What Would Jefferson Do?

Hitchens on the London bombings

2005-07-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens has a beautiful column today in the Mirror on the London bombings yesterday.

Here, IMO, is the paragraph (and a half) which those unwilling to fight against Islamofascists in Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever else they may be found or travel to need to come to grips with:

"We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way."

Elections are not idiot-proof

2005-05-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

PowerLine has the story on a truly bizarre Congressional Black Caucus press release. Apparently the CBC thinks that because filibusters had to be broken in order to pass civil rights legislation, it would be especially offensive to minorities to not allow judges to be filibustered.
I guess that's what happens when you're pleased to have people like Sheila Jackson Lee as members of your group.

Why I write

2005-05-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel that I have something to add to a conversation going on on the Web. Then I may write (or I may not, depending on my time constraints). Sometimes (well, most of the time) I feel that others are already saying what I would say. Then hopefully I don't write. I still might, but if all I'll be saying is "Me too", I'm not contributing anything unless few are likely to view the original post.

To Jim Lampley and Other Clairvoyants

2005-05-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

Sports announcer Jim Lampley is a perfect example of how the Huffington Post celebrates celebrity. Arianna herself promotes his latest commentary on the front page of the site.

Unfortunatley for Lampley, he proves himself the Black Knight of political discourse.

It's almost too easy, but here's a Fisking of his latest.

Byron York has treated me fairly and without rancor, and I am grateful for that. Certainly I am more in his wheelhouse than mine, and I'm honored that he saw fit to engage me in this little set-to we've conducted since Monday. I fired a lead right, Rep. John Conyers Oh, you mean the LaRouchie Congressman. shouted encouragement from my corner, then York delivered a hook to the body. I shot back an uppercut, then he loaded up a right hand and attempted to bring an end to the discussion. Why the boxing analogies? Do you think they will convince people you're winning? Because Democrat pollster Mark Blumenthal thinks you've been swinging and missing.

Byron York's most recent refutation of my charge that irregularities in the 2004 Presidential election demand criminal investigation cites quotes from the report of Edison/Mitofsky, the two-company partnership which provided exit polls to the major television networks, on the vast discrepancies between those polls and the official results of the election. The report, which Mr. York has helpfully highlighted in his second post and which runs to about eighty pages, essentially offered the conclusion that an five-and-a-half point gap between final poll numbers and the national popular vote tabulation-- a variance more than four times the statistical margin for error of 1.3%-- can be attributed to shy Republicans. There are dozens of conclusions throughout the Edison/Mitofsky report, including this one on page 39: "Some have suggested that the exit poll data could be used as evidence of voter fraud in the 2004 Election by showing error rates were higher in precincts with touch screen and optical scan voting equipment. Our evaluation does not support this hypothesis." There were factors that were found to have definitely contributed to the errors, including a significant difference in the average error per precinct based on the age of the interviewer! Other factors that had marked impacts included how far from the exit the pollster stood and if there was bad weather. The Washington Post summarized the conclusion: "procedural problems compounded by the refusal of large numbers of Republican voters to be surveyed led to inflated estimates of support for John Kerry." Perhaps focusing on what York actually said or on the source materials he cited rather than how a newspaper article chose to summarize a source would be a better form of argument. With this, in effect, York dismisses the exit poll variance argument.With an 80-page detailed report showing how the errors have no correlation with the voting systems accused of being centers of fraud and showing that errors in some noncompetitive states were greater than in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, how dare York dismiss this argument. After all, the noted social scientist Jim Lampley has spoken!

I could go on at length here about the curious disconnect between the actual data in the report and its guesswork conclusion, how Edison/Mitofsky systematically validate all their sampling choices and their methodology, in effect eliminating any logical underpinnings for their ultimate summation, all the while selectively ignoring the lopsided skewing of pro-Bush discrepancies in the most critical swing states. Please, why don't you? Could it be that Edison and Mitofsky engage in detailed logical statistical analysis that you cannot begin to attempt to rebut except by smearing them under the guise of saying what you won't do? I could spend some time dissecting what I believe is an obvious whitewash, a delicate sidestep away from the potential public relations disaster of being tied forever to the most notorious election theft in history. I'm sorry. Dissecting it would require facts and logical analysis, not namecalling. Perhaps if you had proven yourself able to dissect anything mathematical, you might have some credibility here.

But none of that is necessary, because the entire Edison/Mitofsky report is irrelevant to the argument, given that it is based on the assumption the final official vote tally is accurate. No, it's not. There are systematically greater error rates associated with characteristics such as the age of the interviewer. This FACT is inconsistent with the hypothesis of fraud. To argue that there was less fraud going on in precincts with older interviewers is downright silly. It's part of the scientific method that if the facts do not fit a hypothesis, it's time to discard the hypothesis. You are not supposed to disregard the facts. Make no mistake: my argument is that the final official vote tally is anything but accurate, that it is the product of massive vote fraud carried out through the programing of Diebold voting machines and various other machinations aimed at suppressing, destroying or losing Kerry votes. Do you actually understand what you are saying? Among the things you're saying is that "suppressed" Kerry votes - meaning people who DID NOT show up to vote - were still counted in the exit polls. My argument is that what were accurate were the exit polls. Your argument has been debunked by professionals, including Democrat partisans. As one Ivy League research methodologist has noted, "Apparently the pollsters at Mitofsky and Edison have found it more expedient to provide an explanation unsupported by theory, data or precedent than to impugn the machinery of American democracy." So because one unnamed "research methodologist" at an unnamed "Ivy League" school says it, it must be true. Never mind that their explanation is based in detail on the actual data, that there is precedent, because there have been significant errors in the past, especially in the 1992 election, which was not conducted using computerized vote-counting equipment, and that the explanation is itself a theory. Surely you must be able to hire researchers who could do a better job for you than this.

Various statisticians have reported that the odds on the occurrence of variances from exit polls to actual results such as were produced in this election range up to 959 000 to 1. That assumes that the samples were random. Now ask the statisticians what they have to say about differential error rates based on the age or education of the interviewer. Sounds like DNA. You obviously don't know much about DNA either. DNA testing doesn't have to worry about differential response rates or interviewer bias. As US Count Votes notes in a statistical abstract, "No matter how one calculates it, the discrepancy cannot be attributed to chance." Who has attributed anything to chance?

So let me put it in Foxspeak. Let me put it in Lampley-speak. Lampley takes a right to the jaw from the facts. He goes down. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. It's over. The winner by a knockout: the facts. If all the circumstantial evidence related to potential vote fraud in this election were gathered up into one big file for the Scott Peterson jury, they'd convict. If all the "evidence" you have were gathered together, no prosecutor would file charges. You've worked around boxing for decades. You should have a long experience with counting things that are rigged. Of courese, we've never heard you say that a fight was fixed. Instead of seeing it where it does occur and you have some clue of what you speak, you're fighting phantoms. The jury that might look at all this and acquit? O.J. Simpson. What does your friend and ally, Mr. Conyers, say about this comparison? Politics make strange bedfellows. Really? Who is in bed with you again? We have John Conyers and the Lyndon LaRouche movement. We also have Keith Olbermann and half the posters on Daily Kos, democratic Underground, and a couple other blogs. Who am I missing? Oh yes. Political professionals, polling experts, and serious commentators, even on the left.

Who is Joseph Bataillon

2005-05-12T18:25:00.000-07:00

For starters, he is the judge who struck down Nebraska's constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage or marriage-like arrangements from being recognized on a variety of federal constitutional grounds today. Plenty of other people have already started blogging about the decision, and I will simply state that I concur with Eugene Volokh's arguments.

I have not, however, yet seen anything blogged about Judge Bataillon's history.

He was nominated and confirmed by President Clinton in 1997 (on a unanimous vote). His legal career, according to the Federal Judicial Center, consisted of being a deputy public defender in Douglas County, NE, from 1974 to 1980 and in private practice in Omaha, NE from 1980 to 1997. He received his B.A. in 1971 and his J.D. in 1974, both from Creighton.

