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Labels: Iraqi WMDs Labels: homosexuality Labels: house project Labels: homosexuality
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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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Boy, Do I Wish I Could Read Arabic
Over at Stop The ACLU, this article mentions that Senator Rick Santorum described a recently declassified document by a witness to a 50 truck convoy from Iraq to Syria just before the start of the war. For some reason, there's no permanent link to the particular article over at Foreign Military Studies Office, Joint Reserve Intelligence Center web site, where all sorts of captred documents are being scanned in and made public.
The brief summaries are really intriguing: BIAP-2003-000059
Title: Iraqi relative working for a U.S. atomic energy agency
* BIAP-2003-000059.pdf - Text
BIAP-2003-000090
Title: Documents covering meetings between Agent #801 and Sheik Adil Mohammed Al-Minshed, the head of a tribe, during which they discussed WMD buried in the area of Halab, Syria, an Iraqi Oil Minister, missing Iraqi Generals and a dead Iraqi physicist suspected
* BIAP-2003-000090.pdf - Text
BIAP-2003-000204
Title: Documents covering pay increases to college Professors and Teachers, bonuses, especially Dr Kamal Abd ((Elglil)), President of the Alamnsour Institute, and a request from Dr. Elgiil for more money to protect himself from nuclear radiation
* BIAP-2003-000204-T.pdf - Text
2RAD-2004-600247
Title: Scientific Study Regarding Lactobacillus Salivarius
* 2RAD-2004-600247-ELC.PDF - Text
2RAD-2004-601172
Title: Article about CBS broadcast on AQ trying to manufacture a nuclear bomb
* 2RAD-2004-601172.PDF - Text
* 2RAD-2004-601172-ELC.PDF - Text
2RAD-2004-601189
Title: Abu-Zubaydah Statement on the Capability of al-Qaidah to Manufacture and Deliver Nuclear Weapons to the U.S.
* 2RAD-2004-601189-ELC.PDF - Text
BIAP-2003-00001050
Title: Information form of a Draftee and a correspondence including directives related to storing and maintaining the chemical supplies and the gas masks
* BIAP-2003-00001050.pdf - Text
NMEC-2006-619323
Title: Technical document published by the Islamic Media Center discussing the physical attributes of the chemical compounds GA and GB
* NMEC-2006-619323.PDF - Text
NMEC-2006-619591
Title: A single page from an al-Markaz al-Islami al-I'lami training document discussing atomic explosion tests and types of bursts
* NMEC-2006-619591-ELC.PDF - Text
NMEC-2006-619911
Title: Information on chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and their handling
* NMEC-2006-619911-ELC.PDF - Text
Washington State Supreme Court Decision Concerning Marriage
I'm sure by now that you've seen the news coverage. Go here to see links to the opinion, two concurrences, and three dissents!
Yes, I'm pleased about the result.
Yes, I'm concerned at how close this was--a 5-4 decision. It would only have taken one judge terrified of spending the rest of his life being harrassed and threatened by gay activists (who seem to have unlimited energy to spend on this sort of thing--boy, do I know) to have changed this into a victory against representative government.
I'm a little concerned about the reasoning, because it seems to be a little too clever in how it deals with a couple of the questions.
The essential claim of the plaintiffs who sued for a right to marry--in spite of state law defining marriage as "a man and a woman"--was that the ban on same-sex marriage violated the equal protection, equal rights amendment, and due process clauses of the Washington State Constitution.
Perhaps the author of the opinion, Justice Barbra Madsen, was just trying to give herself some cover for the next time she gets invited to a billionaire's party, but I was pleased to see this reminder that she knows what her job is--it isn't superlegislator: It is important to note that the court’s role is limited to determining the constitutionality of DOMA and that our decision is not based on an independent determination of what we believe the law should be. United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens talked about the court’s role when he described several noteworthy opinions he had written or joined while “convinced that the law compelled a result that [he] would have opposed if [he] were a legislator.” John Paul Stevens, United States Supreme Court Justice, Judicial Predilections, Address to the Clark County Bar Association, Las Vegas, Nev. 2 (Aug. 18, 2005). As Justice Stevens explained, a judge’s understanding of the law is a separate and distinct matter from his or her personal views about sound policy. Id. at 17.
