Friday, December 19, 2014

Paramount Bans Showing ‘Team America’ - The Daily Beast

OK, how can a company ban a movie theater showing its film? If I buy the print why can't I show it? Can they ban me watching it at home? Just a legal question. I am sure there is an answer. 

But what is really interesting is that the article mentions how the Czechs dealt with threats from the North Koreans over that same film over a decade ago: 

“Obviously, it’s absurd to demand that in a democratic country,” a spokesman for the Czech foreign ministry said at the time.

The new Europe is ahead of Old Europe and the New World. 

North Korea deep into cyber warfare, defector says - CNN.com

I think that two things are being missed in this controversy. First, the role of China. Some of the attacks are executed through China and the North Korean regime is only able to stay afloat because the Chinese Communists bank role them.



The other culprits that are getting away unscathed are lawyers and our legal liability system. It is probably correct that the theaters had no choice given our liability laws but to cancel the showings of the movie, but that is the problem. We have a system that does not allow free born citizens to make their own decisions. Our own legal system is a threat to our freedoms as is terrorism.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Lefty Hate | Simple Justice

Hypocrisy on the Left in Academia:



"That Mahmood was met with the whine of the tenderhearted, his satire created a hostile environment at his other paper, was par for the silliness course.



And until recently, he enjoyed writing for both of the campus’s newspapers: the institutional, liberal paper, The Michigan Daily, and the conservative alternative paper, The Michigan Review.
After penning a satirical op-ed for The Review that mocked political correctness and trigger warnings, The Daily ordered him to apologize to an anonymous staffer who was offended and felt “threatened” by him. He refused and was fired."
The saddest thing about all this is that the one place where you should be freest to speak your mind is the one place where that is the most dangerous. The anonymous denunciation is a particularly nice touch. No confronting your accusers here, comrade.

Killing The Interview Opens Studios to Terrorist Manipulation | The Informer | Los Angeles | Los Angeles News and Events | LA Weekly

Killing The Interview Opens Studios to Terrorist Manipulation | The Informer | Los Angeles | Los Angeles News and Events | LA Weekly:



"Emily Carman, assistant professor of film and media arts at Chapman University, says Hollywood received pressure from the Chinese government in 1932 and 1933 with the releases of Shanghai Express and The Bitter Tea of General Yen, respectively.

The films featured white actors in yellowface as well as interracial relationships.



"It was a racist, Eurocentric view of China," Carman said.

Leaders threatened to block film distribution in China, but Hollywood did not back down, she said.



The Interview also hits a familiar note of insensitivity toward an Asian nation. Before that, in 2001, the Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander featured a plot about a fashion model recruited to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia. That nation and neighboring Singapore banned its exhibition.



 "Can you imagine the outcry if North Korean released, Get Obama, about the assassination of a sitting president," asks Douglas Thomas, associate professor of communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.



"It's amazing that this even got green-lit," Carman adds. "Wow, nothing's really changed. This is still a white male, Western-centric view of a small Asian nation."
"



Let me say that I think these points are wrong in every particular.



The movies from the 1930's were not racist, the characters were fully developed human beings on both sides of the racial divide. That is what made them compelling movies.



And no, I can't imagine the outcry if North Korea released a movie about the assassination of a sitting president because Hollywood itself has released precisely such a movie--not a comedy--where the assassination of a sitting president is envisaged and actually viewed approvingly. Of course, in that case the sitting president was a Republican, so it was ok.



The movie treats the assassination of the leader of a "small Asian nation" as something to laugh about not because of the color of the leader's skin but because of the monstrous nature of his regime. It is a measure of the absurd fetishization of race by our intellectuals that the salient feature of the controversy is not the totalitarian regime the monster runs but the color of the monster's skin.



The battle for freedom of thought and speech must be won in the hearts of the people if it is to survive in government. Sadly, it has already been lost among our tenured intellectual class.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

JustOneMinute: Raaaacism!

Michelle Obama tells of how she was mistaken for a Target employee and interprets it as racist. But a year or two before she told the same story on Letterman as just being asked for help because she was tall and related it as a happy memory.



There is no reason to think she is lying, though, given what we know about memory. People reinterpret when they remember and she may very well now remember it as being tinged with racism.

Australia vows to unearth why 'sick' extremist was at large - Yahoo News

Everyone seems to be outraged that he was 'on the street'. Maybe they should be outraged that he was in the country. You can let fanatics in your country and then try to follow them around 24 hours a day to make sure they don't do anything crazy or you can just not let them in in the first place. You end up transforming your country in either case.



It is not that he was allowed on the street, it is that he was allowed to vote. You let him transform your laws by voting and transform your law enforcement by creating a new class of citizens that are to be 'free but followed'? Why not just keep them out in the first place?

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Eric Garner, criminalized to death - The Washington Post

I disagree with Will (and apparently just about everyone else on the planet). I think the Grand Jury in the Garner case was right. His death was a crime, but the crime was not committed by the police but by the state. He was not the victim of rogue cops but of a rogue law.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Abbas’s Nazi-Zionist Conspiracy Theory and the Western Dupes Who Avert Their Eyes « Commentary Magazine

I remember the other day someone answering the argument that the CEO of Mozilla who was fired for having been discovered to have contributed to the campaign against the gay marriage ballot initiative in California with the question "Would you allow a Holocaust denier to serve as a company president?"



I have to admit, it is a good question. I suppose that those who defended the right of the CEO to oppose gay marriage to would have to admit that it is not the proposition that any private view is acceptable in business, only that the line should be drawn a bit more broadly than it current seems to be. I would probably not want a Holocaust denier running my company and the fact that one was running a company probably would make me less inclined to support do business with that company.



Still, if that is the standard, what are we to make of people that want to keep doing business with the PLO and their leader Mahmoud Abbas? The great and good of the world insist not only that Israel do business with him, that the West continue to fund him, but that the Jewish state allow him to have an army parked at their doorstep. It is one thing to give a Holocaust denier your money, it is surely another to give him an army, an air force and a missile launch pad within a few miles of your capital.  

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Orono students make robotic hand for boy born without fingers - KMSP-TV

The high school teacher who led the class said in the interview "to help someone--I don't want to call it--with a disability, but..." Well, if not having any fingers on your hand is not a disability what the hell is? It can't be an advantage. 

Here is this man who has done a great thing for other human beings, but he still has to bow to the gods of political correctness, mustn't say anything that suggests someone is not equal to someone else. You are allowed to correct the disability but you can't refer to it as a disability, lest you be fell upon by the squealers, those people who do nothing to actually help anyone but take it upon themselves to correct other's vocabulary. Their correctitude in language makes them morally superior to people that actually do something to help others. 

The aristocrats in the 18th century who ruled their times were less noxious than these self-appointed priests of proper diction. 

