By David K. Shipler
When admissions officers from thirty elite universities were asked how many of them were the first in their families to attend college, about two-thirds raised their hands. It was a stunning response, which surprised even them. Here were the gatekeepers for all the Ivy League schools—from Dartmouth to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest--plus an array of the other hardest schools to get into, from Amherst to Rice, Carleton, Stanford, Wellesley, Smith, Swarthmore, and the like. They were gathered in Aspen in 2004 to consider how to increase enrollment by students from low-income families.
I had been invited to speak to them about the dynamics of poverty, which some of them already understood very well. Their own upward mobility helped give them a sense of mission, which they were poised to take home to their respective presidents. Some have since succeeded, to a point, and others may do so soon, for race-based affirmative action is now in jeopardy before the Supreme Court. Class-based affirmative action is the likely substitute.
October 11, 2012
October 3, 2012
Mixing Religion Into Politics
By David K. Shipler
(published in Moment, Sept.-Oct. 2012)
If opinion polls on religion and politics are accurate, the American public reached a turning point last March, in the heat of the Republican primaries. For the first time in the 12 years that the Pew Research Center has been surveying attitudes, a plurality—38 percent—said that politicians talked too much about faith and prayer, exceeding the 30 percent who thought they talked too little. Until now, the figures had been reversed. The “too-little” camp reached a high of 41 percent in 2003. And this year, only 25 percent—down from 60 percent in 2001—felt that political leaders were expressing religious faith in just the right amount.
Does this indicate a growing distaste for candidates who mix religion into government? Let’s not get ecstatic quite yet. The First Amendment still sits uncomfortably on a good number of citizens, especially white evangelical Protestants.
September 19, 2012
Compassionless Conservatism
By David K. Shipler
I met Debra Hall in Cleveland years before Mitt Romney slandered 47 percent of all Americans as lazy parasites who want government to feed, house, and coddle them. She was 39, the single mother of two, and lived near poverty by working intensively at hard jobs that paid extremely low wages.
She learned how to type, how to keep an inventory, and how to drive a forklift, but she couldn’t find a job commensurate with her skills. Hired by a bakery, she was placed at a grueling conveyor belt; all the forklift drivers there were men. When I last saw her, she was getting up at 2 a.m., driving her beat-up car to the bakery, and putting in long, numbing shifts for $7.90 an hour. Yet when I asked her to list the reasons that she thought she had been confined to a life of poverty, she answered with one word: “Lazy.”
Lazy? I said. You work harder than I do. And harder than Mitt Romney, I’d now add. So, where does this self-indictment come from?
It’s not unusual to hear the poor blame themselves by using the same terminology inflicted on them by the upper classes.
September 12, 2012
Where Are All the Bumper Stickers?
By David K. Shipler
I just spent two days driving from Maine to Maryland and saw a total of five bumper stickers for presidential candidates. [Postscript: In 10 days of driving 1300 miles in rural Alaska, I saw no bumper stickers at all--only one for Romney when I got to Anchorage.] This is disastrous for undecided voters who are waiting for a revelation on the highway.
The first was a snappy slogan on a pickup in Maine: “Protect Freedom. Defeat Obama.” This was confusing. The young man behind the wheel didn’t look as if he meant a billionaire’s freedom from reasonable taxes, which Obama’s defeat would surely guarantee.
In Massachusetts, a hatchback came along with a red, white, and blue sticker in the middle of its cargo door: “NOT a Republican,” and an Obama-Biden sticker down on the bumper, where it belonged. The driver was behaving more safely than the young woman who cut me off at high speed on the interstate; as I hit the brakes, her “Romney” sticker loomed large. This is the kind of driving that can lose a candidate the election, as surely as Al Gore lost it when he sighed during a debate.
Here’s a reminder for drivers promoting candidates on vehicles: Undecided voters have X-ray vision.
August 30, 2012
Unfit Running Mates
By David K. Shipler
Only once since Ronald Reagan chose George H. W. Bush as his running mate in 1980 have Republicans picked a vice presidential candidate who was qualified to step into the Oval Office if necessary. He was Jack Kemp, former Housing Secretary, who ran with Bob Dole in 1996, a smart and solid man who could have been a decent president.
With all the rest, the Republicans have exposed the country to a high-stakes gamble with very bad odds. In 1988, Bush selected Dan Quayle, an inexperienced senator whose perpetual deer-caught-in-the-headlights look made him seem less than intellectually capable. He was a lightweight vice president who only recently, in cogent criticism of his party’s swing to the hard right, has shown the good sense he would have needed as president.
