The advertising above is just a source of revenue, and sometimes, I don't know what will appear there.
Unique grips and accessories for your 1911!
Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
Magazines for cheap!
PayPal members: to make a contribution
Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through.
Labels: abortion Labels: child sexual abuse Labels: telescopes Labels: establishment of religion
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.
My nephew Shippy makes very pretty ceramic items. Click here to visit his online studio. Give someone one of these, and you can be sure that they don't already have one!
Click here to find out why the Amazon.com Honor System paybox is no longer here.
RSS feed
Other blogs you may enjoy:
My civilian gun defense use blog
My daughter's blog
Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
A courageous Briton arguing for relaxing Britain's gun control laws
Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
A federal law clerk opines about the law
Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
Music, Politics, Motorcycles
Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
Another conservative.
Neocon Blues
Conservative Oasis
Other Idaho Bloggers
Bubbleheads is a retired submariner
An Idaho State University student. A Democrat. Someday, she'll start paying income taxes and change.
A retired Las Vegas stagehand, of all things.
archives
Search only this site: Click here and enter your search string at the beginning of the search field.
Mountain Lions & Big Dogs
Here's a link to an interesting article about the increasing conflicts between mountain lions and people in the West, and one interesting solution: a dog known as the Anatolian shepherd that is more than a match for the big cat.
What Happens When You Can't Tell The Onion Parody From Real Life?
I am referring to this item, titled, "Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years."The fact of the matter is that while this article is parody, it describes an actual situation: the gay community screeches a lot about being just like everyone else, but gay pride parades and other gay community events, at least for those of us who have had to live in gay-dominated places like the Bay Area, are a lot closer to this paragraph out of this parody: The Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade, Thorne noted, is part of a decades-old gay-rights tradition. But, for mainstream heterosexuals unfamiliar with irony and the reclamation of stereotypes for the purpose of exploding them, the parade resembled an invasion of grotesque outer-space mutants, bent on the destruction of the human race.
Illegal Immigration
I've long wondered why cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles could get away with ordering their police officers not to inform INS about illegal immigrants. Perhaps it is time for Congress to use the liberal's favorite weapon of governmental coercion--federal funding--to get their attention. Perhaps Congress should tell cities that don't believe in immigration laws that Washington no longer believes in San Francisco. Enforce the existing laws, or lose your federal funding.
Sen. Kerry Says He Could Support a Federal Marriage Amendment
Sen. Kerry, I think, can see which way things are swinging in America: Leading Democratic presidential contender Sen. John Kerry is not necessarily opposed to a constitutional amendment to permanently ban same-sex marriage, he told National Public Radio's All Things Considered Feb. 9.
Now, he did say that he wanted some provision for "civil unions," but he is definitely trying to get on the winning side of this: opposition to gay marriage. And remember: he was one of only 14 Senators to vote against the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. The federal DOMA was far less of a straight-jacket than a Federal Marriage Amendment.
In Maryland, a Democrat has introduced a Defense of Marriage Act bill:Del. Emmett C. Burns, Jr. (D-Baltimore County) has introduced HB 728, which would prohibit Maryland from recognizing a same-sex marriage performed in another state or foreign country and would declare that marriage between individuals of the same-sex is “against the public policy of this State.”
Of course, the homosexual need to show off in San Francisco--with hundreds of marriages contrary to California law--is having the effect I predicted:
“I feel that it is the right thing to do,” Burns said. “Most gays and lesbians don’t want to get married, and I think some who do are pushing their agenda so far that they are hurting their own cause.
“Now, a lot of people have accused me of being homophobic. I’m not. If homosexuals want to go at it and do their thing, that’s fine. But don’t sashay your way up to the altar and demand marriage.”(Richmond Virginia) In the wake of hundreds of same-sex weddings in San Francisco, and a Massachusetts ruling that will let gays marry in May, the Virginia House of Delegates Friday passed legislation affirming the state's law that defines a marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
There will be a lot more activity in the state legislatures this coming week, as the full impact of San Francisco's lawlessness hits home.
The bill passed 77-18 with no debate.
What Prejudices are Acceptable in Law?
Your first reaction is perhaps, "none." After all, the Lawrence decision hinged on the question of whether Texas's homosexual sodomy law constituted a rational form of discrimination, or was mere prejudice. But I can quickly give you some examples that demonstrate that there a number of prejudices that are completely acceptable to the mainstream of Americans. Indeed, liberals would foam at the mouth if the Supreme Court struck down these forms of prejudice using the reasoning of the Lawrence decision.
First of all, what is prejudice, in the sense that the Lawrence decision means it? It refers to discrimination against members of a class, simply because they are members of that class, and because there is some presumption that members of that class are more likely to engage in certain socially undesirable actions because of that membership. Prejudicial presumptions exist because some behaviors are either actually or perceived by legislators as being more common in a particular class.
The prejudice against male homosexuals as a class has traditionally been built around the assumption that they are disproportionately child molesters. Pretty clearly, most homosexuals aren't child molesters--but when I hear someone say that the majority of child molesters aren't homosexuals, this doesn't tell me much. There are a number of studies that would imply that about 20-30% of child molesters are homosexual (in their explicit identification of themselves, or their exclusive focus on molesting members of the same sex)--or roughly 7x-10x their percentage in the general population. Of course, NAMBLA's active participation in gay pride parades (for many years, with no apparent negative reaction) also contributes this assumption.
A Midwestern gay reader of my blog (and presumably a pretty conservative sort) asked me a while back, "Why should I be responsible for what gays in San Francisco do?" By this, he meant that he wasn't standing on top of a float on Market Street, naked, whipping another naked man, or simulating? sex with another naked man. He wasn't walking through the streets naked in the gay pride parade, like Totally Nude Toronto Men does. He wasn't one of those guys who goes into a bathhouse and has unprotected sex with dozens of complete strangers. He isn't a member or defender of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.
He asks a fair question. The same question can be asked about any number of other legally enforced prejudices, however. For example, we have a law that prohibits driving a vehicle while intoxicated. The rationale is that drunk drivers represent a threat to the safety of others. Yet while many would concede that drunk driving is certainly less safe than sober driving, this is only a statistical statement. It is entirely possible for a drunk driver to get home without having an accident, and many do. Were this not the case, we would not need a law prohibiting drunk driving by itself; we would simply criminalize having an accident while intoxicated.
Clearly, drunk driving laws are a form of prejudice; they assume that because drunk drivers are more likely to cause injury than sober drivers, the state may criminalize drunk driving. Yet few people would argue that drunk driving laws should be struck down by the courts as a form of prejudice.
Here's another example of prejudice written into our laws. Convicted felons may not possess a firearm--ever again. Why? Because governments fear that convicted felons are more likely to commit another felony than non-felons--and if that felony involves a gun, the crime will be a serious crime. Pretty obviously, this is another of those statistical basis decisions. Not every convicted felon will reoffend, and to assume that a felon who commited a crime such as embezzlement or income tax fraud is more likely to commit a violent crime with a gun. Even if you limit the disabling felonies to violent felonies, the law still engages in a prejudiced assumption, because we know that not every violent felon will commit another violent felony.
If you are a member of that class of persons under 18 years of age, there are a whole bunch of prejudicial laws aimed at you. You may not purchase a firearm--again, like the convicted felon, on the assumption that are more likely than an adult to misuse that firearm. Depending on the state, you are obligated to obey most orders from your parents (with a few exceptions for emancipated minors). Depending on the state, you may not marry below a certain age without parental consent. Below 16 in most states, you may not drive an automobile. Every single one of these is an example of prejudice, based on the behavior of your class. Below 18, you may not vote.
There are many very mature 17 year olds who I would trust with a gun, and there are even some 12 year olds that show enough maturity that letting them drive might be perfectly safe. Overall, however, our society has decided, based on long experience--and not usually bothering to gather any statistical evidence to back up this experience--that minors are on average lacking in judgment. This decision is simply a prejudice, no different from state legislatures deciding that homoseuxals, on average, engage in sufficiently disproportionate improprieties that it is appropriate to treat them as a class in the same way that we treat minors.
If you want to argue that the prejudice against homosexuals is irrational, that could be a valid argument, depending on the data. But this puts the burden of proof on homosexuals to prove their case, unlike what happened in Lawrence, where the Supreme Court decided to put the burden of proof on Texas to justify their homosexual sodomy law. If you want to argue that all laws that are based on prejudice are unconstitutional, there are a lot of laws that are going to have to go away--and it would be honest of homosexuals to admit that this is their intention.
The Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause really doesn't solve the problem here. If equal protection really means that everyone gets treated equally, with no invidious distinctions based on membership in a particular group or class, then all of the class distinctions that I mentioned above are unconstitutional. Every individual must be treated equally. Pretty clearly, our courts aren't going to do that. We are back to the problem that the Supreme Court has decided that sexual orientation is an unfair class distinction, because it is based on prejudice--but has not required the state or federal governments to prove that other class distinctions must be clearly proven to be valid and based on public health and safety.
So what is the argument for these forms of prejudice by a legislature are acceptable, while other forms are not? Or is just a matter of homosexuals have the sympathetic ear of the judiciary, while drunk drivers and minors do not?
665 Gay Marriages in San Francisco
There comes a certain moment where you find yourself wondering if there is any notion of rule of law left in a place like San Francisco. This isn't a question of a dispute between legislature and judiciary, as happened in Massachusetts; this is just wanton violation of California law, without even a pretense that there is a legal basis for it. Yet the same bunch would be absolutely furious if a city ordered its police to arrest people who openly identified themselves as homosexuals, with the same lack of unconcern about following the law.
