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Labels: Iraqi WMDs
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).
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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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Amazing What Qualifies As Thuggery These Days
One of the people involved in the Terri Schiavo dispute is using the sort of intemperate language you might expect of a fanatic: "[N]othing short of thuggery," ... "It was odious, it was shocking, it was disgusting and I think all Americans should be very alarmed about that," he said.
But no, not one of those pro-life fanatics that is trying to keep her from being starved to death. This was Michael Schiavo's attorney, discussing the efforts of Congress to subpoena Terri Schiavo so that she doesn't starve to death.
On one side, you have people arguing for starving someone to death on the word of one person about what Terri would have wanted--and this is a person with a financial interest in seeing her die, and die soon. On the other side, you have people saying, "Wait a minute! You are going to starve her death?" And the attorney thinks those that are resisting this brutal method of killing someone are engaging in "thuggery"?
Liberalism and the ACLU are completely morally bankrupt.
UPDATE: The more I think about this, the more angry I get. This is the modern equivalent of Dachau. Like so much of the German government's actions at the time, it is "legal" but so monstrous that no one should feel compelled to obey such laws.
I am not thrilled by people committing suicide, even under conditions of great pain with no hope of recovery, but there comes a certain point where you can only persuade and cajole so much.
I am not thrilled about euthanasia--it bothers me to have doctors crossing the line from passive to active steps to end a life, but if the patient has clearly stated that this is his or her goal, and there is no question that the patient has made this request, I can weep a little, but accept it.
What is happening with Terri Schiavo is being done on the word of one person. The ACLU considers it "cruel and unusual punishment" to execute a person for murder based on a decision involving a jury of twelve, a judge, as well as appellate judges all the way up the line, none of whom have any financial interest in putting this person to death. Why should we trust the word of one man about what his wife wants, especially when the method would never have been considered constitutional if it were being done as a punishment for a felony?
UPDATE 2: Whoops! It was indeed Michael Schiavo's attorney, not the judge, calling this "brutality" to try and stop starving someone to death.
Different River Has The Most Interesting Items
Like this one, discussing the promotion of a professor to dean at Jerry Falwell's Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. What makes an otherwise ho-hum story so interesting? The background of the professor: Caner, a converted Sunni Muslim whose father was an Islamic scholar, is best known for a 2002 book he co-wrote with his brother, Emir, Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs.
That is one of the great aphorisms of the year.
...
Caner said Islamic terrorists around the world don’t have a hard time recruiting suicide bombers, because millions of Muslims believe dying a martyr’s death in a holy war assures them of going to heaven.
Caner said Jesus’ atoning death relieved him of the pressure to tilt “the scales” so his own righteousness would outweigh his unrighteousness at the end of his life. “Jesus strapped a cross on his back so I wouldn’t have to strap a bomb on mine,” Caner said.
Senator Boxer Suffers Self-Inflicted Verbal Wound
This guy tells us that Senator Boxer, in arguing for the status quo of requiring 60 votes to cut off debate in the Senate, acknowledges that federal judges have too much power: Why would we give lifetime appointments to people who earn up to $200,000 a year, with absolutely a great retirement system, and all the things all Americans wish for, with absolutely no check and balance except that one confirmation vote. So we're saying we think you ought to get nine votes over the 51 required. That isn't too much to ask for such a super important position. There ought to be a super vote. Don't you think so? It's the only check and balance on these people. They're in for life. They don't stand for election like we do, which is scary.
Yes, it is scary. But it didn't scare the left when they were appointing judges. It is only scaring the left now that there is a chance for the right to appoint judges.
Clever Use of Subpoena Power
Congress is ordering Terri Schiavo to appear as a witness! In a last-ditch attempt to stop the court-ordered removal, a House committee on Capitol Hill here decided early Friday morning to start an investigation into Schiavo's case and issue subpoenas ordering doctors and hospice administrators not to remove her feeding tubes and to keep her alive until that investigation was complete.
Now, you might ask, as did one of my readers who does historical research for the Library of Congress, what constitutional authority the federal government has over Schiavo's situation? Well, if liberals want to ban guns on school grounds, regulate the growing and consumption of a crop on one's own property (no, not marijuana, but wheat), or punish trespassing, then liberals have no problem finding federal authority for doing these things.
