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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, May 07, 2005
Tom DeLay's Travel & Ethics Problems Why aren't we hearing the name of Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) a bit more? He makes DeLay seem like a rank amateur, even assuming all the charges against DeLay are true. (Of course, Rep. Hastings was actually removed from the federal bench some years for taking a bribe from a drug dealer who had a criminal charge pending before Judge Hastings.) The Alcee Hastings Ethics Violations blog is full of charming little items like this: I would like to correct my earlier figure stating that Rep. Alcee Hastings and Vanessa Griddine spent about $18,000 in Belgium on their September 11-14, 2004 trip. The acutal figure according to the Congressional Record for November 16, 2004, is $14,193.44. $2972.00 of this was spent on diem for the lucky couple and a further 11,401.44 was spent on what must have been a marvelous flight across the pond. Looking For A Rather Specific House Plan I've been playing with Punch! Super Home Suite, which is a pretty cool house design program, but you don't have to spend a lot of time doing this to realize how hard it is design a house. To my surprise, since there are dozens of online vendors of house designs, some with more than 10,000 different designs available, I am having trouble finding what I need ready made. Here's my goal. If you have seen a house that fits this description, or know of a vendor that supplies such a design, let me know. Because we are building on a rather narrow chunk of mountain, the house has to be less than 40 feet wide--so, long and narrow. Four bedrooms (at least one of which will actually used as an office), two or three bathrooms. Because we have spectacular views, it would be good if all rooms had large exterior windows--something that is all window on the outside, rather like the International-style skyscraper, but in a home. This argues for a two story house, so that the four bedrooms all have at least two walls of windows. I am leaning towards a "Great Room" approach instead of a formal dining room, living room, and family room. (By the time this place is built, our son is probably going to be off at college, anyway.) I tried to design a two story that followed the slope of the mountain, with the second story only sharing a few feet of its floor with the ceiling of the first floor, and ditto for the first floor and the garage. If we were building in Southern California, the first story could have a flat roof, but this is snow country, so a roof sufficiently peaked would block the views from the second story, and ditto for the garage roof. To solve this problem, we would need a more conventional design, with all three layers stacked vertically. Throw your suggestions this way. So, Who Said This? Liberal Democrat, Ashamed of Thuggish U.S. Allies? Interesting statement: [T]he agreement in 1945 at Yalta among President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill "followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact." The decisions at Yalta led to the division of eastern Europe and creation of the Soviet bloc.Yup. President Bush said this. It says a lot about how far "progressives" in this country have gone astray that this next statement in defense of democracy would be regarded with contempt by that crowd: "The idea of countries helping others become free - I would hope that would be viewed as not revolutionary, but rational foreign policy and decent foreign policy and humane foreign policy," Bush said. "I think countries ought to feel comfortable with having democracies on their borders.It seems that most progressives are more interested in making Islamofascists happy than in seeing democratic states. UPDATE: The link to the Associated Press article is dead. See here for the speech Bush gave. Friday, May 06, 2005
Another Winner My review of the Russell Optics 85mm Super-Plossl posted on astromart.com a few weeks ago is the winner this week. A Wicked Thought About North Korea's Nuclear Test Preparations This news story reports that North Korea seems to be digging a hole and building "luxurious" reviewing stands consistent with preparing to test a nuclear weapon--or at least, to give the U.S. that impression: White House and Pentagon officials are closely monitoring a recent stream of satellite photographs of North Korea that appear to show rapid, extensive preparations for a nuclear weapons test, including the construction of a reviewing stand, presumably for dignitaries, according to American and foreign officials who have been briefed on the imagery.I have a wicked thought. If it looks like North Korea is really going to have a nuclear test, and Megalomaniac-in-Chief Kim Jong Il actually shows up.... Wow! They must have miscalculated the yield! Who would have guessed that it turned out to be ten megatons instead? Kim Jong Il and most of the rest of the leadership vanishes in a flash! Okay, daydream over. It would be obvious that we did it. But it's a nice fantasy. "Chlamydia Outbreak Kills a Dozen Penguins" Not surprisingly, at the San Francisco zoo. But there is a more innocent explanation than you might expect from Babylon-by-the-Bay: An outbreak of chlamydia at the San Francisco Zoo has left a dozen penguins dead, according to a spokesman. Discomfort in the Shower Professor Volokh argues that the problem of segregating soldiers by sexual orientation, as well as by sex, is not a sufficient argument for excluding homosexuals from the military: These are soldiers -- people who might have to get shot at by others, and who will otherwise be put in many very psychologically difficult positions. Even those who aren't in combat positions may have to deal with considerable difficulties and