Quick hits 4/22

Notes from my reading:

Larry Elder, from a column on big government economics:

An economics professor asked his class which of these two scenarios the students preferred. First scenario: Japan grows at an annual rate of 7 percent, and the Unites States grows at 4 percent. Second scenario: Japan and the United States both grow at 3 percent. Overwhelmingly, the students chose the second option. In other words, the students accepted their own lower domestic growth rather than allow Japan — a friendly nation — to outpace us. In exchange for "equality," they chose an otherwise lower standard of living. They, at least, acknowledged the existence — and accepted the price — of the trade-off. If people understood the damage done when government takes from A and gives to B, how many would sign on?

It is stunning and sad that these students have become so brainwashed by Marxist rhetoric that they would explicitly choose making everybody poorer for the sake of a Utopian fantasy. That is exactly the position that big government advocates advance, but at least many (most?) of them are ignorant that such a trade-off exists.

Elder recognizes this:

Collectivism is a bargain that most people — if they knew the real price tag — would reject. These trade-offs include lower productivity, diminished initiative, fewer jobs, rewarding reckless behavior and poor choices, a lower-than-otherwise standard of living, less economic freedom, greater government dependency, and fewer resources to spend on national security and to secure our borders.

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Michael Barone, from a column on increasing Wall Street regulation and its beneficiaries:

Little wonder that Goldman Sachs likes the idea. It will be able to borrow at lower cost than small competitors and will be assured that its large counterparties will qualify for government bailouts. Big firms tend to favor regulation because it insulates them from competition and protects them against loss. […]

In the 2008 campaign cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' opensecrets.org website, Goldman Sachs personnel contributed $4.5 million to Democrats and just $1.5 million to Republicans.

Add in three other big Wall Street firms — Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup — and the total take was $12.7 million to Democrats and $6.7 million to Republicans. The image of Wall Streeters as solid Republicans is as dead as J. P. Morgan himself.

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With a (massively regressive, it should be noted) Value Added Tax push coming after the elections are safely over, it’s worth looking at their rate history elsewhere. Canada has actually lowered their VAT from the original 7% to 5%, but every other nation has later increased the rate (source: The Wall Street Journal):

Denmark 9-25%
France 13.6-19.6
Germany 10-19
Italy 12-20
Japan 3-5
Spain 12-16
Sweden 17.7-25
Switzerland 6.5-7.6
United Kingdom 8-17.5

Ahh, but maybe they reduced their income tax rates? Not so much.

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Jay Nordlinger on our tax code:

The tax code pits Americans against one another. It pits homeowners against renters, married people against unmarried people, people with children against people without children, people with children going to college against people with children going into trades — and on and on. The tax code is packed with social policy, and bias. That’s one reason I say, a pox on it.

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More Nordlinger:

I offer you good news out of Havana: “A surprisingly small crowd sweated and sang along to performances by Cuban rock, folk and salsa stars Saturday, at what the communist government billed as a politically important ‘concert for the homeland.’”

The article continued, “Organizers had said the show would be headlined by Cuba’s most famous folk singer, Silvio Rodriguez. But instead the pro-Castro government activist made fans wait for an hour in unrelenting afternoon sun before he took the stage, read a letter defending the single-party communist system — and then left without performing.”

Doesn’t that warm your heart?

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From another Nordlinger column:

President Obama has another pick coming up. If I were able to question him, I might ask something like, “When you were in the Senate, you voted against both John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You said they were qualified in traditional ways, but they were conservative — therefore, in your eyes, they were unfit to serve on the Supreme Court. By your standard, should Republican senators vote against your nominees because they’re liberal?”

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Finally, Charles Krauthammer on the fatuousness of US nuclear policy:

[T]he Washington summit was part of a larger misdirection play — Obama’s “nuclear spring.” Last week, a START treaty, redolent of precisely the kind of Cold War obsolescence Obama routinely decries. The number of warheads in Russia’s aging and decaying nuclear stockpile is an irrelevancy now that the existential U.S.-Soviet struggle is over. One major achievement of the treaty, from the point of view of Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, is that it could freeze deployment of U.S. missile defenses — thus constraining the single greatest anti-nuclear breakthrough of our time.

