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Clayton Cramer's BLOG

Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).



Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through.

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Friday, November 01, 2002
 
This Makes Me MAD!

These are very serious accusations from the Sacramento Bee--not only is the FBI suggesting that these doctors performed unnecessary (and in some cases lethal) heart operations, but they defrauded the government in the process. The accusations aren't that they were performing surgeries for marginally necessary cases:
Barr, the attorney, said the Rev. John Corapi had concerns about inheriting heart problems, so he sought a cardiologist in June.

"As luck would have it, he went to Dr. Moon," said Barr.

Although a treadmill test showed no problem, Moon dismissed the results and ordered an angiogram, the attorney said.

After reading the picture of his heart, Moon stood over Corapi and told him, "There's nothing I can do," said Barr.

Moon told Corapi his arteries were practically shredding like worn radiator hoses, said Barr, and that he needed a triple bypass -- right now.

Corapi, however, contacted a friend in the medical profession in Nevada first, and she convinced him to see a doctor there, said Barr. The Nevada doctor read the heart scans that Moon had ordered and gave the priest a clean bill of health.

Corapi contacted Redding Medical management, but they insisted he needed the surgery, Barr said.

Altogether, Corapi submitted his heart scans to six other heart specialists, said Barr, and all told him he's fine.
Nor was economic necessity driving these two doctors:
Realyvasquez, a University of California, Davis, Medical School graduate, is the top biller to Medicare of 50 in similar practices in all of California except Los Angeles and San Diego counties, according to the affidavit. Moon is second on a list of 50 in practices similar to his in the same region.

In the year ending in June, Realyvasquez billed Medicare for $3.6 million and collected $767,600. Moon billed Medicare $3.9 million during the same year and was paid $1.6 million, the affidavit said.

The suspicious doctors told investigators that in 1997, Moon had boasted that he had billed $40 million for the hospital that year and that Moon had told others he considered himself one of the nation's top 10 cardiologists.

Between December 1998 and last July, 167 of the two doctors' patients died, according to the affidavit, including an elderly patient who had a heart valve replaced.
A while back, when it turned that doctor mistakes killed three times as many people annually as guns, gun rights advocates suggested (tongue-in-cheek, of course) that instead of banning guns, perhaps we should ban doctors. These are the sort of cases that make you wonder....


 
Liverpool's Tunnels

Here's an interesting item from BBC about a vast network of tunnels under Liverpool, built almost two centuries ago:
Tycoon Joseph Williamson dug a vast, bizarre network of tunnels under Liverpool almost 200 years ago. Were they the city's first job creation scheme, a rich man's whimsy or a shelter from the end of the world?

At ground level there is little clue to the secret harboured deep beneath the surface of Liverpool's Edge Hill area.

A church, a school, a police station and student accommodation for the nearby universities compete for space with a railway cutting and roads leading down to the city centre.

Lynn Podmore: "We still haven't explored all the tunnels"

But tucked away on a side street is the entrance to a warren of tunnels hollowed out by an eccentric millionaire in the early 19th century.

They have been the stuff of Merseyside legend for decades but the truth is stranger than any fireside story.


 
Okay, Admit It: You've Forgotten Some of the Fine Details of Arithmetic...

Now you need to help your kids with their arithmetic homework. This has all the rules for doing arithmetic with positive and negative numbers on one page, and free of all the number line theory stuff that math teachers think make it easier for kids, but really make it more confusing.

UPDATE: One reader asked if this was really wise, suggesting that kids need to learn the number line theory so that they don't need to learn a large body of rules. Yes, they do need to learn it. But for most kids learning to do negative and positive number arithmetic, the number line and its application are too abstract. Instead, they hear theory that they don't really learn, and therefore can't use. Then, they try to do arithmetic, don't ever get the right answer, and soon develop math anxiety. (I speak from experience, both as student and parent.) Kids need the ability to do arithmetic accurately enough, and fast enough, that they aren't scared off by it. The helical theory of learning means that they will get exposed to number line theory again, after they are intellectually more mature, and can make use of it.

My suspicion is that the people that develop math curricula are math professors--the sort of kids that "got it" immediately in math class, while the rest of us alternated between confusion and boredom. It is difficult for people that immediately pick these things up to understand what the rest of us need to learn. For some, the number line theory will work just fine. For many others, it won't. "Many learners, many learning methods."