traumas. They're supposed to be, and I wager are, pretty tough.I think this shows that Professor Volokh doesn't understand the level of discomfort that most Americans have about the same sex lusting after them in the shower. I find it distasteful to have another guy trying to pick up on me in the frozen foods section. (This was in the San Francisco Bay Area--it made me a lot more understanding of how uncomfortable women get when a strange guy tries to pick up on them in an inappropriate place.) I suspect had I been in a locker room, I would have found it even more disturbing. And guess what? Compared to a lot of guys, I'm pretty calm about this sort of thing. I've talked to women who had similar discomfort with using locker rooms in the Bay Area, because of excessive staring by lesbians. So what happens if the military allows homosexuals to join up? I don't expect every straight person to refuse to join--but I would expect that at least some significant fraction will decide that along with all the other hardships of military life, they aren't interested in being in a situation like that. Remember that much of our military is very, very traditional in their moral values. I don't know exactly what the percentage would be refusing to join or stay, but considering that homosexuals are perhaps 4% of men, and less than 2% of women, I do not find it at all hard to believe that the net result would be a reduction in total force. A few years back, the Wall Street Journal carried a very powerful essay by a guy who had been in the Navy just after World War II--at a time when there was not yet any legal prohibition on homosexuality in the military. He described a ship that he was on where by either coincidence or by connivance, all the chief petty officers were homosexual--and sexual harassment of straight sailors was constant. The CPOs had successfully short-circuited all attempts to go over their heads to the captain, and it required a near riot to bring the matter to the captain's attention. We already have a bit of a problem with sexual harassment and fraternization violations involving women in the military, and it is hard to believe that this problem would not be substantially worse with homosexual men in the service. UPDATE: Stupid me! I don't how I overlooked this! The primary function of the U.S. military is to promote equal rights and help homosexuals feel good about themselves! The defense of the nation is a secondary mission. UPDATE 2: To Professor Volokh's credit, he points out that Montgomery County Schools are engaged in an unconstitutional and factually inaccurate propaganda campaign in favor of homosexuality. UPDATE 3: A reader sent me the full text of the Wall Street Journal article in question. I didn't have all the details quite right, but close enough: Gays in the Military? A Cautionary Tale Labels: homosexuality LAX Security Different River is discussing Los Angeles International Airport Security, but the airport code appears on their jackets--with unintentionally humorous results. [Correction: Different River was actually just thinking about what would happen if they had "LAX Security" on their jackets.] Oddly enough, he points out an example of stupidly tight security there: In line to go through the metal detector, I had just reached the front when a uniformed TSA security screener broke into the line, said (politely) something to the effect of “hold on, let these people through” and allowed a large group (half-dozen?) of other uniformed TSA security screeners into the line in front of me. It was a new batch of screeners, arriving to begin their shift. Some of them put some things on the x-ray conveyor belt, and they all walked through the metal detector. “What, you have to be screened?” I asked one of them. “Yes, everybody has to be screened – and if it beeps I have to be wanded just like you,” he answered.He goes on to point out that if you can't trust the screeners, the whole system collapses. If a terrorist gets a job as a screener, his friends can carry a weapon or a bomb in their carry-on luggage--and the screener would just let them through. This is rather like screening the airline pilots. If you can't trust the flight crew, the whole system fails. Thursday, May 05, 2005
A Reader Asks, "How Did This End Up in the Los Angeles Times?" I am similarly surprised--perhaps they ran this so that they could return to their regularly scheduled campaign of secularism: Europe, and especially Western Europe, is suffering from a crisis of civilizational morale. The most dramatic manifestations are not Europe's fondness for governmental bureaucracy or its devotion to fiscally shaky healthcare schemes and pension plans, its lagging productivity or the appeasement mentality that some leaders display toward Islamist terrorism. No, the most dramatic manifestation is the brute fact that Europe is depopulating itself.I've long wondered what the world would be like if our species made a conscious decision to shrink down to one billion people, with proportionate reductions in all nations. Obviously, this would take generations, and I doubt that any such reduction could be sustained without totalitarianism or Earth First! engaging in anti-human biological warfare, as I have heard Earth First!ers fantasize about. But what would the practical results be? Imagine the United States with 50 million people. I don't think that we would need much in the way of air pollution equipment on our cars or factories. Even water pollution would be much less serious of a problem. Effectively all natural resources would become cheap. The amount of remaining oil would not change, but there would be 1/6 of the consumers that we have now. Land prices would fall dramatically--why bid up land prices if there's more of it than you need? Even the price of houses