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Beyond Parody: Irving Kristol Edition

Ed Driscoll » Student Mugged, Says He Deserved It Because of His ‘Privilege’: Kristol said that a neo-conservative was a liberal that had been mugged by reality and a liberal as one who was so broad minded that he wouldn't take his own side in a fight. It is hard to make fun of people that keep stealing your punchlines to congratulate themselves.

Monday, November 24, 2014

From Walter Russell Mead

Obama’s Big Miscalculation - The American Interest: "Latinos are the new blacks: a permanent racial minority or subgroup in the American political system that will always feel separate from the country’s white population and, like African-Americans, will vote Democratic. On this assumption, the Democratic approach to Hispanic Americans should be clear: the more the merrier. That is a particularly popular view on the more leftish side of the Democratic coalition, where there’s a deep and instinctive fear and loathing of Jacksonian America (those “bitterly clinging” to their guns, their Bibles, and their individualistic economic and social beliefs). The great shining hope of the American left is that a demographic transition through immigration and birthrates will finally make all those tiresome white people largely irrelevant in a new, post-American America. 
Of course, this is perfectly true. But if that is true aren't the members of the ethnic group scheduled from elimination from history in their own country right to be somewhat hostile to the new arrivals? Or, more precisely, to the elites that hope to use the new arrivals as a path to elimination of the bitter-clingers and their reactionary influence?



But that is the genius of modern liberalism, picking fights where any punching back from the other side is delegitimized as racism or sexism.



This is what makes the situation so reminiscent of the English Civil War.


From Walter Russell Mead

Obama’s Big Miscalculation - The American Interest: "Latinos are the new blacks: a permanent racial minority or subgroup in the American political system that will always feel separate from the country’s white population and, like African-Americans, will vote Democratic. On this assumption, the Democratic approach to Hispanic Americans should be clear: the more the merrier. That is a particularly popular view on the more leftish side of the Democratic coalition, where there’s a deep and instinctive fear and loathing of Jacksonian America (those “bitterly clinging” to their guns, their Bibles, and their individualistic economic and social beliefs). The great shining hope of the American left is that a demographic transition through immigration and birthrates will finally make all those tiresome white people largely irrelevant in a new, post-American America. 
Of course, this is perfectly true. But if that is true aren't the members of the ethnic group scheduled from elimination from history in their own country right to be somewhat hostile to the new arrivals? Or, more precisely, to the elites that hope to use the new arrivals as a path to elimination of the bitter-clingers and their reactionary influence?



But that is the genius of modern liberalism, picking fights where any punching back from the other side is delegitimized as racism or sexism.



This is what makes the situation so reminiscent of the English Civil War.


Most Heavy Drinkers Are Not Alcoholics - NYTimes.com

The standards that they use to define alcoholics would have included Churchill. I am sure that this would give the authors of such standards no cause for second thought. The fact that a great man from the past would be classified as suffering from a disease would only make them more confident in their own superiority.



What is so unpleasant about our age is that it crows about its tolerance while being the least tolerant of other societies, times and cultures that differ from our standards. It is not that our standards are different, it is that we are uniquely inclined to define deviations from our standards as pathological.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Teens Are Sharing Gross Pictures Of Their School Lunches With The Hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama

Thanks Michelle! And remind me again why the party that thinks Washington has to pick your lunch is the cool party?

Obama's wrong way to do the right thing: Our view

USA Today Editorial: "Obama was well aware of the issues raised by such sweeping unilateral action. More than a dozen times earlier in his presidency, he told those pushing for such an order that he couldn't responsibly sign one. "Believe me," he said in 2011, "the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written.""

Someone should ask him what other things he has felt tempted to do and what, if anything, stops him from doing them now? Of course, that would require a press core composed of vertebrates.

The editorial draws a good parallel with the possibility of a future Republican president suspending enforcement of Obama-care tax mandates. 

News Distribution Network, Inc.

Report via instapundit that the Tennessee DA has restricted the use of civil forfeiture. But it should not just be curtailed, it should be eliminated in any situation where the actual property owner is actionable. Republicans should oppose this on the same grounds that they oppose the corporate income tax and support freedom of speech, because you can't prosecute or curtail the rights of a piece of property any more than you can do so to a corporation, because corporations are people.



When you do something to a corporation you are not doing it to the corporation, you are doing it to the people that own the corporation and possibly the people that work for the corporation. In the same way, when a prosecutor steals property under the color of law he is not doing something to the property, he is doing something to the owner of the property.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

The Pinnacle of Hypocrisy

Full text: Obama's immigration speech: "It has shaped our character as a people with limitless possibilities — people not trapped by our past, but able to remake ourselves as we choose."



As we choose? Apparently not. Apparently it is as anyone who strolls across the border chooses. We have assumed among the powers of the rights of a sovereign nation--except we are not allowed to decide who joins our nation. Our deciding who joins our nation is, uniquely among the nations of the Earth, not simply being a sovereign nation, but being racist.

We are told that these people just want to work. Well, I have no doubt that they do. But there are a lot of Americans that want to work to and have given up on finding work. The question is who do we owe? Who comes first? Permit me to say that it is Americans to whom we owe our first obligation.

It is compassionate to the illegal aliens? Perhaps, but only to the extent that we are willing to be less compassionate to the Americans that do not get jobs or have their wages lowered by the surfeit of illegals who are quite rationally from willing to take jobs at lower wages.

What about all the people killed by illegal aliens? We cannot talk about that because all of the crimes committed by illegal aliens are committed by citizens, too, and so singling out illegal aliens is racist. But then we turn around and talk about their willingness to work as if it were some sort of unique human achievement that is beyond the capability of typical Americans.


Monday, November 10, 2014

Excuse me, did I say lie? I meant 'lack of transparency'

Obamacare Architect Admits Deceiving Americans to Pass Law



My favorite part, "call it the stupidity of the American voter..." meaning the voter's inability to see through their lies--oh, there's that word again. I meant 'lack of transparency'.



Remember this the next time we are told, "trust us, we are experts and have your best interests at heart."  They wouldn't be boring on about how expert they were if what they were saying made sense on its own. For example, the reason that the CDC and supporters of Obama's resistance to a tourist visa ban on the countries experiencing an ebola outbreak feel compelled to mention their credentials and the supposed scientific consensus that motivates their actions is because their policy is so at odds with the common sense of most people.



And their certainty that they are doing what they are doing for the good of others is what should make you suspicious of them. People are never so unconstrained by conscience as when they are convinced they are doing something for the good of others and not themselves.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie for them

Jim Stingl - Duped by Innocence Project, Milwaukee man now free


Sunday, November 09, 2014

"He fits the suit."

Putting the O in Johnny Bravo | National Review Online: Jonah Goldberg explains the entire Obama phenomenon with an episode of the Brady Bunch. Its as good as anything I have seen from political scientists.

Rising Star?

