Headline Sketches

US-India Nuclear Deal passes in the US Senate (85-12). Was surprised to see how effective the nuclear lobby can be to haul the senators in the lame duck session and pass the deal in approximately 12 hours. Excellent floor work by Sen.Lugar. Some suspect there are some secret clauses in the deal. As long as they remain secret, the deal will go thru.

Prachanda-Bhattarai visit their friends in India. As expected some dissembling on renouncing the path of violence. Innovative but historically reminiscent diplomatic work with their "friends" here. Pranab gently pressurized by "friends" to meet them, rebuffs it. Shows some class!

Blair calls for talks with Syria and Iran to improve conditions in Iraq. US mentally preparing to do the same with potentially some talks already on in the background. Would be very interesting to see how this can be done in parallel with the acrimonious nuclear issue. Serious difficulties exist for both sides as their publicly staked out positions vary greatly from their actual bottomlines which are flexible.

North Korea returns to the 6 party talks (circus). Ever been in a meeting where 6 guys have to talk? As the talks get serious, they are bound to become bilateral in nature with the other 4 remaining mute spectators literally. If that would massage US Administration's ego, so be it. Bush warned North Korea that any effort to cross-proliferate would invite serious consequences. Does this mean US is willing to live with a "minimally" nuclear armed N.Korea ? May be. Many astute US officials have already pointed out the real threat from N.Korea is not an attack on US or US allies but proliferation to others. Where as Iran the perceived threat level is almost equally an attack on Israel and proliferation to Hizbullah types.

Blair makes an under-reported visit to Pakistan. Did he come to thank Musharraf for the thwarted Bojinka v2.0? Or was he there to prod to get any help on something cooking already? Must remember that Geoff Hoon visited Islamabad last December.

Hu Jintao visits India. It has been 5 years almost since both India and China decided to solve the boundary dispute from the "political perspective of overall bilateral relations". Since then every summit has been an occasion for re-stating that priniciple. Bottom line? No progress! But the Chinese Ambassador's recidivism on Arunachal Pradesh banking on technicalities ( 17th century Tibetan' maps) tells us that may be there is some backward movement. But the discussion on civilian nuclear co-operation was an unexpected positive. But in the face of the fact that Norway has already been recruited to do the shadow boxing for China in the NSG, I am inclined to think it may be a gambit to let Chinese entities in Telecom and Ports as a quid pro quo.

Things get from bad to worse in Srilanka. The power of SL Airforce is being used to effect some substantial battle gains. This was planned long back, 4 years ago but LTTE devastated the plan by blowing up the planes when they were parked in Colombo Airport. Would be interesting to observe how "the guardians of racial honour" in Tamil Nadu handle this.

White House 2008

Candidate	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
John McCain	A	A	B+	A-	A-	A	A-
Mitt Romney	C	C	B+	B+	B	B-	A-
Rudy Guiliani	A-	B-	B+	A-	B-	?	?
Sam Brownback	B	B+	B+	A-	B	?	?
Newt Gingrich	A-	A-	B+	A	A	?	?
Condoleeza Rice	A-	A	A-	A-	B	?	?
George Pataki	B	C	A-	B	C	?	?
Duncan Hunter	C	B+	B+	B	B	?	?
Chuck Hagel	C	A-	B+	A-	B	?	?
Mike Huckabee	C	C	B+	B	B	?	?
Tommy Thompson	C	C	A-	B	C	?	?
Hillary Clinton	A	B+	B	A	B+	B+	A
Barrack Obama	B+	B-	C	A	B+	?	?
Al Gore	A	A-	A-	B+	A-	?	?
John Edwards	A-	B+	B	A	A-	?	?
Bill Richardson	B+	B+	A-	B+	B	?	?
Tom Vilsack	C	C	A-	B+	B	?	?
Joe Biden	B+	A-	B+	A-	A-	?	?
Christopher Dodd	C	B+	B+	B+	B+	?	?
Wesley Clark	B+	A-	C	B	B	?	?
Gary Hart	B+	A-	B+	A-	B	?	?

