Read this article on CNN or this one at the Charleston Post and Courier (intrusive registration required) about a weapons-drawn sweep by local police looking for drug dealers at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, S.C., in which children in a hallway were arrested (sorry, when you’re detained by a LEO(Law Enforcement Officer), it meets the standards of an arrest) without probable cause while the police searched them and their possessions for drugs with a dog.

My primary response is to project my reaction had it been my son’s high school, and had my son faced officers with weapons in low-ready who told him to sit with his back to the wall and put his hands on his head.

It wouldn’t be pretty. it would probably start with a lawsuit against the school, the department, and the local government, and end with a movement to recall any and all of the local officials to whom the police chief of that agency reports. They could fire him, and maybe then I’d back off…
As someone who shoots, I’ve learned a healthy respect for what it means to have a loaded weapon out and in my hand. I have trained with enough LEO’s and military to have heard the horror stories – a SWAT officer in Ventura County mistakenly shot and killed by his partner in the course of a raid; a young actor at a Halloween party shot and killed by an officer who saw him holding an all-too-real prop gun.

I’ve heard about accidents in which Negligent Discharges (there are no Accidental Discharges) put rounds into handcuffed suspects, and accidents in training where experienced officers accidentally shoot into the ground, sending lethal spall and ricochet fragments scattering through a room.

And that’s only on the partial issue of the decision by the officers to draw their weapons.

The notion that they could cordon off a part of a school, detain everyone there, and on unsubstantiated rumor, search each of them is outrageous. It violates everything I know about our relation as citizens – not suspects – to the power of the state.

Fortunately, others are unhappy as well.

As police struggled to calm a growing firestorm over their drug raid at Stratford High School, state investigators Friday began probing why officers charged into a crowded hallway with guns drawn while students cowered in fear.

After watching a surveillance videotape of the Wednesday raid, Solicitor Ralph Hoisington asked the State Law Enforcement Division to look into possible police misconduct in the operation. He called for the probe after consulting with Berkeley County Sheriff Wayne DeWitt.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with law enforcement addressing a problem in a high school, but I have serious concerns about the need for restraining students and drawing weapons,” Hoisington said. “I don’t want to send my child to a school and find out guns are drawn on them. I certainly don’t want them hog-tied as part of a sweeping investigation.”

Of course, some don’t see the problem:

Others, however, say the community needs to trust the police to take whatever action is necessary to address a drug problem that clearly exists in the schools.

“I’m sure students were frightened, but the harm they’re in with drug dealers is far greater than the police coming in,” said Goose Creek resident Judy Watkins. “I trust them to do what’s right. I appreciate what they did.”

Hope she waves at the Stasi as they drive by.

Personally, I hope someone sues. I’ll even try and stir up some folks in the tactical shooting community to testify as expert witnesses on their behalf.

And maybe we can do something about the insane proliferation of aggressive overuse by police of tactics appropriate in confronting an armed or dangerous suspect when they are pulling over a family in a station wagon.

[Update: Instapundit has a good roundup on this as well.]

When Yglesias, Reynolds, and I agree, is the world in danger? I sure hope not…

Matthew Yglesias (who links approvingly to my post on the ebbing of downballot Democrats, and who wrote a thoughtful and polite email concerning our recent contremps) has a post in which he points to a column by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and links it to the following theory:

To make a long story short, the president is trying to cover his right flank with tough talk (i.e., the National Endowment for Democracy speech) while, in fact, withdrawing US troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, Democrats who do not agree with this strategy are being unfairly castigated as cut-and-runners.

Now this is my personal nightmare – one of the ones where you’re in the room, invisible and unhearable as something horrible goes down.

Instapundit shares my concern:

[Megan McArdle] But there are actually rumors that the White House is contemplating accelerating our departure, which seems lunatic to even discuss when the country doesn’t appear to have a functioning anything.

[Instapundit] I hope those rumors are false. Because if the White House — by which, in this case, I mean George W. Bush — decides to drop the ball on this, I’ll probably vote Democratic, even if Kucinich is the nominee. A half-hearted war is the very, very worst kind. I think that Bush understands that. He’d better.

