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!

If the rumors like these are true, then I might have finally found something I like about Hillary.

It won't win my vote though, as I don't believe in identity politics.

Does this finally explain the previously unexplained sex scandal involving the unnamed Democratic candidate which Ron Rosenbaum said was deliberately kept under wraps by the news media?

Should anyone be shocked?

(I mean, it's not as if there's anything new about a White House mistress....)

It must be a slow day.

MORE: Honestly, until today I hadn't heard about "Huma," described as Hillary's "body person." But unbeknowst to clueless me, there's been a "cult" surrounding her for some time. No, I am not kidding:

But, Really, Is She?

Which gets at another facet of the cult of Huma: She's something of a mystery, even to the people who have worked in her proximity for years.

Very little is publicly known about her, which of course leaves plenty to talk about. And the rumors abound. According to various accounts from Huma acquaintances interviewed for this story: She's Lebanese, she's Jordanian, she's Iranian, she's 26, she's 36, she has two children, she lives with the Clintons.

"No one knows anything about her," said one political aide. "She's like Hillary's secret weapon."

How come the dull Republican candidates don't get to have people like that?

And why has this been getting so little press?

MORE: If I am reading Tom Maguire correctly, this all has something to do with the blended puppy school of, uh, political huma:

I have never had a lesbian affair. Er, or perhaps I'm getting my rumors confused. At any rate, where Huma Abedin is concerned the prospect seems more than usually appealing.

So which is it? Puppy blender or gender blender?

I hate to repeat myself, but now I'm reminded of what I said two years ago:

...what I'm wondering right now is why I can't be a pre-post-operative female-to-male transsexual trapped in the body of a man, but who, because of pure luck, has no need to go through with the surgery, because I already have male anatomical features (i.e., a woman who wants to become a man but who is by accident of birth already trapped in the body of a man). It would be a terrible hardship (a cruel travesty, even) to make me surgically become a man trapped in the body of a woman who wants to become a man because the man is trapped in her body, if I can shortcircuit the entire process and merely accept the fact that I am already where I would be after surgery back and forth.

I mean, if there can be such a thing as a "male lesbian," why stop there? If a woman can go from female to male (and can be called a man before the surgery) then why require the male lesbian (once s/he really reaches a deeper understanding of him/herself) to go through one surgery to become female and another to become male? Can't the process be an internal one?

Well, who's to say it can't be?

I suppose there's a serious side to this nonsense, because some people will take it seriously.

But if you think about it, isn't that actually funny?

MORE: The "cult of Huma" has over 6300 Google adherents. (Commonly known as "hits.")

MYTHOLOGICAL NOTE: The "Huma" is a bird of paradise, not unlike the Phoenix, which brings great luck:

According to Sufi master Inayat Khan, "The word huma in the Persian language stands for a fabulous bird. There is a belief that if the huma bird sits for a moment on someone's head it is a sign that he will become a king. Its true meaning is that when a person's thoughts so evolve that they break all limitation, then he becomes as a king. It is the limitation of language that it can only describe the Most High as something like a king."

AND MORE: I've been around for awhile, and I'm still puzzled by the term "body person" as inside trade language. But the HuffPo's Susan Madrak is indignant that "right-wing blogs" don't seem to know what she claims to know:

Having just come off a stint as a campaign staffer, I happen to know what a "body person" is. It's someone who travels everywhere with the candidate. The job description is to take business cards, handle followup thank yous, keep the press out of the candidate's face, etc. - basically, the all-around non-strategic staffer. They work 18-hour days, and they're picked on the basis of 1) appearance and 2) how well the candidate gets along with them, since they spend so much time together.

MORE: The "body person" count.

At the present time, I can find no "Giuliani's body person," nor "Romney's body person," nor "McCain's body person," nor "Thompson's body person." Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of searching for Republican body persons, and I'm not inclined to Google "Huckabee's body person," "Tancredo's body person," etc.

But there's no "Obama's body person," nor "Edwards's body person," and I'll stop with "Biden's body person," because I'm secretly holding out hope that there is a Kucinich body person.

Of all the candidates, only Hillary Clinton seems to have an actual body person.

If this is common as "Senate parlance" (and "industry speak") then why does it only seem to appear in discussions of Hillary Clinton and auto body shops?

Maybe I'm nuts, but I seem to see the world in a very different way than Barack Obama. (Link via Glenn Reynolds.)

Either that or Obama doesn't really mean what he says. I guess it's possible that he's pandering to rural Iowans, but his view of what constitutes "common sense" is just about the opposite of mine. Apparently, he thinks that you're more likely to need a gun in rural Iowa, than, say, around the major urban area where I live:

"We should be able to combine respect for those traditions with our concern for kids who are being shot down. This is a classic example of us just applying some common sense, just being reasonable, right? And reasonable would say that lawful gun owners - I respect the Second Amendment. I think lawful gun owners should be able to hunt, be sportsmen, protect their families.

"And by the way, Michelle, my wife, she was traveling up, I think, in eastern Iowa, she was driving through this nice, beautiful area, going through all this farmland and hills and rivers and she said 'Boy, it's really pretty up here,' but she said, 'But you know, I can see why if I was living out here, I'd want a gun. Because, you know, 911 is going to take some time before somebody responds. You know what I mean? You know, it's like five miles between every house.'

"So the point is, though, we should be able to do that, and we should be able to enforce laws that keep guns off the streets in inner cities because some unscrupulous gun dealer is, you know, letting somebody load up a van with a bunch of cheap handguns or sawed-off shotguns and dumping them and selling them for a profit in the streets."

There's no question that Iowa -- especially rural Iowa -- is nice and beautiful, and it's as close as you can get to being that apocryphal kind of place where you really can in many places leave the front door unlocked without having to worry about burglars or thieves. True, it might take the local sheriff a long time to arrive if you did have to call 911. But most of the 911 calls you'd make would involve injuries, accidents, or sudden illnesses like strokes or heart attacks. Except for the occasional attack by a wild animal (predatory animals that might attack humans are rare in Iowa), these are hardly the sort of emergencies for which you'd need a gun.

On the other hand, I'd be legitimately very afraid for my life and property to be forced to live in Philadelphia without a gun. Philadelphia is one of the most violent places in the country, and violent places are the places where you most need a gun. There are areas in Philadelphia where the police don't come even if you call them.

This is not to say that I'd want to live in Iowa (or anywhere else) without a gun. But given the choice of having to live with no gun in rural Iowa versus no gun in urban Philadelphia, Iowa would win any time. It's such a no-brainer as to be almost beyond common sense.

Barack Obama is obviously not the only person who thinks the country is more dangerous than the city, though, as I've heard this argument before from urban sophisticates who tolerantly allow that "the country people" should be allowed to have guns, because "they need them" but that "city people don't."

Maybe I'm crazy, but if protecting yourself from violence and defending yourself against people who want to kill you is a human need, I think it's the urban folk who need guns -- and a lot more than the rural folk.

Again, this is my view of common sense.

But am I wrong? Is Barack Obama right? I thought I should ask the readers. (After all the Second Amendment is an election issue, even if the candidates are ducking it.)

So you decide.

Where would you be more likely to need a gun?

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and I appreciate the votes, and the input.

(So far, only eight people think you're more likely to need a gun in Iowa than in Philadelphia. Maybe Obama will take this into account...)

Via Nick Packwood (best known as Ghost of a Flea), I just learned about the discovery of the cave where a she-wolf crossed species lines and suckled Romulus and Remus -- "twin sons of the priestess Rhea Silvia, fathered by the god of war, Mars." But for this touching act of inter-species (trans-species? and how about trans-mortalist?) altruism, Rome never would have been founded.

How did the helpless twin demi-gods end up in a state of animalistic dependency?

Glad you asked! Their mother was the daughter of the Trojan-descended Numitor who shared the Alba Longa kingdom with his twin brother Amulius, who tried to stop Numitor's daughter from having children:

Because Amulius held the treasury, thus having more power than his brother, he dethroned Numitor as the rightful king. Out of fear that Numitor's daughter, Rhea Silvia, would produce children that would one day overthrow him as king, he forced Rhea to become a Vestal Virgin, a priestess sworn to abstinence. She was discovered to be pregnant nevertheless[4] She bore the twin boys, as told, of remarkable size and beauty, later named Romulus and Remus. Amulius was enraged and ordered Rhea and the twins killed. Accounts vary on how; in one account, he had Rhea buried alive (the standard punishment for Vestal Virgins who violated their vow of celibacy) the death of the twins by exposure; In another, he ordered Rhea thrown in the Tiber with the twins.

The servant ordered to kill the twins could not, however, because they were too cute and innocent, and placed the two in a basket and laid the basket on the banks of the Tiber river and went away. The river, which was in flood, rose and gently carried the basket and the twins downstream.

The grotto is very fragile, they're afraid it will collapse, but it has been photographed with probes:

November 20, 2007--Colorful mosaics spiral across the vaulted ceiling of a grotto that was unveiled today as the likely place where ancient Romans believed that a she-wolf suckled their city's legendary founders.

In January archaeologists announced that the sacred cave, known as the Lupercale, had been found during excavations of Emperor Augustus' palace on the Palatine, a 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) hill in the center of Rome.

According to Roman myth, a female wolf nursed the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus in the Lupercale. The grown brothers are said to have founded the Eternal City at the site on April 21, 753 B.C.

Since the grotto's discovery, experts have been examining it with remote sensing devices, because they fear that a full dig might cause the already fragile cave to collapse, the Associated Press reported. So far the team estimates that the domed sanctuary is 26 feet (8 meters) high with a 24-foot (7-meter) diameter.

Amazingly, the Lupercalia was an annual celebration which lasted (although substantially degraded form) well into Christian times, until Pope Gelasius put an end to it in 494 A.D.

Interestingly, they failed to get rid of the name "February":

The festival was held every year, on the 15th of February,a in the Lupercal, where Romulus and Remus were said to have been nurtured by the she-wolf; the place contained an altar and a grove sacred to the god Lupercus (Aurel. Vict. de Orig. Gent. Rom. 22; Ovid. Fast. II.267). Here the Luperci assembled on the day of the Lupercalia, and sacrificed to the god goats and young dogs, which animals are remarkable for their strong sexual instinct, and thus were appropriate sacrifices to the god of fertility (Plut. Rom. 21; Servius ad Aen. VIII.343).b Two youths of noble birth were then led to the Luperci, and one of the latter touched their foreheads with a sword dipped in the blood of the victims; other Luperci immediately after wiped off the bloody spots with wool dipped in milk. Hereupon the two youths were obliged to break out into a shout of laughter. This ceremony was probably a symbolical purification of the shepherds. After the sacrifice was over, the Luperci partook of a meal, at which they were plentifully supplied with wine (Val. Max. II.2.9). They then cut the skins of the goats which they had sacrificed, into pieces; with some of which they covered parts of their body in imitation of the god Lupercus, who was represented half naked and half covered with goat-skin. The other pieces of the skins they cut into thongs, and holding them in their hands they ran through the streets of the city, touching or striking with them all persons whom they met in their way, and especially women, who even used to come forward voluntarily for the purpose, since they believed that this ceremony rendered them fruitful, and procured them an easy delivery in childbearing. This act of running about with thongs of goat-skin was a symbolic purification of the land, and that of touching persons a purification of men, for the words by which this act is designated are februare and lustrare (Ovid. Fast. II.31; Fest. s.v. Februarius). The goat-skin itself was called februum, the festive day dies februata, the month in which it occurred Februarius, and the god himself Februus.

February seems a long way off.

(And there's no Lupercalia to look forward to!)

I guess the she-wolf was lucky that there weren't any animal rights activists around to accuse her of "species-inappropriate" behavior.

I don't know how many people have been following the Chauncey Bailey murder case, but the reports I've been reading are unsettling, to say the least.

The story had seemed very cut and dried. Local journalist works on exposé of the Black Muslim Bakery and is then murdered in an ambush. Huge police raid on the bakery. Murder weapon found. Suspect confesses to police.

Well, as it turns out, now Mr. Broussard has recanted his confession, and last week his defense lawyer moved to have the case thrown out entirely. While the motion was denied, the legal issue may be headed for the Supreme Court.

In two tape recordings introduced as evidence Wednesday Broussard confesses to the murder, but his attorney claims he was coerced by leaders of the Your Black Muslim Bakery. Defense attorney LeRue Grim tried to have the evidence dismissed, but he was denied by Judge Robert McGuiness.

Grim said the tactic of police interviews without a defense attorney present is likely going to be carried to the state Supreme Court. "The interrogation room is the dark quarters of law enforcement right now in this country," he said.

Grim added that when Broussard testifies, he will have the chance to explain how he was pressured into admitting guilt.

According to a recent analysis in the San Francisco Chronicle, what is unraveling involves a sordid affair of high level police corruption:

Yusuf Bey IV, the young leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, boasted to his followers that he had avoided being implicated in the slaying of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey because of his relationship with the officer assigned to investigate the case.

Bey IV's two-year-long relationship with Oakland homicide investigator Sgt. Derwin Longmire had already paid off for police - the bakery leader had helped them get a confession in the Bailey case.

Bey IV talked openly about the payoff from his relationship with Longmire, a 22-year veteran of the department, while being held with two bakery associates in an unrelated kidnapping and torture case. Police secretly recorded the discussion.

"The reason they didn't pin the (Bailey) murder on me was because of Longmire," Bey IV, 21, told his two associates on the Aug. 6 video recording, which was reviewed by The Chronicle.

Three days earlier, Bey IV had helped Longmire to gain a confession in the Bailey case from Devaughndre Broussard, a 20-year-old bakery handyman. Broussard had been arrested in an Aug. 3 raid on the bakery the day after the slaying of Bailey, who was working on stories about the bakery's problems.

Longmire arranged for Bey IV to meet with Broussard alone in a police interview room. In just six minutes, Broussard confessed, according to a police account. Police did not record that meeting.

On the secretly recorded tape of his meeting with bakery associates, Bey IV whispered to his followers that Longmire had made it clear that getting a confession from Broussard would "take the heat off the bakery," which had been linked to a series of increasingly violent crimes.

And why not? Didn't high public officials sing the praises for the place?

Over the years, Longmire regularly visited Your Black Muslim Bakery on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland and became acquainted with Yusuf Bey Sr., who founded the bakery three decades earlier. The bakery earned praise from government officials, including a U.S. congressman who would become Oakland's mayor, Ron Dellums.

"You always patronize the bakery, you and your partner, I believe, for a long time. ... A good supporter, you know," Bey IV told Longmire in the first interview police had with Bey IV following the Aug. 3 raid.

Lorna Brown, an attorney who has represented Bey Sr. and Bey IV in various cases, saw Longmire as a mentor to her young client during the past two years. This came even as Bey IV was arrested in connection with a series of increasingly violent crimes.

Once again, Bey's cozy relationship has led to intervention on his behalf, which only seems to have enabled him to commit more crimes:

As the two developed a relationship, Bey IV had several run-ins with Oakland police, records show. Police say it was during this time that Bey IV led bakery members on a string of crimes that included robbery, vandalism, assault, kidnapping and torture.

In November 2005, a month after Antar Bey was slain, Bey IV assumed control of the bakery. That month, Bey IV allegedly led an attack on two Muslim-operated liquor stores in West Oakland in which the display cases were smashed up and a shotgun was taken. That Mossberg shotgun would turn out to be the weapon used in Bailey's slaying.

Through a store videotape and informants, police soon identified Bey IV as having led the attacks, denouncing the two stores for selling alcohol to the black community.

Police records show that Longmire interceded on Bey IV's behalf, apparently over the objections of the lead investigator on the case in the robbery detail.

Do I need to remind readers that Oakland is in the United States and not in Pakistan?

(What ever will I do when all sarcasm fails?)

Longmire's actions, in effect, prevented Bey IV from making a voluntary statement about the case to Sgt. Dom Arotzarena, the investigator assigned to the vandalism case.

In his case log, Arotzarena recounted a phone call he got from Longmire four days after the attacks.

According to Arotzarena's log, Longmire told him that Bey IV's mother had called Longmire about the vandalism case. "Longmire asked me what he could tell (Bey IV's mother) about this case," Arotzarena noted in his log. "I told him not to reveal any details about the case, including the possibility of Bey (IV) being a suspect."

Ninety minutes later, Longmire called back, saying that Bey IV's mother had called him again and that she wanted Longmire to talk to her son.

The next day, Nov. 28, Arotzarena learned from his superiors that Bey IV had arranged on his own to talk about the vandalism case. It was decided that if Bey IV was "completely forthcoming with information," he would be freed pending a decision by prosecutors, Arotzarena wrote in his log.

Bey came in, but instead of meeting with Arotzarena, he met with Longmire and then asked for a lawyer. Any hope Arotzarena had that Bey IV would make a statement about the vandalism was dashed, Arotzarena wrote.

"I never asked for Bey to come down to the Police Department during this investigation," Arotzarena wrote in his log. "Sgt. Derwin Longmire organized his visit. Bey asked for an attorney when he got to the station. At this point, I never spoke to Bey nor told him that he was under arrest."

Arotzarena declined comment about Longmire's intervention in the case.

Although Bey IV was subsequently arrested in connection with the vandalism, he was soon free on bail, and he and his fellow bakery members allegedly engaged in an increasingly violent crime spree, police say.

Despite the fact that this involved a journalist murdered for daring to write about the group. (Hmmm.... Should have said "because"?)

What an unreported scandal it would be if it turned out that Bey was the one who actually issued the order to kill Bailey! That was what some police initially suspected last year:

Oakland Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan said the day after Bailey was shot that police believed that Yusuf Bey IV, the son of bakery founder Yusuf Bey, was involved in some fashion.

But Bey hasn't been charged and Broussard is the only defendant in the case.

However, Bey is in custody without bail on recent kidnapping and real estate fraud charges as well as several other cases, including one involving allegations that he and a group of bakery associates vandalized two West Oakland liquor stores on Nov. 23, 2005, because they were upset the stores were selling liquor in the black community.

Ironically, Bey and three other men are also scheduled to be in court on Wednesday for their ongoing but often-delayed preliminary hearing in that case.

Christopher Hitchens pulled no punches when he wrote about this story in August:

If this isn't softness on crime, then the term is meaningless. Residents have been complaining for a long time about the atmosphere of hatred and violence--and about what some have called the YBMB's attempt to "cleanse" the neighborhood, either of godless liquor stores on the model of jihadism or simply of business rivals and journalistic critics. What were the police doing all this time, and why did Chauncey Bailey have to be murdered before they could be moved to act? Perhaps they were doing what they do best: confiscating marijuana and rousting whores so as to painlessly improve the crime statistics. I called Bob Valladon, the extremely rude and graceless head of the Oakland police union, but I didn't even get to put my question before receiving a large flea in my ear. Other California law-enforcement officials were adamant in refusing to be quoted in any way. I can't say I blame them: Thousands of their voters and citizens are living in Third World conditions of fear, with a "no-snitch" policy openly enforced at gunpoint, and they cannot be troubled to do anything about it.

This official apathy--amounting to collusion--is undergirded by a culture that cringingly insists on "respect" for any organization, however depraved, that can masquerade as "faith-based." If I had stood outside that hideous bakery with a sign saying "Black Muslims Are Racists and Fanatics," I think the cops would have turned up in a flat second and taken me into custody. I might well have been charged with a hate crime. As I have written before and am sure I will write again: This has to stop, and it has to stop right now, before sharia baking comes to a place near you.

British blogger David Vance looks at an emerging phenomenon with clear implications for everyone -- whether Big Brother will restrict travel in England -- in order to save the planet from "global warming":

Restricting the ability of citizens to travel is clearly an unpopular strategy for any politician to advance but if if comes from the left and done in the name of "Saving the Planet" then it is likely to win sympathetic media treatment and so become a real political possibility.

[...]

The UK Government is not just interested in using global warming to raise new green taxes and to further hike fuel costs, but it is also contemplating allocating "personal carbon allowances." The way these work is that you will be granted a fixed amount of carbon to use each year. Each time you travel in a plane, buy petrol, go shopping or eat out would be recorded on a plastic card. The more frugal could sell spare carbon allowances to those who want to "indulge" themselves. But if you were to run out of your carbon allowance, you could be barred from flying or driving.

The government will thus be able to prevent its citizens from traveling both inside and outside the United Kingdom under the guise of managing carbon allowances.

For the first time in history we face the real prospect of having the fundamental right to travel prohibited by government....

But after all, the citizens affected are in England, which is in Europe.

I keep saying that Europe does not have the same history of freedom that we have here, and it never ceases to amaze me how many Americans think that they're "just like us." They are not. In fact, their lack of freedom is in the inspiration behind the idea of American freedom. Our experience with the divine right of kings consisted of kicking it out when the British king decided it was time to restrict the colonists' means of self defense.

As to the right to travel, in this country it is not an express constitutional right. It is (like the right to privacy, which the right wing often claims does not exist) implied:

As the Supreme Court notes in Saenz v Roe, 98-97 (1999), the Constitution does not contain the word "travel" in any context, let alone an explicit right to travel (except for members of Congress, who are guaranteed the right to travel to and from Congress). The presumed right to travel, however, is firmly established in U.S. law and precedent. In U.S. v Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966), the Court noted, "It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized." In fact, in Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that "it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, ... it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all." It is interesting to note that the Articles of Confederation had an explicit right to travel; it is now thought that the right is so fundamental that the Framers may have thought it unnecessary to include it in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Wiki entry points out that the United Nations' Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads as follows:

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.

Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Hey why not? This being a satire blog, let me be the first to encourage them to do so! (Surely the UN will uphold the right to travel in the face of applied scientific theory.)

Anyway, we should all be glad that this is not England, where environmentalist crackpots can abolish the right to travel.

But the author closes by noting that the environmentalist crackpot in chief is a good friend of Bill Clinton, and wants him back in the White House where presumably his wife can overrule the "right" we so smugly infer:

We British are the experimental rats in the carbon-mania laboratory. If Prime Minister Brown can get away with stopping us traveling by car and plane - and doing it in the name of cutting carbon emissions - isn't it possible that the people if the US might also face the future prospect of also being issued with "personal" carbon allowances by a munificent President Clinton? Is it imaginable that someday US citizens could be prohibited from traveling how and when they choose - and all in the name of saving the Earth?

Here we have the Constitution!

And I for one take my implied rights literally!

Via Dr. Helen, I just took the Ultimate 2008 Presidential Candidate Matcher.

Dr. Helen is also a Giuliani match, and interestingly, her candidate preferences are ranked in the same order as mine. (I don't know whether that is built in to the Giuliani profile or not.)

This put me in the mood for more testing, so I took the "Which Superhero are you?" test.

I'm Iron Man:

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

NOTE: The html code did not render properly, which forced me to use a screenshot instead.

Still in the mood for more testing, I thought it was time to retest my libertarian purity, as I'm sometimes acccused of being polluted. I took a fairly thorought test at at this test site.

My results:

Your Libertarian Purity Score

Your score is...

71

51-90 points: You are a medium-core libertarian, probably self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit talking about your views so much.

As backup, I took the the World's Smallest Political Quiz again.

I'm always consistently in the "libertarian" camp, and the placement of my red dot has changed little if at all over the years.

I have a question, though. Will someone please explain to me why they keep leaving Fred Thompson off the candidate matching tests? I am almost certain that he would be my number one match because I'm a pretty strong federalist, and I admire his unusually outspoken (for a politician) federalism.

MORE: Via Greg Mankiw, I found a link to a recently released October 19, 2005 interview with Milton Friedman (by Dallas Fed president and CEO Richard W. Fisher).

Here's an especially good YouTube segment:

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

(I've never been a comics fan, but now I'm intrigued with the idea of Iron Man's sentient armor, especially the implications for libertarianism....)

The Europeans have some of the highest gasoline taxes in the developed world. Certainly higher than in America. And yet....

In common with the rest of the world, Europe is now having to face up to the fact that a cheap and plentiful supply of oil and other fossil fuels has led to a long term under investment in energy technologies. Public funding for energy R&D in the EU member states declined between 1991 and 2005 in real terms, when it stood at around €2.2 billion a year. Of this, almost three-quarters is concentrated in only three countries. Private sector investment in energy R&D shows a similar pattern.

As a result the process of energy technology innovation is riddled with structural weaknesses, such as long lead times to market, incompatible infrastructures and limited market incentives. In the era of cheap oil, the take up of new energy technologies was hampered because they were inevitably more expensive.

Now, as oil nudges $100 per barrel and the IPCC's warnings on global warming become yet more dire, the European Commission wants to accelerate low carbon energy development and deployment. The strategy highlights 14 technologies it plans to promote, ranging from wind and solar power, to decarbonised fossil fuel and nuclear fission and fusion.

The problem is how to jump start energy research from its current low base. Although member states share some priorities, pan European cooperation is low, and until now there has been no setting of priorities at a European level. Yet the capital intensive nature of energy technologies - witness the ITER nuclear fusion project - makes it essential to find synergies and build economies of scale.

America is a little different. We have lots of fusion projects going on and we are a member of the ITER club too. Let us start with a venture capital start up Tri Alpha Energy.

That is not all, we have Robert Bussard's Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion which is currently being funded by the US Navy.

The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and abundant Boron 11 which does not.

The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.

If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame (my best guess is that a crash program could build an operating power plant in 3 to 5 years - if the experiments now underway green light that course of action). A much better investment than the CO2 sequestration non-sense promoted by the EU.

BTW Bussard is not the only thing going on in IEC. There are a few government programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among others.

The Japanese and Australians also have programs.

So let me ask. How is it the Australians can afford a program which may produce actual energy soon or at the very least is going to produce some knowledge on the cheap and yet the Euros can't afford it? It is a wonderment. It is kind of like they have killed off or driven out a major portion of their risk takers.

Welcome to America. Where all kinds of ideas get tried. Even long shots. Like ITER.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I can appreciate the "inoculation" style of advertising that Howard Kurtz describes:

"You give people a small dose of the virus, in the hope that later on, when opponents start bashing you on family values or whatever, viewers will have enough of the defense to resist the incoming attacks."

It's also tough to fault Jimmy Carter for building houses, or Mother Theresa for cleaning bedpans.

But can someone tell me how any of the above constitute presidential skills?

"How dare you question her! To question her is to wish my son had died!," is how Ann Althouse characterizes the Hillary video, showing a man who claims Hillary saved his son's life. (Link via Glenn Reynolds.)

As inoculations go, that's heavy duty stuff. Far beyond Romney's excellence in child-raising, or Giuliani's undisputed claim to less than perfection.

But unlike Mother Theresa, Hillary is not a candidate for beatification, nor is she running for public martyr. (At least, I hope she's not!)

They might all be "inoculations," but I think the relative strength and effectiveness of the vaccines varies.

Mr. Perfect?

Ms. Beyond All Reproach?

If I have to choose from the three, Giuliani gets my vote, because it comes down to simple math. "Less than perfect" is at least a credible claim. "Mr. Perfect" is too squeaky-clean to be credible. (Sooner or later, someone will bring up his underwear again and all hell will break loose between the forces of dirty and holy underwear.)

As to Saint Hillary the Hospitaller, I'd like to see a YouTube video of her scrubbing bedpans or (if she doesn't want to stoop to doing the work of untouchables) at least catheterizing incontinent Republicans patients or something before I buy into the martyr image.

OK, OK, I know I'm being unfair with the bedpan humor and the catheter jokes. But I don't like this sense of automatic martyrdom entitlement that is being promoted by Saint Hillary and Company.

I mean, it's as if she's being allowed to have her stake and heat it too!

Damn it! It's so cold today that I didn't want to go out shopping, and there isn't anything I want to buy right now. Plus I can't stand crowds. I'm just not cut out to be a shopper. But on the other hand I hate it when people tell me not to do something, and I don't like the Buy Nothing Day idea. It just strikes me as too contrived.

Mindless activist follower types bring out the natural contrarian in me. Anything that activists want me to do, I tend to instinctively want to not do. And vice versa. In this case, though, the problem is compounded by the fact that they want me not to do something that I already don't want to do.

But reading stuff like this makes me want to hightail it to the nearest shopping center:

It just might be the most well-known holiday on the activist calendar.

Across North America on Nov 23, and around the world a day later, thousands of activists will take part in mass Santa meditations, credit-card cut-ups, zombie walks through malls and conga lines of non-shoppers with empty carts in the aisles of Wal-Mart.

It's all part of Buy Nothing Day, the annual celebration of anti-consumption that asks consumers to spend an entire 24 hours without reaching for their wallet, which from its humble beginnings in Vancouver in 1992 has spread to over 65 countries.

In fact, right now I'm ready to buy anything!

The Buy Nothing Day people link their cause to Global Warming, of course, and they are also trying to insinuate religion into it:

LOS ANGELES - Buy Nothing Day is getting a Jesus jolt. Performance artist Bill Talen assumes the persona of Reverend Billy, often accompanied by a gospel choir, to use the histrionics and cadences of a televangelist (think Jimmy Swaggart) in an anti-consumerism effort to convert people to his "Church of Stop Shopping."

And for this year's Black Friday shopping frenzy, Talen is upping his profile with a colorful campaign promoting a new documentary film about his efforts, "What Would Jesus Buy?"

- the chronic overwork to be able to spend more; the social disintegration resulting from overwork; the environmental damage caused by consumer waste; conflict over resources to supply consumer demand. In other words, a myriad of problems loosely bound by the innocent desire for an iPod or a luxury car collection.

Needless to say, Jesus is like totally behind Buy Nothing Day!

I should have known that shopping was for secular hedonists who hate God!

Hmmm.....

Maybe I still have time for a spitefully Satanic shopping spree.

I've never had children, but I have never regarded people who had them as selfish.

However, there's an emerging form of new morality which not only regards having children as selfish, but considers them a threat to the planet.

The Daily Mail discusses people and couples who have therefore had themselves sterilized in order to save the planet. One of them is Toni Vernelli:

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to "protect the planet".

Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card.

While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.

"Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet," says Toni, 35.

"Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population."

they'd most likely want to reorient human thinking in such a manner that human childbirth would be phased out gradually. At first the idea would be spread through peer pressure, i.e., having kids would become politically incorrect (as in certain Berkeley circles), then immoral, until finally, when the non-breeders became a fed-up majority. Tired of putting up with the irresponsible and selfish breeders who endangered the planet, eventually they would demand mandatory spay and neuter laws for humans.

This was done with dogs, the breeding (or even buying) of which is now considered to be immoral -- despite the existence of a puppy shortage -- and I don't think it would be all that difficult with a pliant population willing to do as they're told. It might even be easier.

"When I was a child, I loved bird-watching, and in my teens that developed into a passion for the environment as well as the welfare of animals - I became a vegetarian when I was 15.

"Even my parents used to smile and say: 'You'll change your mind one day about babies.'

"The only person who understood how I felt was my first husband, who didn't want children either.

"We both passionately wanted to save the planet - not produce a new life which would only add to the problem."

So, instead of mapping out plans for a family, Toni and her husband began discussing medical options to ensure they would never reproduce.

Regular readers may remember the voluminous number of posts I wrote in opposition to California AB1634 -- the mandatory spay and neuter measure. I sounded off about this in post after post (such as here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). The measure was barely defeated, but it is by no means dead.

While it seemed of little relevance at the time, the bill was the brainchild of an animal rights activist named Judie Mancuso. Perhaps because the details of people's personal lives don't interest me much, I paid little attention to Mancuso, and barely noticed this tidbit about her:

[Mancuso's husband] Wicklund, 39, has a software development company. The couple had already decided they would not have children so they could devote their life to animals. Now they decided that Mancuso, who had just turned 40, would quit her job and become a full-time volunteer.

There's an older, longer writeup of Mancuso's and Wicklund's no-children decision I found linked at Childfree by Choice, with much discussion of the effect it would have on their politics. From the archived full story:

Growing up in upstate New York, Rolf Wicklund thought everybody had kids, everybody owned their home and everybody got Time magazine. "You didn't order it, it just came to your home," he recalls believing as a child. Times have changed. These days, Wicklund, 31, and his wife, Judie Mancuso, 36, own a home in Laguna Beach, Calif., subscribe to The Nation magazine, and they don't intend to have children. Ever. "I like kids. I like listening to what they say, and I think they're really fun," Wicklund says. "But I don't feel strongly enough that I want to bring another person into the world. And that's the only way that I think anybody should have a baby." Wicklund and Mancuso, who've been married for three years, are part of a growing number of couples who are choosing for a variety of reasons to remain childless or "child-free," as they refer to themselves. "'Childless' means lacking. We're 'free from', " explains Katie Andrews, 31, a middle-school teacher who is married and has no children. "Free from a burden, a responsibility. We're free from the drain on our time and money and resources. We're not `less' anything." These couples - along with singles who don't intend to have kids - are forming social organizations such as No Kidding!, with 32 chapters in the United States and Canada. Some are taking leadership roles and denouncing what they see as inequities in employee-benefits packages and in tax-code provisions favoring parents with dependent children. Advocates of the child-free lifestyle say they are not out to convince other people not to have children. Instead, they're promoting the idea that not having children is a valid reproductive choice, and that the child-free lifestyle should be accepted and respected. In shunning parenthood, they are helping to redefine conventions about family and gender roles, and they're doing so in a climate that is generally considered family-friendly and socially conservative. Judie Mancuso, a vivacious woman with an easy laugh, dark curly hair and clunky black shoes, says she has known she didn't want to have children since she was a kid herself. "I always thought that my feeling about it would change because it was supposed to. You're supposed to have a kid one day," says Mancuso, a project manager for a computer company. It never did, not even when she met Wicklund, a fellow animal lover and a vegetarian, at a computer convention several years ago and began a long-distance relationship - he lived in San Francisco and she was in Beverly Hills, Calif. Nor did it change when they got married when she was 33. "I was still open to the idea that my mind is going change, and then all of a sudden it was like, you know what, it's not going to change," she says. "And I was OK with it. And he's OK." But not everyone else is OK with it. "There's been tons of pressure," she says. "The friends are the ones who've shocked me. Especially when they're having a baby. Their emotions, their hormones are raging with baby, baby, baby. I had one friend tell me, 'Judie, you have to have a baby. It's so amazing.'..." Mancuso and Wicklund live in an airy, spacious home that's decorated with photos of their pet cats and an ebony sculpture in the shape of a curled cat. Sugar, a white Persian cat they found abandoned, rests in a sunny spot in the living room. They both volunteer time to animal-welfare groups. They also like spending time with each other, riding bikes and going out to dinner. "We have put a whole lot of effort to getting to this point in our lives with each other," Wicklund says. "We're at the point where we don't argue, and we have a full schedule," Mancuso says. "Not having kids gives us more time to do things in the community and to further our education." According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there has been a steady increase in the number of voluntarily childless women between 14 and 44 who are married or have been married, from 2.4 percent in 1982 to 4.1 in 1988 to 4.3 in 1990. Other statistics show a more dramatic increase: In 1990 one-quarter of women age 30 to 34 were childless, compared with 16 percent in 1976. Fully 22 percent of all women born between 1956 and 1972 are expected never to bear children. These days, nearly everyone knows adult women who have not had children and don't intend to.

Before Global Warming caught on full swing.

Nearly a decade later, it's abnormal for pet animals to have reproductive organs -- in the name of their "rights."

Don't we owe our children the same?

It will take leadership to achieve this goal, and leadership starts in the colleges and universities. In a piece I linked yesterday, the Philadelphia Inquirer discussed the phenomenon of college kids returning home for Thanksgiving and announcing their newfound veganism. It's almost like being gay:

Often, college is where young people first hear from vegetarians and vegans who believe that meat is unhealthy and that animals are exploited for their flesh, as well as for their milk and eggs. Consuming meat and its byproducts are seen, by this minority, as immoral.

College is also a time young people are establishing their own identities, trying to separate from mom and dad, says Temple University psychologist and vegetarian Frank Farley. And food can be a major point of departure.

As it happens, Thanksgiving is often the first big family gathering a student attends after starting college.

"A common result," says George, "is kids going home on Thanksgiving eve and saying, 'Mom, I'm a vegan and no longer eat meat.' " It's akin, some vegetarians say, to coming out as a gay person.

And even if you haven't actually had your tubes done yet, talking about it certainly ought to be a good Thanksgiving dinner conversation starter.

(Hmmm.... I have to say, my dark side has a slightly different take on this emerging, "sterilization is unselfish" movement. I ruled out committing suicide in the early 90s, but I never really thought about how selfish I would become by continuing to live.)

Of course, that last remark was intended only as deep dark satire, because the idea of young people sterilizing themselves on the advice of a professor or in order to be cool is just too absurd to be taken seriously.

I'm glad this is just another silly idea that's not going anywhere, because I'd hate to think that the people who "voluntarily" complied with this new moral code might get sick of putting up with those who haven't.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all! Comments appreciated.

MORE: Rand Simberg's post about the Cattle Decapitation band make me wonder whether my use of the term "anthropomorphic left" might be understatement. A few words from the band's leader:

The end result of our love of nature is the downfall of humanity.....

....I moved to a more anti-human approach as there's a lot more avenues to explore. We kind of nailed the pro-veg message on our first three to four releases and have since started to investigate humanity and its destruction of nature.....

....I pretty much look at everyone out there like, "If I only had a hand grenade, (expletive) "

Might be time to reconsider Pol Pot as a planet healer?

(Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Despite the grim title, and the grimmer contents to come, let me start by wishing everyone a very happy thanksgiving!

Notwithstanding my tendency to lodge complaints about this thing or that thing, I'm not unmindful of the fact that today is a day to be grateful to be an American living in a free country with a free press that we're equally free to criticize.

And of course, there are a lot of other things to be grateful for.

But suppose I started this Thanksgiving Day post by expressing gratitude (not "graddytood") for the fact that today is such a breathtakingly beautiful day!

No, really. It feels like Spring. Never mind that local "Fully" temperatures are expected to drop into the 20s "eauver" the weekend. Saying it's a beautiful day when it Really Should Not Be (because the Global Warming Rechimplicans have ruined the climate) means you're Just. Not. Getting. It.

I should be expressing ingratitude. For the "bad" weather that I imagine to be good.

And how the hell dare I enjoy it?

Seriously, I'm beginning to hope that this does not turn out to be a "record warm" Thanksgiving, for that would mean a hellish moral scolding in the Inquirer tomorrow.

Hey, I know!

I can be grateful that my bags were not lost at the airport!

Well, only because I didn't go anywhere this year, but because I might as well have, I might as well be grateful for the fact that my bags might as well have been lost but weren't. But maybe the whole problem of lost or stolen bags could be solved if we treated them the way the gun control people want to treat lost or stolen guns, and make it a separate crime not to report them. (If we could deter just one illegally diverted unreported bag....)

I can also be thankful that because I didn't have children, I never had to save the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to send them to brainwashing centers where they are taught that ingratitude (should that be "ingraddytood"?) is the highest form of morality, so than when they return home to sit down for their first Thanksgiving meal with the family, they can announce their evolution to a higher plane.

What is it that they learn? Why, that "this is the time of year we place a cooked brown carcass on the table, then reach inside its body cavity and scoop out powerfully odoriferous items that people are expected to eat":

"It's repulsive to see turkeys running around on the news at Thanksgiving time, and then they're all getting killed," says Melissa Stockton-Brown, a Royersford vegan and a 19-year-old sophomore at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

Oh. Well, that's a problem, then, isn't it?

"If someone wants to feel morally superior by not eating meat, that's OK," says California psychologist Edward Abramson, an expert on eating behavior. "It doesn't mean I have to apologize or explain myself."

Maybe as a non-parent I'm not getting it, but I think it is the kids in these instances who owe their parents an apology. The polite thing to do if someone offers you food that you don't want to eat is to simply say "no, thank you," and eat something else. Shouldn't feelings of morally superiority because of what you eat be kept to yourself? I think so, and I think it's wrong of them to lecture their parents at the Thanksgiving dinner table over their food choices (however benighted they might imagine them to be).

Maybe I should be grateful I naver had 'em. But it doesn't matter what I think; this phenomenon is growing. Because at college, more and more kids are taught to be vegetarians.

As it happens, a little more than 2 percent of the U.S. population over 18 says it never eats meat, fish or fowl and is, by definition, vegetarian, according to various polls.

The number of vegans is said to be between one-third and one-half the number of vegetarians, the Baltimore-based Vegetarian Resource Group says.

The VRG's researcher John Cunningham says the number of vegetarians has doubled since 1994. The number of vegans among vegetarians seems to be increasing, although it's hard to say by how much, he adds.

College is often the place where vegetarians are made, food experts say.

"You go away from home and see the world from a different perspective," says Richard George, a professor of food marketing and an expert on consumer behavior at St. Joseph University. "You may ask yourself, for example, 'Why do I eat meat?' "

Often, college is where young people first hear from vegetarians and vegans who believe that meat is unhealthy and that animals are exploited for their flesh, as well as for their milk and eggs. Consuming meat and its byproducts are seen, by this minority, as immoral.

College is also a time young people are establishing their own identities, trying to separate from mom and dad, says Temple University psychologist and vegetarian Frank Farley. And food can be a major point of departure.

As it happens, Thanksgiving is often the first big family gathering a student attends after starting college.

"A common result," says George, "is kids going home on Thanksgiving eve and saying, 'Mom, I'm a vegan and no longer eat meat.' " It's akin, some vegetarians say, to coming out as a gay person.

Yikes, mom might say. I built you out of meat, you ungrateful little thing.

Apparently.

The things that hundreds of thousands of dollars can buy!

And how insensitive of me not to realize that not eating meat is like telling the world you're gay! Well, I guess I should be grateful that they didn't say it was akin to something more serious, like being a veil-wearing Muslim in George Bush's racist America.

"I decided to give vegetarianism a try around Thanksgiving of my sophomore year," says Sarah Stockton-Brown, Melissa's 21-year-old sister, a senior at St. Joseph's.

"I just didn't eat the turkey, but no one noticed. But by Christmas, I told my mom I wouldn't be eating the ham and turkey."

No one freaked out. "My mom had questions and there was skepticism," she adds. "My aunt and uncle treated it like it was a college experimental phase that would pass."

Because both Melissa and Sarah had moral problems about meat, their mother started listening. Now, she, too is vegetarian, the sisters say.

"You see, it's not necessarily a rejection of the parents when a kid announces he or she is vegetarian," says University of Pennsylvania psychologist Judith Coche. "And parents must realize we don't own our children. At Thanksgiving, where there's a feast, we need to negotiate enjoyment of the meal."

