Galarragas Wake

As commenters have pointed out, fairness demands that it be noted that Jim Joyce may have screwed up what would have been a profitable future career as a Republican elected official or BP executive by admitting his egregious error. And given this it would probably better to emulate Galarraga's remarkable class and grace under pressure.

But since I'm not as good a person as Galarraga, I should explain why I don't buy the argument that since it didn't cost the Tigers the game it wasn't that big a deal. I think this actually stands the truth on its head. While I'm free about criticizing inept umpiring, I try to never claim that umps cost the team a game, because it's almost always more complicated than that. Cuzzi's foul call in the ALDS last year was at least as bad as Joyce's, but it was a pretty minor factor in the Twins loss; Cuzzi didn't tell Joe Nathan to throw a cookie to Slappy Rodriguez, he wasn't hitting when the Twins went on to parlay the bases loaded with none out into zero runs, and given the same sequence of events the Twins would have been huge underdogs, tied against a better team on the road. Same thing with Denkinger; it was a bad call, if not quite was bad as Joyce/Cuzzi, but the Cardinals still had every chance to win after it, and Denkinger wasn't hitting or pitching when the Cardinals went on to be outscored 13-0. The endless whining by the Cardinals and their fans is not merely problematic but unseemly, excuse making by a team that lost and deserved to lose. And as much as it pains me to admit it, the same goes for the Seahawks' Super Bowl loss. If Holmgren spent less time complaining about the officiating and more time on his two minute drill they might have won.

What was unusual about the Joyce call was that it really was an if-not-then call in which the athletes in question were blameless. Which, combined with the fact that it wasn't close but was a call a major league umpire should never get wrong, makes it hard to forgive. And while a perfect game might be an "arbitrary" accomplishment, well, Dennis Martinez in 1991 and Pedro's 27 outs-with-no-support in San Diego in 1995 are two of my most ten most vividly remembered regular season games as a fan, and I don't think I'm unusual.

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Goodbye, Kid

Ken Griffey Jr. has retired. It’s impossible to overstate Griffey’s importance to Seattle baseball, or the excitement in the Northwest over the idea of having a genuine Hall of Famer to watch. His years in Cincinnati were less distinguished, of course, and his coda in Seattle lasted just a touch too long. For my part, he reinvigorated my enthusiasm in baseball after a hiatus of six or so years following Donnie Moore’s failure in the 1986 ALCS.

Thank you, Ken. You were my all-time favorite baseball player. Enjoy your retirement.

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Wanker of the Day

Jim Joyce. What a disgrace; as far as I'm concerned, in that context a firable offense. It's much worse than Denkinger, not only because it wasn't even that close but because that blown call left the Cardinals in a position to win. Joyce's incompetence robbed Gallaraga of history, although at least he'll always be remembered as having pitched a de facto perfect game.

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Defending the Indefensible

This goes up on the office door.

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World Cup Challenge

I have created an LGM World Cup Challenge group at ESPN:
Group Name: Lawyers, Guns and Money
Password: zevon
Deadline is June 11.

Speaking of pointless competition, here are the current LGM Baseball Challenge Standings:

RNK	ENTRY, OWNER	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	SEGMENT	TOTAL	PCT
1	Feces Flingers, B. Drunk	366	99	0	0	0	0	0	2801	2801	98.4
2	free leonard, M. Ricci	357	98	0	0	0	0	0	2787	2787	98.2
3	kolmogorov-smirnov, W. Krummenacher	203	95	0	0	0	0	0	2738	2738	97.1
4	C. Quentin's Unicorn, A. Katz	301	127	0	0	0	0	0	2722	2722	96.7
5	HeadlessThompson Gunner, S. Hickey	302	90	0	0	0	0	0	2711	2711	96.4
6	Dwarf Mammoths, T. Mohr	233	127	0	0	0	0	0	2700	2700	96.1
7	Ambulance Chasers, J. Shurberg	326	67	0	0	0	0	0	2672	2672	95.3
8	Bangers and M*A*S*H, N. Beaudrot	337	91	0	0	0	0	0	2644	2644	94.3
9	Signal/Noise, B. Petti	252	92	0	0	0	0	0	2619	2619	93.3
10	Better Arms on Chairs, B. Mizelle	337	124	0	0	0	0	0	2610	2610	93.0

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Pure, Distilled Essence of Hate

I'm sure most of you have heard that some variation of the argument that ending even state-sponsored bigotry against gays and lesbians is wrong because it would violate certain unspecified "religious rights." But when you do it with the stupidly as Tony Perkins does for CNN, you've provided a definitive example. The basic argument is that ending bigotry might create some discomfort for people who want to continue expressing bigotry, and the latter is much more important than the former. I especially enjoyed this bit:

As an ordained minister and a Marine Corps veteran, I was invited to speak at a prayer event at Andrews Air Force Base earlier this year. I had every intention of delivering a spiritual message, not a political one.

But the invitation was withdrawn after I criticized President Barack Obama’s call to open the military to homosexuality in his State of the Union address. The base chaplain told me they had received some complaints - about a dozen. I pointed out that orchestrating a handful of calls was a simple task for homosexual activist groups.

