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Labels: Iraqi WMDs
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
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THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
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I Think Isabel Has Done More Damage To Power Than I Would Have Guessed...
Several websites that should be responding, such as packing.org and the University of North Carolina Press, aren't there.
UPDATE: Sure enough. Packing.org now reports:Packing.org is temporarily down due to Hurricane Isabel
A friend informs me that another friend was quite confident about the safety of his website several years ago. His website was hosted by a company in New York City, and they had a backup website in another building. Which two buildings? The World Trade Center towers.
Sep 21, 2003: I am working my way back to Virginia from Delaware to perform needed server administration on the packing.org server.
Power in the building where packing.org is located was down from Noon, Thurday, Sep 18, 2003, until 4pm est, Sep 22, 2003. Most all other servers came up automatically, but packing.org's drives need administrative maintenance physically. I left southeast virginia before the hurricane struck on wednesday to avoid problems.
Eventhough my house still has no power, I will be back in southeast virginia before noon, Monday, Sep 22, 2003, to perform the needed actions to get packing.org back online.
Thanks for your support, and patience.
--Mark Solomon
Rewriting Martin Niemoeller's Famous Speech
I found this over at Shot in the Dark: "First they came for the Branch Davidians, and I didn't speak out, because they were nutbars."
Think of it as a companion piece to my explanation of the fact that no, Bush is not equivalent to Hitler, and no, conditions in America are not quite analogous to Nazi Germany, no matter what seems to be conventional wisdom to liberals and leftists today.
"Then, they came to blow up the Jews, and I didn't speak out, because everyone tells me Israel is the REAL terrorist."
"Then they came for the Iraqi and Iranian and Sudanese and Syrian citizen who'd fallen into disfavor with his or her government - and I didn't speak out because hey, we're not the world's policeman, are we?"
"Then they came for the refugees from North Korea, but I didn't speak out, because that'd be siding with the Bush Administration.
"Then they came for the people who had killed 3,000 of my countrymen. And I stood up and said "hey, visualize world peace, maaaan".
Bush's Campaign to Destroy Clean Air!
Well, that's how the news media covered EPA rule changes. If you want to read a different explanation--one that seems to have a bit more factual basis to it--see Juan Non-Volokh's discussion here.
How Do You Know That You Are Stupid To Enter A Particular Line of Work?
When you decide to go into the murder-for-hire business by allegedly sending a letter to Kobe Bryant, offering to silence his accuser.
More About The Ninth Circus Hold on the Recall Election
Vikram David Amar, who teaches law at Hastings Law School in San Francisco, makes a strong case that whatever the theoretical legitimacy of the Ninth Circuit's equal protection argument, in fact, what makes this case different from Bush v. Gore (2000) is that the Florida election results were very, very close. Miscounting of election results caused by punch card failures is unlikely to alter the course of the recall election, and if it does happen, it is likely to be "harmless error." That is to say, it won't change the results of the election--unlike the attempts by the Democrats to hand recount ballots in some Florida counties.
Great Election Rhetoric From Ontario, Canada
Someone must have watched the 1980s miniseries V one too many times: "Brush up your scales you lousy reptilian kitty-eater from another planet, and think about what happened to the dinosaurs."
A Great Letter To Annoy Leftists With
It's signed by Vaclav Havel, Former President of the Czech Republic, Arpad Göncz, Former President of Hungary, Lech Walesa, Former President of Poland. And it says that Europeans need to stop making excuses for Stalinist dictators like Castro.
One of these days, I hope that the left is going to stop making excuses for totalitarian dictators. But I fear that the only way to get that to happen would be for the U.S. to start supporting those thugs.
Misleading Americans About the Patriot Act
Byron York's column at National Review Online makes the point that at least one of the Democratic candidates for President kept saying something about the Patriot Act that he either knew, or should have known, was false. Senator Edwards kept making this accusation about how the Patriot Act was being used to find out what books we were checking out of libraries and what books we were buying, even though the Senate Intelligence Committee on which he sits had access to the information that this provision had never been used.
