Entries for October 2005

George W. Bush has nominated Judge Samuel Alito of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to the Supreme Court. Judge Alito has a strong record academically and in government. He was U.S. attorney for New Jersey, a high-pressure job in a state where corruption is—how shall we say this?—not unknown. To be confirmed for that position, Alito would have to have been approved by New Jersey's two Democratic senators at the time, Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg, the latter of whom is again serving in the Senate. From my knowledge of those two men, I believe they would not have approved Alito unless they were convinced that he was (a) highly competent, (b) completely honest, and (c) not likely to use his power as a prosecutor for political purposes. They certainly understood the importance of the job and would not, I think, have given their approval lightly. Here's what Lautenberg and Bradley said about Alito's appointment as U.S. attorney.

Conservatives who opposed the nomination of Harriet Miers were, as everyone expected, delighted by the choice of Alito. So was Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio talk-show host, blogger, and lawyer, who steadfastly supported Miers. I think it's safe to predict that all Republican senators will support Alito, with the possible exception of Olympia Snowe. I don't think Lincoln Chafee will oppose him, for reasons that I'll get to later in the post.

Britain's Conservative Party members will be voting in mail ballots for a new party leader starting soon. The two choices are David Cameron, the 39-year-old shadow education secretary, and David Davis, the 56-year-old shadow home secretary. Davis was the early favorite but delivered what has been considered a disastrous speech at the party conference in Blackpool earlier this month. Cameron delivered, without text or notes, what was widely considered a dazzling speech, and he has been the heavy favorite ever since. Here's the delicious take on Cameron's rise from Matthew D'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph. And here's a news story on Cameron's support among Conservative MPs rising to a majority of 100. For those hungry for more information on this race, I recommend prowling through the links on the websites of the Telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk, and the Times of London.

I have a fairly wide acquaintanceship in British politics, and I once sat next to Davis at dinner. He's a bit of a bruiser, the kind of fighter who does well in the roughhouse atmosphere of the House of Commons. He has been on the right (which is to say right) side of key issues for most Conservative MPs and party members—Europe, tax, immigration and asylum, etc. He has an interesting life story: He was raised by a single mother on a council estate (public housing for us) and was successful in business. But like the three previous Conservative leaders—William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, and Michael Howard—he does not seem to have the kind of charm Tony Blair projects. David Cameron evidently does. He has the sort of upper-class background—Eton, Oxford, married to the daughter of a lord—that analysts of British politics have long thought was a liability in Britain's class-conscious politics. The last Conservative party leader with such a background was Alec Douglas Home, the loser in the 1964 election. But it evidently isn't such a liability anymore. Tony Blair was educated at Scotland's leading "public" (i.e., private) school, Fettes, and at Oxford, and it hasn't hurt him a bit. And it turns out that most of the current Labor cabinet members had posh educations.

For more than two years, mainstream media reporters have been looking forward to an indictment of Karl Rove. They didn't get it today. Reportedly, Rove is still under investigation and not out of jeopardy. He will presumably be expected to cooperate in the Libby prosecution. No one can say with confidence how this will play out.

Even so, the nonindictment of Rove is a victory for the Bush administration. Rove has played a role in this White House that is unique in American history. He has been the president's chief policy adviser and his chief political lieutenant, with full authority to speak for the president on all domestic policy and all political matters. He is a serious student of history and an original thinker of the highest ability on both policy and politics. He is as close to being an indispensable and irreplaceable person in this administration as anyone except the president himself could be.

Now it's official. Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has been indicted for perjury, making a false statement, and obstruction of justice. Evidently, this is for not testifying that he had heard from Cheney that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee. This is a serious charge. I have long said that I would be astonished if someone as smart and savvy as Libby had testified untruthfully. So I am astonished now. There was nothing legally dubious about Cheney disclosing this to Libby. Both had the highest possible intelligence clearances. So it is puzzling that Libby apparently didn't testify truthfully or fully about this.

Note what Libby was not charged with: violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. To violate that act, the agent whose identity has been disclosed must have been serving abroad within five years of the disclosure. According to a book by Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, Plame had not served abroad since 1997, more than five years before the 2003 disclosure. So the act was not violated by anyone. This was an investigation of people who were telling the truth about a person, Joseph Wilson, who was telling lies. For background, see my Creators Syndicate column of last week. The Libby indictment raises in my mind the question of whether it is just to indict someone for false statements in the course of the investigation of what was never a crime.

Politically, this is obviously a blow to the Bush administration. Libby was an important White House aide who played a key role on foreign policy.

Tamara Chalabi has written an article urging that oil profits should be distributed to the Iraqi people. Chalabi is described on the website as an independent scholar in London. She's the daughter of Ahmed Chalabi, the often vilified head of the Iraqi National Congress and now cabinet minister in the Iraqi government. Chalabi played a part in putting Section 109, declaring oil the property of the Iraqi people, into the Iraqi constitution. I think people should stop vilifying him and start regarding him as a farsighted statesman.

I am writing far from Iraq and with less than ideal access to information, but it appears that the elections Saturday were a success. Turnout was higher than in the January elections, and the constitution appears to have been approved by a wide majority. The Sunnis seem to have been split: Two Sunni provinces voted heavily against the constitution, but the vote in other Sunni-dominated provinces appears to have been in favor.

Here's an interesting metric, subject to revision in light of later or better information. There were 347 attacks against Iraqis and Americans in the January elections. There were 13 such attacks in the October election. That's 347 versus 13: a big difference, even if the numbers turn out to be somewhat different. What could account for this?

Ed Whalen, head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, quotes me in this item on National Review Online's Bench Memos blog as saying that a willingness to lie is an essential quality in a university president these days. The quote is accurate but may seem puzzling to some readers. Let me explain.

One of the things university administrators do these days—I'm thinking primarily of selective universities, but I'm sure it's true of others—is to use racial quotas and preferences in admissions. Only they can't say so out loud. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's unfortunate opinion in the Grutter case makes this clear. So they have to lie about what they are doing. They lie when they say they don't have racial quotas and preferences: They make sure that a certain percentage of blacks are admitted. They lie when they say that the credentials of blacks admitted are the equivalent of everyone else's: Sadly, they aren't. And everyone knows they are lying about these things. That encourages people to presume that individual blacks at any institution tend to be less qualified than others. I try never to make that presumption and to judge individuals by their demonstrated talents and performance. But I fear others may not.