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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, July 09, 2005
Not Afraid Cute collection of pictures of mostly Europeans expressing their lack of fear of al-Qaeda. Here's a picture that someone sent me.  For those a little weak on American history: Britain is the mother of the United States. Friday, July 08, 2005
Economic News That moron Bush and his tax cuts have produced exactly the results that intelligent people could see coming: WASHINGTON (AP) - The unemployment rate dipped in June to its lowest level in nearly four years as employers expanded payrolls modestly, a sign that the nation's job market is plugging - not powering - ahead.A 5% unemployment rate is really good news. Once upon a time, when most women stayed home and raised kids (work that is harder and more demanding than the "real jobs" that most men have today), economists argued that a 4% unemployment rate was healthy, because a lot of the unemployed were temporary. If unemployment rates were 2%, the claim was made, this would cause demand-pull inflation, driving up wages, and causing economic inefficiencies. With most mothers now working outside the home, a 5% unemployment rate is spectacular! Now, the news isn't all good. Job growth isn't spectacular, but that is something of a good thing. The economy is growing, but not bursting at the seams. The other good news is that in spite of spending a huge amount of money in Iraq, the deficits are falling: July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Rising tax payments and a growing economy may push the U.S. federal deficit down to $325 billion or lower, a 24 percent decline from the previous estimate, the Congressional Budget Office said.Regular readers of my blog know that I am being a worry wart about interest rates. I want to lock in a low rate for my new house, and I want interest rates to stay low until spring, to keep the real estate market overheated until I sell my current house. All of this seems to be good news. Shrinking deficits mean that inflation expectations are low, which makes bond investors willing to accept lower yields. Lower yields means lower mortgage rates. Jack Cashill's New Book Hoodwinked Jack Cashill has a new book out titled Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked America. I just received my copy (since I am in the index), and I haven't had time to read it yet (except, of course, for the pages that mention me). I did see discussion of Ward Churchill, the "Free Mumia!" nonsense, and a bunch of other signs of the decay of the academic community in America as I flipped through the pages. Anyway, Cashill will be on Book TV, C-Span 2, Sunday the 10th, at 7 PM EDT. You might want to flip on the tube and watch him eviscerate (figuratively, of course) some tenured frauds. It's Alive! Liberals have a very interesting interpretation of what the Constitution means. They read "for public use" as "for some public purpose," as in Kelo. They conclude that the Constitution guarantees a right to engage in homosexual sex, as in Lawrence--even though homosexual sex was a felony everywhere in the United States until 1961. They decide that "interstate commerce" includes a person growing marijuana in his back yard, and consuming it there, as in Raich. They find a right to privacy somewhere in an emanation of a penumbra of some clause or another--although they seem to have trouble finding an individual right "to keep and bear arms," even though the text is there, and plenty of evidence of original intent. Liberals often justify their interpretation of the Constitution as allowing a very expansive view of government (for some things) and a very restricted view of government (for other things) by claiming that it is a "living Constitution"--that the government's powers need to be understood relative to the changing needs of our society. The Framers, for example, could not have imagined the need for a broad understanding of the interstate commerce clause because the economy of the U.S. in 1789 was so local. The Framers could not have imagined the deadliness of modern weapons, and so the Second Amendment needs to be read in its most crabbed form--perhaps only guaranteeing the right to own single shot muskets. The Framers could not have understood the need for every person to find sexual fulfillment outside the narrow range of one man, one woman--so we need to take a wider view. Of course, in 1789, there were no skyscrapers, airports, or Islamic terrorists ready to fly airplanes into our buildings. The "living Constitution" approach, I guess, allows us to reinterpret the Fourth Amendment to allow random strip searches on the street, in the interest of public safety. (Or at least it would, if liberals were consistent in their "living Constitution" approach.) The "living Constitution" is a long standing phrase and view of the Constitution, but I found myself wondering the other night if it really