The left wing resistance to missile defense has never made any sense to me. I'm sure some of it was the anti-American, pro-Soviet worldview that infected the political left of the 80's, but shouldn't that silliness have been relegated to the dustbin of history as well? Is raw hatred for the US still driving opinion this issue?

Just bizarre.

The rationale for censorship

We're too dumb to hear all opinions and still make an informed choice, according to anti-free speech activists. Bert Gall refutes such idiocy:

Democracy 21, which lobbies for strict restrictions on free speech, warns ominously that the [Citizens United] decision “is a disaster for the American people.” Common Cause asserts that the decision has created a “political crisis.” On its Web page, Public Citizen proclaims, in huge red lettering, that “SUPREME COURT UNDOES DEMOCRACY.”

This hyperbole betrays a belief—common among proponents of restrictions on political speech—that Americans, like lemmings, are merely dull creatures who can be easily led off a cliff. Thus, unless the government “protects” us from hearing corporations’ speech about politics, we’ll always vote in ways that benefit corporations because they will spend lots of money to convince us to do so.

This conclusion is as ridiculous as it is patronizing. If corporations are capable of making the public do their bidding, then why isn’t everyone driving their Edsels to Circuit City to purchase Betamax video recorders?

The answer, of course, is that Americans are not imbeciles who mindlessly succumb to corporate advertising campaigns. We are fully capable of evaluating corporate speech on its merits; thus, we do not need “protection” from it.

Bill of rights you have to work for

Sad but true:

It took $833.69, a total of 15 hours 50 minutes, four trips to the Metropolitan Police Department, two background checks, a set of fingerprints, a five-hour class and a 20-question multiple-choice exam. Oh, and the votes of five Supreme Court justices. They’re the ones who really made it possible for me, as a District resident, to own a handgun, a constitutional right [...]

A leopard doesn't change its stripes

So said the noted philosopher Emmitt Smith.

No surprise, then, that new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's first ruling was to vote to give a stay of execution to a hit man whose guilt was not questioned by anybody, including his lawyer or himself.

As to those of you gullible enough to wonder if the "real" Sotomayor was the hard left judicial activist of her past record or the "transparently absurd" (Wendy Long's words) law and order moderate of her confirmation hearing...well, that didn't take long now did it?

Quick hits

Some things I've run across, with limited commentary, combined to avoid a bunch of really short posts:

Thomas Donlan: “Once a government gets the idea that it can control the economy, or at least smooth off the rough edges of the business cycle, there's trouble ahead."

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Bizarre statement by Obama in a speech in Africa: "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top".

He’s correct, but what on earth is he talking about? In this country the government skims off about double that, and the president is trying to GROW the government.

What a hypocrite.

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What a difference a few years makes. Under Bush, we famously had jobless recovery for a while. Under Obama, we have job-loss recovery.

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Dick Morris: “Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.”

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John Roberts echoes my own beliefs on “empathy” and the role of a judge in this quote from his confirmation hearing in 2005: “If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.”

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Indiana governor Mitch Daniels refers to Obama’s domestic programs as “shock and awe statism.” Perfect.

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President Bush (43) gets too much abuse from some quarters and too much of a pass from others, but one thing that we should not forget: the man did more for the people of Africa than anybody who has ever lived.

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Dems unintentionally let us in on how they really feel about Cap and Tax with the unemployment provision that provides 70% of your salary (in addition to any other standard unemployment benefits) is you lose your job because of the bill. That’s a clear admission that they realize it will destroy a lot of jobs.

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Mark Steyn: "Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential."

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More Steyn, on what our future may look like with a government health care takeover: "Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of 'lifestyle choices.' Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his 'lifestyle choices' get a pass while theirs don't. But that's the point: Tyranny is always whimsical."

Religion of Peace update

Malaysian Islamic court orders woman caned for having a beer

KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 (AP) - (Kyodo)—A Malaysian Islamic court sentenced a part-time Singaporean model to six strokes of the cane and a 5,000 ringgit ($1,416) fine for drinking beer in a nightclub, the New Straits Times reported Tuesday.

The Syariah High Court in Kuantan, capital of Pahang State, handed down the ruling after Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, pleaded guilty to the charge.

