The advertising above is just a source of revenue, and sometimes, I don't know what will appear there.
Unique grips and accessories for your 1911!
Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
Magazines for cheap!
PayPal members: to make a contribution
Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through.
Labels: gun rights Labels: gun rights Labels: humor Labels: humor Labels: deinstitutionalization
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
My nephew Shippy makes very pretty ceramic items. Click here to visit his online studio. Give someone one of these, and you can be sure that they don't already have one!
Click here to find out why the Amazon.com Honor System paybox is no longer here.
RSS feed
Other blogs you may enjoy:
My civilian gun defense use blog
My daughter's blog
Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
A courageous Briton arguing for relaxing Britain's gun control laws
Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
A federal law clerk opines about the law
Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
Music, Politics, Motorcycles
Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
Another conservative.
Neocon Blues
Conservative Oasis
Other Idaho Bloggers
Bubbleheads is a retired submariner
An Idaho State University student. A Democrat. Someday, she'll start paying income taxes and change.
A retired Las Vegas stagehand, of all things.
archives
Search only this site: Click here and enter your search string at the beginning of the search field.
Second Amendment Purists
Over at packing.org, a discussion of the upcoming election led to this comment by a poster, upset about Bush's remarks in the third debate about how he would have signed a renewal of the assault weapon ban--had it ever reached his desk: Bush believes ...government has the right to ban firearms simply because they look too dangerous for commoners to own. He doesn't want my vote.
I read remarks like that, and I find myself suspecting that the poster is actually a Democratic troll. I would expect that in the next few weeks, the Democrats are going to be going to every possible "gun rights" chat room or discussion group, and trying to promote the idea that Bush doesn't deserve the votes of gun rights activists because he doesn't share our view of the Second Amendment.
It is also possible that the poster in question really does believe that anyone that doesn't agree with us 100% deserves no support at all--that it is better to have Bush lose, rather than have a heretic hold the office of President. I have met people like this as well--who become so convinced that you must be 100% in agreement with them, or you are the enemy. This is the sign of a fanatic--the person who thinks that 90% agreement with your principles is just as bad as 0% agreement.
There is a slightly better than even chance right now that we can re-elect a guy who tells the soccer moms what they want to hear--but who lifted not one finger to get the assault weapon ban renewed--or we can elect Kerry and Edwards, who interrupted their campaigning to show up in the Senate, for the first time in many months, to vote for renewing the ban--and who would, if they could, replace it with a far more severe assault weapons ban.
I know that there are pro-gunners who are so focused on purity that they are going to vote for someone other than Bush. And what are they going to say next year, when President Kerry is pushing hard for a new, much tougher assault weapon ban, and gun registration, and support for lawsuits against gun makers again?
"I was pure!"
Great. That and 75 cents will buy you a cup of coffee. This is not a game. We are engaged in a struggle for not only our gun rights, but the survival of Western civilization. I can't tell you what John Kerry will do as commander in chief, because he has given so many conflicting messages, many of which indicate that he will not take this war against Islamofascism seriously. I suspect that some of the "purer than thou" posters are actually anti-gunners trying to lower Bush's vote totals.
Don't buy into this nonsense. Any gun owners who votes for someone other than Bush because he isn't "pure" enough has become a fanatic. If this were a race between Bush and a pro-gun Democrat like Zell Miller (D-GA), I could understand the upset. If this were a race between Bush and a wishy-washy Democrat who supported some sorts of gun control, but not others, I would say that I understood why you weren't letting the gun issue control your decision. This is not such a case. John Kerry is the gun control nut's gun control nut. Allowing him to win is going to put gun owners in a world of hurt in the U.S.--and all Americans at enormous risk from Kerry's "nuanced" approach to the War on Terrorism.
I've been following what Kerry has to say about the War on Terrorism. I read English pretty darn well, and I can't tell for sure what he saying--and much of the time, he seems to be talking out of five different sides of his mouth at once. If native speakers of English can't figure out what Kerry means, what do you suppose the chances are that Osama Bin Laden is going to miscalculate all this doubletalk as a lack of seriousness on this matter?
Hussein's Links To Terrorist Groups Now Proved
The Scotsman (one of British papers) carries an article that you probably won't see in your local rag: SADDAM Hussein’s links to terrorism have been proven by documents showing he helped to fund the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Not bin Laden, but a terrorist group, nonetheless, running around setting off bombs in buses and restaurants, killing non-combatants.
The PFLP, whose history of terrorism dates back to the "black September" hijackings of 1970, was personally vetted by Saddam to receive oil vouchers worth £40 million.
The deal has been uncovered by US investigators, trawling millions of pages of documents showing a network of diplomats bribed by Saddam’s regimes, and political parties who qualified for backhanded payments from Baghdad.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which is still working its way through 20,000 boxes of documents from Saddam’s Baath party discovered only recently, found a list of pressure groups bankrolled by Saddam.
Using the United Nations’ own oil-for-food scheme - ironically intended as a sanction to control the behaviour of his dictatorship - Saddam gave Awad Ammora & Partners, a Syrian company, two million barrels of oil.
Documents handed over to US authorities by a former Iraqi oil minister only four months ago show that this was a front for the PFLP - which was then embarked on a spate of car bombings aimed at Israeli officials.
The Iraqi records show only one six-month period - suggesting the payments could go on for much longer. While some allocations to the likes of Russian political parties were not cashed in, the PFLP oil deal was carried out in full.
If You Emailed Me About University of Alabama and the Slave Burials...
For some reason, the email reply-to address was defective. Try again.
Voting For Bush In Strong Kerry States
I am surprised to find out that John Derbyshire apparently made the same suggestion over at National Review Online about the same time that I did--to prevent the Democrats from whining about a "stolen" election. This blogger tells us that for this reason, he is going to vote Republican for President for the first time after 15 years of being a reliable Libertarian Party vote.
This is not a game. As I pointed out below, I would even vote for a domestic liberal who recognized the importance of winning the war against Islamofascism right now--all the domestic policy matters will pale into insignificance if we don't win this war.
This Guy Thinks Bush Is A Clown--And Plans To Vote For Him
This has to be the most hostile election endorsement that I have ever seen: Recently, I spoke to an audience of college kids. The subject was our president. For 20 minutes or so, I gave them my assessment of George W. Bush, that he is a spoiled rich kid who wasted his youth partying with his frat-boy buddies and then woke up one morning and decided to become president. I pointed out that his domestic policy has been disastrous and his foreign policy idiotic.
For you liberals out there (and I know that a few wander in every once in a while), there are a lot of Americans who regard Bush as a sellout to the liberal end of American politics. I wouldn't go quite that far. He is "triangulating," as Clinton did--moving just far enough left to buy off moderates, and throwing just enough bones to conservatives that we don't all stay home on election day. (I mean, I hope that he is throwing enough bones.)
We came to the question-and- answer session. "So who are you voting for?" one of the students asked.
"Why, George Bush, of course."
The kids were amazed. I was amazed they were amazed. All of my criticisms of Bush were from the right. I believe in small government; Bush believes in big government. John Kerry believes in even bigger government. Ergo, I will vote for Bush.
Where I disagree with this columnist, however, is on the question of foreign policy. I do not think Bush's policy is "idiotic." I think he made a big gamble on Iraq. The game isn't over yet, and I think there is still a good chance that we will win this hand--and eventually cause the Islamofascists to leave the table, having run out of idiots willing to commit suicide.
Even if George Bush were a John Kerry sort of liberal on domestic policy, as much as it would really upset me to do so, I would have no choice but to vote for him. This is not a game. The broadly defined notion of liberal democracy is at stake. If John "terrorism is like prostitution" Kerry gets elected, I don't expect all the gals to be wearing burkhas by the end of his first term, but I do think there is a real risk that within 30-50 years, Western Europe and the United States will have become such authoritarian societies trying to prevent continual terrorist attacks that it will start looking attractive to a lot of people to just give in.
Entertaining Column About Encouraging Slackers To Vote
Catherine Seipp asks: The Other Campaign
I ask that question frequently. Along with the obvious questions, such as, "Why do you want people that haven't been paying attention to make life and death decisions about the future of Western civilization?" she presents some devastating quotes:
Why should we want lazy idiots to vote? "I am not disengaged, I'm worn out," a Michigan State University senior named Traci E. Carpenter wrote in a Newsweek essay explaining why she and her peers are "not necessarily available Nov. 2." Traci had won a contest for college journalists sponsored by Newsweek and MTV's college channel, MTVU. MTV also sponsors the Choose or Lose youth-vote campaign; thus the topic of the winning essay.
My son is 16, and tells me that MTV (I thought I blocked that sewer opening--maybe he's watching it at a friend's house) is still running "Rock the Vote" ads that imply that Bush is going to start the draft up again. They don't come right out and say that--but as he describes it, "They are so obviously biased in favor of Kerry."
"Sometimes I feel that no matter how I vote, there will still be war, crime and poverty," Traci continued in what read like a dead-on parody of adolescent cluelessness and self-absorption, except she wasn't kidding. "And I have other things on my mind. I am worried about skin cancer, drunken drivers, eating disorders . . ."
I saw the dimmest minds of Traci Carpenter's generation, destroyed by watching too much MTV, nodding their heads and thinking: "Dude, like, I know! They tell us to vote, but when we do, it still doesn't stop war and skin cancer and eating disorders. That's so totally harsh!"
Oh yes, one more funny line to assist all of you that are trying to diet, or rein in out of control sex drives: Speaking of bribery and condescension, Michael Moore is now touring the country offering first-time voters joke prizes like ramen noodles or clean underwear in exchange for promising to make it to the polls. "Underwear" and "Michael Moore" are two concepts I'd hoped never to have to consider in the same sentence, but life is full of disappointments, as winners of youth-vote essay contests haven't quite realized yet.
Revolutionaries With Chutzpah
From the book I am working on.
First of all, many Bostonians had left town in the weeks before Lexington, as it became increasingly apparent that war was coming.[29] Ammunition, military stores, muskets, and even publicly owned cannon “were carried secretly out of Boston.”[30] The quantities involved seemed to have been quite large; Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie’s diary describes one amusing example:A Country man was Stopped at the Lines, going out of town with 19,000 ball Cartridges, which were taken from him. When liberated, he had the insolence to go to Head quarters to demand the redelivery of them. When asked who they were for, he said they were for his own use; and on being refused them, he said he could not help it, but they were the last parcel of a large quantity which he had carried out at different times. Great numbers of Arms have been carried out of town during the Winter; and if more strict search had been made at the Lines, many of them, and much Ammunition might have been seized.[31]
29 Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, 54-55.
30 Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, 15. See Frederick Mackenzie, Allen French, ed., A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926), 31-33, 39-40, for accounts of gun smuggling out of Boston, and soldiers court-martialed and convicted for selling guns and gunlocks “to the Country people.”
