Let's get rid of our government, start over with a parliament

That's the case I (probably needlessly provacatively) make in this week's Scripps Howard column.

The debt limit debate is only the latest, greatest manifestation of America's broken politics. For more than two years, President Obama has faced unprecedented Republican obstacles to getting executive branch appointees and federal district judges confirmed. The day-to-day business of government is increasingly going undone because the GOP is happy to obstruct for obstruction's sake.

Why is this the case? Partly because the two major political parties are more ideologically coherent than ever ― there are no more conservative Democrats like Scoop Jackson or liberal Republicans like Lincoln Chaffee in Congress. Politicians are less willing and less able to compromise, for fear the other side will get credit.

The problem is compounded by the divided control of Congress, where Republicans have the House and Democrats hold the Senate. Add the Senate filibuster into the mix and there are simply too many procedural roadblocks to getting even the simplest things done.

Maybe it's time to scrap the system, and start over again with a parliamentary democracy.

As commentator David Frum noted on Twitter recently, ``We're getting a good real-life poli-sci lesson as to why so few other democracies have adopted U.S. separation of powers idea."

He's right: In parliamentary democracies, one party ― or a coalition of parties ― captures control of parliament and appoints a prime minister.

It controls all the levers of government, and is thus responsible for everything that happens (and doesn't happen) on its watch.

It's no coincidence that a country like Britain was able to slash its budget a year ago, while American politicians are still dithering.

Here, politicians spend inordinate amounts of energy figuring out how to deny credit and pin blame on the other side; in the U.K., voters know exactly who is responsible.

Yes, the Founders wanted separation of powers ― but what we've ended up with is an abdication of responsibility. Maybe it's time to toss aside our broken machinery of government and start over.

Ben advocates a return to pre-FDR strict constructionism.

Back from surgery. Ish.

On July 8, I entered Thomas Jefferson University Hospital here in Philadelphia for the second surgery in my Summer of Surgery. The first was a colostomy to relieve the life-threatening diverticulitis inflammation that had brought my gastrointestinal system to a standstill. This follow-up was designed to remove several inches of diseased colon and, if all went well, to reverse the colostomy during the same procedure—making it possible to poop out my butt again, among my most cherished aspirations.

All did not go well.

Turns out a reasonably large section of my colon wasn't just diseased: it had collapsed, and the dead portions fused themselves to my bladder. And in the course of trying to separate live bladder from essentially dead colon, my bladder was nicked with a scalpel blade. A surgical urologist was called; an operation originally scheduled to take three hours or so took seven. The surgeon told me afterwards it was one of the three or four worst cases of diverticulitis he'd seen.

I came home Friday afternoon. I'm in more pain this time—my lower abdomen is basically a shambles, and it won't surprise you to understand how much THAT part of the body plays a nexus for the movement of the rest of you. But I feel more emotionally resilient. Except for one thing: after a week of inconsiderate roommates blaring their TVs without regard for anybody else, I've developed panic attacks when I hear Dr. Phil's voice. This is not nearly as funny as it sounds.

The colostomy wasn't reversed. I have to recover a couple of months from this surgery for that to happen. But I'm kind of back.

Should government do more to encourage marriage and prevent divorce?

That's the subject of this week's Scripps Howard column. It's prompted by news in several states of social conservatives leading legislative efforts to make it more difficult to divorce, as well as the unveiling of a new "Marshall Plan for marriage" by the conservative Heritage Foundation. My 300-word limit only lets me scratch the surface of the creepiness involved, but here's my shot at it:

Let's talk about freedom.

Republicans use that word -- and its cousin, "liberty" -- quite often.

Usually they're talking about financial matters. Individuals should be free from taxes. Businesses should be free from regulation. So it's odd that when the topic turns to marriage, conservatives rush to embrace the kind of nanny-state infringement on adult decision-making they otherwise decry.

What Republicans have failed to do is consider how their supposedly freedom-oriented policies may have undermined marriage in this country. One of the prime benefits of wedlock -- beyond the uniting of two persons in love -- is the economic security that comes from partnering. But such security has been increasingly difficult to come by: America's median household incomes have stagnated since 1980, even though many more households now have both a mother and a father working outside the home. That stagnation is easy to attribute to conservative policies that have steered more money to rich individuals and big corporations at the expense of workers.

In other words: It's much harder to raise a family. No wonder more middle-class Americans are "retreating from marriage," choosing cohabitation or divorce over the increasing economic strains of commitment. Rather than face those factors, though, Republicans would rather clamp down on freedom -- repeal no-fault divorce and require counseling sessions of couples that have already decided they're better off apart.

Marriage is, generally, good. That's why so many gays and lesbians have fought for that right in recent years, and why weddings and anniversaries are so significant to the rest of us. The conservative instinct to protect and promote healthy marriages is a good one.

