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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).
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Saturday, June 25, 2005
Randy Barnett's Favorite Constitutional Opinion Sentence Professor Randy Barnett (who lost the Raich case before the U.S. Supreme Court) describes this statement from Justice Thomas's dissent in Kelo as his favorite constitutional opinion sentence: "Something has gone seriously awry with this Court?'s interpretation of the Constitution."He proposes T-shirts and mugs. If someone makes the mug, I'll take one! This is one of those clever uses of understatement sort of things. More Content I have added "Gun Safety Regulation in Early America," which appeared in the November 1, 2004 Shotgun News to the popular magazine articles page. Friday, June 24, 2005
Very Good News! No surprise that you aren't seeing it on TV or in your local newspaper--although oddly enough, the New York Times is reporting it: In the dark, one spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer.Winds of Change has a very detailed, multisource article, well worth reading in full about the evidence that the Iraqi terrorists are engaged in substantial internal warfare between Sunni Iraqis and al-Qaeada jihadists from other countries. Why is this good news? If Iraqi insurgents are killing jihadists or vice versa, that's terrorists that can't kill Coalition forces. One of the factors that assisted Franco in winning the Spanish Civil War was the fight between the Communists and the Anarchists in Barcelona, when the Communists attempted to disarm the Anarchists. If your enemies are fighting each other, they don't have resources to fight you. Vietnam Is Not Iraq This article in USA Today quotes some reservists serving in Iraq who know--they were in Vietnam as regulars: Browning, 56, of Paradise, Calif., and Weatherhead, 57, of Elk Grove, Calif., are grandfathers. They first flew combat missions in Vietnam, before most of the soldiers in the current Army were born. They and others their age are here with the National Guard's 42nd Infantry Division, which includes some of the oldest soldiers to serve in combat for the modern U.S. Army. Few soldiers or officers in the military, other than the service's top generals, are as old.Thanks to Citizen Smash (recently returned from that part of the world as a reservist) for the link. Senator Durbin I didn't have anything to say about Senator Durbin's offensive and false equivalence between the Nazis and Gitmo, because it was so obviously absurd that only a Michael Moore fan could take it seriously. But I did see this amusing description of the Senator from Illinois on Michael Williams' blog: Senator Durbin the TurbanCute, but it gives Senator Durbin too much credit for knowing who he is working for. Ignorance of history, I fear, is what drives the left's current obssession with equating Gitmo interrogation techniques with the Gulag Archipelago, Auschwitz, and next week, I would guess, the Spanish Inquisition. I would not want to be at Gitmo, being interrogated. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It also isn't, by any of the accounts that I have read, the torture chamber to which ignorant leftists keep comparing it. There are allies of the U.S. who are, based on reports that seem credible, engaged in torture of terrorists that we have turned over to them for "interrogation." I am not happy about this--but that isn't Gitmo. Furthermore, leftists who insist that we shouldn't be imposing our values on other cultures need to be consistent, and either stop whining about what other cultures do to terrorists, or acknowledge that there are universal definitions of right and wrong--and they apply on both sides of the fence between Gitmo and the rest of Cuba. Gun Control Advocates Acknowledge Police Can't Be Trusted With Guns There are times that I am convinced that gun control advocates support a police state. Then I see items like this, that suggest that they aren't even that realistic: BALTIMORE -- Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday initiated a state program to license retired police officers to carry concealed handguns, making Maryland one of the first states to implement new federal laws expanding gun rights for retired and off-duty officers.On the second page of the article: Leah Barrett, executive director of the gun-control group CeaseFire Maryland Inc., said allowing officers to carry a gun anywhere at any time is "essentially dangerous."Now, I have my objections to this law, both because it violates the federalism principle, and because it only applies to retired police officers. There might be an argument on Second Amendment grounds for requiring every state to recognize carry permits from other states, or even for allowing all legal residents who are not otherwise prohibited from owning a gun, to carry a gun. I am also realistic enough to know that police officers aren't dramatically better trained or dramatically more careful with guns than the general population. But I do know that gun accidents are really pretty rare, and when they happen they are usually: 1. Hunting accidents. 2. Involve teenagers or children who have obtained unsupervised access to a gun. 3. Involve alcohol or other intoxicants. 