Dick Cheney, Vice President under George W. Bush, displayed such contempt for the Constitution’s protections of individual rights after 9/11 that, as a president unrestrained, he would have damaged the country’s structure of liberty even more extensively than Bush allowed him to do. (One Cheney gambit, which Bush rejected, was to knock down a pillar of American freedom by sending the Army in pursuit of a hapless so-called “sleeper cell” of wannabe terrorists in upstate New York. They were duly prosecuted by the civilian system.) Much of Cheney’s legacy has persisted under Obama.
July 29, 2012
The Amorality of the Market
By David K. Shipler
The lobstermen on the Maine island where I spend summers stayed home yesterday. They did not leave port to haul traps in the season that is usually the busiest and most lucrative of the year. It wasn’t the weather. The windless sea was as calm as gray glass, and the patchy fog burned off soon after sunrise—not that fog ever stops these guys anyway.
The reason they left their boats on their moorings, as many of their colleagues on the Maine coast have done from time to time this summer, was the ruthless market. Their co-op told them it wouldn’t be buying yesterday, because the price has fallen to the lowest since the 2008 economic collapse—at this moment, just $2.05 a pound “at the boat,” as they say. It’s slipped below $2.00 on other parts of the coast.
July 18, 2012
Money is Speech, Poverty is Silence
By David K. Shipler
As billionaires exercise their First Amendment right to freedom of speech by assaulting the country with propaganda, the poor remain quiet. Even as half a dozen Republican governors insist that they will not accept a penny of the federal government’s money to provide expanded Medicaid health insurance to the nearly poor, those citizens do not raise a voice.
The reason is obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. The poor cannot afford to buy TV ads, produce slick Internet messages, or hire fancy public relations pros to manipulate vocabulary and insinuate their versions of reality into daily news coverage, talk-show babble, and political agendas.
This is the other side of the coin of freedom that the Supreme Court struck in its Citizens United decision overturning federal limits on campaign spending by corporations, unions, and other groups.
As billionaires exercise their First Amendment right to freedom of speech by assaulting the country with propaganda, the poor remain quiet. Even as half a dozen Republican governors insist that they will not accept a penny of the federal government’s money to provide expanded Medicaid health insurance to the nearly poor, those citizens do not raise a voice.
The reason is obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. The poor cannot afford to buy TV ads, produce slick Internet messages, or hire fancy public relations pros to manipulate vocabulary and insinuate their versions of reality into daily news coverage, talk-show babble, and political agendas.
This is the other side of the coin of freedom that the Supreme Court struck in its Citizens United decision overturning federal limits on campaign spending by corporations, unions, and other groups.
June 27, 2012
The Supreme Court: How to Encourage Police Profiling
By David K. Shipler
It’s too bad that Supreme Court justices can’t ride along incognito with police officers and see firsthand the frequent profiling that occurs. Then we might not get the sort of airy, wishful opinion that the Court delivered as it upheld the “show-me-your-papers” part of Arizona’s immigration law.
The majority warned that the provision would be constitutionally vulnerable if it were later shown to involve racial and ethnic profiling. But how else are officers to enforce it? They are mandated to check the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest whom they have “reasonable suspicion” to think is in the country illegally. “Reasonable suspicion” is a squishy legal concept, a bit more than a hunch but a lot less than the “probable cause” required for an arrest. What constitutes “reasonable suspicion” near the Mexican border if not a swarthy complexion and a Spanish accent? The Arizona police aren’t going to be on the lookout for suspected Swedes.
June 22, 2012
Invisible Malnutrition and America's Future
By David K. Shipler
Senators from both parties are congratulating themselves for passing the agriculture bill yesterday as a model of bipartisan responsibility and healthy compromise—a model of just what legislators should do. But the result is not an example of what legislators should do. It cuts $4.5 billion from the $80-billion annual food stamp program, which helps keep 45 million Americans—most of them children—from the throes of malnutrition.
Responsible legislators would look ahead to the future of a country where millions of children get inadequate nutrients during critical periods of brain development. We know what that means—“we” being our society, which includes the neurologists and pediatricians and nutritionists and psychologists who have studied the lifelong impacts of early malnutrition. Their expertise never seems to penetrate the walls surrounding Capitol Hill.
