Monthly Archives: March 2010

Here’s some good insight into the slowly brewing Coffee Party, by a Canadian website (and newest admittee to DuelingBarstools’ Magna Cum Blogroll).

Coffee, Tea or Freedom?

Fed up with government gridlock, but put off by the flavor of the Tea Party, people in cities across the country are offering an alternative: the Coffee Party.

The slogan is “Wake Up and Stand Up.” The mission statement declares that the federal government is “not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges we face as Americans.”

Has there ever been a political movement that began with the phrase “expression of our collective will” that didn’t end up subverting individual rights? The Tea Party has been faulted for being a populist uprising with a soupcon of genuine pro-freedom ideas. This is perhaps a bit harsh. The Tea Party was born of a revulsion against the interventionist ambitions of the Obama administration. Its grassroots nature has turned up the usual crank suspects, yet the movement is still broadly anti-government and has attracted some quality people. People who are sincerely, and with some success, trying to block further encroachments on American liberty by the current administration. On the whole the party can be best described as a semi-articulate mass moving in about the right direction. In recent weeks a counter-protest movement has emerged, the logically enough named Coffee Party.

Actually I think it’s a slur to coffee, which I heartily enjoy (piping hot, black, and strong).

Going by their website, the party exists as little more than that at the moment, the Coffee Party seems to be just an expression of frustration that the federal government is “paralyzed.” It offers few specific ideas, approaches or policies. Just a hazy commitment to “democracy.” Its About page also includes boiler plate denunciations of corporate lobbyists, the all purpose devils of the modern political world.  While not explicitly supporting the policies of the Obama administration, they place much emphasis on the “obstructionist” and “fear” tactics of some politicians. No prizes for guessing which party those politicians overwhelming belong to. They are in effect middle-of-the-roaders attempting to counter the influence of the Tea Party, while trying to project an image of civic minded citizens just wanting to make the system work. The rambling introductory video, made by the site’s founder, talks at some length about the importance of diversity, and how some people are afraid of change. Translated into normal speak: Shut up you mouth breathing, wife beating, racist hick libertarians / conservatives. Big government bitter by any other name.

Apparently, several Coffee Party leaders come out of the mainstream (far) left of the Democrat party (see here and here).  That’s no surprise, especially given that the Huffington Post and ACORN have mobilized forces to infiltrate, spy, disturb, or report (depending on who you ask . . .) on Tea Parties nationwide, and that Bill Clinton and James Carville have apparently teamed up to counterattack the Tea Party movement by planting moles within the Tea Party leadership [ed. note: remind me again who that is?] and digging up skeletons on Tea Party leaders.

As you probably know, many state and federal regulations are unnecessary, and inefficient business structures cannot compete with efficient businesses unless they enjoy a significant competitive advantage.  Here’s a surprising illustration of both truths.

Some background on the relationship between Indian Tribes and the federal government is necessary to understand this post.  Federally recognized Indian Tribes retain all the powers of a sovereign government except those limited by treaty with the United States or unilaterally abrogated by Congress (under Congress’ plenary power over Indians, itself a judicial fiction). Individual Indians are full fledged United States citizens but Indian Tribes on reservations or in Indian country (explaining the difference between reservations and Indian country is not necessary here) are not subject to the majority of State or Federal taxation or regulation (employment, business practices, utilities, etc.) because Tribes are quasi-sovereigns.  [Caveat: The socio-political (and legal) relationship between Indian tribes and federal and state governments is much more complex than the preceding two sentences make it seem, but for the purposes of this post such a broad summation will suffice.]

In 1947 Congress decided to “terminate” certain tribes via a series of termination acts.  While the phrase “Termination Era” or “Termination Act” evokes the idea that Congress ‘eliminated’ tribal structures, what Termination Acts actually did is end the federal governments fiduciary (trust) responsibility over Tribal land, resources, and disposition of communally held property (lands, communal trust accounts, communally held companies).  The federal government selected for termination resource-rich, fiscally solvent, tribes that could sustain themselves without the federal government.  While, regrettably, few Tribes were (are) fortunate to possess resource rich reservation lands, some of those that did were quite prosperous – for example, the Menominee Tribe.

The Menominee Indian Tribe . . . “entered the 1950’s a relatively prosperous, self sufficient tribe.” One of a very few tribes to hold assets communally, the Menominee owned a heavily wooded 233,092-acre reservation, a lumber mill, power plants, schools, and medical facilities. Members of the tribe received a broad spectrum of health, education, and welfare services. Unlike most other tribes, the Menominee paid, either directly or indirectly, for these benefits. Most Menominee were able to find jobs on the reservation; the tribe’s mill was run so as to maximize employment rather than profits.

FYI all quotes and information cited to and discussed herein, unless otherwise noted, are from Stephen Herzberg, The Menominee Indians: Termination to Restoration, 6 Am. Indian L. Rev. 158 (1978).

Tribes that the federal government selected for Termination had several options. They could (a) sell tribal property and share the proceeds amongst their members (b) divide tribal property into individually owned pieces or (c) place tribal property in a State-chartered corporation to manage the tribe’s lands and resources for members of the tribe.  It’s important to understand that Termination didn’t end Tribal existence or political structures.  Nor did the federal government confiscate Tribal property (as it did with reckless abandon in the past). Rather, the federal government would no longer be the “trustee.”

With the “Great Father” (federal government) out of the tribal picture, a state-chartered corporation is the most practicable legal vehicle to ‘tribally’ own property.  As such, the Menominee tribe, against it’s will, transitioned into a State-chartered corporation.  The federal government assumed successful tribes such as the Menominee would continue to prosper. But just the opposite occurred.

Incorporation exposed tribally owned property to State jurisdiction, laws, regulation, and taxes, immediately adding significant costs to the Menominee’s once prosperous industries, and eliminating the competitive advantage the Menominee businesses had previously enjoyed.  Now competing on equal footing with for-profit, privately owned companies, the Menominee’s Tribally owned businesses (the lumber mill “was run so as to maximize employment rather than profits) did poorly.  Perhaps worse, however, were the additional (State) regulatory burdens placed upon the Tribe’s companies.

State licensing and permit fees (for tribe vehicles, companies, buildings, etc.) added up.  The Menominee’s hospital (previously a model of Tribal health care) was forced to close due to the Tribe’s financial inability to upgrade the facility to comply with nearly a dozen health code provisions.  The state shut down the Menominee’s water and electricity utilities for failure to post a “sizable” cash bond and because state regulations prohibited operating a utility at a loss, which the Menominee had previously done to subsidize their lumber industries and provide low-cost water and power to community members.  Without profitable industries, the Menominee blew through their significant (prior to Termination) cash reserves, and eventually resorted to deficit spending to pay for tribal services (courts, police, governing structures, etc.).

Insufficient tribal revenue and a dearth of jobs for tribe members had predictably deleterious effects upon the quality of Menominee life – within a decade 80% of the tribe lived below the poverty levels.  This sums it up: “Once a relic, the kerosene lamp became a fixture [again] in many Menominee homes.”

There are many lessons to take from the Menominee’s example.  One to ponder is whether it’s more efficient to permit tribes to operate at a significant advantage in the marketplace in order to keep them off of federal and state welfare doles.  Prior to Termination the Menominee had repaid the federal government for nearly all of its prior financial assistance – twenty years after Termination the Menominee cost the federal and state government over $20 million in welfare, health, and aid programs.

Another lesson is that a huge proportion of state employment, health, and utility regulation is unnecessary.  The Menominee hospital ably served its community without complying with the code provisions that eventually closed its doors. The utility operated at a loss but well served the Tribe’s needs. Tribal buildings stood, cars operated, and the earth continued its rotation without state licenses and permits.  And presumably the Menominee hired, paid, and fired, employees just fine without the EEOC or the watchful eye$ of OSHA, FUCA, FICA, Workers’ Comp, and ERISA.

A third lesson is even less surprising.  Operating businesses “to maximize employment rather than profits” is economically inefficient as compared to operating businesses for profit.  Communally owned businesses can coexist with for-profit companies only if they possess a significant competitive advantage.  When forced to compete with for-profit companies on even footing communally owned businesses fare poorly.

A while back I linked to a music (rap) video comparing Keynes and Hayek’s respective economic theories.  If you haven’t seen the video you should, it’s absolutely brilliant.  Here’s some backstory on the making of the video, via the Von Mises Economics Blog. Excerpts below.

John Papola, maker of the Hayek-Keynes rap, presented his video and then gave a talk about how it was made.

All the technical details were fascinating. We learned about the creative process and how the music came to be written. We learned about the paths not taken and why they chose what they did. We heard about how John personally drove to Barnes and Nobel to pick up the copy of the General Theory that makes an appearance in the first scene. We heard about the marvelous 16-hour stretch of filming.

There were moments when John brought down the house. For example, he jokingly spoke about the affinity between libertarianism and rap. There is the believe in gun rights. And drug freedom. People laughed uproariously about that. But then he went one better: he said that after all the rap community is on the gold standard.

Emphasis added.

Live fish falling from the sky in Australia.

A town in the northern Australian desert has been pelted in a downpour – of fish.

Marine life tumbled out of the sky on two occasions last week, raining down on the Northern Territory town of Lajamanu, about 550km southwest of Katherine. The town is hundreds of kilometres from lakes and the coast.

The Northern Territory News reported yesterday that resident Christine Balmer did a double-take as the fish – believed to be small spangled perch – fell from the sky.

“Locals were picking them up off the footy oval and on the ground everywhere. These fish were alive when they hit the ground.

“I haven’t lost my marbles. Thank God it didn’t rain crocodiles.”

Indeed, Ms. Balmer, indeed.

Weather bureau senior forecaster Ashley Patterson told the Northern Territory News that a tornado in the nearby Douglas Daly region may have been responsible, although no twisters had been reported.

“It’s a very unusual event,” he said. “With an updraft, [fish and water picked up] could get up high – up to 60,000 or 70,000 feet. Or possibly from a tornado over a large water body – but we haven’t had any reports.”

Understatement of the year alert: “It’s a very unusual event,” said in response to live fish falling from the sky in the outback of Australia.  By the way, wouldn’t the fish die at 60,000 feet altitude, either due to cold or lack of oxygen? No matter how they got there? Then again, the fish are dead in the picture.

Yeehaw, and many thanks to loyal DuelingBarstools reader Ale, who submitted nearly a half dozen cab pics for future cab roundups.  That means a double dose of cab name speculation in the coming week.

First up is World Cab.  This cab driver thinks globally, drives locally, and plays “We are the World” on a loop. It’s not a bad cab name, it’s not a great cab name.

Next is Goldwing Cab. I have to assume Goldwing is a reference to the Goldwing motorcyle, and the driver is a member of the Goldwing Road Riders Association, which proudly advertises:

The Gold Wing Road Riders Association (GWRRA) is the world’s largest single-marque social organization for owners and riders of Honda Gold Wing/Valkyrie motorcycles — and some would say, the world’s largest family. Dedicated to our motto, Friends for Fun, Safety and Knowledge, GWRRA members enjoy the freedom of belonging to a not-for-profit, non-religious and non-political organization.

Founded in 1977, GWRRA has grown to more than 80,000 U.S., Canadian and international members in 53 foreign countries in just 32 years. Over 800 active Chapters are managed by 4,000 volunteer leaders working with members to foster safe, enjoyable riding while also working to improve the public image of motorcycling.

Our third cab, A Cab, adds fuel to last week’s conspiracy theory’s fire. If A Cab stands for “Alpha Cab,” A Cab’s driver is most likely the leader of the cab terror cell. If, perchance, A Cab and H-Z cab are wholly unrelated then A Cab’s driver may be an extraordinarily humble, understated individual who doesn’t want to draw undue attention to his Cab. It’s too bad, however, that A Cab isn’t Capt. ACab. That’d be a nice play on Moby Dick. Maybe the driver figures people looking for a taxi will spot his 80s yellow sedan from a distance, yell “There’s a cab” or “I see a cab” and then be pleasantly surprised that the cab’s name is “A Cab,” just like they predicted.

