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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, July 26, 2008
Who Was Leon Jaworski? I was watching the evening news, and they had a story about a bunch of black soldiers who were convicted of crimes related to the lynching of an Italian POW in 1944 at Fort Lawton, in Washington State. It turned out that they weren't guilty--and today, the Army apologized for this miscarriage of justice. I wish that I could say that this was a rare event. It wasn't. There were plenty of examples earlier in the twentieth century where black soldiers were punished for crimes that they didn't commit, or at least for which the evidence wasn't sufficient. Part of the problem was that the dominant culture said that blacks were savages. Especially in the South, almost any confrontation between black and white was going to be assumed to be the black person's fault. Part of the problem was that "black soldier" was a very, very scary concept--because "soldier" includes the idea of "gun." The fear that black soldiers might take knowledge of firearms back into civilian life was why, for much of American history, blacks were allowed either in the Navy (where their experience wasn't going to be useful in civilian life--how many five inch naval guns are privately owned?), or kept in entirely non-combat roles--such as loading ships and driving trucks. The four black regiments (segregated, of course, but with white officers) that the U.S. Army kept after the Civil War were only because Republicans, who dominated the Congress throughout the postbellum period, insisted. If the Army had gotten its way, all the "Colored Troops" units would have been disbanded at the end of the Civil War. Bernard C. Nalty's Strength for the Fight is a very powerful and often heartbreaking history of the efforts of black Americans to prove themselves in the U.S. armed forces--and the enormous efforts that were made to keep them out. It also includes other incidents like what happened at Fort Lawton, where it was apparent that for political reasons, black servicemen were never going to get a fair shake. So, who is Leon Jaworski? The evening news broadcast mentioned that Jaworski was the lawyer in charge of the investigation, and sat on information that would have cleared these black soldiers. This July 23, 2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article tells us: Jaworski had evidence that likely would have cleared Snow and the others. Instead, he sat on it, and the case was nearly forgotten until a book by Seattle author Jack Hamann proved that the black soldiers didn't lynch the Italian soldier -- something Army investigators knew during the largest and longest court-martial of World War II.The evening news broadcast also mentioned that Jaworski later became famous because of Watergate. My guess is that most people under 40, if they even know what Watergate was, only know that it was a scandal involving a Republican politician--and will probably assume that Jaworski was someone caught up in the scandal. Not so. Jaworski was a Democrat who was appointed as special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate crimes, and whose actions led to Nixon's eventual resignation. And I'm sure that's part of why the American Bar Association has the Leon Jaworski Public Program Series: Since 2001, the American Bar Association Division for Public Education has conducted the Leon Jaworski public program series. The Jaworski public programs have examined themes of law, politics, and culture and have operated on the premise that exploring fundamental legal identities and attributes help us better understand who we are as Americans.A couple of points: 1. In some circles, it is just assumed that hostility to blacks is some Republican thing. It isn't, and in practice, Democrats throughout the twentieth century have done far more to injure blacks than Republicans have done. 2. What Jaworski did was not just convicting these black soldiers in error, but actually suppressing evidence that would have cleared them--and perhaps found the real killer. Why? Jaworski was a Southern Democrat--and I would not be surprised if he thought that it didn't matter if these soldiers were innocent of this murder. The whole idea of black men in the uniform of the United States of America would have been abhorrent to him. After World War II, there was an incident in South Carolina where a black soldier returning home was arrested and mutilated by a sheriff who was enraged by the sight of a black man in a military uniform. 3. I presume that in the calculation of which is bigger--taking down Nixon, or violating his duty to the law--the ABA will decide that taking down Nixon was more important. I rather doubt that the Leon Jaworski Public Program Series will be going away. UPDATE: Here's a more detailed account of the incidents that led to this court-martial that, in spite of putting at least some of the black soldiers involved in a poor light, comes from the ultraleftist April 22, 2008 Village Voice:
Friday, July 25, 2008
