August 30, 2005

US Must Protect Iraqi Oil Fields from Terrorists

Link: Bush: U.S. Must Protect Iraq From Terror.

President Bush on Tuesday answered growing anti-war protests with a fresh reason for American troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields that he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 30, 2005 at 02:28 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What are Judge Roberts' Views on Equal Employment Opportunities Commission?

Link: Roberts' advice to Reagan on race / 1982 memo backed bans of busing, employment quotas.

In a memo written in 1983, after Roberts moved from the Justice Department to the White House counsel's office, Roberts left open the possibility that he agreed with a statement that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- which is responsible for enforcing laws against discrimination -- was "un-American."

The memo, sent by Roberts to White House counsel Fred Fielding on June 7 of that year, noted that a citizen had written President Ronald Reagan to complain that the EEOC was "un-American" and that "he will hold the President to his promise to get rid of it." The letter was shunted to Roberts, who told Fielding he could not confirm that Reagan had made such a promise.

"We should ignore that assertion in any event," Roberts said, "as well as the assertion that the EEOC is 'un-American,' the truth of the matter notwithstanding. I have drafted a deliberately bland response for your signature."

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman on Roberts's nomination who works for Vice President Dick Cheney, said the phrase in question does not refer to the "un- American statement" but to the letter writer's assertion that Reagan had called for the abolishment of the EEOC. Schmidt said any other interpretation would represent a distortion.

In their memo, Roberts and Kuhl -- who now sits on the California Supreme Court -- surveyed conservative opinions as expressed by the Heritage Foundation and publications such as Human Events and National Review. They warned explicitly that Reagan's opposition to affirmative action quotas and busing to achieve racial balance in public schools "could be instantly reversed" by a new administration.

They also called attention to other conservative concerns, including demands that the administration repeal a requirement of government contractors to hire the disabled, that it oppose gun control legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment, and that it support an effort to amend the Constitution to protect the "unborn child's right to life."

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 30, 2005 at 08:45 AM in Law School | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Case of the Missing Affirmative Action File

Link: Roberts to Be Quizzed on Torture - Los Angeles Times.

This may well be an administrative error, but it certainly deserves greater scrutiny. Recall that when Sandy Berger was accused of mishandling documents in the national archives, there was an FBI probe, a criminal investigation, and a Congressional inquiry. And Sandy Berger wasn't even seeking a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. This case is different, of course, because any possible wrongdoing here would not be the work of Judge Roberts, but rather his handlers in the Administration. The issue is what Judge Roberts wrote on the topic of affirmative action.

Leahy ... complained about the continued absence of documents relating to Roberts and affirmative action that went missing from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after they were reviewed by Bush administration staff members.

An investigation by library officials has failed to find the memo Roberts wrote on the subject, along with supporting material.

"I don't think anybody would have found that acceptable from the Clinton administration," Leahy told reporters. "I don't find it acceptable from the Bush administration."

The Reagan library acknowledged the absence of the documents when it released a large tranche of Roberts-related papers Aug. 15 and started an investigation into the disappearance.

White House officials, asserting that Leahy had no grounds for complaint, provided a copy of an Aug. 15 statement from the archivist of the United States saying that the contents of the affirmative action file had been reconstructed from copies of the documents filed elsewhere.

But Leahy said the only evidence of what was in the file came from notes taken by a Bush administration official who perused it as part of a White House vetting process.

Under rules established in 2001 by an order from President Bush, the White House has the right to review all documents from previous administrations before they are released to Congress or the public.

Roberts' Supreme Court nomination is the first since the president implemented the rules, and the result has been that all documents requested by Congress as part of Roberts' confirmation process have had to undergo a review by administration officials.

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 30, 2005 at 08:39 AM in Law School | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 29, 2005

Sony Outsources PSP Production

Link: Reuters Business Channel | Reuters.com.

The PSP is one of Sony's core, cutting edge products.  Thus, it is notable that Sony has decided to outsource part of its production to a Taiwanese manufacturer. 