UPDATED 3/13/2010 @ 11:15 am: Loyal DuelingBarstools reader SarahB had some brilliant insight as to A Cab, which I happily post for you now:

If you want a cab and are not particular, A Cab is fine. But a discerning, image conscious passenger would want The Cab.

Imagine arriving at a function and being asked, “How did you get here?” You reply, “A cab.” End of drab story, person who inquired turns around and scans the room for a new exchange, preferably one more remarkable than one would have with a house plant. At this point, you begin your lonely orbit into the firmament, a dark socially inept satellite witnessing from a distance the activities of other brighter stars. Hence, wouldn’t you rather respond to the initial question thusly? “I arrived by way of The Cab.” This would surely generate immediate interest in your conversation. Every person within earshot would pivot towards you as the meaning of the THE’s inferred emphasis is understood. And, likely, just by employing The Cab’s services, the driver’s navigational prowess and street-wise roguishness would be transmitted to you and surround you in a warm aura of social awesomeness (abundance of –esses is good). You’d be the instant life of the party. No more solitary consignment to a desolate corner of the room for you!

“Hey, did you hear? He took The Cab to get here. THE Cab. Damn! I wish I had taken The Cab instead of A Cab.”

Next is . . . U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!

OK, this is kind of weird. R.S.V.P. would be a pretty funny cab name, but it’s a volunteer police officer-mobile.  Note to self and others: you never, ever, ever, want to ride in the R.S.V.P. car.  Oh what a shock it would be walk out of a bar, see R.S.V.P. car barreling down the street towards you, step out in the street to hail it for a ride, then have a volunteer police officer (question: are vol’y cops above or below a mall cop?) with a hard on for enforcing the rules give you a ticket for attempted jaywalking or public intoxication. The good news is that assuming if you get in an argument with said volunteer policeman, and he tells you to shut up, you can say “but Ociffer your car says ‘répondez s’il vous plaît,’ – please respond.” Then he’ll tell you the joke’s on you because he is the one who is responding. That’s why its the R.S.V.P. car.

Next is Jinegwo Cab. To my great dismay Jinegwo appears to simply be a common African name (see here and here too). Nothing more, nothing less. No Mogogo-like symbolic meaning. Unfortunately, I suppose Juliet India November Echo Golf Whiskey Oscar doesn’t make much sense here. What a buzzkill.

VDH has a doozy up correcting Tom Hanks’ misconception that racial animosity precipitated and sustained the bloody Pacific Theatre of World War II.  VDH also gives Hanks’ his due “consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II[] and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers.”

Read the whole thing.  Excerpts below.

Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider:

1) In earlier times, we had good relations with Japan (an ally during World War I, that played an important naval role in defeating imperial Germany at sea) and had stayed neutral in its disputes with Russia (Teddy Roosevelt won a 1906 Nobel peace Prize for his intermediary role). The crisis that led to Pearl Harbor was not innately with the Japanese people per se (tens of thousands of whom had emigrated to the United States on word of mouth reports of opportunity for Japanese immigrants), but with Japanese militarism and its creed of Bushido that had hijacked, violently so in many cases, the government and put an entire society on a fascistic footing. We no more wished to annihilate Japanese because of racial hatred than we wished to ally with their Chinese enemies because of racial affinity. In terms of geo-strategy, race was not the real catalyst for war other than its role among Japanese militarists in energizing expansive Japanese militarism.

From Joe Rogan, naturally, commenting on how Pink changed his life.

Every now and then someone steps up in front of the world and really fucking smashes it, and it makes sitting through every other uninspired performance by every wannabe, bullshit artist, and mediocre hack more than worth your time. Every now and then human beings are exposed to a new benchmark.

I search for that shit. It’s a precious inspirational fuel for me. I love it when I see it, and in all my years on this planet searching for it, very few people have ever grabbed it, held it down, fucked it, lit it on fire, and blew up the fucking solar system with it like Pink did at this years Grammy awards.

Her performance was like Jimi Hendrix doing the star spangled banner while Michael Jackson moon walked and Susan Boyle sang back up.

Emphasis Added.

One of my favorite dive spots is the Mokumanu Islets, on O’ahu, Hawai’i.  There is an enticing, and intimidating, sea cave on the north side of the southern islet.  The water is about forty feet deep at the mouth of the cave. When you swim into the shadow of the cave the water temperature drops (slightly, we’re in Hawai’i after all) and underwater visibility gradually decreases. Frankly, it’s scary as hell. My buddy once quipped that it’d be quite the adventure to set a giant lay-net over the mouth of the cave just to see what swims into it. Here’s some pictures of the cave from the inside.

First, George Will, Obama in the Wilsonian Tradition.

Wilson was the first president to criticize the Founding Fathers. He faulted them for designing a government too susceptible to factions that impede disinterested experts from getting on with government undistracted. Like Princeton’s former president, Obama’s grievance is with the greatest Princetonian, the “father of the Constitution,” James Madison, class of 1771.

This Instapunk (the newest member of Magna Cum Blogroll) article is related too.  As his name implies, Instapunk is somewhat more blunt when describing Obama’s apparent penchant for heavy handed government, rather than representative democracy.

I wonder what Obama sees when he looks into Putin’s eyes. I’m thinking soulmate. And maybe a touch of envy. Putin gets to kill his political enemies and direct the exculpatory investigations afterwards.

Last, the idiocy of Enhancing Democracy by Limiting Speech:

All this evidence should dispel the fear that future congressional debates will pit the senator from Exxon Mobil against her distinguished colleague from Bank of America. It turns out that where corporate expenditures are allowed, corporations a) don’t do much or b) don’t get much for what they do.

But many people in Washington have no time to waste examining the real world. As soon as the court decision came down in January, ruling that the corporate spending ban violated free-speech rights, they demanded action to undo this unconscionable wrong. * * *

That’s the difference between a corporation and a government. A corporation can spend millions trying to influence your choices. A government, granted sufficient power, can just take them away.

Chris Hitchens is an interesting cat, see here and here, and an undying champion of free speech.  Read his latest article, Yamani or Your Life: A Nasty Attempt to Coerce Danish Newspapers Into Apologizing for the Cartoons of Mohammed, here. Excerpts below:

It’s not difficult to remind Danes of the organized campaign of hysterical retribution, ranging from the burnings of embassies to the mob-killing of civilians, that followed the firstpublication of some mild caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in 2005. Only a little further backstory is required: In 2008, it was discovered that a cell of eager murderers was planning to kill those who authored the caricatures, and in solidarity a large number of Danish newspapers reprinted the drawings in order to express their support for freedom of speech. Then, on New Year’s 2009, a Somali fundamentalist chopped his way into the house of 74-year-old cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who was having a sleepover with his granddaughter, and very nearly succeeded in axing them both to death. The apology for all this, however, is supposed to be forthcoming not from the aggressors and inciters but from their victims. Late last month, Copenhagen newspaper Politiken agreed to make a public apology on the terms dictated by the Yamani law firm. * * *

And the finale:

But it is in the material world that newspapers are published and in which laws and constitutions exist that inscribe their right to print material without censorship and intimidation. It is also in the material world that laws protect grandfathers and their granddaughters from homicidal religious maniacs. Are we to surrender these hard-won rights in favor of the hectic emotions of people who claim a distant kinship with a quasi-mythological figure who was uneasy with both reading and writing and preferred to recite? This is without precedent. Are we now to be dogged with lawsuits by those in whose veins the blood of Henry VIII, Mussolini, Columbus, or Ivan the Terrible can be alleged to flourish? (At least—unless you believe Dan Brown—this will not be such a problem in the case of the Virgin Mary.)

The thing would be ridiculous if it were not so hateful and had it not already managed to break the nerve of one Danish newspaper. In Ireland a short while ago, a law against blasphemy was passed, making it a crime to outrage the feelings not just of the country’s disgraced and incriminated Roman Catholic Church but of all believers. The same pseudo-ecumenical tendency can be found in the annual attempt by Muslim states to get the United Nations to pass a resolution outlawing all attacks on religion. It’s not enough that faith claims to be the solution to all problems. It is now demanded that such a preposterous claim be made immune from any inquiry, any critique, and any ridicule.

This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. All democratic countries and assemblies should be readying legislation along the lines of the First Amendment, guaranteeing the right of open debate on matters of religion and repudiating the blackmail by law firms and individuals whose own true ancestry would not bear too much scrutiny.

You would think that vigorously prosecuting voter fraud in order to maintain the integrity of our representative democracy would be a non-partisan issue at the very top of the Department of Justice’s priority list, regardless of who is President or Attorney General. You would be wrong.

WASHINGTON, March 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detailing federal investigations into the alleged corrupt activities of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The documents reference serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by ACORN as well as the Obama administration’s decision to shut down a criminal investigation without filing criminal charges.

The documents include background information on two specific complaints filed in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively, during the 2008 election season.

According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State’s office. Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of “duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses,” which “put a tremendous strain on our office staff and caused endless work hours at taxpayers’ expense.” Corelli claimed the total cost of the extra work caused by ACORN corruption was$20,000. Likewise, Borges contended that: “The organization ACORN during the summer of 2008 conducted a registration drive which has produced over 100 rejections due to incomplete forms and individuals who are not citizens…” Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old.

The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in “questionable hiring and training practices,” closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.

By contrast, the documents also include records related to a federal investigation of ACORN corruption inSt. Louis, Missouri, involving 1,492 allegedly fraudulent voter registration cards submitted by Project Vote, a liberal non-profit organization affiliated with ACORN on voter registration drives, during the 2006 election season. Assistant United States Attorney Hal Goldsmith initiated the investigation with “concurrence” from the Department of Justice and the participation of the FBI. According to a Justice Department memo, Goldsmith “advised he would prosecute any individual responsible for submitting fraudulent voter registration cards.” Goldsmith identified the statute for prosecution: Title 42, USC 1973 (gg), which provides for criminal penalties for fraudulent voter registrations. In April 2008, eight former ACORN employees from the St. Louisoffice pled guilty to voter registration fraud.

Other documents show that the Bush Justice Department failed to prosecute ACORN voter registration fraud of non-citizens in Phoenix, Arizona in 2007 because the allegations that led to the opening of the investigation were “unverifiable.” Notably, the FBI document detailing this questionable decision reveals that a “draft Intelligence Bulletin… concludes that ACORN’s employment practices perpetuate fraudulent voter registration.”

The ACORN documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include internal FBI memoranda, signed affidavits, subpoenas, fraudulent voter registration cards, and publications describing ACORN’s policies and practices. The documents also include details regarding numerous allegations of corruption extending beyond voter registration fraud, to include attempts by ACORN employees to coerce workers to participate in campaign activities on behalf of Democratic candidates.

“These documents reflect systematic voter registration fraud by ACORN,” said Judicial Watch PresidentTom Fitton. “It is a scandal that there has been no comprehensive criminal investigation and prosecution by the Justice Department into this evident criminal conduct. Given President Obama’s close connections to ACORN, including his campaign’s hiring of the ACORN’s Project Vote organization, it seems rather obvious why Attorney General Holder has failed to seriously investigate these and other alleged ACORN criminal activities.”

UPDATED 3/11/2010 @ 10:10 pm:

More here on the DOJ killing the voter fraud investigation.

The real cost of public schools

Although public schools are usually the biggest item in state and local budgets, spending figures provided by public school officials and reported in the media often leave out major costs of education, and understate what is actually spent.

