The awkward debate moment has garnered significant negative publicity for Gov. Brewer, and it was embarrassing to be sure. That said, the moment is being treated by many as if it is a good reason not to vote for Gov. Brewer. The gaffe was amateurish (surprising for a sitting governor), but it’s difficult to extrapolate from that single moment that she isn’t capable of being a governor. She is, after all, already a governor. Perhaps if she were relatively unknown and her abilities were more in question the moment would have greater significance, but she is in a different place than a political neophyte.

Far more troubling was her refusal to renounce her earlier claim that illegal immigrants are beheading individuals in the Arizona desert. Her claims of beheadings have not been corroborated by any police or other government official, yet she continues to make such claims as support for Arizona’s enactment of tougher illegal immigration laws.

During the debate, Governor Brewer was challenged several times to provide evidence of beheadings or to retract her statement. Her debate opponent, Attorney General Terry Goddard (D-AZ), argued that the Governor was harming Arizona business and tourism by painting a false picture of violence in Arizona. While the Governor’s statements may, in fact, be harming Arizona business and tourism, more significantly she is falsely accusing a racial minority of committing heinous acts of violence. Her motive in spreading such falsities appears to be to increase public support for Arizona’s tougher illegal immigration laws by inciting anger against a racial minority.

The video below, taken immediately after the debate, strongly suggests that Brewer knows her claims are false, and yet she still will not retract her statements:

Willful obstinacy is never a good quality to possess, particularly by an individual who asks the public to vest her with the full executive power of the state. It’s even worse when willful obstinacy is used as a tool to attack a minority population. Her willingness to resort to such falsities says far more about her fitness for office than any opening statement debate gaffe ever could.

The President’s declaration of the “end of combat operations” is significant, but its impact will most be felt by Americans who have little or no direct stake in Iraq.  For many, if not most, Americans, the moment will spark brief interest with some political and economic ramifications and then shall largely pass.   For the Americans who have loved ones serving in the armed forces, the declaration may feel like semantics over substance.  Tens of thousands of American soldiers remain in harm’s way in Iraq and will for the foreseeable future.  Declaring combat to be over isn’t likely to mean combat is over.

It’s hard to fathom that two of the three longest wars ever fought in US history were fought concurrently.  It’s even harder to fathom that for one of those engagements, the rationale for the war remains murky to this day.  The Bush administration never settled on one consistent justification for the Iraq invasion: preemptive strike against a nation colluding with al-Qaeda to destroy the US; a need to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction within Iraq; Iraq’s failure to abide by UN resolutions and its abuse of an oil for food program; the need to remove a brutal dictator….  On top of those justifications, commentators have posited several additional theories (with varying degrees of credibility) for the US engagement in Iraq: oil, a need by Bush to complete work his father began, a belief that democracy could be planted in Iraq and then cultivated throughout the Middle East, and more.

If the objectives of the war were murky, so, too, was the identity of the enemy itself.  The enemy was self-selecting, and lived within the neighborhood of the ally.  The only uniform characteristic of the enemy was allegiance to an idea; of course, ideas don’t wear uniforms.

The oddities of the Iraq War which set it apart from most other US wars- group actors rather than state actors, lengthy engagements, murky objectives- may become the rule rather than the exception.  The single largest reason for such a shift in war’s identifying characteristics may be technology.

Military technology makes war increasingly impersonal.  The days of crossing an open field to charge enemy lines are largely over. Today, enemy combatants may be killed by drone airplanes, or by rockets launched from afar, or any other number of remote means.  That technological capability means fewer military casualties and fewer deployed troops (both very positive), but it may also correlate with less interest and sacrifice by a civilian population in and for its nation’s wars- which makes war easier to launch and much harder to stop.  It is far easier for a civilian population to suffer war’s costs if there are relatively few combat casualties than it is to suffer war when the machine of death is fully engaged.  By lowering war’s “barriers to entry,” technology can result in more frequent military engagements with increasingly lower thresholds of justification for each such engagement.  This is precisely the threat President Eisenhower foresaw in a prescient 1961 speech:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades… Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Technology hasn’t only changed the characteristics of war, it has also arguably changed the participants. Other than isolated examples, such as the US war against the Barbary Pirates in the early 1800s, war has historically been fought between nation states and not between a nation state and rogue groups. Not so any more. Modern warfare capabilities make it impractical for most nation states to “win” a traditional military engagement against a superpower such as the United States (the Gulf War, for example, lasted only about 45 days). That fact alone makes it less likely nation states will directly attempt to incite such superpowers to war. Instead, nation states may find it preferable to fund rogue groups (such as al-Qaeda) to take on the difficult task of toppling a superpower. Alternatively, rogue groups may pursue that goal independent of state support. Either way, superpowers may find conflict with rogue groups to be the new norm.