Consuming alcohol is prohibited for Muslims, but it is very rare for the syariah court to impose caning on women.

"The caning is aimed at making the accused repent and serves as a lesson to Muslims," Judge Abdul Rahman Yunus was quoted saying.

He imposed the maximum penalty allowed under the state Islamic law. If the fine is not paid, Kartika faces three years in jail.

According to the newspaper, this is the second time the Kuantan court has made such a ruling.

The first was against a waitress who was arrested with Kartika and another man during a raid by the religious vice squad on a hotel nightclub in Cherating, a popular beach resort near Kuantan, in July last year.

The waitress and the man were also sentenced to fines of 5,000 ringgit and six strokes of the cane.

All three are appealing.

Quick hits

Some quick things I've run across, offered with little or no comment:

Ouch: “Short of writing ‘get whitey,’ It's difficult to imagine how Judge Sotomayor could have fouled up the Ricci case any more than she did. Let's count the ways.”

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Nah, no need to read bills before voting on them: TARP tax break recipients include NASCAR race track builders, Burger King, and a London rum producer. Let’s rush through cap and tax!

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Michael Kinsley on health care rationing: “Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he’d get it and you wouldn’t, it’s rationing.”

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BOTWT reader Joe Engel asks if a gay lawmaker voting against gay marriage is hypocritical, isn’t also the smoker Obama signing anti-tobacco legislation hypocritical? It has to be both or neither.

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Strange headline here: "Analysts say home loans will soon be hard to get with bad credit". Good news, but why “soon”? Why would it have ever been otherwise? The ability to repay should be the only consideration for determining whether loans should be granted.

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Ann Coulter nails the fatuousness of yet another of Obama’s moral equivalencies, this one from the Cairo speech:

Obama said, "Now let me be clear, issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam." No, he said, "the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."

So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don't have enough female firefighters here in America.

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Glen Reynolds on Al Franken: “Caligula sent a horse to the Senate. Minnesota is just sending part of the horse.”

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The first lady's unfortunate disrespect of Queen Elizabeth showed that one does not have to be white to be white trash.

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Megan McArdle: “There’s a reason that most countries do not attempt to fund large welfare states with a very progressive income tax, the way we do. The income of the wealthy is fungible, mobile, and volatile. These are not strengths from the vantage of the tax system.”

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Populism in action: “A health care rally drew only four people to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker’s office Thursday. Sponsored by MoveOn, a national public policy advocacy organization, the rally was intended to support expanded health care for the poor.”

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Jeffrey Miron: “The fundamental problem underlying the financial crisis was government policy. Instead of undertaking enormous new policies, we should try to fix or eliminate bad policies and focus on efficiency rather than redistribution. Doing nothing new and simply working with pre-existing procedures would have been much better than anything we’ve done so far.”

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A call for honesty from James Gibney:

Every product whose ingredients benefit from a subsidy should include the following language on the label:
"This product has been subsidized by the U.S. government at taxpayer expense. For more information, please visit usda.gov."

And every product that benefits from tariff protection should have the following language on the label:
"This product is protected from foreign competition by U.S. import tariffs. Its price is higher as a result. For more information, please visit usitc.gov."

Freudian slip?

A tip of the hat to Powerline for this remarkable find, a quote from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be published in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

It's a fascinating glimpse into the liberal mindset for a couple of reasons.

First is the strangely uncontroversial desire for population control, by any means possible and preferably in populations "that we don't want to have too many of" as she puts it. The wackier factions of the environmental movement have often fantasized about plagues to wipe out significant portions of the human race, and even the more mainstream left mostly sees humans as a bad thing for the planet, and thus populations need to be frozen or outright reduced or unspeakable catastrophes will occur (see Paul Erlich's unintentional comedy for a pointed example).

But second is the leftist impulse that dare not speak its name, namely that we don't want too many of certain kinds of people. You seldom hear it acknowledged, but the abortion movement of the 20th century in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular, grew out of the desire to keep down black populations. "A woman's right to choose" is much like "state's rights" in that it is not in itself, nor are even most (post-1960's/early 1970's, at least) proponents of the concepts in fact trying to find justifications for racist policy, but in that they have often been used as code words for those who want to keep blacks down, be it by segregationist laws or by limiting offspring.