The Greater Freedom and Liberality of Europe
I often hear liberals decry how much freer Europe is than America--usually in the midst of complaining that Americans are prudish about nudity, sex, and (of course) homosexuality. But of course, Europe isn't really any freer of a society--it's just different things that get their governments upset. From the British Independent:American-style bans on smoking in bars and restaurants could be on their way to Europe. Officials in Brussels said yesterday they might legislate to outlaw cigarettes in public places. The European Commission said it was discussing far-reaching proposals as part of its offensive against the tobacco industry.
While the article refers to these as "American-style bans," it seems clear that the proposals aren't just bans in bars and restaurants, but everywhere in public. While a few American cities have discussed such bans, I don't believe that any have actually been passed into law.
Several EU countries already plan to outlaw smoking in restaurants, bars and cafés, forcing smokers outdoors on to patios and terraces. Ireland and the Netherlands want to introduce bans from January.
David Byrne, commissioner for health and consumer protection, told the Eupolitix.com website that discussions had started on a possible Europe-wide measure. "The less smoking there is in public, in public places, the better," he said. His officials were working to see how they could "bring forward policy" on the problem.
Don't get me wrong: smoking is a really vile habit. One of the downsides of my 1999 vacation to Britain was how many people smoked. Since I was living in California at the time, where smoking in restaurants is prohibited by state law, the contrast was even more startling. Here in Boise, most restaurants allow smoking; the ones that don't allow it, get a disproportionate share of my business for that reason. But even California's unlocked ward (the state legislature) isn't quite crazy enough to ban smoking in all public places.
Where Californians Come From
Governor Davis said: "My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every, of people from every planet, of every country on earth," he said.
Having lived there for many years, yes, I find this completely plausible as an explanation for what makes California so weird.
Levying War
This AP wire service story about two Oregon men pleading guilty in terrorism-related charges leaves a few things out that I would like to know.Two brothers who were among seven people accused of aiding terrorists pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of conspiring to help al-Qaida and the Taliban during the war in Afghanistan.
What is the formal charge that they avoided? The phrase "levy war against the United States" is very specific. See Art. 3, sec. 3 of the U.S. Constitution:
Ahmed Bilal, 25, and his brother, Muhammad Bilal, 23, appeared before U.S. District Judge Robert Jones to formally enter their pleas. Jones had announced the plea agreement Wednesday.
The Portland brothers also pleaded guilty to firearms charges in exchange for having the main charge of conspiracy to levy war against the United States dismissed.Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The reason that the crime of treason is specifically enumerated in the Constitution is quite interesting, and a hangover from the wide and varying definitions of "treason" under English law. Were these brothers charged with treason? It seems so. Why didn't this news story tell us that, instead of using an obscure construction that most Americans would not recognize? Is AP afraid to tell us what these people did with a word that most Americans know?
Notice also the Constitution's very demanding requirement for a conviction--the evidence available to the U.S. Attorney must have been pretty strong for the defense to plead this out.
The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus
This is a cartoon out of Al Franken's supposedly serious book about politics. It's intended as an attack on capitalism by suggesting that conservatives and libertarians aren't really good Christians. It is in some respects a strawman misrepresentation of supply side economics (which says nothing about charitable activities themselves).
In other places, its attacks on capitalism are simply wrong. There is absolutely no question that consumption of goods increases demand for production, putting people to work. Indeed, one of the complaints of Keynesian economists was that there wasn't enough consumption to put everyone to work--hence, the Keynesian focus on promoting spending, and discouraging savings because of the supposed "leak" that Keynes believed made Say's Law false.
I think it's also intended to be funny, but like most everything Al Franken does now, it's not funny. I suspect that some Christians are going to be profoundly offended by it. I'm not. It's just ignorant of history. The Roman Empire was nothing like the modern world. (I figured that I better say that--Al Franken clearly doesn't understand this.)
If Michael Moore and Al Franken are the best that the left can manage to put forth as popularizers of their ideas, conservatives and libertarians have nothing to fear from the left in the marketplace of ideas.
Those Rich People Are Trying To Buy the Election Again!