This is not to say that the American soldiers who heroically sacrifice their time, sweat, blood, comfort and even lives at the request of their nation do so in vain. They proudly carry the banner of the United States of America throughout the world and do more good than any other fighting force in the history of the world in the process. Rather than conquer Iraq for example, the American military has worked hand in hand with a new Iraqi government, chosen by its people, and spent hundreds of billions building up a nation which suffered under the rule of a brutal dictator for decades. Similar efforts are underway in Afghanistan and build on American efforts following prior military engagements, such as Germany and Japan.

Even while American efforts in combat operations may ultimately produce much good, Eisenhower’s warning rings true. The “cost” of war cannot be viewed as merely financial, despite technology’s and the military industrial establishment’s arguments to the contrary. Human life is precious, and a nation’s best shouldn’t be sent to die for anything less than a necessary cause. The best tool to combat the ease with which a nation may enter into war is, as Eisenhower noted, an alert and informed civilian population. Apathy is the worst enemy of democracy.

Nevertheless, war will sometimes be necessary. And it will always be ugly. John Stuart Mill perhaps put it best:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

President Obama’s call for the end of combat operations in Iraq is a cause for celebration, but it is also a call for a new review of the forces and circumstances that led the US into Iraq in the first place. Was the engagement a critical cause, worthy of the sacrifice so many have paid, or was it something less which should have remained untouched? Americans need to ask these questions and demand the answers. The process is fundamental to being alert and informed. Regardless of the conclusion one reaches on the question of Iraq, the process of reaching the conclusion will better inform the future.

Originalism is typically explained to the public as meaning “what the founders thought.” The explanation appears simple and is easy for the layperson to quickly understand (undoubtedly part of the reason it has taken such a hold in the conservative movement). Unfortunately, that explanation isn’t all that accurate.

The first problem with originalism is it paints the founders as being of one mind. That wasn’t true of most issues which were actually addressed by the founders, so how likely is it to be true of issues not directly contemplated by the founders? Originalism also struggles to define who the founders were (there are different camps within originalism on this question). Which founders one looks to in deciding what the founders believed may very well radically change the outcome of a particular case. Would the members of the Constitutional Convention as a whole be considered the founders? Or how about members of the Committee on Style (which penned the language in the Constitution)? How about Madison, who was possibly the most influential member of the Convention? Of course, the Convention only proposed the Constitution to the states. Should the state legislatures who ratified the Constitution be considered the founders instead? Committees of those legislatures? Key figures in those legislatures? Does public perception about what a provision meant (if it could be gauged) trump what the drafters themselves thought it meant? Even more problematic is the fact that the Constitution has been amended in significant ways since it was adopted. This is particularly true of the 14th Amendment which, for reasons I won’t get into here, radically changed the manner in which the Constitution is interpreted today. Are the drafters of the 14th Amendment the founders? The states who ratified the 14th Amendment, etc., etc.? There aren’t any good answers to these questions, other than that the voices that support a particular outcome tend to be the voices called the “founders.”

Conversely, are issues which were wholly acceptable to many founders still acceptable today? Take the issue of punishing a criminal by flogging, for example. Flogging was routinely used as a punishment in the early years of the nation’s history. Consequently, strict adherence to originalism would likely lead to the conclusion that flogging is a constitutionally permissible form of punishment. It is inconceivable to imagine any court in the United States taking such a position today, however. Even Antonin Scalia, a stalwart originalist, noted, “Even if it could be demonstrated unequivocally that [floggings] were not cruel and unusual measures in 1791, and even though no prior Supreme Court decision has specifically disapproved [floggings], I doubt whether any federal judge — even among the many who consider themselves originalists — would sustain them against an eighth amendment challenge.”

