Clayton Cramer's BLOG

Things I Love About The Corvette

2009-07-03T15:13:00.002-06:00

Things I Love About The Corvette

On the road to Bend Sunday: 28.6 mpg. On the road back from Bend today (by wild coincidence): 28.6 mpg. And the cruise control was set at 65, 66, or 68 almost the entire way (except for a stretch of I-84 when I re-entered the Free State of Idaho). It took me 4 hours and 19 minutes elapsed time to get there on Sunday from Horseshoe Bend. (The Corvette has an elapsed time counter as well.)

In spite of being a "sports car," it has a very comfortable, controlled but firm ride on reasonably smooth pavement.

Epoxy Over Aluminum

2009-07-02T21:47:00.002-06:00

Epoxy Over Aluminum

Fiberglass is made by combining epoxy with glass fibers, and carbon fiber composite is made by combining epoxy with carbon fiber. Epoxy by itself is stiff, but not terribly strong. Glass fiber and carbon fiber are flexible and strong, but not stiff. The combination of the two gives a material that is very stiff for its weight.

So, what happens if you use the same approach to combine epoxy with aluminum? Thin sheets of aluminum, like glass and carbon fiber, are very strong but flexible. Could you apply epoxy to aluminum to create something that gives you a high stiffness to weight ratio? I see references that suggest that it gets used in boating, but I can't find anything specific to discussing this.

Unless you can provide me with better information, I'm tempted to experiment with this over the weekend--take a thin sheet of aluminum, epoxy it, and then see how it compares to an uncoated sheet of aluminum for stiffness and weight.

Yes, I'm trying to find a way to get Big Bertha 2.0's weight down a bit more.

Am I Being Unreasonable?

2009-07-02T21:33:00.002-06:00

Am I Being Unreasonable?

I received a ScopeRoller order on July 1. I emailed the customer back the same day, informing it that because we were waiting on wheels to ship from Missouri, it would be July 10 before we could ship. The response? A refund request because I couldn't ship immediately.

I'll make a refund--a customer this easily upset isn't likely a customer that I want that badly. But I don't think responding same day to an order with an anticipated production and ship date 10 days in the future is particularly absurd. Has the Internet bred a generation of hopelessly impatient sorts?

Very Un-PC Humor

2009-07-02T21:24:00.002-06:00

Very Un-PC Humor

This was forwarded to me, and who knows, maybe it didn't really come from a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. But it sounds like it could have, and it's still pretty funny!

US troops definition of Taliban

The US troops in Afghanistan proved they have retained their sense of humor. One of them sent this. "YOU MAY BE TALIBAN IF ..."

1. You refine heroin for a living but you have a moral objection to beer.

2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher but you can't afford shoes.

3. You have more wives than teeth.

4. You wipe your butt with your bare hand but consider bacon "unclean."

5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.

6. You can't think of anyone you haven't declared Jihad against.

7. You consider television dangerous but routinely carry explosives in your clothing.

8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.

9. You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least one.

10. You've always had a crush on your neighbor's goat.

Do These People Have No Shame?

2009-07-01T20:52:00.002-06:00

Do These People Have No Shame?

From July 1, 2009 Washington Post/MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth.
The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm's losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal cases, according to agency documents.
Two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye's office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million.

As I pointed out with respect to a Republican member of Congress a couple of years ago, you can somewhat understand why someone who is scraping by to pay his bills might be tempted to abuse his political position. But when you are already wealthy enough that you don't need to work--and in the case of Senator Inouye, you are so old that you can't possibly spend the money that you already have before you die--why takes actions that at least look corrupt, and probably are?

And there are so many of these of late: Sen. Conyers' wife, Monica Conyers, who resigned from the Detroit City Council after her conviction, and whose husband used his position to assist in the corruption. And the list of these crooks (overwhelmingly Democrats) is so long and disappointing. You know, if Americans cared about corruption by public officials, the Democrats would have something to worry about at the next election. But pretty clearly, most Americans don't let this bug them much.

Dealing With Inflation

2009-06-29T23:10:00.002-06:00

Dealing With Inflation

I mentioned a bit more than a month ago that I was wrestling with the question of how to deal with an inflationary economy. I'm still wrestling. The economic disaster hasn't injured me quite as much in the non-retirement portfolio as I had feared, or rather, the damage to my stock mutual funds and some of my bonds has been almost compensated by the improvement in some of my other bonds. The Fannie Mae bonds, for example, are actually above par! And I have some hope, that over the next ten years, either the voters will get smart enough to kick the Democrats out of power, or more direct action will make the value of anything but freeze dried food and ammunition rather irrelevant.