A raft of research has found that the timing of nutritional deficiency during the most sensitive periods of brain growth can determine which mental capabilities are damaged. During the second trimester of pregnancy, the creation of neurons can be affected. During the third trimester, neuron maturation and the production of branched cells called glia, can be inhibited. From birth until about age two, food scarcity can assault the rapidly developing brain enough to lower I.Q. And even if good nutrition is restored later, there is no full recovery. Early deprivation creates lifetime cognitive impairment.
May 30, 2012
Obama and Romney Both Lose
By David K. Shipler
If you want to vote early, stop by Congdon’s Donuts in Wells, Maine and drop a coffee bean into the glass jar of your choice. You don’t have to be a professional bean counter to see the results so far. You can tell at a glance that Romney is trailing Obama, but not by much, and both are way behind the jar labeled “None of Em.”
Summarizing national moods is always risky, since a moody country such as ours has many emotions simultaneously. But the dark, shiny beans tell something about the level of alienation from political leaders, the cynicism about politicians, and the distaste for government that grow out of this period’s unusual fear of uncertainty and sense of personal vulnerability.
May 22, 2012
The Weight of Race in the Race
By David K. Shipler
It will be instructive during this election campaign to watch certain conservative whites try to activate racist attitudes against President Obama without seeming to do so. This will be a challenge, in part because wild exaggeration will be necessary to make Obama into a caricature resembling the ugliest stereotypes of blacks.
Nothing about him fits the malicious images traditionally imposed on African-Americans by American society. He is not stupid, lazy, violent, dirty, criminal, corrupt, or immoral. He is a loving and responsible family man. He does not abuse power or behave arrogantly when he gets it. He does not see through a racial lens, does not remind whites of their guilt, and does not indulge in anti-white polemics. (Being biracial, of course, he is as white as he is black.)
May 16, 2012
Terrorism: The Ambiguity of Intelligence
By David K. Shipler
A strange aura of infallibility still surrounds the gatherers of secrets. Oddly, the false premise of the Iraq war seems not to have damaged public trust in the spy, the interrogator, and the computerized dragnet that captures and sifts petabytes of data. Whatever is hidden, and is ferreted out, carries a presumption of accuracy so seductive as to have beguiled a couple of federal judges, who have issued an unprecedented ruling that unverified intelligence reports deserve unquestioned acceptance. Only the Supreme Court has the power to break this spell, which it will consider doing tomorrow. [Update: The Court on June 11 decided not to review any of the seven habeas corpus decisions by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, letting stand the pernicious opinion in Latif, described below.]
The espionage agencies’ reputations have been bolstered by the spectacular intelligence coups that have led to Osama bin Laden and, most recently, to the foiling of an aircraft bombing plot by a double agent who infiltrated al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to pose as the bomber himself. Nevertheless, scattered among the dramatic successes are untold numbers of dubious reports, false positives, half-truths, and outright absurdities. Such is the nature of intelligence work, according to those in the business.
A strange aura of infallibility still surrounds the gatherers of secrets. Oddly, the false premise of the Iraq war seems not to have damaged public trust in the spy, the interrogator, and the computerized dragnet that captures and sifts petabytes of data. Whatever is hidden, and is ferreted out, carries a presumption of accuracy so seductive as to have beguiled a couple of federal judges, who have issued an unprecedented ruling that unverified intelligence reports deserve unquestioned acceptance. Only the Supreme Court has the power to break this spell, which it will consider doing tomorrow. [Update: The Court on June 11 decided not to review any of the seven habeas corpus decisions by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, letting stand the pernicious opinion in Latif, described below.]
The espionage agencies’ reputations have been bolstered by the spectacular intelligence coups that have led to Osama bin Laden and, most recently, to the foiling of an aircraft bombing plot by a double agent who infiltrated al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to pose as the bomber himself. Nevertheless, scattered among the dramatic successes are untold numbers of dubious reports, false positives, half-truths, and outright absurdities. Such is the nature of intelligence work, according to those in the business.
May 10, 2012
The Other Argument For Gay Marriage
By David K. Shipler
Government has no business telling people whom they can marry. It’s as simple as that, and why most small-government Tea Partiers and other conservatives don’t see it is one of those vexing mysteries of hypocritical politics.
President Obama did not make that argument when he finally completed his circular “evolution” of 16 years and returned to where he had stood in 1996, when he had said, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages.” Yesterday, he declared on ABC, “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
It seems that he has finally come around to accepting his own opinion. That’s what integrity looks like. Now let’s see if he can lead some of the Americans on the other side to accept it as well.