"Gay Conservative" Is Not An Oxymoron The blogger GayPatriot responds to a criticism that he isn't a conservative, and can't be, because he's a homosexual: I ask Knight the same thing I ask some of my liberal critics: do you even read my posts? This guy hasn’t a clue about my ideas.There are people that call themselves "gay conservatives" but really are more libertarian than conservative. But as the quoted remarks above suggest, GayPatriot really is a conservative. We might not agree on everything, but I am certainly not going to push him into the enemy camp. Poor Choices Of Words...Start Wars Back in 1950, President Truman asserted that South Korea was outside our defense perimeter. And the result? North Korea invaded, starting the Korean War. President Bush gets endless criticism for "Bushisms"--sometimes clumsy or unique uses of English. So watch this clip of a speech that Senator Obama gave to the American Israel Political Action Committee where he says that Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel and undivided--and then watch what happens when ABC's Charles Gibson asks him about that (over at Mitchell Blatt's blog), and Obama calls it a poor choice of a word, but can't seem to come up with a way to finesse whether it should remain undivided or not. This is like "a little bit pregnant." (Although Obama has a solution for that!) Jerusalem divided is a binary choice: it will be, or it won't be. Regardless of whether it is or isn't divided, a poor choice of words by the President can start a war. Remember when the left got all twitterpated by Reagan's admittedly foolish joke during a radio sound check? "The bombing will start in five minutes." Watching Obama's stumbling around, looking for a way to answer Gibson's serious questions about a serious problem, it strikes me that Obama needed to either say: "Yes, Jerusalem will remain undivided," or "This is negotiable." Watching him fumble around trying to come up with a non-zero, non-one answer to a binary question gives me the impression that his "great speaker" credentials are the sign of great delivery of a speech--not necessarily of great off-the-cuff eloquence. As someone once observed of Winston Churchill's ability to give great speeches, but not do so well at answering questions: "Heavy guns, but not very mobile." Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Media Bias? What Media Bias? The July 23, 2008 Investors Business Daily reports on contributions by journalists to political campaigns: Of course, we know that as soon as these journalists get to work, they drop all biases and assumptions about politics, and are just completely fair and evenhanded in how they cover the election. Right? Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, low standards of journalism Obamamessiah A number of people have pointed out the absurdity of how people are responding to Obama--an idol worship that would be silly if he were an entertainer, but is downright scary because he is a politician. This piece of satire in the July 25, 2008 Times of London really captures the insanity:
Let me emphasize: this isn't an attack on Obama. It's an attack on the bizarre idol worship that is going on about this guy. This piece in the July 25, 2008 Telegraph isn't so clever--it just points out that Obama is, once again, out of his depth: he words sounded wonderful. "Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together," Barack Obama told 200,000 gathered for his speech at the Victory Column. Only trouble is, that's not the case - since Good Friday peace agreement in 1998, the walls dividing Belfast's sectarian enclaves (known as the "peace line") have been going up, not coming down.Look, I don't expect Obama to be an expert on everything. I don't expect any president to be an expert on even a few things. I do expect that before making a factual statement in a speech about something important, that the president, or his advisers, would see if the factual statement had any actual facts backing it up. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Obama's Going To "Soak The Rich" So why are rich people pouring money into his campaign? According to OpenSecrets.org, Obama has raised $340 million for his campaign. A breakdown by donor amount for individual contributors shows that the bulk of that money was in the category was $1000 and up--and a very large chunk was contributions of $2300 and up. The $2300 and up group contributed a total of $68,735,311, from 26,194 contributors--or an average of $2624 each. In the $4600 and up group, the average contribution is $4702. Pretty obviously, someone who gives this kind of money to a political campaign is pretty well off. I notice a number of the $5000 contributions are from people that list their occupation as "homemaker." I believe the correct term is "independently wealthy."--like Warren Buffett, the billionaire who gave $4600 to the Obama campaign. And cheapskate billionaire George Soros, who only gave $2100 to the Obama campaign. So with all the rhetoric from Obama about raising taxes, why are rich people funding his campaign? For the same reason that billionaires and the independently wealthy have, at least throughout my lifetime, heavily funded "soak the rich" leftists: the "rich" people that they are going to soak aren't rich at all. (And this isn't new. When I was reading about socialist communes in Los Angeles in the 1900-1920 era, it was not surprising to find that millionaires funded these political activities. Similarly, the Bolsheviks raised at least some of their money in Czarist Russia by marrying into the aristocracy. Lenin, for example, was part of the minor aristocracy.) Raising income taxes has only a limited impact on the wealthy people that fund the Democratic Party. If you have $5 million in net assets, income taxes are purely voluntary. If you buy municipal bonds of your state of residence, the interest on them is exempt from federal and state income tax. Right now, interest rates are down, and if you were buying munis, you probably would only get about a 4% return. If you are one of the poor Democratic fat cats, your $5 million will only return you $200,000 a year in tax-free income--why, you might have to wash your own dishes with that little money. (And of course, if you are a more average Democratic fat cat, with $100 million in net assets, you have to live on a miserable $4 million a year in