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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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Opposition to Public Lewdness is Homophobia
There's more coverage from the New York Times of this little matter in East Hampton, N.Y.: At Two Mile Hollow Beach, the longtime center of gay life in the Hamptons, the language of the parking lot pickup scene is very specific.
Yup! That's the sort of romantic relationship that Justice Kennedy was concerned about.
On any given summer weekend evening, there may be dozens of men parked alone in the lot here. When a driver arrives wanting to participate, he typically flashes his brake lights and parks. Then he may flip on his interior light and see who pulls up next to him.
Otherwise, two cars may pass each other like jousting knights and, if they like what they see, pull into adjacent parking spots to meet. Immediate sex is usually the goal, and the men either have it in their cars or wander onto the beach or the dunes.
Participants say they see the same faces cruising the lot every week, but one Friday evening last month, four new men appeared in unmarked cars and wandered onto the beach. They were undercover police officers and they soon saw two men having oral sex.The crackdown has since escalated into a public controversy, with officials and some residents saying the operation is a response to clearly inappropriate and unlawful public behavior and many gays saying it has become a form of harassment.
Aside from the usual crime against the proper meaning of "literally," it is so histronic. I can't imagine what he was upset about it--if you don't want to have the police make a public spectacle of you, there's a simple solution--don't make a public spectacle of having sex. Is it really that hard to go back to someone's home for your anonymous and casual sex?
"It's like a bomb dropped here," said Clifton Nordmeier, 48, one of the two men arrested last month on a public sex charge. "It's a real step back for us. People don't feel comfortable down there anymore."
But town officials and many residents say the actions are not anti-gay, but rather an appropriate attempt to curb illegal public sex acts.
"This is not about being gay," said the East Hampton Village administrator, Larry Cantwell. "We have always recognized the gay community as an important part of East Hampton."
...
There have been no additional arrests, but the police presence alone has riled many regular users of the beach and caused an uproar in the East End's gay community. So has the action of some local residents trying to crack down on gay sexual activity here by hiring uniformed security guards to patrol the beach and parking lot and to videotape people engaged in sex acts.
Mr. Nordmeier, a postal clerk from East Hampton, said he was handcuffed on the beach that night, June 13, and marched into the parking lot in front of many onlookers. He was taken to the station house and charged with public lewdness and his name was listed in news stories.
"I literally felt crucified," he said. "It was so public. I felt like I had been strung up in the parking lot."Tom Kirdahy, a co-chairman of the East End Gay Organization, said that most gay beachgoers agreed with and obeyed the public sex laws, but saw the recent resident and police action as "crackdowns to stop us from meeting one another."
That's it! That's not public lewdness--it's political organizing! On the second page:
"We want assurances this is not about homophobia," he said.After the situation made newspaper headlines (an East Hampton Star editorial called the arrests "anti-gay" and a "witch hunt," and The East Hampton Independent ran the front-page headline "Home Sweet Homophobia?"), the Further Lane Association hired a publicist, who said the group would discontinue using security guards on the beach.
So, what's actually going on here?
The publicist, Cathy Callegari, said that Mr. Baron's was one of 10 households that make up the association. She said that Mr. Baron was far from homophobic and in fact had gone to great lengths to care for an employee with AIDS who died in 1992.Chief Larsen insisted that the police enforcement was directed at illegal behavior, not at sexual preference. "It's a not a gay thing," he said. "It's enforcing the law.
Oh yes, this is one step away from the Holocaust:
"If there are no crimes, then no one's getting arrested. Nobody's pleading not guilty. They're saying, `This has been going on for 50 years; why can't it continue?' "
The chief said that after receiving complaints of public sex and urination, he began sending undercover officers to the beach on Friday nights for "surveillance, not a raid," and that his officers were given clear orders to arrest only those people having "blatantly public sex."
"I told them, `If you can actually see it happening, arrest them. If you can't see it, don't,' " he explained. "I instructed them that if people are having sex in a car and it's dark, don't get involved. If they're under a blanket 50 yards down the beach, leave them alone. But if they're 50 feet off the blacktop and engaged in a blatant oral-sex act, not hiding it, that's public lewdness."Andrew Friedman, 44, a real estate agent from Brooklyn walking his German shepherd, Beethoven, on Tuesday evening, called the crackdown another example of the historic persecution of gays.
Yes, that describes it exactly: "out of control." This second gay man was at least sufficiently in touch with reality to see that public lewdness arrests aren't a form of genocide.
"It's an insult and it's annoying and it's been going on through the centuries," he said. "Until they put us on a train to Buchenwald, my lifestyle's not going to change."
On the other hand, a man walking the beach at sunset sipping from a glass of red wine, who said he was 45, gay and a personal trainer, agreed with the homeowners.
"This is a public beach," he said. "If I spent $18 million on a home here, I certainly wouldn't want to watch people having sex on my dune. You should see this beach on a Friday night. There's like 100, 150 cars in this parking lot. It's out of control."
Hey, It Was Consensual Adult Sex--What's the Big Deal?
From BBC: A German man who confessed to killing and eating a man he met through a website for cannibals has been charged with murder, prosecutors have said.
I'm so glad that the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that what happens between consenting adults is none of the government's business.
The 41-year-old suspect, identified as Armin M, is alleged to have killed the 43-year-old victim in March 2001 in the town of Rotenburg in central Germany, after meeting him through the site.
He then carved up and froze portions of the man's flesh, later eating some of it, prosecutors allege.
The crime was apparently carried out with the victim's full consent, however state prosecutor Hans-Manfred Jung told French news agency AFP that the victim's supposed "death wish" did not change the fact that the killer had wanted to commit murder.
...
The suspect and victim - both apparently homosexuals - met in early 2001, after Armin M is said to have posted a personal ad on several websites and in chatrooms asking for "young, well-built men aged 18 to 30 to slaughter", the German daily newspaper Bild reported at the time of his arrest.
The victim was a 43-year-old Berlin computer technician who had sold his car, written a will and taken the day off work to sort out what he called a "personal" matter.
He then went to Armin M's home, where the pair reportedly agreed to cut off his penis.
The victim was then allegedly stabbed to death - still apparently with his approval - and cut into pieces.
The whole incident was filmed on videotape, and prosecutors say that the whole crime was committed for the purpose of sexual enjoyment.
Constitution? We Don't Need No Stinking Constitution!
I wish I could do the Mexican bandit from The Treasure of Sierra Madre in print, but it just doesn't work. I become increasingly depressed over the lawless nature of the Nevada Supreme Court. The state constitution was amended by the voters in 1996 to require a two-thirds vote of the legislature to pass a budget. Was this wise? There's an argument for supermajorities, and I am always sympathetic to such arguments. I'm not all that sympathetic to requiring a supermajority for a budget. The people of Nevada, however, have spoken. If they made a terrible mistake, well, that's the price of a republic.
The Nevada Supreme Court, however, ordered the legislature to go forward and pass a budget by a simple majority. Why bother requiring a simple majority? The Nevada Supreme Court, by equal logic, could have ordered them to pass a budget by a minority (i.e., even if failed, it's in effect). Why bother having a state constitution and a process for amending it, if the Nevada Supreme Court can simply override it when they find it inconvenient? (The federal courts are unwilling to intervene, and as near as I can tell, they are on pretty solid ground.)
A lot of libertarian law professors were just besides themselves with joy at the Supreme Court's recent dishonest and lawless Lawrence decision because it gave them the result that they wanted. Some of those same libertarian law professors are upset that the Nevada Supreme Court has decided to ignore the plain text of the Nevada Constitution because it doesn't do what the Nevada Supreme Court thinks makes sense. Now California special interests are talking about asking the California Supreme Court to similarly ignore the California Constitution. Once you endorse the doctrine of judicial tyranny--that the courts may overturn any law that they don't like, without any constitutional basis for that decision--what else do you expect?
Liberty is not completely safe in the hands of the majority, which can degenerate into a mob with surprising speed--but at least we can replace most of them at the next election. Liberty is even less safe in the hands of an elitist minority that fancies itself the intellectual and moral superior over the masses that pay their salaries.
UPDATE: Eugene Volokh says that he wasn't beside himself with joy over the Lawrence decision.
UPDATE 2: I'm told by one of my readers that this whole matter was something of a setup by the governor--who ordered the legislators into special session to deal with the budget problem--but:barring them from considering cuts in any part of the budget already passed. In other words, the conflict between the two provisions of the state constitution was no accident, it was carefully engineered.