fully captures what this approach means. Under liberal control of the Court, our Constitution isn't just living--it is mutating. What started out as a gazelle now seems to be half hippopotamus, quarter lobster, and a quarter a creature from another planet. UPDATE: Also, see Jonah Goldberg's essay about the "living Constitution." He prefers his dead, and unchanging, except by amendment. Labels: gun rights NAACP Enters Our Time-Space Continuum The NAACP is holding its national convention shortly in Milwaukee--and it sounds like Bill Cosby's campaign of speaking truth to dysfunctionality is beginning to have an impact: Civil rights leaders like 57-year-old Prentice McKinney, who fought to free Milwaukee's blacks from the ghetto, say gangs, drugs and violence have left those who still live in the nation's urban cores in fear of the next generation.As bad as housing segregation was, it did keep healthy black families--where Dad worked, and Mom raised kids--as positive role models for those kids who were growing up in more dysfunctional homes. I certainly understand why middle class black families left the inner cities. Their motivations were the same as middle class white families. They wanted less crowding and less noise. The consequences, however, were very destructive. I am pleased to see NAACP activists recognizing the destructive effects of violent crime and declining morals. Many of the problems that have been destroying white America were destroying black America first. When violent crime reaches a certain level, those who have the opportunity leave the neighborhood. Fear of violent crime discourages anyone from the outside visiting that neighborhood. Burglaries, thefts, robberies, drive up business insurance rates, which drives some businesses out, and reduces competition among the businesses that remain. The net effect is higher costs--a common complaint from inner city activists, who often see this as "exploitation," and seldom recognize what causes this. I Don't Whether To Believe This... Especially because I found myself saying earlier this evening, "You know, it would serve the whining liberals right if one of the people involved in the London bombings had been released from Gitmo." Then I see this: REPORT: One UK Bomber Was Recent GITMO ReleaseLike I said, a little too good to be true. But even if it is true--it will just be proof of what the mistreatment at Gitmo drove this poor fellow to do. Thursday, July 07, 2005
Unexploded Bombs? FoxNews is reporting that both timing mechanisms (suggesting that at least some of the bombs weren't suicide bombers) and two unexploded bombs have been recovered. The interesting thing about unexploded bombs is: 1. This could have been worse. 2. Even al-Qaeda makes mistakes. 3. What do you suppose the changes are that British police might be able to recover DNA or fingerprints from the components? Think about it for a minute: if you are confident that the bomb that you are building is going to explode into ten thousand pieces, and you are fiddling with small items like switches, wires, would you be wearing gloves as you built it? There are some very stupid people out there--like the Weather Underground bombmaker who took out a browstone in New York City because he was smoking while building a bomb. (Smoking is bad for your health, you know.) Oh yes, the lunatic fringe is at it again. See WhatReallyHappened.com for conspiracy theories--and once again, those Jews are behind it! Here's a roundup of moonbats coming up with explanations for why Muslims weren't involved, it wasn't al-Qaeda, it must be Bush who arranged it, and so on. Look, if you want to believe that humans aren't capable of this kind of malevolence, fine. You are kidding yourself badly, but the moonbats are always insistent that there are people this evil: Bush, Blair, Karl Rove, international Jewish political consultants, whatever. Anyone but those who have repeatedly taken credit for these evil acts. I have an acquaintance in Europe right now. He was born in Britain, but he is a naturalized U.S. citizen. In the course of discussions, he explained that he considers al-Qaeda at least as trustworthy as the U.S. or U.K. governments, because they don't lie about what they have done. Unfortunately, he is pretty typical of the left now--they are so focused on their hatred of Bush that they are making excuses for al-Qaeda. The House Project: It Is Beginning To Look Like a House! I went up over the weekend, and I photographed the footings. (I'm told that these aren't strictly speaking the foundations, but the base on which the foundations are poured.) The footings had steel reinforcing bar in them, although I didn't have my camera with me the day that I was up for that. My builder explained that the purpose of the rebar was to make sure that if we had a bad earthquake, "You can ride the house to the bottom of the hill!" (He's kidding, of course, but perhaps I can file a completely absurd lawsuit against in the event of a bad earthquake, asserting that this is an oral contract!)   