But activists would be best served by offering carrots -- in the form of tax incentives and other economic assistance -- rather than using the stick of government to force couples to remain yoked. There's no reason to choose between promoting marriage and protecting freedom. We can do both.

Ben, needless to say, is more optimistic than I. Forget about gay marriage, though: I suspect plain ol' marriage marriage is the next front in the culture wars.

Time for my next surgery

I go under the knife again on Friday. It will probably be extra-quiet around here for awhile. I'll post a link to the latest Scripps Howard column today, and after that it'll probably be a week before I get back to a keyboard. If you want to keep up with my progress, or my half-assed opinions about anything else, you can always follow my Twitter feed.

The Wall Street Journal's misleading op-ed about defense cuts and China

You know what? I really hate it when op-ed writers deliberately conflate apples and oranges to make the oranges appear to be hordes of Chinese soldiers bent on dominating the world. That's exactly what the Wall Street Journal gives us in an offering from Dan Blumenthal and Michael Mazza. The key graph:

Last year, the Obama administration took the first steps in a $400 billion defense spending cut, ending several crucial programs. The White House has now asked for another $400 billion in cuts. China, meanwhile, has averaged 10% annual spending increases for more than 20 years. As former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown once said of the Soviets, "When we build, they build; when we cut, they build."

Here are the three faulty points of comparison:

• The writers compare China's 10 percent annual increases with $400 billion in U.S. cuts that will be made through 2023. We're not cutting $400 billion out of next year's defense budget—that's the target spread out over the next decade. And you can argue whether that's good or not, but it certainly makes the comparison completely lopsided and completely misleading. That's not fair to the WSJ's readers.

• What's more, that $400 billion in cuts? Not actually cuts, but a cut in the projected growth of spending. The defense budget would still be bigger in 2013 than it is now. Republicans call BS when Democrats pull that trick with entitlement spending; it's just as misleading when applied to the GOP's pet causes.

• What's more, the writers compare the dollar amount in cuts versus the percentage increase in China's military budget. I hate to drag out this chart again, but I have no choice:

Using Wikipedia as a quick reference, we see that U.S. defense spending in 2010 was $685 billion—about 4.7 percent of the national GDP.  China's defense spending the same year $91.5 billion—a 12 percent increase from the previous year's $78 billion, and less than 2 percent of that country's GDP. China has a long, long, long way to go before it's making the same kind of investment as the United States. You wouldn't know that from the WSJ's very misleading comparison.

We need to have a serious national conversation about America's military posture in the world, and how we should approach China as it becomes increasingly confident, capable, and assertive in the Pacific. But that conversation should be grounded in facts. That's not what the Wall Street Journal gives us.

Bag O' Books: 'The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction' by Alan Jacobs

Three thoughts about this book:

• Since my May 1 surgery, I had—until this week—been able to read exactly one book front-to-back: Tina Fey's "Bossypants." It was clever and entertaining, but it took all of an afternoon to read. Everything else I've tried to read the last two months has either been a bit of a slog, or else I've simply been unable to maintain focus. But reading is important to me; it frightened me to think I might be losing my capacity somehow. So when I saw this slim volume at the Joseph Fox Bookshop in Philadelphia, I snapped it up immediately. Maybe, just maybe, I could find my way back.

• A wise choice, because one of Jacobs' chief messages in this book is: "Relax." He eschews reading lists and eat-your-veggies approaches to reading in favor of urging readers to follow their Whim. In Jacobs' hands, this is not a call to dispense with Great Books and devote oneself entirely to Stephen King. He makes it quite clear that one's Whim—he's the one doing the capitalizing—can lead one both to high art and splendid trash, and that one can derive different sorts of pleasures from both. (He's also quite keen on the virtues of rereading certain books.)

• But how does one continue to be a book reader when Twitter, Facebook, and life itself are lurking all around? Jacobs doesn't really offer an answer to this question: Instead, he suggests that it is possible, with some persistent effort, to create a "cone of silence" around oneself—if one chooses to do so. And perhaps he's right: I managed to read this 150-page book in three days. On a long holiday weekend, to be sure, but it was possible. Jacobs' book about the pleasures of reading turns out to be a pleasurable read in its own right.

Is gay marriage the end of religious freedom?

Ben and I talk about the post-New York future of gay marriage in our Scripps Howard column this week. This is normally where I print my half of the column and send you to the link to read Ben's half. This week, though, I'll claim the privilege of printing Ben's half—then responding:

Ben responds to the question: Is legalized gay marriage inevitable?

New York's legislature took a vote, but the question of gay marriage is far from settled. Unfortunately, reasonable debate on the subject now appears to be impossible.

Millions of Americans believe gays and lesbians should be free to live as they please -- a huge generational shift -- but that marriage should remain a union between a man and a woman. Marriage serves a vital social purpose of creating stable families. Raising children is perhaps the most important function of marriage (but not the only one). Not just any two parents will do.