Yup! Those evil rich capitalists, high finance speculators who don't know what it's like to work for minimum wage, are out to tell us who the next president should be! Billionaire George Soros reportedly is putting together a $10 million warchest to prevent U.S. President George Bush from winning a second term.
Fortunately, Mr. Soros knows how Congress should do its job better than Congress knows how:
Soros, who in 1992 made $1 billion in a single day through currency speculation that drove down the British pound, along with a group of philanthropists and trade unions, is mounting a campaign to unseat Bush for what he sees as the administration's misuse of power, Canada's National Post reported."You passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act without proper discussion," Soros said in a recent interview with PBS.
Well, you know, I think Congress might have been a little distracted at the time. Do you suppose?
These are the times that I am glad that federal law limits individuals to $2000 per campaign per year. I shudder to think what would happen if these rich people could give hundreds of millions to elect their stooges in the Democratic Party. (I mean, who else would billionaires fund?)
I At First Mistook This For One Of The Onion's Marvelous Spoofs...
It is apparently for real. A Utah State University student built his own fusion reactor from scrap parts while in high school. When Craig was a sophomore in high school, browsing the Internet he discovered that Farnsworth had come up with a way to create deuteron ion plasma, a prerequisite to fusion.
While it was not good for production of energy (the source of much embarrassment to the University of Utah in the cold fusion debacle in the late 1980s), Farnsworth's design did emit neutrons, a useful tool for commercial applications and scientific experimentation.
"He (Farnsworth) was after the Holy Grail of excess energy, but everyone agrees that it's mostly useful as a neutron generator," Allen Wallace said.
About 30 such devices exist around the country, owned by such entities as Los Alamos National Laboratories, NASA and universities. ("I bet I'm the only high school student that has one," Craig Wallace said.)
Another California Startup Bites the Dust
Valo Corporation of Sonoma County, California, seed capital provided by one friend, and employing a number of people with whom I had worked at Diamond Lane/Nokia, closed the doors on Monday. For once, the problem seems not to have been the market, so much as inability to get the hardware to work reliably. I'm told (by the software people) that the software worked fine.
The Hutton Inquiry Again Shows That BBC's Correspondent Was The One "Sexing Up" a Report
From the Guardian: Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who sparked the cataclysmic row between the government and the corporation, today insisted the broad thrust of his story was true but admitted to a series of mistakes that threaten to undermine the corporation's case.
It has become an article of faith with the left that the Blair government intentionally misled the public, and Gilligan's claim that the report's statements about weapons of mass destruction had been "sexed up" was one of the pieces of evidence. Now Gilligan claims that the overall thrust of what he said was right, but keeps admitting that his reporting was wrong on numerous points.
He said he did not mean to accuse the government of inserting the 45-minute WMD claim into last September's Iraq dossier "knowing it was wrong", describing the phrase as "slip of the tongue".
And he confessed for the first time that his first report on the Today programme had not been as accurate as it should have been.
"I regret that on this occasion, I did not report carefully and accurately what he [David Kelly] said."
And of course, there will be no apologies from the left--after all, they had to keep the torturocracy of Iraq operational, at whatever cost!
UPDATE: The Telegraph also reports that BBC offficials had some concerns with Gilligan's reporting: The corporation's director of news Richard Sambrook told the inquiry that Mr Gilligan "painted in primary colours" and there were question marks over "nuance and subtlety".
UPDATE 2: And here (thanks to Instapundit) is the Independent's coverage of the discrepancies between Gilligan's claims, and reality.
Thomas Sowell on California Politics
Reading his latest column makes me so happy that I am not there anymore. A friend of mine who is still there was bemoaning how the Republicans keep picking these useless slugs as candidates, while "Hitler could get himself elected here, if he ran as a Democrat." Sowell makes much the same points: This is liberal fundamentalism at its purest: Protect parasites and law-breakers -- and attack those who are producing. The exodus of hundreds of thousands of Californians to other states does not make a dent in this kind of thinking.
Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, provided the goose doesn't die before the next election. It could take decades to ruin California completely -- and meanwhile liberals can keep on getting elected again and again.
