The advertising above is just a source of revenue. If the ads get offensive enough, I may drop them.
Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
|
|
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.
Magazines for cheap!
PayPal members: to make a contribution
Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through. |
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Paging Eric Kuperstock/Eric Smith I've lost touch with someone who was born Eric Kuperstock, and I believe changed his name to Eric Smith. His siblings are having a family reunion with their mother, said reunnion originally motivated by a concern that she was dying (although she seems to be recovering). If you know where Eric is, please have him get in touch. Eric is tall--about 6'2" or so. He was nearly completely deaf when last we were in touch, and by now, he may be completely deaf. He is a very talented software engineer--one of those people whose idea of excitement was figuring out how to write a prime number program with only seven characters of APL. Friday, July 14, 2006
Another Loss, For Their Side, In Connecticut I've mentioned before that one of the forces driving the same-sex marriage matter isn't just the actual benefits of marriage, but the symbolism--that homosexuals want an official statement that they are just like everyone else. This Superior Court decision in Connecticut demonstrates this rather well. Connecticut is rather unique in that its legislature adopted a "civil unions" law in 2005 without the courts either imposing it, or demanding it (as happened in Vermont). While I don't support such laws, at least if the legislature does it, that's what the Constitution requires: the people, or their representatives, make the laws. Call such laws stupid, but they aren't a violation of the Constitution, or the result of judicial tyranny. The Connecticut civil unions law is a fig leaf on top of same-sex marriage; the statute creating it is explicit that civil unions shall have all the same benefits, protections and responsibilities under law, whether derived from the general statutes, administrative regulations or court rules, policy, common law or any other source of civil law, as are granted to spouses in a marriage, which is defined as the union of one man and one woman.The argument of the plaintiffs in this suit that it violates the equal protection, due process, and "right of intimate and expressive association" clauses of the Connecticut Constitution. I'm not familiar with how the Connecticut courts have dealt with these clauses before, but the important point is the plaintiffs' arguments, which repeatedly come down to this: they say that they don't feel as good as straight people because civil unions aren't the same as marriage. And they think that people that look down on them for their sexual partner are going to suddenly start to look at them differently because they are "married" not "civilly united"? As it turns out, the court refused to force the state to change "civil unions" into "marriages." For reasons set forth herein, the court finds that the plaintiffs have failed to prove that they have suffered any legal harm that rises to constitutional magnitude.Homosexuals, on average, have much higher rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, sexual promiscuity, and STD infections (and not just AIDS). It is very fashionable to blame all of this on a "homophobic" society. This might have been a plausible argument twenty or thirty years ago. It isn't today. There isn't a "homophobic" society anywhere that I have ever lived--even here in conservative Idaho, homosexuality is widely accepted. Homosexuals who don't feel good about themselves better start looking within, and stop thinking that the changing two words to one on a government document are going to fix that. Labels: homosexuality Another Victory For Republican Government The Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the ACLU. Yes, the peasants do actually get to vote on amending their state constitution. Yahoo! Another Victory For Republican Forms of Government! The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Nebraska's constitutional amendment, approved by 70% of the voters in November 2000, is not a violation of equal protection. The voters of Nebraska had lost at the federal district court level, where the plaintiffs had persuaded a judge that this amendment that prohibited the legislature from recognizing same-sex marriage or civil unions violated the right of homosexuals to participate in the political process. There are a number of other issues that this decision addresses, including standing (are you truly an injured party?) and ripeness (can the federal courts step in before the state courts have decided the question?) but the important issue--the dishonest argument advanced in Romer v. Evans (1996)--is the one that matters here. What, you ask? How does defining marriage prevent homosexuals from participating in the political process? In Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), the Supreme Court considered an amendment to the Colorado Constitution barring all state and local governments from allowing “homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships” to be the basis for a claim of “minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination.” The amendment invalidated certain local ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Colorado Supreme Court held that any constitutional amendment that infringes on “the fundamental right to participate equally in the political process [by] ‘fencing out’ an independently identifiable class of persons must be subject to strict judicial scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.How does it "fence out" homosexuals? By prohibiting the legislature or local governments from adopting a law. As the 8th Circuit decision points out, that's what constitutions and state pre-emption statutes do when they limit legislative or executive authority: While voting rights and apportionment cases establish the fundamental right to access the political process, it is not an absolute right. In a multi-tiered democracy, it is inevitable that interest groups will strive to make it more difficult for competing interest groups to achieve contrary legislative objectives. This can be done, for example, by having the state legislature repeal a local ordinance, or by having the electorate adopt a constitutional amendment barring future legislation.If you find the "fenced out" argument persuasive, consider this example. The First Amendment, by prohibiting Congress from establishing a national religion, and the Fourteenth Amendment, by imposing this prohibition on the states, has "fenced out" devout Christians who would like to lobby for laws against that sort of thing. By the reasoning used at the district court level, the First Amendment violates the equal protection rights of Christians, who are thus prevented from effectively lobbying their representatives to have a state religion established. Now, Romer v. Evans (1996) had been decided under the strict scrutiny test, because the U.S. Supreme Court decided that there was no rational basis for the voters of Colorado to prohibit passage of anti-discrimination laws that protected homosexuals. ("You, the several million voters of Colorado, are irrational. We, a few tyrants in black, are rational.") The 8th Circuit decision was careful to emphasize that laws and constitutional amendments attempting to define marriage as a heterosexual thing have a rational basis: The State argues that the many laws defining arriage as the union of one man and one woman and extending a variety of benefits to married couples are rationally related to the government interest in “steering procreation into marriage.” By affording legal recognition and a basket of rights and benefits to married heterosexual couples, such laws “encourage procreation to take place within the socially recognized unit that is best situated for raising children.” The State and its supporting amici cite a host of judicial decisions and secondary authorities recognizing and upholding this rationale. The argument is based in part on the traditional notion that two committed heterosexuals are the optimal partnership for raising children, which modern-day homosexual parents understandably decry. But it is also based on a “responsible procreation” theory that justifies conferring the inducements of marital recognition and benefits on opposite-sex couples, who can otherwise produce children by accident, but not on same-sex couples, who cannot. See Hernandez v. Robles, No. 86, 2006 NY Slip Op 5239 at 5-6 (N.Y. Ct. App. Jul. 6, 2006); Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15, 24-26 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005). Whatever our personal views regarding this political and sociological debate, we cannot conclude that the State’s justification “lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.” Romer, 517 U.S. at 632.Now, I've never found the "rational basis" arguments very persuasive. I agree that the city ordinance struck down in City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center (1985) does not sound terribly rational, and if I had lived in Cleburne, I would have vigorously argued against it before the city council. But there's no bright line that distinguishes "rational" from "irrational" except in the eyes of each individual. I'll take my chances with democratic majorities passing irrational laws over a few unelected, unrecallable judges making such a decision. One of the arguments advanced was that should have been a basis for a lot of eye-rolling and laughter is that this constitutional amendment was a "bill of attainder." This is the argument of someone who clearly doesn't know what a bill of attainder is. A bill of attainder is when a legislative body passes a law punishing an individual or individuals, prescribing their guilt and punishment. This amendment didn't criminalize anything, nor did it prescribe a punishment. The 8th Circuit didn't buy it, and didn't even waste a lot of time demolishing this argument, because it was so obviously ludicrous. Another argument was that this amendment interfered with the First Amendment freedom of association and right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The first argument is absurd. Just because you can't get a government recognized marriage doesn't prevent you from associating. I associate with lots of people, without being married to them. The petition argument is also