A state law -- or a court decision -- won't change those people's minds. But to supporters of this radical concept of "marriage," none of that matters and no good faith disagreement is possible. It's just bigotry.

Fact is, marriage is already in deep trouble in this country. High rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births have ruined countless lives and torn apart entire communities. Redefining marriage doesn't strengthen the traditional institution so much as signal its irrelevance.

Don't believe for a moment this is simply a matter of "equality." As same-sex marriage becomes routine, it won't be long before other groups demand legal recognition of their own peculiar relationships.

The argument is already well underway. A website called BeyondMarriage.org -- established in 2006 by "a diverse group of nearly 20 LGBT and queer activists" -- asserts: "Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others."

And get ready for an onslaught of indoctrination and litigation. New York's feckless Republicans say their law is more enlightened than most because churches will not be compelled to perform weddings that offend their doctrines. But the weight of our anti-discrimination laws leans strongly the other way.

In the absence of persuasion, what's left is coercion. The New York law's flimsy religious exemptions will fall within the decade. And marriage as a bedrock institution will be even weaker than it is today. Count on it.

Though we disagree often on matters of public policy, Ben is my friend. Our partnership has endured because I believe him to argue honestly and thoughtfully in our public debates, and because of his generosity and warmth behind the scenes. But, particularly in those last two paragraphs, I believe he is guilty of hysteria.

Ben's suggestion here is that, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule that Catholic churches—and other religious denominations—be required to perform gay weddings.

That will never, ever happen. Ever.

I'm not saying that some litigious couple with a daring lawyer won't try to make the case. But I am 100 percent certain that any judge possessing a passing acquaintance with the First Amendment would reject it on its face. And I am even more certain, if that's possible, that such a case would be eviscerated at the Supreme Court—where, after all, six of the nine justices are Catholic. And those justices, it's fair to say, have repeatedly handed down rulings indicating an expansive view of the First Amendment. I doubt they'll let corporations spend unlimited cash on elections but abandon religious freedom. Truth is: religious protections didn't need to be written into the New York law because the First Amendment already does the trick.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Ben's argument is similar to those made among religious conservatives of late. Lacking persuasive arguments, they've come to persuade themselves that states that allow gay marriages are ... victimizing and oppressing anti-gay-marriage conservatives. They've likened the New York law to North Korean tyranny. They've decried "coercive state power" that wields a Bull Connor-like abusive authority in the service of the gay agenda.

This manages to pull of the neat trick of being both Orwellian and deeply narcissistic. Orwellian, because nobody is being coerced to do anything. As the saying goes: "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one." No one is being forced to gay marry, or to abandon deeply held beliefs—and there are no dogs, fire hoses, guns, or forced-labor camps being deployed against heterosexuals. For most people, life won't change one iota. For the rest of us, it's changed to the extent that we've been liberated to live our lives with the same level of government recognition and respect as everybody else. The only thing that's being lost, for some folks, is the privilege of having government enforce your beliefs on other people in this particular regard.

And it's narcissistic because gay marriage isn't actually about the people who oppose gay marriage—at all. It's about people who love each other, and choose to share life's tasks with each other. That's it.

There are other parts of Ben's column I'd quibble with. He argues, again, that "not any two parents will do." Even conceding that for the sake of argument, I note that gay couples are among the most prolific and fervent adopters of kids who don't have parents, who have often been bounced around in foster care, who are often old enough or troubled enough or disabled enough that adoption agencies have an impossible time matching them to adoptive parents otherwise. Ask any social worker you know. Ben's vision, I think, condemns many of those children to eternal orphanhood. If it's the case that "not any two parents will do," I still strongly suspect that in most cases any two parents will do better than none at all. Ben lets perfect be the enemy of the good in this case, and thus seems to advocate the kind of social engineering he would otherwise disdain.

But I don't need to rehash all the arguments for and against gay marriage. That's pointless. But I do have to push back against Ben's extreme vision of Catholic priests performing gay marriages under the bootheel of homosexual tyranny. It is ... laughable.

I've told Ben this: I don't expect to persuade him of very much in this life. He'll be conservative, I'll be liberal, and somehow we'll make it work. On this one issue, though, I hope he someday changes his mind, just a little bit. The existence of gay marriage brings a little more freedom into the world. That's normally the kind of thing he'd celebrate. That's one reason why—despite our disagreements—he remains my friend.

Arlene Ackerman's paranoid delusions

When rumors surfaced Monday that Philly schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman might be leaving town, I was hopeful. Not just because her administration continues to block me from following its Twitter feed—but for less selfish, substantive reasons. Like her questionable budgeting acumen. Her slowness in responding to violence at South Philadelphia High School. Her decision to be defensive instead of proactive when it comes to the broader problem of school violence. The list could go on. I wasn't hopeful that she was leaving because she's awesome.