Liz Ann Sonders of Schwab is indicating that there is beginning to be a cautious, realistic optimism about the market, and investors are moving from cash to a variety of investments. I don't find this hard to believe; the economy was supposed to rebound by second half anyway, and even the crooks who control Congress couldn't completely screw this up. As Sonders pointed out on June 24, the Fed believes that the recession is beginning to ease, and their actions reflect this. But also:

Schwab's Investment Strategy Council continues to believe inflation is not a near-term risk.

Although money supply has grown, the money multiplier (or velocity of money) has collapsed. Quantitative/credit easing ("printing money") doesn't cause inflation unless that money is getting into the economy � at this point, it isn't.

In the longer-term, credit growth will revive and the economic recovery will be more clear�and only then will the Fed need to begin the tightening process. The Fed made it clear that stage is still well ahead of us.

Which fits with some stuff that I linked to several months ago. For those that are still many years from retirement, slowly easing back into conservative growth stock mutual funds might be a good idea. For those of us who aren't that many years away, perhaps either short-term bonds (maturities of 2-5 years) make sense, or adjustable rate bonds.

Of course, don't make the mistake that I made, buying some Sallie Mae adjustable bonds--ones that could theoretically drop to 0% interest if interest rates fell to 0. Not like that could happen, I told myself! Unlike a fixed rate bond, where falling interest rates at least make the value of the bond go up--with these, not only does the interest rate fall--but so does the value of the bond, since it now pays a much lower interest rate. I guess that I will just hold onto these, until they mature (some years out), or the inflation ogre shows up and spoils the party--at which point, those bonds will probably be worth having.

Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing: 1951-1963

2009-06-29T22:38:00.002-06:00

Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing: 1951-1963

This is part of the Battlefield of the Cold War series, volume 1. This is a detailed history of nuclear weapons testing by the United States. In spite of the title, it actually covers 1945 to 1963, and is not limited to the Nevada Test Site. It includes information about the Pacific and outer space nuclear weapons tests, as well as those conducted at the Nevada Test Site--including a list of all the test explosions (including yield and purpose) in this period.

In light of the subsequent problems of the Downwinders (who allege, and I guess with good reason, that they were injured by fallout from the tests), there's a lot of interesting discussion of the struggles over what the proper limits of the tests performed. It would appear that there was a genuine effort to avoid unnecessarily dangerous exposure to those outside the test site--but the combination of bad luck and insufficient understanding of the risks meant that these efforts failed.

This makes a nice companion to Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie.

"Pedophiles Aren't Gay"

2009-06-29T20:43:00.002-06:00

"Pedophiles Aren't Gay"

This is conventional wisdom--and I've been told this repeatedly by gay activists and their liberal apologists--even when the pedophile preys exclusively on little boys.

Sexual preference is on a different axis from pedophilia. There are heterosexual pedophiles, bisexual pedophiles, and homosexual pedophiles. As I pointed out in 2006, in spite of the talking heads that the news media interview on the subject, serious, very PC scientific journals still use terms like "homosexual pedophile" and "heterosexual pedophile" to describe these offenders.

It is true that a majority of homosexuals are not pedophiles. It is also true that a majority of pedophiles are heterosexual. (Since heterosexuals are about 97% of the population, of course a majority of pedophiles are heterosexual.) Scholarly works published into the early 1990s (before Political Correctness took over) were still showing that homosexuals and bisexuals were 20-30% of pedophiles--or about 8-10x disproportionate to their fraction of the population. While I'm a bit skeptical of the article linked here, because Paul Cameron has a strong ideological orientation on this, it is curious that the percentage of homosexual child sexual abuse that he found analyzing Illinois foster care data was...24%, right in the middle of historical data. And there are cases like this one, involving an openly gay couple, molesting a foster child. Or Paula Poundstone, a lesbian entertainer who was charged with lewd acts on one of her under 14 foster children.

I've also pointed out that one rather special group of pedophiles--Catholic priests--overwhelmingly victimize little boys: 81%. And guess what? Catholic priests have about 11x the rate of AIDS of the general population. (Surprised? I was, too. But when I look at those two figures together, I'm not surprised.)

So let's not pretend that this horrific case from Duke University is just a big surprise, shall we? From the June 28, 2009 North Carolina News-Observer:

Federal authorities say Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail, performed sexual acts on his son and invited an undercover investigator online to fly to North Carolina and do the same.

Lombard owns the home with another man, according to Durham County property records. The pair bought the home, which sits at the end of a narrow path lined with trees and multicolored homes, in May 2007, the records show. The co-owner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

...

Lombard, associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy, was arrested Wednesday evening at his home. Investigators seized two webcams, five computers and a sex toy, among other items, after searching his home.
The 5-year-old and another child in the home were placed in protective custody.
...
Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master's degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.