would fall, because there would be more existing houses than we could use up in generations. Of course, there's a downside to a smaller population. It is true that because of the collapse of natural resource prices, the entire world's population would be wealthier. This is one of the effects of the Black Death in Europe--it drove wages up faster than the value of land, and broke the back of feudalism. Unfortunately, I don't see that this would make much of a difference with respect to creativity and education. Intelligence and creativity are pretty much fixed percentages of the population; the geniuses would still be 2% of the population. Perhaps with a little less fighting over resources, we could improve the prenatal and early childhood care of the population, and have some reduction in retardation, but I would not expect a dramatic change in the ratio of clueless idiots and brilliant minds. Education wouldn't be any cheaper, because education is primarily the cost of salaries for teachers and administrators--not the cost of resources. But think of all the great inventions created in the last hundred years, and how many of them would not be here if 90% of the people were never born. Of course, there are some other innovations that we might lose as well: imagine a world with 90% fewer Osama bin Ladens, Adolph Hitlers, and Joseph Stalins. Still, our world would almost certainly be less rich in the technical innovations that we take for granted. I overheard a conversation in the lunchroom today--I don't exactly what these two electrical engineers were discussing--but they were discussing a problem of timing measured in tens of picoseconds. A picosecond is one trillionth of a second. There is something worse than the whole world shrinking to one billion people, keeping current proportions. That is if some cultures engage in unilateral reproductive disarmament. This is already happening; Western Europe has chosen to cede its future to the Islamic peoples of the Middle East, now settled in Europe. In a political sense, American liberalism has chosen to cede its future to Christian conservatives, because American liberals have chosen not to replace themselves, and one of the best predictors of a person's cultural sensibilities are those of the parents. This is part of why liberalism is a dying movement in America. If this were simply a change in gene pool, it wouldn't, in the long run, much matter. I don't much care if a German of the 21st century is dark haired and dark complected or blond and blue eyed. Unfortunately, this is also a change in culture--and the culture that is going to be dominant in Western Europe in another three or four generations is much more likely to be Islamofascist. The emerging secular culture of Western Europe has some troubling aspects to it, but aggressiveness isn't one of them. If aggression has a genetic component to it (and I suspect that it does), the twentieth century has successfully removed much of that gene from the European gene pool, at Verdun, at Ypres, at the Battle of the Bulge. Lipitor Holiday That's not two words you find together very often. I mentioned a while back that my doctor had reduced my Lipitor prescription from 20 mg to 10 mg. Today, my doctor decided that the results were so good (within the healthy range for my age) that I am going off of Lipitor for 90 days, to see if my exercise regimen is sufficient. In addition, he tells me that Lovastatin, now available as a generic (and thus much cheaper) is turning out to be the better choice for people with only slightly elevated cholesterol levels. So at the end of the 90 days, I may go back on generic Lovastatin, back onto Lipitor--and on nothing at all. A little hint: if your doctor prescribes 10 mg Lipitor, have him prescribe 20 mg Lipitor, and cut the tablets in half. It is much cheaper. UPDATE: A reader who works in the industry points out that this may cause problems with some drugs: I haven't looked at Lipitor per se, but there are lots of drugs with certain tablet coatings and thicknesses, excipients, etc. that are specifically designed to achieve a certain dissolution rate (and thereby release rate) when consumed. Cut them in half, and they may be released too quickly, lowering their overall effectiveness. This is particularly the case with drugs that are enteric coated (need to get to the intestines [because] they are slow-absorbing, or because gastric juices in stomach will render them ineffective or create undesirable by-products, etc.). The Lipitor prescribing info identifies a wax as an excipient, signalling a coating, and also notes that there is a low absorption rate based on gastric mucosa, so I would suspect that cutting your tablets in half may alter their effectiveness (and cause byproducts to be absorbed by the liver). Whether it would do so to a material degree, I don't have the information to guess. Also, some drugs are highly water-reactive (Lipitor chemically doesn't seem to be). Leave a cut-open tablet around, and water/oxygen can also destabilize your drugMy doctor didn't think there was a problem with this, but before trying this with other drugs, check with your doctor. Sore Losers Tom McMahon points to this site that sells, "Save America! Kill Republicans" clothing. Perhaps this was intended to be funny. That's what they get for hiring Whoopi Goldberg as their comedy consultant. Crowing About a Labour Party Victory Mark it down on your calendar--it isn't often that you will see me crowing about a Labour Party politician winning an election. There's a lot about Tony Blair that I don't like, and I find much of his Labour Party far less attractive than Tony Blair. But for quite a number of ex-Britons that I know, Tony Blair was going to lose this election for being Bush's poodle and going to war in