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Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
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My civilian gun defense use blog
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Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
A courageous Briton arguing for relaxing Britain's gun control laws
Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
A federal law clerk opines about the law
Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
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Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
Another conservative.
Neocon Blues
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Bubbleheads is a retired submariner
An Idaho State University student. A Democrat. Someday, she'll start paying income taxes and change.
A retired Las Vegas stagehand, of all things.
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Protecting the Environment By Driving SUVs
One of the Canadian cabinet ministers responsible for enforcing the Kyoto global warming treaty owns two General Motors 4x4s. Well, heck, the serfs have always operated under different laws from the nobles.
The Moral Is: If You Must Be Depraved and Immoral, Don't Use the Company's Computer
This is one of those bizarre stories that sounds like it was written by a screenwriter:A North Texas businessman has been jailed after co-workers reported an image of child pornography showed up on a screen as he gave a computer slide presentation recently.
At that point, child pornography appeared on the screen.
James Andrew Smith of Denton was in the Mansfield Jail under $300,000 bond after he was charged with two counts of possessing child pornography and one charge of promoting child pornography.
Exel Inc. co-workers told police Smith had just completed a PowerPoint presentation on Sept. 4 when he tried to open another document on his laptop computer.
Along with his job: "Smith is also pastor of Landmark Baptist Church in Sanger." He is resigning that post, immediately.
Pandering to Racism?
This article by Joanne Jacobs tells a pretty sorry story about trying to teach science to native Hawaiians using culturally relevant examples:In theory, native Hawaiians’ self-esteem will be boosted by hula-ized curriculum. In practice, hula-izing the curriculum implies that natives can’t learn like other students. As Miyake notes, students of Asian descent learn without abacus training. Dutch-Americans don’t need dike and windmill problems, nor do Italian-Americans do math with Roman numerals.
When I visited the source for Jacobs's story, however, I found something not quite so embarrassingly bad:
Typically, ethno-curriculum defines science as white, and therefore cold, while the warm-hearted natives have... spiritual stuff. It's hard to think of anything more racist. Europeans (and, mysteriously, Asians) get science, math, technology and engineering. Hawaiians get poi.
NSF also is funding research on teaching science to Native Americans via culturally sensitive "science stories."The University of Hawaii at Hilo has been awarded a $2.5 million grant by the National Science Foundation to teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics using Hawaiian history and culture, the university announced.
While I share Jacobs's concern that there is a patronizing element to this--after all, we don't bother with culturally sensitive science education for Asians, or non-WASP whites--I'm not sure that the program that NSF is funding is all that bad. (I might have a different opinion if I had a chance to see what they are actually going to do.)
The program is designed to reach students of Hawaiian ancestry who have not been attracted to the sciences by standard teaching methods, the announcement said.
Other ethnic groups may also participate, said David Sing, director of the UHH Center for Gifted and Talented Native Hawaiian Students.
Jacobs makes a very good point in her story, that what most minority kids need is a real education, not culturally relevant teaching techniques:There were five or six Native American students in my freshman dorm. Those who'd gone to Bureau of Indian Affairs schools had received fourth-rate educations. An Arizona boy wanted to major in geology or petroleum engineering, but his school hadn't offered lab science or college-prep math. A girl from the Northwest told me girls did "domestic science" (cleaning the boarding school) while boys did "environmental science" (maintaining the grounds). No other science was offered. These students didn't need stories about the rain god or story problems featuring Brave Elk and Spirit Woman. They needed to be taught biology, chemistry and physics, algebra, geometry, trig and calculus.
Make sure that you scroll down to the bottom of Jacobs's column, to the letters section, where various horror stories of dumbed-down education are presented by upset parents and grandparents. I must confess that I am a bit disappointed with how little my son's high school is expecting of its students.
Frivolous Lawsuits
And here's a case in which a lawyer filing frivolous lawsuits was suspended from the practice of law for three years, and that suspension was upheld by the Idaho Supreme Court.
Frivolous lawsuits are a big pet peeve of mine. Back in the late 1970s, when I lived in Los Angeles (the city of frivolous lawsuits), a woman coming home from a party smashed into a stoplight, and she died.
A friend of mine, named Alan, was driving a car that I owned. He tapped her bumper as he came to a stop. The police report concluded it was a one-car accident, and that no one else (including my friend Alan) was involved. The dead woman, at autopsy, had a 0.23% blood alcohol level--more than twice the legal definition of drunk driving at the time, and a level that causes many people to fall asleep, even while driving. So, who did the dead woman's husband (a lawyer, of course) sue for $15,000?
