Well, not formally an alliance, but nonetheless a landmark defense-cooperation pact signed this week.

The United States and India signed a 10-year agreement paving the way for stepped up military ties, including joint weapons production and cooperation on missile defense. Titled the “New Framework for the US-India Defense Relationship” (NFDR), it was signed on June 27/05 by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and India’s Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Joe Katzman explains why this is so important.

Seventeen soldiers died in Afghanistan when their MH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down this week. One of the killed was the son-in-law of my town’s mayor.

Franklin Mayor Tom Miller said yesterday that his son-in-law, James W. “Tre” Ponder III of Clarksville, was among those killed in the crash. Because the military had not yet confirmed the identity of those killed, Miller declined to name Ponder’s unit but said he was stationed at Fort Campbell.

Names of the other soldiers have not been released, but the Chinook’s crew is presumed to have come from Fort Campbell, Ky., about 60 miles northwest of Nashville. Although the post headquarters is in Kentucky, the largest town near the fort is the Tennessee city of Clarksville.

News of the crash comes at a time of increasing tension among Fort Campbell soldiers as many prepare to redeploy later this year, said Stan McCormick, pastor of Bethel United Methodist Church, which is near the base on Fort Campbell Boulevard.

“With the deployment coming, you just feel a little more tension, a little more stress,” said McCormick, who often consults with soldiers before they head overseas. “I don’t see how this can’t help but increase that a little bit, even if they don’t know (the crash victims).”

While U.S. Department of Defense officials would not provide any information about the 12 soldiers and five crew members killed in the crash, several news organizations reported that the helicopter was carrying U.S. Navy SEALS and was piloted by a crew from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

The 160th SOAR is based at Ft Campbell. It’s a sad day in Clarksville, and here in Franklin, too.

Update: DOD now confirms the number of dead at 16, not 17. There were no survivors.

Bill Hobbs documents that Iran’s president elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “was one of the perpetators of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979″. There’s more, none of it good.

Andrew Clem had a part in the making of the just-begun Spielberg movie, “War of the Worlds.” In his report he wonders whether Tom Cruise is in the midst of a midlife crisis.

Recruiting numbers are low enough for the Army to cause real concern at the high command. The Army’s recruiters are no worse than any other service’s - the problem is (I think) the Army’s recruiting strategy with its heavily civilianized marketing influences.

Hence this email today from reader Matt Holmes:

I was considering joining the Army and know just about nothing about that, so I went to the goarmy.com website and filled out the “Request Info Pack” form on the main page. At the end of the form, the last entry was the following:

(8.) I am most interested in (check all that apply):

( ) Money for college
( ) Skill training
( ) Travel and adventure

Where is “Serving my country”? And what’s up with “adventure”? I was looking at the site because I am tired of wanting to do something and feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, and I’m presented with these options that made me feel like even the Army doesn’t care.

I thought you might find that interesting.

Yes, it mirrors my own son’s experience with the local Army recruiter. That’s why he is a US Marine lance corporal. At least the Marines don’t hide what they’re about.

The Army recruiter here - no kidding - told my son that their monthly meetings before going to basic training would feature pizza parties. I wrote more about our personal experiences with Army and Marine recruiters two years ago.

Professor of political science Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has made an academic specialty of studying suicide terrorism. He writes in today’s ChiTrib of “The strategic logic of suicide terrorism and how to defeat it.” Sadly, he connects some dots that aren’t there.

Pape’s thesis is flawed from the beginning, for he apparently misunderstands what the war or terrorism (WOT) is about. This error has two related parts. Pape’s first error is in assuming that the WOT is mainly a war against suicide terrorism, rather than Islamist extremism.

Since Sept. 11, the United States has responded to the growing threat of suicide terrorism by embarking on a policy to conquer Muslim countries-not simply rooting out existing havens for terrorists in Afghanistan, but going further to remake Muslim societies in the Persian Gulf.

It’s true, as Pape says, that Islamism often manifests itself in suicide attacks, but Islamists are just as likely (if not more) to detonate unattended bombs, such as in Madrid 2004 or using IEDs in Iraq. Al Qaeda even mounts conventional armed attacks against relatively weak targets, as they have unsuccessfully done in Iraq on several occasions.

