Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

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Our image in the Muslim world would probably improve if we stopped killing so many Muslims. Instead we’re ramping it up.

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Combat operations have concluded for:

1. Marine Sgt. Mark A. Bradley, 25, of Cuba, NY.
2. Army Pvt. Ryan J. Larson, 19, of Friendship, WI.
3. Army Pfc. Eric D. Soufrine, 20, of Woodbridge, CT.
4. Army Staff Sgt. Jeremy A. Katzenberger, 26, of Weatherby Lake, MO.
5. Army Sgt. Glenn M. Sewell, 23, of Live Oak, TX.
6. Army Staff Sgt. Nicholas P. Bellard, 26, of El Paso, TX.
7. Marine Lance Cpl. Jason D. Hill, 20, of Poway, CA.
8. Marine Lance Cpl. Sean M. N. O’Connor, 22, of Douglas, Wy.
9. Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua B. McDaniels, 21, of Dublin, OH.
10. Army Capt. Michael W. Newton, 30, of Newport News, VA.
11. Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas S. O’Brien, 21, of Stanley, NC.
12. Marine Cpl. Matthew T. Richard, 21, of Acadia, LA.
13. Army Pfc. Matthew J. England, 22, of Gainesville, MO.
14. Army Pfc. Michael C. Olivieri, 26, Chicago, IL.
15. Army Spc. Robert P. Hartwick, 20, of Rockbridge, OH.
16. Army Spc. Christopher B. Fishbeck, 24, of Victorville, CA.
17. Army Spc. Michael B. Cook Jr., 27, of Middletown, OH.
18. Army Spc. Emilio J. Campo Jr., 20, of Madelia, MN.
19. Marine Cpl. William J. Woitowicz, 23, of Middlesex, MA.
20. Army Chief Warrant Officer Bradley J. Gaudet, 31, of Gladewater, TX.
21. Army Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth R. White, 35, of Fort Collins, CO.
22. Marine Sgt. Joseph M. Garrison, 27, of New Bethlehem, PA.
23. Army Pfc. Robert L. Voakes Jr., 21, of L’Anse, MI.
24. Army Spc. Devin A. Snyder, 20, of Cohocton, NY.
25. Army Sgt. Joshua D. Powell, 28, of Quitman, TX.
26. Army Sgt. Christopher R. Bell, 21, of Golden, MS.
27. Army Spc. Marcos A. Cintron, 32, of Orlando, FL.

Via.

Days since Washington Post has updated its Faces of the Fallen site: 17.

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714,137. Proud. Of. Buckeyes.

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The kids are alright.

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Quotable. Athenae:

I say shrug off, because in any system, there is gonna be some gaming. There’s gonna be somebody who is getting more than you think he should. There’s gonna be somebody getting something you think she doesn’t deserve. There’s gonna be people working it, because people are jerks a lot of the time and just because you can’t build a jerk-proof system doesn’t mean there should be no system at all. It means you should continually try to make the system as jerk-proof as possible, while still helping folks who need it.

dakine01:

You’d think the American public would be demanding government action: a new WPA for the long-term unemployed, a second stimulus to make up for the shortfall in purchasing power, stronger safety nets. But we’re not hearing much clamor for any of this. One reason is that those who remain unemployed have little or no political clout.

And digby with a priceless headline.

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Kay on private education:

For-profit charter schools have been in operation in Ohio for more than a decade. They are not a thought experiment. They are not an abstract hypothetical. They are not just a topic being batted around at various “reform roundtables”. They have an extensive record of failure. Why we are pretending this is all just in the discussion stage is beyond me. The jury really isn’t still out. In Ohio, the jury came straggling back in years ago, and the verdict isn’t good.

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Nice post from Doghouse Riley on David Brooks: “Apparently ‘pundit’ is synonymous with ‘spieler of Conventional Wisdom’, and ‘moderate Republican’ with ‘guy who denies any and all responsibility for his own apodictic political pronouncements’. Hamilton! National Greatness! That’s not a philosophical position, it’s the secret password for the Perpetual Do-Over Club.” Via.