In a new study, Cato’s Adam B. Schaeffer reviews district budgets and state records for the nation’s five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia. Schaeffer finds that, on average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44 percent higher than officially reported.

The police state continues to emerge.  Rodney Balko reports the following at Reason.

Oregon Officials Consult Precogs, Arrest Man for Bloody Shooting Spree That Killed Four Next Week

Several Oregon government and law enforcement agencies are patting themselves on the back for preventing a possible mass shooting incident by sending a SWAT team to arrest a recently laid-off employee of the state’s Department of Transportation. A news release from the Medford, Oregon, police department (yes, they put out a news release announcing their good work) says the man purchased three guns after his dismissal, and that former colleagues described him as “very disgruntled.” He was taken to a mental hospital for evaluation.

The problem is that the man doesn’t appear to have committed any actual crimes. Authorities have filed no charges against him. He did recently buy three guns, but he purchased all three of them legally. A spokesman for the Oregon State Police told South Oregon’s Mail Tribune newspaper, “Instead of being reactive, we took a proactive approach.”

Now perhaps a recent layoff, the legal purchase of three guns, and concerns from former co-workers are indeed red flags that someone’s planning a rampage. And maybe this arrest really did save lives. But there’s a phrase we use to describe the sort of society where the police can come into your home, arrest you, commit you to a mental facility, and confiscate your legally-obtained property on no more than a hunch that you might commit some crime in the near future.

The article linked above is short on details. It will be interesting to see what legal authority these law enforcement agencies cited to get a search and/or arrest warrant—assuming they obtained one.

Personally I hope there’s no warrant involved. Not because the lack of a warrant means the State’s actions will likely be found unconstitutional, but because that would mean there’s a magistrate out there somewhere who would grant a warrant under the circumstances.  If no warrant exits, the State’s legal arguments will go something like this: “While no probable cause existed to justify a warrant, there did exist reasonable suspicion of danger to the community and police based upon articulable facts (disgruntled, laid off, gun purchase) that constitute an exigent-like circumstance (fear of attack) justifying an unwarranted home intrusion (search) and subsequent seizure (arrest).”  If you buy that argument, you’ll love North Korea.

Can’t recall where I found this on Pixdaus, but I like it.

Also, this was the scene at the local watering hole a couple weeks ago when Canada beat the United States for olympic gold in hockey. Note the NBC news crew at the front door filming the festivities.

Please excuse today’s shortage of original commentary – posting interesting links is all time allowed. Here’s another interesting link, a good article by Richard Epstein in Forbes. Excerpt below:

So let’s start with the estate tax and ask whether a tax that exempts 99.75%, of all estates, as the Democrats propose, is better than one that just abolishes the tax altogether. I vote for the latter. The estate tax operates as the third tax on the accumulation of wealth–after progressive taxes on earnings and savings. That heavy state and federal key drives many people to take grotesque steps to minimize their liabilities, which in part explains why only 0.25% of the people pay it. By forcing these dumb maneuvers, the tax distorts the accumulation and transfer of capital in ways that could easily reduce the production of wealth that could be subject to an income tax. Only if you think that hitting the most productive portions of the population is the right way to instill a sense of national unity would you want to keep this ship afloat.

The best tax regime that I can think of–the one with the fewest distortions to economic behavior–is a general flat consumption tax. That tax has these advantages. It is relatively easy to administer. It minimizes the distortion of choices relative to what they would be in some nontax universe. And it does not tax savings in ways that unwisely encourage excessive consumption today. No matter what one thinks about any other issue, why block a legislative reform that makes sense in its own terms? Envy is, of course, no answer. Even if the Republicans are wrong on everything else, they are right on this. So go the entire distance.

* * *

Which brings us to health care. I have diligently sought to master this issue, only to be defeated by my sheer inability to figure out how all these pieces fit together. I am not really ashamed, for anyone from the president on down who thinks he knows how this plan will play out in practice lives in a fool’s paradise. The huge amounts of delegated authority to as yet unnamed administrators leaves key design issues shrouded in darkness. To ignore the gaping legislative gaps is to turn a blind-eye to these grim realities. To dump on this monstrosity is not to defend the status quo against any plausible reform. But it is to insist that no pundit should sweet talk a nation into jumping naked into the briar patch, which is just what the Democrats with their open disdain of market principles are doing.

I found these WWI links at GoodShit.  Interesting perspective here on WWI. It’s a long, interesting article that I recommend. By the way, the author, Mike Gerber, is endeavoring to treat his blog like a magazine, which I think is a neat idea.  Excerpts below.

So for three months, Sir Michael Howard shepherded a hundred or so of us future leaders of the world (you’re welcome) through the sorry events of 1914 to 1918. As my friend Rob and I traded jokes in the shadows—he was a fellow Record E-Boarder, and just as punch-drunk as I—the facts and conclusions flew like shrapnel. What an unholy mess it had been, starting as a comic opera (if the Archduke’s driver hadn’t taken a wrong turn, and Princip hadn’t stopped for a sandwich, the assassination would’ve never happened), and ending like a Wagnerian tragedy. Then as now, it’s difficult to keep the facts in order. Ypres, Mons, Verdun, Chateaubriand—is that one, I forget? The battles are almost impossible to keep straight because they are all the same: stupid plans carried out with incredible bravery, unimaginable slaughter ending in utter stalemate.

“By the end of 1915, the French had lost 995,000 men.” That fact alone is enough to paralyze the imagination, or should be. A million men from one country? In three months? And they were just getting started. How many Einsteins, and Picassos bled their lives away into the dirt of Flanders? How many Alexander Flemings or Louis Armstrongs suffocated in a collapsed dugout, or froze to death on the Eastern Front? How many—and now I am speaking as my 21-year-old self—Thurbers or Benchleys or Groucho Marxes perished? What wars really destroy is potential, the future, and that is something simply too big to mourn. And so Rob and I kept joking, even going so far to pop “Sir Mike” into the magazine for an issue or two. He took it all in very good humor; somewhere I have a letter from him mock-failing us both.

There is no story in World War I, only suffering. There are no great heroes who triumph, nor villains who are vanquished; there is no cause thrumming underneath worth all the sacrifice, nor any final victory redeeming it all. It is, to be blunt, some of the most depressing, unsatisfying history one can study. That is its gift to us, and why everyone should have a passing familiarity with it. Especially citizens of countries who emerged from it relatively whole, and have a tendency to forget what they do not wish to remember—yes, I’m talking to you, United States.

* * *

If our modern madness has a name, this is it. The only reason some members of the US military advocated a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union was, obviously, they felt that they and theirs would come out all right. One always believes that one will survive, this is how human beings are constructed. In people like Curtis LeMay, that instinct was infinitely more powerful than their imagination; that’s the difference between him and say, Jackson Browne. I’d argue one cannot be Curtis LeMay—or indeed any part of the modern military—without killing that precise area of one’s imagination. If a neurotic sees death and decay everywhere, the modern military mind sees everything but death and decay, and must, or be unable to function

Finally, the author linked to youtube uploads of the “The Great War”, which is a BBC series on the first world war similar to “World At War.” I’m happy to find it on youtube, and I’ll be watching all of them.

From freelance journalist Michael Totten:

24 Feburary 2010

From: Mellinger, Jeffrey J CSM MIL USA

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Today, at Arlington National Cemetery, we lay to rest COL(R) Robert L. Howard.  The link for the interview is at the end of this email.

Read a bit about Howard at one of these links: The Robert L. Howard Tribute Website, The Congressional Medal of Honor Society Website, The Washington Post- Medal of Honor recipient Col. Robert L. Howard dies at 70.

COL(R) Howard was arguably America’s most highly decorated Warrior ever, earning more awards for valor (10) than Audie Murphy, but he was surely America’s most highly living warrior until his death.  The US Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) Biographical Sketch.

I had forgotten that Audie Murphy was a highly decorated combat veteran who earned the Medal of Honor.

Color image from the Robert L. Howard Tribute website.

Wounded 14 times in 54 months of combat duty in Vietnam, Robert Howard was awarded 8 Purple Hearts and was believed to be the most decorated living American.

Colonel Howard served five tours in Vietnam and is the only soldier in our nation’s history to be nominated for the Medal of Honor three times for three separate actions within a thirteen-month period. He received a direct appointment from Master Sergeant to 1st Lieutenant in 1969, and was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Richard M. Nixon at the White House in 1971. Colonel Howard is one of America’s most decorated soldiers. His other awards for valor include the Distinguished Service Cross – our nation’s second highest award, the Silver Star – the third highest award, and eight Purple Hearts. He was the last Vietnam Special Forces Medal of Honor recipient still on active duty when he retired on Sept. 29, 1992.

Via Pila, Lost Jewish Tribe Found in Zimbabwe.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.

It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin.

* * *

“It looks as if the Jewish priesthood continued in the West by people called Cohen, and in same way it was continued by the priestly clan of the Lemba.

“They have a common ancestor who geneticists say lived about 3,000 years ago somewhere in north Arabia, which is the time of Moses and Aaron when the Jewish priesthood started.”

Interesting read.

Matt Welch’s latest: Obama and the L-Word. Read the whole thing. Welch draws an accurate distinction between Bill Clinton and Obama’s respective uses of puffery and truth-twisting.

Here’s how predictable the president’s slippery relationship with the truth has become: Hours before the State of the Union address,Washington Examiner reporter Timothy P. Carney posted a “pre-emptive fact check” that, among other things, prebutted any presidential claim to have “stopped the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying.” As it happened, that night Barack Obama made an even bolder (read: less truthful) claim: that “we’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.”

In fact, more than 40 former lobbyists work in the administration, including such policy makers as Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn (who was lobbying for Raytheon as recently as 2008), Office of the First Lady Director of Policy and Projects Jocelyn Frye (National Partnership for Women and Families), White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz (National Council of La Raza), and Treasury Secretary Chief of Staff Mark Patterson (Goldman Sachs).

When Carney confronted a White House spokeswoman with the falsehood, she conceded nothing. “As the President said,” she wrote, “we have turned away lobbyists for many, many positions.” Just not all of them.

As such defiance suggests, this was no isolated slip of the tongue. The president, who promised in both word and style to usher in a “new era” of Washington “responsibility,” routinely says things that aren’t true and supports initiatives that break campaign promises. When called on it, he mostly keeps digging. And when obliged to explain why American voters are turning so sharply away from his party and his policies, Obama pins the blame not on his own deviations from verity but on his failure to “explain” things “more clearly to the American people.”

Take the issue he has explained more than any other: health care. In the State of the Union address, Obama claimed that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had estimated that “our approach” to health care reform “would bring down the deficit by as much as $1 trillion over the next two decades.” This is, strictly speaking, not true. The Democrats’ “approach” to health care reform includes a permanent change to the Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors, colloquially known as the “doc fix.” The CBO estimated that the doc fix, when combined with the health care reform legislative package, actually “would increase the budget deficit in 2019 by $23 billion relative to current law, an increment that would grow in subsequent years.” This is why House Democrats stripped out the doc fix from the health care bill, and passed it separately; it made the CBO scores look bad, making it harder for the president to present bogus claims about deficit neutrality.

That bit of mendacity only scratches the surface of how Congress and the administration gamed the system to produce nice-looking numbers. The CBO, by its own rules, has to take Congress at its word when a piece of legislation promises unspecified future “cuts” in spending, even though an overwhelming majority of promised future cuts never come to pass (a fact that the CBO itself has repeatedly warned in supplementary comments). The Senate promised more than $300 billion in such cuts. Furthermore, the CBO scores bills in 10-year windows. So the Senate delayed more than 99 percent of the reform package’s spending until 2014, thus allowing the decade of 2010–2019 to clock in under the magic $1 trillion number. Add to all that chicanery the fact that every major health care entitlement expansion in U.S. history has vastly exceeded initial cost projections, and you have ample reasons for why Americans believed, by a margin of more than 3 to 1, that health care reform would exacerbate rather than improve the deficit.

