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Labels: Iraqi WMDs Labels: gun rights Labels: humor Labels: humor
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
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Amitai Etzioni's Blog
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Michael Williams -- Master of None
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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
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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
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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
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Neocon Blues
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CIA Interfering in the Politics of a Sovereign Nation--Ours
A friend of mine was very impressed that the CIA allowed one of their employees to publish a book recently--anonymously--titled Imperial Hubris criticizing the Bush Administration. The employee has now left the agency, and revealed his identity: Michael Scheuer. He is also revealing why this very unusual arrangement was allowed--and under what conditions: ON NOVEMBER 9, ex-CIA counterterrorism officer Michael Scheuer gave an interview to the Washington Post's Dana Priest. Scheuer, who ran the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1996-99, and whose latest book, Imperial Hubris (published under the pseudonym "Anonymous"), criticizes the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies in general and the Iraq war in particular, wanted to talk about his former employer. Scheuer told Priest that his bosses at the CIA (he gave the interview prior to leaving the agency) had "diluted the pool that supports our people overseas," which meant that "in the long term, we're less safe than we should be." What's more, Scheuer added, CIA management can't take criticism. Just look at what happened with his latest book. "As long as the book was being used to bash the president, they gave me carte blanche to talk to the media," Scheuer said. When Scheuer started attacking the CIA in interviews along with the president, agency brass forbade him from talking to the media.
This is an important story--and it suggests that George Tenent, whose agency blew it (along with many others) on the WMD question, may have been trying to get revenge--or distract attention from the agency's failures.
Scheuer's stunning admission--that CIA officials actively promoted a book criticizing the administration they work for--has garnered some attention, mostly from conservative columnists like Robert Novak and David Brooks. But one question remained unanswered throughout the coverage--who, exactly, were "they"? Who gave Scheuer carte blanche to attack Bush? At a breakfast with reporters on Friday, Scheuer gave his answer: former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow.
Scheuer told reporters on Friday that, traditionally, he would have to arrange interviews through the CIA public affairs office. Each interview would have to be cleared before
Scheuer was allowed to talk. With Imperial Hubris, however, that wasn't the case. The book's advance publicity had hyped the fact that a CIA officer was anonymously breaking with the administration's anti-terror strategy. Interview requests flooded in. But Scheuer said that Harlow told him, "We're giving you carte blanche." Harlow's condition? Scheuer was supposed to let the public affairs office know who he talked to--after the interview(s) had taken place.
"The book was misunderstood," Scheuer said on Friday. "It's a book about the failure of senior intelligence officers," not an ad hominem attack on the president. During his first round of publicity interviews, he tried to set the record straight. "Once I turned it around," however, "and talked about leadership in the intelligence community," Scheuer said, "well, that was the end of the day." Since Bush was no longer his target, Scheuer had been gagged.
You Are Engaged in a Fiercely Subversive Act
You are reading. My wife is downstairs right now, grading papers for an English Composition class, very close to losing her sanity at some of the typos that were "corrected" by some spell checker, such as "when the United States interred Iraq." She finally moaned, "Someone needs to write a book titled Post-Literate America."
My only response was, "Who would read it?"
The problem is that very, very few kids are reading for pleasure anymore. My daughter is now 20, and she tells me that even at her very demanding high school (99% of the graduating class went to college), none of her friends read for pleasure; she was definitely unusual in that respect.
When I was growing up, in the late Pleistocene, I lived in one of the best served broadcast television markets in the United States (and probably the world): Los Angeles. I could watch KNXT (2), KNBC (4), KTLA (5), KABC (7), KHJ (9), KTTV (11), and KCOP (13). (It's scary that I can remember all the call letters.) Even with seven channels, by seventh grade, what was on was sufficiently uninteresting that most of my spare time was spent reading. It didn't hurt that my mother worked at the library, and would bring home several books a day for me to inhale.
What changed? A big chunk of the population has a lot more channels thanks to cable TV, and a lot more movie choices, because of videotapes and now DVDs. Video is the path of least resistance when you are bored, at least for those who don't get drunk or smoke pot. I fear that a lot of the kids who read for pleasure when I was young--because there was nothing on television to hold their attention--now watch the idiot box instead.
Here's a radical concept. You have all seen the bumper stickers so fashionable in leftist circles that encourage you to, "Kill Your Television." Maybe there is an argument for the government killing television and video. Prohibit broadcast and cable television, or limit it to two hours in the morning, and three hours in the evening. Tax copyrighted video (regardless of medium) at a level to discourage "junk food" viewing.
Okay, okay, I know that Congress would never pass it. The masses would revolt. The entertainment industry would exercise its substantial financial power to kill the idea. But there has to be some solution to the decline of reading. Even reading on the Internet is a big improvement over becoming a nation of vidiots.
I'm Trying To Be Sympathetic To This Professor
He got in trouble for showing a film to his class: SALISBURY, N.C. — A community college instructor who was suspended for showing "Fahrenheit 9/11" in class the week before the presidential election is offering no apologies and says he was unfairly punished.
On the one hand, you really don't want the college micromanaging the classroom.
Davis March showed the Michael Moore (search) documentary critical of President Bush to his film class. Administrators pulled the plug on the movie with about 20 minutes left when March tried to show it to English composition students.
On the other hand, the school made it very clear that the job of professors was not to engage in partisan politics in the classroom. Showing "Fahrenheit 9/11" without showing one of the several critical alternatives is just obvious politics. Can you imagine if a professor showed the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" documentary a week before the election, without making even an attempt at showing alternative perspectives on their claims? (Not that it would ever happen at a college or university.)
I am pretty careful when I teach history to avoid unbalanced presentations. Even pet topics, like gun control, I make a serious effort to present the arguments from both sides of how to interpret the Second Amendment. Even though I make it clear that I believe that one side has the stronger argument, I avoid direct political statements in class of the form, "This is the only sensible position." I expect others to do the same.
I Wish That There Was No Past History Of Microsoft Doing This...
The accusation is that Microsoft had a policy of destroying all email more than 30 days old to make it hard to get evidence in discovery: Top managers at Microsoft told employees to destroy evidence contained in old e-mail during 2000, even as the company faced several antitrust lawsuits at the time, court documents filed by Burst.com charge.
This is vaguely reminscient of the Stac Electronics case some years ago, where Microsoft started negotiations with this company for their disk compression software to be included in DOS--then, when Stac wasn't willing to sign over the rights cheaply enough to make Microsoft happy, they just went ahead and used the information that they had already gotten out of Stac.
Burst.com, which is suing Microsoft for alleged patent and antitrust violations, accuses Microsoft managers of telling employees in 2000 to delete most or all e-mail after 30 days, in court documents made public this week. At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice was in the midst of its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, and the software giant faced dozens of class action lawsuits.
...
Burst.com filed its lawsuit against Microsoft in June 2002, alleging that Microsoft stole patented technology and trade secrets concerning Internet-based video-on-demand for its Windows Media Player product. Microsoft learned all about Burst.com's technology in two years of meetings and discussions, although it signed a nondisclosure agreement with Burst prior to those meetings, Burst.com alleges.
Look, if Microsoft were still a little operation, playing vicious and unscrupulous games with companies roughly its own size, I might not forgive this sort of behavior, but I could at least understand it. But is there any need or excuse to pull this sort of stuff now?
Always Nice To Know That Racist Rednecks Are Just An American Problem
From one of the British papers: DECENT soccer fans fired a broadside at the sick senors of Spain last night over disgraceful racist taunts aimed at black England players.
They're black, you see.
Stars Ashley Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Jermaine Jenas endured vile monkey chants as England lost 1-0 to Spain in a “friendly” in Madrid on Wednesday.