absurd--unless you conclude similarly that the First Amendment's freedom of the press clause violates the right of conservatives to petition Congress for laws against obscenity. As the 8th Circuit decision crisply observes: The First Amendment guarantees the right to advocate; it does not guarantee political success.Most importantly: Appellees are no longer “prevailing parties.” The district court’s award of attorneys fees is therefore reversed.Less money to continue this Quixotic crusade to impose same-sex marriage on the states! Labels: homosexuality I Guess The Continental Army Operated On "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" From The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. John C. Fitzpatrick, Editor. Head Quarters, V. Forge, Saturday, March 14, 1778.Okay, it is a plausible reading (perhaps even the most plausible reading) that John Monhort was not a willing participant. But if so, I'm surprised how lightly Lt. Enslin was punished. Is The Dam Breaking? Dave Hardy over at Arms and the Law reports on Saul Cornell's new book about the Second Amendment: His thesis appears to be--I also agree with Dave's point about Cornell's linking the Second Amendment to militia duty--that was the stated reason, because the idea of disarming law-abiding citizens so as to prevent them from defending themselves was incomprehensible. For example, at the Philadelphia Convention, in August 23, 1787, at Elliot's Debates, 5:465, Elbridge Gerry expressed his opposition to a proposal to give the federal government authority to regulate the state militia by calling it despotism--and what he compared it to shows what else he regarded as despotism--and he assumed his fellow delegates would understand it as such: Mr. GERRY. This power in the United States, as explained, is making the states drill-sergeants. He had as lief let the citizens of Massachusetts be disarmed, as to take the command from the states, and subject them to the general legislature. It would be regarded as a system of despotism. [emphasis added] Labels: gun rights Thursday, July 13, 2006
No, I Don't Approve I was looking to see who has linked to me lately, and I saw an article at the Liberal Idaho blog that mentioned that StopTheACLU.org had gathered and published the names and home addresses of plaintiffs in ACLU lawsuits--apparently leading to some rather nasty behavior directed at the plaintiffs in a suit in Delaware. If you really want to find out where someone lives, it isn't all that difficult--especially with the astonishing amount of supposedly private information that is floating around the Internet. But why make it easy for a nut case? It would appear that StopTheACLU.org came to their senses, and stopped this--at least, I can't find any information like this on their web site anymore, although there was something there at one time--to which I can only say, "Stop acting like a liberal!" I've criticized these attempts at intimidation by liberals before, such as this case where homosexual activists did this to people who signed the initiative petition in Massachusetts to overturn the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision in the Goodridge case. I have personal experience with homosexuals making threatening phone calls to me, and to my children, for expressing political beliefs that they found offensive. A charity reggae concert in New York City had to be cancelled because homosexuals were threatening violence if two reggae artists of whom they disapproved were allowed to speak. When Governor Wilson of California vetoed AB 101 some years ago, homosexuals followed him around for over a year, heckling him constantly at every event. UPDATE: Golly, gee, look whose is engaging in intimidation and harrassment of others because of their sexual orientation: Police say they logged numerous complaints of straight people being called ``breeders" by gays over the July Fourth holiday weekend. Jamaican workers reported being the target of racial slurs. And a woman was verbally accosted after signing a petition that opposed same-sex marriage, they said. Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest I saw this a few days ago. I had very high hopes, because I so much enjoyed the first movie in the series with its mixture of clever dialog, interesting story, entertainingly amusing physical action, and Johnny Depp's "I'm not taking this too seriously, and neither should you" sly grin. As an historian, I was pleased to see a few nods to the actual situation of the British possessions. Look at a lot of older pirate movies--there are no blacks in them at all. As I mentioned three years ago: There are some pretty awesome special effects, but unlike certain other recent films, they didn't spend so much money on them that they needed to fire the scriptwriters.Alas, that does not seem to be case with Dead Man's Chest. They clearly spent a lot more money on special effects--as well as making a full-sized pirate vessel (built on a modern frame)--and a lot less on the witty, often intentionally anachronistic dialog of the first movie. I laughed far less. There are a few fight sequences in Dead Man's Chest that remind you of the great sequence in the blacksmith's shop in the first movie--but not enough to carry a film this long. I never found