Professor Mike Adams points to the wailing fest from the Duke faculty when the lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black woman, and were almost railroaded by a dishonest district attorney. But this is going to be a lot more entertaining:

So it will be interesting to see how Duke faculty members respond to Frank Lombard. Because he is white, Lombard is fair game at Duke, isn�t he? But Lombard is also gay, so will that complicate things?
Unfortunately for Frank Lombard, the affidavit in support of his arrest warrant shows that this second Duke rape case will also have a strong racial component. According to a confidential source (CS) a man using the user name �cooper2� or �cooperse� logged onto an internet-based video chat room. CS saw him perform oral sex on an African-American child under the age of ten. He also performed other acts on the child, which are too obscene to be described in this column.
The user name �cooper2� has now been linked to Frank Lombard, the associate director Duke University�s Center for Health Policy. A second source has now alleged that �cooper2� has confessed to being �into incest� and that he has adopted two African American children.
The only good news coming out of this story is about Frank Lombard�s live-in homosexual partner. The affidavit in support of Lombard�s arrest warrant shows that he made special arrangements when molesting the child � sometimes even by drugging the child � to make sure his partner did not find out.

As I said, most homosexuals are not molesters. And there are enough heterosexual molesters out there--certainly a strong majority--that if you decide to focus on gay men as the danger to children, you aren't being very honest. I suspect that most gay couples that are adopting children are trying to create a white picket fence middle class life that they can't have without marrying the opposite sex. But there are some creeps out there, too, and I do worry a bit that in the mad rush to allow gay adoption, the agencies involved aren't being careful enough in screening.

When we were raising our kids, we were extraordinarily careful who we let watch our children, and I encourage you to be similarly careful. Do not assume that [fill in your favorite male relative] could never have done something like that! Children make stuff up, without question. But they are victimized--a lot.

As I pointed out a while back, both here and here, there is a curious connection between child sexual abuse (CSA) and adult homosexuality--enough so that it seems plausible that CSA causes at least some adult homosexuality. More worrisome is that a small percentage of CSA survivors end up becoming molesters themselves when they grow up. Usually male victims become molesters--but sometimes, female victims do so as well. The exact mechanism isn't well understood, but the connection seems clear enough. And that's part of why we aren't making any progress on stopping it. This ideological pretense that pedophiles are always heterosexual, or don't have an adult sexual orientation is not only false, it is dangerously false.

No, It Isn't An Article From The Onion

2009-06-28T07:51:00.002-06:00

No, It Isn't An Article From The Onion

But you are forgiven for wondering at first. It comes from the June 25, 2009 Telegraph:

Canterbury is sufficiently gay, council inspectors rule

One of Britain's most historic cities, Canterbury, has been told it is sufficiently gay � after a complaint sparked a two-month investigation costing thousands of pounds.
A government watchdog decided that Canterbury in Kent does enough to promote homosexual culture, rejecting a complaint by local activists.
The Local Government Ombudsman � who asked for the city's council to provide evidence of how it supported the gay community � said it was satisfied the pink pound was being catered for.
As part of the investigation, the council had to prove its inclusiveness by giving details of "touring plays and musicals, for example, which would be of interest to the LGBT community".
And it had to show that it had "put forward suggestions for small events that it might help fund, as well as proposals for other events such as exhibitions".
Rob Davies, spokesman for the council, said: "Obviously we're delighted with the outcome of the investigation.
"We feel we do a great deal for the gay community in Canterbury and we have always tried to support various gay events and promotions."
"But at the same time it is not the duty of any council to set up a gay bar � that's not what councils do."
The two-month investigation began at the end of April after a letter was sent from two representatives of Pride in Canterbury.

Please Explain This To Me

2009-06-27T21:03:00.003-06:00

Please Explain This To Me

Most homosexuals don't do stuff like this. I know that. Whenever this type of behavior happens in a public place, I'm told by apologists that this sickness is not either typical or accepted by the gay community.

So answer me this question: If this sort of sickness--exhibitions of torture and sexual pleasure--is not generally considered acceptable in the gay community--why doesn't the government of New York City (or San Francisco) enforce its laws against public lewdness and indecency? (Or even just stop actively funding and encouraging it, in the case of San Francisco.)

It is pretty clear that city governments are at least tolerating, and often encouraging or subsidizing this sickness because they do not want to offend the homosexual community--and doesn't mind offending the majority of its citizens who unquestionably would find this behavior on public streets completely unacceptable. If this sickness is actually a tiny, tiny fraction of homosexuals, and most homosexuals would also find this behavior unacceptable, why do city governments not enforce their existing laws?

