The Boston Herald Pitches a Fit

The Boston Herald reports that "Outrage Builds [at the Boston Herald] over Obama Snub of . . ."

— wait for it —

". . . the Herald." Howie Carr likens the snub, described elsewhere by the Herald as a "freezing out" of "full access" to cover the President's visit to Boston, to inclusion on President Nixon's "Enemies List."

And one sees straightaway why the Obama Administration is disinclined to extend to the Herald the full array of access privileges available to serious journalists.
More...Let's be clear: this isn't a First Amendment issue. Denying "full access" to the President isn't censorship, even if, as it appears, the decision was made at least in part because Obama's aides think the Herald has not treated him "fairly." There is a press pool. It's crowded, there is limited space, and it sits amply within the Administration's discretion to decide how to allocate that space.

Is a review of a paper's previous coverage for "fairness" an appropriate consideration in allocating that space? To be sure, the Administration's decision sounds punitive. White House spokesman Matt Lehrich explained his thinking as follows:

I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters. . . . I think (the Romney op-ed) raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the president’s visits.

Now I don't think anyone can deny that Lehrich made a poor tactical decision writing all this down in an email message for the Herald to reprint. And I'll admit, too, that claims of bias are tiresome and we all should be "troubled" whenever a government figure takes action against a reporter based on what he writes. But let's pause to consider what that action was: "freezing out" of "full access" to the President's visit to the Hub. Not exactly jack-booted thugs kicking down a door and shooting up the Herald's printing press. And with a reporter from Human Events currently holding a chair in the White House briefing room, I'm pretty comfortable that the White House isn't excluding contrary viewpoints.

But that said, a decision to deny the Herald "full access" is entirely consistent with an important theme that the President himself continues to articulate: in recent years our politics have deteriorated to the point where they severely inhibit our ability even to identify seriously problems, much less work together to solve them. And the President is not wrong to assign to the media a share of the responsibility for the deterioration of our politics.

One look at Carr's gagged-up slurry of petulant populism (yeah, Howie: it doesn't take a genius to write this way) — which of course wouldn't have been complete without references to the President as "Hussein" and descriptions of Globe reporters as "spayed" and "neutered" — makes it quite clear that the Administration wasn't wrong to conclude that maybe someone other than the Herald deserved one of the coveted "full access" slots.

Carr writes:

The Herald is for people who didn’t move here from New York to look down their noses at everyone who has calluses on their hands, who aren’t consumed by guilt about the trust funds that support them in their leisure.

Yes, fine, Howie. But I think the President's point is that the folks with calluses on their hands are owed something better than what you and your colleagues give them every day. You can have your tantrums, Boston Herald, and you can forgo actual news to devote no fewer than 5 stories and columns in today's paper to your trumped-up incident of press martyrdom and "we speak truth to power" meme. Nobody's going to shut down your press. But we don't have to take you so seriously as to put you on the White House bus. And we don't, either, need to accept your strained Nixon analogies, which would make you who? Woodward and Bernstein?

Please.

More, More, Better, More

MITHRIDATES
Today, President Obama outlined steps we are taking to improve security in the wake of the near-disaster on Christmas Day. There are four:
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First, I'm directing that our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively -- not just most of the time, but all of the time. We must follow the leads that we get. And we must pursue them until plots are disrupted. And that mean assigning clear lines of responsibility.

OK, so step one is pursue more leads and pursue them longer.

Second, I'm directing that intelligence reports, especially those involving potential threats to the United States, be distributed more rapidly and more widely. We can't sit on information that could protect the American people.

Step two is have more people read the reports.

Third, I'm directing that we strengthen the analytical process, how our analysis -- how our analysts process and integrate the intelligence that they receive. My Director of National Intelligence, Denny Blair, will take the lead in improving our day-to-day efforts. My Intelligence Advisory Board will examine the longer-term challenge of sifting through vast universes of intelligence and data in our Information Age.

Step three is analyze better.

And finally, I'm ordering an immediate effort to strengthen the criteria used to add individuals to our terrorist watchlists, especially the "no fly" list. We must do better in keeping dangerous people off airplanes, while still facilitating air travel.

Step four is put more people on watch lists.

Look, all these things sound great to me. But all of them (except the "do a better job" third fix) require more people spending more time. So are we going to hire more people or just spread our existing people thinner? Putting more people on the sex offender registry, for example, sounds good to the "tough on crime" types, but means fewer resources protecting our children from the really dangerous ones — unless you spend more government money and hire proportionately more police. Unless our intelligence folks are sitting around all day with nothing to do, giving them more leads to pursue means less time on the higher priority leads, no? Sounds like a net loss to me unless you're willing to step up the investment . . .

Walk the Line

MITHRIDATES
While the usual knee-jerk conservatives spout out their predictable objections, it's worth noting the delicacy of the situation in Iran. While most Americans obviously wants an end to the Ayatollah's theocracy and a peaceful, prosperous, and friendly Iran, the questions is how best to get there.

The posturing right demands a strong statement from the President affirming our support for the protesters. But to what end? An open declaration of support from the US President plays directly into the hands of the oppressors in Iran. It gives credence to their claims that the protests are orchestrated by their enemies and might help unite much of the country behind the regime. The obviousness of this predicament has not prevented condemnation of the President from some corners, and some conservatives, such as Peggy Noonan and George Will, should be credited for noting the foolishness of such criticism.
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Let's be fair. Not every conservative is as moronic as Jeff Jacoby and some argue reasonably for stronger words or at least acknowledge the potential downside.

We'll just quietly give thanks for a leader who thinks about the best course of action to effect the most favorable outcome and makes the necessary adjustments as circumstances change — unlike, well, you know . . .

What the Iranian people need is to know that the rest of the world supports them. Obama is trying to do this without giving any credence to the regime's claims of foreign interference. It's a delicate line to walk, and we wish the President success. And whether he got to this speech because of Republican criticism or just a reasonable reassessment of changing circumstances, it's still a damn good one. The man can talk, and right now the right words matter.