Indeed. How do you write an amendment that says, "The Supreme Court lacks the authority to ignore the constitution, including this amendment?"
The Nevada supreme court could have simply authorized the legislature to consider the rest of the budget. While it's true that this would have also required setting aside part of the constitution, the amendments came later. Isn't it a normal rule of interpretation that when amendments conflict with the original text, the amendment prevails?
Of course, that's assuming that they were actually trying to approach this honestly, which I rather doubt is really the case. While there still remains the option of appealing the the federal supreme court, I think it's clear that at least 6 Nevada "justices" need to be recalled, and the Nevada constitution amended yet again, to abolish this nasty precident. Though I'm not sure what text could bind a court that could have arrived at this ruling...
Is It Possible To "Vilify" Hussein's Government?
In an AP news story that at least gives reasons why Bush might have been legitimately in error (as opposed to lying) concerning Iraq and uranium purchases, there is this odd sentence: Officials acknowledged that had U.S. intelligence analyzed the documents sooner, they could have discovered the forgeries before the information was used as fodder for Bush administration statements vilifying Iraq.
According to my dictionary, "vilify" means to utter "slanderous" remarks. With what has come out about Hussein's mass murders and torture factories (both before and after the war), what could Bush have said about Iraq's government that would qualify as slanderous? About the only evil that you could accuse Hussein's government of that would be worse than reality is: "They eat their young!"
Drug-Resistant AIDS
A depressing reminder of the problems associated with sexual promiscuity, on two separate counts: The biggest study, so far, of resistance to AIDS drugs, being released today at the International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment in Paris, finds that about 10 percent of newly infected patients in Europe are infected with drug-resistant strains. Dr. Charles Boucher, virology professor at Utrecht University and lead researcher of the study, called the level of resistance to some AIDS drugs "surprisingly high."
This is depressing both because these drug-resistant strains will be spread, rendering existent treatments for ameliorating the symptoms of People Existing With AIDS (from what I have read, the daily drug regimen is more existence than life) less effective, and because of that statement "newly infected patients in Europe."
It is not 1981. If even in very sophisticated, liberal, open-minded Europe, which doesn't have American "homophobia," there are still enough "newly infected patients" to run large surveys like this (1,633 patients in this survey), it tells me that there are large numbers of people too stupid to run their own lives--because they can't seem to figure out these simple steps for avoiding the disease:
1. Do not engage in unprotected sex (especially anal sex).
2. Do not reuse needles.
Is this really that difficult?
The Case For Sexual Fidelity
Canada is having problems with STDs again: The National Laboratory for STDs is now receiving up to 5,000 isolates each year that are immune to at least one antibiotic. Moreover, the proportion of samples resistant to ciprofloxacin, one leading treatment, is soaring, jumping more than 200-fold in the past decade. The situation is grimmer in Atlantic Canada, where ciprofloxacin-resistant gonorrhea is double the national number.
UPDATE: And Oregon, also.
Experts are blaming gonorrhea's revival in part on evaporating fears of HIV due to improved drug treatments. In addition, a new generation of sexually active youth never witnessed the early devastation of AIDS, said Dr. Janice Mann, acting manager of Health Canada's sexual health and STD section. Suddenly, the fear factor that once kept gonorrhea under control is vanishing. With Oregon syphilis rates reaching levels not seen in a decade, health workers in the Portland area are urging some men to get tested for the disease up to four times a year.
City of Ottawa officials are sounding the alarm:
The rise in syphilis cases is primarily among gay men age 35 and older who pick up male sexual partners over the Internet or in adult venues, according to Margaret Lentell of the Multnomah County Health Department. So far this year, the county has recorded 17 cases of recent syphilis infection in men who have sex with men, compared with 18 such cases for all of 2002 and just four in 2001.
The anonymity of meetings arranged on the Internet presents health officials with a difficult challenge in tracking down sex partners of men with syphilis to notify them of their risk, said Lentell. She is urging high-risk men to get tested for syphilis soon and often.
"Our message is, if you're a man who has sex with men... and you're having more than one partner in a three-month period, that you get screened for syphilis every three-to-six months," Lentell said. She encouraged those who are HIV-positive to get tested every three months. Ottawa health officials are concerned that syphilis numbers, which have increased for the second straight year, are climbing because people have stopped practicing safe sex. An alert placed on the City of Ottawa health Web site reminds sexually active men and women to be tested if they think they are at risk. In the mid-1990s, there were entire years that passed without a reported case in Ottawa. But over the past few years, case numbers have increased suddenly.
I guess these were the meaningful relationships that Justice Kennedy was talking about in the Lawrence decision. You'll notice, of course, that these problems are disproportionately among gay men--for Ottawa, a majority are among gay men--who make up about 3-4.5% of the population. But yes, homosexuals are just like straight people.
Eleven cases of syphilis have been diagnosed so far this year, said Dr. Mary Gordon of Ottawa's Sexual Health Center Clinic. The majority of cases were identified among men who have sex with men. Last year's numbers were on a par with this year, she said. In 2001, there were six reported cases.
"No Thanks, No Free AIDS Treatment Drugs For My Country"
One of the recurring complaints is that AIDS treatment drugs are so expensive that the poor countries of Africa can't afford them. So explain this disturbing story: The German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim said recently that only Uganda and Botswana have accepted its offer of free supplies of nevirapine, the drug used to prevent mother-to- child HIV transmission. The low take-up of Boehringer's offer highlights that, in addition to more funds and cheaper drugs, an effective response to the AIDS epidemic also requires strong political will from African countries.
What? "We are not at all satisfied with how it is running," said Rolf Krebs, chair of Boehringer. Heavy customs charges, poor logistics and lack of the necessary health care infrastructure were some of the reasons why many African countries had not taken part in the program, said Krebs.
How complicated is the application process that these countries would rather buy it, than be given it?
"Because of the high level of administrative burdens, some African countries prefer to just buy the drugs," said Daniel Berman of Doctors Without Borders. "My advice would be to sell the drug at a cheap price [through normal business channels] and then you will see the orders skyrocket."
AIDS activists say developing countries will only have a reliable flow of cheaper medicines if international drug patent rules are made more flexible. Boehringer has been criticized for the complicated bureaucracy of the drug program. Krebs said steps were being taken to simplify the application process.
Let me suggest another possible explanation. Many years ago, I worked for a company that made and sold telephone exchanges. The CEO explained that, to comply with the federal law prohibiting U.S. companies from engaging in bribery to sell products, our company sold through distributors in these foreign countries. This way, when bribes had to be paid (and in much of the Third World, that's the only way to do business), our employees weren't involved.
I later found out that Nigeria had bought more than 40 of our telephone switches--even though they only needed three. What happened to the rest? They went into a warehouse in Lagos that wasn't air conditioned. Within a year, the switches were scrap. Why did they buy so many spare switches? A purchase of three switches wouldn't have had enough profit for the distributor to pay the required bribes, so the government bureaucrat responsible for procurement and bribe acceptance enlarged the size of the order. Now there was enough money to pay his bribe!
I find myself wondering if that's what is going on with this matter. Free anti-AIDS drugs don't involve money changing hands; buying those same drugs through commercial channels has lots of graft opportunity.
Dick Morris, Whatever His Other Faults, Certainly Understands American Politics
From his recent column: DR. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor now rallying liberals in the nation's Democratic primaries, is forcing the party into a potentially lethal march to the left.
So what's driving Dean's brand of leftism? What always drives leftism: rich people.
Animating the Dean surge are groups favoring gay marriage and those opposing further military action against other terror-sponsoring or -harboring nations - formidable forces pushing the Democrats away from the country's center.
...
Yet Dean is to the Democratic Party what the Christian Right is to the Republicans - a force moving the party into territory which offends the values and views of the mainstream of America's voters. He threatens to make the Democratic primaries a killing ground where any candidate who can win nationally is eradicated.
The signer of the civil union (aka gay marriage) law and a resolute pacifist in the face of terrorism, Dean will drive the rest of the Democratic field to the left as they struggle to match his program and rhetoric. He may bring about a new McGovernization of the Democratic Party. (My apologies to George McGovern, who led the national battle to reform the nominating process and, in doing so, contributed a singular service to us all).
In forcing the party left, Dean is picking up where Jesse Jackson left off, creating a gantlet of liberal litmus tests that a nominee must pass to win the nomination - locking him into positions that invite certain defeat in November. No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq. Dean's recent startling success in fund-raising - he raised more money in the last quarter than any other Democratic candidate - propels him into the top tier of candidates and gives him the means to promote his agenda.
