Right Side of the Rainbow

I was wondering today about the loss of infrastructure in New Orleans, and I do not mean the physical. Consider, for example, two unrelated enterprises, both important in their own way to the life of a modern American city.

• The Times-Picayune, the city’s newspaper, hasn’t updated the homepage of its website since Monday. I assume the paper isn’t publishing, either. Between now and the time that commerce — and therefore advertisers — return to the city, what becomes of the paper’s editors, reporters and other employees? Does the publisher have the cash reserves to pay them in the absence of a revenue stream? And if not, how long until the employees seek work elsewhere?

• Hospitals in New Orleans have evacuated their patients to facilities in Houston and other cities. What becomes now of their nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists and other staff? Although college-educated health care professionals usually draw salaries higher than the community’s average, and may therefore have more than others in savings, they still can’t go long without a paycheck. And if the hospitals in New Orleans are in the same financial condition as the ones in Houston, they most certainly do not have the reserves to pay their employees in the absence of a revenue stream. Now gone, and presumably soon to seek jobs elsewhere, will the health care workers return?

Can all the king’s men put the city back together again?

See also from the New York Times: “Future Face of New Orleans Has an Uncertain Look for Now”

Posted by Paul at 8:52 PM | Permalink

A stunning set of photos.

Could this be enough to tip the whole economic cart over? I’m not certain that it will. But it would seem foolish to deny the very real possibility that it could. (Link)

For the cartoon and first link, thanks to Cox & Forkum.

Posted by Paul at 8:35 PM | Permalink

Fox News reports that the effort to seal a breach in the 17th St. levee has failed, which means water from Lake Pontchartrain is still pouring into New Orleans. The Washington Post describes a desperate exodus.

Meanwhile, the “good news:” the devastation isn’t as bad as it could have been. Hooray, I guess.

Posted by Paul at 10:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

My blogging has been virtually nonexistent over the last 48 hours because I’m transfixed on developments in New Orleans. I love that city, having travelled there innumerable times, and I’m now heartbroken for her people. Their losses are almost unimaginable.

New Orleans is a national treasure, unique among American cities. Of all the places to which I’ve travelled, both here and abroad, New Orleans is the most … soulful. But now, it’s a broken city, and out of control. And as I look at the destruction there, which is, I think, to a scale unparalleled in our history, I keep wondering how — and whether — New Orleans can overcome it.

ADDED — Needless to say, boys, this ain’t happening. Take the money you would have spent and give it to the relief and reconstruction efforts.

Posted by Paul at 5:50 PM | Permalink

It does? I bet that’s news to the ten Republicans who sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Beam her up, Scotty. Beam. Her. Up.

Posted by Paul at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is serious:

I put the odds of New Orleans getting its levees breached and the city submerged at about 70%. This scenario, which has been discussed extensively in literature I have read, could result in a death toll in the thousands, since many people will be unable or unwilling to get out of the city. I recommend that if you are trapped in New Orleans tomorrow, that you wear a life jacket and a helmet if you have them. High rise buildings may offer good refuge, but Katrina has the potential to knock down a high-rise building.

UPDATE — From Jeremy Chrysler at Phog Blog (via Michelle Malkin):

As I write this, Hurricane Katrina is approaching New Orleans. New Orleans is about 12 feet below sea level and has always lived under a death sentence of a nightmare scenario which may very well unfold in the next 12-18 hours. Basically, if Katrina’s storm surge causes Lake Ponchartrain to flood the levees surrounding the city, New Orleans will be under 30 feet of water.

Experts say that such a scenario could lead to a death toll in the tens of thousands. Some place the toll as high as 50,000-100,000. The city has no natural drainage and some estimate that it could take up to 10 months for the lake of the dead to drain.

In short, tomorrow could be one of the deadliest days in American History. (Link)

I hope he’s overstating the danger. We’ll know in a few hours.

Hugh Hewitt explains why in the aftermath of Katrina we may be paying $4 a gallon for gas.