Arafat's Surprise
Of course with all the rumors that have been floating around about the cause of death, perhaps his expectations weren't really that high.
You Think You Have a Spam Problem...
This article reports the bad news that goes with being the world's richest man: SINGAPORE (AFP) — Internet junkies, take heart: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates receives four million e-mails daily, most of them spam, and is probably the most "spammed" person in the world.
Those Reactionary, Narrow-Minded Bigots!
Insisting that immigrants learn the language, and follow local customs! If only they were more like those sophisticated, open-minded, worldly Europeans! Whoops! European Union justice and interior ministers agreed Friday that new immigrants to the 25-nation bloc should be required to learn local languages, and to adhere to general "European values" that will guide them toward better integration.
Dutch immigration minister Rita Verdonk, who chaired the meeting, said all countries agreed to make integrating newcomers a priority, considering the growing ethnic tensions as EU nations struggle to absorb a steady stream of poor, mostly Muslim immigrants.
...
"It's not like we are against immigration," Verdonk said. "If you want to live in the Netherlands, you have to adhere to our rules ... and learn our language."
Highlighting a European-wide problem, Verdonk said that some 500,000 Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands don't speak Dutch.
Condoleeza Rice, Second Amendment Absolutist
Dave Kopel has some links to this story. Rice understands what this is all about: Rice has said memories of Birmingham's racial turmoil shaped some of her core values.
During the bombings of the summer of 1963, her father and other neighborhood men guarded the streets at night to keep white vigilantes at bay. Rice said her staunch defense of gun rights comes from those days. She has argued that if the guns her father and neighbors carried had been registered, they could have been confiscated by the authorities, leaving the black community defenseless.
Another Red State/Blue State Difference
Ryan Zempel observes that the blue states rank lower on something called the "U.S. Economic Freedom Index." I don't know how meaningful that index is--people have been known to play games with such indices over the years--but Rite Wing Techno-Pagan says: A Wilcoxson rank-sum test shows this distribution would happen by chance about once in 40,000 times. Anything that would happen by chance less than once in 20 times is considered a publishable result in the journals.
Of course, you could ask, is the economic freedom the reason that voters in those states voted Republican? Or is that their state legislatures are less likely to regulate the economy? Or is that the conditions that seem to justify (and may actually justify) some forms of economic regulation are more common in the blue states?
The Virtues of Monogamy
Interesting article about the fear of STDs among New Yorkers: Twenty-four-year-old Lindsey is attractive, vivacious, flirtatious, and perennially single. She loves men and says that she really enjoys sex. Her stylishly shaggy hair looks freshly tugged, but despite appearances, Lindsey hasn’t gotten past second base in the past twelve months. Her fear of catching a sexually transmitted disease is so acute that she’s taking the only measure she believes will put her chances of contracting an STD closer to zero.
It is a very responsible article about the risks--and that condoms aren't sufficient protection from all STDs. It makes me so glad that before I became a Christian, I wasn't good looking enough, or manipulative enough, to put myself at high risk--and very glad that I've been married for the last twenty-four years.
[too graphic description of events that scared her witless deleted]
Having sex with a rotating cast of interesting characters is what twentysomething New Yorkers do. It’s practically in the job description. Yet Lindsey is one of a small but growing number of young, single, heterosexual Manhattanites so utterly spooked by the prospect of catching a sexually transmitted disease that engaging in “normal” sexual activity has simply become an unjustifiable risk. It’s an acute response to the culture of condoms and caution, a sexual dysfunction that’s grown out of the safe-sex campaign.
Anyone who came of age in the past twenty years can’t be blamed for equating sex with undesirable consequences. The aids epidemic was in full swing before this generation even started thinking about having sex. Freddie Mercury died, Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive, and an unusually grave Madonna laid out the case for condoms from a gritty high-school set in a public-service announcement. Then there were the warnings closer to home.
There is a really, really strong argument for chastity until marriage, and fidelity after marriage, even if it all sounds just so incredibly retro. If you can't manage the "chastity until marriage" part of it, at least reduce the number of sexual partners, and increase the length of those relationships, just to reduce the velocity of STD distribution. A good rule of thumb: don't change sexual partners more often than you change cars, or cell phone providers.
Oh yes, the article does remind us that there is one group that isn't getting the message, and regular readers won't be surprised at which one: In Dr. Bregman’s experience, this kind of STD paranoia is an almost exclusively heterosexual phenomenon. He rarely sees it in his gay patients, despite the fact that HIV infection is again on the rise in that community. His straight patients, however, particularly the men, mirror those of Dr. Salant’s. “There is an increase in patient requests for STD testing to a level that is not always medically justified,” he says. “And some continue to believe they have a disease when good testing—accurate 99 out of a hundred times—tells them they don’t.”
The Left's Sudden Interest in States' Rights
Interesting article by Radley Balko about how the left has suddenly found an interest in states' rights, now that Republicans are firmly in control of the federal government: Election 2004 gave Republicans, for the first time in a generation, unquestionable control of the White House and both chambers of Congress — the culmination of a trend that began a decade ago with the Gingrich revolution.
I think it is important to understand that conservatives were never rigidly states' rights on national security issues. While I disagree with Ashcroft's decision to challenge Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, and I find the federal government's argument against California's medical marijuana law unpersuasive, I do think it is important to distinguish what the Bush Administration has done, from what conservatives believe.
In those 10 years, as the Right has grown more powerful in American politics, it has also abandoned its traditional support for a restrained federal government — the principle of federalism upon which the U.S. was founded — in favor of an activist federal government that promotes conservatism.
...
The Bush administration has epitomized this new “big government conservatism.” Avowed states-righters like former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the supremacy of federal law to overrule the will of the states on issues such as drug prohibition, capital punishment, and physician-assisted suicide. President Bush and congressional Republicans championed more federal involvement in education. Republican committee chairmen secured loads of pork-barrel spending for their home states and districts, just as the Democrats did when they chaired those same appropriations committees.
First of all, a number of these issues that Balko mentions really aren't states' rights matters at all. Pork-barrel spending, unfortunately, is a matter of who is holding office--and wants to continue holding office. I wish it were different, but coming up with money for the district back home is a long tradition in American politics.
Concerning physician-assisted suicide, I suspect what is motivating the Bush Administration's challenge is not that they have suddenly abandoned the notion of states' rights, but that they believe that the right to life is more important than states' rights. This is a defensible position, but they should be explicit that states' rights is only a means to an end, and the end is defense of human life.
On the matter of medical marijuana, even if the Administration did not have an interest in the drug question itself, they do have an obligation to defend existing federal law. The courts might well find against them, but that does not eliminate the obligation of the Department of Justice to defend its laws. Even laws that I disagree with need to be defended by the DOJ; they are servants of the legislative branch on this matter. I am sure that many of those upset with the Administration's efforts to keep federal marijuana laws intact by requiring doctors to conform to those laws would be very upset if the Administration decided not to defend environmental protection laws, because the President decided that they were stupid.
I do find Balko's article amusing in how the left is now rediscovering the virtues of federalism: However, committed states-righters and libertarians can take heart. Apparently, federalism is not dead. The left, long proponents of big, activist federal government, finding itself unquestionably in the minority, is discovering the virtues of federalism. Facing what could be the lengthy reign of a conservative government, many blue-staters are thinking hard about the advantages of local rule.
If this were a serious change of heart by the left, I would be overjoyed. There might be some hope for all to live together. The left could limit itself to passing absurd gun control laws in the blue states; the right could limit iself to passing sodomy laws in the red states. But I don't think the left really sees this as anything but a tactical response.