Remember that even in San Francisco, homosexuals are only about 11% of the men, and 4% of the women--so perhaps 8% of the total population. If this type of pubilc behavior is really only acceptable to a tiny fraction of homosexuals--say, 5% of them--then that means that enforcing the law would upset less than 1/2 of 1% of the population. Does anyone seriously believe that less than 1/2 of 1% of the population is this important to politicians?

This isn't "what consenting adults do in private." It isn't the type of behavior that would show that gay people are "just like straight people, except for who they love." It's a pretty clear indicator that there's something terribly broken about homosexuality, that city governments are afraid to offend homosexuals by saying, "You have to obey the same public lewdness laws as everyone else in public places."

If The Senate Passes This Insane Cap-And-Trade Bill

2009-06-27T16:24:00.002-06:00

If The Senate Passes This Insane Cap-And-Trade Bill

The good news is that it might solve the inflation problem that is likely to bite us as soon as the economy recovers...because it will prevent the economy from recovering. The damage that it will do is so astonishing that I suspect that it will probably end the Democratic Party's hopes of winning elections again. (I'm hoping that this means that they will lose power, but if things get bad enough, I wouldn't be surprised to see Chicago-style elections become a national norm.)

Humorous Gun Posters

2009-06-27T16:18:00.004-06:00

Humorous Gun Posters

A reader sent a collection. Here are some of the more amusing examples.

The Maternal Instinct

2009-06-27T15:47:00.003-06:00

The Maternal Instinct

When we returned from the Grand Canyon trip, we had a new neighbor--a rather loud one at that.

Click to enlarge

It appears to be a Western Meadowlark, with an astonishingly bright yellow coloration. And yes, when seen from above, it appears that she has picked one of our rain gutters to build a nest.

Click to enlarge

I suspect that in our absence, she decided that this would be a nice quiet place to lay her eggs, without worry about predators being able to get to it.

Of course, now we're back, and as soon as we open the garage door, or pull up in one of our cars, she zooms out of the nest, squawking loudly, hoping that we will chase her, and leave her eggs alone.

Click to enlarge

She'll take off on a great loop, and eventually land out in the brush.

Click to enlarge

Only when we have left the vicinity does she fly back home.

Don't Be Stupid

2009-06-27T15:31:00.002-06:00

Don't Be Stupid

From the June 24, 2009 New York Times:

WASHINGTON � An Internet radio host known for his incendiary views was arrested Wednesday in North Bergen, N.J., after federal officials charged that his angry postings about a gun case in Chicago amounted to death threats against three judges.

In a case that tests the limits of free speech, the Justice Department charged that the radio host, Hal Turner, had crossed the line into hate speech.
Mr. Turner, regarded by civil rights monitoring groups as a white supremacist, an anti-Semite and a �maestro of radio hate,� posted commentaries on his blog denouncing a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, that upheld two local bans on handguns.
�Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed,� Mr. Turner wrote in a blog entry on June 2. �Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions.�
He said the three judges, William J. Bauer, Frank H. Easterbrook and Richard A. Posner, should be made �an example� of in order to send a message to the rest of the federal judiciary: �Obey the Constitution or die.�
Mr. Turner also posted the judges� photographs, phone numbers, work addresses and courtroom numbers.

A year or two from now, the Supreme Court will have overturned this idiotic Seventh Circuit decision--and Hal Turner will still be spending money defending himself on a criminal charge. Don't be stupid. You can politely disagree with Bauer, Easterbrook, and Posner. You can rudely disagree with them. But calling for their assassination--and then providing information that might be used by some confused malcontent for that purpose? Bad manners, criminal, and incredibly stupid.

Ways To Make Your Head Hurt

2009-06-27T13:51:00.004-06:00

Ways To Make Your Head Hurt

Read the U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning the constitutionality of the federal income tax. Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429 (1895) is one of the more obtuse decisions that I think that I have ever read. I am not surprised that a lot of the "income tax is unconstitutional" crowd gets this wrong--what a messy, ugly, confusing, clumsy decision.

At the core of the question is this claim made by the plaintiffs:

alleged income tax incorporated in the act of congress were unconstitutional, null, and void, in that the tax was a direct tax in respect of the real estate held and owned by the company in its own right and in its fiduciary capacity as aforesaid, by being imposed upon the rents, issues, and profits os said real estate, and was likewise a direct tax in respect of its personal property and the personal property held by it for others for whom it acted in its fiduciary capacity as aforesaid, which direct taxes were not, in and by said act, apportioned among the several states, as required by section 2 of article 1 of the constitution; and that, if the income tax so incorporated in the act of congress aforesaid were held not to be a direct tax, nevertheless its provisions were unconstitutional, null, and void, in that they were not uniform throughout the United States, as required in and by section 8 of article 1 of the constitution of the United States, upon many grounds and in many particulars specifically set forth.