The homosexuals have probably decided the election this fall. The Democratic Party has no choice but to either waffle about the issue--and look stupid--or continue down a path that 59-60% of Americans explicitly reject: gay marriage. The serious commitment of homosexuals to durable monogamous relationships? Sorry, I don't believe it (at least for men). Promiscuity is so much a fundamental part of homosexual life that I am used to seeing gay men talk about their "husband," and then talk about what strangers they had sex with while their "husband" was out of town.
Bush has been careful to avoid directly endorsing the FMA. I don't what exactly his motivations are on this. I have some concerns as well about FMA, especially because it can be honestly read as prohibiting the state legislatures from recognizing gay marriage. I am not thrilled about that prospect, but in a federal government, that is the right of the states. At this point, however, homosexuals are trying to force America's hand on this, through their control of the judiciary and most of the newstertainment media, and they are likely to find out what happens when 3% (even a very powerful and rich 3%) try to force 60%--they get their noses whacked with a rolled up newspaper. This combination of out of control judicial activism (in Massachusetts) and simple lawlessness (in San Francisco), is going to sink the Democratic candidate in November--and makes passage of FMA far more likely. What next? I expect the U.S. Supreme Court to decide that the states do not have authority to amend the Constitution, when it interferes with the judiciary's pets.
The analogy to miscegenation laws keeps getting made, but it's a bogus analogy. Laws prohibiting interracial marriage (and interracial sex), were actually quite recent. Maryland and Virginia were probably the first governments that are part of Western civilization to prohbit interracial marriage, at the close of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. Perhaps there are European nations besides Nazi Germany and its allies that passed such laws, but I can't think of any.
By comparison, the notion of gay marriage seems to be unprecedented throughout Western civilization. Even the pre-Christian pagan societies of Europe, while somewhat tolerant of homosexuality, to my knowledge didn't recognize homosexual marriage.
If homosexuality were not such an obvious sickness (as evidenced by the high rates of alcoholism and drug addiction, the obsession of so many gay men with the pursuit of young boys, the bizarrely childish exhibitionism that you can describe with the single word "fabulous," the insulting cariactures of masculinity and femininity, a hypersexuality that, sadly, is now spreading into straight culture because of gay dominance over the newstertainment industry), I would be scratching my head and saying, "Wow, this is startling."
I do not believe that a society can long survive where the weirdest and sickest 3% of the society has essentially dictatorial authority over the other 97%. Homosexuals, because of their damaged psyches, are intent on "proving" that everyone loves them, and everyone approves of what they do. If the argument is "privacy," do what you want in private, instead of insisting on making a public spectacle of everything.
I would have preferred a solution that involved governments repealing laws that criminalized private acts involving consenting adults. I could even see an argument for perhaps building a standard package of protections and privileges that would apply to unmarried couples, straight or gay, on matters of adoption, rights of survivorship, tax treatment, and so on. This insistence by homosexuals that they are "just like everyone else" when they clearly are not, however, is likely to wake up that vast majority of Americans who haven't much cared about this issue, but now are being given no choice in the matter.
I've drawn the comparison of homosexuals to the slave owners of antebellum America. In both cases, a very small percentage of the population, but rich and therefore powerful. Slave owners in 1800 generally knew that they were doing something wrong; by 1850, they had constructed an entire ideology to justify that what they were doing wasn't just weird, it was downright good, and indeed, morally superior to the free labor system of the North. There were prominent intellectuals (lots of them) prepared to defend the institution of slavery, both as a good in itself, and as an opportunity for Americans to be tolerant of a different way of living.
Similarly, homosexuals in 1965 were generally just looking to end police harrassment. Most knew that what they did was repulsive to the general population, and had the good sense to be relatively discrete about it. By the 1980s, everything had changed. At least one loud part of the homosexual movement was intent not on just being allowed to do what they wanted, but were insisting on full social acceptance.
I can still recall reading, in the late 1970s, a shocked article about the gay bathhouses of San Francisco, and what went on there. So? This article was in Playboy, the vanguard of the "if it feels good, do it" movement. Fetishism involving bodily waste products has been, as near as I can tell, a significant fraction of the homosexual male culture since the early 1970s. This is no surprise; people who are emotionally frozen at a very young age (as most homosexuals I have met clearly are) unsurprisingly are still focused on elimination issues.
Like the slave owners, homosexuals can't tolerate any criticism of any sort. Hence the widespread attempts to suppress free speech in Britain and Canada that I have previously mentioned on this blog: prison sentences for publicly expressing disapproval of homosexuality; public school teachers suspended for writing a letter to a newspaper; threats of suit against a Catholic clergyman in Belgium for expressing disapproval; attempts to force judges to disengage from the Boy Scouts of America as a condition of being a judge. These are so reminiscient of how slave owners criminalized distribution of antislavery literature, and prohibited the receipt of antislavery petitions by Congress. This is no surprise; like the slave owners, homosexuals largely know that they are doing something that is repugnant to decency, and must therefore stamp out all criticism.
Homosexuals better enjoy this brief moment in the sunlight. I suspect it is going to be pretty short, relative to the larger movement of history.
UPDATE: A reader points out that the Dred Scott decision of 1857, by guaranteeing the right of masters to take slaves into free states, effectively made all states into slave states--if masters chose to move there. This, of course, made the Civil War unavoidable. We have not yet reached that point--but I do expect the current Supreme Court, if given half a chance, to strike down all state laws and state constitutional provisions that refuse to recognize homosexual marriages committed in other states. At that point, the parallel to Dred Scott will be obvious.
How to Find WMDs in Iraq: Advertise on the Web!
My first reaction was to laugh--but hey, it didn't cost the CIA anything to put up this reward announcement online (or here, in Arabic), and maybe it will work: If you have information relating to Iraq which you believe might be of interest to the U.S. Government, please contact us through our secure online form. We will carefully protect all information you provide, including your identity.
Oh yes, for those of you looking for a job as a spy, this is the "Clandestine Service" job openings page.
To help us confirm and act quickly on your information, you must provide your full name, nationality, occupation and contact information including phone number. This allows the U. S. Government to grant rewards for valuable information. We will maintain strict confidentiality.
And the CIA online museum is pretty cool, too.
Your Tax Dollars At Waste
I can't even begin to describe the insanity of the school this essay describes. The author was a school psychologist at an "alternative" public school (the place where you send the kids that either can't be in a regular school, or that scare the teachers too much at a regular school). On one occasion, last October, while timing a student completing mathematics problems, the young man suddenly threw his pencil down and rose from his chair, in response to an “all call” from the PA. He walked towards the door after announcing, “I’m going to the tug-o-war.”
I saw someone comment on the school described in this essay as, "The soft racism of low expectations." Low expectations doesn't even begin to describe this.
I told him to wait a minute. I called up front, and discovered that the whole school, in the midst of academic instruction, was being summoned for festivities in the gym.
What occasion were we celebrating on that day in October? The fall harvest? No, it was yet another in a long line of contrived events, and this one happened to be titled “Wacky Wednesdays.” Bizarre holidays from curriculum have become the rule rather than the exception since our school hired a new principal in 2001.
Old-timers like myself dubbed her “Princess Sparkle.” It is a most appropriate nickname for our leader as it surgically captures her vapidity, lust for attention, lack of seriousness, and ever-present sense of entitlement. No one has ever witnessed her read a book or keep her mouth shut for more than two minutes.
...
We often refer to her as “Play Therapist in Chief” as it seems that she has no stomach for the three R’s or even the seldom stated fourth R, which is known in traditional circles as “responsibility.” Indeed, if our students followed her priorities in life, the only job they’d be qualified to work would be as the principal of a highly wayward alternative school.
...
I began slowly and pointed out that our students are schooled only from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day, and that those six hours already included breaks, lunch, gym, and movies on Friday afternoons [in fact, one teacher I know refers to another’s classroom as “the Cineplex” because his VHS player is rarely off].
I stressed that there was altogether too much “play” and not enough “work” at our facility. I reasoned that these children had more play in their lives than any of those present had ever experienced (other than Sparkle) over the course of the last 30 years.
The majority of our pupils are the offspring of permissive single parents who dress them in the finest gansta wear and rarely monitor their neighborhood activities. Most college sophomores would be envious of the level of partying even our 14-year-olds engage in.
...
Then the meeting took an Orwellian turn. I was conscious of the fact that during my presentation of deficiencies, the supervisor barely listened. Upon arrival, I expected a fair hearing. It turned out that what I anticipated to be a discussion was, in his mind, an opportunity to jerk me back into line. Improving our educational environment had little to do with why he arranged this gathering.
This was evident the moment after I finished, when he began defending Sparkle with the zeal of Mark Geragos. Every point I made he responded to with complete denial. He even informed me that Sparkle was doing an excellent job following his “community model” and that our children needed positive interactions more than they needed books or lectures.
Then, he shared something that I wish was broadcast on every talk radio program in America. The gist of it was that our students never tested well and that assessing their education was useless because they never improved. It was his belief that, through her de-emphasis of instruction which of course could have been gauged statistically, Sparkle had accomplished great things during her tenure. He claimed that we were building characters as opposed to knowledge bases--even though few believed that our students’ characters markedly improved under our care.
Repealing Dead Sections of Law
I see that there is an effort underway here in Idaho to repeal sections of our code related to the state's Prune Commission. As the purpose of the bill explains:Repeal Chapter 30, Title 22, Idaho Code, relating to Prunes Promotion of the Industry. This code established a Prune Commission. The Commission has not functioned for almost two decades and Idaho no longer has a commercial prune industry.