Stone Brain Rises | National Review Online



The rise of the Maine governor points up two things wrong with the conventional wisdom: you have to be bipartisan and compromising to win and that the Republican victories last Tuesday had nothing to do with the substance of policy.



The re-election of Maine's LaPage and the rise of figures like Walker who were brash and took on entrench shibboleths of the Left were the victors in the election, the milquetoast moderates are the ones that did poorly on both sides.



The idea that the election had nothing to do with policy substance is belied by the sweeping and if anything more impressive victories of the Republic party at the state level. The governors and state legislatures that went to the Republicans and, especially, where Republicans were re-elected, were moved not by mere dislike or dissatisfaction with the president but that the Republicans had delivered. It is funny how the Republicans do well when they are responsible for both the legislature and executive or where they pass major and controversial reforms that the electorate gets to pass judgement on at a remove of some years. Moreover, when the Republicans control the state governments, where the government does not have practically unlimited power to print or to borrow money, they deliver results that the voters approve.



That is certainly something.

Rising Star?

Stone Brain Rises | National Review Online



The rise of the Maine governor points up two things wrong with the conventional wisdom: you have to be bipartisan and compromising to win and that the Republican victories last Tuesday had nothing to do with the substance of policy.



The re-election of Maine's LaPage and the rise of figures like Walker who were brash and took on entrench shibboleths of the Left were the victors in the election, the milquetoast moderates are the ones that did poorly on both sides.



The idea that the election had nothing to do with policy substance is belied by the sweeping and if anything more impressive victories of the Republic party at the state level. The governors and state legislatures that went to the Republicans and, especially, where Republicans were re-elected, were moved not by mere dislike or dissatisfaction with the president but that the Republicans had delivered. It is funny how the Republicans do well when they are responsible for both the legislature and executive or where they pass major and controversial reforms that the electorate gets to pass judgement on at a remove of some years. Moreover, when the Republicans control the state governments, where the government does not have practically unlimited power to print or to borrow money, they deliver results that the voters approve.



That is certainly something.

One thing we can thank Harry Reid for

No to the Judicial Filibuster | National Review Online

Maybe they are not real Indians?

More Non-White Voters for the GOP | National Review Online: "Native Americans, who make up 1 percent of the national electorate, favored Republicans by 52 to 43 percent."



But I am sure that Jon Stewart would find a way to dismiss them as not being real Native Americans based on more scientific criteria like hair style or cool 'nativey' looking jewelry.

Make them say no

GOP, Show That You Can Govern | National Review Online. Krauthammer shows the way ahead.



It has driven me crazy how the media has portrayed the refusal of the two parties to agree as Republican intransigence. How does that work? The President proposes something and the Republicans vote it down, therefore, the Republicans are the ones that want to do nothing. Leave aside the fact that the Republicans in the House pass hundreds of bills that the Senate never even takes a vote on, these are never reported on, so in the press it is the Republicans that are the party of no.



Now at least the story line can be changed. The Congress can no pass bills that have to go to the President's desk and the he is the one that has to take an overt action, he has to sign it or veto it. He has to say no. At the very least he has to admit that he is the one that would prefer inaction to an action that he disagrees with. Democrats in the House and the Senate will often find themselves having to vote against their president or against their constituents. And, in some cases, there may even be enough votes for an override. Now wouldn't that be fun (though I thin that repudiating Obama might at some point in the future mark the turning point in the Democratic party's fortunes).

Death of Micro-Pandering?

Politics in the Age of Big Data | National Review Online: Jonah Goldberg says that the most recent election marks the end of targeted scare-mongering guided by fine-grained data-mining, but I am not so sure.

It wasn't just inefficient. It was evil.

On Berlin Wall Anniversary, Somber Notes Amid Revelry - NYTimes.com

Thursday, November 06, 2014

The Economist's Take

America's mid-terms: Republicans on a roll | The Economist:
America is a country with two electorates. One, a national electorate which appears once every four years when a president is on the ballot, leans slightly Democratic. The other, made up of those Americans who reliably turn out in mid-term and state elections, is markedly older, whiter and more conservative. 
Of course, President Obama has generously declared his intention to listen to the electorate, whether they voted or not!

There is a line in Kafka about the government being dissatisfied with the people and deciding to create a new one that would fit in nicely here, I think...


The Daily Beast described Obama as conciliatory...

A reporter pressed him to describe in a word the impact of Tuesday night’s results. In 2010, when Democrats lost the House, Obama called it a “shellacking.” This time he decline to offer an adjective, said he would leave it to others to go through the tea leaves of the election.

Well, he is willing to read the minds of people that don't bother to vote but can't figure out what it means when the voters that actually, you know, vote, decide to turn out his party at most every chance. Curiously, last week there was to be no mistake about the fact that it was his 'policies are on the ballot.'  

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Immigration-the great unmentioned

Warner, Gillespie draw differences on issues in Va. senate race | WJLA.com--The coverage on TV has not mentioned the big differences in immigration policy in the races that Republicans have managed to make into races. I have been watching the network coverage on CNN and Fox and no one has mentioned the immigration issue as a reason that Republican candidates unexpectedly came from behind. Gillespie was a 'comprehensivist' going in but staked out more of a border security first position in the debates. Scott Brown hammered the issue. Why will no one mention it?

Feminist Star Chambers and their effects on real people

"A sexual harassment policy that nearly ruined my life"

an Oped in the Boston Globe from a former Harvard student

Friday, October 31, 2014

Nudges not always more effective than active choice

Organ Donors Want Choices - Bloomberg View: "Consider one seeming no-brainer: making “donate my organs” the default status, as much of Europe does, rather than requiring people to opt in, which is the U.S. policy. There’s a lot of research showing that people tend to blindly go along with whatever the default is, so simply flipping the switch ought to give us more organs at basically no cost to society.

In fact, says Keith Humphreys, the opposite is true: Americans actually donate organs at higher rates."



Maybe nudges work for questions that we do not give a lot of thought to but where the typical person, if they thought about it, would agree with the view of experts. Nudges are fine for savings plans and avoiding extra helpings of desserts, but more problematic if we are talking about removing the organs of someone we love and who is, by the standards that obtained until just a generation ago, still alive. Also, there is a conflict of interest involved in organ donation that is not so apparent in the case of dietary choices and proportions of ones income placed into savings.

The problem is so huge it has even come to the notice of the New Yorker

Is the Field of Psychology Biased Against Conservatives?: "Social psychology, Haidt went on, had an obvious problem: a lack of political diversity that was every bit as dangerous as a lack of, say, racial or religious or gender diversity. It discouraged conservative students from joining the field, and it discouraged conservative members from pursuing certain lines of argument. It also introduced bias into research questions, methodology, and, ultimately, publications. The topics that social psychologists chose to study and how they chose to study them, he argued, suffered from homogeneity. The effect was limited, Haidt was quick to point out, to areas that concerned political ideology and politicized notions, like race, gender, stereotyping, and power and inequality. “It’s not like the whole field is undercut, but when it comes to research on controversial topics, the effect is most pronounced,” he later told me. (Haidt has now put his remarks in more formal terms, complete with data, in a paper forthcoming this winter in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.)"