4. Disproportionately involve people with significant criminal histories. Worrying about retired police officers having gun accidents is absurd. Thanks to Bitter at the Bitch Girls blog for the link. Labels: gun rights My Generation Missed So Much And it makes me a little concerned about this generation: "This is not just a game," German scientist Klaus Mathiak concludes in a new study of the brains of video game players.This is one of the reasons that we wouldn't let my son play first-person shooter games when he was young. There's plenty of evidence that suggests that violent entertainment causes small increases in average levels of aggression--and I would not be surprised if violent entertainment in which you play an active role would be even more of a problem. The State of the Economy When I saw the Fox News report about the increase in durable goods orders in May, I was temporarily unnerved. A rise in durable goods orders generally means the economy is growing, and that often means the Fed will have to raise interest rates to keep inflation in check. This more detailed account, however, gives me less reason to be concerned: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New orders for long-lasting U.S.-made goods leaped by a larger-than-expected 5.5 percent in May on a large gain in civilian aircraft orders but orders fell outside of transportation, a government report showed on Friday.It's nice to see airplane sales doing well, since I would expect a lot of those are exports, but demand-pull inflation isn't normally driven much by aircraft sales. The decline in durable goods orders in other sectors would suggest that the economy is, if not weakening, at least not racing ahead. This would suggest that the Fed will not be under as much pressure to raise interest rates. Not surprisingly, 30 year Treasury bond yields remain at a modest 4.242%. One of these days, the Fed's efforts at raising long-term interest rates are going to pay off. When that happens, a lot of speculative investments in housing are going to sour, and bankrupt a lot of foolish and sometimes greedy people. But for now (and tomorrow, but no bets on next year or even next month), the low-interest rate party continues! UPDATE: As of 4:00 PM Mountain Time, the 30 year Treasury bond yield is down to 4.215%. You know, it seems like I can't lose for winning (to reverse a severe cliche). If interest rates go down, my existing house and my new house go up in value, as do the current market value of my bonds. If interest rates go up, it hastens the day when I can convert my collection of short-term bonds into long-term bonds, and I can retire. There is one down side to a prosperous economy, however, that became apparent Wednesday when my wife and I tried to get a quick meal at Wendy's on the way to the building site: the lines were so long! Throughout history, wealthy people have regarded poverty as a good thing, because it means that there's no shortage of desperate poor people interested in working cheap as butlers, cooks, and housekeepers. (And also traditionally, the master of the house or his worthless sons took full advantage of the maid's fear of losing her job to extract additional horizontal labor from her.) I guess I am not surprised that so much of the limousine liberal set is unconcerned about high tax rates destroying the economy--why should they care, as long as it increases the number of servants available to them? Michael Yon's Reporting Is Astonishing There is a very long report "The Battle for Mosul Part III" that I can't even begin to summarize. There is so much here that you aren't going to find out by watching television news, or reading the mainstream media. A couple of excerpts that I found especially interesting and descriptive: During one late-night sweep in Isla Zeral, Lt. Dan Kearney entered a house where a man asked for help with his five-year-old daughter. She is five years old and her name is Rhma Taha Ahmed and she is afraid of the soldiers, but the father asks the Americans to slow down and look at his daughter. Rhma hid her face while her dad showed her fingers and toes to Lt. Kearney. Her nails were receded and there was blood-blistering, her fingers and toes were tones of red and purple. SFC Joel Lundak called a medic who checked Rhma's vital signs and said she seemed to have a heart condition.For those who want to fantasize that the "insurgents" are Iraqi patriots: Three Algerian homicidists arrive in Mosul. Two of them had flown from Tunis, Tunisia to Damascus, Syria. They kept the airplane ticket stubs, then made their way via the Jihadist equivalent of the underground railroad: walking through the Syrian countryside, hitching rides, taking buses, and staying at a series of safe houses which they are conscientious enough to document. They keep a diary. After about 30 days of adventure traveling, the three reach a safe house in Mosul.There is a powerful descripton of the death of an American soldier, because of our unwillingness to endanger women and children--unlike Michael Moore's heroes: The danger American soldiers face on these raids is exacerbated by their great reluctance to use force when there are civilians around, compounded by the fact that there are children in nearly every home, including the homes of the insurgents. The average American soldier will do just about anything to avoid knowingly hurting a child, and will seldom even use flash-bangs (stun grenades) because of possible effects on children in the closed rooms.Read it all. These segments were especially moving, but all of it is astonishingly well-written and informative. Why Was It Wrong To Remove Saddam Hussein From Power? I found this interesting description in Michael Yon's journal of his visit to the Persian Gulf: An Army medic who was part of the Coalition force