Some libertarians are of the view that every law should have a sunset provision, requiring the legislature to repass every law every few years. One advantage of this is that laws that no longer serve any useful purpose would go away without any special effort (such as this bill). Another advantage is that it would force discussion and debate on laws on a regular basis. It is possible that some of the morals laws might have gone away a bit earlier, rather than requiring the U.S. Supreme Court to run roughshod over history and the Constitution to scrap sodomy laws. The big advantage, however, is that it would keep legislators so busy that they would have to only pass new laws that were really obviously necessary, because they would be so busy debating repassage of old statutes.
Idahoans: Time to Contact Your State Senators
House Joint Resolution #9, amending the Idaho Constitution to define marriage as one man, one woman (not two men, or one man, five women, two dogs, and a goose) has passed the Idaho House of Representatives 53-17. It now is in the State Senate. After that, it goes to the voters in November. Let your state senator know how you feel.
Remember Victoria Plame?
Remember the big scandal about naming a CIA employee, and the claim that this was all some conspiracy by the Bush Administration? Well, I'm pleased to see that the The American Prospect--a dreadly Democratic magazine--is now reporting that it appears that Robert Novak was directly told by government officials not to name Victoria Plame, because it would endanger her ability to continue her intelligence work:Two government officials have told the FBI that conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked specifically not to publish the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in his now-famous July 14 newspaper column. The two officials told investigators they warned Novak that by naming Plame he might potentially jeopardize her ability to engage in covert work, stymie ongoing intelligence operations, and jeopardize sensitive overseas sources.
Now, if you wonder how seriously we should take such a claim--the same magazine carries an article that claims that if Bush wins in November
These new accounts, provided by a current and former administration official close to the situation, directly contradict public statements made by Novak. He has downplayed his own knowledge about the potential harm to Plame and ongoing intelligence operations by making that disclosure. He has also claimed in various public statements that intelligence officials falsely led him to believe that Plame was only an analyst, and the only potential consequences of her exposure as a CIA officer would be that she might be inconvenienced in her foreign travels.
The two administration officials questioned by the FBI characterized Novak's statements as untrue and misleading, according to a government official and an attorney official familiar with the FBI interviews.
One of the sources also asserted that the credibility of the administration officials who spoke to the FBI is enhanced by the fact that the officials made their statement to the federal law enforcement authorities. If the officials were found to be lying to the FBI, they could be potentially prosecuted for making false statements to federal investigators the sources pointed out. we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged.
Excuse me? One party state? In California, the city government is ignoring state law by issuing marriage licenses to gay couples; where I used to live, in Sonoma County, the Republican Party was, for practical purposes, a minor party; nearly all popular entertainment stars who express a political opinion are ferociously anti-Republican; and leftists still dominate the federal bench. One party state? Yeah, right. The article is full of reasons why the era in which I grew up--with Democrats in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, really wasn't a one party state. I am not impressed.
Liberalism At Work
The musician Moby explains how he intends to help remove Bush from the White House this fall: "No one's talking about how to keep the other side home on Election Day," Moby tells us. "It's a lot easier than you think and it doesn't cost that much. This election can be won by 200,000 votes."
Remember this, when you start getting emails from "upset conservatives" trying to make sure that you don't vote for Bush. They want to make sure that the Democrat ends up in the White House.
Moby suggests that it's possible to seed doubt among Bush's far-right supporters on the Web.
"You target his natural constituencies," says the Grammy-nominated techno-wizard. "For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion.
"Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, 'What's all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?'"
Moby didn't claim that he believed the abortion story.
Last month, Bush did propose reforms to immigration policy. But he insisted, "I oppose amnesty, placing undocumented workers on the automatic path to citizenship [because it] perpetuates illegal immigration."
Definitely A Mistake By The Bush Administration
Their hearts might be in the right place, but this is a mistake: WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is proposing to double spending on sexual abstinence programs that bar any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS despite a lack of evidence that such programs work.
The story, of course, is spun to make it appear that the abstinence-only program is an obviously stupid idea. I happen to think that abstinence-only programs are probably a mistake for the same reason that programs excluding discussion of abstinence (as some sex educators would prefer) are a mistake: there's a wide range of kids out there, and what works for some may not work for others.
A study by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on declining birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers concludes that prevention programs should emphasize abstinence and contraception.
"Both are important," said Dr. John Santelli, the lead author of the study, which has not been published.
I have talked to adults who recall that discussions of contraception in junior high actually increased sexual activity among their peers, because the fear of pregnancy had restrained the girls. I also have no doubt that there are going to be teenagers who are going to be sexually active, regardless of the consequences: pregnancy, STDs, and emotional damage from being manipulated into sex.
To my surprise, in spite of the low moral average of the population of Sonoma County, the schools there used a sex education program that emphasized abstinence-best. they taught about contraception, and STDs, and they also emphasized that the only 100% safe method of avoiding pregnancy and STDs was to wait, ideally until adulthood. (Obviously, you could never suggest waiting until marriage--at that point the depraved people that simulate parents out there would probably storm the schools and demand an end to this moralizing.)
Now, the liberals out there may want to stop reading at this point, but especially for kids of 12, 13, 14,15, 16, there is absolutely no question that abstinence is the best choice--even if you don't care about moral questions at all. These are ages with severe emotional turmoil. Many kids at this age are easily manipulated by peer pressure, the hypersexualized images of the popular gutter culture, as well as older kids and adults trying to take advantge of naivete for their own sexual pleasure. These are also ages when, for the most part, we don't trust kids behind the wheel of a car--and you expect them to make good decisions involving activities that can leave them with STDs for life?
Apply the marginal rule to this: there are kids that are going to be sexually active regardless of what you teach them. If you can't get them to wait until at least adulthood, you can try to reduce the pregnancy and STD problems by teaching them the dangers and the methods for reducing those dangers. There are kids that are going to wait until they are 17 or 18 (some even waiting until marriage), regardless of what you teach them. It is the kids in the middle that we have to concentrate on with any form of sex education. Some of these kids, with some encouragement, will decide to wait. But if you don't even try to encourage them to wait, the popular gutter culture wins.
Gibson's The Passion of the Christ Marketing Plan
Roger Friedman's column at Fox News complains that the opening week theater schedule seems to be targeting communities where it is most likely to get a large number of ticket sales: Newmarket Films, which is distributing the movie, seems to have picked a pattern that concentrates heavily on the south and the Midwest, focusing on the Bible Belt and locations where "The Passion of the Christ" will meet with the least resistance. West Virginia will have about three times as many theaters as Rhode Island, for example. Vermonters have three theatres while their more conservative next-door neighbors in New Hampshire, a state equal in size, will have twelve.
And this is surprising for what reason? It makes absolutely no sense to run the film in places where the audience is going to be small. I suppose that if Gibson were running it in theaters in Beverly Hills, he would be accused of being unnecessarily provocative.Calls to Newmarket and to its public relations firm were not returned to this column yesterday. But in the positioning of "The Passion of the Christ," Gibson has consciously created a divisive atmosphere for the presentation of his film. For example, he has screened the movie widely for groups on the religious right while avoiding all mainstream groups, as well as film critics for fear of poor advance word.
Again, what's the surprise? Gibson has invested $25 million of his own money into this film. I can't imagine him arranging a screening for the ACLU, knowing full well that regardless of content, they are going to pan it, and probably revise their support for free speech to exclude religiously offensive material.Meacham writes: "To take the film's account of the 'Passion' literally will give most audiences a misleading picture of what probably happened in those epochal hours so long ago. The Jewish priests and their followers are the villains, demanding the death of Jesus again and again; Pilate is a malleable governor forced into handing down the death sentence."
Let me emphasize that the Gospels do not promote any notion of collective guilt for this. Indeed, it is a fundamental tenent of Christianity that Jesus's sacrifice on the cross was a necessary part of providing salvation for sinners. Anyone who sees Jesus's trial and execution as something to be guilty about needs to spend some time reading the New Testament.
Even then, the claim that Gibson is giving a misleading picture by portraying the Roman governor as weak is misleading. The only accounts we have of the events in question are in the New Testament, and Gibson is following the Gospel accounts on this score. The Gospel of Luke, chapter 23:1Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. 2And they began to accuse him, saying, "We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king."
The level of attack on Gibson's integrity is beginning to work. I will definitely go see it in the theaters.
3So Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?"
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.
4Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man."
5But they insisted, "He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here."
The Kerry Adultery Frenzy
1. So far, all we have is indirect stories: Big Journalism is investigating. We really don't know anything.
2. Adultery by an elected official? I am reminded of the scene in Casablanca, where the police inspector exclaims that he is "shocked, shocked" to discover that there is gambling go on in Rick's joint. It's pretty clear that Kerry is the male equivalent of a golddigger. Even under the best of conditions, being away from your wife for months on end, under the emotional stress of a political campaign, perhaps working closely with an attractive young lady, would make an affair not at all surprising. This doesn't make it okay, but I guess I am not surprised that John Kerry is human, and has fallen into a common human failing.
3. Unlike Bill Clinton, Kerry hasn't perjured himself about this supposed affair (unless you know something that I don't). Contrary to what a lot of liberals were screeching about several years ago, Clinton's problems weren't about sex. They were about Clinton perjuring himself about sex. If you can't be good, at least be honest. Bill Clinton couldn't be either.
4. Will this affect the campaign? I don't know. If it all turns out to be a bunch of smoke and nonsense, not at all. If Kerry bites his lower lip and admits that he did wrong, everyone in Big Journalism will pat him on the back for being honest about it. It was pretty clear that one of the reasons that Clinton's sexual misbehavior helped him in much of America is because there are a lot of women in America who are either sleeping with a cad like Clinton, or wish that they were, and a lot of men in America who are creeps like Clinton, or wish they were.
