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Can the Foreign Service Reform Itself? If so how and where to begin?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I have been documenting serious problems with the State Department’s approach to its most precious resource, its human capital since January 23, 2008. These problems, in reality, began well before 2008. This post “Can the Foreign Service Reform Itself?” has been added to the ever lengthening – now nearly book-length – list entitled “The Troubled State of State” affixed to WhirledView’s top left sidebar.

There have been various institutional arrangements established to mitigate the human resources problems at the State Department. Too many of these arrangements are in desperate need of change. One is the pressing need for an Inspector General as Secretary Kerry has recently and rightly stated. Another is the fundamental reform of an institution called the Foreign Service Grievance Board where too often Foreign Service personnel disputes are sent for resolution.

The following recommendations on reform of this board are by an experienced Foreign Service Officer currently caught up in State’s human resources labyrinth. The officer outlines weaknesses of this board and suggests ways they can be mitigated.

As the author rightly points out, “we owe it to ourselves and our country to ensure that, as we promote workers’ rights and respect for the rule of law around the world, our internal governance reflects our values.” Clearly, I think the State Department falls far short. This thoughtful analysis and its recommendations need a considered and careful read:

Fixing the Foreign Service Grievance Process: Seven Simple Reforms

The Foreign Service grievance process, as currently constituted, is crippled by illogical, unnecessarily complex procedures and structural conflicts of interest.

This must change. We owe it to the Foreign Service community to put in place a user-friendly process that resolves disputes quickly, equitably and with dignity. We owe it to the American taxpayer to stop the current system’s massive waste of human and financial resources. And we owe it to ourselves and our country to ensure that, as we promote workers’ rights and respect for the rule of law around the world, our internal governance reflects our values.

Outlined below are seven areas in which the process is out of step with contemporary norms, along with common-sense reform proposals aimed at increasing both fairness and efficiency. It is my hope that these ideas can start a broader conversation aimed at establishing a grievance process that is fairer, more transparent and more efficient.

1. Mediation: resolve cases whenever possible without a formal grievance

In the private and intergovernmental sectors, and elsewhere in the Federal Government, it is common practice to try to resolve disputes quickly and amicably through the intervention of trained external mediators. This strengthens workplace morale by facilitating rapid, mutually acceptable solutions. It also saves money by averting time-consuming administrative proceedings and litigation. State offers no such option.

While the FSGB “encourages the parties to consider and engage in voluntary efforts to settle the case” and offers the services of one of its members to serve as a mediator “[a]t the joint request of the parties,” this offer comes too late in the process to make a difference: after the aggrieved employee has filed a formal grievance with the Department, received an adverse response, and filed an appeal with the Board. If mediation is to work, it needs to be seen as a first, rather than a last resort.

The Department and AFSA should agree on a roster of qualified external mediators, and offer their services to employees upon request as an alternative or precursor to the grievance process. Any costs involved would be more than offset by savings realized through a decreased grievance workload.

2. Objectivity: remove responsibility for initial adjudication of grievances from the Bureau for Human Resources

The Department’s Grievance Staff, which adjudicates employee grievances, sits within the Bureau for Human Resources, which exercises direct responsibility over the vast majority of “grievable” actions and decisions. This constitutes a direct conflict of interest: grievance attorneys who “review” impugned HR decisions report to the same Director General under whose authority those decisions were taken in the first place.

This discourages accountability, and encourages costly and time consuming defenses of even obviously erroneous decisions. Responsibility for the initial adjudication of grievances should be transferred to the Office of the Legal Advisor, or to a special office established under the direct authority of the Secretary.

3. Segregation: Separate responsibility for adjudicating grievances from responsibility for defending the Department’s position

A further conflict of interest is the dual (or even triple) role played by the HR Grievance Staff. The same official who oversees the initial investigation and adjudication of a grievance then turns around and represents the Department when that same case comes before the FSGB. The need to build a case with a view to an eventual defense before the Board represents an insurmountable conflict of interest, which prevents the Grievance Staff from serving as a truly objective finder of fact in the initial adjudication of the grievance. The investigation/adjudication and advocacy functions should be clearly segregated, and assigned to different offices. Ex parte communications between those offices should be strictly prohibited.

