Right Side of the Rainbow

Posted by Paul at 11:55 PM | Permalink

ABC News reports that Craig will announce his future plans tomorrow. Meanwhile, in an e-mail to the group’s supporters, Log Cabin President Patrick Sammon said today that Craig must resign.

ADDED: “Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig will announce Saturday he will resign from the Senate amid a furor over his arrest and guilty plea in a police sex sting in an airport men’s room, Republican officials said Friday.”

Craig will hold a news conference at 10:30 a.m. MT and say that he will resign effective Sept. 30, three state GOP officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Posted by Paul at 5:50 PM | Permalink

“A Polk County judge on Thursday struck down Iowa’s law banning gay marriage and ordered the county recorder to permit gay and lesbian couples to marry,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

Here, in pdf, is the district court’s opinion in Varnum v. Brien. Polk County will appeal.

Posted by Paul at 10:35 PM | Permalink

Alas, he faces only a $500 fine and thirty days in jail. On the bright side, he is disbarred and unemployed.

Posted by Paul at 9:35 PM | Permalink

Here’s the audio of Craig’s interrogation by the arresting officer, Dave Karsnia.

Posted by Paul at 8:55 PM | Permalink

He should have come out, too, but instead he stood in front of the cameras and lied.

Here, if you haven’t seen it — and if you can stomach it — is Larry Craig’s public statement on his arrest in June in the men’s room at a Minnesota airport.

When the story first broke, I saw no reason for Craig to resign. And on the merits, I still see no reason for him to resign. After all, if David Vitter can stay, why can’t Larry Craig stay?

Well, here’s why. Vitter took responsibility for his behavior and demonstrated contrition. Larry Craig, on the other hand, stepped in front of a microphone to apologize only for the “cloud over Idaho.” (A cloud is hovering all right, but not over Idaho.) He then blamed a newspaper’s “witch-hunt” for his decision to plead guilty to a charge Craig says is false. How it is that the arresting officer came to suspect Craig of lewd conduct, or why that suspicion was in error, we are not told. Nor are we told that the Idaho Statesman’s “witch-hunt” consisted of investigating reports that Craig had engaged in tearoom sex.

What a run of bad luck! The media are out to get him, and the cops are out to get him too — and in both cases, for the same reason. Tell us, senator: Is it a conspiracy, or a coincidence of incalculable odds?

Larry Craig doesn’t have to resign because he was looking for cock. (Sure, the venue was inappropriate, but he paid his fine. And if illicit snatch didn’t do it for Vitter, why should illicit dick should do it for Craig?) But he does have to resign when his denial reaches such pathological proportions as to bring his sanity into doubt, and to cause him to talk to all of us as though we were fucking idiots.

And that poor wife! Just look at her, standing there with sun glasses the size of windshields, trying to cover her face. Can you even imagine it? Evidently, Craig can, because he didn’t have the decency to spare her the humiliation of standing next to a recalcitrant liar.

Larry Craig threw down to the media, taunting them to prove him out. But his fellow Republicans aren’t going to have this shit in the news for months on end, as reporters seek out every cock he’s been down on.

Craig either resigns, or he gets expelled.

ADDED: Not unrelatedly, Ted Haggard’s “spiritual overseers” have told him to lay off the begging and get a job:

Haggard had also told KRDO that he and his family were planning to move into the Phoenix Dream Center, a halfway house, where he and his wife, Gayle, would minister to the “broken people” there.

The overseers said Wednesday that Haggard will not be moving into the Dream Center.

“It was never the intention of the Dream Center that Mr. Haggard would provide any counsel or other ministry,” wrote the overseers.

“Mr. Haggard will not be moving in or working with the Dream Center. He will not be doing any ministry. He will be seeking secular employment to support himself.”

Ted Haggard is the former evangelical pastor who confessed to buying drugs and enjoying the society of a rent boy.

Posted by Paul at 10:55 PM | Permalink

Apparently he was trying to get a nut in the men’s room of an airport, but got arrested instead:

Craig stated “that he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine,” the [arresting officer’s] report states.

Craig’s stance was so wide, in fact, that his foot was into the next stall. But the cop let that slide. It wasn’t until Craig “proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times” that he got arrested.

As Ed Morrissey notes, “The Republicans already have a 21-12 disadvantage in next year’s Senate contests. [Craig’s] was one of the seats the GOP hoped to hold, and his party had been pushing to keep him from retiring. I suspect they’re looking for Plan B at the moment.”

If Craig resigns, The Corner reports that he’ll be replaced by Republican Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, “who was widely expected to run for the seat anyway.”

ADDED: Found at Blogs of War. Seems appropriate.

ADDED: Matt Yglesias is sweet:

Now, common sense indicates that the officer in question is correct and Craig’s foot-tapping was a cruising signal, but surely tapping one’s foot isn’t a crime in Minnesota. Whatever Craig intended to do here, he doesn’t seem, in fact, to have done anything lewd. [Italics in original.]