During the brief Senate floor discussion of his confirmation, Senator Bob Kerrey said that Bataillon had served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. Why that would not be mentioned in Bataillon's official biography is unexplained.

Bataillon has had a few notable cases previous to this case.

He gained some measure of infamy for issuing a midnight restraining order against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a case where he sided with a meatpacking plant that was going to be shut down for repeated food safety violations, including fecal contamination.

He left one prominent criminal law blogger gobsmacked with an opinion last year on a sentencing issue where he stated that stare decisis bound him to NOT follow an opinion of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits above him, that had not yet become final.

He declared the electric chair to be an unconstitutional method of execution in dicta while vacating a death sentence because eligibility for that sentence was decided by a judge, rather than a jury (holding that the U.S. Supreme Court's Ring v. Arizona decision was retroactive). The Supreme Court later ruled that Ring was not retroactive.

He was also one of two judges (and the other was an Iowan) speaking along with Senator John Edwards at the kickoff event for the Iowa chapter of the American Constitution Society.

In short, there is a strong case to be made that Judge Bataillon is a liberal activist on the bench.

Right now, with filibusters about to be launched on several Bush nominees for the Court of Appeal, this decision shows the American public in a very graphic way the importance of who is nominated and confirmed for the federal courts. The "extremist" charges from Senators Leahy, Schumer, Reid, Boxer, et al. may be about to be turned back on them in a pronounced way - after all, this is the sort of ruling that "non-extremist" judges render.

Harry Reid: Attack Dachshund

2005-05-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

Sean Rushton of National Review Online's new feature Bench Memos catches Harry Reid engaging in character assassination of Henry Saad, nominated to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bush.

Reid said:

ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS HAVE A MEMBER GO UPSTAIRS AND LOOK AT HIS CONFIDENTIAL REPORT FROM THE F.B.I., AND I THINK WE WOULD ALL AGREE THERE IS A PROBLEM THERE.

Well now. I think I recall someone else engaging in that sort of character assassination in 1978 (or maybe it was 1962, depending on whether you use our date or theirs).

"And most recently of all, a "Roman Toga Party" was held from which we have received more than two dozen reports of individual acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here."

"Doug Niedermeyer", in Animal House (quotation not from memory but from
IMDB).

44 Democrat Senators (plus Jeffords), and this is the best they could do?

CBS: The C stands for Complete

2005-05-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks go out to Ramesh Ponnuru for talking to the Hon. Ken Starr and finding out just how badly CBS distorted his comments to make him seem opposed to changing the Senate rules to end judicial filibusters. Here's the story.

The New York Times: Making you long for the days of Jayson Blair

2005-05-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times carries this op-ed by University of Surrey (London) clinical psychologist Belinda Board. It's eminently Fiskable.

[Why the Times chose to cross the Atlantic to find someone to write such tripe is worth of separate inquiry.]

The Tipping Point

By BELINDA BOARD
Published: May 11, 2005
London

JOHN BOLTON, President Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, has been described as dogmatic, abusive to his subordinates and a bully. These are descriptions given by opponents. Supporters have given vastly different descriptions. Yet Mr. Bush has said that John Bolton is the right man at the right time. Can these seemingly contradictory statements both be accurate? Yes. The reality is that sometimes the characteristics that make someone successful in business or government can render them unpleasant personally. Did we need an expert to tell us this? What's more astonishing is that those characteristics when exaggerated are the same ones often found in criminals. Perhaps it would be better if your results actually supported your thesis. This will be shown below.

There has been anecdotal and case-study evidence suggesting that successful business executives share personality characteristics with psychopaths. The question is, are the characteristics that make up personality disorders fundamentally different from the characteristics of extreme personalities we see in everyday life, or do they differ only in degree? That would depend on who you see in everyday life, now wouldn't it? And what makes someone's personality extreme?

In 2001, I compared the personality traits of 39 high-ranking business executives in Britain with psychiatric patients and criminals with a history of mental health problems. The business managers completed a standard clinical personality-disorder diagnostic questionnaire and then were interviewed. The information on personality disorders among criminals and psychiatric patients had been gathered by local clinics.

Our sample was small, but the results were definitive. If personality and its pathology are distinct from each other, we should have found different levels of personality disorders in these diverse populations. We didn't. Actually, you did. The character disorders of the business managers blended together with those of the criminals and mental patients.

In fact, the business population was as likely as the prison and psychiatric populations to demonstrate the traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder: grandiosity, lack of empathy, exploitativeness and independence. Narcissistic personality disorder? No. This is a fabricated disorder by a pseudoscience. It's a name given to "medicalize" and assert a right and duty to treat egotism. Grandiosity, exploitativeness, and independence are basic traits of leadership. They do not combine to form a disorder. It causes no adverse effect on a person to seek to promote himself. They were also as likely to have traits associated with compulsive personality disorder: stubbornness, dictatorial tendencies, perfectionism and an excessive devotion to work. Another fake disorder rears its ugly head here. Compulsive personality disorder is not the same as the real disorder obsessive-compulsive personality disorder ("OCD"). How can one be a boss without a significant degree of these traits? Even the one trait that tries to qualify itself as inherently abnormal ("excessive devotion to work") is a purely subjective determination being made by members of a group (clinical psychologists) which is not noted for its long work hours or its subjection to competitive pressures. If your labor is physically taxing, working longer hours may be bad for you, but in the white collar world, many of us have external deadlines and quantities of work such that simply working 9 to 5 Monday-Friday will not get the job done. People choose fields like clinical psychology, where you don't direct the work of others, and where your hours are standardized and often short, in part because their personality characteristics lead them to find such conditions more desirable. That's fine; but converting their traits into normalcy and criticizing as disordered those whose traits are different is an abuse of their prestige.

But there were some significant differences.

The executives were significantly more likely to demonstrate characteristics associated with histrionic personality disorder, like superficial charm, insincerity, egocentricity and manipulativeness. More silly "disorders" are upon us. I should well hope that your average business executive is a lot more superficially charming than your average criminal or psychiatric patient.

They were also significantly less likely to demonstrate physical aggression, irresponsibility with work and finances, lack of remorse and impulsiveness. Facts, they are a funny thing. Here's a little hint for clinical psychologists anywhere: physical violence is the best predictor of criminality. You see, the traits that real people, who haven't had their brains turned to mush by academic theories trying to name a disorder for every personality, regard as actually being dangerous or disordering are found significantly more often among criminals and psychiatric patients. Even if you grant that narcissistic, compulsive, or histrionic personality disorders are real, people do not end up in prison for them. On the contrary, people end up in prison for physical aggression and serious irresponsibility with finances (usually coupled with impulsiveness and a lack of remorse). It's not egotism or stubbornness that makes a man shoot his wife.

What does this tell us? It tells us very little that common sense would not have told us. It tells us that the characteristics we would imagine to be present frequently in mental patients and criminals as compared to the general population are in fact, significantly more frequent among those groups. It tells us that if reports of Mr. Bolton's behavior are accurate then both his supporters and critics could be right. Not only is the entire conclusion qualified by an "if", it's something so stultifyingly obvious that we needed a British expert to tell us so. It also tells us that characteristics of personality disorders can be found throughout society and are not just concentrated in psychiatric or prison hospitals. Wrong. It tells you that the characteristics associated with serious real personality disorders are concentrated in psychiatric and prison hospitals. Each characteristic by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. Oh good. For a moment I thought independence was considered a bad thing.

Take a basic characteristic like influence and it's an asset in business. What would we do without experts to tell us this? Add to that a smattering of egocentricity, a soupçon of grandiosity, a smidgen of manipulativeness and lack of empathy, and you have someone who can climb the corporate ladder and stay on the right side of the law, but still be a horror to work with. What if we add a spoonful of sugar? Add a bit more of those characteristics plus lack of remorse and physical aggression, and you have someone who ends up behind bars. Forget the other characteristics. Have physical aggression and lack of remorse, and you have someone who ends up behind bars.

