The Travesty of John Franco

Amidst all of the discussion of the election of Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar to the Hall of Fame, both quite deserved, and Barry Larkin’s rise to the next-in-line, and Mark McGwire’s slow descent into Hall of Fame irrelevance, one big story is going and will go somewhat overlooked, for the same reason that it came to pass: John Franco got just 4.6% of the vote, and will be dropped from the ballot after only one time on it. This is a travesty. I will now make that case in depth and using statistical analysis.

I have compared John Franco to the five relief pitchers in the Hall of Fame already, plus two others who are certain to get in as soon as they hang up their spikes and two others who I think are at least deserving of being in the same category. In total: Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Dennis Eckersly, Bruce Sutter, Lee Smith, Trevor Hoffman, Mariano Rivera, and Billy Wagner. These are, I think, the relief pitchers who have so far managed to justify their inclusion in the Hall of Fame discussion. The stats that I used to compare them are ERA, adjusted ERA, games, games finished, saves, WHIP, hits, home runs, walks, and strikeouts per nine innings pitched, strikeouts per walk, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage against, inherited runner scoring percentage, average leverage index, outs per game in relief, and save percentage, as well as seasons with over 20, over 30, and over 40 saves or leading their league in saves.

The Problem With Antonin Scalia

Mr. Injustice Scalia recently, and notoriously, commented that in his opinion women are not entitled to equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The argument, such as it is, runs thusly: the framers of that Amendment in 1868 did not consider women people within the scope of that phrase; therefore it does not include them. This attitude has clued me in to the problem with Antonin Scalia.

In my introductory Constitutional Law class, we were told, and/or we decided, that there are five proper sources of interpretation in constitutional law: text, structure, original intent, precedent, and policy. And these five sources are ordered. The idea is, you look to the text; if the text isn't conclusive, you look to structure and relationship; if the structure doesn't clear things up, you check on the original intent; if the original intent is murky, you look at subsequent precedent and interpretations; and if there are no compelling precedents, then at this point you take crude policy considerations into account.

But consider Scalia's argument: the text of the Equal Protection Clause says that "No state shall...deny to any person the equal protection of the laws." Women are human beings, and therefore typically considered people. So the clear text seems to say that women get equal protection just as much as anyone else. And if that weren't enough, it's also clear that the document knows how to discriminate against women when it wants: a later section of the very same Amendment only penalized states for disenfranchising men, explicitly allowing them to disenfranchise women. Indeed, the suffragists objected to that bit. So text is clear, and structure is clear.

But Scalia says, wait! The people who framed this amendment were a bunch of sexist prigs, so despite the fact that the text of the Amendment which is in the U.S. Constitution clearly seems to prohibit denial of equal protection to women, we must bow to their (supposed) sexism. He is placing original intent above the text of the Constitution. He's got the order wrong. Perhaps the Reconstruction Congress did think women weren't worthy of equal protection, but they still enacted a law, an Amendment, saying that they would receive equal protection. To use original intent as a guide to interpreting the open-ended parts of the document is one thing; to claim that original intent should take precedence over subsequent precedent is one thing; but to claim that original intent trumps the clear text of the document is entirely another. It is to destroy the written character of the Constitution: the whole point is that nothing trumps the clear text of the document. You can't plead sloppy lawmaking, if meaning to enact Law X you instead enact Law Y. If you then realize your mistake and have the votes to repeal your error, fine, go ahead, but don't claim that black is white because you meant to paint the room white instead.

Consensus, Elections, and the Filibuster

Senator Lamar Alexander complains that the Democrats want to remove the incentive to craft a consensus by removing the filibuster. He complains that the health-care bill was just a Democratic bill, not a consensus, bipartisan bill like the Civil Rights Act. With all due respect to Senator Alexander, he is trying to pervert the natural course of democracy, and shut the electorate out of the decisions. And he has the thing about consensus just plain backwards.

Things That Make Me Laugh

Mitch McConnell claiming that he's been consistently against an expansion of the filibuster into untraditional territory. Yeah. Because filibusters of things that pass 96-0 are sooooo traditional. Turning the Senate into a 60-vote body is soooooo traditional. And oh, you opposed expanding filibusters to judicial nominations, do you? So your Republican minority wouldn't have filibustered any of Obama's judicial nominees, would it? Oh wait...

Thoughts on the Filibuster

For some odd reason, C-SPAN 2 is showing Lamar Alexander's speech and subsequent presentation to the Heritage foundation about how horrible the filibuster reforms are planned. Several thoughts:

1) These people are idiots. They keep talking about how the proposed reforms will cut off any opportunity for open debate. Uh, no. The proposal is to make the people who refuse to vote to close debate to, you know, actually talk, i.e. debate. The point is to bring back the talking filibuster, to restore the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-esque nature of the thing.

