Funmurphys: the Blog

Department of Odd Coincidences

I'm reading Instapundit when I come across this story about a black bear attacking a boy in the Smokey Mountains:

The incident began about 7:30 p.m. when the boy, Evan Pala of Boca Raton, Fla., was playing in a creek about 300 yards from the trailhead of Rainbow Falls Trail, which is near the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, Miller said.

We didn't see hide nor scat of bear on our hike (thankfully), although when we got back to the van someone had written "Go Patriots!" in the dust of the back window. This really weirded out the Murphy women since somebody figured out what school the funDaughter goes to with just a PS sticker and Missouri plates to go by.

Anyway, here's a picture of the falls:

RAINBOW FALLS

Our hearts go out to the Pala family and we hope and pray they make a full recovery.

Potpourri for $100

When did 'nuts' become an unprintable and unspeakable word? Gen. Anthony McAuliffe used the word to great effect during the Battle of the Bulge and nobody bats an eye at it. Jesse Jackson uses the word and all those bastions of anti-censorship and forward thinking like the NYT all of a sudden can't bring themselves to print the word. And if you haven't seen the film - it's great theatre as Jesse leans in and whispers to his co-panelist and even includes the hand gestures of sawing the coconuts off (apparently they take some effort to remove).

Mark Wadsorth on the difference between left and right wing dictatorships: the recovery from them. Via My buddy in hell, Tom McMahon.

What explains the difference in reaction to the deaths of Tim Russert and Tony Snow? Both were caring people at the top of their profession. Both were involved in politics as well as journalism. Yes, that was a hint.

So Democratic politicians assure me on the one hand it takes a minimum of 10 years to drill a hole in the ground and get oil out of it, and on the other keep bitching about what is taking so long in Iraq. Last time I checked, removing a dictator, and then fighting against a terrorist organization (al Qaida), 2 groups of militias (Sunni and Shia), and a country (Iran) while trying to rebuild a country and create a civil society in country that has never known one is several orders of mangitude harder than drilling a hole.

Can't Drill Our Way Out Of It

At first blush I didn't much care for the response that we "can't drill our way out of" high gas prices, but then I read the full text of Sen. Obama's remarks and was somewhat mollified. But then I thought for a moment, and I was back to thinking the remarks are wrong:

"If we reduce our consumption of oil, that's what will reduce gas prices, the presumptive Democratic nominee said in a one-on-one interview with The Post-Crescent during a campaign stop in Kaukauna.

"There's really no other way of doing it."

"We can't drill our way out of the problem because there's just a finite amount of oil out there and you have got increasing demand from countries like China and India."

Ok, so what's my beef. Well for one thing, back when I took my Econ 101 class from a Marxist I learned that both a decrease in demand and an increase in supply will lower cost. So to say that a decrease in consumption (i.e. demand) is the only way is flat wrong. But I was temporarily molified by his modifier that there's just a finite amount of oil out there. And then I thought and realized that there is just a finite amount of anything out there (wherever you draw your boundary since ultimately the Universe is a closed system) so really the only time that makes any sense is if you are currently up against a limit in your ability to increase supply.

Are we there? No way, not with all the oil in the US that is politically out of reach, and the refining capacity we don't have because of political considerations, and the inefficiency in the government oil producers which control most of the oil right now, we could increase supply without much difficulty. So in the short term, i.e. my lifetime, we can in fact "drill our way out of it". In the long term, the economics of something else will make more sense than oil and we will switch over to that. Again and again.

So while I wait with anticipation for solar energy to get cheap and efficient enough to power all our energy needs, I say drill away.

Left Out, As Always

I feel so left out. I slept through the first quake at 4:30AM. I was jamming to Joe Satrioni at work and so missed the big aftershock. But I can be part of today's big story by directing you to this story that details how republicans are responsible for midwest quake. Thankfully, no one was hurt and damage was minimal.

Hey, at least I felt the one in 1968 (plus a bunch during my six California years).

A Spectacular Fall

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Although it's like getting Al Capone on tax evasion - his other crimes are much worse but at least he got got.

St. Louis had our own version of Eliot, without all the other baggage. George Peach was a prosecuting attorney who by day crusaded against the porno business and by night was in bed with them. Yeah, he too was a Democrat. Mr. Peach was like Gary Hart - he all but dared the local newspaper to investigate him. As I'm not a psychiatrist and don't actually know the people, you wonder is the dare from a desire to get caught so they can stop or just arrogance.

Oh well, one can hope that New York gets a better, less self-aggrandizing governor out of the resignation.

The World Outside

Perhaps it's because I'm getting over that killer flu that's going around and it seems like winter is never going to end, but my thoughts keep returning to the Norse idea that the end of the world is presaged by a winter without end - Fimbulwinter. But then that leads me to think Ragnarok and Roll and I can't help but smile.

And now, not only am I not alone in thinking this has been a particularly bleak winter, but I've got data to back me up.

No, I don't honestly think the world is coming to an end, the weather and my frailty combine to make my mood sink like the Earth's temperature recently. I know my mood won't be permanently affected (I really do have a naturally sunny disposition), and I'm hopeful the Earth's temperature isn't permanently affected, because no matter what climate alarmists tell you, warmer is better than colder. In moderation, of course.

Sometimes, Oops Isn't Enough

Every military base I've ever been to has had displays of equipment. I can still remember the directions I was given the first time I went to Pax River - "turn right at the plane on a stick." And when I got there, I turned right at the plane on a stick to visit the Armament hanger. Sometimes, things are exactly what they seem:

Apparently when Lincolnshire County Council were widening the road past RAF Scampton's main gate in about 1958, the 'gate guards' there had to be moved to make way for the new carriageway. Scampton was the WWII home of 617 Sqn, and said "gate guards" were a Lancaster...and a Grand Slam bomb.

When they went to lift the Grand Slam, thought for years to just be an empty casing, with an RAF 8 Ton Coles Crane, it wouldn't budge.

Read the rest if you can't figure out what happened or want to find out just how big a 22,000 lb bomb is.

I'm reminded of the story my old english teacher, Mr. Felling, used to tell of when he was assigned to a destroyer in the Navy. He went aboard, and noticed the sailors would sit and smoke on the depth charges- the live depth carges that is. At first, he thought they were crazy, but within a couple of weeks he too was lounging and smoking on the depth charges.

First They Came For The Gadfly

Free the Inner City Press!

Cheaters Never Prosper

Or Super Bowl 42.

An exciting quarter of football, a rewarding outcome, so so ads, a brief old school rock interlude, all stretched out over 4 hours.

Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but he had a poor game.

If Belichick is such a great coach, why is he such a cheater?

The Patriots were lucky all game until finally the Manning somehow escaped two defenders and Smith caught the ball on his helmet. Live by luck, die by luck.

News You Can Use

Here at FunMurphys.com, we don't believe in scaring you during sweeps week. No stories about flesh eating bacteria, just important news you can use.

First up, Marvel Comics is putting their catalog of comics on the internet. No downloads, just access to titles like X-Men, Amazing Spider Man, and as the Marvel Marketer put it, hot recent series and so much more! Looks like I waited too long to put my collection up for sale.

Researchers at Texas Tech have created a new drought resistant wildflower, "Raider Amethyst". That's the kind of plant I need around my house. I just love that phrase, researchers created a new wildflower.

Jay Rosen wants to improve reporting by having beat reports meet Facebook. Put another way, he wants to support beat reporters with what he terms a social network, but what I'd call a team of experts, but then I'm so last millennium.

I'm sorry, but I think polls like this are fun but meaningless: Zogby poll shows liberals play more games than conservatives. Just for the record, I've been playing strategy games since I was 9, video games since they were invented, and I don't play Madden NFL, Mario, or the Sims.

The Fed will make four expanded forecasts instead of the current two. What that really means is that the Fed will explain what they're thinking more often, because nobody, even the Fed, can make economic forecasts that are accurate - even figuring out what happened can be mighty hard.

My town, St. Louis, has a dubious distinction - we're tops in STD rates. So let's be careful out there.

In related news, it's now scientifically established that bars cause drinking -- Bars and nightclubs, but not liquor stores, are linked with excessive alcohol consumption and heavy episodic drinking in adults who live nearby, according to a new study from the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California. I loved this line from the report: "The investigators were not surprised with the results, they write, because bars, taverns, and night clubs, especially those that do not allow minors, are where social and cultural norms are more likely to accept, if not encourage, excess drinking."

I'm sorry, but this strikes me as a gag: What’s in a Name? Initials Linked to Success, Study Shows. And not just success, but failure, too. "Students whose names began with ‘C’ or ‘D’ earned lower GPAs than students whose names began with ‘A’ or ‘B.’ Students with the initial ‘C’ or ‘D,’ presumably because of an unconscious fondness for these letters, were slightly less successful at achieving their conscious academic goals." One has to wonder just how large this effect is and thus how significant it is. Just remember, just because you read it somewhere, or somebody in a white coat with more education than you says so doesn't necessarily make it true.

IRA vs. Islamicists

I'm not a Nobel prize winning author, and I never will be one, but then I have a certain grasp of facts. So for instance, when a nobel laureate says that the 9/11 attack wasn't as bad as the IRA's multi-decade terror campaign, I have to point out this is an apple, that is an orange. One is a single attack carried out by a terror ogranization, the other is a totality of terror campaign. Why not compare the number killed by al-Qaida world-wide to those killed in a single IRA attack?

A better comparison would be the IRA's multi-decade terror campaign, and al-Qaida's roughly decade long terror campaign. And then you should also compare what the aims of the two groups are, and then I think it becomes pretty clear that in a real comparison, the IRA is/were pikers compared to al-Qaida, and if you throw in the Islamicist movement compared to the IRA, there is simply no comparison in terms of numbers killed, tortured, lives disrupted or ruined, international scope, or total opposition to everything Doris Lessing holds dear as a member of Western society. None.

A Tragedy In Pakistan

I'm not a world leader, but let me express my shock, horror, and dismay at yesterday's suicide bombing in Pakistan and extend my condolences to the families of those killed and to all of Pakistan.

STREET IN KARACHI 20 YEARS AGO

I have fond memories of the time I spent there, and the wonderful people I met there. What a terrible tragedy, and a reminder that the virtues and evils of man are universal.

Ellen DeGeneres Goes To The Dogs

I don't watch Ellen DeGeneris so I missed her emotional meltdown the other day:

For those who missed out on her shaggy-dog edition of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," here're the condensed version: DeGeneres and her partner adopted Iggy, an adorable Brussels Griffon mix, on Sept. 20. But Iggy didn't get along the couple's cats, so after giving it the ol' celebrity try (about 10 days?), they decided to give him to DeGeneres's hairdresser and her two daughters. Unfortunately, DeGeneres forgot to tell the pet adoption agency, which requires notification for any change of ownership, and when the agency learned of this transfer, it told DeGeneres she had violated their contract and repossessed the dog.

While unpleasant, this kind of story is hardly unusual. What moves it into the realm of OFF/beat is that DeGeneres spent long, painful chunks of airtime dwelling on her clerical error. "I feel totally responsible for it and I'm so sorry. I'm begging them to give that dog back to that family," she bawled in a near-fetal (albeit seated) position. "It's not their fault. It's my fault. I shouldn't have given the dog away."

As a dog lover, I can relate to how tough it must have been. What I cannot understand, though, is why DeGeneres would bawl her eyes out on national television. And then it hit me like a Great Dane to the chest: damage control.

With her emotional and peremptory elocution, Ellen avoided being mauled by the tabloids and, more important, avoided disappointing her adoring fans. Rather than deny and explain, she confessed and begged forgiveness. And by crying those tears, whether alligator or not, she most likely won over even more fans. Think I'm being too cynical? Watch the video and decide for yourself.

I've adopted a dog from a rescue organization and yes they were extremely thorough -- the application was several pages long, the references were actually checked, we had a home visit. We felt it was excessive, but then we aren't out rescuing dogs. It was made abundantly clear to us that if we were no longer able to keep Trooper, he went back to the agency and no one else. That's the agreement you make to get the dog. Don't like it, get a dog from somewhere else.

But back to Ellen D's meltdown - is it real, or is it for show? I don't know - how would I? On the one hand, it's mighty convient as well as excessive, but on the other, most celebrities seem to have emotional issues that cause them to want the attention of celebrityhood.

Torture 2007 Style

In light of this junk article out of the Washington Post about WWII interrogators criticising modern ones, I thought this article was just chilling: CIA May Threaten Detainees with Senate Hearings. Now that would make anyones blood run cold.

Back to the cranky old men, what do we know?

They illegally violated the Geneva convention on reporting the capture of prisoners, and let's be clear here, they knew exactly they were in the wrong and there was no question that the people they were interrogating were legitimately covered by the convention as lawful combatents.

They were not interrogating terrorist true believers who were ready to die for their cause. According to the article, they were interrogating soldiers and scientists. Clearly, some of the participants were quite willing to talk.

It's not clear how much real information they really did glean since the real intellegence story of WWII is that the Allies broke most if not all the important Axis codes during the war (especially Japan's codes). The problem was how much action to take on the information gained so that the enemy wasn't tipped off.

The claim is that they discovered submarine tactics - without naming them. Well, lest we forget it was the British capture of U-boats that led to the breaking of the Naval Enigma code. It wasn't knowledge of U-boat tactics (such as the details of Wolfpack operations), but the use of long range patrol aircraft to cover the North Atlantic that put an end to the U-boat menace.

Another claim is that they learned groundbreaking secrets of rocketry - which could well be, but the Allies didn't capture Werner von Braun his team of scientists until May 2 1945 and Von Braun was trying to surrender to Americans. So we know they came willingly, and they came too late to have any effect on the war.

The final claim was that they learned secrets of microwave technology. Since they weren't interrogating British scientists, perhaps what they mean is they learned about the strengths and limitations of German radar, as the British invented microwave technology and together with the United States held the lead in microwave and radar technology. And when would they have captured a German microwave scientist? Again, it couldn't have been until late in the war.

Stop Excusing Vick

I never put much stock in the whole "white privelege" notion, but I'm reconsidering a bit. The bit is that as a white person I don't feel the need to defend someone just because they are white. That doesn't seem to be the case for people of non-pallor, or at least it's the only reason I can think of that Whoopi Goldberg (among others) defended Michael Vick's torture and murder of dogs:

Goldberg pointed out that Vick was raised in the South.

"This is part of his cultural upbringing," said Goldberg.

So was slavery Whoopi, so was slavery. If it were, for instance, Trent Green who was in the dock, would Ms. Goldberg be defending him?

Enforced Virtue

I used to feel strange driving a car. As opposed to a minivan or SUV, that is. Back when I used to do my parental duty and take the Fruit of the Murphy Loins to functions for children, I often had the only car on the lot. And it didn't matter how green or blue the drivers were. Since then I've noticed that typically a person's politics don't have much impact on the kind of car they drive. People who complain about sending American jobs overseas have no trouble driving a foreign car; people who warn me about global warming and green house gases have no trouble driving some giant SUV; ardent free traders who loathe unions will only buy American cars.

I am not trying to call hypocrite here because it's way overused and I don't think it's accurate in this case. The point is a lot of factors go into the decision of what kind of vehicle to drive, and as with all parts of life, we have to make comprises and balance competing priorities. That's life. And that's why I support free markets in general - they allow the people living with the consequences to be the ones making the decisions.

But in light of the whole CAFE standards issue, more relevant than ever, I have to note while the politics don't seem to play a large role in what kind of car people drive, it does play a large role in support for CAFE standards. I'm against them, for the simple reason if people prefered gas milage over other features, then we'd be driving high gas milage vehicles. The CAFE standard is based on the illusion that we can all drive vehicles that get better gas milage all other things being equal. They aren't - there are always tradeoffs. The reason I don't support increasing CAFE standards isn't because I don't support increased gas milage in the abstract, it's because I know it comes at a price, and a price people aren't willing to pay.

A Window On A Wider World

The thing I enjoy most about the editorial page at the St. Louis Post Dispatch is the letters to the editor. Some are clunkers, and I often get the impression they pick the more extreme letters on a given subject, but I do love reading them. Perhaps I was in an especially good mood this morning, but I like this one so much I'm sharing:

The story "A return to the old ways" (June 14) considered the Tridentine Mass, which is not "the 1,600-year-old Mass" nor is it the "Mass of the Ages." It is the result of the Catholic Reformation of 16th-century Europe.

United in the Catholic tradition are 23 different churches, each with its own ancient rite. In the ninth century, Pope John VIII (872-882) decreed that the Mass need not be confined to the then-traditional Latin, Greek or Hebrew languages. His decision made possible Mass celebrations in Slavonic. This defended the missionary work of St. Methodius and set a new precedent.

If there are those who wish to celebrate the mere 400-year-old Tridentine Mass, let it be. But the claim that this one limited form of the Mass is somehow more Catholic than other forms is a denial of the rich Catholic tradition.

May the Post-Dispatch, which gave front-page coverage to the Tridentine Mass, now report on the more important news about the destruction of the ancient Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq.

Wayne Hellmann | St. Louis

Robert Phenix | St. Louis

The letter is brief but informative, tart without snark. But then what else would we expect from a couple of scholars - a chairman of the Theology Studies department and an adjunct professor of Biblical Studies.

Since the Post will never get around to providing coverage on the destruction of the ancient Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq, here are some links: background, blogging,
news of a synod, and more sad news. One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.

Lileks: Reality's Mole In The Liberal Belly

It is said that the Strib was being foolish in demoting Mr James Lileks to a beat reporter. And I have no doubt that is true from the standpoint of the pecking order at newspapers. But I'd like to take a step back and take a second look.

Have you ever read Lileks? I happen to love his writing, but 90% of it is about the mundanities of life - fully half of it revolves around going to Target, being at Target, the trip home from Target, and just thinking about Target and Target-like stores. The crazy thing is he manages to make his experience of the Sturgeon part of life seem fun and interesting. The other 10% he weaves in revelations on modern life - politics, architecture, pop art and culture, home improvement - that astound.

Have you read the news part of a newspaper recently? Dull stories written from an uncritical liberal point of view that are leavened with 20% liberal pieties. News that might reflect poorly on any oppressed people (i.e. anyone who isn't a white male, or white males in journalism and academia, the two honorary oppressed while male groups) is routinely suppressed from the paper or omitted from stories.

Just think what the impact of having Lileks write some of these stories. Readership might actually go up, as (non-liberal and liberals alike) people actually began to read the news part of paper again. Spot the Lileks could become a local pastime and even a college drinking game (not that we endorse that sort of thing here at FunMurphys). And at last, news stories wouldn't be written from that insufferable liberal viewpoint and instead of liberal pieties we would get real insight along with all the relevant facts. What a deal!

The blog debate over newspapers isn't about whether they'll die, but when. And the Strib intends to do something about it. They are going to put their best writer on the one topic everybody agrees should be the strength (but isn't) of local newspapers - local news reporting. So what's the reaction from all those people who've been telling newspapers to do exactly that? Outrage.

So I'm going to have to disagree here, this makes perfect sense from the Strib's point of view, and Lileks will have to make up his mind whether he wants to be reality's mole in the belly of the liberal beast, or does he want to sever his ties with an organization that needs him more than he needs them. I'm hoping he choses the mole job, but fully expecting him to sever away.

Ann Coulter Robot Post

I'm just going to post this every time Ann Coulter comes up:

The problem with Ann Coulter is that whenever she makes some good points she discredits them with terrible hyperbole and insult. Her problem isn't uncommon in partisans who are forever overreaching, but far too often she misses provocative and land squarely in revolting.

Wall Street Insider Trading - Is That All There Is?

I don't know whether to be happy or sad after reading this article about a Wall Street insider trading ring:

Earlier this year, the SEC asked at least 10 Wall Street firms to turn over stock-trading records for the last two weeks of September, seeking to determine whether they leaked details about big stock trades to favored clients.

The government said yesterday that it broke one of the biggest insider-trading cases since the 1980s. According to the SEC, which brought a civil suit against 14 defendants, the scheme stretched over five years, included hundreds of tips and produced more than $15 million in illegal profits.

At a meeting at the Oyster Bar in New York's Grand Central Station in 2001, Mitchel Guttenberg, an executive director in UBS's equity-research department, and hedge-fund trader Erik Franklin hatched one of the schemes, the SEC claims.

Guttenberg, 41, offered to settle a $25,000 debt to Franklin, 39, by slipping him analyst ratings in advance, the agency said. To avoid getting caught, the men used disposable mobile phones to send each other coded messages, according to the SEC's complaint.

Should I feel sad because it indicates widespread and pervasive fraud in the securities market?

Should I feel happy because it's such small beer - a 25k debt, a total of $15 million for 14 people for 5 years of work - we're talking just over 200k per anum per person, which doesn't compare well with what I guess an executive director at a big name securities firm in New York makes, never mind the $10 billion per anum in fees these firms take in from hedge funds alone. But believe me, I'm not surprised people would risk so much for so little. But then I wouldn't be surprised if the SEC didn't add another zero to the take at a later date.

The Married Man Defense

The jury is still out in the Scooter Libby case, but I've weighed the evidence and have to agree that community service of this sort would be appropriate.

OK, according to the offense, I mean the prosecutor, the case is about Mr. Libby lying when he claimed he had forgotten that he had earlier learned about Mrs. Wilson from VP Cheney and other official channels and it was as if he had heard it for the first time from Tim Russert. According to the defense, the case is did Mr. Libby hear about Mrs. Wilson from Tim Russert as Mr Libby testified.

I have to say the case is about how many married people there are on the jury. If I were the defense, I would have offered up the married man defense - if I had been allowed to mount a memory defense unlike the actual accused. I can't tell you how many important things I have relearned over the years as if for the very first time despite hearing it from my wife earlier (or at least that's what she claims). "I told you that" -- what married man isn't familiar with that refrain. How many a married man has forgotten an anniversary, a birthday, or some other significant event?

So as a married man, a man who looked over at his son at Night At The Museum and said "You wear glasses?" to the immediate scorn of both wife and son, I can believe that Scooter Libby forgot something, something that people telling him thought vital, something that even he thought vital. I have no idea if he did or not, but I can believe it.

The Talented Mr. Russert

Tom Maguire of Just One Minute Fame has made the case that Tim Russert could have lied (OK, just let his memory go dim) in the Scooter Libby perjury case because he was covering for prior less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth statements. Frequent commenter, Barney Frank, claims he should get credit for the white lie leading down a slippery slope of further cover up possibility. I'm sorry to tell both Mr. Frank and Mr. Maguire that there is a very fine movie that pre-dates Mr. Russerts legal entanglements, The Talented Mr. Ripley, that starts with a far more innocent misdirection and ultimately ends up in a far darker place than perjury. The movie is well worth seeing. The Libby Trial, not so much.

I have no idea if Russert was telling the truth about his conversation with Libby (Don Imus thinks he wasn't), although his actual testimony was that while he doesn't remember discussing Mrs. Wilson (which I can believe) with Libby, it was impossible that he told Libby about Mrs. Wilson. However, I can't believe Mr. Russert couldn't remember whether or not he told his boss he had cooperated with the FBI while NBC was fighting the grand jury subpeona. That I just simply can not believe. Nor can I believe that the FBI lost the notes from that initial conversation with Mr. Russert. Oddly enough, I haven't seen either mentioned in conventional news outlets.

More Heat Than Light

Just before the November elections, some nice lady in California, Jill Asher, called me a crazy nut case for opposing Amendment 2 here in Missouri. Clearly Ms. Asher is passionate about the subject because her step mother has Alzheimer's which is a terrible disease. However, she isn't particularly knowledgable about the amendment, and while she linked to a pro and anti site each, she didn't both to link to the actual text of the amendment.

"So when I hear about you nut cases voting against Amendment 2, you are voting to halt research against this horrible disease that affects my family - and soon will affect YOURS in some way. I guarantee that as you age, you or one family members will be doomed with this horrific disease - or other's that can be cured with stem cell research."

Secondly, there is a distinction between adult and embryonic stem cells that Ms. Asher is ignoring. I'm all in favor of studying adult stem cells. Pour the money there, please.

And finally, a vote against amendment 2 wasn't a vote to halt any research whatsoever. Amendment 2 was a preemptive change -- it ties restrictions in Missouri to Federal restrictions. Since there are no stem cell research restrictions in Missouri, no reaserch would have been halted if Amendment 2 didn't pass -- and no reaserch started because restrictions were lifted by the passage of Amendment 2. The only effect is on the ability of institutions, mainly Washington University, to attract money and researchers for embryonic stem cell research because Missouri would be no worse than any other state. Needless to say, supporters didn't mention this angle.

"Sorry if I sound bitter, but I can't imagine that so many people would actually vote against funding that will help us all in the future, and possibly find cures for so many diseases. I know I probably won't change your mind, but I hope you get a crystal clear picture of what you will be going through in the future."

Also, next time you have a failure of imagination, maybe you should do more investigation and ask yourself "maybe I'm wrong?". It works wonders for me.

And no, you won't change my mind with a post like that. You're passion means nothing to me; your reasoning, facts, and acknowledgment of my reasoning and facts mean everything.

"Do you understand what stem cell research can do for you and your family?"

What I disliked most about the amendment was the deception involved. The amendment claimed to ban all human cloning while it specifically only banned creating a clone for reproduction and not for research. The Amendment claimed to guarantee access to stem cell cures for Missourians but there are no restrictions on the cures and there are no embryonic stem cell cures at the moment.

Ms. Asher called me a crazy nut case (yeah, that will help change my opinion) while linking my ballot measures roundup post wherein I thought I made clear the reasons I was opposed to the Amendment and summed up: "While I don't think this amendment will make much difference one way or another, I'm voting against it because (1) it is deliberately misleading, and (2) it doesn't belong in the constitution."

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see how that makes me a crazy nutcase.

Superbowl XLI

The game: lopsided except for the score.

The ads: dull, dull, dull.

The halftime show: not bad.

I was looking forward to the superbowl, I was rooting for Indy, but when the half time show is the high point of the experience, something is wrong. Very wrong.

Maybe it's time to scrap the Roman Numerals and use Arabic. Maybe it wasn't time to hold the Superbowl in a stadium that isn't a dome. Maybe it's just another football game.

Why Is Scooter Libby On Trial?

I've promised one last Plame post numerous times, but the Scooter Libby trial requires comment -- if only for the sheer fun of saying the defendant's name. If you want the ins and outs, Tom Maguire is as always your man. I'm taking a big picture look.

First off, near as I can tell just about everybody who got roped into Fitzgerald's investigation has had trouble with remembering what actually happened -- who said what to whom when -- or has changed their story, yet only Mr. Libby is on trial. Mr. Fitzgerald claims that is because Mr. Libby deliberately mislead him and impeded his investigation, but his investigation into what? He determined that no crime occured, and that determination had nothing to do with who leaked first, it had to do with Ms. Plame-Wilson's status.

Secondly, Joe Wilson has lied long and loud and clear yet he suffers no penalty for doing so. I'm not even sure he actually went to Niger since he's lied about everything else. And as it turns out, he is the guy who actually leaked his wife's status as an ex-NOC -- up until he yapped to Mr. Corn, his wife simply worked at the CIA. It's bad enough Armitage, Fleischer, Rove and Libby let out that much, but Joe himself the most damage.

Third and last, why is Fitzgerald and the government wasting time with this prosecution when real live CIA leaks that actually caused harm are going uninvestigated and unpunished?

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?

I admit it - I love Scooby-Doo. Not the later, lamer cartoons, but the original. So I report with sadness that his creator, Iwao Takamoto, has died.

Obesity Has Replaced Starvation

I admit it's an odd sort of good news: Obeseity has replaced starvation as the main problem with world food supply. As a onetime Guidance and Controls guy (GPS isn't guidance, its Nav!) I hope it's just overshoot until we settle into a proper caloric balance:

One of the most surprising news items of 2006, at least to me, was the announcement that there are now more overweight people in the world than hungry ones.

Say what? It was not that long ago that all the experts were predicting that our skyrocketing human population would soon outstrip its food supply, leading directly to mass famine. By now millions were supposed to be perishing from hunger every year. It was the old doom-and-gloom Malthusian mathematics at work: population shoots up geometrically while food production lags. It makes eminent sense. I grew up with Malthus's ideas brought up-to-date in apocalyptic books like The Population Bomb.

Who defused the bomb? Instead of mass starvation, we seem to be awash in food. And it's not just the United States. Obesity is on the increase in Mexico. Fat-related diabetes is becoming epidemic in India. My parents used to tell me when I didn't eat my dinner to think about the hungry children in China. Today one in five people in China is overweight, 60 million are obese, and the rate of overweight children has increased 28-fold since 1985. Everywhere you look, from Buffalo to Beijing, it's ballooning bellies.

Needless to say, reality hasn't caught up to everyone just yet, but with world population set to peak around 2050, the looming problem is aging/shriking populations (yes Virginia, even China) and how will countries deal with that?

Hat tip to TinkertyTonk

Potpourri for 100

My wife likes Christmas CDs, I like Billy Idol, but somehow I don't think it's right to mix the two. IOW, I didn't buy the Billy Idol: Happy Holidays despite the obvious temptation.

Is it just me, or do liberals only like dead Republican presidents?

Is there a downside to the Rosie Trump feud? Yes - more attention for a couple of people who need to go on a strict publicity diet.

Maybe it's time to consider a 3 state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Let's Go Crazy

Speaking of Apple, I too noticed a slow down in the iTunes store on Christmas morning when the Fruit of the Murphy Loins were trying to load up their new gifts.

Speaking of layers of editors etc. , I just had to laugh at this line:

That extravagant spending may not last forever: one analyst said that while Apple now has about 75 percent of the market for downloaded music, it could see as much as 5 percent of market share go elsewhere in 2007 because of increased competition.

A Friendly Reminder

Nine shopping days left.

No, I'm not done. Are you?