4. Perspective: Reconstitute the Foreign Service Grievance Board to eliminate the perception of bias and ensure a broader interpretation of “the Department’s interest.”

 The members of the FSGB, while appointed by the Secretary, are recruited by the Bureau for Human Resources, and the Board includes many retired Foreign Service Officers with extensive experience in the HR Bureau. While the Board’s members, individually, may adhere to the highest standards of personal integrity, this practice as a whole, like the placement of the Grievance Staff in HR, perpetuates at least the perception of bias in favor of Department management. Ideally, grievance panels should be composed of distinguished jurists and/or labor relations experts with no direct links to State HR (in most other systems, HR experts are available to the board in an advisory capacity, but do not sit as voting members). Each panel should include an AFSA representative, specifically charged with ensuring that the rights of the grievant are respected throughout the process.

5. Expeditiousness: Shorten procedural timelines, and institute a fast-track procedure for time-urgent cases

US Gun Control, a non British British issue

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

18 Apr 2012. Last night the gun lobby defeated even the least intrusive of the measures US President Obama sought to enact into law in the wake of a tsunami of gun violence. I regret that nothing could get past the gun lobby but I am not surprised.  

Here in the UK the British of all political persuasions watch with slack jawed horror and utter disbelief.  I have been hard pressed to explain it.  

To control or not to control 

I myself did not favour gun control per se. I favoured reasonable time, place, manner of storage and discharge of ammunition.  

But it is clear now that even my different approach would itself be a non starter. Even were the gun lobby to entertain any control legislation from any President they clearly aren’t going to do so from President Obama. It’s personal. 

I did not favour gun control per se because 1) I knew it had no chance and 2) I, unlike many who support gun control, am uncomfortable with the argument the second amendment was only ever intended to provide for a militia for the common defence in a time before a strong national military.  It is an appeal for a liberal cause to a conservative principle of interpretation with which I have heartburn. 

The principle of interpretation is important 

It may be historically true that the framers were only thinking of their circumstances at the time, but for a good 150 years the Constitution has been interpreted by the preponderance of distinguished jurists in light of the mores of their time not the framer’s time. The law is said to be “living” not static. In the past 50 or so years a competing principle of interpretation arose as conservatives sought to limit “social engineering” and “activist” judges who allegedly “make” the law instead of interpreting it.  Proponents of original intent argue the Constitution should be interpreted in line with what the framers were thinking at the time in the absence of more recent amendment.  

I am a living law kind of guy. But I am also a stare decisis kind of guy. I  think you can’t have your judicial interpretation cake and eat it too. If I apply original intent to the second amendment to limit its weight to providing a militia for the common defence I feel compelled to apply it to “cruel and unusual punishment.” Visa versa, if I apply living law to “cruel and unusual” punishment I think I must do so with the second amendment. Whatever the historical original intent the second amendment has come to protect private ownership of guns.  

Channeling My Father for Easter

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

30 March 2013. Lytham St Annes, Lancashire.

Easter was one of my two favourite days once upon a very long time ago in a place now 7,500 miles far, far away.  Contemplating Easter as it approaches, I can hear my father turning cartwheels in my head, but not in a good way. He's not happy. Not happy at all. 

Easter

Easter Sunday churches across the United Kingdom and the United States heave with families feeling their way around a sometimes unaccustomed environment. Young women in fine hats join the regulars, the older women wearing Lavender. Men sport polished shoes & pressed suits, stretching necks discomforted by the tightness of neckties last worn Christmas service.  The old regulars wear no tie at all. Both the regulars and the Christmas and Easter crowd eye each other maybe with just a little judgment (kept to themselves of course).

The faithful gather in plain wooden structures or in remarkable, richly adorned palaces called Cathedrals. They sway, singing the old hymns, performing the old, corporate rituals. Some smile those utterly vacuous, vacant smiles which more accurately imitate a drug ecstasy than a religious experience. Some plumb the depth of Easter's meaning with earnest contemplation. All churches smell of abundant flowers & orris root perfume. The social halls echo to the sounds of children eagerly anticipating Easter egg hunts & Chocolate bunnies.

