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Clayton Cramer's BLOG

Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).



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Saturday, February 21, 2004
 
Never Enough

One of the many reasons why the homosexual marriage issue has me so irritated is that no matter what equality the law provides, it is never enough--and homosexuals insist not just on equal treatment by government, but equal treatment by private firms as well. This article about the marriage licenses being issued by San Francisco discusses the fact that because these licenses were issued in violation of state law, a lot of companies are unwilling to treat these newly married homosexual couples as being actually married:
The couple asked State Farm for the marriage-discount rate on their car insurance, and the company mailed them an acknowledgment form showing both their names.

But now State Farm says it won't give them the lower rate after all.

"At this point, as far as I know, State Farm has not recognized same-sex marriages," State Farm spokeswoman Janet Ruiz said. Other discounts are available to homosexual couples, she said.

To Chamberlain, that sounds like "we're on the cusp of being treated again as second-class citizens."
In the mid-1970s, in California, homosexuals complained about police harrassment, and they wanted the sodomy laws repealed. I agreed at the time; I couldn't understand who all these Christians were who wanted the laws left in place. (I was young, naive, fairly liberal, and like most of my generation, I saw homosexuality as just a different lifestyle, not for me, but if others wanted that, sure!) The laws went away, and amazingly enough, within six years, the promiscuity of gay men meant that AIDS was burning a fire through the homosexual community, and soon, contaminating the blood supply.

By 1979, homosexuals were insisting that private employers (admittedly, a public utility) could be sued for discrimination based on sexual orientation--and the California Supreme Court agreed.

In the 1990s, the struggle was to extend this to nearly all private employers, and California's Legislature went along, banning all discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1992. (Note: sexual orientation was not defined by the law. You don't want to hire a member of NAMBLA at your day care center? Lawsuit, lawsuit!)

Now homosexuals are insisting that they have a right to government recognition of marriage.

But that's not good enough: "we're on the cusp of being treated again as second-class citizens." So private companies will have to be forced as well.

Libertarians keep insisting that all of this is a libertarian policy. But inevitably, because the need for approval is so strong (as opposed to the libertarian ideal of laissez-faire), homosexuals aren't content with making the government treat them like everyone else. They need to force everyone to treat them that way. There is nothing libertarian about this, and libertarians should wake up, and admit that they have crawled into bed with a bunch that isn't interested in freedom, but control.

We've already seen how homosexuals have destroyed the concept of free speech in Canada and Britain as part of their irrational need to suppress disapproval. I expect plenty of libertarians will start to make excuses for shutting up disapproving voices here, in the interests of "fairness."

UPDATE: A reader points out that insurance companies give a discount to a married couple because their loss experience shows that married people are less expensive to insure, as reflected by actual losses. This is certainly true for heterosexual married couples. Will this necessarily be true for homosexual married couples? Maybe, maybe not. If I were an insurance company, I would not assume that a homosexual married couple is going to have the same loss record as a heterosexual married couple.


 
More About the Albany Church Scandal

This is over at FreeRepublic.com, so read with appropriate care, rather like you were reading the New York Times:
Andrew Zalay, once of Albany and now working in California as an engineer, showed members of the media excerpts from his brother Tom's diary Wednesday that say shame and confusion from a relationship with Hubbard drove him to suicide in 1978 at the age of 25.

"The relations with Howard are both spiritual and intellectual and are an assistance to my self-confidence, but at the same time the relationship was decadent and sinful," wrote Tom Zalay in an undated diary entry. "As bishop, I think he has unfairly used his position in the church to get what he wants from me. ... I hope the hereafter is a better place. ... This lifestyle is not for me. I need to get out. I do believe the only way to get out is to take my own life."

Andrew Zalay, with attorney John Aretakis at his side, said his brother was molested as a boy by Rev. John Bertolucci and later by Hubbard. Andrew Zalay requested last August that state Supreme Court Judge Christian Hummel release Bertolucci's personnel file. Hummel denied that request.

Andrew Zalay said he is not going to file a lawsuit and is not looking for money. He decided to come forward, he said, so "more children don't get hurt."
Lifestyle? Gee, what do you think Tom Zalay was talking about?


 
Toy Gun Control

From the Salinas Californian:
Five-year-old Martin Patiño threw his toy machine gun into a trashcan marked "armas no," Spanish for "no guns," and he promptly picked up a coloring book to replace it.

Martin was one of about 30 Alisal Community School kindergartners from four classes Wednesday who traded in their fake guns for gentle toys such as stuffed animals and Play-Doh.

Kindergarten teacher Myriam Kennelly came up with the idea of the "peace toy trade" as a way of letting kids and parents know that guns of any kind are not permitted at the school.

"We just want parents to be aware," Kennelly said. "They think that the gang problem begins in the high school, and that's not true."
Isn't it odd that middle class kids used to grow up playing with toy guns, and even BB guns, without becoming gang members? Hint: it isn't the toy guns that are the problem. There are some social and cultural problems involved, but it is easier to blame a toy.


 
Amusing Self-Defense Account

I was at first worried that the headline had something to do with the German cannibalism case, but no, that's just an expression:
Butcher makes mincemeat of robbers
From correspondents in Strasbourg
February 19, 2004

THREE robbers who bundled up the staff of a supermarket in eastern France on Wednesday found they had bitten off more than they could chew when the shop's butcher took to them with one of his meat cleavers, police said.

Two of the criminals were wounded in the counter-attack and were picked up by police a short time afterwards.


 
The Economist About Outsourcing

They have written an article arguing that the protectionist forces are making too big of an issue about outsourcing. I don't dispute that relative to the overall economy, the jobs going overseas are pretty small. (It is still little consolation if you are one of the people whose job has gone away, and is unlikely to be coming back, to know that someone else has a good job instead.)

They also make some good points about how some Democrats are picking the starting year for counting job losses in a way that exaggerates the extent of the problem--picking 2001, before businesses started laying off workers. It is certainly true that some of the three million jobs lost is cyclical, not permanent.

It is at least worth reading after listening to the doom and gloom sorts.


 
A Fascinating Argument: Will Liberals Accept It About Concealed Carry Permits?

Liberals are suddenly making libertarian arguments for gay marriage:
Mathew Staver, a lawyer representing the Campaign for California Families, said he believes the court ultimately will find that Newsom acted illegally when he began allowing gay marriages last week.

"He can't decide to grant same-sex marriage licenses any more than he can declare war against a foreign country," Staver said.

But chief deputy city attorney Therese Stewart said the failure of conservative opponents to win emergency injunctions demonstrates that the city has a strong case.

