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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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The Electricity Crisis in California and Gray Davis
I received an email recently from an old boss, a person who is one of the most decent people for whom I have ever worked. He still lives in California, but is getting ready to abandon the startup he works for and retire to another state, because there seems to be no future in his startup, or California. He is discouraged by the political situation, and like many Californians, seems to blame the budget problems in California on George Bush. He claimed that Bush's friendship with Ken Lay of Enron was behind California's energy crisis. He blames Bush for the economic hard times after eight boom years under Clinton. My friend is upset that Davis is getting pilloried for an electricity problem that he blames on Governor Pete Wilson, for signing into law some years ago. I responded to his upset letter with a factual set of statements about the real problems.
I understand that you are upset about the energy and economic disaster, and I agree that Davis has been given too much of the blame for what went wrong. (Heck, I voted for Davis in the primary in 1998.) But the story is a bit more complex than you what you are describing. The San Francisco Chronicle had a story on December 31, 2000, about what went wrong.
Important points:
1. The bill, written primarily by Steve Peace (a liberal Democrat) passed both houses of the legislature UNANIMOUSLY before Governor Wilson signed it.
2. Most members voted for a bill that they didn't understand, but they trusted Peace because he had done such a good job on workman's compensation reform.
3. Other states also deregulated electricity, but did a more sensible job of it, and didn't end up with the disaster that California did. Peace's bill, among other things, encouraged existing utility company owners of power plants to sell them
to companies that weren't in the retail business. This meant that existing utilities had no control over the price that they might have to pay for power, and a number of them weren't happy with this. (Remember that utilities are guaranteed a fixed return on their investment, so it doesn't matter what price they buy at; they get the same percentage profit.) The incentives to utilities to dispose of their existing plants is discussed in a San Francisco Chronicle December 21, 1995 article.
4. California did experience a dramatic increase in demand, as the article pointed out:
It immediately became clear that California's failure to build power plants as its rapidly growing economy pushed demand upward was a serious problem. Increasingly, the state's growing technology economy depended on electricity, and new home construction concentrated in hot areas like Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where air conditioning is a must.
5. There were some perverse incentives built into the scheme that seem like they weren't well thought out: And for all the talk of competition, there was a serious flaw that made the market singularly uncompetitive.
So, not a free market, but a simulation of one, not done very well.
In order to encourage generators to create as much power as possible, deregulation guaranteed the highest price for wholesale electricity. Through a practice known as the "market clearing price," the last bidders -- who are invariably the most expensive -- set the price everyone would receive.
In other words, if the first generator bids $30 for a certain amount of megawatts but the last bids $100, those two bidders and everyone in between receive $100. As the wholesale price of electricity skyrocketed to $1,500 per megawatt hour this month from $30 before the storm, the high cost has been compounded by the fact that everyone receives that amount.
6. Ken Lay has lots of friends, all over the map. For example, he sits on the board of the Heinz Center, an environmental group founded by John Kerry's wife. Most sleazebuckets do their best to have friends in both parties. However, you'll notice that most of the big corporate shenanigans happened during the previous administration--and the prosecutions happened in this one. This story from the San Francisco Chronicle of December 27, 2001, makes the point that Lay had friends in all sorts of places:The ties of Lay to the White House and GOP leaders, he added, were so multilayered that Republicans are likely to be reluctant to pursue them. But he made clear that he intends to do so and expects the Democratic-controlled Senate to follow suit.
7. The collapse of the stock market bubble started in April of 2000, before the elections. Most of the problem was that certain companies (WorldCom among them) were creating bogus projections of future demand, which encouraged a bogus projection of sales of telecom and datacomm equipment. When reality started to settle in, the bubble burst. As it was, this had been the longest expansion in history, and I guess I should have thought of the story of why J.P. Morgan sold all his stock a week or so before Black Tuesday: his shoeshine boy was giving him stock tips. That same sort of delusion was at work in 1999 and 2000, but like many others, I was anxious to believe it could go up forever.
Enron also cultivated relationships with Democrats, however. Lay played golf in Vail, Colo., with President Bill Clinton, and Enron gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaign committees and Democrats in the House and Senate, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and Texas Rep. Martin Frost Texas, the ranking minority member on the House Rules Committee.
Advocates of campaign finance reform say the Enron case vividly illustrates the ties between politics and big money, though it's unclear that the company's political operations were radically different from others for whom political contributions have become a routine cost of doing business.