'via Blog this'

Attempt to criticize men ends up criticizing 'persons of color'

Racism, Classism and Catcalling (or, #Feminism Is for Rich White Lesbians) : The Other McCain: "“The video also unintentionally makes another point, that harassers are mostly black and Latino, and hanging out on the streets in midday in clothes that suggest they are not on their lunch break. As Roxane Gay tweeted, ‘The racial politics of the video are f–ked up. Like, she didn’t walk through any white neighborhoods?’” . ."


Lena Dunham and the emotional equivalent of footbinding

Pathetic Privilege | National Review Online: "She did not get this way by accident; she got this way because the series of economic and intellectual cloisters in which she has lived her life have functioned as the emotional equivalent of Song-dynasty foot-binding: Intended to bring her nearer to perfection, they have instead left her disfigured and disabled. "

Sunday, October 19, 2014

RealClearPolitics - Election Other - 2014 Generic Congressional Vote

Republicans ahead in generic polling!



This is new and very rare. The Democrats are the party of free stuff, the Republicans the party of charging you less for it. Not surprisingly free stuff with no price tag associated directly to it is more popular as a general rule than lowering its price tag, a price tag that is not directly tied to the goods one receives and is, for most voters, paid by someone else in any case. That people are now willing to say they want the generic Republican says a lot.

Lessons of the Ebola Crisis | National Review Online

Yuval Levin has a good post on this and in particular our touching belief in the power of experts. It is worth reading.



But it is disheartening to see Republicans join in the chorus of denunciation over the President's choice of a political hack to run the government's ebola response for it feeds into this same fallacious belief in the power of people with the right degree to solve every problem.



For one thing, the mistakes that have been made so far are not matters of lack of expertise so much as lack of judgement and courage. We did not ban travel and stop issuing tourist visas in Lesotho because we did not have enough people with medical degrees in the State department or the number of the people in the CDC. We were afraid to do something that might have looked racist. More people in the CDC with impressive credentials from Ivy League schools would not have helped and quite possibly would have made the problem worse. The elite schools have much more ideology baked into the curriculum than the 'mere' technical schools out in the states.



The deeper conflict between the Republicans and the Democrats is the belief in the power of experts armed with government power to manage society's problems. Tammany Hall politicians would never have made the mistakes that Administration has made. The whole argument in our political system is whether people can make decisions on their own better than experts can make them for them.



There is another question about how government works. I am in favor of political hacks running things. The big problems with Ebola are not problems of medicine, they are the problems of getting the government to work, of understanding how bureaucratic organizations alter their routines, and of getting bureaucracies to take chances by altering their routines and take what are essentially political risks. Political hacks are often not only the best, but quite often the only people that can make that happen.



This is quite often done better by political hacks than by people with some sort of narrow technical expertise. The idea that there should be some person with a white coat on telling us what the answer is at the root of many of our problems and the acquiescense of people to ever greater levels of government control in their lives.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Bulgaria’s Vampire Graveyards - The Daily Beast

"In a 7,000-year-old town in Bulgaria, over 100 graves have been uncovered, revealing skeletons with stakes through their hearts and mutilated bones. Meet the vampires that almost were."



The body of the story says that the town is from the 13th century, so the writer apparently does not know that the 13th century was 700 years ago, not 7,000. Big journalism, professionals, fact-checkers, you know? 

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Liberals Storm California's Bedrooms | RealClearPolitics

Liberals are the ones that want to impose their standards on everyone. The Conservatives are the party of live and let live. They may disagree with many of the choices people make these days but they know that giving the government the power to impose the 'right' choice on them is dangerous in the long run.



It is Liberals who want to regulate what you do in your bedroom, what you put in your body, the words you speak and the ideas you have in your head. So tell me again, kids, why are they the 'cool' party? Maybe the Conservatives do represent a bunch of people wearing cheap suits blocking traffic on Sundays going to Church, but they are not trying to make you go to Church. The Liberals are forcing you to go and, baring that, bringing the Church to you.

What Liberals Get Wrong About Football -- NYMag

What Liberals Get Wrong About Football -- NYMag: Thoughtful article about football from an unlikely source. That football is war without bullets might be a good thing.

Monday, October 06, 2014

Why Would Obama Try to Make the Election About Himself? - The Atlantic

Why Would Obama Try to Make the Election About Himself? - The Atlantic:

The author makes a cleaver case for why making it about himself is a smart move, mainly that the key in the election is motivating the base and making it about Obama does that. But I think there is another explanation--his ego. The election is about him because it is no different than anything else. Everything is about him.

Friday, October 03, 2014

How David Cameron Became a Reform Conservative | National Review Online

How David Cameron Became a Reform Conservative | National Review Online: "and he insisted that “our young people must know this is a country where if you put in, you will get out.”": As opposed to Clinton's America, where young women--such as Monica Lewinsky--know if they put out, they will get in.



It is remarkable how sex scandals are played up by the press if they involve a Republican, passed over unremarked if they involve a Democrat. I have heard from members of the press the explanation that in the case of Democrats it is merely a relatively uninteresting case of an individual human failing whereas in the case of a Republican, the party that proclaims itself the protector of traditional moral values, such stories are matters of public concern since they involve a conflict between the professed values of the party and the private conduct of their parties elected officials. But surely the involvement of Democrats in sex scandals involves a conflict as least as great and of as much concern to the public: the professed party of using government to protect the rights of women using the power of their public office and position in government to exploit women?

Saturday, September 27, 2014

911 calls released: FBI investigating claims Oklahoma beheading suspect tried to convert others to Islam | KFOR.com

No Jihad to see here, folks, just keep movin', as Mark Steyn would say.



The fact that the perpetrator--excuse me, suspect--just happened to be Muslim, and that the coworkers who were killed and attacked just happened to be infidels, is not allowed to obscure the main narrative of another tragic case of workplace violence.

Multiple Controversies Plagued Eric Holder Prior to Resignation

These aren't controversies, they are crimes.

At U-M, Sexual Violence Includes 'Discounting Feelings,' 'Withholding Sex' - Hit & Run : Reason.com

'So not feeling my feelings' is a form of violence? It is only the logical extension of 'being insensitive' as an accusation. The effect of such a doctrine is to make your feelings about me into something that affects me directly and is, therefore, a matter for society's concern. So your feelings and thoughts about me are mine, and by extension, society's business. Thus thought is made a crime and the dominion of our totalitarian elites is extended into your mind.

