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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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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).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, July 19, 2003
Opposition to Public Lewdness is Homophobia There's more coverage from the New York Times of this little matter in East Hampton, N.Y.: At Two Mile Hollow Beach, the longtime center of gay life in the Hamptons, the language of the parking lot pickup scene is very specific.Yup! That's the sort of romantic relationship that Justice Kennedy was concerned about. The crackdown has since escalated into a public controversy, with officials and some residents saying the operation is a response to clearly inappropriate and unlawful public behavior and many gays saying it has become a form of harassment.Aside from the usual crime against the proper meaning of "literally," it is so histronic. I can't imagine what he was upset about it--if you don't want to have the police make a public spectacle of you, there's a simple solution--don't make a public spectacle of having sex. Is it really that hard to go back to someone's home for your anonymous and casual sex? Tom Kirdahy, a co-chairman of the East End Gay Organization, said that most gay beachgoers agreed with and obeyed the public sex laws, but saw the recent resident and police action as "crackdowns to stop us from meeting one another."That's it! That's not public lewdness--it's political organizing! On the second page: After the situation made newspaper headlines (an East Hampton Star editorial called the arrests "anti-gay" and a "witch hunt," and The East Hampton Independent ran the front-page headline "Home Sweet Homophobia?"), the Further Lane Association hired a publicist, who said the group would discontinue using security guards on the beach.So, what's actually going on here? Chief Larsen insisted that the police enforcement was directed at illegal behavior, not at sexual preference. "It's a not a gay thing," he said. "It's enforcing the law.Oh yes, this is one step away from the Holocaust: Andrew Friedman, 44, a real estate agent from Brooklyn walking his German shepherd, Beethoven, on Tuesday evening, called the crackdown another example of the historic persecution of gays.Yes, that describes it exactly: "out of control." This second gay man was at least sufficiently in touch with reality to see that public lewdness arrests aren't a form of genocide. Labels: homosexuality Friday, July 18, 2003
Hey, It Was Consensual Adult Sex--What's the Big Deal? From BBC: A German man who confessed to killing and eating a man he met through a website for cannibals has been charged with murder, prosecutors have said.I'm so glad that the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that what happens between consenting adults is none of the government's business. Constitution? We Don't Need No Stinking Constitution! I wish I could do the Mexican bandit from The Treasure of Sierra Madre in print, but it just doesn't work. I become increasingly depressed over the lawless nature of the Nevada Supreme Court. The state constitution was amended by the voters in 1996 to require a two-thirds vote of the legislature to pass a budget. Was this wise? There's an argument for supermajorities, and I am always sympathetic to such arguments. I'm not all that sympathetic to requiring a supermajority for a budget. The people of Nevada, however, have spoken. If they made a terrible mistake, well, that's the price of a republic. The Nevada Supreme Court, however, ordered the legislature to go forward and pass a budget by a simple majority. Why bother requiring a simple majority? The Nevada Supreme Court, by equal logic, could have ordered them to pass a budget by a minority (i.e., even if failed, it's in effect). Why bother having a state constitution and a process for amending it, if the Nevada Supreme Court can simply override it when they find it inconvenient? (The federal courts are unwilling to intervene, and as near as I can tell, they are on pretty solid ground.) A lot of libertarian law professors were just besides themselves with joy at the Supreme Court's recent dishonest and lawless Lawrence decision because it gave them the result that they wanted. Some of those same libertarian law professors are upset that the Nevada Supreme Court has decided to ignore the plain text of the Nevada Constitution because it doesn't do what the Nevada Supreme Court thinks makes sense. Now California special interests are talking about asking the California Supreme Court to similarly ignore the California Constitution. Once you endorse the doctrine of judicial tyranny--that the courts may overturn any law that they don't like, without any constitutional basis for that decision--what else do you expect? Liberty is not completely safe in the hands of the majority, which can degenerate into a mob with surprising speed--but at least we can replace most of them at the next election. Liberty is even less safe in the hands of an elitist minority that fancies itself the intellectual and moral superior over the masses that pay their salaries. UPDATE: Eugene Volokh says that he wasn't beside himself with joy over the Lawrence decision. UPDATE 2: I'm told by one of my readers that this whole matter was something of a setup by the governor--who ordered the legislators into special session to deal with the budget problem--but: barring them from considering cuts in any part of the budget already passed. In other words, the conflict between the two provisions of the state constitution was no accident, it was carefully engineered.Indeed. How do you write an amendment that says, "The Supreme Court lacks the authority to ignore the constitution, including this amendment?" Is It Possible To "Vilify" Hussein's Government? In an AP news story that at least gives reasons why Bush might have been legitimately in