8. I don't know all the details of why FERC refused to intervene when it did, but I can play the cynic and suggest that Bush's commissioners appointed in April of 2001 (the third commissioner is a Clinton appointee) might have seen little reason to intervene in a train wreck certain to rebound poorly on Democrats. But there are other possible motivations as well. When you read the testimony of Commissioner Massey (the Clinton appointee) before Congress, it doesn't sound like that was the story. Throughout this crisis, the Commission's orders have been timid and insufficient to fulfill our statutory duty to ensure just and reasonable prices. The Commission's responses to the crisis, though well intentioned, can be fairly characterized as too little, too late. The crisis began in June, 2000. Electricity prices soared even higher after our December 15, 2000 remedies order, and our refund orders for the months of January through April, 2001, have been paltry and arbitrary. The April 26 order, though somewhat more aggressive, provided a measure of price protection for consumers only during periods of severe generation reserve deficiencies (so-called stage 1, 2, and 3 alerts). The order also initiated an extraordinarily narrow section 206 investigation into electricity prices in the Western Interconnection.
9. California state government is required to run a balanced budget. From what I have read, the state deficit is actually closer to 38B, not 8B. I don't generally approve of running unbalanced budgets, but Keynesian economists (as Democrats have been since the 1930s) argue that it is legitimate to spend one's way out of a recession, and then pay off the debts when the economy is booming. I've never had a problem with the theory; it's just that it's often difficult to keep legislators from spending money that they don't need to after the economy has recovered, and that's pretty much what happened after the 1993 tax increases. Congress kept spending, even as the economy recovered. It wasn't until 1995, and a change of party in the House, that the spending came under control--and you'll notice that most of the booming stock market was post-1995.
10. I'm irritated by Arnold's films, but he has turned into an adequate actor for his genre, and when he makes comedies, he's actually quite good at that. My major concern is that special interest money tends to run Califonia politics; it's good to have someone who isn't beholden to anyone to give him money. I would prefer someone with serious credentials in public policy (like me, of course), but it's hard to call the way that California has been run by "the professionals" anything wonderful.
Interesting Odds & Ends From My Last Research Trip
Professions We Don't Think About Much Anymore
Much of of my last research trip, to the University of Nevada, Reno, was digging through early American business directories, looking for gunsmiths. As usual, I found gunsmiths that seem to have been hitherto unknown to the existing literature on the subject. But along with gunsmiths, it's always interesting to see the occupations that I wasn't expecting. In Stephens's Philadelphia Directory, For 1796..., I found William De Charms, "man midwife."
There are a number of professions that we don't think about much anymore, because factories full of machines make these products now: Peter Miller, "brush maker" or Baltzer Nile, "broom maker," Samuel Nightlinger "whip & cane maker." Others built items that would only be purchased by a museum today: John Mingle, "bellows maker." Of course, those of you who read "Bartleby the Scrivener" in high school (as I did), will recognize what Isaac Milnor the scrivener at 53 Spruce Street did for a living.
There are also some very specialized trades, such as Jacob Mitchell, "mahogony sawyer," or Samuel Scotten, "whalebone cutter."
I was surprised to find in the Boston city directory of 1800 a Hannah Pope listed as "cancer doctor." This is surprising both because of her gender, and because I didn't realize that cancer had that name at the time. Perhaps there's some other meaning to this phrase at the time that I don't know.
Free Black Occupations
Another interesting directory I read was "Register of Trades of the Colored People in the City of Philadelphia and Districts (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gun, 1838). There's only five pages, but it is interesting to see how many of these blacks were operating their own businesses, and were not employed by others. There are bakers, basket-makers, blacksmiths, boot and shoemakers, brush-makers, cabinet-makers, and confectioners. There is at least one dentist, and quite a number of "bleeders"--back when bleeding someone was considered an appropriate form of medical treatment. Dress-makers go on for a couple of columns, as do hair-dressers.
Gunsmithing As A Family Tradition
One of the more intriguing aspects of researching early gunsmiths is how often you see somewhat unusual names repeating, probably because sons (and in a few rare cases, daughters) following in father's profession. Richard Wingert made guns for the Revolutionary government sometime between 1775 and 1783; a William Wingert, gunsmith, worked at 109 Woodbridge Street in 1837 Detroit, Michigan. Son? Grandson?