Senator introduces new legislation to further reduce student loans for government workers | Red Alert Politics

Why not just pay them in money? Oh, that would be too transparent.



We are becoming too classes of people, those that hold a privileged position approved by the government either by direct employment or by engaging in an occupation that the government mandates we use, and those who hold a position in the private sector where getting paid depends on someone's willingness to give up money out of their own pocket for a good or service you provide. It is a kind of creeping serfdom.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Jersey Jihadist by Steven Malanga, City Journal 17 September 2014

Why isn't this news? We seem to have trouble calling homegrown jihadist terrorists terrorists. Major Nidal Hassan was a perpetrator of workplace violence. John Allen Muhammed was termed a serial killer, which he was, of course, but he was also a Muslim and repeatedly stated that he was motivated by his understanding, at least, of Islam.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Rotherham child abuse victim confronts her alleged abuser in the street... but SHE is arrested by a van load of police | Mail Online

The most fundamental task of a civilization, no, something prior to civilization, something more fundamental, the task of a group of human beings who want to survive, is for men to protect women from males of other groups. It is the first responsibility of a society's men. The primal obligation.

That is why this story of the Rotherham abuse scandal is so perverse. At bottom it is a failure of a society, of the men in a society, to fulfill their primary obligation, to protect their women from outside men. And now the ultimate inversion of morality, the police, the men of the community, defend the outside men from their own women. This situation exposes the suicidal, dead-end nature of our cosmopolitan elite's vision of civilization, with its twin pillars of unlimited immigration and non-judgmental multiculturalism, and why the emotions that it calls up against itself are so primal. It is an act of societal suicide.

Here is a NYT's op-ed on the topic

Sunday, September 14, 2014

BLACKFIVE: Muslims Celebrated The Sep 11 Attacks


Posse Comitatus

Rare case: Case thrown out because of a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting military participation in civilian law enforcement. A Navy investigator did a search of all computers in the state of Washington and turned over evidence of child pornography to civilian authorities.

It is good to see this law is still given its force by the federal courts. 

Rice background

Here is a timeline for the Rice scandal.  Here Ann Althouse makes the point that one person should not be punished for the crime of another in relation to the Rice case, but she makes the point in the Peterson case--a player accused of employing excessive corporal punishment on his son--arguing that Peterson is only being punish so severely as a reaction against the punishments against Rice that are now seen as excessively light. 

Friday, September 12, 2014

More Ray Rice thoughts

Part of the reason that people dismiss Janay Rice as being misguided and suffering from some sort of battered women syndrome is that the only reason they can imagine she would defend her husband is that she is suffering from some sort of diminished capacity or she is a gold digger. The possibility that she loves her husband and wishes for his success, or that she does reasonably feel some responsibility for what happened, or that she has just forgiven him, or that she thinks he has been punished enough, seems not to have occurred to anyone.

I don’t know, if I hit my wife and my wife forgave me would I still be fired from my job as a professor? Would they be obligated to fire me? What if I were a shoe salesman or an auto mechanic? Would my employer be expected to fire me and, to complete analogy, see to it that no other college, shoe store or auto repair shop ever employed me? And would everyone expect as a matter of course my wife to encourage them to do so?


Has anyone noticed that this is a bunch of white men deciding how much to punish a bunch of black men?




The thing that is odd about the complaint that the commissioner should have seen the video is that the video admittedly does not add any new information? If so, what is the point? The visceral reaction of the viewers is so important? There is such a difference between knowing that someone got knocked out and seeing them get knocked out by a punch? Is there squeamishness in itself a sign of virtue, of their superior sensibility? Their physical revulsion at the sight of the act is to be taken as evidence of their moral superiority? Isn’t this precisely the sort of thing we are told should be kept from juries because it is inflammatory, shocking and sickening?

Why should he have tried harder to get the video? There were no facts in dispute. The what did he know and when did he know it angle is so habitual it is treated as the focus of controversy without even thinking about it. Did the NFL have a legal right to see the video, let alone a responsibility? I have heard people go on the radio about how the NFL could have gotten the tape because they have former law enforcement on staff and could have gone through back channels, but does that make it right, let alone obligatory? 

Ray Rice

I am very confused about the whole Ray Rice thing and it concerns me. I usually find myself taking one side or the other in a cultural conflict like this but in this case I feel as if there is no one out there taking my side, that there are a bunch of things being said out there that every one seems to agree with and to regard as so self-evident that if you don't agree with them you are some kind of monster or reprobate.

I hear men solemnly say that you must never hit a woman, period. Well, that is what I was always told. On the other hand, I am sure that women were also not supposed to spit in men's faces. I can't imagine hitting my wife, but then I can't imagine my wife spitting in my face.

I must say I have been struck by the dignity and strength of Mrs. Rice and I am really astounded at the way she is dismissed by the very people who present themselves as standing up for women and demanding that women be respected for their intelligence and ability to make their own decisions. No one seems to be concerned with respecting Mrs. Rice's decisions.

One that that has struck me is that the only voices that I have heard (and I have not been systematic at all in focusing my attention) raising the question of reciprocal violence in domestic violence situation has been from the left. I feel that the issue is so toxic and that the right feels so intimidated that they are unwilling to raise any issues that could at all be interpreted as being less than zealous true believers in the presents line, that they are anything less than fully committed members of the chorus of condemnation.

I remember my Grandmother more or less training me to open doors for ladies. I also remember some years later women rolling their eyes or forgiving me for stepping ahead of them to open doors for them. I thought that the whole reason we have an absolute prohibition on violence against women is that they are on average weaker than men. I am sure that if I came at Ray Rice and spit in his face he would hit me and I would garner no sympathy. I would no more be capable of fighting Ray Rice than his future wife was, but I am sure that he would be considered within his rights to retaliate against me or any man that came at him and spit in his face.

Is it not at least somewhat incongruous that the very people that tell us that women can do anything men can do, that any apparent differences in the abilities of men and women are solely the result of the culture indoctrination and truncated opportunities that our sexist society imposes on women? This is why we are supposed to want to have women in the military in combat roles, no? How does this fit with the absolute prohibition against violence against women regardless of the provocation? When men train with women are they not going to use violence against them? Is the 'you don't hit women, period' going to hold when the women are wearing a uniform, when they are on the other side or have a gun?

Perhaps part of the strength of the reaction against the video is the way it she looks so helpless, the way her efforts look so instantly futile, is due to the way it mocks the conceit that the differences between men and women are due solely to social construction? We have movies full of Amazon women beating up men and decking them with a single blow while cracking wise, but when we see an actual example of a fight between a man and a women these cultural delusions are exposed for the puerile fantasies that they are. And yet is the un-apologetically masculine sport of Football that is blamed for violence against women and Hollywood's fantasies which actively portray women as fully capable of holding their own against men in a fight and actively encouraging (can this be denied?) women to exercise their right to compete with men in the realms of violence are ignored?

