Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Curiouser - Fraters has a poll.

I haven't read it yet. We can check it out together.

(click grind read read read read)

Hey! They're feuding with Hewitt again! What the...?
posted by Mitch Berg 12/4/2003 12:46:10 PM

Off For Now - I'll very likely be "off the air" for the next day or two. Posting will be light to nonexistant until Sunday, most likely.

We'll be making up for lost time then, of course!

Have a great weekend.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/4/2003 07:06:02 AM

What Kind of Complex? - People talk about "Minnesota Nice" - the sort of strained civility, descended from Scandinavian roots, that characterizes social interaction in the Upper Midwest.

To that classic term, I need to add "Minnesota Smug"; the belief that somehow the "Minnesota Nice" are, for some reason, better than the rest of their neighbors. It usually implies supporting the DFL, of course.

To define "Minnesota Smug", you merely need to read Doug Grow in the Strib. Read his archives - but also read yesterday's unctuous exercise in MinSmug; he was writing about Governor Pawlenty's move to reinstate the death penalty in Minnesota:
This must be how lynch mobs worked. A strong leader, reacting to anger, would work up the crowd, then, en masse, there would be a rush to the nearest tree.
No, Doug; the governor has called for an orderly, legal process to enact a change in law. He has not called for a mob to string up Alfonso Rodrigues.

I know that's a subtle point.
On Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, reacting to anger from a case that hasn't come close to being resolved, was calling for the rope. He said he would push for Minnesota to become a capital punishment state.

"As a Minnesotan, as a governor, as a dad of two young daughters, I'm fed up with these stories where we have children abducted, women abducted, with a not very good system for resolving the issue," Pawlenty said.
Now, I'm deeply ambivalent about capital punishment. I favor it for every reason but one; the possibility of executing the wrong person. Everything about the death penalty makes sense except that - but the possibility of kiling the innocent is enough to prompt me to reject it. And it's in emotional cases like this one that the death penalty is most likely to be imposed in error.

But it's not the poor sex offender that Grow is worried about. No. It's those dang Republicans and their supporters:
Even though Minnesota is far different from the progressive place we used to know, this was chilling.

What isn't clear is whether Pawlenty is being a manipulative pol, playing on the emotions of state residents, or whether his belief in capital punishment comes from his heart. Either way, he was trying to create public policy with a jerk of the knee.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to to the Constitution, the New Deal, and the Gun Control Act of 1968 were all "knee jerk reactions that played on the emotions of the voter during or after traumatic events. Three of the five were good things, one was probably ineffective, and the other was just plain wrong; I suspect Doug Grow wouldn't have written a snarky column about any of those "knee jerks."

Grow continues:
Who isn't angry when tragedy happens? (It should be noted that there are tragedies daily in Minnesota, though most get far less political or media attention than the apparent kidnapping of University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin.) Who doesn't feel empathy?

But this would seem to be the time for a leader to attempt to comfort the family, support law enforcement and to say to the rest of us, "Take a deep breath."
Grow needs to take a deep breath.

Capital punishment is not about comforting the family or supporting law enforcement, or even dealing with "the rest of us".

It's about killing a depraved person who has destroyed a life, and the lives of everyone they knew.

It's about revenge.

And "minnesota nice" and "minnesota smug" both tell us that revenge isn't something "nice" people think about. And like Concealed Carry reform earlier this year (which brough Minnesota Smug out like flies to dookie), they tell us that it's a form of moral defect to protect yourself from those who'd destroy you or your family!

The sonorous examples of the sainted, forgiving exceptions to the rule are trotted out:
Don Streufert understands a father's anger. His daughter, Carin Streufert, was 18 when she was kidnapped, raped and murdered 12 years ago in northern Minnesota by two men, who are now serving long prison terms.

"I'm in the governor's corner when he calls for more safety for our daughters," said Streufert from his home in Duluth. "It's appropriate to be angry. . . . But I don't see anything positive that would come from capital punishment."

Streufert and his wife, Mary, had been scheduled to speak against capital punishment at an Amnesty International event next Wednesday in Duluth. Now, after the governor's stunning announcement, there will be more urgency in their words.
Christ tells us to forgive. The Streuferts seem to have done this. For their purposes, that's fine.
The Streuferts understand they're unusual. They've gone so far as to meet their daughter's killers. And they understand that families of victims all find different ways to try to cope with horror.

But they believe society must act on a different standard from individuals.

"The terror people feel will not be answered with capital punishment," Streufert said.
I can accept that (remember - I oppose capital punishment). But it's not about answering terror.

It's about removing a predator, rapist and murderer from society.
For different reasons, many others were saying the same thing.