Iraq. Pfllffflluuhh! (That's my attempt at spelling a Bronx cheer.) While I have been generally in sympathy with Britain's Conservative Party, their desire to call Blair a liar for taking Britain to war does not say much for Michael Howard. How hard would it have been to say, "Blair--unlike much of his party--did the right thing on Iraq. We have serious objections to his economic and social policies, and we will run a strong campaign of principled opposition to his policies, but we stand united with him on the importance of removing dangerous genocidal maniacs like Saddam Hussein." Excuse Me, But I Think I Just Found a Time Machine This gushing San Francisco Chronicle book review of Bob Avakian's autobiography just astonishes me--was it actually written in 1970, and just published? If you aren't old enough to know who Bob Avakian is--he runs the Revolutionary Communist Party USA--a Maoist organization so bizarre that in the 1970s and early 1980s, it made Lyndon Larouche's group look sane and rational. The review is one of those reminders that sympathy for Communism--a movement that murdered tens of millions of people in the twentieth century, while producing poverty and suffering on an unprecedented scale--remains among the journalistic classes: Bob Avakian has devoted his life to the one ideology that he believes holds the promise of massively releasing human freedom and dignity. The ideology is communism.I suppose if Bob Avakian had been a member of a really important leftist group, like Eldridge Cleaver, Stokley Carmichael, or H. Rap Brown, I could see why his memoirs might be interesting from a historical perspective. But the Revolutionary Communist Party makes Lyndon Larouche seem like a major political party. Thanks to Marc Cooper for the link. He summarizes the idiocy of this well: Now, Chairman Bob, 62 years old – and who has lived a great chunk of his life in “exile” in France -- has the perfect right to scratch out a book and the Chron has the same right to review it.If you think Cooper is exaggerating: I spent too much of an evening at a political science professor's house talking to members of the RCP who kept insisting that Stalin was "the last real fighter for the people!" (And yes, one guy kept emphasizing that word.) Vigilante Has a Specific Meaning Professor Bainbridge, with whom I generally agree, quotes with approval from Poliblogger that: And as far as the Minutemen are concerned: the President got it right, they are vigilantes.For "vigilante" to have any meaning outside of the Humpty Dumpty "words mean what I want them to mean" category, the Minutemen would have to be doing at least one of the following: 1. Arresting or physically confronting the illegals. 2. Putting them on trial, in either a kangaroo court or some form of unofficial tribunal. 3. Punishing them with either death or corporal punishment. 4. Threatening the illegals. But they aren't doing any of those things. They are calling the Border Patrol and reporting the presence of illegals. If this makes them "vigilantes" then Neighborhood Watch is vigilantism. I understand that some people want cheap labor. It is certainly good for some businesses and those Americans who want cheap maids and gardeners--and not so good for citizens and legal residents whose wages are depressed by illegals. But that does not excuse falsely labeling the Minutemen as vigilantes. Oh Dear! Sexual Equality! Quick, Stop It! Disturbing article about what happened at Roger Williams University when a bunch of students decided to parody the current PC craze of putting on a play in which a woman seduces a 13 year old girl--and this is considered a positive thing. I would quote from the article, but it frankly describes the parody of "The Vagina Monologues"--and how the administration decided that the parody was vulgar, but not what was being parodied. Even in my youth, both the "The Vagina Monologues" and associated materials, and its parody, would have been considered so vulgar that they would have gotten you arrested and convicted--they wouldn't be actively promoted by a university. What I find so disturbing about all this is the core assumption underlying "The Vagina Monologues"--that women are raised to see themselves and sex as "dirty." In 1950, I can believe this. In 1960, not all that much had changed. But today? I live in one of the most conservative parts of the United States, and I can't see any evidence of this--anywhere. We live in a society that celebrates human sexuality in all forms (except for sex with children, and the ACLU is working on that). About the only forms of sexual activity that meet with any significant disapproval are bestiality, pedophilia, and homosexuality. Obscenity Prosecutions The federal government is pursuing obscenity prosecutions. Now, before you get upset, this doesn't mean the Playboy Channel is going away. It doesn't mean that reproductions of Michaelangelo's David are going to get fig leaves. It doesn't mean that the pool scene in Children of a Lesser God will be cut out of the copy at your local video store. The materials being prosecuted are the sort of stuff that is unambiguously obscene under Miller v. California (1973): Thomas Lambert made no attempt to hide the kind of videos he peddled from his Montana home — hard-core sex tapes involving bestiality, sadomasochism and simulated rape.Interestingly enough, the article goes on to mention the so far unsuccessful attempt to prosecute Extreme Associates, but neglects to mention that they make hardcore films depicting rape, torture, and murder. Instapundit, of course, does not approve: "Someone tell [Attorney General] Gonzales that there's a war on." The same could be said for drug prosecutions, financial chicanery, and a host of other matters under Department of Justice jurisdiction. The materials in