I heard Jim Brown sermonizing (I don't think you could describe it any other way) against men telling other men that they 'throw like girls' is demeaning to women and that making such remarks makes men complicit in the wave of violence against women. But isn't the whole prohibition on using any sort of physical force against women based on the very fact which such remarks presuppose, namely, that women are not as strong or as physically capable of deploying or withstanding violence? The reason that it is 'wrong to hit women, period,' is that they are not able to defend themselves, at least typically, just as they are not able to--again, typically--defend themselves, no? Shouldn't he be saying, 'Guys, remember when you told a guy he throws like a girl? That is why you can't hit girls, because it is not fair, because they can't effectively hit back just as they can't throw,'?

Another thing that seems to have been excluded from this discussion is  the common law norm of not having a penalty imposed or invented after the fact, the visceral revulsion that one would have thought all English Speakers had to procedures that smack of ex post facto laws. Should we wait until the offense is committed and then determine the penalty? It is one thing to say that hence forward we will have a so-called 'zero tolerance' policy toward domestic violence and permanently end the career of any player found guilty of domestic violence, but what about the propriety of imposing such a penalty after the fact? If we are going to have a penalty so severe as to end a man's livelihood for the rest of his life shouldn't that be set out before hand? Shouldn't the exceptions or the lack of and explicit irrelevance of common exceptions, excuses and extenuating circumstances (which one might think mutual drinking, being assaulted and being forgiven by the victim must at the very least be considered), be spelled out before hand? Especially in the case of such a severe penalty shouldn't we expect it to be spelled out before hand?

All of the norms shaped by common law thinking seem to have been abandoned in this public discussion. The victim's discretion over whether to press charges, the prohibition on ex post facto laws or the prohibition against bills of attainder, the double jeopardy prohibition, all of this is dismissed with explanation.


Thursday, August 21, 2014

FBI director calls Islamic terror group behind journalist slaying 'savages' | Star Tribune

FBI director calls Islamic terror group behind journalist slaying 'savages' | Star Tribune: What is new is that they have done it to an American. They have been doing it to other Arabs and Muslims for decades but that was merely 'their culture' and condemning it as barbarism was, therefore, racist.


Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Nigel vs the Lunatic Mainstream :: SteynOnline

From Mark Steyn: 


Nigel vs the Lunatic Mainstream :: SteynOnline: "Occasionally, the realities of electoral politics oblige the village's denizens to dissemble to the barbarians beyond, as in David Cameron's current pledge of a referendum on EU membership sometime after his reelection, which is intended to staunch defections to UKIP by seizing the nuanced ground of pretending that he's not entirely opposed to adopting the position of conceding the prospect of admitting the possibility of potentially considering the theoretical option of exploring the hypothetical scenario of discussing in a roundabout way Britain's leaving the EU. He doesn't mean it, of course, but he has to toss a bone out there from time to time. Lord Feldman, the Tories' co-chairman and Cameron's tennis partner, rather gave the game away when he was overheard dismissing the massed ranks of his party as "mad, swivel-eyed loons." Weary of being insulted by Cameron and his Oxford chums, Conservative voters began phoning the local UKIP office for membership applications. In nothing flat, "swivel-eyed loons" became a badge of honor, and the prime minister was giving speeches to the effect that, underneath the insincere unprincipled elitist veneer, he was a swivel-eyed loon himself.

"
I like the 'swivel-eyed loons' bit. It seems to me to be a fine tradition in the politics of the English speaking world to take insults as a badge of honor. Indeed, the names of the two great parties in Great Britain are insults adopted as standards by their objects. This seems to me to be a much healthier kind of politics than the endless whining about being owed an apology that constitutes contemporary political discourse.

Nigel vs the Lunatic Mainstream :: SteynOnline

From Mark Steyn: 


Nigel vs the Lunatic Mainstream :: SteynOnline: "Occasionally, the realities of electoral politics oblige the village's denizens to dissemble to the barbarians beyond, as in David Cameron's current pledge of a referendum on EU membership sometime after his reelection, which is intended to staunch defections to UKIP by seizing the nuanced ground of pretending that he's not entirely opposed to adopting the position of conceding the prospect of admitting the possibility of potentially considering the theoretical option of exploring the hypothetical scenario of discussing in a roundabout way Britain's leaving the EU. He doesn't mean it, of course, but he has to toss a bone out there from time to time. Lord Feldman, the Tories' co-chairman and Cameron's tennis partner, rather gave the game away when he was overheard dismissing the massed ranks of his party as "mad, swivel-eyed loons." Weary of being insulted by Cameron and his Oxford chums, Conservative voters began phoning the local UKIP office for membership applications. In nothing flat, "swivel-eyed loons" became a badge of honor, and the prime minister was giving speeches to the effect that, underneath the insincere unprincipled elitist veneer, he was a swivel-eyed loon himself.

"
I like the 'swivel-eyed loons' bit. It seems to me to be a fine tradition in the politics of the English speaking world to take insults as a badge of honor. Indeed, the names of the two great parties in Great Britain are insults adopted as standards by their objects. This seems to me to be a much healthier kind of politics than the endless whining about being owed an apology that constitutes contemporary political discourse.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

35 Ways British Men Can Address Each Other, Defined

35 Ways British Men Can Address Each Other, Defined: "28 People Who Totally Kinda Had A Little Bit Of A…"



The linked piece is a list of forms of address in contemporary Britain. The interesting thing is, the more insulting the term the closer the social relation. It is pretty funny and worth a read on its own.



It reminds me of something that has often struck me: the names for political parties and movements in the English speaking world tend to have their origins in insults from the other side of the political debate. Both 'Whig' and 'Tory', for instance, started out as terms of abuse. In effect, they answer "Yes, I am, so?" I think it is an attractive and manly--if one is still allowed to use such a term--sort of custom. The contrast with our contemporary political discourse is striking. We are continually monitoring the utterances of the other side to find a word we can pounce upon and loudly demand an apology for.



I suspect that the approach represented by the older discourse is healthier. It is certainly more fun.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Snuffles on the job

No one better try anything in this parking lot, not while snuffles is on the job.

At the Apple Store


Every time I do something at Apple I get a pleasant surprise. 
Courtney, my new hero, just told me I was still under my AppleCare warranty and they're going to place my battery for free.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Wendy Davis, Classic Texas Four-Flusher | RealClearPolitics



Some Futile Filibusters are
Approved by the Media


Classic and Classy take down of Wendy Davis by Carl Cannon, a writer that I had not heard of before but whom I will be following from now on. I frankly didn't care much about the discrepancies in the Texas candidate for governor but after reading this you get a real sense of her ambition and unscrupulousness.



