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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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Friday, September 23, 2005
Rude, Vulgar, Very Funny Complaint Letter It is a person upset about poor customer service from a British telephone and Internet provider--and reading the whole thing had me in great pain from laughing so hard. I'm only quoting the unvulgar section at the beginning, which is mildly entertaining--the sidesplitting part is a bit more crude than I will quote: Dear Cretins,Thanks to Random Thoughts From Marybeth for the pointer. NRA Wins Restraining Order Against Gun Confiscations According to this NRA press release: (Fairfax, VA) -- The United States District Court for the Eastern District in Louisiana today sided with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and issued a restraining order to bar further gun confiscations from peaceable and law-abiding victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.There's nothing identifying on what basis this order was issued, and I can't find the order on the Eastern District of Louisiana website (they are having some problems at the moment). It is nice to win, but it would even be nicer if we won based on the Second Amendment, or at least on the Louisiana Constitution's right to keep and bear arms provision: The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, but this provision shall not prevent the passage of laws to prohibit the carrying of weapons concealed on the person.UPDATE: I've received a copy of the restraining order--it doesn't say anything about why it was issued, except that the Mayor of New Orleans, the Police Chief, and the Sheriff's Department all acknowledge that they have no authority to seize lawfully possessed firearms: Defendants, C. Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans and P. Edwin Compass, III, Superintendent of Police for the City of New Orleans, deny the allegations in the Complaint For Declaratory Judgment and Injunctive Relief and specifically deny that it was or is the policy of the City of New Orleans nor the New Orleans Police Department to illegally seize lawfully possessed firearms from citizens;Okay, I'm confused. News coverage said that the police were seizing all firearms. Now the appropriate officials deny that they will do it, can do it, or did do it. UPDATE: And here's one of the requests that led to the restraining order. Labels: gun rights Jonah Goldberg's Wit What he is saying about the Porkbusters effort to get Congress to rein in spending isn't terribly brilliant, but the way he says is terribly witty. I wish that I could come up with sentences this clever, and visual images this weird: The porkbusters fight is fun now, but not since early cave men tried to train grizzly bears to give them tongue-baths has a project seemed more obviously doomed to end in disappointment. Conspiracy Theorist Weatherman Leaving Station I mentioned this weatherman's...unique...theories yesterday--and today he is leaving the station: POCATELLO - To the rest of the country, Scott Stevens is the Idaho weatherman who blames the Japanese Mafia for Hurricane Katrina. To folks in Pocatello, he's the face of the weather at KPVI News Channel 6.Well, it would be nice to think that. But what is more disturbing (and sounds like it precludes the ACLU filing suit on Stevens' behalf): Since Katrina, Stevens has been in newspapers across the country where he was quoted in an Associated Press story as saying the Yakuza Mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. He was a guest on Coast to Coast, a late night radio show that conducts call-in discussions on everything from bizarre weather patterns to alien abductions. On Wednesday, Stevens was interviewed by Fox News firebrand Bill O'Reilly.Perhaps the Acme Aluminum Foil Hat Company needs a spokesman. Idaho National Laboratory Building Cool Toys I don't think the invention here is really all that novel, but it's nice to see our leftist local rag covering this without moaning: Police and military officers will soon be able to use a single gun to break down doors and detain suspects during hostage rescues or drug raids, thanks to a new weapon the Idaho National Laboratory designed. An Underserved Market Hollywood is finally waking up: LOS ANGELES (AP) - At some of the largest and most influential Christian churches in the country, the lights dim and congregants watch a sneak preview of a new movie - about golf.The article goes on to point out that there's a very large, potentially quite profitable market that has historically not been aggressively pursued by the movie business. As I have pointed out in the past, there are a number of books that could be made into movies that would be attractive to the Christian market--and would have significant secular audiences as well: There are a lot of interesting stories out there that could be made into lavish costume dramas--and drag in an audience that doesn't ordinarily see movies. As an example, Nat Brandt's The Town That Started the Civil War, about the Oberlin Rescuers trial in 1858, would make a splendid film. It has a serious conflict: slavecatchers and U.S. marshals capture a runaway slave in Ohio, and try to take him back South. Oberlin College's students and faculty surround the hotel, with rifles, and demand freedom for the slave. It has social significance, with the Rescuers insisting that the laws of God take precedence over the laws of men. It has a trial, with all the drama that a trial entails. It has political machinations in the background, as abolitionist and slaveowner forces struggle over a jury. It has a great closing sequence, as we see John Brown reading about the case--and becoming increasingly committed to the Harpers' Ferry Raid. So why are properties like this sitting unused? But there's no sex; no homosexuals; no cannibalism; and no torture (although, if Hollywood insists, we can have the slave flashback to being whipped).Unfortunately, I don't have any contacts in the movie business, so I really don't have any method of pitching the idea to anyone that matters. Genetic Experimentation That Doesn't Bother Me If this were being done for some commercial purpose, it might bother me, but this experiment doesn't have the ethically disturbing aspects of putting human brain cells into mice: Scientists have successfully transplanted human chromosomes into mice, a first that promises to transform medical research into the genetic causes of disease. The mice were genetically engineered to carry a copy of human chromosome 21, a string of about 250 genes. About one in a thousand people are born with an extra copy of the chromosome, a genetic hiccup that causes Down's syndrome. Thursday, September 22, 2005
