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Labels: child sexual abuse WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The longer U.S. policy-makers delay in putting Social Security and Medicare on a sound fiscal footing, the greater the burden on future generations, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday. "If we don't begin soon to provide for the coming demographic transition, the relative burden on future generations may be significantly greater than it otherwise could have been," Bernanke told the Economics Club of Washington. ... The Fed chairman said that in addition to reform of the entitlement programs, which are forecast to be underfunded as the population ages, an increase in the national saving rate would ease some of the future burdens associated with the demographic shift. The most straightforward way to raise national saving would be to reduce the government's current and projected budget deficits, the Fed chairman said. However, he acknowledged that cutting the budget gap is politically difficult. Social Security and Medicare are government programs providing income support and health care coverage for retirees. Bernanke said the economy's potential productive capacity would likely be diminished as the population ages. However, actions taken now to address entitlement funding and boost savings could lay a stronger foundation for the future, he said. The bemused smile that broke across Art Bailey's face at first glimpse of a reporter's notepad Tuesday summed up the feeling of many in Greenleaf, a small Canyon County town dragged into the national news media spotlight. Draft Ordinance 208, which had its second reading Tuesday night, is part of a proposed emergency preparedness ordinance for the city. It asks, but doesn't require, heads of households to maintain a firearm and get training on how to use it. Orlando police said two gunmen walked into the Plaza Mexico Grocery on Curry Ford Road on Tuesday, fired a shot into the ceiling and demanded money, WESH 2 News reported. Witnesses said employee Ramon Rodriguez was outside and started throwing rocks at the getaway vehicle. One of the robbers pointed a sawed-off shotgun at him and fired, hitting Rodriguez in the leg, police said. From the Chicago Tribune here's a Debbie Downer article about the stock market surge headlined, "As Dow Surges, Many Left Behind." Get your kleenexes ready: "In current dollars, the economy is more than a third larger than six years ago, with gross domestic product, or annual output of goods and services, exceeding $13 trillion. Joblessness still is low at 4.7 percent. I decided to do a Lexis Nexis search of the Chicago Tribune for January 2000 to see if the paper also put a negative spin on the previous stock market surge (remember that surge occurred while Clinton was president). And guess what I found? An article with a very different tone. Starting with the exciting headline titled, "Bull Market Spreading The Wealth In America" and continuing through the many paragraphs touting the growth in wealth and the number of people investing in the stock market the article is remarkably different from today's. The Trib did have one obligatory paragraph acknowledging the struggles of the poor in it's January 2000 article saying, "The one group swamped by the rising tide was the poorest of the poor. Although the booming economy has reduced the number of families earning very low incomes by a sixth, the 12.6 percent of families who were still earning under $10,000 a year watched their incomes stagnate and their net worth fall between 1989 and 1998." But they explain that away by quoting analysts who believed that the numbers were being dragged down by people escaping extreme poverty. Interesting that we never hear that excuse when the same trends occur with republican presidents in office. Labels: ACLU, freedom of speech Labels: humor Labels: child sexual abuse (Columbia-AP) September 19, 2006 - A former night watchman at a downtown Columbia apartment building has been sentenced to 16 years in prison in the death of a visitor to the apartments more than two years ago. Circuit Judge James Johnson sentenced 32-year-old Jason Dickey of Chapin Monday. A Richland County jury convicted Dickey on Friday of voluntary manslaughter. He had been charged with murder. Dickey was accused of shooting 24-year-old Josh William Boot outside the apartment building in 2004. Witnesses said Boot was visiting friends when someone threw water balloons at them. Boot began banging on doors in the building and Dickey told him to leave. Witnesses say Boot was shot once in the stomach after he argued with Dickey. Boot was unarmed. Dickey's lawyer said his client feared for his life. Q: What do you mean by another attack in America? A: Yes a bigger attack than September 11th 2001. Brother Adnan [el Shukrijumah] will lead that attack, Inshallah. Q:Who is Adnan? A: He is our old friend. The last time, I met him in early 2004, in Khost. He came to Khost from the North Waziristan. He met his leaders and friends in Khost. He is very well known in Al Qaeda. He is an American and a friend of Muhammad Atta, who led 9/11 attacks five years ago. We call him "Jaffer al Tayyar" ["Jafer the Pilot"]; he is very brave and intelligent. Bush is aware that brother Adnan has smuggled deadly materials inside America from the Mexican border. Bush is silent about him, because he doesn't want to panic his people. Sheikh Osama bin Laden has completed his cycle of warnings. You know, he is man of his words, he is not a politician; he always does what he says. If he said it many times that Americans will see new attacks, they will definitely see new attacks. He is a real Mujahid. Americans will not win this war, which they have started against Muslims. Americans are the biggest supporters of the biggest terrorist in the world, which is Israel. You have witnessed the brutality of the Israelis in the recent 34-day war against Lebanese civilians. 9/11 was a revenge of Palestinian children, killed by the US-made weapons, supplied to Israel. The next attack on America would be a revenge of Lebanese children killed by US-made cluster bombs. Bush and Blair are the Crusaders, and Muslim leaders, like Musharraf and [Afghani President Hamid] Karzai are their collaborators, we will teach a lesson to all of them. We are also not happy with some religious parties in Pakistan and Egypt, they got votes in the name of Mujaheddin, and then, they collaborated with Musharraf and [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak. Now look at all of them, Musharraf and Karzai don't trust each other, the CIA and ISI don't trust each other, all the hypocrites and enemies of Mujaheddin are suspecting each other; this help to us is coming from Heavens. Allah is with us. Q: But if you attack inside America again, then Muslims living in America will face lot of problems, why would you like to create new problems for your brothers and sisters? A: Muslims should leave America. We cannot stop our attack just because of the American Muslims; they must realize that American forces are killing innocent Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq; we have the right to respond back, in the same manner, in the enemy's homeland. The American Muslims are like a human shield for our enemy; they must leave New York and Washington. Q: But your fighters are also using the American Muslims as their shield, if there are no Muslims in America, then there would be no Al Qaeda, may be the Americans would feel safer? A: No, not at all. We have a different plan for the next attack. You will see. Americans will hardly find out any Muslim names, after the next attack. Most of our brothers are living in Western countries, with Jewish and Christian names, with passports of Western countries. This time, someone with the name of Muhammad Atta will not attack inside America, it would be some David, Richard or Peter. Labels: terrorism When Idahoans decide Nov. 7 about banning same-sex marriages, they'll vote on a defense of marriage amendment that has passed in all 20 states where it's been on the ballot since the 1990s. Idaho and seven other states including Virginia, Wisconsin and Arizona, will vote on same-sex marriage constitutional amendments next month. Marriage amendments get voter approval with the kinds of margins that politicians would call a mandate if they could get the same numbers. For example: Texas, 76 percent.