error (as opposed to lying) concerning Iraq and uranium purchases, there is this odd sentence: Officials acknowledged that had U.S. intelligence analyzed the documents sooner, they could have discovered the forgeries before the information was used as fodder for Bush administration statements vilifying Iraq.According to my dictionary, "vilify" means to utter "slanderous" remarks. With what has come out about Hussein's mass murders and torture factories (both before and after the war), what could Bush have said about Iraq's government that would qualify as slanderous? About the only evil that you could accuse Hussein's government of that would be worse than reality is: "They eat their young!" Drug-Resistant AIDS A depressing reminder of the problems associated with sexual promiscuity, on two separate counts: The biggest study, so far, of resistance to AIDS drugs, being released today at the International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment in Paris, finds that about 10 percent of newly infected patients in Europe are infected with drug-resistant strains. Dr. Charles Boucher, virology professor at Utrecht University and lead researcher of the study, called the level of resistance to some AIDS drugs "surprisingly high."This is depressing both because these drug-resistant strains will be spread, rendering existent treatments for ameliorating the symptoms of People Existing With AIDS (from what I have read, the daily drug regimen is more existence than life) less effective, and because of that statement "newly infected patients in Europe." It is not 1981. If even in very sophisticated, liberal, open-minded Europe, which doesn't have American "homophobia," there are still enough "newly infected patients" to run large surveys like this (1,633 patients in this survey), it tells me that there are large numbers of people too stupid to run their own lives--because they can't seem to figure out these simple steps for avoiding the disease: 1. Do not engage in unprotected sex (especially anal sex). 2. Do not reuse needles. Is this really that difficult? The Case For Sexual Fidelity Canada is having problems with STDs again: The National Laboratory for STDs is now receiving up to 5,000 isolates each year that are immune to at least one antibiotic. Moreover, the proportion of samples resistant to ciprofloxacin, one leading treatment, is soaring, jumping more than 200-fold in the past decade. The situation is grimmer in Atlantic Canada, where ciprofloxacin-resistant gonorrhea is double the national number.UPDATE: And Oregon, also. With Oregon syphilis rates reaching levels not seen in a decade, health workers in the Portland area are urging some men to get tested for the disease up to four times a year.City of Ottawa officials are sounding the alarm: Ottawa health officials are concerned that syphilis numbers, which have increased for the second straight year, are climbing because people have stopped practicing safe sex. An alert placed on the City of Ottawa health Web site reminds sexually active men and women to be tested if they think they are at risk. In the mid-1990s, there were entire years that passed without a reported case in Ottawa. But over the past few years, case numbers have increased suddenly.I guess these were the meaningful relationships that Justice Kennedy was talking about in the Lawrence decision. You'll notice, of course, that these problems are disproportionately among gay men--for Ottawa, a majority are among gay men--who make up about 3-4.5% of the population. But yes, homosexuals are just like straight people. "No Thanks, No Free AIDS Treatment Drugs For My Country" One of the recurring complaints is that AIDS treatment drugs are so expensive that the poor countries of Africa can't afford them. So explain this disturbing story: The German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim said recently that only Uganda and Botswana have accepted its offer of free supplies of nevirapine, the drug used to prevent mother-to- child HIV transmission. The low take-up of Boehringer's offer highlights that, in addition to more funds and cheaper drugs, an effective response to the AIDS epidemic also requires strong political will from African countries.What? "We are not at all satisfied with how it is running," said Rolf Krebs, chair of Boehringer. Heavy customs charges, poor logistics and lack of the necessary health care infrastructure were some of the reasons why many African countries had not taken part in the program, said Krebs.How complicated is the application process that these countries would rather buy it, than be given it? Let me suggest another possible explanation. Many years ago, I worked for a company that made and sold telephone exchanges. The CEO explained that, to comply with the federal law prohibiting U.S. companies from engaging in bribery to sell products, our company sold through distributors in these foreign countries. This way, when bribes had to be paid (and in much of the Third World, that's the only way to do business), our employees weren't involved. I later found out that Nigeria had bought more than 40 of our telephone switches--even though they only needed three. What happened to the rest? They went into a warehouse in Lagos that wasn't air conditioned. Within a year, the switches were scrap. Why did they buy so many spare switches? A purchase of three switches wouldn't have had enough profit for the distributor to pay the required bribes, so the government bureaucrat responsible for procurement and bribe acceptance enlarged the size of the order. Now there was enough money to pay his bribe! I find myself wondering if that's what is going on with this matter. Free anti-AIDS drugs don't involve money changing hands; buying those same drugs through commercial channels has lots of graft opportunity. Dick Morris, Whatever His Other Faults, Certainly Understands American Politics From his recent column: DR. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor now rallying liberals in the nation's Democratic primaries, is forcing the party into a potentially lethal march to the left.So what's driving Dean's brand of leftism? What always drives leftism: rich people. Dean's recent startling success in fund-raising - he raised more money in the last quarter than any other Democratic candidate - propels him into the top tier of candidates and gives him the means to promote his agenda.When I was taking a History of Los Angeles class as a grad student, one of the oddities that kept popping up was how many sons of millionaires (back when a million dollars was equivalent to about ten million today) were actively involved in promoting early 20th century socialist political movements and utopian experiments. It's not any different today. Big money can always be found helping these movements. The obvious reason is that you can assuage a lot of guilt about your own wealth by giving it to those who are trying to "soak the rich." The less obvious reason is that by funding organizations that promote your particular notion of "soak the rich," you can make sure that whatever becomes the leftist consensus will be a scheme that doesn't tax those who are already rich, but those who are trying to become rich. That's why leftists in the U.S. generally support high income tax rates--but seldom attack the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds--and at least since the days of Huey Long passed, don't support taxes on existing wealth, but on income. Ann Coulter Doing What She Does Best She does a pretty good job of pointing out that even if Attorney General Ashcroft's actions in response to 9/11 were over the top, they actually compare pretty favorably to what Democrats have done under less extreme conditions, and with less reason: AFTER PEARL HARBOR, President Roosevelt rounded up more than 100,000 Japanese residents and citizens and threw them in internment camps. Indeed, both liberal deities of the 20th century, FDR and Earl Warren, supported the internment of Japanese-Americans. In the '20s, responding to the bombing of eight government officials' homes, a Democrat-appointed attorney general arrested about 6,000 people. The raids were conducted by A. Mitchell Palmer, appointed by still-revered Democrat segregationist Woodrow Wilson, who won the 1916 election based on lies about intelligence and war plans.Of course, she can't stop when she is ahead: Albasti told PBS – that's right, PBS, the television network owned, operated and funded by the very same federal government Albasti now claims is oppressing him – that during his one-week confinement he was worried he would be hanged without anyone ever knowing what happened to him. For that remark alone, he should be deported. Is that what he thinks of America?Sorry, but being afraid that our government might overreact under the extraordinary conditions post-9/11 isn't a deportable offense. She does a good job of combining a fairly witty remark with a penetrating thought thta reminds us that "conservative" by American standards would be regarded as radical libertarian by Arab Muslim standards: Apparently, a lot of the false tips to law enforcement are coming from ex-wives. (Maybe Muslim men should have thought of that before introducing the burka.) I Hope This Is A Typo From Roger Ebert's review of the documentary Stone Reader: No MPAA rating (no unobjectionable material).I hope he really meant "no objectionable material." I shudder to think of what a film would be that contained nothing but objectionable material! A Boy and His Dog comes close, though--the only movie that I have ever seen where I felt like punching the director in the nose after watching it. (If I hadn't been reliant for a ride home, I would have walked out on it--as many, many people in the audience that day did, some of them expressing their outrage and disgust as they did so.) Another Ten Commandments Suit Like the suit involving the Alabama Supreme Court building, whatever merit there might be to the claims about establishment of religious should be, I think, balanced against the claims made by the plaintiffs--who are either lying, or mentally disturbed: Plaintiff Sue Mercier is a resident of La Crosse, Wisconsin and a member of plaintiff Freedom from Religion Foundation. When visiting her lawyer’s office, which is near the monument site, plaintiff Mercier must sometimes alter her route to avoid seeing the monument. She shops at the People’s Food Coop and the farmers’ market less often than she would if the monument were not in Cameron Park. When she has viewed the monument, it has “disturbed” her emotionally.One of the plaintiffs feels "marginalized"? Sure, I can understand that. But emotionally disturbed by the presence of a chunk of stone? Another plaintiff feels physical pain from seeing this chunk of stone? What's next? "The Ten Commandments turned me into a newt!... I got better." How far do you think a lawsuit would go in the federal courts if plaintiffs claimed to suffer physical pain or even emotional disturbance, from seeing an interracial couple in public, or a lesbian couple engaged in a public display of affection? The plaintiff would be told to go get counselling--and with good reason. Thanks to How Appealing! for the link. Labels: establishment of religion The Price of Overacting I found this amusing story on How Appealing! PANAMA CITY, Fla. - Jurors who were mooned by a defendant needed only 30 minutes Thursday to find the man guilty of armed burglary and aggravated battery.Talking quietly to yourself, or to your imaginary friends, would have been a more effective strategy, I think. This was just hamming it up--and the jury could probably see it. Going for the insanity defense tends to be more common with more serious crimes--although it doesn't always work the way that you expect. I recall reading about a murder trial in California in the late 1970s or early 1980s where the defendant was, to use a technical term, "crazy as a loon." He dressed in a cape; murdered people; then drank their blood. He insisted that he was a vampire. Slam-dunk not guilty by reason of insanity verdict, right? (This was before many states replaced "not guilty by reason of insanity" with "guilty, but insane.") Nope. The jury found him guilty. It seems clear that they were scared witless by this guy, and were taking no chances of ever seeing this guy back out on the street. Thursday, July 17, 2003
