When I heard that Leeland Eisenberg, the man said to have taken hostages at the Clinton campaign "has a history," I thought I'd turn to Google.

Sure enough a man with the name of Leeland Eisenberg was described in this legal memorandum of findings as an "inmate in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections."

A man of the same name (but described in the pleading as "formerly known as Ralph E. Woodward") filed a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston alleging he was molested by a priest who had provided him with room and board when he was "approximately 21 years old, [and] was homeless and living in abandoned cars in a local junk yard in Ayer, Massachusetts."

Whether he's the same man and why he is doing what he is doing now, who knows?

MORE (06:16 p.m.): The man seems to have just been caught or he has surrendered; I just saw a picture of him lying down being handcuffed.

According to Editor and Publisher, he was very upset over his car being checked and then leafleted for having unlocked doors, as well as having his picture appear in the newspaper.

MORE: The case seems to have resolved with all hostages released and Eisenberg in custody.

The consensus of all the news reports is that he has a history of mental illness, which should surprise no one.

AND MORE (06:25 p.m.) It is now being reported by Fox News that the suspect's name is "Troy Stanley," which is confirmed here.

So "Leeland Eisenberg" may be an alias, and he is reported to have others.

AND MORE: Reading this collection of posts, it appears that the man has gone from "Troy Stanley" (which was discounted) before he was "Leeland Eisenberg" (which has now been discounted), and now (I think) it's back to "Troy Stanley."

Maybe it will be figured out eventually.

MORE: Michelle Malkin is also trying to follow the name saga, and seems to be leaning in favor of the Eisenberg theory.

AND MORE (06:39 p.m.): I know this will sound screwy, but CNN is reporting he's Eisenberg, while Fox said he's Stanley the last time I switched channels.

AND MORE (06:42 p.m.): Now Fox says he's Eisenberg.

Hillary will be having a press conference in 20 minutes.

(No surprise there.)

And I have to run out so I'll miss the rest of a story that is -- or should be -- over.

MORE (08:00 p.m.): My thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.

The reports are now unanimous that the suspect has been identified as Leeland Eisenberg.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post and welcome all. I appreciate the comments.

Don't miss Tom Maguire's post which has links to more of Eisenberg's previous problems -- including a DUI and a history of stalking.

Hmmm...

All the more reason we shouldn't confuse Googling with stalking.

(Geez, I almost said "confuse Stoogling with galking.")

MORE: Regarding Hillary Clinton's orchestrated statement after the event, Ann Althouse's post (linked by Tom Maguire and Glenn Reynolds) is a must-read:

I don't want a President to roil into a mommyesque ball of emotion when a few people are in danger. Yet that's not Hillary. The only question is why she thought a statement like that was a good one. She probably wanted to make sure not to confirm the widely held belief that she's unemotional, and, while she was at it, delight all the ladies out there who lap up emotional drivel.

Via Glenn Reynolds, I found an intriguing question about female genital mutilation:

Should outsiders be telling African women what initiation practices are acceptable?

I guess as an "outsider" I should first be asking whether I have a right to an opinion about what is acceptable.

But I agree that it's a good question, and even though I might not be allowed to have an opinion, I have thought of a few more.

Should outsiders be telling Tlingit Indians what slavery ownership practices are acceptable?

Should outsiders be telling Iranians what nuclear practices are acceptable?

Should outsiders be telling Muslim men what honor killing practices are acceptable?

Should outsiders be telling Rwandans what tribal warfare practices are acceptable?

Should outsiders be telling Cambodians what collectivization practices are acceptable?

Should outsiders be telling Germans what Jewish evacuation practices are acceptable?

God forbid that we might get judgmental about these things....

That CNN has been caught again using planted questioners should surprise no one, least of all me. I've lost count of how many of their "ordinary citizen" questioners turned out to be activists known to CNN or associated with various campaigns.

There were several in the last debate, and there have of course been several more in the latest debate.

It's a farce. (As Roger L. Simon observed, it forces satirists to "parody a parody.")

There have been countless posts by countless bloggers. Glenn Reynolds has had more posts than I can count about CNN's obvious bias; in this one he pretty well sums it up. I especially liked this:

I've never called CNN the "Clinton News Network." (I'm not even a "conservative blogger" except in the sense that I've supported the war, but nowadays that's all "conservative" means to most people). And there's a bigger problem.

Nope.

So here I go....

CNN is the Clinton News Network!

It's just too blatant to ignore.

What irritated me the most, though, about the angry retired gay general whose name is right there for the world to see on Hillary's web site was not so much that CNN failed to disclose it (or that they have now expunged the segment) but that the premise of General Kerr's argument was so flawed.

I do not refer to his argument that gays should be allowed to serve. I agree with him wholeheartedly on that, and I have for years. Rather, it's the way he stood there on national television, with a huge (if justifiable) axe to grind, and scolded the Republicans -- as if his "closet" was all their fault.

Was it?

What I think should have been reported was not merely his presence on Hillary's election committee, but the background behind his argument -- especially the fact that he retired not under Bush, but under Clinton -- after the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was established.

Moreover, his military service dates back to the early 1950s -- a time when there was virtually unanimous agreement by the political leaders of both parties that homosexuality was incompatible with military service. Kerr didn't come out until 2003:

Darrah, along with Army Col. Stewart Bornhoft and Army Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr, who all are retired, will speak about hiding their orientation while in the military and ask for support to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy tomorrow, Aug. 3, at a program benefiting the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) at Chicago's Center on Halsted roof garden.

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy was enacted in 1993 and thought to be an improvement because before its enactment, being LGBT barred a person from military service. The policy also ended intrusive questions about service members' orientation and stopped the military's investigations to smoke out suspected members.

"Sometimes [military officials] used strong-arm tactics to throw people out," says Kerr, 74, who was one of the highest-ranking military officers to reveal he was gay when he came out in a 2003 New York Times article.

Kerr was a teenager in 1950 when Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that Soviet spies and Communists were infiltrating the U.S. government. McCarthyism taught him certain aspects of a person's life are best kept secret. He retired from the California State Military Reserves in 1995 after 31 years in the Army and the Reserves, primarily with intelligence groups.

"The basic premise I started with is that if you wanted to be successful in life, you had to keep that to yourself," says Kerr.

in June John Kerry told the 'Army Times' magazine that he was not sure that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should be abolished, even though he has previously said that he supports allowing Gay men and Lesbians to serve in the U.S. military, and disliked the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

So, with all respect to General Kerr and his decision to come out eight years after his 1995 retirement, why is it that the public national scolding is deserved only by Republicans?

During General Kerr's 43 years of service, he'd have served under ten Presidents -- Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. That's five Democrats and five Republicans; and the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" wasn't implemented until shortly before he retired. Under all previous admininstrations, the policy was more along the lines of "we ask, you lie!"

I'm sure life in the military was difficult for General Kerr, and it is understandable that he would bear a grudge. But I think it's hardly fair to single out Republicans for an emotional scolding.

What would have really been interesting (and more honest, in my view) would have been to allow candidate Alan Keyes to weigh in on General Kerr's question. Keyes is on record as saying that homosexuality, is "the thermonuclear device--that is aimed at the soul of America," and "a direct repudiation of our most important principles."

It may sound cynical, but think CNN did itself a disservice here. I mean, imagine the ratings that would be generated by a presidential candidate accusing a general of being a thermonuclear device on national television.