Look, for me it’s simple. I’m willing to overlook a lot of what I don’t like about the Bush Administration because I believe that he’s the only candidate whom I believe (today) is resolute about this whole war thing.

The second it looks like he’s planning to ‘declare victory and leave,’ I can promise you that Atrios will look like Karl Rove in comparison to me.

That’s because I’m convinced that decision leads almost certainly to nukes in the U.S. and then the real possibility of a genocidal war abroad.

So let’s start with this:

Howard Dean says “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks…”

Then in the debate, he’s challenged to apologize:

My question is for Governor Dean.

I recently read a comment that you made where you said that you wanted to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. When I read that comment, I was extremely offended.

Could you explain to me how you plan on being sensitive to needs and issues regarding slavery and African-Americans, after making a comment of that nature?

(APPLAUSE)

…and doesn’t.
Then, he says that

…southerners have to quit basing their votes on “race, guns, God and gays.”

Then, today, he apologizes for the Dixie Flag remark:

One day after his Democratic presidential rivals demanded that he apologize for his remarks, which they called offensive to blacks and southern whites, Dean for the first time expressed remorse. “I regret the pain that I may have caused either to African American or southern white voters,” he said in New York. What he had hoped to do, Dean said, was provoke a “painful” dialogue about race among all voters, including those displaying Confederate flags. But, he said, “I started this discussion in a clumsy way.”

Now, personally, as noted in a comment, I’m no fan of the Confederate Battle Flag. As I noted, “Now personally, I detest the Stars and Bars as a symbol of the most treasonous act in our nation’s history.” (note that Clayton Cramer has a longer post on the Stars and Bars). And here I have to split my argument and try and touch on two not completely unrelated points.

The first one is about the practice of electioneering, and the way that and natural human impulses seem to get smoothed out – by handlers, staff, and reporters, I’d imagine. Dean said something controversial – but arguably not untrue – was publicly pounded by his opponents, doubtless counseled by his horrified pollsters and staff – and backed away from his statement like a teenager from a sink full of dirty dishes.

Now what that says about him – that he’s sadly no more ‘genuine’ than the balance of the machined products of the electoral process, and that his vaunted backbone is, in fact quite flexible when key interest groups are involved – is of moderate interest in deciding who one might support in the election.

And what it says about our electoral process – that we boil the flavor and individuality – and backbone out of our candidates, and then wonder why they’re made of mush – is probably the most serious issue.

Much like movie sequels, where the energy and imagination of the creators is slowly leached out by the legions of ‘supporters,’ we get a vapid echo of the strong person the candidate once must have been.

The second one is about the social balance of the Democratic Party specifically. I’ve felt for a while that the Democrats have lost the pickup-driving blue- and pink-collar workers in their pursuit of the Skybox crowd, organized (typically public) labor, and identity politicians. Max Sawicky has a insanely great post (as in really smart until he insanely steps up for Kucinich):

As public policy, we can criticize hanging the Stars and Bars on the Courthouse without futile attempts to marginalize individuals for their own choices in this vein.

What’s at stake is whether we are going to have class politics in the U.S. Cultural conservatism, which in the South can include some type of sentimentality for the Lost Cause, or resentment of what is perceived as excess in the name of civil rights, should not be treated as an enemy ideology. I am not talking about adherence to segregation in public accommodations, denial of the right to vote, or other obvious breaches of democracy that nobody in good faith could endorse.

Coalitions are about reaching understandings through dialogue and/or compromise with people of different views. The Democratic Party needs to be a coalition of working people. It needs to ease up on cultural and social liberalism. I mean fetishes about gun control and tobacco. It needs to stop pretending that Southern whites are more racist than other people. It needs to welcome the “seamless web” Catholics who oppose both abortion and the death penalty. It needs to stop overselling rehabilitation and underselling punishment. It needs to find ways of establishing reasonable environmental regulation other than on the backs of workers. What it endorses as a party is ideally the outcome of a rational debate and compromise on these issues. For some, one or another such compromise could be a ‘deal-breaker.’ So be it. That’s the process we need. The constant and lodestar should be an unwavering commitment to the living standards of working people, and opposition to the corporativist, war-mongering ways of the Republican Party.

