November 16, 2007

More Qwik Hits - Sleepless in Senate, Desert Desertions, and John Kerry

Heh, I'll bet you thought the title all referred to the same person, didn't you? Nope, three separate stories...

Sleepless in the Senate

Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 90%) is irked that President Bush has decided to exercise his constitutional authority to make recess appointments when the Senate refuses even to hold hearings on those men and women he has appointed through the normal route.

So in the Democrats' never-ending quest to cripple the presidency itself, stripping as many powers and duties away from the Executive as they can gobble up into the Legislative, Reid has decided not to recess the Senate over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, as has been customary for decades. Possibly even since President Lincoln created the holiday.

Reid's stroke of genius is that, if the Senate isn't in recess, Bush can't make recess appointments:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to keep the chamber in session over the Thanksgiving break to block President Bush from making any unsavory recess appointments while Senators are out of town. ["Unsavory?" Not that Roll Call would be at all biased in its coverage of this issue...]

In a statement inserted in the record Friday, the Majority Leader said he will hold the Senate in a series of pro forma or nonvoting sessions to prevent the controversial practice. ["Controversial?" Who has ever before denied the president has this power -- which is explicitly granted in the Constitution?] In the statement, Reid argued that nominations need to get on track, and that Bush has not met the Democrats “halfway” in agreeing to Democratically backed nominees to “important commissions.”

First of all, Sen. Reid of all people is a fine one to talk about not being met "halfway" on appointments. Does the phrase "blocked judges" ring any bells?

But second, I would love to see Bush call the bluff: When the GOP and most of the Democrats are out of town (as they will be), and there isn't even a quorum in the Senate (as will happen at some point at 3:00 in the morning), Bush should just quietly sign and time-stamp all the recess-appointment papers, whether the Senate is formally in recess or not. A Republican senator should stand outside the chamber, quietly videotaping the virtually empty room -- and showing the clock on the wall -- for future evidentiary use.

Then let Reid spend the next year plus duking it out in the courts. Republicans can run on the issue, noting how many recess appointments President Clinton made -- and demanding to know why Minority Whip Reid didn't object to any of them.

(Reid was Assistant Minority Party Leader, a.k.a. Minority Whip, of the Senate from January 1999 to January 2001, during which President Clinton certainly made recess appointments, including James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg and Roger L. Gregory to the Fourth Circus Court.)

Run on the scandal of the Democratic Senate trying to seize power from the office of the presidency itself, not just from Bush. Don't they trust future Democratic presidents?

The Democratic Party: It's not just a job; it's an ongoing criminal enterprise!

Desert desertions

According to AP:

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

This might be more startling if one did not recall that since 1980, we have barely had any sustained hot wars; it's hardly surprising that more soldiers unprepared to serve in combat would desert during wartime than peacetime, when the military often becomes just a jobs program.

The only long confrontation (more than a few months) we had during that time was in Bosnia; and we were not handling the brunt of the ground action. We had a peacekeeping presence in the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), but mostly we were there in our NATO capacity... and NATO's involvement was mainly aviation.

The point is that the last major American war before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was Vietnam... and as even AP admits:

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

So the AP has discovered, amazingly enough, that major wars with long deployments lead to an increase in the desertion rate -- from 0.7% in 2006 to 0.9%. Shocking!

But they signally fail to tell us what we really want to know: How many of those deserters were Democrats taking their cue from Harry "Pinky" Reid?

John Kerry -- still searching

This one is just amazing. Reporting by the Associate Press tells us that John Kerry (D-MA, 95%) is still trying to disprove the allegations of the Swit Boat Veterans for Truth -- years after he lost his presidential bid largely on the issues the SBVT raised:

Sen. John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign was torpedoed by critics of his Vietnam War record, said Friday he has personally accepted a Texas oilman's offer to pay $1 million to anyone who can disprove even a single charge of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

In a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the Massachusetts Democrat wrote: "While I am prepared to show they lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt."

So what is the one Swiftie allegation Kerry has vowed to prove "beyond any reasonable doubt" was a lie? AP doesn't say; presumably, John Kerry hasn't figured that part out yet.

AP is still carrying water for Kerry, by the way; consider this howler:

While fellow veterans and reporters disproved many of the group's claims at the time, Kerry refused to air ads responding to the criticism. His own response was muted for fear of legitimizing his critics' attacks. The senator conceded after losing to Bush that his lackluster response likely cost him the election.

Which claims were disproven "at the time?" AP doesn't say; presumably, they havn't figured that part out yet.

I have read many of these so-called disproofs; none impressed me with its logical or evidentiary acumen. Typically, by "disprove," they mean the same witnesses who took Kerry's side earlier took it again later, insisting that he really did so perform whatever feat of heroism he claimed to have performed. Each failed to respond to the SBVT's evidence, simply sweeping that aside as irrelevant.

This reminds me of the very recent (past few decades) redefinition of the verb "to refute." According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (my version is from 1989), until very recently, to refute always meant "to prove wrong; show to be false or erroneous." This is what they call the "uncontroversial" definition.

But in the past few decades, a new definition has been grafted onto the word -- a definition that is universally condemned by grammarians (especially the British) but is increasingly common nonetheless: merely "to deny the truth or accuracy of."

To quote from the Dictionary of English Usage:

Its most frequent use is by journalists in reporting the emphatic denials issued by those accused of wrongdoing. Hardly a day now goes by, it seems, without one goverment official or another refuting a new set of allegations.

I reckon "disprove" now joins the ranks of "refute" as simply meaning to forcefully deny an allegation.

Meanwhile, John Kerry is still desperately seeking the real medal-faker... across every golf course in America. Perhaps he should team up in doubles matches with O.J. Simpson.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 16, 2007, at the time of 6:47 PM

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