Liberal Swarthmore historian Timothy Burke wrote on his blog shortly after the election:
[I]t is a shocking thing to wake up the next morning and feel that one is really the target of hatred, to recognize that one's country is now in the hands of people who hate you, disrespect you, and intend to leave little room for you to live the life you prefer on the terms you prefer to live it …
Burke then suggested that the left abandon the idea of an influential federal government that dictates top-down policy for the entire country in favor of allowing blue-state jurisdictions to live by blue-state policy and red-state jurisdictions to live by red-state policy.
The Need For Diversity
This New York Times article (try not to be shocked) about the lack of political diversity in the academic community should be no surprise: Conservatism is becoming more visible at the University of California here, where students put out a feisty magazine called The California Patriot and have made the Berkeley Republicans one of the largest groups on campus. But here, as at schools nationwide, the professors seem to be moving in the other direction, as evidenced by their campaign contributions and two studies being published on Nov. 18.
What just amazes me is the excuses that academics make for the severe political imbalance of their faculty:
One of the studies, a national survey of more than 1,000 academics, shows that Democratic professors outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That ratio is more than twice as lopsided as it was three decades ago, and it seems quite likely to keep increasing, because the younger faculty members are more consistently Democratic than the ones nearing retirement, said Daniel Klein, an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University and a co-author of the study.
In a separate study of voter registration records, Professor Klein found a nine-to-one ratio of Democrats to Republicans on the faculties of Berkeley and Stanford. That study, which included professors from the hard sciences, engineering and professional schools as well as the humanities and social sciences, also found the ratio especially lopsided among the younger professors of assistant or associate rank: 183 Democrats versus 6 Republicans.
The political imbalance on faculties has inspired a campaign to have state legislatures and Congress approve an "academic bill of rights" protecting students and faculty members from discrimination for their political beliefs. The campaign is being led by Students for Academic Freedom, a group with chapters at Berkeley and more than 135 other campuses. It was founded last year by the leftist-turned-conservative David Horowitz, who helped start the 1960's antiwar movement while a graduate student at Berkeley.Robert J. Birgeneau, the chancellor of Berkeley, said that he was not sure if the new study of his faculty accurately reflected the professors' political leanings, and that these leanings were irrelevant anyway.
Sorry, but those of us with recent experience as grad students know better. I am not referring just to bizarre political statements in classes where the professor is outside his field of expertise, such as, "Native Americans took care of the environment, unlike Christians who just came here to destroy everything"--in a musicclass. I had a professor, otherwise very liberal, who confided to me that after mentioning that she had started attending church, found herself the butt of jokes in her department from other faculty.
"The essence of a great university is developing and sharing new knowledge as well as questioning old dogma," Dr. Birgeneau said. "We do this in an environment which prizes academic freedom and freedom of expression. These principles are respected by all of our faculty at U.C. Berkeley, no matter what their personal politics are."
For the first time, universities were at the top of the list of organizations ranked by their employees' contributions to a presidential candidate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group.
Well, no surprise that the millionaire crowd at the three capitalist firms would be kicking in so heavily to the Kerry campaign--rich people always look out for their own--but 19:1? If any university had similar disproportionate racial or sexual composition of its faculty--say, 1% black, or 5% female--there would be endless screeching about it.
In first and second place, ahead of Time Warner, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft, were the University of California system and Harvard, whose employees contributed $602,000 and $340,000, respectively, to Senator John Kerry. At both universities, employees gave about $19 to the Kerry campaign for every dollar for the Bush campaign.
Some of these statements by defenders of the leftist status quo must not realize how absurd they sound: One theory for the scarcity of Republican professors is that conservatives are simply not that interested in academic careers. A Democrat on the Berkeley faculty, George P. Lakoff, who teaches linguistics and is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," said that liberals choose academic fields that fit their world views. "Unlike conservatives," he said, "they believe in working for the public good and social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake, which are what the humanities and social sciences are about."
Conservatives don't believe in working for the public good and social justice? Or do they have different definitions of it? Conservatives don't believe in knowledge and art for its own sake? Or do they not consider "Piss Christ" an example of "art for own sake"?
Martin Trow, an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley who was chairman of the faculty senate and director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, said that professors tried not to discriminate in hiring based on politics, but that their perspective could be warped because so many colleagues shared their ideology.
Yup. I used to have a pretty good relationship with certain law professor bloggers. They often linked to interesting items that I had blogged--but since I have been willing to point out that the "homosexuals are a victimized group" idea just doesn't fly--and that the analogy of sexual orientation to race, sex, ethnicity, and religion really doesn't fit very well--suddenly, they never link to me. Why? I would guess because this is an idea that is outside the pale of legitimate conversation in the academic community, and to even link to anything that I write is somehow dangerous.
"Their view comes to be seen not as a political preference but what decent, intelligent human beings believe," said Dr. Trow, who calls himself a conservative. "Debate is stifled, and conservatives either go in the closet or get to be seen as slightly kooky. So if a committee is trying to decide between three well-qualified candidates, it may exclude the conservative because he seems like someone who has poor judgment."
I don't expect everything that I blog to be worth linking to--but suddenly nothing I blog is sufficiently thoughtful or informative?
Just A Reminder Of Who We Were Fighting in Fallujah
Make sure you send this newspaper article to your leftist friends who agree with Michael Moore about the "insurgents" in Fallujah being the moral equivalent of the Minutemen: As US and Iraqi troops mopped up the last vestiges of resistance in the city after a week of bombardment and fighting, residents who stayed on through last week's offensive were emerging and telling harrowing tales of the brutality they endured.
And on the next page:
Flyposters still litter the walls bearing all manner of decrees from insurgent commanders, to be heeded on pain of death. Amid the rubble of the main shopping street, one decree bearing the insurgents' insignia - two Kalashnikovs propped together - and dated November 1 gives vendors three days to remove nine market stalls from outside the city's library or face execution.
...
Another poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hardline cleric Abdullah Junabi. The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.
Two female bodies found yesterday suggest such threats were far from idle. An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had died from bullets to the head.
Just six metres away on the same street lay the decomposing corpse of a blonde-haired white woman, too disfigured for swift identification but presumed to be the body of one of the many foreign hostages kidnapped by the rebels. Such is the fear that the heavily armed militants held over Fallujah that many of the residents who emerged from the ruins welcomed the US marines, despite the massive destruction their firepower had inflicted on their city.
A man in his sixties, half-naked and his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night.
"I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months," he said, trembling. Nearby, a mosque courtyard had been used as a weapons store by the militants.
Another elderly man, who did not want his name used for fear the rebels would one day return and restore their draconian rule, said he was detained by the militants last Tuesday and held for four days before being freed. He described how he had then sought refuge in a friend's house where they had huddled together clutching Korans in silent prayer for their lives as the massive US bombardment put the insurgents to flight.
"It was horrible," he told an AFP reporter."We suffered from the bombings. Innocent people died or were wounded by the bombings.
"But we were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin. Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time."
The same story of arbitrary executions was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family.
"They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys," said Iyad Assam, 24. "I would hear stories, about how they executed five men one day and seven another for collaborating with the Americans. They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the veil from head to toe."
It was not just pedlars of alcohol or Western videos and women deemed improperly dressed who faced the militants' wrath. Even residents who regard themselves as observant Muslims lived in fear because they did not share the puritan brand of Sunni Islam that the insurgents enforced.
Humor
Over at IMAO (whose motto is "Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated.") there are some real gems. This single line just drops me into hopeless laughter: The opposition party doesn't have enough gravitas to be circus clowns.