The WOT’s objectives are not merely to bring cessation to suicide attacks, but to “dry up the swamp” in which Islamism grows. By Pape’s lights, if al Qaeda et. al. were suddenly to stop using suicide bombers, we will have won the war. But suicide terrorism is simply one arrow in al Qaeda’s quiver. It has used and will continue to use other means to attack us. Pape has confused the enemy’s tactics with their objectives.

(I wrote in 2003 that al Qaeda does not actually have a strategic plan, a conclusion that the New York Times got around to drawing only last month. But they do have a strategic goal.)

By micro-focusing rather than macro, Pape says of his research,

The facts show that suicide terrorist attacks are not primarily an outgrowth of Islamic fundamentalism and are, almost always, part of an organized campaign to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider home.

Too much can easily be made, as Prof. Pape does, of the fact that not just Islamist terrorists conduct suicide attacks. It may well be true that, “The world leader is the LTTE in Sri Lanka, a Marxist group that is completely secular and that draws its recruits from Hindu families.” It is also irrelevant because LTTE has not declared war against the United States as al Qaeda has. It is true that Osama bin Laden and other Islamists want US forces out of Islamic countries. But bin Laden has made it plain that he not only wants US military forces out of the Persian Gulf, he also wants every non-Muslim out, military or not, American or not. Suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia, for example, has not been directed only at US forces, but also American diplomatic housing areas. In April 2004, British police foiled an extensive plot to suicide-bomb thousands of soccer fans at a Manchester United-Liverpool soccer match, hardly a military target in “territory that the terrorists consider home.”

To say that the target of suicide bombings is “the forces of democracy” is to confuse, again, the means of the attack with the goals of the terrorists. What Islamists despise is democracy itself. Witness that in recent months the suicide bombers in Iraq have increasingly turned to attacking the democratic institutions of free Iraq and its people. Not only have they struck the Iraqi military but also Iraqi police and strictly civilian targets. Suicide bombers are a means of attack against democracy as an idea and political operation, not just democracy’s military forces.

This misunderstanding leads Prof. Pape to prescribe a simplistic, erroneous strategy:

Over the next year, the United States should transfer responsibility for Iraq’s security and buildup and control of the Iraqi army to Iraq’s government and begin a systematic withdrawal of ground troops from the region.

This prescription is flawed for three reasons:

1. It fails to account for the fact that the Islamists’ objective is to emplace Taliban-like governments in Iraq and elsewhere in the Gulf. The near-term withdrawal of US forces from Iraq will enable them to do so even if they abandon suicide attacks as a tactic. Stopping suicide attacks will be the result of America achieving its strategic goals, not the cause of their achievement.

2. It falls into the “timetable” trap, the false supposition that our enemies can be appeased if they know we are abandoning the fight. All setting a timetable does is give the enemy the date of their victory.

3. Prof. Pape discounts the religious motivations of Islamist suicide bombers apparently for no reason other than religion did not motivate some other bombers, the LTTE, for example. Certainly Islamism does not mandate suicide bombing, but its core Muslim tenets make it attractive to impressionable Muslims. See here.

Suicide bombing is not the enemy, it is merely a tactic. The nation’s strategy against Islamist terrorists has never been simply to stop suicide bombing, nor should it be so misdirected in the future.

So far, more than 10 minutes into the president’s speech, I am underwhelmed. Look, I know why a free, democratic Iraq is in the interests of America - and the rest of the world- but Bush has yet to say why. He’s insisted it is but won’t get to the point: it is the beachhead for a democratic reformation of and liberalization of Arab society at large, without which Islamism will continue to flourish and have the resources to act.

This speech seems more tactical/operational than strategic. But I stay tuned.

7.19 - now he’s slam-dunked setting an artificial deadline for withdrawal. Good!

Minute by minute liveblogging at Captain’s Quarters.