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The Departed: Brilliantly Realized, Dark, Depressing, Unpleasant
I tend to avoid films that focus on murder, mayhem, and brutality--it reminds me too much of growing up in Los Angeles. My daughter dragged my wife and I off to see Martin Scorcese's new gangster movie The Departed this afternoon. It is both technically impressive as a film, and an utter waste of talent.
Like other Scorcese's films, it focuses on organized crime and police attempts to deal with it. There are good cops and bad cops. There are no good criminals--there are just little thugs of no consequence and a really evil creep played (but not overplayed) to the hilt by Jack Nicholson. It takes us into the seamy underside of Boston, with protection rackets, heroin trafficking, and murder. Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio both do fine work portraying two Massachusetts State Police detectives--but I confess that they look so similar that for a while at the start of the film I could not always tell which was which. (All you humans look alike to me, at times.)
I won't spoil the plot--and to the film's credit, it is simply too complex to explain without spending many paragraphs. It does not insult the audience's intelligence by oversimplification. I might have to watch it at least one or two more times to catch all the plot twists, and yet I didn't find any of the major plot twists laughable or absurd. (There are a couple of minor twists that fail the laugh test. Hint: I don't believe that any information system would allow one end user outside of Human Resources to delete all of a person's employment records.)
This is a violent movie, filled with incredibly foul language. As with every movie that I see with Matt Damon in it, I find myself wondering in what universe do people regularly speak like this? I'm not a prude, and I've heard all of these words before--but the sheer density of them still startles me. It is worse than listening to California junior high school girls talking--and I thought that was very near the nadir of foul language in America. (Yes, something that would make a sailor blush.)
Admittedly, a cleaned up version of either the language or violence would be unrealistic, and it is about a very ugly aspect of urban life--the way in which organized crime uses intimidation and violence to exact a toll from people who are just trying to make a living. (And after watching it, if you don't understand why I oppose restrictive licensing of carry permits, such as is common in places like New York City and Massachusetts, you probably never will.)
While there's a clear moral message that distinguishes good from bad in how the two sides operate, in practice, this movie is tremendously dark in the message it sends about the relative success of good and bad. Let me be clear about this: in the real world, bad people sometimes win, and good people sometimes fail. I don't require every film to end up with the guys in the white hats riding off into the sunset--but I think there is a strong case that even within the limitations of making a realistic film about the problems of crime, it is possible for a filmmaker to present a positive outcome without offending film's great god of Realism. Not only is it possible, it can be entertaining, as well serving a high social purpose.
In the real world, corrupt police officers get away with their crimes, and good cops get shot and killed by criminals. But often as not, the guys in the white hats win. They arrest and jail petty thugs and sometimes even the Mafia kingpins. They do it often enough to keep the situation from becoming completely out of control. Would it be so hard for a film like this to have at least one of the good guys emerge the victor? This happens often enough that to make a film this dark is unrealistic.
I've long been a harsh critic of how the Catholic Church failed to take steps against pedophiles, drug addicts, embezzlers, and murderers among its priests, but this film's portrayal of the Catholic Church (both clergy and laity) is quite repugnant. If rabbis and observant Jews received this sort of consistent negative portrayal, there would be legitimate complaints about anti-Semitic filmmaking--and a similar portrayal of Islam would end up with Scorcese, the screenwriter, and all the actors in the film beheaded within a few weeks. Again, a realistic portrayal doesn't mean Going My Way (1944)--but there are, I think, at least two or three Catholic priests in the U.S. who are not chasing little boys for sex, and there may be perhaps as many as a dozen Catholic laypersons remaining on this continent who are not cocaine-crazed, orgiastic, murderous Mafioso.
So much talent. Such a wasted result.
The Great Budget Crisis
Democrats are hyping the big problem of the deficits and claiming that they will be fiscally responsible. While I am not thrilled about running deficits, as I have pointed out in the past, we are making significant progress on this--and you can give Bush's tax reductions some of the credit for this, by causing a significant increase in tax revenues. A few months back, I pointed out how the deficit projection had dropped from $423 billion to $296 billion over a one year period, largely because of increased tax revenues.
Well, the good news keeps coming, much to the chagrin of the billionaires' party. Over at Back Talk, whose author describes himself as "a professor at a major research university, a registered Democrat, a liberal by most measures, but a radical conservative relative to the large majority of my colleagues" is a discussion of budget deficit progress, and more importantly, budget deficits as a fraction of gross domestic product (GDP):The 2006 budget deficit figures were just released, and the deficit is not only getting better, it is now relatively small by historical standards.
Back Talk then points to a news story about how the budget deficit projection is now down to $250 billion--and that is about 1.9% of the GDP. Back Talk then provides a graph showing the federal budget deficit or surplus as a percent of GDP from 1976 to the present--and considering that there is a war on, we are doing shockingly well.
Embarrassing Pictures of Politicians
I mentioned a few days ago the West Virginia Democrat whose pictures of himself and other men wearing nothing but body paint were creating a political problem. (Those West Virginians are so narrow minded.) I also suggested even in California, outside the San Francisco Bay Area, this would be a serious political problem. A reader reminded of a somewhat similar situation where it turned out to be a problem even in San Francisco--Mayor Frank Jordan's 1995 shower with two male disc jockeys. (I wouldn't visit that site unless you want to be reminded that most people look better wearing clothes.)
It didn't do Jordan much good--of course, to be fair, Frank Jordan was already in trouble in San Francisco because he was, by Babylon by the Bay standards, a right-wing crank. Anywhere else in America, he would have been considered a liberal, but that tells you a lot about San Francisco, doesn't it?
Is The Term "Homosexual Pedophile" Oxymoronic?
It is an article of faith in homosexual circles that a pedophile, by definition, is not a homosexual. They insist that someone who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children is not a homosexual. Someone needs to tell the scientists doing work in this area about this. I found an article by the Family Research Council (not a pro-gay source, obviously) that cited a study in the well-respected Archives of Sexual Behaviorthat used the term "homosexual pedophile" without any awareness that this is utterly wrong! Sure enough, when I dug around, I found a copy of the article, and the Family Research Council's citation was correct.
The study itself is Ray Blanchard, Howard E. Barbaree, Anthony F. Bogaert, Robert Dickey, Philip Klassen, Michael E. Kuban and Kenneth J. Zucker, "Fraternal Birth Order and Sexual Orientation in Pedophiles," Archives of Sexual Behavior 29:5 [2000] 463-78. The abstract describes the paper's purpose:The purpose of the paper is to examine whether the well-known "birth order effect" (homosexual men are more likely to have older brothers--but not necessarily older siblings than heterosexual men) applies to homosexual pedophiles as well: Whether homosexual pedophiles have more older brothers (a higher fraternal birth order) than do heterosexual pedophiles was investigated. Subjects were 260 sex offenders (against children age 14 or younger) and 260 matched volunteer controls. The subject’s relative attraction to male and female children was assessed by phallometric testing in one analysis, and by his offense history in another. Both methods showed that fraternal birth order correlates with homosexuality in pedophiles, just as it does in men attracted to physically mature partners. Results
The paper itself acknowledges what has been long known--homosexuals are more likely to be interested in children than heterosexuals:
suggest that fraternal birth order (or the underlying variable it represents) may prove the first identified universal factor in homosexual development.The best epidemiological evidence indicates that only 2–4% of men attracted to adults prefer men (ACSF Investigators, 1992; Billy et al., 1993; Fay et al., 1989; Johnson et al., 1992); in contrast, around 25–40% of men attracted to children prefer boys (Blanchard et al., 1999; Gebhard et al., 1965; Mohr et al., 1964). Thus, the rate of homosexual attraction is 6–20 times higher among pedophiles.
