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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I 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). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, March 13, 2004
Gun Control Advocate Admits the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban Doesn't Matter From National Public Radio's March 11, 2004 broadcast: The Violence Policy Center is one of the more aggressive gun groups in Washington, DC, and analyst Tom Diaz is their assault weapons guy. It's his job to emphasize just how deadly these guns are. So how does he feel about the effort to renew the assault weapons ban?And then Diaz explains what NRA said back in 1994--banning guns by brand and irrelevant features just makes the makers change the brand and remove bayonet lugs--which makes no real difference. Banning guns by function affects vast numbers of guns--which makes the law politically impossible. Maybe they need to focus on the person holding the gun, not the gun itself? A convicted felon with a .22 rimfire rifle is far more dangerous than a law-abiding adult with an AR-15. Not Entirely An Urban Legend Remember when you were young the story that, "professional boxers have to register their hands with the police department as deadly weapons"? There are variants involving karate black belts. I've always assumed that this was pure urban legend--I even assumed that back in sixth grade. Oddly enough, there is at least one place where it's true. From the Guam Code Annotated, on the Guam Attorney-General's website: §62100. Registration Required. Any person who is an expert in the art of karate or judo, or any similarThanks to Jon Roland for bringing this to my attention. Part Of Why I Get So Angry At Those Making Excuses For Pedophiles I'll only give you the first paragraph of this story from Northwest Indiana. If you click over to read the details, you are going to be much, much angrier: CROWN POINT -- Sexual abuse may have contributed to the November death of a 3-year-old Merrillville boy who had a history of heart problems, officials said Friday.It gets a lot more ugly. Victoria, Australia Bans Swords This is almost comic, at first glance: SWORDS will be outlawed from July under new laws to curb the growing use of the weapons in street brawls.Unfortunately, the problem that they are confronting is real--a society where civilized behavior seems to be in danger: Last week, a 13-year-old boy was arrested and charged after allegedly charging police with a sword near Castlemaine, in central Victoria.What next? Clubs? Rocks? All of these laws are attempts to avoid confronting the fundamental immorality problem--and banning the weapons doesn't fix this. It just means the victims can't fight back. First Self-Defense Use of a Gun Under New Missouri Statute From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of March 11, 2004: Man repels 3 robbers by firing hidden pistolIt turns out that the new law, along with requiring issuance of concealed carry permits, makes it lawful for any 21 or older who can lawfully possess a handgun to have one concealed in his car. Friday, March 12, 2004
The Anti-Defamation League Has To Pay Up I will tell you that I have had a bad taste in my mouth about this bunch since the late 1970s. Tom Hayden & Jane Fonda's Campaign for Economic Democracy was pushing for a rent control law in Santa Monica because of the egregious rent increases that were taking place. (After the Rent Control Board set up shop, they actually found out that there had been 6% annual increase in rents during this period--when the local Consumer Price Index rose 13%. Oh well, what's a few lies when you are taking control of the government?) I was a renter in Santa Monica at the time, and I was very, very worried about the "Two Minute Hate" tone of the campaign. I was also concerned about the destructive effects of rent control in New York, as well as the underlying principle that property rights are a human right. I put together a flyer on bright yellow paper expressing my human rights concerns about this, pointing out the parallels between how the Nazis had dehumanized Jews and the way that the rent control advocates were dehumanizing another unpopular minority: landlords. If you think I exaggerate, I understand that for the first year or so that the Rent Control Board met, when a landlord got up to speak at a hearing, the members of the Board would all turn their chairs away, so that they wouldn't have to actually look at him. I walked over a big chunk of Santa Monica, eventually handing out about 5000 flyers, paid for out of my own pocket (at a time when I was 20 years old, and not exactly rich). Within a couple of weeks, I received a letter from the Anti-Defamation League, telling me that I should not distribute flyers like this, because the Holocaust was unique, nothing like it had ever happened before, or would happen again. It was pretty obvious that they had decided to take sides in a political dispute, and hoped to intimidate a political activist into shutting up. So when I see that the Anti-Defamation League has been ordered to pay $12 million to a couple that they falsely accused of being anti-Semites (based on illegally tapping their phones), all I can say, "Good!" The Anti-Defamation League's payment of more than $12 million for defaming them has been transferred to their bank, according to a Thursday press release from their lawyer, Jay Horowitz of Denver.Abraham Foxman at the Anti-Defamation League keeps screeching that Mel Gibson's The Passion promotes anti-Semitism--a position that many Jews who have seen the film quite emphatically dispute. There are some very serious anti-Semites in the world today, and certainly some in America. I guess they must be pretty well hidden, however, because the Anti-Defamation League seems to be putting too much effort going after people that aren't anti-Semites at all--and stirring animosity that doesn't need to be there. Interesting Coincidences On The Spanish Terror Attack From an AP news story, this makes you think al-Qaeda, not ETA (which has apparently denied involvement): "March 11, 2004, now holds its place in the history of infamy," Aznar said Thursday.I recall that September 11th was picked for the World Trade Center attacks because the date has some significance in the Arab world. Maybe the selection of March 11 for this horrifying crime is a coincidence--but it would fit in al-Qaeda's traditions, and the number of deaths suggest a level of competence and barbarism that ETA has apparently not shown in the past. (ETA usually attacks politicians and police--not civilians.) There can be no compromise with whoever does crimes like this. I don't call it an "act of war," because there are rules in civilized warfare. UPDATE: This article in the Guardian presents evidence that argues this might well be the work of ETA--perhaps of a younger generation that perceives that ETA's increasing weakness required a barbarous proof of their strength. The article also points out: Last night the newspaper El Mundo reported that the EU's police agency reported in December that Eta was changing its operating method. It warned of a scaling up of attacks, and talked specifically of attacks in the capital in which several devices would be successively detonated in strategically important locations. It also warned of possible attacks in France.In addition, the explosive used is fairly distinctive, and is of a time stolen by ETA in France a while back, and used in previous explosions. 400 Horsepower V8; 0-60 in 4.6 Seconds; Seats Five; 25 mpg Highway Yes, it's a Cadillac: BMW has its M cars, Mercedes has AMG and now Cadillac has its V-Series. That's the name of its upcoming lineup of high-performance models recently announced for production. The first model to get the V-Series treatment is the CTS entry-level luxury sedan, a move that has made this already agile four-door a force to be reckoned with among the world's great sport sedans. The transformation begins with the installation of the drivetrain found in the ultrahigh-performance Corvette Z06 that includes the LS-6 V8 good for 400 horsepower and 390 pound-feet of torque and a six-speed manual transmission. The Cadillac's limited-slip rear axle gets a short 3.73-to-1 final drive ratio to optimize acceleration. An enlarged dual-exhaust system allows the driver and surrounding motorists to appreciate the full-bodied rumble of this superb V8. Cadillac claims a 0-to-60-mph in just 4.6 seconds. Suspension upgrades include new shock absorbers and stabilizer bars, along with 27-percent firmer spring rates compared to the standard CTS. South Koreans Take Politics Seriously The National Assembly impeached President Roh Moo-hyun. The parliament voted to impeach Roh after hours of scuffles and protests that included one Roh supporter setting himself on fire and another man trying to drive his car up the parliament steps and into the building.If only Bill Clinton's supporters had felt so strongly during his impeachment hearings. :-) I recall reading a P.J. O'Rourke essay about South Korean politics a few years ago where he described how one protestor cut off the end of his finger to write his candidate's name in blood. They take politics a little too seriously. Here's a Clue for Detainees From Gitmo Learn to tell more plausible lies. Everyone knows that Gitmo isn't a summer camp--although at least some released detainees indicated that it wasn't really all that bad--but