The View from Right Field

A Miracle in Charleston Follows a Terrible Shooting. What Will Follow the Same-Sex Marriage Decision in Washington?

Peggy Noonan­­ writes in The Wall Street Journal about the incredible forgiveness of the members of Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  During the bail hearing for the (alleged) killer, Nadine Collier, whose 70-year old mother was killed, said, “I forgive you.  You took something very precious away from me….  You hurt me.  You hurt a lot of people.  But if God forgives you, I forgive you.”  Alana Simmons, whose grandfather, Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr. was killed, said, “We are here to combat hate-filled actions with love-filled actions.  And that is what we want to get out to the world.” 

Ms. Noonan called it a miracle, which it was.  I certainly wonder if I would have been able to be so forgiving.  But the key, which many in the media may have missed, is that it was not only a miracle of those people and that church.  It was the miracle of the Christian faith, which the members of Emanuel A.M.E. Church were living out in a way we should all hope we would do if put to a similar test.

Which brings me to the second part of the heading of this post.  Last Friday, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.  Proponents of same-sex marriage have won.¹  What will they do next?

World Series: One Down; One to Go

The University of Virginia baseball team won the College World Series in Omaha last night, beating Vanderbilt, 4 to 2, in the third and deciding game.  It was UVa's first CWS championship, and the first CWS championship for the Atlantic Coast Conference since 1955:

 

Next up: October!
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UPDATE (6/25/15 10:40 pm): Corrected a typo.

The Idiocy At the Cubs Game Tuesday Night

I was not at the Cubs game last night.  I am in Omaha (and Lincoln) for the College World Series.  Go Hoos (i.e., Virginia)!  However, I saw a video of the guy catching a foul ball while holding a baby.

 

A couple of comments.  First, when you go to Cubs games, before the game, they tell you, on one of the new video boards, that it is a felony not only to enter the playing field, but also to interfere with any ball that is still in play.  While I don’t understand why either one is a felony, and while I certainly don’t think what the guy last night should be charged with a felony, the fact is that he interfered with a ball that was still in play.  He should not have been applauded or made a hero by the media for what he did.

Who Is Running Our Foreign Policy? And Why Should Anybody Believe John Kerry?

This is from The Wall Street Journal‘s “Washington Wire” this morning: 

“[Secretary of State John] Kerry said this week he is ‘absolutely certain’ that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chlorine gas chemical attacks in his country’s ongoing civil war.

‘We are certain that the preponderance of those attacks have been carried out by the regime.  And we’re putting together a portfolio of that data that supports that even as we speak now,’ Mr. Kerry said Tuesday during a surprise appearance via video during the State Department’s daily press briefing. …

But it’s not clear that Mr. Kerry’s pursuit, as with his failed effort to broker a Middle East peace deal, has the same spirit in the White House.  White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Wednesday avoided the certainty Mr. Kerry expressed about Mr. Assad’s responsibility for the chlorine attacks.  Asked if Mr. Obama shares Mr. Kerry’s view that Mr. Assad has undoubtedly used chlorine as a chemical weapon, Mr. Earnest declined to take as hard of a line.

In Appreciation of Starlin Castro

Starlin Castro gets a lot of grief, both in the season and, last year, out.  But look at the facts.  First, he is the youngest Cubs player ever to get to 900 hits, and that includes a Ron Santo who came up at age 20, too.

Second, consider the players who used to play shortstop in the Cubs organization and who are playing somewhere else, either position or team: Junior Lake, Darwin Barney, Addison Russell and Javier Baez.

Third, the Cubs have had eight walk-off victories this season, three of them by Starlin.  I remember the first.  It was on April 18 against the Padres.  Bases loaded, eleventh inning, one out.  Starlin was up.  The Padres put five guys in the infield.  I was still confident.  In fact, I was glad Starlin up because I was sure he would get a good swing on the ball.  And he did, smashing it between the three infielders on the left side of the infield.

 

The 800th Anniversary of Magna Carta Is a Good Time to Remember: Our Freedoms Depend on the Ends Not Justifying the Means

June 15 is the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta.  As Daniel Hannan, a member of the Parliament for the Conservative Party, writes:

“It was at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, that the idea of the law standing above the government first took contractual form.  King John accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules up as he went along.  From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that we now take for granted: uncensored newspapers, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials.” (emphasis added)

The anniversary of Magna Carta comes at a good time because we are seeing a disturbing trend by the Obama administration to “make the rules up” as it goes along.  I have commented on this tendency before¹, as have many people, but the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta is a good time to do it again.