Her hubby filed suit against eighteen different parties who were either driving cars or owned cars that were in the intersection at the time, alleging that we had "jointly and severally conspired" to force his wife into the stoplight. The complaint with which I was served was awash in misspellings (the same word misspelled repeatedly, so it's not a typo) and non-sentences. When I took it to my insurance company, they looked it over, and told me the next day that this was "probably" the most absurd suit that they had seen that year. They also told me that normally these sort of suits were filed just to get a quick $500 settlement, but this one was so outrageous that they felt an obligation to fight it.
It's nice to see frivolous lawsuit filing punished.
A Prosecutor Engages in Misleading and Unethical Behavior, and Is Punished
Perhaps I have been too cynical about the possibility of anyone doing their job properly, but here's a case in which a prosecutor engaged in childish behavior, as well as failing to correct the record when he knew that one of his witnesses committed perjury--and the Idaho Bar Association pursued the matter. The Idaho Supreme Court suspended the prosecutor from the practice of law (although only for 30 days).
This Report Was So Funny I Had Trouble Breathing
It's from a blog that I am not familiar with until now. This guy is in Bulgaria (or at least claims to be). This report is as funny as anything P.J. O'Rourke has ever written (and that is a high compliment indeed from me), and yet I don't have to be embarrassed about his choice of language (so far).
I Do Not Envy Rep. Nancy Pelosi's Task
This article from Roll Call, the non-partisan journal that covers the Capitol, describes how Pelosi is asking all Congressional Democrats to come together for a conference in December to try and work out a new strategy for the Party, forced into minority position of both houses for the first time in the memory of nearly all Americans. The article points out that:"We all have an enormous responsibility to the American people to articulate and fight for issues of concern to our great country," Pelosi says in letter that will be sent to Members today. "We must begin immediately to build consensus within our Caucus and develop a strategy for success."
Indeed, aides involved in planning the meetings on Dec. 9 and 10 say the entire second day is tentatively being devoted to the development of an economic plan - a signal from Pelosi that she expects there to be a limit to the election post-mortems.
The economic policy talks carry significant risks for the new leader, some insiders suggest. If no plan or direction emerges from the meetings, it could heighten the sense of disarray that has taken hold among Democrats in the wake of the elections, and make it more difficult to forge a unified agenda once Congress is in session.
"There are 80 different views about the economy out there," one senior leadership aide said, referring to the Caucus. "It's hopeless to try to get these people to agree in one day." This is the core of the problem. The Democratic Party, as all major parties are, is a coalition of interest groups. Even on economic policy, there is fundamental conflict between the various factions that make up the party:
Another point the article makes is that the Democrats seem to have been hoist by their own petard: the recent campaign contribution limits law:Filling the DCCC chairmanship would appear to be a monumental task for the new leader. For the job, Pelosi needs someone who can not only raise money to compete with the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has a far broader donor base, but can do so without the aid of soft money, which had been the party's chief means of reaching semi-parity with the opposition. Laws prohibiting the party committees from collecting unlimited soft-money gifts kicked in Nov. 6.
The Democratic Party's financial base is, unsurprisingly, millionaires and billionaires, because they are the ones that get the biggest benefit from the redistribution of wealth--of which a small amount is to the poor, but mostly redistributes to government contractors, trial lawyers, and those with enough money to get tax laws written for their benefit.
I Really Don't Like The Constant Ironic Use of "Islam: Religion of Peace" Phrase...
but what reaction am I supposed to have when I see news stories like this?Rioters in Nigeria have stabbed pedestrians and torched churches during violent demonstrations which have left more than 50 people dead and scores more injured.
I think beauty pageants are stupid and anachronistic. But when a cheeky, perhaps even nasty remark about the founder of your religion leads to a riot, and this is becoming a widespread pattern throughout the world?
The protests were triggered by a newspaper article suggesting Islam's founding prophet might have chosen a wife from among contestants in the Miss World beauty pageant in Nigeria.
More than 50 people were stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death and 200 were seriously injured in the violence in the northern city of Kaduna.
Victoria's Secret TV Show Protests
Instapundit obviously doesn't think much of the protests against the upcoming Victoria's Secret TV special.
His attitude on this may change once his daughter is about five or six years older, and flipping channels in search of entertainment and identity. There is some merit to both the feminist and Christian objections to this sort of dishonest softcore porn. (I call it dishonest because it pretends to not be intended for sexual excitement and objectification of women's bodies, rather like the Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit edition.)
The feminist objection to pornography has long been that it demeans women, turning them into objects rather than people. (That this is increasingly being done to men as well, with predictable effects on young men, isn't surprising.)
