Reasons to be Cheerful - As long as the government mandates 1.6-gallon toilets, there will be libertarians. Since I find many, ahem, uses of the appliance require two or three flushes where one used to suffice, and since I don't think there's anything especially...unique about my plumbing needs, I doubt much if any water is even being saved by this absurd law. But beyond that is the sheer annoyance value of having to resort to the plunger every couple of days. Before we had to replace our old three-gallon toilet, the thing went unused for weeks at a time. Dave Barry once wrote that he never got so much mail as he did when he wrote about Toilet Tyranny. Small wonder.

Aid and Comfort - What was appalling about Clintonism was that the "centrism" favored by the President and his followers came from combining the direst characteristic of what passes for American conservatism - the Nixonian rhetoric and program of "law and order" - with the direst characteristic of what passes for American liberalism - the impulse for social engineering. The whole sorry business, from Waco to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and beyond, has been covered in detail elsewhere.

A big reason Unqualified Offerings didn't vote for Dubya is that, in many ways, "Compassionate Conservatism" has seemed like Clintonism's mirror image, its "centrism" comprising another of the Republican Party's least appealing features, its exhibitionistic, debased religiosity, with the tiresome Democratic impulse to endlessly defer and displace responsibility. What sent the Democratic Party into the Presidential Wilderness for so many years was the public's annoyance that so many liberals spent all their time singing "Officer Krumke," without a sense of irony.

When it comes to deferring and displacing responsibility, it's hard to top the administration twofer of this week. John Ashcroft tells Congress that if you form and express an opinion contrary to this particular administration's security policies, you "aid terrorists...give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends." Ashcroft's boss says, anent American Talib John Phillip Walker, "We're just trying to learn the facts about this poor fellow. Obviously he has been misled, it appears to me. He thought he was going to fight for a great cause and in fact he was going to support a government that was one of the most repressive governments in the history of mankind."

Let me see if I've got this straight: disagree with a specific set of American policies and you are the next thing to a traitor ("aid terrorists"). Take up arms against American troops and their allies and you're "misled!" Leave aside the fact that the Taliban being "one of the most repressive governments in the history of mankind" was what Young Johnny liked about it. The Little Pilgrim told Newsweek that "“the Taliban are the only government that actually provides Islamic law.” You know, burqas, beard-beatings, bombs - all that spiritual stuff. He's a victim! Bush's line is not distinct from that of JW's own parents - the father agreed with Katie Couric's suggestion that his son might be "the victim of brainwashing," which is to say nothing more than that he allowed himself to be talked into betraying his country; indeed, went out of his way to put himself under that kind of influence.

I don't fault Walker's parents as much as some others. As much as they seem to represent much of the worst of bicoastal "liberalism," I recognize that for that very reason they are in a poor position to handle a shock that would devastate any parent. And Bush is not only a father too, but one who has recently seen his daughters abused by the media, which surely plays a role in his own initial reaction. As a parent myself, I have to recognize at least the possiblity that one day twenty years down the road some reporter will appear at my door to ask if I know that Offering Boy has just been arrested for preparing schoolchildren in a light wine sauce, and how do I feel about that?

But I blame John Ashcroft for calling me, and people like me, what he should be calling Johnny Walker. And boy, do I blame Walker. Because the real harm Walker has done hasn't even become apparent yet.

Remember Ann Coulter? Why, she asked, should her sort of people (white, middle class, native-born) be subjected to the same level of post-9/11 indignities as obvious members of your terrorist-producing populations like, oh, muslim immigrants. Remember Robert Bork? The only problem with the military tribunals decision, he said, is that they don't apply to American citizens. Remember Michael Kelly and his "unprecedented threats" that justify curtailing civil liberties? It pains me to say this, but this item is winding towards what Mickey Kaus would call "eerily prescient" status: John Phillip Walker learned to fight in Afghan camps where Osama bin Laden hung out. Given a shave and a shower, John Phillip Walker would look thoroughly unremarkable anywhere in America. Soon now, John Phillip Walker will be the poster boy for the expansion of the Internal Security State, because, after all, "anyone could be a terrorist, just look at John Walker," and for that especially, John Walker deserves to hang.

