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Labels: homosexuality LAS VEGAS — Four members of an anti-government group have been arrested on charges that include money laundering, tax evasion and possession of unregistered machine guns, U.S. Attorney for Nevada Greg Brower said Friday. Authorities said the four men are members of the Sovereign Movement, a group that attempts to overthrow the government and defy authority with "paper terrorism." The arrests in Las Vegas on Thursday capped a three-year investigation into the group's activities led by the Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force, Brower said. ... Davis was described by prosecutors as a national leader in the Sovereign Movement, whose members believe government licenses, taxes and currency are invalid. Rice described himself as a lawyer and rabbi devoted to anti-government teaching, authorities said. Brower's office said Call and Lindsey, a retired FBI agent, are leaders of the Nevada Lawmen Group for Public Awareness, a group affiliated with the Sovereign Movement. Call is accused of possessing an unregistered machine gun, as well as parts designed to covert manual firearms into automatic weapons. Clinton told Lavrov she looked forward to better ties. "We mean it," she said before the two sat down to a working dinner. "I would like to present you with a little gift that represents what President Obama and Vice-President Biden and I have been saying and that is: 'We want to reset our relationship and so we will do it together," said Clinton, presenting Lavrov with a palm-sized yellow box with a red reset button. Clinton and Lavrov had dinner on the 18th floor of the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva. They joked about the Russian misspelling of "reset" on the button before sitting down at an oval table with aides. "We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?" Clinton asked. "You got it wrong," said Lavrov, telling her "Peregruzka" meant "overcharge." It's amateur time at the State Department, I fear. It's certainly amateur time at Treasury. Robin Tyler, who along with her wife, Diane Olson, brought one of the challenges heard by the justices, said afterward that gay and lesbians cannot afford to get discouraged, no matter how the court rules. "If this court rules to uphold Proposition 8, there will be a million of us on the streets marching," Tyler said. "We are not going away. We will not be invisible. We have had it." Labels: homosexuality Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: abortion STOCKTON – His family said he never should have been on the stand. But it was in the middle of David Paradiso's testimony in his own murder trial that the Stockton man leapt from the witness stand and attacked the judge – seconds before being shot to death by the Lodi police detective who built the case against him. The attack occurred during a brief disturbance when Paradiso's mother, Debra, was removed from the courtroom after shouting that her son should never have been asked to testify. Paradiso, 29, had just told the court that he stabbed his 20-year-old girlfriend in the neck in 2006 " 'cause she deserved to die," according to observers. Aaron Paradiso and his family assailed lawyers' decision to put David Paradiso on the stand, saying he was a paranoid schizophrenic who had been "breaking down" in recent weeks and couldn't withstand the stress. "They were playing with a sick man on the stand like it was a game," he said. His family does not dispute his guilt. Instead, they say the defense argument that methamphetamine use prompted the violence is deficient. "The evidence shows what it shows. But the paranoia is real," Aaron Paradiso said. "The craziness was there." Two weeks before the killing, Aaron Paradiso said, his brother broke out the windows of a car parked outside the family's house because he was convinced that a friend was holding the family hostage. Independently, three family members called David Paradiso's parole agent to ask that he be held for violating the terms of his parole, Aaron Paradiso said. But he said that when David Paradiso passed a drug test, nothing happened. "I specifically told the parole officer he's a danger to himself and others," the brother said. Aaron Paradiso said his brother began showing symptoms of mental illness when he was 16 years old. During his 20s, Paradiso feared people were "after him," his brother said. According to previous reports in the Record, Paradiso spent time in a California Youth Authority facility before spending more than three years in state prison. He was convicted in 2003 of evading law officers and in 2004 of felony battery on a correctional officer, the paper reported. Family members say they are incensed that their warning went unheeded two weeks ago when, they say, Paradiso admitted to them he had a knife in jail. Family members reported it to the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department, Aaron Paradiso said, but they fear the same crude shank might have been used in Wednesday's attack. Labels: deinstitutionalization The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ''There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,'' Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan. Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies. So what happened? From the same article: Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing. ''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'' Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed. Labels: economics Labels: machining It is a rare person who does not attach some sort of value or emotion to some physical object or to an event. A home becomes more than a building. A statue of the Virgin Mary, a crucifix, a flag or a song, or even a photograph can stir emotions greater than the value of the material item. I have a piece of paper showing I served in the military until I was discharged honorably. But, oh, the memories that piece of paper conjures up. The friends, the fun times. The bad times. The times when we were bound closer to strangers than to our own families and, in frightening chaos, our lives hung by a thread. Many of our friends died far from home. Ask us about the feeling of "American soil" upon returning to the land we loved. Ask those returning soldiers about America. Remember the old, faintly humorous band of American Legionnaires, wearing out-dated military uniforms straining at the buttons. But, God how proudly they marched. Grinning, waving to friends and families, and always, always "The Flag!" Ask them if the flag is mere cloth, I dare you. See the elderly lady sitting in a lawn chair watching the fourth of July parade. Three flags carefully folded some forty years ago into triangles now rest in her lap - one for each lost son. Ask her if those flags are mere cloth, I dare you. Look at the old man quietly crying, leaning against the Iwo Jiima Memorial at Arlington Cemetery. As he turns to you, smiles with some embarrassment, and says in a choked whisper, "I was there." Ask him, "Is it just metal and clay?" Ask him. I dare you. The Wall. My God, the Wall. See the young man lightly tracing the name of his father there inscribed. Ask him if its just rock. Ask him. I dare you. Labels: gun rights Without question, Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé, having served in a long list of State and Defense Department slots. But also without question, he has distinctive political views and affiliations, some of which are more than eyebrow-raising. In 1997, Mr. Freeman succeeded George McGovern to become the president of the Middle East Policy Council. The MEPC purports to be a nonpartisan, public-affairs group that "strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. interests and views are considered by policy makers" dealing with the Middle East. In fact, its original name until 1991 was the American-Arab Affairs Council, and it is an influential Washington mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia. As Mr. Freeman acknowledged in a 2006 interview with an outfit called the Saudi-US Relations Information Service, MEPC owes its endowment to the "generosity" of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia. Asked in the same interview about his organization's current mission, Mr. Freeman responded, in a revealing non sequitur, that he was "delighted that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has, after a long delay, begun to make serious public relations efforts." Among MEPC's recent activities in the public relations realm, it has published what it calls an "unabridged" version of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. This controversial 2006 essay argued that American Jews have a "stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, which they employ to tilt the U.S. toward Israel at the expense of broader American interests. Mr. Freeman has both endorsed the paper's thesis and boasted of MEPC's intrepid stance: "No one else in the United States has dared to publish this article, given the political penalties that the Lobby imposes on those who criticize it." Unsurprisingly, Mr. Freeman has views about Middle East policy that differ rather sharply from those held by supporters of the state of Israel. More surprisingly, they also differ rather sharply from the views -- or at least the views stated during the campaign -- of the president who has invited him to serve. While President Obama speaks of helping the people of Israel "search for credible partners with whom they can make peace," Mr. Freeman believes, as he said in a 2007 address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, that "Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them." The primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today, he continued, is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth anniversary and shows no sign of ending." Although initial reaction to Mr. Freeman's selection has focused on his views of the Middle East, that region is by no means Mr. Freeman's only area of interest. He has pronounced on a wide variety of other subjects, including China, where he has attempted to explain away the scale and scope of the starkly intensive buildup of the People's Liberation Army. The specter of a Chinese threat, he remarked during a China forum at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in October 2006, is nothing more than "a great fund-raiser for the hyper-expensive advanced weaponry our military-industrial complex prefers to make and our armed forces love to employ." On the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Mr. Freeman unabashedly sides with the Chinese government, a remarkable position for an appointee of an administration that has pledged to advance the cause of human rights. Mr. Freeman has been a participant in ChinaSec, a confidential Internet discussion group of China specialists. A copy of one of his postings was provided to me by a former member. "The truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities," he wrote there in 2006, "was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud." Moreover, "the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tiananmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action." Indeed, continued Mr. Freeman, "I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be." The decision means Chinese immigrant Vince Li will be treated in a mental institution instead of going to prison. The family of victim Tim McLean dismissed the trial as a "rubber stamp" that allows Li to get away with murder. "A crime was still committed here, a murder still occurred," said Carol deDelley, McLean's mother. "There was nobody else on that bus holding a knife, slicing up my child." The judge said Li should not be held criminally accountable for stabbing McLean dozens of times last July and dismembering his body while horrified passengers fled. Justice John Scurfield said Li's attack was "grotesque" and "barbaric" but "strongly suggestive of a mental disorder." An agreed statement of facts between the prosecution and defense detailed how passengers stood outside the bus as Li stabbed McLean dozens of times and beheaded and mutilated his body. Finding himself locked inside the bus, Li finally escaped through a window and was arrested. Li then apologized and pleaded with police to kill him. Police said McLean's body parts were found throughout the bus in plastic bags, and the victim's ear, nose and tongue were found in Li's pocket. A psychiatrist called by the prosecution Wednesday testified that Li cut up McLean's body because he believed that he would come back to life and take revenge. McLean's family is vowing to turn their attention to fighting the law that allows people who are found not criminally responsible to be released into the community once they are deemed well, without serving a minimum sentence in jail. DeDelley said her son didn't die in vain. His death highlights concerns about the justice system, she said. In 2004, Li's life began to take a turn for the worse. Li told psychiatrists he began to hear voices. Ana noted that in the summer of 2004, Li would go several days without sleep or food. "He cried a lot and told me he saw God and I thought he was so tired so I bought him sleeping pills from Shoppers Drug Mart but that didn't work too well." Ana said Li admitted he was hearing voices. Li recalled that in those early days of his illness, the voices provided him with "direction and guidance." Friends urged her to get Li to a doctor as soon as possible but Ana said Li was stubborn and fearful of Western medicine. "When he doesn't agree with people, he doesn't listen, even to me, and I'm important in his life." Stress on the marriage culminated in the spring of 2005 and the couple separated in March. Shortly after