Government has no business telling people whom they can marry. It’s as simple as that, and why most small-government Tea Partiers and other conservatives don’t see it is one of those vexing mysteries of hypocritical politics.
President Obama did not make that argument when he finally completed his circular “evolution” of 16 years and returned to where he had stood in 1996, when he had said, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages.” Yesterday, he declared on ABC, “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
It seems that he has finally come around to accepting his own opinion. That’s what integrity looks like. Now let’s see if he can lead some of the Americans on the other side to accept it as well.
April 30, 2012
Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.
By David K. Shipler
(as published in The New York Times Sunday Review Apr. 29, 2012)
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.
(as published in The New York Times Sunday Review Apr. 29, 2012)
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.
April 24, 2012
Stop Local Immigration Enforcement
By David K. Shipler
The cleanest, most honest way to oppose Arizona’s draconian immigration law is not the way it’s being done in Wednesday’s oral argument before the Supreme Court. It would be to oppose all local police involvement in federal immigration enforcement, including two programs that have been expanded by the Obama administration. They have led to just the kind of error and profiling feared by critics of the Arizona statute.
But profiling is not on the Court’s agenda, although it’s been raised in amicus briefs. The question at this stage is one of federalism, whether federal immigration law implicitly preempts the states’ powers to legislate in this area. Congress included no claim of preemption in the relevant law, so it’s up to the justices to decide whether there is implied preemption, a concept not warmly embraced by states-rights conservatives.
That is an important constitutional issue. But for swarthy people with foreign accents, the more practical, everyday matter—which will surely be litigated if Arizona’s law is upheld—is the license given to local police departments to stop and question and detain people on the basis of hunches and guesses that translate into racial and ethnic profiling. Many of them may be U.S. citizens and legal residents.
The cleanest, most honest way to oppose Arizona’s draconian immigration law is not the way it’s being done in Wednesday’s oral argument before the Supreme Court. It would be to oppose all local police involvement in federal immigration enforcement, including two programs that have been expanded by the Obama administration. They have led to just the kind of error and profiling feared by critics of the Arizona statute.
But profiling is not on the Court’s agenda, although it’s been raised in amicus briefs. The question at this stage is one of federalism, whether federal immigration law implicitly preempts the states’ powers to legislate in this area. Congress included no claim of preemption in the relevant law, so it’s up to the justices to decide whether there is implied preemption, a concept not warmly embraced by states-rights conservatives.
That is an important constitutional issue. But for swarthy people with foreign accents, the more practical, everyday matter—which will surely be litigated if Arizona’s law is upheld—is the license given to local police departments to stop and question and detain people on the basis of hunches and guesses that translate into racial and ethnic profiling. Many of them may be U.S. citizens and legal residents.
April 17, 2012
Legalizing Drugs Would Bolster Constitutional Rights
By David K. Shipler
If Secret Service agents hadn’t infatuated the American press last weekend by cavorting with prostitutes in Colombia, there might have been space and time for newspapers and broadcasters to dwell on a more significant event that took place, also behind closed doors, at the Latin American summit. It was the discussion about partially legalizing narcotics to undermine the lethal drug cartels that have turned parts of the hemisphere into war zones.
This is not about to happen, obviously. As a politician in an election year, President Obama naturally rejected the idea. But the leaders—pushed by President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, and President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala—did order up a study by the Organization of American States. Desperation about drug violence has driven the decriminalization proposal to the highest levels of certain governments.
The arguments for and against legalization are familiar, but there is one in favor that has rarely been made: The war on drugs has also been a war on the U.S. Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
If Secret Service agents hadn’t infatuated the American press last weekend by cavorting with prostitutes in Colombia, there might have been space and time for newspapers and broadcasters to dwell on a more significant event that took place, also behind closed doors, at the Latin American summit. It was the discussion about partially legalizing narcotics to undermine the lethal drug cartels that have turned parts of the hemisphere into war zones.
This is not about to happen, obviously. As a politician in an election year, President Obama naturally rejected the idea. But the leaders—pushed by President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, and President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala—did order up a study by the Organization of American States. Desperation about drug violence has driven the decriminalization proposal to the highest levels of certain governments.
The arguments for and against legalization are familiar, but there is one in favor that has rarely been made: The war on drugs has also been a war on the U.S. Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
April 10, 2012
Mike Wallace: The Question That Changed America
By David K. Shipler
It’s not often that a two-word question can shake a country’s self-regard as deeply as Mike Wallace’s to Private Paul Meadlo, the soldier he interviewed about the My Lai massacre.