You see, there are direct taxes and indirect taxes. Direct taxes, before the 16th Amendment, had to be apportioned among the states by population, because of Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 4:

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census of Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 1, provides for:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

It appears that indirect taxes, including excise taxes and tariffs, were not subject to this same requirement about proportion to population as direct taxes. But makes some taxes "direct" and others "indirect"? Pollock is awash in discussion and example, but can't seem to give a consistent statement, and admits that there is a bit of contradiction in the precedents and original public meaning (as evidenced by debates in the 1790s about a tax on carriages) of these terms, even admitting in one place that an income tax, in the original public meaning, would have been a direct tax:

The general line of observation was obviously influenced by Mr. Hamilton's brief for the government, in which he said: 'The following are presumed to be the only direct taxes: Capitation or poll taxes, taxes on lands and buildings, general assessments, whether on the whole property of individuals, or on their whole real or personal estate. All else must, of necessity, be considered as indirect taxes.' 7 Hamilton's Works (Lodge's Ed.) 332.
Mr. Hamilton also argued: 'If the meaning of the word 'excise' is to be sought in a British statute, it will be found to include the duty on carriages, which is there considered as an 'excise.' ... An argument results from this, though not perhaps a conclusive one, yet, where so important ad istinction in the constitution is to be realized, it is fair to seek the meaning of terms in the statutory language of that country from which our jurisprudence is derived.' 7 Hamilton's Works (Lodge's Ed.) 333.
If the question had related to an income tax, the reference would have been fatal, as such taxes have been always classed by the law of Great Britain as direct taxes.

Yet otherwise Pollock cites precedents holding that an income tax was an indirect tax or excise tax, and therefore not subject to the apportionment requirement. (See the discussion on pages 635-636.)

Pollock is the case which is often referred to as ruling that the income tax was unconstitutional. But to my surprise, what it really ruled was unconstitutional was not a personal income tax, but a tax on income from real estate--which was found to be direct, and therefore subject to the apportionment rule:

Be this as it may, it is conceded in all these cases, from that of Hylton to that of Springer, that taxes on land are direct taxes, and in none of them is it determined that taxes on rents or income derived from land are not taxes on land.
We admit that it may not unreasonably be said that logically, if taxes on the rents, issues, and profits of real estate are equivalent to taxes on real estate, and are therefore direct taxes, taxes on the income of personal property as such are equivalent to taxes on such property, and therefore direct taxes. But we are considering the rule stare decisis, and we must decline to hold ourselves bound to extend the scope of decisions,- none of which discussed the question whether a tax on the income from personalty is equivalent to a tax on that personalty, but all of which held real estate liable to direct taxation only,-so as to sustain a tax on the income of realty on the ground of being an excise or duty.

The net effect of the Pollock decision was to strike down just one little part of the federal income tax code:

We are of opinion that the law in question, so far as it levies a tax on the rents or income of real estate, is in violation of the constitution, and is invalid.

The Sixteenth Amendment changed not only the apportionment requirement, but clarified that it didn't matter if the income came from real estate or not:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

I see some pretty amazing claims made by the anti-income tax crowd to the effect that the Sixteenth Amendment wasn't intended to tax personal income--only corporations, or "Fourteenth Amendment citizens" (by which they mean those persons who became citizens of the United States because of the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of the freedmen). The claim is that taxing individual incomes is some rather modern perversion of the original intention. But you certainly won't find anything to support that position in Brushaber v. Union Pacific R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916):

1. The statute levies one tax called a normal tax on all incomes of individuals up to $20,000, and from that amount up, by gradations, a progressively increasing tax, called an additional tax, is imposed. No tax, however, is levied upon incomes of unmarried individuals amounting to $3, 000 or less, nor upon incomes of married persons amounting to $4,000 or less. The progressive tax and the exempted amounts, it is said, are based on wealth alone, and the tax is therefore repugnant to the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.
2. The act provides for collecting the tax at the source; that is, makes it the duty of corporations, etc., to retain and pay the sum of the tax on interest due on bonds and mortgages, unless the owner to whom the interest is payable gives a notice that he claims an exemption. This duty cast upon corporations, because of the cost to which they are subjected, is asserted to be repugnant to due process of law as a taking of their property without compensation, and we recapitulate various contentions as to discrimination against corporations and against individuals, [240 U.S. 1, 22] predicated on provisions of the act dealing with the subject.

Now, the exemptions were large enough that indeed, the original tax code was a tax on rich people. But it was on people, not corporations. It is the case that very few wage earners had enough income to be subject to that original income tax, because very few people earned that kind of money. But there were some who did. The individual income tax, as unpleasant as it is, was the intention from the beginning. We have the individual income tax because Americans want it.