Economic Mobility A nice column by Thomas Sowell about the ways in which the left tries to use envy as a motivating force for politics. In the case of the Internal Revenue Service data on the 400 highest income-earners in the country, only 21 people were in that category throughout the nine years covered by IRS statistics. In other words, more than 2,000 people passed through this category in the course of nine years but fewer than two-dozen actually stayed there the whole time.This has been my experience as well--people move up and down with surprising speed. I grew up in less than affluent circumstances, but I don't think I ever realized that we were "poor people" until I was applying for financial aid for college--and I discovered that my family was just below the poverty line. (Some of this was because my father's health had declined when he hit his 50s, and being a welder, climbing hundreds of feet on ladders in the middle of deserts--well, that just wasn't very practical anymore.) Twenty-five years later, I was in the top 10% of Americans in net worth. All around me, I saw the same upward mobility. Dozens of people that I knew became millionaires; many became decamillionaires ($10 million and up net worth), and a few became hectamillionaires ($100 million and up). At least a few people with whom I am on a first-name basis (not that we run into each other very often) are probably billionaires by now. I also saw a lot of downward mobility during this same time, as kids who had grown up in upper middle class homes drank and toked their way down to the homeless class. I saw mental illness destroy the potential that many had, turning them into homeless people, and mental hospital inmates. Yes, there were unfortunate situations, bad luck, and for a few people, mental illness drove some of the downward movement. For some, the upward mobility was sheer blind luck, being in the right place at the right time, or having the right friends. (And some of those people have lately demonstrated that it was just luck--I understand that a number of Ferraris have changed hands in California of late, and not because the sellers are trading up.) But from what I have seen, character, as it would be understood in an earlier era (honesty, hard work, concern for others), is a major determinant of a person's economic mobility--probably the largest determinant. You can screw up really good, and take yourself and your family down with you. You can work hard, take your responsibilities seriously, and rise. Another Reminder of What An Evil Thing We Did Overthrowing Saddam Hussein A Reuters news story talks to Iraqis about the 35th anniversary of the Baath Party's coup d'etat. Rational Basis vs. Strict Scrutiny Nice piece by Eugene Volokh explaining "rational basis" vs. "strict scrutiny" standards for evaluating the Constitutionality of laws. As will be obvious when you read it, the Lawrence decision found that the right to private, consensual adult sex (a right that, at best, is implicit) is subject to the very demanding strict scrutiny rule. On the other hand, an explicit individual right to keep and bear arms is, when even found to be a right at all, is usually tested under the rational basis standard. This is why my respect for the courts, already in decline ten years ago, when I first started reading decisions of the U.S. and state supreme courts, is sinking very quickly. Explicitly granted rights get examined under rational basis rules, which as Professor Volokh points out, are basically not rights at all; rights that have no explicit textual support at all, get examined under strict scrutiny rules. There are those who think that the Supreme Court's authority needs to be reined in significantly. I agree, not because the Court is striking down state laws that I like (I'm actually ambivalent about the sodomy laws), but because they refuse to engage in any honest and consistent application of their legal theories. It has basically turned into, "We like this law; it is subject only to rational basis evaluation; we don't like this law because it's icky, therefore strict scrutiny applies." I gave an example a week or so ago from history--how the Supreme Court ruled against state regulation of working hours in the Lochner (1905) decision based on the right of contract, but upheld a state law requiring private companies to segregate railroad cars, explicitly rejecting right of contract, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This was not an ideological purity driving these decisions, but an elite deciding to overrule state legislatures when they felt like it. This is the sort of arrogance that I expect from elitists. I would prefer a Constitutional republic, but it appears that our choices are elitist oligarchy, or unlimited democracy. Even unlimited democracy, as dangerous as it is, is better than unlimited raw power grabs of people that are not answerable to the voters. UPDATE: Read this article from the Albuquerque Journal now; I suspect that it will disappear when the paper realizes how bizarre the events are that it describes. The Senate Rules Committee met in Santa Fe last month to consider Gov. Bill Richardson's appointees to the Human Rights Commission.It turned out that every appointee for the commission gave exactly the same answer. There was plenty of sexual, racial, and ethnic diversity--but no intellectual diversity. Disturbing Articles About Dennis Kucinich's Sudden Change of Heart