that event, Li moved to Thompson, Man. ... In September 2005, again without warning, Li set off for Toronto. "I thought it would be easy to find a job in Toronto," Li recalled. "I failed to find a job, then God's voice told me to go back to Winnipeg. I'm not sure if God's voice told me to walk back, so I started walking on the highway; I threw out my luggage after God told me to do that." Ana would receive a call from police in September 2005 indicating that Li had been picked up walking along Highway 427 north of Toronto, completely disoriented and appearing as if he had not eaten or slept in several days. He was taken to a psychiatric facility in Toronto. Doctors suggested Li remain in the facility for at least a month for a full psychiatric assessment. The circumstances surrounding Li's release from the Toronto hospital are unclear. Li claimed he "escaped" and there is no discharge note on his chart. It is now believed he refused treatment and left against the advice of his doctor. He was prescribed medication for his condition, but he was never formally diagnosed with a mental disorder. Labels: deinstitutionalization, gun rights For example, the favorite musician of the smartest students was Beethoven, with an average SAT score of 1371. Also on the “smart” end of the scale were Sufjan Stevens (1260), Counting Crows (1247), and Radiohead (1220). And sadly for Lil Wayne, enjoying his music was associated with being the dumbest, with an average SAT score of 889. On the book front, Lolita was favorite tome of the brightest students (a result which Griffith called “charming”), with an average SAT score of 1317. The lowest-scoring students liked the erotica author Zane, with an average score of 980. And strangely, the students who listed their favorite book as “The Bible” were smarter (1047) than those who said it was “The Holy Bible” (980). Ironically, students who wrote “I don’t read” in the space for favorite books were only slots 14 from the bottom in terms of SAT scores, meaning that there were 13 other favorite books that theoretically made students “dumber” than not reading books at all. Griffith came up with the idea as a way to show how to take two separate sets of data that were pretty straightforward on their own — in this case, the average SAT score and the favorite books among students at various universities — and combine them to become more interesting. Griffith says, “Their unity is hilarity incarnate. This is to inspire people to think creatively about the data sets that are on the Internet.” “Of course there is the whole correlation is not causation thing, but, I mean, duh,” he added. Labels: humor Labels: global warming T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII Much has been written about the fate of the conservative movement in the months since last I corresponded with you. I won't belabor the barrels of ink expended in the printing of its obituary, nor will I bore you with further reading of its entrails. Suffice it to say the grand old ship is in the doldrums, adrift in the electoral currents, with nary a harbor on the horizon. But it is time we leave such map room mopery aside and navigate a bold new course for the conservative armada. One needn't have a 400-year old heirloom scrimshaw sextant for this task; but, fortunately, I do. It's quite a handsome instrument, I might add, skillfully hewn from North Atlantic whalebone by some long forgotten crewman on De Gouden Hoer, the sleek Dutch galleon that once transported great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great-grandfather Marinus Van Voorhees to the New World, safe beyond the reach of the angry Amsterdam mobs who mistakenly blamed him for some unpleasant business there involving tulip futures. According to family legend grandpapa Marinus won it in a high stakes high seas game of Kaiserspiel, trumping that unlucky crewman's queen-high flush with his trusty pearl handled rapier. Although it doomed the crewman to a tragic fate as shark chum in the Gulf Stream, his beautifully crafted sextant has since proven a treasured family keepsake -- passed down from generation to generation of Van Voorheeses as we migrated westward with the great American expansion; from Newport to Greenwich to Manhattan, and finally back east again to the summer compound in Montauk. Today the Van Voorhees family sextant rests proudly atop my private shipboard desk. I'm admiring it now; there it sits, in its protective crystal bell jar, alongside Marinus' rapier, both still bearing the sanguinary patina of their provenance. They were, of course, the deathbed bequest of my visionary father, T.C. Van Voorhees VI, rakish founder of the National Topsider and the modern conservative movement. Last year, after our final emotional handshake, he looked at me with those anxious, fading eyes, and said: "the helm awaits, my lad; I trust you will steer it well. And, it appears, I have soiled myself." With that, old Dad slipped off this mortal coil. A sad moment, to be sure, but I took comfort in the stoic grace with which he finally relinquished control of both the conservative movement and his bowels. His beloved sextant is a constant reminder of my grave responsibility as conservatism's new helmsman, and a testament to the timeless truth that fate favors the bold - and the well-bred. This was, as you know, the theme of the National Topsider's exclusive January conference at the private Breakers Club in Nassau where I hosted a veritable murderer's row of top tory thinkers to diagnose the troubles with conservatism. Dame Peggy Noonan was there, of course, along with Kathleen Parker, Douglas Kmiec, and those two mighty Davids of conservative intellect, Brooks and Frum. But enough of the namedropping. The order of the day, after mixed badminton doubles, was to formulate an Rx for our ailing patient. In this regard we were in surprising accord: in order to survive, conservativism simply must start appealing to a better class of people. The sad fact of the matter, as we noted, is that one no longer finds admitted conservatives in any of America's prestige zip codes nor the faculty redoubts of her selective academies. During our Bahamian summit many gambits were proposed to win back America's elite electoral precincts from the left; sponsoring various hip hop colloquia at the better Ivies, supporting integration of gays into Nascar, endorsing state ownership of the means of production. Rod Dreher, whose sensational exegesis "Crunchy Cons" sold well over 200 copies last year, recommended a full embrace of the environmental movement, which as I understand is quite the rage among youthful voters and the trendsetting thespians of Hollywood. Good and bold ideas all, and necessary steps to get the movement started again. But there remains a daunting obstacle - namely, the benighted rubes who constitute so much of our so-called "base," and whose existence make it nigh on impossible to recruit their social betters. A member of the U.S. military whose suspicions about Barack Obama's eligibility to be president prompted him to sign onto a legal demand being sent to Attorney General Eric Holder has now been silenced. Look, this whole claim is so weird that it is rather like Twilight Zone meets The Manchurian Candidate. So why doesn't Obama just release his original long-form birth certificate, which would clearly establish that he was born in Hawaii, and is therefore a U.S. citizen? As I have pointed out previously, the Hawaiian government's own web site says that you don't have to be born in Hawaii to get a Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth. You can be born elsewhere, and get one pursuant to an adoption in Hawaii, or a sex change. It's not likely that Barack was born Suzie Obama, so what's left? And why are Obama and the DNC spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid turning over a document that would once and for all clearly blow out all these weird and absurd claims? It doesn't help any to have Kenyan officials refer to him as a "son of this soil." Labels: 2008 presidential candidates There was a Man born blind, who had several Apprentices in his own Condition: Their Employment was to mix Colours for Painters, which their Master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my Misfortune to find them at that Time not very perfect in their Lessons; and the Professor himself happened to be generally mistaken: This Artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole Fraternity. In another Apartment I was highly pleased with a Projector, who had found a Device of plowing the Ground with Hogs, to save the Charges of Plows, Cattle, and Labour. The Method in this: In an Acre of Ground you bury at six Inches Distance, and eight deep, a Quantity of Acorns, Dates, Chestnuts, and other Maste or Vegetables whereof these Animals are fondest; then you drive six Hundred or more of them into the Field, where in a few Days they will root up the whole Ground in search of their Food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their Dung. It is true, upon Experiment they found the Charge and Trouble very great, and they had little or no Crop. However, it is not doubted that this Invention may be capable of great Improvement. Labels: book reviews After two homicide victims were sent to funeral homes as natural deaths within two years, Kansas City Police Chief Jim Corwin on Monday called the system for investigating unattended home deaths “broken.” “Everyone is deferring to someone else,” he said. “Somebody is going to have to take responsibility so this doesn’t happen again.” Last month a 49-year-old man died and was sent to a funeral home as a natural death despite having three bullet holes, including two in his head. In September 2007, a 77-year-old woman was sent to a funeral home as a natural death even though her jaw was broken and her throat slashed. Both times, funeral home workers found the injuries and notified the medical examiner’s office. Jackson County’s medical examiner, Mary Dudley, would not speak specifically about the two cases while addressing the Jackson County Legislature on Monday. She said police and paramedics perform an “initial investigation” and police call to report the situation to her office. If the death is reported as natural, her office declines jurisdiction. Police said patrol officers are not experts in determining causes of death, have limited training in such matters and aren’t in a position to disrobe, move and inspect bodies. “Our officers did nothing wrong,” Corwin said. “They followed a broken system that needs to be fixed. I’m not going to let them be thrown under the bus for something that’s been going on for years.” MAST officials said their workers have no training in death investigation. “We’re trained in determining that a death has occurred, then we remove ourselves,” said MAST spokesman Jason White. He said paramedics discuss medications and medical history with police but don’t determine causes of death. Labels: politicians behaving badly Sen. Barack Obama's wife and three close advisers have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that steers patients who don't have private insurance -- primarily poor, black people -- to other health care facilities. Michelle Obama -- currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital -- helped create the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder their ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants. The list of names involved is something a rogue's gallery: Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program -- called the Urban Health Initiative -- to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. Obama's wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center's board, backed the Axelrod firm's hiring, hospital officials said. Another Obama adviser and close friend, Dr. Eric Whitaker, took over the Urban Health Initiative when he was hired at U. of C. in October 2007. Whitaker previously had been director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. Obama has said he recommended Whitaker for the state job, giving his name to Tony Rezko, who helped Gov. Blagojevich assemble his Cabinet. Rezko, a former fund-raiser for Obama and Blagojevich, was convicted in June on federal corruption charges tied to state deals. But the Urban Health Initiative has critics, including South Side residents and medical professionals. "I've heard complaints from a handful of constituents, but I've also had calls from people in the health care profession complaining," said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, whose 4th Ward is just north of the hospital. "The medical professionals who have come to me are accusing the university of dumping patients on its neighboring institutions. ... Whether it's being implemented in the way that's in the best interest of the patient, I can't tell you." Labels: 2008 presidential candidates In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans. ''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.'' Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market. In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's. ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ''There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,'' Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan. Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies. So what happened? From the same article: Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing. ''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'' Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed. Labels: economics While I appreciate the efforts of some who say they’re trying to free me from the yoke of DADT, it’s clear many still don’t get it. When people argue about the policy and yell about it being “unfair”, I have to laugh because it shows a pretty thorough lack of understanding of what the military is about in the first place. I endure a lot of unfair things in order to serve. I have to cut my hair a certain way. I have to wear a uniform, and wear it correctly. I can’t do many things my civilian friends are allowed to do. I can’t quit my job; simply walk away and tell my boss to shove it. If I don’t do something my boss tells me to do, I don’t get fired…I go to jail. I could go on. So who gives a rip if I have to stay closeted? Lots of people are in the closet by their own choosing. And even though I didn’t realize I was gay when I joined the military, I was well aware of the policy when I figured myself out. I was also well aware of it the numerous times I’ve re-upped since then. It’s a choice I made, and a choice I stand by, so get off my back about it. If you want to talk about real sacrifices, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen husbands and fathers peering through the bus window down to their families on their way to who-knows-where for wh0-knows-how-long, with no guarantee they’ll return. What? I can’t tell people I’m a fag? Oh, okay, I guess I can do that. I can hardly consider my sacrifice to be even on the same scale. There’s the argument about “denying who I am”. Denying who I am? Are you serious? You know who I am? I’m a [....] proud American and military member, that’s who I am. People who argue about “honor” and how somehow living a closeted life (at least at work) is contrary to the principles of honor that the Armed Forces are based on clearly either have never been in the military, or if they have been, learned a vastly different definition of “honor” than I did. To me, honor means sacrificing and giving of myself for a higher cause. It doesn’t mean being who I am and demanding my way or I’m not going to join the fight. It doesn’t mean joining only on my terms. It doesn’t mean questioning the honor of those who are giving of themselves in some of the most fundamental ways because they don’t prize their gayness as much as the gay “leaders” say they should. ... There is nothing more honorable than self-sacrifice to help one’s Country through military service. Sacrifice is what the service is all about. When people ask me “how can you do it?”, I tell them that it’s just another sacrifice I make. It’s amusing sometimes to see the perplexed look on some peoples’ faces when I say that. I’m amazed how hard it seems for some people to believe that I’d willingly make such a sacrifice. For them, I can only presume, being in the closet is asking too much. That’s cool. I say it all the time: “The military’s not for everybody.” Would I like the policy changed? Of course, and I’ve said as much. But do I harbor ill feelings because of it? Am I bitter because of it? Hell no. I know full-well what I’m getting into, and I’ve had every opportunity to back out. The military and the Nation is bigger than me, though, and that’s why I’m here. Labels: homosexuality Labels: machining The former Idaho sheriff who disappeared after he claimed to have terminal cancer has been arrested in Louisiana. Caddo County deputies found Jim Dorion after a tip led them to a residence in Shreveport, where Dorion and his wife have been staying, the Shreveport Times reported. The former Nez Perce County Sheriff is wanted in Idaho on three felony counts of accessory to burglary filed by the Idaho Attorney General's Office on Friday. Labels: Idaho politics Labels: cars Armed to the hilt, they came from land and air, determined to restore order to Mexico's most violent city. Nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers and armed federal police poured into the border town of Ciudad Juarez last weekend. The city - just across from El Paso in Texas - has been ravaged by drug gangs. Just this month 250 people were killed there by hitmen fighting for lucrative smuggling routes. The soldiers' mandate is clear - and ambitious. 'This is to reinforce the operation in general ... to eradicate kidnappings, extortion, assaults and homicide,' army spokesman Enrique Torres said. The soldiers are the first contingent of as many as 5,000 troops and federal police being sent to Juarez. Labels: freedom of speech One of the most expensive and ineffective programs ever imposed on the people of Canada has been the long-gun registry for non-restricted firearms. When the federal Liberals first introduced the long-gun registry 10 years ago, they insisted the cost would be about $2 million. Today, its cost is pegged at $2 billion and counting. The Conservative Party of Canada has been on record for some time in opposing the registry and it was a campaign pledge in the 2006 election to eliminate it. It is common knowledge that such action has been stalled because the three opposition parties, with their majority in the House of Commons, would not allow such legislation to pass. As a result, our government has instead acted to improve licensing provisions, granting periods of amnesty to allow gun owners to bring themselves in compliance with the law and setting aside costly registration fees. And, just recently, the prime minister re-stated the government's determination to abolish the registry and concentrate resources on attacking the criminal use of firearms rather than targeting law-abiding gun owners. Meanwhile, my colleague Garry Breitkreuz, the MP for Yorktown-Melville in Saskatchewan, has brought the issue forward with Private Members' Bill C-301. His bill not only proposes to scrap the long-gun registry, but goes much further to lower costs and reduce what he calls the unnecessary complexities of the Firearms Act. And, he contends, these moves will have no negative effect on public safety. There are numerous changes proposed in Mr. Breitkruz's bill. In addition to the elimination of the long-gun registry for non-restricted firearms, there is a requirement for the Auditor General to perform a cost/benefit analysis of the program every five years. Other clauses would combine the Possession Only licences with the Possession and Acquisition licences, change the licence-renewal period to 10 years and change the grandfathering dates for handguns to clarify and improve what is now a confusing situation for legal owners. Mr. Breitkreuz has been a severe critic of what he describes as the "myths" of the long-gun registry. He dismisses the contention, for example, that it's a valuable tool for police who access it thousands of times a day. He notes that this police usage mostly happens automatically when police officers check the Canadian Police Information Centre for daily inquiries and get gun registry information whether they want it or not. Lists of firearms provided when police respond to emergency calls show legal guns only, which are the weapons an officer is least likely to be harmed by. In addition, police investigations are not greatly helped by the registry because the information is so inaccurate it cannot be used as evidence in court. Registered long guns were used in homicides nine times from 1997 to 2004 and the registry of some seven million firearms did not prevent any of these deaths. Instead, 84 per cent of the firearms used in the commission of crimes are unregistered and 75 per cent of those were illegal guns smuggled into Canada. Where firearms were used in a violent crime, more than 71 per cent involved handguns and only nine per cent involved rifles or shotguns. Very few of those were even registered. Labels: gun rights Labels: gun rights Labels: economics Labels: gun rights But the gains in January are likely to be temporary as wages and salaries continue to fall amid a deepening recession. The Commerce Department said spending rose 0.6 percent, the largest increase since May, after falling an unrevised 1 percent in December, and beating economists' expectations for a 0.4 percent advance. "There was a big increase in the savings rate to 5 percent. It is good that people save but it is not good that everybody saves at the same time. That makes the current downturn more severe and long lasting." Savings jumped to an annual rate of $545.5 billion, the highest level since monthly records began in 1959. The saving rate surged to 5 percent in January, the biggest advance since March 1995, as households uncertain about the economy prefer to conserve their cash. Labels: economics Dede Harris, one of the most famous producers in New York, has been landed with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit after half the cast of her latest play walked out. Harris, the award-winning producer of such previous hits as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Hairspray, has been sued for $5m by the partners of her venture Dog Sees God, a satire on the Charlie Brown comic strip Peanuts. Legal papers filed with a Manhattan court claim her conduct has resulted in cast members leaving the show. The lawsuit claims Harris is 'sexually obsessive and compulsive and is unable to refrain from sexually harassing cast members of productions with which she is affiliated'. It alleges that Harris asked one female cast member to 'feel her up', groped another's breast in a bar and made sexual advances on several other men and women. It describes a game of 'truth of dare' played with the cast in which Harris asked some of the male actors to touch her. The scandal over Harris's alleged behaviour certainly marks a new shift in a profession notorious for the the sexual abuse of young actresses - usually it is ageing male directors who are accused of promising parts in return for sexual favours to young starlets. Labels: movie reviews But how loudly would the people who cheer Obama have screamed if Bush had, for instance, surrounded himself with this extraordinarily long list of spivs and chiselers? There's Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader whom Obama picked as Health secretary, but was forced to quit for having failed to pay more than $150,000 in taxes - and for pulling a mysterious $1.5 million a year as an influence-peddler to a law firm. Nancy Killefer, Obama's choice as the government's chief performance officer, also had to quit, having failed to pay unemployment taxes for her household help. Timothy Geithner, on the other hand, still got appointed Treasury secretary despite having also failed to pay taxes - more than $60,000 in his case. Hilda Solis likewise survived, becoming Labor secretary even though her husband owed $10,000 in taxes. Hmm. What is it about Big Government Democrats that they so hate paying the taxes they impose on others? And we haven't finished with that list, either. Obama's first choice as Commerce Secretary, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, had to quit to fight grand jury charges of selling favors. His second choice, Republican Judd Gregg, then walked out saying he couldn't accept Obama's $1.2 trillion stimulus package. Meanwhile, the Democratic Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was sacked for trying to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bigger. And now helping Obama run the economy are two powerful Democratic Congressmen he's inherited from his party - Charlie Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing House ways and means Committee, who failed to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income from his luxury Caribbean villa, and Chris Dodd, who as chair of the Senate banking committee received $200,000 in donations from the now collapsed Fannie Mae, plus sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial, another business he was supposed to be regulating. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates For CCSU student John Wahlberg, a class presentation on campus violence turned into a confrontation with the campus police due to a complaint by the professor. On October 3, 2008, Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a “relevant issue in the media”. Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007. Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student. During the presentation Wahlberg made the point that if students were permitted to conceal carry guns on campus, the violence could have been stopped earlier in many of these cases. He also touched on the controversial idea of free gun zones on college campuses. That night at work, Wahlberg received a message stating that the campus police “requested his presence”. Upon entering the police station, the officers began to list off firearms that were registered under his name, and questioned him about where he kept them. They told Wahlberg that they had received a complaint from his professor that his presentation was making students feel “scared and uncomfortable”. ... Professor Anderson refused to comment directly on the situation and deferred further comment. “It is also my responsibility as a teacher to protect the well being of our students, and the campus community at all times,” she wrote in a statement submitted to The Recorder. “As such, when deemed necessary because of any perceived risks, I seek guidance and consultation from the Chair of my Department, the Dean and any relevant University officials.” ... “If you can’t talk about the Second Amendment, what happened to the First Amendment?” asked Sara Adler, president of the Riflery and Marksmanship club on campus. “After all, a university campus is a place for the free and open exchange of ideas.” Labels: academic integrity, gun rights
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Why Do I Think Homosexuality Is An Illness?
Read this article from the March 16, 2009 Weekly Standard by an artistic sort from New York City, who contributed to the Yes On 8 campaign in California--and is now paying the price for it. I won't quote the article. Much of the language--even with the four letter words dashed out--is simply too vulgar.