All is joy & warm fuzzies ... except ...

... except for the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable, the widow, the “demobbed” (newly separated) soldier, the debtor, the redundant (laid off), the homeless, the mother without a husband and the children who would be without any food this Easter but for overworked food banks.  These languish willfully unseen by officialdom, disconsolate and feeling abandoned by their neighbours, many of whom, this Easter, stuff the pews. 

A host of draconian new measures go into affect in the United Kingdom the day after Easter. In the past benefits recipients were relieved from Council tax (a local property tax paid by the resident not necessarily the owner). Not as of April 1. As of April 1 they will also pay a penalty if they have a "spare" room, dubbed the bedroom tax. While inflation rises their grants are now capped below inflation. They are forced to accept any work that presents itself including without further compensation or suffer draconian sanctions. 680,000 thus far have been. The list goes on and on of the changes to welfare that grow the food banks, children on the streets, suicides and hate crimes against the disabled, but not the promised way out of "the welfare trap" to almost any.

Legal Reasoning Must Not Be Secret

By Patricia Lee Sharpe and Patricia H. Kushlis

CNN reports that “the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning will receive a classified document that seeks to justify the administration's policy of targeting Americans overseas via drone attacks.”   Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein seems to be satisfied.  We are not. We can see no justification for classifying such a document.

If the Obama administration and its successors are to be given the right to assassinate Americans abroad,  we must know the legal reasoning so that we the people may judge whether such actions can be  justified under U.S. and international law and so that the perpetrators themselves may be prosecuted if and when they overstep or misapply their authority.  Of course, such jeopardy may be what the Obama administration is deeply afraid of.  Although we are not convinced that the U.S. Constitution can be twisted to allow execution without trial,  we cannot see how any such actions can ever be immune from independent judicial review.  As others have noted, neither the use of lethal force by ordinary American troops nor by police confronting violence at home is beyond the reach of judicial review.  In matters of life and death transparency and accountability are essential.

Even assuming we might be persuaded that assassination is constitutional and might sometimes be the best course of action, we and many others believe that the U.S. public deserves to know, in detail, ahead of time, how those targeted for assassination will be selected. The criteria must be public.  For one thing, to keep these criteria secret is to put countless angry Americans in jeopardy.  A legally defensible definition of terms like “imminent danger” is in order lest  Americans traveling or resident abroad be unable to speak out honestly when they are critical of the U.S.  This is a freedom upon which we Americans have always prided ourselves. Others have admired us for our candor.  They have envied our freedom.   Clear definitions of what crimes are to be punished by instant, silent, arbitrary death are absolutely essential, lest innocent people find themselves in the cross-hairs of distant drone pilots. We’ve all said stupid, violent, angry things.  Many of us have allied ourselves briefly with foolish causes.  Are we all to be assassinated?

Some might object that understandable definitions will make it possible for villains to go on spreading poison.  Since when are Americans punished for words rather than deeds?  This is a very dangerous trajectory, and its venomous results are already being felt at home in the use of manipulative entrapment targeting justifiably angry young Muslims and the compiling of don’t-fly lists which impede people’s freedom of movement without giving them expeditious access to possibly wrongly applied criteria. We might note that  Ezra Pound, whose critique of U.S. capitalism was vicious in the extreme,  was spared the death penalty after cooperating with the Axis during World War II, and the U.S. was stronger for it. 

Others will object that targets with knowledge of the criteria may change their habits, modify their pronouncements, and thus live to rant another day.  That surely would be a good thing.  The goal, we would have thought, was to prevent violent acts.   

We understand that the details of any properly justified operation must always be held closely.  The publication of relevant legal doctrines, however,  will not endanger any actual operation or any U.S. agent who acts within the bounds of the law.  

Resolved: Down with Teddy Bears—and Flowers and Candlelight Vigils; Up with Good Gun Laws

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Teddy bears are sweet.  Flowers are always lovely.  Candlelight processions look good on TV news shows.  But all of them are worthless, folks, except to give survivors and observers a quick and easy feel-good experience. In short, all these photogenic gestures are a sentimental evasion of the real responsibility, a long overdue responsibility: forcing the U.S. Congress to pass the kind of gun regulations Australia passed after a mass murder some years ago. ( FYI: hunters still have access to guns Down Under, but the murder—and suicide—rate has plunged.)