But CNN kept Keyes off the air and edited him out of the debate. The Keyes website is naturally indignant:

For reasons evident below, CNN's decision to exclude Dr. Keyes is obviously arbitrary, unfair, and presumptuous -- overriding, in essence, the prerogative of the State of Florida to decide which presidential contenders voters have a right to learn about.

The effect of this decision by CNN is far-reaching. Any candidate who does not appear in this nationally-televised debate -- the last one scheduled before the primaries -- will have little chance of compensating for the damage done to his campaign in the public mind. Note that Ambassador Keyes has already been excluded from two previous national debates on dubious grounds, and as a result, most people are not even aware he is running for president.

Excluding Dr. Keyes from Wednesday's debate will arguably do irreparable damage to his campaign -- a result that can hardly have escaped CNN. CNN is playing "gate-keeper," and that is not a legitimate role of the media, no matter how much influence they seek to exert in the political arena.

Read the following exchange, and if you believe an indefensible injustice is about to occur, contact the following executives at CNN and encourage them to reverse their decision to exclude Alan Keyes.

But both Florida polls and a recent Iowa poll show him as ahead of at least Duncan Hunter:

Mitt Romney 29%
Fred Thompson 18%
Mike Huckabee 12%
Rudy Giuliani 11%
John McCain 7%
Tom Tancredo 5%
Ron Paul 4%
Sam Brownback 2%
Alan Keyes 2%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Not sure/Uncommitted 9%Survey of 405 likely Republican caucus participants was conducted October 1-3. The margin of error is +/- 4.9 percentage points.

What I think is happening is that the Romney people don't want him there, and CNN is delighted to keep him out. The race is very close, and Romney thinks he can corral the anti-gay Keyes voters by positing himself as the "conservative alternative" to the "liberal" Giuliani with all the "values" rhetoric. That Keyes is not there to call him on it suits him just fine.

I think that strategically, it suits CNN and the Clinton machine just fine too. Were Keyes and his supporters with their angry agenda allowed to be heard, it would be clarifying for the country. They would be able to vote, and everyone would know the actual strength -- in actual votes -- Keyes and what I call the "WorldNetDaily wing" would tally. At most, they'd get between 5% and 10%. I may be wrong, but that's my guess.

All the more reason to please, for God's sake, let them vote!

Identifying this vote is not in the interest of the left, because their goal is to claim that the entire Republican Party thinks that way. Thus, while it may be counterintuitive, it is in their interest (and Romney's interest) to marginalize the far right, and in this way, blur their numbers so that they look bigger than they are. Marginalization is in the interest of conflation.

Of course, I may be wrong, and the Keyes WorldNetDaily wing may be stronger than I think.

Isn't that all the more reason to find out?

MORE: Via PJM and Beltway Blogroll, I see that to some on the left, using Google to research people's political affiliations and find out what they have said is now considered "stalking."

Which makes me wonder whom I have stalked in writing this post. General Kerr? Alan Keyes? Mitt Romney? CNN? Who wrote the MyDD post, anyway? A guy named Todd Beeton?

Let's see. According to my quick stalk, here's his blogger.com profile:

# Age: 36
# Gender: Male
# Astrological Sign: Aries

See? When you've stalked one 36 year old male Aries, you've stalked them all!

It's getting to the point where words don't mean anything.

UPDATE: "DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL," says Glenn Reynolds (about CNN), who noted earlier that the prestigious bastions of respectable journalism aren't into asking or telling.

Glenn links Michelle Malkin, who has more on Kerr (including his airline ticket), along with another list of "other Democratic activists lurking in the YouTube garden." She also quotes a CNN exec who attempts to use the Ron Paul supporters as an excuse:

Whether through, as one blogger put, "constructive incompetence" or "convenient ineptitude," CNN has committed journalistic malpractice under the guise of "citizen" participation.

In a now richly ironic interview with Wired.- com before the debate, David Bohrman, a CNN senior vice president, explained why videos were picked not by popular vote, but by supposedly seasoned CNN journalists: The Web is still too immature a medium to set an agenda for a national debate, he claimed. "It's really easy for the campaigns to game the system." "You've seen how effective the Ron Paul campaign [supporters] have been on the Web," he noted. "You don't know if there are 40 or 4 million of them. It would be easy for a really organized campaign to stack the deck."

Not that any of this would matter to CNN, but the YouTuber with the confederate flag (TheHoustonKid) is a not only a Ron Paul supporter, but you don't even have to resort to "stalking" to find that out; it's right there with his YouTube videos!

Pathetic.

Who needs parody when you've got the "Clown News Network"?

Yeah, I know I said "Clinton New Network" earlier, but that's only because I was trying to parody something serious.

But with the Clown News Network, now I'm really serious!

MORE: It's a minor point, but on CNN, General Kerr described himself as "a retired brigadier general with 43 years of service he had 43 years of service." That is reflected here, which means the reference to 31 years in the article I quoted above is wrong. (It also states that his service began in 1953 and he formally retired in 1996, which means he would not have served under Truman. Using the wrong date above, I subtracted 43 from 1995.)

By now you have probably heard about the ringers at the CNN debate. If not Glen Reynolds has a few links to get you started. Eric also has some help. The short version: The Democrats had party activists asking questions for the Democrat's debate and they had party activists asking questions for the Republican's debate. So of course the Democrats got softballs and the Republicans got toughies. Which is a good thing. It takes the Republican's minds off of intraparty warfare and focuses it on beating the Democrats.

As to CNN and the Democrats:

It is unwise to attribute to malice alone that which can be attributed to malice and stupidity.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Megan McArdle looks at a meme of which I've grown quite tired -- that "real libertarians" didn't support the war:

This is the emerging meme, mostly, interestingly, among people who are not themselves libertarians.Stand by for my post tomorrow: real progressives won't vote for Hilary Clinton.

The results I get don't change much, and they're based on my answers to questions. I think what I think, and I happen to agree with a lot of what most people would call "libertarian thinking." Whenever I take these tests, they tell me that I am libertarian. Pointing that out does not morally obligate me to do anything beyond agreeing with my own answers. The tests do not tell me what I think, nor what I should think. I tell the tests what I think, and I think what I think I should think.

Is there anything in those tests or in my stated libertarianism which says I have to take an oath to be "real"?

What is real?

I find it appalling that anyone would tell anyone else that he is not a "real" libertarian. No one is in any position to do this, as there is no oath to take. Other than the Libertarian Party, there is no platform.

So who would have the right to determine what is, and what is not, the correct ideology?

As an individualist, I would not trust anyone who tried to claim such a right, because he'd be claiming a right to speak for me.

Unless libertarianism has become like scientology, I don't think other libertarians have any such power.

I think that part of the reason I fall into the libertarian camp is because of my individualism. I don't believe that anyone has the right to tell anyone else what to think. Telling someone he is not a "real" libertarian has no other purpose than attempting to bully him into thinking not what he thinks, but what the accuser thinks. This, I think, explains why most of the accusations that libertarians are not "real" seem to be coming not from libertarians, but from self-appointed antiwar scolds.

The "libertarian" handle for me is a label of convenience -- something to help give people a general picture of my philosophical outlook which they can take or leave, but certainly not something worth fighting for. People can say I am not real, but unless they change the tests, I'm afraid the tests will go on saying I'm libertarianish, and I will too.

I don't care whether I measure up to someone else's standards of "realness."

Life is too short.