Thursday, October 31, 2002
 
Newspapers Don't Trust Their Readers

This is a very disturbing report about how the New York Post left out some information about some killers. Much like the horrifying murders in Wichita that the national mainstream media are ignoring, apparently because the savages in question are black, many newspapers are engaged in a campaign of making black murderers vanish. I understand the Portland Oregonian made a similar conscious decision several years ago not to identify the race of murder suspects, but at least they had the honesty to admit that they were doing so.

If they were simply ignoring murder, I would be irritated, but there seems to be an intentional effort to hide horrific black murderers from public view. Are journalists afraid that lynch mobs are going to form as result of their covering these crimes?


 
Iraqi Ballots

I received this one in my email:



but I'm told that this is the actual Iraqi ballot used in this recent 100% vote:





 
Saddam Hussein Isn't Stupid

From an interesting USA Today article about the upcoming urban battles in Iraq:
Saddam also has not armed his civilian population, intelligence experts say, for fear that the population would turn on his regime.
Of course, now you know why the richest Americans (liberal Democrats) don't want our civilian population armed.


 
Was Mental Health Treatment Available For Flores?

According to this article in the Daily Star, yes, it was. Being a veteran and out of work it should have been free. It sounds like Flores either didn't know that, was rationalizing why he wasn't seeking treatment, or had some fear of what might happen if he sought it.

If you are reading this blog, and you are feeling suicidal, please call 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433). Don't become a headline. Your pain is temporary; the grief you'll cause to others will be permanent. As much as you might think no one cares whether you live or die, there are more people around you than you know who are going to be startled, heartbroken, and upset if you kill yourself.


 
Catholic Priest On The Run

First convicted of child molestation in 1973--but not defrocked. A bunch more charges have now been filed, and he is running. Why wasn't he thrown out in 1973? These bizarre stories of the Catholic priesthood as a child molesting homosexual cabal start to sound more and more plausible.


Wednesday, October 30, 2002
 
Incredibly Cute Kitty...

My daughter is away at college in northern Idaho, and impulsively got this kitten. But she can't keep it, and can't bear to take it to the pound. (He is a feisty, incredibly playful male.)

If you live in northern Idaho or eastern Washington, please email me and take this playful creature off her hands.


 
An Australian University Professor Speaks Out On Gun Control

This is real courage. Read it. Read it now. And marvel at the guts of a professor willing to make this argument in Australia. It would take real guts to say this on almost any campus in America:
The shooters in these events generally desire to kill as many people as possible and often do not plan to live through the attack. Criminal penalties will not deter them, and it would be impossible to eliminate the possibility of them obtaining a gun. The only effective deterrence appears to be the prospect of failure.

The evidence is not in the Prime Minister's favour. Where studies have been conducted, gun control of the kind he advocates has been found to cost more lives than it saves. Australians should think twice about accepting new gun control laws sold solely on anticipated benefits. These benefits may not be realised and the costs may be large indeed.


 
Why Did He Do It? And What Could We Have Done To Prevent It?

Unlike many of the mass murderers of the last 20 years, Robert Stewart Flores Jr. left us a detailed suicide note explaining why he did what even he called a "horrendous" crime. But like many of the mass murderers of the last 20 years, Flores had given a lot of indicators that there was trouble coming--and those signals were either missed, or dismissed. Let's try to learn something from what happened here.

1. As I mentioned in a previous entry, teaching people that their problems make them "victims" encourages a lashing out at others. That certainly seems to be the case here. The picture that Flores's suicide note paints is of a reasonably articulate, reasonably intelligent person, quite aware of how his actions and his note would be examined:
"To the sociologist, it wasn't the Maryland sniper," he wrote. "I have been thinking about this for awhile."

"To the psychiatrist," he wrote, "it's not about unresolved childhood issues. It is not about anger because I don't feel anything right now."

Addressing Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, he said the gun control debate isn't relevant. "A waiting period or owner registration would not have stopped me. I have a concealed carry permit but I have never brought a gun to the University, (until now)."
Flores blamed at least two of the professors he murdered for not treating him fairly:
Throughout the letter, Flores railed against the UA: "After the fact, the University of Arizona will attempted (sic) to portray me as a misanthropic, marginal student who was undisciplined and could not follow instructions."

As soon as he entered the UA's nursing program, Flores said, he felt "being a male and nontraditional student, and (shudder!) assertive was not compatible with the instructors."