Eventually the pile of teddy bears, wilting flowers and half-burnt candles is nothing but a heap of trash waiting for a garbage truck—but not, all too often, as in Newtown, before it becomes a place of pilgrimage aka gawkers’ delight, inviting more useless sentimentality.

So here’s my wish for our collective New Year.  Let’s really honor those dead children.   Let’s not continue to let ourselves be brainwashed, manipulated, bamboozled, misled, distracted, lied to, sweet-talked, bribed or blackmailed by the gun-producers’ front known as the National Rifle Association. 

And let's not forget the form of vote-stealing that is better known as vote-buying. Mere votes and ballots mean little when the NRA showers millions to counteract them.  We must do something about this, too.  It’s called organizing to defeat Representatives and Senators who let the NRA call the shots—so to speak.

This effort has to be a strong national campaign resulting in a law that holds for the whole country uniformly.  Why?  It’s too easy for the NRA and the arms industry to blackmail individual state legislatures into non-action.  In fact, post-Newtown, the blackmail is already being applied in Connecticut.  Imagine!  At the first sign of popular pressure to enact strict gun laws, the state-based weapons manufacturers threatened to punish the very state in which the massacre of the innocents occurred.  The pressure is on in other states and cities, too.  Regulate us?  Ha!  How many jobs do you want to lose?  How much tax base?  And for sure we’ll defeat any legislator who votes for the least infringement of our right to produce as many guns as we want and sell them to anyone anytime.  Is this shocking or what?    
 
Also deployed, over the years, have been some other, all-too-effective indirect ways of preventing sensible gun control. Above all, the arms industry masquerading as the National Rife Association hides behind the Constitution, flagrantly misrepresenting it in order to keep the camouflage-providing, more naive members on board.  Most everyone knows about the abuse of the archaic Second Amendment.  But there are other ways of manipulating people’s imperfect understanding the Constitution.

In a recent instance, the NRA managed to corral a treaty-killing majority of senators into signifying that they would to refuse to ratify an international treaty on arms-dealing.  In this case, as often, the specious argument (meaning lie) was that the treaty would impinge on U.S. sovereignty by overriding U.S. gun laws.  That, in fact, can’t happen.  Treaties, by law, never supercede U.S. law.  But all it takes is a little fear-mongering (“They’re going to take away your guns—and your freedom!”) and the oh-so-patriotic American  gun industry can continue to profit mightily (pardon the pun)  by putting lethal force into the hands of terrorists, oddball militias, private armies and other swarms of thieves, murderers and rapists in every lawless area of the globe—some of whom will eventually have to be put down by U.S. troops.  Not bad!  The arms-dealers get to profit from both sides!

And now they’re trying the same double-dipping at home.  Hey!  It won’t matter that every angry crazy guy in America has a semi-automatic (or two or three) plus more handguns than he has pockets for —if everyone else is armed to the teeth, too.

Wow!  These guys and their NRA front men are brilliant con artists—and the latest "helpful" proposal is one of the best yet.  The government should mandate armed guards in all schools, plus all teachers and principals should be armed—and Congress should pay for it!!!!  Glock-a-bye baby!  The new lullaby. 

I’d suggest an amendment to that bill.  Any law mandating armed guards to protect against mass killings in schools or any other public venue should include the mandatory collection of a hefty tax to pay the salaries of those gun toters.  The tax should also bring in enough revenue to pay for the victims’ hospital or burial costs—and, yes, it should top up the salaries of first responders.  And, come to think of it, how about a provision to assuage, financially, the mental anguish on the part of survivors?  So Congress, if the NRA toadies among you think that armed guards and teachers are the solution to the proliferation of slaughter in the U.S., add a big fat sales tax to the bill.  Add 25% to the cost of every weapon purchased in the U.S. (and, to take care of the loophole problem, a 25% tariff on imported guns, too).