“And babies?” Wallace asked.
“And babies,” Meadlo answered.
It was a pivot point in Americans’ downward trajectory of honor during the Vietnam War. Something snapped. The struggle to disbelieve the emerging story was now impossible to sustain. No longer was it inconceivable that a U.S. Army platoon had walked into a South Vietnamese hamlet on March 16, 1968, rounded up villagers, herded hundreds into a ditch, and gunned them down.
It’s not often that a two-word question can shake a country’s self-regard as deeply as Mike Wallace’s to Private Paul Meadlo, the soldier he interviewed about the My Lai massacre.
“And babies?” Wallace asked.
“And babies,” Meadlo answered.
April 6, 2012
Long after 9/11: Plato’s Shadows
By David K. Shipler
I recently asked a class of undergraduate journalism students what they remembered about September 11, 2001, since most of them were only eight or nine at the time.
Nobody chose to answer except one young woman, who said that she remembered her parents’ reactions. She did not elaborate, but it seemed that what stayed with her, more than the scenes from lower Manhattan, were the faces and voices of her mother and father.
Inevitably, as generation supersedes generation, that clear and terrible morning will be interpreted through the country’s reactions.
I recently asked a class of undergraduate journalism students what they remembered about September 11, 2001, since most of them were only eight or nine at the time.
Nobody chose to answer except one young woman, who said that she remembered her parents’ reactions. She did not elaborate, but it seemed that what stayed with her, more than the scenes from lower Manhattan, were the faces and voices of her mother and father.
Inevitably, as generation supersedes generation, that clear and terrible morning will be interpreted through the country’s reactions.
March 27, 2012
Health Care: The Myth of Free Choice
By David K. Shipler
If the Supreme Court overturns the health care law, the best response would be to enact a single-payer system, possibly by expanding Medicare downward by age until everyone is covered: in other words, a tax-funded service that is clearly constitutional.
Democrats in Congress toyed with the idea, but it won’t happen, of course, because Republicans who don’t know what socialism is will scream, “Socialism!” Nor are we open to learning from other industrialized countries, which have fashioned an array of methods to finance and deliver medical care to their populations. Our pride in American exceptionalism seems to make us impervious to others’ experiences.
Therefore, as seems likely after today’s skeptical questioning by conservative justices, the United States will remain buffeted by a semi-private system that creates the illusion of free choice.
If the Supreme Court overturns the health care law, the best response would be to enact a single-payer system, possibly by expanding Medicare downward by age until everyone is covered: in other words, a tax-funded service that is clearly constitutional.
Democrats in Congress toyed with the idea, but it won’t happen, of course, because Republicans who don’t know what socialism is will scream, “Socialism!” Nor are we open to learning from other industrialized countries, which have fashioned an array of methods to finance and deliver medical care to their populations. Our pride in American exceptionalism seems to make us impervious to others’ experiences.
Therefore, as seems likely after today’s skeptical questioning by conservative justices, the United States will remain buffeted by a semi-private system that creates the illusion of free choice.
March 21, 2012
The Secret Service As Thought Police
By David K. Shipler
A case of security vs. speech, before the Supreme Court for oral argument today, may set important standards for law enforcement agents who make misjudgments in the heat of the moment. As usual on matters of civil liberties, the Obama Administration is on the wrong side.
Under President Obama’s predecessor, the Secret Service was mobilized to suppress political speech. To create glowing television portrayals of President George W. Bush wherever he spoke, White House staffers screened out people wearing anti-Bush T-shirts, had the Secret Service expel them from public presidential events, and even cruised parking lots looking for hostile bumper stickers so the cars’ occupants could be turned away once they reached the door. The Secret Service, which is supposed to protect the president from physical harm, protected him from political dissent as well, by instructing local police to restrict demonstrators to distant “free speech zones,” usually out of sight of both the president and the cameras.
A case of security vs. speech, before the Supreme Court for oral argument today, may set important standards for law enforcement agents who make misjudgments in the heat of the moment. As usual on matters of civil liberties, the Obama Administration is on the wrong side.
Under President Obama’s predecessor, the Secret Service was mobilized to suppress political speech. To create glowing television portrayals of President George W. Bush wherever he spoke, White House staffers screened out people wearing anti-Bush T-shirts, had the Secret Service expel them from public presidential events, and even cruised parking lots looking for hostile bumper stickers so the cars’ occupants could be turned away once they reached the door. The Secret Service, which is supposed to protect the president from physical harm, protected him from political dissent as well, by instructing local police to restrict demonstrators to distant “free speech zones,” usually out of sight of both the president and the cameras.
