe a moment of silence in Pearl Harbor... the moment the attack began seven decades ago....

President Barack Obama hailed veterans of the bombing in a statement proclaiming Wednesday "National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day."

"Their tenacity helped define the Greatest Generation and their valor fortified all who served during World War II. As a nation, we look to December 7, 1941, to draw strength from the example set by these patriots and to honor all who have sacrificed for our freedoms," he said.

One survivor's story:

“As quiet a day as you’ve ever seen... Beautiful sunshine, nothing going on.”

Suddenly, not far from his seat in the dining hall: bang, bang, bang.

“Somebody says, ‘It’s the Chinese New Year,’ ” he said.

But then, a bullet broke through the glass window of the dining hall. Another flew just past [Army Private Francis ] Stueve and knocked the butter dish off the table.

The survivors who remain are now very old:

For more than half a century, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered here every Dec. 7 to commemorate the attack by the Japanese that drew the United States into World War II. Others stayed closer to home for more intimate regional chapter ceremonies...

But no more. The 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will be the last one marked by the survivors’ association....

“We had no choice,” said William H. Eckel, 89....

“We just ran out of gas, that’s what it amounted to,” [said Harry R. Kerr.]  “We felt we ran a good course for 70 years. Fought a good fight. We have no place to recruit people anymore: Dec. 7 only happened on one day in 1941.”

There's something I like about Newt Gingrich.

He reminds me of a law professor....



Most of the candidates will listen to a question and then answer some question they wish they'd been asked. This is a standard approach to answering questions on television. It's a way to avoid letting the questioner control you, and you create an opportunity to say what you want to say.

That's not what Newt does. He listens to the precise question asked and examines it, then works out, before our eyes, what is wrong with that question and what the real issue is. He has a depth of understanding and flexibility of mind that allows him to do that, he cares about doing that accurately and well, and he has the style to want to perform reasoning for us. I like that. I try to do that all the time in class, and I know how hard it is, what presence of mind and grasp of the material it takes.

For example, in that little clip, the moderator Scott Pelley asks:

As president of the United States, would you sign that death warrant for an American citizen overseas who you believe is a terrorist suspect?

Pelley has framed a yes-or-know question, and instead of saying "yes" (or "absolutely" as Mitt Romney just did), Newt says:

Well, he's not a terrorist suspect. He's a person who was found guilty under review of actively seeking the death of Americans. 

Newt says that in a puzzled and slightly peeved way that creates drama about whether he might be confused or combative. It puts us on edge. And Pelley is now required to speak again. Newt didn't launch into a lecture. He even ceded some time to Pelley, who says:

Not found guilty by a court, sir. 

Gingrich doles out a dollop of information:

He was found guilty by a panel that looked at it and reported to the president. 

Pelley is now put in the role of the student in a dialogue:

Well, that's extrajudicial. (CROSSTALK)  It's not the rule of law. (APPLAUSE) 

Look at Pelley at this point — 0:32 — he's smiling and glowing, thinking (perhaps) that he's doing well in class, and the audience applauds for him. Gingrich swoops in:

It is the rule of law. That is explicitly false. It is the rule of law. If you engage in war against the United States, you are an enemy combatant. You have none of the civil liberties of the United States. You cannot go to court. 

Now, the applause is for Newt. The dramatic moment has happened, and now the professor makes it all very clear with an instant, crisp mini-lecture on the dimensions of the rule of law:

No, let me be -- let me be very clear about this on two levels. There is a huge gap here that, frankly, far too many people get confused over. Civil defense, criminal defense is a function of being within the American law. Waging war on the United States is outside criminal law. It is an act of war and should be dealt with as an act of war, and the correct thing in an act of war is to kill people who are trying to kill you.

There's more applause. We hear one of the other candidates say "Well said. Well said." I think it was Mitt — Mitt, who had just been asked the same question. Mitt answered the question clearly and cleanly. ("If there's someone
that's going to join with a group like Al Qaida that declares war on America,
and we're in a war with that entity, then, of course, anyone who is
bearing arms with that entity is fair game for the United States of America.") Credit to Mitt for openly admiring the style and substance of Professor Gingrich.