"Both judges really recognized there is nobody who is hurt by allowing gay people to marry," Stewart said.
The same is true for carrying concealed firearms, or owning an "assault weapon." No one is hurt by being allowed to carry a gun, or have an AR-15. The same is true for allowing employers and employees to make what ever wage arrangements they want (say, paying less than minimum wage). The liberal argument for why the government has the right to regulate all these matters isn't the direct effect, but the indirect effect.

Hey, if liberals decide that they are really libertarians, that's fine. We'll scrap the vast majority of the laws now on the books. But the fact is that liberals aren't libertarians. They still insist on the right of the government to regulate wages and gun ownership because of the indirect effects.

Even on marriage, their libertarian-sounding arguments are just an excuse to do what they want to do. Ask them why San Francisco isn't issuing group marriage licenses for polygamists, or for five year olds, or, across species lines. After all, who is hurt by these things? Suddenly their libertarian-sounding arguments will all evaporate.


Friday, February 20, 2004
 
Powerful Book Review in Atlantic Monthly

It's by Caitlin Flanagan titled "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement." Her criticism of a number of recent books about working mothers--all written, according to Ms. Flanagan's review, from an almost reflexively feminist perspective--seem spot on to me from living in various parts of California, which is something of a cauldron of both highly paid professional women--and mothers struggling to bring in enough money to pay for luxuries like health care and dental exams. Flanagan is not impressed with the reasoning of these works. It's a long essay, well-written, and worth reading in full. I can't even begin to summarize here without going on for many pages, but I will give you a few interesting and important points.

Flanagan argues that feminism engaged in an at least delusive, if not intentionally self-serving claim that back in the 1950s and 1960s, all women were oppressed in roughly equal ways, and that what all women had in common with respect to work and childrearing was pretty much the same regardless of economic status. As the title of her review suggests, Flanagan believes that without the mass importation of poorly paid, largely illegal immigrants (often exploited for that reason), the modern feminist ideal of the working professional mother would have been impossible. Flanagan's criticism of Ann Crittenden's The Price of Motherhood:
The Price of Motherhood proceeds from an undeniable and painful truth: that although keeping a house and raising children are as physically exhausting and emotionally demanding as almost any job you can think of, they are entirely unpaid endeavors?a fact that carries grave economic repercussions for women far beyond the loss of a weekly paycheck. This was made starkly evident to Crittenden?as it is made starkly evident to millions of women every year?when she took a look at her Social Security statement and noticed a startling row of zeros, the first of which corresponded exactly to the date she began her life's most challenging work: raising her son.

...

Crittenden's chapter on nannies, of which the Zoe Baird case is the centerpiece, is buried near the back of the book, as if even its author is aware of how illogical it is?aware that nearly every sentence undermines the book's most central arguments, that the entire topic of nannies is the Achilles' heel of the feminist campaign to help professional-class mothers earn the right to (as they would say) mother and work without guilt.

Baird's nomination hearings came to an abrupt halt when it was revealed that she employed two Peruvian illegal immigrants as domestic workers, one of them as her child's nanny, and had failed to pay the required Social Security taxes on their wages. (The two, by the way, earned around $6.00 an hour, whereas their employers' household income was well in excess of half a million dollars a year.) This, Crittenden tells us, was merely "a civil violation"?one that might be viewed on a par with getting a parking ticket. "That was Zoe Baird's crime," Crittenden informs us in quiet, seething understatement: just that silly little civil violation about the taxes, or whatever. And then the world came crashing down on poor Zoe because her case really became a referendum on working mothers. "Just when we are on the verge of moving into real power," a friend of Crittenden's lamented, "they invented a new reason to keep us out." Those damn nanny taxes! What next?

But wait a minute, Ann. Haven't you just spent an entire book telling us how important Social Security set-asides are? Didn't you characterize Social Security as "the keystone of the American welfare state"? Didn't you remind us that "a person can only qualify for Social Security as an employed worker or as the 'dependent' spouse or widow of an employed worker"? (We're hip to those quotation marks around "dependent," by the way?the word is so damn insulting to women. Right on, sister. But it's a word with a particular resonance in the case of the Bairds' two domestic workers, seeing as they were married to each other, and neither one of them was getting Social Security contributions.)
As the historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese observed some years ago during a debate about feminism, it had done women like herself with good jobs an immense good; for a vast swarm of women, raising kids on their own, living in a trailer park, surviving on irregular child support payments and welfare, feminism had been a net disadvantage. Flanagan points out that this is not simply a question of some gaining and other losing, with no connection between the two. The privileged class of professional mothers needed a class of women poor enough to do the "[excrement expletive deleted] jobs" without impairing their careers. Yet as Flanagan points out, a previous generation of women had not regarded these as awful tasks, but simply part of being a mother. Even when these jobs were tedious, they were part of motherhood, for good and bad.

Flanagan is not going to pretend that everything was wonderful about being a 1950s mother. She just wants some of the writers on the subject to admit that while something was gained, something was lost as well:
What few will admit--because it is painful, because it reveals the unpleasant truth that life presents a series of choices, each of which precludes a host of other attractive possibilities--is that when a mother works, something is lost. Children crave their mothers. They always have and they always will. And women fortunate enough to live in a society where they have access to that greatest of levelers, education, will always have the burning dream of doing something more exciting and important than tidying Lego blocks and running loads of laundry. If you want to make an upper-middle-class woman squeal in indignation, tell her she can't have something. If she works she can't have as deep and connected a relationship with her child as she would if she stayed home and raised him. She can't have the glamour and respect conferred on career women if she chooses instead to spend her days at "Mommy and Me" classes. She can't have both things. I have read numerous accounts of the anguish women have felt leaving small babies with caregivers so that they could go to work, and I don't discount those stories for a moment. That the separation of a woman from her child produces agony for both is one of the most enduring and impressive features of the human experience, and it probably accounts for why we've made it as far as we have. I've read just as many accounts of the despair that descends on some women when their world is abruptly narrowed to the tedium and exhaustion of the nursery; neither do I discount these stories: I've felt that self-same despair.
One thing that my wife and I have noticed, over the years, is the dramatic decline in the quality of middle class kids. By this, we mean that what used to be considered middle class standards of education, behavior, and values are now relatively scarce. There is no great surprise to this. A generation ago, the woman who was the primary caretaker of middle class kids was their middle class mother. Today, more often than not, the primary caretaker of middle class kids is a daycare provider.

There are exceptional daycare situations out there (and priced accordingly). Most kids aren't in those situations, nor are they being raised in their own home by a nanny from some Third World country. In our experience, they are being raised by women who are so poorly educated that daycare is the highest paying work that they can find. Let me be clear on this: there are women providing daycare because they love kids, and often they compensate for the low pay because they are raising their own kids at the same time. When my wife was working on her BA, our son went to daycare 1 1/2 hours a day, three days a week, with a woman we knew from church. She was educated, intelligent, and with thoroughly middle class in her values.