John Bessler, a Minneapolis attorney who has written three books on capital punishment including, "History of the Death Penalty in Minnesota," said there's no evidence that the death penalty makes a state safer.
See my previous paragraph.

Grow ushers Minnesota Smug back into the conversation:
Should Minnesota become even more like Texas than it already has in the past few years by becoming a death penalty state? Texas is the nation's runaway execution leader. It has one of the highest murder rates in the country. Minnesota has one of the lowest.
When Doug Grow invokes Texas, you know that he has no interest in the issue at hand. Capital Punishment is just the rhetorical taxi that takes him to the address he really wants; his hatred of the unwashed hoi polloi that have so soundly rejected the utopia he and his fellow travellers thought was so within reach.

Of course, as Doug Grow is a mouthpiece for the DFL, there has to be the obligatory campaign plug:
Sen. Jane Ranum, DFL-Minneapolis, was disgusted by the governor's words. Ranum, chairwoman of the Senate public safety committee, supports tough prison sentences but is a foe of capital punishment.

But what caused her to bristle was Pawlenty, standing before Minnesota as a champion of public safety. Ranum said Pawlenty's budget slashed all sorts of programs that dealt directly with public safety.

"Don't just listen to what he says," Ranum said. "Watch what he does."
Indeed.

He's "Cut programs". What programs? We don't know - but "Jane Ranum says...", and that's enough for Doug Grow.

This must be the rub for the likes of Grow and Ranum; Pawlenty has cut programs - but actually done things to make the life of the criminal more dangerous. Concealed Carry reform will reduce crime by making violent criminals just a little bit more afraid to ply their trades. Capital Punishment will make some criminals more afraid, to be sure - the convicted and condemned ones.

If you think it sounds like I've been slowly talking myself into supporting capital punishment over the course of this article - you may be right.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/4/2003 07:05:34 AM

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Sullivan on Stamps - Sullivan comments on Paul Robeson's inclusion on a postage stamp .

He exhumes a laudatory eulogy Robeson wrote about Joseph Stalin (read it) and asks:
Would anyone who had written such things about Hitler in 1945 now be celebrated on a postage stamp?
Of course not. But Stalin is...well, different, dammit!
posted by Mitch Berg 12/3/2003 07:18:07 AM

Yo To Arms - City Pages interviews Twin Cities sci-fi writer and longtime concealed carry activist Joel Rosenberg, one of CCRN's more interesting members.

One of many money quotes:
"'My take is that the predictions of 90,000 gun permits issued over the next year are wildly low,' Rosenberg says. 'One of the things that all the demagoguery on the anti-gun side has done is generated a lot of interest among folks who weren't interested before.' The interest is such, in fact, that since the passage of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, widely known as the conceal and carry law, Rosenberg has temporarily put his fantasy writing aside to pursue a lucrative sideline training prospective handgun carriers. 'I'm doing three and four classes a week, and I could easily be teaching every day. Right now I'm trying to cut down to full time.'"
Read the whole thing, of course.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/3/2003 07:14:37 AM

The Return of Liberal Talk Radio - I have seen the future of liberal talk radio. And its name is ~~Al Franken~~ Colleen Cruse.

Kruse - longtime local comedian best known for endlessly recycling her life as a single welfare mom in the nineties, and apparently a onetime contender to be on Friends - hosts a new show on WMNN Radio, an AM (1330) station that started life as MPR's all-news outlet, that heretofore has been the Twin Cities' 24-hour news station. Kruse's show is the station's first foray into talk radio. I heard it around 2PM yesterday.

Kruse calls the show, with typical liberal modesty, "Higher Ground". The station's drops between breaks constantly intone "lean left, lean right, or stay in the middle...", but you know exactly where Kruse fits in. Her leadoff guests yesterday: City Pages editor Steve Perry, talking about "the so-called recovery", as Kruse termed it.

Kruse sounds like someone who's used to an audience, trying to get used to working without one; she stammers, she giggles in places where it makes no sense, she has no sense of rhythm in an interview. Her co-host (whose name eludes me; WMNN's website has no mention of the program), apparently someone with small-time radio background, adds little; while he sounds better on the air than Cruse, his input is completely uninteresting.

There are comparisons with Katherine Lanpher; neither of them really belongs in radio, both of their shows slant hard to the left and neither will admit it.

The best comparison I can think of:
Colleen Kruse - Katherine Lanpher on laughing gas
Katherine Lanpher - Colleen Kruse on sedatives, only still not as funny during the rare joke that connects
Hope that helps.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/3/2003 06:39:05 AM

Out Of Control, Still - One of the left's most inviolate shibboleths is that countries like Australia, Britain and Canada - which have strict gun control - are safer places than the US.