IN THE COMMENTS: John Althouse Cohen said:

It sounds to me like Perry is the one who said, "Well said, well said."

On another relistening, I agree.

"This is snow, it's not going to kill us. What they're doing to us will kill us. What they're doing to our world."

Winter comes early to Zuccotti Park, where — as the apparently editorless New York Magazine puts it — tents "are explicitly forgiven." 

While the occupation's ranks have thinned, the hard-core activists are sticking around, huddling in a large central tent and distributing donated sleeping bags. "It's like Valley Forge out there now," a beaming middle-aged finance facilitator named Mercury John told me. "But it's a beautiful day ... We'll keep splashing in the puddles."

Valley Forge. Except you have the option to go inside whenever you want, and you're getting something to eat besides "fire cake,' a tasteless mixture of flour and water." And you don't have typhoid and dysentery. And no one is expecting you to fight a war. But yeah, it's like Valley Forge.

That beaming middle-aged finance facilitator isn't the first one to liken the plight of the occupiers to Valley Forge. Here's an AP bit from 3 days ago:

“Everyone’s been calling it our Valley Forge moment,” said Michael McCarthy, a former Navy medic in Providence. “Everybody thought that George Washington couldn’t possibly survive in the Northeast.”

Actually, it was easier for the Valley Forge folks to put up with the harsh conditions. There weren't buildings all around that they could duck into if they lost heart.

"Eat debt, screw you, Occupy UW" — the student debt wing of the Occupy [Your City] movement.

That was the chant yesterday as 20 students marched from Union South to the Memorial Union, here at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. 20 isn't very much, but it was Monday morning, that is, it was half past noon in a city where weekends are (perhaps) grueling (that Hail Mary pass!). 20 students when you expect — what? — 100. That's rough.

It reminded me of the old anti-war slogan: "Suppose they gave a war and no one came?” The phrase was used in the 1968 Monkees song "Zor and Zam," and their video of the song looks something like the protest marches I've seen in Madison this year.



Why aren't students more interested in protesting about student problems?

UW freshman Noah Phillips, who led the march, said it is difficult for most to attain a college degree without enormous debt in the current economic climate.

Students are in a difficult bind. If you're hyper-aware of this problem and you're still here in school, racking up the debt, do you march around with signs or do you get much more serious and study as hard as you can? That is, do you visualize your plight as a something that aligns you with others and put your efforts into seeking political and social change, or do you get fired up about your individual cause and do what you can to win in what looks like a very tough fight for economic gain? (Or do you just drag on, avoiding politics and taking your studies and your career one step at a time, and hope for the best?)

Associated Students of Madison member Justin Bloesch said "What we were told … is that if we work hard, if we stay honest, if we shine by our merit then this society will take care of us; that's the American Dream"...

Who told you that? This society will take care of you? Shine by your merit? How did the "American Dream" evolve into that message?

"But if that's ever how the game worked, that's not how it works now."

Well, it's not really how the "game" ever worked. Bloesch seems to be thinking about those public-school games where everybody wins: if you play and don't cheat, you are a winner.

Phillips said the movement, which recruited demonstrators via Facebook, hopes to build student participation in upcoming weeks by passing out flyers and speaking in lectures....

You might not even win at protesting. Even if you follow the rules of organizing: Facebook page, check... build momentum...

Once participation is higher, Phillips said the movement can take larger actions such as "occupying a building" or forming a teach in.

Occupying a building... that really does sound like 1968.

"The Pentagon already includes unmanned drone attacks in its arsenal."

"Next up: housefly-sized surveillance craft, shape-changing 'chemical robots,' and tracking agents sprayed from the sky."

The future of war.

Madison Peace March: The Movie.

Meade shot the video. I edited. This is what it looked like today on State Street and up on the Capitol Square for the big anti-war march. I make an appearance in the final frames.

The anti-war march — today in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Hope is in the street not the White House."



"Who lied? Who died? Who pays? Who profits?"



"Birds not bombs."



"Corporations get handouts/We get shut out."