But more typical of daycare providers, in our experience, was our neighbor, who had dropped out of high school, didn't vote because she didn't consider herself smart enough, and failed to adequately look after her charges. She eventually stopped doing it because her conscience bothered her. One child she watched from 7 to 7 everyday, starting at six weeks (when California stops paying disability insurance after a birth) while Mom drove a shiny new BMW to an important job in San Francisco. At the father's request, our neighbor kept it a secret when the baby first crawled, rolled over, and walked. By the time the baby was two, she called our neighbor "Mommy" and would hit her biological mother at the end of the day. The mother-child bond wasn't there.

Lower class women are now raising middle class children. I hope that this isn't a suprise to you when I tell you that even in very middle class schools, there are big behavior problems. Unfortunately, it's not just in California; it's here in Boise as well, because much of the poison of "have children; let someone else raise them" has spread throughout the country. It may not be as bad here; my son tells me that in his middle school classes, about half the kids simply ignored the teacher, kept talking, and otherwise being disruptive. The teacher just talked louder, recognizing the unrealism of requiring kids to behave. This is a big improvement over middle school in Sonoma County, where my son tells me that some teachers did little teaching; the whole class was spent yelling at kids to sit down and be quiet. As much as I disagree with Mormon theology, at least Mormons some effort into promoting the idea of raising your own kids. That's probably why half the class at my son's middle school was prepared to sit down and listen.

Promoting the idea that every mother should be working--and thus, every child is in daycare--will someday be looked back upon as one of the great mistakes of the last half of the twentieth century. At least some of the blame can be reduced back to that simple error of treating people as members of a class, rather than as individuals. Social expectations meant that every mother in the 1950s was supposed to be home raising kids, even though some were not suited to it. This was wrong, because it assumed that every member of the class of mothers had, or should have, the same goals and expectations.

The correction to these social expectations (sometimes written into law, and sometimes not) were social expectations that every woman who wasn't stupid should be working, letting the stupid ones raise the kids. This was wrong for the same reason--the assumption that all members of the class mother should be employed.


 
Question For Your California Law Students

Are there any cases that you are aware of where the California Constitution's equal protection clause struck down any law based on sexual orientation? There's a 1978 case where gay law students sued Pacific Telephone for discrimination against homosexuals. I recall that the case was decided based on freedom of political expression under the Unruh Civil Rights Law. (The theory was that being openly homosexual was a political act, since there was no law prohibiting discrimination based on seuxal orientation at the time.)

It would seem a bit strange for California's equal protection clause to have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation--but not be used to strike down the state's laws banning homosexuality (not repealed until the 1970s).


 
Ralph Nader Considering Run For Presidency

Run, Ralph, run! As frustrated as I get with Bush's triangulation strategy, it will not cause me to support a third party candidate to run aganst Bush from the right. If you have to wonder why, look at Ralph Nader and the effect he had on the 2000 election. Al Gore wasn't far enough left for Ralph Nader, and Nader's forces, rather than recognize that they represent a fairly small minority viewpoint, decided to punish the Democratic Party for not catering to them:
Nader, who turns 70 next week, has said he would base his decision, in part, on whether Democratic and Republican officials respond to his agenda, which includes the need for universal health insurance, a more progressive wage policy and making dramatic reforms to the criminal justice system.

...

Nader was on the ballot in nearly every state in 2000 and garnered 2.7 percent of the popular vote. In Florida and New Hampshire, Bush won such narrow victories that had Gore received the bulk of Nader's votes in those states, he would have won the general election.
Conservatives are a good more common than "progressives," or whatever the term du jour is for Nader's form of leftism, but there still aren't enough of us to elect a president--but there are enough of us to guarantee a victory for someone like Kerry, if we sit on our hands.

It is not a good situation. I understand those who get frustrated that conservatives have so little influence in America. But the alternative is to make ourselves into the equivalent of Ralph Nader.


 
A Cure For Opiate Addiction?

Here's one of those amazing stories that I am instinctively skeptical of, but it is at least interesting:
However, when it comes to curing addiction, a reputable scientist believes ibogaine is nothing short of a miracle. "I didn't believe it when I first heard about ibogaine. I thought it was something that needed to be debunked," admits Dr. Deborah Mash, professor of Neurology and Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at University of Miami.

Dr. Mash is one of the few scientists in the world to study ibogaine, a mild hallucinogen that comes from the root of a shrub found in West Africa and was rumored to have the amazing ability to help drug addicts kick their addiction.

...

Patrick Kroupa was a heroin addict for 16 of his 35 years. "It was a very high level of desperation. I had been pretty successful in my life, I had accomplished a lot of things I wanted to do, and then repeatedly I just watched everything burst into flames and disintegrate because I could not stay off heroin," confesses Patrick. "It gets very tiring living like a slave because you keep chasing this and it's like you're not getting high, it's just 'I must do this every single day just to get normal so I can function.'"

Like most addicts, Patrick tried to quit. But treatment for addiction is notoriously ineffective. Only one in ten addicts manages to return to a drug-free life. Most stay dependent on illegal drugs or their legal substitutes, like methadone.

"And I was a spectacular failure at every possible treatment modality, every paradigm, every detox, every therapy, nothing ever worked," admits Patrick.

...

"Our first round in St. Kitts, we treated six individuals, and I will go to my grave with the memory of that first round," says Dr. Mash.

It quickly became apparent that one dose of ibogaine blocked the withdrawal symptoms of even hard-core addicts and was amazingly effective for heroin, crack cocaine and even alcohol.

There are two reasons why: The first, science can measure. The second remains a mystery.

...

Patrick admits, "It's literally like a miracle. Nothing has ever worked and this just did." He was one of the 280 people in Dr. Mash's trial of ibogaine.

"Patrick was one of the worst opiate addicts, worst heroin addicts that I have ever enountered in my life," says Dr. Mash. His arms still bear the scars of years of heroin addiction, and he knows only too well what happened when the flow of drugs into those arms was interrupted. "When you're going through withdrawal, you're sweating, you're shaking, you're freezing, you're hot, it feels like your spine is being smashed in a vise, it's pain," describes Patrick.

Within 45 minutes of taking ibogaine, he actually felt his addiction leaving him. "That moment is the first time in about 10 years that I had actually been clean. Not just detoxed, but clean. That was it. That was the first time. That was like a miracle," says Patrick

That was four years ago. Patrick Kroupa has not touched drugs since. "I'm saying this having been on heroin for my entire adult life. I mean, 14 to 30 is a long time," he says.

On one level, Dr. Mash understands some of what happens. Ibogaine in the body is metabolized into another compound called 'noribogaine.' Noribogaine appears to reset chemical switches in the brain of an addict.