Bring in Henry Kissinger and let's get started!

There's more, of course, including a success story about two daughters who converted their mother to veganism, and at the end of the story the Inquirer concludes with advice:

To read about preparing no-meat dishes at Thanksgiving, go to http://go.philly.com/food.

For that I am also grateful.

I'm going to a friend's house to eat turkey, and if by chance some vegans are there saving the planet by conspicuous non-consumption of turkey, I'll be very grateful if I'm not scolded.

(Especially if I get really mean-spirited and let slip something like "What a nice day!")

MORE: For some practical advice on avoiding family food fights, Dr. Helen's column on the subject is a must read!

While I'll be thankful for my turkey today, I did not especially appreciate the turkey of a headline which greeted me from the front page of this morning's Inquirer:

Two GOP votes test gun lobby in Penna

The axioms of state politics dictate that two Republican House members from the Philadelphia suburbs risked political death when they crossed party lines Tuesday to vote for a gun-control bill.

Those rules may be changing, however, with Pennsylvania polls indicating majority support for stricter regulation of handguns and a newly emboldened advocacy group determined to counter the National Rifle Association's traditional power.

Reps. Kate Harper (R., Montgomery) and Bernard O'Neill (R., Bucks) voted for a bill to limit handgun buyers to one purchase a month. The measure failed to get out of the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee.

Harper, of Blue Bell, said she was reflecting the will of her constituents, knowing that the gun lobby may try to exact revenge next year.

"To the single-issue voters, this is an antigun vote," Harper said. "I am afraid this will come back to bite me next election season."

But, she added, "I think I did the right thing."

O'Neill, of Warminster, did not respond to a request to explain his vote. A Bucks County GOP political consultant said that O'Neill's 29th District was moderate, and that he was unlikely to face a primary challenge over the issue.

John Hohenwarter, a lobbyist for the NRA in Harrisburg, said the votes disappointed him, but that it was too early to say whether O'Neill and Harper would fail to get his group's endorsement next year.

I'm not saying that CeaseFirePA doesn't have every right to do this, but I'm wondering.....

Suppose the NRA commissioned a poll from a known conservative activist pollster in Virginia, and he came up with opposite results. Would the Inquirer refer uncritically to the NRA poll as "Pennsylvania polls indicating majority opposition to stricter regulation of handguns"?

Kate Harper represents nearby Blue Bell, and while it's not my district, it's in my area, and I go there to shop and eat regularly. So I'm technically not in a position to complain as one of her constituents, but in a way I am glad I'm not, because I'd feel discounted.

And I do not mean discounted by Kate Harper's vote, or because she disagrees with me. That I might be able to handle if I thought she was a sincere person who arrived at her decision for sincere reasons, and who took her constituents' opinions seriously.

My problem is with what she said:

Harper, of Blue Bell, said she was reflecting the will of her constituents, knowing that the gun lobby may try to exact revenge next year.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. I am not a lobby! My opinions are my own. Furthermore, I am not an agenda. These phrases are used to discount opinions, and while it is not surprising to see them tossed around by activists engaged in ideological disputes with each other, for any legislator to discount constituents that way is to my mind, a lot worse than simply disagreeing with them.

If I have a pro-gun opinion, and it is mine, why does that make me the gun lobby?

To put it another way, if I have a pro-gay opinion, and it is mine, does that make me part of the "gay agenda"?

To an activist, it does. Glenn Greenwald will refer to people who disagree with him as part of the radical right wing agenda. The Concerned Women for America spokesman will call people who disagree part of the radical gay agenda (or "apostates").

It's the Greenwaldization of political discourse. It's probably inevitable in the blogosphere and among activists, but should legislators be interacting with their constituents that way?

Once again, the thesis in Glenn Reynolds' law review article really hits the nail on the head. There is an eerie similarity, not just between the gun issue and the gay issue, but in the way people who hold opinions about these issues are treated. And stereotyped. I don't know what to call it. ("Greenwalding" the opposition?) But it's leading to a situation where any opinion that you have makes you not a person, but a lobbyist. And Agendaite. (Er, maybe would that be "lobbyite" or "agendaist.")

So, whether you agree with him or not, why should Glenn's remark about the "happily married gay couples with closets full of assault weapons" reduce him to being a hapless stooge of the gun lobby and the gay agenda? The Gun Gay Agenda Lobby? Or the Gay Gun Lobby Agenda?

I think people are getting tired of this. What bothers me in this instance is to see it coming from a legislator, and I'm hoping the Inquirer was putting words in her mouth. Um, no, I'm not really hoping that, because I don't want the Inquirer to put words in politicians' mouths. You know what I mean. (I mean you, the reasonable readers, not the people who think an opinion is a lobby is an agenda.)

Of course, to the Inquirer (and, apparently, Governor Rendell) the argument that current laws are not being enforced is not a legitimate argument or idea worthy of discussion on its merits:

Rendell's 40-minute appearance, in which he sought to refute gun-lobby arguments about weak enforcement of current laws...

Stay tuned for more gun lobby arguments, and gay agenda arguments.

Speaking of lobbies and arguments, I enjoyed this piece of, um, "constituent email" which activists were urging be sent to Kate Harper:

We will never have a sane gun policy unless we stand up to the gun lobby.

You can start today.

Please take a moment to pick up the phone and call a couple of people on the committee. It's a simple form of citizen action that makes a big difference. They listen. I just did it myself. Here's what I said (Rep. Kate Harper's office) - I got her voicemail:

Hi, my name is Hannah Miller, and I am calling to ask Representative Harper to support the gun-control measures that are coming up in front of the committee tomorrow. I live in Philadelphia and I have seen friends lose their loved ones and family members because of all these guns. Just this summer my friend had his 24-year-old son paralyzed and we as a city can simply not take any more of this. Please vote yes on HB 72 and 77. Thank you.

Something like that. That's all you have to do.

Here's the info and the members of the committee....

We will never have a sane family policy unless we stand up to the gay lobby.

You can start today.

Beware!

If you have an opinion, you're just a lobbyist whose agenda assaults someone's values.

UPDATE: Wow. My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all turkey headline gobblers!

"Fuck it," I say.

"Fuck it," agrees Ware.

That settles it. I'm going back in.

You know things are not right with the world when you share a spiritual moment with a damn journalist. But there it is. Mick Ware and I are standing on the street, digesting the finality of the option we've just chosen.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

High Technology meets low art.

More Zeusaphone music.

"This Tesla coil was built and is owned by Steve Ward. Steve is a EE student at U of I Urbana-Champaign. He and Jeff have been going to Teslathons, which is where they met." You can find out more at Zeusaphone.

Just some good old American geeks having fun.

HT Itwassooted

I've seen two new things in the past 24 hours that I like about Rudy Giuliani.

I especially liked what he said today in defense of Barack Obama's admission of past drug use:

"I made some bad decisions that I've written about, there were times when I got into drinking and experimented with drugs.. there was a whole stretch of time when i didn't really apply myself a lot," Obama told the group.

Giuliani said he believes Obama's topic of conversation was completely appropriate.

"I respect his honesty in doing that. I think that one of the things we need from our people who are running for office is not this pretense of perfection," Giuliani said. "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."

I've never had kids, so perhaps I'm the one who's not getting it, but what kind of parenting is it to lie to your children about something they're likely to discover about you anyway? If you took drugs in the past, and you don't want your kids to take drugs, isn't it better to tell them about it so that maybe they'll learn from your mistakes?

I think so, and I strongly disagree with the Romney approach:

But fellow Republican contender Mitt Romney feels differently, saying Obama committed a "huge error."

"It's just not a good idea for people running for President of the United States who potentially could be the role model for a lot of people to talk about their personal failings while they were kids because it opens the doorway to other kids thinking, 'well I can do that too and become President of the United States,'" Romney told an Iowa audience today. "I think that was a huge error by Barack Obama...it is just the wrong way for people who want to be the leader of the free world."

Sorry, but I don't trust people who think that way. It should not be forgotten that one of America's worst traitors was FBI counterintelligence chief Robert Hannsen, and a man more obsessed with being squeaky-clean would have been hard to find. (And I know it's anecdotal, but one of the most unbearably perfect men I ever knew turned out to be far from perfect. He might be out of prison by now.) Call me a cynical ex druggie, but I trust a guy who's made mistakes and tells you what he's done, as opposed to Mr. Perfect.

The other thing I like about Giuliani was an offhand remark I read by a young voter in a post Glenn Reynolds linked yesterday at Politico by a freshman at Dartmouth college who "registered Republican on a whim":

Should Giuliani lose the GOP nomination, however, Lim says it's unlikely he'll vote for another Republican.

But precisely the type of voter the Republicans will need in order to win.

The GOP better be careful not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

That's my best phonetic attempt to write the phrase "Philly spoken here" in the regional dialect that used to be much more common in this area than it is now. The local football team is fondly referred to as the "Iggles" and there's a blog called "attytood," but fewer and fewer people actually speak that way. As more and more local television reporters started speaking in Californian, the accent faded away.

Although I did grow up here, I don't have much of a Philadelphia accent, and thus I was surprised by the results of an online test I found quite accidentally when I clicked on Glenn's link to David Freddoso's discussion of Northern prejudice against Southern accents. Actually, a reverse prejudice also exists, and who could blame Southerners for being annoyed by people who say "attytood" for attitude, "humitt" for humid, "wooder" for water, and even more incomprehensible things?

As someone who lived in California for three decades, I naturally assume that I am as accent-free as the Cleaver family. So imagine my surprise and shock over the results of the What American accent do you have? test!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia   Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Northeast
The Midland
The Inland North
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I don't know how much stock I should place in these online tests. I suspect that the first warning sign of spending too much time online is when you start to take online tests. The second sign is when you let others know about them so they can take them too. But the final alarm should be sounded when you take the time to link the tests in a blog post, while analyzing the results!

This is an addiction, and I really should be more ashamed of myself.

Fortunately, Ann Althouse made me realize that things are not as bad as I thought. She linked a net addiction test which indicates that I really don't have a problem. I scored only a 34 -- not as high a score as Ann Althouse but in the same general grouping :

You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.

The important thing to remember is like Ann Althouse, "I can quit whenever I want!"

I'm not addicted. (Or, as they used to say in Fully, "not addictit.")

It could never happen to me.

Yo! No deenial hur!

MORE: Sean Kinsell's comment made me work harder. It occurred to me that "attytood" really doesn't convey the traditional "Fully" dialect, and that it should have been spelled "addytood," as only the second "t" is pronounced with the t sound.

On top of that, Glenn Reynolds' link to the the video that Andrew Sullivan neglectit served as a reminder that I can improve on the phonetic Fully spelling of "addicted."

It ought to be "adicktit." Hmm... Even there, some people might still get it wrong, because they might mispronunce the "a."

So it's not "adicktit" but "uhdicktit."

Yesterday was not a great day for the forces of gun control. Ed Rendell's extraordinary attempt to pressure the Pennsylvania legislature failed, and the Supreme Court voted to hear District of Columbia v. Heller.

On today's front page, the Philadelphia Inquirer carries Linda Greenhouse's New York Times report.

Yawn....

Ms. Greenhouse (known at least as much for gratuitous attacks on conservatives as for her legal journalism desire to influence the Supreme Court) characterizes the lower court's decision as anomalous, and paints the plaintiff as contrived, if not kooky:

The federal appeals court here, breaking with the great majority of federal courts to have examined the issue over the decades, ruled last March that the Second Amendment right was an individual one, not tied to service in a militia, and that the District of Columbia's categorical ban on handguns was therefore unconstitutional.

Both the District of Columbia government and the winning plaintiff, Dick Anthony Heller, a security officer, urged the justices to review the decision. Mr. Heller, who carries a gun while on duty guarding the federal building that houses the administrative offices of the federal court system, wants to be able to keep his gun at home for self-defense.

Mr. Heller was one of six plaintiffs recruited by a wealthy libertarian lawyer, Robert A. Levy, who created and financed the lawsuit for the purpose of getting a Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court.

I doubt it.

For people who want some more serious discussion, Glenn Reynolds has:

an article in today's New York Post (eat your heart out, Linda!)

a podcast interview on the Glenn and Helen Show with Bob Levy, (who Glenn describes not as a rich kook, but as a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute)

Fascinating background material here (some of which I discussed yesterday)

An initial roundup here, plus a roundup of legal reactions.

reactions from presidential candidates.

I think Hillary will have a Sister Souljah moment and come out in support of an individual rights interpretation. In my leftist days, the New Left certainly felt that way. None of us supported disarming the Black Panthers. And, frankly, Kos isn't exactly a hotbed of anti-gun fervor, given that a strong stream of opinion there believes they will have to take up arms to protect themselves from us Fascists.

It's worth noting that even the far-left Ted Rall believes in the the Second Amendment, and he has long urged the Democrats to embrace the issue:

Democrats, however, still need to make the libertarian case. That's where guns come in. Accepting and promising to defend the Constitution as a whole, including the Second Amendment, could jumpstart the return of the American left from the fringe to the mainstream. Kerry's endorsement of gun rights would not only neutralize a key GOP values issue; it would serve as a cultural signifier that he doesn't view hunters and other gun aficionados with (as Democratic political consultant David Sweet put it) "an urban, sophisticated mentality that sneers at their way of life."

It's very easy for sophisticated people to sneer at the rights of "gun nuts." I grew up here on the East Coast, and watched the phenomenon evolve. In fact, I even saw it first hand, applied in a very petty way by a very "sophisticated" neighbor, when she told my mother that she didn't want her son to come over and play with me as long as my mom allowed me to have toy guns (which in her view needed to be shunned by mothers who knew better). This was shortly after the Kennedy assassination, when I was around eight years old and into the "playing soldier" phase. My mom was quite disturbed by this, because the woman (whose family was headed by a famous New Deal aristocrat) outranked her socially, and I remember my parents discussing it at the dinner table. My father took the "boys will be boys" line and advised my mom to ignore it, but I did lose a friend, and it wasn't really his fault or mine.

It was the new "sophistication." Little did I know that I was witnessing the emergence of one form of what I now call "manufactured morality."

Then as now, the ruling class snobs knew what was best.

MORE: In his New York Post column, Glenn notes that this issue might not break as neatly along political lines as the common wisdom might expect:

It's also probably bad for Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, who have generally been less supportive of gun rights than the other GOP contenders. But maybe Hillary Clinton will prove flexible: Bill Clinton said that the gun issue cost the Democrats control of Congress in 1994, and Hillary no doubt remembers that.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link! And special Thanksgiving thanks to all commenters.

Yes it is very taxing to make a buck. Unless you use taxing to make a buck. Then it gets easier. From Bloomberg.

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- When Senate Environment Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, Republican Senator John Warner, the nation's largest environmental groups and General Electric Co. join forces to push a U.S. cap on global-warming emissions, it should be an unbeatable team. Not in the 110th Congress.

The alliance is running into resistance from an unlikely collection of environmental activists, big oil and coal companies, labor unions and Congress's sole socialist. Some opponents say the measure doesn't go far enough; others say complying with it would cost too much and put U.S. businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

The fight threatens to scuttle the first legislation mandating emissions cuts to be approved by a congressional subcommittee. The bill backed by California Democrat Boxer, 67, would create a potential $300 billion carbon-trading market and press the Bush administration to soften its opposition to stricter emission rules at global climate-treaty talks in Indonesia next month.

``I'm worried,'' says Ralph Izzo, chief executive officer of Newark, New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., owner of the state's largest utility. ``I think there's less than a 20 percent chance that anything will happen in this Congress on climate change.''

Izzo is among business leaders including GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt who want Congress and President George W. Bush to set federal rules for the carbon-dioxide emissions that cause global warming, so they can make business plans and start profiting from carbon trading and the sale of non-polluting technologies.

I looked at such questions before in Criminals And Moralists Working Together where I looked at how all this carbon trading stuff was in part related to Enron's business model and how it seems to have influenced science.

The Brits are wise to this scam. Probably because they are already being taxed to help these industrial schemes along.

New Energy and Fuel is looking at a similar Hillary inspired scheme for automobiles.

H/T I Call BS

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I just got an e-mail from one of my friends at Jewcy repeating in full and providing the url for this article trashing Thanksgiving because of the destruction of the Native Americans. Let me quote a bit of this noxious screed.

After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

Imagine that Germany won World War II and that a Nazi regime endured for some decades, eventually giving way to a more liberal state with a softer version of German-supremacist ideology. Imagine that a century later, Germans celebrated a holiday offering a whitewashed version of German/Jewish history that ignored that holocaust and the deep anti-Semitism of the culture. Imagine that the holiday provided a welcomed time for families and friends to gather and enjoy food and conversation. Imagine that businesses, schools and government offices closed on this day.

What would we say about such a holiday? Would we not question the distortions woven into such a celebration? Would we not demand a more accurate historical account? Would we not, in fact, denounce such a holiday as grotesque?

Funny thing is when the Indians stopped making war the war stopped. Indians joined the American culture. They fought in our wars. They have even written operas. Surprisingly it was about the attempted extermination of the Jews by the Germans.

In any case it looks like the Hate America Holiday Season is in full force. Columbus Day was just a start. Here is the gist of what I had to say on Columbus Day about the myth of the white man's genocide.

You know "the evil white man destroyed the noble Indians and we therefor wish to atone for the sins of our ancestors" types. Have I got news for them.

The Indians fought wars with each other all the time for territory.

The white man was just a better Indian.

You know the Indians regularly fought each other for control of territory.

The Euros were just better Indians.

If only the Jews had been better Indians. Remember the Warsaw Ghetto. That is how Jews should die. Expensive, not cheap.

Then it seemed like a good idea to see if Bad Eagle had something to say on the subject. And yes he does.

I want to see change in Indian country. I'm not talking about new cars, dental work, or even Nikes. I'm talking about attitude. I'm talking about our view of ourselves in American history, and especially in our modern day.

But old AIM (Angry Indian Men) still holds the dominant and destructive image over many Indians today. Casting blame on America's past is still the easiest self-starting motivation for many Indians. They learned to protest in college, and this is still an important part of their lives. But it is a deceptive self-start. It sets forth before our young people that the media is the only goal in life. To hold a protest, to be seen, to be heard, to be in the papers, to be in TV--this is all there is to live for. This is the meaning of being Indian. What is the cost? Psychological disconnect. Negativity, a crippling outlook on life, and a penchant for strife and corruption.

So let me see if I can bring this back on topic. Bad Eagle refers to a piece by I. Ahron Katz. Which made me think of a lot of things in a new light.

It started when I noticed that in the escape from Egypt, a strange thing happened. At least it seemed strange to me when I read it. Especially in the context of what I'd learned. When the Hebrews came to the Red Sea, they were confronted with a dangerous and seemingly overwhelming dilemma. The sea in front of them, and the Egyptian army coming up behind. What were they to do?

The Hebrews cried out to Moses saying that they should have stayed in Egypt, rather than dying here like this. Moses told them to stand fast and God would help them. Then something very strange happened. God said to Moses, "Why do you cry out to me"?

My first thought was, "Let's see now. God took them out with miracles. Why shouldn't they look to Him for help now. That's a very strange question that He was asking. What's going on here?" I know that the accepted opinion is that God meant that they should show faith in him and plunge into the water of the sea. Of course, He did split the waters and you know what happened then. It does say "Speak to the children of Israel and tell them to journey forth. And you lift up your staff, etc."

If we go back a few pages, we see that the children of israel left Egypt "armed". They built cities. They were construction workers. Did you ever see a weak construction worker?

Let's review the scenario. Six hundred thousand armed construction workers being chased by the Egyptian army. How many in the army chasing them? Let's see what the Torah says about it. It says, "He took six hundred elite chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt with officers on them all". It seems to me that the tenth plague, killing all of the first-born males of Egypt, must have created a significant shrinkage of the men in the army. No matter how I calculate it, I can't imagine the Egyptians outnumbering the Hebrews. I believe that it's probable that when God asked "Why are you crying to me?", he was really asking why don't you defend yourselves. For goodness sakes, I set you up with weapons and superior numbers, why don't you stand up and fight for yourselves? But they didn't. So He had to do it for them. But He was forced to do something to correct the problem of the slave and victim mentality that the Hebrews were afflicted
with.

I believe that forty years in the desert happened in order to accomplish the purpose of having a complete recycling of the nation of Israel. Remember that the census showed six hundred thousand men between twenty and sixty years of age. Those are the fighters that are needed to win wars. Forty years completely eliminated all of the original fighting force and replaced them with a new generation of experienced warriors, that were capable of invading and defeating the Canaanites, with God's help, of course.

Now let's look at the stories of Purim and Chanukah. Did you realize that when Haman was exposed to the king, the remedy was to simply decree that the Jews would be allowed to arm and defend themselves? Interesting. I also notice that most people think that the main miracle of Chanukah was that the oil lasted for eight days. But to me, the main miracle was that a small band of courageous Jews fought against overwhelming odds and numbers, and were victorious, with God's help. That's the real miracle.

I believe that these experiences show that God wants us to fight our own battles, and He helps us with his might and benevolence. Conversely, I believe that when we don't do anything to help ourselves, and keep praying for, and expecting miracles, He won't lift a finger to save us. The holocaust is an example of this.

So how about a rousing cheer this Thanksgiving for the Indian Warriors. The Comanche, The Arapaho, The Sioux, The Cheyenne. And their great war leaders like Geronimo and Tecumseh. And the white men who brought a better civilization by eliminating all the warring over property by providing a system of secure property rights (excepting for Kelo).