Not Such a Pretty Mouth After All

MITHRIDATES
We all know that Hollywood is full of lefty nutjobs. From Sean Penn's rants about George W. Bush's bloodsoaked underwear to Tim Robbins' opening his mouth on just about anything. Hollywood is the right's symbol of the lunatic left (never mind that it's also possibly America's greatest export industry).

But the smaller, but still lunatic, right-wing fringe of Hollywood isn't staying silent. They're few and far between, but that just means we need to cover the righty rants more when they happen. You know, in the name of a balanced press.
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So here's to Jon Voight's mostly incoherent, sometimes scary, often scathing ramblings at a Republican fundraiser last week. No need to watch the whole thing if you value ten minutes of your life — it's not that good — but here are some highlighted fragments, phraseoids, and other snippets:

• Obama's "false haloistic presence."
• He "turned out be wildly radical. The way he played his deception is interesting . . ."
• His "strategies should be looked at to see if we could mimic them in a positive legal way."
• "Everything Obama has recommended has turned out to be disastrous."
• "Joe Biden, one of the great double-talkers of our time . . ."
• "The government wants to tell people what doctors they can see, how much they can make, and what cars they can drive."
• "We can blame [list of Democrats] for the downfall of this country."
• "We and we alone are of the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama oppression."
• "Let's give thanks to all the great people like Sean Hanity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingram . . .Glen Beck . . . Anne Coulter . . . Michele Malkin . . . Let's give them thanks for not giving up and staying the course to bring an end to this false prophet Obama."
  

At one point he quotes, and this is no joke, Pravda to prove we're on the road to Marxism. All of this to (sometimes thunderous) applause and the acclaim of the Republican establishment in attendance.

False, haloistic, illegal, radical, deception, disastrous, double-talker, downfall, oppression, false prophet, Marxist — all in one speech.

Read this later interview if you want to see Bill O'Reilly appear the voice of reason against:

• "We have a fellow who's bringing us to chaos and socialism."
• "They're actually attacking entrepreneurs. They're attacking business."
• "This is a very extreme agenda."

And just in case you were wondering, Glenn Beck does not appear the voice of reason in the interview he did, but here are more Voight highlights:

• "Well, you know, I came into celebrity in the end of the '60s and I was surrounded by people who were very heavily programmed, Marxist. And I didn't even realize it at the time that this was communist-based stuff, you know, that the communists were behind organizing all of these rallies and things."
• They [the left] didn't take seriously the blood that they had been directly causing."
• "We're losing so much. This man, Obama, is not only, you know — has not only set himself to redistribute the wealth of the middle class, he also is set to take over, control the industrial wealth of the country with banks and with, you know, the major corporations, with foreign companies."

OK, so Jon Voight's a nutjob. So what? Well, so nothing, so long as he's not invited to speak at the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees gathering and roundly applauded by the Republican establishment. Hey, everyone's entitled to their opinions. Go ahead and applaud if you like. Just don't then pretend you were really ever willing to support the President or give him a chance.

Idiot Watch: Mary Ann Glendon

PHUTATORIUS

With his commencement speech at Notre Dame yesterday, President Obama will — we hope — have put an end to these many weeks of absurd posturing by Catholic conservatives over Obama's record on "life issues." The "pro-life" lobby has poured it on with such relish and gusto, you'd have thought the President was Justice Blackmun himself (or Jane Roe) — when in point of fact, he's endeavored to stake out the middle ground on life issues, to the extent there is any to be found.

One aspect of the tomfoolery around South Bend way that struck a chord with me is Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon's refusal to accept Notre Dame's prestigious Laetare Medal this year — because she couldn't bring herself to share the stage with Barack Obama, Baby-Killer.

Mary Ann Glendon is an Idiot, and I'm taking the liberty of capitalizing the I.

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For full disclosure's sake I should note, before I continue, that I had Professor Glendon for Property in my first year of law school, and she gave me a B. I wasn't thrilled with the grade, but it never detracted from my abiding affinity and respect for her, which I would consider to be the same measure of affinity and respect I would have for any of my law-school professor, before they went and did something backward, absurd, and unqualifiedly stupid. So please don't believe this post marks an attempt to avenge, eight years later, that uninspiring grade — any of you who have talked foreign policy knows that I believe in a proportional response to aggression, such that I would never respond to that B with the F I'm giving Glendon today.

On to the Idiocy now. The open letter Professor Glendon wrote to Notre Dame refusing her Medal last month described President Obama as "a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church's position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice." The letter doesn't supply any of the details to support this indictment of the President. As I can think of no other respect in which anyone can remotely characterize him as the war-criminal dictator described in the letter, I can only assume Glendon is talking about "life issues." President Obama is a well-known advocate of a woman's right to choose, and he supports capital punishment as well. These positions contradict teachings of the Catholic Church, and it's these issues that tend to incite activists — although, one would hope, not a law professor — to the sort of inflammatory rhetoric we see here.

Let's study that rhetoric. Prominent? Barack Obama has never tried to highlight or exploit either of these issues politically. For the most part, he's entirely ducked acting on or discussing them. Nothing in Obama's candidacy or Presidency to date describes a man committed to promoting abortion or fast-tracking executions. Uncompromising? This is an outright laugher. Obama's expressed position on abortion is that he thinks the ideological logjam can and should be broken by taking policy steps to reduce the number of abortions. And yes, Obama opened up federal funding to stem-cell research, but it's likely quite a large number of lives will be saved, as a result of that decision. For that matter, Obama recognizes the importance of interposing "strict guidelines" to govern this field of study.

One wonders what the word "compromise" means, to someone like Mary Ann Glendon. As I remember the word, a compromise calls for concessions from both sides, and that's exactly what Obama has sought to accomplish on these most divisive issues. He's hardly a hard-headed ideologue on these points, and while I understand the urgent absolutism that might make anti-abortion advocates inclined not to give an inch on the question of the lives of the unborn, it's a bit of a logical stretch to describe Obama's position as uncompromising, simply because he doesn't endorse their view.