Admitting these kinds of things is usually avoided in these days of political correctness, but then again Mrs. Ginsberg is 76, and it is not that uncommon for people who predate the PC movement to sometimes let slip things that would make their children or grandchildren blush. Nobody (except the loony right) thinks she's a racist per se, but how easily historically racist concepts such as population control and abortion slip into matter of fact conversation for the leftist who lived through the 60's is a fascinating glimpse into their underlying worldview. ("Affirmative action" serves a similar function for later generations).

Math geeks unite! etc.

Scattershooting while wondering what ever happened to Swen Nater:

Tuesday was Square Root Day, 3/3/09. I know I was partying, 7 years is a long time to wait for another chance.

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Some apologies.

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Sign of the times: The per capita rate of civilian killings in the border city of Juarez, Mexico in 2008 was nearly three-and-a-half times as great as the per capita rate of civilian killings in the Iraqi province of Baghdad

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More transparency in the Obama administration? Not so much: When Vice President Joe Biden spoke to the annual meeting of AFL-CIO officials at the plush Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach on March 5, television cameras were not allowed to cover his speech – on orders from the White House, Fox News quoted the AFL-CIO as saying.

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More evidence of the decline and fall of American Journalism. From the New York Times corrections page: “An editorial on Feb. 22 stated incorrectly that unlawfully entering the country is not a criminal offense. It is a misdemeanor for a first-time offender.”

Yes, a major newspaper editor did not know that illegal immigration was, you know, illegal. And still has a job, despite such fundamental ignorance.

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I was surprised to learn that Steve Nash, was the lowest-drafted player (15th) ever to win the MVP award. I would have guessed that some late first rounder or second (or later, in the old days) rounder would have done so at some point, given that some have become major stars.

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Ari Fleisher asks MSNBC why they are not "going after Democrat members of Congress for why they aren't distancing themselves from Keith Olbermann.”

I think it’s obvious: because the White House hasn't ordered them to.

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Just like Bush, but faster!: “From Election Day 2000 to Election Day 2008, the S&P 500 fell 29.8%. From Election Day 2008 til the afternoon of March 6, it’s down 33.3%.”

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Encouraging sign: Mississippi bans revenue-light cameras; Upon Governor Haley Barbour's signature, Mississippi would join Alaska, Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin which have also banned automated citations (red-light and speed cameras) through judicial or legislative action. A similar ban passed the Montana state House of Representatives last month and currently awaits Senate action. An attempt to ban cameras in Missouri ran into a roadblock in a state Senate committee.

Hopefully Texas will see the light (pun intended) and follow suit; this is a scam whose time has passed.

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A note on buyer’s remorse from The Atlantic: “Like the college students who stayed up late to be inspired by his campaign rallies only to find Obama’s first significant action to be a stimulus program that will transfer about a trillion dollars from them to the Baby Boomers, Silicon Valley Obama supporters are likely to find that a government-dominated economic era will not a great one in which to start companies that threaten big incumbent corporations that have juice with the government. I hope they appreciate the irony.”

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Michael Barone with a sad tale showing that racism may be on life support but is still alive:

"Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, wife of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, presides over a hearing where white witnesses are advised to leave the room. Congressman Conyers joined the Judiciary Committee in 1965, when the Chairman was Emanuel Celler and the ranking was Republican William McCulloch, co-sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. What would they have thought of this? As a nation, we have become more tolerant and inclusive in the years since 1965. Detroit, alas, seems to have moved in the opposite direction."

Somebody call Webster, etc.

Did Obama seriously say that Clarence Thomas did not have enough experience to serve on the Supreme Court? Wow. We need some new words, irony and chutzpah are no longer sufficient for some situations.

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Kirk Mitchell has an idea of where to house current Guantanamo prisoners in the wake of Boumediene: “a minimum security facility should be established in Washington D.C., equidistant between the Capitol and the Supreme Court Building."

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Another baseball tidbit, this one courtesy of Clem Comly.