Perhaps what is most powerful in Cannon's understated account of the controversy around Ms. Davis' account of her life is the vicious self-righteousness with which she has answered the most reasonable observations about the inaccuracies in her campaign biography. Like really good writers he lets the actions of the subject speak for themselves as much as possible, limiting himself to some wry comments in passing. My favorite is this at the end.



As a chaser to such deceit, the campaign added a gaffe in the form of a Wendy Davis statement that Abbott never “walked a day in my shoes.” One doesn’t have to wonder how liberals would respond if George W. Bush had said that about a paraplegic opponent. And then, a surreptitious videotape began circulating in conservative circles purportedly showing Davis backers laughing about Abbott being in a wheelchair.
That’s not as surprising as it first seems. Wendy Davis came to prominence when she filibustered legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require abortion mills to meet the health and safety standards of hospitals, and ensure that the physicians in charge of abortion clinics have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
The impetus for this legislation came about in the wake of the murder conviction of Kermit Gosnell, the Pennsylvania doctor who routinely performed late-term abortions, and killed babies who managed to survive the procedure. Many of his patients were grievously injured, too, and at least one died. All of them were women. 

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Who cares what religious conservatives think?


There is something that strikes me as strange in the arguments we have about gay people. On the one hand it is argued that society's disapproval of gays is the source of many of the problems that gays have, such as, for instance, their higher rates of tobacco use as is argued in this article

But on the other hand, the sort of people who are the chief source of that disapproval such as religious conservatives are themselves the object of ridicule. How can the opinions of people for whom such open contempt is a part of our culture--and I think it is fair to say that religious conservatives serve as little more than the butt of jokes in our mainstream culture--have such an impact on people? 

Moreover, the same cause seems to be maintained to have different effects in similar cases. The same contempt from religious conservatives that is supposed to be the cause of self-loathing and substance abuse among young gays is at the same time, and by many of the same people, sought after and viewed as a sign of being transgressive and meaningful in the realm of art. I think it is even fair to say that the contempt of religious conservatives is advertised and seen as a selling point in the art world. Indeed, the contempt it inspirers from religious conservatives seems in some cases to be the only thing that qualifies certain efforts as art at all, such as the notorious 'Piss Christ'. 

How can something so nourishing to the self-esteem of artists be so damaging to the self-esteem of gays? 

Friday, January 17, 2014

Someone we should all remember

Rick Rescorla: Hero of Vietnam War who was last seen going back up the stairs, in defiance of orders from the Port Authority, to rescue more of the people from the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. 

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Jon Stewart discusses inequality and moral hazard

This is the first segment which automatically moves on to the second segment.
Here is a CNN news story on the same subject which appears to differ with one of Stewart's facts. 

Monday, January 13, 2014

Dragon Bones?

Jon Stewart did a very funny routine denouncing Republican efforts to prevent vote fraud by arguing that in person vote fraud was as rare as "dragon bones." Now evidence comes from New York that if it is it is not because it is hard to do.
DOI undercover agents showed up at 63 polling places last fall and pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials; the agents assumed the names of individuals who had died or moved out of town, or who were sitting in jail. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote. Those who did vote cast only a write-in vote for a “John Test” so as to not affect the outcome of any contest. DOI published its findings two weeks ago in a searing 70-page report accusing the city’s Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.

Here is John Fund discussing the case. Voter Fraud: We’ve Got Proof It’s Easy | National Review Online.

So how does NYC's Board of Elections react when the city's Department of Investigations shows that 97% of the attempts of their investigators to vote illegally were successful? Try to put the investigators in jail, of course! The most dangerous interest group in our society is the government itself.

Somebody tell Jon Stewart.

The English Speaking People's and Statism

Roger’s Rules » Meanwhile, Back in the Fatherland: Here is a great illustration of the difference of the Anglo-Saxon political tradition and Continental Europe and most of the rest of the world: Who owns your children?

In Europe they are the property of the state. In the English Speaking world they are their parents (though we are moving closer to the continental model everyday).

Here is why is matters. A German judge just sent in a swat team to raid a private
German household and take their children into state custody for the simple reason that the parent's are homeschooling their children and the judge is worried that they might escape to the France to continue homeschooling in defiance of the Courts' wishes. Here is part of the judge's decision:

Even though there are no suspicions of any parental care right abuses, besides the prevention of public school attendance, the further withdrawal of the part of parental care rights is considered necessary to help and support the education of the children, to ensure the children’s attendance of a regular school....The children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.
So we can't tolerate homeschooling because it would prevent us from teaching them tolerance. That is the difference between a government that has a people and a people that have a government.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Honest Wonkerry for Ezra

A health industry expert on ‘the fundamental problem with Obamacare’: Kline's interview with Bob Laszewski paints a grim picture for Obamacare, in spite of Kline's support for the president and his signature initiative. Here is Laszewski's assessment of the all important problem of avoiding adverse selection:
It’s not positive. I don’t want to say people have given up on the notion they’ll get a good mix. They know the administration will make a big push. The insurance companies will spend big on advertising and outreach. So no one has given up. But it doesn’t look good right now.
There’s a big misconception that this is about young people. That’s baloney. It’s about healthy people. A healthy 20-year-old might only pay a $100 premium. You want healthy 40 and 50-year-olds. The big problem right now is really total enrollment. We only have about 10 percent of the uninsured in here. Insurers think you need more like 70 percent of a pool of people to sign up.
Laszewski ends with an analysis of the fundamental short coming that could have come from Adam Smith:

If an entrepreneur had crafted Obamacare he would’ve gone to a middle class family. A family of four make $54,000 a year has to pay $400 in premiums net of subsidy and for that the standard silver plan has an average deductible around $2,500 and a narrow network. They’re going to pay almost $5,000 for that?

So the entrepreneur would say I’ve got $5,000 in premium and all this deductible, what do they want for that? And they probably would’ve said we want office visits and lab tests because the kids need to go in occasionally and then we want catastrophic care. The problem with Obamacare is it’s product driven and not market driven. They didn’t ask the customer what they wanted. And I think that’s the fundamental problem with Obamacare. It meets the needs of very poor people because you’re giving them health insurance for free. But it doesn’t really meet the needs of healthy people and middle-class people.
Too bad more of those greedy, evil businessmen who are only out for a profit had not been involved in putting this thing together. 

The real contribution of government to economic growth: get out of the way

For Small Businesses, Small Matters - Bloomberg: McArdle chronicles the impediments to business put up by the statist alliance of officials, lawmakers and lawyers.

The Power of Press Bias

Nets give 'Bridgegate' 17 times more coverage in 1 day than IRS scandal in 6 months | WashingtonExaminer.com: Within 24 hours there is a special prosecutor and wall to wall media coverage while the systematic use of the IRS to persecute the administration's political enemies in the run up to the presidential election and it is no story. Christy has a press conference that goes hours while Obama gets a couple of questions and is later allowed to get away with passing the whole thing off as a trumped up scandal. And it is not a story.
NYC PAPERS OUT. Social media use restricted to low res file max 184 x 128 pixels and 72 dpi
The press is always indignantly denying that it is biased by pointing to its fact checking procedures, but the real power of the press is not to outright lie but to ignore.