He said he complained to Pam Reed, assistant dean of students, about instructors, but got nowhere. Instead, Flores wrote, Reed confronted him with the Student Code of Conduct and said he was "interfering with the conduct of the class."
...
Flores then wrote about Robin Rogers, the professor he shot first in her second-floor office. Rogers was in charge of Flores' first pediatric rotation and presented him with "four unsigned statements" from hospital staff and patients.

The criticisms "were a shock to me," he wrote, but before he could defend himself "Ms. Rogers cut me off and stated that it didn't matter what I said as the statements in themselves showed a trend and that she was failing me in clinicals because of it."

Next, Flores wrote of another victim: Professor Barbara Monroe. After a four-page, convoluted recounting of his dealings with Monroe, filled with medical jargon, Flores said Monroe gave him a failing grade.
Flores perceived his problems to be the result of discrimination against him for being male and "non-traditional age" for a nursing student. Anyone that claims that they can tell, one or the other, based on the evidence now available, is kidding himself. But there are subtle hints that Flores wasn't the Hispanic version of the "angry white male" that certain leftists imagine broods about affirmative action. This story from the Tucson Citizen reports
The couple's custody dispute fills hundreds of pages in a Superior Court file. Included are statements from Flores accusing his ex-wife of training their daughter to believe sexist ideals.

Tammy Lynn Flores is raising their daughter "to believe that she does not need an education because she can find a man to marry her and take care of her," according to a statement filed in 1999.
The Daily Star article about his suicide note also reports that he complained that his ex-wife refused to look for work when they moved to Tucson--no stay at home mother for Flores.

2. In many respects, Flores is like many recent mass murderers. He was a guy at the end of his rope because of depression. Those who are looking to blame Prozac are going to have to keep moving. From the Daily Star
"I am tired, tired and weary," he wrote. "I realize that I am depressed but even with treatment it will not change my future."

Although aware of his "hallmark pearls of depression," Flores said he couldn't follow one unnamed instructor's advice to seek medical help - "it cost money and I would get kicked out of the program if I was candid."
He was also in pain, a lot of debt, broke, and had lost his job. Now he was about to be kicked out of the nursing program.

3. Also, like many other mass murderers, the alarm bells had been ringing for some time, and it seems that they had been missed. A heart-wrenching quote from the husband of one of the professors murdered by Flores:
"When a friend called me and told me to turn on the TV, as soon as I heard 'disgruntled student,' I knew who it was," said Walter McGaffic, husband of one of the victims of the shooting rampage by Robert Stewart Flores Jr.

McGaffic said his wife, Cheryl, 44, had told him she feared Flores might be dangerous.
...
"Frankly, my wife detested the college because of people like him," Walter McGaffic said yesterday. "She felt threatened by him. She feared him."
...
Rogers' husband, Phil, had similar conversations with his wife. "She said that (Flores) might be a problem. She and a couple of other instructors were concerned he might act out. Once I heard about the incident, I figured he might be the guy."
Another indicator of problems that led to a police report--but nothing else:
Yesterday, campus officials defended their dealings with Flores over the years, starting with an April 2001 conversation they had with him after nursing faculty said they thought he might be dangerous.
"Sometimes the appropriate response is a law enforcement response," University of Arizona Police Chief Anthony Daykin said yesterday. "In this case, the law enforcement response was not appropriate.

"Had this tragedy happened a week or two after this report, then it might have been relevant."

He was specifically referring to April 2001, when Flores told an assistant professor, not one of the victims, that he was depressed, "thinking of ending it all" and might "put something under the college."

During the conversation, he said he was having trouble finishing a paper already a month late. And he said "he had a lot of problems other than school," according to a police report filed by the assistant professor and Pamela Reed, the college's associate dean.

UA's Daykin said Monday the police report was made to document the professor's concern, but the professor, whom Daykin did not identify, did not ask police to take any specific action.

Police tried to contact Flores about the threat and left messages at his home but did not talk with him, Daykin said.
He said yesterday he has not had time to check the report and did not know the case's final resolution.