the first movie dragging; this one felt like it could have lost 20 minutes, and it would have been the better for it. I fear that once the director paid the very sizeable upfront costs to design some of these special effects, he figured, "Hey, it's only another million dollars to put in a few more minutes of this sea creature!" The first movie, once you accepted its one supernatural premise, was consistent, and logical. I never find myself saying, "How does that work?" Dead Man's Chest has a couple of supernatural premises, but there were clearly a few explanations that never get made--or perhaps the voodoo priestess's accent was just too thick for me to catch it. What, exactly, is packing a certain piece of meat in dirt going to do? I didn't understand, and it bothered me. The first movie was a bit dark, and I observed at the time that it probably wasn't suitable for most children under 10 because of the macabre aspects of the pirate ship's crew. I think this is even more true for Dead Man's Chest, which has an even more disturbing dead ship's crew. The cannibal sequence is played for laughs, and certain aspects of this might be a bit too disturbing for the very young. By the way, after the credits, there is a brief gag clip. It isn't bloopers--but it does explain what happens to the dog! Labels: film reviews Why Adam Smith Capitalized "Invisible Hand" in Wealth of Nations Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler asks: Because we aren't hopeless ideologues who need to fit a theory to every possible situation? By the way, Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) implies something about the nature of the "Invisible Hand" to which Wealth of Nations alludes as the organizing principle of free markets (and also explains why it is capitalized): They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition.For those not familiar with eighteenth century writing, Providence is a literary way of referring to God. It seems clear that Smith believed that the self-interest that makes a free market work reflects attributes of human character that God has imprinted upon us. Democrats: The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight I'm always impressed with the tremendous skill that the Democrats show in their timing. First we get this: Senate Democrats, including several prospective presidential candidates, charged Thursday that the Bush administration's optimistic assessments on Iraq are not borne out by events on the ground.Then, an hour later, from Newsweek: On Thursday, the southern Iraqi province of Muthanna celebrated the handover of security responsibilities from coalition forces to Iraqi troops in a soccer stadium outside the provincial capital of Samawah. The first transition of its kind in the country—Coalition troops will remain in Muthanna, but only in an advisory role—the ceremony attracted all types of local dignitaries and tribal leaders.Yes, there are still very serious problems in some of the other provinces. Those terrorists who claim that their primary goal is to get non-Iraqis out of Iraq will probably attack Iraqi security forces in Muthanna--in the hopes of forcing Coalition forces to take an active security role again. But this is real progress, not just towards the goal of removing Coalition forces, but towards making Iraq into something that once seemed an oxymoron: a functioning Arab democracy. Cardiac Stress Test I've seen these in movies, but never experienced the joy of one myself. A few weeks back, I went to see my family physician about some sharp chest pains that I was occasionally experiencing. They weren't associated with physical exertion or stress, nor did I get the other common symptoms of angina pectoris or a full-fledged heart attack. My blood pressure being 124/78, and my pulse at 68, my doctor wasn't terribly worried--but since both my father died of a heart attack (at 66), and my father's mother died of a heart attack (at 85), and I'm still carrying an extra 25-30 pounds more than I need, he thought it worthwhile to get a cardiac stress test. According to my doctor, the cardiac stress test has very low false negatives, and somewhat higher false positives. This means that if the cardiac stress test says that there's nothing to worry about, according to both my family physician, and the cardiologist, it's quite rare for you to keel over from a heart attack. More commonly, a cardiac stress test gives a false positive--it suggests that there's something wrong with your heart, when there really isn't, but this is usually resolved by a more complicated, rather unpleasant procedure. I think he mentioned that an angiogram is the step after that--but the good news is that as moving CAT scans get higher and higher resolution, the need for angiograms may diminish or disappear. Well, the good news is that the cardiologist who did the cardiac stress test on me says that whatever is causing these rare, sharp, but short-lived pains, it is almost certainly not my heart. He says that the EKG shows completely healthy behavior from rest all the way up to the point where my legs were beginning to hurt from lactic acid build-up, and I was having trouble breathing deeply enough. (At that point, my heart rate was 151.) I also noticed that he was using a nomograph to calculate