"The noribogaine resets that, so it resets the opiates, blocks the opiate withdrawal, diminishes craving and the desire to use, and it elevates mood," say Dr. Mash.
The story is careful to emphasize that by itself, it won't do the whole job, and there are people who won't help--but imagine how the world could change if heroin and cocaine users could get free of their addictions. Even a 50% reduction in addicts would mean dramatic reductions in rates of burglary, robbery, and the associated murders, rapes, and aggravated assaults. Resources that are gobbled up by the criminal justice system would be available for schools. Of course, when morphine addiction was a big problem in the nineteenth century, someone came up with a non-addictive substitute: heroin.


 
North Dakota Adds Idaho To List of Reciprocity States

North Dakota has added Idaho to the list of states whose concealed weapon permits it recognizes.


 
Lesbian Marriage in New Mexico

At the end of a story about Mayor Newsom of San Francisco officiating at a gay wedding:
In New Mexico, meanwhile, the Sandoval County clerk married a lesbian couple after announcing that the state had no legal grounds to refuse marriage licenses to gays. Other same-sex couples quickly began lining up to exchange vows.
Hmmm. I haven't looked at the New Mexico statutes, so I don't know exactly how the clerk came to this conclusion.

A majority of Americans do not approve of gay marriage. The only question is whether they care enough to do anything about it. Instapundit is of the opinion that the opposition to gay marriage is very soft. I've received email from a gay blogger in Kansas who wanted to bet me about the legal status of homosexual marriage in near-term future America. His bet was that it woudl be lawful. I decline to bet against him, because I think he is correct: within ten years, homosexual marriage will be the law (although not by legislation, but by judicial order).

Within thirty years, I am pretty sure that churches that refuse to solemnize gay weddings will lose their tax-exempt status, again, not by legislation, but by judicial order. After all, what is the tax-exempt status of schools that discriminate based on race? I don't consider the two forms of discrimination at all equivalent, of course, but the analogy will be so powerful that the courts will impose it.

I keep waiting for President Bush to show that he stands with conservatives on this, but I fear that he lacks the guts to side with the 60% of Americans who oppose gay marriage.


 
In Case You Missed This Example of "Homophobiaphobia"

(Yes, there are two "-phobia" suffixes there--this is the irrational fear of homophobia.) David Bernstein points to this example of outrageous behavior by a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--and the department chair willing to step in and make the adult behave like an adult:
PC at UNC: Student at UNC expresses religious objections to homosexual conduct and criticizes homosexuality as "disgusting" in class. Professor sends out an email to the entire class lambasting this student:
"what we experienced, as unforuntate (sic) as it is, is, however, a perfect example of privilege. that a white, heterosexual, christian male, one who vehemently denied his privilege last week insisting that he earned all he has, can feel entitled to make violent, heterosexist comments and not feel marked or threatened or vulnerable is what privilege makes possible."
The professor adds that such "hate speech" creates a "hostile environment" and will not be tolerated in her class.
Now, I don't know exactly what the circumstances were that provoked this "outburst." I can imagine circumstances where the student's statement was a legitimate expression of his opinion. I can also imagine circumstances where these remarks were tactless and inappropriate. The professor's response, of course, is just typical of the sort of fascist sentiment that dominates the academic community today, where some ideas are so horrifying, so repulsive, so dangerous, that a student dare not say it. "The idea that dare not speak its name."


 
Dreams

Some people have erotic dreams; some have nightmares. My dream last night involved opening the Wall Street Journal, looking at the chart of Treasury rates--and seeing a Treasury yield curve inversion--where short-term Treasury yields are higher than long-term Treasury yields. (Click here to see Treasury yield curve online.) This doesn't happen often--once in the entire 15 years that I have been investing. When it does happen, you are supposed to buy the longest term Treasurys you can. Is this a premonition? I hope so!


 
Publishers Tell Me There's No Market for My New Book

Trade publishers keep insisting that there is no market for my new book (teaser here). So please explain to me why there is a large market for this:
Harry Potter becomes "Warrior Cup" and his enemy Voldemort "Scaly Death" in a translation of the schoolboy wizard's adventures into Ancient Greek due for publication this summer.

Retired classics teacher Andrew Wilson told Reuters he had to stretch his linguistic ingenuity to turn J.K. Rowling's magic boarding school fantasy into a language not used for 1,500 years.


Wilson, 64, was commissioned in January 2002 by publisher Bloomsbury to translate "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" into the Greek spoken in ancient Athens.

...

Wilson says his translation is the longest text to have been produced in Ancient Greek since the romantic writings of Heliodorus in the third century AD.


"I suspect very few people will read it all the way through," he said. "You will need a degree in Ancient Greek to get a great deal out of it."


But Wilson hopes students studying the ancient language will enjoy reading extracts of the book as a "relaxation."
I have two university presses looking at my manuscript right now--but still, why is there a larger market for a book written in a dead language than there is for a serious history book written in English?


 
"Roe" Asks Court of Appeals to Reopen Roe v. Wade (1973)

Norma McCorvey, who was the "Jane Roe" of the most famous and divisive case of my lifetime (although I don't recall hearing about it when it happened), is now a pro-life activist, and has asked the courts to reopen the case, claiming, among other things, that she was taken advantage of by pro-choice attorneys. She now says that the factual basis of that suit--that she had been raped--was a lie. I have also seen an interview in which she says that she didn't even know exactly what an abortion was when she agreed to be the plaintiff. To hear her tell the tale now, she apparently thought "abortion" was rather like an "undo" in your favorite text editor, or to quote the Servpro disaster restoration service ads, "like it never even happened." The argument has advanced to the Court of Appeals:
Norma McCorvey, who joined with anti-abortion activists nearly 10 years ago, is seeking to have the decision overturned, citing what she says is more than 30 years of evidence that abortions are psychologically harmful to women.

A federal district judge threw out her initial request in June, saying it was not made within a reasonable time. But the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear McCorvey's arguments March 2.
A Georgia woman who sued in the similar case Doe v. Bolton (1973) now says that she didn't even want an abortion--she just wanted a divorce, and claims that the lawyers involved misled her about the papers that she was signing.

I will tell you that while I think an original intent argument, based on what was lawful and unlawful in 1789, could have been written that came to the same results, Roe v. Wade (1973) isn't really an original intent argument. It is a privacy right argument based on Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and has all the problems of Griswold.

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Conservatives Threatening to Sit Out the Election

You would think from the screeching of the left that Bush is some sort of ideological conservative. Yet the Religious Right is threatening to sit out the election out of frustration with Bush's apparent liberalism on abortion, education spending, spending in general, and his reluctance to get involved in the homosexual marriage struggle:
"It's not just economic conservatives upset by runaway federal spending that he's having trouble with. I think his biggest problem will be social conservatives who are not motivated to work for the ticket and to ensure their fellow Christians get to the polling booth," said Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute.