When I was taking a History of Los Angeles class as a grad student, one of the oddities that kept popping up was how many sons of millionaires (back when a million dollars was equivalent to about ten million today) were actively involved in promoting early 20th century socialist political movements and utopian experiments. It's not any different today. Big money can always be found helping these movements.
The obvious reason is that you can assuage a lot of guilt about your own wealth by giving it to those who are trying to "soak the rich." The less obvious reason is that by funding organizations that promote your particular notion of "soak the rich," you can make sure that whatever becomes the leftist consensus will be a scheme that doesn't tax those who are already rich, but those who are trying to become rich. That's why leftists in the U.S. generally support high income tax rates--but seldom attack the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds--and at least since the days of Huey Long passed, don't support taxes on existing wealth, but on income.
Ann Coulter Doing What She Does Best
She does a pretty good job of pointing out that even if Attorney General Ashcroft's actions in response to 9/11 were over the top, they actually compare pretty favorably to what Democrats have done under less extreme conditions, and with less reason:AFTER PEARL HARBOR, President Roosevelt rounded up more than 100,000 Japanese residents and citizens and threw them in internment camps. Indeed, both liberal deities of the 20th century, FDR and Earl Warren, supported the internment of Japanese-Americans. In the '20s, responding to the bombing of eight government officials' homes, a Democrat-appointed attorney general arrested about 6,000 people. The raids were conducted by A. Mitchell Palmer, appointed by still-revered Democrat segregationist Woodrow Wilson, who won the 1916 election based on lies about intelligence and war plans.
Of course, she can't stop when she is ahead:
In response to the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world right here on U.S. soil, Attorney General John Ashcroft has detained fewer than a thousand Middle Eastern immigrants. Ashcroft faces a far more difficult task than FDR did: Pearl Harbor was launched by the imperial government of Japan, not by Japanese-Americans living in California. The 9-11 Muslim terrorists, by contrast, were not only in the United States but, until the attack, had broken hardly any laws at all (aside from a few immigration laws, which liberals don't care about anyway). And yet, Ashcroft's modest, carefully tailored policies have prevented another attack for almost two years since Sept. 11, 2001. No internment camps, no mass arrests. And no more massive terrorist attacks.
...
As usual, the Democrats have come up with a lot of bloody adjectives, but are a little short in the way of particulars as to how Ashcroft is trampling on anyone's rights. Their case-in-chief seems to be Tarek Albasti. Albasti's story has now run in more than 70 overwrought news stories. His tale of torment led a New York Times report on terrorism suspects whose lives have been uprooted and was the featured story on a PBS special this week about the civil-liberties crisis sweeping America.
Tarek Albasti is an Egyptian immigrant who married an American woman, brought seven of his Egyptian friends to America and was enrolled in flight school when America was hit on 9-11. Based on a tip from the ex-wife of one of the men that they were plotting a suicide mission, the eight Egyptian immigrants were held for one week in October 2001 – one week. The men were questioned and released. Since then, the government has issued copious apologies to the men and has expunged their records.
What are liberals claiming law enforcement was supposed to do with information like that? We're sorry for any Arabs whose dearest dream was to go into crop dusting, but this really isn't a good time. (Perhaps we could have a five-day waiting period for Muslims who apply to U.S. flight schools for a background check.) Albasti told PBS – that's right, PBS, the television network owned, operated and funded by the very same federal government Albasti now claims is oppressing him – that during his one-week confinement he was worried he would be hanged without anyone ever knowing what happened to him. For that remark alone, he should be deported. Is that what he thinks of America?
Sorry, but being afraid that our government might overreact under the extraordinary conditions post-9/11 isn't a deportable offense. She does a good job of combining a fairly witty remark with a penetrating thought thta reminds us that "conservative" by American standards would be regarded as radical libertarian by Arab Muslim standards:Apparently, a lot of the false tips to law enforcement are coming from ex-wives. (Maybe Muslim men should have thought of that before introducing the burka.)
I Hope This Is A Typo
From Roger Ebert's review of the documentary Stone Reader: No MPAA rating (no unobjectionable material).
I hope he really meant "no objectionable material." I shudder to think of what a film would be that contained nothing but objectionable material! A Boy and His Dog comes close, though--the only movie that I have ever seen where I felt like punching the director in the nose after watching it. (If I hadn't been reliant for a ride home, I would have walked out on it--as many, many people in the audience that day did, some of them expressing their outrage and disgust as they did so.)
Another Ten Commandments Suit
Like the suit involving the Alabama Supreme Court building, whatever merit there might be to the claims about establishment of religious should be, I think, balanced against the claims made by the plaintiffs--who are either lying, or mentally disturbed: Plaintiff Sue Mercier is a resident of La Crosse, Wisconsin and a member of plaintiff Freedom from Religion Foundation. When visiting her lawyer’s office, which is near the monument site, plaintiff Mercier must sometimes alter her route to avoid seeing the monument. She shops at the People’s Food Coop and the farmers’ market less often than she would if the monument were not in Cameron Park. When she has viewed the monument, it has “disturbed” her emotionally.
One of the plaintiffs feels "marginalized"? Sure, I can understand that. But emotionally disturbed by the presence of a chunk of stone? Another plaintiff feels physical pain from seeing this chunk of stone? What's next? "The Ten Commandments turned me into a newt!... I got better."
Plaintiff Elizabeth Ash is a resident of La Crosse. She does not attend meetings or events held in Cameron Park because she does not want to view the monument. She does not use banks near the monument. When driving downtown, she avoids streets that would take her past the monument. She has stopped going to Cameron Park to sit in it and read books. When she does see the monument, she feels marginalized and has experienced physical pain.[emphasis added]
How far do you think a lawsuit would go in the federal courts if plaintiffs claimed to suffer physical pain or even emotional disturbance, from seeing an interracial couple in public, or a lesbian couple engaged in a public display of affection? The plaintiff would be told to go get counselling--and with good reason.
Thanks to How Appealing! for the link.
The Price of Overacting
I found this amusing story on How Appealing! PANAMA CITY, Fla. - Jurors who were mooned by a defendant needed only 30 minutes Thursday to find the man guilty of armed burglary and aggravated battery.
Talking quietly to yourself, or to your imaginary friends, would have been a more effective strategy, I think. This was just hamming it up--and the jury could probably see it.
Cornell Jackson, 29, punctuated his insanity defense by loudly hooting "cuckoo-cuckoo" and then dropping his pants to moon the jury on Wednesday.
Going for the insanity defense tends to be more common with more serious crimes--although it doesn't always work the way that you expect. I recall reading about a murder trial in California in the late 1970s or early 1980s where the defendant was, to use a technical term, "crazy as a loon." He dressed in a cape; murdered people; then drank their blood. He insisted that he was a vampire. Slam-dunk not guilty by reason of insanity verdict, right? (This was before many states replaced "not guilty by reason of insanity" with "guilty, but insane.") Nope. The jury found him guilty. It seems clear that they were scared witless by this guy, and were taking no chances of ever seeing this guy back out on the street.
Economic Mobility
A nice column by Thomas Sowell about the ways in which the left tries to use envy as a motivating force for politics. In the case of the Internal Revenue Service data on the 400 highest income-earners in the country, only 21 people were in that category throughout the nine years covered by IRS statistics. In other words, more than 2,000 people passed through this category in the course of nine years but fewer than two-dozen actually stayed there the whole time.
This has been my experience as well--people move up and down with surprising speed. I grew up in less than affluent circumstances, but I don't think I ever realized that we were "poor people" until I was applying for financial aid for college--and I discovered that my family was just below the poverty line. (Some of this was because my father's health had declined when he hit his 50s, and being a welder, climbing hundreds of feet on ladders in the middle of deserts--well, that just wasn't very practical anymore.)
Other studies of income over time have shown very similar patterns of mobility -- not only in the United States but also in Britain, Holland, New Zealand, and other countries. But such facts are simply passed over in utter silence in the media and in much of academia. Why? Because there is on the political left a huge vested interest in the concept of "class." Class holds a sacred place in the new trinity of "race, class and gender" that has become a prevailing social dogma among the intelligentsia.
Twenty-five years later, I was in the top 10% of Americans in net worth. All around me, I saw the same upward mobility. Dozens of people that I knew became millionaires; many became decamillionaires ($10 million and up net worth), and a few became hectamillionaires ($100 million and up). At least a few people with whom I am on a first-name basis (not that we run into each other very often) are probably billionaires by now.