My problem is that I always start with the easy gifts, and then as time is running out I'm stuck with people who are impossible to buy for. Yes, that is a pretty easy recipe for stress.

Jennifer Aniston Available

Jennifer Anniston is back on the market. I suppose I should point out that Hollywood you don't have to be married for a breakup to be considered news.

Dale Carnegie Meet John Brunner

Here's some good advice from novelist John Brunner, from his novel The Traveler In Black:

"But -- but I counseled against this foolishness!" stammered Jacques.

"No," corrected the one in black. "You did not counsel. You said: you are pig-headed fools not to see that I am absolutely, unalterably right while everybody else is wrong. And when they would not listen to such dogmatic bragging -- as who would? -- you washed your hands of them and wished them a dreadful doom."

"Did I wish them any worse than they deserved?" Jacques was trying to keep up a front of bravado, but a whine had crept into his voice and he had to link his fingers to keep his hands from shaking.

"Discuss the matter with those who are coming to find you," proposed the traveler sardonically. "Their conviction is different from yours. They hold that by making people disgusted with the views you subscribed to, you prevented rational thought from regaining its mastery of Ys. Where you should have reasoned, you flung insults; where you should have argued soberly and with purpose, you castigated honest men with doubts, calling them purblind idiots. This is what they say. Whether your belief or theirs constitutes the truth, I leave for you and them to riddle out."

One On One With Kim Jong-Il

Yes, this is going around so you can find it all over, and yes, it really is unfair to Madeleine Albright, but after She Who Must Be Obeyed opened her mouth, I couldn't resist.

A less funny, more traditional rebuttal was provided by Sen. John McCain. McQ delivers a fisking. Personally, I can't fault either administration too much because North Korea under Kim Jong-il was simply going to try and develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them no matter what anyone said. It was worth giving talk a chance, but once it becomes clear that's a waste of time, why continue? Now we need to talk to the North Korea's neighbors about what we are going to do, not talk to Kim.

And another thing, why is it the same people who criticize President Bush for acting unilaterally, or for the US acting like a bully, demand that the talks with North Korea only be with the United States? It's just more dead horse beating.K

Hewlett Packard, We Hardly Know You Anymore

I have to admit I have a soft spot in my heart for Hewlett Packard. Perhaps it's because when I was a physics undergrad I used the original signal generators sold to Stanford University in my first lab (and yes, even then they belonged in a museum). When I was graduating, they were known as a quality employer with a special culture. So I have always associated the company with the best engineering values. It seems that all things change, and sadly H-P has changed too. The Carly Fiorina fiasco has now been followed by Patricia Dunn debacle. No, I don't think this has anything to do with the ability of a woman to run a great engineering company. I think it happens to do more with who runs large companies these days. Not just cream floats to the top.

Pope Benedict and Islam

Isn't it amazing? The way mobs across Dar al Islam seem to hang on the Pope's every word, even scrutinizing obscure addresses that get zero press in nominally Christian countries, unless Dar al Islam expresses its displeasure and the Western Press is forced to cover it. Considering what a wonderful address it is, I suppose I should thank them for raising such a stink that I got to read it.

Before we get to the meat of the address, I'm going to tackle the so-called offensive part of the address, which is being labled as a call for inter-faith dialogue. Well, Benedict calls it a cultural dialogue, and from his remarks he's going way beyond churchman from Christianity and Islam having their own hootenanny. It's a call for everybody to dialogue within a framework of reason, and he tells the story that got the the Moslem world so riled up to make this point: "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."

Now, did he have to include

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"?

I'd also like to point out that the press doesn't seem to be able to quote properly, as this article on CNN has trouble:

The pope enraged Muslims in a speech a week ago in Germany quoting 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything the Prophet Mohammed brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

I'm not Catholic, and I have some theological bones to pick with Catholicism, but I have to say that at least the last two popes have been extraordinary leaders, each in their own way. I'm going to have to start reading the pope more since he's the only guy out there defending Western thought, practice,and culture these days.

I've excerpted the introduction and the conclusion to Pope Benedict's address and urge you to read the whole thing:

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

...

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

What more can I say?

The Path to 9/11 (2)

Yes, I actually watched The Path to 9/11, except a chunk in the middle Sunday night. First up, the negatives. I did manage to catch two glaring errors: a couple of times they talked about scrambling F-16s and they showed the same clip of a F-14. I'm sure Lock-Mart would have been happy to provide a clip of a F-16 taking off. And then when they had the Tomahawk missile strike against Afganistan, they showed video of a Harpoon leaving a canister. I suppose the marketing for the land attack capability in the latest version of Harpoon went much better than I realized. Since I worked on Harpoon for a long while, I admit I enjoyed that goof.

Seriously, while I loved the no commercials, the shaky cam started to seriously annoy long before the end. My head isn't that unsteady, so it just comes across as fake. And I about laughed outloud towards the end when after the attacks Condoleeza Rice told Richarde Clarke, "Yes boss, we sure do need a strong white man to run things around here." (Or words to that effect.) Perhaps I'm wrong, but it strikes me that in a meeting with Rice and Cheney in it, Clarke is in fact chopped liver. I think Condi had far more to complain about than Maddy Albright, who came across as tougher than the rest of the Clinton cabinet combined and someone who should be negotiating on behalf of our country. Hell, as peaceful as I am I'd be ready to fix bayonet and charge uphill into machine gun fire if the character in the movie were leading the way.

Could they have found an older looking guy to play Cheney? He's not a bad looking 65 in real life, but in the movies they always have somebody playing him who looks like he hasn't smiled in 40 years and has one foot in the grave.

Here's the real problem with the movie, and any such look back - there are nothing but connected dots. The movie spans 8 years in 3 hours, and only included are the events that matter. So when watching the movie, of course its all so obvious. But in real life, there is all kinds of stuff going on, and separating signal from noise is very hard.

The fault for 9/11 lies squarely with al-Qaida, and neither the Clinton or Bush administrations. Yes, had some things been done differently, we might have been able to sniff out and stop the plot. So rather than looking back to point fingers, we should be looking back to figure out what are the things we can do better. And that just isn't happening.

The Path to 9/11

It's getting ugly out there. Real Ugly. All that dispicable letter from the Democatic Senators needs is Luigi Vercotti's signature "Things break, Colonel."

I'm sorry if the people who brought us It's the Ecomony, Stupid!" don't like a reasonably accurate (hey, it's TV, it will never be entirely accurate) examination of the past, but so be it. I'm looking forward to the original work, but fully expect ABC to cave.

Just check out Libertas, which has been on top of this story like Tom Maguire on the big Plame-out.

I'm trying hard not to get a case of Leftist Derangment Syndrome, but it gets harder with every provocation.

Free Spirit or Cold Blooded Killer?

Michael Lee Shaver, Jr. has been charged with at keast one murder after confessing to seven. He made a living off robbing and killing drug dealers. I'm going to skip right over the grisly part of how he hid the evidence, and to right to what his neighbors had to say:

Neighbors on Southfork Drive said Shaver never fit in with other residents of the rural subdivision, where homes are built on three- to five-acre wooded lots.

They said Shaver, his mother and her husband moved into the house more than four years ago when the owner of the home returned from a nursing home stay and needed help. Shaver’s mother, Shirley Bryson, 53, cared for the older man and stayed on after he died earlier this year.

The rest of the neighborhood wasn’t happy with that. Occasionally, unfamiliar people would live there for a while, neighbors said.

Keith McMeins said an ever-changing cast of characters visited the log home. Their musical taste ran to Led Zeppelin and “headbanger crap,” which they played loudly enough for the entire neighborhood to hear, McMeins said.

McMeins said he once caught Shaver walking off with a garden hose, which Shaver dropped after McMeins threatened to call the sheriff.

“What possessed you to take the hose?” McMeins asked.

“Jack Daniels,” he remembered Shaver replying.

Neighbor Russ Feeback said the heavily tattooed Shaver was a “basic, prison-looking guy.” He said people in the area noticed a lot of traffic at the house and often heard Shaver yelling.

Usually the neighbors say "he was such a quiet man", but not this time. And by the way, don't ever call Led Zeppelin "headbanger crap".

Obama Calls South Africa On AIDS Response

I'm not a fan of Senator Obama, but I'm with him on this one -- South Africa is making a terrible mistake by advocating garlic, beetroot, lemon and African potatoes to combat Aids while underplaying the role of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. The only way I see that helping is the garlic keeping people apart. South Africa needs to get with the program and soon.

John Karr Arrested for the Murder of JonBenet Ramsey

Okay, my home town is in the national news again. Let's see if I can add some local angle to the story that you can't get from CNN.com.

Obviously the JonBenet Ramsey case was in the local paper for many months in 1997. A sizable amount of suspicion fell on her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey. They attended an Episcopal Church in town, and some of the horrible fascination with the crime centered around the idea that these respectable church-going people might have a dark side.

The homicide case of Mary and Matthew Winkler in Selmer, Tennessee is a blunt reminder that church-going folk can also commit terrible crimes, but I never considered the Ramseys as likely suspects. That scenario was just too complicated, requiring an elaborate pattern of deception on the part of the dead girl's parents. Naw!

When I thought about the case at all, I preferred the intruder theory. The most obvious clue was that the amount of money demanded for the ransom ($118,000) matched the bonus that John Ramsey had just received from Access Graphics. Who would know that amount? Some disgruntled employee, that's who. So find the disgruntled employee! What's the problem? But the police didn't seem to key in on that aspect of the crime. I don't deserve any credit here because I never figured out all the angles to the theory.

The Ramsey house itself has attracted some unwanted attention. The Boulder Daily Camera has carried several stories of fights breaking out on the street in front, usually between people wanting to take pictures and people wanting to protect what little privacy the family had left. The neighborhood itself is in an area of steep financial gradient between the low-priced student rentals near the University, and the high-priced mansions on small lots up next to the open space and mountain parks. Lots of people flow through the area.

I've ridden my bicycle by the house a few times, taking care not to appear too interested. They've done some landscaping – planting trees in the front yard, and other touches. The place looks different now than it did on that Christmas evening in 1996.

The Rocky Mountain News on August 17 published a short item “Under suspicion” on page 31A detailing the other suspects in the case. If you want get creeped out, consider these:

A man who showed up at a memorial service for JonBenet a year after her death. The man has a criminal history, including the sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl in Oregon. Around the time of the slaying, he was getting food and picking up mail at a church near the Ramsey home. When arrested on an unrelated charge in December, officials found a stun gun and a poem about JonBenet in his backpack.

A man living in a suburb east of Boulder who an informant said had a basement shrine to JonBenet. The shrine included a candy cane similar to the candy canes in the Ramsey's front yard at the time of the killing. The tipster also said the man owned stun guns.

A man once arrested in Oceanside, Calif., for a crime against a child. The man lived six blocks from JonBenet's home but disappeared soon after her death.

We locals would like to think that the arrest and apparent confession of John Karr means that the case is solved, that justice has been done at last. Karr could also be some wacko who wanted to attract a bunch of attention, so he did some research and made up a cruel story with himself at the center. The evidence will come out in the weeks and months ahead, so we'll just have to wait and see.

One final note: I'm sure thankful that my own daughter is leading a normal life: reading mystery stories, learning to dance and play soccer, sleeping in on Saturday mornings, looking at algae through her microscope, braiding her hair, and – just living. That's what little girls should be doing. If she complains about having to eat her whole dinner, I don't mind so much. Because sometimes I think, what if she were suddenly taken from me? Or brutally assaulted and murdered like JonBenet was? I know I would long to hear her complain about dinner just one more time.

Andrew Then And Now

Andrew Sullivan once warned of the dangers of a fifth column, now he's a member. (And it's all Bush's fault).

Feet Of Clay

As you already know if you care about such things, Gunther Grass, so called conscience of post-war Germany, was in the Waffen-SS in WW2. Mr. Grass kept silent about this until he spilled the beans in his autobiography, Peeling Onions. On the one hand, this is Hitler's SS were talking about, on the other hand he was a draftee into a military unit.

Was it the crime or the cover up? Certainly keeping silent all these years only to reveal the truth in a memoir that would be guaranteed to sell like hotcakes is more than just "bad form". Really, how can you be a conscience if you can't admit the truth, and then only for personal gain?

Mr Grass certainly has his share of defenders, like Salman Rushdie and John Irving, and I'm certainly unboard with the view that his body of work stands indepently of himself (a view that allows me to see most movies and TV shows these days). So I don't believe the claim you should ignore a book because of the author's shortcomings. But Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews, has a point when she claims thathis criticsism of his countrymen's inability to confront their complicity with Hitler is absurd when he can't confront his own -- but it isn't the criticism itself, it's Grass himself who becomes absurd. What is the difference between Bill Bennet and Gunther Grass?

Eamonn Fitzgerald points out that American records from his POW internment indicate Grass was a member of the SS, and the German press and biographers never bothered to look at them, even though the docoments are in the hands of a German organization in Berlin.

St. Louis Weather

In case you're interested, yes, I survived last night's storm. In fact, I stood outside watching the storm approach with a neighbor and my son until the rain started. With straight line winds up to 80 mph -- yes, that's hurricane force -- and lots of lightning, it was a storm of Biblical proportions. Watching it approach on radar was interesting as well, because the storm covered just the St. Louis metropolitan region, no more no less.

We had a lot of leaves and small branches down, but nothing major, and no power loss. The A/C compressor did trip it's circuit breaker, which I didn't figure out until this morning, but we are certainly more fortunate than a lot of others - half a million others that is, like my parents, who are without power. The electric company, Ameren UE has run up the white flag and asked for help from anywhere. Did I mention they are predicting 102 today?

Hudson vs. Michigan, Walker vs. Scalia

The Post-Dispatch ran an op-ed by Samuel Walker that claimed Justice Scalia misused his research in the Hudson vs. Michigan decision that limited the exclusionary rule: that is that evidence obtained in violation of the constitution cannot be used in court.

Justice Scalia's (majority) Opinion:

This Court has rejected “[i]ndiscriminate application” of the exclusionary rule, United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897 , holding it applicable only “where its deterrence benefits outweigh its ‘substantial social costs,’ ” Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U. S. 357 . Exclusion may not be premised on the mere fact that a constitutional violation was a “but-for” cause of obtaining the evidence. The illegal entry here was not the but-for cause, but even if it were, but-for causation can be too attenuated to justify exclusion. Attenuation can occur not only when the causal connection is remote, but also when suppression would not serve the interest protected by the constitutional guarantee violated. The interests protected by the knock-and-announce rule include human life and limb (because an unannounced entry may provoke violence from a surprised resident), property (because citizens presumably would open the door upon an announcement, whereas a forcible entry may destroy it), and privacy and dignity of the sort that can be offended by a sudden entrance. But the rule has never protected one’s interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence described in a warrant. Since the interests violated here have nothing to do with the seizure of the evidence, the exclusionary rule is inapplicable. Pp. 3–7.

(c) The social costs to be weighed against deterrence are considerable here. In addition to the grave adverse consequence that excluding relevant incriminating evidence always entails—the risk of releasing dangerous criminals—imposing such a massive remedy would generate a constant flood of alleged failures to observe the rule, and claims that any asserted justification for a no-knock entry had inadequate support. Another consequence would be police officers’ refraining from timely entry after knocking and announcing, producing preventable violence against the officers in some cases, and the destruction of evidence in others. Next to these social costs are the deterrence benefits. The value of deterrence depends on the strength of the incentive to commit the forbidden act. That incentive is minimal here, where ignoring knock-and-announce can realistically be expected to achieve nothing but the prevention of evidence destruction and avoidance of life-threatening resistance, dangers which suspend the requirement when there is “reasonable suspicion” that they exist, Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U. S. 385 . Massive deterrence is hardly necessary. Contrary to Hudson’s argument that without suppression there will be no deterrence, many forms of police misconduct are deterred by civil-rights suits, and by the consequences of increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline. Pp. 8–13.

Prof Walker's complaint:

First, I learned that Justice Antonin Scalia cited me to support a terrible decision, holding that the exclusionary rule -- which for decades prevented evidence obtained illegally by police from being used at trial -- no longer applies when cops enter your home without knocking.

Even worse, he twisted my main argument to reach a conclusion the exact opposite of what I spelled out.

The misuse of evidence is a serious offense in academia as well as in the courts. When your work is manipulated, it is a violation of your intellectual integrity. Since the issue at stake in the Hudson case is extremely important -- what role the Supreme Court should play in policing the police -- I felt obligated to set the record straight.

Scalia quoted my book, "Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in American Criminal Justice," on the point that there has been tremendous progress "in the education, training and supervision of police officers" since the 1961 Mapp decision, which imposed the exclusionary rule on local law enforcement.

My argument, based on the historical evidence of the last 40 years, is that the court of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s played a pivotal role in stimulating these reforms. For more than 100 years, police departments had failed to curb misuse of authority by officers on the street while the courts took a hands-off attitude. The Warren court's interventions (Mapp and Miranda being the most famous) set new standards for lawful conduct, forcing the police to reform and strengthening community demands for curbs on abuse.

Scalia's opinion suggested that the results I highlighted have sufficiently removed the need for an exclusionary rule to act as a judicial-branch watchdog over the police. I have never said or even suggested such a thing.

To the contrary, I have argued that the results reinforce the Supreme Court's continuing importance in defining constitutional protections for individual rights and requiring the appropriate remedies for violations, including the exclusion of evidence.

The ideal approach is for the court to join the other branches of government in a mix of remedies for police misconduct: judicially mandated exclusionary rules, legislation to give citizens oversight of police and administrative reforms in training and supervision. No single remedy is sufficient to this very important task.

I have to say I don't think the Professor made his case against the Justice. The Justice claims that police misbehavior is deterred internally to the police by increased professionalism and externally by civil suits. I have no doubt that the data in the good Professor's book supports that claim; however, the Justice has a different opinion of the future of deterence with a more limited exclusionary rule than the Professor. Namely, the Justice feels that the reforms have become self supporting, wheras the Professor feels that without the spur of the exclusionary rule the police, despite the risk of civil lawsuit and their increased professionalism, will backslide. The complaint in fact boils down to "Justice Scalia has a different opinion of a future course events", not the stated complaint that "Justice Scalia misused my research".

Perhaps Prof. Walker will next take up the curious case of Goldberg vs. the Star-Tribune.

However, let's look at the substance of the decision. Let's take up Justice Breyer's dissenting (minority) opinion:

In Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927 (1995) , a unanimous Court held that the Fourth Amendment normally requires law enforcement officers to knock and announce their presence before entering a dwelling. Today’s opinion holds that evidence seized from a home following a violation of this requirement need not be suppressed

As a result, the Court destroys the strongest legal incentive to comply with the Constitution’s knock-and-announce requirement. And the Court does so without significant support in precedent. At least I can find no such support in the many Fourth Amendment cases the Court has decided in the near century since it first set forth the exclusionary principle in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914) . See Appendix, infra.

Today’s opinion is thus doubly troubling. It represents a significant departure from the Court’s precedents. And it weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution’s knock-and-announce protection.

... [Lots of legal citations]

There may be instances in the law where text or history or tradition leaves room for a judicial decision that rests upon little more than an unvarnished judicial instinct. But this is not one of them. Rather, our Fourth Amendment traditions place high value upon protecting privacy in the home. They emphasize the need to assure that its constitutional protections are effective, lest the Amendment ‘sound the word of promise to the ear but break it to the hope.’ They include an exclusionary principle, which since Weeks has formed the centerpiece of the criminal law’s effort to ensure the practical reality of those promises. That is why the Court should assure itself that any departure from that principle is firmly grounded in logic, in history, in precedent, and in empirical fact. It has not done so. That is why, with respect, I dissent.

Let's do what it seems all Supreme Court Justices do these days - ignore precedent and examine my own unvarnished judicial instinct. The goal of the judicial system is to punish the guilty and exhonerate the innocent. Ideally we would do so perfectly, but we undertand that nothing in this life is perfect, and so in America we like to see the inevitable tradeoffs bias the system to exhonerating the innocent over punishing the guilty.

So how does the exclusionary rule fit in? If you haven't committed a crime (i.e. innocent), then there isn't any evidence to be excluded. However, if you have committed a crime, then the evidence is excluded and you get to "get out of jail free. In sum, it perversely allows the guilty to go free but does nothing for the innocent.

At first blush the exclusionary principle seems to actually run counter to what we want a judicial system to do. However, what are the other remedies for the innocent? Civil suits? Yes, in the case of great wrongs, but for the person who suffers little economic loss and only moderate or less non-economic loss such suits don't offer much remedy. That leaves us with civilian review boards and internal policing. Perhaps I'm too hard on government agencies, but my gut tells me that in either case more than the benefit of the doubt will go the police, and only the most flagrant cases will result in any discipline to the police.

The exclusionary rule reminds of the onetime taboo against children out of wedlock -- it served the broader interests of society while being, let's face it, unjust to the individuals it was directed against.

So I have to agree with Justice Breyer, and Professor Walker, that in our opinion, the exclusionary rule (as preverse as it is) is vital to keeping the police from abusing their authority and infringing on our rights. Better that one criminal go free than 10 people have their rights trampled. It is one of those rules that arises from the wisdom of experience, and I'm sorry to say Justice Scalia's reasoning in setting aside such a bright line rule is best described as airy fairy. I have to hope that if this experiment turns out to be a bust, that is if the police escalate the number of unconsititutional no-knock entries, the Supreme Court will treat this decision with as much respect for precedence it showed others and return to the strong but unpopular medicine of the exclusionary rule.

The (Pay Per) View: Star vs. Barbara

I can't say why I clicked through to the article about the Star Jones - Barbara Walters cat fight, but I did -- OK, it's the phrase cat fight -- and I was rewarded with puzzlement. No, not that celebrities are people too, but by this bizarre claim by Ms. Walters:

Jones was one of the original cast members of the show when it launched nine years ago. Word is network execs decided not to renew her contract for a 10th season because research showed her dramatic weight loss and 2004 wedding to banker Al Reynolds was a turn-off to viewers.

“We tried to talk them out of it, and we tried to give Star time to redeem herself in the eyes of the audience, and the research just kept getting worse,” Walters added.

UPDATE: This story just keeps getting stranger as time goes on. Star Jones Reynolds told Larry King that ABC told her to make up a story as to why she was leaving to spare her the embarrassment of admiting that it was because she was unpopular with the audience.

King read Reynolds a statement from ABC claiming that she had been dismissed from the show immediately because, after her remarks to PEOPLE, the network could not trust her to tell the truth on the air.

Reynolds said she was "having trouble reconciling" that charge with the fact that ABC had previously asked her to lie.

And just who was the lie really supposed to help? Star or The View? The View, of course, because who do you think less of, the person who got fired for losing weight and getting married, or the person who fired her? Tell me again who lost their dignity here?

How would you take "you're skinny, you're happily married, you're fired!"? Announce that you're leaving the show to stay thin and married? Or just come right out and tell the truth - they don't want me back.

As a futher butress to my claim that the View's core audience is fat lesbians, consider who they are replacing her with: Rosie O'Donnell. I rest my case.

Immigration Ecomonics

I expect you've heard this big picture thermodynamics question before: You have a thermally isolated room with a refrigerator. You plug the refrigerator into a working outlet and open its door. Does the room get colder, warmer, or stay the same? The answer is that the room gets warmer because the total energy in the room is increasing due to the electricity flow via the plug. If you look at the big picture, it's really a very easy problem.

So we come to the point of this post, the effect of large scale immigration on workers. The relevant law here is that of supply and demand, and if you increase the supply of workers, the price at which they are employed will inevitably fall relative to the price without an increase. Now it may well happen that if the increase in demand is greater than the increase in supply the actual price increases, just less than it would have if there had been no increase in the supply. So if you get a lot of immigrants who are increasing the supply of labor, then that will inevitably lower the price everybody is getting paid in that labor pool relative to what they would get without a change in labor supply. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, I'm just saying what happens.

What sparked this particular post is a John Tierney column which would appear to be behind the Times Select Wall since the St. Louis Post Dispatch ran a column the NYTs published May 30th today. I'm a fan of Mr. Tierney, but I think he stumbles a bit in this article as he's pretty breezy with one consequence to large scale immigration (legal or not). And yes Virginia, there isn't just one consequence.

First off, neither Mr. Tierney or I compete in the same labor pool with the overwhelming majority of immigrants, so we are able to offer a bit more detachment than those who do. I admits its easy to blase, even upbeat about trends that you don't think affect you.

Secondly, Mr. Tierney makes the common mistake of confusing an anecdote with data. He offers the nice tale of a native American women (not to be confused with Native American) who loses her nail salon to the more numerous, lower cost salons run by Vietnamese immigrants. But she lands on her feet by going freelance and working for the wealthy of LA who are willing to pay to have someone who can carry on an intellegent conversation while doing their nails at home. So, despite the fact that a particular person was able to land on her feet, did the average wage in the nail salon business go up or down? Mr. Tierney doesn't comment on this directly, but I think we are safe to infer from the rest of the story it went down. And I'll point something out that Mr. Tierney doesn't -- the (better) job that his nail salon owner found existed before she found it; that is there were plenty of wealthy people who were willing to pay extra for in home nail care before the Vietnamese took over the salon business, its just that the salon owner was comfortable in her job and was not looking to make a change. But what about the wages of such freelance workers - have they gone up or down with the influx of American workers into that niche, displaced by the Vietnamese into the salon business? Again, Mr. Tierney is silent on this subject, but uses the anecdote to claim out that everything will be just fine for all the displaced workers because everything worked out for the particular lady he featured. What would the story have been like had this particular worker moved into the at home/freelance nail business several years ago? Would it have been quite to happy and upbeat? Or would she have been complained of declining wages due to the increased competition with her fellow natives who were moving into the business?

Well, I have no doubt that some workers will move to better jobs because they will actively seek jobs where they weren't looking in the past. But I also have no doubt that some workers will not move to better jobs, and there will be downward pressure on the wages of those workers who remain in their jobs.

And whether you considered this a positive or negative affect might depend if you were a worker in the field, or if you were a consumer of this product or service who was seeing a decline in its price.

And this raises an even bigger point for me -- I think we are better off as a nation looking at the issue, exploring the costs and benefits, weighing the options, and then devising the laws and regulations through the political process with representative government, than we are with our current system of immigration policy by default, with inflows determined by the immigrants themselves, because they aren't looking at the big picture, nor would I expect them to. They are looking at what it means to them.

One of the problems with illegal immigration is that not only the immigration, but so much of the life of such an immigrant takes place off the books. And as Hernado De Soto observes, this life in legal limbo is what makes so many countries poor, and will certainly hurt our own nation. So for me, whatever else the outcome of immigration reform, I just want to see the illegal, off the books part brought back into the law, back onto the books.

A great American Stephen Decatur once said "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country right or wrong.” I'm going to say: "Our representative goverment! May the outcome of our representative government always be in the right; but the process of representative government right or wrong."

Insults Do Not An Exchange Of Ideas Make

After taking Ann Coulter to task for her insulting remarks about a certain group of 9/11 widows, I think it only right to show case a remark by one Larry Johnson that is far worse than any Coulter made: "Karl is a shameless bastard. Small wonder his mother killed herself. Once she discovered what a despicable soul she had spawned she apparently saw no other way out." Mr. Johnson has since tweaked the remark, although from "Small wonder his mother killed herself" to "This could explain why his mother killed herself" really isn't much of a change in meaning. So what's the point? Mr. Johnson objects to Mr. Rove's "attacks" on Jack Murtha and John Kerry for wanting to withdraw all American troops ASAP - as well as the usual assorted claims against the Bush administration. Does such a remark reveal anything about Mr. Rove, let alone shed any light on the correctness of any claims by either Mr. Johnson or Mr. Rove? Of course not, but they do reveal a lot about the character of Mr. Johnson, none of it positive. And I can't even say about Mr. Johnson it reflects badly on his substantive points because he doesn't have any. He simply wants us to believe the paranoid fantasies of the left based on his insults of the right.

Nor do I care what Johnson has to say about Don Surber, who demonstrates how to argue like a grown up, not a petulant, spoiled baby who cries and lashes out when people simply don't do as he demands.

When Not Is News

So when is something not happening news? When it's Karl Rove Not being indicted. Why is his not getting indicted news? Because a lot of people on the left were convinced he would be, and since most people in the news media were also convinced (since there is of course no overlap between lefties and the news media according to both lefties and the news media) that he would be, his not being indicted is almost bigger news than if he had been. Tom Maguire, who's been all over this story from conception, has the story. I'm still wondering who's worse, Nifong or Fitzgerald.

Palestine, Hamas, and us.

OK, remind me again why we should give Hamas a nickel, or why the Palestinians, who've never missed an oportunity to miss an oportunity, deserve a state (and not the Kurds?) Because from where I sit, all I can see is the partying in the streets after 9/11, and now the comes the reaction of Hamas to Zarqawi's death - a man responsible for the death of thousands, and a man who took delight in beheading people: "With hearts full of faith, Hamas commends brother-fighter Abu Musab ... who was martyred at the hands of the savage crusade campaign which targets the Arab homeland, starting in Iraq". If Hamas considers Zarqawi a brother fighter, and Zarqawi clearly fought against the US, that means that Hamas considers themselves ... in a fight against us. I say we don't disappoint them.

Ann Coulter and The Jersey Girls

The problem with Ann Coulter is that whenever she makes some good points she discredits them with terrible hyperbole and insult. Her problem isn't uncommon in partisans who are forever overreaching, but far too often she misses provocative and land squarely in revolting. For instance, Confederate Yankee is able to make the point she was trying to make without any insult: "The point, of course, was simply this: personal tragedy does not bestow omnipotence upon the bereaved." I would add that the greater the demonstration of bereavement, the greater the compromise of wisdom and perspective, but then I come from the stoic Midwest.