Not Afraid to be Listed
I also read through a Washington, DC directory for 1822. The title tells you that among other items, it tells you "The Names of the Members of Congress, and Where They Board...." Somehow, I don't think our elected representatives would be so willing to let this information out today.
More Terrorism By Groups That Liberals Can't Quite Bear To Criticize
It seems liberals are only upset by terrorism by pro-life groups. Where's the outrage about this intimidation by the animal rights crazies? FBI agents are calling repeated acts of vandalism a case of domestic terrorism, directed against Manrique and his partners, who run a small Central Valley farm where ducks are raised for foie gras.
In the past few weeks, vandals have attacked the men's homes and cars, spray painting messages like "foie gras is animal torture" and "stop or be stopped."
They left a threatening videotape of Manrique's family filmed through the window of his home, warning that he was being watched. In the latest incident last week, vandals flooded a Sonoma foie gras restaurant and shop the men planned to open in September. Police estimate the damage at more than $60,000.
Is Physics About to Go Post-Modernist On Us?
An interesting article in Physics Today by one of the physicists involved in establishing the existence of quarks. The disturbing part of the article, which is primarily about what defines truth in science: Philosophers of science say that measurements are "theory laden," and they are. But good experimenters are irredeemable skeptics who thoroughly enjoy refuting the more speculative ideas of their theoretical colleagues. Through experience, they know how to exclude bias and make valid judgments that withstand the tests of time.3 Hypotheses that run this harrowing gauntlet and survive acquire a certain hardness--or reality--that mere fashions never achieve. This quality is what distinguishes science from the arts.
Indeed. History has already began to collapse into the post-modernist gutter. What might still save the history profession was the extraordinarily indiscreet nature of how Michael Bellesiles's Armed America played the game. Had Bellesiles exercised the care that other post-modernists do--who primarily ignore inconvenient sources, rather than just changing them as needed--historians could be well on their way to the grand and glorious future where every part of the past means what you need it to mean today.
But many of today's practicing theorists seem to be unconcerned that their hypotheses should eventually confront objective, real-world observations. In a recent colloquium I attended, one young theorist presented a talk on his ideas about what had transpired before the Big Bang. When asked what observable consequences might obtain, he answered that there weren't any, for inflation washes away almost all preexisting features. Young theorists are encouraged in such reasoning by their senior colleagues, some of whom have recently become enamored of the possibility of operating time machines near cosmic strings or wormholes. Even granting the existence of cosmic strings, which is dubious, I have a difficult time imagining how anyone could ever mount an expedition to test those ideas.
I like to call this way of theorizing "Platonic physics," because implicit within it is Plato's famous admonition that the mathematical forms of experience are somehow more real than the fuzzy shadows they cast on the walls of our dingy material caves. And, in reaction to the seemingly insuperable problems of making measurements to test the increasingly abstract theories of today, some people have even begun to suggest that we relax our criteria for establishing scientific fact. Perhaps mathematical beauty, naturalness, or rigidity--that Nature couldn't possibly choose any other alternative--should suffice. Or maybe "computer experiments," as Stephen Wolfram intimated last year in A New Kind of Science, can replace measurements. According to a leading science historian, such a subtle but ultimately sweeping philosophical shift in theory justification may already be underway.
If so, I think it would be a terrible mistake. There would then be little to distinguish the practice of physics from, say, that of painting or printmaking--in which the criteria that distinguish the good from the bad are based largely on opinions of art critics and historians. There is something unique about scientific fact, and that uniqueness has much to do with the often tedious practice of making telling empirical observations. The primary criterion of good science must remain that it has been repeatedly tested by measurements--no matter how difficult they may prove to be--and found to be in excellent accord with them.
Without such a rigorous standard of truth, science will have little defense against the onslaughts of the creationists and postmodernists, for whom it is just one of many ways to grasp the world. How could we ever hope to defend science against such attacks if it were based only on the opinions of its leading practitioners? Mathematics is not enough, no matter how beautiful. Even Einstein, who helped foster this theoretical style, insisted his ideas had to have observable consequences.
Nice Summary of the Depleted Uranium Tempest in a Teapot
It's here, by Michael McNeil. My only quibble might be that he mentions at one point that the radiation from depleted uranium doesn't have much penetration. That's true. Outside of your body, it's no big deal at all--alpha particles won't even penetrate clothing. If it ends up inside your body, even the limited penetration has some potential to do some damage. Overall, however, I am not surprised that there is consensus that depleted uranium is an oversold problem. It is the left's latest attempt at creating a crisis upon which to destroy Bush for overthrowing their favorite thug.