Better yet, let’s outlaw the sale of semi-automatics (all of them, now, without loopholes), then allocate federal money to mop up such privately-held weapons (at cost plus 10%, as the Aussies did) within three months or so.  (So much for the gruesome gun-ghouls who went on a gun-buying binge after Newtown!)  Let’s institute purchase or transfer registration that applies to everyone all the time (including freebie gifts to relatives and friends) for all weapons that remain legal.  And let’s also tell the gun industry that the Pentagon won’t buy guns from companies that move off shore.

Or something like that.  I’m not about to write the legislation.  Senator Diane Feinstein can do it— and hopefully she’ll produce a stronger bill this time around.  VP Joe Biden will support it, for sure.   The big question is whether our ever-compromising president has the courage to campaign for and sign such a bill. 

Meanwhile, given the great power of ridicule,  we should start making fun of the NRA, its absurd scare campaigns, its weird notions of sportsmanship, its twisted notions of patriotism. 

How many people should die—murdered or as suicides—so some guys can shoot a lot of clay pigeons without going through the boredom of reloading? 

Is it really sport if the deer or elk hasn’t a chance to get away?

And remember this: the NRA wants us to play with teddy bears.  The NRA loves votive candles.  The gun industry is all in favor of flowers.  What they don’t want is sane, effective gun control.

 

Newtown, Aurora, Columbine, Virginia Tech: Enough is enough

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Update, December 21.  Here's the NRA's answer:  volunteer armed guards from the ranks of retirees and veterans for schools trained, of course, by none other than the NRA. Meanwhile, blame the video gaming companies and the media for creating the problem. Naturally, readily available  assault weapons have nothing to do with it:  read it yourself. 

How many hunters live in the U.S.?  How many of them use semi-automatics in their pursuit of four legged creatures and dinosaur descendants?  Is a hunt for wild game in overkill mode to remain protected by a 200 plus year old amendment to the US Constitution which in reality pertains to citizen militias which have gone the way of the dodo replaced years ago by state National Guards, police and sheriff departments and even their eyes and ears – private security companies and unarmed neighborhood watches?

Do the gun-afflicted really think that they could fend off the federal government’s Special Forces with their home grown firepower if push came to shove to protect their castle er home from a government they’ve been encouraged to hate by fearmongering radio announcers?  Remember how long Osama Bin Laden lasted – once he’d been found and targeted in Abbottabad.  Wasn’t it about half an hour?  His compound had high walls and a security guard and the CIA didn’t even use weaponized drones in that pursuit.

Or what about that unwanted intruder?  Chances are those home arsenals are far more likely to be turned against a family member.  Most murders are related to domestic disputes. That’s certainly what statistics show.   

I never thought a lethal minority of about 4 million people (the number of NRA members) out of a country of 315 million or less than .013 percent of the population should be able to hold the other 99.9 percent hostage essentially enabling murderers and would be murderers in the name of what did you say?  But that’s what the New York Times  reported from Newtown even after last Friday’s tragedy there although others are trying to get a grip on the tragedy so it doesn't happen again.

Follow the money

The right to bear arms - is that it? Or maybe the real culprits are far fewer than the 4 million – maybe they are simply a tiny but wealthy and powerful lobby closely tied to the right wing - like Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, Texas’ own Rick Perry and most importantly the various gun manufacturers and their backers which have become filthy rich at the expense of little children and their distraught families.

But then why do private equity and hedge fund firms like Cerberus Capital Management’s Freedom Group plow capital into these companies anyway – return on excess cash to make more cash?  Worse, why is the California State Teachers’ Association Retirement System (Cal-STRS) a major investor? Seems to me this non-profit could and should invest in cleaner funds rather than participate in enabling the madness too - it doesn't need just to study it to death. 

And why does Walmart sell these serial killer guns in as many as 1,700 stores nationwide in urban areas including the one where I live.

The Second Amendment

 Let’s not quibble with the Second Amendment’s words.  They read:  “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  Read it again.  Carefully this time.  Consider the context of the clause “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” because that has all to do with the maintenance of a “well- regulated Militia” necessary for the security of a “free State.”  It doesn’t mean a well-funded, finely tuned gun industry with all too many right wing and a few other members of Congress, the Supreme Court and state legislatures in its thrall. 

Please.  Get it right for a change.