that liberated a Kuwaiti hospital told me that when they first entered the nursery, there were dead and dying infants strewn about the floor. Tossed from their "cradles," their heads had been crushed under the boots of Iraqi soldiers, a parting shot as the Iraqi Army fled from real combatants.You can see why the left is so disgusted with our lack of respect for Saddam Hussein's sovereignty. How Corrupt Is Liberalism? The Daily Kos, one of the premiere leftwing Democrats, is hailing the Kelo decision: As first glace, you may think that giving private homeowner property to a private corporations is a bad thing. And it very well might be in many cases. However, if the Court had ruled differently and NOT allowed local governments to do this, it would have been a disaster for local governments to build for the community (including when the purpose is to help the environment, build affordable housing, create jobs, etc.). It would have sacrificed needed community power at the hands of the sort of property-rights extremism frequently displayed by right-wing libertarian types.What calls itself liberalism today is actually closer to fascism than anything else. Thursday, June 23, 2005
More Recent Articles Added the following new articles to the popular magazine articles page: "Concealed Carry on University Campuses," Shotgun News, July 10, 2004, p. 11. "Take Him To Detroit!" Shotgun News, August 1, 2004, p. 11. "Lawsuits Against Concealed Carry," Shotgun News, August 20, 2004, p. 11. "Publishing Lists of Permitholders,"Shotgun News, September 1, 2004, pp. 20-21. "New Jersey Concealed Weapon Permits," Shotgun News, October 1, 2004, p. 9. "The Henry Family of Gunsmiths," Shotgun News, October 20, 2004, p. 9. "After The Election," Shotgun News, November 10, 2004, p. 9. "Persuading Other Gun Owners,"Shotgun News, December 1, 2004, p. 9. "The Hatred After the Election," Shotgun News, December 20, 2004, p. 9. "Illinois Does Two Things Right," Shotgun News, January 1, 2005, pp. 22-23. "Showing Their True Colors," Shotgun News, February 1, 2005, pp. 20-21. "The Department of Justice Issues an Opinion," Shotgun News, March 1, 2005, pp. 20-21. "Integrity & Real History," Shotgun News, April 1, 2005, pp. 22-23. "Counting Gunsmiths in Early America," Shotgun News, May 1, 2005, pp. 24-25. House Project: The Foundation Forms Are In I drove up there this evening. Yesterday was unpleasantly warm, but today was wonderful. It was 83 degrees as I drove home from work, but it's a dry heat, and not at all unpleasant, especially with the top off the car and wind blowing through my hair. Driving to the property was even more lovely, with the sound of the engine, and my compilation CD of oldies. Here are some pictures of the forms (remember that in most browsers, you can right-click on the picture and say "View Image" to blow the picture up to full size):   Here's the equipment of the company that set up the forms, and I guess is going to pour the concrete. (Do I get a discount for featuring their company name and phone number? I guess not!)  It is going to take a long time for me to get bored with this view to the north:  In spite of a lot of pretty hot days, and no recent rain, the hills remain green:   Labels: house project Little Boise Grows Up I walked up to the front door of my credit union yesterday, and there was a sign that said, "No Hats, No Sunglasses, No Hoods" with appropriate illustrations and the circle slash on top. The flyer indicated it was from the Idaho Credit Union League, and it isn't difficult to figure out why: all of these items are commonly used to defeat bank surveillance cameras. It really is a shame that Boise is growing fast enough--and with the wrong sort of people--that this becomes necessary. I wonder how long before the ACLU files suit against it on the grounds that it discriminates. Islam, Homosexuality, & Liberalism A reader pointed me to this interesting article, and observes: Ann Coulter famously remarked along the lines of "Liberals finally decided to respect religion...but why did they pick Islam?"The article points to a fairly bizarre confrontation between a conservative lesbian lawyer (yeah, they do exist) and the Islamic Thinkers Society: On the evening of July 11, 2004, Kristine Withers walked down 37th Avenue, a main drag in Jackson Heights, Queens, and passed what had become a familiar sight: a group of tables set up on the sidewalk by the Islamic Thinkers Society, a local group of militant Islamists. On the tables, copies of the Koran and books espousing the group’s strict religious beliefs shared space with tracts on Zionism, pamphlets on the dangers of homosexuality, and signs bearing messages like "Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes."The rest of the article discusses the increasingly difficult situation that Islam's fierce disapproval of homosexuality is creating for leftists, who fawn all over Islam because they are America's enemy (or to be more precise, a lunatic fringe of Islam is America's enemy) and because being multicultural is so cool--but now must confront that Islam, even those who are not about to fly jets into buildings, make James Dobson and Jerry Falwell look like ACLU members: But to New York’s gays and to some of its Muslim leaders, the scene in Jackson Heights bears a worrying similarity to communal conflicts that are challenging the idea of tolerance across Europe, with particular flashpoints in Holland and Scandinavia. There, young immigrants and the children of immigrants have been drawn to a more radical Islamic ideology than