Extremists Endangering Lives
Yeah, you wonder when someone is going to do something about these crazy extremists running around trying to impose their narrow moral code on a peaceful majority. Isn't it odd that the Democrats have been so silent? Oh, that's right, these are environmentalists at work: Setting Fires With Electrical Timers - An Earth Liberation Front Guide
It's apparently not just talk. See this arson fire at an apartment complex in San Diego claimed by ELF, and this arson at a car dealership that seems to be ecoterrorism. Have they considered the amount of carbon dioxide they are putting into the air?
The politics and practicalities of arson. Down-to-earth advice and comprehensive how-to's about devices, fuel requirements, timers, security and more.
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I Really Want To Believe That This Was a Parody of Some Sort...
This is supposed to be a translation of an interview from an Egyptian newspaper: Egyptian Jurists to Sue 'The Jews' for Compensation for 'Trillions' of Tons of Gold Allegedly Stolen During Exodus from Egypt
Perhaps the Egyptians might want to take this subject up with Germany. I think they managed to find quite a bit of the "stolen Egyptian gold" in fillings and such a few decades back.
The August 9, 2003 edition of the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi featured an interview with Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq who, together with a group of Egyptian expatriates in Switzerland, is preparing an enormous lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world." The following are excerpts from the interview: [1]
Dr. Hilmi: "… Since the Jews make various demands of the Arabs and the world, and claim rights that they base on historical and religious sources, a group of Egyptians in Switzerland has opened the case of the so-called 'great exodus of the Jews from Pharaonic Egypt.' At that time, they stole from the Pharaonic Egyptians gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more, leaving Egypt in the middle of the night with all this wealth, which today is priceless."
Why Do I Keep Making These Nasty Remarks Making Fun Of Justice Kennedy's Decision?
I occasionally get email from what I suspect are conservative or libertarian homosexuals (yes, they do exist--about 1/3 of self-identified homosexuals voted for Bush in 1992) taking me to task for continuing to point out cases such as the ACLU of Virginia challenging a law against public sodomy, and then pointing out that Justice Kennedy's Lawrence decision kept talking about deep and meaningful relationships.
Yes, I am sure that there are gay men who have monogamous relationships, as stable as those of many straight people. I know that these sort of monogamous stable relationships exist, much more commonly, among lesbians. So why do I keep making fun of Justice Kennedy's remarks?
1. The statistical evidence shows that gay men are considerably more promiscuous than straight men (and that's not a spectacularly high bar to jump anymore in this depraved society). This is part of why AIDS spread so rapidly through the gay male population, and is still doing so. The only straight populations in the U.S. with AIDS transmission rates even similar are IV drug abusers, prostitutes, and women who have sex with bisexual men. Gay men who aren't out hitting the public toilets for anonymous sex are likely to live a lot longer; congratulations on not being ferociously stupid; but keep in mind, there are lots and lots of gay men, and not just a tiny minority, who are behaving like a vicious stereotype.
2. Why is the ACLU busily defending these least defensible behaviors? The particular facts in the Lawrence decision were at least sympathetic to gays; two guys, living together, came to the attention of the police because of a malicious and false report of violence. The case the ACLU of Virginia is pursuing involves anonymous sex in an adult bookstore. The complaints about "homophobia" from East Hampton, NY, that I linked to a while back involved anonymous sex on a public beach. A recent big bust at public restrooms in Nampa, Idaho (a few miles west of here) are in this same category of behavior that, because of the health risks and because of actions taken in a public place, are clearly within the government's legitimate realm of regulation. (Whether these are the most effective ways to deal with these problems is a different question.) These actions would certainly be prosecuted against a straight couple in similar circumstances. Imagine if the NRA went to court to defend the rights of minors to buy and carry handguns! Imagine if the NRA went to court to defend the rights of inmates to keep guns in their rooms in a mental hospital or a prison! You would wonder, "Are there no serious abuses of power to fight?" I ask that same question: are there no serious abuses of the rights of homosexuals to take to court?
Bad Senioritis
A number of bloggers have discussed this lawsuit by a student who got a perfect score on the SAT (1600 combined), was admitted by the University of North Carolina, but then had his admission pulled back when his senior grades were all C, D, and F. Eugene Volokh points out that the acceptance letter is clearly conditional in nature.