Ackerman's staying, though. What's interesting is how she's responding to those rumors of her departure:

Schools chief Arlene C. Ackerman on Monday shot down rumors she is in talks to leave the Philadelphia School District, and suggested that those who want her gone are uncomfortable with the thought of all public-school children succeeding.

Many initiatives in Ackerman's three-year superintendency have been focused on funneling resources to struggling schools, and, she said, "that is maybe threatening to some people, but I came here to do a job, and I'm going to do that job. All the rest of this is just noise."

Oh, sure, Dr. Ackerman. You're under fire because your critics hate kids. That's it.

We're faced here with a couple of options. Either Ackerman believes what she's saying, in which case her head is filled with paranoid delusions. Or she's intentionally trying to delegitimize her critics by ascribing evil motives to them. Which might be a savvy survival technique, but sucks in terms of serving the students in her district.

From where I sit, it appears that Ackerman is the figure who is motivated by politics and turf defense. Her critics probably have some of that going on, too, but they can also make a substantive case that Ackerman's leadership is bad for the district—and thus for the kids. It would be nice to see Ackerman focused on leading the district instead of tearing down her opponents.

Back in his natural habitat.

Taken at Cafe Lutecia

Why we can't afford the death penalty in Pennsylvania, ctd

A lawyer weighs in on that flat $2,000 preparation fee the state pays defense lawyers in capital murder cases:

Think of it this way. As a lawyer I charge a little under $200 for the paper-pushing work I tend to do: contract negotiating, real estate transactions, and so on. Two grand is ten hours of my work, which doesn't involve attempting to preserve someone's basic liberties -- mostly it involves bringing a deal to a close, or winning someone's money back, or securing some intellectual property rights.

Criminal defense involves securing someone's fundamental liberty not to be kept in a prison by the government. A capital case involves securing someone's fundamental liberty not to be killed by the government. Even if I were to do that work for you for $200 per hour, wouldn't you hope I work more than 10 hours on your case?

A cynic might suggest that Pennsylvania politicians are happy to see capital murder defendants walk into court with one hand tied behind their back. But even if we refuse to speculate about motives, how can anybody deny that poor murder defendants are hugely disadvantaged on what is supposed to be a level playing field?

The conclusion remains the same: Death penalty jurisprudence in Pennsylvania is unbalanced, unfair, and ultimately ineffective. Why are we holding onto this system?

Conservative intelligentsia largely silent on gay marriage

We've had an entire weekend to react to news of New York's gay marriage law, and the silence of so much of the right on the topic is pretty notable. I've periodically checked in at a number of leading conservative blogs over the last 48 hours—Hot Air, Power Line, Red State, No Left Turns, Commentary, Weekly Standard—and the reaction has been almost total silence. There has been more hubub in the Catholic precincts of National Review, but it's not one-sided: there's genuine debate going on there.

Obviously there are plenty of self-described conservatives out there—particularly religious conservatives—who are incensed. And they always will be. But a good chunk of the conservative intelligentsia just can't rouse itself to battle on the topic—probably, I'm guessing, because so many folks in that group have gay friends. It takes two sides to have a culture war; on this issue, at least, one side appears to be leaving the battlefield.

The Weekly Standard thinks the generals command the president

Interesting wording from Daniel Halper:

The Los Angeles Times reports that President Obama defied his generals' advice on Afghanistan.

At the risk of being pedantic, here's the first dictionary definition of "defy": "to challenge the power of; resist boldly or openly: to defy parental authority." Halper's phrasing certainly suggests that the generals are supposed to command the president, instead of the other way around. A minor detail, perhaps, but telling nonetheless.

Stu Bykofsky wishes for the devastation of Philadelphia

Weird little column from Stu Bykofsky this morning, wishing that Philadelphia would be a little more like...Detroit:

Unlike Philadelphia, Detroit's business community is as galvanized and aggressively optimistic as a Disney theme park.

Over the weekend, members of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists were bombarded by some biggies from the past, the Big Three automakers, and the future, Quicken Loans, which just brought 1,600 high-tech jobs to downtown - and will add an equal number in the months ahead, jobs dragged from the suburbs because its young staff wanted to be where the action is.

The action is still modest, but the downtown bowl has new buildings, refurbished hotels, casinos and a Hard Rock Cafe. But drive just one mile east and there are block-long gaps where buildings once stood, where neighborhoods died. The city is toying with the idea of growing farms within the city limits.

Ideas like that are far more revolutionary, made necessary by necessity, than Philadelphia's bike lanes. Ideas like that are born of a desperation that has not yet gripped Philadelphia. Maybe it should.

Yes: Byko is saying that Philadelphia would benefit from almost complete and utter economic devastation—something that (like Detroit) would cause us to lose two-thirds of our population and leave the rest desperate and scraping along for survival. Maybe then we could attract more artist/hipster types to the city core? That sounds like what he's saying.

