Dallas DA re-examines questionable convictions

I get the knee-jerk reaction, but why are prosecutors really mad at this guy? If you go from the premise that those who he clears with DNA evidence are actually innocent, then why in the world would prosecutors want to keep them in jail? Won't the public have more confidence in those that the DA convicts? What is wrong with this picture?

The Exonerator - WSJ.com

Which School Will Pass the Obamas' Test? - washingtonpost.com

I think Michelle Rhee's daughters go to a DC public school. Surely the Obamas cannot be expected to throw their daughters into a poor academic environment (or, infinitely worse, a dangerous environment), but if there's a school good enough for the Chancellor's daughters, might that school also be worth considering? Imagine the message of support it would send to teachers, parents, and students in the DC public schools!

Sadly, this probably isn't an option. Real life isn't the West Wing, and there are too many risks and variables associated with gambling on a public school.

What a commentary on the sorry state of American education.

PS -- thanks to Amy for the correction re: number of Rhee's daughters.

Which School Will Pass the Obamas' Test? - washingtonpost.com

Rhee's DC tenure fight

Today's NYT has a good article about Michelle Rhee's efforts to revive DC's flagging school system. It focuses largely on her plan to phase out the tenure system. The quotation below sums up the intellectually honest reasons for tenure (in my view, the real reasons are far less noble):

Teachers first won tenure rights across much of the United States early in the 20th century as a safeguard against patronage firings in big cities and interference by narrow-minded school boards in small towns, said Jeffrey Mirel, a professor of history and education at the University of Michigan.

“And the historical rationale remains good,” Dr. Mirel said, pointing to the case of a renowned high school biology teacher in Kansas who was forced to retire nine years ago because he refused to teach creationism.

“Without tenure,” Dr. Mirel said, “teachers can still face arbitrary firing because of religious views, or simply because of the highly politicized nature of American society.”

These are important considerations. But they're not arguments for tenure. They're really arguments for greater first amendment protections for teachers and other public employees.

The SCOTUS has not been kind to public employees in this regard. Most recently, in Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) (free summary here), the Court held that an employee could be fired for disparaging comments he made, largely because the subject matter of those comments was in the scope of his job description.

Public employees should be protected from arbitrary dismissal when they speak out on issues relating to their jobs. This is because the public has a right to know insiders' views with respect to the operations of the system (and the physical plants, and the cafeteria food, etc.).

Address the legitimate union concerns by granting greater first amendment protections against aribtrary firings. Create causes of action that will allow for damage awards when a teacher is fired, e.g., for refusing to teach Creationism in Kansas. But don't just make it automatic that a teacher can't get fired.

Rhee is right: schools need to be able to get rid of crappy teachers (and, much more importantly, to reward those who are good at their jobs). Merit pay is the only way to do this.

Obama's Educ. Sec.?

Please, oh please, don't pick Linda Darling-Hamilton. That rabid anti-TFA Stanford education prof is precisely the type of person we DON'T need as Sec. Educ.

Of course, since Obama said education is his fifth priority, a new Sec. Educ. might not be able to do much. But regardless, someone else needs to be in that important role.

See also this entry from the Huffington Post. Highlights:

Yes, Darling-Hammond is an ed school professor who talks in nuanced, academic terms--not scripted talking points (see her debate here). Yes, she was among the first and most prominent critics of Teach For America--and still favors a more intensive, residency-based approach to training new teachers.

But she also has authored a recent study that acknowledged T.F.A. teachers were in some ways better than traditional teachers. And she has helped start several charter schools in California. Darling-Hammond says there's no real daylight between her positions and Obama's policy proposals, and I haven't seen any convincing evidence to contradict that claim.

So what's going on then? Part of it is just a knee-jerk response against someone who dared criticize T.F.A., the reformistas' most cherished accomplishment to date. Another part of it may be the desire for a younger, fresher name picked from their own ranks--D.C. superintendent Michelle Rhee, or New Leaders founder Jon Schnur.

Who Will Obama Pick as Secretary of Education? - TIME

Edwards' "City upon a Hill" terrorism speech

John Edwards recently spoke at Pace University in New York, laying out his strategy for combating global terrorism.

Among the wonkish (but smart) plans of establishing CITO (Counterterrorism and Intelligence Treaty Organization) and a "Marshall Corps" of 10,000 civilian volunteers who would work to alleviate poverty conditions, a Edwards struck a broader theme that reminded me of a speech given almost 400 years ago.

John Winthrop, a New England Puritan leader of the would-be Massachusetts Bay Colony, warned his congregants that the eyes of the world would be upon them:

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken...we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God.We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

Then president-elect Kennedy spoke with similar language in an address to a joint session of the Massachusetts "General Court:"

But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier.

"We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill--the eyes of all people are upon us."

Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us--and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill--constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities

For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within.

Kennedy quoted Pericles' address to the Athenians, reminding them that they were a model for others, and to conduct themselves accordingly. America has forgotten this historic and sacred duty in the past seven years. We have conducted ourselves poorly, as reactionary thugs, not as visionary leaders. It's ironic that Reagan, the supposed hero of the Republican party, spoke of a "shining city upon a hill," yet his heirs have abandoned the responsibility that city entailed.

Edwards noted that the ideological war with Al Qaeda would be won only by convincing those in the middle of the ideological spectrum - and most at risk of supporting terrorism - that America offers a better, more hopeful vision.