1 - Nationwide Name Recognition
2 - Foreign Policy Credentials
3 - Experience in Government
4 - Communication
5 - Ideas
6 - Finance
7 - Campaign Organization

Changes since last Update :

John Kerry out of the race, a graceful and wise decision. Romney gets endorsed by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

John Kerry

Out

Huge Sigh of relief among Democratic party donors

Thumpin' for GOP

The analysis of 2006 is non-stop and ubiquitous. But why leave a chance for another post?

Two months back on 'Meet the Press' when Dick Cheney bet Tim Russert a dinner that GOP would hold down both the house and the senate, Russert did not take him up on that. I was inclined to agree with Cheney then. The GOP narrative had not changed, its strategy of putting the Dems on the defense in national security was very much in play, news on the economy was generally postitive, Mark Foley's instant messages hadn't exploded on the national news yet. But there was a silent and systematic campaign by two quintessential urban Jewish democrats, Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel on the back ground. Their strategy was to out-Jesus and out-hick the GOP with candidates that would not lend themselves to easy caricatures of familiar GOP hit and run tactics. In Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Jr. a well known anti-abortion Catholic was pitted against the Christian warrior Rick Santorum (a Catholic as well). This made Rick Santorum the single speech Hamilton with respect to abortion, weaponless. In Montana, the candidate was a gun owning anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, ole-farm boy with a square top haircut running against a corruption tainted old-pol Conrad Burns. In Virginia, an ex-republican, marine veteran, Navy secretary ran wearing his son's combat boots ( who is currently deployed in Iraq ) against the Presidential hopeful George 'Macaca' Allen. Boy! I need a new post to cover this one single word. His introductory TV spot was an old footage of Ronald Reagan praising him to a military audience, which had Allen in fits. In Tennessee, the candidate was the charismatic Harold Ford, who looked up and prayed publicly at every available oppurtunity. Boy, if Bible guaranteed there was a vote for every mention of the word 'Jesus', he would have won too. The strategy was similar in many house races. This recruitment strategy in itself was not a election winner, but it set up the Dems in good position if the electorate wanted to look for alternatives, they found someone on the ballot who had just managed to survive the race up until the election day with a (D) next to their name.

And then the 'I' word began to pick up momentum. If you see the level of violence or the clueless, moronic fox-trot of US Foreign Policy in Iraq since March 2003, there was nothing dramatic that happened in the last 2 months. The situation was more or less similar to conditions in Nov. 2004. But what changed was the GOP did not have a monolithic person or idea to run against. That brought the constant drum beat of lack of progress and widespread dissatisfaction to the fore. In 2004, GOP had the "anti-veteran, phony, liberal, wishy-washy weak and wobbly flip-flopper" aka John Kerry. The intrasigence in acknowledging the problems in Iraq by the Bush administration and the other-worldy 'optimism' of Cheney-Rumsfeld made the GOP look dangerously callous in its approach and execution of the war. The numbers steadily rose and the GOP was in trouble. Emanuel and Schumer had a one line advice for their candidates: Dont' f**k this up! Apparently they were not wise enough to include Kerry on the address list, as he was not on the ballot. Kerry with his stupid botched joke came close enough to f**k this up and gave GOP their Nov.2004 rerun. But he was forcibly silenced by everybody in his party. His hometown newspaper Boston Herald ran an editoral titled 'Shut up and Sit down'.

Finally the night ended up with a thumpin' for the GOP. This is not to be construed as some sign of dramatic realignment of forces in American politics as many democrats that won that night are not liberal anti-war candidates. They represent America's quest for change and salvation from the mess in Iraq. As in other democracies American citizens armed with the right information took a prudent choice in acknowledging the failed nature of the whole idea of Iraqi invasion and looking for a B- to C+ grade in getting out of there which they were not going to get with Cheney-Rumsfeld who were already claiming an A+ with their cooked up grade sheet.

My personal satisfaction in the race was the ouster of Rick Santorum and George Allen from the senate and hence the race for GOP nomination in 2008. I strongly believe that they would give a tough run to McCain (my favourite) and fear that may eventually win in 2008. This does not totally eliminate their chances but atleast has knocked them down considerably. Nixon afer losing the Governor's race in California came back in 1968 but there were no heavy weights standing in 68 in his party. Now we go to 2008 - Dashboard , my favorite time pass in ranking the chances on both parties.