I also saw a lot of downward mobility during this same time, as kids who had grown up in upper middle class homes drank and toked their way down to the homeless class. I saw mental illness destroy the potential that many had, turning them into homeless people, and mental hospital inmates.
Yes, there were unfortunate situations, bad luck, and for a few people, mental illness drove some of the downward movement. For some, the upward mobility was sheer blind luck, being in the right place at the right time, or having the right friends. (And some of those people have lately demonstrated that it was just luck--I understand that a number of Ferraris have changed hands in California of late, and not because the sellers are trading up.) But from what I have seen, character, as it would be understood in an earlier era (honesty, hard work, concern for others), is a major determinant of a person's economic mobility--probably the largest determinant. You can screw up really good, and take yourself and your family down with you. You can work hard, take your responsibilities seriously, and rise.
Another Reminder of What An Evil Thing We Did Overthrowing Saddam Hussein
A Reuters news story talks to Iraqis about the 35th anniversary of the Baath Party's coup d'etat.
Rational Basis vs. Strict Scrutiny
Nice piece by Eugene Volokh explaining "rational basis" vs. "strict scrutiny" standards for evaluating the Constitutionality of laws. As will be obvious when you read it, the Lawrence decision found that the right to private, consensual adult sex (a right that, at best, is implicit) is subject to the very demanding strict scrutiny rule. On the other hand, an explicit individual right to keep and bear arms is, when even found to be a right at all, is usually tested under the rational basis standard.
This is why my respect for the courts, already in decline ten years ago, when I first started reading decisions of the U.S. and state supreme courts, is sinking very quickly. Explicitly granted rights get examined under rational basis rules, which as Professor Volokh points out, are basically not rights at all; rights that have no explicit textual support at all, get examined under strict scrutiny rules.
There are those who think that the Supreme Court's authority needs to be reined in significantly. I agree, not because the Court is striking down state laws that I like (I'm actually ambivalent about the sodomy laws), but because they refuse to engage in any honest and consistent application of their legal theories. It has basically turned into, "We like this law; it is subject only to rational basis evaluation; we don't like this law because it's icky, therefore strict scrutiny applies."
I gave an example a week or so ago from history--how the Supreme Court ruled against state regulation of working hours in the Lochner (1905) decision based on the right of contract, but upheld a state law requiring private companies to segregate railroad cars, explicitly rejecting right of contract, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This was not an ideological purity driving these decisions, but an elite deciding to overrule state legislatures when they felt like it. This is the sort of arrogance that I expect from elitists. I would prefer a Constitutional republic, but it appears that our choices are elitist oligarchy, or unlimited democracy. Even unlimited democracy, as dangerous as it is, is better than unlimited raw power grabs of people that are not answerable to the voters.
UPDATE: Read this article from the Albuquerque Journal now; I suspect that it will disappear when the paper realizes how bizarre the events are that it describes. The Senate Rules Committee met in Santa Fe last month to consider Gov. Bill Richardson's appointees to the Human Rights Commission.
It turned out that every appointee for the commission gave exactly the same answer. There was plenty of sexual, racial, and ethnic diversity--but no intellectual diversity.
The commission hears complaints from New Mexico citizens who claim damages based on discrimination. One example given by an appointee was that of a case where a radio station manager fired a 72-year-old employee and commented that the man was just too old for the job. The Human Rights Commission ruled in the man's favor and had him granted back pay for his trouble.
The first appointee to appear before the Senate Rules Committee last week was a 57-year-old man from Alamogordo. His hair was coifed in the style of a middle-aged lady, he wore women's jewelry, earrings, lipstick, makeup and of course a dress — with purse and matching shoes. He was a self-proclaimed cross dresser.
He also happened to be extremely articulate and well-informed. I found this out when no one seemed to have any questions, and I decided to ask him about the role of the Human Rights Commission, its scope and powers. He was thoroughly knowledgeable and I learned a lot about the commission. He probably knew as much about the commission to which he had been appointed as any other appointee to appear before the Rules Committee.
I also asked him a hypothetical question — one I ended up asking all eight appointees:
"Let's say a local New Mexico school board has decided that because very young children are highly impressionable and that the early school years are crucial to a child's development, it is their policy not to have 1st-, 2nd- or 3rd-grade teachers who are in any way "gender-confused." They have decided that young children will not be taught by cross-dressers, transgendered individuals, transsexuals, transvestites, homosexuals or others whose behavior might be confusing in some way to the kids.
Then, let's say, an applicant who falls into one of those categories is denied employment as a teacher at the school. The rejected applicant brings his/her case to the Human Rights Commission. How would you rule?
There was a great deal of explication, but in the final analysis, the gentleman stated that he would have to rule against the school board and in favor of the applicant.
Disturbing Articles About Dennis Kucinich's Sudden Change of Heart About Abortion
National Review reports (also here) that Rep. Dennis Kucinich, leftwing activist, antiwar Congressman, hater of all things Bush, has had a very sudden and amazing change of heart about abortion, going from a near-perfect pro-lifer until the beginning of 2002, to a pro-choicer. What happened? The articles suggest that Kucinich decided that he wanted to be the leader of Democrats.
I describe myself as a reluctant pro-choicer. I think that trying to ban first trimester abortions is completely impossible as long as the demand is so high, and so many people support having it available. In practice, I doubt that there will ever be the supermajority required to make such a ban feasible. Even though Roe v. Wade (1973) was wrongly decided, it is clear to me that first trimester abortions are Constitutionally protected, based on the combination of the Ninth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the absence of laws criminalizing such abortions in 1791 and 1868. I also have some serious concerns that those who insist that life begins at conception have made an error in their assumptions, because the various Bible verses used to justify this position are, at best, only implications.
On the other hand, a ban on "convenience" third trimester abortions (those where the mother's life or permanent health are not at risk) wouldn't bother me at all. Removing all government funding from abortions would make me a lot happier, both because many pro-lifers genuinely resent being required to fund what they consider an immoral practice. (And yes, if you feel moral qualms about supporting the Defense Department, you shouldn't have to do that, either.) As with most things, government funding almost certainly increases demand for abortion--and abortion as a form of birth control is both grotesque and economically inefficient.
The various "abortion waiting period" laws that some states have tried out don't bother me, either. If liberals are happy with waiting periods to act as "cooling off" time for gun purchases, then they really shouldn't mind 48 hours waiting on abortions. If 48 hours is too long to wait for an abortion, then you are obviously a little too far along. I see no reason why kids need parental consent to get their ears pierced, but not to have a fairly major surgical procedure which involves significant infection risks.
Look, I can respect a pro-lifer who holds his position for honest and consistent reasons, and I can respect a pro-choicer who does likewise. I can't respect anyone who makes such a change for such transparently political reasons. The question about abortion isn't trivial; it's a question as to whether this is a human life, deserving of legal protection or not. Abortion is not a procedural question, such as whether punitive damages should be treble damages or quadruple damages, or whether the statute of limitations should be one year, three years, or seven years.
One can take positions on particular aspects of abortion that are not purely pro-life or purely pro-choice (oppose partial birth abortion, but allow first trimester abortion; oppose government funding of abortion, but allow private funding; make exceptions for abortions in the case of rape or incest, but otherwise prohibit it), and have those positions be honest disagreements. It doesn't sound like this is what Kucinich is doing, however.
Gay Quotas Have Come Out of the Closet, Finally
From the Chicago Sun-Times: Mayor Daley on Wednesday opened the door to contract set-asides for businesses owned by gays and lesbians--provided they can prove they were frozen out of city contracts because of past discrimination.
My suspicion is that they are going to have a hard time proving past discrimination against gay and lesbian owned businesses for the simple reason that unlike black-owned businesses, where everyone knew that the owner was black, homosexuals, even 30 years ago, did their best to keep a very low profile.
Daley kept the volatile issue alive, one day after Chicago's first openly gay alderman took the first step toward a gay agenda that will start by extending ethics rules to the live-in partners of gay and lesbian city employees and could end with contract set-asides.
"You have to look at it. You have to have an open mind. There's nothing wrong with that," the mayor said.
Daley said he has no idea whether gay- and lesbian-owned businesses could meet the rigid burden of proof--a documented history of past discrimination--that a U.S. Supreme Court decision demands to justify contract set-asides.
Of course, this will only be a temporary roadblock. The rationale for contract set-asides will be that gays and lesbians, because of the laws, were unable to form the capital to start businesses, and get city contracts. This will become just another spoils system, much as minority-owned business set-asides have also become.
There is one difference, of course. Blacks were the victims of fierce discrimination for centuries. If you were to believe the claims of the Lawrence decision, systematic discrimination against homosexuals is only about 30 years ago.