this story from the London Mirror is so absurd that I can't take it seriously: Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.UPDATE: The Telegraph reports a bit more about the detainees--and the money they were paid for their story: Ruhal Ahmed, 22, was facing re-arrest over a charge of stealing a set of wheels and tyres from a Honda car in Tipton in March 2001, as well as driving without insurance and an MoT. He faced a two-year jail sentence if convicted.Hmmm. Their credibility seems a bit weak. Rewriting History Concerning Marriage Licenses I see that the latest attempt to justify gay marriage comes from a newspaper called the Desert Dispatch, for the California high desert: The founders of our nation were as unfamiliar with marriage licenses as we are with parent licenses. The very thought that government could license your marriage was as repulsive then as a parent licensing is today. Even well into the 1800's the idea of obtaining a license to have a spouse was unheard of. The government simply did not have that authority to intrude into the private lives of American families.The article then goes on to claim that marriage licenses were introduced in the 1800s as part of the scheme to prevent interracial marriage. Nope. Completely false (although you will find a lot of people making this claim around the net, as part of the campaign to discredit the state monopoly over defining marriage). Here's a list of Maryland's colonial marriage laws from Archives of Maryland 75:686, that show that "authority to intrude in the private lives of American families" goes back a long ways: 4. All Persons, desiring Marriage, shall apply to a Minister for contracting thereof, and cause due Publication to be made, according to the Rubric of the Church of England, at some Church or Chapel belonging to the Parish wherein the Woman is resident. 1717, ch. 15, §. 1.Of course, the interracial marriage laws were already present during the colonial period, and were not dependent on marriage licensing: 12. No Minister, Pastor or Magistrate, shall, upon any Pretence join in Marriage any Negro whatsoever, or Mulatto Slave, with any White Person, on Penalty of 5000 lb Tobacco; one Half to the Use of Free-Schools, the other Half to the Informer. 1715, ch. 44, §. 25.The 1777 laws from Archives of Maryland 203:166 are even more clear about the need for a marriage license: XII. And be it enacted, That all licences for marriage shall be issued by the clerk of the court of that county where the woman shall have her usual residence, under the seal of his county, in the following form, to wit:Marriage licenses were apparently required in England; here's a reference to a 1628 marriage license in Durham, and another reference to a marriage license in 1629 England. There are a number of books that make reference to colonial marriage licenses in their title: The Marriage License Bonds of Northampton County, Virginia, from 1706 to 1854 by Stratton Nottingham. New Jersey also licensed marriages: "A marriage license was recorded at Piscataway, N.J., on December 19, 1670, between Hugh Dunn and Elizabeth Drake...." Since the Lawrence decision was based on false statements about the history of sodomy laws, I guess that I shouldn't be surprised that efforts to justify gay marriage are also being made based on false history. Labels: homosexuality Gay Marriage Updates Both houses of Wisconsin's legislature have passed a state constitutional amendment that bars both gay marriage and civil unions. Another vote is required in January, and then approval by the voters in 2005. Wisconsin! The Cheese state isn't quite as liberal as Minnesota, but it is still pretty liberal. The Kentucky State Senate has also passed a state constitutional amendment to the same effect; still waiting for action from the lower house. I guess there's no great surprise on that, but the lopsided vote, 33-4, gives some idea of the magnitude of sentiment even among legislators. I am disappointed to report that the Idaho State Senate killed a state constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage here. It looks like homosexuals have sunk their cause with lawlessness in San Francisco, New Paltz, and Multnomah County. Thursday, March 11, 2004
Viagra & Methamphetamine No, it's not the punch line to a vulgar joke. (But if it were, the question which the punch line answers would be, "What did you give him?") It's from the headline to a New York Times article (registration required) about those people that are just like you and me, "except for who they love": The expanding recreational use of crystal methamphetamine and Viagra is apparently fueling increases in syphilis, H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases among gay and bisexual men in the United States, according to new studies reported here on Wednesday. Condoms & HPV I've mentioned before that there is serious question about the effectiveness of condoms for preventing the spread of HPV, a virus that appears to cause cervical cancer. The Bush Administration is now considering requiring a warning on condoms: The Bush administration is considering requiring warning labels on condom packages noting that the contraceptive devices do not protect users from all sexually transmitted diseases, a Food and Drug Administration official said Thursday.Oh I know, you are probably thinking, "those Religious Rightists in the Bush Administration are trying to stop people from having fun." California--hardly in control of the Religious Right--already has such a labelling requirement with respect to condoms & HPV. Why is HPV "little-known"? Because it does not do any harm to men--they just pass it on to their next female partner. I remember well when this connection was first discovered, and a biology professor explained to our Biology of Aging class that as the number of lifetime sexual partners went above three, a woman's risks of cervical cancer increased quite dramatically. You could hear the gasp from a number of girls in the class. Back when cervical cancer epidemiology was first being studied, early in the 20th century, they noticed that Jewish women in America had much lower rates of cervical cancer than Gentile women. There was a theory for a while that circumcision (still not so common among American Gentiles at the time) played some protective role. What Professor Benko told us was that it now appears that at the time, Jewish women were far less likely to have had multiple sexual partners than Gentile women, and that was the reason for the difference--not circumcision. Unsurprisingly, Democrats--the party that cares about women, unlike those uncaring Republicans--seem intent on keeping the silent epidemic going forward: But some lawmakers feared that such labels could turn people away from using condoms, thereby increasing the risk of contracting diseases such as AIDS, chlamydia and gonorrhea.Except that properly warning people that condoms aren't 100% effective at stopping the spread of HPV, and therefore thousands of cervical cancer deaths a year, isn't "undermining" their effectiveness at all. Waxman is probably scared that if women realized the risk that they are taking by trusting in condoms--instead of reducing their number of sexual partners--things would get very, very unpleasant on Capitol Hill. This would also be a serious problem for the entertainment industry, which lives on selling the idea that casual and promiscuous sex has no serious consequences. California Supreme Court Tells San Francisco To ... "stop issuing marriage licenses as queer as a three dollar bill." Well, no, but they did tell Mayor Newsom to stop issuing marriage licenses not in conformity with California law. I suppose that we should regard this as a victory, but I think of it more as a statement of how weird American politics has become that the mayor thought he could just ignore the law. In other good news, the Massachusetts legislature has passed a proposed amendment that allows them to ban gay marriage, but allow civil unions. House Votes To Increase Fines For Indecent Broadcasts The vote was surprisingly lopsided: 391-22. Those who are upset about this can thank Howard Stern, Janet Jackson, and "Bubba the Love Sponge." The courts have generally not taken the position that broadcasting enjoys all the same protections as newspapers under the First Amendment. But shouldn't radio, television, and movies enjoy the same protections as print media, under an original intent theory? Even if they did, the First Amendment was not understood by the Framers as a shield against all punishments for what you published. You could be prosecuted criminally for libel back then (and you still can, in a number of states); you could be sued for libel; you could be criminally prosecuted for publishing obscenity. What the First Amendment protected you from was prior restraint, and punishment for publishing the truth. There's one other point worth considering. I don't buy the argument that some conservatives have made, that the First Amendment's protections were only intended for political speech. I just don't see the evidence for this claim. It is, however, the case that broadcasting, for most broadcasters, isn't being done because of their concern for the public good, but because it is a very profitable business. I am reminded of the Supreme Court's decision upholding Ohio's film censorship law in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915): It cannot be put out of view that the exhibition of moving