A post by Ward Farnsworth at Volokh on "rent seeking behavior" reminded me of one of my objections to lawyering:

....there are two general ways to increase your wealth: by creating things people want, or by fighting over prizes that already exist -- things other people have created or found. Either strategy might be more successful than the other, and perfectly rational to pursue; it depends on the circumstances. Which do you prefer as your own method of choice? Which do you spend more time doing? Why does it matter?

The difference between these methods of gaining wealth -- between, say, competing to build a better restaurant and competing to get to the treasure first (rent seeking) -- is that the first one creates wealth, or better-offness, for the world. Customers are made happy, and restaurants gradually get better. Fighting over who gets the treasure isn't like that. The treasure doesn't get bigger as a result. In a sense it gets smaller because wealth is eaten up in the effort to lay hold of it.

"Attorneys fees are there by statute!" I was told.

Great. Now that I was out of business, I could be born again as a despicable parasite and help ensure that other business owners would be put out of business. It struck me that if I became a homeless derelict, I'd be doing more for the world than if I helped ruin other people's businesses. (It didn't help much that one of the many reasons my business failed was that the building was cited by the fire marshall for inadequate handicapped access, and there was no way to remedy this without major alterations to the building, which I did not own, for patrons in wheelchairs who never came.)

Think of this on a larger scale and you can see that the more a society spends on rent seeking -- on quarrels over who gets what -- the poorer it becomes. If that's all that anyone did, everyone would starve in due course.

Farnsworth concludes with a question:

But probably the most interesting question for my current audience is this: to what extent are lawyers professional rent seekers, and to what extent are they something more worthy of admiration and encouragement?

This piece by Stephen Bainbridge made me realize that lots of parasitic lawyers will soon be waking up to the fact that Global Warming looms large as another rent seeking scheme:

trial lawyers are gearing up to turn global warming into their next pot of gold. A coalition of environmental groups and cities are suing the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank of the United States for making loans to finance oil pipelines, oil drilling, and similar projects that supposedly result in a net emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans trial lawyers Gerald Mapes and Timothy Porter sued dozens of energy companies, claiming they had contributed to global warming.

Last year, Business Week reported that there were 16 pending global warming cases of these sorts pending around the country. More are surely in the pipeline, so to speak.

Indeed, the prospect of a boom in global warming litigation is prompting law firms to begin setting up units specializing in climate change issues. According to the Dallas Morning News, for example, Dallas law firms Vinson & Elkins and Thompson & Knight have set up global warming units with 41 and 26 lawyers, respectively.

This is a classic example of why tort reform is a pressing need. The Institute for Legal Reform offers some chilling statistics: "America's civil justice system is the world's most expensive, with a direct cost in 2005 of $261 billion, or 2.09 percent of GDP.

"Tort costs were $880 per U.S. citizen in 2005, meaning the average American family of four paid a 'litigation tax' of more than $3,500 due to increased costs from lawsuits and other liability expenses that force businesses to raise the price of products and services. That cost is equivalent to nearly an 8 percent tax on wages."

These costs are having a dramatic impact on the US economy. A nonpartisan report prepared for New York Senator Charles Schumer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, found that the "propensity toward litigation" in the United States is "driving growing international concerns about participating in US financial markets."

Along with regulatory excesses like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the litigation industry in this country is making our capital markets and our economy as a whole less competitive.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds links an interesting post about the campaign donations of large law firms. I hadn't know that Ken Starr's firm gave "more to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign than to all of the top Republican candidates combined," but I'm not surprised.

Go seek the rent, and ye shall find!

UPDATE (08/01/07): Thank you, Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome all!

(Now that I think about it, had I listened to the lawyers advising me to go into ADA litigation back in 1994, I might be wealthy and unwise today!

Who needs satire when all you have to do is read news from Berkeley?

By law, elected members of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board (the rent control commissars) are supposed to live in Berkeley. However, according to a report in the SF Chronicle, that legal technicality has not prevented one elected commissioner from living in Oakland (apparently for a long time). This has come to light now that he's fighting eviction -- allegedly with help from a community law center that has a contract with the Rent Board:

Over in Berkeley, Rent Stabilization Board member Chris Kavanagh, who by law should be living in Berkeley, is fighting eviction from a cottage he rents in Oakland.

And here's a twist: Kavanagh is fighting his eviction with the help of a former vice chair of the Berkeley rent board, now an attorney for a nonprofit law firm that has a contract with the panel to represent tenants.

A contract, we might add, that Kavanagh voted for.

"It's complete news to me," rent board Executive Director Jay Kelekian said when we asked about Kavanagh's eviction fight and the help he's getting from the East Bay Community Law Center.

The eviction battle -- and the fact that Kavanagh doesn't appear to live in Berkeley -- are laid out in an exchange of letters between Kavanagh's attorney (and former board member) Marc Janowitz and H. Wayne Goodroe, a lawyer representing a couple who recently bought the cottage and a main house on 63rd Street in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood.

In a letter last month, Janowitz said Kavanagh, who has rented the cottage since 2001, wanted to stay another year, "after which he will move."

(Janowitz is also representing a second tenant living in the main house who's also fighting the toss -- former Black Panther Party member Johnny Spain.)

As recently as two years ago, Kavanagh -- a Green Party member first elected to the rent board in 2002 -- signed a campaign disclosure form, under penalty of perjury, stating that he lived in an apartment on Dwight Way in Berkeley.

Voting rolls also list him as living at the Dwight Way address, though sometime last year he notified the rent board that he was living at 2705 Webster St. in Berkeley, Kelekian said.

When we caught up with Kavanagh this past week at his Oakland digs, he was having dinner on his patio. He said he'd call us later to explain how he's managed to live in two places at once.

He hasn't.

As for Janowitz, he let out a long laugh when we told him what we were calling about -- but said he couldn't really say where Kavanagh lived.

"I'm just defending the eviction," Janowitz said.

He said he didn't see it as a problem that he's representing a rent board member when his firm has a contract with the board. He wouldn't say how much Kavanagh is paying him, calling that "the subject of private attorney-client communication."

Janowitz said the real issue was that the Oakland landlords and their attorney hadn't succeeded in evicting Kavanagh or Spain and now are "attempting to influence the litigation by resorting to extrajudicial gossip -- you being the monger."

It would appear to be a very newsworthy story. Newsworthy enough for Judith Scherr of the Berkeley Daily Planet to investigate further:

Glen Kohler, manager of the apartment building at 2709 Dwight Way, responded to the Planet's inquiry, saying: "No, he doesn't" live at that address.