that of their parents. On the extreme fringes, these young men have committed acts of violence against Jews and gays, and in a case that shocked Europe, one young Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street.Yup. The left seems intent on disarming the West in a struggle with groups whose notion of compromise is lcastration of homosexuals and burkhas for all women. Labels: homosexuality Just Like You and I...Except For Who They Love From the San Francisco Chronicle: This Sunday in a Wells Fargo bank parking lot near San Francisco's City Hall, August Knight will demonstrate for any adult who cares to stop by what it's like to be flogged -- and enjoy it.Yeah, yeah, I know, there are straight people into this sort of thing, and I would guess that most gay people are not. But tell me, those of you who insist that there is no connection between sexual orientation and childhood sexual abuse: do you suppose that it is just a coincidence that this crowd for whom pain, humiliation, and sexual pleasure are so intimately connected is disproportionately homosexual? Can you see why someone whose first sexual experiences involved force, pain, coercion--and yet might also have experienced some level of sexual arousal (as sometimes happens during rape), might end up identifying sex with pain and humiliation as an adult? Labels: child sexual abuse, homosexuality Why Democrats Should Support the Flag Amendment, and Republicans Should Sit On Their Hands One reader suggested that the practical effect of a constitutional amendment banning flag burning is that there would be an epidemic of it in protest, and then asks where we are going to find prison space for them all. I'm not even sure that there is a need for such a law (for reasons that I will explain shortly), but if such a law is passed, the appropriate punishment is a fine, not jail time. There is this amusing web site on the subject of flag burning with some slightly rude language. If you think about it for a minute, the ways in which Democrats and Republicans have lined up on this amendment makes no sense politically. Flag burning discredits the leftists who do it, because of emotional reaction that it promotes. Democrats should want some way to stop the left-wing of their party from engaging in these antics, because it makes the Democrats look like they hate America. Republicans should sit back and allow flag burning because it causes a patriotic, jingoistic frenzy in a very large number of Americans--and makes them even more hostile to the Democratic Party because of the actions of a few spoiled rich kids. That Republicans and Democrats are taking positions contrary to their political interests inclines me to think that both sides are taking their positions out of genuine conviction--not simple political advantage. A reader asks a question which I have rephrased a bit. If I go into South Central Los Angeles, and spend the afternoon addressing every person passing by with the N-word, is that constitutionally protected free speech? In the event that I survived long enough for a police officer to arrest me for "disorderly conduct" or "disturbing the peace," would I not have a valid basis for arguing that the law in question is just as much a violation of the First Amendment as burning an American flag? Or do the rules all change when it involves racial epithets? Impearls Is A Blogger Almost As Interesting As Me! A splendid collection of items! 1. Visually stunning elevation map of Mars. 2. A picture of a frozen lake in a crater on Mars. 3. Who built Hadrian's Wall? Impearls reproduces a picture of a plaque that lists names of the builders, recorded on the wall in 122 AD. 4. A long (probably exceeding fair use) quote from A History of Private Life, pointing out that sexual hangups aren't a Christian invention, and that classical civilization was, by some measures, even more taboo-ridden about sex than we are today. Even the area in which it is widely believed that classical civilization was more open-minded--homosexuality--was merely different. This conforms to what I have read in a number of other sources: homosexuality was okay as long as you were only taking advantage of little boys or your social and economic inferiors. I'm adding Impearls to my blogroll today. (I will adding a few others shortly who have made the request.) The Flypaper Strategy This blogger links to several reports that suggest that even the BBC is beginning to recognize that the flypaper strategy--of attracting deranged jihadists from all over the world to Iraq to blow themselves up--is making the rest of the world safer. This isn't great for the Iraqis, who are bearing the enormous burden of civilian and police deaths, but if the jihadists are intent on mass murder, I would prefer it somewhere far away from the United States. Unfortunately, I don't see any alternative; there is no reasoning with the jihadists. James Lileks Channeling Dave Barry Except Dave Barry is still alive... but it does sound like something Dave Barry would write. Anyway, read this in full. It is really funny! Q: What is Gitmo? Once Again, The Liberals On The Court Show Their Contempt For the Constitution Everyone and their brother is blogging about this abomination, Kelo v. City of New London (2005). The liberal end of the Court upheld the City of New London condemning private property so that it could be sold to a private corporation to "revitalize" a decaying part of the city. The plaintiffs challenged this as violating the Fifth Amendment guarantee that private property would only be