To be sure, all forms of constitutional interpretation have their flaws. The judiciary is charged with interpreting and applying a text written in the 18th century to issues never contemplated or in existence in the 18th century. Sometimes that works well, and sometimes it is a struggle. Whereas no serious scholar I am aware of would declare a specific non-originalist form of interpretation to be the single best form of interpretation, originalists frequently claim that originalism is inherently superior to all other forms. Decisions which don’t apply originalist theory are decried as shams and “judicial activism,” a phrase without any real meaning.

While originalism was once a form of constitutional interpretation, many conservatives have now been convinced that is the only legitimate form of constitutional interpretation. It isn’t surprising, then, to see a full assault on the judiciary by many conservative politicians and pundits where they perceive originalism is not being used. Such an assault weakens a vital branch of the nation’s government, upsetting the delicate balance of power among our three branches. Note that among the strongest critics of the judiciary are congresspeople, members of the legislative branch who tire of seeing that pesky judiciary overturn the laws the Congress spent so much time crafting.

Yet another problem with originalism is that the “founders” themselves never required that originalism be used as the exclusive form of constitutional interpretation. Rather than require a judge to adopt a certain form of constitutional interpretation, the founders provided for the impeachment of judges who got out of line as well as the advice and consent of the senate to put federal judges on the bench in the first place. Those are the checks of the system.

So how should constitutional interpretation work? It has to start with the text of the Constitution itself. Despite the passage of over 200 years since the Constitution’s drafting, the text itself is often unambiguous. Where ambiguity exists, however, judges must work to resolve the ambiguity in a manner which is fundamentally consistent with the constitutional provision in question. Take again the 8th Amendment as an example. We know that cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional. So what does “cruel and unusual” mean? Must we apply the understanding of the term in the 18th century (as originalism would require)? Or is “cruel and unusual” a concept that evolves as society evolves (which seems implicit in Scalia’s admission that no originalist would permit flogging today)? If the concept evolves, how can it be measured? “Cruel and unusual” are comparative terms. “Cruel” compared to what? “Unusual” compared to what? The basis of comparison will differ from judge to judge, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. One judge may look to what states view as cruel, and may ask how many states permit a certain punishment (the fewer that permit it, the more “unusual” it appears). Others look beyond the nation’s borders to global conventions on human rights (which has upset many conservatives- “why are the judges looking at other countries to interpret OUR Constitution?!). Public opinion on “cruel” could also be reviewed (words mean what most people think they mean). Just as there is no easy way to define cruel and unusual today, so too is there no easy way to define what it meant in 1791. In this instance, originalism would tell us to look at what the term meant in 1791 but wouldn’t tell us whose opinion in 1791 would govern.

Originalism isn’t necessarily worse than every other form of interpretation, but it isn’t necessarily better either, contrary to its supporters’ claims (Justices Scalia and Thomas in particular have been quite vocal on this point). I have no problem with those who advocate for originalism as a valid method of constitutional interpretation, so long as they don’t then assault every other form of interpretation as illegitimate. The application of originalism to a set of facts is far more difficult than the overly-simplified explanation of “just do what the founders would do.” As politicians in the legislative and executive branches continue to look for easy ways to weaken a competing branch of government (the judiciary), one can only hope that the public won’t play a willing accomplice by assaulting good judges who (wisely) don’t share the politician’s belief that originalism is the only valid form of interpretation (rather than merely a form of interpretation).

Originally posted December 7, 2009.

If VacTrain were built in the United States, the commute from New York to Los Angeles would be cut to less than an hour (which includes a stop in Dallas). But why stop there? Engineers believe VacTrain could also be built underwater across the Pacific and Atlantic, permitting travel between Los Angeles and China in just two hours (as discussed in the video below):

Part 2- Part 3- Part 4- Part 5

China is in the process of moving a scaled down version of VacTrain from conceptual design into reality. Southwest Jiaotong University in China has developed a prototype maglev train system which would operate in low pressure underground tubes and would be capable of traveling up to 600 mph (3 times faster than current maglev trains). The system could be in place between 2020 and 2030.

Hard to put it better than The Daily Show. Stupid or evil- we are running out of options.

I’m not going to bother debunking the myth as to whether President Obama is a Muslim. That has been done repeatedly and more than sufficiently, and those who hold the belief do so without regard to fact and won’t be persuaded anyways. Instead, I ask a simple question: why does it matter?