March 13, 2012
The Permanent Emergency
By David K. Shipler
When President George W. Bush went outside existing law to fight terrorism, his unilateral, ad hoc measures were so lacking in authority as to be vulnerable to political pushback and constitutional challenge. They had a transitory quality, cobbled together hastily to address sudden danger. When he ordered the National Security Agency to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and secretly monitor communications without warrants, when he declared prisoners enemy combatants who could be held indefinitely without lawyers or trials, and when he avoided Congress and established military tribunals on his own, he faced an uproar from both the left and the libertarian right, and the prospect of reversal in the courts.
But now, more than a decade after 9/11, most of the policies that once seemed so extraordinary have been codified in law and practice, and recently portrayed by Attorney General Eric Holder as permanent, justifiable features of the legal landscape. This sea change in the constitutional culture will be difficult to undo, and it may lead eventually to a harsh judgment by history.
When President George W. Bush went outside existing law to fight terrorism, his unilateral, ad hoc measures were so lacking in authority as to be vulnerable to political pushback and constitutional challenge. They had a transitory quality, cobbled together hastily to address sudden danger. When he ordered the National Security Agency to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and secretly monitor communications without warrants, when he declared prisoners enemy combatants who could be held indefinitely without lawyers or trials, and when he avoided Congress and established military tribunals on his own, he faced an uproar from both the left and the libertarian right, and the prospect of reversal in the courts.
But now, more than a decade after 9/11, most of the policies that once seemed so extraordinary have been codified in law and practice, and recently portrayed by Attorney General Eric Holder as permanent, justifiable features of the legal landscape. This sea change in the constitutional culture will be difficult to undo, and it may lead eventually to a harsh judgment by history.
March 1, 2012
Church, State, and Santorum
By David K. Shipler
Given the history of religious persecution in colonial America, not to mention elsewhere in today’s world, it’s hard to think why Rick Santorum and his acolytes would so zealously wish to undermine what President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 called the Constitution’s “wall of separation between Church & State.” Jefferson coined the famous, controversial phrase in answer to a worried letter from leaders of the Baptist minority in Connecticut, where religious freedom was not an inherent right but merely a privilege granted by the legislature—one that could be withdrawn.
It had also been Baptists, in Virginia, who had inspired the First Amendment. Baptist preachers there had been jailed at the behest of the Anglican Church, and the growing Baptist voting bloc feared oppression by the fledgling federal government. Their leaders pressed a certain congressional candidate in 1788—James Madison—to abandon his ambivalence about amending the new Constitution. Madison hadn’t seen the need for amendments spelling out specific rights, but he did see a need for votes in a tough election. We know the result: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Given the history of religious persecution in colonial America, not to mention elsewhere in today’s world, it’s hard to think why Rick Santorum and his acolytes would so zealously wish to undermine what President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 called the Constitution’s “wall of separation between Church & State.” Jefferson coined the famous, controversial phrase in answer to a worried letter from leaders of the Baptist minority in Connecticut, where religious freedom was not an inherent right but merely a privilege granted by the legislature—one that could be withdrawn.
It had also been Baptists, in Virginia, who had inspired the First Amendment. Baptist preachers there had been jailed at the behest of the Anglican Church, and the growing Baptist voting bloc feared oppression by the fledgling federal government. Their leaders pressed a certain congressional candidate in 1788—James Madison—to abandon his ambivalence about amending the new Constitution. Madison hadn’t seen the need for amendments spelling out specific rights, but he did see a need for votes in a tough election. We know the result: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
February 23, 2012
‘I Confess!’ Why Do People Admit to Things They Haven’t Done?
By David K. Shipler
(Published in the New York Times Sunday Review of Feb. 26, 2012, online Feb. 23)
Several months after Antonio Ramirez was shot seven times in Oakland, Calif., the police picked up a frightened 16-year-old named Felix, isolated him in an interrogation room late at night without a lawyer, rejected his pleas to see his mother, and harangued him until he began to tell them what he thought they wanted to hear.
They wanted a diagram of the crime scene, he later told his court-appointed lawyer, Richard Foxall, but whatever he drew was so inaccurate that the police never produced it. When he described escaping in one direction after the killing, they corrected him, because they knew from witnesses that the shooter had gone the opposite way. When he didn’t mention an alley nearby, they told him about it, and he incorporated it into his statement. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said one officer, as Felix recalled to his lawyer.