Her experience has some strong parallels to my own experiences almost 20 years ago. I asked in a gay newsgroup what I thought was a simple, not terribly offensive question: Why, since "homosexuals as child molesters" is a vicious, nasty, unfounded stereotype, was the North American Man-Boy Love Association marching in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade? It was a genuine question. I didn't buy that stereotype as being accurate, since the news media continually claimed that it was false. It just seemed weird to allow a group like NAMBLA into the parade. It would be rather like if the NAACP held a black pride parade, and the floats had black men chasing white women around them while making remarks about rape. I was genuinely startled, and I was trying to get clarification, because this made no sense.
I didn't even oppose gay rights at that point. When California repealed its ban on oral and anal sex in 1975--and a small number of pastors has gone to Sacramento asking the legislature not to do so--I thought this was just so weird. Why would anyone care what people were doing in private?
Unlike Maureen Mullarke, who wrote the article above, I didn't actually contribute anything to a group opposing gay rights. I was just asking for clarification of something that made no sense to me, and I thought in a way that would show that I wasn't their enemy. If anything, I was hoping to get some sensible answer that would reassure me that people like Focus on the Family were taking something out of context.
Yet in short order, I found that what Maureen Mullarke experienced is actually very much the norm when you question in any way at all the orthodoxy of homosexual activism. Over a period of a couple of years, I received not just nasty emails, threats of violence (and yes, I started carrying a gun regularly for this reason), harassing and obscene phone calls at my home (some to my children, who weren't old enough to understand what these creeps were saying), attempts to get me fired from my job, and threats to perform obscene sexual acts in front of my house.
I was a pretty active participant in political discussions on the old USENET newsgroups. I took a lot of positions that were unpopular with the overwhelmingly liberal crowd that dominated there: in favor of capitalism; in favor of gun ownership; in favor of monogamy; in opposition to Communism. Yet as many people as I must have upset with those positions, there was not a single instance of threats, harassment, nasty emails, etc. caused by any of those other discussions.
I know that many homosexuals--maybe even most homosexuals--are pretty well content to live their lives without making dangerous and annoying pests of themselves to others. I know that there are many homosexuals who pursue their political agenda through legal and ethical channels. But what Maureen Mullarke, myself, and many others have experienced over the years for questioning homosexual orthodoxy, tells me that there is a non-trivial number of homosexuals who are profoundly disturbed people--far too many to regard this as just a coincidence. This is a pretty damaged bunch--and the last thing these sickos need is anything that tells them that they are okay.
Billie J. Grey, Where Are You?
I have misplaced a long time correspondent named Billie J. Grey of Ohio. If you know her, have her get in touch.
"Sovereign Movement"?
Especially after the mass of lies told by the government to justify the Waco Barbecue, I'm generally skeptical of government claims about domestic terrorist groups. But then again, this sounds like a rehash of the Freeman movement, which turned out to be financial fraud with a patina of politics. From the March 8, 2009 Idaho Statesman:
Rabbi? My, perhaps all this talk about diversity is penetrating deeper into the heartland than I would have guessed!
Retired FBI agent? That certainly puts an interesting spin on it. Who better to distrust the government than someone who has worked in the belly of the beast?
This Isn't Really Secretary Clinton's Fault
But imagine if one of Bush's Secretaries of State had presided over this embarrassment. It would be evidence of the anti-intellectual nature of George Bush, proof that everyone around him was a bunch of barely educated evangelical Christians, and all the rest. From March 6, 2009 Reuters:
As one of the commenters over at Volokh Conspiracy with an appropriately Russian name explains:«???????????a» - reload
Another commenter observes:
«??????????» - overchargeSo, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Reagan all work hard to make sure the Russians never start a nuclear war and the first thing Obama and Clinton do is present them with a red button and encourage them to push it?
Most important of all--there used to be a Secretary of State who might have caught this mistake early on. From February 6, 2005 BBC:
Nice.A state department official said Ms Rice, who as an academic specialised in Soviet affairs, had a two-and-a-half hour working dinner with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at her hotel in the Turkish capital Ankara.
Although Ms Rice speaks fluent Russian, the two spoke only in English, the US official said.
Fascinating Piece of Americana
It's from 1948. It's a bit corny now--but as a simplified explanation of the difference between what was then the doctrine of liberal capitalism and the various Big Government models of the time--it's not bad! And I agree with Randy Barnett of Volokh Conspiracy, where I found this clip: "Somehow, the film seems eerily appropriate today."
The Invisible Homosexuals of California
The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning Proposition 8 yesterday. It sounds like, from those who watched it, that the Court will uphold Proposition 8. An annoying comment (as well as the jarring "her wife") in this March 6, 2009 Associated Press story:
I think the last time that homosexuals were "invisible" in California was about 1974. And visibility like the "Up Your Alley" street festival just makes it easier to yell, "Back in the closet! At least until you put a loincloth on!" (Note: that link isn't worksafe; it wouldn't be worksafe if you boss has horns and a tail.)
Ah, Bushisms
Remember when the media used to make fun of some of President Bush's...unique attempts at English? What a nice opportunity to feel so superior. So what to make of this March 5, 2009 article about a certain politician's inability to deliver a coherent speech without assistance?President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter.
When I was much younger, and Jesse Jackson was out running around the country giving speeches, reporters would often call him "articulate." I can remember some black civil rights leader eventually pointing out that Jackson wasn't unusually articulate; it's just that reporters (who were, even then, overwhelmingly white liberals) couldn't imagine a black man who could actually speak clearly and eloquently. They thought Jackson was a remarkable figure because he was an effective public speaker.
The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the president’s prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks.
Resting on top of a tall, narrow pole, they flank his podium during speeches in the White House’s stately parlors. They stood next to him on the floor of a manufacturing plant in Indiana as he pitched his economic stimulus plan. They traveled to the Department of Transportation this week and were in the Capitol Rotunda last month when he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln in six-minute prepared remarks.
Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual — not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small.
After the teleprompter malfunctioned a few times last summer and Obama delivered some less-than-soaring speeches, reports surfaced that he was training to wean himself off of the device while on vacation in Hawaii. But no such luck.
His use of the teleprompter makes work tricky for the television crews and photographers trying to capture an image of the president announcing a new Cabinet secretary or housing plan without a pane of glass blocking his face. And it is a startling sight to see such sleek, modern technology set against the mahogany doors and Bohemian crystal chandeliers in the East Room or the marble columns of the Grand Foyer.
...
Just how much of a crutch the teleprompter has become for Obama was on sharp display during his latest commerce secretary announcement. The president spoke from a teleprompter in the ornate Indian Treaty Room for a few minutes. Then Gov. Gary Locke stepped to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper for reference.
The president’s teleprompter also elicited some uncomfortable laughter after he announced Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice for Health and Human Services secretary. “Kathy,” Obama said, turning the podium over to Sebelius, who waited at the microphone for an awkward few seconds while the teleprompters were lowered to the floor and the television cameras rolled.
Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.
But there have always been black men who were effective public speakers--and white liberals who were shocked to find that out. Frederick Douglass, early in his career as an abolitionist, was told by white abolitionists that he needed to sound less educated because it made it hard for anyone to believe that Douglass had been a slave. The tradition of the black church has meant that there were always a lot of effective black public speakers. But white liberals just couldn't get past their ignorance.
Obama can, with a TelePrompter in front of him, deliver a pretty decent speech. And without one, from what I have seen, he is about as articulate as Teddy Kennedy. (Are you old enough to remember Kennedy's 1980 interview with 60 Minutes, where it became apparent that he was extemporaneously challenged?) If George Bush had been this dependent on a TelePrompter for even the most trivial of occasions, the media would have never let us hear the end of it. But Obama can't seem to do much more than introduce himself without one--and it is the truth that the Obamedia dare not say.
One Way To Improve Health Care In America
Force one of the larger operators of hospitals in America to close. From the March 6, 2009 St. Louis Post-Dispatch:A proposed bill promising major changes in the U.S. abortion landscape has Roman Catholic bishops threatening to close Catholic hospitals if the Democratic Congress and White House make it law.
If you don't understand the moral objection to this--imagine if Republicans, back several elections, had passed a law requiring every psychologist, psychiatrist, and family therapist in America to pray the Lord's Prayer with their clients at the start of every session.
The Freedom of Choice Act failed to get out of subcommittee in 2004, but its sponsor is poised to refile it now that former Senate co-sponsor Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office.
...
FOCA, as the bill is known, would make federal law out of the abortion protections established in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade ruling.
The legislation has some Roman Catholic bishops threatening to shutter the country's 624 Catholic hospitals — including 11 in the Archdiocese of St. Louis — rather than comply.
Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops' fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. "It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions," he said. "That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil."
...
In its last incarnation, FOCA defined abortion as a "fundamental right" that no government can "deny" or "interfere with." That language, FOCA's opponents warn, would help overturn abortion restrictions such as parental notification, laws banning certain procedures and constraints on federal funding.
This looks like an attempt to force the Catholic Church out of an activity in which it was a pioneer (in the medieval period)--or to become complicit in something that they consider murder.
How liberal of the Democrats.
And Another Failure
This March 5, 2009 Sacramento Bee article is pretty disjointed:
Paradiso's mother was upset because his defense attorney was arguing that Paradiso committed this crime because of meth-induced paranoia:
And the article goes on to provide evidence that suggests that his family was right:
The mental health system is hopelessly broken, and that's because that was the goal.
More Proof
I linked to a smoking gun from the 1999 New York Times a few days ago. Libertarian Leanings found the other part of this story. From the September 11, 2003 New York Times:
Mill Vises Again
I mentioned that I was struggling with machining a particular part. I've decided that there is no substitute for having a better mill vise. What comes with the Sherline vertical mill just doesn't have enough clamping force--and the jaws are too low--to hold this piece of Delrin in the vertical position. Doing it horizontally with clamps against the table doesn't work so well, because the Delrin flexes as you machine it, unless you have fully supported on the far side.
Little Machine Shop sells a mill vise that is big enough--indeed, a bit too big. It is just a bit too big for the Sherline vertical mill's table, both in dimensions and weight. I may try to figure out something that I can machine myself that does what I want.
It needs to be wide enough to take a 2.62" wide workpiece. It needs to clamp the workpiece with a lot of force--so the 10-32 Allan head screw that the Sherline mill vise uses just isn't going to do the job. I'm thinking something with a handle on a 3/8"-16 bolt so that I can make the workpiece absolutely immobile.