No, Matt, I’m sure foot tapping isn’t a crime in Minnesota. But people should be able to relieve themselves in a public facility without having someone else’s extremities all up in their toileting space. (By the way, WaPo reports that Craig pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct, not lewd conduct.)

That said, Craig has paid his fine, and will pay again in public humiliation. He doesn’t also have to resign, as Hugh Hewitt demands. Unlike Mark Foley, Craig didn’t shake his junk at teenagers, and his conduct is no more “reckless and repulsive” than David Vitter’s. Sen. Vitter enjoyed the services of prostitutes while his wife was home alone, but he didn’t resign — Hewitt didn’t call for his resignation — and neither should Craig.

ADDED: Rick Moran, who notes “the regularity with which conservative Republicans seem to get themselves into trouble over sex,” writes:

[Craig’s] conduct doesn’t seem lewd to me and the whole story reeks of something very fishy. But the fact is, the Senator pled guilty and probably thought that it would stay out of the papers if he didn’t make a fuss.

The point really isn’t whether he’s guilty or innocent. The point is that this sort of thing becomes a huge issue because of the way the party talks about gays and the way many GOP stalwarts like Reverends Robertson and Dobson talk about sex. The perception that Republicans are a bunch of bigoted blue noses stuck in the 19th century with Victorian sensibilities about the bedroom turns off a lot of voters – especially the young.

Posted by Paul at 8:20 PM | Permalink

Philip Bobbitt, a law professor at Columbia and a former senior director of the National Security Council under the Clinton Administration, weighs in on the Protect America Act:

Congress just passed, and President Bush hurriedly signed, a law that amends the legal framework for the electronic interception of various kinds of communication with foreign sources. Almost immediately, commentators concluded that the law was unnecessary, that it authorized a lawless and unprecedented expansion of presidential authority, and that Democrats in Congress cravenly accepted this White House initiative only for the basest political reasons. None of these widely broadcast conclusions are likely to be true.

[…]

As Judge Richard Posner has put it, “once you grant the legitimacy of surveillance aimed at detection rather than at gathering evidence of guilt, requiring a warrant to conduct it would be like requiring a warrant to ask people questions or to install surveillance cameras on city streets.” Warrants, which originate in the criminal justice paradigm, provide a useful standard for surveillance designed to prove guilt, not to learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities.

[…]

Furthermore, there is an unstated assumption that warrantless surveillance is lawless surveillance. There is, however, judicial precedent for warrantless searches, even if you can’t tell this from the public debate.

[…]

In fact, there are many instances in which warrantless surveillance has been held to be permissible under the Fourth Amendment. Searches in public schools require neither warrants nor a showing of probable cause. Government offices can be searched for evidence of work-related misconduct without warrants. So can searches conducted at the border, or searches undertaken as a condition of parole. Searches have been upheld in the absence of a warrant where there is no legitimate expectation of privacy. The Clinton administration conducted a warrantless search — lawfully — when it was trying to determine what the spy Aldrich Ames was up to. The day after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the United States. [Emphasis added.]

Here’s yet another instance of constitutionally permissible warrantless searches, one Professor Bobbitt doesn’t mention but that’s on point: pre-flight screening at the airport. Before you board a plane in the United States, Government agents search both you and your bags; they do this not only in the absence of a warrant, but also in the absence of even individualized suspicion. A person found to be in possession of dangerous contraband might face criminal prosecution. But prosecution isn’t the Government’s chief interest here. Its chief interest is in preventing a terrorist from either blowing a plane up or turning it into a guided missile.

When data-mining foreign communications, the Government isn’t looking primarily to build a criminal case. Its looking to detect and disrupt potential acts of terrorism. And like the security drones at the airport, the eavesdroppers at the NSA don’t know who they’re looking for until they’ve found him. Initially, the Government knows only that it’s interested in bags and calls. It doesn’t know that it’s interested in Mr. Doe’s bags or calls until it’s already examined them.

Obviously, it isn’t practical for the Government to get a warrant before searching every bag or intercepting every call. What’s more, it’s not even permissible. To get a warrant, the Government needs probable cause. But it doesn’t know that it has probable cause until it’s searched the bag or intercepted the call!

We live everyday of our lives among people who plan to harm others. But until one of these aspiring criminals tips his hand, there’s nothing to be done about him and no warrant against him can issue. In fact, more often than not, we won’t actually prevent his crime. We’ll only punish it after the fact. This is the price we pay to live in a free country, where the warrant requirement serves as a bulwark against baseless prosecutions.

But when the goal isn’t prosecutorial and potentially thousands of lives and billions in property are at risk, we add weight to our interest in security and subtract it from our interest in curbing the Government’s power. For though few are keen to live in a surveillance society, fewer still are keen to live in a suicidal one.

Posted by Paul at 8:25 PM | Permalink

Yes, really: “The Left likes to talk about supposed fascism among conservatives, but the Huffington Post is literally calling for a military coup to reverse an election, not only an un-Constitutional act but also the kind of authoritarian rule they supposedly despise.”

Actually, I don’t believe the Left despises authoritarian rule per se. It depends on the ideology of the ruler.

