Hurricane Katrina Aftermath

Well, the effects of Katrina have passed by Baton Rouge. We've got about half the city without power. Crews should start working this afternoon, and I am hopeful that we won't be without power for too long. Several substations are out, though, so it could be several days. Plus, of course, crews will also be very busy trying to restore power to New Orleans, which was hit so badly.

As the winds were dying down, I walked through my neighborhood and took a few pictures of the local damage. The aftermath of Hurricane Andrew (which I also rode out) was worse.

1. That's my dog, Sadie, in the middle of the street. This was what most of the streets look like, no major damage, just a bunch of leaves and small limbs littering the road.

2. Fortunately, this tree fell across the street and not onto my friend's house behind where I was standing to take the picture. It's pulled down a power line.

3. Old Glory got knocked over. I'm sure the owners will set her right shortly.

4. & 5. This was the only serious property damage I saw. Half a tree came crashing across the road and onto a parked car. It also clipped a pickup truck which was driving underneath when it fell.

6. & 7. These are the broken parts of the limb which fell in 4 & 5. The green beads up in what's left of the tree are throws from a St. Patrick's Day parade which goes through our neighborhood. There are left over beads hanging in the trees all year round.

8. Very minor roof damage from a tiny little branch.

9. This has nothing to do with any damage, but the little fellow was so cute I had to take a picture. Never noticed him before, even though he's right down the street.

10. A telephone pole went down. I was kind of surprised by this one, I didn't think there was enough there for the wind to catch hold of.

11. Pecan trees are dangerous! Most of the fallen trees and broken branches around my neighborhood were pecans. They have shallow root systems, and after a certain age, they're just weak inside. Plus, even in good weather they drip the stickiest sap all over your car or anything else left underneath them.

12. & 13. My neighbor's house. This is the only actual home damage I saw in my 2 hour walk today. The tree split down the middle. Half went across the road, and half went right on top of the poor guy's house. Damage could have been much worse, though.

14. & 15. This is about half a mile from my house. Most of the downed trees I saw today were very considerate; if they could fall away from a house or a car, they did. Only a couple of them misbehaved and caused any property damage at all. You can again see the St. Patrick's Day parade beads stuck up (well, it used to be up) in the tree top.

So, that's my neighborhood. I'm grateful the damage wasn't far, far worse. Reports I hear from New Orleans are still very sketchy, so I hope and pray that they didn't suffer too much. From what I've put together, the damage was bad, but a last minute shift to the east made it not be the cataclysmic event it could have been. My prayers also go out to all along the Gulf coast who have been battered by this storm. Mobile is being hit very hard, I understand.

Liberty of Thought

Jim Geraghty at The Kerry Spot posts some of the e-mails he has received about the Terri Schiavo case. He notes that, after posting several e-mails from conservatives opposed to what has become the Republican orthodoxy in the case, other conservatives suggested he was being "Moby-ed", that those challenging the orthodoxy were not really conservatives, but liberal in disguise, or maybe just RINOs. To his credit, Jim says he doesn't think so. Still, he refers to us as "disgruntled" conservatives. Charles Johnson at LGF has noted the same problem.

This post is not to rehash the merits of the Schiavo issue. That has been endlessly debated elsewhere. Suffice it to say, I am opposed to the actions Congress has taken, and I have respect for the difficult decisions which the Florida court has been forced to make.

I post today about liberty, the liberty of thought. I post in protest of the idea that I must defend myself as a true Republican or a real conservative simply because my opinion differs from that of Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, PoliPundit, and all the others. These are good people, incisive thinkers, and I agree with them so often, and on so many issues. But they are not always right. And if we are to be a party and a movement which values truth above all else, we must be free to debate even the deepest and thorniest issues without fear of being shunned when we disagree.

I’m for life. I’m against abortion. I’m against euthanasia. But I’m also against continuing to force feed a body whose mind and soul have left it. Now, whether Terri Schiavo’s mind and soul have left is obviously something where there are differences of opinion. But differences of opinion over questions of fact should not be assumed (as so many on the right have done of their critics) to be differences of opinion over ideology. That I accept the court's findings of fact does not mean that I am in favor of euthanasia, assisted suicide, or the mass killing of the useless and functionless. At the moment, it feels most of the right believes that it does.