pictures is a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded, nor intended to be regarded by the Ohio Constitution, we think, as part of the press of the country, or as organs of public opinion.Obviously, this is no longer good First Amendment law. It does, however, make a point that people like Larry Flynt and Howard Stern, when they wrap themselves in the flag and the First Amendment, are hypocrites. They aren't pumping sewage into the public arena because of high ideals; they are in it for the money. (Hugh Hefner at least pretended that he was trying to free America from its Puritanism, but it was still about making money, producing a more refined form of sewage than say, Hustler or Howard Stern.) Paying fines to the FCC is just one of the costs of pumping sewage: an effluent charge. It is somewhat amusing to see the same liberals who are upset about "rich people" defending people like Howard Stern as though he is a modern Tom Paine or Margaret Sanger. Canada is Generally a Peaceful Place... But when a serial killer gets to work there, Canadians give up nothing to Americans. I won't give you any details on this story--it's horrifying, and repulsive. If you read Unintended Consequences, this won't be a surprise. Alias Star Makes CIA Recruiting Video My daughter, before she went off to college, was a big fan of Alias: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jennifer Garner, who plays spy Sydney Bristow in the television series "Alias," has turned her talents to recruiting real-life spies to work for the CIA in a video on the agency's employment Web site.Here's the part that surprised and pleased me: Garner was not paid for the recruiting video, a CIA spokesman said. "She did this out of a sense of patriotism." The Passion As Teen Slasher Movie? This article in Variety about the audience demographics mentions that while the audience is generally older than average for a movie, it also has a lot of 18-30 year olds coming to see it as well: "It looks surprisingly like the audience for a lot of our films," said Rick King of AMC, nation's second-largest chain. He said the heaviest demographic for "Passion" shows was ages 18-30. "Most of the people I'm seeing look like they've been in a theater before," he said.Now, here's the part that startled me a bit--but also heartened me as well, because this unexpected audience probably needs the message more than most: Young males who flock to slasher pics seem to be taking an interest in "The Passion," which has been widely characterized as gory by reviewers. U.S. Citizen Charged With Espionage For Iraq From AP: An American citizen was arrested Thursday on charges she acted as an Iraqi spy before and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, accepting $10,000 for her work, prosecutors said Thursday.Well golly gee, what happens when you google Susan Lindauer? You find her name and city listed as a signer on PEACE PLEDGE: TO STOP SPREAD OF ANTI-TERRORIST WAR TO IRAQ. You find that she gave a deposition claiming to know for a fact that Libya wasn't involved in the Lockerbie bombing--but that it was done by the Syrians (who have a long-standing enmity with Hussein's Iraq). There's a Susan Lindauer listed (perhaps not the same person) involved with one of the gun control groups here. Very interesting. UPDATE: Here's the indictment at The Smoking Gun. Walter Williams on Gay Marriage I'm impressed. First Thomas Sowell, well-known libertarian economist weighs in on why gay marriage is a bad idea, now Walter Williams (not quite so well-known) libertarian economist weighs in with almost exactly the same arguments that I use: Here's my question: Are homosexuals the only Americans permitted to change the definition of marriage, or do people with other sex orientations have that right as well? Improving Teaching at the High School Level Greenspan says that the job recovery should be coming along soon, but he made some other important points about problems that may be holding us back as a nation: Instead, Greenspan said the country needed to explore avenues to make sure that all Americans had the opportunity to get a good education and then be able to return to school to improve their job skills.Yes. I've blogged in the past about how teaching credentials, especially at the secondary level, are keeping a lot of skilled professionals out of that job market. I understand why, especially at the lower grades, where most learning disabilities are discovered, there is a strong case for specialized training. By high school, however, it seems unlikely that this specialized training is really necessary. For a lot of people who are currently working in private industry, they simply can't afford the one to two years attending school full-time to get a teaching credential. In this last recession, after the dot-com bust, there were a lot of people with degrees in math and science who were suddenly out of work. In some ideal world, they could have taken jobs teaching math or physics--and probably improved the quality of high school education. Spending two years in school full-time just wasn't an option--they needed jobs now. Two states, Idaho and Pennsylvania, have now adopted a fast-track approach to this problem. The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence has a testing procedure for those with a bachelor's degree, including a background check. Both Pennsylvania (search for REG 3752) and Idaho have decided to accept the ABCTE certificate as a substitute for a teacher's credential. Unsurprisingly, the Idaho teachers' union is not happy. UPDATE: Here is an absolutely devastating discussion of the problem of teacher certification by retired physics professor Donald E. Simanek. Along with demonstrating that education majors are near the bottom of the heap in academic capability, he also argues that much of what makes a good teacher does not require specialized training: Ross Perot was asked what can be done to improve education. He responded "Torch the teachers' colleges." That's one of the few things he's said with which I can agree. Don't hire teachers who wasted their college years in fluff education courses purporting to teach them how to teach. Hire teachers who concentrated on learning and understanding what they teach.[3]He also has some unpopular things to say about the level of preparation of students entering college, relative to previous years--and what he says I have heard from many professors with similar experience: When I began teaching college physics nearly 30 years ago, we could count on perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the students in freshman physics being well-prepared, bright, intellectually curious, and hard working--capable of earning an honest A grade. About as many more were not so bright, but still hardworking, and earned Bs. Teachers wrote off the rest as hopeless. They would never really learn physics. They'd probably 'get the picture' soon and change to a major that didn't require physics, so no great harm would be done. One could confidently bet that they weren't doing well in their mathematics and chemistry courses either. Enslaved Europeans It isn't exactly news that Arab slave traders enslaved Europeans; our word "slave" actually comes from "Slav," peoples that were often enslaved in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. But here's news coverage of Ohio State University historian Robert Davis's new book that puts some numbers to this: In a new book, "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800," Mr. Davis calculates that between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by pirates called "corsairs" and forced to work in North Africa during that period.It is unfortunate that from the rather narrow view of history that Americans learn, we think of slavery as something rather peculiarly American--a special sin staining the American experience. It really isn't. Throughout human history, slavery has been more the norm than the exception. It has often been a sign that a society has moved from a primitive state, to a civilized one, that it held slaves. Savages don't take prisoners of war; they build mountains of skulls, instead. Enslaving your defeated enemies was often a sign of a relatively humane and enlightened commander. John Locke, who we now think of as an enlightened thinker for his time, was quite clear on this: Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life by some act that deserves death, he to whom he has forfeited it may, when he has him in his power, delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service; and he does him no injury by it. For, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires.I do wish that when American history is taught in the lower grades, that a little more effort would be made to emphasize that slavery is really the norm; the efforts of Christians in the West to abolish slavery, and then Western imperialism driven in part by a desire to abolish slavery elsewhere, is the shining exception. STDs & Anonymous Sex This Reuters article discusses a new survey of the spread of syphilis: The Internet was one of a number of factors contributing to the rise in syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases among gay men, Aynalem said. Other contributors included the increasing use of the recreational drug crystal methamphetamine and the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra.So 60% of all syphilis cases are happening in a population that represents, at