But right now I’m thinking about the people stuck in New Orleans, including my colleagues in health care. The doctors and nurses who were on duty when their hospitals declared an emergency would not have been allowed to leave at the end of their shift, at least not without losing their jobs and risking their careers. But they took an oath to care for their patients, and that’s what they’ll do, even though it means they can’t be with their own families or help them to evacuate. And now they’ll work around the clock, without relief. Pray for them.

Posted by Paul at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

In its decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), did the U.S. Supreme Court announce a right to sexual privacy so broad as to include the consensual, incestuous conduct of an adult brother and sister?

Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe:

Allen and Pat were lovers, but a Wisconsin statute enacted in 1849 made their sexual relationship a felony. The law was sometimes used to nail predators who had molested children, but using it to prosecute consenting adults — Allen was 45; Pat, 30 — was virtually unheard of. That didn’t deter Milwaukee County Judge David Hansher. Nor did the fact that the couple didn’t understand why their relationship should be a crime. Allen and Pat didn’t ”have to be bright,” the judge growled, to know that having sex with each other was wrong.

He threw the book at them: eight years for Allen, five for Pat, served in separate maximum-security prisons, 25 miles apart.

[…]

They were convicted of incest. Although they didn’t meet until Patricia was 18 — she had been raised from infancy in foster care — they were brother and sister, children of the same biological parents. They were also strongly attracted to each other, emotionally and physically. And so, disregarding the taboo against incest, they became a couple and had four children.

When Wisconsin officials learned of the Muths’ relationship, they moved to strip them of their parental rights. The state’s position, upheld in court, was that their ”fundamentally disordered” lifestyle made them unfit for parenthood by definition. Allen and Patricia’s children were taken from them. Then they were prosecuted for incest and sent to prison.

Missing from Mr. Jacoby’s accounting is that Allen and Patricia Muth abandoned their middle child, who was disabled, at the home of a baby sitter; this is how the couple came to the attention of Wisconsin, which subsequently moved to terminate their parental rights and charge them with incest. Both were convicted of violating Wisconsin Statutes § 944.06.

Following the exhaustion of his state court remedies, Allen Muth filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. district court, asserting the unconstitutionality of Wisconsin’s anti-incest statute. The district court denied the petition, and in June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit affirmed; you can read its opinion here.

The holding in Lawrence, said the appeals court, was limited to consensual homosexual conduct, and was not a general grant of sexual liberty. Perhaps. But as Mr. Jacoby notes:

There is simply no principled escape from the logic of Lawrence: If the Constitution forbids the states to criminalize private sexual conduct between consenting adults, lovers who happen to be siblings can no more be sent to prison than lovers who happen to be men. [Emphasis added.]

Indeed.

Assuming that Mr. Muth appeals and that the Supreme Court agrees to hear his case, there is no principled basis for limiting the holding in Lawrence to homosexual conduct. The only question now is whether the justices are prepared to follow Lawrence to its logical conclusions — and if so, to suffer still further erosion of the Court’s institutional legitimacy — or whether they will attempt to make a constitutional distinction between homosexual conduct and other forms of consensual, adult sexual behavior.

Posted by Paul at 7:09 PM | Permalink

When I first saw that headline, I wondered whether the story was about a new method of illegal entry. I wasn’t far off. According to the organizer, Venezuelan artist Javier Tellez, the human cannonball was a “living sculpture” that dramatized the “dissolving borders” between the United States and Mexico.

The launch was aided by psychiatric patients from a mental health center in Mexico and had the approval of U.S. officials, which sums up nicely our Government’s crazy policies on immigration.

Posted by Paul at 2:36 PM | Permalink

Grrr.

In this post, I reported that cell phone providers were on the verge of releasing their customers’ numbers to telemarketing companies. Because that information came to me, via e-mail, from what I took to be a reliable source, I didn’t investigate further and just passed it on as fact. As it turns out, it’s not fact.

According to this Snopes.com report, last updated on May 1, 2005, a consortium of wireless providers is (was?) planning to create a national 411 directory, to be made available sometime in 2006. But the directory will operate on an opt-in basis and telemarketers won’t have access to it. Also according to the report, two cell phone providers are balking at even that: “Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular Corp. have always been opposed to the proposed cell phone directory.”