My own recollections from when I was a senior, and all of us were receiving our acceptance letters (technically, acceptance cuneiform tablets), was that these are all conditional on not screwing up our senior year. Our counselors emphasized that a little decline in grades wasn't going to be a problem, but at least for my crowd, who were generally 3.8 GPA and up, this meant a couple of Bs senior year wouldn't kill our acceptances; a bunch of the grades whose letters we dared not speak was another matter entirely.
Bush's Economists Sound a Bit Smarter Than I Gave Them Credit For
From Reuters: NEW YORK (Reuters) - Manufacturing in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region soared well beyond Wall Street's expectations in August and U.S. unemployment lines were shorter last week, lending renewed vitality to hopes for stronger growth ahead.
Obviously, some of this was under way even before the tax cut, but a tax cut on top of a recovering economy will definitely goose sales, increasing manufacturing.
In a sign that the nation's long-beleaguered factories may be catching up to the rest of the economy, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said its monthly industrial gauge leapt to 22.1 in August from 8.3 in July. The jump far exceeded economists' expectations of a rise to 9.9.
It was the third month of expansion for the highly industrialized region. A harbinger of growth, new orders expanded briskly, to 14.6 from 10.4.
"It just confirms the direction of the economy, which is going to see strong growth in the third quarter, especially in industrial production," said Elisabeth Denison, economist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.
Now, unemployment is still a problem, because hiring tends to be a lagging economic indicator. (If you have ever wondered what that phrase "leading economic indicators" means--it means those items that signal what the economy is likely to do in the next few months. A "lagging economic indicator" tells you what the economy did in the last few months.)
If the economy continues to rise over the next two to three quarters, Bush's re-election should be a shoe-in--although the Iraq thing could still blow up in everyone's faces.
Associated with this, of course, are rising bond yields. If you are on the edge of retirement (in the next couple of years), and you have a lot of retirement money invested in long term bond funds, you might want to consider moving it into a money market fund. Rising bond yields mean falling bond prices; bond funds that have done really nicely these last two or three years are already giving up some of those gains.
This Is So Bizarre That It Should Only Work in a Movie--But It Worked In This Case
An action film being made in Mexico has suffered what might be a tragic accident--but increasingly looks like a murder by proxy. MEXICO CITY (AP) - An actor in an action scene apparently was handed a gun with real bullets rather than blanks, causing him to shoot and kill another actor, authorities said Thursday.
The props manager is known only as "the Brush"? Oh come on. I want a better scriptwriter than this.
Actor Flavio Peniche - brother of internationally known soap-opera star Arturo Peniche - was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and then released on bail of $40,000 on Wednesday, according to the attorney general's office of Morelos state, just south of Mexico City.
The incident occurred on Saturday during filming of a low-budget movie, "The Scorpion's Vengeance," at a hotel in Cuernavaca.
According to a police report sent by fax to the Associated Press, the scene called for Peniche to shoot six people. After firing what were supposed to be two blanks, he realized that actor Antonio Velasco had been wounded and the crew ran for help.
Velasco died shortly afterward at a Cuernavaca hospital.
Police said they were still seeking the film's producer, Eduardo Martinez Sanchez, and a props manager known only as "El Cepillo" - "The Brush" - who disappeared after the incident.
Great Picture of the Blackout From Space
It's here. Unfortunately, like many great pictures, it's obviously a fake. Why is the blacked out area darker than the ocean? Why is it darker than parts of central Nevada?
More Interstate Commerce Questions
The FACE Act, which makes criminal actions against abortion clinics into a federal crime, has been found by a federal judge to be unconstitutional, at least in part: U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt on Monday dismissed the case against Bird with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be refiled as originally drawn.
There has been a real revolution in the last ten years on this, with the courts increasingly willing to strike down federal laws under the absurdly overbroad notion of "affecting interstate commerce." There's enough parallels between FACE and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that even though I don't think abortion should be illegal, I get some satisfaction in seeing FACE suffering some legal problems.
But Cris Perez, vice president of communications for Planned Parenthood of Houston, said charges could be refiled by federal prosecutors under a different section of the FACE Act or filed by state prosecutors.
Hoyt acknowledged in his opinion that six circuit courts have ruled the FACE Act constitutional and ruled that Congress had the right to enact it under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes."