Although faculty members contacted police on April 24, 2001, about Flores' comments, they told officers they'd deal with the problems within the School of Nursing, reports show. If they thought the situation merited police attention, they would contact authorities, according to the report.
...
Even though the campus has a zero-tolerance policy on threats, neither instructor filed formal paperwork on Flores' behavior, according to Melissa Vito, the university's dean for student affairs.
...
Immediately after the shootings, a woman told a police officer outside the nursing school that Flores threatened the school in the week before the shootings, Miranda said yesterday.
Sgt. Marco Borboa, a Tucson police spokesman, said he did not know whether the woman was a UA staff member or a student, or if she heard the threat secondhand.
If I had to pick a single item worth pursuing out of this tragedy, it is that here was a guy making statements that gave a lot of people reason to be afraid of him. It does not sound like Flores was a stable guy who just felt wronged; the impression I get from the quotes out of his suicide note is a guy looking for someone to blame for his failure to do what he clearly wanted to do--nursing. He blamed his ex-wife. He blamed professors at University of Arizona. He seems to have blamed just about everyone but himself. It is time to encourage everyone to be responsible for their own failures. There is way too much "it's not my fault" mentality out there.

It also sounds like someone that desperately needed mental health treatment. He was depressed, and perceived that going for mental health treatment was something he couldn't afford, and something that would get him kicked out of the nursing school. What about confidentiality of mental health records?


 
No More Mr. Nice Guy Republicans?

I have, for a long time, been mystified why Democrats engage in the most ruthless and shameful tactics at election time, while Republicans (with a few exceptions), operate under Marquis of Queensbury rules. There are times it seems like the Republicans don't really want to win. I found this amusing line in this report about how Republicans think that they might pick up 1-3 seats in the House. It suggests that some Republicans are actually playing to win this time around!
DeLay’s Strategic Task Force to Organize and Mobilize People (STOMP)...
And here's an ad that, if they actually run it in South Dakota, could make a difference. It's shallow, unsubtle, and clearly assumes that voters are driven by emotions not intellect. Of course, this is a democracy we're talking about--where just under half of the eligible voters are, by definition, below average in intelligence.


 
Does An Employer Have a Duty to Not Hire Advocates of Child Molestation?

I mentioned a few days ago that Father Shanley's boss has now acknowledged that he knew Shanley was an advocate of sex with children when he promoted him to head a Boston area parish. This is an issue because some of Shanley's victims are now suing the Catholic Church, arguing that they were negligent in employing Shanley, in light of knowing about his preferences.

Eugene Volokh is arguing that requiring an employer to investigate an employee or potential employee's opinions is unconstitutional. His argument is that if a civil suit allows an employer to be held liable for the actions of an employee based on the employer's failure to explore the employee's statements, it is a violation of free speech rights.

Now, Professor Volokh has a pretty substantial body of precedents to point to for this argument. But I notice that many of these precedents come from workplace harrassment law, from laws restricting the number of non-citizens working for an employer, and laws requiring segregation of a restaurant. None of these examples seem appropriate to this case.

Workplace harrassment law concerning offensive behavior is entirely different from the felonious molesting of a child. The law restricting non-citizens economically injure an employer and non-citizens, but this is nowhere near as serious a matter as child molestation, a felony. The laws requiring segregation of a restaurant, while offensive, were blatant and obvious to all, and the injuries suffered were relatively small compared to child molestation. In none of these cases are we talking about felonies committed against third parties. I don't find the parallels terribly strong.


 
The First Snow Flakes of the Season...

fell as I reached the parking lot this morning.

It's beautiful. It's cold. It's Boise.


 
I Made Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web" Column!

See? "I am somebody!"

Also worth reading is Pete Du Pont's column about Oregon's Measure 23 on next week's ballot. Oregonians, pay attention! This isn't just socialism--it's remarkably stupid socialism. Even the National Health Service in Britain has a modest copayment to keep lonely little old ladies from wasting the doctor's time.


 
Internet Based Digital Clock

Exactly as I received this text: "After years of work, computer science graduate students at University of Washington have finally finished their Internet-based digital clock." I presume that this is a comment by their rivals elsewhere!


Tuesday, October 29, 2002
 
Soon To Be a Movie Starring Ahhhnold?

It reads like science fiction, but this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer says that
Ruben Gur, a neuropsychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says new kinds of brain scans can reveal when a person recognizes a familiar face, no matter how hard he or she tries to conceal it.

The scanning machine, called a functional MRI, takes pictures that highlight specific parts of the brain activated during certain tasks. Telltale parts of your brain "light up," he said, when you are presented with a face you have seen before.

It is easy to imagine such scanners being used in interrogation of criminal suspects or terrorists about their associates. Gur described just such possibilities for national security experts at a recent Penn workshop.
Pretty chilling--unless you believe that governments never abuse their power.


 
Bellesiles as Poster Boy For Post-Modernism

Nice commentary on Bellesiles and post-modernism by someone who earned her MA from a far better university than mine. In Sonoma State University's hopelessly old-fashioned History Department, truth was still the goal. (If that link doesn't work, try going to the top of her blog. Blogger has some weird archiving problems, and I think that's the problem here.)