About Abortion National Review reports (also here) that Rep. Dennis Kucinich, leftwing activist, antiwar Congressman, hater of all things Bush, has had a very sudden and amazing change of heart about abortion, going from a near-perfect pro-lifer until the beginning of 2002, to a pro-choicer. What happened? The articles suggest that Kucinich decided that he wanted to be the leader of Democrats. I describe myself as a reluctant pro-choicer. I think that trying to ban first trimester abortions is completely impossible as long as the demand is so high, and so many people support having it available. In practice, I doubt that there will ever be the supermajority required to make such a ban feasible. Even though Roe v. Wade (1973) was wrongly decided, it is clear to me that first trimester abortions are Constitutionally protected, based on the combination of the Ninth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the absence of laws criminalizing such abortions in 1791 and 1868. I also have some serious concerns that those who insist that life begins at conception have made an error in their assumptions, because the various Bible verses used to justify this position are, at best, only implications. On the other hand, a ban on "convenience" third trimester abortions (those where the mother's life or permanent health are not at risk) wouldn't bother me at all. Removing all government funding from abortions would make me a lot happier, both because many pro-lifers genuinely resent being required to fund what they consider an immoral practice. (And yes, if you feel moral qualms about supporting the Defense Department, you shouldn't have to do that, either.) As with most things, government funding almost certainly increases demand for abortion--and abortion as a form of birth control is both grotesque and economically inefficient. The various "abortion waiting period" laws that some states have tried out don't bother me, either. If liberals are happy with waiting periods to act as "cooling off" time for gun purchases, then they really shouldn't mind 48 hours waiting on abortions. If 48 hours is too long to wait for an abortion, then you are obviously a little too far along. I see no reason why kids need parental consent to get their ears pierced, but not to have a fairly major surgical procedure which involves significant infection risks. Look, I can respect a pro-lifer who holds his position for honest and consistent reasons, and I can respect a pro-choicer who does likewise. I can't respect anyone who makes such a change for such transparently political reasons. The question about abortion isn't trivial; it's a question as to whether this is a human life, deserving of legal protection or not. Abortion is not a procedural question, such as whether punitive damages should be treble damages or quadruple damages, or whether the statute of limitations should be one year, three years, or seven years. One can take positions on particular aspects of abortion that are not purely pro-life or purely pro-choice (oppose partial birth abortion, but allow first trimester abortion; oppose government funding of abortion, but allow private funding; make exceptions for abortions in the case of rape or incest, but otherwise prohibit it), and have those positions be honest disagreements. It doesn't sound like this is what Kucinich is doing, however. Labels: abortion Gay Quotas Have Come Out of the Closet, Finally From the Chicago Sun-Times: Mayor Daley on Wednesday opened the door to contract set-asides for businesses owned by gays and lesbians--provided they can prove they were frozen out of city contracts because of past discrimination.My suspicion is that they are going to have a hard time proving past discrimination against gay and lesbian owned businesses for the simple reason that unlike black-owned businesses, where everyone knew that the owner was black, homosexuals, even 30 years ago, did their best to keep a very low profile. Of course, this will only be a temporary roadblock. The rationale for contract set-asides will be that gays and lesbians, because of the laws, were unable to form the capital to start businesses, and get city contracts. This will become just another spoils system, much as minority-owned business set-asides have also become. There is one difference, of course. Blacks were the victims of fierce discrimination for centuries. If you were to believe the claims of the Lawrence decision, systematic discrimination against homosexuals is only about 30 years ago. Jerry Springer Is Running For Senate From Ohio, You Know I found this very funny Letterman list over at The Corner: David Letterman's Top Ten List: Is Spam A Terrorist Plot? I'm only half-joking. It does seem as though the quantity of it--and how much of it seems to include a computer virus--has increased dramatically since 9/11. Now, this could just be coincidental, but I notice that an awful lot of the incoming spam is clearly written by people with limited English skills. Even if the spammers aren't connected to terrorists, cruise missles are still the right solution for spammers. I use McAfee SpamKiller now. It works, but it's a bit clumsy, and there are still a dozen pieces of spam a day that I have to add a filter for--and I really wish that I didn't have to use it at all. Another Liberal Expresses Her Disapproval of Free Speech This piece by Professor Sherry Colb of Rutgers Law School explains why what firefighters and police officers do and say off-duty isn't protected by the First Amendment. It's a well-done rationalization, as I would expect from a law professor, but it still boils down to this: the government is allowed to fire employees for saying offensive and distasteful things while off duty, because such speech raises questions about whether they would do their jobs properly. A public school math teacher who announces his strong belief that girls are stupid and unfit to study math cannot be expected to