taken for public purposes. The opinion of the Court is relying on a bunch of precedents that take the position that "public use" should be construed quite broadly--even when the immediate and probably greatest beneficiary of the taking is a private business. The precedents are embarrassing cases, from a time when corporations weren't content to buy what they wanted--they insisted on having the government take it for them from people that weren't prepared to sell--or at least, not at a price that the corporation was prepared to pay. If you aren't a property owner, consider this analogy: you believe that you labor is worth $10 per hour. You aren't prepared to work for less. A corporation decides that your labor is essential to what they are doing, but they aren't prepared to pay you $10 per hour--so they have the government draft you, and pay you a private's wages--and assign you to work for that corporation, arguing that the corporation's products would enhance the overall economy. You would properly recognize that you had been enslaved. My contempt for the liberal end (or is that the back end?) of the Court grows everyday. There are rights that are explicitly contained in the Constitution, such as this guarantee about private property only being taken for public use--and the Court rationalizes a way around it. The same bunch, however, finds a right to have homosexual sex--a right that is, at best, implicit. What's the point of a written Constitution if the rights that are explicitly there get ignored, and rights that no one bothered to get approved by Congress and ratified by the states, are upheld? A few weeks back, the liberals on the Supreme Court (plus, inexplicably, Justice Scalia) told us that federal marijuana law applies in the Raich case because drugs that are grown and used at home affect interstate commerce, and if we aren't happy about it, we the people can use the democratic process to fix this problem. But the same hypocrites decided in Lawrence that the completely implicit right (one contradicted by the historical evidence) to have homosexual sex is so important that the people can't be trusted to make laws. These same liberals find that the First Amendment protects virtual child pornography--but not political advertising. There seems to be nothing beyond the imagination of the liberals on the Supreme Court, intent on becoming an unelected superlegislature. A few months back, Professor Randy Barnett was full of optimism about some sort of libertarian revolution going on at the Supreme Court. Of course, there is nothing of the sort happening, and it was obvious at the time. The liberals on the Court think homosexuality is really cool, so they struck down a law that they didn't like. They may feel the same way about marijuana, but the liberals recognized that much of federal regulation of business, gun ownership, and a swarm of other liberal warm and fuzzies would be endangered by striking down federal enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act. Here the liberals had a pretty clear example of a too cozy relationship between corporations with political influence and a local government. Rather than recognize and deplore the sleazy history of the precedents on this, and take the side of the individual against a wealthy and well-connected corporation, the liberals chose to violate the original intent of the Fifth Amendment, so as to preserve governmental power. There is no convincing common thread to these decisions. Stare decisis? In Kelo, sure, but not in Lawrence. A results-oriented concern about governmental power versus individual rights? In Lawrence, but not in Kelo or McConnell et. al. v. Federal Election Commission et. al. (2003). A scrupulous respect for original intent? Clearly not the case in Lawrence, or McConnell, and arguably not in Kelo. Deference to the people and their elected representatives? Sure, in Kelo and McConnell, but not in Raich or Lawrence. This is simply the liberal end of the Court imposing its desire to write the laws. Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Flag Burning Amendment I've never understood the importance of this measure--to either side. I think the Supreme Court decided this matter wrongly, because it decided that a very symbolic form of speech--burning the flag--is protected by the First Amendment. Somehow, this not terribly articulate and both literally and figuratively inflammatory act is protected speech, but political advertising is not--or so the Court decided when it upheld the McCain-Feingold measure. Instapundit isn't happy that the House has time to consider and pass this measure. I guess along with seeing no pressing need for this amendment, I also don't see any pressing argument against it. Expressing your political opinions by burning the American flag is right up there with using a certain four letter word as every part of speech (verb, noun, adjective, conjunction): you could, but wouldn't it be better to find a more articulate way to express yourself? Unlike say, a constitutional amendment that banned antiwar protests, or that allowed arbitrary searches of cars, or banned virtual child pornography (which is protected by the First Amendment, according to the Supreme Court), or defining marriage as one man, one woman, this really doesn't do anything. How often does anyone burn a flag in the U.S.? Is this particular action really so incredibly important to free speech that Democrats feel a need to get self-righteous about it? There are times that I wonder if the Democrats have any idea how