Then there is a riotously funny demolition of a Walter Schneider who wrote an email to IMAO attacking him for his ignorance--but the letter is full of spelling and grammar errors: > I assume your joking, nothing here improves your standing or your party's
There's nothing quite as funny as a leftist getting snotty about his intellectual superiority, while demonstrating that he can't spell, he can't punctuate, and he can't figure out how to construct a rhetorical question. (Your, you're, yore, they're all the same to the generation that grew up on television. Or perhaps Mr. Schneider doesn't know the difference between homophones and homophobes, and decided that he better not learn about homophones for fear of being a homophobe.)
> standing? (that's a rectorial question)
Either There's More To This Story...
Or some lawyer needs to be disbarred: Patricia M. Frankhouser filed suit on Nov. 4 seeking damages in excess of $30,000 from Norfolk Southern Corp. (search), according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Perhaps there should be a warning label on the edges of cliffs: "Warning, throwing yourself over the edge may be dangerous."
Last January, Frankhouser was hit by a train as she walked along railroad tracks in her hometown of Jeannette, Pa., a southeastern suburb of Pittsburgh.
...
"Defendant's failure to warn plaintiff of the potential dangers negligently provided plaintiff with the belief she was safe in walking near the train tracks," Frankhouser's suit asserts.
It goes on to state that Norfolk Southern, based in Norfolk, Va., should have posted signs warning passersby "of the dangers of walking near train tracks and that the tracks were actively in use."
Michael Jackson's Friends
I am shocked--shocked--to find out that Michael Jackson has friends of this moral caliber: Before entering Jackson's inner circle a few years ago, Schaffel was best known as a producer of gay porno films like "Cocktales" and "Man With The Golden Rod." According to Santa Barbara prosecutors, Schaffel plotted with Jackson to silence the boy who last year accused the singer of sexual molestation. While not charged, Schaffel has been named as an "unindicted coconspirator" in the indictment.
Think Of It As The Equivalent of Adopting a School or a Highway
Adopt-a-Sniper. No, it's not parody--it's an effort by America's police snipers to help out their buddies in far away lands.
Please make sure that you send this to a liberal friend. I really want to hear all those heads exploding.
Still Missing
My mother's cat, which ran away in Redding, California while she was moving, is still missing. She is still hoping that someone will find it and send Ditto home.
More details are here.
Somewhat Outside The Normal Duties of Historian, I Suspect
I sometimes fantasize about going to work as a civil service historian, and while searching the federal government's job listings today, I found this odd collection of duties: MAJOR DUTIES:
Hmmm. And all this time I thought the biggest occupational hazard for an historian involved paper cuts and inhaling dust.
Incumbent prepares annual history, analytical reports and other written material covering the activities of the unit to preserve its corporate memory and to promote continuity of operations. Writes the organization's history emphasizing problems encountered, solutions to these problems, and the unit's effectiveness in accomplishing its mission.... Collects and safeguards documents concerning contingency operations. Preserves pertinent documents containing information that might not be available elsewhere.
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OTHER SIGNIFICANT FACTORS:
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4. Position will include training in the carrying and use of firearms.
Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back in the Water...
I mean, to go fishing: NEW YORK - Touting tofu chowder and vegetarian sushi as alternatives, animal-rights activists have launched a novel campaign arguing that fish — contrary to stereotype — are intelligent, sensitive animals no more deserving of being eaten than a pet dog or cat.
It is possible that fish are "just as intelligent" as PETA activists, but I am quite certain that they are less intelligent than my dog (which isn't saying much) or my cat (who is quite intelligent--the ultimate mouse killing machine).
Called the Fish Empathy Project, the campaign reflects a strategy shift by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as it challenges a diet component widely viewed as nutritious and uncontroversial.
"No one would ever put a hook through a dog's or cat's mouth," said Bruce Friedrich, PETA's director of vegan outreach. "Once people start to understand that fish, although they come in different packaging, are just as intelligent, they'll stop eating them."
Yes, this was when he was just a kitten. Two years on, and he's ferocious! He thinks he is a mountain lion.
I confess that I am not entirely comfortable with trophy hunting or sport hunting, and the same is true for fishing, although I agree that there are legitimate game management reasons for these activities, and I would never attempt to restrict them. (I work with a guy who is a big fisherman--but because he is allergic to fish, it is all catch and release.) Still, if you kill an animal humanely to eat it, I don't see any difference between that and getting meat at the market in the cellophane wrapper. I am trying to not be quite as flippant as Michael Williams, who asserts, I don't misunderstand fish or any other animals -- I just like to eat them. After all, a cow is just dinner wrapped in shoes.
If you have any question about whether man is by nature a hunter or not (and I have had intelligent people try to argue that meat-eating is "unnatural" for us), just look in the mirror. Predators have binocular vision so that they can use parallax to figure out distance to target; prey generally have eyes on opposite sides of their head, so that they can observe predators approaching. Any of my readers who do not have two eyes in the front of their heads, please let me know about this!
Imposing Morals on Others
I've blogged before that the favorite bumper sticker slogan "Government shouldn't impose its morals on others" is nonsense, unless you are an anarchist. All criminal laws impose a moral value. These laws may be good ideas, or bad, but to argue against laws imposing a moral value is to argue against government. Professor Volokh makes this point here.
I think that this slogan is actually shorthand for, "Government should not impose the morals of a bare majority on a large minority." This is a much more defensible position. If 51% of the population orders the other 49% to stop eating meat and milk at the same meal, it is going to be impossible to enforce such a law. If even 10% of the population absolutely refuses to obey a law, there aren't enough police, courts, and prisons to make such a law work, except by very selective enforcement, and making painful examples of those who run afoul of the law.
This is, I suspect, why California's 1989 Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act had such severe punishments: 4 to 8 years for sale of an assault weapon--a more serious punishment than California law provides for forcible rape. If you know that there is a large minority that does approve of a law, you need to threaten very severe penalties for it to work.
This problem of enforceability is part of why I think that banning first-trimester abortions, bans on gun ownership, sodomy laws, alcohol prohibition, marijuana prohibition, and a host of other well-intentioned ideas are really poor ideas. Some of them may be constitutional. If the point is reached where an overwhelming majority of the population supports such laws, they may even be enforceable.
It is rather amusing, however, to hear the supporters of gun control laws, anti-discrimination laws, and dozens of other ideas which involve imposing a liberal's morality on others argue against conservatives doing likewise.
Population Density and "Redness"
Patrick Cox has a very interesting article over at Tech Central Station about the correlation between population density and whether counties voted for Bush or Kerry. Not surprisingly, the lower density, the more likely to vote for Bush. So what is it about population density?
Cox points to a study of the willingness of people to help strangers that shows: Overall, people in more crowded cities were much less likely to take the time to help. New York City was Exhibit A. Crowding brings out our worst nature. Urban critics have demonstrated that squeezing too many people into too small a space leads to alienation, anonymity, de-individuation and social isolation. Ultimately, people feel less responsible for their behaviors toward others -- especially strangers.
So perhaps urban tendencies to vote Democrat reflect a sense that no one (except the government) is there to help you. Another possible explanation is that selfish, uncaring people congregate in urban areas, and project their selfishness onto the rest of the country.
Thirty Years On: A History of the National Border Security Act of 2005
Those with long memories will recall the enormous political struggle around the National Border Security Act of 2005. Today, the clear advantages that it has provided, not only for the United States, but for our neighbors, have made it uncontroversial. At the time, however, it seemed as though the United States might come to a second Civil War over it, with conflicts not only between political parties, but within parties as well.
Throughout the opening months of his second term, President George Bush (2001-2009) sought formal recognition of the status of the millions of illegal aliens in the United States. His opponents in Congress included both Democrats and Republicans, with a variety of motivations, sometimes less than noble. Long smoldering populist resentment of the issue appeared, however, when President Bush’s Social Security reform bill was brought to a floor vote. It was an odd three-part coalition that stopped Bush’s bill in its tracks. Fiscal conservatives were afraid that some parts of the bill failed to address long-term Social Security deficits. Some liberals were fearful that too many younger workers would mismanage their Social Security 401(k) plans, and be left destitute in old age. National security Republicans, concerned about the problem of illegal aliens, logrolled their votes against the reform plan into a commitment to solve the problem of illegal immigration.