do a fair job of educating girls in mathematics, as his position requires him to do. A Humane Society employee who says that animals deserve to suffer cannot be trusted to provide nurturance and love to homeless animals. And a firefighter who finds humor in the lynching of a black man cannot be trusted to risk his own life to protect the lives of black men, women and children.You will notice that every example that Professor Colb gives involve statements or beliefs that are offensive to the left--not a single example that would be offensive to the right. I have no question that if black government employees engaged in similarly offensive off-duty behavior, and were fired for that reason, that the ACLU would be lined up to defend their right to do so under the First Amendment. Liberals used to defend civil liberties, even with the most extreme examples, based on high principles. It has become very clear in the last 10-15 years that the high principles were just an excuse to get what they wanted. Now that they are in control of the institutions, they are full of clever little arguments for why freedom of speech only protects speech that was offensive to the majority of 1965--but doesn't protect speech offensive to the majority of 2003. James Lileks Makes a Good Point About Ann Coulter I sometimes enjoy Coulter's writing--even when she is being unfair and cruel, she is often quite entertaining--but Lileks makes a good point about what Coulter does, and does in a way that's almost as funny as Coulter can be: Coulter is a Lumper. Anyone who says “all liberals are . . . “ and follows it with something like genetically driven to oppose the United States is just talking nonsense, and gives the impression that they are actually standing on their hands, and have taught their rectum to pass gas in such a way that forms recognizable phonemes. Yes, there are hard-cases who fit Coulter’s description. But it’s possible to be in favor of all sorts of lefty causes - progressive taxation, affirmative action, abortion, socialized medicine, etc. - and love America. That should be obvious. Otherwise you have to believe that 32 percent of the nation is actively devoted to its eventual destruction. One could say that the consequences of their beliefs might be ruinous - but ruin is not their objective. So to say “left-wingers hate America!” just strikes me as fatuous drivel. If that’s the case, there’s no point in arguing about anything. To the barricades!I think every political writer does some Lumping (even I do, on occasion), simply because so often you do find an astonishing level of common ground shared by people of a particular political persuasion. It's useful to stand back occasionally, and think about it. Globalizing Our Constitution John Leo's recent column makes an interesting assertion: On ABC's This Week, Justice Breyer said a challenge for the next generation will be "whether our Constitution [fits] and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations." There's a sense in which this is obvious. Globalization and mass immigration are highlighting clashes between judicial systems. But there's an alarming interpretation too: the suggestion that the U.S. Constitution may have to be adapted to foreign governing documents.Funny, but I don't remember when we amended our Constitution so that the job of Supreme Court justices is to make our Constitution fit into the governing documents of other nations. Was I just not paying attention that day? New Hampshire Bans Junk Lawsuits Against Gun Makers From the Concord Monitor: Gov. Craig Benson signed a bill into law yesterday that protects gun manufacturers and sellers from being sued when criminals use their products.These absurd lawsuits, seeking to hold gun manufacturers liable for unlawful use of guns, are in the same league as holding McDonald's responsible for obesity. The New Iraq It's amazing how many different Iraqs there seem to be. The mainstream media (those who hate George Bush) portray it as a continuing disaster of anarchy. Others who have returned from Iraq recently have a very different--and a very positive portrayal of a society that is finally enjoying freedom, and where the coalition forces are either grudgingly acknowledged as a good thing, or regarded as liberators. Read this article by Amir Taheri. Read all of it--there are so many thoughtful and important points that trying to excerpt the best or the most important is hopeless. I can see why the left in the U.S. is hopping mad about what we did in Iraq. Iraqis are free from the secret police, from the torture chambers, and all the rest of what makes the left feel important. A Disappointing Accusation Against The Traditional Values Coalition This article in National Review Online says that the Traditional Values Coalition is attacking pro-life Congressmen in its mailings for supporting a change to the law allowing importation of prescription medicines from other countries. Why? The idea is that American consumers would be able to benefit from Canadian price controls. The pharmaceutical industry and the Bush administration have long (and plausibly) contended that opening the borders to medicine would also let in drugs that are illegal or dangerous. The TVC has added a new twist to the argument: Allowing imports would let RU-486 in, thus undermining the regulation of the abortion pill. The TVC is therefore going after at least 25 pro-life congressmen who support the idea. If the bill becomes law, their mailers say, RU-486 "may become as easy to get as aspirin." The TVC continues: "Call Congressman Kevin Brady. . . . Don't let him forget the sanctity of life." It even insinuates that liberalizing the bill was designed, in part, for the purpose of relaxing controls on RU-486.The article goes on to indicate that the phamaceutical industry may have bought off TVC to oppose this bill on false grounds. Some social conservatives are suggesting that the TVC was paid off by the