Without class politics, the Democratic Party becomes cats-paw of the big donors, a party of well-to-do white liberals lording it over second-class minorities organized by race and ethnicity. The economic policy of such a party boils is neo-liberalism (balanced budgets, free trade, smaller government, and Federal Reserve supremacy in monetary policy), with tokenism and crumbs for the minorities.

I’m not sure I’m buying his exact prescription, but I do think he has the disease diagnosed exactly correctly.

I think the title says it all.

Middle Guy, TG and I saw it.

People laughed – at parts that weren’t supposed to be funny.

Lawrence Fishburne, who I respect beyond all belief, had that anxious Michael Caine “I’m just here getting a paycheck” look in his eyes for the whole film.

Believe me, any movie you imagined this to be is much, much better than this.

It’s almost as bad as ‘Signs.’

OK, I’m missing something here.

My party, the Democrats, just lost three statehouses in the last 60 days, and are on track to possibly lose another in a bit over a week.

The smart Democratic blogs … Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, Daily KOS … not a peep about this or what, if anything it means.

My reaction is twofold:

First, I think that the Democrats may have suddenly taken a page from hapless L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who has believed for years that if he can only buy one great player, he can have a contending team.
Maybe it is all about “Beat Bush.” The problem is that you get there by growing and winnowing candidates at the lower levels…mayors, Congressmembers, Senators, Governors – and my sense is that the national Party isn’t doing a good job there. Look one level down from the current crop of Democratic contenders – ignoring how strong or weak you may believe them to be – and where are the contenders for the next cycle? I’m not an expert, but I don’t see a lot of interestng candidates until I get down to the mayoral level, and that’s bad. Politics is a team sport, and you have to play more than one position.

For the Democrats (who admittedly won some statehouses last time around, while losing the Senate and House), I wonder if it’s entirely too concentrated at the top.

Second, I’m inclined to ask “What has to happen, exactly, in order for us to panic?” In the polls, each of the plausible Democratic candidates is running behind the numbers of plain old “don’t like Bush”. We lost the Senate and House. We lost California, because the party wouldn’t stand up to a corrupt and barely competent incumbent and challenge him, either in the election or in the recall. A strong Democrat – a Feinstein, Panetta, or even an Angiledes – would be Governor now. We lost Kentucky and Mississippi, and the Republicans in Louisiana have to be smelling blood this morning.

And no one on the left is willing to sit down and go “Huh. Wonder what we’re doing wrong.”

Can I make some suggestions?

Well, my part of the presentation got done this morning at 3:00, and I’m up and don’t have much to do until this afternoon, so a bit of blogging and then back to reading documents.

Kevin Drum and I have agreed to do a cross-blog discussion, which I hope will widen, starting on the policy positions I took in my piece chastening the Democrats. We’ll work out some structure for it over the next day or so and maybe start it next week (if that works for him).

Tristero and I have also been having a damn civil email dialog, and have cooked up something which I then proposed to Kevin, and which he reasonably shot down as impossibly burdensome. But…I’m thinking we might try to make it into a collective project, and so a feasible one. And if nothing else if it fails, it will fail spectacularly.

Here’s what I’m thinking about as a start.

An encyclopedia of information on the policies of each of the major candidates in a specific set of areas. Pulling together position papers, speeches, news clips, etc., in one place so that people can step up to meet Tristero’s Challenge and actually read primary sources.

Now, I’ll point out that position papers do not policy make, and policy does not action determine. But it’s a start…

What I’d like to do is invite partisan supporters of each candidate to email me, and we’ll pick one person who will in essence be a ‘librarian’ for each of the major candidates (Clark, Dean, Gephart, Kerry, and Bush) who will receive information from reader or other sources, and then will forward links to Joe & me. We’ll then create an updated-weekly post around several areas that we think are interesting so that readers can link directly to all the current position papers and speeches of each candidate around a topic.