This is back where the garage meets the rest of the hillside.  This evening my wife and I went up there again. Quite a bit more has been completed. The actual foundations have now been poured. Notice the bolts sticking up; the floor joists attach to those, I think. (These pictures aren't quite as good because it was getting dark, and the camera was trying to compensate for the darkness with longer exposures and flash.)  This looks up the trench from the front of the house to the cistern.  Here's the cistern in place.  Here's the trench from the cistern to the well.  That's my wife down there, imagining the view from the master bedroom.  Here's the trench where the power line from the electric panel in the garage goes down to the well, to operate the well pump.  This forlorn piece of equipment will be the electric meter, I think.  This is one end of the conduit through which Idaho Power will supply us electricity. (Bad focus; not enough light.) That pinkish looking thing at the bottom is a big sheet of copper which I believe provides the ground to...the ground.  Here's the other end of the conduit, where it goes up the electric pole at the road.  For some reason, I didn't photograph where they filled in the trench, after dropping the conduit into it. Labels: house project New Product Announcements It has taken a while, but I have updated the ScopeRoller web page, and sent out New Product Announcements to the usual suspects for ScopeRoller 11 and ScopeRoller 700. Oddly enough, at least one of the Losmandy dealers actually responded this time, and indicated that he was on vacation, and would take a look when he returned. I am getting orders for ScopeRoller 8 from the Sky & Telescope new product announcement, and orders for ScopeRoller 11 from the astromart.com ads. I'm actually getting enough orders now (typically 3-4 a week) that I am glad that I ordered up another case of the 5" wheel casters--I may even break down and start running magazine ads and buy a lathe if this keeps up. It is going to take a lot more activity to quit my day job. Labels: telescopes The London Terror Attacks In case you haven't turned on your radio or TV this morning, and this is the first website you visit each day (thanks!)--you should be aware that there was a multiple bomb terrorist attack in London, killings dozens, and injuring about 1000 people. I expect the leftist will either be cheering or saying, "I told you so! If we had invaded Iraq, there would have been no terrorist attacks!" (Ignoring that the 9/11 attacks took place before the invasion of Iraq.) I would point out that since 9/11, the U.S. has been remarkably lucky--or more likely, the CIA and Homeland Security Department, in spite of their often astonishingly stupid actions, have successfully prevented such attacks in the U.S. I find it hard to believe that al-Qaeada would have attacked our allies in London and Madrid--and the attack on Australians in a Bali nightclub--and left the U.S. alone unless our security apparatus has made such attacks difficult. This doesn't mean that the British authorities haven't been doing their job. They aren't hampered by the Bill of Rights, and the ACLU's equivalent in Britain doesn't seem to have so much control over the judicial process as it does in America. I am not saying that I don't want a Bill of Rights. I am just saying that while the Bill of Rights is a necessary restraint on governmental abuse of power, there are times that those restraints prevent the government from using its powers in a legitimate way. Still, Britain has a lot of other problems that we don't. It seems to have a much larger Muslim population, and a much larger radical Muslim population. It has many of the same multiculturalist fanatics that we have. It also closer to the Middle East. The British authorities have a difficult job to do--and as I think Tom Ridge observed, we have to do our job perfectly everytime; the terrorists only have to be successful once. Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Coulter On O'Connor's Retirement As usual, funny, perhaps not entirely fair, but I liked this section: Of course, it was often hard to say what her decision was, period. In lieu of clear rules, or what we used to call "law," O'Connor preferred conjuring up five-part balancing tests that settled nothing. That woman could never make up her mind!And this, unfortunately, is very true. The Grutter decision essentially argued that as wrong as racism is, it is still "necessary" for another 25 years. Something tells me that O'Connor's expiration date will be forgotten about in 2028, and the need for government-sanctioned racism will still be with us--because the core problem--lousy primary and secondary public education and severe cultural problems within the black inner-city community--will still be with us. Unclear On The Concept, I Fear Lil' Kim, begging