A recent Philadelphia shooting has attracted so much local attention that I thought it merited a post. The situation is so appalling, and the family so squalid and so dysfunctional, that it challenges my usual libertarian sensibilities, and while it doesn't incline me towards communitarian thinking, it does incline me to entertain the idea that some situations -- and some people -- might be so hopeless as to be beyond redemption.

This is, I admit, an ugly thought, and one most people don't allow themselves to have. But is denial the better approach? Too many libertarians just want the world to be the way they are. They behave responsibly, and therefore so should others.

Tell that to the family involved here:

Philadelphia - A five-year old boy was shot outside a Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) home early yesterday morning, police said yesterday.

Chief Inspector Keith Sadler described the scene as "chilling," as a group of children, pre-school age to teenagers, were surrounded by illegal guns in a building police said had been abandoned. The shooting occurred at around 1 a.m. at 622 Huntington St. in the West Kensington section of the city. The child, whose name has not been released, was taken to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children and is in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the buttocks.

The child's mother, Charlene Shallings, 29, was arrested last night for endangering the welfare of a child. Police said she was found in a local cocktail lounge at the time of the incident.

Police are looking for 15-year old Kevin Fletcher, who is assumed to be armed and dangerous.

Chief Sadler said police recovered two guns from a van that transported the five-year-old to the hospital - a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a .380 semiautomatic handgun. On both guns, police said the serial numbers were nearly obliterated, but investigators were able to trace them.

Chief Sadler said Mr. Fletcher is wanted in connection with another shooting that occurred last month, and evidence ties both shootings to yet another incident - the accidental shooting of two other children, ages 15 and 11, on Thanksgiving night.

About half a dozen other children, ages 2 through 15, were present at the time of yesterday morning's shooting, as well as the Thanksgiving shooting. Police have the unidentified 15-year old in custody.

"The twist to this story is that the 15-year-old victim ... was also arrested for a shooting prior to these incidents. Last night, the shooter for the incident on Thanksgiving night ... was present at [yesterday's] shooting. We believe these to be accidental shootings."

Police said the two guns involved in both shootings were reported stolen by Fletcher's uncle, who allegedly possessed them legally and resided nearby.

"The teenagers stole these guns from their uncle's residence. This is all very frightening because it involves teenagers and preschool children," the chief said.

Police said the investigation into the case is ongoing.

That was a couple of days ago. In today's Inquirer, it was reported that the boy has been arrested, and the mother of the five year old is having her children taken away.

The wounded boy's siblings have been placed in the custody of child welfare officials.

Police have charged their mother, Charlene Stallings, 29, with endangering the welfare of children, saying she apparently was in a cocktail lounge at the time of the shooting.

Relatives said Stallings was a good mother who left her children with a baby-sitter while she visited friends nearby.

Court records show that Stallings pleaded guilty May 3 to retail theft in Montgomery County. She had been arrested in January on a complaint dated Nov. 15, 2006, according to records.

They indicate that she apparently was unable to post bail, even when it was reduced to $500. She remained jailed until she was paroled May 11.

After her release, she made no payments on $988 in outstanding court fines and assessments, and on Sept. 26 Montgomery County referred the matter to a collection agency, the records showed.

Officials also said her 11-year-old son was arrested in October for car theft and was placed in a court-ordered program designed to reduce violence in the city.

In another piece, a relative weighed in on the family's, um, issues:

Aisha Meggett, Stallings' cousin, said the police have the story all wrong. She was babysitting at the home yesterday and helping to clean up; clothes were strewn around the living room following the police search the night before.

"They're trying to make it seem like my cousin is a bad mother, but she takes care of these kids," Meggett said, opening the refrigerator to show that it was stocked with food. She said Stallings was not at a lounge at the time of the shooting, but visiting friends nearby, while a 19-year-old cousin of the injured boy was babysitting. The incident happened about 10:30 p.m., she said.

"There's no gun in this house, no drugs, nothing," Meggett said. "My cousin wouldn't jeopardize anything." She had no idea how Fletcher obtained the gun. "Kids find guns and they play with them. If they [police] found a gun here, they set us up."

Other relatives, too, decried the ready availability of guns.

"What do you think? Guns are all around," said a teenage cousin of the victim, who declined to give his name. "Go over there, go in there, and you'll find a gun in a couple of minutes," he said, indicating a vacant lot across the street.

After the shooting, the boy was taken by private vehicle to Episcopal Hospital and then to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, where he remained yesterday. His three siblings were taken into custody by the city's Department of Human Services, which is also investigating.

The worst thing about this is that while I don't blame guns for being stolen and played with any more than I'd blame the car that the eleven-year-old stole, I worry. My worry is that there might be people who just plain shouldn't have guns. They shouldn't have cars. And in all probability, they shouldn't have kids. (The mother who was at the cocktail lounge when all this happened has had hers taken away.)

Not that any of this matters. I doubt that the mother or any of her kids are allowed to own firearms anyway. That's why the gun control people are upset by cases like this.

Notice how the Inquirer trots out the stock phrase "ready availability of guns," though. They're writing about a group of people who are not legally allowed to have them, yet who claim they are everywhere, and admit their kids are playing with them. If there is a problem with ready availability, I would suggest it is a law enforcement problem.

The idea of passing more laws for such people to ignore is laughable. It is illegal for 15 year olds to steal guns. It is illegal for 15 year olds to possess guns. Similarly, it is illegal for 11 year olds to steal cars, and the last I heard, it was also illegal for them to drive them!

Now, let's suppose the 11 year old who stole the car had managed to run over the 5 year old before the 15 year old had managed to shoot him.

Would anyone be complaining about the "ready availability" of cars?

If this family proves a ready availability of anything, it's that Philadelphia has a ready availability of crime.

(Need I point out for the umpteenth time that there is also a ready availability of laws? Nah, why bother?)

The problem is that I can offer no solutions, which is what makes posts like this emotionally unfulfilling to write.

Libertarianism offers nothing by way of solutions to intractable social problems. People like me tend to have a "Leave me alone in my house, and I'll leave you alone in your house" approach. This might work fine among libertarians who don't believe in "It Takes A Village." But what happens when the village wants village laws, village rule, and (ultimately) village tyranny?

What happens when the village "decides" it does not like the "ready availability" of freedom?

Can I just go get it somewhere else?

MORE: This quote from Ludwig von Mises may be helpful to libertarians in their time of need:

A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

I watched part of last night's debate and read about the rest (via Glenn Reynolds) at Vodka Pundit.

Nothing beats reading drunken live blogging the morning after.

The most important things were that Fred looked good, so did McCain (at least during the waterboarding discussion when he "pulled rank"), and I agree with Stephen that it was Rudy's weakest night so far.

I absolutely loved some of the YouTube questions Stephen Green has for the candidates. This one is especially good, as it zeroes in on a key issue:

A lot better than many of the YouTube questions they had last night!

No seriously. The truth is, Romney's hair really is perfect. At least as perfect as John Edwards's hair. And John Edwards' perfect hair is an important campaign issue. It has been for two elections now. As even Kerry admitted, "better hair" "goes a long way!"

So why not ask Romney about his perfect hair? Women love men with perfect hair, and regular guys with regular hair are jealous, so it is a big deal, even a huge deal.

Not that there's anything wrong with being perfect....

But I'd like to know something.

Yesterday, I noticed that Romney not only appeared to be backing away from his previous holier-than-thou attitude, but in doing so he was saying almost the same thing he'd slammed Giuliani for saying:

"I was wrong, I was effectively pro-choice," said Romney, who has said he changed his stance in 2004 during debates on stem cell research. "On abortion, I was wrong."