Hey Stu: We already have a Hard Rock Cafe.

I've heard local folks make the Philadelphia-Detroit comparison before—though not quite with Byko's apparent enthusiasm—and I think it's wrong. Philadelphia, these days, isn't quite so dependent on any single industry the way Detroit was for a long time: We've already largely experienced our industrial collapse, but in stages—it was unpleasant, but it didn't bring down the city with it. What's more, we have geography on our side—we're part of an urban ecosystem: New York-Philly-Baltimore-D.C. are all in relative proximity to each other; some folks here commute to NYC every day. Detroit is more physically isolated.

In any case, I don't think Stu really wants Philadelphia to have a near-death experience. If he does, he's an insane, evil madman who doesn't deserve a column. Mostly, I think he went to a convention in Detroit and had to come up with a column for Monday's newspaper somehow. This is what we got.

My Top 10 most influential movies

I'm not saying these are the 10 most influential movies, or the most important or even best movies ever made. I'm saying that these 10 movies, in particular, had a strong hand in shaping how, why, and what movies I watch. In no particular order...

• Star Wars:

Why? Because I was 4, 7, and 10 when these movies came out. They dominated my childhood, and the childhood of every young boy—and many young girls—around me. Just about everybody had action figures, so everybody could play. But only a few kids were rich enough to own a Millennium Falcon. This was one of my first lessons in class distinctions. As entertainment, though, the series primed my generation to seek out sci fi/fantasy tales well into adulthood—what were previously “kids” films now belonged to all of us. That’s part of why the failure of the prequels was so badly received: George Lucas didn’t just make bad movies; he retroactively altered our collective sense of childhood.

Movies I watched because of Star Wars: The Hidden Fortress, The Last Starfighter, Alien, Tron, Planet of the Apes

• The Godfather:

Why? I avoided this movie for a long time, actually, because it was so praised as a classic movie that it took on the aura of doing cultural homework. Then, one weekend, I stayed home sick—and the movie showed on Cinemax. I was entranced. Went to the video store the next day and rented both sequels. One of them was good, the other … less so. Over the next few years, I read everything about The Godfather that I could get my hands on: the novel (which is really trashy) as well as behind-the-scenes making-of coffee table books. I didn’t bother buying a DVD player until the movies came out on disc: when they did, I burned through all the special features, repeatedly, in a day. The story behind the movies is about as interesting as the movies themselves.

Movies I watched because of The Godfather: The Conversation, Hearts of Darkness, Dog Day Afternoon, The French Connection, Heat


• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Why? When this movie came out, I probably hadn’t seen a kung fu movie in 15 years or so—the badly dubbed chopsocky stuff they used to play on Saturday afternoons back when local television stations did that sort of thing. The first wire-enabled chase across the housetops riveted me: it was the first time I saw beauty in an action movie. And I developed a huge crush on Zhang Ziyi.

Movies I watched because of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Hero (Jet Li, not Dustin Hoffman), Once Upon A Time in China, House of Flying Daggers, Red Cliff, In The Mood For Love

• Infernal Affairs

Why? This is a movie best known in the states, if at all, for inspiring The Departed. Infernal Affairs—despite the laughably punny title—is a better, leaner, less tidy movie. After watching this Hong Kong flick, I realized the last great gangster movie made in the United States was probably Goodfellas...all the way back in 1990. Even if the Hong Kong scene isn’t quite as vibrant as it was in the John Woo/Chow-Yun Fat days of the 1990s, it’s still pretty awesome. I’ll watch any movie with Andy Lau, Tony Leung, or Anthony Wong.

Movies I watched because of Infernal Affairs: The Departed, Election (Simon Yam, not Reese Witherspoon), Triad Election, A World Without Thieves, The Warlords

• Three Extremes

Why? Because the first of the three short films in this anthology—”Dumplings,” directed by Fruit Chan—is probably the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen. So much so that I can’t actually recommend it to anybody. It’s the film I remember the most, but it’s the other two directors, Takashi Miike and Chan-Wook Park, whose movies I’ve followed since then. Frequently taboo-busting, always stylish, and sometimes—but not always—humane in the midst of the horror they depict: Miike and Park are too interesting to ignore.

Movies I watched because of Three Extremes: 13 Assassins, Ichi the Killer, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

• Full Metal Jacket

Why? Before Three Extremes, this was probably the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen. The ruthlessness of the drill sergeant, the look in Pyle’s eyes before he killed himself, the terrible decision Joker makes at the end of the film. When it came out, the Vietnam depicted in this movie looked a lot less than the actual Vietnam than the one in Platoon, which came out at the same and to much greater acclaim. But Platoon hasn’t aged well—it features Charlie Sheen, after all, and Oliver Stone at (almost) his most pedantic. Full Metal Jacket is merely relentless.