Questioned about how long the elected official had been "gone," Kohler answered: "I don't know if 'gone' is the correct word," explaining he meant that during the two and one-half years that he had been managing the apartment, Kavanagh had, to his knowledge, never lived there.

A postal worker delivering mail while the Daily Planet was at the Dwight Way apartment house said Kavanagh had previously received mail there, but hadn't for more than a year and a half.

The mailbox at apartment No. 16, where Kavanagh has said he lives, bears no name.

Asked if he knows where Kavanagh lives, Rent Board Executive Director Jay Kelekian told the Daily Planet on Monday, "To my knowledge he resides in Berkeley."

Kelekian said that Kavanagh had informed the rent board of a change of address to 2705 Webster one time, but had informed Kelekian that address is actually a box at the Elmwood Post Office and that he continued to live at the Dwight Way apartment.

Kelekian said Kavanagh picks up his rent board materials at the rent board office.

If it is determined that Kavanagh doesn't meet the residency requirements of the City Charter, Kelekian said he thinks the rent board would agree that he should step down.

Determining residency is not the rent board's call, he said, explaining it is up to the city clerk's office to investigate.

Rent Board Chair Jesse Arreguin said he is aware that this is not the first time the question has been raised. Reporting a conversation with Kavanagh on the topic, Arreguin said, "He assured us that he rents an apartment in Berkeley and stays with his girlfriend in Oakland."

Apparently the question of Kavanagh's residence has not come before the city's Fair Campaign Practices Commission. "It's never been drawn to our attention," said Eric Weaver, FCPC chair.

"We looked at the fact that he is the most chronic late filer," Weaver added.

I don't know anything about the merits of this litigation, and I'm only speculating that the new owners want to move in. If their goal is to live in their own house, I'd support their right to do that.

So, while that would appear to place me on the side of the property owner, I really wouldn't want to "attempting to influence the litigation by resorting to extrajudicial gossip," nor do I think I could. This is only a blog post, and while I don't reach as many Bay Area people as the local press there, I think the legal system can and should run its course regardless of what is said in any report or blog post, whether involving "extrajudicial gossip" or newsworthy facts.

So says "Dan Nender, a 1634 supporter who filed suit in Sacramento Federal Court" to have a "marble monument to service dogs, originally set to be displayed in Sacramento, California" altered.

According to the full story at the "Official News Agency" they want the statue's nuts sawed off:

[Sacramento, CA] A marble monument to service dogs, originally set to be displayed in Sacramento, California, may be on its way out of the golden state. The reason? The statue's "manhood" is still intact.

Proponents of the recently-tabled state assembly bill AB-1634, the so-called "California Healthy Pets Act", which would require that most of the state's dogs and cats over the age of 6 months be sterilized, claim that placing the image of an intact male dog on public property is harmful and sends the wrong message to California pet owners.

"Its not an appropriate display, in a state that carries out three million euthanasias a year." said Dan Nender, a 1634 supporter who filed suit in Sacramento Federal Court to have the monument altered.

Pressed about the number, since most reputable sources set that number at 400,000, Nender replied, "One is too many. Concentrate on the point I'm making, not the numbers."

The sculptor who created the piece, Fidel Marquez of Hemingford, Nebraska, has already refused to alter it. "This is ridiculous. I'll put the damn thing on my lawn before I 'neuter' it."

"Frankly, it doesn't matter what the artist wants, or for that matter whether the lawsuit succeeds." responded Nender. "This is the will of the people... and don't ask me which people, and we're going to carry it out. If this guy doesn't want to do the work himself, we'll sneak in there at night and use a Saws-All on it."

"We cannot have intact testicles on government property. As California government officials, at least the ones on our side, will attest to, Sacramento is a testicle-free zone."

Assembly Bill AB-1634 may come before the California legislature some time again in 2008, according to supporters, but in the meantime, they say they will fight the battle their way. "The ends justify the means," said Nender. Even if the means includes vandalism.

California Department of Parks, who oversee this sort of project, did not return our calls immediately, and the Governor could not be reached for comment. However, plans to erect the monument are on hold until the lawsuit is settled or dismissed.

But I regret to say that much as I love the narrative, I'm afraid the report isn't true.

Not only can I find no confirmation of it anywhere, but Googling the artist's name and hometown leads only back to the same story and the various discussion boards that have mentioned it.

Even the Canada Free Press seems to have been conned, for their earlier link to the story is now dead, although I did very much enjoy the Google cache version which adds a bit of commentary to the story.

Attention all non-Hollywood type sheriffs and law officials: They're going to tote the Kool-Aid, don the tinfoil hats and pull the heist off under cover of darkness.

"We cannot have intact testicles on government property. As California government officials, at least the one's on our side will attest to, Sacramento is a testicle-free zone," said Dean A. Ayers, of Animals C.L.U.B. Freedom. "Animal rights activist "perverts" in my book."

Meanwhile can ACLU check in to let us all know whether is it against Fido's rights to be forced to be in the same state as latter day politicians: Neutered?

Anyway, I hate it when stories that support what I think turn out to be wrong -- especially when they have all the right elements!

There is a serious side to this, and that is the growing emergence of news hoaxes and bogus news sites. Regular readers may remember "Capitol Hill Blue" and the fictitious "George Harleigh." (He didn't exist, and he was debunked, but he's still considered quotable!)

More recently, the Bussard fusion project was falsely reported by a hoax site to be funded by Governor Schwarzenegger.

Of course, the "Official News Agency" does not even pretend to be anything other than a satire site, so it would be laughable to maintain that this rises to the level of a real hoax.

It's a fake hoax, folks!

And what a pity! Because, I really enjoyed another report -- that Harry Reid kicks dogs!

[Washington, DC] Animal rights activists were up in arms Friday, as reports came in that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada, savagely kicked a retired ranch dog lying in his path as he toured a property near Reno. Witnesses say that Senator Reid had to be forceably restrained by his staff so that caretakers could attend to the injured animal.

The dog, a mixed-breed working dog named "Pace", was taken to a local veterinary hospital where x-rays showed no broken bones but physical examination revealed substantial bruising.

"Pace is a tough dog," Mark Hassler, a ranch hand who was present at the incident, said. "He's been around the block a few times. He'll be just fine."

"On the other hand, though, that doesn't make this alright. My boss is really pissed... I have to say I'm not happy either. Pace is a member of the family here, and there was just no reason for this."

The ranch owner, and Pace's master, Phillip Dischete (pronounced dish-SHAY), would not speak to the press except to say that Senator Reid is no longer welcome on his property.

Which means that our superficial concerns over the technical truth can end up obscuring the larger truth -- which is whether the dog Harry Reid might as well have kicked might as well have had balls.

In a long update to my "I should care?" post, I got a little hot and bothered by the idea that disagreeing with gun control means not caring that people are being killed.