I've pointed out before that the evidence is clear that homosexuals are overrepresented among pedophiles, and that a very PC journal like Archives of Sexual Behavior published a paper that uses a term like "homosexual pedophile" shows that the gay claim that pedophiles can't be homosexual is simply wrong.
UPDATE: There's a lot more interesting material in this study. While the authors are partial to the idea that the correlation of homosexuality to increasing numbers of older brothers might be the result of some sort of hormonal effects on the younger brothers: "maternal antibodies to Y-linked minor histocompatibility antigens (H-Y
antigens), which are raised in increasing concentrations by each succeeding male
fetus," they also acknowledge:The most popular rival hypothesis is the notion that sexual interaction with older males increases a boy’s probability of developing a homosexual orientation, and that a boy’s chances of engaging in such interactions increase in proportion to his number of older brothers (e.g., Jones and Blanchard, 1998). Although this hypothesis may seem intuitively plausible, there are little empirical data to recommend it (see discussion in Purcell et al., in press).
It seems an appropriate area to examine--especially with the strong correlation of child sexual abuse and adult homosexuality. The paper also acknowledges something that homosexuals refuse to admit:The proportion of pedophiles in this study who were exclusively or primarily interested in boys, as assessed from their offense histories, was 25%. This result is consistent with previous studies that suggest the prevalence of homosexuality is about 10 times higher in pedophiles than in teleiophiles (Blanchard et al., 1999; Gebhard et al., 1965; Mohr et al., 1964).
UPDATE 2: Oh yeah, count on USA Today to contact experts about the subject:NARTH states on its Web site that gay men are three times more likely than heterosexuals to have sex with minors; it also says about 35% of pedophiles are gay. It attributes these figures to studies published in 1984 and 1992 by Kurt Freund, a Toronto researcher who died a few years ago.
Does anyone find something...interesting...about how Berlin and Finkelhor can make such claims, when published, peer-reviewed research on the subject--and in a serious, well-regarded journal like Archives of Sexual Behavior--directly contradict them? At best, I would hope for something like, "Well, there's been a lot of contradictory research" or "There isn't general agreement on this."
USA TODAY asked experts on pedophilia and sex behavior research to evaluate these studies.
The verdict: They don't support a claim that gay men are more likely than heterosexuals to abuse minors. In fact, Freund explicitly points this out, says physician John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.
Freund's sample of sex offenders finds that male pedophiles are more likely to molest boys than girls.
A 'separate sexual orientation'
But NARTH's claim that 35% of pedophiles are gay stems from "a flawed assumption" that men who prey on young boys also are attracted to grown men, says Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist Frederick Berlin, an expert on sexual disorders.
...
No scientifically conclusive research exists that would answer questions about pedophiles' sexual orientation, says Berlin.
But clinical experience with pedophiles suggests "it's kind of a separate sexual orientation," says David Finkelhor, author of four books on child sexual abuse and director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "Often they have no attraction to adults whatsoever."
Bancroft agrees. "They're men interested in children. They're more interested in boys than girls, but they're interested in kids, not adults."
Dealing With Mass School Shootings
You know, when I was young, "mass school shootings" would have been an oxymoron. There were certainly situations where one kid might get a handgun, bring it to school, and use it to settle a score. The notion that kids might bring guns to school for the purpose of killing lots of their classmates--or where an adult would come to a school for that purpose? Incomprehensible. And it wasn't because we had stricter gun control laws back then--quite the opposite.
Instead, we had a considerably more civilized society--one that for all its faults, was not awash in people whose notion of a way to deal with their problems was to murder a bunch of kids. I cringe a little when I see proposals like this to solve the problem by arming teachers and staff. Why do I cringe? Not because they won't work. Dave Kopel points out that this is the most workable immediate solution:[T]he only realistic gun control policy which would stop school shootings would be to completely prohibit firearms, and confiscate the entire existing supply of more than 200 million firearms. Lesser policies (e.g., one-gun-a-month, gun registration) would, whatever their other merits, be unlikely to have a significant effect on school shootings. There are no substitutes for firearms (in both offensive and defensive situations), because firearms are fairly easy to use, and can project force at a distance.
Now, the response of gun control advocates is, the problem isn't that severe, and Kopel points out:
Constitutional problems aside, it seems completely implausible to believe the gun prohibition could be successful, given the ability of the black market to supply drugs (which have been illegal for almost a century) to a wide variety of consumers, including high-school students.
The second-best--and much more realistic approach--would be to allow licensed, trained teachers and administrators to possess concealed handguns on school property. I agree that having police officers on school grounds would be very helpful, but it seems that there are not sufficient police resources to cover all schools all the time.
In 2004, I detailed how Israel (which has a well-established Swiss-style [civic duty] gun culture) and Thailand (which has a very strong anti-gun culture) have armed teachers in order to protect schools against terrorists.Some critics state that schools are, statistically, still relatively safe, mass murders notwithstanding. This is true, but it would still be beneficial to reduce the number of children and teachers who are murdered.
It is also worth pointing out that if schools are, "statistically, still relatively safe" so that there's no need to allow teachers to be armed, then the same argument is true in response to whatever crack-brained gun control measure the gun control advocates come up with "for the children." The fact is that mass school shootings, as disturbing as they are, are quite rare. They get a lot of press, but setting public policy based on them makes about as much sense as requiring every home in America to have medications for treating bubonic plague.
What makes me cringe most of all about such proposals is what it says about the state of American culture that we even have to worry about this. There are people out there who are blathering on about how removing prayer from public schools is why we having these problems. No, that's confusing the symptom with the cause. When Americans largely bought into the notion that there are some things that are just wrong: "You shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery" was also a time when the concept of going into a school with the plan to rape and murder a bunch of elementary school girls would simply not have occurred to enough people to happen. Our culture was so boringly homogenous that some ideas were simply not in widespread circulation--unlike today. See this example about a federal prosecution for distributing stories about rape and torture of children.
If there were people like the Marquis de Sade who entertained such ideas, they were usually sitting in prison--not out free where they could carry out their monstrous thoughts. Every once in a very great while, some depraved and evil person would commit a shocking crime like this--but we recognized how bizarre such a person was, and we did not waste time and energy figuring out how to preventatively deal with people that sick.