The effort by the House Government Reform Committee came after lawmakers in both Washington and Tallahassee failed in attempts to pass legislation to keep her husband, Michael Schiavo, from having the tube pulled despite heavy lobbying by Schiavo's parents.
It is often the case that Congressional investigation of a situation may produce nothing except the bright glare of publicity--and there's nothing wrong with that. I was watching Fox News this morning, and the anchor made the claim that as of a few days ago, his reaction to the hearings about steroid use was, "Why is this important enough for Congress to investigate?" (You can find Instapundit echoing the same argument over here.) He then went on to explain that as he realized the extent to which steroid use by athletes--widely known, although not widely admitted--influences teenagers to take steroids, it does become a public health concern. Maybe Congress won't do anything about steroid use, or doctors starving Terri Schiavo to death--but they can certainly raise awareness of the hazards of both without passing a law--and raising awareness is a good thing.
What should destroy the ACLU's credibility when it complains about coercive interrogation techniques at Gitmo is their zealous support for starving someone to death on the claim of one person that she wants to die--and this is a person with a financial interest in seeing Terri die. If Terri Schiavo were a convicted murderer, and she had been sentenced to death by starvation, the ACLU would be on the other side.
UPDATE: A reader points out that the Fourteenth Amendment specifies that states may not deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and that Congress may enforce this provision by legislation. When a judge orders removal of a feeding tube--and worse, prohibits conventional feeding--that's depriving a person of life. It is hard to imagine that this legal procedure qualifies as "due process." She hasn't been convicted of any crime.
Why Don't We Have Senators Like This?
From W. C. Varones Blog: Australian Senator Ross Lightfoot is in a bit of trouble for running around Iraq with an AK-47 and smuggling cash to the Kurds.
But wait! We have someone who presides over the Senate who is pretty dangerous!
Lightfoot represents Western Australia, which is the Australian equivalent of Texas, but it's still nice to see that the cowboy spirit is alive and well even in boring places like Canberra.
As My Son Likes To Say, "Drugs Are Bad For You"
Really sad reminder that some drugs make people do really, really horrible and stupid things: Prosecutors say a Fort Wayne man killed his roommate with an ax, and then bought crack cocaine, gasoline and cigarettes with the money he made by selling the dead man's car stereo.
Yes, he needed that, at least.
...
Prosecutors say Scott killed his roommate, 49-year-old John Miller, a week ago, and took Miller's car and drove to Indianapolis.
That's where he told a guard at a hospital that he "needed to be arrested" and that he killed his roommate.
Hearing Both Sides
You know, I believe that the news media tend to be pretty politically biased. Until recently (and I think largely because of the competition from Fox News), the mainstream media barely acknowledged that there were conservatives in America--I mean, other than the ones missing half their teeth who were married to their cousin/niece/mother (and that's just one spouse).
So what can I make of this? C-SPAN, in its relentless pursuit of balance, decides that it needs Holocaust deniers on a program to "balance" out Professor Deborah Lipstadt: C-SPAN had planned to televise a speech at Harvard by Emory University Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, whose new book, History on Trial, recounts her legal victory over Holocaust denier David Irving, who sued her for libel in Britain over material in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust. But then Lipstadt was informed by the sages at C-SPAN that, in the interest of “balance,” they’d also be airing an appearance by someone on the other side of the argument — who, it turned out, was none other than David Irving.
I must confess that there are many occasions when a somewhat broader range of opinions would certainly help inform viewers more effectively--but it was not that many years ago that if you turned on almost any national television program for a discussion of gun control and the Constitution, the mainstream media's notion of "balance" was an NRA officer (necessarily a political animal, with all the negatives that this implies) and a bunch of supposedly "academic" sorts, who were overwhelmingly in support of restrictive gun control laws. It wasn't as though there weren't any academics on our side--they were just never invited onto these programs.
Lipstadt refused to go along with this exercise in non-judgmentalism, and, for now at least, it appears that her Harvard speech won’t be seen on C-SPAN.
In a letter to Connie Doebele, a C-SPAN executive, David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies director Rafael Medoff expressed his organization’s “opposition to your reported decision to broadcast a lecture by Holocaust-denier David Irving, to ‘balance’ your intended broadcast of a lecture by Holocaust historian Prof. Deborah Lipstadt.”
Added Dr. Medoff: “Just a few weeks ago, we concluded Black History Month. Presumably C-SPAN did not consider broadcasting a program about black history that would be ‘balanced’ by a program featuring someone denying that African-Americans were enslaved. C-SPAN should not broadcast statements that it knows to be false, nor provide a platform for falsifiers of history, whether about the Holocaust, African-American history, or any other subject.”
This is a head-scratcher for me.
When Bulldozers Are Outlawed...
Yeah, like this is really Caterpillar's fault: Relatives of a US activist, killed when an Israeli army bulldozer demolished a Palestinian house in Gaza, are to sue the machine's manufacturer Caterpillar.
Well, duh!
Rachel Corrie was killed during a demonstration against house demolitions in Rafah refugee camp in March 2003.
The action alleges that the firm broke international law by selling specially armoured bulldozers to Israel knowing the machines would endanger lives.
...
In a statement on its website, Caterpillar says it "shares the world's concern over unrest in the Middle East and certainly have compassion for all those affected by political strife".
But it has "neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of its equipment," the statement says.
Pink Floyd: A Retrospective
This is such a sneaky article! I just love it! All the way through, you are saying, "What a thoughtful article about a rock and roll legend. Where's it going?" And from a Harvard student, at that!
Buck Rogers, Reporting For Duty
A report about the first battlefield laser weapon system, first deployed in Afghanistan to blow up mines and other nasties at a safe distance, now deployed in Iraq: In 2003, the Army sent ZEUS, a Humvee armed with a 10kw solid-state laser, to Afghanistan, to blast mines and other explosives left over from years of war. In the six months ZEUS spent there, the laser-hummer zapped over 200 pieces of unexploded ordnance, according to the Army, "at one point setting a record for ordnance disposal by negating 51 pieces in less than 100 minutes."
Al-Qaeda and friends want to go back to the fourteenth century; sorry, we're fighting this war in the twenty-first century.
Now, ZEUS "is being forward deployed" again, Army Space and Missile Defense Command Lt. Gen. Larry Dodgen tells Defense Daily.
"According to spokesman at Headquarters, Department of the Army, ZEUS is in Iraq as part of a three-vehicle convoy protection concept being evaluated now," DD adds.
Thanks to Murdoc Online for the tip.
UPDATE: And the plasma torpedoes are coming soon! Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.
Thanks to The View From North Central Idaho for the tip!
"We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.
Revenge, Execution, and Torture
Professor Volokh's recent approval of an Iranian execution by torture of a guy who raped and murdered children means that he isn't going to be getting the ACLU's support for a federal judgeship, I expect: I particularly like the involvement of the victims' relatives in the killing of the monster; I think that if he'd killed one of my relatives, I would have wanted to play a role in killing him. Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there's a good explanation.
I have never been comfortable with capital punishment--and I freely acknowledge that this is an emotional reaction. There have been a few instances where I have read the details of a crime, and my rage at the cruelty of the crime caused me to think, "For this monster, I would make an exception." (Yes, I'm thinking of the guy who raped and murdered a two year old, and who tortured her with channel locks--they were able to prove his involvement by matching the tool marks on the channel locks to the tool marks on her body. Decades after his conviction, I believe he's still living on Death Row in California, thanks to the efforts of the ACLU, California Chief Justice Rose Bird, and the rest of the liberal establishment.)
I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.
Still, as horrifying as this crime was, the notion of intentionally inflicting unnecessary pain as part of an execution just disgusts me. Torture as a method of extracting information has a long and not terribly reliable history to it, and I have argued that under very extraordinary circumstances, there might be occasions where it could be justified by the need to save the lives of others. I can understand those who argue for capital punishment as a deterrent, although I am skeptical that it works for that purpose. I can understand those who point out that executed criminals, at least, are permanently deterred; this point seems unquestionable.
I can understand those who argue that making execution excruciatingly painful might act as a deterrent also. This assumes that those to be deterred are rational enough to be influenced by this threat; at least for most murderers, this is simply not the case. They are usually such damaged, short-term people that they are not going to be deterred by a remote and unlikely event. I also cringe at the thought of a government intentionally taking actions to add suffering; it is way too reminiscent of the bloodlust that has driven tyrants throughout history. (I think of Hitler's execution of German officers who participated in--or were simply thought to have been part of--the von Stauffenberg coup plot. He had them executed by being hung with piano wire--a slow and painful death. Hitler had it filmed, so that he could enjoy watching their suffering at a later time.)
What I find especially disturbing is the notion, expressed by Professor Volokh, that this torturous revenge constitutes justice. Does it bring back the dead children? Does it go back in time and prevent their suffering? Does it make the living less traumatized by what happened to their children? No.
There's a famous quote by Gandhi, "An eye for an eye will blind the world." Perhaps executing monsters like this makes sense, especially if you live in a society where it is impossible to keep them locked up for life, or where powerful forces (like the ACLU) argue that murderers should not be executed, but people who have committed no crime should be starved to death. Adding torture to the execution doesn't do anything but lower our society to the level of the savages.
Public Transit: Why Is It So Expensive?
Let me emphasize that I am not hostile to public transit systems. I rode buses a lot as a child, and even a bit as an adult in Orange County, because my wife and I only had one car. Still, P.J. O'Rourke asks the question in his usual humorous way: There are just two problems with mass transit. Nobody uses it, and it costs like hell. Only 4% of Americans take public transportation to work. Even in cities they don't do it. Less than 25% of commuters in the New York metropolitan area use public transportation. Elsewhere it's far less--9.5% in San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, 1.8% in Dallas-Fort Worth. As for total travel in urban parts of America--all the comings and goings for work, school, shopping, etc.--1.7 % of those trips are made on mass transit.
I don't find this hard to believe. Back in 1981, when I ran for Santa Monica City Council, I spent some time looking over the city's budget. I was astonished to find that Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines spent $4.25 per passenger mile--and that was back when $2000 a month was a pretty decent salary in Los Angeles. I don't find the $19 per ride number hard to believe.
Then there is the cost, which is--obviously--$52 billion. Less obviously, there's all the money spent locally keeping local mass transit systems operating. The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.
Now, pretty obviously, leasing BMWs for every poor person using public transit isn't a real solution. A lot of public transit riders can't drive because they are too young, or disabled (physically or mentally). Even if every rider could drive, it would create serious traffic jams in those urban areas not already in that state. Still, you look at the cost per rider of public transit systems, and you have to ask yourself, "Why in the heck is this so expensive? There has to be a cheaper way to do this."
I know that it isn't very fashionable, but there's a lot to be said for buses. The road system that they use is already built--unlike light rail systems. That road system is available for use in the middle of the night, when demand for public transit drops. If I had to pick a single deficiency of buses as public transit, it is that until quite recently, public transit systems bought big buses that were almost empty except at rush hour. You can add more small buses at rush hour, or to deal with unusual peak demands (a ball game, for example); there's not much you can do to waste less fuel with a 40 seat bus carrying two passengers. You can also run three small buses every ten minutes, instead of one big bus every thirty minutes to move the same number of people--and make the service more convenient.
As I said, there has been some movement away from the big bus approach in the last fifteen years, and it is a good thing. Since the primary purpose of public transit is putting union workers on the public payroll, smaller buses perform the primary mission, by increasing the number of drivers. Unfortunately, because public transit systems have no economic pressures or incentives to be efficient, and no threat of competition drawing away a large part of their customer base, public transit systems are not terribly interested in efficiency. Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines only received about one-tenth of its revenue from the fare box. In a sense, the rider almost didn't matter, because he was effectively not paying for the ride.
This Puts A Whole New Twist On Predestination
If you don't know what "predestination" is--welcome to one of the more troubling aspects of Christian doctrine--and this article in New Scientist might even make you wonder if predestination is genetic!
For those who weren't paying attention in Sunday School (or who aren't Christians--and I know that you are out there)--one of the big areas of dispute between John Calvin and most other leaders of the Protestant Reformation was the question of whether Christians choose salvation--which indicates that we have free will--or whether we are predestined to either accept or reject salvation. This had important consequences in European history--about which I will bloviate a little later.
Calvinism emphasizes predestination--that God has chosen some to be saved, and others to be damned, and there is nothing that you can do about it. Most Protestants find this idea abhorrent, or at least disturbing, because most people know (or at least believe) that they have free will--that we are free to make choices, for either good or evil. They are also disturbed by it because it seems to fit an Old Testament sort of God, full of judgment, and weak on mercy. The Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that predestination is real, but seems to hedge its bets a bit.
I have generally not spent a great deal of time on this, largely because I think of this as a form of the "immovable object/irresistable force" conundrum--you can't have an immovable object and an irresistable force in the same universe, because they contradict each other. Similarly, predestination and free will are mutually exclusive; we either have free will (and can make choices for good and evil) or we are deluding ourselves when we make choices. If free will is an illusion, how would we know?
Predestination was a major problem in the Reformation and Enlightenment periods because--at least according to advocates of free will--the notion that you are predestined to salvation means that regardless of what you do (rape, murder, torture, genocide, unpaid parking tickets), you are going to Heaven. Similarly, if you are predestined to damnation, it still doesn't matter what you do--all your good intentions and worship of God means you still better plan on wearing asbestos. There's a lot to be said for encouraging people to behave--and taking away incentives for good behavior isn't necessarily a good way to organize a society.
Anyway, back to the New Scientist article: Genes may help determine how religious a person is, suggests a new study of US twins. And the effects of a religious upbringing may fade with time.
Fascinating. Another interesting aspect of the article was this:
Until about 25 years ago, scientists assumed that religious behaviour was simply the product of a person's socialisation - or "nurture". But more recent studies, including those on adult twins who were raised apart, suggest genes contribute about 40% of the variability in a person's religiousness.
But it is not clear how that contribution changes with age. A few studies on children and teenagers - with biological or adoptive parents - show the children tend to mirror the religious beliefs and behaviours of the parents with whom they live. That suggests genes play a small role in religiousness at that age.
Now, researchers led by Laura Koenig, a psychology graduate student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, US, have tried to tease apart how the effects of nature and nurture vary with time. Their study suggests that as adolescents grow into adults, genetic factors become more important in determining how religious a person is, while environmental factors wane.About a dozen studies have shown that religious people tend to share other personality traits, although it is not clear whether these arise from genetic or environmental factors. These include the ability to get along well with others and being conscientious, working hard, being punctual, and controlling one's impulses.
Gee, religious people have a number of positive qualities, and the question is whether these traits "arise from genetic or environmental factors." Could it be that most of the major world religions strongly encourage at least some of these traits?
Not All Atheists Are Fanatics
One of my readers points out that there are atheists that really don't much care if there are crosses visible to the public, and that not every atheist is a fanatic. Very true. It is interesting to me that while the religious fanatic is a common stereotype in entertainment, the atheist fanatic is not--and yet over the years, I can't say that I have met dramatically more religious fanatics than atheist fanatics--in spite of the much larger numbers of religious people in our society.
Science & Faith
Nice article from the Chistian Science Monitor about Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Hard Townes: For centuries, scientists and religious scholars have sparred over questions about the workings of the universe. Galileo's espousal of a sun-centered universe, rather than the earth-centered model widely accepted at the time, landed the 16th-century astronomer in court, accused of heresy.
More recently, scientists and religious leaders have disagreed over everything from the big bang theory of the origin of the universe to the teaching of evolution in schools to the debate over stem-cell research.
But even in these often discordant worlds, Townes has found little difficulty in reconciling his Christian faith with the empiricism of scientific inquiry.
"I don't think that science is complete at all," says the 89-year-old physicist. "We don't understand everything and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand."
Within the great unknowns of the universe, Townes argues there is ample room for faith in God and His presence in human experience.
...
In 1966, Townes published "The Convergence of Science and Religion," an article that detailed some of his thoughts on the relation between religion and science.
"They are much more similar than people generally accept," Townes says. "Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them."
Mark Levin Has a Nice Description of the Evolution of the Right To Privacy
It is an excerpt out of a new book of his, and really captures the absurdity of how the "right to privacy" has continued to morph in absurd ways.
This One Almost Sounds Like An American
So many of the fraudulent "I'm the son of the former finance minister of Ghana--please help me, and you can have part of this $50 million that my father embezzled" emails are written in just pitiful English--almost funny, at times. This one, however, purporting to be from a soldier in Iraq, is just bizarre. He seems at first to be claiming to be an American soldier who has stumbled on $45 million--which he is willing to share. But then other parts of it suggest that he is in the Ukrainian Army (Swedish Exchange)--so why is his name Stevens? From: Sgt Stevens C,
Hello there this is Sgt Stevens C, I am a soldier,serving in the military .I am with the 62nd Detached Mechanized Battalion, 6th Mechanized Brigade, Ukrainian Army( Swedish Exchange) in the National Guard. I am writing this message from Suwariyah, Iraq
we hit Iraq may 2003 and have moved around a few times building up F.O.B.'S around the western side of the country as well as missions into Baghdad.With attackes by insurgents everyday and car bombs,We ( my friend Aaron and i.Aaron is now Dead) managed to move funds
which i and my friend stumbled into outside Iraq.Current Destination and current Location will be made known to you in the course of this business transaction.
The total amount is US$45 Million dollars in cash (this is figure is from what we could estimate from our counting).We want you to assist us in securing this money in the country where it is currently deposited.All we need is your representaion as i will not be able to do this on my own due to my services here. Iraq is a warzone although partially ended. We
shipped the money using diplomatic courier to ship the money out in large silver (Galvanized) boxes, using diplomatic immunity.
If you are interested I will send you the full details as soon as i get your reply signifying your interest and genuine intentions to assist in this
transaction.
Respectfully,
Sgt.Stevens
San Diego Removes Cross
Okay, I can understand why some people are offended by the presence of a cross on public lands. They are using a historically incorrect reading of the meaning of the First Amendment's establishment of religion clause, but if they are offended by having it on public property, I can at least understand their upset. But here's a case where several buyers (including the National Park Service) have offered to buy the land from the City of San Diego--and even that isn't good enough for these intolerant sorts: SAN DIEGO — A 43-foot cross is to be removed from public land after a 15-year legal battle came to an end last week when the City Council rejected a proposal to transfer the land around the cross to the National Park Service.
Pure and simple, atheists want crosses removed from public view--even when the option exists to get this cross off of public land by selling the land. Can you imagine the upset if a similar campaign were under way to make other religious symbols disappear from public view?
Two local congressmen had inserted a provision in a spending bill to have the land transferred as a last-ditch effort to keep the cross on top of Mount Soledad, where it has stood in some form for 90 years.
The bill was signed by President Bush, but City Attorney Michael Aguirre issued a legal opinion last week saying the donation would be for a religious purpose and therefore infringe on state law. The City Council rejected the transfer on March 8.
"For us to transfer our cross from city ownership to federal ownership leaves us in the same constitutional position," Councilman Scott Peters said.
Several churches have expressed interest in a taking the cross, including one that is within 1,000 feet of its current location, said Jim McElroy, an attorney representing Philip Paulson, who brought the lawsuit challenging the cross. He expects it to be moved within 90 days.
The cross has been a point of contention since 1989 when Paulson, an atheist, sued the city, claiming its presence on city property violated separation of church and state provisions in the U.S. and state constitutions.
Over the years, the city had tried several times to sell the cross property to a private buyer. But federal courts overturned the sale each time, saying the transactions were designed to favor a buyer who would keep the cross.
I guess the saddest part of all is not just that federal judges have decided to go along with this, but that even the San Diego City Council has decided that making the atheists (all of about 5% of the American population) happy is of paramount importance. There were options that would have kept the cross visible, but removed it from public ownership--and that wasn't good enough for these lunatic intolerants.
Rising Bond Yields
I am astonished at how rapidly long corporate bond yields are rising. There are a number of Ford and GM bonds with yields above 8% right now--and some of them are above 8.8%! These aren't all terribly long bonds, either. GENERAL MOTORS 7.70%16NOTES DUE 04/15/16 has an annualized yield to maturity (as of this moment) of 8.14%--not bad for a bond that matures in eleven years.
Even limiting yourself to Moody A-rated bonds and above you still see a number of corporate bonds with yields above 7%. FORD MOTOR CR CO 7.9%15NOTES DUE 05/18/15 has a current yield of 7.75%--pretty decent for a bond maturing in eleven years.
I am hoping to see Moody A-rated corporate bonds yielding above 8% in the next year or two, and even Moody Baa-rated corporate bonds above 9%.
Remember: if yields go up, the value of existing bonds declines, and the longer the maturity, the dramatic the reduction. Now is not the time to be buying long-term bonds, unless you expect interest rates to drop, or you intend to hold those bonds to maturity, and find the current yields sufficient for your needs.
2.35" OD/2.26" ID Rings
I mentioned that the caster assemblies for the G-11/CI-700 have not been universally praised. (Well, they haven't been universally condemned, either.) I managed to borrow a CI-700 tripod on a somewhat more long-term basis for more thorough testing (which I should have done in the first place, but I got a little too cocky about this), and I believe that I can solve at least one of the three complaints if I can find some rings either plastic or metal that are 2.35" -0.01" OD, 2.26" +0.03" ID--and use them to more securely locate the assembly. These rings can be 0.25" wide, perhaps even less--but they do need to be no larger than 2.35" OD and no smaller 2.26" ID.
If I have to have someone turn these in nylon, Delrin, or something else, it would be cheaper than have the entire rod turned down to this size. But does anyone know of some common tubing that fits these dimensions? Remember that 2.35" is just about exactly 60 mm, and something that size OD with a 1 mm tube wall thickness would be perfect.
How Homosexuals Will Destroy The Democratic Party
It is decisions like this one, that ruled that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right--and that not only does California's law (passed by the voters as an initiative) fail under the strict scrutiny test, but also under the rational basis test.
Here is the core question: do the traditional moral definitions have any standing under our laws? Unlike the miscegenation laws (which are of relatively recent date, and were by no means universal), the definition of marriage as opposite-sex is both ancient and universal. I have never seen any example of any culture that has recognized homosexual marriage--anywhere.
To make homosexuals happy, the Democratic Party is prepared to run roughshod over majority opinion even in California. They should just stop the pretense that the majority has any right to make laws at all.
UPDATE: A reader informs me that the ban on gay marriage was passed by referendum, not initiative. While the two terms are used somewhat interchangeably, they have a precise meaning in California law. Art. II, sec. 8 of the California Constitution: SEC. 8. (a) The initiative is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject them.
A statutory initiative does not require the same supermajority vote that a constitutional amendment requires, and constitutional amendments are frequently placed on the ballot by the state legislature.
Article II, sec. 9: SEC. 9. (a) The referendum is the power of the electors to approve or reject statutes or parts of statutes except urgency statutes, statutes calling elections, and statutes providing for tax levies or appropriations for usual current expenses of the State.
Essentially, a referendum in California law is a chance for the voters to override a legislative act. I am pretty sure from this that the law in question was adopted by statutory initiative, not referendum.
(b) A referendum measure may be proposed by presenting to the
Secretary of State, within 90 days after the enactment date of the
statute, a petition certified to have been signed by electors equal
in number to 5 percent of the votes for all candidates for Governor
at the last gubernatorial election, asking that the statute or part
of it be submitted to the electors. In the case of a statute enacted by a bill passed by the Legislature on or before the date the Legislature adjourns for a joint recess to reconvene in the second calendar year of the biennium of the legislative session, and in the possession of the Governor after that date, the petition may not be presented on or after January 1 next following the enactment date unless a copy of the petition is submitted to the Attorney General pursuant to subdivision (d) of Section 10 of Article II before January 1.
UPDATE 2: Here's the text from the California Secretary of State. It was indeed a statutory initiative.
Not Afraid
Idaho's reputation as a center of neo-Nazi white supremacists is really not deserved. A relatively small number of them (a few dozen or so) moved to northern Idaho from California some years back, and created a fearsome reputation for the whole state. I saw a personalized Idaho license plate today that was a reminder that someone is not afraid to identify himself here: JEW.
Is The New York Times Reporting From a Time Warp?
Or is the WMD matter not quite as open-and-shut a case as some want to believe? NEW YORK (Reuters) - Looters systematically removed tons of equipment from Iraqi weapons facilities, including some with components capable of making parts of nuclear arms, in the weeks after Baghdad fell in 2003, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
That Reuters report is dated March 12, 2005.
Citing Iraq's deputy minister of industry, Sami al-Araji, the paper reported a highly organized operation apparently pinpointed specific plants in a quest for valuable equipment, some of which had both civilian and military applications.
"They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," the Times quoted Araji as saying. "They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want; this was sophisticated looting."
The official based his account chiefly on observations by government employees and officials who either worked at the sites or lived nearby, the newspaper reported.
The facilities, cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, were left largely unguarded by troops in the months after Baghdad fell. Senior U.N. agency officials confirmed that satellite images confirmed that some of the sites said to have been looted did appear to be totally or partially stripped, the Times report said.
According to the newspaper, Araji said that equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from eight or 10 sites that were at the heart of Iraq's dormant unconventional weapons program.