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Cleveland businesses supporting the destruction of collective bargaining. Via.

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“For what it might be worth, this is what hard times has taught me:”

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Municipal broadband is such an unassailably good idea that cable companies can only offer brute opposition in response.

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Citizen journalists have a long, hard fight ahead.

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Phil Gramm and the Kochs might be the best friends renewable energy ever had. Deregulation, speculation and price instability is creating a huge, unmet demand for locally produced energy that’s not traded anywhere. Of course, some speculation is more evil than others.

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John Cole has a tendency - particularly when leaping to the defense of the president - to not use the rigorous logic that he usually brings to bear on his posts. For example, when it was revealed that Obama overruled the Office of Legal Counsel on Libya and just go to war anyway, Cole twice rationalizes it as a case of the president receiving conflicting legal advice and choosing that which seemed best. (Even that rosy scenario seems more like executive branch forum shopping.) One lawyer says this, another says that, what can one do but sigh and resign oneself to picking one and ignoring the other?

The lawyers in question have different functions though:

The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) assists the Attorney General of the United States in his function as legal adviser to the President and all the executive branch agencies, hence the appellation “the president’s law firm.”[2]. The OLC drafts legal opinions of the Attorney General and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the Counsel to the President, the various agencies of the executive branch, and offices within the Department of Justice. Such requests typically deal with legal issues of particular complexity and importance or about which two or more agencies are in disagreement. The Office also is responsible for providing legal advice to the executive branch on all constitutional questions and reviewing pending legislation for constitutionality. The decisions of the Office are binding on all executive agencies.

And:

The Office of Counsel to the President was created in 1943, and is responsible for advising on all legal aspects of policy questions, legal issues arising in connection with the President’s decision to sign or veto legislation, ethical questions, financial disclosures, and conflicts of interest during employment and post employment. The Counsel’s Office also helps define the line between official and political activities, oversees executive appointments and judicial selection, handles Presidential pardons, reviews legislation and Presidential statements, and handles lawsuits against the President in his role as President, as well as serving as the White House contact for the Department of Justice.

Now come on: which of those seems suited to weigh in on whether the war is legal? Cole couldn’t have spent two and a half minutes getting a summary of each shop’s purpose in his rush to declare it all an unresolvable muddle?

There is exactly one agency charged with advising the president on broad issues of executive authority and Constitutionality. It’s the OLC. He doesn’t do anyone any favors by pretending otherwise.

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“His post is not even an argument, it’s a tribal signal to the insider class that, though he may have liberal sympathies, he can be trusted at crunch time.” Via.

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Re: the most covered story in politics this week (and I’m not fucking linking to it): “Part of the sadly underrated process of growing up is realizing that people, the world and life are no less beautiful and amazing for being imperfect.”

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ECONNED EXCERPT from page: pp. 120-1:

Joseph Stiglitz, in analyzing the failure of Russian reforms, makes a key observation that “free markets” advocates are fixated on their particular approach, rather than the objectives of creating a healthy, dynamic economy:

It is not just the creation of market economy that matters, but the improvement of living standards and the establishment of foundations of sustainable, equitable and democratic development.

Stiglitz is being too charitable. It was, like Chile, a “(fantasized) ends justify the means” approach. Wayne Merry, the chief political analyst in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the beginning of privatization, said:

The US government chose the economic over the political. We chose the freeing of prices, privatization of industry, and the creation of a really unfettered, unregulated capitalism, and essentially hoped that the rule of law, civil society, and representative democracy would develop somehow automatically out of that.

Weimar Germany illustrates vividly that economic dislocation can lead a democracy to turn to the security of authoritarianism. Why should a country that had never experienced self-rule suddenly have it spring forth full blown, like Athena from Zeus’s forehead, especially when order had already broken down?