Jerry Springer Is Running For Senate From Ohio, You Know
I found this very funny Letterman list over at The Corner:David Letterman's Top Ten List:
Top Ten Jerry Springer Campaign Promises
10. "Fifty-dollar tax rebate if you have sex with your wife's sister"
9. "All staff dinners will be at D.C.-area Hooters"
8. "Sausages will attack baseball players with bats!"
7. "Repeal restrictive laws against first-cousin marriages"
6. "Amend constitution to include words 'hoochie mama'"
5. "In the summer months, all press conferences are topless"
4. "I'll tell the truth about which legislators have too much junk in the trunk"
3. "Solar powered prostitutes"
2. "C-Span will feature more young people calling each other 'bitch'"
1. "Enough cheap sex to make the Clinton years look like a church social
Is Spam A Terrorist Plot?
I'm only half-joking. It does seem as though the quantity of it--and how much of it seems to include a computer virus--has increased dramatically since 9/11. Now, this could just be coincidental, but I notice that an awful lot of the incoming spam is clearly written by people with limited English skills.
Even if the spammers aren't connected to terrorists, cruise missles are still the right solution for spammers. I use McAfee SpamKiller now. It works, but it's a bit clumsy, and there are still a dozen pieces of spam a day that I have to add a filter for--and I really wish that I didn't have to use it at all.
Another Liberal Expresses Her Disapproval of Free Speech
This piece by Professor Sherry Colb of Rutgers Law School explains why what firefighters and police officers do and say off-duty isn't protected by the First Amendment. It's a well-done rationalization, as I would expect from a law professor, but it still boils down to this: the government is allowed to fire employees for saying offensive and distasteful things while off duty, because such speech raises questions about whether they would do their jobs properly. A public school math teacher who announces his strong belief that girls are stupid and unfit to study math cannot be expected to do a fair job of educating girls in mathematics, as his position requires him to do. A Humane Society employee who says that animals deserve to suffer cannot be trusted to provide nurturance and love to homeless animals. And a firefighter who finds humor in the lynching of a black man cannot be trusted to risk his own life to protect the lives of black men, women and children.
You will notice that every example that Professor Colb gives involve statements or beliefs that are offensive to the left--not a single example that would be offensive to the right. I have no question that if black government employees engaged in similarly offensive off-duty behavior, and were fired for that reason, that the ACLU would be lined up to defend their right to do so under the First Amendment.
Liberals used to defend civil liberties, even with the most extreme examples, based on high principles. It has become very clear in the last 10-15 years that the high principles were just an excuse to get what they wanted. Now that they are in control of the institutions, they are full of clever little arguments for why freedom of speech only protects speech that was offensive to the majority of 1965--but doesn't protect speech offensive to the majority of 2003.
James Lileks Makes a Good Point About Ann Coulter
I sometimes enjoy Coulter's writing--even when she is being unfair and cruel, she is often quite entertaining--but Lileks makes a good point about what Coulter does, and does in a way that's almost as funny as Coulter can be: Coulter is a Lumper. Anyone who says “all liberals are . . . “ and follows it with something like genetically driven to oppose the United States is just talking nonsense, and gives the impression that they are actually standing on their hands, and have taught their rectum to pass gas in such a way that forms recognizable phonemes. Yes, there are hard-cases who fit Coulter’s description. But it’s possible to be in favor of all sorts of lefty causes - progressive taxation, affirmative action, abortion, socialized medicine, etc. - and love America. That should be obvious. Otherwise you have to believe that 32 percent of the nation is actively devoted to its eventual destruction. One could say that the consequences of their beliefs might be ruinous - but ruin is not their objective. So to say “left-wingers hate America!” just strikes me as fatuous drivel. If that’s the case, there’s no point in arguing about anything. To the barricades!
I think every political writer does some Lumping (even I do, on occasion), simply because so often you do find an astonishing level of common ground shared by people of a particular political persuasion. It's useful to stand back occasionally, and think about it.
Globalizing Our Constitution
John Leo's recent column makes an interesting assertion: On ABC's This Week, Justice Breyer said a challenge for the next generation will be "whether our Constitution [fits] and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations." There's a sense in which this is obvious. Globalization and mass immigration are highlighting clashes between judicial systems. But there's an alarming interpretation too: the suggestion that the U.S. Constitution may have to be adapted to foreign governing documents.
Funny, but I don't remember when we amended our Constitution so that the job of Supreme Court justices is to make our Constitution fit into the governing documents of other nations. Was I just not paying attention that day?
The background for this is that the legal elites of America and other western nations attend the same conferences and swim in the same intellectual waters. At the conferences, Americans are attacked as insular and parochial for not adopting new international or transnational standards. This pressure is not just to pull away from American law and the Constitution. Often it is also a push toward standards out of sync with American traditions of liberty. The European version of free speech is so frighteningly narrow that a major push is underway to criminalize criticism of homosexuality.
New Hampshire Bans Junk Lawsuits Against Gun Makers
From the Concord Monitor: Gov. Craig Benson signed a bill into law yesterday that protects gun manufacturers and sellers from being sued when criminals use their products.
These absurd lawsuits, seeking to hold gun manufacturers liable for unlawful use of guns, are in the same league as holding McDonald's responsible for obesity.
The new law limits the liability of manufacturers, distributors, dealers and importers of guns and ammunition from harm caused by misuse. The law also protects access to guns and ammunition for lawful uses. It takes effect Jan. 1.
The New Iraq
It's amazing how many different Iraqs there seem to be. The mainstream media (those who hate George Bush) portray it as a continuing disaster of anarchy. Others who have returned from Iraq recently have a very different--and a very positive portrayal of a society that is finally enjoying freedom, and where the coalition forces are either grudgingly acknowledged as a good thing, or regarded as liberators. Read this article by Amir Taheri. Read all of it--there are so many thoughtful and important points that trying to excerpt the best or the most important is hopeless.
I can see why the left in the U.S. is hopping mad about what we did in Iraq. Iraqis are free from the secret police, from the torture chambers, and all the rest of what makes the left feel important.
A Disappointing Accusation Against The Traditional Values Coalition
This article in National Review Online says that the Traditional Values Coalition is attacking pro-life Congressmen in its mailings for supporting a change to the law allowing importation of prescription medicines from other countries. Why? The idea is that American consumers would be able to benefit from Canadian price controls. The pharmaceutical industry and the Bush administration have long (and plausibly) contended that opening the borders to medicine would also let in drugs that are illegal or dangerous. The TVC has added a new twist to the argument: Allowing imports would let RU-486 in, thus undermining the regulation of the abortion pill. The TVC is therefore going after at least 25 pro-life congressmen who support the idea. If the bill becomes law, their mailers say, RU-486 "may become as easy to get as aspirin." The TVC continues: "Call Congressman Kevin Brady. . . . Don't let him forget the sanctity of life." It even insinuates that liberalizing the bill was designed, in part, for the purpose of relaxing controls on RU-486.
The article goes on to indicate that the phamaceutical industry may have bought off TVC to oppose this bill on false grounds.
The TVC's claims aren't true. The importation bill does not make it legal, or likely, that people are going to be able to get RU-486 along with aspirin at a 7-11. As a matter of law, the importation bill does not appear to override all other regulations. You would still need a prescription to get the covered drugs, they would still have to be labeled — and RU-486 would still have to be taken in front of a doctor, with three mandatory appointments including a check-up a day later. Doctors, not individuals, would be allowed to import RU-486. The FDA would be able to tell Customs officials that any RU-486 shipments are very likely to be illegal, and therefore to make it an enforcement priority. It is true that it would be impossible to enforce these regulations perfectly; but that is true currently.Some social conservatives are suggesting that the TVC was paid off by the pharmaceutical lobby. Mike Schwartz, a vice president of Concerned Women for America, says that several social-conservative organizations were offered money in return for making the RU-486 arguments. Most of them turned it down, he said, citing Eric Licht of Coalitions for America and social-conservative lawyer Pat Trueman in particular. Trueman declined to be interviewed on the record. Licht confirmed that he was approached "preliminarily, hypothetically about some things we could do." He adds, "I didn't feel comfortable with it so I said no." He says that he was not contacted by the pharmaceutical industry, but declines to answer whether a lobbyist for the industry made the offer.
I often disagree with TVC--although I have become more sympathetic to their concerns over time--and my conversations with TVC's director, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, have left me a pretty positive feeling about him in the past. This disappoints me greatly. Honest disagreements are one thing; this is a pretty dishonest campaign, it seems.