"If there is a rerun of 2000, when an estimated 6 million fewer evangelical Christians voted than in the pivotal year of 1994, then the Bush ticket will be in trouble, especially if there is no [Ralph] Nader alternative to draw Democratic votes away from the Democratic candidate," added Mr. Knight, whose organization is an affiliate of Concerned Women for America (CWA).

Their list of grievances is long, but right now social conservatives are mad over what many consider the president's failure to strongly condemn illegal homosexual "marriages" being performed in San Francisco under the authority of Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Top religious rights activists have been burning up the telephone lines, sharing what one privately called their "apoplexy" over Mr. Bush's failure to act decisively on the issue, although he has said he would support a constitutional amendment if necessary to ban same-sex "marriages."

...

Religious conservatives helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency in the 1980s and helped Republicans retake the House and Senate in 1994, but complain that they have little to show for their loyalty to the GOP.

"I'm not blaming the president, but religious conservatives have been doing politics for 25 years and, on every front, are worse off on things they care about," said Gary Bauer, president of American Values. "The gay rights movement is more powerful, the culture is more decadent, the life of not one baby has been saved, porn is in the living room, and you can't watch the Super Bowl without your hand on the off switch."
So why is the left so vehement against Bush, when he has apparently sold out one of his core constitutencies? As an example, I just received a furious email from my sister about Bush's anti-choice policies, and the enormous damage that Bush's "abstinence-only" sex education policies have done to health education in the schools. The problem, however, is that while the Bush Administration is talking about increasing funding for such policies (and I think they are a mistake), federal funding for such programs was already $100 million a year when Bush took office. Bush hasn't actually made any change in this area. I wrote my sister back asking if perhaps she was upset about the Clinton abstinence-only sex education policies--because they were defintely in place when Bush came into office.

Does anyone remember when the left was furious with Clinton for selling out to the Republicans on welfare reform? Yup. Bush is doing what Clinton did so well--triangulation. He is going just far enough to the left to make the middle happy.


 
Who To Blame For Faulty Intelligence?

As I have pointed out in the past, it would appear that even Hussein believed that he had WMDs--at least, he was paying people to build them for him. Now it appears that at least some faulty intelligence came from an organization that had its own reasons for wanting Hussein out of power, the Iraqi National Congress:
U.S. officials said last week that one of the most celebrated pieces of false intelligence, the claim that Saddam had mobile biological-weapons laboratories, had come from a major in the Iraqi intelligence service made available by the INC.

U.S. officials at first found the information credible, and the defector passed a lie-detector test. But in later interviews it became apparent that he was stretching the truth and had been "coached by the INC."

He failed a second polygraph test, and intelligence agencies were warned that the information was unreliable in May 2002.
I can understand why the INC might have felt that lying to get Hussein removed was worth it, and Chalabi, one of the INC leaders, admitted as much in that same article:
During an interview, Mr. Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled U.S. intelligence.

"We are heroes in error," he said in Baghdad on Wednesday. "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful.

"Our objective has been achieved. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."


 
The Glories of a Refractor

Last night was the first really good night for observing in many months. It was cold, of course, but only about freezing. The sky was completely clear, although there was a lot of moisture impairing transparency. I was able to put the Televue Ranger and the Photon Instruments refractors side-by-side on the same objects, without the sound of chattering teeth distracting me. The Photon Instruments has a huge advantage in aperture--127mm vs. 70mm--but the Televue Ranger is about as good as it gets without being an apochromatic refractor.

On Venus: both showed gruesome purple halos, with the Ranger perhaps having some slight advantage. Venus, of course, shows a gibbous image right now, and there is no detail--just blinding white clouds.

On Saturn: the Photon Instruments showed at least one cloud band on the planet, as well as a clear and unmistakable Cassini Division in the rings. The Ranger showed no detail on the planet, and the Cassini Division was more implied than clearly visible. In both cases, image quality started to break down at high power. The Ranger image broke down at 120x; the Photon Instruments broke down at 229x. The limitation here, I think, was the seeing (mostly transparency).

Star testing: I remain convinced that the Photon Instruments is undercorrected, about 1/3 wave. Oddly enough, I was unable to get diffraction rings out of the Ranger. I suspect that I need more magnification than I can get without using a Barlow.

Orion Nebula (M42): The Photon Instruments gave a lovely image at 127x. I couldn't see any of the E, F, G, or H stars fo the Trapezium (nor should I), but A, B, C, and D were crisp and flicker-free. The lack of tube currents in a refractor, I am beginning to think, has a lot to do with the superior image quality that refractors have for their size. With only 127mm of aperture, the Photon Instruments is certainly no deep sky telescope, but within its limitations, it does a fine job.

I pulled out the 8" reflector as well, to see how it compares on Saturn. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of collimation, and the batteries on my new laser collimator are dead. I don't know if the problem was having left it on, or being out in the cold aggravated battery death. Saturn was certainly not impressive because of the collimation problems. (This is also one of my objections to reflectors--the need to collimate them often.) One odd aspect, however, is how much whiter Saturn is in the reflector than it is in the Photon Instruments refractor, where it is a yellow color. I don't mean that Saturn is brighter in the reflector--it is actually a different color.

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How Many Gay Couples Are There? Bad Links

Instapundit links to Nick Schulz's column about gay marriage. Nick Schulz quotes Virginia Postrel:
But the libertarian writer Virginia Postrel touched on another dynamic at work, one that captures why a lot of self-described conservatives haven't lost a lot of sleep over the gay marriage debate. On her personal website she recently linked to an Associated Press article that pointed out the following:
"Massachusetts has one of the highest concentrations of gay households in the country at 1.3 percent of the total number of coupled households, according to the 2000 census. In California, 1.4 percent of the coupled households are occupied by same-sex partners. Vermont and New York also registered at 1.3 percent, while in Washington, D.C., the rate is 5.1 percent."
Postrel went on to say that this "helps explain why DC conservatives, including the president, tend to squirm when their base demands condemnation of gay marriage and gays in general: If you work in Washington, you inevitably have gay friends, many of whom are de facto married."
THere's a problem, however. When you go to Postrel's website, you find:
The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that only full marriage rights for single-sex couples, not Vermont-style civil unions, satisfy the state constitution's demand for legal equality. With a Massachusetts senator the Democratic frontrunner, and Bush desperate to avoid the issue, this could get nasty.

The AP story linked above ends with some interesting statistics:
The problem is that the AP news story contains no such statistics. Furthermore, I am skeptical that these statistics are even close to possible. For example, this news story reports on 2000 census data on homosexual couples:
To date, the Census Bureau has reported that there are 479,107 same-sex couples sharing a household. This number will rise when data from all 50 states is released. The missing states are New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Arkansas.