Discriminations If you haven't visited the Rosenbergs' blog Discriminations recently, you probably should. As the title suggests, the blog focuses on the problem of race, sex, and ethnic discrimination (something that liberals just love, as long as it going the "right way"). One of the more entertaining entries is: Meanwhile, university president Laurence Summers announced that Harvard would file an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to invalidate the Solomon Amendment, which cuts off funds to colleges that won't allow military recruiters.“The Law School and the University share a deep and enduring commitment to the principles of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity for all persons,” Summers said.Silly me. All this time I thought Harvard gave some people preferences based on their race, which violates both the principles of nondiscrimination and the principle of equal opportunity for all persons. The ACLU's Drive To Legalize Pedophilia Professor Volokh has been engaging in all sorts of troublemaking lately--including this post pointing out that it is not dirty politics to claim that Justice Ginsburg, back when she worked for the ACLU, argued for lowering the age of consent to 12: Yet then-existing federal law set the age of consent at 16. If the Ginsburg report had only intended to make the law sex-neutral, it could have done so without suggesting a new age of consent, or endorsing a proposed federal bill that lowered the age of consent. Yet the Ginsburg report's proposal recommended the replacement of a sex-specific age of consent of 16 with a sex-neutral age of consent of 12. It seems to me quite fair, and not a "smear," to fault the report for suggesting this change.More interesting is the various attempts of commenters to either excuse or rationalize lowering or abolishing the age of consent. Volokh points out in one of the comments that back in the late 1970s, quite a number of liberals thought this was a very cool idea: I agree the view is deluded, but some people seemed to have it during that era. (For whatever it's worth, the National Coalition of Gay Organizations' "1972 Gay Rights Platform in the United States" called for "Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent." According to Laud Humphreys, Out of the Closets: The Sociology of Homosexual Liberation 162 (1972), the meeting at which this was adopted was apparently a pretty mainstream event within the liberal activist movement -- "[s]upportive telegrams were received from Democratic candidates John Lindsay and George McGovern," which suggests that it wasn't just an entirely irrelevant fringe group.)The discussion inevitably turned into a discussion of the Limon case from Kansas, because the ACLU (Ginsburg's former employer) argued against Limon's conviction, both on the grounds that the Kansas statutory rape law discriminated against homosexuals (with more serious punishments than for heterosexuals who were close in age to the minor). Those defending the ACLU refused to believe that the ACLU argued for a constitutional right of minors to have sex with adults. The ACLU's brief is pretty clear on this (see footnote 13 on page 17): While a teenager’s constitutional rights may be more limited than an adult’s in some circumstances, and while the state is more likely to have a compelling state interest that justifies intruding upon a teenager’s rights, it is well established that teenagers - like adults - have a due process liberty interest in being free from state compulsion in making these types of personal decisions. [emphasis added]Especially in light of the brief's argument to which footnote 13 is attached--which lists a whole stack of rights that the ACLU will not acknowledge have any legitimate state regulation: Sexual intimacy, including same-sex intimacy, the Court explained, is protected by the same fundamental right to autonomy recognized in Griswold v. By the way, contrary to some of the claims being made about how Limon was having a consensual relationship with the 14 year old, read the Kansas Court of Appeals ruling: Limon, an 18-year-old male adult, and M.A.R., a 14-year-old boy, both resided at a school for the developmentally disabled. M.A.R. told police that Limon had performed one instance of oral sex on him. M.A.R. further told the police that Limon performed oral sex on him until he asked Limon to stop.Limon also had two previous convictions: Because of Limon's prior two adjudications for aggravated criminal sodomy, the trial court sentenced Limon to 206 months' imprisonment.UPDATE: Another part of the footnote does state: Laws that burden a minor’s liberty interest must be narrowly tailored to advance a compelling governmental interest unless they advance a 'significant state interest that is not present in the case of an adult.'So the question is: does the ACLU recognize a "compelling governmental interest" in preventing adults from having sex with children? Notice that this footnote is attached to a set of decisions in which the ACLU has not recognize a compelling governmental interest in regulating anything. UPDATE 2: I just noticed something else interesting about the ACLU's brief in defense of Limon: they are arguing that a minor has a "liberty interest" in having sex free of government compulsion. If they were defending a minor against a criminal charge, this would be at least plausibly related to the question--but in this case, they were defending an adult against a criminal charge. There might well be an equal protection argument based an adult's "liberty interest," but they were defending the adult--not the minor. The ACLU was arguing for the right of a minor to have sex--but it was really the right of an adult to have sex with a minor who apparently said, "No." This is even more monstrous than I first noticed. Labels: child sexual abuse, homosexuality House Project: Whoops! Over Budget! We are running about $40,000 over the initial budget. Using all tile instead of carpet added about $10,000. The appliance budget was about $4500 too low (because of the jetted tub). The concrete budget was $3000 too low (labor for the stampings). The garage door budget came in $1000 too low (we added a second garage door at the back). The original budget didn't include the backup generator ($1800). We hadn't originally planned a sprinkler system--which makes sense for fire suppression, so there's $2000. The extra $1400 I spent on more insulation I think was a good investment, but it is amazing how all these little things add up. Time to make contributions through the PayPal button! And perhaps all the people who have given up on the Gulf Coast and moved to Boise (which is the second safest city for weather in the U.S.) will drive up housing prices enough here to increase the equity in our current house in Boise. UPDATE: Here's the biggest cause of the overrun: just as they were starting to put up the framing, my wife and I suddenly realized that similar houses he had built felt cramped because they had eight foot ceilings, so we switched to nine foot ceilings, and 2x6 walls, instead of 2x4 walls (for improved insulation). This doesn't sound like much, but an extra foot of ceiling means taller studs, more sheet rock--and on a 2300 square foot house, it adds up quickly. Labels: house project Wednesday, September 21, 2005