Even when addressing black-and-white examples of broken promises —such as his vow to televise each and every bit of health care legislative negotiations on C-SPAN—Obama can’t quite resist the temptation to plead gray. When confronted directly on the broken C-SPAN pledge during a January meeting with GOP lawmakers, the president said: “Look, the truth of the matter is that if you look at the health care process—just over the course of the year—overwhelmingly the majority of it actually was on C-SPAN, because it was taking place in congressional hearings in which you guys were participating.”

Presidential defiance, dissembling, and disinformation are nothing new, even if such political perennials are more disappointing coming from someone who still boasts (as he did in the State of the Union address) of “telling hard truths” to the American people and “doing what’s best for the next generation.” Voters pretty much knew that Bill Clinton was a slime ball when they sent him to the White House; Barack Obama held out the promise of being more dignified.

The difference between these two most recent Democratic presidents, substantial to begin with (especially in the crucial area of economic policy), may come into sharper relief in 2010. Clinton’s reptilian relationship with the truth, suffused as it always has been with a catch-me-if-you-can sense of personal preservation, actually turned out to have some uses for the nation when he changed course after the 1994 Republican revolution and began co-opting some of the limited-government policies proposed by his opponents. It’s easier for a chameleon to change his spots.

Obama’s dishonesty, by contrast, seems to spring from a different place. As a man who has spent most of his career wowing people with his words and very little of it converting those words into deeds, he has an activist’s gap between rhetoric and reality and a radio broadcaster’s promiscuous carelessness with cutting rhetorical corners. Sure, it’s not technically true that the administration’s day-one lobbying reforms served “to get rid of the influence of…special interests,” as he claimed in a January radio address (to the contrary: federal lobbying in 2009 set an all-time record), but it’s easy to imagine that the president feels his combination of tighter employment restrictions for ex-lobbyists and stricter disclosure requirements for current ones is, in the context of the Manichean fight between “the people” and “special interests,” good enough for government work. The perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good, and the critics who complain are just opportunistic literalists grasping for any club to beat back the march of progress. No need to give them an inch.

But there’s a less charitable explanation too. During the president’s nonstop gabfests before, during, and after the State of the Union speech, he kept repeating the fiction that the medical industry’s “special interests” were significantly to blame for scotching his health care legislation. In fact, the administration and Congress negotiated with those interests every step of the way, receiving crucial buy-in and millions in campaign contributions. Pro-reform lobbyists outspent anti-reform lobbyists on advertising by a factor of 5 to 1. There’s a three-letter word for blaming the defeat of his bill on health care lobbyists, and it rhymes with pie.

And yet it smacks of something worse still. When a politician cannot fathom opposition to his policies except as the manifestation of wicked manipulation by bad guys, remediable only by more thorough “explanations” from the good guys, it indicates an unseemly paternalism. And if he cannot take the hint that Bush-Obama bailout-and-spend economics are deeply and increasingly unpopular, that indicates something immovable about his core economic ideology. With those two factors as backdrop, it’s hard to say which would be worse: if the president didn’t really believe what he said, or if he did.

I have a new favorite beer - Karl Strauss Pintail Pale Ale. It’s delicious. Grab one and watch this Reason TV video.

Much maligned victim of illiberal, anti-hate speech laws Geert Wilders recently spoke at the House of Lords. Most of his speech is below, via the Powerline blog.

Thank you. It is great to be back in London. And it is great that this time, I got to see more of this wonderful city than just the detention centre at Heathrow Airport.

Today I stand before you, in this extraordinary place. Indeed, this is a sacred place. This is, as Malcolm always says, the mother of all Parliaments, I am deeply humbled to have the opportunity to speak before you.

Thank you Lord Pearson and Lady Cox for your invitation and showing my film ‘Fitna’. Thank you my friends for inviting me.

I first have great news. Last Wednesday city council elections were held in the Netherlands. And for the first time my party, the Freedom Party, took part in these local elections. We participated in two cities. In Almere, one of the largest Dutch cities. And in The Hague, the third largest city; home of the government, the parliament and the queen. And, we did great! In one fell swoop my party became the largest party in Almere and the second largest party in The Hague. Great news for the Freedom Party and even better news for the people of these two beautiful cities.

And I have more good news. Two weeks ago the Dutch government collapsed. In June we will have parliamentary elections. And the future for the Freedom Party looks great. According to some polls we will become the largest party in the Netherlands. I want to be modest, but who knows, I might even be Prime Minister in a few months time!

Ladies and gentlemen, not far from here stands a statue of the greatest Prime Minister your country ever had. And I would like to quote him here today: “Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. No stronger retrograde force exists in the World. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step (…) the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” These words are from none other than Winston Churchill wrote this in his book ‘The River War’ from 1899.

Churchill was right.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t have a problem and my party does not have a problem with Muslims as such. There are many moderate Muslims. The majority of Muslims are law-abiding citizens and want to live a peaceful life as you and I do. I know that. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people, the Muslims, and the ideology, between Islam and Muslims. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.

Islam strives for world domination. The Quran commands Muslims to exercise jihad. The Quran commands Muslims to establish shariah law. The Quran commands Muslims to impose Islam on the entire world.

As former Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan said: “The whole of Europe will become Islamic. We will conquer Rome”. End of quote. Libyan dictator Gaddafi said: “There are tens of millions of Muslims in the European continent today and their number is on the increase. This is the clear indication that the European continent will be converted into Islam. Europe will one day soon be a Muslim continent”. End of quote. Indeed, for once in his life, Gaddafi was telling the truth. Because, remember: mass immigration and demographics is destiny!

Islam is merely not a religion, it is mainly a totalitarian ideology. Islam wants to dominate all aspects of life, from the cradle to the grave. Shariah law is a law that controls every detail of life in a Islamic society. From civic- and family law to criminal law. It determines how one should eat, dress and even use the toilet. Oppression of women is good, drinking alcohol is bad.

I believe that Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life. Islam is a threat to Western values. The equality of men and women, the equality of homosexuals and heterosexuals, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech, they are all under pressure because of islamization. Ladies and gentlemen: Islam and freedom, Islam and democracy are not compatible. They are opposite values.

No wonder that Winston Churchill called Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ “the new Quran of faith and war, turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message”. As you know, Churchill made this comparison, between the Koran and Mein Kampf, in his book ‘The Second World War’, a master piece, for which, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Churchill’s comparison of the Quran and ‘Mein Kampf’ is absolutely spot on. The core of the Quran is the call to jihad. Jihad means a lot of things and is Arabic for battle. Kampf is German for battle. Jihad and kampf mean exactly the same.

Islam means submission, there cannot be any mistake about its goal. That’s a given. The question is whether we in Europe and you in Britain, with your glorious past, will submit or stand firm for your heritage.

We see Islam taking off in the West at an incredible pace. Europe is Islamizing rapidly. A lot of European cities have enormous Islamic concentrations. Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Berlin are just a few examples. In some parts of these cities, Islamic regulations are already being enforced. Women’s rights are being destroyed. Burqa’s, headscarves, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honour-killings. Women have to go to separate swimming-classes, don’t get a handshake. In many European cities there is already apartheid. Jews, in an increasing number, are leaving Europe.

As you undoubtedly all know, better then I do, also in your country the mass immigration and islamization has rapidly increased. This has put an enormous pressure on your British society. Look what is happening in for example Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford and here in London. British politicians who have forgotten about Winston Churchill have now taken the path of least resistance. They have given up. They have given in.

Last year, my party has requested the Dutch government to make a cost-benefit analysis of the mass immigration. But the government refused to give us an answer. Why? Because it is afraid of the truth. The signs are not good. A Dutch weekly magazine – Elsevier – calculated costs to exceed 200 billion Euros. Last year alone, they came with an amount of 13 billion Euros. More calculations have been made in Europe: According to the Danish national bank, every Danish immigrant from an Islamic country is costing the Danish state more than 300 thousand Euros. You see the same in Norway and France. The conclusion that can be drawn from this: Europe is getting more impoverished by the day. More impoverished thanks to mass immigration. More impoverished thanks to demographics. And the leftists are thrilled.

I don’t know whether it is true, but in several British newspapers I read that Labour opened the door to mass immigration in a deliberate policy to change the social structures of the UK. Andrew Neather, a former government advisor and speech writer for Tony Blair and Jack Straw, said the aim of Labour’s immigration strategy was, and I quote, to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”. If this is true, this is symptomatic of the Left.

Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake: The left is facilitating islamization. Leftists, liberals, are cheering for every new shariah bank being created, for every new shariah mortgage, for every new islamic school, for every new shariah court. Leftists consider Islam as being equal to our own culture. Shariah law or democracy? Islam or freedom? It doesn’t really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire leftist elite is guilty of practising cultural relativism. Universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians. They are all betraying our hard-won liberties.

Why I ask myself, why have the Leftists and liberals stopped to fight for them? Once the Leftists stood on the barricades for women’s rights. But where are they today? Where are they in 2010? They are looking the other way. Because they are addicted to cultural relativism and dependent on the Muslim vote. They are dependent on mass-immigration.

Thank heavens Jacqui Smith isn’t in office anymore. It was a victory for free speech that a UK judge brushed aside her decision to refuse me entry to your country last year. I hope that the judges in my home country are at least as wise and will acquit me of all charges, later this year in the Netherlands.

Unfortunately, so far they have not done so well. For they do not want to hear the truth about Islam, nor are they interested to hear the opinion of top class legal experts in the field of freedom of expression. Last month in a preliminary session the Court refused fifteen of the eighteen expert-witnesses I had requested to be summoned. Only three expert witnesses are allowed to be heard. . . [and] their testimony will be heard behind closed doors. Apparently the truth about Islam must not be told in public, the truth about Islam must remain secret.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m being prosecuted for my political beliefs. We know political prosecution to exist in countries in the Middle East, like Iran and Saudi-Arabia, but never in Europe, never in the Netherlands.

I’m being prosecuted for comparing the Quran to ‘Mein Kampf’. Ridiculous. I wonder if Britain will ever put the beliefs of Winston Churchill on trial… Ladies and gentlemen, the political trial that is held against me has to stop.

But it is not all about me. . . .Free speech is under attack. Let me give you a few other examples. As you perhaps know, one of my heroes, the Italian author Oriana Fallaci had to live in fear of extradition to Switzerland because of her anti-Islam book ‘The Rage and the Pride’. The Dutch cartoonist Nekschot was arrested in his home in Amsterdam by 10 police men because of his anti-Islam drawings. Here in Britain, the American author Rachel Ehrenfeld was sued by a Saudi businessman for defamation. In the Netherlands Ayaan Hirsi Ali and in Australia two Christian pastors were sued. I could go on and on. Ladies and gentlemen, all throughout the West freedom loving people are facing this ongoing ‘legal jihad’. This is Islamic ‘lawfare’. And, ladies and gentlemen, not long ago the Danish cartoonist Westergaard was almost assassinated for his cartoons.

Ladies and gentlemen, we should defend the right to freedom of speech. . . .I believe it is our obligation to preserve the inheritance of the brave young soldiers that stormed the beaches of Normandy. That liberated Europe from tyranny. . . .As George Orwell said: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in another policy, it is time for change. . . .If I may quote one of my favourite American presidents: Ronald Reagan once said: “We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow”. That is why I propose the following measures, I only mention a few, in order to preserve our freedom:

First, we will have to defend freedom of speech. It is the most important of our liberties. In Europe and certainly in the Netherlands, we need something like the American First Amendment.