Many times Bush has said that the terrorist enemies are “trying to shake our will.” Well, yeah, but to what end? Bush refuses to say that al Qaeda and its aligned groups want to attack America again and kill us.

Whoops! He finally said it, sort of. But I still await Bush to state plainly that al Qaeda desires to kill Americans and attack America, and that by forcing them to fight us in Iraq we are badly foiled their plans and upset their operations.

Bush’s conclusion with a tribute to the troops was direct and obviously heartfelt. Well done.

Overall, I don’t rate this speech very high - no better than a “B” and maybe B-minus.

I haven’t found the transcript on the nWhite House web site yet, but as I watched the president deliver it, I was left with the impression that this speech was poorly structured.

— Now FoxNews has a transcript up. The speech reads betters than it hears. I think that Bush’s delivery, never stellar, was below even his par tonight.

Mark Steyn writes more about the decline of Europe and includes this tidbit:

Every day you get ever more poignant glimpses of the Euro-future, such as it is. In East Germany, whose rural communities are dying, village sewer systems are having a tough time adjusting to the lack of use. Populations have fallen so dramatically that there are too few people flushing to keep the flow of waste moving. Traditionally, government infrastructure expenditure arises from increased demand. In this case, the sewer lines are having to be narrowed at great cost in order to cope with dramatically decreased demand.

hat tip, Richard Heddleson. While we’re on the general subject of Europe, reader Tom Pechinski emails about, “The moral disinvestment of the Church of England.”

The Christian church has played an absolutely central role in the long history of Jewish persecution. The Catholic church has publicly recanted its hatred of the Jews and painfully tried to make amends for its role in the Nazi Holocaust. The Church of England has never done so but instead has swept the issue under the carpet. Now we are seeing the immoral legacy of this unfinished business. Instead of supporting the Jews against those who use terror, hatred and lies to deny them the right to live in their own restored nation state, the Church of England is singling out the Jews as the one people in the world who do not have the right to defend themselves from being murdered.

I know there are many other decent Christians who are equally appalled. Now is the time for them to make their voices heard loud and clear against this moral corruption that has overtaken their church.

See also:
The economic basket case called the European Union, and
The decline of Europe - more retirees.

Spengler (no first name given) writes in the Asia Times that George W. Bush is not too dumb to win the war against Islamism; in fact, Spenghler says, Bush is actually pretty smart and clever.

Bush’s disadvantage is that he is too good:

The Christianity that Bush professes is an American original, a true rebirth without a backward glance. The born-again American Christian expects every individual on earth to respond to divine grace in similar fashion. The kind of evangelical Christians one finds in Midland, Texas, evince a spirit of charity found among no other people in the world, sending money and missionaries to assist the most impoverished people of Africa and Latin America.

Good people cannot as a rule understand wicked people. They do not wish to be wicked, and cannot understand why anyone else would wish to do so. American Christians cannot fathom the kind of wickedness that accounts for the bulk of the butchery in world history, born of the pessimism of dying races who will kill without compunction to delay the hour of their demise. …

Spengler’s thesis is that Bush intends to convert the Middle East, not to Christianity but to democracy and civil society. This, Spengler implies, is not going to happen,

To embrace death is the extreme of evil. Iraq’s Sunnis, as I wrote last week, have even less hope without control of the country’s oil than had the young men of the American South without control of slaves. They are the denizens of a failed culture, and therefore hold their lives cheap enough to trade for a bombing in a restaurant or a bank, let alone the death of an American soldier. Against such radical evil, the good has no natural defenses.

I don’t agree, on the whole, but whomever Spengler is, he does provoke one to think anew.

PS - Spengler says that the only American Holy War was the Civil War. I agree that it was a holy war, but disagree with his general observation in two ways. First, it was not the only American holy war. World War I at least counts as such, and probably WW2 also. Second, Spengler seems to think that American holy war means only religiously-motivated war, which he says the Civil War morphed into (which is true, but not completely).

I explained at some length American holy war before the Iraq War, using the Civil War as the premier example, but not the only one (and in which I said, “American Holy War is coming to Iraq … . But the peace to follow will probably be a mess”).

hat tip: American Digest.