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I should be more careful about what I don't wish for.

In a humongous post on Sunday (in which I argued that the man who murdered a Philadelphia police officer was quite possibly a bad person), I took issue with the Inquirer's editorial contention that it was society's fault, but expressed relief that they didn't see the killer's three stolen guns as an argument for gun control:

I'll say this for the Inquirer editorial; at least it didn't try to paint John Lewis into an argument for gun control.

Get 'em up, lawmakers

The murder of a Philadelphia police officer should be a High Noon moment in the fight against the illegal trafficking in handguns in Pennsylvania.

Gov. Rendell is right to seize on the tragic Halloween shooting of Officer Chuck Cassidy. While city prosecutors pursue Cassidy's accused killer through the courts, Rendell today plans to demand accountability from Harrisburg lawmakers over lax handgun laws.

But none of that matters to the Inquirer. What matters is that they just want more gun control, and any incident will do as an excuse.

Again, I see John Lewis's shooting of Officer Cassidy as an argument for having a gun and an argument against gun control, and the Inquirer (along with many Philadelphians) see it as an argument for gun control.

You'd almost think defenselessness against evil was a virtue.

Laughable as that sounds, there are now many ways that this society promotes precisely that idea. Schools indoctrinate children with pacifist ideology, citizens are systematically being encouraged to cooperate with criminals, and a recent incident illustrates a growing tendency to actually punish people who dare to show initiative. And in some cases, murderers are portrayed as heroes.

Of course, if Che Guevara and Mumia abu Jamal can be considered heroes, then why should I be surprised that a murderer like John Lewis could be considered an argument for gun control?

I can't help thinking that had Lewis been shot by Officer Cassidy instead of the other way around, the people who want to take away our guns would consider that a "tragedy." And had the police officer's life been saved by the presence of an armed citizen who shot Lewis first, I don't doubt that the citizen would have been called a "vigilante" -- with accompanying calls for gun control.

That's because if all violence is wrong, then guns are inherently evil!

(Well, except the guns that the government needs to take the guns away from everyone else....)

While I try to be rational and logical and not conflate things that really shouldn't be conflated, the world is not a logical place, and many people are driven by emotion, especially where it comes to hot button issues.

Guns, gods, and penises are all hot-button topics, and when you're as steeped in the arguments about these things as I am, a process commonly known as "sleep" inevitably produces another form of conflation: the dream state. Dreams are not meant to be rational, for they are a form of auto-therapy. Ideas and thoughts are naturally scrambled and sifted, and either rendered less annoying, or sometimes the ones that won't go away are highlighted in reminders we call "nightmares."

I don't know how many posts I've written which have compared gun control to penis control, but Glenn Reynolds' scholarly law review article on the subject -- Guns and Gay Sex: Some Notes on Firearms, the Second Amendment, and "Reasonable Regulation -- is a must read. I've downloaded and read it a couple of times, and last night I also read Glenn's states rights "thought experiment" analysis of gun control, which touches on another hot-button issue: the racist impulse (now in the form of denied liberal racism) which fuels gun control.

These things were on my mind, but also on my mind was God, or gods, or religion.

When too many hot buttons are pushed at the same time, the result is cultural overload. The dreaming process thus functions as a natural cultural cuisinart.

But just as one man's satire is another man's reality, one person's unconscious cuisinart is another person's apparently conscious cause.

I'd be willing to bet that the above idea (in one form or another) has occurred in liberal dreams, as well as conservative nightmares. And while it is undeniable that God can be said to hate or to love almost anything, imagine my reaction when, still half asleep, I opened this morning's Inquirer to see the latest Tony Auth cartoon:

I know that the Second Amendment follows the First, and there are many logical and rational connections which can be made (as well as the argument that the rights in both come ultimately from God), but I really didn't need to look at that right after a night of dream therapy.

Of course, I may be suffering from surrealist shock, but I just don't see the need to complain that the Inquirer's graven image unfairly stereotypes the NRA (to say nothing of demonizing Pagan gun owners).

I think it's more likely a testament to desperation.

People who think the cartoon represents NRA reality are engaged in wishful thinking.

I mean, does anyone seriously believe the NRA worships guns as religious objects? I'm familiar with the argument that the Second Amendment comes from God, but not all NRA members even go that far. (And it would not surprise me if the more religious members of the NRA would frown on the idea that the Second Amendment dictates violating the Second Commandment.)

The irony is that the activity portrayed in the Inquirer cartoon would be just as protected under the First Amendment as phallic worship -- an irony compounded by the fact that the depiction of the latter might not be! (Although what can be depicted in schools is another matter.....)

While I'm being admittedly silly here, isn't the cartoon clearly intended as a form of religious ridicule?

Is the Inquirer carrying religious ridicule too far?

(Or not far enough?)

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

MORE: Regarding the gun control measures which the cartoon and the accompanying editorial flurry were intended to advance, Governor Ed Rendell did not get what he demanded from the legislature. Far from it:

HARRISBURG - Despite an impassioned personal plea by Gov. Rendell to do more, a state House panel this morning endorsed one bill aimed at curbing gun violence but rejected two others and tabled action on a fourth.

In a 27-2 vote, Judiciary Committee members approved a bill sponsored by Speaker Dennis O'Brien (R., Phila.) to create a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 20 year for anyone who fires a weapon at a police officer.

Also by wide margins, the committee rejected bills that would limit the number of handguns a person can buy to one a month and allow cities to enact their own gun laws. Members tabled action on a bill that would require gun owners to report lost and stolen weapons.

The votes came moments after Rendell urged committee members to grow a "backbone" and send the entire package to the full House for a vote.

UPDATE: "A Bible scholar she ain't."

My thanks to Donald Sensing for the link, and for totally discrediting the poor religious scholarship behind the "GOD HATES GUNS" sign.

Very amusing post!

I lost this damned post earlier because of an error in the time stamp, so now I'm recreating it. (Sorry if I sound whiny, but I hate reinventing thoughts which aren't new, and I find this topic extremely annoying.)

Anyway, "GOD HATES SEX" seems to be an apparent area of agreement between those waging war against sex, and those waging war against God.

I realize that it is natural for activists to create dichotomies which imply that the only choice is between their extreme or the other extreme, but I think that perhaps in this instance, neither "side" wants to dare admit even to the possibility of a sexually-tolerant God.

Thus, in a numbingly predictable form of collusion, the two sides "agree" that the "choice" is between a sexually intolerant God, or no god at all.

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues of Concerned Women for America, has sent me yet another Culture War-promoting email, and his emails put me in a double bind, because if I ignore them I feel like a coward. (I know this is as irrational as refusing to be too "chicken" to take a dare, but these are feelings, OK?) And OTOH, if I spend time on them, I'm not only wasting time on someone who will never be convinced, but by paying attention to him, I'm doing what Ace suggested we not do with, uh, Gleen Grenwald. So I'm damned if I do pay attention, and damned if I don't.

I suppose you could say that I shouldn't give the man a link, but I think that's a little petty. Besides, I usually link Glenn Greenwald when I discuss him, and I think that when you discuss something, it's good form to give a link, whether it helps his traffic or not. I don't mean to single out Greenwald as the gold standard by which Matt Barber linkage is to be judged, but the way I see it, if I'm willing to link Greenwald, then I should be at least as willing to link Barber. (Besides, they probably each deserve to be spending time listening to each other.)

Of course, what link should I give him? Matt Barber's review of The Golden Compass came to me as an email, but it's all over the Internet. As TownHall seems to be his home base, I guess I'll link to that.

I have not seen the movie, nor have I read any of the books by author Phillip Pullman, but Barber says both the book and the film are anti-Christian:

....both this movie and the man behind it have a very certain anti-Christian axe to grind.

Hmmm....

What if Barber actually does think the Episcopal Church is anti-Christian?

Geez, I'm thinking that in that case Barber might consider this an anti-Christian post, and I don't consider myself anti-Christian at all. I'm just a pantheistic Pagan Christian with kooky ideas that God might love the people he's said to hate, and that maybe certain things in the Bible either weren't said by God or are taken out of context. Is it "anti-Christian" to engage in such speculation?

See how complicated this gets? If right off the bat, I'm anti-Christian by disagreeing with Matt Barber, there's no way I can ever hope to persuade him or the people who think like him of anything, is there? Seen that way, this post is a waste of time. But it's really not personal to Matt Barber because I think there is a larger issue, and it's a pet peeve of mine: the tendency of atheists and fundamentalists to agree on terms which, while boosting the ranks of atheists and fundamentalists, tend to make ordinary people roll their eyes and turn off to spirituality in any form.

By focusing on Pullman's philosophy, Barber conflates atheism and secularism into a neat little package united by a common desire to do away with authority:

Pullman leaves little question as to his books' central theme. "I don't profess any religion," he is quoted as saying. "I don't think it's possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty understanding what is meant by the words 'spiritual' or 'spirituality.'"

Ironically, Pullman's confident pronouncement that there is no God appears to take an exclusive backseat to his hatred for the very God he denies. "My books are about killing God," he told The Sydney Morning Herald in a 2003 interview. And in the trilogy's final offering, The Amber Spyglass, he does just that -- he knocks off the Almighty in a delusional fit of grandeur.

Pullman's books drip with moral relativism, that deceptively sweet, yet fruitless nectar of the secular humanist. His portrayal of God -- which is clearly intended to personify the Christian church -- is that of an evil authoritarian who spitefully stifles human creativity, arbitrarily punishing mankind for very naturally and properly entertaining base impulses with unfettered license.

....isn't that what atheism is all about, really? Our fallen desire to have, "no one to punish [us] for being wicked." If we can convince ourselves that there is no God, then we escape accountability for what we do, or so we believe. It's not so much a-theism as it is anti-theism. In fact, atheism is every bit a religion as any other. But in the church of the non-believer, the high priest is cloaked beneath the vestment of pseudo-"science" and parishioners worship at the altar of moral anarchy.

Still, like so much else in our culture, Pullman's aversion to God would appear to boil down to sex. Mary Malone explains that her desire for sex was her primary purpose for abandoning the God in Whom she no longer believes. "And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? ... And I took the crucifix from around my neck and I threw it in the sea. That was it. All over. Gone. ... So, that was how I stopped being a nun," she recounts.

Author and attorney David Limbaugh sums up the anti-theist condition succinctly:

"It seems the most militant 'anti-theist' these days are either arrogant scientists or unrestrained licentious types whose main obstacles to faith are not intellectual, but moral -- and that moral obstacle seems invariably to be sex ... sexual perversion, while perhaps not the worst sin, especially when compared to pride, for example, seems to be the one galvanizing the modern opponents of God."

Psalm 14:1 tells us, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good."

It's tough to read through someone's characterizations of the views of an author with whom I am not familiar, so I thought it would be fair to attempt to determine exactly how atheistic or anti-theistic the author himself is. In this interview, he seems to be a religious skeptic, although his main gripe seems to be with those who claim religion as an excuse to behave badly:

....I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'. I've got no evidence whatever for believing in a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God out there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself on earth.

But going further than that, I would say that those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result automatically in behaving very well.

Pullman says he doesn't care which religious variant is involved, and that his opposition to religious mischief is not limited to opposing the Christian variety:

when you look at organised religion of whatever sort - whether it's Christianity in all its variants, or whether it's Islam or some forms of extreme Hinduism - wherever you see organised religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and tyranny and repression. It's almost a universal law.

It's not just Christianity I'm getting at. The reason that the forms of religion in the books seem to be Christian is because that's the world I'm familiar with. That's the world I grew up in and I knew. If I had been brought up as an orthodox Jew, I would no doubt find things to criticise in that religion. But I don't know that world as well as I know Christianity.

However, I have not hesitated to criticize what I've repeatedly called "the Bigot God of 9/11," and I do think that there (and have always been) are plenty of religious people who insinuate their particular bigotry into their various forms of God or gods.

What shouldn't be forgotten is that these are competing views of the unknown, and what will likely remain unknowable (at least as far as I can see). That means that it is entirely possible that the atheists might be right. Matt Barber might be right. Phillip Pullman might be right. Fred Phelps might be right. The Archbishop of Canterbury might be right. And (nauseating thought though it is) even Osama bin Laden might for the sake of argument be right. (Which means that I and most of us could very well be going to hell.)

It is also possible that God (or a god or gods) might not be as anti-sexual as is commonly claimed. What Barber forgets with his "either my way or atheist hedonism!" pitch is that there is just as much right for a group of theists (in this case "Pan theists") to set up a Church of Nature's God and engage in phallic worship as there is for him to get all bent out of shape over it.

Don't expect me to start such a church though. Just because I've been photographed with Nature's God doesn't mean I have to start a cult.

I mean, consider the god's name. Pan? Priapus?

(It's a slippery slope from there to the "Church of Viagra".... And for the record, I am not the hedonist I appear to be in the picture, OK?)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

(Comments appreciated, whether from atheists, fundamentalists, people in between, or none of the above.)

Engineering is scientific in that it compares results to theory and adjusts accordingly. However, in engineering it is not always the theory that gets adjusted.

I was having a discussion with Gerald Browning at Climate Audit about engineering vs science. Two related but very different disciplines. Which brought up this polemic (thankfully short) from me.

In engineering it only has to work. The theory need not be correct. It just needs to bring you in the vicinity of a solution.

Second, a feed back system properly designed will cover up a lot of misunderstanding. I know the valve will be highly non-linear. Its components (O-Rings [pdf]) will have serious hysteresis and material creep problems. The gas flows will be probabilistic (see comments). You servo the system to the desired results and it doesn't matter. Which is why some of the companion articles deal with feedback and control. Instrumentation. Detectors.There is also a bit about having sufficiently large tanks inserted in the system at convenient places in order to reduce rates of change possible. It is ALL about scale. Try doubling the size of the oceans to slow down the dT/dt (rate of change of temperature with time) for a given energy input. An exercise best left to the reader.

A very bad way to do basic science. A good way to do engineering. The fact that this is engineering in service of basic science is even better.

Of course if your system response is exponential to change and your feedback loop is longer than the system response time you are farklempt. Nuclear reactors would be uncontrollable for this reason if it wasn't for the approximately 1% delayed neutrons. Even then there is a narrow range of reactivity where the delayed's help. Get above that range and the reactor self controls - i.e. melts down.

Let me add that what usually happens in these cases is that if you can get a lash-up to work and it has high utility a lot of people get assigned to understanding and improving on the original design and correcting the bad theories.

Read some of Tesla's work. Brilliant in general, but he had some serious and glaring mis-understandings - according to what we know now. The thing is his mis-understandings lead him to dead ends. OTOH he made things work. Like radio controlled boat models in the very late 1800s. An amazing accomplishment for its time.

Now it is good to have so many people studying climate. What is unfortunate is that our minuscule understanding has given rise to orthodoxy that pretends to more understanding than it actually has. This is easy to hide because the time scales are so long and the system itself is chaotic with strange attractors (You want to know the most likely weather for tomorrow? Same as today). Even when the time scales are short (electricity) understanding is some times decades in coming. The real crime in all this is not this prediction or that prediction. It is confidence intervals that do not match the quality of the data and its analysis.

One must take this as a common human failing because we see it in all fields. Predicting the future gains one prestige. Tarot reader or climate scientist. Doesn't matter.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

What a foul and wretched day it is today! It's that wet cold that pierces to the bone, and it's raining steadily .

On the bright side, today happens to be National Ammo Day.

Glenn advises picking up a box or two, and what the hell, if it's "Chinese-made, "at least it'll be something that's supposed to contain lead!"

In an interesting heavy-metal coincidence, I badly need to buy a new battery for my car. Batteries are also probably made in China these days, and of course they also contain lots of lead in the plates. So today, I'll buy lots of lead.

Considering today's theme, there are two "lead" stories which seem appropriate.

Reader Sean sent me a link to an incident in Allentown in which an unarmed shopkeeping family was forced into barehanded combat with armed invaders:

Using nothing but their fists against two armed would-be robbers, an Allentown shopkeeper with a bullet in his shoulder, his stepson with a stab wound to the chest, and his wife fought back against their attackers with fatal consequences Friday night.

Jonathan D. Fernandez, 30, who police say tried to rob the store at gunpoint, was shot in a bloody struggle with the family at the Allen Mini Market, 601 N. Ninth St., said Assistant Police Chief Ronald Manescu.

Fernandez entered the store with an unidentified man wearing a mask and carrying a knife, police said. The man with the knife fled during the struggle, which was captured by a surveillance camera at the front of the store. He remained at large Saturday night.

[...]

Store owner Catalino Bautista, 44, was immediately shot in the shoulder and his stepson, 27-year-old Wilson Cabrera, was stabbed in the chest.

Although they were severely injured and unarmed, Bautista and Cabrera fought back barehanded against the suspects with the help of Eneyda Ponce, 46, who is Bautista's wife and Cabrera's mother. They were able to tackle Fernandez. It isn't clear how Fernandez was shot.

While the story is testament to the family's courage, it's a miracle that they survived, and I can't think of a better argument for being armed ahead of time.

The other "lead" story is from the Inquirer, and it involves a robbery at a Rite Aid. Fortunately, a witness flagged down a passing Philadelphia highway patrol officer who responded immediately:

Police surrounded a Rite Aid store while it was being held up last night and then wounded the shotgun-wielding robber as he walked out the front door and leveled his weapon at the officers, Chief Inspector Keith Sadler said last night.

The accused robber, identified only as a white man about 55 years old, was in stable condition at Frankford Hospital-Torresdale Campus after being shot twice in the legs, Sadler said. Four officers fired their weapons, he said.

The police simply cannot be there all the time. In their absence, guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are the only equalizing force to preserve any semblance of a civilized society.

Again (from the essay Glenn linked) here's an excerpt from "why the gun is civilization":

....Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

[...]

....People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

So buy ammo today and give peace a chance.

And if you're in Pennsylvania, be sure to remember to boycott gun control tomorrow!

UPDATE: In a post about rape, Connie du Toit has some common sense advice that seems worth quoting here:

if a woman does have to be out alone, carry a gun! That is such a minor hurdle to overcome. Women carry Kleenex, in case they SNEEZE. Can't they carry a gun, in case of RAPE? We carry aspirin, a tampon in case our period starts unexpectedly, or hand cleaner, in case we get our hands dirty and water/soap isn't immediately available. Men carry a condom, in case they get lucky (despite their comb-over condition). Is it such a big deal to suggest that we ALSO carry the means of protecting life and limb, in the event of rape or assault?

UPDATE: The interview has now been posted!

Watch it here.

Pajamas Media is doing an interview with Fred Thompson, which will be posted tomorrow morning.

Early Monday morning, we will post the first of these conversations, with Senator Fred Thompson. Roger L. Simon and Bob Owens discussed the subject at length with Sen. Thompson at The Citadel in Charleston, SC last Tuesday. See a preview of their conversation here now, and watch it here in its entirety Monday. Look for other candidates at a later date.

If it doesn't work the flv link is here.

I'm looking forward to seeing the full interview, as I'm quite partial to his candidacy and I think he'd be a better president than anyone else now running in either party.

Whether he's the one with the best chance of beating Hillary, who knows?

It's still too early to tell.

(The only thing I know right now is that I don't want to see the Clintons returned to the White House.)

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks is one of the funniest things I've seen in some time.

If you need a laugh, check it out!

(Via CG Hill.)

It's not every day that an editorial has a picture of a person, but this one does.

While it is normally a matter of indifference to me what a criminal suspect looks like, it obviously matters to the Inquirer, for the editorial (titled "Wage war on causes") begins with a reference to the self-confessed cop killer's "baby face":

A police officer has been murdered, gunned down in the line of duty, leaving behind a grieving wife and three fatherless children.

The last thing most Philadelphians want to hear is a discussion of the social conditions that create men like the baby-faced suspect alleged to have shot Officer Chuck Cassidy during a doughnut shop robbery.

But if this city is going to prevent the murders of more officers (four others have been wounded by gunfire since Oct. 28); if this city is ever going to become safer for anyone who wants to buy a doughnut, or walk to school, or simply watch the world through a window of her home - then it has to have this discussion.

First, there must be an acknowledgment that violent crimes are a reflection of the violence we see in too many other aspects of our daily lives.

It's the new normal. Just check out TV, radio and film. There's even a commercial in which "moms" want to "whack" the Burger King king. Yeah, that's funny. Don't like the king? Go Tony Soprano on him.

Philadelphia is about to get a new mayor and police commissioner who promise to be aggressive in ferreting out and arresting criminals. But that's the easy part. Much tougher is preventing crime from occurring in the first place. Retiring Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson has said that again and again.

To reduce crime, especially violent crime, you must address the factors that produce it, including unemployment, poverty and bad schools. There's plenty of each in any big city in America. But in all of the Democratic and Republican presidential debates, have you heard anyone detail a cohesive national urban policy aimed at these issues?

Studies have shown that teenagers who have received high-quality education, beginning in preschool, are less likely to be arrested for violent crimes. Yet urban schools continue to be underfunded - in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

The result is high dropout rates that produce the jobless young men who end up committing crimes and serving time in prison. And prison is the worst place for many of them. They're not rehabilitated; they're turned into hardened felons who are even more likely to commit violent crimes when they get out.

And they do get out, almost all of them, eventually. Uneducated, and likely to have a drug habit, they become predators who rob doughnut shops and shoot police officers who get in the way.