Posted by Paul at 11:55 PM | Permalink

Ethan Nadelmann’s article, “Think Again: Drugs,” is here.

[RSS and e-mail subscribers: Video appears here. Click to watch.]

HT: Drug War Rant

Posted by Paul at 7:16 PM | Permalink

It’s all about thorough fact-checking and verification, baby.*

Posted by Paul at 5:15 PM | Permalink

A Republican lawyer in California is promoting a ballot initiative that could “shake up the 2008 presidential contest,” the Associated Press reports:

California awards its cache of 55 electoral votes to the statewide winner in presidential elections — the largest single prize in the nation. But under the proposal, the statewide winner would get only two electoral votes.

The rest would be distributed to the winning candidate in each of the state’s congressional districts. In effect, that would create 53 races, each with one electoral vote up for grabs.

Upshot: Of California’s 55 votes, the GOP nominee would take at least 20, a number equivalent to winning Ohio. It’s an idea any Republican could love. It’s also unconstitutional.

Article II, Section 1 provides that “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress …” [Emphasis added.]

A ballot initiative is not an act of the legislature, and cannot be said to reflect the direction of the legislature. California’s Legislature has directed that all of its electoral votes should go the statewide winner of a presidential election. The voters cannot change that.

If you think no judge ever pays attention to Article II, Section 1, think again. In an obscure case called Bush v. Gore, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas, wrote:

In McPherson v. Blacker, we explained that Art. II, §1, cl. 2, “convey[s] the broadest power of determination” and “leaves it to the legislature exclusively to define the method” of appointment. A significant departure from the legislative scheme for appointing Presidential electors presents a federal constitutional question. [Citations omitted.]

At the time, Rehnquist’s view commanded the support of only three members of the Court and was widely derided by Democrats. But if this initiative passes, his view will enjoy newfound acceptance.

ADDED —

For the same reason, this initiative by California Democrats is also unconstitutional.

Posted by Paul at 11:50 PM | Permalink

Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13-year-old boys from McMinnville, Oregon, are finally free.

Following their arrest in February, the two were initially denied contact with their parents, charged with felonies and brought to court in shackles. Cory and Ryan spent five days in jail, where they were reportedly strip searched four times.

Why? What dastardly thing did these boys do? Answer: They swatted some schoolmates on the butt.

Can you even picture it? Teenage boys engaged in inappropriate horseplay. Who the hell ever heard of that?

Evidently, talk radio host Dennis Prager has heard of it. He’s now leading the drive to remove Bradley Berry, the district attorney who Nifonged the case:

When he finally explained himself under pressure from the media, Berry told The Oregonian, “From our perspective and the perspective of the victims, this was not just horseplay.” In fact, it turns out that the girls involved did regard it as horseplay. And they claimed from virtually the outset that they had been pressured into making a case against the boys.

The Oregonian has reported that listeners to my radio show across America provided nearly all of the more than $40,000 for defense costs for the two boys. But they have done more. They have also sent letters to the two boys assuring them it is not they, but Bradley Berry, who acted perversely. One of the boys’ mothers, in tears, told me that these letters profoundly affected the boys, who were made to appear as perverts and sexual predators and who could have been placed on sexual predator lists for the rest of their lives. My listeners also reported that when they phoned the office of Bradley Berry, they were told that “there was more to the story,” that more evidence would be forthcoming.

That was a lie. Berry had nothing more to reveal and did in fact drop the felony charges. The boys were then charged ‘only’ with sexual harassment.

Yesterday, in exchange for an apology from the boys, Circuit Judge John L. Collins dismissed even the lesser charges. “Now,” writes Prager, “we will focus our attention on removing Bradley Berry from office.”

A democracy cannot long survive the contempt more and more Americans feel for American law.

A system that treats juvenile horseplay as felony sex abuse is not just contemptible; it’s unhinged.

But speaking of abuse, please note: While isolated from their parents and under the custody and control of Oregon officials, two 13-year-old boys with no history of violence or drug dependence were reportedly strip searched four times in five days. Boys. Strip searched. Four times. In five days. What exactly were these officials looking for — or at? Hmm?

There are days — today is one of them — when I wish I had gone to law school instead of nursing school and had signed on with these folk. I’d be on the next plane out.

Posted by Paul at 2:25 PM | Permalink

As an RN, I’ve long wondered why hospitals thought they were entitled to compensation for their own mistakes. Now comes the Bush Administration to say that Medicare will no longer pay for “reasonably preventable” errors, including:

• falls

• bed sores

• urinary tract infections

• catheter infections

• and events that should not ever happen, e.g. surgical instruments left in the patient’s body.

I agree with everything on the Government’s list except for the falls. If hospitals had unlimited staff and money, then in theory every fall could be prevented. But hospitals have neither.

I once worked in a head trauma unit, where falls are not uncommon. The nurses there usually carried a load of six patients each. Obviously, we couldn’t be in every patient’s room every minute of the shift. We also weren’t allowed to restrain patients, either physically or chemically, as in the days of yore. If a confused patient took a notion to get out of bed, and then stumbled and hit the floor, busting his lip or cracking his head, what exactly was the nurse supposed to do about that? Clone herself?