(Published in the New York Times Sunday Review of Feb. 26, 2012, online Feb. 23)
Several months after Antonio Ramirez was shot seven times in Oakland, Calif., the police picked up a frightened 16-year-old named Felix, isolated him in an interrogation room late at night without a lawyer, rejected his pleas to see his mother, and harangued him until he began to tell them what he thought they wanted to hear.
They wanted a diagram of the crime scene, he later told his court-appointed lawyer, Richard Foxall, but whatever he drew was so inaccurate that the police never produced it. When he described escaping in one direction after the killing, they corrected him, because they knew from witnesses that the shooter had gone the opposite way. When he didn’t mention an alley nearby, they told him about it, and he incorporated it into his statement. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said one officer, as Felix recalled to his lawyer.
February 13, 2012
A Lesson for Candidates
If political candidates want a quick lesson in how to speak to both the hopes and the hardships of America, often in a single sentence, they would do well to spend a little contemplative time at the new memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.
In his day, King could probably not have been elected to much of anything, even if he’d had such an aspiration. But his words of nearly half a century ago, engraved into the memorial’s semi-circle of dark granite, reverberate now in haunting harmony with the yearning of the country.
February 2, 2012
The Tattered Safety Net
By David K. Shipler
Mitt Romney’s remark that the poor don’t need his concern because they have a safety net has triggered worry on the right and glee on the left that he’s emerging as an uncaring, unelectable patrician. But the more important issue is the myth that a safety net even exists—the widely accepted notion that the fragmented, underfunded programs to address poverty actually rescue falling families from destitution.
To give Romney his due, he said that “if” he found holes in the net, he’d “fix” them. Let’s take him up on that. Since he doesn’t already know about the gaping holes through which 46 million Americans have fallen into poverty, perhaps he’ll want to talk with a few such folks on the campaign trail. Then, all he’d have to do as president is summon up the billions it would take to do the job—a worthy investment, but not one that Republicans have ever been willing to make.
Mitt Romney’s remark that the poor don’t need his concern because they have a safety net has triggered worry on the right and glee on the left that he’s emerging as an uncaring, unelectable patrician. But the more important issue is the myth that a safety net even exists—the widely accepted notion that the fragmented, underfunded programs to address poverty actually rescue falling families from destitution.
To give Romney his due, he said that “if” he found holes in the net, he’d “fix” them. Let’s take him up on that. Since he doesn’t already know about the gaping holes through which 46 million Americans have fallen into poverty, perhaps he’ll want to talk with a few such folks on the campaign trail. Then, all he’d have to do as president is summon up the billions it would take to do the job—a worthy investment, but not one that Republicans have ever been willing to make.
January 29, 2012
Arresting the Witness Instead of the Criminals
By David K. Shipler
Does this make sense? The Obama administration is prosecuting a former CIA analyst for allegedly telling reporters the names of two interrogators, but it is not prosecuting interrogators who committed torture.
Sometimes the law collides with morality. When that happens, prosecutorial discretion is supposed to reflect a certain wisdom and perspective, not a narrow agenda of expediency. But here we have the United States misreading its national security interest and misunderstanding what constitutes a threat. It was the torture itself that damaged America’s global influence, not the disclosure of a couple of names to journalists. If any repair to American moral authority is possible now, it would come by bringing to trial those who authorized and carried out the torture—a federal crime much more serious than the victimless crime of which the analyst, John Kiriakou, is accused.
Does this make sense? The Obama administration is prosecuting a former CIA analyst for allegedly telling reporters the names of two interrogators, but it is not prosecuting interrogators who committed torture.
Sometimes the law collides with morality. When that happens, prosecutorial discretion is supposed to reflect a certain wisdom and perspective, not a narrow agenda of expediency. But here we have the United States misreading its national security interest and misunderstanding what constitutes a threat. It was the torture itself that damaged America’s global influence, not the disclosure of a couple of names to journalists. If any repair to American moral authority is possible now, it would come by bringing to trial those who authorized and carried out the torture—a federal crime much more serious than the victimless crime of which the analyst, John Kiriakou, is accused.
January 21, 2012
Imagining Terrorism: Bombs Not Nukes, Guns Not Germs
By David K. Shipler
After 9/11, we blamed ourselves for lacking the imagination to think that hijackers might drive jetliners into buildings. To compensate for this failure, we expanded our imagination to picture terrorism by nuclear, chemical, and biological means. Now a carefully researched study concludes that weapons of mass destruction are unlikely to be used by jihadi terrorists. Their goals are more attainable with explosives and firearms, and the skill and equipment needed to mount an unconventional attack are far beyond the reach of existing terrorist groups.