silly this makes them look. The flag burning matter is an emotional, even somewhat irrational matter to most Americans, and insisting on keeping it protected when there is no real injury caused to our freedoms by banning it makes them look really out of touch and unpatriotic. That flag burning doesn't do any real harm is rather beside the point; it also doesn't do any real good for public debate. Treasury Yields As of right now, the 30 year Treasury yield is 4.245%--a bit of a drop over the last few days. This is good news for those waiting to lock mortgages, and with houses we need to sell sometime in the near future. Islamic Bank This news story reports on something which is probably a good thing: PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia - Muslim bankers and regulators announced plans Wednesday to set up a global Islamic bank by next year that could rival Western lenders and to chart a 10-year blueprint to bolster growth in the Islamic financial sector.Okay, fine. The goal is to improve the economic conditions of Islamic nations--which are desperately poor. Unfortunately, one of the core problems impoverishing Islamic nations isn't going to change: Officials have said the bank will operate in keeping with Islamic laws, which means no interest would be paid or charged on deposits and loans.Medieval Christianity operated on this same rule, defining usury as any lending at interest--and this stifled economic development quite seriously. Here's a simple truth: why would you lend someone money without interest? A loan involves some risk, unless the person you are lending it to is going to put it in the bank...which doesn't pay interest. You might as well keep it in the bank for yourself. The prohibition on usury meant that until the late medieval period, if you needed to borrow money, you typically had to borrow it from Jews, who weren't subject to the threat of excommunication for usury. This played some part in creating anti-Semitism...and created an incentive for heavily in debt borrowers to arrange for a riot that burned out the Jewish section. Dead people have a hard time getting their money back. By the late medieval period, various ruses had been developed to get around the prohibition on interest, such as granting a portion of the profits of the business for which the money was borrowed, and other more arcane methods of paying interest while being able to claim that it wasn't interest. (Is this where points on your mortgage came from?) By the eighteenth century, the concept of usury had changed from "interest" to "unreasonable interest." What constituted a lawful rate varied with time: Parliament under Henry VIII set the maximum at ten per cent per year; subsequent Parliaments reduced the rate until it was six per cent by the middle of the seventeenth century. [Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, ch. 9] In Colonial America, loans were commonly made at six per cent per annum, simple interest, because interest compounded daily isn't much fun to calculate with pencil and paper. In addition, the quality of arithmetic instruction left much to be desired. If you have an interest in the methods used for doing arithmetic in those days, Patricia Cline Cohen's A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (University of Chicago Press, 1982) is a must read. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations addresses the problem of interest being unlawful, and observes that such laws actually increase the interest that borrowers pay (even if it is paid under some other name): In some countries the interest of money has been prohibited by law. But as something can every-where be made by the use of money, something ought every-where to be paid for the use of it. This regulation, instead of preventing, has been found from experience to increase the evil of usury; the debtor being obliged to pay, not only for the use of the money, but for the risk which his creditor runs by accepting a compensation for that use. He is obliged, if one may say so, to insure his creditor from the penalties of usury. [Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book II, ch. 4]While there are factors at play, the prohibition of interest in Islamic nations has almost certainly not prevented the lending of money at interest, but rather, made the actual rate that borrowers pay, in one form or another, much higher, both for this reason, and because it dries up the supply of money available to lend. The ACLU's Double Standard Charles Krauthammer's column in the Washington Post a few weeks ago is pretty devastating in its criticism of the civil libertarians all ga-ga over Gitmo. He points out that while there were very serious allegations--most turned out to be nothing, or close: The self-flagellation has gone far enough. We know that al Qaeda operatives are trained to charge torture when they are in detention, and specifically to charge abuse of the Koran to inflame fellow prisoners on the inside and potential sympathizers on the outside.Most importantly, Krauthammer points out the hypocrisy of the ACLU and its concern about "cultural sensitivity": The most inflammatory allegations have been not about people but about mishandling the Koran. What do we know here? The Pentagon reports (Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, May 26) -- all these breathless "scoops" come from the U.S. government's own investigations of itself -- that of 13 allegations of Koran abuse, five were substantiated, of which two were most likely accidental.You see, the ACLU's