Nursing theorists and Government regulators say hospitals should hire enough staff to prevent falls. But there’s a reason these people are theorists and regulators, and not clinicians. They prefer a fantasy world to the real one. Even if hospitals could hire ample nursing staff — and they can’t — labor costs would explode. And though we all want world-class health care, few of us want the world-class bills that come with it.

Americans suffer a cognitive dissonance between the care they want — no, demand — and the care they’re willing to pay for, either individually or collectively. Escaping that dysfunctional tension is the chief reason I left bedside nursing, thereby doing my little part to exacerbate an already critical nursing shortage.

Many are under the mistaken view that a single-payor system is the cure-all here. But while free markets ration care by maximizing profit, single-payors ration it by minimizing costs, just as the Bush Administration is doing now. When single-payors hit the point where further savings cannot be wrung from administrative efficiency, they turn to denial of service.

As the economist Thomas Sowell has noted, there are no solutions to health care financing; there are only trade-offs.

Posted by Paul at 4:15 PM | Permalink

It’s dramatic, even if also PC and predictable. And it stars Jake Gyllenhaal. I could watch him read a phone book.

HT: Gay Orbit

Posted by Paul at 12:25 AM | Permalink

From a must-read piece in today’s Washington Post:

Thirty-six years and hundreds of billions of dollars after President Richard M. Nixon launched the war on drugs, consumers worldwide are taking more narcotics and criminals are making fatter profits than ever before. The syndicates that control narcotics production and distribution reap the profits from an annual turnover of $400 billion to $500 billion. And terrorist organizations such as the Taliban are using this money to expand their operations and buy ever more sophisticated weapons, threatening Western security.

[…]

The trade in illegal narcotics begets violence, poverty and tragedy. And wherever I went around the world, gangsters, cops, victims, academics and politicians delivered the same message: The war on drugs is the underlying cause of the misery. Everywhere, that is, except Washington, where a powerful bipartisan consensus has turned the issue into a political third rail.

The problem starts with prohibition, the basis of the war on drugs. The theory is that if you hurt the producers and consumers of drugs badly enough, they’ll stop doing what they’re doing. But instead, the trade goes underground, which means that the state’s only contact with it is through law enforcement, i.e. busting those involved, whether producers, distributors or users. But so vast is the demand for drugs in the United States, the European Union and the Far East that nobody has anything approaching the ability to police the trade.

Prohibition gives narcotics huge added value as a commodity. Once traffickers get around the business risks — getting busted or being shot by competitors — they stand to make vast profits. A confidential strategy report prepared in 2005 for British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet and later leaked to the media offered one of the most damning indictments of the efficacy of the drug war. Law enforcement agencies seize less than 20 percent of the 700 tons of cocaine and 550 tons of heroin produced annually. According to the report, they would have to seize 60 to 80 percent to make the industry unprofitable for the traffickers.

[…]

In Washington, the war on drugs has been a third-rail issue since its inauguration. It’s obvious why — telling people that their kids can do drugs is the kiss of death at the ballot box. But that was before 9/11. Now the drug war is undermining Western security throughout the world. [Emphasis added.]

The violence in our communities, the militarization of our police, the erosion of our freedom, the taxes we pay, the prisons we build, and the danger we face are all fueled in part by the prohibition we demand.

On the right, we extol the value of liberty and the power of markets, and then undermine the former and ignore the later in service to a costly and futile “war on drugs.” On the left, they rally for the rights of the terrorists held at Guantánamo, but not for those of innocent Americans who’ve had their doors kicked in and their lives cut short by storm troopers executing no-knock drug warrants.

Except only for the evil of slavery, the “war on drugs” is the greatest assault on reason and liberty in our Nation’s history.

Posted by Paul at 6:00 AM | Permalink

A divorced Oregon couple is fighting over whether their 12-year-old son should be circumcised. The father is the custodial parent and a convert to Judaism. He says yes. The mother says no.

According to the article, the case raises two issues: “… the right of custodial parents to guide their children’s religious upbringings, and the weight that religious considerations should be given when considering the welfare of a child.”

And then there’s the “complicating factor at the heart of the case: the boy himself.”

Called “Jimmy” by his father and “Mischa” by his mother, and bounced from her home to his in the wake of an ongoing custody battle, he has aged three years as the circumcision case has wound its way to the Oregon Supreme Court. While both sides in the dispute claim to have the boy’s support, his own testimony has yet to be requested by the courts.

Our law rightly affords parents wide latitude to make decisions for and about their children. But there are exceptions to that rule. For example, a Jehovah’s Witness usually cannot deprive his child of a life-saving blood transfusion.

Circumcision isn’t a medical emergency — or even medically indicated — and this boy isn’t an infant who’ll never remember what was done to him. He’s twelve years old, old enough to understand the procedure. Does he want part of his hoo-ha cut off? Shouldn’t the law ask?

