The Intelligence Employment Act

The massive overhaul of US intelligence is already having a positive effect – for employment in Washington. As Walter Pincus reports in the Washington Post on 12/23, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is adding 15 new staff members, one for each of the Senators on the committee. This increase in staff was authorized in the legislation so that the committee members would be able to handle the important authorization and appropriations functions, in addition to oversight.

But wait! There’s going to be a new appropriations subcommittee for intelligence, so much of the reason for the staff increase disappeared. Not the jobs, though. Here’s the scary part: Pincus reports that “the select committee's additional staff members will have access to the panel's classified meetings, reports and computer databases, relieving individual senators from having to attend every closed meeting or read all the reports and other documents the panel receives from the CIA and other agencies.” In other words, there will be more people than ever listening to and reading classified information. People who may or may not have any experience in intelligence gathering and analysis, and who are ultimately loyal to one person each – a Senator.

The media, bloggers and activists of all stripes must be salivating at the prospects for an additional 15 “sources close to the issue” who can selectively drop tidbits of information when it will help one political side or the other. And our intelligence services have to slog along with more layers of bureaucracy, more overseers, and more opportunities for their work to be compromised at every turn.

Red & Blue, again

This article (scroll down and you'll find it) was my commentary on the coventional wisdom's oversimplification of the election. James Q. Wilson of the American Enterprise Institute does a much better job of saying it here.

Talent vs celebrity

How many times have we watched someone flapping their lips in a "live" performance on television, wishing desparately for something to go out of sync and expose the fraud? Hank Steuver, writing in The Washington Post about Ashlee Simpson, gets it right:

Forgive me for still being in the thrall of Ashlee Simpson's lip- syncing embarrassment on "Saturday Night Live" last month. I could watch that clip over and over and over. It reminds me of something gone awry during the high school talent show, and how we cringed with pure ecstasy while some girl made an idiot of herself in front of the whole school....We didn't ask for Ashlee Simpson. She is a pure creation, nothing from nothingness, and it's no wonder that when her drummer pushed the wrong button, Ashlee danced her little jig and then fled the stage.

I Was Wrong

The most sure-fire way to get a struggling publication off the ground is sensationalism. James Graham taught me this lesson a couple years ago. James, a friend and former co-worker in the Utris empire, took a conversation we had about my tenure at Bodo's Bagels in Charlottesville, and turned it into the lead for the second-ever issue of The Hook, one of Charlottesville's two weekly papers. You can find the article here.

So - bearing this in mind, I drop that bomb of bombs for the debut of accordingtous.com : Mark Brunell is not a good quarterback anymore. I was wrong.

Red & Blue

So what’s up for the country in the next few years?

• Putting the military under international control
• Banning private possession of firearms
• Removing the word “God” from all dictionaries
• Appointing only Supreme Court justices who have conducted same-sex marriages

No, wait. The Republicans won. Different set of priorities:

• Tax cuts for the enormously wealthy
• Clear cutting the Alaska wilderness, and parts of Massachusetts
• Establishment of religious courts in all jurisdictions
• Overthrow of Belgium, to remove King Albert

OK, maybe that’s a little extreme. But it’s not too far off the mark of some of the words that flew around during the campaign, with candidates and commentators warning of the grave consequences if the other guy won. And now that the election is past, the pundits are busily showing the blue-red divide and telling us again and again just how divided we are.

One of the most disturbing things I heard on election day (I told myself I wasn’t going to listen to the news until the next morning, but it’s always there) was that only a small percentage of voters said they’d be satisfied to support the other candidate. That kind of partisanship may work in football games, but it’s scary to hear it applied to the people who, for better or worse, are going to be governing this country.

So let’s back off, take a deep breath and try to understand just who we are. First of all people who inhabit the red states and support Republicans are not mindless rubes who spend all day Sunday in church and carry shotguns in their pickups. (Hey, weren’t Republicans supposed to all be fat cat financial types?) They are normal, working men and women who live normal lives, and don’t especially want them to change. In particular, they don’t want to accept new definitions to words like marriage, which have worked for them for many years. One-on-one, in families and communities, people are tolerant and accepting of all sorts of lifestyles. They accept change as well, but slowly: Look at the difference in American communities since the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. There are plenty of them living in cities in the “blue” states.

And the blue state folks are not all long-haired college professors, poverty professionals and media stars. They are normal, working men and women who live normal lives, and don’t especially want them to change. If there’s a difference, maybe it’s that they think other people’s lives should change to be more like theirs. They’re more likely to live in big cities, where they see more variety in their surroundings, and they’re likely to be more tolerant of different groups. In fact, they probably are more likely to identify with some kind of group – a union, a nonprofit, or even an unorganized group of like minded individuals. They consider themselves modern, and bask in most of the attention of the entertainment and information media.

Now, red states are full of blue people. Blue states are full of red people. It’s a matter of numbers. We all were shown maps on election night that cut a clear boundary - blue in the northeast, west and upper midwest; red everywhere else. But if you can get a copy of the New York Times of 11/4/04, take a look at the map printed on the last page of the special election section. It shows how we voted county by county. And it shows clearly the big blue circles around many of the cities in the south, as well as the red dots covering much of the land area of blue US. It's a much better depiction of our national divide, and one that the Democratic Party is going to have to figure out.

Thanks for voting

Ever since the morning after the election, my wife - a dedicated political news junkie - has had one question on her mind: Where are the "Thanks for voting"ads? Good question. For months, groups have been spending enormous amounts of money and time to try to get out the vote. Based on the numbers, and the lines at some polling places on election day, it looks like they did a pretty good job. So where are the ads thanking the 117 million Americans who did their part for democracy? Wouldn't it be great to see the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic Parties make a joint appearance and say "Thanks for voting," before they go off and bash each other some more? So far I've seen only one "thank you" ad - a full-pager in the Washington Post from MTV. At least there's one group that wants to hold on to any excitement they were able to generate about the process.