The Christian objection to pornography is both that it demeans women, and that it creates unrealistic expectations and lusts that most women will never be able to meet. (And again, the same problem has developed as women have started to become consumers of pornography that similarly demeans men.)
Is Michael Jackson a Fit Father?
This news story reports that:Child protection officers in California have held secret meetings to decide whether superstar Michael Jackson is fit to be a father.
What? California law doesn't have a special provision guaranteeing the right of alien life forms to raise children? :-)
...
The move comes a day after Jackson dangled his baby son, Prince Michael II, over the balcony of his third-floor suite at a Berlin hotel. The child was seen kicking his legs over the 50ft drop before Jackson hauled him to safety. The singer later apologised for the stunt - but the incident may prove more than a public relations disaster.
More seriously, looking at the picture of Michael Jackson testifying in a recent civil suit only made me want to cry. The plastic surgery failures are apparent. Why would anyone put themselves through this much pain and disfigurement? There is so much so obviously screwed up about Michael Jackson--what a horrendous childhood he must have had!
How Stupid Do These Conmen Think Americans Are?
Here is an example of one of the many confidence game emails I get every week, in this case from the email address sa_m11@mail.com (just included here so that the spammers will fill her mailbox). They must think Americans are really stupid:ATTENTION:
UPDATE: Here's the U.S. Secret Service website for these sort of scams.
Dear Sir/Madam,
LETTER OF ASSISTANCE
I write this letter of assistance with a great sense of honour and responsibility in care of SADIQ MOHAMMED. The decision to write to you was arrived at after a critical consideration of its urgency and the severe pain/terror my entire family had gone through with the present Civilian Government of Nigeria after the death of my husband.
I am Dr. (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha, wife of the late Nigeria Head of State, General Sanni Abacha, who died on the 8th of June 1998, while still on active duty. I am contacting you in view of the fact that we will be of great help to each other and also develop a cordial business relationship in the near future.
Since the strange and unfortunate death of my husband (may God's mercy be upon him), the government has turned against my family and myself. At first, I thought it was a normal interrogation from my husband's enemies but I was proved wrong. My eldest son, Mohammed is being detained at the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, Lagos and all our bank accounts have been frozen since then to frustrate us. It has dawn on us now that it is a serious battle between President Olusegun Obasanjo's Government and my family. As my husband's regime put him in jail before he was released, he now wants to get back at us. My husband's closest associates have betrayed and deserted us and I no longer trust anyone of them. Therefore, I am requesting for your urgent assistance to help my family and myself have hope through my nephew (SADIQ MOHAMMED) who will handle this transaction because we are under 24hours surveillance with our telephone lines bugged.
We are going through severe hardship, my son, Mohammed had just been released from jail after three and a half years behinds bars and the remaining ones and myself are under restricted movement by the Federal Government of Nigeria. The new democratically elected President, General Olusegun Obasanjo has seized more than US$700,000,000.00 million Dollars from us already including landed properties and other investments of ours here in Nigeria. You can find this out in news watch of 7,8,15,21 of year 2000 on website http://www.newswatchngr.com or Tell of 24th July 2000 on website http://www.tell.com.org. Since my family and I are under 24hours surveillance by the Federal Government of Nigeria, I have therefore been making all my contacts through my nephew (Sadiq Mohammed) without the Government agents' knowledge.
I currently have within my reach the sum of Twenty-five Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($25,500,000.00), which I intend to use for investment, like Real Estate Development specifically in your country. This money came as a payback contract deal between my late husband and a Russian Firm in our country's multi-billion Dollars Ajaokuta Steel Plant.
The Russian Partners returned my husband's share of US$25,500,000.00 before his death and was lodged in my husband's Security Company of which I am a Director, But when the new Civilian Government intensified their probe on my husband's finance/security and oil companies. l acted quickly to withdraw the US$25,500,000.00 from the Company's vault and deposited it as family treasure in a Finance/Security Company in a foreign country for safe custody. Thereafter, I declared my husband's Finance/Security Company bankrupt. No record ever existed concerning the money traceable by the government because there is no documentation showing that we received the money from the Russians.
Due to the current situation in the country concerning government attitude towards my family, it has become quite impossible for me to make use of this money within, thus with your consent, I shall expect you to contact me urgently to enable us discuss in detail about this transaction. Bearing in mind that your assistance is needed to retrieve this fund from the Finance/security vault which is not yielding any profit to your account. I proposed a percentage of 25% of the total sum to you for the expected service and assistance, 5% for offsetting minor expenses incurred in the course of this transaction and 15% will be used for investment probably in your company. Your urgent response is highly needed as to stop further contacts. All correspondences must be by the Telephone and Fax numbers or e-mail address above. I must use this opportunity to implore you to exercise the utmost indulgence to keep this matter extraordinarily confidential whatever your decision while I await your prompt response.
