The Hokey-Pokey?

The Armed Liberal (yes, I know that some of my readers will find that to be an oxymoron) has a long (but not padded) post on a new liberalism.

It's interesting to think about.  He includes a few thoughts, though, that makes me think that his "new liberalism" is going to look quite a bit like the current conservatism mixed with some fin du siecle populism.

He finds the defining criterion calling for a new liberalism

But I think we can take as a given that the informal (i.e., non-governmental) structures have yielded much of their role to government.
I don't think that necessarily a good thing, but I take it as a fact.

I would say it is a natural consequence of the enlargement of entitlements.  If the government is going to take (by way of example) 10% of your income and give to the "poor" (disregarding for the moment whether they should or should not get it, in your opinion), why should you give an additional 10% of your income -- or your time -- to aiding them?

Armed (I don't have to call you Mr. Liberal, do I?) also says

It is my personal observation that people’s attitudes toward government are in part ideological, in part driven by bad experiences with ineffective or actively hostile agents of government, and in biggest part a simple sense of old-fashioned Yankee search for value for the buck.

The second probably leads to the first, and not merely in a purely reactive sense.  As a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, he may also be a liberal who's had to deal with the DMV (a libertarian is a liberal who believes that people hired by the DMV inevitably come to act like that).

The biggest consideration, I think, and one that Armed seems not consider at all, is the quality of the people served.  Libertarians often claim that the increasing alienation of people from politics, electoral and non-electoral, is an indication of their increasing libertarianism.  I think otherwise; I think that they're people who don't want to get off of the couch and miss an episode of Friends, and would rather have public affairs handled by a professional political class than do so (substitute the name of any field of endeavor who for wish for "political" to get a feel for the grand scheme of life).  This, I think, is in turn caused by the increasing centralization and (although I dislike the term, I don't have another one on tap) political correctness of government.  If the decision of who to give charity to is made in far-away Washington, if it is made solely on the basis of who doesn't have money, instead of why he doesn't have money, or whether she should have money, why bother going to the expense and difficulty of getting into the decision-making process at all?  Some gray, faceless bureaucrat can do that better than I -- he might even like doing so -- and I don't have to miss Friends (the bureaucrat, of course, doesn't watch Friends -- he watches The West Wing).

A distinction is made in physics between those processes which do not result in a net increase in entropy, and are therefore theoretically reversible -- a particle following a closed trajectory, say -- and those which increase entropy, and there are not reversible -- such as scrambling an egg.  I greatly fear that handing over tasks to the government is a process of the latter sort.

Oh the felinity!

Nezumi-chan had a rude awakening this morning.  The neighbors have a cat.

I don't know if this is a recently-acquired cat, or an indoor cat that got loose for the first time today.  But it was outside -- on our terrace, in fact -- and the neighbors were calling it:  "Here, Jackie!  Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!"

This sent Nezumi-chan into high alert status.  A cat?  In her yard?  A filthy, disgusting, smelly, disease-ridden, fleabag of a cat?  (Nezumi-chan, of course, is not a cat; she's a little person with fur.)

She was so upset that she threw up.  Since we hadn't fed her yet, it was all water.  Still, the sound of a cat puking is not the first thing that I want to hear in the morning.

A little while ago, she came into the study, belched, licked her chops, and went into her carrier for a nap.  The food has apparently been protected from the Evil Neighbor Cat by the simple expedient of eating it.

Is it true? Is it fair? Is it workable?

A correspondent writes to a mailing list that I am on

Help me out here, because I'm having a hard time believing this. Did the
president of the United States of America just publicly sign an executive
order authorising operations to topple by violent methods, including
kidnapping or assasination the head of a foriegn state?

Actually, he didn't authorize outright assassination, although anyone with enough brains to get into Iraq should be able to exploit the loopholes in that order.

Some of the replies, of course, just showed what idiots the people making them are.

I'm as shocked as you are, <name omitted>. I guess this is where the whole world pays
for George the Younger to restore the reputation of George the Elder. Yet
more proof that Americans are an undeserving bunch on a fast-track to hell.

:-PPPPPPPPP

Not all of us voted for him.

Using assassination as a tool of revenge means that the President is
publicly declaring that he is lowering himself and the rest of the US to the
same level as the terrorists themselves

Others made comments slightly more palatable

On the season finale of The West Wing, President Bartlett orders an
assassination. Not of a head of state, but of a defense secretary of a
supposed US ally. This Defense Secretary has a rather clear cut set of
evidence marking him as the responsible party in several terrorist
attacks against the US cited in the TV show.