Of course, quoting Justice Stevens when you are about to skewer the most important sacred cow in the liberal's barn, is always a good idea.
A judge’s role when deciding a case, including the present one, is to measure the challenged law against the constitution and the cases that have applied the constitution. Personal views must not interfere with the judge’s responsibility to decide cases as a judge and not as a legislator. This, after all, is one of the three legs supporting the rule of law.
While it isn't the first time that I have seen pretty severe criticisms of another justice's opinion in such a document, this seems pretty remarkable: Perhaps because of the nature of the issue in this case and the strong feelings it brings to the front, some members of the court have uncharacteristically been led to depart significantly from the court’s limited role when deciding constitutional challenges. For example, Justice Fairhurst’s dissent declines to apply settled principles for reviewing the legislature’s acts and instead decides for itself what the public policy of this state should be. Justice Bridge’s dissent claims that gay marriage will ultimately be on the books and that this court will be criticized for having failed to overturn DOMA. But, while same-sex marriage may be the law at a future time, it will be because the people declare it to be, not because five members of this court have dictated it.
It sounds like a good argument for making sure that Justice Mary Fairhurst doesn't survive the next chance that the voters of Washington State get to remove her. And indeed, when you read Fairhurst's dissent, there's a lot of justification and rationalization for what is clearly a, "I think this is unfair, and I'm not going to stand for it" argument.
The argument concerning the Washington State Constitution's privileges and immunities clause was quite interesting. Unlike the provision in the 14th Amendment (whose meaning was quite clear, until the Supreme Court had a chance to muddy the waters), Madsen's opinion asserts that the Washington Constitution's provision was specifically intended to prevent minorities from being especially privileged--to make sure that the government didn't pass laws to benefit powerful or influential friends: legislative abuses were rampant—the territorial legislature reportedly passed few laws in 1862-63 but enacted numerous pieces of special legislation; governors were criticized for abusing patronage power; there was criticism of the judiciary due to “absentee judges, political manipulations, and the lack of local control over appointments”; and the “presence of powerful corporations in Washington was often at the root of the governmental corruption.”
I don't know anything about this clause's history, but in the time period that Madsen discusses, this doesn't seem too startling. Late 19th century America is awash in corrupt deals that would make such a meaning seem like a good idea.
Of course, Washington's Defense of Marriage Act didn't privilege a minority; you could argue that it privileged the majority (straight people) by making marriage available to them, but not to homosexuals. Still, if Madsen is right about the intent of the privileges and immunities clause, then homosexuals don't have a leg to stand on using this argument.
The argument based on Washington State's guarantee of equal rights regardless of sex gets disposed of by pointing to precedents that hold that this provision provides no stronger protections than the privileges and immunities clause. This sounds a bit weird to me--a constitutional amendment that guarantees equal rights regardless of sex did nothing at all, except reiterate the existing privileges and immunities clause? Again, I have no knowledge of the precedents involved, but it sounds a bit strange.
The plaintiffs argued that their rights were violated under the equal protection clause as well. Madsen's opinion correctly identifies that unless the law affects a "suspect or semisuspect class," then the court is obligated to apply rational basis review--not any heightened form of scrutiny.
If this sounds like gobbledy-gook: rational basis means that as long as the legislature has some reason to believe that a law serves a legitimate governmental objective, the courts aren't supposed to overrule them. Heightened scrutiny means that forms of discrimination with a long history of discrimination and governmental abuse (classification by race, or by sex) allows the courts to impose a stricter standard for figuring out whether equal protection has been violated.
Racial classification is subject to "strict scrutiny," which means that the government has to prove that there was no other method of achieving a legitimate governmental objective except by racial classification. To my knowledge, no law subject to strict scrutiny has survived in the courts. I suppose that if I spent some time at it, I could dream up a bizarre science fiction plot that would justify a law that engaged in racial classification and meet this requirement, but there's a saying that strict scrutiny is always fatal.