The other two factions of the coalition went along with this demand, because they expected real immigration reform to be too complex for Congress to pass. As it turned out, they were very nearly right. President Bush, recognizing that Social Security reform was the most important domestic policy initiative of his second term, proposed a relatively mild immigration reform act. The July, 2005 arrests of four jihadists in Baltimore while they were building an ammonium nitrate truck bomb mobilized public opinion—especially when INS could find no record of their entry. As discussion of the measure grew—and the benefits of a more dramatic change in immigration policy became apparent—the bill morphed into the far more radical National Border Security Act of 2005.
Many pro-illegal immigration Democrats found themselves voting for a bill that they detested because they believed that President Bush would veto it. The vote of Congressional Republicans for the bill, these Democrats believed, could be used as an effective tool to bring Hispanic voters back into the Democratic fold at the 2006 mid-term elections. Even if signed into law, these Democrats believed that most provisions of the new law would be struck down by the Supreme Court for violating equal protection.
Because of the many later revisions to the bill, it is worthwhile to list the major provisions of this groundbreaking piece of legislation.
1. Knowingly hiring of any illegal alien within the United States became a felony, punishable by a fine of $10,000 per employee per day. The statute required employers to file copies of the employee’s evidence of legal status with the U.S. Department of Labor within 48 hours, through the Department of Labor website. Employers complained about the costs of this program—but spot checks by the Department of Labor found a 89% drop in hiring of illegal aliens. Cross-checking of Social Security numbers, often within one week of employment, caused an enormous number of referrals to the INS, followed by rapid deportation.
2. All state and local governments were obligated to arrest illegal aliens that came to their attention, and refuse non-emergency services to illegal aliens. The ACLU’s efforts to challenge this as a violation of separation of powers, along the lines of argument in Printz v. U.S. (1997) at first seemed as though they might be successful, but by the time the Supreme Court heard the case County of Los Angeles v. U.S. (2009), President Bush had appointed three new members of the Court, and the Court ruled 5-4 that New York v. U.S. (1992), and Printz, while limiting the authority of the federal government to impose obligations on the states, were not applicable here. New York v. U.S. (1992) had decided that:
If a power is delegated to Congress in the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment expressly disclaims any reservation of that power to the States; if a power is an attribute of state sovereignty reserved by the Tenth Amendment, it is necessarily a power the Constitution has not conferred on Congress.
Immigration law was clearly a federal responsibility, and states were obligated to enforce federal law, under Art. VI:
The prohibition on non-emergency services to illegal aliens would at first seem to have been contrary to the New York v. U.S. and Printz decisions, since welfare and medical services were not traditionally within the responsibilities of the federal government, but the Court held that this prohibition was simply a method of enforcing the federal immigration law. Few Court observers found this argument convincing. Justice Thomas’s memoirs, Justice From Pin Point (Regnery, 2015) leads many historians to conclude that even the majority found this claim more expedient than persuasive.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.
3. A long standing tradition of American law—that any child born in the United States was a citizen by birth—suffered a dramatic change: only if both a child’s parents were lawfully in the United States at the time of birth would that child acquire American citizenship. This minor revision to 8 U.S.C. 1401 was, of course, controversial, because the Fourteenth Amendment specifies that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” Indeed, a previous decision, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), held that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” only excluded children born to foreign diplomats. However, Ark was not directly relevant to the case of children born to illegal immigrants because Ark’s parents were both lawfully resident in the United States at the time of his birth. In U.S. v. Martinez (2007), the Court ruled that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” could not be said to apply to an illegal alien. The Court’s opinion received ferocious criticism for quoting from Ark: It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
The Court observed that “an illegal alien, by breaking the laws, can hardly be said to be ‘within … the obedience” of the government. Unsurprisingly, the many unusual cases that were not adequately forseen (a child born to an illegal alien mother while the father was not in the United States; a child born during a layover at Los Angeles International Airport) led to a series of minor corrective acts in later Congresses.
4. The provision that was subject to the most prolonged ridicule was that which directed the President to make use of the unorganized militia to secure the borders. To the surprise of many commentators, the forty million members of the unorganized militia were surprisingly easy to organize. Especially in border states such as California, Arizona, and Texas, there was enough popular frustration with the problem of illegal immigration that it was easy to turn out enough militia to patrol the relatively small sections of the border where illegal immigration had been a problem. National Guard units provided organization, guidance, and adult supervision. The militia primarily acted as eyes and ears for the Border Patrol. While the unorganized militia armed themselves, there were surprisingly few shots fired—no more than a dozen deaths a month in the first two years. Most of those killed in these skirmishes turned out not to be illegal aliens, but those smuggling aliens and drugs, for whom few tears were shed. Also to the surprise of those who feared that the “unorganized militia” would turn out to be Hispanic-hating rednecks, many of the militiamen were of Hispanic ancestry. The notion that opposition to illegal immigration was driven by racial hatred did not survive a few months of actual experience with militia enforcement of the law. Some have even argued that the experience of seeing all Americans, regardless of ancestry, working together to end illegal immigration, may have actually increased tolerance for Hispanic-Americans lawfully present.
The legal consequences, while interesting, turned out to be the least dramatic. In a little more than a year, from the adoption date of January 1, 2006, the face of America changed—but often in ways that few had predicted. The satirical film A Day Without a Mexican (2004) had suggested that anti-illegal immigration agitation was directed at Hispanics—and yet, to the surprise of many liberals, Hispanics supported the new law, once it became apparent that the requirements for proof of residency were being applied strictly and equally to all—including Canadian illegals. Within a year, almost two million illegal aliens had been arrested and deported. In spite of the ACLU’s best efforts, the majority accepted deportation without argument—especially because employers who had previously hired illegals on the basis of obviously forged documents were now refusing to do so. There was little reason to stay in America without a paycheck.
The first few weeks were, indeed, chaotic. Restaurants in almost every major city in America—and indeed, even in many small towns—found themselves woefully understaffed. Gardening services, agricultural harvesting, and even a surprising number of skilled jobs were soon unoccupied. Many of the dire predictions of economic collapse at first seemed as though they might come true. Still, the problem quickly led to a solution, because the law of supply and demand still applied. Minimum wage was not attracting U.S. citizens and legal residents to jobs as dishwashers and busboys? No problem: pay better. Soon, market forces had created swarms of unskilled, entry level jobs paying a national average of $6.54 an hour. Minimum wage laws, with a few exceptions, became irrelevant, without an enormous swarm of illegal aliens depressing wages.
The change in the nature of the workforce caused by this exit of illegal aliens turned out to have surprising benefits to the Democratic Party. The emerging class of better paid but unskilled American workers turned out to be somewhat easier to unionize than the illegal aliens, and far more willing to insist on fair treatment, even when there was no union to represent them. They were not afraid of la migra, and so an employer could not frighten them into accepting dangerous working conditions. They knew their rights as Americans, and were far more willing to contact state regulatory agencies. Because replacement workers were in short supply, the American workers knew that they were not replaceable like light bulbs, and exercised this knowledge to demand better treatment and working conditions. At least some small employers were, for the first time, offering health insurance plans to their employees. (Most employers, of course, remained unable to do so, because their businesses were not profitable enough.)
