Iranian Hypocrisy

Truculent, xenophobic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues his game plan for repealing the last millennium. He has now banned all Western music, including classical, from Iran’s state radio and TV stations.

All this does, however, is underscore the Islamic Republic’s commitment to hypocrisy. This is no Talibanned-in-Tehran. Behind the closed doors of the well-off and influential, the liquor still flows, the fashions still reflect Western taste and satellite dish owners still receive entertainment from outside the Muslim cloister.

Immigration And Assimilation

Two weeks ago I was watching the Sunday morning political talk show hosted by Chris Mathews on NBC. Among his guests: the conservative David Brooks and the not-necessary-to-label Andrea Mitchell of NBC, a mainstream media liberal as well as Alan Greenspan’s wife. The topic was illegal immigration. Economics. Legalities. Security. Sovereign borders. The usual mix.

Mitchell waxed apoplectic when Brooks referenced a “culture of criminality” that permeated much of today’s immigrants — because they were illegal from the get-go. Mitchell accused Brooks of cheap-shotting Hispanics and said today’s immigrants were no less worthy than their counterparts from Europe a century prior.

There then followed a commercial break and a new topic.

That’s show biz.

But it’s hardly the last word on a very sensitive, very politically incorrect aspect of this country’s volatile immigration scenarios. We’re all too easily at odds with our own “homeless, tempest-tossed” immigration ideals. In short, today’s immigrants are different – and not just because they’re not from Europe.

Those “huddled masses” of yesterday were looking for economic opportunity, and they were looking to assimilate. Topping their agendas: becoming Americans and Americanizing their kids in this unique melting pot.

Now we have the salad bowl of diversity. Assimilation (for those arriving from south of the Rio Grande) is not a priority. Or a necessity. Or even, presumably, a particularly good idea. Witness “Mexafornia.”

Those coming from other continents and hemispheres — with educations and skills – often seem more absorbed in skimming the economic cream and retaining national and religious identities in self-contained sub-cultures. Opportunity trumped by opportunism. Allegiance is elsewhere.

Other than that and some border issues, not much has changed since the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886.

Administration’s Bush League Move

Next year marks the inaugural World Baseball Classic, an event that organizers hope might some day grow into the counterpart of soccer’s World Cup. It will be an 18-day tournament in March featuring 16 teams from North and Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. The games will be played in Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Florida (Walt Disney World), Arizona and California.

It could not have happened without the cooperation of Major League Baseball. As a result, many of the biggest MLB names, such as Bobby Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr., will participate.

However, the most pre-eminent name in the annals of international baseball – Cuba — will be absent. That’s because the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control denied MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association the permits required for a Cuban team to travel here to participate. It’s a function of the Bush Administration’s ever-tightening trade and travel sanctions on Havana.

It’s also a function of lobbying by the usual one-trick pony South Florida politicians, such as Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who want all Cuban screws tightened until Fidel Castro finally does the right thing and dies. For now, however, the Administration will remain tethered to a counterproductive Cold War policy that is as much at variance with sensible trade polices as it is with basic, humane practices.

An interesting aside to the World Baseball Classic is its possible impact on future Olympic bids by U.S. cities.

“This will impact IOC (International Olympic Committee) members negatively,” points out Peter Ueberroth, the U.S. Olympic Committee chairman. “This may be the only example of a country prohibiting competition on an international scale.”

In baseball parlance, it’s called a Bush League move. It’s also another low for a country that ought to be above this sort of vindictive, arrogant action that helps no one. Especially – and ironically – the U.S., which can ill afford any more geo-political black eyes.

Presidential Primary Reform Gets Another Airing

See if this sounds familiar.

Some politicians, including “powerful” ones, are recommending that something be done about our presidential primary system. Like get rid of the inordinate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire, the demographically-skewed states that front-end and distort the quadrennial process.

This time it’s Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who’s championing a Democratic proposal that would add one or two caucuses after Iowa’s but before New Hampshire’s first-in-the nation primary in early February. “I hope this is the beginning of the end of Iowa and New Hampshire’s dominant role.”

As if. It’s too little and likely to no avail.

New Hampshire even has a law requiring its primary to be scheduled a week or more before any “similar election.”

Levin’s take? “If New Hampshire decides to challenge the proposal, all bets are off,” he acknowledged. Oh.