Thinking about it now, I should have realized sooner that the releasing of cell phone numbers to telemarketers would be the subject of widespread media coverage and lots of public disgruntlement. I’m usually more skeptical than this lapse into naivety would suggest. And at any rate, I should have corroborated the information before passing it on.

I very much regret the error. Lesson learned.

Thanks to Jason for the link to the Snopes article.

Posted by Paul at 3:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I’ll add only that of course Patrick’s poll is not methodologically sound, and for lots of reasons. Still, doesn’t his poll tell us something about how Republicans — or at least Internet-savvy Republicans — are sizing up the 2008 presidential contenders? I think it does.

Patrick’s poll shows Rudy Giuliani the early favorite among a plurality (30%) of the participants. (Condi Rice leads among the “fantasy” candidates.) Now I don’t know whether he’ll end up with the nomination, but does anybody really doubt that, for whatever it’s worth, Rudy is indeed the frontrunner, at least for now? Frankly, I don’t think the core results of Patrick’s poll tell us anything surprising, or even new. The former mayor of New York is a 9/11 hero with national name recognition and a reputation as a law-and-order conservative and social moderate. Anyone who thinks such a man can’t pull a third of the GOP primary vote doesn’t know many Republicans.

ADDED — In case it’s not clear from the text of the post, good blogging ethics require that I disclose my bias. I voted in Patrick’s poll. For Rudy Giuliani.

Posted by Paul at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Running since May, it’s a political news and blog aggregator. Stories on the homepage are ranked by popularity. But you can subscribe to an XML feed that ranks them chronologically. For every news item, left-leaning blog commentary appears on the left side of the page, right-leaning commentary on the right, and all related reporting from every major media source is in the middle. It’s a fine, useful layout, and graphically clean as well.

UnPartisan tracks the feeds of 1,088 blogs, which, I think, makes it the blogosophere’s largest political aggregator.

Posted by Paul at 2:07 PM | Permalink

After evacuating terminals, rescreening 2,000 passengers (many of whom had already boarded their planes) and delaying flights for four hours, the security drones at Bush International Airport in Houston decided yesterday to call off a search for two women who had squeezed past a closed checkpoint:

“They saw this small opening, and they were able to walk through,” [TSA spokesman Hector] Vela said. “They gave the impression they were not trying to sneak through.”

A videotape of the security breach indicates the women did not possess “malice” and seemed to be confused about what path they should take, Vela said. (Link)

And ya’ll couldn’t figure that out before you inconvenienced thousands?

Pop quiz. “Transportation security” is more likely to do which of the following:

• prevent the next terrorist attack against U.S. interests, or

• make air travel so unpleasant as to bankrupt the industry?

Posted by Paul at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Question: exactly how crazy must you be to work as a cop in LA?

Posted by Paul at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

CORRECTED

THIS POST HAS BEEN CORRECTED.

At about this time next month, your cell phone provider is going to release your number to telemarketing companies and you may begin to receive sales calls. These calls will, of course, eat into your minutes.

You can prevent this by adding your cell phone number to the Federal Trade Commission’s “do not call” registry. Dial 888-382-1222 from your cell phone. The process takes about 1 minute.

Alternatively, you can add your number to the registry at the Government’s “do not call” website. Once your number is registered, the block is good for five years.

ADDED — An employee of Verizon Wireless sends e-mail to say that his company “will NOT be participating in this. Your Verizon Wireless number will remain unlisted.”

Posted by Paul at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON — An abortion rights group on Friday launched a new television ad criticizing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, two weeks after pulling a heavily criticized commercial that linked him to violent anti-abortion activists.

The new ad “paints a really clear and unambiguous picture of John Roberts’ record and it keeps the public debate focused on the threats that he poses to our freedom,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

[…]

The new ad, featuring smiling families and an American flag in the background, emphasizes a phrase in a 1981 Roberts memos: the “so-called right to privacy,” and points out that he co-wrote a government memo saying the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion was wrongly decided.

“There’s just too much at stake to let John Roberts become a decisive vote on the Supreme Court,” the ad says.