Five players have played for both World Series teams during the season:

Jack Kramer, 1951 Giants and Yankees
Johnny Schmitz, 1952 Dodgers and Yankees
Sid Monge, 1984 Padres and Tigers
Lonnie Smith, 1985 Cardinals and Royals
Jim Bruske, 1998 Padres and Yankees

Only Smith actually appeared in the Series in question.

If this kind of research interests you, you might want to look into joining SABR. Disclosure: I was a longtime moderator of and now train and supervise current moderators of the research e-mail list, but I have no financial stake in recommending the organization.

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Jack Kelly echoes my observation (first item) on antiwar hypocrisy:

Did you see the huge crowd outside the Russian Embassy protesting the war in Georgia?

Neither did I. Now that we have a genuine war of aggression, the silence on the Left is deafening. […]

It is scandalous to liberals that terrorists at Gitmo don't have easy access to lawyers, but most don't care how many Georgians the Russians kill.

Vladimir Putin is counting on this.

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A couple of environmental factoids:

Glaciers are advancing in Northern California, Norway, Sweden, Pakistan and New Zealand.

Arctic ice has been thinning by 3% per decade, but Antarctic ice has been growing by 1% a decade. Antarctic ice is 20 times bigger, which means that overall global polar ice is growing by 8/10 of 1% a decade.

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On a related note, the California legislature passed a bill that would have required the state’s public schools to teach “climate change,” which fortunately was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. An increase in such inconvenient truths has led greens to sense some urgency in their quest to indoctrinate our youth; gone are the good old days when you could wait until college to start the brainwashing.

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Energy analyst Vinod Dar (Dar and Company) on why global action on climate is unlikely to happen: The US and Japan will not tell Asia and Africa to choose poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy over electricity. Europe might, but nobody will listen.”

Dar (sorry Ticket fans, his nickname is probably not “Eight Dollar”) lays out his vision of what we should do:

“Contingency planning should entail strategic responses to a warming globe, a cooling globe and a globe whose climate reverberates with laughter at human hubris.”

Indeed, the thing to keep in mind is that not only do we not know if the planet is going to warm or cool long term, we also do not know whether warming would be beneficial or harmful to man. We do know, from relatively recent experience (a little over a century ago), that a world more than a wee bit cooler would be harmful.

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Is Rep. Jack Murtha ever going to apologize to the US Marines for his shameful “killed innocent civilians in cold blood” slander from May 17, 2006? His allegations, irresponsible at the time, have by now been conclusively shown to be false.

If Murtha is an honorable man, he will do the honorable thing. I won’t be holding my breath.

Same old Edwards, etc.

John Weidner calls BS on Walter Shapiro’s claim of John Edwards disillusionment:

What malarky. You were besotted with Edwards because he was (or was pretending to be) a liberal Democrat. And Edwards almost certainly paid flattering attention to the guy who was writing a book about his campaign. You dolt, Edwards and his wife almost certainly coldly planned how to woo you, and knew what your weaknesses are. That's what trial lawyers do with a jury. They study every scrap of information available on each juryman, and, like chameleons, tailor the message, and paint their very selves, to fit them. (I know about this stuff; my dear wife's on the other side, the good side, fighting scoundrels like Edwards every day.)

Everybody who retained any objectivity could see that he was a phony, and were not surprised by this. When a guy talks populism and green-ism while building the biggest mansion in the county, there's a 99% chance that he's a sham. When a guy spends minutes in front of a mirror fluffing his hairdo, there's a 99% chance that he will not resist the sexual temptations available to a celebrity.

And when you make millions as a trial lawyer, it means you are skilled at convincing people of things that just ain't so.

Hammer. Nail. Head. I’ve called Edwards the Empty Suit from North Carolina, but I think Dennis Miller is correct in saying that’s an insult to coat hangers.

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How does Michael Phelps swim 17 times in 9 days at the Olympics? Your standard 2000 calorie diet will not get it done. Try 4000 calories…every meal.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Man...I think I need a pizza and a pitcher, I'm feeling a little tired today.

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Man attacked bus, tried to rob 7-Eleven, stripped, fought dog and withstood Taser

Or, as we call it around here, Friday night.