most, 2.25% of the U.S. population? (About 4-4.5% of men are homosexual or bisexual, and men are just under half the population.) Obviously, it could be that only a tiny fraction of homosexual men are part of the anonymous, random sex crowd--but it does suggest that there is a dangerous pathology in behavior present when syphilis is so disproportionately homosexual. If Viagra is also part of the explanation for this, then it doesn't say much for the maturity of this crowd--guys old enough that they need Viagra, but so emotionally immature that they are engaging in promiscuous and risky sex. Libertarian Purity Test David Bernstein over at Volokh Conspiracy pointed to this online libertarian purity test. Okay, I scored 45--but there's a reason, and it is the problem with tests filled with binary answers. As an example, the question asking whether Social Security should be abolished, my answer was NO. I think Social Security is a very bad program in almost every respect, but a lot of people have retired, or are about to retire, based on the belief that Social Security would be there. They paid into the program, and made financial decisions based on the assumption of getting a check every month when they retired. To abolish Social Security without some sort of phase-out would cause enormous chaos and suffering--enough that it would completely discredit the entire government. The same is true for many other government programs: overnight abolition would cause problems so severe that they would make the liberals look like prophets. I was surprised that the test didn't have more questions about the programs that redistribute wealth from the poor and middle class to the very wealthy, such as the National Flood Insurance Program (which subsidizes people with beach houses), or farm price supports. These are programs that from a simple justice standpoint should be abolished overnight, and for whom any disruption and chaos this caused would be a good thing, because a lot of the superrich liberals would have to dip into their own bank accounts to pay for their luxuries. In case you are curious: the question asking whether all laws prohibiting consensual sex between adults should be abolished, I said YES, assuming that this didn't include the laws against sex in public places. I don't think that laws regulating adult sexual relations are a good idea, although many of them are certainly Constitutional. Wednesday, March 10, 2004
"What If He Takes The Gun Away From You?" One of the recurring methods by which gun control advocates discount the possibility of a mere woman defending herself with a gun is to say, "What if he takes the gun away from you? You'll be in more danger than if you didn't have a gun at all!" Here's a story where a woman is in jeopardy, someone takes away a gun--but it doesn't end quite the way the gun controllers would like to think: Sheriff's Lieutenant Rich Maricelli says the woman parked her pickup truck in a lot on campus, and a man asked if she could give him a lift to his vehicle and maybe jump-start it for him. She agreed. But the man pulled a handgun out of his jacket and told her to drive up Deer Creek. [overly graphic description of removal of clothes, being bound, raped, deleted] He set the gun down between the seats; and she managed to free her hands, get the gun, leap from the truck and roll down an embankment. She later told detectives she was prepared to use the gun if the man came back for her. Awesome Picture From Hubble 
It really makes you realize how tiny you are, when you see a picture with that many galaxies in one field! One Kilometer Asteroid Hit: 1500 AD Interesting article in Science News: Scientists may have discovered the impact site of one big space rock that smacked into the South Pacific just a few hundred years ago. In eastern Australia, researchers have found jumbled deposits of rocks more than 130 m above sea level that they propose were left by a tsunami. That debris has been dated to about A.D. 1500—a date that matches when the Maori people inexplicably moved away from some areas of New Zealand's coast, says Stephen F. Pekar, a sedimentologist at Queens College in New York. On New Zealand's Stewart Island, two sites sport possible tsunami deposits at elevations of 150 m and 220 m, respectively.I'm glad that I live up high enough not to worry about tsunamis. Thanks to Instapundit and A Voyage to Arcturus for the links. The Death of Marriage in Scandinavia Stanley Kurtz's article in the Boston Globe claims that gay marriage (or rather its equivalent) in Scandinavia is destroying heterosexual marriage there. You may be surprised to find that I am a bit skeptical of his claim: Data from European demographers and statistical bureaus show that a majority of children in Sweden and Norway are now born out of wedlock, as are 60 percent of first-born children in Denmark. In socially liberal districts of Norway, where the idea of same-sex registered partnerships is widely accepted, marriage itself has almost entirely disappeared.There are a lot of changes that have taken place during this time, and I don't see that Kurtz's article really shows a causal connection there. He does point out that homosexual marriage caused a purge of conservative clergy from the Lutheran Church in Nordland County, Norway, a hotbed of same-sex marriage, but I don't quite see that Kurtz's explanation of how one caused the other makes much sense. Kurtz also observes: Clearly, in a place where de facto gay marriage has gained almost complete acceptance, marriage itself has almost completely disappeared.Doubtless, but I find myself wondering if the decline of traditional marriage and the rise of same-sex registered partnership (what Kurtz calls "de facto gay marriage") both reflect the underlying moral decline of the population--not that gay marriage causes the collapse of marriage. I think the bigger issue that needs to be confronted is the underlying factor--moral decline. CBS News Playing to the Rich Again, Trying To Hurt Bush I was watching CBS Evening News tonight, while doing the bench press, and they carried a report about the Bush tax cuts, saying that for many taxpayers, the "Bush tax cut" really hasn't turned out to be that big, because of the Alternative Minimum Tax. They then interviewed one of those typical working class Joes who has been snookered out of his big tax cut by AMT: a financial planner. Oh yes, that's a typical working person. What just amazes me is the nerve of this claim. The Alternative Minimum Tax, which the reporter characterized as an unfair and antiquated part of the tax code, was originally put there to prevent high-income taxpayers from paying no federal income tax at all. Let me quote from the IRS's history of the AMT: Taxpayers who are not required to pay tax under the regular tax system may still be liable for tax under the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) laws. These laws create an equity in the system, requiring higher income individuals with certain deductions to pay tax. Without the AMT laws, these individuals would pay little or no tax while those with lower income levels and no deductions would pay higher tax.I have never had to pay AMT, although I came close one year. I exercised my stock options with great care (10,000 shares one year, 6,000 the next) to avoid this. I would guess that AMT is almost never an issue for people making less than $100,000 a year. Yet CBS News wants us to believe that large numbers of Americans are losing their "Bush tax cuts" because of AMT? If so, these are almost certainly the "rich people" that John Kerry claims got the lion's share of Bush's tax cut. Oh yes--these rich people are also disproportionately found among the millionaire talking heads that do network broadcasting. What a coincidence! Yet Another Wrinkle in the Bond Market Larry Kudlow's National Review column is about how, in spite of the recent drop in bond yields, he doesn't believe that this can continue much longer: If you are among the pessimists who believe the U.S. recovery is going to sink, or that the China boom is on the verge of collapse, then buy bonds. But if you stand with the optimists and expect a world economic recovery, then it's time to take profits off the table in the bond market.Without anywhere near Kudlow's expertise, I am betting on the same--that we'll see 10-year Treasuries with yields above 5% within a year or so, and 30-year Treasuries above 6%. That's why I am only buying bonds with short maturities, expecting to throw a lot of money into long maturity A-rated corporate bonds when they start giving yields of 7.5% to 8.5%. (Hey, I can dream about 9%.) What I found really fascinating about Kudlow's column, however, was a scheme that I didn't know about: Economist Victor Canto makes a good case that the current bond rally is a function of the "carry trade." This is where the purchase of a long bond ? in this case the 10-year bond, which holds a higher yield than a short-term maturity ? is financed by taking out a short-term loan, allowing the investor to keep the difference in rates between the two maturities.Sure enough, there isn't much risk here. The only way that this becomes risky is if the short-term interest rates rise so quickly relative to the 10-year Treasury that you can't sell the 10-year bonds in time. It's quite rare for bond prices to fluctuate that quickly. You do have to pay careful attention to the bond yields to make sure that you are making money, and you also need