Borders Will Carry Mohammed Cartoons

Borders has decided that while they weren't willing to risk jihad over an obscure publication that a few people read, they are willing to put their necks on the line for Vanity Fair. Maybe they figure Jihadists were already so upset at the pictures of mostly naked women in the ads (so I've been told) that they wouldn't bother to notice that VF has the infamous Mohammed Cartoons in them. Or Borders could be run by a bunch of buttholes. We report, you decide.

Haditha

There are two kinds of news stories I lack confidence in (just two?). There is the anonymously sourced story, and there is the "local people tell us" stories. The first is a staple of political reporting - and the shortcoming is that an anonymous source always has an agenda, and the anonymity hides the agenda. I'm not talking about the "some people say" or "experts say" without providing an actual person which is the way reporters simply inject their own opinions into a story, I'm talking were the reporter is relying on a source for information but just not telling us who that is all the while pretending that we are getting the whole story. We're not.

The "local people tell us" is a staple of international reporting, but it doesn't have to be international. The whole Katrina reporting debacle - yes, Virginia, pretty much everything the press reported about New Orleans following Katrina was wrong, and wrong because it was "local people tell us". The press didn't make up these stories out of whole cloth, they simply reported rumor as fact (and they thought that if multiple people told them the same rumor, why it must be fact). Think about how bad the press got it during Katrina, when the sources by and large had no agenda but were simply repeating what they had heard in good faith. Then think about all those stories where an intrepid reporter discounts the "official" version of events in a foriegn land because he's talked to the locals and found out what they know (or in reality, what they think they know). Now the reporter isn't just running with rumor dressed up in it's Sunday best, but is often relaying whatever agenda the locals have as well.

This brings me to the story of a possible deliberate killing of civilians by Marines in Iraq. I have no idea what happened, and to my mind both the worst and the best may have occured. But the story is being driven by leaks to the New York Times. Maybe the leaker just wants to get the story out a month or two sooner - or far more likely the leaker has an agenda and wants to shape the story by getting his or her version out there first. And the story of a massecre is also supported by local witnesses -- who may be right, but who may be wrong or even lying. And what do we know about eyewitnesses testimony? It's unreliable, and it can be influenced into error after the fact.

Maybe the lurid storiy of a Marine unit shooting innocents is completely accurate. I don't know. It wouldn't be the first time American soldiers have done terrible things. I don't want to confuse my hopes with reality, but I prefer to wait to more facts are in - what's really in the report, what is the physical evidence, and even what local eyewitness have to say in detail.

President Bush's Immigration Speech

I didn't see the President's speech last night as I was at my daughter's orchestra concert. And then picking up my son from scouts. And then walking the dog. In the rain. Uphill. Both ways.

I have read the speech, and I think it is a dandy. Because it does everything it should, it will be condemned by extremists on both sides, plus the usual Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers. I'm not an immigration extremist - I don't think we should just let everybody in who wants to be an American, nor can I find it in my heart to condemn people who have yes, broken the law by coming here, but not done anything wrong (IMHO) because they have come here because yes, Virginia, this is the best country in the world. And doubly so when we did next to nothing once they made it here.

I have only one question for President Bush: I know you're plates been full, but what took so long?

The next question is what will Congress do? My prediction - not much slowly.

Current Obsessions Over Nothing

Gas prices seem to be like the weather these days: Everybody complains about it, but nobody does anything about it. Have you noticed anybody slowing down on the road these days? Driving less? How about bitching about it like somehow we're all entitled to nice weather and cheap gas all the time? The first two, nothing. The third, plenty.

Yesterday I came across the USA Today story about NSA gathering information from three out of four telephone companies with mild boredom. I didn't even bother blogging about it because it seemed so trivial. Now the government has a trifle of the info that private companies already have and I'm supposed to care? This is what kills me about so much of the privacy paranoia - the information has already been gathered by one entity, but if the federal governement gets its hands on it, watch out, dictatorship is around the corner (or already here). Thankfully, most of my fellow Americans agree with me, and those who don't (in the story, anyway) turn out to have a full blown case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. At least there is more ot this story than the Bush Fishing Kerfuffle.

All Mouth, No Stomach

Sudan is a killing field. No question about it, whatever you decide to call it. Well, now some people have discovered it - like George Clooney. No problem with that, and welcome. I have no doubt Mr. Clooney et al are sincere. But I do have a few questions.

First off, what's the difference between Sudan/Darfur now and Iraq pre-2003? Other than more dead Iraqi's and the prospect of neverending death and destruction? So if you didn't like the intervention in Iraq, why are you urging it in Sudan? Just because you personally visited one region and not the other? Why not go talk to survivors of Hussein's reign of terror then? What will happen when the only way to stop the slaughter now is to give up on the UN and act unilaterally, or at best with the same circle of trusted allies (like the British)? Will you be out cheering President Bush then? What will happen when US forces kill Africans in Africa? What will happen when the US takes casualties in Sudan? Will you stand firm for what you urged, or will you question why we are intervening in someone else's civil war? Will you stand firm, or will you question why the US, stained by slavery, is killing innocent black people in Africa? Will you stand firm, or will you start in with American boys are paying with life and limb for Sudanese Oil?

What I'm asking is, when the going gets rough as most surely it will -- the only way to stop the killing will be to intervene militarily, and we will take casualties, and we will kill innocents and bad guys alike because that is the very nature of a civil war -- will you stay the course, remember how and why we got involved, and rally support in difficult circumstances, or will you cut and run? Because I've got to tell you, the track record of you and your mates on this aren't good. You breath fire when the talk is about putting pressure on somebody else, but when some real pressure is put on you, you cut and run. In the past, you've been all mouth, no stomach. Are we going to see another sequel, or will it be something orginal for a change?

Immigration In a Nut Shell

For me, the whole immigration imbroglio boils down to three simple questions:

(1) how many people should be allowed to immigrate to the United States,
(2) what methods should be used to control immigration, and
(3) what should be done about immigrants who have already arrived here illegally.

Immigration has become a hot topic because it seems that we've had no official answers to these questions; because we've done basically nothing about those who came here illegally and have taken only the most rudimentary steps to control immigration, our de facto position on how many people should be allowed to immigrate is the combination of how many we are willing to allow in plus how many immigrants are willing to take whatever steps they have to in order to get inside the United States.

Now we can have a nice rational discussion about how many people should be admitted based on such factors as what that means to wages, what that means for demographics, what that means for social services, what that means for the countries the immigrants are coming from, how well immigrants are assimilating and the like. What that also means is that slogans such as "America is a nation of immigrants" don't provide any meaningful insight. Hard data on the factors I've raised would be far more helpful than mass rallies or man in the street interviews by the press.

Once we've decided how the numbers compare between how many people we are willing to admit and how many are trying to get here, the proper control methods can be decided on. A big fence with regular patrols would be overkill if there is only a slight imbalance but may be the right solution if the imbalance is large. While its wrong to keep citizens from emigrating to a country of their choice and is willing to take them, there is nothing wrong in keeping out immigrants if the nation is unwilling to take them in.

The question about what to do about those who are already here is somewhat unrelated to the other two, although certainly we've experienced that lax enforcement leads only to greater numbers of people willing to flout the law to enter the US illegally. Should we simply round people up and expel them back over the border or should be they be punished before they are expelled? How many resources should be devoted to looking for illegals? Should employers be sanctioned for hiring illegals, and should it punishment apply or be greater if they employer does so deliberately and not accidentally?

The reason these issues have become front burner is that immigration has been large enough long enough that it has affected most every American in some way.

More Mary McCarthy

Okay, first up, Mary McCarthy's lawyer says his client did not disclose classified information. Something to keep in mind is that as far as I can tell, the only official word from the CIA was in an announcement that reportedly said somebody was fired because they had provided classified information to a reporter; I haven't been able to find it on the web, not even at the CIA web site. So far, we have mostly anonymous sources at the CIA providing a variety of info. So if Ms. McCarthy is not accused, let alone not guilty, then my apologies.

Second up, when the NYTs was reporting on the Swiftboat Vets, they put together this very handy chart with all the political donations, and connections, however tenous, to the Bushes or any high profile Texas politician. I'm wondering, where is the chart for Ms. McCarthy? Heck they can't even get the amount of her contributions correct. Tom Maguire is so good at finding inconsistancies in news accounts, perhaps he should make up charts like the NYT did on the Swiftboat vets comparing what they said now to what they said then. Heck, why doesn't the NYTs do that more often with politicians, or retired generals?

Mr Maguire also points me to one Larry Johnson, and his analys of how she came to posses the classified info she alleged leaked:

She could find out about secret prisons if Intelligence Officers involved with that program had filed a complaint with the IG or if there was some incident that compelled senior CIA officials to determine an investigation was warranted. In other words, this program did not come to Mary's attention (if the allegations are true) because she worked on it as an ops officer. Instead, it appears an investigation of the practice had been proposed or was underway. That's another story reporters probably ought to be tracking down.

And one last thing to ponder - the CIA did not official release her name. Does this mean that they will be investigating who did, a la Valerie Plame Wilson? Or that whoever did out this CIA agent should get the full Scooter Libby treatment?

I may have to create a CIA scandals category.

UPDATE: It wasn't the New York Times, it was was Mind in the Qatar, yes Virginia, a blog, who has put together the visually catchy chart, AKA the McCarthy Matrix so you don't have to wait around for the NYTs not to put one together.

And while I'm at it, Allahpundit has the best primer on the subject - via FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog.

The Other McCarthy (Mary, that is)

Is there a difference between providing classified information to an American journalist or an agent of a foreign power? Yes, if you provide it to the journalist, every enemy of America will get the classified information. That's why I have to agree with Will Collier: throw away the key. Mary McCarthy is a traitor.

Now we just have to find out who divulged the NSA program of wiretapping international calls and punish that traitor too.

And that's part of my disappointment with Patrick Fitzgerald - make the case on Libby for releasing classified information to someone who was not authorized, make the case for Joe Wilson releasing classified information to someone who was not authorized, or go home. Why make a perjury case on Libby while at the same time shielding 1 or 2 (depending on whether or not Novak and Woodward had the same source) people who leaked info before Libby -- to save them from embarrassment -- and do nothing on the underlying offense? Pathetic.

Gateway Pundit has a big roundup on this story.

Two Duke Lacross Team Members Arrested

I haven't been following the whole Duke Lacross team Rape story much, mainly because I was in a news blackout in Lousville when the story broke. I came in to the announcement by defense attorneys that there was no DNA evidence to support the allegation. But 2 of the team members were arrested for rape today. I have no idea what actually happened, and the information I've seen so far raises a lot of questions. Karen Russell of the Huffington Post has a lot of good ones. And someone who has more experience in these matters than me (though he assures me that isn't much) wonders why the "exotic dancers" had no bodyguard(s) with them -- you know, the big guys who come along to make sure that there are no problems - especially with payment and to make nothing gets out of hand. I found the comments to this post interesting as well.

I can't automatically believe every rape allegation, nor can I discount every rape allegation. But the burden of proof is on the accuser, and at this point there is no evidence in the public record that the lacross players are guilty of raping this woman beyond her claim. Maybe that's enough to take it to a jury, but I don't see how that's enough to convict.

When The Dog Bites

Here is an abridged sample of a few of my least favorite things:

Nutty anti-semitism wrapped in academics and hidden as political realism;

This guy, who is just wrong wrong wrong and deeply offensive to this Christian man;

both Both these guys (among too many others) who deserve more than just their removal from power; and here's just the smallest taste of why.

Katrina Redux

The Return of Katrina, first as tragedy, now as farce. Videos from before the disaster of various meetings with President Bush about Katrina are being touted as showing that Bush was complacent and under prepared. But when you get to the details - you have things like Bush didn't ask any questions in a particular meeting or this sleight of hand:

"I don't think anyone can tell you with confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very, very great concern," Mayfield says in one.

In a September 1 television interview, Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," a statement Chertoff agreed with three days later.

I'm not sure what President Bush was supposed to do a few days in advance of levees being overtopped - sent that non-existant armor that also wasn't sent to Iraq? The time to sound such a warning and for it to have an effect is in the years before such an event, not days.

I'll start with the highest level argument - the "fault" of Katrina lies squarely with the citizens of New Orleans, past and present, who built a city that could be devasted by a hurricane, and then didn't take adequate steps to protect themselves. Yes, I have a lot of symphathy for the victims, but ultimately it was local failures over a long period of time that brought about this disaster. Am I blaming the victim here -- to the extent the victims were the perpetrators I am. It's not like this was a hidden hazard.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee, said the tape "demonstrates for all to see what our committee discovered during its investigation of the preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina."

"Government at all levels was forewarned of the catastrophic nature of the approaching storm and did painfully little to be ready to evacuate, search, rescue and relieve," said the Connecticut lawmaker, who had accused the White House of stonewalling the committee.

By that time, 11 inches of rain had fallen in New Orleans, the massive storm surge had damaged the flood protection system and about 15,000 people were in the Superdome. That figure eventually doubled, leading to days of intolerable conditions before residents could be bused elsewhere.

Why didn't people get out? The Post-Dispatch had stories in the first few days about how local St. Louisans got out after the hurricane. According to the paper, the first people to show up at the convention center were a group of St. Louis tourists who were directed there by the hotel they were staying at, and who left and came home after being warned to leave by residents. I think people thought aid wouldn't simply come to them because of their great need. Let that be a lesson to all of us - you are on your own in a giant disaster, and the first help will be from your neighbors, not your government.

I have yet to see the press own up to their own mistakes, or pursue with such fervor the timeline of their own flawed reporting. The hysterical and wrong coverage of the press caused assets to be diverted to supressing criminal behavior that was virtually non-existant. Gen. Honore uttered the memorable "Stuck on Stupid" line because the press didn't want to do it's job of informing people, but wanted to second guess and badger. What a President says after the fact is trivial - what the media reports at the time is vital not just because it shapes our perceptions, but because it effects the response. The media failed during Katrina, and made things worse. I'd take a lot more notice of their reporting if news people ever got fired for their mistakes, and not just making things up out of whole cloth.

And as far as the response to the disaster, the real tragedy was the decision (and it's still not clear exactly who decided) not to provide relief in New Orleans, but to use it as a carrot to entice people to leave. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army were ready to go in, but they were prevented. That is truly what caused the suffering that we saw on TV.

Gateway Pundit writes the headline the AP should have written for this story.

Powerline focuses on the factual errors of the reporting.

The Junkyard Blog wonders why the AP is so hot to report this video but so cold to report some other facts.

Wizbang notes the ability of the media to turn on a dime - from Bush was out of touch because he was on vacation, to Bush was out of touch even though he was being thoroughly briefed.

Dubai Ports, Oh My!

So we have dropped Dick Cheney accidentaly shooting his friend like a wounded quail and its on to the sale of a British company, P & O Ports, to an Arab company, Dubai Ports. There are plenty who think this is a really big deal. I happen to agree with Michael Crichton observation:

The first is that there is nothing more sobering than a 30 year old newspaper. You can’t figure out what the headlines mean. You don’t know who the people are. Theodore Green, John Sparkman, George Reedy, Jack Watson, Kenneth Duberstein. You thumb through page after page of vanished concerns—issues that apparently were vitally important at the time, and now don’t matter at all. It’s amazing how many pressing concerns are literally of the moment. They won’t matter in six months, and certainly not in six years. And if they won’t matter then, are they really worth our attention now?

But I'll throw my two cents in even though there are more important things to write about.

The whole concern really is just anti-Arabism and guilt by association. How many members of al qaida have been recruited among international Arab executives as opposed to alienated Arab youth? It's not like Syria or Hamas is taking over port security, or even Iran getting nukes. One of the things I'm struck by is how were always telling Israel to quit complaining, get over their security concerns, and cooperate with those nice Arabs, but when the shoe's on the other foot, Katie bar the door!

Port security is currently non-existant, but we weren't worried. What do people think - that Dubai Ports is going to use people from Dubai as port security instead of Americans already here? That realistically, anything is going to change except where the money ends up? Does anybody who's complaining really know what a port management company does? If you're seriously complaining, then shouldn't we require background checks on the workers, not just on the ownership? Why not bar any Arab-American from working in port security, airline security, the CIA, the FBI, the police, as a crossing guard just for being Arab? I mean, they are the enemy after all, and security is paramount.

Dubai is an ally in the war on terror, a country that has aligned themselves with the west, and What kind of message does it send to the Arab world besides you'll never be good enough to be trusted by the US. What's the difference between this and Ann Coulter's offensive remark about ragheads except one is made by a fringe polemicist and the other would be the official position of the US government? How would Dubai take such a snub?

I have to admit that I was shocked by President Bushes immediate threat of a veto, especially after all that hasn't been vetoed (that doesn't mean just you, McCain-Feingold, you fascist swine piece of legislation). But perhaps President Bush is trying to repair the damage, or perhaps he overreacted -- just like those who are complaining.

And for those who complain that the President should have realized the American public is a bunch of arabphobic bigots, who abandon their principles at the slightest provocation, all I can say is quit pointing fingers at others for not protecting you against yourself, especially if you call yourself a libertarian. Either that or admit there are times that even adults sound of mind and body need a nanny.

And to those who really do honestly object to the deal because they think Dubai is our enemy, remember Don Vito's advice: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Danish Cartoons: Freedom of Speech

Clearly this is a freedom of speech issue. While there are legal limits on speech even in West, these cartons are clearly legal in Denmark, legal in the United States, and probably legal in all of Europe. So from a legal standpoint, end of story.

But only lawyers with the winning case in court are satisfied with just a strict legal view, the rest of us are worried about what we ought to do or say, not what we can do or say. Most of us believe that there is a line you should cross in public discourse, and a different, less restrictive one you shouldn't cross in private discourse, but that is by no means universal. So just what is that line anyway - who draws it, and who decides when and if it's been crossed? At least in private discourse, it's the person(s) you are speaking to directly, but in public discourse you can be speaking to the world, even at a small paper in Denmark. Just how much do you have to take into account before expressing yourself? Different communities have different standards, even within the United States, and within a global audience, the differences can be huge.

Here we have the collison of two values - one is the reverence in Islam for the Prophet Muhammad, and the other is the reverence for free speech in the West. Which one wins, whose values should we follow? If I am not a believer in Islam, why should I have reverence? Who should respect the other one more? I in the west, or those in Islam? If Moslems want me to respect their reverence, can't I expect them to respect my freedom to speak my mind?

Is this a "clash of civilizations?" If you mean clash in the sense of war or struggle between, then the answer is no, not really. But if you mean in the sense of incompatibility, then the answer is yes. I want to be clear that I'm not talking about religion here, I'm talking about culture. There is not much of a contemporary culture of freedom in Islam, nor is their much respect for religion in the West these days.

At one time it was clearly understood that the core right of freedom of speech was the freedom to offend other people. And the more important the belief being offended, the more important the right to be offensive. It's why Lenny Bruce was such an icon of free speech, or Larry Flynt was considered a champion of freedom of speech in his legal battle with Jerry Falwell, or why the ACLU was heralded as a bastion of freedom of speech for their fight on behalf of the neo-Nazi march through predominantly Jewish Skokie Illinois.

But that isn't the case any longer.

What has happened to those people who say "I don't agree with what you say, but I defend your right to say it to the death?" A lot of them, mostly on the left of the political spectrum, no longer say that anymore. Now the motto is, I don't agree with what you say, so shut up already.

All of a sudden a lot of progressives who used to tell about the importance of freedom of speech, unfettered in your face communication, are telling me that just because you have the legal right to be offensive doesn't mean you have to exercise it. Well, thanks for coming around to my way of thinking. But don't go too far and claim that because you shouldn't say just anything we cannot allow certain people to be offended anymore. Universities, which by and large are ruled by the left these days, have simply abandoned freedom of speech in practice while they still pay it lip service in ever lesser amounts.

To be sure I'm not saying all liberals (or progressives or leftists) have abandoned true freedom of speech, nor do all conservatives embrace it. There are still plenty of liberals who really will defend to their death my right to say what they disagree with while more than one conservative is in favor of freedom of speech only as long as they agree with what's being said.

I think part of the swing is that back in the 60's (the heyday of liberalism) it was the left that needed freedom of speech to express themselves and the right that clamped down; now that the left is in many ways the establishment, freedom of speech challenges the left and is needed for those on the right to express themselves.

Now that good liberals are saying that you should excercise good judgement, does this mean they'll take back all those nasty things they said about Ari Fleischer and his "watch what you say comment"?

Now that newspapers have taken the position that not offending religious sensibilities is more important than informing the public, will they support the return of the Catholic Legion of Decency? If for instance Brokeback Mountain was banned from some Midwestern town, would there be any question of the response of all those wagging their fingers at Jyllands-Posten?

Will they tell Michael Kinsley he had it all wrong:

The right to go too far and the right to put it badly may not seem like terribly crucial rights, but they are. Opening your mouth is not an exact science, and it's harder to do well if you're looking over your shoulder at the same time. Consider an analogy from libel law. The constitution protects some false statements from libel suits, not for their own sake but to give attempts to tell the truth some necessary room for error. For similar reasons, a healthy political culture has to be able to shrug off some stupid or even offensive remarks. If your main concern is not to say anything offensive or subject to misinterpretation, a lot will go unsaid that is true or even possibly wise.

Danish Cartoons Self Exam

While laboring mightly on a post that examine the responses to the Danish Cartoons and the freedom of speech issues surrounding them, I asked myself would these be cartoons that I would either draw (if I could draw) or originally publish? I would have only gone with the one captioned "Stop, stop, we've run out of virgins" because I think its at least funny (yes, I laugh at and have told St. Peter jokes - the ones that involve St. Peter and the Pearly Gates and people trying to get into heaven) and captures the western amazement at the thought that people who blow themselves up with innocent civilians think that the reward for such a heinous crime is an afterlife filled with sex with 39 virgins.

The others are all too bland and innocuous or inside jokes except for the one with the bomb in the turban which I don't care for because it is too general. I understand that it may be an honest representation of the cartoonists feelings -- that he associates Islam with bombers -- but I think that subject is best tackled at length so that you can make clear that only the lunatic fringe of Islam are bombers but you worry that too many of the rest are at least sympathetic to such acts. Rather than be insulted by the cartoon, Moslems should examine why so many people outside Islam worry that the lunatic fringe is Islam. Hey, if they can demand a law that nobody in the world gets to insult the prophet , I think I can make the counter demand that they act in a way that doesn't bring reproach on the prophet. And before you submit a laundry list of why you think that either the US or Christianity is just as bad as a defense, let me remind you that my dirty laundry does wash your dirty laundry clean, it just adds to the pile of dirty laundry.

But it wouldn't have been because I was worried about offending anyone. I do try to think about what I say or write before I say it and the effect it has on others, but generally I try only to change the form so that it is an inoffensive as it can be and still be an accurate reflection of what I think, but that doesn't mean that I can make it offense free. I need to curb my tongue out of love, not fear. I try to avoid being needlessly offensive [mighty big of you -- thanks]. I don't always succeed. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Black River News

For those of you interested in information about the Taum Sauk dam failure, and the cleanup of the Black River and Johnso's shut ins, Black River News, a blog by a Lesterville resident, has you covered. They point to the new Ameren Tauk Sauk website which provides additional information. I've never floated the Black River before, and I don't float near as much as I did in my youth, but the Murphy Family may have to go this year.

The Lost World

I really enjoyed Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow but I was saddend by the thought that in the world of today there are no unexplored parts of the earth anymore. Boy was I wrong as a lost "Garden of Eden" was found in Papua New Guinea.

Danish Cartoons 2 part 1

Let me try to chop up the whole Danish Cartoon affair into bitesize pieces. Part one of 2 today examining the cartoons themselves, part two of 2 examining everything else tomorrow (I hope).

The Cartoons.
They get lumped together, but there are twelve different ones of varying quality and content that were published. Most of them are simple depictions of the prophet Muhammed or poke fun at the commisioning of the cartoons themselves. Only 4 have political messages and could be considered offensive beyond just depicting the prophet in and of itself. And considering the level of discourse in the media today, the level of criticism is pretty mild. They all suffer from the problems of any single pane cartoon - they are essentially soundbites or slogans, and not a fully developed argument.

I've found essentially 3 objections to the cartoons, the first being that the commisioning itself was wrong because it would be knowingly provocative, would produce racist or anti-religious work, and had no news value. The problem is that if you think political cartoons do have merit (which by and large I don't), then it would make sense to commission them on a topic that is undercovered and provocative.

The second is that any depiction of the prophet is offensive to Moslems and therefore should be avoided. I think there is some merit in this -- and to explore it personally I need to substitute my own religions symbols and think about that case. But I also think you have to look at why there is this taboo on the depiction of the prophet Muhammed and that is to prevent the false worship of him. It seems to me that by having such a rigid taboo without the appreciation of why it leads to the very thing that it seeks to avoid in the first place. The prophet is placed on a level that no other person is allowed, and his person with Islam itself.

Perhaps my blase response to the cartoons is that I'm used to seeing critical cartoons of Jesus (who by the way isn't just a man but God when comparing what believers of both religions believe). Vengeance is mine saith the Lord, so my response as a Christian is to worry about the critic's soul, not their punishment.

The third is that by using the prophet in a political cartoon, the religion itself is attacked, and not the believers. IOW it's one thing to say that there are a few wild eyed crazy terrorsts who happen to be moslems, but another to say that Islam turns its adherents into wild eyed crazy terrorists. While this is a distinction about the point of the cartoons, I don't see it as making a real difference in the response. Why is one worse than the other? And aren't political cartoonists free to criticize a religion as well as particular adherents?

The Fake Cartoons
In addition to the twelve cartoons that were actually printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, three cartoons (here, here, and here (which as you can see are of a much insulting nature) were added by certain Danish Imams when they circulated them in Arab countries. The Imams declared that the cartoons were the work of Danes even though they hadn't been published with the others. It now appears that they have pulled a Dan Rather and have been caught peddling phonies.

The first photo is what the Imams claimed was a Danish cartoon, the second an AP photo of the winner of a French pig squealing contest discovered by who else, a blogger.

No doubt the defense will be the same, fake but accurate.

I have no idea if the imams were duped or if they made the cartoons themselves, but my BS detector votes for them being deliberate hoaxers. The only thing that argues against them drawing the fakes is this fact, pointed out by Paul Belian (linked above):

Denmark is being punished at the instigation of radical imams because twelve cartoonists have depicted Muhammad. However, these imams created their own three Muhammad images. They have even presented a French clown as being Muhammad. Because the twelve JP cartoonists are not Muslims, the Muslim blasphemy laws do not apply to them. But these laws do apply to the imams. Consequently, these imams deserve death. They – and no-one else – depicted the prophet as a pig – the highest imaginable insult in Islam.

So the response we are seeing isn't to just what was published, and given the contents of the fake cartoons, the response isn't to what was published at all, but to fake cartoons either made up or provided to radical Danish imams who then circulated them in several Arab countries.

Those are the facts. I hope to get to implications and speculations tomorrow.

Danish Cartoons

I have to admit I've been puzzled by the whole Danish Cartoon ??? I don't even know what to call it. Controversy seems too mild a word when buildings are burning and people are dying. Debacle implies that the Danish newspaper did something wrong, or at least something worse than what every other newspaper does, and that is to continue publishing political cartoons, an artform that (in the US at least) is simply wretched, worn out, and cliched. Who can take them seriously anymore? Crisis may be the best fit, but that depends on whether anything is learned or changes (on either side) or if after awhile the whole thing settles down to the status quo ante.

So how did we get here? The Brussels Journal provides a pretty good overview of the whole affair (there, I've made my decision on what to call it for now):

Do not think that by now you have heard all that there is to say about the “Danish cartoon” crisis. Last September, a Danish paper noticed that some cartoonists were frightened to depict Near Eastern topics. They seem to have sensed that being funny leads to serious trouble. So the paper made some effort to get such material. The result was twelve drawings [see them here, halfway down the page].

Some are good, others so-so. Still others are not especially funny. When perusing the material before the cartoons became the story, I thought that they depict an “Islamic type” in different situations. The best one seemed to be a scene at the gates of heaven. Incoming suicide bombers (“martyrs” if you insist) are told by the gate-keeper: “Stop, we ran out of virgins.” Another favorite is several women in burkas that follow a turbaned fellow. The rectangular eye-hole cut out of the black cloaks is transferred over the eyes of the (unenlightened?) man. In time it was discovered that the caricatures show the Prophet. That is a no-no if you are a Moslem. As time passed there was, rather than boos, a bit of protest. When it intensified, other papers reprinted the cartoons to show what the outcry is all about. Thereupon the insulted protestors defending the messenger of peace became violent. Considering that Islam claims to be a creed of mercy, peace and benevolence, its discontented are surprisingly violent. All of which makes one wonder what would happen if the faith would not have peaceful forgiveness in its core.

The contrast between the anger of those upset and the silliness of the simple cartoons can serve to distract us from the important issues confronted here -- at core what can I expect of and what can I demand of my fellow man. Normally in religion the questions are about the relations between man and God; here despite the religious angle the questions are about the relations between man and man, and the different beliefs on that subject that are informed by the overall culture, not just religion (and it can be mighty hard to separate the two). Christopher Hitchens agrees with me, just at greater length and with a different view of religion.

The fault lines are not just between West and East; there are fault lines within the West as well, and are well explored by Jeff Goldstein:
"This battle over the Danish cartoons highlights all of these philosophical dilemmas (which I have argued previously are the result of certain linguistic misunderstandings that are either cynically or idealistically perpetuated); and so we are brought to the point where this clash of civilizations—which in one important sense is a clash between theocratic Islamism and the west, but in another, more crucial sense, is a clash between the west and its own structural thinking, brought on by years of insinuation into our philosophy of what is, at root, collectivist thought that privileges the interpreter of an action over the necessary primacy of intent and agency and personal responsibility to the communicative chain—could conceivably become manifest over something so seemingly trivial as the right to satirize."
Actually, I think that arguments in the abstract don't cause anyone but college professors to get excited; it takes something simple and concrete like satirical cartoons to set everyman's heart to pounding.