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Those who claim that abortion is “settled law” based on a 35 year old Supreme Court precedent must have been mortified when the current Court extended habeas corpus rights to POW’s in Boumediene v. Bush. After all, it overturned 58 years of settled law in that the Court had ruled, in 1950’s Johnson v. Eisentrager, that nonresident alien enemy combatants had no right to habeas corpus.

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Isn’t “entitlements” an odd term for government programs that transfer assets from those who earned them to those who did not?

Wouldn’t “slavery” be a more proper term? That’s what one person being forced to work in the service of another, with no legal claim to the fruits of his labor, has traditionally been called. We should just be honest and call effective tax rates what they are, slavery rates – the percentage of their work time each year that an individual is required to function as a human slave.

Indeed, the difference between slavery and charity is one of freedom vs. coercion.

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Lat November, Brazil discovered a reserve of billions of barrels of oil in an area 180 miles offshore from Sao Paulo and Rio. And here’s the punch line: they are already working on the drilling platforms and pipelines to bring this oil into the market.

Why is it that there was no resistance by the international environmental movement? No moralistic pronouncements, no demonstrations against Brazil or its interests, no lawsuits filed in Brazilian or international courts to delay or prevent development.

You might conclude that the gnashing of teeth and legal maneuvering to prevent the US from drilling off its own coasts is not about concern for the environment at all, that it’s instead purely about trying to damage America.

And you would be correct.

Judicial philosophy etc.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on the question of how cases should be decided: “Look, it’s not my view: It’s what is permissible and impermissible under the Constitution. If you want this or that, by all means pass a law — and if the Constitution permits it, I’ll okay it. Even if it’s a law I deplore. But if the Constitution does not, I won’t.”

Perfect.

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If you’re not familiar with the international teams, here’s a great preview from a friend of Kurt at Forum Blue & Gold.

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Why has “global warming” been replaced by “climate change?”

Because we’re a few years into what is expected to be a three decade cycle of global cooling, meaning those who want control of every aspect of your life needed more versatile terminology.

Odd that those who are most critical of pre-emptive war for the national interest and based on irrefutable evidence are most eager to go all-in on a pre-emptive war based on the flimsy predictions of theoretical computer models.

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How is it that Obama is considered the (or a) candidate of change? He seems to me to be almost wholly reactionary, with a mixture of positions pulled straight from the playbooks of the 1970’s, 1960’s and 1930’s. To label an old-fashioned Chicago machine politician espousing extreme welfare statism at home and reflexive appeasement abroad as being a reformer or an advocate of change is as silly as it is dishonest.

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Government 101: George Mason U economist Donald Boudreaux, blogging at Café Hayek (great name!), on the necessity of airline regulation:

"Suppose that all government regulation of airlines were abolished today. Does ... Congressman [Oberstar] suppose that airline executives would tomorrow fire all inspectors and maintenance crews, indifferent to the prospect of losing multimillion-dollar assets in fiery crashes? Does he not see that airlines with poor safety records would have difficulty attracting customers? Is he unaware that airlines' insurers have ample incentives to work closely with airlines at keeping air-travel safety at optimal levels? In short, is Mr. Oberstar really so dimwitted to think that airlines will be safe only if they are regulated by government?"

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The absurd lengths to which Obama supporters will go to play the race card deserves as much ridicule as possible. Peter Kirsanow weighs in with "25 Reasons You May be a Racist"

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My Senator And Me: A Dog's Eye View Of Washington, D.C. is a children’s book written by Ted Kennedy. What caught my eye was this note from a cited review: “Kennedy's introduction to the political process is clear, informative, and loaded with child appeal, in part due to the choice of narrator: his Portuguese Water Dog, Splash.”

Yes, the man who killed Mary Jo Kopechne has a dog named Splash. Disgusting chutzpah from a disgusting man.

Scattershooting

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Chuck Nevitt:

Trivia I would never have been able to answer: Name the only two NCAA Division I colleges who have won a national championship in football (mythical, since the NCAA does not crown a champion at the highest level), basketball or baseball in each of the last four decades.

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Bob Novak brings us the sad story of how the Democrat leadership in the House, when forced to make a choice between saving US lives or increasing billable hours for trial lawyers, chose…well, you can guess.