"If people are looking for somebody in this country who has never made a mistake ... then they ought to find somebody else," he said.

It sounded almost exactly what Rudy Giuliani -- "Mr. I'm Not Perfect" -- said one week ago:

"The reality is all of us that run for public office, whether its governor, legislator, mayor, president-we are all human beings. If we haven't made mistakes don't vote for us cause we got some big ones that are gonna happen in the future and we wont know how to handle them."

So what does it mean when it comes from Romney?

The perfect triangulation imperfection inoculation?

Anyway, the bottom line is that Giuliani had a weak night, and the background is that he had already beaten Romney to the claim of not being perfect. But Romney not only had the best hair last night, but he will continue to always have the best hair! And if he, Mr. Perfect, is now able to triangulate Giuliani as Mr. "I'm Not Perfect," but he still has perfect hair, where does that leave Mr. Less-Than-Perfect-Hair?

Will Romney triangulate bad hair? (Maybe just one bad hair day?)

I guess we'll stay tuned.

According to logic, if tasers are instruments of torture (which the UN argues they are), and if you can use an ordinary camera to make a taser, then cameras should also be considered instruments of torture, and regulated, right?

What? You don't believe me because my old link no longer works? There's a new link to the same video here, or you can just watch this YouTube video and learn how to outwit the UN!

Why no one brought up the taser torture issue at last night's Republican debate, I don't know.

I'm surprised that UN hasn't decided that police nightsticks are instruments of torture. And sjamboks. (traditionally considered South African, but used in Namibia or Zimbabwe) And fists!

Why, even the lowly lit cigarette is well known as an instrument of torture.

And what about guns? If the theory is that torture is the infliction of pain, then why isn't shooting someone considered torture?

The answer is that anything can be used to torture someone. In Daniel P. Mannix's History of Torture, a police detective from the days of the "Third Degree" is quoted as saying he could make anyone talk by using only a telephone book and a pair of pliers. Moreover, he claimed that he knew how to use them in such a way that it would leave no marks.

[OK, I didn't want to spell it out, but since most people won't buy and read Mannix's account, the telephone book is used to beat the victim's head on the temples without leaving marks, and the pliers work best with unneutered males....]

Mannix also quotes Peron's police chief Cipriano Lombilla, an expert at torturing people electrically without leaving marks. Here's a typical (if poorly translated) account by one of Lombilla's victims -- Nieves Boschi de Blanco:

In half of the declaration the Amoresano employee came to cover the eyes to me using cotton and a long bandage. Lead by a running length to another room they forced to lay down to me to me on a stretcher. They began then to use the electrical wire, the first on the clothes and soon directly on the body, raising to me dress and undergarments until the height of the neck. The application was made systematically by space of ten minutes in the ears, sines, belly, ingle, genital organs and legs, using as a towel dampened like average conductor. As result of the torture I underwent the first fading, restored of which they reinitiated the procedure during other five minutes. Before a new loss of the sense the bandage took off being able to verify then that the voices and mentioned laughter before heard corresponded to the Lombilla, Ferreiro and other three, whose last names I do not know. The torture was preceded and accompanied by obscene offenses by word and in fact (in an opportunity the Amoresano employee expressed: ' I am going to you to make release the baby before its time').

Here's a brief history of the Argentine picana:

The Argentine picana electrica had humble origins.[2] In 1902, Boekelman had published papers on the electric stunning of animals for slaughter and its effects on the quality of the meat. By 1929, Weinberger and Muller developed a stun device for pig slaughterhouses at the University of Munich. In Argentina, the picana electrica replaced the barbed picana. In 1932, it entered into police work in Buenos Aires and little has changed in its usage since that time. Victims are strapped to a wooden table and wetted down to aid the current. The prod operator applies the wand to sensitive parts of the body (head, temples, mouth, genitalia, breasts) while the machine operator works the bobbin, raising and reducing voltage. The victim often bites on rubber or lead to make sure that the tongue is not bit off during the shocks. Usually, a doctor is present to make sure that the victim has no heart problems and can survive the interrogation. Other accounts indicate a doctor keeps tabs on the pulse of the victim during the interrogation.

The electrical picana operates on direct current but it can be plugged into the wall socket of the victim's home with the aid of a transformer. It is transported in a suitcase and usually powered by an automobile battery. The sleeve is insulated and the bronze or copper tip applied to the body. The voltage of the first picanas varied between 12000 and 16000 volts with a thousandth of an ampere. This voltage is modest by comparison to modern tasers, but it is the low amperage that allows the repeated use of shock without killing the victim.

I have read various gruesome accounts about Lombilla's use of the picana (he bragged that he could make even the most stubborn cases talk by sliding a wire down the esophagus and then shocking the pit of the stomach opening), but Time magazine has another account involving two brothers who were "friends of Evita":

When Dictator Juan Peron was in power, the Cardosos were notorious for winning "confessions" from the regime's prisoners. Their prize persuader was the picana electrica, an "electric needle" that delivered a 12,000-volt jolt. Applied to the lips, soles of the feet or genitals, the picana made the victim convulse with shrieking pain, while leaving no marks. "With the picana" Juan Cardoso once boasted, "you can extract in one session confessions that would have taken four days of sissified questioning."

For four years the brothers plied their trade. In 1952 Eva Peron gave Juan Cardoso a gold cup as "best detective of the year." Then when Peron was finally ousted in 1955, the boys hopped on a motorcycle, raced to the Paraguayan embassy and requested political asylum. The new Argentine government angrily demanded their return as common criminals. But the Paraguayans insisted that the Cardosos were political refugees.

Or just use the pliers.

The important thing to remember is that it's all Bush's fault.

Apparently there are such things.

And I'm not referring to anything done by the Inquisition (which I hope people will grant was worse than Bush and Rumsfeld).

I refer to the comments of a Philadelphia judge in characterizing a defendant's crimes:

"She was basically tortured," said Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon, summarizing the half-hour testimony of Ian Hood, a deputy city medical examiner. "She was tortured much worse than waterboarding."

What was done to this woman in question was so awful that when I read the piece, I found myself surprised that the judge would even think to mention waterboarding in comparison:

Her head had been covered with plastic and a pillowcase, and a scarf had been tied around her neck. She was also wearing latex gloves with bleach-like fluid inside. All of this had been done, police have contended, to mask the victim's identity.

The goateed defendant, wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt, sat upright, with a look of intense interest. At one point, he craned his neck as if to see a picture that Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber showed the judge.

Hood said the injuries to Jackson from head to foot had been inflicted over several days, with a minimum of three separate episodes of abuse. Hood listed "blunt trauma" as the cause of death, though he said there was no single death blow. Her death was caused by an accumulation of bruises, lacerations and fractures, he said.

Jackson had been Johnson's live-in girlfriend for two years. Police have said that Johnson had found a new girlfriend on a telephone chat line and wanted to get Jackson out of the way.

"It's one of the most gruesome, horrific cases I've seen," Selber said.

I probably should have pointed out in my Inquisition post that burning people alive is worse than waterboarding.

(Wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea.)

Even The New Republic notices.

Campaigning for his wife this afternoon in Iowa, Bill Clinton threw an asterisk over his position on the Iraq war:

"Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning," said Clinton, "I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers."