The very prohibition against assassination by the US that we're now
debating (like it or not) is debated in the show. The show essentially
lets the characters comes to the conclusion that this guy is funding
terrorists,  supporting them with fake IDs, training them, and providing
them with equipment and intel. The show is, remarkable one-sided about
it.

Now if they really wanted to tell a good story, they should let the
President find out that the intel was wrong, and it was someone else in
the supposed US ally country. Talk about your cool Presidential
scandals...

An even cooler scandal, IMNSHO, would be for Bartlett to ignore the evidence, let another attack occur, and then get on TV (overriding programming on all 4-6 networks (do UPN and WB count?)), and say, "Americans, you were so vocally disgusted at the thought of assassination that I forbade it.  Now we see the results.  You can demand another policy -- you can even blame for that one -- but remember that I did it as the servant of a democratic people, not as the ruler of a servile one.  Discuss among yourselves what happen now, and tell me -- but do not place the decision on my shoulders, assigning me all the blame if things go wrong, and taking all the credits for yourselves if things go right."  Of course, that would require that The West Wing be produced in a different universe from the one that we reside in.

A few made comments wholly in line with reality

I certainly fucking hope so.

The decades long executive order preventing such
things is an incredibly stupid piece of work.

The most often offered defense of that policy is
that if we declare open season on heads of state,
other organizations will then decide it's ok to
take shots at us.

Since I'm pretty sure those organizations will take
shots at us, regardless of our policy, it's just
retarded.

"But Saddam, we can't attack Bush.  They're not allowed
to attack you, after all".   Gimme a break.  You think
that happens?

Sure, I'd like the CIA to be clever, and maybe make it
look like some in-country Kurds knocked him off.  But I'm
not gonna lose any sleep over him eating a bullet, regardless
of the source.

And some offered some genuine tactical criticism -- not entirely correct, in my view, but showing that they're thinking about the matter

They haven't targeted government officials.
There the US and indeed any western government
have a structural weakness. Our governments
are composed of too many important people.

How many congressman, federal judges and
family members are there ?
Protecting a leader a few officials and their
families in a country where asking for the adress of
a government official will get you shot is vastly
easier.

In the long run an assasination match is a lost cause
for any western country.
Especially the US which doesn't even have
a national identity card and database. A country
where leaders regularly expose themselves to large crowds.

So I must conclude that Mr. Bush has just taken the
conflict into an area where he is weak. He should have
invaded.

I've got Gregor Ferguson's Coup d'Etat:  A Practical Manual (not really very practical, IMHO, but sitting next to Jim Dunnigan's Ho to Make War on my bookshelves, it's enough to give people serious doubts about my sanity).  Ferguson notes that the size and complexity of the American government (not just Federal, but state and local) give the flexibility necessary to survive coups and assassinations.

The above correspondent goes on to suggest that the large number of officials means, since all of them, let alone their families, cannot be protected, that several will become collaborators in a war of assassins to protect themselves and their loved ones.  Such an objection is not without merit, although the history of mob wars in this country suggests that this is by no means an inevitable consequence.

Money is power, too

From Alana Post, article of 06/15/2002 10:35 PM (permalinks not now working) comes this proof that girls are evil.

No comment.  At least none that wouldn't get me severely beaten.

Padilla and MiniSec

John J. Reilly has an interesting article on why the Padilla detention is more justifiable than the Lindh trial.

I disagree with his suggestion that naming the new homeland security bureaucracy the "Department of Public Safety" will give the cits the warm fuzzies whilst misleading the enemy, but then I may be a little more knowledgeable about the French Revolution than most people.

Genocide: the last hope of the left

Atrios of Eschaton (sounds niftily pseudo-classical, doesn't it?) is being silly again in writing

All this talk about Islamists, or whatever we're calling them this week, is quite interesting. It is only important to label and identify this groups if we are trying to understand just why it is they hate us.

Of course, Atrios is hoping for a "kill them all, God will know his own" reaction that will allow him to

1. be safe, and
2. allow him to whine about disproportionate response.

Unfortunately for his tender sensibilities, distinguishing Islamists from Muslims will allow us to make a non-leftist response against the guilty, rather than a good old-fasionable genocide a la Pol Pot.