For years, hints have been leaking out that it's just not so. British Home Secretary Jack Straw famously addressed the issue two years ago, in a speech that was alarmed about the booming crime rate in the UK.

Folsom James points us to a study by the Fraser Institute that tends to confirim this.

From the press release:
Disarming the public has not reduced criminal violence in any country examined in this study. In all these cases, disarming the public has been ineffective, expensive, and often counter productive. In all cases, the effort meant setting up expensive bureaucracies that produce no noticeable improvement to public safety or have made the situation worse. Mauser points to these trends in the countries he examined:
And from the study:
Restrictive firearm legislation has failed to reduce violent crime in Australia, Canada, or Great Britain. The policy of confiscating guns has been an expensive failure. Criminal violence has not decreased. Instead, it continues to increase. Unfortunately, policy dictates that the current directions will continue and, more importantly, it will not be examined critically.

Only the United States has witnessed such a dramatic drop in criminal violence over the past decade. Perhaps it is time politicians in the Commonwealth reviewed their traditional antipathy to lawfully owned firearms. It is an illusion that gun bans protect the public. No law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to commit violent crimes. Maybe we should crack down on criminals rather than hunters and target shooters?
Both pieces are worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/3/2003 06:01:50 AM

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

One Line On Kerry - Sullivan has the best one:
"Kerry is emerging as the worst of all the viable Democratic candidates. He has the backbone of Clinton and the charm of Gore"
I can see the Kerry career ending in about a year. If not sooner.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2003 06:00:47 PM

The Peril of the Moderate Moslem - Part IV - Excellent article in the Globalist by Tulin Daloglu on the Israelization of Turkey .

One of a bunch of Dinar quotes:
Although Turkey did not support the war in Iraq, it agreed later on to send its troops. But no troops were deployed in the end � because the Iraqis preferred it that way.

Yet, Washington and Ankara did not become allies yesterday. Rather, they have been strategic partners for decades and staunch allies in NATO. There is also Turkey's ever-closer cooperation with Israel.
Read it all, of course.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2003 06:07:00 AM

Arrest - An arrest in the Sjodin case:
A convicted sex criminal was arrested Monday night at his Crookston home and charged with kidnapping Dru Sjodin, who remains missing.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, was arrested at 7:20 p.m. Monday on a warrant from the Grand Forks County State's Attorney's office and signed in Grand Forks District Court, according to Grand Forks Police.
He is, of course, innocent until proven guilty.

I'm trying not to get a sinking feeling about this. But with statements like these:
"Out of respect for the Sjodin family and in the interest of the integrity of the investigation, no further information will be released at this time," police said in a news release Monday evening.

Allan Sjodin, Dru's father, said late Monday after news of the arrest, that "we are going to reserve comment until tomorrow morning. We want to assess the situation and set up for tomorrow. We are going to go about searching again tomorrow morning. That is the only comment I can give."
...it's just not easy.

By the way - Rodriguez would not seem to be an example of Minnesota "Catch and Release" correction:
Rodriguez grew up in Crookston and first was convicted of attempted aggravated rape and aggravated rape in 1974 in Crookston and sent to prison. During a furlough from prison in 1979, he attacked another woman, attempting to abduct her from a city sidewalk in Crookston. He was convicted of attempted kidnapping and aggravated assault in 1980.

He remained in prison from 1980 until May 1 of this year.

State officials say Rodriguez previously was known to one victim and attacked two other women who did not know him, according to state correctional officials.
This is the part that I'm making sure my kids know all about - especially in light of the other, less-publicized case in Fertile, MN:
Wayne Swanson, who prosecuted Rodriguez in 1980 and served as Polk County attorney from 1979 to 2002, recalled the case Monday night.

"He attempted to abduct a woman off the street," Swanson said. "She fought him. He stabbed her. She did get away from him. She was not about to go with him. She was a pretty gutsy lady."
The case in Fertile is less well-known because the girl fought back, and got away. That seems to be the case with many such crimes; if you fight back against aggravated assault, kidnapping, attempted rape, robbery or other violent crimes, you are 1/4 as likely to end up dead than if you don't fight back. (If you use lethal force, of course, the odds are 1/7 - but don't tell the good folks at Citizens for a ~~Supine~~ Safer Minnesota). Anyway - the lesson for the kids today - always fight back. Never get in the car while you have the strength to keep yourself out. Scream and holler, and if the perp pulls a gun or a knife, run for it - your chances are much better than if you get in the car.