Another Tragedy Caused by Letting Ordinary People Possess Incredibly Dangerous Devices
Eight dead, and dozens injured. No, not a gun. A car. SANTA MONICA, Calif. - A car plowed through a crowded farmers market Wednesday, killing at least eight people and possibly injuring dozens more, authorities said.
Firefighters and ambulances converged on the market area in the oceanside city's downtown and treated the injured in a large triage area.
Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Edward Osorio said as many as 25 pedestrians were injured.
Too Bizarre To Be Believed
Have you ever wondered if your favorite element has ever been referenced in a comic book? Wonder no more! Visit this truly amazing page. Thanks to Eugene Volokh for the pointer.
Interesting Claim: 20-30% of IV Drug Abusers Are Lesbians
From American Journal of Public Health: Women injection drug users who have sex with women (WSW IDUs) comprise 20 percent to 30 percent of American women IDUs. Compared to other women IDUs, WSW IDUs have higher HIV prevalence and incidence rates and a greater likelihood of engaging in high- risk injection and sexual practices with men.
I have banged the drum for sometime about the disproportionate reporting by homosexuals of having been child sexual abuse victims (30% of men and 48% of women in one San Francisco Dept. of Public Health survey that I have read). There are sound reasons for suspecting that severe drug abuse may be an adult response to child sexual abuse, and I can think of several examples among people that I know. (One woman at a Bible study explained to my wife that it was better to be homeless for five years, than to stay at home in an abusive situation.) Lesbians (including bisexual women) are about 1-2% of the American women--and yet they are apparently about 10x to 15x that fraction of female IV drug abusers. Does anyone besides me find that a pretty compelling reason to:
1. Reconsider the claim that homosexuals are "born that way."
2. Do everything possible to prevent child abuse, by discouraging divorce--one of the mechanisms that often leads to it?
UPDATE: The study does indicate that the sample group (n=803) came from "street-recruited women," but unless you can come up with some reason to think that such a sampling method will give disproportionately lesbian drug addicts, as opposed to straight drug addicts, I don't think it impairs the sampling.
Is There A Public Health Reason to Regulate Casual Sex?
In particular, is there a public health reason to regulate homosexual anal sex? An interesting article about the rise of a phenomenon that AIDS experts are calling "superinfection": PARIS - Evidence is growing that "superinfection" with more than one strain of HIV (news - web sites) may be more common than previously thought, which could complicate efforts to make a vaccine, experts said Monday at an international AIDS (news - web sites) conference.
It's certainly true that promiscuity increases substantially the spread of STDs; the spread of infection rises exponentially with the increase in the number of sexual partners that an infected person has. Anal sex seems to be especially well-suited to the spread of AIDS, and specifically homosexual anal sex seems to be an especially effective mechanism, because a man who becomes infected has more opportunity to infect others than a woman who becomes infected with AIDS.
Scientists reported three new cases of HIV-infected people who initially were doing well without drugs but became sick years later after contracting a second strain of the AIDS virus.
"Superinfection is sobering," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (news - web sites), the chief U.S. AIDS research agency. He was not involved in the studies.
"That means that although you can mount an adequate response against one virus, the body still does not have the capability to protect you against new infection, which tells you that the development of a vaccine is going to be even more of a challenge."
It appears that vaginal and oral intercourse is less effective at transmitting AIDS than anal intercourse:For example, anal sex -- in which HIV-infected semen comes into contact with tiny abrasions of the anal wall -- is highly risky for HIV transmission. Oral sex -- in which semen or vaginal fluids are taken into the mouth and/or swallowed -- is considered a less likely route of HIV transmission.
From what I have read in a variety of places (including here ), women are less likely to transmit AIDS to men than men are to transmit it to women. In addition, women who become infected tend to sicken and die more quickly than men, reducing their opportunities to spread the disease.
If you accept the usual liberal public health arguments (such as applied to guns), these are all legitimate public health arguments for regulating homosexual anal sex--even if the law is overbroad, affecting the relatively small percentage of gay men who are in permanent, mutually monogamous relationships. After all, liberals don't mind that many gun control laws are even more overbroad, impacting the vast majority of gun owners who will never misuse a gun.
UPDATE: It appears that unprotected homosexual anal intercourse with persons whose HIV status is either unknown, or different (meaning that one partner is at risk of being infected) is still pretty common: Subjects were classified as having potentially serodiscordant unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) if they reported UAI with at least two persons whose HIV status was not known to them in the preceding six months. Unprotected was defined as "not always" using a condom with anal intercourse. Anal intercourse was insertive, receptive, or both.
Now, the higher rate of "potentially serodiscordant UAI" among the HIV+ compared to the HIV- is worrisome because these are people who can't claim ignorance as the reason that they are putting others at risk. The HIV- risktakers can at least pretend that they have been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years, and have no idea that they are risking a slow and painful death.
Most MSM (90.5 percent) had previously tested for HIV, 64.2 percent were white, and 59.5 percent were over age 30. Overall, 1,343 (12.7 percent) reported UAI in the preceding six months with at least two partners whose HIV serostatus was not known. Potentially serodiscordant UAI was higher among HIV-positive respondents (20.8 percent) compared with HIV- negative respondents (12.1 percent). For MSM who did not know or report their HIV serostatus, any UAI with two or more anal sex partners (reported by 13.4 percent) was considered potentially serodiscordant.
Bizarre Article About Michael Chertoff's Confirmation to the U.S. 3rd Circuit
At first glance, the article is suggesting that Judicial Watch's attempt to block Chertoff's confirmation was some sort of political payback for Chertoff's refusal to investigate the Clinton Administration's use of IRS against political enemies (like Judicial Watch). But the full story gives the impression that while there is little reason to assume that Chertoff is dirty, there is some reason to wonder what's going on with another interesting character: The man whom Chertoff is accused of not reining in is Stanley Myatt, who between 1969 and the 1980s was accused of smuggling marijuana in private planes, embezzlement and interstate transport of stolen securities. It is not clear, even to law enforcement officers, whether Myatt -- who uses more than one name -- was ever convicted. As one prosecutor says, "he's not one of those guys who leaves an accurate trail."
Very interesting. It makes you wonder who Myatt is--and why law enforcement isn't interested. Not surprisingly, the article goes on to discuss the connection between Myatt, Clinton, and Democratic Party fundraising in Cailfornia. One of the people involved in this bizarre witches' brew is a guy named Peter Paul:
Part of that trail can be found in Strikeout, the 1988 autobiography of Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain, who was convicted of racketeering. McLain described Myatt thus: "He was a big guy, about 6-3 and 240 pounds, had black hair and carried the biggest handgun I'd ever seen ... Myatt kept an even bigger weapon, a submachine gun like an Uzi or something, in his car, which had tinted glass so nobody could see in. This guy was right out of 'Miami Vice.'"
Myatt was forced into the public eye in February 2001, when a former private-plane pilot, James Pritchett, was arrested in the parking lot of an Applebee's restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., trying to pay a hit man $2,500 to kill Myatt. The hit man turned out to be an undercover sheriff's deputy, who arrested Pritchett on the spot.
West Palm Beach Assistant State Attorney Jim Martz says Myatt had an odd reaction to being the victim of an attempted homicide: "He wouldn't talk to us at all and hooked us up to his attorney." The lawyer, Jay Levine of Miami, did not return calls seeking comment.
According to Martz, Pritchett claimed that he and Myatt were drug smugglers who had made millions before Pritchett came to believe Myatt had double-crossed him out of $3 million, and he vowed to kill his former partner. Pritchett was sentenced to 15 years in April 2002 for trying to kill Myatt.
There was something else odd about the case: No other law enforcement authorities were interested in Myatt, even though he seemed like an ideal candidate for investigation. "We don't have anybody screaming about Myatt," says Martz. Paul had once spent almost $2 million on a lavish party for Sen. Clinton in Hollywood, Fitton says. The evening attracted dozens of stars, including Michelle Pfeiffer and the cast of "Ally McBeal," and culminated with Bill Clinton, then president, playing the saxophone in a pair of Ray-Bans. Paul was never repaid, and the $2 million was never reported to the Federal Election Commission, Fitton alleges.
Very odd indeed.
But after communications between Judicial Watch and Chertoff's Washington staff, Fitton and Paul were told that the prosecution was going ahead without a deal. On Sept. 19, 2001, the Justice Department's organized crime and racketeering chief, Bruce Ohr, wrote to Judicial Watch: "It is impossible to arrange another meeting between you and Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff ... nothing has changed in relation to his involvement in the Peter Paul matter. Mr. Chertoff will continue to be involved in the case and will have to approve any disposition of this matter." Ohr declines to comment.