After 9/11, we blamed ourselves for lacking the imagination to think that hijackers might drive jetliners into buildings. To compensate for this failure, we expanded our imagination to picture terrorism by nuclear, chemical, and biological means. Now a carefully researched study concludes that weapons of mass destruction are unlikely to be used by jihadi terrorists. Their goals are more attainable with explosives and firearms, and the skill and equipment needed to mount an unconventional attack are far beyond the reach of existing terrorist groups.
January 11, 2012
The Silver Lining of Super PACs
By David K. Shipler
Here’s a surprise: So far, super PACS have actually enhanced the political debate. They have used big money to inform voters about the checkered pasts of Newt Gingrich in politics and Mitt Romney in business, prompting mainstream news media to focus on legitimate issues that had received scant attention.
This is the first, not-so-bad impact of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) granting First Amendment rights to corporations, unions, and other groups. The negative effects may be felt in the months ahead, but for now it is easy to see why the American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief supporting this outcome.
Here’s a surprise: So far, super PACS have actually enhanced the political debate. They have used big money to inform voters about the checkered pasts of Newt Gingrich in politics and Mitt Romney in business, prompting mainstream news media to focus on legitimate issues that had received scant attention.
This is the first, not-so-bad impact of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) granting First Amendment rights to corporations, unions, and other groups. The negative effects may be felt in the months ahead, but for now it is easy to see why the American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief supporting this outcome.
January 6, 2012
Obama Toys With the Constitution
By David K. Shipler
President Obama has adopted one of George W. Bush’s most troubling tactics, roundly denounced by liberals when a conservative Republican used it, but now generally excused by liberals when employed by a Democrat in the White House. It is the “signing statement,” a litany of reservations and reinterpretations of a bill, issued by a president as he signs it into law.
Obama did this on the last day of 2011 to soften the immediate effect of the military detention powers he had just been awarded by Congress. He said he would “not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” as the new law allows—but he signed a bill empowering any president to do so anyway. He rejected the statute’s requirement that foreign suspects be held by the military, saying he would use his option under the law to waive the mandate broadly, both for individuals and for “appropriate categories of cases.” Nevertheless, he signed a bill that would impose no such restraint on any president.
President Obama has adopted one of George W. Bush’s most troubling tactics, roundly denounced by liberals when a conservative Republican used it, but now generally excused by liberals when employed by a Democrat in the White House. It is the “signing statement,” a litany of reservations and reinterpretations of a bill, issued by a president as he signs it into law.
Obama did this on the last day of 2011 to soften the immediate effect of the military detention powers he had just been awarded by Congress. He said he would “not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” as the new law allows—but he signed a bill empowering any president to do so anyway. He rejected the statute’s requirement that foreign suspects be held by the military, saying he would use his option under the law to waive the mandate broadly, both for individuals and for “appropriate categories of cases.” Nevertheless, he signed a bill that would impose no such restraint on any president.
December 22, 2011
Counterterrorism: Legalizing Illegality
By David K. Shipler
You may have noticed a pattern in counterterrorism since 9/11. First, the executive branch violates the law, provoking an uproar of outrage, and then Congress changes the law to permit the violations. This has happened several times in the last decade, most recently in the National Defense Authorization Act’s mandate that suspected terrorists be imprisoned by the military, possibly indefinitely. President Bush started doing just that without clear legal authority, locking up three U.S. citizens in military jails until the courts intervened. Instead of acting to prevent a recurrence, Congress has now codified this extraordinary power.
The peculiar dynamic here is very different from the one seen in the 1970s, after the FBI and other federal agencies illegally spied on civil rights and antiwar groups.
You may have noticed a pattern in counterterrorism since 9/11. First, the executive branch violates the law, provoking an uproar of outrage, and then Congress changes the law to permit the violations. This has happened several times in the last decade, most recently in the National Defense Authorization Act’s mandate that suspected terrorists be imprisoned by the military, possibly indefinitely. President Bush started doing just that without clear legal authority, locking up three U.S. citizens in military jails until the courts intervened. Instead of acting to prevent a recurrence, Congress has now codified this extraordinary power.
The peculiar dynamic here is very different from the one seen in the 1970s, after the FBI and other federal agencies illegally spied on civil rights and antiwar groups.
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