It's worth revisiting, too, the point Mithridates made in an earlier roundup: that Barack Obama stood alone among the handful of serious aspirants for the Presidency in his opposition to the Iraq War. Lives were lost as a result of that decision — a decision that the Church opposed — but apparently no credit is due to Obama for this, as he is not completely in lock-step with Glendon and the bishops on the other "life" issues. The Church is at least consistent in its life doctrine, even if so many of its conservative adherents would gladly hang, shock, waterboard, and bomb their fellow man, if it could translate to a marginal increase in their own "security."

But more important — to my mind, anyway — than Professor Glendon's obvious posturing, willful inconsistency, and unsupported (and unsupportable) rhetoric is the fact that Mary Ann Glendon should know that the first and most important mission of a university, Catholic or not, is to foster and promote a free exchange of ideas. Putting aside the sheer absurdity of her attempt to cast the President as a willful and determined challenger to Church orthodoxy on issues that have to this point all but escaped his Administration's notice — particularly as he is as close to a moderate on these issues as there can be — it's supremely irksome that a law professor (a law professor!) should turn on Notre Dame for inviting Obama to speak. If differences of opinion cannot be tolerated at a university, then where?

Glendon finesses this issue just a little by writing that the University's intention to confer an honorary degree on President Obama contravened the request of U.S. bishops that Catholic institutions "should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." Glendon writes that this request "in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution's freedom to invite or engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes," and she is sorely troubled that a "Catholic university should disrespect it." It logically follows from this passage that Glendon would have accepted her Medal, had the University only invited the President to speak and stopped short of awarding him the honorary degree. But really, though: would Glendon have abandoned her very public, self-serving gesture of sacrifice, if only Notre Dame had withheld a degree from the President?

I doubt it. Mary Ann Glendon is a bright woman, so bright that she knows to seek nuance when it might serve her, and to abandon it in favor of blithely cast generalizations when it doesn't. The ostensible addressee of her open letter, Father Jenkins, the President of Notre Dame, surely saw through the manipulative and self-serving representations she made in her letter, just as I did. But of course we know that the letter wasn't really meant for Father Jenkins: it was directed to the frothing horde of Obama-haters — the kind, just like her, who will happily exaggerate his differences with the Church, overlook the many areas in which his views are consonant with official Church doctrine, and judge him so harshly, four months into his Presidency, that they can't even stomach the notion of appearing on a stage with him. This was never about religion; it was about politics. And in either case, a distinguished scholar like Mary Ann Glendon should be able to tolerate the presence of — and indeed the grant of honors to — a man who disagrees with some of her deeply-held opinions. That goes double when that man is your President.

You ought to be better than this, Professor Glendon.

But Does School Choice Work?

MITHRIDATES
As Vercingetorix recently pointed out, there exists a video that makes Obama look really bad on the issue of school choice. I, for one, support the DC voucher program, mostly because I'm in the "try something different, see what works" camp. The video, however, has its problems, to say the least.
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First, it portrays Obama as the leading force behind ending the program. As in "working with congressional Democrats, Obama has effectively killed the program." Let's be clear that it's the congressional Democrats who have been leading the charge to end it. Obama actually pushed through a compromise that allows students currently in the program to graduate. Maybe he's not forceful enough in his support, but let's not pretend he's the evil bogeyman actively trying to destroy little kids' lives.

Second, in fine Michael Moore fashion, Reason.TV — in lieu of honest statistical analysis — throws around nice sounding numbers as if they somehow prove their point. The video claims that students gained "19 months advancement in reading" from joining the program. Actually, it was 3.7 months. The "19 months" was for one particular subgroup. The folks at Reason looked at all the data, picked the subgroup that did best and said, "Look — it works!" As Michael Moore has proved, one can "prove" anything by looking at a giant chart of numbers and picking out the biggest.

If you actually read the Department of Education's analysis of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, you'll find there was a slight, but (apparently) statistically significant improvement in reading scores for participants, but no corresponding improvement for math, safety (except as "perceived" by parents), or satisfaction. Weighed against loss of funds for public schools and using tax dollars for religious institutions (liberals' complaints), it's hardly a slam-dunk winner. But, sure, if I were king I'd let it run longer so we can gather more evidence before shutting it down.

The "argument for school choice is pretty basic," claims the narrator. Choice forces competition and therefore better services. It sounds nice. And it might be true. But so far the empirical evidence for this proposition is pretty thin.

This issue of school choice was dealt with pretty well in Freakonomics, and there's a recent follow-up. The authors compare students who wanted to change with those who did change schools and found that the "wanting" makes all the difference, not the school they end up in. To be fair, the Chicago lottery system they examined is not quite the same as the DC voucher program. But it's hardly a done deal that "school choice" works as the video would have you believe.

A recent article in The Economist catalogs the failures of school choice in Britain. Again, this doesn't mean it doesn't work in any fashion and shouldn't be tried, but let's not pretend for a second that it's proven to work. Reason.TV faults Obama for promising to support programs that "work" and then "failing to live up to his rhetoric." Sorry, fellas, but first you have to convince us that it actually does "work."

The good thing about videos like this is that it reminds the Michael Moore fans out there how easy it is to make a tear-jerking video that cherry-picks statistics to make a convincing emotional argument against a particular policy.

The Democrats' crime on education is that they're beholden to teachers' unions whose knee-jerk reaction is to smother any attempt at reform (to be clear: love the teachers; hate the union). In this respect, best wishes to new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as he takes on the "blob."

Fake Threat, Real Threat

MITHRIDATES
It seems like Pakistan is finally getting it ("it" being my — America's, the Western World's — way of thinking). From the low point of moving troops towards the India border after the Mumbai attacks and a peace deal with the Taliban earlier in the year, Pakistan has come a long way and is now apparently taking the fight to the Taliban. Apparently they're even making some gains.
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The US criticized the peace deal from the beginning, but diplomacy consists of getting other countries to do what you want — it's not, as Vercingetorix rightly points out, just asking for it. But it's not just criticizing them, either. Finally, the Pakistani government seems to be doing something we want — cooperating in the fight against the Taliban. There's still the sensitivity of having American soldiers on their soil, but the Obama folks and the Islamic Republic folks seem to be finessing that by training counterinsurgency troops in an undisclosed third country.