Distinctions based on sex are not subject to strict scrutiny, but heightened scrutiny, nonetheless, at least partly because the courts have actually figured out that while sex discrimination was usually irrational, it wasn't always so.
So, the question becomes: is homosexuality a "suspect class"? Another way to ask this is, "Should laws that distinguish based on sexual orientation be automatically suspect, and therefore subject to heightened scrutiny"? Madsen's decision spends a lot of time trying to establish that this isn't the case: To qualify as a suspect class for purposes of an equal protection analysis, the class must have suffered a history of discrimination, have as the characteristic defining the class an obvious, immutable trait that frequently bears no relation to ability to perform or contribute to society, and show that it is a minority or politically powerless class. Hanson, 83 Wn.2d at 199; City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 440-41, 105 S. Ct. 3249, 87 L. Ed. 2d 313 (1985); High Tech Gays v. Def. Indus. Sec. Clearance Office, 895 F.2d 563 (9th Cir. 1990). Race, alienage, and national origin are examples of suspect
Pretty clearly, homosexuality is not immutable. There are a fair number of homosexuals who managed to change not just their behavior, but their orientation. (There are a lot who have tried, and failed, too.)
classifications. City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 440. Suspect classifications require heightened scrutiny because the defining characteristic of the class is “so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy—a view that those in the burdened class are not as worthy or deserving as others.” Id. There is no dispute that gay and lesbian persons have been discriminated against in the past.
The parties dispute whether homosexuality is immutable. The State relies on the decision in High Tech Gays that homosexuality is behavioral, and thus not immutable. The plaintiffs counter that the Ninth Circuit has since “corrected” High Tech Gays and held that gay and lesbian persons constitute a suspect class.
Most importantly, the powerlessness issue is pretty much dead. Homosexuals have managed to get the Washington legislature to add sexual orientation to the state's antidiscrimination law, and there are at least four openly gay Washington legislators. That pretty blows away any argument that homosexuals are politically powerless.
The most absurd claim of the plaintiffs is that there is a fundmental right to same-sex marriage. As Madsen points out, bringing in the big gun of judicial activism about "fundamental rights": Under a federal constitutional analysis, for a fundamental right to exist it must be “objectively, ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ . . . and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,’ such that ‘neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.’” Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720-21, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 138 L. Ed. 2d 772 (1997)
Try as hard you want: you can't argue that same-sex marriage is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." Not even close.
M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water
Attributed both to Paul Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli (two giants of mid-20th century physics), upon reading a paper by a colleague. "This isn't right. It isn't even wrong." That's my reaction to the latest film from my favorite director.
All of the impressive films that he has made have certain characteristics in common: grief; loss; hope; and a belief that there's something a bit more important than just the immediate gratification of the senses. Films like The Sixth Sense deal with the supernatural; Signs confronts a crisis of faith in a science fiction setting; The Village in particular grabbed me, because I could identify with these people fleeing barbarism-induced loss. None of his films are explicitly Christian (even though the protagonist in Signs is a pastor who has walked away from his calling after the loss of his wife). Still, I suspect that many of Shyamalan's fans are like me, Christians who find a spiritual resonance in his work.
Lady in the Water is also about loss, grief, and hope--but part way through it, I found myself thinking, "If Saturday Night Live had made a parody of a Shyamalan film, this is what it might seem like." It is often quite funny--and that may be what saved an otherwise wretched story. The actors are (with the exception of Shyamalan himself, as usual, playing a part) largely unknowns or close to it--and there wasn't a weak performance in the bunch. At times, the film gets just a little too self-consciously self-referential--the film critic confronting the beast in the corridor was way over the top, and yet it was hilarious. Perhaps this is how Shyamalan vents his real feelings about film critics. "You savage my film? Fine! The beast will savage you!"
Still, in spite of a lot of elements that were individually excellent: fine actors, poignant portrayals of the grief-stricken, characters who in their own quirky way, remind my wife and I of neighbors we had in various apartment buildings over the years, the net result is a very disappointing film. Look, I've wasted money and time on much worse films, such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Perhaps my expectations were set so high by his previous works, which are searing portraits of good and decent people confronting real world (or almost real world) life crises.