More Discussion of Iran & Future War With The U.S. I have no idea what the credibility of Arab News is, but they present a case here that Iran is preparing for war with the U.S. They make a number of plausible points for why Iran might think it could engage the U.S. in a limited war, and end up gaining both political prestige internationally, and strengthened internally against reformist factions. The one point that they don't make is that such a war would serve to destablize Iraqi democracy (a country that is already suffering more than a little problem with stability). This could only be a win for Iran, which would prefer an Islamic theocratic democratic model, not even a slightly secular and liberal democratic model as may develop in Iraq. I May Regret This Entry Because all the Chemtrails enthusiasts will start emailing me "proof." I've heard about this guy, and today it made both our local paper (the Idaho Statesman) and this Wyoming newspaper: IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) -- An Idaho weatherman says Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack -- and that this technology will soon be wielded again to hit another U.S. city.A reader's comment relaying this to me was, "It makes as much sense as global warming." I don't think so. Global warming might be real, but if so, it is probably not anthropogenic (or at most only partly anthropogenic). Stevens' theories...they are in their own private Idaho. National Hurricane Center Director: Natural Cycle With all the politicians blathering about how Katrina was the result of global warming and our failure to ratify the Kyoto Treaty, it is nice to see an expert responding: WASHINGTON: Expect many more hurricanes, large and small, in the next 10 to 20 years, the director of the US National Hurricane Centre warned the nation yesterday.Back in January, I blogged about how Chris Landsea (appropriate name for a hurricane specialist!) explained that he was withdrawing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) because of efforts to politicize hurricane science in the service of global warming policy. Labels: global warming Air Temperature Sensors For Sprinkler Systems I'm having a hard time finding what I need: a lawn sprinkler control system that allows an external air temperature sensor to override the timers, and force one of the zones to ON. Can you tell me where to look? UPDATE: Stuff I have found: Over at Smarthome.com is a collection of boxes that you can use to turn power on and off at various temperatures. Model 7145 is an outlet that turns on power at 120 degrees, and turns it off at 100 degrees. This would have to go outside somewhere--but this isn't really a sensor that feeds into a sprinkler controller. There must be some way to turn a 110 VAC power source into an input to a sprinkler controller that says, "Start zone 3." Acclima is a maker of "closed loop irrigation systems." (Located in Meridian, Idaho, right next door!) They are saying instead of using timers, use sensors to figure out whether you need to water or not. This is a very intelligent solution--so I am asking if they have an outdoor air temperature sensor to feed into this system. UPDATE 2: I may be looking for an elegant solution that isn't there--and not needed. Sprinkler control valves are 24 VDC, I think. A stepdown transformer from 110 VAC to 24 VDC, then fed into the line that goes to the fire sprinklers wires would mean that the 120 degree on, 100 degree off outlet would be enough to activate those sprinklers. Speaking Of Alternative Oil Sources Instapundit mentions that oil shale--a trillion barrel Plus source located in the United States--is looking quite promising with oil prices so high. (The Canadian oil sands, which I gather are a geologically similar format, are already being commercially exploited.) A couple of years back, I blogged about Changing World Technologies, a company that believed that it could turn sewage, garbage, turkey guts--in short, almost any organic material--into oil at the equivalent of $8 to $12 per barrel. According to their web site, they are currently producing oil from turkey guts in Missouri--and the energy to run the plant is coming from the oil that they produce. Their description is a little weasel-worded, but makes it sound as though they get 100 BTUs of energy for every 15-20 BTUs consumed. Now, a lot of magazines were hyping Changing World Technologies as the future two years ago, when oil was half the price it is now. I've asked a couple of times for an update--are they producing oil from turkey guts and sewage at a price that is competitive with current world oil prices? I've received no answer. If Changing World Technologies made enough sense for people like Warren Buffett to invest in it several years ago, when oil was cheap, I would think it would make even more sense today. So, what's the story? UPDATE: I received a lot of feedback from readers. One pointed me to a story in Fortune that said that it is turning out to be a less of a bargain for energy production than first thought: The key question is whether the end products are pure enough and cheap enough to compete with other biofuels and petroleum. Until recently it seemed that turkey fuel would score big on both counts. CWT saw opportunity in the mad cow scare of December 2003. Expecting U.S. authorities to ban the feeding of animal offal to livestock—a practice linked to mad cow disease—CWT and ConAgra formed a joint venture that built a $30 million plant in Carthage, Mo. The venture assumed that nearby turkey processors would provide lots of free turkey waste. Last year the Carthage plant began selling its output to a Midwestern manufacturer, which buys it for roughly $40 a barrel (25% less than conventional fuel) and uses it to run its plant. The Carthage factory now produces 400 barrels a day.Still, this might make sense as an alternative to filling garbage dumps with waste, but we still aren't quite at the point where it is cost-effective for producing oil. Another reader pointed me to this article from some sort of environmental organization--who you would expect to be quite supportive of a method of disposing of waste. The author purports to have a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Yale--but some of his statements make me wonder about his degree, because it betrays a real ignorance of chemistry: Now along comes one more scheme for playing on the gullibility of a public that is so dumb it actually believes that a complex technological society, such as ours, can rip and strip the earth of all its resources, use them transiently, then somehow destroy them all, and still continue to leave a thriving planet for future generations. As though the earth is some kind of a magic lamp we can rub and the genie will continue to bestow upon us any gift we request. This concept is idiotic, and any company that seeks to effectuate the "getting rid of" part of this scheme is selling a bill of goods leading to planetary suicide. But this may not be sufficiently specific to your article to satisfy you.Except that Changing World Technologies has never claimed to convert steel into oil. They've made the claim that organic waste (turkey guts, sewage, wood, paper, plastic)--all of which are made of largely of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, with a little bit of phosphorous, sulfur, and nitrogen--can be converted into oil (which is just about entirely carbon and hydrogen). CWT has always been clear that the various trace minerals that come out of garbage are essentially scrap, and play no part in the production of oil. It is possible--even likely--that the energy required to do this transformation from garbage to oil won't work. But there's no claim of transmutation in CWT's materials. Either "Dr." Palmer isn't reading carefully, or his rage that someone is trying to solve the garbage and oil problem is taking precedence over his education. Now let's look a little further, to the subheading "Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year ". Apply a bit of that skepticism that journalism