Topic: Politics
I just submitted the following letter to the CS Monitor, in regard to their article Debate on Hill Over Power of the President. It’s the first time I’ve ever written a letter to the editor - I’ll let you know if they print it. The Cooper paper I mention is here [PDF].
Your June 28 article, “Debate on Hill Over Power of the President,” overlooks two vital concerns in this debate. One is that President Bush’s use of signing statements exceeds those of previous Presidents not only in number, but also in scope. In the September 2005 issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, scholar Phillip Cooper described in detail Bush’s “audacious claims to constitutional authority” in his use of signing statements. Bush has used signing statements to treat a number of mandatory legislative provisions as merely “advisory,” to recast areas of foreign affairs where Presidents previously shared power with Congress into areas of exclusive Presidential authority, to grant himself a de facto line-item veto, to reprogram Congressional appropriations for his own purposes, to assert such tight control over information as to render Congressional oversight meaningless in many areas, and to assert several other claims to power. No previous President has made such wide-ranging claims of Presidential authority, by use of signing statements or any other means.
The other vital concern is understanding the larger context of this debate. President Bush has made broad claims to Presidential power beyond the use of signing statements. For example, via executive order he has suspended habeas corpus for those he suspects of connection to terrorism. Habeas corpus has been suspended only once before in our history, by President Lincoln in the Civil War. While Lincoln sought and obtained retroactive authorization from Congress, Bush has not acknowledged any Congressional authority in this area. In regard to the warrantless wiretapping program, what has not been widely noted is its connection to the Patriot Act. President Bush asked Congress to loosen some of the FISA rules, and was granted these requests in the Patriot Act. He publicly thanked Congress, and then secretly directed the NSA to disregard those very same laws.
What is urgently needed in this country, and is so far lacking, is a broad, informed, and vigorous public debate on just how much power we are willing to invest in the Presidency, given the terrorist threat, and how to guard against abuses of that power. President Bush’s aggressive stance on executive authority will not go away with his administration. Once power is acquired, it is rarely relinquished - future Presidents will build on the precedents he is establishing. As such, this is hardly an arcane debate - it goes to the very principals of government on which this country was founded.
Topic: Kai
Kai explained that in this picture, he’s climbing the tree, and a coconut has hit him on the head. His friend Ryan is standing nearby, laughing. I don’t know where Kai gets his sense of humor 
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Topic: Kai
Kai says this is a bat, carrying its baby around its neck (a bat equivalent to a kangaroo pouch, I guess).
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Topic: Politics
Occasionally someone will plainly elucidate, in the space of relatively few words, what others have a hard time saying clearly. Today that person is Josh Marshall:
…For the United States, the situation in Iraq is close to unprecedented in the last century in terms of the duration of time an American president has left a war policy on autopilot while more and more evidence comes in that it’s simply not working. Even in Vietnam, for all the mistakes the US made there, Richard Nixon kept escalating the conflict. There’s at least some strategic movement on the policy brain scan. I’m not saying that’s preferable. And I don’t want to get into an argument about bombing Cambodia. But it is at least different from letting a flawed policy grind through money and men for three years because you don’t have the moral courage to rethink it or adjust course. It’s denial elevated to the level of high principle.
Remember what the president said: getting out of Iraq is something that’s going to be up to the next president. He or she can get started in 2009.
Topic: TV, Movies, and Music
We’ve been in Philly about 3 years now (…actually, exactly 3 years - we arrived in early June 2003), and in all that time I’ve been to only one show - Bob Mould, a couple of years ago. I used to be obsessed with music, so that’s quite a decline for me. Getting up at 5:30 for work every day, having 2 kids to take care of, not being up on who’s worth seeing these days, etc. - those are all factors. But I opened a Philly Weekly yesterday, and in the next two weeks there are shows by Cat Power (female vocalist with piano, or sometimes acoustic guitar), Mike Doughty (singer/songwriter with acoustic guitar, and brilliant lyrics), and the elder statesmen of Industrial/Dance/Electronica, Frontline Assembly. All are worth staying up late for!
Topic: Japan 2007
I haven’t posted anything since early April about our upcoming 6-month stay in Japan. So it’s time for an update:
- Maria’s position with JBIC is now finalized (it’s not a common destination for CFR Fellows, so there was some bureaucratic legwork to do). She’ll also get to spend some time at JICA, which was where she originally thought she might go.
- We’re looking into an apartment that’s the first one to catch our eye so far. Here are some pictures of it. It’s very nice, small (1 bedroom, about 500 sq. ft.), and fairly expensive (the rent is about the same as the mortgage we pay for our 5 bedroom house). The location - Shinagawa - is part of Tokyo’s equivalent to Manhattan. We’ve been trying to decide between paying less and living further away from where Maria will work, vs. paying more and living closer. Maria will be working Japanese salaryman hours, which means if she has a long commute, she’d leave before the boys are up in the morning and often not get home until after they’re in bed. So we’re thinking it’s worth it to pay more to have a place where her commute will be short.