As we all know, public figures can exhibit extreme characteristics. Often it is these characteristics that have propelled them to prominence, yet these same behaviors can cause untold human wreckage. Untold human wreckage? Some people are claiming that John Bolton hurt their feelings and made them upset. Pol Pot caused untold human wreckage. Hitler, Stalin, Mao - they caused untold human wreckage. For shame. What's important is the degree to which a person has each ingredient or characteristic and in what configuration. Uh, no. We can do without the physical aggression, irresponsibility toward work or finances, impulsiveness, or lack of remorse. Everything else mentioned is just fine for a policymaker. Congress will try to decide whether Mr. Bolton has the right combination. Senator Kennedy, do you have any opinion on Mr. Bolton's psychiatric fitness?

[edited to acknowledge a hat tip to Rich Lowry of NRO]

Torquemada would have been proud

2005-05-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt may be the cruelest man alive.

Who would want to live like this?

2005-04-08T19:43:00.000-07:00

That has to be one of the most inane questions ever asked, because the question is asked as if the person's choices were living normally or living in some impaired state, when in fact the questioner is not acknowledging that the choices involved are living in some impaired state and dying.

But it is the rationale of Beth Gaddy, who has been given guardianship power by Troup County, Georgia, Probate Judge Donald Boyd [Probate Judge is an elected position in Georgia, and does not require the person to have a law degree. According to several reports, Judge Boyd does not have a law degree.] over her grandmother, Mae Magouirk.

Here's the short verion of the situation: Mae Magouirk, who is 85, was admitted to the hospital for an aortic dissection. She has a living will, which provided that food and water were only to be withdrawn if she is comatose or vegetative. She is neither. Her designated agents for health care decisions are her siblings, who are still living. Her granddaughter (and beneficiary under her will), Beth Gaddy, went to the hospital with a financial power of attorney, and convinced the hospital that it was a durable power of attorney for health care and to transfer Mae to an affiliated hospice. Once at the hospice, Mae was denied food (through a nasogastric tube) or water from March 28. Her siblings and nephew found out about this and contacted the hospice, which began administering water but told them they would need to come to the hospice to sign an order to insert the NG tube. While they were at the hospice on April 1, Beth went to the probate court and obtained an emergency order for guardianship, and within a few hours water was withdrawn (food had not yet been given). On April 4, a hearing on permanent guardianship was held, and the judge apparently ordered that permanent guardianship be given to Beth but that Mae be given whatever treatment would be ordered by a chosen panel of 3 doctors. Those doctors have met, but have not yet announced a treatment plan. It's now April 8.

This story was originally broken by Blogs for Terri and Father Rob Johansen's blog Thrown Back, but has since been picked up by NRO's The Corner (Katherine Lopez), by Instapundit, by Megan McArdle's blog Asymmetrical Information, by Straight Up with Sherri, and others. [World Net Daily has a lengthy story on it, but as long as they are going to give featured column space to wack jobs like Devvy Kidd, I'm not going to give them a link.] The first newspaper column on the case appears to be from the local paper, the LaGrange News.

Sean Hannity has indicted he is having his people investigate the story.

More to follow.

My other blog

2005-04-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

I'm a diehard Dodgers fan, but I've started a blog to promote Houston Astros star Craig Biggio for the Hall of Fame. Check it out if you're a baseball fan . . . please.

O Canada

2005-04-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters has the scoop on secret testimony in a scandal that could (and should) bring down Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien's government. In short, this witness's testimony establishes that Canada's ruling Liberal Party doled out about $100 million CDN of government expenditures to a few advertising firms who did not really work for the money, but kicked large sums of it back to help the Liberal Party campaigns (paying invoices, paying staff, etc.).

Canada has criminalized publication or distribution of this material, but Canadian bloggers have suggested that American bloggers distribute it far and wide. That sounds good to me.

I'm in Instapundit mode

2005-01-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

Tony Blankley takes Seymour Hirsh to task.

Who will replace Danforth?

2005-01-20T14:17:00.000-08:00

Today marks the end of John Danforth's tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. This speech shows why Michael Novak should replace him.

And the winner is . . . more or less

2005-01-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

Sound Politics is the best source for news and commentary on the Washington gubernatorial election fiasco.

A new election clearly appears warranted, as the results of the first one are not trustworthy. The fact that 348 provisional ballots were permitted to be counted as votes at polling places in King County without the eligibility of the voter being first determined is itself ground to find that there is an unacceptably low confidence level in the election result. Add in the highly questionable decisions by canvassing boards (with the poster child being a ballot with a writein for Christine Rossi that was counted as a Christine Gregoire vote), and the shenanigans from the appearing and disappearing ballots in King County (plus the approximately 1800 more ballots counted that voters known in that county), and it should be a simple decision for a court.

A new election is also warranted in the North Carolina race for State Agriculture Commissioner where 4438 votes were lost in Carteret County (because no paper record was kept and the machine stopped recording data input due to its memory being full) and the margin was approximately half that many votes. A court has thrown out the state election board's plan, but that plan made little sense - it would have established a revote for the people whose ballots were lost AND for the residents of that county who didn't vote the first time. A new statewide election is the proper remedy. Carteret County happens to be a GOP stronghold, and the GOP nominee was unseating the incumbent Democrat without those votes, but the expectation that people would have voted a certain way, based upon the votes of others, is inimical to a democratic system.

Send the Marines

2005-01-13T01:35:00.000-08:00

National Review's John Derbyshire misses an essential difference between the Congo and Thailand/Indonesia/Sri Lanka/India in his argument.

For all these differences, however, and with all proper respect to those who have selflessly given to the suffering people in south Asia, Orwell's remark is not quite truth-free. There is, for example, a capricious quality to rich-world charity. Our charitable impulses are mediated by, well, our media. We see an orphaned child or a weeping mother on our TV screen, and are moved to pity. Nothing the least bit wrong with that; but the world is full of orphaned children and weeping mothers who never make it to the nightly news. Here is a country that for five years has endured a horrible civil war, with fatalities guessed at three million. Must be lots of orphans and bereaved mothers there. Did you send any money to relieve their distress? No, neither did I.

There is nothing capricious about it. Sending money to help people in south Asia means donating it to a charity which is engaged in reconstruction efforts and/or distribution of food, medicines, etc. in countries where a natural disaster befell people, and where the government is welcoming assistance. Sending money to help starving people in the Congo, on the other hand, means trying to find someone who can brave the middle of a civil war (although at a much lower intensity currently than a few years ago) to deliver aid without being robbed or killed by either rebels or government-allied forces. The latter is a fool's errand, because we can expect that aid intended for the Congo will not actually do any good. Those people need armed troops to "convince" combatants to stand down.

There are more suitable examples of how the media chooses tragedies for our assistance - endemic serious diseases in countries such as Bangladesh are remediable by sending aid, but are almost ignored in the media. I still do not believe that the difference is capricious. A catastrophic event is far more newsworthy than a prolonged condition, simply because the former is changing markedly.

Pixar

2004-12-23T14:19:00.000-08:00

Pixar does incredible technical work in moviemaking, and also has some of the best storytellers in Hollywood.

National Review Online interviewed Craig Good about Pixar. Read it.

San Francisco, the Un-American City

2004-12-16T16:04:00.000-08:00

Five members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have signed a petition to put a complete ban on handgun possession in the city (with exceptions only for law enforcement, the military, and security personnel) on the next ballot. This apparently is sufficient by itself to qualify the measure for the ballot. The Contra Costa Times covers the story.

Well, since San Francisco doesn't seem to care about state preemption law or the Constitution, it seems that San Francisco has proven itself incapable of rational self-government. [Even if you think that a municipality has the right, consistent with the Second Amendment, to prohibit ownership and possession of handguns, the proponents don't seem to like the Fourth and Fifth Amendment much either. "The hope is twofold, that officers will have an opportunity to interact with folks and if they have a handgun, that will be reason enough to confiscate it," said an aide for one of the Supervisors.]