2) The presentation was full of Democrats talking about how good the filibuster was back in the old days, as if to prove that their current position is a pure power grab. A few points: Tom Harkin at least wanted to reform the filibuster in 1995. Many of the current freshmen Senators taking the lead never made such speeches in favor of filibusters. And as for the rest of them, well, it was a different world back in 2006. The practice of filibusters of things that pass 96-0 had not begun. Really, the practice of every single person who will vote against a bill also vote against cloture had not begun. Things passed 53-47 in that last Republican-held Congress. That never ever happens in this Congress. And just as Chris Dodd pointed out that many freshmen Democrats have never served in the minority, well, in 2006 most Democratic Senators had never served in the majority. They had never experienced the frustration of having a 59-seat majority and being unable to get one's own agenda through. When the facts changed, they changed their opinions: what do you do, Republicans?

3) During the 2005-06 Senate, there were 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats, and the 45 Democrats represented more people than the 55 Republicans. Given that the Senate is undemocratic itself, I can see an argument that when the "minority" represents 51% of the people and the "majority" represents 49% the principles of democracy would make it a nice thing if the "minority" could manage to do some amount of obstruction. In the 111th Congress, the 59 Democrats represented something akin to 65% of the people, who were being obstructed by about half as much of the populace's representatives. That changes the dynamic in the short-term, though it doesn't change whether filibusters themselves are a good thing or not.

4) It is entirely possible that those 2006 Democrats were wrong. After all, everyone like Senator Alexander made identical speeches denouncing the filibuster and calling for up-and-down votes in 2006. (And what the Republicans proposed in 2005 was to simply blow up filibusters of judicial nominees in mid-session, something which is more radical than the Democratic proposal of 2011.) Sen. Alexander is now claiming that he, or at least many of his colleagues from back then, were wrong, and that the Democrats were right! Maybe the Democrats were wrong then, and have subsequently realized the error of their ways. Or maybe they were just pandering to the temporary partisan institutional incentives of the moment, as Republicans were doing the last two years. Are Democrats doing the same now? Well, given that they can't pass any legislation without Mr. Boehner's consent for two years, those incentives are pretty weak right now, extending only, really, to nominations. But maybe they are, maybe they think they'll keep the Senate in 2012 and be able to pass more legislation then. Regardless, they are currently, for whatever reasons no matter how craven, on the right side of the issue: a supermajority requirement for ordinary legislation is undemocratic. The Democrats propose to weaken that supermajority requirement. They are in the right here, no matter how wrong they were in the past.

Abortion, the Overlapping Consensus, and Good Faith

This is a thought I had after reading Ross Douthat's article about abortion in America, in which he doesn't so much advocate anything as try to argue that abortion is sort of a big deal, in that it happens a lot, and that this is a problem. I've had a similar thought before, but I happen to be in a mood to write it up right now, so here goes.

John Rawls has, among his manifold ideas, the idea of the overlapping consensus. This relates to his idea of "comprehensive doctrines," which are an individual's set of personal ideologies, beliefs, dogmas, theologies, etc. The overlapping consensus is the stuff that approximately all reasonable comprehensive doctrines in a society can basically agree upon, and often includes things like, say, a commitment to democracy, or to freedom of expression rights, or whatever (at least that's how it's supposed to work). I always found his idea that there will typically be an overlapping consensus large enough to build a government on somewhat overly optimistic, but that's not exactly my point here.

Consider the two "camps" on the issue of abortion: the right, the pro-life faction, argues that unborn infants are human beings just like the rest of us and are therefore deserving of complete protection against being, you know, killed, while the left, the pro-choice faction, argues that decisions as to pregnancy between a woman and her doctor are a private matter upon which the government cannot intrude. It sounds like there's nothing those two can agree upon, right?

The 2012 Mets

Lineup:
SS   Jose Reyes
CF   Angel Pagan
3B   David Wright
1B   Ike Davis
LF   Jason Bay
RF   Someone?
C     Josh Thole
2B   Ruben Tejada

Rotation:
LHP   Johan Santana
RHP   Mike Pelfrey
LHP   Jon Niese
RHP   Jenrry Mejia
RHP   R.A. Dickey

Is there a problem with this team? If so, what is it? Yes, saying this team would be good is dependent on these players' continuing to look like they're all pretty good, like Reyes showing he can get back to being his old self and Pagan/Davis/Thole/Tejada/Pelfrey/Niese/Mejia/Dickey continuing to develop well. Whether that seems to be happening will develop this year. But I don't think this is a team that would be second-division status. The problem with this year's team is, basically, that essentially no one on the team is devoid of question-marks: they're all either developing young players or coming off of injuries, or both. Also, we still have Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo on the payroll, and we don't yet really have a fourth starter for Opening Day. But if the question-marks turn out to be false alarms, this team could could easily contend in 2012.

Why, then, would we trade the lynchpin of the team for prospects/rebuilding? We don't need to rebuild. We need to heal. This Mets team will heal rather naturally: we have a lot of big names and big talents on the team, and we have several more who will be developing better and better over the next few years.

And of course, if Beltran is still good and we get a few surprises in the rotation, we just might contend (for the wild card, at least!) in 2011.