I warned on June 23 - the day of the Supreme Court’s Kelo ruling - that the ruling would place houses of worship in more severe danger of eminent domain than any other kind of property.

Today, Christianity Today catches up: “Experts Warn Houses of Worship at Risk After Court Ruling.”

Meanwhile, Bill Hobbs links to a piece about how “the city of Richfield, MN announced that they would move to condemn people’s houses and small businesses to allow Best Buy to build a new corporate headquarters.” And Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., who recently filed to run for the Senate next election, said that the Kelo decision is a “positive” thing.

Braden Files, always rewarding and badly under-read, has an entry about calculating flight times, but this time it was school kids who did so for a Coast Guard HH-60 helicopter.

It was a U.S. Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter that touched down on the school playground at exactly 8:44 a.m. – the precise time that third-, fourth-and fifth-graders calculated it would.

“I told the kids the helicopter would be leaving San Diego at 8:25 a.m., it was 32 miles to the school, and the chopper would be flying at 100 mph,” said Capt. Joe O’Hagan, a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 16-06, based in Oceanside.

“They hit the arrival time right on the button,” O’Hagan said.

O’Hagan’s wife, Beverly, is a substitute teacher at Richland, and she arranged for her husband to come to the school Wednesday and pose the math problem to upper-grade students. The couple also arranged for the helicopter and its crew to visit yesterday.

A correspondent named Larry - a trained navigator - also relates how “United Airlines used to keep their clientele on long overseas flights amused by offering a bottle of champagne to the person who came closest to guessing the time at which the midpoint of the trip would occur.” On one such flight he happened to have his fancy-dan E6-B navigational computer with him.

Ha! I calculated the midpoint…exactly the same number that the navigator had, with his E6-B. I settled down for the flight, taking pity on all the suckers who were doing Mickey-Mouse stuff such as dividing the total distance by twice our average airspeed etc etc. Thinking how my wife and I would enjoy cracking open the champagne that night.

“And the winner is…the lovely lady in seat 33B!” came the announcement as we touched down in Honolulu. “Off by four seconds!” I (and the navigator) were off by FORTY- FIVE seconds! “How on earth did you figure that with such precision?” I asked the grandmother in 33B. “Oh, I just guessed what would be reasonable and put down that number” she said.

“Probably arrogant kids should not mess with their grandmothers” is the lesson I took away from that.

United Air Lines still offers a reward for calculating the time of midpoint, but it’s not champagne. On our flight to Honolulu from Chicago last month the prize was a gift basket from Hilo Hattie’s, a big gift shop in Honolulu.

Using the speed, wind and distance data provided over the intercom, I used my Palm Tungsten E to open a spreadsheet, made my calculations, filled out my entry sheet and turned it in. Awhile later the captain announced that the plane would detour well to the south of a thunderhead, quite a time before half the estimated total flight time had elapsed. I knew that any of us who had figured carefully just lost.

As it turned out, I missed the actual midpoint time by about 15 minutes - pretty close to the time it took to complete the detour and get back on course. Ah, well. . .

Let us briefly review the concept of Islamic martyrdom, for which the Arabic world is shahid. (Many Muslims, not only the Islamist kind, dislike using “martyr” as a synonym for shahid, saying that “martyr” is a Christian term which does not conceptually translate well to the Muslim concept. They’re right, but such are the limitations of language.)

It’s well known that Muslim suicide bombers in Iraq and elsewhere have committed their gory deeds principally from religious fervor. Time Magazine profiled a sui-bomber to be in Iraq, a native Iraqi who conversion to reactionary Islam began during Saddam’s reign and whose religious determinism intensified after the invasion.

That the young man, whose nom de guerre is Marwan Abu Ubeida al-Jarrah, has motivations that seem neither entirely clear in his own mind nor simple in scope. He opposes American forces in Iraq, that is clear. He is a veteran of several firefights and is now awaiting a suicide-bombing mission.