I expect there are fault lines within the East as well, its just as a man of the West I'm not the best judge of them.

And I have to wonder, with all the provocations to chose from, why this one?

Another view is that the cartoons are an excerise in racism, freedom-of-speech a dodge to hide it, and that the Prophet Muhammad is not a current figure who would be an appropriate target for political cartoonists. Apparently symbolism is lost on some people.

Cassandra, not surprisingly, has girded her loins for intellectual battle:

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than the Danish cartoon kerfuffle. But for all the overwrought fulmination about freedom of expression, what the Coalition of the Outraged hate to admit is that unfettered speech in the Western world is more sentimental fiction than reality. By law and by custom, Western society has always recognized all sorts of limits on the right to speak freely. A notable example is the fighting words exception to the First Amendment, which recognizes that certain words and ideas are so inflammatory that society's interest in maintaining order outweighs the individual's right to express himself without limitation. Another, the criminalization of 'hate speech', places paramount value on the feelings of certain identity groups while allowing others to be insulted or attacked with impugnity. A third, cultural bugaboos, are equally problematic in that they allow rappers to casually drop words like 'nigger' but mandate that everyone else use silly euphenisms like 'the n-word' as surrogates for an appellation so shocking that only the pigmentally gifted may utter it without rending the fabric of the universe in twain.

So it would appear that protestations to the contrary, our own tolerance for free speech has definite limits. The question then becomes not, "Does a free society recognize any limitation on speech?". Of course it does. The sticking point becomes "Where do we draw the line, and who gets to draw it?" And therein lies the rub. The mainstream media regularly exercise self-restraint... but only when it suits them. As I observed earlier regarding the JCS controversy, media self-censorship is at best a hypocritical exercise:

And as far as the cowardly response of the American Press to spare our delicate sensiblilities by not showing the cartoons, what am I as a Christian to learn? That there is a double standard when handling Islam or Christianity? That we would be better off killing abortionists, blowing up abortion clinics, burning down movie theaters that show movies like Dogma or The Last Temptation of Christ, offing Dick Wolff or any other TV producer when he shows Christians in a negative light, or anyone else who disrespects us because then we would get respect? Then would our feelings would taken seriously? We'll never know, will we, because we woulnd't be Christians if we did. There's an idea for a movie - The Latest Tempation of a Christian.

Maybe, just maybe we should applaud some obscure Danish newpaper for having the audacity to commission cartoons these cartoons, and by doing so have caused not just turmoil in Islamic lands but soul searching in Western lands . We live in interesting times.

The Mediocre Bowl

The game was mediocre, the ads were mediocre, the halftime show was mediocre -- only the officiating stood out, and not in a good way.

I should be happy that the game wasn't lousy, like so many Super Bowl's before it, but recently the games have been better. The Steelers managed three good plays, all for touchdowns, and won the game. The Seahawks managed to move the ball but couldn't score - thanks more to the officials than the Steelers (although some lousy receivers didn't help).

The talking heads of course kept telling us the game could get better - they might just have well made the same appeal to keep watching based on the ads. And what game were Michaels and Madden watching? The same one as the officials? Madden thought Tampa Bay was in the Super Bowl this year, and Michaels couldn't tell his left from his right.

AB can be counted on to provide most of the good ads, and this year was no exception. They cover a variety of genres - funny, touching, battle of the sexes, etc.

The Burger King ad, notwithstanding Brook Burke, was creepy just like all their ads lately. I love the food at Burger King, but why oh why have they always had such lousy ads - including the worst ever campaign, Where's Herb?

And the Fed-Ex ad? I'm hoping the lamebrain who OK'ed that one get's stomped on by a giant foot too. And what is goDaddy.com? It sure looks like a porn site from the ad. What exactly do busty women have to do with domain names?

Was I the only one rooting for Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the MI:3 ad? If my choice is between Phil and Tom, Phil wins every time. You better believe I think you'd do it Phil.

What was up with the Dancing with the Stars ad wondering if you were hoping for a wardrobe malfunction? Didn't Kelly Monaco have a wardrobe malfunction but won the competition on the strength of the judges votes, and not the public's votes? Maybe the public wants to see good dancing, which is much harder to find that naked breasts (I'd start with goDaddy).

How much money did ABC forego to pitch their own shows? Anybody beside Lorne Michaels think Sons & Daughters is going to be funny? Somehow I don't think they managed to pick only the unfunny bits for the ads.

I'm all in favor of having a single great rock act do the halftime show. U2 did it best in 2002, but they have all been better than the old style of having a bunch of current acts run around and do each other's songs. While I'm amazed at what great shape Mic Jagger is in at his age, it would have been better if the Stones had done the show 20 years ago.

I can't believe that was the best officiating crew in the NFL. They stank. Did they all bet on the Steelers are something? Usually lousy crews screw both teams; in this game they managed to do in the Seahawks (not that they needed much help). I especially liked the call on Hasselback for blocking below the waist on what was really an outstanding tackle on his part. And I often complain (just ask my son who has to endure my ranting during games) about how the refs never call offensive pass interference -- guys like Randy Moss push off every play. So I was happy they flagged Seattle for it until I saw the replay -- he knocks the defense backs hands off himself and he's flagged? NFL, you need to fix your officiating.

All in all, what a waste of a few hours. Of course, I'll waste them again next year.

NSA - This Time, Do Get Technical

Lately I've regaled you with tales of my misspent youth in an attempt to divert attention away from the NSA imbroglio. No, that's not what I've done. I'm not a lawyer, so when people start telling me something is illegal or unconstitutional I don't head for the law library to research, I comb my vast store of memory to see if what they are telling me squares with my experience. And so I've written extensively (for me) on why I think the complaints can't be right - because they don't square with my experience.

But I now turn to some lawyers who have done the legal research and declare that I haven't lost my mind (yet). The men at Powerline tell me that there are controlling legal authorities for the NSA eavesdropping and they say that the president has the legal authority to order them, despite FISA:

"We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power." -- direct quote from an 2002 decision by theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

Taum Sauk and 2 Clean Ups

I've been meaning to write about this for a little while, but tempus fugit and all that. First up, the clean up efforts of particulates clouding the water in the Black river and lower resevoir at Taum Sauk have begun. The water in the Black river, once noted for its clarity, has been a murky muck since the disasterous breach of the upper reservoir. From the picture the Post Dispatch ran, you could see that the water had scoured its path right down to the pink granite bedrock underneath, washing away everything - trees and soil included.

Secondly, the investigation heated up when it was discovered that Ameren UE had earlier problems, including a prior overflow, with the upper reservoir. So now Missouri officials (including Gov. Matt Blunt) are talking about criminal charges, and a local judge has appointed the state Attorney General, Jay Nixon, as special prosecutor.

While I think the company should pay for the clean up, I would much prefer, as both a Ameren UE ratepayer and a citizen of Missouri, to see fines and criminal charges targeted at the specific people whose actions, or failures to act, led to this disaster, than a large blanket fine imposed on Ameren UE. My thinking as a ratepayer is obvious - why should I pay the fine for another person's failure, because that's exactly what will happen. And as a citizen, I want to see (1) the guilty punished and (2) similar screwups detered. I think you are more likely to have a deterent effect if people realize that they will personally pay for, not mistakes per se, but clear failures of judgement that hurt other people. I realize that a corporation is a wonderful financial and civil legal abstraction, I'm just not sure it's all that good as a criminal one. The blame is shifted onto an artificial abstraction, and not on the flesh and blood it belongs on.

More I Just Don't Get It

Yesterday I mentioned I have been searched only once by the police. It happened in college when I was back home over the Christmas break (we could actually use that word back then). Three other friends and I went to a Pizza Inn or Hut in Rock Hill late one evening. The place was closed early, and so after pounding on the door and examining the posted hours, we discussed where to go to assuage our hunger. We noticed a police car in the filling station across the street, so when we headed west on Manchester with the police car following, the driver, Dave, made sure to stay below the speed limit.

The police officer turned on his lights just before we entered Warson Woods, so by the time we actually pulled over at the Warson Woods shopping center, we had an officer from Warson Woods, and a Sargeant from Glendale in addition to the officer from Rock Hill. The Rock Hill officer, who wouldn't tell us why we were pulled over, was none too happy when Dave gave him a paper driver's license which was a temporary because his original had been destroyed in an apartment fire in Columbia. So they went off to the Rock Hill car to sort matters out, leaving us with the Warson Woods officer standing alongside the passenger side ignoring my friend Greg in the back seat who kept asking him why we were pulled over. Greg's brother had apparently had a number of run ins with the Rock Hill police and his family didn't have a high opinion of them. Greg wanted to get out and address the officer directly, and since it was a two door car, I got out to let Greg out. The Warson Woods officer was none too happy that either of us got out, so he told us to get back in the car. Greg told him he wouldn't get back until we were informed why we had been pulled over. The officer than said he was giving us a lawful police order to get back in the car. I complied, Greg didn't. So they handcuffed Greg, searched all of us and searched the car.

All they found was four college students looking for pizza.

I have to admit I snickered when I was ordered to take the keys out of my pocket "real slow" while the police officer watched very intently with hand on gun following the discovery during my patdown that I had a large metal object in my pocket. My keys were on a very large brass K.

The Glendale sargeant eventually persuaded the Rock Hill police officer, who about went ballistic when we told him we'd simply follow him to the Rock Hill police department and pay $500 cash to bail Greg out of jail, to let us go since we were "super squeeky clean" and he was glad he wasn't the one who would have to write this one up. So after Greg "apologized" we were on our way.

So why bring this up? Did you notice something? We were searched without a warrant. Some would have you believe that's a violation of the fourth amendment. Apparently not. Anything else? It was Greg, and Greg only who "didn't obey a lawful police order", but we were all searched along with the car. That's right, I, who did obey the order, was searched, along with my two friends who weren't even subject to the order. You mean they could search a persons associates? Just in case there's some question, we were all US citizens on US soil.

One last thing - they finally told us what we were pulled over for while driving 28 MPH down Manchester Road -- loitering.

I Just Don't Get It

Outrage is still flowing strong over the NSA program to eavesdrop (wiretap is so last century people) on international phone conversations and emails -- often wrongly described as domestic. I'd love to see those people who claim this is domestic go to the domestic terminal to fly to Australia (under the theory that they are a US citizen embarking in the United States), or order a domestic French wine in a swanky restaurant (under the theory that they rare a US citizen consuming the wine in the United States). Look it's really quite simple. If somebody sits in the comfort of his home in the US and sends something, including information, outside the US then what is sent is sent internationally. If that same person receives something in the same comfort of his home from abroad, including information, then what he recieves he recieves internationally. Now here is something that's going to really blow some people's minds: If you, a US citizen in the United States, provide anything, including information to a foreign national anywhere, even in the comfort of the United States, or even indirectly through another US citizen if you know it will be provided to a foreign national, even inside the borders of the United States, you have committed an export.

Much has been made over the former NSA director, General Michael Hayden, remarks on the subject. Some claim it demonstrates a shaky grasp of the 4th amendment. I'd say it demonstrates that those complaining have a shaky grasp of the 4th amendment. Tom Maguire demonstrates the error of their ways repeatedly. Jeff Goldstein has also exhaustively covered this topic.

I think it also demonstrates that those who charge it's unconstitutional need to get out more. They seem to argue that a search requires probable cause per the 4th amendment. I've been searched so many times by government agents or by government mandate (only once by law officers though) I can't keep count. I can remember a time (barely) when you could just walk on an airplane like a train or a bus, but for a long time everybody has been searched. Now every piece of luggage, and every person who boards is searched by a government agent. Yep, US citizens, inside the US, travelling domestically (and I do mean domestically) are searched without a warrant, without probable cause, by the US government.

You go to the courthouse here in St. Louis, you get searched. US citizens, inside the US, are searched without a warrant or probable cause everyday by US agents in the very courthouses intended to uphold the law.

A couple of years ago, we took a trip to Washington D.C. We were searched at every location on the mall. Not only did we have to walk through metal detectors, backpacks, purses, etc. were opened and searched. Again, US citizens, inside the US, searched without a warrant, without probable cause, by the US government. The Smithsonian, the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress -- everywhere we went. I'm sure the irony will be lost on the Congresspeople involved that everyday thousands of US citizens are searched without a warrant to gain admission to the very building where the inquiry into warrentless searching of international communications will be held.

I have taken trips outside the US and I've been questioned about my activities abroad upon my return, and usually my effects have been searched, all without a warrant or probably cause by US agents. Even Democrats call for US customs to search every shipping container entering the United States. Needless to say, without a warrant, without probable cause. How can this be? How can this massive violation of the 4th amendment continued on for so many years if probable cause is required for a search of a US citizen, his person, papers, home, or effects?

As I said previously, I don't understand why I'm supposed to be upset that the NSA is eavesdropping on international phone calls -- calls that pass through an international border -- to US citizens when those very same citizens are subject routinely and unremarkedly to questioning and search if they physically made the same trip their call were making. What is the difference?

Oregon and The Right To Die

There is a lot of happiness in some quarters about the Supreme Courts decision on doctor assisted suicide in Oregon. I wonder how long the rejoicing will last if applied to things like labor laws, environmental laws, and other laws that roll out from Washington with little regard for the individual states.

So do I think the people of Oregon passed a good law about doctor assisted suicide? Nope (although I may change my mind in a few years), but I think that's their mistake to make. I sure do hope the legal reasoning get's extended to other areas besides suicide.

This extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome

The Listless Lawyer discovers a case where the court hands the ACLU their head on a "separation of church and state" case and also discovers that he thinks like a appellate judge.

Third, and finally, as much as I support the ACLU on most issues, I admit that it is fun to watch them get slapped around a bit for their ill-considered views on religious “freedom”. And to see them get slapped around using tools honed to perfection (at least in recent history) by the political left? You’ve gotta love schadenfreude.

So if you want to see the ACLU slapped around (and if you're my kind of person, you do), go and read.

Out Of The Mouth From The Heart

What's the difference between Ray Nagin and Pat Robertson?
Pat's incompetence hasn't killed any one yet.

What's the difference between Republicans and Democrats?

Republicans aren't crazy enought to elect either one, while Democrats elected Ray "Tantrum" Nagin, who brings whole new meaning to the phrase "The politics of personal destruction".

My advice on what God's thinking -- James 1:26-27:

If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Judge Alito, Your Bench is Calling

I keep hearing about the confirmation hearings for Judge Alito. I'm not paying much attention because I figure (1) he's going to be confirmed, and (2) he can't be any worse than Ruth Ginsberg. I know, I have such high standards for Supreme Court Justices.

My problem with the process is that whoever is nominated is going to say what they think will cause them the least immediate hassle during the confirmation hearings and once on the bench they can and will do whatever they want. And having seen how the august responsibility of having no accountability has turned many a Supreme Court judge into a not so petty tyrant has soured me on the whole process. I'm beginning to think that the best qualification is age - the older the better. Not because of any notion about wisdom coming with age, but just because there is less time for the power to corrupt.

So go ahead, if you have a strong stomach, and read the transcripts and make fun of your least favorite Senator. I've seen less posing for the cameras at a fashion show. To me, it's an acquired taste, like oh, the one for Limberger cheese and through studious indifference I have the good fortune to have not acquired it (or for Limberger either).

I'll stick to my pre-digested info on this matter, like this hilarious yet sad article from Bloomberg about Democrats who simply can't believe that Alito won't endorse the notion that the Constitution confers a right to abortion. I cackle at Dick Durban going "can't you see the emanations, the penumbras, the auras, the effervesences of the Constitution that quite clearly state, well, not state exactly, but slip into the brain of sensitive people and help them understand that personhood is confered by a decision of one's mother right up until, let's be honest, the placenta comes out? Good God man, haven't you drunk the cool aid yet?" The sad part is that an otherwise sane person could read the constitution and conclude that it does indeed confer a right to abortion on demand by mom until birth and includes an exception for her health (whether abortion should be legal is a separate issue).

And let's be clear - Alito is against abortion. While it would be nice for him to ask the good senator if he's ever, you know, actually read the constitution all the way through in one sitting, and then state that of course he's against abortion and thinks Roe was a terrible case of legislating from the bench, it might cause enough senators to confuse insulting a senator with insulting the senate that he wouldn't be confirmed. The only real question is does Alito think that overturning what he thinks is a bad judicial ruling that lies somewhere between a super and a super-duper precedent is inline with his judicial philosophy. In other words, does Judge Alito think that correcting the mistakes of one's predecessors on the bench cause more harm or good? Now if somebody asked that, I'd pay attention.

Only 8?

Here's a great post from the Ombudsgod: Top 8 Media Mulligans For 2005. What discipline to keep the field to only eight.

A Mulligan is where you act like what just happened didn't really happen even though everyone really knows what really happened. The following, in my opinion, are the 8 worst Mulligans the collective media took in 2005. They are areas of failure in the media that we are supposed to pretend don't exist.

No Katrina coverage, even though that was an unnatural disaster.

You're No Johnny Carson

Mr. Ott, as always, has the best story about Jon Stewart hosting the Oscars. I'm writing my response to Mr. Stewarts hosting job already: "I thought he'd be taller." Yeah, I know, low blow.

Ignore Pat Robertson

We keep telling you people, ignore Pat Robertson. He only gets media attention because he fits their caracature of a right wing Christian. Move along.

Sago Mine Disaster

A terrible tragedy compounded by a false hope - that's the story out of West Virginia. It's a really sad day, and my heart goes out to the families who are grieving. Yes, the press screwed up, but then it underlines the truism that first reports are wrong, something we've seen over and over and over. And to be fair, the families didn't get their news from the press, if anything, it was the other way around. Yes, we all admire the gimlet eyed hard head who doesn't get carried away with improbably good news after the fact, but we forget how much we hate them at the time for throwing cold water on our celebration.

Punishment Should Fit The Crime

I'm a believer that extraordinary crimes deserve extraordinary punishment, so I've often thought that wealthy people who steal large sums of money tend to get off far too lightly. And so I think Jack Abramoff will get off far too lightly, along with his partners in crime. To be clear, not every politician who got money from Abramoff did anything wrong. Considering that he's done double the damage - he's stolen millions of dollars and created the appearance of corruption in Congress if not actual corruption and despite his cooperation, he should receive what in my mind is the maximum penalty such financial criminals should receive (along with such criminal masterminds as Bernie Ebbers and John Rigas): he should have all his money, down to the very last cent, taken from him, then he should be stripped naked and whipped through the streets. Then he loses all property rights for 5 years.

On a side note, while the charges Ronnie Earl brought against Tom Delay in Texas were a joke, the trail from Abramoff to Delay is very serious indeed.

Merry Christmas

Milad Majid.
Feliz Navidad.
Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan.
Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce a stastny Novy Rok.
Gajan Kristnaskon.
Ojenyunyat Sungwiyadeson honungradon nagwutut. Ojenyunyat osrasay.
Meri Kirihimete.

However you say it, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Make My Day

Arnold beats some punks at their own game. He's angling for the Harry S Truman award: I tell it like is and they think I'm giving them hell.

He's Right, You Know

Tom Maguire explains the symbolism behind Time's photograph of the publicity twins, Joe and Valerie Wilson. The only thing he left out is that Joe not only outed Valerie in his NYT op-ed, he followed up with David Corn to make sure that nobody missed just how important she was.

Next up for Tom, Ulysses.

Taum Sauk Dam Fails

The upper dam at Taum Sauk failed early this morning, about 5:30 AM, sending a wall of water down the Black River. Three children were injured in the flood. Why the dam failed is unknown, although it did rain here in Missouri last night. The dam had prior leaking problems that were fixed in 2004.

The dam that failed is part of a hydro electric battery which consists of an upper reservoir connected to a lower reservoir by a tunnel that houses electricity generating turbines and pumps. During peak electrical usage times (typically summer days) water is released from the upper reservoir to flow through the electic turbines and then pumped back up during low usage times (usually that night). The beauty of the system that it helps deal with high cost peak demand in an elegant way. From the Department of Energy's Residential Electricity Prices: A Consumer's Guide:

In most areas, the cost to generate electricity fluctuates daily and monthly. These fluctuations are a response to changes in demand for electricity. Daily demand for electricity is usually highest in the afternoon and early evening (on-peak). Seasonal peaks reflect regional weather and climatic conditions, with the highest occurring in the summer when air-conditioning use is greatest. Power plants tend to operate in two basic modes: base-load and base-load peaking load. Base-load power plants are most efficient generating electricity at an even, consistent level, around the clock, and generally include nuclear, coal-fired, geothermal and waste-to-energy plants. Some plants may sit as a “spinning reserve” during off-peak or on-peak periods. Peaking plants are turned on or “dispatched” as demand increases above the normal base demand or load. Peaking plants are expensive to operate, often fueled by refined oil products, or natural gas, and have a fuel cost per kWh higher than a baseload plant. Hydropower plants can operate in base and/or peaking mode. A relatively small amount of electricity is generated from “pumped storage” plants. These economically efficient plants pump water from a river or reservoir up into reservoirs located above hydroelectric turbines.

The setting for Taum Sauk couldn't be more gorgeous, near the Arcadia Valley. If you like scenery, and you're ever in Missouri, be sure to visit the Taum Sauk area, including Johnson's shut-ins -- cleaned up since I was a kid when it was a haven for biker gangs, Elephant Rocks -- giant pink granite boulders, Mina Sauk falls, and other attractions.

A local resident asks for your prayers.

Gateway Pundit has lots more on the story.
Group blog The Oil Drum looks at the power aspects of the story.

Laugh In Looks At The News

Mr Lileks proves once again that he can write: A 2005 Rollick:

An oppressive colonizer is forced to withdraw from occupied Arab land. This is initially met with dancing in the streets of Cairo, Paris, and Turtle Bay. Then everyone realizes it is Syria pulling out of Lebanon. You must understand that the Cedar Revolution, after years of Syrian domination, has nothing to do with the American presence in Iraq, you jingoist. It's just one of those international coincidences like the moon being where it was when Apollo 11 flew past. A few months later, Israel voluntarily withdraws from Gaza, earning approximately 17 seconds of good will from the international community. Personal best!

ABC, Mel Gibson, and The Holocaust

Jeff Jarvis is upset that ABC is making a TV miniseries about the Holocaust with Mel Gibson and that ABC is happy that the controversy that is bound to ensue will increase viewership. Jeff quotes Elie Wiesel: we must not bring theater to Auschwitz or Auschwitz to theater — that is, we must not exploit the emotions of the Holocaust for the sake of drama or think that drama can adequately tell the story.

There's a whole bunch here to digest, so let me start with Mr. Gibson. Yes, his father is a holocaust denier, but that doesn't mean Mel is. I think the son should be judged on his own. I find it humurous in a sad way that Jeff is adding to the very controversy the use of which he decries. But perhaps a real problem for me is that because the series will based upon the experiences of a Jewish family who lived because they were hidden by Christians in the Netherlands, the focus will be on what good people Christians are, which I don't think is the best focus on a movie about the Holocaust, and we won't be forced to confront the monstrous face of evil of the Holocaust.

I think if all ABC sees by using Mel Gibson's company is publicity, that is if they thought the product would be lousy but the controversy would sell the audience anyway, then that would be deplorable. But if they think that a side benefit is publicity, that is the product would be good and a larger audience would be attracted because of the Mel angle, then that is acceptable. Since I can't see into other's hearts and minds, I can neither condemn nor defend ABC. But I don't think Jeff should be condemning them either, unless he can provide some other evidence that all they care about is the publicity.

On the art front, I too would hate to see Law & Order: The Holocaust or CSI: Auschwitz, but I don't think that is the only option. Not only was Schindler's List just an outstanding drama, so too was Life Is Beautiful which managed to be both outstanding drama and comedy. Truly great art is about the stuff that is too big, too powerful to truly comprehend any other way. It isn't observations about lint. Now maybe the problem is since art is so crappy these days, so little worthwile art around at all, that good people like Mr. Wiesel and Mr. Jarvis don't think that the Holocaust can be treated any other way than documentary. But I think they've already been proven wrong, and I'm hoping they are proven wrong again.

Wilson Plame Who Cares Anymore?

Yes, I know some of you never cared about the whole Wilson Plame saga from the beginning, and some gave up caring long ago, but I've stopped. I know, Tom Maguire who is a better writer and investigator is still going full steam ahead, but this is I hope my last word on the subject. I'm going cold turkey.

Yes, I'm upset by the leaking of classified information, but then unlike a lot of people excited by the whole affair I'm upset by the leaking of any classified information. Frankly, it was a shock when Fitzgerald announced that revealing classified information wasn't a crime in and of itself. It ought to be, but then there might not be anyone left at the CIA (or Congress for that matter).

Part of the ennui is the excessive focus on the least important parts and the ignoring the of the most important. And by that I mean the focus should be on our ability to gather intellegence, analyze it, promulgate it, and protect it. In other words, the process. Instead, the focus has been on the personalities, the who instead of the what. The whole mess has been (or at least should have been) an embarrassment to everyone involved. The CIA comes off as bumbling at best or rogue at worst; the press comes off as bumbling at best and biased at worst; even the vaunted Patrick Fitzgerald comes off as a bumbler - he didn't deliver on what he was asked to do, namely get to the bottom of who leaked to Bob Novak -- instead he got Libby who appears to have leaked to everybody but Novak, his prosecution of Libby now looks weak since Bob Woodward nonchalantly announced that he got a leak from somebody else before Libby started and while I'm always up for perjury the idea that Libby diverted Fitzgeralds investigation is nonsense - it ultimately saved it from coming up empty - because Libby wasn't party to the leak to Novak. Apparently, prosecuting the mafia, terrorists, and Illinois politicians is a walk in the park compared to unraveling the relationships between the press and the government in D.C. - which is a reflection not on Mr. Fitzgerald but the Byzantine workings of Washington. The whole prosecution has this weird feel because even though we have a prosecutor investigating a crime, he can't come after the witnesses, and let's face it, partners in crime AKA reporters with the full majesty of the law like he could against mob bosses, terrorist masterminds, and crooked politicians.

And finally, the left seems to be deranged on the subject. Consider Marty Kaplan, otherwise brilliant renaissance man - bright light to my dim bulb, who wrote the most astonishing blog post A Piss Is Not A Leak:

When government officials or campaign operatives go off the record to a reporter in order to smear someone, spread disinformation, lie about an opponent, stab someone in the back while wearing the cloak of anonymity, kindle a propanganda brush fire, slander critics, psych out enemies, and throw red herrings in an investigator's path, they are engaging in the dark arts of psy ops.

On the other hand, this laudable devotion to the truth and fair politics somehow falls to the wayside when it comes to examining Joe Wilson's claims which again, have been revealed to be false by every investigation into the matter. Those claims which were, how shall we say, leaked under the cover of annonymity to the New York Times to kindle a propanganda brush fire - a propanganda brush fire that continues to burn (Bush Lied!) and divert attention and resources from important things. So you have Wilson pretty much doing everything the left is foaming at the mouth mad at the Bush administration for but not doing, which strikes me as deranged. It must be amazingly emotionally satisfying, to be so utterly convinced of one owns superlative righteousness that reality itself is distorted into a mirror image. Excuse me if I find it boring to hear such smug assertions of fairy tales.

Perhaps we can find a middle ground with it comes to kicking the tar out of Randy Cunningham, who I hope we can all agree behaved reprehensibly in accepting bribes and who's actions are, in a word, unpatriotic. Frankly, I don't know if it worse or mitigating that he was a war hero in Vietnam.

Wilson Plame Libby Woodward

The case against Scooter Libby took an odd turn the other day when investigative reporter extraordinaire (just ask him, he'll tell you) Bob Woodward announced the other day that he'd been given Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA analyst by an administration source other than Scooter Libby before Libby talked to Miller, Cooper, and Russert.

Tom Maguire is all over this, as always. And from every angle, especially Cheney.

What I think it means is that Fitzgerald will have a harder time convicting Libby. Why? Because Mr. Fitzgerald's claim was that Libby was the first leaker based on the testimony of Miller, Cooper, and Russert and therefore his claim to have heard it from reporters first has to be a lie, and not just a disagreement over what was said in a brief conversation a couple of years ago. If it cannot be established that in fact this info was not leaked prior to Libby, then that claim goes down in flames. And further, Woodward claims he told Walter Pincus about Ms. Wilson, although Pincus doesn't remember that. So now we have two reporters disagreeing about who told what during a brief discussion a couple of years ago. But wait, there's still more - Mr. Woodward kept mum about this leak, despite the investigation, until Mr. Fitzgerald contacted him because one of Woodwards sources spilled the beans to Mr. Fitzgerald. So no doubt everybody is wondering who else is out there but hunkered down and waiting for Fitzgerald to make the first contact.

I think it also means we're less likely to ever make sense out of it beyond partisan ax grinding. And that might be a good thing, because as far as I can tell it has become a sideshow, a distraction, the mother of all red herrings, from the important questions - what can we do to improve intelligence collection and analysis at the CIA and what can we do to safeguard classified information better. This is a case where we can't see the forest for the trees.

In God We Trust

In God We Trust, all others pay cash.

Michael Newdow is trying to have "In God We Trust" removed from US currency. I don't care, but don't our courts have better things to worry about? I'm an evangelical Christian, so I think what's written on our hearts is far more important to God than what's written on our money. Take it off, leave it on, makes no difference to me. That isn't the case for everyone, though.

Maybe Mr. Newdow has the right idea for the wrong reason. Maybe we should sell "motto rights" to each individual piece of currency. Think of the money we cold raise if corporations would pay to put their name, logo, or motto on the currency. If big oil did it, would Congress promise to use that money to defray the costs of home heating?

I have to admit I don't really pay much attention to what's on there - just enough to let me tell it apart, although the mint keeps screwing with the nickel and freaks me out with every change - the friendly game of golf (it looks like golf clubs and a handshake to me) on the back, the ancient bireme, the ocean view on the back and the weird just Jefferson's face on the front. But I couldn't tell you what's written on there, or if it changes.