Obama and Prolonged Detention

2009-06-26T09:12:00.002-06:00

Obama and Prolonged Detention

The Ron Paul crowd have taken a Rachel Maddow segment that correctly pillories Obama for hypocrisy and inconsistency and attached their campaign material at the end.

And she's right: Obama made a big deal throughout the campaign--and at the start of his speech--about the Bush Administration's ad hoc approach to the problem of detaining unlawful combatants--and then announces that they are going to do the same thing! But somehow, what was unconstitutional and criminal when Bush did it in the heat of the moment, by crossing a few more "t"s and dotting a few more "i"s, will somehow become constitutional and appropriate when Obama does it.

PowerLine has the statement of one of Bush's guys before Congress on this issue, in which he agrees that Obama's "prolonged detention" is the right policy for those who are unlawful combatants, but that Obama's emphasis on due process is likely to encourage the U.S. to not take prisoners, or to make sure that third parties--who aren't as nice as we are--end up with these prisoners.

I think a lot of people are failing to recognize how fundamentally different non-state actors (such as al-Qaeda) are from traditional nation-state enemies. The closest historical example to non-state actors are pirates and the post-World War II German Werewolves. Pirates were tried (sometimes rather summarily) and hung; unlawful combatants were sometimes not even given the benefit of a trial.

Strip Searching a 13 Year Old Girl

2009-06-25T22:58:00.004-06:00

Strip Searching a 13 Year Old Girl

Gee, what were they looking for that could justify such an intrusive search? From the June 26, 2009 Washington Post:

Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are "categorically distinct" from other efforts to combat illegal drugs.

In a case that had drawn attention from educators, parents and civil libertarians across the country, the court ruled 8 to 1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution's protections against unreasonable search or seizure.

Justice David H. Souter, writing perhaps his final opinion for the court, said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two tablets of Advil. [emphasis added]

Wow. Not weapons. Not plastic explosives. A pain killer that the article describes as "prescription strength"--but I can buy bottles of 200 mg ibuprofen, and take enough to get the same result. It's still an over the counter painkiller.

I'm disappointed that Justice Thomas dissented on this, but I'll read his dissent before I get too upset. But clearly: strip searching a 13 year old for ibuprofen? The Court declined to hold the idiot who ordered this strip search personally liable. I don't think that I would have been so nice.

Francisco M. Negr�n Jr., general counsel for the National School Boards Association, said he was glad the court recognized that the school officials had acted "in good faith."

I'm sure that they did act in good faith. But how about with a working brain?

UPDATE: I just read Thomas' opinion, which is "concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part." Thomas makes two points where I can somewhat see his point, but still think he's wrong.

His first point is that the Court made a mistake in the Tinker (1969) case when they scrapped in loco parentis as the rule for schools having the authority to act in place of the parents for maintaining order and discipline. He points to not only the serious prescription drug problem nationally, but the particular problems that the school in question was having involving alcohol and prescription drug abuse by its students--and argues that the problem is a bit more serious than the majority implies. He points out that there is an implication in the majority opinion that a near strip search for illegal drugs might be justified.

The second point that Thomas makes is that there is a well established set of precedents holding that once a police officer believes that a crime has taken place, it doesn't matter how trivial that crime it is: the police officer is supposed to arrest. Thomas' point is that we are going to create a real problem figuring out at what point a police officer has gone too far in performing a search based on how trivial the crime is. Continuous second guessing about, "Is this serious enough to take action?" saps the willingness of school administrators to do their job.

I agree that there is way, way too much finding of constitutional rights in places that the Framers never intended. I am also incensed that the rules keep changing to satisfy political correctness. You want to wear black armbands to protest the War in Vietnam? That's protected free speech. You want to wear a T-shirt on "National Coming Out Day" that expresses an opinion about homosexuality? That's not protected free speech. But I still reiterate my earlier point: I expect school administrators to think occasionally, and use a little common sense.

Of course, part of the problem is that equal protection suits have caused school administrators to go utterly beserk in "zero tolerance" because if you start behaving as though you have a brain, someone is going to sue you because Johnny wasn't expelled for having a pocket knife in his car in the parking lot, but Emilio was expelled for carrying a switchblade knife in his back pocket. That's gotta be racism!

The Punch Line To A Bad Joke

2009-06-25T22:34:00.002-06:00

The Punch Line To A Bad Joke

As we were leaving Grand Canyon National Park, we saw this motor home ahead of us--and the rather chaotic nature of how the bicycles were stacked on the back caused my wife to wonder:

Click to enlarge

Would this be the punchline to a joke involving the Tour de France and a motor home going too slowly?

Too Stupid and Disgusting For Me To Even Hint At

2009-06-25T21:53:00.002-06:00

Too Stupid and Disgusting For Me To Even Hint At

But of course, it's a type of performance art in San Francisco. From the June 25, 2009 San Francisco Weekly. You have been warned.