Second, we will have to end and get rid of cultural relativism. To the cultural relativists, the shariah socialists, I proudly say: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Don’t be affraid to say it. You are not a racist when you say that our own culture is better.

Third, we will have to stop mass immigration from Islamic countries. Because more Islam means less freedom.

Fourth, we will have to expel criminal immigrants and, following denaturalisation, we will have to expel criminals with a dual nationality. And there are many of them in my country.

Fifth, we will have to forbid the construction of new mosques. There is enough Islam in Europe. Especially since Christians in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia are mistreated, there should be a mosque building-stop in the West.

And last but not least, we will have to get rid of all those so-called leaders. I said it before: Fewer Chamberlains, more Churchills. Let’s elect real leaders.

Ladies and gentlemen. To the previous generation, that of my parents, the word ‘London’ is synonymous with hope and freedom. When my country was occupied by the national-socialists the BBC offered a daily glimpse of hope in my country, in the darkness of Nazi tyranny. Millions of my fellow country men listened to it, underground. The words ‘This is London’ were a symbol for a better world coming soon.

What will be broadcasted forty years from now? Will it still be “This is London”? Or will it be “This is Londonistan”? Will it bring us hope? Or will it signal the values of Mecca and Medina? Will Britain offer submission or perseverance? Freedom or slavery? The choice is yours. And in the Netherlands the choice is ours.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will never apologize for being free. We will and should never give in. And, indeed, as one of your former leaders said: We will never surrender.

Freedom must prevail, and freedom will prevail

Daniel Hannan sharing some Aristotelian wisdom. Via the Von Mises blog.

Though I don’t have the time to read this biographical sketch of John Maynard Keynes by Murray Rothbard, I look forward to doing so.

Yeehaw. Let’s get right into it.

First up is the Nile Cab. Clearly this cab driver is from Egypt. It’s a cool name, I like it. Then again, we’re talking about Egypt. The very name, Egypt, is cryptic, so you don’t have to dig for good cab name. (Yes that’s two intended puns, sorry). He /she (oh screw it, I’ll use ‘he’ from now on – when is the last time you saw a female, Egyptian cab driver in San Diego?) had a (pun alert) treasure trove of great cab names at his disposal. Egypt has so much history, so many iconic symbols (not to mention an entire written language of symbols). Nephrititi, Cleopatra, Pharoah, Mummy (THAT would be a great cab name), the library of Alexandria, the lighthouse of Alexandria, Pyramids, Sphinx, Obelisks – and on and on. But the Nile – the Nile is the river that runs through it. The Nile has sustained life and culture in Egypt for, well, ever. The Nile is Egypt’s alpha and omega. The Nile was there before the pyramids, it will be there after the pyramids. The Nile is a desert Oasis, perhaps the world’s largest. The Nile subsumes all that is Egypt into a single syllable. That’s why it is a tremendous cab name. Kudos, brownie points, and Jersey shore fist pumps to you, Mr. Nile Cab driver.

Next is the Red Top Cab.  On one hand, Red Top Cab is as boring a name as Yellow Cab, as it merely describes the car’s paint job. But there are relatively few Red Top Cabs, and the red / soft yellow is a refreshing break from the 80s-yellow of most San Diego Cabs, so Red Top Cab has that going for it. Plus, very few cab names are three words (In Touch Cab and Call Me Cab are the only two I can think of off the top of my head). Moreover, it’s kinda-sorta savvy to get your cab’s top in your name and marketing strategy, since the cab’s top is the first thing most people see when they sight a cab. But why red? Red’s hard to see at night, and there are a lot of red sedans. And what if you forget to turn on your cab light? People won’t even see you, Red Top Cab. But Carrot Top Cab – now that would be funny. And possibly a trademark / copyright infringement. But it’d recognizable, unforgettable even, and held in high regard here at Dueling Barstools. Red Cloud Cab would have been good too, although Native Americans wouldn’t like you appropriating the name of one of history’s greater statesman and warriors. Red Top Cab gets . . . more kudos than Yellow cab, but not nearly as many kudos as Sea Cab, In Touch Cab, or Mogogo cab.

Third is the Cash Cab. When I first spotted Cash Cab I thought, wished, – no – I ran unabashedly towards it in hopes it was part of the Cash Cab tv show that M.Wife and I Itotally kick ass at when we watch it at home. Seriously, put some combination of Pila, Neil, Cadwell, J.Love, Paulie, and Divinryan in a cab and we’d run the table. Yes that is a challenge to you, Cash Cab tv show. Anway, does the Cash Cab only take Cash? Is that cool with whatever city agency regulates cabs? Is the Cash Cab’s driver a huge Johnny Cash fan? (Click that link, it’s the world’s biggest Johnny Cash fan.) Then again, who isn’t a Johnny Cash fan. Maybe it’s a misspelling due to, in the words of loyal Dueling Barstools reader SarahB, the “cultural origin, the fleeting emotional impulse, and/or nascent grasp of the English language that prompt[s] these name selections[?]” Is Cash Cab supposed to be Cache Cab? But Cache has so many meanings, unless you include the accent over the ‘e.’ And if you have the accent over the ‘e,’ then you’ve got a French cab. And who wants to ride in a French cab, in America? Yes that was a rhetorical question. This is only Cash Cab, and there’s no game show included. That means he wants to take your hard earned cash. I know, all Cabs do. But the Cash Cab is so brazen about telling you he wants your cash. In that sense it’s almost insulting.

Finally, The H-Z Cab. I really have no idea where to begin speculating. But I digress. Maybe the driver doesn’t like letters A-G? At least it’s not the AGW cab – that’d be too much to bear in so many ways. Actually, the fact that the AGW Cab (assuming it’s not a Prius) would most likely stand for “Actual Weight of Gold,” rather than Anthropogenic Global Warming, is really funny. Especially if the cab is bright yellow. And the driver bites it upon request.

Holy. Shit. It just came to me. This is the Hotel Zulu Cab. Think military language, interested readers. But what the fuck does Hotel Zulu mean? A quick google search doesn’t reveal much, but unsurprisingly there are several hotels in Africa named “Zulu” or “Zulu Hotel.” *Note to Hawai’i peeps: Google says there exists a Shakaland Hotel. Really.*

Until further articulable facts allow for the reasonable inference that H-Z Cab (“Hotel Zulu”) is secret code for some nefarious plot that only Dueling Barstools and its legion handful (but growing) of loyal readers can solve, I cannot jump to such a bold conclusion. (Please, vigilant citizen-heroes, keep on the lookout for other “[letter]-[letter"] cabs, take a picture, and upload it to the DuelingBarstools fan-page on Facebook.) For now, Occam’s Razor says this cab driver has a legal or equitable interest in a Hotel named Zulu in Africa.  But if you hear about a plot to destroy the shining light on the hill that is most of San Diego do not, i repeat, do not be surprised if it implicates H-Z Cab. You heard it here first.

Weekend TV that is good for you. Gary Johnson.

I bow in humble awe to Goodshit, who puts together a fascinating mix of links everyday, such as this – 20 color images from WWI. Ever watch a WWI documentary and wish you could see it in color, just to better imagine what no man’s land looked like from the soldier’s trench point of view? See below:

Ilya Somin at Volokh commenting on a recent article by Matt Yglesias, which complained that there should be less elected positions in State government and more appointed positions because it’s impossible to be an informed voter these days. In his words:

No real people are paying attention to what these different offices are, what the incumbents are doing, how they interact, who’s doing a good job, etc. Special interests who are able to hire professionals to monitor elected officials for them, by contrast, are able to make out like bandits.

I principally disagree for two reasons. First, the Internet makes it easier than ever before in world history to be an informed voter. I don’t buy the argument that it’s impossible to be an informed voter. To the extent a voter cares to be reasonably informed he/she can certainly inform him/herself as to the candidates and broad issues. With respect to Yglesias’ point that “[n]o real people are paying attention . . .” he may be correct. It does seem that the majority of citizens don’t pay enough attention, or simply don’t care, preferring to whine about the results of their apathy rather than cure it by taking an active interest in the institutions and people that govern them. Yglesias appears to prefer, as a matter of practicality, relieving the electorate of the political burden (voting) they clearly shirk by giving fewer elected candidates more authority to appoint more bureaucrats. My second objection is that if our collective apathy towards voting results in ineffective, corrupt, and grossly inefficient government then tough shit for us. Democracy (and civil liberty) is not without consequence. We suffer for our apathy. We should willingly bear those consequences, especially when we have at our fingertips the means to improve our democracy.

Ilya Somin makes a couple of different points:

I completely agree with Yglesias that most voters know little or nothing about these offices, and that this creates an opening for interest group influence. I have made similar arguments myself. The problem is exacerbated by the reality that for most voters, it is actually rational to devote little or no time to acquiring political information. It’s also rational for them to do a poor job of analyzing the political information they do know.

At the same time, I am skeptical of the solution that Yglesias implicitly seems to advocate: making these positions nonelected offices. If the Commissioner of the General Land Office becomes a bureaucratic position appointed by the governor, that doesn’t eliminate the problem of voter ignorance. It merely shifts it to a different election. Now, the question of who the governor is likely to choose as the next Commissioner is added to the long list of issues at stake in the gubernatorial election.

Next, Know Your Rights.  If you don’t think that’s important, I invite you to sit in on a criminal procedure class at my law school sometime and witness how federal courts have emasculated the Fourth Amendment.

[UPDATED 3/5/2010 @ 10:50 pm].  More here from Reason on the current administration’s frightening defenestration of civil liberty via the obliteration of the Fourth Amendment.

Re-read that last sentence again, and it doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out that any protestations on the Obama administration’s part that they have any respect for the 4th Amendment or privacy is utter bilge. I wrote on the government’s growing snooping powers in ye Moderne Age at theAmerican Conservative back in February.

Here’s a dated, but good read re: Paul Krugman.

Time after time, Krugman leaves me wide-eyed with wonder at how much economics he has to forget to write those [NY Times] columns.

Interview with an Austrian-school, Soviet economist who defected to the United States.

Yuri N. Maltsev received his MA in history and social sciences at Moscow State University and his PhD in economics at the Institute for Labor Research in Moscow. Some of his major achievements include consulting on Central and Eastern European economic, trade and political issues, as well as appearing on national television and radio programs. He currently is a professor of economics at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

What convinced you of the merits of the Austrian School of Economics over other schools of thought?
The Austrian School of Economics is economics of freedom, economics for free people, economics of human action, not of government design. It is the only school which accurately predicted the fate of the socialist experiment, which cost over 150 million lives last century. Ludwig von Mises showed with precise and irrefutable logic why socialism could never work.

Related: The confluence of classic liberalism and Austrian economics.

Classical liberalism — which we shall call here simply liberalism — is based on the conception of civil society as, by and large, self-regulating when its members are free to act within very wide bounds of their individual rights. Among these the right to private property, including freedom of contract and free disposition of one’s own labor, is given a very high priority. Historically, liberalism has manifested a hostility to state action, which, it insists, should be reduced to a minimum (Raico 1992, 1994).

Austrian economics is the name given to the school, or strand, of economic theory that began with Carl Menger (Kirzner 1987; Hayek 1968), and it has often been linked — both by adherents and opponents — to the liberal doctrine. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the connections that exist, or have been held to exist, between Austrian economics and liberalism.

Change Status Quo: KSM trial probably occurring in Gitmo. I guess that means the White House thinks terror is more akin to war than crime, Terrorists are more akin to war-actors than criminals, and military tribunals are a more appropriate forum than civil courts in which to try them. Where’d they get that idea? I wonder what Neal Katyal, current Deputy Solicitor General, thinks about it, having made his name by arguing (successfully) Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that the Bush administration’s first iteration of military commissions to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions. I’m interested to hear Katyal explain what substantive changes the Obama administration has made to the Tribunals and why those changes now satisfy the arguments Kaytal ably posed against the prior version of military tribunals. More here.