This touches on a fundamental disagreement which tends to be lost in the gun control debate, and that disagreement is over CRIME AND PUNISHMENT:

April Saul, who has been chronicling Philadelphia's many teen shooting deaths in a piece called Kids, Guns, and a Deadly Toll [...] explains "why she decided to tell these stories" and at no point does she express even the slightest desire to see the killers caught and punished.

I don't think this means she does not care. Obviously, she cares very much, but in a different way than the way I care. If I had a teenager who had been murdered, I'd want the perpetrators caught and punished, not just for personal reasons, but because I think putting away murderous people is in the ultimate best interest of civilization. April Saul, by saying she would "not try to distinguish between the 'guilty' and the 'innocent,'" in my view is subordinating the distinction between murderer and victim to a narrative which blames the tools used by murderers.

Obviously, I disagree. But what really galls me is this notion that because I disagree over how to address a problem, I don't care about it.

Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson says, "You have a family that's been devastated not only lost one to death but probably going to lose one to life in prison for killing the other family member,"

It flows from the proposition that criminals do not deserve to be punished. In fairness to both sides, though, I think it has to be recognized that the debate over crime and punishment is becoming ever more clouded by the war on drugs.

I do not think it is a coincidence that the clamor to eliminate the distinction between criminal and victim has accompanied the growth of an immense criminal, economic, and law enforcement nexus which drives a large portion of the economy in this country and around the world, and which is predicated on the idea that self abuse is a crime against society. I can think of no better way to blur the distinction between criminal and victim than by creating an immense system of law in which criminal and victim are synonymous, and that harming oneself deserves a lengthy prison term. This has consequences, and they're now being seen in the form of ever-wider acceptance of the terrible idea that we should not distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.

Drug dealers are economic offenders, who sell to willing buyers, and who would not exist without a market. That this market is a crime makes it more profitable, and more violent. Drug dealers are seen as people who are trying to make a living in difficult circumstances, and the crimes they commit against each other are being blamed not on the illegal market, but on certain tools of their trade. They are seen as victims, and the gun is seen as the culprit. It would make about as much sense to say that they are victims of the drugs they sell, but no one would listen to that argument, because the drugs are universally illegal, whereas the guns are not. However, making guns illegal is about as likely to solve the gun problem as making drugs illegal has solved the drug problem.

What the drug laws have done is to distort the traditional perception of crime from one of criminal-who-harms-victim to one of criminal-who-harms-self. This in turn has clouded society's normal desire to punish the criminal. Now, there has always been a tendency in some circles to see criminals as victims, but when crime is defined as including self victimization, and when this category of crime becomes as large as it is now, much greater mischief results. The war on drugs has created a large and constantly growing class of angry dissenters who see all criminals as victims.

As for me, I think they're terribly mistaken in their logic. Just because the drug laws have criminalized victimhood does not mean that all criminals are victims.

Murder remains murder, assault remains assault. The motive is secondary; whether someone was murdered for selling drugs on a competing dealer's corner or for refusing to pay a drug debt, that no more justifies murder than jealousy over a girlfriend. The problem is that drug war has vastly enlarged the criminal class and caused people to lose sight of simple reality.

But when on top of that they accuse me of not caring, I must protest!

MORE: A remark by M. Simon in an earlier post bears repeating:

The War On Some Drugs was always a prototype for the War On Guns. If American gun owners really took this to heart the Drug War would be over in America in short order.

Instapundit has brought up a topic near and dear to my heart. Nerds. He gives a few links.

I clicked on this one and got Tom Maguire's view on the subject. Very nice. There was a long discussion in the comments about gangsta culture and its aversion to numbers and all things technical (white).

Some one in the comments was trying to define humanus nerdus and came up with a list which included the following:

unusual conversation skills/topics

There is nothing unusual about wanting to talk about neutron scattering cross sections vs absorption cross sections. Or heat transfer and fluid flow.

Well, I was a Nuclear Reactor Operator in the Navy. About as geeky as you can get and still be a member of the fighting forces. Lotsa numbaz. LOL.

BTW I had some trouble with dating until I put on a Navy uniform. That is when I went from rags to riches. Even better was looking like a hippie (after I got out of the service), ah the 60s.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Home Gunsmith.com Has some very neat plans for a home shop built SMG (submachine gun). Here is what the site owner has to say about gun control:

My own view is that the gun not only belongs in the hands of the agents of the state (they can never be disarmed) but in the hands of the people as a whole. This is the surest way of maintaining the correct balance of power between state and citizen. The mad rush of government to create a 'gun free' Utopia will not, of course, have any effect on the crime rate. The criminal, by definition, does not obey the law and is therefore unaffected by any anti firearms legislation. Gun control will, however, create more and more victims of violent crime as long as we allow ourselves to be disarmed behind the smokescreen of 'Crime control'. This is the unpalatable truth you will never read in the media or hear from any politically correct politician.

Unfortunately, while we continue to allow the media anti gun propaganda mills to churn out their lies, myths and misinformation we will continue to see the destruction of the ancient liberties and freedoms once securely enshrined under the "Common laws of England".

When any government deprives a citizen of his freedom or property, the individual must take action to publicise his grievances. To this end, I hope to illustrate in the following pages, the futility of gun control, and that no amount of arbitrary legislation can ever prevent those wanting firearms from owning them. The individual who has the ability to construct his own homemade gun can never be permanently disarmed by any level of gun control legislation.

So as to allow you to get a 'feel' for the subject of homemade guns, the following pages illustrate how a reasonably light weight and portable homemade Machine gun was assembled from readily available 'Off the shelf' materials and components. No lathe or milling machine was required or used.

The firearm that can truthfully be described as "a homemade gun" should be one built using the type of hand tools and materials that the average individual could easily acquire.

H/T Commenter PRCalDude at Hot Air

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at The Astute Bloggers

I usually don't start a post by quoting someone's comment to another post in another blog, but I did so here, because this is just too damned typical, and there are just too many damned typical examples of this too-damned-typical complete lack of common sense which now seems to have modern America in a deathlock.

No, seriously. Via Pajamas Media I just learned that when 13-year-old boys are caught engaging in horseplay (they slapped butts of junior high girls as they raced down the hall), that is now to be treated as a felony meriting ten years in prison with mandatory Megan's Law lifetime sex offender registration.

As I keep saying, there is no longer common sense, and that unfortunate fact is being drummed into children at an earlier and earlier age.

The only good I see in any of this is that the Protein Wisdom post (which I found at Pajamas Media) was written by Darleen Click, and I'm delighted to see her talent being recognized by another long-favorite blog.