5. Certainly within the Democratic Party, adultery is going to mark Kerry as a hopeless square. I mean, with a member of the same sex or another species, then he would be one of the truly liberated sorts, and big chunks of the Democratic Party who fancy themselves open-minded would be singing his praises. But with a woman? How cliche! How boring!
Funny One By Meryl Yourish
She's complaining about Tom Friedman's article in the New York Times : Then again, she pointed out to me this passage from Friedman's column of last week, which is as offensive as any article I've read in the Arab News. Nice to know you're on the home team, Friedman. Here's your foreskin back, too.
Was This Kid Too Smart? Or The Dealer Too Stupid?
From CNN, an account of a teenager satisfying every teenaged boy's wildest dreams: NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) -- A teenage boy posing as a banker duped an Ohio car dealership into delivering a $123,000 BMW to him at his high school, police said Thursday.
A second order was never shipped after the dealership became suspicious, and the teen was arrested. The first car was later found in Raleigh, North Carolina, police said.
"He apparently sold the car, and it ended up in a dealership in North Carolina," said Detective Scott Davis of the Dublin, Ohio, police.
The boy was 16 in early January when he ordered the 12-cylinder 2004 BMW 760Li with "black sapphire metallic" paint and a heated steering wheel and seats. He told Midwestern Auto Group that his bank would confirm the wire transfer, authorities said.
After completing and returning paperwork that was mailed to his home, the teen called the dealership pretending to be a banker confirming the transfer, police said.
The car was delivered to him at Dickinson High School on January 27, two weeks after the boy turned 17, police said.
Odd Piece of Email From a Dean Supporter
> I have a great deal of respect for you and most of the opinions you offer
> the world. Your blog is book marked as part of my Mozilla startup group,
> and I enjoy going through your musings every morning. You are a true
> intellect and a rare, informed champion of 2nd Amendment rights.
>
> Since I generally hold your views with such high regard, I am in a bit of a
> quandary over our apparent differences. I have been a life long Republican
> until we attacked Iraq. I discovered Howard Dean like several other
> hundreds of thousands of folks, I was part of his "grass roots" campaign
> efforts. He is the only person to come to such prominence with over 85% of
> his funding coming from little people like me.
>
> What pulled me to Dean was his NRA endorsement as governor and my
> conversations with other Dean supporters on the forums at
> www.ForumsForAmerica.com. I wished I had a viable, alternate Republican
> candidate but I do not and this is not such a big issue since I agree with
> Dean on most all of the issues he describes on his web site
> (www.DeanForAmerica.com).
>
> While Kerry appears to be getting the nod from the DNC, your political
> commentary seems to be narrowly focused on the eccentricities of Dean. I am
> innately curious as to the rational or mechanism by which Dean has captured
> your derogatory attention. For those that might be seeking an alternative
> to our current one party situation and/or for those that can't support a
> man that will go to war without a shred of tangible evidence of clear and
> eminent danger, I am curious as to who you would recommend.
Actually, the decision to go to war was based on a combination of pretty persuasive evidence of current intentions and clear evidence of past actions. It now appears that Saddam Hussein believed that he had chemical WMDs, because he was giving lots of money to people in his government to make them. Some of the captured generals insisted that while their forces didn't have chemical weapons, the units on either side of them did--but apparently, this was a widely held belief by the generals commanding those other units.
It is very likely that Hussein spent a lot of money on WMDs--and that money ended up in Swiss bank accounts of the people that were supposed to producing this stuff. This is the reason that most of the world's intelligence services believed, as did the CIA, that we would be confronting serious chemical warfare.
Part of what made this intelligence mistake so easy is that Hussein had made extensive use of chemical weapons in the past, and at least as late as 1995, had extensive WMD development programs under way. A friend of mine recently read Saddam's Bombmaker, by the guy who headed up Hussein's nuclear program in the 1990s--and it was a serious effort. Hussein's efforts to prevent the UN's monitoring program from completing their job in the late 1990s, and the 2001 efforts, suggested that Hussein was indeed hiding such weapons--even though we now know that what Hussein was hiding was that he had no idea what was actually going on in his own government.
As mistakes go, this one seems to have been completely understandable. Hussein was clearly involved in funding terrorist organizations (payments to Palestinian suicide bombers), and gave refuge to known terrorists, such as Abu Nidal (who committed "suicide" with two head shots just before the war). The question of ties to al-Qaeda are a bit more murky.
In practice, the net effect of the Coalition invasion of Iraq has been very good. We've known for a long time that Hussein was like a cut-rate Hitler, with roughly an order of magnitude less victims (perhaps a milion civilians murdered, and perhaps two million soldiers killed in combat). I feel absolutely no discomfort about destroying this torturocracy. While I would not have predicted it, the recent demands for democracy in Syria (and the willingness of the government to tolerate it as much as it has) and Libya's sudden willingness to drop WMD programs are both indications that the message got through pretty well. Of course, at least some of why France has suddenly come around on this is perhaps the awareness that the records of Hussein's bribes high into the French government were now available.
I am not completely happy with Bush's "triangulation" strategy of giving just enough liberalism to appease the center, but the alternatives are people like Howard Dean, who purports to be a Christian, and then says that God wouldn't have made homosexuals if homosexuality were a sin. This shows someone who doesn't even understand Christianity well enough to phrase a sophistic argument well. ("God wouldn't have made adulterers if adultery were a sin.") There might be an argument that Dean could make to defend his position, but this was one of the sillier ones.
Even on the subject of gun rights, where Dean sounds more Republican than Democrat, remember that a Democratic president would be subject to the full set of pressures of the Democratic machine for gun control, and Dean made it clear that he supported the assault weapons ban.
Yeah, That's It! Conservatives Are Too Stupid to Teach!
Over at Instapundit there is a nice discussion about the gross disproportion of Democrats to Republicans on the faculty at Duke. The Philosophy Department chair, Professor Robert Brandon, explains that there is no surprise to this: conservatves are stupid, and therefore you can't expect them to be college professors.
What is really funny about this is that Brandon misquotes Jon Stuart Mill to defend his position. Even more amusing to me, having studied 19th century British politics a bit, is that what Mill insults as Conservatives (the Conservative Party of that time) held values quite a bit closer to modern liberals (such as opposition to free trade, and support for the welfare state). What called itself the Liberal Party back then was a lot closer to conservative and libertarian ideas (free markets, low tariffs, minimal government regulation). Of course, the pressing issues of modern liberalism--such as gay marriage, partial-birth abortion, and the importance of public nudity before an audience of millions--would have been regarded with shock and disgust by both Liberal and Conservative back then.
Instapundit quotes a long piece by Professor James Lindgren about how the data from the General Social Surveys for many years show that Republicans are not only better educated than Democrats, bu tthat conservative Republicans show the highest level of intelligence, based on vocabulary and analog reasoning questions.
Professor Volokh quotes Gerge Mason University law professor Ilya Somin concerning a survey that show those who identify themselves as "Strong Republicans" are dramatically more knowledgeable about politics than those who identify themselves as "Strong Democrats."
I find this stereotyping of conservatives as stupid to be offensive, but what is especially interesting to me is how the group with no particularly strong claim to being elite looks down their nose at a group that really can claim to be more elite with respect to education and knowledge. (Obviously, you can find plenty of counterexamples among both liberals and conservatives.) It smells like projection to me.
My Former Misrepresentative Shows Her True Feminist Nature
From the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat:
Woolsey's is commonly referred to as "Congresswoman for Life" because she represents the values of the millionaire liberals of Marin and Sonoma Counties so well. And on this, she is again in turn with her constitutents, who blather on about feminism, but ignore the savage misogny of the young men they are raising.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey sought a lenient sentence for a convicted rapist who is the son of one of her staffers, igniting a political firestorm over the weekend.
The Petaluma Democrat quickly apologized after a Marin County newspaper reported she intervened on behalf of Stewart Pearson, who pleaded guilty last fall to raping a 17-year-old Terra Linda girl and covering her face with a rag soaked in household chemicals in an attempt to incapacitate her.
Pearson, 20, had volunteered on Woolsey's campaign and is the son of an employee in the congresswoman's San Rafael office.
"Stewart Pearson is a young man from a supportive family," Woolsey wrote in a Dec. 2 letter on congressional stationery to Marin County Superior Court Judge Terrence Boren one month before Pearson was sentenced. "I believe he has a promising life ahead of him, and I urge you to consider these factors when deciding upon a suitable sentence."
The letter was signed, "Lynn Woolsey, Member of Congress."
Pearson pleaded guilty to rape in September in a deal that dropped other charges, including assault and sodomy. Woolsey's intervention did nothing to sway the judge, who sentenced Pearson in January to eight years in state prison, the maximum allowed under law.
Woolsey is the essence of liberalism. Back in 1992, before she was elected to her first term in Congress, she told me that if she had her way, private ownership of all firearms would be illegal in the Untied States. I guess she's afraid that too many of her potential voters might get shot by their victims.
City of San Francisco Demonstrates That It Out Of Control
First of all: city and county governments are subsidiary entities of the state governments. They have no independent authority except that granted by the state constitution or the state legislature.
Second: California voters (amazingly enough), defined marriage as one man, one woman by initiative in the 2000 elections.
Now the City of San Francisco has decided that it has authority above and beyond the California Constitution, and the voters of the state:SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - In a bold political and legal challenge to California law, city authorities officiated at the marriage of a lesbian couple Thursday and said they will issue more gay marriage licenses.