I'm also beginning to think that in addition to clamping across the workpiece (in the Z axis), it might be useful to have some way to clamp the workpiece in the Y axis as well. This way, any tendency for the forces of the end mill to move the workpiece in that direction will be resisted also.
Snowthrowers & Wet Snow
On Monday, I drove down into Boise for a doctor's appointment--and it was 70 degrees! I found myself wondering if it was time to uncover the Corvette, turn the collision coverage back on, and start driving the tart again. And today, it started snowing. Not much--but all day long. When my wife got home, she dragooned me into helping her clear the driveway, which wasn't really all that deep, but this is a very wet, heavy snow, and the TrailBlazer was slipping a bit coming up the driveway.
Well, the snowthrower stopped turning the second stage, which grabs the snow from the front blades, and throws it to the side. So we brought back to the house, poured water through until all the snow and ice was gone--and there was rock it picked up between the garage apron and the asphalt of the driveway. Cleared--back in action--and it stops again.
I think the problem now isn't a rock, but that this wet, heavy snow has just clogged the big spinning part that throws the snow. I'll take another look in the morning--but the idea of an ATV (or a small tractor) with a snowplow gets more and more attractive, even though it would cost about $2500, and we would need a shed to store it in.
Eating Birds
One of my sisters sent me this video of a Rolls Royce jet engine doing the bird ingestion test. Apparently, the goal isn't to have the engine say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" but just to contain the fire and flying parts in the cowling!
Really Powerful Essay
"Metal and Wood" by Dennis Bateman. Here's the opening. You might want to click over and read it in full:
Another Stunning Pick By Obama
From the February 25, 2009 Wall Street Journal:It now appears Mr. Obama has appointed a highly controversial figure to head the National Intelligence Council, which is responsible for producing National Intelligence Estimates. The news Web site Politico.com yesterday reported that it could confirm rumors that a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles "Chas" Freeman Jr., has been appointed chairman. (My calls to the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence produced neither confirmation nor denial.)
What? No nice words to say about Iran and North Korea?
Ya Think?
I'm trying not to be flippant, because this is a very serious problem, and a tragedy, but I want to believe that the reporter has completely twisted the judge's words. The alternative is just too worrisome. From March 5, 2009 Associated Press:
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) - A Canadian judge ruled Thursday that a man accused of beheading and cannibalizing a fellow Greyhound bus passenger is not criminally responsible due to mental illness.
"Strongly suggestive"? Afraid to take a stand on that judge? What makes this really tragic is that in many American states, this would not have happened. There were plenty of witnesses--but this being Canada, none of them could be armed:
And not just the justice system. Canada has gone down the same deinstitutionalization path as the United States. Vince Li gave plenty of warning that he was severely mentally ill--and the system failed him, and his victim. From the March 5, 2009 Ottawa Citizen:
How many more tragedies like this do we need? Or like this one? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? And those are just the tragedies like this that I blogged since the start of 2008.
Cute
The CalTech doctoral student who came up with WikiScanner, which tracks who is anonymously changing Wikipedia--and why their motivations might be less than completely disinterested--has come up with something cute. From the February 27, 2009 Wall Street Journal:Griffith used aggregated Facebook data about the favorite bands and books among students of various colleges and plotted them against the average SAT scores at those schools, creating a tongue-in-cheek statistical look at taste and intelligence.
Why Didn't You Hear This On The Evening News?
It's a statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Work from William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Princeton University on February 25, 2009 (although the document headers look like he gave a similar statement in 2002, and neglected to update the headers):Let me state clearly where I probably agree with the other witnesses. We have been in a period of global warming over the past 200 years, but there have been several periods, like the last ten years, when the warming has ceased, and there have even been periods of substantial cooling, as from 1940 to 1970. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) have increased from about 280 to 380 parts per million over past 100 years. The combustion of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, has contributed to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. And finally, increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the earth’s surface to warm. The key question is: will the net effect of the warming, and any other effects of the CO2, be good or bad for humanity?
I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind. I predict that future historians will look back on this period much as we now view the period just before the passage of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution to prohibit “the manufacturing, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” At the time, the 18th amendment seemed to be exactly the right thing to do – who wanted to be in league with demon rum? It was the 1917 version of saving the planet. More than half the states enacted prohibition laws before the 18th amendment was ratified. Only one state, Rhode Island, voted against the 18th amendment. Two states, Illinois and Indiana, never got around to voting and all the rest voted for it. There were many thoughtful people, including a majority of Rhode Islanders, who thought that prohibition might do more harm than good. But they were completely outmatched by the temperance movement, whose motives and methods had much in common with the movement to stop climate change. Deeply sincere people thought they were saving humanity from the evils of alcohol, just as many people now sincerely think they are saving humanity from the evils of CO2. Prohibition was a mistake, and our country has probably still not fully recovered from the damage it did. Institutions like organized crime got their start in that era. Drastic limitations on CO2 are likely to damage our country in analogous ways.
But what about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated. Let me turn now to the science and try to explain why I and many scientists like me are not alarmed by increasing levels of CO2.
The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature -- on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds.
Since most of the greenhouse effect for the earth is due to water vapor and clouds, added CO2 must substantially increase water’s contribution to lead to the frightening scenarios that are bandied about. The buzz word here is that there is “positive feedback.” With each passing year, experimental observations further undermine the claim of a large positive feedback from water. In fact, observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative. That is, water vapor and clouds may actually diminish the already small global warming expected from CO2, not amplify it. The evidence here comes from satellite measurements of infrared radiation escaping from the earth into outer space, from measurements of sunlight reflected from clouds and from measurements of the temperature the earth’s surface or of the troposphere, the roughly 10 km thick layer of the atmosphere above the earth’s surface that is filled with churning air and clouds, heated from below at the earth’s surface, and cooled at the top by radiation into space.
But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing. Doesn’t this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models.
Riotously Funny Satire
Iowahawk has a wickedly fine satire on the national Republican party that keeps looking for ways to lose elections (as they did with this last one). Here's a taste--worth reading in full:
The national Republican Party needs to face some hard truths:
Editor, the National Topsider
Membership Chairman, The Newport Club
1. As the last election demonstrated, the obscenely wealthy are not our friends. There's no reason for them to be our friends. They want an activist government to alleviate their guilt about being obscenely rich, and to keep shoveling money from middle class taxpayers upward.
2. We need to make a serious effort about stopping the flood of illegal aliens, both by interdicting the border, and by vigorously prosecuting knowing employment of illegal aliens. This has positive benefits for national security, perhaps some reduction in illegal trafficking, and improving the economic status of the poorest working Americans.
3. There are two reasons why we need to be doing this--and to be seen as doing this. The obvious crass reason is to peel away people making $8/hour from voting Democrat. The more important reason is that taking illegal aliens out of the workforce drives up wages of citizens and legal residents.
To the extent that people at the bottom earn more money, the less need they have for the government to help them, and the less need there is for bureaucracies to process paperwork and redistribute wealth. I have no sympathy for people who are lazy, or who prefer getting high to working. (And I know such people.) But I have a lot of sympathy for people who show up for work every day, and make just enough money to pay their rent, their car payment, their car insurance, and their groceries--but not enough to buy health insurance. Someone like that is the traditional base of the Republican Party--people with enough self-discipline to work hard when there isn't a lot of reward that comes from it. We don't need to throw money at them--but we can certainly remove the obstacles that are making them worse off than they need to be.
4. The entertainment industry is not our friend. Back when Republicans controlled Congress, I was amazed at the bills that Republicans pushed to help Hollywood and the music industry. These industries are intent on putting hard left Democrats in power. Why should we help them do anything?
5. Stop trying to play nice with Democrats in Congress. George Bush tried to be friends with Democrats by backing Teddy Kennedy's disastrous No Child Left Behind bill. It failed, because it was built on a false premise: that the reason that black and Hispanic kids were being "left behind" was because the schools weren't trying hard enough. Hence, this elaborate testing scheme. The possibility that there are cultural problems in these subcultures that might explain the problem just didn't occur to Kennedy. But you know what, Bush became so identified with NCLB that I hear schoolteachers talk about it like it was Bush's idea. They blame Bush for something that the teachers union pet, Teddy Kennedy, created.
6. Yes, cutting taxes is a good thing. Yes, the higher income brackets pay a disproportionate share of the taxes, and any sort of even tax cut will probably benefit them more. But there's a reason that the Democrats keep banging the drum about taxing the rich: it motivates a lot of voters who are having trouble making ends meet on $8/hour. I wouldn't argue for "soak the rich" rhetoric--but the highest marginal tax rates are low enough. Let's take a "highest marginal tax rate cutting" holiday for a few years, and focus on tax cuts down where it matters. Besides, the $250,000 a year and up crowd is overwhelmingly voting Democrat and Green, anyway. Why give them more money to fund Obama and Nader?
If we want to have some fun, let's start reminding voters that the obscenely rich (the billionaire wing of the Democratic Party) doesn't even have to pay income taxes, because of the municipal bond interest exemption from state and federal income taxes. I don't know that there's much that can be done about this (since this is an artifact of the Constitution and that the federal government can't tax the states and vice versa), but it is good to remind the average voter that an income tax isn't a tax on the rich--but on those trying to get rich.
This Is Getting Serious
You know, if it was just a few kooks asking the question, you could ignore it. When a Major General joins a suit that has to be considered a career ending move, you have to start wondering why Obama won't show the original birth certificate. From the March 2, 2009 "I'm not entirely sure that they are credible" World Net Daily:Military officers from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are working with California attorney Orly Taitz and her Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, citing a legal right established in British common law nearly 800 years ago and recognized by the U.S. Founding Fathers to demand documentation that may prove – or disprove – Barack Obama's eligibility to be president.
And the not too surprising March 9, 2009 World Net Daily follow-on:
...
Requesting the action are Maj. Gen. Carroll Childers; Lt. Col. Dr. David Earl-Graef; police officer and Selected Reservist Navy Commander Clinton Grimes; Lt. Scott Easterling, now serving on active duty in Iraq; New Hampshire state Rep. Timothy Comerford; Tennessee state Rep. Frank Nicely and others.