question, "bestiality, sadomasochism and simulated rape," are hardly worthy of the protection of the First Amendment. Some of you may find the following paragraph unpleasant to read (it was unpleasant to write). Here's an unpleasant thought experiment for those who think that these materials aren't worth prosecuting. Imagine if KKK Films made extremely graphic movies which depicted homosexuals being grabbed off the streets of San Francisco, castrated, and tortured to death. Another film depicts a Gloria Allred type attorney kidnapped from in front of a courthouse, gang raped and tortured to death while anti-feminist rhetoric is spewed at her. The third film involves a group of heroic neo-Nazis "arresting" a stereotyped Jew caught in the act of raping a very young looking "Aryan" female, then torturing him to death. Do you think that liberals would still be upset about obscenity prosecutions? They would be outraged not just because the materials are offensive, but because this sort of garbage can and does encouraqe unstable sorts to think of this as acceptable behavior. Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Bill Maher Expresses His Opinion About Molesting Children Jonah Goldberg quotes the noted comedian and talk show host from the Late Late Show on CBS yesterday. I won't reproduce it here--it is simply too offensive for my blog. But it does demonstrate the left's willingness to justify and excuse molesting children--that what Michael Jackson is alleged to have done really isn't all that bad. Water, Geology, & My 11+ Acres I've reached the point where I am getting estimates for roads, well, septic tank, foundations, and perhaps even a site-built house--because of the length of the driveway, the modular home may turn out to be very close to the cost of something built on-site. It turns out that the geology of my area is very, very well researched, because the old state highway 15, built in 1946, was, almost from the beginning, doing that old Paul Simon song, "Slip Slidin' Away." One report is John J. Peebles, Engineering Geology of the Cartwright Canyon Quadrangle (1962). This includes not only a detailed discussion of why water causes some of the rock to slide and rotate (to the great consternation of the highway on top of it), but also a detailed map showing the nature of the bedrock under the subdivision that includes my eleven acres. It turns out that those of my neighbors who have hit water were the ones who were on something called the Payette Formation, a Quaternary sandstone/siltstone layer. Most hit water at about 3650 to 3700 foot elevation. I'll add a picture this evening taken a short distance from my lot where a road cut exposes these layers very nicely--and at the exact same elevation as one of the septic tank exploratory holes on my lot. Here's the road cut showing the standstone:  Those who have gone down hundreds of feet and hit either nothing, or short-lived water flows, are in Tertiary period basalt. (Quaternary period is later than Tertiary.) Basalt is pretty resistant to erosion, and when it decays, it turns into montmorillionite, a clay that absorbs water readily--and then becomes an effective block to water passing through. The Payette Formation is later, and layered on top of the Tertiary basalt in our area. The Payette Formation, like most sandstone/siltstone formations, erodes easily. It turns out that my parcel has two massive basalt blocks--which is why I have the wonderful view. In between the two basalt blocks, running north-south, is a Payette Formation layer--and my neighbor to the north has a well that is about 80 feet north of the property line, along that layer. On the north and south sides of my lot, where the hill slopes, appears to be Payette Formation.  On the south side the county inspector dug a couple of exploratory pits for septic tank evaluation (what is commonly called a "perc test"). When I look carefully at the lower pit, which is within four feet elevation of the road cut mentioned above, I see what seems to be identical sandstone layers. The perc test calls this "shale," but shale is metamorphosed sandstone. This stuff is so crumbly that it barely qualifies as rock, much less metamorphosed sandstone.  This gives me some confidence that a well here would hit water at about 160 feet, perhaps less. The other pit, higher up the hillside, seems to be montmorillionite clay--a basalt decay production. This is consistent with the basalt block that shows up on the 1962 map.  Fortunately, I have been able to test out my theories of where to find water in the subdivision with someone else's money. A house that we looked at--and decided against--was eventually bought. The new owner believed that he had a working well. When they turned on the pump--nothing came out. The well had gone dry. A friend from church, Jim, is a well driller, and had been hired to dig a new well. I found out about this, and explained to him and the new owner that the house was in the middle of the basalt block that forms the lower half of my lot--and why he was unlikely to get water in the place where the old well had been, or where Jim was drilling the new well. A little investigation found yet a third well hole on the site, also dry, and for the same apparent reason--this basalt was an effective barrier to water flow coming down the mountain. Anyway, I made a couple of suggestions on places where they were more likely to find water. One was too steep for Jim's well drilling rig (but it had a spring, so there was water there), but the other was feasible. Sure enough, at about 160 feet down (or about 3680 feet elevation), they hit a very solid flow of good water. I am looking at the question of a driveway. The original estimate from the modular home contractor was for a $23,600 driveway, based partly on my original plan to be at the very top of the lot (higher than I need for the view, and too close to the property line, I think), and I suspect some goldplating--the ultimate driveway. However, the other contractor, for a site-built home, used to own this lot, and points out that an existing path up the basalt spine is quite stable, and in many places, you can see that basalt. It might need to be smoothed a bit, but it doesn't look like it needs layers of rock and gravel to be an adequate all weather road.  