tax-free interest.) So what does raising income taxes on families that make $100,000 a year do? It prevents people that are not yet rich from becoming so. And that's why Democrats talk about how the rich people get away with so much--but never propose taxing assets--only income. Because if they talked about taxing assets, most of their campaign contribution base would dry up. These are people that like to talk about helping the poor, but most of them don't believe it enough to give away their excess wealth, and have to live on a miserable $200,000 a year. It is so much easier to fund people like Obama who make sure that the rest of us won't get to that point. This is one of the reasons that this country lurches back and forth between left and right. Republicans generally push for cutting income taxes, which allows some people to become obscenely rich. Once enough wealth accumulates that there are people who no longer have to work for a living, because they are obscenely rich, many of them shut off the opportunity for others to get that well off, by electing Democrats. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Getting Up To The Top of Big Bertha I mentioned a week or so ago the problems with the stepstool I have been using to reach the eyepiece on Big Bertha 2.0. It wasn't quite tall enough, it's a little rickety, and in the dark, it is very easy to get disoriented. I took one step to solving the elevation problem by lowering everything by about eight inches. I needed to bore the interior of a short segment of 6" OD aluminum tubing to 5.7" ID--but my lathe wasn't big enough. A former co-worker has an older Atlas lathe, and was happy to turn it for me. The Atlas as a power feed (meaning that you don't have to advance the cutting tool by turning a crank). The more I watched this, the more tempted I was to get the power feed for my lathe. Anyway, Big Bertha's eyepiece is now quite a bit lower, less chance of banging into the top of the garage door when moving it in and out, lower center of gravity--all the way around a big win. I think I may have found a combination of price and functionality that make sense. Louisville Ladders makes this rolling warehouse ladder that has casters that let you roll it, but as soon as you step on, the weight locks them. The top platform is 30" high, which I believe would be high enough. (The stepstool I use now is 20" high, and it is only a little stretch to look through the eyepiece in a couple of odd angles.) It has handrails, and a rail at the top of the platform so that you don't have any risk of falling over the top. Load capacity is 350 pounds--which might be useful if two people are both at the top at the same time. And it is only $235. (I suspect shipping isn't going to be real cheap, however.) There is also a a 40" high version for just a bit more money--perhaps worth getting. It appears that Louisville Ladder may make this in America, which is nice, and really not surprising, when you consider that shipping costs on something this large might wipe out the advantages of cheap Chinese labor and the absurd yuan-dollar exchange rate. Thursday, July 24, 2008
Digital TV Converters If you weren't already aware of this: On February 17, 2009 all full-power broadcast television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and begin broadcasting only in digital. Digital broadcasting will allow stations to offer improved picture and sound quality and additional channels.A couple months back, I went to this website and asked for two of the $40 coupons for digital TV converters. I went out and bought two of the RCA boxes today at Wal-Mart. By the time I let the story, it cost me $25. Because we are in a so-so area for broadcast TV, I was expecting that the digital signal might be a bit better than the analog signal. My, that was an understatement! The broadcast digital channels are as sharp and beautiful as the satellite channels! If I had realized how much of an improvement this was going to be, I would have done this sooner! Of course, remember that if the digital signal is too weak, you won't get anything at all--and I had to fiddle a bit with the rabbit ears to get a couple of the digital channels to come in. But where before I had channels 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12 (as well as religious broadcasting on 18 and 31 that we never watch), now I have thirteen digital broadcast channels. Most the stations actually broadcast different shows on different subchannels--4, the PBS station, actually has five separate subchannels, everything from serious public affairs to Barney. There's also show some limited programming information (what's on now, what's on next), although from what I have seen so far, there's so mismatches between what's being broadcast and the program description. Another nice feature is that this box has V-chip support, which as broadcast television gets raunchier, may be useful for keeping the trash away from your kids, your spouse, and you. (Democrats may prefer to block anything rated G or PG instead.) Wednesday, July 23, 2008