Of course, anybody who can count knows John Roberts’ vote will not be decisive, at least not when it comes to Roe. Even if you assume that Justice Roberts would vote to overrule Roe — something I believe to be far from certain — you’d still have only four votes for that position (Roberts, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas). Quite obviously, that’s not a majority on a nine-member court.

Meanwhile …

Supporters of President Bush and his Supreme Court nominee, Judge John Roberts, have outspent opponents on television advertising at a pace of nearly 8 to 1 ($1,274,025 to $165,114) since Roberts was nominated on July 19.

Well, maybe. If the opponents count their pennies with the same precision with which they count votes, who can say how much money they’ve spent?

Posted by Paul at 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Reuters:

BOSTON — Opponents of same-sex marriage face near-certain defeat in their bid to overturn a ruling in Massachusetts allowing gays and lesbians to wed, a result that could influence debate on the hotly contested issue across the country.

Just over a year after Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to allow gay couples to marry, political support is fading for a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage and allow only same-sex civil unions.

Massachusetts lawmakers vote on the proposal on September 14 in a constitutional convention. Approval would pave the way for a final hurdle — a state referendum on the amendment in 2006. But a senior lawmaker expressed doubts it would get that far.

House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi said rejection was likely.

“At this point he thinks the way it looks now, the amendment will not proceed any further,” said DiMasi spokeswoman Kim Haberlin.

Posted by Paul at 7:09 PM | Permalink

I haven’t read the suit so I don’t know what it is exactly that California alleges the drug companies have done. But the New York Times gives the impression that the state’s attorney general, Bill Lockyer, is suing to recover for his client’s own business incompetence:

Mr. Lockyer held up a bottle of 50-milligram tablets of Atenolol, a generic high blood pressure treatment manufactured by Mylan Laboratories, for which the state paid $804.70. A pharmacy chain pays $33.85 for the same bottle, he said.

Mr. Lockyer acknowledged that the Medi-Cal system might not always be the most prudent buyer of pharmaceuticals and other medical services. But he said that did not let the drug companies off the hook for what he called an elaborate scheme of fixing prices.

“I wish there had been more aggressive negotiations along the way,” Mr. Lockyer said. “Now we have to clean up after the elephant.”

So insufficiently aggressive negotiations by state officials makes the pharmaceutical companies guilty of fraud? And you “clean up” not by altering your own practices, but by suing people who do what their shareholders expect them to do and maximize profits?

And get a load of this cheap shot:

California officials cited as an example a pint bag of saline solution used as an intravenous drip manufactured by Abbott Laboratories. The lowest price available to health care providers was 95 cents, the officials said. Medi-Cal was charged $9.78 for the same item.

“We have an ocean of it,” Mr. Lockyer said. “It’s called saltwater.”

Well, Mr. Lockyer, why don’t you hook yourself up to an intravenous drip of ocean water and see how that works out for you.

Posted by Paul at 12:29 AM | Permalink

No, it’s not; it’s about the rule of law and the role of courts in a democratic society.

I wish these left-wing gay interest groups would just tell the truth: they want to win by judicial fiat what they have so far been largely unable to win by legislative mandate. At least then we could have an honest discussion.

Posted by Paul at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

MovableType 3.2 is now available.

Posted by Paul at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Kinky’s website is here.

Posted by Paul at 6:33 PM | Permalink

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Associated Press (via Yahoo News):

WASHINGTON — Black, Hispanic and white motorists are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched, handcuffed, arrested and subjected to force or the threat of it, a Justice Department study has found. (Link)

It is of course possible that race alone explains the disparity in post-stop treatment, as the grievance lobby is sure to claim. But if racism explains it, wouldn’t you also expect to see a racial disparity in the first instance, i.e. in those who got stopped?