Think about that statement in light of police statistics showing that 80% of Philadelphia's shootings involve previously convicted criminals. Presumably, if they were behind bars the shootings would not have occurred. Doesn't saying they all get out beg the question of whether keeping them in would decrease crime?

No. Paradoxically, the Inquirer says that locking them up only "delays" crime:

When is America going to learn that warehousing prisoners only delays crime, it doesn't stop it? When is it going to make adequate funding of schools a top priority? What good is waging a worldwide war against terrorism when the terror outside our doors is scarier? The violence won't stop until we take a good look at ourselves.

The baby faced cop killer really would have been good, but "we" made him bad with all the awful television programs, bad schools, and a fictitious Burger King king being whacked by moms.

I don't watch much television so I hadn't been aware of that latest shocking development until I read the editorial. In the old days I'd have probably taken the Inquirer at its word (at least for the sake of argument). Please believe me when I say that the last thing I want to have to do is turn on the television and watch carefully for offensive Burger King commercials. Writing this essay is enough of a pain in the ass as it is, but being forced to watch commercials? That is too much.

Fortunately, I don't have to. Like many offensive and dangerous things, the "Hit Moms Burger King Commercial" can be watched at any time on YouTube!

I try to be thorough, so I watched it carefully in its entirety. Not once but twice. It is obvious comedy; a harmless, even cute parody of countless mob films.

Honestly, I am trying to give the Inquirer the benefit of the doubt here, but what can they be thinking? Does anyone seriously believe that a silly commercial skit like that could in any way -- even remotely -- contribute to a cold-blooded murder of a police officer? I mean, I'm accustomed to crazed conspiracy theories and everything, but if someone told me this with a straight face I'd wonder what they were on.

The climate of Burger King violence theory aside, I do think the Philadelphia school system is an atrocity, and I've written numerous blog posts about it. I have no argument whatsoever with improving education, and I'd support a major overhaul from top to bottom. But is a poor education really to blame for John Lewis? Let's assume that John Lewis got a crummy education. I agree that it's awful that anyone should get a crummy education, because education is one of the things that tax dollars are supposed to pay for. But thousands and thousands of Philadelphia kids go to the same schools, and how many of them shoot police officers? Was John Lewis forced by society to drop out of school in the first place? Isn't individual motivation a factor in education?

To be fair, the Inquirer also blames unemployment and poverty in addition to bad schools. While the reporting about John Lewis's family situation is a bit scanty, what is known is that his mother works as a corrections officer, and that he appears to be her only child. He's 21 and she's 37, so it's more than likely his father committed a crime in helping to create him (unless he was a paid sperm donor, which I doubt). Whether babies born to teen mothers are more likely to become criminals, I don't know, but I think I've seen studies somewhere, and I suspect that there's at least as much of a correlation there as with a poor education; maybe more. You'd think teen pregnancy (perhaps out of wedlock birth, if that's the case here) might be worth a mention in the Inquirer's litany of "social conditions that create men like the baby-faced suspect."

But even if we put this aside, it does appear that the mother was gainfully employed in a law enforcement job, which means she knows right from wrong. Whether she was able to impart this to her only son, I am not sure. But frankly, I'm not seeing poverty as a factor. As to unemployment, well, I admit, there aren't a whole lot of jobs for drug-addicted high school dropouts, but he seems to have found jobs anyway:

Earlier this year, Lewis worked at two other Dunkin' Donuts locations - at Germantown and Erie Avenues, and on Roosevelt Boulevard near Rising Sun Avenue.

"He was nice," said Kiani Clark, 20, a cashier at the Roosevelt location.

"He was polite. He was happy he had just had a baby," she said while ringing up customers.

"We were all in shock," said Megan Chin, the manager.

Lewis was let go a few months ago for unspecified reasons, said Sofia Gonzalez, 23, a co-worker who has known Lewis since they were schoolmates at Olney High School.

"I believe it was money problems that pushed him over the edge," said Gonzalez, who said she did not think he would stage an armed robbery at another Dunkin' Donuts out of spite.

"He wasn't the type to hold a grudge like that," she said. "He just had issues."

"He just had issues"?

I'm going to stick my neck out here and venture a controversial theory about what kind of person would walk into a Dunkin Donuts and blow away a cop in cold blood.

I think it is possible that this cop killer might just have been a bad person.

That his education, employment history, money problems, and even Burger King commercials really were not what made him do what he did.

Did affluence, college and law school prevent Ted Bundy from murdering 30 people?

OK, since we're supposed to be noticing faces, let's take a look at Bundy's:

Maybe not exactly Lewis's innocent "baby face," but what is evil supposed to look like, anyway? (I've known wonderful people who looked a lot more ferocious than that.)

Or is it that "we" are responsible for John Lewis, but not Ted Bundy? I don't see how. I think that there are bad people, and evil exists in the world. Had John Lewis been arrested for stealing food to feed himself, I'd be more sympathetic.

I'll say this for the Inquirer editorial; at least it didn't try to paint John Lewis into an argument for gun control.

That rhetorical task was left up to Governor Ed Rendell, and columnist Monica Yant Kinney.

Rendell and his crowd are trying to spin the gun issue as "urban" versus "rural" one; this Inquirer headline being a perfect example:

Rendell puts gun divide to the test
"This does not break down on partisan lines. It's rural vs. urban," an observer said. A showdown comes Tuesday.

Gun-control bills have tended to die obscurely in the halls of the Pennsylvania Capitol, rarely requiring a legislator to cast a recorded vote.

The popularity of hunting in the state, and the lobbying power of the National Rifle Association, taught legislative leaders not to bother.

This week, Gov. Rendell will force a public reckoning.

In a highly unusual move, the governor plans to testify Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee to urge passage of three bills, including one - to limit handgun purchases to one a month - that has languished for a year. The committee chairman, Thomas Caltagirone (D., Berks), agreed to schedule votes the same day - this after a call from the governor.

Despite Rendell's gambit and a wave of gun crimes in Philadelphia and smaller cities, longtime political pros say committee passage of the bills is iffy - and approval by the full House and the Senate even less likely.

"Rendell is fighting a series of political and cultural forces in this state," said pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College.

An angry Rendell, clenching his teeth and pounding the lectern so hard it rocked, on Friday implored lawmakers to take guns out of the hands of thugs to protect citizens and police. The governor's passionate outburst came on the heels of the murder of Philadelphia Officer Chuck Cassidy.

"This does not break down on partisan lines. It's rural vs. urban, and Democrats have a strong rural base in the southwest and northeast," Madonna said.

Democratic media consultant Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphian who grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, agreed that the politics are tough but noted that Rendell had some leverage.

"The fact is legislative hearings in Harrisburg don't usually make the 6 and 11 o'clock news, but this one will," Ceisler said. Ultimately, though, "it's a campaign, and there's going to have to be a lot of grassroots work" to win acceptance of gun control in Pennsylvania, he said.

"In the end, it won't have the votes to pass," said Jeff Coleman, a former Republican legislator and now a political consultant. "It will end up being a terrific fund-raising tool for Republicans in rural areas running for reelection, and it will do the same thing for Gov. Rendell in his attempts to widen the Democratic majority in the House."

A poll done in six legislative districts for CeaseFire PA found that constituents favored one-gun-a-month legislation by a 2-1 ratio, said Phil Goldsmith, president of the gun-control group.

"At some point in time, these legislators are going to have to worry what their constituents think," he said.

Steve Miskin, a spokesman for the House GOP, said there was little sentiment in his caucus for more legislation on guns.

"The way we look at it, the governor's got a bully pulpit, and if he would spend even half the time enforcing the laws already on the books . . . we'd be further along," Miskin said.

Rendell said that was just "propaganda" from the NRA.

"The prisons are bulging. Don't tell me enforcement's the problem," he said. Limiting sales of handguns is imperative, Rendell said, because "a high percentage of crime guns are purchased by people other than the actor."

I had no idea that the NRA had the power to run politicians out of office. I thought that was the sort of thing that required losing an election, being impeached, or being a Republican in a sex scandal.

But never mind. As a member of the NRA, I'm feeling very empowered, so at the risk of spouting what Ed Rendell would call "NRA propaganda," I thought I'd offer a few reasons why I think the gun control forces have a very poor poster boy in John Lewis. Far from being an argument for gun control, his sordid spree of gun crimes (culminating in the murder of Officer Cassidy) stands as a compelling argument that gun control does not work.

All his guns were illegal.

Initially, it appeared that Lewis had killed Officer Cassidy with the gun the city had issued to his corrections officer mother, and which he stole. According to later reports though, Lewis had yet another illegal gun -- which had been stolen in Virginia. This brought his collection of stolen guns to three:

According to articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lewis' mother is Lynn M. Dyches, whose prison-issued gun was missing after the Oct. 31 shooting.

However, the Inquirer reported that police believe the murder weapon was a 9 mm handgun stolen from Virginia. Lewis also allegedly stole Cassidy's sidearm after shooting him.

None of the new gun control laws that have been proposed would have done anything to stop Lewis. People in law enforcement (like his mother and Officer Cassidy) would still carry guns, and it would still be illegal to steal them. And it would be just as illegal as it was to buy guns stolen in other states.

The problem is not that we need more laws; the problem is that we need fewer evil men like John Lewis. (It might also help to enforce the law we have.)

Back to Rendell's claim that calls for better law enforcement are "NRA propaganda." What the governor seems to be missing is that eleven days before he shot Officer Cassidy, Lewis was positively identified as the gunman in a pizza store robbery. Yet no warrant was issued:

An employee of Oasis Pizza in Feltonville positively identified Lewis as a regular customer who showed up Oct. 20 with a gun demanding cash. He fled with $150. Despite the identification, no arrest warrant was obtained.

Officials said the internal investigation would focus on several questions:

Did the detective follow protocol in gathering information and pursuing it, or was the detective neglectful when an arrest warrant was not obtained?

Was the detective still investigating the case and looking for more evidence to secure a warrant? Was she assigned another job that took precedence in the busy East Detective Division, which covers some of the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods?

The question no one can answer is whether Cassidy's death could have been prevented had a warrant been obtained and Lewis arrested, police officials said yesterday.

The name of the detective, who has been on the force for more than 20 years, has been withheld because of the pending investigation. Several people who know her said she was distraught about Cassidy's death.

Many in the police community said the case was troubling on several levels as police try to heal from the loss of Cassidy, a popular patrol officer from the 35th District, while they cope with an investigation of one of their own.

Last week, allegations surfaced within the department that the detective did not actively pursue an arrest warrant for Lewis. However, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson was not informed until questioned by The Inquirer on Wednesday, when he immediately ordered an internal investigation.

Among other things, Johnson said he wanted to know what other cases the detective was handling when the Oasis robbery was under investigation.

Johnson is adamant that appropriate discipline will be administered, if warranted, but repeated yesterday that it was too early to know whether mistakes were made.

There was an active investigation of the case before Johnson was informed, Sadler said. Sadler said he told his boss, Deputy Commissioner Patricia Giorgio-Fox, what happened, but she said she did not advise the commissioner after she learned about it Friday.

I'm sorry, but I think Lewis is the bad guy here. It's his fault; not poverty, education, unemployment, Burger King, or guns.

The prisons may be full, but short of capital punishment, locking up bad guys is the only thing that will stop them.

If they are not going to be locked up (or if, as the Inquirer says, "they do get out"), I think that taking away people's ability to defend themselves constitutes criminal recklessness.

MORE: Did police fail to act on tip? It certainly looks that way.

AND MORE: I'm wondering whether Ed Rendell and his gun-grabbing buddies have read the wonderful essay that's making the rounds which Glenn Reynolds linked earlier Here's an excerpt from "why the gun is civilization":

....Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

[...]

....People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Truly, guns give peace a chance.

Longtime Classical Values blogger Dennis and I got together last night, and had dinner at the official Classical Values restaurant.

This picture was taken later:

The reason I'm looking a bit askance is because I had to balance the camera on the uneven banister post at the bottom of the stairway, set off the 10 second timer, and run into the picture, all the while worrying that the camera might fall off the banister post (which is raised and slanted so there's no flat surface for the camera).

It made me feel nostalgic for the old times when Dennis had nothing better to do than write posts!

(But at least he wrote one last month; maybe there'll be more...)

Dennis related an interesting anecdote involving a recent Google image search for "classical scholar." He was looking for someone else and the last thing he expected to find was a picture of himself. But page 2 of the Google search bought up this picture -- of Dennis holding an odd-looking object:

Looking back at the post, I'm realizing that I should have been more forthcoming. It's one thing to play guessing games and have fun with mysteries, but I probably should have made it clear what the object is.

It's an onion ring!

But not the kind in the famous Clinton Sopranos "Don't Stop Believing" video.

The onion ring Dennis is holding is more, um, chaste.

So.... whether your preference runs for traditional or classical onion ring values, don't stop believing!

MORE: Coco has just reminded me that her picture is on the FIRST PAGE of the Google search for "classical scholar" and it shows her in this post reading a very important book!

Take that liberal arts snobs!

It's the Dovells, singing their 1961 hit, "The Bristol Stomp":

As I keep saying, you never know what is going to turn up on YouTube next!

Incidentally, the Dovells, while a white Doowop group, copied the style of several black Doowop groups.

Indeed, some would argue that they came pretty close to copying this -- my all time favorite Doowop song -- "Every Day of the Week" by the Students (1958):

Sorry it's only audio. This was a fantastic group that didn't last long, and I've never been able to find out much about them. But thanks to the Internet, today I've found more:

A song written by William H. "Prez" Tyus, of Cincinnati, Ohio.

While still in high school, Tyus wrote the songs I'm So Young and Every Day of the Week and gave them to a local African-American vocal group called the D'Italians.

Once a recording contract with Chess Records was secured, the group changed its name to The Students, and it was under this name that Tyus's two classic doo-wop songs were recorded.

I'm So Young has been covered by the Rosie and the Originals, the The Del-Vikings, the Beach Boys, and by The Ronettes (as "So Young").

The Students left us a legacy of four songs which became oldies favorites in the early 60s and have remained popular to this day. In spite of this, surprisingly little has been known about the group.

Original Dovells member Mark Stevens talks about his group, and the musical connection with the Students.

I actually thought that we were pretty unique. We had a very R&B sound. We were a white group with a black sound and that's what got The Dovells signed to Cameo / Parkway. That's what they were looking for. There's no doubt about that. And Len Barry, the original lead singer of The Dovells, had that black, rhythm and blues thing going on. We all did. We all went to a very black high school. We were all rhythm and blues oriented.

Q - "The Bristol Stomp" would be the song that put you over the top then?

A - Oh, yeah.

Q - Did you write that song?

A - No. Kal Mann and Dave Appell wrote all The Dovell's hits per se, along with Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker, The Orlons, The Tymes, Dee Dee Sharp. All those hits from the Cameo / Parkway days were, for the most part, written by Kal Mann and Dave Appell.

Q - They were like the Motown staff writers.

A - Make no mistake about it, they were stealing melodies and ideas. "Bristol Stomp" was the same four chords you find in a lot of songs. The beat and the content of some of the songs came from other songs back then..."Pretty Little Angel Eyes", "Every Day Of The Week" by The Students... two prime examples of how "The Bristol Stomp" got started.

Frankly, from a musical standpoint, who really cares? I wish the Students had made more money, but both these groups were great, and in those days they didn't need no stinking Digital Millennium Copyright Act!

This piece of, um, legislation, is an outrage. Among other things, it would allow the city of Philadelphia to outlaw all guns, in direct violation of the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions:

(3) A city of the first class may adopt ordinances doing any of the following:

(i) Limiting the ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of assault weapons within the city limits.

Is it just the governor being emotional? That's what we are told, but considering Ed Rendell is a seasoned political animal (and former Chairman of the DNC), I seriously doubt he's been carried away by emotion.

In any event, the emotional pretext he's using involves the recent shooting of a police officer by another rampaging criminal:

Visibly moved by the funeral Wednesday for slain Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy, Gov. Rendell yesterday called for tougher penalties for shooting at a police officers and pledged to renew his fight for three gun-control laws stalled in the Legislature.

Rendell said that at the funeral he was struck by the prayer from Cassidy's family members for government officials "to continue to strive to ensure a safe, non-violent community for all Philadelphians."

"I thought about that and said, we just can't throw our hands up," a somber Rendell said at a Center City news conference.

Rendell said he has convinced the chairman of the state House Judiciary Committee, Tom Caltagirone, D-Berks, to list three stalled gun-control measures for consideration. Rendell offered to be the first witness before the committee.

Which is the news media's way of "disclosing" that he violated existing gun control laws. Drug addicts are not allowed to own guns. People with criminal records or facing felony charges are not allowed to own guns. People are not allowed to steal guns. Etc.

And of course, not even the most draconian gun control laws will disarm prison guards.

So what we have is an emotional reaction to an incident which happened despite a plethora of existing gun control laws, and which would not have been prevented by any of the proposed ones.

The governor's move is so unusual that it is attracting national attention. Here's the Examiner:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (Map, News) - Gov. Ed Rendell, hoping to inject fresh drama into the stalled debate over gun control in Pennsylvania, plans to personally address a House committee considering several bills he says are crucial to reducing gun violence.

An appearance by a sitting governor before a committee is so rare that some of the longest serving legislators and staff members could not remember another such time. At Rendell's request, Rep. Thomas Caltagirone, D-Berks, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, will bring up three bills for a vote Tuesday after members listen to the governor.

Let them know.

(Contact information from the NRAILA follows if you expand the post.)

The KOS Kids are going to show the wingers how supporting the troops is supposed to be done.

Today, I'm calling all kossacks with an invitation to show the wingers how to walk the walk by supporting the troops with some good old fashioned care packages. It's a great way to support those men and women who will not be home for the holidays and sending care packages to the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is easier than most folks realize. So, here's some specific information on where to find soldiers to support, what to send, and the ins and outs of mailing care packages overseas. I promise, it's easier than you think and you'll feel wonderful walking away from that post office counter.

Well any way, welcome aboard "The Victory" shipmates, one of the very latest and most modern ships in the US Military.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Welcome Instapundit readers.

If things are still going well in Iraq by the beginning of next summer or a little earlier, expect all those Congress Critters who didn't support the war to come out for more dollars for Veterans hospitals, college benefits, pay, and what not to cover for being on the wrong side. Victory will not be an orphan.

When some one brings up the war they can start talking Veterans.

They are going to paper their tracks with our money. In this case it is probably a good thing.

Inspired by this post.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that Dan Riehl identified one planted questioner from last night's debate. It turns out that Suzanne Jackson, (mother of a three term Iraq War veteran) is a fairly well known antiwar activist.

Activists have just as much right to ask questions as anyone else. It's just that when their activist backgrounds are known but not disclosed, the false impression is created that they might as well be ordinary Americans selected at random.

Why, they're just plain folks like you sitting at home!

Like the randomly-selected ordinary citizen questioner Khalid Khan.

From the CNN transcript:

MALVEAUX: Our next questions is -- Khalid Khan, if you would please stand for a moment. You and I spoke very briefly, and you said you have some concerns about racial profiling.

KHALID KHAN: Yes, I do. I am an American citizen and have been profiled all the time at the airport. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of Americans have been profiled. And, you know, it is like a harassment.

KHAN: My question is that -- our civil liberties have been taken away from us. What are you going to do to protect Americans from this kind of harassment?

MALVEAUX: Senator Edwards, we'd like you to take that. You obviously voted for the Patriot Act, which gives the government extended powers of surveillance. What do you say to people like Mr. Khan who say he's been abused by that power?

EDWARDS: I say he's right. He's right. This administration has done more than abuse the Patriot Act, and the Patriot Act needs to be dramatically changed, by the way.

(APPLAUSE)

Nor, as it turns out, is Khalid Khan a stranger to CNN. From the transcript of a show last year called "keeping the faith in Sin City -- a surprising look at how Muslims manage to live and work under the glitz, greed and sex in Las Vegas.":

ZAHN: Our special hour tonight continues with a "Top Story" out of Las Vegas, where Muslim prayer rugs and the Las Vegas Strip collide, and collide in a big way.

Islam forbids Vegas standbys, like gambling, alcohol and strip shows. Yet, 14,000 Muslims live and work in Vegas. So, how do they all get along?

Let's turn to Ted Rowlands, who joins us from Vegas tonight. And he has the latest details for us.

[...]

ROWLANDS: The president of the Islamic Society here estimates, there are 14,000 Muslims living in Las Vegas, trying to follow the stringent rules of Islam in Sin City.

KHALID KHAN, PRESIDENT, ISLAMIC SOCIETY: It is a challenge to them. It is a challenge, that they see all these temptation around them, and, still, they just ignore them.

It makes me wonder what else CNN is not saying.

UPDATE: My thanks to Allah at Hot Air for the link! Allah links another story about Khalid Khan, with video showing that he is of course the same person.

UPDATE: Wow. My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post! I'm honored to be in such good company, for Glenn also has two more links from Dan Riehl, and a surprising remark from Josh Marshall -- "Can We Just Close Down CNN?"

I'm not going near the "diamonds and pearls" business.

Not in a serious post, anyway....

But I just can't resist mentioning Slublog's post about how the Wolf got neutered (which Glenn also linked), because it's a "pet" issue.

Haven't I repeatedly warned that they wouldn't stop with the neutering of dogs?