the judge to give her a light sentence for perjury related to a gun battle between her band and another: Rapper Lil' Kim escaped a stiff prison sentence Wednesday after telling a judge she was a "God-fearing good person" who regretted lying to a federal grand jury about a 2001 shootout outside a Manhattan radio station.And then: Her 1996 debut album, "Hard Core," was laced with sexually explicit lyrics and became a big hit, thanks to songs such as "Crush On You" and others with unmentionable titles. There Is A Blog For Everything Like this one, devoted to the mysterious disappearance of a relative: There is a lot of mystery around the disappearance of my Uncle Walter Frank Spence. All I know is that he served in the Navy in WWII. He came home after his discharge to visit my dad. The story is he went out to get a haircut and never came back. This was in the early 1950's. His whereabouts was unknown until my wife found him in the Social Security Death Index in 1999. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Walter Frank Spence and his whereabouts in those 40+ years.I can't claim that I find it very interesting--but somewhere, someone (perhaps even the family and friends of Walter Frank Spence during the "lost years") might find it interesting. Oh, and this one, whose last entry says it all: BLOG CLOSED. LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WRITE BLOGS. Pump Parties I've blogged before about the absurdity of sex change operations--and how many of those who undergo these procedures end up unhappy, and try to go back. There might be a very tiny number of people for whom this could make some sense, but the insanity of things like this becoming a widespread problem really tells you how deranged these people are: SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - A dangerous underground of "pump parties" has sprung up around the country catering to transgender individuals seeking more feminine features through cheap -- sometimes deadly -- black-market silicone injections, experts say.Even more outrageous is not just that there are so many people taking these sort of insane risks, but the response of the transgendered "establishment" activists: Still, some in the transgender community see silicone injection as a reasonable choice and many Web sites offer advice on how to get injections more safely.Or even better: seek help for why they feel the need to change sex. Labels: transgender Circumcision and AIDS This was a bit of a surprise--a study in Africa that was examining whether circumcision reduces the risk of men catching AIDS was stopped early, because it was so clearly true: French and South African AIDS researchers have called an early halt to a study of adult male circumcision to reduce HIV infection after initial results reportedly showed that men who had the procedure dramatically lowered their risk of contracting the virus.There is a reason to suspect a connection between AIDS transmission and circumcision: Laboratory studies have found that the foreskin is rich in white blood cells, which are favored targets of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. So the theory is that men who are uncircumcised are much more likely to contract the virus during sex with an infected woman, and that the epidemic spreads when these newly infected men have sex with other women within their network of sexual partners.As I was reading the article, I found myself wondering if there might be some other factors involved in the disparity in AIDS rates, since circumcision in much of the world is associated with particular religious beliefs. Sure enough, at the end of the article is a discussion of why this might be a factor: Although the apparent protective effect of circumcision has been noted for more than 20 years, doubts linger as to whether circumcision itself is protective, or whether the lower risk may be the result of cultural practices among those who circumcise. HIV rates are low in Muslim communities, for example, which practice male circumcision but also engage in ritual washing before sex and frown on promiscuity.How well did this study distinguish circumcision from lower promiscuity rates? One of my biology professors, back in the early 1990s, told us that recent research had demonstrated a connection between promiscuity and cervical cancer--which we now know is related to HPV. For a long time, doctors had suspected that circumcision had some protective effect for cervical cancer, because studies in America in the early twentieth century had found much lower rates of cervical cancer among Jewish women, at a time when most American boys were not circumcised. Our biology professor indicated that the real difference wasn't that Jewish men back then were circumcised, but that Jewish women were much less promiscuous. (You could hear the intake of breath from the women in the class.) I woudl guess that the lower rates of promiscuity back then were because so many