Best regards,
DR. (MRS.) MARIAM ABACHA.
Jonah Goldberg Doing What He Does Best...
That is to say, making us laugh with his coverage of Al Gore's attempts to justify what a "statesman" he is:As Michael Kelly also notes, Gore said to the Washington Post of the Florida recount mess: "I could have handled the whole thing differently and instead of making a concession speech, launched a four-year, rear-guard guerrilla campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Bush presidency . . . And there was no shortage of advice to do that." However, "I just didn't feel like it was in the best interest of the United States, or that it was a responsible course of action." Presumably this was said in his most statesmanlike voice.
Before I go on, I'd like to pat myself on the back about a few things too. When CNN announced it was going to pay Paula Zahn several million dollars a year to host that network's new morning show, I could have handled the whole thing very differently. Rather than go on about my life and work, I could have put on a giant sandwich-board sign reading "Paula Took My Job" and marched up and down outside CNN headquarters throwing macaroni salad at anybody trying to enter. However, I concluded this wasn't the responsible course of action. When William F. Buckley tapped Rich Lowry to be the new editor of National Review instead of me several years ago, I could have driven out to his house and slapped him across the face with a rotting Chilean sea bass. Sure, Mr. Buckley might have said, "Who the hell are you?" because he'd never heard of or met me, but I still could have done it. But, I took the high road.
Things We Dare Not Say
Permagringirl posts a link to something that no one dares to say: full inclusion has some problems. Permagringirl speaks from experience; I'm old enough that full inclusion came after I completed high school (though my wife and I saw bits and pieces of the problems it has caused in California schools).
Along with the problems that Permagringirl points to, there is another difficulty caused by full inclusion: it has been very expensive. If you just look at per pupil education funding in a state like California, the supposed "crisis" caused by Proposition 13 just isn't apparent: per pupil funding, adjusted for inflation (at least the last time I checked the numbers a few years ago) has roughly kept up. What isn't discussed is that full inclusion happened about the same time (nationally mandated by Congress), and the costs ballooned rapidly because many of the most severely disabled kids required enormous attention. Yes, this has to be better for the kids than shunting them aside, which is what seems to have happened in some states. In some cases, the extra money invested in some of these kids might pay for itself in increased self-sufficiency when they become adults. But it wasn't cheap; and in some of the most tragic cases, it is hard to imagine that the enormous expense will ever be recovered by the society. It also greatly helps to understand what went wrong with education when we acknowledge this.
Why are so many people afraid to say that full inclusion was a mistake--or at least a mistake as implemented? Because full inclusion was supposed to help kids with severe developmental problems, and there isn't anyone who can look at a retarded kid, or a kid with severe developmental problems, and not find themselves saying, "There but for the grace of God go I."
You shudder to think of how you would feel if that was your kid, and it is very, very hard to tell that parent, "I'm sorry, but I am reluctant to spend an extra $10,000 a year educating your child who has very, very limited prospects for ever being self-sufficient." You don't have to be a bleeding heart liberal to find yourself looking for ways to avoid turning a child--someone who is loved tremendously--into an example of cost/benefit analysis. The parent of that kid isn't interested in your cost/benefit analysis; he or she isn't interested in hearing that the $120,000 to $300,000 that the government is investing in their child will never pay for itself. This is a child that they want to have a better chance at life than they were born with, and they are generally not going to listen to a dispassionate analysis of why their child's needs are less important than the 10-20 other kids whose education is being impaired by full inclusion of their child. If I were that parent, I wouldn't be terribly interested in such a discussion.
Where is the dividing line? I don't know. There are kids with significant developmental problems for whom the extra money doubtless makes a real difference in their quality of life. There are others for whom the extra funds are wasted. I don't want to have to make that decision on a child by child basis, looking into the eyes of a distraught mother or father. You don't either, because it would be too heart-breaking. But we need to start making some decisions somewhere between the poles of the hard-hearted beancounter and the bleeding heart liberal. The current law is a bit too far in the bleeding heart liberal direction.
American Kids Failing Geography
This is a pretty typical story about how American kids haven't the faintest idea where obscure, irrelevant countries like Iraq, Israel, and Iran are. (Yes, that's sarcasm when I call them obscure and irrelevant.)