UPDATE: My thanks to Doug Ross for the link!

I was fascinated to stumble upon a report of citizen heroism, buried deep in a Philadelphia Inquirer local news piece about carjackers targeting "high-end SUVs." A very brave woman resisted a pair of armed thugs who were trying to take her SUV away with her daughter in the back seat, and she actually managed to get the gun away from them -- shooting one in the process.

Instead of singling the woman out for the praise she deserves, the incident is being treated by police almost as an aberration which never should have happened.

...The drivers were female, the vehicles high-end, the keys taken along with the cars.

But for drama, what unfolded just after 4:30 p.m. on North Belfield Avenue in Havertown was most unique.

Police gave the following account: A 37-year-old woman had just left work at Sunny Days Early Childhood Development when she saw two men get out of a black Jeep and approach her Toyota Cruiser. They reportedly asked her about getting a job.

After she leaned into her car to get them a pen, the woman turned back around - only to be facing a handgun. She was told to give up her vehicle, but pleaded with the men to let her first retrieve her daughter from the backseat.

She did, and at the same time managed to grab a gun that one attacker had put on his lap as he tried to start the vehicle. Both attackers tried to take the gun out of her hand. During the struggle, the weapon went off and one carjacker was hit in the right thumb.

One attacker got back in her Cruiser and drove off; the other ran away and was later seen getting picked up on Peach Lane by a black Jeep.

Then, at 8:50 p.m., a 911 call came into Montgomery Township police about a black Range Rover stolen at gunpoint in the 100 block of Duchess Place, in the Tall Gables development just north of the intersection of Horsham and Upper State Roads.

The driver and her passenger, described by police as women in their mid-50s, were approached by two men fitting the description of the Havertown carjackers "who had their guns out and . . . demanded the keys," said Lt. Mark Houghtaling. The driver complied.

Houghtaling lauded that response. "If you are encountered by people like this . . . don't fight, don't put yourself in jeopardy."

I'm wondering...

Should the brave woman who resisted have let them drive away with her child too?

I realize that the police mean well when they tell people to always comply with criminal demands and never to resist, but can't this be carried too far? I mean, are we supposed to hide under our desks and wait our turn like the Virginia Tech shooting victims?

None of the three victims has been identified by police. The Havertown victim, approached at her home in Philadelphia, declined to comment about her decision to resist.

I might be old-fashioned, but I think the police should be thanking this woman. Most of the time the cops never catch carjackers, who usually use the vehicles in short crime sprees and then abandon them.

Ultimately, the fact that this bastard got shot in the hand during the struggle may have been what helped the police nail him.

By 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Philadelphia police had located her Toyota Cruiser in Cobbs Creek and sent in a surveillance team. As officers waited, they heard about the theft of the Range Rover in Montgomery Township. Not long after, a Range Rover pulled into the alley followed by a black Jeep. Police moved in. Two males in the Range Rover and the driver of the Jeep were taken into custody after police opened fire as one of the vehicles tried to run down an officer.

As of last night, Omaru K. Sannoh, 20, of Yeadon, and Unisa Kamara, 19, of Dale City, Va., had been charged by Havertown police with robbery of a motor vehicle, receiving stolen property and aggravated assault, among other offenses. Other charges in Philadelphia and Montgomery Township were expected.

Charges were also expected against a third man, Jakuba Komoram of Philadelphia. All three men are natives of Sierra Leone. Their immigration status had not been determined yesterday.

Sannoh was the man shot, and inside the Jeep, police recovered a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun covered with blood.

But citizens can.

Whoever this anonymous Havertown woman is, I think she should be praised. Acts of courageous resistance like hers do more to discourage criminals than gun control laws or uniformed police who file the usual reports which accumulate into the usual statistics.

My hat's off to her.

MORE: The Philadelphia Daily News has more details about the case, which apparently involves an international car-theft ring:

The suspects are believed to be part of a Liberian carjacking ring that is known to ship high-end vehicles out of the country, Sgt. Ray Evers, a city police spokesman, said.

Last night, the Delaware County District Attorney's Office announced it had filed robbery, assault and related charges against two of the men, Unisa Kamara, 19, and Omaru Sannoh, 20, both of whom are foreign nationals believed to be from Sierra Leone.

A third man, Jakuba Kamara, 29, also of Sierra Leone, was expected to be charged late last night, Joseph Brielmann, a spokesman for the Delaware County District Attorney's Office, said. Jakuba and Unisa are believed to be cousins.

As she stared down the gun's barrel, she pleaded not only for her own life, but for the life of her 7-year-old daughter, who was cowering in the car.

The men agreed to let the child go, and as the frightened mother snatched up her little girl, she also - in an astonishingly bold move - snatched up her attacker's handgun, which he'd left on his lap while starting the car, police said.

A brief struggle over the weapon followed, during which time the gun discharged once. Neither the woman nor her child was injured. Haverford police say it remains unknown if one of the attackers was shot in the scuffle.

"We're just fortunate that the situation didn't put anybody else in any harm and that no one was hurt in the struggle that ensued," Haverford Township Police Sgt. Shant Bedrossian said.

AND MORE: Until I saw this story, I didn't realize the extent of the problem involving stolen American SUVs shipped overseas. An investigative report in the Boston Globe revealed that these international car-theft rings are often linked to terrorists, and that the high end SUVs are popular with suicide bombers in Iraq, because they "blend in":

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 1 million cars were stolen from US streets in 2003, the most recent statistics available. Government officials think the vehicles insurgents use were stolen from locations as varied as Virginia, Maryland, Texas, and Florida. Arizona reported more than 56,000 vehicles stolen last year, the largest per-capita number of thefts in the country.

Terrorism specialists think Iraqi insurgents prefer American stolen cars because they tend to be larger, blend in more easily with the convoys of US government and private contractors, and are harder to identify as stolen.

The new disclosures are part of a pattern, according to government officials. US law enforcement and intelligence agencies are increasingly finding links between violent Islamic extremists groups and vast criminal enterprises such as drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, and car theft.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has cut off some of the terrorists' access to money, including freezing bank accounts of suspect groups and individuals and pressuring Middle Eastern governments to terminate aid. But terrorist operatives have found other means to raise cash, acquire weapons, or gain other logistical help. Facing greater scrutiny, terrorist groups are increasingly using illegal, highly lucrative business arrangements to support their operations, according to the FBI and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Investigators say the criminal activities that terrorists use to raise money run the gamut from creating and selling fake documents to insurance fraud. Taliban and Al Qaeda followers are thought to be heavily involved in the expanding heroin trade in Afghanistan, and a US-based cigarette smuggling ring was linked to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon

James G. Conway, Jr., legal attache at the US Embassy in Mexico City, told the Globe that ''where you find terrorists you often find some kind of criminal activity."

Car theft, a criminal enterprise that costs US citizens more than $8 billion a year, now seems to have become a new enterprise for some terrorist groups, according to the law enforcement officials and private specialists.

''The car bomb is the top weapon in the world for carrying out terrorist attacks," said Lieutenant Greg Terp, commander of the Miami-Dade Police Department's Auto Theft Task Force. ''These car thieves don't necessarily know that they are financing terrorism, but they might."

The Boston Globe report also notes the keen interest shown by FBI's counterterrorism unit in these international stolen car rings.

(The FBI certainly wasted no time getting involved in an otherwise "local" Philadelphia carjacking.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Clayton Cramer for linking and quoting this post, in an interesting discussion of SUVs.

(I never gave it much thought, but now I'm wondering how much thought the number crunching economists have given to terrorism as a cause of global warming.)

I watched tonight's debate, and Hillary turned things around. With the help of hecklers and (I think) CNN.

The following argumentative rhetorical question appeared across the bottom of the screen (at around 8:25 p.m. EST):

IS IT FAIR TO ACCUSE SEN. CLINTON OF FLIP-FLOPPING, BUT CHANGE YOUR OWN POSITIONS?

Stephen Green:

7:12pm The question, from Gloria Borger that hot brunette talking head not named Borger, is pretty much, "Hillary, you're a weak little girl, aren't you?" Reply: "...I'm comfortable in the kitchen." And you know what? I totally Dowdified that quote.

Ann Althouse:

6. Is Hillary playing the gender card? That's the question. Of course, she denies it. Follow up: What did you mean by "the boys' club." She refers grandly and vaguely to the "impediments" there may have been along the way to progress. Wolf asks if anyone thinks she is playing the gender card. Edwards takes over, but totally fails to stalk about gender.When he says HC takes money from lobbyists, the audience boos him loudly. Who knew the pro-lobbyist sentiment was so strong? Anyway, no one wants to talk about gender.

Ian Schwartz has the video of this portion -- appropriately titled "Hillary Plays Gender Card While Explaining She Doesn't Use It."

Pressed twice on what she meant by the phrase "boys' club" Hillary smiled and said knowingly,

"Campbell....."

This was followed by a classic Jack Benny-style "straight man" pause. Then,

"Well, I think it is clear from women's experiences from time to time, there may be some impediments."

I thought it was ingenious the way Campbell Brown had to be seen as dragging it out of Hillary.

UPDATE: Commenter Meleva asks whether it's true that CNN placed the rhetorical question -- "IS IT FAIR TO ACCUSE SEN. CLINTON OF FLIP-FLOPPING, BUT CHANGE YOUR OWN POSITIONS?" -- at the bottom of the screen.

I'm afraid so. I was irritated enough to pull out my camera and take a "screen shot" showing the caption (or advertisement, or whatever it is):

Says Meleva,

i can barely contain my incredulousness at such obvious "side-taking" on the part of a major network! CNN is actually going to sell you their candidate IN THE MIDDLE OF A "NON-BIASED" DEBATE?!

Hmmm...

Maybe it is a form of advertising.

Here's Glenn Reynolds on Wolf Blitzer's bind:

If he doesn't pound on Hillary tonight, it'll look like he's given in to intimidation. If he does, of course, Clinton fans will call him names, or say that he should be shot.

But is that really funny? I mean, if we look at the big picture, it becomes quite clear that it really wouldn't be fair to expect Wolf Blitzer to pound on Hillary tonight -- at least, not with tough questions. That's because the record shows that when tough questions arise, Hillary Clinton can only really be expected to know what she did not know.

"I knew nothing about the Marc Rich pardon...."

"I knew nothing about my brother's involvement in these pardons."

In fact, the pardons broke her heart:

A "heartbroken" Senator Hillary Clinton expressed shock that her brother Hugh Rodham got $US400,000 for urging clemency for two felons who were pardoned by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

But the former first lady said she was unaware of the payments to Rodham, which have subsequently been returned. Indeed, she said she knew nothing about the payments until Monday evening, and still had not spoken to her brother.

"I was very disappointed and saddened by this whole matter," Clinton told a crush of reporters on Capitol Hill.

"It came as a surprise to me and it was very disturbing." She added that she was "heartbroken and shocked."

They really do gang up on her, don't they?

And they've been ganging up on her a lot, and for a long time, because there's so many more heartbreaking and shocking things that have been kept from her.

She did not know did not know about the FALN pardons. And she was shocked. Shocked! when she found out.

She also did not know that her former senate campaign treasurer John Cunnungham III, was simultaneously "working as an attorney who was preparing and sending in pardon applications, two of which were approved by President Clinton."

That's got to be another heartbreak right there.

"I did not know that Vince had any of the documents related to our personal business in his office until after his death."

Shocking. Positively shocking!

She did not know about the criminal background of campaign financier Peter Paul.

She did not know "about Bill's counseling of his friend and benefactor the crown prince of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, on the ports deal."

And of course she did not know about the fugitive status of Norman Hsu.

As recently as last week, she did not know about the now famous planted question.

Nor did she know that her husband wrote a letter in 2002 asking the archives to release his presidential papers as soon as possible.

Those awful shocking and heartbreaking men! How could they have all kept her in the dark like that?

HOW DARE THEY?

A very cynical cosmic conservative attributes the not knowing to credibility problems:

But do you think anyone will start calling Hillary a "liar?" Of course not. And this is just one example. Ask Hillary about her involvement in any number of fund raising scandals, and again she will look straight at you and with deep sincerity say "I knew nothing about that" even when her voice is on tape from phone calls discussing the fund raising event. She will tell you that she knows nothing about missing documents from investigations against her legal partners, even AFTER they are discovered hidden in her bedroom.

Heartbreaking and shocking though it is to report, I'm afraid this is not a not a new argument:

She never knew about Whitewater!
She never knew about file-gate!
She never knew about China sending spies over for campaign contributions!
She never knew about Korea being given nuclear material!
She had no earthly ideal about Jennifer or Monica!
She never heard of Bin Laden!
She never knew about WMD's in Iraq, even after Bill told the world about them for 8 years!
She never knew that terrorist were plotting to attack the WTC the first time!
She never heard of Waco!
She was unsure if she even knew where Ruby Ridge was!
She thought that Trenton New Jersey was one block for the North Tower on 911!
She just didn't know folks.

So what makes her qualified to be President?

Answer is "I don't know. Because if she doesn't know about these events, then who knows is she qualified?"

But here's a similar sentiment coming from a left-wing anti-war activist who also doubts that Hillary did not know what she said she did not know:

Either she is not as smart as we are and therefore not qualified to be president, or she is a liar and does not deserve our trust. Choose.

Every single one of the things she did not know were things that were kept from her by men.

And aren't almost all the mean questions being asked by men?

Isn't Tim Russert a man?

And Wolf Blitzer? He too is a man.

The shocking and heartbreaking dots are all there, if only we connect them.

While I don't know whether she'll sparkle in tonight's debate, I have to say that watching this video of Hillary slugging it out in Iowa was no fun.

The blogger who linked it titled the post The Hillary Scream. Not to disagree in a major way, but I'm afraid that it's more along the lines of crassly mundane political plodding than it is a true Howard Dean-style scream. The speech is the sort of thing I'd expect to hear as an exhortation from a Chicago ward-heeler in a get-out-the-vote drive. And about as inspiring. Frankly, I find it dull and grating. It is to screaming as a dull ache is to real pain.

But, much as I'm already tired of Hillary's speechifying, being tired of hearing her is the least of my objections to her.

What I find more crass than the unpleasant tonality of her voice is the sheer tawdriness of what she represents.

It's the wife-really-running-for-the-husband, wink-wink stuff.

In a word, it is tacky.

And it's unbecoming the United States.

Longtime anti-Clinton columnist Charles Krauthammer discussed the phenomenon recently. Needless to say, if this old hand at Clinton-bashing didn't like Bill as president, you can imagine what he thinks of what he calls the "Hill-Bill Problem":

...Hillary's problem goes beyond discomfort with dynastic succession. It's deep unease about a shared presidency. Forget about Bill, the bad boy. The problem is William Jefferson Clinton, former president of the United States, commander in chief of the Armed Forces, George Washington's representative on earth.

We have never had an ex-president move back into the White House. When in 1992 Bill Clinton promised "two for the price of one," it was taken as a slightly hyperbolic promotion of the role of first lady. This time we would literally be getting two presidents.

Hey, you don't have to like my wife's speech-making, her flip-flopping, or her voice tone as long as you remember that the country's in good hands!

OK. While I wouldn't vote for him again, I'm enough of a realist that I can handle the fact that a majority of Americans would like to put Bill Clinton back in the White House. Had he been allowed to run against Bush in 2000, he'd have won. No argument there.

But must we suffer through the wink-wink charade?

Apparently. Reading Charles Krauthammer piece was painful for me, only because I agree with him and hate being reminded that if you thought Bill was tacky, you ain't seen nothin' yet:

Any ex-president is a presence in his own right. His stature, unlike, say, Hillary's during Bill's presidency, is independent of his spouse. From day one of Hillary's inauguration, Bill will have had more experience than her at everything she touches. His influence on her presidency would necessarily be immeasurably greater than that of any father on any son.

Americans did not like the idea of a co-presidency when, at the 1980 Republican convention, Ronald Reagan briefly considered sharing the office with former President Gerald Ford. (Ford would have been vice president with independent powers.) And they won't like this co-presidency, particularly because the Clinton partnership involves two characters caught in the dynamic of a strained, strange marriage.

The cloud hovering over a Hillary presidency is not Bill padding around the White House in robe and slippers flipping thongs. It's President Clinton, in suit and tie, simply present in the White House when any decision is made. The degree of his involvement in that decision will inevitably become an issue. Do Americans really want a historically unique two-headed presidency constantly buffeted by the dynamics of a highly dysfunctional marriage?

Only one solution comes to mind. Argentine-U.S. relations are quite rocky these days. The posting of a charming and dynamic ex-president to the Kirchner court in Buenos Aires might do those relations a world of good. The Romans had a fine appreciation for the art of exile. This might be an excellent occasion for us to start cultivating it.

That is not a bug, folks, it's a feature. It's the whole idea.

Krauthammer mentions two famous men's famous wives, Isabelita Peron and Cristina Kirchner. Perhaps his goal was to remind his readers that this is the sort of thing that should only go on in other countries, but I wish he'd mentioned Lurleen.

That's Lurleen Wallace, who ran as a wink-wink stand-in for Governor George Wallace when the Alabama Constitution forbid him a third term. People thought it was a cheap, tawdry, and tacky thing. Up here in the North, people laughed. (Probably because most of them thought it was a dumb, white-trashy thing to do.)

Well, I'm sorry, but the idea of a wife of a president who could never become president on her own becoming president as an end-run around the Constitution is cheap, tawdry, and above all tacky.

From a feminist perspective, it is insulting and degrading for women. But the feminists don't especially care how they smash the Last Glass Ceiling.

In terms of pure tackiness, it's amost on the level of Jim McGreevey, heterosexual until a corruption scandal caught up with him, and then "the nation's first gay governor." Although I'll say this for McGreevey: at least he ran on his own. I doubt he could ever have been elected had he run as a gay man, but OTOH I doubt very many people voted for him because he had a wife and kids. The usual non-controversial "straight" assumptions were made, and he never had to say, "I'm running because I want to become your heterosexual governor!" (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I just don't remember that.)

My point is that it was tacky for gay activists to claim McGreevey, and it is almost as tacky for feminists to claim Hillary. I stress "almost" because she did run for and serve as a United States senator. But even that involved a huge effort by her husband and the Clinton machine, and considering what's happening right now, it's laughably unreasonable to deny that the goal all along has been for the Clintons to retake the White House.

Wink-wink!

Thus, I don't see Hillary as the feminist identity politics issue some would like her to be. There is no issue in the minds of reasonable people over whether a woman should be president. Not only do I have no problem with that, but I'd vote for Condi Rice in a heartbeat, because she's earned it.

OK, I'm sure there are conservatives out there who'd refuse to vote for Condi for various political reasons. (After all, according to some "conservatives," she's a war-supporting One World Trilateral Bilderberger who's destroying America's sovereignty and wants to replace the dollar with the "Amero.") But how many right-wingers would really oppose her for being a woman? I submit that the number would be minuscule, and you can be damned sure they wouldn't vote for the Democrats.

The point is, there are many fully qualified women in both parties who qualify on their own merits, and not on their husband's merits. (Just as the GOP has Condi Rice, the Democrats have Dianne Feinstein, Madeleine Albright, and others. Even Nancy Pelosi at least is known as Nancy Pelosi and not the wife of whoever the hell she married.)

Tacky though it was, the cheap end-run around the Alabama Constitution that George and Lurleen Wallace pulled off in the 1960s simply does not compare in scope to this monumental national charade.

It's no understatement to call this a sleazy and dishonest trick. By two sleazy and dishonest people. America is not a corrupt Jim Crow state. Nor is it supposed to be a third world country where people fall for sleazy and dishonest tricks by sleazy and dishonest people.

Why can't the Democrats get a real woman who can run on her own? Whose electability doesn't depend on the fact that her husband is a popular former president who's barred from running again?

I'm wondering whether the 22nd Amendment was a mistake.

So did Dwight Eisenhower:

"The United States ought to be able to choose for its President anybody it wants, regardless of the number of terms he has served."

All who don't want Hillary Clinton to be president have the 22nd Amendment to thank. But for that amendment, her campaign would not exist.

But is it really fair of me to blame an amendment to the Constitution? I mean, this was all debated to death and agreed to in the 1940s, and when the amendment was passed, it became as much a part of the Constitution as the right to free speech. So perhaps rather than blame the Constitution, I should blame those who are so eager to cheapen it. To call what they're doing "tacky" might even be an understatement.

If enough Americans want Bill, wouldn't it be more honest and more dignified to allow them to actually vote for Bill?

I say get rid of the 22nd Amendment and let Bill run.

You want sleaze and dishonesty, vote for the real thing!

Isn't that better than cheapening the Constitution?

Let me admit my bias here. I voted for him the first time around, but I wouldn't do it again. I think Bill and his wife brought tackiness to the White House, and the conservative attack-Clinton hate machine that emerged was something I had never seen before in American politics.

I naively hoped I'd never see it again. But that was before payback came in the form of BDS.

Does it really have to be payback time again? Is there any way to turn off the cycles of Bush-Clinton hate machines?

(I guess that's another topic. The winking at the mocking of the inconvenient 22nd Amendment by two tacky people is a tacky enough mouthful for one post.)

What the hell is it with Elliot Spitzer?

Every time I turn around, he's trying to implement another insanely stupid idea (his latest being taxes on Internet sales just in time to muck up Christmas).