And earlier this month in Orlando, presumptive 2008 Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards and Virginia Gov. Mark Warner both equivocated – amid responses awash in “grass roots” rhetoric — when asked about diluting the impact of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Expect New Hampshire to challenge if anything comes of the Democratic proposal. And expect Florida to unconscionably remain a primary black hole.

Recall that when New Hampshire voters cast their ballots in 2004, their choices included: Gen. Wesley Clark, former Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. John Edwards, Rep. Dick Gephardt, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Joe Lieberman, former Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, Rev. Al Sharpton and Sen. John Kerry. When Florida Democrats voted, they were handed a Kerry rubberstamp. That’s asinine in a state with the population and diversity of Florida.

Both parties need to get serious about a primary system that ill serves its nominee-picking charge. An election without an incumbent would seem to be propitious timing.

Otherwise, the time is long past to just move on to regional primaries on the same day. What’s not to like? The candidates would do less pandering, and the media wouldn’t be able to play momentum kingmaker.

Those looking for an earlier forum on their electability can always go on Don Imus or Howard Stern.

Torture Debate Revisited

Typically I wouldn’t be revisiting a column subject less than a month after publication. But my comments on the topic of government torture brought enough of a response – of disagreement and disparagement – that I feel compelled to further clarification.

As I mentioned in that column of Nov. 30, I could never have conceived of a “debate” on the subject of torture. As if there were two legitimate sides. As if I would be aligned with the “pro-torture” position.

Was 9/11 a synonym for “anything goes”?

Some readers wondered if my morality were so facile that it could easily accommodate some ends justifying any means. That due process was no more than a speed bump on the road of expedience. That I had a Torquemada fantasy.

To reiterate. I think a government is derelict if it doesn’t use every tact, ploy and non-nuclear option in its arsenal to protect itself, i.e., to prevent a civilian-casualty atrocity that would dwarf 9/11 in mass-murder magnitude. Even if the Vatican disagrees.

If this sounds like selective morality or due-process hypocrisy, I’ll live with it. As will millions more. Literally.

And a corollary would be that contextual circumstances and common sense justify – and, indeed, demand – profiling. Might as well re-open that can of national security worms as well.

As to due process, per se, I don’t apologize for making self preservation a priority. However, it should go without saying that in regards to the treatment of prisoners and the “T” word, we must carve out very specific parameters and proscriptions.

That means legitimate, high-value, non-Geneva Convention-qualified targets. They’re not that hard to define. They’re the combatants sans uniforms and consciences who target non-combatants. They behead the innocent. And videotape it. On a moral scale, they couldn’t carry Tookie Williams’ dumb bells.

But their interrogators must be disinformation-deciphering professionals – not neo-Nazi losers or al-Qaeda counterparts. The approach must be sophisticated, not sadistic.

The rule of humane treatment for legitimate POWs doesn’t change. But neither does the rule of thumb that the Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds and his terrorist ilk might have to take one for our team. Might. Arguably, Mohammed’s “waterboarding” means has already served the end of saved lives.

In short, and after all is said, we don’t live life in the abstract.

And, yes, it would have helped immeasurably if we had had an Administration that didn’t divert troops from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Osama bin-Laden to the ill-advised, ill-managed invasion and occupation of Iraq. Now we’re saddled with the mother of all jihadist pep rallies – and many more problematic prisoners.

But that’s a different debate.

Al-Arian Perspective

Depending on your perspective, Sami Al-Arian has been vindicated of the biased charges against him or is the fortunate beneficiary of a case too conspiratorially complex for a jury to feel comfortable with. But what Al-Arian is not is innocent.

We know he lied and misrepresented himself as to his relationship with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a certified terrorist organization. Even the hardcore USF lefties should be embarrassed by his duplicity.

And while there were no smoking guns, there were smoldering rants that trampled on a rhetorician’s right to speak despicably. While he stayed perched on free speech’s slippery slope, others responded appropriately with revulsion to his exhortations of “death to Israel” and damnation to America.

*No one begrudges Al-Arian his fervor for the Palestinian cause. Theirs is a lamentable lot that, deplorably enough, not even Arab countries have been willing to do much to alleviate. However, his unqualified praise for acts of martyrdom – a sanitized term for the murder of innocents — are not the reflections of an innocent man. An unconvicted, not-guilty one — but not an innocent one.