So why should a court rule to have the motto removed? Because somebody is offended? And don't tell me it violates the separation of Church and State, since that isn't a constitutional provision. Instead, the first amendment reads (in relevant part) "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Putting God on money clearly doesn't violate free exercise thereof, but does it constitute establishing a religion?

I suppose you could argue that it establishes a monotheistic religion with just three tenets: God exists, there is only one God, and we trust God. Seems pretty slim to me, but I tell you what, if the Supreme Court declares that putting "In God We Trust" on something makes it an official religion, I'll slap it on all my possessions and tell the IRS hands off because its now religious property in the "In God We Trust" religion. I suppose for those who adhere to the notion that "all religions are basically the same" (I'm not a believer in that church) then those three are enough. I'd just point out that there are huge differences between Christianity and Islam, although they in theory worship the same God.

I think the Supreme Court adopted the right policy when it comes to "In God We Trust": Leave us out of it.

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day, the day we honor those who have served in the military and lived. Memorial Day is the day we honor those who died while serving in the military. While that seems like a big difference, the reality is that chance plays a huge role in which soldiers live and which soldiers die. So to all you veterans out there, thanks for the willingness to put your life on the line for all the things I hold dear.

Judy Miller "Retires"

Now that she's not part of the black hole of news, I'm hoping Judy Miller tells all, starting with the offer Keller and Pinch made her she couldn't refuse. Of course, it would be nice if elite journalists actually told us what they knew when they knew it instead of only telling it to a grand jury.

News And Response

The CIA has asked that the lastest leak about secret CIA prisons be investigated.
As Billy Idol would say, more more more!!!

White House Staffers to take Ethics Class.
Hey, the business solution to ethics problems. Michael Sears once observed that if you weren't ethical before you took an ethics class, you wouldn't be ethical afterwards -- and he ought to know!

Ahmad Chalabi will meet with Secretary Rice during trip to US
You don't have to hold you're nose, but I'd wash my hands afterwards Condi. Just remember, an ambassador is an ethical man who lies for his country (hey, that must be why Joe Wilson is out, he wasn't ethical and his lies were only self serving).

US-EU Stalemate Persists Over Farm Subsidies.
Let me be perfectly clear: end farm subsidies now. Let's not bicker over whose is bigger, cut them both off, completely.

Crude Oil Falls Near a Three-Month Low as U.S. Supply Increases
What, it wasn't Bill O'Reilly holding the feet of Big Oil to the fire that dropped the price of gas? Maybe we'd be better off listening to Adam Smith on tape than listening to radio or TV pundits.

Gates Orders Web Services Emphasis.
I thought MS would already have been all over web services, what with that marvelous free browser of theirs that giving away free didn't hurt consumer choice, and especially after Chairman Bill changed that chapter in his book The Road Ahead from Internet Schminternet to I Guess The Internet Might End Our Monopoly So We Better Crush Our Competitors There First

Europe Space Agency Launches Venus Probe
Looking for love in all the wrong places.... The good news is that spaceflight has become routine, the bad news is spaceflight has become routine.

Scientists unearth earliest known Hebrew ABCs
From graphiti to scientific bonanza in 30 short centuries. How long before the scribblings here become worth writing about?

Kevin Explains MoDo

Maureen Dowd is making news again, this time for an excerpt from her new book: Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide. I'm proud of myself, because I noticed long ago not only had Maureen asked this question, but she answered it (hint: when it comes to the necessity of men, she's the David Spade of the Capitol One ads). Matt Yglesias, modern lefty to the core, can't recognize hate when it comes from the left or is directed at the right group. Ezra Klein, modern lefty to the core, is similarly perplexed, even while he provides evidence from Playboy to rebut her assertion that men only love stupid, spineless Barby dolls.

Let me explain the point of 99% of MoDo's writing: She hates men. It really is that simple. She hates them for not loving her, for what they've done to her and all other women. She isn't blaming feminism, she's blaming men for the failure of feminism. In MoDo-land, it's men who hold the upper hand because they force women to conform to their ideal before they have a long term relationship with them. What a shock then that she can't find a man.

More Of The Same

President Bush has nominated Judge Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. That's more like it, even if it isn't Judge Janice Brown. I expect that he'll be confirmed on a close to party line vote. While he can clearly write court opinions, I'm starting to miss Harriet Miers because she at least was something different, not another brilliant Yalie who followed the correct path (which isn't meant to be a knock on Judge Alito). The problem was that she represented too great a risk at a time when the Supreme Court has become far too political and not simply judicial. It's too bad that that's what we hold elections for now - to pick and confirm Supreme Court Justices so that one side can win the nine vote elections.

Libby Indicted, Resigns

Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury yesterday. He wasn't charged for the actual disclosure of classified information. Since Fitzgerald is alleging that Libby engaged in a pattern of deception, namely Libby's claim that he first found out about Valerie Plame from reporters and merely passed along what he had heard from reporters, I think he should be charged with perjury. But what I don't understand is, since Fitzgerald made clear that he considered Plame's status with the CIA classified information and that Libby did indeed disclose it without proper authorization, why Libby wasn't also charged with the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. So my complaint isn't that Libby was charged with perjury, but that he was just charged with perjury.

If that's all Libby faces, what message does it send? It's OK to leak classified information, just own up to it in court? We seem to have adopted a standard in the US that disclosing classified information to foreign governments, friendly or otherwise is punishable, but disclosing to the press isn't punishable. When was the last time a leak to the press itself investigated and charges brought? Here was a chance, and Fitzgerald has (so far) declined to take it. Does disclosure to the press somehow do less damage to national security? I sure don't think so.

I'm also of the opinion that lying Joe Wilson should be charged for unauthorized disclosure of classified information, and there is some ammunition in Fitzgerald's Press Release. First, Ambassador Wilson made the most damaging disclosure of classified information about his wife to David Corn since he went far beyond my wife works for the CIA. But he also maintained that there was nothing classified about his trip - neither his taking it nor his findings. Yet we find in the press release this statement:

on or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents from the CIA were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another person in the Vice President’s office. The documents, which bore classification markings, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

And Fitzgerald's statement in the press release

shortly after publication on or about June 19, 2003, of an article in The New Republic magazine online entitled “The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War,” Libby spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the article. That official asked Libby whether information about Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. Libby responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line;

Is this the end of the indictments? What about Karl Rove? Only Fitzgerald knows, and he (still) isn't talking. Certainly the evidence uncovered so far is weaker against Rove or he'd have been indicted too; maybe Karl is in the clear because he did hear from a reporter before saying things like "I hear that too".

Discretion, Valor, Better Part

Now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn from consideration, I won't be able to make up my mind on her elevation to the Supreme Court. No hearings, no way for me to decide. I do think the nomination itself was a mistake (yeah think, einstein?) mainly because there seems to have been so little thought put into it. It's like all this effort went into picking now Chief Justice Roberts, and then they were too tired and distracted and picked the first woman who said yes. It's like going out to Tony's for dinner and then stopping off at Shop 'n' Save to pick up some house brand ice cream for dessert on the way home.

I suppose I'm a natural optimist, but I don't think the nomination does any lasting damage to the president if this time President Bush picks a compelling nominee, or at least someone the administration can provide clear reasons to support. Who remembers Kerik? He was clearly qualified for the job, but he had "other" issues. And his successor is the lackluster Chertoff.

I'm hoping for Janice Rogers Brown, but I'm not holding my breath.

Fitzgerald, Plame, Wilson, Rove, Libby, Cheney

OK, the webs aflame with rumor and speculation over Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame kerfuffle. Of course, I get all my Plame news from Tom Maguire, who never grows tired of the fact that we know so little. Consider that Fitzgerald and his people are famously closed lipped. Who do all these leaks come from? Even if they came from Fitzgerald (gigantic if there), let me remind you of the most important point about leaks involving politics (OK, any leak for that matter) - they are always self serving for the leaker. Always. The fact that the leaker can provide only partial truth allows the leaker to control and manipulate the story.

And isn't leaking grand jury testimony a crime as well? I understand a witness can come out and talk about the questioning, even lie about it like good old Sid Blumenthal, but other than that the testimony is legally protected. So the only way for it not to be a crime is if the leaker about a particular witnesses testimony ultimately derived their leak from the particular witness? Which leads us right back to the self serving nature of any leak. Sigh.

So what's really going on here. Is the most important part of the whole sodden mess the fact that Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA employee? Is it that CIA is a rogue organization that is trying to undermine the elected President of the United States? Or does it's import derive as proxy for the Iraq war itself?

Personally, what I care about most is the unauthorized discloure of classified information. If Fitzgerald can return indictments about that, even perjury indictements, I'll consider it a successful investigation. But I want the perjury to be perjury, not just how good Karl Rove's memory is. So if he deliberately lied to conceal unauthorized disclosure, then good. If he forgot a particular conversation of several that occured with one or more people, then bad. And by that I mean if he were tardy in disclosing a conversation with Matt Cooper, someone who Rove had no reason to believe wouldn't disclose, then an indictment is just butt covering.

But if it turns out that the Valerie Plame wasn't covert and the CIA persued this case while it has let plenty of other equally or more serious dislosures go in the past, then I think the CIA becomes the big story. Why should it be OK for a disgruntled current or ex-CIA employee to disclose classified information to the press, but not the White House?

Here are the unanswered questions for me. Was Valerie Plame a covert agent at the time her name was leaked? If so, it raised for me another important question then - how did her name leave the CIA? What does that say about their security proceedures? If not, what is the CIA trying to pull here?

Which reporter broke the sacred confidentiality to tell Joe Wilson who the sources were? I mean, how else was he able to finger Karl Rove and Scooter Libby way back at the start of the kerfuffle? It was only a month after Novak's article that Wilson said he wanted to see Karl Rove "frogmarched" out of the White House in handcuffs. Libby's name followed soon after, and then Joe Wilson backtracked and shut up about it. Odd how the press isn't interested in Joe Wilson's source, which he admitted to, and how that source named the two people that have been most prominently featured as people who talked to the press.

Speaking of Joe, why isn't he being investigated as the man who clearly did the most to out his own wife? For those who like convoluted conspiracies (I'm not one), why not think the Valerie was tired of living the covert life, have Joe out you, and bam you're out, in the clear, the darlings of the media, book deals, Vanity Fair articles. Hey, it's more plausible than Flight Plan.

What about the role of the State Department? Plame was "moving to State Department cover", there are reports of a State Department memo with her name in it, State opposed the war in Iraq just like the CIA. Has the institutional opposition at these two power centers overstepped the bounds of good government? And will we ever see that probed?

Most of all, what does Fitzgerald really have?

OK, that last one is a repeat of how we know so little. And what amazes me is how there are some who don't seem to realize that. We don't even know if Valerie Plame was covert. Did the neighbors know she worked for the CIA? I have no idea, but Mark Kleiman is convinced by an article in the LAT which relies on two neighbors. Did the LAT contact "all" the neighbors but only inlcuded quotes from two? Cliff May said lots of people in Washington knew a long time ago - but Cliff wasn't a neighbor. Was he just talking trash, or was he telling the truth? Beats me, I don't live in Washington. We have to rely on these leaked reports to the press, which clearly has lower standards about such leaks than, say, allegations by a victim that she was raped by Bill Clinton.

Some people don't even know what we do know - namely that Joe Wilson is a liar who came forward not courageously before the war, but after when the status of the Iraq WMD was known. If Ambassador Wilson was so upset by President Bush's so called manipulation of intellegence before the war (you know, when CIA head Tenet was claiming that Iraqi WMD was a "slam dunk"), why didn't he come forward then, when it could have done some good?

One last final thoughts (not for the subject, just the post) - whatever you may think of Fitzgerald's integrity, it seems as if people are treating the indictments as the final word on the subject. They aren't, they are just accusations. I know that depending on whose ox is being gored, people will ignore that fact or ignore every other fact.

Same As The Old Boss?

Republicans heaved a huge sigh of relief yesterday when President Bush named Ben Bernanke as his nominee to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Bernanke pick surprised no one, as the man has impeccible credentials.

Rumor has it that President Bush was seriously contemplating nominating his longtime broker, and a draft of the President's introductory remarks has been obtained by Funmurphys: "This is a man who understands the markets; and who by the way made a ton of money for me over the years. I'll never forget his timing on Harken, that's for sure. Cutiepie, come on up here. I call him Cutiepie because he sends Laura and me the cutest cards and notes, with cats and bluebonnets on them." The Whitehouse and "Cutiepie" were unavailable for comment.

The Queen of Maybe

I suppose the real problem with Harriet Miers nomination is that I actually have to wait until the hearings before I can make up my mind. Oh, I admit I'd like to support her, but nothing so far has indicated to me that she clearly should be on the Supreme Court, nor has there been a clear indicator that she shouldn't. Team Bush has not been able to put forth a good, let alone compelling, reason beyond George and Laura really like her, and even her most ardent critics have shot intellectual blanks. She's beyond a stealth candidate, she's a Rorschach test.

I suppose after Roberts we think the bar is set pretty high, but even a cursory examination of both the current court and past courts show not just that the mediocre is well represented, but can thrive. And the idea that to understand the constitution you have to be a great intellect who's done nothing but thought deep thoughts about it is a bunch of hooey. It's a two page document that relies on a combination of common sense and historical insight. Now, I have to admit that the actual court decisions, especially in later years, can be quite impenetrable, especially for those who expect that they should be clear and be related in some modest degree to the actual text. Quite frankly, what good is stare decisis if the previous decisions are not just a hopeless muddle, but unconstitutional on their face, and not even followed by the wing of the court that holds that evolving community standards, as discovered by canvassing nine people who just happen to be the nine most powerful lawyers in Washington, D.C., trump all.

Travelling Woman

I know Colin Powell has a lot of admirers, and I tend not to be among them. I'm not talking about his military career, where from what I can tell he did a fine job, with such admirable quotes as "First we're going to cut [the enemy army] off, then we're going to kill it." There are parts of the Powell Doctrine that are letter perfect, such don't make it a fair fight, hit the enemy with everything you can, but the clear exit strategy is a non-starter for me. Clear victory conditions and a clear vision of what you hope to achieve, yes, but that may not be get in and get back out ASAP. It may be get in and stay in -- like after WWII.

I think his reputation as Secretary of State had more to do with his ability to handle the press than handle foreign affairs. And quite frankly, I think Condoleeza Rice is outshining him in one important area - she isn't afraid to leave the US and beard the lion in his den. Colin seemed much more attached to the comforts of hearth and home and his lack of foreign travel limited his effectiveness as Secretary of State.

International News

Ghazi Kenaan, Syria's Interior minister, is dead officially by suicide. He was questioned by the UN about the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minster Rafik Hariri. Apparently, Syria felt the Syrian interior covered more than the Lebanese did. Not everyone thinks it was suicide, me included.

Gerhard Schroeder will have no role in the "grand coalition" government in Germany. He took the opportunity to make some gratuitous insults, and spout some typical nonesense, like "I say to my British friend that people in Germany, in Europe, don't want complete denationalisation, they don't want the privatisation of lifetime risks. The Anglo-Saxon model will have no chance in Europe." and "I don't want to name any examples of catastrophes, where you can see what happens when there is no organised state. I could name countries, but the office I still hold forbids that - but everybody knows I mean America." Good riddance to bad rubbish. Don't let the doorknob hit you on the ass on the way out, Gerhard.

Is it just me, or does Angela Merkel look a lot like Harriet Miers?

China has launched its second manned spaceflight, sending two astronauts into Earth orbit. Xinhua, as the official news agency of China, focuses on the excitement of the people, along with Zang Ziyi's new sexy looks. Apparently China is engaged in more than a space race with the West (which doesn't seem to know that it's in one).

A former French ambassador to the UN is under arrest in France as part of Saddam's scheme to buyoff of the UN and others with Oil (known as the "Oil for food scandal"). This should not reflect on the UN or France. Who am I kidding, both are cesspools of corruption that are run for the benefit of their elites. Hmm, wasn't New Orleans a former French colony? Anyway, one can only hope this is the start of a number of prosecutions that lead to criminals spending a long time in jail and start on the draining of a couple of cesspools.

And some good news in a place where any good news is needed -- the weather has cleared over Kashmir and aid is "pouring in". Still, the devastation is simply overwhelming, and with an official death toll of about 25,000, I'm am deeply saddened. I spent three months in Pakistan (Karachi) a long time ago and really like the people there. You can see my pictures here.

Start Afresh

As long as we're rebuilding New Orleans, perhaps we should take a more "from the ground up" approach and start fresh with those parts of the City that didn't work before Katrina - like the New Orleans Police Department.

Hat Tip to Ed Driscoll.

I Didn't Get My Way

In keeping with my new policy of posting on issues after a delay to allow me time to (1) get accurate facts and (2) actually think about it, I'm now going to opine on President Bush's supreme court nominee, Harriet Miers. OK, if I waited until the press got its facts straight, I'd never be able to post. But at least I thought about it, and the great thing is, I'm still as disappointed that the President didn't pick Justice Janice Rogers Brown this time as I was when he picked Justice Roberts. Oh well. Just so you know where I'm coming from. No, I wouldn't want 9 of her on the court, but we do need a counterbalance to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (of whom I would prefer to have a number less than 1 on the court).

Since I couldn't actually name all the Justices of the Supreme court, I did a little research and discovered that far too many were undergraduates at Stanford (Kennedy, O'Connor, and Breyer) where none of them took the Physics 60 series, the wimps. Only Souter went to Harvard as an undergrad, and we know how he turned out. And all them have as their chief failing that they are lawyers. If not Justice Brown, why not Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman when there were openings for two justices?

And what is with the claim that we want judges who will be fair and impartial and oh by the way, what are their political views? Like we know that Supreme Court justices are going to vote their politics, principles be damned, but that's OK as long as we agree with their politics? Isn't that what 99% of the questioning by the Senate during confirmation hearings is about - tell me how you will rule on abortion, gays, guns, affirmative action, the environment, the little guy, unions, hats, etc? It's even OK to talk in code somewhat, as long as you show your hand. But we have the nominees claiming that it's inappropriate for judges to do so. Why, you can't judge shop at the Supreme Court. You get all nine unless they have a conflict of interest. Politicians will tell us that its not right to have litmus tests for judges (too bad you can't put a piece of paper up against a nominee and see "pro-abortion" or "pro-gun") but why not?

I'd like to see a nominee come in and spell it all out in detail, not some wonkish "judicial philosophy" but to what stage of development they'd limit abortion at, is a loophole for the health of the mother really a "constitutional" requirement, under what exact conditions should parents be notified or minors be allowed to withhold information from them about abortion, gay marriage is constituitional yes or no or a matter for each state and what does the full faith and credit mean if states differ on this, etc. As long as judges are going to legislate from the bench, we ought to know what their agenda is. I'd prefer that to winks, evasions, silence, and "trust me". And quite frankly, I think it would be educational hearing the nominees explain their views in detail on the leading issues of the day.

Enough process, I'll have to tackle Ms. Miers herself another day.

The Speech

Last night was a big TV night what with Survivor and the President. Maybe they should have had the president in a Mayan ruin too, talking about how civilizations could implode from poor land use. I did watch President Bush, but I didn't care much for the speech. I had several thoughts, like:

There goes the domestic agenda!

The Military as first responder? NO!

Let's reinforce success, not failure!

He's channeling FDR, not RWR!

OK, I it was the broad sweep of the speach I didn't care for, but I did like a lot of the details (we need lots of Inspectors General). Maybe I wasn't the target demographic.

In other news, now that the French Quarter is reopening, NBC news is opening a bureau in New Orleans and Brian Williams will be going there to party and work on his tan during the winter months on a regular basis.

Katrina Ramblings 4

The press is taking some heat over the Katrina body count numbers. I don't think it's particularly fair as I don't think the press was presenting numbers like 10,000 as anything close to accurate, but as a guess -- a guess by government officials, and something of an upper bound. And there is certainly nothing wrong with reporting the quantities of body bags being requested by local and state authorities. I suppose I'm a naturaly happy guy, so I'm happy that the body count is low so far. I have no idea what the final number will be, and I'm not sure that we'll ever have a count accurate to the last dead person.

But I also think it's a bit premature to use the number so far to predict the final count. The other day while watching cable news I saw a feature from a reporter who was riding along with one of the teams sent out by boat to search in New Orleans for the dead and the living. They pulled up to a flooded house, knocked out a window, yelled inside in case there were survivors, and then sniffed inside to try to see if there were any dead bodies inside. Simple but effective, I suppose. Then they spray painted the side of the house to annotate their findings. The team told the reporter that they would have to actually physically search the building later when flood waters receded to make sure there were no dead bodies in the building. There's something to look forward to.

Katrina Ramblings 3

Barack Obama has made some fine speeches and is hailed by Democrats as a true national leader but I wonder if I'm the only one offended by has statement that the huge influx of volunteers and donations shows that Americans were ashamed by what happened. I can only speak for me and others of my acquaintance when I say that my donation was sparked not by shame but pity. I want to alleviate the sufferings of others, and I understand that government can only do so much -- and besides, all that government has it has because of us, the American people. We'll pay one way or another, and I'd just as soon have some of my money funneled through organizations I think will do a good job and spend wisely. If anything, I'm embarrassed by all the carping by people who aren't affected and especially the political partisan posturing of people who put party before basic human decency.

He also said Katrina revealed "huge systemic problems" in emergency response systems at all levels of government. I think the best reading of the evidence to date is that it isn't systemic at all, but confined to New Orleans by nature of its geography which provides for the twin whammies of hurricane followed by flooding and to New Orleans and Louisiana by nature of the gross incompetence of their current government officials who really ought to be horsewhipped. But since such pleasures are rightfully denied to us, does this mean that Senator Obama is calling for the recall of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin for their manifest unfitness to hold office? I doubt it, after all, he's fine with his party in Congress being led by the unbearable duo of Pelosi and Reid. But honestly, there is a long road of recovery before us, and given the huge failures of Blanco and Nagin to date, is it likely that they will improve when it comes to spending the billions upon billions of dollars that will be thrown their way during the recovery and reconstruction?

I have a feeling that what the Senator has in mind, along with many others when they talk this way, is to completely federalize disaster planning and relief. But just because the local and state authorities failed in Louisiana doesn't mean we need to overhaul a system that has worked in other times and places. Instead of concentrating on state and local disaster planning and relief, which where the problem is, they want to concentrate on the feds, where the problem wasn't, and ignore the number one source of planning and relief, which is victims and bystanders. In other words, I don't think the best response is to overhaul one of the agencies that worked but ignore the agencies that didn't. Then you will have a huge, system problem, despite all the good intentions in the world.

Katrina Ramblings 2

Complaints about FEMA are nothing new. I remember in the 1993 floods people were bitching about how slow, ackward, and bureaucratic the organization was. I don't recall anyone claiming that the percieved poor response showed that President Clinton didn't like poor white people, which was the group mostly affected by the flooding around here. There were complaints following every major disaster I can think of, and the larger the disaster, the more the complaints. And why not, FEMA the organization consists of bureaucrats at the top and then an ad hoc conglomeration of disparate parts put together for a particular mission. Of course it's going to take time to get it's act together, and the more resources it has to meld, the longer it takes. And we have come to believe that somehow because it ultimately has the full resources of the country at its disposal, it can do anything. Yes, but as Scotty would say if he were alive today, FEMA can't change the laws of physics.

And yes, they are a part of the government, which means that they have to do all the stupid things we, the people, make government do. Like make sure everybody's sexual harrassment training is up to date. Don't you have to have some sort of sexual harrassment training at your place of employment? Hey, if we can dispense with it in an emergency, why do we need it all? Are you saying sexual harrassment is OK?

Micky Kaus is going on about the problems of Federalism, and sums up with: "When things screw up, these days, we hold the president and the federal government responsible. It follows that the president and the federal government should have the power to stop things from screwing up. ... " Hey Mickey, maybe we shouldn't hold the president and federal government responsible (I know I don't - so there's one vote no). Should we forget about the separation of powers (which isn't just between executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government BTW) in extreme situations? Would it be better in an emergency if we just had one man on a white horse who could simply order whatever needed to be done? How many tyrants have seized power under just such a pretext? Who decides how when it is just such an emergency? Such a move ignores the centuries of hardwon experience on why such a separation is ultimately a better way. Nor is it clear that a single edict issuer is better. If it's better in an emergency, why isn't it better all the time? You have to understand there are tradeoffs, and one system may be better one thing than another, but you have to pick what's best overall. And that doesn't even address the fact that every management study shows you're better off pushing authority down, not concentrating it upward.

It reminds me of my aerodynamic days, and people would ask me to optimize the performance. I'd ask them back, "When you say performance, are you talking range or maneuverability?" Invariably I'd get the reply, "Both". Then I'd have to get midieval on their heinies, because at that point it was obvious they didn't have a clue about optimization.

I wonder if there would be so many complaints about FEMA if (1) Bush Derangement Syndrome didn't infect so many media types (CNN needs to find a cure stat) and (2) the dunderheads in Louisiana concentrated two enourmous crowds of helpless people - one at the Superdome and one at the convention center. And then they wouldn't let relief in, nor would they let the people out - and then they had to scrounge transportation since they let hurricane destroy all the local buses. How much more poignant could they have made the story?

Now is all this a defense of FEMA? No, not really. I suppose it's a defense of FEMA for what it is, not what it should be. First, because after the two big screwups at the local level - no evacuation except self evacuation, and turning away the Red Cross and the Salvation Army from entering New Orleans, all you're left with on FEMA is that it does what a Federal Agency does best - spend a hell of a lot of money to slowly do something while making damn sure it compleis with every law and every proceedure that has been set upon it in advance (otherwise known as "red tape"). And they aren't first responders, they were an organization that plugs in resources to local leadership. Since the local leadership doesn't have a clue as to what to do, FEMA couldn't provide adequate resources. And that's why you saw the announcement over the weekend that FEMA was now an equal partner, and the LANG would be closely coordinating with Gen Honore. So what happens when local leadership sucks (like this instance?) Well, the people who picked that leadership suffers. Isn't that part of the accountablity politicians have to voters, and ultimately voters have to each other?

Katrina Ramblings

I still haven't seen an explanation as good as Carl's in his comment to an earlier post of mine (Dutch Uncle) as to why the levees failed where and when they did. Putting it into my own words, since a hurricane's winds blow counter-clockwise, they cause a counter-clockwise movement of water -- the storm surge. This surge moved from the Gulf of Mexico into Lake Pontchartrain (which is connected to the ocean both by open water and low lying marsh) as part of the counter clockwise movement - and was concentrated in Lake Pontchartrain (thus raising its level) because inlets concentrate storm surges. As Katrina passed, the winds shifted and blew out of the north, thus piling the water in the Lake up against the levees on the south side of the lake -- the north side of New Orleans, and ultimately overtopped some which led to their failure. I doubt any level can withstand being overtopped for very long becuase of the enourmous erosion power generated by the flowing water, and the higher the levee, the greater the erosion. Geography as destiny. Because hurricanes rotate counter-clockwise, and New Orleans is south of large "lake" (inlet really) that opens to the ocean to the east, was the site inherently prone to being swamped by a storm surge? What if the geography was mirror imaged east-west, with the ocean and the inlet to Lake Ponchartrain to the west, would that site see much lower storm surges?

I suppose the only solace to take in the vast destruction is that this represents a worst case combination of catastrophes - hurricane and flooding (which contra Chertoff in the case of New Orleans are not just linked but expected in a storm the magnitude of Katrina). Typically when you have flooding, that's the only damage, or if you have a hurricane, thats all the damage, and the same goes for earthquakes, tornados, mudslides, etc. But New Orleans put a gun to it's head and then let any hurricane of sufficient strength pull the trigger. Normally evacuations don't occur with the surrounding area out of commision. Still, I'm considering keeping a one week supply of necessities on hand in case of a local emergency.

There is no comparison between Hurricane Katrina (or more properly, the devastation caused by Katrina) and 9-11 (or more properly, the devastation caused by al-Qaide on 9-11). Well, you can compare the death tolls, and you can compare the response both here in America and around the world, but the devastation of Katrina far outstrips 9-11. Katrina devasted a large regions that covers multiple states and includes several medium sized cities; 9-11 devastated several square blocks in a giant city and damaged a huge office building. For Katrina lives hung in the balance for days, possibly even a couple of weeks; 9-11 was all over by nightfall of the first day. Katrina was a natural disaster or heroic proportions; 9-11 was a mass murder carried out on a scale rarely seen outside government. So trying to compare the governmental response to the two simply doesn't make sense because responding to 9-11 was piece of cake compared to Katrina.

My church will be helping out with some 300 families from New Orleans that will be housed in the old prison in Gumbo Flats (now known as Chesterfield Valley). Why yes, the prison was under water during the '93 flood. It's expected that most of the people will try to restart their lives here in St. Louis and so will move out when able. They should be arriving today.

I'm weary of all the people making claims about what should have been done, how much faster it could have been done, etc. Some claims are simply disgusting and absurd, like Bush wasn't interested in helping poor black people. Many claims are simply grasping at straws, and bear the earmarks of blind partisan carping. Frankly, what I've read so far makes the best case that the worst failures -- and of a very long standing nature -- were at the local level and the most dithering at the state level. But FEMA may have to be renamed Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency after their performance, which has only been made worse by the poor TV performance of it's head, coupled with the poor TV performance of the head of Homeland Security, both of whom I wouldn't trust to get me out of a tree with a ladder in their hands after watching them. And quite frankly I'm a little tired of any organizaiton in New Orleans complaining about how outsiders are to blame for not rescuing them from there folly fast enough.

The New Orleans police department has taken a lot of heat over its performance in Katrina. I'd like to ask for a little understanding, since the only difference between the people who were sitting on their butts saying I need to be taken care of and the police on duty who were expected to take care of them is that the police were members of the police force. Other than that, they were the same. They'd been through the same devastation, lost everything, had access to the same information and supplies, yet they were expected to keep on going. Many did and deserve our praise. Many didn't, but I don't see that they deserve our scorn. Could they have performed better - absolutely, and if they had been better prepared (just like everybody else), they probably would have.