There is much political disagreement over the extent to which federal legislation enacted under the Commerce Clause can govern economic activity contained within a state, but affecting interstate commerce.
Interpretation by the Supreme Court held that the clause gives Congress the right to regulate use of the channels of interstate commerce; regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activity; and to regulate activities that have substantial relation to interstate commerce.
Hoyt points out in his opinion that all six circuit court affirmations of the FACE Act occurred before a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision that calls Congress' Commerce Clause authority into question.
In that decision, issued in a review of the constitutionality of the Violence Against Women Act, the U.S. Supreme Court said that Congress had no authority to "regulate non-economic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct's aggregate affect on interstate commerce."
Slippery Slopes Again
For those who insisted that Lawrence didn't open the door to same-sex marriage, it looks like a lot of lawyers don't agree: Arizona's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and should be reversed, a lawyer for a gay couple told the Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday.
"We're families. We're fathers. We're mothers. We love each other and our children just as other couples do," said attorney Michael S. Ryan, arguing that same-sex couples are entitled to the same protections as heterosexual couples.
But the state argued that marriage is based on community morals, has historically been limited to a man and a woman, is centered on their ability to procreate and designed to protect families.
The issue is a matter for the state Legislature, not the courts, Assistant Attorney General Kathleen Sweeney said.
A Prominent American Admits to Racial Profiling
You've probably seen this quote before, but finally, I see it properly cited, in Nelson Lund, "The Conservative Case Against Racial Profiling in the War on Terrorism," Albany Law Review 66:2 [2003] 329-43: There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it's somebody white and feel relieved. How humiliating.
Who said this? Jesse Jackson. The quote is cited to Paul Glastris & Jeannye Thornton, "A New Civil Rights Frontier: After His Own Home and Neighborhood Were Invaded by Street Punks, Jesse Jackson Dedicated Himself to Battling Black-on-Black Crime," U.S. News & World Report, January 17, 1994.
Shocking! A Federal Court Actually Rules Against Racist Admission Standards!
Okay, it's not a public institution: Kamehameha Schools was established under the 1883 will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop to educate "the children of Hawaii." Its three campuses are partly funded by a trust now worth $5.2 billion.
Okay, it's a private school, and there is some merit to the claim of the school:
Admissions are highly prized, both for the quality of education and the low cost compared to other private schools. About 4,400 Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian students from kindergarten through 12th grade attend the schools. Non-Hawaiians are admitted if there are openings, after Hawaiians who meet the criteria have been offered admission, school officials say.
Last year, the first non-Hawaiian admitted to Kamehameha Schools in 40 years created an uproar by the alumni and in the Hawaiian community. This year, no non-Hawaiians were admitted.its admissions policy giving "preference" to children of Hawaiian ancestry is needed and legal to "create educational opportunities to improve the capability and well-being of people of Hawaiian ancestry."
I just want liberals to take a consistent policy on this. If private schools are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race in favor of minority groups, then private schools just be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race in the other direction. I'm not thrilled with either situation, but darn it, it's a private institution, the government doesn't need to stick its nose into everyone's business--and it needs to be consistent and even-handed when it does decide to intervene.
Public schools, of course, are another matter. It is clearly not valid for them to discriminate based on race, religion, national origins, or even sexual orientation. We are all paying for that institution, and we all deserve an equal shot at use of those institutions, without irrelevant criteria being brought into the picture. (Obviously, discrimination in educational institutions based on grades, test scores, or abilities, is legitimate and relevant.) The moment that an institution starts to ask questions of its students or employees about any of the irrelevant criteria, because it is concerned about "underrepresented groups," the alarm bells go off for me.
Private schools that aren't directly funded by the government are off-limits to this theory. We don't all pay for them, and Kamehameha wants to discriminate based on race, it's no more a government affair than if you decide that you aren't attracted to pygmies, and refuse an offer of marriage from one.
Interesting Case, Not For The Facts, But For What It Suggests The Government Is Doing
It's interesting both because the names of the participants are under seal (the grand jury is still working on the underlying criminal case), but also because it suggests that are government is attempting to break down the door into a larger network of terrorists. A guy of Middle Eastern descent is questioned by the FBI in early 2002 both to find out if he has any knowledge about terrorist groups, and also about his green card application, which has a question: "Have you ever, in or outside the United States . . . been arrested, cited, charged, indicted, fined, or imprisoned for breaking or violating any law or ordinance, excluding traffic violations[?]"