But Spitzer has a long history as a control freak, whether it's constantly messing with ebay for things like gambling and stun gun sales, bullying UPS, going after toy guns -- to say nothing of real guns (naturally he's one of the worst gun grabbers in the United States, and wants to bankrupt the firearm industry). And on top of that, he's a petty and vindictive SOB:

"It's now a war between us," Eliot Spitzer told me. "I will be coming after you."

It should come as a surprise to no one that (as Glenn Reynolds noted yesterday) the Nifong comparisons are flowing over reports of dirty tricks. Spitzer is a guy who goes for the jugular, and he seems quite willing to go after almost anybody. Well, anybody except the people who aren't allowed to be here. He wants to give them drivers licenses.

I'm just wondering. Is Spitzer competing to win the Biggest Horse's Ass of the Year Award?

Or is he just trying to make Hillary look reasonable?

Especially now that Hillary's campaign forced him to drop the drivers licensing for aliens, this not only made her look reasonable, she can now be spun as a savior.

It's a neat trick, really. This way, Hillary gets the credit for stopping a bad idea. She looks like a leader and a moderate, while Spitzer looks like an overreaching hardline fanatic governor brought to heel by the eminently reasonable senator from his state -- who has now shown that she knows how to run the state better than he does.

Here here!

Hey, maybe it was the anti-tax Hillary who stopped Spitzer's Internet tax too!

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

Eric says in a previous post: Hope you Dead haters will indulge me; I realize not everyone shares my tastes.

Well I'm going to indulge you Eric - with more Dead.

I Need A Miracle

I need a woman 'bout twice my age
A lady of nobility, gentility and rage
Splendor in the dark, lightning on the draw
We'll go right through the book and break each and every law.

I got a feeling and it won't go away, oh no
Just one thing then I'll be OK
I need a miracle every day.

I need a woman 'bout twice my height
Statuesque, raven-tressed, a goddess of the night.
Her secret incantations, a candle burning blue
We'll consult the spirits maybe they'll know what to do.

And it's real and it won't go away, oh no
I can't get around and I can't run away
I need a miracle every day.

I need a woman 'bout twice my weight
A ton of fun who packs a gun with all her other freight
Find her in a sideshow leave her in L.A.
Ride her like a surfer running on a tidal wave.

And it's real, believe what I say, yeah
Just one thing I got to say
I need a miracle every day.

It takes dynamite to get me up
Too much of everything is just enough
One more thing I just got to say
I need a miracle every day,
I need a miracle every day,
I need a miracle every day, (got to be the only way)
I need a miracle

Another vintage classic from the Grateful Dead, this one from 2/4/70.

(Hope you Dead haters will indulge me; I realize not everyone shares my tastes.)

It gives a pretty good picture of what they sounded like when I first started calling myself a "Deadhead." I only wish the sound quality was better, but considering how long ago this was, I can't complain.

As to the lyrics to China Cat Sunflower, how could I be expected to omit these pearls of psychedelic wisdom?

Feel free to interpret, but I think they're as acid-soaked as the music, and not subject to rational analysis:

Look for a while at the china cat sunflower,
Proud walking jingle in the midnight sun.
Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono,
Like a crazy quilt stargown through a dream night wind.

Crazy cat peekin through a lace bandanna,
Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack.
A leaf of all colors plays a golden-string fiddle,
To a double-e waterfall over my back.

Comic book colors on a violin river cryin leonardo,
Words from out a silk trombone.
I rang a silent bell, beneath a shower of pearls,
In the eagle-winged palace of the queen chinee.

At Pajamas Media, Amy Alkon looks at "When Involuntary Fathers Are Forced to Foot The Bill":

Jennifer Spenner for the Saginaw News and Kathy Barks Hoffman for the AP wrote about a Michigan man who recently challenged being forced to pay child support for his girlfriend's baby -- despite what he alleges were her assurances that she couldn't get pregnant because of a medical condition, and her knowledge that he didn't want a child.

He made the point to the court that if a woman can choose whether to abort, adopt out, or raise the child, a man should have the same right, and argued that Michigan's paternity law violates the Constitution's equal protection clause.

And unlike men, women have three opportunities to opt out. The first opportunity -- to not have sex or to take precautions against pregnancy -- is of course shared by both sexes. But women (like it or not) have a second opportunity in the form of legal abortion, and men have no say in the matter.

The third opportunity to opt out of parenthood is by putting the baby up for adoption. Again, only women have this right.

The bottom line is that once pregnancy has occurred, men simply cannot opt out.

Noting a horror story about a man forced to pay child support for a baby conceived when he was molested at 14, and the irony of a society that considers it "reprehensible" for a man to father a baby out of wedlock but no big deal for a woman, Alkon concludes with advice for men:

For all you boys out there, until that day there is actual male choice, don't neglect the birth control...no matter what she tells you. Unless you're a sterling judge of character, on the level of secret service agents and clinical psychologists, and unless you're absolutely sure you've got an ethical and/or infertile girlfriend, or you personally watch her get Depo Provera injections...prudent thinking is never believing her when she says she can't get knocked up, always bringing your own condom, and retaining custody over it at all times...lest it find its way to the business end of a pin.

Sound cynical? That's what a lot of guys think -- before they write to me about what they can say to persuade some girl to get an abortion, or whether there's anything they can do to get out of paying child support...short of dying.

I've written about this before, and I asked whether there's any moral distinction between a man selected at a bar and a sperm donor selected from a clinic's catalog:

...Putting the legalities aside for the moment, I don't see a whole lot of moral difference between a woman who decides to get pregnant by visiting a fertility clinic and a woman who selects an attractive stud at a bar for the sole purpose of getting pregnant, assuming she never wants to have anything else to do with the man. Society -- and lawyers -- have declared that the man selected at the bar is obligated, whereas the man selected in the catalog is not. Suppose the woman thought sex was "icky" and told the guy from the bar to just deposit his sperm in the measuring cup, and that she would take care of the rest with a kitchen turkey baster. The obligation is the same, because there's no army of clinicians with the right paperwork insulating him from the identical consequences of his actions.

His actions, right? Or are we talking about the woman's actions? This is why the term "serial sperm donor" so intrigues me. It's as if there are two systems of sperm donation -- one for the rich (or the politically and medically sophisticated), and another for the rest.

I'm feeling cynical enough to relate a true story involving the flip side of Amy Alkon's example. A friend had a vasectomy after having kids and an unpleasant divorce. He began dating a woman he really liked, told me it was going well, and that he was going to tell her about the little "operation" he'd had on the next date. Of course, he was "sure" that would be OK, because after all, she had told him that she was "not interested in having children!" However, no sooner did he tell her than she ended the relationship. The disclosure of the vasectomy was their last date, and she dropped him like a rock. It was as if saying she didn't want children was part of a dishonest script, but hearing about the vasectomy introduced reality. These things come down to instinct, and words are just words.

I knew this guy, and trust me, had the situation been reversed -- had she told him that she'd had a tubal ligation -- he'd have been tickled pink.

Considering that women hold the cards and the deck is stacked against men, I suppose the most cynical thing an eligible but hedonistic and irresponsible man could do would be to have a vasectomy and then deliberately withhold that from the women he's dating. That way, he could have sex to his heart's content without a care in the world.

Ah, but that would be sexual misrepresentation, wouldn't it?

Or would it? Let's spice up the hypothetical. Suppose the man lied, and stated after direct questioning that he had never had a vasectomy. If the woman had sex with him hoping to get pregnant, would his lie constitute "romantic deception"? Does it rise to the level of the guy who claimed to be an astronaut and tricked women into bed?

Do women actually care sexually whether a man has had a vasectomy? Is this a relevant consideration in determining whether to have sex out of wedlock? Why? If anything, I'd expect that a "responsible" woman who wanted to play around would consider it a plus. Or would they? Simple logic dictates that women who do care whether a man has had a vasectomy are interested in something other than recreational sex.

Let's look at it the other way around. Suppose a woman was not able to have children, and she lied to the man. If his goal was having recreational sex, her inability to conceive would likely be seen as a plus, not a minus, and whether she lied would be only be relevant to whether she's an honest person.

Nondisclosure or lying about sterility would of course be grounds for annulment of a marriage, but I'm wondering how the two sexes would see it the context of a casual affair. I think they'd see it in very different -- even diametrically opposing -- ways. Might "casual sex" be not nearly as casual for women as it is for men?

The answers are to be found more in instinct than in logic.

MORE: The vast differences in commitment levels between the two sexes can be illustrated by contrasting the gay man and lesbian "second date" jokes:

There's a lesbian joke that goes like this:

Q: What does a lesbian bring on her second date?

A: A U-Haul.

If it is confirmed, this tendency might explain why so much of the push for same sex marriage comes from lesbians.

[...]

Q. What did the gay man bring on his second date?

A. What second date?

MORE: My thanks to Mrs. du Toit for the link! She also has some good advice for everyone:

We HAVE a mechanism whereby a woman can be assured that her children will be supported by their father. It is called marriage. Without it, you got nada in the way of guarantees.... which, by the way, is FINE if a woman doesn't want those guarantees, but she doesn't get to play BOTH sides of the fence. You either get married with all the requirements of that arrangement, and with that you have financial security for yourself and your children, or you go it alone.

It's not rocket science.

No, that's not what this wonderful post by Connie du Toit says.

Nor is the title even my characterization of what Connie says. It's my satirical reaction to it by way of deliberately grotesque oversimplification. But why should liberals feel out of place at a gun range? And why should conservatives feel out of place at a ballet or art museum? The kind of things that go to the heart of human differences and make people hate each other really ought to be topics for humor.

And, if possible, self-deprecating humor on both sides, instead of hateful pronouncements like this provocative tidbit of conventional (now all too typical) liberal wisdom:

"There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power."

While nothing will ever explain the process fully, I think that what Connie du Toit said gets close (uncomfortably close, IMO) to understanding the psychology of this divide:

If we, as conservatives, cannot laud beauty and shun ugliness... if we are not able nor willing to discriminate against ugliness, ignorance, or the simpleton by risking a supposed encroachment on another's freedom to choose badly, then we will lose. If we cannot champion the arts, language, and culture and both appreciate and understand it, then our stewardship of our civilization has ended. We have consciously and callously handed it to the other side or dropped the baton entirely.

Our civilization will be lost to those who at least pay lip service to loveliness. Our cities, our great institutions, are full of those on the ideological left with the ideaological right locked in our houses or scattered into the woods... and when a young mind is given the choice between the ugly emptiness, selfishness, and simplisme of the right, or the elegant pseudo-sophistication of the left, what do you think they will choose? They will choose lovliness, in whatever guise it is offered.

We must take back these institutions, but not destroy them as Rousseau or those who copycat his ideas have tried to do. No, we must become the intelligentsia again, and worship at the alter of loveliness. We must once again put value on a liberal arts education and not mock it. We must become it.

Or we, and all that the Enlightenment and the Founders gave us, shall perish from the earth.

There is no risk of Barbarians at the gates when we are nothing more than Barbarians ourselves. We must choose better and exercise a wholesome discretion in favor of beauty, in all things.

It is worth noting that she starts with an admission that she is a snob. This is something I was taught never to admit, and to this day I refuse to admit it.

Of course, whether that makes me a liberal or a conservative is not the point, because I don't aspire to either "category." If I am a snob, then I am in denial about it. Perhaps that's a feature I share with "liberals"; perhaps not. (It would not surprise me if there are conservatives and maybe a few Libertarians and libertarians and pseudolibertarians who keep such things in the closet.)

Here's a paradox for you. I think that conservatives tend to be less snobbish. But that's wrong, because to the extent that they are snobbish, they tend to admit it. Liberals, however, tend to be so steeped in snobbery -- and from such an early age -- that no sooner do they learn how to be snobs than they learn how to deny it.

Don't you dare say that we're better than other people! (Even if we know we are....) This is an all-permeating denial that denies even itself.

Hey don't expect me to write about it. All I can do is leave a comment like the one I just tried to leave (I think the comments are delayed or closed):

Wonderful, wonderful post. The problem is, it just makes me so incredibly sad, because it's a reminder that my mother was right, that some things are beyond the appreciation of some people, but to dare discuss them is to risk being considered a snob.

Yet to not discuss them is to give up.

To pretend we are all the same is either delusional or a dissembled exercise in condescension. (Dumbing down cultural education is fine for your kids but not for mine.) The reason "liberals" tend to "own" the finer aspects of culture is that many "conservatives" these days have been manipulated into seeing culture as involving battles over sex education and religion in the schools. While the latter battle over condoms and baggy pants, the former are laughing at them as they send their kids to safe private schools.

As I say, it's sad. (More disturbingly, I worry that IQ might be implicated. Can't talk about that of course.)

I mean, we all hate each other, right? That's a given. But is it necessary to kill each other over it? Was it necessary to have the culture war between radically simplistic Abolitionists and radically simplistic property rights fanatics who believed in human chattel escalate to a shooting war? Why is it that the British were able to do away with slavery without a Civil War?

Might the origins of the Civil War be at least partially related to this observation by Oscar Wilde?

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Bear in mind that while this is one of Wilde's most famous quotes (I first read it in high school), his Wiki entry claims it is unsourced.

If it is "misattributed" to Wilde, then it's one of the most famous misattributions of all time.

Come on, he really must have said it. If it looks like Wilde and sounds like Wilde, then it might as well be Wilde. Right?

Get with the program! We need to know how barbarous Wilde thought we were even if we weren't!

Sorry for this digression, but it seems worth the time spent. (I'd hate to think that a masochistic national inferiority complex would fuel a massive misattribution!)

Here the remark is said to have been made during Wilde's 1882 tour. And this reviewer rather uncritically attributes it to Lady Windermere's Fan, but the review involves a butchered "updated" version of the play.

Still no actual page citation anywhere. No line and verse, no citation to a scholarly anthology anywhere

It is said to be "atttributed" but not sourced here.

What the hell does "attributed" mean? This is a famous man of letters. His writings were widely published and he did tour the United States. Had he written this down it could be looked up, and had he said it, it would have been reported. I'd like to know when it was first attributed to him; if it was while he was alive, it's more probable he said it than if some unknown prankster misattributed Clemenceau (1945) to Wilde.

It also comes up as an "unsourced" quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw. But the earliest actual, citable, reference to the quote I can find would seem to be in Frank Lloyd Wright's autobiography, which mentions "a witty Frenchman":

* America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between

o Also attributed to Oscar Wilde and Georges Clemenceau. Earliest citation to Clemenceau by Hans Bendix, "Merry Christmas, America!" The Saturday Review of Literature, 1945-12-01, p. 9. Mentioned in Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography (1943):

+ A witty Frenchman has said of us: "The United States of America is the only nation to plunge from barbarism to degeneracy with no culture in between.

Not that it especially matters who said something that so obviously and profoundly might as well have been said by someone profound. But let's assume Clemenceau said it and not Wilde. Would that make it more serious? I think so. Wilde was a humorist, and Clemenceau was a more of a moralist. People swallow moral criticism more easily when it's packaged as comedy.

And Wilde, the foppish Englishman, traveled to America and appreciated this country in a manner that Clemenceau, the clueless Frenchman (and architect of the precursor to World War II) never could.

I admit, I'm not much of a fan of Clemenceau, and I don't like seeing his quotes rebadged, if that's what's going on. However, if the goal here is to understand American psychology, I think the fact that the remark has broader appeal coming from Wilde than it would coming from Clemenceau is more interesting than either the remark itself or how true it might be. (Of course, if Hitler had said it, it would have been considered a despicable and evil remark, and likely rebutted eloquently by FDR.)

Another famous quote (being less likely to generate ill will because of its general nature) is widely attributed to nearly everyone :

Anyone who is not a socialist at 16 has no heart, but anyone who still is at 32 has no mind.

There are many different versions of the same basic quote ? Take your pick?

A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart; a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head. - Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) Any man who is under 30 and is not a Liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and not a Conservative has no brains. - Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Georges Clemenceau [another French Premier and former socialist] Not to be a socialist at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. - Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

Not to be a Republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. - Fran?ois Guisot (1787-1874)

He who is not a Socialist at 19, has no heart. He who is still a Socialist at 30, has no brain. - Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1896)

Anyone who is not a socialist at 16 has no heart, but anyone who still is at 32 has no mind. - Woodrow Wilson

The man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at 40 he has no head. - Aristide Briand (1862 - 1932) [French premier and former socialist]

As George Bernard Shaw said, one who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, and one who remains a socialist at 40 has no head.

I think there are basic differences between the way certain types of people and certain types of minds view the world. They are translated into politics by a process of reduction, which all too often means liberal versus conservative and you have to take your pick.

I'm not taking a pick! I think it's grotesque mental tyranny to tell people that they should pick and then belong to one group or another. People should be allowed to think for themselves. The problem is, that just isn't in the interest of those who want to lead or those who want to follow, which makes it wildly impractical in the real world, but food for a blog post.

(The wonderful thing about writing blog posts is that there's just as much right to misunderstand as there is to be misunderstood. Not so in real life.)

UPDATE: Thank you, Connie du Toit -- for the link and the kind words!

The Universal Life Church has been around for 47 years. Founded by the late Kirby Hensley (a man I met many years ago), the church takes an extremely broad, extremely liberal view of man's relationship to the unknown force or forces that many people call deities.

Do only that which is right.

The idea is that while the civil authorities (in the form of the state) possess the power to regulate marriage by issuing licenses, the nature of the religious ceremony and the qualifications of a minister are beyond government purview.

Not, however, in Pennsylvania. A couple in York county decided they wanted to marry so they filled out the forms, paid the fee, obtained the marriage license, and then married each other in a ceremony officiated by a ULC minister.

Like a lot of marriages, theirs ran into trouble in the first year, but unlike most divorce-seekers, they decided that the marital difficulties somehow resulted from a defect in the minister's credentials. Amazingly, a judge agreed with them:

Are marriages valid if performed by people who were "ordained" by online churches in a matter of minutes and have no congregation? Answer: No.

In a York County case, a Common Pleas Court judge invalidated a 10-month marriage, finding that a friend of the bride's who officiated at the wedding didn't have the power to do so under Pennsylvania law even though he had been ordained online by the Universal Life Church. The judge ruled the friend didn't qualify as a minister under state law because he had no regular congregation or place of worship.

A state lawmaker is sponsoring an amendment that would prevent those who have received quickie ordinations from performing marriages in the future.

"Right now, the marriage law in Pennsylvania is in a state of upheaval," said David Cleaver, solicitor for the statewide Association of Registers of Wills and Clerks of Orphans Court, the two row offices that issue marriage licenses in Pennsylvania. "I would love the legislature to clarify this because then we would all be reading the same sheet of music."

Pennsylvania first put its marriage law in writing in 1682, but that has not stopped it from being interpreted differently, county by county, ever since.

Anna and Casey Pickett fell in love during a college class on Transcendental literature, reveling in the nature-loving rhapsodies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It was only natural, then, that when the couple married last July, they would stand beside a rustic lake in Pennsylvania, with the professor whose class brought them together officiating at the ceremony.

Two months later, however, the couple got a call from a county clerk in Pennsylvania, who told them their marriage might not be valid. And years from now, the clerk said, when they bought a house, applied for government benefits or had children, they might have a problem.

"It was a total shock," said Anna Ruth Pickett, 27, who works in environmental justice for the New York-based Ford Foundation.

The problem: Their professor, T. Scott McMillen, who was not a minister, got ordained online to perform the ceremony. In September, a judge in York County, Pennsylvania, ruled that ministers who do not have a "regularly established church or congregation" cannot perform marriages under state law.

The American Civil Liberties Union says Pennsylvania officials have trampled the boundary between church and state and is mulling legal action.

Meanwhile, 30 state lawmakers have introduced a bill in Pennsylvania's General Assembly that would exclude wedding officiants who are ordained "by mail order or via the Internet or any other electronic means."

"To me, if you want to perform marriages, you have to go to school and learn the teachings for the correct way to perform this extremely solemn ceremony," said state Rep. Katie True, a Lancaster County Republican who co-sponsored the bill.

Nevertheless, the York County judge (in a decision I think is eminently reversible) decided that ministers must have credentials of the sort he deems worthy of state approval:

Adams Charles Robert Johnston hadn't done any of that, according to York County Common Pleas Judge Maria Musti Cook -- the judge who issued the order -- when he married two friends in August 2006.

Johnston was ordained online "in five minutes" by the Universal Life Church, Cook's ruling states. Johnston testified that he was a member of the church by virtue of his ordination but that he had never attended any church meetings, nor did he have a congregation.

Without a church or a congregation, Cook ruled, Johnston was not a minister. At the request of the wife, Dorie Heyer, 21, the marriage was declared invalid.

After the ruling, Cleaver sent an e-mail to all county clerks and registers, telling them not to accept marriage licenses from couples married by online ministers. Five days later, he sent a second e-mail, telling them to accept the licenses.

"I said to myself: Wait a minute, we're not cops. We're not entrusted to check out these licenses," he said, explaining his change of mind.

MaryCatherine Roper of the ACLU said that "lots of clergy don't have congregations but do other things, and to suggest that those are not legitimate ministers is insulting and disregarding the religious work of any number of denominations."

In its 47 year existence, the ULC has not changed its doctines. Anyone who wants to become a minister can be ordained by filling out their form and agreeing to their simple religious guidelines.