If we go with a site-built home, it will be three stories, each recessed back to fit the shape of the hill. The bottom story is the garage, with stairs into the first floor, and then stairs up to the second floor. The road will also go up the side of the hill so that we can move furniture in through doors on the first and second floors. (We'll have a deck all the way around both floors.) Some of the local flora:  View down the hill. The red car is my Corvette.  View to the north, of the Payette River Valley, and the town of Horseshoe Bend, from about where the living room will be:  Labels: house project Kingdom of Heaven The previews looked good; Focus on the Family's Plugged In gave it a so-so review, primarily concerned that the Crusaders didn't seem to have any religious zeal--which was, after all, one of the reasons for the Crusades. Other reviews popping up around the blogosphere indicate that this is more about current politics than about the Crusades: Kingdom of Heaven sets itself up as though it has some story to tell. But the history it does tell is inaccurate, and the plot utterly uninteresting. Balian is shaped by events rather than one who shapes them. This comes through most annoyingly in his inability to grasp the faith for which he fights, or the city he's charged to defend. "What is Jerusalem worth?" he asks, not knowing the answer. When the great Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) finally conquers the city and demands terms, Balian meekly accepts freedom to leave with the survivors alive.Other reviews suggest that it is just a weak film with a weak lead actor and a bit too much leftist foolishness: So in a movie about the Crusades, who are the good guys supposed to be? And how should a skilled but inconsistent director treat a primarily religious war in the heart of the Holy Land?I guess I won't be wasting my time or money on this. The Crusades really are a good basis for a movie--or even several movies--because there are so many interesting characters and events contained in them. I won't claim to any great expertise on the subject--just what I learned in High Middle Ages class. You have deranged populists like Peter the Hermit, who headed off to Palestine ahead of the "official" army, leading a vast mob of what today would be meth freak trailer trash. Peter the Hermit was motivated less by Christianity and more by hatred of Jews--so much so that on the way to Palestine, he burned down German churches that were sheltering Jews from Peter's mob. Once arrived, Peter did not simply kill Muslim prisoners, he ate them. The Byzantine Empire decided that Peter wasn't really someone that they wanted around, so they aimed him towards a pretty powerful Muslim army--Peter was one of the few who got away. Wal-Mart & Its Employees I've long been bothered by Wal-Mart, Red China's primary salesman in America, but I confess that I have a hard time seeing them as entirely evil. On the one hand, their relentless pursuit of efficiency in distribution destroys small and medium sized businesses across America. Wal-Mart aren't the only such examples. Many of the "Big Box" home improvement stores have done the same to traditional hardware stores--and yet without the full range of, for example, fasteners that traditional hardware stores carry. Try to find a 3/8"-16 x 1.25" long bolt at many of these stores. They have 1" and 1.5" long, but not 1.25" long. On the other hand, by making lots of stuff cheap (with big help from the Chinese government's artificially cheap currency), they do make it easier for poor people to get both their needs and wants. I also recognize that much of the opposition to Wal-Mart's wage and benefits package isn't completely selfless--labor unions have an economic interest in destroying Wal-Mart. To my surprise and pleasure, this New York Times article is prepared to admit that the labor unions have their own selfish goals on this, and admits of the complexity of the questions about this: Labor groups and their allies are focusing on Wal-Mart because they say that the campaign will not just benefit its workers but also reduce the existing pressure on unionized competitors to reduce their own wages and benefits.I cringe a little when Mr. Scott says that wages are determined mostly by market forces. Yes, but if you are making a pile of money, you can afford to be generous. It makes your workers happy, and the example of Henry Ford--paying $5 a day to his assembly line workers, and infuriating his competitors by being so generous--is something that Wal-Mart should think about. But it is also the case that a lot of the mom-and-pop operations that are being driven out of business by Wal-Mart around the country are not high wage, good benefits package places for their employees. Retail has been notoriously bad for its employees for decades, and for a simple reason: these are generally low skill jobs, and there is no shortage of low skill workers. Ever Wonder Why Meth Is No Common? Perhaps it is the police showing how to make it in classrooms. No, I'm serious. I read news stories like the one below and I am forced to conclude that either: 1. The Grays Harbor sheriff's department don't have enough business, so they are teaching kids how to make meth. 2. The police there are idiots. 