A suggestion:Thirty-four percent of the young Americans knew that the island used on last season's "Survivor" television show was located in the South Pacific, but only 30 percent could locate the state of New Jersey on a map. The "Survivor" show's location was the Marquesas Islands in the eastern South Pacific.
Perhaps we could have a new reality based show? Every week, they pick up the whole cast, and move them to a different country or American state?
Surprise, Surprise! Bellesiles's Awards for Arming America Are In Jeopardy!
Here's an article from the Emory University student newspaper, the Wheel. Make sure that you read the quote from Garry Wills, acknowledging that he was taken:Garry Wills, a Northwestern University (Ill.) historian who wrote a favorable review of the book in The New York Times, wrote in an e-mail that much of Bellesiles' work has been "discredited."
Unsurprisingly, since Knopf knew that they were publishing a fraud more than a year ago, and made no efforts to correct this problem:
In his book A Necessary Evil, Wills cites Bellesiles' work to refute popular claims that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms.
In his e-mail, Wills wrote that he regrets having professionally associated himself with Bellesiles.
"I would not have included it if I had known what I now do, though my basic argument on the Second Amendment is not affected by it," Wills wrote.Knopf Press, which published Arming America and is said to have plans to print a second edition, did not respond to repeated e-mails and phone calls.
Ten Commandments Case in Alabama
In case you haven't been following this one, a judge in Alabama decided to put a representation of the Ten Commandments up in his courtroom some years ago. Then, with the controversy this produced, he got himself elected to Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court by running as the "Alabama's Ten Commandments judge" and promising to do the same at the Alabama Supreme Court building. And he did. And the lawsuits began. Now a federal judge has ruled that it "must be removed because it violates the separation of church and state."
As I discussed a couple of days ago, this notion of separation of church and state is ahistorical. Particular denominations were not to be given a preferred status, but religion, and particularly Christianity (the dominant religion when the Bill of Rights was ratified) was not something to be shunned or "separated" from government. The Ten Commandments is about as transdenominational as it gets, being something shared and revered by Jew, Protestant, Catholic, and Greek Orthodox alike.
If you think that it's unfair to non-Judeo-Christian religions--oh, probably. But click here, and then come back, and tell me that you see anything like "separation of church and state" in the remarks from the Continental Congress, or more appropriately, from the First Congress--the one that approved the Bill of Rights before sending it out for ratification. Tell me that you can see that same First Congress telling a judge that he couldn't have a copy of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse.
UPDATE: I have found the judge's decision, and as is usually the case, it is considerably more intelligent than the news accounts describing it. The judge is relying on Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). While Judge Thompson is correct in citing the aptly named Lemon precedent, the problem here is that Lemon was wrongly decided, based on an erroneous understanding of the meaning of the establishment clause.
Top 10% Plans
This is the latest attempt at doing an end-run around the racially discriminatory aspects of affirmative action in college admissions. John Rosenberg's blog discusses the issues involved, and argues (though not very rigidly) that this idea--of admitting the top 10% of students from every high school. I've added my comments below to his blog, but because this is a painful and personal issue for me, I'm inflicting it here as well.
The intent of the 10% rule is to make sure that kids from the crummy schools--overwhelmingly black and Hispanic--get into the state university, even though they are going to be less prepared than kids from schools that have done a better job of preparing kids for college.
This is clearly racially motivated, and even the proponents acknowledge that this is an end-run around the racial discrimination of affirmative action.
Here's the point that you need to remember: these aren't abstractions, but real people whose self-esteem is going to be damaged, and whose opportunities are going to be squelched. When the kid with a 3.5 GPA and a combined SAT score of 1250 gets told, "Sorry, we don't have a place for you at Enormous State University" but a kid with a 3.0 GPA and an SAT score of 1050 gets in because he goes to a high school that is 60% black and 20% Hispanic, this is an unfairness.
I remember, vividly, and with a bit of pain, graduating from high school. I had a 1390 SAT score, a 3.83 GPA (much of that in hard classes like accelerated physics, accelerated English, calculus, and so on). There was a kid from a wealthy family at my high school, who because she was a racial minority (back when East Indians were still considered victims) received a scholarship to attend Vassar that picked up not only tuition, but living expenses. I was from below the poverty line, but the wrong race (white), and the doors were far less open for me because of it.
If we are going to just drop the pretense that merit matters, fine. It's all a racial spoils system? I can live with that. But I want the pretense that merit has anything to do with college admissions to end. Merit has little to do with the process once liberals find a way to turn everything into a race issue.
Another point that isn't being addressed is what happens to the kid from the crummy school who ends up at Enormous State University, and because of the lousy education he has received, can't cut it? He drops out--while he might well have been able to make it attending community college for a couple of years first.