American Jews were first or second generation immigrants, with very traditional views of what was appropriate. One of These Days... We, as a society, are going to decide that it makes more sense to keep those who predate on children in prison, instead of releasing them. You've seen the coverage about the convicted, level three registered sex offender who was arrested with Shasta Groene--and it is beginning to appear that there will be no problem getting a conviction for the murders in Shasta's home. Here's another story about a level three registered sex offender that, because it was a racially motivated hate crime--and it didn't involve a white man killing a black person--isn't going to get much press from the mainstream media: WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A homeless ex-convict accused of killing a 56-year-old woman in a parking garage near a suburban mall told police that he was fighting a race war and killed her because she was white."Could"? This sounds like a pretty open and shut case, what with statements like "was not an innocent victim — because she was white." On the tape, Grant, a convicted rapist, said he was sick of being harassed on the street for being a registered sex offender. He also complained that Westchester County never helped him with his mental problems.You know, I am beginning to see a pattern here. Leave them inside, forever. Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Do Names Push You Into Certain Jobs? I was going to ask that question about Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, who sat on the Supreme Court from 1955-71. John Marshall, of course, was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 1801-35. John Harlan (John Marshall Harlan's grandfather) was Associate Justice of the Supreme Court 1877-1911. With this much family history--and named for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court--wasn't this almost inevitable? Of course, there's always the example of the clown named after John Wayne, but he didn't turn out quite as well. The Robotic Doctor Is Coming I had suggested a while back that one beneficial side effect of enforcing the laws against illegal immigration might be a substantial investment in robotic fruit pickers, and that this could well lead to robotic nursing for the unpleasant and physically demanding jobs in nursing (emptying bed pans; moving patients from bed to gurney; giving sponge baths). I still think this is a real possibility, but my expectations weren't quite this high. I saw this news story, and I realized that the robotic doctors of Larry Niven's short stories (the "autodoc") may be closer than we think: Life-saving breast examinations could soon be performed by a robotic hand that combines ultrasound with an artificial sense of touch.This particular research is focused on remote diagnosis, but it isn't that much of a step from remote sensing passed back to a doctor to having a program that uses this information to do an initial diagnosis of breast abnormalities (and a number of other common manual diagnostic procedures). Three possibilities leap out at me: 1. Reduce the cost of breast exams by having a machine doing them. Any reduction in medical costs is a win. 2. Bring the cost down so much that instead of annual breast exams, perhaps semiannual or monthly breast exams, especially for women who are high risk because of either individual or family histories of breast cancer. 3. There are women who are not comfortable having a man doing this sort of manual breast exam, and men still predominate in the medical field. There's no question about whether a robot is doing an exam, or copping a feel. Yields Continuing To Rise As of 2:41 PM Mountain time zone, 30 year Treasury yields are up to 4.362%. It may be time to lock the loan on the new house--a 3/1 ARM is now at 5.375%. Gas Wall Ovens: The House Project The layout of our kitchen has a wall oven and a microwave oven, and cooktop in the island. I've run into an interesting problem: it seems that gas wall ovens come in a 24" wide size; if you want 30" wide, you need to go to an electric wall oven. I am a little concerned that a 24" wide wall oven won't be large enough for a turkey. We have a conventional electric range/oven combo right now, and a large turkey just barely fits. Is there something that I am missing? Labels: house project GM's Employee Discount This news story reports that GM's Employee Discount For Everyone program has so dramatically improved their sales--although at the cost of a reduction in per vehicle profits--that they are extending it until August 1: Under the program, which was launched last month and due to expire July 5, the world's largest automaker is selling anybody a 2005 model car or truck at the same lower price a GM employee would pay.Now, here's the part that I find attractive: GM's program resonated with consumers because of its simplicity and because it eliminated the haggling over