31 Mackenzie, British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston, 42.
One Missing Word Makes All The Difference
I was at the mall, buying a watch battery, and I noticed an enormous Ford F-350 crew cab pickup in the middle of the first floor, attempting to lure potential buyers. (As if having its own gravity well wasn't enough to suck people close.) I noticed the window sticker, in the section reserved for EPA mileage numbers, contained only these words: THIS VEHICLE DOES NOT NEED FUEL ECONOMY
I'm pretty sure that the word missing at the end of that sentence was, "ESTIMATES." But hey, maybe it's one of those vehicles that runs on water, or that model can only be sold to government agencies.
Kerry's Position on Same-Sex Marriage
Instapundit makes the claim that Kerry and Bush hold the same position on same-sex marriage, and trusts Kerry's statement to be the proof of this: The president and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do. Same position.
Nope. Kerry now claims to oppose same-sex marriage (same as Bush), but opposes a constitutional amendment to prohibit judges from imposing same-sex marriage on the states (not the same as Bush). Opposing same-sex marriage--but allowing judges to require states to perform it--is like claiming to oppose abortion, knowing that judges can strike down state laws against it. It doesn't fool anyone who is paying attention.
Of course, a few years ago, Kerry took a very different position, one consistent with the Democratic Party orthodoxy: Echoing the ignorance and bigotry that peppered the discussion of interracial marriage a generation ago, the proponents of DOMA call for a caste system for marriage. I will not be party to that. As Martin Luther King Jr. explained 30 years ago, “Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married.” This is the essence of the American pursuit of happiness and the core of the struggle for equality.
Why has Kerry changed his mind? (If he has changed his mind at all, instead of just lying, as he does about almost everything in his blind lust for the Presidency.) Because Kerry knows that supporting same-sex marriage would be a lethal blow to his campaign--especially among black Americans, who tend to be quite a bit more conservative on social policy than the Democratic Party activists.
Instapundit isn't stupid. So why is he pretending that there's no difference between Kerry and Bush on this matter? That's a good question to ask him.
I Wish There Was Language That I Could Use To Describe This...
But I don't use language that coarse. You'll have to just imagine my reaction: If Osama bin Laden ever buys a rap album, he'll probably start with a CD by KRS-One.
Imagine what the media reaction would be if some musician explained that "lynching happens to them, not us" or gay bashing "happens to [offensive term deleted], not us" or any of a number of similar scenarios.
The hip-hop anarchist has declared his solidarity with al-Qaida by asserting that he and other African-Americans "cheered when 9-11 happened," reports the New York Daily News.
...
"I say that proudly," the Boogie Down Productions founder went on, insisting that, before the attack, security guards kept Blacks out of the World Trade Center "because of the way we talk and dress.
"So when the planes hit the building, we were like, 'Mmmm - justice.' "
The atrocity of 9-11 "doesn't affect us the hip-hop community," he said. "9-11 happened to them, not us," he added, explaining that by "them" he meant "the rich ... those who are oppressing us. RCA or BMG, Universal, the radio stations."
Parker also sneered at efforts by other rappers to get young people to vote.
"Voting in a corrupt society adds more corruption," he added. "America has to commit suicide if the world is to be a better place."
Reasons To Vote--Even In States Where The Contest Is Already Decided
If you are going to vote for Kerry, please don't read this message.
There is a pretty widespread conventional wisdom that if you live in a state where the presidential race isn't even close--say, Idaho, or Utah for Bush, or New York or Massachusetts for Kerry--that it doesn't much matter which presidential candidate gets your vote. Libertarians argue that if you live in a state where one candidate is going to win anyway, you can safely vote for the LP candidate, or Ralph Nader, and it won't really matter. The state's electoral votes are going for Bush or Kerry anyway, so a few thousand--or even tens of thousands of third party votes won't affect the outcome.
With respect to the electoral vote, which determines who wins, this is true. If 50,000 Bush voters here in Idaho left that box blank, Idaho would still cast its electoral votes for Bush. But there is another issue here. It seems almost certain that unless Bush surprises everyone, and pulls an enormous upset on Kerry, there are going to be lawsuits in multiple states challenging the results. If Bush wins the electoral vote--but loses the popular vote (very likely, consdering the massive fraud that Democrats seem to be planning in places like Milwaukee), the left will spend the next four years whining about it.
What this means is that we need every possible Bush vote, even in "safe" states. I do not want to hear Democrats screeching endlessly about the evils of the electoral college, and how Kerry "really" won the election. Tell your friends: we need a clear popular vote victory next month.
The Question of Executing 16 and 17 Year Olds
I mentioned a few days ago that I find the distinction of not executing minors a plausible one. I still am not comfortable with it (or any form of capital punishment), but here is a powerful, graphic, and unpleasant brief by the Alabama Solicitor General submitted to the Supreme Court on this question.
This blogger writes how it changed his position on this question. (Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy made me read it.) The point of the brief is that there are 16 and 17 year olds who are behaving like adults: carefully planned, premeditated crimes of shocking cruelty, with carefully structured coverups. These are not kids who lost their temper and punched someone out, or pulled out a gun that they were carrying for style purposes, and shot someone. These are really, really evil teenagers. If there is an argument for the death penalty based on accountability and ability to understand the consequences of one's actions, these kids meet those requirements.
I'm not sure that it changes my position, exactly. I'm still not comfortable with the death penalty. I also think that while there are legitimate distinctions between minors and adults, and states might conceivably cross the line into Constitutionally inpermissible actions by erasing some of those distinctions, at which point the courts should intervene, I have yet to see a strong case presented for that intervention on this question.
As an originalist, the proper question is: "What was the minimum age of accountability that could lead to the death penalty in 1791 (for federal executions) and in 1868 (for state executions)?" If so, that might be a valid basis for finding such a minimum execution age today.
Was there a single fixed age of accountability at the time? If so, you could argue that using a similar single fixed age would be appropriate today.
I do encourage all good little liberals to read the brief, however, so that they can stop living in fantasy land about teenagers that commit murder.
Interesting Online Primary Source Collection
Library of Western Fur Trade Historical Source Documents
Diaries, Narratives, and Letters of the Mountain Men
Surprisingly, not of much relevance to what I am currently doing, but someone researching this topic might find it very useful.
A Side Of The Story That You Won't See On The Evening News
Iraqis expressing their gratitude about the overthrow of Hussein.
I don't know who is funding this group, but the money is well-spent.
How Horrifying: Justice Thomas Believes That Following Wrong Precedents Is Wrong
How Appealling links to an article that tells us the dirty little secret about Justice Thomas. No, it doesn't involve pubic hair, porno films, or sexual harassment, but this even more shocking detail: Specifically, Scalia told Foskett that Thomas "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period." Clarifying his remark, Scalia added that "if a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let's get it right. I wouldn't do that."
The rest of the article explains stare decisis, and why Thomas is a rebel, where Scalia is not. The article also makes the case for why stare decisis makes sense. I will agree that, all other issues being the same, stare decisis is a good idea: it prevents sudden and unpredictable changes in the law. Who wants to live in a society where every few weeks, judges come up with new rules for contracts, for police searches of vehicles, and the ten thousand other matters where law impacts our lives?
But here's the phrase that matters in that sentence: all other issues being the same. If there is nothing clearly wrong about the existing precedents, I can see a good argument for stare decisis. There are a great many matters of law where both sides have evidence to defend their position. A good example is the question of what that phrase "probable cause" means in the Fourth Amendment. A liberal and a conservative could have a pretty serious discussion about this, come to different conclusions, and except at the very extremes, there might not be any clear point where one of them was wrong and the other right. The text of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are sufficiently imprecise that their meaning can only be teased out by a lot of historical research--and even then, the results are less clear-cut than I would like.
But there are other precedents that were just plain wrongly decided. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was wrongly decided in more ways than I have time to list. I don't mean that I disagree with the result (I do), but that justices on the Court took a position with respect to the right to make contracts and laissez-faire exactly opposite to their position in other cases, where the question of race was not involved. Eventually, the Supreme Court struck down Plessy, but it took decades to do so, at great cost to the rights of black Americans, rather than admit that Plessy was wrongly decided.
I would also make one other observation: stare decisis doesn't really mean that the courts following existing precedents in a long steady chain. It really means that each precedent twists the meaning of an early precedent just a little. As an example, look into the history of state supreme court decisions concerning the right to keep and bear arms. My book For the Defense of Themselves and the State (Praeger Press, 1994) shows that nearly all the antebellum precedents found that the right to keep and bear arms (under both state and federal constitutions) guaranteed a right to carry deadly weapons, including pistols. Yet by the twentieth century, a surprising number of those state supreme courts, pretending to following stare decisis, had turned that right into a privilege, available (if at all) at the whim of a sheriff or judge.
I can't ever find a case where a judge acknowledged that they were breaking with an existing precedent (except when relying on a revised constitutional provision), and yet the effect was the same: many states where open carry of pistols had been constitutionally guaranteed in 1830, had effectively banned it by 1950. My favorite example of this judicial game-playing is Aymette v. State (Tenn. 1840), where an earlier decision's finding about the right to keep and bear arms, in Simpson v. State (Tenn. 1833), is dismissed as mere dictum.
Now, I can see why the author of this gasping-with-shock article feels the way he does. He "is executive director of Community Rights Counsel, a public interest law firm." You see, a lot of the precedents right now have been constructed for the benefit of public interest law firms and the leftist causes that they represent. Any careful, original intent examination of the Constitution by a "rebel" like Justice Thomas would be setting a dynamite charge under the current, largely leftist legal structure.
Maybe it's time for some rebellion--time to start asking how our current system ended up so at variance with the intent of the framers of the Constitution.
I'm Really Sorry This Happened To Her...
But since she was appointed by Clinton, I can only hope that the humorous saying, "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged" applies when she gets back to the bench: "Federal judge is carjacked at gunpoint in Hyde Park": The Chicago Tribune today contains an article that begins, "A federal appeals judge was carjacked at gunpoint Friday night in the alley behind her Hyde Park home, Chicago police and the U.S. Marshals Service said Saturday. Ann Williams, 55, had just gotten out of her 2002 Toyota Camry in the 5400 block of South Cornell Avenue when three men, one carrying a shotgun, approached, pointed a gun at her and demanded money and her keys, which she gave them, said police spokeswoman JoAnn Taylor."
Please Recommend Online Photo Printing Services
I have some digital pictures that need to be printed as 8x10 glossies. I could do it at home, but I suspect that it isn't anymore expensive to have a professional service do it. I'll recap everyone's recommendations here.
When I Get Home, I'm Getting Out The Earplug Attachment for My Cell Phone
There have been previous studies that have been worrisome on this, but this study sounds a bit more solid on sample size--and it found the same type of cancer: People who have used cell phones for at least 10 years might have an increased risk of developing a rare brain tumor, according to a study published Wednesday in the international journal Epidemiology.
I think I will also run out and buy earplugs for my wife and son, because they are also regular cellphone users.
A team of researchers at Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, found almost a fourfold increase of the tumors, known as acoustic neuromas, on the side of the head where the phone was most often held.