The incentive to fix crummy schools also goes away with this scheme.
Professional Historians Still Don't Get It
From Professor Jeffrey L. Pasley's blog at historynewsnetwork (sorry, you'll have to page down a bit--apparently there's no link to this particular article): One might add that if the self-appointed history lovers who worked themselves into such a lather over Michael Bellesiles spent a tenth as much time and effort lobbying their favorite Republican politicians about the need to protect the institutions that make historical teaching and research possible, we might see some changes in these anti-historical policies.
Do you suppose that if the history profession had taken its professional responsiblities seriously, instead of the sort of political agitation disguised as history that Bellesiles represents, that Pasley wouldn't be having to ask Republican politicians not to disembowel the Library of Virginia?
Seriously, if Pasley had been following the Bellesiles matter seriously, he would know that Arming America was a pretty blatant fraud, and not just on the narrow issue of probate records with which Emory forced his resignation.
There are two possible explanations for why Bellesiles's falsehoods were so freely accepted by the professional historians (with a very few exceptions) until Professor Jim Lindgren of Northwestern Law, myself, and a few others blew the whistle.
1. Professional historians are very, very gullible, and are easy to fool.
2. Arming America's not very subtle political subtext was so popular with historians that they knew better than to give Bellesiles's claims even a cursory examination.
The first explanation is an argument that what historians do is of so little value, because so easily fooled, that the government might be better off spending its money on something more valuable--like promoting genealogy, which at least makes no pretenses of deep significance.
The second explanation is an argument that historians have so politicized what they do that there is no reason for Republicans to give "professional historians" even one penny of public funds. That Professor Pasley is still diminishing the significance of Bellesiles's fraud ("worked themselves into such a lather") tells me a lot about what he considers important.
More About Professor Peter "Babykiller" Kirstein
Well, St. Xavier College must have received a lot of upset email, because they have punished Prof. Kirstein in a manner that I consider inappropriate. See what they have done to him, here. Prof. Kirstein made a complete fool of himself, acting in a manner that, sad to say, didn't surprise me at all for a college professor. But this level of punishment seems a bit much.
MTV's Success in Damaging Girls
A very depressing article in the New York Times about how girls and sex, and how many of the behaviors that have traditionally been a sign of boy boorishness are now adopted by girls:Whether they are influenced by the trickle-down effects of feminism, which has taught girls to be assertive in all areas of life, or have internalized the images of sexually powerful women in popular culture, American girls are more daring than ever. "The teenage boys I see often say the girls push them for sex and expect them to ask them for sex and will bring it up if the boys don't ask," said Tabi Upton, a counselor at the Johnson Mental Health Center in Chattanooga, Tenn., who consults with 20 to 30 teenagers a month. "There has been a shift where girls now see themselves as sexualized and approach men with pretty much the attitude, This is all I have to offer."
"This is all I have to offer." What a depressing result of trickle-down feminism combined with the premature sexualization of kids:"The culture — MTV videos and television shows — helps to reduce adolescent girls to being successful when they look sexy and date often," said Dr. Ann Kearney-Cooke, a co-director of the Helping Girls Become Strong Women Project at Columbia University. "There is a status to the girl in middle school who is the first one to start dating."
A generation has grown up severely damaged by widespread divorce:
Teenagers, Dr. Kearney-Cooke said, feast on media images while they starve for love and parental attention. "One of the ways we learn about relationships is by being in them and seeing them at work," she said. "Today, kids come home from school and the parents or parent might not be home. They watch MTV and talk shows and cruise the Internet, and that is where they are learning about relationships."Marty Beckerman, 19, a student at American University in Washington, said that girls' sexual bravado is a response to the cold transactional nature sex has taken on for some. "There is a kind of machismo among girls now," he said. "They have the male-conquest attitude."
Unfortunately, this isn't just the problem of the kids who come out of divorced homes; don't feel smug and secure about your kids because you have chosen to be "perverts" and stay married. The rot induced by this insecurity spreads over to the kids from stable homes.
Mr. Beckerman is the author of "Generation SLUT," to be published next year by Simon & Schuster/MTV Books. SLUT stands for "sexually liberal urban teenagers," and his book is a plea for a return to more chaste behavior. He surmised that girls may be trying to transform sex into something as meaningless as they believe it is for boys.