something. When I asked what he was calculating, he explained that it was a measure of cardiovascular fitness under exercise stress. For men my age, the average is 8; for me, it was 10. I am apparently fitter than average for my age. For those who have not yet enjoyed this procedure: the nurse attaches several electrodes to your chest that receive electrical signals from different parts of your heart. Unfortunately, I am part gorilla, so the nurse had to shave those patches first. Then you get on the treadmill, and the doctor slowly accelerates the speed and slope of the treadmill, watching the graphs, with the nurse checking your blood pressure every three minutes. Normally, I don't do any exercise that puts my heart rate above about 138. For my age, that is quite sufficient to get all the cardiovascular benefit of exercise, as well as soaking my clothes in sweat. At 151, I was definitely not happy! House Project: Backup Generator Worked, But There's Some Minor Issues We lost power last night about 10:30 PM--and so did everyone in Horseshoe Bend. From our commanding position on the mountain, we can see every house. We were watching something on History Channel about Caribbean pirate technology, and sudden darkness. My wife says, "Okay, where's the backup generator?" Sure enough, it started, but as I think I have mentioned in the past, there wasn't enough capacity to run every circuit in the house from it, because it is only seven kilowatts, so only the kitchen appliances, the furnace/air conditioning system, and the well and pressurization pumps remained powered. The rest of the house was dark. Now, at any given time, I'm sure that we are not using seven kilowatts in the whole house. The problem, at least as the electrician who wired the house and installed the generator explained it, is that the backup generator is set up to power circuits based on their maximum capacity. When I went out today and counted up the capacity of all the circuits that the backup generator protects, I counted 145 amps--which at 120 volts, would be 17.4 kilowatts--quite a bit above the seven kilowatt capacity of the generator. So why can't it spread its capacity across more circuits? I've called the electrician to ask what we can do about this. I have an idea--and that's to buy a large storage battery and inverter such as would be used with a photovoltaic system or wind generator that can feed all the circuits in the house, and have both the backup generator and the grid keep it fully charged. If we lose grid power, the battery feeds the house, and the backup generator recharges the battery. That way, we have full power for the house, and it would take a very long outage to discharge the battery sufficiently that we would have to start shutting off unnecessary circuits. It also makes it easier to add a wind generator to feed the battery. Alternatively, we might use the storage battery and inverter to feed all the other circuits, figuring that these are less essential, and only a long outage would cause us to lose the luxuries of computers, televisions, and lights. If I understand the math on this unit, it supplies 258 amp-hours at 12 volts, which would be 3.096 kilowatt-hours. There's some loss from running it through an inverter to get it back to 110 VAC, but still, that would run at 20 to 25 100 watt light bulbs for an hour. It's about $447 (plus shipping, which might be expensive for something this heavy). Unfortunately, the inverters end up well above $1000, so it turns into an expensive investment. Last house project entry. Labels: house project Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Someone Attacks Me For Not Being Pure Enough About Gun Rights Yup. Here. Make sure that you read the article of mine that he linked to--and then his reaction. This is someone who thinks that widespread open carrying of firearms in places like Seattle will make people less supportive of gun control--and spends a bit of time here arguing that drunk and armed is a fine thing. Someone needs to spend a bit more time out of the woods, talking to the urban population of Washington State. The Clean Flicks Suit If you don't know who Clean Flicks is--they are a video chain that takes films that were wildly popular, but contained material that some would have found objectionable, and edits the films to a somewhat lower rating. As an example, if you saw Titanic, you may recall the scene of Kate Winslett's breasts as she poses for a painting. (I didn't find it objectionable, but neither was it necessary--no loss to edit that out.) Well, there's an example of something that Clean Flicks trimmed out of their version. In essence, Clean Flicks and a number of competitors around the country have been producing rental versions of "edited for television" movies. The Directors Guild of America was very upset about this--about their artistic vision being corrupted--and filed copyright suit against Clean Flicks et. al.. The DGA won the suit, and from a strictly legal point of view, they are correct. But where's their outrage about "edited for television"? It isn't like the movie industry is losing revenue from this--they are actually gaining revenue as their films are edited to a form that a lot of parents are willing to share with their kids. I suspect that the real