The work was done as part of the World Health Organization's cell phone research agenda, and experts in the field said it must be taken seriously and is likely to rekindle consumer worries about the risks of using the phones.
...
The study, involving 150 acoustic neuroma patients and 600 healthy people, is one of at least six studies of possible links between cell phone use and acoustic neuromas. Most of those studies had fewer long-term users than the Karolinska study.
Acoustic neuromas are slow-growing noncancerous tumors that develop on a nerve linking the brain and the inner ear. The most common first symptom is hearing loss, but as the tumor grows it can push against brain tissue. If not treated, it can be life threatening. Such tumors are very rare, occurring in about one person per 100,000 in the general population.
...
To conduct the three-year study, the Karolinska researchers interviewed people who had developed the tumors -- asking about their cell phone use, how many different phones they had used, the makes and models, duration of calls, whether they used a hands-free set and on which side of the head they held the phone.
Researchers said they found no association between the tumors and the amount of use measured in hours or cumulative number of calls, but rather on the length of time those in the study had been regular users of cell phones. Regular use was defined as an average of at least once a week during six months or more.
Ahlbom said in a phone interview that the data are strong and statistically significant, but the findings must be confirmed by follow-up studies. He said the mechanism by which cell-phone radiation might cause tumors remains unknown.
...
Sam Milham of Olympia, Wash., an epidemiologist and pioneer in studying the effects of electromagnetic radiation on humans, said it usually takes 20 years or more for solid tumors to develop.
"I'm actually astonished that they found anything like this early," Milham said. "If that energy can do that to normal nerve tissue cells, what can it do to adjacent brain cells? I think it's the tip of a big iceberg, and the peak could be at 25 years past exposure.
"What's really alarming is that in the last five years an enormous number of people started using cell phones, including kids, so I think this is just the beginning of it. I hope I'm wrong."
Those earplugs have two substantial advantages: they are less distracting when you are driving than holding the entire phone to your head; the emitted energy isn't up to your head. I would still worry about that affecting other body parts, but by moving the phone to different locations (in your shirt pocket, on your belt, perhaps sitting in the console of your car), you are spreading the risk around. And maybe there just needs to be a little less cellphone use.
Oh Dear, A New Sexual Minority Has Appeared
But it is rather difficult to find much basis for demonstrations or lawsuits, since this sexual minority, to my knowledge, is not a victim of our current laws, and doesn't hold parades where they make fools of themselves: LONDON, England (CNN) -- About one percent of adults have absolutely no interest in sex, according to a new study, and that distinction is becoming one of pride among many asexuals.
Note that this isn't the same as those who are celibate. There are a lot of people who are celibate for religious reasons, severe social problems, really bad breath, etc. but still have sexual desires.
The new study was conducted by Anthony Bogaert, a psychologist and human sexuality expert at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario.
It was published in the latest issue of The Journal of Sex Research and is the focus of a report in this Saturday's issue of New Scientist.
Bogaert's analysis looked at responses to another study in Britain, published in 1994. That study was based on interviews of 18,000 people about their sexual practices.
It offered respondent a list of options. One read: "I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all." One percent said they agreed with the statement.
That response level is close to the percentage of gay people in the population, which is around three percent, the New Scientist report says.
In spite of having no real basis to feel victimized, this does not prevent there being an asexual pride movement: Activists have already started campaigning to promote awareness and acceptance of asexuality, it reports.
Acceptance? Maybe I've missed something here, but I wasn't aware that asexuals had any barriers to break down. Or is just that a society that soaks everything in sexuality can't imagine a person for whom sex isn't the central focus of one's life?
The Asexual Visibility and Education Network has an online store that sell items promoting awareness and acceptance on asexuality.
Among the items is a T-shirt with the slogan, "Asexuality: it's not just for amoebas anymore."
Devastating Column By Charles Krauthammer About Bin Laden's Choice
Krauthammer points out that repeatedly now, al-Qaeda has staged operations to influence elections, and there is no question who al-Qaeda wants to win this election: Last month, terrorists set off a car bomb outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, in the middle of a neck-and-neck Australian election campaign and just three days before the only televised debate between the two candidates. The prime minister, John Howard, is a staunch U.S. ally in both Afghanistan and Iraq. His opponent, Mark Latham, has pledged to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas.
Make no mistake about it. Even if Kerry had made a consistent set of speeches in defense of the general Bush strategy--while arguing against how Bush has fought the war--bin Laden would want Bush to lose, just to make it expensive for Bush to have shown the leadership of invading Iraq.
The terrorists may be medieval primitives, but they know about cell phones and the Internet and fuel-laden commercial airliners. They also know about elections. Their obvious objective is to drive from power those governments most deeply involved in the war against them -- in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else. The point is not only to radically alter an enemy nation's foreign policy -- as in Spain -- but to deter any other government contemplating similar support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
But Spain and Australia -- Britain, with Tony Blair up for reelection next year, will surely be next -- are merely supporting actors. The real prize is America. An electoral repudiation of President Bush would be seen by the world as a repudiation of Bush's foreign policy, specifically his aggressive, preemptive and often unilateral prosecution of the war on terrorism, most especially Iraq. It would be a correct interpretation because John Kerry has made clear that he is fighting this election on precisely those grounds.
...
The point, of course, is that the terrorists have no particular interest in Kerry. What they care about is Bush. He could be running against a moose, and bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi would be for the moose.
How to elect the moose? A second direct attack on the United States would backfire. As Sept. 11 showed, attacking the U.S. homeland would prompt a rallying around the president, whoever he is. America is not Spain. Such an attack would probably result in a Bush landslide.
It is still prudent to be on high alert at home, because it is not wise to bank on the political sophistication of the enemy. The enemy is nonetheless far more likely to understand that the way to bring down Bush is not by attack at home but by debilitating guerrilla war abroad, namely in Iraq. Hence the escalation of bloodshed by Zarqawi and Co. It is not just aimed at intimidating Iraqis and preventing the Iraqi election. It is aimed at demoralizing Americans and affecting the American election.
What A Shocker...The First Amendment Still Somewhat Applies to Political Speech
Some television stations are going to run a news program about one of the candidates that is very, very uncomplimentary, and members of the candidate's party have asked the FCC to step and engage in censorship. Not surprisingly, the party of censorship are the Democrats: WASHINGTON (AP) The Federal Communications Commission won't intervene to stop a broadcast company's plans to air a critical documentary about John Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities on dozens of TV stations, the agency's chairman said Thursday.
That the Democrats are concerned about political misuse of the public airwaves is hysterically funny. I guess they don't ever turn on CBS ("1973 Air National Guard memos produced on Microsoft Word"), ABC, NBC, or CNN.
''Don't look to us to block the airing of a program,'' Michael Powell told reporters. ''I don't know of any precedent in which the commission could do that.''
Eighteen senators, all Democrats, wrote to Powell this week and asked him to investigate Sinclair Broadcast Group's plan to run the program, ''Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,'' two weeks before the Nov. 2 election.
Powell said there are no federal rules that would allow the agency to prevent the program. ''I think that would be an absolute disservice to the First Amendment and I think it would be unconstitutional if we attempted to do so,'' he said.
I will never take a Democrat seriously again when they talk about the importance of free speech. They don't believe in it, except to the extent that it promotes the degradation of women and the sexualization of children. If it involves political speech, they want the modern equivalent of the Sedition Act. Actually, that's not quite fair: the Sedition Act only punished speech after it happened--it did not provide for prior restraint.
368 Economists Against Kerry's Policies
I've never been a big fan of the "400 historians against" or "300 economists in favor" approach to politics--it reminds me of when the Nazis persuaded 100 prominent German physicists to deny the validity of "Jewish physics." As Einstein observed, if relativity was wrong, it would only take one physicist to demonstrate it.
There is a point, however, where it is interesting that 368 economists, including six Nobel laureates, have taken the position that Kerry's tax policies would be bad for our economy. If they are speaking in their area of expertise, then Kerry is either ignorant, or just pandering.
Great Column About Kerry's Lies
What's really sad is that he is telling lies that are so transparent--and so purposeless: There's not much Kerry can do about his 20-year anti-gun voting record. (Just last year, he supported a Ted Kennedy measure to tax ammunition.) And the National Rifle Association is already running ads showing that despite his windy rhetoric, in reality he is about as pro-Second Amendment as he is pro-life.
So when it comes to courting all those blue-collar outdoorspersons — those "regular folks," as he calls them — Kerry works the margins. All year he's been giving interviews that are, well, Kerry-esque, in their nuanced recollections of his days as a nimrod in the deep woods of Massachusetts.
...
"I track and move and decoy and play games and try to outsmart them."
He was presumably referring to deer, not voters. But Kerry, a "former law-enforcement person," as he is also wont to describe himself, seems to have forgotten that the use of decoys is forbidden under Massachusetts law. Just using a decoy deer can mean a fine of up to $100, 30 days in jail, and/or loss of hunting license.
In the current issue of Field & Stream, the outdoorsperson was asked about the biggest deer he'd ever killed — er, harvested.
"Probably an 8-pointer," Kerry replied, "something like that. Nothing terribly big." Actually, an 8-pointer would be a rather large kill to most hunters — the kill of a lifetime in fact.
But Bwana John wasn't done. "I once had an incredible encounter with the most enormous buck — I don't know, 16 points or something. It was just huge. And I failed to pull the trigger at the right moment. I was hunting down in Massachusetts, on the Cape."
The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife doesn't keep such statistics, but an open invitation on the radio for calls from Cape hunters turned up no one who had ever glimpsed such a 16-pointer in Barnstable County.
...
Then there's marathon running. Kerry claims to have once run the Boston Marathon. This is proving as hard to verify as the 1968 Christmas in Cambodia that he said "seared, seared into my memory." So far, he has told more versions of his Marathon run than Rosie Ruiz:
ESPN last July: "I ran a marathon back in '80, something like that. Did the Boston Marathon."
Runner's World, November issue: "Ran the Boston Marathon in the '70s, but said he doesn't recalls his time, and no official record exists."
Boston University Daily Free Press, 2002: "Kerry, who fired the starter's pistol . . . lamented the fact that time constraints had made it impossible for him to run in the Marathon, which he participated in 20 years ago."
Most runners can remember every major marathon they've run, not just the year, but their time, and where they finished. But John Kerry doesn't even recall the decade in which he ran the biggest race of his life.
Maybe his memory has failed him because those were the same years in which he was busy tracking the biggest game of all — rich heiresses.
If You Are Going To Commit A Felony...
don't videotape yourself: A South Toledo man who police say is HIV-positive was charged yesterday with unlawful sexual conduct with a minor after police found videotapes of him allegedly having sex with boys.
Yeah, he was certainly doing some serious HIV outreach, alright. I wonder how many of the boys he was having sex with will end up with AIDS?
Jerry Steven Gonzales, 46, of 313 Daniels Ave. has been a volunteer for Planned Parenthood of Northwest Ohio's HIV outreach center since 1997, the organization said.
...