The agents knew this guy had been convicted of shoplifting, and therefore had lied on his application. When asked why he lied, he claimed to have done it on advice of his attorney.
This case isn't really about a lie on the green card application. It's about trying to compel the attorney to testify about if and why she told this guy to lie on his green card application. I smell an effort to break a criminal conspiracy to bring Middle Easterners into the U.S. under false pretenses. This might be just your run of the mill money-making maneuver, or it might be a method for bringing terrorists into the U.S.
The ACLU's Position Seems To Be That Public Sodomy Is Constitutionally Protected
Okay, if that's not what the executive director of the ACLU of Virginia is saying, what does this mean? Legal experts generally agree that the high court's ruling means that laws banning sodomy in private are unconstitutional but that laws against public sodomy can be enforced.
If Virginia law didn't allow for severability (continued operation of part of a law while other parts have been struck down or repealed), I think I could see his point. But it seems that sodomy in a public place (an adult bookstore) is now a protected activity, at least in the ACLU's interpretation of the Constitution. (Yeah, it's another of those examples of what Justice Kennedy was talking about when he talked about how homosexuals just want the deep and meaningful relationships that heterosexuals have.)
Virginia's "Crimes Against Nature" statute, however, does not distinguish between public and private activity, leading some civil rights groups and homosexual rights advocates to argue that the state's law is unenforceable even against public sodomy.
Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, told the Roanoke Times, "Our interpretation is that any charges under the sodomy law are invalid at this point." Other misdemeanor charges were available to the police, he said, including lewd and lascivious cohabitation, obscene exhibitions and indecent exposure.
There Are Courts Crazier Than Ours
At first glance, this news report doesn't sound too bizarre. A mental hospital was sued because they negligently released someone back into the community who then committed murder, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Even the award amount isn't too bizarre: $300,000 Australian. But who sued and received the money? The killer--for the mental suffering the mental hospital imposed on him for letting him out, and having to go trial for murder.
Thanks to How Appealing for the link.
Another Victory for Free Speech, and a Defeat For the Anti-Defamation League and Other Liberals
The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals decided John Doe v. School District of Norfolk, Nebraska et. al. in favor of free speech, and against the liberal campaign to remove all religious expressions from public schools. It has been traditional in Nebraska schools (and many others) for high school graduations to include prayer and a benediction. This is no surprise, once you get out of cesspools like the San Francisco Bay Area, religion has been a fundamental part of the lives of many Americans. To avoid causing unncessary offense, the school had taken a policy of reviewing proposed prayers: At the rehearsal, John Doe learned that the ceremony would include two separate prayers, an Invocation and Benediction. The separate prayers were placed on the program schedule after a meeting during which the students voted in favor of the traditional practice. Students were allowed to submit non-sectarian and non-proselytizing prayers for consideration. Principal Stephen Morton (“Morton”) reviewed the proposed prayers, deleted proposed prayers which did not meet the specified criteria, and submitted the remaining prayers to a student committee for selection by vote.
Okay, it's a bit bizarre to review in advance prayers, and one could even argue that this practice violates free speech, but I have to give them credit for their concern for minority viewpoints. This wasn't enough to make the ACLU happy, of course, so they did their usual threatening to sue maneuver, and the School Board and high school principal went ahead and gave in.
The principal gave a little speech at the start of the graduation ceremony where he explained that the scheduled prayer and benediction had been dropped from the program. The tradition of the school was to allow any member of the School Board who had a child graduating that day to speak. James Scheer, a member of the School Board, and a parent of a graduating child, rose to speak. He recited a part of the Lord's Prayer.
So this lawsuit was against Scheer, claiming that he was acting as an official of the government. This decision decided that no, he was acting as a parent, not in his official capacity, and his right of free speech allowed him to speak.Because Scheer’s remarks were not sponsored and did not bear the imprint of the state, we find that his recitation of the Lord’s Prayer was constitutionally protected private speech.
Another victory for free speech; another defeat for liberals, enemies of free speech if it involves religion, but zealous advocates of free speech if it degrades women, glorifies brutality, or offends others.
Thanks to How Appealing for the link.