upset about this is that Clean Flicks etc. are reminding people that there's a lot of gratuitous violence, sex, and vulgar language in films that doesn't really contribute anything to the plot. I will agree that there are serious films where you can't really made a G or PG version without dramatically impairing what it is about--but that's a minority of films. Hollywood doesn't like to be reminded that a lot of what they do is not art, but trash. I confess that I have mixed feelings about the result. I like the idea that Clean Flicks and their competitors are providing a useful service. But there's a little part of me that wonders if putting money into the pockets of studios that are producing movies that need this sort of editing is sensible. I was quite offended by the unnecessary homosexual and transvestitism "jokes" in Shrek 2--this was a kids cartoon. But there's a sizeable element of Hollywood that intends to destroy what little innocence is left to children. Why put money in the pocket of the trashmongers? "Under God" Updated I added sections on the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 (the one that prohibited an "establishment of religion" but allowed the legislature to require officeholders to be Protestants), the South Carolina Constitution of 1778 (which made Protestantism the established religion of the state, and required some officeholders to be Protestants), and the Vermont Constitutions of 1777 and 1786, with their strongly worded recommendation to the population to worship God--and specifically addressed to Christians. I also added some of the text of Congressional statutes where they provided for direct federal assistance to churches in Ohio by sale of public lands, and passing that money to churches for operating expenses. You can read it here. Can't Sleep I've been fighting a virus for several days, which is, as these things go, not so bad. It causes waves of fatigue, muscle aches, and some headaches. I've slept enough today that I am having trouble sleeping. Adding to the excitement, the wind is blowing quite impressively outside--enough so that even if there weren't clouds blowing in and out, I would be reluctant to roll Big Bertha out to observe, for fear of it landing in another county. These are the nights that wind turbines to generate electricity start to seem sensible. Tuesday, July 11, 2006
House Project: Outstanding Issues 1. There's a bit of paint overspray on the windows, both inside and out. My wife has taken care of most of this, but there's a couple of spots that we are going to point out to the builder when he comes up here this week. 2. The front door leaks--and not just when my wife sprays a hose at it. There's actually dirt blowing in at times at the base of the door, at the two edges. Surprisingly, there's no wind whistle--even when the wind is blowing something dreadful, as it is now. 3. The kitchen faucet needs tightening. 4. Concrete, of course, needs painting before the rainy season starts. 5. We have a loose panel that we found on the porch, that is painted our exterior color, and looks like the wood was literally broken in half by the wind. We don't see where it came from, and I can see just about the entire roof of the house from the water tower hill, but we will have the builder look over the house carefully and figure out where it came from--assuming that it isn't just scrap that blew in from somewhere else. 6. At least the master bedrooim closet crawl space (and perhaps the one in bedroom four) should have at least edge beveled to make it easier to get these back in place. 7. The pantry door has a ghost problem, and once open part-way, goes all the way open. 8. The window east of the slider in the family room is extremely stiff--something that my wife can't even open or close, and that takes a lot of effort for me. 9. There is a badly bent screen on my east facing office window--enough so that it is letting bugs in if I open that window. Last house project entry. Labels: house project Lowering The Price Across Certain Boundaries Makes Quite a Difference We've lowered the listing price of our old house in Boise three times now, but the last cut--to $374,900--seems to have dramatically increased the number of people coming through to look at it. This is not surprising; people specify an upper bound for what they are willing to look at, and $374,900 is just below the $375,000 mark. Now, if only we could get some of these lookers to become buyers. Worst comes to worst, my daughter and son-in-law will live there until next summer, by which point I expect to see interest rates drop (for the reason mentioned below). More Good Budget News I hope that you hear it, because it will probably drive interest rates down next year: the budget deficit is way down: The US budget deficit will be trimmed to 296 bln usd in the current fiscal year, down sharply from earlier projections, President George Bush said.That's way down from the $423 billion budget deficit for last year, and largely because of increased tax revenues. Hmmm. Weren't the Democrats insisting that cutting tax rates wouldn't increase revenues? Lowering the deficit reduces the amount of money the federal government will be borrowing. The federal government's borrowing, unsurprisingly, plays a major part in driving