Darleen addressed this latest bureaucratic horror with some of the inimitable wisdom to which I've grown fond over the years:

Reasonable people don't excuse obnoxious behavior. Reasonable people would expect the school not only to discipline Cory and Ryan, maybe a few after-school hours, or Saturdays, scrubbing graffiti off the walls, or scrubbing down the restrooms, but to exercise the judgment of alleged educational professionals who work with children on a daily basis. And such judgment would not be to involve the police.

But hey, public school admins are filled with people who substitute written rules for judgment, law for morality. And why should we be surprised that they would want to palm off two immature 13 year olds to the criminal system when some of the purported "adults" involved act as unreasonable as the prosecutor?

Naturally, the leftiesphere is chiming in about how these are evil white boys and deserve punishment a la the Duke "rapists." Darleen answers:

The abject stupidity of this writer is jaw-dropping. Only in the most fevered-imaginings of rape is however I define it of radical feminists is adolescent prankish, albeit obnoxious, behavior criminal and akin to rape.

But hey, even Jeffy's spearcarrying for VW's sounds reasonable when compared to one of his co-bloggers, Kathy, who not only picks up Jeff Feckes "prank = little rape" meme, but expands on it by comparing to a brutal gang-rape because...well...because Cory and Ryan are White Boys

The systematic destruction of common sense in this country has gotten scary. I worry that the phenomenon truly has become the dominant paradigm I complained about earlier, because it's escalating, and taking on a life of its own. Avoiding the public schools, as Darleen advises parents, might work for now, but the bureaucratic tentacles are metastatic in nature. They grow and grow, and that is because we must pay and pay for them as they inexorably poke, probe, prod and expand, here and there, whether openly or by stealth, finding endless new ways to justifying themselves as they reach out and touch everyone, everywhere, in every last nook and cranny of this once free country, enforcing and reinforcing as they work towards the Orwellian, "democratically totalitarian" goal of zero tolerance for simple common sense.

No, it doesn't much matter who is elected president, or who is elected to the various state or national legislatures, because it is they -- the truly awful they -- who are really in charge and who seek to totally run our daily lives without so much as being elected. (What's really crazy is I don't even know who they are.... Alas! I liked them better when they were just a few kooks in Berkeley. Yes, I know it's an old rant.)

Nice work Darleen!

MORE: Via Dr. Helen (who points out that the girls were slapping butts too) here's Mark Steyn:

A world that requires handcuffs and judges and district attorneys for what took place that Friday in February is not just a failed education system but an entire society that's losing any sense of proportion. Without which, civilized life becomes impossible. So we legalize more and more aspects of life and demand that district attorneys prosecute ever more aggressively what were once routine areas of social interaction.

A society that looses the state to criminalize schoolroom horseplay is guilty not only of punishing children as grown-ups but of the infantilization of the entire citizenry.

Who was Jason Brewer and why was he shot?

Not to pick a murder victim at random, but the Philly.com web site provides few details about the murders, and I get the impression that the overall tally is more important:

Philadelphia tallied six murders over the weekend, police said, bringing the total for the year to 242.

In addition, two police officers allegedly fatally shot two gun-wielding men in separate incidents under investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau.

Back to Philly.com:

This weekend's six murders:

* 2 a.m. Saturday - 15-year-old Raheem Grant was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head on Callowhill Street near 63rd, in the Overbrook section.

* 4:46 a.m. Saturday - Jason Brewer, 25, was shot multiple times near 18th Street and Girard Avenue, in North Philadelphia. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 5 a.m.

But should that disincline me to look any further?

Remember, my access to information is solely based on what I am able to glean from the hard copy of my daily Inquirer and online, and my opinions are a result of my textual analysis. (I do not have access to the police blotter, which I'm sure is off limits to lowly bloggers.)

Today's Inquirer has more:

It was a violent weekend in the city, with at least six homicides reported apart from the police shooting, bringing this year's total to 242. They included:

[...]

Jason Brewer, 25, of Albanus Street was found shot to death in an apparent robbery in the 1700 block of Harper Street Saturday. Police found Brewer after a companion showed up at St. Joseph's Hospital with a gunshot wound to his ankle and told hospital staff that his friend had also been shot.

Raheem Grant, 15, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in the 6300 block of Callowhill Street after reports of a fight Saturday.

But what about the more puzzling case of Jason Brewer? Was he murdered? If he did not live in the 1700 block of Harper, what was he doing there? Was someone trying to rob him? Or was he trying to rob someone else? Was he found lying on the street?

Or are these details meaningless? I think they might matter in determining whether he was a murder victim, or something else.

In an yesterday's version of the story, it was reported that Brewer was found "at a residence."

Police were still investigating the three slayings that occurred yesterday.

At 2:18 a.m., they received a call about a shooting in the 6300 block of Callowhill Street in West Philadelphia, and found Raheem Grant, 15, who lived nearby, dead of a gunshot to the head.

Just after 5 a.m., St. Joseph's Hospital notified police that a patient had walked in with a gunshot wound to an ankle. The patient told police that another victim was at a residence in the 1700 block of Harper Street in North Philadelphia. When police arrived, they found a 25-year-old man dead of multiple gunshots.

Jason Brewer was murdered;

in a robbery;

at a residence;

where he did not live;

where his companion was also wounded during the same robbery;

I'm tempted to say inquiring minds want to know, but that would sound sarcastic and I'm trying to be serious. What I'd really like to know is who are the victims, and who are the perpetrators. For some reason, these things just don't seem to matter in a world divided into good and bad based solely on guns.

The details don't seem to matter, and I'm left looking at a map of the 1700 block of Harper wondering whose residence might have been involved. Who lived there? Was anyone home? Why no arrests for what is being called a murder? Who might have been robbing whom? As I think about these things which I will probably never know, I'm ever mindful of the numerous admonitions in the Inquirer about how people like me who live in the suburbs just don't care about what goes on in the city. Here's Monica Yant Kinney:

Whenever I write about Philadelphia's homicide crisis, I hear from suburban readers who think it's a waste of space.

Poor black people killing poor black people, thugs shooting thugs - why should we cry?

With alarming regularity, folks living outside the city suggest they'd rather ignore the horrors inside it.

And the way these things are reported makes me wonder how much the Inquirer cares beyond the tally and the narrative of the evil gun.

UPDATE (07/31/07): Today's Daily News has more on Raheem Grant's shooting. Police say they believe it was "retaliatory" -- and neighbors are afraid to talk to reporters:

In Overbrook yesterday, the news that Raheem Grant may have been killed as retaliation caused little shock in a busy neighborhood where many people work during the day.

"It's really crazy," said a woman, who called herself a lifelong resident of the neighborhood.