It's time for the Calfiornia legislature to recognize that the experiment with the City and County of San Francisco has failed, and to decharter it as both a city and a county, and fold it in as an unincorporated area of another county.

[edited for typo]

Bill Lockyer, gross polluter

2004-12-16T15:53:00.000-08:00

Today's San Francisco Chronicle has an op-ed by Attorney General Bill Lockyer defending California's bizarre law to regulate fuel efficiency by curbing the carbon dioxide that can be emitted by motor vehicles. Carbon dioxide, of course, is one of the two desired products of combustion of hydrocarbons (along with water). There are three ways to produce less carbon dioxide while driving - use less fuel per mile driven, use a non-hydrocarbon energy source, or produce more of other pollutants (like carbon monoxide and nitric oxide) because combusition is less complete. The third choice is highly undesirable, so the other two ways are to force cars to have greater fuel economy or to become hybrids or electric cars. Lockyer, as it states in the byline of the article, drives a hybrid, and apparently wishes to force the rest of us to join him.

Lockyer calls carbon dioxide emissions "environmental pollution". He fails to mention that he himself is an ongoing and unpermitted carbon dioxide emitter, whose emissions have increased severalfold during his lifetime.

Perhaps Bill Lockyer should be required to reduce his individual carbon dioxide emissions by 30% before cars and trucks in California are required to do the same.

MICRA is not the problem

2004-12-13T15:32:00.000-08:00

Doug Lorenz beat me to the punch on explaining what's wrong with Jamie Court's L.A. Times op-ed attacking MICRA. I'll just add one point.

MICRA caps general damages at $250,000. The two cases Court references resulted in settlements of $25,000 and $100,000. Neither settlement was limited by the cap, because neither was for even as much as half the cap.

Personally, I think both of these settlements show a poor job of legal representation, and Court should be asking why we have made it so difficult to go after the plaintiff's attorneys involved for malpractice. Of course, that would be biting the hand that feeds him.

Mark Sanford for President

2004-12-13T14:59:00.000-08:00

I've made my choice for President in 2008: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

He has not announced a run, but there is an active Draft Sanford movement going, with an online petition to register your support (and collect supporter information to be used in a campaign.

Rather than rehashing what's on the site, I'll simply mention that the American Conservative Union has called him America's best governor. Check out the rest yourself.

Moronic blather

2004-12-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

The California Republican Party and JOBS PAC (the CA Chamber of Commerce's PAC) sponsored ads against Nicole Parra and Juan Arambula (Democrat candidates for the 30th and 31st Assembly Districts, respectively) that included "fliers that criticized Arambula on issues ranging from drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants to his one-time membership on a Mexican council. The party also paid for a mailer knocking Assembly Member Nicole Parra's voting record on the immigrant drivers license issue." Fresno Bee article.

Now, a month after the election, here comes California Democrat State Senator Martha Escutia, chair of the legislature's Latino Caucus, to complain that the ads are racist and to ask Governor Schwarzenegger to disavow them.

Here's Escutia's "justification" for her position.
"Were they attacked because of their qualifications? No. Were they attacked because of their positions? Some of these members have never even taken a vote here in the state Legislature"

Earth to Escutia. You don't have to have taken a vote in the state legislature to have a position. All you have to do is to have come to a position on an issue.

The California Republican Party issued its usual weak and self-loathing response:
"Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the state Republican Party, said the fliers were intended to educate voters about Democrats' positions on immigrant issues. The party, she said, did not mean to offend anyone.
Hanretty said members of the Latino Caucus, in speaking out Tuesday against the mailers, want to advance their own political careers."

A proper response would be something on the order of:
"The candidates we targeted are whining because they didn't like having their radical and harmful views exposed to the voters. They can't defend their extremist positons, so they are screaming 'racism'. It's a false charge, made by people who know they will lose as more voters hear about where they stand, so they hope to shut us up by spurious charges. We will not be cowed."

Meanwhile, Arambula torpedoed Escutia's claims with his own comments:
"Arambula, formerly a Fresno County supervisor, said the mailers distorted his views."

Maybe Arambula is right. I don't know what his views are on these issues, nor do I know what the mailers said. I didn't pay much attention to the details of the campaign there - it's not exactly in my neighborhood. But when you complain that a mailer distorted your views, you're acknowledging that it is about issue positions.

The Dance of the Grizzly Bear

2004-12-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

"I'm all in favor of people getting justice for their crimes and all that stuff. But there are some mistakes whose consequences are so severe that further legal punishment really doesn't make any sense. For example, I think people should pay a fine if they try to feed cigars to bears at the zoo. But, if in the process the bear bites off half your face, the courts should pretty much stay out of it."
Jonah Goldberg

He's right, and this is one of the best ways to convince people to adopt libertarian policies as opposed to the nanny state. Want to ride a motorcycle without wearing a helmet? Well, if you redecorate the asphalt with your gray matter, there's not much point in punishing you, and since the risk of not wearing a helmet is precisely that sort of injury, why should we attempt to punish you for endangering yourself?

How not to be a majority

2004-12-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

Redstate has the Democrat Senate Caucus's wish list for committee spots. That's not the problem. The problem is that none of the committees have more than a 2 seat GOP majority. In the context of a 20-member committee, that gives an 11-9 breakdown, which exactly mirrors the 55% GOP makeup of the Senate. In the context of a larger committee, that means the committee is less than 55% GOP.

That is unacceptable, and endangers the GOP agenda - all it takes is one Republican on a committee like Appropriations (15-13 split) to break ranks and vote with the Democrats to kill a bill.

With the exception of Ethics (traditionally an even split), the ratios must be reset, and no committee should be less than 55% GOP in its membership.

Just when I think I've posted, they pull it back out

2004-12-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I was getting back to posting, but Blogger is not cooperating. Twice in a row, I've lost posts to busy servers and server errors. Let's see if the third time's the charm.

Just a nuisance

2004-11-28T22:06:00.000-08:00

Hat tip to Jonah Goldberg for picking up this article from The Scotsman. Thousands of Iranian people (the group claims 4000, but I take that figure with enough salt to give me hypertension) recently volunteered for training in one of the following three aeras: assassinating novelist Salman Rushdie, undertaking suicide attacks against Israelis, or undertaking suicide attacks against U.S. forces in Iran. The organization training them is unofficial, but one Iranian lawmaker and a military official were present and supportive of the efforts.

This is a death cult. There is no negotiating with people who welcome their own deaths. As long as they live and breathe, terrorists can never be "just a nuisance". Islamist fanatics see this as a clash of civilizations. If we do not, it is at our peril, because they may lie low waiting to strike again, but they do not surrender.

The metaphor that Iraq has become a magnet for terrorists is true in part, but it fails to adequately capture the result that happens to terrorists when they go to Iraq to attack U.S., Coalition, or Iraqi forces. Iraq has become a bug light for terrorists. They are attracted to it, and it kills them.

The importance of the training to assassinate Salman Rushdie cannot be overestimated. The man was a novelist, who offended Moslems by apostasy and blasphemy. He was no military threat. He offended people. That's it. The response by Islamist groups was not to condemn him, or to call for boycotts of his work. It was to organize large numbers of people to kill him. Theo Van Gogh was assassinated for much the same reason - and he was not even an apostate Moslem.

Militant Islam considers anyone who publicly disparages it to be an enemy and a target. Atomizing the "War on Terror" to be about specific individuals or organizations misses the nature of the fight.

a dash of red

2004-11-14T09:42:00.000-08:00

The Galvin Opinion breaks the news that President Bush did significantly better in New York City and its suburbs in 2004 than he did in 2000.

Bush won Staten Island by 15 points, after losing it by 7 points in 2000. He narrowed the gap in Nassau from 19 points to 6 points, and in Suffolk from 11 points to 0.3 points.

Kerry received 100 thousand fewer votes in New York City and its suburbs than Gore did (even though Nader's total dropped dramatically), while Bush's total increased by over 250 thousand votes.

That is significant.

Yasser Arafat is officially dead

2004-11-13T10:21:00.000-08:00

Goodnight, street thug.