Since the 1950s, the Supreme Court, in the context of cases involving both contraception and abortion, has generally expanded the rights of teenagers when it comes to their own bodies. Harvard Law School professor Martha Minow, an expert in family law and in cases involving religious rights, would like to see that precedent extended in Oregon.

“If the child at issue is 12 years old, a court would rightly consider that individual’s own view — about religion and about the procedure at issue — perhaps not as the ultimate basis for the decision but as a vital input,” Minow wrote in an e-mail to the Forward. “Legally, morally, and practically, the view of an emerging adolescent would be highly germane here just as it would for a medical decision facing a pregnant teen.”

• If minor girls can have an abortion, why can’t minor boys refuse a circumcision?

• Why does the father’s conversion to Judaism necessitate elective surgery on the son?

• Does the father plan to have the boy circumcised in a hospital by a surgeon, or in a temple by a rabbi?

Apparently, others are also asking these questions:

The acceptance of the case by Oregon’s highest court is surprising, because judges generally grant a wide degree of latitude to custodial parents — so much so, in fact, that the state’s Court of Appeals rejected the mother’s case without issuing an opinion.

It’s a good bet the Oregon Supreme Court didn’t accept this case merely to restate settled law.

Posted by Paul at 12:55 AM | Permalink

Wow.

[RSS and e-mail subscribers: Video appears here. Click to watch.]

HT: Allahpundit

Posted by Paul at 4:30 PM | Permalink

“I intend to help these people.” With your sanctimonious ass having made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, I’m sure you do, Mary. I’m sure you do.

Edwards’ shtick as a morally preening, self-indulgent hypocrite — who, among other things, whines about personal attacks while making them — is wearing thin, even on the left.

Posted by Paul at 3:50 PM | Permalink

“In a significant victory for the Bush administration, a federal jury found Jose Padilla guilty of terrorism conspiracy charges on Thursday after little more than a day of deliberation,” the New York Times reports from Miami:

Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who became one of the first Americans designated an “enemy combatant” in the anxious months after Sept. 11, 2001, now faces life in prison. He was released last year from a long and highly unusual military confinement to face criminal charges in Federal District Court here.

Padilla and his co-defendants were convicted of conspiracy to murder people in a foreign country, and of providing material support to terrorists. He was arrested in May 2002 for what then-Attorney General John Ashcroft described as an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.” Padilla’s convictions Thursday were unrelated to the “dirty bomb” plot.

“This demonstrates, at least for now, that the United States is fully capable of prosecuting terrorism while affording defendants the full procedural protections of the Constitution,” said Michael Greenberger, who served in the Clinton administration Justice Department …

Wrong. This case demonstrates no such thing:

… other terrorists may be more clever than Padilla and his co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi; they may not leave a trail that can be followed by a normal criminal investigation — subject to all the normal limitations on the collection of evidence, but which can be tracked by the use of expanded intelligence operations that could not be introduced in federal court, either because they violate some right guaranteed to ordinary criminal defendants or because introducing them as evidence would expose covert sources, methods, and technology.

[…]

In ordinary criminal trials, we accept the fact that a certain percent of guilty defendants will get off ‘on a technicality.’

[…]

But where national-security is concerned, we are much less concerned with punishing the guilty than protecting society from dangerous people. Nor does deterrence factor into the equation when dealing with attackers who expect to die during their crime …

Above all else, the Government must do whatever it can to stop a mass casualty attack. Here, Padilla was arrested to prevent a “dirty bomb” attack, and then transferred to military custody for useful interrogation.

His handling by the military means that, among other things, Padilla was not Mirandized or given a lawyer, making it impossible to prosecute him in civilian court on “dirty bomb” charges. But the attacked was foiled. (The Government then sought other grounds for bringing a criminal prosecution.)

As John Hinderaker explains, this case highlights “the difference between war-fighting, the administration’s primary approach to terrorism, and criminal prosecution, the Democrats’ predominant if not exclusive method.”

In a war-fighting model, you’re trying to get information about terrorist plots before they mature, so you can prevent them from taking place. In a criminal prosecution model, you’re trying to punish terrorists for acts they’ve already committed. In Padilla’s case, the government was able to achieve both ends. But the administration’s priority was correct: first, do what it takes to learn the facts, so that if there are plots that may be carried out imminently, they can be foiled.

At sentencing, Jose Padilla faces life in prison. In bygone days, he would have been shot dead.

Posted by Paul at 8:05 PM | Permalink

The second half of that statement is, I think, wrong.

For a long time, I paid no attention to the debate over global warming. It just didn’t interest me. But when I finally decided to read up on it, I noticed straightaway that the believers sounded … well, religious.

Their narrative is a familiar one. Man has sinned. Unless he repents, he will burn. (Though verily, verily, an indulgence — now known as an “off-set” — can redeem you. All religions take VISA.) In the meantime, non-believers should be treated as heretics. There can be no questioning of the Word.