Bill still has it going on. Support the wife? Check. Support the troops? Check. Throw an arm's length up between your team and the war administration? Check. This 'two-for one' bit sure has legs. But as much as Clinton may wish it otherwise, these days Bill's extra-credit work cannot go unchecked. Reporters soon rustled up a speech at the war's outset in which Clinton said:

"I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In his continuing examination of why Hollywood's recent antiwar films have flopped (even though the old Vietnam stuff didn't), Roger L. Simon offers a very interesting explanation. The Iraq films flop because they lack the same type of passion which characterized the anti-Vietnam war films.

As Roger explains, it's a lot easier for leftists to be pro-Communist than pro-Islamist:

While the Vietnam and Iraq Wars are often equated by the liberal-left, the differences between the two are greater than the similarities, especially in the critical area of who is the adversary. For Vietnam: The evils of communism could be and were rationalized by the left as a plea for social equality in an economically unjust world. For Iraq: The evils of Islamofascism and just plain fascism are considerably harder, indeed almost impossible, to rationalize.

This problem is particularly true for Hollywood because the evils of Islamofascism - notably extreme misogyny and homophobia - are justifiably big no-nos to people in the Industry. In fact, they are close to the biggest no-nos of all for them in their daily lives. Who is worse than a sexist pig? Only a violent, murderous sexist pig who wants to take over the world. It then becomes a complex balancing act indeed to make a movie that ignores or downplays this in order to criticize the US as the larger villain. No one has been able to come close to pulling off this balancing act in a film. In fact, it may well be impossible because it is fundamentally dishonest.

People don't want to sit through fundamental dishonesty. It's also emotionally unrewarding to go to a film expecting good guys and bad guys (after all this stuff is marketed as entertainment), only to be told that "your side" is bad, without a cogent and compelling explanation of exactly how the enemy is supposed to be good.

Would Hollywood make a film showing American troops committing atrocities against the Nazi SS in an unsympathetic light? Such things did happen; I knew a man who was present at the liberation of Dachau who personally witnessed American GIs spontaneously shooting unarmed Nazi concentration camp guards despite the fact that they had surrendered. The officers didn't stop it as fast as they might have, for they were also in a state of horror over what they found. But there's no question that shootings like that were illegal. For obvious reasons, such incidents tended not to make it into Hollywood films. They'd have flopped at the box office, and to make them during World War II would have been unthinkable. For that matter, so would a film about the deaths of innocent children during the firebombing of Dresden.

Whether war is war, and whether atrocities in Iraq are morally comparable to atrocities against the Nazis -- these issues are irrelevant to whether the general public wants to shell out money to sit through a scolding of their own country.

To the extent that entertainment becomes propaganda, it tends to lose its entertainment value. To make good propaganda, the propagandist has to be what is called a "true believer."

(Such a thing may be an oxymoron in Hollywood today.)

It's a term I see more and more, and I'm worried that it's degenerating into either a redundancy, or code language for "atheist left."

Ann Althouse linked this WSJ Op Ed by First Things editor Joseph Bottum which has the following subtitle:

Will the secular left soon attack the religious right for being pro-science?

While I can't read the mind of Joseph Bottum, I don't think it has quite the same rhetorical ring as the accompanying overused term "religious right."

Or does it? When I think of the "religious right" I normally think of moral or social conservatives, usually fundamentalists, who tend to be in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. As opposed to the non-religious or less religious right. Goldwater conservatives, paleoconservatives, libertarian Republicans, and even some neoconservatives are by no means necessarily fundamentalists, and thus they do not all deserve to be lumped in with the "religious right."

But is "secular left" used the same way? Is it used to distinguish the secular from the non-secular left? Or is it code language implying that secularism is inherently leftist?

I don't like the automatic assertion that there is no such thing as the secular right.

This tends to be a kneejerk assumption among conservatives, but more than one conservative has objected.

In a great article titled "The Secular Right," Robert Tracinski explains:

If a young person is turned off by religion or attracted by the achievements of science, and he wants to embrace a secular outlook, he is told--by both sides of the debate--that his place is with the collectivists and social subjectivists of the left. On the other hand, if he admires the free market and wants America to have a bold, independent national defense, then he is told--again, by both sides--that his natural home is with the religious right.

But what if all of this is terribly wrong? What if it's possible to hold some of the key convictions associated with the right, being pro-free-market and supporting the war, and even to do so more strongly and consistently than most on the right--but still to be secular? What if it's possible to reject the socialism subjectivism of the left and believe in the importance of morality, but without believing in God?

Interestingly, there's a Wiki entry on the subject of the secular right, but this is defined as "refer[ing] to but [is] not exclusive to the libertarian, socially liberal or non-religious wing of most conservative movements or parties."

At the time of the founding, there were plenty of religious secularists, who wanted to separate government and religion not to the detriment of religion but for the benefit of religion. In a post on the subject, I quoted James Madison:

The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both...

"Secular" has become such a dirty word that few on the secular right would dare define themselves that way.

And the endless conflation goes unchallenged....

Some things are incredibly tedious for me to go through, and I'm afraid that Dinesh D'Souza's "He didn't suffer all that much" is one of them.

It is D'Souza's position that because of a false atheist claim that the elderly Galileo was physically tortured, the Inquisition is in need of reexamination. And maybe other stuff we've learned is all wrong too. Maybe Galileo is more to blame than we were all taught in school. For the Inquisition (it turns out) was surprisingly benevolent, and Galileo really forced their hand by violating an earlier order not to teach heliocentrism.

NOTE: D'Souza's "He didn't suffer all that much" essay is in red, because I have too many other quotes interspersed throughout.

Is there an irreconcilable conflict between science and religion? Today's outspoken atheists, including Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, seek to set science and religion at odds largely by invoking the Galileo case. For example, Harris, in his book The End of Faith, condemns the Christian church of the Renaissance for "torturing scholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about the nature of the stars."

I intend here to reopen the Galileo case to expose the atheist argument as completely misguided.

In 1907, Pope Pius X declared modernism a heresy, had its exponents within the church excommunicated, and put all critical studies of the Bible on the Index of proscribed books. Authors similarly distinguished include Descartes (selected works), Montaigne (Essays), Locke (Essay on Human Understanding), Swift (Tale of a Tub), Swedenborg (Principia), Voltaire (Lettres philosophiques), Diderot (Encyclopédie), Rousseau (Du con trat social), Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), Paine (The Rights of Man), Sterne (A Sentimental Journey), Kant (Critique of Pure Reason), Flaubert (Madame Bovary), and Darwin (On the Origin of Species). As a censorious afterthought, Descartes' Meditations was added to the Index in 1948. With all that had occurred earlier in the decade, one might have thought that the Holy See could have found greater offenses with which to concern itself. Although not a single leader of the Third Reich-not even Hitler himself-was ever excommunicated, Galileo was not absolved of heresy until 1992.

In the words of the present pope, John Paul II, we can see how the matter now stands: "This Revelation is definitive; one can only accept it or reject it. One can accept it, professing belief in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, the Son, of the same substance as the Father and the Holy Spirit, who is Lord and the Giver of life. Or one can reject all of this. " While the rise and fall of modernism in the church can hardly be considered a victory for the forces of rationality, it illustrates an important point: wanting to know how the world is leaves one vulnerable to new evidence. It is no accident that religious doctrine and honest inquiry are so rarely juxtaposed in our world.