Unlike many other insurgents, who reject the terrorist label and call themselves freedom fighters or holy warriors, Marwan embraces it. “Yes, I am a terrorist,” he says. “Write that down: I admit I am a terrorist. [The Koran] says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim.” He quotes lines from the surah known as Al-Anfal, or the Spoils of War: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy.” …

Marwan says he doesn’t think about his legacy or how others might regard him when he is gone. Unlike their Palestinian counterparts, Iraq’s self-immolating terrorists are not celebrated and memorialized by family and friends. At best, Marwan might be profiled on one of the jihadist websites, but even there, his identity would be concealed to spare his family harassment by Iraqi authorities. “It doesn’t matter whether people know what I did,” he says. “The only person who matters is Allah—and the only question he will ask me is ‘How many infidels did you kill?’”

The only question Allah will ask Marwan is how many non-Muslims he killed. Is there any better illustration of the gulf between Islamism and the (at least nominally) Christian West? The Christian New Testament foretells the interrogation on the day of judgment in Matthew 25:31-40:

31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.”

Marwan’s god wants to know whether he committed mayhem and murder. Christ wants to know whether we fed the hungry and thirsty, welcomed strangers, clothed the naked, nursed the sick and visited the imprisoned.

The contrast could not be clearer.

Update: The Telegraph tells of Palestinian female suicide bombers who failed their mission for one reason of another and are now imprisoned by the Israelis:

One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: “Because of my religion. I’m very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there’s no difference between men and women shaid [martyrs].”

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr “will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair”.

Another failed terrorist told the interviewer,

“Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …'’

Update 2: These vignettes illustrate why I insisted in 2003:

The overall concepts of deity between Judaism-Christianity and Islam are so divergent that both cannot be simultaneously true. I referred to comedian Jack Handy’s shtick that trees and dogs are just alike. They both have bark, after all. Of course, one is a small, furry, warm-blooded, mobile animal. The other is a large, leafy, coarse-surfaced, woody, motionless plant. But they really the same.

But if someone described his pet dog to you using terms such as leafy, woody, motionless and such, at some point you’d insist that he wasn’t talking about a dog at all. And no matter how stoutly he insisted he was, you would say no.

So it is with the way Islam presents Allah and the way Judaism-Christianity present YHWH/God. At some point, for those who study the subject, the light dawns that although both recognize there is only one deity, we are not talking about the same deity. If we alike insist, though, that there is still only one deity, then either Judaism-Christianity or Islam are false, even though there are occasional points of agreement.

Update 3: Just why suicide bombing or any other death in battle gains salvation for a Muslim is explored here.

Just read this.

My friend and sometime OHC contributor Maj. John Krenson, TNARNG, is published today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (registration required): “Grappling with Gitmo - U.S. needs to keep evil in its place: Right here.”

I have looked evil right in the eyes. I know some people don’t believe it exists, but it does. I felt the lingering presence of evil when I visited Dachau as a teenager many years ago. I sensed evil when I visited the Soviet Union as a student in 1980, when it was at the zenith of its repressive power. And I looked into the face of evil in Afghanistan nearly a quarter of a century later. Unlike most Americans — particularly many in our leadership and in the media today — I’ve seen the evil burning in the eyes of those who helped to plan and perpetrate terrorism such as the Sept. 11 attacks.

There is a place for such people. Places such as Gitmo. …

As usual, Mark Steyn cuts to the quick on why and anti-flag-burning amendment to the US Consitution is a bad idea, and why he, a Canadian, was made proud of his country when he saw the Maple Leaf flag burned one day. RTWT.

If you haven’t had a chance to beat me up for my own expression of opposition to the amendment, here’s another chance.

“RCOB” is Kim Du Toit-speak for “red curtain of blood” - that which descends over one’s eyes when encountering something horrible or inexcusably unjust (Kim defines it a little more, uh, bluntly than that).

I got a phone call awhile ago that summoned it forth.

You may recall that on June 23 Nashville police responded to a 911 call from Nashville Muslims reporting that a defaced Quran had been found on an outside stairway. Police are treating the incident as a hate crime and have consulted with the police.