I observed a while back that Michael Crichton has reached the point where if he mailed his grocery shopping list to his publisher by mistake--it would be on the best seller list shortly thereafter. I suspect that Shyamalan has reached that same point. The expectations are so high for what his films will be, that even a script this silly would have no problem reaching the screen.
Is USA Today Making Stuff Up Now?
I blogged a couple of days back about how encouraging it was that national news media covered the story of how a witness retrieved a 9mm pistol from his vehicle in the parking lot, and used it to force a guy on a knifing rampage to stop. Some years ago, Dr. John Lott pointed to an incident at a law school in the Appalachians where something similar happened--and the news media "left out" the use of a gun to stop a rampage killing--a dramatic ending to a tragic story, and something that you would expect news media to want to include.
USA Today has gone one better. They didn't just "leave out" the use of the gun--they appear to have invented new details to explain what happened: ARLINGTON, Tenn. (AP) — Eight employees were stabbed Friday by a co-worker at a Memphis suburban grocery store, and four were seriously injured, police said. The victims were identified only as six females and two males who worked at the Schnucks grocery.
Not only is there no mention of the gun, the witness "tackled" the suspect--something that appeared in no other news account, but directly contradicts other news accounts, such as this one from AP (which is where USA Today claimed that they received their version of the story):
Memphis Police Sgt. Vince Higgins said the man suspected in the attack was in custody after the incident that was reported at about 9:25 a.m. The suspect, whose name wasn't immediately released, was complaining of chest pains and was sent to the hospital.
The victims were identified only as six females and two males who worked at the Schnucks grocery. Higgins said officials hadn't determined a motive for the attack.
Three victims were in stable condition at St. Francis Hospital in Bartlett, a spokeswoman said. The others were sent to other area hospitals, and Higgins said four of them were in critical condition.
The suspect was tackled by a witness as he tried to run from the building and was held until officers arrived, Higgins said. [emphasis added]Ingram, chasing one victim into the store's parking lot, was subdued by Chris Cope, manager of a financial services office in the same small shopping center, Memphis Police Sgt. Vince Higgins said.
This version of the AP story at ABC News also tells the same story--a gun, not "tackling" the guy with the knife. This article from The Scotsman has the gun--not "tackling" the guy. I can't find any version of the story--other than USA Today--that includes this apparently made up version of what happened.
Cope said he grabbed a 9mm semiautomatic pistol from his pickup truck when he saw the attacker chasing the victim "like something in a serial killer movie."
"When he turned around and saw my pistol, he threw the knife away, put his hands up and got on the ground," Cope told The Associated Press. "He saw my gun and that was pretty much it."
UPDATE: I guess they got enough flak about this, because there is now another story on their site now that talks about the gun.
UPDATE 2: Welcome Instapundit readers! What sort of blogger gets an Instalanche, and doesn't follow it up with dozens of interesting blog entries? A blogger who has to complete final edits on his next book, Armed America, before August 4.
A Very Busy Day
I spent just about all of it going through and editing the manuscript for Armed America. There are places where the more I read it, the more I want to summarize.
House Project: Another Disappointing Towel Rack
My wife noticed that a towel ring in the bathroom was a little loose--so she decided to see why. Instead of using a molybolt or something similar--the screws were just turned into the wallboard. There was a stud all of three inches away--and it would have been centered between the wall edge and the mirror if they had used the stud.
It didn't take long for us to fix it--but this is inexcusable sloppiness.
Last house project entry.
Machining: Practice Makes Perfect
Like most things, the more you do it, the better you get.
I'm machining UHMW polyethylene cylinders for use in leg inserts for the ScopeRoller 11 product. Each time I make some of these, I learn a little more.
1. The first cylinder was fighting and catching--sharpen the tool.
2. Facing a cylinder (taking something that is approximately a right angle cut from the miter saw and making it exactly a right angle) involves turning the cylinder while running a cutting tool across the end. If you try to cut too much plastic on the first facing pass, you are likely to have the tool grab the plastic, and maybe even throw it completely out of the chuck. (Stand aside from the direction of rotation!) If you try to cut too little, it takes forever. I've learned to make the heaviest cut inward as the cylinder turns, and only remove a few thousandths of an inch as I move the cutting tool out from the center to the edge.