Interesting read here by Timothy Garton Ash, whom I linked to in On Armenia and Genocide, about the challenges facing the EU’s monetary policies. Excerpt below is the end of Ash’s article:

Behind the monetary lurks the fiscal; behind the fiscal, the economic; behind the economic, the political; and behind the political, the historical. The deepest reality underlying this crisis is that the personal experiences and memories that have pushed European integration ahead for 65 years, since 1945, are losing their force. The personal memory of war, occupation, humiliation, European barbarism; fear of Germany, including Germany’s fear of itself; the Soviet threat, the cold war, the “return to Europe” as a guarantee of hard-won freedom; the hope of restored European greatness.

These were massive biographical motivators, which drove people like Mitterrand and Kohl even unto the euro. Can Europeans go on building Europe without such profound motivators? Are there new ones in sight?

Yesterday’s Pentagon attacker was a left-wing truther. Here’s some reasons why non-left wing, non-truthers shouldn’t try to make political hay out of it.

So, instead of playing the blame game so unapologetically employed by the Left when they feel they can spin things to their political advantage, I’m not going to say that Bedell’s actions at the Pentagon epitomize the leftist worldview. Rather, he was just crazy, as clearly indicated by his belief in the craziest of modern crazy conspiracy theories, 9/11 Truthism.

Are most Truthers leftists? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that all left-leaning Americans are thereby just as crazy as the most extreme among them; it simply indicates that when a leftist goes crazy in the post-9/11 era, he often gloms onto Truthism as his paranoia of choice.

Put it this way: Leftism fails as a coherent philosophy on its own terms. We shouldn’t try to wring significance from the delusional outburst of someone who just happened to be leftist. There are plenty of ways to logically disembowel Marxism and its numerous noxious contemporary offspring without having to resort to an unnecessary round of political “gotcha!”

Did you know that Willie Nelson smoked weed on the roof of the white house? Plus this on Nelson, from Reason’s 35 Heroes of Freedom.

One of the great crossover artists in popular music, the Texas legend pulled off a Martin Luther King Jr.-like achievement by uniting hippies and rednecks in a single audience.

The most plausible Republican fix to the fiscal mess . . . I’m still in the tank for Gary Johnson.

Finally, Reason’s Peter Suderman on the ‘jobs created or saved’ canard:

In selling the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—otherwise known as the economic stimulus—to the American public last year, the Obama administration promised that the massive spending package would serve as a sort of Keynesian Red Bull, allowing the tired economy to keep partying hard by pumping up GDP and trapping unemployment in single digits. Or, as the administration put it in January 2009, the bill was to create or save three to four million jobs over the next two years, with over 90 percent of those jobs in the private sector.

Instead, the economy reacted like it just downed a glass of whiskey and warm milk: Private sector output fell sharply, and last fall, the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent. * * *

That still leaves us with a question: How many jobs did the stimulus actually create? The best answer to that question is not 1 million or 2.1 million or any of the other figures that have been batted around in recent months by the administration and its defenders. It’s not even a figure at all; instead it’s another question: Who knows?

But don’t take my word for it; take the CBO’s. Unlike the administration, the CBO is a nonpartisan entity without a particular interest in strengthening its claims further than they should. All the numbers it produces are estimates, and the agency devotes plenty of ink to explaining its methodology and the uncertainties it entails. Last month’s report cautioned that “considerable uncertainty exists about many of these economic relationships that are important in the modeling,” which is why many of its estimates come in rather wide ranges. And its December report noted that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

In other words, don’t blame the CBO, which is merely doing its lawful duty to produce compliant estimates (a fact which it dryly makes clear in the introduction). Instead, blame the administration, the government-spending enthusiasts, the liberal pundits, and anyone else who treats these pre-cooked estimates as settled fact.

Via Instapundit, this article:

Although it might seem unlikely that anyone would wonder whether the author of The Lord of the Rings was Jewish, the Nazis took no chances. When the publishing firm of Ruetten & Loening was negotiating with J. R. R. Tolkien over a German translation of The Hobbit in 1938, they demanded that Tolkien provide written assurance that he was an Aryan. Tolkien chastised the publishers for “impertinent and irrelevant inquiries,” and—ever the professor of philology— lectured them on the proper meaning of the term: “As far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects.” As to being Jewish, Tolkien regretted that “I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”

Needless to say, C. S. Lewis wasn’t Jewish either, though he did marry a Jewish convert to Anglican Christianity (played by Deborah Winger in the film Shadowlands). In fact, when one of her two sons from a previous marriage became increasingly observant, Lewis turned to the great Jewish historian Cecil Roth for advice on finding kosher food and shabbat hospitality for his stepson. But of course no one would suppose the author of Mere Christianity and theChronicles of Narnia to have been Jewish himself. Tolkien had famously converted his friend and fellow Oxford don from skepticism to Christianity through a series of conversations that led Lewis to the realization that “the story of Christ is simply a true myth.”

Tolkien and Lewis’s gentility would hardly bear comment were it not for the fact that they are not isolated examples in this regard, but only the most well-known figures within an entire literary genre—perhaps the only such genre—in which Jewish practitioners are strikingly rare. I cannot think of a single major fantasy writer who is Jewish, and there are only a handful of minor ones of any note. To no other field of modern literature have Jews contributed so little.

So why don’t Jews write more fantasy literature? And a different, deeper but related question: why are there no works of modern fantasy that are profoundly Jewish in the way that, say, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is Christian? Why no Jewish Lewises, and why no Jewish Narnias?

My interest in these questions is partly personal. Tolkien and Lewis loomed large in my childhood and, as I read them to my own children, I wonder what they ought to mean to us as Jews. But my thoughts are also stimulated by the recent publication of some apparent exceptions to the rule: from the United States, The Magicians, a fantasy novel for adults by novelist and critic Lev Grossman, and from Israel, Hagar Yanai’s Ha-mayim she-bein ha-olamot (The Water Between the Worlds), the acclaimed second installation of a projected fantasy trilogy, which, when it is finished, will be the first such trilogy in Hebrew.

Asking these questions is hardly frivolous when fantasy, especially children’s fantasy, has today become a multi-billion dollar industry. In addition to the perennial popularity of Lewis and Tolkien, there is of course the publishing tsunamithat is J. K. Rowling, as well as the lesser but still remarkable successes of recent fantasy authors such as Philip Pullman and Jonathan Stroud, all magnified immensely by the films based on their books. Fantasy is big business

Read the whole thing, it’s good.

Serially.

(CNN) — Thirty to 40 ships — including several passenger ships — were stuck Thursday in ice off the coast of Sweden, said a spokesman for the Maritime Search and Rescue Center in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The area of the Baltic Sea worst hit by the ice were the waters bounded by mainland Sweden, the Stockholm archipelago and the Finnish island of Aland, said Tommy Gardebring, press officer with the Swedish Maritime Administration.

Several passenger vessels from Viking Line were stuck, he said. One of them had been freed.

“It has been a lot colder than normal in the southern parts of the Baltic sea, but in the north all is normal with normal levels of ice,” Gardebring said. “However, in the worst-affected areas, the ice breakers that normally operate haven’t been able to cope with the ice, which is why we are sending additional ice breakers.”

The extra help was expected to arrive around midnight (6 p.m. ET), he said.

That’s Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards’ story, and they’re sticking to it!

“There was never any danger for the safety of the vessels, but we have increased our preparedness, just in case, since the ice puts a lot of pressure on the sides of the ships,” Gardebring said.

But what about polar bear attack? (Fyi, it would have been awesome if above scenario occurred in Canada, so I could type “aboot”.)  I interviewed some notable celebrities on the matter.

Keith Olbermann declared: “You wear a crown of negligence, sir, having precluded the threat of polar bear attack in the tepid firing of neutrons you erroneously refer to as passenger risk analysis.”  Gardebring “acted stupidly,” averred President Obama. But Roger clemens came to Gardebring’s aid, saying that Gardebring simply “misunderstood the question.”

[Gardebring] predicted that most of the ships would be freed by Friday.

Predictions are only as good as the assumptions they rest on, and Gardebring forgot about the polar bears. Unbelievable.

UPDATED 3/4/2010 @ 5:10

No mention of polar bears in this article either, but a couple of noteworthy phrases.

STOCKHOLM – Dozens of ships including a passenger ferry with nearly 1,000 people on board were trapped Friday in heavy pack ice in the Baltic Sea off Sweden’s east coast, officials said. * * *

“There’s no danger for the passengers as long as there’s food and drink on board,” Lindvall told The Associated Press.

Sure, it’s all fun and games until a polar bear eats you.

Mats Nystrom, a passenger on the Amorella, told Swedish broadcaster SVT that there was no panic on the ship.

“The atmosphere is calm so there is no danger in that sense,” said Nystrom, who is a sports presenter for the network. He said the most dramatic event had been when the two ships touched.

No matter what came before “when the two ships touched,” it’s funny.

Michael Graham at the Boston Herald makes a good point. You never hear Obama (or Congress) discuss Massachusetts’ universal health care model (“Romneycare”) while touting the merits of Congress’ proposed health care bill because Romneycare has failed in several significant metrics that Congress’ proposed legislation is intended to remedy.

[Romneycare is] exploding the budget: Our “universal” health insurance scheme is already $47 million over budget for 2010. Romneycare will cost taxpayers more than $900 million next year alone.

It’s killing us on costs: Average Massachusetts premiums are the highest in the nation and rising. We also spend 27 percent more on health care services, per capita, than the national average. Those costs, contrary to what we were promised, have been going up faster here than nearly everywhere else.

It’s creating bizarre marketplace mutations: In Massachusetts, ObamaCare 1.0 is such a mess our governor is talking about imposing draconian price controls. He’s even suggested going to “capitation,” a system where doctors get a fixed amount of money per patient – and then that’s it. Which means it would become in your doctor’s financial interest never to see you again.

The percentage of uninsured Bay State residents has gone from around 6 percent to around 3 percent.

Moreover, this ReasonTV clip, which I’ve linked to several times points out that Romneycare denies nearly 24% of medical claims, compared to the 4-6% of claims Massachusetts’ private insurers deny.

Romneycare makes Gov. Daniels’ (R-In) plan look like a much better model. Specifics below:

[Healthy Indian Plan] is for uninsured Hoosier adults between the ages of 19-64. Parents or caretaker relatives of children in the Hoosier Healthwise program are likely candidates for HIP.

Eligibility Requirements:

1. Individuals must earn less than 200% of the federal poverty level (FPL). A single adult earning no more than $21,660 a year, or families of four earning approximately $44,000 likely meet the basic financial requirements.
2. Individuals must not have access to employer sponsored health insurance coverage, whether or not it is utilized by the individual.
3. Individuals must be uninsured for the previous six months.

Plan Structure

The Plan provides:

• A POWER Account valued at $1,100 per adult to pay for medical costs. Contributions to the account are made by the state and each participant (on a sliding scale based on ability to pay). No participant will pay more than 5% of his/her gross family income on the plan.
• A basic commercial benefits package once annual medical costs exceed $1,100.
• Coverage for free preventive services including annual exams, smoking cessation, and mammograms.

Why a POWER Account?

• POWER Accounts give participants a financial incentive to adopt healthy behaviors that keep them out of the doctor’s office. When they do seek health care, plan participants will seek price transparency so they can make value conscious decisions to better manage the funds in their account.