I Wish He Hadn't Said That - Speaking of the deadly dynamic and Michael Croft's blog, I can't help but get nervous when he criticises the inconsistencies between Ashcroft's (so far) tender concern for gun-rights protections and his...more casual approach to the rest of the Rights of Man. Michael writes:

[If there] is a valid reason not to question why the Justice Department should be allowed to ignore inconvenient parts of the 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, as well as Article I, Section 9, and other parts of the supreme law of the land, why is he so concerned about violating 18 U.S.C. 922(t) and checking the records of gun-purchase approvals from the "National Instant-Check System" to see if any of his legally questionably detainees bought guns? Surely he's being hanged for a sheep, why not take the lamb as well?

And oddly enough, the other sage of whiterose.org writes:

He could have asked Congress to change the law in the USA-PATRIOT Act, but he didn't. And Ted Kennedy read from a terrorist training manual that specifically instructing students to obtain a legal gun in the United States. So Ashcroft knew there was a reason for the FBI to look at those gun-purchase records. But Ashcroft's putative Second Amendment concerns trumped all of that. Would that he were as concerned about upholding the rest of the Constitution.

Ginger. Michael. Don't go there. These kinds of arguments never, ever lead to lost freedoms being restored. No, they inevitably lead to the loss of the counterexemplary freedom instead. Faced with a complaint that it is being lenient about gun rights compared to, oh, habeas corpus, the government is far more likely to go ahead and gut gun rights too than to put habeas corpus back the way it used to be.

Only a Fool - Michael Croft reminds us that Mr. Johnson rebuked bloggers hundreds of years ago, saying that only a fool ever wrote for any reason but money. Tonight it occurred to me, though, that Thucydides' trio of reasons why nations go to war - honor, fear and interest - adequately cover the writing impulse too, and certainly the impulse to political writing. (Money is, of course, one thing to be interested in.)

Fear and interest both come to us today courtesy of Attorney General John Ashcroft. The following passage has been much quoted today:

To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.

To all this, there are only two things to say: Fuck you, dude. And thanks. When you come right out and say that complaining about "phantoms of lost liberty" aids terrorists and gives ammunition to America's enemies, which is to say, call anyone who criticises current domestic security policy traitors, you have done the critics' work for us. What we have said is that there is a deadly dynamic in which: The government introduces a liberty-curtailing measure which it justifies by reference to extreme circumstances. Interested parties rhetorically expand the circumstances by teasing out implications of the logic behind the original measure. With the circumstances enlarged, they push for expanding the scope of the original measure. The measure expands. This new combination of control and justification opens new logical gaps and the cycle continues.

We already see the first couple of stages unfolding before us. The government announces military tribunals for non-citizen terrorist suspects whether captured at home or abroad. Robert Bork helpfully pipes up that the problem is that the provision doesn't go far enough, since the same difficulties the government complains of in prosecuting non-citizen terrorists apply to trying citizen terrorists too. Robert Bork is not some crank on the internet (with, we are pleased to think, upwards of a dozen readers!). Robert Bork is wired into the establishment of the Party in Power, indeed, a cause celebre for its most partisan members. The man has influence. And Ashcroft, probably one of the half-dozen most powerful men in the country right now, is reading statements that place the word "aid," as in "aid and comfort," very close to the word "enemies," as in "to the." Unqualified Offerings has bitched and bitched about the faction that wants to (recklessly, UO feels) expand the war abroad. It's crushingly obvious now that there is a faction that wants to expand the war at home, too.

Out of the Mainstream - Ever since Bill Clinton began referring to people like Unqualified Offerings as "antigovernment extremists who want to divide us rather than bring us together," I've been more willing to look for value in "extremists" of both right and left. To that end I commend a long interview with Pat Buchanan in, of all places, Salon (it's the rare, free Salon item too), and Alexander Cockburn's latest piece for New York Press on the Left and Center-Left's delight in what they see as the boost in prestige the War of Terrorism has given to good old Big Government.