Toledo police chief Mike Navarre said during a news conference he is urging others who had contact with Mr. Gonzales to call authorities and seek medical treatment. Police said Mr. Gonzales has HIV, which is the cause of AIDS.Chief Navarre said Mr. Gonzales pleaded guilty to a similar, misdemeanor charge in Michigan in 1989 but was not required to register as a sex offender.
Not fired?
Sergeant Kral said a girl found a videotape in an alley near Mr. Gonzales' home and turned it over to a relative. He said the relative played the tape and recognized at least one person on it and turned it over to police.
Mr. Gonzales reported to police his home was burglarized Oct. 7 and again Monday, Chief Navarre said. He said when detectives went to Mr. Gonzales' home to discuss the tape, another police crew was there taking a report on the burglary.
Detectives exercised a search warrant last night to confiscate about 50 videotapes. Sergeant Kral said police viewed Mr. Gonzales having sex with five boys on the tape; two of those, ages 15 and 16, have been identified, he said.
...
Bren Blaine, executive director of Planned Parenthood, said he was shocked by the news. He said Mr. Gonzales was placed on indefinite leave."We're very concerned about what's going on, and I'm not very happy about it," Mr. Blaine said. "We had no idea what's been going on. This is something we certainly won't tolerate."
Of course, child molesters aren't gay. But what gave Gonzales the right credentials to be talking to gay men about unprotected sex, if he wasn't gay?
Mr. Blaine said he learned of Mr. Gonzales' arrest through media reports. He said Mr. Gonzales was a volunteer for Planned Parenthood, talking to patrons of gay bars about unprotected sex. Mr. Blaine said he did not know that Mr. Gonzales was HIV-positive.Neighbors in his South Toledo neighborhood said Mr. Gonzales was friendly, but kept to himself.
Yeah. Stuff like that.
"He was always helpful," said Augusta Holloway, on lived next to Mr. Gonzales.
"He had a lot of young boys around. They would do work around the house, plant flowers for him and stuff like that."
More On Voter Registration Fraud
See here for video of people admitting on film to forging signatures on voter registration forms.
Humor About Philadelphia
I've had some less than positive things to say about Philadelphia, but overall, it was just ugly and a little scary. (If I hadn't been armed just about the whole time I was there, it might have been a lot scarier.) A reader contributes this: My wife, who had the misfortune of working in Philadelphia for her first few jobs out of law school always thought that Philly should change its tourism slogan to
"Philadelphia, The City That Hates You Back"
Her tales of aggressive pan handlers, shocking poverty, rudeness from pretty much everyone, rampant public urination & defacation (including on the commuter trains) was best summed up when she told me that "Philadelphia just assaults you with its urbanness."
Like David Brenner jokes, "In New York, you ask somebody for the time, they'll ignore you. In Philly, they answer you with, 'What's the matter? You can buy a *&$&^% watch!' "
Interesting Claim
The article, unfortunately, doesn't give enough information to evaluate whether the claimed genetic differences appear in all homosexual men, or just some: LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Genetic factors, along with cultural and early experiences, influence male homosexuality, Italian scientists said on Wednesday.
The study goes on to explain the methods and the size of the sample group:
Researchers at the University of Padua said the genetic components are linked to the X chromosome which is inherited only from the mother. But they are probably on other chromosomes and could partly explain male homosexuality.
"The key factor is that these genes both influence homosexuality in men, higher fecundity in females and are in the maternal and not the paternal line," Andrea Camperio-Ciani, who headed the research team, said in an interview.In their research, which is reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, they found an increase in homosexuality in the maternal line of gay men they studied which suggests the X chromosome.
I would think that this must be a pretty dramatic difference if you could identify it from a sample group that small. However:
"We know that at least one of these genetic factors in on the X chromosome but that it not enough, there must be other genetic factors that are important but are elsewhere," Camperio-Ciani added.
The results are based on a study of 98 homosexual and 100 heterosexual men and about 4,600 of their relatives. The scientists compared the frequency of gay men on the maternal and paternal lines of the families.
Among homosexuals there were a greater number of gay men in the maternal line of the family, as well as greater fertility in the female relatives."We can no longer say that is it impossible to have a gene that influences homosexuality because we found out that genes might have different effects depending on gender," Camperio-Ciani.
Psychologists were partial to a variety of explanations for homosexuality until the 1970s, abandoning each theory because it became apparent that there were large numbers of homosexuals that did not fit that set of facts. Perhaps a bit less willingness to look for a single explanation would have helped.
But he added that cultural and individual experience also play a part.
More On The O'Reilly Lawsuit
Well, after O'Reilly and Fox filed a complaint for extortion, the "victim" of the alleged sexual harassment filed suit. Her complaint is really interesting, including that she was a victim of this sexual harassment from "May 2002 through January 2004, and commencing again approximately July 6, 2004 through the present..." You see, she left Fox News to go to work for CNN in January--and then came back to work for someone that sexually harassed her before? Oh yeah, that's very believable.
UPDATE: Just to clarify: if not for having returned to an environment and a boss that she calls sexually harassing, I would not have a strong opinion either way on this. I don't particularly like O'Reilly--he comes across as a bit of a egocentric jerk on TV--and the accusations that the "victim" makes about O'Reilly are the sort of out of control behavior that I expect from some people who have become rich and powerful. But returning to a place and a boss that from her description had engaged in really shocking sexual harassment before--that is just too hard to believe.
I find it a lot easier to believe that watching her former boss at CNN fired for sexual harassment put ideas in her head--how can I get myself set up for life, financially? This is a woman who only makes $73,000 a year at Fox. Going for the big win would seem very attractive.
Is The Entertainment Industry A Net Loss For Society?
I think of that when I read accounts like this about a Botox lawsuit in Los Angeles: LOS ANGELES - EVEN before "Mr. Botox" returned from Europe to take the stand and Vanna White showed up, the judge braced the jury for something special. "You'll remember this for a long time," he said. Indeed, history is being made this month in Los Angeles County Superior Court, as Botox goes on trial for the first time in its brief but glamorous life as America's favorite anti-wrinkle treatment. Hollywood socialite Irena Medavoy, wife of film producer Mike Medavoy, is suing celebrity dermatologist Arnold Klein and Botox's manufacturer, Allergan Inc., claiming the drug caused myriad illnesses, including a four-month migraine so severe it left her bedridden.
...
It has already heard witnesses either married to celebrities or employed by them testify on in-home eyebrow dyeing, John Travolta's birthday party, summers in St. Tropez, winters in Aspen and, naturally, Bill Clinton. And then there's the melodrama inherent in the bitter breakup between an ex-model and her longtime dermatologist. For 25 years -- through all the swimsuit photo shoots, the recurring role on "Dallas," the infomercials, the charity galas and four marriages -- Klein helped keep Medavoy looking young and beautiful. "I trusted him with my life," she said. But then Botox came between them, and everything changed.
...
Today, she sees herself as a sort of Erin Brockovich for the Botox set, a champion of women everywhere who have suffered similar, debilitating side effects but are silenced by disbelieving doctors.
...
The defense attorneys have portrayed her as an emotionally unstable, overindulged, overmedicated woman consumed by vanity, opportunism and celebrity. They told the jury of her bulimia in 1983, her breast implants and the six years she's spent in psychotherapy. They drilled her on her previous marriages, her panic attacks, herpes outbreaks and, perhaps worst of all, her financial solvency.
If You Are Going To Commit Vote Fraud, Be Subtle
For example, the City of Milwaukee has asked the county to supply them with 938,000 ballots for the November election. One little problem: In a letter sent to City Elections chief Lisa Artison, Walker said that he had "serious questions" about the need for that many ballots when the city reported having 382,000 registered voters in September.
Over here we see that the 2000 general election had 245,670 votes cast.
...
For the September primary, the city requested 841,357 ballots, or about 3,000 per ward plus the absentee ballots. Barrett said that the number requested in September was "in retrospect, too high" and, in fact, only some 94,643 votes were cast in the city.
Yes, there does need to be some spare ballots for spoiled ballots. But why does the city need more twice as many ballots as there are registered voters? I have never needed a replacement ballot in almost 30 years of voting. Does it seem even slightly possible that every registered voter in Milwaukee is going to show up, spoil his ballot, and need a replacement?
Also, along with all the voter registration fraud stories implicating Democrats, one out of Nevada implied that a Republican registration organization was throwing away Democratic ballots. But it turns out that the "Republican" organization is actually part of the Democratic Party's effort--suggesting an attempt to smear Republicans.
The Democrats seem intent on the dirtiest election in my memory.
UPDATE: And here's more evidence, again, involving the group ACORN: A field director for one of the many national partisan organizations trying to drum up votes in Florida admits to routine efforts to rig the outcome. They include submitting thousands of invalid voter registration cards, as well as failing to turn in boxes of cards filled out to register Republicans.
"There was a lot of fraud committed," said Mac Stuart, former Miami-Dade field director for ACORN. Among his allegations -- that ACORN "quality control" workers routinely kicked back Republican voter registrations while paying for Democratic ones. "They said they had enough," he said.
ACORN is spearheading both a minimum wage ballot initiative and a voter registration drive. Its top two Florida directors failed to return telephone calls Friday.
Stuart is listed as a plaintiff in a notice of intent to sue ACORN and others in a discrimination class-action lawsuit. "The voter registration project has been operating illegally since it started," the intent-to-sue filing asserts.
...
Active investigations include one in South Florida involving ACORN.
Stuart said he has been interviewed twice by an agent for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. That FDLE agent declined Friday to confirm his investigation. Florida law makes it a third-degree felony to interfere with someone's right to register as well as to pay a per-card solicitation fee for gathering registrations. Stuart says ACORN did both.
Stuart said ACORN officials at state headquarters in Tampa were aware of what was going on, and discouraged him from talking about it. He said he was ultimately fired as "a loose cannon."
While Republican registrations were ignored, Stuart said those of convicted felons were eagerly sought, even though by law they are ineligible until they are granted clemency by the state. Stuart set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail.
"We targeted them because ACORN had a goal: 103,000 new registrations from Dade County," Stuart said.
...
The questions surrounding ACORN's voter registration efforts were preceded by problems with initiative petition signatures the group submitted earlier in the year.
A Hillsborough County election official in July found some 800 apparently fraudulent signatures among the minimum wage petitions turned in by ACORN. Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson said he merely notified the organization, and ACORN agreed to police its own workers.
Such criminal allegations are giving initiative opponents a foothold for proposed amendments beyond those sponsored by ACORN.
Opponents of the slot-machine initiative contacted 5,278 individuals in Broward County who allegedly signed the gambling petition. Of those, 3,587 said the signature on the petition was not theirs. Another 33, the opponents allege, were dead.
In a lawsuit filed last week in Leon County circuit court, slot-petition opponents assert Floridians for a Level Playing Field paid Arno Political Consulting as much as $6.50 per petition signature.
The business practice, they contend, "invited the submission of fabricated signatures."
UPDATE: There seems to be some evidence that the Nevada group throwing away Democratic registrations is actually connected to the Republican Party.