Across the Middle East...

2009-06-25T20:56:00.002-06:00

Across the Middle East...

There are little boys who, if they know what just happened, would be praising Allah that they were saved from him.

It's not good to speak ill of the dead. And it's pretty clear that something really bad must have happened to Michael Jackson to warp him this way. But there does come a point where an adult can make the conscious decision not to visit the evil on others that was visited on him.

Bright Angel Fault

2009-06-25T08:06:00.002-06:00

Bright Angel Fault

I think that I mentioned the Bright Angel Fault is one of the causes of the Grand Canyon's transept--part of what makes it so much wider than just what the Colorado River and its tributaries have gouged out of the Earth. Here's another panorama shot that shows a fairly recent landslide (the white patch on the right) and the canyon excavated by the fault. This was taken from a little ways up the Transept Trail.

Click to enlarge

Yet Another Reason San Francisco Should Be Expelled From the Union

2009-06-24T22:17:00.002-06:00

Yet Another Reason San Francisco Should Be Expelled From the Union

This is something so awful that if a novelist wrote it, you would put the book down in disgust, because it would be so unbelievable. From the June 22, 2009 Los Angeles Times:

San Francisco D.A.'s program trained illegal immigrants for jobs they couldn't legally hold

As she runs for state attorney general, prosecutor Kamala Harris faces questions over a program that trained illegal immigrant drug felons for jobs, kept them out of jail and expunged their records.

The assault on Amanda Kiefer at dusk in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights was extraordinary enough for its cruelty.

A stranger, later identified as Alexander Izaguirre, snatched her purse and hopped into an SUV, police say. The driver sped forward to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and the driver laughing. The driver slammed on the brakes, propelling Kiefer to the pavement. Her skull fractured. Blood oozed from her ear.

Only after the July 2008 attack did Kiefer learn of the crime's political ramifications. Izaguirre, police told her, was an illegal immigrant who had pleaded guilty four months earlier to a drug felony for selling cocaine in the seedy Tenderloin area.

He had avoided prison when he was picked for a jobs program run by San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, now a candidate for California's top law enforcement post. In effect, Harris' office had been allowing Izaguirre and other illegal immigrants to stay out of prison by training them for jobs they cannot legally hold.

The program, Back on Track, is a centerpiece of Harris' campaign for state attorney general. Until questioned by The Times about the Izaguirre case, Harris, a Democrat, had never publicly acknowledged that the program included illegal immigrants. In interviews last week, she and her office offered inconsistent explanations.

Izaguirre's trial this fall for the Kiefer attack -- his arrest forced him out of the program and into jail -- will put Harris in the middle of the controversy over San Francisco's lax policies toward illegal immigrants.

The city has a history of shielding some illegal immigrant criminals from deportation. The assault on Kiefer occurred just a month after a triple homicide in San Francisco that put Mayor Gavin Newsom on the spot over the city's repeated release of Edwin Ramos, the illegal immigrant accused of the slayings.

The fact is that San Francisco's DA can do stuff like this without worry of the voters getting upset. They like this sort of thing. It makes them feel so progressive.

Breaking Up California

2009-06-24T21:37:00.003-06:00

Breaking Up California

Another article that I couldn't interest PajamasMedia in running. (Admittedly, I write them faster than they have space to publish them.) It's unfortunate that there aren't more conservative magazines that:

1. Pay for articles.

2. You don't have to be someone important to get published in.
----
The May 14, 2009 Economist talks about how California has become ungovernable�which is apparent to almost anyone who pays any attention to the Golden State�s annual budget crises�and gives a pretty obvious set of explanations for why. Only a minority of Californians actually vote, and they are �older, whiter, and richer� than the population as a whole. (And who�s to blame for that? The last I checked, there weren�t any Klansmen blocking the polling places.)

The Economist also blames gerrymandering and �self-sorting� into highly partisan electoral districts for the problem�with no apparent awareness that redrawing those district lines along latitude would largely wipe out this partisanship. (Generally, the closer you are to the ocean, the more expensive the property, and thus, the more dominant the Democrats.)

It is certainly true that the California Constitution�s twin requirements of a 2/3 vote of both houses to pass a budget and to raise taxes are part of the problem. The popular referendum process�s interaction with the legislature contribute significantly to the problems. But The Economist, and presumably the experts that they interviewed, seemed to have missed California government�s biggest problem: bigness.

I grew up in California. I spent most of my adult life there, and I was as actively involved in politics there as a non-millionaire could realistically be. But in the entire time that I was so involved, I never met a member of the California legislature. At most, I saw a few members from a distance. I certainly never ever shook hands with any of them, much less had a conversation about public policy.