This is a difficult issue, and even among those who wish to overturn the Florida court's decisions, there are differences of opinion. Some say that removing the feeding tube, even if that's what Terri would truly want, would be assisted suicide. Others use the term "murder". Those positions are fundamentally opposed to those who say that Terri's wishes should be respected, but only if there were a living will. But murder and assisted suicide are wrong whether the dying person agrees or not. Those who use the most exterme terms, then, believe that those in favor of living wills are wrong. Both positions can be rationally supported, but they contradict each other. Which side is the orthodox opinion? For now, they are united because they share a common goal. What will happen after Terri dies and actual legislation is on the table? Who will be orthodox then?

Whatever solution is ultimately crafted, those in leadership in the conservative movement and the Republican party must realize that this is an intensely personal issue to most people. Like many deeply personal issues, beliefs here do not break easily into left and right, Republican and Democrat. For every person who viewed an evil Michael, there was someone who saw selfish parents who couldn’t let go of their daughter who had long since departed. For every person who thinks life should be forced to prolong at all costs, strapped to the bed regardless of human liberty, there are many who feel that difficult decisions such as these should be left to the families and, if they cannot agree, to the courts rather than to politicians.

As conservatives, we believe in liberty, and we believe in liberty of thought and speech above all else (for are we not willing to sacrifice life in war and as Christian martyrs to protect our own liberty and bring it to others?). We must respect, then, liberty of thought within our own ranks.

Do not demonize (or force to prove our loyalty) intelligent people of good will who happen to have strong feelings opposite from the orthodoxy. Do not assume that we share different beliefs simply because we differ in how we apply those beliefs to a particular case. In the words of my namesake, different men often see the same subject in different lights.

This is right, and it is also pragmatic. For myself, I will remain a Republican, because that is who I am, and my views overlap with Republican beliefs much more often than not. But no political party will ever reflect all of the views of all of its members all of the time. In picking our party, we all must decide which party’s positions our views overlap with most of the time. We lose elections when we are divided, but we lose core members and threaten schism when our tests of loyalty are too strict, and set by too few. Look at what has happened to the Democrats since they marginalized or ran off the Zell Millers and Joseph Liebermans of their party.

So I will remain a Republican, and I will speak to how I see the truth, popular or not among the conservative powers. But others may not be so loyal. They may decide that a party and a movement which labels them as supporters of murder and euthanasia when they disagree with the orthodoxy has deprived them of their liberty of thought, and they may find another home.

Does bankruptcy reform impair existing contracts?

The bankruptcy reform bill is a hot topic. Oddly enough, this pro-big-business bill is being attacked by Republican bloggers like RedState, and defended, to some extent, by at least one centrist site, Centerfield.

I've been troubled in the past by prior bankruptcy reforms because they elevated credit card debt to the same level as things like child support payments. If some dad out there doesn't have enough money to pay both his Visa bill and his child support, I'd rather the bankruptcy court make him pay the child support first. Not only does this seem more humane, but if he doesn't make the child support payment, the taxpayers are more likely to be on the hook to spend tax money on the child for food or health care.

To be honest, I haven't learned enough about the bill to know exactly what it does, other than generally to require more bankruptcies with payment plans and allow fewer bankruptcies that completely obliterate the debts. (Note to media: I wish you would do more reporting on the substance of bills and much, much less on the politics and process of them).

But I wonder if there's an argument to be made, either from a legal perspective or merely a moral one, that bankruptcy reform which makes it harder to discharge debts is an unconstitutional impairment of contract?

This bill will apply to all debts currently in existence, as well as all debts incurred in the future. But both parties to existing debts entered into those contracts under current law. The lending companies knew the risks of default and impact of bankruptcies when they set the interest rate and other terms of the debt. The borrower agreed to incur the debt with knowledge of the current law. We must assume that both parties entered into these contracts might not have entered into the contract, or might have required different terms and conditions for those contracts, had different bankruptcy rules been in place at the time. In short, they may not have entered into those contracts with those terms if discharging a debt in bankruptcy was materially harder or easier than the law provided at the time the contract was formed.

This bill essentially revises the terms of the contracts for those debts, in favor of the lender. The lender set the interest rate at a level to allow it to recoup the expected losses to defaults and bankruptcies, plus make an adequate profit. This bill will reduce the amount of loss from bankruptcies, without affecting the interest rate charged on those loans. That is a significant windfall to the lenders.