Another strange item that I found through this link on How Appealling.
Delaware's Governor Has Signed a Concealed Weapon Permit Reciprocity Law
HB 178, passed June 27, signed by the governor July 11. The guts of the bill:Notwithstanding any other provision of this Code to the contrary, the State of Delaware shall give full faith and credit and shall otherwise honor and give full force and effect to all licenses/permits issued to the citizens of other states where those issuing states also give full faith and credit and otherwise honor the licenses issued by the State of Delaware pursuant to this Section and where those licenses/permits are issued by authority pursuant to state law. The Attorney General shall communicate the provisions of this Section to the Attorneys General of the several states and shall determine those states whose licensing/permit systems qualify for recognition under this Section. Likewise, the Attorney General shall, at least annually, publish a list of all such states whose licensing/permit systems qualify for recognition hereunder and shall make such list readily available to all State and local law enforcement agencies within the State as well as to all then-current holders of licenses issued by the State of Delaware pursuant to this Section.
It looks like the Delaware A-G needs to actually do some letter writing, but since Idaho recognizes permits from all other states, I will shortly be able to add another state to the places that I am allowed to carry.
More Reminders That Public Schools Have To Be Sued To Support The First Amendment
I found this link to a 3rd U.S. Circuit decision over at How Appealing. The guts of the case were:
1. Punxsutawney Area High School had an "activity period" of the day when students were required to be in class, but this time was available for extracurricular activities, including student clubs. Students could use this time for just about any purpose, including studying, socializing, or other non-instructional activities.
2. Melissa Donovan, a student there, organized a non-approved student activity that involved prayer. Remember: this is an entirely voluntary activity. No student was required to attend, to participate, and because there was freedom to move freely throughout the school, no one had any reason to feel left out or like an outsider.
3. Donovan didn't bother trying to get approval for her group, since she knew it would not be approved.
4. Not surprisingly, the school insisted that they not meet during the activity period, because of the religious nature of the group. The school even went so far as to claim that this activity period was instructional time.
The Court of Appeals decided that Donovan was in the right. The guarantee of freedom of religion in the First Amendment means something! Wow! With the EAA, Congress specifically made it “unlawful for any public secondary school which receives federal financial assistance and which has a limited open forum to deny equal access” to student groups based on the religious or other content-based nature of the speech at their proposed meetings. 20 U.S.C. § 4071(a). Congress passed the statute to address perceived widespread discrimination against religious speech in public schools.
It sounds like that perception was pretty darn accurate. This is one of the reasons that "liberal" is a dirty word to me. Liberals claim to support freedom of expression, but through their control of public schools, they demonstrate that they don't really mean it.
Part Of Why I Don't Take Most Claims of Racism Very Seriously Anymore
From a Washington Post story about the television business: Similarly, on Sunday Steve Harvey said that a strong accusation he made 18 months ago -- that the WB network paid him less to appear on his sitcom than it paid white actors on lower-rated series -- was just a scam to get more money out of the network.
Bush's Tax Cut Shows Up in My Paycheck
I was wondering why my semimonthly paycheck was about $60 larger than usual. I couldn't have punched through the Social Security tax ceiling this early in the year. It turned out that the Bush tax cut finally showed up in reduced withholding.
Now, I am not keen on running deficits, but if you worship at the altar of the economist John Maynard Keynes--as not only Democrats do, but even Richard Nixon eventually did: "We are all Keynesians now"--there is some merit to this action. Keynes claim was that governments should run deficits to spend out of recessions, and run surpluses during the boom part of the cycle to pay down the debts run up during the recession. As a theory, it's sound; in practice, governments have a nasty tendency to keep running deficits during the boom times because it buys votes.
I suspect that most American households, with two paychecks coming in, probably make close to what I do, and therefore we can expect about $100 a month more in the average household. The sensible thing to do with the extra money is to retire debt, especially credit card debt. That won't get the economy rolling. Fortunately, the average American is about as sensible with money as they are with sex, and so that $100 a month is going to be spent on new cars, consumer electronics, and meals out. Let's hope that there is enough of this consumer spending to revive the economy.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Upholds State's Concealed Weapon Law
I'm not thrilled with the result--Wisconsin has a complete ban on concealed carry, and I'm not thrilled with the Wisconsin Supreme Court's very artificial distinctions between fundamental rights that deserve strict scrutiny and fundamental rights that can be restricted if the law in question is "reasonable."
They do seem to have reached the right conclusion by the wrong process, however, in one area. When Wisconsin's voters added a right to keep and bear arms to the state constitution a few years back, there was an existing ban on concealed carrying of firearms--no permits. It is, I think, perfectly reasonable to assume that the new guarantee was not intended to overturn the existing law, especially because there is no direct conflict between the two. Open carry is lawful, and there seems to be no evidence that the voters or legislators intended this right to keep and bear arms to destroy the existing law.
This is consistent with McIntyre v. State, 170 Ind. 163, 83 N.E. 1005 (1908), which had a similar situation--the Indiana Constitution of 1850 had a right to keep and bear arms provision in it, and when adopted, Indiana had a general ban on concealed carrying of handguns. The Indiana Supreme Court decided when a clause or provision of a constitution or statute has been readopted after the same has been construed by the courts of such state, it will be concluded that it was adopted with the interpretation and construction which said courts had enunciated.
This would have been a good case for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to cite. Instead, they cited the nearly opposite situation, in State v. McAdams, 714 P.2d 1236, 1237 (Wyo. 1986). In McAdams, the concealed weapon law was enacted well after the Wyoming Constitution's right to keep and bear arms provision. From my book For the Defense of Themselves and the State. The Wyoming Supreme Court insisted
I suppose if decisions like Lawrence weren't oozing out of the U.S. Supreme Court these days like pus out of an infected chancre, I would be only a little peeved at the McAdams decision and this Wisconsin Supreme Court decision. But liberals want it both ways--the right of the state governments to "to enact laws for the health, safety, comfort, moral and general welfare of the people" but insisting that the state governments can't be trusted to pass laws that clearly impact the health and moral welfare of the population.In the second place, defendant’s argument incorrectly presumes that the right to carry concealed arms for defensive purposes did exist when the constitution was adopted. An absolute right to bear arms, concealed or otherwise, has never been recognized, even at common law. State v. Rupp, Iowa, 282 N.W.2d 125 (1979). In the case of Carfield v. State, Wyo., 649 P.2d 865 (1982), dealing with the constitutionality of a statute prohibiting a felon from carrying a weapon, this Court held that, by its very terms, Art. 1, §24 of the Wyoming Constitution grants to citizens only a limited right to bear arms in defense of themselves and of the state. Because there was no claim by the appellant that he possessed the weapon for the purpose of defending the state or himself, the Court found it unnecessary to address the question we are presented with in the present case.
In State v. Rupp (1979) and Carfield v. State (1982), the question was not whether the right to bear arms was absolute, but whether convicted felons could be prohibited from bearing arms as a loss of civil rights for past criminal behavior. Even the assertion that the Wyoming Constitution “grants only a limited right to bear arms in defense of themselves,” based on Carfield is highly questionable. In the Carfield decision, the Wyoming Supreme Court had cited Hyde v. City of Birmingham (1980), but the rest of the decisions cited related to ex-felons in possession of arms.
The Wyoming Supreme Court then went on to argue that constitutional rights were always subject to the police power, and quoted State v. Langley, 53 Wyo. 332, 84 P.2d 767 (1938), an alcohol regulation case: “That power, giving the legislature the right to enact laws for the health, safety, comfort, moral and general welfare of the people, is an attribute of sovereignty, is essential for every civilized government, is inherent in the legislature except as expressly limited, and no express grant thereof is necessary.”
There Are Days That I Despair for America
Along with the absurd "historical" arguments based on Puritans being gay-friendly, one of the other arguments for overturning the Texas sodomy statute was that sodomy laws were originally part of a larger system of traditional, religious sexual morality laws--the rest of which no longer exist. Texas, for example, had repealed its bestiality statute in 1973, when the legislature wrote the dearly departed homosexual sodomy law. What were they thinking? Did bestiality have so much support in Texas in 1973 that the legislature felt like legalizing it?