What Is Covered

• Services include: physician services, prescriptions, diagnostic exams, home health services, outpatient hospital, inpatient hospital, hospice, preventive services, family planning, and case and disease management
• Mental health coverage is similar to coverage for physical health, and includes substance abuse treatment, inpatient, outpatient, and drugs

Other Plan Specifics

• Sliding scale for individual contributions (based on % of gross family income):
  • 0-100% FPL: 2%
  • 100%-125% FPL: 3%
  • 125%-150% FPL: 4%
  • 150%-200% FPL: 4.5%- 5%*

* Caretaker relatives/ parental adults in this income bracket contribute 4.5%, and the childless adults contribute 5%.

• No co-pays except for ER use, which are based on a sliding scale and will never exceed $25 a visit.
• If all age and gender appropriate preventive services are completed, all (state and individual) remaining POWER Account funds will rollover to offset the following year’s contribution. If preventive services are not completed, only the individual’s prorated contribution (not the State’s) to the account rolls over.

It’s just absurd that at the ‘health summit’ last week no one stood on the desk and shouted: “Has anyone in the room wondered why the cost of [insert elective medical procedures such as botox, hair implants, laser eye surgery] drop every year due to demand for them spurring medical innovation [jump into tangent: "that means jobs, people"] that drops costs and creates a competitive fierce competition by doctors for consumer dollars?”

Watch these again, and share it with your friends.

Via Reason, I find this gem by Ron Hart. Excerpt below.

We should be delighted there is no bipartisanship in Washington. Bipartisanship brings about bad decisions, like the Iraq War. The Democrats had 60 votes for ObamaCare which they had to bribe some of their Senators to secure—the bill is that bad. With no Republican votes and daily defections of Democrats, the health care bill will not be bipartisan, but maybe bi-curious at best. They want to pass this bill through “reconciliation,” which could be the most expensive phrase to come out of the White House since “Mission Accomplished.”

Obama called in the GOP again last week for his “made for TV” lecture on health care. Obama really, really, REALLY wants us to have universal health care, just like North Korea, Cuba and Russia have. Obama promised equal time to Republicans, but once the cameras were rolling he said the rules did not apply to him. Why do politicians come to D.C. like Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and morph into Hitler in “Inglourious Basterds”?

He called on the GOP to provide alternatives to his plan, besides the ones that made sense like tort reform and competitive interstate insurance offerings.

If you currently don’t have health insurance, under the GOP alternative you can keep your plan. Their health care plan, which I think they call “Walk it Off,” is less expensive than that proposed by Democrats. For example, instead of Viagra they only pay for a tongue depressor and duct tape.

Ron Hart is hereby admitted to the Magna Cum Blogroll.

Reason has an article up sharply criticizing Justice Scalia’s apparent unwillingness to use the high-profile McDonald v. Chicago (argued yesterday) to restore the original intent of privileges and immunities clause (“PI clause”) of the Fourteenth Amendment by overturning the infamous (1870s) Slaughterhouse cases, which emasculated the PI clause.  Since Scalia is considered a fire breathing advocate of originalism, his unwillingness to use what appears to be a perfect chance to restore the PI clause on originalist grounds smacks of hypocrisy, or as Reason’s Damon Root put it “faint-hearted 14th Amendment originalism.”

What’s more is that Scalia appears amenable to the idea of incorporating the Second Amendment to the States via the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  As a matter of originalism, ‘incorporation‘ is a suspect doctrine that is unnecessary if the Court would properly interpret and apply the PI clause.  As the Reason article points out, Scalia has long criticized using Due Process to incorporate various portions of the bill of rights onto the States.  But standing in the way of overturning the Slaughter House cases is 140 years of precedent. Considering that Roe v. Wade, decided more than 100 years after the Slaughterhouse cases, is considered sacrosanct precedent today – and validly so because of the effects overturning Supreme Court precedent has on the mountains of lower court precedent and local, state, and federal statutes based upon Supreme Court rulings – overturning the Slaughterhouse cases today would be a quite the leap.  That isn’t to say that the Court shouldn’t overturn them – I’m in favor of it. And I’m pretty certain at least a couple justices are. But apparently not Scalia.

Consider the following three views on the matter:

Legal Scholar Timothy Sandeur: (Linked to in the Reason article)

[Scalia] said he was much more willing to rely on substantive due process–which he believes is a errant doctrine–than to revive the privileges or immunities clause. After this, Justice Scalia’s claims of being an originalist can simply not be taken seriously by anyone. Here there is no question at all that, whatever else might be said about Slaughter-House, it does not represent the original intent or original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet he openly said he was more comfortable using a different theory–one he has repeatedly attacked in his decisions–rather than return to the original meaning.

Now, some particularly interesting commentary from the Reason article:

First, John:

I don’t think people are being fair to Scalia. He is just saying that the Court ought to always make as limited rulings as possible. Why overrule 140 years of precedence when you can accomplish the same result and not disturb any precedence?

The answer of course is because the precedence is wrong. Scalia I think would respond by saying that the Court owes the country as consistent of an application of laws as possible. If you overrule Slaughterhouse a lot of law goes out the window. Now, maybe that is a good thing. But, it is also a lot of displacement and uncertainty that could be avoided by using substantive due process. If the other law is so bad, then bring a case before the court where overruling Slaughter is the only way to get to the proper result. Scalia doesn’t want to re-write law if he doesn’t have to.

This whole exchange puts lie to the liberal cartoon that Scalia is some kind of a partisan lunatic aiming to destroy all established precedent in name of originalism.

More from John:

You look at the court as a means to your ends. Scalia looks at the court as a place where cases are properly decided. If Slaughterhouse is that bad, bring a case where overruling it is required to get to the proper result. Don’t shoehorn it onto something else. And further, if all of the bad law under Slaughterhouse can be overruled for other reasons, why bother with Slaughterhouse at all. And who says this case is about Slaughterhouse? Right to bear arms is a substantive right just like every other right in the Bill of Rights. And thus, ought to be incorporated against the states via substantive due process.

From Spartacus:

Scalia is a hard core proponent of stare decisis. If it were up to him, no one would ever revisit settled precedent, no matter how stupid or wrong (see Gonzalez v. Raich).

R C Dean:

One cannot be both an originalist and a hard-core proponent of stare decisis. Either the text of the Constitution is the ultimate touchstone, or previous case law is. Where they conflict, one has to prevail.

I think we know where Scalia is on this question.

And finally, John Thacker:

Yes, he’s in the middle. Only Justice Thomas completely rejects stare decisis.

I think the above discussion is a perfect example of what Robert McNamara said about life, and especially controversy (such as the Vietnam war):

We see what we want to see.

Via Lauri Hakala, my friend for life and former roommate. Here’s some info on Lauri:

The complexity of University of Hawai’i volleyball player Lauri Hakala begins with his name.

“I got sick of people telling me I’m Hawaiian or Tongan,” Hakala said. “Even when I paid my phone bill, they said, ‘You must be Hawaiian.’ To end the discussion once and for all, I went to the O’ahu phone book. There was only one person who has the ‘Hakala’ last name. I called him. He said his grandparents came from Finland a long time ago. They’re Finnish. There’s your proof.”

I was present for that phone call, it took place in our 4th floor Wainani apartment at the University of Hawai’i.  I recall that the O’ahu Hakala was dumbfounded that Lauri called him, especially since the O’ahu Hakala was a University of Hawai’i volleyball fan and knew who Lauri was.

I recently linked to an article containing a number of WWII images taken in Nazi occupied Russian territory.  As an introduction to the pictures the article’s author wrote the following:

The photos are shocking and cruel, but they should teach us to respect others’ lives and dignity. We are equal and we are not born to be slaves.

Moving prose.  We are principally equal – human beings – and deserve equal treatment. We are not born to be slaves. Not to each other, not to ideology, not to States.  We should increase our principal understanding of what respect, dignity, and slavery means. We should increase the measure of respect, dignity, and liberty we give each other and demand from the institutions that govern us.

That bit of reflection prompted me to do bit of research into the series of atrocities the Armenians call the Armenian Genocide, but Ottomans Turks, the perpetrators of the aforementioned atrocities, deny was genocide. You probably know that whether to label the over one million Armenians that Ottoman-Turkey killed during the first world war is a contentious issue internationally and domestically.  For instance:

Two years ago [in 2008], before a resolution was to be put to a vote in the House, Turkey recalled Ambassador [to the US] Sensoy in protest. Its president warned of “serious troubles” and its top general said that military ties with the U.S. would never be the same. To limit further damage, the Bush administration and eight former secretaries of state then weighed in to kill the bill. It worked.

With regard to the fight over whether to officially label the Turk-on-Armenian atrocities ‘genocide’ this author persuasively argues what I believe is a more important point:

Among the ways in which freedom is being chipped away in Europe, one of the less obvious is the legislation of memory. More and more countries have laws saying you must remember and describe this or that historical event in a certain way, sometimes on pain of criminal prosecution if you give the wrong answer. What the wrong answer is depends on where you are. In Switzerland, you get prosecuted for saying that the terrible thing that happened to the Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman empire was not a genocide. In Turkey, you get prosecuted for saying it was. What is state-ordained truth in the Alps is state-ordained falsehood in Anatolia. * * *

This kind of nonsense is all the more dangerous when it comes wearing the mask of virtue. A perfect example is the recent attempt to enforce limits to the interpretation of history across the whole EU in the name of “combating racism and xenophobia”. A proposed “framework decision” of the justice and home affairs council of the EU, initiated by the German justice minister Brigitte Zypries, suggests that in all EU member states “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” should be “punishable by criminal penalties of a maximum of at least between one and three years imprisonment”. * * *

Let me be clear. I believe it is very important that nations, states, peoples and other groups (not to mention individuals) should face up, solemnly and publicly, to the bad things done by them or in their name. The West German leader Willy Brandt falling silently to his knees in Warsaw before a monument to the victims and heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto is, for me, one of the noblest images of postwar European history. For people to face up to these things, they have to know about them in the first place. So these subjects must be taught in schools as well as publicly commemorated. But before they are taught, they must be researched. The evidence must be uncovered, checked and sifted, and various possible interpretations tested against it.

It’s this process of historical research and debate that requires complete freedom – subject only to tightly drawn laws of libel and slander, designed to protect living persons but not governments, states or national pride (as in the notorious article 301 of the Turkish penal code). The historian’s equivalent of a natural scientist’s experiment is to test the evidence against all possible hypotheses, however extreme, and then submit what seems to him or her the most convincing interpretation for criticism by professional colleagues and for public debate. This is how we get as near as one ever can to truth about the past.

How, for example, do you refute the absurd conspiracy theory, which apparently still has some currency in parts of the Arab world, that “the Jews” were behind the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York? By forbidding anyone from saying that, on pain of imprisonment? No. You refute it by refuting it. By mustering all the available evidence, in free and open debate. This is not just the best way to get at the facts; ultimately, it’s the best way to combat racism and xenophobia too. So join us, please, to see off the nanny state and its memory police.

The author’s name is Timothy Garton Ash. He has a good piece here on Europe’s illogical, illiberal, and appalling stance degrading position on civil liberty, and especially free speech.  A snippet:

So, for example, last week the home secretary pathetically and idiotically banned the Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the UK to show his noxious and offensive anti-Islam film at the invitation of members of the House of Lords. Result: a curtailment of free speech that gives Wilders more free publicity than he could otherwise have dreamed of. And how does the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne react? Oh, that’s all right, he says, because the film is really offensive. Well, d’oh. Call yourself a liberal? John Stuart Mill would be turning in his grave. And I shall need some convincing that the Conservative frontbench are going to be any better.

I’m not sure I fully understand all the reasons for this cravenness, but here’s one. A couple of years ago I asked a very senior New Labour politician if his government had not got the balance between security and liberty wrong. “Well”, he replied, “one thing I can tell you is that if you ask the British people they will always choose more security.” And this is where the ball comes back to us. Since our leaders are now mainly followers – following the latest opinion poll, focus group or newspaper campaign – it’s up to us, the people, to change their view of what “the people” want.