"All kids are scared of long-term relationships now," Mr. Beckerman said. "Our parents are all divorced, and we have never seen a successful long-term relationship. Girls don't want to think of sex as something which is about love because that will just come back and bite them later. The sex thing is just the most visible sign of disconnectedness we feel."An 18-year-old from Manhattan confirmed that a sense of sexual adventure and power is derived from the feminist movement — or at least the way it's filtered down to teenagers. "I think with feminist thought being pushed upon girls from a young age, that some people put a premium on girls' dominating different areas of life," she said. "So girls may now feel that it is also important to dominate in a sexual relationship. This allows the girl to have more control, e.g. `I wanted him to do that' versus `He sort of made me do something.' "
But the pursuit of profit doesn't seem to stop some people:
Ms. Upton, the counselor in Chattanooga, said she had recently counseled a 15-year-old girl who embraced the role of vixen as portrayed by pop culture. "She saw this stuff in the movies, on MTV, and she had sex with several guys," Ms. Upton said. "She got pregnant and she was pretty sure it was one of two guys." She also contracted a sexually transmitted disease, Ms. Upton said.
"And she was like, `Oh my gosh, why did I do this?' " she added. "She hadn't been taught about her body and about the value of sex and intimacy and love. She doesn't have a father in the home and she is just hungry for love and she wanted to look brave and adventurous. It looks so exciting in the videos and so wonderful in the movies, but it isn't."And while Ms. Upton said that she felt the sexual revolution had turned around and "bitten women on the butt," Gabrielle Lasting, the editor of the year-old Boy Crazy! magazine, for the 12-year-old set, defended its girl-power message.
For "the 12-year-old set"? Yes, I know that at 12, there are girls who are becoming focused on sex (don't try to tell me that "You're so hot" is an expression of romance), but do we really need to pander to this?
Boy Crazy! treats cute boys much as the Wine Spectator highlights tasty new vintages. (This month's cover: "Jason: One of Virginia's Finest.") "We're about teaching girls that they don't have to sit around and wait to be chosen," Ms. Lasting said. "They can get in the driver's seat and choose what they want. They are not afraid to send in fan mail saying, `You're so hot.' "
Germaine Greer Establishes the Intellectual Framework for an (Almost) Male-Free World
This article from the Guardian almost sounds like a parody of feminism that you might expect to be written by a bunch of drunken male chauvinists of the 1970s:The truth is out. Men are much more trouble than they're worth. Sisters are doing it for themselves. Discarded males of all ages loiter in the streets, looking for trouble to get into and finding no lack of it. Male security guards shoot male football fans in Bratislava, male fans howl racist abuse and hurl chairs at each other, males train as suicide bombers, male heads of state stroll about discussing whether they could get away with another shooting war on the women and children of Iraq, and their male flunkies zoom around the world trying to talk other males into joining in. The Beltway Sniper turned out to be a man. And those "children" ejected from school for threatening to kill their teachers are actually boys. It doesn't do to say so. A kind of mad squeamishness prevents us from quantifying the nuisance value of maleness, possibly because if you actually tell men that they are damned nuisances, they are likely to behave even worse.
What men does Germaine Greer know that dream of a world without women? She thinks that men have suddenly lost interest in sex? Or are only interested in sex with other men? Or is Germaine Greer trying to create the rationale for a world where only a few boys are allowed to live so that they can provide sperm for the next generation of women? Greer's arguments smell suspiciously like a mirror image of The Handmaid's Tale.
...
Men are redundant not because of women or anything that women might do to them or without them, but because of biology. With every second, the world's men produce 200,000,000,000,000 sperm, while in that same space of time the world's women produce only 400 eggs; intensify that imbalance by considering that a woman becomes a mother only after nine months, and a man can be a father as many times as one of his billions of spermatozoa meets a viable egg, and you can see that the human race could continue on earth if 99.9% of human males were wiped out by some sex-linked disorder.
This unimaginably enormous disproportion between the huge investment demanded of females and the piffling contribution of males is reflected across terrestrial species where the male is often jettisoned as too costly and too useless to be allowed to survive once he has contributed his sperm. The genus Antechinus comprises several Australian species of marsupial mouse, the males of which are remarkable for the extraordinary vigour and intensity of their mounting behaviour. Immediately after their orgy of violently athletic intercourse, the males die, leaving the females to raise their young alone. Yet these marsupial mice are among the most successful of Australian species at a time when other indigenous small mammal species are being wiped out at the rate of one a month. If survival is your game, you need many more females than males.
...