There's plenty to dislike about either Cockburn or Buchanan. But I'll take either one over most of mainstream pundithood.

New Sharif In Town - Michael Croft has taken the weblog plunge! Among his many qualifications are his strong historical sense and his husbanditious standing with fellow blogger Ginger Stampley. There's a link at left, so you can get to his page easily and often, as I do.

Advantage: Unqualified Offerings! Best [Neocon-Approved Items] of the Web links to two British reports on the Northern Alliance balking at the interim Afghan government because, well, a multi-faction interim government means less power for the Northern Alliance! If I could resist a Told You So! I probably wouldn't be doing this. Just remember who coined "The Northern Opponents" back in mid-November when some big-time web guy starts using it.

Here's BN-AIOTW's punchline to news confirming that the NA (or NO) say N-O to British peacekeepers: "The likely compromise: a German-led force."

Man, are the Germans that dumb?

Credit Where Credit Is Due - Glenn Reynolds had the first link I saw to an mp3 of "Let's Roll." Reynolds points out that, while the legality of the mp3 is not immediately apparent, Neil Young has maintained that the song isn't and mustn't be intended as a commercial release, so your putting the mp3 about is in that spirit.

It's a darn good thing we have the internet to distribute this anyway. Since I first heard about the song yesterday "released for radio play only" I've been wondering which if any heavily-formatted megacorp stations in the DC area would play a new song by an old dog like Neil Young. The "modern rock" stations exist not to provide an "alternative" (remember that word?) to blockbuster music but to be blockbuster music for a particular demographic - Top 40 for people with lip rings. The "classic rock" stations have made it their mission to preserve their aging white listenership from the apparently unsettling realization that people like Neil Young have actually made records since 1983. Steely Dan released a perfectly groovy single last year, "Cousin Dupree." No one who sticks to "classic rock" radio would have any idea what the song sounds like, though. There's a triple-A station down the road in Annapolis, and yes, I'd listen to it if it came in better where I do the bulk of my driving. Maybe they're playing it, or maybe they are Aging Lefties enought to find the song unsettlingly bloodthirsty. That leaves, what? actual Top 40 radio? It's hard to believe they'd play such a thing, but perhaps I sell them short.

Since Unqualified Offerings believes that its readership reaches into the high one figure, we invite any of our many loyal reader who does hear "Let's Roll" to write in with the news: what station, what format etc. Libertarian rant on the responsibility of government regulation for the wasteland that is the audio spectrum withheld for a later time.

Oh. The song itself? I like it. I may grow to love it in time. More later. I'm only on my third listen.

Threats of This Nature - Best [Neocon-Approved Items] of the Web approvingly quotes Michael Kelly's column today justifying military tribunals and decrying their attackers. Actually, Kelly goes rather beyond merely justifying military tribunals:

Any intellectually honest contemplation of the situation we are dealing with here must begin with the obvious: The United States has never faced a threat like this. It has faced graver threats, but never one of this nature -- and that unprecedented nature is such as to demand unprecedented curtailing of liberties.

Kelly is pro-war - and not just the one we have right now, in Afghanistan, but all the wars his fellow neocons would like to have: Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and "parts of Egypt" as well. (Still wondering about this last, weeks after the Wall Street Journal advocated it. Will we formally withdraw our ambassador to "parts of Egypt" before hostilities commence?)

Let us pause to remember that Kelly was once a great reporter. The man who wrote the prize-winning accounts of the (First) Gulf War that the New Republic published in 1991 understood things about the moral costs of even just wars that the apologist for "curtailing of liberties" seems to have worked hard to forget. I'm not going to unpack all the assumptions, most of them dire, behind Kelly's enthusiasm. What I want to do is juxtapose Kelly's piece with one by another supporter of the campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal. From his satiric "council of war":

MULLAH KURLI: This project shows great promise. Please carry on. With such stratagems on our side, victory cannot fail to find us. In conclusion, I would note that the destruction of America is in sight! To date, we have demolished approximately 10 million square feet of Jew-Crusader office space. That leaves the infidel with only 10.5 billion square feet of commercial office space. At this rate, God shall bring us victory in little over 1,000 years.