When the state finally goes down the drain, by then who will remember John Burton, Gray Davis or Cruz Bustamante? By then there will be a thousand other reasons concocted to explain California's problems.
...
Generosity toward those who are not producing is matched by hostility toward those who are. The greatest hostility is toward those who are producing what the state most needs -- more housing. The very word "developer" is anathema in California.
In other parts of the country, liberals have to dilute their liberalism with a certain amount of concessions to reality. But no such galling compromises are necessary in order to get elected in California.
Here you just advocate all the things that liberals find desirable and don't worry about whether they are mutually contradictory, such as "open space" laws and "affordable housing." Nor do you need to worry about whether all the heavy taxes used to finance giveaways are causing people and businesses to flee the state, taking the taxes they pay with them.
After all, there are plenty of illegal aliens and panhandlers coming in to replace them.
Beware of Dog Sign When You Don't Have a Dog
This AP wire service story has Hans Blix, UN weapons inspector, suggesting that Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction ten years ago, but misled the West into thinking it still had them: Blix, who spent three years searching for Iraqi chemical, biological and ballistic missiles as head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said Iraq might have tried to fool the United States into believing it had weapons of mass destruction over the years in order to deter attack.
The difference, of course, is that by giving the impression that Iraq had WMDs, Hussein guaranteed that the U.S. and allies would invade. Sometimes, the "Beware of Dog" sign doesn't work the way you expected.
"I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, 'Beware of the Dog,' without having a dog," he said from his home in Sweden.
Out of Work Engineer? HP Is Hiring!
Go here. Unfortunately, you'll have to work a little to get a job just in your area--the list that comes out complains that they are only showing 100 positions per page.
There are nine software or firmware engineer jobs listed just here in Boise. Of course, you would have to live in a city with almost no crime, friendly and polite neighbors, with mountains, forests, and skiing 20 minutes away, and where you can buy a new house for $120,000. But everywhere has its disadvantages, doesn't it?
HP isn't the only employer here, either. I'm seeing ads for engineers in the local paper as well.
The Book That I Can't Find a Publisher For...
If you want to see the first two chapters, look here. If you are a publisher--or you are good friends with a publisher--maybe you can see the merit to what I have been working on the last two years. Remember: the book that I wrote this to counteract (Michael Bellesiles's Arming America) is again in print.
No Wonder Kennedy Died November 22, 1963...
Everyone, it seems, was trying to kill him.
There's the "Mafia turned by Castro after Castro discovered the CIA had contracted the Mafia to kill Castro" theory.
There's the evil capitalists who hated Kennedy because he was (contrary to all appearances and speeches) really a closet socialist, about to create the Great Society.
There's the Algerian terrorists upset because Kennedy backed De Gaulle's decision to turn Algeria back to the Algerians.
There are gobs of other bizarre theories that made so little sense that I can't keep them in my head long enough.
There's even a weird little theory that an obscure, almost unknown guy named Lee Harvey Oswald, a known Communist, member of the American Atheist Association, and part of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, shot him (or, was trying to shoot Oswald's former commander, Governor Connolly, and hit Kennedy as well).
Here's the latest version of the "LBJ killed JFK" theory, with a little more credibility than the usual paranoid ramblings: In the firmament of American political families, the McClellans of Austin are not in the constellation of Kennedys and Bushes. But like both of those dynasties at points in their histories, the McClellans now have political power in multiple generations, a family member in the White House and a relative they would like to sweep under the carpet.
Scott McClellan, 35, is the new White House press secretary. His oldest brother, Dr Mark McClellan, 40, is the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Their mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, 63, is the bombastic (her word) comptroller of Texas and former three-term mayor of Austin with an eye on the governor's seat. Their late grandfather, W. Page Keeton, was dean of the University of Texas Law School for a quarter of a century.
And their father, Barr McClellan, 63, Ms Strayhorn's first husband, has written a book asserting that Lyndon Johnson engineered the murder of John Kennedy.
...