"Catastrophic Violence": Compared to What?
Is this perhaps a sign of not being completely in touch with reality? Former U.S. Attorney-General Ramsey Clark and current moonbat claims:WASHINGTON (AFP) - Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general who is one of
You will forgive me for my incredulity, but Clark's fellow moonbats keep telling us about how bad things are in Iraq, and without question, there's a very serious violence problem in some provinces--with bombs going off daily, killing dozens of people a day. Does Clark think that a lot of Iraqis who are peacefully going to work every day, with no serious complaints about the situation there, are going to respond to execution of Saddam Hussein with violence?
Saddam Hussein's lawyers, said that any death sentence against the former Iraqi president would increase violence in the strife-torn country.
"It seems clear that a guilty verdict will set off catastrophic violence" and that a death sentence would be even worse, Clark told a Washington press conference.
"It's hard to know how many Iraqis, dozens, hundreds, thousands, will die because of the sentence," he said.
Like all good leftists, Clark loves tyrannical, genocidal, torturing thugs more than he loves America.
Personal Finance
I held off on buying long-term bonds because I didn't get the house in Boise sold, and I wasn't sure whether the cash that was sitting in a money market fund might be needed short-term. In the meantime, the very attractive high yields on long-term bonds have slipped down quite a bit. (Had I bought those bonds, they would now be worth more than I paid for them.)
However, the good news is that short-term rates are still quite high. Money market funds are doing very nicely, but if you need a bit higher return, and can afford to keep your money a little less liquid, there are some ultrashort bond funds available. Schwab has a couple of these ultrashort bond funds, Schwab YieldPlus Investor Shares (symbol SWYPX), with a 30 day SEC yield of 5.48% and a minimum investment of $2500, and the Schwab YieldPlus Plus, Select Shares (symbol SWYSX), with a 30 day SEC yield of 5.63% and a minimum investment of $50,000.
These are bond funds that invest in bonds that have maturities under one year, so that dramatic changes in interest rates will have almost no effect on capital value of the bonds. As an example, SWYPX's current share price is 9.67; the 52 week range of share prices is 9.65 to 9.67, so only about a 0.2% change in valuation as interest rates has gone way up. This is almost as low risk as a money market fund, with a bit better yield.
Along with fixed-rate bonds, there are some bonds that are inflation adjusted, such as Student Loan Marketing Corporation's A-rated bonds maturing in December of 2009 (currently yielding 6.3%) and December of 2013 (currently yielding 6.45%). These bonds pay the CPI-U percentage (which varies monthly), plus either 2.15% of 2.30%, respectively. The disadvantage of inflation adjustment is that if you lock in these high rates now, they are likely to drop in the future. The advantage is that you aren't going to see the capital value of these bonds change substantially as interest rates rise, since the coupon paid goes up as inflation rises.
A Good Word For Phrenology
I'm reading Dr. Isaac Ray's A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity (1838). The introduction to this 1962 edition by Wilfred Overholser actually has a few good words to say on behalf of phrenology--and it is a reminder of the dangers of getting too arrogant in our intellectual superiority over the people of the past:Phrenology represented the union of a theory of localized brain functions with a primitive behavioristic psychology. Its basic theory was that the mind was not unitary but is composed of independent and ascertainable faculties, some thirty-seven in number, localized in different so-called "organs" or regions of the brain....
Much of phrenology has passed into limbo today, yet it should be remembered that Gall was a serious worker who did much to stimulate the development of neuro-anatomy. He disproved many of the existing theories of his time, such as the idea that the vital spirits were contained in the ventricles of the brain and transmitted by tubular nerves.... Since his theories were basically materialistic, Gall was in his time thought anti-religious, but they were originally presented merely as hypotheses to be tested, rather than, as happened, believes to be seized upon and exploited by enthusiasts. [Winfred Overholser, ed., Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1962, x-xi]
The editor goes on to point out that phrenology was part of a tradition that regarded mental illness and pecularities as representing something biological in nature, while psychiatry, at least from Freud onward, focused on psychogenic causes. In the last few years, psychiatry has once again started to recognize that at least some of the psychoses represent biochemical problems--not "You're crazy because your Mom mistreated you as a child."
I've long felt that Freud was a seriously mistaken detour in psychiatry. His first attempts to discuss female patients who claimed to have been sexually abused were so negatively received by other doctors in Vienna--and that these reports he was receiving were so widespread--that he decided that his patients were engaging in fantasies. The alternative was that there were a lot of monsters in middle class Vienna. In retrospect, there probably were. We now know that sexual abuse of children is far more common than anyone would have guessed. All that energy that Freud and his followers put into "Oedipus complex" and elaborate theories of childhood--largely wrong. The biochemical and structural explanations of which phrenology was something of a first step, made more sense.
Copycat Crimes
Part of why I initially suspected that the incident in Pennsylvania might have been a copycat crime is that it is a pretty common problem, throughout history. I was reading Dr. Isaac Ray's A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity (1838), and at sec. 191 he discusses the many reasons why punishment of the insane for a crime makes no sense:Not only is the moral effect of punishment totally lost when inflicted on the subjects of homicidal insanity, since it does not deter other madmen from committing similar acts, but by a curious law of the morbid action ever publicity obtained for them by the trial and execution of the actors leads to their repetition to an almost incredible extent. At a sitting of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris, August 8, 1826, Esquirol stated that since the trial of Henriette Cornier, which occurred not two months before, he had become acquainted with six instances of a parallel nature. Among these were a Protestant minister who became affected with the desire of destroying a favorite child. He struggled against this terrible inclination for fifteen days but was at least driven to the attempt on his child's life, in which he fortunately failed. Several other physicians on the same occasion bore similar testimony relative to the effect of that trial, and the newspapers about that period teemed with cases of child-murder which had originated in the same way.
Speaking of Elephants in the Tub
Do you remember, shortly after President Bush won re-election, he announced that he was going to spend some political capital on a reform of Social Security, and Democrats said that there wasn't wrong with the system, and he was just trying to scare people? Well, someone else is saying that there's a problem, and we can't keep ignoring it:
The Democrats in Congress were so intent on denying President Bush any sort of political victory that they pretended that there was nothing to worry about--and Republicans in Congress, terribly afraid that the Democrats were going to terrify retirees, refused to take any action. (Perhaps they were too busy IMing lewd suggestions to Congressional pages.)
Idaho's Notion of Gun Control
Own a gun!
Of course, I'm one of those reasonable, moderate sorts. If you don't want to own a gun, well, that's okay, no one should force you to do so.
Bailey owns the Greenleaf Store, a grocery/gas station that is a hub of the rural town of 862 people. He's already been interviewed by local news media, the New York Times and Comedy Central's news satire program, The Daily Show. They all want know the same thing: What does he think about a proposed city ordinance calling for a firearm in every home?