And may flights of demons speed you on your way

There's something about Specter

2004-11-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

Much of the commentary on whether Senator Arlen Specter should be blocked from the Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship (Stones Cry Out has the most detailed listing of blog posts) has involved people talking past each other, because the "dump" and "keep" sides are focusing on different issues of importance to Republicans and conservatives. Hugh Hewitt is not wrong to worry about pushing a moderate GOP Senator to leave the party or act like Zell Miller and endorse the Democrat ticket, and pretty much the entire staff of National Review is not wrong to worry about having a Judiciary chairman who is trying to water down the judicial nominations.

I think the White House seems to have the right idea from their lack of activity - they want Specter to agree to be a team player before the chairmanship is given to him. The comparison to the House passing over other members to hand the Appropriations chairmanship to Bob Livingston is not terribly helpful here, because individual Senators have a lot more power than individual House members - a Specter who feels seriously upset or any GOPers who took umbrage at his being passed over could very well slow down or stop much conservative legislation.

In my view, here is what Specter should be asked to commit to before being selected as Judiciary chair:

A commitment to stopping the practice of letting a Democrat block a nominee by refusing to "blue slip" the nominee.

A commitment to reform of the "hold" practice, including the abolition of anonymous holds.

A commitment to hold prompt hearings and votes on all nominees.

A commitment to oppose filibusters on the floor on any Bush judicial nominee.

A commitment to support filibuster reform, at least for nominations.

A commitment to support hearings on particular legislation if such is requested by a majority of the Senate GOP caucus.

I believe Senator Specter has sufficient honor that he would stand by his commitments.

Here's what's important about each commitment - it relates to process, rather than to substantive votes, and thus does not implicate individual conscience or belief. I don't want to create any litmus test on votes - sometimes the majority of the caucus can be wrong [coughcoughprescriptiondrugplancoughcough], but I do believe party discipline should extend to matters of organzation and rules.

Call you later

2004-11-04T09:47:00.000-08:00

For the second straight election, states that went for Bush by double digit margins often took around an hour to be called by the networks for him, while states that went Democrat by the same or smaller margins were being called right away. One egregious pair of examples is New Jersey and South Carolina this election. New Jersey voted Kerry by 7 points. It was called for him right away by the networks. South Carolina went for Bush by 17 points. It was not called for him for at least a half hour on either CNN (website) or FOX (TV). That just doesn't square with accurate projections. In the case of East Coast states, this would appear to be a deliberate attept to avoid discouraging Democrats and to discourage Republicans.

Hat tip to PowerLine for not only catching this issue, but bringing in non-GOP evidence supporting the bias theory.

The delay in calling states for Bush to put him over 270 has a separate dynamic at work - ratings. Once all the polls are closed, there is nothing left the networks could do affecting voting, but once the election is called, people turn off the news and go to bed.

About impeachment

2004-11-01T23:36:00.000-08:00

Federal judges hold office during periods of "good behavior". Congress gets to determine what is "good behavior". It need not be limited to high crimes or misdemeanors, unlike impeachment of other federal officials. Considering the utter absence of any other sure remedy for a judge willing to decide cases which he should be disqualified from hearing (although an appellate court could issue an order disqualifying him in advance from certain matters, which was done as to Judge Andrew Hauk (Central District of California) in police brutality cases), impeachment is appropriate for a judge willing to disregard ethical rules in such a fashion.

This is a law review article in the making. It's almost midnight on the night before election day. I'll have to have more later.

Political Brief on Piersol's ethics

2004-11-01T23:28:00.000-08:00

Piersol made public statements supportive of Daschle less than a week ago.

Impeach Judge Piersol

2004-11-01T23:21:00.000-08:00

Judge Lawrence Piersol (U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota) was recommended for the federal bench by Tom Daschle. Judge Piersol is now (as in right this minute) hearing a case brought by Tom Daschle seeking to bar Republican poll-watchers for the election. Based on that, you might question Judge Piersol's impartiality. Of course, Tom Daschle has served in Congress for 26 years, the last 18 in the Senate, so he may have had a say in every judge sitting on the bench in South Dakota. But that's not the half of it. Judge Piersol represented Tom Daschle during the litigation over Daschle's first election to the House. That's right. Tom Daschle got his own prior lawyer to act as judge in a case he filed.

This is a gross violation of Canon 3.C. of the Canons of Judicial Conduct

There are five specific prohibitions stated in that Canon (subdivisions 1(a) through 1(e)), none of which contains this sort of activity, but the Canon ("A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned") is broader than that. The Canon does explicitly provide for a waiver of disqualification in any circumstances other than the specific subdivisions, but that requires that the judge disclose on the record the basis for disqualification and all parties consent in writing or on the record to the judge remaining on the case.

Without such disclosure and consent, which does not appear from any articles I have seen about the case, the judge's behavior is grossly improper.

Here's a detailed review of the proceedings.

The gay marriage phone calls

2004-11-01T22:42:00.000-08:00

The outcry about phone calls telling voters that John Kerry supports gay marriage may be overblown - based on John Kerry's own published statements.

Here's the text of the phone calls (obtained from the AP, and published on numerous websites)

When you vote this Tuesday remember to legalize gay marriage by supporting John Kerry. We need John Kerry in order to make gay marriage legal for our city. Gay marriage is a right we all want. It's a basic Democrat principle. It's time to move forward and be progressive. Without John Kerry, George Bush will stop gay marriage. That's why we need Kerry. So Tuesday, stand up for gay marriage by supporting John Kerry.

Conservative and libertarian bloggers have been condemning this phone message
Jim Lindgren has the following to say about it.

This sort of thing is reprehensible. While Kerry might want to make gay marriage legal if he thought he could (I would favor such a move myself), Kerry is crystal clear that he opposes it.

Many others have similar comments, but I'm not about to collect them here.

However, here is what John Kerry told the gay magazine The Advocate back in 1996:

Echoing the ignorance and bigotry that peppered the discussion of interracial marriage a generation ago, the proponents of DOMA call for a caste system for marriage. I will not be party to that. As Martin Luther King Jr. explained 30 years ago, "Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married." This is the essence of the American pursuit of happiness and the core of the struggle for equality.

National Review's Kathryn Lopez broke this story last month. Her article has several money quotes, but here's the one I consider most appropriate at this time.

One does wonder how a candidate who thinks gay marriage is the "essence of the American pursuit of happiness and the core of the struggle for equality" can really be against it.

Kerry thinks DOMA is unconstitutional. Presumably he would appoint federal judges who feel the same way. The effect of a ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional, since Massachusetts has now legalized same-sex marriage, would be to force other states to recognize Massachusetts same-sex marriages, So tell me again what is so inaccurate about claiming that electing John Kerry will "make gay marriage legal for [y]our city"?

UPDATE: Kathryn Lopez's article was actually from August 11, 2004, not October as I stated in the post originally.

More election predictions

2004-11-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

CA State Senate (competitive races only)
SD 5: Machado by 3%
SD 15: Maldonado by 17%
SD 27: Lowenthal by 16%
SD 39: Kehoe by 10%

No change in the State Senate

CA State Assembly (competitive races only)
AD 15: Houston by 9%
AD 17: Matthews by 6%
AD 21: Ruskin by 4%
AD 24: Cohn by 10%
AD 30: Gardner by 3%
AD 31: Arambula by 9%
AD 35: Nava by 11%
AD 44: Liu by 10%
AD 53: Gordon by 6%
AD 54: Kuykendall by 2.5%
AD 61: McLeod by 5%
AD 76: Saldana by 10%
AD 78: Horton by 4%
AD 80: Garcia by 5%

Republicans pick up 2 in the Assembly, leaving it with a 46-34 Democrat edge.