once relied on. How many pounds is 600 million tons. Multiply 600,000,000 by 2000 to get 1200 billion pounds. Now lets look at the oil. Depending on your definition of barrel, one of them weighs 300 to 400 pounds. So multiply 4 billion by 300 and you get 1200 billion pounds. What a strange coincidence! These phoneys say they can turn every pound of mixed water, dirt, rocks, paper, steel, acetone, tars, polyethylene, concrete (and oh, yes, turkey scraps too) into one pound of - are you ready for this - not just oil, not just a grease derivative, but light Texas crude. The loaves and fishes story has now been left in the dust. Jesus must be biting his nails with regret that he didn't think of this.Uh, no. They have never claimed that they were goin to turn "dirt, rocks,... steel,... concrete" into oil. But paper (made largely of cellulose--carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen), acetone (again, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen), tars (hydrocarbons), polyethylene (again, hydrocarbons), and turkey scraps (carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, mostly): all of these things are convertible to oil. It might be too expensive to do so, but it isn't impossible. This Dr. Palmer is either a fanatic, or didn't learn enough chemistry to be expressing opinions as an expert. Oh! I was wondering why this guy knows so little about a subject in which he supposedly has a Ph.D.: As a member of the Sonoma County Local Waste Management Task Force and a former chairman of the Sonoma County Hazardous Materials Management Commission, he has been extensively involved in local garbage politics as well.Sonoma County: where multimillionaires race Ferraris, when they aren't praising Noam Chomsky's critiques of the evils of capitalism. Things Must Be Bad In Iraq! Miserable weather; death and mayhem around every corner; no hope for making things any better. I guess that's why 654 members of the Idaho National Guard just re-enlisted over there: More than 650 soldiers with the Idaho Army National Guard serving in Iraq have signed up to stay on duty, setting a record for combat-zone re-enlistments, the 116th Brigade Combat Team's public affairs staff said.There are 1800 members of the Idaho National Guard in the 116th Brigade, and obviously, not all of them had enlistments coming up, so we don't know how many chose not to re-enlist. If more than one third of the unit re-enlisted, however, I would guess that there weren't vast swarms who chose not to--even though it would mean a trip home. UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I don't get Instalanches as often as I would like (or deserve!), so feel free to keep scrolling down (and up). You are likely to find all sorts of odd, interesting, and occasionally irritating items by me. UPDATE 2: A new reader points me to this unemployment rate report for Idaho, which suggests that economic necessity isn't what is keeping Idahoans in the Guard: Idaho’s unemployment rate set a record low in August at 3.8 percent, seasonally adjusted. Total employment continued at a record high with 708,300 persons. The number of persons unemployed dropped to 27,700 persons, the lowest since January 1980. Iraqi Defense Ministry Corruption This is a very depressing story, both because it means that the Iraqi military isn't properly equipped to do its job, and because it suggests that U.S. officials did a lousy job of overseeing the contracts: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq’s finance minister alleges that $1 billion was stolen from his ministry, leaving the army with inferior weapons to confront insurgents.Britain's anti-American Independent of course emphasizes incompetence by U.S. overseers--and even implies that they were perhaps corrupt themselves: The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions.We really need to find out if U.S. officials involved were corrupt or incompetent. It does matter. "Stuck on Stupid" There was a press conference to discuss evacuation plans for hurricane Rita. Reporters were trying to get Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, who is directing the U.S. Army relief efforts along the Gulf Coast, to assign blame for what happened with respect to Katrina--instead of the purpose of the press conference: getting people safe from Rita: Let's not get stuck on the last storm. You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don't confuse the people please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight.General Honore isn't the most articulate person in public life, but "stuck on stupid" is fast moving into public discourse--for example, this headline: Is Desktop Linux Stuck on Stupid? Elasticity of Demand for Gasoline I've had this discussion with my wife, who simply finds it heard to believe that rising gasoline prices will substantially affect consumption. The experiment has been performed (as anyone who has filled up their car recently can tell you). Different River points to this discussion with graphs over at EconBrowser showing that gasoline demand has plumetted as prices have risen. This should be a "duh!" sort of answer, but there are a lot of people who simply can't imagine that: 1. People in the aggregate are capable of responding to economic incentives. 2. People in the aggregate have some discretion in the amount of driving that they do. Global Warming--On Mars I've previously mentioned the evidence of global warming happening on Mars, but here's yet more evidence of it from JPL (a place that I used to work): And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.As Instapundit observed: If only we had ratified Kyoto.My previous blog postings about the evidence that global warming is coming from outside of our atmosphere are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Previous blog postings about the question of whether global warming is anthropogenic (man-caused), part of some larger natural phenomenon, or some combination of the two, are here, here, here, and here. Blog posts about the politicization of the issue and sloppy reporting are here, and here. Labels: global warming Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Great Moments In Civilian Gun Self-Defense One is from--I kid you not--the town of Rifle, Colorado: A Denver-area hunter has quite a story to tell after killing a mountain lion that threatened to attack him.Uh, because humans are like really slow, well-marbled deer? And here's a law student that may have some serious explaining to do to the faculty when he gets back to school--he obviously missed the "Second Amendment is only about National Guard" lecture: MACON, Ga. - A Mercer University law student shot and killed a man who broke into his home, police said. Labels: gun rights A Billion Here, A Billion There You probably know the full quote from the late Sen. Everett Dirksen: "A billion here, a billion there, after a while it adds up to real money." Michael Williams points to an article from the Wall Street Journal reminding us that Congress is spending a truly astonishing amount of money to recover from Katrina: When President Bush announced last Thursday that the feds would take a lead role in the reconstruction of New Orleans, he in effect established a new $200 billion federal line of credit. To put that $200 billion in perspective, we could give every one of the 500,000 families displaced by Katrina a