3. The reporter covering the story is negligently careless in reporting the facts. You read this story, and try to figure out which of the choices above is the case: ELMA - A local woman went 'through the roof' when a deputy took his anti-drug message to high school.Thanks to PunditGuy for the link. Is Something Missing From This Illegal Immigrant Story? I find myself wondering if the reporter left out some rather important facts: JAFFREY, N.H. -- A man from Mexico pleaded guilty on Tuesday to trespassing in the town of New Ipswich, N.H., as the police passed the first test of whether they can use trespassing laws against illegal immigrants on public property.So why did "federal immigration officials" refuse to take into custody someone "in the country on forged documents"? I know that Bush is really intent on making sure that Wal-Mart has an adequate supply of low wage workers, but you know, someone who has entered the country illegally, with forged documents, might almost qualify as a violation of federal law! Tuesday, May 03, 2005
I Guess It Was Inevitable Blogging is turning into a full-time business for some: In a dramatic sign that Web logs are going mainstream, three of the largest political blogs are banding together to form what is believed to be a first-of-its kind ad-supported network.I confess that I have been tempted to see about turning this into a group blog--perhaps get several of the other conservative bloggers to join up, in the hopes that our collective readership would get us into the 10,000 visitors a day area, and increase advertising revenue substantially. (I just received a $110 check from Google AdSense for the first quarter--obviously, that's not enough to do much more than pay the hosting bills.) Perhaps we would split the advertising revenue based on the number of items each blogged during the quarter. Drugs Are Bad For You At least, that's my guess to explain this: INVERNESS - An Inverness man was arrested Saturday after breaking into his neighbors' house and threatening them, shocking himself by sticking his fingers into a lamp socket, threatening a deputy with a metal rod, running naked through his yard and chewing through a cable in a patrol car, authorities said. Saddam Hussein's Financial Ties To Canada's Prime Minister Wondered why Canada, who supplied troops for Afghanistan, declined to help in Iraq? Here's one possible explanation: The Canadian company that Saddam Hussein invested a million dollars in belonged to the Prime Minister of Canada, canadafreepress.com has discovered. Monday, May 02, 2005
Where Is The Outrage? Stuart Taylor is upset that judicial conservatives aren't more willing to express outrage about California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who President Bush wants on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals: What's most striking about this nomination is the question why Bush wants to add to this, of all courts, a person who has:Here's the problem: what has Mr. Taylor so upset is that Justice Brown is arguing that the courts were willing to recognize some rights as fundamental--and imposed a strict scrutiny standard--but with respect to economic rights, that a law had a "rational basis" was enough justification: Protection of property was a major casualty of the Revolution of 1937. The paradigmatic case, written by that premiere constitutional operative, William O. Douglas, is Williamson v. Lee Optical.23 The court drew a line between personal rights and property rights or economic interests, and applied two different constitutional tests. Rights were reordered and property acquired a second class status.24 If the right asserted was economic, the court held the Legislature could do anything it pleased. Judicial review for alleged constitutional infirmities under the due process clause was virtually nonexistent. On the other hand, if the right was personal and "fundamental," review was intolerably strict.Now, if you want to argue that Lochner was wrongly decided, because it found a right to contract hiding under the Fourteenth Amendment, I can be sympathetic. The majority in Lochner clearly extended the Fourteenth Amendment's reach to an area that the Congress that passed it did not intend. But when Taylor makes this argument, I just laugh: Brown is not alone in her embrace of a radical libertarian brand of judicial activism. A number of conservative-libertarian law professors, public-interest activists, and other thinkers have long expressed similar views. This group is ranged toward the right fringe of the legal-political spectrum, just as the remaining exponents of radical redistributionist and Marxist theories are ranged toward the left fringe.Radical redistribution of wealth isn't on the agenda of those advocating "social Lochnerism"--instead, we have examples such as Lawrence v. Texas (2003), in which the Court invented "constitutional rights unmentioned in the Constitution," and did a little rewriting of history to justify it. If you find the prospect of "radical" sorts like Justice Brown substituting her judgment about economic liberty for that of the legislatures outrageous, what do you call it when your side substitutes its views of appropriate laws for that of the state legislatures? Any criticism that you can make of Lochner's arrogance is even more true of Lawrence. UPDATE: Oddly enough, Taylor in email agrees that Roe and the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (Mass. 2003) went too far in finding liberties not actually in the respective constitutions, but excuses Lawrence because sodomy laws are cruel to homosexuals because they stigmatize their expression of their sexuality. UPDATE 2: Professor Bernstein points out that one difference between Lochner and Lawrence is: I agree that the cases are actually quite similar: traditional police power