Eloquent Incoherence

The Bush Administration recently fired seven U.S. attorneys. Firing a U.S. attorney is a drastic and rare action usually taken only in extraordinary circumstances (by comparison, of the 486 U.S. attorneys appointed between 1981 and 2006, only 3 were fired). The seven fired U.S. attorneys had solid resumes and good records, and some were replaced by candidates with weaker credentials but strong Republican connections. Particularly alarming was the dismissal of H.E. Cummins, a distinguished and well-respected U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas. Mr. Cummins was replaced with J. Timothy Griffin, a former deputy to Karl Rove who has limited legal experience but did opposition research for the Republican National Committee.

The position of U.S. attorney is a powerful and prestigious post; U.S. attorneys prosecute headline-grabbing cases involving terrorism, corporate misgovernance, corruption, and other high-profile crimes. U.S. attorneys have traditionally been insulated from political pressures and executive meddling, but Bush’s recent purges were made possible by a little-known provision of the Patriot Act that allows the president to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation. Adam Cohen’s column in the New York Times suggests three theories for this “political purge”:

1. Helping friends. Ms. Lam (one of the fired attorneys) had already put one powerful Republican congressman in jail and was investigating other powerful politicians. The Justice Department, unpersuasively, claims that it was unhappy about Ms. Lam’s failure to bring more immigration cases. Meanwhile, Ms. Lam has been replaced with an interim prosecutor whose résumé shows almost no criminal law experience, but includes her membership in the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

2. Candidate recruitment. U.S. attorney is a position that can make headlines and launch political careers. Congressional Democrats suspect that the Bush administration has been pushing out long-serving U.S. attorneys to replace them with promising Republican lawyers who can then be run for Congress and top state offices.

3. Presidential politics. The Justice Department concedes that Mr. Cummins was doing a good job in Little Rock. An obvious question is whether the administration was more interested in his successor’s skills in opposition political research — let’s not forget that Arkansas has been lucrative fodder for Republicans in the past — in time for the 2008 elections.

One of the greatest aspects of the system of government established by our founding fathers is the seperation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. No branch of government can amass too much power, and each branch acts as a check on the other branches. The process of appointing federal judges and U.S. attorneys (Presidential nomination followed by Congressional confirmation) is an important element of this separation of powers. The magnitude of Bush’s successful attempt to bypass the process can’t be understated. The Patriot Act’s sweeping expansions of executive power have enabled Bush to install cronies in powerful positions with the authority to investigate and prosecute (or, more importantly, the authority to refrain from doing so). These developments are alarming not only because of these immediate consequences, but because of the precedent they set in upsetting the delicate balance of authority that is a hallmark of American democracy. Though such excesses would normally be regarded as policies unbecoming of the United States, they seem to have become a sad reality of life under the Bush Administration.

The first part of the Bar Exam in most states is tomorrow, February 27, so I just wanted to wish all of my Bar-taking friends good luck as they attempt to clear the final hurdle in their path to the vaunted title of ‘Esq.‘ (okay, so maybe it’s not so vaunted). May you all rock the Bar (the exam, that is) and never have to worry about taking another test ever again.

When I was a kid, my parents had a PAL system TV and VCR on which they watched tapes of movies and television programs from India and Pakistan. Among the few programs they watched that I actually thought were good was Fifty Fifty, an Urdu language sketch comedy show from the 1980’s. Fifty Fifty aired back when PTV was the only channel on TV in Pakistan and didn’t broadcast 24 hours a day. I recently stumbled across some clips of this show on YouTube, and I must say, Fifty Fifty was not only good, it was light years ahead of its time. This show was sketch comedy at its finest, back when no one in Pakistan had heard of Saturday Night Live and MADtv was still at least ten years away. If you speak Urdu/Hindi or Punjabi, check it out (there are more clips in the ‘Related’ frame to the right of the video). I guarantee you’ll laugh. And not in a “man, this show is so poorly done, it’s funny” kind of way.

If you’ve seen the Comedy Central show Mind of Mencia, you’ve probably been struck by how lame and untalented Carlos Mencia is (especially if you saw it immediately after watching Chappelle’s Show). Every time I see this guy on TV, I wonder how he ever managed to become successful enough to have his own show. It turns out that he’s a fraud, a plagiarist, and a borderline pariah in the comedy community. If you like comedy and hate Carlos Mencia, watch Joe Rogan rip him to shreds during a confrontation at a Los Angeles comedy club (warning: contains profanity). Rogan’s commentary on the incident and Mencia in general can be found over at his blog.

UPDATE: Apparently, Rogan has been dropped by his agent (who also happens to represent Carlos Mencia) and banned from the comedy club at which his confrontation with Mencia occurred. I’m not a fan of Rogan’s, but I think it’s unfortunate that he’s catching heat over calling out a no-talent fraud like Mencia.

USC has had a nice run of dominance over the past few years. Since 2002, the Trojans have lost only 6 games, won 5 conference championships, made 2 appearances in the National Championship game, and won 2 National Titles. But they haven’t been tested much in the Pac-10. The fact that USC has won the Pac-10 championship every year since 2002 is as much an indictment of the rest of the Pac-10 as it is a statement about USC. Over the course of USC’s impressive run, the Pac-10 has been the only conference without at least two dominant powers, and the gulf between USC and the conference’s next best team is pretty wide. Ivan Maisel’s latest column discusses how that may change. UCLA and Oregon State, the two teams USC lost to this past season, each return at least 18 starters. Stanford has hired Jim Harbaugh to turn its program around. Arizona State has hired Dennis Erickson, one of the few college coaches with a resume more impressive than Pete Carroll’s. Though USC will likely remain the pre-eminent team in the Pac-10, they can no longer cruise through their conference season.