to be borrowing in big enough chunks to get the federal funds rate on your loan. It does seem like a pretty safe way to improve your return on capital, assuming that you can go borrow a few million dollars without too much hassle. "Did You Know the Pro-Gay Marriage Crowd Has No Sense of Humor?" "No, but hum a few bars and I'll try and fake it." Two days ago, I posted a pretty serious item about Senator Hatch's proposal for a federal marriage amendment that solves some of the federalism concerns that many people have expressed about the version that is currently under consideration. I made one statement that was a mixture of serious and attempted humor, and as often happens when I attempt humor--or for that matter, anyone attempts humor in a text-only medium, not everyone "got" it. If the point is reached where a majority of a state wants gay marriage, they'll probably legalize polygamy, bestiality, and then combine them into polygamous bestiality.For those who are humor-impaired, "and then combine them into polygamous bestiality" was attempted humor. But this raises a serious question that the pro-gay marriage crowd seems to run from: what makes marriage intrinsically between two people? Why not three, or five, or eight? Why do they have to be humans? France, a while back, allowed a woman to marry a dead man (her fiancee died in a motorcycle accident). I can see the following arguments that the pro-gay marriage crowd might advance to defend why what they are wanting is okay, but polygamy, and interspecies marriage is too weird to argue seriously against: 1. "That's disgusting." And how does that differ from the majority view of homosexual marriage? We are back to a "that's icky" argument. Sorry, but the Supreme Court has spoken--simple prejudice has no place in the law. 2. "Animals aren't humans." Okay, we are on our way to a tautology. Why is this a problem? You could make the same statement about two men getting married: "One of them isn't the opposite sex." 3. "We love each other. Why shouldn't we be able to get married?" Love is a many-splendored thing, and to be blunt, I've seen married couples whose relationship wasn't markedly more loving than most pet owners have for their pets. Our society has many expressions of love, some erotic (as between husband and wife), some fraternal in nature, some Platonic. Yet we do not expect everyone who has a very close friend to get married to them, and I think that even most of the pro-gay marriage crowd would find it ridiculous to get married to every really close friend. 4. "What harm does it cause to the society for us to get married?" What harm does it cause to the society for Ed and Janet and John and Lisa and Mark and Fido to get married? Almost any argument that you can make against polygamous bestiality can be applied with equal validity to gay marriage. 5. "But homosexuals are just like everyone else, and we shouldn't be discriminated against." This is the only argument that has a ghost of a chance of surviving the giggle test. If you accept that homosexuals are just like everyone else--no different from heterosexuals--then you could make this case. Guess what? There is certainly no consensus in support of this claim; there's not even a majority (except on the federal bench, probably) that buys this claim. However, you can certainly find animal rights theorists who say the same about animals. "A boy is a pig is a rat is a dog," as Priscilla Feral of the Animal Liberation Front likes to say. Princeton professor Peter Singer says the same thing, and about sex with animals--and he is considered a great intellectual by the same crowd that is defending gay marriage. What makes Feral and Singer wrong, and you right? Oh dear, we're getting back to that question of absolutes and universals again--and once you go down that road, where do you get those absolutes and universals from, if not a theistic base of some sort? Then what happens to gay marriage--a position that none of the world's major religions has ever supported? Stanley Kurtz's article in the Weekly Standard last year pointed out that many of the same academics that were arguing for gay marriage ten years ago--and have clearly won in the only population that matters anymore, judges and law professors--are now arguing for "polyamory," or the notion that any number of humans that want to get married as one unit should be able to do so. Once that battle is won, the next battle, I suspect, won't be animals, but children, for the simple reason that the ACLU has been working hard to get age of consent laws repealed. But a bridal gown for Fido will be coming, shortly after all laws prohibiting sex with children have been abolished by judicial order. They Can't Wait Until They Get Home? Those little TVs in cars are getting bigger, clearer, and more explicit: DETROIT - Andrea Carlton hadn't planned on telling her daughter about the birds and bees until she was 8 or 9. But that changed the night 4-year-old Catherine spotted a porno movie flickering on a screen in a minivan nearby.Perhaps the ACLU can take one of these cases, arguing that the Constitutional right to watch pornography while driving is implicit in the right to free speech. Needed: 2" Threaded Diagonal For A Few Days Okay, the Chromacor for the 5" refractor arrived yesterday, and I started preparation to install it--and then I discovered that the 2" diagonal that came with the refractor isn't threaded. (There is something on the inside of the barrel that looks like threading, but according to Photon Instruments, this just prevents internal reflections.) Okay, I could buy a 2" diagonal that is threaded for filters, but I only need this for a few days to make sure that the Chromacor justifies its expense in improved image. If not, back it goes. So if you hve a 2" diagonal threaded for 48mm filters lying around, and you could let me borrow it for a few days, I would be happy to pay the shipping costs both ways. Labels: telescopes FBI Misconduct in the Oklahoma City Bombing Case: More News From AP: WASHINGTON (AP) - Terry Nichols' attorneys say more than a dozen FBI documents that raise the possibility of additional accomplices in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing weren't turned over by state prosecutors or the federal government for Nichols' murder trial defense.Whether this affects Nichols's trial on murder charges in state court is far less interesting and worrisome than the question of whether we can trust the FBI to do its job properly. Starting in Brady v. Maryland (1963), and I gather somewhat inconsistently since then, the courts have held that denying the defense information that might show the defendant's innocence--or at least the guilt of others--is a violation of due process. This isn't just something that the wine and cheese set should worry about. If a judge sentences someone to prison--or death--I want to be absolutely sure that the prosecution has provided all the information to the defense that might assist the defense. The government has an enormous advantage in any criminal prosecution. Unless you are a multimillionaire, you have no chance of even achieving approximate parity with the prosecutor's office in resources. The government has other advantages as well. They can legally reward and punish witnesses in a way that only organized crime figures can match or exceed. To achieve truth and justice, the scales have to be tipped pretty strongly in the favor of the defendant. That's why so many of the procedural protections of the Bill of Rights make the prosecutor's job so hard. Being absolutely sure that the courts have convicted the right person is essential, not only because of the injustice of punishing an innocent party, but also because of the risk of letting guilty parties continue to predate. There's one other reason why getting it right matters. The government sometimes avoids providing Brady material to the defense to cover wrongdoing by police or prosecutors. One good example of this I saw during the second Congressional hearings about Waco. An April 14, 1993 memo from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms directed investigators into the initial Waco raid: DOJ does not want Treasury to conduct any interviews or have discussions with any of the participants, who may be potential witnesses; the prosecutors do not want us to generate additional Jencks, Brady or Gigolo material or oral statements which could be used for impeachment.In other words, we may have screwed up; let's make sure that our screwup doesn't appear at a subsequent trial. Why? Because the government was busily losing the trial of Randy Weaver in Idaho at that moment, because of governmental misconduct. I was shocked and horrified by the discovery that the Justice Department knowingly avoided a proper investigation for fear that government wrongdoing might be used by the defense at trial. This sort of criminal behavior isn't just bad by itself. It's bad because it creates a profound mistrust of the entire system. Perhaps Timothy McVeigh might have done some horrifying crime even if the Waco inferno hadn't happened. But we know without question that Waco--and the Clinton Administration's cynical manipulation of the criminal justice system to protect what was at best a bunch of incompetents in BATF and the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, started McVeigh down the path to mass murder. Justice Scalia Tells The Truth About What Has Gone Wrong From