"I don't think it will have any real impact," said Bailey, a supporter of the ordinance. "I just think an armed community is the right thing."
The ordinance is based on a 1982 law in Kennesaw, Ga., requiring each head of household to keep at least one firearm in the house.
Most residents and business owners contacted Tuesday were indifferent about the ordinance — a nonchalance that spilled over into the half-empty City Council meeting, which had been moved to a larger venue in anticipation of an overflow crowd. But only roughly 15 people attended the meeting, which also featured discussion about a water project and the police chief's report that included a short discussion about a police contract with Wilder, a nearby town.
Never Bring a Rock to a Gunfight
I admire this guy's willingness to not let criminals get away with their crime, but the first rule of gunfighting is: bring a gun:
Coverage of the Record Level of the Dow
A blogger that I've never heard of before points out that record levels of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are unmitigated good news when a Democrat holds the White House--but not so when a Republican occupies the Oval Office:
But much has changed about the U.S. economy since the boom and the subsequent bust. Inequality within American society has grown. The budget deficit is looming as a major problem as the Baby Boomers begin to retire. Health-care costs have skyrocketed. The savings rate is negative as people go deeper in debt or use home equity loans to pay for purchases. Energy costs have surged until recent weeks.
At the same time, the housing market developed a bubble of its own in the past six years as the Federal Reserve kept interest rates low to prop up the economy. Now, home construction has tumbled, and prices generally have softened. Some fear the end of this bubble could sink the economy. Others disagree. Whatever the case, the economy is slowing down."
At Least Foley Resigned
Considerettes reminds us that when something substantially worse happened--with a Democrat having sex with a 17 year old page--Rep. Studds (D-MA) didn't even resign, but won re-election:Shapiro goes down the list of Democrats that the Left either made excuses for or simply slapped on the wrist–Studds, Clinton–and also adds Pelosi, who opposes parental consent laws regarding underage abortions. While moral outrage is well-placed on Foley’s head, I find Shapiro’s contention that Democrats are not taking that tack, rather using the “hypocrite” bludgeon.
News flash: Human beings are flawed and hypocritical. Politicians, with all the power and money flowing around them, will be put in more situations than the average person that will tempt them to abandon their principals. This is not news.
What is, or should be, news is how each political party deals with its problems. Regardless of possible hushing in the past, Foley did the right thing once the truth came out. One wishes that this would have been caught and dealt with earlier, but Foley is gone. Not censured, not reprimanded; gone.
The ACLU's Clients Are At It Again
Having just won a major victory in defeating a state funeral picketing law, one of the ACLU's clients is after another opportunity to promote liberalism:(CNSNews.com) - A Kansas-based group that says "God hates fags" plans to picket the funerals of the Amish girls killed by a disturbed man in Lancaster County, Pa.
Now, they probably aren't trying to promote liberalism, but Phelps' little hate cult manages to make liberals look good every time they show up to an event.
The Westboro Baptist Church -- described as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League -- has made a name for itself by picketing the funerals of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. The troops are dying as punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality, the group says.
The Westboro group says the Amish school girls were "killed by a madman in punishment for Gov. Ed Rendell's blasphemous sins against Westboro Baptist Church.
"Gov. Ed Rendell -- speaking and acting in his official capacity to bind the State of Pennsylvania -- slandered and mocked and ridiculed and condemned Westboro Baptist Church on national Fox TV," the group says on its website.
"Rendell also revealed a conspiracy to employ the State's police powers to destroy WBC in order to silence WBC's Gospel message. Co-conspirators identified by Rendell included state officials, citizens, lawyers, legislators and media," the website says.
Westboro Baptist Church said it is "continuing to pray for even worse punishment upon Pennsylvania."
Thanks to Stop the ACLU for bringing to my attention what these creeps are planning.
I Guess Amazon Is Getting Orders For My New Book
Not many, however, since my sales rank for this book is still way down there:Amazon.com Sales Rank: #727,809 in Books
A Certain Lack of Good judgment, I Think
If there's anything that the Foley matters shows, it is a lack of both character and judgment. I think the same can be said for this guy:CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A state senator said he is evaluating whether to continue his bid for a second term after a Charleston television station aired revealing pictures of him last week.
Yup, this is a "tragic and troubling episode" and it might be best for people with "personal identification" problems to not be holding public office. I'm not sure that this would be acceptable even in most of California. (The Bay Area, of course, would find it "cool.")
"My family has urged me not to withdraw from the election and I will work with them to make a decision in the immediate future," State Sen. Randy White, a Webster County Democrat, said in a letter to newspapers in his district.
An apologetic White also wrote that he was "shocked" and "horribly embarrassed" after WCHS-TV aired photos depicting him and at least two other men wearing only body paint.
"The pictures were taken approximately two years ago in private and were stolen from my personal computer," said White, 51, a married father of three. "I am not sure why they were given to the media, but I must assume for obvious political reasons."
...
White wrote that he had been working with his family to overcome a "personal identification situation" and to overcome depression for which he has been treated through medication for over a year.
"I am a religious person and have been for some months praying to God to help my family and me through this tragic and troubling episode in my life," the letter said.
Apparently Not A Copycat Crime
Because the murders at the school in Pennsylvania followed so closely on the murders at the school in Colorado--and because of the disturbing similarities in what both monsters were planning--I assumed that this was a copycat crime. Apparently not:QUARRYVILLE, Pa. (AP) - Charles Carl Roberts IV started buying supplies for a siege six days before storming the one-room Amish school. He made a checklist of what to bring. He wrote out four suicide notes.
There are some details I've left out that you don't need to read, but this is what shows that Roberts had already started preparing for this crime before the incident in Colorado:
Carrying several guns, a change of clothes, rolls of clear tape and toilet paper, Roberts planned for a long stay and possibly sexual violence. He said he was "filled with so much hate" and "unimaginable emptiness."
But his siege was shorter than he had expected. As authorities swarmed, Roberts opened fire on 10 tied-up little girls, fatally wounding five, and then killed himself.The crime bore some resemblance to an attack on a high school in Bailey, Colo., where a 53-year-old man took six girls hostage and sexually assaulted them before fatally shooting one girl and killing himself. That attack occurred Sept. 27, the day after Roberts began buying materials for his siege.
One of the reasons that I firmly believe that pedophilia needs to stay on the "sick" list--as opposed to those mental health professionals and academics that want us to go down the path that they took with homosexuality--is that it really is a sickness.
Humor: New Phone Menu
My friend Peter Buxtun sent me this:We should hear this when calling government, phone company, etc.
"GOOD MORNING."
Press "1" for service in English.
Press "2" to disconnect until you learn English.
Hang up if you hear: "Good Morning, this is The Bilgewater Corporation, your call is VERY important, but because we fired most of our operators, you must wait half an hour to speak to a person."
Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Bad (Congresssional Division)
Mark Foley is gay. Mark Foley makes lewd suggestions to minors. Regular readers will know that I have frequently pointed to evidence of a connection between child sexual abuse, pedophilia, and adult homosexuality:Disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley said through his lawyer Tuesday that he was abused by a clergyman as a teenager, but accepts full responsibility for sending salacious computer messages to teenage male pages.
How many examples of child sexual abuse victims who grow up to be homosexual--and how many studies that find a correlation between child sexual abuse and adult homosexuality--does it take before this amazing coincidence starts opening some eyes?
Attorney David Roth said Foley was molested between ages 13 and 15 by a clergyman. He declined to identify the clergyman or the church, but Foley is Roman Catholic.
He also acknowledged for the first time that the former congressman is gay, saying the disclosure was part of his client's "recovery."
"Mark Foley wants you to know he is a gay man," Roth told reporters in Florida as Republicans struggled to avoid election-year fallout from the congressman's behavior and sudden resignation.
Like this one? Or these other high profile homosexuals who admit to be abused as children? Or this collection of abstracts? Or this one? Or this one? Or this?
Perhaps this one?
The 800 pound elephant in the bathtub isn't going away, as much as Professor Volokh wants it to.
The BBC Program
They have a blog on which they are soliciting comments, and since the quality of most of them (even the ones with which I agreed) were so poor, I decided to actually add some facts, not just opinion and emotion--but for some reason, my comments below can't seem to work their way through the process, while later entries do. Perhaps it is the high quality of these other comments that caused them to be accepted, while my very low quality one below seems to have vanished?
1. These sort of mass murders are very atypical of murder in the U.S., but get a lot of press coverage. Drawing conclusions about appropriate public policy from incidents that are pretty rare makes little sense.
2. The U.S. murder and non-negligent homicide rate in 2005 was 5.9 per 100,000 people (well down from the peak of around 10 per 100,000 in 1980). Of that, 68% were committed with firearms. That means that the non-firearms murder rate in the U.S. was 1.9 per 100,000 people. That is substantially higher than the murder rate in England & Wales from all weapons types. Even if you magically made every gun in the U.S. disappear, and there were no murders prevented by defensive gun uses--we would still have a much serious violent crime problem than England & Wales.
3. Guns, especially handguns, are commonly used for self-defense in the U.S., and not just against criminals with guns, but criminals using knives, fists, feet, clubs, and every other weapon known to man. I collect news clippings of such defensive uses here. There's one just about every day that received press coverage, and often multiple incidents daily.
4. Gun control laws, to the extent that they work at all, tend to disarm those who are the least of your concerns. About 3/4 of all U.S. murders are committed by those under 18 (who can't legally buy a gun from a dealer, or in most states, from anyone), convicted felons (prohibited from either purchase or possession of a firearm), or those with histories of mental illness (who can't possess a firearm, purchase from a dealer, and in most states, possess under any circumstances). Unfortunately, those most prone to misuse a firearm are the least likely to obey gun control laws. That's part of why Britain's quite strict gun control laws have not worked to reduce gun violence. Even restrictive licensing does not seem to work all that well--Thomas Hamilton managed to get a pistol license in Scotland, in spite of what should have been red flags because of his unhealthy interest in little boys.
5. Murder rates are largely determined by social problems such as average population age (peak rate for murderers is 18 in the U.S.--we have a much younger population that almost any European country), undiagnosed or untreated mental illness (see the website of the man who went on a rampage at Dawson College in Canada, summarized here), and a reluctance to acknowledge that the murder problem is concentrated in certain groups. For example, 53% of U.S. murders where the offender's race is known, are black--and blacks make up about 11% of the U.S. population. (The victims are overwhelmingly black as well.) I understand that there are similar results in Britain, but for obvious reasons, no breakdowns by race are allowed out of the Home Office.
6. Why murder in the U.S. is largely a black problem is subject to consider debate: is it crowded housing conditions? That's one explanation. Poor whites live in rural areas, usually not crowded. Is it the absence of positive male role models for young black men? Maybe. Is it because blacks are disproportionately poor? Perhaps. No one wants to talk about this elephant in the bathtub, because it would cause people to ask why American blacks, who have lower rates of access to guns than American whites, have dramatically higher murder rates.
Why Child Molestation Is Bad
When the first accounts reported that the murderer in Pennsylvania was taking revenge for something that happened when he was 12, I wondered: molestation? This would seem to suggest that:A man who laid siege to a one-room Amish schoolhouse told his wife he had molested young children decades ago and left a note saying he had "dreams of molesting again," state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said Tuesday.
The weight was lifted because he had figured out what to do, and had made up his mind.
Police said they could not confirm the claim by Charles Carl Roberts IV and that family members knew nothing of the alleged molestation.
...
Authorities said Charles Carl Roberts IV, a milk truck driver and father of three who lived in the area, wrote what appeared to be suicide notes before taking guns and an estimated 600 rounds of ammunition to the tiny school.
Roberts did not appear to be targeting the Amish, though, state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said Tuesday. He said Roberts apparently chose the school because he was bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago."
From the notes Roberts left behind and the telephone calls he made, it was clear he was "angry at life, he was angry at God," Miller said. Co-workers said his mood had darkened in recent weeks, but suddenly brightened over the weekend, Miller said.
"A few days before the shooting a weight was lifted," Miller said Tuesday.
From everything that I have read, child molesters aren't born; they are a consequence of having been abused under certain specific conditions that cause them to identify with the molester. It sounds like Roberts was sexually abused at age 12, either ended up molesting girls at some point that has not come to the attention of authorities, or thought that he was going to do so--and decided to take revenge on little girls for "tempting" him, while killing himself. (Molesters often persuade themselves that they are being seduced or tempted by children, rather than see themselves as the problem.)
I know that a lot of other bloggers (especially the law professor bloggers) don't understand why I am so enraged by child molestation, but this is the reason: it leads to enormous damage, and the damage keeps going for generations.
I'll Be On BBC In About Two Hours For A Live Broadcast About Gun Violence
Apparently 18:00 British Summer Time.
The Foley Scandal
Some conservatives are questioning the timing of the exposure of Foley. Yeah, it's a dirty political trick--but that's not the core problem. The core problem is that Republicans (and apparently everyone else) knew that Foley was gay, and they were reluctant to say anything when questions about inappropriate emails to pages first came to the Republican leadership's attention. As Newt Gingrich pointed out a few nights ago on Fox News, if they had said anything about it, however, they would have been accused of gay-bashing and homophobia.
The Human Rights Campaign (which is the gay lobbying group) made $27,000 in contributions to Rep. Mark Foley since 2000. Do they have any concern about this at all? Remember that the last time a Congressional page scandal hit Congress, Rep. Crane (R-IL) was caught with a girl; Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) was caught with a boy. Crane either actually felt shame about it, or at least knew that he was supposed to pretend to be ashamed. Studds insisted that it was none of Congress's business if he was having sex with a minor.