concern really isn't cultural sensitivity. Their concern is that Bush might actually be successful. I Am Proud To Be Insulted By This Guy Brian Leiter is a professor who complains about how the academic community is on the side of what he considers incipient fascism: the Bush Administration. There's a guy who blogs over at the Volokh Conspiracy under the pseudonym Juan Non-Volokh, because he doesn't have tenure. While not really a conservative, Juan doesn't engage in the leftist intellectual goosestepping that is safest for non-tenured faculty. Anyway, Juan Non-Volokh pointed out Leiter's claims about fascism in America really don't fit the historical evidence. I pointed out the same--and that that the modern American political movement that best fits the definition of Fascism (from Mussolini's quotes), is progressivism--not the Bush Administration. Anyway, Leiter is now engaged in a campaign to find out who Juan Non-Volokh is, and to "out" him: So who is Juan Non-Volokh? I intend to find out and to post that information here in due course. I welcome your help...and I promise to keep my sources secret!It is pretty clear that Leiter regards Juan's opinions as something that should be used to revoke tenure if Juan ever gets it: Mr. Non-Volokh gives as the reason for anonymity concerns about getting tenure. I confess I wonder about the prudence of that rationale: I would think a tenure process deprived of the information that the candidate had been writing about legal matters for years on a very public website would be invalidated once that information became known.Juan had quoted something that I had observed in an email to him, and Leiter decides that it is time for gratuitous insults in the midst of his highly italicized, exclamation marked, and generally furious posting: Putting that aside, Mr. Non-Volokh is now reduced to quoting the pathetically dumb Clayton Cramer (how dumb? almost anything on his blog will do, but start here).The amazing thing is that Leiter has pointed to a lengthy blog entry where I cited a number of serious academic works that suggest that there is a connection between child sexual abuse and adult sexual orientation. You can disagree with my conclusions if you want--but if this the best example that Leiter can find of "the pathetically dumb Clayton Cramer," he's going to have to work a little harder. By the way: Professor Leiter, from my experiences, is close to the average academic. Juan has good reason to be concerned about being "outed" before he has tenure. The academic community is astonishingly narrow in what it considers acceptable thinking, and this is no surprise. Professor Leiter's intent on "outing" Juan really shows how little room there is for disagreement among "progressive" academics. Labels: child sexual abuse, homosexuality, political correctness A Story Too Good To Be True From Ethiopia: ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.Unbelievable? Here's the explanation, which sounds almost as unbelievable as the rest of this charming story: Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack. Tuesday, June 21, 2005
New Articles Up I've gotten quite a bit behind in putting newly published articles by me on my web page. Here are two recent ones that may be of interest. "Duty to Retreat," Shotgun News, June 1, 2005, 22-23. Recent actions from courts in New York and the Florida legislature concerning the duty to retreat rather than use deadly force. "What Is A Felony?" Shotgun News, July 1, 2005, 24-25. The U.S. Supreme Court rules that people convicted of murder, rape, and terrorism in foreign courts are allowed to own guns in the U.S.--but Americans convicted of odometer fraud are not. I promise to get some of the other articles published in the last year or so up there , soon. Backup Generator I'm planning to have a backup generator for the house. My experiences with electric utility reliability in California is that you can't really can't on them to provide power. We lived in the middle of a city, and we became used to 30 minutes outages almost monthly--and occasionally, outages that ran into hours. One weekend, Pacific Gas & Electric was unable to supply us with electricity for 15 hours straight. Here in Boise, electric power is more reliable, but we have had several power outages lasting tens of minutes to as much as a couple of hours. I fear that out in the wilderness, it will be less reliable. The case that has me most worried is loss of electric power because of wildfires taking down lines. That is the case where it is imperative to have electric power to keep water pumping from the well into the 1400 gallon cistern, and then power to keep the water pressurized, so that we can use it for fire suppression. (It is also nice to have enough power to read, watch TV, and cook a meal.) Consequently, our current plan is to have a switch that lets us go off-grid, and a backup generator. The obvious way to do this is to use an LP gas generator, since we already have an LP gas tank that will be supplying the furnace, oven, and water heater. In addition, I really don't like storing quantities of gasoline around the house--it is basically a bomb waiting to go off. We store a little for the lawnmower, but I don't expect to have a lawn to mow up there, and gasoline, if it is allowed to sit for more than six months as a stretch, I understand disassembles itself and turns into a varnish on the inside of an engine. This is not a good choice for a generator that you want to keep as a standby. The difficulty is that LP gas generators are less