A Tennessee Democrat Hits The Ball Out of the Park!
But for the other side. I am still in shock that any serious political candidate--and especially a Democrat, the party of inclusion, love, and concern for the downtrodden, would put together a flyer like this one here. Voting for Bush Is Like Running In The Special Olympics
One of the recurring problems of American politics is that, by and large, the left, and to a lesser extent, liberals thinks of themselves as morally and intellectually superior to conservatives. Hence, this willingness to call Republicans "retarded." The moral and intellectual superiority notion is so strong that it overpowers what should be a Democrat's concern about insulting language.
picture of kid running in a race with a George Bush face
Even If You Win, You're Still Retarded
Imagine if a Republican had put together an ad portraying Kerry lip-locked to John Edwards with the slogan, "Even if they win, they're still homosexuals." This would have been front-page news everywhere in America.
Why Bush Is Ahead in Electoral Votes
Bush has only a slight lead in the popular vote--but a pretty substantial lead in electoral votes. Today's summary of state by state surveys shows Bush with 291 electoral votes, and Kerry with 228. (Only 270 are required to win.) Electoral votes are based on the number of members of the House and the Senate that each state has. (I don't know how they compute this for DC, which somehow has three electoral votes--and no senators.) This gives a disproportionate (you might even say "unfair") advantage to the small states, since every state has two U.S. Senators.
Bush as of today's tally has seventeen states that are "strong Bush" (more than a 10% gap between Bush and Kerry) while Kerry has only seven states, plus the District of Columbia, in the "strong Kerry" column. Bush's states, however, are a lot of sparsely populated places like Idaho, while Kerry's are big population places like New York and Maryland.
This advantage continues in the "weak" states (where one candidate is 5-9% ahead of the other). Bush has nine of these states; Kerry has only six--and they include high population states like California, whose electoral votes, while large, are smaller relative to population than the small states.
What is quite amazing to me is that Kerry is only up 8% on Bush in California--a state awash in New Age idiocy and multimillionaires--practically the definition of likely Kerry voters.
UPDATE: A reader reminded me that Amendment 23 gives DC as many electoral votes as an equivalent state--giving DC also disproportionate influence to its population.
More Difficulties for the Left
I've seen leftists over at Indymedia defend Hussein's mass killings of Kurds as punishment for their rebellion: Saddam's troops butchered thos Kurds and Shi'ites for the same reason Lincoln's troops butchered Confederates.They were in open rebellion.
but what excuses this? A mass grave containing the bodies of children, babies and their mothers has been unearthed in Iraq.
How does a baby engage in open rebellion? Spitting up on you?
Shocked investigators reported finding "thighbones the size of matchsticks" at what they believe is the site of one of Saddam Hussein's atrocities. Among the findings-were the skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys.
A baby had been shot in the back of its head and was found still being clutched by its mother, who had been shot in the face. The discovery was reported as Tony Blair came under mounting pressure to apologise to Parliament for the misleading intelligence claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Supreme Court Considering Question of Executing Minors
I understand why some crimes by minors provoke a desire to see them pay the ultimate penalty. I am no fan of the death penalty, but I do think that there is a legitimate distinction between minors and adults. We don't give minors all the rights of adults, because we recognize that there are areas where they simply don't have the judgment to make some types of decisions.
What amazes me is that Justice Ginsburg, who has supported lowering the age of consent to 12, is suddenly interested in holding the line at 18: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the dividing line between adults and children is 18, "to vote, to sit on juries, to serve in the military."
Slippery Slope Problems
As a friend of mine likes to say, "Never undestimate the osmotic pressure of money." He was referring to zoning and developers, but this applies to the problem of regulating political advertising as well:
How about drawing the line where the Framers intended it: that the First Amendment's guarantee was first and foremost to protect the right of the people to participate in political discussion:
WASHINGTON (AP) - With political fund raising, campaign advertising and organizing taking place in full swing over the Internet, it may just be a matter of time before the Federal Election Commission joins the action. Well, that time may be now.
A recent federal court ruling says the FEC must extend some of the nation's new campaign finance and spending limits to political activity on the Internet.
Long reluctant to step into online political activity, the agency is considering whether to appeal.
But vice chairwoman Ellen Weintraub said the Internet may prove to be an unavoidable area for the six-member commission, regardless of what happens with the ruling.
"I don't think anybody here wants to impede the free flow of information over the Internet," Weintraub said. "The question then is, where do you draw the line?"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I don't dispute that they intended for freedom of speech and the press to include areas outside of politics, but the first point of this was political speech. Now, the Supreme Court seems to think that it includes almost everything but political speech--including forms of speech that would have been universally recognized as criminal actions in 1791. As I wrote a few months back for a Shotgun News column: What was the First Amendment supposed to protect? First and foremost, its purpose was to protect political speech. There have always been some gray areas on this, with questions as to what constitutes incitement to riot, what is obscenity, and what are the limits to libel. At least in the last few years, the Supreme Court has taken a very, very broad view of what is protected free speech. Last year, in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002), they ruled that virtual child pornography—that is, computer graphics depictions of sex involving children, but in which actual children do not appear—is protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of the press.2 Two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law regulating tobacco advertising within 1000 feet of a school, again, on free speech grounds. The law, among other problems, was “overbroad” in the speech that it prohibited.3 In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that burning of the American flag was constitutionally protected free speech.4
With decisions like this, BCRA’s provision prohibiting political groups from running political ads should have been a no-brainer. Alas, it was a no-brainer: the majority of the Supreme Court did not use their brains. They decided that Congress has the authority to prohibit “issue advocacy” advertising on radio and television5—in effect, the right to tell the NRA, the ACLU, and dozens of other political groups, to shut up and sit down.
So what is the effect of this change in the law? There are groups that can still run radio and television advertising just before the election. The candidates themselves can do so. Oh yes, there is one other group that also gets to run “issue advocacy” ads—except this group doesn’t have to pay for the ads at all. That’s because they are called “news broadcasts.” That’s right. CBS, ABC, NBC, and CNN—four organizations that hate guns and hate gun owners—they get to broadcast news coverage for sixty days before the election, and their position on gun control is pretty obvious.
You can see why Justice Scalia wrote a very angry dissent on this decision. He pointed out that after finding all sorts of very questionable material protected by the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has now found one category of speech that is not protected: political free speech. He asks if anyone would have guessed that a Court that has found flag burning, virtual child pornography, and a host of other very arguable materials protected, would uphold “a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government. For that is what the most offensive provisions of this legislation are all about. We are governed by Congress, and this legislation prohibits the criticism of Members of Congress by those entities most capable of giving such criticism loud voice….”6
2 Ashcroft et. al. v. Free Speech Coalition et. al., 535 U.S. 234 (2002).
3 Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 535 U.S. 235 (2001).
4 Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989).
5 McConnell et. al. v. Federal Election Commission et. al. (2003), 85.
6 McConnell et. al. v. Federal Election Commission et. al. (2003), Scalia dissent, 3.
Reasons To Be Armed In Public Places The Next Few Weeks
Anywhere that I can be armed in the next few weeks, I will be, because of news stories like this: U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July.
If you don't already have a concealed weapon permit from your state (and assuming that you live in a state where you can get a permit without having to bribe someone), you should go apply now. Visit packing.org to find out details about your state.
The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.
...
The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.
A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.
"We don't know whether or not that report is true," this official said.
...
It could not be learned whether the reported infiltration is related to the recent Education Department warning to school officials to examine security in the aftermath of the attack last month by pro-Chechnya Muslim terrorists on a school in Russia, in which more than 300 people were killed and some 700 wounded.
Dirty Tricks by the Democrats? Or Just Greedy Lawyers?
The complaint filed by O'Reilly and Fox News asserting extortion of course only presents their side of the matter--but I will say, I don't find it at all implausible that the goal of the suit is primarily political. The Democrats will stop at nothing: violent attacks on campaign offices; forged documents; registering convicted felons to vote; registering non-citizens to vote. So why not some extortion as well?
Hurricane Damage
Patrick Cox writes a column for Tech Central Station that starts out talking about his situation, more than a month after Hurricane Frances blew through: If there were a working land line in the cabin my family is using while we wait for services to be restored to our home, it would be a simple matter to google the scientific term for these hyper-winds that form on the lake, but they tell me I won't get electricity back for several more weeks. It's an interesting sign of these new tech times that Web access is now on my short list of missing amenities, along with power and sewer services. In the meantime, I impose occasionally on friends to send and read e-mail, but little else.
He goes on from there to discuss the current project to restore the Everglades: For those not familiar with the Everglades restoration, it is nothing less than the Great Pyramid of environmental projects -- the largest, most ambitious public works and ecosystem alteration enterprise in the history of the world. It's purpose is to reverse over a century of swamp draining and canal building that has transformed the face of south Florida from the marshland it once was to one of the most popular and populated regions in the nation. Officially, the cost estimate for the project is $8.4 billion, to be split between federal and Florida taxpayers. Insiders, however, admit the figure is low-ball, because the number is in unadjusted 1999 dollars and the real estate yet to be acquired is in the most developable areas of the state, such as the south-east Atlantic "gold" coast where prices are skyrocketing.
This is a point worth reminding environmentalists of: to do ecological damage on a regional scale usually requires a government to redistribute money. Free markets almost never have the resources to do this level of damage on their own.
Despite a general perception that the Florida peninsula's environment was destroyed by business interests, especially big agriculture, private enterprise actually failed repeatedly to turn the Everglades into usable land. Only when government involved itself did the effort to dry out Florida real estate meet with any real success.
FDR's New Deal program, in particular, provided the massive funding needed to do what is currently being undone, partially at least, by more than ten thousand people from various state and federal agencies, including the organization that does all the really big public works projects -- the Army Corp of Engineers. In this there is some symmetry, at least, as the Corps played such a major role in eliminating the wetlands we are currently trying to replicate.
A system of free enterprise and property rights would have actually preserved the Everglades. If market forces and the test of profitability had been allowed to determine land usage in South Florida, the current landscape would resemble prehistoric Florida far more than a "restored" Everglades ever will.
Speaking of hurricane damage: the remnants of Ivan blew through Pennsylvania when I was there last month, and did enormous damage. Along the Delaware River I had to give up on at least one research library because the roads were under water. Even at Jacobsburg State Historic Park, I had to take a rather circuitous path to the museum because of this:
Philadelphia Was A Surprisingly Poor Place
I've lived in big cities before, but Philly makes Los Angeles look pretty darn good. This first picture is of a beautiful old church west of the University of Pennsylvania. I don't know the story on this, but if I were a film student at the U. of Penn., making a post-apocalyptic short subject, this would be the place to shoot it.
Here's the sign on an automobile insurance agency nearby. Notice that they only options seem to be cash (which they don't dare accept for fear of robbery) or money orders. People this poor don't have checking accounts--at least checking accounts that won't bounce checks.
UPDATE: Here's a link to a story about the collapse of that church from a reader in the area. I have more readers than I thought!
