More Polling Data

This article, by Karl Zinsmeister, summarizes the results of what it calls the "first scientific poll of the Iraqi public" since the war ended.

Zinsmeister seems ready to say that the emergence of some secular state is all but certain in Iraq. In the survey, for instance, 60% said they didn't want an Islamic government, with 33% saying that they did. And from the fact that 43% of respondents said they hadn't attended Friday prayer at all in the last month, Zinsmeister happily concludes: "The nation is thoroughly secularized." Which means that 57% did attend Friday prayer. Zinsmeister's reports of the demise of Islam in Iraq are exaggerated.

For Zinsmeister, this poll is a source of optimism. To me, it serves as a reminder that Iraq is not yet a secular state. 33% is a minority, but far from a negligible one. Figuring out how deal with that minority will be one of the most difficult tasks in building a stable regime in Iraq.

- posted by Erik at 11:50 AM; link

 
Disrespectful Dungaree DeFazio

Yesterday was one of those days on Capitol Hill that I like. That is, Congress didn't really do anything, they just stood around and spoke about 9/11. That means no more incursions were made into our freedom or our pocketbooks.

The day began with a prayer (still allowed in Congress, oddly) about 9/11/01. The Chaplain, Rev. Coughlin asked, "in a moment of silence, let us stand tall and be one with the thousands of faces lost in the dust; let us hold in our minds those who still moan over the hole in their lives."

Congressman Roy Blunt continued in that vein, if somewhat self-important about the role of Washington, giving a patriotic little speech. The tone of the morning was one of mourning, patriotism and respect.

Steny Hoyer, a top House Democrat, said, "On that day, there were no Republicans, there were no Democrats, there were no liberals, there were no conservatives. There were Americans. There were representatives of 280 million people elected to serve this great Nation."

But on 9/11/03 those party fissures were not absent, thanks to Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio. DeFazio took to the floor to excoriate Congress for not appropriating more money to local firemen and other first responders:

"Our first responders, those who responded so selflessly on that tragic day, still lack basic resources and help from the Federal Government, even as Congress is considering the President's request for another $87 billion for Iraq.

On this day, Congress should resolve to remember by redoubling its efforts, avoiding dangerous distractions, and providing all the funds necessary so we can say with confidence, never again."

First, there is the attacking tone, completely incongruous with the rest of the day. Then there is the illogic of first responders being able to prevent another attack. Then there is the clincher:

DeFazio was wearing blue jeans on the floor. A violation of the rules and complete show of disrespect. West Coast lefty crunchiness can be cute, but this one was a little much, Pete.

- posted by Carney at 3:20 PM; link

 
Re: UNpopular

Thirty percent of the French were rooting for a brutal dictator to defend his oppressive regime better against France's purported allies. That is simply amazing, but I guess not that surprising.

- posted by Carney at 3:49 PM; link

 
Re: UNpopular

The Pew Global Attitudes Project is gigantic and fascinating. If you have the time, you should check it out. To answer my question from below, though, Vladimir Putin is the fifth most respected world leader in America. The following is a list which I compiled from pp. 153-59 of the Topline Results. The question the respondents were asked was something like "Do you trust x's leadership in global affairs?" Americans who responded either "very much" or "somewhat" are included in the parenthetical figure.

1. Blair (83%)
2. Bush (78%)
3. Sharon (49%)
4. Annan (45%)
5. Putin (40%)
6. Schroeder (33%)
7. Chirac (26%)
8. Arafat (19%)

I should mention that Russia is the only Western country surveyed where Annan polled worse than than he did in America. Note that the average score on the above list is 46.6%.

Some other facts I learned:
1. Bin Laden is the most respected global leader in the Palestinian Authority (Arafat's a close #2).
2. 30% of the French populace was disappointed that the Iraqi Military didn't put up more of a resistance against the U.S.
3. More people in America disagree with the statement that "Children need to learn English to succeed in the world" than in any other part of the world.

As an excercise in partisan manipulation of data, I suppose I could compile a longer list of surprising statistics, but I'll leave that to the experts like Lewis Lapham.