Yet we also should have a broader, deeper goal—to prevent terrorism from taking root in the first place. Millions of people around the world are sitting on the fence. On the one side are bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and on the other side is America. The question is which way they will go. If they perceive America as a bully, it will drive them in the other direction. If, on the other hand, they see us as the light, the country they want to be like, the country that's creating hope and opportunity, it will pull them to us like a magnet.

We have to be that light again. We need to do everything we can to prevent this generation of potential friends from becoming a generation of enemies.

This speech was a big step for Edwards. His focus on poverty and his "two Americas" theme are undeniably important, but until now he hadn't made the case that that effort was important to middle class Americans, and not just on moral grounds.

In the years after the second World War, America was a visionary leader, extending a hand to the very societies we had vanquished, pulling them up and helping them to rejoin the community of nations. The Marshall Plan has had lasting impact, and it's no coincidence that Edwards named his civilian corps the "Marshall Corps." This is what America needs.

At the end of his speech, Edwards called on the students in his audience to dedicate themselves -- and make the necessary sacrifices -- to this broad, noble fight. Let's hope his words don't go unheard.

The Principled Conservative

NYT profiles former DOJ White House legal adviser

I found the principled conservative with whom Bush could replace Gonzales. The problem, according to the Times, in its profile of Jack Goldsmith, is that there is no way Bush could hire him.

Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard, is the former head of the office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House on, inter alia, the extent of executive powers. As Jeffrey Rosen, the author of the Times piece and friend of Goldsmith, writes:

"[T]he office has two important powers: the power to put a brake on aggressive presidential action by saying no and, conversely, the power to dispense what Goldsmith calls “free get-out-of jail cards” by saying yes. Its opinions, [Goldsmith] writes in his book, are the equivalent of “an advance pardon” for actions taken at the fuzzy edges of criminal laws."

So essentially, Goldsmith's opinions were the behind-the-scenes supports for some of the Bush gang's most nefarious and notorious policies, including the torture of detainees in the "war on terror."

Goldsmith, according to the profile, wasn't entirely all thumbs when it came to a rational analysis of a proposed exercise of executive power. Rosen describes in the article one instance in which Goldsmith didn't give his blessing to a proposed policy:

"Several hours after Goldsmith was sworn in, on Oct. 6, 2003, he recalls that he received a phone call from Gonzales: the White House needed to know as soon as possible whether the Fourth Geneva Convention, which describes protections that explicitly cover civilians in war zones like Iraq, also covered insurgents and terrorists. After several days of study, Goldsmith agreed with lawyers in several other federal agencies, who had concluded that the convention applied to all Iraqi civilians, including terrorists and insurgents. In a meeting with Ashcroft, Goldsmith explained his analysis, which Ashcroft accepted. Later, Goldsmith drove from the Justice Department to the White House for a meeting with Gonzales and Addington [then Cheney's chief legal adviser]. Goldsmith remembers his deputy Patrick Philbin turning to him in the car and saying: 'They’re going to be really mad. They’re not going to understand our decision. They’ve never been told no.'"

"They've never been told no." A more succinct indictment of the Bush administration's excesses has yet to be written. That sentence captures the arrogance with which Bush and his cronies have squandered American prestige and the good will of the immediate post-Sept. 11 environment by eschewing entirely the rule of law. The Bushies counted on Americans to trade a essential liberties for a little temporary safety. Maddeningly, that's exactly what we did, every time the issue came up. And Bush's team knew it.

“We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004."

The "unitary executive" theory of presidential authority espoused by the Bush gang has effectively squandered America's reputation with the rest of the world. The go-it-alone approach with which they approached their Iraq boondoggle has mirrored in their approach to domestic politics:

“The Bush administration has operated on an entirely different concept of power that relies on minimal deliberation, unilateral action and legalistic defense,” Goldsmith concludes in his book.

Ironic, since for seven years, Bush had an extremely acquiescent legislative branch, ready to roll over at the very threat of being made to appear "soft on terror."

The results of Bush's attempt to solidify the power of the executive branch have in all likelihood backfired with staggering brilliance. Rosen notes that future presidents, as opposed to enjoying more expansive executive authority, will find themselves hemmed in by ever more skeptical legislative and judicial branches:

“I don’t think any president in the near future can have the same attitude toward executive power, because the other institutions of government won’t allow it,” he said softly. “The Bush administration has borrowed its power against future presidents.”

It will be interesting to see, in only a couple of short years, what a federalist government premised on separation of powers looks like. Thanks to Bush, we're virtually assured that's what's coming.

Surgeons general silenced for political reasons? Gasp!

The other day, a group of former surgeons general (including the Colonel Sanders-looking guy from the Life Alert commercials) testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about their work and reports being silenced by various current and former administrations. Of course, it's no surprise that the Bush administration has stiff-armed its chief medical scientist; right-wing ideology has always trumped scientific consensus (global warming and stem cells, anyone?). But there were surgeons general from both sides of the aisle at the hearing, so it's not an pachyderms- or asses-only problem.
It seems to me that there will always be political pressure to silence medical research. So here's a solution: make the Surgeon General an independent entity. (S)he will still be the principal adviser to the President, but will not be subject to Executive branch control and censorship. In practice, this should work out well for all parties. The American people will have access to quality information (like the fact that abstinence-only sex education is the dumbest idea this side of letting Cheney's oil pals write the energy policy), the Surgeon General will be treated as an actual scientist should be treated, and the administration would be able to answer extremist critics by saying that they will not interfere with an independent entity. It's not too hard, folks.