check for $400,000, and they could each build a beach front home virtually anywhere in America.Well, not in California. And yes, a lot of that money is going to be spent on levee repair, bridges, public buildings, so the $400,000 per family is a little misleading. Nonetheless, think of the kind of money we are talking about with this relief program. That's enough money that the interest payments would come to $1666 a month per family forever--without ever touching the principal. Yes, I'm sure that for some of Katrina's victims, $1666 a month is just a drop in the bucket, and would never be enough for them to make a fresh start somewhere else. My guess is that for many of the desperately poor who are now living in the Houston Astrodome, that would be enough to get a pretty nice apartment and food forever. Would it perhaps make more sense to write off New Orleans, and grant five years of $1000 a month payments per family to help them get relocated? This is still far more generous than it needs to be--but perhaps makes more sense than the current program to alleviate Congressional guilt. Denmark Sets A New Standard In Welfare Statism The Danish government is now paying prostitutes to have sex with disabled people: Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly defending a government campaign that pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.Professor Volokh (where I found the pointer to this article), has written quite a bit about slippery slopes in governmental policy, and this is certainly an example of it, and he identifies this as one of them: Services of Prostitutes -- From Crime to Government-Funded Entitlement in One Generation The PorkBusters Project This was going so nicely--bloggers coming up with examples of "pork barrel" spending that needed to be nuked, to get the budget under control. Instapundit was a big proponent of this effort--and then he decided to throw in something that, whether you think it is a good idea or not, isn't "pork barrel" at all--the FBI's prosecution of obscenity: I would have slapped the PorkBusters logo on this post, but I was afraid someone would notice that the pig isn't wearing pants . . . .You might not approve of the federal law prohibiting obscenity (it isn't new), or you could argue that there are more important priorities (chasing terrorists, for example), but this isn't pork barrel politics in any conventional sense of the word. It isn't specific to a particular district, and it doesn't pay off a special interest (unless you consider the vast majority of Americans who don't want rape/murder hardcore and bestiality porn being sold to be a "special interest"). You Really Should Prepare For This It makes al-Qaeda seem like small potatoes: NOUMEA, New Caledonia (Reuters) - The initial outbreak of what could explode into a bird flu pandemic may affect only a few people, but the world will have just weeks to contain the deadly virus before it spreads and kills millions.I mentioned a while back that I had just read Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999). There is a very real possibility that an avian flu variant comparable to the 1918 pandemic could get under way, and kill millions. Kolata's book quoted a number of disturbing accounts that makes you realize that even in the twentieth century, it was possible for a disease to start to devastate the planet. The economic consequences of 9/11 were dramatic--but another flu strain like 1918 would be far more disruptive to the economy, with millions dying over a year or two period, even in developed nations. There would be quarantines impacting travel, and disruption of global trade because developing nations would lose such a large part of their workforce. It's kind of nice that the new house is somewhat self-sufficient, at least for a few months. We have our own water supply, our own LP gas supply, and our own backup generator that runs off the LP gas. All we would need would be a few months worth of canned food. We already have more ammunition than we would ever need. (There's a long story behind all those cases of .308 Winchester, .223 Remington, and 9mm Parabellum.) William Rehnquist, Average Joe This is an amazing article by a lawyer telling about what happened when, as a law student editing his law school's journal, he had the nerve to ask Associate Justice Rehnquist to not only write a paper for the law journal--but then to deliver it in person--and Rehnquist accepted. The best part of the article is the description of what happened when Rehnquist decided to go out for a beer in Topeka, Kansas: I left the justice at the hotel about 8 that night and picked him up the next morning. He told me how much he enjoyed his walk and that he had three or four beers at one of the "joints." He said he sat at the bar, talked and told jokes late into the night with a number of the bar's regulars. Just before he left to return to the hotel, he asked one of his bar mates, Pete, what he did for a living.You wonder if "Pete and the gang" ever found out that this guy really was Associate Justice Rehnquist. Thanks to Professor Volokh for the pointer. Dan Rather Blathers About Dark Forces Dan Rather and "HBO Documentary and Family president Sheila Nevins" received lifetime achievement awards at the Emmys--and I find myself wondering what drugs Dan Rather is doing: Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Monday that there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career.Yeah, it is pretty scary when there are people checking to see if the documents you show on the CBS Evening News are bad forgeries or not. How presumptuous! (Especially since the documents were bad forgeries--and CBS News either was too stupid, or too dishonest, to bother checking.) The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a devastating analysis of Rather's speech, and that of Sheila Nevins, who complained about receiving criticisms for the documentaries that she produces. You need to read it all, but here's an excerpt that seemed to really hit the nail on the head--and remember, her job title is "HBO Documentary and Family president": I find it quite telling that Rather is getting his award right alongside the “Family Programming” president that produced such family gems as A Real Sex Xtra: Pornucopia – Going Down in the Valley and Cathouse 2: Back in the Saddle. For All Those Leftists Like Michael Moore... Who persist in thinking of the terrorists in Iraq as "the moral equivalent of the Minutemen": BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide bomber captured before he could blow himself up in a Shiite mosque claimed he was kidnapped, beaten and drugged by insurgents who forced him to take on the mission. The U.S. military said its medical tests indicated the man was telling the truth.This fits with other news accounts that report some suicide bombers in vehicles seem to have been tied in place, and at least one report indicates that Down's Syndrome sufferers have been used. The U.N. Defines A New Right This should upset leftists everywhere: In the final declaration last week 191 countries, including Sudan and North Korea, went along with a restatement of international law: that the world community has the right to take military action in the case of "national authorities manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity". It comes too late to help Darfur, not to mention Rwanda and