There is nothing quite as amazing as the arrogance of liberals, who think that they can ignore state law whenever they feel like it. I wonder how San Francisco government would feel if say, Weaverville decided to ignore state law, declare each and every one of its citizens (regardless of age, criminal history, mental health history) a police oficer, issue them automatic weapons, and encourage them to visit San Francisco? The liberals would be screeching and hollering about lawless city officials, you can be sure.
...
The act of civil disobedience in San Francisco was coordinated by Mayor Gavin Newsom and top city officials and was intended to beat a conservative group to the punch.
The group, Campaign for California Families, had planned to go to court on Friday to get an injunction preventing the city from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.
...
Thursday's marriage runs counter to a ballot measure California voters approved in 2000 that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Ads Like This Make Me Wish I Were Obscenely Rich
From Astromart.com: Coming up for sale in 2004 is the Swanson 15-inch refractor. The telescope can be seen at the Pettinger-Guiley Observatory in Washington state about 35 miles S.E. of Seattle.
Not A Very Reputable Source...
But it's a news story about not a very reputable figure, so I guess it's a wash: MICHAEL Jackson's former maid said the singer used to have baths and showers with young boys.
Blanca Francia claimed she saw youngsters sitting on the King of Pop's lap and found their underwear on his floor when she cleaned his room.
She even became worried about her own son's relationship with the star.
But the former employee kept quiet fearing she would lose her job at Jackson's Neverland Ranch where she worked from 1986 to 1991.
I Won't Be Asking Governor Dean For a Drink Of Water
From the Washington Post: Making the point that good scientists must "never take anything for granted," Dean observed that water from a flushed toilet actually would be cleaner for drinking than water untreated from the nearby Mississippi River.
"That's disgusting!" one girl shouted. Another student volunteered that his experiment studied dog urine.
"Now that we're on dog pee, we can have an interesting conversation about that," Dean said. "I do not recommend drinking urine . . . but if you drink water straight from the river, you have a greater chance of getting an infection than you do if you drink urine."
A Political Hack's Excuses For the War in Iraq Two Years Ago
From the New York Post: "in the four years since UNSCOM inspectors were forced out [of Iraq], Saddam Hussein has continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction."
Yup. John Kerry's speech two years ago--when he wasn't running for the White House.
...
Saddam "has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometers restriction imposed by the United Nations."
...
"Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort over the last four years."
...
"a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region."
...
"it would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world."
I respect Kerry for recognizing that the evidence of danger was real back then (even though it now appears that Hussein's people were building Potemkin village WMDs). I disrespect him now for trying to play to the hard left of the Democratic Party to get the nomination.
I have many differences with Sen. Lieberman, but Sen. Lieberman at least knows that playing politics with national security is not acceptable. Lieberman wasn't prepared to pander to the hard left of the party, with unsurprising consequences.
Humor
Three former presidents watched the Superbowl.
After the game, Bush, Sr. called the Patriots to congratulate them on their win.
Jimmy Carter called the Panthers to congratulate them on their brilliant performance.
Bill Clinton called Janet Jackson.
If You Have a Sound Card...
You might find this strange...production, interesting. I don't know what genre to classify this as, but it combines Dean's famous Iowa non-concession speech with Incredible Hulk and some pictures of Dean in a way that is very disturbing.
Six Months From Now, Dean Will Be Praising Kerry's Ethical Standards
But right now, Dean is saying things that Bush's campaign will be quoting in September: "What we now see is John Kerry is part of the corrupt political culture in Washington," Dean told The Associated Press in an interview.
Bush And Guns
The blog whose name I will not utter (because I was raised not to use words like that, except to refer to female dogs) is upset that Bush hasn't done more for gun owners:Even though I know a special man in my life won't be happy with this statement, let's face the fact that Bush hasn't done a damn thing to help gun owners and can't be counted on. This doesn't mean I'm saying not to vote for him, but I'm just telling you his record. There are thousands of politicians like him out there. You need to get them out of office. Don't be a wimp.
Let me recommend reading both "The Justice Department Discovers the 2nd Amendment," Shotgun News, July 15, 2002, 18-20, and "Extremism in Defense of Liberty--Does Not Win in Court," Shotgun News, December 1, 2003, 22-23.
Politics is a lot like mud wrestling with pigs. There's no way to stay clean when you do it. You won't look dignified afterwards. There is some danger that you will be mistaken for the pig, if you spend too long at it. But there are times that this is the only way to get the ham hanging in the smoke house.
The Federal Marriage Amendment
Interesting comments by Siflay Hraka, pointing out that many of the criticisms of the Federal Marriage Amendment are similar to the criticisms that almost sank the Thirteenth Amendment (the one that abolished slavery) at the end of the Civil War. I would point out one little error, which explains part of why this was a struggle: The Thirteenth Amendment, the constitutional amendment outlawing slavery, was defeated upon first consideration in the House of Representatives. And this was done by representatives of supposedly free and loyal states, most of whom opposed slavery.
Actually, a number of states loyal to the Union were slave, not free, at the start of the Civil War, including at least Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland. (Delaware, I think, abolished slavery in 1864--not sure about the others.)
Siflay's mentions Andrew Sullivan's repeated effort to stop the FMA. Pretty obviously, in light of Sullivan's history of seeking random unprotected sex--and Sullivan's HIV+ status--it doesn't sound Sullivan is planning a stable home life with a white picket fence and two dogs in the yard.
The Cell Phone Gun
I've seen news reports from Europe that criminals are beginning to get caught with "cell phones" that fire .22 LR. Donald Sensing has a report, including video from a friend in law enforcement firing one.
This Post Is Just To Annoy Meryl Yourish
From Jeff Jacoby's Boston Globe article appropriately titled, "An Auschwitz in Korea": It is not exactly news that the communist regime of Kim Jong Il has sent millions of North Koreans to early graves. Estimates back in 1998 were that as many as 800,000 people were dying in North Korea each year from starvation and malnutrition caused by Kim's ruthless and irrational policies. World Vision, a Christian relief organization, calculated that 1 million to 2 million North Koreans had been killed by "a full-scale famine" largely of Pyongyang's creation.
Ooooh! According to Meryl Yourish's definition, Jacoby is a Holocaust denier, because he is clearly asserting that the Holocaust isn't unique.
Nor is it breaking news that North Korea operates a vicious prison gulag -- "not unlike the worst labor camps built by Mao and Stalin in the last century," as NBC News reported more than a year ago. Some 200,000 men, women, and children are held in these slave-labor camps; hundreds of thousands of others have perished in them over the years. Some of the camps are so hellish that 20 percent or more of their prisoners die from torture and abuse each year. The dead can be of any age: North Korea's longstanding policy is to imprison not only those accused of such "crimes" as practicing Christianity or complaining about North Korean life, but their entire families, including grandparents and grandchildren.
...
"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son, and a daughter." The speaker is Kwon Hyuk, a former North Korean intelligence agent and a one-time administrator at Camp 22, the country's largest concentration camp. His testimony was heard on a television documentary that aired last week on the BBC. "The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing."
...
Soon Ok-lee, who spent seven years in another North Korean camp, described the use of prisoners as guinea pigs for biochemical weapons.
"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners," she testified. "One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it, but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream. . . . They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were dead."
Gas chambers. Poisoned food. Torture. The murder of whole families. Massive death tolls. How much more do we need to know about North Korea's crimes before we act to stop them? How many more victims will be fed into the gas chambers before we cry out "never again!" -- and mean it?
Obviously, the U.S. can't do anything about this evil. If it does, the left will get all self-righteous, and start chanting, "No blood for kim-chee" or whatever nonsense they have imagined today legitimizes mass murder and torture in the Third World.
Iraq As Flypaper
A number of bloggers (myself included) have been saying for some months that Iraq is flypaper for al-Qaeda--they flock to Iraq to attack coalition forces. Better in Iraq than North America. This news report from Down Under seems to confirm that the candle flame is attracting moths from very long distances:LARGELY seen until recently as a logistical base for Islamic terrorists, Italy has become a departure point for suicide attackers linked to al-Qaeda and active against US-led forces in Iraq, according to an Italian intelligence report released today.
Coalition forces are fighting these thugs half a world away--and probably depleting the supply of dangerous Islamic extremists in Europe. This can only be a good thing for the future peace of Europe.
The document also warned that forces staging anti-coalition attacks in Iraq might expand their scope and targets.
The report came weeks after Italian investigators said they shut down a European network suspected of recruiting Islamic militants to carry out attacks on US-led forces in Iraq. The investigators said the volunteers were drawn from Muslim youths living on the fringes of society in Western Europe, including Italy.
Evidence gathered over the past six months shows "the strategic importance of our country ... not only as a transit point and for logistic and financial support, but also as a departure point for would-be 'kamikaze' or holy warriors" in Iraq, read the biannual report put together by the Italian secret services.
The intelligence report said many of the extremists stationed in Italy had links to North-African terror groups and to al-Qaeda's operatives believed to be active in the autonomous northern Kurdish region in Iraq.
More Evidence of Brutal Abuse By U.S. Forces at Gitmo
From the British Telegraph: An Afghan boy whose 14-month detention by US authorities as a terrorist suspect in Cuba prompted an outcry from human rights campaigners said yesterday that he enjoyed his time in the camp.
I rather suspect it wasn't quite summer camp for the adults there, but still, you would think after all the ferocious--and ferociously wrong--predictions and misguesses by the professional American haters that they would learn to shut up more, so as not to look so foolish.
Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, who until last week was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, said that he was treated very well and particularly enjoyed learning to speak English. His words will disappoint critics of the US policy of detaining "illegal combatants" in south-east Cuba indefinitely and without trial.
In a first interview with any of the three juveniles held by the US at Guantanamo Bay base, Mohammed said: "They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons."