 
A Sobering Reminder Where Victimology Takes You

This article from the Tucson Citizen discusses the personal problems of Flores, who murdered three professors at the University of Arizona yesterday:
Flores was divorced and lived alone in a small apartment.

"There's a sense of righteous indignation among these people," Gilmartin said. "They believe they've been done wrong and they are the victim.

"They are very isolated people."

Such individuals usually project their failures on others, Gilmartin said.

Flores most likely felt professors in the College of Nursing, who work closely with students, were keeping him from being successful, he added.
"He had a heartfelt goal and he felt somebody blocked that goal," Gilmartin said. "The intense anger comes from violated expectations."
Unfortunately, our whole society has turned itself into a pity party the last few years, with entire political movements built around the notion of being a victim.

People sometimes are victims. They are sometimes mistreated. But by creating a climate that encourages people to wallow in being victims, it makes this sort of thing a bit more likely, doesn't it?


 
Your Tax Dollars At Work?

This might be a disgruntled employee who was fired and is now taking revenge--or it might be a good indication of how your taxes are being spent in the war on AIDS. You decide:
A gay-porn movie actor stripped and engaged in sexual contact with guests during a "safer sex" event sponsored by a local AIDS agency, which paid for his appearance with federal money, two former agency employees said Monday.

The St. Louis Health Department last week acknowledged that it was investigating the spending of a federal grant by Blacks Assisting Blacks Against AIDS, known as BABAA. A lawyer for the group said it paid $500 to Edgar Gaines to speak to a gathering that was held July 20 in the downtown residence of Erise Williams Jr., its executive director.

Bruce Hopson, the lawyer, called the allegations false, adding that the actor "did not strip for anybody, and nobody touched him."

BABAA paid Gaines, of Memphis, from a $96,000 grant that it received from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight syphilis. Dr. Hugh Stallworth, city health director, said his department is investigating the matter on behalf of the federal agency.

He called the allegations "quite serious" but said he could not confirm or discuss them. Stallworth said the department could freeze the grant and require BABAA to reimburse inappropriate spending.


Monday, October 28, 2002
 
Big Brother Is Watching...

I was a little skeptical that this could be a real government poster in Britain. It's just a little too obviously a leftover from the 1984 version of 1984. But my friend Brad found identical artwork on the official government mass transit website for London.

If this wasn't intentionally self-deprecating, then someone in Britain needs to read 1984.


 
Is This An Appropriate Activity on Public School Grounds During Class Time?

A religious group comes on campus. They go to a number of the classes, and are given class time to explain that they need money, and asking students to give it. Shocking! Horrifying! Where is the ACLU?

Oh, but it's not a Christian group. It is the local Islamic community here in Boise. I guess that's okay, isn't it?


 
Did Gray Davis Engage in Unethical Behavior As State Controller?

A federal judge has unsealed some documents in which a corrupt member of the California Coastal Commission alleges that then-state controller Gray Davis approached him looking for favors for powerful friends. Davis's campaign, of course, disputes this:Davis spokesman Roger Salazar said: "These are baseless charges made by a man who is a convicted felon, admitted perjurer ... in an attempt to get his sentence reduced."Prosecutors at the time didn't believe the charges. Let's see, who to believe? A convicted felon, admitted perjurer? Or that paragon of fundraising virtue, Gray Davis. Hmmm....

For those of you who wonder what the California Coastal Commission is--well, I confess I supported its creation. It was going to stop evil nasty developers from building horrible buildings along our beautiful coastline in the pursuit of their evil, capitalist, greedhead ways! In practice, the people that were disproportionately stopped from building were individual property owners and small developers. The fat cats just needed to spend a bit more money to bribe and sue their projects through to completion.

I lived about four blocks from the ocean when I was young. The owner of the apartment building next door wanted to convert it to condominiums because of the threat of rent control. He needed approval from the Coastal Commission to do this--a change that would not have built anything at all, just made some changes to the interior of the building. If you want to know why my sympathies lie with free markets, it is partly because of this sort of nonsense.


 
I Don't Really Want To Believe The "Homosexual Cabal" Claims About the Catholic Clergy...

But what's the alternative explanation for this admission:
BOSTON (AP) - The man who is now the bishop of New York's Brooklyn Diocese knew the Rev. Paul Shanley endorsed sex between men and boys when he promoted Shanley two decades ago to head a Boston-area parish, according to a sworn statement made public Monday.