If I was blacklisted merely for supporting existing law, what will happen to those who oppose the new, politically correct law?

We cannot have freedom and equality, and must support qualified people being fired by the military during the war for irrelevant factors, because is might violate the inalienable right of hateful assholes to be invited to speak at prayer events. I'm convinced!

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Nukes and Cold War Nostalgia

I have an article up at Right Web on nuclear policy and the institutional Right.

The vehement attacks against President Obama’s arms control initiatives reveal the extent to which the militarist extreme in the Republican Party’s foreign policy establishment has remained deeply entrenched despite the significant setbacks hawks have suffered since helping drive the country into war with Iraq. Using language that conjures images from the heyday of the Cold War, neoconservatives and other right-wing nationalists have endeavored to paint the administration as willing to sacrifice national security to achieve international acclaim. They have also drowned out more moderate voices in the Republican Party, whose realist views, although more in line with the policies pushed by the Obama administration, are failing to have an impact on conservative discourse.

Read the rest at Right Web.

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The Yoda Doctrine and the War on Terror

The NYT picked up on my BHTV spot with Dan Drezner last weekend, where we discuss whether or not Obama should be assassinating Americans. But they only stuck a small clip of our discussion on that topic at their site, so I've clipped the entire piece for your perusal.



Note that a variety of technical snafus caused the BH folks to edit the video here and there making the context hard to infer at spots (watch out for the part at about 5 minutes in where my face and voice suddenly jump scarily forward at you!). In fact, it seems they edited out the part where I mention the Terrorist Expatriation Act currently being pushed through the Senate by Joe Lieberman, which would render it constitutional to strip Americans of their citizenship for "joining a foreign terrorist organization or engaging in or supporting hostilities against the United States or its allies."

While human rights law would still arguably make it criminal to summarily execute non-citizens, the aim of this legislation is to at least render the constitutional questions moot (would it, actually? I defer to the lawyers who blog here and elsewhere...) until such time, at least, as the Supreme Court renders said law unconstitutional.

In that regard, it's worth noting the Court's (and the current nominee's) past history on precisely these issues, which has been helpfully summarized by Richard Epstein.

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As the Crowe Flies

A good way to spend Memorial Day is watching a movie that reminds you both how ugly war is for those involved in the fighting, and also the reasons why some things are important enough to fight for. Robin Hood hasn't received good reviews for cinematography or narrative. It's true the film is wanting - everything from the American accents to the tired battle scenes to the deplorable way that Lady Marian conducts herself at the beachhead.

But I still liked it. It's always good to see a version of Robin Hood in which Richard the Lionheart is portrayed as the butcher he was instead of a just, noble king whose only failure is his absence. Also, I'm a sucker for political narratives that can't be easily stuffed into conventional boxes.

Readers' thoughts?

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It's Not About the Drones.

Drones were back in the news this past week. First, the UN is poised to publicly criticize the US for allowing CIA operators to conduct lethal attacks with drones, in a report to be released later this week. Then, the US military released a report sharply criticizing operational failures that led to the deaths of 23 civilians in a convoy in February. And Newsweek has a big lead article about the extent to which drone strikes, regardless of their legality or side-effects, are fueling homegrown terror.

I would like to posit that to some extent, the issues at stake in all of these debates are much broader than the issue of drones and it may be problematic to focus on drones, as if altering our "drone policy" will resolve the broader issues. Drones themselves are simply remotely piloted aerial vehicles. They're not robots and they're not making decisions on their own, Star Wars-like. (Though they might in the near future which would raise entirely different ethical questions.) Except for the fact that the pilots are operating remotely from the safety of a military base (or CIA facility), these weapons are little different than other forms of air power. Of course, as Peter Singer has documented there are those who are troubled by the dislocation of the warrior from his targets, but this argument is as old as the long-bow and doesn't necessarily pose legal issues. It should also be pointed out that drones have many extremely useful non-lethal applications: reconnaissance that helps ground troops avoid civilians, for example. And drones are not simply being used to hunt terrorists in Pakistan. They have civilian and law enforcement uses as well: to monitor the drug trade in South America or population flows across borders. (Not that these surveillance functionalities don't also involve pressing trade-offs with respect to rights and civil liberties.)

Speaking just in terms of using drones as attack weapons here, I would argue the important issue here is not whether we use drones. The issues are a) whether it is right to use any weapon in such a manner as to risk more casualties among civilians than we are willing to accept among our own troops (as both manned and unmanned forms of aerial bombing do) b) whether we are willing to use any weapon to summarily execute individuals we have associated with criminal organizations whether or not they are engaged in what might be considered combat operations against us and c) whether it is either right or effective to outsource the deployment of lethal violence - by drones or by other means - from our military to our civilian agencies?

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Anger. Anger. Anger.

Because we continue to have server issues at the new site, we have decided to re-open lefarkins.blogspot.com, and will be posting here until the situation is resolved.

Thank you again for your patience.

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We Have Issues

All,

A number of issues continue to afflict our transition. At this point, the RSS feed from the old site does not appear to be updating. The quickest fix is to subscribe to the new feed (http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/feed) at the new site. However, I suggest that you remain subscribed to the old feed; at this point a transition back to Blogger remains a possibility.

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