The answer, I fear, is that many people view Islam as a dangerous and even evil religion, and those adjectives describing Islam better fit how many would describe President Obama as opposed to adjectives traditionally used to describe Christianity (of which Obama is actually an adherent). Pew’s poll supports this theory. Among those who believe Obama is a Muslim, 67% disapprove of his job performance. Among those who believe Obama is a Christian, 62% approve of his job performance. Those poll numbers suggest two competing possibilities: 1) people dislike Obama because they believe he is a Muslim; or 2) people associate Obama with Islam at least in part because they dislike him. Put another way, is the relationship between believing Obama is Muslim and disliking Obama causative or merely correlative?

Frankly, either alternative is discomforting, but both suggest a deeply held resentment of Islam by many Americans. That resentment undoubtedly arises in large part from an association of Islam and terrorism, as I have argued before. Once the association of “Muslim=terrorist” is made, it’s easy to see how 28% of Americans could ever believe that Muslims should not be eligible to sit on the US Supreme Court, or how one-third could believe Muslims should be ineligible for the US presidency.

There is no rational reason why someone’s belief in Islam should disqualify them for the US presidency or, for that matter, even be a factor in determining the person’s suitability for office. Just as there are radical Muslims, there are radical Christians, radical Jews, radical atheists, and radical everything else. I have no problem with opposition to a religious extremist candidate, but that opposition should be based on the actual extremist views of the candidate and not on the basis of membership in the religion itself (particularly the world’s second largest religion, after Christianity). And if opposition shouldn’t be based on membership in a highly populated religion, it certainly shouldn’t be based on a false attribution of membership in that religion.

Islam is not a weapon to be wielded against a political opponent. It is a religion peacefully followed by the overwhelming majority of its 1.6 billion adherents. The American tradition of religious pluralism is offended by the treatment of Muslims in the media and political discourse. So too are Muslims, and so ought to be the rest of us.

With that understood, I write today to highlight what I believe was a missed opportunity by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the public leader of the Cordoba Initiative, the group behind the cultural center. On August 15, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the group’s chief in the Gaza Strip, publicly endorsed the building of the cultural center. In adding his support, Mr. Zahar stated that Hamas “is representing the vast majority of the Arabic and Islamic world—especially the Islamic side.” As a leader purportedly dedicated to the furtherance and proliferation of moderate Islam, Mr. Rauf should have used his current position in the limelight to distance himself and his organization from Mr. al-Zahar’s statement. A public rebuke from Mr. Rauf affirming that the positions taken by Hamas do not represent the views of his organization would have sent a strong message to the public that Mr. Rauf and his followers practice what they preach.

Now, I am not so naïve as to think that publicly rejecting the support of Hamas is an easy thing for a visible Muslim figure to do. One is hard-pressed to find any type of public condemnation of Hamas from the leaders of more moderate Arab countries, such as Egypt, Jordan or the U.A.E. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict presents a unique set of complicated and sensitive issues in the Arab world. Given the context, a strong public denouncement by Mr. Rauf of Hamas may induce Arab media outlets to pigeonhole him as an Israeli sympathizer. This would likely cause serious backlash in much of the Arab community and result in a ideological schism between Mr. Rauf and many of the people he hopes to reach. Thus, I am realistic and do not expect Mr. Rauf to categorically condemn and reject Hamas and everything that it represents.

But at some point, a line must be drawn in the sand. And here, that line should have been drawn with Mr. al-Zahar’s statement that Hamas “is representing the vast majority of the Arabic and Islamic world.” Reasonable people can disagree on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how best to approach it. However, I would hope that no reasonable person, including a prominent Arab leader, would agree that Hamas represents “the vast majority of the Arabic and Islamic World.” The international community considers Hamas a terrorist organization and its modus operandi has traditionally been suicide bombing. These defining characteristics should reflexively castigate Hamas to the radical fringe of Islam and the Arab world at-large. But the fundamental distinction between Hamas and peaceful Muslims will only have true resonance when prominent Islamic clerics and other Arab leaders begin to distance themselves from Hamas and other terrorist groups like it. Their unwillingness to do so permits a very small percentage of extremists to disproportionately shape the public’s perception of an entire religion.