The other, more likely explanation for the disparity in post-stop treatment is an obvious, if politically incorrect, one:

The study, first reported by The New York Times, said the interviews did not ask enough questions about circumstances — such as whether drugs were in plain view — or about driver conduct to “answer the question of whether the driver’s race, rather than the driver’s conduct or other specific circumstances,” led to the search. [emphasis added]

I’m reminded here of claims that racial disparities in mortgage lending are the product of racism. Perhaps. But they might also be the product of differences in credit history or other indices of credit worthiness.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that constitutive traits never play a role in the way police officers treat people. For example, I can imagine a buxom female exercising her charms to good effect when confronted by a male officer. Similarly, I doubt that a beautiful, 20-something gay boy is at the same risk as other motorists of getting a ticket from any of the middle-aged gay patrolmen who work my gay neighborhood. (In Houston, the assigning of minority officers to their own neighborhoods is known as “community policing.”) But these disparities are not invidious, nor are they race-specific.

Factors associated with race may give the appearance of an improper disparity, but this is misleading. For example, I’d wager that further analysis of the study’s data would also reveal gender disparities in post-stop treatment, with males being more frequently subjected to search and arrest than females. But this is not anti-male gender discrimination by a largely male law enforcement apparatus. Males are just more mouthy and criminally prone than females.

Posted by Paul at 6:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Tony Blankley:

Many of the strongest supporters of the president’s Iraq war aims are coming to suspect that the president has placed a limit on troop strength in Iraq for reasons extraneous to calculations of victory. (Link)

Posted by Paul at 9:35 AM | Permalink

Posted by Paul at 6:32 PM | Permalink

It takes a moment to overcome the shock of the AP’s mendacity in describing Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, as a “moderate Democrat.” (Her 2004 ADA rating: 100%. Only in the left-wing world of the legacy media does a perfect score from the ADA qualify you as a moderate.) But then you come to this:

“I happen to feel that it would be very difficult for me to vote yes on a [Supreme Court] nominee I thought would overturn Roe vs. Wade,” she said.

Followed by this:

In her remarks Monday, Feinstein also said the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist had restricted congressional authority to pass legislation.

[…]

“I would like to come away with the view that he [John Roberts] was not going to be one who would further restrict and bind lawmakers’ hands and keep them from enacting legislation that the people of this country want,” she said.

Of course, Roe bound the hands of legislators, state and federal, who seek to give many people in this country what they want by putting limits on the legal availability of abortion. Indeed, liberals fear the overturning of Roe precisely because they know that Congress and several state legislatures will act expeditiously to erect impediments to the practice of abortion.

We’re left then with three possibilities in construing the senator’s remarks:

• she doesn’t understand the nature of the holding in Roe;

• she dissembles when complaining that the Court is “bind[ing] lawmakers’ hands;”

• or she thinks that the people should be given what they want, but only if what they want doesn’t conflict with what she wants.

The answer I leave to you.

Posted by Paul at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yes, Mr. President, we all understand the strategic objectives. And many of us are now, as we have been from the beginning, on board for achieving them. But your restless conservative supporters aren’t asking about strategic vision; they’re asking about tactical planning.

Don’t tell us the aims of victory, Mr. President; tell us the path to victory. Don’t tell us why; tell us how.

Posted by Paul at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

… making liars out of the very people upon whom the integrity of our criminal justice system depends.

And for what?

Posted by Paul at 4:28 PM | Permalink

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court today refused to reconsider its decision in Kelo v. New London:

The Supreme Court, given a chance to revisit a heavily criticized ruling, refused Monday to reconsider its decision giving local governments more power to seize people’s homes for economic development.

[…]

Justices did not comment Monday in refusing to reconsider the case, which had been expected because requests for a reconsideration of rulings are rarely granted.

[…]

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion and defended it last week in a speech in Las Vegas. The ruling was legally correct, he said, because the high court has “always allowed local policy-makers wide latitude in determining how best to achieve legitimate public goals.”

The ruling was not legally correct. The Fifth Amendment says:

nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Taking private property from its middle class owners and handing it over to the wealthy is not within the historically understood meaning of “public use.”

When the Court has been inclined to do so, it has managed to find liberties and protections lurking in the Constitution’s “penumbra.” But it was unable here to find one commanded by the text. So much for the “living Constitution,” which in Kelo did not evolve but instead rotted, just as Justice Scalia warned that it would.