When we consider that so few generations had passed since the church left off disemboweling innocent men before the eyes of their families, burning old women alive in public squares, and torturing scholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about the nature of the stars, it is perhaps little wonder that it failed to think anything had gone terribly amiss in Germany during the war years. Indeed, it is also well known that certain Vatican officials (the most notorious of whom was Bishop Alois Hudal) helped members of the SS like Adolf Eichmann, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Mueller, Franz Stangl, and hundreds of others escape to South America and the Middle East in the aftermath of the war. In this context, one is often reminded that others in the Vatican helped Jews escape as well. This is true. It is also true, however, that Vatican aid was often contingent upon whether or not the Jews in question had been previously baptized.

Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture....

Is there something wrong with me in finding it appalling that the world's leading scientist was hauled before the Inquisition, convicted of heresy, and sentenced to life imprisonment?

Not that this justifies atheists (or anyone else) exaggerating what was done to him, and he does not appear to have been tortured. But if atheists have made the false claim that he was, is that really an occasion to leap to the defense of the Inquisition?

At any event, I am unable to find any claim by Harris that Galileo was tortured. Instead, he complains about the Church (not limited to "of the Renaissance" as D'Souza claims) "torturing scholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about the nature of the stars."

Is that necessarily a reference to Galileo? Isn't it possible that he meant to refer to Giordano Bruno? The latter was a scholar, philosopher and cosmologist who held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, and ended up being burned at the stake for it:

Bruno continued his Venetian defensive strategy, which consisted in bowing to the Church's dogmatic teachings, while trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy. In particular Bruno held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. Instead he appealed in vain to Pope Clement VIII, hoping to save his life through a partial recantation. The Pope expressed himself in favor of a guilty verdict. Consequently, Bruno was declared a heretic, handed over to secular authorities on February 8 1600. At his trial he listened to the verdict on his knees, then stood up and said: "Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." A month or so later he was brought to the Campo de' Fiori, a central Roman market square, his tongue in a gag, tied to a pole naked and burned at the stake, on February 17, 1600.

For this, another apology was issued, also by Pope John Paul II:

Four hundred years after his execution, official expression of "profound sorrow" and acknowledgement of error at Bruno's condemnation to death was made, during the papacy of John Paul II.

In Naples he was also initiated in astrology; astrological speculations would become a constant feature in his writings.

Campanella's heterodox views, especially his opposition to the authority of Aristotle, brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities. Denounced to the Inquisition and cited before the Holy Office in Rome, he was confined in a convent until 1597.

After his liberation, Campanella returned to Calabria, where he became the leader of a conspiracy against the Spanish rule. Campanella's aim was to establish a society based on the community of goods and wives, for on the basis of the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore and his own astrological observations, he foresaw the advent of the Age of the Spirit in the year 1600. Betrayed by two of his fellow conspirators, he was captured and incarcerated in Naples. Feigning insanity, he managed to escape the death penalty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Campanella spent twenty-seven years imprisoned.

While I am not a scholar of the Inquisition, I think either Bruno or Campanella would fit within the general parameters Harris describes. To what extent they were tortured, to what extent it was for speculations about the stars, and to what extent it drove them to madness I cannot say. But considering what happened to other scholars, I think it is a little disingenuous to characterize Harris's claim as a false statement that Galileo was tortured.

I was never taught that Galileo was tortured, although I was taught that he landed in the hands of the Inquisition repeatedly. I believed then and I believe now that it is one of the most regrettable periods in Christian history.

Unless I am reading him wrong, D'Souza is going out of his way to imagine a "false torture smear" against the Inquisition (even though he doesn't show the smear was made by any of the atheists in question), and then he bootstraps that into a defense of the Inquisition against the atheists.

What in the world is going on with this guy? Does he think that atheists are morally worse than the Inquisitors?

Or is he a professional apologist, leap-frogging from a defense of "conservative Muslims" against "cultural leftists" to this latest defense of the Inquisition against godless atheists?

These questions may sound argumentative, but I feel forced to ask them because he is on record as stating that atheists share the blame for Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. (More on that later.)

Before the 16th century, most educated people accepted the theories of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who held that the Earth was stationary and the sun revolved around it. The geocentric universe was a classical, not a Christian, concept. The Christians accepted it - though not because of the Bible. The Bible never says that the sun revolves around the Earth. Christians accepted Ptolemy because he had a sophisticated theory supported by what seemed like common sense (i.e., everything does seem to revolve around the Earth) and that gave reasonably accurate predictions about the motions of heavenly bodies.

Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Psalm 104:5 says, "[the LORD] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "the sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises."

Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally, particularly when the scripture in question is a book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. The writers of the Scripture wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, and from that vantage point the sun does rise and set. In fact, it is the earth's rotation which gives the impression of the sun in motion across the sky.

The data right up to Galileo's day favored Ptolemy. Historian Thomas Kuhn notes that throughout the Middle Ages, people proposed the heliocentric alternative. "They were ridiculed and ignored," Kuhn writes, adding, "The reasons for the rejection were excellent." The Earth does not appear to move, and we can all witness the sun rise in the morning and set in the evening.

Galileo was a Florentine astronomer highly respected by the Catholic Church. Once a supporter of Ptolemy's geocentric theory, Galileo became convinced that Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was right that the Earth really did revolve around the sun. Copernicus had advanced his theory in 1543 in a book dedicated to the pope. He admitted he had no physical proof, but the power of the heliocentric hypothesis was that it produced vastly better predictions of planetary orbits. Copernicus' new ideas unleashed a major debate within the religious and scientific communities, which at that time overlapped greatly. The prevailing view half a century later, when Galileo took up the issue, was that Copernicus had advanced an interesting but unproven hypothesis, useful for calculating the motions of heavenly bodies but not persuasive enough to jettison the geocentric theory altogether.

Galileo's contribution to the Copernican theory was significant, but not decisive.

Having developed a more powerful telescope than others of his day, Galileo made important new observations about the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and spots on the sun that undermined Ptolemy and were consistent with Copernican theory.

It may surprise some readers to find out that the pope was an admirer of Galileo and a supporter of scientific research being conducted at the time, mostly in church-sponsored observatories and universities. So was the head of the Inquisition, the learned theologian Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. When Galileo's lectures supporting the heliocentric theory were reported to the Inquisition, most likely by one of Galileo's academic rivals in Florence, Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo. This was not normal Inquisition procedure, but Galileo was a celebrity. In 1616, he went to Rome with great fanfare, where he stayed at the grand Medici villa, met with the pope more than once, and attended receptions given by various bishops and cardinals.

Bellarmine proposed that, given the inconclusive evidence for the theory and the sensitivity of the religious issues involved, Galileo should not teach or promote heliocentrism. Galileo, a practicing Catholic who wanted to maintain his good standing with the church, agreed. Bellarmine issued an injunction, and a record of the proceeding went into the church files.

It was an order from the Inquisition, with a threat of stronger action, and Bellarmine was in turn ordered to formally issue it to Galileo:

On February 24 the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the idea that the Sun is stationary is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture..."; while the Earth's movement "receives the same judgement in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith."

At a meeting of the cardinals of the Inquisition on the following day, Pope Paul V instructed Bellarmine to deliver this result to Galileo, and to order him to abandon the Copernican opinions; should Galileo resist the decree, stronger action would be taken. On February 26 Galileo was called to Bellarmine's residence, and accepted the orders.[11] On March 5, the decree was issued by the Congregation for the Index, prohibiting, condemning, or suspending various books which advocated the truth of the Copernican system.