In summation, can we all work together on the task at hand, work on recovering from the damage, work on insuring every town and state is ready for the next natural or manmade disaster, and remove partisan politics from the inquiry into what went wrong and what went right. Because if all we want to do is blame particular individuals because of their political affiliation, we are not going to be ready for the next challange, and for all those who so want to fix the blame the blame on a polical basis, the blame will belong to you.

Don't Forget

I understand and whole heartedly agree that we need to give to relief agencies to help the victims of Katrina. But let me point out that you should continue to give to charities that you have supported in the past, whether local, national, and/or foriegn because those needs have not gone away just because there was a natural disaster on the gulf coast. The best giving plan is flexible to handle crises as they arise but not be driven by them.

Dutch Uncle

OK, I can't resist. I just want to settle one thing. New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. It was built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. It got hit by a category 4. It drowned. No matter who was President, no matter what treaties were signed, no matter what money was spent on the levee system, it was not designed to withstand a category 4 hurricane like Katrina. And before we start blaming the good people of New Orleans for living like that, I doubt there's a major city in the United States built to withstand a possible natural disaster, from earthquake to volcano to hurricane to tornado to forest fire to you get the idea.

Let me balance that with a couple of worthwhile Katrina posts:

It's a quagmire and Submarines.

The Long Shadow

Last night my wife asked me to change the channel on the Katrina coverage since it was too depressing. Death, destruction, the breakdown in order, all with little relief in sight. I suppose if I were a better writer, I could write something worth reading, but I'm not. So yes, by all means contribute to relief agencies like The Salvation Army which has done a great job at disaster relief for years.

Better that than bicker and backstab and rant and rave. There's a time and a place for all that, but not now. We need to work the priorities, and fault assessing doesn't rate highly at a time like this. I can respect the bitchiness of people actually trapped in the nightmare, not those on the outside who take any event as confirmation of their ongoing rightness.

Yes, it's frustrating to see how much bad it is, and wonder what's taking so long. But let's review. Something like million people have fled their homes. Something like 100,000 are left in New Orleans and need to get out. There's no power, areas are flooded, roads and bridges are out, and the people left have no transportation of their own. The states workers providing relief have suffered varying amounts of damage of their own. So what's the hold up? The latest holdup is the breackdown in order which has led to shots being fired at rescuers. I never thought it would come to his, but why not shoot looters, or at least people who shoot at law enforcement, refugee caravans, search and rescue operations, or menace hospitals.

Once we're past the crisis of saving people, we can recriminate to the cows come home, but we'll be faced with another issue - what are we going to do with 1 million refugees? What is going to happen to their lives? How many will return if it takes 4 months (or more) for the city to be drained, cleaned, and rebuilt? Who can sit out that long and not face financial ruin? And is that the best use of finite resources?

USS Alabama

I read on One Hand Clapping that the USS Alabama in Mobile Bay was damaged. Amid all the death and destruction, I suppose that's really no big deal. But I remember the happy time and amazement when I visited it as a kid, and I remember the happy time and amazement when I visited it again with my kids. Here is a picture of my wife and son during our visit:

A Slow Nightmare Scenario

A disaster of heroic proportions is unfolding before our very eyes. The damage caused by Katrina is huge, the deaths untold (and likely to be hearbreakingly high, as in thousands) and yet the misery and suffering are not over, and will continue a while longer. A major US city and the region near it has been destroyed and rendered uninhabitable. The "chaos and looting" are only a small part of the story, and will end as the entire area is completely evacuated of residents.

It will take a long time and a lot of money to restore the area. But the immediate task of just rescuing as many people as possible and getting the survivors out and in shelters is daunting enough. What will they do, how will they live while the rebuilding goes on? How many people will return, and what kind of changes in building codes and land use will we see as a result? Should New Orleans even be rebuilt, given it's location, geography, and weather?

Soon enough, the dramatic part of the disaster will be over, the rest of the country will go back to our own concerns, and the people in the area will be left with picking up the pieces -- although with plenty of outside help.

No Singing Yet

The good news is that New Orleans wasn't wiped off the face of the earth by Katrina. The bad news is that it isn't over yet, as a levee was damaged and it appears the flooding in the city is worsening. What a terrible time for the people caught in the storm and its aftermath.

Storms of a Different Kind

Katrina isn't the only storm out there. In Australia, a high ranking opposition politician was forced to resign his party position because of a, and I quote "boozy night out". Apparently the lad had a few too many, made a racist remark about the Malaysian wife of another politician being a "mail order bride", and not content with that, started propositioning and manhandling female journalists. Sounds like he has all the political skills to be a politician in Illinois.

And in Russia, the foriegn ministry apologized because Senators Lugar and Obama were briefly detained (if you're not the one being detained, that is) after visiting a nuclear site. Senator Hagel was also briefly detained in a separate incident while trying to leave Russia. Just think what life is like for the average tourist (and citizen), and they're not even a totalitarian dictatorship anymore. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

Katrina and Her Waves

On the one hand, New Orleans is the ultimate, no worries, be happy kind of place (in the US anyway). It's party all the time down there. On the other hand, everytime a hurricane heads for the gulf coast, the worrying starts and the warnings that the end of New Orleans is, if not exactly at hand, at least within sight. Personally, I couldn't take the strain. On the third hand, maybe all that worry fuels the partying later.

I'm glad that the worst fears apparently haven't been realized, but that doesn't mean that it won't cause a lot of damage in addition to deaths and injuries. The relief effort is already underway, although the storm has to pass before aid can actually arrive. I'm sure the good people of New Orleans perfer Katrina the performer to Katrina the Hurricane, especially her waves.

Plan For The Worst

You've seen movies that start with happy scenes of innocent frivolity and then the camera pulls back to reveal a menace lurking in the shadows that only the audience can see. The people on screen go about their routines blissfully unaware, until KAPOW! the menace strikes. I sometimes wonder if we're the unmindful characters and the avian flu is the lurking menace. Oh, there are warnings, and all the right people seem to be noticing, but is a major pandemic really on your schedule for next flu season? I've checked and it's not on mine.

I guess it's good news then that pharmaceutical giant Roche donated 3 million doses of flu fighting anti-viral oseltamivir to the World Health Organization. That way the organization is ready to fight avian flu whever it shows up and hopefully nip any pandemic in the bud.

What A Travesty

I guess I'm not the only one who thinks the Vioxx case in Texas shows some flaws in our system of jurisprudence. J Bowen notes the unfairness of the spoils going to the first victor; Jane Glat notes that juries aren't the best way to decide every legal case -- and she doesn't even throw in that lawyers race to the bottom on juries these days, using voir dire to pick the dumbest jury they can. It really was a terrible verdict and I don't see how companies can stay in business in the long run when juries are willing to hand out such enormous verdicts on such shaky evidence.

Ignore Him

Carl already took the position on this blog that we should have nothing more to do with Pat Roberston, so I'll only note in passing that his latest remarks about "taking out" Hugo Chavez should likewise be dismissed and ignored -- ignored in the sense of have nothing to do with them, not pretend they didn't occur.

Cindy Sheehan

I make it a policy to never speak ill of the recently deceased and to make allowances for those in mourning. So I'm not going to comment on Cindy Sheehan directly. But Ms. Sheehan, thanks for raising a fine young man who reenlisted for a second tour in Iraq and who volunteered for a dangerous mission to help his fellow soldiers and my condolences on his death. Casey Sheehan was a true American hero. I continue to support our war and mission in Iraq, and defer to Mohammed at Iraq the Model to explain one reason why I do and why your son didn't die in vain.

But there are other questions that affect us all. For instance the cry goes up Why doesn't Bush meet with her? Ezra Klein even pointed out the smart political way to handle such a meeting -- fly in grateful and photogenic Iraqis and have them talk to her. Both these gentlemen feel that the reason President Bush doesn't meet with her is a mixture of stupidity and arrogance. Maybe (I'm no mind reader), or it could be a simple matter of principle -- you can't demand an audience of the President -- not because he necessarily has better things to do in a particular instance, but because once you start down that road there is no end to it. Who exactly is President worthy, who gets to decide, and how do they? Egalitarianism is as American as apple pie, but there are limits to any President's time. And if President Bush meets with Ms. Sheehan, who can he refuse? He'd be at the beck and call of at least 3,600 people. And if she wants another meeting again, can he say two is enough (because one apparently wasn't)? A President is in charge of his own time. It's not like he doesn't already meet with the families of soldiers -- fallen or not -- and wounded soldiers themselves. I honestly don't think any more can be demanded of any President.

And is Ms. Sheehan's pain, as awful as it is, really an argument specifically against the war in Iraq? As a general indictment of war, yes, but who doesn't understand the costs of war - the death and destruction, the pain and anguish? But there are costs to both action and inaction, and the calculus of the two is terrible. Do we give veto power to a single grieving mother? Congress can vote to go to war, but if just one mom opposes, then we should end the war - and the consequences can sort themselves out? I don't think so. So much for representative government and sober judgement if we do.

Sadly, while Ms. Sheehan's pain and anguish is all too real, her media circus in Crawford is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Big Blow

We got home from the lake yesterday (more later on that, with pictures!) and discovered quite the storm had rumbled through St. Louis on Saturday. A lot of people are still without power, and our new neighbors had major tree limbs down - one had a big soft maple branch down in their driveway, and the other had half a bradford pear blown against their house. I had nothing but a few dead branches from a birch, but it drops dead branches all the time.

We've been having a drought in the area, so people were happy to get the rain, just not the wind. But the weather forcasters here have been saying that until the fall, we would't get rain from anything less than a tropical storm -- which was true right up until Thursday last week. Then all of a sudden we could get rain, and now we're getting it almost every day. Last time I checked, August isn't the fall. Of course, the weatherpeople are too busy reporting on all the rain to tell us why we don't need hurricane remnants to provide rain. That's the kind of never look back job I'd like to have.

A Good Example

I'm not a big fan of celebrity causes, but it seems that Kylie Minogue's fight with cancer has led to a 100% rise in the number of Australian women booking mammograms. Now that's the power of example, something celebrities should remember before they take on a cause.

Ave Atque Vale

Peter Jennings, the elegant anchor of ABC news, is dead at 67 of lung cancer. A sad day for journalism, his passing marks the passing of an era in TV news.

Backlash Across America

Maybe some good will come of the Kelo decision afterall. It seems that people are unhappy about it and making their voices heard - right here Maplewood turned 180 degrees on their land grab. When you push anything, including judicial decisions, to their logical conclusions like Kelo did, a lot of rethinking of the original occurs.

He's Baaaaaaack

Sir Charles, that is. And in fine form, too. He puts his finger right on the problem of modern jurisprudence (OK, it's a problem that has been with as long as there have been judges) -- judges making up law or striking law down because they think that's what the the law ought to be. So we have a law against partial birth abortions ruled unconstitutional because it has no provision with respect to the health of the mother. Now even if you think that Constitution has a right to privacy somehow embedded, which is the theory on which laws against abortion were ruled unconstitutional, you will never persuade me that it contains a right to better health. But that's what we're stuck with because 5 appointees decided it ought to have one.

Sudan Regime Displays True Colors

I read the headline with interest: Rice's Guards Manhandled by Sudanese Security. Yet when I read the article, it was everybody accompanying Secretary of State Rice who were "manhandled" (where are the gender police on that one?) by Sudanese guards while she was conferring with the President of Sudan. The main examples cited were of the US press traveling with her who were "manhandled". Good for her that she got pissed and got an apology. The most telling part of the incident is when the Sudanese aid told our press "there is no free press here."

He's Dead, Jim

Beloved actor James Doohan has died. Who couldn't love his Star Trek character Scotty? He is to be cremated and his ashes shot into space as there is no transporter beam to send them there.

The Supreme Choice

President Bush has nominated John Roberts for the Supreme Court. I haven't heard of him before, but I'm sure I'm going to know far more about him than I ever wanted to. No doubt I'll hear conflicting reports - some will extoll his greatness, and some will hammer his wrongness. Already people have been calling him brilliant, which frankly isn't what I'm looking for in a judge. But I have taken some comfort in his opinion in the french fry case: "The question before us," Roberts wrote, "is not whether these policies were a bad idea, but whether they violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution." That isn't brilliance, that's common sense, and spot on. And it just seems to this non-student of the Supreme Court the longer a judge is on that bench, the more they rule based on the belief that bad ideas are unconstitutional.

I was disappointed that President Bush didn't nominate a woman, but not just any woman, a particular woman, namely Ann Coulter (who sounds kind of peeved she didn't get the nod but does have a point). Judge Roberts was selected in part because he would be approved by the Senate; a Coulter nomination on the other hand would not be approved but would provide glorious theater and encouragement for extremists of both stripes. I would hope for a total lack of decorum, lots of lunges for the jugular, and at the end of it all, catharsis.

Public Service Announcement

The Belleville East High School Class of 1980 has a website, and a 25th reunion coming up with activities starting August 5th and lasting until the 7th. So if that was your school and your class, hit the website to find out all the details and RSVP. Just thought you should know.

More of the Same

Somebody finally found a link that lays out the responsibility for people to protect classified information even after it has been disclosed:

Question 19: If information that a signer of the SF 312 knows to have been classified appears in a public source, for example, in a newspaper article, may the signer assume that the information has been declassified and disseminate it elsewhere?

Answer: No. Information remains classified until it has been officially declassified. Its disclosure in a public source does not declassify the information. Of course, merely quoting the public source in the abstract is not a second unauthorized disclosure. However, before disseminating the information elsewhere or confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, further dissemination of the information or confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.

As for Rove, the question(s) are was her employement at the CIA classified, and if so, did Rove know that. We're assuming her status was because of the referrel, but I don't know if we've actually seen the referrel. But let's answer yes (and this is a hypothetical since I don't actually know), in which case for Rove to have committed a crime, he had to know that her status was classified. If Rove knew, then it doesn't matter if a reporter mentioned it to him first. If he didn't know, it doesn't matter if Rove mentioned it to a reporter first. Now if Rove was accurate in saying her learned her status from a reporter, and had no official source, then he didn't do anything illegal, because he didn't know it was classified. You might think it sleazy, I might think that he should have asked the White House security people about it before commenting, but that doesn't mean it was illegal.

And that brings us to Joe Wilson. He knew of his wife's covert status, and that it was classified. He told reporter David Corn all about his wife covert, classified activities:

So he [Wilson] will neither confirm nor deny that his wife--who is the mother of three-year-old twins--works for the CIA. But let's assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it.

The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good.

From an email Corn sent to Cliff May:

All I can say again is, nice try. When I spoke to Joe Wilson after the Novak leak, he would not tell me whether or not his wife worked at the CIA. He spoke only in hypotheticals. He said, imagine if she did, what would this leak mean, AND imagine if she did not, what would this leak mean. So I do deny that he told me because he did not. That's the truth, the absolute truth. No spin. No parsing. No stonewalling. If you find any wiggle room in this response, let me know and I will unwiggle it. And you can believe it or not.

This is what really gaps my ax, is that Joe Wilson has been leaking leaking, no make that spewing classified info - about his trip, about his wife, about WMD intellegence, maybe even about the sweet tea -- he's lied more times than I can count, and yet where are the calls for him to be frog marched out of his home, let alone indicted? No where. Instead, attention is focused on maybe Karl Rove leaked a subset of that information.

It's a crazy, mixed up world which we live in.

Yes, I do Have A Life.

I had a busy weekend. Saturday morning the Fruit of the Murphy Loin's swim team won their conference meet which makes them undefeated on the all too short season -- they were 5-0 in dual meets. Mid day Sunday I took my son Boy Scout camp where he'll be for the next week. We watched movies - Napolean Dynamite (which isn't), Hotel Rawanda (which is), and Cold Mountain (which my wife thought far more of than I did). And somehow I did manage to read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. This time, no waiting around for midnight for us, we sailed in after the swim meet and sailed out immediately afterwards.

For those of you who think I kept my kids from reading it, my son thought it best he didn't take the book to camp where it could be damaged and my daughter wanted to finish her current book before starting a new one.

Yes, I like it, a lot, and I think part of it is how well Rowling writes Dumbledore, and he is in the book early and often. Gone is the teenage angst from the last book, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Rowling does some things very, very well -- her wonderful imagination and warm sense of humor combine to form an amazing yet fun world of wizards and magic that is full of detail and fairly coherent. It's so good though, that paradoxically I feel let down at those times when you reach it's limits of making sense or being internally consistant. And with six books, of increasing complexity and scope, you start to bump into them a bit more. And just I so I can speak freely, that's all I'm going to say unless you care to read the extended entry.

The books started out light and breezy, but they have gotten darker and darker, and yes, this book puts the lights out with the death of Dumbledore. But that's one of the things I like best about Rowling - she isn't afraid to kill off interesting characters who she clearly loves. I suppose a ton of money in the bank helps, but more likely is a trueness to her story, and an understanding that sacrifice is important.

The book also indicates that the seventh year won't be spent at Hogwarts, thus breaking the mold. In fact, it promises to be a much different book than the rest.

This book was also different in that Harry was pretty much a failure this time around. He never figured out what Malfoy was doing, he didn't have a hand in winning the Quidditch cup, he relied on Snape's notes in his old textbook in potions, he didn't figure out who the Half Blood Prince was (neither did I), and he was unable to help Dumbledore in the end. His only success, really, was the result of the luck potion he took. It made me realize the Harry is pretty much a mediocre wizard, and his success hasn't been built on his wizarding skills but his pluck, courage, and friendships, which is I suppose part of what Rowling is trying to say, especially in light of the discussion of the importance of love as a source of power. In a sense, the books aren't about what you can do, but what you do.

Plame Miller Novak Rove Wilson Corn

Yesterday I speculated (and it is just that, speculation) that Valerie Plame Wilson was a source for Judith Miller on WMD. Lot's of people have speculated that Judith Miller was the source and the possible start of "everybody knew" Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA. Today Cliff May speculates that Joe Wilson was the source for Valerie Plame Wilson being covert agent for the CIA in an article for David Corn - which amazingly enough Corn confirms. If you think the Wilson's hypotheticals weren't a confirmation, remember that Joe Wilson wasn't speculating, he knew. Simply working for the CIA isn't classified information. Being a covert agent is. (That's the covert part.)

So now we know who actually outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA operative - her husband, Joe Wilson. Not Bob Novak, not Karl Rove, but Joe Wilson. Novak didn't have access to her status as a covert agent, nor did he identify her as such. Karl Rove didn't have access to her status as a covert agent, let alone her name until a reporter told him, nor did he identify her as such. Joe Wilson knew her status as a (prior) covert agent, and he did identify her as such.

Plame Wilson Novak Rove

I'm finding the entire Plame Wilson Novak Rove mess to be pretty much awful from start to finish. Nobody looks good in this, and I mean nobody as a person or institution -- except Tom Maguire, who's been all over this story since day one and is the only person, Ambassador Wilson included, who can keep track of all the different stories Joe Wilson has told and who he told them to. But back to the story,as I wrote back when this first broke:

Joe Wilson served our country ably and courageously during the Gulf War as acting ambassador to Iraq for which he got zero public notice; Valerie Plame served our country ably and courageously for years for which she got (understandably) zero public notice. What they are recognized for now has been on his part a willingness to criticize President Bush beyond any factual basis (the more strident the criticism, the greater the recognition); and on her part simple victimization. This is crazy. Talk about your perverse incentives.

Second, they seem to have real troubles with opsec. In addition to having had a string of former bosses caught with classified material in their possession when it shouldn't have been, you have somebody go on this mission and then blab all about it when he gets back. Ambassador Wilson filed a classified report, and then turn around and leaked it and eventually wrote not just an oped on the subject, but a book. No attempt was made to stop him (and please don't cite the first amendment - if he has a security clearance, he signed an agreement not to disclose classified info). Yeah, I know his defense would be that nothing he said afterward had any resemblence to what was in his report (or the truth) as he lied about everything, who sent him, why he was sent, what he reported, and who saw his report.

Third, they seem to be a little cavalier with the identities of their covert operatives. How the heck did Karl Rove find out about Valerie Plame?

There are two possibilities - one is that the CIA told the White House. I imagine when Joe Wilson's op ed hit the fan, the White House asked the CIA who the heck is this guy and what's he doing going on CIA missions. And they (meaning Tenet or whoever answers the phone when the White House calls) could have told them that he was married to a CIA analyst who got him the job - no name mentioned - which squares with Rove told Cooper. Of course, in the words of Joe Biden, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who Joe Wilson's wife is, especially since Ambassador Wilson included it in his web bio.

Now perhaps her identity as a covert operator was so well guarded that the person passing along this info from the CIA didn't know that under that mild mannered analyst cover was a covert operative. Which then raises the question, is it really a good idea to have covert operatives go to work as regular CIA employees? And there's another question - did the CIA impress upon the White House the need for secrecy in regards to Ms. Plame's identity?

I'll get to the other possibility in a moment because there are two loose ends. One is Novak himself. We know Rove was Cooper's source, but who was Novak's? I don't think it was Rove for several reasons - one is that Novak said the person wasn't a political operator, which Rove is; Novak seems to have already given up his source before Cooper was forced to, and if it were Rove, Cooper wouldn't have held out let alone have pressure applied; and Rove told Cooper she was an analyst, but Novak said operative - two very different things; and I think Rove denied being a source of the leak because he wasn't Novak's source and didn't think any one else (i.e. Cooper) would ever be forced to.

Now we come to the question, raised by Bryan Preston at Junkyard Blog, of why Judith Miller is still in jail. If Rove were her source, she could get out of jail. So I doubt he is. And if not Rove, than who? Well, Ms. Miller wrote a lot of articles about WMD before the war in Iraq. Where'd she get her info? Could some have come from CIA sources? Perhaps from a WMD analyst? Perhaps from a co-worker who outed Ms. Plame? Perhaps from Valerie Plame herself? I don't know, but it's interesting that Ms. Miller is going to the mat on protecting her source when apparently all others have been given up.

She has the key to unravel the whole mystery, and yet she chooses silence. I'm supposed to be happy that a journalist is refusing to tell what she knows? I'm supposed to be informed by her silence? That's the craziest part of this whole sordid mess.

Excellence, Not Privilege

What, exactly, is freedom of the press? Is it the freedom not to testify to grand juries? I sure don't think so. I think freedom of the press is the freedom to investigate and publish without prior government restraint; the freedom of the press isn't a trump card over any and all consequences. And last time I looked in the constitution, it said nothing about "the public's right to know." To know what exactly? Apparently not the identity of sources.

Judith Miller is in jail for refusing to name a source to a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation. I don't see how freedom of the press provides any coverage here, especially since there's every possibility that the source committed a crime, and the crime itself was a source disclosing confidential information. To my mind, Ms. Miller is clearly breaking the law by impeding a criminal investigation and has no basis for the claim that she has a legal right to confidentiality. The promise of confidentiality at this point is an illegal contract, and can't (nor should it) be enforced.

But the press tells me there's a bigger issue here - the ability to protect confidential sources. They tell me this is very important for America, and often mention Watergate. Well. President Nixon's underlings were investigated, indicted, and convicted by the judicial system, and President Nixon resigned rather than be impeached and convicted by Congress. From my vantage point, the triumph of Watergate is that the separation of powers worked, not that the fourth estate was needed. It wasn't. It didn't do a darn thing but report what real branches of government (and in the case of Woodward and Bernstein, the executive branch) were doing. Confidential sources contributed nothing to the outcome, even if they contributed to the Washington Post's bottom line.

But what about the case of a whistleblower who bravely steps forward to alert the public to danger? By and large, these are not criminal offenses and the confidentiality protects the whistleblower from reprisal, not criminal investigation. And where a crime is committed, or may have been committed, the proper resolution is that it be adjudicated by a court, not stonewalled by a reporter. That is, the source should have their day in court so that their deed can be judged, not hidden because of a reporter's promise.

Ultimately what the press is asking for is the easy road, not the best road. They truly do want to be above the law, which is wrong. Ms. Woolner skirts the issue:

Still, reporters, like prosecutors, can't always choose their sources. We find ourselves getting information from people with their own agendas, some of them lacking a certain degree of character. The trick is to independently assess the information, taking into account the weaknesses and motivation of the source. It is a task that can rarely be completed in that first discussion with the source, the one where the terms of the conversation and the degree of confidentiality are negotiated.

I have no illusions that because of this blog I'm a "journalist", although technically I am. I don't think I should get any special privileges or treatment because I post stuff to the internet where it can be read by others. Nor should be people get special privileges or treatment because they write stuff that is published and read by others. That's just crazy talk.

Sourcing isn't the only area the journalists and journalism want special privileges - they want special treatment for product liability. Thus they successfully argued for the malice standard for slander/libel. Thus they want measely correction columns to satisfy the informationally injured - both the party that was directly wronged and the consumers of the false information. Journalism is gung ho about everybody else being held to high standards and facing lawsuits, but about themselves, well, it would have a chilling effect. They don't accept that argument from any other party, why should I accept it from them?

What would journalism look like if people could sue not based on maliciousness, but simple truth and accuracy? What if their consumers could sue and collect damages if they could show that their product wasn't true and accurate as claimed? Ignorance, laziness, and disregard for others would quickly be banished as money talked, bulls**t walked. Yes, it would have chilling effect on the lousy side of journalism, but I'm not convinced that it wouldn't lead to accurate stories based on fact, not opinion and restore the trust in journalism that is rapidly eroding -- both of which can't but help boost the bottom line. But that's the hard way to excellence, and it's much easier to move the goal posts.

One final note: I realize that contrary to Ms. Woolner's published opinion which I linked to, Joseph Wilson did not discredit the Bush administration's claim that Iraq tried to purchase Uranium in Africa - in fact he confirmed it, but then lied to Nick Kristoff about it as an anonymous source and then lied about it repeatedly as himself before ultimately admitting the truth that indeed Iraq's then foreign minister, known as Baghdad Bob, made overtures to Nigerian officials that they interpreted as trying to buy uranium. I guess her column goes to the point I'm trying to make in more than one way.

Sink Or Swim

I happened to catch some of the coverage of Live8 on CNN over the weekend and I never thought I'd see newscasters having orgasms live on TV, but I saw multiple ones. I don't get it. But then, I read stuff like this instead. No, it doesn't provide any satisfaction for me, only sadness. The problems in Africa have very little to do with money - that's a symptom, not a cause. But send money has become such a reflexive response it can be hard to overcome.

Long May She Wave

OK, I'm like the 45,365 blogger to link to Mark Steyn's column on flag-burning, but it is both well written and I agree with it. There are certain popular ideas that float around and no matter how discredited somehow keep coming back - bell bottoms, mercantilism, and outlawing flag desecration for instance. So once again the House has taken up the burning issue of flag desecration, and another feel good piece of legislation is passed. I'm against this amendment (in all its forms) for two simple reasons: People should be free to express themselves, even in such a wrong way; and such expressions say a lot flag desecrators, none favorable. OK, three - I'm against feel good legislation on principle.

But let's face it, such a ban is similar to hate crime legislation (what is desecrating the flag if not a hate crime) or campus speech codes. I'm against them, too, and unlike bell bottoms, they don't show any signs of (thankfully!) going out of style.

Welcome to St. Louis. Now Leave.

The weather turned nasty here this weekend - no big storms, but suffocating heat and humidity. The haze is amazing, cutting way down on visibility - the clouds themselves are mostly obscured and the sky is this grey-blue blanket. I had plans for more yardwork this weekend, but I just can't work under such conditions. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

Back In The USA

Many moons ago when I wore a younger man's clothes I spent three months in Pakistan. I didn't know it when I arrived at the airport to leave, but I didn't have permission to leave the country. After I had gone through customs, checked in with Air France (yes, Air France, and I'd fly them again in a heartbeat), I was stopped at the security check, my luggage removed from the plane, and I was told I couldn't leave the country without a travel permit. As an American, I hadn't a clue that a country would stop a traveller from leaving. A criminal, yes. Someone who had spent three months in country without incident, no. The next day I and several co-travellers went to the police station and in a scene from Dickens (imagine very old men in uniforms surrounded by massive amount of paperwork) we were issued Travel Papers and I was able to leave the country (on Air France, who did right by me).

Well.

I'm glad to see that someone else will be now be able to leave Pakistan - Mukhtar Mai, the woman whose gang rape was ordered by a tribal council to punish her family for her brother's alleged indescretion. For reasons best known to the Pakistani government, she wasn't allowed to leave the country until the prime minister of Pakistan himself took her name off the do not leave the country list yesterday.

But while her story ends there for now, my tale continues on.

I look at the AP version at the KC Star -- it reads like the woman's appeal moved the PM. Ditto for The Independent. I look at ABC News and it reads like international pressure moved the PM. The Indian Express notes that it was pressure from "key ally" United States that did the trick. Finally the WaPo version cites a single factor: "a stern protest by the Bush administration". Australia's News.com.au isn't content just to cite some amorphous pressure, they have the best detail on who said what stern protests. The NYT, God love them, can't bring itself to mention the word Bush in a positive light, so it has a "pressure from Washington" formulation. Could be the state, could be congress, could be George, who knows for sure. Reuters, Reuters makes it clear just who applied the pressure and how it was applied.

But the best coverage was at Voice of America, which supplied all the details, and even covered the NYT's prior coverage. In head to head coverage, the VOA is consistantly one of the best for news coverage.

Google News - it's how you can compare a bunch of different versions of a story in a hurry.

Rip Off The Masks And Let's See

I'm no tree hugger, but this does make my blood boil. Since we brought back Riverboat Gambling in Missouri -- which has since turned into gambling in buildings built on liquid foundations -- why don't we bring back hanging? If the $279.50 fine isn't enough to keep these jerks from ruining the streams in Missouri, maybe a few of them swinging by the neck will. Instead of ruining these great natural streams, why don't these yahoo's make their own concrete stream bed and play in that instead?