UPDATE: Here's the smoking gun about why the news media sat on the first signs of trouble, last year:Meanwhile, Florida newspapers — who were leaked copies of the e-mail with the Louisiana boy last year — defended their decision not to run stories. Both The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald were given copies of the e-mail, as were other news organizations, including Fox News.
If he wasn't known to be gay, might they have pursued the story? That's certainly one implication: gay men get special treatment.
"Our decision at the time was ... that because the language was not sexually explicit and was subject to interpretation, from innocuous to 'sick,' as the page characterized it, to be cautious," said Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Herald. "Given the potentially devastating impact that a false suggestion of pedophilia could have on anyone, not to mention a congressman known to be gay, and lacking any corroborating information, we chose not to do a story."
A Disturbing Dream: Neither Live Nor Dead
I had a very disturbing dream last night--one that was so stupid and yet so horrifying that it really should be a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. (And yes, that's an insult, for the reasons articulated here.)
Just a little ways into the future, a scientist discovers that political dissidents are disappearing. But instead of being simply murdered, he discovers at the institute where he works that their brains are being removed and put in a state of suspended animation, while everything from the waist up is preserved as a trophy.
Intrepid scientist tries to alert the population of this horror, and his pretty teenaged daughter becomes part of his effort to stop this. Finally, having failed to persuade anyone on the outside, they sneak in to the brain storage vault, and decide to get some evidence. But they've been tracked to the brain storage vault--and they decide to lock themselves in. Of course, there's no food or water, so eventually they have to give up. In this disturbing dream, we see them being directed to come out of the vault with their hands in the air.
The final scene of the dream we see the bad guys carrying two brain boxes into the vault--and the preserved upper bodies of the scientist and his daughter.
I guess the prospect of the Democrats getting control of Congress again is showing up in dreams like this.
Is Iraq on the Verge of Civil War?
A reader with more than 200 hours in an F-16 over Iraq pointed out:I keep pointing out to my friends that Iraq is not "on the verge of a civil war", rather, Iraq has been in a civil war since...well, about since Saddam seized power and started suppressing Shia and Kurdish minorities.
I remember flying over Kurdistan and seeing Iraqi army heavy artillery lined up deep inside Iraq ready to bombard Kurdish targets (also deep inside Iraq), seeing shelled-out villages with Kurdish names near nice new villages with Arabic names, and seeing the film of the bodies from Halabja during a squadron intel brief.
The difference is that now, in Iraq's ongoing civil war, the oppressed victims of Saddam's regime are able to fight back - with American help, but eventually on their own - against their oppressors and their oppressors' heirs, the jihadists.
Bush should have made this point from the get-go: Iraq is not "descending into", "sliding into", or "slipping into" civil war. Iraq has been in a savage civil war for years, where one side - Saddam - had a marked advantage over all the rest. The invasion offers the best, indeed the only, way of ending this war.
Moreover, our enemies aren't "insurgents"--we're the insurgents, challenging the millenia-old system of rule of tyrants. Our opponents,on the other hand, are of the same stripe as Nebuchadnezzar and Ashurbanipal.
Why You Should Patronize Dunkin' Donuts & Applebee's
They have the unmitigated nerve to obey the law!September 30, 2006 - A local group fighting for immigrant rights is calling for a boycott of two nationally known companies. Dunkin Donuts and Applebee's are accused of discriminating against immigrant workers whose names don't match their social security numbers.
Even if you ignore the problem of being unlawfully in the United States, when someone works under an assumed Social Security number it creates very, very serious problems for whoever actually has that Social Security. Every dollar that Jose Garcia earns under John Garcia's Social Security number is considered taxable income by the IRS. Now, John Garcia might eventually get this straightened out, explaining that he lives in Los Angeles, and could not possibly have worked in Phoenix--but what a mess!
On the 10th anniversary of what immigration reform advocates call stringent changes to immigration laws, supports of the legalization of the undocumented are once again speaking out -- only this time, they are hoping not only to mobilize their vote, but also use their buying power to force the kind of change they want.
"The social security administration says it plans to send out 8 million no match letters," said Martino Unzuerta, Chicago Workers Collaborative.
The initial purpose of the social security administration's 'no match' letter was to credit workers unclaimed social security earnings. The agency routinely sends out 'no match' letters to a company when employees' names and social security numbers don't match possibly because of a spelling error, omission of information or a unreported name change. But immigration activists say some employers are now aggressively using the letters to fire immigrant workers.
"The Bush administration wants to give the appearance that they are cracking down on undocumented immigration and workers are an easy escape goat," said James Thindwa, Chicago Jobs with Justice.
Groups accuse several companies of the practice using 'no match' letters to immigrant workers who don't have valid social security numbers. They want the public to boycott businesses, including Applebee's and Dunkin Donuts. Neither company could be reached for comment.
How Special Is Mecca?
I mentioned a few days ago that if the democracy project in Iraq doesn't work, what are the alternatives? These weren't necessarily alternatives that I liked--and some of them are absolutely monstrous--but the way things are going, I could see the population of the West (and for that matter, of just all societies around the world that are having to confront the isanity of Islamofascism) finally saying, "Enough. It's time to stop playing nice with Islam."
As part of that discussion, I observed that while pretty barbarous, destroying Mecca as a method of humbling Islam--so that the crazies can get past the cognitive dissonance that encourages them to engage in savage attacks on the West--might end up seeming like a "good idea" at some point in the future. I also expressed my belief (and my uncertainty) that Mecca wasn't necessarily "special" in a faith-humbling way for Muslims.
I may be wrong. Over at Infidel Bloggers Alliance, they linked to that piece, and one commenter disagreed:The idea of destroying Mecca and especially the Kaaba seems very stupid to many but it isn't. I am going to paste here a "fable" that's very popular among Muslims.
The fable is about how an army attacking Mecca was destroyed by pebbles dropped by birds at Allah's orders. The Koran, Sura 105, references this story:In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
If the Islamofascists really believe that Mecca will be defended by Allah by miraculous means, it might well be the case that the complete destruction of Mecca would cause an enormous collapse of confidence in their religion.
Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the army of the ELEPHANT?
Did he not cause their strategem to miscarry?
And he sent against them birds in flocks (ababils),
Claystones did they hurl down upon them,
And he made them like stubble eaten down!
Copycat Crimes
Do you suppose the news coverage of what happened in Colorado--where an adult went into a high school, sent the boys out of the room, then sexually assaulted and murdered a girl--might have encouraged this crime?Police are offering new details of today's fatal shooting in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. They say the gunman, a 32-year-old man, sent the male students outside while keeping young girls inside and blocking the doors.
Police say that as they arrived and tried to negotiate with the shooter, he opened fire, killing 3 girls, and then taking his own life. They say 7 other students, some with very serious injuries, were taken to hospitals.