Got that? A 911 call. For a defaced Quran. Hate crime. Consulted the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

This morning in Nashville the storage shed of very close relative of mine was burglarized while my relatives were at home. More than a thousand dollars of property was stolen, the shed was badly damaged. My relatives called the police.

The police refused to come, and said that if my relative provided them with serial numbers of the stolen items they’d look out for them. Oh, no serial numbers? Not interested.

The police refused to come! For a burglary! And what by any meaningful definition of the term also has to count as a home invasion.

At WOC, a “reader with a long-standing liberal orientation” has “had it up to here with some of the recent shennanigans.” He’s absolutely right, too.

Richard Heddleson kindly sent me the link to a Washington Monthly article on the history of coffee. I find the topic fascinating. See also my own post about roasting your own coffee at home. Coffee is, btw, traded worldwide more than any other commodity except petroleum.

Tennessean Bob Krumm is proposing to amend the state constitution to protect private property owners against abuses sure to come as a result of the Supreme Court’s Kelo ruling. Bob’s proposed amendment is this:

No private property shall be taken by the State of Tennessee nor by any subordinate jurisdiction except for public use, and without just compensation.

No fee or admission shall be charged for general use of the grounds and facilities located on taken property, nor shall taxes be collected on such property.

At such time that the taken property is no longer in public use, its ownership shall revert to its previous private owners or their heirs without charge.

Bob continues his post with explanation and explication. Despite my severe disagreement and dismay with the High Court’s ruling, I think Bob’s proposal is actually too restrictive. For example, he says,

Here are some of the public uses that would be allowed under this amendment: parks, schools, libraries, and roads. Prohibited uses would be strip malls, office developments, stadiums, convention centers, golf courses, and toll roads.

Unfortunately, my draft amendment appears to disallow a college or a hospital, because they charge admission. It also prohibits the seizure of land for power and sewer lines since they would be operated by a private entity which presumably (though not necessarily) would be paying a fee to the government.

I don’t see a lot of difference between building a city-owned park and a city-owned golf course, even though the course would charge a greens fee and the park would be free to use. I also am unwilling to sign on to banning eminent domain to build power or sewer lines because (A) these utilities are already publicly regulated if not actually publicly owned and (B) economies of scale for efficient, effective service often may require that certain routes be used even if it means “domaining” private land.

Here is where I agree with Bob’s intent: the city or state should not be allowed to force a landowner to sell his/her land in order to turn the land or its use over to a for-profit business, with, as I said, public utilities being a possible exception. (Note that insurance and banking businesses are regulated, too, but they are not public-service businesses whose profit margin is regulated, as utilities’ margins are.) That means that the city or state should not ever act as the agent for transferring land ownership or its use from one private owner to another. As I said, I think an exception should be made (abeit rarely) for public utilities, but I ‘m not sure how to draft and amendment for that.

Bob also disallows a city to buy private property, own it for a time and then “flip” it to other private hands. Further, the government must permit “reversion clauses” in the title transfer, specifying that when the government vacates the land the title reverts to the sellers or their heirs or assigns.

That last part could be pretty sticky, as Bob implictly admit in linking to the problems foreseen with the possible closure of the Army’s Fort Monroe, Va. The post was recently named for closure by DOD’s Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

If Monroe stays on the closing list, one of the first hurdles to figuring out what happens next will be deciding who owns it.

That won’t be easy, predicts A. Paul Burton, Hampton’s city attorney.

The city hired a real estate lawyer to do some research just in case what happened Friday happened, he said.

He found out that the base comprises a number of properties, assembled from 1838 to about 1917. There’s even a two-acre splotch of land where a lighthouse for shipping traffic was acquired in 1798, during the administration of John Adams, the nation’s second president.

Several, but not all, key pieces of the land that are now combined and known as Fort Monroe had what lawyers call reversion clauses as part of their sale to the federal government, says Burton - the original sale laid down conditions for what happens if the Army stops using the land.

“It’s probably one of the most complex land title situations you’ve got around here,” Burton says.

Then there are potential issues with cleaning up the land in question or razing buildings erected there, et cetera. One compromise could be that the original owner, heirs or assigns must be given the right of first refusal at the original, unadjusted selling price; if they decline the land can lie fallow or be sold at market. However, admitting that I am not a real estate attorney, I won’t try to prescribe about that angle any further.