3. My goal is to cut the cylinder not only perfectly right angle at both ends, but to a specified length, +- at most .002". (I really don't need this level of precision on the length of these cylinders, but it makes me feel good about my work when I can put six on them on a table, and running my fingers across them I can't feel any differences.) The trick is to make the facing cuts on each end, then remove the excess material from each end. This way, any roughness or gouges left in the ends during facing get removed in the length cutting section.
4. Once I am ready to turn the diameter of the cylinders to size, because the axis of rotation may be as much as a few thousandths off of the center of the cylinder, I make a light pass with the cutting tool down the length of the cylinder to remove perhaps .005", so that if there is any offset from the axis, this gets removed. All subsequent cuts are now on a cylinder perfectly on axis with the lathe, and I can remove .025" at each pass, as quickly as I can advance the carriage.
You Just Can't Start Propagandizing Too Young
From the British Guardian: Nursery teachers should promote tolerance of same-sex partnerships and outlaw the use of offensive homophobic language in the classroom or playground, a teaching union said today.
One of the defining characteristics of liberalism is the belief that everything that is not prohibited, is required. I guess that we can't trust British nursery teachers to use their best judgment, can we?
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) said the introduction of civil partnerships last year created an ideal climate for nursery schools to tackle the issue of same-sex relationships and homophobia.
Many gay parents of nursery school children are reluctant to "come out" for fear that their children might become the target of homophobic bullying, said the union.
Young boys at primary school are also bullied and called "gay" if they do not conform to perceived male stereotypes - reflecting the union's belief that homophobic prejudice should be addressed at an early age when children are in nursery school.
The NUT said: "It is particularly important to begin to make three to five-year-olds aware of the range of families that exist in the UK today". That would includes families with single parents or those with "two mums" or "two dads", the union said.
The union added: "There will be parents who are gay or lesbian who will want to be reassured that that their children will be safe in the setting."
The comments by the NUT come in an annex in its response to the government's consultation document on the Early Years Foundation Stage - the guidance that the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) produces for nursery and early years staff on delivering play-based activities for children aged up to four.
The guidance, which has so far been voluntary, is due to become compulsory for early years staff from next year, following the outcome of the consultation.
Interesting Recent Additions to the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
This news account of a defensive shooting--and the actions of the prosecutor--would seem to be an outgrowth of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's Wisconsin v. Hamadan (2003) decision, which, as I wrote several years ago, created a useful exception to the Wisconsin ban on concealed carry: A 35-year-old pizza delivery man who shot a 14-year-old boy he said was trying to rob him won't face criminal charges.
A reminder that when it comes to firearms, even thoroughly obsolete technologies will do the job in the right hands:
Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Irene Parthum, who reviewed the July 14 incident, said Andres Vegas of Cudahy was acting in self-defense when he shot the boy, who himself was wielding a BB gun pistol. Police said at the time that the 14-year-old suffered non-life-threatening wounds to the shoulder, hand and buttock.
Parthum also said Vegas, who had been delivering a pizza in the 2400 block of N. 34th St. at the time of the shooting, won't be charged for carrying a concealed firearm because he had been robbed during a delivery last year and, under state weapons law, had a reasonable belief he needed to protect himself.BATTLE CREEK (NEWS 3) – A weekend shooting that left a Battle Creek man dead appears to be a case of self-defense, police have confirmed.
The shooting happened just after midnight on Saturday in the 500 block of Hamblin Avenue. Police received a 911 call from a resident saying he'd shot another man.
Officers arrived and found 38-year-old David Bailey of Battle Creek dead.
Detectives say the 58-year-old homeowner, whose name is not being released, told them Bailey had come to the house with a hammer, looking for money. Neighbors say Bailey attacked the resident with the hammer and a struggle ensued. The resident then shot Bailey in the chest with a .50 caliber muzzle loading rifle.