Don't give up your hopes yet, though, Atrios.  Your blathering may yet move the discussion to the point where people see no difference between self-defense and genocide.

Essential and temporary

On a mailing list, a certain person attempted to shut off debate on what security measures were right and proper in the light of 11 September 2002 by quoting Ben Franklin, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."   I retorted, saying. "They that can give up essential safety to obtain a little temporary liberty deserve neither safety not liberty"  (That's not original with me, BTW.)

Too many self-proclaimed civil libertarians of the conservative and libertarian bents are, it seems to me, smugly using that Franklin quote as a presumed talisman against any change (liberals seem to want us all to forget that Franklin existed, and are hoping to attribute the origins of American liberty to John Reed).

Let's look at that quote.  Franklin spoke of essential liberty and temporary safety.  We can debate just what he had in mind, but the terms certainly suggest that he viewed some liberty as inessential, and some safety as permanent.  Indeed, the fact that he participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, anathema to many libertarians (who conveniently forget that, under the Articles of Confederation, America was not one libertarian republic, but an association of thirteen distinctly unlibertarian republics), suggests that he viewed the liberty provided by the Articles to the several states as too great for their safety.

There has actually some informed debate on what liberties are and are not essential, and what inessential (in the minds of the debaters) liberties can be safely traded for safety.  Far too many, though, are parroting Franklin (or Jefferson, or Reed, or Jones), leaving out that (in their views) matters were not satisfactory on 10 September 2001, but preferring to forego that in the hopes of demoting the discussion to how much praise or abuse Norman Mineta and Tom Ridge deserve, rather than raising it to level of debating essential liberty and safety (in some cases, because they hope to "fly under the radar" with unsound ideas.

As I have said before, just where we're going (and therefore what liberties and safeties are viewed to be essential) depend on what kind of polity we want to have.  The right hopes to return to the halcyon days before 11 September; the left wants to use the Islamofascist attacks as an excuse to loot the U.S.  Neither is a realistic vision of America's future; promoting their utopias will very likely mean that the U.S. will proceed in a direction that dismays both.

All one to me

Steven den Beste links to this article to illustrate how the term "war crime" is being devalued.

I'd give as my opinion that "war crime" is not the only such term.  Among others are "global warming", "feminism", and, of course, that perennial favorite, "fascism".

I'll also go further, and say that this is a deliberate attempt by hard leftists to try and recruit moderate numbers and opinions.  After all, you're surely against genocide, destruction of the exosphere, and oppression of women, right?  Then, sayeth the left, you must be against "war crimes", "global warming", and "fascism", and for "feminism"; which, they then proclaim, means that you must be against Israeli military action, industry, capitalistic democracy, and integrating women into society.  Let's excrete a press release showing how 70% of Americans agree with us, and claiming that any policy to the contrary must be due to the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Unfortunately, this denaturing of terms means the right can justify damned near anything in terms of moral equivalence.  If there's no difference between knocking down a house or committing genocide, between holding a woman to a contract and holding her as a sex slave, between the policies of Nelson Rockefeller and Adolf Hitler, then why not do whatever we perceive is in our (short-term) interest -- perhaps, kill a few tens of millions of Muslims -- and shrug off criticism by saying, "Hey, it's all the same thing".

Denaturing terms by way of using them as Orwellian duckspeak only works for the hard left as long as they are in control of the debate.  "Global warming" has already slipped out of their control; "feminism" constantly threatens to do so.  If "war crime" and "fascism" do, the results will not be pretty.  If Bush's approval ratings are in the 70-80% percent range, and he's a brutal fascist with no regard for human rights or lives, then presumably about three-quarters of voting-age Americans are brutal fascists.  And if we're brutal fascists...well, imagine a Nazi Germany or a People's Republic of China where the citizenry are not merely too scared to oppose the government, but are eager to help it carry out its policies.

Read the words of Chomsky, Fisk, Pilger, Moore, and their kind.  Now imagine a world where everything they say is true, and is justified by the persons beating them with rubber hoses saying, "Well, you said there was no difference between this and the way things really were in 2001..."

Will they say then that they were just kidding?  And why should we believe them?