The 1947 partition of India is one of the most fiercely debated subjects amongst expatriate South Asian Muslims. The stated purpose behind the creation of Pakistan was to ensure the preservation of the South Asian Muslim community as a distinct nation with its own norms and culture. An unfortunate (and ironic) side effect of this was that the overwhelming majority of landmarks, institutions, and historic centers of Islamic Civilization in the Subcontinent ended up on the wrong side of the border. The capital of the Mughal Empire, the most prominent of the Muslim dynasties through which Islam came to influence every aspect of Indian culture and history, was at Delhi. Three of the most influential movements within contemporary Sunni Islam–The Barelvi Movement, the Deobandi Movement, and the Tablighi Jamaat–originated in or near modern-day Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow, also in Uttar Pradesh, was the Subcontinent’s most prominent center of Islamic learning and culture where the Urdu language was born and from which some of the world’s most eminent Muslim scholars and poets hailed. Hyderabad, built by the Qutb Shahi Sultanate, was a similarly vibrant center of Muslim culture. The Dargah at Ajmer, home to the mausoleum of Sufi saint Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti, is among the most visited religious sites in the Subcontinent by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Aligarh Muslim University, the first institution of higher learning set up during the British Raj, still stands at Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. The first mosque in the Subcontinent (which was also one of the first mosques outside of Arabia) is located at Kodungallur in modern-day Kerala and was built in the late seventh century by the Prophet’s (SAW) companion Malik ibn Dinar. And who can forget the Taj Mahal, built at Agra by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.

Though the regions that came to form Pakistan have their share of Muslim landmarks and historic centers of civilization, few of them rival the aforementioned sites and institutions in terms of historic significance. The creation of Pakistan has yet to usher in the Islamic renaissance that Iqbal and others had hoped would give rise to modern centers of Islamic civilization; to the extent that the Pakistan movement was an attempt to re-create the golden age of the Mughal Empire, it has so far been unsuccessful. Though a 150 million-strong Muslim community remains in India, their status as a largely underprivileged minority comprising no more than 15% of the population limits the extent to which Islamic Civilization can continue to thrive in India. And the intermittent tide of Hindu nationalism is an ever-present threat to the remaining vestiges of Islam’s cultural legacy in the Subcontinent (Remember Ayodhya and Gujarat?).

I do not mean to imply that I believe the creation of Pakistan was a mistake. There were other factors at stake, and the issue is not a black-and-white one. But the exodus of Muslims from India effectively orphaned much of the cultural heritage of Islam in the Subcontinent, and unwittingly aided the cause of those Indians who see Islam as a “foreign” influence worthy of eradication. The result has been an effect not unlike the loss of Andalusia 500 years ago. The difference is that South Asian Muslims voluntarily abandoned part of their heritage in search of a dominance they have yet to achieve.

I apologize in advance for the petty nature of this post, but it annoys me when Muslims confuse South Asians with Southeast Asians. The former are from the nations of the Indian Subcontinent, most prominently India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The latter are from the nations located in the region between mainland China and Australia, most prominently Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The two regions are geographically and culturally distinct. I cringe whenever I read or hear someone refer to Indians and Pakistanis as Southeast Asians. Please don’t make this mistake. It makes you sound ignorant.

According to a report by the Justice Department Inspector General, the FBI lost 160 laptops and a number of weapons during a 44-month period ending September 30, 2005. Of these 160 laptops, 10 contained classified information and 51 may or may not have contained classified information. Believe it or not, the figures represent an improvement over the FBI’s prior record of handling sensitive inventory; the Bureau lost 300 laptops and 300 weapons during the previous 28-month period. That’s an average of over 10 laptops and 10 weapons lost every month over the course of two years and four months.

In response to the report, Assistant FBI director John Miller acknowledged the problem and noted the “significant progress” the Bureau has made in the past five years. Miller also took issue with the report’s count of missing weapons, claiming that 43 of the unaccounted weapons should not have been counted because they had been reported missing prior to the time period covered by the report. In other words, “you can’t count those weapons; they were missing from a long time ago.”

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.

Why is it that trouble always seems to follow USC along the recruiting trail? Shouldn’t Southern California weather and beaches be enough for USC to attract recruits?

No major surprises on National Signing Day. Though our recruiting class doesn’t rank in the nation’s top 10, it’s probably the best class in the Big Ten in what has turned out to be a down year for the conference. Jerimy Finch, after committing to Michigan, changing his mind and committing to Indiana, then changing his mind again and declaring that he was “50-50″ between Michigan and Indiana, ended up signing with Florida. Though we didn’t pick up any eleventh-hour commitments, we didn’t lose any either. As expected, Florida, USC, and Tennessee pulled in the nation’s top 3 classes.

The biggest Michigan-related story of the week turned out to be a hoax. Sirius NFL Radio reported that defensive coordinator Ron English had interviewed for the defensive coordinator position with the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings. In response to the report, Coach English issued a statement through the athletic department denying having had any contact with the Vikings and affirming that he intended to stay at Michigan. The timing of the report strikes me as extremely odd. Even if Coach English was interested in other opportunities, there is no way he would interview for another job the day before National Signing Day. Given how nasty recruiting battles have gotten in recent years, it wouldn’t surprise me if the false report may have been part of an effort to sabotage Michigan’s recruiting.