Attorney Orly Taitz, the California activist who through her DefendOurFreedoms.us foundation is assembling the case, told WND today she's been informed one of the members of the military has been ordered by commanding officers not to speak with media.
The officer's identity was withheld to prevent further actions against him.
Gulliver's Travels
I read Gulliver's Travels recently. I suspect that I may have read an expurgated version as a child--there are aspects to it that are a bit scatological. There's a tendency to forget that much of the notions of appropriate topics that were common into the 1960s are a Victorian invention. Bodily functions were not quite so delicate a subject when Jonathan Swift published Gulliver's Travels in 1726.
Anyway, it's a book that recounts a ship's surgeon's adventures in four different nations, while on four different trips. Most of us know only the two first two parts: the land of Lilliput and the land of Brobdingnag, and to be honest, these are by far the most entertaining parts of the novel.
Now, you may think the notion that there could be a nation where everything is 1/12th our size--six inch tall people, sheep that you could put in your pocket, structure fires that our hero can put out by unbuttoning his fly--is pretty fantastic. Ditto for Brobdingnag, where everything is ten times as large.
But think of the times. Europeans were sailing to remote parts of the world--and finding some pygmies in some places--and some very tall Africans. And not just people--sometimes, they were coming across pygmy animals--and remarkably large birds, like the dodo. If you haven't studied the consequences of the square/cube law, it would be easy to imagine that the same mechanisms that encouraged small and large variations could go all the way up and down the scale--and there was still a lot of the world left to be explored. There could still be an island like Lilliput in the South Indian Ocean in 1726--and it was just barely possible that there could be an island like Brobdingnag somewhere between Washington State and Japan.
The second two parts of the tale--the voyage to Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms--I found far less compelling. Laputa is a mildly interesting story, but what really mkes it stand out is Swift's ferocious attack on intellectuals completely isolated from reality in the Academy:The first Man I saw was of a meager Aspect, with sooty Hands and Face, his Hair and Beard long, ragged and singed in several Places. His Cloathes, Shirt, and Skin were all of the same Colour. He had been Eight Years upon a Project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers, which were to be put into Vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the Air in raw inclement Summers. He told me he did not doubt in Eight Years more he should be able to supply the Governors Gardens with Sun-shine at a reasonable Rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and intreated me to give him something as an Encouragement to Ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear Season for Cucumbers.
As an amateur astronomer, one section that I knew was in there--but still found its prescience quite astonishing--is concerning the satellites of Mars:
....
There was a most ingenious Architect who had contrived a new Method for building Houses, by beginning at the Roof, and working downwards to the Foundation; which he justified to me by the like Practice of those two prudent Insects, the Bee and the Spider. They have likewise discovered two lesser Stars, or Satellites, which revolve about Mars; whereof the innermost is distant from the Center of the primary Planet exactly three of his Diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten Hours, and the latter in Twenty-one and an Half; so that the Squares of their periodical Times, are very near in the same Proportion with the Cubes of their Distance from the Center of Mars; which evidently shews them to be governed by the same Law of Gravitation, that influences the other heavenly Bodies.
Phobos is actually a bit closer (it revolves in about 7.3 hours) and Deimos is actually a bit farther out (about 30 hours), but still quite astonishing, since it was 1877 before Asaph Hall found them--and there was simply no basis for assuming that Mars even had satellites.
The most poignant part of the Laputa story is the discussion of age. In Laputa, there is a small population of immortals who may die by accident, or murder, but do not have a natural death. But Swift's description of what happens as they age reminds me of Larry Niven's science fiction novels where boosterspice allows humans to live almost indefinitely--but after a few hundred years, grow tired of it. Swift describes a life with all the disadvantages of age--senility, declining vision, hearing, and memory. Swift was an Anglican priest, and I suspect that his goal here was to remind people that there are virtues to accepting that death comes, and there is something beyond that is preferable.
There is much throughout the book that shows that Swift was disgusted by religious intolerance and the corruption caused by aristocracy and politics. Yet in spite of his position as a clergyman, there is an awful lot here that suggests that Swift wasn't too keen on Christianity--at least, as it was practiced in Britain at the time. The last section of the book, in the land of the Houyhnhnms (think intelligent and peaceful horses, with primitive almost chimp-like protohumans as their slaves), seems at times to go way overboard in its misanthropy and Rousseauian worship of the "noble savage." It was easily the least satisfactory section, and I can't say that I found much to say in its favor.
The Three Stooges As Police Officers
This article from the March 2, 2009 Kansas City Star would almost be funny, if it wasn't so tragically gruesome:
And how did they miss these?
Gee, do you suppose those bullet holes in the head didn't leave a little mess that might have been a tipoff? And the slashed throat. Is that considered natural causes in Kansas City? How much do you have to "disrobe, move, and inspect" to see that?
Dilbert Speaks Truth To Stupidity
One of the things that I like about Dilbert--besides its humor and thoroughgoing ability to explain the deranged foolishness of working for a large corporation--is how skilfully it foretells future news stories. Like this strip from February 25, 2009:
And then Michelle Malkin links to this CBS news story:Educap is a multibillion-dollar student loan charity run by CEO Catherine Reynolds. As CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported Monday night, Educap is under investigation by the IRS and Congress for alleged abuse of its tax-exempt status because it charges high interest on charitable student loans, and provides lavish perks with millions in compensation for Reynolds and her husband.
Dilbert nailed it. Hypocrites.
CBS News has obtained exclusive details of what may have been the biggest charity perk: use of Educap's $31 million luxury jet, which costs thousands of dollars an hour to operate.
Investigators say for five years, Reynolds jetted friends, family and luminaries to faraway and exotic destinations that sometimes had little to do with the charity's mission.
CBS News has learned that high-profile names on the Educap flight list include CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Sens. Tom Daschle and Ted Stevens, former FBI Director William Sessions and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.
According to flight records, Panetta and Daschle, while not in public office, accompanied Educap's Catherine Reynolds on flights to private business meetings not related to the charity.
Reynolds also took Daschle and his wife on a tour with seven stops in Europe and the Middle East.
Ted Stevens, his wife and daughter were along on dozens of flights, hitting destinations like Vail and Aspen, Colo., before the senator was convicted on corruption charges last fall.
And records show Reynolds took Chicago's Daley and his wife on 58 flights including ones to Turkey, Asia and Sweden.
Watchdog Stephen Burd says money spent on the jet comes off the backs of students, who have Educap loans costing up to three times more than government loans.
Imagine If John McCain's Wife Was Behind This
From the August 23, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times:
Now, if properly done, this "Urban Health Initiative" could be a good thing. The E/R is not the best place to go for non-emergency medical conditions. It's expensive, slow, and delays real emergencies getting treated. But the criticisms of it are from people that should know better, if this was really aboveboard:
Like I said, if Republicans had been doing something like this, with curious business, personal, and political relationships intertwined like this, I rather doubt that the national media would have ignored it.
Michelle Malkin mentioned this curious matter, which is where I found the Sun-Times article.
Not The Only Cause of Our Current Disaster
But a significant part of it. And you don't have to take my word for it. Here's the September 30, 1999 New York Times article where Bill Clinton started the ball rolling. I've emphasized some points that show that someone saw what was coming, warned about it--and it did no good:
I'd say Mr. Wallison gets the prize for farsightedness. Obviously, he won't be working for the Obamination of Desolation.
UPDATE: Libertarian Leanings found the other part of this story. From the September 11, 2003 New York Times:
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Who are the loneliest people in the world? People that are in the wrong group. Gay gun owners. Black Republicans. Pro-life feminists. Pro-life liberals. Gay conservatives. Pro-choice social conservatives. (At one time, Jewish conservatives.) In short, anyone who is part of a group by birth, by ideology, or by belief--but doesn't completely agree with that group.
I frequently read, and sometimes link to the blog Gay Patriot, which describes itself as "the Internet home for the American gay conservative." I recently read a six part series there from a couple of years by one of their bloggers who, for obvious reasons, doesn't give his name. Colorado Patriot is the nom de plume he uses. He's a gay, active duty member of the U.S. military. He made some very thoughtful observations about the problems of the current military policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (usually abbreviated as DADT), and the problems of changing that policy. It's hard to read his thoughts without feeling really sorry for him, and yet enormous respect for his service, and his unwillingness to put homosexuality above military service:
Wow! Along the way, Colorado Patriot argues for why allowing homosexuals in the military is a good thing--or at least not a bad thing--but also demolishes some pretty specious arguments for it:A surprisingly common argument is that the military should “reflect” the society it shelters. This, from a military perspective is preposterous. Sorry to be harsh, but take a look around you: there are handicapped people, old people, infirm people, weak and out-of-shape people, people addicted to drugs, criminals and people of questionable moral fortitude. This list of characteristics making individuals unfit for serving could go on and on. Not to (necessarily) compare gays to these other groups, but the suggestion that the military needs to be representative of the Nation as a whole is so full of obvious holes (from a mission perspective), it hardly needs but the example of its absurdity already shown herein. It’s not the military’s mission to “reflect” its sponsor (it never has been), and its ability to do so has nothing to do with its ability to win wars (its actual mission).
I have my objections to allowing homosexuals into the military, but they aren't what you might think. I do not think that homosexuals can't be good soldiers. My guess is that the more bizarrely self-destructive homosexuals who make such a spectacle of themselves in the streets of San Francisco aren't inclined towards the kind of sacrifice and honor-driven behavior that Colorado Patriot describes. It's the same reason that Code Pink members aren't joining up, either.
As I mentioned several years ago, one my concerns is that in some military settings, with all the requirements to obey orders, and limited opportunity to appeal a decision, it would be very easy to abuse authority--and I gave an example from the end of World War II, when the U.S. Navy had not yet formalized a prohibition on homosexuals in the service, and the nightmare that resulted on one ship. Yes, we have procedures to handle that sort of thing--but for the same reason that women in the military have been sometimes quite reluctant to file charges about rape, the problem will be substantially worse if the victim is a man.
I am concerned that a fair number of current members of the military, if put in a situation like that, might decide not to re-up, and many might decide not to join. How many? It's hard to say for sure, but if even 10% of the current population that is in, or considering going into the military, decided not to do so, it would be catastrophic, since homosexuals are only about 4-4.5% of the male population, and 1-2% of the female population. I don't find a 10% loss rate implausible, considering how traditional much of the population is that joins our military.