Mohammed, an unemployed Afghan farmer, found the surroundings in Cuba at first baffling. After he settled in, however, he was left to enjoy stimulating school work, good food and prayer.
I wonder if the problem is that the left knows how it would treat its enemies--in the style of their heroes Stalin, Mao, and Castro--and just assumes that the U.S. must be every bit as evil.
Gay Marriage: An Interesting Divide
This AP wire service story reports on a recent poll (Feb. 5-8) about gay marriage:In polling conducted by the National Annenberg Election Survey, people said by a 2-1 margin - 60 percent to 31 percent - that they oppose any similar law legalizing same-sex marriage in their states.
There are several ways to read this. It would appear that about 18% of Americans do not want gay marriages to be legally recognized--but also don't want a constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage. I find myself wondering which is the case:
Still, they were cool to the idea of a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.
In the poll, 49 percent of those polled were opposed to such an amendment, while 42 percent favored it.
1. This 18% wants the states to have the authority to legalize gay marriage in the future.
2. This 18% was rejecting either the particular text of this amendment that was presented to them, or the polling question's description of that amendment.
Keep in mind that there are those who argue that the current Federal Marriage Amendment would prohibit state legislatures from recognizing gay marriage or civil unions; others who argue the text would prohibit state legislatures from recognizing gay marriages; other who argue that the text would only prohibit judges from imposing gay marriage on the states. The language of the proposed FMA is not as clear as I would like. What we may be seeing is that 18% of the population doesn't want judges imposing gay marriage, and their objection to an amendment banning gay marriage may be because they perceive that the FMA would preclude legislatures from adopting gay marriage or civil union laws.
UPDATE: Don Quixote says that there might be a third reason: people whose objection is to judicial tyranny on this matter. Judges shouldn't be imposing their wishes on the people. That's the legislature's job.
Mel Gibson's Film: Surprise Hit?
From that well-known anti-Semitic and evangelical Christian publication, Variety (that's a joke, son): (Variety) The movie that couldn't find a distributor a year ago is now poised to become this year's first surprise hit.
All those who spent months ranting and raving about Gibson's movie being anti-Semitic without having seen it? Mel should send them flowers.
Though not a single television ad has aired for "The Passion of the Christ" two weeks before its release, Mel Gibson (news)'s depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus is eclipsing mainstream Hollywood fare in audience interest.
Fostered by wide media coverage and a grassroots marketing campaign aimed at evangelical Christians, "Passion" is registering numbers on recent surveys by Nielsen NRG that suggest an opening in the $15 million-$30 million range.
The figures top those for pics whose heavy TV campaigns are well under way, such as Adam Sandler (news) laffer "50 First Dates," which opens Friday, and Warner Bros.' "Welcome to Mooseport," which will opens Feb. 27, two days post-"Passion."
...
"It's one of the most talked about films since the first 'Star Wars' prequel," said Exhibitor Relations prexy Paul Dergarabedian.
The anti-Semitism debate has probably helped the pic, he said.
"Controversy is a double-edged sword. It can either boost your chances or derail you," Dergarabedian added. With "Passion," "People are intrigued. I've never seen all these pieces of the puzzle come together before."
Tracking numbers on "Passion" are a far cry from the dismal commercial expectations once widely held, even by Gibson himself. At a 2002 press conference announcing the project, he said, "No one wants to touch something in two dead languages. They think I'm insane --- maybe I am."
In the most recent NRG poll, 16% picked "The Passion" as their first-choice pic to see the weekend it opens. "50 First Dates" drew 13%.
...
Tracking data show interest in "Passion" skewing toward older filmgoers but equally balanced between men and women.
Total awareness for "Passion" is 60%, but much higher among men and women over 25, where it tops 80%. First-choice ratings for men and women over 25 is 23%, while it is rated around 10% for those under 25.
Tracking data is tightly controlled by Nielsen NRG and its studio clients because predicting box office from NRG numbers is more of an art than a science.
Nonetheless, the big tracking numbers for "Passion" have created ripples at rival studios.
"They're very high --- expectedly so," said one distrib exec. "It's one of those films where awareness is high across all demos."
On another lot, an exec said, "The picture is going to open huge."
"Passion," which personally cost Gibson $25 million to produce, is set to be released on around 2,000 screens.
...
Last week, online ticket seller Fandango reported that "Passion" tickets accounted for 43% of all its sales.
Though industry execs anticipate a big opening, they disagree on how it'll play long term.
One exec predicted, "I personally think it's going to do $100 million-plus."
I am once again somewhat torn by this. On the one hand, it tells me that large numbers of Americans--enough to create a groundswell of excitement for a movie--identify themselves as Christians. On the other hand, someone is watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and thinks it is cute or funny.
Interesting Story From the London Evening Standard
It has long been assumed that child molestation is almost entirely done by men. I saw this story, and found myself wondering if perhaps child molestation by women may simply be underreported, or if there may be a change in behaviors beginning to happen:A lesbian paedophile who posed as a teenage boy to begin a relationship with a 12-year-old girl she had met on school playing fields was today convicted of indecently assaulting the child.
Once upon a time, you didn't find women doing crimes like bank robbery; women tended to be in check fraud and other crimes that didn't involve threats of violence. Over the last few years, I've read that this has started to change, suggesting that at least some of the relatively non-violent nature of woman criminals was a reflection of the values with which women were raised. Is it possible that the tendency of some male victims of child sexual abuse to become abusers while female victims do not, perhaps just a cultural issue related to how women used to be socialized to not be aggressive?
Kelly Trueman, 23, reinvented herself as 16-year-old Jake and concocted a string of lies about her former life to befriend a group of youngsters in Ripley, Derbyshire.
Derby Crown Court heard that the young victim believed she had embarked on her first relationship when she met the supposed teenage boy last summer.
...
In interviews with police, the 12-year-old said she kissed Trueman while on the playing fields and told officers the woman had made repeated attempts to touch her in a sexual manner.
Oh yes, for those who insist that pedophiles aren't homosexuals:Trueman, who told police she was a lesbian, hung her head in her hands and choked back tears as she was found guilty of the indecent assaults.
Of course, I could point to other self-proclaimed homosexuals, such as Paula Poundstone, who have been charged with "lewd acts" on girls under 14. Pretty obviously, this claim that pedophiles aren't homosexuals doesn't fly. It might well be that they are no more common among homosexuals than among heterosexuals, but the claim that pedophiles are not homosexuals is wrong.
While looking for the Paula Poundstone story, I found this site, ageofconsent.com (not particularly work safe, because of the advertising), which seems to be an advocacy site for either getting rid of age of consent laws, or lowering them quite dramatically. For those that want to imagine that the interests of the publishers of this site are purely idealistic, and concerned about the rights of minors: I noticed the ads running on the site are for "World Guide to Brothels," Viagra, and Cool Teen Sites (definitely not work safe).
Age of Consent's letters column is also pretty repugnant, with letters thanking them for their assistance in getting this guy off of criminal charges:I flew to Kansas to meet the young lady [now 16] of whom I was greatly enamored. I was met by both the FBI and the Chief of Police of the young lady's town, arrested and incarcerated for 8 months.
There really are a lot of very sick people out there.
Photon Instruments Refractor: Finally, the Limiting Factor Seems to Be the Conditions
The sky was almost completely clear today; the snow is mostly melted; it was, compared to the last month, almost sunbathing weather--in the high 40s today! I put the telescope out before dinner, and when I went out an hour later, the glass seemed pretty much adjusted to outside temperatures.
I was able to see diffraction rings on both sides of focus: a fair amount of undercorrection, but at least there are recognizeable diffraction rings outside focus.
On Saturn at 190x--Cassini's Division all the way around the planet, and really black at the ansae (the outermost extensions of the rings). I could see at least two cloud bands on the planet.
So I put in the 5mm eyepiece, for 229x. I didn't see any more detail, but there wasn't great decline caused by increased fuzziness. The 4mm eyepiece takes you up to 286x, and here there was definitely beginning to be some noticeable decline in image quality.
Oddly enough, chromatic aberration wasn't all that serious of a problem. It was visible, but not terribly disturbing.
At this point, I can't tell if the limiting factor is the optics, or the viewing conditions. Saturn wasn't looking so good by 9:30 PM, even though it was now directly overhead, but that could have been increased moisture in the air. I didn't see any dew on the lens--but at this temperature, it would have been ice.
Jupiter was low on the horizon, which is never a good situation (too many extra miles of air to scramble the image), and so it's hard to criticize the telescope for this. There were certainly at least two dark equatorial cloud bands visible, even with the less than optimal conditions.
Of course, it's terribly cold outside, and for Saturn, I had to literally lie on the ground to aim the finderscope at Saturn. At least it's just cold and wet now, instead of having to lie down on snow.
So here's the choice: spend $89 on the Baader Planetarium Fringe Killer (a filter that selectively blocks the violet part of the spectrum where most chromatic aberration comes from, allowing more precise focus of the rest of the light), or spend >$500 for the Chromacor, which corrects both chromatic aberration and undercorrection. Or, sell this, and spend the big bucks for a true apochromat. At least my conscience wouldn't bother me now selling this one.
Is It Reality? Or Humor?
I like it either way. Make sure you read the whole thing: it's not that long:This one’s beyond redemption and pernicious to no end. Probably irresponsible, inconsiderate, and thoughtless to boot.
Still.
I’d just finished cleaning my .30-06 when the doorbell rang.
Setting things aside, I got up and opened the door.
Found a young lady standing there.
“Mr. Simoneaux?”
“Yes.”
“I’m your neighbor from a few doors down. Our boys are friends with your son and he’s asked if they could come play at your house.”