Here is an excellent analysis of the difference in coverage the two issues have received from the press by Andrew Stiles. 

Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Government Fail: Obamacare vs. Evil Capitalist Walmart

Surprise! Walmart health plan is cheaper, offers more coverage than Obamacare | WashingtonExaminer.com: The company has been the target of criticism and been made the exemplar of an exploitative corporate employer, but it turns out that Obamacare costs between 5 and 9 times as much as the programs that all Walmart employees are eligible for and less restrictive networks.

Reducing the Size of State Government

Ten freshman governors who have shrunk their states’ bureaucracies | Conservative Intelligence Briefing: Mississippi is not on the list, but New York and California--both with Democratic governors considered liberals--are. Something to ponder.

Monday, January 06, 2014

Minimum Wage

Conservative case that increasing the minimum wage does not reduce poverty. The Liberal case that it does.

A libertarian critique of the arguments from both sides by Megan McArdle.

Raising the Minimum Wage Isn't Just Good Politics; It's Good Economics | New Republic: This is the most convincing argument I have run across for why the minimum wage does not seem to result in more unemployment in the short run.

An argument that it might even create jobs.

Conservative economist Greg Mankiw's argument against raising the minimum wage and for increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit (here is an EITC calculator for those of you who are not familiar with the anti-poverty tax credit; see if you benefit from the credit).

Wonky survey of the conservative case against the minimum wage hike.


Sunday, January 05, 2014

Lawyers and Double Standards

Another reason to hate lawyers?
Rampant Prosecutorial Misconduct - NYTimes.com: "The defendant, Kenneth Olsen, was convicted of producing ricin, a toxic poison, for use as a weapon. Federal prosecutors knew — but did not tell his lawyers or the court — that an investigation of the government’s forensic scientist, whose lab tests were critical to the case, had revealed multiple instances of sloppy work that had led to wrongful convictions in earlier cases. A state court found the scientist was “incompetent and committed gross misconduct.” 
Yet the majority of the federal appeals court panel ruled that the overall evidence of Mr. Olsen’s guilt — including websites he visited and books he bought — was so overwhelming that the failure to disclose the scientist’s firing would not have changed the outcome."
The first requirement of a legitimate authority is that it live under the same laws and meet the same standards that it applies to those under its authority. If a police officer made the same mistake there would be no mercy or no exceptions for him. The standard that lawyers apply to other lawyers is that whether they violated the rule or not is irrelevant as long as the outcome would have been the same. But when a police officer breaks a rule about gathering evidence it doesn't matter whether the evidence was true or even whether the mistake is made in good faith, the evidence and all evidence that was gathered subsequently that came to light in any degree because of the wrongly gathered evidence is thrown out as well. Regular citizens are expected to know an incomprehensible and ever changing mass of laws while prosecutors are allowed to plead innocent error.

We have traded the rule of law for the rule of lawyers.

Saturday, January 04, 2014

The coming meltdown

IMF Says: By the Way, There’s a Debt Crisis | Power Line: I see it as being a situation like the 1930s in Great Britain. There is a catastrophe looming on the horizon and the only people talking about are ostracized by polite society. The good news is that then the disaster comes the people that were warning about it and discounted as extremists will have a new credibility. The more one is castigated as a fiscal extremist today the more one will have credibility when the whole monstrous edifice of debt comes crashing down.

The Real Story of Unemployment in the US

Here’s what the GOP should propose for ending America’s jobs crisis: a number fo proposals for helping the long term unemployed with pro-market solutions are outlined. But the chart says it all: the Obama administration has made hiring workers more costly and so fewer of them are being hired, even though the unemployment rate is going down as workers become discouraged and stop looking for work altogether or find their way into disability programs.
010213employment

Interview with Obama's brother

News Distribution Network - Shared Video: The brother that Obama denied ever having met talks to Laura Ingram. The problem with Obama is not that he is a socialist but that he is kind of a creep.

Liberal War on Science: Head Start Edition

Impervious to Evidence, Liberals Ride Again: Mona Charen discusses the evidence for the effectiveness of Head Start and points out that the large-scale, randomized experiments show no significant effects surviving beyond the time the students are in the program itself and precious little effect even then. Randomized, longitudinal studies are the gold-standard for determining science--except when their results don't meet with liberal expectations. As with Genetically modified foods, opposition to nuclear power and vaccinations, liberals are the ones waging a war on science in this case.

Here is a review of the evidence on gun control in Applied Economics Letters showing that the case against gun ownership has virtually no scientific support.


Thursday, January 02, 2014

What happens when you let lawyers re-write your constitution

Chaneya Kelly on Falsely Accusing Her Father of Rape -- New York Magazine: the accuser was not allowed to withdraw her charges and the legal system, protecting its own, went on with the prosecution of an innocent man. Particularly rich: the Judges' contention that the accused was a liar when the incriminating statements that were relied on by the prosecution to convict him were elicited by wall of deliberate lies. 

Bringing Hitler back in

‘Looks Like Weimar Germany’: The Viral Photo Out of Connecticut That’s Giving Some Gun Owners Chills: On of the unfortunate side effects of the widely observed prohibition on making any analogies to Hitler and the Nazi movement is that we miss similarities to their policies and some of ours. Case in point: gun registration. Viral Photo Shows Long Line of Connecticut Residents Lining Up to Register Guns, Ammo

Big Business and Big Governments are Bosom Buddies

Industry, not environmentalists, killed traditional bulbs: When will people get it? Big government is big business's best friend. Regulations are easily implemented by big businesses but ruinous for small businesses and big businesses are always able to influence the writing of these regulations to put their competitors out of business.

The culturally insensitive Chinese


China may face a revolution of rising expectations | WashingtonExaminer.com:

"In 1793 the envoy Lord Macartney appeared before the Qianlong emperor in Beijing and asked for British trading rights in China. “Our ways have no resemblance to yours, and even were your envoy competent to acquire some rudiments of them, he could not transport them to your barbarous land,” the long-reigning (1736-96) emperor replied in a letter to King George III.

 “We possess all things,” he went on. “I set no value on strange objects and have no use for your country’s manufactures.”

Well, ethnocentrism was not a Western invention. Many of the standards used to condemn the West would, if applied to the East, yield even more damning verdicts.


This is worth keeping in mind in the coming years as the Chinese become more aggressive and confrontational. In many quarters the first reaction to Chinese provocations will be to point out the crimes and failings of the West in the colonial era. But this ignores that the Chinese were every bit as much an imperial power as were the nations of the West, and that the immediate victims of contemporary Chinese revanchism are themselves non-Western countries.