The Court’s order insisting on its error is here.

(Thanks to Jurist.)

Posted by Paul at 6:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Posted by Paul at 11:57 AM | Permalink

As part of Hugh Hewitt’s call for the blogosphere to review John Roberts’ files from his years in the Reagan Administration, Duane at Radio Blogger assigned me Box 52 (4) — Supreme Court. (It’s the box I asked for.)

Box 52 (4) contains only two documents.

One of them is labelled “Talking Points / White House Reception for the Supreme Court Justices.” The document does not identify its author; I assume it was written by John Roberts for the president’s delivery at a White House reception for the justices. In any case, the document is dated October 3, 1983, and carries this anecdote:

Now that is, I quite assure you, the most interesting tidbit from that document.

The second document is the statement of Jonathan C. Rose, then assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy, delivered on November 10, 1983 to a subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary. Mr. Rose spoke on the U.S. Supreme Court’s workload. I do not know — and background provided by the Archivist of the United States did not help me to learn — whether Mr. Rose wrote his own remarks and John Roberts merely reviewed or approved them, or whether Mr. Roberts wrote the remarks for delivery by Mr. Rose.

In either case, the material is arcane and void of revelation. From the 46 pages of the statement, I extracted the following, all of which I expect is still accurate today:

• the U.S. Supreme Court granted most of the Government’s petitions for certiorari;

• the Government appeared before the Court more frequently than any other party;

• the Government won a substantial majority of the cases it argued before the Court;

• if the Government lost a case in one of the regional courts of appeal, it was the practice of the Reagan Administration to not seek review in the Supreme Court until the Government won a similar case in one of the other circuit courts;

• the Reagan Administration rejected calls for establishment of a permanent national court of appeals, although it did support establishment of a temporary Intercircuit Tribunal to ease the Supreme Court’s workload. Neither proposal came to fruition;

• the Administration supported legislation to make the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction almost wholly discretionary. The legislation passed. Now at least four justices must vote to hear a case before the Court will take it up for review;

• finally, then as now, the Government complained of an activist Court:

I see this morning where almost every box from Mr. Roberts’ files has been assigned to a blogger for review. Kudos to Hugh Hewitt for the idea. This nomination is going to be the most layman-inspected in the Nation’s history.

Posted by Paul at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Associated Press (via MSNBC):

WASHINGTON — The Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in Iraq — well over 100,000 — for four more years, the Army’s top general said Saturday.

In an Associated Press interview, Gen. Peter Schoomaker said the Army is prepared for the “worse case” in terms of the required level of troops in Iraq. He said the number could be adjusted lower if called for by slowing the force rotation or by shortening tours for soldiers.

Schoomaker said commanders in Iraq and others who are in the chain of command will decide how many troops will be needed next year and beyond. His responsibility is to provide them, trained and equipped.

About 138,000 U.S. troops, including about 25,000 Marines, are now in Iraq. (Link)

Posted by Paul at 4:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

(Editorial cartoon courtesy of Cox & Forkum.)

Posted by Paul at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some people just don’t get it, which is the only reason nowadays that Republicans, though increasingly statist and self-serving, are likely to remain in power:

SEATTLE — Sen. John F. Kerry told state legislators Friday the Democratic Party doesn’t need to undergo an extreme makeover, saying “the last thing America needs is a second Republican Party.”

Indeed. But a responsible Democratic Party — you know, one with some sympathy for the country and for her security, traditions and ideals — would be nice.

Posted by Paul at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Paul at 9:19 AM | Permalink

Perspective:

Rules of interrogation, Korans, prayer arrows pointed to Mecca, visits by U.S. congressmen, Middle Eastern food, inmates as voracious readers of Harry Potter, and the absence of a single inmate lost in captivity: All of that suggests humane treatment toward terrorists — often caught in combat, always out of uniform, and not subject to the Geneva Convention. Guantanamo seems radically different from any prison run by any other current wartime state, much less like anything in our own past when, for example, we summarily shot German agents not in German uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge.