Call it ‘open source’ journalism.

Let’s start with the basic question: Stupid or Useful? Answer below in the comments.

Over the last day, I distinctly recall that I left three comments over at Matthew Yglesias’ in the thread responding to my post here.

Don’t see them this morning.

I’ve emailed Matthew, asking what’s up.

[Update: And he graciously replies that “he certainly did not” and assumes he has a technical glitch, which I’d encourage him to investigate – I find the back-and-forth in comments to be the best part of blogging.

And commented ‘bendover’ (is that in Maine?) adds that I have three comments in a differnt post of Matthew’s than I recalled. Which means either a) I’m not getting enough sleep, of b) that Matthew’s technical glitch moved the posts, which is unlikely. I’ll pick “a)” and offer an immediate apology to Matthew.

OK, that’s it. No more blogging until I get my presentations done and get some sleep. See everyone Thursday.]

Matt Yglesias has a cute post up on my discussions with Kevin Drum.

Now, Kevin and I have met, and while I think a Venn diagram of our views would overlap by about 85%, we do have some significant differences – we’ve just agreed to have a cross-blog discussion and try to identify and clarify them – but I have found that wherever he & I disagree, our discussions typically come from a point of mutual respect and a genuine belief that each of us means what we say, that we’re entitled to have an opinion, and that our arguments aren’t somehow codes for something else.

That’s not true of everyone participating in these discussions, sadly.
At a dinner at Kevin’s, I met some other bloggers – other than Tom of TBogg, I haven’t retained names – and we had a telling exchange.

Kevin asked me a direct question: “So is it that you buy into the ‘restructuring the Arab world’ justification for the war?” As I started to answer, one of the other bloggers, his voice honeyed with superior knowledge, added “Why in the world did you let yourself get spun so badly by the White House?“

My reply was Mad Dog Stare #2 (a personal favorite) and a simple statement: “Thank you so much for granting me the courtesy of assuming that I may have examined the information and made up my own mind.” He and I didn’t have much to say to each other for the rest of the evening.

Matt (whose post on Michael Totten’s ‘schtick’ lit me up like a Christmas tree – Matthew is, after all, the one who parlayed his blog into a cush media job, which in his own terms means that it’s his blogging that qualifies as ‘schtick’) posts the following. I’ll intersperse my comments.

Kevin Drum’s got himself embroiled in a quagmire-like debate with hawkish liberals or ex-liberal hawks or whatever you want to call them. In response, some things to consider doing before you defect from the Democratic Party:

Well, first of all, I don’t have any plans to defect from the Democratic Party. I may or may not vote the party line; personally, I’ll take each campaign as I see them. But I’ve been critical of the Democratic Party because I think it’s headed off a cliff into electoral oblivion, and I intend to publicly kick it’s ass as hard as I can to do what I can to get it steered in a more successful and productive direction.

Take a deep breath. Look in the mirror. Take another deep breath. Look at some photos of your liberal friends and family. Ask yourself: Do you really believe that they opposed the Iraq War because they wanted Saddam Hussein to stay in power; do you really think they don’t care if your hometown gets destroyed by terrorists?

No, I think they opposed the war because they believe they can have the benefits of modern liberal society without getting their hands dirty. They value moral purity and self-satisfaction above everything else – with the possible exception of creature comfort.

Try reading some actual policy statements put out by Democratic foreign-policy hands, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and members of the Armed Services Committee. Ask yourself: Do the views expressed therein really sound like the characterizations of them you’ve read on NRO and the hawk blogs?

Actually, I do read the policy statements and talk to people who work within the political and defense establishment. I don’t base my opinions on Instapundit, NRO and Fox News And, believe it or not, I’m actually unhappy with much of what I hear. I’m trying to engage in a broader dialog about what makes me unhappy, in the hopes that I and others like me can have some impact on what the Democratic Party thinks and does.