Quote of the moment II

"[Y]ou know you're truly sick when you find yourself sleeping as much as your cat." -- Asparagirl

Entropy marches on

Wagimoko got up about 1330, as is her wont on weekends, and settled down for another day of TV watching.  Except that the TV wouldn't turn on.

That set is about twenty years old.  Whilst the lifetime of IC sets is a hell of a lot longer than the old tube sets (which, as I seem to recall my childhood, had a lifetime of about 20 hours between replacement of tubes), they do have a finite lifetime.

"It seems to me", I said, "that we've got three choices here:

1. Go out and buy a new TV
2. Get cable, and hook up the TV in the living room that I use about twice a year to watch videos on
3. Say 'Screw it'

"What do you want to do?"  ::shrug::

"OK, in the meantime, do you want to watch a film with me?"  No thanks; I'd rather fiddle with this set.  Watching videos means having to get up every hour or two to change tapes; this way, I can sit still until 1800 or so, when I have to start dinner.

After about fifteen minutes, wagimoko finally got the TV to turn on and hold a channel.  Watch this space to see if anything else happens.

Left and Right Wing News

I've added John Hawkins' Right Wing News to my blogroll as part of a link trade.  I've looked at his site; I don't agree with everything he posts, but then the same is true of Mac Thomason, the Libertarian Samizdatists, and (in less political things) Alana Post and Ginger Stampley.  Nonetheless, it should be read at least as a starting point of discussion.

To keep the balance, of course, I've also added Matt Welch <evil grin>.  Matt is, IMHO, the best and most careful of the liberal bloggers.  Not every word he writes is to be taken as gospel, but you'll have a hell of a time proving that it shouldn't.

Indian naval air power

Dan Hartung at Lake Effect picks up on my article on Indian interest in the Russian light carrier Admiral Gorshkov.  I'll endorse what he has to say, save for this

Even so, the lack of a mission means it's a begged question. India's greatest strategic concern, stand-down or not, remains Pakistan; and in that regard there is very little an aircraft carrier would do that their land-based forces cannot.

I would argue that Pakistan, as a strategic problem, is one that New Delhi believes in has an answer to (nor are they alone in so believing).  Indian armed forces are now capable of conquering Pakistan -- not just holding off Pakistan, or defeating it in a war, but of bringing about a scenario at the end of which India exists as a functioning polity, and Pakistan does not.  It would be expensive for India to do play out that scenario, of course -- and with both sides in the conflict having nuclear weapons, the cost to India would not be in rupees and dead soldiers alone.  But India could do it.

Gearing up for a carrier, perhaps even an American-style carrier group, is necessary in the Indo-Pak conflict.  India sees it as being convenient, if not necessary, for the future -- to secure its eastern trade routes in the event of Indonesia collapsing or becoming an enemy of India, and to balance out Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean (Myanmar is virtually a Chinese puppet now).  India is thinking ten years the road.

I do not, incidentally, view Indian interest in South Asian hegemony as a bad or unjustified thing per se.  My previous article may have given a different impression; that is due to incoherent writing on my part.

Primordial stupe

N.Z. Bear has done his weekend run of the Blogospheric Ecosystem statistics, and I now show up as a Lowly Insect, tied at 32 inbound links with the erudite Jay Manifold, the witty Coyote, the charming Sasha Castel, and the pseudonymous Edward Boyd (sorry, I ran out of adjectives).  Previously, of course, I wasn't showing up all, which I guess made me pre-biotic mush or some such.

I actually don't mind being a Lowly Insect, so long as that insect is not a praying mantis.  Giving head is one thing, having one's head consumed is another ("Eat me" must be a very serious insult in mantis society).

Evil AND stupid

Mac Thomason links to this unpleasant story from Ananova.

I'll agree with him that this is evil, although I think that there can be and are greater evils (and I think that he would agree with me about that).  More than just being evil, though, this is stupid.  Paintbrush manufacturers pluck hair from live mongooses (yes, that really is the plural) and then kill them?  To save themselves the trouble of feeding them, perhaps?

I think that what may be needed is mongoose ranching.  And if the "domestic" mongooses turn out as nasty as "domestic" mink (which are damned nasty critters), well, that will be the price of mongoose-hair paintbrushses.

You say "Tomato", I say "Livorno"

Kevin James of The Goliard Blog wonders (prehaps simply for effect) why so many English place names seem to be totally unrelated to what the locals call that place.