And, we must assume that these borrowers entered into these debts with knowledge of the bankruptcy laws at the time. Had the borrowers known that the debts would become harder to discharge in bankruptcy, they may not have incurred that debt to begin with. A retroactive change in the terms of the debt agreement is fundamentally unfair to the parties.

Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from passing any ex post facto laws or any laws "impairing the obligation of contracts". Interestingly, this proscription is not included in section 9, which imposes similar restrictions against ex post facto laws and bills of attainder against Congress. I'm sure there must be case law on whether the prohibition has somehow been made applicable on Congress as well, through the 14th Amendment or similar process, but I haven't done the research yet. Perhaps the Federal government is at liberty to pass laws impairing contracts all it wants. And perhaps courts have or would find that the impact on existing obligations by bankruptcy law amendments is so indirect that the constitutional prohibition is not implacted.

But it seems unfair to change the terms of the agreement after the fact, to change the rules after the game has started. And in this case, the benefits are one-sided. The lender keeps the high interest rate it justified because of the risk of default and bankruptcy, but nevertheless has that risk reduced substantially. What benefit does the consumer get from this mid-game rule change?

Political divisiveness... a new theory

There's an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning,"In Divided U.S., A Big Question: Who Gets the Kids?" It examines how the deep ideological divide between Red and Blue state people is being played out through battles for the mind of the younger generation. I had no idea that there are children's books out there called: "Help! Mom! There's a Liberal Under My Bed!" and "No, George, No! The Reparenting of George W. Bush". I've argued in the past that the media has overblown the cultural divide story, but when children's books get involved, that's a sign of something deeper.

First, an aesthetic note. At least when Dr. Seuss sought to spread propaganda, he did so with fun, flair, and creativity - not to mention from a far deeper perspective then simply the latest chapter in a partisan fight. From the description of these books given by the WSJ, they sound like warmed-over diatribes from former Crossfire talking heads, (slightly) dumbed down for 8 year olds. I am appalled that our children would be exposed to literature of such little actual value.

But I digress. Why are feelings so deep, so ideological disturbing right now? How is it that American society, a society whose very first amendment promotes free speech and diversity of thought and opinion, become a land where people needed psychiatric help to cope with the results of an election?

This morning, my answer is: graft and corruption, or rather the elimination thereof. Politics was once practiced by ward heelers and political bosses. The spoils system ran rampant. Your choice of party was controlled by who could get you a job, not what your ideological beliefs were. In such a system, politics did not define your soul; it was blantantly about self-interest. Who you were was defined by what you did, not so much what you believed. If you did the right things, worked hard, went to church, played with your kids, that was what mattered.

Now, we have elevated political belief systems to the realm of religious convictions. We're not partisans because of self interest, but because we've convinced ourselves that our party has cornered the market on Truth. And, like other religions, we protect our beliefs with all the zealousness of Orthodoxy. If you are a liberal and you suggest that abortion may not be a very good thing, you are not questioning a mere political position... you are questioning the very Gospel of the church of liberalism. On the right, try suggesting that public schools are not merely a necessary evil but in fact can be and have been a force for good in society. You will be shouted down with the zeal of a convert.

I don't want to go back to Tammany Hall days, but I'm not sure today's system is all that much of an improvement.

Time to stand and fight voter fraud

The Wall Street Journal and others are now calling for Dino Rossi to "take the high road" and stop the fight over the Washington election. This is the wrong approach. Now is the time to stand up and fight for strong protections against voter fraud.

The lesser, nitty-gritty political reason is that the high road hasn’t gotten us very far in the fight over voter fraud. Nobody but Republicans generally ever really bit into the unflattering comparison between Nixon’s response to Illinois in 1964 and Gore’s response to Florida. And it's the political equivalent of the military announcing ahead of time the date it will withdraw from a battle. Gore wasn't wrong for wanting to count every vote; he was wrong because he only wanted to count every vote in Democratic counties, not Republican ones. But when an election is marred by fraud, nobody - winner, loser, Republican, Democrat, Naderite, or Luddite - is served by sweeping the fraud under the rug and letting the results stand. When going to court is necessary to support important rights, we shouldn't consider that the low road.

The bigger reason to stand and fight now is because respect for the procedural safeguards surrounding voting has been consistently eroding over the past few years, all in the name of “count every vote”. (By the way, politically, Republicans need to find a good slogan to come back to this. Something that can be chanted at rallies. I thought of "no pulse, no vote", but I don't think it will go over that well.) Until we vigorously reinforce following procedures which minimize the opportunities for fraud, we will have nothing but growing distrust over the basic outcome of every election, an extremely unhealthy situation for our democracy.