Unbelievable. But this continues in like vein, as if Galileo was duty bound to obey his masters, until eventually, he "dishonored" himself by cheating on them!

For several years, Galileo kept his word and continued his experiments and discussions without publicly advocating heliocentrism. Then he received the welcome news that Cardinal Maffeo Barberini had been named Pope Urban VIII. Barberini was a scientific "progressive," having fought to prevent Copernicus' work from being placed on the index of prohibited books. Barberini was a fan of Galileo and had even written a poem eulogizing him. Galileo was confident that now he could openly preach heliocentrism.

But the new pope's position on the subject was complicated. Urban VIII held that while science can make useful measurements and predictions about the universe, it cannot claim to have actual knowledge of reality known only to God - which comes actually quite close to what some physicists now believe regarding quantum mechanics and is entirely in line with modern philosophical demonstrations of the limits of human reason.

So when Galileo in 1632 published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, the church found itself in a quandary. Galileo claimed to have demonstrated the truth of heliocentrism. Oddly enough, his proof turned out to be wrong. But the book amounted to a return to open heliocentrism, which he had agreed to avoid.

Why, this is almost as dishonest as Benjamin Franklin breaking his indenture bond! Or a slave running away from the master he was duty bound to obey!

And despite his perfidious behavior, look how kindly Galileo was treated!

In 1633, Galileo returned to Rome, where he was again treated with respect. He might have prevailed in his trial, but during the investigation someone found Cardinal Bellarmine's notes in the files. Galileo had not told the present Inquisitors - he had not told anyone - of his previous agreement not to teach or advocate Copernicanism. Now he was viewed as having deceived the church as well as having failed to live up to his agreements. Even his church sympathizers, and there were several, found it difficult to defend him at this point.

But they did advise him to acknowledge he had promoted Copernicanism in violation of his pact with Bellarmine, and to show contrition. Incredibly, Galileo appeared before the Inquisition and maintained that his new book did not constitute a defense of heliocentrism. "I have neither maintained or defended in that book the opinion that the Earth moves and that the sun is stationary but have rather demonstrated the opposite of the Copernican opinion and shown that the arguments of Copernicus are weak and not conclusive."

I'm getting the feeling that D'Souza is just plain not on the same page of history that I'm on. OK, I admit my bias. I don't like the Inquisition. You know, Torquemada and all that. I don't consider it a nice or honorable thing to burn people alive for their opinions, and I see no duty towards such people to do be any more honest than is necessary to save your skin in the hope you might be able to somehow sneak through whatever contribution you might have to the advancement of human knowledge. Lying to the Inquisitors strikes me as about on the same level of dishonesty as lying to Stalinist commissars or Khmer Rouge officials.

I'm sorry, but this really comes down to good guys and bad guys, and I don't accept the Inquisitors as the good guys.

It has been widely repeated that Galileo whispered under his breath, "And yet it moves." Pure fabrication. There are no reports he said anything of the sort. One should be charitable toward his motives here. Perhaps he issued his denials out of weariness and frustration. Even so, the Inquisitors can also be excused for viewing Galileo as a flagrant liar. Galileo's defense, Arthur Koestler writes, was so "patently dishonest that his case would have been lost in any court." The Inquisition concluded Galileo did hold heliocentric views, which it demanded he recant. Galileo did, and he was sentenced to house arrest.

Weariness and frustration? Hey, I'm feeling that way reading through D'Souza's gray, bleak, and downright grim polemic. (Inquisition apologies -- especially from an apologist for Islamism -- leave me with an ugly feeling, and I've been putting off this post for three days.)

Contrary to the claims of Sam Harris and others, Galileo was never charged with heresy and never placed in a dungeon or tortured. After he recanted, Galileo was released into the custody of the archbishop of Siena, whose terrible punishment was to house him for five months in his own episcopal palace. Then he was permitted to return to his villa in Florence. Although technically under house arrest, he was able to visit his daughters at the Convent of San Mattero. The church also permitted him to continue his scientific work on matters unrelated to heliocentrism, and Galileo published important research during this period.

Galileo was ordered to Rome to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633, "for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the sun is the center of the world", against the 1616 condemnation, since "it was decided at the Holy Congregation [...] on 25 Feb 1616 that [...] the Holy Office would give you an injunction to abandon this doctrine, not to teach it to others, not to defend it, and not to treat of it; and that if you did not acquiesce in this injunction, you should be imprisoned"[12]. The sentence of the Inquisition was in three essential parts:

* Galileo was required to recant his heliocentric ideas, declaring the immobility of the sun to be "absurd in philosophy and formally heretical", and the mobility of the earth "to be at least erroneous in faith";
* He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest for the rest of his life.

Galileo died of natural causes in 1642. It was during subsequent decades, Kuhn reports, that newer and stronger evidence for the heliocentric theory emerged, and scientific opinion, divided in Galileo's time, became the consensus we share today.

What can we conclude about the Galileo episode? "The traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and a victim of the church's opposition to science," writes historian Gary Ferngren, "has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature." The case was an "anomaly," historian Thomas Lessl writes, "a momentary break in the otherwise harmonious relationship" that had existed between Christianity and science.

That way, a heretic like Giordano Bruno wouldn't have been able to displease "learned theologian Cardinal Robert Bellarmine" by saying things he might not have wanted heard.

Being iron, of course the gag would have been reused. (I wonder how carefully they washed off the charred residue from the mouths of previous victims...)

(Sorry, I'm trying to have fun, but gallows humor is a bit of a strain where it comes to burning people alive.)

Back to D'Souza.

The church should not have tried Galileo. But his trials were conducted with comparative restraint. Galileo himself acted in bad faith, which no doubt contributed to his fate. Even so, that fate was not so terrible. Alfred North Whitehead, the noted historian of science, concludes from the case that "the worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed."

What bothers me the most about D'Souza is to see him so casually passed off as just another "conservative" by the MSM. He doesn't speak for me. If he is a conservative then I need to reevaluate the term.

I am sick of the game playing and the endless false dichotomies. Why, for example, must I choose between D'Souza and Dawkins? Between religious conservatism/fundamentalism and atheism?

What about neither?

Why don't more libertarians or centrists appear in the MSM as alternatives to the left?

This isn't quite the HITLER WASN'T SO BAD argument that Glenn linked earlier, but I've been increasingly concerned about the constant revisionism that's going on everywhere. If you think about it, if Bush is like Hitler, then could Hitler have really been so bad? And Torquemada -- was he really any different than, say, Donald Rumsfeld?

This is not to say that atheists (and demagogues like Glenn Greenwald) are not doing the same thing as D'Souza. A mischaracterization here, a twist there, and pretty soon all Christians are guilty of the Crusades, and the Inquisition.

Naturally, this makes D'Souza feel justified in retaliatory communitarianism, blaming all atheists for the crimes of some:

It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.

So in addition to the mountain of corpses that the God-hating regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pot Pot and others have produced, we must add the body count of the God-hating Nazi regime. The Nazis, like the Communists, deliberately targeted the churches and the believers because they wanted to create a new man and a new utopia freed from the shackles of traditional religion and traditional morality. In an earlier blog, I asked what is atheism's contribution to civilization? One answer to that question: Genocide.

But the argument is an attempt to conflate all atheists with Communists and Nazis:

Should religion now be blamed not only for the crimes committed in the name of God but also those committed in the name of atheism?