This Doesn't Speak Well of the Knox County DA The problem of mentally ill people--or just emotionally disturbed sorts--confessing to crimes that they didn't do--and often could not have done--isn't new. This story from the July 23, 2008 Knoxville [Tenn.] News gives me no confidence in the ability of the Knox County District Attorney's office to do its job: Yup, that seems like a pretty open and shut alibi to me. Global Warming Graphs I have no way to verify the accuracy of these graphs--but they rather fit with a lot of what I have posted here over the last several years about global warming. For example, this graph showing global temperature data for the last few years:  The dashed lines are the trend line--downward. A much more detailed report is here showing that while CO2 concentrations keep rising since 1998--there is no statistically significant temperature rise to go along with it. Now, this doesn't prove that CO2 has no effect on global temperatures. But it does make you ask why rising CO2 levels aren't having a measurable effect over this time period. Maybe the effect is far less than the global warming claimers want to believe. Maybe it is being overwhelmed by some other change (hint: solar output changes). But it should make you very skeptical that the global warming claimers have it right. Labels: global warming The Great Global Warming Swindle You may recall that I mentioned this documentary produced by channel 4 in Britain last year. The global warming fanatics complained to the government agency responsible for telling television networks what they are allowed to say, and how ("Ofcom," whatever that stands for). And the report that came out largely vindicated the producers of the documentary. BBC (which is part of the global warming scam) described the results like this:
Wow! Can you imagine? A documentary about a controversial subject that promoted a particular point of view! What a shocker! Steve McIntyre over at Climate Audit points out that the relatively small number of complaints upheld was nothing compared to the complaints that Ofcom decided were without merit, or outside their area of competence: None of the complaints alleging lack of due impartiality in the science portion (sections 1-4) was upheld. Not one. The only bone thrown to the complainants was a finding that there had not been due impartiality in the portion talking about Africa - an issue that Bob Ward and the Myles Allen 37 didn’t even mention. Labels: global warming When Obama Supporters Admit It... It's probably a sign that victory in Iraq in almost unavoidable. From Time magazine's blog, Joe Klein admits: The reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be "lost" at this point.Now, Klein thinks it is "scurrilous" for McCain to point out that Obama wanted to withdraw U.S. forces last year, because Obama was convinced that the surge would make things worse, not better: This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.Is there anyone that doesn't think that the Democrats would rather lose Iraq than lose the race for President? Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Right of Newspapers To Keep And Bear Machine Guns I'll say this for nineteenth century American journalists--you would never use the word "wimp" to describe them! The British naval officer and novelist Frederick Marryat, visiting America in 1837, wrote about the role of libel and slander in provoking duels: Slander and detraction are the inseperable [sic] evils of a democracy, and as neither public nor private characters are spared, and the law is impotent to protect them, men have no other recourse than to defend their reputations with their lives, or to deter the defamer by the risk which he must incur.I've read that the New York Times ordered up some Gatling guns to protect the newspaper during the New York City Draft Riots, during the Civil War, when enraged antiwar protesters upset about the draft murdered hundreds (some say, thousands) of blacks, burning down black orphanages with the children inside. A few years back, an acquaintance who invited me to speak at Columbia University told me that he had actually seen a photograph of a Gatling gun on the roof of the New York Times building. I was a bit skeptical, but I now have considerable evidence that the Gatling gun was on the roof only because the strafing run hadn't yet been invented. All the following sources agree that the New York Times had Gatling guns set up to deal with rioters; using the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms to protect the First Amendment right of a free (non-smoldering) press. John Swinton, Memories of the New York Times, New York Times, March 27, 1898; Paul Wahl and Donald R. Toppel, The Gatling Gun 24-25 (Arco Publishing Co., 1965); Lawrence Milton Woods, British Gentlemen In The Wild West: The Era Of The Intensely English Cowboy 42 (Collier Macmillan, 1989); Don Carlos Seitz, Horace Greeley: Founder Of The New York Tribune 209 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1926). Not only was Henry Raymond, the publisher of the Times manning the guns, so was Winston Churchill's grandfather, who was part owner. Really Dumb Idaho law allows open carry. Back when we had a discretionary concealed carry permit law, and it wasn't that easy to get a permit, open carry made a bit of sense. But today? From the July 20, 2008 Idaho Statesman:
Do you know how to upset people, really fast? Force them to confront the reality that many people own and carry guns. It isn't even like open carry has some great advantage over concealed carry when it comes to self-defense. It's a bit quicker to draw, sure, but if a random spree killer is deciding who to attack first, guess who's first? The person who is obviously armed. Open carry may make you as an individual somewhat safer from criminal attack, because it encourages those criminals who don't have a death wish to go look for an easier target. Concealed carry, however, makes everyone safer--because the criminal doesn't know if his intended victim is going to draw a gun--or perhaps a bystander is going to do so. Open carry is constitutionally protected, as the Idaho Supreme Court has ruled in the decision In re Brickey (Ida. 1902). But that doesn't mean that this is the most appropriate or most polite way to carry a gun. Don't be rude. Don't be stupid. UPDATE: It strikes me that there is an analogy to gay