Bill Cosby Out Doing Good Again
My admiration for Bill Cosby grows by the day. We have our differences, but he is committed to improving the lives of young blacks in America--unlike many so-called black leaders, who seem more interested in playing the victim game: RICHMOND — Bill Cosby spoke bluntly to students at Richmond's mostly black public schools yesterday, urging them to dedicate themselves to graduation, not gangs, and to control anger that threatens to derail their dreams.
While the situation for inner city black kids is definitely worse than it is for suburban and rural whites, many of the same problems afflict them also: a culture that does not encourage education or self-discipline.
Mr. Cosby toured four schools with former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who is running for mayor. But instead of talking politics, Mr. Cosby stuck to his no-nonsense message to inner-city black children that at times has made him the target of criticism.
...
"Study. That's all. It's not tough. You're not picking cotton. You're not picking up the trash. You're not washing windows. You sit down. You read. You develop your brain," Mr. Cosby said at Fred D. Thompson Middle School, where 65 percent of the 700 students meet low-income criteria for free or reduced-price lunches.
There and at George Wythe High School, the 67-year-old actor and comedian implored black teens to begin studying in groups, and urged girls not to allow themselves to get pregnant and boys not to compensate for love they lack at home with gangs or sex.
I'm Assuming That This Is Legitimate
This was forwarded by my mother, which was forwarded by a friend, who received it from a friend whose daughter apparently works at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. It is at least consistent with what I have read in news accounts--and another reminder of what happens when evil men like George Bush interfere in the internal affairs of other nations: Subject: FW: my view from Kabul
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 08:54:00 -0400
From: Anne
I don't think that Jayne would mind me forwarding this on to you all.
Thought that you might be moved by a real insiders view of what's happening
in Afghanistan. She is such a happy girl to be a part of this life-changing
event for the Afghans.
Happy Columbus Day!
From: Jayne A
Subject: my view from Kabul
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 10:58:23 +0430
Greetings from Kabul!
Thanks to many of you for your messages of good luck and concern over the
last several weeks. I apologize for my total lapse in correspondence, but I
haven't been able to spend much time at my desk. This despite the fact that
the Embassy has been on lockdown for five weeks and I haven't left the
compound except for official meetings in that entire time. And after the
workday ends, we've had dust storms and rocket attacks and bombings and
midnight trips to the bunker, but much much more than that, we have been
here to witness the dawn of a new era in Afghanistan. This is the hardest
thing I have ever done, but it would be impossible to put into words how
much it has meant to me. To say it was life-changing seems trite and
insufficient. Forget what you hear about ink problems and voter fraud. I
was there and what happened in Afghanistan on Saturday truly was historic
and truly reflected the will of the people. It was an experience I will
treasure for the rest of my life.
I got to be an observer and spent eleven hours running around the city in
Level IV body armor with a close protection detail and CAT team. And what I
saw was inspiring. The Afghan people were willing to risk anything to cast
their votes...especially the women. It was deeply moving to see the women
rally around each other, making sure each had the chance to participate. I
saw blind ladies voting with the help of their granddaughters. Women on
crutches and in wheelchairs crawl on their hands and knees to make it up the
stairs into the polling centers. I saw women in burqas threaten male
policemen with violence when they were told their polling center had run out
of ballots and wait hours in a freezing cold dust storm for the new ones to
arrive. My interpreters had to scold me as I kept breaking down in tears
and wanting to hug the voters.
In each female polling station, I felt a warmth and sisterhood I have
rarely seen anywhere in the world. Pashtun, Hazara, and Tajik ladies lined
up together chatting freely about which candidate they supported. Laughter
and smiles abounded. Pregnant women were affectionately escorted to the head
of
long lines. One such lady who was expecting her fourth child at the age of
22 told me without being asked that she had voted for Mr. Karzai because she
believed Mr. Qanooni would bring the burqa back. The fact that she argued
this wrapped in a burqa herself didn't seem a contradiction to her.
Three of the female polling centers I visited were in mosques. Afghan women
are barred from visiting a mosque at any time, but none seemed to think it
was an issue on Saturday. With typical Afghan practicality, they had simply
moved the Koran and rolled the carpets into the corners and that was that.
At one such site in a very poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Western
Kabul, a young mullah announced to me in halting English that he was proud
the women were voting in his mosque. He said he was an Islamic Law student
at Kabul University and that through his sharia studies he knew better
than most that there was a place for women in Islam, as well as place for
them in its mosques. He also thanked me as a foreigner for helping his
country find peace and offered his assistance in whatever way I may require.
Tears ran down my face during that speech as well.
And in the 15-odd polling centers I visited all across the city, that "thank
you" to the international community was universal. When I introduced myself
at each site as a representative of the American Embassy, the smiles got
bigger and the welcome warmer. Afghans, men and women alike, saw it as an
invitation to tell me their opinions of what was going wrong and what was
going right in their county. Occasionally coupled with criticism (Afghans
are a delightfully honest and direct people), it was consistently
appreciative and positive.
And most importantly, shockingly, no one died trying to vote in Afghanistan
on Saturday. There was not even one confirmed attack on a polling station
anywhere in the country. Not even in the Taliban heartland along the
Pakistani border. But it is important to note that despite Gen. Barno's
security blanket on the country, the credit for the peace on election day
must be laid firmly at the feet of the Afghan people themselves.
Afghans are not a people to tolerate a government, military or idea that
they don't support fully. I believe that the fact the Taliban were not able
to act is proof positive that the Afghan people are tired of fighting. As
the ladies in the polling stations told me, they want to see their daughters
learn to read. They want to see their sons grow to manhood and their
husbands
come home from fighting. The women of Afghanistan have finally spoken and
their voices ring loudly in the quiet over Afghanistan today.
Please forgive the sloppy grammar and disjointed message, but I
thought it might be interesting for some of you as a quick counterpoint to
the news reports focusing on ink malfunction and allegations of fraud and,
in my humble opinion, entirely missing the point.
Warmest wishes to you all!
Jayne
Narrow-Minded Bigots At Work
Can you believe it? There's a candidate trying to make a big deal about public nudity by his opponent decades ago, when his opponent when a college student? Obviously he's some sort of right-wing religious fundamentalist Republican, terrified of a naked body. Except that the person trying to use these embarrassing pictures is the Democrat: Democrats are circulating old newspaper clippings of a 1974 college streaking stunt staged by hundreds of students at what was then called Southwest Texas State University.
If you want people to judge you by what you did in the 1970s, then make that the centerpiece of your campaign (as John Kerry did with his stupid "reporting for duty" speech). But many of us did things in our youth that are sources of at least embarrassment, and sometimes shame.
One of the participants was an 18-year-old freshman named Pete Sessions -- who grew up to become a conservative Republican congressman.
A Sessions spokesman says the congressman's "old school days are long gone" and that he recognizes the streaking stunt was "an immature action."
But the campaign of Democrat Representative Martin Frost is holding his rival's bare body to the fire, saying he "exposed himself to children and strangers."
No, I won't tell you about anything that I did back then that I am ashamed of. But on the embarrassment side, there were these red-and-white checked doubleknits that I wore, sometimes with a similarly patterned blue-and-white shirt. I called it my "optical illusion" outfit--and like many clothes of the 1970s, my wife destroyed this fashion crime shortly after we got married.
Another Reason Why The Courts Shouldn't Be Second-Guessing About Gitmo
This news story about hostages taken in Pakistan tells us that a former Gitmo detainee is again in action: On Tuesday, a group of influential elders from the Mehsud tribe gathered in the town of Barwand, seeking talks with Mehsud, and if possible, the kidnappers — believed to include at least two foreigners. Hundreds more tribesmen were arriving to put additional pressure on Mehsud, fearing that the whole tribe could be liable for punishment if the engineers are killed.
The hostages are Chinese engineers: China, a country that opposed the Iraq war.
...
Officials say Mehsud is a local man but used to fight with the Taliban and was a former U.S. prisoner at Guantanamo Bay (search). He is thought to be hiding with foreign and local militant supporters in Barwand area.
I guess releasing Mehsud was a mistake, wasn't it?
Democratic Party Slogan: Vote Early, Vote Often
And don't let being non-existent or cloned get in your way: DENVER - With just 21 days left until an election in which every vote will count, the 9News I-Team has uncovered voter registration fraud that could cause chaos on Election Day for hundreds, possibly thousands of Colorado voters.
Now, ACORN claims that they were defrauded, too, by this people, and fired anyone who did this. But imagine if this were a corporation pressuring its employees to make sales. Do you suppose that ACORN would claim that the corporation was also a victim? I don't think so.
9News has discovered a record number of fraudulent voter-registrations across the state. Secretary of State Donetta Davidson tells 9News she is concerned about what the I-Team has uncovered and wants those responsible prosecuted. "It has just gone rampant," she told reporter Deborah Sherman in an interview Monday afternoon.
Most of the fraud has come from registration drives, where people at grocery stores or on the streets ask you to sign up. 9News has learned many workers have re-registered voters multiple times by changing or making up information about them. 9News has documented 719 cases of potentially fraudulent forms at county election offices show fraudulent names, addresses, social security numbers or dates of birth in Denver, Douglas, Adams, Boulder and Lake counties. Information from other counties is still coming in.
Some voter registration application forms are completely bogus. Others belong to legitimate voters, who have had one or two facts changed that could affect their registration when they show up at the polls November 2nd. Tom Stanislawski registered to vote six years ago. But this summer, someone signed him up again and changed his party affiliation. "My concern would be I'd walk in November 2nd and be unable to vote," he said.
Some of the registration drive workers earn $2 per application or about $10 an hour. One woman admitted to forging three people's names on about 40 voter registration applications. Kym Cason says she was helping her boyfriend earn more money from a get-out-the-vote organization called ACORN or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN works with low or moderate-income families on housing issues. Cason said her extra registrations earned her boyfriend $50.
Oh yes, then there's this little matter of what looks like 6000 felons (either serving sentences, or still on parole) who are registered to vote in Colorado. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they didn't know any better. But what about the crowd of Democratic activists that went to a jail to register inmates? I should mention that the 6006 apparent registered to vote felons is based on having the same first name, last name, and date of birth. If the middle initial didn't match, they weren't included.
Marriage Amendment Roundup
Michigan's four Episcopal bishops are part of the campaign asking Michigan voters to vote no on a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man, one woman. If you are a still a member of the Episcopalian Church, ask yourself, "Why?" You wouldn't be leaving your church; your church has left you.
To my surprise and pleasure, the Catholic Church is heavily funding the marriage amendment campaign in Michigan. (I guess it is atonement for having paid the salaries and coverup costs for child molesting priests, as well as contributing one of the founders of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, Father Shanley.)
Here's a real surprise :-): the Indigo Girls are asking voters in Georgia to vote no on the marriage amendment that is coming up for a vote there. Not surprisingly, homosexuals are intent on preventing the people from having a chance to vote on it: Last month, a Superior Court judge dismissed a legal effort to block a vote on the amendment saying she did not have legal authority to do so. The Georgia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal in the case on October 19th.