up interest rates. It may take until next year, but I would not be surprised to see interest rates fall as aggregate demand for borrowing declines. Still, Let's Not Get Complacent U.S. News & World Report says that gun control is a loser issue now: Not long ago, it was the gun lobby on the defensive from the passage of the Brady bill in 1993 and the 1994 ban on "assault" weapons. But some say support for gun control cost Democrats the House in 1994, and former President Clinton credited it with Al Gore's 2000 presidential defeat. "It's different than it was in the early '90s. Those were, in retrospect, the glory years," says Paul Helmke, former GOP mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., who recently took the reins of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.Those "glory days" for gun control, I think, were partially because there was more support for gun control--but also it was because the news media had spent a lot of time persuading themselves that everyone wanted it, except for a few malcontents. There's an interesting quote from Professor Saul Cornell: Saul Cornell of Ohio State's Second Amendment Research Center, says polls consistently show broad support for gun control.There certainly is broad support for it in the abstract. When you ask people to support specific gun control proposals, that enthusiasm starts to fade. Except for places like San Francisco--what a reader calls a museum of the last two hundred years philosophical errors--bans on handguns, for example, enjoy little support. I've Wondered Why There Are Few Teaching Opportunities For Me... Because I don't teach bizarre conspiracy theories--like that 9/11 was an inside job. This guy isn't teaching this at a backwater place, like Bob Jones University, but at the University of Wisconsin. As one of the commenters on that discussion asks, when will the University of Wisconsin be hiring a Professor of Astrology? And to think that academics get all contemptuous of the masses for wanting Intelligent Design to be taught as well as evolution! One of these days, probably when a virus destroys all television sets, the masses are going to rise up in anger at how they have been ripped off funding universities so completely out of touch with reality. HPV Vaccine Inside Higher Education reports on efforts by colleges to encourage female college students to get the new vaccine against some strains of HPV: Allen says that the CDC plans to work closely with the American College Health Association on getting word out about the vaccine and its importance. HPV is very common on college campuses. Estimates suggest that up to 75 percent of women will become infected with one or more of the sexually-transmitted HPV types at some point during adulthood. Many men also have forms of HPV, but cancer is much less common in the male population as a result of the virus. Thus, the Gardisol vaccine is being focused solely on women for now, say health experts.The article does point out that Gardisol has the capacity to prevent 70 percent of cervical cancer cases.From what I have read, Gardisol works on some strains of HPV, but not all. What I don't understand is that there is apparently some conservative opposition to use of the vaccine, out of concern that it would encourage premarital sex. Gardisol isn't going to do anything about genital herpes, syphilis, HIV, pregnancy, or a host of other risks associated with premarital sex. It does reduce the potentially lethal consequences of sex--and even women who wait until marriage are at risk of HPV if their husband has had previous sexual partners. Monday, July 10, 2006
Unrivaled Arrogance That Deserves Impeachment You thought it was arrogant when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the Goodridge decision imposed gay marriage on Massachusetts? There's an initiative scheduled for the ballot to amend the state constitution to correct this--and of course, liberals were trying to get the courts to prevent the voters from having the opportunity to vote on it. The Massachusetts high court had the good sense to agree that yes, the voters are allowed to at least vote on whether to amend the state constitution or not. But as Professor Volokh points out, a concurring opinion by two of the justices seem to have lost all notions of who is charge: This strikes me as deeply wrong: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is saying that its judgments about equality and fairness under the Massachusetts Constitution trump not only the judgment of the legislature, but the judgment of the people amending the constitution itself.Reading the comments over there is pretty interesting, too. One commenter makes the point, regarding the concurring opinion's claim that the Goodridge decision "may be irreversible": If this statement does not deserve impeachment or the Mass. equivalent, nothing does. No other statement can show more arrogance than for a judge to say that his or her ruling is of greater legal weight than the constitution of that state.More typical of the comments, unfortunately, are the usual suspects attempt to rationalize why the voters do not even have the right to vote on amending the state constitution--because it interferes with their desire for the tyrants in black to impose gay marriage. |