But the rest of Jeff Jacoby’s essay is excellent. He reminds us that Newsweek — the same Newsweek whose cover now derides atheists global warming “denialists” — was in 1975 prophesying a return of the ice age. (The evidence was so massive, said Newsweek, “that meteorologists [were] hard-pressed to keep up with it.”)

In the 1980s, you may recall, the world faced its end in the hell of a nuclear winter.

Question: Does man need to believe in the apocalypse?

Posted by Paul at 6:00 AM | Permalink

How long would it take us to get out?

… there is no simple or safe way rapidly to remove 160,000 troops, 64,000 foreign contractors, 45,000 vehicles, and millions of tons of equipment from a war zone. Estimates from within the American military suggest that an orderly departure would take, at a minimum, 12 to 20 months to accomplish. (In Vietnam, our withdrawal was conducted over four years.) To leave faster than that would require a precipitous abandonment of allies and equipment. U.S. forces would have to fight their way out of the country along Route Tampa, the main supply line to the south, with insurgents determined at every inch of the way to inflict a final humiliation on the defeated superpower. The pell-mell scramble would likely produce traumatic images akin to those of the last helicopter lifting off from a Saigon rooftop in 1975.

Posted by Paul at 2:07 AM | Permalink

The caption reads, “An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.” [AFP photo by Wissam al-Okaili.]

No, no, mama. If you want to make bogus claims about munitions, restrict your propaganda to Europe. Here in the United States, you’ll draw nothing but ridicule.

If you’re an American, you know what’s wrong with mama’s picture vis-à-vis its caption. If you’re visiting from, say, France, Allahpundit explains: “The only way those two bullets hit anything is if someone threw them or launched them from a slingshot. They’re still pristine, still in their shells.”

Posted by Paul at 12:45 AM | Permalink

Here I’m ripping off John Hawkins, who today named his favorite 40 bloggers. I’ll just name ten political sites worth checking everyday.* These sites offer interesting links, thoughtful center-right analysis or compelling rhetoric. You’re probably familiar with most, and maybe all, of them. But just in case …

• Memeorandum
• Big Lizards
• Just One Minute
• Volokh Conspiracy
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• Ace of Spades HQ
• Kausfiles
• Best of the Web
• Instapundit
• Hot Air

*I say check rather than read because some of these sites don’t update everyday.

Posted by Paul at 10:10 PM | Permalink

Is this working?

ADDED @ 20:25 —

Actually, it isn’t working. I get a bizarre error message whenever I attempt to publish an entry. But I have at least figured out how to force an entry to publish. In the meantime, I’ve filed a help ticket with SixApart. I’m sure I’ll get it all worked out. Pardon the construction.

ADDED @ 21:25 —

Okay. The installation still seems a little buggy, but I can publish entries. Thanks, Sarah.

Posted by Paul at 7:10 PM | Permalink

Absorb it: “James Clyburn, the third-ranked Democrat in the House and a vocal troop withdrawal advocate, admitted that if General Petraeus reported progress it would be a problem for antiwar Democrats.” Progress = problem.

When Congress returns, expect the Democrats to renew their full-on push for surrender in Iraq. Their politics demand it, whatever the cost to us or the Iraqis.

I’ve been confident in saying the war was no longer politically tenable for the GOP, and that come September the defeatists would pick off enough Republican votes to force the president’s hand. I don’t yet think I’m wrong about that. Public support for the surge, though rising, is still low enough to make Republican politicians nervous. But hope builds:

President Bush plans to continue his Iraq troop surge well into next year after a string of positive reports left Democrats increasingly powerless to end the war.

Mr Bush, bolstered by growing public support for the surge and recent admissions from war critics that military gains have been made, has begun a campaign to talk up the strategy before General David Petraeus’s critical progress report next month.

Posted by Paul at 6:30 AM | Permalink

Whom do journalists, policy wonks and Hill staffers regard as the most powerful person in Washington? The answer might surprise you.

Posted by Paul at 12:40 AM | Permalink

Victor Davis Hanson believes we have reason to feel perky:

The point is that few know exactly how the country and the world will look by November 2008, but it may very well be that the U.S. will enjoy a position of strength and respect abroad and security at home — and someone still in office in late 2008 will get a great deal of credit for that.

Posted by Paul at 11:45 PM | Permalink

“I promise you, we can end illegal immigration.”

That’s a big promise. See who’s making it.

Posted by Paul at 11:00 PM | Permalink

I don’t care where they are or what they’re doing, my people cannot stand roaches.

[RSS and e-mail subscribers: Video appears here. Click to watch.]

Posted by Paul at 11:55 PM | Permalink

Fighting the “real” fight
Christopher Hitchens

If I am right about this, an enormous prize is within our reach. We can not only deny the clones of Bin Ladenism a military victory in Iraq, we can also discredit them in the process and in the eyes (and with the help) of a Muslim people who have seen them up close. We can do this, moreover, in a keystone state of the Arab world that guards a chokepoint—the Gulf—in the global economy. As with the case of Afghanistan—where several provinces are currently on a knife-edge between an elected government that at least tries for schools and vaccinations, and the forces of uttermost darkness that seek to negate such things—the struggle will take all our nerve and all our intelligence. But who can argue that it is not the same battle in both cases, and who dares to say that it is not worth fighting?