Police say the man, identified as an area resident named Charles Roberts, left what were described as suicide notes for his wife, saying that he would not be home, and that he indicated that he was seeking revenge for something that happened 20 years ago.
Am I Missing Something Here?
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have more than once, after posting a news clipping about a civilian using a gun in self-defense over at my Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog, I have received upset emails from family and friends of the deceased. In some cases, they claim that their loved one was innocent, and did nothing wrong--and I admit, I have read one or two of these news accounts and find myself wondering if there might be some truth in what they are saying. Still, my rule is that if the criminal justice system, which is strongly biased against civilians using a gun in self-defense, concludes that someone's actions were legal, I go ahead and count that as a defensive use.
Sometimes it goes the other way. Jason Dickey was just sentenced to 16 years in prison in Richland County, South Carolina, for voluntary manslaughter. (He was charged with murder.) His girlfriend believes that a great injustice has taken place--that he was engaged in self-defense. Here are the news accounts of the conviction:
I hate to second guess a jury. Perhaps there was something about how Dickey or his attorney handled their defense that was unconvincing. Perhaps the account above fails to convey information that suggested that Dickey did not have reason to fear Boot. At least at first glance, I am hard pressed to see from the available information that Dickey was clearly in the wrong--and for a criminal conviction, there has to be evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. At least what I am reading suggests a reasonable doubt exists that Dickey did something wrong. If any of you have information that might explain this verdict, I would love to hear it.
Al-Qaeda Has Been Promising Attacks on the U.S. Ever Since 9/11
I don't see any reason to take this latest threat anymore seriously--but I must confess that the mention of this guy Adnan is worrisome. This is an interview of Abu Dawood by journalist "Hamid Mir, the only journalist to interview Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Taliban leader Mullah Omar in the wake of 9/11." It is a threat that seems to claim that al-Qaeda has smuggled either a nuclear or radiological bomb into the U.S.:
Adnan would appear to be this guy, who the FBI would very much like to find. Here's the FBI's wanted poster. There's a $5 million reward for the guy; they aren't looking for him because of unpaid parking tickets. Obviously, you should be looking for this guy if there was no reward at all--but wouldn't it be nice to save tens of thousands of American lives and get rich as well?
This Appeared in the Idaho Statesman?
You could have knocked me over with a feather:
No, it isn't, because guess what? Even many liberals draw the line at gay marriage. They may not want to admit it, but even they recognize, at some reptilian level of propriety that they won't even admit to having, that gay marriage is wrong. They may phrase as "unneeded" or "divisive," but when a state like Oregon--one of the most blue states that there is--can pass something this knuckle-dragging with that kind of a margin, a lot of liberals are cringing at the concept of two men getting married.
The reason: Defending traditional marriage is vital to many Americans. It trumps their support for other gay civil rights, say some who follow voting and social patterns.
Even among people who balk at amending constitutions, it's difficult to resist voting yes. "It's one of those things they'd rather be safe than sorry," said Donald Haider-Markel, a University of Kansas political science professor who has tracked voting rights on gay issues.
Mississippi, 86 percent.
Montana and Utah, 66 percent.
And the state with the closest margin? Oregon, 57 percent.
During the legislative hearings earlier this year, one of the citizens who spoke to the committee considering whether to put this initiative on our November ballot was an older gay man. While he asked the committee to not put this initiative on the ballot, he admitted that even he still was a bit taken aback by a wedding cake with two grooms on it.
CNN's Special "Rumsfeld: Man At War"
I watched this hour long special about Secretary Rumsfeld this evening, and I was both pleased and surprised at how fair it was. They interviewed both those generals who think highly of him, and those who want him to resign, because they blame him for the failures of the Iraq War. They gave Rumsfeld plenty of opportunity to defend himself, and to Rumsfeld's credit, he acknowledged that he, as well as many others, completely missed the extent to which they were going to face a determined insurgency.
They interviewed the general who command the Big Red One in Iraq, who complained that he had asked for a lot more troops. CNN's reporter asked what he would have used the additional forces for--and the response was to shut down the border with Iran. Rumsfeld's response was that he gave the theater commander in Iraq as many troops as he indicated were necessary--and that was their call.
I have frequently wondered why we did not send enough troops to shut down the border. It seems like it would have been a good idea--at least to prevent the escape of members of the Hussein government. In retrospect, I consider this one of the more important mistakes. The number of foreign jihadists who came to Iraq must have numbered in the tens of thousands over the last three years--it is hard to imagine that Iraq would be anywhere near as screwed up today if we had only been fighting against Iraqi insurgents.
However, one of those interviewed on the program, I can't remember now if it was Rumsfeld or Gen. Pace, made the point that bringing 400,000 soldiers, while it might have simplified internal security, would have felt like an occupying army. Very true. But might we have been better off having 400,000 soldiers there for a year, and crushed the insurgency immediately--then reduced troop strength to a few tens of thousands than what actually happened?
Hindsight is always 20/20, and the program pointed out that many of the strategies that worked well in Afghanistan (at least, through mid-2002) were tried in Iraq--and with unpleasant results. The focus in Afghanistan was to work with native forces, minimizing Coalition forces, and build democracy. While there is definitely a problem resurgent there, at the time, this seemed to have worked. The same approach in Iraq has been, at best, poor in its results.
There's plenty of room for legitimate criticism of what worked and what didn't. If the Democratic Party were prepared to make a consistent argument along the lines of:
1. These are the policies that didn't work in post-war Iraq.
2. These are the changes that we propose to make in how to manage post-war Iraq so that we can destroy or pacify the insurgency, allowing Iraqi's government to operate.
3. Elect us to Congress, and we'll do this.
They would have no problem getting people like me to at least listen to their proposals.
Unfortunately, what I am hearing is the multimillionaire wing of the Democratic Party accusing Bush of lying (not being misled or mistaken) to start a war.
I am hearing the adult supervision wing of the Democratic Party saying, "We aren't going to cut and run, but we'll do a better job of running this war than Republicans have done." But I'm not hearing any specific strategies.
Let me give you an example of the level of specificity I am waiting for them to give:
1. Move existing U.S. forces primarily to the borders of Iraq for the purpose of interdicting the importation of explosives and foreign jihadists.
2. Establish a "free fire" zone for two kilometers along the borders, except at the relatively small number of controlled roads into Iraq. Plaster these areas with signs to make it clear that if you cross into Iraq outside of the controlled border crossings, you will be shot on sight.
3. Substantially expand U.S. forces in Iraq for a period of one year with the goal of suppressing both foreign jihadists and internecine death squads.
4. State that our policy is that we will withdraw all U.S. forces when a month passes without bombings. I have confidence that the foreign jihadists doing this lack the self-control to stop--but it would create an interesting conflict between those foreigners and Iraqis who, as much as they hate the U.S., would rather have us leave the country. It would also create a situation where insurgents would have to admit, at least to themselves, that they prefer to kill Americans rather than have them leave.