There's still a long way to go, and the Pakistani government defines dysfunctional, so who knows how long they'll keep this up? Maybe it's the immediacy of the Taliban threat. Maybe it's the diplomatic genius of the new administration. Maybe it's the realization that although posturing against India wins you some domestic political support, India poses no real threat. Who knows? But it's good to have — at least for the time being — Pakistan fighting a second front against the Taliban instead of just hindering our fight on the first front.

Extreme Anguish of Body or Mind

MITHRIDATES
President Obama released four memos regarding alleged "torture" during the Bush administration. Cue outrage from all corners:

• The New York Times editorial page condemns the memos for being "written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country's most basic values." They contend that "as far as Mr. Bush’s lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth." They may be right in this regard. This type of thinking falls way short of the American ideal. But the Times's sin is in omission. The regimes we've been fighting might not even consider those acts "really torture." "They torture, we torture, we're no different" has been a rallying cry of the raving left. It's worth pointing out that it's nonsense.

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• "The Memos Prove We Didn't Torture" victoriously screams the Wall Street Journal headline of a David Rivkin and Lee Casey opinion piece. Thank you, WSJ, for saying what the Times wouldn't. Thank you even more for going into even more detail of decidedly un-American activities supported by the Bush Administration. The authors justify these techniques by noting that they've all been tested on US servicemen. They almost have a point. It seems clear — at least from what we know — that the CIA did not engage in any activity that inflicted serious pain. This is not the "torture" of Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib. But discovering a captive's worst fear and making him think it's about to be realized is something straight out of 1984. To claim these memos are an acquittal means you haven't read your Orwell.


• Former head of the CIA Michael Hayden condemns the release of the memos on the ground that it has made us less safe, without making any convincing argument as to why this is true.


• Meanwhile, the frothing Left is outraged that Obama won't prosecute CIA agents.


• Some say Obama is obliged to prosecute under the UN Convention against Torture. But we'd have to have a working definition of torture, now, wouldn't we? The CIA techniques may have been un-American and long-term harmful to our cause (we have to take the interrogators' word for it that they conferred tangible short-term gains), but is it really "torture" comparable to what the UN convention was designed to combat? Either way, the Bush Administration's actions and these type of responses will no doubt take the pressure off those engaged in "torture" of a far worse variety.


• At least one Feigned Outrage author thinks this a victory for transparency in government. Let the critics rant all they want, but find me another country where an organization like the ACLU openly sues for the release of top secret documents and the President agrees to release them. We're back on track to leading the way in democratic government. Keep this up and those who admired us before Bush will start to admire us again. And we'll be safer for it. So a shout-out to Obama for enraging the Right (and his own CIA director) by shedding some light on our past sins. Another shout-out for stating emphatically that the US will not engage in such activities any more. And a final shout-out for enraging the Left by refusing to undermine the CIA completely by prosecuting agents walking a fine line between defending their country and obeying the laws of human decency.

Thumbs Up to Obama's Revised Cuba Policy

PHUTATORIUS
Today the Obama Administration announced that it will relax longstanding sanctions on Cuba just a little.

These gestures — allowing emigres to travel and send remittances to their family members in Castroland, opening up communications channels for U.S. based cellular and satellite television carriers to broadcast into Cuba — could not but elicit criticism from the right, simply because we're talking about the lifting of restrictions on Cuba. And in due course, two Republican Cuban-American representatives posted this sharp critique of the policy change:
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Unilateral concessions to the dictatorship embolden it to further isolate, imprison and brutalize pro-democracy activists, to continue to dictate which Cubans and Cuban-Americans are able to enter the island, and this unilateral concession provides the dictatorship with critical financial support.

But this sort of talk doesn't really enrich the discourse: the statement says nothing about the nature of the "concessions"; it chooses instead to blather about how awful the Castro regime is, presumably in support of the thesis that any treatment that doesn't consist of a stiffarm constitutes an indulgence to dictatorship. This is too bad, because I should think that the Diaz-Balart brothers are peculiarly positioned to make some nuanced contribution to the discourse on Cuba.

I'm not wholly averse to the notion that we have to "get tough" with dictators, but in the case of Cuba, it ought to be clear by now that a wholesale reevaluation of the United States' policy of "disengagement" is in order. It's been fifty years now, and I think it's fair to say that our isolation strategy has not been effective. Castro is still hanging on. There's no better indicator of Castro's growing sense of comfort than the evolution of his wardrobe — from his signature Revolution-evoking fatigues into a politician's suit, and then from there into pajamas and Adidas. Clearly, Fidel is letting it all hang out in his isolation and old age, and all signs point to an orderly transfer of power to Raul down the road. Maybe it's time to say that our policy just hasn't worked.  Why don't we put pride and spite aside for just a moment and consider the possibility that softening up the line just a little doesn't translate to "letting Fidel win?"  I think by most measures — at least those important to him — he's already won.  If you'd asked Castro in a candid moment back in 1960 to set the odds that he would be (1) alive, (2) still in Cuba, and (3) its head of state in 2009, even he would have laughed you out of the room.

And it's worth examining a bit more closely exactly the specific moves the Obama Administration has made. They haven't abandoned The Embargo outright. They're not sending champagne and Omaha Steaks to Fidel (or even DVDs). The relaxed restrictions are directed not at the Castro regime, but at the people suffering under it.  It seems not just benevolent to allow Cuban-Americans to reestablish ties with and lend material support to their families on the island — it's actually pretty clever. These families can see how their relations have prospered under the American system. The President gets that the isolation actually supports Castro's grip on power, because it makes it easier for him to suppress the evidence of working alternatives to the regime's ideology.  It's no coincidence that Obama relaxed the travel and remittance restrictions at the same time he opened up cellular and satellite concessions: these, too, will get word out to Cubans of the grand, beautiful world that subsists beyond the socialist writ of El Presidente Fidel.

Whether or not you might think this sort of opening-up is advisable with, say, Iran or North Korea, here it seems to be a no-brainer, given 50 years of failure and it's the only thing we haven't tried. So maybe Castro's government absorbs some of the proceeds of the check you write to Grandma in Havana. I'd be quite surprised if that revenue makes the difference between a surviving and a failing regime. The Cuban people deserve better — they deserve to know that there's better out there — and that's what will ultimately drive out the Communists. And I think we should place just a little bit of faith in Obama's strategy: here's a guy who knows a thing or two about bottom-up political movements.