Look: as this website has repeated over and over since its inception, terrorists murdered thousands of unoffending Americans in September. Measured rage and fierce retribution was called for. We all cried, and it was fitting to do so. It is right to destroy the institutions that made such a depredation possible. It is right to defend ourselves and our way of life - yes, our civilization - from such assaults. And what is that civilization? It is many things, but not least among those things, it is mighty. Not just in arms, either, but in wealth, space, thought and culture. No less a hawk than Instapundit himself argued, soon after the attacks, that in terms of both relative material damage and psychic harm the September massacres were a failure. (Some have quibbled.)

Rauch implicitly makes the same argument, satirically. This is a big damn country. It is the neocons themselves who constantly counsel "toughness." The time is surely coming, if it is not here already, to be tough enough to recognize that what the terrorists have achieved and realistically can further achieve is a calamity in human terms, but a pinprick on the body politic and body economic. Kelly-style adversions to the "unprecedented" threat facing us sounds less tough than - hysterical. If the terrorists really hate our freedom as the anti-blowback school claims, then spite the terrorists and keep it. Otherwise we're giving them what they want, which as I recall is "appeasement."

Bloomwatch - Not! - Unqualified Offerings has done almost nothing but kick Andrew Sullivan around since its inception, despite owing the guy an enormous debt in entertainment and influence. And it's not sorry! But he deserves credit for an item today on John Lennon Walker, Bicoastal Yankee in the Talib Court:

Here's an interesting point made by a reader. We were told for ages that one reason we had no intelligence on the Taliban or Muslim terrorists in general was that they were basically impenetrable. An American spy couldn't effectively go under cover, we were told: they would be spotted and expelled immediately. So how come a red-diaper baby from the Bay Area managed to infiltrate Taliban ranks and find himself on the front-lines in Northern Afghanistan? In retrospect, all that hooey about the impossibility of human intelligence in these groups seems like defensive CIA spin. . Has George Tenet been fired yet?

He also has a couple of first-rate items about experiments with changing up AIDS drug regimens.

Nice Doggie - Best [Neocon Approved Items] of the Web has sport today, as always, with Colin Powell, this time with his public statements about Arafat's position in the wake of the recent Palestinian terror-bombings in Israel. The item declares incredulously that

On CNN's "Late Edition," Secretary of State Colin Powell put forth the view that Arafat was a victim of the attacks:

I spoke to Chairman Arafat last night right after the first bombing in Jerusalem but before Haifa, and I made it clear to him that he had to act because not only was this a terrible attack against innocent Israelis, a terrible act of terror, but it was also an attack against him, it was an attack against his authority, it was an attack against Palestinian leadership, and it was an attack that he could not overlook.

Allow me to translate for the correspondent from the Wall Street Journal, Diplomatese apparently being a little tricky for him.

Powell: Yo! Yasser! They're dissin' you, man! They think you nothin'. They laughin' at you! You best deal with it or you is reveal as just a punk. And the US don't deal with no punks.

Translation services compliments of highclearing.com, dba Unqualified Offerings. Now some free consulting services: As a decent high school civics class will explain, Secretary of State is the "sound nice" job. Cf "Cop, Good."

The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Speaking to a vendor today about my previous employer, which did the 90% reduction thing a couple of months ago, he said he heard they got more funding. I have to tell you, if someone will fund my former employer, the spigots must be loosening. OTOH, my sister reports that in her latest conversations with recruiters and their ilk, the word is that there are jobs to be had in government contracting and suchlike, but that the pay is simply not what those of us in tech companies have gotten used to. Nor will it be, they feel, for another three to four years. Good thing I bought this spiffy 19" flat screen monitor already!

The Health of the State - On the front page of the Sunday Post the following headline:

Terrorism Spending Vitalizes D.C. Area
Region Emerging As the Nation's Top Economy

The story is a secondary lead from the index page Post's website. I don't believe that the government is pursuing war just to make money on the deal, but there's no getting around the fact that the class of decision-makers will have an economic disincentive to shorten the nation's enemies list.