Cambodia, but it is a millennial change.Not surprisingly, the rest of the article is sniping about this, because the left believes that national sovereignty is more important than stopping genocide. The Guardian article goes on to compare the "no-fly zones" created after the First Gulf War to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein's genocide to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. How typically leftist. Obscenity Prosecutions Warning: this contains some pretty unpleasant discussions of why the Justice Department is prosecuting obscenity. Professor Orin Kerr over at Volokh Conspiracy links to a Washington Post article that makes fun of the FBI's new obscenity squad. While the article emphasizes that pornography is now mainstream and perfectly acceptable to most Americans (probably true), what the article leaves out is what sort of materials are being prosecuted. The obscenity prosecutions that the Bush Administration is going after are films that involve sex with animals and that graphically depict rape and murder. From an ABC News report whose link no longer works, but that I excerpted here: On April 8, law enforcement seized five movies produced by Zicari's California-based company, Extreme Associates, which bills itself as "The Hardest Hard Core on the Web."From the San Francisco Chronicle: 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.If you want to argue that there should be no laws against obscenity, fine, make that argument. But Professor Kerr should have included some of the article that really captures not only what the FBI is going after--but why they are doing so: "Based on a review of past successful cases in a variety of jurisdictions," the memo said, the best odds of conviction come with pornography that "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior." No word on the universe of other kinks that helps make porn a multibillion-dollar industry.UPDATE: I am inclined to think that the occasional consumption of pornography by well-adjusted adults is probably not terribly destructive. (Nor would I consider it terribly healthy, either.) What does concern me a bit is: 1. The effect that a steady diet of violent and degrading pornography has on adults, especially those that aren't terribly well-adjusted. The tales that my daughter and son-in-law tell me of how soaked in porn their generation is--and the effects that it seems to be having on how men regard women--do not sound healthy. 2. As with most things, even though the law prohibits selling porn to children, there is a certain amount of it that flows through to kids. When I was growing up, there was a small amount of pornography that managed to percolate down to kids--but it wasn't much, because the total volume of pornography was limited. Even the most hardcore materials were generally pretty tame compared to the stuff that is being prosecuted by the Justice Department. As an adult, you can watch a pornographic movie and recognize that it isn't reality; hunky UPS drivers don't drop off a package at an office, and then have an orgy with the secretaries. Kids have a somewhat more limited understanding of the real world, and soaking them in it is likely to cause at least some kids to end up with pretty distorted views of themselves, of sexuality, and the world of adults. 3. Child molesters have long used pornography (both child pornography and adult pornography) as a method for both exciting the child just entering puberty, and for breaking down their inhibitions. Here's an example. And here. Monday, September 19, 2005
So This Was Why Norman Bates Kept Mom in the Basement It's sad, in a creepy way: MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - A Frenchman in his sixties lived for five years with the body of his dead mother to keep receiving her 700 euros monthly pension, judicial sources said Saturday. The Most Violent Country in the Developed World It is one with very strict gun control laws: A UNITED Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America.Now, I will admit that the U.S. still has higher murder rates--but even if guns increase murder rates--a very arguable point--it might well be that the tradeoff is lower rates of non-lethal assaults. "For The Most Part": Japanese Internment Michelle Malkin received a storm of criticism for her book defending the Japanese internment. Liberal law professor Eric Muller went so far as to attempt to have government bookstores remove it from sale. (Of course, this isn't a surprise; he's such a liberal that he proposed suing a publisher of a book because he didn't like seeing it in his daughter's school library.) Anyway, Michelle Malkin does a nice job of dealing with a memo now being used to disprove her claim that there was a real national security concern that motivated the internment of Japanese residents and American citizens of Japanese ancestry. As she points out, the handwritten postscript to the note by Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy is of uncertain provenance, and directly conflicts his testimony on the subject. I would raise even another point: the handwritten note actually says: These people are not 'internees' — they are under no suspicion for the most part and were moved largely because we felt we could not control our own white citizen (sic) in California.The important words here are "for the most part." If McCloy thought that there was no suspicion at all, I rather doubt that he would have put in a qualifying phrase such as "for the most part." This is especially true because his memo was attempting to justify the amount of money that the government was spending on feeding the internees. If I were being hassled about how much I was spending, and I felt that I needed to justify it, I wouldn't add a qualifier like this to the "under no suspicion" statement--simply because it weakens the argument. Malkin makes a good bit of the "protecting them from white violence" claim. Bill Hosokawa's book Nisei argues that this wasn't a very strong reason, because there had been only a few murders and other acts of "extralegal violence" against Japanese-Americans between Pearl Harbor and the start of the internment. I don't have any basis to dispute Hosokawa's claim that there hadn't been a lot of violence. I do think, however, that the government could well have been partially motivated by that concern. A schoolmate's mother was interned at Rowher in Arkansas, and told me that the KKK attacked the camp at one point, and raped and killed some internees. I can't find any information about such an attack in any published sources, and this might well be the sort of rumor that is rife in wartime. Still, anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S. was strong during this time, and much of the propaganda of the time was fiercely racist. I can see why the government might have been motivated by concern about anti-Japanese rioting. (I still think that other, less legitimate motives were stronger factors, such as the widespread hatred for Japanese-Americans outcompeting lazy white farmers.) There Are Black & White Questions, You Know Especially when the questions are asked by Justice Black and Justice White. Professor Volokh has one of those, "I told you so" moments here, where he discusses how during oral arguments of the Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) case, Justice Hugo Black asked if