Valerie Plame Quotes

The concern of extreme wings of various parties with judicial activism is not limited to the United States.

Then Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, there appeared to be a majority of the court that would overturn Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to an abortion. However it was an election year and the Chief Justice, a Republican, was concerned that if Roe was overturned the electorate might take it out on the Republicans, whose Solicitor Generals had fought to overturn Roe, at the polls. He therefore postponed the hearing of a Pennsylvania case, and then tried to postpone it again till after the election. Blackmun’s memo caused a majority of the court to vote to hear the case with no additional delay. Ironically, by a single vote, Roe was upheld.

During the George W, Bush Administration, key politicians, including the vice president pressured and influenced the CIA and to produce intelligence reports that justified their policy of invading Iraq. After the invasion, the weapons of mass destruction were shown to have never existed even though they were the official causes belli (cause of the war).

Bill Casey had an individual ideology of the world and being a strong administrator imposed that on most of intelligence analyses that the agency did during his tenure.

Rendition is the process whereby one country sends a prisoner to another country for interrogation under the theory that the second country can use methods that would be illegal in the first country. Usually torture is involved.

While this quotation seems bizarre to us in modern America, there was some historical truth of this in Europe. Before political parties, the Church was the dominant political force, and no professor could be appointed whose views did not coincide with those of the church. Later political parties in many parts of Europe did concern themselves with the views of professors. However, America with its strong tradition of private universities built state public universities in the mold of Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia and Princeton where national and local politics were not major factors of appointment and retention of professors. Today it is very rare when a state legislature or government allows politics to become a factor in appointments of professors. The University of Virginia is the most dramatic exception where governors of the state serve for 2 years and when a new governor takes office, he replaces all the trustees and the University. These then have allowed politics to become a major factor in some dramatic cases. And the Federal Universities—the military service academies—do allow political views to encroach on the faculty appointment and retention decisions. However, this is rarely partisan in the sense of Democrat or Republican. But Professors who hold views contrary to BOTH political parties are rare.

Mises is one of the very few economic conservatives who opposed companies getting involved with lobbying or politics in any way. He, like some others, saw the negative public effect that business produces when it does get deeply involved in politics, but he uniquely observed that the businesses themselves suffered as a result of the involvement in politics. Obviously very few business leaders of the 21st century agreed with Mises’ earlier views.

The FDA had studied for years the safety and efficacy and concluded that Morning After pill contraceptive, Plan B was safe and effective and could be sold over the counter. However when the Department of Health and Human Services issued the regulations to allow it to be sold over the counter without a prescription they disallowed sale to girls under 15. Several religious organizations opposed to birth control pressured the administration to overrule the FDA and they did so partially trying to compromise. However, the science showed no differential factors of risk for girls under 15 and a suit were filed by women’s and public health groups to eliminate the age restriction. Judge Korman found that the government had acted illegally in imposing an age restriction with no scientific evidence to justify it. The Plan B contraceptive was particularly contentious for religious groups as it as a “morning after” pill—it is taken AFTER intercourse and thus is considered abortion by some anti abortion groups. What made the case more embarrassing for the Obama Administration is that Obama campaigned against the common practice of the George W. Bush administration of ignoring the science or distorting it in policy making. Upon inauguration, President Obama issued executive orders to all departments to follow science in their decision making. Then in this case, they did just what the Bush administration had done—overruled the science to pander to or mollify a particular pressure group.

Although, the Obama administration vastly improved on this requirement compared to the George W. Bush administration excesses, he was not able to eliminate it. Some would argue that it should NOT be eliminated in that military planning ought to be driven and controlled by the people in a democracy, and therefore the process is inherently political. However few would defend the Bush ideologically driven military planning and decision making.

There are many factors that tend to make it very hard for Cabinit Secrretaries and other Presidencial appointments to control their agencies. They include inertia, the huge size of many agencies, existing laws, bureaucracies, and the techncial complexity of the work of the agency. Like a huge aircraft carrier, when they can make a change it takes a while for the change to occur and be noticable--typically more time than the average cabinet member is in office. This is much like CEOs of very large corporations.