Movies I watched because of Full Metal Jacket: Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now, Restrepo, Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining

• Spellbound

Why? Before this movie, I thought documentaries were boring eat-your-veggies viewing. Then I saw this flick, following competitors as they prepare for the National Spelling Bee, and was tremendously entertained. I still learn stuff from documentaries, but it’s OK to enjoy them as well.

Movies I watched because of Spellbound: Gunner Palace, The Fog of War, Winged Migration (I wasn’t even high!) Mad Hot Ballroom, A Perfect Candidate







• Pulp Fiction

Why? Nirvana’s Nevermind came out my freshman year of college, blasting the hair metal of my high school years into oblivion. When Pulp Fiction came out my senior year of college, it felt like the same thing was happening in movies—that crap like “The Bodyguard” was being stepped over for something both smarter and more visceral. The 1990s were going to be amazing! Only problem is, lots of filmmakers tried to do what Tarantino had done...and almost all of them failed. The second half of that decade was littered with really bad pulp noir movie attempts financed by credit cards, often starring Eric Stoltz. The only Tarantino-esque director who ever really succeeded was Robert Rodriguez—and that’s because he had his own, similar-but-not-same vision. He wasn’t an imitator. Tarantino, it seems, is almost impossible to duplicate.

Movies I watched because of Pulp Fiction: 2 Days in the Valley, El Mariachi, Inglourious Basterds, Kill Bill I & II, Sin City

• Raising Arizona

Why? I saw this early in high school; my senses told me that it was funny, yes, but that it was also coming at the funny from about five-to-10-degrees off the angle that most movies did the funny. That intrigued me. And like every other pretentious movie lover of my generation, I started paying close attention to the Coen Brothers.

Movies I watched because of Raising Arizona: Every other Coen Brothers movie.



• The Fifth Element

Why? And so we come full circle: I could say I watched this movie because of Star Wars, and it would be true. But it came along when I was taking my movie watching a bit too seriously; I went along with some friends, expecting to find it puerile crap. And I kind of did. But I was tremendously entertained. If Tarantino makes art out of trash, director Luc Besson just makes trash. Splendid, entertaining trash. The Fifth Element helped me see that I didn’t need to be a pseudointellectual arthouse snob; that genre filmmaking could be a wonderful thing in its own right without necessarily having higher aspirations. (I’m unfortunately enough of a snob that sometimes genre tropes are easier for me to enjoy if they’re presented in another language.) It was, is, just plain fun. Michael Bay still sucks, however.

Movies I watched because of The Fifth Element: District 13, The Professional, Crank, The Transporter, La Femme Nikita.

• Honorable Mention: Liberty Hall

As easy as it is to get online and download a movie these days, it’s easy to forget there was a time not-so-far past when a rural Kansas boy like myself didn’t really have access to movies that were even slightly outside the mainstream. Liberty Hall, a theater and video store in Lawrence, Kan., really opened up my movie education—I either rented or viewed five of the 10 movies above from this list at Liberty Hall. My movie-viewing life has been immeasurably enriched by that association.

Netflix Queue: "A World Without Thieves"

Truth is, I'll watch anything with Andy Lau in it—the stuff that makes it to America (like, most notably, "Infernal Affairs") is generally entertaining—and so is this. Here, Lau plays one half of a grifting couple that decides to protect an innocent young man traveling on a train with his life savings. The moments where Lau tangles with another gang of grifters are quietly thrilling; the movie takes me back 30 years, when big movie studios made quiet, entertaining dramas instead of farming them out to the indies and boutique divisions for Oscar bait. A pleasant Saturday night diversion.

The sheer tediousness of Ben Shapiro's anti-Hollywood crusade

Ben Shapiro

Over at National Review, professional grievance-monger Ben Shapiro documents Hollywood's relentless anti-father agenda by highlighting 10 sitcom dads over the decades. It's a list full of proclamations like this:

Ross Gellar (Friends, 1994-2004) What is Ross doing on this list? He’s here because he represents the left’s next step: the absentee father who simply doesn’t matter to his son’s life. Ross impregnates his lesbian wife, has a kid, and then takes care of the kid once every blue moon between his affairs and antics. His son, Ben, never feels any ill effects. Welcome to the liberal paradise, where dads are completely superfluous.

This is just ... so ... tedious. And it also reflects why Shapiro and his ilk don't do very well in advancing a conservative agenda through popular entertainment: He's concerned exclusively about the agenda, and almost not at all about the entertainment.

The Friends example is probably the most revealing of this mindset. Was Friends a show about family or parenthood? Nope. It was about a group of ... Friends. Young, attractive people who had the freedom to do wacky things and live in New York apartments far beyond their likely incomes. Was Ross a father in the show? Sure. But the reason we didn't see Ross parenting much is because the show wasn't about that. The relationship with his son served as fodder for an episode or two, and that's all it was designed to do: be an excuse for an occasional story. In Shaprio's hands, Friends would've either become a family sitcom like Leave It To Beaver—and not been the show it was, but some other show entirely—or else Ross's son Ben would've descended into a life of drugs, crime, and despair. That would've been a great sitcom!