*If perception is reality, then maybe it was better that Al-Arian skated on those eight terrorism-related counts and scored a mistrial on the other nine. In much of the Arab world, the American judicial system was as much on trial as Al-Arian. The result helps defuse the overseas view that we’re witch-hunting Muslims and would sooner lynch them than accord them a fair trial.

A Streetcar Named Night Life

Time was when streetcars were synonymous with public transportation in America. For Tampa, which featured Florida’s most extensive system, that era ended in 1946 when buses wheeled in.

Fast-track more than half a century. They’re back. Well, 11 of them: nine modern replicas; one restored (1923) car; and one open-sided “Breezer.”

But they are more than the streetcars named nostalgia, featuring operators in traditional uniforms. Also call them: an economic development tool.

Debuting in October, 2002, Tampa’s 2.3-mile TECO Line Streetcar System daily connects the Tampa Convention Center with Ybor City – via the Channel District, the burgeoning entertainment and residential area. The majority of the 40,000 monthly riders, who pay $2 for a one-way fare and $4 for a one-day pass, are tourists – heading for night life, visiting the Florida Aquarium or leisurely getting the lay of the land.

“The streetcar gives us connectivity from the convention area to the entertainment and historic districts,” says Karen Brand, vice president of communications and public relations for the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Meeting planners love it, and travel writers think it’s a neat story. Makes our convention package very attractive.”

So winsome that the streetcar is already a TBCVB staple when pitching Super Bowls, the GOP national convention and the NCAA basketball tournament.

“This is mass transit designed to serve visitors,” explains Michael English, president of Tampa Historic Streetcar Inc. (THS), the non-profit that manages the system for Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HARTline). “It’s also an urban design amenity. As traffic increases in the core, the streetcar system increases in importance.”

Indeed, it’s projected that the 15 residential projects now in various stages of development in the Channel District will bring more than 3,300 units by 2008. Developers and merchants regularly reference the streetcar as a selling point.

“We’re definitely happy with it,” says Irene Pierpont, general manager of Centro Ybor. “We’re the number one (of 11) on-and-off spot for the streetcar.”

Not everyone who arrives in Ybor – or Channelside — is a visitor. For holidays and events such as Guavaween and Gasparilla, the system (with its maximum capacity of 88 per car) is dominated by locals. Moreover, the THS also aggressively promotes group charters for $175 an hour. Customers have ranged from Outback Steakhouse and wedding rehearsal diners to young professionals looking for a DUI-free evening of clubbing.

The streetcars carry CD players and are actually wet-zoned inside to accommodate a BYOB party crowd. The cars act as festive shuttles and return to the main station in Ybor between pick-ups and drop-offs.

“Charters have become increasingly popular,” says THS’s English. “All kinds of parties. But, no, we haven’t put up the red velvet blinds yet.”

Also Tooling Around Downtowns

Complementing Tampa’s streetcar is the rubber-wheeled In-Town Trolley. One route is a 22-stop loop of downtown and Harbour Island, the other a 35-stop loop from downtown to Hyde Park. Fare is 50 cents.

Its St. Petersburg counterpart is the Downtown Looper, 13 stops including The Pier, BayWalk, museums, the Renaissance Vinoy Resort and the University of South Florida. Fare is 25 cents.

Courting A Controversial Case On Campus

Much is being made – for obvious reasons – of the FAIR v. Rumsfeld case now being considered by a seemingly skeptical U.S. Supreme Court. In short, it’s about the government’s right to condition its funding to universities on the basis of military recruiters having equal access to students.

This goes for undergrads as well as law students. It’s also about a school’s prerogative to deny military recruiters the same access that all other recruiters get – and still expect the same federal largess they’ve long become accustomed to. The Feds’ financial support to higher education now exceeds $35 billion annually.

And, in the verbalized view of new Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s also about “the right in the Constitution to raise a military.”

The genesis of the case is the 1994 Solomon Amendment, which gives the government the right to withhold funds when schools deny such access. The real target of the case is the higher ed-hated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy, which has been – like it or not — the law of the land since 1993.

However this shakes out – couched in language referencing discrimination against gays and bizarre spins on free speech and academic freedom – there are interesting extralegal issues at play.

For openers, shouldn’t an all-volunteer military have direct access to as wide a recruiting base as possible? It’s hardly an egalitarian fantasy, but shouldn’t it be able to make its pitch in front of a demographic that is not mostly minorities and na