According to the latest census statistics released Wednesday, California and Vermont lead the nation with the highest percentage of gay couples, while San Francisco has nearly twice as many same-sex partners as any other county.

There are 92,138 same-sex couples in California, including 8,902 in San Francisco. In Vermont, 1,933 same-sex couples responded to the census. Gay and lesbian couples make up nearly 1 percent of total households reported in both states.

The census found that gay couples represent 2.7 percent of San Francisco's households. However, San Francisco's total gay population is closer to 10 percent, or 80,000 people, according to San Francisco pollster David Binder.
San Francisco is, if not the most gay-friendly city in America, certainly in the top five. It has one of the highest concentrations of gay people in the U.S.--and even there, only 2.7% of the population are gay couples. Contrary to Postrel's claim that 1.4 percent of Californian households are gay couples, the actual number--92,138 same-sex couples in California, multiplying by two to get the number of people, and dividing by California's population--comes to about 0.55% of the population. I am very skeptical of the rest of the statistics that Postrel is quoting. I suspect that someone is looking at same-sex households, and assuming that these are all gay couples. They may well be roommates.

UPDATE: Volokh says that Postrel's data is correct, because the 1.4 percent is of all couples, not of the general population. (Yup, my mistake.) Postrel's link definitely doesn't point to an article containing the data. Here's the census data that Postrel should have cited. This would suggest, however, that one of the arguments for gay marriage--the supposed stability that legal marriage would provide--isn't much of an argument. Homosexuals are about 3% or so of the population--and about 1.4% of couples. Unsurprisingly, half of these same-sex couples are female, even though homosexual men outnumber lesbians by perhaps three times.


Thursday, February 19, 2004
 
The Onion Has a Marvelous Satirical Piece

It's about the multimillionaire gigolo's campaign to protect ordinary Americans from that rich guy George Bush:
ANCASTER, PA?Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) began a seven-day, eight-state whistle-stop tour Monday, addressing a group of Frigidaire factory workers from the all-teak deck of his 60-foot luxury motor cruiser.

"George W. Bush put tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for the special interests before our economic future," Kerry told the crowd gathered below the starboard side of The Real Deal II. "I will fight to restore the three million jobs that have been lost on the president's watch. It's time America got back to work."





 
Equal Protection Claims in San Francisco

I certainly don't claim to have any detailed knowledge of the California Constitution's equal protection clause, but at first glance, it appears that even in the much more serious situation of someone being sent to prison, California's courts seem pretty willing to defer to the Legislature in deciding whether a distinction between two classes is legitimate or not. This is from People v. Jones, 101 Cal. App. 4th 220 (2002):
The Mills court noted that although section 290 requires registration by persons convicted of some sex offenses but not by persons convicted of other sex offenses, it is up to the Legislature "to determine the different degrees of gravity, of danger, to society from various types of sex offenses." (People v. Mills, supra, 81 Cal. App. 4th at p. 180.) The court explained that the Legislature's decision not to make certain sex offenses subject to registration "may be based upon the legislative determination a particular type of offender does not recidivate or recidivates less; some offenses, although touching upon sexual acts, are not so directly concerned or related to the type of conduct which is repetitive, recidivist, in nature." (Id. at p. 181.)

The Mills court rejected as "unsubstantiated" the defendant's claim that his offense had a low rate of recidivism, explaining: "This is a disputable assertion best left with the Legislature for determination." (People v. Mills, supra, 81 Cal. App. 4th at p. 180.) The court concluded: "There is a rational basis for Penal Code section 290; to wit: a legitimate state interest in controlling crime and preventing recidivism by sex offenders. The fact all persons who in any way touch upon a violation of sexual mores or behavior are not included would indicate inferentially a legislative distinction is drawn. Mills does not carry his burden to establish the lack of rational relationship at least as to people who violate Penal Code section 288 and are thereby required to register." (Id. at p. 181.)
Obviously, this is a very different situation from the question of marriage (and mostly, I am posting this to start a conversation)--but I would think if anything, the courts would be less willing to defer to the Legislature on a criminal charge, where someone is going to go to prison--a far more serious consequence than an inability to get married.

Of course, the real issue is whether the courts will decide that the statute adopted by the voters had a rational basis. As that same decision explained:
We conclude that defendant failed to show that the Legislature had no rational basis for requiring persons convicted of violating section 288a, subdivision (b)(1) (oral copulation with a person under the age of 18) to register as sex offenders under section 290. Therefore, the statute does not offend equal protection as applied to defendant, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to dismiss defendant's current conviction.
It seems that to win on an equal protection claim, the defendant was required to establish that the Legislature's classification had no rational basis.

To some people, of course, any distinction based on the sex of the participants is prime facie irrational. But there are lots of distinctions in the marriage laws that would seem equally irrational: laws against incestuous marriages, and laws against polygamy. I can't see any reason why a law prohibiting same-sex marriage is intrinsically more irrational than laws against brother-sister, mother-son, father-daughter, or one guy, four women marriages.

And what's with this discrimination against animal marriage? What makes it irrational to define marriage to an animal as wrong? I know that some people will get really steamed, and say that animals aren't humans. Yeah--and your point is? What makes human relationships preferable to animal ones, without getting into that pesky notion of absolute morality?

UPDATE: At least part of the issue is whether marriage is a fundamental right. If so, strict scrutiny applies; if not, rational basis is enough, and the courts must defer to the judgment of the Legislature. The problem is, as another decision, People v. Alvarez, 88 Cal. App. 4th 1110 (2001), points out:
In discussing the Olivas case, the court in People v. Bell n20 noted that "We find a lack of clarity and consistency in the cases dealing with the equal protection analysis of penal statutes. Olivas did not deal with a statute creating a crime but was concerned rather with a law which results in greater punishment for separate defendants convicted of the same crime in the same court based solely on the ages of the defendants. Still, Olivas states that liberty is a fundamental interest and requires that the strict scrutiny test be applied to equal protection claims when liberty is affected. Courts since Olivas have applied that concept narrowly . . . ."
This case upheld an enhanced penalty for use of a firearm in a crime, relative to another deadly weapon. What makes using a gun rather than a dagger worse? The argument is essentially this:
The Martinez court rejected the defendant's contention, stating that other enhancement provisions, such as section 12022 (committing a felony with a firearm or deadly weapon) and section 12022.7 (infliction of great bodily harm), "may not be compared to section 12022.53, because they enhance the sentence for 'any felony,' whereas section 12022.53 is limited to designated felonies of a very serious type. . . . More significantly, the Legislature determined in enacting section 12022.53 that the use of firearms in commission of the designated felonies is such a danger that, 'substantially longer prison sentences must be imposed . . . in order to protect our citizens and to deter violent crime.' The ease with which a victim of one of the enumerated felonies could be killed or injured if a firearm is involved clearly supports a legislative distinction treating firearm offenses more harshly than the same crimes committed by other means, in order to deter the use of firearms and save lives."
I don't know about you, but this sounds like doubletalk to me. Yes, a firearm is deadlier than a knife, when used in a crime, but they aren't all that different in lethality.