"Occupy the World."



"U.S. empire abroad requires austerity at home! Bring all troops & dollars home now."/"Still waiting to get trickled down on."



"Soon the poor will have nothing left to eat but the rich."



Following a man in a badger hat and rainbow fingerless gloves, a woman eats from a bag of popcorn:



"The world is a dangerous place to live... not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."



"End the wars," a sign clothes-pinned onto a marijuana flag, held by a man wearing a "No more drug war" T-shirt.



"It's time for peace" (and also time for the Farmers' Market, which is going on at the Capitol Square at the same time the peace march arrives).

"The country I come from is called the Midwest....."

"With God On Our Side" is a great, if over-familiar Dylan song, but I love this cover version by Bon Iver, performed last week in Portland, which you can listen to here.

"It's as if, despite all their pieties, finger-pointing, and moralizing, they were just hypocritical shills for the Democrats all along..."

"... Record numbers of U.S. troops are dying under Obama, but the anti-war movement is nowhere to be found.“

McConnell: "But I do think there is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, asked about “the isolationist streak of some in the Republican Party." The subject is Libya and the War Powers Act.

I’m not sure that these kind of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president. But I do think there is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side. So I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration, but party loyalty tended to mute them. So yeah, I think there are clearly differences and I think a lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House, feel more free to express their reservations which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration.

Thoughtful and honest, right? Is it also disturbing? Should members of Congress be expected to take a consistent position with respect to presidential power and the military? Or does the need for a check on the President justify the pressure from whichever party happens to be the opposing party?

"You had a very specific vision for your work and for your life, and that vision included your death."

"It didn’t have to, but that’s how it turned out. I’m so sorry, Tim. The conversation we could have had about this crazy stunt of yours! Christ, I would have yelled at you, but you know that. Getting mad was how we kept each other safe, how we kept the other from doing something stupid."

Obama's Libya adventure does not fit the War Powers Resolution... and can only be supported by the most extreme view of presidential power.

Lawprof Bruce Ackerman explains:

After the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which granted the president the power to act unilaterally for 60 days in response to a "national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." The law gave the chief executive an additional 30 days to disengage if he failed to gain congressional assent during the interim.  

But... these provisions have little to do with the constitutionality of the Libyan intervention, since Libya did not attack our "armed forces." The president failed to mention this fundamental point in giving Congress notice of his decision on Monday, in compliance with another provision of the resolution. Without an armed "attack," there is no compelling reason for the president to cut Congress out of a crucial decision on war and peace....

The War Powers Resolution doesn't authorize a single day of Libyan bombing. But it does provide an escape hatch, stating that it is not "intended to alter the constitutional authority of the Congress or of the President." So it's open for Obama to assert that his power as commander in chief allows him to wage war without Congress, despite the Constitution's insistence to the contrary....

Many modern presidents have made such claims, and Harry Truman acted upon this assertion in Korea. But it's surprising to find Obama on the verge of ratifying such precedents. He was elected in reaction to the unilateralist assertions of John Yoo and other apologists for George W. Bush-era illegalities. Yet he is now moving onto ground that even Bush did not occupy....

The War Powers Resolution cedes power to the President in the very place where the argument for independent presidential power is strong: When there is a national security emergency. If you don't fit the War Powers Resolution, because it's not an emergency, the argument for independent power is at its weakest.

Here's the part of my diavlog with Bob Wright where we talk about this issue. Note how, challenged, Bob comes up with a generic neocon argument about how more democracy in the world is good for national security. I press him about how there needs to be an emergency to justify not including Congress in the decisionmaking. (I've let this clip go on a bit, so it's a little long, but I purport to tell you the whole story of constitutional law, so it's actually super-concise.)

"Rave On" — a new Bloggingheads with me and Bob Wright.

Topics:

• Ann’s family feud with liberals, Rob Farley, et al.
• Bob defends Libyan intervention
• Is there an Obama Doctrine?
• Could the Supreme Court stop a war?
• Creepy Wisconsin protester threatens Ann
• Bob vs. Ann on the meaning of free speech