Posted by Paul at 11:30 PM | Permalink

National presidential preference polls are mostly useless. But unlike other polls, at least they ask a legitimate question, and one voters can answer: For whom will you vote?

According to a new CBS News poll out Monday, Rudy Giuliani retains a significant lead nationally among Republican primary voters in the race to become the party’s presidential nominee.

In all, 38 percent of Republican primary voters favor the former New York City mayor, a slight increase from last month. Senator-turned-actor Fred Thompson is next; he’s favored by 18 percent of Republican primary voters, a seven-point drop from last month.

Actually, it’s actor-turned-senator, but whatever.

If, as now seems likely, we end up with Hillary v. Rudy, keep this in mind.

ADDED @ 21:35 —

Just in case you were wondering, no, pollsters haven’t given up on asking stupid questions.

Posted by Paul at 10:15 PM | Permalink

It will choke you up. Little wonder, then, that’s it gone viral.

[RSS and e-mail subscribers: Video appears here. Click to watch.]

Posted by Paul at 6:35 PM | Permalink

We could end our expensive, ineffective “war on drugs” and use the savings to repair our failing infrastructure. But before that happens, many more bridges will have to fall down.

Posted by Paul at 6:15 PM | Permalink

Which is fine. Higher prices promote conservation and the development of alternative energy sources. But when asked, “What would you do to reduce gas prices?,” all but one of the Democratic presidential candidates gave answers that would increase prices rather than reduce them, as the candidates seem to believe.

Question: Are the Democrats guilty of (a) economic illiteracy, (b) prevarication or (c) pandering?

Posted by Paul at 12:45 AM | Permalink

Ronald Brownstein explains why 2008 is an especially risky year for moderate and maverick Republicans.

He suggests that the GOP is becoming more ideologically homogenous just as the Democrats are becoming more ideologically fractured:

Polls show that only about half of Democratic voters consider themselves liberals, while three-fourths or more of Republicans call themselves conservatives. That means to win elections, Democrats depend more than Republicans on the votes of moderates — which compels them to accept more dissent from party orthodoxy.

When Democrats dissent from party orthodoxy, they dissent to the right. (See, for example, Joe Lieberman.)

If Brownstein’s analysis is correct, it’s bad news for Republicans, but good news for the right. It means the GOP is becoming more reliably conservative, while the Democrats are becoming less reliably liberal.

The consequences of this have been foreshadowed by the new Congress, which, despite its Democratic majority, has been mostly stalemated when not producing conservative victories.

Posted by Paul at 5:05 PM | Permalink

I leave today for a business trip and won’t return home until Sunday. So I probably won’t have another opportunity between now and then to update the blog.

In the meantime, this is right: “US Republicans start to smell blood.” I’d still bet on a (big) Democratic win in 2008. But Republican prospects are looking brighter.

Posted by Paul at 10:20 AM | Permalink

The vote was 8-2:

Terminally ill patients do not have a constitutional right to be treated with experimental drugs, even if they likely will be dead before the medicine is approved, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned last year’s decision by a smaller panel of the same court, which held that terminally ill patients may not be denied access to potentially lifesaving drugs.

The court’s opinion, in pdf, is here.

This decision is correct not only as a matter of law, but also as a matter of policy.

If patients could gain access to an unapproved drug, they’d have no reason to participate in research studies, where often half the participants are given a placebo. And if patients didn’t participate in research, we might never learn whether an experimental drug actually works. To just assume that a drug works because it’s under study is to assume facts not in evidence.

Posted by Paul at 6:00 AM | Permalink

The downside of diversity
Boston Globe

It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite.

Posted by Paul at 8:40 PM | Permalink

Were the Democrats “stampeded,” “strong-armed” and “rolled,” or just “eager to get out of town”?*

Posted by Paul at 5:30 PM | Permalink

Democrats have it within their power to end the war in Iraq. If they truly believe the war is based on a lie, that it’s illegal, that it’s immoral, and that it’s unwinnable, why do they pay for it? More importantly, why do they let young men and women die fighting it?

If the war is as they describe it, Democrats are guilty of crimes against humanity. You don’t finance a war you believe to be illegal and immoral, and you most emphatically don’t let young people die fighting it.

Watch:

“This is the most heartless, cruel, disgusting thing …”

(HT: Hot Air)

Posted by Paul at 11:30 PM | Permalink

With 41 Democrats voting yes, the House has joined the Senate “and sent to President Bush for his signature legislation his intelligence advisers wrote to enhance their ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners without a court order.”

The vote was 227-183.

According to the New York Times, Democrats “appeared worried about the political repercussions of being perceived as interfering with intelligence gathering.” The Times is such a cynical, Republican mouthpiece! Surely some of the Democrats were worried about, you know, national security. Geez.