It looks to me like the courts use "strict scrutiny" to strike down laws when convenient. As the decision admits, liberty is a fundamental right, and Alvarez's liberty was definitely at risk here. I can't see that there is anything rational about firearms enhancement relative to use of another deadly weapon. You could just as easily make the argument that promoting homosexuality by giving it equal status justifies treating it more harshly than heterosexuality. It would make about as much sense.

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Should Chutzpah Be a Capital Crime?

I outraged by the chutzpah of this guy's notion of an appropriate punishment for what he did. First, the crime:
Alan Walter Jr., one of eight friends accused of abducting, raping and drowning 13-year-old Maryann Measles in October 1997, pleaded guilty Thursday to six counts, including felony murder.

Under the plea agreement, Walter, who was originally charged with capital felony, will be spared the death penalty. Prosecutors are recommending a life sentence, which in Connecticut is 60 years in prison.

In addition to the felony murder count, Walter pleaded guilty to kidnapping, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to commit sexual assault and tampering with a witness.

Walter, 25, had given police a videotaped confession in which he demonstrated how he held the New Milford girl's head in the Housatonic River.

...

Measles was kidnapped outside a grocery store, and driven to the river's edge, according to court documents. Several members of the group beat Measles and dragged her into the van, where three of them raped her, according to the documents.

Measles was then drowned, Walter told police. He said that after Measles became unresponsive under the water, he took her out and had sex with her body. He told police that he and others then wrapped her up in the blanket and chains tied to a cinderblock, and threw her back into the water.

Walter told police that afterward the group went to a nearby marina "to smoke a bone," a reference to marijuana.
Horrifying crime, right? But this is shocking:
He initially told police he thought he deserved about 300 hours of community service for his crime, but later revised that to two months in prison.
I am stunned by the savagery of the crime, and I am even more stunned that this monster would make either of these proposals with any expectation of being taken seriously. This sounds to me like someone who should never see the outside of a jail cell. He is so completely out of touch with civilized standards that he thought punishments this light might be a basis for negotiation.


 
Do You Remember Reagan's First Term?

When Reagan came to office in 1981, we were in a terrible economic situation. For all the whining about unemployment and a bad ecnomy we are hearing today, you would think this is an unprecedented situation. America was a much more unpleasant place to look for a job in the late 1970s than it is today. Even though the economic malaise was largely the result of previous administrations (both Democrat and Republican), the left called the economic hard times of 1981-83 "the Reagan recession." Yet, by 1984, the economy was recovering--and Walter Mondale, a Big Government liberal, went down to smashing defeat.

The situation is quite similar. The good times (built partly on dotcom and telecom startup delusions) came to an end in April of 2000, with the stock market beginning to fall. Bush took office when things were definitely not going well. We now know that there was some mild recovery--or at least, the bloodletting was starting to cool--when 9/11 happened--and the economy collapsed.

For the last few months, partly because of the tax cut, but partly (perhaps mostly) because the liquidation of unproductive assets is part of how recessions cure themselves, the economy is well into recovery. Today's news is that the leading indicators composite index is up, and new unemployment claims for the week ending February 14 are down: "the largest decline since the beginning of November...." There is enough time between now and November for this rising economy to put a lot of people back to work--and yet not enough time for the inevitable demand-pull increase in interest rates. I think Bush is going to win re-election, although it will be nip and tuck--the billionaires are pulling out all the stops to get their boy Kerry into the White House.

UPDATE: Here's a table from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing unemployment rates from 1975 (when I entered the workforce) to today:





























Unadjusted Civilian Unemployment Rate, 16 and Over
YearJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecAnnual
19759.09.19.18.68.39.18.78.28.17.87.87.88.5
19768.88.78.17.46.88.07.87.67.47.27.47.47.7
19778.38.57.96.96.47.57.06.86.66.46.56.07.1
19787.16.96.65.85.56.26.35.95.85.45.65.76.1
19796.46.46.15.55.26.05.95.95.75.65.65.75.8
19806.96.86.66.77.17.87.97.67.27.17.16.97.1
19818.28.07.77.07.17.77.37.27.37.57.98.37.6
19829.49.69.59.29.19.89.89.69.79.910.410.59.7
198311.411.310.810.09.810.29.49.28.88.48.18.09.6
19848.88.48.17.67.27.47.57.37.17.06.97.07.5
19858.07.87.57.17.07.57.46.96.96.86.76.77.2
19867.37.87.57.07.07.37.06.76.86.66.66.37.0
19877.37.26.96.26.16.36.15.85.75.75.65.46.2
19886.36.25.95.35.45.55.55.45.25.05.25.05.5
19896.05.65.25.15.05.55.35.15.15.05.25.15.3
19906.05.95.55.35.25.45.65.55.65.55.96.05.6
19917.17.37.26.56.77.06.86.66.56.56.76.96.8
19928.18.27.87.27.38.07.77.47.36.97.17.17.5
19938.07.87.46.96.87.27.06.66.46.46.26.16.9
19947.37.16.86.25.96.26.25.95.65.45.35.16.1
19956.25.95.75.65.55.85.95.65.45.25.35.25.6
19966.36.05.85.45.45.55.65.15.04.95.05.05.4
19975.95.75.54.84.75.25.04.84.74.44.34.44.9
19985.25.05.04.14.24.74.74.54.44.24.14.04.5
19994.84.74.44.14.04.54.54.24.13.83.83.74.2
20004.54.44.33.73.84.14.24.13.83.63.73.74.0
20014.74.64.54.24.14.74.74.94.75.05.35.44.7
20026.36.16.15.75.56.05.95.75.45.35.65.75.8
20036.56.46.25.85.86.56.36.05.85.65.65.46.0
20046.3


 
John Kerry, Enemy of Special Interests

Shockingly enough, the Los Angeles Times (free registration required) is running this story:
Sen. John F. Kerry sent 28 letters in behalf of a San Diego defense contractor who pleaded guilty last week to illegally funneling campaign contributions to the Massachusetts senator and four other congressmen.

Members of Congress often write letters supporting constituent businesses and favored projects. But as the Democratic presidential front-runner, Kerry has promoted himself as a candidate who has never been beholden to campaign contributors and special interests.

Between 1996 and 1999, Kerry participated in a letter-writing campaign to free up federal funds for a guided missile system that defense contractor Parthasarathi "Bob" Majumder was trying to build for U.S. warplanes.