Sony Corp.'s game unit said on Monday it had outsourced part of its PlayStation Portable (PSP) production to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Taiwan's top electronics parts maker.

Hon Hai, which also makes Sony's PlayStation 2 game console, started PSP production earlier this month in China's southern city of Shenzhen, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) said.

The development comes as little surprise since Taiwan's Commercial Times said earlier this year Sony would outsource PSP production to Hon Hai.

Sony's gaming unit aimed to achieve lower production costs, higher output capability and flexible operations by outsourcing PSP production, an SCE spokeswoman said.

She declined to comment on how PSP production would be shared between Hon Hai and Sony's existing production facility in Chiba, near Tokyo.

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 29, 2005 at 01:32 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 28, 2005

Another Grim Milestone: More Journalists Dead in Iraq Than Vietnam

Link: CNN.com - Report: More journalists killed in Iraq than Vietnam - Aug 28, 2005.

More journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Sunday.

Since U.S. forces and its allies launched their campaign in Iraq on March 20, 2003, 66 journalists and their assistants have been killed, RSF said..

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 28, 2005 at 08:22 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Affirmative Action for Conservative Law Profs?

Link: If the Law Is a Ass, the Law Professor Is a Donkey - New York Times.

A study by John McGinnis and others suggests that law professors in the U.S. are far more likely to contribute to Democratic campaigns than Republican ones.  Adam Liptak quotes Peter Schuck (whom I respect), who suggests that this political leaning is a result of "our preference for ideological homogeneity and faculty-lounge echo chambers."  The implicit suggestion is that there should be affirmative action for conservative legal academics.  The study itself says that faculties that engage in affirmative action for race and gender "open themselves to charges of intellectual inconsistency" if they do not also bring in a proportionate number of conservative law professors.  (The University of California is barred from engaging in race-conscious hiring by law.)

Having been involved for almost a decade in hiring decisions at Law Faculty, I would point out my own experience that a person's politics were never discussed among those doing the hiring.  That, of course, does not prove that politics did not influence the outcome.  But another factor is important: most of the time, the person's politics are not apparent, and there is no effort to divine one's political stance.  There are no clear left-or-right markers in most resumes--few people have worked for the ACLU or been on the steering committee of the Federalist Society.  Even if a particular policy preference in a narrow area may be apparent from the resume of a particular entry-level applicant, that policy preference may not necessarily reflect a general left-or-right view.  One might deduce a left-or-right stance from a particular view of a procedural issue or an issue in contracts (the kind of view likely to be evident in a job talk by a prospective junior level candidate) at some peril.  There may be a correlation, but it will prove an imprecise measure.

I suspect that it is the pool of qualified candidates themselves that varies from the general population in its political views.  To become a law professor generally means sacrificing the near-million dollar (and above) annual salaries that partners at top law firms make.  There may well be fewer conservatives willing to forgo the multi-million dollars than there are liberals.  Yet another question is the ideological distribution of the top, most academically-inclined law students in the country.  Now these would be useful questions to measure empirically.

Update:  "LawProf" argues that clerkships give away one's politics.  I doubt if that is very decisive.  Most judges are not so clearly marked as left or right--the occasional Reinhardt or Roberts are few and far between.  Even these few politically defined judges will often choose clerks whose politics differ from their own.  Larry Lessig clerked for Posner and Scalia.  Yet, he joined the Chicago, Harvard and Stanford law faculties, in rapid succession.  Where were the filters for the politics of judges?   (Perhaps Chicago was convinced he was a conservative because of his judicial affiliations?)
   

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 28, 2005 at 08:54 AM in Law School | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 27, 2005

Abu Ghraib now reduced to allegation

Link: Nearly 1,000 Released From Abu Ghraib.

Notice the language used in this Associated Press story about the prisoner release at Abu Ghraib:

It gained international notoriety after some U.S. military personnel were charged with humiliating and assaulting detainees.

Thus, the AP says the U.S. military personnel may not have actually humiliated and assaulted detainees; all the AP can say is that they were "charged" with doing so.