"There was an explosion a week ago, and there's shootings all the time," she said.

The woman, who did not want to be identified, paused near the multicolored makeshift memorial at 63rd and Callowhill bearing Raheem's picture, candles and teddy bears.

Other neighbors agreed that the neighborhood had gone from bad to worse.

They blamed groups of youths for much of the trouble.

"What was he doing out so late?" pondered Jason Miller, a resident of nearby Felton Street.

"I don't know the situation, but why would a 15-year-old be out past midnight?"

Hanging out late at night shouldn't be a thing for young folks, agreed neighbor Roberta Jenkins.

"The neighborhood is pretty bad . . . ," she said.

"Someone I know just got shot two weeks ago. I'm trying to move."

Darnell Washington, who also lives in the area, said it was hard to believe that Raheem could have been shot over a misunderstanding or an argument.

"He was real cool . . . ," said Washington. "Shot in the head? That's crazy. Who deserves that?"

Many passers-by stopped to check out the memorial to Raheem. But in a city gripped by a "don't snitch" mantra, not many would say anything about the shooting.

One woman said she knew Raheem, but hurriedly walked away when approached by a reporter.

"I'm sorry," she said, as she walked down 63rd Street.

"I'm sorry, I'm not going to say anything."

Who was "retaliating" against this teenager at 2:00 a.m. -- and why -- these are things that we who "do not care" will probably never be told.

(That's because we'd "rather ignore the horrors," of course.)

Is there any way to get these people to at least stop scolding me for ignoring what they're not providing?

Seriously, this "you don't care" meme really rankles me, because I suspect that the people who say that are more opposed to seeing the actual perpetrators of these awful crimes punished than I am.

It's as if "you don't care" means "you don't agree with my position on gun control!"

MORE: Not only I do care about Raheem Grant enough to want his killers caught and punished, but I cared enough to photograph the Inquirer's photo of the Grant vigil for the readers of this blog.

Why it appears in the hard copy but not on online, I don't know. The photos are by April Saul, who has been chronicling Philadelphia's many teen shooting deaths in a piece called Kids, Guns, and a Deadly Toll. Ms. Saul explains "why she decided to tell these stories" and at no point does she express even the slightest desire to see the killers caught and punished.

I don't think this means she does not care. Obviously, she cares very much, but in a different way than the way I care. If I had a teenager who had been murdered, I'd want the perpetrators caught and punished, not just for personal reasons, but because I think putting away murderous people is in the ultimate best interest of civilization. April Saul, by saying she would "not try to distinguish between the 'guilty' and the 'innocent,'" in my view is subordinating the distinction between murderer and victim to a narrative which blames the tools used by murderers.

Obviously, I disagree. But what really galls me is this notion that because I disagree over how to address a problem, I don't care about it.

I just found a new site (via Instapundit) called Minding the Campus that concerns how the Race, Class, Gender (RCG aka Angry Studies) people are undermining liberal education.

A good place to start is this piece on the Ward Churchill case, recently in the news, by KC Johnson of Durham in Wonderland/Duke Lacrosse case fame.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at The Astute Bloggers

From Slide Rule, the autobiography of Nevil Shute

In the autumn of 1915 my father took advantage of a break clause in the lease to give up South Hill, the house at Blackrock. I think he was concerned at the rising cost of everything due to the war and the mounting income tax, which was to rise to the unprecedented figure of six shillings in the pound.

I think, too, he felt that the house held so many memories of Fred for my mother and myself that it would be better to get rid of it and start again. What he did seems curious now in these days of total war, because for the Christmas holidays he took my mother and myself on a trip to Rome and Naples.

Wars were localized in those days, when the range of aircraft was small and bombing far behind the lines was not a serious menace. The Western Front was ablaze with war from Switzerland to the sea but this war was completely static; there was nothing to prevent the normal express trains full of tourists from running as usual fifty miles behind the lines, and no currency restrictions then impeded foreign travel.

One might have thought that the turmoil of war would have prevented my father from leaving his work to take his annual allowance of six weeks' leave, but it didn't. He was a very conscientious man who would never have put his personal interests above the job...

Rome was full of officers in magnificent uniforms frequently with sky-blue flowing cloaks; the Italians in those days believed in getting some fun out of a war. Naples and Capri followed. My parents prolonged their leisurely holiday so that I had to travel back to Shrewsbury alone from Naples, an interesting and stimulating experience for a sixteen-year-old boy who spoke virtually no Italian and only schoolroom French.

I think this journey did me a lot of good; although I had to change trains unexpectedly two or three times i had no real difficulties; when I got back to school I found that very few boys had made a journey of that length through wartime Europe. I think my parents showed a good deal of insight and wisdom in pushing me off on it.

In a very thoughtful Pajamas Media piece, Rick Moran looks at the desire of many Americans for a "return to normalcy" (meaning a return to pre-9/11 world):

Torn as they are between the desire for a different kind of politics that Obama is offering and the sure handedness that Hillary Clinton is trying to sell, the Democrats (and the nation at large) seem to prefer the familiar and experienced candidate. But might there be something else at work on the voters' minds? Could it be that the change they yearn for is a desire to go back--back to 9/10/2001 when the outside world rarely intruded on our somnolence and where the big debates in Congress were over education and prescription drugs?

Back in 2004, Mickey Kaus wondered if we hadn't experienced "too much history" in the 3 plus years since 9/11. Peggy Noonan echoed those thoughts, asking if what the American people wanted was a Harding-like "Return to Normalcy."

While the Republican candidates all seem eager to continue making history in the War on Terror, the American people may want to take a break from the harsh realities and hard future offered up by the GOP and choose instead a more settled hand on the tiller.

If there are harsh realities (and I think there are), then they are not imaginary realities. This is why I have criticized the people who think that once you get tired of a war, voting it out of existence is as easy as changing the channel on a TV remote.

Of course, the people who do this will naturally vote for Hillary, because she's marketing herself as Clinton nostalgia. Vote for your old favorite Peace and Prosperity Channel, and we'll bring back the program of your choice!

This might even appeal to Republicans who suffer from short memories or wishful thinking. But I can't help notice the way Barack Obama keeps forcing Republicans to defend Hillary. Must be handy for Hillary to have someone like that to run against.

If I were Hillary and I didn't have him, I'd invent him.

From Slide Rule, the autobiography of Nevil Shute

We had a motor bicycle between us by that time, a new Rudge Multi. My parents must have been very wise to launch out on this extravagance at a time when my father must have foreseen rising taxation, for the Rudge cost almost sixty pounds, a lot of money in those days.