common, and more expensive than gasoline generators. I have read that we should have a minimum 5000 watt generator to get the well pump started. (Once under way, they are apparently less demanding.) I have a number of choices in that size for gasoline generators under $1000. It is looking closer to $2000 for LP gas generators that size. For roughly $1000 difference, I suppose that I could keep a few gallons of gasoline around, and since a standby generator is only useful if you are sure it works, once a month we could switch over, run the generator for an hour to make sure that it works, and to keep the gasoline fresh in it. We might keep only a gallon or so in the tank, figuring that if there is a power emergency, we would refill the tank from a five gallon can. If worst comes to worst, we can siphon gasoline from our cars to refill the generator. The House Project We went up there last night, to see how the project was progressing. It was hot and muggy in Boise--but quite pleasant at the property, perhaps 75 degrees, and the wind was blowing. The culvert (the little pipe that lets water pass under our driveway at the edge of our property) is in:  It was actually dusk when we arrived, so I brightened up some of these pictures to make them more enjoyable. The excavations seem to be complete, with sticks in the ground. That house up the hill, next to the airstrip is actually huge. It is what I would have built if I were as rich as most people I used to work with. (Sniff, sniff, try not to sound too envious.) Apparently the forms will be put in place by the concrete guys:  This is looking south, towards the neighbor's house we want to hide by moving that mountain of dirt on the right into a berm:  There are some big basalt boulders left. This was about 18 inches or more across. I didn't try picking it up:  The next picture may still be loading, if you have a slow connection. I didn't want to shrink this image down, because it came out rather well, of the Moon rising over Bogus Basin ski resort. This was shot with an HP Photosmart 812--a completely inadequate camera for this sort of thing, but you can still make out some detail:  Looking north down the Payette River, into Horseshoe Bend. This is the view from the master bedroom, the family room, the kitchen, and probably the observatory for Big Bertha:  Another shot of the Moon, a little later:  Some of our neighbors don't seem to believe in leash law. (Yes, those are horses.)  The appraisal came in--$282,000. This is a bit lower than I expected (although about $20,000 more than we will spend on land, improvements, and house), partly because two nearby houses were sold at foreclosure--and one of them, as far as I was concerned, should probably have been bulldozed, and a new house built. This is enough that I won't have to come up with any money out of pocket to keep it at an 80% LTV (Loan to Value) to avoid paying Private Mortgage Insurance. The low appraisal may actually be an advantage, if Boise County uses the same comparables to figure the taxes. We need to go out and sign some paperwork for the power line easement for Idaho Power tomorrow--and because the mortgage company isn't quite done with their paperwork, we need to write a $2398 check to get Idaho Power to schedule a date to drop the 12.5 kV line into the power trench, and plant the transformer next to the house. I expect that this is the only check that I will be writing throughout this entire process. (This is also about $1500 less than the initial estimates, so I am reasonably happy.) Labels: house project Minuteman Project Forces ACLU Chapter To Suspend Operations But not for the reason you think: Operations have been suspended for the Las Cruces chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union after state ACLU officials learned that one of its board members, Clifford N. Alford of Organ, also is a leader of a Minutemen group in New Mexico.When even ACLU chapter board members are part of this movement, it really shows how widespread support for enforcing our immigration laws really is. Broadband Service It turns out that the brother-in-law whose daughter's wedding I attended last Saturday has DirecWay satellite broadband service at his farm, and for the same reason that I am looking at: the farm is far enough out that there is no cable TV cable passing by, DSL is impossible because of distance, and there are not yet any wireless broadband services. His experience matches that of others that I have talked to: latency (the time it takes for a request to climb 22,300 miles to the satellite, then go back down 22,300 miles to the base station) makes performance a little funky. If you are downloading large files, performance is decent--not much inferior to cable modem or DSL. The average web page, however, because it involves large numbers of individual transactions, isn't blindingly fast. Uploads are faster than dialup, but not spectacularly so. Of course, what's the alternative? It turns out that he expects to get wireless broadband service offered to him in the next several months, so rather than him sell the equipment back to DirecWay, I may just buy it from him, and have them install it at my place. The rates are not impressive, but still far better than dialup for download, and better than dialup for upload. Of course, there might be wireless broadband service in place by the time I am ready to move in--at least I can hope so. Constitution Writing You would almost think from reading this account by one of the Iraqi bloggers that there is something going on in |