Better than I have written on this, of course.  But the basic reason is that we generally don't give a damn what they call themselves.

Part of the reason for this is that self-names are often self-aggrandizing.  To pick one of James' examples:  Deutschland means "land of the people".  Which makes where I am -- what?  The Land of Chopped Liver?  The French call it Allemagne, which is actually a concession to German egotism -- the name derives from Alamann, "all the men".  "Germany" (like "Greece" as the name for Ellas) comes via Latin from the name of some obscure tribe that the Romans used, by synedoche, to refer to every who jabbered in that language (when the French, those arbiters of good taste, quit referring the England as "L'Angelterre", I'll think about changing).

Part of the reason is also that names change.  "Japan" is actually from a medieval Chinese pronunciation (via Malay) of characters now pronounced er⁴ben³ (incidentally, "Nippon" is actually a Sinicized form of Nihon, the native pronunciation of those characters.  In the 1930's, the Japanese militarists decided, for some reason, that "Nippon" was the only acceptable pronunciation.  As a reaction, the "Nihon" pronunciation is much more common in modern Japan than the "Nippon" pronunciation, although the latter is not unknown).

Finally, as James suggests, some differences are due to spelling and pronunciation screwups.  "Moscow" may seem a silly transliteration of "Moskva" -- until you realize that the name is actually German, and should be pronounced "Moskov" (the native English name is "twenty miles beyond the edge of the world").

No-cook ice cream

A while ago, someone on ICQ lamented that she couldn't find any ice cream recipes that didn't include raw eggs and, therefore, have to be cooked.  In accordance with the sudden profusion of recipe postings in the blogosphere, therefore, let me add a recipe and its variations here.

Vanilla Ice Cream

2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup heavy cream

Blend milk, water, and vanilla throughly, pour into freezing tray and freezing until ice crystals form around edge of freezing tray.  Whip cream until soft enough to hold a soft peak, fold into milk mixture and freeze.  When half frozen scrape mixture from sides and bottom of tray, beat until smooth but not melted and freeze until firm.

Variations on this recipe

Anchovy -- Just kidding!

Apricot -- Use 1/2 cup crush fresh apricots and 1/2 cup apricot juice instead of water.  Reduce vanilla to 1/2 tsp.

Cherry -- Use 1/2 cup minced cherries and 1 cup cherry juice instead of water.  Use 1 tsp. lemon juice instead of vanilla.

Coffee -- Use strong black coffee instead of water.  Reduce vanilla to 1/2 tsp.

Coffee Rum -- Use strong black coffee instead of water.  Use 2 tsp. rum instead of vanilla.

Orange -- Use orange juice instead of water.  Use 1/2 tsp. grated orange rind instead of vanilla.

Peach -- Add 1 cup crushed fresh peaches sweetened with 1/4 cup confectioner's (caster) sugar to milk and water; omit vanilla.

Indian hegemony vs. Chinese hegemony

Sri Lanka Signs Military Assistance Pact with China.  It is reasonable to assume that New Delhi will not like this.

It is becoming more and more likely that a U.S.-Russian-Indian alliance would, from the start, have to take an anti-Chinese posture.  It is also becoming more and more likely that that stance would be justified, or even an out-and-out necessity.

Hubris or hegemony?

From a correspondent comes this item from the Russian Reform Monitor

INDIA EYES RUSSIAN AIRCRAFT CARRIER. According to the Russian Ship Building Agency, India is interested in a major naval acquisition - the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. Pravda reports that should the contract be finalized, the vessel, which has been docked for three years at Severodvinsk, will be repaired and modernized to accommodate MiG aircraft. However, the sale has long been delayed due to concerns that the carrier may house secret technology and equipment.

This could be a purchase of prestige at a semi-ruinous price.  On the other hand, India has genuine needs and ambitions.  It would like be a Great Power on the order of the EU or China.  A fair amount of Indian sea-borne trade passes through the Straits of Malacca and Suez.  Finally, India has imperial ambitions in the backs of the minds of its ruling classes.  It would like to re-unite the Raj (which the destruction of Pakistan, the domination of Burma, and the extension of its influence into the Gulf) and, if the Indonesian empire assembled by Javanese imperialists more than a half-century ago bgins to crumble, it would like to go fishing in those waters, both out sheer expansionism and to defend its trade. 