Although completely unmechanical himself, my father saw good sense in Fred's contention that every officer ought to know something about motors, revolutionary though that doctrine seemed. My mother had another angle on it; she foresaw that in the holidays my life would be empty without Fred since we had been so much together, and she thought that if I had a motor bicycle while Fred was away at the war it would ease the loneliness.

So in September 1914 when I was fifteen years old I took delivery of the Rudge from the depot in Stephens Green, Fred being in hospital. I had never ridden a motor bicycle before though I had a very comprehensive theoretical knowledge, and I was too shy to admit my inexperience.

The Rudge mechanic gave me a shove off in amongst the trams and for a moment I was out of control while my body accustomed itself to the unfamiliar weight of the machine and the great surge of power that small movements of the throttle produced, for the Rudge was no lightweight but a man-sized, powerful machine. Then I got the hang of it and rode round Stephens Green a couple of times gingerly manipulating the infinitely variable gear, and finally rode it home in triumph.

From time to time in life one gets a moment of sheer ecstasty; I had one of them that day.

Fred had the Rudge at Sandhurst through the winter, and I went back to school where military training was now to take up much of our free time. In the spring he was commissioned and posted to the depot of the regiment at Falmouth, and in the Easter holidays my father and mother took me there to stay for a fortnight so that we could see something of Fred before he went to France.

I think war was still romantic in those days, early in 1915; certainly nobody yet had any conception of what casualties could do to a nation. Fred was very smart in his new uniform, his Sam Browne belt beautifully polished, his sword impressive, his revolver massive, new, and fragrant with clean gun oil...

Fred went to Flanders with a draft, and I rode the Rudge Multi home. It was the first big journey I had made alone in my life, and it took me four days to get from Falmouth to Holyhead. Nearly forty years later it is difficult to see why it should have taken me so long, for I did nothing else but travel. I can remember a vague impression that a hundred miles was an enormous distance and a good day's riding, and I think the fact of the matter must be that roads were generally bad in those days, and motor bicycles much slower than we now recollect...

In adventure and fatigue the journey was probably comparable in these days to a drive from London to Rome or from Boston to Chicago, and that I accomplished it without mishap gave my self-confidence a boost which was rather needed, for I still stammered very badly.

In the middle of the summer term Fred was badly wounded, at a place called l'Epinette near Armentières...In these days of sulfa drugs, blood plasma, and penicillin nobody would die of the wounds Fred got, extensive though they were. He was evacuated down to the base hospital at at Wimereux and for ten days or so he made good progress. Then gangrene set in and became uncontrollable, in itself an indication of the march of medical science, because the medical attention that he got was very good.

My father and mother crossed to France to be with him, as was common in those days of gentler war, and he died about three weeks after he was wounded, with my mother by his side.

If Fred had lived we might have had some real books one day, not the sort of stuff that I turn out, for he had more literature in his little finger than I have in my whole body. He was only nineteen when he died, and after nearly forty years it still seems strange to me to that I should be older than Fred.

For nearly a week, a triple murder in a sleazy Philadelphia bar has been much in the news, with the local press has been reporting that the shooting was triggered by an argument over a bet. This story, headlined "Six killed in weekend violence -- Dispute over bet turns deadly" is typical:

The gunman inside Abay's Wheeler Bar on South 62d Street had won the bet, and flew into a rage when the loser didn't produce any money, said the cousin, Henry Atkins, 18, of the 6200 block of Reedland Street, a block from the small corner tavern.

Atkins, who was sitting on his steps, staring blankly ahead with moist eyes, said his cousin and next-door neighbor, Arthur Jennings, 20, was one of the dead men. "It was all over a bet," Atkins said, shaking his head.

He said another victim, Claude "Netty" Snelling, 30, had wagered on Ronald "Winky" Wright, a challenger to light-heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins of Philadelphia.

Hopkins won a unanimous decision. "Netty bet on Winky, and when the guy wanted his money, he didn't have it," Atkins muttered. Then he stood and abruptly went inside, leaving unanswered the question of how much was owed.

A neighbor who knows the family said that Snelling was the boyfriend of Jennings' mother and that the two victims lived together. The third homicide victim was Jamar Thompson, 31, of the 3500 block of North Masher Street.

one of seven people killed last weekend in Philadelphia, his case lost in the attention focused on the shooting at Abay's Wheeler Bar in Southwest Philadelphia that left three men dead and a fourth critically wounded after an argument over a boxing bet

Monday, Street dragged himself to Abay Wheeler's Bar in Southwest Philadelphia, where a weekend shoot-out - over a boxing bet - left three people dead and one barely breathing.

Philadelphia police announced the arrest of a West Philadelphia man in the triple murder at a bar shooting last week even as three more people were killed in the city yesterday.

Vonzell "Pooh" Roundtree, 27, of the 5800 block of Rodman Street, was charged with three counts of homicide and attempted murder in the rampage last Sunday at Abay's Wheeler Bar in Southwest Philadelphia.

Arthur Jennings, 20, Claude "Netty" Snelling, 30, and Jamar Thompson, 31, were killed after a "very minor argument," police said.

It was originally reported that a fight had escalated after a wager over the Bernard Hopkins-Winky Wright boxing match was not paid. Yesterday, police said that story was not the case. (Emphasis added.)

Can we be sure?

Once again, it strikes me that the most important detail is not what may have gone through the criminal's mind at the time of the shooting, but the fact that he was an armed ex-con, whose possession of the gun was in total violation of strong, existing gun laws. Readers have to turn to the inside pages of today's Section B (to page B-6 to be exact), to find the following recital:

Roundtree had three previous arrests for firearms and drug charges, court records show. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to carrying firearms without a license and was sentenced to three years of probation.

Nor do criminal backgrounds of shooters fit the narrative of Philadelphia as a city at war:

A CITY OF VIOLENCE

The CBS report - which noted that the number of homicides has been increasing in many large American cities - focused on North Philadelphia, where reporter Byron Pitts said that "life is often short and illegal handguns are cheap." To prove his point, a 19-year-old - whose face was obscured and who was said to have been just released from jail - pulled a pistol from his front pocket and said, "Everybody's got a gun everywhere."

Perhaps I should be thankful that the reporter didn't dutifully tag along and help the criminal out with a straw purchase as they did in Boston.

Yeah, I know that MSM journalists think the First Amendment gives them a special "no snitching" privilege unavailable to anyone else, but they also feel somehow entitled to break the gun laws in order to advance their narrative that because it's easy to break existing gun laws, we need more.

Yes, it is easy to break gun laws, just as it's easy commit crime. You'd be surprised. Why, I don't see why some "journalist" doesn't just get in his car and prove his point by doing a driveby shooting, then declaring how easy it is to break the laws against driveby shootings! (Why, it's almost as easy as breaking the laws against child molesting or rape!)