Look again in the mirror, focusing this time on your hairline and that little space next to your eyes that gets wrinkly when you squint. There’s no easy way to say this, but . . . you’re getting old. I am too. It’s scary, it happens to us all. Ask yourself: Has the left really changed, or am I just that cliched guy who stopped really caring about the poor as I aged?

Tell you what, Matt – you look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re just another jejune 20-something year old who thinks he knows everything; it’s a painfully familiar condition to me – I used to be one too. Back when I worked in politics and wrote laws and policy. But philosophically, I was uncomfortable with the idea that I could be a part of the political class, and make a damn comfortable upper-middle class living as a policy wonk, staff to an elected, or commentator – all without ever getting my hands dirty in the real world.

I was uncomfortable with the love of power that I saw in my peers, and the lack of wisdom, humility, and openness to have one’s views changed through experience. Sound familiar? It’s OK, you’re smart, and if you’re lucky, you’ll grow out of it.

Take a look at the transcript of the latest White House press conference. Find some other examples where the president had to respond on-the-fly to questions. Ask yourself: Given the perilous international situation, am I really comfortable with the fact that a total moron is president of the United States.

Gosh, Matt, I just love the schoolyard names. Here’s a clue: Bush isn’t a moron. I doubt that he’s even particularly stupid; I’ve met and had business with a fair number of elected officials, and the stupidest one I know (Barbara Boxer – most of the ones I’ve met are Democrats, so there may be a Republican who’se worse) is probably as smart as any of the bloggers I have met to date. One doesn’t get to high elected office in this land by being stupid, stories of Chauncey Gardner aside.

I’ll also add one of the hard truths that came to me several years out of grad school – life isn’t like school, and being smart and clever alone are not decent predictors of future success.

And having been elected, these officials – even Boxer, or my own detested Jackie Goldberg – are worthy of some basic measure of respect by all of us. I may loudly and publicly disagree with Jackie’s policies and politics, I may think that she’s deeply wrong and happily look forward to the end of her term, but I would never suggest that she’s an idiot or a moron, or that the public that elected her are idiots for electing her.

Read this post again. Consider the condescending tone, the cheap psychoanalysis, the refusal to confront your actual arguments. Ask yourself: Isn’t this exactly what I’ve been doing all this time? Just an exercise.

Matt, here’s a proposal. Go through all my stuff on Armed Liberal and Winds of Change. Find me five posts with condescending tone. Find five posts where I psychoanalyze you or any of the liberal Democrats (or even wacky leftists) with whom I disagree. Email me the cites. If we disagree, I’ll let Kevin or Brian Linse act as a referee. Find five, I’ll send you a nice crisp $100.00 bill. I’ll bet I can easily find ten quotes like that from you. I’ll even give you 2-1 odds; I’ll only ask for $50.00 if I do. Are you in?

I’m out here looking for arguments, and I have the habit of allowing that people who say things mean what they say. Perhaps it would be a good thing if you did too.

Here’s a little quote to put all this in a larger perspective. John Schaar was a political theorist, and a staunch member of the New Left – and one of my professors as an undergrad. This is from his essay on ‘The Case for Patriotism’:

“Finally, if political education is to effective it must grow from a spirit of humility on the part of the teachers, and they must overcome the tendencies toward self-righteousness and self-pity which set the tone of youth and student politics in the 1960’s. The teachers must acknowledge common origins and common burdens with the taught, stressing connection and membership, rather than distance and superiority. Only from these roots can trust and hopeful common action grow.”

…it’s something that Matthew hasn’t learned yet, which is a personal problem for him. But it’s something the left in this country hasn’t learned yet, which is a political problem for me and the rest of us.
–

Calpundit challenges Roger Simon for saying:

…here’s why I think they’re dangerous—they’re acting like we’re still in Vietnam when we’re in a real war of civilizations.

and says in reply:

Look, guys: if you think we ought to use military force to fight terrorism, I’m with you. But if you think we ought to use that same military force as part of a war of civilizations, count me out. Way, way out. That’s not any kind of liberalism I’m familiar with.