At the time, Thomas V. Daily was chancellor, vicar general and auxiliary bishop in the Boston Archdiocese. Daily promoted Shanley to administrator and acting pastor at St. Jean's parish in Newton.

Shanley, 71, is one of the priests at the center of the sex scandal engulfing the archdiocese. He was indicted in June charges of raping or otherwise molesting boys while he was at St. Jean's from 1979 to 1989.

In the deposition, Daily said he considered Shanley a "troubled priest" who needed help. He also said he knew Shanley had attended a meeting of the North American Man-Boy Love Association and had spoken in favor of the group.

But under questioning, Daily said he had not received any reports of Shanley engaging in abuse himself.


 
Another Mass Murder in a Place Where Guns Aren't Allowed

See here for a picture of the sign declaring that the University of Arizona does not allow guns on its premises. And here's an opinion piece in the University of Arizona student paper by a fetching young lady named Rachel Alexander arguing that this is a bad policy. Unfortunately, mass murderers don't pay attention to those signs. Only their victims do.

I'm not saying that for sure repealing this policy would have prevented this crime. But it certainly the case that the situation could not have been any worse. If a student or a professor with a concealed weapon permit had shot this guy in the first five seconds of this spree, at least one or two of the dead would still be alive.


 
Bellesiles's Nonsense Lives On...

From Garry Wills's new book, A Necessary Evil: A History of American Mistrust of Government:
Guns for both militias and the Continental Army were so scarce that George Washington fills page after page with laments for his inability to get them -- and he meant muskets as well as the even scarcer cannon and artillery. If guns were not omnipresent, then obviously the skill in their use was not widespread either. Why were so many guns broken or unusable in the probate records?
...
How can this be? We have always known or assumed that men in the colonial period had to hunt for food. Bellesiles shows that this, too, is a myth. Hunting for food -- with a musket, inaccurate enough when aimed at a man and generally hopeless against a rabbit; or with a rifle whose loading (after each shot) was slow and difficult -- could not be an efficient use of the ordinary person's time. Though most meat consumed was from domestic animals (pigs or cows), the supplementary provisions were best caught with the trapper's or the fisherman's net. People's defense came from their living in communities, with select militias to guard them, using what guns were available.
More evidence that the publishing industry is awash in dishonesty and stupidity.

UPDATE: Apparently just a reprint of an older book. Still disappointing, but not quite as bad as I thought.


 
Public Attitudes About Islam

Interesting article at abcnews.com about how--even before the Islamic connections of the DC killer became known--public attitudes about Islam in the U.S. have become much harsher. What is amazing is that this increasingly negative view of Islam is even relative to the immediate post-09/11 period.
The percentage of Americans having an unfavorable view of Islam has jumped from 24 percent in January 2002 to 33 percent now.

The portion of Americans who say that Islam "doesn't teach respect for other faiths" rose from 22 percent to 35 percent.

A total of 73 percent of Americans do not feel they have a good basic understanding of its beliefs and tenets, and that, too, has risen, from 61 percent last winter. This suggests that any additional information people have gleaned about Islam has confused more than clarified.

Meanwhile, evangelical white Protestants are 22 points more likely than other white Protestants to express an unfavorable opinion of Islam. They're also more likely, but by much smaller margins, to think Islam encourages violence and doesn't teach respect for other beliefs.


Sunday, October 27, 2002
 
Bellesiles and St. Crisipian's Day

Those of you familiar with the St. Crispian's Day speech in Shakespeare's Henry V will appreciate this modern revision posted by William A. Levinson in talk.politics.guns on Friday:
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil remind his neighbours and the public
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he pull forth Michael Bellesiles' resignation
And say 'These wounds the antigun movement had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats we did that day: then shall Bellesiles' shoddy scholarship
Familiar in his mouth as household words
"intentional fabrication or falsification of research data,"
"other serious deviations
from accepted practices in carrying out or reporting results from research,
Be in all newsgroups and letters to the editor freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But Bellesiles in it shall be remember'd;
Those few, those unhappy few, that band of liars;
For the antigun organizations that associated with Bellesiles
Shall be branded liars; be they e'er so vile,
This day shall remind the American people of their condition
And charlatans in the Brady Center and the VPC now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were here,
And hold their cause cheap whiles any speaks
Of Michael Bellesiles' resignation upon Saint Crispin's day.