pharmaceutical lobby. Mike Schwartz, a vice president of Concerned Women for America, says that several social-conservative organizations were offered money in return for making the RU-486 arguments. Most of them turned it down, he said, citing Eric Licht of Coalitions for America and social-conservative lawyer Pat Trueman in particular. Trueman declined to be interviewed on the record. Licht confirmed that he was approached "preliminarily, hypothetically about some things we could do." He adds, "I didn't feel comfortable with it so I said no." He says that he was not contacted by the pharmaceutical industry, but declines to answer whether a lobbyist for the industry made the offer.I often disagree with TVC--although I have become more sympathetic to their concerns over time--and my conversations with TVC's director, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, have left me a pretty positive feeling about him in the past. This disappoints me greatly. Honest disagreements are one thing; this is a pretty dishonest campaign, it seems. Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Another Tragedy Caused by Letting Ordinary People Possess Incredibly Dangerous Devices Eight dead, and dozens injured. No, not a gun. A car. SANTA MONICA, Calif. - A car plowed through a crowded farmers market Wednesday, killing at least eight people and possibly injuring dozens more, authorities said. Too Bizarre To Be Believed Have you ever wondered if your favorite element has ever been referenced in a comic book? Wonder no more! Visit this truly amazing page. Thanks to Eugene Volokh for the pointer. Interesting Claim: 20-30% of IV Drug Abusers Are Lesbians From American Journal of Public Health: Women injection drug users who have sex with women (WSW IDUs) comprise 20 percent to 30 percent of American women IDUs. Compared to other women IDUs, WSW IDUs have higher HIV prevalence and incidence rates and a greater likelihood of engaging in high- risk injection and sexual practices with men.I have banged the drum for sometime about the disproportionate reporting by homosexuals of having been child sexual abuse victims (30% of men and 48% of women in one San Francisco Dept. of Public Health survey that I have read). There are sound reasons for suspecting that severe drug abuse may be an adult response to child sexual abuse, and I can think of several examples among people that I know. (One woman at a Bible study explained to my wife that it was better to be homeless for five years, than to stay at home in an abusive situation.) Lesbians (including bisexual women) are about 1-2% of the American women--and yet they are apparently about 10x to 15x that fraction of female IV drug abusers. Does anyone besides me find that a pretty compelling reason to: 1. Reconsider the claim that homosexuals are "born that way." 2. Do everything possible to prevent child abuse, by discouraging divorce--one of the mechanisms that often leads to it? UPDATE: The study does indicate that the sample group (n=803) came from "street-recruited women," but unless you can come up with some reason to think that such a sampling method will give disproportionately lesbian drug addicts, as opposed to straight drug addicts, I don't think it impairs the sampling. Labels: child sexual abuse Is There A Public Health Reason to Regulate Casual Sex? In particular, is there a public health reason to regulate homosexual anal sex? An interesting article about the rise of a phenomenon that AIDS experts are calling "superinfection": PARIS - Evidence is growing that "superinfection" with more than one strain of HIV (news - web sites) may be more common than previously thought, which could complicate efforts to make a vaccine, experts said Monday at an international AIDS (news - web sites) conference.It's certainly true that promiscuity increases substantially the spread of STDs; the spread of infection rises exponentially with the increase in the number of sexual partners that an infected person has. Anal sex seems to be especially well-suited to the spread of AIDS, and specifically homosexual anal sex seems to be an especially effective mechanism, because a man who becomes infected has more opportunity to infect others than a woman who becomes infected with AIDS. It appears that vaginal and oral intercourse is less effective at transmitting AIDS than anal intercourse: For example, anal sex -- in which HIV-infected semen comes into contact with tiny abrasions of the anal wall -- is highly risky for HIV transmission. Oral sex -- in which semen or vaginal fluids are taken into the mouth and/or swallowed -- is considered a less likely route of HIV transmission.From what I have read in a variety of places (including here ), women are less likely to transmit AIDS to men than men are to transmit it to women. In addition, women who become infected tend to sicken and die more quickly than men, reducing their opportunities to spread the disease. If you accept the usual liberal public health arguments (such as applied to guns), these are all legitimate public health arguments for regulating homosexual anal sex--even if the law is overbroad, affecting the relatively small percentage of gay men who are in permanent, mutually monogamous relationships. After all, liberals don't mind that many gun control laws are even more overbroad, impacting the vast majority of gun owners who will never misuse a gun. UPDATE: It appears that unprotected homosexual anal intercourse with persons whose HIV status is either unknown, or different (meaning that one partner is at risk of being infected) is still pretty common: Subjects were classified as having potentially serodiscordant unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) if they reported UAI with at least two persons whose HIV status was not known to them in the preceding six months. Unprotected was defined as "not always" using a condom with anal intercourse. Anal intercourse was insertive, receptive, or