The book claims that Johnson plotted the killing of Kennedy through the late Edward A. Clark, who was for half a century one of the most powerful political figures in Texas as well as Johnson's personal lawyer. Barr McClellan said last week that he had worked in Clark's firm but had parted company with him in 1978 over business gone sour. "It seemed like a story to be told," he said. "I had a grudge, anyway, that I was going to clear up."
Barr said his book would offer photographs, letters and fingerprints to back up his claim. Johnson had a clear motive, he said, in that he faced being dropped from the ticket.
Excuse Me While I Express My Complete Disbelief
In an article about "black projects" research, CNN reports: Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacturer says it is working on anti-gravity propulsion, which could revolutionize conventional aviation.
Okay, Area 51 and the flying saucers just got a whole bunch more credible. Or did CNN just get a lot less credible?
If the science underpinning the program can be made into reality, it will be the biggest thing to hit the aviation industry since the Wright Brothers.
"GRASP," or Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion, was only recently reported in Jane's Defence Weekly, but the U.S. military may have had the technology for years.
The National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), based in Nevada, say that mysterious U.S. military craft using this kind of technology have been skirting the skies since the 1980s.
Anti-gravity? Can someone explain to me the basic physics behind this? I mean, without citing science fiction novels?
UPDATE: Shockingly enough, you can find antigravity discussions that aren't part of the Art Bell Universe. Some of the sites are, well, bizarre, but there was this article in Business Week that suggests that some people on planet Earth are actually looking into the possibility of building gravity shields.
It's Going to Get Busy
George Fox University's Boise extension has been trying to scrape together enough students so that I can teach an American History survey class this fall, and they seem to have the requisite number. For those of you who are either faculty or student--get ready to be envious. There are six students in the class so far, and I don't expect the number of students to double before the class starts on September 30. (Of course, that somewhat balances out having 30 students in the U.S. Constitutional History class I teach at Boise State.)
George Fox University is a very, very highly rated Christian liberal arts university in Oregon; the Boise branch is primarily oriented towards working adults who are completing business degrees (undergrad and graduate level). Unlike the main campus, where liberal arts is one of the core activities, at the Boise branch, classes in the social sciences and humanities are primarily for completing general education requirements.
My wife taught an upper division Shakespeare class there in the summer (and will be doing so again in the spring), and found it quite enjoyable. There are some advantages to teaching working adults: they tend to be a bit more motivated than traditional age students, simply because it is a lot more of a struggle to complete a college education in the evenings. The traditional age college student isn't usually juggling a full-time job and raising kids.
If you are a traditional age college student who is considering becoming a full-time worker, and finishing your education when you are a bit older and more mature--trust me on this: do whatever it takes to finish up your education now. It just gets harder, the older you are.
My wife and I both confronted difficult situations that made it impossible for us to be traditional age college students. We used to kid that we would get each other hearing aids as graduation gifts, so that we could be sure of hearing our names called. As it was, I was 38 when I received my bachelor's, and my wife was 35; we received our master's degrees at 42 and 37, respectively. We have enormous empathy for the working adult trying to finish a degree--and we have done our best to get the message through to our kids that everything else can wait until you finish at least your bachelor's degree.
Another Reminder of What the Left Tried to Prevent Us From Stopping
Instapundit provided the link--but more importantly, he contacted Judge Walters to verify that this transcript accurately described the speech that Judge Walters gave. Remember: Judge Walters was an opponent of the war.Despite my initial opposition to the war, I am now convinced, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam sheltered and financed terrorists, absolutely, we should have overthrown the Baathists, indeed, we should have done it sooner.
And that's something to remind the next leftist who talks about how we should have waited for the UN, or tried the persuade Hussein to be a nicer person, or whatever nonsense passes for intellectualism these days. Try to explain your high-sounding ideas to this child without the eye, or his parents.
What changed my mind?
When we left mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable.
I have seen the machines and places of torture. I will tell you one story told to me by the Chief of Pediatrics at the Medical College in Basra. It was one of the most shocking to me, but I heard worse. One of Saddam's security agents was sent to question a Shiite in his home. The interrogation took place in the living room in the presence of the man's wife, who held their three month old child. A question was asked and the thug did not like the answer; he asked it again, same answer. He grabbed the baby from its mother and plucked its eye out. And then repeated his question. Worse things happened with the knowledge, indeed with the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Baathist regime.