the Court struck down Connecticut's contraception ban, wouldn't it open the door to striking down laws against abortion as well? Justice White's questions to the plaintiff's lawyer proceeded to draw a bright line between contraception and abortion: [Justice White]: Well, apart from that, Mr. Emerson, I take it abortion involves killing a life in being, doesn't it? Isn't that a rather different problem from contraception?Justice Black dissented from Griswold; Justice White did not. When Roe v. Wade (1973) came along, Justice White was on the dissenting side--presumably for the reason above. Professor Volokh is making the point that Justice Black's concern turned out to be correct--that once the door was opened with Griswold's "privacy right," it would be difficult to close the door. Even though I agree with Justices Stewart and Black's dissent that called the contraception ban "an uncommonly silly law," I have some serious problems with the Griswold decision. I think that you can make a pretty strong case for a marital privacy right, if you accept the idea that the Ninth Amendment reserved unenumerated rights from not only federal but also state intervention. (I'm not persuaded that the Framers actually intended the Ninth Amendment to limit the states.) Remember that the spousal privilege meant (and means) that a wife could not (and still cannot) be compelled to testify against her husband, and vice versa. Under femme couverture, a married woman had effectively no legal status separate from her husband. Even though femme couverture was eventually wiped from the law, little echoes of it persisted for a long time. I've read a 1920s decision from the California courts that used a similar provision to let a woman get off on a traffic offense; she argued that because her husband told her to do it, she had to do so, and she had no legal status separate from her husband. Based on this, there might well have been a strong case for a right to marital privacy--but it wouldn't necessarily have gone outside the marriage relationship. There are all sorts of laws in the colonial and early Republic period that intrude on what, post-Griswold, many people want to imagine are "privacy rights." There's one more aspect of Griswold that bothers me. The marital privacy right might well protect a married couple in their decision to use contraceptives in the privacy of their own home--but the plaintiffs in this case include a number of people who could not claim to be participating in any marital privacy right: Appellant Griswold is Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Appellant Buxton is a licensed physician and a professor at the Yale Medical School who served as Medical Director for the League at its Center in New Haven - a center open and operating from November 1 to November 10, 1961, when appellants were arrested.There might be some argument that you could make to protect what they were doing, but "privacy" doesn't seem to fit. I've read elsewhere that Planned Parenthood advertised their services--which doesn't sound terribly private to me. The Library of Congress Is At It Again Every time I turn around, they have added another important collection of historical documents to their online collection. In this case, Peter Force's Tracts and other papers relating principally to the origin, settlement, and progress of the colonies in North America from the discovery of the country to the year 1776. Collected by Peter Force. published 1836-46. This is a collection of numerous interesting and sometimes important primary sources about colonial America. I believe that this link will take you there. The Limits of State Authority Over Religion The Continental Congress hoped to liberate Canada from British oppression at the start of the Revolution, and they came very close to doing so. From what I have read, there was genuine enthusiasm for the Revolutionary cause around Montreal; had Benedict Arnold's expedition left a few weeks earlier, the United States might today stretch all the way to the Arctic Ocean. (I see a wonderful opportunity for an alternative history rather like Turtledove's The Guns of the South, where our intrepid time travelers go back in time and encourage Washington to accelerate Arnold's move north.) Anyway, the instructions that the Continental Congress gave in 1776 to the commissioners who were to negotiate with the soon-to-be liberated Canadians gives some interesting insights into what the Framers regarded as the appropriate limits of state authority concerning religion: You are further to declare, that we hold sacred the rights of conscience, and may promise to the whole people, solemnly in our name, the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion; and, to the clergy, the full, perfect, and peaceable possession and enjoyment of all their estates; that the government of every thing relating to their religion and clergy, shall be left entirely in the hands of the good people of that province, and such legislature as they shall constitute; Provided, however, that all other denominations of Christians be equally entitled to hold offices, and enjoy civil privileges, and the free exercise of their religion, and be totally exempt from the payment of any tythes or taxes for the support of any religion. [Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 4:217]Canada was a Catholic majority at the time, and the Continental Congress was prepared to let them pass whatever laws they wanted concerning the status of the Catholic Church, as long as other Christians could hold office, worship, and not be required to support a state religion. (You will notice that they weren't prepared to make this protection broader than "other denominations of Christians.") Religion & The Founders I found an interesting letter by Samuel Adams about the role of religion in American society: Oct 17-78 I suppose you will have seen before this reaches you the Pennsylvania Packet of Tuesday last (1) which contains a Resolution of Congress expressing their Sense that true Religion and good Morals are the only Foundations of Publick Liberty and Happiness; and earnestly recommending to the several States to take the most effectual Measures for the Encouragement thereof and to prevent Stage playing and such kinds of Diversions as are productive of Vice, Idleness, Dissipation and a general Depravity of Principles and Manners, also injoyning on all officers of the Army to see that the Rules prescribd for the Encouragement of Virtue and the discountenancing of Prophaness and Vice are duly executed. [Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 11 October 1, 1778 - January 31, 1779I know that it is popular now to believe that there is no connection between religion and morality--and certainly no connection between religion and the maintenance of government--but there seem to have been plenty of people like Samuel Adams and the Continental Congress who didn't share that point of view. When interpreting the Constitution and the meaning of the First Amendment's establishment and free exercise clauses, it would be worthwhile to remember what the Framers thought on the subject. The Iraqi Constitution's Islamic Provision One of the liberals I know who thought it was a very bad thing for the U.S. to intervene in Iraq ("it's all about oil!") is upset that the U.S. didn't impose its views on the new Constitution. The new