An additional point of the "CITY OF VIOLENCE" narrative here is that Philadelphia is Baghdad. Whether that means Bush is responsible and that we should pull out, I'm not sure. But it's a war, complete with law abiding citizens -- who are... Are what? I can't be sure, so I'll let readers decide:

The newscast could have come down even harder on Philadelphia. Earlier in the day, reporter Pitts had written on the CBS Web site that Philadelphia is like "a war zone."

"Just like Baghdad, there are law-abiding citizens whom we met that keep a gun close by when they take their children to school, go to the grocery store and when they close their eyes at night in their own bed," he wrote. "In Philadelphia they're not called 'insurgents'; they're drug dealers and thugs."

But if you keep reading, it seems someone edited that important detail out!

The televised report, however, did not mention Baghdad. And experts have cautioned that comparisons between Philadelphia and Iraq's war-ravaged capital are a slippery slope, since the death rate is far higher in Baghdad, and the root causes of violence so radically different.

But one thing is the same 11,000 miles apart, and that is the senselessness of violent death.

But unless I am reading him wrong, Philadelphia's Police Commissioner appears not to think that locking up a triple murderer would be a devastating result:

Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson says, "You have a family that's been devastated not only lost one to death but probably going to lose one to life in prison for killing the other family member,"

Does he actually think that it was the gun drove this ex-con to possess it illegally, take it to a bar, murder three patrons, and wound others?

I can't be sure, but what he said about concealed carry permit holders last year makes me worry not only about the man's priorities, but whether the anti-gun narrative has blinded him to reality:

"At this point, right now, we have over 32,000 people in Philly who have permits to carry (and) actually walk the streets of Philly with a gun. We only have 6,400 police officers. We're outnumbered nearly 5-to-1 with people who are on the streets with guns," Johnson said.

I think guns in the hands of criminals are the problem, and guns in the hands of law abiding people are part of the solution.

Unfortunately, disagreeing with a narrative often seems like a waste of time, because disagreeing with it doesn't make it go away.

(Might as well disagree with the lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine.")

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome all!

In a post I wrote this morning, I tried to analyze the facts of another Philadelphia shooting -- and wondered whether the narrative is rendering facts almost superfluous.

I guess the rule is that it's OK to drug children with benadryl for takeoff if you're an airline, but a criminal offense to use the same drug on them at naptime if you're running a day care center. (Actually, there is a certain logic to this, because it is undeniable that flight attendants have a more compelling interest in quiet children than do day care workers.)

Then there's Ritalin. It's OK for schools to drug children to make them pay attention in class, so that they'll perform better in school. But it's not OK to drug athletes to enhance their performance in sports. And God forbid that musicians might try improving their musical performance with drugs.

Somewhere in all of this, there's an exception for drugging under a "performance enhancement theory" -- but it is not being applied consistently.

Then there's medication for pain. For physical pain, it's OK to drug people -- even at the risk of making them feel good. For mental pain, though, while there might be certain allowable drugs, if a drug used to treat emotional pain makes people feel good, its bad.

I'm thinking about the manufacture of morality again. It's always tough to keep abreast of these constantly changing standards.

MORE: The bottom line seems to be that where it comes to drugs, all adults are children.

Except the authorities (and the "experts")!

Bill Hobbs says the war is not lost, but that the Democrats are determined to lose it:

The war has not been lost. American forces on the ground are in the process of winning it. The American military has never lost a war that the American people and its politicians have vowed to win.

It's a shame that the Democratic-controlled Congress can't manage to do anything about illegal immigration, earmarks, sleazy congressional ethics or energy, but it would be better if they buckled down and worked harder at those issues than focusing so intently on legislating American defeat in Iraq.

Do they really want to run in '08 as the party that caused us to lose in Iraq?

I agree with Bill Hobbs, and I think the strategy is to do everything possible to lose the war in such a way that the Republicans will be blamed. One of the ways this is being done is by discounting the documented military brilliance of experts like General Petraeus, whom the Democrats themselves voted to appoint!

Obviously, this is a tricky business, requiring cunning, duplicity, and deception.

Comedian Jackie Mason (while a bit blunt) shows that he understands the dynamics of this elastic inconsistency quite well in this YouTube video:

I have not fact-checked (and cannot vouch for) everything Mason says, but what I find delightful about the video is that he manages to nail the Democrats on their strategy by applying simple common sense. (No wonder the latter is under attack everywhere.)

Mason is absolutely right about one thing: the Democrats did vote unanimously to confirm General Petraeus. (And most of them supported entering Iraq.)

A question I asked myself yesterday about the new "Conservatives for Hillary" phenomenon only seemed to reopen a Pandora's box of endlessly undefinable definitions. (But words fail, because the "box" has been irreparably burst open for a long time.)

Anyway, Socrates left this comment:

Sullivan is not a conservative. I don't know what he is.

For example, I once tried to maintain that Michael Savage is not a conservative:

I think I can fairly state that conservatism does not mean sympathizing with radical Islam, or attributing to God the worst attack on the United States since World War II.

By claiming to be a conservative when he is not, Savage is behaving as a classic agent provocateur.

That he has many fans who call themselves conservatives is more worrisome to me than whether he calls himself a conservative.

I'm not sure whether I should consider Savage's fans to be conservatives or not. (Certainly if he pronounced himself a "libertarian," that would not mean he or his fans were libertarians.) But again, I think the extent to which people who call themselves conservatives agree with Savage begs the question of why some (not all) people think conservatives are idiots.

For the record, I don't think conservatives are idiots (far from it), and I'm going to try not to think of Michael Savage or his fans as conservatives.

(I'm hoping this is an exercise in fairness and not denial.)

This makes me crazy, because some of my liberal friends call me a conservative and some of my conservative friends call me a liberal, and I am not middle of the road, and yet "libertarian" is problematic, because I disagree with many of them and many of them would say I'm not libertarian.

Then there's the political party stuff: as long as I remain a Republican, the "conservative wing" will call me a RINO. Yet if I switch to the Democratic Party, my views will be even more anathema, and I'll be a DINO. (I've had the same views I have now for many years, and had them when I was a Democrat.)

Yeah, I love rejecting labels. But it's getting tired, and seems a tad overwrought at times.

Just for today, I'll stick my neck out and say that I am not a Savage/Sullivan conservative.

If that makes me a liberal, I'll take my lumps.

MORE: It also occurs to me that there are four possibilities:

A. Savage is a conservative and Sullivan is not.

B. Sullivan is a conservative and Savage is not.

C. Savage and Sullivan are both conservatives.

D. Neither Savage nor Sullivan are conservatives.

And if the word has no meaning, then it is very foolish to worry about whether one can "be" such a thing.