Look at all the excuses being poured out by Washington state for serious failures of ballot security, voter identification lapses, failure to actually keep accurate track of how many people physically came in to vote at particular precincts, it goes on and on. State laws impose very specific laws on exact procedures to be followed by election workers. These procedures, like all audit control procedures, exist precisely because, if they are followed, it is very, very difficult to commit voter fraud and much easier to catch and prosecute it if it does. If we gloss over this right now in this fight, then we are saying those procedures aren’t really all that important.

When I was a prosecutor here in Louisiana (where we know a thing or two about voter fraud and, as a consequence, how to prevent it), one of the last cases I worked on was the initial election 8 years ago of Mary Landrieu to the U.S. Senate. Landrieu herself didn’t do anything wrong, and she was actually fairly disliked by the urban machine in New Orleans. (Let me be very clear; I like and respect Senator Landrieu personally and believe her to be a good and honest politician, though I often disagree with her political positions.) But there was a vote over a local casino there which was heavily promoted by the city's political machinery, so, I believe, she was an unintended beneficiary of some serious voter fraud. I say I believe because we could never actually prove anything. And the reason we couldn’t prove anything was because many of the urban poll workers utterly failed to follow the proper voting procedures.

In Louisiana, these procedures are straightforward, but strong enough, if followed, to give a high degree of confidence in an election. When a voter walks in to the polling place, he shows his ID to one of the pollworkers. This worker looks him up in the registration book and calls out his name to the other 2 workers. Each of them independently writes down the name in a notebook given to them when they show up. The voter signs the registration book, then goes and votes (we used mechanical machines for years, but have now switched to electronic ones). There is no reason for any variation between the signatures in the registration book and the names recorded in the 2 notebooks. Even minor mistakes such as a name or two recorded in switched order in the 2 notebooks is suggestive of fraud (as if the individuals were copying out the names from some other list, rather than recording them contemporaneously).

Also, the machine prints out a candidate list, vote tally (which should be 0, of course), and time stamp when it is first turned on in the morning. Each of the pollworkers must sign this and post it at the site. At the end of the day, after the last voter, another printout is made showing the final tally for each machine and a timestamp of when the machine was shut down. This also must be signed by all 3 workers. All of this paperwork is gathered and stored with the machines at the end of the day, sealed until the formal opening of the machines for the "official" count.

Taken together, these processes can either prove that no fraud occurred or help identify with specificity the pollworkers who committed it. We found a number of instances where it was obvious that the same person obviously wrote down the names in each of the 2 notebooks. Sometimes it appeared as those the first part of the notebooks were done properly, and then one person added in a lot of names in both books in the same handwriting. None of this establishes fraud for certain. Perhaps one of the poll workers came down sick and had to leave early. But the procedural lapses ensure that we have no way to guarantee the integrity of the process.

In our case, the U.S. Senate even came down and investigated. They too “took the high road” because we had no specific evidence of fraud. We didn’t prosecute anybody for the same reason. The general feeling, as with Rossi, was that without evidence of fraud by the candidate (and again I have no doubt about Senator Landrieu's integrity and honesty; I don't believe she had anything to do with any voter fraud which may have occurred), she shouldn’t have her election tarnished with these questions. Also, we hesitated to prosecute mostly African-American pollworkers simply for what would be called failures to fill out some “bureaucratic paperwork”. Plus, we were in Baton Rouge and the questionable practices took place in New Orleans, so there were jurisdictional issues, too.

While these were good reasons to not prosecute at the time, letting the failure of the poll workers to follow the procedures designed to protect the integrity of the ballot go uncorrected was fundamentally a mistake. The only way to show the importance of these rules is to prosecute their violation or, where the election is so close that the failure to heed the rules cause real doubt as to the validity of a significant number of ballots, rerunning the election.

The Washington election for governor seems like the perfect place to fight, to me, because of a strong convergence of factors. There is a strong grass-roots fight to support protecting the integrity of the process. There is some national attention on the issue. The initial evidence of dead people voting and mysterious ballots being found in unsecured locations seems quite strong. It doesn't sound like there are any major crises currently facing Washington such that a delay in finding out who the new governor would cause truly major upheaval. I think this is the perfect time and the perfect place to have this fight.