These ambitions would make India a more worthy ally and a more dangerous enemy.  Perhaps we should commit to the former instead of trying to make show of even-handedness in South Asia.

13 June 2002 Part I

Eugene Volokh argues that a formal declaration of war is neither necessary nor useful.  Frankly, I cannot understand his argument.

That Congress can authorize, and has authorized, military action without formally declaring war, I will agree (there are some Constitutional limitations here, but as far as I know, none of them have been transgressed).

But Volokh also says

If on 9/12 Congress had debated whether to declare war, people would have had little idea of just what war measures the government would have to undertake, and in what circumstances they'd be applied. If given the question "Declare war and give the government flexibility, or don't declare it and deny the government this flexibility?," Congress would have, I'd wager, quickly declared war, with little debate about the then purely hypothetical details, no matter how important these details would ultimately prove to be.

The same reasoning could be applied to our declarations of war in 1917 and 1941, of course:  who could say what powers would be genuinely necessary for the government to prosecute these wars; what powers, though unnecessary in themselves, would serve as reminders to the American people of the gravity of the situation; and what powers were merely seized upon by empire-builders and the power-hungry under cover, as it were, of a war?

We might reply that what was done sixty years ago has no bearing on what should have been done last September and what should be done today.  But is that so?  It would be futile to argue that Bush should be given the same powers, in the same words, as were given to FDR; this is not the same war.  Yet one of the great flaws, I think, of this war is that Bush appears to be making one of the same errors in judgment that Johnson did with respect to Vietnam:  of assuring the American people that nothing that will effect them is happening, or will happen; that we can fight this war on discretionary spending alone; that we can have both guns and butter.  We can dispute the righteousness of the Vietnamese war; few though, I think, will dispute that, for good or ill, it would have had a very different outcome had Johnson gone before Congress in 1965 and called for a formal state of war, with war powers over the U.S. as FDR had had twenty years earlier.

The debate could and should not, of course, been all at the moment of a declaration of war.  Yet, I think, a "sunset" provision is needed in every proposal that the government be granted this or that authority to prosecute the war.  I simply do not see the problem in making the sunset be at the moment that war is "undeclared".

Dirty bomb, dirty bomb, what have they been feeding you?

Brink Lindsey writes that the threat of a dirty bomb has to be seen in light of rational risk assessment.  I'd agree.  My problem is that Lindsey seems to be inadvertantly adding to the irrationality of the risk assessment.

He links to this Wired article, in which the Federation of American scientists state

"However," the scientists continued, "residents of an area of about five city blocks ... would have a one-in-a-thousand chance of getting cancer. A swath about one mile long covering an area of forty city blocks would exceed EPA contamination limits, with remaining residents having a one-in-ten thousand chance of getting cancer. If decontamination were not possible, these areas would have to be abandoned for decades."

and this article from the Washington Post, and this report directly from the FAS (whch was the basis for the Wired article).

Scary sounding stuff.  But should it be scary?

The FAS estimates the current probability of dying of cancer at about 1:500 (they state a death rate of 1:100 is 500% of the current rate, and a death rate of 1:10,000 is 5% of that rate; the report seems to conflate contracting cancer with dying of cancer). The NCI gives the total prevalence of cancer (based on first reported tumor) as about 1:33.  How do we resolve this apparent discrepancy?

We note, of course, that the FAS report is implicitly considering only those cancers which can reasonably be attributed to ionizing radiation.  It is, of course, impossible to say that this cancer was caused by that agent; however, rates of carcinogenesis per unit dose are well-known for many agents, so it is possible to say that if, e.g., radiation dose to a population is increased by so many milliSieverts, there will be so many additional cancers in that population, although we cannot predict when or in whom.  Their calculations, although obviously only the conclusions are reported, and those in crude form, seem out of line with those of RERF, which finds an excess death rate for all cancers (leukemia and solid tissue cancer) of about 0.05% for those survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who received significant radiation exposure.

The FAS has a long history of over-estimating cancer risk from radiation exposure, and of making severe, uncorrected, and unacknowledged errors in other areas.  Whilst what they ought not to be dismissed out of hand, neither ought it to be taken as gospel without confirmation.

One thing that Lindsey says, however, I have absolutely no disagreement with

There's only one viable response [to dirty bombs and those who would use them]: We have to rid the world of those people. We have to crush radical Islamism and all the states that breed or foster it. And we have to do it sooner rather than later.