I think the sudden firestorm is grounded in the fact that ordinations can now be obtained online. Big effing deal. What makes one form of communication between humans more suspect than another? Suppose a religious-minded blogger decided to form the Divine Church of the Holy Blog, and decided upon a common set of beliefs, based on articulable principles known and understood and agreed to by all interested joiners. Why wouldn't their congregation ("Holy Blogroll") and place of abode be just as valid as any other? What business is it of the government to decide?

But somehow, the fact of online ULC ordination is seen as tainting the ordination in a manner in which it wouldn't be tainted if obtained by mail. I think making any inquiries into the nature of beliefs and qualifications of any minister is beyond the purview of the state.

Quite incidentally, I'd even say this about crackpot denominations run by self-appointed freelance ministers with whose tenets I disagree.

Last night I wrote a blog post about two fringe type "street preachers" -- one of whom was ordained by the "God Hates Fags" Church. Much as I dislike their religious doctrines, their credentials are not the state's business, and they are just as free to perform marriages as anyone else.

Moreover, there are 6000 ULC ministers in Pennsylvania, and I am sure that there are many weddings at which they've officiated.

As Cook notes in her ruling, Pennsylvania courts have not addressed the validity of marriages performed by ministers who are ordained online through the Universal Life Church.

However, the church has a tangled history with other states' marriage laws. The Supreme Courts of New York, Virginia and North Carolina have invalidated marriages performed by Universal Life Church ministers. Courts in Mississippi and Utah, on the other hand, have ruled that the state must recognize them.

George Freeman, president of the Seattle-based Universal Life Church Monastery, which ordained Johnston and counts 6,000 ministers in Pennsylvania, said the ruling is religious "elitism."

"I guess if you're a pagan or a druid and you hang out in the woods or rocks and have a ceremony, that's not going to work," Freeman said.

The Universal Life Church Monastery, which separated from the Modesto, Calif.-based Universal Life Church in 2006 over financial and legal disputes, is split between seekers and people who want to marry their friends, Freeman said.

Claiming its only tenets are "to promote freedom of religion" and "to do that which is right," the Universal Life Church Monastery and its affiliates claim to have ordained more than 20 million people.

Roper said "dozens" of people have contacted the ACLU about the York County ruling. Among them are the Picketts.

"The fact that someone could just decide that our marriage is null and void, without us having any say about it," said Casey Pickett, "that's not a decision that someone should be able to make."

Anyway, I think the Picketts are right. As to the ULC, they plan to fight the decision, and it appears they also plan to fight the ridiculous ordination law:

The brevity of this marriage, as with many others in America, reflects not on the Universal Life Church minister but on the couple. It is inappropriate for Ms. Heyer to blame the failure of her marriage on the ULC administered ceremony.

We have not seen Judge Cook's decision regarding the authorization of Adam Johnston to perform marriages under Pennsylvania statutes. It is our position that any infringement upon the rights of our ministers is an infringement on the protections of the First Amendment which guarantees:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."

As such, it is apparent that Judge Cook's decision is an impermissible attack upon the constitution. Moreover, the Universal Life Church Monastery is prepared to take the following action:

1. Seek Constitutional counsel licensed in the state of Pennsylvania to bring action in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. [42 USC 1985]
2. Name the county officials in their individual and official capacity in a Federal lawsuit for making arbitrary and capricious decisions under the color of law.
3. Seek a declaratory judgment asking that the Federal Judiciary enjoin York County officials and the state of PA from making further decisions as to the legitimacy of one church over another.

Marriage licenses are state created, so it is natural to expect people to talk about "safeguarding" the institution of marriage in that respect. Religious ordination, however, is not a state created institution, and the state simply has no business there.

If the state can get into the institution of ordination, and regulate credentials of ministers, what's to stop it from getting into the credentials of journalists, and regulate online journalism?

I better ordain myself as an online journalist fast, before they close the "loophole."

UPDATE: I'm honored to see that this post has been ordained! My thanks to Blogfather Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.

All are free to gather here and comment. Absolutely no credentials required.

UPDATE: My thanks to Eugene Volokh for linking this post in a very interesting discussion.

UPDATE: My thanks to Sean Kinsell for linking this post in a great one of his own. Don't miss Sean's thoughts.

And be sure to read his earlier post on the subject of what makes a religion "legitimate."

AND MORE: In addition to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (which applies to the states), the Pennsylvania bill in question also appears to violate the Pennsylvania Constitution:

Religious Freedom
Section 3.

All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship.

At least, that's what's on the sign that got the man in the video arrested.

The arrested man is the Reverend Orlando Bethel, and he is running for president of the United States as the Christian Reform Party candidate. He is waving his "SANTA IS SATAN" sign across the street from a school, apparently in a residential neighborhood in front of a home. (I'd love to know what strange language is being spoken in the background by an unidentified woman during the arrest.)

While Santa's satanism might be the concern in this video, his campaign platform is anti-sodomy and pro-welfare:

Today, Apostle Orlando Bethel, Minister of New Life Gospel Ministries - Repent or Burn in HELL, announced his intention, within the next week to file the official paperwork to run for our nations highest office, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. He is running as the Christian Reform Party - Remove all sodomites.

A speech will be given in Loxley, Alabama courthouse steps with all town supporters present.

Apostle Bethel stated that he plans to "restore America's moral values and ban sodomites from the country as well as divorce and remarriages." These monsterous sins are why GOD is punishing this nation.

Also, Apostle Bethel plans to strenthen the welfare state to include health insurance for all people, including the homeless and raise taxes by 23% on the upper middle class and 32% on the top 1 percent.

Lower middle class and the poor will have ALL taxes eliminated and enjoy all the welfare provided by the upper middle class and the rich.

All information is provided as of 3:25 p.m. CST and approved by Apostle Orlando Bethel.

Your Humble Servent!

Prophetess Gussie

Judge Moore of Alabama said, "we need more Christians who are not afraid of God's word and have been a humble servent of Orlando's for years and give me a first class endorsement for President."

If you really want to read his philosophy, his "Motion TO DISMISS TO WICKED LYING BASTARD JUDGE" is a classic.

While most people would consider him on the outer edge of fringy, Reverend Bethel is being taken seriously by the First Amendment Center, and I do see an interesting First Amendment issue which makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

To what extent are time, place and manner restrictions appropriate?

Is the right to wave "SANTA IS SATAN" signs in front of a school constitutionally protected? This gets into a murky area, as schools are supposed to be places where children have a right to be free from distractions. It's pretty well settled that the First Amendment is not an entitlement to demonstrate in front of private homes, but I don't know about schools.

Can or should the content matter? If it's OK to show kids the "SANTA IS SATAN" sign, how about waving giant bloody pictures of aborted fetuses?

In this video, well known anti-gay/anti-abortion activist Michael Marcavage has his signs taken away by local police in Media, PA. The reason given is that the pictures would "upset the children."

Is that not content related? Sure, the pictures are upsetting, but are they more upsetting than pictures of graphic sex? The latter would not be protected. Nor would signs advertising tobacco.

I think it's inappropriate to wave any of this stuff at children, but by what standard is one worse than the other? Are penises and breasts more upsetting than butchered fetuses? Should they be?

What is the standard, and where is the line drawn, if anywhere?

Does it depend on whether someone might freak out and go ballistic?

When I attended a demonstration in Berkeley I later blogged about, pro-Israel and pro-PLO demonstrators were kept on opposite sides of the street by officers who were understandably concerned about keeping the peace. This struck me as common sense at the time, and I've also read about anti-Bush demonstrators being kept away from the president.

I'm a strong supporter of free speech, but are there practical limitations? I knew a lot of cops, and they want to avoid inflammatory situations, and things like having a nut in a Klan uniform handing out leaflets at a black civil rights gathering tend to scare the crap out of police. So does the idea of anti-gay activists heckling gay events. Is keeping counter-protesters at a distance unconstitutional?

Can deliberately irritating speech constitute a disturbance of the peace? I'm not free to go outside and yell political slogans late into the night; and I see no reason why it would matter if I were yelling religious messages instead. Yet the same behavior would be constitutionally protected in a business district, even if people felt harassed. Do my rights change again in front of a school? What if the school is in a residential neighborhood, and the message is disturbing to children?

I'm not seeing any clearly decipherable lines under the time place and manner exception. Maybe kids just have to tolerate obnoxious nonsense as part of their education. (Considering what passes for education I guess there isn't much harm.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Clayton Cramer for the link. Good questions about the ACLU too.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post. A warm welcome to all!

Obviously, it's getting close to Santa time. And in that respect I do have a question.

Are we still allowed to say "Ho Ho Ho"?

Last Wednesday, an oil-filled container ship struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, spilling 58,000 gallons of "heavy-duty bunker fuel oil" into the San Francisco Bay. It could have been much worse, and I guess everyone's lucky the ship didn't take out one of the bridge towers.

What intrigues me, though, is the way an intricate bureaucratic labyrinth has produced a system in which ultimate responsibility is non-existent. (An increasingly common phenomenon, which we see constantly in the form of banks being free to make business decisions with terrible consequences they never have to bear, because what big brother regulates, the big nanny state sister guarantees.)

For starters, the ship that hit the Bay Bridge was not even being operated by its captain. Port regulations mandate that ships turn the controls over to local pilots. Yet even though he has no control over his ship, the captain is still "responsible":

Even the newest and largest ships, however, depend on the skill and judgment of pilots and ship officers. In the bay, a pilot gives orders to the helmsman. While the captain has the ultimate responsibility, the pilot has control.

Cota's [that's Capt. John Cota, the previously and repeatedly reprimanded bar pilot] job was to take an 810-foot-long ship, displacing 65,131 tons, between two support towers of the Bay Bridge. The channel is 2,210 feet wide. The ship is 131 feet wide.

The ship has a steel hull. Like all freighters, it has a single hull. Only tankers have double hulls.

Cota has been before the Pilot Commission for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun, a state regulatory agency, several times in his career.

In his most recent incident, he was reprimanded in July 2006 after an investigation showed that he had allowed the bulk freighter Pioneer to move out of the channel and run aground when it was approaching a dock at Antioch in February 2006.

According to records of the Pilot Commission, "Capt. Cota had not realized that the vessel was going off track and did nothing to prevent it."

He also received a "letter of concern" for an incident involving a small Navy aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay in 2003.

Cota was involved in four other incidents dating to 1993. Before that, Moloney said, Cota was "counseled" by commission executives a number of times.

Cota works in a system that is both tightly regulated - all pilots, for example, must go through exhaustive licensing and training procedures - and extremely complex, especially when it involves foreign ships.

Naturally, I find myself wondering what it might take to fire one of these government employees. (Despite all his power, President Bush couldn't even fire the incompetent paper pushers who gave visas to Mohamed Atta and company, so they were "reassigned." That's the way the "system" of "responsibility" works. "The buck stops here" is a bit like "the age of big government is over," "I am not a crook," "I did not have sex with that woman" and other classics....)

Putting myself in the "real" captain's position, the whole thing really sucks. Imagine being completely responsible for things which are legally beyond your control. Who would take such a job? I'd demand backup. And backup there is -- all the way to.... To where? Oh, who knows? Because of infinite government regulation compounded by infinite litigation, there's no way to tell who owns these ships:

The Cosco Busan has had two names and has sailed under at least two flags since it went into service in 2001.

An experienced San Francisco admiralty lawyer, who did not want to be named because he has many clients in the shipping world, said ships and their owners and operators sometimes cloak themselves with dizzying layers of paperwork "to avoid liability. If you can't find who owns it," it is more difficult to file a lawsuit.

Hanjin Shipping, which is chartering the Cosco Busan, said in an e-mail Wednesday that the vessel is owned by a company it identified variously as Synergy Maritime Ltd. or Synergy Marine Ltd., of Cyprus.

Raajeev Singh, technical manager for Synergy, said the ship was run by a ship management agency in Hong Kong, whose name he did not provide.

A woman who answered the phone at Synergy in Cyprus referred queries to Darrell Wilson, a spokesman for MTI Network in Stamford, Conn., which handles "crisis management" for the shipping industry.

Wilson said the ship is owned by Regal Stone Ltd. of Hong Kong, managed by Fleet Management Ltd. of Hong Kong, and its crew and technical support are provided by Synergy Management Services.

Asked about financial liability, Wilson said, "Regal Stone is stepping up to the plate."

Finding the owner of the ship - or finding who, if anyone, is liable - can be so difficult that sometimes it's "hard to get jurisdiction over the actual owner or even figure out who they are," the admiralty lawyer said.

I thought of responsibility in another context when I read in today's news that the "West Memphis Three" (three young men convicted in a "Satanic ritual killing" in the mid 1990s) have apparently been exonerated by DNA evidence, and that they may be freed:

ATLANTA, Oct. 29 -- In 1994, three teenagers in the small city of West Memphis, Ark., were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys in what prosecutors portrayed as a satanic sacrifice involving sexual abuse and genital mutilation. So shocking were the crimes that when the teenagers were led from the courthouse after their arrest, they were met by 200 local residents yelling, "Burn in hell."

But according to long-awaited new evidence filed by the defense in federal court on Monday, there was no DNA from the three defendants found at the scene, the mutilation was actually the work of animals and at least one person other than the defendants may have been present at the crime scene.

Supporters of the defendants hope the legal filing will provide the defense with a breakthrough. Two of the men, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, are serving life in prison, while one, Damien W. Echols, is on death row. There was no physical evidence linking the teenagers, now known as the West Memphis 3, to the crime.

And now it turns out that "animals" did it? Well that's no fun for the hysteria machine, is it?

Hey, maybe it was killer pit bulls that did it!

Forgive my cynicism, but I've been treated to so many sexed up news stories and so much manufactured public hysteria that I honestly don't know what to expect next.

Especially in case that's been around as long and written about by as many people as has the West Memphis Three, there is no accountability, and no responsibility. Even the Wiki entry has become a hotly contested (and largely incomprehensible) war of words. Prosecutorial careers rise and fall with such cases.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who will blame the "climate of violence" for the crimes -- perhaps the climate of irresponsibility itself.

We are all responsible. Well all crashed the tanker and we all Satanically mutilated the children. Or we might as well have.

Which means that after the moral lecture is over, we're all off the hook!

(But does that mean we all have to go down with the ship anyway?)

M. Simon's post yesterday (about the anti-war crowd's lack of faith in the American people -- along with a plea for passage of the Veterans bill) was very appropriate on the eve of today, because today is Veteran's Day.

Here's the official poster for this year:

(The official gallery at the Department of Veterans Affairs has the rest of them going back to 1978.)

Because Simon doesn't toot his own horn about being a veteran (and because I'm one of those people who tends to get so focused on minutiae that I sometimes forget important things) I just thought I'd start today by reminding readers that he is M. Simon is a veteran, that today is Veteran's Day, and that we should all be grateful to everyone who has served in this country's military in any capacity. I'm grateful to have Simon as a co-blogger here, but it's not often that I have the opportunity to thank him for his military service, and today seems like a good time.

So thank you, M. Simon.

And the larger point is that today is Veteran's Day, so anyone who's reading this, go out and thank a veteran, or decorate a grave, or donate to a good veterans organization.

And the most important thing is to remember.

I'm watching "Battle of Algiers" right now. Great, award-winning documentary-style war drama from 1967, which sympathetically portrays the uprising against the French in the late 1950s. Plenty of bombings, and plenty of stuff which will make plenty of light bulbs suddenly light up the minds of intellectual dimwits who are otherwise clueless about history.

Really, it's almost too good:

A film commissioned by the Algerian government that shows the Algerian revolution from both sides. The French foreign legion has left Vietnam in defeat and has something to prove. The Algerians are seeking independence. The two clash. The torture used by the French is contrasted with the Algerian's use of bombs in soda shops. A look at war as a nasty thing that harms and sullies everyone who participates in it.

No, the showing of this film that's never been on TCM before is absolutely not intended to influence anyone's mind about anything going on in the world today. Rather than being introduced by Robert Osbourne alone, the film was introduced by Danny DeVito, who really almost goes out of his way to say nothing about anything except the film's technique, and how good the director is.

No need to mention Iraq, Vietnam, Bush. (Or what's the name of the new guy in France? You know, the one who's made France US-friendly again?)

Modest boy Danny. (Doesn't even remember the drunken "numb nuts" Bush remark....)

And nothing even about... Sarkozy! (I knew I'd remember his name!) His existence must disturb the hell out of those who are wedded to the idea that has Bush made our European allies hate us. (The New York Times has tried to warn us that he's a right wing bigot....) Probably a great time to start "reminding" American "intellectuals" about France's past problems.

Anyway, "Battle of Algiers" is an excellent film, and I enjoyed watching it. I also loved Lion of the Desert despite its bias. It just bothers me a bit to contemplate that there are historically unaware people who've never thought much about French colonialism in Algeria, and who will suddenly have "insights" into the Iraq War simply because this floats across their tube on Saturday night, and I certainly hope this film was not intended to influence their thinking.

"Just like a documentary," said Danny in the afterword.

So true to contemporary life that it almost felt like drunken live blogging!

MORE: Among other things, "Battle of Algiers" reminded me that they don't make leftie films like they used to. And as Robert James Bidinotto explains, today's anti-war films are box office flops. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

I liked it better in the original German. Which you can actually find to the left or on YouTube. An amazing bit of work.

This was prompted by one of the most recently honest Democrats in America. As long as we have Democrats like him there will be no orphan victories in America. No surprise there. Well what is my little agitated brain coming up with these days? Gateway Pundit, that's what. Who says:

Senator Joe Lieberman blasted Democrats today for placing politics before protecting America:

Sen. Joe Lieberman on Thursday painted a dim picture of his party, saying Democrats have given up their moral authority on foreign policy because they are more concerned with opposing Republicans than doing what is right.

And, Senator Joe Biden said in an interview that Democrats have lost faith in the American people.

Don Surber thinks Biden is on to something.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joe Lieberman on Thursday painted a dim picture of his party, saying Democrats have given up their moral authority on foreign policy because they are more concerned with opposing Republicans than doing what is right.

The former presidential candidate and hawkish senator from Connecticut also came down hard on critics of a resolution he and Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., co-sponsored calling on the Bush administration to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

"For many Democrats, the guiding conviction in foreign policy isn't pacifism or isolationism, it is distrust and disdain of Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular," Lieberman said at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

"In this regard, the Democratic foreign policy worldview has become defined by the same reflexive, blind opposition to the President that defined Republicans in the 1990s -- even when it means repudiating the very principles and policies that Democrats as a party have stood for, at our best and strongest," Lieberman continued.

"Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America's moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there."

Now here is another Joe who gets it. Democrat Joe Biden. Joe is from Delaware, not too far from Connecticut Joe. Both are reliably liberal states. Total Blue blood. Here is what Joe from Delaware thinks:

Sen. Joe Biden said in an interview at the New Hampshire Union Leader this afternoon that too many Democrats, including the frontrunners for the presidential nomination, do not have faith in the American people.

"We've got to trust the American people more," Biden said.

"I think they've really lost faith in the American people in terms of leveling with them," he said of his leading rivals.

When he asks groups of Democrats if they think the American people are stupid because they elected George W. Bush twice, most respond that, yes, they do, he said. He said he thinks that attitude is a real problem for the Democrats, who fail to understand how smart and pragmatic the American people really are.

Biden was generally critical of the far left wing of his party and of the strategies the frontrunners are using to win the nomination.

I remember Vietnam when so many politicos came out and said that the President fooled them about the prospects of that war. I look forward to Hillary saying that the President fooled her. "The war looked so totally unwinable, I was fooled by Bush's incompetence." Or something. It must have been Bush's stupid evil genius. Or something.

Now we get to Don Surber who disects Biden. In a nice way that really slices and dices the Democrats. Or as I prefer Defeatocrats.

Biden said: "We've got to trust the American people more. I think they've really lost faith in the American people in terms of leveling with them."

That pretty much nails the problem. Dems don't trust the people and so the people don't trust them.

Democrats keep blaming their presidential losses on the stupidity of the American people. They've made "swift-boating" a verb, as if John O'Neill somehow ambushed John Kerry in 2004. The 2 first debated Kerry's accusations of war crimes by all Vietnam vets in 1971. Helen Keller could have seen O'Neill coming.

But nope, dumb voters were duped. Again.

The Democratic Party line since at least 1968 is that the voters are duped by Republicans every 4 years.

Thanks to Wake Up Americans we find another Democrat who also wants to be the father of an Iraqi victory.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on Tuesday that the troop surge, which began in June, has had a significant impact on the situation in Iraq and noted that he had always been critical of the Bush administration for deploying an insufficient number of troops in previous years.

"Stability and a decrease in violence, they've done that - God bless them. I'm not surprised that they did," Hoyer told Cybercast News Service in response to a question about steadily declining U.S. casualty rates in Iraq.

The Weekly Standard has gotten Steny to look at where the Democrats need to go now that losing the war does not appear to be a viable option:

Steny Hoyer is one of the sharper members of the Democratic leadership. He's hated by many in the Netroots because he believes that Democrats need to tread a centrist path to keep the backing of a majority of the American people. He understands that the hard-line against the Iraq war favored by the Democratic base is not a winning message while the troops on the ground are winning the war.

This tone of Hoyer's -- recognizing success and arguing that the president made a fundamental mistake in not listening to Democratic calls for more troops -- might be a trial balloon of the next Democratic argument on Iraq.

Now how about passing the Veterans Bill?

Cross Posted at Power and Control without the nice video.