“No problem there. Jason’s our youngest and we’ve been through having kids over with our older two. Got the place almost to where we can hose it down after an afternoon of whatever the kids get up to.”
“Well, that’s good Mr. Simoneaux, but, you see, I’m a concerned parent…”
“Aren’t we all. I was mostly concerned with staying sane while my two oldest went through their teens. Still not sure I made it and I still have Jason to go.”
“Well there is that worry but, just now, I’m more concerned about guns.”
“Good one to be concerned about.”
“So, you’re concerned about guns in the home too?”
“Absolutely. I’ve just about run out of space in the gun cabinet what with the rifles and shotguns we have for when we all go hunting together.”
“No, what I mean is I’m concerned about guns in the home and I don’t want my kids in danger.”
“I’m with you there. You wouldn’t believe how tough my wife and I are on that subject. Locks on the gun cabinet door. Safety chain running through the trigger guards to lock them into the cabinet. Ammunition locked in a small cabinet in the garage. My wife’s Italian, you know. I’d be sleeping with the fishes if I weren’t careful.”
“So you keep guns in your house?”
“Yep. How do you store yours?”
“We don’t have guns and that’s why I wanted to talk with you.”
No, The Draft Is Not Coming Back!
The latest form of left-wing alarmism just arrived in my mailbox, forwarded by one of my sisters to my daughter, and then my daughter sent it to me, asking for verification. (My daughter just made the Dean's List at University of Idaho!)
From the usual suspects:ACTIONS, ACTIONS, ACTIONS:
And my response:
Please send this on to all the parents and teachers you know, and all the aunts and uncles, grandparents, godparents....
And let your children know -- it's their future, and they can be a powerful voice for change! Please also write to your representatives to ask them why they aren't telling their constituents about these bills -- and write to newspapers and other media outlets to ask them why they're not covering this important story.
*********
The DRAFT
$28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS) budget to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005. SSS must report to Bush on March 31, 2005 that the system, which has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation.
Please see website: www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.html to view the SSS Annual Performance Plan - Fiscal Year 2004.
The Pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide..
Though this is an unpopular election year topic, military experts and influential members of Congress are suggesting that if Rumsfeld's prediction of a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan [and a permanent state of war on "terrorism"] proves accurate, the U.S. may have no choice but to draft.
No, it isn't. It turns out that the Selective Service System, contrary to claim that it has been "dormant" for decades, has been wasting money preparing for a draft from 1980 onward (when Jimmy Carter revived to send a message to the Soviet Union after their invasion of Afghanistan). When I distributed antidraft registration literature in 1980, one of my arguments against registration was that it wasted $25 million a year registering for a draft that we didn't have. If you look at the FY 1999 budget you can see that it was budgeted $24,940,000 back then. The $28 million budgeted is about a 10% increase in five years; with inflation adjustment, that's barely an increase from its "dormant" state.
There are people calling for restoration of the draft--liberal Democrats, like Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. See this article here :Last year, U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., introduced a bill asking Bush to reinstate the draft.
If you visit sites like this one, dedicated to ending the draft, you'll see that they are covering that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld doesn't want a draft, because we don't need one.
"Our brave soldiers are primarily from working, lower-income families. They do their patriotic duty, but they do not join the Army because they want to fight anymore than wealthy kids who do not join because they have better opportunities elsewhere," Rangel said. "If America must be at war, the burdens of war should be shared by all segments of society. The only fair way to ensure both that we have enough troops and that the burdens are borne by all segments of society is to have a draft."
If you want to see who is pushing for a draft, read these comments here . It is sociology professors like Charles Moskos at Northwestern University and liberal Democratic Congressmen Charles Rangel who think it's a good idea. In fact, the only Republican that Time quotes in support of a draft is this one:JAMES INHOFE
Remember who ended the draft during the Vietnam War: Richard Nixon. Who brought draft registration back? Jimmy Carter.
Republican Senator from Oklahoma
I think I'm the only member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who would reinstate the draft.
The Imperial Government of Germany had exempted Socialists from the draft during World War I. At the very end of the war, desperate for soldiers, they started drafting Socialists--who promptly went to the front, and encouraged soldiers to mutiny against their officers.
I don't want any conscripts fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Their heart won't be in it.
One of the greatest weaknesses of any totalitarian state is their reliance on conscripts. The Soviet Army was of low quality for this reason; it had almost no professional soldiers, and lots of conscripts. The Iraqi Army (except for the Republican Guard) was not much of an army for the same reason. If you can't persuade soldiers to join up voluntarily, your government is either failing to sell the reason for the war to the public, or the pay or conditions are so miserable that people are genuinely unable to do it.
Back in 1987, I was strongly tempted to join the Air National Guard, to the point that I was making calls and asking questions. My motivation was simple: duty to my country. I didn't join up, because at the time, I couldn't afford six weeks off without pay to go through basic training. (Literally, there wasn't enough money in savings for me to do that.) By the time I was financially able to do so, I was too old.
Young men and women from more than 30 nations are now serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, assisting in replacing ferociously brutal, misogynistic governments where rape and torture were official government policy, with societies that, with time, may turn into something about on a par with Turkey--a somewhat functional democracy. I am proud of what those young people are doing. Some are in the military because their choices were limited out of high school, and went in for the educational benefits. But I have talked to more than a few people who went into military service out of a deep sense of obligation to not just our nation (patriotism is in itself is not a very important idea to me), but out of a realization that the United States is the primary guarantor of individual rights in the world today. All the fine speeches from the European Union and the United Nations don't do anything; totalitarian thugs are stopped by a young man or woman holding a gun and saying, "Stop."
The Ten Commandments Monument in Boise
Click here to add your name to the petition to keep the Ten Commandments monument in Julia Davis Park in Boise. This is one of those memorable situations where you get to give a poke in the eye to the Rev. Fred Phelps and support the Ten Commandments!
Now Accepting Advertising
See the left side of the screen.
I saw that Instapundit was doing it, and I decided that if he can do it, without worrying that his editorial independence will be questioned, then so can I! I must say, the BlogAds scheme seems like it has real potential as a way to turn blogging into something that people can at least turn into a part-time job. The real proof will be if you start seeing ads appearing there.
What Newspaper Published An Astrology and the Candidates Column on Their Op-Ed Page?
No, not the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News. The New York Times. Seriously. And the column seems to be serious, not a "we're feeling silly today" piece. Thanks to the Cranky Professor for the link.
States That Trust Me To Carry a Concealed Handgun
Red states are the ones that trust me to carry a concealed handgun:
create your own states that trust me with a concealed handgun map
or write about it on the open travel guide
States That I Have Visited
I'm taking advantage of a cute little script that you can produce by clicking here:
create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide
Defining Marriage in Idaho By Constitutional Amendment
I guess recognizing that we may someday have judges with the same reading disability as the majority on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the Idaho legislature is considering an amendment to the Idaho Constitution that would add a new section to Article III:SECTION 28. MARRIAGE. Only marriage between one man and one woman at one time shall be recognized as valid in this state. No other relationship shall be recognized as a marriage or its legal equivalent by the state of Idaho or its political subdivisions, regardless of whether such relationship is recognized by the laws of any jurisdiction outside of this state.
Here's where to go to get a list of Idaho legislators so that can contact them.
What Animals Do
Professor Volokh acknowledges that what animals do isn't a particularly good model of whether something should be lawful or not.
Yup. I recall watching two male ducks fight over a female duck until they had drowned it. Is that natural? Sure. Males fighting to see who gets to be dominant over a female is common in the wild, and if the female dies, oh well.
When a lion takes over an existing pride, he often kills off the lion cubs of the previous administration. When a zebra stallion takes over an existing harem, he often kicks any pregnant mares until they abort. Why not? They aren't his progeny. This also explains why sexual abuse of children is relatively rare by biological fathers (although I know at least three women who were victimized by their biological fathers), and more commonly by stepfathers, new boyfriend, or bar dropping of the night.
Anyone who argues against homosexuality on the grounds of it being "unnatural" is making a big mistake. Most civilizations have moral codes designed to restrain "natural" instincts. You don't want to live in a society where everyone gets to be "natural."
Damaging Children and The Consequences
Part of why I get so upset about the rationalizations that I keep hearing for repealing age of consent laws is that you can see the damage it does when you read about the more noteworthy cases. Roger Ebert's review of this recent documentary about Eileen Wuornos (Aileen: Life And Death Of A Serial Killer) really captures it:Aileen Wuornos was trashed by life. That she committed seven murders is beyond dispute and unforgivable, but what can we expect from a child who was beaten by her grandfather, molested by a pedophile, abandoned by her mother, and raped by her brother and other neighborhood boys and men? A child who was selling sex for cigarettes at the age of 9, who had a baby at 13 and was thrown out of the house, who lived for two years in the woods at the end of the street or, in cold weather, in the back seat of a car, wrapped in a single blanket? Society made Aileen into a weapon and turned her loose.
Some years back, there was a pretty notorious case in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California involving two young girls who murdered a old woman. Was there a reason? Not really. It wasn't hard to get a conviction; one of the girls had written in her diary of how good it felt to murder this old woman. Her defense attorney tried to excuse and explain what had happened by explaining how this girl had been passed around like a party favor in a polyincestuous family at a young age.
Is anyone surprised at the rage in either of these cases? Is anyone surprised at the disconnect from the rest of the human race? I expect to receive at least one piece of email explaining that repealing age of consent laws is "different" or that lowering the age of consent to a more "realistic" level isn't the same thing. The fact of the matter is that children are easily manipulated. That's why we have age of consent laws.