Most Americans purport to be Christians--a sizeable fraction identifying themselves as evangelical or fundamentalist Christians. Yet American life is built increasingly around the unlimited pursuit of sex: premarital, extramarital, and postmarital. A lot of Americans have taken marriage vows that they asserted were permanent--and yet in the last 20 years, I have seen divorce become the norm--even among regular churchgoers.
Unfortunately, America is a fundamentally hypocritical and depraved nation. There are some who see the Lawrence decision as the beginning of the end of America. They are wrong. It is really just the final blow. There will be some more shocking decisions of the courts, and I'm sure that there will be considerable popular outrage when the Court rules that states must offer gay marriage. There will be even more outrage when the Court rules that age of consent laws violate the Constitutional rights of children to express their sexuality, and bestiality and incest statutes have no rational basis. I'm not sure that the Court will ever rule that child molesters have a right to rape, but in practice, it will become so common and so lightly punished that it won't much matter that it is still illegal. There's an interesting article here about how the courts are scrapping the last vestiges of decency from heterosexual marriage, by removing any incentive to fidelity.
The die is now cast. The only way that America can reverse course on these matters is for Americans as a whole to give up on depravity and selfishness. That will take a horrific wake-up call. It seemed for a while as though 9/11 would be that wake-up call. For a few weeks, I saw clear evidence of a nation waking up to the very real danger that every day could be your last, and the need to live based on that. But Americans have returned to their old ways--the desire to let the news/entertainment media tell them what to think, and what to feel takes precedence over anything deeper.
Easily The Funniest Federal Court Decision That I Have Ever Read
Seriously--not just witty, but laugh out loud funny.Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact — complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words — to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions.
With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.
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Finally, Defendant does not even provide a cite to its desired Texas limitation statute. A more bumbling approach is difficult to conceive — but wait folks. There's More!
Defendant submitted a Reply brief, on June 11, 2001, after the Court had already drafted, but not finalized, this Order. In a regretful effort to be thorough, the Court reviewed this submission. It too fails to cite to either the Texas statute of limitations or any Fifth Circuit cases discussing maritime law liability for Plaintiff's claims versus Phillips.
Plaintiff responds to this deft, yet minimalist analytical wizardry with an equally gossamer wisp of an argument, although Plaintiff does at least cite the federal limitations provision applicable to maritime tort claims. Naturally, Plaintiff also neglects to provide any analysis whatsoever of why his claim versus Defendant Phillips is a maritime action. Instead, Plaintiff "cites" to a single case from the Fourth Circuit.
Plaintiff's citation, however, points to a nonexistent Volume "1886" of the Federal Reporter Third Edition and neglects to provide a pinpoint citation for what, after being located, turned out to be a forty-page decision. Ultimately, to the Court's dismay after reviewing the opinion, it stands simply for the bombshell proposition that torts committed on navigable waters (in this case an alleged defamation committed by the controversial G. Gordon Liddy aboard a cruise ship at sea) require the application of general maritime rather than state tort law. See Wells v. Liddy, 186 F.3d 505, 524 (4th Cir. 1999) (What the ..)?!
The Court cannot even begin to comprehend why this case was selected for reference. It is almost as if Plaintiff's counsel chose the opinion by throwing long range darts at the Federal Reporter (remarkably enough hitting a nonexistent volume!). And though the Court often gives great heed to dicta from courts as far flung as those of Manitoba, it finds this case unpersuasive. There is nothing in Plaintiff's cited case about ingress or egress between a vessel and a dock, although counsel must have been thinking that Mr. Liddy must have had both ingress and egress from the cruise ship at some docking facility, before uttering his fateful words.
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After this remarkably long walk on a short legal pier, having received no useful guidance whatever from either party, the Court has endeavored, primarily based upon its affection for both counsel, but also out of its own sense of morbid curiosity, to resolve what it perceived to be the legal issue presented. Despite the waste of perfectly good crayon seen in both parties' briefing (and the inexplicable odor of wet dog emanating from such) the Court believes it has satisfactorily resolved this matter. Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED.
Opposition to Public Sex And Exposure of Genitals is Homophobia?
From Newsday: Anti-Gay Concerns Addressed
East Hampton Village officials and gay leaders resolved yesterday to meet regularly and address fears that homophobia is jeopardizing a local beach.
In response to angry criticisms voiced yesterday at a public forum, police Chief Gerard Larsen said he will confer with the district attorney's office to see whether he can legally stop a private security firm hired by homeowners from videotaping and monitoring Two Mile Hollow Beach. Meanwhile, the East End Gay Organization is creating a task force to meet with police biweekly.
The organization called for the two-hour forum after the Further Lane Association, an organization of homeowners who live near the beach, hired Superior Group of Sag Harbor to monitor and videotape Two Mile Hollow in early June for public sex, public urination and trespassing. The beach has been a popular meeting place for gay men for more than 50 years.
The firm threatened to make civilian arrests, prompting Larsen to alert the East End Gay Organization before sending four plainclothes village officers to monitor the beach on June 13, resulting in the arrest of three men for public urination and two others for oral sex. No one was targeted because of sexual orientation, Larsen has said.
The Emerging Academic & Legal Struggle To Legitimize Child Molestation
This article talks about the effort going on in academic circles to legitimize child molestation.On its website, NAMBLA Director David Thorstad claims: "Pederasty, like homosexuality, has existed, and exists, in all societies that have ever been studied. Homoeroticism is a ubiquitous feature of human experience, as even efforts to repress it confirm. Men and youths have always been attracted to each other, and, like homosexuality in general, their love is irrepressible."
Of course, the claim that homosexuality has always existed, and that attempts to suppress it are very modern, was part of the Lawrence decision. Reclassifying pedophilia already subject to debate
The article goes on to list several recent scholarly publications promoting the idea that adults can have sex with kids without doing any harm to them.
During its annual convention in May, the American Psychiatric Association hosted a symposium discussing the removal of pedophilia along with other categories of mental illness (collectively known as paraphilia) from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
After much criticism following CNSNews.com coverage of the symposium, the APA issued a statement reiterating its position on pedophilia.
But in his 1999 article "Harming the Little Ones: The Effects of Pedophilia on Children," Timothy Dailey, senior analyst for cultural studies with the Family Research Council, chronicled the APA's treatment of pedophilia in the DSM and compares it to the APA evolution of homosexuality.
In DSM revisions, Dailey explained that APA "adds a subjective qualification similar to that which appeared with regard to homosexuality: The individual must be 'markedly distressed' by his own pedophilic activity to be considered needful of therapy," Dailey wrote, adding that in the latest revision, pedophilia "is to be considered a paraphilia when the behavior causes 'clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.'"
I have expressed my concern that at some point the Supreme Court is going to use the same reasoning as in Lawrence to make child molestation a constitutional right. They probably won't do it so bluntly; more likely, they will decide that the state laws setting age of consent violate the constitutional rights of minors, because these laws are backward and fail to account for modern conditions. And to my surprise, there is apparently a member of the Court already committed to the idea that 12 year olds are capable of making sensible decisions about who to have sex with:Potential trouble on the Supreme Court
However, restraining the Court may prove more difficult than expected. Responding to criticism aimed at Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) over his conclusions that the Lawrence decision could lead to legalized pedophilia and other sexual acts, the Catholic Family Association of America (CFAA) pointed to a potential pedophilia advocate on the Court itself.
"Given that homosexual advocates are in a full court press to lower the age of consent as low as it can go, and pro-pedophile sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 's documented advocacy of lowering the age of consent to 12 years old, parents should be horrified that there are so few politicians, like Sen. Santorum, actually defending the family," Timothy Chichester, CFAA president, said April 23.
Chichester was referring to a paper authored by Ginsburg entitled "Sex Bias in the U.S. Code," which was prepared for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in April 1977
The allegation was further substantiated by Robert Knight, director of CWA's Culture Institute, in "Homosexual Behavior and Pedophilia," an article he co-authored with the Family Research Council's Frank York.
"When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an attorney for the ACLU, she co-authored a report recommending that the age of consent for sexual acts be lowered to 12 years of age," the article points out.
Knight and York's footnoted documentation on this is as follows: "Sex Bias in the U.S. Code," Report for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, April 1977, p. 102, quoted in "Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Feminist World View," The Phyllis Schlafly Report, Vol. 26, No. 12, Section 1, p. 3. The paragraph (from the Ginsburg report) reads as follows: "'Eliminate the phrase "carnal knowledge of any female, not his wife, who has not attained the age of 16 years" and substitute a federal, sex-neutral definition of the offense. ... A person is guilty of an offense if he engages in a sexual act with another person. ... [and] the other person is, in fact, less than 12 years old.'"