- posted by Mark at 7:54 PM; link

 
Re: UNpopular

I'm not sure fourth place is such a great showing for Kofi. Besides Bush and Blair, who else would it even occur to an American qualifies as a world leader? Jacques Chirac? Yasser Arafat? The fact that the Secretary-General of the U.N. ranks below the Prime-Minister of Israel as as most respected world leader is hardly a vote of confidence. I'd like to see who's #5 on the list.

And Kofi's only going to get less popular with all the recent rape allegations.

- posted by Mark at 6:55 PM; link

 
Iraqi Poll

Today's featured article at the WSJ (also available here) summarizes the data from an AEI/Zogby poll about what Iraqis think of the occupation and of their future. Iraqi opinions are relevant to Bush's (perhaps ad hoc) justification of Gulf War II as a war of liberation, and these results largely seem to back up such a justification inasmuch as we can now say that the Iraqis by and large want a secular democracy (not a return to Baathism) and have hope that things will be better in five years. The poll also shows deep skepticism in Iraq, especially among women, about the future role of the U.S. in effecting these results, but even with these qualms about U.S. power, more than 2/3 of Iraqis don't want the U.S. to leave for at least a year.

At any rate, calling for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq should now look like what I think it always was, moralistic opportunism untethered to any true concern for the Iraqi people.

- posted by Mark at 4:34 PM; link

 
Growing Pains

Another shocking headline from MSN:

Even Kids Drinking Diet Soda Getting Fat

But there's good news for all you Mario Kart fans and porn addicts: Video game players and internet surfers are nowhere near as fat as television watchers.

- posted by Mark at 1:16 PM; link

 
Pros and Cons of War

Here's an interesting article from Slate about right-wing dissension over post-War Iraq. The Buchanan/Frum dispute might have made it seem like the main division within the Republican party was between Neo-conservatives and Paleo-conservatives--this little article shows how supply-siders (and thus libertarian-style conservatives) fall in with the Paleos on some recent issues.

Incidentally, it explains why someone like Carney fits so well into the ideology of the Wall Street Journal.

Bonus point: I think right-wing Straussians should be called Decepti-Cons.

- posted by Mark at 12:48 PM; link

 
Marriage and Natural Law

Yevgeny Vilenskyat of the Yale Free Press takes issue with Eve Tushnet's argument that marriage is a political issue, not because the state has some interest in furthering self-fulfilling relationships, but because it has an interest in kids. He suggests contrary to both of these alternatives that, in America, "marriage was a political institution because modern democracies evolved from theocratic regimes." Tushnet makes her argument to undermine arguments that would seek to expand marriage rights to homosexuals. Without sharing her agenda, though, I think she (pace Vilenskyat) must be right on this point. At least from the perspective of Classic Natural Right, the state has a natural interest in marriage since the growth of the city depends on procreation. This is explicit in Plato's Laws 720e-721e (cf. 631d) and in Aristotle's Politics 1334b30 (and following). At various points in history, religious institutions might have taken on some of the responsibilities for educating and caring for children, and at various later points these religious institutions might have been secularized. Neither of these changes, however, would alter the underlying natural rationale for marriage (the evidence being that this rationale can be found outside the context of any viable theocratic tradition). But that of course doesn't mean that marriage couldn't come to serve other purposes as well.

- posted by Mark at 4:20 PM; link

 
Specter v. Me

Arlen Specter fires back at me today, with a letter in the WSJ:

Wall Street Journal
Letters to the Editor
September 9, 2003

Holmes's Nomination, and My Part in It

It is a well-known adage that all are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. When Timothy P. Carney writes that I have sought to sink the nomination of Mr. J. Leon Holmes by privately approaching GOP senators, specifically mentioning Sen. Susan Collins, he is wrong on the facts ("Stop This Man," editorial page, Sept. 4).

When Mr. Holmes's nomination came before the Judiciary Committee, it was anticipated that it would be noncontroversial until some senators raised a series of objections. When I told Chairman Hatch that time was needed to check out the objections, Sen. Hatch said that there were other concerns on the Republican side so he suggested sending Mr. Holmes's nomination to the floor without a committee recommendation. I agreed.

Mr. Carney's critique of my record on Republican judicial nominees omits any reference to my votes for the confirmation of Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O'Connor, Justice Scalia and Justice Kennedy or my support for Justice Clarence Thomas, which may have been determinative and almost cost me my Senate seat in the 1992 election.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.)
Washington

First, I stand behind my article.