Thousands suffered while we were messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the UN. Every one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the UN were making millions administering the food for oil program. We cannot, I know, remake the world, nor do I believe we should. We cannot stamp out evil, I know. But this time we were morally right and our economic and strategic interests were involved. I submit that just because we can't do everything doesn't mean that we should do nothing.
Isn't it sad that the left has now become one of the major supporters or torture, mayhem, and murder?
Randy Barnett's Ahistorical Notion of Police Powers
Professor Randy Barnett's recent paper on "The Proper Scope of Police Power," forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review, is well constructed--up to a point. He points out that the Ninth Amendment was intended to protect those rights not specifically enumerated. Fine, but not an earthshaking discovery. He describes how the "privileges and immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was effectively read out of the Constitution by the Slaughter-House Cases. Fine, also, but again, not exactly a surprise.
What rights should have been protected under the "privileges and immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? This is where he goes completely off the rails. He claims to be looking at original intent and original meanings of the Revolutionary and Fourteenth Amendment era. His claim is that the only authority that the state governments have under the police power is to prohibit those actions that cause direct harm to others. To justify this, he relies on the definition of police power from prominent postbellum jurists such as Thomas M. Cooley and Christopher Tiedeman, and then draws a dotted line back to Locke's notions of the proper function of government. Tiedeman argued that alcohol prohibition, gambling laws, and other laws that were primarily for the improvement of public morality, were outside the legitimate police powers of the states.
Barnett also raises the strawman argument that, On the other hand, were the state allowed the power to prohibit any purely private activity on the sole ground that a majority of the legislature deems it to be immoral, there would be no limit on state power since no court could review the rationality of such a judgment.
This is incorrect. There is an originalist model for determining what individual rights were retained by the states, and are therefore outside the proper scope of state governmental regulation today: examine the laws that were in effect when the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments were ratified.
If some action was a criminal offense in every state in 1791 and 1868, pretty clearly, this was not considered a right retained by the people.
If there were no state laws regulating a particular activity, it would be prima facie evidence that this was a right retained by the people under the Ninth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment. I would say that the lack of drug laws would be an example.
I'm not quite sure how one should interpret some states regulating an activity in 1791, while others did not. Pretty clearly, if half the states prohibited X, it would be hard to argue that the Ninth Amendment reservation of rights applies.
If some action was unregulated in 1791, but regulated in many states in 1868 (e.g., regulation of concealed carrying of arms), it would seem clear that this is within the legitimate police power of the states--or at least, the Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges and immunities" clause can't be considered a basis for attacking state regulation.
At the very bottom of the article, we get to where Professor Barnett is going: why striking down state sodomy laws is a proper application of this view of the limits of state police power. Now, the limited view of state police powers that was held by jurists like Cooley and Tiedeman was but pretty clearly not held by a majority in any American state, and the best evidence of this is that sodomy was a crime in every state in 1791 (a capital offense in several), and a felony in every state in 1868. No original intent or original meaning argument will justify Professor Barnett's goal.
It is embarrassing to see someone advance an original intent or original meaning argument that leads to this absurd result: what was everywhere felonious when the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments were adopted, should be understood as constitutionally protected by those two documents today.
I have pointed out this absurd problem with Professor Barnett's reasoning to him before--and he never answers my email about this. It's not like there's any dispute about the criminal statutes of the colonial period, or in 1868. Sodomy was a felony. His argument is constructed on the views of a couple of prominent jurists, yes, but so what? His interpretation of their views of the limits of the police power are completely contrary to the statutes of every state at the time. And we are supposed to take seriously a claim based on Professor Barnett's extrapolation from two law professors's opinion that directly contradicts what every state legislature had passed as law?
UPDATE: A reader points out that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to roll back some state laws already in effect. Good point: the laws in the former slave states that oppressed the freedmen. Pretty obviously, a law that was in effect in every state, North and South, and identical to a law in effect in 1791, would not be included in the list of laws that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to strike down.