As long as I'm on the subject, another thing that really bugs me is the way subdivisions are built in my neck of the woods these days. The way they just level all the trees first thing sends me around the bend. I don't get it. I understand you have to knock down the trees where the streets and houses are going to go, but why knock down every single one of them? One of the things I like about my subdivision is that they didn't do that - my back yard is filled with mature oak and ash trees (and dogwoods before the anthracnose got them). The subdivision is old enough now that the trees planted along the street have grown together to form arches in spots, but thirty years isn't long enough for oaks to become mature. I'd figure that you could get a higher price for neighborhoods that still had stands of mature trees and not just nothing but sod. First thing people do when they move in is plant trees, so why not leave a few? And since my area is hilly, it can't help with erosion to clear cut like that.

Sometimes You Get Kicked

I had a great post built around this amazing article about Watergate by Edward Jay Epstein
from 1974. But as I was wrapping up my browser quit and took my post with it. Instead, you'll have to read the Powerline post about it instead.

OK, I can't resist. What's so amazing is that the article not only nails the press, but it also nailed Deep Throat -- high ranking official(s) who wanted to bring down the head of the FBI L. Patrick Gray.

And one last dig. Nixon deserved to go for running a criminal conspiracy from the White House. But didn't JFK deserve to go, for a lot more than petty burglery? He not only attempted the assassination of foreign leaders, he succeeded.

Laugh of the Day

On a whim a read this BBC article on "When Pop Stars Get Political" and had to laugh at this paragraph:

George Michael's anti-Iraq war song Shoot the Dog , which accused Tony Blair of being George Bush's poodle, so angered Americans that the former Wham star moved out of the US for a time.

I Feel Safer

First they put Martha Stewart in jail for lying to an investigator about a non-crime, and now that addled 'runaway bride' woman has been indicted for lying to police. Boy do I feel safer knowing that prosecutors go after such big criminals for lying to police about events that aren't crimes. How about we indict some people for lying about real crimes? Wouldn't that be novel.

Abortions Down Not Up

So have abortions gone up under President Bush? No, they've gone down according to FactCheck.Org a non-partisan group. Will that stop the repetition of the inaccurate claim that they've gone up? No. Does that mean that Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean are liars? No, they just used a study to make inaccurate claims.

Only Started With A Little Kiss

Back when I spent several months in Pakistan (see the pictures here!) one couldn't help but notice the editing of TV shows -- no kissing. There's Ward heading out the front door where June waits, jump cut, and Wards walking out the door. Gone is the peck on the cheek as Ward leaves for work, or returns home, or whatever, just as long as there is no kissing. Of course, porno video tapes were a hot commodity on the black market. At the American club, any movie involving more than kissing was broken because the staff had worn it out watching the same scenes over and over. But on TV, no hanky panky of any kind, and that included kissing, probably because it would lead to dancing.

But a Pakistani movie star wants to change all that (well, the kissing part anyway) according to the Gateway Pundit. She's gone to Bollywood where she can kiss, and by the looks of the promo shots, it's no Ward-June peck on the cheek. It's as sizzling as Karachi pavement in August. She's hoping this leads to a melting of the relationship and closer ties between India and Paksitan. I can imagine that most Indian men, after seeing the movie, are melting and hoping for an equally close relationship with at least one Pakistani woman.

Runaway Story

I just don't get it. I didn't get the attention the story got in the first place, or all the upset now that it turns out that fortunately no foul play was involved. In case you haven't guessed, I'm talking about the runaway bride story -- Georgan woman goes out for a run, doesn't return, foul play is suspected but it turns out she was freaked out by the giant wedding and instead of eating a snickers she hopped a bus to Las Vagas. Then she went on to Albuquerque where she called the police back home and claimed to have been kidnapped. Now prosecutors in Georgia are contemplating filing charges for the false report in what is being mislabled as a hoax. They police are talking about all the effort they put in but somehow overlook it pretty much all took place before the false report. I'm just hoping this is it.

Men Vs. Women

Shelley at Burningbird has a nice takedown of a post by a "Christian Libertarian" called Vox Popoli. When I followed the link to his post, I thought at first it was joke, then a lousy one, and then I realized I was reading a dead mackeral hocked up days ago.
"Far too many women are fascists at heart."
"given the obvious connection between the female franchise and the West's continental drift into"socialism."
"It's time for men to fight back against these laws with the nuclear option. Refuse to get married in the eyes of the law."

I do think there are more differences than the obvious ones between men and women, but I also happen to think that makes us complementary, not adversaries. The problem isn't that just that far too many women are fascists, but that far too many men and women are fascists or socialists or communists. I don't recall women's votes putting Hitler over the top, or Stalin, or Mao, or Mugabe, or Saddam.

Yes, I think a law mandating men do more around the house and spend more time taking care of dependents is silly and an intrusion - but in line with a lot of other silly intrusions that people, both male and female seem to want. Wouldn't the better response be to mandate that women do more manly tasks plus codify a minimum amount of sex to show how silly the whole thing is?

Trust The Experts

When I read the story in the paper this morning (Yes Virginia, I still stain my hands with soy based ink in the morning skimming an old timey product I don't trust), I was surprised by the revelation that in instead of waiting for air travel to disperse a deadly new flu virus around the world, researchers were speeding up the process by shipping 50 year old deadly flu virus around the world. A company included it as part of a test kit used in routine quality control for labs.

What were they thinking? They weren't.

The good news is that people born before 1968 may have some immunity, so the funWife and I are OK. The bad news is my kids were born after then.

She's Worth It

Jane Galt has a fabulous post that you should read that is ostensibly about gay marriage but is really about any form of society reform. When I first came across a link I didn't really want to read another post about gay marriage, especially a long one. But after the third or fourth "go read!" I girded my loins and boy was I ever happy:

Is this post going to convince anyone? I doubt it; everyone but me seems to already know all the answers, so why listen to such a hedging, doubting bore? I myself am trying to draw a very fine line between being humble about making big changes to big social institutions, and telling people (which I am not trying to do) that they can't make those changes because other people have been wrong in the past. In the end, our judgement is all we have; everyone will have to rely on their judgement of whether gay marriage is, on net, a good or a bad idea. All I'm asking for is for people to think more deeply than a quick consultation of their imaginations to make that decision. I realise that this probably falls on the side of supporting the anti-gay-marriage forces, and I'm sorry, but I can't help that. This humility is what I want from liberals when approaching market changes; now I'm asking it from my side too, in approaching social ones. I think the approach is consistent, if not exactly popular.

Rest At Last

Terri Schiavo died this morning. Now everybody will get on with their lives except for Terri and her family. Terri goes to her rest and her family will get on with their grief.

Now perhaps we can turn to making sure that the law is clear on matters not of terminal or end stage care, which wasn't what her case was about, but on custodial care. I wonder once the disable groups weigh in how the story will change, but I already know the answer - the media will melt and reframe the story.

Judicial and Media Failure

In what is hopefully not just one more burning coal in the heap poured on the Schindlers' head, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has agreed to a rehearing of their appeal by the whole court.

I have to consider Terri Schiavo's saga as a terrible judicial and media failure on top of a great personal tragedy.

The judicial failure is that a judge would make a determination that ends someone's life on such scant and conflicting evidence and that the courts above would or could do nothing. If she had been a condemned prisoner, the Governor could have pardoned her, but in our truly great legal system, he can't do anything. In the words of that famous Christian republican, Nat Hentoff:

Among many other violations of her due process rights, Terri Schiavo has never been allowed by the primary judge in her case—Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, whose conclusions have been robotically upheld by all the courts above him—to have her own lawyer represent her.

Greer has declared Terri Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state, but he has never gone to see her. His eyesight is very poor, but surely he could have visited her along with another member of his staff. Unlike people in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schiavo is indeed responsive beyond mere reflexes.

While lawyers and judges have engaged in a minuet of death, the American Civil Liberties Union, which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die.
...
In February, Florida's Department of Children and Families presented Judge Greer with a 34-page document listing charges of neglect, abuse, and exploitation of Terri by her husband, with a request for 60 days to fully investigate the charges. Judge Greer, soon to remove Terri's feeding tube for the third time, rejected the 60-day extension. (The media have ignored these charges, and much of what follows in this article.)

Michael Schiavo, who says he loves and continues to be devoted to Terri, has provided no therapy or rehabilitation for his wife (the legal one) since 1993. He did have her tested for a time, but stopped all testing in 1993. He insists she once told him she didn't want to survive by artificial means, but he didn't mention her alleged wishes for years after her brain damage, while saying he would care for her for the rest of his life.

To me the crux of the legal failure is how a single judge can end a person's life by his steadfast purpose in doing so.

The simple story is woman suffers brain damage and her mental capacity is sharply diminished, althought the exact amount is still in dispute. Years later the husband collects a large settlement partly for him but mostly for the care of his wife. Then the husband suddenly remembers her wish not to live this way and sues in court to not let her eat or drink. The judge hears conflicting testimony on her desires and a recomendation from her original >guardian at litem not to stop nourishing her because the husband has two huge conflicts of interest - money and sex since he stands to inherit a ton of money and he is currently bopping another woman but rules that the woman should die as it was her very own desire. The womans parents appeal as most of her family feels that was not her very own desire, but the desire of her ersatz but real in an all too binding legal sense husband. The appeals drag on for seven years during which husband lives with other woman and fathers two children with her. Also during this time the Florida Legislature passes a law which make the state's governor her guardian, but this law is soon declared unconstitutional by another Florida court. When the original judge in Florida rules he's had it with all these appeals and sets a deadline when the food and water will be witheld, the publicity really intensifies and the US congress passes a law which allows the woman's family to have a new day in court but this time in Federal court. The Federal court rules that the family already had it's day in court so there.

How is this reported in the press? Right Wing nutters want to keep body alive against former occupant's wishes and will do anything, include appeal court rulings, to do it. And that's the most accurate part of the reporting. Tim at Random Observations has a lot more about what you didn't hear, Power Line takes on the so called GOP talking points, Patterico deflates the phoney baloney polls, and Nat Hentoff gets the last word on the courts and the press:

Contrary to what you've read and seen in most of the media, due process has been lethally absent in Terri Schiavo's long merciless journey through the American court system.

"As to legal concerns," writes William Anderson—a senior psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a lecturer at Harvard University—"a guardian may refuse any medical treatment, but drinking water is not such a procedure. It is not within the power of a guardian to withhold, and not in the power of a rational court to prohibit."

This isn't about the end stages of care of a terminal patient but an injustice done to a particular person. I'm not a big Jesse Jackson fan, especially since he shows the ocasional flash of the man he should be, but he is right:

I feel so passionate about this injustice being done, how unnecessary it is to deny her a feeding tube, water, not even ice to be used for her parched lips," he said. "This transcends politics."

Of course, other people have to weave this into the same dreary tapestry they weave every thing into, whether it belongs or not. Like Paul Krugman, who continues to not make sense, as in:

America isn’t yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren’t sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.

Hey Paul, if we really should worry about assassination by domestic extremists, who would get wacked in this case? The judge, liberal politicians, crazy pundits? Nope, I'm not advocating violence, but if anyone were iced, it would be Michael Schiavo because then it would be over - her parents would be Terri's guardian and they would immediately order proper care be given.

Its Over

Now that the US Supreme Court has decided not to issue an emergency order to reconnect the feeding tube for Terri Schiavo, all that's left is for her to die. No doubt there are other similar cases throughout the country, just without all the publicity. It is a mystery, though not a complete one, why some cases receive publicity and interest, and others languish outside the limelight. This is often cited as a right to die case or a right to life case, but to me it seems more of a lack of proper law coupled with a case of incompetence coupled with a case of husband wanting money and new wife.

My biggest problem with the case is that any court would try to ascertain someone's intent to live or die based on off-hand remarks and not written instructions when the mechanism for written instructions exist and that a court would find clear intent when there is complete disagreement between a husband on one hand and all of his wife relatives on the other.

Given her age, I think it likely that Terri never gave much thought to whether she wanted to live or die in this situation, so to fish around in people's recollections for off-hand remarks and impressions and have her life depend on what one person makes of all that strikes me as the height of hubris and folly. No legal system should have a judge in that position. A judge made a finding of fact about a decision when there is no real evidence that such a decision was ever made. It's not like deciding who pulled a trigger or who robbed a bank. If anything comes of all this, I would hope that it is every state passes a law to keep such legal wrangling from happening again - and I would use the old legalism, if it wasn't said in writing, it was never said at all.

I think it illustrates several things - one of which is that there does seem to be a huge divide in this country. And too often both sides are too busy being partisan to listen to what the other side is saying. Hear you have people who don't have any problems with appeals to stretch out for more than a decade in a death penalty case, and in so doing have no trouble thinking that courts make mistakes all the time, claim that seven years is too long because it's not like a court would make a mistake.

Another is that this divide is fed by an information gap -- the information that the two sides of this issue are using are completely different. I can't say this often enough or strongly enough, but the mass media in this country is terrible. Awful. They suck. There's a reason why the oath to testify is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and no reporter ever wants to be under oath to testify. It just isn't in them to tell the whole truth and nothing but. They've been misinforming me my entire life and it would be folly on my part to expect them to change now.

So instead we have one narrative told by the mainstream media, of a husband who is heroically fighting the forces of extemism so that he can fulfill his wife's wishes, and another told in alternative media of a husband who is trying to kill his wife so that he can keep the settlement money and marry the mother of his two children. And on the one hand, the wife's condition is clearly that of a vegetable, not only is nobody home but the lights are pretty dim; and on the other we have a woman at best not properly diagnosed to at worst misdiagnosed, refused any treatmant by her husband to hasten her departure, who does have some mental capacity. It's like the bring-out-your-dead scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Eric Idle wants someone hauled off to the ash heap even though he isn't dead yet. And the mortician does Eric a favor by bashing the guy over the head before taking his body away. Only this time, it isn't funny.

Oops

Patterico notices something interesting -- Judge Greer of Terri Schiavo fame didn't believe a witness because he thought the witness had his dates wrong, but it turns out the judge had his own dates wrong. But nothing to worry about, there is possibility of judicial error, no need for a fresh look. Yeah, right.

Another Curtain Falls

Another creative titan dead - Redmond Simonsen is dead at 62. He was the creative force in graphics for SPI, and I'm sorry to say if you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably never will. Still, his passing made the New York Times:

"As S.P.I.'s vice president and art director, Mr. Simonsen standardized the look of the games, fitting historically accurate, visually comprehensible information into small spaces. The company's earliest game boards were black and white, with playing pieces (there might be several hundred) that had to be glued onto shirt cardboard and cut out by hand. The games were soon produced in full color, with die-cut pieces ready to punch out.

Redmond Aksel Simonsen was born in Manhattan on June 18, 1942, to Norwegian-American parents. He earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Cooper Union in 1964 and afterward worked as a graphic designer of book jackets, album covers and advertisements.

S.P.I. began in the summer of 1969, when Mr. Simonsen and Mr. Dunnigan took over Strategy and Tactics, a gaming magazine. Mr. Simonsen redesigned the magazine, including in each issue a complete game, plus a historical article about the battle it simulated. The company released more than 400 games in a little more than a decade, and by the mid-1970's, Mr. Dunnigan said, it manufactured more than half of all the war games sold worldwide. It also produced science fiction and fantasy games, several of which Mr. Simonsen designed."

All of us who love to play games owe Mr. Simonsen a huge debt.

Love Is the Plan, The Plan is Death

After the efforts of Congress to get the Terri Schiavo's parents a new day in court, another judge has dealt a terrible blow by denying an emergency order to keep feeding her. Congress acted because it felt that her parents hadn't gotten a fair shake in the state courts; the judge ruled that because the state courts had spent years mishandling the case, that was good enough for him. This is just one more example of why I no longer respect our legal system. The criminal system is a game of roulette that pretty much defines capricious and arbitrary, and the civil system is out and out extortion. The judiciary as a group seems to this poorly informed observer to be a combination of stupid, smug, and arrogant. Yes, there are good judges, but they are being overwhelmed by the lousiness of the rest.

I have to say, I'm not wild about passing a law to cover a specific situation like this. I suppose the problem is that on the one hand its poor process trying to fix bad judging, and on the other its a woman's life at stake. We don't have consistancy -- we don't want to execute mentally defective people who are criminals, but it's peachy to starve someone if they are guilty of nothing more than being inconvenient. We have very clear rules on how to pass on a dead person's property, but we can pass someone on because her husband, who has some clear conflict of interests, wants to say goodbye. It should be simple -- in the absence of clear written instructions, nobody should be denied food and water or even medical care for that matter. If you don't want to live past a certain level of ability, write it down, notarize it, and let people know. Otherwise, you get to hang on.

We allow executive clemency to handle situations the courts either got wrong or handled poorly in the first place for criminal cases, but not in a case like this. Jeb Bush could pardon someone he thought was wrongly convicted of a crime in Florida, but he can't keep Terri Schiavo off her own death row. George Bush could do the same for someone convicted in Federal Court, but his hands are tied the same in this case. Frankly, I don't see a lot of difference between executive clemency and Congressional clemency, which is what the law they passed represents. They are both Deus Ex Machina, and the only defense is that they are used to help the innocent.

Tom Maguire covers the subject like a rug, with coverage of the basic issues of the situation, the media bias on display (with a special shoutout for the NYT), and why this isn't a case of Right-To-Life hypocrisy. Where does he find the time?

Legal Murder

Terri Schiavo is set to start the slow, agonizing process of starving to death tomorrow. I find it to be a process where a husband gets to murder his wife, collect the money meant for her, and live with his new girlfriend without consequence by using the state as his instrument of death. But that's just me. The unvarnished facts are bad enough, without my interpretation.

The struggle is often cast as an extension over the fight over abortion; personally I don't see it that way. If Terri had left a living will, or made her intentions known that indeed she did not want to live this way, I would support her decision. But the only evidence that she didn't want to live this way is her husband's word. Forgive me if I find it hard to rely on given the large sum of money and the other woman involved.

Ave Atque Vale

Jef Raskin is dead at 61. A sad day for those who love computers with the passing of someone who helped change the world.

We're Here To Help

All help isn't equal, as Eamon Fitzgerald reminds us:

"A tidal wave of compassion is bearing down on Sri Lanka. A guy on the radio is saying that his travel company will fly people from Ireland to the Indian Ocean island to help the victims of the tsunami. You pony up 850 euros for the flight and he'll take care of the accommodation. Skills required? None. The hungry have to be fed, the homeless housed and the grieving counselled. So what if you don't understand the dialect or can't put a splint on a broken leg? Love conquers all. Righ?"

He goes on to demonstrate the essence of wisdom by relating someone else's pertinant anecdote.

Stupidity Still Kills

James Joyner points out some problems with a Reuters (who else?) article about highway deaths. He asks some good questions, but I have a few bones of my own to pick with the story.

While the article cites the fact that the number of automobile deaths has been going up in absolute terms for the last 13 years, it notes that the rate (the number that tells you what's really going on) is unchanged at 1.5 per million miles driven. Has it stayed the same the last 13 years, or just the last year?

And if it's been staying the same, does this mean that overall, airbags and anti-lock brakes haven't affected auto fatalities? They've become standard in that time. Are there competing factors at work - have the gains in vehicle safety from safer design, construction, and safety devices such as airbags been balanced by the increasing driver distraction from such things as cell phones and ever more sophisticated audio-visual equipment unboard (yes, the Murphy Van has one of those fancy DVD players with remote headphones)?

What are the factors that really contribute to fatal accidents? The article notes that more than half the people killed in auto accidents were not wearing seatbelts and 40% involved alcohol. So it would seem that rather than bash SUVs, we ought to concentrate on persuading people to buckle up and not drink and drive. Without knowing the overlap between these two, I'm still going to confidently say that most people are killed by stupidity -- since driving drunk and/or not wearing a seatbelt is just plain stupid.

The article notes that over 2/3s fo the SUV fatalities were not wearing their seat belts. So is the real problem with SUVs that people feel too secure? As vehicles become more intrinsically safe, have drivers compensated with riskier behavior to keep fairly constant accident and fatality rates? And has there been a change in accident rates - are accidents becoming safer, less safe, or about the same?

What about better training or more stringent licensing requirements for drivers? I know that Illinois increased their requirements for people to get a license for the first time -- has Illinois seen an improvement in their accident and fatality rates as a result?

Wouldn't my headline -- Stupidity Still Kills -- be more accurate than "Highway Deaths Hit 13-Year High in 2003"?

I expect that the traffic safety people are thinking along these lines, but I despair that our wonderful press does, or can report accurately without sensationalism or distortion.

Odds and Ends

Somebody won on "The Apprentice" last night - no surprise there, it had to happen. Somebody doesn't think Trump is the best role model because of his shady business dealings. I didn't watch the show - every time I tuned to it some poor people sat quitetly in front of Donald Trump while he blathered on with the oddest hairstyle I've ever seen. I guess if you're The Donald, you can't be like other mortals who as they go bald use the tried and true comb-over to accentuate their baldness, no, you have to use the comb-forward to accentuate not just your baldness, but your business acumen as well.

Kevin Spacey got "mugged", sort of, the other day in London. Does this mean he'll become a Tory now? At least he fell for a con that preyed upon his niceness, not his greed.

Well, the other shoe fell here the other day. The first one was when a St. Louisan won the Miss USA title. To balance out, one of our hockey players, Mike Danton (let me point out right away he isn't a native) was arrested in a bizzare murder for hire scheme. He befriended a 19 year old girl who works at the Blues practice facility at the St. Louis Mills Mall. He asked if she knew any hit men (I'm just wondering if she's got a tattoo), and she said she might. I guess I don't travel in the right circles because I can't think of anyone I know, let alone have met, that I think might be a hit man. Well, unfortunately for them but not us the man wasn't a hit man, and he recorded his conversation with Danton, and then called the FBI. Now Danton and his lady friend are both in jail.

My Cub Pack went hiking at the Shaw Arboretum, so let me pass along a timely warning about West Nile Virus. There weren't any mosquitoes around, which was good, but there weren't many leaves on the trees either, and as the temperature went over ninety, their shade was sorely missed.

The official leading indicators are up for March (I suppose if it takes this long to calculate the index, it needs to be leading so that it doesn't lag on arrival). I have my own economic indicator -- I call it the peter indicator. The peter principle states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence in an organization. I have noticed that in good economies, you run into incompents in service industries who've never been promoted; the better the economy, the more incompetents. I ordered pizza from Domino's for my son's birthday party on Sunday -- it took literally 10 minutes to order three pizzas. And yes, the gentleman let me know that he was new. I'd say the economy is getting much better.

Oliver Stone Kisses Castro

I don't get a chance to correct Mickey Kaus too often so here goes. Mickey, Oliver Stone was a fool before Ann Bardach said one word to him.

This article makes it clear that Oliver Stone is not just a fool, but moral pygmy.

The left needs to come to terms with the fact that a large swath of it loves dictatorship, and not just abroad, but in America too. It loves judges who issue fiat from the bench, and it loves government agencies who issue fiat as regulation. It can't admit that anti-communist cold warrior were right; it gives wet smoochies to leftist dictatorships around the world past, present, and future. It can't admit that communism is evil itself and not just specific implementions. It embraced Stalin, it embraced the Sandinistas, it embraces Castro, and it repudiates any attempts to topple or prevent dictators today.

I think that by and large, the right does not love dictatorship, but was willing to compromise during the cold war. And I think the right has come to terms with that. Certainly now the clarion call of freedom sounds from the right, and not the left - which is why a lot of people who once considered themselves on the left can no longer do so.

No Surprises

Since St. Louis is chock full of beautiful women, it's no surprise that one of our tall blondes is now Miss USA. Nor is it a surprise that she's a republican who wants to speak out about Iraq. No sir, no surprises at all, just another beautiful day here in the Heartland.

Eisner's Lost His Grip

I watched Barbara Walter's interview with Shrek in total amazement. Not because of the content, but because of the context. Shrek was made by Jeffrey Katzenberg who left (was forced out of ?) Disney -- and who mocked Eisner in the movie unceasingly. So there was Barbara Walters shilling for Shrek 2 on ABC, which is owned by Disney. Eisner is notoriously thin skinned and vindictive, yet there was Shrek 2 being promoted on his network.

The tea leaves say: Eisner has lost his grip.

I can't believe I beat Robert Musil to it.

Case Closed?

I saw Malcom Gladwell's take on SUVs the other day and was impressed. And I'm not the only one. But there is one glaring problem with it - the table that purports to show that SUVs aren't safe has some problems. I'm reproducing it here:

Looks pretty authoritative, doesn't it?

First off, the other deaths and therefore total death column is meaningless. What it measures is how often somebody besides the driver is riding. Automobiles are not made safe only for the driver, and what with the steering wheel like a blunt spear pointed right at the driver, you could argue that the driver sits in the most dangerous seat in any vehicle. So you should ignore that other death column, and concentrate only on driver deaths. It's the only way to get an apples to apples comparison. Now the SUVs don't look as bad.

Secondly, this table doesn't take into account the driver. Young and old drivers are bad drivers. The Pontiac Sunfire may have such a poor record in part because it's mainly driven by young hot rodders. The Lincoln Towncar may be less safe than the Ford Explorer in part because the drivers tend to be doddering oldsters who shouldn't be on the road any more, not because the car is less crashworthy - and it might deliberately have lousy handling so as to give grandpa the feeling he hasn't left his living room, which could affect its safety. And anyone only casually acquainted with America realizes that a different car models have different demographics - even with similar age ranges. It's not only that a different age group drives mini-vans that drive subcompacts, but youths who want sporty (and thus drive more daringly) on a budget may prefer Sunfires to Sentras.

Thirdly, the chart is per million cars, not million car-miles. So it doesn't cover milage or how cars are driven (which sort of goes along with demographics). When I take my son to one of his activities, I'm often the only car in a sea of mini-vans and SUVs. Somehow, I don't think there are all that many mini-vans on the road after the bars close on a Saturday night, the most dangerous time to be on the road.

Lastly, it lumps different models together, even though newer models may be much safer (or even less safe) than older ones.

Now I don't think my objections mean SUVs are as safe as mini-vans (I own a mini-van and a subcompact), but I don't think that the chart is conclusive, at best it's suggestive.

I think you're much better off looking at crash test results to get a handle on relative safety between vehicles.

Who's Ready For Some Downloads?

The Superbowl is so passe. The hype, the ads, the game, the halftime show are just so last millenium. OK, I'm just bitter because the Rams aren't in it (again). I'm sure I'll watch it, ignore the hype, discuss the ads, root for the Panthers, and do something else at half time (they can't have U2 there every year). But the most important thing is that Pepsi is going to give away 100 million downloads through iTunes after the game. Hip Hip Hoorah! I love my iTunes, and I'm looking forward to burning some new CDs as I drink far more Pepsi than I should. While iTunes doesn't have everything, it does have a lot of good music: you can get the title cut from Traffic's Low Spark of High Heeled Boys for a mere 99 cents - an amazing value when you consider it is over 11 minutes long.

And just between you and me, Beyonce as a gladiatrix will never go out of style.

Cast A Giant Eared Shadow

Robert Musil takes up the rumor that Michael Eisner is going to bring Steve Jobs on board at Disney and decides that while it would be a great move by Eisner, it wouldn't make business sense for Steve Jobs. He thinks it makes more business sense for Jobs to take over Disney, and Bill Palmer describes the top ten changes Jobs would make at Disney.

I'd just like to throw in that I don't think it makes emotional sense for Jobs to take Eisner's side against Roy Disney in the ongoing saga. Consider that Jobs is a founder of a company where he has consistantly fostered (dictated?) creativity and innovation. Jobs was forced out of that company by his handpicked business guy, John "Sugar Water" Scully; afterwards he bought Pixar because "The thought of participating in the production of a classic film such as Snow White, which our grandkids may watch in 30 years, is what's exciting for me." He was able to take his baby, Apple, back over after pursuading everybody's favorite bumbling uncle, Gil Amelio, to buy his other company (NeXt) and take him on as an advisor. Next thing you know, Gil is still sitting in the corner office, but everybody is taking orders from Steve. So I don't think Eisner is going to ask Jobs to sit on the board: he might not be the best visionairy, but he still knows the ins and outs of corporate infighting. And Jobs has to sympathise with Roy Disney, because even though he isn't the founder, he shares not just the name but the founder's vision for what Disney should be. The way Roy Disney was forced out by his handpicked business guy will remind Jobs of how he himself was forced out. Nope, it makes far more emotional sense for Jobs to join Roy's Raiders and try to topple Eisner -- if he get's involved at all.

UPDATE: Brian Tiemann at Peevefarm has his own thoughts about a Jobs take over at Disney

Terri Shiavo

Power Line has a nice summary of David Gelernter's piece in the Wall Street Journal about Terri Shiavo.

It's a lot better than my local paper's editorial on the same topic, even in summary form. "STATE LEGISLATURES and governors are uniquely unqualified to take over the most difficult decision any family has to make - when to withdraw care from a severely brain damaged relative with no hope of recovery." Yes, but then the Post Dispatch doesn't mind judges doing the same thing. And as my wife pointed out, at least legislatures and governors stand for election, unlike judges, and legislatures aren't just a single person, unlike judges. And the Post Dispatch Editorial board feels that they are fully qualified to speak to any topic, solve any problem, and condemn any stranger to death --unless they happen to be a criminal, in which case they don't think even juries can condemn them to death.

What's their real objection? "The Schindlers' desperate effort to prevent that led them to enlist help from conservative religious groups, who transformed Ms. Schiavo from a young woman into a cause celebre. They built public interest by releasing an excruciating videotape..." It's those conservative religious groups, that good liberals should always oppose on principle. I did laugh out loud when reading that crack about cause celebre - jealousy rears it's ugly head. Yep, the press are the only people allowed to create cause celebres.