Vercingetorix, tell me why I'm wrong.

Diplomacy

VERCINGETORIX

The Western diplomat said the council might take up a resolution or a non-binding statement that would reaffirm existing sanctions.

I'll just leave it at that for my commentary on the North Korean missile launch response.

Toker-in-Chief Should Know Better

MITHRIDATES
I expected more. But maybe that's my problem.

Reasoned arguments are coming from everywhere — from Kathleen Parker to The Economist to Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and Freakonomics fame — to end, or at least consider ending, the counterproductive War on Drugs. After eight years of a President glibly dismissing reasoned arguments out of hand, we now have — wait for it — a President glibly dismissing reasoned arguments out of hand.
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Yes, I know there are political considerations. Yes, I know any sort of legalization or decriminalization faces an uphill battle on Capitol Hill. It's way too reasonable a solution for the sound-bite monkeys in Congress to support.

But don't just kill the conversation. Even better, use your power and prominence to give credibility to the anti-war crowd. It would make a difference.

Bill Clinton smoked pot and half-admitted it. George W. Bush did all sorts of crazy stuff (who really knows what?) and admitted to nothing. Barack Obama did cocaine and wrote about it. Aren't we at the point where we can talk about this?

Special Relationship Edition DVD

VERCINGETORIX

Our new President has already set about repairing the damage caused by the Bush Administration's disastrous foreign policy. As such, he's already reaffirmed our "special relationship" with the UK....by, uh, well, by giving the Prime Minister a really nice box set of DVDs.

I mean Raging Bull and Casablanca are great movies, of course, but are you fucking kidding me?

Luckily, Gordon Brown's gift was equally lame. You know, just an "ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet", "a framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to mark Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria", and "a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert."

Good thing he didn't put much thought into it either or we'd look stupid....

(HT: TigerHawk)

Migracorridos

MITHRIDATES
Finally some creative thinking about illegal immigration. Take "migra", the derogatory term used by illegal immigrants for the US Border Patrol, and "corrido", traditional Mexican ballads, and what do you get:

Migracorridos, a five-song CD distributed by the USBP to Mexican radio stations containing such hits as "El Enemigo Mas Grande", a ballad about a Mexican watching his cousin die in the desert. The CD also includes "La Carta" (The Letter), "La Tumba" (The Tomb), and "El Funeral" (you're on your own with this one).
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The good news is it actually represents some creative thinking by our border control. Mexican drug traffickers are known to sing narcocorridos to brag about their exploits and the USBP now has a competing offer. And they're apparently quite popular. Read the rest of the Daily News article (hooray, they produced something worth reading! Oh wait, that's just an AP reprint) for more about the Border Crossing Initiative. The BCI claims success, as deaths are down from a peak of 492 in 2005 to 390 in 2008, but it's unclear how much of this is from fewer border crossing attempts due to fewer opportunities en el norte during the recession.

The sad news is that an effort like this is only noteworthy in the absence of any reasonable immigration policy. Eight years ago a governor from a border state ran for President with a sensible position based on years of first-hand experience with immigration. Too bad he never got the chance to make it happen. From 2005 and 2007, John McCain*, Ted Kennedy, and others led an effort for a comprehensive immigration reform that sought to address the major issues in a reasonable way by largely ignoring the rantings from the right and left extremes. The resulting rants of these extremes against the bill suggest it had some merit.

It was not perfect. It was not how I would have drawn it up. But considering the usual crap that comes out of Congress it wasn't that bad. It had the support of the last President. Would it have the support of this one? I think so. Can it get through the new Congress? It came close last time and seems worth a try now. But will ecomonic troubles and a temporary decline in illegal immigration remove it from the agenda entirely?

This seems like something the current Congress and President could get done in a reasonable way. So what gives? We'll tackle this issues in depth at a later date, but for now, can't we at least get it back on the table?

* note: when this author refers to "John McCain", he is not referring to the alien-demon-possessed 2008 presidential candidate who ran under the same name and said he would actually vote against the immigration bill the real John McCain sponsored back in 2006.

Somebody Find Me LL Cool J's Letter to Obama

PHUTATORIUS
I want so badly to find LL Cool J's "open letter" offering counsel to President Obama, so I can make fun of it. But Google only turns up these Hollywood gossip blogs, and they all carry the same quoted excerpts, e.g.:

You have shifted the cultural paradigm of America, but now you have to live
up to the ideal that fostered the shift and ensure that the paradigm doesn’t
shift back. You must deliver.

Blow! How ya like me now?!

Somebody needs to post this communication on the Internet, in its entirety.

Hope over Fear?

MITHRIDATES
Bradley Schiller expresses his worries in the Wall Street Journal about Obama's fear-mongering. He's right in that the over-the-top rhetoric can't be good for confidence, but where was the WSJ over the last eight years of real fear-mongering, when Bush told us we were in for catastrophic attacks unless we passed every single one of his measures and continued to mock American justice by holding people in perpetuity without trial?
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And it's pretty rich to single out Obama for calling this the worst crisis since the Great Depression without noting that people of all stripes in both political parties have been saying that for quite some time. Moreover, some of Schiller's points are just nonsensical. Yeah, there were far more bank failures in the Depression, but banks are much bigger now (or has the WSJ not noticed the consolidation in the financial industry it's been championing for years?). There are fewer bank failures now, but those that do happen are devastating. It takes a facile and petty mind to compare the failure of say, Jimmy's Corner Bank in 1931 to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

But the entire argument is nuts. He writes "as [Obama] tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression." And then he goes on to note how he thinks the Great Depression was worse. Well, it was worse. That's why this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, and not the worst economy ever.