Guns kill people and the greater the gun’s firepower the more people a single gunman – or woman – can kill.   If Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy had been an archery aficionado, for instance, not a semi-automatic weapons freak the likelihood of her son’s murdering more than a couple of people if that with her bows and arrows before being stopped would have been infinitesimal.  Moreover, it’s highly unlikely Lanza would have been able to turn that bow-and-arrow around to use on himself regardless of his mental state.

Other industrialized countries have gotten their murder rates and serial killers under control.  Look at Japan, Australia, the UK and much of the rest of Europe.  Well placed and enforced laws made all the difference in protecting the many from the few.  Doesn’t mean, however, that they don’t have problem citizens with mental disorders. Dealing effectively with these troubled people is another part of the complicated equation this country needs to address but it’s no excuse for lack of gun control.

A Fight Back against the War on Welfare for Christmas

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

Update:  At its 8 PM virtual meeting on Twitter and Facebook WOWpetition named comedienne Franchesca Martinez as their spokesperson. Franchesca, an outspoken and nationally known entertainer has already made plain to everyone across the country where she stands on the issue of the government's War on Welfare.

18 Dec 2012.  A poignant conversation took me by surprise late last night. It was one of those mind focusing moments of unexpected intimacy with a stranger and his unremitting grief. The stranger lost his dear wife two years ago to long term illness.  She was only 44.  

Poignant under any circumstances, it was made the worse by an event become all too common place in today’s “United” Kingdom.  ATOS -- a contractor used by both the current Conservative and the preceding Labour governments -- had found the stranger’s wife “fit for work” just 2 months prior to her death.   

All too common 

ATOS has done the same to many women and men who previously had been considered too disabled or ill to work.  The grim statistics-- and stories-- are easy to find.  Advocacy organizations keep and publish them.  Both BBC’s Panorama and Channel 4’s Dispatches broadcast exposes of ATOS. I’ve heard many anecdotes from strangers. But I also know -- and seen the paperwork-- concerning people close to me. 

Although the stranger’s experience took place in 2010, the current Conservative government takes it all to a new level. Its “Welfare Reform” coerces the disabled to work -- without proper medical exam to determine what they can do within the limits of their disability without exacerbating it.  It coerces them to work without proper determination of what resources, support (including carer) or accommodations the disabled need in order to do the job within the limits of the disability.   It coerces them to work without assessment as to their suitability to the task or the working environment.  The government coerces the disabled with substantial sanctions to their weekly benefits if they fail to cooperate with work placement activities, including placement into unpaid manual labour. 

Sham procedure 

The government likes to characterize their procedure as a medical exam. In fact it is a computer checklist with pre-determined standards. Those who complete the check list may have degrees and experience but they have no discretion. They examine no records. They may not consider the recommendations of treating physicians.  To call it a medical exam is like calling one who microwaves MacDonalds’ hamburgers a chef.  The standards are such that the ability to sit upright for a brief period is considered sufficient to require finding someone “fit for work.”   

By contrast, US Social Security tries to determine what someone can and cannot safely do under what circumstances with what kinds of support or accommodation.  They make the determination based on medical records, recommendations of treating physicians and independent medical examination.   

Unrealistic and demeaning

Welfare Reform pushes the disabled into a job market where scores of persons not diagnosed as disabled-- including many young college graduates and persons with solid track records of previous employment-- compete unsuccessfully for the scarce job vacancies.  It does this without calculation of the reasonable probability of success either at the job or at building what is often a temporary placement into permanent work. Indeed, the current government declares such considerations irrelevant. What’s important, according to the current government, is that the “work shy” be “helped” to see work as the thing to do. 

Welfare Reform comes wrapped in demeaning rhetoric.   It isn’t just the frothing-at-the-mouth “know nothing” who is “not prejudiced, but ...” who uses terms like “Scrounger,” “work shy” or “blinds drawn” or the tabloid press.  Government Ministers regularly use them, including no less than the Chancellor.  Neither Welfare Reform, its proponents, the Department of Work and Pensions or Ministers exhibit any appreciation for the distress they cause or its real life consequences to health & indeed life.    