"Gov. Bush may have been given the power to stop Ms. Schiavo's imminent death, but he doesn't have the ability to restore her mental function. In the end, he has merely prolonged her death - and her family's suffering." Yeah, the husband is suffering all right, waiting for his big pay day. For a group that is so keen to report on conflict of interest, they fail to mention that her husband has "moved on" with another women with whom he's having a second child, and that he stands to inherit a great deal of money when she dies. Perhaps in this case we should listen to the wishes of her parents, who actually love her, and can better balance the question of her life and death.

What About The CIA and Plame?

First off, Alex at the Parks Department has put together an excellent list of leaks on "Wilsongate".

As long as the press is faulting the Bush administration on the pace of it's investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's CIA status, why aren't they faulting Novak, who knows who leaked, and the six journalists who reportedly know who leaked (because they were leaked to but didn't publish)? Oh that's right, because their careers might suffer. Look, this is a serious matter, and probably a crime, and I for one think playing by journalism's rules (as Craig repeats them from Edward J Epstein's book) makes no sense. The bottom could be gotten to in an afternoon of eight journalists in front of a grand jury. I mean, do we really want the press to shield criminals? Does that really serve some larger purpose?

Plame's employment with the CIA was classified. Sometimes people think if you have a security classification, its OK for you to be informed of any classified information of the appropriate level. This is not true. You have to have a need to know the classified information to carry out the tasks for which you have a security clearance. That is the general rule. I can't be told classified information just because I have a clearance. Sometimes, it's a little more formalized, and some information has an access list - in other words, only certain pre-defined people can be told particular classified information - they are the only ones to have a need to know. I would think in a properly run CIA, the identities of clandestine agents, which apparently covers Plame, would be access list controled, with a different list for each such agent, with the list limited to as small a number of people as possible. This limits the damage moles and captured agents can do.

So here's what I find odd - how did somebody in the Bush Administration know she worked for the CIA? Did the CIA not keep her name close to the vest? As an undercover operative, you'd think they'd want to protect her name. Let's turn to Nick Kristof's piece (which I by and large agree with):"Third, Mrs. Wilson's intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the CIA and moved to State Department cover, but her job remained a closely held secret." This jibes with Clifford May's piece in National Review that he was told in an offhand manner by a former government worker. In other words, somehow her status got out of the CIA itself - and excuse me, you can't be an overcover operative if everybody knows you work for the CIA even if nobody knows what you do there. So as long as we're investigating the leak from the Bush administration (which as I've pointed out before should be child's play but isn't), we should also be investigating the leak from the CIA (which nobody has mentioned yet). Maybe it was a structural leak - people who didn't know she was an undercover operative (because that is a closely guarded secret known only to a few) didn't see anything wrong in letting slip that she worked for the CIA because at this point she was currently not undercover- in which case the CIA needs to rethink how they handle that situation.

I have no idea how much damage this has done (if any) to CIA networks and agents - and anybody who does isn't (or at least shouldn't) be talking to the press. Apparently she may have been unmasked earlier - by our old buddy Aldrich Ames. Still, I'm upset that somebody either deliberately or inadvertinately in the Bush Administration leaked the name of a CIA operative, which is a serious breach of trust, and that the CIA didn't protect their own operative.

Why hasn't the press asked the question of how (not why or who) the name of an undercover CIA operative popped out of the mouth of an administration official? I guess because nobody's leaked why that may be important to a journalist.

Novak, Wilson, and Plame

The latest Washington scandal sounds like an old rock group, but it is serious business. Did someone at the Bush Whitehouse leak the name of a CIA operative (Valerie Plame Wilson) who was the wife of a former ambassador (Joseph Wilson IV) who wrote an op-od critical critical of the Bush administration? If administration officials broke the law by deliberately leaking her status with the CIA, then by all means they should be prosecuted and fired. If it was a nobody somewhere in the great Military Industrial Complex who did this (i.e. me), that's the fate they would suffer. It shouldn't change because of either its political nature or the position of the officials. I know that in the past nothing happens to leakers, but it ought to. I think putting a few senators and representatives in the dock would be highly beneficial, but then I think all public officials, regardless of party affiliation, should be held accountable to the same standards as everybody else.

If you want blog coverage, Just One Minute is all over this. If you prefer your coverage from big media, Google News is always a great source.

The odd thing to me is that the parts that should be straightforward are so murky and the the murky stuff is simply opaque. The CIA should know whether or not Ms. Plame is an undercover operative as covered by law and therefore whether or not the leak broke the law. If she isn't covered, there should be no investigation, so I have to assume she is. And the next stop should be to question the star witness, Bob Novak - just like they should for any journalist who is an eyewitness to a crime. I don't buy the notion that there is some right to keep sources confidential if a crime has been committed, and I don't think journalists should be treated any differently than any other private citizen. So it should be straightforward whether or not a law was broken and if so, who did it.

But it isn't, and so Bush will twist slowly, slowly in the wind while the investigation fumbles along to no certain conclusion. If Bush were machievellan, he'd get a couple of volunteers to claim they were the leakers, that it was inadvertant and not malicious, and have them resign. What would Novak do - reveal his real sources? The scandal would be over, and the whole matter would be forgotten by most of the electorate.

The larger picture is very much confused in my mind. Apparently, Dick Cheney was concerned enough about the intel about Iraq trying to buy yellow cake from Africa that he asked the CIA to indepently check on it. So the CIA sends Joe Wilson - why? Of all the nutty yet courageous ex-Ambassadors, they picked him. What, wasn't Felix Leiter available? Besides being married to an agent, what were his qualifications (remember his contacts in Niger were from 25 years ago)?

So he conducts his investigation by talking over tea with some Nigerians, comes back to the US where he files only a verbal report, and then goes on to right an op-ed that claims that based on his brief and cursory investigation, Iraq didn't get yellowcake from Niger, and therefore the Bush administration was lying when it claimed that UK intellegence was reporting that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa.

Then somebody tells Bob Novak that his wife works for the CIA, and that's how he got the job. How does this person know that Mrs. Wilson works for the CIA? Do they sign their reports, and as an expert on WMD proliferation they've been reading a lot of them recently? Is this how everybody seems to know that she works for the CIA? And how is leaking her CIA connection supposed to intimidate the Wilsons, or even undercut his op-ed, which if anything is enhanced by giving him some connection, however tenuous, with expertise in WMD proliferation? It is either really stupid, or simply honest.

After this Wilson claims that even mentioning her maiden name is somehow a breach of security, despite the fact that he included it in his bio on the net. And now he's claiming that he knew all along that Iraq didn't have WMD, although he apparently felt confident of it earlier to claim that Saddam would use it against US troops. Yeah, I know, a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of small minds.

And now we have the press outraged that somebody would leak a CIA agent's name, although not outraged that the press would print it, we have serial leakers (i.e. congresspeople) outraged that somebody would leak confidential information, and we have people demanding a special prosecutor despite their track record when all we need is a justice department that isn't afraid to put a journalist in jail for refusing to name a criminal.

And yes, you have me, who hopes that we find out who did what and why, who hopes that the guilty are punished and the innocent exhonerated, that justice be applied impartially, and that we all remember and hold accountable the people we place our trust in, in public service or in the media. But then, I'm just an old fashioned guy.

Lies vs. Mistakes

I'll never be a good pundit because I can't read minds. All the good pundits can. They can always tell when somebody made a simple mistake, no big deal really, and when somebody is a lying weasel of evil. I lack that talent, and so without knowing I tend to err on the side of caution. Oddly enough, it seems that there are two sets of pundits who consistantly disagree about the simple mistakes and deliberate lies. I guess if I just listened to one set or the other I wouldn't be confused and I would be unshakable in my determination of the axis of lying evil weasels.

Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?

OK, in case you've just crawled out from under a rock, a lot of the northeast lost power today just after 4PM. We're being assured it wasn't terrorist related, although nobody has definitive information as to what caused it. What really gets me, though, is that there are already "experts" on the cable news networks blaming not enough regulation, not enough money for maintanence, in short, whatever they said was a problem before the blackout must be the cause and must be addressed, even though they haven't a clue at this point as to what actually occured. I guess that is why I'm not an expert - I like to have an idea of what happened before I pontificate on how to keep it from happening again.

Supreme Court?

OK, the Supreme Court has issued a couple of rapid fire decisions in high profile cases. I haven't had a chance to read the decisions, but I've read the reporting, and so like any good pundit, I have my reactions already lined up. I hope to get around to the merits of the cases later (when I have time), but my initial reaction is that the Court has continued its tradition of making a muddle of things. This is what happens when you have old people who have all the time in the world on their hands. If you put people like me - too busy to even keep up a decent blog - on the Court, you'd get clear cut decisions that are designed to lower my work load, not keep up a never ending stream of landmark rulings that seem to only invite further litigation. We need to send Justice O'Connor some Ginko Biloba or something so that we can improve her memory and focus her thinking. I know it's a woman's perogative to change her mind, but not if they are serving on the Supreme Court. Oh well, since we live in a Democracy, I just won't vote for her again.

My Letter to Bill Bennett

Bill,

I'm glad you admitted you had a gambling problem. Even if you're not a gambling addict and can afford to lose the money, do you really want your money supporting the gambling industry? An industry that not only ruins lives wherever it goes, but betrayed your confidence and insulted you behind your back even though you were an outstanding customer and treated you like a king to your face. Surely a virtuous man can find better ways to spend time and money.

If you find playing video slots and video poker for high stakes relaxing, and want to continue to do so without actual gambling, then might I suggest that you can still do this at home with a casino game on a PC? To "keep it interesting", you could donate your losses to charity, and spend the money on the wife when you win. You'd get the fun and relaxation, and other people would benefit as well.

If you want to make a clean break with gambling, but enjoy the experience of solitaire gaming, you could try computer games. In Diablo, you get to slay the forces of evil -- sounds pretty virtuous to me. In Civilization, you can build a society to withstand the test of time. I'm not sure about the virtue part, but I sure find it relaxing. In Black and White, you get to be a deity for good or evil -- temptation and virtue in the same package. And as far as stakes go, it doesn't get any higher in those three games, what with the fate of the earth riding on the outcome and all. I'd mention the Sims, but you should wait since Sims 2 is coming out, and despite your detractors, I don't think you really want to micromanage other people's lives like the Sims has you do. Frankly, after parenthood, the Sims is too much like work.

If violent video games are on the forbidden list, I guess there's always gardening.

Your Friend,

Kevin Murphy

Ave Atque Vale, DPM

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan passed away yesterday. Would that all senators had his intellegence, passion, ethics, and sense of public service. A true giant, his passing diminishes our great country.

International Eat An Animal For PETA Day

The people at PETA are all for the treatment of animals as if they were people. You may agree with this, and that's fine. But when it comes to the morality of eating animals, let's examine the question: is it more moral to eat plants or animals? I assert it's more moral to eat animals than plants. While it is undeniable that animals are more like us, and we don't eat other people, such an analogy isn't the whole story. When we compare plants and animals, we find that plants are pacifists - they do not take life to survive. Animals, on the other hand, are killers. We must kill and eat to survive. Clearly, the only moral eating pattern is to eat only other killer animals, condemned by their very own nature, and spare those harmless plants. When I eat my steak and salad, I can take pride in the justice I'm bringing to the mass murdering cow, while I must suffer the agonies of conscience over the poor lettuce that did nothing to deserve its fate.

BTW, blame or congratulate Meryl Yourish for the idea of IEAAFPD.

One More Pearl Of Wisdom In A Faux Strand

Another entertainer shot her mouth off overseas - a Dixie Chick said at a concert in London "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Why do entertainers feel the need to be critical of the US when they are overseas? Certainly I'm not questioning their right, I'm just questioning their manners. If you think truly think that Natalie, why don't you say that in concert in Houston or Dallas, Austin or San Antonio? If you're an American, and you want to be critical, say it here, to our face. Don't keep silent here and then try to be ingratiating abroad. I have to admit though, that I'm far more incensed over what the the chicks did to Landslide (has there been a worse cover in the history of covers, OK, outside of celebrities like Shatner), than any political remarks the chicks have made.

Orange Backs

When my wife and I honeymooned in the Canadian Rockies, along with thousands of Japanese couples, we had a great time. Not only did I fall in love with the mountains (hey, I was already in love with the wife), but I also fell in love with Canadian money because it had different colors for the different denominations. You could tell with just a glance what a bill was worth. I thought to myself, what a great idea! Now, at last, we here in the states will be joining the rest of civilized society by adding color to the money. I'm sure the fuddyduddies will complain, but it won't take get long to get used to. It really is better than all one color.

Columbia Ave Atque Vale

The space shuttle Columbia blew up today, killing the seven astronauts on board. It is a sad day for all of us, but especially for the friends and family of the astronauts. The space shuttle, and the space station for that matter, get very little news coverage anymore, unless something goes wrong. Space has become routine, so they say. It's not routine for the brave souls who rocket into space on a pillar of fire and return riding a wave of white hot plasma. It's not routine for all the people who work hard with the safety of those brave souls in mind. It's not routine for all of us who understand the hard work, dedication, and yes, risk taking associated with scientific and engineering advancement. I'm sure NASA will figure out what happened, if they don't already know, and it will be fixed, and we will return to routine. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a fighter pilot and an astronaut. Lousy eyesight and motion sickness ended those dreams. But I continue to dream about human exploration and advance into space - the final, unending, still beckoning frontier.

This Is Gonna Be Good

Everybody's least favorite hometown paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (full disclosure, I'm a subscriber, but only because my wife says we save more in coupons than spend on the paper), will be negotiating a new union contract as the last one has expired. Managment had a 37 page list of demands; the union, AKA the Newspaper Guild, responded by asking for an 18.6% wage hike. Oh, this is gonna be good -- well, better than the paper, anyway.

Pete Townshend

I'm sure you've heard about the arrest of Pete Townshend for downloading child pornography. I have no idea if he is or isn't a pedophile (I hope he isn't), and the only reason I even blog this is because of an interview he gave years ago on if I recall correctly, a local (St. Louis) radio station. Chuck Berry had been arrested and sued over tapes he made of women in a bathroom at a business he ran. He said it was to check for drugs or somesuch; I think it was degenerate. Anyway, the point isn't Mr. Berry's extensive legal problems, but Pete Townshend's attitude. He kept repeating "Leave the man alone" - he stated that it was wrong to hassle such a great musician, to whom we all owed a debt of gratitude, and his guilt or innocence didn't matter. He'd done so much for music, he could do whatever he wanted. I was kind of shocked.

Gov. Ryan Commutes Death Penalty Sentences

Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted every death sentence to life without parole. I happened to catch part of his speech announcing his decision. He found that the process in Illinois was fundamentally flawed - it applied the death penalty capriciously, it convicted the innocent, and it was biased against minorities and the poor. I could understand his reasons except for one - he cited the fact that some blacks were judged, "not by their peers, but by all white juries." Excuse me, but I find that remark offensive and racist. It simply assumes that white people are biased against blacks, and it explicitly states that blacks and whites are not peers - we aren't equal.

My first reaction was that Governor Ryan had abdicated his repsonsibilities as Governor by issuing a blanket commutation. While some of the people on death row might not be guilty or deserving, certainly not all were. To excercise his reponsibility properly, shouldn't he have reviewed the cases and made a case by case decision? But wouldn't doing that be replacing the jury's judgement with his own? Wouldn't that be in effect saying that his judgement was superior to the jury's? I many of the cases, there is no doubt about the guilt of the defendent. The Post Dispatch ran synopsises of the affected cases from the Metro East, and they were all clearly guilty, and guilty of heinous crimes. But in other cases, there would doubt. And people could draw different conclusions, and perhaps to do justice in those cases life inprisonment or even release would be more appropriate. And if the system itself truly was fundamentally flawed, then how could you accept any of the applications of the penalty? You would be facing the choice of doing nothing, substituting your judgement for the jury's, or invalidating the death penalty system as a whole.

The next question is what comes next? Shouldn't he have made every effort during his term to fix the problems with the justice system in Illinois - frankly, if the death penalty process is as broken as he claims, I can't believe the rest of the system is just fine. If confessions are being coerced, then there aren't being coerced just in death penalty cases. If the application is of the death penalty is biased, capricious, and punishing the innocent with the guilty, I simply can't believe that these problems affect only death penalty cases - the entire justice system must be shot through with them. Well, Governor Ryan has tried to fix the death penalty (along with other reforms), but his efforts haven't gone anywhere in the legislature. And the incoming Governor Rod Blagojevich doesn't seem inclined to do anything either. So what we are left with is a dramatic gesture and more polarization; and rather than needed reform, we'll have a more angry status quo.

The Death Penalty

USA Today has an article about the death penalty. I think it does a pretty good job of covering the subject. Some of the main objections to the death penalty are: sometimes the innocent die, it's unfair to minorities, it doesn't deter crime, and (unmentioned in the article) is it's immoral.

Guess what - any system designed and executed by man is not going to be perfect. You cannot reject the good because it's not perfect. If we stop the death penalty because it's not perfect, why not end life imprisonment - surely there are those who are wrongly imprisoned. Ah, but we can correct lesser sanctions, although I doubt the resources will be devoted to investigating the merely incorrectly incarcerated that are devoted to investigated those slated to die. But we really can't correct the lesser sanctions - we can't give someone back 20 years of life spent behind bars. You can let them out, but you can't return to the status quo ante. Frankly, if you stand on this principle, the entire ediface of government comes crashing down because nothing it does is perfect.

If the death penalty is being applied unfairly, isn't the remedy to apply it fairly, not scrap it altogether? Is there something intrinsic to the death penalty that means it will be applied unfairly, but simple imprisonment won't? Nope. The stand here seems to be it's not okay to unfairly kill someone, but it's fine to lock them up until they die unfairly.

Does it deter crime? Some view murder as a crime of passion or insanity, and so obviously it won't deter crime. But what about pre-meditated murders? Certainly having some penalty deters crime; the question is does the death penalty deter murder more than life in prisonment. And frankly, I find the newer studies where going back to the death penalty lowered murder rates more persuasive than the older ones that compared states with and without the death penalty. But as Robert Blecker points out, don't certain crimes simply demand the death penalty, whether it deters or not?

And that brings us to the moral aspect. One strand of thought is that the state morally is the same as an individual. You won't hear this pronounced as such, but it usually takes the form that if it's wrong for me to kill someone, it's wrong for the state. The problem with that view is that it's wrong for me to lock someone up in my basement until they die of old age, but these same people don't question the morality of imprisonment of prisoners, since the alternative offered to death is usually a life sentence without parole. So we're left to balance the state's moral duty and status as a state to punish evil, or if you prefer, wrong behavior. And I think many of us know of a case that we say to ourselves, if anyone deserves the death penalty, it's this guy. Jeffery Daumer perhaps. The killer of Barbara Jo Brown for Robert Blecker; the killers in Valley Park who burglerized their neighbor's trailer, then worried about her identifying them, led her with her hands tied behind her back and a towel around her head to a nearby railroad bridge where they pushed her off to drown in the Meremac River for me. And to me that's the crux of the issue - do certain crimes demand the death penalty. People will arrive at their own answer to that question - one I'm still grappling with.

The Victimization of Nuns Continues

First the nuns were sexually abused, and now they are suffering media abuse. The Post Dispatch ran a hatchet job about a survey that examined sexual victimization among Catholic nuns. Why do I say a hatchet job? Let me count the ways.

I believe that it's terrible that any woman, or man, is sexually victimized - even one. But we need an accurate accounting if we want to understand the problem. The article claims that 40% of nuns have been vicitimized by priests or other nuns. How does it reach that figure? The survey asked the nuns if they had been victims of (1) childhood sex abuse (18.6%), (2) sexual exploitation (12.5%), or (3) sexual harassment (9.3%), and then lumps all three together. So the maximum number would be 40%; but since only 10% of the childhood sex abuse, less than 75% of the sexual exploitation (which includes consentual sex), and less than half of the sexual harassment took place at the hands of nuns, priests, or other religious person (whatever that is), the figure drops to 15.9% -- which is still 15.9% too large, but at least that's a more accurate number - and less than half of what is claimed. Clearly the article is trying to maximize the number and put it at the feet of the Catholic church. The correct headline should be that 40% of nuns who have been sexually victimized were victimized by anyone in the church - not that 40% of all nuns have been victimized by people in the church.

According to the article, the Catholic church discovered in 1996 that nuns had been sexually victimized, and despite running the results of the survey in a couple of religious research journals, buried it by not putting out a press release. This tells us that reporters look to press releases for stories, and not religous journals. I knew this already because I've discovered via the internet that stories, even at papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post, are often nothing more than lightly reformatted press releases with one or two outside experts comments added. What a clever way to hide something - put it in plain sight. What a novel concept - unless you actually notify the press, you're hiding something.

The final problem with the story as run in the Post is that there were no comparison of victimization rate to any other group, like women in general. The article gives us no idea whether you're more likely to be a victim of sexual "trauma" as a nun than as a woman in general. The article give us no idea if nuns are more likely to be sexually harassed in houses of worship than women in places of work. The Toronto star throws out the figure that 20 to 27 percent of all women have been sexually abused as children (a figure that quite frankly is alarmingly high) -- which indicates that nuns are on the low side -- but no word on sexual exploitation or sexual harassment. Its just one big scare story designed to cash in on the sex molesting priest scandal. Its important - does the Catholic church need to clean up its act, or does all of society?

I can't speak for the study itself, but the Post ran a letter from Janet Lauritsen, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice who ripped the methodology of the study - only certain orders participated, less than half of those in the order responded and concluded that it was unrepresentative and that no estimate of victimization could be drawn.

No doubt this story will get plenty of play, even though its biased, misleading, and provides no context. But then, every media consumer is used to that kind of reporting.

UPDATE:

Today the paper ran a letter from one of the original researchers of the study refuting the claims of poor methodology and labeling the other academics claims "fatuous". Oooh, academic catfight. Is a 50% non-repsonse rate significant? Beats me. But this letter says the post left off two categories of sexual victimization included in the study: intra-community sexual harassment and other sexual abuse (including rape and sexual assault). So I still think the Post has done a lousy, sensationalist job of covering the survey.

In Local News

In local news, our ambitious Attorney General, Jay Nixon, is leading the charge for legislation to create a no spam list just like the existing no call list for telemarketers. All I can say is, good luck. Jay seems to think he can track down the emailers; I'm not so sure. I've had automated anti-virus software send me emails telling me that my computer is infected with the Klez email virus, even though I use a Mac, because of a simple email header spoof.

Julie Bushue, the founder of the Angel Tree in St. Elmo, IL, which collects gifts and then distributes them to the needy, is in hot water because of a letter. It seems a few years ago half the recipients didn't bother to collect their gifts, so this year as she was handing the reins of the organization to another volunteer, as a joke to the new leader she tacked the following line on to the letter describing the program to the recipients: "So if you decide to sit on your fat a---- at home, too lazy to pick them up, you lose." Needless to say, some recipients were miffed. And the letter of apology Ms. Bushue sent them didn't put them in the Christmas spirit. Some lady wanted Ms. Bushue fired. If you're really that upset, lady, why don't you return all the gifts you've gotten over the years? Some people are just ungrateful and unforgiving, no matter what they've been given and how many times they've made mistakes. It was a lousy joke, she shouldn't have put it in the letter, but she apologized, it's a volunteer organization that she's run for 15 years -- which shows her true feelings on the matter, so get over it.

Paul Wellstone, RIP

Senator Wellstone's death is a tragedy, along with all those who died with him.

It's important for our country that its diverse viewpoints are represented, and Wellstone did an admirable job in representing a particular viewpoint. Not only does this keep the people who agree with this viewpoint engaged and involved in politics in a helpful way, it also means that there is a healthy competition in the marketplace of ideas. And that competition sharpens all the viewpoints there. You could argue, and I don't have time here to do it, that the monoculture of modern academics has caused its staggering decline and irrelevance.

I'm struck, though, by how the Democratic Party has replaced two of its senatorial candidates with old men who've been out of politics for years. Orin Judd pointed this out as an example of the Democrats stepping on blacks because in both instances capable up and coming black candidates were bypassed for has been whites. I'd just like to point out that it's not the sign of a healthy party that not it prefers candidates purely for name recognition. Both Lautenberg and Mondale are a couple of placeholders - two guys who's only point is to hold on the Senate for the Democrats. The Democratic Party seems to be the one standing athwart history yelling "Stop!" these days: they want no change in Social Security, no change to Welfare, no vouchers, no this, no that; what they want is more of the same spending. Are there any new ideas? Are there alternatives? Nope, it the same thing: if there's a problem, spend more money.

Sniper Questions

I'm glad they caught the snipers in Washington, D.C., but I'm having a hard time separating all the reporting from fiction. Apparently, everything we thought we knew before they were caught is wrong - it isn't a lone crazed white guy in a white van, but two black guys in a blue Caprice (OK, they were right about the guy part).

I have a lot of unanswered questions. Are they linked to Al Qaida, or are they just a couple of losers, or are those two things mutually exclusive? Were they terrorists, extortionists, robbers who morphed into mass murderers who morphed to serial killers and then decided to retire on 10 million dollars rather than kill people anymore? If they hadn't called people and told them about Montgomery, would they still be on the loose? Doesn't Tacoma have an ordinance about discharging a firearm within the city limits - a common one around here? I mean, these guys shoot up a stump every night for weeks on end, and nobody calls the cops? And does the INS ever bother to actually deport people anymore? I hope I get some answers, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Unishooter or the Beltway Blaster

It looks like Susana Cornett at Cut On the Bias was right about the unishooter or beltway blaster (your choice) based upon this article in the Washington Post. He's the rare guy who got away with a mass murder, serialized it, and now, like a typical American, wants to make money off it. We really, really need to catch this guy, or we're going to have copycats out the wazoo.

Washington University Law Students Belatedly Do The Right Thing

The Washington University Law School Student Government (SBA) decided to recognize a pro-life student group after voting just last week not to, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The Post has no trouble saying the ACLU "demanded" the SBA reverse itself, despite no mention of the dispute on their website, but couldn't bring itself to mention the name of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), which only provided support in the words of the Post, even though an earlier editorial had no such trouble, FIRE features the flap prominently on their website, FIRE has written the dean, and FIRE wrote a joint letter with the ACLU to the SBA asking them to change their position. Why do I still get the Post? My wife saves more with the coupons than a subscription costs, so I'm not allowed to cancel our subscription.

Washington University Law School Refuses Recognition of Pro-Life Group

Washington University Law School Student Government has decided, tolerant, open, loving people that they are, not to recognize a Law Student Pro-Life Group, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch. What's odd about this story is that I'm in agreement with the Law School Dean, and not the students, when he says, ""We appear to have stomped our foot down and said there's only one ideologically and politically appropriate way to behave." I guess the students have done a good job of picking up the reality, and not the rhetoric, of campus life. Apparently, recognition was denied because the group has a narrow political focus, and approving it would open the door to other groups with narrow political foci. Why this is bad, you'll have to ask the students. The paper notes that there are 29 recognized groups, ranging from legally themed groups to sports clubs to minority and religious groups, and what the Post so opaquely refers to as "proponents of gender and sexual equality". Is that a feminist organization, or a gay and lesbian one or both? Who knows, who cares, they are acceptable; pro-life isn't.

Isn't if funny, when the left today talks about the erosion of civil rights because of the war on terror without providing an example, they never mention that the one protest movement that is legally muzzled in this country is the pro-life movement, with restrictions on their speech based upon proximity to an abortion clinic?

Shock Jock Fired!

Shock Jock Beau Duran was fired for his on air phone call to Flynn Kyle, the Arizona Republic reports. I don't know about you're neck of the woods, but around St. Louis it's big news.

Good for KUPD for doing the right thing. I know radio stations hire guys like Duran not to be thought provoking but simply provoking, but to America's credit we're not ready for someone to use the pain of loss of widows and orphans for amusement.

Shock Jock Gets Shocked

If you live in St. Louis or Phoenix, you've heard the story about how shock Jock Beau Duran called Daryl Kile's widow, Flynn, on the air and after telling her she looked hot, asked if she had a date for the game. Flynn mustered the class to say "Goodbye" before hanging up. Everybody and their brother has been apologizing for the incident, the St. Louis Post Dispatch ran a couple of letters of apology from Phoenicians, the radio station even put up lame apology on their web site.

While it's nice everyone in Phoenix felt the need to apologize, they didn't do anything wrong. We know it's the mutton headed jock who's to blame (along with the station manager), and that our own St. Louis idiot shock jocks would have done the same if only the Diamondbacks had a recent widow, or something similar. Let's face it, the race for morning radio ratings is a race to the bottom, although I'm not sure we're sinking any lower. Wasn't it Howard Stern, the king himself, who talked about how "hot" the "chicks" were fleeing the Columbine massacre? Isn't he making more money now than then? As long as the audience listens, we'll continue to hear it - whatever it is. And don't think radio is somehow different -- wasn't it Salon, bastion of everything good, that ran Forbidden Thoughts About 9/11, which was a catalogue (when including the follow up "The Readers Respond") of just about every tasteless, thoughtless, and heartless response - common denominator of shocking - to 9/11 that even Howard Stern wouldn't have aired?

According to this story, originally Doran wasn't going to be disciplined in any way, despite the uproar. But when a big advertiser, The Shane Co. ("now you have a friend in the diamond business"), yanked their advertising and demanded the station make public apologies in St. Louis, Beau was suspended for a week. Not much of a penalty, but you take what you can get. I never much cared for the Shane Co., but I have to applaud their action. Not enough to run out and buy some jewelry, but still I hope other advertisers consider what it is they sponsor. Maybe it will be a "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." moment. Or not. It's a tricky job, balancing what some want to hear against what many don't. But if you're an advertiser, there's nothing wrong in saying: Say and do what you want, just not on my nickel.