men who feel the need to have sex in public view (something that I have blogged about before). Just about every adult knows that there is homosexual sex happening out there. Most Americans aren't approving of it, but at least it isn't something that they have to see. It's an abstraction. When you walk down a public beach in Rhode Island, or along the Russian River in California, and there are guys having sex, it is no longer an abstraction. It's a reminder that someone wants you to see what they are doing, or at least doesn't care that it might not be what others want to see. Now, some of the goal of both groups--public sex and open carry--is desensitization. They are hoping that if people see this happening on a regular basis, that it will no longer be shocking, and eventually, everyone will get used to it. There are people for whom this is probably true, and it is part of why television shows make a point of including gay characters--to get everyone used to it, so that it is no longer shocking. But for most people, public sex and open carry--and especially in a setting where there are children present--it has the opposite effect: it infuriates, enrages, or (at best) annoys. UPDATE 2: I keep getting emails, so let me clarify. You have a right to open carry in Idaho and many other states. I would not for a minute propose that this should be illegal. But if your actions drive people that are neutral about guns into the enemy camp, should you do it? Labels: gun rights Weird Dreams I dreamed of thermodynamic chemistry last night--delta G, delta H, the graphs showing relative heat of the reactants and products, the threshold that prevents the reaction from going forward, how catalysts lower the threshold. I studied thermodynamics in general chemistry back in 1975 at USC. I've made no use of it since. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge decides that the Ghost of Christmas Past is really a bad dream caused by a bit of "undigested potato." What you have a dream this weird, you ask yourself, "Where did this come from?" UPDATE: My wife tells me that we had a spectacular electrical storm during the night--among the most impressive that she has seen (and we get some good ones here). I managed to sleep right through it, but perhaps all that flashing and thunder put my sleeping mind to thinking of the energy involved in thermodynamics! UPDATE 2: A reader passed this piece of nerd humor to me:
Monday, July 21, 2008
Privileges & Immunities: What Did It Mean? If you are familiar with the historical question about the meaning of the "privileges and immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and whether it incorporates the Second Amendment against the states, you may find this of interest. The "privileges and immunities" clause appears first in the Constitution, Art. IV, sec. 2, where it guaranteed that "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States." What does that mean? There are a number of arguments about how that was understood, but I found this discussion quite interesting, in an 1838 complaint from black Ohioans about discriminatory laws of that state: All residents of the state were prohibited, by penal laws, from hiring or employing, in any manner whatever, any person subject to this law, who had failed to comply with its provisions, while the citizens of other states, who had not gained a residence, were exempted from such penalties. Nor were the projectors of this measure satisfied with casting them out beyond the protection of law, and depriving them of the means of obtaining a lawful subsistence: but they made it the duty of the officers of townships to remove them by force out of the state, for disobedience to these laws. By the same process of legislation, every right secured by the constitution may be taken from the citizens of the state. The right of suffrage, the right to bear arms, the right of the people to assemble together and consult for the common good; the right to speak, write, and print upon any subject, might be trammeled with such conditions, as to preclude their free exercise by a large portion of the citizens to whom they are secured. There is no greater security given for the right of suffrage, to those who now enjoy it, by the constitution, than is given to all men of acquiring and protecting property, pursuing happiness and safety, and of enjoying personal liberty. The constitution was formed with a full knowledge that our population was comprised of white and colored persons. The rights and privileges of the one class were as clearly defined and settled, and as sacredly secured, as the other, by that instrument. The discrimination was distinctly made and expressed in unequivocal terms, whenever it was intended to confer any political privilege upon the one, from which the other was to be excluded. But these laws are not only repugnant to the constitution of this state, and to the principles of our free institutions, they are also in direct contravention of the constitution of the United States. That document declares, that 'the citizens of each shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.' What is the plain and obvious import of this provision? What was the manifest design of its insertion? Can there be any doubt as to its construction or intention? Was it not intended to secure to all the citizens, in each state, the right of ingress and egress to and from them, and the privileges of trade, commerce, and employment in them, of acquiring and holding property, and sustaining and defending life and liberty in any state in the Union? Does it not form one of the conditions of our national compact?[1] [1] “Unconstitutional Laws of Ohio,” The Liberator, April 6, 1838. Labels: gun history, history |