Schiller almost actually tries to counter Obama's claim by suggesting that the 1982 recession might be as bad as this one, but he uses very selective statistics. He compares peak unemployment from the 1982 recession to current unemployment figures, even though we don't know if we've bottomed out yet in this one. But this crisis features massive bank failures as well (Schiller fails to mention that this didn't happen in 1982). In 1982 the entire financial system wasn't at risk. It seems to me that this recession is much worse than the 1982 crisis, and Schiller's really grasping at straws if his argument is that Obama shouldn't say this is the worst since the Depression because the 1982 recession might, by some metrics, be just as bad. The current situation might be closer to 1982 than 1932 — that's fair to postulate — but that wouldn't refute Obama's claim.

To say that Obama's claim was way out of line, you'd have to provide very convincing proof — far more convincing than the trite argument Schiller makes here — that 1982 was worse. Or, show somewhere in your article a quote where Obama says this is as bad as the Great Depression. As is often the case with journalists on the left and right, the headlines and paraphrases usually exaggerate the statements of the politician. See headlines about John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama on the Great Depression.

But Schiller does have a valid point in there. One worth making. It's not so noticeable amid WSJ's hypocrisy about fear-mongering, his selective statistics about 1982, his willful ignorance about the fact that most people are saying the same thing, and his embarrassing misunderstanding of the word "since." So I'll restate my own modified version of it here:

Talking about impending financial disaster will not boost confidence in a way that's needed to get people spending and lending again (nor, of course, will burying our heads in the sand and pretending nothing's wrong). Getting quick passage of a controversial bill with huge ramifications by threatening disaster is something we all hoped we were finished with, as well as loading up said bill with partisan policy and then calling the other body "obstructionist" for opposing it.

Now that the bill has passed, can we get back to Hope? Now that the bill has passed, can we get back to working with the John McCains of the world again?

Shepard Fairey Sues the Associated Press

PHUTATORIUS
Good for him. What Fairey did with the photo was absolutely a fair use, and the AP is trying to shake him down.
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There is a larger problem here, and it has to do with the publishers' culture of trading permissions. Big Media organizations recognize the reciprocal benefits of granting permissions to one another: ESPN wants highlight footage of the Notre Dame home game on NBC; MSNBC wants to run clips of Peter Gammons's A-Roid interview. Everybody wins — including the viewer. Each network is fairly positioned to use the other's copyrighted video and rely on a fair use defense, but there's no need to take the chance. There's a free trade in permissions, so why bother with the uncertainty?

The problem comes when there's an asymmetry in the dealing — when the lowly Joe Blogger or Shepard Street Artist wants to make use of Big Media content. Joe and Shepard don't have anything to trade: an organization like the AP has nothing to gain from granting permission — and nothing to lose if it presses its rights.

And so the Associated Press can buy up truckloads of stock photos, and if by chance someone other than Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, or Disney should do something marketable and compelling with one of them, their lawyers will get on the phone and demand their cut. That's not unreasonable. That's how copyright law works. But the law also allows creative people to make "transformative" uses of another's copyrighted content, as Fairey did here. It helps, too, if the original work wasn't all that creative to begin with. So here: it's a straight-on headshot of a public figure. And all the better if, as is true here, the subsequent use does nothing to impair the rightsholder's existing and anticipated rights in the work. Fairey's poster does not remotely compete with the Press's licensing of stock photos of Barack Obama. It's a slam-dunk fair use.

Oh, and it's a bit rich that the AP spokesman is "disappointed by the surprise filing" of the preemptive lawsuit. All's fair in love and litigation, isn't it?

Shepard Fairey should win this case. He has good, committed lawyers and his cause is righteous. Of course, all that usually gets you only 35% of the way to victory in a copyright case in New York.

Embryonic Step Forward

MITHRIDATES
While we debate the merits of the stimulus package and which group of partisans is more partisan, let's not overlook certain obvious and clear benefits of replacing Bush with Obama. Under Bush, the U.S. government refused to fund embryonic stem cell research, "one of the world's most promising medical technologies," according to The Economist.
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Obama has yet to make this official, but word is out that an executive order lifting the ban is forthcoming. This is not only a no-brainer for the advancement of medical science, but for the long-term competitiveness of the United States — a topic which will be a focus of this blog (or at least this writer). As The Economist puts it, "American academics will no longer have to watch enviously from the sidelines as their colleagues in Australia, Britain, China, the Czech Republic, Israel, Singapore, and South Korea push ahead." The United States has been at the forefront of medical research for a century, and it must be a top priority of any American administration to maintain — and improve upon — this position.

Bush apologists will point out that the Administration only withheld funding and did not ban any research practices, that for that matter not all stem-cell research was subject to the funding ban, that embryonic stem cells pose risks, that stem-cell research is is unproven at this point, and that opening up funding for one type of research will no doubt reduce funding for others. All true, but let's acknowledge here that the best way to push science forward is to let scientists pursue the most promising paths forward without government getting in the way. Moreover, because the funding ban required researchers to compartmentalize all grant expenditures away from stem-cell research — for example, stem-cell researchers could not use devices or materials bought with grant money for other purposes — the restriction added a layer of bureaucracy that made even privately-funded stem-cell research a costly and burdensome proposition.

To be fair, one of John McCain's signature maverick positions was to oppose Bush on his ban, and Obama overstated the difference between his and McCain's positions. But who knows if a President McCain would have had to appease the Palin crowd on this one?

Anyway, we're still waiting for the order, but this is a step forward. Hopefully tough financial times will not cause the new President to balk in his stated support of science and that he'll recognize how critical maintaining our lead in scientific research is to our long-term competitiveness. There is no country in the world that can innovate the way America can — at least for now — but other countries are eager to catch up. As India, China, and others begin to develop better institutions of higher education and promote technology centers, the incentive for those countries' leading minds to stay home will grow. The United States must do everything it can to continue to attract the brightest scientists and innovators from around the world — it's the surest way to maintain our long-term scientific and economic leadership.

PHUTATORIUS
This is one of the great disasters of the Bush Administration. Not only did he cut off the funding by executive fiat — he subsequently vetoed a funding bill that had substantial bipartisan support.

(Remarkably, Bush defended his veto by stating that "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical — and it is not the only option before us." This from the man who threw thousands of lives and billions of dollars behind the proposition of elective, preemptive war.)