Unsurprisingly, the small business class that had traditionally backed the Republican Party came very close to putting the Democratic Party back in control of both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections of 2006. It was not that the small businessmen backed Democrats—-but many sat on their hands in frustration, and more than one businessman found that without a supply of cheap labor, his business went under. Still, the social benefits of the new immigration law were apparent by the 2008 elections, with political benefits for those members of Congress, of both parties, who had voted for the new law.
One obvious social benefit was the change in medical care. Emergency rooms were no longer crowded with illegal aliens seeking medical care for sick children. Much of this problem had been because illegal aliens were poorly paid, often paid off the books, and consequently uninsured. As the percentage of uninsured patients fell, the severe budget problems of many urban counties eased.
Another area of improvement was with respect to police services. While most illegal aliens came to America to work, at least some were criminals at home, and did not change their behavior here. Also, because so many illegal aliens were single young men, they behaved as single young men almost everywhere do: badly. After twelve hours working at physically demanding jobs (picking lettuce, plucking chickens), many drowned their sorrows in alcohol, with predictable consequences in bar fights, brawls, and disputes over women. The loss of these single young men back to their home countries was entirely a gain for America—-and perhaps a gain for the single young men, who returned to traditional village social structures.
One effect that had been predicted had been automation. Much as the chronic shortage of labor in early America had driven inventions such as the McCormick reaper, the sewing machine, and interchangeable parts, the chronic shortage of labor after the new immigration law provoked another burst of American innovation. There were two causes for this. One was that many businesses found it impossible to operate without an enormous supply of labor—especially in the agricultural area. The development of machinery to pick tomatoes, fruit, lettuce, and many other crops that we now take for granted, would almost certainly not have happened without the severe shortages of labor.
A second cause was that even when labor was available, the cost was now much higher. California’s agricultural industry was capable of making a profit with minimum wages of $6.75 an hour; it was not capable of doing so by 2007, when market forces had driven wages above $9 an hour—and these were wages for relatively pleasant jobs, such as busboy and dishwasher. Many growers discovered that Americans would not pick fruit even for $11 an hour. Crop harvests for 2007 were substantially below the 2005 and 2006 levels, and a number of smaller growers were driven into bankruptcy.
Entrepreneurs saw the profit potential to build harvesters for these crops that had been traditionally picked by hand. Silicon Valley companies channeled their capabilities in machine vision, robotics, and heuristics into harvesting machines that largely eliminated the need for field laborers. The jobs that remained were increasingly supervisory in nature, adjusting the harvesting machines’ decisions such as what constituted a ripe tomato, and correct levels of force in removing ripe apples. Agribusinesses made a substantial capital investment—exceeding $100 billion a year from 2007 through 2015—but this also kickstarted the dramatic expansion of the American robotics industry. A robot that can pick fruit (and know what fruit not to pick) is the ancestor of today’s robotic car mechanics (now performing more than 30% of all regular vehicle maintenance) and robotic nurses (now performing more than 15% of hospital labor, such as turning and bathing bed-ridden patients).
All of this capital investment, and the use of higher priced American labor had a predictable effect on the prices of food, on restaurants, and service industries where illegal aliens had been dominant. Yet because the wages of the poorest Americans rose in response to the reduced competition for jobs, these rising prices ended up as a net transfer of wealth downward. In the first two years, the price of a meal out rose by 12%, but the benefit was that the wages of the poorest Americans rose by 8%. Illegal aliens had dominated service industries such as gardening, maids, and childcare, but for the most part, these services were used by middle and upper class Americans. The rising cost of these services injured those who could most afford it, and benefited those poor Americans who most needed the help.
Perhaps the greatest surprise was how the immigration reforms altered the political and economic climate of other nations. It had long been recognized that illegal immigration from Mexico had been a safety valve for that country. Along with a few criminals, Mexico had been exporting its most industrious and motivated workers, rather than confront the serious economic problems created by decades of corrupt rule. As millions of illegal aliens returned to Mexico in 2006 and 2007, there were severe pressures on the Mexican government. Predictably, the Mexican government blamed the United States, as did most of the returned illegals.
As it became apparent by 2008 that the United States would not alter its policies, the National Action Party (PAN) realized that a more politically expedient course was not to persuade our government to change policy, but to adopt a “blame them, change us” strategy. While they continued to blame the United States for Mexico’s surging unemployment rate, PAN took advantage of the opportunity to argue for larger structural changes in the Mexican regulatory environment, to create more capital investment and more jobs in Mexico. Because the North American Free Trade Act was not affected by these immigration law reforms, there was a substantial expansion of Mexican industry, in many cases moving low-wage American industries to Mexico. Because Mexican wage rates were much lower, many of these American industries that relied upon illegal aliens actually became more profitable. Service jobs (such as gardening and restaurant work) could not move, of course. By 2015, it was apparent even to Mexicans who had criticized the 2005 reforms that the net effect had been to remove a major source of friction between the two countries—and a dramatic expansion of the Mexican industrial base.
The effects in other countries were considerably less direct. While other countries had contributed to the American illegal immigration problem, they had done so in much smaller numbers. Attempts by social scientists to evaluate the effects of the 2005 reforms have remained mixed, with clear-cut advantages obvious only for Canada—who found itself going through much the same situation as Mexico. One obvious difference was that Canada had never been quite as dependent on its illegal immigrants to America for either money or pressure relief. Nonetheless, it seems self-evident that the net effect of returning hundreds of thousands of illegal Canadian immigrants played some part in the rightward shift of the Canadian political system after 2010.
Abercrombie & Fitch Deserves What They Get
I've mentioned before Abercrombie & Fitch's efforts to sexualize kids with their catalogs before. How appropriate that this most liberal of institutions would get skewered by an EEO lawsuit: LOS ANGELES - Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has agreed to pay $40 million to black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants to settle a class-action federal discrimination lawsuit that accused the clothing retailer of promoting whites at the expense of minorities, lawyers said Tuesday.
Judicial Confirmation Fights
John R. Lott Jr. and Sonya D. Jones had an article in the Los Angeles Times today about the increasingly difficult process of judicial confirmation, with statistics on rates of confirmation and how long it takes: The confirmation rate for presidential nominees to federal appeals courts has fallen steadily over the last 30 years, from 93% under President Carter to 89% under President Reagan, 78% under George H.W. Bush, 74% under Clinton and 69% under President Bush.
There are a number of other statistics in the article as well--all of which suggest that judicial confirmation has become far more partisan and nasty than it used to be.
And the length of time it takes to confirm has gotten longer too. During the Carter and Reagan administrations, it took fewer than 70 days to confirm an appeals court judge. (About 33% of Reagan's nominees were confirmed within a month.) Under Bush's father, the length rose to 92 days, but Clinton saw the total soar to 230 days. Now, under Bush, it has risen again, to 263 days.
Liberal Humor
At least, I am going to assume that it is humor: “I am a Democrat—it’s no secret. I am a museum-quality Democrat,” [National Public Radio (NPR) superstar Garrison Keillor] said. “Last night I spent my time crouched in a fetal position, rolling around and moaning in the dark.”
Professor Volokh points to how "humorous" it would be if you substituted "Jew" "Catholic" or "Muslim" for "born-again Christian." It is just amazing how religious bigotry is acceptable from a leftist, when it would never be acceptable from anyone else.
Not one to shy away from speaking his mind, Keillor proposed a solution to what he deemed a fundamental problem with U.S. elections. “I’m trying to organize support for a constitutional amendment to deny voting rights to born-again Christians,” Keillor smirked. “I feel if your citizenship is in Heaven—like a born again Christian’s is—you should give up your citizenship. Sorry, but this is my new cause. If born again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?”
Is Dislike of Hip-Hop Racist?