By fear or favour once more let down

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

30 November 2012.  Yesterday Judge Leveson delivered his long awaited report into Media ethics.  

It was hardly the storming of the Bastille.

The Judge seemed to some to lean over backwards to shield the police, Ministers and the Prime Minister from criticism over their conduct.  

But Prime Minister David Cameron and the majority of his Conservative Party MP’s rejected even Judge Leveson’s muted and temperate central recommendation even despite the fact this was the 8th time in 70 years press behaviour had necessitated such an inquiry.   

Lord Justice Leveson recommended a statute which would 1) enshrine the principle of free speech, and 2) require the Press to establish an Independent Press Commission to watchdog Press behaviour. The Commission would be independent of government and politicians, and be composed of distinguished people drawn from outside the active Press.   

Both in the report's thrust and in his carefully chosen words at yesterday’s press conference, Judge Leveson focused on bad behaviour -- not the content of speech. He additionally stressed the point that no one -- no one -- spoke for him as to what he “really” meant, thereby underlining the care, temperance and caution he brought to the report.  He was, it seems to me, remarkably temperate, considered and narrowly focused on a narrow reform.  As Alastair Campbell remarked, one could characterize the Judge as pulling his punches. But one can not -- by the wildest stretches of imagination -- call his proposal partisan, personal, recriminatory, repressivly aimed at the content of speech or free speech in the public interest.  

But it was all too much for the Prime Minister.

Or was that the heat in the political kitchen? Was it principle or lost nerve?  Or maybe political advantage? Did the Prime Minister calculate his best hope to salvage a respectable (if losing) finish for his party at the next general election was for him to be the one who sucked up to the Press Barons?  Certainly, election strategy looms larger by the day.   

Whatever motivated the Prime Minister, his decision triggered a political firestorm. 

The faces of the firestorm are the unhappy ones of the Dowler family and celebrities Hugh Grant, Stephen Fry, and Charlotte Church. But the outraged and disappointed victims of press misconduct are not alone. This firestorm may yet escalate into the equally long awaited “last straw” between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.   

Liberal Democratic Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg took a step without precedent in response. Clegg spoke separately from the Prime Minister and against the Prime Minister’s position.

Conservatives met Clegg’s decision with outrage, some calling for his resignation. 

Maybe, as some perhaps jaded commentators opined, they will patch this up, too. After all, it is their sacred jobs and power at stake.  On the other hand, it just maybe this is the affair that breaks up the always bad marriage between the two parties. 

What are the relative prospects for the two parties?  

Three Parliamentary by-elections took place the same day as Judge Leveson announced his report.  They were utter disasters for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Both finished behind euro-skeptic rival UKIP, itself perhaps a significant change in political winds. But worse, Conservatives finished behind UKIP, the British National Party and the Respect Party in one district. The Liberal Democrats lost deposits in 2 districts so poor was their showing. In one Liberal Democrats finished 8th, behind the, ahem, erm, how shall I describe them (?) ... oh, the “other” parties.   

But these three by-elections cannot be considered bell weathers.  They were all Labour strong holds. It is interesting how badly the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats did. It is interesting how well UKIP did. But the results are probably not solid indicators of a blood bath to come, although some will dream. 

On the other hand, the Prime Minister’s response to the Leveson report came only in the late afternoon. One must wonder just how bad the results would have been had the Prime Minister’s reaction been known the day prior.  At least one poll conducted in the pre-release build up to the report suggested that as much as 80% of the country wanted some form of statutory regulation of the Press.

It ain't over yet.

In the weeks ahead the Coalition government will draw up a bill that allegedly does what Leveson recommends. But Ministers "are confident" it will illustrate why the idea won't work.  So, that would be a bill sabotaged in the writing by its opponents, then? A lot of credibility that will carry.  

I will not rehash here the arguments concerning whether or not these proposals would actually impinge on freedom of speech or the press in any way inconsistent with democratic tradition.  Whatever those arguments, whatever the future regulatory and political consequences of this moment, one thing appears crystal clear in this writer's honest opinion. When the chips are down, the Conservative Party stands for neither stabilizing conservative principle nor acceptance of the democratic will if principle or democratic will threaten the special privileges of the entrenched special interests. 

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