Majumder's firm, Science and Applied Technology Inc., was paid more than $150 million to design and develop the program in the 1990s. But the program ran into some stumbling blocks at the Pentagon.

Kerry's letters were sent to fellow members of Congress — and to the Pentagon — while Majumder and his employees were donating money to the senator, court records show. During the three-year period, Kerry received about $25,000 from Majumder and his employees, according to Dwight L. Morris & Associates, which tracks campaign donations.

Court documents say the contractor told his employees they needed to make political contributions in order for him to gain influence with members of Congress. He then reimbursed them with proceeds from government contracts.
Now, there's no evidence that Kerry knew the contributions were illegal--but this is exactly the sort of special interest politics that Kerry claims to oppose.


 
Amusing Description of Howard Dean's Campaign

From one of the comments over at Lucianne.com:
Dean was the perfect dot-com candidate, all hype with tons of start up money but no substance. This combination led to his top-fuel dragster like acceleration to oblivion.


 
Viacom CEO Capable Of Learning; the Virtues of Rolled Up Newspapers Against the Snout

From the New York Post:
BESIEGED Viacom president Mel Karmazin read the riot act to execs of all 180 Infinity radio stations yesterday - including Howard Stern's in New York - telling them they'll be fired if they violate the company's new "zero tolerance" policy on obscenity.

...

Infinity is home to Stern and several other controversial radio shows that have been canceled, fined or suspended for sexual hijinks - including Opie & Anthony after the infamous sex-in-St. Pat's contest.

Last evening after the conference call, Infinity execs issued a blunt memo to all personnel.

"Any station airing programming that has any sexual or excretory content needs to take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that the programming is not even arguably indecent," the memo said.



"When in doubt, leave it out," said the memo, which also ordered all stations to install programming-delay units for on-the-fly censoring "immediately."

Stations were told to seek "advance consultation with counsel" if they have questions about anything "graphic or explicit."

This strict, new policy would appear to put the kibosh on several regular features of Howard Stern's show - who wasn't mentioned yesterday and who is on vacation this week - including "small penis" contests and bits wherein items are placed in, or expelled from, the most intimate of bodily areas.
Yes, you can call me narrow-minded, prudish, whatever you like. I have caught Howard Stern's late night TV show a few times, and I was really impressed. I guess it doesn't surprise me that Stern has an audience for stuff like this--I just didn't think there were enough drunken, out of control teenaged boys to keep a show like that on the air. (Let me emphasize: I am sure that there are many drunken, out of control teenaged boys with far too much taste to watch a show like Stern's.)

I expect that some of you are also going to tell me, "If you don't like it, change the channel." I will take you seriously when your henchmen at the ACLU stop trying to remove the Ten Commandments from public parks because it is offensive:
Plaintiff Sue Mercier is a resident of La Crosse, Wisconsin and a member of plaintiff Freedom from Religion Foundation. When visiting her lawyer’s office, which is near the monument site, plaintiff Mercier must sometimes alter her route to avoid seeing the monument. She shops at the People’s Food Coop and the farmers’ market less often than she would if the monument were not in Cameron Park. When she has viewed the monument, it has “disturbed” her emotionally.

Plaintiff Elizabeth Ash is a resident of La Crosse. She does not attend meetings or events held in Cameron Park because she does not want to view the monument. She does not use banks near the monument. When driving downtown, she avoids streets that would take her past the monument. She has stopped going to Cameron Park to sit in it and read books. When she does see the monument, she feels marginalized and has experienced physical pain.[emphasis added]


 
Yale Law School

On those occasions when I think about going to law school, I read articles like this one, and cringe:
Federalist Society Vice-President Nick Muzin LAW '05 said he did not consider himself to be particularly conservative before coming to the Law School; he said he even worked for the Gore/Lieberman Presidential Campaign in 2000. But he said he feels far to the right of the politics of many Law School students.

"I would say I'm a centrist, but when I got to law school I found myself to be conservative [by comparison]," Muzin said. "I find that the student body here is ultra-liberal and extremely intolerant; I realized it shortly after I started here."

...

Muzin said he considered unnecessary protests by Law School students against military recruitment policies at a career day in the fall, when he was interviewing with several law firms. Muzin said while he supports the rights of gays to join the military, he had not planned that a protest of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy would be the backdrop to his interviews.
And this is the right wing at Yale Law School? Compared to most of America, Muzin is firmly in the liberal camp.
"My larger concern is I feel that the law school is really marginalizing itself -- they're fighting for causes that were already lost 30 years ago," Muzin said. "I think they're really doing a disservice to their students, producing students who will not be leaders in mainstream America."
I really wish that this was true. In one sense, Muzin is right: these causes were already lost 30 years ago among the people. But what the majority wants isn't really particularly relevant in the post-Lawrence world, where judges get to rewrite history to suit their preferences about what the law should be. If enough judges want it--and Yale Law School graduates are going to be disproportionately represented among federal judges--that's all that really matters.

Thanks to David Bernstein for the link; he remarks that he was apparently ostracized for a controversial statement he made in Contracts class at Yale. As a former fellow student related it to Bernstein:
"I don't remember Contracts class being that controversial; we didn't discuss any of the truly hot button issues for the left--such as race, abortion, gay rights--in Contracts--and, in any event, my (libertarian) views on such issues wouldn't have been so objectionable to them, anyway. So what did I say in Contracts class that led to my ostracism?" He said, and I swear he seemed at least 80% serious, "well, you kept saying that contracts should be enforced!"
This is really scary.


Wednesday, February 18, 2004
 
Illegal Immigration & Temporary Worker Programs

I received this article from a group called the Center for Immigration Studies. I don't know anything about them, but it is pretty obvious that they think Bush's proposal for a temporary worker program, like the Bracero programs of the past, would be bad for low wage American workers. You can read a short history of these programs here.

Obviously, you have to regard anything from an advocacy group with a certain amount of care, but I don't see anything obviously absurd in it, and much that fits with my knowledge of the effects of large scale immigration in other periods of American history:
The heart of the problem is that guestworker programs seek to reconcile two sharply conflicting goals: the need to protect citizen workers from the competition of foreign workers who are willing to work for wages and in conditions that few citizens would tolerate versus the wishes of some employers who rely on labor intensive production and service techniques to secure a plentiful supply of low cost workers. In addition, there are always unforeseen side effects that harm the wider society.

With 34 million low-wage workers in the current civilian labor force, the problem to confront is not a shortage of low skilled workers; it is the oversupply of from 9-12 million illegal immigrants that needs to be addressed. Getting illegal immigrants out of the labor force should be the first order of business for policymakers. Neither guestworker programs or amnesties of any kind should be part of the necessary efforts to end this labor market nightmare.
Another article from that same group, written by a former federal prosecutor, points out the combin