If you look at Shapiro's list of dads, only three—Archie Bunker, Cliff Huxtable, and Cameron/Mitchell from Modern Family—can plausibly be claimed to be serving somebody's political agenda. But Shapiro sees all of them, in every show, through the lens of ideology, can only conceive of entertainment as agitprop, and does not conceive of a world where the main agenda is getting a good laugh or telling a rollicking yarn.

And it's really, really, excruciatingly tedious.

If you want a contrast, check out Alyssa Rosenberg's culture blog at Think Progress. Rosenberg frequently views popular culture through liberal, feminist lenses. But sometimes she just enjoys a good book, or a good movie, or a good show, all without getting hung up on whether it's liberal enough. It makes one wish that Shapiro could stock up on junk food, head to the basement, and spend a weekend in his underwear watching so-bad-they're-good movies from the 1980s.

Do liberals run Hollyood? Maybe. But on the evidence of Shapiro's perpetual whining, that's the way I prefer it. Ideology or no, liberals—in the storytelling realm, at least—are way, way more fun.

Ed Rendell and why we can't afford the death penalty in Pennsylvania

I'm pretty stoutly against the death penalty, but I'm often unsure that I should write about it—because, as a practical matter, Pennsylvania doesn't ever really put anybody to death. Still, the legal and theoretical existence of the death penalty skews the justice system here in undesirable ways—and Ed Rendell, to his credit, is trying to do something about it:

Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and the city's district attorney from 1978 to 1986, has written to Common Pleas Court President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe urging her to administratively increase the flat-fee system now being challenged before the state Supreme Court.

The petition on behalf of three Philadelphians facing death if convicted of murder contends that the $2,000 flat rate paid court-appointed capital lawyers is so low that it violates the clients' constitutional right to "effectiveness of counsel."

Emphasis added. Now, that $2,000 just covers "trial preparation" time—defense lawyers get paid $200-$400 a day during the actual trial.

Now, I'm not in a position to turn down a $2,000 paycheck. But when you think about the time it must take to prepare a proper defense in capital murder trial, that preparation fee is incredibly low. Google doesn't offer me a ready-made estimate of defense billable hours in death penalty cases around the nation, but it's not uncommon to see figures like 463 hours—or many, many more—thrown around.

One wonders if a capital defense lawyer in Pennsylvania ends up making even minimum wage on a case. But this is troubling—and unjust—because prosecutors surely aren't limited to $2,000 of pay in preparing for a capital case. While government prosecutors don't have an unlimited budget, their resources simply overwhelm those of an indigent murder defendant. When the trial starts, the playing field is already weighted heavily toward the prosecution.

It's not supposed to work that way.

Rendell is trying to do something about it by getting a raise for defense attorneys because of that imbalance. "It results in a tremendous waste of money, but, far more importantly, it increases the very real possibility that someone who is not guilty or not deserving of the death penalty could be convicted and sentenced to death." He's right. But he's wrong about the solution.

Pennsylvania's budget--like government budgets everywhere--is coming down. There is no more money for defense attorneys, and it's never politically popular to increase spending on defendants anyway. The best way to ensure that capital murder defendants have something approaching a fair chance in Pennsylvania courts is to end the death penalty, once and for all.

This isn't about whether guilty defendants deserve to die. It's about whether the state can fairly administer justice, whether it can ensure that a condemned man legitimately deserves that condemnation. Right now, that doesn't appear to be the case. And since death row appears to mostly be a life sentence, anyway, the added costs of a capital murder trial seem wasted—if the intended result is an execution.

Death penalty jurisprudence in Pennsylvania is unbalanced, unfair, and ultimately ineffective. Why are we holding onto this system?

Mandatory sick leave: It's not just Philadelphia

City Council approved a mandatory sick leave bill yesterday—Mayor Nutter has promised a veto. But Philadelphia isn't the only place this debate is playing out: Connecticut just passed a law, and several other states and cities are considering it. That's why Ben and I tackle the issue in our Scripps Howard column this week. My take:

Here is what opponents of paid sick leave apparently desire: that you enter a local restaurant for a delicious meal prepared by a flu-ridden cook who can't afford to take the day off -- or else her own kids might have to do without a meal of their own. Enjoy your Virus Burger, folks!

Hyperbolic? A little. But the reason the sick-leave moment exists is that many low-paid workers often have to choose between working sick -- or leaving sick children at home -- or losing desperately needed income.

Business owners are understandably concerned that such a requirement would cut into their revenues, and possibly make it impossible to do business. Their concerns are fueled by studies that exaggerate the potential costs by assuming -- implausibly -- that workers would take every possible day of sick leave. An additional underlying belief is that businesses see little or no benefit from offering such benefits to their employees.