Deranged, Ignorant People
I found this amazing web site (and when I say "amazing," I don't mean in a positive way). The website compares Hitler to Bush (which is becoming an incredibly tired analogy, but it doesn't bug the crazies at all). Some idea of the historical knowledge that went into this website was the claim:He named this group the "Geheime Staatspolizei." The literal translation is "Home Nation Police." A near approximation would be "Office of Homeland Security." But the group is known throughout the world by its more sinister appellation: "Gestapo."...Was that a knock on the door?
But anyone who knows any German knows that Geheime is "secret" not "home." When I pointed out this little problem to the ignorant bozo responsible for this site, his response was:It's close enough. Besides the rest of the article should be enough to convince you of the similarities between NAZI germany, and America today.
My response was:
NORTHSTARI must have missed the other similarities.
Yeah, you have me persuaded! Of course, the difference is that I have read a lot about Nazi Germany. It appears that you have not.Nazi Germany Modern America All media outlets promote the Chancellor's policies. Many media outlets actively oppose Bush's policies. Jews are fired from all jobs. ? Effectively no unemployment, because of government work projects. Unemployment above 6%. Opposition political parties suppressed. Vigorous Democratic Party thinks it can win the White House. (I hope not, but it's possible.) Labor unions suppressed. Labor unions whining that they aren't doing as well as they could. Public opponents of Hitler arrested or killed. Public opponents of Bush keep making movies and doing concert tours.
A Sobering Article About The Corruption of the News Media
By John Burns, of the New York Times, this article in Editor & Publisher magazine is about the corruption of journalists who chose to play along with Saddam Hussein. Terror, totalitarian states, and their ways are nothing new to me, but I felt from the start that this was in a category by itself, with the possible exception in the present world of North Korea. I felt that that was the central truth that has to be told about this place. It was also the essential truth that was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here. Why? Because they judged that the only way they could keep themselves in play here was to pretend that it was okay.
Very sobering, and worth remembering, when you try to figure out why so many well-educated people in America and Europe are still looking for some way to "get" Bush for overturning this monster. It comes down to this: people that are prepared to play along with torturing sadists are people without consciences. Rather than look themselves in the mirror about their part in protecting this monster and his bureaucracy of evil, they prefer to regard Bush as the evil.
There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.
In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people's stories -- mine included -- specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper.
Yeah, it was an absolutely disgraceful performance. CNN's Eason Jordan's op-ed piece in The New York Times missed that point completely. The point is not whether we protect the people who work for us by not disclosing the terrible things they tell us. Of course we do. But the people who work for us are only one thousandth of one percent of the people of Iraq. So why not tell the story of the other people of Iraq? It doesn't preclude you from telling about terror. Of murder on a mass scale just because you won't talk about how your driver's brother was murdered.
Those who actively defend evil by misleading their readers are also evil. These journalists don't gouge out eyes themselves; they don't rape women on their wedding night; they don't pour acid on their victims; but they still do their darndest to make sure that the rest of us regard Bush, Blair, and the American-led coalition as bad because we stopped these crimes from continuing in Iraq. I do my best to distinguish between those who have disagreements about the best methods of dealing with people like Hussein, and those who don't thugs like Hussein stopped at all. There are times, however, it seems that intellectuals throughout the Western world are less troubled by torturocracies than they are troubled by Republicans.
Even if this had been motivated by the desire to get access to Iraq's oil (and the evidence is pretty clear that it would have been far simpler and cheaper to just quietly drop sanctions against Hussein's government, if that was the goal), so what? To intellectuals, it seems that torture is a lesser evil than capitalism.
Recall Election Stopped by the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals
As transparently political as their decision is (putting off voting on Prop. 54 until the primary election), so far, from my reading, it looks to be correct. I haven't checked their footnotes (always useful with the Ninth Circus), but the essential arguments are:
1. Punch cards are very inaccurate compared to modern voting methods.
2. Because some counties still use them, voters in those counties will be disenfranchised relative to voters in counties that don't use them, thus violating equal protection.