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If the Lakers are invited to play Celebrity Jeopardy, it might be a good idea to leave Lamar Odom at home. After their February 6 loss in Atlanta Phil Jackson said his team was disjointed. When asked if he agreed with that assessment, Odom said “I don’t even know what disjointed means.”

Given Lamar’s past, he probably guessed it means it’s time to re-up.

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Have you noticed that every mass shooting happens in a “gun-free zone” – schools, post offices and the like? And that on those rare occasions when they are stopped it’s because they run into somebody else with a gun? There’s a lesson in there somewhere…now what could it be?

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Jason Kidd will be happy to get back to Dallas for so many reasons, but don’t overlook the fans. Earlier in the season, when asked why the Nets play harder on the road he replied "Maybe more people in the seats?"

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It was nice to see activist Bob Geldof effusively praising President Bush and our policies in Africa, a reminder that the wailing about how the perception of the US has dropped throughout the world is based more on the success of anti-American propagandists getting their message out than on reality. Usefully illustrating the point, major American papers ignored the story (as they do with pretty much any news that reflects positively on the US and/or the president), with only Investor’s Business Daily in addition to the linked Washington Times article even mentioning it.

Thankfully, there is a thriving alternative media out there. The bad news is that you have to work a little to find it, with most passively having their worldview shaped or at least influenced by anti-American elites.


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One more reason college basketball is a joke: Drake beat Iowa in Iowa City for the first time in 40 years due in no small part to the fact that Iowa shot 0, that’s zero/zip/nada, free throws.

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Trivia answer: Oklahoma (1974-75-85 football, 1994 baseball, 2000 football) and Cal State Fullerton (1979-84-95-2004 baseball).

Scattershooting

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Ollie Mack:

Oh yeah, open borders is a great policy idea:
A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the last year.

And working to make getting a FISA warrant as difficult as possible is another bit of genius:
U.S. intelligence officials got mired for nearly 10 hours seeking approval to use wiretaps against al Qaeda terrorists suspected of kidnapping Queens soldier Alex Jimenez in Iraq earlier this year, The Post has learned.

Item: 46 percent of Americans feel that the US economy is in a recession, according to a CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll. You know, there are random idiots out there who are impressionable and gullible to believe that man walked the earth with dinosaurs, that the US or Israel of both either committed or had advance knowledge of and allowed 9/11, or that Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. But how can such a large segment believe something such a blatant falsehood? I understand that mainstream media propaganda in service of the DNC is relentless, but it still saddens that so many people can be so uninformed as to be so far off the mark on such a fundamental fact.

I turned on the Lakers opener and a Tennessee-Houston football game broke out.

Speaking of the new Lakers season, suppose you want to go to a home game and partake in the convenience of valet parking. Well…that will be $4510, up front (tips not included). Yep, you have to buy the entire 41 game season at $110 a pop. I’d just like to be one of the valets, I can catch the game later on TiVo.

And finally, thanks to (genius blog name) Kissing Suzy Kolber for perfectly summarizing my thoughts on the recently concluded baseball postseason.

America's Team

Even those who read their daily sports page and tune into Sportscenter on occasion may have missed it, but there is a great story developing in college sports. The Duke lacrosse team overcame an early 6-1 deficit and stormed to a 19-11 win to advance to the NCAA Final Four.

I don't usually have a rooting interest in this thing, although I enjoy it and usually try to tune into the Final Four games on ESPN. But how can you not root for Duke in the wake of the despicable lynching endured by three of their players, causing the cancellation of last season for the team and destroying the lives of three young men whose only crime was to be white and at least somewhat privileged. No need to rehash the story here, it has been very well documented, but suffice it to say that the conduct of the corrupt DA trying to secure black votes in an upcoming election and the cheerleading of countless racists and class bigots in a faction of the Duke faculty and much of the mainstream media were as shameful as the lynchings in the bad old days of segregation.

"Fight, Fight Blue Devils,
Fight for Duke and the Blue and White."

And fight for David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty.

UPDATE 5/28/07: A campus organization asks for an apology from the group of 88 faculty bigots. I'd advise against holding your breath waiting for it.

UPDATE 5/29/07: Ultimately Duke fell just short, hitting the post twice late in trying to tie the game. Kudos to them nonetheless for what they have had to endure and overcome the last two years, they serve as an inspiration to us all.