Neither belief is warranted. In Connecticut, for example, the Economic Policy Institute discovered that employees who already had access to five paid sick days took off just 2.41 of those days.

And while advocates for paid sick leave say that a national law would cost businesses $20.2 billion, those same businesses would reap $28.4 billion by reducing job turnover and lost productivity from workers who show up ill and can't properly perform their duties.

In these dark economic times, policymakers understandably hesitate to add to the burdens of small businesses. It would be nice if government could provide incentives to business to provide sick leave, instead of merely piling on new regulations.

The underlying principle of such proposals is sound, however: Jobs should offer more than a labor opportunity-- they should offer a living.

If that means you eat a hamburger with fewer germs, so much the better.

Ben: "Don't be surprised if unemployment remains high if these bills pass."

A theory about Anthony Weiner, Democrats and strong women

I expect this is the last time I write about Anthony Weiner, but I do wonder if his resignation today doesn't have something to do with the fact that there are actual women in the Democratic leadership, both in the House and in the broader party.

Remember, it was after Weiner confessed to his lewd online communications and vowed not to resign that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said he should resign: He'd lied to her, after all, claiming he wasn't responsible for the first incriminating photo. Pelosi was followed by DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And there were lots of behind-the-scenes reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—the friend and boss of Weiner's wife—was exceedingly furious with him. When Pelosi started the effort to take a powerful committee assignment from Weiner, the game was up: He quit. But the pattern is clear—the post-confession drive to get Weiner from office didn't seem to come from his constituents or even from Republicans, who seemed happy to let him twist in the wind. It came from powerful Democratic women.

Contrast this with some of the higher-profile Republican scandals of recent vintage. Sure, Christopher Lee resigned, but David Vitter went to see a hooker—and got re-elected! John Ensign's Christian roommates knew about his affair and confronted him, but they didn't try to push him out of office—Ensign hung on for a long time until it appeared that he might face ethics charges over his efforts to cover up the mess. What don't those men have that Weiner did? Women in leadership positions in their party who had the power to damage their careers—and the desire to use it.

None of them lied to Nancy Pelosi.

I'm certain that my conservative friends will remind me of Nina Burleigh. (Read the second paragraph at this link.) But that was 13 years ago. And in 1998, there wasn't a woman in the land who could or did exercise political power over Bill Clinton. He did keep his office, you'll recall.

Why this is notable is that the Democratic Party makes real efforts to include women and minorities in power. Republicans snort at this, believing they believe in a more pure meritocracy that just happens to be weighted more toward white dudes. But that Democratic effort seems to have played a real role in how the Weiner scandal played out. That's neither good nor bad, but it's certainly different.

Libya, Obama, and the War Powers Act

Remember during the Monica Lewinsky scandal when then-President Clinton responded to a question by quibbling with terms? "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," he told his interlocutors, and the moment became emblematic of Clinton's lawyerly slipperiness--not a great moment, even if you thought he was wrongly pursued.

Well, war is a lot more serious than a consensual affair in the life of a nation, but it appears that President Obama is determined to create a similar moment for himself:

In a broader package of materials the Obama administration is sending to Congress on Wednesday defending its Libya policy, the White House, for the first time, offers lawmakers and the public an argument for why Mr. Obama has not been violating the War Powers Resolution since May 20.

On that day, the Vietnam-era law’s 60-day deadline for terminating unauthorized hostilities appeared to pass. But the White House argued that the activities of United States military forces in Libya do not amount to full-blown “hostilities” at the level necessary to involve the section of the War Powers Resolution that imposes the deadline.

The two senior administration lawyers contended that American forces have not been in “hostilities” at least since April 7, when NATO took over leadership in maintaining a no-flight zone in Libya, and the United States took up what is mainly a supporting role — providing surveillance and refueling for allied warplanes — although unmanned drones operated by the United States periodically fire missiles as well.

They argued that United States forces are at little risk in the operation because there are no American troops on the ground and Libyan forces are unable to exchange meaningful fire with American forces. They said that there was little risk of the military mission escalating, because it is constrained by the United Nations Security Council resolution that authorized use of air power to defend civilians.

We're only a little bit at war, you see. Not even enough to count!

Poppycock.

The War Powers Resolution is actually fairly clear on this, from my reading: Just because the United States is in a support role doesn't mean that President Obama can ignore the resolution. The act specifically states the president must report to Congress when U.S. forces "command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities." It's not just when American trigger-pullers are pulling triggers, in other words, but when our forces are actively supporting other forces engaged in combat.

Under the most Obama-friendly reading of the circumstances—that we're only supporting the fighting countries, not fighting ourselves—he is still required to be accountable to Congress. Instead, his legal team has ignored the definition in the law and created its own.

I supported Obama in 2008 because he said things like this: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

He lied. And he's trying to elide that fact with an unseemly parsing of words. How embarrassing. How wrong.