A Louisiana state appellate court will next hear the challenge to the marriage amendment approved by voters 78%-22% last month. With those sort of margins, it is clear that this is strictly a delaying tactic; homosexuals can't expect to turn this around enough before the next election. Of course, the goal of the delay is to get the U.S. Supreme Court to force homosexual marriage on the states in the meantime.
Here's a sign of how much the homosexual marriage tyranny project (defined as the courts telling the legislatures that they must recognize homosexual marriage) is blowing up in the Democratic Party's faces: MIAMI — Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson told black voters at a church here yesterday that President Bush's support for a constitutional amendment against homosexual "marriage" shouldn't be enough to earn their vote.
Amazingly enough, the black vote--at least part of the black vote--is in play, because of the issue of homosexual marriage.
Mr. Kerry attended Mass at a Catholic church in North Miami, and then spoke during services at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Miami, as he and several black Democratic leaders tried to rally black voters.
A Democrat Who Doesn't Think Homeland Security's Concerns Are Playing Politics
People connected with the Kerry/Edwards campaign have suggested that Homeland Security is playing politics with their concerns about pre-election violence. Here's a Democrat who obviously doesn't think so: Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., said his office in the Russell Senate Office Building across the street from the Capitol will be closed while Congress is in recess through Election Day, with his staff working out of his Minnesota office and in Senate space off Capitol Hill.
It's a bit oversimplified, but I notice that many Congressional Democrats who aren't running for President seem to be taking this matter of national security seriously; they aren't acting like it's all a big political game. For that, all Americans can respect and applaud those Democrats who are putting the nation ahead of partisan interest.
"I take this step out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise be visiting my Senate office in the next three weeks," he said.
Dayton said he could not give details of the intelligence report, which he said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., presented to senators at a briefing two weeks ago.
...
Added Capitol police spokesman Michael Lauer: "There's been no specific threats against the Capitol complex. We continue to be on guard now, all the way up to the election and all the way through the inauguration."
Nonetheless, Dayton said he would advise people from his home state to avoid Capitol Hill until after the Nov. 2 election.
"I would not bring my two sons to the Capitol between now and the election," he added.
UPDATE: A constituent of Dayton, a law professor I know, thinks Dayton is just going off the deep end--again.
The Horror Of Politically Motivated News Organizations!
FCC Commissioner Copps is shocked, shocked to discover that news organizations have political motivations for what they put on the air! Commissioner Michael J. Copps reacted to reports that Sinclair Broadcast Group will preempt more than 60 local stations across the country to air an overtly political program in the days prior to the Presidential election.
Certainly, the American television news business has never done something like this before!
Copps stated: “This is an abuse of the public trust. And it is proof positive of media consolidation run amok when one owner can use the public airwaves to blanket the country with its political ideology -- whether liberal or conservative. Some will undoubtedly question if this is appropriate stewardship of the public airwaves. This is the same corporation that refused to air Nightline’s reading of our war dead in Iraq. It is the same corporation that short-shrifts local communities and local jobs by distance-casting news and weather from hundreds of miles away. It is a sad fact that the explicit public interest protections we once had to ensure balance continue to be weakened by the Federal Communications Commission while it allows media conglomerates to get even bigger. Sinclair, and the FCC, are taking us down a dangerous road.”
Over at Drudge Report, Drudge is reporting that: Kerry Senior Advisor Chad Clanton to SINCLAIR Broadcasting: 'They better hope we don't win' [said on FOX NEWS DAYSIDE]
This is a clear statment of intent to retaliate for free speech. If that doesn't disqualify Kerry alone, what does?
Yes, They're Just Like You and Me
Joseph Farah over at WorldNetDaily had a column that so was so outrageous and unbelieveable that I spent some time trying to track the sources--otherwise it reads like a vicious, homophobic satire of what academic conferences actually do. I couldn't find the list of sessions that he quotes, but I did find the American Academy of Religion's call for papers: The Gay Men's Issues in Religion Group explores the intersections between the gay male experience and forms of religious discourse and practice. This year, we are particularly interested in receiving proposals for papers and panels on the following topics: transgenderism, its construction and religious dimensions; queer theory and its relevance to the religious/spiritual lives of gay men; queer latino/a theologies and spiritualities; S/M, submission, and the spiritual dimensions of power. We also seek proposals on topics not listed here, and from all religious traditions. Submissions by Latin American scholars are especially encouraged.
Farah's quotes are consistent with this call for papers, unfortunately: The Gay Men's Issues in Religion Group within the AAR has set for its theme for the program: "Power and Submission, Pain and Pleasure: The Religious Dynamics of Sadomasochism." It also has another session on the program, half of which is devoted to transgenderism.
It does, unfortunately.
Last year, Gagnon says, the group featured a session on the topic: "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing: Varied Views on Polyamory." (Don't bother looking up that last word in the dictionary. It's not there yet. It means having sexual relations with more than one partner at a time.)
About the "Power and Submission" topic, the program explains:
Sadomasochistic or bondage/dominance practice (sometimes also referred to as "leather sexuality") ... offers a particularly potent location for reflecting on gay men's issues in religion.
One of the papers presented by Justin Tanis of the Metropolitan Community Church, a homosexual "denomination," if you will, is titled "Ecstatic Communion: The Spiritual Dimensions of Leathersexuality."
"This paper will ... look briefly at the ways in which leather is a foundation for personal and spiritual identity formation, creating a lens through which the rest of life is viewed," explains Tanis. "All of this based within the framework of a belief in the rights of individuals to erotic self-determination with other consenting adults, rather than apologetics for those practices and lives."
It gets worse – and more bizarre.
Fascism Afoot...in Canada
The Canadian government is at it again--sentencing someone to a $1000 fine for referring to someone as a "fifi" (apparently the French Canadian equivalent of "fag"): MONTREAL - Quebec's Human Rights Commission has ordered a used car salesman in Sorel to pay a gay man $1,000 for a derogatory comment he made three years ago.
Thanks to David Bernstein over at Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer. Professor Bernstein points out that this is part of the growing intolerance of free speech in that leftist utopia of Canada. As Bernstein pointed out a while back, this isn't even home-grown fascism; it's an import from the American left. It makes you wish that along with their Canadian content laws for television that they had Canadian content laws for political ideas.
In 2001 Marcel Bardier told the man's travelling companion to keep an eye on him because he was a "fifi", a french word that amounts to "fag".
The man, who cannot be identified because of a court order, filed a complaint with the Commission which said the comment caused him to feel dehumanized, humiliated and degraded.
Humor
Click here for a funny bumper sticker about Kerry and Edwards.
Notice the clever beanie crown at the top of this blogger's page--don't know where it came from, but it's funny!
Great NRA Billboard
From a reader: Please find attached a picture of an NRA billboard taken 10/5/04 just outside the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, Forsyth, Ga.
It says it all.
Deinstitutionalization & The Mentally Ill
I inflicted on you a draft of the introduction to the next book a few days ago, and mentioned that it was written under the influence of bitter chocolate gelatto in Philadelphia. (I couldn't sleep because of all the caffeine.)
I was going through my photographs from that trip, and I realized that there was another reason that I had the energy to write that draft. I was driving towards my hotel, and I noticed a lot of police cars and a lot of police--and a large crowd watching them. As I turned the corner, I saw what the excitement was about: a man who climbed some scaffolding, making rather odd motions, while the police tried to talk him down.
A young black man in a business suit (a very nice business suit, I must say) told me that it was a mentally ill person, and that the police had been trying to get him down. Nothing I saw gave me any reason to doubt that this was the situation. In many ways, this incident captured the essence of what has gone wrong with the treatment of mental illness: at least ten Philadelphia police officers, trying to get this guy down before he hurt himself--and it was no surprise, since Philadelphia, like many big cities, has quite a few homeless people wandering the streets. You don't need a psychiatrist to tell that many of these people are not in their right minds.
Here's a closeup that gives a bit more insight into this guy's mental state. (At least, it was obvious to me when I was there.)
This is something that should ashame the people that pushed for deinstitutionalization on the grounds that it was more humane, and better looked out for the civil rights of the mentally ill. Everyone makes mistakes: good ideas that just didn't pan out. This idea has not panned out. The ACLU needs to admit that it made an honest mistake, and attempt to rectify it.
Just A Coincidence, I'm Sure
THis is not a terribly interesting news story about a car accident in which the driver survived for eight days without food or water. What makes it interesting is how she was found:
I'm enough of a rationalist to discount most of the stories that people tell me about being cured by prayer, and similar such claims. Stories like this, though....
Teen Is Found Alive After Eight Days
REDMOND, Wash. - A teenager missing for eight days has been found alive in her wrecked car by a woman who said prayer and dreams led her to the site.
Laura Hatch, 17, last seen at a party Oct. 2, was found Sunday in her 1996 Toyota Camry about 150 feet below a road in this suburb east of Seattle, King County sheriff's deputies said.
...
Parents Jean and Todd Hatch hired a private investigator and on Saturday organized an unsuccessful search with 200 volunteers in areas near the place where the car was found.
Sha Nohr, a church member and mother of a friend of Hatch, said she had several vivid dreams of a wooded area with the message, "Keep going, keep going," after she went to bed Saturday night.
She said she awakened Sunday morning with an urgent need to look for Hatch, had her daughter join her and drove to the area where the crash occurred, stopping at one point, then leaving because "it just didn't feel right" and going to another spot.
Along the way, Nohr said, she prayed: "I just thought, 'Let her speak out to us,'"
At the second stop something drew her to clamber over a concrete barrier and more than 100 feet down a steep, densely vegetated embankment where she barely managed to discern the wrecked car in some trees.
She called to her daughter, who flagged down a passing motorist and the man helped Nohr get closer to the car as aid was summoned.
"I told her that people were looking for her and they loved her," Nohr recalled, "and she said, 'I think I might be late for curfew.' "
Just In Case You Wondered Where John Kerry's Wife Stands
She is part of the crowd that thinks "no blood for oil" has some connection to reality: McALLEN, Texas - The wife of presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) told a receptive audience in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas that Kerry would seek out all other options before going to war.
But he won't be able to approach the victims of future 9/11s and say, "I did everything I could to prevent this, I'm sorry."
"John will never send a boy or girl in a uniform anywhere in the world because of our need and greed for oil," Teresa Heinz Kerry told about 1,200 supporters at the McAllen Civic Center.
She said her husband, as president, would be able to approach the families of slain soldiers and say, "'I did everything I could to prevent this, I'm sorry.' "
I have really wanted to believe that John Kerry, if elected, would do the right thing, and all of this waffling was just his attempt to get elected. But if his wife is part of the "no blood for oil" delusionist wing of the Democratic Party, and makes speeches for Kerry that show that idiocy, that pretty well seals the question of where he stands, doesn't it?
Do You Have Recent Experience Owning a Fast Food Franchise?