The Senator says I am wrong, and then his second paragraph, which at first appears to be an explanation, is completely irrelevant. I never contended that Specter's deeds had anything to do with the committee's vote to send Holmes to the floor without recommendation.

That charge has been levied by others, but just as my reliable Senate sources told me about the Collins-Specter encounter, sources told me that Specter was not the reason for the unusually tepid approval of Holmes.

I suppose this comes down to Specter's word versus mine, which is rough for me, a cub reporter. But considering Specter's spin on voting records, I think what he says about his own record needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

- posted by Carney at 3:31 PM; link

 
Re: Re: Loose Cannon

I finally got around to seeing the Dempsey-recommended show Forensics Files this weekend. I watched three episodes, which is easier to do than it sounds since CourtTV is always broadcasting it (and I don't have any friends in Pittsburgh). I saw all three in one sitting. Episode one was not a particularly auspicious beginning for the evening. It was about some kid who had ingested some e-coli bacteria. The mystery (presumably to be solved by cutting-edge forensics) was how did he get infected?. The solution: the kid eventually remembered that he ate a piece of raw ground beef at camp. That sounds anti-climactic, but you should have seen the dramatic re-enactment. The kid looks to his right and left and decides to eat this large piece of raw beef. Immediately he is stricken with a look of fear. It was cold, the narrator explains, but he did not want his friends to make fun of him for spitting it out so he swallowed it (you can imagine the painful grimace on his face). I guess I understand that—kids can be merciless to pantywaists who can't handle a little boeuf tartare.

The other two episodes were good, though. In one, a wife-beating philandering cop with a handlebar moustache claims his wife, upon serving him with divorce papers, killed herself with a shotgun. Initial forensics reports make this look impossible, but a more detailed reconstruction proves that his story, despite its wild implausibility, is correct. In the other episode, a newscaster is murdered in her apartment and a DNA test proves that, even though witnesses saw her ex-boyfriend fleeing the scene of the crime, somebody else did it. In both cases, without the forensics evidence I would have convicted the wrong guy.

These episodes of Forensics Files were followed by an episode of Body of Evidence: From the case files of Dayle Hinman which provided an interesting contrast to these forensics successes. Hinman is the woman Jodie Foster's character in Silence of the Lambs was patterned after. This episode dealt with a serial killer in Gainseville, FL who was breaking into apartments and killing beautiful collegiate brunettes. During the manhunt, cops found a tent in the forest near one of the killings and saw a white guy running away from it. Next to the tent were a screwdriver, a tape-recorder, and evidence from a local (bank?) robbery, among other things. They tested the screwdriver to see if it matched the instrument used in the serial-killer's first break-in. It did not, so they bagged the evidence. Weeks later, there is another killing in Baton Rouge with the same m.o., and the cops there suspect a drifter named Collins who had also been suspected of several robberies. Some bright cop in Gainesville decided to check out the evidence from the tent. On the goddamned tape-recorder, which no one had bothered to listen to, was a virtual confession from Collins (e.g. "I'm Collins. A drifter who's done some bad things. Please don't judge me.") The reason the screwdriver didn't match the first crime scene was because it had gotten banged up when he was breaking into the later apartments.

I pray to God I'm never murdered in Gainesville.

- posted by Mark at 3:02 PM; link

 
Stopping Arlen Specter

My Wall Street Journal piece on Specter is now up on Opinion Journal, which is free, and so you all can read it.

In the OJ responses there's comment I would like to answer.

RJ Parsons writes:

"If Representative Toomey (Lehigh Valley) upsets Sen. Specter in next spring's primary, Democrat Joe Hoeffel, who represents the Philadelphia area's 13th Congressional District, will be well-positioned to become Pennsylvania's next Democratic senator.

Please note Mr. Carney: Things may not change for the best."

In my judgement, the GOP will pick up 1-3 seats in the next election. If the question is Specter or Hoeffel (which I don't believe) I would rather have 51 GOP Senators and a conservative Republican Judiciary Chairman (Jon Kyl of Arizona is next in line) than 52 GOP Senators and Chairman Specter.

- posted by Carney at 7:55 PM; link