Men get angry when I describe them as "freaks of nature, fragile, fantastic, bizarre", as idiots savants, "full of queer obsessions about fetishistic activities and arbitrary goals, doomed to competition and injustice not merely towards females, but towards children, animals and other men". Professor Steve Jones's new book Y: The Descent Of Men is much harder on men than I am. Imagine the fuss if I had said, "The chromosome unique to men is a microscopic metaphor of those who bear it, for it is the most decayed, redundant and parasitic of the lot." Men are surplus to requirements, but so what? Human beings don't exist for any ulterior purpose but in and of themselves. The audience for male display, whether in dance or song or fine plumage or bower-building, is female. None of the spectacular male craziness we see around us every day is necessary and some of it is lethal, but much of it is wonderful, compelling, awesome. For whatever reason, women are more heterosexual than men, perhaps because they build men's bodies inside their own. Mothers are more indulgent to their sons than their daughters. Women would find a world without men flat and savourless; it is men who dream of a world without women.
Brooklyn College Has a Reputation For Being Very Liberal, I Understand...
So can you explain this item from a news story about a tenure denial dispute going on there?In one e-mail about a search for a professor, the history department’s chairman, Philip Gallagher, suggested “finding some women that we can live with, who are not whiners from the word go or who need therapy as much as they need a job.”
Apparently, the professor being denied tenure was insufficiently "collegial":Mr. Johnson and his defenders say his two offenses against collegiality were objecting to a one-sided college-sponsored panel following the September 11 attacks and suggesting that a search that seemed predetermined to pick a woman — in need of “therapy” or not — instead be conducted on the merits.
Oh my, how horrifying! Suggesting that a search be conducted on merit, not "predetermined to pick a woman...." What sort of troublemaker is this guy Johnson?
I know that my hopes of ever teaching at the university level have been pretty well destroyed by my part in exposing the Bellesiles scandal. You see, "collegiality" is more important than accuracy in many history departments today. It's a big club, and if you aren't prepared to play the game, you aren't ever going to be part of the club.
Media Bias in Britain
Even when I disagree with Andrew Sullivan, I find his writing stimulating and entertaining. But this article about Media Bias is one of the best that he has written in a long time. He makes a very good point, and it is a reminder that Britain, for all the pretense of freedom of expression, really only allows freedom of expression for the left:Two weeks ago, the Independent Television Commission reprimanded the American-based cable channel, CNBC, for running an opinion and news program that featured only the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. The program was deemed too biased and is currently barred from being broadcast in Britain. It seems that while British readers are considered mature enough to distinguish between news and commentary, British viewers are not. Simple questions: aren't they often the same people? And what is unique about television that it requires some elusive quality called "objectivity"? I can see the argument, perhaps, in the 1940s, when there was only the BBC, and its power was so great and its reach so comprehensive that some kind of rigid internal balance was deemed important. (Even in the 1940s, of course, the BBC was anything but unbiased. It represented establishment Britain in largely conservative form.) But today? With dozens of television options to choose from, why on earth is "objectivity" deemed to be important to each? Are the viewers of television so radically different from newspaper readers? Why are they not allowed to pick and choose between differing viewpoints? And why are producers, editors and writers required to be "balanced" in their output?
Media Bias in Britain
Even when I disagree with Andrew Sullivan, I find his writing stimulating and interesting. But this article about Media Bias is one of the best that he has written in a long time. He makes a very good point, and it is a reminder that Britain, for all the pretense of freedom of expression, really only allows freedom of expression for the left:Two weeks ago, the Independent Television Commission reprimanded the American-based cable channel, CNBC, for running an opinion and news program that featured only the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. The program was deemed too biased and is currently barred from being broadcast in Britain. It seems that while British readers are considered mature enough to distinguish between news and commentary, British viewers are not. Simple questions: aren't they often the same people? And what is unique about television that it requires some elusive quality called "objectivity"? I can see the argument, perhaps, in the 1940s, when there was only the BBC, and its power was so great and its reach so comprehensive that some kind of rigid internal balance was deemed important. (Even in the 1940s, of course, the BBC was anything but unbiased. It represented establishment Britain in largely conservative form.) But today? With dozens of television options to choose from, why on earth is "objectivity" deemed to be important to each? Are the viewers of television so radically different from newspaper readers? Why are they not allowed to pick and choose between differing viewpoints? And why are producers, editors and writers required to be "balanced" in their output?
More Of What Passes For Intelligence in My Former Home
This was really useful: 50 women forming the word "PEACE" with their naked bodies. (Don't worry, you can't see enough in this picture for it to qualify as pornographic.)
What is it with the left? Making a big word that says "PEACE" from human bodies doesn't do anything but provide a photo op. Making it out of naked bodies doesn't make it any more of a photo op, except for the sorts that don't have access to pictures of naked bodies.
This is just stupidity.