CA Propositions:

1A: PASS, with 64% in favor
59: PASS, with over 85% in favor
60: PASS, with 60% in favor
60A: PASS, with 71% in favor
61: PASS, with 54% in favor
62: PASS, with 55% in favor (but does not go into effect, because Prop. 60 gets more votes)
63: PASS, with 53% in favor
64: FAIL, with 59% opposed
65: PASS, with 53% in favor (but does not go into effect, because Prop. 1A gets more votes)
66: FAIL, with 58% opposed
67: FAIL, with 60% opposed
68: FAIL, with more than 80% opposed
69: PASS, with 66% in favor
70: FAIL, with more than 65% opposed
71: PASS, with 59% in favor
72: FAIL, with 58% opposed

Election predictions

2004-11-01T20:38:00.000-08:00

An overabundance of work has caused me not to blog for a while, but here goes with my election predictions:

President:

Bush 50, Kerry 48, Nader 1, others 1

Bush wins all Bush 2000 states except NH (Kerry by 3) and picks up IA (by 3), NM (by 5), and WI (by 2) from Gore 2000 states.

Closest electoral vote contests are ME 2nd dist - Kerry by about 400 votes, MN - Kerry by 1%, and MI (Kerry by 2%) and OH (Bush by 2%).

Bush 295 (and 1 EV for some other Republican cast by a WV elector), Kerry 242

Competitive Senate races:

AK: Murkowski by 3% (don't forget that Alaskans will know with several hours left to vote that there will be a continued GOP Senate, and they're not about to opt for a freshman member of the minority party)
CA: Boxer by 10%
CO: Coors by 1.5% (Bush's GOTV operation is stronger than it has been given credit for here, and Bill Owens wants this one badly for his 2008 run)
FL: Castor by 1% (Martinez underperforms Bush dramatically in Foley's and Shaw's districts)
GA: Isakson by about 20%
(mentioned mainly because it's a party change)
IL: Obama in a walkaway (not competitive, but it's a party change)
KY: Bunning by 6%
LA: Vitter leads going into runoff with 45% (against John, with 24%), but loses it by 1% or less
MO: Bond by 13%
NC: Burr by 4%
OK: Coburn by 8%
PA: Specter by 9% (with another 9% going to Clymer)
SC: DeMint by 11%
SD: Thune by 1.8%
WA: Murray by 6%
WI: Feingold by 9%

Governor:
All incumbents win reelection.
Benson (by 7%) is the only one with a close (under 10%) race.
IN: Daniels by 6%
MO: Blunt by 6%
MT: Brown by 2% (polling MT is very hard)
WA: Gregoire by 5%
Huntsman wins UT by about 20%, and Manchin wins WV by a larger amount

Seriously contested House races (all open seats not mentioned are safe for the incumbent party):
AL-03: Rogers (by 12%)
AK: none
AZ-01: Renzi (by 14%)
AR-02: Snyder (by 15%)
CA-20: Costa (by 4%)
CA-39: Sanchez (by 12%)
CA-47: Sanchez (by 15%)
CO-03: Walcher (by 4%)
CO-04: Musgrave (by 15%)
CO-07: Beauprez (by 7%)
CT-02: Simmons (by 11%)
DE: none
FL: none (everything contested has a 20% margin or more)
GA-03: Marshall (by 16%)
GA-11: Gingrey (by 14%)
GA-12: Barrow (by 2%) (Burns puts up a good fight, but this seat was drawn to be Democrat)
HI: none
ID: none
IL-08: Crane (by 6%)
IL-11: Weller (by 16%)
IL-17: Evans (by 20%)
IN-02: Chocola (by 14%)
IN-03: Souder (it's a blowout)
IN-07: Carson (by 10%)
IN-08: Hostettler (by 7%)
IN-09: Hill (by 9%)
IA-03: Boswell (by 8%)
KS-03: Moore (by 3%)
KY-03: Northrup (by 9%)
KY-04: Davis (by 5%)
LA-01: Jindal gets 54% for an outright win
LA-03: Tauzin (33%)/Romero (25%) runoff, which Tauzin wins by 10%
LA-05: Alexander wins outright with 59%
LA-07: Mount (29%)/Boustany (25%) runoff, which Boustany wins by 3%
ME: none
MD: none
MA: none
MI: none
MN-02: Kline (by 11%)
MN-06: Kennedy (by 13%)
MS: none
MO-03: Carnahan (by 13%)
MO-05: Cleaver (by 9%)
MT: none
NE: Fortenberry (by 13%)
NV-03: Porter (by 15%)
NH: none
NJ-05: Garrett (by 14%)
NJ-07: Ferguson (by 10%)
NM-01: Wilson (by 8%)
NY-02: Israel (by 10%)
NY-27: Higgins (by 5%)
NY-29: Kuhl (by 7%)
NC-07: Hayes (by 11%)
NC-11: Taylor (by 9%)
ND-AL: Pomeroy (by 12%)
OH: none
OK: none
OR-01: Wu (by 8%)
OR-05: Hooley (by 10%)
PA-04: Hart (by 8%)
PA-06: Gerlach (by 7%)
PA-08: Fitzpatrick (by 22% - it helps when your opponent self-destructs)
PA-13: Schwartz (by 10%)
PA-15: Dent (by 9%)
PA-17: Holden (by 13%)
RI: none
SC: none
SD-AL: Diedrich (by 1%)
TN-04: Davis (by 12%)
TX-01: Gohmert (by 16%)
TX-02: Lampson (by 3%)
TX-10: McCaul (by over 30% - it's a party change)
TX-11: Conaway (by over 20% - it's a party change)
TX-15: Hinojosa (by 9%)
TX-17: Edwards (by 4%)
TX-19: Neugebauer (by 7%)
TX-24: Marchant (by 18%)
TX-32: Sessions (by 8%)
UT-02: Matheson (by 9%)
VT: none
VA-02: Drake (by 12%)
VA-08: Moran (by 17%)
VA-09: Boucher (by 14%)
WA-02: Larsen (by 8%)
WA-03: Baird (by 10%)
WA-05: McMorris (by 11%)
WA-08: Reichert (by 4%)
WV-02: Capito (by 10%)
WI: none
WY: none

That's a net +# for the GOP in the Senate (making it 54-45-1), a net +2 for the GOP in Governorships, and a net + 5 for the GOP in the House after the December LA runoffs (making it 234-200-1). Outside of TX, where 4 Dem incumbents lose, the only open seats to change hands are the Ken Lucas, Chris John, and Jack Quinn open seats (each of which goes to the party that it favors at the Presidential level).

Call this a very status-quo election.

Goldberg on the war

2004-09-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

Jonah Goldberg defends the U.S. conduct of the war.

He's right, and this piece should be read widely.

I do quarrel with one point. He describes the Islamists as irrational. With some exceptions (possibly including Uday and Qusay), these people are rational. They simply have a value system that is highly foreign to our own, and hard for us to comprehend, since they place little value on their own lives and often welcome their own deaths in fighting.

He is still correct as to his recommendation:

There simply is no diplomacy with the enemy today. So, that means going on offense. That means taking the fight to them. That means, in the short term, "creating" more extremists and terrorists by fighting on their home turf. But the point isn't merely to fight them, it's to pull the rug out from under them. The ultimate goal is democracy, of course. But the interim goal is to rationalize the Middle East so that, while it may still produce enemies, they will be ones we can deal with around a table, not a crater. And the short-term goal is to kill lots of them where they live, instead of them doing the same to us.

9-1-4

2004-09-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt has also used the Tinker to Evers to Chance allusion for the CBS-Burkett-Kerry campaign, so just for fun, let's try the baseball player version of it:
Mapes to Burkett to Lockhart.

Jesse Burkett retired too long ago for me to wish to use him.

Guess what Frum found

2004-09-21T01:42:00.000-07:00

David Frum dug up the following Senate floor statement by Kerry:
“[T]he record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior which is at the core of the cease-fire agreement, with no reach, no stretch, is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by use of force, if necessary.”

That just can't be reconciled with Kerry's latest position.

more on Letterman

2004-09-21T01:27:00.000-07:00

More demonization of Halliburton. Complaining that $20 billion was wasted is a new one though. Wouldn't Halliburton have made massive profits if that were the case?