I have received some emails that try to draw a distinction between pedophiles (those interested in prepubescent children) and ephebophiles (those interested in pubescent minors). Yes, I suppose that there is a real difference there, but so what? The same dynamics are in play--manipulation of someone not completely competent to understand what is going on. The age of consent is necessarily arbitrary, but so are a lot of rules.
Ann Coulter's Amusing Response to Howard Dean About Janet Jackson
Once again, she is more amusing than deep, but I love this remark: Former front-runner Howard Dean sat out this week's primaries, but still managed to make news by ridiculing the FCC's plan to investigate MTV's halftime show at the Super Bowl. Dean pronounced the proposed investigation "silly." He explained that, as a doctor, a naked breast is "not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me."
That's an interesting standard. Presumably a primetime exhibition of Janet Jackson having a full pelvic exam and pap smear would not be "exactly an unusual phenomenon" for Dean either. Let's just be grateful Dean's not a proctologist.
Frightening Report: I Don't Think I Believe It
From Haaretz, an Israeli publication: Al-Qaida have possessed tactical nuclear weapons for about six years, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported Sunday.
Why don't I believe this? Because if they did have such weapons, I would have expected them to have been set off in American cities on 9/11. Instead of 3000 dead, we would have had tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands dead. Instead of a disrupted economy for many months, we would have cities still unusable because of public panic about fallout.
The Arabic daily reported that sources close to Al-Qaida said Osama bin Laden's group bought the nuclear weapons from Ukrainian scientists who were visiting Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1998.
What Happens When A Professor Is Honest
The school looks at firing him: KIRTLAND, OH—Lakeland Community College near Cleveland, Ohio, has removed a professor of moral philosophy from his classes as punishment for refusing to hide his religious identity from students. The college threatened Dr. James Tuttle, who espouses traditional Catholic beliefs, with dismissal because he made statements on his syllabi and in class that disclosed his religious faith and how that shaped his personal philosophy.
One of the great myths is that a teacher comes to a class completely objective about a subject. It's a fine goal to strive for, but realistically, all of us bring certain assumptions to how we teach a subject.
...
Dr. Tuttle's problems began in March 2003 when he received a copy of a student complaint forwarded to him by Dean James L. Brown of the Arts and Humanities Division at Lakeland. The student complained that Dr. Tuttle mentioned his Catholic beliefs too often for the student's taste and suggested that he be given "counseling for tolerance."
In an effort to address this issue, Dr. Tuttle decided to add "disclaimers" to the syllabi of two of his classes informing students that the professor was "a committed Catholic Christian philosopher and theologian," so that students would know in advance about his perspective. The statement also encouraged any students who felt uncomfortable with Dr. Tuttle's views or methods to feel free to talk to him outside of class.
On April 21, 2003, Dr. Tuttle received a letter from Dean Brown saying that he was "more bothered by [Tuttle's] disclaimer than by anything I read in [the student]'s complaint." Dean Brown went on to suggest that Dr. Tuttle "would be happier in a sectarian classroom." In punishing Dr. Tuttle for including the disclaimer, Dean Brown stated that he would reduce Dr. Tuttle's course load for the next semester to only one class (thereby reducing his pay) and would subject him to classroom monitoring by a fellow professor before reaching a final decision on whether to actually fire him.
There a couple of possible solutions:
1. Do your best to hide your assumptions and beliefs.
2. Inform your students of your assumptions and beliefs, so that they can appropriately consider what you tell them.
I don't go out of my way to use approach #2, but neither do I pretend to have no strongly held opinions, either. I would say putting such statements on a class syllabus is a form of full disclosure. This should be consider commendable--not dismissable.
Do you suppose that if he put a statement into his syllabus that he was a committed Marxist that this would be a problem? What if a male professor put in a picture of his "civil union" ceremony with Bruce? Do you suppose that they would be trying to push him out? Certainly not at a public institution.
Free Speech: Void Where Prohibited by Homosexuals
Eric Rasmussen has a long piece about the recent decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia that a teacher can be suspended from teaching for writing a letter to the editor calling homosexuality immoral. An interesting quote from the decision that reminds us that "self-fulfillment" takes precedence over free speech:Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth. In addition, the appellant's publicly discriminatory writings undermine the ability of members of the targeted group, homosexuals, to attain individual self-fulfilment.
New Yorkers: Your Tax Dollars At Work, Promoting Anti-Semitism
From the New York Post: Now playing at a Times Square theater: "Crown Heights," a play about the 1991 race riot in which members of the Hasidic Jewish community are cast as the instigators — not the victims.
The state, of course, provided financial assistance for this.
Talk about standing history on its head.
And your tax dollars are paying for it — thanks in large part to Gov. Pataki.
This dubious exercise is being presented by the All-Stars Project at its new $12 million Castillo Theater. The group and theater are both brainchildren of political extremist Lenora Fulani, whose mentor — cultist Fred Newman — co-wrote the play.
With a prologue proclaiming that "it is probably closer to the truth than what is sometimes labeled New York reality," the play jibes completely with Fulani's contention that the three days of anti-Jewish rioting in Crown Heights — including the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum — constituted "the first clear exercise of power by the city's new coalition of black leadership" against "right-wing Zionists."
There is a long history of hostility on the lunatic fringe of the black nationalist movement towards Jews--in spite of the prominent role (dare I say, "disproportionate role"?) in the Civil Rights Movement. Jews worked long and hard to raise public consciousness about both the petty insults of discrimination and the great crimes of lynching. Yet the lunatic fringe of the Civil Rights Movement seems to have long had a strong anti-Semitic edge to it, of which Jesse Jackson's "Hymietown" remarks are just the best known.
What, Exactly, Are These Men Protesting?
From Newsday: NEW YORK -- About 100 men in minis, midis and even tutus took to the streets of Manhattan to call for an end to the tyranny of trousers.
I can't imagine that there is any law in New York City that prohibits men from wearing dresses. I've spent a lot of time around guys wearing kilts over the last few years (my wife's band does Scottish folk music). So what are they protesting, exactly? If they are protesting laws, I guess I can understand that, but it almost sounds like they are protesting being looked at funny.
"We're not transvestites, homosexuals or cross-dressers," David Johnson told the New York Times for Sunday editions. "We don't want you to call us Jean or Sally. We're men. Men who want the right to wear a skirt."
Johnson, a retired teacher from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and the other pants opposers walked several blocks from the Guggenheim Museum to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they visited an exhibit called "Bravehearts: Men in Skirts." Their presence attracted confused looks from a few fellow visitors.
Ingemar Johnsson, 39, came from Sweden to join the march Saturday. He told the Times that men in Europe often wore skirts and pantaloons until the time of the French Revolution, when pants became the expected masculine attire. Others pointed out that Scottish men have donned kilts for centuries.
Really Inappropriate Behavior From a Pilot
You know, there's a time to share your faith with others, and there's a time when it is really, really rude:An American Airlines pilot flying passengers from Los Angeles to New York asked Christians on board to identify themselves and then suggested that non-Christian passengers discuss the faith with them, the airline confirmed Saturday.
Now, perhaps if the engines had all fallen off, or there had been a sudden in-flight change to a pilot named Mohammed, this wouldn't be so quite so offensive....
The pilot, whose identity was not released, had been making flight announcements before he asked that the Christians on board raise their hands, said American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner.
Wagner said the pilot told airline officials he then suggested the other passengers use the flight time to talk to the Christians about their faith.
Bad Guy Goes to the Wrong Neighborhood
I put this up on my Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog, but I thought my regular readers would enjoy this one. Talk about breaking into a house in the wrong neighborhood!
Rancho Cordova, California
From the February 7, 2004 Sacramento Bee: Woman opens fire on intruder
Terminally stupid, perhaps?
A man is wounded as she defends her home with two handguns.
Firing nine rounds from two handguns, a 53-year-old Rancho Cordova woman fended off an intruder Thursday night after he crashed through her sliding glass door.
William Kriske, a 47-year-old parolee, was treated for a gunshot wound to the arm, then taken to jail and arrested on suspicion of burglary and resisting arrest, according to Sacramento County Sheriff's Sgt. Lou Fatur.
"It was one of those nights. I have a few holes in my glass out front," Carolyn Lisle said Friday.
"That's OK, I don't think he'll be back," said Lisle, who emptied one .357 revolver at the intruder before she retrieved a second one and he crashed through another window to flee.
"I was trying to miss my furniture. Priorities, right?" Lisle said.
Lisle, shaken but spirited, recounted her night that started as a quiet evening of TV with three friends and two dogs in her living room.
At about 9 p.m., a noise at the sliding door prompted a male visitor to get up to investigate, but Lisle dashed to a back room to get one of her guns.
"I knew it couldn't be good," Lisle said.
When the intruder shattered the glass, Lisle's three guests fled from the house. Lisle stood her ground and opened fire.
"He was like a mosquito hitting the window. Every time he turned around, poweee," she said.
Lisle wasn't sure the intruder was alone so she nervously watched her back as she squeezed off rounds.
When she emptied one gun, she still hadn't hit him. And he wasn't gone.
"He was still in the garage, flitting around," she said.
She went to get another gun -- "I like to be prepared," she said -- and waited to see his next move. After tearing up the garage, he finally broke out through a garage window, but he veered toward Lisle's front door. She fired again, hitting him at least once.
The bleeding intruder ran across the street and tried to hot-wire a motorcycle, but its owners, already armed to come to Lisle's aid, chased off the would-be thief, she said.
She said one of the men yelled after the retreating burglar: "And that's just our womenfolk."
A California Highway Patrol officer stopped the suspect a short distance away and sheriff's deputies arrested Kriske.
Lisle is still puzzled why someone would break into a well-lit living room with four people and two dogs.