3. The California Constitution does require a recall election within 60-80 days after the recall has been certiified, and this will be violated--but the California Constitution is clearly inferior to the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause in terms of authority. Therefore, with the choice of ignoring the California Constitution, or the 14th Amendment, the California Constitution's requirement goes by the wayside.
I'm not thrilled with the result, but I am pleased to see that three liberal Democrat appointees have decided to use Bush v. Gore (2000) as justification, both because the decision was right, and because the left can stop whining about Bush being "selected, not elected."
On the plus side, the Democrats can continue to be in charge--and thus to blame--for California's mess. The corrupting influence of special interest money has played a major part in creating this disaster, and the Democrats have no one to blame for this but themselves. I feel sorry for the Californians who aren't raving idiots (I know several who haven't moved out yet), and California's fiscal problems are going to be a drain on the national economy, but what's the alternative? This a clear equal protection problem to have some counties using an antiquated and less reliable voting system.
UPDATE: I have received email pointing out that:
1. The low reliablity of punch cards can be dramatically improved if the voters will remove all the pregnant, hanging, and dimpled chads after they pull the card out of the machine. Very true, and my recollection the last time I used the punch card ballot is that the instructions encouraged you to do so.
2. Another upset Californian pointed out that the recall's need is so urgent that it can't wait. That's probably true, and yes, they did use this inadequate punch card system in the election that put Davis in office--so pehaps there's some poetic justice in using it again. Perhaps an en banc hearing of the 9th Circus or the U.S. Supreme Court will decide that the urgency of the recall takes precedence over equal protection issues.
UPDATE 2: Eugene Volokh quotes a Los Angeles Times article indicating that Los Angeles County may not be able to use the new system with the combined March primary and recall ballot anyway--so it may be that the only choice would be to deschedule the recall and the March election! Hmmm. Well, prohibiting elections is certainly one way for liberals to achieve their goals of preventing the peasants from overruling the nobles, but even the 9th Circus isn't quite that audacious...or are they?
UPDATE 3: This article over at National Review Online argues persuasively that the 9th Circus has misread Bush v. Gore (2000)--and other readers have said the same thing.
Why Does This Get So Little Attention?
I've seen a few local news accounts about this from California newspapers, but I would think a scandal of this size would get some serious national attention: According to an internal Justice Department memo I obtained last summer, federal anti-terrorism investigators launched "Operation LAX Lounge," an investigation based on information that four individuals were using the TWOV [Transit Without Visa] program to smuggle illegal aliens, many of whom are Middle Eastern males, into the United States at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
And here's the list of their names and fraudulently obtained Social Security Numbers, and the cover memo explaining all this.
Two of the four involved in the smuggling operation were Jordanian nationals who worked as LAX contract security guards. Another was a Social Security Administration official married to one of the guards. They were convicted of collaborating to smuggle transiting passengers out of the airport and helping approximately 1,000 individuals -- mostly of Middle Eastern descent -- obtain fraudulent Social Security cards between 1998-2000.
Some of the TWOV passengers let free by the Jordanians at LAX are on the federal immigration and State Department watch list of terrorist suspects. A few of these fugitive passengers were traced to New York City and arrested last July, but most remain at large.
Oh Good, I Won't Feel Guilty ABout Third World Poverty Anymore
This news item certainly takes away any reasons for feeling guilty: The World Health Organization says the health of young people throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia is suffering, as they are increasingly exposed to the so-called "benefits" of western life.
The European Committee of the WHO concluded a week-long session in Vienna to discuss the increasing health problems of young people in Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, Turkey, the Caucasus and central Asia.
More than 300 representatives from 52 countries paid special attention to the increasing problems faced by children and adolescents related to alcohol and drug abuse and smoking, as well as behaviour problems and violence.
Studies show that people under 30 account for 84 percent of new cases of HIV-AIDS in the eastern half of Europe, compared with 30 percent in the west. The regional director for Europe, Marc Danzon, says young East Europeans are beginning to "catch up" with problems long apparent in the more affluent west.