prices that many consumers dread, according to analysts.Hallelujah! I dread it too--even though I am one of those car buyers from whom car salesmen usually want the government to protect them. I hate haggling. One of the reasons that I often look at Saturn's offerings is because from the beginning, that division of GM has had a single price. I've seen the claim that Quakers played a major part in creating what is now the standard in America for just about everything but houses and cars: one price that everyone pays. The claim is that the Quakers were uncomfortable with the unfairness of giving some buyers a better price than others, based on their haggling ability. Think of it as the equal protection clause applied to retail prices. I don't know if this is true, but it is certainly how I feel about the matter. I would be overjoyed if car companies decided to pick a price for cars, probably well below the current Manufacturers Suggestion Retail Price (MSRP), but somewhere above the actual cost that the dealer pays for the car (which is often a good bit below the semi-mythical "invoice price"). I would like for all the sleazy games of car salesmen, sales managers, etc., to just evaporate away. Just Remember The Scene At The End Of Soylent Green The one where we find out from what the food Soylent Green is made. Then visit this ecological fertilizer company's site. Scientology's Theology I've just been reading the Wikipedia description of the Scientology explanation of mental illness. There is not a religion on this planet that even begins to approach Scientology for weirdness--and I am including every pagan belief you can think of when I make that statement. I have long suspected that Scientology was a scam for separating fools from their money--but I had no idea how bizarre Scientology theology really was: 75 million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The planets were overpopulated, each having on average 178 billion people. The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with people "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth.And then it gets weird. What Is Art? I went to the Boise Art Museum yesterday with my wife. My wife is a big fan of Georgia O'Keefe; I must confess that I am not a big fan, but at least I recognize it as art of a certain very twentieth century style. Another exhibit was titled, "Sweepings." If this was intended as satire of artistic pretension, it works, but I don't think that was the case. The sign explained: Sweepings consists of floor remnants from the studios of 30 well-known artists, collected and mounted as an exhibition by Northwest artist Jack Dollhausen and his graduate seminar in fine arts at Washington State University, Pullman, between 1972-1973. According to Dollhausen, the idea that led to the inception of Sweepings was that it was impossible to attract big names from the art world to Pullman, Washington before they had a museum of art. Someone even sarcastically said that Big Names would not show their floor sweepings in Pullman.And that's exactly what this is. Each bag of floor sweepings was accompanied by a business reply envelope to WSU Pullman in which the contents were sent by the artist. As a one-time gag, sure, it was funny. But that this collection of random trash is still touring today. Why? I attended a wood carving exhibit a few months back that showed vastly more talent. Yeah, I know, I'm a bit old-fashioned as to what I consider art--but "Sweepings" reminded me of a less interesting form of visiting the West Los Angeles Official Police Garage. It was in the late 1970s; a friend's Buick Skyhawk had disappeared, and we couldn't get a straight answer from LAPD if her car had been towed, so we went down to the LAPD Official Police Garage in West Los Angeles--a most surreal experience at night. This was a city block with a six foot concrete block wall around it. Inside the wall were hundreds of wrecked cars. The lights were slowly fading as the batteries failed; on some cars, the headlights were blinking at various rates because of short-circuits caused by the accidents. On other cars, the horns were honking for the same reason, and again, at different rates. My friend approached the guy who ran the place, and asked if we could walk through and see if her car was there. He said no, and I can understand that. Then she asked if we could just walk around the outside of the lot, looking over the wall. "No, your eyes could get arrested." He was a slightly weird and slightly scary older guy who didn't seem to be, as my friend observed, "playing with a full deck." (This led to a polite conversation with two LAPD officers who this deranged lot attendant called on us for looking over the wall.) Perhaps the City of Los Angeles could improve their financial situation by changing the name to West Los Angeles Museum of Post-Traumatic Automotive Art, and charging admission. Things That May Not Be On Government Property; Things