The AP might do well to review the photographic evidence and then talk with the Iraqis who were tortured at Abu Ghraib. It might also review the various convictions obtained in the United States in the few cases the U.S. has brought against the American torturers.

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 27, 2005 at 06:08 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Did Time Hide Truth Before Presidential Election?

Link: Salon.com - War Room.

From Salon:

The Los Angeles Times takes a long look at Plamegate today. There's little new here -- except for a claim by someone close to Karl Rove that Rove first heard Plame's name from Bob Novak -- but the Times does raise an interesting question along the way. We know now that Rove and Scooter Libby were involved in the outing of Plame. But how is it, the Times asks, that their roles remained secret until after George W. Bush was reelected?

The answer, at least in part: Their roles remained secret because some members of the mainstream press helped to keep them secret. According to the Times' report, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper chose not to ask for a waiver of confidentiality from Rove until this summer -- in part because his attorney advised against it, and in part because "Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year." As a result, the Times says, "Cooper's testimony was delayed nearly a year, well after Bush's reelection."

Translated, as John Aravosis explains at AMERICAblog today, that means that Time's editors didn't want Cooper to reveal information that could be damaging to Bush's reelections hopes until after the election was over. "It's one thing for Time to do its job and ignore the effects of its reporting and overall work on US elections," Aravosis writes. "It's quite another for Time to make decisions based on whether they'll influence US elections."

In a way, it may be even worse than that. By not seeking a waiver from Rove -- by not reporting what its reporter knew to be true -- Time allowed Americans to go the polls believing that which the magazine knew to be false. Until Time turned over Matthew Cooper's e-mail messages to Patrick Fitzgerald this July, the White House was free to proclaim -- as it did, repeatedly and vociferously -- that Karl Rove had nothing whatsoever to do with the outing of Valerie Plame. That's the false story Americans had been told when they cast their votes for the presidency in November. Time knew better but didn't say.

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 27, 2005 at 07:49 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Innocent Chinese Men Linger in Guantanamo Years Later

Link: Salon.com - War Room.

(Via Michael Froomkin) Salon follows up on a story about 15 Chinese Muslims (Uighurs) held at Guantanamo for three years who were determined to pose no threat the U.S. or its allies. Why won't the U.S. let them go? Because the Chinese might persecute them if they are returned to China. Under U.S. law they cannot be returned to a country that will persecute them because of their religion or political belief. What's the real problem? They likely qualify for asylum in the U.S.--and that would make them big news here in the U.S. They would describe directly their treatment over the last three years in Guantanamo while in the United States itself. People could look them in the eye as they told their stories.

This is the mess that the Bush Administration's lawless and reckless policies have created.

We reported earlier this month on some Muslim men from China who have been held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo Bay for three years. They're being held there still, despite the fact that a U.S. Combatant Status Review Tribunal has concluded that they're not enemy combatants and were seized by Pakistani forces -- and then turned over to the United States -- in error.

At a hearing in Washington yesterday, government lawyers said that the United States has moved the men to a less restrictive part of Guantánamo, but that it still isn't setting them free. The U.S. won't send them back to China for fear that they'd face religious persecution there, and it says it hasn't been able to find anyone else to take them in. As the Washington Post reports, attorneys for the men argued that the United States must set them free now, and that putting them into a less restrictive area at Guantánamo simply amounts to "fluffing the pillows" when they're still locked up behind a fence. The men could be released into the United States population as seekers of political asylum, attorneys said.

The government isn't interested. Although U.S. District Judge James Robertson expressed some discomfort with the "big picture" -- that is, that innocent men are being held for no reason -- he said he wants to think further before making any decision. The government? Having exposed the men to more dangerous elements within Guantánamo, it wants to keep them locked up there until it can find some other country to take them. "We can continue to hold them ... for as long as it takes," the Justice Department's Terry Henry told the court Thursday.

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 27, 2005 at 07:46 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Onion: Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

Link: The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory.

As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

(For readers unfamiliar with the source of this story, The Onion is satire.)

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 27, 2005 at 07:26 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack