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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Friday, April 15, 2005
Professor Muller, Totalitarian Not only does he want the public school library to remove a book from the shelf that he doesn't like (wrong religious persuasion), but he is now toying with suing a publisher for selling material associated with the book to the schools. Even the crowd that has tried to get books like Heather Has Two Mommies removed from use in public schools haven't proposed to sue the publisher. The totalitarian nature of modern liberalism is increasingly revealed. Why Do So Many Americans Regard Homosexuality As An Illness? Perhaps it is polite and intelligent activists like this law student at New York University who asked Justice Scalia, during a Q&A session, about his sexual behavior with his wife. The law student: finally got a hold of himself and said he wasn't going to answer that and tried to move on to the next question, but for about 30 seconds the guy kept on badgering him and Scalia kept on trying to move to the next question, which he finally did.The homosexual in question justifies his actions here, and it is full of the sort of cant that I expect from spoiled rich leftists: It should be clear that I intended to be offensive, obnoxious, and inflammatory. There is a time to discuss and there are times when acts and opposition are necessary. Debate is useless when one participant denies the full dignity of the other. How am I to docilely engage a man who sarcastically rants about the "beauty of homosexual relationships" (at the Q&A) and believes that gay school teachers will try to convert children to a homosexual lifestyle (at oral argument for Lawrence)?What this twerp doesn't seem to understand is that: 1. The question of whether something is Constitutional is not the same as whether it is good public policy. There are a lot of people, like Justice Thomas, who echoed Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) when he called Texas's homosexual sodomy law "uncommonly silly"--but that is not the same as contrary to the Constitution. I wouldn't support passing such a law, but that doesn't mean that the states lack the authority to do so. 2. The objection that most Americans (including, I suspect, Justice Scalia) have to homosexuality isn't based on the sexual acts, but the sexes of the participants. 3. Even if you buy into the argument advanced in Griswold which underlies a lot of the later privacy decisions, there is a big difference between the privacy right of a married, heterosexual couple, and that of homosexuals. 4. Why do so many Americans, especially those who are past 30, have this notion of homosexuals as immature and out of control people? Perhaps it is incidents like this, where jerks like Berndt, groups like ACT-UP, and affiliates such as NAMBLA, work so hard to be publicly visible symbols of homosexuality. You would think that there is some vast effort to keep homosexuals in the closet, or widespread hatred of homosexuals. Maybe somewhere, but nowhere that I have ever lived. Great Prank These MIT students decided to have a computer randomly generate an academic paper--and it was accepted for a conference: CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - A bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference in a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Honestly, the text above doesn't sound completely outrageous--but then again, if this was truly randomly generated text, this should have been obvious if anyone read it with any care. Chimpanzees: No Smarter Than Humans At least, I make that assumption after reading this report: JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit. Positive Coverage of U.S. Forces in Iraq To my pleasure, since the Idaho Statesman sent some reporters over to cover the Idaho National Guard's activities in Iraq, the coverage has been quite positive: Soldiers with the 116th Combat Brigade Team are trying to work themselves out of a job. The obstacles are formidable. The soldiers must:This must cause quite a bit of irritation among the leftists who dominate at least the letters column of the paper, and I suspect are a large part of the Idaho Statesman's subscriber base. (Most non-leftists that I know here in Boise refuse to put any money in the paper's pockets.) GM & Ford In Trouble This article reports on the increasing difficulties that both companies are having selling cars in North America: Sales at G.M. have fallen, profits have tumbled to losses. Last week, Ford also warned of a drop in earnings. Thursday, in yet another blow, its union refused to give much ground on G.M.'s health care coverage. If that were not enough, G.M.'s stock hit a 12-year low. (Related Article)I wonder how much of this "quality and reliability" problem is actually statistically verifiable today. There's no question that build quality of GM cars back in the 1970s and into the early 1980s was absolutely awful. You could immediately see how carelessly the body panels on GM cars were put together--and it did not compare well at all to any of the Japanese makers. Initial build appearance quality is not the same as long-term reliablity and durability. My experiences over the years lead me to think that a lot of "Japanese" quality is really Honda and Toyota quality. My Mitsubishi Galant, Mazda GLC, and Datsun B-210 were about the same reliability and quality as the various GM cars that I have owned--not bad, not great. The article goes on to point out that: Soaring health care costs are a crushing burden because G.M. and Ford cover 1.7 million Americans, or more than half a percent of the total population.This is really the big issue. UAW negotiated really good health insurance benefits for employees and retirees over the years. I don't blame them for doing this; that's the job of a union. But it may kill the goose. The article points out that from a styling standpoint, GM and Ford are in trouble. There's no question about that. My wife is not particularly a slave to style or fashion, but even she finds the new Malibu Maxx too ugly to consider. I am impressed with how Pontiac replaced a stylish, sleek car like the Pontiac Grand Prix of three years ago with the current heavy, clumsy looking Grand Prix. The Next Time A Leftist Tells You We Shouldn't Have Invaded Iraq... Remind them of this article in the New York Times--a properly leftist source: Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.Some of my leftist acquaintances have tried to argue that more people were killed by the U.S. invasion and occupation than were killed by Hussein. I'm sure it makes them feel better to justify leaving a genocidal madman in charge of Iraq. The Definition of Species When I was young, the definition of species was that two creatures were different species if they could not produce fertile offspring. Donkey and horse can produce mules, but mules can't reproduce. Of course, wolves and dogs produce offspring, and those offspring are often fertile--hence, you can purchase dogs that are 1/4 wolf. Now there's this example: The only whale-dolphin mix in captivity has given birth to a playful female calf, officials at Sea Life Park Hawaii said Thursday. Thursday, April 14, 2005
Fox News Is Pursuing The Middle Eastern Connection There have been questions about possible Iraqi connections to the Oklahoma City Bombings for some years now. Fox has a documentary coming this Sunday about these questions, including an interview with former FBI agent Danny Coulson who indicated that there are some unanswered questions, and an investigator who says that the Philipine National Police had reports that Terry Nichols traveled to the Philipines to meet with an al-Qaeda representative. Preventing Science Okay, there's a bill before Congress that seems like it is intended to prevent any scientific investigation of the evolutionary development of mankind. What? Those pesky Creationists are at it again? Well, no. This effort is from a Republican so liberal that he really should be a Democrat: McCain has proposed adding two words to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a law Congress passed 15 years ago to defend American Indian burial sites and cultural objects from grave robbers and pot hunters. Its a worthy goal, but tribal activists increasingly have tried to broaden the interpretations of NAGPRA. The bottom line is that they want to make it virtually impossible for scientists to study prehistoric human remains, no matter how ancient or disconnected from actual tribes.Regular readers know that I have blogged about the Kennewick Man case before (and also here)--the facial reconstruction of his skull looks a lot like Patrick Stewart, and not much like an Indian. As a comment over here points out: We're proposing to let the tribes who likely exterminated the original tribe represent them in the present. Who says government doesn't have a sense of humor. The Jackson Trial I haven't been following it closely, but it sounds like the mother of the boy Jackson is accused of molesting has been a less than credible witness (and an absolutely lousy mother), but this news story has a headline that makes me laugh: Jackson Accuser's Mom Tells Bizarre StoryWell, yes, it is a bizarre, and perhaps not even believable story. But this is about Michael Jackson: if the story wasn't bizarre, it would stand out a bit, wouldn't it? Gay Marriage The Oregon Supreme Court--surprise, surprise!--decided that the Oregon legislature really does have authority to pass laws: PORTLAND, Ore. The Oregon Supreme Court (search) on Thursday nullified nearly 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year ago by Portland's Multnomah County (search), saying a county cannot go against state matrimonial law.The unanimous decision is here, and demonstrates that there are judges who recognize that their job is to interpret the Constitution, not rewrite the laws as convenient. Note that not only did state law clearly provide for opposite-sex marriage only, but the voters of Oregon passed an amendment to the state constitution in November to make it clear that same-sex marriage was not lawful. What amazes me is the chutzpah of the gay marriage crowd, who tried to argue that the amendment was not legally binding, but was only a goal: One issue, however, is pertinent, because it affects the prospective ability of five of the plaintiff same-sex couples to pursue their claims that Article I, section 20, entitles them to obtain marriage licenses on the same terms as opposite-sex couples. That issue is whether Measure 36 is an operative statement of law or whether it is only a statement of aspirational principle that requires some further action to make it enforceable.Fortunately, the Oregon Supreme Court isn't filled with useful idiots, and they recognized that, yes, this was not just a vague goal, but a statement of prohibition. Connecticut's legislature seems about ready to pass a "civil unions" law. I am not happy about this, but at least, is the right way to do this: persuade the legislature that this is a good idea, instead of having judges run roughshod over the people. Here's a great moment in thinking, from one of the supporters of the civil union bill: Bethany Hamilton, 26, of Hartford, was waiting to get into the House gallery to watch the debate, with a yellow sticker stuck to her sweater.Perhaps she had something more intelligent in her head, and it just didn't get out the way she meant it. My Resume My current employer is attempting to shed quite a large number of workers; to that end, they are offering a pretty hefty incentive to volunteer for layoffs. Along with that carrot, the stick is that if they don't get enough volunteers, there will be layoffs, and the severance won't be quite as generous. (Still, it is more than the law requires.) If they get too many volunteers, seniority with the company will determine who gets it, and who doesn't. I've been told that I don't have anything to worry about; my job is secure, and indeed, I am about to take over a fairly interesting job from someone who has volunteered for the layoff. Still, it would be very interesting to find a new job in time to volunteer--and get several months pay to go to work somewhere else. (We all have until April 22nd to volunteer for the severance package.) I've already had a very encouraging first interview with a local company. I don't think it would make sense for me to look at leaving the area, because my son has a little more than a year before he graduates high school, and there's no real pressure to find another job. I could see some employer that needs my somewhat unusual combination of skills might be willing to work out some sort of telecommuting arrangement, or perhaps have me there one week out of the month--and that could work well. Anyway, my resume is here. Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Looking For 4WD Pickup, Cheap, in Boise Area My son has an instructional permit, and I am hoping to kill two birds with one stone. I need a 4WD pickup (or perhaps a 4WD car) that I will use occasionally in the winter months to get back and forth from my property in Horseshoe Bend, and that my son can drive for a year or so. It doesn't have to be beautiful--it might be an advantage if it comes pre-dented, as long as it is reasonably reliable, and in the $2000 and under range. Foreign Law & The Constitution Orin Kerr points out that conservative concerns about the Supreme Court's increasing use of foreign precedents to decide cases is really not absurd--and suggests that liberals should consider how they would respond if the Supreme Court had started citing the Bible in defense of say, executing 16 and 17 year olds: Imagine that instead of citing foreign law in its decisions, the conservative majority on the Court started citing to and discussing the Bible. In particular, let's imagine that Roper v. Simmons had come out the other way, and that Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court upholding the death penalty for 16 and 17 year olds had contained the following passage:Indeed. But I would suggest that Professor Kerr should consider an even stronger analogy: What if the Supreme Court started citing precedents from courts in Muslim nations in support of laws against homosexuality, legal equality for women, and freedom of religion? (And there are more nations that take those views than the liberal ideas with which our current Supreme Court is suddenly so enamored.) The liberals would absolutely blow a gasket, because it is our Constitution that the Supreme Court is supposed to be interpreting, and these other nations have very different traditions.My sense is that most people who have no problem with the Court citing foreign law would blow a gasket if this passage appeared in the United States Reports. This "other nations" approach is simply window dressing designed to cover over that a majority of the Supreme Court justices have decided, in the absence of any clear Constitutional basis, that their views of what constitutes good law takes precedence over the opinions of the people. More On Chinese Currency Manipulation More discussion of forcing China to stop playing games with exchange rates: WASHINGTON | Rep. Pete Visclosky, D.-Ind., co-sponsored a bill Monday that seeks to halt China's undervaluation of its currency, which proponents say hurts U.S. steel manufacturing and other export-dependent industries.Note that this is not directed at all foreign countries--it is specific to China. You don't have to spend much time looking at the prices of Chinese goods relative to a lot of other similarly poor countries to realize that there is something amiss about this. Not everyone pushing for this bill is playing completely straight, I suspect, but I've read enough now to have some confidence that China is manipulating currency exchange rates for its own benefit--and to the detriment of a great many other nations: Marc Miles, director for the Center for International Trade and Economics at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, believes that attempts to change China's monetary policy are "a smokescreen for their real agenda, which is to reinstate restrictions on imports from China."If this bill were an attempt to raise tariffs on goods from all nations, I would agree with Miles's concern. It is targeted as a specific nation who almost everyone agrees is playing games with exchange rates. Some readers have pointed out that there isn't much the Chinese can do with all the money we are sending them except buy Treasury bonds. Not so. They can buy productive assets in the United States, and turn those into a regular source of income. If this happens in the natural course of things, I don't have a problem with it. I do have a problem when China is engaged in economic warfare as a method of acquiring assets on the cheap. Vigilantism on the Border? I will be curious to know what the facts turn out to be about this case--but the article is careful to note that the guy arrested was not part of the Minuteman Project: An Army reservist was arrested on charges of holding seven Mexicans at gunpoint at a rest stop in southern Arizona, where civilian efforts to watch for illegal immigrants have raised fears of vigilante violence.There are a couple of interesting issues that a situation like this creates. 1. Would Border Patrol officers similarly order suspects at gunpoint to "lie on the ground" while waiting for backup? What makes it okay for the Border Patrol but not for a civilian enforcing the same law? It might well be that Haab lacked probable cause, but that's a separate question. 2. Anytime a police officer points a gun at someone and orders them to not move, that's an implicit threat of death. What makes a civilian different from a police officer in that situation? If Haab was in the wrong, it wasn't because he was a civilian, was it? 3. Vigilantism in American history has often been the result of there being no effective criminal justice system (for example, in the California mining camps in the first year or so of the Gold Rush), or where the criminal justice system was so corrupt that it might as well have been absent--of which the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 is a good example. It formed after a county supervisor shot to death a newspaper publisher in front of many witnesses--and the District Attorney refused to prosecute. The federal government needs to make a serious effort to secure our borders, so that people like Haab aren't tempted to take the law into their own hands. Oh Dear, A Member of Congress Paying Family Members... Except it isn't Tom Delay. It's Rep. Bernie Sanders, a Socialist (no seriously, he isn't a Democrat, although the news media seldom report his party affiliation) from Vermont: Rep. Bernard Sanders used campaign donations to pay his wife and stepdaughter more than $150,000 for campaign-related work since 2000, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Tucson Sights Way more barred windows and doors than I am used to seeing here in Boise. I walked to breakfast Monday morning--and passed a stun gun lying on the ground. It was gone when I returned. These are not generally good signs. The Joyce Foundation and Hired Guns Professor Barnett has written a rather long piece that completely describes my concerns about the Joyce Foundation's funding of "special issues" of law reviews--that only invite one side to participate, and only publish work by one side. The core problem isn't that the Joyce Foundation promotes one-sided work; the core problem is that a scholarly journal or a university should be in the business of promoting scholarly work, not one-sided propaganda. Quick! Pull It From The Shelf! There's a book on the school library shelf. It is a story that contains offensive elements to the values of a parent. The parent has asked the library to remove it. No, it isn't Heather Has Two Mommies, and the parent is a liberal law professor. The problem, you see, is that the law professor thinks it is Christian proselytizing--and he doesn't like that his daughter read it--and he doesn't want any other students at the school, apparently--to read it. I am actually sympathetic to his concerns in general, if not this particular book. Parents really don't want schools, especially in the lower grades, to be continually undermining the values that we are trying to teach them. But there needs to be a consistent policy about this--not just the current standard, where by Christian materials are unacceptable, but anti-Christian materials are always acceptable. Do we remove all books from school libraries that offend a parent--effectively a veto power? If so, there will be quite a few less books in school libraries. Do we allow the school librarian to put any book on the shelf that he thinks is appropriate? Not only Heather Has Two Mommies but also, S&M Quarterly & Leather Review? Do we require that perhaps 10% of the parents object before we pull a book? Professor Volokh seems to understand the Constitution a bit better than Professor Muller does. UPDATE: Professor Muller's liberalism is really shining! Here's another book that he wants not available: Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment, which is offered for sale at the Manzanar book store. Muller compares Malkin's book to David Irving's work; this is absurd. Malkin isn't denying that the internment happened; she is making an argument that it made sense under the circumstances. You can disagree with her argument without calling her a liar. UPDATE 2: I see Professor Volokh thinks that I am being unfair for suggesting that attempts to get a government bookstore to pull a book off the shelf is somehow inconsistent with Professor Muller's liberalism. There's no question that "government as vendor" is a bit different from "government preventing others from vending," but if the shoe were on the other foot, and conservatives wanted Professor Muller's book pulled off the shelves of government bookstores, the ACLU would be screaming up a storm. Government has an obligation to be even-handed in a way that private institutions are not. I don't believe that every bizarre or implausible claim that someone finds a publisher for requires the government bookstore to stock, but I do think that once they decide to put a book on the shelf, and then pull it back because of its content, they are in a truly dangerous situation with respect to equal protection. There's a book about the Grand Canyon that argues that the Earth is really only a few thousand years old, and tries to explain the Grand Canyon in Creationist terms. If I were running the Grand Canyon National Park bookstore, I think I would have skipped that one at ordering time. If it didn't sell well, I would feel very comfortable with the bookstore not reordering it. But it has sold rather well--and the effort to get that book removed from a GOVERNMENT bookstore is an attempt at censorship. What calls itself liberalism today used to make a big deal about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, insisting that even unpopular ideas deserved an airing. Now that liberals run most major institutions, they are full of excuses, like Professor Muller, for why some ideas are so scary (like Christianity, and that our government's actions in 1942, however wrong they appear in retrospect, might have made sense at the time) that they dare not appear in any government library or bookstore. As my wife likes to point out, for the left, it isn't about freedom, it is about control. Irony Overload A prominent politician is attacking a political consultant, and makes a big deal about the political consultant's alternative sexual orientation. Quick, which party is the politician from, and in which party is the political consultant? You'll guess wrong: Former President Bill Clinton wasn't about to let just anybody attack his wife - especially a gay Republican operative.This confuses me. I know that there are a lot of libertarian homosexuals who end up voting Republican because they perceive economics and national security to be the most important issues. I would guess that most of this crowd, even if they are pretty wild about their sexuality, are probably not the sort that insists on parading naked in the streets. They buy the "privacy" argument so much that they actually try to keep their sexual behavior private! I know that there are even a fair number of homosexuals who are actually quite conservative, except for their sexuality. This must be a very difficult situation for them--rather like being a gun rights progressive, or pro-life liberal, or non-white neo-Nazi. I have known people in both of the first two situations. We have recently seen press coverge about the kid in Minnesota, who was an American Indian National Socialist, and of course, the neo-Nazi who wanted to lead the march through Skokie some years ago turned out to be Jewish--with a father who had survived a concentration camp. (For some odd reason, this revelation caused the local neo-Nazi party to split.) Still, this guy Finkelstein, if Bill Clinton's characterization of him is correct, must be in a very peculiar situation. He wasn't content to stay at home quietly with his partner (as I might expect a conservative or even libertarian homosexual to do)--he went out and got married to him in Massachusetts--a position that even the Democratic Party won't admit that it supports, and that the Republican Party overwhelmingly opposes. I next look forward to the formation of Abortion Doctors for Life, the National Socialist League of Orthodox Jews, the Fundamentalist Coalition for Gay Marriage, and Pornographers For Censorship. Monday, April 11, 2005
Even Boise Isn't Without Problems This particular incident happened so close that my son and wife saw the draped body: Boise police continue to search today for the suspects and vehicles involved in the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old man in the Albertsons parking lot at Fairview Avenue and Cole Road in Boise.It was apparently started by a thrown beer bottle and an argument. Back From Tucson and the Denver International Snowpark I was scheduled to return on Sunday, but when I reached the ticket counter, there was a very long line--and with good reason. An unexpected snowstorm had closed Denver International Airport, and there was no way for United to get me to Boise. Apparently the number of flights leaving Tucson (even on other airlines) was quite small, and by the time I reached the front of the line, it was too late, so I had to fly back Monday. It was not a complete loss. I did some sightseeing on Sunday, moved from the Howard Johnson's (which was in very, very poor shape--the worst condition hotel I have stayed at in twenty years) to a recently renovated Motel 6 (much better shape), helped Dave Hardy move a very heavy swamp cooler on to his roof, and had a very stimulating dinner conversation with Dave and Kevin Baker, who blogs as The Smallest Minority. (Here's his account of the dinner--I wasn't as bored as I look in the picture.) I wish I had gone over to the Pima Air & Space Museum a little earlier in the day--they were about to close when I arrived, and they have some absolutely amazing stuff there--like the Pregnant Guppy cargo plane, for transporting booster rockets. Tucson's climate was absolutely delightful. (It will be different in July.) |