First, Kevin (and Matt) it’s not a schtick, it’s a movement. And the fact that the Democratic leadership, like you, doesn’t see that is why I won’t be booking big bets against Bush in 04.

That’s not the only place where Kevin and I part company.

I don’t think we are in a war of civilizations…yet. I don’t doubt that the other side thinks and hopes that we are, and that our response to them, over the last few decades, has been mistaken on a number of fronts.

A real war of civilizations, as I have pointed out over and over again, only has one result. We’ll be here, they won’t.

I believe there is still time to avert that war, through a balance of force, diplomacy, self-sacrifice in a number of arenas, and careful consideration of our relationships with the Islamic and Arab world.I’m not thrilled with a lot of what GWB has done on the front of diplomacy, self-sacrifice, and careful consideration. I think he has done the right thing in making it clear that we are serious and that we are willing to use force; up until now our response to the threats and acts of the Islamists was best summed up as “Isn’t that cute!!”

No more.

Sadly, I don’t yet see a better plan from the Democrats – one that would lead me to choose one of them over GWB. I’m not endorsing Bush (that would be hard for me to do) – but I’m certainly going to push the Dems to come up with something better.

Here’s a couple of off-the-cuff suggestions:

First, we’re not going anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq until we’re done. Afghanistan will not turn into Vermont any time soon, but we will make sure that the power of the warlords is checked, and that it doesn’t collapse again. Iraq could be the leader of the Middle east, and we intend to help build it into that;

Second, we’re too dependent on ME oil. We’re going to do something about it, both by pushing conservation, expanding alternative energy, and expanding exploration. We’re going to build the damn windmills off of Cape Cod;

Third, we’re going to stop Israel from building new settlements and push them to dismantle existing illegal ones;

Fourth, we’re going to work to expand the ground-fighting capabilities of our military by adding at least one division to the Army, and looking carefully at the allocation of all our assets to make sure that we have the resources to deal with the kind of wars that we are going to realistically face;

Fifth, we’re going to sit with the Arab countries we are supporting and make it clear that they cannot buy internal stability by fomenting hate against Jews and the West and still expect our financial and military support. We will also talk about what kinds of support would be forthcoming if they did stop;

Sixth, we’re going to develop security mechanisms based on the theory that fine-grained systems that bring information and communications to the existing public safety community, as well as the public at large are better than huge, centralized bureaucratic solutions;

That’d be a start…

UPDATE:

* Roger L. Simon responds to Calpundit’s challenge as well.

* Matthew Yglesias joins a respectful cross-blog debate in a way that’s less than respectful. He gets this return volley, plus a proposed bet. Wonder if he’ll take it?

Calpundit links over to Atrios – who has received a lawyer-letter from an attorney representing Donald Luskin. The claim is that by claiming that Luskin ‘stalked’ Krugman, and by allowing commenters who then spun off of that theme, that Mr. Luskin was libeled.

God knows, I’m not a fan of Atrios, who I think is part of the Jackie Goldberg/ suicidal-lemming wing of the Democratic Party.

But this is just embarrassing.
Luskin – who, as far as I know, is a grown-up, writes with pretty sharp elbows himself:

Paul Krugman began his Tuesday column for the New York Times – inevitably, about the blackout – with one of the few truthful statements I can ever recall him uttering: “We still don’t know what started the chain reaction on Thursday.”

And it seems like pots should be careful about calling kettles black, no matter that the pot has been careful to tread – barely – on the side of the line which divides actionable from exceptionable behavior.

And pundits who use slings ought to be able to take a stone or two, and the fact that Mr Luskin can’t – the fact assuming that the letter Atrios posted was genuine (and the lawyer’s name does check out on the firm website) – certainly drops him a few kilometers below credible in my view.

Free speech – even hurtful speech – is something the folks at NRO (and others) have championed for some time. It appears that they neglected to mention that it only matters when someone else’s ox is being gored.

Personally, I’m hoping it’s some kind of prank. In that case, I’ll personally email Mr. Luskin an apology. Watching and waiting…