[…]

In the age of utopianism we demand impossible standards of perfection. Then when they cannot be met, we conclude that we are not good at all, but the equivalent of a Pol Pot, Hitler, or Saddam himself — an elected American president who is a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden.

And in a war with enemies like few other in our recent history, the contrast between rhetoric and reality is only accentuated: panties over the head of an Iraqi inmate, no head at all on an American prisoner; Korans given to the enemy terrorists in jail, Bibles outlawed for visitors to our friends the Saudis; our elected president becomes a member of the “Bush crime family” as we worry about proper barristers for Saddam Hussein’s genuinely criminal family. As we fear that we have fallen short of the postmodern therapeutic age, Islamic fascists brag they are avatars of the Dark Ages.

As always, Victor Davis Hanson’s writing is essential reading.

Posted by Paul at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here’s one of the keys to gaining control of our borders:

Illegal immigration, always a fact along the border, has become a key instrument of Mexican economic policy during the presidency of Vicente Fox.

The government makes no bones of the fact that it wants workers to enter the U.S., legally or not, so that they can send sorely needed remittances (expected to hit $20 billion this year, according to the Bank of Mexico) back home.

Why not prohibit, or at least tax oppressively, these remittances?

Posted by Paul at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now tell me this kid is not just totally, completely adorable. (And welcome to his video blog! I can’t quit laughing.)

See more at Wannabeleader.

Posted by Paul at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The “war” against them notwithstanding, drugs are more available than ever to the Nation’s youth. But while most kids don’t care what the law says about their drug use, they do care what their parents say about it:

A majority of teens said whether it was legal for them to smoke or drink had no bearing on their decision to do so.

[…]

The good news was that it doesn’t take an act of Congress to crack down on risky behavior. Teens who felt their parents would flip out if they found out they were doing drugs and teens who felt drugs were morally wrong were several times less likely to try drugs, the survey found.

Well, imagine that. Government is no substitute for good parenting.

Who knew?

Posted by Paul at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Manifestly the correct decision, even if you disagree with the content of the boy’s speech:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal judge said officials at an Ohio school district violated a student’s free speech when they asked him to remove a T-shirt that called homosexuality a sin and called Islam a lie.

Seventh-grader James Nixon was sent home from his middle school in September because officials thought his shirt was offensive. The shirt also contained a Bible verse.

The ruling came Thursday in U.S. District Court in Columbus. Judge George Smith said officials at Northern Local School District in Perry County could not prove that the shirt would be disruptive.

The judge said that although some students may disagree with the shirt’s message, Nixon has a right to freedom of expression.

Posted by Paul at 5:04 PM | Permalink

Israelis security forces break the siege:

KFAR DAROM, Gaza Strip — Riot troops stormed synagogues in two hardline Jewish settlements Thursday to evict hundreds of militant holdouts who locked arms in a human chain and pelted soldiers with acid, oil and sand, the most violent clashes in Israel’s historic Gaza pullout.

By the close of the day, 14,000 unarmed forces had cleared all but five of Gaza’s 21 settlements — including Kfar Darom and Neve Dekalim, pillars of resistance to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to cede Gaza to the Palestinians and alter the course of Mideast peacemaking.

Dozens of protesters at Kfar Darom sequestered themselves behind razor-wire on the synagogue roof, at first singing and waving flags, then attacking soldiers below with their arsenal of caustic liquids and objects, including paint-filled lightbulbs. Police and soldiers stripped off their clothes after being doused. Comrades poured water on their heads and torsos to wash them.

Breaking the siege, army cranes lowered metal cages filled with helmeted troops onto the roof, as cannon sprayed protesters with blasts of blue-tinted water.

[…]

“What we saw here crossed all boundaries,” said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel. “Everybody who was now on the roof will be arrested and put in prison.”

Posted by Paul at 12:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Quote:

While some of the tales of woe emanating from the Court are enough to bring tears to the eyes, it is true that only Supreme Court Justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off.

Posted by Paul at 12:10 AM | Permalink

It’s what happens when you’re constrained by a desire for perfection.

Posted by Paul at 12:02 AM | Permalink

Manuel Miranda in Opinion Journal:

Why are both sides alarmed about talk of pea