functions (regulation of working conditions, morals sex laws) declared by the Court to be unconstitutional because they violated an important right and had no third-party externalities or paternalistic health reasons (none at least asserted in Lawrence) to justify exercise of the police power. The big difference, I think is that Harlan made a persuasive case in the Lochner dissent that the law did perhaps protect workers' health, while this was not at issue in Lawrence due to the state's choice to argue that its law was based totally on moral disapproval, with no health rationale. Thus, Lawrence is easier than Lochner.While I would not want to defend state sodomy laws on public health grounds, if the State of Texas had really wanted to defend their law banning homosexual sodomy (and it doesn't look like they really made a serious effort), they could have made such an argument. It would be about as persuasive as the attempts to justify tobacco laws, gun control laws, and a whole host of other measures that are generally regarded as legitimate by the left, even though they punish all members of a class for externalities that will be imposed by only some members of that class. As an example: if a California resident sells another California resident a Colt AR-15 (a felony under California law), there is only a small possibility that the sale of that gun will lead to a crime of violence. Even accepting the dubious claim of gun control advocates that so-called "assault weapons" are disproportionately used in violent crimes, it is clear that only some members of the class of assault weapon purchasers will commit crimes with those guns. Yet this is considered sufficient justification for a law that affects all members of the class. The Texas homosexual sodomy statute was adopted in 1974, and clearly, AIDS wasn't a motivation--but Texas could have used the very liberal argument below to justify the statute. It is clear that on the average, homosexual anal sex is more likely to spread AIDS than either sexual intercourse or even heterosexual anal sex, for at least three reasons: 1. Anal sex is much more likely to cause tearing that opens up pathways for transmission of AIDS. 2. Homosexual men, on average, are more promiscuous than heterosexual men. Even if you take the very low differential of homosexual men being about 1.5x - 4x as promiscuous (which, having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I find laughable), this means about six to sixteen times the rate of spread of STDs, because the transmission of STDs operates on an exponential growth curve. 3. Women are far less effective at spreading AIDS to men than vice versa, partly because women are less promiscuous than men, and because women do not transmit AIDS to men through sexual intercourse anywhere near as well as men transmit to women. Straight women who get AIDS are much more likely to be terminal (in both senses of the word) points for the disease than homosexual men. If anyone wants to get all upset about "Lochnerism," they better get upset about Lawrence as well--or their objections smack of politics more than a concern for the Constitution. Wrong Object Florida has passed a law to make it easier to keep track of child molesters: TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Spurred by the killing of a 9-year-old girl, Gov. Jeb Bush on Monday signed a law imposing tougher penalties on child molesters and requiring many of those released from prison to wear satellite tracking devices for the rest of their lives.I would actually prefer something else permanently attached--a 20 pound ball and chain, around the molester's ankle. Advantages 1. It would slow them down quite dramatically--much harder to get away from angry parents. 2. No need to wonder if the local police are keeping track of the molester's movements--that ball and chain would make sure that everyone knew that a convicted molester was nearby. 3. They might get chased into a lake. Disadvantages When the ACLU files suit on behalf of convicted Florida child molesters (as you know that they will do), they will claim that a ball and chain is "cruel and unusual punishment." May Universities Prohibit Recruiting by the U.S. Military? This is the question that the U.S. Supreme Court has apparently decided to answer: Justices will review a lower court ruling in favor of law schools that restricted recruiters to protest of the Pentagon's policy of excluding openly gay people from military service.Professor Orin Kerr predicts that the Court will uphold the Solomon Amendment, overturning the 3rd Circuit decision. It is an interesting case, because even Professor Michael Dorf, who finds the Solomon Amendment "odious" thinks the 3rd Circuit decision striking down Solomon was wrong, for several reasons. (Read here for a detailed explanation.) There are people attempting to argue that, based on the Supreme Court's decision allowing Boy Scouts of America to exclude homosexuals, the Court should rule that universities have a similar right to exclude those with whom they disagree--such as the U.S. military. I wish that I was confident that the Court will overturn the 3rd Circuit decision. Reasons why I think that they might overturn it: why hear this appeal if they intend to uphold the decision? Perhaps there's a circuit split on this, which might explain it, but if four justices voted to grant certiorari for this case because they are hoping to continue forward from striking down Texas's sodomy law, then they have no idea what this will contribute to the popular sentiment against the judiciary. I think it is more likely that the Court will overrule the 3rd Circuit. There is one clear difference between Boy Scouts of America and the U.S. military, which makes Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000), just |