Federalism and Medical Marijuana
Randy Barnett asks if the doctrine of federalism will swing both ways--not just for conservative issues, but also for liberal issues, such as state medical marijuana laws. As much as I am offended by the excuses used to justify medical marijuana, and the destructive effect that it had in legitimizing its use by kids (or so my daughter tells me), at least this is a legitimate federalist position: if the voters of California, in all their glorious foolishness, choose to pass such a law, the federal government has a bit of a struggle to justify why federal law on this should take precedence, absent some sort of clear interstate commerce involvement, national defense issue, or some other enumerated power.
The real question here is whether Professor Barnett will recognize the flip side of federalism: the authority of the states to pass laws that are also clearly within their authority, and for which there is no constitutional basis for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn them, except by changing American history.
Atkins Diet
I've been reading about the Atkins Diet for some time. At first glance, it is so contrary to everything that has been pounded into our heads for the last 30 years about nutrition that it seems nonsensical. Essentially, the Atkins Diet argues that the key to losing weight and reducing cholesterol is to eat a diet that gets its calories from protein and fat, not from carbohydrates.
When I first started reading about the Atkins Diet, it struck me that until hunter/gather societies gave way to agriculture, the average human probably received most calories from proteins and fats, simply because the only significant source of carbohydrates came from fruit. Most of the starch foods that form the staples in both Old World and New simply didn't exist 10,000 BC. Rice, wheat, and corn, all appear as the result of mutations within two thousand years of each other--in South America, the Middle East, and China. (If this seems like a likely coincidence, your faith is at least as strong as that of the Creationists.)
It would not be a surprise if the healthiest diet for humans was that which our ancestors lived on for tens of thousands of years: lean meat (at least, as lean as a mammoth can be); some fruit and vegetables; and lots of physically demanding exercise. Unfortunately, it's hard to live that way today. I could take up hunting mammoths, but the museums would object, and besides, there's not much meat on those bones. I do my best to get a lot of exercise, but I am a software engineer, after all. But I am attempting to aim my food a bit more towards an Atkins Diet; the Ogg the Caveman Diet, unfortunately, has too many parasites.
In any case, what I find so entertaining is that a prominent nutrionist at the Medical Research Council in Britain recently published a report that claimed that the Atkins Diet was dangerous for the overweight: The controversial high-protein, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet is a mass experiment into public health based on "pseudo science", a leading nutritionist said yesterday.
That was last week. This week, we learn:
Extreme "faddy" diets that cut out entire food groups were unbalanced, untested and could pose serious health problems, she warned.
It would be negligent to recommend the Atkins diet to anyone who was overweight, said Dr Susan Jebb, of the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research Centre, Cambridge.The nutritionist who condemned the protein-based Atkins Diet is working on a report looking at the benefits of a high-carbohydrate diet funded by the Flour Advisory Bureau (Fab).
As Mr. Spock would say: "Fascinating."
It emerged yesterday that Susan Jebb, the head of nutrition and health research at the Medical Research Council (MRC), has been commissioned by Fab, the organisation which is recognised as the lobbying arm of the National Association of British and Irish Millers.
The council will be paid £10,000 by Fab for the study, which involves Dr Jebb reviewing scientific literature investigating diets that are high in carbohydrates such as bread, pasta and rice.
Betting on Both Black AND Red
From the Independent: Britain may be basking in one of the hottest summers on record, but scientists now fear that the UK could face an abrupt switch to freezing winters and Icelandic summers.
Leading global warming experts suspect that climate change, instead of being a gradual and largely predictable process, could mean that Europe's weather patterns will worsen severely with very little warning.
At any time after 2010, their research suggests, Britain's average temperature could drop by up to 5C within as little as three or four years - with catastrophic results for farming, transport, northern towns and tourism.
That would leave Britain with the same average temperatures as Iceland, said Professor Jochem Marotze, one of Europe's leading oceanographers. "It would wreck agriculture the way we know it now," he said.
Pray For My Daughter
She's going into surgery at 10:00 AM (Pacific Time) this morning. It's pretty major, under general anesthetic.
UPDATE: She forgot that you aren't supposed to have anything to eat or drink before general anesthesia, so surgery is delayed until Wednesday.
Embarrassing Past
Cruz Bustamante, Lt. Governor of California, is on the ballot to replace Gray Davis. Instapundit points to Bustamante's involvement with MeChA, a group that can be accurately classified as racist and fascist. MeChA has something called El Plan de Santa Barbara--which sounds to me like it was inspired by the even more fascist El Plan de San Diego which I describe on page 3 of this paper that I wrote some years ago about Pancho Villa, anti-Mexican racism, and the Los Angeles Times.