To D'Souza, and to another atheist he cites (in the familiar pattern of "my way or the atheist way"), it's eminently fair:

Consider what the atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett says in discussing religion. He says judge it by its consequences: "By their fruits ye shall know them." Dennett says he doesn't care if these consequences were intended by the founders of the religion or if they represent its highest and noblest values. He writes: "It is true that religious fanatics are rarely if ever inspired or guided by the deepest and best tenets in those religions. So what? Al Qaeda and Hamas terrorism is still Islam's responsibility, and abortion clinic bombing is still Christianity's responsibility." Fine: I accept Dennett's standard. But then by the same criterion, the mass murders of atheist regimes are atheism's responsibility. If the ordinary Christian who has never burned anyone at the stake must bear some responsibility for what other self-styled Christians have done on behalf of religion, then atheists who think of themselves as the kinder, gentler type do not get to absolve themselves for the horrible suffering that their beliefs have unleashed in recent history. If Christianity has to answer for Torquemada, atheism has to answer for Stalin.

And clowns have to answer for Gacy. And law students have to answer for Bundy! Etc.

D'Souza or Dawkins? Sorry, but no thanks!

But it often seems that the sicker I get of fake dichotomies, the more there are.

Hey, if Dawkins gets to be Stalin, does that mean D'Souza gets to be Torquemada?

Seriously, it wasn't long ago that D'Souza performed a tap dance around Islamic terrorism, and now he's tap dancing around the Inquisition. It's a free country, and I defend his right to do either. But the more he does these things, the more I think he helps encourage the very nihilism he would condemn. There's nothing new about the post modernist view of bad guys as good and the good guys as bad.

An old idea, really. Because, in the days of the Inquisition, the bad guys were the good guys!

But if we're going to tap dance with Torquemada, doesn't it work better as comedy?

Hmmm.....

Maybe D'Souza doesn't go for the chorus lines with trendy tonsures and two-toned tap shoes.

Every man has his own view of torture...

But I draw the line at accusing Galileo of bad faith.

Good news for Democrats. Something like 100,000 American troops will be leaving Iraq over the next few years.

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, quietly announced that the American and Iraqi governments will start talks early next year to bring about an end to the allied occupation by the close of Mr. Bush's presidency.

The negotiations will bring to a formal conclusion the U.N. Chapter 7 Security Council involvement in the occupation and administration of Iraq, and are expected to reduce the number of American troops to about 50,000 troops permanently stationed there but largely confined to barracks, from the current 164,000 forces on active duty.

"The basic message here should be clear. Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own. That's very good news. But it won't have to stand alone," General Lute yesterday told reporters in the White House.

Bringing the war to a close by the end of 2008 will ensure that the next president will face a fait accompli in Iraq, a fact that will further remove from the presidential election the Iraq war as an issue of contention.

I think Iraq will be even bigger issue now that the outcome seems to be a good one for the Iraqis and the Americans.

Don Surber is gloating.

Quagmire, eh?

Looks like victory at last is here. The terrorists have been routed and the insurgency quelled.

Wapshott reported: "The negotiations will bring to a formal conclusion the U.N. Chapter 7 Security Council involvement in the occupation and administration of Iraq, and are expected to reduce the number of American troops to about 50,000 troops permanently stationed there but largely confined to barracks, from the current 164,000 forces on active duty."

This is Korea II, just as I have said in print and on this blog.

I won't go into the you're-full-of-crap e-mails I have received over time.

Lute told reporters: "The basic message here should be clear. Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own. That's very good news. But it won't have to stand alone."

I'm predicting some likely responses from the Democrats. "We told you so", "Not soon enough", and "Where are the contracts for my district?" will be very popular. My vote for the one you will hear most often is: "We were the real fathers of this victory. Bush and the Republicans had nothing to do with it." Which is a pretty good position. As long as no one asks for a paternity test.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Last night I had trouble finding "body persons" for anyone except Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that such entities are supposed to be ubiquitous in the um, "industry."

So I thought I'd look again.

Using the phrase "my body person," the first hit was typical, and it involved a person who works on customers' bodies:

When Maria Turretto-Shropshire bought Naturals back in 1990 it was a haphazard mix of employees, renters and commissioned stylists.

She switched the focus to the customer by making all of her workers hourly employees and creating a mandatory monthly training program to ensure that all of her staff was up to date on techniques and customer service, said Naturals General Manager Cindi Torres.

"Nobody's just sitting around in the back," said Torres. "If my body person isn't busy, she'll come out and she'll start doing a shoulder massage for someone getting a manicure or she'll come out and she'll rub people's feet."

The spa has diversified, too, carrying gift items, custom cosmetic lines by Hollister-based Acqua Cures, and offering everything from pedicures to hairstyling, massages to microdermabrasion.

My body person is a fender bender, not a gender bender!

Such a person used to be called a "body man." (I was almost afraid to Google "body man" as I don't want to get mired in X-rated popups, but I did, and I got over 20,000 hits, most appearing to involve body and fender type repair.)

There are sixteen hits for "his body person," mostly involving sex and/or religion, and none seem to involve politics. Considering that there are a lot of men in the United States Senate, and the fact that "body person" is said to be "Senate parlance," what gives here?

Googling "her body person" yields similar sex and religion results, but they're now hopelessly contaminated by Hillary's "body person." (Like it or not "her" seems to be becoming synonymous with "Hillary" or "Hillary's.")

In any event, I cannot find another "body person" anywhere who works according to the so called industry standard and has that title.

Googling the phrase "body person wanted" came up with employment listings for jobs in auto body shops. (I suspect they're not allowed to use the phrase "body man" lest they invite discrimination litigation.)

Either I am missing something, or something is wrong with the term we have been given as "industry speak," because its only industrial usage seems to be in the automotive and Hillary repair industries.

And I do mean given. I did not make up the ridiculous phrase "body person," and I think it looks ridiculous. I am beginning to suspect its current usage is of recently manufacture.

Might be a good name for a business, though. But that brings up a pet peeve, which is the contamination (even destruction) of perfectly good words by their use in commerce. At the shopping center the other day, I saw a store with the word "THEORY" on it. Now, that's fine. They can use whatever word they want for what appears to be a clothing store. (I didn't go in.) But people are greedy by nature, and the human tendency is to imagine you own what you use. So they have theory.com, and no doubt if they succeed, the longer they're in business the more likely they'll think that "theory" is their word. It's annoying as hell, but how do we protect words?

How would we stop the body person snatchers?

After all, the term is already IN VOGUE.

And Vogue is more than vaguely theoretical.

Things could be worse, though. At least we don't live in the kind of country where our leaders use body person doubles....

(Actually, the correct term seems to be "political decoy" but that's a completely different subject. In this country we still have real leaders, right? At least in theory....)

UPDATE: Jim Miller links this post and in turn links a New York Times piece which refers to John Kerry's "body man":

''There are not many staff members who go snowboarding with the principal,'' David Morehouse, a senior adviser, said, referring to Mr. Kerry's recent ski vacation in Idaho, on which Mr. Nicholson accompanied him. ''John Kerry wanted Marvin to go snowboarding with him.''

Every modern presidential candidate has a factotum, or ''body man,'' typically an ambitious Washington junkie, overqualified to schlep bags but eager to shake high-powered hands.

A factotum is a general servant or a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities. The word derives from the Latin command (imperative construction) fac totum ("do/make everything").

But body person?

The word almost seems too contrived -- as if someone wants to get the GOP guys to deny having them!