He comes across as very smug and condescending during his Top 10 list. I don't think it plays all that well with undecided voters. Did I mention he has the personal warmth of a cobra?

Iran submits to the will of the U.N.

2004-09-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

Not!

Basically, Iran's government has asserted that the U.N. has no authority to tell it to curtail its nuclear program, and is threatening to pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty if the Security Council takes up the matter.

“Iran will not accept any obligation regarding the suspension of uranium enrichment,” chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani told a news conference Sunday. “No international body can force Iran to do so.”

So how would Kerry deal with Iran?

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the story.

more on Kerry on Letterman

2004-09-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

Jim Geraghty was not impressed.

so much for humanitarian aims

2004-09-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

Well, according to Kerry, Saddam "deserves his own special place in hell". But also according to Kerry, we should have not gone to war to oust him. Well, how about other dictators whose crimes are primarily against their own subjects?

If all Hitler had done was kill German Jews, should we have left him alone?
Idi Amin? Pol Pot?
Slobodan Milosevic?

It looks like the Democrat Party has officially repudiated Woodrow Wilson. The question is what they are opting for instead.

This is nauseating

2004-09-21T00:22:00.000-07:00

Kerry complains that Arab countries are not at the table for rebuilding Iraq.
Which Arab countries would he pick? Syria? Lebanon? Libya? Saudi Arabia, which he demonizes most of the time?

Now he says that people who should have been with us were pushed aside. Which people? France? They were busy creating fake evidence to discredit the case for removing Hussein. Germany? They were busy making major commercial deals with Hussein. Russia? Well, I don't know what Russia was doing. Putin appears to have been playing several games at once - opposing us in the U.N. and giving us intelligence about Hussein's threats.

Kerry on Letterman

2004-09-21T00:07:00.000-07:00

Kerry's speech on making America safer includes global warming as a priority?
Has someone been watching The Day After Tomorrow a little to much?

Yeah, Kyoto will stop Kim Il Sung and Ayatollah Khamenei.

Now Kerry is saying you can't have elections in Iraq because Kofi Annan said it's not safe for the UN observers and personnel.
Considering that Kofi Annan said it was illegal to remove Saddam Hussein, why would we want him overseeing the election?

Tinker to Evers to Chance?

2004-09-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

Nope. But it is Mapes to Burkett to Lockhart. Powerline identifies what is so strange about the AP story about the contact between Bill Burkett and the Kerry campaign. Joe Lockhart didn't get buttonholed by Burkett somewhere (as Max Cleland did), he called Burkett after CBS urged him to! How much of the DNC's research department is on CBS's payroll?

CBS develops standards

2004-09-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

From the CBS public statement:
"CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report."

So much for Rather's argument that a preponderance of the evidence was sufficient to run with the documents.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word

2004-09-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

John Miller catches Kerry in an unfortunate choice of words.

More to life than politics

2004-09-20T17:51:00.000-07:00

Here are my personal ballots if the season ended now (not that I get to cast a meaningful vote) for the important Major League Baseball awards.

AL Cy Young:
1. Johan Santana
2. Curt Schilling
3. Mariano Rivera

NL Cy Young:
1. Carl Pavano
2. Roger Clemens
3. Randy Johnson

AL MVP:
1. Ichiro Suzuki
2. Vladimir Guerrero
3. Ivan Rodriguez
4. Johan Santana
5. David Ortiz
6. Manny Ramirez
7. Alex Rodriguez
8. Miguel Tejada
9. Travis Hafner
10. Michael Young

NL MVP:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Adrian Beltre
3. Albert Pujols
4. Jim Edmonds
5. Lance Berkman
6. Scott Rolen
7. Todd Helton
8. Juan Pierre
9. Bobby Abreu
10. Carl Pavano

AL Rookie of the Year
1. Lew Ford
2. Bobby Crosby
3. Shingo Takatsu

NL Rookie of the Year
1. Jason Bay
2. Khalil Greene
3. Akinori Otsuka

The best use of $250

2004-09-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt gives his optimal way to spend $250 to influence American politics.

In brief, his recommendations are:
$25 to John Thune (U.S. Sen. - SD);
$25 to George Nethercutt (U.S. Sen. - WA);
$25 to Bill Jones (U.S. Sen. - CA);
Buy a copy of his book ($25) and send it to someone who lives in a battleground state and changes opinions;
$25 to Jim DeMint (U.S. Sen. - SC);
$25 to Richard Burr (U.S. Sen. - NC);
$25 to Pete Coors (U.S. Sen. - CO);
Buy a copy of his book ($25) and send it to someone who lives in a battleground state and changes opinions;
$25 to Senator Lisa Murkowski (AK)
$25 to Mel Martinez (U.S. Sen. - FL)

I'll comment only on races here, and limit it to $200 to spend.

I agree with most of his choices, but not necessarily in the same order.

If you were spending $100:

Send $25 to John Thune.
Send $25 to Lisa Murkowski
Send $25 to Pete Coors
Send $25 to Richard Burr

If you have another $100 to spend:
Send $25 to George Nethercutt
Send $25 to Tom Coburn (OK - U.S. Sen.)
Send $25 to Congressman Pete Sessions (TX-32)
Send $25 to Congressman Phil Crane (IL-8)

Thune and Murkowski should be no-brainers. Both are in small states (1 Congressional district apiece) in hotly-contested races. These are the two races where $25 makes the most difference.

I rate Coors and Burr ahead of Nethercutt because Nethercutt is challenging an incumbent and the other two are running for open seats. That makes their battles more fluid, because Nethercutt's opponent is a much more defined quantity in voters' minds.

Coburn moves onto my list ahead of several other candidates because his race is a lot tougher and is in a small enough state that $25 is meaningful. DeMint is ahead by a double-digit margin, and Mel Martinez and Bill Jones are from huge states. Coburn's impolitic comments about the power of Indian tribes, coupled with accusations that he sterilized a woman without her consent (a 20-year old patient who presented with an ectopic pregnancy) have turned his poll lead to a deficit.

I place two Congressional races in my top 8 because of the cirumstances those races present, even they may not be the two most in-danger seats.

Pete Sessions is running against Martin Frost, DCCC chairman and Democrat candidate recruiter. Taking out your opponents' generals is one of the most important tactical maneuvers in politics.

Phil Crane is in severe trouble mainly thanks to the embarrassment that is the Keyes for Senate campaign. Keyes is imploding so badly that he could harm GOP candidates across the board, and since Crane's last election garnered him 57% and his challenger is far better funded this time, he has become a national target. Crane is the dean of the House GOP caucus (first elected 1968) and a nationally known conservative leader (including a brief run for President in 1980). Max Burns, Rick Renzi, Anne Northrup, Heather wilson, Bob Beauprez, and several open seat candidates may be in tougher races, but Crane has been an invaluable figure in the modern conservative movement.

Na na na na Na na na na Hey Hey Hey Goodbye

2004-09-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

That would be the sound of conservatives across the country singing about the implosion underway at CBS. By now, if you haven't already heard your fill of the details about the "Killian memos", you don't read the political stories in papers or you just awoke from a long coma.
I'll simply link to a few good articles and add a bit of commentary.

Andrew Sullivan in TNR becomes the first well-known journalist openly supporting Kerry to call for Dan Rather's firing. I know Sullivan's support for Kerry is soft, to put it mildly (He called the election "The incompetent versus the irresolute."), but this one is legitimate spin.

The Weekly Standard summarizes the state of the coverage. They include a detailed summary of the Washington Post investigatory article.

Powerlinecomments on the L.A. Times excommunication of CBS from the liberal pantheon.

background on Sudan

2004-09-11T01:22:00.000-07:00

Nina Shea on the U.S. decision to call it genocide

We have candidates, don't we?

2004-09-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

Are you a Republican in California? Are you looking to know who are the Republican candidates for Congress, State Senate, and State Assembly in your area or in other parts of the state?

Would you just like to find a candidate's website without having to know how to spell his or her name?

Well, you can skip the California Republican Party website.

