So I was watching Guilty by Suspicion the other day and noted that lefties oppose some coerced Congressional testimony (by the Hollywood 10 -- for example) but favor it when the targets are people like Imelda Marcos' lawyers (Congress decided that Attorney-Client Privilege doesn't apply to Congressional testimony), or Ken Lay, or Martha Stewart. Shouldn't one oppose all coerced testimony or support (at least the right of Congress to coerce) all?

I've got my biometric national ID -- do you?

I say national ID not national ID card because it's not a card. I spend a lot of time thinking about the concept of National ID and it occurred to me that anything that identifies you as a national (of a country) is a national ID.

Now, not to change the subject, my mother is a paper magnet. She was cleaning out her house recently and dumping whatever she could on her children. She sent me my file. Sort of a TIA Data Mining file; mother style. It included my original birth certificate, the hospital bill for my birth ($75.00), some kind of hospital record with my footprint, and my baptismal certificate. Every piece of paper indicates that all events occurred in California.

Now that file constitutes genuine, legal, biometric, proof of my nationality and my identity. I think I'll start carrying it around in case anyone asks me to prove that I exist.

New York Sun and Treason continues...
Prof Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy commenting on the Sun controversy:

MORE ON THE NEW YORK SUN: Best of the Web recently came to the defense of The New York Sun's "antiwar speech as treason" editorial; Brendan Nyhan in SpinSanity has a quite persuasive response to that defense, as does Jesse Walker in Reason's Hit & Run. I generally very much like Best of the Web, but think that on this point its author erred.

I'm not sure I understand. Accusing the opposition of treason is a traditional part of robust American (and most other) political discourse. I gather that Best of the Web was arguing that if lefties can attack us with excessive rhetoric, we can attack them the same way. After all, many marchers are accusing the current US administration of war crimes and crimes against humanity ("Hitler" comparisons). Accusing the government of this sort of behavior is the exact equivalent of accusing individuals of treason. Note that both sorts of crimes can be punished by death.

The beauty of the Net is that it has restored vibrant disputation after a century of boring monopoly media. I have long predicted that this new culture would infiltrate backwards into traditional media and that seems to be happening. Seems like a good thing to me.

I'm sick and tired of having to treat those I think of as commie scum with kid gloves because it's not somehow "nice". They certainly don't treat me that way.