the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution," Scalia said at a conference Uptown on the merit selection of judges.Scalia is correct that homosexual sodomy has been criminal since at least the sixteenth century in English and American law. He isn't quite right about abortion. First trimester abortions seem to have been legal under English law. The prohibition on first trimester abortion is a bit more recent. Scalia was the keynote speaker at conference at on "Judicial Independence and Accountability" at the Audubon Tea Room sponsored by the Louisiana Organization for Judicial Excellence, based in Baton Rouge.Scalia didn't articulate this point, but the real problem with choosing judges on "merit," is that inevitably this means that the elite of the legal profession--an elite of an elite--defines merit. Because the legal profession is utterly dominated by the left, this means that selecting judges based on merit really means picking judges who have contempt for popular government, because it so seldom comes to the "correct" results. One of my wife's English professors made the same criticism of a lot of post-modernist literary criticism that Scalia is making of how the courts have freed themselves from that bothersome text of our Constitution: "At a certain point, you don't even need to read the book" for which you are writing a criticism. The difference is that literary criticism doesn't really influence that many lives. When the Supreme Court decides that what was a felony when the Constitution was written is now Constitutionally protected behavior--or, as I expect the current leftist majority there to do one of these days, and decide that what was legally required when the Constitution was written (gun ownership) may now be completely prohibited, the consequences will be much more severe. Labels: abortion Miracles of Newspeak From a news story about an outbreak of HIV at Southern colleges: While all but two of the men infected in the outbreak had sex at least once with another man, they typically did not consider themselves to be gay or bisexual, according to North Carolina's research.I understand why homosexuals insist that just because someone has sex with others of the same sex doesn't mean that they are homosexual. They are insisting that same-sex pedophiles aren't homosexuals, and neither, necessarily, are men who have sex with other men for money. But now, highly promiscuous guys having casual sex with other men, also aren't homosexuals? This damage to the meaning of words like "homosexual" is getting more bizarre by the moment. Next, I suppose, we will learn that everyone who has AIDS is, by definition, not a homosexual. Canadian Government: One That Makes Me Appreciate The Intelligence of Ours No, I'm not making fun of their gun registration program originally budgeted at two million Canadian dollars, now reaching two billion Canadian dollars--and most of the guns aren't registered yet. It is this little farce: Canada said on Tuesday it was looking at ways to cool down four trouble-plagued submarines it bought from Britain after a report revealed temperatures in one craft hit 65 degrees Celsius (149 degrees Fahrenheit) on a patrol. A Rare Glimpse into Freemasonry's Initiation Rites I've seen the claim before that the Freemasony initiation rites include a threat to kill anyone who reveals the "secrets" of the order. It appears that there is some truth to this: NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Masonic initiation ritual ended in tragedy when a man was shot in the head and killed with a gun thought to contain blanks, police said on Tuesday.Fortunately, New York State, where this tragedy took place, has pretty strict laws to make sure that only responsible adults may possess handguns. UPDATE: A Freemason emailed me to tell me that the secret ritual involves a symbolic cutting of the throat--not a gun. (I wonder if someone decided to update it to modern times.) This Freemason site claims that there were no Freemason activities scheduled for that evening. Abstinence Pledges Among Teenagers Reuters is reporting that a study of STDs among teenagers shows that those who took a pledge to wait until marriage for sex had the same rates of STDs as those who did not: PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - U.S. adolescents who pledge not to have sex until they are married have about the same rate of sexually transmitted diseases as other teenagers and they often fail to keep their pledge, according to a study released on Tuesday.That's very discouraging. But then you have to ask: if they are using condoms less, why is their STD rate the same? The study found that pledging did succeed in delaying sex, reducing the number of partners and led to earlier marriages but it did not reduce the rate of sexually transmitted diseases.So perhaps the real problem here isn't that the abstinence movement does no good, but that it needs to include a discussion of, "Just in case you lose your resolve, have a condom available. Don't combine moral failure with STDs and pregnancy." UPDATE: A reader points to another article about the study here that says that 99% of non-pledgers and 88% of pledgers have sex before marriage--and asks if these numbers are plausible. I must confess, when you find that 99% of a population does anything, other than breathing, it makes you wonder how random was this sample? From a Friend in San Francisco I don't know if this was original with him, or if it came from somewhere else, but I got a laugh from it. The friend in question is very cosmopolitan, definitely not religious, and the sort of person who I would have expected to find the whole gay marriage thing very cool: A scene at City Hall in San Francisco A New Fraud I just received this email: Dear Wells Fargo valued customer!The link, however, doesn't take you to www.wellsfargo.com/verify, but http://68.104.255.61:82/verify/ instead. I don't have a Wells Fargo Bank account, but if I did, I might have been taken in. Watch out! UPDATE: A reader reports: I've gotten messages like that twice - one purporting to be from Ebay and one from Paypal (I don't have accounts with either). They both use that IP address, which by the way is someplace in Shanghai. Tuesday, March 09, 2004
The ACLU Needs To Change Its Name From National Review: The ACLU is defending those who abuse children while attacking those who give them moral guidance. This contrast reveals the priorities of today's ACLU.This is rather the same argument for why Paladin Press was held responsible for a murder committed by someone who read Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, and put it to work. I expressed my concerns about where such lawsuits could lead here, but I was also very clear: Here's a simple rule: if a book promotes the abuse of others, no responsible person should be part of publishing, selling, or distributing that work.The ACLU, of course, in their craziness, decided to support the right of Paladin Press to publish a "how-to" book for contract killers, and is doing likewise in defending NAMBLA's right to encourage the molestation of children. One of these days, I am going to meet an ACLU member, face to face, and I am going to ask him or her to sign a contract in which they give up the right to sue by themselves, their estate, friends, and family members, for a book that I will write and have published titled, Torturing to Death ACLU Members for Fun and Profit. We'll see how serious they are about freedom of the press. If they decline to do so, I'll organize picketing of their home for several months by people carrying signs calling him or her a supporter of child molestation. That should teach them! Labels: child sexual abuse Hatch's Federal Marriage Amendment Proposal Professor Volokh examines Senator Hatch's alternative Federal Marriage Amendment, and makes some very good points about ways in which it might be misinterpreted by the courts: The more I think about it, the more I dislike the first sentence of the Hatch FMA draft, even while I generally support the second. The draft reads:Professor Volokh points to a number of other pitfalls on this language.Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or its benefits be extended to any union other than that of a man and a woman. It is very important to think in these terms because after all, why is this amendment even required? Because of willful misinterpretation of the existing Constitution by judges on this subject. I hope someone who matters gets Volokh's concerns expressed to Senator Hatch, before he puts this one in the hopper. Achille Lauro Hijacker Dies in U.S. Custody of Natural Causes From AP: That's certainly more than he deserved. I really hate terrorists (which makes me some sort of a bigot, I think, by current academic standards--after all terorrists comes in all types), but even by the "standards" of terrorists, shooting an old man in a wheelchair and shoving him over the side of a ship is extraordinarily cowardly. Oh, yes, we perhaps weren't supposed to be holding him in custody: When Abbas was captured, the Palestinian Authority demanded his release, saying the United States had pledged not to prosecute him as part of a blanket promise not to press charges against Palestinians who acted against Israel before interim peace accords were signed in the 1990s.Well yes, I agree, when the Palestinian Authority, headed by Yasser Arafat, appeals to the United States to follow the rule of law, with the wonderful moral example that they have provided, we have a clear obligation to listen to their request for us to jump, and then say, "How high?" I'm Glad To Be In Company With Thomas Sowell I've gotten a lot of flak lately for my satirical entry about getting married to someone near and dear to me, and for suggesting that the arguments for gay marriage based on analogy with miscegenation statutes are misleading. But Thomas Sowell, the well-known libertarian economist, has weighed in on not only the absurdity of public officials breaking the law to perform gay marriages, but also the underlying question about gay marriage: Love affairs are personal relations. Marriage is a legal relation. To say that government should not get involved in legal relations is to say that government has no business governing. This Also Sounds Like It Came From Scrappleface, But It Didn't From Reuters: OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - An Oklahoma woman shot her husband to death during a fight after the couple watched a daytime TV talk show on how to survive domestic violence, officials say.Yeah, don't call him violent! He'll pull a gun on you to show that's not true! New Jersey Files Suit Again Nissan; Failed To Warn Customers About Thieves Wanting Their Headlights No, this isn't from Scrappleface, although it reads like it should be: NEWARK, N.J. - New Jersey authorities sued Nissan North America Inc. on Monday, alleging the automaker failed to warn customers that the super-bright headlights on its Maximas were hot targets for thieves.What next? Who will New Jersey sue for failing to warn tourists that they need to watch their wallets and purses when visiting Newark? California Legislators Propose Lowering Voting Age To 14 Everytime I say that things couldn't get any crazier in the unlocked ward, I see something like this: A proposed amendment to California's constitution would give 16-year-olds a half-vote and 14-year-olds a quarter-vote in state elections.Better informed than their predecessors? Sorry, but that just doesn't fly. I haven't seen an enormous difference in knowledge level between the kids here in Boise and the ones in California (with whatever advantage there is going to the kids here in Boise), and my son tells me that a big chunk of his 10th grade geography class was unable to find Israel on a map. I have seen example after example both at Boise State and Sonoma State University (where my wife and I received our BA and MA degrees a few years ago) that showed that large numbers of kids were getting out of high school with educations grossly inferior to what we received in the 1970s. Even if you accept the bogus claim of "better informed than their predecessors," there are problems of maturity as well. There is nothing quite as amusingly arrogant as a 14 year old's knowledge of the world. This is not a new problem. Mark Twain is responsible for that most powerful indictment of the immaturity of youth: When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years.At 14, 15, 16, lots of kids have stopped listening to their parents--but often are listening to their teachers. Can anyone figure out why Democrats would want 14 year olds, who spend six hours a day being indoctrinated by the teaching wing of the Democratic Party, to vote? Also, 1/4 vote for 14 year olds, and 1/2 vote for 16 year olds? What's with that? What happened to equal protection of the law? What happened to "one man, one vote" from Baker v. Carr (1962)? Is the rationale that 14 and 16 year olds are 1/4 and 1/2 as informed as adults? By that reasoning, my vote deserves about twenty times the weight of the average voter. Is it because 14 and 16 year olds are 1/4 or 1/2 the economic influence? By that reasoning, Bill Gates gets more votes than all of California combined. This is just madness (also known as mainstream California political philosophy). The voting age is arbitrary. I think you could make a legitimate argument for setting it at 17, 18, 19, maybe even 21. There is nothing magic about any of these numbers. The real test of whether Vasconellos and fellow liberals believe that 14 year olds are really that responsible and informed, however, is when they propose to lower the age for all adult activities to 14: handgun purchases; trial as adults; potentially facing the death penalty for their actions; ability to make contracts. I am not surprised that Vasconellos is behind this. This is the legislator who thought that California needed a self-esteem commission, some years ago. From that has fallen the delusion of self-esteem education, in which school kids are told that they are "special" and to feel good about themselves--instead of schools teaching them to actually become competent at something--which would actually make them feel good about themselves. Self-esteem programs are so transparently phony that I am not surprised that they don't work. A few years back, I spoke before a California legislative committee of which Vasconellos was the chair. At one point, Vasconellos argued that concealed weapon permits in California really aren't that hard to get. It was all that I could do not to start laughing at him. That conversation left me with one of two possible conclusions: he's a raving idiot, or he is hopelessly dishonest. When Rights Collide A few days back, I pointed out that when you find two rights guaranteed by the Constitution in collision, it is usually a sign that the government has gotten just a little enthused about being active. One example was when the California Supreme Court decided that freedom of religion was less important than forcing all employers to provide contraception. No one can seriously argue that forcing the Catholic Church (which opposes nearly all methods of contraception) to provide contraceptive prescription does not impinge on their freedom of religion. It would be like requiring all employers in California to pay for meat for this employees. PETA, half a dozen vegan advocacy groups, and some religious organizations, would be genuinely upset that they were being forced to pay for something with which they disagree. I gave the example also of Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), where freedom of religion (the desire of Amish to not send their kids to grades above eight) conflicted with Wisconsin's mandatory school attendance law. The Supreme Court started us down a foolish path with that decision, exempting the Amish from a law that applied to everyone else--and thus putting freedom of religion in conflict with equal protection fo the law. The Amish were given a right that others from Wisconsin did not enjoy. The newest example of overreaching government, demonstrated by rights in conflict, is the case that the Supreme Court has decided not to hear: the Boy Scouts have been excluded from a Connecticut employee charity fundraising campaign. What are the rights in conflict here? Does a private organization have a right to freedom of association and to free speech? Yes, as the Supreme Court ruled four years ago. Boy Scouts of America may exclude homosexuals in hiring, and may express their belief that homosexuality is wrong. Connecticut decided that they would not allow non-profits that discriminated against homosexuals to participate in the employee charity fundraising campaign. By so doing, Connecticut decided that Boy Scouts of America does not have the right to participate on an equal basis with other non-profits. Connecticut has thereby discriminated against Boy Scouts of America because they are exercising their right of freedom of association: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, located in New York City, acknowledged that Connecticut's law has a "foreseeably adverse impact" on the ability of groups such as the Boy Scouts to express their views about homosexuality.Rights are in conflict--and unsurprisingly, anti-discrimination laws protecting homosexuals take precedence over freedom of association and free speech. This isn't just my cranky idea. The Supreme Court said that in Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale (2000): As the definition of "public accommodation" has expanded from clearly commercial entities, such as restaurants, bars, and hotels, to membership organizations such as the Boy Scouts, the potential for conflict between state public accommodations laws and the First Amendment rights of organizations has increased.Here, however, we confront a difficult problem: at least two rights in this conflict are Constitutionally protected: freedom of speech, and freedom of association. Freedom of speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Freedom of association is a bit more indirect, but as the Supreme Court observed in NAACP v. Alabama (1958): It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the "liberty" assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech.What is the right that is in conflict? The right of homosexuals to not be discriminated against by the Boy Scouts of America. And where in the Constitution is that right found? Connecticut has passed a statute to that effect, and somehow, federal judges will find some way (eventually) to rule that "equal protection" mandates that every state must have such statutes. But why does this merely implied right take precedence over the freedom of speech right that is boldly and explicitly in the text? I've written before about my concern that imposing acceptance and equality for homosexuality is fast destroying the rest of our freedoms. In this case, the freedoms that are being lost are freedom of speech, freedom of association, and equal protection of the laws. Are these really less important than anti-discrimination laws? Monday, March 08, 2004