There was talk that Obama might duck the issue and simply defer the matter to Congress, with the expectation that they could muster another bill like the one Bush vetoed. Let's hope he doesn't go that route. Bush invoked executive authority to turn off the funding faucet; Obama is at the very least empowered to turn it back on.

Idiot Watch: Jeff Jacoby

MITHRIDATES (with PHUTATORIUS)
Today Feigned Outrage launches "Idiot Watch," this blog's effort to expose the Web's most illogical and nonsensical commentators, argument by inane argument. Yeah, so we're a little behind on this. And there's only three of us signed on to beat back the blithering hordes of pundit orcs out there. But we do what we can to bring the world out of darkness. We'll try to be as fair as we can and attack both sides — Idiocy is not the sole domain of any one party or ideology — but I'm a natural-born lefty, so forgive me if I start with the prototypical knee-jerk conservative with a brain of mush. It's not that his positions are never right — sometimes he stumbles upon a Half Truth or two — but the process by which he seeks half-truths (usually by hacking Whole Truths to bits) is wont to leave Reason, Virtue, and Fairmindedness bleeding in the streets as "collateral damage."

Today's polemic about Obama's efforts to woo the Muslim world is not his dumbest, but if I had to wait for Jeff Jacoby to hit rock-bottom, we might be here for a while. This one is timely, it's modestly on-point, and it's classic Jacoby in that it combines his signature double standard-mongering with failures of basic logical reasoning. In short, it'll do, Pig:
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Carter's failure to understand the threat posed by the Soviet Empire had costly consequences for America and the world. Will that pattern now be repeated with Barack Obama and the threat from radical Islam?

We'll resist the temptation to engage Jacoby on his conclusory assessment of Carter's foreign policy. It's a bit galling that Jacoby so casually spins off these damning premises, but we're not necessarily inclined to defend Carter's administration here, when there are bigger fish to fry. For starters, the two enemies here differ so radically in their natures, methods, and agendas that it's ludicrous to compare them. Jeff might have a point, if Obama had ever said he thought Bin Laden and Khamenei were committed to peace. Second, to analogize direct diplomacy with Brezhnev and Castro to trying to reduce the hatred of Muslims for the US is asinine. It helped bring down Communism was that the people in those countries found our way of life more appealing and they finally revolted against an awful ideology — this is partly what Obama is selling to the Muslim world.

But running through [President Obama's] words [on Al-Arabiya] is a disconcerting theme: that US-Muslim tensions are a recent phenomenon brought on largely by American provincialism, heavy-handedness, and disrespect.

Well, this isn't illogical on Jacoby's part, it's just false. Obama has never said recent tensions are largely America's fault. What he's said is that the policies of the last seven years haven't helped, and it might be worthwhile to change course to reverse this downhill trend.

Missing is any sense that the United States has long been the target of jihadist fanatics who enjoy widespread support in the Muslim world.

Jeff, the man is trying to win over moderate Muslims around the world. It would be idiotic, as a matter of strategy, to come out guns blazing and blame the entire Muslim world for jihadist attacks (whether they receive widespread support or not). And for that matter, as a matter of principle it's distasteful to tar every religion's adherents with the dirty brush of its most radical, fundamentalist adherents.

Respect? Not even the Islamist atrocities of 9/11 provoked American leaders to treat Islam with disdain. "We respect your faith," George W. Bush earnestly told the world's Muslims on Sept. 20, 2001. "Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah."

We remember this quote, we applauded it at the time, and we'll even accept that it was "earnestly" given. But its not unreasonable to judge a man by his actions, rather than his words — and by how he treats people, rather than religious abstractions. One unjustified invasion later, with the naked human pyramids and flushed Korans behind us, we think it's fair to conclude that though President Bush retained nothing but "respect" for Islam, he hasn't necessarily done right by a lot of its students.

Even more troubling is Obama's cluelessness about US-Muslim history.

"The same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago - there's no reason why we can't restore that," he said on Al-Arabiya. Well, let's see. Twenty years ago, American hostages were being tortured by their Hezbollah captors in Beirut and hundreds of grief-stricken families were in mourning for their loved ones, murdered by Libyan terrorists as they flew home for Christmas on Pan Am Flight 103. Thirty years ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, proclaimed America "the Great Satan," and inspired his acolytes to storm the US embassy and hold scores of Americans hostage. Meanwhile, Islamist mobs were destroying US embassies in Pakistan and Libya, and staging anti-American riots in other countries.

Here's where Jacoby goes completely off the rails. Yes, Muslims, some of them leaders of their countries, did bad things twenty or thirty years ago. He's using this as a proxy for the relations between American and the Muslim world. But Jeff, let's apply your logic to the Christian world. Once more round the bend, then: Christians have done some terrible things to Muslims in the post-Cold War era, most notably Serbs in Bosnia and Russians in Chechnya. America has stood firmly against the Christian side in these cases. Would it be fair to associate the U.S., and all the other identifiably "Christian" nations in the West, with these atrocities? Of course not. So let's not apply such facile reasoning to the Muslim world.

The fact is that we did have much better relations with the Muslim world twenty and thirty (even ten) years ago. The Arab world especially had a very favorable opinion of the US. This has plummeted over the past eight years. This is no judgment on the policy of the past eight years, it's simply a statement of fact. By denying this with the above smokescreen, Jacoby is either being remarkably dumb or intentionally disingenuous.

Radical Islam's hatred of the United States is not a recent phenomenon, it has nothing to do with "respect," and it isn't going to be extinguished by sweet words — not even those of so sweet a speaker as our new president.

Radical Islam's hatred is not new. This is true, but irrelevant to Obama's efforts. Obama is not trying to win over Bin Laden and Khamenei. He's trying move the opinion of the rest of the Muslim world away from radical Islam and back towards the US; just as the Cold War was won, in part, by winning over the people in Eastern Bloc countries, even as their leaders clung self-interestedly to an adversarial orthodoxy. Does Jacoby not understand the distinction, or does he mean to mislead the reader. Oh, and Jeff — he's our President. With a capital P. Cope with that.

Sooner or later, Obama must confront an implacable reality: The global jihad, like the Cold War, will end only when our enemies lose their will to fight — or when we do.