You Are Required To Subsidize Ann Coulter has a powerful column--perhaps a little too powerful for many readers--so I won't quote it. She points out the hypocrisy of the left insisting that the Ten Commandments can't be on government property--and then gives a list of statements that your tax dollars have subsidized, and that liberals insist must be funded by the taxpayers. Yes, it is true that the really offensive examples that she gives are not expressions of support for a particular religion (although several are examples of expressions of hostility to a particular religion). Still, it makes you wonder what the Courts would say if the National Endowment for the Arts funded art exhibits that were as offensive to Judaism or Islam as some of the anti-Catholic art has been. For example, imagine if NEA funded a series of paintings showing Mohammed intimately involved with pigs. I somehow doubt that the left would be quite so insistent on the government funding every art project. Monday, July 04, 2005
WiFi Network Names In my neighborhood, there are about three wireless networks that show up when I turn on my laptop--some of them not encrypted. Fine. But click here, and you can see what happened when someone did this is in Palo Alto--and even the names of the nearby wireless networks were politicized. Hair Loss Blogad You'll notice ad on my blog for a product that is supposed to prevent hair loss. The name of the product and associated marketing materials indicates that it blocks testosterone from causing hair loss. I always cringe a little at products that mess with hormones, so if you are one of those unfortunate enough to have to worry about baldness, you should probably talk to your doctor before starting the use of such a product. Sunday, July 03, 2005
Reasons Why Children Should Not Be Sexualized Doubtless this will be disturbing news to Justice Ginsburg and the ACLU, but there are good reasons why we have laws to prohibit having sex with children: it tends to screw them up pretty good. You are doubtless now aware that Shasta Groene, the eight-year-old who went missing in May after the murder of her mother and two others in her home, turned up at a Denny's in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where a sharp-eyed waitress named Amber Deahn recognized her in the company of Joseph Edward Duncan III (a registered sex offender), called the police, and then successfully stalled them from leaving until the police arrived. Shasta's nine-year-old brother Dylan, is still missing. Shasta's mother and an older brother, and one other adult, were bludgeoned to death some months back, which is when Shasta and Dylan disappeared. Not surprisingly, Joseph Edward Duncan III is being held without bail, while police presumably try to tie him to the murders. He is also wanted on child molestation charges in North Dakota. He also rented a car there in April, and passed through Wyoming. The murders and the disappearance of Shasta and Dylan took place in May. I would be very surprised if this was just a coincidence. Who is Duncan? According to this news story: At age 15, a year before his parents divorced, Duncan stole a vehicle and led police on a high-speed chase before ramming a police blockade.Well, maybe, but all of this is consistent with a child who was sexually abused at age 12. Girls often turn self-destructive; boys destroy others, sometimes becoming molesters themselves. Duncan's website (now taken offline, but archived here) complained: The mission of The Fifth Nail is to help in the fight against official propaganda that supports discrimination against classes of people defined by mistakes they made in the past, or might make in the future. It is our position that State Sanctioned Discrimination serves no public interest and in fact creates an even more dangerous class of criminals by denying x-convicts a place in our society, forcing them to feel like outcasts with little to loose.Right now, even if the police can't pin the murders on Duncan, he's done a pretty strong job of demonstrating that "State Sanctioned Discrimination" is completely justified. As I pointed out a few days ago, there are all sorts of state sanctioned discrimination that the Supreme Court hasn't (yet) ruled to be violations of the equal protection clause. This is yet another. There is at least one person who deserves more than her picture in the paper, and that's Amber Deahn. She's a waitress. I rather suspect that she doesn't make an huge amount of money doing that--maybe $8 an hour with tips? I'm going to write out a check to Amber Deahn, and mail it to her in care of her employer: Denny's 2300 N 4th St. Coeur D'Alene, ID 83814 This is a hint to the rest of you. I suspect that if 10% of my readers could send her $10 or $20 each, it would probably help wipe out some credit card debt, let her go out to a nice dinner, and put a little money into savings. Can you think of anyone who deserves it more today? |