Here in Idaho, my legislators know me by sight (and not just the one that I tried to knock out in the Republican primary last year)�and I have had serious public policy conversations with other members of the Idaho legislature. Last year, my state senator so irritated me with his sponsorship of a bill that I ran against him in the Republican primary. Okay, I got beaten by 24 points�but I was able to make a serious effort, spending less than $10,000. In California, this would not have been possible. What�s the difference?

California has 33 million people�so the 80 members of the lower house of the California legislature each represent 412,500 people. By comparison, each member of the Idaho lower house represents less than 22,000 people. You don�t have to be obscenely rich to spend fifty cents per voter on advertising running for Idaho legislature�nor do you have to sell your soul to raise the money required to run a serious campaign. (Well, I suppose if you really wanted to sell your soul, you could, but I was able to raise huge amounts of money without anyone asking to see if I still had the pink slip.) It is even possible to spend a few months going door to door, and actually talk to a majority of the voters.

Spend fifty cents per voter in a California legislative race�and you need enough money that you are either personally wealthy, or you will have to sell your soul to even have a realistic chance. (Former California state senator Alan Robbins wrote quite eloquently about this problem from his federal prison cell at Terminal Island.) Going door to door in a California legislative district is just not possible. Even if you spend five minutes per voter, eight hours a day, it would take more than six years to talk to a majority. California�s bigness has created a chasm between its legislators and voters that simply can�t be resolved without either a dramatically larger legislative body�or a much smaller state.

Chopping California into seven states of a bit less than five million people each would make each of those seven legislatures substantially more responsive to the voters. Depending on the new boundaries, it seems likely that each of the new states would be considerably more politically cohesive than the current legislative madhouse. The State of Bay Area could pass whatever silly gun control laws they want (until the Supreme Court incorporates the Second Amendment against the states); the States of Modoc, Mojave, Sierra, and Borrego would probably end up with gun control laws like their neighbors of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona. Bay Area and Los Angeles would probably make their entire states into undocumented worker sanctuary zones; Modoc, Mojave, and Sierra would probably pass laws punishing renting to and employing illegal aliens. I suspect that the vast majority of Californians would find their new state governments more to their liking than the current gibbering collective idiot that presides in Sacramento.

Yes, the state of Bay Area would still be pretty hard left�but at least Bay Area�s U.S. Senators Boxer (from Marin County) and Feinstein (San Francisco) would be counterbalanced by Republican Senators from the states of Sierra, Mojave, and Borrego. And with six more states�why, we might be able to make Obama�s claim to have visited 57 states correct!

Bizarre Poll Results

2009-06-24T18:35:00.003-06:00

Bizarre Poll Results

Dr. John Lott points to some rather astonishing poll numbers that asked, "How satisfied are you with your health care?"

A survey conducted jointly by the Kaiser Family Foundation, ABC News and USA Today, released in October 2006, found that 89 percent of Americans were satisfied with their own personal medical care, but only 44 percent were satisfied with the overall quality of the American medical system.

...

Uninsured Americans, not surprisingly, are not as satisfied as people who have insurance. Nonetheless, 70 percent of the uninsured who indicated their level of satisfaction said they were either "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their health care, and only 17.5 percent said they were "very dissatisfied."

Your first reaction is probably, "What? They don't have health insurance! How satisfied can they be? Don't they realize what a tragedy they are experiencing?" But something to think about:

1. A lot of the uninsured are young people--who generally don't get sick. What's the biggest risk for many of them? An automobile accident--and their car insurance (or someone else's) will end up covering the injuries.

2. You don't have health insurance? That doesn't mean that you don't have health care. Effectively every hospital in the U.S., because of the Hill-Burton Act of 1946, is required to provide emergency room care, and even a certain level of non-ER care for the indigent. This is a lousy way to provide medical care, because it is expensive--but it does mean that in a real crisis, you will get medical care in this country. You may end up with a huge bill--but if you are as poor as most of the uninsured, what does it matter? You can't get blood out of a stone, and most hospitals eventually give up on that.

Now, there's a good argument for why the uninsured should be insured--but it as much for the benefit of those suffering from cost-shifting as it for the poor, who are clearly pretty satisfied with the medical care that they get.

UPDATE: A reader informs me:

Indeed. Any Providence Health system institution will take you without cost if you can't afford it; that's the mission of the religious sisters running it.

My wife is a physician and, years ago, volunteered at various free clinics in the Portland area. She finally gave up. She basically burned out: she generally cared more about her patients' health than they did themselves. Despite access to physicians, diagnostic tests, and medicine at no charge, a large percentage of her patients couldn't be bothered to show up for their appointments even if she explicitly warned them, "This is important and potentially life-threatening."

There's no substitute for individual responsibility.