Posted by Paul at 11:45 PM | Permalink

Read Michael Kinsley not for his views on the war in Iraq, but for his indictment of opinion-poll democracy:

Dislike of opinion polls is one of the great clichés of American politics, but it’s not clear exactly what people dislike. They dislike politicians who follow the opinion polls, and they dislike politicians who fail to follow the will of the people, as revealed in opinion polls. But the real problem with opinion polls is different: they reinforce the impression that everything is a matter of opinion, and all opinions are equally valid. [Emphasis added.]

Pollsters routinely ask people to express an opinion on matters of fact; on matters unknown or unknowable; and on matters for which the general public is unqualified to express an opinion. Examples:

• “Are most of the insurgents in Iraq under the command of Osama bin Laden?” The answer to that is a matter of fact, not opinion.

• “Will the United States suffer another terrorist attack in the next six months?” How the hell would you and I know?

• “Is the surge in Iraq working?” Since the surge is a military operation, “working” requires a military definition. Many Americans have the expertise to express an informed opinion about whether the surge is “working.” But the general public does not. (And even an expert might say, “I don’t know,” or, “It’s too soon to know.”)

Pollsters may never stop asking inane questions. But you and I can stop answering them.

Posted by Paul at 2:35 PM | Permalink

Wall Street Journal:

Jittery home-mortgage lenders are cutting off credit or raising interest rates for a growing portion of Americans, extending well beyond the market for subprime loans for people with the weakest credit records.

This worsening credit crunch threatens to put further pressure on the housing market, where prices are flat to declining in much of the country.

Lenders say they are being forced to raise interest rates and stop offering certain loans because mortgage-bond investors have lost their appetite for a broad range of mortgages considered risky. That includes those dubbed Alt-A, a category between prime and subprime that often involves borrowers who don’t fully document their income or assets, or those buying investment properties. Notably, American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., which stopped making loans earlier this week, said late yesterday it would cease most operations, slashing its work force to about 750 from more than 7,000. [Emphasis added.]

Well Fargo this week jacked its fixed rate on 30-year jumbo loans by 1.125%.

Anyone who has bought or refinanced a home in the last five to seven years knows that credit has been loosey goosey. Those halcyon days are over:

The fright among investors is forcing lenders to go back to more-conservative practices that were the norm before the housing boom of the first half of this decade. Many now are focusing on loans to borrowers who are willing to document their income, can make a down payment of at least 5% and have a history of paying bills on time. [Emphasis added.]

Well, imagine that!

HT: Volokh Conspiracy

Posted by Paul at 8:45 PM | Permalink

Backstory.

Posted by Paul at 6:20 PM | Permalink

One.

Almost three years ago, I noted that the number of gays in Massachusetts who’d availed themselves of a judicially-mandated opportunity to marry was tiny. And even some of them are now divorced.

Since gay kids will one day grow up with the expectation of marriage, who knows what future generations may do. But though I support the few who choose it, I’m convinced that most of my contemporaries will never marry. We’ve been acculturated to other interests.

ADDED —

Question: Does the paucity of matrimony-minded gays make the policy argument for same-sex marriage stronger or weaker?

Posted by Paul at 10:21 PM | Permalink

I’m ripping here on Patterico, who today posted a list of “Books That Have Changed My Life.” I can’t say these books were life-altering, but I can say they strongly influenced my thinking about public policy, economics and law. Some of them are in every libertarian’s library; others, perhaps not. All repay the read.

“Restoring the American Dream” by Robert J. Ringer

“Wealth & Poverty” by George Gilder

“Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Friedman

“In Defense of Freedom” by Frank S. Meyer

“When We Are Free” edited by Lawrence W. Reed and Dale M. Haywood

“Economics in One Lesson” by Henzy Hazlitt

“The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek

“A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law” by Antonin Scalia

ADDED —

Here are two other gems that may be of interest to the politically minded. I don’t claim to follow always the authors’ advice, but that’s a reflection on me, not them. Both are excellent references.

“How to Win Arguments” by William A. Rusher

“Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking” by D.Q. McInerny

Posted by Paul at 8:50 PM | Permalink

• Council on American-Islamic Relations tries — and fails — to silence critic
Hot Air

CAIR can go to Hell and they can take their 72 virgins with them.

Related coverage from Michelle Malkin. Video at Little Green Footballs.

[ADDED — CAIR’s attempt to intimidate Robert Spencer is one of many instances in which Islamists have tried to use libel law to gag others.]

• My view of Islam
Ayaan Hirsi Al

Under sharia law (Islamic law), such as governs in Saudi Arabia, Iran and parts of Nigeria, the civil rights of women are dramatically reduced. Threat of violent punishment in the form of whipping and stoning makes the prospect of financial independence and sexual freedom for women all but impossible. Miraculously, even in such harsh circumstances you will find women who are relatively well educated, have some say in choosing a husband and manage to earn a living. Let us be clear that these exceptions are due to the compassion and progressiveness of families who have been influenced by the West, and not to rules derived from Islam.

Posted by Paul at 6:14 PM | Permalink

To freeze the slide show, place your mouse on an image.

Posted by Paul at 12:40 AM | Permalink