I frequently hear that disapproval of hip-hop, rap, whatever you want to call that particular style of music, is just racist. (I remember hearing the same criticism of the negative reaction to the creatively sterile form called disco.) But you can get a pretty good feel for the nature of the crowd that considers this an art form from how hip-hoppers behave at an awards show: SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) - A fight broke out near the stage at the Vibe awards ceremony as rapper Snoop Dogg and producer Quincy Jones were preparing to honor Dr. Dre., and one person was stabbed, authorities and witnesses said.
Dozens of people sitting near the stage Monday inside a hangar at the Santa Monica airport began shoving each other as the show wound down about 7:30 p.m. News video showed chairs being thrown, punches flying, people chasing one another and some being restrained.
It was unclear if the stabbing preceded or followed the fight. The victim, a 26-year-old man, was taken to a hospital and was listed in stable condition.
No arrests were made.
Witness Frank Williams said Dr. Dre was involved in the brawl.
"I saw Dr. Dre fighting somebody," Williams told KCAL-TV. "I don't know if he was fighting back. But there was a guy taken out basically bloodied."
Animal Hoarding As Mental Disturbance?
My wife has long thought that these cases where someone has so many animals in the case that both human and animals are at risk are a form of mental illness. While I am reluctant to apply such a label too glibly, you read of cases like this (and I have read of many over the years in local newspapers), and you do start to wonder. In particular, note the description of the fractions of ammonia and oxygen in the air: Even with a gas mask on, the strong stench of cat feces and urine made breathing difficult for the police officer as he picked his way through 3-foot-high piles of garbage.
Now, a libertarian would argue that government intervention in these cases is unwarranted, because no human is being injured by this behavior. A liberal would agree that government intervention is justified (unless, of course, the human decides to get married to them).
Nearly 20 cats skittered nervously about the Scottsdale house, which was buzzing with flies and infested with spiders, roaches and maggots, a police report states.
"It was clear the homeowner’s life was overwhelmed," said Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Brachtl.
The mess, found by police Nov. 5 after neighbors reported a foul smell, was one of two "animal hoarding" cases in the East Valley in a week. On Tuesday, about 80 cats were discovered in a Mesa woman’s apartment. The air had a higher concentration of ammonia than oxygen.
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Animal hoarders are not necessarily mentally ill, said Gail Steketee, a psychologist at Boston University. "The best bet is to call it a wellintentioned behavior gone awry."
Steketee is one of dozens of scientists who volunteer with the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium in Boston, a group formed in 1997 to study the problem. There is no known treatment, she said.
Animal hoarding, a term coined five years ago, is defined as collecting more animals than can be cared for, combined with a failure to realize the squalid conditions are hurting both the homeowner and the animals.
Between 700 and 2,000 cases of animal hoarding arise each year in the United States, the group’s research shows. Three-quarters of animal hoarders are women living alone. About half of hoarders are 60 years or older. Many are employed and may seem ordinary when outside their homes, experts said.
The crisis builds gradually for hoarders, Steketee said. The person may identify with unwanted, stranded animals, and begin taking strays or salvaging animals from euthanization at a pound. The attachment to the animals later "overwhelms their ability to see what’s in front of their very eyes."
...
Reclusive by nature, dozens of people are likely hoarding animals throughout the Valley but have not been found yet, said Arizona Humane Society spokeswoman Kim Noetzel. The society responds to an average of four significant cases each year in Phoenix, she said.
Stopping a person from hoarding can be a painful experience for all involved, Noetzel said.
"There’s nothing worse than leaving the scene and seeing somebody in their front yard screaming and crying and begging to have their babies back," she said. "It’s gut-wrenching."
UPDATE: One reader tells me that the news report fails the sniff test concerning the concentration of ammonia in the air (and I don't think he intended the use of "sniff" as a pun), and I must confess that I found myself skeptical of that as well--probably should have done some investigation on that. This link indicates that concentrations far lower than that would be a major health problem for the animals, as well as the people. Remember that ammonia (NH3) is the analog to these poison gases that have been used in warfare: phosphine (PH3), arsine (AsH3), and stibine (SbH3). The last compound in that column of the periodic table would be BiH3, but I can't recall ever reading of it being used in warfare. It may not be volatile enough.
Another reader claims that my remarks above about libertarians is a strawman attack, because many libertarians support laws against animal cruelty. My experience is that doctrinaire libertarians don't support such laws, because they recognize the inconsistency of them. It is okay to inflict pain on animals for legitimate medical experiments; it is okay to inflict pain on them when you kill them for food. What makes it wrong to inflict pain on animals for fun? Libertarians who support animal cruelty laws do so based on either animal rights, on the right of owners to contracturally impose duties on buyers of animals, or because they just know that it is "wrong." See C.S. Lewis's argument in Mere Christianity about universal notions of right and wrong. I don't completely buy Lewis's argument, but it is interesting to see even libertarians with no Christian belief have so utterly internalized ideas such as animal cruelty laws.
Judges For Life
Michael Williams argues here against federal judges sitting for life, and suggests amending the Constitution to correct this.
This is a very tempting position to take, at least when conservatives seem to be in political ascendancy. I have a theory, however, that lifetime appointments for federal judges has a positive effect of buffering the rate of change--and this is actually a good thing, overall.
Consider what happened when FDR tried to ram through the New Deal. A bunch of federal judges, including most of the Supreme Court, were appointed by Republicans, and had a view of the government's role that is often characterized (not entirely accurately) as "strict constructionism." They hindered substantially FDR's well-intentioned by foolish attempts at making the federal government master of the economy. They hindered FDR's efforts, but they could not delay them indefinitely. Still, without these delays, I suspect that FDR and Congress might have gone quite a bit farther down the road to government control than they did.
Today we are confronting the opposite problem. The United States has moved very markedly to the right over the last thirty years. The federal judges remain one of the major liberal forces in American society today, not only hindering the popular effort to remake our society, but also actively attempting to impose their liberal beliefs on the majority (e.g., gay marriage).
Yes, I am frustrated by the left's remaining influence--but if the conservative movement remains powerful, this is only a delaying tactic, not a permanent obstacle. Remember that the judges that Bush assigns to the bench will remain a powerful buffering influence for a generation if the left again ends up with popular support.
I'll take my chances with judges buffering political change; it's part of the counterbalancing strategy of our Constitution.
Setting Yourself On Fire
A fair number of Democrats tried to portray their opposition to Bush as a moral disapproval of the war, even though the real objection was just political objection to other issues. Much of this was simply fear that the billionaire's party wouldn't get control of the White House again; Republicans obviously don't look out for the interests of the wealthy as well as Democrats do.
This incident, however, is not something that you can easily ascribe to that sort of cyncial dishonesty: WASHINGTON, D.C. — An unidentified man tried to set himself on fire outside the White House fence midday Monday, witnesses said.
UPDATE: It appears that unless the Democratic Party's outreach efforts have been remarkably successful, this isn't one of the upset Democrats--at least not screaming "Allah, Allah."
Onlookers said the incident took place outside the Northwest gate. Uniformed Secret Service agents were seen rushing to surround the man, who had graying hair and glasses. He was heard screaming in pain.
Emotional Problems & Kerry Backers
I've resisted the urge to suggest that you would have to be mentally or emotionally disturbed to be a Democrat, partly because I don't think that is necessarily true, and partly because it is so typical of how Democrats see everyone who disagrees with them as being stupid or crazy. Then you see news stories like this... The Boca Raton News reported last week that more than 45 South Florida Kerry supporters sought psychological help after the Democratic candidate conceded to Bush on Nov. 3.
That number, including 20 patients treated by Schooler, had risen to more than 50 by the weekend.
“One woman I treated the other day said the election triggered other issues in her life,” Schooler said. “Stuff she had been working on for a long time became worse. That’s pretty common in trauma cases: A small thing like an election triggers longstanding mental problems.”
Good News; But Still Pretty Frightening
The good news is that the birth rate for girls aged 10 to 14 is at the lowest level since 1946: ATLANTA (Reuters) - The birth rate among adolescent and young teen girls in the United States fell sharply in the 1990s, hitting a 58-year-low in 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday.
Aged 10 to 14? The decline is good news, but this is still profoundly disturbing that this many girls this young are having sex. Even the new, greatly reduced numbers tell me that there are a lot of girls who are not being given adequate adult supervision--and a fair number of guys (many of them adults) who need something a bit more serious than adult supervision:
CDC researchers said the drop in births among girls aged 10 to 14 might be a sign that programs emphasizing abstinence and other forms of birth control were having an impact on this high-risk group.
They noted that the downward trend in births occurred despite a rise in the number of girls in this age group.
"A number of surveys have shown that in recent years fewer teenagers are sexually active, and they seem to be acting more responsibly," said Fay Menacker, a CDC statistician and one of the authors of the study. There were 7,315 babies born to girls aged 10 to 14 in 2002, compared to 11,657 in 1990.
Remember that most acts of sexual intercourse do not lead to pregnancy. I've seen the number that one out of 288 acts will lead to a pregnancy. This implies, even if none of these girls are using birth control of any sort, and that all of them have reached menarche, that there were at least 2.1 million acts of sexual intercourse with children (and that's the only way to describe 10 to 14 year olds) in 2002.
Not surprisingly, there are significant variations in these rates: Blacks had the highest birth rate among girls in the study at 1.9 per 1,000, more than six times the rate for whites. The rate for Hispanics was 1.4 per 1,000, while Asians and Pacific Islanders had a much lower rate of 0.3 per 1,000.
If you want to understand disproportionate poverty among blacks and Hispanics in the U.S., look at those numbers. A girl who gets pregnant between and 10 and 14 is, I would guess, not high on the list of those going to college.
Why Border Security Matters
This very disturbing article is from Time: A key al-Qaeda operative seized in Pakistan recently offered an alarming account of the group's potential plans to target the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, senior U.S. security officials tell TIME. Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with Iran and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials.
Masri also said al-Qaeda has considered plans to "smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, then operatives would carry material into the U.S.," according to the report, parts of which were read to TIME. Masri says his family, seeking refuge from al-Qaeda hunters, is now in Iran.
The Moral Equivalent of the Minutemen
Remember when Michael Moore compared the "insurgents" in Iraq to the Minutemen? On Sunday, U.S. Marines found the disemboweled body of a Western woman wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket on a street in Fallujah. The woman could not be immediately identified, but the only Western women known to have been taken hostage are Briton Margaret Hassan, 59, director of CARE international in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq.
Oh yeah, the similarity to the Minutemen is obvious.
Oh yes, this other charming way of responding to criticism: What Dutch filmmaker and columnist Theo Van Gogh saw as the shabby treatment of females throughout the Muslim community led him to produce documentaries that portrayed Muslim men as tormentors of women, especially their wives. One recent scathingly critical Van Gogh film's carried the message that Islam promotes violence against women. Last week, Van Gogh, a grandnephew of the painter, was shot as he cycled to work. He managed to get up and stagger across the street to his building where he collapsed. The assailant followed him and slit his throat before pinning to his chest with a knife a five-page manifesto that called on Muslims to rise against the "infidel enemies" in the West.
If, ten years ago, Hollywood had made a movie in which Muslim "insurgents" were portrayed beheading people, and then distributing videos of it, there would have been a liberal screech about vicious and unfounded stereotypes. Al-Qaeda and friends, however, are acting like cartoon cutout evil characters. Here's a disturbing thought for liberals: maybe there really is evil in the world, and not just in the White House!
Mach 27 Aircraft
NASA is getting ready to set a new aircraft speed record: WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA will conduct the final and fastest test flight of its pilotless X-43A hypersonic research aircraft, aiming to send it zooming across the Pacific Ocean at about 10 times the speed of sound -- almost 3.2 kilometers (two miles) per second.
Oh, and why?
If the test is successful, it will beat the record set in March by another X-43A, which powered up its scramjet engine and performed "flawlessly" for 11 seconds, attaining speeds of seven times the speed of sound, or Mach 7.The US Air Force is seeking to develop an airplane capable of reaching any point on the globe in less than two hours while transporting six tonnes of bombs or cruise missiles.
When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed before your shift is over.
Converting C to Java
I am taking a break of a couple of weeks from the book project, mostly to let it cool a little. In the meantime, I am back working on converting a C program that is supposed to be capable of understanding human language (not simply searching text, or parsing it) to Java. A few lessons learned about converting C to Java:
C and Java can return one object to the caller. C lets you get around this limitation by the use of pointers. You pass pointers to objects to a function, and the function alters the objects to return multiple pieces of information back to the caller. Because Java only passes objects by value, you can't do this. There are solutions to this, but they are not terribly pretty.
1. You can define a class in Java that contains all the pieces of information that you want a Java method to return to the caller. If you were building a program in Java from scratch, this would actually be very natural. When converting a C program to Java, it's not very natural. You have to define a class that contains the various objects that you want to return, change your function calls so that they no longer pass pointers, and have the return value be the new class that you have defined. Ugly! Even worse, the new class that you have defined is a composite object that may not have any methods logically associated with it.
2. If all of the parameter passing is taking place within a single class, you could define the objects to be passed in static variables, and remove the pointer passing completely. This is also ugly, because you are effectively creating module level variables, with all the ugliness of indiscriminate references. (There is certainly a way to do this without making the variables static, but I didn't need to do that in this case, so I haven't bothered to figure it out.)
"America's Stone Age Explorers"
I caught this Nova documentary Saturday afternoon, and I was very pleased with it, for several different reasons.
First of all, the documentary examines how the "Clovis-first" model (that the first humans arrived here about 13,000 years ago over the Bering land bridge) has come increasingly into question as archaeological digs have shown both that there were humans here earlier, and that there is at least a plausible claim that America was settled by both Asians and Europeans in this period. The show makes the point that there reason to suspect that the Clovis point was developed as an outgrowth of a known European stone tool culture--and argues that this would have required Europeans to have crossed the Atlantic during the Ice Age. Most persuasive evidence for this, however, is a sizeable fraction of the Ojibwa tribe carried mitochondrial DNA that would suggests that they acquired European ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. That's not the only explanation for this rather particular DNA being present in the Ojibwas, but it's the most likely (at least, so it seems to me).
Secondly, the documentary captures some of the religious fear of heresy that sometimes creeps into the sciences. Some of the first anthropologists to question the "Clovis-first" model used the word "dogma" to describe the way in which the evidence they presented was denied. At least one of the anthropologists said that some of his fellow scientists were at first reluctant to admit the possibility, for fear of what it would do to their professional careers. It doesn't take a clerical collar or a belief in the infallibity of the Word to develop a certain type of narrowness.
Third, the presence of Europeans in North America at the same time--and perhaps even before the Indians--would blow out at least some of the "Noble Redman" arguments that are often advanced by those who are ignorant of history. The Kennewick Man skull is pretty obviously European, and it is thousands of years old. The harsh reality is that almost all nations have regarded possession of the land as a right of conquest, and the Indians were no different from most of the Europeans in that regard.
It is worth remembering that in many cases, Europeans actually purchased land from the Indians. Sometimes the sellers did not completely understand what they were selling. Sometimes the buyers provided liberal amounts of alcohol to muddy the thinking of the sellers. Sometimes the sellers claimed to speak for the whole tribe, and did not. Sometimes, the sellers sold land to which they had no legitimate claim. (I understand that there is some question about the legitimacy of the claim of the sellers of Manhattan Island.)