If Sjodin turns up dead - and I'm praying for a miracle here - look for a renewed call for the death penalty - in Minnesota.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2003 06:06:04 AM

Ignorant Americans - I minored in German in college, and spent some time overseas. I've never been overly burdened by the old European (and elitist American) trope that "Americans are ill-informed/provincial/ignorant about anything that happens outside the US."

Of course we are.

Humans - most people - have a saturation point for information. That point is different in every single person; it's the difference between people who ask you what state North Dakota is in, and people who have never lost a Trivial Pursuit game in all of history (pats self on back).

If you travel in Europe, you learn - it's a small place. The countries there are the size of states in the US; Minnesota is the size of the old West Germany; add in Wisconsin, and you have the reunified Germany. On our northwest border, of course, North Dakota is nearly triple the size of Belgium and the Netherlands. South Dakota is at least as large as France. It's a fair bet that the average Minnesotan knows a fair bit about the culture of Wisconsin, or the Dakotas.

In fact, while Europeans are proud of the fact that many of them are bilingual, think about it; if the Dakotas spoke three different languages, and Iowa yet another, and all those folks in Illinois and Ontario two more, and Minnesotans needed to know these languages for their economic survival, I think it's a fair bet you'd see a lot of multilingual Minnesotans.

I bring this up because of an email I got from David, at Davids Medienkritik. Trans-national ignorance is hardly a one-way street:
" 'Still observers point to the fact that a short visit in Iraq will not change everything with one blow. The American troops in Iraq have to reckon with continued resistance and the expected rise in popularity for Bush could also be over very quickly. They point to former US President Lyndon B. Johnson who visited the troops on a spectacular trip to Vietnam but then clearly lost the 1968 election to his opponent Richard Nixon.'
David notes
A mistake of this magnitude might lead some to reach the conclusion that most of the 'America experts' in the German media were too busy throwing rocks at police and getting high back in 1968 to pay close attention to the US Presidential election.

Just to clear things up a bit, Lyndon B. Johnson didn't even run for the Presidency in 1968 after announcing he would not seek re-election at the beginning of the year. Not only that, but the 1968 election between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat Hubert Humphrey turned out to be a hotly contended race which Nixon won by the thinnest of margins and was by no means 'clearly lost' by the Democrats.

German journalists frequently and gleefully report on the 'ignorance' of the average American, always with a hint of condescending superiority of course. It seems, though, that they aren't quite the brilliant know-it-alls they fancy themselves to be either..."
Many of us have known this since Adenauer won the World Cup in 1980.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2003 05:57:31 AM

Monday, December 01, 2003

Jackson Shunned, Media Stunned - Didn't see much coverage of this - protesters turning on Jesse Jackson at a rally.

Interesting quote:
"'We are tired of coming here to voice our opinion when we got African-American people sitting at the table and saying they represent our interests and playing this puppet game,' said one protester.
More interesting response:
Afterwards ABC7's Rob Johnson asked Reverend Jackson why he felt like so much verbal venom was aimed in his direction.

'They lashed out at Dr. King, they lashed out at Nelson Mandela, they lashed out at Jesus, so all of those who fight for change become the object of frustration,' said Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow-Push Coalition"
Christ, Mandela...Jackson; Martyrs.

The man may have finally lost it.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/1/2003 10:11:00 PM

Out Of Control - The Gun Control movement has had a rough couple of years - even before 9/11, their fortunes were waning. Gun control laws were relaxing nationwide, the concealed carry movement was burgeoning even before the attacks (there were eight "shall issue" states in 1983 - we're around 35 today). Municipal lawsuits against gun manufacturers, including Jay Benanav's here in St. Paul, were falling by the wayside by the score.

The Professor, writing on the Fox website, discusses the effect 9/11 had on the gun control movement:
"Properly understood, the gun control movement has always rested on certain essentially religious notions (indeed, though it is little publicized, much of the gun-control movement�s financial and institutional support comes from non-evangelical Protestant denominations). These notions are that violence � even against a criminal � is always bad, that ordinary people are not to be trusted, and that it is best to let the authorities look out for you.

In addition, the movement has always contained a rather strong undercurrent of hostility toward traditional American standards of masculinity, of which it sees the gun as a symbol.

It is here that things seem to have changed the most. Americans have learned that being harmless does not guarantee that they will not be harmed: in fact, it seems that terrorists (like ordinary criminals) actually prefer victims who cannot strike back.

The heroism of ordinary people in the aftermath of the attacks has also undercut the gun control movement�s elitist notions that ordinary Americans are dangerous, violent rubes who must be kept under control. (The absurdity of the chattering classes, with their exaggerated panic over anthrax mail and the ridiculous posturing of some peace advocates, has also served to give elitism a bad name). "
Read it all, natch.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/1/2003 07:48:51 AM