Some of our leaders get frustrated with the democratic process.  They see a problem, and they want to solve it – and they are sure that they know what to do.  But then some other part of the democratic process won’t cooperate.  For Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was, for a time, the Supreme Court.  For President Obama, it has been Congress.

Will Sending 450 More Advisers to Iraq Do Any Good?

The Obama administration announced Wednesday that the United States will be sending more troops to Iraq.  The news reports about the announcement made it sound like this is a big deal.  It’s not – at least in terms of making a difference in what will happen in Iraq.  Even if it was double the 450 additional advisers and trainers we’re sending, it still wouldn’t make much of a difference.  There are several reasons for this.

First, in terms of the training we will be providing, it looks like what we are giving Iraqi recruits is a few weeks or months of training.  That’s not enough time to make a new recruit into a reliable solider.  In any case, the key to an effective fighting force is leadership, and leadership takes more than weeks or months to develop.  It takes years.  One of the reasons the Iraqi forces fled Ramadi is that their leaders left first.  (Also, exploding Humvees could be pretty scary.  Before anybody talks about somebody not having a “will to fight,” I would suggest they stand up to an exploding Humvee with no way to stop it or fight back.)

Is President Obama Trying to Succeed in Iraq Or Just Avoid Blame?

I think I may have figured out President Obama’s Iraq strategy: To be able to deny responsibility if (when-?) things go bad.  Let me explain.

By calling “Iraq redux” a multi-year effort, President Obama’s original idea was to set things up so that he could deny responsibility if the result eventually turned out bad and he could claim credit if it was a success (which seems less and less likely).  The idea was that, when President Obama left office, he would say that Iraq 2.0 (or whatever version it is by then) was succeeding.  If it eventually failed, it would be his successor’s fault.  If it worked, it would be because of what he did.  In other words, it would be sort of a reverse of what President Obama did vis-a-vis George W. Bush.  Instead of blaming his predecessor for all the bad things and taking credit for all the good, President Obama would blame his successor for the bad things, while taking credit for the good.

Is Bernie Sanders 2016’s Eugene McCarthy?

Something interesting may have happened in Wisconsin on Saturday.  In a straw poll at the Democratic Party’s state convention, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders got 41% of the 511 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 49%.  While it is only a straw poll in a state of liberal activists, and Hillary Clinton still won, it does remind one of the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary.  President Lyndon Johnson won the primary (he got 49% of the vote), but Senator Eugene McCarthy’s 42% was, as they say, a game-changer – in at least two ways. 

First, it pushed President Johnson out of the race less than three weeks later.  That is not going to happen in 2016.  Hillary Clinton is not going to drop out of the race.  

But the New Hampshire primary did something else, too: It brought other candidates into the race.  Eugene McCarthy was probably never going to win the Democratic nomination in 1968, just like Bernie Sanders won’t in 2016.  However, by demonstrating President Johnson’s weakness as a candidate, it brought other candidates into the race.  In 1968, it was Bobby Kennedy.

The question for us in 2016 is whether former Senator Clinton’s weakness in Wisconsin, especially if it shows up somewhere else, will bring other, serious candidates into the Democratic race.  And what might happen if it does.

Joe Maddon Bats the Pitcher Eighth. I Don’t Agree.

During the Cubs’ last homestand, I started thinking about Joe Maddon batting the pitcher eighth.  The fact we only scored six runs in the three games I went to probably accelerated my thought process, but I would thought about it anyway.  (Fortunately, in one of the games, the other team only scored one run, so our two was enough.  But you can’t count on that too often).  When I saw Jason Stark’s article today on why Joe is doing it, I decided I should post my thoughts.

First, I do understand one of Joe’s points.  By batting the pitcher eighth, he is able to bat Addison Russell ninth, and it may help Addison to be batting in front of the leadoff man instead of the pitcher.  Obviously, it didn’t matter to Starlin Castro when he came up, but there aren’t that many Starlin Castros around.*

But even with this argument, I don’t like batting the pitcher eighth – for one simple reason: The pitcher bats earlier.  You can talk about how batting the pitcher eighth, gives you an extra leadoff man the second, third, etc., times through the lineup.  You can also say that after the first time through the lineup it doesn’t matter.  But the fact is eighth spot comes up before the ninth spot every time.  Every time you go through the lineup, a pitcher batting eighth is going to come up earlier than a pitcher batting ninth.  That is not something I want.