So why care?

Well, I didn't start the "Conservatives for Hillary" movement.

Nor did Sullivan.

Sheesh.

I have to say, the "Conservatives for Hillary" movement strikes me as beyond dishonest or contrived -- to the point of being downright tacky.

(But I guess if I can get used to "Goldwater Marxism," I can get used to anything.)

MORE: Regular readers know that I have long doubted the sincerity of Michael Savage. So, apparently, does NRO's David Klinghoffer. Among many other things he cites Savage's contribution of thousands of dollars to ultra-liberal Jerry Brown's campaign for California Attorney General.

Reason?

"Why bet on a horse that isn't going to win? Why throw your money into the garbage?''

Leave it to Michael Savage to think up a catchy fund-raising slogan for Hillary!

I have a friend who reports on the defense industry. Nice Jewish boy.

He says via e-mail that it is no use wasting your time trying to convince idiots of the obvious (morally it is sound though).

He says a big war is coming. BIG war. Like Pearl Harbor it will unite us. He says it is a waste of time trying to talk to the idiots. He used to blog a lot on the subject. Now he doesn't bother. He says events are the best convincers. Why does it feel like October 1939 all over again? The period of the "Phony War".

Which reminded me of this piece by Herbert E. Meyer at the American Thinker.

For better or worse, it's part of the American character to wait until the last possible moment - even to wait a bit beyond the last possible moment - before kicking into high gear and getting the job done. It's in our genes; just think of how many times you've ground enamel off your teeth watching your own kid waste an entire weekend, only to start writing a book report at 10:30 Sunday night that, when you find it on the breakfast table Monday morning is by some miracle a minor masterpiece.

However horrific it may be, the knockout punch won't knock us out. Instead, it will shift us from playing defense back to offense - and this time we won't hold back. The president will ask Congress for a declaration of war and he, or she, will get it. We'll bring back the draft, send our troops into battle without one hand tied behind their backs by lawyers, and we won't waste time and energy pussyfooting with the United Nations. And if we've closed GITMO by this time - we'll reopen it and even double its size because we're going to pack it. All of this will take longer to organize, and cost more, than if we'd done it right in the aftermath of 9-11. That's unfortunate, but that's the way we Americans tend to do things. And when we do finally start fighting for real -- we'll win.

H/T Reliapundit who got me to thinking about this subject with his reports of recent terror alerts.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at The Astute Bloggers

As it's YouTube night and as M. Simon started the tradition of "Not Fade Away" nostalgia here, so I thought I'd supply a few variations on the theme:

First, here's the Rolling Stones, from a 1964 appearance on the Mike Douglas Show:

Originally a Buddy Holly song, "Not Fade Away" was the Stones' first hit in the UK.

And it was a staple for the Grateful Dead, performing it here in1970:

Much as I'd love to find the original Buddy Holly version of "Not Fade Away" on YouTube, some things aren't on video and probably never will be. (Well, there is a video showing the original record spinning, but that doesn't count.)

I think the closest video is this. It's not quite "Not" -- but it is a video of Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy":

The year is 1958 and the crowd is pretty excited.

Yes, it is a question I feel forced to ask from time to time.

Reading about horrors like this make me wonder whether the United States government has become almost as dysfunctional as the Saudi government. The latter has a well-known penchant for paying their dysfunctional children go and make trouble all over the world, while our government (if Stanley Kurtz is right) helps ensure that the Saudis indoctrinate young Americans with their hateful Wahhabist bile:

Unless we counteract the influence of Saudi money on the education of the young, we're going to find it very difficult to win the war on terror. I only wish I was referring to Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan. Unfortunately, I'm talking about K-12 education in the United States. Believe it or not, the Saudis have figured out how to make an end-run around America's K-12 curriculum safeguards, thereby gaining control over much of what children in the United States learn about the Middle East. While we've had only limited success paring back education for Islamist fundamentalism abroad, the Saudis have taken a surprising degree of control over America's Middle-East studies curriculum at home.

Game, Set, Match
How did they do it? Very carefully...and very cleverly. It turns out that the system of federal subsidies to university programs of Middle East Studies (under Title VI of the Higher Education Act) has been serving as a kind of Trojan horse for Saudi influence over American K-12 education. Federally subsidized Middle East Studies centers are required to pursue public outreach. That entails designing lesson plans and seminars on the Middle East for America's K-12 teachers. These university-distributed teaching aids slip into the K-12 curriculum without being subject to the normal public vetting processes. Meanwhile, the federal government, which both subsidizes and lends its stamp of approval to these special K-12 course materials on the Middle East, has effectively abandoned oversight of the program that purveys them (Title VI).

Read it all and weep. I'd like to ignore the whole thing (and I'm sure a lot of people would label Kurtz an Islamophobe), but there's a real Saudi madrassa in my neighborhood, and there's just something about seeing that the majority of Iraqi suicide bombers still remain Saudi Salafists (as were the 9/11 gang) that I find more than a little unsettling.

What kind of war are we fighting if young people are being systematically taught that the Wahhabist/Salafist enemy is good, but that we are bad?

I know there are many truly moderate Muslims, including patriotic Americans, but there is nothing moderate about Wahhabism. Why spend tax dollars promoting the philosophy of the enemy in American schools?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just not fight the war, and give them everything they want?

Maybe we already are, but we're still pursuing the war because we imagine the enemies don't realize we've largely defeated ourselves at home. In an interesting piece Glenn Reynolds links, Michael Burleigh asks a good question of England, which might as well be asked of the United States:

Why is foreign aid not contingent upon warning recipient states that they will forfeit it if clerics they subsidise preach hatred of the West?

In a Reason Magazine piece titled "Gut Feelings and Real Threats: Why civil libertarians shouldn't be cavalier about terrorism," Cathy Young has some common sense advice for libertarians:

In the past, wars and other national security threats led to far worse assaults on American liberties than anything being contemplated now. Already, the majority of Americans seem willing to accept at least some curtailment of civil liberties in order to reduce the threat of terrorism. Even one more major attack, let alone three a year, could usher in some very dark days for freedom. If champions of civil liberties want to prevent that, they need to take a different approach: to show that the compromises we are being asked to accept will not make us safer, or that there are ways to make us more secure without sacrificing our bedrock principles. If they want to be heard when they warn about loss of liberty, they cannot afford to sound cavalier when they talk about loss of life.

Right.

Denial is always very appealing, but in real life, there's no TV remote.

This post by Ann Althouse woke me up to the new reality (and a series of posts by Andrew Sullivan supposedly document this new phenomenon.)

Did I really need another reason why I'm not a conservative?