Exactly. And that's why Obama said in his inaugural speech, "We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." Who knows if he means it, but he at least, unlike Jacoby, he understands the difference between the radicals we must defeat and the rest of the Muslim world we want to win over. There is a short-term and and a long-term battle to be fought here. In the short term, we have to thwart, preempt, and eliminate the radicalized terror networks. In the long term, we have to destroy the root causes of Islamic terror. These two ends are not incompatible, and you'd have to be an Idiot to think otherwise.

Is Obama's policy the right one? Was Bush all wrong? Another topic for another day. But let's try to get to the answer reasonably and tune out the imbeciles. Jacoby is way too dumb to have a column. Way too dumb.

"Transparency"

PHUTATORIUS
The White House press corps is on Obama's case already, as they weren't offered full video coverage of the President's do-over swear-in inside the Oval Office:

“It is ironic, the same day that the president is talking about transparency, we were not let in,” CNN’s Ed Henry said on the air Wednesday night after news of the second swearing-in broke.

Substitute "unrelated" for "ironic," and you have a true and accurate statement.
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Now this isn't the case we see five times a day, where "ironic" isn't the right word, because the speaker doesn't know what "ironic" means. This is a case where "ironic" isn't the right word, because the speaker doesn't know what "transparency" means.

By invoking the word "transparency," President Obama means to differentiate himself from the Bush Administration's policies and practice of secret government and information warfare. Transparency in government is a social value — a democratic value — and the role of the press in ensuring it is critical. So yes, Mr. Henry, you're really important. You have a privileged status in American society.

But transparency wasn't at issue here, because the White House did invite a number of print reporters into the Oval Office to view and document the event. Let's be clear: nothing about the re-swear-in was kept from the public. It's just that Ed Henry and his counterparts in cable news didn't get the video footage they wanted. Boo hoo.

This is not to say that, to date, Obama and his people have always been open and forthright with the press and the American people. They might have front-loaded the information about Tim Geithner's tax liabilities; instead, they waited for the news media to dig it up. This would describe a failure to live up to the "transparency" value: We know something that might be material and you don't. But we're not going to tell you.

It says something about the state of the profession that "we wanted to get footage of that" is greater cause for complaint from the media than "you withheld that information from us." I'm fine with the media zealously defending the principle of press access: I'd just like the underlying rationale to be service of the people, and not simply an assertion of Big Media privilege.

A Window into Obama and His Politics, ca. 2005

PHUTATORIUS
Here's a blast from the past, a blog post then-Senator and not yet candidate-for-President Barack Obama wrote to the fulminating orcs at The Daily Kos who had recently expressed inclinations to wring the necks of Democratic Senators who had voted to confirm John Roberts as Chief Justice.

It's a long post — Phutatorius-long — and perhaps it displays a bit of a weakness on the President-elect's part for lecturing. When I finished it, I found myself too spent to look down into the comments to see how well it was received.

That said, the post also reveals many of the personal qualities that make me hopeful about an Obama Administration: a firmness in belief, an ability to see the other side of a controversial issue, political sophistication, longsightedness, perspicacity, articulation. And it gives an inkling into Obama's politics, which — based on what he wrote here — are moderate, conciliatory, principled, inclusive, evenhanded, thoughtful.

One excerpt in particular speaks to these qualities:

From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don't think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don't think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.

I must say I don't like some of the comma usage here, or his use of "which" where "that" seemed more appropriate. But substantively, could he be more spot-on?

Then-Senator Obama was, no doubt, thinking Presidency when he wrote this post — but he wasn't under the microscope at this point, and he delivered these sentiments to an ostensibly hostile audience (albeit Kevlar-vested in the privileges and immunities of one who had himself voted against Roberts's confirmation). There was no overarching second audience of moderates and conservative to appeal to here. Those folks don't read The Daily Kos.

I think this post says a lot about our President-elect, and it crystallizes why I like him so much. I daresay (of course) that Barack Obama consistently, if not unfailingly, displayed the same personal qualities and maturity of his politics during his candidacy for the Presidency, and I hope that when he assumes the Oval Office the same even, cooperative, thoughtful temperament will carry him — and us, if we're lucky — through some of the difficult times we see on the horizon.

I leave it to Mithridates (and Vercingetorix, if he's out there and so inclined) to judge whether I ought, by virtue of this comment, to be lumped in with the other blue-fleeced sheep in Obama's spellbound flock.

MITHRIDATES
The guy shows a remarkable clarity of intellect and refreshing willingness to consider different points of view. I think he's proven that he has it in him to a great leader. My early willingness to support Clinton and then McCain over Obama had nothing to do with his potential. He has demonstrated — more than any candidate I remember — a whole lot of upside.

We'll know you're part of the spellbound flock if you expect too much practical good to come out of his demeanor and intellect or if you fail to criticize him when he does stupid things like giving those assheads at GM a single penny . . .


PHUTATORIUS
Actually, it would be pretty Solomonic — or maybe reverse-Solomonic is the more apt description — if he gave the Big Three just that, a single penny.

Put the three CEOs at the points of an equilateral triangle. Place the penny at the center (i.e., at the spot where the lines bisecting the three angles converge), and give them an hour to fight for it. Whoever's holding the penny when the clock runs out gets bailout money.

This strategy would have the effect of (1) identifying the most competitive and ruthless CEO (and therefore the one with the most upside; (2) appropriately demeaning these pathetic men); and (3) if you run this in prime time and sell advertising, raising some of the money.

Damn. That idea was so good it should have been in a post, not a comment.


MITHRIDATES
I think your idea is legitimately brilliant, but you betray your ignorance of geometry.

In any triangle, the angle bisectors meet at the incenter, the one you describe; the perpendicular bisectors of the edges meet at the circumcenter; the three medians meet at the centroid; the altitude lines meet at the orthocenter.

In an equilateral triangle there really is no ambiguity about the center as all four centers occupy the same point.


PHUTATORIUS
What's the word for the center of a circle drawn around the triangle's three vertices? That ought to work here, too.


MITHRIDATES
That would be the circumcenter I described above.