Pardon my digression. Atrocities should be be investigated thoroughly, and people free of Orwellian restrictions on speech and thought should discuss them openly to find truth. Here are some links with pertinent information about what the Turks did to Armenians during the First World War.

Images:

Here’s a m0ral-relativistic argument against labeling the Armenian atrocities as genocide.

This is a good window into the Armenian point of view.

Finally, here’s the transcript of a Sixty Minutes video clip on the matter.  Excerpt below.

(CBS) Wars are fought over oil, land, water, but rarely over history, especially about something that happened nearly 100 years ago. But that’s what Turkey and Armenia are still fighting over: what to label the mass deportation and subsequent massacre of more than a million Christian Armenians from Ottoman Turkey during World War I.

Armenians and an overwhelming number of historians say that Turkey’s rulers committed genocide, that its actions were a model for what Hitler did to the Jews. The Turks, meanwhile, say their ancestors never carried out such crimes, and that they too were victims in a world war.

Ever since, this battle over history has not only ensnared the two nations but even the White House and Congress, where resolutions officially recognizing the genocide are currently moving through the House and Senate.

But our story begins where the lives of so many Armenians ended, far from Istanbul, in the desert.

“60 Minutes” and correspondent Bob Simon took a drive into what is now Syria, to the barren wilderness, to what amounts to the largest Armenian cemetery in the world.

“As many as 450,000 Armenians died here,” author Peter Balakian told Simon.

Balakian is an Armenian American who has written extensively about what happened in this desolate place.

According to Balakian, 450,000 Armenians died in this spot in the desert. “In this region called Deir Zor, it is the greatest graveyard of the Armenian Genocide,” he explained.

Deir Zor is to Armenians what Auschwitz is to Jews. The most ghoulish thing about the place is that 95 years later the evidence of the massacres is everywhere.

Just a short distance from the banks of Euphrates there’s a dump. It’s also the site of a mass grave. It has never been excavated. All we had to do was scratch the surface of the sand to collect evidence of what had happened here.

Under the surface was evidence of bones. “It’s the hill full of bones,” said Dr. Haroot Kahvejian, an Armenian dentist who showed Simon around.

Conversation overheard on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai:

Iranian Air Defense Radar: “Unknown aircraft you are in Iranian airspace. Identify yourself.”

Aircraft: “This is a United States aircraft.  I am in Iraqi airspace.”

Air Defense Radar: “You are in Iranian airspace.  If you do not depart our airspace we will launchinterceptor aircraft!”

Aircraft: ”This is a United States Marine Corps FA-18 fighter. Send ‘em up, I’ll wait!”

Air Defense Radar: (no response …. total silence)

I can’t verify this story any more than I can verify the story two American backpackers told me in 2004 about their chance encounter in Scotland with Sean Connery, which today is considered the greatest story ever told by all who have heard it. Like the Sean Connery story, if this FA-18 story is true, it is bad ass.

If I were the President of the United States I would appoint Eugene Volokh to the Supreme Court, notwithstanding my that my views towards the legal academy are, ahem, jaded (see here for my thoughts, in short I’d prefer a free market in legal education). Volokh’s blog, Volokh Conspiracy, is a daily read for me, and in my opinion provides the broadest, insightful, legal commentary available on the Internet.

By the way, if you’re into takings issues, Inversecondemnation is a must read.

The newest admission to Magna Cum Blogroll is Logicology, who self describes as:

Composer, vibraphonist, drummer, armchair economist, wannabe polymath, atheist, classical (Jeffersonian) liberal, purveyor & causer of awesome.

Check out this post for an interesting video titled “The Surprising Science of Motivation”, and excellent, critical analysis of that video by Logicologist in Chief Sean Malone:

Dan [ed. note: Dan is the speaker in the video] notes that sociological researchers are finding that in creative problem-solving situations, offering people more money to do a job faster actually correlated to poorer performance than people who are offered lower rates of pay.

Seems odd, right?  Dan certainly thinks so.

But I don’t.  At all.  You see, it seems odd only if your conception of incentives is purely financial or monetary.

Clearly, that’s what Dan is referencing and is the one major flaw he seems to repeat throughout this speech.  It’s also a stereotype of economists and so-called “free market” supporters that is actually completely untenable, and is why I’ve decided to write about this today.

The premise of his talk is that “science knows” that people don’t actually respond to incentives in the way economists and (many, but definitely not all) businesses believe…  While he’s certainly right that the business environment is changing for Americans in the 21st Century into areas which “traditional” financial incentives have less meaning for employees, he actually makesno challenge what-so-ever to the assertion that people respond to incentives, which is sort of the revelation he’s trying to support.  What’s more, essentially his entire speech at TED actuallysupports the basic Misesian “Action Axiom” instead, summed up as follows:

“Action is the purposeful employment of means to achieve ends in accord with the actor’s values.”

Note the crucial qualifier: “in accord with the actor’s values.”

…Not the proscribed values of researchers, not the values of other people…  The values of those individuals doing the action and no one else.

Where Mr. Pink gets confused is that his conception of what constitutes an “incentive” has been grossly narrowed to include only the kinds of ideas bandied about by the same types of economists who are hung up on aggregating supply, demand and every other market process in order to quantify & create fancy, elegant and entirely useless macroeconomic statistical models.  What’s worse, is that he pushes this false assumption onto both the audience (who for all I know share his misconception) and to essentially all economists.

On the issue of human motivation, however, anyone who’s remotely familiar with the Austrian School of Economics (which has been around over 100 years and has successfully predicted and clearly explained many major economic events, such as the Great Depression, the steep rise in inflation since the 70s, various shortages and bubbles & even the current economic catastrophe) should be explicitly aware that the school’s views are completely in line with “the science” being reported on at TED, and always have been.

I would go so far as to suggest that had Mr. Pink approached any economist from Walter Block, Bob Murphy or Mark Thornton all the way to even a few non-Austrians like George Mason University’s Walter Williams or the brilliant Monetarist, Thomas Sowell, and said, “Would you believe that an encyclopedia who’s only rewards for contribution were the satisfaction of writing about a topic you are interested in could out-compete a professional highly paid encyclopedia like Encarta?” and I can almost guarantee that every single one of them would have resoundingly said, “Of course!”

I’d recommend reading the whole thing. Logicologist uses Wikipedia as an example of how traditional mainstream economist thinking never could have predicted a non-paid user encyclopedia (but thought Microsoft Encarta would succeed) while Austrian Economists Libertarians have long proposed such models.

Via the DialetcticalPlaya.

Sky from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

As he is wont to do, FuturePundit has a thought provoking article up today on the implications of the fact that the universet is apparently not getting any older.

Universe Still 13.75 Billion Years OldThe universe is not getting any younger.

Menlo Park, Calif.—Using entire galaxies as lenses to look at other galaxies, researchers have a newly precise way to measure the size and age of the universe and how rapidly it is expanding, on a par with other techniques. The measurement determines a value for the Hubble constant, which indicates the size of the universe, and confirms the age of the universe as 13.75 billion years old, within 170 million years. The results also confirm the strength of dark energy, responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe.

These results, by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, the University of Bonn, and other institutions in the United States and Germany, is published in the March 1 issue of TheAstrophysical Journal. The researchers used data collected by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and showed the improved precision they provide in combination with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

Think about it: If you want to live long enough to see the universe get a tenth of a percent older (and really, who doesn’t) you are going to have to figure out how to stay alive for another 13.75 million years. Puts things in perspective. One would have to become extremely risk averse to stay alive that long. This risk aversion is probably why long lived super intelligences aren’t revealing themselves to us.

People talk a lot about alien intelligences and whether they exist. A big question is, why the space aliens aren’t here already and whether they are hiding and watching us. Here’s what I’m thinking: Someone really really old, say a few hundred million years old, might have grown bored looking at the life forms that already existed and decided to sleep many millions of years waiting for some other form of intelligence to evolve.

Given the vastness of time I would expect some forms of intelligence to find ways to slow down their metabolisms and basically go time traveling into the future to meet (or at least observe from a safe distance) life forms unlike any they found on the planet they evolved on. Sleep in a traveling planet and look for signs of a solar system interesting enough to cruise near.

13.75 billion years is such a long time that sentient beings that came into existence hundreds of millions or billions of years ago should have found ways to maintain sentience for extremely long periods of time to carry out long term plans.

By the way, the comments on FuturePundit are usually worth reading.

I don’t know a lot about Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana, but Ross Douthat calls him the best governor in America, and recently analyzed Gov. Daniels’ prospects for the 2012/2016 presidency. Long excerpt below:

Since then, though, he’s become America’s best governor. In a just world, Daniels’s record would make him the Tea Party movement’s favorite politician. During the fat years of the mid-2000s, while most governors went on spending sprees, he was trimming Indiana’s payroll, slowing the state government’s growth, and turning a $800 million deficit into a consistent surplus. Now that times are hard, his fiscal rigor is paying off: the state’s projected budget shortfall for 2011, as a percentage of the budget, is the third-lowest in the country.

But Daniels hasn’t just been a Dr. No on policy. His “Healthy Indiana” plan, which offers catastrophic coverage to low-income residents, aspires to eventually cover 130,000 people, about a third of the state’s long-term uninsured. He’s pushed targeted investments in kindergarten programs, the police force and the child welfare office. And he’s been a pragmatic free-marketeer, rather than a strict ideologue. His controversial decision to lease the Indiana toll road reaped $3.8 billion for the state. But when an attempt to outsource welfare enrollment went awry, Daniels yanked the system back into the public sector.

If this portrait sounds suspiciously glowing, keep in mind that I saw the governor last Monday, in between the CPAC gathering of movement conservatives and the White House health care forum. In both cases, the contrast made Daniels seem particularly appealing.

Unlike the politicians who spoke at CPAC, Daniels eschewed triumphalism about conservatism’s prospects. “I think a lot of Republicans are over-reading all of this,” he said. “They’re a little ahead of themselves, a little too giddy.” What his party still needs, and doesn’t have he said, are the answers to “the ‘what’ question — what are we about, what are our answers to the obvious problems the nation has?”

Unlike the Republicans at the health care summit, he balanced criticisms of Obamacare with candor about the problem of the uninsured. “This is a very real issue, and we were determined to have a constructive approach to it — but one that would be affordable.” Healthy Indiana, he went on, is “incredibly popular with the people who are a part of it. I get tearful hugs from people who just want to tell me that it’s brought them peace of mind.”

And unlike both CPAC-goers and his party’s leadership, Daniels was blunt about the challenges of deficit reduction. “There’s been some very healthy hell-raising going on in the country,” he said of the Tea Parties. “But to my knowledge, nobody’s gotten up in front of those rallies and explained what’s going to have to happen.” His ideal approach to the deficit would look like Paul Ryan’s fiscal roadmap, all spending restraint and no new taxes. But one way or another, deficit reduction “has to be done” — even if “you have to take the second- or third-best method.”

All this honesty might evaporate on the campaign trail. And if it didn’t, would Daniels have a prayer? He’s admired by elites, but unknown at the grass-roots level. He’s a social conservative, and his gubernatorial campaigns have played the populist card successfully — but he lacks the built-in constituencies of other candidates. And his years’ carrying water for the Bush administration’s budgets would doubtless be used against him in the battle for the Tea Partiers’ affections.

For a Daniels candidacy to catch fire, what’s left of the Republican establishment, currently (if reluctantly) coalescing around Mitt Romney, would have to decide that he’s the better pick. That would mean gambling that the best way to defeat the most charismatic president of modern times is to nominate a balding, wonky Midwesterner who reminds voters of their accountant.

No offense Gov. Daniels, but I’ll stick endorsing Gary Johnson for President.