The Daily Snark 6/20

Today marks the 91st day since the United States began bombing Libya. This is important, since as of this day President Obama is required by law to have Congressional authorization in order to continue the attack.

He doesn't have that authorization. The attacks are continuing.

To begin with, this law was broken when the attack was initiated. The President may only introduce the use of military force when

1. there is an declaration of war
2. specific Congressional authorization
3. a national emergency in which the United States is being directly attacked.
   

Clearly, none of those situations existed when this conflict began. Critics of the Iraq War (and often Obama supporters) may not like that conflict, but at least it was signed off by the legislative branch.

To make matters worse, even if the attack began legitimately, the War Powers Resolution does require Congressional authorization within 90 days. We have passed that mark and the President continues his attack with Congressional authorization. Pretty clearly, this law is being broken by the executive branch.

The written excuse put out by the President is beyond contemptible. Basically, the argument is that this is a small conflict, so it doesn't count. Go back to the War Powers Resolution and you'll note that there is no exception made for small conflicts, or those involving low probability of casualties, or not having boots on the ground. If the President wishes to use military force against another nation, he must have Congressional approval. No exceptions are made in the law.

The War Powers Resolution fills a necessary hole in our division of power, as military action may be necessary before the slow gears of legislation can catch up to a national emergency in our modern age. Pretty clearly, Libya was no threat to our nation; if we wished to change their regime or stabilize the region, those are reasonable objects, but they require a national discussion followed by approval from the branch closest to the People. The President's action is nothing more than a naked power grab, which unfortunately will pay off for him. There is no real judicial recourse to end the campaign; no court writ will undo Libyan lives ended by American missiles.

I've pointed out elsewhere that the political and moral reasons for this Libyan intervention are pretty ridiculous as they could just as easily apply to Syria, which the Administration has shied away from. It looked like an easy opportunity to have a rally 'round the flag effect and show the United States supporting purported democracy lovers in the Middle East. Clearly, that has not been the case. That the President is so willing to break the rule of law is most distressing. Some modification to the War Powers Resolution is required in order to give it judicial teeth; if a law cannot be enforced, it is not a law.

The Daily Snark 6/18

Recently I posted a thing from Gallup about how little Americans know about current events. Just to let you know that our understanding of the past isn't much better, either, and isn't going to get better in the near future.

There will be an upcoming post on teaching history shortly enough, but for now I think it is safe to say democracy may not be the best of ideas when you put control of the most powerful government in the world into the hands of idiots.

The Grad Student

(This is a short story I wrote in February of 2007, mostly as an attempt to deal with my own graduate school experience. I was stuck in a program that really emphasized the "scientific" aspect of social science, in particular quantitative (read: statistical) studies. I had a hard time then and now believing such studies are of any value. This was my way of venting. I'm putting it up because I'm currently reading Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and there's a similar chord in both stories. Fiction writing can be escapist, but I've always felt the best works have a strong foundation in philosophy, whatever that philosophy may be. The philosophy need not be political, though most fields of philosophy intersect; that is a discussion for another day. This story was written at about the time I took my first real hard look at epistemology, which would down the road influence my political beliefs towards libertarianism.

Anyway, I like this story. Hopefully someone else will, too. I may take up writing fiction again, but only if I can avoid sounding like an angst ridden teenager.)

He slowly closed the door behind him, shutting out the cold, wintry night, and flicked on the light to reveal the familiar apartment that Paul had called home since he began graduate school two years earlier. It was hard for him to comprehend the enthusiasm he had possessed for the study of physics back then. Paul was exhausted of a world described in numbers and would quit his studies if he had any prospect of a decent career, but in this economy he knew that wasn't in the cards. He was too far along to quit; that advanced degree would be worth the suffering. Well, financially it would be, anyway.

After taking care of his winter gear, Paul plopped down at his dining room table with a notebook he had bought that afternoon. He stared at the notebook. It was a red one subject notebook, indistinguishable from a dozen other notebooks around the apartment except that it was still blank. Paul flipped through the pages, picturing what it would look like in a month. He could see numbers and signs, hundreds of them, and the occasional illegible shorthand that would hopefully translate these hieroglyphs into something intelligible when comps came around in another year.

Paul burped, loudly. There was nobody around, so an apology wasn't forthcoming. He looked back at the notebook. Given enough time and thought, somebody could probably translate that burp into a mathematical formula. Paul chuckled as he thought of some frantic student writing that paper. It wouldn't be all that less pointless than describing the trajectory of some far off (and maybe nonexistent) planet. Which is what Paul bought the notebook for.

The thought made Paul a little sick to his stomach. Physics is a way of studying the world around us. He thought about his other notebooks, full of numbers and Greek letters. Did those equations explain why his classmates had said "God bless you" when he sneezed? Could they explain his parents divorce? They might explain why he was still single, though.

Those equations didn't seem to explain much to Paul. They could explain movement, combustion, and the mysteries of the atom. Hell, those formulas could explain anything that didn't have a touch of humanity to them. It would be remarkably hard to come up with an equation for love and hate and poverty and war, but Paul knew that there were poor bastards in the social sciences trying to do just that.

Academics, apparently, was the conversion of life into a regression model. A world of cold logic and predictability, without a hint of mystery or morality. A world where beauty would be labeled Y, and every characteristic of beauty would be beta coefficients X1, X2...Xn, and Poof!, instant Shakespeare! Instant da Vinci. Instant Vivaldi. Every erroneous idea would not only be corrected but would be predicted. The academic would become the perfect prophet.

Except that he would be a prophet without a message to deliver. When love can be scientifically explained, will it still have value to us? When life is explained in its totality, will it still be worth living?

Paul opened his notebook, picked up a pen, and wrote "In the beginning, there was mystery, and God saw that it was good."