Ninth Schedule and Untouchables

I have always been ambivalent about the 9th schedule in our constitution. But I have to confess that I am a big fan of the approach the constituent assembly took in coming with schedules to enumerate states, languages of the union. However the concept of immunity from judicial review is a totally different issue. This is a classic and typical problem that arises in any constitutional democracy with the tripolar structure : executive, legislative and judicial branches. How would we let a group of unelected judges dictate and overrule popular will ? But if we let the "popular" will to be supreme at all circumstances, the premise that the popular will would automatically confine its function within the four walls of the constitution becomes very suspect. But the answer as in many other cases lies in the middle. If all the branches agree on the primacy of the constitution over and above all their unitary powers (combined) and the judges decide the (un)constitutionality of any law that comes under review, rigorously based on the constituitional tenets we can hope to have a stable equilibrium. This issue is very complex that occupies countless volumes of legal scholarship, I won't even attempt to argue it, but my preference is for untrammeled judicial review combined with the
power to the legislative/executive branches to appoint judges.

It is noteworthy to remember that in the most evolved of all constituitional democracies the United States, no law is exempt from judicial review. Marbury v. Madison (1803) anchored this principle very early on. This is not to say that this untrammeled judicial review was (is) always popular. For example during FDR's presidency several of his New Deal programs were struck down by the conservative court. This did not prompt FDR to amend the constituition to create a phony nineth schedule to include New Deal laws under its cover. He packed the court with men he thought would be sympathetic to his social and economic policies. Again in the current cultural battle of abortion and Roe v. Wade, nobody in US is suggesting that a constitutitonal amendment to create an "untouchable" schedule be passed and the laws banning abortion be included in it. Both sides on this issue are seeking to get their view prevail in the court by appointing judges who would rule in their favour. We do hear some voices arguing for a constituitional amendment banning abortion which is an entirely different approach.

On a similar issue in India, relating to agrarian reform and estate possessions reform instead of relying on the power of the popular will to be able to appoint and keep judges sympathetic to that social view, which was an extremely easy task at that stage of the republic, with Nehru at the helm, we created this mish-mash articles 31-A and 31-B providing "immunity" to these laws from judges. Now once the genie of judicial immunity was out of the bottle, it took no time for our geniuses to create a menstruating ladies room out of the 9th schedule to protect their favourite laws. I have been following the arguments with keen interest but was disappointed to know that Soli Sorabjee even agreed to appear for TN. Nevertheless his arguments are worth debating:

"The effect of Article 31-B is to remove a fetter on the power of Parliament to pass a law in violation of fundamental rights. On account of Article 31-B, cause of action for violation of fundamental right is not available because the fetter placed by Part III of the Constitution on legislative power is removed and is non-existent". Here his sole argument relies on the "B" part of 31, where as 31-B is a mechanism for implementing 31-A which is very specific about land reform acts. 31-B does not have a leg to stand on without 31-A.

He goes on to say that "The same people who enacted the Constitution and the chapter on fundamental rights after full deliberations enacted article 31 B" . Agreed. But those people deliberated 31-B in the limited context of 31-A when there was great uncertainty about even what kind of laws and how many laws would be required to accomplish land reform. 31-B was not created in a superfluous ethereal vaccum with the purpose of removing the "fetter" on the legislative. If that was the purpose there was no need for Part III dealing with fundamental rights which would become appallingly watered down.

And then comes the argument of expediency: One of the reasons for putting an Act in the Ninth Schedule was to remove uncertainties about its validity arising out of forensic challenges of divided judicial pronouncements and to prevent time-consuming litigation which would impede speedy and effective implementation of the statute in question. This is the most ridiculous argument one can make: "I am going to enact a law. I don't care about its constitutionality. Different courts may arrive at different conclusions on that question..^[*] Litigation takes time and it is such a waste. To implement it effectively I am going to exempt it from judicial review. ". This is the kind of argument fathers make to their children : "This is right because I know it is right".

Ram Jethmalani the buffoon yesterday had tried to brow beat the bench by lecturing to them on the moral obligations of the society to the downtrodden, oppressed, suppressed. He was rightfully shot down by the bench that they were not hearing the inclusion of a specific law but the very question of the 9th schedule and its imits, which is where I think the focus should be.

^[*]
I know that the Supreme Court of India has the overall appellate jurisdiction over this matter, but it is irrelevant for me.