both.Now, the higher rate of "potentially serodiscordant UAI" among the HIV+ compared to the HIV- is worrisome because these are people who can't claim ignorance as the reason that they are putting others at risk. The HIV- risktakers can at least pretend that they have been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years, and have no idea that they are risking a slow and painful death. Bizarre Article About Michael Chertoff's Confirmation to the U.S. 3rd Circuit At first glance, the article is suggesting that Judicial Watch's attempt to block Chertoff's confirmation was some sort of political payback for Chertoff's refusal to investigate the Clinton Administration's use of IRS against political enemies (like Judicial Watch). But the full story gives the impression that while there is little reason to assume that Chertoff is dirty, there is some reason to wonder what's going on with another interesting character: The man whom Chertoff is accused of not reining in is Stanley Myatt, who between 1969 and the 1980s was accused of smuggling marijuana in private planes, embezzlement and interstate transport of stolen securities. It is not clear, even to law enforcement officers, whether Myatt -- who uses more than one name -- was ever convicted. As one prosecutor says, "he's not one of those guys who leaves an accurate trail."Very interesting. It makes you wonder who Myatt is--and why law enforcement isn't interested. Not surprisingly, the article goes on to discuss the connection between Myatt, Clinton, and Democratic Party fundraising in Cailfornia. One of the people involved in this bizarre witches' brew is a guy named Peter Paul: Paul had once spent almost $2 million on a lavish party for Sen. Clinton in Hollywood, Fitton says. The evening attracted dozens of stars, including Michelle Pfeiffer and the cast of "Ally McBeal," and culminated with Bill Clinton, then president, playing the saxophone in a pair of Ray-Bans. Paul was never repaid, and the $2 million was never reported to the Federal Election Commission, Fitton alleges.Very odd indeed. Another strange item that I found through this link on How Appealling. Delaware's Governor Has Signed a Concealed Weapon Permit Reciprocity Law HB 178, passed June 27, signed by the governor July 11. The guts of the bill: Notwithstanding any other provision of this Code to the contrary, the State of Delaware shall give full faith and credit and shall otherwise honor and give full force and effect to all licenses/permits issued to the citizens of other states where those issuing states also give full faith and credit and otherwise honor the licenses issued by the State of Delaware pursuant to this Section and where those licenses/permits are issued by authority pursuant to state law. The Attorney General shall communicate the provisions of this Section to the Attorneys General of the several states and shall determine those states whose licensing/permit systems qualify for recognition under this Section. Likewise, the Attorney General shall, at least annually, publish a list of all such states whose licensing/permit systems qualify for recognition hereunder and shall make such list readily available to all State and local law enforcement agencies within the State as well as to all then-current holders of licenses issued by the State of Delaware pursuant to this Section.It looks like the Delaware A-G needs to actually do some letter writing, but since Idaho recognizes permits from all other states, I will shortly be able to add another state to the places that I am allowed to carry. More Reminders That Public Schools Have To Be Sued To Support The First Amendment I found this link to a 3rd U.S. Circuit decision over at How Appealing. The guts of the case were: 1. Punxsutawney Area High School had an "activity period" of the day when students were required to be in class, but this time was available for extracurricular activities, including student clubs. Students could use this time for just about any purpose, including studying, socializing, or other non-instructional activities. 2. Melissa Donovan, a student there, organized a non-approved student activity that involved prayer. Remember: this is an entirely voluntary activity. No student was required to attend, to participate, and because there was freedom to move freely throughout the school, no one had any reason to feel left out or like an outsider. 3. Donovan didn't bother trying to get approval for her group, since she knew it would not be approved. 4. Not surprisingly, the school insisted that they not meet during the activity period, because of the religious nature of the group. The school even went so far as to claim that this activity period was instructional time. The Court of Appeals decided that Donovan was in the right. The guarantee of freedom of religion in the First Amendment means something! Wow! With the EAA, Congress specifically made it “unlawful for any public secondary school which receives federal financial assistance and which has a limited open forum to deny equal access” to student groups based on the religious or other content-based nature of the speech at their proposed meetings. 20 U.S.C. § 4071(a). Congress passed the statute to address perceived widespread discrimination against religious speech in public schools.It sounds like that perception was pretty darn accurate. This is one of the reasons that "liberal" is a dirty word to me. Liberals claim to support freedom of expression, but through their control of public schools, they demonstrate that they don't really mean it. Part Of Why I Don't Take Most Claims of Racism Very Seriously Anymore From a Washington Post story about the television business: Similarly, on Sunday Steve Harvey said that a strong accusation he made 18 months ago -- that the WB network paid him less to appear on his sitcom than it paid white actors on lower-rated series -- was just a scam to get more money out of the network. |