Bottom line, though, is this: The government should not have the authority to force the transfer of title of privately-owned land or its use to other private hands. I would include in a proposed amendment to the state constitution a clause specifically rejecting “higher tax base” as meeting the criteria of “public use.” There sits not a government anywhere, of any size, that doesn’t want more tax money. Now that the Supremes have written that collecting more taxes in and of itself meets the definition of public use, no one’s property - especially the poor and houses of worship - is safe from the government’s grasp.

Update: Okay, maybe I’ll need to oppose domanining property for golf courses, too.

My latest free coffee contest

Andi’s World tells of one Rachel Lea Hunter, who according to North Carolina’s Lincoln Tribune, is “a Republican and a candidate for Chief Justice” of North Carolina. Seems Ms. Hunter, a lawyer, once “ran unsuccessfully in 2004 for the North Carolina Appeals Court.” She has never held an elective office, but hey, why not go for that big brass ring of chief justice?

Anyway, Ms. Hunter says she’s dropping out of the Republican Party because of,

… the Bush administration’s policy on troop withdrawal from Iraq. Rachel Lea Hunter [also] likens Bush’s administration to the “Nazis” and says that all who disagree with the administration are being branded as “traitors”.

This is far from the first time such allegations have been made against the Bush administration. Fred Barnes cited in the WSJ a similar quote by Hillary Clinton that she uttered during a speech at the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner on April 28, 2003:

I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration you’re not patriotic. We should stand up and say, ‘We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.’

I’ll agree that “unpatriotic” is not the same as “traitor,” but my question is this: Just who among members of the Bush administration has actually made such accusations against Ms. Hunter or Sen. Clinton or anyone else?

Hence the OHC June challenge: A prize goes to the first person to leave a comment with the verified quotation from an administration official - meaning a staff principal or official spokesperson - accusing someone of being a traitor for opposing the administration’s policies.

NB, please:

1. You must provide both the quote and a link to it, which must be in a credible source. I will be the sole arbitor of what is a credible source because it’s my contest.

2. If you email me your entry I absolutely promise you will not win nor will your entry ever appear on this site. Leave a comment only!

3. The prize is one full portion of my world famous, home-roasted, Papua New Guinea coffee, about four ounces. U.S. addresses only!

Now, back to Ms. Hunter. The woman, as the saying goes, seems to “have issues.” Ed Cone reported on Nov. 1, 2004:

NC Rumors: “Rachel Lea Hunter, a Republican Cary lawyer running for the state Supreme Court, has battled the impression in her own party that she’s a fringe candidate.

This won’t help: Several years ago, she signed onto the agenda of a Fresno, Calif., group called Alliance for the Separation of School and State.

The group’s Web site includes Hunter and her campaign manager, Cameron DeJong, on a list of hundreds of North Carolinians who have openly endorsed this policy: ‘I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.’”

I think that Republicans and Democrats alike would consider that group “fringe.”

Hunter has a blog which I have searched for unsuccessfully. The Lincoln Trib says that on it, “Hunter expresses anger at former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot for unsubscribing to her campaign’s email list.”

The long tirade against Hunter’s political enemies even includes quotes attributed to her pet. While criticizing the Republicans throughout the state, Hunter says that: “Max the dog says, they will be reduced to four people meeting in a phone booth at this rate.”

The candidate also takes time to blame “COPAM” for past criticisms of Hunter. “COPAM” is an acronym passed along on Internet message boards for a number of Republican leaders and operatives in North Carolina. No such group officially exists but the myth of such an organization has been perpetuated by campaign operatives of Hunter’s organization.

Hunter does not allude to which party she may join when and if she leaves the Republican Party.

Might be tough finding someone to accept her, eh? Politics would be so dull without people such as these.

From OpinionJournal’s Review and Outlook:

So, in just two weeks, the Supreme Court has rendered two major decisions on the limits of government. In Raich v. Gonzales the Court said there are effectively no limits on what the federal government can do using the Commerce Clause as a justification. In Kelo, it’s now ruled that there are effectively no limits on the predations of local governments against private property.