In the past, calling on moderate Muslim and Arab leaders to denounce Hamas has been a Sisyphean task. But Mr. Rauf has the ability to be a new kind of leader, a type of post 9/11 Islamic progressive. He has displayed a willingness to defy conventional stereotypes when he agreed to speak at the funeral service of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists. His remarks at the service were thoughtful and certainly do not smack of a religious fundamentalist. His speech at the funeral evinces a willingness to transcend many of the religious and cultural barriers that have previously impeded meaningful progress. Given that he has demonstrated this potential in the past, it is all the more disappointing to watch Mr. Rauf sit back while the leadership of Hamas grossly mischaracterizes the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Publicly distancing his organization from Hamas may not be the easy or popular route to take, but dynamic leaders do not operate in the realm of the easy or the popular. Unlike so many other leaders in the Arab world, Mr. Rauf should not be given a pass for his silence. Let’s hope that he understands why.

The failure to confront this fact has led to the ridiculous parsing of whether there is a legal right as opposed to the right “culturally sensitive” approach to take. President Obama did himself and the country a disservice by engaging in the debate only to support the legal right for the project. Pardon me, but of course there is a legal right! Even such vaunted Constitutional scholars as Ex-Gov. Palin acknowledge the legal right.  If you aren’t willing to address the next question (should Americans have a problem with the project) kindly do not participate.

And liberals bear some blame for this equivalence of all aggrieved parties’ complaints warrant deference. Many liberals default to a position, when presented with a new issue, of particular sensitivity to the emotional state of the parties involved. This is fine insofar as it does not trump a rational evaluation of whether the underlying emotional state has merit. Publius laid out convincingly that the emotions behind the Park51 site do not.

Alternatively, hay has been made recently on the similarities between the public-censure case of Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s racially-insensitive rant and the “they have a legal right to build, but should take other feelings into consideration” opposition to the Park51 site.  This, in my view, gets it exactly wrong and is the natural result of an absurd equivalence. To put it mildly, discomfort with the racial situation in America strikes me as exceedingly legitimate. This isn’t because I fall on the left side of the political perspective and have an emotional disgust for bigots (though I do), but because in this country white Americans commit 70% of violent crime while African Americans comprise 50% of the prison population, poverty affects 24% of African-Americans as opposed to 8% of white Americans, and the unemployment rate among African-Americans is 44% versus 23% for white Americans. If my objection was based purely my emotional response it would (hopefully) be shared by a majority of people in this country and in the world as a whole. But that emotional disgust alone isn’t valid if not supported with reasoned thought.

Political leaders and media figures who play to those emotions while recognizing that not all Muslims are terrorists are charlatans selling the worst kind of populist pitchfork bigotry. Leaders who engage in the debate without questioning the validity of the opposition are cowards or willfully ignorant (or both). The sole leader who represented himself and the country well during this debacle is Mayor Bloomberg and he deserves everyone’s respect for that reason (if you know of others, please help restore my faith in this country’s leadership). The rest of the political and media leadership should be embarrassed. Should be, but suffice it to say I’m making up in my embarrassment of them for any deficit they may have on their own.

Once again, an explicit equivalence of “Muslim” to “terrorist” underlies the message being pushed by Blunt and his ilk. There may be legitimate reasons to oppose the construction of the Islamic center, but equating Muslims with terrorists isn’t one of them and Blunt should be ashamed. Perhaps he is ashamed- he did pull down the ad eventually. This ad is despicable, and not just for its content. Consider the fact that Rep. Blunt, even if elected to the Senate, will literally have zero input on whether or not the Park51 project is constructed in lower Manhattan. None. He is willing to peddle a gross misconception of a religious organization, which he knows will needlessly inflame hatred and contempt towards that religious organization, in order to win a position in the United States Senate.

Mr. Blunt: for all its flaws, the United States Senate retains a high measure of dignity. You, however, do not.

This has been a heart-wrenching day for me and for my delegation. I will never forget the destruction and suffering I have witnessed today. In the past I have seen scenes of natural disaster around the world, but nothing like this. The scale of this disaster is so large. So many people in so many places in so much need.

The map below shows the scope of the flooding in Pakistan, but the video which follows the map perhaps does the tragedy more justice.

Not only is the flooding a humanitarian disaster, it is a strategic disaster for US interests in the region. Pakistan is already highly unstable, and its cooperation with the US is critical in America’s pursuit of terrorists. The extensive flooding further complicates a highly volatile situation in Pakistan and demands the immediate attention of the American, and global, community.