They don't list GOP candidates in CA (other than Bill Jones and Bush/Cheney) anywhere on the site that I can find. You have to click on the button on the left side for Victory 2004 - another website run by the CA GOP. The link is not very noticeable, as the important information is contained in small type in dark gray text on a light gray background. We wouldn't actually want people to find that site, would we?

And don't get me started about the Project Y button in the same column - it links to a page that DOES NOT EXIST.

While we're at it, ditch the Active X. Lots of people block it with their internet security software, because it's a great method for hackers to attack your computer.

This is unacceptable.

Patterico 1, MediaMatters -1, NPR -1

2004-09-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

Patterico systematically eviscerates the nitwits at NPR and self-proclaimed serial liar David Brock's Media Matters (I won't dignify these SFB's with a link) for their utterly addlepated decision to spread a conspiracy theory about the "Killian memos" because they missed the difference between Eastern and Pacific time. [For those unfamiliar with the acronym, SFB is the completely nanny-filter-safe way to say Sh** for Brains.] They also proclaim the case for authenticity of the documents strong because . . . well, because they drank Dan Rather's Kool-Aid.

OK, so I'm writing a lot about the memos

2004-09-10T21:20:00.002-07:00

Blogs for Bush has more good coverage of the story, including a summary of the memo problems originally from Free Republic (look in the Sept. 10 comments at 10:03 pm on Blogs for Bush) and Ben Barnes having a "seared, seared" moment (look in the Sept. 10 comments at 10:19 and 10:40 pm).

OK, so I'm writing a lot about the memos

2004-09-10T21:20:00.001-07:00

OK, so I'm writing a lot about the memos

2004-09-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

MAKE MONEY NOW

2004-09-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Defeat JohnJohn.com has a way that you, yes you, can make $10,500.

Here's the catch. All you have to do is find a typewriter available in 1973 that could have made the CYA memo.

ABC: CBS misled Hodges

2004-09-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

Instapundit has the story.

Perhaps it's time for CBS to change its logo to an eyepatch.

Marcel Matley's credentials

2004-09-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

CBS has acknowledged that Marcel Matley was the expert it used to authenticate the "Killian memos".

A little Googling revealed Mr. Matley's curriculum vitae as of 1995. At least as of that time, his claimed expertise is all about handwriting.

So when did Mr. Matley become an expert in typewriters and typefaces? What did he study to gain his expertise? Inquiring minds want to know.

More from the indispensable Power Line

2004-09-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Kerry for Senate 1984 press release.

Read it and weep that a man such as that was elected to a position of power.

Power Line has more

2004-09-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

Update 13 on Power Line's debunking of CBS's story has pictures you can view together of an unquestionably authentic Killian document from Sept. 6, 1973 and the "August 18, 1973" CYA memo.

It's time to bring back the bumper sticker

Watch Dan?
Rather not.

More on the memos

2004-09-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

Hit and Run has a very perceptive user comment for anyone who approaches the question of the memos' veracity from a disinterested perspective.

Their user alkali posted the following:

The more I think about it, it is entirely unproductive to look at these individual documents (though that's all we in the blogosphere have). If there was a machine that created this kind of output in the TANG offices in the early 70s, then there must be a thousand memos just like these in the files, and it is probable that these are genuine too. If there are no comparable memos in the files, then these documents are fakes, regardless of whether they could have been created at the time.

Freedom Tour 2004: Next Stop - Sudan

2004-09-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

Secretary of State Powell has, in a formal statement, called the slaughter of black Sudanese in the Darfur area genocide. This declaration imposes obligations on the U.S. government under law. Hopefully we will soon take action to remove the Sudanese Islamofascist government. Iterestingly, the geocide is racial rather than religious - Arab militias are killing all black persons in the villages they raze, rather than only the non-Moslem ones.

Bush is right that there can be no neutrality toward evil. What he has not done as good a job of explaining is that any government which would do this to its own people deserves no respect for its sovereignty, and that we cannot rely on the goodwill of evil people to contain their evil within another country and to not provide support for terrorists who would attack us.

I wonder what the Congressional Black Caucus will say about this.

Bushmaster feeds the alligators

2004-09-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

FOX News reported that Bushmaster and the store where the rifle was purchased have paid a combined $2.5 million to settle lawsuits by the families of Muhammad and Malvo's victims, with $500 thousand coming from Bushmaster and $2 million from the store. I don't know the merit of the claim against the store (i.e., was Muhammad a prohibited person who they should not have delivered a firearm to), but Bushmaster should have fought this one. Even if litigation costs would have exceeded $500,000, paying off that much indicates that they are an easy mark for these ridiculous suits in the future.

More to come on this later.

Update to the memos

2004-09-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

If you didn't get the joke in the prior post's header, tough. :-)

CNN has pulled the story.

ABC is running their own story with comments from Lt. Col. Killian's son questioning the memos.

Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt had it on their shows.

FOX News with Brit Hume raised questions about the authenticity of the memos.

CBS is standing by their story.

The plot thickens.

18 August 2004

2004-09-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

Today's top online story seems to be the possible forgery of the "CYA" memo purportedly created on August 18, 1973 by Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian (now deceased). A Free Republic thread apparently broke the story, recognizing that proportional spacing, while common nowadays in fonts like Times New Roman on word processing software, was very rare 30 years ago. Power Line brought it to a wider audience and broke the 187th angle (in short, that the conversion of the "th" in 187th to a superscript could not have been done by even a proportional font-enabled typewriter back then - there seems to be some doubt as to the accuracy of this for the most specialized high-end models back then, but it was certainly true for standard electric typewriters), and since then it has been picked up in a thorough fashion by Drudge Report, who made it his top story, by Hugh Hewitt, by InDC Journal, who retained a questioned documents expert who opined that it is likely a forgery, by CNS News, who retained their own experts with similar conclusions, by National Review Online's Kerry Spot, which is explaining the story in detail and summarizing (with links) many of the major blogs' coverage of the story, by Little Green Footballs, by many other conservative blogs I haven't looked at, and even by some blogs on the left (granted, mainly in their comments sections). Washington Monthly's thread is particularly funny, as over the course of the hundreds of posts you can see some of the frequent posters changing from being gung-ho about using these documents to bring Bush down to effectively saying "OH SH**" [Internet nanny filters for inappropriate language don't mind asterisks.] Of course, it being a lefty site, much of the speculation seems to be that Karl Rove ordered it to discredit the major media and the Kerry campaign.

At this point, we'll see how long the forgery backlash takes before becoming a bigger story than the original story. The Boston Herald may be able to take the most advantage of this - between the fake Abu Ghraib porn tapes and this, the Boston Globe's credibility has to be at an all-time low.

Where to begin?

2004-09-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

Since this will be the last post people read, I might as well put the important information here. I'm Nikola Mikulicich, Jr. Call me Nick. That's simple enough for even idiotarians to get it right.

I'm an attorney in the Los Angeles area. I'm also an active partisan Republican, with a paleolibertarian ideology - although paleolibertarianism has very little to do with the attempt by Paul Craig Roberts, Lew Rockwell, et al. to hijack the name for their Animal Farm defense of the Confederacy and racism in law. Think John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson instead.

The blog name is both an expression of my philosophy and an attempt to chide others who ask a question with little practical applicability of the response. If you can undo murder by raising the dead and end hunger and malnutrition by creating food with a word or a gesture, you are not useful to my efforts. I have to obey the laws of physics.

The blog will be about things I find interesting, amusing, or otherwise worthwhile to share with the world.

Emails are welcomed about any topic. You may receive a response privately or on the blog. I won't respond to everything. Childish flames will be cheerfully posted to the blog, complete with your email address and IP tracing information. Instant messages may not ever be read. I use AOL, and the number of spam Instant Messages causes me to turn an IM filter on to catch them. If I don't already recognize the sender from my address book, it goes automatically into the filter and may never be viewed.

I use NMMJR @ aol.com (close up the spaces when you send - I posted it in this fashion to block email harvester robots).