This apartment also has some nice perks: a washing machine (which Maria tells me is a rare thing to find in a Japanese rental), paid utilities (also uncommon, which means the rent isn’t quite as bad as it seems), an elevator, a fiber-optic internet connection (fairly important since I’ll be working remotely), and no key money required (a legal form of bribery in Japan, where you pay an extra, non-refundable fee to the landlord for the privilege of renting). We also like it because it’s much less dark and dreary than a lot of Tokyo apartments.
If we end up in this place, or another place like it, we’ll probably put the boys together in the bedroom and Maria and I would use a convertible futon in the living room (or just sleep on tatami mats). Since we’re travelling half-way around the world, we’re not bringing much stuff, so I don’t think we’ll need a lot of storage room.
Here’s a map where you can get the lay of the land. The apartment is near the Shinagawa subway station, near the bottom center of the map (and near lots of hotels if you want to visit :-)). The JBIC office is near the Tokyo station, just to the right of the center of the map (near the Imperial Palace). That’s only 5 stops on the subway, so it would be a short commute. Note this map only covers a slice of Tokyo - it is an unbelievably enormous city (Wikipedia lists it as the world’s largest megacity - New York is number 4).
- A good friend of Maria’s has agreed to stay in our house while we’re away. We’re hoping to find one more person to stay in the house - that way we’ll get enough rent to cover the mortgage (as we can’t afford our mortgage and Tokyo rent at the same time!).
- We’re leaning towards putting Kai in a Japanese public school. This is partly because the private, international schools are more expensive than we first thought (almost twice the cost of private schools here), and because we’ve seen a lot of positive feedback from other Americans who’ve stayed in Japan and put their kids in Japanese public schools (unlike here, Japanese public schools are uniformly excellent). Apparently, the teachers usually have a smattering of English, which helps ease the immersion into Japanese, and Kai is still in that age range where kids can absorb language like a sponge. Also, kindergarten in Japan is more like pre-school here, so Kai won’t be academically stressed ;-). I saw one post in a discussion forum (which I can’t seem to find again) where someone was worried that her American kid might be bullied in a Japanese school. The response was that Americans are usually so good at pumping up their kids’ self-esteem, that if any bullying goes on when they arrive in a Japanese school, it’s the other way around. One thing we haven’t figured out is how to deal with the Japanese school calendar - their school year starts in March, not September. So Kai may actually end up in 1st grade for the last half of our time there (or he could probably repeat kindergarten if he ends up having any difficulty).
- One thing I’m looking forward to is taking the boys on a tour of the really impressive, crazy Japanese playgrounds.
Topic: Kai and Eidan
About a week ago Eidan entered his “attachment” phase of development. This is part of his realization of what’s called object permanence: he’s realized that just because something is out of his range of vision, it doesn’t cease to exist. One clear sign of this is that he’ll drop or throw a toy out of sight, and then look for it (yesterday he gleefully played a game with Kai, where he would throw a ball through the hallway railing, and it would land out of sight down the stairs, and then Kai would toss it back up to him). Another clear sign is that when I hold him now, and then Maria leaves the room, he screams. And keeps screaming, and staring longingly at the doorway, until she comes back. Babies will latch on to one person during this phase, and when they’re tired or cranky, no other person will do. When Kai was this age, he attached himself to me, but Eidan’s got a serious case of the mommy’s. So now I’m going through what Maria endured with Kai - life as a second-class parent. Eidan’s happy to be alone with me when he’s in a good mood, but when the chips are down, I just won’t do at all. So I’m trying not to take it personally, and I’m hoping that this phase won’t last too long. My step-father’s a psychologist, and he’s told me there’s a saying that the first child is the father’s child, and the second child is the mother’s child. We’ll see how things go, but I think that may end up being true with our boys.
A couple other Eidan related observations while I’m here:
- Is the name Aidan the new Michael? There’s another baby named Aidan a few houses down from us, there’s one on Kai’s baseball team, there’s one in his karate class, a friend of mine recently named his baby Aidan, etc. To avoid sounding like obnoxious snobs we decided to pronounce Eidan’s name like the Irish Aidan (as we didn’t want to spend his entire childhood correcting people with, “actually, it’s Ay-dan”). So for all practical purposes he’s another of the apparently growing number of Aidans, which I used to think was a fairly uncommon name. Maybe it’s just the large number of Irish in Philly?
- One thing that’s great about babies is their complete lack of impulse control. The pleasure center of Eidan’s brain is hard-wired to his arms and legs. When he experiences joy, his entire body flails with glee. Imagine if adults were like that.
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