Why do they call it life?

Reading about a Danish terror indictment, I came across this head scratcher:

The four men, who cannot be named under a court order, would face up to life in prison if found guilty. Under Danish law, life sentences are commuted after 16 years.

Huh? If "life" sentences last 16 years, then why not call them what they are - 16 year sentences?

Useful Idiot of the Week

Time for a new quasi-weekly feature for those who, perhaps but not necessarily unintentionally, further the cause of terrorism. Named, of course, for Lenin's description of western reporters and other western fellow travelers who furthered the cause of communism via sympathetic or favorable coverage of the Soviet Union and its policies.

This week's "winner" is Carter-appointed Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who issued a ruling that the NSA's program of surveilling international calls to or from terrorists is unconstitutional. In so doing she ignored a mountain of higher court precedent that the President has the constitutional authority under Article II to order warrantless surveillance for national security purposes. The program has previously been upheld by the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Circuits, as well as the FISA Court of Review, but if you judge-shop long enough you can find somebody to rule pretty much anything.

The Sixth Circuit will surely reject this decision on appeal, but it's sad that it even has to waste its time. This decision is just am intensely partisan judge putting Democrat Party politics above the law and the interests of the country. Even the far left NYT was forced to report on the scorn which legal analysts on both sides of the aisle have heaped on the decision:

They said the opinion overlooked important precedents, failed to engage the government’s major arguments, used circular reasoning, substituted passion for analysis and did not even offer the best reasons for its own conclusions.

Discomfort with the quality of the decision is almost universal, said Howard J. Bashman, a Pennsylvania lawyer whose Web log provides comprehensive and nonpartisan reports on legal developments.

“It does appear,” Mr. Bashman said, “that folks on all sides of the spectrum, both those who support it and those who oppose it, say the decision is not strongly grounded in legal authority.”

At least terrorists and their sympathizers got to celebrate briefly. As does Judge Taylor, having been named the first SarcastiPundit Useful Idiot of the Week and all that implies.

UPDATE 8/24/06: Ann Althouse has more on the quirks of decision and its implications. Money quote:

"For those who approve of the outcome, the judge’s opinion is counterproductive. It will be harder to defend upon appeal than a more careful decision. It suggests that there are no good legal arguments against the program, just petulance and outrage and antipathy toward President Bush. It helps those who have been arguing for years about result-oriented, activist judges."

Deja vu

The governments of the US, Great Britain and Pakistan deserve our grateful thanks for foiling the massive scale airplane bombing plot. In particular, credit goes to Scotland Yard, MI-5, a heroic British Muslim whistleblower, Pakistani intelligence, and our own NSA and Treasury Departments. WSJ notes that "The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications." Also vital were the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program and Treasury's SWIFT terrorist finance tracking program.

Wait...those last two sound vaguely familiar, where have I (and thus future terrorists) heard about them before? Do not for a minute forget that this kind of coordinated intelligence and law enforcement effort is exactly what the ACLU and the New York Times are trying to eliminate. They use the civil liberties canard, as if the ability to plan and execute mass murder transparently and anonymously is part of the Bill of Rights and thus are worth protecting at the expense of large numbers of American lives.

Fortunately, the early returns in court are promising. The government has chosen to prosecute individuals who violate espionage laws, and as it moves up the ladder courts are holding that they have the right to do so. A new decision also holds that institutions such as the Times have no more right to violate espionage laws than do individuals. There is a long road of "lawyers gone wild" yet to come, but the possibility that those who choose to flout the law in the service of partisan political posturing will be held to account for their actions seems to be closer to becoming a reality. And we will all be safer, with no loss of any liberty for the non-terrorists among us, if that comes to pass.

The "Living" Constitution

Quote du jour, courtesy of The Federalist Patriot:


"Many law professors, and others who hold contempt for our Constitution, preach that the Constitution is a living document. Saying that the Constitution is a living document is the same as saying we don't have a Constitution. For rules to mean anything, they must be fixed. How many people would like to play me poker and have the rules be 'living'? Depending on 'evolving standards,' maybe my two pair could beat your flush." --Walter Williams