Iraqi Constitution specifies in Chapter 1: Article (2):This liberal friend of mine was all upset because this creates an establishment of religion, contrary to the First Amendment of our Constitution. To his way of thinking, theocracy and democracy are incompatible. Establishing a state religion--and especially Islam--would not have been my choice, but the Iraqi people wrote their Constitution. Nonetheless, the guarantees of religious freedom for non-Muslims makes this, for the Arab Muslim world, a very liberal document, and probably the best that we can hope for at the moment. Theocracy and democracy are not incompatible, in a country where the population is overwhelmingly of one religion. Yes, Sunni and Shiites have their differences, but "undisputed rules of Islam" seems to be a statement that Iraq's laws will reflect what is commonly understood as Islam by both factions. This liberal friend is quite upset about all this--claiming that at least under Hussein, there wasn't oppression of religious minorities. (Perhaps true: a government that maintains power through ethnic genocide, torture, rape, and mutilation, probably doesn't need to add religious oppression to the toolbox.) Somehow, for this liberal friend of mine, it is unacceptable for us to overthrow a torturing thug--but it is acceptable to tell the Iraqi people what their constitution should say. NRA Wants To Hear From New Orleans Residents Whose Guns Were Confiscated I just finished writing an article for Shotgun News titled, "Lord of the Flies, Cajun Style" about what happened in the aftermath of Katrina--including confiscating guns from law-abiding residents of New Orleans. As I wrote in that article, the Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was not written by fanatic absolutists. State governments confiscated arms from Tories during the Revolution (although they received compensation), and there are doubtless some very extraordinary circumstances where disarming the law-abiding could be rationalized as being constitutional. After a couple of days of thought, the most plausible of these scenarios that I could come up with started out, "The multitentacled ambassador from Tau Ceti 5 lost his memory in both brains last night after eating kung pao chicken...." Disarming law-abiding adults in New Orleans after the situation that they had been through isn't one of those scenarios--if anything, quite the opposite. Anyway, NRA would like to hear from those whose guns were disarmed: If you have personally had a gun confiscated in Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina hit, please call (888) 414-6333. Be prepared to leave only your name and immediate contact information so we can get back to you. Once again, we are seeking contact information from actual victims of gun confiscation in Louisiana only. Labels: gun rights Sunday, September 18, 2005
Here Goes Someone's Political Career From Montgomery, Alabama: MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- While unaware he was being recorded at a civic meeting, Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright offered a crime solution that has stunned the city of Montgomery and the nation.And even after the predictable firestorm of liberal whining (remember, Alabama has a sizeable black population): Mayor Bobby Bright is unapologetic and stands firm behind comments he made this week about the need for residents to buy guns and learn how to use them to protect themselves from criminals. House Project: Electrical Roughed In; Much of the Sheetrock; Insulation There's a lot more done on it--and with all the windows in, and construction doors in place, there's a pretty significant shield from the wind once you are inside. Here you can see that the exterior security lighting wiring is in place. You can also see that someone cut a hole for the wiring and fixture--and then realized: whoops! Fortunately, the siding, once in place, will hide this hole.  Click to enlarge Ditto, by the rear door of the garage.  Click to enlarge We have security light fixtures on all sides--and depending on switches, we can turn them completely off (for astronomy), turn them completely on (in case something goes bump in the night--it's good to have your target fully illuminated), or leave them in motion detector mode, where they detect something moving, and turn on. Paranoid? No, no, we grew up in Los Angeles. We are....careful. Yeah, that's the word we're going to use! Here you can see hose bibs and external outlet wiring. Our current house has insufficient hose bibs, and in very poor places.  Click to enlarge The back porch is well under way--providing shelter from the rain.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Here you can see some of the platform and piping for furnace and hot water heater in the garage. To my surprise, the view out the front garage door came out a lot more artistic than I expected, with Idaho State Highway 55 curving in the background, slightly diffused by distance.  Click to enlarge And here we have the portal into the fifth dimension.  Click to enlarge Actually, this is the access panel into the garage rafters. I had requested a pull down staircase to get into the rafters for storage--it looks like Scott may have planned with this in mind. Sticking up out of the kitchen floor is the gas pipe for the island range.  Click to enlarge This picture from the family room came out badly exposed, because of too little inside, and too much light outside. I've fiddled with contrast and brightness to equalize things a bit, but I doubt that the result will be that wonderful. (You have to be there!)  Click to enlarge Second bathroom. The tub/shower combo is in place; everything else is waiting for final sheetrock before they install the sink and the toilet.  Click to enlarge This was an astonishgly non-descript picture of the master bedroom closet. It needs something to give some idea of scale--in some parts of California, you could rent it for $500 a month.  Click to enlarge This isn't much of a picture of the master bedroom, but it gives you an idea what a room looks like after the electrical outlet and switch boxes are installed, and the sheet rock is up.  Click to enlarge A better picture of the master bedroom, looking through the slider down into Horseshoe Bend.  Click to enlarge We came by these two ladders tangled together, as though they had just fallen asleep. My wife's comment: "So that's where stepstools come from!"  Click to enlarge The front of the house gets better looking by the day.  Click to enlarge Last house entry. Labels: house project Harley-Davidson Accessories A friend has gone into the business of making motorcycle accessories aimed at the upscale woman's Harley-Davidson market. Merkel's Christian Democrats Win In Germany? I see on Fox News that Merkel's Christian Democrats--running on a platform of economic reform and closer cooperation with the U.S.--seem to have beat Schroeder's Social Democrats in Parliamentary elections today. The Christian Democrats are still a minority party, so there may be some interesting coalition building to be done yet--and Schroeder could conceivably hold on to power--but it does seem as though Germans have revolted against the SPD/Green coalition. UPDATE: The Financial Times has a report that suggests that both SPD and Christian Democrats did poorly--and it may be a while before a ruling coalition can form. |