A Better Federal Marriage Amendment A number of law professors have expressed concern that the language of the Federal Marriage Amendment goes too far--that it would prohibit state legislatures from recognizing marriage. I disagree, but not too strongly. The language is less than clear, and it seems clear to me that if any state wants to recognize gay marriage--that is to say, if the voters or their elected representatives decide that, after careful thought (or as careful as voters and legislators are capable of performing), that would be fine with me. If the point is reached where a majority of a state wants gay marriage, they'll probably legalize polygamy, bestiality, and then combine them into polygamous bestiality. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), it seems, is introducing an alternative to the Federal Marriage Amendment that resolves the problem of federalism: "Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or its benefits be extended to any union other than that of a man and a woman."The people or the legislature could still allow gay marriage. Even judges could impose gay marriage based on a state constitution (as happened in Massachusetts). But no judge could misconstrue the U.S. Constitution to require either federal or state governments to recognize or offer gay marriage. UPDATE: Click here to find out that the pro-gay marriage crowd has no sense of humor--or perhaps I am not very good at making humor obvious enough in this medium. A Gay Journalist On Gay Marriage From the New York Times (registration required): Last week, my boyfriend's best friend, a lesbian, told him she was taking her girlfriend to go tie the knot in San Francisco the first week in April. She wanted him to be there, absolutely. He got all worked up about it, but not the way you might think.I've long suspected that groups like Lambda were doing a PR job for the more average homosexuals. Thanks to the reader who pointed this to me, but didn't want his name used. (It makes me feel like an "outlaw" to have people give me anonymous tips!) For those who wonder why this website sometimes seems like Homophobia Central, let me clear up some confusion for you: 1. I am not doing this to get more hits on my blog. I have almost certainly damaged by ability to get links from better known bloggers by not toeing the blogospheric party line on homosexuality. 2. I grew up in Southern California, and I was pretty liberal about homosexuality, until I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and saw the influence of homosexuality on the culture up close and personal. The Bay Area's depravity is more than just that influence, but that is certainly part of what makes the place so disturbing. 3. I had said almost nothing in a public forum about homosexuality for many years. I stopped partly because I grew tired of the death threats, obscene phone calls to my children, and the rest of what I have learned is pretty common homosexual behavior. I've written about a number of controversial issues, and none of them have ever caused this kind of reaction. Obviously, many homosexuals are prepared to engage in civilized discussions, and I often exchange emails in ways that are productive and thought-provoking. But why is that when I have written about the evil of affirmative action, or totalitarianism, or gun prohibition, I don't get death threats, threats to engage in obscene demonstrations in front of my house, and obscene phone calls to my home? 4. Shortly after I was invited onto Volokh Conspiracy, homosexual activists brought up things I had written in Internet newsgroups in the early 1990s--and shortly thereafter, I was too hot for the Volokh Conspiracy. This was something of a turning point; it mad me realize the enormous hazard to free speech that homosexuals represent, as evidenced by their inability to hear ideas that they don't like. Is This A Normal Disclaimer On A Government Web Page? At the bottom of the California Department of Motor Vehicles website: The content found herein may not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Schwarzenegger Administration.Who's in charge of California government, if this is true? If I Were Writing a Vicious Satire of the European Welfare State... I might write something like this, but it would be too ridiculous to believe that anyone would be gutsy enough to file such a suit. At least the court didn't buy his argument: BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court rejected a legal bid on Friday by an unemployed man who wanted the state to provide him with free pornography and trips to brothels because his wife is in Thailand. Most Common Musical Hallucinations You were thinking about this, weren't you? Everyone occasionally has a catchy tune they just can't seem to get out of their heads but in a musical hallucination the song is heard as if it were really being played.So what explains the other common musical hallucinations? The tunes ranged from "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" to "Yes, We have No Bananas" but just over half heard some sort of religious music, either hymns or Christmas carols. Please Tell Me This is Satire To say that a cloud of suspicion fell on her parents is an understatement. And now her father plans to run for Michigan state legislature? LANSING - John Ramsey, father of slain child pageant star JonBenet, is seriously considering a run for the Michigan House of Representatives. Use of 9/11 in Bush Ad I understand a lot of Democrats are upset about this. The ad was actually pretty subtle--it reminded us that we have been through "tough times" and some of these challenges are new. (Text is here.) I can understand why the Democrats are upset. Reminding people that we live in a dangerous world may cause them to start asking, "Would I rather have George Bush in charge in a dangerous world? Or Hanoi John?" More On Plymouth Probate Inventories One of the interesting aspects of how goods are grouped in these seventeenth century Plymouth probate inventories is how often books and weapons are appraised together as though this were a natural category: Armes wearing Clothes and Lyberary 04 10 00 Things Unseen & Forgotten It sounds like the title of a very literary book, doesn't it? Or a program on National Public Radio. Actually, it's an item in a probate inventory of Samuel Parker, Sr., "deceased the seauenth of Nouember 1684": Item to half a dozen of Napkins 00 03 00Those numbers at the right are the valuation in pounds, shillings, and pence. How do you value items that you haven't seen and that no one remembers? Something of the appraiser's confidence in his work can be deduced from this line totaling the value of the goods: The sume totall if noe Mistake in Cashing up is 133 06 06 The Passion Continues To Surprise Hollywood From AP: LOS ANGELES (AP) - Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" took in $51.4 million in its second weekend to remain the top movie, racing past the $200 million mark in just 12 days.If you want to know why Hollywood is surprised, read Michael Medved's Hollywood vs. America. In that book, Medved (who is Jewish) explains that the entertainment industry is severely out of touch with America. Medved reports that when he would ask movers and shakers in the movie business what percentage of Americans regularly attend church, they would often guess, "Oh, about 5%." It is no surprise that they missed the enormous market potential of a film aimed at a Christian market. Sunday, March 07, 2004
It's Not About Freedom; It's About Power Seattle's mayor has decided to recognize city employee same-sex marriages performed elsewhere for the purpose of benefits. Okay, stupid, possibly illegal but here's the follow-on ordinance he is proposing that reminds us that it is about coercion, not freedom: The ordinance Nickels was to send to the City Council on Monday defines "spouse" as a husband or wife in a same-sex or opposite-sex marriage.UPDATE: A Seattle-area homosexual tells me the ordinance is just an extension of the existing requirement imposed on contractors with respect to domestic partners. Can you imagine what would happen if a city in say, Wyoming, prohibited contractors from offering domestic partners coverage for homosexuals? The courts would step in, call it "simple bigotry" and that would the end of that. UPDATE 2: Someone asks, "Will the Mayor now direct the relevant city departments to recognize CCW's from other jurisdictions/states with the same vehemence that he insists they recognize these "marriages" - fair is fair?" Washington State, you see, does not recognize concealed handgun licenses issued by other states. At least such a policy would involve recognizing lawfully issued licenses, not ones out of a Cracker Jack box. Age of Consent A reader points out that the same crowd (like Justice Ginsburg) that argues that the age of consent for sex should be lowered to 12, based on an assumption that young teens are capable of making rational decisions and resisting pressure from adults, does not usually accept the idea that young teens should be tried as adults for crimes. Why? There needs to be some consistency on this. If you are legally competent to make decisions about sex and abortion, why aren't you legally competent to be tried for murder as an adult? |