I'm curious to hear the experiences of those who have bought such a franchise: what sort of return on investment you actually received; how long it took to get to that point; how many you spent actually managing the operation.
My impression is that a franchise owner can spend 70 hours a week, depending on how much responsibility he delegates to his employees, or as little as 10-15 hours a week, if he pays a good bit more for trustworthy and competent management. Obviously, the first approach maximizes profit; the second approach probably means a lower return on investment.
I'm not looking for a passive investment. I am looking for an investment that gives me an annualized ROI in the 20-25% area. Fast food chains are understandably a bit closed mouth about "typical" ROI, because it is so dependent on an owner's intelligence, location, and luck. Even reporting average ROIs inevitably opens the franchisor up to absurd lawsuits.
Yes, This Is How the Senate Works
An article about a new corporate tax code bill passed by the Senate includes this unfortunately very accurate statement: "What was supposed to be a quick and minor fix of the tax code blossomed into this huge giveaway of tax benefits," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
I don't know everything in this bill, but I am sure that there are some real stinkers buried in it.
Grassley responded earlier in the debate to critics who said the measure had provisions for specific interests, saying, "Well, that's true. But that's how the Senate works."The tax bill, which the Senate approved 69-17, began as an effort to help U.S. exporters avoid European tariffs. But as Republican leaders hunted for votes, it swelled into the most profound rewrite of the corporate tax code in two decades.
Unfortunately, this is not a specifically Republican problem. The 1986 tax reform bill, passed by Democrats, had all sorts of buried bodies, including an exemption for federal inheritance taxes for any estate probated in Tarrant County, Texas, on a particular day. (One of Rep. Jim Wright's wealthy constitutents didn't think it was fair to have to pay inheritance tax--so she didn't!)
The final 633-page product pared taxes for interests ranging from major manufacturers to native Alaskan whalers and ethanol producers. Other winners included fishing tackle box makers, NASCAR track owners, Chinese ceiling fan importers, and foreigners winning bets at U.S. horse and dog racing tracks.
Thomas Sowell's observation captures it well: "When legislatures control what is bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold will be legislators."
Why Does John Kerry Talk About The Unfair Tax Breaks for the Rich?
I've pointed out in the past that once you get really rich, you only pay income taxes if you want to pay income taxes. Anyone with $5 million or more can invest their money in municipal bonds of their state of residence, earn at least $225,000 a year (that's almost $20,000 a month--and pay neither federal nor state income tax on that income. If you are as rich as Mr. Teresa Kerry, with somewhere above $900 million in assets, you could earn about $40 million a year with essentially zero risk, and no taxes.
In practice, Mrs. and Mr. Teresa Kerry don't do that. Professor Bainbridge quotes from a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece that points out that Mrs. and Mr. Kerry pay 12.8% of their income in taxes. (I'm not sure if that includes state income tax or not.)
The Kerrys are indeed a strong argument against unfair taxation for the rich--and why no tax increase on "the rich" is going to affect people like them. It is going to be people like me that are going to get hit up for more taxes, because I actually work for a living, instead of hunting for rich heiresses.
Remember: an income tax isn't a tax on rich people. It's a tax on those trying to get rich. If the Democratic Party tooks its "eat the rich" philosophy seriously, they would be supporting a tax on assets, and a constitutional amendment eliminating the exemption of municipal bond interest from federal income tax. But Democrats aren't going to support that, because "eat the rich" is really just a marketing device.
UPDATE: I do hope that the Bush campaign makes an issue of how little the Kerrys pay in income taxes--and what hypocrites they are for talking about "Two Americas." There are two Americas, but the gap between George Bush's net worth and mine is a heck of a lot smaller than the gap between George Bush and John Kerry.
Draw the Curve, Then Plot the Points
Reason magazine has an interview with Joel Miller, author of Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America. Most of his points are unsurprising, but one claim in particular stood out: Reason: In the '90s, what happened to the price of drugs?
It sounds like Miller knows that there is another explanation for the dropping price of drugs, but chooses to not raise it: reduced demand could play a part as well. This report on drug abuse indicates a substantial reduction in cocaine use in the 1990s among college students and young adults. As an example, Table 2-1 shows that 21.0% of young adults had ever used cocaine in 1991; by 2000 it was down to 12.7%. Since paying for illegal drugs drives a lot of burglary and robbery, it is entirely possible that reduced use of cocaine and heroin caused the drop in both prices and crime.
Consistently, they dropped. With cocaine, the downward slump was not huge, but with heroin it was pretty strong. Prices in general for drugs seem to be on the decline.
Reason: This occurred at the same time as crime rates fell. Does that mean more drugs equal less crime?
Dropping prices can definitely mean increased supply. It could mean other things too, but it's an interesting fact that the only type of crime that began rising in the late '90s while every other type of crime was going down, was gang crime—street crime. That's the crime most closely associated with the drug trade. It was responsible for half of the murders in Los Angeles.
So I don't know that more drugs equals less crime in any causal way, but you could certainly make the argument that drug prohibition is increasing crime, and if you were to lighten up the thumbscrews on enforcement, you'd see crime drop.
It is certainly true that prohibition makes these drugs more expensive, and that drives the purely economic crimes. It is also the case that drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and alcohol are factors in a lot of violent crimes as well, such as rape, murder, and child abuse. Surprisingly enough, intoxicants play something of a role in driving economic crimes not just to pay for the drugs, but because some economic crimes take place because the intoxicated person loses inhibitions or fear.
I do wish that those pushing for decriminalization would acknowledge the complexity of these relationships. Complete decriminalization would probably reduce one set of crimes, but probably increase another set. To claim that this is entirely a win-win situation is not honest.
The other problem here is the assumption that decriminalization and lowering of drug prices would have no effect on total sales or total addicts. Those who claim that drug dealers would be injured by decriminalization are assuming that the number of addicts would not rise enough to make up the difference. Consider these two scenarios:
1. Colombian drug kingpin sells cocaine or crack variant to a million Americans, for a thousand dollars a year per addict. (Guess: about $25 a dose, 40 times a year.) Out of this, he has to pay $200 million in bribes, legal fees, assassination of politicians and judges in Colombia, and replacing boats and airplanes seized.
2. Cocaine is legalized. Colombian drug kingpin sells to ten million Americans at $100 a year per addict. (Guess: about 40 times a year, $2.50 a dose--or about the price of a pack of cigarettes.) He doesn't have to pay for bribes, legal fees, assassinations, etc. Which is more profitable?
Now, I don't know what the actual demand for cocaine and its variants would be if it were decriminalized. It might be 10x the current number; it might be 5x the current number. The one thing that we can say with some certainty is that there will be more cocaine addicts if using cocaine isn't illegal, and the price drops to a free market level. If you have any doubt about this, look at the enormous alcohol problem the U.S. has where it is lawful and cheap.
I don't know for sure what the net result of decriminalization of cocaine would be, and anyone that claims to know is kidding themselves. It might be better for the society; it might well be worse. It could be that resources spent on interdiction would be better spent on treatment and advertising campaigns designed to discourage drug abuse. The criminal justice system might work better if it was only working on the consequences of drug abuse, instead of the drug abuse itself. We don't really know. An honest discussion of decriminalization would include an honest discussion of the unknowns.
Yeah, It's All About Oil
But "It" isn't what you think: PADAK, Sudan — America is on a lonely mission to end the crisis in Sudan.
I am convinced that the reason the left kept screeching "No blood for oil" is because they knew that for many opponents of U.S. policy on Iraq, it was all about oil.
The United States is pushing for U.N. sanctions against the east African nation. But U.S.-sponsored resolutions have met resistance in the U.N. Security Council — particularly from China and Pakistan, which have major oil deals in the African country. Algeria, which is a fellow Arab league member, also is an obstacle.
Thanks to Michael Williams for the pointer.
How Pornography Becomes Real Life
Purely as an aside, I mentioned bukake pornography a few days ago. (If you don't know what it is, I won't tell you, and you almost certainly don't want to know.) This blogger asserts that Then again, I strongly suspect it’s the sort of sexual activity (like its single-participant cousin) that only takes place with a camera in the room.
Nope. See the police interview with Kobe Bryant--his desire to do this to the woman who accused him of rape is apparently what led her to finally say no--at least, according to Kobe Bryant. If pornographic movies started to portray people using oatmeal in sexual ways, within a few months, there would be people in real life using oatmeal in this same way. Humans are very suggestible creatures.
Over at Jonathan Rowe's website, he tells us that he finds the discussion laugh out loud funny: For some reason, this passage amuses me more than it should. Or maybe you too should try reading it without laughing out loud. I can't...
I'm sure the feminists on the faculty where Rowe teaches won't find his amusement very tolerable. Perhaps they will send him off to re-education camp--or give him a pass because he's gay.
Leatherman Endorses Kerry
No, no, the Portland company that makes the really neat multitool, not the leather fetishists. At least I understand why the leather boys would endorse Kerry. I don't own a Leatherman product, and at this rate, I won't.
Where To Report Child Pornography
The Bayesian spam blocker that I use does a pretty good job. Every once in a while, I check the Deleted folder, to make sure that nothing is being mislabeled. I get a lot of spam, much of it trying to offer me prescription medicines that I don't need, credit cards that I don't need, and body enhancements that I don't need. (Seriously: I have no need for non-surgical alternatives to breast implants.) Much of the spam is porn, and while it annoys me, that's about all. (The category called "bukake," however, is so repulsive that it makes me slightly sympathetic to those feminists who assert that pornography is part of the mechanism for keeping women in subjagation.)
But yesterday afternoon, one of the pieces of spam was more weirdly worded than most. It wasn't quite telling what they were offering, but there was an implication that these were pre-teen girls. Indeed, they were--and there was no question as to whether or not the "models" were just very young loooking adult women.
It turns out that you can report this sort of problem by visiting the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC) CyberTipline at www.cybertipline.com, and fill out a report online. I was able to provide both the www.geocities.com web page that redirects to the child pornography site, the child pornography site itself, and the message headers that may assist in tracking down the actual sender of the child porn spam.
I know, I know, I'm being narrow-minded about all this--but there are two overpowering reasons why child pornography needs to be unlawful:
1. Unless it is made entirely with computer graphics software, some child is being sexually abused to make it.
2. Pedophiles use child pornography to persuade victims that, "it's okay to do this. See? They're doing it."
Making child pornography should be a capital offense. Liberals can make as much fun of me for saying that as they want.
UPDATE: Just to be clear on this, since some of may think I am being too harsh in saying that this is a liberal cause: Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) struck down a provision of Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 that criminalized virtual child pornography. Sure, virtual child pornography is not a problem for point #1 above--but it is certainly a problem for point #2, and more importantly, as the quality of graphics software improves, we will reach a point where it will be impossible to determine whether child pornography is virtual, or real. Yes, strictly speaking, the decision did not completely preclude banning virtual pornography, but that's effectively the result. The notion that the First Amendment was ever intended to protect obscene materials--much less child pornography--is insane.