What concerns me most of all is this: homosexuals who are currently in the military under DADT are committed to the success of our military--even at some considerable personal sacrifice above and beyond the personal sacrifices that all members of the armed services undergo. They are having to watch what they say (like Colorado Patriot) to be in the service. Dropping DADT would, I fear, encourage a fair number of homosexual activists out to prove a point to enlist--and who would then insist that displays of affection, sex in the barracks, dressing in drag after hours, and other signs of...flamboyance...were part of gay culture. Would any of this set stay in the military, after making their point, and winning their lawsuits? Certainly not. But like the Goodridges, who won the right to marry in Massachusetts in 2003--and are now divorced--they would have done their damage, and gone on to destroy something else.
Machining Fun
I mentioned a couple of days back that I was struggling with machining a slightly complex part. The harsh reality is that machining this workpiece in a vertical position just doesn't work. Even very light cuts (.020") in Delrin seem to exceed the Sherline's mill vise grasping capabilities. The jaws only stand about 1" high, and the part that I am cutting is 3.42" tall. Okay, the cut is 1.5" tall, by .020" deep, and I am side milling. But it is already a slow enough process without having to make it even slower.
Because the workpiece is 2.62" wide, it won't fit in the Sherline mill vise lying down. One possibility is to buy a mill vise that is larger, so that I can lay the workpiece on its side, and do the cut that way.
As an experiment, I used the clamps that Sherline sells to lock the workpiece to the table, eliminating the mill vise completely. This works surprisingly well, once everything is clamped down securely. It takes a lot of passes, because I am using a 3/4" diameter end mill, but the good news is that I can take pretty aggressive cuts--.030" or even .040"--since only the end of the mill is doing the cutting.
I keep wishing that there was something in between the coarseness of a chop saw and the precision of a vertical mill--sort of a low accuracy vertical mill, that would let you run either a large diameter cutting tool across the surface in .1" chunks, or side mill several inch long slices in .05" cuts. Perhaps I just need some sort of mill vise that lets me exert a lot more force against the workpiece!
What Is It About Lewiston, Idaho?
From the March 3, 2009 Idaho Statesman:
I remember some years ago watching a horrifying documentary about some guy from Washington State who was serving time for a murder committed in Lewiston a decade or two back. As the documentary portrayed it, this guy murdered a couple that had taken in his runaway daughter, raped her, then pimped her out. He took the law into his own hands because the Lewiston Police Department was supposedly compromised because the couple was closely related to someone important there.
Part Of Why Breaking Up GM Might Be Bad
The March 4, 2009 Daily Mail has an article about the new Vauxhall plugin hybrid, the Ampera, that is pretty clearly the British version of the Chevy Volt. (Vauxhall is GM's British subsidiary.) As much as I hate seeing GM subsidized, there are some advantages to big companies--like the ability to spread the costs of developing a new technology like this across multiple markets, by repackaging it in slightly different forms.
This Might Work Better Than Whining About Guns in America
From the March 4, 2009 Daily Mail:
It's mostly pictures--but very interesting pictures--and not much text. Still, it would appear that the Mexican government has decided to deal with a situation that has no real parallel in the United States by sending in enough troops to do the job. Sending the military to do civilian police work is often a bad idea--the missions are very different. But it sounds like the situation in Juarez had gotten completely out of control.
Freedom of Speech & The Press
Professor Volokh asked a question over at Volokh Conspiracy about evidence of what the Framers intended the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press provisions to mean, in the context of the famous case New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), which almost gutted libel law if it involved a public figure.
I recalled reading a paper about the subject when I was an undergrad to the effect that the original intention was to prevent prior restraint; it did not mean that you could not be held responsible for the abuse of those freedoms. I remembered that Ben Franklin had quoted Shakespeare about how a person who steals his purse steals trash, but that if someone destroys his good name, it was far worse.
So I did a little digging, and found some interesting remarks by either Framers or at least early Republic legal commentators on the subject. James Wilson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the time it was formed, and noted legal scholar of his time, has a lengthy discussion of libel law, both civil and criminal, exploring where he thinks Blackstone went wrong. Wilson seems not to have a problem with his statement of criminal libel's punishment:The punishment of a libel is a fine, or a fine and corporal punishment. [Works of the Honourable James Wilson, 3:76]
Yes, America had laws that made it a criminal offense to libel a person. About twenty states still have these laws on the books. From what I have read, they are seldom used, and when they are, it is often to punish someone for accusing a police officer of wrongdoing. (Just because a law is constitutional, doesn't mean that it still makes sense.)
Joseph Story is another early U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice. His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) is pretty clear that freedom of speech is a protection against prior restraint: That this amendment was intended to secure to every citizen an absolute right to speak, or write, or print, whatever he might please, without any responsibility, public or private, therefor, is a supposition too wild to be indulged by any rational man. This would be to allow to every citizen a right to destroy, at his pleasure, the reputation, the peace, the property, and even the personal safety of every other citizen.... It is plain, then, that the language of this amendment imports no more, than that every man shall have a right speak, write, and print his opinions upon any subject whatsoever, without any prior restraint, so always, that he does not injure any other person in his rights, person, property, or reputation; and so always, that he does not thereby disturb the public peace, or attempt to subvert the government. [Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), 3:731-2]
I would call this the anti-ACLU understanding of the clause.
Similarly, William Rawle's 1829 A View of the Constitution is quite clear on this as well:But the liberty of speech and of the press may be abused, and so may every human institution. It is not, however, to be supposed that it may be abused with impunity. Remedies will always be found while the protection of individual rights and the reasonable safeguards of society itself form parts of the principles of our government. A previous superintendency of the press, an arbitrary power to direct or prohibit its publications are withheld, but the punishment of dangerous or offensive publications, which on a fair and impartial trial are found to have a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the peace and order of government and religion, which are the solid foundations of civil liberty. [pp. 123-4]
William Waller Hening's The New Virginia Justice, Comprising the Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace (Richmond: Johnson and Warner, 1810), which seems to be Virginia Justice of the Peace for Dummies, as a discussion of criminal libel starting on page 373 that is pretty devastating to anyone that wants to argue that public officials deserve less protection than private citizens from defamation. The First Amendment wasn't applied to the states yet, but it would passingly odd if the First Amendment created a substantially different standard with respect to libel than the existing state laws.
Whatever might be said for the ACLU's view of freedom of speech and of the press, I can't find any Framers or early Republic assertions of the ACLU's position of effectively unlimited authority to publish virtual child pornography, obscenity, libelous attacks on public figures, and broad definitions of speech that include burning flags, topless/bottomless dancing, etc.--quite the opposite.
Progress On Gun Rights--In Canada!
We could see a situation in a few years, if certain incompetents currently pretending to be a government had their way, where Canada would be friendlier to gun ownership than the U.S. From the March 3, 2009 Kings County [New Brunswick ] Record:
What a shocker! Even Canadian criminals don't register their guns!
What Next? A Tax On Murder?
One of the most detestable aspects to representative government is that legislators often introduce bills that anyone smarter than a soggy piece of toast would know are simply not going to work. So why do they do it? Because they want to be able to send out flyers that emphasize that they are doing something up there, besides tapping shoes in the adjoining bathroom stall, or getting arrested for drunk driving, or soliciting bribes campaign contributions.
The latest piece of really pointless legislature is AB 962, currently under consideration by the morons in the California legislature. What this bill does:
1. It requires a license to sell handgun ammunition--making it unlawful to transfer more than 50 rounds of handgun ammunition per month without a license. So no giving a couple of boxes of .22 LR to your brother when you go out plinking in the desert. (You do know that handguns come in .22 LR, right?) The bill allows sales of .22 LR to someone who is 18 "if the vendor reasonably believes that the ammunition is being acquired for use in a rifle and not a handgun." And how, exactly, would you "reasonably believe" that?
2. No retail seller can have handgun ammunition out where someone can get access to it without sales assistance. When I lived in California (before moving to the United States), handgun ammunition (rimfire and centerfire) was on the shelf in sporting goods stores, Wal-Mart, and even drug stores where I lived. No more! At least they aren't requiring it to be kept under the counter, and sold in plain brown wrapping paper.
3. The bill also requires that "a person enjoined from engaging in activity associated with a criminal street gang, as specified, would be prohibited from having under his or her possession, custody, or control, any ammunition." I guess that I understand that. But this "enjoined" thing doesn't seem to be defined in any of the 29 California codes. What is this? How can what seems to be a prior restraint on free association survive court challenge? You don't have to be an ACLU member to be a bit concerned about the due process aspects of this. A bit more importantly: if you are worried that someone "associated with a criminal street gang" is going to have handgun ammunition, I would think that you would be even more worried about this person, or the rest of his gang, having something in which to put that handgun ammunition. If California can get away with punishing you for possessing handgun ammunition when you apparently have not yet actually committed a crime--why not go whole hog, and punish you for being associated with a criminal street gang? I am hard pressed to see how one of these survives court challenge, and the other doesn't.
4. "The bill would prohibit supplying or delivering, as specified, handgun ammunition to prohibited persons, as described, by persons or others who know or by using reasonable care should know that the recipient is a person prohibited from possessing ammunition." Since we gave up branding people on the forehead for being felons, back before the Civil War, how do you know? The actual text of the bill isn't any better about this. What constitutes "reasonable care"? I can see a whole bunch of civil rights suits coming out of this because a store clerk decides that a black man coming into buy a box of ammo is dressed just a bit too ghetto--and prosecutions if a store clerk decides not to risk the civil rights suit.
Why is it so much easier to pass a law that puts all these restrictions on handgun ammunition, instead of making a concerted effort to send violent felons to prison and keep them there? Yes, this is cheaper than sending violent felons to prison. The difference is: sending violent felons to prison works. This won't.
February Car Sales Numbers Out
And they are dismal. Not just the Big Three, but the Japanese car companies in America aren't much better. I was a little frustrated at the amount of criticism of the Big Three over the last few months, because it wasn't their cars that were the major problem. Yes, UAW's labor rates are part of the problem, but the biggest problem is that the economy is collapsing, and people just aren't buying cars--not even Japanese cars.