These kinds of judicial encroachments on liberty are precisely why Supreme Court nominations have become such high-stakes battles. If President Bush is truly the “strict constructionist” he professes to be, he will take note of the need to check this disturbing trend should he be presented with a High Court vacancy.

A mighty big “if,” speaking of Bush. I have almost no confidence that this administration will offer anything but lip service to correcting these wrongs. Why? Jonathan Adler explains,

There are a few problems with President Bush going out and attacking the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision. First, the Bush Administration had the opportunity to intervene on the side of the homeowners, and they decided not to. Indeed, it was pretty clear to those watching the case that if the Solicitor General’s office participated at all, it would have been on the side of the city government seeking to use eminent domain.

Not that the other party will set things aright, either. The ruling does two things the Left loves: it increases the judiciary’s power, if only by by an increment, and expands the power of government to control the economic health of ordinary citizens.

— a long list of links and excerpts is here.

That’s what Gerard Van Der Leun does, quite expertly.

From today’s Tennessean, a Nashville city official on the portent of Kelo on the city’s residents and businesses:

Nashville officials say they aren’t poised to begin wholesale condemnation of personal property to beef up the local tax base.

“Sweeping away a whole neighborhood of small houses and businesses to simply replace them with a higher tax generator is not something we would do,” said Phil Ryan, executive director of the Metro Development and Housing Agency, the local body that has the power of condemnation.

Well, Phil, you’ve been doing it already:

In Nashville, condemnation has sometimes occurred in redevelopment areas around downtown. To build the BellSouth Tower, the Gaylord Entertainment Center and the Coliseum, the city moved to condemn properties, for instance.

Guess what corporation owns the BellSouth Tower, one of the tallest skyscrapers in Nashville? The Gaylord Entertainment Center is owned by Gaylord Entertainment, a national company headquarted in Nashville. It also owns Opryland Hotels here and elsewhere. The Coliseum is the football stadium where the Tennessee Titans play. Its construction at city expense, including tax-paid purchase of “domained” land where it sits, constituted one of the biggest welfare projects ever done, with the sole recipient of the welfare largesse being one Bud Adams, the team’s owner.

But noooooo … Nashville’s government would never do such a thing again. Really. Trust ‘em.

From Joseph Braude at TNR: “Fighting Chance: The Egyptian media responded badly to Rice’s speech. Which was partly a good sign.”

An editorial in today Washington Post begins thus:

IT’S HARD TO TAKE satisfaction in the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in the case of Kelo v. City of New London — the result of which is quite unjust. Yet the court’s decision was correct.

Let’s see whether I understand. The WaPo says that the result of the court’s decision is that injustice will be done, but that the decision itself was correct.

Got that? The courts, which are charged with upholding justice, are now endorsed by the Post to render injustice provided that their decision is “correct,” whatever that means. The Post goes on to say,

The trouble is that there is no good way to distinguish New London’s use of eminent domain from assertions of the power that local governments depend on all the time for worthy projects. Railroads, stadiums, inner-city redevelopment plans and land reform efforts all have involved taking land from one owner for the apparently private use of another. …

However unfortunate New London’s plans may prove, stopping the city based on a standardless judicial inquiry into how “public” its purpose really is would be far worse.

So the Post falls into the Socratic fallacy of claiming that because we cannot define exactly what a term means there is no point in talking about it at all. Hence, power, not reason, rules, and government has the power, so government wins.

It’s one thing to say that this sort of thing has been going on a long time. It has - here in Nashville the city took land away from downtown businesses to give to Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams under the specious proposition that having a pro football team in the city would increases the standard of living of all. (It hasn’t, of course.) But, as Glenn Reynolds observes,

I think that existing law has moved, by gradual increments, to a point where it’s out of step with the Constitution and with public sentiment about what’s just.

Precisely. In fact, eminent domain has been misused by governments for a long time. Maybe now we’ll wake up and realize it and do something about it.