Cars and houses are among the major drivers of our economy. What causes people to buy cars and houses? Low interest rates (we've got that now), confidence that their job isn't going to go away, and money in their pocket. The best action that our government could have taken in response to this crisis would have been:
1. Allow the larger financial institutions to go under.
2. Reduce tax rates, especially in the lower brackets.
3. Reduce spending. That may seem difficult. No, it isn't. There are necessities; luxuries; and useless programs that no amount of budget surplus should fund. No farmer making more than $100,000 a year deserves any government support through the farm price support program. The National Endowment for the Arts? A luxury. The National Endowment for the Humanities? A luxury. The space program? A luxury. These are programs that, if the economy were in good shape, and we were running a budget surplus, we could discuss their merits. In some cases, there are existing programs operating that can't be shut off (some of the space probes currently out there). But in times of crisis, you cut off the luxuries, so that the economy can focus on necessities.
If the billionaires that funded Obama's campaign really wanted to do something to save the economy right now, and avoid the inevitable Republican takeover of Congress in 2010, they would take the money they are spending on fuel for their private jets, and start doing some income redistribution of their own. Every billionaire has at least $50 million a year in interest income (much of it exempt from income tax, unless they are very, very stupid). If they cut back their spending, they should be able to live on $5 million a year. (Yeah, I know, it'll be tough for them to do that.) With the remaining $45 million, each billionaire could buy 1500 $30,000 cars a year, and give them away to the masses, solving the car maker's short-term problems, and giving a lot of ordinary people a new car, with a warranty. A lot of those ordinary people could sell or give away their old heap--helping someone us down the food chain. (I'll take a new Corvette, please!)
If all the billionaires who backed Obama did this, they could easily move 150,000 cars off the lots, and get the economy moving again. There's only one little problem: that would require billionaires who funded Obama to get income redistributed upward to be willing to short-term redistribute income downward. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.
CNN Actually Treated Gun Rights Like They Were Real!
See this video from CNN. They actually interview an expert pointing out that guns being used in Mexico aren't assault weapons. The reporter clearly discussed the difference between automatic weapons and the semiautomatics that Holder wants to ban. Lou Dobbs says that the Mexican government won't provide the serial numbers of guns supposedly smuggled in from the U.S.--which suggests that they were actually obtained from the Mexican Army.
Surprising Economic News
From March 2, 2009 Reuters:WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer spending rebounded in January, snapping six months of declines, and incomes rose unexpectedly, boosted by salary increases for government employees, a government report showed on Monday.
Any increase in incomes at all is somewhat surprising and good news, even if much of that was because of government pay raises. But the more encouraging news (from a responsibility standpoint, if not from a stimulus point of view):
The department attributed to rise in incomes to pay raises for federal civilian and military employees, as well as cost-of-living adjustments to several government transfer payments programs. It said excluding these factors, incomes increased by 0.2 percent in January.
From a responsibility standpoint, that is excellent news. It is the equivalent of the guy who wakes up hungover at 11:00 AM Saturday morning, in a strange apartment, trying to figure out why all he is wearing is a leopard skin loincloth (and he doesn't even own one), and swears off drinking. It may not last, but it's an improvement over previous misbehavior.
From the standpoint of stimulus, this is not so good. It means that whatever money Uncle Obama manages to drip into people's paychecks through reduce withholding is likely to end up squirreled away in savings. Good for individuals to have a rainy day fund; bad for the rest of the economy, which needs some spending.
On that same note, here's something quite disturbing. I found this link at a piece by Todd Zywicki at Volokh Conspiracy, and it should concern you a lot. It's the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's Adjusted Monetary Base graph. Take a look at what has been happening to the money supply in the last couple of years. You can't blame this on Obama; some of this started during the end of George "We had to destroy capitalism to save it" Bush, and the Federal Reserve Banks are supposed to be independent of whatever fool is running the government at the moment.
Zywicki points out the reason that this isn't showing up price inflation yet:Presumably because the "velocity" of money has remained low--people and banks are hoarding money, rather than spending, borrowing, and lending it. Assuming velocity rises again, however, we may be looking at an inflationary spiral like we've never seen before in this country.
Which fits with the record savings rate, slowing down the velocity of money.
I don't know what's going on in the other districts, but I rather suspect something similar. I smell big inflation coming. That will (for a while) revive the economy, solve some of the housing crisis, and make some people think that they are better off, because there are more dollars in their pocket. But inflation of the money supply--especially this vigorous--has a bad habit of causing gross distortions in interest rates, in the economy, and eventually, you get the legacy of the Vietnam War during the Carter years: stagflation.
V is for Vendetta
This is one of those movies that I briefly considered going to see when it came out, since I am a big fan of dystopian fiction, and it's nice to see totalitarian thugs lose. Part of what put me off was that some of the reviews tried very hard to make it sound as though it was about the evil that George Bush (the man with horns on his head) causes.
My guess is that the original "graphic novel" (as comic books with literary pretensions are now styled) was probably indeed ferociously hostile to American values--and that these were toned down substantially for the movie. If so, it could be one of those examples of a movie being better than the novel.
The essential problem of totalitarianism is about the very human desire for power and control. It doesn't matter if the justification is socialism (as in 1984), or religious and moral conformity (as in this film), or capitalism (which doesn't seem to yet have a dystopian novel of any note--for good reason).
Power attracts evil people, and it doesn't matter what the underlying justification is--the power to control and to hurt others is the real reason. Some ideologies are better suited to the will to power than others. Anyone with the desire to control others who hitched his star to libertarianism would qualify as too stupid to be dangerous! Socialism represents the obvious danger, as 1984 points out.
The justification of control by obscene wealth--plutocracy--is a bit less direct, but there's no question that if you are rich enough, you can control and destroy people. Hollywood is perhaps the best example of how obscene wealth does this. There's a reason that the casting couch and rape has long been a problem of the entertainment industry (for example, this charming example in Doe v. Capital Cities, 50 Cal.App.4th 1038, 58 Cal.Rptr.2d 122 (1996):An aspiring actor is first drugged and then gang-raped by a casting director and four other men one Sunday at the casting director's home. Can the actor successfully allege causes of action for sexual harassment and negligent hiring against the casting director's employers? The trial court ruled against the actor, sustaining a demurrer without leave to amend. On this appeal, we analyze the allegations in the actor's second amended complaint in light of pertinent statutory and decisional law and conclude that he has adequately pled a cause of action for sexual harassment but that the allegations for negligent hiring are insufficient as a matter of law.
Or this suit:
Could the men in the Capital Cities suit not have found a young man willing to have sex with them? Of course. Can casting directors find pretty young women for sex, without having to mix it up with business? Of course. But in both cases, the objective is power--to use wealth and influence to control actors and actresses, and degrade them. It's more subtle than monsters like Nicu Ceausescu and Saddam Hussein's boys, but it is still fundamentally about the desire to hurt people.
Anyway, in spite of the fact that the bad guy (played by John Hurt, who played the good guy in 1984's 1984) is ostensibly doing horrible things because he is some sort of devout Anglican (which seems almost oxymoronic), and that the victims seem to be disproportionately well-scrubbed and emotionally stable homosexuals, I still found it a powerful film. (In the next ten years, I can guarantee you that more homosexuals will be executed, tortured, and degraded by Islamic governments than governments in Christian nations will do in the next ten years--or have done in the last one hundred years.)
What I find rather bizarre is that the reviews of the movie that I read when it came out claimed that the graphic novel upon which it was based is apparently motivated by the Thatcher government, and in the movie, the bad guy is described as leading the Conservative Party--even though one brief clip shows that the winners of the election are actually a fascist party called Norsefire.
I confess to being confused why reviews implied that this was an attack on the Thatcher government. If I had to pick words to describe Thatcher's government, "religious" is not one of those words. And while Conservatives generally were not supportive of repealing the law against homosexuality, "Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality and voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion...." In reading the Wikipedia description of the novel, it appears that it was not primarily an attack on Thatcher at all, but is set in a post-nuclear Britain in which Conservatives lose the 1982 elections, and the Michael Foot-led Labour Party gives up nuclear weapons--with predictable results, leading to a post-war fascist government.
Anyway, it's a bit bloody (the hero uses edged weapons, throughout--this is Britain), but quite interesting.
UPDATE: A reader tells me:I wish I could remember where I read this, but I remember an interview (or maybe just something that mentioned an interview) about the original book in which Moore said he set the story in a totalitarian version of a Thatcher government basically because there was a conservative government in power at the time. He said had there been a Labour government when he wrote it, the book would have reflected that--basically demonstrating the universality (not quite the word I'm looking for) of the totalitarian impulse that you mention in your post.
Considering when it came out, I'm not surprised that the film makers might have missed that universality.
Wildlife
My wife and I met with the Idaho coordinator for the Second Amendment Sisters and her husband yesterday. They live a few miles from us--and tell us that they regularly see both wolves and mountain lions around their place--and they actually live closer to town than we do. On one occasion, a mountain lion was trying to get in through the slider because it saw their dogs--and considered the dogs to be an inviting snack.
Imagine If Bush Had Picked This Bunch
From the February 27, 2009 Australian Herald Sun:
I don't have any illusions that Bush surrounded himself with wonderful people. But the hypocrisy of Obama claiming that he was going to change the way things work in Washington--while surrounding himself with a bunch of sleazy crooks like this--just infuriates it.
Think Differently: The Police Will Contact You
You doubtless heard of the incident where a student was supposed to give a oral presentation on an important topic--and the professor stopped him part way through because he was arguing for "one man, one woman" marriage laws, called him a "fascist bastard" and otherwise behaved inappropriately. Here's an example of academic support for freedom of thought that makes that pale in comparison. From Central Connecticut State University's student newspaper, The Recorder, February 24, 2009:
Nope. Not now that the left is in charge. Imagine if, in 1970, a student had given a presentation in a class in support of homosexual marriage. Would even the most conservative professor have called the police, so that they could interrogate the student about his sexual preferences? What calls itself liberalism today is really fascism.
There are days that I think that defunding most of the squishy subjects (English, History, Psychology, Art, Ethnic Studies) in state colleges wouldn't be any great loss.
UPDATE: It is conceivable that this student said something that was genuinely scary, or that indicated that he was engaged in a violation of law (perhaps carrying concealed on campus)--but it seems pretty odd that the professor wouldn't defend her call to the police department by mentioning this.
